Shards and Ashes

  It’s as if I do not exist at all.

  It only looks that way.

  That’s my secret, the thing no one can know. People would kill for a full set of drops like the one I hold in my hand.

  Killing for life. How ironic is that?

  I thought I had this all worked out. I thought I had a plan for myself, a way of engineering things so they were never too dangerous, never too fast—never too unexpected or creative or different.

  I was in control.

  I understood my place in the game.

  Then Z moved in, right across the hall, in another nameless cubicle of our government-subsidized office. Here at the job I only qualify for because of my grandfather and the role he played in the founding of the FEIC, and the mass production of Xianglian necklaces.

  Pioneer of the FEIC Expiration Monitors.

  The shackles we all wear around our necks, hide in our boxes.

  My grandfather was a doctor.

  All he meant to do was save lives. That’s the punch line—or it would have been. If the Xianglian were jokes.

  He sat at the head of the federal organ-donor lists. He watched while good hearts went to waste, time and again, when they were given to unfit recipients, simply because of their youth. He began to develop a database, youngest to oldest—until he computed their LC, life calculus. Junkies dropped lower, taking alcoholics and prescription-drug users with them. Convicts, prostitutes, high-risk behaviors dropped again. There were so many factors. So many reasons to be denied key organs, additional days and months and even years of human life.

  Time, he realized, was a factor. Just not the determining factor.

  The nature of the life, that was the true cost. That was the math that mattered.

  The Feds noticed when his patients’ surgical outcomes soared. My grandfather’s agency grew.

  I don’t blame him, any of them. I understand why they did it. It’s possible I would have done the same thing. My grandfather was a good man. He was only trying to help.

  That’s when he realized the database had other uses, so many other uses. To think that he could imagine a new world, and bring it to life, whether or not it was right or wrong. He was as a god among men.

  When people wanted to end world hunger, they didn’t consider how the ends could justify the means. When faced with overpopulation and the erosion of global resources, they didn’t perform the cost-benefit analysis.

  The FEIC database did it for them.

  And so our grandfather became a god, before I was even born. You know how they say we have to make the world we want for our children, and our children’s children?

  I am that child.

  I didn’t tell Z that. I didn’t tell him any of this.

  I look up to see if he’s there. He’s not. He’s late. Of course he is.

  I am never late.

  I don’t know why Z works here. He’s never told me how he got the job. Only his name, over lukewarm tea in the break room, since our break isn’t long enough to steep it properly.

  Laurence Horatio Hanzicker.

  An old name, from an old time.

  Z’s what you’d call a Stringer, the kind my mother warned me about. Bare string, nearly the length of it. World traveler. Pilot. Rebel. Thrill seeker.

  He makes Hana look like a medical librarian. Like a research botanist.

  Like, well, like me.

  I have 99 percent of my necklace, fully intact. My life, preserved in a box. In a drawer. In a pouch. In a room so locked up and lonely, it might as well be Fort Knox.

  My grandfather’s granddaughter.

  I’ve memorized the database. I’ve eliminated my risk calculus, almost entirely. I’m a perfect candidate for anything.

  Z is not.

  He’s on his last drop. That’s what people say about him.

  He’s final.

  Zuihou. That’s what he says. Z for short.

  I don’t know when it will happen. Any day. Any hour. Any minute could be his last.

  If what they say is true, Z’s life is all used up, while I hold mine here in my hands, bagged and boxed up in satin and velvet and drawers.

  I don’t know why I’m crying.

  For Rama or Z or me.

  My family, everyone who has gone before.

  Everyone who has dropped or will.

  I don’t know which one of us I’m crying for.

  My screen lights up and I deaden my mind for another day at work. The interface logs me in. One Nine Six Seven. That’s all I am.

  I wipe my eyes and lift them for the scan.

  This is my life.

  Is it any wonder Rama jumped?

  5. Z

  She’s there when I finally get to work.

  Late as usual. The Shift Super glares at me as I walk by the front desk with my helmet stuck under one arm. She looks at me the way my old aunties did, after I came home from school. Like pit vipers.

  Rough.

  My hair stands straight up after I ride. I let it dry that way.

  Also rough.

  I see her there, across the room, in the little place where her cubicle stares at mine.

  One Nine Six Seven.

  She doesn’t know why I’m always late. That I ride my motorcycle all the way down to Pinminku, waiting in the alley until she locks her little door and leaves her little cat inside.

  I follow her, two blocks behind. I’m her guardian angel. That’s what I told her little brother, before I set him up with the drop. I told him I’d do it. That’s how he knew he could do it. Leave all this. Her.

  She just doesn’t know.

  That, or how badly I wanted the job.

  She’s beautiful, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. The only beautiful thing in the room. Everything else is made of smoke.

  Smoke and steel and ash.

  All around us, everyone is dying, and they feel it. It’s no way to live.

  She’s not dying.

  She may never die.

  I watch her. Her head fixed, eyes staring straight ahead. Her mind is wild, though, a thousand mountains and moons away.

  Even I know that. Even from here, my desk, all the way across the corridor.

  She hasn’t seen me come in. Not yet.

  She’s a flower, I think, the moment before it’s cut. She’s a puddle of rain in the street, before a tire has yet to run through it.

  Jai.

  Even her name is a petal and a puddle to me.

  She stands. She hangs her jacket on the hook behind her. Pulls something from her pocket.

  Paper.

  Strange.

  A letter? A paper letter. Her face looks tired, drawn. It isn’t good, whatever it is.

  I try to remember. Her family is gone. She has only Rama. He’ll be gone soon, if he’s not already. He’s been preparing for months. That’s why I came back.

  I came because he asked me to help.

  I stayed because he asked me to help her.

  Her glossy black hair bobs as she reads, again and again.

  Is she crying?

  It’s him.

  It’s her brother.

  It’s either her brother, or a lover I know nothing about.

  I smile at the idea of Jai, my Jai, having a lover. Jai, who would not risk the rain without an umbrella. Jai, who keeps a spare train ticket in her pocket at all times, in case she has to flee.

  Then I stop.

  I want to tell her about tigers.

  I want to throw her into a river, and see which one of us can swim the farthest.

  I want to walk her out into the ocean, one step at a time. I don’t care if we ever come back.

  What does it matter to me?

  What difference would it make now?

  I flip on my computer.

  It grunts into blank white light. Then, an animation pops up onscreen.

  “Hello, Valued Employee of Cubicle Two Zero One One. We at Shenzen salute your contribution.”

  “Thank you.” I
look the animation in the eye. If I don’t, my terminal won’t finish loading.

  I prefer the other kind of security, where they shoot the criminals in the face and don’t make the rest of us endure this. That’s how we do things in the North, where I’m from. Hinter. Here in the Southlands, where the Feds are crawling up your ass all day, that’s not an option.

  The face nods, accepting my retinal scan. I guess I’m not as bloodshot as I thought.

  “Begin your day, Two Zero One One. We hope you find personal fulfillment as you are of use to the world around you.”

  “Super.” I hit a key, and the face disappears, my database scrolling across the screen. Name after name, number after number, risk after risk.

  It’s not rocket science.

  You do the math, you hit the key.

  The plus sign to add a drop.

  The minus to delete one.

  You do the math.

  You hit the key.

  Sometimes it’s just a tear that drops.

  Sometimes it’s a person.

  That’s how it works.

  You hit the keys.

  But I don’t.

  I never have.

  I never will.

  Instead, I reach around back and flip on my off-market modem.

  My screen becomes another screen, and I see a face again. This face isn’t an animation, though. In fact, it doesn’t move at all.

  “Jai,” I whisper, leaning closer to the microphone at the base of my monitor.

  “Are you there?”

  She looks down at the camera, which I know is only a blinking green light at the corner of her monitor. I know this, but it feels like she is looking at me.

  When she smiles, which isn’t often, it feels like she’s smiling at me.

  “Z.”

  “In the flesh.”

  “You’re late.”

  “I’m always late.”

  “You’re going to get fired.”

  “So?”

  “So.”

  She falters, biting her lip. She looks away, but she has nothing else to look at. Not even a mug, with a cat painted on it. Not even a pen. There is nothing but me, a small blinking light above a keyboard and below a stretch of reflective plasticine.

  She looks back at me.

  “So. That would not be a positive contribution to the world around you.” She’s mocking the Corporation’s log-in screen, and I grin. That’s Jai, that spark deep inside. It isn’t easy to get to, and you have to work hard to find it, but I try.

  I will never stop trying.

  I crave it, more than anything else in my day.

  “So?” I say it back to her, smiling. I straighten in my seat as the Super walks by, then slump back toward her. “What’s it to you whether or not I contribute? Whether or not I get fired?”

  “It would be . . .” She smiles at her fingers, playing against the keyboard. They type and retype the same letters, over and over again. “It would be sad if you weren’t here.”

  “It would?” I grin again. Say it, Jai. Her lips are pursed with a smile that they struggle to keep to themselves, like a kiss, like a secret.

  “I would.”

  “Meet me in the break room at the hour.”

  “No.”

  “Please.”

  “We can’t be alone there.” She says the words, not me. I wonder what is happening to her today. Maybe it is her brother. Maybe it’s Rama.

  Better and better, I think.

  “Okay. Meet me outside, after work.”

  She pauses, and I sit back and wait, watching the screen.

  After a century, after one million years, she nods, so slightly you would have missed it, if you were not me.

  Then she hits a key in front of her, and all I can see is the database once again, scrolling down my screen.

  6. J A I

  “What are you doing?”

  I say the words to a stranger passing by me, who looks startled, but they’re meant for someone else.

  For him.

  The man pulling me by the arm the moment I step out onto the sidewalk, pulling me into people and traffic and passersby, dragging me around the corner until we are pressed against the side of a building hung with shadow. It is after six, rush hour, and the crush of the commute is everywhere. Not for us. We are the only ones standing still.

  I don’t dare look at him.

  I haven’t seen him all day.

  I drank my lukewarm tea alone at break, ate my Spam roll alone during lunch. I kept my book with me, a statistical primer of risk calculation. I didn’t read it. I only pretended to read, so I didn’t have to talk to anyone around me.

  There was no reason to speak, because the only person I wanted to speak to wasn’t there.

  He disappeared right after we talked in the morning. His chair sat empty all day, his cubicle dark. Two Zero One One had been logged out, flagged a sick day, the seventh this month.

  “Why did you go?”

  “I was sick.”

  “You aren’t sick.” I glance at him, sideways, though I know even before I look at him that he’s perfectly fine.

  “Of course I am. I’m dying, One Nine Six Seven. We all are.”

  “Jai. Call me Jai.” I say it quickly, and he smiles.

  “I know your name, Jai.” His lips curl as he says it, and I want to touch them. Instead, I wrap my hand around the blade in my pocket. I grip it so hard I am afraid I will cut myself.

  “I know your name better than they do, Jai.” He curls himself around my name again, looking up at the building behind us, and I realize it is the far corner of our own building. We haven’t gotten very far.

  I shiver.

  “Very funny.” I don’t smile.

  “Your grandfather didn’t think it was. Your grandfather thought it was very smart, the database.”

  I feel myself growing colder.

  “His database,” Z says, again.

  “Z.” I stiffen and pull my army jacket more tightly around me. I don’t want to talk about that. Not with him, not with anyone.

  This was a bad idea.

  All afternoon, I have imagined this meeting, this time we have. I have imagined it so many times. The two of us, together at an out-of-the-way teahouse or, even more daring, a bathhouse.

  The two of us, riding on the back of his motorcycle, my hair streaming in the wind behind me.

  Of course, that would be impossible.

  I would have a helmet. We both would.

  It’s little improbabilities like that—impossibilities, really—that are why fantasies are so stupid, and why I don’t have them anymore.

  “I should go.” I look toward the busy street. The night is thick and humid, graying in the fading light. It looks as sticky as it feels, as if I am standing in the shower, letting the steam roll into the world beyond me.

  “I’m sorry.” He slips his hand into my pocket, uncurling my fingers from the knife. “I’m not going to hurt you. I don’t want your necklace. I don’t want anything that belongs to anyone but me.”

  Then he leans toward me, as if he’s going to kiss me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he whispers something, so softly I almost can’t hear it.

  “What do you want, Jai?”

  What do I want? To run away. To grow a vegetable garden, with weeds and flowers taller than my own body.

  To run wild in the sunshine. To jump, fly, shout in the air, in front of strangers.

  To wander. Travel. Love. Live forever.

  To tell my brother I love him, one last time.

  To kiss the man who stands in front of me, whether or not he wants me to.

  To know. To be sure.

  Of him, of me.

  Everything.

  I say nothing.

  I wish I knew.

  And even if I did, there’s nothing I can say. No words to say it. Only numbers, only the system of our own making, my own father’s father.

  I can’t speak the truth.

  I’m not br
ave enough.

  I can only feel it, in the flush that creeps into my cheeks and the way his warm fingers burn against my cold ones.

  Then I’m ashamed of myself, of what I’m saying, even if I can’t bring myself to say the words at all. I don’t think he needs me to say them.

  I think he knows.

  I draw my hand away from his, out of my own pocket. I clutch the collar of my jacket, holding it close.

  His eyes follow me.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  7. Z

  I have dreams that go like this. I must be dreaming.

  We ride on the back of my motorcycle, Jai holding me with small hands. Her hands are warm, even though the night is growing cold. She shivers against me, and I can feel her breathing, her heart pounding. She wears my helmet. It still smells like her, when she hands it back to me.

  At least, it will.

  That’s how it starts, how it always starts. When I dream of One Nine Six Seven, of Jai.

  I dream of her almost every night.

  Only none of this is a dream. All of this is happening. I shake my head, wondering to myself how one conversation in a lost roadside bar on a faraway continent with Rama could change so much.

  But she is real.

  I know this, because she clings tightly to me, behind me. And her hands are warm, the way I want to remember them.

  The broken streets of Pinminku disappear behind us, then widen and open into the vacant stretch of empty highway that will lead us up and into the foothills, circling back on itself until we reach the reservoir.

  Everything is ready. It took all day and every penny I had, but I have seen to that.

  It has cost me more than the day—probably my job—but I don’t question it now. I have other jobs, another job. Not that I will need a job much longer.

  I question nothing now.

  It’s too late for that.

  The shade is thick, and the water is fringed with trees. I take her by the hand, leading her to the cliff rock where I have left everything I could find, in a bucket resting on what used to be my bedcover.

  In the bucket is everything I know about her. A daisy. A thermos of tea. Rice rolled with meat, how she takes it in the lunchroom. A cluster of grapes that I found off-market, at the cost of my old receiver.

  The flask of wine, that was a question. Not something I know; it’s there for me.

  For courage.

  “Do you trust me?” I pour the contents of the flask into a tall plastic glass. She stops me, wine splashing across her hand.