Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 100

by Aliette de Bodard

  I need to see her again. The strange and strangely fascinating conversations of the finger-taking gathering ended at three in the morning. The people in black hoodies streamed out of the spartan basement of 289S Eden Road in silence, and I’d lost her among the crowd. I obeyed the rules of the gathering and didn’t call out for her. Later, I realized that I didn’t even know her name.

  I need to see her again.

  7.

  By the time I log in, Roy has left. I sigh and turn off my computer.

  The finger-talking gathering begins at midnight. I’d never waited so anxiously for sundown. I stand up, sit down, change the TV channel, sit blankly on the toilet staring into space. I repeatedly check my watch. To while away the time, I take the Bolívar No. 2 cigar I’d secreted away for so long out of the humidor. I open the precious aluminum cigar tube, carefully cut the closed end, and light it with a match. I take a deep drag and exhale it slowly. The rich, intense smoke of premium Cuban cigar makes me dizzy with pleasure, but guilt quickly follows. A thirty-dollar cigar? I don’t deserve it. A thing so splendid should remain forever in my crude humidor, to be admired from a distance the same way as the beautiful Kawasaki.

  And my motorcycle . . . it had functioned less smoothly on the ride home, the engine coughing weakly. I think the aging carburetor’s losing efficiency; my old buddy’s getting along in years, after all. I ought to use a safer, less traceable method of transportation to go to Eden Road. I turn my mind to that problem, idly clicking the TV remote through channels. The TV shows are as boring as the Internet. None of the topics from yesterday’s gathering appeared at all, never mind the accompanying bold discussion and critiques. Impatient and restless, I suck away at my cigar until the stub burns my fingers, then go to my bedroom and dig in my closet until I find a dark blue hoodie from my college years. I put it on, flip up the hood, and walk in front of my mirror.

  The wrinkled hoodie bears the image of Steve Jobs—someone that this generation of young people might never have heard of—printed in black and white on its front. It fits well: I haven’t gained a pound since I graduated. From the depths of the hood floats the bloodless, hollow-cheeked, baggy-eyed face of a middle-aged man. It tries to smile, but coupled with the big brandy nose, it looks comical.

  This is why I long for the finger-talking gathering. In darkness, no one needs to see your ugly face. All you have is the touch of a fingertip and a thought put into writing. I push back the hood and carefully comb my hair to the right, but I can’t cover the balding top of my head no matter what I do.

  The sky is finally dark. I stack crackers and cheese, press down, and heat it in the oven. Then I open a bottle of beer and have myself a simple dinner. The cheese gives me heartburn. I can’t suppress the pounding of my heart. In my hoodie, I pace in the living room. The TV shows some guy with too much time carrying a massive sign in front of the city hall. The protestor is surrounded by a sizable audience, but no one seems to be joining him. I think I see a few people in black hoodies in the crowd. Is it them? I toss down the remote and pull up my hood, determined to go take a look.

  There aren’t many people on the subway. A number of them pretend to be watching the commercials on the display screens while secretly sizing me up.

  Two teenagers with fashionable mushroom-shaped hair discuss me quietly. “Who’s the guy on that old geezer’s sweatshirt?”

  “Some religious leader, probably. Like Luc Jouret or something.”

  “Uh, who’s that?”

  You’re half right, ignorant kids. I pull my hood lower. In my time, Steve Jobs was as good as a religious leader, until the Internet degenerated into senselessness and everyone tossed aside their complicated smartphones for basic phones that could only make calls.

  I arrive at the city square half an hour later. The protestor stands in the middle of the brightly lit lawn. His sign is ridiculously huge, covered with several rows of garishly colored writing. I can’t see what it says with my deteriorating vision. Is this a side effect of overdrinking, like the tinnitus? My mother says that my father is blind as a mole now. I can’t imagine what he looks like, what remains of his bushy beard, red face, brawny arms, his massive beer belly, and I don’t care to find out.

  A crowd has gathered to watch him afar. A few cops are leaning against the side of their police car, chewing gum. Skater kids are showing off their tricks on the steps. In front of a TV van, a reporter and a camera man are chatting. In contrast, the protestor seems all alone. I walk closer, squinting at the sign. The red text on the top reads, “Wood-burning fireplaces are the leading cause of global warming.” Below it, “For every traditional fireplace you tear down, Mother Earth lives another day” is written in blue.

  I wrinkle my brow. The First Amendment wasn’t made for idle crap like this. Where are the incisive opinions from the finger-talking gathering? I approach the crowd, trying to find the people in black hoodies, but at this time the police come up and ask the protestor to leave for the sake of the grass, and the crowd disperses too. I can’t find anyone I recognize. Two cops turn their gazes on me questioningly. One of them points at the portrait on my hoodie, and the other guffaws in realization. I quickly turn and leave.

  Without thinking, I ride the subway eastward and get off at the terminal station. I hail a taxi, telling the driver, “289 Eden Road.”

  “Eden Road?” the driver grumbles. “I hope you’re planning to tip well.”

  The car turns onto a side road. The city around us grows more and more run-down, and the streetlights dwindle. When the taxi stops in the middle of the darkened Eden Road, my anxiety and hope rise as one. “Thinking of going elsewhere, pal? I know some good hotels.” The taxi driver takes my fee and opens the door for me.

  “No, it’s fine. I like quiet.” I get off, shut the car door, and wave. The taxi’s taillights brighten, then quickly diminish and disappear into the distance. It’s nine o’clock right now, but Eden Road is already silent as a grave. I walk toward the front door of 289 Eden Road with its missing glass panel. After some thought, I open the door and enter.

  I know I’ve arrived too early, but I thought that the anticipation would add to tonight’s gathering. Like yesterday, my heart is thumping, but this time it’s out of excitement rather than fear. I find the door at the back of the stairs by the light of the wobbly incandescent lamp and turn the brass doorknob. The dark, narrow forty steps appear before me. I’ve lost my cell phone, and neither do I have a flashlight. I adjust my hood, close my eyes, and walk into the deepening darkness. One, two, three, four, five . . . thirty-nine, forty. There’s a wall in front of me now. The stairs double back here. I grope around, exploring with my right foot until I find the next stair. One, two, three . . . thirty-nine, forty. Both my feet are on flat ground. The green door with the brass letter S should be in front of me. Filled with hope, I reach out.

  My fingers touch cold concrete.

  Had I misremembered? I summon last night’s experiences to my mind. There was only this door at the end of the stairs. This door, and nothing else. I’m sure of it. I clearly recall the gleam of the brass S. I shuffle to the left and right, but touch only concrete wall on either side. The place directly in front of the stairs, where the door should have been, is also rough wall. The stairs have taken me to a dead end.

  I can feel the blood pounding in my head. My ears feel hot, and the headache is returning. Calm, I tell myself. I need to calm down. Breathe deeply. Breathe deeply. I take off my hood and suck in a slow breath. The cold, damp basement air fills my lungs, and my overheated brain cools down a little.

  Once I’ve taken a few minutes to calm down, I start to look for the vanished door again, but there are no signs that there had ever been a door here. The rough wall scrapes my fingertips raw. I sit down, despairing.

  Where are your friends now? My father’s face appears in the darkness, sneering carelessly.

  Shut up! I yell. I bury my head in the crook of my arm and cover my ears.

  I told y
ou, don’t make trouble. My father wipes a trickle of beer from the corner of his mouth. His breath is hot and foul. His arm is around my sister, whose blue eyes glisten with tears. My mother is to the side, crying.

  Shut up! I scream.

  You’re eighteen now. Get the hell out of my house. Get a job, or go to your goddamn university, but I don’t have to let you live under my roof anymore, my father roared, throwing the suitcase at my feet. My sister hides herself in the kitchen, tears running down her face as she looks at me. My mother is holding a pot; her face is expressionless.

  Shut up! I scream hysterically.

  I don’t know how much time passed. You can’t tell time accurately in the dark. It might have been a nightmare, or maybe I’d never fallen asleep in the first place. I stand up slowly, letting the wall take some of my weight. I’ve been curled up too long; every joint cries out in protest. All I want to do is go back to my little apartment, down a big glass of whiskey, no ice, and turn on the TV. Forget my absurd dream from last night. Forget the lingering sensation on my palm. Forget that there ever was such a thing as the ridiculously named finger-talking gathering.

  I stride forward. My left foot strikes something. It rolls, then glows to life, a spot of white light illuminating the narrow space. It was the cell phone I lost at the door last night, my ridiculed, one-of-a-kind old fashioned smartphone.

  It wasn’t a dream. Strength surges into me instantly. I pick up the phone; the battery is almost depleted, but it’s enough to let me properly examine the wall in front of me. Yes. This portion of the wall is brand-new, troweled together in a hurry with fast-setting concrete. Where the wall meets the floor, I see a wooden doorframe buried in the depths of the crack. The door is there, just hidden by people trying to keep it secret.

  I knock on the wall and find that the cement is too thick for me to break through. The people in black hoodies weren’t some hallucination. They’d simply changed their meeting place and forgot to tell me. I comfort myself with that.

  I wait there until two in the morning, but no one comes. I climb back up the stairs, walk to the subway station two kilometers away, and hail a taxi back to my apartment from there. Step by step, I climb up the squeaking stairs. My thoughts are in a muddle, but I still need to work Wednesday morning. As I open the door to my apartment, I plan to drink a glass, take a shower, and get some proper sleep.

  I freeze at the doorway. Someone in a black hoodie is sitting on my couch.

  8.

  I pick up the e-seal and stamp the social welfare petition on my display: a newly immigrated family with six children. The green indicator light on the e-seal turns red, telling me that I’ve used up today’s approval quota. I relax into my chair and work the cramp out of my wrist. There’s still half an hour until my shift ends.

  The pretty blonde girl who shares my cubicle stands up to invites everyone to her birthday party. “We’d . . . welcome you too, if you have the time,” she says belatedly to me, out of what I know is forced courtesy.

  “Sorry, I have an important date the next day. But happy birthday!” I reply. She visibly gives a sigh of relief and puts her hand to her chest. “Thanks. That’s a pity. I hope the date goes well.”

  To a girl her age, I’m from another generation, and I understand an out-of-place old man at a party can be a disaster. But the date wasn’t an empty excuse. I can still feel her message on my right palm: Tomorrow in the city square at 6 AM.

  I don’t know how she found me, how she got in my apartment, or how long she waited there. After a moment of surprise, I walked over and took her hand. The neon lights of the strip club flashed through the window, splashing her black hoodie with radiant colors. I still couldn’t see her face properly. “Sorry, we changed the meeting place. We couldn’t contact you in time,” she wrote.

  “Did I cause trouble for you?” I ask.

  “No. The situation’s complicated. Only a few core members went to the finger-talking gathering just now. We’ve had some internal disagreements.” At the end of the sentence, her finger tapped out a few hesitant ellipses.

  “About what?”

  “About whether to do something stupid.” She drew two wavy lines under “stupid.”

  “I don’t understand,” I write honestly.

  “If you’re willing to listen, I can tell you how the finger-talking gathering came to be, how we’re organized, the struggles between the factions, and our ultimate goal.” She wrote it in one long sentence.

  “I don’t want to know,” I reply. “I don’t want to turn these interesting conversations into politics.”

  “You don’t understand.” She draws a greater than sign, a sigh. I’m realizing that she expresses even the most basic emotions through writing. “You must have noticed how the Internet, TV, books have lost any semblance of intelligence.”

  “Yes!” I feel a rush of excitement. “I don’t know why, but every topic worth arguing over has disappeared. All that’s left is pointless bullshit. I’ve tried tossing provocative topics out in discussion more than once, but no one would reply. Everyone’s more interested in sashimi and earthworms. I noticed it years ago, but no one believed me. The doctor gave me pills to get rid of the hallucination. But I know this isn’t a hallucination!”

  “It’s not just these. Conversations with friends and the things you see on the street are becoming as bland as the Internet and the media.”

  “How do you know?” I nearly stood.

  “It’s all a conspiracy.” She pressed hard writing this, hard enough to hurt.

  “A conspiracy? Like the moon landing thing?”

  “Like Watergate.” Her writing grew agitated, harder to decipher.

  “I think you need to tell me everything.”

  “Then we’ll start with politics.”

  “Hold on . . . when’s the next gathering? Can I join?”

  “This is what we’re arguing about. Those in support of action think we should hold our next gathering in a public place, like the city square. We shouldn’t keep running and hiding. We should show what we believe in, no compromises,” she tells me.

  “I’m guessing that the police don’t like you guys very much.” I once again recalled the first time I saw her, chased by two panting cops.

  “They don’t have anything on the organization as a whole. It’s just some individual members who have criminal records, especially the activists,” she answers frankly.

  “You have a criminal record?” I ask, curious.

  “It’s a long story.” She was unwilling to say anything more.

  I work up my courage and ask the question at last. “What’s your name?”

  Her finger stilled. I tried to scrutinize her face under the hood, but the hoodie concealed her face entirely. It even hid any sex characteristics. I suddenly realized that my only evidence that she was female was her slender fingers. She could just as easily be a young man, I thought, though my heart utterly rejected the idea. I wanted her to be a woman like my big sister, flaxen-haired and soft-voiced and a little mischievous, freckles scattered over the bridge of her nose. The sort of woman I’d been seeking all my life.

  “You’ll know it in time,” she said eventually, avoiding my question.

  “Actually, I’m more curious about—” the exquisite sensation of my left finger on her right palm was interrupted by the sudden howl of a police siren approaching rapidly. She straightened, alert, and pulled her hood lower. “I’m leaving now,” she wrote rapidly. “If you want, be there tomorrow in the city square at 6 AM. Remember, this is your choice. This is your chance to change the world, or more likely, regret it to the end of your days. Either way, don’t blame anyone else, especially not me, for your own decision. And I might as well add, I think bald men are sexier.”

  She squeezed my right hand with her delicate but strong fingers, got off the sofa, and vaulted out of the living room window. I hurried over to look down. She’d already climbed down nimbly from the fire escape and disappeared around the c
orner. I touched my balding head, somewhat dazed.

  9.

  For a variety of reasons, I sank into a deep depression the year I was thirty-seven. The landlady persuaded me to go to her shrink, threatening that if I didn’t get treatment, she’d kick my ass out of the apartment. I knew that she just didn’t want me to OD and leave my corpse in one of her rooms, but I’m grateful to her all the same after the fact.

  The man was a Swede with a beard like Freud’s. “I’m not a psychologist,” he said, once we’d talked some. “I’m a psychiatrist. We don’t consult here. We fix problems. You’ll need to take medications if you don’t want to dream every night of your sister’s grave.”

  “I’m not afraid of pills, doctor,” I replied. “As long as the insurance covers it. I’m not afraid of dreaming of the sister I love, either, even if she crawls out of the grave every time. I’m afraid of what’s happening around me. Do you feel it, doctor? Tick-tock, tick-tock, like the second hand on a clock. Here, there, endlessly.”

  The psychiatrist leaned over, full of interest. “Tell me what you feel.”

  “Something’s dying,” I said in a low voice, glancing around me. “Can’t you smell it rotting? The commentary on the news, the newspaper columnists, the online forums, the spirit of freedom is dying. It’s dying en masse like mosquitoes sprayed with DDT.”

  “All I see is the advancement of society and democracy. Have you thought whether some paranoia-inducing mental disorder may be causing this suspicion toward everything, including the harmonious cultural atmosphere?” The psychiatrist leaned back, fingers interlaced.

  “You were young once too, doctor. You once had the courage to question everything.” My voice rose anxiously. “Back then, when we didn’t know who we’d become, but understood who we didn’t want to become. When there were battles and heroes all around us.”

  “I reminisce sometimes of my youth too. Everyone should. But we’re all grown people now, with responsibilities toward our family, our society, even our civilization and our descendants. I suggest you take these pills regularly when you go home to get rid of your unreasonable fantasies. Find an undemanding job, fish on the weekends, take a vacation once a year. Find a nice girl when the time is right—we haven’t discussed your sexual orientation yet, I realize, please don’t take that the wrong way—and start a family.” The psychiatrist put on his glasses, flipped open his notebook, and cut my protests off with a hand before I could voice them. “Now, let’s discuss the problems relating to your father and sister. Your childhood traumas had significant influence on my choices of medication. Is that fine with you?”