I

Baby born in tumult. 2078, a French hospital that looked like it could have been a summerhouse. Mama and Papa Christensen saw me and each contributed a name. Melody. Joanna. Melody Joanna. Her choice took precedence, of course. My mother’s word was law in our family.

I was not supposed to be there. I was premature, and no one had expected me so early. We were from Maraine, on a trip to visit my mother’s brother. It was his because of his cancer; he’d had a relapse and for the next few weeks, he and I struggled separately in that hospital, fighting to get above water. In the end, I made it. He didn’t. Not that the man had ever been a favorite of my mother’s or anything. It was just – he had been the last. After that, there was no one left, not for her or my father.

Too many people were dying then. Not enough food. Not enough water. All sorts of new sicknesses. On my birthday alone, the world saw three floods and two quakes.

“The world didn’t want you,” my brother used to joke.

“The world doesn’t want any of us,” I’d return.

It was a topic that would become a favorite of ours as we got older. The debate line: ‘Humans’ Role in the World’s Shittiness’. I might have been a few years behind him, but he drove me to think by exposing me early to news and books. “What’s this place for, if not for us to live on?” he’d argue.

“And murder?”

“You’re being dramatic. Every resource has an exhaustion point.”

“Doesn’t that include people?”

To which he’d just laugh and shake his head. I didn’t know that for him, that was code for surrender. Not until it didn’t matter anymore.