Never Never Stories

by Jason Sanford

  She finds Alessa on the playground, sitting on a ceramic swing surrounded by three freeloaders. The freeloaders circle Alessa, laughing as they push him back and forth like a toy. Milli pauses in fear. All of the freeloaders are over 18, with way too much height and weight. But they also only have one good hand each, all of their right arms ending in round stubs because they refused to accept the debt they'd piled up in their short lives.

  Still, the odds don't favor Milli. She prays the freeloaders will see Alessa as one of them. That Alessa has given as much, if not more, than they ever did.

  Instead, one of the freeloaders – JinJin, the no-account son of a local jazz drummer – yanks Alessa from the swing and pulls down his pants. “Let's have a look-see,” JinJin shouts. That's too much for Milli. She shifts the rebar in her hands, picks up a chunk of broken cement from the dust and sand, and charges.

  JinJin turns in shock as she throws the cement at his face. Connection! The freeloader falls to the dust in blood and pain as his friends jump back from Milli's madly swinging rebar.

  “Get her,” JinJin yells, holding his right eye in with his remaining hand.

  Milli swings the rebar a second time. “Sharps,” she yells. “Rust and tetanus. How you gonna debt a Doc to fix you?”

  The freeloaders glance at one another. Since the transponder killed their right hands, and since they never activated the artificial chromosomes in their bodies, they can't debt – and Docs won't take trade or theft or begging, which is how they currently survive. JinJin's face bleeds as his one good eye burns rage. He'd charge if he could, but with only one hand to hold his damaged eye in, he can't do anything.

  He turns and stalks off. The other freeloaders follow.

  Milli grabs a swing and collapses into the ceramic seat. Alessa smiles as he looks up from the sand. “You have an incredibly poor sense of debt management,” he says. “They might have beaten you up. Or worse.”

  “Saved your ass, didn't I?”

  “Oh, I'm not complaining.” Alessa stands, wincing in pain as he sits on the swing next to Milli.

  “Is it supposed to still hurt?” Milli asks.

  “Takes a while to heal.”

  “Seems cruel.”

  “Not at all,” Alessa replies, grabbing Milli's right hand. He rubs the transponder buried inside her palm, sending shivers dancing down Milli's fingers. “How much do you owe His Lordship?”

  “Sixteen years, nine months, fifteen days.”

  “And when you're eighteen all that gets encoded in your genes. You'll spend that much of your life paying Him off – or you go freeloader and lose your hand. For me, His Lordship covered the cost of the operation and most everything else – school, food, singing lessons. I'll only have to work a few years as his vassal. Less if audiences like me. And if I ever want kids, I'll do like Dad and debt a gene doc to help.”

  Milli admits it sounds like a good plan. Better than the options she has in life.

  * * *

  Since this is the future, things percolate up as the ages pass on. Milli practices her viola day and night. However, everyone knows her parents' musical souls have passed her by. She's a technician. She can play the instrument, but it doesn't sing. She simply can't plug the emotions she feels into the strings she plays.

  When Milli is 15 she performs in the Tonal Hall before His Lordship, who glares as if she's a sour investment.

  Lady Amanza Collins, though, doesn't care. She paces her tanned and ageless body around Milli, examining her viola playing from all angles. “Great things,” she whispers. “I expect great things.”

  “But my love,” His Lordship whines. “Where's the virtuosa you bet she'd become?”

  “The bet's not over,” the Lady Lord says, a slick smile running her smooth-frozen face. “And I didn't bet on a virtuosa. I bet she'd accomplish great things.”

  His Lordship sighs and waves for Milli to step aside. As Milli curtsies, the Lady Lord says not to worry. “You'll set His Lordship on fire one day, young Millisent Ka.”

  Despite the Lady Lord's support, Milli knows the truth. She walks across the fake marble floor to the guest seats, where her parents hug her. Even though Milli wants to run screaming from the castle, she waits for Alessa's performance. Her best friend bows before His Lordship and sings the most haunting song Milli has ever heard. Milli glances at her obsolete reader. According to the charts, several million people listen to Alessa's performance in realtime, each trading seconds of their life to share in the joy of Alessa's sublime voice. Tears form in Milli's dark eyes.

  “Don't worry,” her dad whispers. “You can be a teacher. There's always a need for music teachers.”

  Milli nods, even though a teacher might never earn enough to be free from debt.

  Once Alessa's performance is over and the vassals dismissed, Milli wanders outside into the castle's manicured gardens. The vassals who tend the grounds smile at Milli, acknowledging their shared service. But Milli ignores them and kicks the dust in anger. She's read her history. Vassals used to be more than any Tom Dicked Harriette who debted their services to a lord. She might as well be a slave for all the choice she has in anything.

  Milli sits on a carved stone bench beside a bubbling fountain. In front of her, the ocean bobs and surges. Off to the left, the dusty streetlights of L.A. ripple in the heat. Despite the beauty before her, all Milli sees is how much everything cost. Two months of someone's life to carve the ornate stone bench. Three months to build the fountain. All that debt from people up and down the California coast – debt washing across the world and propping up the stupid lords of this land.

  The gravel behind Milli crunches. Alessa walks over and sits beside Milli, taking her hand in his. “Let me guess,” he says. “You're pondering the debt which created this garden?”

  Milli chuckles. “Am I that predictable?”

  “Only when you're angry – which lately, has been way too often.”

  “But it's not fair. I was debted to His Lordships at birth, but I can't play music worth a damn. I'll never be free.”

  Alessa hugs Milli tight. “Wish I had words to make everything better, but I don't.”

  “I'm glad,” she says and kisses Alessa. They hold each other for long minutes, kissing and feeling and kissing again until they hear the crunch of gravel behind them. They turn to see Lady Amanza Collins watching from up the manicured pathway. The Lady Lord claps her hands as if hearing a distant musical score. She then pirouettes and walks back to the castle, leaving Milli and Alessa alone in their puzzlement.

  * * *

  Milli and Alessa turn 18 only a week apart, so they hold their debt ceremony together. His Lordship and Lady Amanza Collins bless both of them – reminding Milli and Alessa that removing their transponders and burning the accumulated debt into their artificial chromosomes is the first step into adulthood. Once their chromosomes are active and humming with debt, Milli and Alessa kneel before His Lordship and pledge fidelity to his realm.

  Even though they stay in their parents' homes – not wanting to debt their own place – Milli and Alessa take on an adult workload. Alessa sings for His Lordship, creating unique songs and vocals which thrill the world. Milli works in the fief's school, tutoring young vassals in the ways of musical service. While she doesn't love her work, she earns enough to pay off her debt second by painfully long second.

  Six months into her new life, Milli falls on the basketball court and breaks her arm. All her friends gasp – both because this means their best player won't be playing in tomorrow's championship game, and because a broken arm requires mountains of debt.

  “Ewy shit,” Alessa says in a shocked falsetto voice. “That's like two years of your life, gone.”

  “Shut up,” Milli shouts, clenching her arm and angering back tears.

  Even though Milli doesn't want to go, Alessa drags her to the Doc. Inside the cement box of a clinic, the Doc – who's paying off med-training debt by keeping the vassals healthy – shakes her head. “It's a
really bad break. I can fix it, but that's a massive time-swap. Should we bring in your parents to discuss your options?”

  Milli shakes her head, wincing in pain as she remembers the last time she hurt herself. JinJin, now with only one eye, had caught her behind the school. He'd punched her face bloody before Alessa and Milli's other friends ran up. While Milli had only a hairline fracture of her jaw, the medical debt still equaled several months of her life.

  To help, her dad burned the debt into his genes. Never mind that he hadn't slept in days as he'd played a virtual gig his Lordship's avatar set up with some Japanese lord. “I have a few free years left in my life,” he'd whispered to Milli. “Maybe I'll get lucky and live longer than I'm supposed to.”

  Milli grits her teeth against the pain in her arm. She knows her parents want her to start life with as little debt as possible. To have some freedom in choosing where and how she lives. But she's an adult now. This is her life to live.

  “No,” Milli tells the Doc. “I'll pay.”

  The Doc scans Milli's body with the payment arc. A moment later Milli sees her total debt jump to almost thirty years.

  The Doc is good and Milli's arm doesn't hurt at all as she draws blood samples to regrow the bone. Alessa holds Milli's good hand and offers to help with her debt. “People love my singing. His Lordship might let me burn some of your debt.”

  Milli kisses Alessa on the cheek and thanks him, but says she'll pay her own way.

  * * *

  A week later Milli's arm is healed enough to again play the viola. Even though she doesn't want more debt, Alessa convinces her to go to the Doc for a final checkup. The Doc tests her arm, mumbling how things look good, before holding Milli's hand over the debt scan. A shocked look runs the Doc's face.

  “Your debt's gone,” the Doc says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean your artificial chromosomes record absolutely no debt.”

  Milli stares at the scanner's screen. Sure enough, her artificial chromosomes show no time owed to anyone. The Doc fidgets nervously with her machines.

  “What caused it?” Milli asks.

  “I'm not certain,” the Doc says, data flowing through the air around them. “Your body appears to harbor an unknown bacteriophage. Perhaps it rewrote the debt's genetic sequence.”

  Alessa grabs Milli's hand. “I've heard rumors about this,” he whispers. “When the time-debt lords created artificial chromosomes, one of their genetic engineers created a phage to wipe out the stored information. A backup, in case the chromosomes were put to evil use.”

  Milli laughs. She's heard the same rumors. They're campfire tales. Urban BS. But then Milli remembers how Lady Amanza Collins used to be a genetic engineer, and how the Lady Lord has always shown a strange interest in Milli's life.

  From the scared looks on the faces of Alessa and the Doc, they've come to the same conclusion.

  “Get out of here,” the Doc whispers in purest fright. “Run. Now. Before His Lordship finds out.”

  The Doc grabs her medicine bag and shoves in her reader and other equipment, preparing to flee. Milli understands the fear. Once the lords and lady lords of debt learn about this, they'll strike hard to stop any threat to their carefully managed world.

  But Milli is tired of always doing what others expect. She grabs the Doc's hand. “Wait,” she says. “If you run, you'll always be in debt.”

  “What do you mean?” the Doc asks. “Think how long it'll take to pay off your debt. Now think about what's in my body. You can run anytime, but if we plan this right, maybe you'll run a free woman.”

  The Doc glances from Milli to Alessa. The panic is still in her eyes, but there's also a longing to be free.

  “Give me a week,” Milli says. “Show me how to work this.”

  * * *

  Milli and Alessa sit on the playground's old swings as the Santa Ana howls hot and dusty. Cement crumbles and blows from the abandoned houses beside the park. In the hill beside them, His Lordship's castle gleams, all bright lights and ocean view from this moment well into the future.

  “What if the Doc's wrong?” Alessa asks nervously, constantly eying their surroundings for freeloaders.

  Milli shakes her head. In the past few days, they've learned so much. A secretive search of the fiefdom's records showed a spike in infant deaths in the years before Milli's birth. Not enough deaths to prove anything, but still a disconcerting trend. The Doc guessed someone added the phage to a few of the artificial chromosome injections the fief's babies received – a practice that must have stopped with Milli surviving the first few hours after birth.

  Alessa had been furious to discover this, but Milli accepted the news with calm understanding. All she could see was Lady Amanza Collins' perfectly-formed illusion of a face whispering that Milli was destined for great things.

  As Milli and Alessa sit on the swings, they hear the crunch of boots across sand and scrub. They turn to see JinJin and his gang of freeloaders. Alessa hasn't seen JinJin in years, and gasps at how old he looks. His one eye glares while an orange pastie hides the ruins of the other. In his only hand he holds a long piece of rusty rebar.

  “Sharps,” JinJin says, swinging the rebar. “Didn't think it was true, you waiting out here.”

  Milli stands between JinJin and Alessa. “You've got one shot,” she says. “But you do us, you won't get that eye back. Or your hand.”

  JinJin pauses. “What do you mean?”

  “Figured you'd have smarts. Why didn't you take the debt?”

  “Rather be free than debted,” JinJin says. The freeloaders around him mutter agreement.

  “So if you had a chance to stick it to His Lordship, you'd take it?” Milli asks.

  “Damn straight.”

  Milli and JinJin eye each other warily as Milli explains her plan.

  * * *

  As Milli tells the freeloaders, the problem is the phage. It only works on Milli and doesn't last long enough outside her body to infect others. The Doc suggested cultivating the phage for injections, as Lady Amanza Collins did with the babies, but Milli refuses to kill people over this.

  The upside of the phage is that Milli can take as much debt as she wants and it's soon purged from her genes. JinJin and the freeloaders aren't sure they believe Milli's story, but since she agrees to debt the costs of repairing their hands – and JinJin's right eye – they don't care what the truth might be.

  “What do you want in return?” JinJin asks suspiciously.

  “Rumors. Tell everyone what I'm doing. Spread it over the nets, and up and down the coast.”

  A few days later, the freeloaders are healed and Milli is still debt free. “Now what?” Alessa asks.

  “Now we make people happy.”

  They hire a bootleg accountant to transfer debt into Milli's genes without notifying His Lordship. Milli knows they'll have to move quickly, so she starts with the Doc, transferring all her medical training debt. Then Milli's mom and dad. Then Alessa, and Alessa's parents, and their neighbors and friends and acquaintances and finally anyone in the fief who wants to be free.

  But like all good things, Milli's run comes to an end as the rumors JinJin and the freeloaders spread reach His Lordship. One afternoon Milli sits in her house, the bootleg accountant transferring debt from a third string bass player, when His Lordship's guards break down the door.

  The bass player and the accountant flee, but Milli merely looks up and asks, “Got any time to burn?”

  * * *

  By nightfall, Milli is in His Lordship's dungeon, her right eye swollen and leaking bloody tears, her arms and legs a mix of bruises. She lays on the dirty cot in her cell, her ankles shackled to the cold stone floor. When Lady Amanza Collins enters the cell, the Lady Lord's stiff-young face frowns slightly.

  “Such a disappointment,” Lady Amanza Collins says.

  “How?”

  “You had so much potential, but instead of being secretive and taking your time, you became greedy. And
now you're caught.”

  Milli grins at the Lady Lord's irritation. Milli has already confessed everything – not out of any sense of loyalty or to avoid punishment, but because she wanted His Lordship to know. His guards still beat her, but the beatings had been half-hearted since His Lordship knew she'd already told all.

  “He knows what you did,” Milli says.

  “Oh, I'm quite aware of that. His Lordship came to my suite and paid off our bet, saying you had indeed accomplished great things. He also screamed about my experiment, but that's neither here nor there. It's not his place to stop me.”

  Milli understands. While she'll likely be killed, there are different standards for lords and lady lords. Lady Amanza Collins will not be hurt for what she's done. Instead, this entire affair will be swept under the rug with whatever is left of Milli's body.

  But Milli doesn't care what happens to her – she wants to know why the Lady Lord did this. So she asks.

  The Lady Lord pulls the cell's small stool over to Milli's cot and sits down. “Are you aware of my background?”

  “Genetic engineering.”

  “Yes. I helped create the artificial chromosomes which power our world. It was supposed to be a miracle technology; to erase all the wrongs of the old economy. But time-debt ended up recreating the sins of the monetized world. So a few decades ago I devised a way to wipe everything clean and start over.”

  “The phage…”

  “Exactly. But it was defective, barely infectious. To make someone an effective carrier, they had to receive the phage at the same time as their artificial chromosomes – at birth. But the phage reacts poorly to young immune systems and kills most of its hosts.”

  Milli shivers at the Lady Lord's coldness in describing murder. “Did His Lordship know?”

  “No. In the old days, I would have told him. You won't believe it, but he was once so different. We both wanted to change the world. To make things better. But as he grew older, he stopped caring.”

  For a moment, Lady Amanza Collins slumps on the stool. Her youth-crafted face looks ancient and her eyes no longer sparkle. Milli imagines the disappointment the Lady Lord feels, living long enough to see her dreams destroyed. To learn that each problem you fix in this world births a new wrong.