by Nino Cipri
They stopped in one of the newly chaotic rooms; a dining room table was crowded in next to a child’s pink-and-purple canopy bed, with a glass-top coffee table at its foot. The coffee table rippled a half-hearted welcome to them. Derek collapsed onto the bed, which shuffled grumpily under him, while alt-Derek slid down the wall, leaning heavily on the table.
Derek glanced over at his otherworldly counterpart, and found his gaze drawn to his defect.
It was a delicate-looking thing, a narrow pink slash like a lipless mouth that stretched across his Adam’s apple. It gaped a little bit, just enough for Derek to get a glimpse of intricate folds of skin inside, tiny and nearly invisible hairs dotted along the flesh.
“It’s not as bad as I thought it would be,” alt-Derek said. Derek looked up to see that he was being stared at with the same scrutiny. He swallowed nervously.
“Sorry! I didn’t mean to stare.”
“It’s fine, of course,” said alt-Derek. “I hadn’t really gotten up the courage to look at my own, but yours was . . .”
“Oh, me neither,” Derek laughed. “And I don’t know if they’re the same, yours is really pretty small. Definitely not as bad as—”
“Yours too,” said alt-Derek. “I think I really blew it out of proportion in my mind.”
“It’s easier, isn’t it?” Derek said. “To confront the things that scare you when it’s, you know. Not you.”
The silence spun out between them for a long moment, until Derek asked, “What are you going to do now?”
The other Derek didn’t answer for a moment, then sighed, “It’s a good question.”
“Do you not want to answer it?” Derek asked.
“I’m just saying—it’s really nice to be able to ask that question. It’s a good question to have.”
Derek smiled after a moment and nodded in agreement. He wasn’t sure if the other Derek meant that it was nice to be able to sit and plan something out, or that it was so rare that they’d had options. Either way, Derek let himself wallow in the luxury of choice for a few moments, lying back and staring up at the gauzy pink canopy of the bed, which had little firefly-shaped lights embedded in it that pulsed in rhythmic bursts of light.
After a while, he knew it was time to go. He wanted to go back to the rest of the inventory team, to his store and the defekta that had remade it. He felt a moment of panic as he searched for the sound of his world, its distinct pitch and rhythm—what if he couldn’t find it? what if the maskhål had collapsed and he was stuck?—until he found it again, ringing clear in the distance. He was part of the labyrinth, just like the other defekta, and knew how to shape it.
“I think I’m going to head back.”
“Yeah, it’s about time, huh?”
They both stood, considering each other for a moment.
And because it was so much easier to say it to somebody else, he told the other Derek, “You deserve better than what LitenVärld was willing to give you.”
The other Derek hunched in embarrassment for a moment, then straightened up and said, “You’re worth more than what you can do for other people.”
Derek grimaced a little, feeling the words settle heavily on him.
“Good luck,” he said to Derek, and to himself. “For whatever comes next.”
They shook hands and turned back toward their respective worlds.
Email sent to: ResDevVP@LitenVärld.univ, ResourceMgVP@LitenVärld.univCC:BOD@LitenVärld.univFrom:ReaganKoch@LitenVärld.univSUBJ:Re:Re:Re:Re:[IMMEDIATE RESPONSE REQUIRED: Situation at Store 7748]
All,
Please find the forwarded list of demands below. I am well aware that this is unprecedented and outside of our normal playbook, so let’s all keep cool heads. My read on this situation is as follows, in bullet point format because I’ve been awake since 3AM with the store manager, whose sobriety is definitely suspect.
All attempts to contact the team’s leader (D - 64598 - 01 - 6 - 13 - 150, designation “Dirk”) have been met with no answer, though this does not confirm or deny any claims about his death or defection to another universe.
We’re able to access CCTV, but it only uploads to the cloud every six hours, so it doesn’t help us get an accurate view of events right now. We’re working on ways to access the store’s internal network remotely. At the moment, we only have the team’s word and the video footage that they’ve sent us to go on.
If their video footage is to be trusted (and we’re reasonably certain that they do not have access to any software that could be used to doctor it), this is one of the largest and most serious outbreaks of defekta that we’ve seen.
The store is effectively held hostage. There is enough food in the food court that starving them out would not be easy, even if we cut the electricity and they lost all perishables. Cutting the heat might freeze them out, but given the current temperatures, we would likely end up dealing with numerous burst pipes, with the potential to lose the entire inventory—a loss that could be too great for this store to recover from, given its underperformance at Christmas.
Obviously some of these demands are non-starters, and others are simply jokes. I’m familiar enough with the team in question to recognize their attempts at humor. Unfortunately, like I said, the store is effectively held hostage, and we have a short timeline before customers start arriving. The store manager assured me that they have the normal set of elderly customers that always show up at opening to get their stepcount in and take advantage of the food court’s Early Bird special.
If the team has actually managed to ally with the defekta inside—and again, we have no reason to believe that their video footage is anything but real—this has extremely troubling implications for future extermination efforts, which have had middling success so far.
We are less than a week away from the grand opening of the VIP program, which has been a costly investment. LitenVärld does not need the scrutiny that a full siege or frontal assault on the store would bring, counter to some of the suggestions that have been made in this thread.
Please re-familiarize yourselves with the definition of the sunk cost fallacy and Einstein’s definition of insanity before responding.
I don’t believe in negotiating with terrorists either, Jerome, but some of these demands offer far more elegant solutions than anyone in R&D has been able to come up with after four months, an army of unpaid interns, and a wildly bloated budget. Glass freaking houses, Jerome.
Please review the demands below before our conference call at 05:30 CST and be ready to make some pragmatic choices.
QUOTED TEXT:
to whom it may concern:
This is Delilah, Darkness, and Dex, remaining members of the short-lived INVENTERA division, and Derek, our newest comrade. Dirk is permanently indisposed. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
To replace our lost leader, we have made allies with the defekta. We have set aside our mutually assured destruction in favor of screwing up your week, which is a much more laudable goal. We would like to open negotiations about the collective working conditions for discordant and defekt LitenVärld models. We will remain locked in the store until the following demands are met, or a collective agreement is reached.
Here is our opening list of demands:
1) A 24-pack of beer, delivered immediately
2) 3 personal pan pizzas from Brava’s (1 meat lovers, 1 hawaiian, 1 bravissima with everything) and 1 calzone with chicken, spinach, broccoli, and olives, also delivered immediately
3) 4 $150 PriceLow giftcards for clothes, we’re tired of dressing in coveralls
4) The creation of a new subsidiary or division, located in one of the pocket universes from whence we came, that functions as a semi-autonomous zone for discordant and defekt LitenVärld models. This zone will be under the collective control of those residing in it, with the goal of open communication and exchange with its parent company, the terms of which can be negotiated. This space will be welcome to all current and former discordant and defekt models.
5) A spa day
6) For the former INVENTERA division, a raise in pay backdated to December 5 of the previous year, when we began working under Dirk. This reflects the hazardous nature of having a sociopath as a direct supervisor.
We’ll follow up if we think of anything else. We’ve attached some video footage to show that this letter is not sent in error or as a bluff.
We look forward to speaking more about this.
Chapter 9: The Journey Never Ends
“The pizza is kind of a post-shift tradition,” Delilah had explained. “Dirk would be off reporting to Reagan at Resource Management, and they’d give us pizza as a reward for living through another inventory. It was the only break from him the three of us could rely on.”
“Not that we did much with it,” Darkness added. “We were usually too busted from the shift to plan our rebellion or anything.”
The front of LitenVärld, with its tall plate-glass windows, faced east, where the sky was steadily turning a light, pearly gray. The four of them leaned back against one of the more indulgent sectional sofa defekta—a number of them had followed them to the front of the store, exploring the food court and Scandinavian groceries. Others were investigating the leftover scraps of pizza that corporate had sent them. They’d been shocked that Reagan had immediately conceded to that particular demand, but on the other hand, it was the easiest thing they’d asked for.
“Here’s hoping this is the last sunrise we’ve gotta watch,” Dex said, saluting the burning sliver on the horizon with his bottle of root beer. “I’m done with night shifts.”
“I don’t mind the sunrises,” Delilah said. “They were one of the better parts of the job.”
Derek was gazing at the sky, at the bright pearly light soaking into the bricks, the pink blush staining the wispy clouds. It wasn’t as impressive as the sunsets that he’d seen. No stunning display of colors, no orange-gold light. The moon still hung suspended above the horizon, small and smudged by clouds, chalk-colored against the lavender sky.
“I’ve seen better,” Dex said. “That one in Atlanta? I took, like, twenty pictures of it.”
Darkness tweaked Derek’s ear. “Deep thoughts, handsome?”
“That’s a little narcissistic,” he said, blushing when Darkness pinched his cheek. First time he’d been called handsome, he thought to himself. First time he’d had his cheek pinched—no wait, there had been that one elderly customer last month, who’d subsequently tried to convince him to give her granddaughter his phone number. First time someone had pinched his cheek and let their warm hand linger on his jaw.
He looked at them. “I . . . I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a sunrise before.”
The other members of the inventory team looked at him.
“They usually had me working closing shifts and overnight receiving and assembly. I think the earliest they ever had me in was at eleven, so I usually slept late. It’s pretty,” he added, a bit awkwardly. “Not as colorful as the sunset, but those always made me a little sad.”
Everyone looked back at the sun, watching as the burning crescent of light slipped higher over the horizon.
“Guess it’s alright,” Dex said. He held up his phone, lined up a shot, and took a photo. Then he shrugged and turned the camera to selfie mode, angling it to get the entire team in the shot. “Everyone say fuck the man!”
Dex seemed to like that one much better, and he started typing rapidly across the screen. “We’re going to have to set you up with your own SnapYap account, Derek. Then I’ll be able to tag you.”
He flipped the phone around to show Derek the post, a looping GIF of the four of them. Everyone except Derek was obviously mouthing fuck the man—he had a slightly confused look on his face, mouthing the words wait, what.
WHATS UP NEW FOLLOWERS, SAY HI TO MY CRINGE-WORTHY FAMILY LOL #LOVEYOUWEIRDOS #D-SQUADFOREVER #FUCKTHEMAN
Derek inhaled, catching the thousand scents of morning in the store, the rhythmic sounds of Darkness’s breath and his own blood traveling through his veins. Darkness slipped their hand up Derek’s back, pressing it against his spine, and he let himself lean back into it.
First sunrise, but not the last. First time eating pizza that didn’t come from the food court. First time trying a calzone and an IPA (he liked the calzone better of the two). First rebellion, regardless of whether it worked out in the end or not. First time imagining a world beyond this one, a future beyond a to-do list of tasks to complete.
Maybe not the kind of personal milestones worthy of a catalog, but he was glad to have them.
Acknowledgments
Finna is a standalone novella, and I had no plans to write a sequel (I cede that to any interested fanficcers). But coming up with story ideas is my self-defense mechanism against boredom, and I spent nearly all of the fall and early winter of 2019 and 2020 on the road. On some stretch of I-90 between New York and Michigan, Derek started to bother me. Every job has at least one fucking Derek—an otherwise inoffensive coworker that still somehow manages to earn your ire at every turn, because it’s easier to heap scorn on a clueless coworker than to change the system actually making your life hell.
So: what was up with that guy? It took a few thousand miles and a brainstorming session in a Panera in Pennsylvania to decide he was a clone and what he needed was some serious self-reflection. Speculative fiction being what it is, self-reflection was literalized into encounters with a whole team of cloned selves.
Thanks to my agent, DongWon Song, who facilitates the transformation of my weird impulses into pitches for books, and to Carl Engle-Laird, whose incisive feedback on each draft of Defekt got it closer to a story worth reading. Leah Cipri let me live in their house and frequently spitball story ideas with them when outlining. Ellen Cipri put me and Nibs up while I was writing this in the awful early spring of 2020, and let me wander the woods by her house whenever I needed to get out of my head. I’d be absolutely lost without Nibedita Sen, who’s my map, my compass rose, and all the dragons beyond the borders of the known world. Is that romantic or just insensible? Whatever. Thanks also for believing in me and reminding me to take breaks.
Immense gratitude to the team at Tordotcom Publishing, many of whom also made Finna the success that it is: Lauren Anesta, Oliver Dougherty, Christine Foltzer, Irene Gallo, Lauren Hougen, Jim Kapp, Jess Kiley, Mordicai Knode, and Amanda Melfi. Thank you, Carl Wiens, for your amazing cover art.
Manish Melwani, Martin Cahill, k8 Walton, and Sarah Loch all either read drafts of Defekt or just took the time to yell at me to keep going. Karin Tidbeck helped with some of the Swedish, but if there are mistakes, that’s my fault. Ryan Boyd gave an insightful sensitivity read.
I would not have made it through the writing of this book, or 2020 in general, without my friends. Thank you for all your Facetimes, Zoom calls, group chats, opossum memes, and photos of your pets.
If you’re reading this book, and have gotten this far down in the acknowledgments, I’m grateful for you too. It means that we survived 2020, despite its best efforts. Fuck yeah.
About the Author
Korbin Jones
NINO CIPRI is a queer and trans/nonbinary writor, editor, and educator. They are a graduate of the Clarion Writing Workshop and the University of Kansas’s MFA program, and author of the award-winning debut fiction collection Homesick (2019) and the novella Finna (2020). Nino has also written plays, poetry, and radio features; performed as a dancer, actor, and puppeteer; and worked as a stagehand, bookseller, bike mechanic, and labor organizer. One time, an angry person on the internet called Nino a verbal terrorist, which was pretty funny.
You can sign up for email updates here.
Also by Nino Cipri
Finna
Thank you for buying this Tor.com ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great reads, sign up for our newsletters.
For email updates on the author, click here.
TOR•COM
/> Science fiction. Fantasy. The universe. And related subjects.
*
More than just a publisher's website, Tor.com is a venue for original fiction, comics, and discussion of the entire field of SF and fantasy, in all media and from all sources. Visit our site today—and join the conversation yourself.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Welcome aboard!
Chapter 1: The LitenVärld Universe™ and Your Place Within It
Our corporate values
Chapter 2: Orienting Our Own Moral Compass
Changes to normal operations: special inventories
Chapter 3: Known and Unknown Risks
Leadership lesson: Are your outcomes CLEAN?
Chapter 4: Shortsight and Farsight
Checking in! How harmonious are you?
Chapter 5: Expecting the Unexpected
Quarterly Performance Review
Chapter 6: There Is No Escape . . . From Fun!
Disciplinary Report
Chapter 7: When “Don’t Be Evil” Fails, Try “Don’t Be Boring”
Are your wormholes spawning syndicalists?
Chapter 8: Changing the World, One Room at a Time!
Email
Chapter 9: The Journey Never Ends
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Nino Cipri
Copyright Page
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
