Harmony (9 page)

Okay, people were allowed to grieve, fine. If one of my friends died, I’d grieve. But to sit back and judge someone else’s choice, someone completely unrelated to you—to talk about “public property” and “resource awareness” when someone just
died
to justify giving someone’s life a cold look? That was what I called arrogance, and I wanted no part of it.

Miach would have thought the same thing. Rather, Miach
did
think that.

But not the rest of the world.

The only reason the suicides weren’t punished was because they were dead.

Beyond the admedistration’s reach. Finally.

If someone were to come up with a way to effectively punish the dead, I’m sure the world wouldn’t hesitate. I knew the regimen of drugs and counseling awaiting the failed suicides—it would be an earnest attempt to reclaim the resources the “involved” very nearly squandered, to patch up these damaged goods and put them back on the assembly line. To reinstate them as the basic unit in the medical economy, so that they could fulfill their societal function as consumers. Cian and I knew how that went. Been there, done that.

Except Cian wouldn’t be coming back this time.

Suicide was an offense punishable by disdain. Even if it wasn’t technically a legal offense. I remembered Miach telling us how the Catholics buried their suicides in the middle of a crossroads as punishment for betraying God.

Admedistrative society, lifeist society, hadn’t quite figured out how to treat suicides yet. The gravediggers wanted to know if they were victims or perpetrators.
So, uh, ma’am? Should we just go ahead and dig this hole in the crossroads here, just to be safe?

People had no idea what to do. I didn’t blame them. Lately, not even battlefields produced this many corpses. In lifeist society, it took old age, accidents, and the occasional, very rare homicide to result in a body. Otherwise, people just didn’t die. Cancer and other diseases were targeted in real time by WatchMe and removed. The all-important credo that was resource awareness helped us keep ourselves in check. Keep your WatchMe updated and your body fat ratio low.

The people who had killed themselves eight hours before were suspended in space over a chasm that ran between criminality on one side and victimhood on the other.

I participated in the Interpol/Helix session from my hotel room. The Helix Inspection Agency had called the AR meeting after determining that this event was something in which they should be involved. Clearly, a crime had been perpetrated against the highest value of our society—the very sanctity of life! Even though no one was sure exactly what the crime was, there was a general expectation that they would figure that out shortly to everyone’s satisfaction.

“Those involved,” the Interpol communications officer told us, came from twenty-five different countries, and all belonged to the Sukunabikona Medical Conclave, or Sukunabikona Admedistration, as it was more commonly called. The means by which they had killed themselves were varied:

And numerous other ways besides. It all made for a very impressive list of recipes for self-destruction.

The chain saw had been a guy in forest management. He had been in the middle of work and went from sawing through a tree to sawing off his own head. The one with the chopsticks had, in the middle of a meal, driven one chopstick through an eyeball and then twisted it around and around for good measure. It made sense that eating utensils took a prominent role in the list, since in every single confirmed case, the “involved” had simply picked up the nearest potentially lethal item they could find and gone for it.

As far as Cian’s method went, she was strictly by the book.

“This
event
is clearly an act of terrorism against admedistrative society!” the Helix agent next to me was saying. He was a senior inspector assigned to monitor elections in some war-torn hinterland. Of course, I say “next to me” but that was merely where the AR conferencing system had placed him. In reality, I was sitting all alone on my hotel room bed, talking to people who weren’t even there. If anyone had walked in and seen me they would have thought I had gone mad.

An act of terrorism
. How perfect.

It was the kind of statement that sounded meaningful while being utterly pointless. You might even call it a waste of time, but in our lifeist society where harmony was valued above all else, no one smirked or shook their heads at my neighbor’s blatant grab for attention. Instead, they all nodded and muttered their agreement that yes, that had been a most insightful statement. They had to.

  That was how you did things as an adult.

Maybe it was because I had seen one of my old friends become “involved” right before my eyes that this whole meeting felt like a charade. I didn’t have time to sit here listening to all these people blow smoke up each other’s asses. I waited the minimum amount of time necessary to not seem rude, then asked what condition those involved were in now.

The Interpol agent turned toward me. “All those who did not immediately die have fallen into a deep comalike state. At present, not one is available for questioning as to motives.”

“What about WatchMe?”

The question came from the Helix agent who had just been spouting off about terrorism. The Interpol agent turned, politely smiling at the man’s ignorance. “Though it is not widely known, WatchMe does not monitor the brain’s condition.”

“Really?” the agent asked, looking at me for some reason.

“Yes,” the Interpol agent said. “WatchMe cannot penetrate the blood-brain barrier. Apologies in advance if you already know this, but the blood-brain barrier is a feature in the body that limits the circulation of materials between tissue fluids—such as blood—and the brain. The barrier is there to protect the brain and spinal column from potentially dangerous substances, and no scientist has been able to develop a medicule able to pass through. Basically, it’s a blind spot in the system.”

“Doesn’t the blood-brain barrier work like a filter? Why can’t they just make a medicule smaller than the holes in the net?”

“Actually, the barrier is
not
like a net. Though in fact it was believed to be for quite some time. A century ago, the popular theory was that anything with a molecular mass of, oh, 500ì or less would be able to pass through, but that theory has since been entirely refuted. As it turns out, certain kinds of material, no matter what their size, cannot pass through the blood-brain barrier, while rather large molecules can pass through if they are needed by the brain. In other words, size doesn’t matter. The blood-brain barrier isn’t a mindless filter, it’s a highly attenuated and complex selection organ.”

The man looked down at his lap. “I see.”

I smiled. This was about the closest thing to a smackdown I was likely to see in one of these meetings.

“Though the numbers are small, there are a handful of instances every year of people with WatchMe installed dying of brain tumors and otherwise preventable hemorrhages. The brain is the last sanctum of the body, you might say. The only place where WatchMe’s eyes cannot go. That is, most of the brain. Because the pituitary gland and pineal gland deal with hormones, we can access them.

“Of course, we are doing what we can to monitor the coma patients externally via electronic scanning, though that falls far short of nano-level resolution,” the Interpol officer explained. “That said, only eight hours have passed since the…outbreak. We have, at present, no confirmation of any brain abnormalities in those affected, but it is still quite early in the day, so to speak.”

I saw Prime Inspector Os Cara Stauffenberg stand. She was probably still in her pink tent in the Sahara. For a second, I felt like she might be glaring at me, but I was too busy ignoring her to see.

Would Cian have killed herself if Prime hadn’t sent me packing from the Sahara? Would Cian really have stuck a knife into her own throat if I hadn’t been sent back to Japan to go to lunch with her and watch her do it?

Or would she have done it anyway, with a knife she was using to cut tomatoes in her own kitchen?

Want to fill a bathroom with poison gas? Beyond easy.

Hadn’t Miach said something like that?

Every person holds within themselves the potential to take another’s life.

I’ve got the power.

I could kill someone.

Even myself.

Each of us holds within us the power to destroy something important.

Had Cian killed herself, after a thirteen-year delay, just to truly understand the meaning of Miach’s words for herself? Was I to be the only one left behind?

“In two hours from now at a general emergency meeting of WHO in Geneva, I will be addressing all admedistrations and telling them that this, this chaos, is evidence of a full-on attack against lifeism,” Prime announced.

“As senior inspectors, all of you will be cooperating with security in your local regions. You all know about the treaties binding each admedistration to WHO—we’re going to make them honor those treaties. I want each of you to take the initiative in rooting out the people responsible for this, and let them know we will not sit idly by while they threaten our very way of life.”

Every agent in the room nodded. Like that, the session ended, and I was back in my hotel room, surrounded by unpacked bags.

Unlike the other inspectors, I didn’t have much time. I had to start right now.

Just two hours earlier, our fearless leader Prime Inspector Os Cara Stauffenberg had opened a secure session in AR with me.

“Though it is not public knowledge, you are under house arrest. Add to that the fact that you witnessed one of the people involved take her own life, and it is clear that you cannot be allowed to be involved in the upcoming investigation. Let us not forget that as a recent victim of an emotionally traumatic experience, you have likely sustained psychological damage. Most admedistration ordinances dictate that any conclave member who has experienced a dramatic ordeal must submit themselves to a minimum of one hundred twenty hours of psychiatric counseling and drug therapy. Your presence will not be required at the emergency meeting of Helix inspectors to be called in two hours time.”

I laughed. Of course I should be involved with the investigation. And seeing my friend kill herself was emotional trauma? Really? If I’d suffered an emotional trauma, it was when I failed to die at the age of fifteen. No, it had been when I tried to kill myself by overeating, long before I met Miach Mihie. Don’t talk to me about psychological damage. I’ve been damaged for years.

But I didn’t say that. Instead I saluted Prime Inspector Stauffenberg and informed her that I would happily use my newfound free time to work on my press release informing the media just how many of us in the Niger armistice monitoring camp had collaborated in acts of shameless, wanton indulgence.

She had asked me if I was serious.

“Deadly serious.”

I wanted everyone living in every admedistration across the world to know exactly what we did, even if that revelation should happen to take the fragile state of truce between the Nigerians and the Kel Tamasheq and throw it off a cliff, leading to the loss of countless lives and the complete gutting of the Helix Inspection Agency as it lost all authority in the aftermath.

Also, I added, if my memory serves, due to the nature of our work in conflict zones, Helix agents are given a five-day reprieve before they are required to report to mandatory therapy following a traumatic incident, ma’am.

I was satisfied to see a shiver run through Prime Inspector Os Cara Stauffenberg as the sheep’s clothing came off her misguided, insubordinate underling. Clearly, she was wondering how someone with such a deeply flawed character could have sneaked her way into the upper ranks of an elite division of WHO.

Except I knew she wasn’t trembling at me. She was trembling at the unseen, unnamed specter of Miach Mihie standing right behind me. At times like this, I often felt like it was Miach’s words coming out of my mouth.

I counted roughly thirty seconds of rage, regret, and hesitation passing before Prime spoke again.

“Fine. You will participate in the investigation.”

I nodded, satisfied.

“However,” she added, “though you may have a reprieve, don’t dream you’re getting out of therapy. Not even
I
could do that. Five days from now, you will be placed in an emergency morality center to undergo a full therapeutic regimen.”

This was about the worst that Prime Inspector Stauffenberg could threaten me with, and nothing she was saying was news. Unfortunately, she was right. The mandatory therapy requirement would be a very hard one to get out of. In five days’ time they’d toss me in an emergency morality center somewhere, pile on the kindness and thoughtfulness until I couldn’t breathe, and when I cried uncle they’d keep me in their benevolence-stained sweatshop a few weeks more just for good measure. As long as I was a member of an admedistration, there was no way around it.