Anti

The Weight of Sugar and Sorrow

The city shimmered under a sky too perfect to be real, its spires catching the light like the edges of a dream. Beneath that flawless canopy, the youth of Elaris moved with a grace that bordered on mechanical—smooth, untroubled, their faces serene as still water. Pain was a relic, a whisper from a time before the nanites wove themselves into the marrow of every citizen. The little machines hummed in their blood, silent sentinels that snuffed out sickness, mended broken bones before the ache could settle, and softened the jagged edges of grief into something bearable. It was a marvel, they said. A gift. And yet, in the shadow of that gleaming perfection, an old woman named Anti crouched like a thorn in the flesh of progress, teaching a truth no one wanted to hear.

They called her Anti behind her back, a name that stuck like burrs to a cloak. To her face, they stumbled over “Auntie” or avoided titles altogether, unsure how to address a relic who refused the polish of modernity. She was near a hundred, or so the rumors claimed, and she looked every year of it. Her skin hung in deep folds, etched with lines that spoke of a life unbuffered by nanites. Her eyes, sharp and unclouded, gleamed beneath brows white as frost, and her hands trembled faintly—not from weakness, but from a defiance that had calcified into habit.

“She’s ancient,” Taryn muttered, kicking a stone along the path as he and his sister Lirien approached the low, crooked house at the edge of the city. “I bet her face is so stretched out it flops when she walks.”

Lirien snorted, brushing a strand of dark hair from her eyes. “No, it’s wrinkled. Like those old photographs in the archive. She looks… used up.”

“And she’s supposed to fix my mind?” Taryn’s voice carried a bitter edge, though it softened at the end, curling into a question he didn’t want answered. At seventeen, he was a tangle of restless energy, his thoughts a storm the nanites couldn’t quite tame. The elders had sent him here, to Anti, after the machines failed to smooth the sharp peaks of his anger and the hollows of his despair. Lirien, two years younger, had tagged along out of curiosity, her own nanites keeping her steady as a metronome.

The house loomed ahead, a squat, moss-draped thing that seemed to grow out of the earth rather than sit upon it. Its windows were mismatched, one round and fogged, the other a narrow slit like a suspicious eye. The door creaked open before they could knock, and there she stood—Anti, bent but unbowed, her presence filling the threshold like a shadow cast backward in time.

“First of all,” she said, her voice dry as cracked leather, “it’s Anti, not Aunty. I’ve no patience for misnomers. Are you prepared for me to help you?”

Taryn shifted, his defiance flickering beneath her gaze. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

Anti’s lips twitched, a ghost of a smile that held no warmth. “Good enough. Second, drink this.” She thrust a small, tarnished canister into his hands, its surface embossed with faded letters: Coca-Cola. It was cold to the touch, heavier than it looked, and Taryn stared at it as if she’d handed him a live ember.

“What’s this?” he asked, turning it over. The metal gleamed dully, a relic from a world he’d only glimpsed in holo-vids—before the nanites, before the city became a glittering cage.

“Drink it near the privy,” Anti said, pointing a gnarled finger toward a narrow hall. “You’ll want to be close when it hits.”

Lirien frowned, stepping forward. “Is it medicine?”

Anti’s laugh was a rasp, sharp and sudden. “Medicine? No, child. It’s a key. Now, boy, drink.”

Taryn hesitated, then popped the tab with a hiss that sounded too loud in the quiet room. The liquid inside was dark and fizzing, its scent sharp and sweet, alien to a tongue accustomed to synthesized nutrient gels. He took a tentative sip, then a deeper one, grimacing as the bubbles burned his throat. Within moments, a strange heat coiled in his gut, and he stumbled toward the privy just as Anti had warned, the canister clattering to the floor.

When he emerged, pale and unsteady, Anti was waiting, her arms crossed. “Sit,” she commanded, gesturing to a worn chair carved from real wood—another anachronism in a world of molded polymers. Lirien hovered near the door, her curiosity warring with unease.

“What was that?” Taryn demanded, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“That,” Anti said, “was the beginning. You’ve got trillions of little helpers in your blood, boy—nanites that fix what’s broken before you even feel the break. They snatch pain away, physical or otherwise, and leave you… comfortable. But comfort’s a thief. It steals the weight of living.”

Taryn scowled. “Pain’s not a gift. It’s a curse.”

“Is it?” Anti leaned forward, her eyes pinning him like a moth to a board. “Diabetes was one of the old plagues—tough for even the nanites to manage. Too much sugar in the blood, and the little machines swarm to escort it out. Overwhelm them with enough of it, like that old brew you just drank, and some of them falter. Die off. We don’t strip them all away—your body’s too soft for that, too used to their coddling—but we thin the herd.”

Lirien’s voice cut in, soft but firm. “Why would you want to?”

Anti turned to her, and for a moment, her expression softened. “Because pleasure’s a shallow thing without pain to give it depth. You’ve never wept, girl, so your laughter’s thin. You’ve never ached, so your ease is a ghost. The nanites take the highs with the lows, and you’re left… half-alive.”

Taryn rubbed his temples, a faint throb pulsing there—unfamiliar, unsettling. “So you’re breaking me?”

“No,” Anti said. “I’m waking you. Go live your life for a week. Let the world touch you. We’ll meet again after, for the next step. And don’t breathe a word of this—or re-up your nanites. They’ll undo it all.”

The city felt different as Taryn stepped back into its embrace, Lirien trailing behind. The air, once a neutral hum against his skin, now prickled with a faint chill. The lights, so bright they’d always seemed to erase shadow, stung his eyes. He walked home in silence, his sister’s steady presence a tether he couldn’t shake.

That night, he dreamed—not the vague, pastel visions the nanites usually spun, but something raw and jagged. He stood on a cliff, wind tearing at his clothes, and below him churned a sea black as ink. He woke with his heart pounding, a sensation so visceral it left him breathless. Was this what Anti meant? This… weight?

The days that followed were a slow unraveling. A cut on his finger, earned from a careless swipe at a thorned vine in the hydro-garden, bled longer than it should have, the sting lingering like a quiet song. When he argued with Lirien over some trivial thing—her habit of humming off-key—the anger flared hotter, unmuted by the nanites’ gentle hand, and the sting of her sharp retort cut deeper. Yet later, when they reconciled over a shared bowl of gel, the warmth of her smile settled into him like sunlight on bare earth, richer than he remembered.

By the fifth day, he wept. It came unexpectedly, a flood loosed by the sight of a bird—a real one, not a drone—trapped in a net outside his window. Its wings thrashed, feathers scattering, and something in Taryn broke open. He didn’t know why it hurt so much, only that it did, and when the tears dried, he felt… full. Not empty, not numb, but alive in a way that frightened him.

Lirien watched it all, her own nanites keeping her steady, but a crease formed between her brows—a crack in her calm. “You’re different,” she said one evening, her voice low. “I don’t know if it’s better.”

“It’s real,” he replied, and the words felt like a confession.

When the week ended, Taryn returned to Anti’s house alone. The crooked door opened as before, and she stood there, unchanged, her eyes glinting with something that might have been approval.

“Well?” she asked, ushering him inside.

“It hurts,” he said, sitting heavily in the wooden chair. “Everything hurts more. But… it’s not just pain. It’s everything.”

Anti nodded, as if she’d expected no less. “The nanites dulled you, boy. Kept you safe, yes, but caged. Now you’re tasting the world as it is—bitter and sweet together.”

He met her gaze, his own steady despite the tremor in his hands. “Why do you do this? Why not let us stay… comfortable?”

She turned away, her movements slow, deliberate, as she retrieved another canister of Coca-Cola from a shadowed shelf. “Because I remember,” she said, her voice dropping to a murmur. “Before the nanites, we lived with pain. We broke, and we mended, and the mending meant something. I was a girl when they came—tiny miracles, they called them. My mother died of a fever they could’ve cured, but she was gone before the machines spread wide. I felt that loss, Taryn. I felt it carve me out, and then I felt the love that filled it back up. You lot… you’ve never had the chance.”

She handed him the canister, her fingers brushing his. “Drink again. We’ll thin them further. You’re strong enough now.”

He took it, the metal cool against his palm, and drank without hesitation. The burn was familiar this time, the rush to the privy less frantic. When he returned, Anti was watching him, her wrinkled face unreadable.

“What happens next?” he asked.

“You live,” she said simply. “And you decide if it’s worth it.”

Weeks bled into months, and Taryn changed. The nanites dwindled with each visit to Anti, their numbers culled by sugar and time, until his body remembered how to fend for itself. Colds came and went, leaving him weary but triumphant. Grief over small losses—a friend’s betrayal, a storm that shattered his window—settled into him, heavy but bearable. And with it came joy: the thrill of a race won on aching legs, the quiet bliss of Lirien’s laughter when he teased her into it.

The city noticed. Whispers followed him—some curious, some wary. Lirien, too, began to question her own seamless calm, her fingers lingering over the canister Anti offered her one day. She didn’t drink—not yet—but the seed was planted.

Anti remained, a constant amid the shifting tide, her house a beacon for those who dared to feel. She never preached, never forced, but her presence was a challenge: to weigh the cost of comfort against the price of living. And as Taryn stood on the edge of adulthood, his skin scarred and his heart bruised, he knew she’d been right. Pleasure without pain was a shadow, a half-thing. The world was cruel and beautiful, and he would take it all.