Clarkesworld: Year Six

by Aliette de Bodard

  That sent a shiver through them. “Stranger danger,” muttered one of the kids, repeating one of the old warding phrases they’d all learned and passed on to each other. Even though they stayed within the long block that made up the Street, the freedom within it was nearly unfathomable. To be able to run and play, beyond the tightly fenced playground behind their building . . . this was a freedom they had never known in their lives. Food. Warmth.

  Melissa thought back to the lessons she had been taught. The stories she’d been told about the world. “There is evil and there is good, in the world,” she repeated. “Demons, like La Llorona, want to capture us and steal our energy. But there are angels out there. And they want us to be free, and to laugh and play. It makes them happy to see that.”

  Her mom had made angels out of bits of wire and bottles that she found. Twisted metal wings wrapped onto the bottles, with bottle-cap faces. When they’d stayed in the tent on the Outskirts, her mother had made hundreds of them. “They protect us,” her mother had said. “From the government. They hide us from the bad people who’ll take you away from me.”

  But then she’d died. Killed by the demon that ripped her up from the inside and made her cough blood. And Melissa had been left alone to sing on the street, to beg for food.

  Alone while people started to fade away, and the city got silent.

  Alone until the beautiful Blue Lady came out to the Outskirts and talked to her. Invited her to come to the Street.

  A little boy with braided hair raised his hand and broke through Melissa’s memories. “Is the Street an angel?”

  Melissa opened her mouth. And didn’t have an answer.

  The others scattered as they realized she was done, their lunches finished, their attention waning. She didn’t blame them, but she hoped they would take what she said to heart. Many of them didn’t believe in La Llorona the way she did, they hadn’t smelled her fire, heard her strange and demonic language. Some of them had been reading things, learning history from the Street.

  Even some of the other children who’d hunkered in the Outskirts, near that abandoned factory that Melissa had hid in after her mom died, had stopped believing.

  The Old Man was standing there, watching her. Today he had gone back to the cream-colored suit, but with a peach-colored tie.

  “We really enjoy your stories,” he said to her, “the way you teach the children what you know about the world.”

  “They need to know,” she said. “And no one else wants to do it, I think. Is that why you want me to stay?”

  “We want you to stay for many reasons,” he said, “but your stories are a part of it.”

  “What do you mean? You must know far more than I do,” she replied. “You transcended.”

  That was why everyone left. She hadn’t understood, not talking to other people. Hiding in the parks. Begging.

  Did you ever use your mother’s old phone? the Blue Lady had asked. Or play with a computer? They get faster and faster. And better. And some people use mind interfaces. Or speak to them.

  Technology got faster. Better. And then technology started designing technology. Evolving. What used to take a lifetime took a decade, then years. And then last year, months. Weeks. Days.

  People transcended. Became other things. Many other things. Some were still here. Some had left. Some were different.

  Some stayed the same.

  The Found Children had been left behind.

  “Transcending was the problem,” the Old Man said. “In some ways, we’re only the sum of our parts. The collective that is the Street is made up of only so many individuals, with so much life experience, with so much knowledge, or emotion, or wisdom. If we do not take care to find more, to cultivate more, we could easily stagnate and die. Believe it or not, it has happened to collectives already, others elsewhere have encountered this. It took one such collective in Switzerland just a week, in your time.”

  “In my time? Isn’t my time the same as yours?” Melissa asked, walking along the sidewalk, watching the other children run and play. Some of them were playing tag, others had a more complicated game of make-believe going on. A couple of the others had started a painting project early, only they did not seem to be doing quite the nice, even job the Street had suggested. The Old Man took that in as well, but smiled with approval.

  “Machine intelligence has multiplied us, in a way. Everything happens faster, your experiences seem exponentially slower. We can make very complex decisions in the blink of your eye.”

  “That changed you,” she said.

  “You could say that.”

  “I don’t want to change,” she replied, not sure where the defensiveness had come from, suddenly. She didn’t want to become a robot body for some larger entity like the Street. Even if the Street was made of all the minds of people who had lived in these buildings a year ago. “I want to be me, forever.”

  “Indeed,” the Old Man said, and that was all on that subject.

  The next night, a tribe of adults entered through the western checkpoint and set up camp on the opposite side of the Street from The Castle. They rolled up in a small caravan of vehicles, including one large truck with tarp-covered objects on the back. Much to her excitement the people seemed mostly normal to Melissa, though they greeted her with a deference that surprised her. The other kids stayed away, mostly, only peering-through-the-windows curious right now. They had had so few visitors through the Street in the months since the transcendence, since the neighborhood became the Street.

  “They’re heading to the spaceport,” the Old Man had explained to her. “We’re giving them freeway and a camping spot in exchange for some things they will make for us in space, in zero gravity.”

  Melissa looked up as she crossed the Street, at the stars overhead, thinking about his words. What kind of people would want to go there? She was meet-them curious, so she approached a small group gathered around a grill. There were only a few others that she had seen, beside these three, and they were busy with tasks she could not see.

  Once they had finished the greetings, and Melissa explained who and what she was—careful to emphasize that they were in the Street’s safekeeping—she asked what they were doing, where they were going.

  “To space,” one of them replied, light in his eyes. His curiosity and passion lit a small fire in her. “We’re going to be adapted to life in zero-gee, and we’re going to explore the solar system. Maybe beyond, if we can figure it out. The transcended are making huge strides toward that, now.”

  “So you’re not transcended?” she asked.

  “No, but we’re going to be modified, enhanced,” said one of the women, a similar light in her eyes. “In those,” she said and jerked a thumb toward the tarp-covered objects. “Some of our friends are already undergoing the changes.”

  “Changed? Enhanced?”

  “Do you want to see?” said another of the women. And without waiting for Melissa’s response, she climbed up on the back of the truck and started undoing one of the tarps. She lifted the edge, and Melissa could then see underneath. Machinery, wrapped around a green glowing tank, beeped and blinked at her. Inside, she could dimly make out a human form, only it wasn’t quite so human any more. The body was changing, slowly, very slowly. Elongating here and there, widening in the limbs, flattening. New lumps on the body showed implanted machinery, perhaps, or new organs grown to perform whole new tasks the human body could never have evolved to perform.

  “Are you still you?” she asked the woman holding the tarp.

  “We’re still individuals,” she said. “Linked, by technology in our heads, some of the same technology that allows people to transcend. But we use it differently.”

  That night, Melissa stood on the rooftop of The Castle, looking up at the sky. Lights moved across the stars now, something she had never noticed before. Were they angels, going about a heavenly mission? Or more like these people, exploring the worlds beyond hers? Perhaps both, now that she thought about
it.

  But as she watched, shrill cries broke the night. She looked down at the visiting tribe, but they were all asleep, and undisturbed.

  The cries went on for a full minute, and then trailed away. Melissa hurried inside. They had come from somewhere on the Street. They had to have been caused, she knew, by La Llorona.

  Only La Llorona could sound that sad and scared.

  The next day, the tribe readied to depart. Some of the orphans ran around, their hesitancy overcome, and they were now doing tasks for the visitors, little things that earned them treats or simple pats on the head. Melissa walked back and forth along the Street, almost like a nervous hen, keeping an eye on her chicks. Surely, La Llorona slipped up onto the surface with the tribe?

  No, the Street would have noticed, she felt. It would not have allowed that. No, besides, La Llorona came from the depths, from the caverns, coming up from under the Street.

  Once the tribe had moved on, she was joined by the Old Man again, walking the length of the Street. He asked her what she had thought of the visitors, if she wanted to go with them, what she had been working on artistically.

  But she could also sense that he wasn’t quite as engaged with the questions as he usually was. Something was missing in his attitude, and as they neared the western end of the Street, he guided her down an alley. It ended, a hundred feet down, in a blank wall erected since the transcendence, physically blocking the Street off and helping make it more of an enclave.

  Between the street and the wall lay a boy’s body, bloody and tattered, surrounded by sparkling shards of glass. She looked up at once, instinctively, but there were no windows on the buildings that formed the alley. She looked back down and whispered, “La Llorona. I heard the screams last night. I’ve warned you. Why don’t you listen to me?”

  She wiped tears from her cheeks.

  “You think she did this?” the Old Man asked, walking close to look at the boy. He was not one of the Found Children. He was an outsider, from a nearby neighborhood. She had seen him before, a little younger than her, but at the time imperious, walking like he owned the world and smiling at the Found Children, but not talking to them. Now he was dead, the life gone from his body.

  She looked up and met the Old Man’s eyes, looking into them for what she thought must truly be the first time. She found herself falling into them, as though under a spell, seeing in him time and space, the stars of eternity, the soul of hundreds, maybe thousands. How many were dead now, like this boy?

  “He was one of us, you know,” the Street whispered, in the body of this Old Man. “He is one of us. But a piece of us was in there when this happened. And now it’s gone.”

  Melissa turned and ran from him then, running back to The Castle, running to the hidden room she had once used, high in The Castle, and shut herself in. She held her knees to her chest and rocked back and forth, crying softly lest anyone hear her. She had not needed this room, this tiny closet of freedom since she arrived here, holding the Blue Lady’s hand. Scared of the new children. Scared of the Old Man.

  The close walls, the musty smell, the semi-darkness enclosed her, comforted her. Here she was trapped, and yet free, free from everything out there that wanted to consume her, from La Llorona and the Street, the Old Man and the other children. The dead child.

  Death. The Street didn’t seem to fear it, at least not the way she did. The violent, brutal murder of that child, the child who had no doubt been the source of the cries the night before.

  Melissa cried herself to sleep.

  The blue glow woke her, late in the night. It appeared first around the edges of the secret door that led into her private space, and then the door opened. Melissa tried to block the glare with her hand, but then it subsided on its own, revealing a beautiful woman, dressed in blue, radiating blue light from her skin. She had a soft and sympathetic smile, and reached a hand out toward Melissa.

  Melissa smiled widely, her own hand meeting the Blue Lady’s, feeling her fingers touch that warmth. She held on, and the Lady guided her out of her hiding place. Melissa climbed down and stood before her looking up.

  “It’s you,” she whispered.

  “Hello, Melissa.”

  “Why did you come?” Melissa asked. “I didn’t call you.”

  “You did,” she said, “when you saw Rafael in the alley, don’t you remember?”

  She nodded, but couldn’t actually remember. Her mind had been a whirl then.

  “I must have,” Melissa whispered.

  “Do you really think it was La Llorona?”

  Melissa nodded, though she had actually become less sure since leaving the boy’s body. His death didn’t mesh with anything she knew about La Llorona, and doubt had begun to creep into her mind that she wasn’t real at all. The Blue Lady’s presence threw those thoughts into disarray once more.

  “Do you know where we can find her? You said you saw her under the Street, right?”

  “Yes,” Melissa said, then shook her head. “No. No. But, I do know . . . I did come near the lair of a demon once, a few days ago.”

  “You knew it was a demon?”

  “Who else could live like that?” she asked, shuddering. Deep in the sewers, the burning reek of its lair infesting the Elemental Caverns and fouling the sweet smell of smoke.

  “Can you show me?”

  “I . . . ”

  “It will be safe,” the Blue Lady said, “you called on me to protect you, and I will. But I need to see this place. I need you to lead me there.”

  “Okay,” Melissa said, and took the Blue Lady’s hand again.

  Together they walked out of The Castle into the cool night. The other children were all asleep, or hiding themselves, and she knew it was better if they did not see her with the Blue Lady. They would be scared, even if they believed Melissa’s stories, they would know this meant danger lurked nearby. And she did not want them to be afraid, any more, ever. She wanted them to be free of that, too. Fear was horrible, awful, and if the Street no longer feared death, maybe that was for the better.

  Melissa led the Blue Lady to the entrance she used for the Elemental Caverns, a grate that had been stacked with boxes to keep it from being pushed up from underneath. Together, they pushed the boxes to the side and slowly crawled down the ladder inside to the concrete path inside. Melissa went first, swallowing her fear, and looked around carefully after beckoning the Blue Lady down.

  Melissa began creeping toward the place she had last seen the glow of the demon’s fire, but the Blue Lady walked without fear, her stride long, her feet loud on the concrete. Melissa tried to hurry quietly, but gave it up, drawing strength from the Blue Lady’s fearlessness.

  Before they reached it, she could smell the sickly smoke, see the glow reflecting on the walls. Within another minute, she was at the place she had found the trash compactor, the dried muck there still churned from where it had been turning its erratic circles.

  Another few steps and she saw the shadows moving on the far wall, occluding the glow of the fire. Melissa froze in place as the demon stepped around the corner, ragged looking, long, straggly hair hanging from his head.

  His head?

  Melissa’s thoughts swirled with confusion. The face she saw was certainly a man’s. This was not La Llorona. Or was it? Was La Llorona tricking them?

  She didn’t have time to think further, as the demon breathed words in the demon language, and Melissa felt her knees shake with fear. He carried something in his right hand, long like a gun, but strangely shiny.

  Melissa wanted to back away but could not, her body would not respond to her. But then the Blue Lady, who she’d almost forgot about, stepped around her. The demon started to raise the thing in his right hand, screaming something in his language at the Blue Lady. Her hands moved in a flicker and filaments shot from her fingers, glittering in the firelight. They whipped across the intervening distance and in a blink the demon was pinned against the wall.

  His gun fired, the sound unmist
akable in the confined space, but the filaments had pinned it to the wall as well, and it discharged harmlessly at the floor. The Blue Lady strode forward, her calm undisturbed. She had been right, Melissa was safe with her.

  “It’s okay, you can come closer,” the Blue Lady said, beckoning Melissa to her side. She followed, coming closer to the demon, and seeing that he was not, in fact, a demon, but just an angry bad smelling man with long hair. He spat words at the Blue Lady and jerked the trigger again on his gun, but it would not fire now.

  A thousand little shards of glass were embedded in the concrete around his feet. Melissa crouched down to look closer at them.

  “That is what killed the boy,” the Blue Lady said, reassuring her. “Not La Llorona, or anything else. Just this awful man’s awful weapon.”

  “Who is he?” she asked.

  “A man, just a man from across the ocean.”

  “From where?” she asked.

  “Does it matter?” the Blue Lady asked, and Melissa had no answer.

  “You were right, when you thought of him as La Llorona,” she said. “Not everyone transcended, or chose to. He’s an individual. He is the last remnant of a meme that has worked its way through all of human history, that believes a race or a nation are exceptional and destined to great things in history. He’s a nationalist. Transcendence ignores such boundaries, but he wants them back and is willing to hurt people in the name of this desire.”

  Melissa nodded, understanding and yet not understanding at all. Her mind was unraveling, and then remaking connections.

  “You are the Street, aren’t you?” Melissa asked. “Another aspect of it.”

  “I am,” she said, turning now to look down at Melissa. “Abandoned children talk about the legend of the Blue Lady. We felt you would trust us, let us take care of you, if I found you.”

  But Melissa didn’t answer, didn’t say anything else, just walked away.

  Melissa stopped telling her stories.