Lotus was sitting on the old bridge the land cars had used to cross the Ganges a hundred years before. She sat fearlessly on the crumbling old metal structure, her legs dangling out a rusted away gap. She was swinging them over the sludge that had been the river below. Her friend Yasmin came running to her side, trying to get her to come to safety.
“Lotus! You could fall.”
“And die, that would end my dilemma.”
“To live or to let them download you into an astronaut android?” Yasmin sighed. “I don’t understand why you are even considering it. Lakshmi blessed you with this life and you want to just throw it away. Your soul might not even be able to reincarnate with your mind stuck in that machine.”
“I want to last forever.” Lotus said. “I want to go up there, explore the other worlds, and meet the other kinds of people out there.”
Yasmin sat down a bit behind her friend carefully avoiding any of the many rusted away holes. Lotus continued to dangle over the side of it precariously. Yasmin thought the choice Lotus was pondering was just as precarious.
“You want to stay here, never even leave India, much less Earth, Yasmin. So you can’t understand my wanderlust.”
“I want to live, breathe, eat. I want to love. I want to hold my own babies and help other women give birth to theirs.” Yasmin said smiling.
“A noble and worthy ambition.” Lotus said. “What I want is just as noble, just as worthy.”
“It is much more costly. It costs your life. You die when they download you into an astronaut android, Lotus.”
“Your body dies… but your mind, your consciousness lives on and lives on for thousands of years, maybe forever.”
Yasmin had had this argument with her best friend a dozen times before and always lost. She gave up this time. She carefully got back up to her feet and tiptoed off the dangerous bridge back to the river bank.
“Don’t worry, Yasmin. If I decide to go, I will come by and see you first.”
Yasmin shot her friend an exasperated look over her shoulder and headed back to her home. She lived in an ancient building overlooking the ancient bridge. She made her way home and when she got to her bedroom. She looked out the window to see Lotus still sitting on the bridge. She was still dangling over the edge, risking death, the death she did not seem to fear.
It was the next morning when Yasmin’s mother Rahda called for her to get up. She had a visitor. Yasmin came out of her room to see Lotus, carrying luggage into her living room.
“I packed for my trip!” Lotus laughed. “I can’t take it with me, so I’m giving it all to you.”
“No, you aren’t serious? You can’t… you won’t. No please!” Yasmin stuttered and broke into sobs.
“Don’t cry, I’ll call you right after the procedure. We’ll talk just like we do every night.”
“Namah Shivaya!” Radha said in prayer. “You will be dead if you go through the procedure.”
“I will still be able to talk to Yasmin, my other friends, my family, and aliens even when my ship finds some out there.” She shut her eyes imagining all the wonders she would be seeing.
Lotus was smiling ear to ear as Yasmin and her mother Rahda were tearing up. Their tears, alas, did not move Lotus to change her mind. She just set the last of the suitcases down at Yasmin’s feet, hugged her friend, and left.
Yasmin was inconsolable all day until her usual nightly call from Lotus came through her computer. The computer’s voice announced that she had a call from Lotus. Yasmin corrected the computer saying it was not Lotus, just what was left of her mind in digital form. The computer didn’t answer. Lotus’s disembodied voice answered.
“Yasmin. I am calling you as is our tradition. I regret I will not be able to keep that up forever as my ship passes Jupiter we will be out of instant communication range. I will not be able to call you nightly then. I will however send nightly messages that you will receive some time after I send them. The lag in the communications system will make my messages seem further apart but I assure you I will send them nightly.”
“Lotus, why did you go through with it?”
“Let us not waste time on this argument anymore as it has been settled now.” Lotus’s voice sounded somehow like her and yet unlike her.
The nightly calls proceeded for a week until the spaceship Lotus’s astronaut android was on passed Jupiter Station. Then they came once every few days, then once a month, then once a year. Yasmin grew up, got married, had her own babies just as she had wanted. She became a midwife and helped others have their babies just as she had wanted. She grew old, living and then dying naturally just as she had wanted.
Out in far-flung space the astronaut android that held the downloaded mind of the girl who had been Lotus did not grow up. She did not marry or have babies of her own. She did travel through space and saw great scientific wonders just as she had wanted. She met aliens and spoke to them. She did not live but she was lasting forever. Like her wanderlust, she was never ending. Never did Lotus’s thoughts rest in peace. Every night she still pens a letter to Yasmin whom she knows is long dead. She does it no longer for Yasmin but for herself, trying in vain to hold on to the last bit of herself. Eventually, perhaps the android Lotus will be destroyed, falling into some black hole or maybe when the universe itself ends in billions of years. Until then Lotus lasts if not lives.
Ginger Strivelli is an artist and writer from North Carolina. She has written for Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, Circle Magazine, Autism Parenting Magazine, Silver Blade, Solarpunk Magazine, various other magazines and several anthology books. She loves to travel the world and make arts and crafts. She considers herself a storyteller entertaining and educating through her writing.
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