by Joan He
The smoke cleared.
Celia disappeared.
In her place was a girl with electric-blue hair and Newton’s cradles for earrings. Gimmicky, Celia would have said, whereas Kasey might have actually found the earrings pretty cool if her mind hadn’t flatlined, deleting all opinions, fashion or otherwise, her heart racing 100 bpm as the girl seized a cup and filled it. “Quick, talk to me.”
Was she still hallucinating? “Me?” Kasey asked, checking to see that the kitchen island had, in fact, been deserted.
“Yes, you,” said the girl, prompting Kasey’s Intraface to launch SILVERTONGUE, a conversation aid recommended by Celia. It’ll make things easier, her sister had promised.
Mostly, its rapid-fire tips just made Kasey dizzy. She blinked, popping the bubbles lathering her vision. “Talk to you about . . . ?”
“Anything.”
Insufficient parameters. Annoyed, Kasey surveyed her surroundings for inspiration. “The entire human population fits into a one cubic kilometer cube?” The fact came out sounding like a question; she corrected her inflection. “The entire human population fits into a one cubic kilometer cube.”
“REPETITION DETECTED!” chimed SILVERTONGUE in disapproval.
“Really?” said the girl, peering at the dance floor over the rim of her cup. “Go on.”
“About the homo sapiens volume?”
The girl laughed, as if Kasey had told a joke. Had she? Jokes were good. Humor was a core trait on the Coles Humanness Scale. It was just . . . Kasey hadn’t been expecting laughter as a reaction. This wasn’t going well, by standards of an experiment. She had half a mind to ask the girl what was so funny, but was outpaced by the conversation.
“Thanks a million,” said the girl, looking away from the dance floor and finally facing Kasey. “Some people can’t take a ‘not interested’ hint to save their life. So, you here to see her too?”
Questions were straightforward. Questions, Kasey could handle, especially when she knew the anticipated answer. “Her?” she asked, only because she didn’t want to encourage it.
She waited for Celia’s name. Braced herself for it.
“Yeah, Kasey? Party host?” The girl nodded at the city Kasey had built out of cups when she failed to reply. “Guessing you aren’t here to mingle. Gets old fast, once you get over how real it feels. The younger sister, though . . .”
Don’t ask. Nothing good could come of it.
“What about her?” Kasey asked, caving to her curiosity.
“I don’t know.” The girl sipped her drink, eyes veiled. “That’s the lure, isn’t it? One minute, she’s dodging the press. The next, she’s e-viting everyone within a twenty-stratum radius to her party. The disconnect is disturbing, don’t you think? Like, I have a sister too, and I don’t know what I’d do if she went missing.” A new song came on, heavy on the delta-synth. “But sure as hell wouldn’t be jamming it up to Zika Tu.”
Fair. All solid points. “Maybe it’s her moving-on party,” Kasey offered, rather wishing now Meridian hadn’t flaked. Meridian would’ve been able to explain, in the same way she’d explained to Kasey, why this party made perfect sense, for reasons Kasey was blanking on.
Oh well. She’d tried. She added another cup to her city—and almost knocked the whole thing over when the girl said, “Hard to move on when they still haven’t found a body. Too morbid?” she asked as Kasey steadied her model. One cup rolled out of her reach. The girl caught it. “Sorry.” She placed the cup atop two others, where it wobbled. Kasey fixed it. “I keep forgetting it’s different here. Where I’m from, bodies are every . . . okay, yeah, I’ll stop.” She bobbed her drink at Kasey. “That’s me for you. Yvone, queen of gaffes.”
Silence followed.
The girl was waiting, Kasey realized after a delay, for Kasey to introduce herself as well.
Was it too late to come clean about her identity? Probably. “Meridian.”
“Sorry?”
“Meridian.” How did people talk at parties? Did people talk at parties? Why couldn’t this girl have ordered a drink like everyone else and been on her merry way? “Meridian,” Kasey repeated as the music turned up.
“What?”
“Meridian.” Was it condescending to spell out a name? Or overkill, when the name was as long as Meridian? She should’ve picked something shorter, in hindsight. “M-E-R—”
“Wait, I got it.” The girl blinked at Kasey three times, causing Kasey’s Intraface to emit a cheery little ding as it projected Kasey’s ID over her head.
MIZUHARA, KASEY
Rank: 2
Crap.
Kasey canceled the projection, then checked to see if anyone had noticed. Outside, in streets, schools, shops, or any public domain, rank was auto-displayed, the number over your head dogging you wherever you went. Private domains were the only respite. As such, it was considered bad form to swagger around with your rank when it wasn’t required.
It was also bad form to lie about your name.
“You’re . . .” A frown spread across Yvone’s face. “Celia’s . . .”
Abort. The LOG OUT screen, already up on Kasey’s Intraface, was just a CONFIRM button away when something clapped onto her shoulder.
A hand.
“Kasey?”
She turned—
—and knew, the second she saw the boy, that he was one of Celia’s. Tristan, his name must have been. Or Dmitri. One of the two.
Which?
“Kasey,” repeated Tristan/Dmitri, blinking as if he didn’t quite believe his eyes. Behind him, the crowd danced on. Kasey would’ve given anything to be in the thick of it right now. “Thank Joules. I’ve been trying to reach you for months.”
As had everyone else. Spam and malware had flooded her Intraface. All unknown contacts, she’d had to filter out.
“I need to know if it was my fault,” Tristan/Dmitri said, voice rising when Kasey shook her head. “I need to know!”
Yvone’s gaze darted between the two of them, sponging up the exchange.
“I can’t sleep at night.” Tristan/Dmitri’s chest heaved. He took a wet-sounding breath. Kasey’s mouth was dry as dust. “Haven’t been able to, ever since . . . I thought we were cool, after the breakup, I thought—but now I wonder—was it something I said? Something I did?”
Dmitri, Kasey wanted to say; she did, after all, have a fifty-fifty chance at guessing right. It’s not your fault. Not anyone’s fault. Sometimes there were no answers. No cause and effect, no perpetrators and victims. Only accidents.
But those weren’t the words of a loving sister, Kasey knew. Just didn’t know how to act like one. A loving sister wouldn’t let statistics guide her decisions. Tristan or Dmitri? Wouldn’t be throwing a party without knowing why, motive left open to interpretation. Tristan or Dmitri?
How could she be okay with fifty-fifty?
How could she be okay when no one else was?
The bass gobbled up Kasey’s heartbeat. Her chest felt weak. She fumbled for the kitchen island behind her, clutching it like the rim of a pool. “Hey, buddy,” she heard Yvone saying to Tristan/Dmitri, her voice murky as if buffered by water. “You’ve got the wrong person.”
“I saw her ID just now.”
“Well, you saw wrong.”
It was nice of Yvone to cover for Kasey. Kasey should have thanked her. Celia would have, not that she’d ever be in Kasey’s situation, but if, hypothetically.
Celia would have done a thousand things differently from Kasey, who pressed CONFIRM LOG OUT.
The kitchen island vanished. The dance floor, the lights, the drinks and cups, consumables that would turn into carbon emissions at the end of their life cycles if they existed, disappeared, only ever strings of code. Over in the virtual domain, the party went on for everyone still logged in. No one would miss Kasey.
Just as well.
Kasey opened her eyes to the blue-dark of her stasis pod. Its sarcophagus-like interior glowed faintly with data arrays transmitt
ed from her Intraface’s biomonitor app, which tracked her vitals whenever she holo-ed. Her heartbeat, while high, fell within the normal range. Her peripheral vision displayed the time—00:15—and the current number of residents still traversing the eco-city as holographic versions of themselves: 36.2%.
Holoing, as it was called, was less of a green alternative and more of a last resort. To live sustainably, people had to live less. Conduct nonessential activities (“essentials” being eating, sleeping, and exercising) in the holographic mode. Fine-dine and jet-set virtually, without trace or footprint. Reduce transportation needs and shrink infrastructure, energy and materials conserved. Concede these things and only then could architects build eco-friendly cities in the skies, safe from rising sea levels. The trade-offs were worth it, in Kasey’s opinion. A minority one. Most people rejected living like bento-packed vegetables—be it for their own good or the planet’s—and stayed in their land-bound territories. The weather was more extreme, yes, but sufferable. The arctic melt, while lamentable, didn’t affect them like it did island and coastal populations.
But the wildfires did. The hurricanes and monsoons. Earthquakes rose in magnitude, exacerbated by decades of deep-crust mining. Natural disasters catalyzed man-made ones: chemical factories and fission plants compromised, meltdowns disseminating radioaxons, nanoparticles, and microcinogens across the land and sea. Global opinion flipped overnight. Eco-cities came to be viewed as utopias, so removed from disaster epicenters. And holoing from one’s stasis pod, once seen as restrictive, came to represent freedom and safety. Why experience something in real life when real life had become so volatile?
Why? Kasey wondered now to her sister, even though she knew. Boundaries existed so that Celia could push them. Nothing was off-limits, no trouble too deep. Her sister was alive in a world increasingly removed from life. It was why people found it difficult to cope with the news of her disappearance, with some going as far as to straight-up deny it.
Fifty bytes she shows up tonight.
Others grieved.
I have a sister too.
Still others blamed themselves.
I need to know if it was my fault.
This, Kasey found to be the most nonsensical reaction of all. Her sister was gone. No amount of lost sleep could reverse that. Guilt was irrelevant. Irrational.
Kasey wished she felt less of it.
WAIT FOR ME, KAY. I’M coming for you.
My blood swirls down the drain as I rinse the propeller in M.M.’s sink. I dry it with a fistful of sweater. Then I start hammering at the dents. My hands shake so badly, it’s a miracle I keep my thumbs. My heart feels like it might detonate, and back outside, I drop the bolt into the sand twice before finally twisting it onto the drive shaft, screwing the propeller in place.
At last, it’s done. As the sun sinks, I drag Hubert out on his first test run with M.M.’s solar-cells repurposed as boat motors. I crank on the engine once we’re in the water and crab-crawl to his stern.
“Come on, Bert.” I grip his sides. “Make me proud.”
Hubert groans.
“Come on, come on.”
A wave rolls under us, pitching me stomach-first into the stern. I brace myself for the next lurch.
It never comes.
Because Hubert moves. He moves, skimming over the waves, foam pluming in his wake, and I could kiss him. I really could. I adjust his trim, test his tiller, then steer him back toward the shore. I leave him on the beach and run to the house for my stockpiled supplies. Some of the taro biscuits have gone moldy. I toss them onto the kitchen floor and replace them with fresh ones from M.M.’s glass jar. On a whim, I pour in the entire jar. Gotta go big to go home.
“Strongly disagree,” U-me says, following me as I carry the supplies to Hubert.
I stash them in the locker under his stern. “You knew my endgame all along.”
“Agree.”
“This shouldn’t be coming as a surprise.”
“Disagree.”
“You’re contradicting yourself,” I complain, but she’s not looking at me anymore.
She’s looking to the sea.
I look too. In my dreams, there are other islands out there, even floating cities. But in my dreams, I can also see in color and swim for days. Dreams are dreams. I know better than to rely on them.
Truth is, I haven’t a clue where Kay is. Joules, I don’t know where I am. I used to row Hubert as far out as I dared, hoping to find land, or at least something to orient myself. But I never discovered anything, just kilometers of choppy sea.
And now I’m reminded of how it felt out there. How quiet, on the best of days. How stormy on the worst. The muchness of things, solid water all around. The littleness of things, silence and sunlight to spectate if I drown.
Shivering, I trudge back to the house. The sand-carpeted steps whisper beneath my feet as I climb onto the porch. The kitchen greets me from behind the door. The windows above the sink are open, facing the sea and inviting in its breeze. On windy days, one gust can travel through the half door separating the kitchen from the living room and into the modest hall, breathing life into every nook and cranny, teasing the tattered lace curtains into a dance and animating the rocking chair in the bedroom.
But even without the sea’s spell, the place is alive. The furniture is minimal but mismatched, as if collected over time, and the floor plan, while straightforward, springs the occasional oddity, alcoves indenting the walls like sealed-off entryways to other worlds. The house must be an heirloom, cherished and passed down, and as I pull on a sweater from M.M.’s closet, I’m almost tempted to stay. It’s possible I’ll go mad in isolation, or lose my vision entirely, or the taro plants will catch blight and die. But the future is too abstract. In the here and now, I’m safe. We take care of each other, M.M.’s home and I.
The bedroom door behind me sighs open. I don’t turn because it can be no one else, and sure enough, U-me rolls next to me, something in her arms.
A purl-knit sweater embellished with iron-on pugs.
My heart catches in my throat as I remember my first days here. Waking up on the shore, naked as a newborn, drawing air into my deflated lungs. The water has never been warm, but that day, it must have been freezing. My teeth chattered so hard that my vision flickered as I crawled toward the house on the sand-submerged rocks.
M.M. saved my life. Well, her sweaters did. I yanked the pug one from her closet, right after the moths flew out. It was thick and warm, and all I cared about.
It took a full day for the shivering to stop. A week to remember my name. Then the other pieces came back. Memories of colors I can no longer perceive. A sister back at home, wherever home was. We were close—I knew that in my blood. She must have been worried sick when I disappeared. Maybe I’m forgetting her, but what if she’s also forgetting me?
My heart hardens as I stare at the sweater. I thought my enemy was the sea. But it’s this house. These sweaters. Even U-me. They’ve let me grow comfortable.
I can’t grow comfortable.
I leave the bedroom. The living room. I ignore the mess of taros I’ve made in the kitchen and head out to the porch again. U-me trails me. She watches as I use a piece of metal scrap, foraged from the Shipyard, to etch one more line onto M.M.’s porch rail. It’s striped with tally marks of all the days that have passed since I first washed up.
With any luck, this will be the final mark.
“Stay,” I order U-me, dropping the scrap metal. “Good,” I say, backing down the porch steps as U-me blinks from the deck, sweater still draped in her metal arms. “Just . . . stay.”
I swallow, turn, and jog to Hubert. I push him into the water, clamber aboard, and switch on his motor.
I don’t look back.
The sun sinks into the horizon as we zoom toward it. It’s beautiful, I recall. Sunset. Honey-hued and apple-skinned. But it’s hard to retrieve images from the past without feeling like I’m running through dry sand, and soon, the charcoal skies d
im to black. The moon brightens slowly, like an antique filament lamp. We hit a calm patch of sea a couple hours later, and I turn off Hubert’s motor to save some battery before resting against the supply locker, a spare sweater folded beneath my head. The stars in the sky are the last things I see, and then the sun is rising, rinsing the waters around me to a powder gray. I start the motor again.
I mark the days on Hubert’s gunwale. I drink some water, confident it’ll rain soon. I nibble on taro biscuits and try to keep up the conversation.
“Bert, love. Do you think we’re going the right way?”
“Want a hear a joke? Okay . . . guess not.”
“Want to hear it anyway? Why don’t oysters give to charity? Because they’re shellfish. Get it? Shellfish? Selfish? Okay, I’ll stop now.”
“Why don’t you ever define my curse words?”
“Joules, you’re worse than U-me. Why can’t you say something?”
I stop talking to Hubert after a week, because I run out of water.
I had to make a choice: Pack enough water that it’d slow Hubert down or hope for rain. I’d hoped for rain. On the island, it rains at least twice a week.
But there’s no rain.
Until there is.
I’m trying to nap—the only way I can ignore the desert growing in my mouth—when something plops onto my head. At first I think it’s gull poop, but the skies are quiet. I sit up. Another plop, and I almost weep with joy.
Rain. Fat droplets falling out of the gray heavens.
My face tilts back and I part my lips, catching the cold, sweet drops on my tongue. Then I dive for Hubert’s locker and wrestle out the empty water bin—not so empty when the first wave crashes into us.
For a stomach-dropping moment, we’re shoved under. Bubbles burst before my eyes—I think I scream—and then I’m coughing, eyes stinging with salt and rain, pelting down, because we’ve resurfaced, thank Joules, and I’m clutching to Hubert’s gunwale as the ocean thrashes, waves blacker than ever, and among all that black is a speck of white.
My water bin. Washed overboard, quickly swirling away from us. My taro biscuits, too, dusting the waves like dandruff. The door to Hubert’s locker is gone. Torn off. My supply pack is nowhere in sight and I’m sitting in more seawater than not.
