Oblivious to my anxiety and to my gloomy pallor, Kitwara ignores the silence and opens the door. She stands on the threshold, her long pink boots and silky brown braids glistening through my hut, under the ice of the nervous haze that reflects in the windows. The fog clouds my brain. It even clouds the cookie in my mouth, which crumbles, tasteless, down my throat.
I tuck my head into the pillow. The girl is speaking, but I’d rather remain evasive, slithering in the cold bed, through these slick sheets, like a river of lard.
“Hey, why aren’t you dressed yet?”
“I’m sorry, Kitwara. It’s cold. And tonight, I just want to hide my face from the world!”
“Hide? What are you running away from?”
“My destiny, obviously! I can’t stop thinking about the manifest!”
“Well, we all have this senseless clock ticking, don’t we? What’s the point of ruminating about it?”
“I can’t think of anything else”
And I grasp, again, in my mind, the old world.
They say that the old world was big. And then we decided to break it into pieces and sell the bits. When it got too small, we tried to rebuild it. But it was too late. We had spent it all on carbon dioxide credits, artificial water, and oxygen. There was nothing left for the rest of us, in the new world.
“Eish, how depressing ehh! Get up and get dressed, because the party is going to be a blast! There are good heaters there, and plenty of alcohol!”
“But Kitwara! What if the manifest gets me today? Which alcohol will cheer me up?”
Kitwara stares at me, serene.
“As far as I know, the manifest can catch you today, as it can catch you in five, ten, or fifteen years from now. Or never!”
I rise and stand by the ledge. It is amazing how the technology of the city can break through this forest. I can see the little metal bees flying over the leaves of the apple trees. I wonder if they are wise. If they have heard Kitwara’s determined “never!”. Escaping the manifest is almost impossible. Just as it is impossible for me to imagine such a thing as “cars”, circling the streets of the old world.
“Think this way”, Kitwara says, “If the manifest gets you now, even better”.
I quickly turn to her, wide-eyed.
“Better? Better for whom?”
“For you. Don’t you want to stay young for eternity? And then, imagine what it will be like to live in the Plain? They say it’s paradise!”
“No one has ever come back from there to tell what it’s like”
For an instant, it seems that the serenity in my friend’s beautiful pair of brown eyes, will succumb and swallow my soul.
“Enough, already! You know very well that the both of us have good inheritances. When the manifest happens to us, it will be glorious”.
“Will it, now? Do I really have a good inheritance? Is that the reason why I am alone in the world?”
“That is the reason, yes sir,” she assures me, “Our ancestors were generous. And I’ll tell you more: Cossa, Michael, Zuleca, Nhantumbo, they all are in the Plain”.
“What if they did not find their inheritance?”
“I hate your pessimism. You have nothing to worry about, trust me. Just get dressed and come with me to the party!”
I excuse myself. Not that my friend isn’t worthy of my company. Or that I don’t value her. I have known Kitwara since I was a child. I grew up in the dark of the woods, she was raised in the lights of city, but we are like sides of the same coin. I know by heart the scent of her hair, the path of her ideals. She is the only one capable of guiding me when it gets so shadowy. But today it’s hard to follow her sun. It’s hard to accept that “I have nothing to worry about”. What do I know about this life? Waterfalls, birds, fresh air. What do I know about it? Other than what I have been imagining?
Someone said I should try write about these anxieties. But the more I insist on sliding my fingers across the pen, the more the ink dries, my inability to communicate becomes evident. As if one could expect much from an indigenous person like myself, who took shelter in the woods and didn’t even have a proper education. The kind of education I heard about, that happened more than two or three centuries ago. In the generation of my great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents. My ancestors. Where schools and universities existed as institutions. Before the old world had ended.
By the way, I was raving in dreams about the old-world times, when the manifest, obviously inexorable, came. It broke through me in the middle of the night. Some will wish you congratulations on the manifest. Others, the condolences. Who cares. I was alone, there was not a single syllable of consolation for me.
Some people have described the manifest as the feeling of having a saw ripping your skin off. Others have said, it’s like liquid mint coursing through your veins. I don’t know if it hurts. I just feel the cracking into my arteries. I see the blood clots staining the sheets and pillowcases, pouring uninterruptedly from my nostrils and ears. I feel a burn in my bones, barks in my head.
I have little time left to continue breathing normally.
Just enough to leave behind the tired and grey walls of this hut. After all the years of living in fear, like a rabbit out in the wind, I must focus on one thing only: the inheritance. The damn inheritance. I wonder if the light of my ancestors will now illuminate my path.
Stumbling, I drag myself across the dripping rug and lift my trembling fingers to the refrigerated safe. I grab the blue ampoule stored inside. Every citizen has the right to one. At least the Government assures us this. I have been guarding the ampoule like one guards his heart.
Statistics. Why doesn’t the Government share the statistics of those who entered, and those who stayed? Some things are better left unknown; I assume.
Anyway, I don’t want to get into any statistics, other than of those who lived.
I inject the medicine through my thigh. Single dose.
A distant uncle, officer at the central power, told me that my mother activated the manifest when I was just born. My father, a hunter, followed her three years later. I had no one left. In Kitwara’s family, the first and only one to have gone through, so far, was her father. The manifest caught Mr. Antonio, at the age of 55. Not at 18, as it turns out to happen to me.
Under the effect of the ampoule, the bleeding slows down and my lungs slowly open, allowing me to breathe calmly again. I must rush to the Center to reclaim my inheritance, immediately.
It is unbearably cold. I curl up in my fuzzy coat. Use my dry fingers to stretch my long dreads.
During the trajectory through the ice of the night, I try to call Kitwara, but her cell phone is off. I don’t want to leave without saying goodbye to my best friend, but under the circumstances, there aren’t many options. We will meet again on the other side, in the Plain.
I’m waiting for the train to the Build Center, downtown. There are more people waiting. Sick people like me, who have also activated the manifest. While we cross on the train, at the speed of death, I can’t help but imagine the old world. Not that I don’t like my world. I love the new world, all its technology and extravagance. It’s just that, my body doesn’t respond to the new world. My body was made to survive in the conditions of the old world. Where humans did not suffer from the manifest. My ancestors, certainly, did not suffer from the manifest.
It is not known, for sure, what caused the present generation to develop this condition. The most accepted theory is that severe climate changes are to blame. The old world by then, collapsed, and the effects are now felt in our bodies.
When the manifest gets us, it activates something in our blood, and eventually we stop breathing the oxygen of the new world. It is not a death sentence. Over the years, with the help of the best scientists, the government has managed to find a cure. In Africa, the cure is called mawa.
Mawa is implanted in us to clean and renew the blood, suppressing all the abnormalities. They say that mawa not only stops the manifest, but it also stops aging. In other words, it is a new chance. After we are implanted with mawa, we cross to the Plain, a place resembling the old world, created especially for all those who activated the manifest. There, we can continue to live, for many long years, breathing normally.
Through the coach window I can see the building that houses the Center. My legs tremble as I jump straight onto the cold concrete.
Shit! The manifest is indeed a death sentence. Forgive me if I said otherwise.
He who has no inheritance, gets no mawa. Period.
No soul has ever returned from the Center to report on the experience. We are not told who gets the inheritance and who doesn’t. My parents, my family, may have crossed over to the Plain or they may have simply passed away in some corridor of this vast building. I wonder what they do with the bodies. If this is a mystery, the government’s reasons have always been very clear: the resources for mawa development and for the sustainability of the Plain are limited. Because of that, they only allocate mawa to those who have the inheritance. This is how the system has worked ever since I can remember.
The inheritance is gauged by the database controlled exclusively by the government, a database that contains information about each of us, each of our ancestors, and our activities. Everything counts. Not only my behavior. Theirs, mainly. The care they took with the old world, with the environment, the water, the air. Each of these actions counts towards the points, negative or positive, compiled by the government. It is the positive points that determine our inheritance.
My life depends now on my ancestors.
“Ma’am, may I ask why are you laughing?”
The woman in the white uniform, reading my file, my history, and certainly studying my inheritance, continues to smile.
“Ma’am?”
She moves away through the luminous silver of the floor, and rummages through several rows of silver drawers. When she returns, she brings a small box with her.
“Rejoice, young man, you are a lucky fellow! You come from a line of exemplary people. Your relatives were true janitors for the environment. Yay, you can celebrate, as you are about to cross over into the Plain! Young man: today you are reborn! You just have to sign the form… and that’s it!”
A warmth runs through my chest, at the exact moment when she folds up the sleeve of my shirt, to insert mawa into my arm. I end up making a sudden movement, awakened by an insistent screaming. There is something horrible going on behind the glazed door.
The technician releases the metal syringe, which slides to the floor.
“What is this?”, I ask, choking as the screams hit the flank of my heart, “What’s happening?”
The technician places a hand on my shoulder. Visibly shaken, she mumbles:
“Oh, it hurts so much. It’s a reality that I never get used to. It’s always sad when someone doesn’t get their inheritance… hey! Come back here, young man! There’s nothing you can do for them…!”
Something stronger inside me keeps me from remaining still. I open the door, and I see her. Dragged by her arms and feet. Everyone ignores her pleas.
No. Not my life. Not her. How could her ancestors have forsaken her?
“Kitwara…!”
