Page 31 of Coldwire
This is ridiculous. I firmly mute notifications for all messages other than ones from people listed in my contacts. Then I navigate to my directory and find Kieren’s profile.
LIA: u up?
LIA: jk lol, did they get you in yet
I swipe my display closed. He’ll reply in due time. The waterfront is cold, most definitely encoded to be several degrees chillier than the rest of the city, and I resist a shiver, running my hands up and down my arms. I can’t believe I’m here.
Upsie is lit up in every color fathomable to the eye. I walk off the embankment area, crossing the road to the green pedestrian light. Theself-driving vehicles waiting at the red stoplight are all taxis, painted blue to indicate their function. No one spares a second glance my way, which is a relief after that woman’s comment. A tiny dog yaps on the other side of the road. When I pass by, the owner smiles at me, tugging the leash. Most real dogs downcountry are dying out, either from starvation or abandonment. People can’t tell the difference anyway. If they perceive “real life” to be upcountry, then that virtual dog is as real as any flesh and blood kept downcountry.
I reach the main road. Holograms beam down from doorways, harsh and erratic depending on what they’re announcing. I’m looking one way, then another, and it doesn’t matter how weirdly I move because I don’t stick out. Idon’t. My face blends in, my features resemble everyone else’s, and I could bellow out loud in the middle of the road with the incident forgotten in seconds. I’m just a Medan in Medaluo.
“Whoa,” I whisper out loud, looking at my hands. They shimmer back the green of the twenty-four-hour pharmacy, then the pink of the underground train entrance. I don’t drink, but I imagine this is the sensation people are always after, enough warmth unfurling from my stomach that my perception of the world is off-kilter.
Maybe this is all. Maybe this is why I’ve been afflicted with Wakeman Syndrome, stubbornly at odds with the nature of my reality. My eyes track the avatars strolling the streets, the couples ducking under the swooping hologram of a dragon, the friends arm in arm on their way to a bar. I stop dead center in the street, spotting a fast-food chain that Atahua has too, and then that feeling in my stomach suddenly pushes up to my chest, transforming into hot discomfort.
In Atahua, my options are acing military school for a career I can choose, or something middling that shoves me into a miserable existence. In Atahua, I have grown up spending every day trying to be the best, and instead… I could have justexisted.
“Comedy show, miss?”
I jolt. A man with a light-up hat offers me a flyer, and I take it. The moment I scan the first line, I practically have to shove my eyes back into their sockets at the price of the entry ticket.
“Thank you so much,” I say, already walking away. “I’ll consider it.”
I fold the flyer up. Maybe I could have existed upcountry happily in Medaluo, attending comedy shows in a crowd without standing out, but most likely I would have been downcountry, inching closer to a premature death with the next climate disaster or virus that attacked my immune system. No one wants to admit it, but upcountry grew popular early on because the unhoused populations were getting unmanageable. City hubs were impossible to navigate past the slumped bodies and makeshift tents and the smells—and since the government refused to do anything about it, people chose the selfish option, the easy option, the pretty option. They built another world and fled.
My fantasy dissolves, bit by bit, as I continue down the main road. Dad and Mallory adopted me in Atahua, not Medaluo. I am dreaming of a life I would have never been afforded. I should consider myself so lucky that I’ve gained a comfortable home in trade for some bouts of delusion and anxious ailments.
My display screen lights up with a notification.
KIEREN: [hacker voice] I’m in.
I snort.
LIA: eta to the cafe in 20 minutes, walking over
KIEREN: I landed a little farther north. Finding subway now, give me 30.
I send a thumbs-up and keep my display open, letting the map direct me. Lovers’ Café is a ground-level establishment located inside a skyscraperthat’s otherwise used for corporate business. I’m already on Hazel West Road, so it’ll take one more turn before going west for Sky Blue Street.
I pivot on the corner, humming under my breath. It’s then that a small warning triangle notification appears at the bottom of my display, one I’ve never seen before. It must be something only allowed by Medaluo’s server settings. There are plenty of notifications that Atahua bans for privacy.
I open the notification, frowning.
One unfamiliar user has been following for 0.6 miles.
7EIRALE
A self-driving taxi waits outside the helicopter, its rickety doors thrown wide open.
I take a step forward. My knee threatens to buckle, and I pause, suppressing the tremble. The newly fallen night is bleak. Smoky. A shroud of gray hovers over the city on the horizon, a filter swept over the buildings to prevent its lines and lights from taking shape. I almost rub my own eyes, as though that might clear the picture.
“Go on,” Nik prompts from behind me.
The grass brushes a slimy, wet touch on my ankles while I walk. Nik calls a warning about my head when I reach the nine-seater, but I ignore him, hauling myself in without watching for how much space is left between the top of my head and the taxi. I feel it scrape my hair roughly. A light dusting of blue paint flecks follows me into the back, sticking to the pads of my fingertips. I wipe it all off, then swipe my fingers through my hair, twisting it up.
“Can I have a pen?”
Miz follows me into the taxi first. She’s frowning, hauling two bags in with her. “What?”
