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August 26 - September 3, 2020
He could tell by the amount of static crackling over the ansible how far away he was from the person on the other end.
Rosemary pulled her sleeve back, exposing her wristwrap—a woven bracelet that protected the small dermal patch embedded within the skin of her inner right wrist. There was a lot of data stored in that thumbnail-size piece of tech—her ID file, her bank account details and a medical interface used to communicate with the half million or so imubots that patrolled her bloodstream.
She wore an orange jumpsuit smudged with grease and gunk, patched on the elbows with bright fabric and big stitches. There were hasty notes handwritten on her sleeves, things like “CHECK 32-B—OLD WIRES?” and “DON’T FORGET AIR FILTERS YOU DUMMY” and “EAT.”
Remembrance Day was a Human holiday commemorating the day that the last homesteader set off from Earth—the day the last Humans left their inhospitable homeworld. The holiday had originated as an Exodan custom, but Remembrance Day had quickly gained popularity in both the Solar Republic and the extrasolar colonies.
“Huh. Well, if this band hates the establishment that much, then I doubt they’ll care about me making up my own words. They can’t oppress me with their ‘correct lyrics.’ Fuck the system.”
“So we travel to one end—whoosh—and all the people seeing us fly by are like, oh my stars, look at that totally amazing ship, what genius tech patched together such a thing, and I’m like, oh, that’s me, Kizzy Shao, you can all name your babies after me—whooosh—and then we get to our start point.”
“It’s beautiful,” Sissix said. She sounded like she meant it. She pointed at the flower and turned her head to her companions. “Your genitals look kind of like this, right?”
“Listen, when you’re talking about lions, it doesn’t matter if they’re literally everywhere,” Kizzy said. “Knowing there are a few lions that might be around is bad enough.”
“Yes, awesome, go, Sissix,” Kizzy said. “But I am now starving. What sounds good? Noodles? Skewers? Ice cream? We’re grown-ups, we can have ice cream for lunch if we want.”
The idea that a loss of potential was somehow worse than a loss of achievement and knowledge was something she had never been able to wrap her brain around.
“Do you know why Human modders give themselves weird names?” She shook her head. “It’s a really old practice, goes back to pre-Collapse computer networks. We’re talking old tech here. People would choose names for themselves that they only used within a network. Sometimes that name became so much a part of who they were that even their friends out in the real world started using it. For some folks, those names became their whole identity. Their true identity, even. Now, modders, modders don’t care about anything as much as individual freedom. They say that nobody can define you but you.
Rosemary’s hand went to her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said. Such a quintessentially Human thing, to express sorrow through apology.
The memories reached out to Dr. Chef, trying to pull him away from his safe observation point. They tugged, begging for him to give in. But he would not. He was not a prisoner of those memories. He was their warden.
“We cannot blame ourselves for the wars our parents start. Sometimes the very best thing we can do is walk away.”
People can do terrible things when they feel safe and powerful. Your father had probably gotten his way for so long that he thought he was untouchable, and that is a dangerous way for a person to feel.
The truth is, Rosemary, that you are capable of anything. Good or bad. You always have been, and you always will be. Given the right push, you, too, could do horrible things. That darkness exists within all of us.
Pei blinked her weird eyelids sideways. “This isn’t that Human thing where you pretend not to be scared, is it?”
Rosemary yelped. Ashby burst out laughing. Sissix darted forward, pulling Vush’s hands back. “Vush, Human women don’t like it when people they don’t know touch them there.”
The people we remember are the ones who decided how our maps should be drawn. Nobody remembers who built the roads.”
