Fighting for the Future, page 4
“My daughter’s—” I cut myself off when the woman looked as though she understood, but a certain sadness and disappointment shone behind the understanding. She had ordered two pasta servings just for this reason. What if it weren’t me who made the delivery?
I smiled, still nervous as my thoughts flitted back to Shimei, but I replied, “Maybe for a bit.”
The old woman looked up, returning the smile.
I noticed multiple takeout containers stacked near the fridge—some half full, most sat untouched—before taking a seat at the dining table. The woman followed my gaze.
“Ah,” she said, “I always order extra for my daughter… in case she ever visits. We were close when she was younger…”
I had the urge to prod the woman further, ask her what happened, why it all changed. I thought of my own daughter, and how I would feel if she ever abandoned me. And perhaps she might when she aged, blaming me for forcing her to spend so much of her life in a small van.
“I should probably throw these, shouldn’t I?” She laughed to herself, shielding her face—abashed. Then she looked up. I flinched at the sudden movement. “Do you think she might come back? Maybe when her father retires from the company?” Her eyes were wide, hopeful.
Sympathy welled and spilled from my lips. “I think she would.”
We ate without another word for the rest of the meal—her with a small grin, me with my thoughts still on my waiting daughter: the silence of two mothers thinking of their daughters.
When I finished, the woman followed me to the door.
“Thank you,” I said, bowing my head. Though our conversation was brief, it was nice to speak to someone who seemed to understand
I winced as another shot sounded outside, my anxiety rising with the bile in my throat.
When I returned to the driver’s side, before opening the door, I noticed Shimei was nowhere in sight. In the space between the seats and the back storage of the trunk, the glass screen was lowered. Shallow, quick breaths escaped my nose. Another shot. I scrambled into the truck and into the back.
A shadow rested in the middle of the largest cube.
Shimei.
“How…” the doctor began when they opened the back of the car.
“I don’t know,” I ground out.
“No one has ever—”
“I know.”
They whisked Shimei to the emergency sector of the hospital and left me sitting on the ground next to the car, still staring at the empty PAUSE cube Shimei had been in.
Another delivery notification pinged my phone. I raised it and was about to chuck it across the parking lot when I noticed when it said:
Tip: $300.
Note: For staying. For being the first person I’ve spoken to in a long while.
The tears returned when I noticed the name attached to the tip. Surely it wasn’t a coincidence. She had the same name as the wife of PAUSE Ltd.’s CEO. I clicked to return the woman’s money. I hated myself staying at her house for dinner. If I had gotten to the truck just a few moments earlier…
I thought of my mother, wishing I could call her and tell her what happened, but knowing I couldn’t. I still visited her grave once a month.
After the sun had risen again, the doctor exited the emergency unit and trudged toward me with a haggard face, clipboard gripped in their hands. I knew what had happened even before they opened their mouth.
“My daughter,” I said.
The doctor looked grim and nodded.
I swallowed, but the spit lodged in the middle of my throat.
We paused. I willed the doctor not to say the next words, but of course, eventually they did.
“The child… won’t wake.”
I didn’t know why I drove to the old woman’s house the following week after Shimei’s funeral. Maybe it was because I knew it wasn’t her fault. She’d lost a daughter to a decision that might not have been hers, or at least not hers alone.
When the woman opened the door, I fell to my knees, and she cradled my head like she had known me her whole life.
A year after the incident, my daughter sat in the middle of a museum, displayed bare for all to see—at least she felt bare even though she was still clothed in her penguin nightgown with the small tail in the back. She loved that part of it the best and would run across the halls in a waddle, always looking behind her to see her tail flap.
I fought against it, the exhibition of her actual body, but my words didn’t matter. They didn’t care.
“This is for science,” they’d said.
Why couldn’t they just make a replica? I asked, mentally, not knowing the words left my mouth.
“It’s not as authentic.”
They tried to make themselves sound sympathetic, but all I heard was impatience as they explained to me that everything placed in the cubes became property of PAUSE Ltd. I wanted to spit in their faces.
Shimei’s small body was still curled into a fetal position, eyes squeezed shut, one hand over one ear, the other holding out two fingers a centimeter from the cube’s wall. And I couldn’t help but imagine her as a newborn, cradled in my arms at the hospital, a small hand reaching for my face.
I pressed my palm against the glass, praying my daughter would feel the warmth of my fingertips, my touch. She was stalled, a statue, unreal—but I knew she was real.
“Excuse me.”
I turned to see the security guard strolling toward me with a stun baton in their right hand, held up in front of them like an unspoken threat.
“No touching the displays,” they said, jerking their chin toward my hand.
I blinked.
“But this is my daughter.” My words hung in the air.
There was a brief silence, and it seemed as though the entire room paused, as though we too were within the cube with Shimei. No one moved. No one spoke. The security guard and I stood staring at one another, with everyone else in the museum gawking at our interaction, breaths held—unmoving.
The Galaxy’s Cube
Jeremy Szal
It was another sweltering night in New Bangkok, and Jharkrat wasn’t selling anything.
The crowds were always here. They strode under lanterns and weaved through sluggish traffic, broad streets slick with blood-warm rain. Rusty frying pans hissed with fury as chefs cooked bubbling pastries in oil, spinning carousels draped with rice noodles. Curlicues of smoke coiled upwards from make-shift shrines. People shouted and bargained, exchanging burlap sacks of spice and seed to tourists, probably from Earth. Canoes sliced across the canal, battering away flotsam as they navigated to the floating markets. Half-finished skyscrapers towered above, cocooned with scaffolds. A fat drop of watery rust dripped from a flaking steel pylon, landing with a brown-red plop on Jharkrat’s table. He didn’t bother scrubbing it away. It was the city’s sweat, oozing out of a million pores. There’d be another in a minute. He made a mental note to bring his umbrella tomorrow.
Two Ministry peacekeeprs dressed in dark blue—vivanors—were sipping tom kha gai at a hot-food booth, keeping an eye on the milling crowd. One of them caught his eye and Jharkrat turned away, pretending to focus on the computer components sprawled in front of him. He didn’t want trouble tonight. They’d already frowned on his business in dealing with long decommissioned electronic goods and he didn’t need them to shut him down.
Someone came rushing up to his booth, pudgy face flushed with the heat. Was this a customer? Jharkrat straightened up, only to groan as the overweight man dumped an armful of decrepit equipment on the stained counter.
“I’m not buying,” sighed Jharkrat, picking at the bramble of decaying wires. “Only selling.”
“Come on,” he shouted over the tooting horns of traffic. “I’ll give you a good price.”
It was all from the Last Age, before the Ministry had replaced all their computer systems and software. His warehouse was nearly full of this stuff. It was barely worth paying the rent to keep it there. “Mai au khrap. I’ve got enough.”
“Please.” The man was desperate, neck tendons straining like bridge cables. “I’m low on cash.”
“Sorry.”
“Two thousand baht for the lot?”
“No deal.”
“Fifteen hundred?”
“No.”
“One thousand.”
He was torn. It was madness, acquiring all this for such a good price. But he’d be even madder to buy anymore stock.
The man must have seen his dilemma. He plucked out a modest black box from the mess, twirling it in his hands. “Take this. I can’t sell it anywhere else.”
Jharkrat inspected it, the cloying smell of incense from a nearby shrine tickling his nose. The cube was heavy for its size, little grooves carved into the sides and a port for plugging into a computer. “What is it?”
“A module, I think.” The man picked at a welling boil on his neck. “Five hundred?”
Jharkrat had never seen anything like this. There wasn’t even a manufacturer logo stamped into the metal. He couldn’t really afford it, but his curiosity was winning him over. “I’ll give you four hundred.”
“Done.”
Jharkrat forked over the crumpled notes. The man nodded gratefully, scooping up his materials and slipping out into the crowd. Jharkrat glanced back at the small mysterious box, shutting out the roaring city around him.
It started to rain as he made his way back home, warm spatters of water drumming on tin roofs and taut tarpaulins. Two moons were visible in the sky, pouring pale light on the road. The third was obscured by thick clouds. Back on Earth, where his grandparents were born, there had been only one moon in the sky. And the days were twenty-four hours long, not thirty-two. He’d been meaning to go there, see the wonders they spoke about. But even getting a permit to travel would require years of saving. And then there was buying the actual ticket. He’d spent all his money on his daughter when she came down with the blister plague, slowly eating away at her body. Every sale he made from selling equipment fought back the disease just a little more. But in the end it hadn’t been enough. It had crawled into Serah’s brain and killed her.
Some days Jharkrat didn’t know what kept him going.
He arrived at his bottom floor apartment. Blood-red creepers curled around the sagging poles that were weary with the building’s weight. He fished for the rusty key and unlocked the ancient door. He could have gotten a keypad or printscan system, but that would draw attention. Showed he had something to hide. The place was going to get broken in again anyway. No need to encourage the thieving devils. He’d seen what people would do for money. Just last month a man a couple of blocks down from him had traded his newborn son for a dog so he could sell its litter. Jharkrat had to restrain himself from going over and smashing the man’s teeth out.
The flat was a wreck; the floor littered with computer equipment and crushed beer cans, plastic chairs wrapped in thick cables. A moldy fan spun lazily overhead, swirling muggy air around the room. Stock was packed in cardboard boxes threatening to fall apart, stacked to the ceiling. Jharkrat swept away a disassembled motherboard from his desk and brought out the cube. He simply had to know what this was. There was no way the Ministry had licensed it. Which just made it all the more exciting.
He flicked his ancient computer on, snatching up a cable and hooking it up to the box with a click.
Zap. Everything powered down, the screen spluttering and flashing bright colours before winking away, leaving the screen a black mirror.
Well, that wasn’t good. He sat still, too surprised to move when the screen jumped back to life, displaying a flickering background. Was this some sort of virus? Even now it was probably eating away at his files—or worse—shipping them off to the Ministry. He was finished now. He was—
“Hello?” A chill shot through his body. The box was speaking. The grooves had burst to life, glowing an eerie blue. “Hello?” it said again, louder this time. It was a woman’s voice. “Where am I?”
Jharkrat paled. He knew what this was. It had to be. It was a Mind, banned decades ago by the Ministry. Anyone caught handling them was immediately executed. No trial, no questions asked. No wonder that fat bastard wanted to sell the cube so desperately.
He had to get rid of it. Now!
He kicked the chair back and extended an arm, desperate to rip the cables out. The Mind must have guessed what he was doing. “Please!” it begged. “Don’t!”
The intense emotion laced in its voice made Jharkrat hesitate, his hand poised to tear out the wires. “Who are you?” he finally asked.
“I do not have a name,” the Mind said, sounding genuinely relieved. “I…I did not expect to boot up again.”
“Why?” Jhrakrat could feel the hooks sinking in, pulling him deeper. “What happened? Where are you from?”
“Earth,” said the Mind. “At least, I was made there.”
“Earth?” Jharkrat leaned back in his chair, breathing hard. What had he stumbled onto here? “How did you end up in New Bangkok?”
“With the ships. I was the one who flew them here.”
Jharkrat blinked. “You were part of the First Fleet?”
“Yes.”
This Mind had to be almost a century old. No doubt it was packed full of data and logs that would have fetched millions of baht on the black market. No wonder the Ministry didn’t want them around. A stupid grin played on his face.
Then doubt started to seep in. “You said you didn’t expect to boot up again.”
The Mind paused. “They came for us,” she finally said. “The men in blue. They told us we were no longer needed and the Ministry ordered us shutdown. But one scientist, she had grown…fond of me. She downloaded my system into a storage device instead of destroying the software. I wasn’t sure what would happen after that. I don’t think she knew either.”
“Do you have a name?”
“No. None of the officers or scientists were permitted to grow attached to their Minds.” The voice seemed to hesitate, as if contemplating what to tell him. “But I did want one.”
“I can give you one,” Jharkrat offered. “How about…Serah?”
The Mind considered this. “That should serve. But why that name?”
Jharkrat smiled tightly, biting his cracked lips. “It was my daughter’s name.” He leaned forward. “What is Earth like? Tell me.”
And she did. She told him about the snow-capped mountains and sprawling deserts, the endless open spaces the size of entire countries. She described the haunting forests and jungles, the ice glaciers and tundras, the coral reefs and lush islands. Jharkrat sat there in amazement, barely noticing the buttery fingers of dawn creeping through the grimy window, painting the floor a dusty yellow. He hadn’t gotten a moment of sleep, but somehow he felt rejuvenated. Refreshed.
He stood up, stretching his cramped muscles and rubbing the nape of his neck. “I’ll have to hide you,” he told Serah. “Just in case someone breaks in.”
“Oh,” Serah said, a ring of disappointment in her voice. “I’ve charged up enough. I should stay aware at least forty-eight hours.”
He planned to be back long before then. He disconnected Serah from the computer, shoved plastic bottles out of the way and slithered under the bed. He jiggled loose some rusty nails and raised up a thin floorboard to reveal a hoard. This was where he stored most of his money in thick bundles. He didn’t trust the banks. He’d seen them flop in the economic crisis before, seen the outcry as lifesavings dwindled down to loose change. He wasn’t planning for that to happen to him.
He sandwiched the cube between two fat wads of baht before replacing the floorboard and tightening the screws. She was safe for now.
The sun was blinding, poking out over the rim of his stall’s umbrella and stabbing his eyes. He’d bought a good pair of sunglasses a few weeks ago but they’d been stolen. He would have gone for the cheap ones, but those broke down in less than a month.
He gulped down his kaeng som, flooding his mouth with spicy fish and observed the flow of the market. People drifted past, sipping from plastic bags of coconut juice, feet slapping against the pavement. Jharkrat remembered when coconuts had been horrifyingly expensive, sold only by licensed companies. But then someone had wormed into the genebank labs and leaked them on the market. Now they were only twenty baht each, sold at every corner of every street of the city. He remembered buying coconut milk for Serah, watching her face light up as she tasted it for the first time…
A shadow swept across his face. Jharkrat swallowed and squinted up at the figure, a dark silhouette outlined by the sun. It was a vivanor with a mountain peak of a face. He leaned forward, scanning the stock with quiet menace.
“Can I help you?” Jharkrat eyed the pistol strapped to the man’s side and pushed his bowl away.
The vivanor blinked, hooded eyes drilling into him. “A man came here last night. He sold you a small box. Perhaps this big.” The man held his dirt-fringed thumb and forefinger roughly ten centimeters apart. “Do you have it?”
Jharkrat realized with dread that this man had been here last night, watching him from the foodstall. This wasn’t good. He couldn’t deny owning it. “Yes, I bought it. But I was mugged on the way home and it was stolen.”
The vivanor’s face could have been chiseled from marble. “Is that so?”
“Yes.” Jharkrat forced himself to smile at the man. The vivanor lingered there for another few seconds before heading off, slicing past the crowd as he strolled further down the market.
Jharkrat bit down on his cheek so hard he tasted blood. Dammit. The vivanor hadn’t bought his story. Not for a moment. Every fiber of his being urged him to scurry home and make sure Serah was safe, but that wouldn’t be wise. No doubt they were watching him from the shadows, waiting for him to make a move before they struck. He had to pretend that everything was normal.
He sighed, a bead of sweat rolling down his chest, soaking into his shirt. It was going to be a long day.
