Author's note: Trigger Warning - Suicide

August 1, 2053 [7]

The bowls clinked against one another as Martha took one down from the cupboard. She opened the freezer door and found only a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream and a bag of peas. They'd barely used their freezer in months because there was no need to preserve perishables anymore.

She took out the ice cream and scooped it into the bowl, halfway to the top. He won't need this much, but there is no need to preserve, et cetera...

Though she knew her bad knee would punish her for it, Martha bent down to unplug the refrigerator as one last, small courtesy to the world. She slowly raised her old body back upright, then took a moment to compose herself. Through their kitchen window, the turquoise blue of Moraine Lake shimmered beneath the nearly dry peaks of the Canadian Rockies. They'd retired to this humble mountain cabin – closer and closer to a humble lake house – in part, because of this view. Another reason was the mild weather. Still another was Canada's legalization of at-home euthanasia kits.

She took the bowl from the counter and slowly walked out of the kitchen and into the bedroom. There, James waited, lying in bed and propped up by pillows, gray, frail, and smiling at the sight of her. She walked to his side and handed him the ice cream.

"Mint chocolate chip? My favorite. How did you know?"

Martha was relieved to see the twinkle in his eye. He's kidding... not confused. "Oh you just look the type." She sat on the bed next to him and brushed a wisp of white hair from his forehead.

Three years earlier, the symptoms had appeared, right on schedule. He'd forget why he'd entered a room or lose his train of thought, mid-conversation. Little by little. More and more. They eventually had to deactivate his smart lenses once the floating icons became too overwhelming. And then about a month ago, it happened.

He was dressing himself in their bedroom after taking a shower. Martha walked in and startled him and he screamed for her to get out – as if he didn't know me...

The episode ended shortly thereafter, but the implication was clear. Their canary in the coal mine had fallen silent. It was time.

They'd come to the same decision the lifetime before, making this one exception to their rule. Because James would brave kindergarten and the rest of his childhood; he'd last years without seeing her – as long as he knew that Martha was somewhere in the world; as long as he knew she loved him. Existence without that certainty, even if only for a minute, was a living hell.

Presently, he scooped a spoonful of the ice cream into his mouth, then closed his eyes and inhaled through his nose. After a moment, he swallowed, reopened his eyes, and said, "Thank you."

Martha smiled then leaned in to kiss him, catching a hint of his favorite flavor. On his bedside table was the kit, unpacked and laid out. The main device was barely larger than a deck of cards with a power button at its top, a pair of thumbprint readers in the middle, a darkened screen at the bottom, and a cartridge each of anesthesia and a lethal barbiturate cocktail hidden inside.

Leading out of the device were a pair of cords: one was attached to a cuff that Martha wrapped around James' arm and the other, an electrode pad she attached to his forehead. She circled around the bed to climb in next to him.

They stared at each other in silence. Martha could still see the seventeen year old boy who'd swept her off her feet behind his tired, wrinkled skin. Still, she loved every last crease and fold that covered his face.

Finally, she spoke. "I love you."

"I know."

James gently threw back his head and hissed, recreating the carbon freeze. Martha warbled her best Chewbacca wail – though with a little less vigor than I had at the sushi restaurant.

He smiled. "I sure am going to miss you."

"I'm going to miss you too," she said, then shrugged her shoulders. "But... what's a couple of decades?"

"Not a thing," he agreed.

"Eazy-peezy." Their plan was to meet at Berkeley after high school and go from there, though they would keep in touch as pen-pals along the way. "Are you ready?"

"Definitely," he said with an easy nod.

Martha kissed him one last time. Then she held the device over his lap and turned it on. The screen at the bottom flashed on and the twin thumb readers glowed crimson. She placed her thumb over one and James, the other. The device beeped and he flinched slightly as the needle within the cuff punctured his vein. A green circle flashed on and off at the center of the screen. James lifted a bony finger, pressed the circle, and the machine buzzed.

Martha set the device down, grabbed his hand, and laid her head against his shoulder, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing. James lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it. She wasn't used to this yet.

"I was thinking maybe we could... go to Bali next life," he labored.

Martha sniffled away a tear. "Oh yeah? Is it nice?"

"It's... beautiful... It'll change... your life..."

His hand went limp. In a moment, his breathing stopped. He shuddered slightly as she held him. Then the device began to beep and the green circle turned red.

Martha turned it off to kill the noise but stayed with James, savoring the last of the heat his heart had made as it gradually seeped out. Eventually, she sat up and looked at him. His mouth hung open awkwardly, but otherwise he was the picture of serenity. In a moment, he'd be stomping and screaming in his childhood kitchen. Tell Ruth I say, hello.

Thinking of him there made Martha smile. Thinking of him at Berkeley gave her purpose. She sat up and wiped the tears from her cheeks. On the identical bedside table on her side of the bed sat an identical kit reserved for herself. But first, Martha reached below, opened the table's drawer, and pulled out a manila envelope. She held it up and a photograph fell onto her lap, face down. The back of it read: Aug '78.

Martha turned over one of the few photographs she had ever seen of her mother; one that her father had kept hidden from her. It was a studio shot, family portrait with Steven standing behind her mother who was seated with a six month old Martha in her lap. She stared at her mother's face. Her mouth was not quite pink because of the photograph's age, but the shape of it was beguiling – beautiful, but defeated or maybe resigned; lost and trapped at once, as James had observed.

Then Martha looked at the baby, herself. Could she do it? Could she jump into the body of that baby on her mother's actual lap? And could I...

There wasn't anything in the picture that looked usable – no bowl of orange mush to throw. How was she going to cause enough of a disruption in the twenty seconds she had to change her mother's mind?

And what would it feel like to be only six months old? Would she be able to control her body with virtually no muscle development? Would she be physically capable of forming words? Whatever I do will have to be loud. It'll have to be big.

Martha held the photograph above her and navigated her smart lenses with squints and blinks to take a picture of it. She set the physical photograph down, but the image remained, floating above her. She took the cuff from the kit and wrapped it around her arm then attached the electrode to her forehead.

If this worked – if she could make the jump and somehow influence her mother – where would she land next? James said that he'd landed at the same time, but in a different place because of the change he'd caused. If that was consistent, she'd still come back at night, most likely still in her toddler bed, but what would be different? Would they be in a different house? Would her room be different? Certainly, having a mother as opposed to only a single father would change something.

She turned the device on then picked up James' hand and set his thumb on the reader. It was a convenient loophole in Canada's responsible witness clause as he was still registered as living and thereby qualified. She placed her thumb in the other and felt the needle.

Martha studied the floating photograph. This was it. When she landed, she wouldn't have long. No time to gawk, no matter how batshit crazy this is going to be...

The green circle beckoned her. There was no use stalling. She pressed it and the device buzzed. As the anesthesia entered her bloodstream, she trained her eyes on the picture. She felt happy, as if she were floating up toward the photograph, but knew it was the drug. With all her might she forced her eyelids open to stay on the photograph as long as she could, until sleep overcame her and this life ended.

Author's note:

I was conflicted about writing this chapter.  I want to avoid glamorizing or normalizing suicide.  Things are obviously very different for Martha and James compared to the rest of us one-lifers, but still.  It's a serious issue that I absolutely do not mean to trivialize.

But it's a part of Martha's journey I felt needed exploring.  Of all the places and all the people Martha can chose to visit in all her infinite lives, the one she most longs for is always just out of reach.  Or, is it?  We shall see...

Thanks again for reading!