The Thick and The Lean E-Book

Chana Porter

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 510

Beschreibung

From the acclaimed author of The Seep, comes a provocative and astonishing new novel where three women from a strange new world seek to break free of a society that wants to constrain their attitudes to food, sex and their own bodies. In the quaint religious town of Seagate, abstaining from food brings one closer to God. But Beatrice Bolano is hungry. She craves the forbidden: butter, flambé, marzipan. As Seagate takes increasingly extreme measures to regulate every calorie its citizens consume, Beatrice must make a choice: give up her secret passion for cooking or leave the only community she has known. Elsewhere, Reiko Rimando has left her modest roots for a college tech scholarship in the big city. A flawless student, she is set up for success . . . until her school pulls her funding, leaving her to face either a mountain of debt or a humiliating return home. But Reiko is done being at the mercy of the system. She forges a third path—outside of the law. With the guidance of a mysterious cookbook written by a kitchen maid centuries ago, Beatrice and Reiko each grasp for a life of freedom—something more easily imagined than achieved in a world dominated by catastrophic corporate greed. A startling fable of the entwined perils of capitalism, body politics, and the stigmas women face for appetites of every kind, Chana Porter's profound new novel explores the reclamation of pleasure as a revolutionary act.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Part One

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Part Two

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Part Three

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

PRAISE FOR THE THICK AND THE LEAN

“Porter’s newest is simultaneously a dark capitalist dystopia and a sexy allegory of queerness… Porter’s narrative digs into how religion and capitalism infiltrate societal norms on a big scale and into the pain of unlearning trauma and fat-shaming on a deeper scale, while delivering the stories of two lovable, complex characters and a convincing, moving conclusion.”

Booklist

“The Thick and the Lean delivers on premise and promise alike. Food kept aside as an ultimate taboo feels foreign in our world… Chana Porter interweaves this with all-too-familiar societal fatphobia and examinations of oppressive cultural structures.”

Chicago Review of Books

“An incredibly subversive piece of literature... This is the type of book that quite a few schools will be using in their curriculum years from now, and quite a few other schools will have banned.”

Lightspeed Magazine

“Porter’s sensual descriptions of even the simplest foods, inspired foraging, and creative cookery will resonate with those who love foodie fiction, while her visceral and blatant expressions of body, racial, and class stigma and fetishism give her allegory a heavy punch.”

Publishers Weekly

“In a world where reality is quite bitter, it’s a story of human kindness, found and chosen family, and the power of a good book. The Thick and The Lean is a buffet of delicious characters, a story meant to be savored and explored. In a word, it’s umami.”

The Southern Bookseller

“Decadent and richly imagined, The Thick and the Lean topples expectations and skilfully re-maps vice and virtue, indulgence and shame as we know them… Porter is one of our moment's most original seers.”

Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine and Something New Under the Sun

“Chana Porter is a brilliant engineer of speculative societies and vivid far-flung realms, but she is also an author who reminds us what matters most in our real lives: the urgency of living our highest truth. This novel is a feast of ideas I didn’t want to end.”

Allegra Hyde, author of Eleutheria

THE

THICK

AND THE

LEAN

PLEASE NOTE:

This book contains references to disorderedeating and body dysmorphia that might betroubling to some readers.

Also by Chana Porter and available from Titan Books

The Seep

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The Thick and the Lean

Print edition ISBN: 9781803366180

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803366197

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

144 Southwark Street. London, SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: August 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2023 Chana Porter. All Rights Reserved.

The right of Chana Porter to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For my mother

“AND WHAT INTRICACIES ARE WE LEDINTO FROM THE SHEER CHANCE OF PLANTINGA SEED IN THE EARTH?”

Mirabel Osler, A Gentle Plea for Chaos

PART ONE

1.

BEATRICE BOLANO LOOKED down at her almost empty plate. She was still hungry. Hungry in the way they warned about in church, whispered about in the girls’ bathroom at school, scratched into the wall behind the Buff ’n’ Go. Beatrice was hungry for taste, texture, mouthfeel. Crispy, crunchy, silky, chewy. Beatrice was hungry for juxtaposition, and she would never tell anyone as long as she lived.

There was still a small mound of rice on her plate, and next to that an even smaller mound of celery and carrots cooked together in such a way that they resembled each other. Grayish, stringy, mushy. She ate the remaining rice with a bit of vegetable mush and imagined it overlaid with lemon, butter, salt. Beatrice was comfortable with this kind of game, even in front of her parents, injecting clean, modest meals with her secret perversity. While Beatrice chewed her bland food, imagining it improved, a litany of words floated through her mind: reduction, flambé, seared, marzipan.

Soon Mama would go into the living room and choose a television program for the evening while Papa cleaned out the cooking pot. Feigning a headache, Beatrice excused herself from her parents to retire early. She couldn’t concentrate, not on homework or television. Colors and scents and flavors she had never actually tasted, only imagined, danced through her mind. Words she knew from her secret hours lurking in chat rooms on her family computer.

Beatrice locked her bedroom door and lay down on her bed. Now that she had made her decision, she wanted to tease herself, to go slow and make it last as long as possible. It wouldn’t be like the other times. No one would ever know. As if it had never happened, only a dream. It wouldn’t be like that time she’d stood in the refrigerator light in Carrie Sutherland’s kitchen, stuffing her face with peas and rice gruel as Carrie’s mother walked in, horrified. Carrie, smirking, fist-deep into a jar of enriched vitamin syrup. Even when misbehaving, Carrie knew better than to let anyone outside her own family actually see her chew and swallow. The memory of that day still filled Beatrice with a cold, static dread every time she saw Mrs. Sutherland at church. Sometimes Beatrice felt her shame so palpably, she could almost taste it.

Her mouth watered. Her fingers twitched. Beatrice glanced at the door. The sounds of the television drifted up to her bedroom. A young man screamed out in pleasure and pain, the din interspersed with a woman’s throaty laughter. It was her parents’ favorite program of late, Boy Meat, where a gang of dominatrixes rode through the countryside on their motorcycles, torturing terrified young men. It was a city show, like most of the media they consumed. The people of Seagate enjoyed the outlandish outfits and dramatics, even though the formula of the show was tiresome. Beatrice mainly watched it for the exit interviews. The young man sat on the floor shiny with sweat and tears and body fluid, with his head resting on the lap of one of the toughest biker babes, his words dreamy and awed: “It was an experience I’ll never forget—and I have the video to cherish forever!”

Beatrice took out a small wooden box from under her bed. She slid off the lid to reveal parcels of individually wrapped tissue paper. Slowly, reverently, she unwrapped the treasures she’d been collecting. One small block of cheese, a jar containing half a preserved lemon, and her prize: a small flatbread, perfectly contained in her open palms.

She had made the food herself when she was alone in her family’s perfect, quiet house. Healthful, appropriate milk, strained through a fine cloth and set to curdle sinfully, the lemon pilfered from a neighbor’s tree. The bread was an approximation—cornmeal, water, and salt cooked in secret on the stove that heated her bedroom. Beatrice had borrowed a clean metal tray intended for mixing paints from Papa’s toolshed, his haven for endless home improvements. It had served nicely as her pan, a thick white towel stuffed in the crack of her door to muffle the aroma.

She leaned back to survey her meal.

It was all so very beautiful.

Beatrice glanced back at the door and felt the strange urge to cry. Then little Remus, her sugar glider, pressed his hot, fuzzy head into her shoulder, eyes blinking open from Beatrice’s handwoven neck pouch, waking from a long nap.

Beatrice tore off a bit of the flatbread and layered it with sour lemon and sweet cheese. “Here,” she whispered to the sugar glider, cupping the food in her open palm. “Eat.” There was no hesitation. The food, so lovingly prepared, was devoured without a thought, and then Remus yawned, settling back into his pouch for another nap. Beatrice wiped her hands on her skirt and sighed. She didn’t want to live like an animal, enslaved by mindless hunger. The church doctrine said holiness was like a ladder—or a circle, or an upward spiral, depending who was preaching. But one thing everyone agreed on was that eating pure helped you think pure, which in turn made you be pure.

Beatrice looked down at the food. For a moment, she was loath to eat at all. She knew it would feel so good, then worse than ever. She considered flushing the lot down the toilet, symbolically ridding herself of these desires so she could live a normal, productive life. Maybe if she just tried harder, it would eventually feel like she wasn’t trying at all. She would simply be better—happy, like everyone else.

Just one more time, she thought. As a purge. One more time, and then never again.

Hands trembling, she set upon her feast like a dog, like a thief, like a chef.

*   *   *

THE FIRST TIME Beatrice had experimented with cooking, she was fourteen years old, attending her first girl-boy sleepover at their church. The pastor, Father Alvarez, corralled the teenagers into a circle after a long evening of prayers and hymns alongside his upbeat acoustic guitar. The children sat on their sleeping bags on the wooden floor, cathedral windows flooded with light from the dual full moons. The church was handsome, well-built, and unadorned, like everything else in Seagate, the flagship community of the Stecopo Corporation. Every office building, street sign, school, house, and community park was perfectly curated by Stecopo. Her parents were pioneers—city folk who had devoted their lives to the company back when Seagate was just a glossy suburban dream. The visionary Rick Tenzo had dreamt of a place where people could live together harmoniously and healthfully, with each part of their lives streamlined, beautified, purified through the power of science married with religion. It was the only life that Beatrice had ever known.

In his everyday priest robes of white and yellow, Father Alvarez resembled a bird, his nose a sharp beak, his eyes bright and round. He gave a short sermon about Bremah, the celebration of the dual full moons Lluna and Ata. He spoke reverently of their ancestors finding their way here in hot air balloons, guided by the moonslight, to be welcomed by the Free-Wah people, who were native to these lands. Esther Sima, whose mother was Free-Wah, held up her hands, murmuring, “Praise God!” at the important bits. Lately Esther had made quite a show of being religious. She also had cut her hair into bangs, covering her Free-Wah forehead ridge. While she wasn’t fooling anyone, the bangs did look cute.

“We call ourselves the ALGN people, but can anyone tell me what this really means?” asked the pastor.

“All Lands Gone Now,” droned the youth group.

“That’s right. We came here as weary travelers, in search of solid ground. Many peoples from many different lands, all washed away in the rising tides, following the promise of the Divine Mother, the original Flesh Martyr, who discovered this land and the people here. The Free-Wah king tried to destroy her, but the faithful always rise to serve another day!” He gestured out the window to the bright circles in the sky. “The festival of Bremah is a celebration, and a solemn reminder. One day, all lands will be gone. The beauty of our two moons does not soften the forces they wreak upon our planet—earthquakes, high waves, a steadily shrinking mass of habitable land. One day, Lluna and Ata will be drawn into each other’s orbits, raining destruction over us all. This could happen in a thousand years, or it could be tomorrow.”

The youth group was very quiet.

“That is the promise of the Divine Mother. Through our faith, no matter what comes, we will rise again to flourish in the Forever Palace,” he continued softly. “But tonight, we give thanks for this precious moment. We praise God with our bodies, with the gift of our holy love.”

Then Sister Marita, a pretty young nun, gave her own speech about the privilege of them being alone together to explore sacred sex. She was hugely pregnant, and several of the boys (and some of the girls) could not stop looking at her smooth, shiny legs under her white shift. Everyone wore the same style of clothing in Seagate—loose, light fabrics, a few acceptable shades of white, yellow, and tan, the same fabrics cut into tunics, jumpsuits, shirts, and trousers. But a certain garment might look plain on one person and seem to shine on another, as if they were lit from within by a candle. Beatrice, being only fourteen, did not know if she was a candle person or not, but lately people had seemed to notice her. Mirrors were deceptive, and Mama always told her she was perfect, but Beatrice was beginning to suspect she was beautiful.

“What do we say, friends?” Sister Marita asked the youth group.

“Our bodies are divine vessels,” the teenagers said in flat unison.

The chaperoned portion of the evening was beginning to wrap up. Beatrice could feel the eager anticipation in the air. Sister Marita warned the children to stick to outercourse instead of innercourse, as that was the road to becoming good lovers. “Remember, the better you get at outer sex, developing a relationship with your body, the more enjoyable inner sex will be in the future. Don’t skip steps!” Most of the teens nodded seriously, but Mina Ido and Melis Peltzman looked at the ground. Everyone knew they had been having inner sex for at least four months—it was all anyone could talk about. But Sister Marita had no clue.

Then, before the pastor and Sister Marita left, Danny Walton and Michael Rodriguez began tickling each other and rolling on the floor, giggling rebelliously.

“Stick to outercourse, Danny!” called Ezra Allen, poking fun at the rolling boys. The other kids shoved and hushed them.

“Boys,” Father Alvarez warned.

“Are you ready to control yourselves?” asked Sister Marita.

“You’re making us wait longer!” complained Mina.

“Young ones,” the pastor began slowly. “Animals cannot make love.” The teenagers quieted and settled in. This was his sermon voice, with its storyteller rhythm. All they could do now was relax and listen up. “They engage in intercourse mindlessly, driven by biology. Gorillas, our closest kin, mate for one to two minutes. The females lie down and are penetrated from behind. They signal their interest in sex two to three days out of the month when they are ovulating. These same animals use tools and care for their young. They even form social circles, friendships, and hierarchies. But they do not make love. To give and receive pleasure outside of procreation is the most human act possible.”

Suddenly his handsome, hawklike face looked sad. “Likewise, many animals, observed in captivity, will eat until it harms them. Some animals will gorge themselves until they die.”

He winced at the moons outside, as if blanching before a judgmental God. “To be holy, you must live in a holy manner. This is our sacred task as human beings. Animal bodies with angelic souls.” He gazed at them gently. “You are young and hungry to experience, to enjoy, to learn and feel it all. But be soft with yourselves and each other. Only with restraint and purity can we glimpse God.”

Sister Marita touched him on the shoulder.

“Okay, that’s all—we promise! We’ll be upstairs if anyone needs help.” Father Alvarez and Sister Marita stood up.

“One more very, very important thing,” Father Alvarez said sternly, wagging his flashlight at them. “Have fun!” Then they turned off the overhead lights, chuckling, and left.

The evening started off just like all the other boy-girl parties, with all the normal games: Wobbly Bottles, Truth or Consequences, Nuns in the Bell Tower. Flora Bitman told a particularly gruesome version of the old Night Witch story, flashlight pointed up on her chin when the Night Witch lured the children into her cottage, cleaving their body parts and stirring them into her noxious brews. Eventually the boys and girls moved toward those they found attractive and split off in couples or small groups. Beatrice zeroed in on Leroy Kim. He was tall, all lanky arms and legs, and seemed to be growing faster than his mothers could keep him in new pants. Leroy was given an extra carton of milk at mealtimes to account for his raging metabolism, but Beatrice suspected that it wasn’t enough.

The boy was hungry.

“Leroy,” Beatrice said, pushing out her chest. “Would you like to go somewhere more private with me?”

Leroy’s brown eyes grew as wide as those of a cat on the hunt. He nodded. Beatrice took him by his long, bony hand and led him away from the group.

They walked silently down a dark hallway, past the Sunday school classroom to a door painted the purest white. She pushed it open into a dark room where metal objects gleamed silver. Beatrice held a finger to her lips and turned on the light. She was surprised she didn’t feel guilty about doing this in a church. But then again, she never felt bad before doing it, just after. She looked around; the kitchen was larger than she had expected. Its industrial oven shone with a kind of sacred internal purpose, like a potter’s kiln or a surgeon’s instruments. She looked down at her hands.

I’m going to make something, she thought as Leroy’s wet, round mouth careened into her neck.

Leroy spoke quickly into her hair. “Do you want to be my girlfriend?”

“Yes,” she murmured into his chest before gently pulling herself away. “Leroy, you look hungry. Can I feed you?”

“Um,” he said, looking at the tiled floor. “I’ve only ever had my family’s cooking. That and the nutrition packets they give us at school.”

“I know that.”

“But why would you want to cook?”

She groped for the words. “This is how I can show you that I like you.”

“But,” he protested, “we have to eat clean to be clean. To be more like the angels, who don’t need to eat and are never distracted from God.”

She gave him a timid kiss on the lips. “Leroy, we’re together now,” she said. “Maybe, someday, if we stay together, you’ll come to my house for a family dinner.”

He sighed, squeezing her hips. “I would be so honored, Beatrice.”

She looked up at him. “But then, why wait? Aren’t you hungry?”

He looked down at her bright, determined face, a half-smile playing on his lips. “Yes,” he whispered.

She began riffling through the church’s cabinets. All the usual suspects were here: rice, oat bran, bags of dried beans. Her hands trembled as she opened the pantry door and saw a bag of carrots, a sack of potatoes, cans of peas. Food for the pious, food for people who could not afford (or did not believe in) the tidiness of meal supplements.

Then she opened the fridge and saw it. A small drawer, hidden behind drums of powdered milk. Beatrice opened it and gasped. Two sticks of real butter, a hard wedge of yellow cheese wrapped in parchment paper, six brown eggs, and a basket of little tomatoes. “Oh, bloody hell!” Beatrice exclaimed, covering her mouth.

“Shhh,” said Leroy, laughing.

She sliced off a stocky knob of butter, then ran her greasy finger across her lips. They watched together as the yellow-white wedge began to pool and heat in the skillet.

“Is this food blessed? Who do you think it belongs to?” He inhaled deeply. “What is that smell?”

“We could bless it ourselves,” said Beatrice softly. “This is our first meal of our own, after all.”

“It’s like we’re husband and wife.”

They looked down at the miracle happening in the skillet. How could such a little thing, butter over a low flame, fill the room with such a scent? Leroy tentatively put a hand on her waist as he watched her spread more butter on two thick slices of bread, then layer on many slivers of hard cheese. She placed the sandwich in the pan of heated butter, and it began to sizzle.

“Is it supposed to make that sound?”

“Just wait and see,” said Beatrice confidently, but it was all bluster. She didn’t know if she was burning the food; she’d never imagined it would make any kind of noise. After what felt like ages, she took a big breath and flipped the sandwich. The side was golden with butter and seared from the fire, the melted cheese crackling out of the edges onto the hot pan below. The range of colors on the toasted bread—deep, golden tan, creamy white, nutty flecks of brown . . . It was more luscious and dynamic than Beatrice’s wildest imaginings.

“It’s beautiful,” she breathed.

“You are,” Leroy said, planting another kiss on her cheek and then lingering, breath hot in her ear.

Leroy was still holding her as she sliced the sandwich in half. Bright-yellow cheese oozed out vulgarly as she pulled the halves apart. It was even more obscene than she had anticipated. She couldn’t wait to take a bite.

“Oh, Lord!” Leroy licked his lips. “What do we do now?”

They joined hands. “God,” said Beatrice solemnly, “bless this food and our bodies. That we might eat to serve you another day.” And please, forgive me.

At first bite, they moaned. It was so much better than the descriptions she had read on those late-night message boards. The playful balance of textures—the crunchy, fried exterior of the bread giving way to pillowy, internal softness. They consumed her creation within seconds. But instead of the elation she expected, Beatrice felt a deep sadness overtake her.

“Oh no,” said Leroy, thumbing away her tears. “Don’t cry.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “You were right,” he whispered. “It was so, so good.”

She kissed him again, more firmly this time, wrapping her arms around him. She wanted to ask, How could something so good be wrong? But words were too small, too bare, to contain the range of feelings ricocheting inside of her. He kissed away her tears, until her sadness was replaced by a greater longing. Leroy’s mouth was nourishing, like sweet, clean water.

There was a sound at the door. Leroy and Beatrice looked at each other, filled with the same terrible thought. They did not have time to conceal what they had done.

Father Alvarez stood in the doorway in a dull white sleeping tunic, his brown hair rumpled with sleep. His usual soft, gentle expression was replaced by a look of holy rage as he stared at the stick of butter melting on the counter, the half-used block of cheese, the opened loaf of bread. Leroy dropped her from his embrace. She wrapped her arms around herself, cold.

Her father picked her up from the church sleepover in his pajamas. The walk home was very quiet. Without the usual sounds of children playing or the hum of airships, Beatrice could hear the waves below, crashing against the huge cement platform that held the Valley aloft over the water, its ingenious design keeping its citizens safe from the dangerous swells of an increasingly tempestuous sea. Their founder, Rick Tenzo, was consumed by his next big project—Seagate colonies in outer space, a dream that would take decades to realize. Walking back through this beautifully designed community, the hardworking people all asleep in their beds, made Beatrice feel even more ashamed. As if Mr. Tenzo himself were looking down from space, judging her.

In the living room, Mama sat in her bathrobe, ready with a full pot of herbal tea and three cups. After tearfully apologizing for her behavior, Beatrice curled up in her mother’s lap on the couch, letting her stroke her hair. “It can be difficult, in its own way, not to have anything to rebel against,” said Mama gently.

Beatrice felt lower than the ground. She could have been having fun with the other teenagers. Instead, she’d managed to get herself sent home.

“You learned an important lesson tonight,” said Papa. “Keep that lesson and let the rest go.”

Beatrice sat up, sniffling, and wiped her eyes. “But I feel awful!”

“Did you take your pills today?” asked Papa.

Mama stood up. “I’ll go check.”

Alone on the couch with her father, Beatrice felt shy. “I’ll never do that again. I promise.”

He waved his hand, as if pushing the thought away. “It’s in the past, Beatrice. Guilt is a useless emotion.”

Mama came back with a glass of water, Beatrice’s pillbox, and what looked like a jewelry box, only a bit larger than Beatrice’s own palm. “No wonder you’re feeling bad!”

Beatrice took the small handful of pills and gulped at the water.

“Now. I was going to give this to you on your birthday,” said Mama, holding out the second box. “But I think this is the perfect time.”

Beatrice opened it to reveal her mother’s gleaming opalescent necklace, a double moonstone she had admired ever since she could remember, on a delicate silver chain.

“The women in my family have worn this necklace for generations,” said Mama. “And now it’s your turn.”

Papa beamed as Mama clasped the necklace around Beatrice’s neck.

“Keep it under your clothes, darling,” said Papa. “Don’t gloat or show off what our neighbors don’t have. One day, you’ll give it to your daughter.”

The necklace felt cold and heavy on her chest. “I’ll wear it and make you proud.”

“Our gorgeous girl,” said her mother simply. “We are already proud.”

*   *   *

THE PRIVATE MEETINGS she was made to attend with Father Alvarez were similarly benign. First they would sit together in quiet contemplation. After about twenty minutes, he would begin to speak, gently, like softly falling rain. God is like the sky, God is like a river. God is big and God is small, God is inside us and always around us. God is in everything, God exists everywhere. On and on and on and on. Sometimes she thought about his hypotonic, quiet sermons when she couldn’t sleep. After their session, she’d go with a nun to sweat it out in the sauna or bounce out her feelings at the trampoline park. No one expected teenagers to do penance the way adults did, cheerfully carrying buckets of water or going on long runs with the pastor at night instead of sleeping. The young hadn’t joined the community as adults and couldn’t be held to the same standards.

Over the next year, Leroy would disappear for various lengths of time: a week, a handful of days, once a whole month. Of course, Beatrice had seen this happen to others before. If a classmate was slow to lose their baby fat as a teenager, they were sent on a spiritual retreat. They would come back thin, with a zealous gleam in their eyes. Some of the newly religious teenagers would talk about actually becoming Flesh Martyrs, about abstaining from food until you were taken by God back to heaven. But no one ever did it—it was all just talk. There were rumors that in the big city, wealthy families designated one of their many children to become a Flesh Martyr at birth, as a sacrifice to prove their piety. Still, these were only urban legends, like the Night Witch who stole little children for her toxic brews, or restaurants for cannibals.

One day Beatrice heard that Leroy and his moms had actually left Seagate for good. Their beautiful house was now empty, their wide, lush lawn pristine, awaiting some other lucky family to take the Kims’ place.

*   *   *

WHEN SHE TURNED sixteen, Beatrice explicitly lied to her parents for the first time. She told them that she was going to have a sleepover with her sometimes-lover Jaimes. Beatrice had no intention of ever spending the night with Jaimes (though he had often asked). Everyone knew the most effective way to feel the depth of God’s divine love was to fall in love, as relationships were containers for spiritual development. Yet Beatrice had never felt anything close to love. She had sex as casually as if grabbing a snack—a little bit to tide her over, then off to think about other things.

Things she was definitely not supposed to be thinking about.

The walk to her destination was an hour long, but the night was fine. Tonight Beatrice was going for the first time beyond the edge of town to the borderlands, where some people lived quietly sinful lives. Her only map was a crumb of a clue from a seedy chat room, given to her by an anonymous avatar.

As she approached the end of her town, the buildings grew shabby, their appearances random—a tall, dark-gray building next to a squat white one, brown stucco next to a spire. Paint peeled, cement cracked—a stark contrast to the cheerful, unified design of Seagate.

Then she saw it. The bookstore was sandwiched between a shabby-looking traveler’s motel and a pharmacy that appeared to be out of business. She could have walked by this place a million times and never glanced back at it.

It was already proper nighttime, with both moons stark in the sky, yet she couldn’t bring herself to go inside. She looked up. Lluna was almost full, while Ata was a waning sliver. The next double full moon wouldn’t be for years to come. Would she be in the Valley for the next full moon festival, working for Stecopo middle management like both her parents? Beatrice knew it was what she was supposed to want, but she just couldn’t picture it. The moons appeared to be steady, but Beatrice knew this was an illusion—the heavenly bodies were rotating closer and closer. One day, as certain as the sun, the two would be drawn together. After millennia of courtship, Lluna and Ata would finally kiss. But only destruction would come from that lovers’ embrace. One day, everything on this planet would be washed away in giant waves or shattered by falling chunks of moon dust. Nothing was permanent, not even the sky. Beatrice steeled herself and opened the door to the bookstore.

Inside, as these things so often are, was rather disappointing.

The store was musty and brightly lit, shocking in its ordinariness: protein powders, vitamin drinks, green “juices” that came dry, to be mixed with water. Nothing was fresh. By the front door, an old fridge hummed, filled with a variety of drinks and a few endurance gels. Beatrice had seen nicer versions of this type of shop in the Valley—they had smoothie bars, freshwater infusions that boasted specific pH levels or caffeine. This store was a hodgepodge of things that mimicked what people might want, but on closer inspection, every item was a cheap facsimile. Rows of sex toys of assorted shapes, colors, and sizes, but all the flimsy, synthetic kind, not the nice ones made of real leather or glass. There were rows of paperback books with lascivious covers, pulpy romances with thin plots, mysteries with more sex than intrigue, like the ones her mother read then gave away, so as to not clutter up the house. The back wall was easy-to-use bondage gear, the sort that one could set up in less than ten minutes with very little training. None of the products were particularly nice or specialized; one could find them at any drugstore. And every single object was covered with a fine film of dust.

There was someone at the counter, an unremarkable-looking older woman with sallow skin, long gray hair, and cheap wire-frame glasses. So much for closer to angels than animals, Beatrice thought. She had pictured a man in charge of such a place—a rakish, burly man who could not control his appetites, a scoundrel or a creep, not a lady who like herself would fit in better at a church service than the black market. One of the movies from the Orgasm Wars franchise was playing on a high, small television, but the woman at the counter wasn’t watching. She was thumbing through a thick book, its cover obscured.

Beatrice tried coughing to get the woman’s attention, but she never looked up from her book. She held up lingerie to her body, pretending to eye it for size. Soon another woman, closer to her own mother’s age, walked in. Beatrice couldn’t be sure if she recognized her—she was wearing a large, floppy hat and sunglasses. The woman at the counter looked up from her book, and then back meaningfully toward Beatrice. The customer sputtered out something about needing lubricant. She bought the smallest amount available and left. Beatrice felt an expansive tenderness toward the woman, who probably had kids at home around the same age as Beatrice. Certainly, if she did, they went to her school and Beatrice at least knew their names. Maybe she was a recruiter for Seagate, like Mama, or in advertising, spreading the good word of Stecopo products, like Papa.

Curious, Beatrice picked up a chilled bottle of electrolyte-infused water and glanced at the bottom. It had passed its sell-by date two years ago. At this, the woman behind the counter raised her head.

“Uh . . .” started Beatrice, unsure how to proceed. “Do you have anything to go with this water?” She looked at her meaningfully. The woman rolled her eyes and went back to her book.

Frustrated but undeterred, Beatrice took a pile of books from the back wall and settled down in a corner. She pretended to read, but she was really just listening to the small shifting sounds inside the sleepy shop. The woman took a short personal phone call in which she inquired after someone’s health. Eventually Orgasm Wars stopped, and a commercial for the holiday special of Jessima McVee’s Gratitude Hour played, followed by one for a deodorant pill that made your sweat smell like cherry blossoms. Then a new program started, but Beatrice didn’t recognize it. The premise sounded like another reality competition where the judges would have sex with the contestants, then rank them across intimacy, sensuality, and creativity. The city was always cranking out these kinds of shows. Father Alvarez said when you didn’t have a concrete relationship to God, even your holiest of actions were farcical. In the city, unlike Seagate, sex was for sale, along with everything else. She yawned, fighting the temptation to close her eyes. Beatrice was just about ready to give up and go home when the door opened for the second time. A deep voice rang out, causing her to sit up very straight.

“Hey, Lina,” a man’s voice said. “I’m looking for a book about castles. Can you help me?” The words vibrated with hidden meaning. She mouthed them silently to remember.

“I just got a new shipment of books,” the woman replied. “There might be something about castles. Let’s check in the back.”

Beatrice heard footsteps. She mouthed the words again. All was quiet. Slowly, achingly, she crept out of her nest on the floor. She approached the counter. The woman’s thick book was facedown and covered in simple brown paper. She opened to the cover page.

THE KITCHEN GIRLA TRUE STORYBY IJO

She had never seen a book so thick, with text so fine. It didn’t have any pictures. And the pages themselves felt different—the material smooth, yet slightly rough. Her fingers paused on a page, its lines spread out, like poetry.

It read:

One-half cup reserved cooking liquidOne whole cup heavy creamBeat together until homogeneousTruss your stewing birdand place in large roasting pan, legs aloftNow say a prayer to whatever gods you servethat your meal be fit for a king.

An electric shock ran up the length of her body, starting at her feet and shooting up her spine. She shivered. Then Beatrice felt a sharp tap on her back. She turned to find the shop woman scowling at her.

Her voice was raspy, low. “I thought you might have crept out like a mouse.”

“Hi, Lina,” she said, trying to steady her voice, which did sound rather mouselike at the moment. She repeated the man’s words in a rush: “I’mlookingforabookaboutcastlescanyouhelpme?”

The woman threw up her hands. “Okay, okay, fine. You’re very persistent.” She went to the front door and turned over a little sign that read ON BREAK. She locked the door.

Beatrice felt a drum thumping in her chest. She had done it. She was going to be let inside the secret room.

Instead, Lina led Beatrice to a little back room that looked like an office—an old, full-sized computer sat dusty on a desk, joined by an ink blotter with a wide pad of paper and some unopened boxes.

She motioned to Beatrice to sit. “I’ll get you when I’m ready.” She clicked on a small desk light. “And don’t touch anything!”

Beatrice put her head down on the desk and waited. On the television, she heard a woman discuss her easy seven-step hair-care system—the secret to long, luscious locks. Tomorrow at church, Beatrice would repent. She would ask for God’s help, to be healed. And then she would truly abstain from food pleasure. She would surrender to her perfect Seagate life. She would be normal. She would be happy.

The woman opened the door. “Are you ready?”

Beatrice was frightened, suddenly, of both scenarios—that she would be disappointed, and that she might fall in love with it. She tried her best to sound confident.

“I am.”

Lina led her down into a basement. Beatrice shuddered to walk below ground level, like an insect crawling into the earth. Lina entered numbers on a pad embedded into a thick metal door. The door buzzed open.

The walls were white, the wooden shelving simple. None of the displays were fancy, but the items displayed there made Beatrice feel that she had stumbled upon a cavern of riches. A wall of gleaming utensils—shiny silver spatulas, tongs, spoons of so many different sizes and depths. She reached out and touched one lightly.

“Whisk?” she asked cautiously.

Lina nodded. “Come here.” She led her over to several shelves of books. Traditional Northern Free-Wah cuisine. Seafood delicacies. A manual on bread-making. Eating Your Way through the Seasons: A Guide to Local Produce. Cooking with herbs and flowers. A slender leaflet on homemade ice cream. She picked up Eating Your Way through the Seasons.

“How much?”

Lina studied her over her glasses. “These books are very rare.”

“How much?” she insisted.

“Four hundred ducats.”

“What?” cried Beatrice.

“Lower your voice. I’m not trying to fleece you, girl. How much money do you have?”

“Fifty ducats,” she said, her voice hollow. Beatrice had thought for certain that fifty would be enough to buy her several items. Money was barely used in Seagate, as everything substantial was provided by Stecopo—housing, supplements, clothing, technology, medicine. Beatrice’s parents gave her an allowance for visits to the greater Valley, but she had no idea how much these kinds of items cost. The idea of walking home empty-handed was too much to bear.

“I’m not running a charity here,” the woman said, her voice softening.

“Please,” she said. “I’ll work for you! I’ll do anything.”

“Never tell anyone you just met that you’ll do anything to get something they have. Do you understand?” She frowned as if Beatrice had offended her. It was not an expression Beatrice was used to seeing. “Here’s the deal: for fifty ducats, I’ll let you bring this book home for one week to copy its pages.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you!”

“And then I need you to bring it back to me. In perfect condition. If you turn out to be trustworthy, maybe we can do it again.” Lina looked at her steadily over her wire frames.

Beatrice reached for the book.

“Not so fast. What are you going to leave me as ‘collateral’?” Her eyes sparked at the chain around Beatrice’s throat—the double moonstone necklace.

“What do you mean, ‘collateral’?”

“I mean, what will you give me to make sure you won’t steal my book?”

“But I would never—”

“I don’t know you,” the woman interrupted. “Pull that out, let me see.”

Beatrice took the moonstone out from under her shift.

Lina had the gall to lift the necklace from Beatrice’s bosom and study it like a jewelry appraiser. “It’s very nice.”

Beatrice twisted the chain around her neck. “It’s my mother’s. And it was her mother’s before that. I can’t part with it.”

Lina shrugged. “Fine.”

“Wait!” she said. “I’ll need it back.”

“And I’ll need the book back,” said Lina, as if Beatrice were dull-witted.

Beatrice paused. “My mother’s necklace is worth more than four hundred ducats.” She wasn’t sure about this figure, but it sounded right. “Let me keep my fifty!”

Lina shook her head. “I’m keeping the money, little mouse. You’re too young to know I’m being kind.”

“Fine!” She reached out to snatch the book.

Lina pulled it out of her grasp. Beatrice, grimacing, thrust her ducat bag and necklace at the woman.

“Lovely doing business with you,” said Lina, admiring the necklace. Then she slipped it into a deep pocket in her dull cloak dress; it seemed to disappear entirely, swallowed up by the coarse fabric. Beatrice felt her heart sink. No book, however valuable, was worth losing her mother’s heirloom.

Lina put a light hand on her shoulder. “Tut-tut, chin up. I’ll give it back.”

“I don’t trust the promises of people I don’t know.”

Lina sneezed out a little laugh. “Very good. Take a little spice, for your troubles.”

Beatrice stood, eyes wide, before a wall of spices in little glass jars, their colors bright and surprising—dusty red, yellow-gold, smoky brown. Little greenish seedpods. A thimble’s worth of dark-orange strings.

“I can take any of these?” Beatrice reached toward the case.

“Not that one!” said Lina, gesturing to the orange strings. “Here.” She took out a little scoop of the smoky brown and the yellow- gold. “Do you have food at home?” Beatrice nodded. Mama still cooked simple foods in the crockpot rather than only using food bars and meal replacements, as most Seagate families did.

Lina motioned for Beatrice to follow her back upstairs, to the bookstore proper. Reluctantly, she left the marvelous place and climbed the rickety stairs. “Take a half cup of rice and boil it in a full cup of water, covered, with three pinches of spice until tender—all the water in the pot should be absorbed. Then fluff it with a fork and salt it. If it’s gummy or dry, you’ve done it wrong. And don’t forget to rinse your rice at least six times before boiling.” When they reached the main store, Lina lowered her voice, even though the door was locked and the shop was empty. “There’s an easy recipe for quick preserved lemon in that book,” said Lina. “Try the turmeric rice with a little preserved lemon on top. You have access to sugar? That will temper the pickle, but you can do it with only salt if necessary.”

“We have plenty of sugar. My father uses it to feed the hummingbirds, and Mama uses it for cocktails.” She stuck her nose in the air. “And I’ve been preserving lemons for several months now.” Although she didn’t know you were supposed to wash raw rice before cooking—Mama certainly never did.

Lina raised an eyebrow. “Lucky girl, aren’t you? Family jewels and sugar for birds. My, my. Now, don’t stain my book.” She crossed her arms. “I’ll see you next week.”

“Thank you,” she said out of habit, because she was sure she hated this woman. “My name is—”

The woman shook her head. “We don’t do names here, girl.”

“But aren’t you Lina?”

She smiled, revealing long, crooked teeth. Beatrice almost shuddered. No one had teeth like that in Seagate. “You can call me that. I’ll call you little mouse.”

Lina handed her the book, wrapped in brown paper.

Beatrice pressed it to her chest. It was hers, if only for a week.

“Oh, and little mouse?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

In the moonslight, her face looked rather ghoulish. “If you stop taking the yellow pill, your hunger will come back.”

Beatrice had no idea what she meant.

2.

REIKO RIMANDO LOADED her ducats into the slot, more than she’d ever held in her hand all at once, and with the sounds of clink, clink, clink, the money carried her up out of the Bastian. The Loop whirred, and its great track started moving, chugging across the sky like God’s own personal train. Reiko looked out the window, and the world was new.

The Middle was spectacular. Red, green, and gold towers capped with rounded cupolas, fanciful yet regal against the bright-blue sky. The domes were embellished with cheerful stripes like a circus tent, or an overlapping lattice reminiscent of a pineapple, or in undulating ridges, as if some whimsical god had twisted the tops of these grand buildings just so.

The ride to the Middle took less than an hour. Reiko heard her station announced; hands trembling, she pressed the button on the side of the door and punched in her ticket. Paying an additional coin to exit (which she found ridiculous), she watched as an armature jutted out from the side of the train, creating a tiny, narrow staircase just for her.

The Middle was beautiful in a way that made her angry. Unlike the Bastian, there wasn’t any trash in the streets, or little rivulets of water or runoff from the factories upstream. The air smelled different too, cooler on her skin and fresher in her nose. Her view of the sky was unobstructed, so Reiko could finally see the puffy white clouds, and, of course, the floating orbs Above. How expensive it must be to travel that high on the Loop, if this amount of money only took her to the Middle. She took out the electronic tablet she had borrowed from kindly Father Felix, her old computer science instructor, and pulled up the map to the university district. It was a thirty-minute walk, but luckily she didn’t have much luggage. By the time she got there, she would feel ready—she hoped.

It had taken Father Felix a personal trip home to her parents in the Low Quake to explain what an all-expense-paid scholarship was, and how this was too good an opportunity to pass up. Her mother seemed suspicious, as if this man were trying con them, while her father just looked sad.

“Reiko doesn’t even want to study computers. She’s an artist,” her mother had protested.

Father Felix nodded. “It was Reiko’s latest art project that attracted their interest. She designed a very special sort of program, you see, to generate visual patterns from sound waves. Then she used these patterns to make her big paintings. But the tech behind the paintings—it was very elegant.” Father Felix looked at her parents meaningfully. “The university will provide for every expense—room, board, tuition, supplies. All Reiko needs to do is show up. If she does well in her degree, she’ll get an apprenticeship.”

“A job?” asked her father. Reiko grimaced.

Father Felix shook his head. “Even at top firms, the apprenticeships are unpaid.” Her parents blinked at him.

“My daughter will compete against other kids, wealthy kids,” said Mama slowly, “to work for free?”

“It isn’t like that!” began Reiko, exasperated. They didn’t understand anything.

But Father Felix nodded seriously. “Yes. She’ll compete to work for free. And if she does well, which she certainly will, Reiko will get an entry-level job at a top firm.”

Mama spoke mournfully, as if she had been told that Reiko was ill. “She’ll work twice as hard, with fewer advantages. It’s a recipe for disappointment, that’s what it is.”

Father Felix lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Let me tell you the average starting salary at these firms.”

Mama’s and Papa’s eyes widened.

“As long as the school’s free, I don’t see how it can hurt,” said Mama. She kissed Reiko’s forehead ridge. “And remember, my good girl—you can always come home.”

Reiko paused in a wide, grassy park to get her bearings, leaning against a great big tree. Every detail of the city was a feast for the eyes, and now her brain felt sluggish, full. The snaking paths of this park were dappled with little arched bridges, painted a bright blue. Reiko was surprised to see so many bridges, as there didn’t seem to be any water nearby, except for the broad, lazy river that bisected the Middle like a winding serpent. The bridges were just there because they were beautiful, arching over gravel or grass. Reiko peered at two women in billowing, translucent dresses, their hair lacquered into towers ornamented with little jeweled birds. One woman carried a parasol, the other what looked like a giant sheaf of grain. Reiko had seen racy advertisements of women holding fruit, but never this. The soles of their knee-high lace-up boots were almost a foot thick, making them totter slowly across the little bridges. The women took turns snapping pictures of each other with their phones, in front of trees, on bridges, sometimes kissing each other, sometimes blowing kisses at the tiny screen. So far, everyone else Reiko had seen in the Middle was dressed relatively normally, in cloaks and capes and jumpsuits—nice clothes, to be sure, but nothing so fantastical. These women looked more like aliens or art objects, their faces heavily painted to suggest a mask or a baby doll. The woman with the parasol had a bright-orange square painted on her lips, while the other woman’s eyes were completely encircled in blue. Reiko watched, fascinated, as one of the women lay down on the grass and lifted her skirt. Half-naked, she held out her phone with her right hand, angling it at her crotch. The other woman knelt, no longer holding the grain sheaf, and proceeded to lick her toward orgasm. Reiko looked away. She wasn’t embarrassed to see people having sex—she had seen that a million times—butsomething about this felt wrong. The women didn’t seem aroused, and there was nothing about their body language to suggest that they were lovers. The only times they kissed or touched each other was for pictures; otherwise, they just walked together like employees heading to a meeting. The woman on the ground moaned loudly, finally shouting, “Eat me! Eat me! Eat me!” then lay back as if exhausted. Her “orgasm” had taken less than two minutes to achieve. The other girl sat up, wiped her mouth, and bowed to her partner. Then she smiled into the camera, covering her mouth with her hand in a little cupping gesture. “If you liked this video, please follow our adventures by clicking the floating lips on the left! Have a beautiful day.”

*   *   *

AT THE UNIVERSITY gate, Reiko showed a guard her identification card. Her hands felt sweaty, despite the cool air. He glanced at his computer, found her name, and let her through with a nod. Reiko walked across the threshold and realized she was shaking. It took all of her self-control not to throw up her breakfast on the beautiful coiffed lawn. The first building was a blocky stack of levels floating off the ground. The sight was dizzying, imposing. Reiko did not want to go inside. Then she noticed that the first level was hoisted up on thick metal stilts, designed in such a way that the building appeared to hover in the air. It wasn’t magical—just a neat architectural trick.

She said I am God, and God is me twenty-five times under her breath until the shaking stopped. Then she thought of her mother and how happy she’d be if Reiko decided she didn’t want this after all and just went home so they could all eat dinner together every night. Then she walked on, head held high, and proceeded to climb the hundred small steps to enter the university compound. She could do this, she thought as she walked up, up, up. She could make something better than the options laid out before her; she could not only survive but thrive, because she was so damn smart. Her sonic program was brilliant. Father Felix took credit for molding her young mind, but her true teacher had been the Bastian, the other junk kids in the Low Quake, sifting through trash cans for hot pads and helio tape, making their own cyphers from busted-up bits of last decade’s tech. She was better, not despite where she came from, but because of it.

Reiko found her dormitory, a skinny blue-gray stone building with huge turrets, and registered with a friendly older girl who said her name was Agata. Her red hair was styled up on her head like a column of fire, but her clothes were rather strange. Was she poor? Most girls in the Bastian, though their clothes were cheaply made, took fastidious care of them. This girl had giant holes in her shirt. It looked as if she had been mauled by a large animal.

“I love your bag,” said Agata, gesturing to Reiko’s leather suitcase. It had been her grandfather’s, and it was very well made. Grandma had mended it many times with her expert sewing.

“Family heirloom,” said Reiko.

“Good taste,” said Agata, winking. Agata explained how to get to her hall, and that she’d be joined by her roommate shortly, then held out a silver tube, which she said was Reiko’s room key. As she walked away to find her room, Reiko couldn’t shake the feeling that she was about to be stopped, that she had taken another girl’s place by accident, that her scholarship was some kind of mistake. The other kids were busy being moved in by their frantic, overbearing parents, but they seemed nice enough, smiling and nodding at Reiko, a few “hellos” and short introductions over carried couches and rolling suitcases. Everyone else had furniture and things to hang on the walls, cases of vitamin-enriched water, and even flatscreen televisions. Reiko had her two bags and a mobile wallet, the first one she’d ever had, filled with the money from her scholarship. Reiko lay down on the pleasantly firm bed in her own private room. She looked at the creamy white walls, the hardwood floor, the huge, gleaming windows that she could not imagine ever leaking in rain. Reiko pulled out a roster of fascinating-sounding classes, and flyers with hours for the metalworking lab and a tech locker where she could rent equipment. She was a long way from mining junk in the Low Quake, but it was all the same. She’d find the best bits of what was on offer, then reinvent, repurpose, reimagine them into something even better. Reiko recited I am God, and God is me under her breath again, but she was actually praying, not meditating. Dear God, she thought. You are me, and I am you. Please, help me make something larger than myself. She gazed out the window at the lush, opulent city. And help me to never go back to the Bastian again.

*   *   *

THE ONLY SOUR spot for Reiko in that first semester was her randomly assigned roommate, a freshman named Terry. Terry was a mousy Middle waif who looked like a thousand other girls, with her light-brown hair in a little pointed cone. It was in vogue to style your hair as high as possible as a gesture of piety, but Reiko could never be bothered. She let her dark hair hang long and loose around her shoulders, like all the other Bastian girls at home. At first she tried making conversation with Terry, but it never went well. In fact, Terry always seemed slightly shocked to see Reiko enter their shared apartment. Terry would smile very wide, answer Reiko’s questions as quickly as possible (“How was your day?” “Fine.”) before quickly rushing to her bedroom and shutting the door tight.

Reiko had expected her insular roommate to loosen up once the semester got underway, but instead her behavior only grew more secretive. Unmarked boxes were delivered to their door, then quickly hidden away in Terry’s room. Through the thin walls, Reiko could hear the rustling of wrappers and the crunching of their contents, all while Reiko cooked her own food in their little kitchenette. She couldn’t decide if she was being rude or not, as she herself hadn’t been raised in Flesh Martyrdom, but there was a kitchen, and she needed to eat. She tried to do it away from Terry, but the girl seemed to have no hobbies or friends. Other than attending class, she was always home.

Terry’s room started to stink by late autumn. Perhaps she didn’t even know that food had to be thrown away or it would rot. The smell drifted heavily into their common area. Terry would flee the flat anytime Reiko tried to bring up cleaning or the smell. By winter, Terry was vomiting in their shared bathroom many times a day, presumably to get thin enough to see her parents over the holiday. Reiko felt bad for her, even as she scrubbed dried vomit from the tile grout. She’d never seen the food shame of Flesh Martyrdom mess with someone’s head in such an up-front and personal way, but she assumed many young girls suffered similarly. Their tech institute wasn’t religious, but certainly if Terry gained any more weight, she’d be put into counseling, and if she didn’t improve there, be asked to leave school. That was, if her family didn’t take her out of school first. Of course, Reiko didn’t learn any of this from actually talking to Terry—the girl would barely look at her. She researched extensively, as Reiko did with anything she didn’t understand. One day, armed with this new knowledge, she sat down and wrote Terry a long letter. In the letter, she outlined some good resources for help and added a personal note, saying, I know we don’t know each other very well, but if there’s anything I can do to help, my door is open. And if it’s not, you can always knock! :) She pushed the letter under her roommate’s door and waited, feeling rather pleased with herself.

The response came back very quickly.

On the back of her letter, in red ink, it read: GO BACK TO THE GROUND AND DIE, FREE-WAH FLOATER

Reiko left the apartment. As she walked across the quad, she decided to go to her tech locker to work on her newest project: a heliograph that used sunlight to generate images, which, combined with her sonic program, could make something more dynamic than a mere photograph—a