The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  Boys on bright yellow cycles roared by, risking fines by taking the pedestrian high road suspended between the city’s buildings. Miho liked these bikes, enough to step into the warm humidity of their exhaust steam. Always-perfect Aimi enveloped the boy in the front of the pack with her long thin arms and legs, but there was no sign of Ichiro in this group. There wouldn’t be: he would never run with boys so young. But she sought him everywhere circuit-laced boys rode with robots or flipped off the law. She wished she could have a little danger with him again.

  Some stranger handed her a Kirin. She keyed it open and let the bottle imprint on her hand. It would open again only for her. Too many girls ended up with more than beer in their bottles by the end of a party, then wound up on the floor, under a man.

  “Hope the storm passes before it soaks the party,” the stranger said. He looked low-corporate, a semi-reformed otaku with a fiber-thin moustache and bouncing hair that threatened to collapse. He wore glasses in a sad attempt to look retro. Miho’s fingers slid across the latex casing of the mini welding torch she kept in her jacket pocket for guys like this.

  She nodded and giggled, then darted to where Tomi and her school friend, Leslie, chatted in the shade of a yamazakura. The feed Leslie overlaid on herself made her hair a brilliant shade of orange, chemically impossible in reality. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down, but American nails stood high, and refused to be hammered down even as the sun set on their empire of influence.

  “Miho, your mushrooms are exquisite!” Leslie said, after scooping a handful from a nearby bowl. Why did Leslie make such a big deal about her food? Tomi told her that Leslie had gotten tongue and nostril feed strips months ago. Couldn’t you make any food seem wonderful then? “I wish I could be as domestic as you,” the American girl continued.

  “Thank you very much,” Miho said, with a slight bow. But domestic felt like a kick in the stomach. She wanted to be dangerous around Leslie. She concealed her anguish with a smile which didn’t have to be forced after a lifetime of practice.

  Leslie popped another mushroom into her mouth and half-shouted, “Seriously, these are the fucking end!” Most of the partygoers had grown up with western manners and didn’t think twice, but one or two of the older set fired stern glances over their colored acrylic plates. Yamashita-san’s eyes burned, tight and angry. Miho excused herself and went to him. She bowed in partial deference to custom for the old man, but not as low as custom dictated, since her more cosmopolitan friends were watching.

  “Please forgive the American for her rude behavior, Yamashita-san.”

  “Which one?” The old man said. His bald head shone brown from a lifetime of working in the sun before being forced to live with his nephew in the city. “There were three Americans, all with glassy eyes and greasy ears.”

  Miho’s face grew hot. “Please forgive all three, then, Yamashita-san.” Her hand rose to her ear to pull the audio strip from it, but stopped at her shoulder. She didn’t want to call more attention to the very thing he insulted. She bowed again without meaning to, deeper this time. Flustered and embarrassed, she’d handed control to the automatic Miho, who didn’t give a damn about her lame attempts at rebellion.

  “Fuck him,” Leslie said out loud, when Miho returned. Tomi sucked air in through her teeth, and Miho glanced around to see if anyone had overheard, moving her head as little as possible. How could she ever hope to be a wild child when she freaked out at bombs Leslie tossed without a care? “When he was our age he probably ran around with green hair and a bone through his nose.”

  “We should get out from under the trees and avoid the lightning,” Miho said.

  “Why?” Tomi asked. “There are lightning rods all over the place.”

  “Let’s walk out to the railing anyway,” Miho said. She sent Tomi an angry little cartoon cat icon over a private feed.

  “All right,” said Tomi, getting it.

  “Where’d you get the beer?” Leslie asked.

  “That man with the antique glasses,” Miho said. She didn’t want to turn his way. He didn’t need any more encouragement. Instead, she fed them a quick still-shot of him from a couple of minutes earlier.

  “Right. Lonely men equal free beer everywhere in the world,” Leslie said, pulling her skirt up a bit. She wore white cotton panties whenever she visited. Over here, she said, they drove men crazier than what they hid. “I’ll be back.”

  “Let’s get away from her,” Miho begged Tomi, but Tomi stood still. Miho’s mother approached.

  “So nice to see you, Tomi-chan,” her mother said.

  “It is always a pleasure, Matsumoto-san,” Tomi said with a proper bow. Tomi always behaved in front of Miho’s parents, for which Miho was grateful.

  “Miho,” her mother said, eyeing the beer for a second more than necessary, “It’s time to visit your father.”

  “I’ll meet you at the tram in five minutes,” Miho said.

  Her mother looked sad and insistent. Jowls had begun to droop from her once round face. It broke Miho’s heart to see her proud mother’s eyes reduced to pleading with her child. Miho could not look at her.

  “I haven’t seen Tomi all week,” Miho said. I’ll meet you there, I swear.”

  “Five minutes,” her mother said, perhaps as much to reassure herself as to confirm. She left for the station.

  “How is your father, Miho?” Tomi asked.

  “The same,” she said. “Worse. He’s always worse. It won’t be long. When a father dies, so dies his family.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “In our case it is. My father refuses to blame his company for his illness. They won’t cover the costs. We’re completely broke.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tomi said, holding Miho’s fingers in hers as they came to the edge of the high road. “Your uncle–” she began, before Miho let her know with a squeeze that she didn’t want to think about leaving at the moment.

  At the railing, Miho peered down into the streets five stories below, through the filter of Matsuo Hikaru’s brilliant overlay feed. Tomi had discovered it over a month ago, and since they’d started using it, they refused to look at Nagasaki any other way. The steel struts that suspended the high road between the adjoining buildings shone a dark blue in the faltering light, and the city’s arteries glowed red, pulsing with commuters. Miho followed them south through deepening grid valleys toward the nebulous sea.

  “You’re thinking of Ichiro again,” Tomi said. “I can tell. Your feeds get shaky. You’ve got to stop, Miho; it only makes things worse. He never comes around here anymore. I think he’s sleeping with that Aimi robot.”

  Miho’s eyes burned. Matsuo’s Nagasaki began to bend and falter as her thin video strips peeled away from her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Tomi said. She folded her arms around Miho’s arm and pressed her head into her friend’s neck. “But you’ve got to accept that he won’t come around any longer. He wouldn’t be around now anyway. He’s probably working.”

  “You’re right. Let’s have an early dinner there.” Miho inhaled and thought she could taste the harbor’s salty air already. These Friday afternoon block parties had lost some of their appeal since she was practically an adult.

  “Miho, you’ve got to see your father in the hospital.”

  “I saw him a few days ago.”

  “You promised your mother.”

  “My father puts his corporate masters above his family. Maybe I’ll visit them instead. But tomorrow, not today.”

  “Causing problems with your parents won’t change Ichiro.”

  “I know,” Miho said. “But he’s all I want, Tomi. Do you understand that I don’t have any choice anymore?”

  Tomi bent her head against the light drizzle and stared down at the permaplaz windows of the lower floors across from them.

  “Anyway, we can’t even afford his father’s restaurant,” Tomi said.

  “Maybe we can, from the kitchen,” Miho said. “His father likes me.” />
  “What about Leslie?” They glanced back and saw Leslie being much more animated with the beer man than she’d been with them.

  “She’s got a tether,” Miho said, tapping Tomi’s ear. “She’ll find us once she’s had her fill of friendly men and free beer.”

  “What an awful thought.”

  They left the crowd behind and made their way across the high road on foot before hitching rides from the next gang of biker boys that came by. Thirteen-, fourteen-year-old boys. Boys too young to understand that they had no chance with a couple of seventeen-year-old girls dressed to party. The girls straddled the bikes behind the largest boys. Miho hiked up her skirt until the road no longer seemed worthy of their attention. They sped off and wove through clots of enraged pedestrians.

  The boys showed off, zigzagging and shouting at each other in their own ganglang. They stole a moment to harass a homeless man who huddled in an otherwise quiet corner of the high road. The girls synced with the player on the leaders’ bike, and the latest chemotech discovery blasted in their heads: “Wilderness Falls Before Us.” Leslie would have disdained the music as being fifteen years out of style in the States.

  For a moment, Miho forgave the chill of the wind and rain and allowed herself a delicious shiver. Her parents and her obligations lay far behind. Why can’t you be Ichiro? she thought, wrapping herself a little tighter around the boy in front of her. Her fingers ran the ridges of his cheap, filament-lined jacket.

  To her right, Miho saw the local Hamada Robotics Boutique chain store glowing neon in the late gray afternoon. Feeds danced lights across her shining eyes:

  Love that never betrays!

  There stood Aimi in the window, in her plaid microskirt. Not Ichiro’s Aimi, but the same model. For the eleventh time this week, Miho wondered how she could afford the surgery to enlarge her eyes to the size of that living manga doll’s. She’d retain no more than thirty percent of her vision with the implants, but that would be more than enough to enjoy Ichiro losing his sense of self in her huge, sparkling blue eyes.

  A beauty like no other!

  True beauty fell beyond the reach of natural evolution. A lady at the salon had explained that. Nature was full of hairs and moles and flaking skin. It operated accidentally. But humans had evolved the appreciation of beauty, built from an amalgam of living samples. Humans could bring its elements together and set them in stone. Before human invention, there had been no sleek skin, no symmetry down to the micron or grace that only a digital brain and artificial muscles could achieve. Before technology there had been no real beauty. Miho could do it all if she had the money. Her body hair could be removed permanently. Her fat could be redistributed, and her bones shaved. She could have robotic beauty. The hair was possible now, but she’d always been afraid of what her father might do if he came home one afternoon to a blue-haired daughter. Then she remembered that her father would not be coming home again. Ever.

  Servants with the strength of seven men!

  She could get the hair now. It only took a fraction of a second to think the thought. It filled her with so much guilt she shut out everything. The thoughts, the feeds, everything but the ride.

  The bikers descended in deep tilts down a road that led over the water, down long, tight, wet spirals never designed for motorcycles, down to street level with Tomi screaming all the way. The boys laughed. Miho might have screamed, but she gripped her driver’s waist with every ounce of her concentration. Her biker seemed to like that more the Tomi’s screaming.

  They dropped Miho and Tomi off near the water south of Dejima, the old Dutch trading post. Here, the sprawling Pachinko parlors lured tens of thousands of addicted Chinese who couldn’t get a legal fix at home.

  “Hey, you wanna come to a real party tonight?” asked Miho’s biker. A couple of the other boys kicked gum wrappers on a road where the robotic street cleaners had already begun to buckle before entropy.

  Miho smiled. “Maybe. Meet us in front of the circuit bars by the Happy Star Cannery tonight.”

  Fear flashed across the faces of the younger boys, but Miho’s driver glanced at her covered arms. “Ah. You getting some work done? Some vibration?” he asked, holding up his first two fingers.

  “Maybe you’ll see tonight, rude boy.”

  He grinned and stood tall above his saddle, then raced away with his gang speeding behind him. One of the littler members glanced back once at Miho’s legs and then shot off. Amplified police whistles sang in their wake.

  “That is so wrong of you, Miho,” Tomi said. “They’ll get themselves killed there.”

  “How else could we get them to leave? Tempt them with something better, later. They won’t go there, anyway. He’ll tell his friends he went and didn’t see us.”

  “You know so much about boys,” Tomi mocked.

  “I do,” said Miho, missing the sarcasm.

  One night when they were sixteen, Miho and Ichiro snuck into the high forest on the twenty-first floor of the Mitsubishi Memory Plastics building. It continued upward for another twenty meters before the building took over again, six more stories into the sky. The forest had been closed due to some dubious viral scare that had threatened the rowans, but nothing more than a polite sign kept the rest of the world out.

  Whenever they found themselves alone together they switched to a language made just for themselves, not of words, but inflections and gesture. For the first time in weeks no one else was around, yet now they had nothing to say.

  They wound themselves around a pair of gnarled trunks and looked out upon the ships lighting Nagasaki’s water, while jets and stars lit its sister sky, feed-enhanced to compete with the light of the city itself. The wind rattled a million leaves until their din overwhelmed the sounds of the traffic below. To Miho, who relished the noise, it seemed that a great river rushed past them, just out of sight in the dim light deeper in the trees.

  Miho reached out to Ichiro and let go of her tree once she held his arm. In the city-lit darkness, she hugged him, so happy to bury her head in his chest now that he stood taller than she for the first time in their lives.

  “Ichi, I love you.”

  “You do?” he asked.

  “Of course I do. And I always will.”

  “Why, Miho?”

  She smiled. “Why? We’ve been friends all our lives. You help me with my essays. You bring me food when I’m sick. I’ve kept your uniform button under my pillow since you gave it to me when we were ten years old. You care about what happens to me, Ichiro. Sometimes I think you’re the only one. Everyone else seems more concerned about how I act. I can be myself with you. You know how much that means?”

  “Yeah,” he said. His grey silhouette nodded against the city. “I do. I, uh…I love you too, Miho.”

  Pushing up on her toes, she rose to meet him, giving him plenty of time to initiate their first kiss. She fell into him before he figured it out. She smiled at that, which meant that he first kissed her on her teeth. He tried to pull back, but she held his head fast with one hand and let her lips take over from her teeth. They kissed once more, lingering over it this time. Miho returned to his chest and closed her eyes.

  “No hurry,” she said. “We have our whole lives together.”

  The wind had quieted for a moment and the low humming rumble of the traffic far beneath them returned. Ichiro murmured something in the affirmative and stroked her long head of hair with one gentle hand.

  Two weeks later, he left her for Rebecka.

  “Wait,” Tomi said, stopping at a survey terminal no bigger than a restaurant waiter. A round little thing, it sat hooded from the elements, crisp, white, and ubiquitous. The older generation and the tourists used them, mostly. Students used the feeds.

  “There’s no time,” Miho said.

  “It only takes a moment,” Tomi said. They’d had this argument a thousand times, and Tomi had always won, because Tomi had more spending money. She made that money by singing the virtues of her sponsor corporations to
survey terminals all over Nagasaki. Today she hawked a German handbag company with the deliciously rude name of Glans. Design computers, which struggled to understand human aesthetics, chewed on this data day and night in an effort to produce original designs which would appeal to their customers.

  The smells of the harbor hung in the air: fuel exhaust from old African ships, curry elbowing wasabi for supremacy, the sea underlying all of it.

  “There,” Tomi said, with a quick step. “See? Done already.” The screen returned to one of its defaults: an advertisement for Orim, the inner body deodorant. The body’s gas becomes like lilacs!, went its song.

  They cut through the alleys where vendors in light blue work clothes pushed dehydrated ice cream bars and laser-light dolls that looked like miniature Bunraku puppets.

  Tanaka-san’s restaurant was a few blocks east of the harbor, designed to catch the tourists before they reached old Chinatown. The girls went around the back, where the service door hung half-open during business hours. Cooks and waiters, some of whom Miho had known for years by face, zipped across the sani-tile floor, appearing more professional than their employer ever had. Tanaka-san always looked like a big businessman who had just changed his own tires. He spent good money on tasteful suits to cater to his upscale clientele, but found his familiar kitchen far more comfortable. After abandoning his jacket and letting his dress shirt get rumpled, he looked out of place in every part of his own restaurant.

  “Ah, Miho-chan! It’s been so long,” said Tanaka-san, embarrassing her. “Tomiko-san, yes?”

  “Yes, Tanaka-san,” Tomi said with a bow.

  “How is your father today?” Tanaka-san asked Miho, his forever bright face becoming grave.

  “The doctors think he may be stabilized. There is hope for the best.” Tomi sent her a feed of a thousand question marks mixed with a thousand exclamation points. Miho blew them off.