“So, you finally admit that The Splits is real?” Michelle, talking on her cellphone in her bedroom, said.
“Yes,” Peter said with a sigh of embarrassment. He, too, was calling from his bedroom. “I’m sorry for having been so pig-headed about this whole thing. It’s just that there’s so much bullshit out there in the media, it’s hard to tell the difference between fact and fiction.”
“I know,” she said, “but the media didn’t split our parents’ bodies into pieces. Our eyes aren’t the TV. We can trust what we see, and you can trust me to tell you the truth.”
“Yeah, but still,” he said. “There’s something strange about this ‘disease.’ As they say, it isn’t like anything we’ve ever seen before.”
“Split-off body parts acting like entities unto themselves. I know what you mean.”
“They were talking, Michelle. My mom’s and dad’s body parts were actually talking.”
She felt a shudder at those words, remembering her father’s death. “It seemed that way to me, too. I thought I heard the parts of my dad saying, ‘No, no, no…’.”
“I saw faces forming on my parents’ ripped-off body parts,” Peter said. “What looked like eyes and mouths in their innards, saying, ‘I don’t want it. I don’t want it.'”
“It’s more like demonic possession than a disease.”
“Exactly. No disease does anything that freaked out.”
“Anyway, have you been tested?” she asked. “And do you have a protective suit?”
“Yes, and…yes,” he said with a sigh of annoyance. “I’m gonna hate wearing it. It’s so uncomfortable.”
“I know, but it’ll be less uncomfortable than feeling your body tearing up into pieces, and nowhere near as traumatic as seeing other people’s bodies tear up into pieces, especially if we’re the ones responsible for passing The Splits onto them.”
“Yeah, I guess. It still sucks, though.”
“But at least we can be together, and since both of us have been tested recently, we can be intimate. When did they test you at MedicinaTech? Earlier today?”
“Oh, I got it done today, but it wasn’t there. I know a doctor in Regent Park.”
“Regent Park? Why’d you go to that poor-as-fuck place? Why not in your parents’ business, where they have the best medical equipment and doctors?”
“Because I don’t trust the doctors there,” he said. “Dr. Teague, our head scientist, is a carrier, and he infected my mom and dad, though nobody saw it was him, and nobody believed me when I said it was he who passed it on. I think many of the staff are carriers, and trying to keep it all a secret.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. That’s why I doubt that this is just a new virus. There’s a weird, body-snatcher kind of thing going on.”
“Like my mom and her fake smiles,” Michelle said with another shudder.
“Yeah. I’ll tell you another thing. Now that both my parents are dead, I’m supposed to succeed them as head of MedicinaTech, right?”
“Yeah, and what’s going on there?”
“They made Wayne Grey, head of R and D, the new CEO of the company.”
“What? Why him? How could your mom and dad do that?”
“Oh, come on, Michelle. You know why.”
“Because you’d end the company and its rule over Toronto as your very first act as new CEO.”
“Exactly,” Peter said. “And this Wayne guy, who’s been with the company since it began, has shown more loyalty to MedicinaTech and its government than even any of the surviving members of the Board of Directors. Mom and Dad would have given it to that Derek Gould guy, the old CFO, but The Splits killed him, remember? And his replacement is too new to be trusted to lead the company and government.”
“I see,” she said. “But why did you get tested in Regent Park? It’s so filthy dirty there. How can you know they did a good job there?”
“I don’t trust rich people. And I know the doctor there personally. He’ll test you without any agenda. He doesn’t buy into any of the older diseases, though he acknowledges The Splits. For me, that’s reliable enough.”
“OK.”
“In fact, I suggest we go over there and rent a room in a hotel there.”
“Eww! Why there?“
“It isn’t all that bad. There are some nice places there. The hotels are nice and cheap, too, and we won’t have to worry about surveillance cameras watching us and penalizing us for not wearing the suits, the way we do even in our own homes now. The government doesn’t care about the people in Regent Park, because they’re too poor to do anything against the powerful; they’re not allowed to enter the middle- and upper-class sections of the city, so nobody worries about them spreading any diseases among us.”
“Well, I guess that makes it OK,” she said, still wincing. “If we’re alone and don’t have any of the residents near us.”
“We can wear the protective suits all the way to the hotel room, then when we’re all alone, we can take them off…and everything else. Then we’ll leave with the suits on, we can get tested by my guy again, just in case, then go home.”
“You think it’ll be romantic in Regent Park?” she asked with a sneer.
“I like the poor a lot better than the rich,” he said. “I like to be reminded of how the other side lives. And I think you need to be reminded of their plight every now and then, too.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right about that,” she said. “I feel a little guilty about my ‘Eww!’ before. I need to be reminded of how lucky we are. When do you want to meet up?”
“How about tonight at around 8:00? I’ll meet you in MedicinaTech. I want to talk to Wayne about the progress they’re making on finding a cure for The Splits. Not that I trust him all that much, but I’m so desperate, I’ll do whatever I have to so we won’t have to wear these suits anymore.”
“OK, I’ll be in the lobby at about 8:00. Bye.”
“See you then,” he said, and they hung up.
Infinite Ocean 