Chapter 2

2

FROM A DISTANCE, THE CITYin the sky appeared as lifeless as the ocean below it.

Beneath the surface was a different story.

Inside stratum-99, the penultimate level of the eco-city, the party had left Kasey Mizuhara marooned at her own kitchen island. As everyone else jumped to the beat, bodies shimmering under the blacklight, Kasey stood behind a facade of drinks and cups, watching like one might watch animals at a zoo, except she didn’t feel quite human. Alien was more like it. Or ghost.

About time. Kasey had missed her invisibility. She’d been recognized twice in the last week alone, and when the first wave of partiers had logged in, she’d almost logged out.

But the universe had a way of balancing itself. Within fifteen minutes, a group of Kasey’s classmates mistook her for the hired bartender. Then, while Kasey was winging the mixed drinks, Meridian messaged to say she could no longer make it. That’s fine, Kasey sent back. Better than fine, actually, that the mastermind of Kasey’s so-called “moving on” party wasn’t present for it. Because no one was here for Kasey, to her great relief.

To her equally great consternation, everyone was here for her sister, Celia.

Case in point: “Fifty bytes she shows up tonight,” a girl on the dance floor said to her partner, her words captioned in Kasey’s mind’s eye thanks to her Intraface. The most portable computer yet, the Intraface was an interface within the brain capable of capturing memories, transmitting thought-to-speech messages, and—in this instance—lip-reading sentiments Kasey found ludicrous but forgivable. Crashing her own party would be a Celia thing to do. She’d show up fashionably late, bedecked in sequins, and everyone would stare, the fear of missing out on a laugh, a kiss, a whispered confidence written over their faces.

Even then, they missed things.

Like the way Celia never failed to find Kasey among a crowd.

The way Celia found her now.

A pulse went through Kasey. She tore her gaze from the sea of bobbing heads and focused on the city she was modeling out of cups. It was the lights. The music. Too dark, too loud, messing with her senses. Withdrawing inward, she tended to the slew of log-in requests cluttering her mind’s eye. ACCEPT GUEST. ACCEPT GUEST. ACCEPT GUEST. More people appeared on the dance floor. None, however, could outclass her sister, and Celia was still there when Kasey dared another glance. She was dancing with a boy. Their gazes met, and Celia lifted her perfectly lasered brow as if to say: This one’s a catch. Want to try your luck, love?

Kasey tried to shake her head. Couldn’t. Was transfixed as her sister abandoned the boy and slipped through the partiers with ease. She joined Kasey by the island, dispersing the group that was blowing rings of hallucinogenic smoke in Kasey’s direction.

The smoke cleared.

Celia disappeared.

In her place was a girl with electric-blue hair and Newton’s cradles for earrings. Gimmicky, Celia would have said, whereas Kasey might have actually found the earrings pretty cool if her mind hadn’t flatlined, deleting all opinions, fashion or other-wise, her heart racing 100 bpm as the girl seized a cup and filled it. “Quick, talk to me.”

Was she still hallucinating? “Me?” Kasey asked, checking to see that the kitchen island had, in fact, been deserted.

“Yes, you,” said the girl, prompting Kasey’s Intraface to launch SILVERTONGUE, a conversation aid recommended by Celia. It’ll make things easier, her sister had promised.

Mostly, its rapid-fire tips just made Kasey dizzy. She blinked, popping the bubbles lathering her vision. “Talk to you about…?”

“Anything.”

Insufficient parameters. Annoyed, Kasey surveyed her surroundings for inspiration. “The entire human population fits into a one cubic kilometer cube?” The fact came out sounding like a question; she corrected her inflection. “The entire human population fits into a one cubic kilometer cube.”

“REPETITION DETECTED!” chimed SILVERTONGUE in disapproval.

“Really?” said the girl, peering at the dance floor over the rim of her cup. “Go on.”

“About the homo sapiens volume?”

The girl laughed, as if Kasey had told a joke. Had she? Jokes were good. Humor was a core trait on the Coles Humanness Scale. It was just … Kasey hadn’t been expecting laughter as a reaction. This wasn’t going well, by standards of an experiment. She had half a mind to ask the girl what was so funny, but was outpaced by the conversation.

“Thanks a million,” said the girl, looking away from the dance floor and finally facing Kasey. “Some people can’t take a ‘not interested’ hint to save their life. So, you here to see her too?”

Questions were straightforward. Questions, Kasey could handle, especially when she knew the anticipated answer. “Her?” she asked, only because she didn’t want to encourage it.

She waited for Celia’s name. Braced herself for it.

“Yeah, Kasey? Party host?” The girl nodded at the city Kasey had built out of cups when she failed to reply. “Guessing you aren’t here to mingle. Gets old fast, once you get over how real it feels. The younger sister, though…”

Don’t ask.Nothing good could come of it.

“What about her?” Kasey asked, caving to her curiosity.

“I don’t know.” The girl sipped her drink, eyes veiled. “That’s the lure, isn’t it? One minute, she’s dodging the press. The next, she’s e-viting everyone within a twenty-stratum radius to her party. The disconnect is disturbing, don’t you think? Like, I have a sister too, and I don’t know what I’d do if she went missing.” A new song came on, heavy on the delta-synth. “But sure as hell wouldn’t be jamming it up to Zika Tu.”

Fair. All solid points. “Maybe it’s her moving-on party,” Kasey offered, rather wishing now Meridian hadn’t flaked. Meridian would’ve been able to explain, in the same way she’d explained to Kasey, why this party made perfect sense, for reasons Kasey was blanking on.

Oh well. She’d tried. She added another cup to her city—and almost knocked the whole thing over when the girl said, “Hard to move on when they still haven’t found a body. Too morbid?” she asked as Kasey steadied her model. One cup rolled out of her reach. The girl caught it. “Sorry.” She placed the cup atop two others, where it wobbled. Kasey fixed it. “I keep forgetting it’s different here. Where I’m from, bodies are every … okay, yeah, I’ll stop.” She bobbed her drink at Kasey. “That’s me for you. Yvone, queen of gaffes.”

Silence followed.

The girl was waiting, Kasey realized after a delay, for Kasey to introduce herself as well.

Was it too late to come clean about her identity? Probably. “Meridian.”

“Sorry?”

“Meridian.” How did people talk at parties? Did people talk at parties? Why couldn’t this girl have ordered a drink like everyone else and been on her merry way? “Meridian,” Kasey repeated as the music turned up.

“What?”

“Meridian.”Was it condescending to spell out a name? Or overkill, when the name was as long as Meridian? She should’ve picked something shorter, in hindsight. “M-E-R—”

“Wait, I got it.” The girl blinked at Kasey three times, causing Kasey’s Intraface to emit a cheery little ding as it projected Kasey’s ID over her head.

MIZUHARA, KASEY

Rank: 2

Crap.

Kasey canceled the projection, then checked to see if anyone had noticed. Outside, in streets, schools, shops, or any public domain, rank was auto-displayed, the number over your head dogging you wherever you went. Private domains were the only respite. As such, it was considered bad form to swagger around with your rank when it wasn’t required.

It was also bad form to lie about your name.

“You’re…” A frown spread across Yvone’s face. “Celia’s…”

Abort.The LOG OUT screen, already up on Kasey’s Intraface, was just a CONFIRM button away when something clapped onto her shoulder.

A hand.

“Kasey?”

She turned—

—and knew, the second she saw the boy, that he was one of Celia’s. Tristan, his name must have been. Or Dmitri. One of the two.

Which?

“Kasey,” repeated Tristan/Dmitri, blinking as if he didn’t quite believe his eyes. Behind him, the crowd danced on. Kasey would’ve given anything to be in the thick of it right now. “Thank Joules. I’ve been trying to reach you for months.”

As had everyone else. Spam and malware had flooded her Intraface. All unknown contacts, she’d had to filter out.

“I need to know if it was my fault,” Tristan/Dmitri said, voice rising when Kasey shook her head. “I need to know!”

Yvone’s gaze darted between the two of them, sponging up the exchange.

“I can’t sleep at night.” Tristan/Dmitri’s chest heaved. He took a wet-sounding breath. Kasey’s mouth was dry as dust. “Haven’t been able to, ever since … I thought we were cool, after the breakup, I thought—but now I wonder—was it something I said? Something I did?”

Dmitri, Kasey wanted to say; she did, after all, have a fifty-fifty chance at guessing right. It’s not your fault. Not anyone’s fault. Sometimes there were no answers. No cause and effect, no perpetrators and victims. Only accidents.

But those weren’t the words of a loving sister, Kasey knew. Just didn’t know how to act like one. A loving sister wouldn’t let statistics guide her decisions. Tristan or Dmitri? Wouldn’t be throwing a party without knowing why, motive left open to interpretation. Tristan or Dmitri?

How could she be okay with fifty-fifty?

How could she be okay when no one else was?

The bass gobbled up Kasey’s heartbeat. Her chest felt weak. She fumbled for the kitchen island behind her, clutching it like the rim of a pool. “Hey, buddy,” she heard Yvone saying to Tristan/Dmitri, her voice murky as if buffered by water. “You’ve got the wrong person.”

“I saw her ID just now.”

“Well, you saw wrong.”

It was nice of Yvone to cover for Kasey. Kasey should have thanked her. Celia would have, not that she’d ever be in Kasey’s situation, but if, hypothetically.

Celia would have done a thousand things differently from Kasey, who pressed CONFIRM LOG OUT.

The kitchen island vanished. The dance floor, the lights, the drinks and cups, consumables that would turn into carbon emissions at the end of their life cycles if they existed, disappeared, only ever strings of code. Over in the virtual domain, the party went on for everyone still logged in. No one would miss Kasey.

Just as well.

Kasey opened her eyes to the blue-dark of her stasis pod. Its sarcophagus-like interior glowed faintly with data arrays transmitted from her Intraface’s biomonitor app, which tracked her vitals whenever she holo-ed. Her heartbeat, while high, fell within the normal range. Her peripheral vision displayed the time—00:15—and the current number of residents still traversing the eco-city as holographic versions of themselves: 36.2%.

Holoing, as it was called, was less of a green alternative and more of a last resort. To live sustainably, people had to live less. Conduct nonessential activities (“essentials” being eating, sleeping, and exercising) in the holographic mode. Fine-dine and jet-set virtually, without trace or footprint. Reduce transportation needs and shrink infrastructure, energy and materials conserved. Concede these things and only then could architects build eco-friendly cities in the skies, safe from rising sea levels. The trade-offs were worth it, in Kasey’s opinion. A minority one. Most people rejected living like bento-packed vegetables—be it for their own good or the planet’s—and stayed in their land-bound territories. The weather was more extreme, yes, but sufferable. The arctic melt, while lamentable, didn’t affect them like it did island and coastal populations.

But the wildfires did. The hurricanes and monsoons. Earthquakes rose in magnitude, exacerbated by decades of deep-crust mining. Natural disasters catalyzed man-made ones: chemical factories and fission plants compromised, meltdowns disseminating radioaxons, nanoparticles, and microcinogens across the land and sea. Global opinion flipped overnight. Eco-cities came to be viewed as utopias, so removed from disaster epicenters. And holoing from one’s stasis pod, once seen as restrictive, came to represent freedom and safety. Why experience something in real life when real life had become so volatile?

Why?Kasey wondered now to her sister, even though she knew. Boundaries existed so that Celia could push them. Nothing was off-limits, no trouble too deep. Her sister was alive in a world increasingly removed from life. It was why people found it difficult to cope with the news of her disappearance, with some going as far as to straight-up deny it.

Fifty bytes she shows up tonight.

Others grieved.

I have a sister too.

Still others blamed themselves.

I need to know if it was my fault.

This, Kasey found to be the most nonsensical reaction of all. Her sister was gone. No amount of lost sleep could reverse that. Guilt was irrelevant. Irrational.

Kasey wished she felt less of it.