“Your hands are dry,” she says. 

  I don’t think they have always been this way. My left is worse than my right. She strokes my penis. I can’t remember her name, but her hands are smooth. Afterwards, as is customary, we exchange pictures. I pause at first and then take it. I don’t want to draw attention. ONE may be watching. But I don’t bother looking at it. The picture is not of her. 

  The public address speakers buzz and then groan. There is no aloneness. There is only ONE, the automated, half-hourly announcement declares. 

  I think of my parents and the ocean. I have very few memories of my parents. I was removed from their care by Custodial Services when I was four. Like all children, I was transferred to government-controlled facilities to protect us from gangs and organized crime during the Great Collapse. The place of my employment is my home. 

  My work cubicle is on the second floor. The soot-thickened windows allow little light to penetrate, so one can never quite tell the time of day by looking outside. Only grey light passes through the bars, an unsteady brightness dissipating over the rows of square work spaces —the grey cement floors and walls, making the wasteland outside indistinguishable from what is inside. The dimness doesn’t bother me; my computer monitor lights up my cubicle with what I imagine is a daytime brightness. Horizontal lines run along the screen and cast shimmering ripples over my desk. 

  Although the second floor is at capacity, I neither see nor hear another employee. The only sound I’m hearing is of my fingers tapping the keyboard. I remove the seven framed photos of co-workers from my cubicle wall, place them face down on my desk and bask in this simple tranquility. I remove my fingers from the top of my desk so the keyboard (which sits flush in my desk) powers down, the illuminated keys going dark. I can now concentrate exclusively on the image on the screen. The computer’s waning light runs from the edge of my desk and down along the thighs and torso of my uniform. Some threads in my uniform reflect the light, especially my inner thighs. 

  My eyes return to the screen. I watch the video. The image shakes slightly from the hand-held camera. I focus on the tide. I would find it agreeable to see water move like this, to once again see the ocean as I had when I was a child. The images cause me to think of her.

The Hand appears in Resistance, Revolution and Other Short Stories.

Of Interest:

The Hand's setting is ambiguous. Although the setting is never made clear, I wanted to give the sense of some futuristic world where citizens experience an insular existence. Citizens reside at the place of their employment and spend the majority of day acquiring photos to fill their 'walls'. However, in spite of all their sexual conquests, it is an intimateless world.

The main character is disconnected from the world and has a chance at love, but the system is against him. He does not know how to connect with people in a meaningful way.