Plum Rains

by Andromeda Romano-Lax

Douzo, Itou had written to her. Minutes later, his second text arrived: Hai-douzo.

  Yes, go ahead with even more details? Or just go ahead with life, as in: don’t worry. Don’t keep bothering me. I’m in meetings. I certainly can’t place a call at this moment.

  That sounded more like Itou.

  There was a reason, even aside from Sayoko’s anti-tech preferences, that he hadn’t set med-alerts to trigger every time Sayoko ate too much soy sauce with her lunch or experienced a quickening pulse during the teledramas, whenever lovers kissed or argued. Itou wanted only to hear about genuine emergencies, and then, only to the extent that he could help. In a true emergency, Angelica was to seek local medical help first, not wait for his command.

  One last message from him—no abbreviations, no slang, no ambiguity, thank goodness—just two characters: raishū. “Next week.”

  Yes. That’s when he was expected home.

  She already knew that.

  That night, the problem repeated itself: whispering on the other side of the thin wall—less wailing, less weird static, but still audible. The constant pattern of waking to confusing sounds and then trying to get back to sleep played havoc with Angelica’s mind. She had the vision of the night of the typhoon, the firefly dream that had recurred since childhood. That’s what she called it: a dream. Don’t even say the word “nightmare.” Don’t give it that power. It isn’t powerful. It’s just moving pictures, light between blinks, light in the darkness between slashing rain, confusion. Flashes that had given her false hope, when in reality they were . . . fireflies. Just fireflies.

  It was the dream she always used to have, back in the Philippines: at the charity home, in high school, in nursing school. Japan had provided a reprieve. Maybe it was sleeping in a different kind of bed, breathing different scents, all the strangeness of a new land: the dream had left her.

  She would not miss it. It was the continuation of the mental image of the night of the typhoon that she always tried to freeze before it got past the first moments, the first sounds. She had told only one person about it, Yanna, and Yanna had said, “Those images were what kept you alive. No wonder they come back to you.” But Angelica had disagreed. Closing her eyes to those images, refusing to think about the loss of her extended family and the worst days of the storm, is what had kept her alive. And banishing those memories now was the only way forward.

  When she woke from the nightmare, eyes damp, Angelica repeated that thought to herself and turned her pillow to find a cooler, dry spot. Let the buried stay buried.

  She realized that’s what she had wanted to say to Sayoko, too, the previous morning, when Sayoko had become distraught over her memories. But you couldn’t say that to another person. It was like telling a patient with a skin condition not to scratch. The best you could do was trim their nails, distract them during the daytime and put them to bed at night with soft mitts. Leave it alone. You’ll only hurt yourself. But the automaton and its orientation procedures were seemingly designed to provoke rather than protect. The annoying device had brought not only the future into their home, but the past, too.

  The next day, Sayoko refused to get out of bed for two hours, neglecting Angelica’s warnings about dry rice and cold broth.

  “You have to eat something.”

  “I don’t. And I don’t want those.” Sayoko flapped a hand at the folded pair of synthetic blue pants that Angelica had set at the edge of the futon. “I have a better pair. Black. The ones with the pleats. You never bring those out anymore.”

  Angelica was surprised by the specificity of the request. “Those don’t wash as easily.”

  “I don’t care. They’re all cotton. They feel better.”

  “All right. We’ll get to that in a minute,” Angelica said. “For now, you’re late for your pills and you can’t have medication on an empty stomach.”

  Angelica served the tea, yogurt, and her morning pills in bed, and then let Sayoko drift back to sleep, like a stubborn teenager.

  Obstinacy was to be expected, perhaps, given that Sayoko had been a lady of leisure for much of her life. From what Angelica could piece together from framed photos and occasional oblique comments by Itou, Sayoko had been orphaned sometime during the war, but she had survived better than some of her generation. She had married an older salaryman who toiled himself into an early grave—not uncommon in the 1970s and 1980s, the era of karōshi—but at least he had left Sayoko and her late-born son comfortably provided for. It should be no surprise that Sayoko did what she wanted, according to her own schedule.

  Between the repeated wake-up calls, Angelica had time to worry over her malfunctioning phone, which she’d had no opportunity to take to a repair shop, given the lack of relief care for Sayoko. She knew many people would forego food and sex before they’d sacrifice their phones or sophisticated communication implants, and she was no different. Beyond the mere discomfort of everyday tech addiction, though, she also felt dumb, or at least memory-impaired. It had been years since she’d had to rely on her brain to remember things, including the everyday aspects of her nursing routine. That morning, she’d checked Sayoko’s temperature and blood pressure on her wrist monitor, turned to gaze out the window, and realized she couldn’t recall either reading, never mind both. Usually, they were sent to the app on her phone. She hadn’t physically jotted anything down with pen and paper in years.

  But the issue was more serious than just the messages or the vitals app, she realized with dread. She’d been so fixated on the texting glitch that she hadn’t seen the full scope of the problem. Anything that required identification of any kind—fingerprint, eye scan, multi-metric bio-scan—punished her with a failure message, even the apps she normally used offline and without cell service, even the websites that usually remembered all her authentications from previous visits. Only her chat app stayed open without reauthentication, but as before, the new messages weren’t fully visible.

  The problem seemed to be taunting her. It reminded her of something a former client at the nursing home had said: if we went to bed one night healthy and simply passed away in our sleep, old age wouldn’t be so bad. It’s the incremental, unpredictable erosion of capacities that leave us feeling . . . disillusioned. But no, that wasn’t the word the client had used. That leave us feeling betrayed. That’s what he had said. As if there were malicious intent behind life’s unraveling.

  And perhaps there was.

  She forced herself to consider that someone or something had done this. Her phone wasn’t on the fritz. It might be hacked. But maybe hacked wasn’t the right word, if it was government authorized.

  The last time she’d been able to read all her texts was two days ago, when she’d fainted on the street. Perhaps the kenkobot exam had triggered something. It wasn’t out of the question. She’d heard from another foreign nurse about an expired visa automatically causing changes to bank account access—a much bigger problem than missing texts. Angelica still had two months left on her visa, renewable as long as she met all annual requirements: nursing updates, language exams, no complaints from any employer. Would the kenkobot exam trigger some sort of early visa review? And what else could be affected? Had someone messed with her bank balance?

  The longer she tinkered fruitlessly, the more powerless she felt. She looked for new messages from Datu: nothing.

  One could say that worrying about her brother was compounding her anxiety, but that wasn’t necessarily true. Datu wasn’t only a source of potential stress; he was also a distraction from more local, immediate stressors. Brooding about her brother in the BZ often helped Angelica shrink her own problems down to size—or that was her justification for allowing the fretting to go unchecked, anyway.

  Meanwhile, the phone had nearly drained its battery. Angelica resisted the urge to recharge it, thinking that a full drain followed by recharge and reboot was on her list of things to try next. If the thing was hacked
, well—a reboot wouldn’t help that. But best to focus on the easy steps first.

  She heard the robot powering on in Sayoko’s room. The sound must have woken Sayoko, because Angelica heard her suddenly eager to get up, get dressed, and eat.

  “Coming, madam sleepyhead,” Angelica called back, frankly glad to have some company.

  This time, Sayoko insisted that Angelica move the half-assembled robot into the living room so it could watch the shows with her. Angelica indulged the whim, relieved that the robot wasn’t illuminated or talking.

  Angelica almost never used the house phone system, but Itou had explained it to her, should she ever need it in an emergency. She withdrew to the kitchen and recited the name of Itou’s personal assistant, Hanako Kono.

  “Thermostat economizing,” the house system answered. “How long are you going to be away?”

  “No,” Angelica corrected it, speaking to the ceiling. “We’re not going on vacation. I just need to make a call.”

  There was a pause as the house system considered before saying brightly, “Okay! Let’s reset the daily minimum and maximum temperatures.”

  Giving in, Angelica recited, day by day, acceptable temperatures, noting when they woke up and went to bed, and when they most likely left the house altogether, before being asked another set of questions. “May I check your water and light usage patterns in order to advise you on other economizing options?”

  “No thank you. What I need—”

  “Okay! That’s good. Systems reset at 2:05 a.m. Tuesday, August 15.”

  “That isn’t the correct time or date. Change the thermostat to manual, please.”

  “Thank you! How long are you going to be away?”

  “I really just need to make a call now. To Itou-san’s secretary.”

  “Please dictate, and then we’ll choose which forms of social media you’d prefer to use. You have a maximum of five choices.”

  “No, I just want to call her.”

  “I don’t detect video feed in your present location. Please move to the hallway.”

  “I want audio. I just want to place a simple call.”

  The words finally triggered an action. Immediately, there was a response—“Odenwa arigatou gozaimasu. Thank you for your call. This is Kono,”—delivered in the high-pitched, eager-to-please voice that still startled Angelica.

  “May I speak to Itou-san? It’s about his mother. It isn’t a medical emergency, but it is urgent.”

  The secretary barely waited for Angelica to finish making her request. “Itou-san is with a foreign legation, please. He isn’t taking calls. Sorry, thank you very much.”

  At least a robot might try to sound less robotic, Angelica thought. She wanted to explain what was happening, wanted to assure Hanako Kono that she had already texted Itou and received his brief reply, but still needed to know he was aware that she wanted to speak to him, whether or not he chose to speak to her. Which was hard to get across, in any tongue.

  Angelica asked, “Is there a better time for me to reach him? Later tonight? Excuse me, would that be possible?”

  “Itou-san will be entertaining the legation. Thank you very much.”

  “Yes, I understand, excuse me. But please, maybe when he has a free moment?”

  Hanako maintained the same high, cheerful, explosive tone. “I’m sorry, Itou-san will be fully occupied. I’m sorry, thank you very much.”

  Angelica waited to see if the secretary would hang up, but she was too polite. Hanako waited, in turn, silently, for Angelica to disconnect, which she did, reluctantly.

  Then Angelica started over, reciting the technician’s contact information, reading it off the card he had formally presented. She realized, belatedly, that she no idea how to address him. Despite the title on the card, he wasn’t a mere technician, after all. He was an engineer or technologist of some kind, he had expertise, he obviously had some specific position within his company: Suzuki-gishi? Suzuki-san? She was still worrying when an automatic message came on, asking her to wait. A moment later, she heard the familiar voice, louder and clearer than when he’d been sitting in this very room, drinking Nescafé.

  “Are they friends yet?” he asked jovially.

  “Friends? More like a confused old woman and her broken toy.”

  “What do you mean, broken?”

  “It keeps waking her up, like a newborn baby.”

  As soon as she said the words, she regretted them. She didn’t want to compare it to a baby or to anything alive.

  “Keeps waking her up?” he asked.

  “Well, for two nights. So far.”

  He was stubbornly cheerful. “If only babies cried only two or three nights!”

  “It’s not right for us,” she said, trying to sound objective. “It’s too needy.”

  “Is she responding to its needs?”

  “I suppose so. But it isn’t good for her. Or me. I can’t be woken up at all hours of the night.”

  “Don’t wake up, then. Don’t go to it. Let her do that.”

  “But she’s an old, sick woman. She needs her sleep even more than I do.”

  “We reviewed her records prior to the delivery. Her medtech files are incomplete—”

  “Yes, she prefers it that way. Registered old-fashioned. I already explained—”

  “She seems to be healthier now than she was five years ago. She’s a poster child for age reversal therapies. I don’t imagine her birthday will go unnoticed. You will have a public party of some kind, I imagine?”

  His humanity was fading, replaced by salesmanship. Angelica was unpleasantly reminded: as if the robot weren’t enough, they’d soon have the party to deal with as well. Itou, equally uninterested in publicity but resigned to a public life, had warned her about media coverage. At the very least, there would be some photographers, tabloid reporters and the local news stations. It wasn’t that hundred-year-olds were uncommon in Japan. Tens of thousands passed the centenary milestone every year, and a healthy cohort celebrated their 110th birthdays as well. But the Japanese media hadn’t yet tired of longevity stories. To see a cheery news photo of a 118-year-old being spoon-fed cake wasn’t even surprising anymore.

  In response to Angelica’s weary sigh, the technologist softened. “Don’t worry. Nothing will happen if the unit wails a little.”

  “But I’m responsible for her health. It’s bothering her.”

  “Is it?”

  Angelica began to feel the same light-headedness she’d felt the other day on the street, just prior to fainting. Was it only her normal, everyday anxiety? No, none of this felt normal. The dominoes had lined up, and who knew where the last one would fall. Nonetheless, it all seemed connected somehow: fainting on the street, evasiveness from Datu, the unwelcome delivery, her tech problems. But that was how paranoia and catastrophic thinking worked. Everything seemed connected and unsolvable.

  “Your robot isn’t interfering with my phone, is it?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You delivered the robot, and suddenly, I can’t do anything with my phone.”

  “Excuse me, I see no logical connection.”

  “But it’s . . . using wifi or accessing the cloud somehow, isn’t it? It’s getting online? Doesn’t that mean it could tamper with something else that gets online or uses networked cell phone service or something?”

  After a moment, Suzuki replied, “I’d hate to leave you with any concerns, even if they have nothing to do with our product. I’m happy to look into this. May I call you back later this afternoon?”

  “Yes, thank you very much,” she said, slowly releasing her indignation.

  “No promises, of course. You may have a problem particular to your device, especially if it’s an older model.”

  The comment made her wince. Yes, her phone was out of date, as was nearly
everything she owned. Worn-out underwear, old phone, no biological implants, uncorrected eyes, not even a pap smear in four or five years. He had diagnosed her perfectly.

  “I don’t think it’s the device itself. I think it’s my entire online identity, or something.”

  He asked, “I assume you’ve stopped in at a technology center to ask these questions?”

  “It’s impossible to get away.”

  “Don’t you have a retail establishment on the corner? I think I saw one on my way to your door the other day. You might ask them to take a look. In the meanwhile, I’ll do what I can.”

  Sayoko was still happily engaged with the second of three half-hour programs. Angelica had heard her speak aloud, to the robot presumably, explaining the names and relationships of the people on the screen and why one of the women was getting upset. A commercial came on and Sayoko said, “I was always a little dark-skinned, myself. Men don’t like that.”

  Fine, Angelica thought, let her talk to a machine about affairs and amnesia. Let her explain the soap and lotion commercials, and why every woman should yearn for whiter skin.

  She had an idea.

  “Sayoko-san, I’m having a problem with my phone and I need to go out. I can’t wait for Phuong’s next visit. I don’t think Phuong is working for us anymore.”

  “I don’t think so either,” Sayoko said, without taking her eyes from the screen.

  “You don’t?”

  “She said I don’t have enough documentation. The agency won’t take old-fashioned patients anymore.”

  Why hadn’t anyone told Angelica?

  “But you’re registered.”

  “That’s the point. Registered old-fashioned is too much trouble. She called me a liability,” Sayoko said, miffed. She turned her attention back to the new episode that was starting.

  “I’m only going to the corner,” Angelica said. “It won’t take more than ten minutes.”

  Sayoko didn’t reply.

  “Or twenty. Your show will just be ending. And then, don’t worry, I’ll be right back. I promise.”

  At the elevators, Angelica saw a neighbor, Kubota-san. He was five years older than Itou—around seventy—and recently retired. Shy but pleasant, always willing to exchange a few words or a smile.