He had never seen his wife of fourteen years, even though they had had four children together. Her scent he knew from their infrequent couplings, always in strict darkness, in a small room between their quarters. Usually she smelled of honeydew melon, sometimes sage or wheat, and once, in his sharpest memory, a flower he could not name. She was plump, like himself, but pleasingly, and always responsive though she spoke little. They knew each other very well, as much as the Law would allow. She worked in agriculture, was moderate and conscientious, and their children, living with them both alternately before they reached the Age of Privacy, were beautiful, curious, and kind. To know where they were now, or what their mother looked like, could lose him everything.
He had also never seen the doctor who examined him by robotic remote. The machine was shaped like a box with multiple legs and arms, and could send back to the doctor pictures and scans of everything but his face. (Doctors were, for practicality’s sake, allowed a little leeway in the Law.) The remote finished its ministrations and retracted its appendages.
“I am afraid the cancer has returned and is spreading. I have given you more drugs, but I think you have to face the fact that you are dying. I am sorry. Maybe two or three more months,” came the electronically disguised voice from the machine by his bed.
He raised himself weakly. “But it was gone. What happened?”
“I don’t know. These things happen. Unfortunately it’s not one of the curable cancers,” said the doctor.
He coughed, and his lungs hurt. “What can I do now?”
“I don’t know, and it’s none of my business,” the doctor said, his machine trundling off. Soon it was gone, and he had his privacy back.
He did not feel better. For weeks he had been feeling worse and worse, until finally placing the secure call to the doctor. His quarters were silent and empty of any other human beings. Groaning, he laid back down and tried to think. His work, in computer design and encryption, sat unattended at his console in the corner. He could not bring himself to face it. It didn’t matter now, if it ever had. All that came to him was her face.
It was not her face, of course. In his forty years, he had only seen a human face not his own or his children’s with his hands. But study hers he had, when she would permit it. Round, small-nosed. Countless times he had tried to reconstruct it in his mind, but only managed to see distortions of his own. Now they seemed to hover over his bed, mocking him. The Laws of Privacy were absolute, and always had been, since the dark days of ancient history. The thought of actually seeing another person, knowing what was only theirs to know, put a leaden feeling in his gut, even though he found himself wanting it. More than ever now.
He pulled himself out of bed and into his plain overalls. Not letting himself think anymore, he collected a few tools and shut down the console and the dim lights of his small set of rooms. The security lock-outs at the portal took him a minute, but were not too much trouble for a computer man to bypass, as they were designed with the assumption that no one would want to breach them and risk being around anyone else, save for the designated mating or material delivery times.
The corridor beyond was naturally empty and dark save for emergency lighting. He stole along it carefully, though there was zero chance anyone would endanger his or her privacy to be here when they did not have to be. He chided himself for a fool. And a heretic. He didn’t know what he was doing out here, a mostly dead man, as alone as if he were the last man alive. He could still see his bad models of her face before his eyes. Coughing and pain slowed him further. But there was one last thing he wanted, so he pressed on.
On her side of the corridor was a dull metal door similar to his, easily defeated. He froze. What if she did not want to see him? Of course she wouldn’t. Like the decent person she was, she’d be horrified. What if she was out in the fields, shrouded in a privacy suit as she worked? He coughed again and slid to the cold floor. The distortions of her face called him names.
With a creak, her door began to open. He scrambled to his feet, almost falling. He was moving backwards when he heard her voice.
“Where is the delivery?” she said from the privacy of darkness.
He could not answer, and she asked again. Finally she said, “Is it you?”
A lifetime of values broke from him like an ice sheet, and raggedly he said, “Yes.”
“What are you doing here! Leave now!” The door began to close again.
“I am dying,” was all he could say.
The door halted, but silence stretched. He could see none of her, but thought he caught the faintest whiff of soil and rain. “I am sorry,” she said at last, “but that is your—“
“Isn’t it yours too? Just once.”
She said nothing, and he waited for the door to close. If someone somehow found out that she had learned the business of another, she could be shunned, and she didn’t deserve that.
“I love you,” he said, and walked away.
“Stop,” she said, and he did. Turning, he saw only darkness in her doorway. Then a hand, the same brown as his, and next an arm came through into the dimness. A round body, a face like his and yet impossibly different. She emerged fully, and two private persons stood looking at one another like on the first morning of the world.
Edited by Sophie Gorjance.
Gary Charles Wilkens’ first book, The Red Light Was My Mind, won the 2006 Texas Review Breakthrough Poetry Prize. His manuscript Fayetteville was a Finalist in the 2014 Moon City Review Poetry Contest. His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Texas Review, Moon City Review, Passages North, the Adirondack Review, James Dickey Review, Melancholy Hyperbole, and Midwest Quarterly. His fiction has appeared in Drunk Monkeys, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Pale Ghosts Magazine, and Ginosko Literary Journal. His day job is Associate Professor of English at Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia.