by Cole, Olivia
“So it’s everybody?” Tasha isn’t sure who says it; it’s not Ishmael and not the woman, who Tasha has heard Ishmael call Vette.
Tasha nods vaguely in answer.
“Man, I wish I could have afforded MINK.” It’s a player beside #34, a chubby guy with a young face. Tasha has no idea what he means.
#16, sitting a little to the right of Tasha, scoffs across the circle at him.
“What are you talking about? If you had MINK, you’d have the Chip. If you had the Chip, you’d be…crazy. One of them.” He looks scornful.
“Yeah, I guess so,” the chubby guy says slowly. “But at least I wouldn’t have to worry about it.”
They ponder this as a group for a moment before #34 says,
“Well, if it’s because of the Chip, maybe there’s like, a cure. An off switch. There has to be, right? I’m sure the lab knows all about this. I mean, they got to, right? They know. They’re trying to fix it. Probably right now. It’s not like a plague or some shit. It’s an implant. Cybranu just has to figure out how to turn it off.”
Tasha glances at him doubtfully but says nothing. Dinah had voiced similar hopes. In the first day or two, Tasha had held off lighting the rug on fire to cook boxed pizza, just in case all of this blew over. But by now, the way she sees it, if the world as she knows it is over…it’s over. Although she sheepishly misses her shoe collection, praying for an off switch to what the world has become seems dumb. She would’ve liked an off switch when her parents died, or a rewind button, and that didn’t happen. Get real, dummy, she thinks.
“I don’t know, dude.” It’s the chubby player again. “That seems easy. Real easy.”
“Easy?” Tasha asks.
“Too easy. It’s neat.”
Tasha looks sideways at Ishmael, who is leaning against a cardboard box. He hasn’t said anything but his eyes are following the conversation, his fingers knitted.
“Yeah,” says #34, rubbing the back of his neck, “but if this was a possibility, Cybranu would have known about it and have like a protocol or some shit. That’s what labs have, right? Protocols and shit. They test stuff. They would have had a protocol for this, and maybe it’s just taking a while to fix.”
Tasha considers this. He’s right, on one hand. Labs do test stuff. Surely they had to know this was a possibility.
“Some of them act weird,” she says suddenly, and they all look at her. “Different than the others. You know, the ones that were chasing me on the beach are the typical ones. But some, like this one Chipped lady I saw at the Post, she acted different. Like she didn’t even know I was there. Not until I actually walked into the Post.”
“Maybe she was getting fixed by the protocol, see?” #34 insists, nodding enthusiastically.
“She still tried to kill me,” Tasha adds neutrally. She feels like she’s staring at a mirage inside her head. The lines between her thoughts won’t stay still.
“Well, the protocol ain’t done yet,” says #34, a little glum.
“It is neat, isn’t it,” Ishmael says suddenly, softly. They all turn to look at him. He’s staring at the ceiling.
No one says anything.
“It’s neat, like you said, Zayd,” he says, nodding at the chubby player. “All the main jobs give you MINK. MINK gives the implant. People without jobs don’t get MINK, so they don’t get the implant.”
Tasha can’t help but think of Dinah again, who had said something very similar. Will everything remind her of her dead friend? Is that the way death is? A song stuck in your head?
“Well…yeah,” #16 curbs his tone a little for Ishmael, but not by much.
“Just saying,” Ishmael says, still staring at the ceiling. Tasha thinks maybe he’s looking at a mirage too.
They all sit quietly for awhile, lost in their own thoughts. Tasha watches Ishmael, whose eyebrows still look sewn together. The light coming through the still-open door is fading as the sun sets somewhere opposite the lake. As it grows dimmer and dimmer, he stands and closes the door, asking no one. She hears the dry scuffle of cardboard in the dark as he drags boxes in front of the door. Light comes underneath it, a thin line bright enough to illuminate her backpack, which she drags over to use as a pillow, shifting its contents so the can opener isn’t stabbing her skull.
She can hear the others settling too, their breaths deepening not with sleep but with deep thought. With the light of day gone, they are free to be terrified; free to think their darkest thoughts about family members whose whereabouts they’re unsure of. They don’t say these things aloud; they don’t want to be comforted. They wrap up in their despair like cocoons and wait for morning. Tasha knows about cocoons.
Someone shifts close to Tasha.
“Hey.”
It’s the woman, Vette.
“Yeah?” Tasha says.
“Cute purse.”
“Thanks.”
And quiet.
Chapter 15
Tasha wakes before the others and freaks out on a miniature scale as she becomes aware that she can hear the breathing of other lungs besides her own and that there is a human being very near her. It’s Vette, and next to Vette is #34. They both sleep soundly.
Tasha reaches into the outside pocket of the Prada backpack and pulls out one of Leona’s letters, pressing the paper to her face and breathing it in like a bouquet. She doesn’t actually smell anything, but with her eyes closed she imagines she can smell her sister’s hair, the oil she would rub through it. She imagines, too, the warm, comfortable smell of composting vegetables, melon rind. She takes the page away from her face and studies the surface of it for prints, soil, food stains. There isn’t much to see. She runs her eyes over the handwriting without actually reading it.
What would her parents have thought of this whole ordeal? Leona had gotten her nose for conspiracies from their father, who Tasha knows would have already had a theory or two ready on the morning of the Change. They would have survived, Tasha’s parents. If they hadn’t already been dead, unprotected by MINK, they would have survived all this. Or maybe they would have been seduced by the beckoning Cybranu ads that crowded the Net and the world.
Tasha remembers her daily train ride, both sides of her lit up with voices and flashing colors of lips and legs. The man on one of the illuminated panels, modeling for Hanes and talking about the comfort of his crotch, fades as he finishes his half-naked ploy, and the screen lights up with Cybranu. The model in the ad changes as passengers shuffle before it—Microscopic Mirroring Devices at work. An older man, his posture stooped, his hair thin, passes in front of the MMDs and the ad reflects his whiteness, his white hair, his blue oxford. But his Cybranu self has a straighter back, a more defiant hairline, fewer crows’ feet. The man gazes at the better version of himself for a moment before getting off the L. Taking advantage of the new space afforded by his absence, a full-hipped girl of no more than 20 finds herself in front of the MMD’s, confronted with a slimmer reflection, a straighter nose. Blonder, it seems. The real girl lowers her eyes, changes the song on her Glass, the seed planted.
Another man passes in front of the Cybranu ad, speaking Spanish on his ear-chip. When he looks ahead at the image provided by the MMDs, he has less facial hair and the tattoo on his cheek is gone. His hair is shorter. The real man moves away from the ad. There is no one to replace him—the crowd on the train is thinning—so the image dissolves into what Cybranu programmed as default, an athletic white man in his thirties, smiling. The people on the train nod to their individual soundtracks. The Cybranu ad finishes and then fades into something else shiny.
Tasha sighs. Looking back, she recognizes the carrot dangling from the stick, always jerked out of reach. She folds Leona’s letter back into its envelope as people around her in the storage room are starting to stir. She pulls her compact of foundation with its tiny mirror out of the backpack. She glances over at the hair of sleeping Vette. Hair like that doesn’t need much fixing, Tasha thinks enviously, but her own does. She peers into th
e tiny mirror and tilts it this way and that while attempting to tame what’s becoming a mane. As for the rest of her, she can only see one eye at a time, her nose disconnected from the rest of her, her mouth on its own. Without her eyes to offset it, her overbite seems dramatic and sharkish.
Vette sits up as Tasha snaps the mirror shut.
“What’s that for?” the woman asks, rubbing her eyes.
“My face.”
Ishmael is moving the stuff out from in front of the door that leads to the stadium, and now the faint light that had colored the room blazes as he opens it. Vette stands up, rotating the shoulder she slept on. She follows the other players over to the door, where some of them are picking up a couple of the boxes of food and carrying them outside.
“Ish likes to eat up top in the morning,” Vette says, motioning to Tasha. She’s warmer today.
Outside the weather is cool but pleasant, and on top of the stadium—from where #34 had spotted Tasha the day before—one can look out at the lake in one direction, and in at the city from another. There is no wind at the moment; all is still. The world could be a meadow. The lake is a soft wash.
Someone hands Tasha a hotdog, which she eats without thought. Ishmael stands with #34 and #16, looking out at the beach.
“Check it out,” Ishmael says, turning to Tasha.
From his side she can see a swarm of the Minkers wandering around on the beach where she was ambushed yesterday. Their movements are idle, empty of meaning, operating in circuits of activity. Tasha sees them and thinks of the wandering buffalo in an old, old America. She remembers what she learned about pioneers pushing West on trains so long ago, appearing in windows of the freight’s cars and clearing the fields of bison with their magical, inaccurate shotguns blasting, not even taking the meat when the train moved on. What she wouldn’t give for a long-range rifle here and now.
“There’s more today,” Ishmael says to no one in particular.
Tasha agrees but doesn’t say so out loud; she feels strange beside him. In a bar she would probably be leaning on his shoulder by now, or talking nonstop. Here she feels unarmed, her mascara old and her hair audacious.
“Do you still want to go downtown?” Ishmael asks her, turning his face to her.
She turns slightly away. The less he sees of her smudginess the better. Besides, she needs to remember her lie and doesn’t trust her face not to betray it.
“Yeah,” she says. “Gotta check on my family.”
Standing so near him, Tasha realizes suddenly that she had not packed underwear. The thought sinks into her stomach like a greased cannonball. More thoughts come, one after another like fire ants: no deodorant, no toothbrush, no H-Airless or even a razor. On Foster, out and about cutting open random necks, she had allowed the existence of her sweaty underarms to shrink in importance. Standing between Ishmael and #16, she feels a lump like a planet expanding in her throat. She needs camouflage. She finds herself flipping through a dusty file cabinet of alibis to be used for escape, untouched since college: she can’t use the dead grandma excuse, as everyone’s grandma is likely dead at this point.
Ishmael and Vette are discussing the amount of food left in the concession stand boxes. Tasha is imagining what the area between her eyebrows currently looks like. The idea of a forest springs up unbidden; the trees cloud her vision. Ishmael is proposing they ration the remaining hot dogs, and Tasha is imagining each follicle on her glabella extending outward like the legs of massive black spiders. She feels wild, feels in her muscles the desire to pace steel bars in anxious liquid steps. This is why she’s better off alone, she thinks. She would leave right now if these people hadn’t saved her life. She doesn’t know what she owes them, but it’s something, so when #34 says, “Someone is going to need to go get food, or we won’t be able to hold out,” Tasha has to restrain herself from leaping into the air to offer. A store. In its linoleum fluorescence is salvation, things like deodorant and old-school razors that will comfort her. Two birds with one stone, she thinks, stuff for me and food for them. Debt paid. Then I’ll move on. She holds her tongue for a moment and then says,
“I’ll go. Me and someone else. We can watch each other’s backs and carry more food.”
Silence greets her offering. Still too painfully aware of her face to raise her eyes, she directs her energy at Ishmael. She isn’t aware of the faint feeling of hope until it’s replaced with disappointment when the voice who speaks up isn’t his. It’s Vette’s.
“I’ll go.”
Great, thinks Tasha. This should be fun.
“You sure?” That voice is Ishmael’s. He doesn’t sound concerned, only diplomatic. The face of #16 is sour but he says nothing. Neither does anyone else.
“I’m sure. We’ll be quick. Let’s go now while it’s still early.”
Tasha has offered to empty out her backpack to carry some of the food, and she does so now, stacking the cans of fruit and the bottled water on the floor by the door leading to the field. Some of the team is watching her a little suspiciously, as if expecting her to withdraw some wondrous food or magical weapon that she’s been withholding. She removes everything except the letters from Leona, the can opener, and the striped bag of make-up: the can opener so they don’t demolish her fruit while she’s gone, and the letters because they’re private. The make-up she brings because to leave it would be like a magician leaving his magic top hat on stage alone with a curious audience set on discovering the origins of the pristine white rabbit. Plus, when she and Vette get where they’re going, she plans on slipping off to the bathroom to fix her face. She’ll feel better when she’s covered. Vette can sneer if she wants.
Vette has a duffel bag emptied out of soccer equipment—Nike, unlike the team’s uniforms. Tasha resists the urge to say Just do it! as they slip out the concealed door of the stadium, the same one she had been hauled through the day before. With #34 at the top of the stadium, promising to give them a signal if the beach herd heads their way, the two women slink across the trash-cluttered lawn of the park. Tasha walks quickly and quietly, saying nothing. She has the Wusthof ready, and has given Vette the paring knife she brought along.
A little way down Foster, Tasha realizes the other woman isn’t keeping up and she looks around to check on her progress. Vette is two yards behind, the small knife held in front of her like a miniature Samurai sword. Tasha stops, bewildered.
“Hey, uh, you okay?”
Vette looks at her and licks her lips.
“Yeah, um, I’m good. I’m just, you know, bringing up the rear.”
Tasha laughs, in spite of the dead bodies that surround the ground around them.
“Bringing up the rear? The rear of what?”
Vette looks at her helplessly and Tasha realizes the woman is scared. Tasha is genuinely surprised. The scowl that has barely left Vette’s mouth since they met has been enough to convince Tasha that she is a warrior, afraid of nothing, tough as nails. Tasha almost asks her why she bothered to come if she was so scared until she realizes no one else on the team volunteered. They would have been just as bad, she knows. Worse, even, on account of their inevitable attempts at dashing shows of bravery. Tasha sighs.
“Look, you don’t have to pretend we’re in Predator or something.”
Vette stares.
“Predator? Come on. Not even the remake? Okay. Well look, just, like, relax. If they’re near us we’ll probably see them, or they’ll see us and start a riot. You can relax the knife. Right, let it hang down. You don’t need it right now anyway.”
Nothing said in the circumstances could be reassuring; every positive has a terrifying opposite. But Vette lets the hand holding the knife droop, the creases on her face softening. Vette looks up at Tasha, beginning to smile, then glances over Tasha’s shoulder. Her face goes ashen, the knife springing back up to attention.
Tasha pauses, uncomprehending only for a moment before she whirls around and sees them coming, two of them. A couple. An actual couple: the woman wearing a
wedding dress; he, a tux. His lapel is torn and her veil hangs crazily off her head and nearly to her shoulder, held on only by bobby pins stuck in her ragged hair. Their hands are outstretched in the typical fashion, but no rings grace their groping fingers. The Change happened early in the morning, Tasha recalls. Who the hell gets married that early in the day? Maybe they were just preparing for a noonish wedding. Bad luck to see the bride before the service. Obviously.
Vette is too terrified to scream. She drops the knife and Tasha curses at her, telling her to pick it up again. The happy couple looms closer and Tasha lets them, standing slightly in front of Vette, who is scrabbling on the ground for her weapon.
The groom yawns toward Tasha’s throat and she hacks at his neck, missing and instead lopping off an ear. He doesn’t notice, of course, only frowns and barks. Meanwhile his wife—or almost wife—has set her sights on Vette, who has picked up the knife and is standing ready, holding the blade like a gun, pointing straight ahead. Vette’s face is grim and she looks as if her mouth might open to scream (or vomit) at any moment. The blushing bride isn’t quick—neither is her spouse—but Vette’s fear has slowed her down.
“The neck, Vette,” Tasha warns, keeping her eyes on the groom, who has finally turned to face her. He lunges, a bit quicker this time, and Tasha sidesteps, jamming the knife into his shoulder. Blood spurts out, as red as the light flashing from his neck. She stabs again in closer quarters and hears the familiar crackle of the Chip. She doesn’t wait for him to fall, instead turns to help Vette.
But Vette doesn’t need help, not really. She’s gotten the woman in the dress onto the ground and is stabbing her in her neck repeatedly. The bride snarls and barks each time the blade misses the mark. Tasha watches for a moment and then realizes the problem.