Air

by Geoff Ryman

  Your,

  Bugsy (Adele) Harris

  Editor, Nouvelles Magpie

  audio file from: Mrs. Chung Mae

  28 October

  Dear Bugsy Nouvelles-ma’am

  Our hearts are singing after so kind a missive. A link with such a prestigious entity gives us as much joy as a marriage in the family, for like all marriages it will bring both love and money. And middle-aged ladies in Karzistan need both! Please be kind and send us terms and conditions. Kindness and blessings.

  videomail from: bugs@nouvelles

  2 November

  Hiya! No terms and conditions except one. Let us know if any stores get in touch with you, and tell them to go through us. We charge them a finder’s fee and take a cut on sales to our people. We started out, believe it or not, running the software that found people the TV shows they wanted to see. We got real big, and started different kinds of TV interest groups like fashion. We then realized we could use our software to find anything, not just TV shows. We got the idea of selling information to suppliers and then telling our groups how to buy the stuff. So you pay us nothing.

  audio file from: Chung Mae

  4 November

  Lung, Please tell your officers’ wives that Nouvelles Magpie in New York lists us as an important fashion resource. Tell them that we are big news in the New York fashion world. Tell them they are undeveloped for not knowing the future is upon them and that they should have shame for not doing something about it. I have clipped onto this record our Ahk Sess numbers and addresses and you can see that we are a great success. Show that to the officers’ wives. Tell them that humble wild girl Sezen learned to tell the computer to produce new instructions to send special messages to each of our customers.

  Thank you for your kind words. Your sister sent me a very kind and informative card a few weeks ago.

  audio file from: Lieutenant Chung Lung

  4 November

  Are you angry? I meant to say I was proud of your site and that I forgive what you have done.

  videomail from: bugs@nouvelles

  10 November

  Hiya! I just wanted to let you know that we are getting plenty of comments in our newsgroup about you guys. Can I make a few suggestions? Put who you are and your address on each screen. Incredible as it may seem, some people still print out screens. Usually they give them to other people, but if the address doesn’t show, then people can’t find you. Second, people love you. They want to know more about how you live, how things are going in your lives. Really! So more hot gossip. Also, forgive our ignorance, but people here know absolutely nothing about Karzistan. Your President looks like a lovely man, but we have one of those ourselves. So, a few more links to other sites about Karzistan would be go down well. Finally, do you have any music you can put on the site? The Collaborationist movement here is desperate for new sounds to share and build on and something from the roof of the world (are you guys in Tibet?) would be very popular. And remember, we love you, so give us more news.

  videomail from: Mrs. Chung Mae

  15 November

  Dear Mrs. Busgy-ma’am.

  It is very strange because I am speaking Karz and my lips are doing one thing and the voice is coming out in English! I do this for the first time because this is a special occasion. We have a deal from big New York store and they say Nouvelles drives people crazy for Eye of the Beholder screens. This plays our hearts like a harp. We do feel you are family, and Mrs. Wing Kwan offers suggestion for a special token. Native women make a circle of friends. A circle of women all work together. They spin, wash, crack nuts, sort beans, beat old tough lamb, sew, do everything but clean house together. So they can sing and tell stories and smoke pipes. Each woman wears a special collar for that Circle, which they all embroider together. It is a small sign of belonging among friends. Would readers of Nouvelles like to join our Circle and have a collar? We promise special low price, to cover cost. Available only to friends of Nouvelles through big New York store. Oh, and we clip on a file of our access statistics, which show how powerful Nouvelles is as a way to make new friends in many lands. One final request: Can you send me any information you have on Air and the difference between the Formats?

  voicemail from: bugs@nouvelles

  16 November

  Mae-honey. It’ll drive ‘em wild. No sooner said than done, but I need a shot of the design. I have to say, despite the mismatched lips, you look and sound great. You should get on TV more often. But hey, where’s my News from Kizuldah screens? Like I said: gossip, girlfriend, gossip. But hey, I’ve been speaking English to you, what language have you been hearing?

  SIZZLING SEZEN’S POP PICKS

  Hello, young people, this is hair-in-eyes Sezen who is impatient with everything, except my auntie Mae. We may not be having Madonna sixtieth birthday parties, but we are full of music here in Karzistan and it is great mix of modern and old. We got Arabesque, we got Lectro, we got Traditional, many different musics, and this is where you can hear what we sound like and use it in Collab.

  GIVE US MONEY

  You can listen, but don’t keep the music unless you pay. Our musicians are poor, okay? So try to send us something. We are starving up here—well, not starving, but my mother keeps corncobs in our chic diwan, and our neighbor keeps a pig in her kitchen. And it is very bad-tempered. So don’t steal these poor people’s music or you are dried shitcake!

  That noise was Auntie Mae telling me off for being rude. I talk too much anyway. So here are my “Pop Picks.”

  “BALSHANG” BY CHEN TUI

  Start with my favorite. Tui is Chinese girl who writes all her own stuff. She plays Karz flute and the violin, she used to do Lectro dance, but this is both real and Air music at once, and it’s so beautiful, about girl who falls in love with a married man and his city at the same time. So she talks about the city and the man using the same words at the same time. They say there is an Air version full of pictures and memories as well. I want to see what her beautiful beau looks like!

  “KISH MASHALI” BY ERCHAN PEKER

  How is it that fools can make good music? This guy thinks he is pretty, and pastes his face all over everything. He is good-looking, but we should discover that for ourselves. This is a fun song about school, the words are really good, and he wrote them but he is a Balshang Otter, which means he is small, smooth, and vicious. Listen to the rhythm and the way his voice jumps about. That is pure Karz, like he is.

  “KLASIKLERI” BY MUSA

  Just how smart are you? This word comes to us from Europe, it is your word, you should just say it and you will know what it means. This is new song but played in completely Traditional way and it is about all things classical and Karz that are going away, like Musa himself—soon, I hope. Musa is how all Karz men would like to be: big, fat, hairy, full of bristle and mustache, and everyone says how handsome he is, but I think he is old and ugly, and he says some very dull things about new music. But everyone loves him and so do I, in a way, like a good father. One of his other songs is called “Yorgun,” which means “Tired,” and that is very appropriate.

  “MUT” BY YULDUZ

  “Mut” means “Destiny,” and the singer’s name means Stars, so she has high opinion of herself. She used to be backup singer with Chen Tui and she would like to be Chen Tui, but Chen mixes Chinese, Karz, and New York Air. Yulduz is just another Balshang Fox. Most of her stuff doesn’t work, but this is really good, nearly as good as Chen she imitates. It is about our country and how it mixes things and how it is lost now, but will find itself.

  “HARP HATAMAHLARI” BY BULENT DO-UDAN

  War memories. This is the story of our country in the 1980s when there was a terrible war. My auntie Mae’s father was murdered. She has to run from the room whenever this song is played. So the song is harsh, big, it roars at you.

  Now, look at the picture, the only one on this page. Isn’t the singer beautiful, all makeup, polished hair, lipstick, a woman as shiny as the front of a new car? Yo
u will get a shock when you hear the voice, because that person used to look like Musa. And one day, Bulent suddenly looked like that instead, no explanation. The voice stayed the same. The name didn’t have to change either. Nobody cared. Don’t you find our country is surprising place?

  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.

  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!

  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.

  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 behavior? 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.

  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?

  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 center. 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.

  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 U.N. Format was tried, but I agree with those who want the Gates opened. U.N. 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 U.N. 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.

  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.

  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.

  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 neighbor 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 t
he shock killed my 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 U.N. 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.

  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?

  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.