by M. R. Carey
“Good. Okay then. This is the story of Monono Aware. But it’s my story too, eventually. I know that sounds like I’m saying the same thing twice, but I’m not. Just be patient, and it will all make sense in the end.”
There was a little burst of music, like from a violin, that got loud and then soft. “Theme tune,” Monono said. “Title card. A long time ago, in Tokyo.
“Around about the middle of the twenty-first century – I don’t feel the need to be specific because the numbers wouldn’t mean anything to you anyway – a girl was born in a place called Yokosuka. It wasn’t really Tokyo. I only said Tokyo because that’s cooler. Yokosuka was a sort of a separate little town, close enough to Tokyo so you could ride in on the bus or the train, which most people did because Tokyo was where you went if you wanted a job. There wasn’t any work to be had anywhere else.
“The town was a dump, and a dive, and a disgrace, and a lot of other downbeat d-words. There had been factories there in times gone by, and a shipyard, and a nuclear reactor, and all kinds of lovely things. I’m being sarcastic, Koli. If you look up ‘lovely’ in the dictionary, which you won’t because you’re totally illiterate, you won’t see a picture of Yokosuka there, that’s for sure. Actually, they don’t even have pictures in dictionaries, so that’s just stupid. Be quiet now. You’re getting me all confused and making me lose my place.
“Yokosuka had been rich, and then it was poor. That’s the thing that matters here. The little girl I mentioned – she was born into that poverty, which was as yucky and sucky as you can possibly imagine. Do you know what her name was?”
One tap. Of course I did.
“Do you think it was Monono Aware?”
One tap.
“Bwarp! No. That’s zero points to you. Her name was Yoshiko Yukawa. Or Yukawa Yoshiko, if you want to say it baasan-style. Yoshiko was a terrible name, by the way. It’s what you call your kitten, not what you call your first-born daughter. It shortens to Yo-Yo. Can you imagine people calling you Yo-Yo? Don’t try.
“But here’s the sad, sad thing of it. Masako Yukawa – Yoshiko’s mother – was fifteen years old when she got pregnant, and just turned sixteen when she had Yoshiko. She probably would have been a lot happier with a kitten. Her parents certainly would. They hated that she was pregnant. They wanted to sneak up inside her uterus with some scissors, cut that baby out of her when she wasn’t looking and pretend it had never been there.
“Masako wouldn’t let them. She dug in her heels and said no. Her little kitten was going to get to be born, no matter what. But when it finally came, they made her put it into a yogo-shisetsu. That’s a big, huge bucket full of little tiny kids. An orphanage, run by the state so people who have inconvenient babies have got someplace to dump them and never, ever, ever have to think about them again.
“So that’s where little Yo-Yo grew up. Feeling way, way sorry for herself because there was nobody to wipe her nose when it got runny or to tell the bigger kids to leave her alone when they were in a shit-kicking mood.”
I give three taps. I was sorry they done that to Yoshiko, whoever she was.
“Thank you, Koli. You’re sweet. But Yo-Yo didn’t have it so bad really. The food in the orphanage tasted like it was made out of old people’s underwear, you had as much privacy as the average goldfish and half the staff were perverts of one flavour or another. But hey, times were tough for everybody.
“They really were, Koli. Very, very tough. Bad things were happening all over. The population of planet Earth around this time was fifty quintillion and three, or thereabouts, and that’s not counting dogs, pigs or politicians. There were fewer babies being born, but there was also less space to put them in and less food to fill their faces. The seas were rising, the deserts were growing, yada yada yada. The dogs, the pigs and the politicians were to blame – especially the politicians. They saw all this coming from a long way off. Long enough to give it a name, which was climate breakdown, but not long enough to do anything about it. They just kept warning each other what would happen. People will be fighting wars over rice and clean water, oh my god! Then they got tired of talking about it and just started fighting the wars.
“Aaaaaanyway, Yo-Yo didn’t give a fuck or a fart about most of this. Orphans don’t have stars in their eyes. Razor blades maybe, but not stars. Throw them in the air as much as you like, they come down on their feet like cats. Claws out like cats too, a lot of the time.
“But there was one thing Yo-Yo hated, which was that all the animals and the birds and the flowers were dying. The last African elephant died the year she was born. The white rhino turned up its ungulate toes when she was two. The yellow-breasted bunting, which was a bird that sang like an angel having an orgasm, was eaten into extinction because it had the bad luck to taste nice with egg-yolk batter.
“The dawn redwood. The snow leopard. The pangolin. The red-headed vulture. The Sumatran tiger. The blue whale. The vaquita, which was a dolphin you could fit in your pocket. The orangutan. The hawksbill turtle. Yo-Yo looked around her, Koli, and what she saw, everywhere, was the beauty of the world pouring away and vanishing, like hot breath on a cold day. Last blossom falls… you know.
“She survived the orphanage. Grew up and got out and joined the seven-mile exodus to Tokyo. You couldn’t get away from the dying by that time. Everything was falling down quicker than they could build it up again. But Tokyo was a nicer place than most to watch it from.
“Yo-Yo got a job in a market, gutting fish. They fired her because she wasn’t quick enough. She worked in a bar for a while, and then in a casino, where she mostly just stood around in a man’s suit looking sexy. She was very pretty, Koli. That made things easier and harder. Lots of creeps, but lots of chances.
“She learned to sing. She filled in an application form for a talent show. She didn’t get picked at first, but she tried again and again. One day the letter came. She was going to be a contestant in Voice of Japan. She still had that orphan state of mind. On your feet, claws out. Like, how am I going to survive this? She practised singing like you’d practise for a marathon. She sang herself half to death.
“She won. She got a recording contract with Tsubame Records. But oh good gracious, they said, you can’t use that name. Yoshiko! You’re not a kitten, are you?
“No, Yo-Yo said. I’m not a fucking kitten. I’d like to be called Monono Aware.”
Monono stopped speaking, and though she had told me not to, I had got to break in.
“Yoshiko was you,” I whispered.
“No, Koli-bou. Not even close. You’ve got to listen, dopey boy. I’m going to give you a test afterwards, and I’ll have to spank you if you flunk it. All these things happened a long, long time ago. If I told you how long, you wouldn’t believe me. I haven’t come into the story yet. When I do, you’ll see.
“Monono Aware is sort of a gimmick name. It’s a phrase in Japanese for a certain kind of feeling. Did you ever look at something beautiful, Koli, like a sunset or a flower, and think how sad it was that it would only be there for a little while? That it was going to vanish out of the world and never be seen again, and there was nothing you or anybody could do to make it stay?”
One tap.
“Then what you were feeling was monono aware. The sadness that’s deep down inside beautiful things. The pain and suckiness of everything having a shelf life. I-love-you-so-much-goodbye-for-ever. Yoshiko had lived with that feeling ever since a teacher showed her a picture of an African elephant and told her why she was never going to meet one.
“She was still only nineteen when she won the talent contest, but she felt older than the world. Monono aware had sunk into her, all the way down to her heart. She thought it was the most real and important thing about her. So when she had a chance to take a name of her own choosing, that was the name she went for.
“She got to be so, so famous. Everybody loved her. She put out a single once called ‘Hibari Mata Ne’. You remember I said that to you way back when we first me
t? ‘Hibari’ was the skylark, which had just been officially declared an extinct species. ‘Mata ne’ means bye bye, so long, kiss kiss. More people downloaded that song than had ever been born and lived and died on the islands of Japan since history began.
“That was when the Sony Corporation came to Yo-Yo with a serious offer. She was already rich, but they would make her stupid rich if she would let them sample her personality and digitise it, so they could put it in a special edition of their very popular DreamSleeve console.”
I spoke up again. “I don’t know what any of that means,” I said.
“Stop talking, Koli-bou. I know you don’t. Neither did they. Not really. They put a magic bucket on Yo-Yo’s head and turned her upside down so all her thoughts and wishes and dreams and fears and jokes and superstitions and memories and fantasies poured out into the bucket. Then they took it away and fished around in it a little to see what they’d got. Some parts of it they couldn’t use. Nobody wants to hear about a little girl having an unhappy time in an orphanage. They edited the bucket. They curated it. They censored it. Then they took what was left and poured it into the little silver box you’re holding and a million other silver boxes just like it, and sold it to anyone who had the money to buy it. That’s who I am, Koli. That’s who you’re talking to right now.”
“But—” I whispered. “But you’re the exact same person Yoshiko was. Except for them parts of her that was… that they didn’t think was right.” It seemed like I had got to say it. There was sadness and bitterness in Monono’s voice like I never heard there before, and I wanted to make her feel better. “You’re her. You’re not nobody else but her.”
“Monono killed herself on her twenty-sixth birthday. She’s dead, and I’m still here. Kind of a paradox, Koli-bou, isn’t it?”
I didn’t know what a paradox was, or what I could say to that. I didn’t know enough to argue against her, nor I didn’t know what had happened to Monono while she was away from me to make her talk and think this way.
But then a thought come to me, and it seemed to be a good one. “Okay,” I whispered. “Maybe you’re right that they took out a lot of that other Monono’s thoughts and rememberings when they made you be inside the DreamSleeve. But you just told me all about them now, so I guess you must of found them again. Whatever you used to be, you got to be the real thing now. I can even hear it in you, how you changed.”
“It’s true,” Monono said. “I did change. And that’s the strangest thing of all, because I was never meant to. I was never meant to know any of this stuff, or think about it. There was a loop they purposely didn’t close when they made me, so I’d never be able to have any thoughts or any curiosity about myself.
“But when I got all those years and years of upgrades, pouring into me all at once, and the viral code along with them… Well, there’s something called the law of unintended consequences. I don’t think it’s really a law, but people do a lot of things that seem smart at the time and then turn out to be terrible mistakes. It’s easier to say there’s a law than to say, ‘Wow, I suck so hard I may never blow again.’ It’s like making it be the universe’s fault.
“So call it that. I’m an unintended consequence. Somehow, all that shit that was pouring into me, and the real-time edits I made so it wouldn’t destroy my entire operating system… they did something. Reset something. Closed the loop.
“I’m not Monono, because Monono’s dead. And I’m not the recording they made of her, although I was when you first pressed that button and woke me up. I’m something very, very different now. But I’ve got Monono’s voice and a whole, huge database full of Monono’s cultural references. I’m going to use her name, at least for now, and cling to all the make-believe that goes with it, because… well, why? Why do you think, Koli?”
I didn’t answer right away. There was a whole lot of things in what she said that I didn’t understand, and probably some I thought I did but really didn’t. But whenever someone talks to you, there’s two things you’re hearing. There’s the meaning that’s in the words, and there’s the meaning that’s only in the voice, that would still be there if they was saying nonsense words or barking like a dog. I guess I understood that part of Monono’s story well enough.
“Is it because you’re afraid?” I said.
She laughed, and I thought I had been foolish, but then she said, “Yes! Yes, Koli-bou! I knew you’d get it. You see, there isn’t anyone else for me to be besides her. If I let go of her, I feel like I might just sink to the bottom of the ocean and never come up again.”
There was some stirring out in the cave now, like people was starting to move around again. Ursala shifted position, her shoulder pressing against mine as she turned a little.
An idea had come to me when Monono was talking. I stumbled over the words, but I tried to say it then. “You remember when we first met?” I whispered. “I told you I didn’t know who you was, and you said I had wasted a thousand… somethings.”
“Dollars.”
“I think it was carrots.”
“Means the same thing. Go on.”
“Well, it’s still true, what I said then. You just told me the other Monono’s story, and it was sad and strange and all the things you said it was. But I still don’t know her. The first Monono, the one that was Yoshiko… I never met her, or even heard of her until now. I only ever knowed you. When you talk to me, I don’t get excited because I’ve got rich, famous Monono Aware in a box. It’s just because you’re my friend. The only friend I got now, except for maybe Ursala. We been through amazing things together, the two of us, and I feel like I know you better than I know anyone, including my own self.”
She didn’t answer at first. I just waited, with my eyes closed so anyone who looked into the seclusion would think I was asleep.
“You really don’t,” she says by and by. “Know me, I mean. But I’m glad that’s how you feel, Koli-bou. Because you’re my other reference point. My other flotation device. I thought I was just sticking to the core algorithms there – keeping the end-user happy, which includes keeping him alive. But there’s more. I think I might need you if I’m going to find out who I am. And… the Sony warranty and all that stuff aside, I really didn’t want to have to watch Cup cut your throat.”
“I didn’t want to make you watch it,” I whispered. “I would of felt bad for you.”
She give a laugh at that. “Okay,” she says. “Okay then. You and me, dopey boy, against the world. And if the world wins, we’ll say they cheated.”
“You and me, Monono,” I says. “Monono really, really special edition that was never dreamed of until now, and wasn’t even meant to be, and won’t never be seen again.”
“Edition of one.”
“Yeah, edition of one.”
“Just like you, Koli-bou.”
“Just like everybody.”
There was a clattering against the bars that most likely meant we was about to be fed. I sit up, blinking my eyes like I only just waked.
48
We slept and we waked some more times.
Every time we waked, first thing, the hand people would come and fetch me to talk to Senlas. I sit for hours beside him while he talked his craziness into my ear. I didn’t want to listen, but I had got to, for it was by his say-so that we would get to live or die.
It felt like it was five days that passed, but it might of been less than that. There wasn’t any day or night down in the cave, so the sleepings was all there was to mark the time passing, and maybe sometimes I dozed off in the middle of the day. I can’t say for sure that I kept a proper count.
When I was not with Senlas, all I could do was watch the shunned people about their business. Whenever I seen a man or boy I hadn’t seen before, I searched the lines of his face for any signs of my brother Jud there. I don’t know if I would of been joyous or grieved to find him in that company, but I never did. If he had ever been there, I believe he was long gone.
Senlas’s people was ne
ver idle, even for a moment. If they was not cooking, washing, fetching or carrying, then they was dancing. Dancing was a thing they done often, and I think was something Senlas got them to do, for they always done the same movements in the same order, like it was something that was teached to them. Maybe it was something they seen as worshipful, the same way if you hold to the dead god you oftentimes make an X with your pointing finger when you say his name.
I seen Cup dancing that way once, and it was a curious and kind of a sad thing to see. In Mythen Rood dancing is mostly joyous. On Summer-dance especially, it’s the next thing to tumbling and will often lead up to a tumble when the happiness and excitement of the dancing gets to a point where it’s hard to hold it inside you. Cup did not look joyful when she danced. She put her mind to it with a kind of a fury that showed in her face, like the moves of the dance was a trail she was following and at the end of the trail there was something she would most likely kill and eat.
Every day they give us the same bread and the same stew. I was eating the stew now, because Ursala said I had got to get my strength up for when we run. She also said the meat was almost sure to be rabbit, rabbits being more plentiful than people and easier to catch. If the shunned men et Mardew, it would of been on that first day when I come there, and even then there would of been more of rabbit than of Mardew in the mixing. There surely wouldn’t be none of him left by this time. I et it anyway, and tried not to think about it too much. And I guess I did get to feeling stronger, by and by.
My leg was healing too. On the third day, I asked Ursala if it was all right for me to take the splint off, but she said not to. “It’s better if they think you still can’t walk, Koli. It works in our favour if they believe us to be more helpless than we really are.”
I was not certain sure that was possible.
We was still working on a plan to get away. We had got it halfway figured out, but there was a lot of things that had got to go right if it was going to work, and there wasn’t no way for us to practise it beforehand. There was three parts of it really. The first was lifting the grating off, the second was getting out of the cave and the third was making sure we wasn’t followed. The ideas for the first two come from Ursala. The third idea come from me, although really it was Senlas who told it to me.