How Long 'Til Black Future Month?

Sadie, the head “caregiver,” shows Enri to The Master who has come to transfer into Enri’s body (214). She can tell Enri feels “betrayed” by her, but she has him prepared for the transfer anyway (215). She follows The Master to the receiving room where it will take on Enri’s form. In the receiving room, she feels Enri’s eyes boring into her as he lays strapped to a table. The Master wants her to leave for the transfer, and though she feels she owes it to Enri to stay, she thanks the Master for their business and exits.

At night, Sadie dreams of Enri. She is bipolar, and dreams have been an overbearing part of her existence all her life. Though medicine has helped her control the other symptoms and saved her from “the Disposal,” she continues to have to contend with the vivid dreams (216). In the dream, she is in a field—something she has only seen once in waking life—and apologizing to Enri who claims to understand. Enri reveals that he and the other children whose bodies have been taken by the Masters are trapped in a dark limbo—a limbo they constantly dream of escaping. He tells Sadie he thinks she “can help” break them free (220). This suggestion frightens Sadie and she wakes up crying.

The next day, a Master wearing a rather young body shows up looking for the body of a young dancer. Before she can do anything to protect her, one of Sadie’s colleagues suggests a 10-year-old girl referred to as Ten-36. The Master is delighted and the young girl walks by her cheering peers as she is brought down for transfer. Sadie worries that the little girl is too small for transfer, but the Master insists it will be fine. They complete the transfer, leaving Sadie feeling sick for the fate of Ten-36. She yells at her colleague for suggesting such a young girl be sent to transfer, but the colleague dismisses Sadie’s concerns.

Sadie dreams again that night. Initially, she is back in the darkness from the night before but then, she is overlooking a “laboratory,” watching the process of Masters being born (223). Enri explains to Sadie that Masters are essentially a complex combination of the worst parasites. The scene changes and she in a lustrous room where a “portly” older man is being wrestled to the table by people in dark uniforms (225). The uniformed people have a baby Master and are transferring it to the old man. Sadie tries to stop the procedure as she has always been taught that Masters should only transfer into physically perfect bodies, but Enri stops her. She tells him she wants to “fight them,” but Enri says it’s been done before and has always failed (226). He takes her hand and asks her to confirm that if she “had a way to fight them,” that she would (226). She can’t commit to an answer though and the dream ends with Enri saying, “[w]e’ll talk again” (227).

The next day, Sadie gives the children their history lesson. She tells them that the benevolent Masters found the “foolish humans” destroying the planet they lived on so they took over and saved them from self-destruction (228). When she tells the story she messes up, accidentally saying that the humans found the Masters, not the other way around, which invokes suspicion in her colleague, Olivia.

Sadie dreams of Enri again that night, but this time tells him to leave her alone. The dreams are making her waking life unbearable and she wants them to stop. Enri begs her to let him show her one more scene. She agrees and he shows her a vision of the city surrounding her facility if the city was not ruled by Masters. The city is colorful and bustling. He switches back to the current scene of the city which is lifeless and boring. Seeing what is possible makes Sadie want to start a “[r]evolution” (229). Enri tells her that he has given her the education she needs to make a change. She says she wants to help, and he explains that in order to do so, she will have to agree to die.

Sadie waits until a dying Master arrives for a transfer. Once the child is brought in for the transfer Sadie locks the door and kills her, making it so the Master must use her body for transfer. She lays down and prepares to join Enri.