With controller in hand, Soo-hyun steered the dog to the left and waited. Nothing. They steered it to the right, and the dog suddenly lurched left, then veered right and scraped its head against the brick as it tried to walk through the wall.
“Fucking shit!” Soo-hyun shouted. They sent the shutdown command and strode across the workshop to kick the dog with the sole of their boot again and again until finally the machine toppled sideways and clattered to the ground.
“Not having any luck?”
Soo-hyun spun and found Kali standing in the open doorway. Plato was beside her, its head cocked, seemingly perturbed by Soo-hyun’s display of violence against its kind.
Soo-hyun shrugged and wiped their forehead with the sleeve of their coverall.
“Come on,” Kali said, “you need a break.” She turned and walked away.
Soo-hyun drained their water bottle and left it sitting on the counter. They patted Plato on the head as they passed. “Don’t worry, Plato; I’m not mad at you.”
Kali was walking toward the main school building, trailed by another drone. Soo-hyun jogged until they came up alongside Kali. The tattoo still itched on Soo-hyun’s inner thigh, caked with a thick, ink-black scab.
The night air was still, cut through with competing strains of music and the background hum of people cooking, working, and rutting. Together they strode across the old school grounds, and Soo-hyun caught snatches of conversation in a shifting collection of languages.
“I need your phone, Soo-hyun,” Kali said.
Soo-hyun reached into their pocket and retrieved it. They hesitated. “What do you need it for?”
Kali took the phone from Soo-hyun’s hand, and held it out so Soo-hyun could unlock it with their fingerprint.
“You’ve been so busy working that I haven’t wanted to bother you,” Kali said. “It’s your brother. Have you spoken with him?”
Soo-hyun shook their head. “He left a voicemail. I couldn’t understand everything he said, but he sounded paranoid.”
Kali nodded. “He refuses to hand the virus over. I’m worried he might take it to another buyer.”
“That doesn’t sound like JD.”
“If he’s acting paranoid, there’s also the risk he could turn himself in to the police. We could all be in a lot of trouble if that happened.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Soo-hyun said.
They neared the main school building, but instead of approaching one of the doors dotted along the front of the structure, Kali walked to the ladder mounted on the rear corner. She motioned for Soo-hyun to go first, and as they climbed up to the rooftop, their boots gonged gently on each metal rung.
When they reached the top, the whole commune was spread out before them, a warmly lit island in the darkness. Beyond that dark climbed the monolithic skyscrapers of Songdo to the west and Seoul to the northeast. The clouds sweeping overhead glowed bright with light pollution, seeming low enough for Soo-hyun to reach up and touch.
Kali climbed the ladder behind them, so Soo-hyun picked their way through the rows of solar panels, connected to small gutters that collected rainwater and filtered it down to the commune’s tank. They reached the far edge of the rooftop where two empty beach chairs sat—liberated from a courier auto-truck that had gotten lost on the outskirts of Songdo. It was still the largest haul they’d ever scored, as much in that one truck as they would get from shooting down twenty quadcopters. The ground around the chairs was littered with energy drink cans, beer bottles, and the tiny burned nubs of joints and hand-rolled cigarettes.
Soo-hyun and Kali sat, and Kali opened a waterproof case beside her chair to reveal a drone jammer like a rifle made from black plastic and an old UHF antenna.
“Do they catch many drones here?” she asked.
“Not really. If a drone gets this close, then it means someone fucked up further out.”
Kali nodded absentmindedly and closed the container. She retrieved a battered cigarette case from a pocket buried deep in the folds of her monochromatic sari. The case flicked open to the smell of ganja, and Kali took a joint and put it between her pursed lips. She lit it and inhaled deeply, the cherry at the end of the joint shining bright like a firefly, the dry herb burning with a sharp crackle. Soo-hyun mimicked her inhalation subconsciously, their breaths in sync.
Kali offered the joint to Soo-hyun. They took a long drag, trying to match Kali’s, but they coughed and couldn’t stop, holding the joint out to Kali while they covered their mouth with their other hand.
“I know I should be vaping,” Kali said, taking the joint back from Soo-hyun. She dragged deep again, and her next words flowed out accompanied by bluish smoke: “But the smell of a joint, the taste … reminds me of the first time I ever smoked. Vaping’s just not the same.”
She held the joint out to Soo-hyun, who took another drag, this time managing to stifle the cough. Kali’s weed was grown in the former school’s greenhouse—tall, bushy marijuana plants growing beside a few scant rows of basil, coriander, and chives.
“I haven’t figured out the pilot program yet,” Soo-hyun said.
Kali took the joint and cleared the air with her other hand. “We’re up here so you can not think about it for a while.
“Have you always lived in the city?”
“Not this city, but a city, yeah.”
“Have you ever seen the stars? Properly, I mean?” Kali pointed up at the sky. “Look at the light pollution, look at what we’ve done to the sky itself. All those constellations connected to ancient
