Кори Доктороу - Make Shift - Dispatches from the Post-Pandemic Future

“You’re a horrible monster,” said Brishti to him, and to the mekha, no doubt. Daitya . Still the same word she normally used with such joy. Different meaning.

“Brishti. A mekha will never hurt any animal unless the body is used to nourish others. And I would never hurt another person, ever, with my body or that of the mekha. You know that, don’t you?” he asked Brishti as she cried. “Just like the body of god we inhabit, and our bodies, that cheetal’s body is serving a purpose. His body didn’t expire in vain. It goes back to this city, this land. People need to eat. To make clothes and blankets for winter.”

Brishti didn’t acknowledge her father’s words, only begrudgingly snatching the rotis and not the kebabs. He watched her eat through her tears and suppressed a smile. He had lied—he would hurt another person or animal, with his body or that of the mekha, if it meant protecting her. He ate the kebabs as her sniffles died down to a sulk.

In a few years, Brishti would be helping her father target the cheetals during hunting season, and praying over their bodies before their delivery to the village butchers. She would soon deny she had ever refused the kebabs made over the firepits of the city’s bans.

WHEN THEY HAD WANDERED LONG ENOUGH IN SERVICE, THE GIANTS OF KOLKATAreturned to the mekha depots scattered throughout the city. There, the mekhas would periodically gather inside cavernous warehouse garages. Workers in gas masks and HEV suits would examine the giants and provide surgery on them if needed, sparks flying like glowing blood, lubricant oil seeping across the floor like bodily fluids, filling the air with an acrid scent. Their disinfectant tanks would be refilled, their backup batteries charged, their bodies trailing cables like hair.

They would usually spend the night at the depots, when all the mekhar hridaya, all the hearts of the giants, would talk to each other over their radios while lounging in the open chests of their mekhas, smoking weed beedis that twinkled in the shadows. Brishti thought it a beautiful sight, all the giants kneeling and quiet, praying in peace while their hearts chattered. Glowing earrings of worklights hung from their sides, illuminating their freshly polished and stencil-tattooed arms in the gloom of the warehouses. During these visits, Daitya would tense up, always holding Brishti’s hand, telling her not to wander off.

Sometimes the other hearts greeted Brishti over the comms. She was an open secret. They knew about her from the radio chatter in the city, but it was only at the depot they saw her clearly. On these rest stops she would wear one of her father’s lungis like a long skirt, instead of her shorts, along with a t-shirt, and she’d tie her now long hair into a braid. She was welcomed by the tribe. They waved from their mekha’s chests and told her father how lucky he was to have found her, with a hint of envy in their voices. But they were loyal to each other, and no one informed the state that one of their own had broken the rules attached to their greater bodies—namely, that they couldn’t share the mekha with anyone else. Luckily for them, the age of plagues had diminished the surveillance networks of governments, broken by the very cataclysms they’d aided by using their billion eyes to look at the wrong things. In this fragile and healing world, trust had far more value than it had in the collapsing time before the age of plagues.

Since Brishti’s father, like all of his lonesome tribe, was mekhar hridaya, the heart of the mekha, Brishti became affectionately known as mekhar atma, the soul of the mekha. Theirs was the giant with both heart and soul.

SOMETIMES DAITYA WOULD BRING THE MEKHA TO THE CRACKED HIGHWAYS BEYONDNew Town at night, where the dark green lakes of algae farms glistened under the moon. His hands guiding Brishti’s, they would increase the speed of the mekha together. The giant would run down the open road until the inside of its chest was shaking violently, making Brishti laugh, safely strapped into the seat. The packs of wild dogs who wandered the highways would join the race, howling and barking alongside the pumping mechanical legs of this strange beast, which they knew not to get too close to.

The forest flowed, the city ebbed.

The plagues waned like the shadow of the moon, always sure to return.

AS BRISHTI GREW OLDER, AND HER BODY GREW WITH THE YEARS, THE MEKHAstayed the same size, still a giant but less of one to her. She became, more and more, a part of this god’s body, a twin heart and soul to her father, mimicking his moves, absorbing his knowledge of the being that sheltered them. As she grew more confident inside the mekha, her father grew less confident about the future he had bestowed upon her, wondering if he had imprisoned her in the cramped chest of a giant for all her days. She was a teenager, and deserved a life of less solitude than being one of the mekha.

Whenever he brought this up, she would go silent with rage. Later, she would blame him for trying to get rid of her, the only times she could bring him to tears deliberately. But Brishti couldn’t hide the way she looked at the young people in the villages they delivered supplies to. Daitya recognized the longing in her eyes as she watched them play in the distance, or walk up to the mekha’s open mouth to leave offerings. Sometimes they would look up and wave to Brishti. She would wave back but retreat into the chest of the giant with uncharacteristic shyness.

One day, Daitya asked Brishti, “Do you feel like, living with me, that you’re missing out on being with other children?”

She frowned as if this was an absurd question. “I am mekhar atma,” she put a fist to her chest. “My life is here, I don’t need anything else.”

He smiled at her. “I know. But… it’s normal to want to be with others your age.”

She shrugged and looked away, evening light through the panes of the giant’s chest catching the curve of her cheek. “You aren’t with others your age.” He felt these words, sharper than she realized. “I’m not normal . I’m like you. We live to serve the people of the city.”

“You’re a child, Brishti. You shouldn’t have to live to serve—”

Brishti’s head whipped around, eyes wide. “I’m not a child! We are the heart and soul. We are one with god together here, you said,” she said, her voice wobbling.

“Of course you are. Of course we are, I didn’t—”

“You don’t want me to live with you anymore,” she snapped, eyes shining.

“No,” he pleaded. “I could never think of leaving you. But this is not a space for two people to live in. There are opportunities out there.”

“You are mekhar hridaya. You can never leave this body. It’s your home!” Brishti said, shaking her head. “You told me that, you promised. Which means the only solution is for me to leave.”

“I don’t want you to leave. I want you to think of… of a life outside. Outside this giant. I helped build this city, with its forests, these rivers and villages, with this giant. It is not like when I was small, and those without wealth would be doomed to die on the roads, or work for nothing. There are forests to live off, villages to settle and lend your labor to, where you could meet others your age, and grow with them.”

“I will not leave the giant that saved me. The giant won’t abandon me, even if you will, Baba,” she said, not hearing him at all, because she was a teenager, and terrified of losing him.

“Okay, I am sorry,” he said, over and over, and didn’t bring it up again. But he couldn’t forget the look on her face when she looked to other children beyond the shared body of their giant. He couldn’t forget what he had denied himself as a teenager, struggling to survive at the dawn of the age of plagues.