Geoff Ryman - Air (or Have Not Have)

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e-mail from: Lieutenant Chung Lung

20 November

Mother,

It pains me to write to you like this, but I feel I must point out that the things you put on your machine are open to the world. Sezen Ozdemir recalls my grandfather's murder. There are people here who misread the site as being full of backsliding minority nationalism. I urge you to have a care and to be less of a wild woman.

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audio file from: Mrs Chung Mae

20 November

Son, it pains me to write to you like this, but I am not entirely cut off like a thread from the world and news does reach me. You married and did not invite me or even tell me. I would have understood that you could not have your mother there, and that only your father would be invited. If only you had explained, I am adult enough to understand. You chose not to tell me at all. I am open before the world, you are hidden even within the family. So, is that the difference between good and wild behaviour? So go fuck yourself. Is that wild woman enough for you? By the way, all my mail is private, unless you have been using army decoders to read it. Have you? Are you a spy as well? Tell your army friends that they will find a world they cannot control, and that I am glad that they are all asleep.

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audio file from: Mrs Chung Mae

28 November

Bugsy, you are the only one who can help us. Bugsy, we have over five hundred orders for the collar. We make our embroidery special, we cannot make five hundred collars, not at special deal price. We were very foolish not to think of this and apologize humbly for causing our good family friend such difficulties. It is not our way to make native designs by machine, it is not what our business is for. What can we do? Also, why is your name Bugsy?

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audio file from: bugs@nouvelles

28 November

First things first. Bugsy is a gangster's name and people call me that as a joke, because they say I remind them of a gangster. Second, I attach info about a machine that embroiders to order. Yes, it's a machine, but listen, you give it the ID files of your guests, and it will weave their names and or a message into the collar. It won't be handmade, but it will still be special, and the design will still say a Circle of friends.

Now, on the distribution. I've talked to the store, and hey, live the changes! Nouvelles is now a distribution centre. What you do is send all the collars once to us and we'll send them out. But. We need our own customer's barcode on each one to be read and shipped. Attached is a file with all the customers with our barcode details for each. If you can get the machine I suggest, it will also weave in the barcode in the back of the collar just where we need it. Now listen up. If you get the machine, it's so smart that you will be able to do individual things for your customers. Customize! Live that change! You're in business, not a museum. Don't apologize for not making everything by hand. Love the new screens.

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audio file from: Chung Mae

29 November

Bugsy-ma'am, I will not lie, I need a friend. Kwan has been better to me than a mother would be. But even a mother can tire. My business is in her barn, and she lets me live with her. There are people in the village who want to stop the future, and so they tried to stop me. They stopped me with the truth. They told my husband I was in love with another man. It was true. And so I became a fallen woman, and only my little tribe of women will talk to me. They suffer too, especially brave Shen Suloi. It was her husband who tried to stop us, and who told my husband about me. Mrs Shen is Eloi and is loyal to me because I show the traditions of her people to the world. She believes that the soul of her people is growing in the world through me. Her husband is Chinese and does not understand.

Many of the husbands think this thing with all the women is strange. So Shen Suloi and I work and laugh and help each other and there are things we cannot say. We all have to put our feelings in little boxes in this village, or we would end up killing each other. Kwan tells me I should go out. I do not have the heart. People treat me like I am a ghost. They try to walk through me. All I try to do is help them, but they are so suspicious now and fear even to be seen with me. So I stay in and talk to the machine. I am lost to the machine, I spend all my time on it.

I am trying to find out about the Gates Format, I am trying to find out about the Air before it kills me. I can see why the UN Format was tried, but I agree with those who want the Gates opened. UN imitates the machine, the Gates open like our own heads. Also, I have personal reason that I will not unburden to you, to hate the UN Format. I am become its opponent. Can you help me by telling your powerful friends that those who are as dependent on you as children, should at least be asked what we want done to our heads? The Test killed people in Kizuldah. Can you please get them to understand that we are real, that we are here? We are frightened, and ignorant, and we are trying to catch up. I hope opening the door to all this misery does not lose me friendship.

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audio file from: bugs@nouvelles

30 November

Every time you write me, I wonder what have we done to the world. Three billion of us live in a world with lights, cameras, action; the other four billion can't get clean water, let alone bandwidth. There are times when I want to do an article: 'Mae's Story.' Then I think what a nasty thing to do, turn a friend into copy. But Mae, you got me jumping, wanting to tell people: 'Look, look over there, look what you've forgotten.' But what I want to show them is too big. I can't do it, only you could. Only you could tell them. If it's not too much to ask, could you do a talk about your life and let me magpie it? Bugsy.

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audio file from: Mrs Chung Mae

1 December

Listen Western woman all painted in finery, we survived the Japanese, who at least look human. We survived a war of liberation that cut off our men's heads and left them in a row by the roadside. We survived childbirth, disease, joints, worms, hunger, winter winds, drought, the Red Guards who ate everything, the guerrillas who made us pay them tax, as well as the government. We ate rotten seed rice, we boiled up grass, we pulled out our own teeth, sewed up our own wounds with thread. Do you really think you can obliterate us with your lights cameras action, your shows, your wires? We who are rooted in the earth like trees? Who do you really think is stronger? Who will be dead in one hundred years, you or us? I hope you die like vermin, all of you.

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audio file from: Mrs Chung Mae

1 December

Bugsy, that last mail was not from me. I heard it with horror. But I see I must explain at last. I said that the Air Test killed. The Air Test killed my neighbour Mrs Tung who was ninety. I saw her every day and I loved her, for she was kind and gentle and was my teacher from earliest days. She always saw something special in me because she loved pretty things and I was good at making things pretty. We talked every day, as if I had a good angel of a mother. When the Air Test came, she was visiting me. We were all in panic and in terror, and the shock killed my friend, my dear Old Mrs Tung, and I called her, called her, and the mail put me inside her, and I died with her, and when I woke up she was copied inside me. At first it was like having a well-wisher inside my soul. But it is not wholesome, and she has curdled like goat's milk into hatred. She wants a separate life. I have been studied. I have been told such a thing could not happen if Air came by the open Gates; that is why I hate the UN Format, why I study it, why I try to find ways to undo it. It turned my beautiful friend into a monster. It turned me into someone who can be surprised by a dragon erupting out of her own mouth. The past talks out of me, instead of the future. I am fighting for the future, she fights for restoration of the past. Please, please, do not think I am mad, sick in the head. If you do not believe me, talk to Yeshiboz Sistemlar in Yeshibozkent. They did the study on me. Beware, for that place does things that would be illegal in the West. But Satan sometimes tells the truth, while goodness hides itself in soft lies. It was not me who said those things.