The next row of stands sold drinks, with all the same variety: one sold beer, the next one sold absinthe, the next whiskey. One sold sake. I slowed down and stopped for a minute.
Stopping something you’ve done forever is hard, especially something like drinking. Even if you take away the shakes and the sweating and just the physical need to do it, there’s still this other part that’s almost harder to let go. It’s hard not to do what you’ve always done. I couldn’t remember a time I lived in the city when I passed by a row of those stands and didn’t have a drink. Even if I was already drunk and even if I had a bottle in my hand, I always stopped. I just always did. Now I had to just walk by, and so far I’d managed, but every time I did, I wondered how much longer I’d make it.
Why weren’t you home? I thought.
I wondered where he was and what he was doing. I wondered if he knew that I thought about him, or if I was just invisible to him like I was to everyone else. I wondered if he’d met someone, and if that wasn’t why he had drifted off like he had lately.
The sake stand was run by an old Asian guy who kept a little TV mounted in back of the little bar. He filled the little ceramic glasses in front of the people sitting there, steam rising off the tops of each one while the TV flickered. I could smell it from where I was standing.
The nights were too long now. I stayed in my apartment as long as I could, but I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to go down and bug Karen but she’d gotten back together with that asshole and I could hear her down there with him.
I stared at the big ceramic jug in front of the Asian man, and the steam coming out of its spout. I wanted to talk to Nico. I wanted …
A hand touched my shoulder and I jumped. When I turned, I saw a woman, about my size with straight black hair and bright blue eyes. She was wearing a red rain poncho with a wool hat, and around her neck was the tattoo of a snake. It went all the way around, until it swallowed its own tail. Its red eye stared from over her jugular.
She pinched my shoulder and my arm locked up as she turned me around so we were face-to-face. One second she wasn’t there and the next she was, right up in front of me. She was looking right at me.
Without thinking, I focused on her and everything went bright, but only for a second. In that second, I saw the colors come up around her and something else, a band of white that circled her head like a halo. As soon as I saw it, it was gone. The lights went back to normal and it was just her, standing there staring right into my eyes. Her lips curled just a little bit.
My breath caught in my throat. I’d first seen a halo like that after I got kidnapped. I’d seen it down in the cages, where there were others like me. This weird woman was like me.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I just wanted to say hello.”
Her hand moved away from my shoulder and my arm came unstuck. I looked around to see if anyone else thought what was happening was weird, but no one was paying any attention to us. When I looked back at her she was still staring at me.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I’m Penny,” she said. She had this calm, quiet voice that was a little creepy.
“What do you want?”
“Just planting a seed,” she said. “I’m going to be your friend soon.”
I felt like I was falling all of a sudden, and stumbled a little. She reached out and steadied me. I felt dizzy for a second, and she held my arm until it passed. Then, before I could say anything else, she winked at me and walked away. She merged with the rest of the crowd, and then was gone around the corner.
Was she was real? No one else seemed like they even saw her.
I guessed it didn’t matter. Real or not, she was gone. When I looked back at the sake stand, a news lady was on TV, standing outside next to a broken concrete wall with rebar sticking out. Blood was splashed on it and by her feet were what looked like bodies, missing their heads and arms.
“…nightmare in the ghetto of Juba, where scenes like this one are becoming all too common …”
The war. The grinder, some people called it. They were on the other side of the planet. It looked hot over there. It was a hot, dirty place where lots of people died.
I looked back at the sake, but all of a sudden I just wanted to get home. The whole trip had been a bust, and I was really starting to hope Nico never found out I’d been there.
Part of me still thought he might warm up to me. I think there was a part of me that really believed it, but there was another part of me that always knew it wasn’t going to happen. Even if I was prettier or sexier or just had more of whatever it was he was into, it probably wouldn’t have made a difference in the end. He was still hung up on a dead girl.
I should have just accepted that. If I had, I could have saved myself a world of hurt.
Calliope Flax—Metro Center Station
On the train, in a car full of dregs and drunks, was the first time I felt like I was home. After two years in the grinder, it was kind of hard to believe.
“…in other news, the last appeal for the controversial ‘Five-Percent Bill,’ which would have allowed offshore UAC company sites to pad up to five percent of their workforce with revivor laborers, was shot down today in a move that was not unexpected, with the note that if the companies are to remain UAC based, then UAC law will apply in this case. Key members of the corporate conglomerate who pushed for the bill were quick to assign blame.”
My left hand tingled. It tingled all the time, and it was always cold, like the blood was cut off. I made a fist and cracked my eyes open, head to the glass. It was dark out there. The TV feed hung in front of my eyes like a ghost. Since I made corporal and got the implant, I had TV twenty-four/seven; the UAC dream.
They cut from the news bitch, and some fat asshole with white hair popped up.
“We were supposed to have Heinlein Industries’ support,” the fat, white-haired asshole said.
“Even Heinlein Industries is bound by UAC law, Mr. Hargraves.”
“This whole thing was a sham! This was going to bring big business to them, and they knew it. They were one hundred percent on board with it, but what do they have to worry about now? With that massive decommission forced down our throats, they’ve got a military contract sitting in their laps like this world has never seen!”
“Are you saying Heinlein was—”
“I’m not saying anything! This isn’t over!”
“According to the UAC Supreme Court, it is over, Mr. Hargraves.”
I shut it off and closed my eyes. The “massive decommission” had geared up while I was over there. Someone got it into their head to scrap every revivor that was stored before a certain date. They said they were obsolete even though they weren’t, and someone up top was pushing it hard. Disposal was a piece of shit work we all got stuck with at some point. I never thought about Heinlein, and how much they’d get paid to replace the ones we threw out. Some shit never changed.
“Next stop, Brockton-Stark Street Station,” a voice crackled over the speaker. I stood up and hung my bag on my shoulder while I held the rail. In front of me, pasted over about fifty other notices, was a pink piece of paper with smeared black print that said TIER TWO IS A LIE.
In some ways, it was like I never left. Two years gone, and it was more of the same; people pissed about tiers, revivors, and the grind. Most people were still tier two, and they still screamed the most. They never shut up about the grind, even though they saw it only on TV. The grind wasn’t like they thought. It wasn’t like anyone thought. The only part anyone got right was how bloody it was.