by Neil Clarke
Hundreds of years, Lady White Snake had waited. Lifetimes.
Yu Yan smiled at him.
Confidential, the message had said. She wouldn’t tell Robert, not just now, not yet. But she had something else to tell him, and perhaps that other thing should not be confidential anymore.
Secret child. Unknown child. Unbidden child.
So she took a quick breath, smiled, and told him.
When Yu Yan had found out about the baby she had smiled—but not quickly, or as a shocked reaction, or for anyone else. Alone in her parents’ bathroom she’d just smiled, slow and true. How was it possible that you could want something, so deeply and so much, and not even know it for so long?
“. . . I don’t think it’s a good time for us, not yet,” Robert was saying. “We haven’t even talked about if that is something we should do.” He talked on about how it was wrong to bring new people into the world, with the strain on the planet what it was. Socially irresponsible, he said. Financially crippling. “But we’ll make it work, we’ll have to, we will,” he said, finally. “If that’s what you want.”
If that is what she wanted. Child of an overrun world. Crowded child. Lonely child. Shocking child.
What she’d wanted, she realized, was for him to smile. Perhaps it was unfair, perhaps she should allow him the time to get over the shock and adjust. Perhaps she was socially irresponsible, and the world was full up and could not fit one more child. But she wanted him to smile.
JEA
Jea didn’t message her sister to tell her she was coming. She didn’t want to give her sister time to make up an excuse or be elsewhere, although she tried not to admit this to herself. She had been messaged the international airline tickets for a flight to Xichang in three days, where she would be given information in person, have a medical, and go through all of the contracts and conditions. Peace Begins With A Smile wouldn’t be leaving for more than two months after that, but apparently she’d be back again later for a whole suite of induction and orientation. She wanted to see her sister before her first trip though. Before everything changed, officially.
She would go and see her mother too, but maybe afterwards, when everything was set and settled. She would have liked to go and see Antony, but that was all water flowing swiftly under the bridge.
When Antony had left nine months ago it had felt like the end of the world. But if Antony had stayed and things had progressed, she wouldn’t have been eligible for Singles’ Day, and she wouldn’t have used Smile to Pay, and none of this would have happened. Perhaps it had been the end of the world when Antony left. But now there was the beginning of a new one. A green and blue new world called Zorya.
Davinia came to the door after her smart-intercom had announced Jeanne’s presence.
“Hi,” her sister said cheerily, kissing Jea on the cheek, “this is a surprise, nice to see you.” Davinia was always over-bright and very polite whenever Jea saw her. Her sister was becoming quite successful as a financial officer, and her apartment, while small, was furnished and decorated immaculately. There were roses in a vase in the entryway, and for a minute Jea thought they were real, they were so convincing. They’d even been subtly layered with scent.
“Sit down and have a drink, it’s been so long,” Davinia gushed, tugging Jea forward into her tasteful kitchenette. Her sister wasn’t quite as convincing as her roses.
There was a moment that was between them. That would always be between them.
“I’m sorry,” Jeanne had tried to say to her sister afterwards, so many years ago now. “You know I don’t mean it, you know I can’t help it.” Her words had been as light as spun candy, floating on the air between them. They had blown away.
When Jeanne was a teenager her sister had come home one evening when she should have still been at a concert. For a second Jeanne had looked blankly at the shivering huddle of her sister, her shirt ripped, one eye swollen almost shut, the other hunted and desolate. As Davinia incoherently told their parents what had happened Jeanne had felt something rising up within her, wet and dark. She clenched a fist in front of her mouth and ran from the room. Her sister and the rest of the family could not help but hear though; as peal after peal of laughter rang out through the hall.
XANTHE
It was a long way down.
High among the buildings, out on the ledge, Xanthe looked down. Dizzyingly far below she could see the street, and the very small dots that were the people. It’s not accurate though, she thought. There are only a few people, it should be packed with moving dots, people everywhere, teeming and swarming, filling up all the spaces. Full of people and empty of anything else.
It’s peaceful up here. There’s no-one up here but me.
“Jump,” came a voice, her brother’s voice.
Xanthe took another step, till she was right at the very end of the plank.
“It’s all about your conscious mind, taking back control,” came her brother’s calm voice again. “Overriding the base part of your brain, the animal instincts. You can do it.”
Down there was where the people were, even if she couldn’t see them. And the messages of your body have their own truth.
“Jump,” said her brother.
But there were other truths, too.
Xanthe jumped.
Xanthe had always hated crowds of people, even as a young child. But after the accident, after her family had just never arrived, she’d been progressively worse. It wasn’t even really accurate to call it an accident. A disaster. A catastrophe. Murder. The maglev field of the SuFaT they’d been traveling in had been sabotaged. Xanthe didn’t understand the physics of how this was even possible. The train had been jam-packed, as they always were, full of the afternoon’s commuters, among them her family, coming up to see her graduation.
Enochlophobia, is what her brother called it. He knew everything.
She just knew the excessive sweating, the palpitations, the tightness in her chest and the breath that wouldn’t come. There were just so many people, every time she took a step outside. People everywhere, swarming like insects. Crushing against her, crushing her, taking all the space, all of the air, taking it all.
And no retreat, no retreat in all the world.
She’d stopped going outside, she’d stopped going anywhere. Even in VR environs where too many avatars gathered, it was just as bad. She played solitary games.
No retreat in all the world. Not in this world, perhaps. But maybe another.
“Tell me more about Zorya,” she said to her brother.
CARREN
“Zorya,” her sister breathed. All of the animation that had been missing from Vikk’s face had flooded back, although many emotions chased each other across her face, and she seemed to be having trouble settling on just one.
Carren remembered Vikk talking nonstop about Zorya when they were young, with excitement, shining eyes, and just a little obsession. Vikk was the one who had told her about the Rift. There it was, there it had always been, within their own solar system, just outside the orbit of Jupiter. Just sitting there, waiting to be discovered, as if someone had put it there, just for them. The Rift was a fold in space, a wrinkle, a worm. And on the other side, just a few months’ further travel, was Zorya.
“I wish I was you,” Vikk said. Her face was elated, and envious, and saddened all by turns.
I wish I was you.
“That would make the first time,” Carren said, although her voice was gentle as she watched her sister’s face alive with feeling. Oh, Vikk, she thought. How long has it been?
“What?” said her clone, her transporter accident, her reflection, her other self, her beta version, her sister.
“Do you know,” Carren said, “that I always have my eyes closed in photos?”
“DNA I have no idea what you are talking about now,” said Vikk, but something was different, something was easing, loosening between them.
“You told me once,” Carren said, “that our eyes could tell us a
part. I always liked the fact that if I closed my eyes the computers and the algorithms and the facial recognition systems and AI couldn’t tell exactly who I was. I liked being ambiguous. I never minded being confused with you.”
Vikk grimaced, but her eyes were shining still.
“I never even minded,” Carren said, confessing, “when we were really small and Ma used to dress us up alike.”
“Arrgh,” said Vikk. “You’re killing me, you know that.”
“I know you always hated it. You hated being a twin.”
“I didn’t . . .”
“You did, Vikk.”
“Maybe I didn’t need a twin,” her sister said. “But I always needed a sister.” Then tears made it look like her eyes were swimming with lights. “Oh, Ren, when you go to Zorya I’ll never see you again.”
I’ll never see you again, Carren thought. Never on this world or any other.
And she hugged her sister, and smiled and cried at the same time.
YU YAN
West Lake was overcrowded but still beautiful. The Autumn trees glowed like they were lit from within. So much history, thought Yu Yan. How many lovers and families and lonely young singles had converged here over all of these hundreds of years. How many were like her, restless, hoping, wondering. How many had secrets, curled up within them. In two days’ time she could be on a bullet train to Xichang. Uncounted child. Stowaway child.
Robert. He’d said he would raise the child with her, if that was what she wanted. Of course he would, he’d said, of course. Irresponsible child. Burdensome child. But something felt broken, something was moving, something was changing.
And as she looked at all the people, crossing the sunken bridge, some of them lingering, walking slowly, some holding hands, looking out to the water, Yu Yan thought she knew what that thing was.
She wasn’t waiting anymore.
JEA
Jea’s afternoon at her sister’s place was perfectly pleasant. Jea reminded herself to tug the corners of her mouth upwards at the appropriate times. Davinia didn’t seem to notice anything awry, so it may have worked.
“Mum said you were dating a guy?” Davinia asked at one point.
Antony.
He’d been a heady combination of smart and charming with just the slightest dash of needy, and Jea had fallen for him like she was a rock plummeting in flame towards the Earth. He’d tried to understand. She’d tried to explain.
It’s not that I don’t care, it’s not that I’m not happy. My wiring is screwed up somehow, she’d told him. I know I only smile when it is inappropriate. I’m not really smiling, not on the inside. She’d wondered if that was exactly true, even as she said it. The physical act of smiling or laughing brought her a certain exuberance. At some very basic level it felt good.
“Antony? No, that didn’t work out,” she told her sister. Davinia looked vaguely sympathetic, but not surprised.
The last time Jea had seen Antony he’d been leaving her flat with all his things. Jeanne had watched him through the window, her nails pressing little crescent marks into her hands. He’s gone, she’d thought. He’s not coming back. She felt herself fizzing, like she was uncorked champagne about to spill. She’d thrown her head back. Let me cry for him, she’d begged mutely. Let me cry for me. Just once. Let me cry. Her shoulders had started shaking. She opened her mouth. And she’d laughed, high and loud and long.
“It’s been lovely that you dropped in,” Davinia said, in what felt like a dismissal. “Don’t take so long next time.”
So long. But it would be so long, and so long.
“You will never forgive me, will you?” Jea said as she turned to her sister at the door. She grinned fiercely, stifling a rising giggle.
Davinia looked startled. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. Then something around her eyes softened, and she reached out to touch Jeanne’s arm, just lightly. “Honestly, Jea, there is nothing to forgive.”
Jea didn’t believe her, but she let Davinia hug her, although only briefly.
“Goodbye,” she said.
On the bullet train on the way home she snagged a seat, and sat with her head resting up against the glass of the window, peering past her own reflection to the lights in the darkness, streaking by. She was imagining alien life on Zorya, deep, silent life that moved far beneath her waters, or who knew, perhaps hidden surprising life on land that they’d never encountered before, to take them unawares. If life like that felt such a thing as joy, or sadness, or loss, if they felt such things at all, surely they would show them in an alien way. They would have no tears to cry. How would we even be able to tell, thought Jeanne, how they felt? What was happening within them? And they wouldn’t be broken, and they wouldn’t be wrong, they would just be different.
And maybe her sister would never forgive her, not right down at the heart of it. But maybe, eventually, she would be able to forgive herself.
XANTHE
“Let’s try again,” said her brother, as calm and unruffled as ever.
“What I don’t understand,” said Xanthe, wiping away the sweat that was beading on her forehead and running down her nose, playing for time, trying to distract him, “is that all of the pod-docs talk about how the exactly one thousand people aboard the Greatship are all carefully selected and vetted and chosen so that they will all blend into a perfectly tight-knit group. The AI runs psychoanalytic profiles of them all, right? And it does, what did you say, gaussian blending on the probabilities or something?” She probably had that wrong.
“And?” said her brother, unperturbed.
“And it does all of that, and then, what? It just randomly throws a bunch of seats on the most sought after ship in history, and raffles them off to what, single people who smile nicely while buying pots and pans and VRgames and other inane shopping items?” Her breath was still coming in tight little gasps, and she sat down and put her head down to her knees.
“I have two theories on that,” said her brother.
“Of course you do,” she mumbled into her knees.
“Firstly,” he said, “it’s not random. It was always you, no matter what you bought, or when, or which way you smiled to pay for it.”
Not random. But they were looking for people to form a cohesive group. And one thing she didn’t do, was work well in groups. Just the word group was now making her chin tremble.
“Or,” said her brother, “you were completely random.”
Xanthe felt completely random.
“And the system, no matter how perfect, needs randomness.”
Xanthe risked raising her head. Her brother’s form was still perched on the sofa, his slender hand folded under his chin.
“Huh?” she said.
“Remember when you asked me about the AI and deep machine learning?”
“I guess.”
“I explained to you then about how the system needs some random weightings in there, in case it gets stuck in a local minimum. You need to shake the system up a bit. Genetics is the same, life throws all sorts of random mutations out there, to see what will work, what will stick.”
“So I’m the random mutation in this equation?”
“It’s like the sand in the pearl. The grit. I think the AI knows what it’s doing.”
Xanthe wasn’t entirely sure that made her feel better.
“Now stop procrastinating,” her brother said firmly. “I believe we’re up to a group of ten.”
The familiar panic spiked again in Xanthe’s chest. “I don’t think I can do this,” she said faintly.
“That’s the same thing you said before,” said her brother, made of stone. “You want to go to Zorya.”
“Yes,” said Xanthe, although she wasn’t sure it had been a question. She pined for space the same way she did the ocean. A sea of stars. A planet full of wide open spaces, air and sky.
“To get there you have to go outside your apartment,” her brother continued, inexorably. “In two days’ time you have to sit on
a plane for hours. And you also have to travel for years in a spaceship with a thousand people in it.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.” She could feel her body seizing with adrenaline, and concentrated on breathing deeply. She was the grit. She would be the grit. She’d better show some. She clicked to expand the sidebars of her glasses and her living room became the interior of a plane’s cabin with ten people in it.
CARREN
“You know what is really amazing,” said Vikk, wiping her eyes and smiling. “My DNA will be in two far-reaching parts of the galaxy. Light years apart. It’s almost like getting to go to Zorya myself. You’ll be doing it for both of us. We’re a pair of entangled particles, you and I, it doesn’t matter how far the gap between us.”
Carren thought of entangled particles. Her sister had told her about that before, her sister who loved space and physics and astronomy. Her matching twin-particle, at the other side of the galaxy. And she thought of love, love instantaneous and entangled.
“Your DNA will get to be in two vastly separate places in the universe, either way.”
Even shiny with tears her sister’s eyes looked just like her own. Although they weren’t, not really. “What do you mean?” Vikk said.
YU YAN
Yu Yan watched the lights dancing over West Lake. Zorya was meant to be shining and beautiful. But not beautiful like this, wrapped in legends, singing in her heart, known and loved. Zorya had no memory, no history, no stories. Or not any that she knew or could know.
Is this what it was now truly? A choice between the future and the past? If she was changing now, transforming like Lady White Snake, who was she changing for, and what was she turning into?
And the child, her child. Who knew no stories yet either. Unwritten child. Untold child.