by Geoff Ryman
GOODBYE, AND REMEMBER TO PAY
So that is some of our music. We don't have many books, our television is all kung fu. All our heart and soul is in our music. It's where all our brains are, too, in the little tapes. They play around our heads like swallows even here in a dump like Kizuldah.
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audio file from: bugs@nouvelles
18 November
Just thought you'd like to know that there's a Collab sharemind base called the Sezen Drop. You can't go into any New York club without hearing Karz music. Your little girl's a fashion leader. Oh, brace yourselves. Got the collar offer up on my home. And thanks again for telling us about the store. Attached to this you should find an article about the difference between the Formats and who's behind it. You may be interested to know how hard the cable people fought against all this! That's my old industry!
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e-mail from: Lieutenant Chung Lung
20 November
Mother,
It pains me to write to you like this, but I feel I must point out that the things you put on your machine are open to the world. Sezen Ozdemir recalls my grandfather's murder. There are people here who misread the site as being full of backsliding minority nationalism. I urge you to have a care and to be less of a wild woman.
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audio file from: Mrs Chung Mae
20 November
Son, it pains me to write to you like this, but I am not entirely cut off like a thread from the world and news does reach me. You married and did not invite me or even tell me. I would have understood that you could not have your mother there, and that only your father would be invited. If only you had explained, I am adult enough to understand. You chose not to tell me at all. I am open before the world, you are hidden even within the family. So, is that the difference between good and wild behaviour? So go fuck yourself. Is that wild woman enough for you? By the way, all my mail is private, unless you have been using army decoders to read it. Have you? Are you a spy as well? Tell your army friends that they will find a world they cannot control, and that I am glad that they are all asleep.
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audio file from: Mrs Chung Mae
28 November
Bugsy, you are the only one who can help us. Bugsy, we have over five hundred orders for the collar. We make our embroidery special, we cannot make five hundred collars, not at special deal price. We were very foolish not to think of this and apologize humbly for causing our good family friend such difficulties. It is not our way to make native designs by machine, it is not what our business is for. What can we do? Also, why is your name Bugsy?
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audio file from: bugs@nouvelles
28 November
First things first. Bugsy is a gangster's name and people call me that as a joke, because they say I remind them of a gangster. Second, I attach info about a machine that embroiders to order. Yes, it's a machine, but listen, you give it the ID files of your guests, and it will weave their names and or a message into the collar. It won't be handmade, but it will still be special, and the design will still say a Circle of friends.
Now, on the distribution. I've talked to the store, and hey, live the changes! Nouvelles is now a distribution centre. What you do is send all the collars once to us and we'll send them out. But. We need our own customer's barcode on each one to be read and shipped. Attached is a file with all the customers with our barcode details for each. If you can get the machine I suggest, it will also weave in the barcode in the back of the collar just where we need it. Now listen up. If you get the machine, it's so smart that you will be able to do individual things for your customers. Customize! Live that change! You're in business, not a museum. Don't apologize for not making everything by hand. Love the new screens.
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audio file from: Chung Mae
29 November
Bugsy-ma'am, I will not lie, I need a friend. Kwan has been better to me than a mother would be. But even a mother can tire. My business is in her barn, and she lets me live with her. There are people in the village who want to stop the future, and so they tried to stop me. They stopped me with the truth. They told my husband I was in love with another man. It was true. And so I became a fallen woman, and only my little tribe of women will talk to me. They suffer too, especially brave Shen Suloi. It was her husband who tried to stop us, and who told my husband about me. Mrs Shen is Eloi and is loyal to me because I show the traditions of her people to the world. She believes that the soul of her people is growing in the world through me. Her husband is Chinese and does not understand.
Many of the husbands think this thing with all the women is strange. So Shen Suloi and I work and laugh and help each other and there are things we cannot say. We all have to put our feelings in little boxes in this village, or we would end up killing each other. Kwan tells me I should go out. I do not have the heart. People treat me like I am a ghost. They try to walk through me. All I try to do is help them, but they are so suspicious now and fear even to be seen with me. So I stay in and talk to the machine. I am lost to the machine, I spend all my time on it.
I am trying to find out about the Gates Format, I am trying to find out about the Air before it kills me. I can see why the UN Format was tried, but I agree with those who want the Gates opened. UN imitates the machine, the Gates open like our own heads. Also, I have personal reason that I will not unburden to you, to hate the UN Format. I am become its opponent. Can you help me by telling your powerful friends that those who are as dependent on you as children, should at least be asked what we want done to our heads? The Test killed people in Kizuldah. Can you please get them to understand that we are real, that we are here? We are frightened, and ignorant, and we are trying to catch up. I hope opening the door to all this misery does not lose me friendship.
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audio file from: bugs@nouvelles
30 November
Every time you write me, I wonder what have we done to the world. Three billion of us live in a world with lights, cameras, action; the other four billion can't get clean water, let alone bandwidth. There are times when I want to do an article: 'Mae's Story.' Then I think what a nasty thing to do, turn a friend into copy. But Mae, you got me jumping, wanting to tell people: 'Look, look over there, look what you've forgotten.' But what I want to show them is too big. I can't do it, only you could. Only you could tell them. If it's not too much to ask, could you do a talk about your life and let me magpie it? Bugsy.
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audio file from: Mrs Chung Mae
1 December
Listen Western woman all painted in finery, we survived the Japanese, who at least look human. We survived a war of liberation that cut off our men's heads and left them in a row by the roadside. We survived childbirth, disease, joints, worms, hunger, winter winds, drought, the Red Guards who ate everything, the guerrillas who made us pay them tax, as well as the government. We ate rotten seed rice, we boiled up grass, we pulled out our own teeth, sewed up our own wounds with thread. Do you really think you can obliterate us with your lights cameras action, your shows, your wires? We who are rooted in the earth like trees? Who do you really think is stronger? Who will be dead in one hundred years, you or us? I hope you die like vermin, all of you.
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audio file from: Mrs Chung Mae
1 December
Bugsy, that last mail was not from me. I heard it with horror. But I see I must explain at last. I said that the Air Test killed. The Air Test killed my neighbour Mrs Tung who was ninety. I saw her every day and I loved her, for she was kind and gentle and was my teacher from earliest days. She always saw something special in me because she loved pretty things and I was good at making things pretty. We talked every day, as if I had a good angel of a mother. When the Air Test came, she was visiting me. We were all in panic and in terror, and the shock killed m
y friend, my dear Old Mrs Tung, and I called her, called her, and the mail put me inside her, and I died with her, and when I woke up she was copied inside me. At first it was like having a well-wisher inside my soul. But it is not wholesome, and she has curdled like goat's milk into hatred. She wants a separate life. I have been studied. I have been told such a thing could not happen if Air came by the open Gates; that is why I hate the UN Format, why I study it, why I try to find ways to undo it. It turned my beautiful friend into a monster. It turned me into someone who can be surprised by a dragon erupting out of her own mouth. The past talks out of me, instead of the future. I am fighting for the future, she fights for restoration of the past. Please, please, do not think I am mad, sick in the head. If you do not believe me, talk to Yeshiboz Sistemlar in Yeshibozkent. They did the study on me. Beware, for that place does things that would be illegal in the West. But Satan sometimes tells the truth, while goodness hides itself in soft lies. It was not me who said those things.
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audio file from: bugs@nouvelles
2 December
That does it, Mae. I am writing my article. I don't do it to embarrass you or your country, but because my own people must know what is happening. Your Old Mrs Tung was right, we are so far from the soil. Mae, I don't know what to say to you, except I'm on your side, too, kid. I'll let you see the article before I send it out. Any news about the machine?
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audio file from: Mrs Chung Mae
3 December
Wise criminal, you recall me to business. No, we do not have the machine. I have sent repeated messages to Mr Saatchi Saatchi at the bank and I believe the thing has been ordered and even paid for. I fear the worst. The worst is that in this country someone has paid someone else to lose it on the road. So we cannot deliver collars as planned. Our Circle is sewing day and night; even I am sewing day and night, which means I have less time for miserable reflection.
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e-mail from: Mr Oz Oz
4 December
Mae,
Many thanks for your voicemail. I am very sorry not to have replied to your others, but I have not been in a position to help anyone until just a few days ago. You were so worried about brigands in hills; so was I. But I felt secure in the main pass down from Yeshibozkent. I pulled over to sleep late at night on the road, and woke up with a gun in my face. Mae, they took everything – the van, the computer, all my clothes, even the beautiful coat you gave me. I was left barefoot by the side of the road. I walked into Sogan (Dilapidated) which lived up to its name and did not open a single door, except for the police, who put me in jail. I am young, Mae, and like a child I wondered why they treated me like a thief. I found out soon enough, for I was going to be treated like a thief by everyone.
I didn't know, but it is a racket: government officials go out, and come back shoeless, saying everything is stolen, when in fact they've sold everything, especially the computer. I was the third Taking Wing operative that had come back that way, and the government was sick of it. They held me under house arrest until the computer was sold to a foreigner in Balshang. The thieves were so dumb they did not even know about the hard-disk watermark, and, thank heaven, it was an honest bumpkin of a thief who said that, yes, they had stolen it from me. He was so foolish, he even said that he had been the one to persuade the others not to kill me, thinking it would save his neck. It saved mine. The government expects its operatives to be killed defending its property, or spend time in jail. It was Allah's will – all my material on your village, including both your and Sunni's question maps had been sent online, and were received as a model of what the operatives were supposed to achieve. So, having been a thief and in serious trouble, I was restored to my former favoured position as the only operative who had succeeded in doing anything.
Thanks to God who sent you to me. Mae, it is all your work, and I have tried to tell my boss that it is so and he waves it away. After all, you are an ignorant peasant woman as far as he is concerned. Still, I have written a further report on you and I have not been short of wind in describing what Teacher Shen did to you. I expect that there will be a result there. This is not cheap revenge, Mae, for truly we cannot have teachers who block the education of our people.
It also means I am back in a position to chase your machine. As an honest victim of theft, I am in a strong position to denounce corruption. So I am making a big stink. We have traced your machine to a depot in Balshang where we have a signature. Naturally the signature matches no one who works there, so we arrested the shipping agent. Now I know why the government arrested me. The shipper is a tough but civilized man. He keeps saying he knows nothing, and probably does not. But we keep him in jail, and have seized all his goods and thrown all his people out of work so they have no money. The idea is simple. With no job, one of the employees will rat on the one who did it. All we can do is wait.
Your site makes full use of audio, video, and customer database, so everyone at Taking Wing is proud of you. But, a suggestion: Perhaps you could have something more about how much the government has done for all the united peoples of Karzistan? I know your simple heart bubbles with gratitude for the government, for I heard your words and saw your face when we opened the bank account. But some people here do not know you, and are concerned that people abroad might get an unbalanced picture of the variety of peoples in the Happy Province.
Your friend in waiting,
Mr Oz
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audio file from: Mrs Chung Mae
4 December
Mr Oz-sir
My heart delights in news from you, and I add to the chorus of voices that can confirm your innocent youth and innate honesty. I am overwhelmed that the government makes such efforts to restore my machine to me. I really am not worthy. Do make sure they know how much I owe to you and how I would not have known what to do without you. Your coming was like an angel from the Lord for us. I knelt and praised Allah, for I saw that the government of Karzistan had given me hope. I did not feel it was the place of humble fashion expert to describe the work of government, which passes my understanding. But your just admonition has shown me that however embarrassing my crude efforts would be to myself, I must add my voice to the chorus of earned praise. Please see the new addition to my site and please express my gratitude. I attach a letter for your boss, and if it is worthy, please show it to him.
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e-mail from: Lieutenant Chung Lung
7 December
I am not a son to choose to lose a mother, even when she is lost to herself. Your material at your home site has recently much improved. I trust that it was because you listened to your son's advice. Encouraged, I write again.
Yes, I married, and in confusion did not tell my mother. And my honest sister in an innocent card told the truth for me, and that is humbling. I've clipped on a picture of your new daughter. Her name is Sarah. You see perhaps why it was a bit more difficult to tell you?
Sarah is from Canada, and has chosen to cast her lot with your son, though I cannot think why. She is beautiful and intelligent, and regards your son as an educated man because of Army College. She stayed in the American Institute here while studying the history of Attila the Wonderful. She is not a model of Karzistani femininity, but she opens a world for me. She is very good with the other officers' wives, who tell me they find her delightful. She has seen your screens and your last letter and likes both very much!
I did decode your personal mail. Either I did it, or someone else would. Your friendship with the fashion magpie is well regarded by officials here. I thought I would set your mind at rest.
Your son,
Lung
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audio file from: Mr Oz Oz
9 December
Mae
Your letter was well received here. All our hearts were warmed by such simple, truthful words from a good Karzistani woman who wo
rks so hard for her people. We know what happened to your machine. You will not get that one again, but we have arrested your Mr Saatchi Saatchi. He will be executed next month. The warehouse boss who I thought was innocent, was not. My boss has personally approved a repurchase for your business. It will be delivered by the army!
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audio file from: Mr Hikmet Tunch
9 December
Mae,
I am sorry to slip back into your life, perhaps unexpectedly. Don't worry, you will not need to escape me again – though you should know that I have watched the development of your fashion screens with interest. Do you really intend to become part of a romance for Americans? They do so like foreign pets. And how is your little inner friend? Both of them. A file is attached. It is a scientific paper about you. It is about to appear in the Journal of Medical-Computer Interface. It shows that no physical change has happened to you. It shows instead that a mangled imprint of two selves have been united in Air. It shows how this could happen, due to real flaws in the UN Format. It also proves that such a catastrophe could not have occurred if the Formatting process had been achieved by opening the Gates. It suggests that elements of the Gates Format be copied across and made part of the UN system.
One further thing I meant to tell you when I drove you back. You are in the Information business, Mae. That means everyone you know will betray you. You can relax with me. I already have done that.