Imaginarium 2013

by Sandra Kasturi

  Near an erstwhile sandtrap is a bench and an interactive obelisk. Ruthie pulls up its menu and lets it eat five of their hard-earned bank credit to pay for power. There’s a jack for a battery—it’s cheaper to bring your own juice—but she only needs a minute.

  Fog machines belch out mist and a micro-projector starts up, projecting an image of Daddy within the fog. He’s young, the invincible father she remembers from childhood, and Matt has apparently set his defaults so he’s proportionately big. She has to look up, way up, because she only comes to his thigh.

  The giant face brightens as Daddy looks down. “You’re starting to look like your mother,” it says. “How old—”

  “I’m looking for Matthew,” she interrupts. “I thought this was your spot.”

  Dad scratches his non-existent beard, buying time as, elsewhere, computers process her statement. “Your brother’s not on the system, Ruth.”

  “Since when?”

  “Twelve days, ten hours, six minutes.”

  She sinks to the edge of the sand trap and buries her face in her hands. Okay, don’t be stupid, don’t be a baby. Where you been going, Matt? Little lying bastard . . .

  The ghost shifts, sitting. “Shits day, kid?”

  She remembers the phone call when he asked her that. She was in school . . . she’d failed an art exam. Through a teary haze she sees him flicker, resetting. He resolves on a chair near the obelisk, older now, normal sized. He’s playing his guitar.

  That does it . . . she melts down completely. Dad plays rock songs under the tree, burning cash she can’t afford while Ruthie cries and cries.

  When she’s stopped carrying on like a diva, he tilts his head: “Want to talk about it?”

  “You’re an answering machine,” she says. “Cobbled-together phone conversations, vidblog entries . . .”

  “If you prefer, I’ll direct you to my physical remains.”

  Remains. A Dust-proof tube containing a DNA sample, buried under the slate tile that bears his name. “I’d prefer to talk to Matt.”

  “Sorry, hon. I don’t know where your brother is.”

  She glares at the illusion. “We’re losing our parking spot. No spot, no money. No money, no food. You get that? Matt told you how we live?”

  “Yes.”

  It hurts to look at him, but the tears have carried her back to a hot, achy place where she can function.

  “Sam will let us stay, but there’s strings.”

  She can’t go on. Demo Intelligence has to be monitoring these conversations, combing transcripts for damaging admissions. Exploiting people’s grief. She can’t tell him Sam’s joined the Fiends. “Anyway, bribe’s going up.”

  “Can you pay more?” Daddy asks.

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  Matt turns up after midnight, slipping through the side door and delicately arranging his skin and bones onto their mattress. She doesn’t bother pretending to be asleep. He wouldn’t be fooled; they’ve lived this way too long.

  “Where were you? I went to the sandtrap.”

  “It’s a big boneyard, Ruth.”

  She pinches him. “You haven’t been online all week.”

  He lights up. “You talked to Dad?”

  “Where were you?”

  He bites his lip. “I’m seeing someone.”

  “Oh.” A flare of unease, somewhere in her marrow.

  “Yeah, ‘oh.’ You want to know who?”

  “Someone I won’t like, I guess, or you’d have told me. But human.”

  “Yeah, human. I don’t do squid, Ruth. It’s Holly Scott.”

  “Oh.” Holly’s a Democratic war veteran, like Sam. She’s royalty here on the Row—lives in a real camper, sells water and battery charges. She runs a good patter on the human and offworlder marks alike; her wares sell well.

  She’s old—thirty at least, twice Matt’s age.

  “That’s all you have to say? No lecture on fucking the competition?”

  He’s spoiling for a fight, but Ruthie doesn’t have one in her. “If I was that much of a bitch last time you had a girlfriend, I’m sorry.”

  “If?” He morphs from mad to scared. “No. You’ve been drafted, haven’t you?”

  “Worse.” She laughs weakly. “Sam’s with the Fiends.”

  “So? We knew there had to be a few on the Row.”

  “They want us to sing, Mattie.”

  That gets his attention—his eyes widen, and he lets out a peep.

  “He called it a project,” she tells him. “We sing, it draws the squid off Fry Beach. Fiends want to plant a bomb there.”

  “We’re a diversion?”

  “I guess.”

  He sits, toppling a stack of soda cans. “No way.”

  “Half the parking lot’s getting demolished. Sam says we can keep our spot—”

  “I am not helping those bastards commit murder.”

  “You think I want to?”

  “You’re considering it, aren’t you?”

  “Where we gonna go? We got a good thing here . . .”

  “I remember what a good thing is, Ruthie, and this isn’t it.”

  “You ungrateful shit. We’re eating, aren’t we?”

  “You’d rather kill people than go hungry?”

  “Hungrier?” But now Ruthie’s ashamed of herself. She fumbles for his hand. “We’ll offer more money.”

  With that, the resistance vanishes. Matt presses his forehead against hers, and they don’t say any more.

  Next morning they pull out all the stops, hustle-hustle, sell-sell-sell. Ruthie does a tune-up on the van, fills the fuel tank, changes the oil. Matt trades their heavy goods for lightweight stuff: touchables, music files, things they can hawk at any roadside. By dinner the van is ready to move. They have a few weeks of water and protein mallows laid by, just in case.

  They’re discreet, but the Row talks. Sam shows, a disappointed expression on his narrow face. “You pissing on my offer, then?”

  Ruthie lets him into the van. Steady voice, she thinks, don’t quaver. “We’ll pay more to keep our spot—”

  “Did I ask for more money?”

  “We can’t sing,” Matt says.

  “Can’t?” Sam’s gelatinous eye rolls in his direction, its false iris cycling wide.

  “Take the payment, Sam, okay?” Ruthie pleads.

  “No.” Sam holds up both hands, making an “L” with his left finger and thumb, mirroring the gesture with his right hand so that his prosthetic leers at them through a rectangular space the size of a photoprint.

  “What’s that?” Ruthie says.

  “Making sure I’m in the now,” he says. “Kids, this is the moment when we become Friendly.”

  Matt puts up a hand. “There’s no attitude here.”

  “No scam,” Ruthie agrees. “We’ll pay more, or go.”

  “It’s just singing’s impossible.”

  “And I’m—we’re sorry.”

  “Gee,” says Sam. “Can’t I change your mind?”

  The back of her hand tingles. Itches. Pinches. A tiny silver dot pimples up from under the skin behind her thumb.

  She looks up, horrified, locking on Sam’s flinty, half-alien gaze. Her flesh, around the metallic pinprick, is heating up. There are other itches now, too, a scattering of discomfort across her body.

  “The apple you gave me . . .”

  Sam smirks.

  “What’s happening?” Matt asks.

  The dot behind her thumb begins to smoke. The burn’s a candleflame at first—and that’s bad enough—but the fiery seed is getting bigger, glowing like the cherry of a lit cigarette, frying more skin by the second.

  “Ruthie?”

  Another of the itches, above her navel, goes hot.

  Matt catches her as she doubles over. She can’t squelch a growl of pain. Wasp-hea
t in her temple, the stink of scorching hair, makes her gag.

  Matt is screaming now.

  No, she thinks, he’s hurting Mattie too. She tries to lift herself off the van floor, to fight back.

  Sam is laughing.

  And Matt’s not hurt, she realizes. It’s worse—he’s begging. “Stop, you win, we’ll do it, don’t hurt her.”

  Tears stream down Ruthie’s face—crying again, second time in two days, she thinks—as Sam grabs her hair. “That true, Ruth? You’ll sing for us?”

  “Yeah,” she manages.

  The seeds cool off, forming blisters.

  “Saturday, dinnertime, at the Atlanta monument.” Sam nudges her with a toe; she has his pants leg fisted in her hands. “Sing for at least an hour. Don’t try running off—we’re listening, we’ll know.”

  He steps over her to the door, patting a furious Matt on the head.

  “Sam . . .”

  He turns, and she finds herself wanting to cringe, like a whipped dog. “We’ll need our stuff.”

  “That so?”

  “She’s right.” Matt says. “It was in storage in Koloa. Masks, instruments, sound system. Can you find it?”

  “We can find anything.” With that, Sam steps back out onto the parking lot.

  Matt slams the door, throws the locks, and flicks the A/C on full. He yanks out their first aid kit, rummaging. “What do we do?” he asks, sounding like a little boy.

  Shakily, Ruthie knots her fingers together in an approximation of a Kabuva tentacle knot. “Practice,” she says, but the sign she makes is different; it’s the squid word for deception.

  “Isshy taught us the Kabuva folk songs back when he and Dad were living together,” Matt says. He’s standing beyond the bedroom door of Holly’s camper. Ruthie is stretched out on the bed.

  “Your dad had a sugar squiddy?” Holly pokes Ruth’s shoulder with a stubby finger; she’s using bootlegged med equipment to locate the fireseeds.

  Ruthie nods. “By the time I was ten, we were a bona fide novelty act.”

  “Human kids who sing squid. I can see it.” Holly’s apparent lack of judgment annoys her. She wonders if this is playacting, if Matt already told Holly their secrets.

  “Dancing monkeys, they called us,” he says.

  “Found another one.” Holly eases the point of her knife into Ruthie’s shoulder. “Over soon. Just breathe.”

  Matt keeps talking. “Isshy got on the wrong side of his superiors and got reassigned to The Sponge.” He means the massive undersea installation the squid built in the middle of the Kauai channel. “Dad got drafted into the Demo Army. We moved here to live with a cousin, who got Dusted.”

  “Okay, doll, I got all the seeds. You doing okay?”

  “Thanks, Holly.” Ruthie reaches for her clothes.

  “And now the Fiends want you to sing so they can crisp some calamari?”

  “That’s their plan, yeah.”

  “You want my opinion?”

  “What, for free?” Ruthie says.

  “Do as they tell you.”

  “Don’t joke, Holly,” Matt says.

  “So not joking.”

  “But—you fought with the squid against them.”

  Holly steps out into her kitchenette, where she can see them both. “Democrats are losing the war. The squid’ll give up on us.”

  “Holly, come on! What the Fiends want—it’s terrorism.”

  “I don’t want to cross the playground, Matt, I don’t. But in another few years, Fiends’ll invade the U.S. After that . . .”

  “After that, what?”

  “It’ll take years. But Earth’s gonna be all Fiend, all the time. They’re gonna crawl over the whole map and eject every offworlder they find.”

  “There’s gotta be some chance.”

  She shook her head. “Make some Friends, Matt. They’re psycho, but they’ll be running things.”

  “Switch sides? You wouldn’t do that.” He runs a finger down her face, stunned. Ruthie wonders: does he love her?

  “This whole war’s going in the squatter—”

  “We aren’t murderers, Holly.”

  “It’s not like they’re asking you to kill people.”

  “It is like that. Isshy was a mother to us.”

  “Squid momma left you here, grafting,” Holly says. “For that you defy the Fiends?”

  “We’re not doing it,” Ruthie says. “We just haven’t figured out how to screw them yet.”

  Her brother’s fingers come together, unconsciously expressing relief. Ruthie immediately feels better. Mattie’s on board, she’s still in charge. How hard can fooling Sam be? Being a Fiend doesn’t make him smart.

  “Thanks for patching me up, Holly,” she says, then forces herself to add: “You two should get in some time together while you can. We may have to run for it.”

  Matt catches her arm. “You won’t decide anything without me?”

  “I figure something out, I’ll text you.”

  With that, she heads for the beach path, vying with other scrabblers to sell touchables to the squid heading down to the water. She sells fake fur, fruit leather, perfumed gel, acting like everything’s okay.

  Squid are blind, their senses based in taste, smell, and touch—preferably all three at once. They’ll stick a tentacle into any stinky moist thing they can find. Even the poorest scrabblers out here are wearing protective masks over their eyes and mouths.

  Of course they’ll pay you to take the masks off, to let them ramble their tentacles over your mouth and eyes, better yet into your pants. Every so often, a fry goes into the bushes with one of the vendors, bringing ’em back well-paid and covered in suckermarks.

  Ruthie’s not up for that, but she leaves her burned hand unbandaged, offering a taste of her blood.

  It’s over an hour before she gets what she’s hoping for—a squid whose mantle veins go green with compassion when it tastes her wound. A bleeding heart.

  Ruthie’s fingers form the sign for help as the stranger’s tentacle slithers over her . . . and before it can pull away, she passes it a KabuBraille note she’s been coding, surreptitiously, this whole time.

  It recoils, vanishing into the crowd. Ruthie starts coding another strip, hoping for another chance.

  At sundown, she goes back to the sand trap. Dad is older when she boots him up: older, uniformed, hollow-eyed. “You look more like your mother every day.”

  “I need to get Matt somewhere safe,” she says. “If Isshy boots you, will you tell him?”

  “Isshy rarely—”

  “I’m trying to get him a message.”

  More beard-scratching: it’s processing again. “I know you’re unhappy about Isshy and me. . . .”

  She winces. “Stop. Play guitar—”

  “It was love, you know—” He freezes.

  Like Matt and Holly? Her face burns. “I’m over it, Dad. I’m sorry they broke you up.”

  The personality simulator is so good sometimes—he looked surprised, even grateful.

  Steel up. Squash that rush of emotion. Ruthie’s about to walk off when Dad starts strumming. She sinks to the grass, fixing her eyes on the anti-aircraft platform over the Sponge, the glimpse of ocean through the trees.

  That evening Sam turns up with their old music trunk.

  “You owe me back rent on that locker,” he says. “Fifty, due after the concert.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” They shut themselves in the van and Ruthie restrings her minicello. Matt warms up, warbling soprano Kabuva laments.

  As they sing, they flash squid signs back and forth, piecing together a conversation the Fiend listening devices won’t pick up. Ruthie tells him she’s trying to contact Isshy.

  Matt digs in his pocket for a balled-up sheet of seapaper. Ruthie runs a hand over the KabuBraille quickly; it is an advertisement for their concert.

/>   Where? she signs.

  All over the Island. Throwing back his head, Matt lets out a string of notes, all too high and atonal to sound musical to human ears. It is one of the squids’ favourites, a howl of despair about leaving Mother Sea for faraway, violent shores. Disaffected soldiers went nuts over it.

  Ruthie joins in, again fighting tears. She never liked this piece; what’s wrong with her?

  When the song ends, she turns away, hiding her brimming eyes. “Let’s take a break—do some planning.”

  “You’re the planner.” Sour. Talk about disaffected . . .

  “I meant . . . wanna talk song order?”

  “Up to you.”

  She fumbles the mini-cello, which feels small. Her hands have grown. “Matt, you’re the one told Sam we’d do the dancing monkey on Saturday.”

  “I should’ve let him burn you to a crisp?”

  Ruthie’s stomach burns. She was stupid; she took candy from a stranger. “Fine, everything’s my fault.”

  “Any song order is okay,” he sighs. “Shits, I’m already tired of this.”

  “We ended up getting drafted after all, Matt.”

  “Just not by the side we thought?”

  “At least our so-called friends are winning,” she says, for the benefit of the listening Fiends.

  “Now there’s a silver lining.” He smiles weakly, signing: Are we gonna be okay?

  In response, Ruthie plucks through the opening notes of a Kabuva folk song. Its first line translates, roughly, to: “All we can do is hope.”

  Next day she is emptying out the minivan’s squatter when two goons whisk her off to the cemetery. It’s just as she imagined in her wildest paranoid dreams: there’s a secret door within the mausoleum, then a long elevator ride down to dull, fluorescent-lit Demo offices.

  The air is stale but cold—air-conditioned. Heavenly.

  Matt is already there. “I told them everything,” he blurts.

  “It’s okay—”

  “Hurry up.” Her abductor, a lanky blond Amazon in a Democratic Army uniform, cuts them off. “We can’t have the Fiends noticing you’re gone.”

  They’re marched to a squalid concrete box that smells of body fluids. An interrogation room? Ruth tenses. . . .