An Astronaut's Life by Sonja Dechian Read Free Book Online Page A

rest on the leaves of Lomatia tasmanica .
Others are swept away because they are so light. They’re lighter than air, and more
determined.
    Sean and François are nowhere nearby. They’re kilometres away, on the second floor
of a supermarket car park in the suburbs. Sean had pictured a mountain, a bridge,
but there is nothing like that in the neighbourhood so he leads François up the concrete
ramp to the top, and they lean against the metal railings and look out across the
empty parking spaces below. He explains that the nanobots are so small they can be
inhaled or swallowed or absorbed through the mucous membranes of a human. Because
they are only robots, they can’t differentiate between the electric impulses of the
brain and those of a machine.
    ‘Is this real?’ François says.
    ‘I think so. You can’t see them, but the machine was working.’
    ‘And they destroy specific types of cells?’
    ‘Neurons. Memories. Files.’
    ‘It’s exactly what we dreamt of.’
    ‘I know,’ Sean says. ‘It’s perfect. Well, Mendel hopes the brain will adapt to the
changes, but there will be some problems.’
    ‘How long do we have?’ François leans forward over the railing and lifts his feet
so he’s balanced against the metal.
    ‘I’m not sure. Maybe hours.’
    There are no cars, but there are lights around the car park’s perimeter as well as
signs that are all lit up. Sean isn’t sure about the extent of the threat these things
pose, given the possibility of electromagnetic radiation, but he realises he wants
more time. He doesn’t want to be awake when it happens, he just wants to go to sleep
and then everything will have changed.
    ‘Your phone,’ he remembers.
    François takes it from his pocket.
    ‘Do I just turn it off?’
    ‘I’m not sure. I thought we’d smash it.’
    François looks uncertain, but only for a second. He hands it over.
    Sean holds the phone over the railing and when he lets go they lose sight of its
path in the shadows. The sound is an unsatisfying crack followed by the tinny echo
of falling plastic.
    ‘It’s going to happen to us anyway,’ says François.
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Fuck, you really did it. Take that!’ He leans forward to shout, ‘Take that, you
fucking cum bags.’ He shouts louder, ‘Take that, fuck-faced dick faces!’
    The sound settles over the car park.
    ‘How long now?’
    They have hours. Sean’s excited about the hours he has with François. He thinks about
the things he already has to fill into his chart, but by the time he gets home he
might not remember the chart at all.
    From somewhere far away he hears something, a very low hum. It could just be a distant
vehicle. But no.
    ‘I’ve been thinking about something,’ he says.
    ‘What’s that?’ François slumps forward against the railing.
    ‘I’ve been thinking about kissing you.’
    François doesn’t look over. He doesn’t move.
    ‘I have too,’ he says.
    ‘I was scared to do it.’
    François straightens up. ‘But why?’ he says. ‘What might happen?’
    Sean considers this. Deep in his chest he feels the machine’s hum grow stronger.
He thinks about what it would be like to kiss François and, for once, it doesn’t
seem that anything too bad could happen.

THE ARCHITECT
    They were eating dinner when the call came. It was the landline phone, which rarely
rang, so they exchanged a look as the architect stood up to take it.
    ‘Hello?’
    He knew it would be one of those international call centres and he was probably going
to hang up before they could finish a sentence, but instead a serious voice asked
for him by name.
    ‘Yes?’
    He watched his wife dip a slice of bread into the sauce of her pasta. It was his
pesto cream sauce, the one meal the architect could always make well.
    ‘I’m sorry?’ he said into the phone.
    His wife looked up.
    ‘I don’t think I understand,’ the architect said. ‘What do you want me to do?’
    As the architect explained the phone call, he looked