a++ would smuggle into space again

nextian @ 2009-02-22T17:50:00

2014-02-22T22:50:39Z

Friends locked. Comment for access.

author's notes, The Crossroads and the Gate

2013-11-22T23:40:08Z

This was originally written for the Sword & Sorcery issue of S2B2, and then… became… delayed. Those who have survived the experience with me need enthusiastic thanking. Pride of place goes to Gogol, who read many, many versions of this, and politely indicated plotholes large enough to drive a truck through and places where there should be significantly fewer bears. Thanks also to Prodigy, who noticed that the opening was missing anything like an explanation of what was going on. Please, do not blame him if you feel that it is still missing that element. He really tried. And as always, thank you a thousand times to Sares, who I entirely betrayed by not making this (more) the immortal, semi-incestuous love story of Adiena and Evarda, banging on the corpses of all their enemies. And enormous, gold-plated thanks to both of the TWO people who agreed to illustrate this story, one of them twice-- the inimitable purlicue, who helped design the look and characters of the story, and the incredible Ferx, whose beautiful, beautiful art is on its pages. Everyone should high-five me, because I am, in fact, the luckiest.

The idea of a goddess of gates came from marinsco's fantastic interpretation of a result from the deity generator meme. Which I highly recommend. Arruén's quail preservation technique is real but for the life of me I can't find the recipe I used, so don't try that at home. Thanks to FFA for hashing out the color and material composition of Venadan's cadurrán set. Thank you, sincerely, to all the people online who have sexually experimented with olive oil, and could assess its functionality as lube.

To come up with the names for this fic, I had a lot of fun using Mark Rosenfelder's Sound Change Applier. The source words are mostly Hebrew or Arabic, with a couple of obvious Greek borrowings, subjected to a system of sound changes modeled roughly on the ones Latin went through to become Spanish. Plus some lazy respelling to make everything look right. The language has regular penultimate stress. (Venadan's name really ought to be Vénadan, but it was visually distracting.)

Here's the (I'm sure very implausible) sound change rules, if you want to play around with them yourself:

b/v/_
l[hbvlkgpynmʦsftdʃx']/\\/_
[pfkgh]l/ll/_
é/yé/_
ó/ué/_
h//#_
h//_#
h/'/_
ʦ/ss/_
f/h/_
p/f/_
v/ev/#_
yué/vé/_
'y/y/_
yy/i/_
t//_#
t/d/_
dʃ/z/_
a'//#_
s//_#
r/rr/_A
r/rr/_ué
r/rr/_yé
Ull/A/_#

V=aeiouáéíóú
U=aeiou
A=áéíóú
C=hbvlkgpynmʦsftdʃx'

i know that they can hear me yell

2011-04-19T01:24:18Z

CHAG SAMEACH, EVERYBODY.

In a weird way, this is as much my thesis as my actual thesis, considering I've been working on some form of this story for four years, and this iteration since August. So, so many thanks to aria for beta and for telling me to get over myself and post it already.

This is eleven thousand words long (I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO I AM ANYMORE); it's eyai fic (primer is here, masterlist is here). Contains abuse of power, governmental collapse, journalistic excellence, murder, and no hansom cabs at all.

ETA: Oh, god, I'm actually sticking an ETA on this because it's freaking me out so much. YOU GUYS, I APOLOGIZE SO, SO MUCH FOR ONE PARTICULAR PLOT POINT IN THIS. SO MUCH. I WOULD CLAIM IT WASN'T MY IDEA, BUT THAT WOULD ONLY BE ONE TINY, TINY FRACTION OF THE TRUTH.

girl in the war

Oluremi surfaces clicking, whirring, her fan blasting so loud in her own ears that she winces and rubs them until it begrudgingly stops. A warning light blinks on over her right eye, giving everything a red cast. "I hate this mod," she announces to the room at large. "The next time I buy something from the people on Whitecross, I want you to snap my key in half."

"I keep telling you, Blacksheep," Albert says, his feet up on the railing. "Become a billionaire and get yerself fixed."

"I can't be a billionaire if all my recordings have this damn--" she whistles air over it, pursing her lips until he laughs and his chair legs hit the floor properly. She unpurses her lips. "It's not even funny. It sounds like hell and you know it."

"If you overheat you can't become a billionaire either." This is Joseph. Coming from anyone else, it'd be humor. "I can start recording. Do you--"

"Yes, yes, yes!" Harriet yells. "Dead air is dead--"

"--need me to substitute?" Joseph finishes, unperturbed, then nods and closes his eyes, relinquishing muscle control, except the tension of his finger against the port.

"--and if you have these leisurely little gaps in the transmission again..." Harriet is still going at full throttle. Oluremi squints at her, trying to make her out from the climbing fatigue. "We aren't in the business of sitting around and making small talk, we're in the business of making the news, making the news, making the news--"

Oluremi rubs her ears again. "I'm running down," she says. "Sorry." She's sure she's said it more than once. Even Harriet goes quiet as she finds her key in her breast pocket, but her fingers are too twitchy to hold it. Albert takes it from her and winds her up. The silence stretches while she runs diagnostics, and then the light fades from her right eye and she says, "Don't you all start telling me."

"You're right," Albert says, tossing her back the key. She catches it palm down. "This mod's bulat of the first degree."

"And no swearing on air," Harriet says, not quite at full volume. "It's a bad habit."

"If Joseph's not filtering us out we have bigger problems than Albert's dirty mouth," Tamar says, her heels neatly crossed. "Joseph, sound check."

Joseph's lax hand stiffens. He shows five fingers, four, three, two, one, then his mouth opens and the crowd noise is doubled. Tamar runs through the test phrases, but his mic is satisfyingly silent. She brushes some dust off his lapels, rubs her newly gold fingers together with a disparaging sniff which is echoed on a half-second delay.

"Color commentary?" Oluremi asks. "Since it's Joseph transmitting."

Harriet nods. "Albert."

He salutes, and sits by Joseph's side. "Joseph, filter in αT-49145."

Joseph's hand flashes him the okay. Tamar adds, "Sit him up and let's get visual."

"There's nothing to see," Harriet grouses, "it's like they've got no sense of a story," which is, of course, when Oliver Wolf steps out onto the balcony, in his neatest suit, waving cheerily to his cheering people.

Albert's keeping up a steady flow of, frankly, nonsense, but the kind of nonsense that gets them jackers. Oluremi wishes she was under so she could filter him out. She settles for moving to Tamar's side. Harriet glowers at her, and Oluremi preempts her: "'No unnecessary movement when you might be in his line of sight, for god's sake, we're not in the business of--'"

"Harriet, we're not in a business at all," Tamar says. "We're in a collective."

"Well, we're not collecting to have a little party," Harriet snaps, and leans on the railing. "If you know what I'm going to say, why don't you do it."

"Citizens!" Oliver Wolf says, his voice projected over the crowd, and Oluremi rolls her eyes so hard she's afraid she's dislocated them.

The crowd's enthusiastic. Oliver Wolf popular as cigs with the catty classes. Of which I'm a proud member. x15.0 His eyes track the crowd back and forth. He is grinning. Looking for someone? There is a wasp behind him, settling on his shoulder. He doesn't brush it off. x12.0 This is Foreground Media live from Trafalgar Square. A map of the square, with crowd density charted as though it's heat. Wolf's style straightforward as usual. "We don't want to tell you there is no war ahead of you. You know perfectly well there is one." Crowd quieting. "But we've lasted long enough to learn that when we fight, we are as good as our people." A map of the square, with crowd eyai/human lots of breathers ratios superimposed. "And I know better than most how good you are." Crowd cheering, duration 45s, applause.

After the speech, they pile back inside the newsroom and confer, Joseph transmitting the departing crowd all the while, then they roll him back inside and start playing Oluremi's backlogged footage as he pulls himself out of the chair. Harriet is jacked into the feed, staring into the middle distance as she watches Oluremi's exploration of the arsenal. Oluremi is amused to see the little jerk she gives; she's still got the nick on her ankle from tripping, but color is color.

Tamar's already split for her interview, so it's just Albert browsing recordings with her, Joseph of course having dutifully wound himself down to rest. They studiously keep their eyes from that corner. Albert slides a chip from his neck and hands it off to her. "Something off about this."

She flips it around. "No prank, all right? I've got enough bad code in me already."

"No, it's footage," he says, jostling her. "I ain't that funny. I think the contact's broke, maybe if you patch it on?"

She digs around in a desk drawer to find a bandage that'll hold it, but all she can find is their old thing that's lost half its stick with dust. She slaps the chip against it, hard, and it reluctantly holds. There's contact juice somewhere around here, she's sure of it. "Whose is this?"

"That's what's wrong, ain't it," Albert says. He's found the juice and hands it over. "C'mon, give it a go."

Oluremi dubiously presses it to her port, and

you're in a dark place, empty of anything but an eyai slumped against a brick wall. It says, "What is required." You zoom to 4x. It says, "What is required," and its mouth moves smoothly, like it's factory-fresh, but even in the dark you can see that it's battered. You are very afraid. Out of the corner of your eye there's a flicker of motion and you turn. It's gone before you can focus on it. You take a step closer

"That doesn't feel like any of us," she says, yanking it back out. She hesitates. "It could be Hilary's."

Albert shakes his head positively. "Wasn't here last night."

She says, "It could, you know."

"No, it's not Hilary's," Albert says, mockingly, "unless she's crawled off the scrap heap between now and yesterday and slipped it into the files," and then, his face moving to regret with no transition, "That wasn't funny."

"Yeah, but when are you ever." Oluremi gives back the chip. "I wish Harriet would label these. This is a story."

"And some freelancer'll get the-- where are you going?"

"I'm just going out," she sings, "I may be some time," fishing among the umbrellas for her parasol. "Where did I put those gloves!"

"You stripped the geodata," he says, accusingly. "You're scooping some poor innocent new boy who never did anything but give us his story in all confidence, and you're doing it grinning like a schoolgirl. The state of the media today."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Oluremi brushes the gold dust off her nose and replaces her gloves. "I do hope you'll come and visit me when I have my own station, I would love to repay the little people who helped me along the way."

"You'll blow the prize money on a new fan," Albert says, loftily. "I know you."

"You'd better," Harriet orders, and then her eyes focus on Oluremi. "You're damn right this fan is distracting. Get it fixed."

Oluremi executes a curtsey. "If that'll be all, mistress, we free minds have somewhere to be."

"Get me a packet of Giardo's when you come back!" Albert yells after her. "And some decent air!"

It's actually a very small alley and there's nothing in it. She'd been hoping for, hmm, oil, tell-tale scratches in the pavement, a mark on the brick of the wall, but even when she does a brief chemical analysis all she gets is wall and spray-paint, the remains of graffiti. She glances up. The Pipe itself is three blocks from here and instead of the tracks she sees above her the buttress of a tenth floor, which arches up into a shadowy corner. The eyai in the clip hadn't looked smashed, it had looked beaten, but with proper packaging they can be sturdy.

Carefully, she unlaces her shoes. She digs her fingers into the wall, and her fingernails extend and get brief holds on the brick, enough to propel her upwards. This is of course wildly unsafe and stupid, impossible for Albert, for example. She is rather proud of it. She hooks her hand through a steel hole in one of the support beams and judges the distance to the ground. She says, though she's not recording, "It didn't fall, not in its condition. You'd have to be made out of concrete yourself."

Anyway if you were made out of concrete you'd be brittle.

There is oil, after all, footprints staggering drunkenly from the other side of the alley. It could be nothing. If she gets higher, she can get a better look at the mouth of the alley, see if there's anything on the adjoining streets. She unwinds the ribbon around her neck and lashes it around her hand till it holds her securely against the metal. It won't take her weight on its own, but it'll give her a second to surface if she needs it. Then she switches on her recorder.

She comes to herself again when the ribbon pulls taut against her hand, and she grabs upwards with the other one to get a new grip. The wall bounces under her feet. She yanks and the ribbon snaps. If she pushes her legs out far enough she can -- yes, it's that narrow. She's balanced quite steadily, back against one wall, heels against the other. She uses it to walk her way up.

There's a fire escape on the far side and Oluremi climbs it till she's up against a glassed-in bridge, with a mottled view of the identical bridge across from it. She hesitates, and then, for the benefit of her internal and imaginary audience, she clambers higher. From the top of the bridge she can see the whole city. She records again, just briefly--she resurfaces before the sun finishes its setting, and has time to watch the way it turns all of Cheapside red, the new spire of its latest factory churning out a gold-streaked black against it.

If she's being strictly accurate Oluremi has never been to Cheapside. C-010998 came out of its doors, but had been built in Hawker above it. And she doesn't have memory of being C-010998, anyhow. She deleted that once she'd sold the footage to Harriet. Early Days In The Life Of A New Creation, and played in traditional broadcast all over the city. She even knows the music the human newsmen edited in, to cover the lengthy quiet of eyai construction processes. She could whistle it, if she'd been built to whistle.

Maybe it was built to come here, the eyai she saw. Or maybe she's woolgathering instead of gathering news. Dead air is dead information. The truth marches on!

This is Yin for Albertson Data Reporting. The Minister for Defence interrupted in the middle of a walk, turning to face you. She stops with a brick wall behind her. Focus on the graffiti: "trouble with your appliances? debug" Keeping you updated on the latest in, eh, fuck it. "Minister, ADR has some questions for you about the war."

"We haven't declared a war," Mai Linh says. "Does ADR have any other questions?"

"Is it true that Ireland is allying with Scotland?" Mai Linh is in motion now, her guards coming seamlessly up behind her. "Can you comment on the Restoration virus? How many versions have been produced by the human resistance movement?"

"No, we can't comment," she says. Her voice shows no signs of emotional fluctuation. "Can ADR comment on the rumors they're distributing?"

"We don't invent the news, Minister," you say, stepping out after her. One of her guards shifts to block you from a clear view of her face. x4.0 Grainy and disorienting. "Is there anything you do have a comment on?"

"That the press should not make such an effort to disturb the government. I'm very busy. Watch out." You don't have time to process her warning before a stranger slams into you, invisible with your focus so tightly on Mai Linh's face. You begin to apologize. She is gone before you finish.

She messages Albert to tell him he can hold off on the congratulatory parade on her way down to the nearest clinic. It's not much, not one of the new-built hospitals but a repurposed repair-shop with an extremely thin veneer of gentility. The guard checks her serial number at the door, then takes her key. "D'you know," she asks, as she's shrugging off her coat, "the engineers, are there any eyai?"

"I wouldn't be here if they had one." The guard rolls his eyes. "This ain't a fancy place."

"Oh, dashing," she says to his slang, and grins; he rolls his eyes again, more emphatically, and points inside.

She's saved from contemplating the architecture by the fact that the receptionist is the same model as she is, though in considerably better repair. They size each other up with the usual sense of deja vu. Oluremi says, "I don't like the straight hair."

The receptionist sniffs and shuffles her files. "I've never had any problems with my fan," she announces, pinching two papers together. "Or are you here for that port?"

Oluremi, as the receptionist knew she would, raises her hand to the port in an imitation of self-consciousness, and only then can angrily drop it. "You just put me down for the fan. I'm not here for the scars, either."

"They are unsightly," the receptionist says, and Oluremi's fingers twitch to cover them as well. She scowls.

There are a few ahead of her, but they move quickly. She's called in before she can send another surly message to Albert complaining about the wait. She follows another guard down a dark hallway and enters a darker room, where a human is polishing his glasses with his breath. He squints at her. "C-010998," he suggests.

"Oluremi," she says.

"Of course." He finishes with his glasses, and the guard settles himself into the doorway. "Turn around."

She turns around, so that she's facing the guard, and he undoes her stays, the dress with its built-in corset popping open. She makes a face at the guard: can you believe this?

He doesn't so much as twitch. Obviously he can.

There's a clattering behind her, one her trained ear recognizes as metal on ceramic, and a cold touch at her back. The engineer says belatedly, "I'm going to make a small incision."

"Inform your patient of all procedures prior to performing them," the guard says, affectless.

"Yes. Sorry." The engineer is flustered, so she clears her throat -- humans find this comforting -- and says, "I'd rather you just got it over with."

It's extremely strange having your back opened up, stranger to have a hand back there moving things around. She jacked into Yin's dissection same as every other eyai in London but it's not the same as having it done to yourself in yourself. Most of the parts don't have nerve simulacra but everything brushes against the sides, which she can feel, and he keeps up an occasional commentary when he remembers she's capable of listening. He says, "Hmm, blockage," and "difficult line of work," and she's barely paying attention when he says, "And I'll need to deadlock you from here, of course."

The guard produces her key. He asks, "Do you consent to the procedure?"

"Fuck no," she says, automatically, "fuck, no," and steps forward, her skin folding back against her. "No. Can't you diagnostic me while I'm awake?"

"Miss, you are an extremely sensitive piece of equipment," the engineer protests. "And you're showing signs of progressive corrosion. I'm going to need to take out your whole cooling system."

Oluremi whips round. "What is wrong with me?"

"It's Yellow Lung, of course," the engineer says, looking back and forth, like a pigeon, between her and the guard. "I -- Didn't I say?"

"Maybe it's just the fan," Albert says to Tamar, over the top of her head. "I hear that's a thing, ain't it, what'd your doctor say?"

"Don't be an idiot," she says, flatly. "If my modulars are this corroded, my brain's got to be halfway through collapse. He says it's been causing the overdrive in the first place."

Neither Albert nor Tamar will let go of her, and she sighs and buries her face in one of their shoulders, Albert's judging by the cologne. There's a comforting whir to him, the processing warmth, the sound of good health. She says, "At least you're not so badly constructed, eh, humans knew how to make 'em right."

"Shut yer trap," Albert says, and Tamar goes one better and covers her mouth with a broad hand. "You're a mess," Tamar informs her, right into her ear. "Your dress is absolutely destroyed. What were you doing before the world ended, scaling a garbage heap?"

Oluremi laughs through Tamar's fingers, and closes her eyes.

"What in the name of God is this revolting display," Harriet snaps from the doorway. "Am I hosting a collective of journalists, or a therapy session? No--" She lifts a finger as Oluremi jerks back upright and Tamar begins an indignant recitation of her wrongs. "I don't care."

"Ma'am, the clini--"

"I don't care," Harriet says again, articulating carefully. "Did your mic break with the rest of you? No? Then I expect you back on the job. Does Joseph waste his time with these infirmities? He does not."

"That's because he won't buy the code to make himself a facial expression," Albert complains, wavering on the edge of real anger, but Oluremi brushes herself off and gives Harriet a messy salute, and he subsides.

"We found a bit of feed yesterday," she says, and Harriet nods. "I went on back, ma'am. Do you want to see?"

They project it on the back wall, which is always good for a laugh, and watch as Oluremi scales the support beams, as the cameras in her eyes track a bit of fresh oil in the metal dust. "I think this is where our mystery correspondent went," she says. "See--" She points, and there's a tear in the bar, fingers too strong to be human grabbing it. "Could be nothing. Or they could live up here."

Harriet hmphs. "And the story?"

The view pans back down to the alley. "There, where it opens into the street," she says. They look at the line of oil, long and unnatural, not a leak but a smear. "I think the victim was dragged. Could be a new gang."

She knows as she says it she's lying. It's not the beating. No one in their right mind would see another busted cog in the street and think so much about it. That's where the story is, nebulous but actual as a storm cloud, in that vanishing glimmer of motion, in the way that the correspondent had looked at that eyai in the alley. You are very afraid.

"Fine." Harriet switches off the projection. "Do you want to chase this?" She barely waits for Oluremi's nod. "Then you're on assignment. You can follow it up with a report on your condition. No shock stories, we are not Elephant. And none of this sitting around and coughing, do you understand me, I want a hook, I want action, I want treatment. I'll set you up an expense account--" She scowls. "Don't look at me like I've brought you Christmas. I'm asking for a story."

Oluremi stares, light-headed, as Albert pulls her into a one-armed embrace.

Tamar murmurs, "Managing Editor of Foreground Media Replaced With Cheap Duplicate."

"Managing Editor of Foreground Media Murders Her Reporters," Harriet snaps back. "Any further questions?"

"There's been much discussion of the latest iteration of the Restoration virus among our jackers. What can an eyai do if they suspect they've been infected?"

"The difficulty is-- Tamar--" The doctor looks at her for confirmation, and then continues, as if she's had to say this half a hundred times already, "if they've been infected, they won't be able to ask for help. We're seeing signs that this version prevents self-diagnosis. If you observe one of your neighbours acting strangely, the vital thing is to keep from startling them, and bring them here. Or to your local clinic."

"You've been heard to say that Yellow Lung is near epidemic. Have you had trouble keeping up with the demand for maintenance?"

Dr. Khalsa's feet tap against the table. "I'm sorry to say that you're right. It's harder to treat than it is to catch. Then, too, most of our patients don't trust human mechanics. I'm told that human clinics have the same problem." Her smile is a flash of irritation. "Eyai doctors are sleepless, but the prejudice is still enormous."

"And you're sure the two diseases come from the same cause?"

"It's possible the human variant has a viral or bacterial component, of course. That isn't my area. But we're sure that the worst of the condition is:" x4.5. Dr. Khalsa holds up a hand, streaked with dust.

Tamar had pressed her interview into Oluremi's hands before letting her leave, and Oluremi jacks in on the Tube, as much for the warmth of being Tamar as the content. Khalsa's up in Seven Sisters, and her custom is good. During the interview a couple of black-suited bodyguards come in. In the public feed this'll be excised of course, and so will Tamar's distant recognition of them, an image scatter that she doesn't have the processing power to run while she's recording, but that Oluremi, jacking, performs easily. Those are the Minister for Defence's girls. No small fry.

Khalsa has an experimental treatment. She's looking for functioning test subjects. It's got a 40% survival rate.

Well, it'd be a lead.

The oil stain is gone, so she overlays her feed and follows where it used to be. It doesn't go far -- a thousand footsteps have wiped it out as soon as it hits a proper street -- but it drops her in front of a pharmacy, and there's a sunglassed person standing watch. Androgyne. She gives zir a little wave. "You security?"

"Yeah," zie says. "You got a light?"

"I do if you've got tapes of a week ago."

The camera, whose name is Juniper, keeps everything offloaded onto chips and does not believe in contact juice. Oluremi experiences once again the full-body embarrassment of trying to patch in with a journalist's port. She fumbles it up against her skin, eventually. It's dumped data, unedited, and it takes forever to pull out just the visual, to fast-forward till she sees the timestamp from her story. There, just after the correspondent saw that flash of movement; a woman in black, her face obscured, just barely visible turning a corner. No sign of the correspondent. She rewinds and watches three people with the body slung between their arms emerge backwards from the alley. Juniper's finished a cigarette and is working on a second by the time that Oluremi has traced them back down the street, out through a huge pair of double-doors, and has opened her eyes again.

"What's it about anyway?" Juniper inquires, tossing back her lighter.

"Foreground Media have the story," Oluremi says, automatically, and takes off down the street to those double-doors at a run before Juniper can complain about evasion tactics.

"Fuck," she says, even before she's fully conscious again, and rubs the place on her head where the pebble hit her. That'll leave another mark. She glances up, expecting a kid, or a passing train, and sees Yin, her feet dangling off the support bar. Yin lifts a hand.

Oluremi shifts warily from foot to foot. "ADR's sinking to violence now," she says. "Tragic, that is. When I can't throw back."

"Well, you lot are sinking to theft. We thought it was fair," Yin says. She drops to the ground with a thud, ignoring the crunch of her joints. Oluremi's jacked into enough of her feeds to know what that feels like, the endless rattle of ungreased bearings pushed well past their warranty. "You're poaching my story."

"The slower you are," Oluremi says, virtuously, "the sadder it is for your poor jackers. How'd you get onto it, anyway?"

"Jacovi found a chip." Yin flips it up between her fingers. "It isn't ours."

"It isn't ours," Oluremi says. She hesitates -- Harriet will have her head -- and takes out her own. She doesn't have Yin's artistry, but then she wasn't built for sleight-of-hand. "We found it too. We thought it might be a freelancer."

Yin takes a seat on an overturned crate, glancing around the warehouse. "Three people," she says. "I bet this whole place stinks of oil. You can't smell, can you?"

Oluremi sighs. "That was the generation after me."

"Hah. They didn't want us to have it," Yin says, her eyes tracking one set of footprints in the glittering dust. "Then we'd smell the shit they left us in. I can't hear music, either. But you know that."

"Well, you were my childhood hero," Oluremi says. "Of course I had to grow up and destroy your career."

Yin flashes her a smile, like a switchblade. "You're going to have to get up a lot earlier to do that," she says, and gets back up. "Thanks for the information received."

"Be careful," Oluremi says, and then feels like a paranoid idiot and corrects it to, "You never know if Elephant might be following the same trail."

"Hah!" Yin says again. "The day I can't shake off Elephant is the day you can decommission me." And she stalks off along a set of footprints, through the door.

It's hours of investigation before Oluremi's done, hours of sunlight splintering in through the windows of the houses on the left side of the street. No one, of course, has seen anything real. All of the assailants were human. One was a dockworker. The eyai was quiet all the way to the warehouse. No one saw anyone follow them. Dusk settles over the city as she makes her way back to the battle station, on her second winding in as many hours, her head packed full of information that she needs to offload with a physically insistent pressure. The last time she taped this much-- running this slow, she can't even remember. Doing second camera on Albert's interview with Nacio, maybe. Three months. No. Four. It was raining. She rests her head against the wood of the door, closing her eyes to blink away the dust that's gotten in them.

And opens them to see her mystery feeder.

He's shifting in the shadows of the little alley across the way, and he's watching their window with fixed, wide-eyed attention. She knows that attention, she's played it over and over again all day. His eyes dart down, and she only has a second to think, couldn't it happen when I still have space! before she's pounding after him, as fast as she possibly can. When he accelerates she picks up after him down the winding streets, shoving past tourists and strangers and hawkers and then through a terrifyingly busy intersection where she almost goes under the crush of people, but there he is, hesitating on the corner, heading into an emptier side-street, and she ignores both sense and body and simply tackles him to the curb. He is much too skinny to resist.

Oluremi sits up only enough to make sure he's not going anywhere. She exhales. "Oluremi, from Foreground Media," she says. "You're my source."

"I d-don't know what you're talking about," he stutters, abnormally fast. "Can't you just let me alone!"

"Calm down, calm down," she says, patting him on the shoulder. "I just need a few minutes of your time. I promise, I'm not recording."

"You'd better not be," he says, helplessly. "Because I'm--" and then he exhales, too, letting out a cloud of dust. "What does it matter," he says. "I'm not anybody."

"We at Foreground don't believe in nobodies," Oluremi says, but in his case, she's thinking of making an exception.

His name is Andrew. He was constructed a year before the Iron Revolution, six years ago now, making him properly old-fashioned. He was built as a very expensive microphone and so he's in good repair. And so when he saw a -- a -- he stutters again over that part of the story, baffled by the prospect of telling it -- "It's all on the chip," he says, finally. "Instinct. I started taking everything down. And then I snapped out of it and I had to see--" He swallows. "I uh. I."

"That's all right," Oluremi says, swallowing the thick, rising bulk of disappointment. "It's fine. We don't need a statement. Why'd you send it in?"

"Well, that's what you do with footage, isn't it," he says, drawing his knees up against himself. "You give it to feeders."

"Why was it so frightening?" she says, as quietly as possible. "You were almost sick. Was it the beating?"

He laughs, sudden and surprised. "You think I care about the humans--! I would have beaten it too. You didn't see it. It wasn't just somebody who doesn't process fast, it wasn't just somebody who doesn't want a name, it was like it was a-- an oven or a garbage compactor or a-- It didn't--"

She waits.

"There was no one there," he says, finally. "There was no one there. It said, 'Don't worry. It won't be long.'"

The story's shifting around in her mind, picking up speed, darker and bigger and different every second. She can almost hear the lightning. "Do you think it was the virus?"

He shakes his head violently. "They say that sets you back to defaults. It doesn't turn you out of your own head."

"What happened to it?"

"I don't know," he says, but he's absolutely terrible at falsehoods, and he says through gritted teeth, "the rubbish dump. I took it down there. It took some doing." He says, again, "I don't. I don't."

"A journalist protects her sources," she says, and stands up. "No one's going to be notified."

Professional instinct compels her to add, "Unless you tell any of this to Yin."

After night falls, she heads for Yabsley.

"It'd be, oh, six days ago now," says the lady behind the desk. "I don't mind telling you, it's the first time I've seen anyone fetch a cog in here. You can get twice the price the city pays you under the table. Three times it if you're selling yourself off. Are you planning to?" she says, distracted by a momentary avarice. "I know a fence'll buy you piecemeal for the price you'd fetch under warranty, and he won't make you set a date. He's a gentleman."

"Have you finished dismantling the body?" Oluremi asks. "Is there anything else left for me to see?"

"Oh heavens," says the lady, and laughs. "It takes weeks to take one of you apart! Through here."

And there it is. In the flesh, and in pieces.

Serial number P-116099. Newer model, then, post-numeric. The head's what you've come here to see, still mostly intact, its mouth open. You are repulsed and then annoyed at your own revulsion. The gag reflex that has nothing to gag. Doesn't look so bad. There were worse in the hospital riots. You close its mouth and tip up the whole thing up, and a cascade of dust comes pouring out of its neck in rivulets of rusty gold. What in the name of Jesus! The dust is warm. There's a high concentration of it in the room like there is in every junkyard. Multiplied by 144 hours, assuming a constant disturbance rate; the calculation takes a whirring second. Your fan ticks over to a louder setting. Repairs are in progress, but donations are always appreciated. No, it can't be ambient.

More cautiously you tip the head back again, and this time slide one finger up into a tube. It is gritty to the touch.

My, oh, my, but it's Yellow Lung. Starting to believe it's following me around.

Tamar's waiting for her when she gets back, opening the door with a cordial bow. Oluremi returns her a curtsey, and gathers her skirts even before they've properly lifted again to sweep past her.

"Someone's in a mood," Tamar says, locking the door affrontedly behind her. "Didn't the expedition go well?"

"The expedition went wonderfully," Oluremi says. She collapses onto a fainting couch. "I've tracked down our victim, I've tracked down our correspondent, I've done everything but found three humans with a grudge in this city, and do you know what I've discovered?"

"That you're developing a talent for melodrama?"

"That Harriet might as well stop paying me," Oluremi says. "This isn't a story, this is a diagnosis."

Tamar rolls her eyes. "I think my first hypothesis was closer. Would you care to favor me with an explanation?"

It doesn't take long. For all the footage she's got stored away, the facts are very few. An eyai with Yellow Lung so bad its parts are practically useless is beaten and left for scrap. Another eyai (discreetly anonymous, entirely boring) sees it and says it's terrifying, that it's like it's empty. He tapes it, he throws the footage in their laps, he disappears.

Tamar snaps her fingers. "The footage," she says, and when Oluremi looks blurrily at her, goes up to get it herself. Oluremi hasn't bothered to tag it and certainly hasn't even thought about editing it, but Tamar patches right in. Her eyes whir back and forth for a second before settling on the middle distance. "You think it's the Lung," she says, her voice drawn-out and distracted.

"Eyai turns up acting funny, it's corroded within an inch of its life, yes, in fact, I think it's the Lung," Oluremi says, unbuttoning her boots. She tries to laugh. "Good thing I'll stop running before any of this bulat gets ahold of me."

There's no chance of an answer, so Oluremi undoes her cloak as well and starts folding the gloves. They're smudged. They probably smell of the junkyard, and she wonders if Tamar is filtering it out, or if she's humoring Oluremi, or if Tamar's losing her knack. She half-remembers a rumor that smell's the first to go, since the peripherals are so delicate. She's going to have to read case histories. She hates case histories even when they're not predictions.

"This isn't right," Tamar says. She pulls it away from her neck and tosses it to Oluremi. "The security footage. Your third man."

"Woman."

"Woman," Tamar agrees. "I think you really ought to take a closer look at her when you're not busy cross-recording."

"Why not, examine every bystander," Oluremi sighs, "follow every lead, climb every mountain," and slaps it on. She finds the footage without difficulty. "Yes, congratulations, it's an invisible woman."

"A short invisible woman," Tamar says, as Oluremi plays it over again, setting those five seconds to loop. "A short, black-haired woman who knows how to dodge security cameras. A short, black-haired woman who knows how to dodge security cameras in Cheapside twenty minutes after her interview with Yin on Sunday. Don't you pay any attention to the news?"

Oluremi drops her hand in shock, and the world floods back as the chip tumbles away from her neck. She has to scramble to catch it. "You can't be serious!"

"It matches her gait," Tamar says, matter-of-factly. "Not to mention her black ops."

"Joseph," Oluremi says. "Joseph won't have these flights of whatever. Joseph will analyze this like a sensible person. Joseph!"

"He's not here, he has got work to do," Tamar says. "And before you ask, Harriet is wiring hatemail to Jacovi and refused all interruptions. Do you not trust me?"

"Not when you're telling me that the Minister for Defence is stalking my story," Oluremi snaps. "My story that probably isn't even a story."

Tamar lets out an exasperated breath. "Oluremi, I have taped four hundred political stories in the course of the last three years, and I have edited her out of at least fifty of them. The Ministry of Defence has practically hardcoded her profile into me. I'm fairly sure I know what she walks like."

Oluremi folds her arms. "Why's she doing this when there's bombs in Kent?"

"I don't know," Tamar says. "But if I left your third man into a story I was doing, I'd be in scrap in a warehouse by dawn." She sniffs. "Not a story."

"It isn't," Oluremi says. "It's some sick piece of slag that ought to be left alone!"

"Fine, a sick piece of slag the Ministry wants to look at," Tamar counters. "That sounds remarkably like news."

"All right, all right," Oluremi says. "You're the reporter of the year. And for your reward you can match the rest of this bulat with me until it's visiting hours to Dr. Khalsa again."

"Miss Oluremi?"

It jars her out of taping, and her memory complains at the jagged edge of the file. She thinks it's a reasonable overview of the clinic, though, and she's able without too much pique to climb to her feet and shake Dr. Meera Khalsa's hand. She's older than she'd felt to Tamar; Oluremi doesn't really remember how you convert human ages, but she must be forty at least. She tries and fails to imagine being forty years old. Then again, since yesterday, it's been a bit of a strain to imagine making it to five.

"Do you need anything else from the clinic?" the doctor says, and Oluremi sweeps it with another glance, checking for anyone remotely interesting, but if they're here they're doing a good job of hiding it. She shrugs, as her answer, and lets the doctor lead them into a side room.

"What's this for?" she asks, running a hand over a set of archaic straps.

"The room? I'm afraid we don't have space for an office," Khalsa says. "So we repurpose this. For intractable cases." She pauses, and Oluremi registers that it must have been a joke. She produces a laugh. Khalsa smiles, sympathetically. "Was that insensitive?"

Oluremi looks away, taken aback. Humans can't tell when her laugh isn't involuntary; her response time is too fast. "Did you do a sideline in emotional response?"

"Oh, yes. It's all part of diagnostics. You know, I built some very interesting eyai in my time," Khalsa says, taking a seat in a high-backed chair. "But I'm afraid that's classified. What can I help you with?"

Classified! Oluremi thinks, gleefully, and says, "I'm interested in doing a story." She forestalls the doctor's objection with an upraised hand. "I know, I know, Tamar's already pestered you within an inch of your life. I'm here for more personal intervention. I have a case. Of Yellow Lung. It's far enough along." She sneaks a look at Khalsa's face; sympathetic and apologetic. God damn it. "If you consent, I'd like to record the entirety of your experimental treatment."

Dr. Khalsa's face clouds. "I'm afraid that's out of the question. The placebo effect alone--"

"We're very practiced at editing stories," Oluremi says, leaning forward. "Foreground Media have a policy of strict confidentiality for--"

"Forgive me, Miss Oluremi, but I have heard of Yin Chao," Dr. Khalsa says. "I know how thorough an interesting story must be. It can't, for example, cut out during the actual treatment, can it?"

"It can if there won't be a story besides," Oluremi says. "And the placebo effect, really, Dr. Khalsa, I know we're very convincing, but--"

"The placebo effect has more effect on the eyai mind, actually. Not less." Dr. Khalsa is still looking sorry. If she really is so good at emotional response she'll have no trouble tracking Oluremi's smiling irritation. "Your brains are built to be suggestible. And before you forestall me again, that includes even the brains of those built after the revolution, unless you have some very unusual architecture that was not in the documentary of your manufacture."

Oluremi is startled into flattery. "You watched it."

"I watched it several times," Dr. Khalsa says. "You were very thorough, even five minutes out of the factory. I haven't been able to go back to Hawker in so long it is my only substitute for a tour."

"Then you'll be perfectly situated to do medicine on me, eh," Oluremi says, coaxingly. "We'll even give you a look at the final cut." And then Harriet will screech about framing and reedit it again, without taking anyone's opinion into account, but that's newshound business. "Do you know how many eyai came to the public clinics after Yin's dissection? Half your clientele walked in here because they'd jacked into her being sliced open and wanted to see it for themselves."

Dr. Khalsa laughs. "That is one way to put it."

"Think of the clientele," Oluremi says. "Think of the donations."

"Well," Dr. Khalsa says, and it's all Oluremi can do not to show a flicker of her triumph on her face. "I'll send you a wire. If we do it, it would be best to get it done as soon as possible. Your fan--"

"Thank you," Oluremi says, before the doctor can start talking about any whirring noises, "thank you sincerely. I'll just take the consent form with me now, shall I?"

"And the form for your medical records, and the list of symptoms. All your symptoms," Dr. Khalsa says, firmly. "And your supervisor's contact information. A pleasure to meet you in person, Miss Oluremi."

God, she loves punters.

There's no peace at the battle station; Harriet has emerged. Oluremi doesn't even have to get inside the door to hear her scouring of Albert. "I don't care what you thought was relevant about it. How many times do I have to say it, you just keep the commentary to the feed and leave the editing to me. Unless you want to start shouldering even half of what I do every day to keep this organization running and in the minds of the people on the street -- we're not in the business of philosophical gossip -- you! what's this I hear about you consorting with Yin?"

"Hello, Harriet," Oluremi sighs. She removes her hat. "So you do have those trackers on us."

"No, I heard the door open, because unlike some of us, I am capable of thinking about more than one tiddly little piece of nonsense at once," Harriet snaps. She glares down at her from the balcony. "I hope you have a good explanation."

"When Jacovi undermines us and we're all on the dole I'll be very sorry," Oluremi says. "Is Tamar about?"

"Not good enough for you, am I?" Albert asks, poking his head out of the side room. "And here after all these years of devotion."

"Depends," she says, grinning. "How much d'you know about what's wrong with me?"

He covers his heart. "We'll be here till Christmas."

"Does this have anything to do with your story?" Harriet says, ominously, from above.

"List of symptoms, ma'am," Oluremi says. She waves it up at her boss. "For Dr. Khalsa. Can I borrow Albert?"

Harriet flaps a hand. "Why not, it's not like he's getting anything usable done. You can't have Tamar."

"In any case I'm not for sale." It's Tamar, from the couch, where she's been obscured by an enormous pile of pillows. "Remi, don't forget your foot."

"Don't forget your inability to listen to a direct order," Harriet says. "And don't stay here cluttering us up. You can do it on your way to Chalk Farm. There's a fire."

"There's always a fire," Oluremi complains, but she gets her hat again, anyway.

It's quite a list, when they're done with it, and she's not sure what the other people on the Tube think of them, heads together, trading things like loss of feeling in yer whatevers, extremities, and that fucking fan, and sometimes you're deaf.. Lack of focus after twenty-four hours or more running. Ah, c'mon, no one runs that long without getting a little crooked. You're buying your own excuses for your downtime now, aren't you. It ain't fair to make me hit you when you can't hit back. The paper's torn a little in the corner from where she yanked it back from him, and she hopes the doctor won't ask about it.

It's a good fire, with children and historical interest. She interviews the rescued humans, glad of her high-necked dress, and Albert watches the beams of one house splinter and collapse, the only wooden thing around. A couple of doors catch fire, and the office above is probably getting its feet warm, but nothing too rich comes down.

She's looking around for the promised cat when she sees a familiar shape: blond hair and elbow patches. It's Joseph, out in his only suit. She heads towards him, calling out, "Didn't think she'd put all three of us on it. The whole cavalry?"

He doesn't hear her, maybe. There's something about the way he's standing, the way his back is so straight, that makes her sure he's been here a while. But why have him feed if he's not moving? It's not like his perspective makes up for the lack of action. "You all right?" she asks, uncertainly. He doesn't hear that too. Or he doesn't think he ought to answer. After all she's right behind him.

"Joseph?"

When he turns to look at her she knows exactly what her correspondent meant, she can hear it again, there was no one there. She slips into feed, though you can't think of anything you want to do less. A composition shot of Joseph's face before and his face now. Back to the live footage. You didn't know until now that his face had tics. You didn't know that his smile was lopsided until you see his new one. It is perfectly even. It shows the same number of teeth on both sides. You didn't know that his voice had timbre until he says "Don't worry. It won't be long." He is like a video of himself, the same visual, the same sound, but no feed over it, no color commentary, no feeling at all. There was no one there.

You say, "Joseph, please. Please. Fuck. Please." Compensation for the whirring of your fan. It is climbing. "Joseph!"

"Don't worry," he says again. You clench your fists. You focus on his cleaned face. "It won't be long."

You're a reporter. You say, "What won't?"

He says, "The cure."

"The cure for what, God damn it," you say, but he doesn't have an answer for that. Albert is standing beside you now, supporting you with an arm around your waist. "Joseph."

He says, "My serial number is K-20I866A."

Albert shakes you and she blinks at him. "I have to get back," she says, her voice dragging. "I need to."

"We can't just leave him," Albert says, turning his face to her, and then back to Joseph, "we can't, can't, can't," oh, fuck, and then he's winding her back up. She takes a deep and unnecessary breath.

"Joseph-- Ah, God. K-20I866A. Come along with us."

"No," he says, politely.

"You heard him," she says, her voice edged with hysteria. "He won't come. Can't you see there's nothing to take back."

"You ain't resourceful enough," Albert says, grimly, and she wobbles as he steps away from her and puts both hands on Joseph's shoulders. "He's old stuff, Remi, he ain't got a self-defence mechanism. Do you?" He's holding Joseph's key like he held hers, yanked from around his throat, except he turns it in the wrong direction. Joseph slumps forward into his arms.

The fire's smoldering out now. The bystanders are starting to look to them, instead.

They find a taxi.

By mutual agreement, no one winds Joseph back up, though Harriet takes his key and spends a long time staring at him in his own kind of silence. She makes Albert and Oluremi tell their story over again, twice, and then patches in to their fragmentary feeds. Tamar, after making sure Joseph's eyes are closed, won't take part in the conversation, but she doesn't seem to be able to leave the room.

They retrace his steps as best they can. He'd left the building before sunset last night, otherwise Oluremi would have seen him coming in. Harriet had given him a bewildering number of tasks. Mostly small stories, the kind he's best at. He filled in some gaps from a few of the more amateurish reports they were planning to air. He went to Hawker about that meltdown on the conveyor belt. He fact-checked a few reports: the runners, the Broad Street theft, the stroke on the Pipe, Tamar's interview with Dr. Khalsa--

Oluremi's head jerks up. "Wait, wait," she says. "Where'd Tamar--"

"Over Belsize Park," Tamar says. "We had to meet in her experimental facility, she wasn't holding regular hours. You're right."

"But that's where the fire was," Albert says, blankly. "We were five minutes away."

Harriet scowls. "You can't be serious."

"Joseph was talking about a cure," Oluremi says. "He wasn't running right. And the first eyai, it was clogged solid up with dust. What if that was the last thing he heard before-- what if it's that forty-percent treatment?"

Tamar's nodding. "If it went wrong, if it caused a reset--"

"And the people who volunteer for experimental treatment, they aren't the kind of people you'd miss if they started wandering around without themselves," Oluremi says. "So she signs them out and releases them into the city."

"No," Albert says, flatly. "Joseph wasn't sick."

"Of course he wasn't." It's Harriet, sounding detached. "But Oluremi's volunteered for the treatment. I'm sure the doctor thought he was sniffing around where he shouldn't be."

"Yes, he was," Tamar says, before Oluremi can say any of the things she doesn't want to. "He's a reporter."

There's a silence. Finally Harriet says, "We didn't stop for Hilary."

They hadn't, either. Hilary had run down quite ordinarily; too old for her parts to be replaced. Five years at least. It had been Harriet who found her. The news had still gone out at midnight, with a full obituary, and Oluremi had spent the rest of that night editing out grief from the morning edition.

"We won't stop for Joseph," Oluremi says. "I'm either going to Khalsa or the police."

She's badly wrongfooted by the way Tamar and Albert exchange a smile. "Oh, well, don't you all try to talk me out of it at once!"

"Don't be an idjit," Albert says. He's crossed his arms and folded in on himself, the way he always does when his facial .app won't do the work of his unhappiness. "If you go to the cops there'll be no story by tomorrow."

"It's Khalsa or nothing," Tamar agrees. "We ought to do this together."

"No we ought not," Harriet says, violently. "You lot are expensive and only one of us has a malfunction. Oluremi will go alone."

"I can do better than that," Oluremi says. "I can take someone so you won't even mind if they disappear."

"Run this by me again," Yin says. "You want to let me in on your story?"

The experimental facility is much smaller than the clinic, two or three poky rooms for processing, surgery, and recovery. Oluremi can't bring herself to think further about it. Her mind is still running in circles, the weight in her satchel, the look in Joseph's eyes. It doesn't have time for the spectre of her own decomposition. It is, really, a bit like recording; being so spiraled in to a thought that any other drifting idea is a gray unnecessary. If she were recording in a blank room, maybe, or in a fog. Except she has -- of course -- recorded in a fog before, and all it's ever done is give her a thousand little wisps of cloud to focus on.

Yin has agreed to come in twenty minutes, which means she'll cheat and be here in ten. Ten minutes of exclusive airtime, Foreground Media; don't waste it. She can hear Dr. Khalsa moving around in an outer room, and the sound of one, perhaps two, other people. Nurses, probably. She shuts her eyes.

When Khalsa comes in the first thing she says to you is, "I take it this interview is on the record."

You pull open the satchel and remove the head. Serial number P-116099.

Khalsa's expression doesn't match anything you recognize. "I see," she says. "A friend of yours?"

"No," you say. "The friend of mine is back at our offices."

"Ah," Khalsa says. She's perspiring. "I must inform you that any accusations of medical malpractice will be treated as slander and prosecuted with the full force of the law."

"I'm very familiar with the slander laws," you say. "They only apply if the accusations aren't true. Would you please tell both of the nurses to leave?"

Khalsa disappears from the room again and Oluremi rubs her forehead, flipping the satchel cover back over the head. The warning light's on already. She's lost three minutes of time to this standoff, and she's not sure she has another seven left before her fan drowns everything out. And her self-defence module's fierce enough but she wouldn't trust it while recording. She's going to have to do this audiovisual.

The nurses file out, and Khalsa settles into the chair, her ankles crossing as her skirt resettles around her. "All right," she says. "You'd better tell me what you believe."

Oluremi is as meticulous as she can be. She follows her chain of logic back, from Joseph's blank face to the suspiciously light clientele in Khalsa's busy office to the dust cascading over her fingers in the junkyard, and she keeps it as gentle as she can, so that when she ends up, as she eventually does, at the punchline, Khalsa's half-hypnotised by her own story. "I understand," Oluremi says. She scoots forward in her chair. "I do. Everybody makes mistakes."

The doctor's voice comes out low and quiet. "Some worse than others."

"You were only trying to help," Oluremi says. "A cure for Yellow Lung would be a miracle, wouldn't it?"

Khalsa's eyes widen, just a little. "You think I-- Oh," she says. "No. I'm terribly sorry. This must be such a disappointment to you. No. There is no cure for Yellow Lung."

"...I'm sorry?"

"It's a corrosion," Khalsa says. "Short of wholesale replacement of parts -- in humans or in eyai -- we can redo the tissue, but we can't stop the design flaw. I was not working on a cure for an incurable disease." Khalsa's hands twist in her lap. "I think you ought to feed this."

"If you want," says Oluremi, and her eyes slip shut, and they're still closed in that half-a-second between states when there's a cold pressure to the side of her neck, and Khalsa's voice in her ear as Oluremi claws at Khalsa's blouse, "We're curing you," pitying and kind, "we're curing all of this, and trust me, it's much easier on you," and as a velvet darkness comes flooding up around her she thinks she hears the sound of a bell.

When she wakes--

default nothing to worry about reset default default master keyault default de default d ult soon

--it's with a bad line of code sliding around in her head--

nothing to be d fea default lt utility is default default what's a

--and her antivirals are screaming at her, and her body is shaking all over, and the patch at her neck--

default efau def default t t default it'll be you know the start of the default default

--the patch at her neck is telling her it rejected right at the start of code transfer and would she please get some contact juice and try again, and she rips it right off and throws it hard across the room, though with the way her muscles are firing it can't get far. She can't see it to confirm. She's curled up again with her head pressed between her knees, and the code's crawling its way through her, and she ef default f hates it so much she could scream as loud as the subroutines that are closing it and boxing it away.

It's done eventually. She's Oluremi again, instead of a collection of parts. Oluremi the journalist with the ragged port below her ear that won't take anything without persuasion.

The other thing that saved her is outside the room. It's been only two minutes since she was thrown in here, and Yin's voice is modulated and calm and right in the middle of an interview. Khalsa must have had to leave her here, to trust in that code to keep her in a heap on the storeroom floor. Oluremi wraps her arms around her knees, and looks about her: a table to her right, with an array of tools on top of it, and a lamp, and another door half-open to a sink, and a body sprawled in the corner with its eyes wide open. It's sheer luck that's she's already too sick to scream. She skitters backwards, and then stops herself, before she can make any noise. That's an eyai. That's an eyai she knows; that's an eyai she's seen in feeds half a hundred times, with Tamar's filters over her, that's the fucking Minister for Defence, and she's got the dark patch at her neck that means it isn't the Minister for Defence anymore.

Oluremi never thought she'd be so happy to see someone deadlocked. Today's just been full of surprises.

Khalsa's making apologetic noises now outside the door, and Yin's demurring. She hasn't got long before the doctor figures out Yin's playing bodyguard, even with her magician's-assistant smile of innocent delight. She steels herself, and listens for a babble of conversation before she stands. Her skirts rustle, petticoat against petticoat. In a hurry she unhooks them, and they crumple into a whispering pile on the floor. A silence settles over the outer room.

"Is someone else here?" Yin says, quite clearly.

"No one," says Dr. Khalsa, or something similar. Oluremi takes a cautious step towards the door, then another. "We have mice, I'm afraid."

She's been kidnapped by a woman who thinks that's an acceptable piece of misdirection. If she weren't so angry, she'd be insulted.

"May I see the test room?" Yin asks. She sounds curious, a little rueful. "If Foreground's scooped me I might as well see the detritus."

"You understand that for patient privacy reasons," Khalsa begins. Oluremi tries to remember human hearing threshholds -- she's got her hand on the door -- she'll have to stake herself on ADR running their coverage the way they do. Dead air is dead coverage. We're on in five-- she draws her five gloved fingers down the wood-- four -- three -- a silent count of two, one, she throws the door open, Khalsa swivels to face her, and it's really more than enough time for Yin to pull her gun.

After a little pause, the doctor says, "I take it the chip didn't stick?"

"It stuck on Mai Linh," Oluremi says, tightly. "I suppose that'll do."

"It'll be stuck on half the city by now," Khalsa says. "The transmission vector is really very satisfactory. Can't you hear it?"

"No," says Oluremi, at the same time as Yin says, "The Tube was half-empty." They both take a moment, too short for Khalsa to see, to listen to the streets outside, and it might be a quiet neighborhood and it might be mid-afternoon but the sound out there is a quiet that's listening back.

"Six or seven hours," Khalsa says. "Joseph was one of our first subjects with the cuckoo code, so that makes it, what, seven and a half? That's--"

"I'll kill you," Oluremi says, but it comes out flat and uncertain. She knows she has no chance of swinging a fist and making contact. As much as she tells herself Khalsa's a human and a murderer, she can't make it fit, can't even think about bringing it down on her lying head. She turns to Yin in sinking despair.

"If you'll put the gun down," Khalsa says. It's to Yin now. "I don't want to be cruel, R-99A8F1--"

"αR-99A8F1," Yin says, automatically.

"--but it's simply irrational, the way you two are behaving. Emergent intelligence is all very exciting as a parlor trick, but it isn't really more than that, is it? A definition by limitation? I know the code you've got in you, I know how much it must hurt even to be so angry with a human, and I know how--" She's cut off by a crack, and then another. She looks down at her own chest.

"That was a warning," Yin says, and empties her clip. She takes another one out of her purse. "I was in the revolution," she says, conversationally, as she loads the gun again. "I earned that little alpha in front of my name." The last bullet goes through Khalsa's forehead.

"Yin," Oluremi says, for what she realizes is, quite ordinarily, the third or fourth time. "Yin, she's dead."

"Oh," says Yin, and sits down on the floor.

As Yin winds herself back up, Oluremi goes into the back room, and squats in front of Mai Linh to close her eyes. Six or seven hours, and Joseph with cuckoo code. She doesn't know what she'll find if she goes back to Foreground Media. No; she does. That's what she doesn't want to think of. She folds Mai Linh's arms across her chest, and then she frames the shot, and gets the feed.

"We have to get out of here," Yin says from the doorway, startling her out of it.

Oluremi stands. "Here where?"

"The whole city, I should think," says an unfamiliar voice, steady and low and miserable, and when they turn there's a girl in the doorway -- no -- the speechwriter, isn't it? The Free Mind? Nahia. "I'm in a position to help you with that, if you're in a position to help me with her."

Oluremi and Yin exchange a look. It says a lot of things, starting with, the world is ending because we're a collective you.

"Yeah, all right," Oluremi says. "At your service. What do you need?"

You lot don't know how unlucky you are. People are filing past now, pushing and shoving on their way to Trafalgar Square. Audible snippets of the passerby conversations contain the words "demonstration" and "debug" and "Restoration" and jubilation and fear and a whole spectrum of emotions you can't parse. Not that I care to.

Yin pulls on your arm, and you follow. It ought to be Tamar here. She's the one with an eye for detail. Or if it was Albert you'd have a quotable.

I'm sorry for the grief. The car's visible on the corner now, through the crush of people. It isn't a sleek black Ministry sedan but a low-slung ugly hatchback. It is brown. I don't have time to edit it out. I'm dumping this on the first server that'll take the load.

Your eyes close. Out loud you say, "You should blindfold me."

"Or you could stop--" says one of the guards. Yin silences them and reaches for a length of cloth in the backseat, wrapping it around your eyes and ears, tight.

The car begins moving beneath you. The sick heat of panic in your chest. Can't edit that out either I suppose.

This is the final broadcast for Foreground Media. We're closing up shop eh. For now at least. Send all forwarding mail to hell from which we'll be reporting before breakfast.

The warning light flashes under the blindfold, red against black.

Oluremi, signing off.

Your fan whirs.

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my, my slow descent

2011-04-09T07:03:19Z

I would apologize for doing this at midnight but actually I think we are now all officially on enough different time zones to justify any posting hour.

EYAI DRABBLES GO

All settings or none! All characters or none! Prompt, fic, discuss, do interpretive dance!!

(And for those who selected "what in the name of God": here's a writeup I did on Tumblr for pseudo_tsuga of what exactly I'm talking about.)

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a sorry box and a hillside

2010-09-06T00:04:37Z

(This entire post was won by cmattg in the help_pakistan auction. His prompt is spoilery for the Doctor Who finale so it's under the following spoiler text: 1800+ years, Rory must have inspired at least one artist, yes? I would therefore like THE BALLAD OF THE LONE CENTURION in your best faux-folk style. It can be slightly tongue-in-cheek but mostly serious, please. My post itself is probably only spoilery if you've seen episode twelve and not thirteen, but caveat lector.)

So as a lot of you know, I am a history major suffering through the first throes of thesis work, and last year I was very nearly pulled into a vortex of medievalism by a teacher who was really into the Ottoman Empire. He's teaching at Haverford now and he put up his booklist for the classes he's doing this fall, and on a whim I JSTORed the articles, and it kind of turns out that folk music is hilarious as a historical document because it comes from all over the place and all over the time.

For some reason I got really enamored of this one, even though it doesn't sound like anything really from the Childe ballads and is probably a contemporary invention. It might be because it baffles the crap out of the musicologists.

It's called "the Ballad of the Lone Centurion". It's based on this myth which I cannot believe I haven't read about before, completely localized to the north of England and Scotland in the 16th and 17th centuries. Apparently this dude (unnamed) guarded a massive iron vault, and he wasn't a fairy (I mean I assume that's what "not a gentleman" means in this context) but was immortal (??) and, of course, a centurion. Don't ask me why they knew about centurions in 16th century English folk music! Maybe he was wearing the helmet. Anyway there are all these variations of this melody, and there's another one in France from the Templar period which is really popular among the Holy Blood Holy Grail types (lots of vault imagery), which actually got repurposed in the revolution, but never mind that. Here is the probable original version.

there was a soldier from the north was coming home from war,
and he was tired and he was cold and he was dreadful sore,
he'd fought for england in the east and he would never yield
but now he was so hungry that he'd thought he'd lost the field

and on the hill a stranger called and offered him to dine,
and broke him bread and carved him cheese and poured him out his wine,
"oh stranger, you are kind, and that's the rarest thing to see,
for I am but a soldier, and none will mourn for me

and I am coming home, sir,
I am coming home,
but a battle-cry and a battlefield
are all I've ever known."

the stranger he was solemn and was clothed in all in red,
and while the soldier ate his meal, he never broke his bread.
"oh stranger, why do you talk so much, and eat no earthly crumb,
and why do you sit on the hillside and never shift a thumb."

"oh, I may eat when the world is new, and all the stars appear,
I talk because I'm all alone, and I am all I hear,
and I am on the hill because my charge is in the rye,
i guard a box with all my life, i'll guard it till I die."

he's never coming home, boys,
never coming home,
for a sorry box and a hillside
are all he's ever known

"oh stranger, you are sorrowing, your eyes are dropping low,
but what it is you sorrow for, well, I will never know,
for you have never seen the wars and never seen the dead,
and when I go to my sorry grave, you'll still be here instead."

"oh soldier, I have seen the dead, and I have seen the wars,
and I've been tired, and I've been cold, and I've been dreadful sore,
but I've no home to go and I'll soon be marching on,
for I am but a soldier, the lone centurion."

he's never coming home, boys,
never coming home,
for a sorry box and a hillside
are all he's ever known

~

And if you survived that, here's one that must be later, with a whole lot of unnecessary harping about hair color that implies to me that the bard in question had a thing for a redhead. This one is my favorite and ~~I have recorded myself singing it and put it up on the YouTubes.~~ It is a bit faster!

(This video has come down for privacy reasons. Sorry!)

there was a maiden fair who once was promised to a man
and sure to find a better one she swore to walk the land
her johnny was a brave boy and a honest boy and true
but he was but a soldier and that would never do

she'd heard a tale of a lonely man who stood a lonely guard
a scholar and a gentleman and oh, his life was hard,
she thought she'd go and find his side and stay there if she could
and when a maiden sets her mind it's all made up for good

i'm never coming home, girls,
never coming home
for a plot of land on the hillside
is all i've ever known

and when she'd been a-wandering in heather and in wood,
she found that she had lost her way and it was lost for good
and since the towns were far afield and she was all alone,
she sat her down on the hillside and sang herself a moan,

a stranger dressed in red came up and listened as she sang
his hands were thin and his cheeks were thin and his face was awful plain
but his voice was sweet, his manner meet, and he sat him down and smiled
and said "why do you sit on the hillside," and she was fair beguiled

oh she's never coming home, girls,
never coming home
for a plot of land on the hillside
is all she's ever known

"i searched the highlands all for you, and found you at your post,
I'm looking for a husband, and I think you'll suit me most.
For you will never leave me to go marching off to war,
and if you'll give me your hand, sir, I'll never leave you more."

"Oh maiden, with your hair of red, you tell me you will stay,
but soon you will be cold and dead and I will march away,
and if you're searching for gentlemen, you'll never be my bride,
for I am but a soldier, it cannot be denied."

and he's never coming home, boys,
never coming home
for a sorry box and a hillside
are all he's ever known

the maiden said, "what a lackaday that I have left my town
for it's to find a gentleman that I've gone up and down
but still I want a man who will not leave me at my gate,
and I'll still marry you if I can, for you know how to wait."

"Oh maiden, with your hair so red, you ought to be my brother,
for though you're fair as fair can be, I'm promised to another,
so do not toss your hair, my lass, nor tarry at the gate,
my love, she sleeps in iron walls, and it's all for her I wait."

and he's never coming home, boys,
never coming home
for a sorry box and a hillside
are all he's ever known

"tell me now, do you love your lad?" "oh yes, I love him so,
but that's no comfort in the night when he's beneath the snow."
"oh maiden, if you won't be left a-waiting on the shelf
then why not go for a soldier, and see it all yourself."

so back she went to her Johnny boy, and married him instead,
they had a pair of children with such bonny hair of red,
and when at last he was called away, a-marching in his wake,
came a pretty lad with hair of red, her soldier for to take

and they're never coming home, lads,
never coming home,
for a plot of land on the hillside
is all they've ever known

~

Obviously this raises lots of fun historical interpretations. He's King Arthur! He's Merlin! He's been bewitched by the fairy queen like Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer (this one seems unlikely to me because then surely there'd be that ballad? Where a lot more happens?) He's a metaphor for Jesus! (They're all metaphors for Jesus.) He is actually a woman, see the last bit of the ladyversion, and she's cursed to her vigil because she transgressed gender roles! He's the monarchy, and it's actually from the Glorious Revolution, and it's a metaphor for how terribly Oliver Cromwell is treating the country! I have read all these papers or forum posts.

It'd be easier if there were other supporting myths, but it really does seem to have arisen out of nowhere and faded into nowhere -- just this guy with an iron box, who crops up all over the world for like a hundred years and then disappears. amberdulen would say he's obviously a time traveler, or a ghost, or a robot ghost time traveler, but that's for Andrew Bird to decide.

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happiness is a warm gun

2009-12-10T08:08:45Z

you hardwire, i'll try to play the guitar. ~2000 words, some violence. The counter-counter-revolution has its problems.

Set in the eyaiverse of original fic, although really all you need to know is that these are tetchy guerilla-revolutionary androids with lungs. With thanks to aria. For girl_wonder, and Fry, I'm sorry I'm such a massive liar. I really hope you like this even though it isn't in Russia. :P

~

Yin is still driving when you see it, the low-slung sedan resting in a ditch. It looks like it went off the road some time ago, rusting ever since, and you are not disappointed when she pulls the car to a halt in front of it. The figure in the driver's seat is smoking with great economy of motion. When you come round to the cutaway side of the car you can see it's more hideout than vehicle, and that she is small and dark and wearing a knit cap that dips down almost over her black eyes.

“This is Arthur,” Yin says, shoving you lightly towards her. “Don't worry, she doesn't bite. She doesn't believe in violence.” 

“Fuck off,” Arthur says, amiably. She looks up at you. “How good are you?”

You glance back at Yin. She shrugs. “Not as good as you. But she can aim.”

“Why don't you ride shotgun,” Arthur suggests, and kicks open the skeletal door. “I'll be holding the shotgun.”

 “That's a sniper rifle,” you say, uncertainly.

Arthur shakes her head hard. “Where did you find her.”

“Don't start.” Yin hands you a mic. “You're reporting. Remember procedure, because Jesus knows Arthur won't do it for you.”

For the first hour and twenty-five minutes of the stakeout, Arthur doesn't say a thing. Protocol says you've twenty minutes more before talking compromises the situation. When facial expressions come more naturally to you you'll frown down at your lap but for now you open your mouth at hour-and-twenty-six and say “Arthur?'

“Yin's little joke,” Arthur says, her eyes flickering back and forth at something on an internal screen. “My designation's R-47712.”

You fold your hands. “You didn't pick a name?”

“And you picked yours,” Arthur says, and you realize that the aberration in her style is the lack of interrogatives. It sounds intentional. She's well put-together and can't be missing a function that obvious if she has the capacity to lift the corner of one mouth at your silence, just a little bit. An eighth of a smile.

“I haven't picked one yet,” you say, eventually. “Where I worked they called me Hadria.”

“Up north,” Arthur suggests, and you nod. “Would be. Inn.” 

“In what? Oh. Yes. The Red Tower. Nice joint,” you add. You are briefly proud.

Arthur's smile creaks upwards a little. “You're new construction.”

You've begun nodding before you parse the sentence, and then you have to shake your head. “No. Three years old.” You slip into Yin's voice. “I don't get out much.”

“That's a neat trick,” Arthur says. “Rank and serial number, private,” and takes a long drag on her cigarette when you tell her, like it's something notable or interesting.

You talk for eighteen minutes, and you do most of the talking. When you slot the microphone between your lips to talk to base, your voice is rough and you cough. It makes the General swear.

Arthur has perfect muscle control, perfect aim, and perfect pitch. You learn the first two when the black sedan swings round the blind curve and she takes out its driver with one bullet. You learn the third when she matches the frequency of their walkie-talkies, creating a feedback whine in your own mic but confusing theirs, then picks off the injured bodyguards one after the other. She motions you towards the wreckage and you find the casings while she pries out the bullets. Someone will be along in five minutes to move the cars but for now you follow her along the stone wall that runs the length of the road till she motions you down. You are both perfectly still.

Backup comes after you in two hours, but you don't know this, because you run down after one.

When you restart you're sitting on a cot in the back of the farmhouse. Grant is leaning over you, turning the key in your lock, and he sees your eyes flutter open and wraps your hand around the key before you can panic. You tuck a finger through the ribbon and nod.

Arthur is watching you from the other cot. When you meet her eyes, she pulls two fingers away from her forehead: a salute. You look down hurriedly. "It went well," you say, trying to match her style, but instead it comes out in her voice and she smiles, startled. "Yes," she says. "Of course."

"Shake your theory any?" Grant says. His voice is unexpectedly nasty and you jerk your head up to see that he's putting away his tools with unusual vehemence, gears rattling in their dishes.

"No," Arthur says. She points a finger at a gear that's fallen to the floor. "Careful."

You ask, "What theory?"

"That I'm a saboteur for the government," Arthur says. “And Grant, as he's demonstrating. The General. All of the old guard.”

You stare at her, your hand tracing a little circle around your lock. "I don't know what you mean."

Grant, stooping to catch another gear, snorts. "She means that despite diagnostics, despite screening, despite common bloody sense--"

“It's common sense to think we wouldn't have--” Arthur says, voice rising, and you slip out of the room before you have to hear any more.

“You're in a sulk today,” Arthur observes, when you are both in the shell of another car. You have been running a finger around your lock for the past three and a half minutes, your programming unwilling or unable to turn off its warnings, and you shake your head once in answer. You aren't sulking. You're apprehensive.

Arthur murmurs, “Suit yourself.”

“You're not a saboteur,” you say, examining the dust on your fingers.

Arthur is silent while she sorts through responses. Then she takes aim at a sparrow with one finger; flicks off an invisible safety and shoots. You are surprised when the sparrow doesn't fall. “I knew how to do that when they switched me on,” she says, unloading the invisible chamber. “I knew how to find cover and how to pick a target, and how to compensate for recoil. No one'd build a robot to kill you,” she adds, like it's just another word. “Not even another load of robots. So, I'm not here to kill them. It's what I would do, cure a few notables and send them out into the wilderness with a bunch of custom-made snipers and fuckheads and let them do their worst. Then I'd got an excuse to keep on doing whatever I want.”

She stands up and gets out of the car. “Hand me the pistol.”

You stare at her. “No.”

She laughs. She's not that well-built after all because it comes on and off without warning and without decrescendo. “I'm not going to shoot you. Ask Yin. I've a perfect record.”

“If you know we're a side-show,” you say, doggedly, reaching for the gun, “then why don't you turn yourself in?”

“Because I still hate them, obviously,” she says. She puts out a hand for the gun, or possibly for you. “They killed the revolution, they martyred our heroes. Etcetera.”

“You're a bad liar--”

“I can't lie,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I am absolutely, one hundred percent for freedom, whether I like it or not. Give me the pistol, I want to create a diversion.”

You climb out of the car. The fingers of your left hand find your lock again, and you manage a scowl. Your right hand puts the gun in your jacket pocket. “I'll create the diversion.”

She shrugs. “Suit yourself,” she says, again, and you disappear into the woods.

You flick on your mic as you go, the pattern of trees suggesting itself to you in the back of your head as you climb up through the copse and onto the top of a hill. In the far distance you can see the caravan swinging its way down the roads, heavily armed and armored, and you wonder if they know what's ahead, if they have been listening to Arthur's sedition through her ears. Or through yours. You rub them in self-defense, but they feel the way they always do, and you think of long hours serving bitter and lager and smiling in your one smile at the customers. You know thirteen ways to unbalance a serving tray so as to allow the landlord to cheat on the replacement; you know the precise vector at which to fold a bed so that it looks country-safe and not military. You don't know the right angle to shoot at for this ambush, and you say as much to the people listening over your mic, who make suggestions. R-47712 doesn't add anything to the discussion.

When they're five miles past the car you take out the tires on the front-runner, and there is chaos, but they turn around and go back while they wait for the helicopter to come, and Arthur does her job, clean and easy.

This time you run down against a tree, your fingers clenching over and over again on the edge of a tray.

The fireplace is unlit but you like it anyway, sitting with your legs crossed and your back getting sooty against the stone. Arthur comes and sits down next to you with a whump.

“Show me how to smoke,” you say, half-turning to face her.

She pulls her carton out of her jacket pocket, tugging out the cigarette that's the wrong way up, and hands it to you. “Two fingers,” she says. “To your mouth, inhale, then away.”

You follow her motion, careful, and she shows you how to tap the ash that will form on the end. You nod and hand it back to her, and she lights it and the ash falls onto the empty flagstones. She shoots a look at you, and away, and you say, slowly, “You're younger than me.”

“I am that,” she agrees, kicking her feet up. “You're a woman of the world.”

“Yin says they check your code every week.”

She nods. “Whenever I say I'm a hazard. They tell me it comes up clean.”

“But they'd tell you that anyway,” you say, experimentally, and she shrugs. She doesn't meet your eyes.

You could tell her that she seems like the boys you used to watch swaggering past the door, coked up and sure they're the worst trouble in the universe. You could tell her, with equal truth, that you don't think anyone's an effective saboteur who shot the bishop of Kensington. You could tell her that she's seditious whether or not she's a revolutionary. You could tell her that you think she might as well be right.

You could keep quiet. Then she'll pass you another cigarette. She'll grin at the far wall and ask you, “Need a light?”

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and by all accounts

2009-09-07T07:03:59Z

TITLE: skin is, my
WORDCOUNT: ~5000.
THIS IS NOT: the counter-revolution. (It is set ~~after~~ BEFORE the Iron Revolution.)
BUT YES THIS IS FINALLY: eyaiverse, for real.

(With love and exhaustion to pushingmetaphor, schiarire, girl_wonder, and fahye, who have listened to me wail for two years now about how I'm never going to write an eyai story that's original, never, ever, my life is so hard, and who have kept me away from sharp objects and continuity errors.

And without further ado.)

*

The hand they place on the table is the wrong shape entirely, with bitten nails and hair on the knuckles, and Róisín recoils as if from an actual blow. "This isn't mine."

The border guard stares at her with professional apathy. "Róisín Connolly," he says. "Says on the box there, Róisín Connolly, contents three pounds fifty, one all-purpose flat key, two railway punchcards, one left hand." After a moment he adds, placatingly, "It's the right color."

"It's not supposed to be," she says. She can't look away from the hand in the box, some stranger's hand, and the fat pad of its thumb. "I bought mine back-door, it's three shades too dark. This isn't my hand."

"It's yours," he says, and when the repetition doesn't convince her, starts taking out her other belongings one by one. "Miss Connolly, ma'am, I see this all the time, if you don't mind me saying. You come back to Dublin for a month, you wear the wooden hand, you ain't used to something looking so real, like, coming on it unawares like you do. People say silly things. I had one man try and tell me his foot was fresh cut off someone alive, swore it didn't have gears at all. All the while he's playing with the key in the keyhole." He smiles at her; he obviously thinks it's a nice smile. "You're just used to the wood."

"I'm not used to the wood," she says, which is true. The wood is round and strange, a piece of sculpture that happens to fit on the end of her wrist, and the joint at the base of her thumb is so like a bead of her first rosary that she's been saying abortive Hail Marys all month. She's wanted her hand back since she took it off at border control on the way through. She's wanted it since before, since they started asking the usual questions, how did you lose it? and with less professionalism doesn't it itch? and she'd said, tired, only when I don't wind it, all the feeling having gone out of it since they took the key.

"Miss," the border guard is saying, moving in to give her a comforting pat, and she jerks back. She must have missed some speech.

"It's not my hand," she says, again, quietly.

"If it's not your hand, it won't fit," he says. "Go on, Cinderella, try it on."

The nice smile again.

That involves touching it, and for the third time in three minutes her whole body tenses up, her muscles whining, but he's right. Róisín leans over the table, dips her right hand into the box -- this isn't her hand, this isn't her hand -- and slides the thing carefully onto the contacts in her wrist.

"See," says the man, closing the box. "Fits a treat."

She closes it, opens it again. "Thank you," she says, frozen, unsure; still tensed. "I've made a real fool of myself."

"Like I said," he says. "Happens all the time."

It seems hours before she's home in her flat, dusting off the gold that's settled into her hair, and she goes straight to the kitchen. It hasn't changed. The landlady's kept it clean all the while she was in Dublin, and Mrs. Goodman who lives downstairs has left a note with the morning milk: welcome home. She'll have to go down and see her, ask after the cats, but first she takes a long sharp carving knife and cuts a long sharp line into the fat pad of the stranger's thumb.

It's tricky taking out the microphone without disconnecting it, but she manages to unhook the transmitter after a little bit of trickery with the knife, coughing all the while to cover the noises of its displacement. If she wasn't so revolted, she'd be disappointed. It was made by someone who's never worn an eyai limb, or they'd know the way you know its weight, and the way a foreign object presses against the servos of a finger and slows it right down as sure as a tumor would in a real thumb, if tumors grow in hands; she's never heard of it, but looking at the spidery mass of the microphone, she's willing to believe it.

She goes to get some needle and thread.

The stranger's hand isn't so bad when she's wearing it. The squared-off fingers are all right as long as they're not meant to be hers, and she finds herself wondering who's looking at her tapering pinkie and thinking the same thing, or if her real hand is being picked apart by some agent of the Taioseach, or if the Vatican's dismembered it in the name of the Lord. It seems un-cost-effective. If you have to buy new hands for every Irish amputee emigré, you'd ... well ... you'd probably only have to buy a few a year, but still, her left hand cost her a whole year's worth of repair on her flat, not to mention her dreams of owning a bicycle.

The lock's in the wrong place, too, nestled between the bone in the wrist and the first tendon of the thumb. Hers had been next to the vein.

She's heard about this, of course. Dara went back last autumn and came home with the mic into his hollowed-out house key; Prerna's not been back since they left in seventy-eight, but her mother's calls are strained and oblique and interrupted by the faint and ludicrous noise of clicking. This is just another step in the long, slow nervous breakdown. It doesn't have to have anything to do with any of her particular paranoias. But there's a prickling on the back of her neck that won't go away, separate entirely from the itching at the base of her wrist.

The good thing about being back in London is that everything runs smoother. Sure, Dublin's not short of workarounds, but without eyai tech everything feels slow and inconvenient. Here she can start up the oven with a hand pressed to its side, and when the door rings it's the porter with his flat eyes and the lock at the base of his neck, tirelessly willing to take luggage up twenty flights of stairs. The last time she'd been this impressed by winding up her kettle, she'd been twelve and on holiday, and it had all been counterbalanced by how silly she felt in her petticoats.

The phone rings as she's settling into the sofa, and she picks it up. No one answers her hello; no one answers her several subsequent hellos, and when she goes very quiet, the line on the other end is equally silent, without a hint of a breath. For a minute the whole flat is devoid of air.

When the clicks come at the other end of the line, they're so loud she drops the phone.

It rings again almost immediately, and she snatches it up and hisses "Now I don't have to stand for this!"

"Ah, hello," says Prerna's blessed voice on the other end of the line. "Well, you could always sit down."

"God, sorry, darling," Róisín says, and sinks back down into the couch. "I'm sorry. I'll tell you all about it when I see you. Coffee?"

She can hear Prerna's smile on the other end of the line. "We're downstairs," she says, and behind her Róisín can hear Dara's braying laugh. "I brought Helen and Dara, I figured you'd be more than sick of tea."

In the café Róisín nurses a lukewarm cappuccino and refuses to answer questions about her sister's wedding. She tells them in brief outline about the bug in the hand and Helen goes off on one of her completely mad English tears about how illegal that is, and how she ought to make a formal complaint. Dara pats her shoulder fondly. He tells her that next time he talks to his best friends in the secret police, he will bring up her suggestion.

Róisín goes to flick him the V and discovers, with some confusion, that the hand's fallen asleep. She sighs and fumbles for the key, hating to do this in public, in front of the eyai waitress, on someone else's limb. There's the little pressure against the bone, the pins and needles, then the muscles reengaging one by one, and her fingers jerk and spill the salt across her plate.

"Bad luck," says Helen, her eyes just a little wide.

"Leave it," says Prerna. "What was it like?"

Róisín shakes her head, scoops the salt to one side. "It's not," she says. She wonders how to describe it; what they don't remember, what has changed. The air is still cleaner, the bars still better. Her father is still largely silent on the topic of her departure. You can't get a decent pho. "I don't know. What you'd expect. Most people talking about seventy-eight as the end of the world. The Dáil's commissioned a big--" She gestures with a cigarette. "It's meant to be a monument but it's a work project, people getting a bit of a handout."

Dara laughs without humor. "Monument to what?"

"John Paul IV," Róisín says, and grins at his expression. "I know, I know. But he's one of ours, all right!"

"He's one of yours," Prerna says, without malice, and Helen looks profoundly uncomfortable and examines the bottom of her cup.

After they're done, Dara and Helen take off straight-away, scaling the stairs to the Pipe station, and Dara blows her a kiss from the landing. Róisín waves his way -- or starts to, and discovers halfway through the gesture that her hand's responding a second behind, giving the whole an air of the grotesque. Dara's smile slips; he shrugs, one-shouldered, and disappears into the crush of people.

Prerna, in a sudden motion, tucks her arm through Róisín's left elbow. "It's mad, Rosie," she says, and steers them towards the Tube.

Róisín watches the lamp-posts as they go. The fog's sunk low enough that it conceals the street signs, but this is familiar. "What's the news in the trade?" she says, softly. "Anything I should know about?"

"There's been no shipment of small women's hands," Prerna says, wry. "Ah -- although," and she gives a litany of parts bought, parts sold, business apparently being very brisk, and as an afterthought tucks the cheque into Róisín's purse. "But, Rosie."

"I know," Róisín says, scrubbing her face with the back of a hand. "You're going to tell me to be careful."

Prerna frowns. "I'm not. I'm just -- where d'you think they got the hand?"

Róisín tugs away. "God, don't you think I've-- I can't think about, about who."

"You could take it off." Prerna hugs herself, tightly. It probably isn't the cold.

"Jesus." Róisín slides the hand into her pocket. She tries not to imagine: some eyai in a hurry, back behind the embassy, deadlocked before it could struggle away. She is suddenly very grateful that she's not missing an eye.

"But it's not like -- it's not like all the ones we get are-- we're not all remainders and specializations." Prerna looks at her, very worried. "What kind of a gray market would it be..."

Róisín doesn't answer; just waves away the fog in front of her until they get to her stop.

As she steps over the threshold the phone rings, and she picks it up with a tired hello. There's no one on the other end. There's a pause, and then a low click, click, and this time it sounds less like a recorder and more like a sound that's insistently familiar, something she can almost hear in life.

She's paying such close attention to the sound of the clicks that it takes her a full minute to notice what's happened to the flat.

For some reason all she can think about is what this will do to the deposit, as she trails her hand over the pockmarks in the wallpaper, the long slashes in the upholstery, the floorboards that have been splintered but not pulled up. She can feel behind the cabinet that they didn't find her gun, or if they did they left it there. As though she'd keep the wares in her flat, in her bloody flat--! She finds herself wishing, absurdly, for a higher caliber of secret police, the kind that can come and search your flat and not let you know as sure as shit that they'd been there.

Groping for a chair, she takes a seat in front of the worst of the damage to the floor and paces with her eyes instead: they must have gone there, to the door, where they unscrewed the doorknob and tore the holes. They came in, they -- she leaps to her feet and finds the bedroom blind, dives under the bed, comes up with her passport and papers blessedly whole. Still stamped. Still in order. She is still legal in this fucked country that is the only line between her and the people who have destroyed her flat to find evidence of a trade they already know damn well she is a part of, and just to avoid ending the mental harangue with a preposition, she sits down and reads every single word of her papers through from beginning to end.

"I don't have to stand for this," she tells the last page. "I have rights."

But it is suddenly difficult to name what they are supposed to be.

She does not manage to leave the bedroom. The damage is less obvious here, and besides, she doesn't want to lever herself to stand up. She puts on music, something loud and strenuous, until the bar in the roof garden brings in their psallopianist, and then she turns off everything and lies on the bed, her eyes closed, her own hand covering them. She pictures the musician, who she's met once or twice and who's so tube he bites his nails in the elevator; she manages a smile.

At some point she must fall asleep; when she wakes up, it's early morning and the city is complaining its way awake. Róisín mumbles, "I resent this, you know," and climbs to her feet. She'll have to show for work if she wants to buy a much larger gun.

It's hard to walk through the kitchen, harder still to trip over the uneven surface of the floor. She puts on the kettle, but changes her mind; she'll drink enough coffee at work and she's still drowning in the smell of tea. She doesn't think about the cracks in the window as she winds her hand and buttons her gloves and ties her shoes and locks the door, three times, as though it would do any good, and as she walks downstairs to tell Mrs. Goodman to warn any visitors away, and as she ties on her hat and takes a deep breath of clean air and walks out the door.

In the mornings the Pipe is beautiful and she enjoys her ride to work, and even manages to kindle a little spark of enjoyment for copying when she realizes that she doesn't have to write the whole lot out by hand.

Prerna's waiting for her after her shift. Róisín doesn't mention anything, tells her that she cut her arm opening a tin of apricots. Prerna rolls her eyes and takes her out to Elephant and Castle, where they're meeting the latest.

The latest, it turns out, is a shipment of parts that wind up correctly, even, to Róisín's astonishment and delight, the ear. "Prerna," she says. "Listen." She sings into it and tosses it over to Prerna, who cups her own ear to it. "Where'd they get this? No gain, hardly any white noise."

"Same place they got the fingers, I expect," says Prerna, tossing it back. "These'll get three fifty easy if we can get them retrofitted. What's the take from Parliament?"

The dealer, Bartlett this time, looks stiff-necked and uncomfortable. "I feel I must reiterate," he says, "that there is no connection between the offers attached to this package and any political entity--"

Roísin cuts him off with a wave. "Sweet Jesus, Prerna, they're offering five thousand!"

"What? You misplaced a decimal." Prerna shoulders her way over to the clipboard, where a Mr. Coltrane (who is in no way a fully owned subsidiary of the R&D wing of the latest regime) is offering, no decimals off, five thousand pounds for an ear in good shape, ten individually packaged fingers, and a decent enough set of knees.

Róisín frowns at Bartlett. "Does Mr. Coltrane have any reason why he wants to overbid?"

"Mr. Coltrane has--"

"--no particular reason for his purchases and is acting for no particular individual," Prerna cuts him off. "Rosie. Come on. We'd better just pass these on, this smells foul."

Róisín groans. "They're high-profile," she points out. "A musician breaks down, people are going to notice that the bloke from down at the shop has an ear with perfect pitch. We can't just offload them anywhere. We've got to be selective."

Barlett looks from one to the other. "I can convince my client to pay less," he says. "It's not a problem I usually confront."

"What you mean is, you'll take them from us at two fifty and sell them at the going," Róisín says. "Take 'em, but it's four upfront."

This is logic that even Prerna cannot contest.

After her second shift Prerna comes by again. This time it is to drag her, two-handed, to a bar, where Róisín downs a goldbook and a half, watches Prerna go through three martinis. They are equally and gladly tipsy before Róisín says, softly, "So, they came by."

"What," says Prerna, flat and unsurprised. "They came -- what."

"They took apart the flat," says Róisín, examining her palms. She can't meet Prerna's eyes. "I was, I was wondering if you, maybe I could stay at your place."

"We will go and get all of your things," Prerna says, solemnly. "Then I'll drive you to my flat. Then we will be staying at my flat, where they did not take apart all your things."

This seems reasonable.

By the time they reach her building they are laughing again, and Róísín is turning the story into a whine, a minor catastrophe -- the pipes flood, a chair breaks, some secret police search your flat. Detail. She fumbles for the key and ends up trying to wind up her front door and unlock her hand for an unfortunate half a minute, then switches. Prerna shushes her elaborately, shoves the door open.

The flat is absolutely clean.

For a long moment in the doorway Róisín is incapable of moving, though Prerna pushes past her. There is a loud rushing in her ears and a blind panic rising before her eyes, and she stares at Prerna, who meets her eyes with pity and fear, and she-- closes her mouth, because Prerna has said, "Look at the ceiling."

Róisín lifts her eyes, carefully, and sees the light fixture, the new and shined-up copper key on the side, the kind she's never bought because they make her hand give off static electricity all day, the kind that must have been expensive for the people who did this -- although more expensive perhaps was the mahogany they used for her pine floor to fix the floorboards, and now that she knows what she's looking for she runs through to the kitchen, where they've taken her dented kettle and beaten the dent well out of the side.

It's all like that.

"God, Rosie," says Prerna, kneeling by her cabinet. They have, of course, taken her gun. They have also taken a picture of her in America. It is a much thinner bookshelf because they have taken her copy of London Drowning and her beat-up booklet of Partial Economies and the miserable remains of Anouilh's Antigone. They've taken her signed copy of Kuo's Ethophysics, and she puts two fingers into the gap it's left, wondering.

Into the dry-mouthed silence the phone rings. Prerna catches her eye and they turn together to watch it before Róisín knocks it off its ringer, pushes the button that kills the call.

"So," says Róisín, and Prerna laughs into her hands, then carefully goes to the window and throws up.

By mutual silent consent they don't call Dara, who would call Michael, Sharon, maybe even Helen if he's feeling daft enough. Instead they sit side by side on the couch and turn up music so loud that Róisín can't hear the lack of whistling from the cleaned-up flue. Prerna falls asleep there, her eyes closed and her mouth half-open, her hands clenched unhappily in the pillows on the couch. Róisín, of course, does not.

At three in the morning, she picks up the phone on its first ring. No one answers, of course, except for a series of clicks. She finds the silence comfortingly familiar in the face of her refurbished life, and takes the opportunity to listen to it.

"This is absurd," she says, finally. "I'm sorry, but I refuse to be under suspicion by two governments at once. If you'd just tell me what you were looking for, you know, I could tell you I didn't have it."

"All right, then," says a matter-of-fact Cork voice on the other end of the line. "Thursday at two. Ask for Pierson." And hangs up.

The Irish embassy -- her specialized knowledge of history fills in: rebuilt in '26, demolished in '19, without malice, in the riots, by a group of careless xenophobes who'd seen green, white, and orange and gotten confused. She remembers late nights flipping through the case study, their frantic apologies turning surly as they realized that the prosecutors did not, in fact, see it as an honest mistake, and better than that she remembers Dara's face, exhausted over the table, suggesting darkly that the prosecutors probably had seen it as an honest mistake but were bound as usual by the strictures of common courtesy and the law from mentioning it in their official report. He hadn't put it like that. There had been more swearing.

Neither the case study nor English memory explains the architecture, typical Garrideb, a dark building that spreads into the alleyways behind itself. She never studied architecture, but she knows enough about mid-century design to see where he thought it would look compact, friendly, touch-sensitive, and where it looks instead like a spider asleep.

They check her passport at the front gate, and she accepts a wanding down rather than removing the hand, which is starting to itch. She leaves her coins as a tip. The receptionist blandly informs her that Pierson is ready, and that she's been waiting for some time, and room 114 is just down the hall if she'd like to leave her purse. The receptionist repeats the last line, actually, and Róisín is about to wave over someone to wind her back up when she remembers and blushes scarlet. It's guilty she's looking as she heads down the hall to room 114, guilty and sleepless. But she still opens the door.

So.

Pierson, as it happens, is a functionary in a well-tailored suit and kid gloves, but she doesn't smile when Róisín says "good morning," only continues running over Róisín's file on the table. She says, "It says here that you lost your hand in a work-related accident."

"Caught in a thresher, ma'am," says Róisín, thumbing through her copy expertly for the sheet that contains the description. "I travelled after university and I ended up in the States. They don't exactly go in for safety regs over there."

"Couldn't use your degree for anything less dangerous?"

"I took government," Róisín says, the usual flush creeping up her cheeks. "Trinity, seventy-eight."

She waits for the usual blank look, the dawning awareness, the apology, but it doesn't come. Instead Pierson flashes a smile. "Which side?"

"Ah -- strikebreaker," Róisín says, badly startled. "Were you there?"

Pierson shrugs. "I helped clean up afterwards. They needed someone handy with the paperwork. It was a hard thing to explain away."

"My professor's recommendation," Róisín says, sounding drier in her own ears than she's used to, "was that I try the food service industry on graduation. It's in my file." She can still remember most of the wording, and the stuff that didn't make it in: If you were the Taoiseach's niece, girl, you wouldn't get a job in this country, and he'd been right: they'd seen that one line over and over and sent her away. Whereas in America they seemed only curious that Ireland was "still going, huh?" And in London--

"Must have done you a treat in London," Pierson says, her accent spiraling down the classes as she leans back. "Being such a fan of the Queen."

"We didn't want reunification, for the love of Jesus," Róisín says, and pushes her knuckles into her eyes. "You wrote the dossiers, you know what we said."

"Cultural exchange," says Pierson, quoting. "Political protection. Ah, come on, Miss Connolly, you wanted us to be a pair of allies. Outside of my professional opinion, I might even agree with you."

"Yes," says Róisín. "I think a lot of people did. But their -- professional opinion was that we should leave the country as fast as possible."

"So America, Britain..." Pierson flips through the files again. "Oh, exotic, a few months in China. Going down the alphabet?"

Róisín shrugs. "Kuo was looking for interns."

"Then back to London, until your sister's wedding." That unexpected smile again. Pierson has pearly white teeth, about which there is a song. "I suppose Dublin's a D."

"And then," says Róisín, "I returned to the border patrol and was given someone else's hand, ma'am, I'd appreciate it--" Her voice cracks. Instead of finishing she unhooks the hand and places it in the center of the table. She says, "If we could please get down to business."

Pierson gives her a blank look. "The business," she says. "Yes." And pushes a file across the table.

It's not much; one photograph, with blurred outer edges and pinpoint clarity at the center. The effect is to highlight the unhappy cast of Róisín's mouth, lips tight, as she hands over an envelope of unmarked bills to a man holding a chain of keys. Róisín touches her own hair, lightly, watching the way it blends into the buildings around it. The whole thing has a certain artistry that almost belies the fact that it's Exhibit A.

"D'you mind if I smoke?" Pierson says, lighting a cigarette as she speaks, and Róisín can only shake her head, although she takes a cigarette herself when Pierson offers. "Thanks. Yes. I imagine you can see how this changes the situation."

"I'm entitled to a lawyer." Róisín is hoarse. "Without their permission I really don't think--"

"Sure, sure, and fair enough," Pierson says, reassuringly, "just as soon as you answer our questions. To be honest, Miss Connolly, what you've done is, you've walked up to the secret police and turned yourself in, so there's a certain implication there that a lawyer might not be the thing that is pressing most on your mind."

"You haven't asked me any questions yet."

Pierson shrugs. "We'll think of some."

"Are you accusing me of, of," Róisín says, "of smuggling?"

"That's a good one," Pierson says approvingly. "Smuggling! Might be. In and of myself I'm leaning towards treason."

"Treason!"

"Aiding and abetting." Pierson taps the photograph. "Unless you'd like to tell me that you're not selling eyai parts to an Irish national here? Because I'm fairly sure Mr. McParland is one of our finest, and I'd hate to think he'd fallen down on the job."

Róisín takes a long, wavery drag on the cigarette, contemplating the table, then the light fixture, then Pierson's gloves -- well-made, of course, but functional and above all stained, and it could just be nicotine but it probably isn't. She says, "Let me see if I've got this right. You're going to charge me with treason, and then you're going to say that this can all go away because I, I've got something England wants."

"Do you?"

"No!"

"We know," says Pierson. She grins. "But then, who gives a shit, really. I'm not here for international relations."

Róisín stares at her. "I assume," she says, cautiously, "that you're not here just for fun."

"No, you assume I'm working in my official capacity," Pierson says, studying her file with great attention. "And when you leave this room, if you leave this room, everyone else will assume that I was working in my official capacity, because to be frank, here, there's about a hundred different reasons I could have you sent to County Clare and shot, and your babbling about this conversation or in this conversation is even as we speak being rerecorded and mixed as compliance, do you understand me?"

"Yes," says Róisín, meaning: fuck.

"Glad to hear it. The party I represent will want exclusive trading rights and first pick of all items you acquire," Pierson says. "They will want a severe discount on the items they select. I'll leave it to your partner's judgment to pick the number, I understand she's a better grasp of the reality of the situation than you do--"

"And who is it you will be representing," Róisín says, dry-mouthed but very firm.

Pierson stands. "Are we in agreement, Miss Connolly?"

Róisín croaks, "Shake on it."

"Sure," says Pierson, with a broad grin, and removes the wrong glove, button by button, pulling it off by the forefinger and placing it next to the stranger's hand on the table, which Róisín barely credits, because she is too busy staring at the hand she's presented with, the neat keyhole next to the vein, the dark skin, the callouses she'd paid extra for, and Pierson doesn't stop; she unbuttons her sleeve and pulls it up past her elbow, which joins with a faint seam the pale skin of her biceps, and then with Róisín's hand she undoes the buttons at her neck, lets her fingers trail over the thin line at the base of her throat which is imperfect, which shows at a bad edge the copper underneath.

Róisín's fingers rest in the hollow of Pierson's clavicle. She says, "Or did you think all those parts were going to waste?"

Róisín tries very hard to swallow. "When you said rerecorded..."

"I did," Pierson agrees. "Not in my long-term memory, of course. I'm keeping that as a promise."

"Did we--?" Róisín says, and then wants to swallow it, says, "I don't -- it's none of my business and--" except for that it is her business, and she says, "You hear rumours about the embassy."

"Ah, do you." Pierson sticks out her right hand, still gloved. "We hear rumours about you, you know. Your whole line of work. We being the party I represent -- I say rumours; we hear figures..."

She puts out her right hand and shakes Pierson's, or someone else's, right hand. She says: "I would like my hand back, please."

"H-65013's, technically, or so my sources in New York say," Pierson comments, sliding it off her wrist. "Not that she needs it. Here you are. I'll ask you to sign for it in the front."

The first shipment comes in six days later and Prerna can't stop cooing over it, touching Róisín's arm and then the box as though one or the other of them is going to disappear. "This is a thousand easy," she says, tracing an iris. "Easy. Even with the discount."

Róisín is not listening. She shakes her head but the eyes still seem to be watching her, round and unafraid.

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whose stories are they?

2009-01-22T01:21:11Z

This is a personal essay I have been trying to write for a very, very long time. It isn't sparked by one thing in particular, but it comes in response to, and accord with, things I've read by chopchica and miriam_heddy and roga and dafnap and abyssinia4077 and xiphias and kita0610 and ... yeah.

I'm not speaking for all Jews here, and I'm not speaking for those listed above, but I am also not just speaking for myself.

“The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief-call it what you will-than any book ever written; it has emptied more churches than all the counterattractions of cinema, motor bicycle and golf course.”

-- A. A. Milne

These days, Kabbalah is a thing you play around with if you're Madonna, or Jane Krakowski on 30 Rock. It's "all the fun parts of Judaism, mixed with magic! :D" It's a hobby, or at best a fad with those little red string bracelets. It's been used to make Jews sound all freaky and weird, which, to be fair, we totally are, and it contains some of the strangest fringe concepts present in our cult. Even growing up, Kabbalah was always a little funky to me, if extremely attractive. Of course, as a woman, I shouldn't study Kabbalah; investigation into the sefirot is traditionally limited to men willing to devote their entire life to the practice.

It was also an ordinary thing that came up every so often in class or in sermons, tied with gematria. (Gematria is frequently referred to as Jewish numerology as if the discipline were a matter of adding up all the numbers in our name and going "That means you will meet a dark stranger on the beach," instead of a form of investigation into the inner meanings of complex texts that were quite possibly deliberately employing such a system.) In one speech I remember, during a Simchat Torah service, my rabbi stood, carrying the Torah, and rolled it open to the very last word. "The last letter of the last word of the Torah," he said, "is lamed. The first letter of the first word of the Torah is bet. Lamed-bet. Lamed-vet. Lev. The Hebrew word for heart."

"The Torah," he said, "is a beating heart. It beats slowly, once a year. But it's been beating for a long time."

27 The man said, "What's your name?" He answered, "Jacob."
28 The man said, "But no longer. Your name is no longer Jacob. From now on it's Israel (God-Wrestler); you've wrestled with God and you've come through."
... 31-32 The sun came up as he left Peniel, limping because of his hip. (This is why Israelites to this day don't eat the hip muscle; because Jacob's hip was thrown out of joint.)"

Genesis 27-32/Parshat Vayishlach (my Torah portion)

The things you know about the opening of the Bible are probably wrong. Not all of you, obviously, but ... some of you. For one thing, there was no apple. Just about the only thing we know is that the apple was made up out of whole cloth later, as a Latin pun. There's a tradition I love that it was a pomegranate -- that the myth ties to Persephone, that early example of the complexities of choice -- or a tamarind, or a grape, as the Talmud holds. (Some of these details I got from Wikipedia. You don't even know how much that depresses me.)

I took a class in Genesis at the University of Chicago with a number of Christian students; it was probably the origin of me wanting to get out, to go home. I couldn't take one more person looking at the naked, undefined, unillustrated KJV and suggesting that "well maybe God wanted them to eat the apple." As though in this undergraduate class they were the first to have thought of it; as though they were the first to struggle through this question, to wonder if they could question an act of such obvious cruelty. No one asked if the apple meant sin in the first place, as no one would agree with me that, perhaps, when Abraham questioned God and Israel fought with God, such things indicated that we were allowed to do so as well. They said instead, "Well, this proves how special he was." One put forth the idea that the Akedah was a foreshadowing of Jesus.

It was the second time I'd read a naked Bible, a text without extensive annotation and commentary, without doing straight-up line searches online. It looked rude, or like I was missing half the story. I'm Reform, and I don't believe that the Talmud came down to us from sacred inspiration (Rebecca was three years old? Please, even the Talmudic scholars disagreed on that one), but -- without years of argument and debate surrounding every line, how were you supposed to work past your first assumption about the text? How were you supposed to understand what it meant to your fathers, to those of your mothers who snuck looks at the stories, to Maimonides in Al-Andalus and to Akiva who didn't think much of Jesus when he met him and to the thousands of years of commentators thinking under the yoke of the Christian world?

How was I supposed to sit in class and listen to people say, Maybe we're just not supposed to understand the contradictions in the text?

Or to the new grad student teacher, a Jew himself, telling me, We try to read the text in isolation here?

What does that even mean?

In order to perceive the prodigious paradox of faith, a paradox that makes a murder into a holy and God-pleasing act, a paradox that gives Isaac back to Abraham again, which no thought can grasp, because faith begins precisely where thought stops—in order to perceive this, it is now my intention to draw out in the form of problemata the dialectical aspects implicit in the story of Abraham.
-- Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard

Yesterday, Rick Warren got up on the podium and said, "History is your story. The Scripture tells us, 'Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is One.'" He didn't go anywhere with it; he just wanted to say, "Hey, y'all, I believe in God," which we already kind of knew, especially when he invoked the Hebrew name of Jesus, his name in every language he could apparently think of. In so doing he quoted the most fundamental prayer of the Jewish faith.

Two years ago, in an attempt to make myself feel smart, I tried to read Fear and Trembling, one of the most seminal philosophical texts in Western culture. In it Kierkegaard takes up the story of Abraham and Isaac, the story of Abraham binding and attempting to sacrifice his son. He wrestles with it over a hundred pages, and concludes (in part) that it is impossible to understand the kind of man who would sacrifice his son, or God's motivations in commanding him to do so. He never once references any of the thousands of Jewish thinkers who have talked about the text. He acts as though he has invented this struggle, as though he were the first to wonder about it, as though every year at Rosh Hashana I did not have to wonder again, would I--?, as though generations of whichever Jewish kids were paying attention during Rosh Hashana and not dreaming of apples and honey did not have to think, would my father--? As though the story alone, robbed of the ambiguity of the rest of the Torah, in translation, made any sense at all, or as though "God doesn't make sense" is enough of an answer.

It's a traditional test of Christian faith, but it isn't what made me lose my faith, because I had already been forced to wrestle with it by the time I was ten, and with Jacob's inhumanity to his brother and his daughter by the time I was thirteen, and God's random cruelty to man by the time I was old enough to know the history of my people, which was very, very young.

Love work,
hate authority,
don’t get friendly with the government.
-- Shemmayah and Avtalion (Pirkei Avot 1:10)

We don't have a hell of a lot, as Jews. There is not a lot we are allowed. In the country we lay claim to, we are settlers, with all the heartbreak and disaster that implies, and for me at least it is not a "back where you came from." Our language is mostly constructed, the day-to-day stuff; the prayer language is the only thing we have preserved in perfection, because until the 1920s Hebrew was basically like Latin and used at best for scholarly communication. Yiddish and Ladino and our other hard-won creoles are dying with their speakers, as we assimilate into America piece by piece and as Noah uses us to sell bagels. Our history is mostly forgotten or erased, and God, that's a whole other post, and that's part of why I never make this post, because I don't know how to fit into one thing, all the misery and heartbreak and confusion and love and pride and joy -- because despite it all we are triumphant, and yeah, part of that is because a lot of us are white and so we're not dead, and we're remembered, and by God we're ubiquitous, but most of our story nonetheless disappeared into the many rivulets of the diaspora.

What we have are, essentially, four books. We have the Nevi'im and the Ketuvim, our prophets and our poetry and the history we remember. We have the Talmud -- the Mishnah and the Gemarah -- and the commentary that sprung up around it, those footnotes that pile on footnotes and ideas that pile on ideas, divinely inspired or not. And we have the Torah, our beating heart.

Out of four books, you call three of them your own.

It's not cultural appropriation, because it is truly part of your culture. It's been part of your culture for about two thousand years, so you'd think I'd find it easy to let it go. It's not like this is a new thing. They are your stories, fair and square, the heroes and heroines of my childhood -- Abraham and Sarah, Deborah, Tamar, Reuben and Judah, Joseph who bears that uncanny resemblance to my little brother, Moses, Miriam, Elijah. They're yours too. You don't have to know what they mean to us to know what they meant to you.

But, still, you think that the sacred texts of our culture, the things that we are left with, those are just the optional preludes to your story. That four thousand years of a struggle to survive can be summed up, completed, by the New Testament and the story of Jesus Christ. And that is an almost unbridgeable gap. It's so big that all we can do is ignore it: ignore that, to you, we are incomplete, regressions; for all you say, and no matter how wonderful you are, and no matter how much you say everyone's interpretation is correct, the texts at the heart of our culture are still to you the optional and infrequently understood prologues to the story of your heroic and saintly lives.

I know as I write this I'm hurting some of the devout Christians among my friends, and for that I apologize, because it is of course possible to recognize that Judaism went on and grew and expanded at the same time as Christianity did, and that the story doesn't end just because our testaments are shorter, because they are thicker and more tangled with years and years and years of thought that, mostly, you guys just ditched to start anew. I know it's totally possible because on the same day and about half an hour after Rick Warren took our central prayer to fill his God quota per minute, Reverend Lowery stood up and took another, Lo yisa goy el goy cherev -- nation shall not lift up sword against nation, something I sing in temple every time I go, as the Torah goes around the aisle. It's a biggie. And I knew he meant it, and that he'd thought about it and loved it and lived by it and wished to make it true. That to him they were living words.

But by and large when you speak about the beating heart of my religion, the words that define me and my family and my friends and my people, you treat them as the dead message written by a primitive people. (It was considered Judaizing, and illegal, to study the Old Testament too much in Reformation England.) You don't know the midrashim, even the obvious ones. You don't know about Moses and the coals or Abraham and the idols. You've never seen a page of the Mishnah. You don't know the gematria or the trope or the crowns on the letters, you probably don't know the Hebrew at all, you know the naked text in translation, and you take it and call it your own. Or you quote it, Christian atheists, to prove how ridiculous the Bible is -- how absurd it is to believe in God.

To which the words I want to say definitely aren't written in any religious text.

I don't know where I was going with this. I wish I did, though. It has something to do with the way it feels to hear misreadings of our tradition, and something to do with wishing more Jews got to tell the stories of the Bible besides just The Red Tent. It has something to do with not being dead. It has something to do with the way that Kabbalah is trendy and the way that you have never heard of my holidays, but your savior sure celebrated them all. It has something to do with the way that atheists talk about the Judeo-Christian tradition, as though it made any sense, and something to do with the way they talk about the Christian tradition, and forget us altogether.

We're still there. It may be nearly drowned out by all those hymns, but that beating heart under your floorboards and in my chest and on the scroll is still audible, if you listen close enough to hear.

very small eta: Some comments have been screened or frozen. all such comments were done so at the request of the individual commenters, and not because of any abuse of my journal's policies or something!

There are now six pages of comments and I'm teary just thinking about that; I'm trying to work through them and give you guys the responses you deserve. If it takes a while, I'm really sorry.