Shards and Ashes

statistical primer of risk calculation. I didn’t read it. I only pretended to read, so I didn’t have to talk to anyone around me.

There was no reason to speak, because the only person I wanted to speak to wasn’t there.

He disappeared right after we talked in the morning. His chair sat empty all day, his cubicle dark. Two Zero One One had been logged out, flagged a sick day, the seventh this month.

“Why did you go?”

“I was sick.”

“You aren’t sick.” I glance at him, sideways, though I know even before I look at him that he’s perfectly fine.

“Of course I am. I’m dying, One Nine Six Seven. We all are.”

“Jai. Call me Jai.” I say it quickly, and he smiles.

“I know your name, Jai.” His lips curl as he says it, and I want to touch them. Instead, I wrap my hand around the blade in my pocket. I grip it so hard I am afraid I will cut myself.

“I know your name better than they do, Jai.” He curls himself around my name again, looking up at the building behind us, and I realize it is the far corner of our own building. We haven’t gotten very far.

I shiver.

“Very funny.” I don’t smile.

“Your grandfather didn’t think it was. Your grandfather thought it was very smart, the database.”

I feel myself growing colder.

“His database,” Z says, again.

“Z.” I stiffen and pull my army jacket more tightly around me. I don’t want to talk about that. Not with him, not with anyone.

This was a bad idea.

All afternoon, I have imagined this meeting, this time we have. I have imagined it so many times. The two of us, together at an out-of-the-way teahouse or, even more daring, a bathhouse.

The two of us, riding on the back of his motorcycle, my hair streaming in the wind behind me.

Of course, that would be impossible.

I would have a helmet. We both would.

It’s little improbabilities like that—impossibilities, really—that are why fantasies are so stupid, and why I don’t have them anymore.

“I should go.” I look toward the busy street. The night is thick and humid, graying in the fading light. It looks as sticky as it feels, as if I am standing in the shower, letting the steam roll into the world beyond me.

“I’m sorry.” He slips his hand into my pocket, uncurling my fingers from the knife. “I’m not going to hurt you. I don’t want your necklace. I don’t want anything that belongs to anyone but me.”

Then he leans toward me, as if he’s going to kiss me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he whispers something, so softly I almost can’t hear it.

“What do you want, Jai?”

What do I want? To run away. To grow a vegetable garden, with weeds and flowers taller than my own body.

To run wild in the sunshine. To jump, fly, shout in the air, in front of strangers.

To wander. Travel. Love. Live forever.

To tell my brother I love him, one last time.

To kiss the man who stands in front of me, whether or not he wants me to.

To know. To be sure.

Of him, of me.

Everything.

I say nothing.

I wish I knew.

And even if I did, there’s nothing I can say. No words to say it. Only numbers, only the system of our own making, my own father’s father.

I can’t speak the truth.

I’m not brave enough.

I can only feel it, in the flush that creeps into my cheeks and the way his warm fingers burn against my cold ones.

Then I’m ashamed of myself, of what I’m saying, even if I can’t bring myself to say the words at all. I don’t think he needs me to say them.

I think he knows.

I draw my hand away from his, out of my own pocket. I clutch the collar of my jacket, holding it close.

His eyes follow me.

“Let’s get out of here.”

7. Z

I have dreams that go like this. I must be dreaming.

We ride on the back of my motorcycle, Jai holding me with small hands. Her hands are warm, even though the night is growing cold. She shivers against me, and I can feel her breathing, her heart pounding. She wears my helmet. It still smells like her, when she hands it back to me.

At least, it will.

That’s how it starts, how it always starts. When I dream of One Nine Six Seven, of Jai.

I dream of her almost every night.

Only none of this is a dream. All of this is happening. I shake my head, wondering to myself how one conversation in a lost roadside bar on a faraway continent with Rama could change so much.

But she is real.

I know this, because she clings tightly to me, behind me. And her hands are warm, the way I want to remember them.

The broken streets of Pinminku disappear behind us, then widen and open into the vacant stretch of empty highway that will lead us up and into the foothills, circling back on itself until we reach the reservoir.

Everything is ready. It took all day and every penny I had, but I have seen to that.

It has cost me more than the day—probably my job—but I don’t question it now. I have other jobs, another job. Not that I will need a job much longer.

I question nothing now.

It’s too late for that.

The shade is thick, and the water is fringed with trees. I take her by the hand, leading her to the cliff rock where I have left everything I could find, in a bucket resting on what used to be my bedcover.

In the bucket is everything I know about her. A daisy. A thermos of tea. Rice rolled with meat, how she takes it in the lunchroom. A cluster of grapes that I found off-market, at the cost of my old receiver.

The flask of wine, that was a question. Not something I know; it’s there for me.

For courage.

“Do you trust me?” I pour the contents of the flask into a tall plastic glass. She stops me, wine splashing across her hand.

“No.” She smiles down at the glass, and I lower the bottle to the tattered blanket on the grass between us.

We are alone now, here at the edge of the reservoir at the far reach of the district. Her ghetto is faraway, her old life even farther.

“I don’t drink.” That’s all she says.