“Good morning, gorgeous.”
I grip the edge of the seat. Turn slowly to see her sitting next to me. She’s wearing her favorite shirt, and those jeans. I stifle a whimper as she smiles and I can see her jawbone through the place on her face where the rot has set in. See the hollow of her throat, grown black and green.
“Cherie?”
“You left without coffee. Don’t you want your coffee?”
“How did you follow me?”
“I’m alive in here,” she says, tapping a pretty painted nail to her temple. “As long as my engrams are still floating around in your head, I’m here.”
“For how long?”
“Don’t you want me around, Dez?” Her pout shifts to something else, and she leans forward. Her eyeball looks wet and too round. “You promised you’d stay with me. ‘Always,’ you said. You said you’d never leave.”
“I—I know,” I stutter out. “And I meant it. But—”
“Always is forever, Dez.” Her voice hardens. “Don’t back out on me now.”
“I won’t.” I tell the car to turn off and climb down out of the back seat. Walk back to our house and through the glass door. Slump on the couch. The visual display is on. There’s Cherie in her two braids. Cherie as a—
“Want some coffee, gorgeous?” Cherie calls brightly from the kitchen.
* * *
I wake up on the couch to someone knocking on my glass door. Light trails in as the sun rises over the Santa Monica Mountains in the east. Sunrise. Sunrise on the third day.
I look around, cautious. Everything is quiet. The visual display is off, even if I don’t remember turning it off.
“Cherie?”
No answer, so I try again. Twist my neck to look in the kitchen, my breath in my teeth, half expecting her to be there, coffee in hand. But it’s empty.
Relief bubbles up from my belly, and I let my breath out with a harsh whoop. Carol Elder was right. I just needed to wait it out, sleep it off. The engrams must have worn off.
The knock comes again, and I pull myself up off the couch and double-step it to the door, feeling clean and brand-new. Carol’s there, in another crisp suit, holding another white envelope. “We missed you at the studio this morning,” she says, as she click-clacks over the threshold. “I did say two days.”
“I tried,” I explain, “but she was still in my head. She’s gone now. Two days was the charm. And don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I got to say good-bye. Grateful even,” I say, folding my hands in prayer. “But we all gotta move on.”
She stops and studies me, her chin tilting to the side. “I spoke to a friend of mine. A memorologist. She said that they’ve done experiments with test subjects willing to inject the engrams directly, and the results were . . . unpleasant.”
“What does that mean?”
“The effect is permanent.” Her voice is precise when she says it. I imagine she fires people with that voice. “The foreign engrams integrate into the subject’s brains. They never go away, Dez.”
I flip my hair over my shoulder and grin. Hold my arms out wide. I catch a glimpse of myself in the wall mirror. I look like a goddamn movie star. “Save your pity, Carol. Your memorologist is wrong. I’m fine. Better than fine. And, listen. I learned my lesson. No more engrams for me, okay?” I tap my forehead to make my point.
She sets the white envelope with my name written on it on the kitchen island. “My friend said they have had some success countering the effect by reasserting the subject’s own memories. Enough of Dez Hunter, and Cherie Agoyo is consumed.”
“You’re not listening to me. She’s already gone.” I feel a tinge of sorrow when I say it that way. I loved her. She was my perfect girl.
Carol presses a hand to the envelope. “Keep this anyway. A just-in-case.”
“Fine, but I won’t need them.”
We walk back to the glass door. She pauses as she steps through. “I put them off one more day, but tomorrow is it. Be there tomorrow at six a.m. or you’re in breach of contract and we call in Dabiri.”
“I’ll be there. No way Sixteen Tipis is getting my job.”
She waves over her shoulder as she walks to her waiting car.
“Hey,” I call. “Did you hear about that luxury liner that goes all the way to space? That’s tonight. I might go. Be seen. Get my face projected into space!”
Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. And I’ll look good doing it.
* * *
And I do. I condition the hair, find just the right outfit to wear, a mix between glam and effortlessly cool, and then let my good looks do the rest. My agent’s more than happy to arrange to have a WeCam follow me, and my image streams out live to millions of households and handhelds as I wave and walk up the ramp onto the waiting liner. The party inside is thick with celebrities, and I work the room, accepting condolences and welcome-backs and propositions with equal charm. When I hit the bar, I almost order a champagne like I used to do for Cherie, but I catch myself and ask for some kind of Croatian beer instead that’s all the rage.
Everyone gathers at the windows as we take off, and the acceleration through the atmosphere feels like nothing, smoother than the airplane turbulence that used to accompany low-altitude flight. Soon enough we’re approaching the hundred-kilometer mark, and when the captain tells us we’ve reached the edge of the atmosphere, I lean forward and peer out the window into the perpetual darkness, like everyone else.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Cherie says.
I swerve with a shout, my hand spasming. Drop my beer, which splashes the woman next to me. She cries out, and I rush to apologize, but she storms off, distraught, before the words are out. The WeCam over my shoulder buzzes as the viewer count erupts upward by a couple million.
“Smooth move, gorgeous.” Cherie looks out the window not more that an arm’s length away. She smiles, and worms fall from her mouth.
I reel back, slamming into the people behind me. I hear glass shatter and rough voices, and someone pushes back, and I stumble forward. The WeCam buzzes loudly.
“I’m alive in here,” she says, tapping a pretty painted nail to her temple. “As long as my engrams are still floating around in your head, I’m here.”
I grip my jacket pocket, the one with the engram needle and the vial Carol Elder brought me. My just-in-case. They are solid and real under my hand, and I force my way through the crowd toward the privacy of the bathroom, my hand already pulling the needle from my pocket.
I stagger into the narrow space and slam the door shut. It catches the edge of the WeCam flying in over my shoulder, knocking it into the wall. The indicator light flashes an alarm, but I can still hear the buzz of view feeds growing. I splash my face with water, try to get my goddamn calm back, but when I look in the mirror, Cherie is right behind me.
I stifle a scream. Yank the vial marked D.H. free and twist off the cap with a jerk. Ram the plunger home and watch the needle fill.
Hands shaking, I dare to look up. Cherie hasn’t moved. She’s watching. But there’s something dark in her face. Something waiting.
“Come on, come on,” I mutter, until the needle is at full business and I grasp for the back of my neck and ram that thing into the injection spot. I can feel when the engrams hit my brain. Flashes of childhood. My grandma’s place by the Rio Grande River. My first ceremonial dance. And meeting Cherie in high school. And then my memories are all Cherie. Cherie at prom. Cherie when we both landed our first digital gigs. Cherie moving into the Malibu house. Cherie. Cherie. Cherie.
Carol Elder didn’t tell me what to do if there is no Dez Hunter without Cherie Agoyo.
On the camera feedback screen I see myself, sweaty and panicked, my eyes glazed and a needle gripped in my hand. And Cherie standing beside me, looking as real as any fleshie.
The WeCam dings, indicating the livestreams have hit capacity. A billion viewers, our faces projected across outer space.
We’re goddamn stars.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
* * *
I am Native American (Ohkay Owingeh) on my mother’s side, so I wanted to focus on a Native story that may not be familiar to most science fiction and fantasy readers. I chose the classic Tewa story “Deer Hunter and White Corn Maiden,” which has over 788,000 hits on Google and has been published in multiple books.
The original story has a historical setting, but Native people are very much part of the future, and I wanted my retelling to reflect that. So I chose a cyberpunk-eqsue setting where fame is everything and technology has made it possible to live, if not forever, then for a very long time. (As I researched biological memory and CGI “digital reincarnation” in Hollywood movies, I realized my story is much more near-future than I anticipated.)
I see this story with its cautions about obsessive love as still relevant and beautiful. I hope that it intrigues readers enough that they learn more about Native cultures and peoples.
* * *
REBECCA ROANHORSE
BRIDGE OF CROWS
BY
* * *
JY YANG
LET ME TELL YOU A story, my small darlings, my soft feathered peaches. Gather round, my sweet loves, for a story of equal parts joy and woe, a tale of love so great it scaled mountains, and of treachery so bitter it turned whole continents sick and barren. It is a story of determination so great it swelled like lava in the oceans. Of bravery so strong that it toppled all obstacles foolish enough to stand in its way. Like all stories, it contains whorls of lies wrapped around kernels of truth, and it’s up to you, my little ones, to sort out which is which.
Are you comfortable, my chirplings? Good. Space can be so cold sometimes, and we have a long day tomorrow, and the day after, and all the days after that. But there’s time enough for one last tale.
This story begins with a girl. She’s not the only character in the story, nor the most important, but by all means she’s at the center of it all. And her name is not as important as her purpose, but things need names to keep their shape in our minds, so let’s say her name is Callen. It’s a good name. Callen was young, maybe not as young as you, but in good shape, having been raised in sheltered lands where the fields are thick and green and the berries grow plump on bushes.
We start with her at the end of a long journey, which is as good a place as any to begin. She was walking alone across a great red plain with no name pronounceable in our tongue, barefoot over the hissing red earth, steam the color of blood erupting from its fissures. Above her, the sky hung heavy and dark with despair, but it would never rain in that place. It was barren and dry as a heap of bones. No trees grew there. Nothing green could survive. The things that rose out of the ground looked like trees, but they were black and dead and sharp as glass, reaching upward with twisted, cruel fingers. Callen’s bare feet had been burned by the hot ground, blistered and scabbed over. Now they felt no pain.
It had been a long journey, but Callen’s destination rose in front of her, a jagged swell of earth breaking the line of the horizon. Anywhere else and it would have been too small to be called a mountain, but here the smallest of obstacles was magnified ten times, and this thing that you and I would think of as a hill was to Callen an insurmountable peak. Yet she knew that she would have to scale it, for she had been told that the one she sought could be found at its summit, and meeting her was the reason she had come all this way, after all. The sour air seared her throat and lungs, and the heat stopped blood in her veins.
Callen was not alone on the plain. The hill that was also a mountain was home to a number of strange birds, each as large as a horse, heads shrunken by desiccation into long and hollow skulls. Their forms shifted with the wind, parts blinking in and out as though they had forgotten what their wings or their clawed feet were supposed to look like. See, the unnameable plain was barren, but it was not dead. No, it was well, alive and hungry, and it fed itself with whatever foolish creature lingered within its bounds. First it took their memories, then it took the certainty of their forms, and finally it took their names. These wretched creatures knew what they had been once, but now they shambled mindlessly across the cracked and broken earth, trying to pull sustenance from the blackened ground. Callen carefully watched their hunched forms as she walked, hoping that a lone, living traveler such as she would not catch their attention.
She was lucky. She reached the foot of the mountain-hill before one of them could wander across her path and swivel its monstrous, empty eye sockets toward her. Above her, a path curled up the sides of the mountain, threading through angry rocks with jagged teeth, too tall for her to scale. Callen knew that the road ahead was the longest and the most dangerous part of her journey thus far, so first she sat down to eat. She had been walking across this plain for three days, and she was hungry. More importantly, her senses had started to warp and waver in the strange pull of this land. She was losing her memories and her sense of self, and if she wasn’t careful, she would forget everything.
Callen’s bag, slung across one shoulder, was a tiny thing—only a little bigger than a baby’s skull—and contained nothing except a map and two soft rice cakes. To our eyes they would look like ordinary rice cakes, soft and pink and dusted with tender flour, but these were celestial rice cakes, given to Callen by her aunt, who was handmaid to the Queen Mother of Heaven. This was the same aunt who had told Callen where to find the one who could grant her what she wanted, and had set her upon her path. Eating one of those rice cakes would fill one’s stomach and sate one’s thirst for three days.
Callen had two cakes left, and she ate one, saving the other for the journey back. As she chewed, she felt her mind anchor itself back to her body. She remembered why she was here, and what she had come here to do.
When she had finished eating, Callen started on the path upward. The ground underneath her was slippery, and every step strained her weary body. In no time, her feet were bleeding again, and her fingers were cut to ribbons from clutching rock edges for purchase. But she kept climbing.
Halfway up the mountainside, her path was blocked by an eldritch bird. She couldn’t avoid it—the path was too narrow for her to go around, and the creature stood with its body between craggy rockface and craggy rockface, looking at her. Callen was terrified, but she saw no choice about the matter, because she was not turning back. Gathering all the strength she had left in her, she stepped up to the bird-creature.
“Excuse me, O great one,” she said, as politely as she could. “I need to get to the top of this mountain. May I walk past you?” Her body was shaking and her voice trembled, but she had been taught manners by her aunt, who worked in the Celestial Court, and she knew that deference and respect could be wielded as a shield against ruin and death.
The creature turned its head toward her. Light guttered in its eye sockets as though fires burned deep in its skull. Callen stood still and breathed very slowly while it studied her. The creature smelled like parched soil before the rain, and its plumage shifted between foam-white and bone-red and the pitch-black of the void between the stars.
The bird-creature spoke; its voice sounded like marbles rolling in a silver can. “I am so hungry,” it said. “My brethren and I have not had anything to eat for a hundred years. Will you give me something to fill my belly?”
Callen had nothing to offer except the last rice cake, which she was saving for the journey back. Yet she feared what would happen if she refused. “If I give you something to eat, will you let me pass unharmed?”
“Yes,” it said. “I give you our word.”
She hesitated. Without the rice cake for the way back, she would slowly lose her grip on who she was until she became no better than the bird-creatures, wandering this barren land without purpose. But maybe she could travel faster than the firmament could sap her. She reached into her bag and offered up the last rice cake. “Here,” she said. “Take this. One bite will feed you for days. Perhaps it will ease some of your hunger.”
“Thank you, little one,” the creature said.
It bent its massive, feathered head, and took the offering in its beak. As promised, it stood and left the path, leaping onto the jagged rocks and vanishing in an indeterminate direction. Only then did Callen release the breath that she had been holding, and continue farther up the path.
Her reprieve was, however, all too brief. She had gone not more than two hundred meters when she found her way blocked by another one of the creatures. Its plumage was darker this time, the color of a dead heart, and it looked at her as she slowly and reluctantly approached.
“Excuse me, O great one,” she said. “I need to get to the top of this mountain. May I walk past you?” But her heart was heavy, because she had given the last of the rice cakes to its compatriot down the path.
The creature tilted its head. “Will you give me something to fill my belly?”
“I have nothing left to give you,” she said. “I gave the last of my food to another of your kind. All I have left in my bag is this map.”
“Then give me your map,” it said. “My brethren and I have been trapped upon this plain for a hundred years. Lend it to us so that we may seek our freedom.”
Callen hesitated. She was afraid of navigating these plains without the security of her map. With that map, she always knew where she was. The barren land could not fool her or turn her mind around. She was deathly afraid of becoming trapped here. Trapped, just like these bird-creatures were.
Pity overcame her then, and rode over her common sense. A hundred years was a long time to be bound to this lifeless, joyless landscape. How could she begrudge this creature its freedom? After all, on the way back she could follow the path she had taken here.
She reached into her bag and drew out the map, a glowing red ruby that, when it pulsed in her hand, fed her the names of directions. “Here,” she said, “take this. Maybe it can tell you a way out of this place.”
The creature took the ruby in its beak and swallowed it. The glow of the ruby traveled down its gullet and lodged in its chest like a second heart. When it looked at Callen, its hollow sockets now glowed with the same sacred crimson. “Thank you, my chirpling,” it said, and then it too was gone.
The Mythic Dream Page 9
