Accessing the Future: A Disability-Themed Anthology of Speculative Fiction (9 page)

I wasn’t okay.

The clock ran out. The transactions were complete, and Albrecht signed off on them. Ramirez had it split up between the two of us in seconds. It did nothing to change my situation.

The cops shot at the windows next, their rounds leaving cracks in the first layer of bulletproof plexi. More cursing. Ramirez was sweating—literally sweating. I thought I’d experienced every symptom of fear, but I was wrong. I didn’t sweat. That was a pleasant thought in the morass of my brain.

Then I heard the air-raid siren. A hand-cranked thing, coming closer. And the cops outside started cussing in earnest.

“Darknet?” I asked. It took me a long time to formulate words.

Ramirez nodded. “I put out the call as soon as I saw them.”

I uncurled my left arm from its place around my knees and set the door camera up on my screen. There were lights outside—squatters gathered at the closest street corner. The cops turned their backs to us, pistols and tasers drawn.

There’d be too many of us out there for them to start shooting. That was the idea, at least. And every squatter on the street was wearing a camera broadcasting to Darknet. And for every camera there was someone at home who would rather be asleep, hitting the big fat censor button on a console or tablet or field-of-vision device every time something on screen might incriminate anyone but the police. Was it fair? Hardly. But the other side had been doing it for decades.

Just knowing they were out there, the burning waves of fear lost the worst of their power over me. But they remained.

I heard the crack of a grenade launcher and saw a muzzle flash, lasting so much longer on my screen thanks to the wonders of a low frames-per-second camera. The police were shooting teargas, I’d guess.

Ramirez was looking at me, saying something, but it was just white noise to me. All I could hear was the ruckus outside and the cold sound of my slow-beating heart. I really shouldn’t have gone to work. I should have stayed in bed. I wasn’t okay.

“We gotta go!” Ramirez was shouting. She didn’t need to shout—words that promised a chance of escape cut through every frequency.

She had her yoga mat rolled up under her arm, the modem in her hand, and her teeth gritted. Whatever she saw on the Darknet, it must have been more promising than the haze I saw on my screen. I slammed the laptop shut.

She threw open the door and dove into a cloud of pink smoke—cover, provided by our side.

I ran, choking my way into a maelstrom of shouts and smoke and pepperspray. The cop silhouettes were the ones bulky with gear and belts and guns. My friends’ silhouettes were the thin ones and the fat ones unencumbered by armor or by much weaponry. They were the ones that kept on the move, playing mouse to the police’s cat.

The police were outnumbered but unafraid, backed by an empire’s worth of legitimacy. They had jails and judges and healthcare and rich patrons and immunity. We had whatever we could make or steal or whatever minimum wage could buy.

Ferocity was enough that night. A cop grabbed at Ramirez as she sprinted past—they always go for the smallest target—but backed off when a heavyset woman stepped closer with a ski mask and a bat.

No one got hurt, no one got arrested. Thirty squatters—most of them strangers, some of them kids—had turned out for the alarm and the cops beat a retreat once we were past their line.

Invisible people take care of one another.

If the bank would budget for it, the cops would be back during the day, combing the house for the clues they weren’t going to find. Worst case, Ramirez was going to get tagged the same as me as a person of note and she’d have be more careful around cameras in hot neighborhoods. But more likely than anything else, the bank would drop it. We won, and they weren’t going to want to draw attention to that. We won, but I didn’t feel much like a winner.

I was on edge the whole ride back to my neighborhood. Every time I saw another car on the street, I got a little spike of adrenaline. In the dark, every set of headlights was Schrödinger’s cop car.

Ramirez rode with me back to my neighborhood and I had her drop me off a few blocks from home. I wouldn’t let her self-driving car take me closer. I don’t trust the things. One day, I’m going to get into some friend’s car and the car itself is gonna just drive us both to jail. I know better than most people that machines will take orders from anyone with good enough code.

“Thanks for the work,” I told her when I got out in the soft twilight of morning.

She laughed. Not the condescending, haughty laughter I keep thinking she’ll belt out, but a childish giggle that reminded me why I trusted her. “We’d make so much money together,” she said.

“I’ll call you when I’m starving,” I told her. And she drove off.

It wasn’t her fault. She lived like she’d never been hurt, like she’d never been broken, so I kept her at arm’s length. Her strength reminded me of my weakness.

There’s something I tell myself, a kind of mantra I mutter on long nights when the far-off sirens keep me wired or when I’m walking home through the fog and trying desperately not to jump at my own shadow as I pass from the light of one streetlight to another and my own silhouette suddenly appears in front of me. And that mantra is: beauty lies on the far side of fear.

Everything I’ve done in my life that I’m proud of has terrified me. I’d earned enough that night to keep a whole warehouse of people eating well for the next three months, and that wasn’t nothing. It might just be worth it.

Marcellus was lying on his back and snoring in earnest when I crept back into the room. He’d wrapped himself up in the comforter and I had to pry him free to get my naked body into the bed with him. But he murmured in joy when my hand found his chest, and I held him tight and cried with relief and fear in equal parts.

I was home, I had Marcellus. But my house was stolen and my partner was a felon, so both were things that the state could take away.

“How was it?” he asked, half-awake.

“It was work,” I said.

“Fucking work,” he mumbled. His eyes closed and he snored in that way he always did, endearing and soft.

“Julienne the Technician” by Fabian Alvarado

Previous Page:

A woman who has no arms is positioned in front of an open mechanical panel. In the lower right corner, there is a circular window that looks out on to a planet. The woman appears to be floating in zero gravity. There is writing on the wall behind her that has an arrow pointing left and the partially obscured words, “Gate B2—.” The woman has long hair tied in a ponytail and is wearing a hard hat with an insignia on it, a harness around her upper body (which is attached to a clip on her left side, holding her in place), a jumpsuit that ends at her ankles, and toe-fitted socks on her feet. Between the toes of her right foot, she holds a small computer board. A cut piece of wiring hangs down around her left leg, held in place with her left toes. She is looking down with concentration as she works.

The Lessons of the Moon

Joyce Chng

1. Sea of Rains

Waxing, waning, dark moon, crescent, full—

like rain that comes and drench

the desert of my being

water

the bare sand, caress the skin, grow seeds.

2. Sea of Crises

Blame the fullness for the insanity that comes

like the crack of lighting or the giggle

of a child at the sight of buffoons

balloons

staying afloat at the sky,

subject to the whim of the wind.

3. Sea of Tranquility

I hope to remain calm—

consistent, sure as the tides

and as violent as rip currents that pull me

apart,

tear me inside out,

outside in.

4. Landing

Landing, hoping to land,

that’s all I want, all I desire—

Landing.

I have been storm-tossed, thrown away, pulled apart:

terra firma, solid ground.

Land now, just land.

I am staring out of the window, at the colors that sweep across the sky, the pinks and the oranges and the red and the rare streak of purple. They cover me, the patches on my chest going up and down. I am awash with colors, swimming in them. I am alive.

My IV drip feeds me, giving me the salt and glucose. My mouth craves the feel and texture of food. Oranges. Apples. A fat juicy medium-rare steak so red that the blood blends with the caramelized onion sauce. Glasses of wine, water and fruit smoothies. Quivering red jellies gleaming like pure ruby, tasting of fine plum and grape liquor. Food, glorious food. Hard to eat when your taste-buds hate you and your intestines reject food straight away.

They are saying that I am changing. Like the moon. I am so low in energy now, the dark moon, that I can only lie on my bed and stare at the colors. Sometimes, I am in my waxing phase, energy coming back—and when I am full, I can do so many things. I write. I dance. I cook. I move. My garden of green and red chili, of rosemary and mint. Then I crash and I am back to square one. My limbs feel like weights. My joints ache and my pain synapses are on fire. I am brought back to earth. I am changing. Into what form, I am not sure.

I am not changing into a phoenix, for sure. The thing running in me isn’t some mythical bird due for re-birth. The thing inside me is some insidious beast, sometimes tame, sometimes vicious. All I can do is to chain it down.

Now I am earthbound.

They want me in a Pod, so that I can live further and enjoy more years. I am not sure I want to fly a Pod and fight bad aliens in space, where physics still work and there is no sound. If my body fails, the surgeon tries to reassure me, be patient, this disease needs patience, I will have a new body and I will be a warrior. A good cause. I am fighting for something noble.

Am I?

How many warriors are there out fighting? Are they stationed next to the moon? Can I be the moon instead?

I want to be the moon?

When I die, eventually, I want to be buried in the Sea of Tranquility, or have my ashes scattered. Pods get destroyed at the end. I do not think Pod warriors retire. I want to be scattered like stars. Turn into diamonds. Better than just being destroyed in a burst of mangled steel and voiceless pain.

My little girl comes to see me during visiting hours. She has just turned five. But somehow, she knows what I am going through. She looks at me with huge dark eyes. I don’t know how I look. I don’t want to know. I refuse having a mirror in the room. The nurses laugh and say I look beautiful. I think they are just pulling my leg and lying through their immaculate teeth. The kind of polite laughter able-bodied and healthy people use, the tone they take with me. “Hang on in there”, “You will be fine”, “You should pull your bootstraps”, nonsense nonsense more nonsense. Where are you when I am in pain? Where are you when I need help?

My little girl is unafraid, daring. She is always like that. She will pick the coat’s button daisies growing outside our house and braid them into tiny bracelets. Coat’s button daisies have smiley faces and grow wild everywhere. Endemic. Pest. Resilient. I think they are more resilient than me. I love them. When I sleep, the bracelets are beside me. There is sap and sweetness in my nose. When I wake, the nurses have removed them away. Thrown them into the bin. For fear of contamination, they explain. This is a germ-free environment.

There will always be new bracelets.

They remind that I am resilient. I hang on.

I am hanging on.

“Remember the dandelions?” My little girl would whisper next to my ear. “Remember the dandelions, will you? Please? There are no dandelions in space.”

I remember them. They are not really dandelions, but they have similar blowballs. I used to pick her up after day care, plucking the flowers and blowing at the cotton-like puff. She loved the seeds floating in the air. I told her about the pappus that act like parachutes, drifting in the wind. She loves these memories.

“Yes,” I reply and my voice rattles in my lungs. My pain synapses snap and bite. My body is rebelling against me.

“You will be in a Pod,” she would say later. “You will be like the pappus. You will fly away. I will miss you.”

“Yes,” I say and I think about the moon. Always the moon.

Waxing, waning, dark moon, crescent, full—

like rain that comes and drench

the desert of my being

water

the bare sand, caress the skin, grow seeds.

The Pod is big, like a silver egg with wings and turrets built in. A mobile missile, piloted and inhabited by a brain. My brains. Someone else’s brains. Brains, without bodies. A mess of synapses and nerve, stuck in a machine.

I see the Pod in images they show me, just to convince me how fabulous it is. I am on a noble mission. To fight for the Earth in an egg. To fight for humanity against big bad aliens who want to conquer us and our planet.

To fight for my family.

“I want my ashes scattered in the Sea of Tranquility,” I state calmly to the attending surgeon. “I want my dust to mingle with the moon dust.”