The Chemistry of Death

Chapter 9

Joe stared at his onscreen brain. Colors flashed through the axons so quickly he could barely track them. Watching his recorded fear replayed in slow motion was surprisingly disturbing.

As expected, his amygdala pulsed with activity, shooting out electrical panic to the rest of his brain. The scans from his control group showed that their amygdalas didn’t react to the sunny day and the beach that he’d glimpsed through the open door. He’d expected that — the simulation was designed to terrify him, the Joe of today, not the Joe who had gone through life unafraid of the light and beauty of the outside world. This thing that calmed everyone else submerged him in an ocean of fear.

Even on the frightening simulations, where their amygdalas were engaged, the control group fared better than he did. Even though they were initially frightened, the other parts of their brains immediately got busy filtering the signals and calming things down. Within seconds, everyone in the control group seemed to recognize that the stimuli weren’t worrisome, shake it off, and move on.

But he had lost his calm switch. His brain panicked at the sight of the bright outside world, and it didn’t calm down until he got away from it. His calming breaths didn’t stop his amygdala from firing, nor did Edison’s soothing presence. Only removing the threat worked.

His own brain overloaded itself and couldn’t recover.

Edison snored under his desk, content after a long romp in the park with his dog walker, Andres Peterson. Edison had come back smelling of cold and fall leaves. Joe had untangled an orange leaf from his furry belly and set it on the edge of his desk — a bit of the outside world.

His mailbox dinged, and he switched over to it.

Joe opened the first attachment. Sandra Haines had been twenty-six (blue, orange) when she died. She’d worked in the accounting branch of KPMG. No known living relatives. The police had ruled her death an accident or a potential suicide. An autopsy had been performed, although Vivian didn’t include it. She did mention that Sandra’s blood alcohol level was 0.16 (black, decimal point, cyan, orange), more than twice the legal limit. At that level, she’d have been staggering, but probably still walking, maybe throwing up. But she wouldn’t have been completely incapacitated.

Because she’d been found near 72nd (slate, blue) Street, the theory was that she’d stumbled or fallen off the platform and wandered down the tracks until the train hit her. That scenario happened far too often, although usually people were hit trying to get back onto the platform. Most people, even drunk, didn’t head off into the dark and threatening tunnels.

The second attachment was a picture. Sandra had delicate features and wide blue eyes. Her hair was butterscotch blond, the same as Celeste’s, but her smile looked uncertain, not like the almost manic smile he always associated with Celeste, although he hadn’t seen her smile in years. For all he knew, she couldn’t smile anymore. The women looked similar enough that it caught at Joe’s heart to think of Celeste alone in his tunnels, depressed, perhaps seeking to end her own life as Sandra had.

He called Celeste to tell her he wanted to talk. She didn’t answer so he left a message saying that he’d follow her wishes, that he didn’t need to see her in person, and that he just needed her. By the time he finished, he felt like a fool, but he didn’t delete the message.

Celeste had cause for despair. She’d lost so much — her art, her mobility, and, if she was to be believed, her beauty. He corrected himself. She was still beautiful, no matter what the disease might have done to her, and he wished she could understand that as well as he could.

But he didn’t want to fight about it with her. Her life was fading away. If she could go down into the tunnels and jump in front of a train, would she? No, not Celeste. She’d fight till she drew her last shallow breath. He was sure of it.

He had lived through dark times after he was struck by agoraphobia. Since the day he’d expected to come into his millions, the day that Pellucid had gone public, he’d been unable to go outside. From that day on, he’d never felt sun on his skin, never felt clean wind against his cheeks. He’d worked hard and attained an unimaginable level of success, only to find that he was forever trapped inside. But he hadn’t given in to self-pity. He hadn’t stepped in front of a train. He hadn’t grabbed the third rail. He’d kept going, making a life for himself in the place that he’d been given.

What had driven Sandra to make the opposite decision?

He hid his IP address, stepped through a few machines to hide his trail, then logged into Facebook. He kept a fake account there, mostly to download pictures he used for test images for Pellucid’s facial recognition software. No point in limiting himself to government databases when Facebook had a far larger array of pictures.

He searched Facebook for a Sandra Haines in New York. Like just about everyone else, she’d had an account. Her timeline was topped by condolences and pictures of flowers. Many people had come to this space in a uniquely modern ritual of public grieving.

He skimmed through their sentiments, but didn’t find anything unique. Her friends would miss her smile, her ability to find good shoe sales, and the way she could knock back cosmopolitans. The generic nature of their one-line comments made him feel tired and sad.

No one had a single specific anecdote, a moment that illuminated who she might have been, how she was different from the seven billion (slate and a long row of black) other people on Earth. He wondered if his own Facebook page, had he created a real one, would have been as remote in the event of his death, if anyone really knew anything about him either.

He reined in his self-indulgent gloom and scrolled back to the top of her profile to look at her pictures. She was a beautiful woman who photographed well. Even in candid shots, she stood out. She wore an array of black and silver dresses, and high-heeled shoes. Her carefully made-up face was almost always smiling. She was photographed most often with a pair of women, Iris and Antonia, and a man named Slade.

Iris stood to her left in pictures, an Asian girl with a round face and alert eyes. Iris usually wore red, her dresses often matching Sandra’s lipstick. They were photographed in a lot of clubs — people dancing behind them, a bar behind their heads. Iris wasn’t in Sandra’s league beauty-wise, and she seemed to know it, often turning away from the camera, her face half hidden, her smile uncertain. Antonia was taller than the others, always scrunching down to fit into the shot. She wasn’t in the most recent pictures, having moved back to Iowa.

Slade hadn’t been on his Facebook account since soon after Sandra’s death. It seemed that Iris, in particular, didn’t like him. He’d dumped Sandra the morning of the day she died, and Iris had posted vitriolic rants against him on his timeline. He’d never responded, even when Antonia had posted the information about Sandra’s funeral. Joe wondered if Slade had attended. Had he written Sandra off completely when he dumped her, or had he blamed himself for her death? It was hard to imagine that he could drop her cold like that, but people were often that cruel.

If Celeste were to die tomorrow, he wouldn’t be able to attend her funeral either. He’d have to send Vivian, as he’d sent her to his own father’s funeral. If he’d had a Facebook page, would Leandro and Celeste’s friends blame him for her death? Would he blame himself? He was useless as a boyfriend. He couldn’t even talk to her, let alone hold her and comfort her.

He went back to Sandra’s page to see what she liked. Musicians. Films. Books. Nothing unusual. Wait. She’d liked an Urban Beekeeping page. Joe went over to the page and found a picture of her there, wearing a heavy beekeeper’s suit, the hood half on. She looked so different she was almost unrecognizable. He’d spotted the wide set eyes, the three (red) faint freckles on her left cheekbone, and the curve of her hairline. She’d been an active member, and the beekeepers had named a memorial hive for her.

He went back to his email and typed out a quick message to Vivian.

He imagined Sandra working during the day, partying at night, and still spending every weekend husbanding bees on rooftops throughout the city. That was the incongruous detail he would have put on her timeline. A woman obsessed with flowers and honey and the furry yellow insects that pollinated most of our foods. She had been vivid and connected to life. A surprising suicide.