Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 100

by Aliette de Bodard

  The ride is over too quickly. The sign for Eden Road appears before I’ve had my fill of racing through the empty city streets. I decelerate and shift to second gear, turning my head to read the numbers on the doors. Looking at the map, the subway and light rail stations closest to Eden Road are two kilometers away; this is a place forgotten by the city’s development. The street isn’t wide, and dingy old cars line both sides of the road. The rundown three- and four-story buildings beyond them are crammed against each other, the majority looking more dilapidated than my own apartment building. Most of the streetlights are dark, and the Kawasaki 400R’s headlamps sketch an orange halo against the black street. A feral cat jumps out of a trash bin, eyes me, and pads off.

  At this point, I’ve calmed down enough to wonder whether crossing the city at night for an unfamiliar district in search of a stranger’s cryptic address was a rational decision. Every telephone pole could conceal a knife-wielding mugger, maybe even a black market doctor in search of organs to steal. I want to escape my dreary life, but I definitely don’t want to escape it only to end up as a gory crime scene photo in tomorrow’s newspaper.

  I decelerate as much as I can, but it’s too quiet here, and the rumble of the Kawasaki’s engine sounds louder than a B-52 pressed back into active duty. Luckily, at this point, a bronze door plate appears in the headlights: 289A/B/C/D/S Eden Road.

  I stop by the roadside, kill the engine, and turn off the headlights. A deathly silence instantly engulfs me. On either side, Eden Road has fallen into darkness. In front of the door to the apartment building at 289 is the only light, a weak incandescent lamp; its shade wobbles in the wind, making muffled metallic scraping noises.

  Dammit, I should have brought a flashlight. Cold sweat seeps from my back. Right, my cell phone. My cell phone. I pat my windbreaker all over and finally find my old-fashioned phone in an inner pocket. I turn on the flash; the football-sized spot of white light comforts me somewhat.

  I walk up and gently pull open the doors to 289 Eden Street. The doors aren’t locked. The glass pane in one door is broken, but there’s no glass on the floor.

  It’s even darker inside. My cell phone barely illuminates a long-unused front desk with a yellowing ledger tucked behind it: this used to be a hotel. There are stairs on the right. I walk closer, shining my light on the walls. The letters A through D are written crookedly on the walls, followed by an arrow pointing up. There’s no “S.”

  I point my cell phone light up. The stairs lead into a pitch black second floor, and I can’t see anything. Don’t make trouble! my father repeats idly. I wave the irritating memory away. When the beam of light swings behind the staircase, I see that there are no stairs down. Typically, there would be a closet in the triangular region below a set of stairs, and I spot its door, painted discordantly green. The doorknob is unexpectedly shiny, seemingly at odds with the dilapidated building around me.

  I step toward the door, my old brown leather shoes tapping against the badly worn terrazzo. The brass doorknob is as smooth and oily as it looks. I try to turn it. There’s no lock on the door, and I push it open, revealing a long set of narrow stairs. My cell phone light doesn’t penetrate far enough for me to see how deep they go.

  I don’t hear anything. It’s as quiet as a grave. Should I go down? I weigh my options, looking at the battery percentage icon on my phone display. I make up my mind and start down.

  The stairs are only wide enough for one person, and the walls press in on me. I shine the cell phone at my feet and count about forty steps before a wall appears in front of me, where the stairs double back. I continue forward—down toward the center of the earth, I suppose.

  It’s not a fun experience. My heart thumps loudly, and my blood presses at my eyes. The sound of my footsteps bounces off the walls, echoing at times in front of me, at times behind me, and I look back more than once. Another forty steps later, my cell phone reveals a green wooden door ahead, slightly ajar. A big brass letter hangs on it: “S.” No light shines through the crack.

  I’m here, then, at 289S Eden Road. For a second, I’m not sure if I should knock. If the strange woman’s message was intended as a personal invitation, I’d be amiss to come at two in the morning, whether I knocked or not. If the message was an invitation for some sort of secret organization, how else was I supposed to enter? I lick my dry lips. I need a glass of whiskey. I’ll even settle for beer.

  I push the door open all the way and walk in. All I see is darkness. I raise my cell phone in my left hand to better illuminate my surroundings. In that moment, my scalp prickles so hard I can feel the plates of my skull being squeezed together. I can’t help but turn my tensed neck like a searchlight, shining my phone over each corner of the room.

  This is pretty big as basements go, the walls plain, pipes and concrete everywhere, the air damp and moldy. A couple dozen—maybe a couple hundred—people in black hoodies sit cross-legged on the floor, hand in hand. No one’s talking. Even the sound of their breathing is as faint as the beat of a mosquito’s wings. Their eyes are closed.

  My light shines on one face after another. Under the hoods, there are men, women, old people, young people, whites, blacks, Asians, and on each face is the same eerie expression of joy. No one reacts to my unexpected entrance; their eyes don’t even move under their eyelids. The air in the basement congeals in my lungs. I stand frozen at the doorway, my throat working uselessly.

  I need a drink. In my mind’s eye, my father always carries that bottle of gin, the clear alcohol sloshing against the glass. I’ll leave here first. Get out, ride my motorbike back to the apartment, then pour myself a full glass of whiskey. I swallow, feeling my Adam’s apple bob jerkily, and start to back out of the room, slowly, one step at a time. I reach out my right hand to pull the door shut. I stare at my hand to avert my gaze from the strange gathering, at the ugly splotch. I’ll go to the hospital tomorrow and get that damn laser surgery done, I decide, and have a doctor to look at my tinnitus while I’m there.

  Then a hand suddenly descends onto mine. The black-clad arm comes from the other side of the door, and the fingers are slender but strong. I feel every hair on my body stand on end. The flashlight falls from my left hand and goes dim. I’m left in darkness. I can’t move. I can’t think.

  A finger gently reaches for my palm. The familiar tingling sensation begins again. It was the mysterious woman from yesterday; I think I can read her fingerprint from her fingertip. Or is it just bioelectricity? I mentally read the words she writes: “Don’t be afraid. Come . . . share . . . transmit.”

  Don’t be afraid. Share what? Transmit what? Did I miss words between these? The hand pulls me forward, and I follow unthinkingly with clumsy steps, reentering the silent room. The air is like thick printer’s ink. The mysterious woman tugs me through the darkness slowly, toward the depths of the room. I’m afraid that I’m going to step on one of the sitting strangers in black, but our circuitous path is free from obstacles. At last, the woman stops and writes, “Sit.”

  I grope around, but there’s nothing around me. I sit down on the ice-cold cement, my eyes wide open, but I still can’t see anything. The woman’s breathing flutters at the edge of my hearing. Her left hand still rests against my palm, cold, the skin smooth. Her finger starts moving. I close my eyes and read the words she traces onto my palm: “Sorry. Thought. Knew. Don’t. Afraid. Friends.”

  “Sorry, I thought you already knew what this is about. Don’t be afraid. We’re friends. We’re all friends here.” With a bit of imagination, her touch could be translated into eloquent words. I still don’t understand why she didn’t just talk, but this isn’t bad either. My fear melts away like hail in sunlight. Slowly, I adjust to the blinding darkness and the touch in the center of my hand.

  She moves closer and finds my left hand, pressing my finger against her right palm. I understand immediately. I write in her palm, “I’m fine. This is one heck of an experience.”

  “Slower,” she writes.


  I slow down and write one character at a time, “I’m. Great. Fascinating.”

  “You learn fast.” She draws a shallow crescent shape that I interpret as a smiley.

  “You. Meet. Here,” I write, followed by a question mark.

  “Yes, the society meets daily,” she replies.

  “What for? What kind of organization are you? Why did you invite me?”

  “We hold discussions through finger-talking. You’ll love it. I saw you on the street staring at that window, lost in thought, and supposed you must be lonely like me. You must find the world so dull.”

  “Me? Yes, I suppose. To tell the truth, I do find life stifling. But before I met you, I never thought to do something about it.”

  “Start now, then.” She draws another smiley. It’s at that moment that I think I’ve fallen in love with her, even though I’ve never seen her face, never smelled a woman’s perfume on her.

  “What am I supposed to do now?” I ask.

  “Members arrange themselves in a circle, each person linked to two others. Write with your left hand and let someone else write on your right. Whatever you want to hear about, whatever you want to say, is up to you. I left the ring just then to meet with you,” she replies.

  “I think I understand the gist.” I think some more. “Then I won’t be able to converse with someone like I’m doing now? I can only speak to the person on my left, and listen to the person on my right.”

  “That can’t be helped in the general gathering. But privately . . . whatever you want.”

  “If—just out of curiosity—I were interested in the person to the right of me. If we alternate writing between my right hand and his left, couldn’t we have a one-on-one conversation?”

  “That’s not allowed. The rules of the finger-talking gathering require facilitating a unidirectional flow of information. But you can make a topic and transmit it so that the person you’re interested joins.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Say you want to talk about the president with the person on your right. Spread the topic “What does everyone think of the president’s foreign exchange reserves policy?” to the person on your left. They might add in their viewpoint, or transmit the original topic unchanged. When the topic goes around and reaches the person to your left, he can now give you his opinion. Finger-talking gatherings aren’t meant for dialogues. The fun lies in sharing thoughts and transmitting opinions. I’ve been told this resembles the old, extinct topological structure of the Internet.”

  “Sounds complicated.” I don’t understand why they had to invent such a strange mechanism for having conversations. There are plenty of forums and discussion groups on the Internet, and chatting over a beer at bars is even better. But since my bizarre experiences have led me to this mysterious gathering, I’m not going to pass on a chance to try it out. “Can I join the gathering right now?”

  “There’s too much info being passed around for a beginner. Your slow speed of transmission will clog up the entire circle. We use a lot of abbreviations and references to increase efficiency, and you’ll need time to learn them,” she replies, and spends the next five minutes demonstrating those special abbreviations. “You don’t seem like a newbie,” she says, surprised at the speed at which I pick them up. She draws a big letter P to represent sticking out her tongue.

  My sister’s and my little secret, I think. “Don’t worry, let me try it.”

  “Okay,” she says eventually. “I’ll move to your left. We’ll step forward three steps to one of the nodes in the ring. Pat the shoulder of the person on your right, and he’ll break the connection. Take his left hand in your right hand. Remember, you have to be quick.”

  We exchange positions. She holds my left hand in her right and leads me forward until I can dimly feel the body heat of the person in front of me. I kneel, feel someone’s shoulder come into contact with my hand, and pat it. The person immediately moves to the right to leave me a spot. I sit down with the woman hand in hand, and the person finds my right hand and takes it.

  The hand is a man’s, hard and knobby and powerfully muscled, but his finger is astonishingly nimble. My palm is instantly covered with rapid writing. He’s so fast that I can’t even identify every letter. I focus on capturing the keywords and abbreviations, and guessing the meaning of the sentence from there. Before my brain has time to take in each message, the next sentence assaults me—my skin evidently hasn’t become sufficiently sensitive for the flood of finger-talking information. As I frantically decipher the words, I pass on what I can to her on the left. “Opposition party . . . scandal . . . resignation crisis . . . secret police . . . pursuit . . . ” I can only retransmit some o the keywords in the message, but I’m hooked. No one brings up politics in my online groups anymore. I want to add my own viewpoint for her, but the next message has arrived already. “Spaceplane wreck . . . Jamaica. Scandal. Fuel leak. NASA’s lost government support? Russian attack.” The first part is the topic, and after it are everyone’s opinions. I think I’m getting used to this method of receiving information. She’s right, I’m not a newbie. But the fingers on my left hand can’t quickly and clearly transmit information no matter how hard I try. After a few attempts, I write dejectedly, “Sorry.”

  Her palm is cool and smooth, like the fresh new blackboard in my elementary school classroom. In response, she extends a finger and stealthily writes three words on my left hand: “I forgive you.”

  I can feel the corners of my mouth lift. “You just told me this is against the rules,” I write.

  “You’re getting better.” She breaks the rules again and adds a smiley face.

  6.

  Knocking on my door wakes me. I cover my ears with my pillow, hoping that whoever is at my door will go away. But five minutes later, I have no choice but to put on a night robe, shuffle into my slippers, and walk toward the living room. The knocker is persistent but unhurried. I look out the peephole; the brim of a policeman’s cap blocks my view. “Damn,” I mutter. I unlock the door and open it. “What can I do for you?”

  “Good morning.” The cop leaning against the wall takes off his cap and shows me his badge. “Can I have five minutes of your time, sir? It’s purely protocol,” he says listlessly.

  “Sure, five minutes.” I return to the living room and flop down on the couch. I pour myself half a glass of bourbon. The clock reads Tuesday 1:30 PM, and my night of tossing and turning has reactivated my headache. I pour the amber-colored alcohol down my throat and exhale slowly. My computer screen brightens: Roy left a message. I joined that discussion group after all. It’s a little more interesting than I thought.

  The cop looks to be about thirty, short, with an old-fashioned mustache. He makes himself at home in my armchair. He looks around, sizing up my little apartment. “Nice place.”

  “It was nicer twenty years ago,” I reply.

  The cop sets his cap on my coffee table and takes out a tablet and stylus from his pocket. After a moment of consideration, he tosses them aside and falls against the armchair’s backrest. “Even I know this is completely pointless,” he sighs.

  “Just doing your job, right?” I say sympathetically.

  “Yes, job.” He frowns as he unwillingly picks up the tablet. “Let’s see . . . you work at the Social Welfare Building. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays,” he reads.

  “That’s right,” I reply.

  “You’re forty-five and single. Last year, you were convicted of medical insurance fraud and sentenced to two weeks of community service.” He sounds mildly surprised.

  “The hospital got my coverage limits wrong! They apologized afterward,” I explain irritably.

  “We received a complaint today at 1:12 AM saying you were disturbing the neighbors?” The policeman idly combed at his mustache with the tip of his stylus.

  “Uh . . . ” Remembering the experiences of last night, I feel a surge of apprehension. Is the cop’s visit tied to the finger-talking gathering? I don’t think sit
ting in the dark in large groups and scribbling against one another’s palms is illegal, but my instincts tell me to say nothing, to keep this secret. Don’t make trouble, as my father used to say to me. “I had some beers last night. When I woke, I thought I’d take my motorcycle out for a spin, nothing more. I apologize if I disturbed the neighbors.”

  “I see. You were taking your motorcycle out for a spin.” The cop lethargically writes something on the tablet. “I understand a man’s need for adventure. Well, that’s it, then. You know we don’t take those neurotic old ladies’ complaints too seriously, but protocol is protocol.” He stands, sticks his cap under his arm, and stuffs the tablet and stylus back into his pocket.

  “That’s it?” I stand, in disbelief.

  “Thank you for your cooperation,” the cop recites, and turns to leave. I follow after him with my whiskey glass in hand. Just as I prepare to close the door, the short policeman turns and raises his black eyes to mine. “Right, you didn’t take your motorbike anywhere you shouldn’t go, I hope.”

  “Somewhere I’m shouldn’t go? Of course not,” I reply quickly.

  “Oh, your motorcycle went southeast, out of surveillance camera coverage. You must have come across some really unique little neighborhood. Crime rates may have fallen to their lowest in fifty years, but in my job you learn that there’s still all sorts of bad people in this world. Have a nice day, sir.” He pats my shoulder with a not-quite smile, puts on his cap, nods in farewell, and trots down the squeaking wood steps.

  I slam in the deadbolt and lean against the door, gasping for breath. Was the cop really onto something? Are the woman and the finger-talking gathering doing something illegal? That’s right. I’m an idiot. I smack my forehead, remembering that when I met her yesterday, she and her friends were being chased by two policemen.