Hannu Rajaniemi - The New Voices of Science Fiction

“Bongmong?” you say in Cantonese. It’s one of the few words you can remember—as the days passed, you realized that some of your Cantonese had been taken too, its roots intertwined and excised with your Mandarin.

“(???). (???????),” your mother says, gesturing toward the couch. You and Lillian sit down. A period drama plays on the television. The subtitles go by too fast for you to match sound to symbol; Lillian idly taps away on her phone.

A few moments pass like this, your gaze focused on the television as you see if you can pick up something, anything at all; sometimes, you catch a phrase that jogs something in your memory, but before you can recall what the phrase means, the sound of it and its meaning are already gone.

“(???)!”

Lillian gets up, and you follow suit. The small dining room table has been decked out with all kinds of food: glistening, ruby-red shrimp with caramelized onions; braised fish; stir-fried lotus root with sausage; sautéed vegetables… you wish you could tell your mother how good it looks; instead, you can only flash her a smile and hope she understands.

“(?????????), (?????????),” your mother says.

Lillian digs in, picking up shrimp with her chopsticks; you scold her and remind her of her manners.

“But (??????) said I could go ahead,” Lillian says.

“Still,” you reply. You place some food on your mother’s plate first, then Lillian’s; finally, you set some food on your own plate. Only after your mother’s eaten do you take a bite.

Lillian converses with your mother; her Mandarin sounds a little stilted, starting and stopping, thick with an American accent, but her enthusiasm expresses itself in the vibrant conversation that flows around you. You stay quiet, shrinking into yourself as your mother laughs, as Lillian smiles.

You’re seated between Lillian and your mother; the gap across the table from you is a little too big, spacing the three of you unevenly around the table. As the syllables cascade around you, you swear the spaces between you and your mother, between you and Lillian, grow larger and larger.

After dinner, as your mother washes up the dishes—again, she refuses your help—you and Lillian watch the Spring Gala playing on the television. An invited pop star from the U.S., the only white person on the stage, sings a love ballad in Mandarin. You don’t need to know what she’s saying to tell that she doesn’t have an American accent.

“I bet she bought her Mandarin,” Lillian says. It’s an offhanded comment, but still you try to see if you can detect any disgust in her words.

“Is that so bad?” you ask.

“I don’t know; it just seems a little… (appropriative?), you know?”

You don’t know. Lillian doesn’t know. You were planning on telling her the instant you came home, but you didn’t know how to bring it up. And now… you want to keep your sacrifice a secret, because it’s not about you—it was never about you. But it’s only a matter of time before Lillian finds out.

You don’t know how she’ll react. Will she understand?

Lillian rests her head on your shoulder. You pull her close, your girl who’s grown up so fast. You try to find the words to tell her what you’d do for her, how important it is that she has a good future, how much you love her and want only the best for her.

But all you have is silence.

David Erik Nelson is a science fiction author and essayist. He has written reference articles and textbooks, such as Perspectives on Modern World History: Chernobyl . He builds instruments, as he chronicles in Junkyard Jam Band: DIY Musical Instruments and Noisemakers . His short fiction has been featured in Asimov’s , Fantasy & Science Fiction , StarShipSofa , and such anthologies as The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet , Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded , Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution , and The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 10 .

“In the Sharing Place” deals with the stages of grief in losing the world one has always known.

CHILDREN ARE brought to the Sharing Place because a loved one has died.

You must always use the present perfect tense and passive voice: “A loved one has died.” Not “A loved one is dead,” and never “ this killed a loved one” or “a loved one was killed by that” or even “a loved one died because of the other thing .”

The actual circumstances of the death are inconsequential. They have nothing to do with why children are brought (note the passive voice) to the Sharing Place, nor when they will leave the Sharing Place.

Children are brought to the Sharing Place because a loved one has died and, despite being young, they may very well still suffer Rejection if they fail to process this grief.

And just about the only thing we can do for our children now is help them avoid Rejection.

There are three rules at the Children’s Sharing Place. The first is that a child may leave at any time, provided they attest that they are ready to leave on two separate occasions.

The boy with the long hair that hangs over his eyes does not speak for his first two sessions in group. On the third session the first thing he says is that he is ready to leave.

He shouldn’t even be here, he explains. His father isn’t dead, he insists.

“Augie,” you say, “your father has died.”

Augie does not speak again for the remainder of the session.

The next day, he repeats that he is ready to leave.

You say nothing, because that is the therapeutic protocol. This protocol demands impartiality and discipline: A child who has self-selected to leave will not progress further if forced to stay in the Sharing Place. Worse yet, a non-progressing child could derail the others’ progress.

You remain silent, but the other children attempt to talk sense into him. They Bargain. This is appropriate.

They tell Augie he can’t go, because he just got there, because he hasn’t resolved any of his issues, because he hasn’t Said It yet, hasn’t even started to Say It . They say that if he goes into the Waiting Room now, he’s definitely going to get Rejected. They say that he can go but doesn’t have to: he can still just go back to the dorms and then have dinner and then go to bed and then get up and then go to class and then return to their next session. He doesn’t have to leave, even if he said he wants to leave. Fifty-seven minutes pass this way.

“Our time is almost up for today,” you say.

Augie stands without a word and opens the Waiting Room Door. Beyond the Waiting Room Door is a small waiting room—just a pair of upholstered yellow chairs and a side table with a fan of three magazines. The top magazine is Ranger Rick . You have never been in the waiting room, and so do not know what the other two magazines may be. There is also a potted plant. There must be a draft, because the potted plant nods rhythmically, like the quiet old lady knitting in the rocking chair in Goodnight Moon .

And, of course, there is the other door, the EXIT. The word “EXIT” glows above it in red. It probably isn’t even three long strides from the Waiting Room Door to the EXIT.

Augie steps through the Waiting Room Door and gingerly shuts it behind him. The door latch clicks, then there is the faint sigh of the EXIT door, followed by a big and sudden sound, like an alligator roaring and rolling in a swamp. And then silence.

“Our time is up for today,” you begin to say, but just after you say “time,” Augie’s scream interrupts you. It is a truly agonized scream, loud and long and ragged. It doesn’t end, so much as fade. There is whimpering and crying for a long time after. But this whimpering is quiet, and the other children in the Sharing Place understand your words this time. They file out the main door, back to the dorms and mess hall and everything else down here in their sheltered world.