Miach’s ghost hovered nearby, a cold smile on her lips as she whispered.
This body, these tits, this ass, this uterus. These are mine.
Aren’t they?
So after our failure, Cian had taken the plunge headfirst into the adult world. The only one dragging her heels was me, and I couldn’t decide whether that was admirable or pitiable.
I hung, suspended in space, somewhere between Miach Mihie’s ghost and Cian Reikado’s innocence.
“Look, Cian, I’ve been overseas a long time, right? So I just don’t know the people who live around my home. I haven’t volunteered with them or gone to health meetings with them. I’m just not very connected to the community.”
I explained to her that being a globe-trotting Helix agent meant:
✦ ✦ ✦
<list:item>
<i: dangerous working conditions>
<i: difficulty fitting in with social life in any one place>
<i: difficulty forming bonds with former neighbors or a medical community>
<i: an artificially high social assessment score given to make up for all that>
</list>
✦ ✦ ✦
Because we lacked a conclave to assess us, the admedistration awarded us an arbitrary SA score in order to account for the inconsistency that resulted from doing something very important to the continuation of the admedistration’s lifestyle while, by necessity, being forced to operate independently of that admedistration.
“Oh. Really?”
“Really.”
As I was explaining my life to Cian, I couldn’t help but feeling that I had somehow become Miach. Miach explaining how to use a medcare unit to make a chemical weapon capable of killing fifty thousand people. Miach who could make a pill that would shut down your entire digestive tract.
Miach who could wear a cool smile as she told you she wanted to watch the world burn.
I felt like she must have back then, filled with knowledge no one else had, talking openly, brazenly, full of confidence, fearing nothing, giving every word a declaration.
Hey, Cian, did you know that if you install DummyMe, you can spoof your physical data before it gets sent to the server? Hey, Cian, did you know that you can do anything to yourself with DummyMe installed? Hey, Cian, have you heard about this… Hey, Cian… Say, Cian…
But instead of playing Miach’s doppelgänger, I merely smiled cynically and said, “The real reason they give me a score is because if they didn’t, I’d be labeled a sociopath.”
Cian frowned, not understanding. “So you’re not going home?”
“Probably not.”
Cian stepped in front of me. “Then let’s go get something to eat, at least. There’s this new building near where I live. It looks all bumpy and white from the outside, like it was made out of solid plaster. But when you go inside, you can see out. It’s this new intelligent material, a special light-refracting Styrofoam glass.”
“Sounds pleasant. I’m really not in the mood.”
“We could eat, and then you can come over to my house. It’s only eleven o’clock. How about lunch?”
I had an urge to check with the nonexistent Miach. “Want to go with me and Cian to get some lunch?”
I sighed and told her I’d go with her to lunch. Only lunch. I followed after Cian, getting into the first bean-shaped light yellow train that came sliding down the tracks. My WatchMe linked to my credit account, deducting the appropriate rail fee. I was just realizing how long it had been since I rode the subway in Japan when I looked around at the other passengers and felt a sudden fear grip me.
✦ ✦ ✦
<panic>
They were all the same. Everyone.
It hadn’t been so blatantly apparent on the battlefield. Working with an international group meant there were a lot of people from a lot of different places and races around all the time, and more than a few of them were indulging on the sly, like me.
That was definitely not the case here.
For the first time, I realized how bizarre a sight the medically standardized Japanese populace presented. The difference between the couple sitting in the seats nearest to me was no more than the difference between mannequin A and mannequin B. Neither was too fat nor too skinny. Every person on the train conformed to a particular body type. Everyone fit within a healthy target margin. I felt like a stranger in a house of mirrors—a country of mirrors.
How had things come to this? How could everyone be the same when simple genetics told us everyone was different?
<maxim>
The more rigid and narrower the goal, the easier it will be for the weak to achieve.
</maxim>
Miach’s phantom again, whispering in my ear. Talking just like she always did when giving us a lecture. I remembered her saying how human will could grow rigid even while it succumbed to temptation.
Humans were like a broken meter whose needle swung back and forth between desire and willpower, always all or nothing, never lingering in between. There was no room for moderation. Even a pigeon had a will of its own. Volition just happened to be a good fit for vertebrates, which was why our brains kept it around.
</panic>
✦ ✦ ✦
“Is something wrong? Do you feel unwell? Here, take my seat,” a woman offered, seeing the momentary fear caused by social panic flash across my face. My AR told me that she was a politician—a coordinator or commissioner for an admedistration somewhere—though her face looked no different from anyone else’s. She too was well within the margins. A healthy, standardized face. It was a feature—that is, the lack of distinct features—I assumed you would find even more the higher up you got in the chain of command. I remembered everyone at Geneva headquarters looking more or less the same.
“I’m okay,” I told the politician and went a short distance down the train car. Cian caught up to me, a worried look on her face.
“You shouldn’t have walked away like that. It’s rude. She’s an admedistration councilor somewhere.”
“I know. I saw the AR. Sorry.”
“I think you’re just exhausted from work, Tuan. It must be hard, doing all that. But you’re really making a contribution to society.”
Me, making a contribution to society.
Making a contribution by going to a battlefield where I could smoke.
Making a contribution by consciously choosing not to be part of society—where I undoubtedly would have either slashed my own wrists or cut into someone else a long time ago.
Which was how I was able to agree with Cian, without a trace of sarcasm, that I was indeed making a great contribution to society.
My path and Cian’s had diverged sharply after Miach’s death. For Cian, all the enmity she had felt toward society, her family, her hometown, and school had passed. For her it was like a rite of passage, a phase everyone went through before returning to a standardized life. For me, I had gone on collecting the knowledge I surely would have gotten from Miach were she still alive, and on the surface, I too appeared to be conforming, just like Cian. My grades kept climbing until I took Miach’s former place at the head of the class. In a sense, I had become Miach’s doppelgänger. I was becoming Miach Mihie.
Cian wasn’t becoming Miach. She was joining a club—a club at least nine out of ten Japanese belonged to. A club with tightly defined body fat ratios and stable immune systems and known RNA transcription error rates.
All while I went from party zone to party zone. Battlefield to battlefield.
From airport to airport.
Cigar to cigar.
Bottle to bottle.
Except this time, I’d gone from Château Petrus to insalata di caprese, in a place where there was little likelihood of seeing a single smoke or drink.
I had said goodbye to the depressing, dizzying subway and now sat enjoying a healthy meal in an Italian restaurant with my old friend.
There were slices of tomato burying water buffalo cheese that had been completely drained of fat, with a light sprinkling of olive oil on top. We were on the sixty-second floor of the Lilac Hills building. The meals here were noteworthy for each bearing a slight risk to the diner.
When you ordered a plate, the menu displayed your total calorie intake and any potential risk of chromosomal damage you might suffer from consuming the food. Every single item on the menu had a warning attached. Once you had read the risk information to your satisfaction, you could order what you wanted to eat, within the prescribed limits set for you by the health consultant on contract with your admedistration.
There were a few other people in the restaurant, but not too many. Everyone sitting around the marigold tablecloths were just like the people I had seen in the subway, each well within the margins of a healthy Japanese body.