Broken Mirror

by Cody Sisco

  He said, “Biology is fine, but if I was normal, I don’t think I’d settle for it. The universe is almost big enough for me,” he joked, bringing up their old silly banter.

  “Are you in love with the stars?” she asked.

  “Stars are sexy,” he said.

  Elena giggled. “Stars are not sexy,” she said. “Cells are sexy. Astronomers grow up to be sad old hermits and spinsters. Biologists pump out loads of babies.”

  He giggled and nodded. Elena smiled. He was such a strange bird, so difficult to pin down. His mood swings were the size of the solar system, much worse than when he was younger. She had to figure out what was really going on with him.

  “How did you know your granfa was poisoned?” she asked.

  He paused before replying, and she wondered how far he trusted her. “He had a hidden lab room at Oak Knoll. There was an image, a kind of photograph that showed he’d been exposed to alpha particles.”

  “Yes, but you said you knew he was murdered at the funeral. I was there, remember?”

  His eyes flicked across the landscape. “I didn’t know that he was murdered. It was just a feeling.”

  She shifted toward him. Somehow despite his condition, he’d seen the truth when no one else had. How? “But you were right. It’s strange, don’t you think?”

  Victor smirked. “I’ve been called worse.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Like your dreams—”

  Victor’s hands tensed on the steering disk. “We’re not going to talk about those.”

  Elena shifted back toward the window and crossed her arms. She’d get him to open up eventually. “Fine,” she said. “What about your family? Are you going to call them? Do they know you’re leaving?”

  Victor leaned forward, readjusting the position of his butt on the seat. The car maintained a steady speed throughout. “The more people who know where I am . . .”

  “The more they can help you,” she said.

  “Or the more the information could leak out, and whoever’s following me can track me down. Like Karine, my boss. I don’t think I can trust her.”

  “Why not?” Elena asked. Victor’s trust seemed like a fickle thing—freely given to some people and locked away from others. It would help if she knew how he decided between the two.

  “Something Ozie said about her. Maybe he’s being paranoid. I can’t figure her out. Sometimes she’s supportive, and other times I think she wants to get me locked up.”

  Elena smiled to herself. “It sounds like she has a crush on you.”

  “I don’t think that’s it.”

  “That’s what women do when we can’t get the man we want. We flirt. We criticize. We murder. Trust me, she’s crazy for you.” She should be cautioning him against getting involved with his boss, but instead she felt happy that someone felt fond toward him.

  Victor said, “I don’t see how she could be,” as he squirmed. Elena suppressed a grin.

  She looked out the window and saw rows of dried-up orchards. One field was scorched; the burnt trees looked like black figures lined up in rows. Her good feelings drained away. The devastation reminded her of Texas, and she wondered whether she would ever descend to such savagery again. One murder was already too many.

  Chapter 21

  What freedom do any of us have? Our prison surrounds us wherever we go. Our choices are only illusions. Don’t ask me to sympathize with Broken Mirrors. They’re still human. That’s the most damning thing of all.

  —Interview with Mía Barrias in Five Years After Carmichael (1976)

  Republic of Texas

  22 September 1990

  Elena gagged. The Corp’s wafting body scent, a rotten fruit and acetone stench, permeated the Amarillo Cattle Company’s feed warehouse, a burnt-out husk on the outskirts of town. A single lightstrip hung limply from charred ceiling beams. The concrete floor was pocked and stained by decades of blood, filth, and meat.

  Synthleather straps stretched around the prisoner’s bulging thighs and arms. He refused to talk. His swollen limbs and tank-like torso indicated massive steroid use, as did the acne spreading down his face and neck. He had sandy hair, buck teeth, narrow shoulders, a bulbous chest, and limbs that seemed tumorous on such a small frame. He was a smirking, overmuscled kid who hadn’t yet realized how much trouble he was in.

  Tonight, Xavi, the Amarillo Puro’s chief, had ordered Elena to accompany them. They had instructions to find out why the trade truce with the Corps, in effect since before Elena joined the Puros the first time, had been canceled, and to do so by any means necessary.

  Shadows clustered thickly around Elena and her fellow Puros, Chico and Davinth, while they questioned the tied-up Corp. Folks who didn’t know the Puros probably thought they were hick farmers with political leanings. If so, they knew shit. The Puros were a family dedicated to principles of loyalty, rootedness, and, above all, purity. The Corp should have feared them more.

  Elena almost gagged at the smell the Corp gave off. She made a retching sound and said, “He looks like an inflatable dummy.”

  Chico, the Puro in charge of this particular job, laughed. “He’s a juicer. What did you expect?”

  Davinth, the Puro’s most junior member, asked, “Been ragin’ for a while now, haven’t ye, tosser?”

  Davinth had made the journey from Cardiff in the Welsh Protectorate to the middle-of-nowhere Republic of Texas and had become a drug-free zealot like the rest of the Puros. He was a dim bulb, always ready to blindly follow along, but at least he’d never figure out that Elena was still dosing.

  She worried about Chico though. He was wild, always looking for ways to impress Xavi, and perceptive enough that Elena avoided him when she was using.

  Elena cursed herself. She hadn’t been strong enough to resist a few puffs. Hot saliva stung the back of her throat. She refused to cough. None of her Puro dickiemates could know that she’d sneaked stimsmoke in the other room while they were busy binding the Corp. Addiction was a leash tugging her down a path to ruin, and she couldn’t break free.

  The Corp didn’t respond to any of their taunts. He stared at the walls and ceiling, ignoring them. If he wouldn’t talk, this was going to be a long, difficult night.

  “Let’s get on with it,” Elena said.

  Chico shredded the Corp’s shirt with a pop-out blade and started yanking a strip of sandpaper across the young man’s nipple. The Corp, who was probably only a few years younger, didn’t scream, didn’t wince, and didn’t speak. Elena wished he would. The silence only encouraged Chico to get more creative. Elena looked into the Corp’s bloodshot eyes so she wouldn’t have to watch what was happening lower down.

  “Why did you call off the drop?” Elena asked.

  She hated interrogations and the stupid and ineffectual cruelty of her dickiemates. There wasn’t much she could do about it, though. The Puros wouldn’t pay a Corp for information—their principles forbade bribery—so they had to rely on other tactics.

  The Corp’s expression was sullen and bitter, and he was starting to sweat.

  Unfortunately he appeared neither scared nor in pain. Chico tried cutting, squeezing, and breaking, and nothing seemed to affect the Corp. It was like he was numb all over, like his pain receptors were broken—

  “I got it!” Elena said as she grabbed Chico’s shoulder. She spun him toward her and smiled into his confused face. “He doesn’t feel anything. Look!” She tugged hard on the young man’s ear for effect. His head snapped to the side, and his teeth almost caught her fingers.

  “Try that again, gums,” Chico warned. He casually knocked a baton against the Corps’ lips hard enough to split them. The Corp spit blood and looked away sullenly.

  “This isn’t working. We need to scare him.” Elena unclasped and removed her belt and handed it to Chico, miming how to use it to block the flow of air.

  Chico nodded, wrapped the belt firmly around both fists, stepped behind the Corp, and started strangling him. The Corp’s eyes bulged,
and the muscles in his face seized. Elena walked into his field of view, but the panicked Corp didn’t see her at all.

  Elena grabbed his ears and pulled. “Hey! Listen up! He’s going to strangle you until I tell him to stop.”

  Chico watched her, waiting for the signal.

  Elena said, “Not yet. A few seconds. Or maybe a few more. I’ve got time.”

  The Corp wheezed and strained unsuccessfully to draw a breath. His face turned purple and appeared to swell. Elena nodded to Chico, and he let up. Ragged breaths wheezed out of the Corp’s throat, and he began to cough.

  “You either tell me why you called off the drop, or he’s going to squeeze again. And again. Your brain cells will die off. All your buddies’ drugs won’t help. He’ll keep going until you’re a drooling vegetable. What do you say?”

  Chico looked at the Corp with an excited grin that turned Elena’s stomach.

  The belt touched the Corp’s neck. His face caved, becoming just another scared dickie. “Wait!” he pleaded. Words spilled out of him alongside gobs of spit. His eyes were dark black pools of fear. “I don’t know why. We got the word. No more deals with the Puros. Everyone knows now. You’re off limits.”

  “Why? Who gave the order?” Elena leaned in, then gagged. He was giving off some sort of gross half-metabolized oily odor, a by-product of whatever substances he was taking. “Why?” she repeated, backing away and blocking her nose with her thumb and forefinger. She couldn’t stand his stench.

  Both Chico and Davinth were staring at her with heads cocked. Gooseflesh rose on her skin. Neither of the guys was plugging his nose. They acted as if the smell wasn’t there.

  And it wasn’t, she realized, her heart pounding.

  The smell was in her head.

  Flashes from previous stimsmoke highs slammed into her, and she sunk to the ground and leaned against one of the metal struts holding up the ceiling. She should have realized it sooner. The smell was an artifact of synesthesia, a side effect of stimsmoke that no one had bothered to explain to her. Maybe other users didn’t quite understand it. Not everyone had a friend with mirror resonance syndrome.

  The Corp spilled his guts to Chico and Davinth, naming names and describing the hierarchy of a local Corps franchise—she barely heard what he said. Instead she smelled his fear and desperation. Elena watched and said nothing. She didn’t think she could stand up.

  Chico looked over at Elena, mouthed, “You okay?”

  She waved at him to keep going.

  “It goes way up,” the Corp was saying. “Maybe as far as the king. All we hear is, ‘Push the stims! Push the stims!’ And ‘no arms for the Puros.’ Anyone caught in a deal gets his head bashed in.”

  Chico asked, “Who else are you going to sell to?”

  “No idea. But I can find out for you. Just don’t kill me.” He looked at Chico with pleading eyes. “Or choke me again.”

  Elena stood, grasping the metal beam to haul herself up. She beckoned to Chico and pulled him to the side of the room. She wanted to release the Corp, but he refused. He slipped the belt around the Corp’s neck and tightened it.

  Elena took a step forward on wobbly legs. The floor seemed to vibrate under her feet, and shadows crowded her vision. She took another step and stumbled to her knees, retching. The sounds of the Corp struggling washed over her. She couldn’t stop Chico. In between heaves of her belly, Elena wished that Victor would return her feed requests. If stimsmoke mirrored his condition, he might be able to talk her through getting clean.

  ***

  The smack of a juicy insect exploding on the windshield brought Elena back to the present.

  She wished she could be honest and tell him how her life had changed when she had moved to the Republic of Texas, how much she hated it at first, the time she spent careening between depression and stimsmoke. How she’d been saved by the Puros, how she’d relapsed, and then how his family had saved her again.

  She wished her life hadn’t taken the turns it had. But her actions had consequences, and she had to live with them no matter how dark and shameful.

  She should tell Victor about Lucky and Bandit. He deserved to know the truth.

  How would he take it? Would he forgive her for lying?

  Elena glanced over at Victor. His hair needed combing. He probably hadn’t showered in days. His hands gripped the steering disk as if he were holding onto a lifeline. She couldn’t blame him for the mess her life had become. But if he’d been there for her, even a little, maybe she wouldn’t have needed the Puros. Oraciones in Portuguese-influenced Spanish repeated themselves in her head. Los Puros sonao limpios, salvos, amadaos. Unidos, hastao lo ultimo. She pressed a palm to her heart and breathed in calmness.

  Still, it could have been different. If his family hadn’t rescued her, she would never have been to the clinic in New Venice. She wouldn’t have rejoined the Puros and learned about the arms embargo. And she wouldn’t have tortured the young Corp—that was the tipping point, when she lost control of stims again.

  “Are you still not taking your medication?” she asked.

  He flashed her an angry look.

  “I’m not criticizing. I’m asking. How do you feel?”

  “It’s hard to describe. I’m me again. I’m in my body, feeling like me, feeling . . .” He paused, breathed deeply, then began again, “When I was on Personil, it was like there was a layer in between me and the world, between me and myself. Mostly I felt numb, except when an episode came and broke through, and I could finally feel something again. It’s different every time. Colors or sounds or feelings take over, and I don’t—I’m not myself anymore. That’s when the blankness comes. It swallows me up.”

  “And then?” He made it sound as if she’d experienced only a fraction of what it was like for him.

  “Most of the time it’s nothing. Nothing at all. I’m gone. But sometimes, right before the blankness hits, it’s like the universe opens up. I feel . . . Dr. Tammet called it euphoria, but it’s more than that. It’s like I’m going somewhere beautiful and dazzling, and that’s okay, because it’s all the same, everything is part of the same stuff: me, the world, all the stars and galaxies, we’re all one.”

  Elena relaxed into her seat. Blankness didn’t sound all that bad. It sounded like a release from a world that required so much just to keep going.

  They were nearing the foothills. The flat valley floor had given way to gently undulating land, though the road continued due east. Trains heading to the resorts of Lake Tahoe, carrying SeCa elites to their vacation homes, sped past every minute or so.

  She looked at Victor. His eyes scanned the contours of the road as he drove. He didn’t need to know about her past. He wouldn’t understand.

  Although if she confessed to him about using stims, she could tell him about the good parts of being a Puro: the community, the farms, how they had tried to help her get clean and succeeded for a time. How being with them felt real and grounded. He needed a refuge like that, a place to start again. But he wouldn’t be able to see past the violence. Maybe she could prepare the way by describing the dickie violence spreading across the Texas prairie as the Corps’ fault. Everyone knew the Puros were only defending themselves.

  And maybe she could ask him why a street drug spreading through the Republic of Texas produced his syndrome’s exact symptoms.

  “What’s it like in the R.O.T.?” Victor asked.

  Elena sucked in her breath. She contemplated the possibility that Victor was indeed psychic, but dismissed the fantasy. Still, it was uncanny the way his question tracked her thoughts. Maybe she had dropped too many hints about how much the Republic of Texas had changed her.

  “It’s simpler,” she said. “People are more normal. More normal than here, I mean. They want to be left alone. Their attitude is screw everyone else, we’ve got our own problems. In SeCa someone is always in your business, trying to fix things, but messing them up worse instead. People in Texas believe in autonomy. It’s not just a poli
tical thing. It’s a way of life. Except . . .”

  “Except what?”

  Elena watched dirt fields pass by. The ghost tang of stimsmoke lolled in her mouth. She couldn’t tell him yet.

  She said, “The R.O.T. is missing something. It’s like a blank canvas. In SeCa you’ve got a lot of people with competing ideas. Lifestyle designers, techies, New Catholics, deep ecologists, sex cultists. The list goes on and on, you know? But in the R.O.T. there’s no ideology. Maybe there was before the Repartition, but now people don’t even believe MeshNews reports, like all that stuff is from another planet. You see a lot of strange things creep up.”

  “What do you mean, ‘strange things’?” He looked at her, his expression that of a curious little boy. She’d confused him. He knew nothing about everyday violence and poverty and the blind faith that grows in such fertile soil.

  The things she had seen . . . It was like the two of them were living in different universes. He wouldn’t understand. With enough time, if she told him bit by bit, maybe she could enlighten him. Maybe then he would understand when she told him that she was spying on him. Until then she’d have to live with the aching feeling in her gut that she was betraying him. “People need to believe in something bigger than themselves,” she said. “There’s always someone selling a dream. So you get cults rising up. People believing in supernatural stuff. Not like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we could talk to ghosts?’ They really believe in it. Other stuff too.”

  “What other stuff?”

  She could tell him about the flood of stims the Corps had unleashed to hook as many people as possible and their enticing lies about the effects: unlimited energy, visceral fantasies, and the feeling that everything was as it should be. They never talked about synesthesia, mood imbalances, addiction, and nauseatingly powerful déjà vu.

  Tomorrow she would tell him everything. First she needed time to figure out what to say.

  “Never mind,” she said.

  They reached the Trans-SeCa Highway, the main route through the mountains for a thousand kilometers to the north or south. Few other cars traveled the road with them, even though it was midday on a Friday. An anticontraband drone hovered and tracked the traffic, including three other cars and theirs, forcing them all to slow down and submit to the scan.