Dove Arising

by Karen Bao

  I watch Mom sleep for two hours and sixteen minutes while Cygnus and Anka drift in and out of her bedroom. Mom clenches her fists and kicks the covers so frequently that I’m relieved when she finally sits up, sweating but shivering. Despite her exhaustion, wakefulness seems more peaceful than reliving the horrors of Penitentiary in her dreams.

  “Tell me this is real, dear,” she rasps.

  Indeed, she’s safe, with not a Beater in sight. I mop her brow with a scrap of cloth torn from one of Anka’s old robes. Now that Mom’s woken up inside her own home, maybe she’ll realize how much better things are.

  She begins to laugh and finishes with a cough. “You didn’t answer. That’s how I know it’s really you.”

  As her knobby hand tucks a strand of gray hair behind my ear, her eyes flick to the mole beneath my bottom lip. Then she catches sight of my jacket’s black collar, and her left hand darts under the covers.

  “I apologize—my guards wore the same black jacket. For a while, I’ll be confused as to where I am.” Her voice is a whisper that hardly makes it past her throat. “Is your brother home from Primary?”

  I point toward the kitchenette, where my brother is toying with his handscreen and our Hemispherical Registered Processor, or HeRP. He’s probably blowing off homework to mine a department or two for information that’ll help in the trial; tunneling is more urgent than ever now that the date has been moved up.

  Mom’s eyes are cast downward. “Can you fetch him?”

  She must want me to leave; she wants to enjoy being home without a reminder of how she got here.

  Miffed, I walk into the living room. As I pass the kitchenette, my boots clack and echo. Four and a half pieces of leftover sushi wither on the table. After months of eating bland root vegetables, my siblings couldn’t stomach the riot of flavors that Yinha so easily swallowed down.

  Anka looks up from her handscreen, upon which she’s doodling a floral pattern, with the same scared expression she wore when Wes first visited Theta 808. For her sake, I relax the muscles in my face before proceeding.

  As I suspected, Cygnus hunches over our outmoded HeRP, waving his hands over the dome-shaped structure like some Earthbound fortune-teller. The HeRP is about as big as the top of his head; its entire surface is a screen that sheathes the other working parts. A spotted banana peel lies limp on his lap.

  Coming closer, I see the screen is pistachio-colored rather than the white I remember. What’s he doing? I squat beside the HeRP, tuck my left hand between my knees, and gesture until Cygnus notices me.

  “Hi,” he says, sitting on his handscreen and continuing to work with one hand. “I’ve been trying to jailbreak this thing for a week. ’Cause the processor’s a lot faster than the one on our handscreens. That’s why the color’s all weird.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I’m going to remove the limits of the civilian operating system. We’ll be able to change the wallpaper to whatever we like, upload stuff, run searches, contact anyone. Maybe I can even find out what they say Mom wrote. Just in case it’ll help prove she didn’t write a thing, yeah? I jailbroke my handscreen a few years ago, remember?”

  “Altering HeRPs is riskier,” I observe. The punishment for his trick must be hefty, and I hope he found a way to hide it.

  “Not a problem.” With his index finger, Cygnus drags a red box labeled ENCRYPTED KEYSTROKES to the top of the hemispherical screen. As he types, incomprehensible letters, numbers, and symbols roll across the box. “This is a Keyscrambler. After I started the jailbreak and removed the downloading restriction, I could finally get it. Generates gibberish so no one can see what I’m typing.”

  “Won’t someone find you?”

  “Psh, no one will notice activity from this address. I’m going to put in private networks, proxies, tunnels. They won’t have any idea what we’re—I mean, I’m—doing, ’cause it’s impossible to crack or track.”

  When my brother speaks in tech-talk instead of English, I wonder if he has neurons or microchips between his ears.

  Wheezing coughs reach our ears from Mom’s room; she must be getting impatient. Cygnus freezes. “She all right?”

  Forgetting both me and the HeRP, he rushes into Mom’s room, coming to kneel by her side with his handscreen under his rear. Although a wave of sickly smells hits me, I follow him until I reach the doorway, still hoping to be included in the conversation.

  Mom picks a stray eyelash off Cygnus’s cheek with her cracked yellow fingernails. “Give your eyes a break from that thing once in a while.”

  “I’m fine. If stuff gets blurry, then Phaet can buy me bionic eyes from Medical.”

  Mom ignores the reference to my—our—improved financial situation. “What are you working on now?”

  “Jailbreaking. Changing the HeRP settings so that we can access other systems on the base, like I do on my handscreen—but faster. Thought it would help you.”

  “Fascinating. And timely.” Mom turns toward the door, registering my presence. The parentheses around her mouth deepen. “Phaet, you don’t need to stay. If your superiors need you back in Defense . . .”

  But I want to stay. And I will, because something’s off, and it’s not just the color of the HeRP screen. Not only is Mom saying I can leave; she wants me to leave.

  “Do you want to take anything with you? Blankets? Something to eat? The kitchen’s empty, but I’ll start cooking when I feel better. I remember the utter mediocrity of Militia fare. . . . Should I bring you something later this week? Pepper lasagna? Papaya juice?”

  I shake my head, though Mom’s offer makes my mouth water and my heart fill with gratitude. Not only would a Theta-to-Defense delivery service embarrass me in front of my older colleagues, but it would also heighten my homesickness. “I have everything I need now—my apartment’s supposed to be really nice, and I can buy things from Market.”

  “You sure?” Mom pinches her lips, dejection in her tired eyes. “I wouldn’t go in. You could meet me at the Defense entrance.”

  I clench and unclench the muscles in my legs. Does she still see me as a child, after everything I’ve accomplished? “I’ll take care of myself.”

  Mom’s glumness turns into irritation, and I realize my mistake. “For fifteen years, I’ve given you the best I could . . . with my Journalist’s pay. I tried, but now Militia tends to you better than your own mother.”

  “I didn’t mean that—”

  “I’m sorry, my girl.” She swallows hard, moving the sagging skin hanging from her hollowed-out neck. “It’s just that . . . it’s hard to look at you, with those weapons clipped to your belt, and still see the child I raised. They used those same weapons on me.”

  “But Shelter.” Let her imagine what my siblings and I would have endured if I hadn’t become a trainee.

  “Better than Defense. Safer, and with fewer threats to the goodness of your soul.” She turns to Cygnus, irritating me more. “If you were a stranger and saw this captain in the hallway, what would you think? Wouldn’t she frighten you? You’d wonder what she did to become a captain, and if she’d hurt you to remain one.”

  “I . . . I don’t know. . . .” Cygnus looks desperately at the door, his escape.

  “Phaet,” Mom says, “I apologize for my honesty, but . . . I wish you hadn’t joined.”

  “Stop it!” I shriek, straining my vocal cords. In Mom’s eyes—maybe in Cygnus’s too—I’m bordering on Beater behavior. I’ll show her that I haven’t changed, treat my family the same as before I left, if not better.

  We hear the patter of small feet rushing to the doorway. Anka tumbles into Mom’s bedroom and dashes behind Cygnus, using him as a shield against me. “What’s Phaet yelling about?”

  Me, yelling?

  “Oh, Anka,” says Mom, “you don’t need to witness this. Phaet, can you take your sister outside and help her with her homework?”

  I stare at Mom, not moving, not even blinking.

  She lowers her head; her chest heaves. When she
looks back up, she’s crying. “You’ve entered another world now.”

  I stamp my black boot on the floor. Anka shrinks farther back, and Mom clenches her eyes shut, squeezing more tears out.

  “See?” Mom glares at where I’ve put my foot down as if she’s expecting to see a pothole there. “You’ve changed. I’m not sure how to deal with you anymore.”

  “Phaet, calm down. . . .” says Cygnus. I know he doesn’t mean to alienate me, but it’s happening nonetheless. I extracted Mom from Penitentiary and my siblings from Shelter, and now they treat me like an outsider.

  “I’m sorry, dear Phaet,” Mom says. “Maybe . . . maybe we need some time apart. I can love you from a distance, but I haven’t an inkling how to do it up close. It’s impossible to know what to think of you anymore.”

  She’s cracked something inside me wide open. I stride to the door, but I can’t leave just yet.

  “Fine,” I say, infusing the word with venom. “Then don’t think about me at all. You’re on your own now.”

  I return to Defense two minutes before curfew.

  “Not cool,” Yinha scolds me, powering up her Pygmette speeder. The little ship, suitable for both on-base and outdoors, is shaped more like a clown fish than a shark. As its three-pronged stand retracts, it lifts Yinha into the air. “A traffic jam in the Atrium and you would’ve been late.”

  “Family’s important.” I avoid Yinha’s gaze; so much pain courses through me that one look in my eyes would give it away.

  “You sound like my mom, kiddo. Are you okay?” Yinha leans forward. “Your face looks like a parachute that’s about to spring a leak.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  I vault into the seat next to Yinha. We zoom through the lobby, through twisting hallways that lead to the housing wing, up a spiral staircase, and through doors, spaced throughout our journey, that progressively require more identification. At the fourth, I watch over Yinha’s shoulder as she jams her thumb on the sensor, tugs her eyelids apart for a retinal scan, extends her tongue to an unseen camera, and types MILKI8WEI8 into a keypad lock.

  At first, I’m confused as to why there isn’t an elevator, but I realize that the endless stairs provide either a cardiovascular workout or steering practice for anyone who can afford a Pygmette.

  The door opens and we zoom into the next leg of the staircase.

  “All the privates live on the first six floors,” Yinha says. “The seventh is for corporals and sergeants. The eighth is for us and the majors—there aren’t many of us, but our apartments are bigger. Don’t bother visiting the top two levels. The four colonels and the General live there. I’m pretty sure that if you’re not a Sanitation maid and you try to intrude, some kind of Electrostun will zap you into a pile of human compost.”

  Yinha parks the Pygmette in front of two doors with silver daggers, which are taller than I am, painted on the front. She opens the one on the right, orders me to sleep tight, and disappears into the apartment on the left.

  My new living space reminds me with every generously furnished square meter that I live in a different world from my family. If I were happier, I’d run laps around the living room, cartwheel across the dining table, drown in the shower chamber, and bounce across the bed. While I reside here, I won’t shiver at night under the heat-retaining gel comforter or wish for a glimpse of the outside landscape. With shaky steps, I approach the floor-to-ceiling window made of tinted photovoltaic glass.

  The graphite-colored swells and dips of Oceanus Procellarum spread out below me, and a small peak rises in the distance like a curled knuckle raised to the sky. But enjoying the magnificent view dredges up guilt. I adjust the window glass so that it blocks all sunlight and turn to face my clinically clean apartment, devoid of people and even small personal comforts, like my moss garden. Has Anka remembered to water it?

  I drag the comforter to the memory-foam sofa and lie down, taking a massive burden off my feet. I wish for dull dreams, to take up space in my mind and relegate the hurt from Theta 808 to the margins.

  After what feels like only seconds of sleep, my apartment flashes like a blue strobe light. I roll off the couch and stumble to the door barefoot to find Yinha suited up. “Look sharp, sleepy. Skat wants to see you at headquarters. Pay attention on the way there—next time, you’ve got to find the place yourself.”

  Good. Militia has an assignment for me, something to distract me from the situation at home. “Skat?”

  Yinha rises on tiptoe and positions her mouth next to my ear. “Our boss, a major. I’m pretty sure some officer paid for him to get promoted—he’s so lazy, I don’t know how else it could have happened. Whatever he asks you to do, no matter how scary or stupid, just say yes and walk out, okay?”

  I throw on my boots and tuck stray hairs into the bun I wore yesterday. Yawning, I tail Yinha to the top floor of the residence tower and march with her into the conference room, where ordinarily only colonels and the general are allowed. We salute as we enter, two fingers to our foreheads.

  The room has a commonplace domed ceiling, but screens cover every inch of space with a plethora of figures and charts. A map of Earth, with its scantily populated continents, looms above us. Our satellites track each of the major mobile island cities.

  Blinking orange dots represent cities in the Batterer cohort, while blue dots represent Pacifian allies. Green icons indicate nonaligned cities. We also track all of Earth’s manmade satellites, which provide excellent hideouts for our enemies when they pass close to the Moon—especially the Apollo crafts, which, according to the screen, orbit 350,000 kilometers from Earth’s surface.

  Yinha, her face filled with wonder rather than worry, watches the icon of the largest satellite, which has been tagged with a red marker. Pacifia appropriated the International Space Station, or ISS, shortly before the Battle of Peary, to intimidate us. By attaching thrusters and accelerating the ISS, they moved it closer to the Moon, a strategy cheaper than launching their own space station.

  The now-abandoned satellite’s orbital path has grown eccentric because the thrusters are still attached, and it nears us at odd intervals. Now, it’s aligning with the Moon, and therefore is a great place for our Earthbound enemies to launch an invasion.

  Seated around the circular table are the General, who absentmindedly examines his Lazy, and a short, slouchy man in his thirties whose insignia reads MAJOR SKAT YOTTA. His head has been shaved on the sides, leaving a strip of black hair that runs from his forehead to the nape of his sunburnt neck.

  Skat greets us with little more than a yawn. “So, this the new kid?”

  Tearing her eyes away from the miniature ISS on the ceiling, Yinha says, “This is the new kid.”

  Skat turns his head toward the General; the rest of his body doesn’t move. “Just the patrol duty for now?”

  “We’ve been over this,” snaps the General.

  “’Kay, new kid.” Skat inspects his fingernails, picking off bits of skin at the cuticles. “We have an important assignment for you . . . but it’s not ready for discussion. For now, you’re on Atrium patrol from 12:00 to 17:00 daily, starting the day after tomorrow. Means you oversee the privates. Can’t have you sitting pretty around the Defense compound.”

  “Yes, sir!” I holler, sounding more excited than I feel. I grow restless thinking about the monotony of endless laps around the Atrium. I’d rather oversee privates’ workouts or check on the bioweapons and nukes we’ve deployed in space. I’d even lead a debris cleanup team, using a special magnet and laser-equipped Titan ship to remove stray pieces of space junk, the pieces of metal and other materials left by sporadic Earthbound launches that interfere with our Earth remote-sensing and spaceflight capabilities.

  But because I’m new, it’s silly to wish for a better assignment.

  “Yinha, show her around so she doesn’t get lost,” Skat adds.

  “Yes, sir!”

  The General takes over. “Remember, Yinha, you also have a meeting with Colonel
Arcturus to prepare for the new trainees’ arrival. Don’t be late.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Crossing his feet on the table, Skat chews off part of his middle fingernail and examines the result. “What you waiting for? Leave.”

  That’s all? They called me and Yinha up here to assign me to patrol the patrols? I imagine pulling Skat’s chair out from under him so that he falls, squirming, onto the floor.

  For one day, I have Yinha’s tour around Defense to keep me busy.

  The privates exercise in a cylinder-shaped room shabbier and larger than the training dome. They salute us halfheartedly. Only Eri smiles at me as they jog by in formation; the others stare with either mild interest, like Io, or disgust, like Ganymede. Even people who weren’t in my trainee class give me looks that guarantee they’ll talk about me as soon as I turn my back.

  The officers’ gym, one floor above the privates’, looks and smells better. Expensive equipment and rows of adjustable free weights line the walls. After watching me strain to work the bench press, Yinha lies down and hoists the bar above her chest with perfect form—until a man around her age begins flirting with her, addressing her as “Yee-haw.” She curses at him and leads me away to the Medical quarters lobby, where scores of soldiers wait for voluntary injections such as painkillers, caffeine shots, and muscle-enhancement drugs. At night, she scans in my thumbprint, retina, tongue, and chosen personal password of 08T03M97 so that I can access my apartment, the Defense intranet, and the mid-level Militia files on my own. She bets me ten Sputniks that I’ll forget the “too-numerical” password within a week.

  Every day after that, while Yinha’s indoctrinating the new trainees, I walk endless loops around the Atrium, chastising unfocused privates and checking the civilian security mirrors for infractions that never occur. In the evenings, I grow uneasy with the absence of a sibling to help or a friend to be with. I explore to ward off loneliness and the longing to run home for a long hug—from anybody. But I can’t. Neither can I approach Umbriel, who has likely heard about my actions. I’m sick of rejection.