I MANAGE TO get back to the house without anyone seeing me. At least, no one calls my name or waves or comes over. I open the door, crawl in and sink into a pile of clothes, exhausted. It isn’t even lunchtime and I could sleep for hours.
I’m woken by something falling on my head. It happens sometimes. I pull it from my cheek and see that it’s the top I wore to Sung-Soo’s welcome party. It has wine spilled down the front. I didn’t notice that at the time. I ball it up and toss it away from my little nook. I’ll deal with it later.
With trepidation I check my messages. There’s one about a list that’s been set up by Nick to coordinate the colony’s desire to shower housewarming gifts upon Sung-Soo. Everyone is free to open it and see what hasn’t been made for his house yet and then tick off the item they’ve decided to give him. It’s a nice idea, like an old-fashioned wedding list.
All the basics have been given already, and even as I scan the list, items are being grayed out as someone makes their choice. By the end of the day Sung-Soo will have everything he could possibly need and significantly more than he’d ever want.
I see that a projector unit hasn’t been picked yet, probably because it requires assembly. It intimidates most people, despite there being so many construction guides on the public server. I built the house and the water filtration unit, basic kitchen and waste management system, but I still feel like I should take him a gift. Something to calm the waters between us again, perhaps. Or just an excuse to go and see him and determine whether he still wants to talk to me. No, it’s more than that; I want to see if he’s going to hold this over me. I need to see if he’s a threat.
I mark the projector as my choice and see if there are any time slots available on the colony’s midsize communal printer. It will be faster to split the component manufacture between that and my home one. I book a slot later in the day, select the model I want to make and check that the base metals and minerals needed for it are available in the communal feed. Levels are lower than they would normally be, thanks to the current high demand, but there’s enough. We need to either recycle some things or make an expedition again if the levels get much lower. I’d rather the former, seeing as we’ve managed for the last ten years or so to keep fairly balanced without the need to mine for more base materials.
There’s probably a thing or two I could chuck in the Masher to help replenish some of the rarer elements. Then I remember I can’t actually reach any of the three Masher chutes in my home anymore.
Sitting up, I resolve to clear the pile in front of the one in my bedroom. But when I see it all stacked so high, the desire disappears, like a tiny water spillage sucked up by dry, cracked earth. Where do I start?
The one in the hallway might be easier to reach. I squeeze and twist my way out of my room and into the corridor with its valleylike route leading toward the printer. I don’t really think of it as a living room anymore, seeing as I stopped using it as anywhere other than the place I collect my printables from some years ago.
Now that I’m looking at the stuff stacked in front of me, I’m struggling to recall exactly where the Masher chute door is. By the time I’ve found the right spot, it’s clear there’s far too much work to be done to access the chute considering I want to build a projector today too. It’s a job for another time when there’s less going on.
I was so distracted by the list for Sung-Soo that I neglected to check the rest of my messages. I clamber my way back to the nook in my bedroom and open them up. There’s one from Kay with a report on the parasite’s genetic makeup that I almost open before seeing the subject of the message below. It’s from the program I created on the Atlas server to find potential matches for the metal artifact.
The first batch of results is in.
I open the report and select the first match that leaps out at me with its evidence score of photo and film matches in the high thousands.
The potential match is for “glasses,” or “spectacles,” to use an older word pulled from the archive. I ask the AI to provide a visual summary of one hundred randomly selected examples it’s found to come up with the suggestion, just to be certain it’s the kind of object I have in mind.
I watch the pictures, each one displayed for five seconds before being replaced by the next. There’s one of a woman on a beach (oh God, to go to the beach again!) and she’s wearing a pair of sunglasses like my grandfather used to wear. There’s one of a child hunched over a paper book in what could be a schoolroom but I’m not certain, having never been in one myself. Image after image of the past, across multiple countries, people of multiple ages and races all with defective vision. They’re from the days before it was routinely fixed by crude laser surgery in the time of my grandfather. Once basic lenses formed computer interfaces, they were used to correct vision instead.
Memories of people wearing glasses in Paris when I was a student come to mind. They lived in the poorer areas, had the worst jobs and were the people society did its best to ignore. Some still wore them because they distrusted the lens technology and tried to persuade everyone else it was another way for the gov-corps to track your movements and exploit your data. I ended up arguing with one of them in a bar one night until we realized we agreed; I just accepted that all the data he feared would be harvested by the lens was already being captured by a dozen other devices and techniques. One more data source wasn’t going to alter the fact that I was already in the system. We ended up drinking so much I passed out in the stairwell outside the flat. The man died a week later in the first wave of violent protests that marked the beginning of the “bloody summer” that the press reveled in reporting. All those protests achieved was raising the profiles of several citizen journalists. Nothing changed, of course.
I pause the images, minimize the interface and fish out the artifact from the little crevice I tucked it into for safekeeping. Could this be part of a pair of glasses?
I run my finger along the lengths and feel patches of roughness on one of them. There are two, separated by a smooth portion. The ends of the two pieces look broken, but one of them has a slightly bulbous edge, suggesting a second hinge used to be there. Am I trying to fit it to the suggested pattern? It’s what human beings are far too good at, after all.
I hold the length with the rough patches up to my face. It’s certainly long enough to form the front part of the frame. The rough patches correspond with my eyes—perhaps the large external lenses were attached there. The hinge makes the second piece bend in the right direction to form the arm over my ear.
No. This is madness. How would a pair of glasses end up in God’s city? If others did travel here before us and explored . . . and even died in there . . . why would they be wearing such primitive devices? Surely they’d have technology comparable to ours to travel here and—
That’s an assumption. Several, in fact. Aside from the one about physical similarity, who am I to think I know the technological development of all species and cultures? Besides, the glasses could just be an earlier form of interface, just like they experimented with before integral retinal lenses.
The program provides other potential matches, which I scroll through, but none have as much visual evidence from the archive. The search is far from complete though. I have to keep an open mind.
Mack pings me, asking if I’m free. It makes me groan and curl up on my side. Hasn’t today been enough? Do I have to go outside again? I allow myself one minute of indulgent self-pity and then reply with a promise to be over right away. I can’t let anyone think something is wrong with me. I can’t risk the attention.
• • •
EVEN though there are dark circles beneath his eyes, Mack looks happier than I’ve seen him in days. He offers me a drink and I ask for Turkish coffee. He’s the only person on this planet who makes it just the way I like it. I can’t tell the difference with printed versus cooked food, but I can with that.
I flop onto his sofa and cradle my head in my hands as he clinks and thuds away in the kitchen. If someone left the glasses behind, where are they now? Did they leave? I imagine a body rotting and decomposing in the tunnel and it makes me nauseous, so I tune back in to what Mack is saying.
“So I’m thinking when she sees how much it means to everyone, she’ll simmer down. And Sung-Soo’s been brilliant. Hasn’t fazed him at all.”
He brings in two steaming cups and hands one to me. I let the aroma waft up and try to focus on the simple pleasure, but it isn’t enough to still my thoughts.
“Do you think anyone came here before us?”
He frowns at my question. “Where the hell did that come from?”
“Theoretically, it’s possible,” I continue. “We found a way, right?”
The frown doesn’t lift. “We haven’t found any signs of anyone else. Atlas didn’t detect any old structures or wreckage or—”
“But they might have come to God’s city and left again. Not settled, like we did.”
“Like tourists?” He sniffs. “Who knows? There are more important things to think about now, Ren, remember?”
I sip the coffee and let it soothe the flicker of fear that I’ve just let myself blather on without thinking. I’m not usually so careless, but after the upset with Sung-Soo earlier and the ramifications of this damn artifact, I’m not at my best. Thank goodness he’s too distracted to wonder why I asked. I refocus myself.
“I suppose you wanted to see me about the seed,” I say and when he nods, a little pocket of dread blooms within me.
“It’s got to be done,” he says. “How’s the coffee?”
I don’t let him divert my attention in the way he wants. “I’m really not comfortable with this.”
“I’ll show you the best route. Just make sure you wear all the protective gear, don’t take out the seed until the last minute and make sure that—”
“I mean, I’m not sure this is the right thing to do.”
He sighs. “Do we really need to go through this again?”
I turn my attention inward. Do I have the courage to stand up to him? It’s not like I’m afraid of him. But I keep going along with what he wants. Why?
“You know there’s no better way to keep this colony going,” he says softly. And he’s almost right; I don’t challenge the way he does things because I can’t think of a better way, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. “If there is,” he continues, “tell me; we’ll talk about it. But just flatly refusing to help when there’s only days to go isn’t good enough.”
“I haven’t ‘flatly refused,’” I say before I realize the trap he’s led me into. Shit.
He smiles. “Glad to hear it.”
“But I’m not happy about it.”
“I don’t exactly skip there every year either,” he says, a harsh edge creeping into his management voice.
“I know. I just . . . don’t think this can go on forever. They have to find out one day. I think this should be the last year.”
“It can’t be. I haven’t put anything into the message about that. We have to plan further in advance.”
I want to be the kind of person who would stand up now and declare that there is a better way, or that I’ll stand by my principles in this as all things and not do it. But what is the alternative? And I’m just as afraid of what will happen if the transition from lies to truth isn’t handled carefully. I should have spoken up over twenty years ago.
But if I had, I would be dead.
“You’d better show me how you do it, then,” I say, without bothering to hide the defeat in my voice. He isn’t the victor. Fear is. And cowardice.