PRIME MERIDIAN
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Copyright © 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems — except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews — without permission in writing from its author.
Published by Innsmouth Free Press
Vancouver, BC Canada
http://innsmouthfreepress.com
ISBN paperback 978-1-927990-21-6
ISBN e-book 978-1-927990-22-3
Cover artwork: istockphoto MATJAZ SLANIC, KrisCole
Layout and cover design: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Introduction
I think I first came across the work of Silvia Moreno-Garcia in the virtual pages of an online magazine called Futurismic. Her story, “Maquech,” caught me immediately, with that sense one gets of having made an im-portant new discovery, as though the story itself were a “jew-el-encrusted beetle,” like the one described within it. Already in that story, one could see the seeds of work to come. The milieu of Mexico City, for instance, written not as some faux-exotic Otherness for the consumption of North American armchair tourists, but as a place which is lived in, which is worn and comfortable and mundane, in which the science-fictional trap-pings evolve and adapt naturally.
Since then, I’ve had the good fortune to reprint the story in my Apex Book of World SF 2 anthology and, in turn, appeared in one of Silvia’s own anthologies, Fungi. Most recently, what began as a joke on Twitter to come up with the stuffiest possible name for a literary magazine — we settled on The Jewish Mexican Literary Review — became a reality with two issues already published at the time of writing. And the legendary founder of that esteemed journal — one Nahum (Eduard) Landmann — makes, in turn, a cameo appearance in this story. -STARTI-Prime Meridian is an… excuse me… prime example of Silvia’s work. If Signal to Noise, her 2015 debut novel, is a paean to — or perhaps lament for — the pop music of an 80s childhood in Mexico City, then Prime Meridian returns to another great love: the movies. The real Mars, one could say, is a construct of the imagination.
Forget the lifeless planet that’s actually there. The real Mars is a place of yearning, the promise of escape, an Otherland that has caught the collective imagination for centuries. “There is air here,” Silvia writes. For this isn’t our Mars, but the movie planet of “EXT. MARS SURFACE — DAY.”
But if Mars is a land of wish fulfillment and escape, the people who live in Silvia’s future Mexico are stranded much as we are, in the here and now of drudgery and work, relationships and the minuet of the everyday, having to make a living, barely getting time to dream.
In this, Silvia echoes, not the majority of SF writers with their shiny futures and ragged heroes, but that most unlikely of novelists, the late Philip K. Dick, for whom the future was only ever inhabited by the little people, by people like us, and for whom Mars represented the same sort of escape. It is an escape from the mundane into the fantastical, but is escape possible? Is it even desirable?
The novella, I’ve long felt, is the perfect form of story. Long enough to submerge us in its world, to make us care about its characters, yet just short enough to be stripped of the excess fat of novels, short enough to be focused and lean. In this deeply humanistic story of people living in a present/future at just a few angles different from ours, Silvia has crafted a quiet masterpiece.
I feel privileged to have read it early and I’m envious that you get to read it now, for the first time. I loved it — and I’m sure you’ll feel the same.
Lavie Tidhar, 2017
1
Why did I have to poison myself with love?
— Aelita, or The Decline of Mars, Alexei Tolstoi
***
Una ciudad deshecha, gris, monstruosa
— “Alta traición,” José Emilio Pacheco
The subway station was a dud. Both of its entrances had once again been commandeered by a street gang that morning, which meant you’d have to pay a small ‘fee’ in order to catch your train. Amelia was tempted to fork over the cash, but you never knew if these assholes were also going to help themselves to your purse, your cell phone, and whatever the hell else they wanted.
That meant she had to choose between a shared ride and the bus. Amelia didn’t like either option. The bus was cheap. It would also take forever for it to reach Coyoacán. The car could also take a while, depending on how many people hailed it, but it would no doubt move faster.
Amelia was supposed to meet Fernanda for lunch the next day and she needed to ensure she had enough money to pay for her meal. Fernanda was loaded, and odds were she’d cover it all, but Amelia didn’t want to risk it in case Fernanda wasn’t feeling generous.
The most sensible thing to do, considering this, was to take the bus. Problem was, she had the booking and if she didn’t check in by five o’clock, she’d be penalized, a percentage of her earnings deducted. The damned app had a geolocator function. Amelia couldn’t lie and claim she’d reached the house on time.
Amelia gave the gang members standing by the subway station’s entrance a long glare and took out her cell phone.
Five minutes later, her ride arrived. She was glad to discover there was only one other person in the car. Last time she’d taken a shared ride, she sat together with four people, including a woman with a baby, the cries of the child deafening Amelia.
Amelia boarded the car and gave the other passenger a polite nod. The man hardly returned it. He was wearing a gray suit and carried a briefcase, which he clutched with one hand while he held up his cell phone in the other. You heard all these stories about how the ride shares were dangerous — you could get into a car and be mugged, express kidnapped, or raped — but Amelia wasn’t going to pay for a damned secure taxi and this guy, at least, didn’t look like he was going to pull a gun on her. He was too busy yakking on the phone.
They made good progress despite the usual insanity of Mexico City’s traffic. In Europe, there were automated cars roaming the cities, but here drivers still had a job. They couldn’t automate that, not with the chaotic fuckery of the roads.
Mars is home to the tallest mountain in the solar system. Olympus Mons, 21 km high and 600 km in diameter, she told herself as the driver honked the horn. Sometimes, she repeated the Mandarin words she knew, but it was mostly facts about the Red Planet. To remind herself it was real, it existed, it was there.
Once they approached the old square in Coyoacán, Amelia jumped out of the car. No point in staying inside; the vehicle moved at a snail’s pace. The cobblestone streets in this borough were never made to bear the multitudes that now walked through the once-small village.
The square that marked the center of old Coyoacán was chock-full of street vendors frying churros and gorditas, or offering bags emblazoned with the face of Frida Kahlo and acrylic rebozos made in China. Folkloric bullshit.
Amelia took a side street, where the traditional pulquerias had been substituted with fusion restaurants. Korean-Mexican. French-Mexican. Whatever-Mexican. Mexican-Mexican was never enough. A couple of more blocks and she reached Lucía’s home with five minutes to spare, thank-fucking-God.
Lucía’s house was not an ordinary house, but a full-fledge casona, a historical marvel that looked like it was out of a movie, with wrought iron bars on the windows and an interior patio crammed with potted plants. The inside was much of the same: rustic tables and hand-painted talavera. It screamed Colonial, provincial, nostalgia and also fake. There was an artificial, too-calculated, too-overdone quality to each and every corner of the house, an unintended clue that the owner had once been an actress.
Amel
ia knew the drill. She went into the living room with its enormous screen and sat on one of the couches. Lucía was already there. The woman drank nothing except mineral water with a wedge of lime. The first time Amelia had visited her, she had made the mistake of asking for a Diet Coke, which earned her a raised eyebrow and a mineral water, because fuck you, Lucía Madrigal said what you drank and what you ate (nothing, most times, although twice, little bowls with pomegranate seeds had been placed on the table by the couches).
That day, there were no pomegranates, only the mineral water and Lucía, dressed in a bright green dress with a matching turban, the kind Elizabeth Taylor wore in the 70s. That had been Lucía’s heyday and she had not acclimated to modern dress styles, preferring tacky drama to demure senior citizen clothes.
“Today, we are going to watch my second movie. The Mars picture. I was quite young when this came out in ‘65, so it’s not one of my best roles,” Lucía declared with such aplomb one might have believed she had been a real actress, instead of a middling starlet who got lucky and married a filthy rich politician.
Amelia nodded. She had little interest in Lucía’s movies, but her job was not to offer commentary. It was to simply sit and watch. Sometimes, it was to sit and listen. Lucía liked to go on about the film stars she’d met in decades past or the autobiography she was writing. As long as Amelia kept her eyes open and her mouth shut, she’d get a good rating on Friendrr and her due payment, minus the 20% commission for the broker. There were other apps that functioned without a broker, but those were less reliable. You might arrive for your Friendrr session and discover the client was an absolute sleaze who wouldn’t pay. Friendrr vetted the clients, asked for deposits, and charged more, which was good news.
The movie was short and confusing, as if it had been rewritten halfway through the production. The first half focused on a space ranger sent to check out a Martian outpost manned by a scientist and his lovely daughter. Lucía played the daughter, who wore ‘futuristic’ silver miniskirts. For its first half-hour, it played as a tame romance. Then space pirates, who looked suspiciously like they were wearing discarded clothes from a Mexican Revolution film, invaded the outpost. The pirates were under the command of a Space Queen who was obviously evil, due to the plunging neckline of her costume.
“It doesn’t much look like the real Mars, I suppose,” Lucía mused, “but then, I prefer it this way. The real Mars is bland compared to the one the set designer imagined. Have you seen the pictures of the colonies?”
“Yes,” Amelia said, and although she knew only monosyllabics were required of her, she went on. “I want to go there, soon.”
“To the Martian colonies?”
Lucía looked at the young woman. The actress had indulged in plastic surgery at several points during the 90s and her face seemed waxy. Time could not be stopped, though, and she had long abandoned attempts at surgery, botox and peels. What remained of her was like the core of a dead tree. Her eyebrows were non-existent, drawn with aplomb and a brown pencil. She perpetually sported a half-amused expression and a necklace, which she inevitably toyed with.
“Well, I suppose people are meant to go places,” Lucía said. “But those colonies on Mars, they look as antiseptic and exciting as a box of baby wipes. Everything is white. Who ever heard of white as an exciting color?”
There was irony in this comment, since the movie they had just watched was in black-and-white, but Amelia nodded. Half an hour later, she took the bus back home.
When Amelia walked into the apartment, the television was on. Her sister and her youngest niece were on the couch, watching a reality TV show. Her other niece was probably on the bed, with her phone. Since there were two bedrooms and Amelia had to share a room with one of the girls, the only place where she could summon a modicum of privacy was the bathroom, but when she zipped toward there after a quiet ‘hello,’ Marta looked at her.
“I hope you’re not thinking of taking a shower,” her sister said. “Last month’s water bill came in. It’s very high.”
“That’s the fault of the people in the building next door,” Amelia said. “You know they steal water from the tinacos.”
“You take forever in the shower. Your hair’s not even dirty. Why would you need to get in the shower?”
Amelia did not reply. She changed course, headed into the bedroom, and slipped under the covers. On the other bed, her niece played a game on her cell phone. Its repetitive bop-bop sound allowed for neither sleep nor coherent thoughts.
2
Amelia took her nieces to school, which meant an annoying el-bowing in and out of a crowded bus, plus the masterful avoiding of men who tried to touch her ass. Marta insisted that the girls needed to be picked up and dropped off from school, even though Karina was 11 and could catch the school transport to-gether with her little sister, no problem. It was just a modest fee for this privilege.
Amelia thought Marta demanded she perform this task as a way to demonstrate her power.
When Amelia returned from dropping off the girls, she took the shower that had been forbidden her the previous night. Afterward, she cooked a quick meal for the family and left it in the refrigerator — this was another of the tasks she had to execute, along with the drop-offs and pick-ups. Again, she boarded a bus, squeezed tight next to two men, the smell of cheap cologne clogging her nostrils, and got off near the Diana.
Fernanda was characteristically laggard, strolling into the restaurant half an hour late. She did not apologize for the delay. She sat down, ordered a salad after reading the menu twice, and smiled at Amelia.
“I have met the most excellent massage therapist,” Fernanda said. This was her favorite adjective. She had many, employed them generously. “He got rid of that pain in my back. I told you about it, didn’t I? Between the shoulder blades. And the most excellent….”
She droned on. Fernanda and Amelia did not meet often anymore, but when they did, Amelia had to listen patiently about all the wonderful, amazing, super-awesome people Fernanda knew, the cool-brilliant-mega hobbies she was busying herself with, and the delightful-darling-divine trips she’d taken recently. It was pretty much the same structure as her visits with Lucía, the old woman discussing her movies while Amelia watched the ice cubes in her glass melt.
It made her feel cheap and irritated, but Fernanda footed their lunch bills and she had lent money to Amelia on previous occasions. Right now, she was wondering if she should ask for a bit of cash or bite her tongue.
Amelia, who didn’t drink regularly in restaurants (who would with these prices?), ordered a martini to pass the time. Fernanda was already on her second one. She drank a lot but only when her husband wasn’t looking. He was ugly, grouchy and wealthy. The last attribute was the only one that mattered to Fernanda.
“So, what are you doing now?” Fernanda asked. Her smile was blinding, her hair painted an off-putting shade of blonde, her dark roots showing. Not Brigitte Bardot — bouts of movie-watching with Lucía were giving Amelia a sense of film history — but a straw-like color that wasn’t bold, just boring. Every woman of a certain age had that hair color. They’d copied it off a celebrity who had a nightly variety show. No brunettes on TV. Pale skin and fair hair were paramount.
“This and that,” Amelia replied.
“You’re not working? Don’t tell me you’re still doing that awful-terrible rent-a-friend thing,” Fernanda said, looking surprised.
“Yes. Although, I wanted to ask if you hadn’t heard of anything that might suit me….”
“Well… your field, it’s not really my line of work,” Fernanda replied.
Not that Fernanda had a line of work. As far as Amelia knew, all she did was stay married, her bills paid by her dick of a husband. Amelia, on the other hand, since dropping out of university, had done nothing but work. A series of idiotic, poorly paying and increasingly frustrating gigs. There was no such thing as full-time work for someone like her. Perhaps if she’d stuck with her studies, it might have been di
fferent, but when her mother got sick, she had to drop out and become her caretaker. And afterward, when her mother passed away, it wasn’t like she could get her scholarship back.
“I do almost anything,” Amelia said with a shrug. “Perhaps something in your husband’s office?”
“There’s nothing there,” Fernanda said, too quickly.
There was likely something reserved for Fernanda’s intimate friends. Amelia had once counted herself amongst those ‘excellent’ people. When they’d been in school together, Amelia had written a few term papers for Fernanda and that had made her useful. She’d also dated Elías Bertoliat, which had increased her standing amongst their cohort. That had gone to hell. He’d ghosted her, about two months after she’d dropped out of school, and returned to Monterrey.
Amelia was more devalued than the Mexican peso.
She looked at the bread basket, not wishing to lay her eyes on her so-called friend. She really didn’t want to ask for money (it made her feel like shit), but of course that was the one reason why she was sitting at the restaurant.
“Anastasia Brito might be looking for someone like you,” Fernanda said, breaking the uncomfortable silence that had descended between them.
Amelia frowned. Anastasia had gone to the same university, but she’d been an art student while Amelia dallied in land-and-food systems, looking forward to a career as an urban farmer.
“Why?” she asked.
“She’s going through a phase. She has an art show in a couple of weeks. The theme is ‘meat,’ but after that, she said she’s going to focus on plants and she’ll be needing genetically modified ones. It might be your thing.”
It was, indeed. After her chances at university soured up, Amelia had taken a few short-term courses in plant modification at a small-fry school. All she’d been able to do with that was get a gig at an illegal marijuana operation. Non-sanctioned, highly modified marijuana plants. It paid on time, but Amelia chickened out after a raid. You couldn’t fly to Mars if your police certificate wasn’t clean. She didn’t want to risk it.
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