Itoh, Project - Harmony

I want to dance on the graves of those kind, healthy people.

A waltz, I think.

A nonexistent Miach looked back at us over her shoulder.

Miach Mihie. Miach Mihie. Miach Mihie.

We passed by volunteers handing out artificial protein soup to political refugees in the airport lobby and took the elevator down to the floor where the subways connected to the airport. On my way down, I had the sudden sensation that Miach was standing right behind me, and I had to turn and look, but it was only Cian.

“You going home?” she asked me as we waited on the subway platform. The platform had been painted an inoffensive sea blue.

I shook my head. “I’ll look for a hotel or find someplace to crash. There’s nothing for me at home.”

“I wouldn’t say that. Everyone wants to hear your stories, you know.”

“Who’s everyone?” I chuckled and shook my head. “Actually, I did get a message from one of the neighbors saying they wanted to throw a welcome home party. They were going to call everyone for two blocks around and be here waiting when my PassengerBird landed. Can you imagine? No thanks. That’s the last thing I need. Especially since my mom was so enthusiastic about the idea.”

“Why not let them have their party? It could be fun.”

“I have nothing to talk to them about.”

“What are you saying? You could tell them about the Sahara, or where you were before that—Colombia, was it? You’ve been to so many places and seen so many things, Tuan.”

Yeah, I could tell them stories. Like the one about the child soldiers drugged up and made to shoot their own parents and siblings for target practice. Or the bloody severed arms and legs piled up in heaps like firewood. Hardly anyone who bought into the admedistration’s protected life had the faintest clue about the realities of war. They were far too busy being nice to everyone in their immediate vicinity to care. Cian was as ignorant as any of them. Ignorant and innocent. Nothing had changed in that regard.

“And I think they’d want to hear about what you’ve been doing,” Cian was saying.

“I’m just not interested.” I sighed for effect. “Cian, you volunteering at all?”

“A little. Three days a week. Delivering meals and taking care of the elderly, that sort of thing.”

“Morality sessions and health conferences?”

“Online, yeah. About fifteen hours a month. It’s not too bad.”

What was this? One of my friends, a girl who couldn’t stand this world, who tried to kill herself just to leave a mark on its perfect face, had conformed completely to a typical, publicly correct lifestyle.

Or maybe it was less personal. Maybe it was just that kids grew up and became adults.

Miach’s ghost hovered nearby, a cold smile on her lips as she whispered.

This body, these tits, this ass, this uterus. These are mine.

Aren’t they?

So after our failure, Cian had taken the plunge headfirst into the adult world. The only one dragging her heels was me, and I couldn’t decide whether that was admirable or pitiable.

I hung, suspended in space, somewhere between Miach Mihie’s ghost and Cian Reikado’s innocence.

“Look, Cian, I’ve been overseas a long time, right? So I just don’t know the people who live around my home. I haven’t volunteered with them or gone to health meetings with them. I’m just not very connected to the community.”

I explained to her that being a globe-trotting Helix agent meant:

Because we lacked a conclave to assess us, the admedistration awarded us an arbitrary SA score in order to account for the inconsistency that resulted from doing something very important to the continuation of the admedistration’s lifestyle while, by necessity, being forced to operate independently of that admedistration.

“Oh. Really?”

“Really.”

As I was explaining my life to Cian, I couldn’t help but feeling that I had somehow become Miach. Miach explaining how to use a medcare unit to make a chemical weapon capable of killing fifty thousand people. Miach who could make a pill that would shut down your entire digestive tract.

Miach who could wear a cool smile as she told you she wanted to watch the world burn.

I felt like she must have back then, filled with knowledge no one else had, talking openly, brazenly, full of confidence, fearing nothing, giving every word a declaration.

Hey, Cian, did you know that if you install DummyMe, you can spoof your physical data before it gets sent to the server? Hey, Cian, did you know that you can do anything to yourself with DummyMe installed? Hey, Cian, have you heard about this… Hey, Cian… Say, Cian…

But instead of playing Miach’s doppelgänger, I merely smiled cynically and said, “The real reason they give me a score is because if they didn’t, I’d be labeled a sociopath.”

Cian frowned, not understanding. “So you’re not going home?”

“Probably not.”

Cian stepped in front of me. “Then let’s go get something to eat, at least. There’s this new building near where I live. It looks all bumpy and white from the outside, like it was made out of solid plaster. But when you go inside, you can see out. It’s this new intelligent material, a special light-refracting Styrofoam glass.”

“Sounds pleasant. I’m really not in the mood.”

“We could eat, and then you can come over to my house. It’s only eleven o’clock. How about lunch?”

I had an urge to check with the nonexistent Miach. “Want to go with me and Cian to get some lunch?”

I sighed and told her I’d go with her to lunch. Only lunch. I followed after Cian, getting into the first bean-shaped light yellow train that came sliding down the tracks. My WatchMe linked to my credit account, deducting the appropriate rail fee. I was just realizing how long it had been since I rode the subway in Japan when I looked around at the other passengers and felt a sudden fear grip me.

They were all the same. Everyone.

It hadn’t been so blatantly apparent on the battlefield. Working with an international group meant there were a lot of people from a lot of different places and races around all the time, and more than a few of them were indulging on the sly, like me.

That was definitely not the case here.

For the first time, I realized how bizarre a sight the medically standardized Japanese populace presented. The difference between the couple sitting in the seats nearest to me was no more than the difference between mannequin A and mannequin B. Neither was too fat nor too skinny. Every person on the train conformed to a particular body type. Everyone fit within a healthy target margin. I felt like a stranger in a house of mirrors—a country of mirrors.

How had things come to this? How could everyone be the same when simple genetics told us everyone was different?

The more rigid and narrower the goal, the easier it will be for the weak to achieve.

Miach’s phantom again, whispering in my ear. Talking just like she always did when giving us a lecture. I remembered her saying how human will could grow rigid even while it succumbed to temptation.

Humans were like a broken meter whose needle swung back and forth between desire and willpower, always all or nothing, never lingering in between. There was no room for moderation. Even a pigeon had a will of its own. Volition just happened to be a good fit for vertebrates, which was why our brains kept it around.

“Is something wrong? Do you feel unwell? Here, take my seat,” a woman offered, seeing the momentary fear caused by social panic flash across my face. My AR told me that she was a politician—a coordinator or commissioner for an admedistration somewhere—though her face looked no different from anyone else’s. She too was well within the margins. A healthy, standardized face. It was a feature—that is, the lack of distinct features—I assumed you would find even more the higher up you got in the chain of command. I remembered everyone at Geneva headquarters looking more or less the same.