Brian McKinney

Girl 1

I was probably not very good company these last two weeks at home; something else was bothering me besides pretending I wasn’t bored. My boyfriend at school flat-texted me about a ‘late night rendezvous’ with one of my romance stories; saying, I guess, ‘be strong, find something fun; like my family is so dull. Yeah, all that, but, like, I just wanted a private time to read and relax, get some relief from being the celebrity daughter of the most famous and powerful man on the planet.

    My Citizen buzzes. Screen says Phasebook Wisdom, Reporter! At 6:47 in morning? Oh, no, worst thing. Or best thing?

    “Mom, Amaya.” I say, showing my mother and sister my screen, which is easily read in the pre- dawn grey of the passenger area of our family limo. It is not a great distance from our castle on the outskirts of Tokyo to the Kyojiin-owned PORV launch pad in the industrial section. They look at each other, faces in classic low information mode, eyes neutral, slight smiles, which I read as ‘here-goes-same-thing-again, Shizuka’s -world -famous-teenager-act, which-is-whole-problem-two week-no media-vacation-was-supposed-to-cure.’ Sister Amaya rolls her eyes, mother looks out the window.

    “Launch time is twelve minutes from now. Use judgement.” says mom, looking to her other daughter and seeing no opposition.

    “Thanks mom, sis.”

    “Put on speakerphone.” Suggests mother, her lack of English matching my lack of Edonese. “Good morning, Shizuka. My name is Nemesisia, Nem for short. From your enviro-cam I see you are with company.”

    “Don’t you recognize my mother and sister? They are seeing me off.”

    “To SoCalAsia Loop cities? For interning in Kyojiinville?” asks Nem, showing me she is well informed, even if she doesn’t recognize my mother and sister.

    “Yes, uncle Henry’s penthouse. We like to tease him. . .”

    “Ahemm!”my mother clears her throat, meaning ‘don’t go there’. “

    Nem, we don’t have much time.” I say.

    “Okay. Soooo I did a little research. For a sixteener you have a lot of backstory. More than a hundred terabytes worth. But lately, last two months, almost nothing. Even your flog, GRLUP, very little. A paragraph a day, then these last two weeks, nothing. Two months ago you wrote whole stories, like the time you bought the four star restaurant because the waiter was, what did you say, too traditional, and then you fired him?”

    I look at mom and sis. Annoyed faces, Edonese style, turning away from my eyes. I take a deep breath. “Oh, yes, I did terrible things. I used my
wealth. . .I was irresponsible.”

    “Irresponsible? Funny, I got the impression you were against all the things of the past, of tradition.”

    “Oh, so, so untrue. We must know our past. Even wisdom reporters.”I say, looking at Amaya to see if she thinks I’m funny, poking the reporter. Head shaking a no-no-no. Older sister.

    “First Loop established in SoCalAsia, called California then, in 2046. Earthquake leveled everything, no money to rebuild, no one wanted to pay taxes, so money was borrowed from both great Asian centers. By 2067 industrial pollution reduced, Loop cities and Mobility concept spread across earth . . .”

    “Toyola Technologies?” asks my mother loudly.

    “Oh, yes, forgive me honorable wife of Grand Master Tadashi Toyola. Of course, whole moving building technology engineered by. . .”

    “Global warming reversed? Civilization continued?” I interrupt Nem, enjoying brief moment of agreement with ‘comrade’ mother.

    “Solar power air conditioning? Mining Mars for metals, lightweight metals?” adds sister Amaya, joining in.

    “Yes, honorable, uh, honorable sister. All by your company. I know who I am talking with. So, Shizuka, is it true, the rumors that you started a secret encoded flog site? Revolutionary? DWNLO?”

    “Put yourself in my seat, Nem. Nothing is perfect. But are you attacking me because I am part of family that saved the world, and I don’t agree. . .”

    “That’s enough!” says mom, reaching to take my Citizen. Before she can I have pulled it close to my chest, which helps me feel a level two buzz. I look at the screen. Lucaster. I accept his call. Mother should be happy since I’m cutting off the Phasebook reporter. I put my Citizen on earphone setting. I begin texting.

    “Hello, Lu. . .”

    “Bohemian Prep isn’t the same without you.” He says suggestively. I’m glad mom and sis can’t hear. “You know the hypercoded computer deprogrammer we talked about? The Protocols? I did it.”

    Hmmm. I text back.

    “It’s in your big suitcase, the one with the secret compartment, don’t worry, it’s in a lead-lined case, looks like jewelry. Sorry, I had to.” His apology kills me. He creates a numermagnet depro-gramming code intended to hack into the operating system of any two or three hundred-story tall mobility and make it fall down. Sorry? Oh, I get it. He’s sorry he put the dangerous codes in my luggage? I wonder for a moment, then realize I know exactly when he did it. I was packing, all my luggage open, in my dorm room. First Lucaster showed up, to say goodbye before I hovered to school’s PORV pad, then I heard a girlfriend shouting outside, calling for me. It was Leiko. Now I want to somehow strike back, but I sink in my seat, feel my judgement leaving instead, and my teeth grinding again. I look up, I notice mother and sister staring at me. It’s so quiet. “ , . . .look, Shizuka, they’re not going to do what you think. I’ve studied with McHinton.” Says Lucaster in my earphone. I wonder why he is telling me this. I already told him ‘no’ before he finished devising his ‘fantasy’ weapon. I look out the window at the PORV station in the distance, rising above the smaller factories and poor houses all round it like a master towering above a household of servants.

    600,000 people. Kyojiinville is old. 2071 heuristics. I text back to Lucaster.

    “They’ve, your uncle, what’s his name, he’s,. . . Kyojiinville’s had plenty of retrotechs. You worry too much. Just put them near the mobility’s main command and control processor and text me when you’re out. I told you, Cyber-sam, it’s just a wake-up call to let them, you know, Kyojiin, the bloated dragon you’ve been lecturing us about? Like you flogged for a year, I shouldn’t have to remind you, ‘we have to let them know we can’t go on like this’? Forget what weapons they have. They were all built, engineered, designed before Shamephasing. We’ve talked and talked about this. Time for action.”

    Killing 600,000? I can’t. I text him back.

    “No. No, their systems will have to deal with it, that’s all. No killing.” He replies.

    “Sister, your face, so dark. Whas up?”asks Amaya as Kamiko the driver steers the limo into the elevator. The lift groans as it pulls our special, very heavy armored limosine up the twenty stories to top. I try to sit up and act like I’m in charge of myself. My mother looks at both of us. She is cute like Amaya, dressed expertly and expensively in silk, like a company flag proclaiming our wealth and position on top of the Loop society, including the distinctive make-up of blah-blah-blah, who is usually with her, along with her hair-man and her social secretary but I know she is making a statement coming alone: family loves the new Shizuka.

    “Shizuka, did you hear me?”says Lucaster in my earphone, who last year took over DWNLO, my revolutionary cybersite, leaving me more time for GRLUP, the site that has bothered my family along with my ‘anti-social antics’, as my behavior has been branded by Kyojiin Technologies. The elevator stops, the door opens onto the platform. Kamiko slowly edges the limo onto the parking area. Through the polaroid-tinted limo window I see my green PORV perched on top of booster rocket: escape.

    “Come on, CyberSam, you miss orbital fit time and we’ll be here all morning.”says Amaya.

    “I’m coming.” I say, feeling my Citizen buzz. I look at the screen. It’s me, in my pajamas, one hand holding a paperback book, the other hidden. Lens zoom in on title of book. Romance with the Knights of the Round Table. Clearly fiction. I hear my voice and my breathing. Oh, I would be ruined. Then screen zooms in on blanket covering my hidden hand, freezes; letters appear.

J u l y   4 t h

    Exactly a month from now.What does it mean? Oh, no, is he threatening to send that visual capture to Phasebook? He can’t be serious! I want to scream, or strangle him, or kick him in the nuts. Sister and mother blurring, I want to stay in their innocent safety, but my past has caught up to me, making me crazy. Their smiles are traditional; clothes the same, even proper, matching the way they sit, legs locked together, the way I never will, the boring way I never will!! Is all of the world mocking Shizuka! Then I remember.

    “Shizuka, you look like someone slapped you!” says Amaya.

    I can’t talk. I’m watching in memory, the first night at home. How could I forget? My mother’s secretary informs me that Ramashito, the family lawyer, has revoked my anti-Phasebook codes! Did Lucaster know that?

     I hear Tamiko opening the limo door. My life is ruined! I watch Tamiko walk to the trunk. I hear it pop open. Taking a deep breath, I tell myself to find calm place, to step out carefully; but I slip and my Citizen falls out of my hand, clips the edge of the platform and begins the twenty story journey to the ground below. I laugh. I scan around. Kamiko looks up from unloading my luggage from the limo’s trunk. I wish I could explain that I just saw my life turned into garbage, that without the codes they took away I am now faced with two actions: employ lethal computer weapon that could bring down our family’s largest Mobility or be Shamefaced by having video of me following me wherever I go, showing the most famous Toyola reading for pleasure!

    Sad. Everybody wants change, but nobody wants to suffer. We hug. Always respectful assistants ride the lift carrying my bags up to my PORV”s open baggage compartment. I catch one looking at me but he turns away so quickly I let it go.

    Amaya smiles. Mother smiles. Both are looking past me into the distance at our Tokyo skyscrapers, which sparkle in the rising sun like a pile of diamonds on a jewelers carousel.

    “I have changed. No more Flog, no more SHIZUKA.” I say as I turn to walk up the movable stairway to my small green spacecraft, feeling my teeth clench as I wave goodbye. Sister that everybody says is my twin pretends not to care, but from her smile at hearing my promise I can tell she likes the idea of no more SHIZUKA.

    It’s not even seven; I feel like I should be just waking up, gradually correcting myself, pulling the world back around my dream; instead I have just been punched in my pleasure center, shown a secret capture that can never appear on the worldweb. I still can’t believe studnerdy Lucaster, tech aid in building DWNLO, has dared to pillow me and then to blackmail me. So bogus, so unreal! But I know Phasebook is real; shaming for breaking the law is real, going on all the time.

    In the middle of smiling and thinking one thing and pretending another, I see the irony: the family took my Phaseshaming prevention codes away but I still look like them; we all three have Codefaces; relaxed, unlined, happy, funny, witty. By taking away my protection from Phasebook Shaming they will force me to do something a million times worse than being a subject of ridicule and shame. Ironic headline: Flagship falls on Phasebook threat. So is that the power of Social Media? I want to cry, or laugh like crazy.

    I’m leaving Tokyo and my family and our castle to ride the dragon’s tail. Maybe what really disappointed me during family visit was not missing writing in my flog for two weeks but not seeing our busy father; which disappoints me now more than ever because I need his strength.