“Lily! What is wr—I see. Dorina!” Ai stood up.
The coolness of her desk against her left cheek made Lily’s eyes flutter, then open. She slowly sat up, the headache quickly receding as she did. What in the world did I just dream?
“Hey! Friend Lily! Better now?” Lily looked at her computer screen. Ai’s overly cute rendered image peered out at her, happy and relieved.
“That... was no dream, was it?” She asked slowly. “Was it, friend Ai?”
Ai’s image vigorously shook her head. “Nope, nope! I didn’t mean for you to get hurt: we didn’t know that our home would stress you like that. We’ll fix it so you can come back soon!”
Although she was able to keep her face impassive, Lily’s mind spun with questions. From the dusk outside, four chimes told her she’d work to do. “Ai, I really don’t understand what happened just now, but thank you for inviting me to your home. Please know that you’re welcome in my home at any time!”
For just a moment Lily saw, for only the second time, Ai’s stillness and blank look. A moment later, Ai’s image leapt into the air.
“Hurray! See you later!”
-connection lost-
Lily walked out of her building towards the dining hall. Some yells and calls from behind the dorm told her some of the kids were likely playing soccer. She just hoped they’d finished their homework, first. She made a mental note to check on that at dinner.
Up three steps into the dining hall, she noted that the place settings were already out. Maggie sat at one of the six tables, knitting, apparently. She waved as Lily came in. Walking towards the kitchen, she noted Karl hunched over his tablet, reading.
“’Evening, Karl,” Lily said in passing. He mumbled in reply, then: “What the heck...!”
“Hey, you! Uhh... Karl!” Lily was surprised to hear Ai’s voice. “Turn me around so I can see Lily!”
Lily turned to see Karl had pushed his chair away from the table, looking at his tablet in shock. He looked up at Lily.
“M... Miss Barrett?” He stuttered. “Do you know what’s going on...?”
“I think I do. May I?” As she gestured at the tablet, Karl nodded. Lily picked it up.
“There you are!” Ai beamed. “I wanted to tell you something and you forgot to turn your phone back on, so-” Lily cut her off.
“Ai. Here, where I live, we don’t just take other’s things. If you had to reach me, you could have asked Karl if he would pass on a message.” Ai’s face fell as she tried to look contrite. Lily again wondered if she’d pre-programmed images like that, or if she just did it on the fly.
“I’m sorry,” Ai said. “I’ll be older now.” Lily tapped the screen where Ai’s nose was.
“Better. We’ll talk after work.” She handed the device back to Karl. “Sorry about that.”
The fifteen year old took it back. “No problem, I... huh, she’s still here?”
“Hi, Karl! I’m Ai, Lily’s friend! Good to meet you!” She held up what looked like file folders and papers. “Wow, you’ve lots of stuff here... books, notes... hey, poems! Did you write this? ‘The Woman I Lo—‘” With a cry, Karl held down the power tab as he fled the room.
Lily shook her head. Karl was one of the quieter ones, but also one of her best karate students. If Ai wanted to meddle in his life, he’d better get ready for some changes.... Before she forgot again, she turned her phone back on.
In the kitchen was Emily again, assisted by Ken. He was prepping salads while she stood guard over the oven.
“What tonight?” Lily asked.
“Meatloaf,” Emily replied softly. “I’m trying to think of ways to stretch out the meat you got for us as long as possible.” Lily touched her shoulder.
“Thank you, Emily,” she said. “We all appreciate how hard you work for us!”
This was punctuated by a loud, “Wha-hoo! Let’s eat!”
Essaying a rare smile, Emily said, “All of you? Even Erik?”
Lily smiled back. “Well...most of us!” She made her way back to the dining hall. By this point, most of the kids had arrived. Karl was back as well, but when she caught his eye, he turned bright red and looked away. I wonder what that’s about?
“Erik!” She called. “If you’ve that much energy, go help them bring the food in!”
“Awww...!” The lanky pre-teen started to protest, but he caught the fire in Lily’s eye. He went. It’d not been long after she’d started living and working there that the kids realized her standing order of “You don’t work; you don’t eat” was not an idle threat.
Some minutes later, food out and all sitting, they began: “Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts...” Lily spoke along with the others, but with her eyes down. It’s not as if I don’t believe; I do. There’s just been so much that makes me doubt....
“Itadakimasu!” About half the children cried out. What had been a tradition in Lily’s family she’d accidentally started doing at St. Edwards. Erik, of course, had been the first to copy her, out of mockery. Lily had neither encouraged nor forbad it, so it slowly spread. Traditions are odd things, she thought, eating.
Dark now, Lily checked the doors of the kitchen and dining room before walking over to the front gate. Crime was negligible these days, but that didn’t mean you got stupid. Attacking or stealing from an orphanage would lead to a quick hanging here, but there were always crazies. However, Lily, like Mr. and Mrs. Fitzhugh, never went about unarmed. True to its frontier heritage, people took seriously that ‘an armed society is a polite society.’
She closed and locked the Office’s front door and proceeded upstairs. No messages, so she went into her bedroom and flopped onto her small bed. Something of a roller coaster of a day, she thought. Roller coasters. These kids don’t know what those are outside of pictures and videos. I wonder when the economy will’ve recovered enough to... a chime from her phone.
Still in the dark she pulled it out of her pants pocket. Ai, of course. ‘What a great day! Let’s another one tomorrow! Where’s the world going?’ At Ai’s question, Lily’s breath caught. The refrain of a song her mother and father used to sing. In Japan, and even before, in Ohio. Could Ai know that? But if not, what did she mean by it?
Lily changed clothes for bed and brushed her teeth. In her mind’s eye, she thought back to her childhood, before things all went so wrong. Sure, they were better now... but the intervening years.... She plugged her phone in to charge overnight, and sent a reply to her friend: ‘Won’t somebody tell me? Are we all one?’ Let her puzzle that one out.
six years prior
“I’m back.” Lily spoke by habit. There was never anyone at their tiny flat in the city of Hamamatsu, halfway between Tokyo and Osaka. Her mom was always at the Corning factory and her dad... well....
“Bark, bark!” Her little wauzer-dog, Tippy, came running. At least someone was happy to see her!
“Tippy! Yes, yes, stop biting...let’s go outside so you can pee.”
Taking Tippy outside on his leash, Lily thought about the confusion of the past few months. My three months in Okinawa turned into six, then, instead of going home to the US, we ended up here. She vaguely understood that something bad had happened back there, but she just couldn’t quite bring herself to care. From friends she had from her past job, mom was able to get on at the Corning Glass factory, and her dad... well, she was never very sure what her dad was doing.
She'd even been able to resume school in the spring, just two months ago. That had worried her: an ethnic Chinese girl who's an American citizen, and glasses, too; she had fretted that she'd be ignored or bullied, but after a slightly rough start, things there had settled down as well.
The little white dog seemed pleased to have successfully re-marked his local territory, so she took him back inside. Compared to their big house back in Ohio, this two-bedroom apartment sure wasn't much, but her parents had tried to explain the money situation to her.
With a glance at the clock, she knew her folks would be h
ome in about an hour. As her homework was light, she thought to go ahead and get things ready for dinner. Each time she would get near the fridge Tippy would wag furiously, spoiled little dog that he was.
"Now, now," Lily said, "We'll see if there's anything left after dinner. Okay, Tippy-whip?" A yawn with a small whine was his only response.
Still setting some vegetables out, she heard the front door open. The dog started yapping happily. Her father was home.
"Daddy! Welcome back," she called.
He waved at her as he hung his jacket up on a peg by the door. He tossed the file folder he was carrying onto the kitchen table and sank into a chair.
“Hear from your sister today?” Clive Barrett asked Lily.
“Nope. Oh, that’s right: that makes today three days now, doesn’t it?”
He nodded grimly. “I tried calling from the office today; no answer.”
Lily stood still for a moment. “I… I’m sure she’s alright….” She trailed off.
When she and her parents traveled to Japan almost nine months ago, her elder sister, Callie, was going to spend the summer with her friend Lauren and her family, the Cummings. They lived a few miles north of town on a small farm. That turned out to be a blessing when the US economy started collapsing and cities became permanent battlefields for food and shelter. They managed to send emails and messages to each other, but it seemed both the electric and telecom grid was failing. Even so, it’d been rare for such a breakdown in any communication like this.
As Lily turned to clean the rice cooker, she heard her father mutter, “I’ve got to go back.”
She cringed a bit. The fights between him and her mother over this had been so bad that the apartment manager threatened to call the police; now it seemed it would happen again. He stood abruptly.
“I’ll be upstairs. Please let me know when dinner is ready.” He tried to keep his voice level, but Lily knew he was worried about Callie. That made Lily worried, too. Everything was going to be okay, right? Her mom and dad somehow always made things turn out fine, right? Looking down, she realized that prepping the vegetables would have to wait until her hands stopped shaking.
Lily had the food in a holding pattern and the table just set when her mother came in. Sitting on the threshold to change into slippers, Shari Barrett played with the happy little white dog.
“How are things?” She asked Lily.
“Er, fine, I guess. Have you… heard from Callie at all?” She asked with only a slight break in her voice. Shari stopped petting the dog.
“No,” she said quietly. “I guess that means neither of you two have, either. And that means your father…. Is he upstairs?” She stood as she asked.
“Yes… but…” Lily moved to hold her mother. “Please don’t fight!”
Her mom held her gently. “I… we’ll try not to. I’m sorry, Lily.”
A creak from the stairs let them know he was coming back down. Seeing them, he walked over and hugged them both.
“We should do this more,” he said quietly.
They separated and Lily went to bring the food to the table. She said the blessing and they started eating. Not wanting to yet broach the difficult subject, her mom and dad bantered about their jobs.
“I’m really more like something between a secretary and a tech – I don’t think there was any way for Stephanie to get me in there as an engineer – but at least our sales have stabilized. The Indian market’s still strong, and since sales to the US are zero…” Shari trailed off nervously, having accidentally gotten too close to that subject. “Ah. How are things at Tohsaka?”
As far as Lily understood it, Tohsaka Corporation had something to do with computers. It puzzled her, as her father had never been someone that worked with hardware nor software. Knowing her mom wouldn’t eat it, she took another piece of fish.
“I really don’t know why I’m there,” her father said. “Even if my Japanese was better I don’t think I could follow most of the technical discussions about coding. I’m beginning to wonder if Shiotsuki hired me as some hairless monkey he can trot out on occasion to make meaningless statements.” Lily had to laugh at the ‘hairless monkey’ part.
“It can’t be too meaningless,” Shari countered, “if they’re paying you a salary.”
While her parents kept making idle talk, Lily thought about how her dad had ended up at Tohsaka. Three months ago, she and her father were randomly wandering about the booksellers’ district in Tokyo, Jimbocho. In one larger store there was a crowd listening to a man give a talk of some kind. At his request, Lily translated what a poster said about this event.
“It says that they’re auctioning off a signed, first edition of Asimov’s ‘I, Robot.’ And prior to the auction, some guy is going to talk about… uh, how to translate this… machine intelligence?”
“That sounds kind of cool,” her father said. “I’m going to listen a bit to see if I understand anything. You can go look around if you’d like.” Which she promptly did.
It was no more than twenty minutes later that she heard her father’s voice, asking a question. Uh, oh, she thought, I’d better go back and make sure he doesn’t say anything embarrassing! She eased through the crowd until she was just behind his left. He was finishing what he was saying, barely.
“<…nothing in the Three Law that stop machine from lying, to itself, human, or other machine. Bad enough when humans lie; what happens when lie moves at light speed?>” He’d asked. It was understandable to her, so she thought everyone else would get it. Oh, maybe not: she saw that the man who’d been speaking earlier stood there with his mouth open.
“” The man exclaimed. “
“
“
“Thanks for the translation. Find anything you want?”
They were over in the Sports section looking at a book on karate when someone cleared their throat behind them. It was the speaker from before.
“
“Lily?” She remembered her father asking. “Did he just offer me a job?”
“Lily? Lily, are you there?”
With a start she looked at her parents at the table. “Sorry! Really wandered off, that time!”
Her father grunted. “If you’d please clean the table, your mother and I have to talk. I promise we won’t yell.” Lily nodded and grabbed some plates.
It was, Lily thought, as she lay in the bath two hours later, surprisingly simple. Her father talked quietly about returning to America, getting Callie, then moving what of their stuff he could to the newly independent Republic of Texas. He’d been able to use the Tohsaka Corporations systems to talk with a cousin of his, who worked in something called the Rangers, there. When she’d asked from the kitchen, her father explained them as being like a State police force.
She ran a little more hot water into the bath. He had said some more beyond that, but her mother finally waved her hands.
“Just go.” She said simply. “Find Callie, then we’ll come.”
Her mom stood slowly. “When are you going?”
He shrugged. “A freighter leaves in two days. I’ll take that to Portland, Oregon, the only port city on the West coast that didn’t burn itself out. Yet. After that, cross country. This… will take some time.”
She just nodded as the tears welled out of her eyes.
“Just go.”
C
rying in her bath, too. Lily began to wonder: would she really ever see her father and sister again?
Chapter 4
Lily was pulling some meds from the Pyxis machine in the hospital when she felt her phone vibrate. Seriously: didn’t Ai have hobbies or a job?! Putting the medications into a pocket of her red scrubs, she went to find her charge nurse to get them double-checked. Unlike the fully trained nurses in blue scrubs, apprentices such as her rated red, for, as her instructor put it, “Danger! This trainee is dangerous and can kill you!”
Lily sighed. Old Mrs. Watters was a good instructor, just with a peculiar sense of humor. Her meds checked and delivered to the patient, Lily stood in the hall to see to her phone. Oh: it was the school, St. Joseph’s. She doubted it was a medical emergency; the nurse there, Agnes Varro was also a Field Forces nurse, and still in the ready-reserves. She could handle anything. She had fifteen minutes before she was due for charting, so she found a spot by a window to call back.
“This is Lily Barrett; someone there gave me a call?”
“Just a moment, Miss Barrett,” replied the school Secretary, Mrs. MacDonald. “It was our counselor; I’ll transfer you now.”
Counselor? What does that have to do with me?
“This is Janet Weiss, may I help you?” Not a native, Lily thought. She’d no accent, just like me.
“This is Lily Barrett, returning your call?”
“Ah, yes! Miss Barrett! I was wondering if you could come over before we close this evening. One of your kids from St. Ed’s, Will Helsing, is graduating this year, and I wanted to go over his career choices with you.”
What Lily knew about Will flashed through her mind: tall with bright brown hair, slightly above average student, played football and baseball. Were it not for his parents being unaccounted for in the Burning of Dallas, a typical Texan boy.
“My shift here ends at three, Miss Weiss. I can swing by before I’m needed back at the orphanage.” There, she knows I’m available, but I can’t throw away my afternoon on her.
The Fourth Law Page 3