Imagine being gutted by
a soft, pink feather that explodes into a dark storm that happens to be your
belly and buried beneath that is the ocean, a lollipop that flickers into
tadpole earrings, a hollow leaflet on the cloudiest of floors, a knife
constantly slashing. The tadpole flips on its head but comes tumbling through
all the light and as you beg and beg for it to complete its round, it swallows
itself into your mouth, leaving you dry with hiccups, tree bark, heavy bones
and plaster.
You are alive. You have
forgotten what it is like to be alive.
When the road jumps up
and suffocates your sister Kevi after she warned that it would happen, you half
don’t believe it because the monster doesn’t leave any of her blood. You cannot
blame the rain since The Fast Water happened fifteen years ago and everything
is dry. You go to the market the next day and burp a bubble. It is Sunday and
every Sunday you play hide the creek, so she must be here. She must see
you.
Any moment now and
you’ll both jump inside a single bubble. But Kevi is not here and you have to
find her. She is the only living person you love.
You look for her above
the tents, the lying bargainers, the oak spice sprinkled over the fires no one
is allowed to burn and yet, burns anyway. You get distracted thinking about the
tadpoles and the not-creek, the way you two played in the water before it
became a weapon too. You used to do the same thing with the road, climbing into
its center and giggling when it spat you out. Your mother warned that the road
would develop a taste for your bones and eventually decide to keep you.
You remember Kevi now.
The way her hair gathered like fists, fighting at everything, the brush, what
water you could find, almond oil, your mother’s voice. It isn’t clear how long
you travel in remembering, but the bubble snags on your memory and pops. A dog
barks nearby. You fall fifteen feet onto a cow field, cursing the entire way
home because these are your Sunday shoes and the dung is everywhere.
You do not remember
returning home. You remain dizzy from the fumbling grief of living in a world
where the ones you love no longer exist. Or the one you loved most doesn’t. Or
sorrow is so deep that you hold your breath to pick through what is now, what
was and what isn’t anymore. Your tears turn to sap. You make a map of clouds,
chart a new destination, wind a rope around a balloon, and will it to carry
you.
It does not carry you.
Your bed is covered in dirt and dung and you move to get up, even though you
know you’re spreading the smell everywhere. You eat the last bit of stale bread
with walnut soup, and eventually rock yourself to back to sleep.
The first night you
dream up a road that calls cars into its belly but does not harm little Black
girls. It crash-winds up, down, on the side and secures a sliver into the
OutRealm. Like the dog, it yips at you.
Missing your sister this
much makes an enemy of hugs. Everyone you see asks after her with their eyes
but not their mouths. Your bones ache with missing. No matter how many times
the road decides who belongs in the OutRealm, the ones inside remain quiet.
This is how your parents left. This is how everyone you are close to leaves.
Iya Mori says dimensions
go upturned and even if you grasp the rose bottom surface, the loss will still
be there. A hole of something gone then transmitted into sorrow, earth, dust
but not seed.
You decide that is not
enough. You have lost too many people and your sister was the last person on
earth you loved. Iya Mori does her best by making you porridge and offering you
shelter. She says she will sit with you in the quiet, as long as you remain
hopeful, as long as you let the memories of what life you had with your sister
be enough. As long as you don’t go chasing what is not possible.
You tell her no, thank
you. You’d rather stay in the house that once held eight. By now your dog has
died too. One night, you hear the branches rub against the ruins of the oak
door thinking it’s him, only to be visited by his ghost body.
That is all it takes to
make you turn. You make a plan. You accept a job at the nearest entropy
station, and learn everything you can about the road. You learn that there is a
specific temperature at which it comes most alive. You get your hands on
whatever news of the OutRealm you can.
There isn’t much. The
Jacinthe government doesn’t trust its citizens with information about travel
and you are no scientist. But two things surprise you. Depending on who you
speak with, the reason the road exists range from governmental mistrust and
population control, to hunger for human flesh, to an elaborate plan to save
Jacinthe’s most promising citizens and then, finally, a transmutation
conspiracy.
After you learn about
the quadrant split, you pack a bag and bury it behind the house. You pretend to
forget about your sister and shape some resemblance of a life. You go to town
on Fridays and dance. You study for the Remni exam and apply for a Science Lens
eight months later. You pass.
In the between spaces of
your grief, you practice. You learn about the land of River Snakes. You learn
that the quadrants split because Earth could no longer sustain itself. You
learn High Scientists have a key granting them entry into the OutRealm, even
though they said no one can access it.
It turns out Iya Mori is
a Middle Scientist who studies the vegetation at the edges of the Quadrants.
She teaches you many things, including how to make foot guards that’ll
electrocute anything within 40 feet of you. She helps you build a training
center below ground because you now know how you can travel to the OutRealm and
look for your sister.
You gather the old ocean
with memories of not catastrophe amongst the belongings you dug up and forecast
a story for your temporary leave. Iya Mori helps you by ensuring her sabbatical
lands on the day of your leave. And instead of traveling with her through the
water, you plan to go through memories, except Iya Mori goes missing during her
excursion.
So now, amongst
searching for Kevi, your parents, and the boy you never talk about, Iya Mori is
added to the list. You were Iya’s assistant on paper, so the Council approves
your application to lead the search, reasoning that you knew her and her work
best. You try not to feel resentful but it comes anyway.
Initially, you wanted to travel with her but
you’ve never been underwater. You don’t trust it and we have no idea what your
gifts will do while submerged. It’s safer this way. The trip will take Iya one
month to collect the materials and data needed. She’s built organic cases to
place samples of the minerals in.
The atmosphere rotates at the
same rate Earth is spinning: approximately 12,050 miles per hour at the
equator. Its speed decreases the further north (or south) you go from the
equator and its rotation is effectively zero poles. More oceans are being
pushed to opposite sides.
Iya Mori is skilled and ready. She’s not worried
about the conditions of the water or the impact of the spin speed because she
created a vessel that welcomes and listens, instead of fighting. Iya Mori
specializes in prime meridian and equatorial knowledge.
Iya Mori’s full name is Chitakrahmori Nnemidu
Bonga. She is a pseudo mechanical engineer turned cultural anthropologist who
rope jumps in her spare time. She’s an expert diver. Her favorite smells are
pickled eel, licorice root and a new hybrid plant she mixed called teekrut.
Teekrut is part curry leaf, part guava and part tapioca. It has a full, rich
flavor that turns bitter if left in the pot for too long.
You repeat this when you miss her: It is
impossible for Iya to be lost. It is impossible for Iya to be lost. It is
impossible for Iya to be lost.
This is when you realize you love her, too.
Another love who’s disappeared.
The first time you were
able to travel into another body’s memories you couldn’t figure out how to
leave it. Simulation, as Iya called it, allows you to project your appearance
in one place with the edges of your mind and travel through people using the
center of your brain. Managing appearances is a challenge because you’re not
exactly exciting to be around, but when you aren’t completely inside yourself,
you become the version of you other people like. Iya points out the flaw of
this logic, like she does everything else. For people who already know you, the
newer version of you is suspicious.
You haven’t received a
transmission from Iya Mori in two weeks. You were supposed to meet at the edge
of Tanzania four days ago, in search of Kevi.
Not panicking is hard
work. Before you left, your work performance was slipping. Maybe no one noticed
but the company hasn’t asked about Iya since you’ve been assigned and her
transmitter screen needs to be serviced. You need to find her.
You find your sister
first in a state with no name and you’re shocked by this vision of her: a
flower in her hair, her body pushed by a small child in a swing, her legs
flying in the air, her giggle a high, soft shriek. She looks happy. You realize
in this moment that you have never seen her happy. Not like this.
She doesn’t see you. Not
you, really, just the body of the man whose memories you’ve traveled into. For
a split second, you see recognition in her eyes and then it goes away. She is
dead to you again now, but this time is even worse than before. This double
death has no space for you, only her new life.
You think maybe Iya got
tired of you too. Maybe her disappearance, like Kevi’s and possibly even your
parents and the boy, was purposeful. Maybe they all wanted to leave you. Maybe
the road was an excuse, an elaborate ploy to get you to stop searching, stop
asking, stop hoping.
You stop looking for everyone after that. You
let the hole that’s been in your heart close. You forget all that love and turn
your focus towards everything un-human.
