Tears For Sale

By Tonia Markou

The tears arrive in a vial of see-through metal foam: 100 ml, 800 Alu-dollars, and very hard to come by. Unless you know Miso. Miso knows the black market like no other.

“Whatta ya want ‘em for, anyway?” he says, scratching his artificial eyelid.

“Brecca. I miss him.”

What I keep to myself is that, before his accident two days ago, he showed me a proposal that suggested loosening a section of the Human Enhancement Act. “They could incrementally reprogram our Inhibitors. Allow us to feel again. I don’t believe emotions caused chaos or made us irrational. They’re what made us human.” Those were Brecca’s words before his hearing.

He never returned home that day. Instead, they called me to the morgue to identify his body.

“’E was a brave man. Honest, too, for a PubServ.”

Too honest, maybe.

I still expect him to pick me up from work, waiting by the cherry tree near my building, pushing up his glasses that always slipped down his nose. He used to bring me strawberries because he knew I didn’t like flowers. I see his crooked summer smile, and force my body to react, but it’s like watching him lying on the steel tray—lifeless, cold. Same difference.

“My boyfriend died, and nothing changed. Don’t you think something should’ve changed?”

“Like what?”

I hesitate. “Me.”

He shrugs. “Change, don’t change. ‘E’ll stay as dead as our civil rights.”

He has a point, but still, I want to… feel something, and that forbidden potion seems like a good start.

I slide the contraband into my backpack and reach for the door handle.

“Xenia, be careful. It’s not worth the risk.”

I’ve heard these five words before, coming from my own mouth, addressed to Brecca when he told me about the proposal. I’ll never forget how excited he was as he read it out loud, voice somersaulting, eyes sparkling. In that moment, he was contagious. He had made up his mind.

“It’s what Brecca believed in. I have to know why it was so important to him. I owe him that much.”

Back in my shoebox of an apartment, I activate the jammer Miso threw in for a special price. One minute, tops. If the surveillance system is interrupted for longer than that, the E-Gov will get suspicious.

I fumble with the vial, hold it against the neon light. Inside, the liquid—these tears, as the label states—rages like a tiny wave in a captured ocean.

So this is what flowed out of people’s eyes when emotions were still a thing.

“E-mo-tions.”

My tongue stumbles over the rarely-spoken word.

“Drink it,” Miso said, “and you’ll experience what the crier went through.”

The voice of reason, which sounds a lot like Miso, tells me to let it go, flush the contents down the toilet, forget it exists, but there’s another voice, soft yet determined, urging me to see it through.

I look around my studio apartment: standard gray sofa, gray desk and matching chair. Even the carpet lacks color. My unpressed uniform lies on the single bed, waiting to be worn at the Data Center where I type numbers and letters into a computer all day.

I have nothing to lose.

I open the bottle cap, take a sniff. It smells of nothing. I put it to my lips and drink.

The tears taste endive-bitter with a tinge of sour, but once they’re down my throat, a light sweetness spreads inside my mouth.

It’s the taste of heartbreak, of an unbearable loss that defies a lexical explanation. This is what I should be feeling with Brecca gone, not the black hole expanding inside my chest.

I remember the awkward way he used to fall asleep next to me, his knees bent, pointing to the ceiling; how he always attended his V-meetings in PJ bottoms; the sound of his pre-coffee voice, dark and rich.

The holo-clock on the wall wobbles for a moment, as if covered in a veil of water, and my nose congests. I blink, releasing something wet from my eyes that trickles down my cheeks.

Touching my face returns damp fingertips. Like a curious toddler, I stare at them, stick out my tongue, and lick. Salty.

“Violation of the law,” blares a robo-voice from the speakers, its mantra accompanied by a shrill alarm. “Violation of the law. Display of emotion, punishable under section 128 of the Human Enhancement Act.”

I dash to the door and yank it open. Just in time, for a second later the auto-lock clicks into place. There’s nowhere to run, but I run anyway, down the staircase, out into the street. I run and run while an armed drone yells for me to freeze. A ravenous waterfall gushes out of me. I gasp for air, happily drowning.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tonia Markou is a Greek-German teacher, polyglot and globetrotter with an unhealthy obsession for stationery, mugs, pajamas, socks and Chuck Taylors. Her short fiction has appeared in 50-Word Stories, Dime Show Review, Youth Imagination, Corvid Queen, little somethings press, Odd Voice Out Press, Scarlet Leaf Review and other literary journals.  She currently lives in Germany.

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