by Anthology
Benji wasn’t in evidence in the main room, but after a minute I heard his voice carrying from the office. On the phone, probably still working. Since I was stuck waiting anyhow, I tossed my purse onto his leather sofa and grabbed a garbage bag from the kitchen to start my renovation with the worst of the not-quite-empty soda cups and grease-stained take-out bags.
“Listen, I have to go, she’s going to get here any minute,” Benji said.
I froze, not wanting to listen in to his conversation, but unable to do anything else.
His voice was tight, defensive. “Yes, I get it, I’ll figure out a way to ask her…I know it’s important, you don’t have to tell me. I know. You keep your eyes on your business and I’ll handle mine.” He wasn’t talking about me. No way could he be talking about me.
He banged around in his office, from the sound of it closing drawers and stacking papers up, ready to pack it in for the day. “This might come as a shock, Marjorie, but you’re not the only one with chips on the table. I’m handling it, OK? I know what I’m doing.”
I bit my lip, then shoved the garbage bag under the sofa as quietly as I could. I grabbed my handbag and backed over to the door. I opened it. I slammed it shut again, the sound echoing through his apartment. “Benji, you here?” I called. My voice was steady, even casual.
“One second, phone,” he called back. I heard him make his apologies and hang up. Benji emerged from his office and greeted me with a cool kiss on the forehead, but his mind seemed a million miles away. So was mine.
***
We weren’t going to Villa Rosalita after all. “I spaced and totally forgot there’s a work thing tonight,” he said, hands spread out in fauxpology. “Given the investment stuff we’re working on, I really have to be there. But you can come along. You’ll have fun, right?”
…Right. Sure.
Benji had brought me to one of his endless work-related parties for the first time just a couple of weeks after we started dating. Its highlight was my conversation with a broad-cheekboned woman with dozens of tiny braids that set the tone for all my future interactions with his peers. It went something like this:
Her: So what do you do?
Me: Oh, I’m a barista.
Her: Hahahaha! We’ve all had those jobs before. So what are you trying to get into? Let me guess—you’re a designer? Or are you the startup entrepreneur type?
Me: Uhhhhhhmmmmm. No? I’m OK with being a barista.
Her: Oh, um. That’s great. Good for you.
Then she looked wildly around the room searching for somebody to talk to who wasn’t horribly beneath her. Once was more than enough, thank you very much. The only other kind of conversation available was more or less like Benji talking about his work: a brothy soup of buzzwords all jumbled together that, upon deconstruction, amounted to a variant of “technology is awesome,” or “I know about cooler stuff than you do,” or sometimes “that guy thinks he’s cool but really he is not.”
It was as tedious, in its own way, as my parents’ endless cocktail parties and fundraising dinners. The people were younger, but the conversation was always the same.
Eventually I developed a coping strategy to lubricate my way through the parties with Benji’s crowd. It involved taking a couple of hits of the hardest booze on offer the second I walked in the door, and then hunching over my phone pretending to be all wrapped up in sending texts or something. If anybody tried to bother me, I’d smile and shake my head and point to my phone, apologize profusely, and say something about how the system was down and I had to take care of it.
I was so proud of myself the first time I pulled that one off. It was the perfect impenetrable armor.
Tonight’s itinerary was a local tech-art meetup at a Brazilian-Korean fusion place with high slabs of a dark-polished wood as cocktail tables and a rosy filter on the lights. The air was hazy from meat-scented airborne carcinogens, and the red-aproned waiters walked among the crowd offering hunks of steak pierced on bamboo skewers. The technorati were shoulder to shoulder.
Miss Blue Streaks grabbed Benji’s wrist as soon as we hit the door. “We need to talk,” she said. Her eyes skipped over to me and then past, to the crowd. “It’s about Prometheus.”
He gave my hand an apologetic squeeze. “Verity business,” he said. “Might take a while. Settle yourself in and try to have a good time. I’ll make it up to you, promise.”
I squeezed his hand back. “Will do.” Benji and the girl weaved away in the crowd, and I lost sight of them almost immediately. No big surprise, really. It always happened sooner or later at these things. He’d come back and find me eventually.
On to coping, then. The specialty cocktail was a soju caipirinha; I grabbed one from a passing tray and squeezed into a corner next to a massive bronze jar of bamboo to claim a little breathing room. I watched the crowd for a while, monkeys trying to impress each other for status, and wished I were anywhere else.
And then, as I stood there cursing my uncomfy dress-up heels and wishing the pierced-tin ceiling didn’t make the noise so much more buzzy and awful, some guy with a close-trimmed beard and these glasses with massively thick frames cornered me. His breath was hot and yeasty from the beer and he stood a normal distance away from me, but leaned forward at the waist so his face was way too close to mine to be strictly comfortable. He had good hygiene and all, just no sense of personal space. That’s what I get for hiding in a corner.
I waved my phone at him, as per usual. “The system is down,” I said. “Sorry, can’t talk!”
“You said that last time,” he said.
“Flaky system?” I looked around for Benji, hoping against hope that he was near enough to notice I’d been pinned down and come to my rescue. A little jealousy kicking in would be handy. But Benji still wasn’t in evidence.
Yeast-Breath eyed me suspiciously, then leaned even further into my personal space to look at my phone screen. The soft contours of his face folded up into his frown. “You’re playing Candy Crush.”
I panicked. “Have to run!” I squeaked, and I pushed my way past him, out through the crowd, then further, right out the door of the restaurant.
The cool night air hit me like a bucket of water in the face, but it was a welcome change. I breathed deep. My shoulders relaxed and the pounding in my head receded.
I could see Benji through the black-shuttered window, head bent in conversation with that woman. She tilted her head; her gleaming hair swung forward. I tried to read the body language. Him hunched over, his arms crossed, while she had her chin high and her hands on her hips. A new thought struck me: Ex-girlfriend. Good luck with that, honey, he’s mine now.
I walked.
***
I stopped at a corner a couple of blocks away, not sure exactly where I was or where to go to pass a little time. Benji had driven us here, and he was still inside talking about who even knew what. So was my handbag, for that matter. But the air was fresh and cool, the street was quiet, and out here nobody was passing judgment on my worth as a human being. Or at least not to my face. I stood there, arms crossed and sweater pulled tight across my ribs, and looked up at the sky. I wished I could see the stars, but the city lights drowned them.
“Rough night?” asked a soft voice. The asker stood about fifteen feet away from me, but she blended in with the shadows until she stepped into my puddle of lamplight. She was wearing an outsized army jacket and a broomstick skirt. A corona of frizz rose from her hair, each strand glowing. The smudges below her eyes looked like she’d had maybe four hours of sleep in the last couple of weeks. Combined.
Familiar, but I couldn’t place her until I saw the pin on her lapel: She was the woman from the subway earlier. Probably about to ask me if I could spare some change.
“I…I’m sorry,” I said, fumbling in my jeans pockets. “My bag is inside.” I nodded at the restaurant.
She grimaced. “I don’t need your money, thanks.”
I thought about fate and chance and there-but-for
-the-grace-of-god and I searched in my pockets a little harder. There was a credit card in my back pocket. “Hey, I was just about to get something to eat, and I’d love some company,” I lied. “Come on, I’ll buy you dinner.”
Her face moved through a quick series of inscrutable reactions, surprise and horror and something that might have been irritation. I couldn’t be sure because it didn’t last long. She studied me for another moment, the way a surgeon might study a tumor. “Sure, why not,” she said.
***
I led her into a cheap Mexican place and ordered a mess of nachos with extra guacamole and a burrito the size of a football. I wasn’t that hungry, but I figured as long as I was trying to do some good, I might as well try to go all the way and send her away with extra food.
“Big appetite, huh?” the woman said.
I nodded amiably. “I didn’t eat today.”
She ordered a couple of fish tacos and a veritable pail of soda, and I handed my credit card to the man at the counter. He sneered at me and pointed to a sign that read: “Cash Only.”
“Oh. OH!” I twisted my credit card in my hands, thinking about my purse, probably still dumped on the floor behind that bronze jar of bamboo at the party.
The woman rolled her eyes and fished a crumpled-up twenty from an inside pocket. “I guess I’m buying tonight,” she said.
“God, I’m so sorry,” I said as we walked back to the table. Guilt consumed me. “Look, I swear I’ll pay you back. I have cash in my purse back at the party.”
She shrugged. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
I nibbled on a chip laminated with melted cheese and tapped a fingernail on the plywood table. Silence felt awkward, but making conversation seemed awkward, too. The woman kept opening her mouth, poised on the brink of speech, and then backing away, like she’d lost her nerve.
She fiddled with punching the straw into her cup, then she caught my eye and began to talk. The words came slowly at first; it seemed like it had been a long time since she’d had the chance to really talk to anybody.
Her name was Chandra. In the course of a few minutes’ conversation, I noticed a particular pomposity to the cadences of her speech as if she’d spent much, much too much time at a university. She seemed only a little older than me, though. Grad student? Unusually grubby junior professor? I worried with no small embarrassment if I had completely misread her situation.
We made pointless small talk for a while. The summer is supposed to get awful hot this year; what a shame about the latest political scandal brewing; isn’t it wonderful how that fireman saved that little boy on the subway the other day.
Then she was quiet, toying with her fork like she could pick out the right words with it. “The people back at that restaurant you left,” she said abruptly. “You know they’re the tech scene around here.”
The sudden change of subject startled me. And…had she been following me or something? “Yeah,” I said, “I guess so. I’m not really one of them, though. I’m just…I’m engaged to Benjamin Adler.”
“So I hear,” she said. I jumped in my seat, wondering what she could possibly know about it. Before I could ask, she went on. “Are you interested in technology at all?”
I shrugged. “Not really.”
“You should be,” she said. “You should be afraid of it.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this. Ever the busybody, I decided to poke at her and see what happened. “Why is that?”
“We’re in a dangerous place,” she said, with a furtive scan around. I wondered if she saw nonexistent fellow diners trying to eavesdrop on us, and not just the bald chef behind the counter serenading his grill in discord with the radio. “Before long, truth will be determined more by technology than by real reality. It’s already happening.”
I sat back, convinced I’d found the edge of her tin foil hat.
“It’s like this,” Chandra said. “Your bank has a computer. Let’s say there’s a glitch…a data-entry error, whatever…and suddenly it says you don’t have any more money. That makes it real. It becomes true.” She kept her eyes fixed to my face, as though looking for a particular reaction.
This was a little too much for me, a little too close to home, so I winced. “Saying something doesn’t make it so.”
She relaxed and sat back, shaking her head. “You’re wrong. It’s always been possible to change reality by saying the right thing at exactly the right moment.” She waved her tiny plastic fork in the air for emphasis. “Take the Spanish American War. It was a complete fabrication. It didn’t happen until a few newspaper moguls decided business was slow. They started covering a war, and both sides wound up fighting because they fell for it. They thought it was real.”
“You mean writing about it as if it were already true made it true,” I said. I drummed my fingers on my thighs, suddenly nervous.
“Exactly.” She sat forward again, leaning onto her elbows to stare at me with burning eyes. “Words have power. But you know all about that, right? I mean…your fiancé runs Verity, right? So I’m sure he’s told you everything.”
“What kind of everything?” I asked slowly.
“Hasn’t Ben told you what Verity really does? Verity isn’t in the business of reporting reality, they’re in the business of making it.” She clapped her fingertips to her mouth with faux horror, and her voice became syrup-thick from bitterness. “Silly me. Not for me to spill his secrets. Forget I said anything.”
I stared at her, my eyes wide, trying to think of something to say. My upper arms were covered with goose bumps. I thought again, for about the millionth time that day, about changing Benji’s Verity page. It was impossible, right? A coincidence. Saying something doesn’t make it true. Everybody knows that.
I had to get out of there before I totally lost grip on reality. Real reality. I tried to think of a way to excuse myself and get back to the party. But…there was the matter of the money I owed her. I couldn’t bear to stiff her on a dinner I’d asked her out to in the first place.
“Um, will you walk me back to the party?” I asked. “And then I can pay you back.”
She turned her little plastic fork over and over in her hands. “I’d rather not,” she said. “But I promise I’ll give you a chance some other time.” She set the fork down and began shredding her napkin instead. “Just do me a favor. Don’t tell Ben you saw me, OK? Forget my name, forget we ever met. It’s…complicated.”
“Right,” I said. “Whatever you say.” Like I would have had any idea what to tell Benji about her anyhow.
Mark Robert Philps
https://twitter.com/markrphilps
Dragonfire is Brighter than the Ten Thousand Stars(Novella)
by Mark Robert Philps
Originally published by Robinson
NEWSREEL (i)
SPY-RING SENTENCED
TODAY, IN AN EIKSTOWN COURTROOM, THE COMMISSARIAT SHOWED HOW THE PEOPLE OF THE COMMONWEALTH MEET THREATS TO THEIR FREEDOM: WITH THE COLD MACHINERY OF JUSTICE! IN THE GALLERY, MEMBERS OF THE ACCUSED WATCHED WITH THE HOODED AND REPTILIAN EYES OF A DRACO AS THEIR SENTENCE WAS METED OUT. THE TRIBUNAL DELIBERATED, AND SWIFTLY THEIR VERDICT CAME DOWN: IT WAS TO BE DEATH. LET THE JACKALS OF THE MANDATE BE WARNED: THE COMMISSARIAT STANDS READY, THE SWORD OF THE PARTY! BUT THE SWORD MUST HAVE ITS SHEILD—THE WATCHFUL CITIZEN! REPORT ANY SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY TO YOUR LOCAL COMMISSARIAT FOR STATE SECURITY OFFICE. BE AWARE! BE VIGILANT!
***
1
City of Whitebottom, one mile south of Green Banner Electrical Station No. 45. A cold evening in winter.
I ducked beneath the fire-cracked lintel of a gutted patrician mansion, reached into the mended-and-remended pocket of my woollen overcoat and once again pulled out her letter. The thick paper card was sooted by the same coal dust that coated my aching hands. The words on it I had already committed to memory.
Kaffa Brewcourt. 22:00 tonight. res mutatae mutatae non sunt. The note wasn’t signed, but that last phrase was writ
ten in blotted black ink, and it was all the signature I needed.
Attia.
Years ago, amid the bright-eyed passion and the party slogans and the thinly veiled tension of the University annex in Ravenna, we had together composed those words, a political slogan as true of revolution as it was of love and war. But in the twenty years since the bloodshed at Aelia Capitolina, since I’d last seen her, I’d barely thought of it. I’d been too busy running, keeping low and quiet in backwater cities, stewing on old betrayals. Hiding from the Commissariat. Until today. Until this yellowed slip of paper had appeared in my pigeonhole at the electrical station. Attia. Twenty years since that night in a rundown kaffahouse, stinking of sweat and sulphur, waiting for a woman who had never arrived. Twenty years since she’d broken my heart. Why now, after so much time?
I stuffed the letter back into my coat and stepped onto the rain-slicked streets of the city I still thought of as Vindobona. The air tasted wet, bitter, as thick as the heavy fog. She was out there. Somewhere in that grey atmosphere. I moved from beneath the shadow of the abandoned mansion. On the stonework above me dragons and dragonriders were trapped in time on a blackened frieze.
"Cacō,” a shrill voice exclaimed. "Dulcis cacō!" agreed another. Kids, running ahead through the white haze like wraiths, cackling to each other in high voices. Latin was still outlawed, so naturally the child-gangs that overran the New Commonwealth had adopted it as their native tongue. I waited until their voices receded further into the fog. Then I folded my shoulders and splashed hurriedly down the street. I slipped past an idling diesel truck, turned a sharp corner plastered on both sides with Party recruitment posters, and stopped at the glass door of a soot-stained kaffahouse.