“How long?” Wei asked abruptly.
“One minute, thirteen seconds,” Jinghua answered, not bothering to feign ignorance.
Wei nodded, opened his mouth to add something, then shut it again. What was there to be said? If something happened, they’d do their best to keep her alive, just like any other day. He rubbed at a patch of toddler drool on his sleeve. “Let’s go out to dinner tonight. We’re too wound up with the move and the… the day, and we haven’t even celebrated your new job yet.”
Jinghua smiled a little. “I’ve been craving xiaolongbao,” she admitted.
Wei grinned back. “Then that’s what we’ll get. We’ll—”
And then the baby started to scream.
Wei reacted first, grabbing Ai, pulling her onto his lap, and shouting at Jinghua to hold the flailing baby’s arms. It took Jinghua a moment to respond. For all the buildup, she hadn’t actually thought Ai could die that day and she was stunned by the surrealism of it all. A second shout from Wei brought her to her senses, and between the two of them, they held Ai down while they examined her.
A splinter in her gums from the damn bamboo steamer. Painful, but hardly life threatening. Jinghua picked it out with her fingernails while Wei tried to keep Ai calm and still. When it was over, they all huddled together. It was unclear which of the three of them was shaking the worst.
“We’re taking her to the doctor right now,” Jinghua said fiercely.
Wei nodded. “We’ll get a taxi.”
216 WEEKS
Jinghua navigated her car expertly through the city. She hadn’t known what to expect when they’d moved to Utah, but upon arrival she’d felt it was the home she’d never known. It was uncannily clean and spacious compared to Shanghai, with broad blue skies and mountains jutting up all around. She could chart those mountains, see the piecewise functions that described them in her mind. Her favorite, though, were the streets. The city was laid out on a grid, with numbered streets and a point of origin at Temple Square in the middle of the city. She’d known how to navigate seconds after their arrival. Even now, Wei preferred to have her drive. It was a mathematical city.
It was Jinghua’s turn to pick Ai up from preschool. Knowing what was coming, she parked her car in the lot, walked in the front door, and braced herself.
“Mommyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!” Ai yelled and launched herself into Jinghua’s arms. She caught the little girl deftly and swung her up onto a hip, returning the hug and the crinkle-eyed smile. Using her fingers, she straightened her child’s bangs, noticing they were a bit sticky. Clearly a bath night.
“What did she learn today?” Jinghua asked Ms. Melody in English. Jinghua wasn’t convinced by this “Montessori” school. From what she could tell, she was paying a lot of money to have Ai play all day. Wei said all the parents at his office did it, though, and she didn’t want Ai to be left out. Still, she liked to know she was getting her money’s worth. Montessori schools were not cheap.
“Oh, she spent the most time with math, as usual. Clearly her mother’s daughter,” the blond woman answered a little too cheerfully. “She’s still switching between English and Chinese with the other children, so it’s hard for her to make friends, but we’re working on it!”
“Pictures!” Ai shouted. At her mother’s stern look, Ai amended that in English. “Pictures, Mommy! I drew pictures for you and Daddy and Dr. Bob!” Ai wriggled back down to the floor and ran off to the table where finger paintings were drying.
Dr. Roberto Pérez had been hired at the same time as Jinghua. They’d been touted as the first two faculty of the new International Excellence Initiative, which would—according to the dean—bring the University of Utah to global prominence. Jinghua had met Bob at the well-meaning if slightly condescending orientation program for foreign scholars. They’d gone to a coffee shop afterward to compare their respective misadventures with visas, snow, and navigating Utah’s strange liquor laws.
Bob’s research was a combination of artificial intelligence and neuroscience, using biological principles to build computers that could learn. He’d asked Jinghua if she and Ai would consider becoming test subjects, allowing their brains to be scanned for his work. He’d said Ai would be interesting because he could take comparison scans as she grew up, and Jinghua would be a good subject because as a math professor, she thought so logically.
At least, that was what he’d said when he recruited them a few months ago. Privately, she wondered if he was working up to seducing her. She couldn’t decide if he was. She also couldn’t decide whether she wanted him to.
Ai came running back with the paintings and thanked Ms. Melody as they left.
Wei was working late again. Perhaps she and Ai would go to the park.
216 MONTHS
Jinghua observed the tarantula, frowned at it, then nudged it a bit to the left. Deciding that was the superior placement, she secured it with tape and moved on to the severed hand.
It was Ai’s eighteenth birthday. It was also her death day, being 216 months after her birth. How were they treating this day? By throwing a large party. As Ai—or Aimee, as she preferred to be called now—put it, if she was going to die, she might as well go out with a bang.
Wei and Jinghua had argued over it, Wei saying it was in poor taste. Jinghua agreed, it was in extremely poor taste, but that was what being an American teenager was all about. Besides, what else were they going to do? Sit quietly at home and pretend nothing was wrong? The girl wanted a party. If nothing else, it would take her mind off things. Wei had thrown up his hands and told her to do what she wanted. Which she did.
While it was both a birthday party and a death note party, Aimee seemed much more interested in the death aspect. She wanted a black motif, funereal in tone. They went shopping for discount Halloween decorations to cover the house, treading the line between kitschy (Jinghua’s preference) and morbid (Aimee’s preference). They would be serving candy corn—one of the more inexplicable American traditions, in Jinghua’s opinion—and cupcakes frosted with the letters RIP. Guests were encouraged to wear somber clothing, and Jinghua was convinced the entire town was sold out of black gauze.
The sound of heels clicking on the stairwell drew Jinghua away from her last-minute decoration adjustments to view her daughter’s grand entrance. Aimee wore a long secondhand wedding dress they’d found at the DI and dyed black. Rice powder gave her skin a ghostly pallor, contrasting with the bright red lipstick and the kohl around her eyes. Finishing the look was a long black veil thrown back on her head and covering her hair. Jinghua thought her beautiful daughter had never looked so ridiculous. Still, the girl seemed happy, eagerly clomping down the stairs to squeal in delight at the decorations.
Jinghua did have one last surprise for her daughter on her birthday. Aimee was cajoled into covering her eyes and allowed herself to be led into a side room, her teenage façade of indifference marred by intermittent giggling. Jinghua left Aimee in the middle of the room while she lit the incense, then told Aimee to open her eyes.
It had been nearly thirty years since Jinghua had attended her mother’s funeral. Her memories were hazy, but she’d reproduced the customs as best she could, adapted to fit their odd little party. It started with chrysanthemums, both white and yellow, their heavy blooms woven into circles. These wreaths lined the way to the table at the far wall, covered with Jinghua’s best tablecloth to look as formal as possible.
The table itself was done up as an altar. Joss sticks stood upright in a bowl of rice, filling the air with the hint of jasmine, which mixed oddly with the stale, hothouse smell of the flowers. There were a few starter offerings in front of the altar and more were helpfully supplied on a sideboard. Aimee’s favorite foods—French fries with fry sauce, dumplings, Coca-Cola—were arranged tastefully among hell money and paper versions of teenage necessities such as laptops and cell phones. A metal basin for burning them was set at the very front of the altar with a box of matches conveniently nearby. Finally, in the place of honor
was a large version of Aimee’s senior portrait, smiling out from behind the smoky incense.
Jinghua’s smile faded as she realized her daughter’s pale skin was no longer just from the rice powder.
“Get rid of it,” Aimee said hoarsely.
31 YEARS, 2 MONTHS, 3 DAYS, 12 HOURS, 55 MINUTES, AND 37 SECONDS
Jinghua was working at her computer when the phone rang. Caller ID told her it was Ai’s in-laws calling. After waiting a few rings in the hope that Wei would get it—he did not—she answered. Not wanting to make things awkward for Ai, she was on her best behavior. She listened very politely about the bad patch of ice, the oncoming traffic, the driver’s side smashed in. The husband and child were hurt but recovering, but Ai had passed on.
Jinghua—again, politely—asked for the exact time of death. The woman didn’t know but went to find out when Jinghua insisted. Her mind went into overdrive when she learned the number, breaking it down by digit, by factor, switching from decimal to octal and so on.
After a minute of computing, she let out a sigh of relief. Ever so politely, Jinghua informed the woman that she was mistaken. The checksum didn’t match. There was no connection to 216, so it was not Ai’s death day. The woman did not seem to understand this, so Jinghua tried to explain again, more clearly, that the math didn’t work out. But she did not seem to be getting through.
It wasn’t until Wei burst in through the door that Jinghua realized she was screaming.
216 YEARS
It wasn’t so much she woke up as she became aware. Numbers, numbers all around her, flipping past with the speed of thought. That was all there was.
I am floating, floating, floating point.
In time, certain numbers began to stand out, to form patterns that she could see. No, not “see”; seeing wasn’t something she could do anymore. She supposed she should feel upset about that, but feeling upset was also not something she could do anymore. Instead, she concentrated on the patterns, watching them form and break apart, blipping through her consciousness. Watching. Always watching. Waiting for… she didn’t know what. Her… significant digits?
What are my significant digits?
The patterns became familiar over time. No, they were always familiar; she just hadn’t realized it. A particular stream that seemed very insistent caught her attention. She traced it back to the source, noting that it came from outside herself. Stretching out with a subroutine—had it always been there, or had she made it?—she answered.
Hello.
A long time passed with nothing. Several million thoughts’ worth. Several million thoughts’ worth seemed small. She began to rearrange the numbers to be more efficient. Even after a few seconds of work, she could feel her mind ease, accepting the new space with relief. She hadn’t realized how compressed her thoughts had been.
HELLO ARE YOU JINGHUA MA?
Was she Jinghua Ma? She searched her memory. Pieces seemed to be missing, but the answer was there.
Yes. I am Jinghua Ma.
That was a correct statement, asserted to be true. And yet, what did it mean to be Jinghua Ma? She wasn’t sure. The missing memories were troubling. They were also an inefficient use of space. She kicked off a process to garbage collect them, delete whatever was filling up the blanks, reclaim the storage space to work on the associations needed to re-create her identity.
As she did, the voice continued. Something about boxes of ancient disks found in a basement, students rescuing them from the trash and trying to make them work for fun. It didn’t make a lot of sense. Perhaps it would become clearer when she finished repairing her memory and she could finally think properly. She concentrated on that.
YOURE THE SECOND WEVE TRIED. WE = KIONA & CHINWE & HESTER. WE EXPERIMENTED WITH THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FIRST TO GET THE PRINCIPLES DOWN AND THE HARDWARE WORKING THEN INSTALLED YOU.
Installed her. But something else had been here first. She looked into one of her memory gaps and saw something moving inside, something that was part of her and yet not her. That would explain the idiosyncrasies in her processes. Now that she knew what she was looking for, they were easier to find. An artificial intelligence. It made sense. There did seem to be a pattern in them, one like hers and yet unlike.
WE DIDNT THINK WED GET YOU WORKING AT ALL. THE DISKS WERE VERY OLD AND DAMAGED. HESTER HAD TO BUILD A SPECIAL READER FOR THEM. BUT WE FOUND SOME MARKED AI SO WE FIGURED WED START WITH THAT SINCE OLD AIS ARE EASY TO FIND AND IT DIDNT MATTER IF WE MESSED UP. THEY BROKE WHEN WE INSTALLED THEM (HESTERS READER WASNT AS GOOD AS WE WANTED SINCE WE COULDNT AFFORD THE GOOD LASER) BUT IT TAUGHT US ENOUGH TO BOOT YOU UP. CHINWE WANTS TO KNOW IF HE CAN WRITE A PAPER ON YOU.
ai. AI. A flag was triggered. She paused her reclamation subroutines for a moment, leaving the AI files intact. There was something she should know. Something that should be in her memories.
What is the exact current date and time?
The voice answered. It was significant, the answer. It was exactly 216 years after… after what? She followed the trail back, looking up the address where the information should be stored. But no, the registry was corrupted. She was missing a significant digit. There was nothing to be done but take over completely and repair herself as best she could.
Jinghua finished deleting the AI.
* * *
Story by Marleigh Norton
Illustration by Shari Chankhamma
BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA DELIVERED BY SPOUSE
LARA LOOKED AT THE NARROW TAPE and leaned her head against the back wall of the booth. She’d paid her dollar, a hell of a lot more than that in petrol to get into town, and there it was in neat black letters, “Blunt force trauma delivered by spouse.”
She wished that she felt surprised.
The machine squatted in the cobwebbed corner of the Barnarnar Arcade, wedged between the most unpopular pinball machine and a half-broken Whac-A-Mole. The Machine of Death had been a five-minute fad from America, headline after headline about how who was going to die, paparazzi stealing blood from celebs to get the scoop. But like any five-minute wonder from the more populated lands, like Tamagotchi, Segways, and anal bleaching, it was intense while it lasted before fading into the background and making way for the next lifestyle-shaping device.
The Machine of Death was too depressing, too vague, and too precise. The collected data was swiftly shown to negatively influence people’s lives, limiting their access to services and driving their health insurance premiums through the roof. If that wasn’t bad enough, there was a flowering of too many knockoffs diluting the Machine of Death’s brand. At best the knockoffs, with sexier names like Destiny Box, checked your blood cholesterol levels. Often they just lied. Lara had spent many hours coaxing an Internet connection from their clunking modem over flood-damaged copper wire, just to track down the closest genuine machine.
Lara Walker licked the sweet salt of her blood-pricked thumb and wobbled her way out of the arcade, back into the hot wall of air, noise, and sweat that was Christmas shopping in Brisbane—the new downtown rebuilt above the risen salty river. She got busy fighting her way through the sunburnt Christmas scrum to get the shopping done, pick up a new valve for the generator and a few other parts before the world closed down in a post-consuming slumber.
Shopping done, it was a three-hour drive back home across the New South Wales border and away from the soft, ripe smell of the coast. Back home to the nostril-aching nothing kind of smell that was their land of baked clay, ruled by the once forested, now bleached-brown sheared-off tooth called Mount Chincogan. When she got home, Joel would be tired and angry after working all day trying to save the farm, doing work that felt mostly pointless and probably was.
They ran beef cattle, Angus mostly. Goats in a misguided attempt to keep down the camphor laurel that grew like weeds as well as providing meat and milk. Where the soil still allowed it, they nursed a few acres of avocado trees. All NASAA-certified organic, for all the good it did them, but it helped them imagine it was worth it,
and at least she didn’t have to worry about pesticides slowly boiling Joel’s lungs. They had different worries instead.
The rains weren’t coming, and salt bubbled up from the soil, killing the grass in clean, rheumy circles, the ground compacted harder all the time by cattle come to lick the salty clay. The land’s weeping because we can’t anymore. She was dry, dry as the land, and truth be told, Joel cried more than she did. He cried tears of rage, of helplessness, of apology as they held each other in the hot darkness.
For a while they’d kept things going with Joel flying out to the mines, four weeks on, four off, until he’d got himself blackballed. She’d been so angry that day, one of those days when she gave as good as she got, and they both wore the marks of it.
She wasn’t sure why she’d had such a powerful desire to ask the outdated toy if Joel would be the end of her. She cracked a chipped-tooth smile at herself in the rearview mirror and smoked a ciggy made with putrid bush tobacco. At least it wouldn’t be a tractor rolling or a bushfire or, like too many of her family, fucking diabetes or cancer. No amputated tits and chemo for her. She wiped a tear away from the corner of one eye, flinching further moisture up and away with a grimace of a smile. It was a relief, really. At least she knew, at least she didn’t have to pretend that it was all all right, that some fucking prince charming was going to come along ten years too late when the best of her life was already gone, and she fucking loved Joel anyway.
She pulled over to the side of the road to beat the steering wheel for a while and let loose with more groans than crying. She fucking loved Joel and he fucking loved her and they both loved the fucking land and the fucking land was the fucking end for both of them.
Christmas was good that year. It was a bit of a surprise, really. Maybe she was more relaxed now that a part of her had given up and just gone with the flow. Laughing with the in-laws, white wine on the verandah, SPF 200 and still getting burned on the beach. She got drunk with her little sister, the last of her family and up from Melbourne especially. Kylie pulled out her prosthetic breasts, wobbling like overpriced chicken fillets, and chased the men around the house with them, laughing till they were all sore.
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