Forfeiture

Alexander sat in a grimy bar several streets from his apartment, finishing his sixth whisky. It was cheap and tasted terrible. He could have afforded better. Instead, he embraced the misery.

There was no solution to his mother's illness. Even in the 22nd century, scientists and doctors still hadn't found an effective treatment for terminal cancer.

He'd been thinking over and over about the true purpose of his resurrection. Why had he been offered another chance, but not his mother? What was the point of being able to redo his wasted life if he couldn't even save her?

Just as he was about to call for a seventh whisky, a disgustingly corpulent man—twice Alexander's size—swaggered into the bar and ordered a beer in a fat-choked voice.

Alexander, totally drunk, laughed at him. "You're a real head case, you son of a bitch!"

The enormous man ignored this provocation. He sat down and gulped his beer as if he hadn't heard anything.

Outraged, Alexander staggered to his feet and hurled his glass at the man's face. His aim was drunkenly useless, and the glass sailed harmlessly into the well. The burly man snarled, finally provoked to action, and rushed at Alexander!

He wanted to punch this fat idiot in the face, but the whisky had dulled his reflexes. Alexander's punch was slow and awkward.

The man easily avoided the blow and retorted with a headbutt into Alexander's eye socket.

He collapsed immediately and fell into darkness.

***

During the murky time that followed, Alexander remembered all the stages of his mother's cancer at the end of her first life: the hair loss, the physical weakening, the eventual coma…

And then her slight remission. The renewal of hope.

It hadn't lasted, and his mother had died within seventy-two hours of the first sign that things were wrong again.

After her death, Alexander's relationship with his father had deteriorated—especially when Alexander missed his mother's funeral. Believing his father to be responsible for failing to make enough money to afford her treatment, Alexander had cut all ties with him. Alexander then drifted into the life that eventually killed him, growing more and more miserable with every passing day.

Hours now passed as Alexander continued to relive the most painful memories of his old life. He was vaguely aware that he'd been thrown out of the bar, but in his nearly blacked-out state, he couldn't comprehend anything except for the horror of his failure. Would he be forced to re-watch his pitiful failure until the end? Surely it would be better just to die for real and leave all this misery behind…

***

Eventually, Alexander came to his senses in an alley that was even filthier than the bar. It was early evening.

Vomit soaked his clothes, and his throbbing eye was swollen shut. Alexander used the camera in his holo-watch to examine his own face and found that his eye was blackened, with a dried-up cut on the eyebrow.

Alexander got up from the ground, head pounding, and started walking in the streets of Sector 18. After a few minutes of shambling, he arrived in a vile district full of people sleeping on the ground or otherwise consumed by a drug trip. These were the slums of Paris, where the poorest people and the drug addicts of the city took refuge, a district totally abandoned by the authorities.

Someone familiar caught Alexander's eyes. It was Amir, his dealer in his former life.

After his whole life had fallen apart in his first life, when even Emma left him, Alexander took refuge in the readily available drug called Neo-Crack. It was the perfect drug which, for a few hours, made one forget all their problems. Apophis preferred the version which came in an aerosol inhaler. Its cloud of indescribable happiness was readily available at the cost of only nine credits per dose… and was deadly addictive.

Everyone knew that one puff was enough to make you a slave for life. No detox or medication could cure the addiction.

Only death.

Alexander bought an inhaler from Amir, then isolated himself in a filthy, stinking corner.

In his first life, Alexander had no idea what he was getting into when he took his first dose.

This time, he did.

Alexander raised the inhaler to his lips and prepared to draw the Neo-Crack into his airway, where it would sink into the mucous membranes of his mouth, throat, and lungs and be part of him until the day he died.

He prayed that day would come soon.