by Bob Proehl
Fahima forgets about the public narrative around Emmeline’s death. It can be hard to keep her lies straight. She worries she’ll run into her own doppelgänger, but Fahima was kept out of the story of the Battle of Bishop Academy. It made it easier for her to assume her current role if she was seen as unsullied by the war.
When Fahima sees the real Ji Yeon Kim, she experiences a vertigo not unlike what she experiences when she turns away from one Omar to find another behind her. Fahima can’t help but remember Ji Yeon as the kid from the Revere standoff, clad in vintage T-shirts and worn-out Converse, razor haircut and litany of revolutionary rhetoric. Ji Yeon’s fashion aesthetic has changed from riot grrrl to corporate terrorist. She looks like the person they send in to coolly and silently pick the carcass of an acquired company for assets before the employees know it’s been sold, but her bangs are still razor cut across her forehead. Behind her, three members of her Bloom try to pull off the same look, but their dark suits and skinny ties make them look like a self-serious indie rock band.
“Aren’t you short one?” Fahima asks.
Ji Yeon smiles. “We’re here as guests,” she says.
“But this is your Bloom,” says Fahima, gesturing at the man whose arms look like skewers, the girl hovering a foot above the dance floor, the hulking woman whose massive black suit forms a backdrop for the rest. “Are they the only friends you have?”
“I have friends everywhere,” says Ji Yeon.
“And your other guy, he didn’t get invited?” Fahima says. “That’s got to be bad for team morale.”
“Busy with other things,” Ji Yeon says. “Maybe he’ll come by later.”
Not in the mood to spar with Ji Yeon, Fahima says, “Be seeing you,” makes an okay sign with her fingers, looks through the circle at all four of them, and flicks her hand downward before walking away.
She finds Niklas Babisch, former German ambassador, on one of the balconies, drinking a beer and watching the crowd move on the dance floor like protozoa on a slide. He fled the embassy with his family when the war broke out, and his expression has vacillated between wistful and angry all day.
“Are you impressed?” she asks as she sidles up to him on the railing.
“How could I fail to be impressed, Doctor?” he says. “You have made here a city of wonders.” His translator renders his English with a light remnant of his accent, which makes him sound like a Bond villain. She wants to give him a cat to stroke.
“It’s the beginning,” says Fahima. “We’re planning the overhaul of five more cities in the next—”
“I’ve read the brochures,” he says. “And I have seen your miracles. I’m more curious about the things we haven’t seen.”
“If there’s an infrastructure project you’d like to—”
“Tell me about the riots,” he says. “Near here. In the Bronx.”
The Omars took bets among themselves about whether someone would ask. Fahima hoped they wouldn’t but was prepared. From the generating station they toured in Astoria, they could see the smoke rising across the East River. The wind coming in from the north carried the chants and occasionally the screams, although they were usually hidden behind the high whine of the power inverters that changed the direct current the dayshifters generated into usable alternating current.
“There are protests,” she says. “That’s all.”
“I’m told there are water shortages,” says Babisch. “Cuts to electrical services. People without food.”
“Everyone there has the opportunity to leave.”
“To go where?”
“West,” says Fahima.
“The area you call the Wastes?” He overpronounces the word, or the nanites overrender it.
“We don’t—”
“I’ve heard it called that,” he says. Fahima is done with his cutting her off. She’s used to being allowed to finish her thoughts. “Let’s call it as you say. These people have options, yes? They can leave, or they can stay here and what? Be liquidated?”
“Nothing is happening to them,” says Fahima.
“Nothing is happening for them,” Babisch says. “On this side of the river, you have everything. There, they wait to die.”
“Baseliners liquidated four camps,” says Fahima. “In the first days of the war. Before you could even call it a war. Alta Mons. Half Moon. Holiday Home. Topaz Lake. They blew up a school full of kids in Houston and sucked all of Phoenix into a black hole fucking around with things that weren’t theirs to fuck around with. We are working on forgiveness, but some of us are not there yet.”
“And you?” Babisch asks.
“I’m tired of people dying,” Fahima says.
Babisch mulls this a moment, then nods. “This is a good answer, Miss Deeb.”
“You’re very informed,” she says. It’s as much a lament as it is a compliment. “Most people here don’t even know about the riots.”
“Even a tight lid releases a bit of steam,” Babisch says. His eyes never leave the dance floor.
“Who’s been in contact with you?”
“Zealots,” he says. He searches for a word. Fahima can hear the translator nanites in his bloodstream struggling. “Verwandtschaft. Family?”
“Kindred,” says Fahima. The Kindred Network was a right-wing news conglomerate that quietly funded militia-run camps in the days before the war. It persisted as a fraternal organization, a bigoted boys club. Fahima keeps tabs on the cell in the Bronx, but they’re mostly harmless, if awful. There’s money backing them, but their goals beyond being a mutual aid society aren’t clear. She’s not thrilled to hear they’re playing politics abroad.
“They offer us information in hopes we’ll send military aid to take the country back for real humans,” Babisch says. “They speak of the brotherhood of man.”
“Are you sending them aid?”
Babisch shakes his head. “I know a Nazi when I hear one.”
“Are you talking about me or them?”
He gives her a weak smile. “I did not like the situation in your Bronx, Miss Deeb,” he says. “I do not like that you allow this to happen in your backyard. It makes me question either your intentions or your capacity.”
“Why did you come?” Fahima snaps. She should be better at this. She has been better at this, but she’s done this dance too many times to care about the steps. Anger flickers in her, and Babisch senses it, wincing like he’s about to be struck. She smiles, draining the accusation from his question.
Confident the ground is safe, Babisch proceeds. “I don’t want my country to be made obsolete,” he says. “Or to become a colony ruled over by—”
“No one’s colonizing anyone,” Fahima says, waving this away with annoyance.
“You brought us here to make an offer,” he says. “Make it.”
Fahima nods. “Seven years ago, we engineered an event that’s been commonly referred to as the Pulse.” The first little lie. Non-Resonants are uneasy knowing the Pulse had been created by one person. Any Resonant will tell you Emmeline Hirsch caused the Pulse and, weakened from the effort, was killed in the first outbreak of combat at the Bishop Academy. Publicly, especially abroad, the Pulse was a project carried out by a team of Resonant scientists led by Fahima. The implication of plurality helps normalize the fantastic. “This event actualized the potential Resonance of a significant portion of the population of—”
“Significant but not all,” says Babisch.
“Not all,” Fahima says.
“What happened to those who were not actualized?”
“Nothing happened to them,” Fahima says. “The event occurred. Some changed. For others, nothing happened.”
“Like the people in your Bronx,” he says. “Or in the Wests.” His pronunciation lands exactly middistance between west and Wastes in a way Fahima is convinced he’
s practiced.
“That is a simplification of a complicated political—”
“There was a war, and they lost,” Babisch says.
“There were political conditions particular to America at the time that led to hostilities,” says Fahima. “Conditions you don’t have at home.”
“Yet,” Babisch says. He’s afraid Fahima’s selling him the same war that split America. There are days she doesn’t think about the war despite the dead, despite Denver and Boston gone, miles of the California coast dropped into the ocean. It’s her job to deal with the result, the half of the country that belongs to Resonants and the disenfranchised enclaves that refuse to move or be moved. The war was a readjustment, the balancing of a scale that had drifted out of true.
“The terms of the Armistice reflected resentments born out of the action of the previous government,” she says.
“You’re very good at this, Dr. Deeb,” Babisch says. “I might imagine talking around uncomfortable truths is your superpower.”
Fahima grits her teeth. “We don’t use the term superpower.”
“Fahigkeit.” The nanites inside him hum. “Ability, is that right?” says Babisch. “Some of the words in our languages are close but inexact. My assistant wrote me up a style sheet for this conversation, but I only skimmed it. Ability is the preferred term?” She never gets used to the way the humans from the old world talk to her, the way they make her feel less than. It feels like setting the clocks back seven years. “May I ask what your ability is?”
“Your assistant should have told you it’s rude to ask.”
“Then may I be rude?”
They always ask. With fascination, with horror, or with the condescension Babisch is showing her, the high hand of demanding that an off-duty magician do a parlor trick. They always ask, as if they don’t believe you are what you say you are.
“I make impossible things,” she says. “I invent miracle machines.” But do you? asks a nagging voice that sounds like Alyssa’s. How long’s it been since your last miracle? How’s your latest dream machine coming along, Fahima?
Babisch rolls his eyes theatrically. “So you’re very smart,” he says.
“About some things,” says Fahima. “Less so about others. Can I continue?” Babisch nods. “We believed the Pulse was a unique event. But we’ve been able to duplicate it.” Another lie. The tech isn’t there yet. Fahima’s selling notions, setting up buyers, when she should be in the lab, making the thing work.
“How many of these men have already agreed to your terms?” he asks.
“I’m not at liberty to say,” Fahima says.
“I suppose I’ll find out soon.”
Fahima gives the barest hint of a shrug.
“Your method doesn’t work on everyone,” he says.
“We estimate a two-thirds effective rate.”
“And the rest of us are left behind?”
“The rest are exactly who they were before. Nothing changes.”
Babisch smacks his hand on the railing. “Everything changes,” he hisses.
That’s the fucking point, Fahima thinks.
“You’re thinking at an individual level,” she says. “I’m asking you to think at the level of nation. How would Germany be affected? How could Germany be helped?”
“Has America been helped?”
“You’ve seen New York,” Fahima says. “It’s the dream of what a city can be. Our other cities aren’t far behind.” Another lie. No place else has received Fahima’s direct attention the way New York has. They’ve gotten the scraps, the bits that are easily replicable. “I’m not talking only in terms of technology. The impact on race relations, on economics and class, has been revolutionary.”
“For your people,” Babisch says.
“We’re working to share what we have,” Fahima says. “Admitting mistakes, we are expanding our positive impact.”
“You knew my answer when you mailed me my ticket to your magical kingdom,” Babisch says. “You need to see it on our faces, don’t you? I wager every one of us looks the same when we submit. Yes, dear overlord, we want the gifts you offer. We need them lest we become a backwater of mere humans.” He swigs the rest of his beer and twirls the bottle by the neck. “Germany will take the deluxe package, please. Will that be cash on delivery or is there an installment plan?”
Babisch is right: There is a look they all get. It’s the hopeless eyes of someone in the moment they act on a horrible decision they’ve already made. And it’s the same every time.
Fahima takes a delicate sip of her drink. “Consider it a gift.”
Sharlene’s on Flatbush would be the perfect bar at which to begin a lazy affair. Dominic walked Clay through every detail of his dalliance like a proper lapsed Catholic. He had to carry on in dives in the Lower East Side for fear of running into anyone they knew. The inconvenience of hiding was the cost of cheating first. Sharlene’s is blocks from their apartment, a hangout of their friends and acquaintances, and Clay sits at the bar, waiting for a man who is not his date but could be. I’m allowed one, he thinks.
Transplanted from the harsh fluorescents of the Berkeley Carroll classrooms to the buttery yellow light of Sharlene’s, the draw of Castillo’s Victorian pallor is gone. It lets Clay focus, and as Castillo bumps and squeezes his way across the crowded room, Clay tries to suss out what was behind the invitation, the thing that wasn’t sexual but had the desperation and want Clay associates with his earliest closeted trysts.
“Thank you again,” Castillo says as he sits down. “Can I get you a— Oh. You have.”
“Can I buy you one?”
“Please,” says Castillo. “I’ll have”—he glances uneasily at Clay’s whiskey—“one of those. Sure.” Clay summons the bartender. When the drink arrives, Castillo takes a gulp and winces at the burn of it going down. He recovers and lays his hands delicately on the bar between them. “So, for one thing, you’re right: Rai is young for his class. And everyone is different. At first I wasn’t worried about him. Also, I’m new here. I don’t have a lot of context. But he’s such a good kid. And I’m worried.”
“Mr. Castillo—” Clay says. He stops short of putting his hands over Castillo’s.
“Nick.”
“Nick,” Clay repeats. “If there’s something you dug out of Rai’s head during a lesson, that’s none of my business. Kids keep secrets. When I was his age, I had a real whopper.” He smiles knowingly at Castillo, who looks back at him blankly. Maybe I was way off, he thinks. Am I so old and off the market I can’t even spot anymore?
“This isn’t a secret,” says Castillo. “Rai doesn’t know. Or he does. I don’t know. I shouldn’t have done it.”
“Nick,” says Clay. This time he does put his hand over Castillo’s. It’s shaking.
“I did a sounding,” Castillo says. “A deep Hivescan. Even with nascents, there’s something you can pick up. Some people say even as babies you can tell. But by Rai’s age there’s something there. Except with Rai, there isn’t.”
It’s Clay’s turn to stare blankly while Castillo pushes the implication of what he’s said. “His parents were both Resonants,” Clay says. “They led a support group in Crown Heights. They were some of the first I met.”
“I don’t think that matters.”
“He’s young,” says Clay. “In another year, he’ll be—”
“In a year they’ll sound him,” Castillo says. “The beginning of second year in the upper school, all the students who haven’t resonated get brought in and sounded by the Faction. They claim it’s because it can shake things loose. I don’t think it does. I think they want to weed out anyone who isn’t.”
“What do they do if someone isn’t?” Clay asks. He can’t bring himself to form the question around Rai, to ask what happens if Rai isn’t.
“I don’t kn
ow,” Castillo says. “I’ve been trying to ask, quietly. Theoretically. But everyone shrugs. I don’t think it happens often. But something must happen. They wouldn’t do it if they weren’t going to do anything about it.”
“Have you told anyone?”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Castillo says emphatically. “I’m supposed to. I’m a mandatory reporter. I could lose my job. But without knowing what would happen, I couldn’t tell anyone.” He puts his elbows on the bar and rests his head awkwardly in his hands. “I didn’t know what to do.” The bar’s not the right height for this gesture of defeat. Castillo raises his head and shoves his hands in his pockets. Clay wants to comfort him even though he knows it’s a bad urge. His discomfort with other people’s pain, even if they deserve it, is what made him so quick to forgive Dominic. “I thought if you knew, you’d have better options,” says Castillo. “Or some options at least. Because if the Faction knows, then whatever happens is going to happen.” He sniffles, lifts his drink, and takes the daintiest sip. “I was thinking Chicago.”
“We have lives here,” says Clay. “We can’t up and go.”
“You can make a choice,” Castillo says. “Right now, you can choose.” He looks across the bar at the group that just entered. “Shit,” he says. “My coworkers. I have to go. Thank you for the drink. I’m sorry.”
Castillo stands and turns his back on Clay, giving a wave to the rest of the Berkeley Carroll staff gathering to discuss the insufferability of the parents of Brooklyn’s elite. This is their work bar. We pay them for their days, and they talk shit about us as soon as they’re off the clock, Clay thinks. As it should be. He watches them for a second, then turns to his empty glass. He looks at Castillo’s glass, mostly full, and slides it over in front of himself.
