And the placid turquoise river that shines

With the touch of the sun

Carrying the news from coast to coast

And marries the wind, land and sand.

Hush! Listen, a sudden thud, a ripple, a trepidation

The water turned topaz

Turned jade

Turned ruby

Loaded ships with the heavy load

Is outweighed by the water of rotten corpses

Shaving the ground to zero

Signing the dust by translating the wind

Vowels whirled and consonants collided

Syntax of languid language is limping

The zooplanktons and planktons

Are searching for the moral ground of discourse

When a jellyfish caught the nuke and demanded a justification

Dolphins are holding diplomatic discourse

And octopus is busy predicting the course of the water

Water like time, time like water is running and dropping lives

Big whales are dreaming of the festival of sardines, among chaos

Starfish with many stars want to sway and be top on the chart

The slumbering turtling hope of the subterranean bunker

Refuses to comment on the situation

The salt on the wound is soaring

And the sea of hatred is soaring

Feasting seagulls are frolicking with fun

While sardines are running for their lives

The water rushed, gushed and hushed all

Fire of the river, fired the land, fired the sky

Marching silence is punctuated by the marching feet

All are told to abide by and respect The line drawn on the water.

The place is hideous, though. Deep and unlit and choking.

How have I seen it, you ask? I woke up there once. Take a look at me, is it that hard to accept?

It was Angela who taught me about sleeping in the ocean, and that is how it all got started.

We were on a friends’ trip to Cancún. My lover was there, but we’re not together anymore. We split up before the year was over, you’ll see. Angela was married to Kyle at the time. We referred to them, jointly, as AK, like the gun. But they’ve split, too. We’ll get to all that.

Vicki flew in a day after we did and threw a beer bottle at Jackson her first night. The rest of the trip she guessed her punishment was coming, she feared a storm would level the place, blow us all out to sea. A typhoon for a Blue Moon, that was our limerick about it.

Rick and William were there, drunk and sunburned as ever.

As for the saltwater trick, Angela brought it up late on Friday. Two a.m., maybe two-thirty.

We were talking about insomnia, about what we had tried, how long we had suffered. Did we secretly enjoy the sleepless nights, that sort of chat. When Vicki walked up Angela said, ‘What have you two heard about being a wave?’

Vicki and I hurried to say it first: ‘Being a wave?’

‘I haven’t tried it and I don’t believe any of it. But what they say is if you float in warm ocean water, if you really sleep—’

Vicki was nervous already, ‘So you’re not talking about bringing it back to our tub? Like, with buckets?’

‘No, you walk out to the beach. You take off your clothes and then keep walking.’

‘No way. And how can you say some trick for sleeping is to just fall asleep? What am I missing?’

‘I said I don’t think it will do anything. But what I hear is you float on your back, it just sort of—’

I cut in: ‘One of you should try floating on your face.’

Vicki glared hard: ‘Don’t, Wayne.’ She was one of those, just talking about something made her panic.

Angela returned my smile, and I responded, ‘What? She said she doesn’t think it’ll work. Maybe it will if you try it face-down.’

‘I’m serious. Don’t.’

We each checked our phones and read from various accounts: blogs, Medium, Tumblr. Most of the pages were a kind of religious counterculture. One of them read: Your left hand and foot will drift out toward the east, while your right hand and foot will stay in the west. Make sure it’s cloudy or the starlight will drill straight through you. You are immaterial. If a boat shines its light on you, you’re finished.

In the end—if we pulled it off, if we turned to brine—we would be pale smears across dark water. We would have the best night’s sleep in our lives. When our eyes filled with sunrise we would collect ourselves, become whole again. Flesh first, then bone, the opposite of what you would think.

You can still find your things. Despite that it seems you floated off, you will not have gone far.

‘What about the part about burning to death from starlight?’ It was Vicki who mentioned it, though I was going to. What I asked was, ‘And what about the part about drowning?’

‘I’ve said over and over I don’t believe it.’

Vicki was out. And by now it was almost four: too late for Angela and me to try, either. We agreed to wander off some time the next night, the last night of our trip, so long as it was cloudy. After the bar closed, maybe.

No one suggested we bring Kyle or my lover, Gwendolyn.

Did I tell you? Angela let me kiss her the next afternoon. Our mouths tasted of rum and when we were finished she grinned around her straw. Her dimples cut deep and gorgeous. Cut to the bone, for all I knew.

She had huge eyes, and I let myself believe she chose that top with me in mind.

At midnight, when Vicki repeated that she was too frightened to try, I followed Angela past the breakers. We did not sleep much; we mostly kissed and touched in the shallows. At times her laughter was cut short with a wave. You wondered if your unseen, liquid fingers had skimmed into her mouth. I can’t tell you how erotic that was.

We must have nodded off, though, because at once it was daybreak and my torso felt unspooled. Our limbs were dissolved together the same as two flavors of milk, which were adrift on a third, vast, salty flavor.

Warmth from the gathering dawn woke us in time to put our bodies together.

Angela and I were friends already but we kept in better contact now. We sent each other texts which we erased at every step. There was something ghostly about that, as if Kyle had discovered us and the AK went off twice and we kept on talking.

You’ll remember the Iron Wolf spill near Houston; that was the second Tuesday in August. By Sunday the protests had reached the hundreds of thousands, at Exxon’s offices in Irving and Spring, and all along the Texas coast.

Angela texted me the following Wednesday:

you watching this iron wolf thing?

I wrote back:

Ofc

the protestors are talking about hiring boats

give you any ideas?

Not really

it gives me an idea

I did my best to dissuade her. Yet at the same time I wanted her to do it, I wanted to go. We could spend the days on board, making love in time with the ocean, at whatever pace it set. At night we could sleep within the spill, spreading out with the petroleum until we were acres. Square kilometers. They would measure our bodies in nation-sizes.

You know what they do to oil spills right? 

ik they burn them, that’s got nothing to do with us

You told me starlight alone would put holes thru us

yes, and those stars will see us from space, wyatt

from actual space

*wayne sorry baby

She sent an email to the group, then privately asked Vicki to agree, or appear to. She asked that of a few others, too, promising they could back out at any time. It had to look as though we would all make the drive to Galveston, and commission several boats.

Why Vicki? Because she had worked it out already. ‘She was there the first night, in Cancún. A woman knows.’ This by itself was reason for concern. If Vicki knew, everyone knew. But Angela wanted to keep her close.

That night Gwendolyn turned her mouth downward and asked, ‘Did you see this crazy thing from Angela? She has lost her mind.’

‘About a protest? Why’s it crazy?’

‘She’s getting a bunch of us in a boat and we’re heading out there with the marines and the USDA and the spill? Christ, no. I’m not going and you’re not either.’

It wasn’t the marines, it was the Coast Guard. And it wasn’t the USDA, it was the Environmental Protection Agency. But I had other things to correct her on:

‘Actually I am going.’

‘The hell you are.’

‘We’ll be cleaning this up for ten years. It might never get clean.’

‘You sound a lot like her right now.’

‘I mean, you and I got the same email.’

‘What she’s not getting is that Exxon will be sued dead, and they’ll lose every lease in the U.S. There’s a way to handle this without sailing to the middle of some—, some—.’ She stammered a bit, then finished with: ‘Some grease fire.’

We argued until something happened to her eyes. I knew the conversation was going to shift. No: I knew we would shift.

‘I get it, Wayne. She looks great in a wrap. But honey, she’s not going to fuck you no matter how late y’all stay out.’

Like I said, if Vicki knew, word was all around. Gwendolyn was crying in the end. I felt awful and twice asked her to come along.

With such short notice we couldn’t find an excursion boat, though a fishing guide agreed to take us if we paid for a full group. It was twelve hundred for the night and he did not once blink at the terms: leaving at dusk, dropping anchor at the Iron Wolf site. No need for bait. No need for tackle.

He was in his mid-thirties with lean, sun-wrecked legs and a large silver crucifix. He had named his boat Seven Eves; he made constant jokes about soyboys and bailouts and seaside elites. I liked him despite it all, and did not mention that the Texas coast was still a coast. I did not ask who subsidized his rent when his best source of income was parked in a marina.

It did not occur to me that we would drip crude on his deck until we arrived. He was nonchalant: ‘Don’t worry, money washes everything out.’ He told us to go swim, that he’d be fishing with Bill Clinton’s old partners while we did. It was one of those punchlines, you laugh because you don’t get it at first.

Overnight we swam and took the horizons for ourselves. There was a black chasm above us and one just underneath, and there were no ships, no sounds of ships. The water was almost body temperature and I mentioned sensory deprivation a few times, though Angela kept shushing me. The idea of a tank the size and shape of creation made her anxious.

But she did not comment that Seven Eves was drifting further and further off. A hundred yards or more. A speck we’d mostly forgotten.

There was no coast guard, no EPA or activists. No seagulls. No fish, that we could tell. And so much for my idea of photographing other protestors, of sending the image home to Gwendolyn as proof of something.

We had a deep, perfect rest, and when we woke our hands were miles from us. You had to plan ahead if you wanted to put fingers through her hair.

On the drive back I told Angela her mascara was running. Her only response was that she wasn’t wearing any.

If she was concerned, she did not let on. I think she worried less about her body composition and more about my car interior, at least for a while.

We bought towels at a hardware store in Conroe and began wiping dark, thick fluid from our eyes. I thought she looked sexy with black lips but she was intent on keeping them clean. She stayed at it with the rags, but the fluid kept coming forth. It was starting to drench our clothes. She unclasped her necklace, which her grandmother had left her.

‘Don’t let me forget this.’

She put it in the glove compartment with my unpaid utility bills. I tried making a blackmail joke but she didn’t get it. And I thought it was best not to explain.

She asked, ‘How would we even google this?’

‘You mean, this?’ I held up a palm, which was the same shade as coal.

‘Jesus, look at you.’

‘I keep trying not to.’

‘And it’s not like I could just: hey Siri, what’s this black Crisco coming out of my pores?’

Her phone answered: ‘I found this on the web—’ and we cracked up. It was probably the last time laughing for both of us. For good.

‘You don’t suppose?’

‘Suppose what?’

Angela smelled one of the rags and made a face. I knew exactly what she was going to say: ‘It smells like motor oil.’

‘Mine does? Or yours does?’

‘We both do.’

She tried a few searches but was quick to give up.

‘Your phone isn’t working?’

‘I’m not working.’

I nodded: my hands were slick on the steering wheel, and when we stopped at the Valero in Madisonville I could barely open the car door or get my wallet out. I could barely put the transmission in park. We tried playing it down. We said we’d pour ourselves into the tank to get better fuel economy.

But dark humor didn’t work. Everything was already dark, including the taste in our mouths and the heavy sensation of bile in our guts. It was dark crude oil that came forth when we sweat. Came from our tear ducts when we cried.

If Gwendolyn and Kyle had not figured it out yet they would now: the outpouring of 10W-30 was some new sexually-transmitted disease we had concocted and passed to each other, without once making love.

Amen, if we were going to be blamed for it we might as well do it: we stopped in Corsicana for the night (it was a few minutes past three). We had no luggage and no way to answer our calls, which kept coming. Our thumbs slid ineffectively across our phone screens, we could neither answer them nor dial out.

For all we knew we would die in that room, unable to open the door or knock on it, or use the hotel phone.

Our clothes came off in slick, easy gestures. We put towels on the sheets but there was no use. The bed was void-stained in no time.

Angela’s breath tasted of catalytic converter but I did not give a damn. I breathed her in and drank her. I gently bit her. She was three states of matter, then: gas, hydrocarbon, petra.

She spoke more than I would have thought. She was profane. She was propane, too. You found yourself thinking of hell almost constantly.

Vicki and Gwendolyn and Angela stayed in touch with William. With Rick. Whether they were deliberately shutting me out or it only happened like that, who could say?

Jackson was the last to stop taking my calls, which strangers had to place, after I handed them my phone and told them my passcode. And I’d be damned if Kyle and I would start over together. (I was damned as it was.)

I lost my job. No matter. Living alone wouldn’t work out, besides. What was I going to do with the front lock, the fridge? The coin-operated laundry?

What was I going to do with the coins?

I mostly wandered and dug through garbage for food. Don’t act disgusted, none of the trash I ate was as foul as my sulfuric breath.

I hitchhiked to Nebraska, only walking at night, fully covered up. I took rides from men in pickups, anyone who had room for me in his truck bed. My jacket was sodden with sweat-oil, and when I dozed, light petroleum came from the sides of my mouth. It looked like the strangest of mustaches.

I waited during the day, usually sleeping under a bridge or in a highway barn. On a map, my route was almost straight up. North star north. It felt like a pilgrimage.

I haven’t told you what my plan was yet. Only that it was magnificent.

When the miles and poor sleep overcame me, I checked into an emergency room in Wichita. I was certain my organs had turned to crude, yet every scan was inconclusive, starting with the ultrasound of my bladder.

Never mind the results, I was pissing motor oil and had done it in front of the nurses.

‘There is this life hack for insomniacs. You sleep in the ocean and it turns you into ocean. In the morning, if the water is clean, you turn all the way back. But what if the water wasn’t clean?’

The checkout paperwork read likely organ abscess, but I drenched it black by touching it. I was the perfect censor, I could redact any document.

The desk attendant said, ‘Did you talk to them about that?’

‘I tried. They won’t hear it.’

‘That’s not normal, sir.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Let me get someone.’ It was the second time she had offered to.

If I was bent on extermination, I could have just stripped from my clothes and stood oil-side out in the sun. But it was more than that: I wanted a ride. I wanted to be stretched into a thousand-mile shape, to sleep and dream. To stay fully enclosed in metal for a hundred hours.

Suicidal? No. Though whether I woke up again was secondary.

I meant to water-slide the oil pipeline from Steele City to Port Arthur, which was fewer than a hundred miles from Galveston, where this began.

In Corsicana she asked me, ‘How much of your life do you think you’ll just let go?’

I stirred. She was stirring, too. Her question roused both of us. I had fallen asleep to her soft hands, her strong forearms on my chest and arms. My abdomen.

It was a deep-tissue oil massage, in a way. But the deep tissue and the oil were one and the same.

‘What’s that?’

She said, ‘The things you want to do. I don’t know, volunteer at the SPCA. See your kids get married. How much of that do you think you’ll have to let go now?’

‘This isn’t going to kill us. Angela.’

She grinned. I could hear her oils respond to the movement in her face. ‘You forgot my name for a second.’

I had, though I’d never admit it. She reached over and touched my diesel throat.

‘It’s alright. It happens with affairs. Happens all the time.’

‘I’ll take your word for it.’

‘It’s the whole point, actually. Affairs are soul-to-soul. They go right past our names and go straight to the essence.’

I did not consider the distribution hub in Oklahoma, or the refinery in Kansas. So I must have been collected, left in a barrel, hauled, unloaded and poured out, all while dreaming of Angela’s coconut rum and warm lips. Her turbulent mind.

I woke up in that underground Louisiana cave with no chance of sleep anymore. My insomnia was crueler than ever, likely because there was no way to drown or swim or set fire to the place, and no clear way out.

The mind has to wander before it can sleep, and there was no room for wandering here.

Had I not remembered AP Organic Chemistry, what I might have done was name the place Chevronia and install myself as its eternal president. Serve as its listless tyrant. I never let myself mention hell. I did my best not to think of this in religious terms.

Instead I tried reciting the principles of surface tension. Tried listing the conditions which allowed liquids to oppose great forces, including the force of gravity. I tried repeating the adhesion coefficients between petroleum and various surfaces, namely mineral surfaces. I tried some examples of Young’s equation, and used trigonometry to determine contact angles.

The theory escaped me, yet in applied terms I found my fluid hands reaching up, my limbs pushing into tiny apertures in the cave walls. I found myself spreading, breaking apart, splitting into a network of arteries and veins. Of capillaries, really, because that was my only way out, was it not? Capillary action?

Had we conversed at the time, you would have heard one hundred near-silent voices. Had I any willpower at all, it would have been the sum of one hundred separate wills.

I cannot describe what my form was when I reached grade level. Better said: what my forms were. And thank god it was pre-dawn or I would have combusted into a wildfire. One that lived up to its name: vast and truly wild.

Angela, it seemed, did not mind holding out until dawn.

She was sublime. Tall and bulky. She had no face, at least not one the news helicopters could capture on film. Those choppers were a safe distance off, forty feet at least.

While my escape had carved me into scores of nightmarish cubist works, some other force had accumulated her into a single crude oil beast, eight feet in height, with the strength of a rhino.

She was in flames. Yet the way she strode through downtown Fort Worth, you could tell she had no pain at all.

“Circus Sized Man” Sets Himself Ablaze in Texas, Reason for Protest Unclear, read the chyron.

Angela promised me we would turn to waves. Ocean waves, radio waves, I guess it didn’t matter. She had lived up to the oath, good for her.

I had to turn away from the screen, one of a few dozen in that electronics store downtown (I was in New Orleans by then). If I saw her fall to one hand, or saw any anguish in her gait, I would have splashed right there where I stood. I would have been a rorschach pattern on the sidewalk. Not that I wasn’t a rorschach already.What was the last thing she said to me, after we checked out of the Corsicana hotel? It was worth it, baby. Not one of them can touch us now.

He drove closer as he heard music, dancing, and revelry, and then his car broke. The weather was ice cold. He had to walk a bit of distance through the wet mud and the slush and he felt the sticky black snow under his feet. A sharp smell of the carcasses in the sea caught his nostrils till he came to the heavy gates of The Steamer that automatically opened at the touch of his fingers.

He walked ahead. The death odor was still not gone as he pushed through the heavy metallic doorway of the motel. His eyes led to the reception lounge and a brightly lit hallway, and all of a sudden, he felt warm, almost in sweat. He realized the environment was perfectly controlled, so he removed his protection suit and mask. The man at the door gave him a slight bow, relieving him of his heavy apparel. The receptionist, a young lady at the desk, welcomed him with a smile. ‘Mr. Indra Basu!’ she said as if instantly recognizing him as he went through the booking register.

‘I would like to…’ he began hesitantly.

‘Yes, we have arrangements for your night stay in suite number seven on the second floor,’ said the receptionist. When she handed over the keys, she emphasized number seven as his favorite suite. And then he thought that whoever he was, he must have been stinking rich to be able to be welcomed to a place like this. He tried hard to remember what these places were called, but it only added to his confusion. He saw flashes of him and his wife in some such place, but the artificial oxygen and the regulated room temperature made him feel sick. There weren’t many people there at the reception lounge, except the staff dressed in identical suits with badges and aprons. It appeared like a quiet place to retreat to, or even die at, for people often spend their last moments in isolated places. It seemed ironic to him now that places that were built to survive should look like places to die.

‘And your pass, Sir. Today there is a special dance at the club on the rooftop open to all,’ she continued. But he could not remember ever having come to this place. He merely smiled and nodded. He took the keys to the room as another man dressed in a suit, a staff member of the motel, got up to show him to his room.

‘I will go to the club,’ he said hurriedly.

‘I’ll show you the way, Sir,’ the man said, beckoning him to the elevator. The man pressed the switch, opening the door wider as he stepped into the boxed space with mirrors on all sides. He glimpsed himself in the mirror, but it only added to a sense that his life bordered on confusion.

His wife was dead, he thought, but he had not killed her. He could not do that, not even hurt a fly; he could not, he was sure. But how long had she been dead? Not yesterday? And then a thought occurred, and he felt terrible—surely not a year ago? Had he, in his grief and madness, been out of his senses for a year or more? That was not possible, for he saw himself in the mirror, perfectly dressed in an expensive blazer on top of a buttoned-up shirt, paired with matching trousers and loafers, for an evening at the club.

‘Ok, thank you, sir. Have a nice day,’ the motel staff said almost mechanically, taking leave.

The word day hardly made sense, for the thick smog that had covered the sky since the catastrophe had made sunlight disappear for months. Temperatures had fallen to drastic levels. Without the sunlight, most of the flora and fauna in these parts had perished, while the animals were dying of starvation. It was only the pall of the dirty snow and the poisonous dust, even though to him it seemed death, that enigmatic abyss of darkness or silence, seemed a long way away; now was just the slow burn of ambivalence between the poisonous dust and smog.

As Indra entered the club from the rooftop, he heard the strains of old-time Bollywood film music. Amidst the murmur, the clinking of glasses and the dancing lights, he saw well-dressed people like him with deadpan faces. The crowd was full—men and women with half-filled glasses in their hands, couples engrossed in their rehearsed steps, while drinks and food were being served.

‘Ah, Indra, how long?’ asked a rather stout man, making an appearance all of a sudden. The man was much older than him, actually old enough to be his father, with a thick mustache and spectacles, wearing an expensive formal suit. He had a bulky body and a large face, which made his personality all the more imposing. ‘Staying over today?’ he asked. ‘Surely…’. He had not finished the sentence, but Indra nodded.

The man patted him on the back, and they were in the lounge at a corner table. As they sat, the man called a server, who seemed to know both of them, and ordered drinks for both.

‘Surely these are extraordinary times! First the swarm, the catastrophe, the starvation,’ and then he gave a flourish with his hands like the conductor of a classical concerto and said, ‘All’s well that ends well, the happy ending that you can have, the election. Finally, the government is in place, just like we are in the club, doing nothing actually. Must we say then that now is the Great Hibernation?’ and he winked at him like they were old pals who cracked jokes.

But the music was getting too loud, and their conversation drowned out, so he could not hear a thing except that the man said, ‘The war’s over, I say.’

He vacantly looked towards the crowd dancing, not able to find any meaning in the exercised moves. He saw a lady waving at him in the distance. She looked elegant in a blue gown wrapped around her waist like a lehenga, with her hair tied back. She was young and had a quiet prettiness about her rather than the stunning beauty he remembered of his wife, and now she was moving towards them.

‘How did you manage this far? I thought you would not make it, Indra,’ she exclaimed. Then under her breath, he heard her mutter about his companion warily, ‘Oh, this man’s all over the place.’ He understood then that this lady and the man also knew each another, but disliked each other intensely. The man’s smile was gone as he glanced at her. ‘Excuse me for a moment, Indra,’ the man said and immediately left. The lady took the man’s seat, and he garnered her name was Ira.

‘What was Stoker talking about?’ she asked, and he guessed she meant that man who had accompanied him previously.

‘Well, nothing, just about the war being over, and then he left, and you came,’ he said as though she was already familiar to him.

‘I know it would not make much sense now, but he has made a fortune in the war, and well, his money stinks. Of course, I need not lie. At the time of the war, I survived because of him, and even now, our contract has not ended. But it stinks, you know and I hate myself.’

She moved closer to him and then went on, ‘When you came back from the war, you could not remember anything, nor recognize anyone. If it had not been for her… I mean your wife, and for this, I should be grateful to her.’

So, it was that he had lost his mind after the war. Perhaps he had not fully gotten better after all, he thought resignedly.

Ira advanced her delicate hands towards him. ‘Let us move to Seven like old times. It’s quieter there,’ she almost whispered, and he felt he knew her. He didn’t know why he felt compelled to follow her. Her body, her fragrance—had he at one time…? No, he had never loved her; he knew that for sure. The heart can never lie, even if the memory is gone.

He left the club and followed Ira through what he thought were staff bunkers, with the oxygen generators, water purifiers, and stacks of wine and food. Men like shadows, with scalded hair, skin diseased, the kind who couldn’t, in their lifetime, afford one protective suit, even if they worked day and night all their lives. They kept this place going, and he saw their sad eyes, sensed their eyes on him, but it was strange that he had never noticed these people. To him, they all looked alike. And then even if men were cheap, he wondered where the power for running this place was coming from, how they had somehow managed that.

Seven seemed like an expensive executive suite at the motel. He noticed there was a large old-fashioned bed with silken sheets, a stack of books, a closet of expensive suits, and a mini wine cellar. From the windows, one could see the black sea rolling through the dark sky, and he closed the curtains. He thought he might have once been in such a place, injured and sick as Ira had said he was, and she had nursed his wounds and healed him, his wife. Was that it? Perhaps this was a place where a man and woman could begin anew after the war even though he was now alone.

Ira sat on the sofa at the bedside as he stood by the window. Without memory, language seemed extinct to him, even though Ira seemed never to be at a loss for speech. Perhaps it was some kind of nervousness about never forgetting anything that was about her.

‘Remember when we were young and the sun shone every day? We did not bother about that, of course. And in the spring, when we read together and had phones, we called each other and left messages. Now I can tell you that in a hundred years, we will wait just like that.’ He felt a terrible pain in his head that made him dizzy. He could never have loved her, that was not possible. But she went on. ‘And we read Romeo and Juliet. Then another day, we read Chandrasekhar and then Eurydice and Orpheus. We swam together that day into the sea, and you kept your word, but I came back. I was selfish, or just young and frightened, so I called the boats.’ Perhaps he had drowned himself to keep his word, he thought. Keeping his word had meant more to him then, maybe, for he was not a coward after all. ‘Did you ever hate me for that Indra?’ she asked suddenly. He had no answer for what she said made little sense in this world.

As she continued, her voice sounded slightly disturbed and less melancholic, ‘What is the use of living like this, Indra, surviving like an animal? Sometimes it gets so bad, and my lungs, the pain… to be able to bear it. I cannot wait any longer, not with the water thick with filth, the corpses, and the stench. It is the squalls of fire that were started by the bombing, and it may finally be many more months before the light comes. I’d prefer to die soon like the birds and the animals.’ He thought she wanted him to say something, like I cannot let you die. But it appeared too dramatic in this world—almost absurd and comical.

‘When the war began, I thought I must live,’ Ira was still saying. ‘What I did, only to live: sold everything, even my soul. What do women do to live during a war? But to think that now that it is over, I do not feel like waking up with this darkness and the smoke killing my lungs.’

He walked up to the sofa, where she lay in a posture halfway between sitting and lying down. He found a faint echo of the past in what she said. A woman struggles to keep her head above water during the most difficult time of the war, and when it’s all over, all of a sudden she gives it up. ‘The weather is going to be like this for days, Indra, they say.’ She got up and pulled aside the curtains as they sat around in silence. ‘If only for old time’s sake,’ she asked but he could not remember. The Steamer might have made him understand that just opening a door could lead him to the old world, but between that world and this stood the death of someone that he had not been able to prevent, and that had changed everything. They didn’t talk about his wife. How had she become one with the dying world? He wondered if he had carelessly let her die, if he somehow wanted it or worse was relieved by it. Was there a child between them that never came into the world, who was muffled by the mere threat of a catastrophe?

As Ira came close and embraced him, he felt her trembling and could hear the pounding of her heart. It made him feel that she was almost shaking like a tree in a tropical storm, but he felt paralyzed and remained unmoved. Maybe it was insomnia, but his head was throbbing and he felt a terrible pain. She felt the coldness of his body and withdrew. ‘You have not slept for days,’ she said, pained, as she opened a medicine cabinet beside the big bed and brought out a bottle of pills. She hesitated then, as if she wasn’t sure of giving it to him, that there was some thought passing her mind that was stopping her. But then she slowly slipped the bottle into his palms and he thought if she wanted him dead, he would accept it. He was always willing to obey, as though condemned to take orders. ‘I’m sorry’, he finally managed to say. He slept like a dead man, even a child in its womb; just a couple of colored pills and he couldn’t remember when she was gone.

When he woke, it was still dark. He heard footsteps as though a great many people were going down the unused stairs. He rushed out into a wide corridor and found the lifeless body of Ira being taken down in a glass box by the shadowy men who worked in the bunkers. It seemed she was asleep and would wake at any moment, except that she was now dressed in a red wedding dress.

His eyes met Stoker’s, who appeared behind these men. ‘She’s dead, Indra’, and there was a slight tremor to his voice, even though his eyes were cold looking ahead.

‘It is the weather,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Even the birds and the animals are drowning themselves in the murky sea, jumping off cliffs, or rushing into the fire. And for women, it is contagious, like an epidemic. They are killing themselves like in an epidemic,’ Stoker said vigorously, shaking his head.

She probably would not have died if he had not come. And again, he was seized by a pang of terrible guilt.

‘I will leave,’ he said.

‘Where, Indra?’

Stoker stood alone, even after everyone had gone. ‘This is the last post that has the remnants of our civilization: clean water, food and a bit of electricity. The land ends here. Everything else is gone. I am a man of science, Indra! I am not dependent on that woman. What’s she called? Ah! Yes, the naughty Lady Luck, for whose favor men clamor. I am a survivor. I have mastered the art of survival, for sure. You can stay here as long as you want; I can do that much for you, young fellow.’

Stoker’s stinking money, he thought, as Ira had said, but he always obeyed orders. He was born to follow them, but the women were not and could set themselves free. When he and Stoker went back to the club, the people were still dancing and laughing. ‘We have to keep it going, Indra, with this place with the lights, and all we have to do is maintain the pretenses, the fun, the dancing, the little games.’

But he thought that he should leave, though it was not by the path that the woman had chosen. He was neither fighting death like Stoker nor was he seduced by it. He desired supreme indifference, like a cruel God, perhaps. In an earlier world, this indifference would have made him an aristocrat. In this world, there was simply one word for it: insanity.

‘There is no place else to go, Son,’ Stoker said. ‘The city is emitting nothing but deathly radiation. Have you forgotten the swarm when we fled the city? Memory is an unpleasant thing, Indra. If I did not have that, I would be the happiest, I suppose; there would be no need for this awful show.’. But he had no memory, past, or future, or so he thought, and he wanted to say what Stoker thought was wrong, but he did not.

He did not know for how many days he had slept. He had lost track of time, but to him, it was the next day when he woke up. Again, he heard the frantic movement of heavy footsteps of too many people outside his suite. Ghostly wails crying from within the Steamer. He was seized by panic. He had an impulse to hide, to become invisible. Still, something drove him out, and he followed the crowd down the stairs. The suspense almost killed him till he came into the lounge. He saw Stoker’s body resting, waiting to be carried in a hearse. All the employees of the motel, indistinguishable in identical suits with their tired heads and starved bodies waited to follow the hearse in what would be a man’s last journey. Some grim, some sobbing it seemed they still waited to bow or nod to Stoker’s orders.

For the first time, it appeared to him he would burst into loud wild sobs. Then, as if on an impulse, he wanted to rush up the stairs but felt weak, so he took the elevator, and his eyes fell on the mirror. It was not him anymore; it was someone older. His eyes were sunk, his face was hollow, and his skin wrinkled. But it did not frighten him, and he took it in with a calm acceptance, like inviting dusk at the end of day. He did not know how long he was in his suite. In fact, he could not even remember how long he had stayed on the Steamer. But when he opened the window, the sky looked familiar, and there was a bit of light and warmth, and it felt like an evening in the old world.

He had forgotten the woman he loved, whom he thought to be his wife. In the future, the scientists would explain the swarm, the catastrophe, and the hibernation that would have nothing to do with him, Ira or Stoker but that didn’t matter. Outside, the narrow track to the beach was piled with bones of long rotten carcasses that had become as hard as rocks. He stumbled on them when he came close to the water, which was clear. The filth had drifted away somewhat.

I must be back, he thought, but he could not find any place or reason to go, so he stood there under the sky with a splash of red-orange, the water touching his feet.

All around her, in the little park next to Merdeka Close, kids were playing in the sun, while the smart set of KL City were jogging, lounging or walking their dogs. The stately, ancient trees spread their leaves over this tiny patch of greenery, doing their best to shut out the traffic noise from nearby South Seas Plaza.

This was the district where all the media production houses of KL City clustered. It was a Sunday, but Yonanna was working. She was a sound engineer, and this thirty-minute lunchbreak was her only time to spend outside the dark and cramped sound-booth where she worked all day, adding tracks to image-builds, ad-campaign spots and viral videos for her boss’s corporate clients. She sighed. She could have eaten her lunch in the employees’ canteen, but she liked being out in the fresh air where she didn’t have to make conversation. And because this neighbourhood was KL City’s very modest tinsel town, sometimes she got to see hot, well-dressed youngsters hurrying through the park on their way to auditions or shoots.

That reminded her: she unlocked her phone and turned on FriendRetriever. On her screen, a golden dog sat up and begged, then curled up with her nose on her paws. The dog would alert Yonanna if anyone she followed on social media should turn up in real life.

She frowned at her doshirak. She’d have to remember to dump the leftovers before she went back inside, or her boss would complain about the smell. As the only foreigner on the team, she had to be extra careful not to break any rules, spoken or unspoken. She took a bite and sighed, hoping he wouldn’t take it into his head to smell her breath and mutter about filthy foreign habits.

It was a lovely February afternoon, and she couldn’t stay mired in her annoyance for very long. The air was still fresh from the winter rains, but the sun was warm on her back. On days like this, she could afford to put aside the nagging voices in her head and tell herself her decision to come here, to the Southeast Asian country of Melayu, was a good one. Even though none of her friends and family approved.

Her phone pinged. Still eating her lunch, she glanced down at it. Friend approaching! The doggy wagged her tail and pointed with a paw. Yonanna squinted against the midday sun. No, it wasn’t an actor, it was that cute boy, Sid somebody, Sid Chakrapani, that’s the guy. He wasn’t anyone to do with the studios, just some student who’d liked her demo tapes on Sharebox and left a few nice comments. He had a sweet smile, and he always smiled whenever he passed. He never spoke, though. Possibly because she was always dressed in her work clothes: baggy slacks and a t-shirt with a peeling logo of a once-popular MMORPG. Or maybe he didn’t talk to sound engineers. Huh, well, there was always a first time. Might as well risk it.

‘Hi,’ she said, as he went past. ‘Hi, Sid.’

To her excited joy he stopped, turned, and tapped his finger on his earbud, no doubt muting whatever cool track he’d been listening to. ‘Hello, Yonanna.’

She gave a little cry. ‘Oh, you have FriendRetriever too! Why didn’t you ever say hi? I mean, it’s for finding your friends in real life, isn’t it? And I’ve seen you around so many times.’

He gave that shy smile again, and his eyes behind his tinted glasses slid away from her. ‘Yes, I… I did want to talk to you, Yonanna, but I’m not very good at reading facial expressions. I wasn’t sure whether you’d mind.’ He seemed to consider this. ‘Sorry, I should have asked.’

She looked up into his face and made a snap decision. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I don’t have any pressing work to do right now. Have you had lunch?’

‘No, I was on my way to visit a friend.’ He hesitated, then went on, ‘I guess they won’t mind if I’m a little late. I’ll text them. What do you have in mind?’

She put the remains of the doshirak in the trash and said, ‘Great, let’s go to the Freedom Cafe in South Seas Plaza. They have a fab lunchtime buffet. My treat, okay?’

‘Only if you’re sure it’s no trouble.’

‘No trouble at all. I picked up the wrong lunchbox this morning and I was just sitting here cursing myself. You’re the perfect excuse for me to get a proper meal.’

They fell into step, strolling along the brick-lined path. ‘So you’re a sound engineer?’ he asked, as they sidestepped a baby in her carriage. The baby cooed, grabbing at the spots of light that filtered through the leaves.

‘Yeah. I do backing tracks at work, and sound effects for video games on my own time, just to make a little extra. But what I really want is to make my own music.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I have friends who play in a band. The Collapsineers. You’ve heard of them?’

‘Heard of them! They’re big stars!’ She looked at him. ‘You know people in Climate Town?’

He smiled. ‘I live there. I’m a huge fan of Bian Nguyen. The band is the voice of Climate Town. They’re our ambassadors.’

‘Oh, I love Bian! You know her? Is it true she’s from New Orleans?’

‘Yes, I’ve sat in on their rehearsals ever since I was a baby. It’s great fun. Bian once asked me what I thought she looked like and I said, “you’re a music volcano.” She laughed like a mountain shaking.’

Yonanna laughed too. Then she grew serious. ‘But if you live in Climate Town, that means you’re a… a…’

‘Climate refugee? Yeah, second generation, actually. My folks are from Bangladesh. They lost their homes when the Ramdhun Climate Defense Fund took over the Sunderbans in 2016. They got shunted from camp to camp, until Climate Town was set up in 2018 and they were selected to be part of it. I was born there in 2020, so I never saw our homeland.’

‘Oh. That sucks.’ She did the math. ‘So you’re eighteen years old? And still in school?’

‘Yes, I am,’ he smiled. ‘In Climate Town we can learn as long as we want. It’s not like regular school where everyone has to graduate at 15.’

‘That’s kind of old-fashioned, isn’t it? Nowadays everyone rushes through school so they can get a job and pay bills as soon as possible.’

He nodded seriously. ‘Yu Li Wei, she’s our principal, she says it’s because school was broken even in the old times, and no one fixed it. So we learn in a very different way in Climate Town. Most of our teachers are volunteers, and they have regular jobs. They teach us academic stuff, but also about how they work.’ He smiled at her. ‘You could take classes in sound engineering, if you wanted.’

‘Oooh, I couldn’t. I’m no good at talking to people.’ They paused to let a pair of dogs chase a frisbee across the path. The older dog caught the frisbee, then the puppy who was following grabbed it and there was a brief tug of war until the older dog indulgently let go and the puppy ran back with the frisbee, tail wagging furiously. Sid chuckled. Yonanna sighed. ‘My boss says we should learn on the job. That way we can be independent and productive members of society.’ She tapped her chest. ‘No student debt for moi. Under the old ways, I’d still be a prisoner in my father’s house. This is way better.’

‘There’s no student debt in Climate Town. Everyone teaches what they know to anyone who wants to learn.’

‘And you have some high-powered scientists living there, right?’

‘Yes. Cherie Lahiri Wilson, our coordinator, is a former professor from Singapore University. Bian used to be Cherie’s scholar, and she still does climate science when she’s not busy with the band. Bian designed all our foodgardens.’

‘What about you, Sid? What do you want to do when you’re done with learning?’

‘Oh, I’m already doing it. I work with the scientists to make new tech and test it out in the field.’ He pointed ahead. ‘Hey, is that a popup food fest? Does it look good?’

‘It sure does!’ They’d turned a corner and come out onto the side of the park that faced South Seas Plaza. In a small space marked ‘vendor parking’, a group of people had pulled up their vans and were selling various popular local items, cooked fresh on tiny braziers. ‘Oooh, I love street food,’ said Yonanna. ‘You game?’

‘Oh yeah. They have fried rice noodles and coconut curry, I can smell it,’ he said eagerly. ‘Shall we?’

Soon they each had a steaming plate of bihun, with a few sticks of lok-lok kababs on the side. ‘I want apom balik for afters,’ she said, pointing to the crispy white fritters filled with palm syrup and crushed nuts. ‘How about you?’

‘Sure, if I have room. What would you like to drink?’ He paused. ‘They have durian shakes.’

‘Mmm, too heavy. Just longan juice for me.’

She sat and watched over their food as he went to get the drinks. She noted how slow and gentle his gestures were. They spoke of a maturity beyond his years. She wondered what had taught him to take it slow like that. Trauma, no doubt. Climate refugees all lived hard lives, or at least, so she’d heard. She’d never really met one till now, and she had lots of questions. All she knew was that Climate Town had started as a UN-mandated township on the fringes of KL City, designed and run by the scientists who’d created a model of how to convert the world’s cities into sustainable green spaces, but no investors had bought into that vision. Since then, Climate Town had taken in climies from all the island nations of the South Pacific, Asia and the world. Their website had charming little drawings and stories of how their people had lost their homes to landslides and tsunamis and all the many climate fails that were simply routine these days. Charming, but childish.

Her boss often said Climate Town was just a hyped-up slum, a place where liberals spent their guilt-money to promote bullshit green solutions, but her flatmate thought that Climate Town was far too good for the climies and should be turned into a housing estate for middle class homeowners. Yonanna was less inclined to hate them, but she did feel a little jealous of how the climies were able to have cool stuff essentially for free. It made every kid in corporate employment, herself included, look a little foolish.

She was dying to ask Sid about his life in Climate Town, but she didn’t want to seem too pushy on a… first date? Was that what this was? She had to set her thoughts aside as he came back bearing two glasses. He placed them on the bench very carefully, as if they were precious jewels. Then he sat down beside her, she handed him his plate, and a happy silence ensued as they concentrated on putting away the food. Finally she sighed and sat back, replete.

‘What’s it like in Climate Town?’

‘It’s great. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.’

‘Really? Because the world’s supposed to feel sorry for you, which it does with a very bad grace.’

‘What’s to feel sorry for?’

‘You lost everything to climate fails, didn’t you? But people don’t like being reminded of how they’ve fucked up the planet.’ She sighed. ‘Every damn month, I have to do the sound for yet another campaign by Ramdhun Image Builds telling the world that Climate Town sucks. It’s like they’re obsessed.’

‘Oh, that’s because of Rik Nehra, the guy in charge of Ramdhun’s image management. His wife Lila Bintam left him in 2019 and came to Climate Town. She teaches in the school, and her daughter Bilqis is a trauma counsellor to the kids. He didn’t take it well.’

‘Really? I didn’t know that.’

‘Ancient history,’ he smiled. ‘Bilqis was six when she left Singapore, and now she’s twenty-five. Everyone’s forgotten the story.’

‘Tell me something, Sid. When Singapore was destroyed by the Wave of 2023, it was big news, but when Mumbai sank in August 2032, the story was dead by September. Now it’s 2038, and pretty much every week a suburb or two falls into the hungry sea in every coastal city of the world. It barely even makes it to social media feeds.’ She spread her hands to the sunlight. ‘Why don’t people care more?’

‘I care.’

‘You’re a climie, Sid. I meant ordinary people.’

‘Everyone’s a climie, Yonanna. Everyone’s suffering. It’s just that you’re not allowed to grieve or complain unless you lose everything. Sometimes, not even then.’

Yonanna watched him out of the corner of her eye. He wasn’t good-looking in a filmstar kind of way, but he had a softness and charm that were very natural. Painfully shy, too, judging by the tinted glasses. He had barely looked at her the whole time. Once again she wished she hadn’t just grabbed the first clothes that had jumped out of her closet that morning, and that she had anything that wasn’t bleached to an indeterminate grey. Oh well, too late to worry about that now.

Sid finished eating. ‘Give me your plate, I’ll throw it in the trash,’ he said, and winced. She looked at him with concern. ‘You okay?’

‘Yeah, sorry, we don’t trash our disposables in Climate Town. They’re all made of rice paper, and we feed them to the dogs. Throwing stuff away feels kind of wrong to a climie.’

‘Whaaat! You have dogs roaming around where you eat? Ugh, that’s so unsanitary.’

‘Is it?’ He smiled, stacked her empty plate on his and chucked them both solemnly into a trash can. She gave him a thumb’s up, and he did it back to her. As she watched him walk to the apom balik stand and get two servings for them, she realised what it was about him that didn’t add up.

‘Sid,’ she said as he came and sat back down, ‘You were looking at that kid with the balloons as you were walking to the stall. I was scared you’d bump into something. Why don’t you look where you’re going?’

‘Oh,’ he said, taken aback. ‘I can’t see.’

She stared at him. ‘What do you mean, you can’t see? I saw you step round that baby on the path, and then you stopped for those dogs.’

He smiled. ‘That’s the research project I’m working on. There’s a doctor in Climate Town, Dr Harry Alaka’i, and he’s making a system to help me get around and live normally. I test it every day when I come to Merdeka Close. I was born blind.’

‘What? You’re blind? No way!’ She goggled at him. ‘I had absolutely no idea!’

‘That’s the point,’ he said with a beautiful smile.

‘But… why aren’t you working with Ramtech? A product like that would be worth millions.’

‘That’s not the climie way. Dr Harry is going to give the system to people for free when we’ve perfected it. It’s called Nai’a, which means “dolphin”, because it uses sonar to detect how far and what size objects are around me. There’s also a pair of cameras in the arms of my glasses, and an onboard AI that speaks into my earbuds in Dr Harry’s voice. It tells me what’s in front of me, wall or door or gate or person. Nai’a can also access my social media feed and tell me which of my friends is close by. That’s how I recognised you.’

‘Wow, Sid, that’s amazing.’

He nodded. ‘Let me show you. Do you mind if I give you this earbud?’ He took it out and wiped it on his shirt. ‘Sorry, it’s kind of… warm.’

‘That’s okay.’ She put it in her ear. Sid pushed his glasses up his nose and said, ‘Now I’m going to look at my plate of apom balik.’ A kindly male voice said in her ear, ‘Fritter dead centre, crushed peanuts on top, sugar syrup from nine to twelve.’ He turned and looked at her, and the voice in her ear said, ‘Yonanna Kim, forty centimetres to the right. Mouth open.’

She shut it. ‘So that’s what you meant when you said you weren’t good at reading faces!’

‘Sorry, um, the on-the-go word-portraits aren’t very flattering, but they do their job,’ he said a little diffidently. ‘Like when you spoke to me, I turned and looked at you, and it said, ‘Yonanna Kim, dyed hair, glasses, baggy clothes, eating Korean shrimp pancakes,’ and then I turned it off because you were talking.’ He bit his lip. ‘I’m really, really sorry.’

‘For what? The fashion comments? I’m used to it, my boss rags me all the time, but… this is so cool!’

‘You don’t mind?’

‘Why would I mind? I’m not some shrinking schoolgirl, and I really should have put more thought into what to wear today.’

‘I think…’ He actually blushed. ‘I was going to say I think you’re beautiful, but that would be… presumptuous.’

She grinned, and the voice in her ear said, ‘Yonanna Kim, smiling…’

‘Sorry,’ he said, and pressed the other earbud with a finger. ‘Now I’ve left just the sonar on. Move your hand towards me and listen to the beeps.’

She did. The soft clicks got closer together as her hand approached his head, then receded as she moved it away. ‘I can hear where you are,’ he said softly, ‘but I don’t know that it’s your hand. For that I need Dr Harry’s AI to tell me.’

‘Wow. I legit had no clue. I would never in a million years have guessed that you were… impaired, no… special, I mean…’ She stopped in confusion. ‘Well, whatever the climie word is.’

‘You can say “blind”,’ he said kindly. ‘That’s just a word that means my visual handicap is total. Unlike yours. You’re disabled too, it’s just that you don’t think you are because your prosthesis works so well.’

‘My… what?’

‘Your glasses. Dr Harry says all disability is relative. In a good world, it wouldn’t exist, because creative people would automatically get rewarded for making life better for everyone, so disability would be seen as an opportunity, not a problem. His goal is to make a prosthesis for me that works as well as glasses do for people with refraction errors.’

‘I’m… speechless.’ She took a sip of her drink. ‘But now I have a better idea of why Ramdhun hates you.’

‘You do?’

‘Well, your Dr Harry is making something awesomely marketable, but he’s not contributing to any corp’s stock or turnover. Ramdhun HR thinks the Indosphere is bleeding talent out of the money economy and into Climie World, if there is such a thing.’

‘There is,’ said Sid. ‘Putul Ganguly, she’s one of the scientists, she says money and law are what’s wrong with everywhere that isn’t Climie World.’

‘Really? I would have said money and law are the only things keeping us from descending into global madness. Your Dr Harry could be a millionaire by now if he wanted. Why doesn’t he want it?’

‘He’s a millionaire to us. I’d do anything for him. His system has saved my life so many times I’ve lost count.’

They were silent for a bit as Yonanna thought about this. She took the earbud out and handed it back to him.  They finished their dessert, and this time she chucked the plates. ‘I had no clue that Climie World was so different to mine,’ Yonanna said softly. ‘ I just thought you guys were a bunch of losers living the way you do because you can’t afford proper homes and stuff. I mean, Ramdhun talks about you as if you exist to make the rest of us thank our stars we still have jobs.’

‘We have jobs. We work for each other. And we have fun too,’ Sid said mildly. ‘There’s a concert every month. You should come.’

‘It’s invitation only.’

‘That’s right, so I’m inviting you. We’d let everyone come if they’d behave themselves, but we’ve had Ramdhunites turn up and throw water bombs at the stage and stuff, back in theTwenties, so Cherie forbade it.’

‘I’d like that. To go to a Collapsineers concert with you, I mean. And maybe you could come to one of my gigs too, on the rare occasions I get to DJ.’

‘I would, but a concert is still a little too much for the Nai’a system. Fast-moving crowds can be confusing.’

‘Huh, no risk of a crowd at my gigs,’ she muttered. ‘So you never go to big events?’

‘Only if they’re happening in Climate Town.’ He smiled sweetly. ‘There, everybody I bump into just hugs me.’

They started walking again, drinks in hand. Now she could see the little telltale signs, the tiny frown of concentration Sid acquired every time an obstacle loomed on the horizon. She felt herself falling into the rhythm, giving a little pause for him to hear Dr Harry telling him what to do. It was surprisingly calming.

‘How do you travel to the centre of KL City by yourself, Sid? Climate Town is out in the suburbs.’

‘Yeah, but we have a bus terminus right by the gates, so I get on the bus and tell the driver where I want to go. They all know me, and even if they didn’t, Nai’a maps my location and tells me if I take a wrong turn. The drivers always announce my stop, and then it’s just a walk in the park to get to Liv and Jose’s studio.’

‘Liv and Jose? The Jesumanis?’ Her eyes widened. ‘That’s who you were visiting? You know them?’

‘Sure I do. Liv Jesumani does all the Climate Town sponsorship videos, and she teaches video production at the school. She gave me these earbuds. They’re professional quality; journalists and hopper jockeys use them. But I was actually going to meet her cousin Jose. He’s a game developer. We play against each other.’

‘Oh.’ she thought about this. ‘How do you game if you can’t see the screen?’

‘I don’t need to. Two months ago. Jose started getting splitting headaches. He never leaves his flat, and he’s always staring at some screen or other. Dr Harry told him it was eyestrain and he had to shut his screens down for a few hours every day, to get better. But sitting around without gaming drives Jose nuts, so I visit him to play maze games in the dark. You have to hold the controller and figure out how to navigate a maze by how it vibrates in your hand.’ He grinned. ‘Jose hasn’t beaten me yet, but then I’ve had waaay more practice.’

She was silent. Then she stopped, and turned to him. He stopped too, without her having to touch his arm. ‘I legit had no clue you couldn’t see until you told me,’ she said sincerely. ‘If you hadn’t said anything, maybe I wouldn’t have worked it out at all.’

He beamed. ‘When I tell Dr Harry that, he’s going to be so happy.’

‘He should be. This is a fabulous thing he’s invented. Tell me more about it,’ she said inviting him to sit by her on a park bench. ‘What improvements are you working on?’

‘Well, one of the things we want to do is make the AI more sensitive to context, and also make different settings for how much detail to put in the narration. If we can get it to calculate my walking speed and reaction times, it’ll know just how much time it has to warn me before an action item reaches me. Right now sometimes I have to stop and stare into space while the AI tells me how to open a door or get a ticket out of a machine. Or what items are on a menu. People curse at me if I take too long.’

‘People are cruel.’

‘Not their fault. I mean, the whole point of Nai’a is to make it seem like I can see. The cursing is proof that it works.’

‘Or it’s proof that they’re assholes.’

He shook his head. ‘Ableism is an illusion, because if we live long enough, we’ll all have disabilities. A world that’s nice to people with problems is a nicer world for everyone.’

‘That’s true. I once broke my wrist when a stack of speakers fell on me. Getting dressed or bathing was an absolute nightmare, but I didn’t take a single day off work.’

‘Why not?’

‘Hah! And give my boss a chance to fire me? No way. I know I live like a slob on my tiny salary, but it’s by choice, not necessity. I turned my back on my rich family and said I’d make my own way, so there’s no going back for me.’

‘Why did you make that choice, Yonanna?’

She shrugged. ‘I wanted to make my kind of music. I didn’t want to spend my life looking after Daddy’s chain of convenience stores in Seoul. He wanted a son, anyway. He took Pradip Shankar’s Humane Choice vaccine to tip the odds in favour of a boy, but nope, he got me. And I’m not even a real girl.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m a Broken Pot,’ she said. ‘I have male genes, but I look and talk and feel and think like a woman.’

He took a breath, as if he’d suffered a blow. ‘I’ve never understood why people call you that name. It makes no sense.’

‘It’s because we don’t have wombs. We’re “women” who can’t have children, and so the mainstream thinks we’re useless.’ Her face contorted into a shape of hate. ‘Pradip Shankar coined that term. Which was large-hearted of him, considering it was probably his vaccine that broke us in the first place, as well as caused the Ladbubble, the jump in male births in the Twenties. He’s never admitted to any of the crimes I’m certain he’s guilty of. He’s Ramdhun’s pet and he can do no wrong. I thought he’d get lynched back in 2030 when all the newborn boy babies started dying, but he just promised to find a cure and wham! he became a hero.’

‘I know,’ said Sid. ‘Bilal Bintam’s a friend of mine. Out of the one-thousand boys saved by the Shankar Cure in 2030, he’s the only one who’s not a billionaire’s son. And some of the things he’s told me about the Cure… well, it makes you wonder whether dying of the disease would have been a bigger mercy.’

‘Really? Tell me!’

He shook his head. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. Bilal and his family had to sign a non-disclosure agreement when he was discharged last year. They’re not supposed to reveal anything about the Cure. Ramdhun could have them arrested if I tell you.’

‘Okay,’ she bit her lip. ‘Forget I asked. It’s just that any dirt about Pradip Shankar makes me happy. I just know in my bones that he’s the reason I’m broken.’

‘You’re no more broken than I am,’ said Sid, ‘and I’m not.’

‘You don’t understand. I was supposed to be a boy, but by some fluke I turned out like this. I’m a living disappointment to my parents. I’m a girl but I’ve never had a period, I can’t have children, and I have to be screened for testicular cancer every year. I’m a freak.’

‘You’re a person.’ He reached out and gently wrapped a hand around her clenched fist. ‘When you come to Climate Town, would you like to speak to Amiru? She’s our gender counsellor. She’s from Japan, she’s gorgeous, and she’s a male-bodied person with a feminine persona. She really helped me with my anger issues.’

‘Oh,’ she said, then frowned. ‘How do you know she’s gorgeous? Does your AI tell you?’

‘No. The same way that I know you’re beautiful.’ His hand was warm against hers. ‘I feel it.’

‘How?’ she asked helplessly. ‘I have no idea how beauty feels.’

‘Of course you do. Just go into the presence of a beautiful person, and shut your eyes. If they still feel beautiful, they are. Simple.’

She was silent. Then she said, ‘You’re right. And I’m a fool.’

‘No, you’re just angry,’ he smiled into the air. ‘I was, too, because I couldn’t see my beautiful friends. I felt cheated, and then Amiru told me not to be an idiot, because beauty has nothing to do with a person’s looks. It’s their vibe. So I can’t take full credit for that insight.’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I guess… that makes sense.’ She wrapped her own hand around his, as his in turn wrapped hers. ‘What’s my vibe, Sid? Tell me honestly.’

‘You want to prove to the world that you’re a person. And you’re succeeding.’

‘I am?’

‘We’re talking, aren’t we? Even though we come from different worlds. That tells me you have the patience to be empathetic.’

‘Or I might just be creepily curious about a blind man who can fool people into thinking he sees.’

‘No, you’ve spent your life having your nose rubbed in the worst interpretation of yourself by people who don’t love you.’

She tried to speak, to come back with some witty repartee, but she couldn’t. ‘Oh god,’ she said. ‘You can’t see me, but I’m crying.’

‘I can feel your hands shaking.’ He stroked her knuckles. ‘Let’s not talk about the sad things for now, Yonanna. The sun feels nice. What should we do next? How much time have you got before you have to go back to work?’

‘It’s already too late for that.’ She grinned ruefully. ‘In any case, I just came in today because my Sundays are boring.’

‘Want to come and check out Climate Town? I can introduce you to all my friends.’

She gasped in delight. ‘Really?’ Then her smile vanished. ‘What about Jose?’

‘Oh, he texted me an hour ago to say he was gonna take a nap. He’ll be fine.’

She took his hand and moved it to her elbow, curling his fingers carefully round her arm, then with her other hand she picked up her bag and jacket. She got to her feet and he followed. They smiled at each other. ‘You just keep a hold of me,’ she said. ‘That way you won’t need Dr Harry talking at you.’

‘Great idea. Hey, that means we can do this.’ And he put one of his earbuds in her ear and tapped his own.

A familiar voice said, ‘Aloha, climies! This is Bian Nguyen and the Collapsineers, and we’re gonna sing “Walking in the Park”! Ah one two three four!’

You’ll never walk alone,
When your hearts are hand in glove.
Come on, come on, come on!
Touch the love to the fuse of love.

You’ll never fear the dark,
Because you carry that spark.
You’ll be walking in the park,
You’ll be walking in the park.