“Just remember, Mr. Burma; you play ball and we can make life much easier for you—maybe take care of the whole employment thing. You don’t play ball, and . . .”
“It’s in everyone’s best interest,” the other one said.
Maung stopped at the hospital door to ask one last question. “That thing. What was it, really?”
“That thing never existed.”
It existed, thought Maung. He heard the general’s wife, wailing with her family because they lived only a few doors down, and many in his neighborhood lost someone today. Only two men in the work crew survived. Their families were permitted to visit the hospital but neither man was coming home soon and one lost an eye and both legs. The other broke his back. Maung’s mother made tea while his son slept on a small mattress in the living room, one they rolled up and stashed during the day, and Maung sat on the couch in the dim light, watching the boy’s chest rise and fall. There was a knock at the door. Maung stood and hesitated before opening it, hoping it wasn’t the men from DC again.
It was Joseph. He smiled and shook Maung’s hand. “You made it!”
“Barely.”
“Look at the stitches on your arms,” said Joseph. “That thing got you?”
Maung had forgotten he was wearing a tank top. He shrugged. “That was from the razor wire on that security wall, not the monster.”
“And the general?” Joseph asked. When Maung shrugged again, he nodded. “This was a horrible day, Maung. Horrible.”
Joseph sat on the couch and looked at Maung’s mother to check if she was listening, and then at Maung’s son. He seemed nervous. Finally the man said, “I’m sorry I left you there, Maung, I didn’t know what would happen.”
“It’s not a problem; you were smarter than me, I should have left too.”
“Maung,” Joseph whispered. “I spoke to John Ngyuen, in the hospital. There were security men from the capital all over the place but I told them I was his brother so I could get in. Filipino, Vietnamese, Burmese; we all look the same to them.”
“What happened to the work crew?”
“He said that our bunch was all hired by the same man: a defense contractor who was shorthanded that day and needed laborers to help with a demolition project. When they noticed where they were headed the general explained that the group lacked authority to enter the Sommen zone. The contractors said not to worry—that it was fine because all the sensitive material had been removed; the government had lowered the security clearance required to enter.”
Joseph cleared his throat, and then spoke more quietly. “The inside of that place is like a maze—at least that’s what John said. And there was a group of men trying to break a floor slab of that green material, in a chamber underground where John was assigned to clean up. They succeeded. But as soon as they cracked it, they choked on ammonia gas, and John barely escaped from a massive cloud that billowed out. A few minutes later that monster emerged; like it had been asleep all these years, waiting, already armored and ready for them.”
“That makes no sense,” said Maung.
Joseph opened a pack of cigarettes and the two men stepped outside into the street to smoke. Usually it was filled with music. But tonight everyone hid inside as if the danger hadn’t yet passed and Maung shrugged as he took a drag.
“Are you going to the bodega tomorrow?” he asked.
Joseph nodded. “I have to work. I gave up looking for a permanent job a long time ago. Path to citizenship my ass. Only if you have a PhD in engineering and come from Korea can the Jobs Bureau find you permanent work.”
“I’ll come with you. I want to see what they’re doing with that place now that this happened.”
“Maung,” said Joseph. “John said one more thing.”
“What?”
“He said before that creature killed them all, some of the defense contractors were screaming that it was a Sommen.”
Maung got a chill. He remembered the signals that emanated from the thing’s armor and the black eyes, a spider’s eyes. “That can’t be true. They’re gone.”
“Most of them, I guess,” said Joseph. He let out a long breath of smoke. “But not this one.”
“Tell nobody what you just told me, Joseph; we talk about this with each other and that’s it.”
The next morning was hotter. Humidity clung to Maung’s skin, tempting him to smear thanaka on his cheeks but it would draw attention from the whites and anyone else who thought it a quaint tradition, one that proved how backward Myanmar was. He yanked on a t-shirt and baseball cap, hoping to blend in but knowing that the deep brown of his skin prevented this when it came to Americans. He and Joseph took a back way to the spaceport to avoid as many people as possible; but who cared? It was clear nobody could access the day laborers’ area and the pair of them encountered large crowds at every gate. Joseph waved someone over, then asked what was going on.
“They’ve shut the spaceport down so that a team from the capital can come and inspect.”
“Inspect what?” Joseph asked.
The man shrugged. “Whatever. I don’t know. I just heard—”
A transport horn interrupted him. The crowd parted, pushing sweaty bodies against Maung so that he had to back against a fiber wall, and less than ten feet away a convoy passed. The vehicles were all black—government electric vans and trucks with windows tinted so nobody could see in. Three of them had antennas on the roof. Some of the antennas looked like long whips, strapped into place so they wouldn’t rock back and forth, whereas others were so bizarre that Maung couldn’t begin to assign them shapes. But he recognized them. Maung fought the urge to run, recalling similar vehicles he’d witnessed long ago in the jungle trails of Myanmar when he and his wife tried to escape over mountains into Thailand. That was the day she had died. Somehow the Americans had climbed impossible mountain trails in small two-man transports, an army of them, each with antennas that Maung and his wife knew were designed for tracking Dream Warriors. Maung had screamed at what happened next. His wife activated her systems and ran down the mountain to draw the Americans away, sending one last message: Run. Take care of Win.
“They are bringing in electronics specialists,” he said.
Joseph asked, “For what?”
But Maung ignored him. Instead he pressed his way through the crowd, trying to move away from the spaceport. A wave of panic choked him, tightening his chest and stomach into knots. Maung fell. When he picked himself up he heard Joseph calling after him, but Maung no longer grasped the words; he couldn’t understand what the man said, only that he said something. Maung guessed what the specialists were looking for and why the vehicles were here: They had detected a semi-aware yesterday, one used during the fight with the Sommen.
Me.
“You are a dream warrior,” his mother whispered. “I was proud the day the generals called your name. You can get out of this, Maung. They will never catch you. On the day you were born a tiger came to Yangon, out of the jungle. It attacked and killed a boy and it was out of respect for this that we gave you your name, Maung Kyarr, ‘Brother Tiger.’ Do not forget that the tiger made room for you and that you have a greater purpose.”
“I am subnormal,” Maung said. His voice was barely a whisper since he rarely spoke of it, but now everything came out. “I was smarter before the Chinese drafted me. Father carved wood, and you made thanaka, and I remember being able to do math in an instant because you both let me handle the money at the marketplace. I pawned our linens in the morning and bought them back at night. But after the Chinese finished operating on my head I was a genius, a million times smarter than before—but only when I could activate my systems. Without them, without my semi-aware, I am only half a person. An idiot.”
Win was at school. Maung wanted to activate the system again, to merge with his semi-aware and sink into data and facts, a cold logic that made him feel invincible, a merging that created a super-aware. But he remembered how the Americans tracked them in Myanmar. As s
oon as he activated it, sensors throughout the city—sensors the Americans installed across their entire country—would register the signature. They’d sniff out the tiny leakages that were inevitable, and would match the waveforms against their database so that somewhere in DC an alarm would go off. That was what had happened at the Sommen compound.
His mother wiped tears away. “You are still my child. And I am proud of what you did. Proud that you risked everything.”
“They will find me,” Maung said. “Now they have my name, along with a list of everyone at the complex yesterday. They have all our addresses. Later today they will drive through the streets of North Charleston and broadcast pulsed attack signals, ones my system can’t ignore no matter how hard I try to keep it dormant. It was a design flaw, mother. A design flaw. And as soon as my semi-aware activates, they’ll have my location. I will be caught.”
“Then you have to run,” she said. “Now. I will pack some things and will take care of Win, the same way I took care of you.”
“I will not leave my son!”
His mother shushed with her hands, looking around as though there might be someone else in the hut and then hugged him, whispering into Maung’s ear. “You have no choice. If you stay, you will lose him forever after they kill you.”
“You will make sure he becomes American?” Maung whispered. Tears dripped from his eyes and onto the dusty floor, and he shut them but it made it worse because now he saw his son in his thoughts.
“You know who to go to,” his mother said. “He does this all the time.”
“I’ll send money as soon as I can. You will not suffer for food, I promise. Open an account with one of the local lenders under your name—one of the ones in the neighborhood so I can find it.”
He left without saying another word. Talking made it worse; the more he prolonged this the harder it would be and even now, each step from his hut felt as though it would rip Maung’s insides apart. He cried openly at first, but then forced himself to stop.
Maung made his way south, into the old city where an antique, horse-drawn trolley nearly ran over his foot. The encounter brought him back to reality and he kept looking for the place, the shop every Myanmarese knew—the stall owned by the only person who could give him a new identity.
CHAPTER TWO
Maung avoided staring at the Old Man’s wrinkled skin, which formed a labyrinth so complex it reminded him of a human brain, but he also couldn’t bring himself to look at the man’s eyes, which were almost like the Sommen’s—deep and black. He wheezed whenever he inhaled. The man wore an oxygen amplifier on his belt so that a plastic hose ran under his shirt, where it entered a port in his chest, pumping nearly pure oxygen to the lungs. Maung imagined the cost. Even the general, who had smuggled a small fortune in gold from Myanmar, couldn’t afford such a procedure for his mother, who the entire neighborhood mourned; her death had involved months of suffocation.
“You look troubled, Maung,” the Old Man said.
“I am, Grandfather. Deeply troubled. I may lose everything, including my mother and my son.”
This was not Maung’s grandfather and to use the honorific made him a liar. They were in the old slave market. It was an ancient structure that until now Maung had only read about, and he imagined how difficult it would have been for the men to stand in these stalls for hours, waiting while the air refused to move for anything, least of all the heat. Even now, Maung wished he had thanaka.
“There is nothing that cannot be solved,” the Old Man said. “I’ve lived in this country since I was a boy—far longer than you. I was glad when they decided to bring all of you in. Glad that so many of my countrymen were joining me. And in all these years as an American, I’ve learned one thing that you may not have picked up yet.”
“What, Grandfather?”
The Old Man smiled. “Money. It makes everything go away. I imagine even the Sommen had a price, but for the life of me I never found it.”
“Wait,” said Maung, curious. “You knew the Sommen? Met with them?”
“I never met with them, exactly. I met with their go-betweens. One of the things we first learned was that the Sommen value only one thing: war. So they didn’t bother with money or business or supplies. They have subjugated races who handle these things, creatures collected off thousands of conquered planets. There was a rumor that one man from Russia or Ukraine went to serve the Sommen and was the only one to ever return. But my men never confirmed it.”
“And what did the go-between tell you?” asked Maung.
“Nothing about his masters. I asked if they had a cure for lung cancer but it was a stupid question; what would the Sommen care of human disease after all? I was foolish.”
Maung recalled the thing he killed at the spaceport and shivered. “I think I ran into one at the spaceport the other day. I was there when something happened at the Sommen complex, the one they dismantled.”
“Ah?” The Old Man’s eyes flickered with interest. “And you’re alive! That is a story to tell.”
“What do they look like? The Sommen. Some say that is what I saw but nobody knows for sure.”
The Old Man sat up. He reached for a cup of iced tea and sipped, then placed it carefully on the table again before wiping his forehead with his handkerchief. “Is that why you’re here?” he asked. “Because I can answer your Sommen question, but this is valuable information and perhaps I even have pictures; but it will cost you.”
“No,” said Maung. “I came for something else.”
“Yes. Of course you did. So let’s get down to business and why don’t you tell me what you really need, Maung.”
The man used a remote. Servos drew an electrified curtain across his stall and then a soft static sound filled the space.
“White noise and electromagnetics to make sure we can talk safely,” the Old Man explained. “Old, but still effective.”
Maung squatted on the floor. By the time he finished telling his story—a web of lies, one that avoided the fact that he was a Dream Warrior—his knees ached and his body craved a cigarette.
“So you need to disappear,” the Old Man said, “but you can’t really tell me why. And you have no money?”
Maung nodded. “I know. And I need to support my mother and son. It is impossible.”
“Difficult, yes, impossible, no. If you were a young girl I would give you a new identity and you could work it off in one of my brothels—maybe five years of service. But you aren’t.” The Old Man paused and tapped a finger against his chin. “Still, I have an idea but it will take time to research. Can you go home or is that now a dangerous place?”
“It is too dangerous, Grandfather.”
The Old Man nodded and picked up a notepad and pen. He scribbled something down, ripped a sheet off, and handed it over. “That is the address of a hotel outside the city. Take a bus. Wait outside and one of my boys will come get you in a few minutes to drive you there.”
Maung stood and clapped his hands together, pressing them tightly as he bowed, over and over. “Thank you, Grandfather, thank you.”
“Don’t thank. What I have planned will not be easy and you may never make it through, but for someone in your position it’s the only option. And I don’t do this out of charity. You will be performing a valuable service. For me.”
The hotel was attached to a strip club. Maung could barely take three steps in his room and the bed folded down from the wall, which thumped and vibrated from the music on the other side, and there was a small shower and toilet cubicle. Maung headed to a tiny window. The room was air-conditioned so he hated to open it, but he had to smoke and the driver’s instructions were clear: stay inside or the deal was off. So he let the humidity in, feeling it wash over his arms and chest as he blew smoke rings.
By the third day claustrophobia almost forced Maung’s mind to the breaking point, where he considered giving up on the Old Man. The room smelled dank—a mixture of sweat and cigarettes—and Maung kept the window ope
n all the time now, so he could sit by it and breathe fresh air to imagine that hot breezes carried thoughts to his son. A girl opened his door. Maung barely noticed when she placed a tray of food on the floor and then shut the door behind her. The smell of curry filled the room and Maung’s eyes watered with the memory it brought: his mother cooking dinner, his son banging a fork on the table.
On the fourth day the driver returned and took him to the Old Man’s home; Maung had never seen such a place, and he thought that not even the general’s house in Yangon was as beautiful. Four stories of historical mansion in downtown Charleston met him when the driver let him out, and a battery of servants ushered Maung through the door and onto the piazza, a huge columned porch that led to mahogany double doors. They strolled through a living room paneled with deep purple wood, and finally into the Old Man’s study. The servants were all women. Young girls with thanaka patterned on their faces took him gently by the arm and brought him iced tea. Maung marveled at their beauty and the smell once again made him think of home. He sat in a huge leather chair; it was not long before a girl wheeled the Old Man in, then shut the door to give them privacy.
“How do you like it?” the Old Man asked, gesturing to the rest of the room.
“It is a beautiful home, Grandfather.”
The man nodded. “America. This is where it’s all possible, Maung. Anything.”
Maung listened to the ticktock of the massive grandfather clock that sat in the corner and he was so exhausted from not getting sleep that the sound almost made him pass out. Finally he shrugged.
“What is the news, Grandfather? Do I have a way out?”
“Yes,” the Old Man said. “I found a way out. But that way is for a normal human, and you aren’t exactly normal are you? That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, only that the price goes up since now we’re talking about hiding a super-aware. You’re a Dream Warrior. Funny how you failed to mention that.”
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