Chapter 3-1
2035 Words
Anna threw her head back with eyes squeezed shut. She let them flutter open. “Oh my…,” she said through a gasp. “Well, that should just about take care of it. Thank you for the conversation.”
The woman who sat across from her was positively lovely with a pretty face framed by long dark hair. “Are you alright?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “You look like you might be sick.”
Covering her mouth with the tips of her fingers, Anna felt her face grow warm. She shut her eyes. “Yes, I"m fine,” she said, nodding to the other woman. “Just a little fatigue. Nothing serious.”
The woman stood.
Slipping the strap of her purse over her shoulder, she watched Anna with a concerned expression. “Well, if you"re sure,” she said, turning away. “But if you need medical attention, I can call an ambulance.”
“Thank you, but no.”
The small coffee shop she had chosen for this exchange was sparsely populated. A dozen round tables were spaced out across a black-tiled floor, most unoccupied. Behind the counter, a young man in a black uniform stood with his face concealed by something called a…Damn it! What"s that word? A magazine!
Damn it! What"s that word?The face of a woman with a sultry expression dominated the cover, her long dark hair falling over her shoulders in waves. Objectification of women. If her knowledge of history was accurate – Anna cursed her decision to frequently doze off in Mr. Dae"s class – her own people had faced similar problems once.
Through the window on her right, she could see people making their way up and down the sidewalk and beyond them a line of…Cars! A line of cars making its way along the road. You can do this, Lenai.
Cars!You can do this, Lenai.Her faint reflection in a mug of coffee wavered as she blew on it, ripples spreading across the surface. At least these people had discovered coffee. Their planet seemed very similar to her own.
The Nassai within her stirred.
Anna bit her lip as she stared into the mug, a lock of reddish blonde hair falling over one eye. I know you"re tired, she thought at the symbiont. I"m tired too, but we"ve got to keep at this a while longer.
I know you"re tired,I"m tired too, but we"ve got to keep at this a while longer.No reply.
Clamping a hand over her mouth, Anna shut her eyes tight. She took a deep breath through her nose. Can"t you at least acknowledge me? she screamed in her own mind. I"m all you"ve got down here.
Can"t you at least acknowledge me?I"m all you"ve got down here.No reply.
The Nassai preferred to avoid direct interaction. Through their blending of minds, she was able to learn a complex language in days, but that was not something that Nassai did often. They preferred to allow their hosts to learn on their own. Only sheer necessity had changed that.
Pulling her brown coat over her shoulders, Anna got to her feet. She paced across the room to the door, pushed it open and stepped through. I guess I"ll just have to keep myself company.
I guess I"ll just have to keep myself company.Once outside, she found herself on a street with tall buildings on either side, glass spires that stabbed the overcast sky. A yellow car sped toward her, carrying a young man who stuck his head out the back window.
His thin face was marked by a neatly trimmed beard, and spiky black hair crowned the top of his head. “Hey, gorgeous!” he shouted as he passed. “Five Twenty-One Lisgar Street! I"ll be expecting you at seven!”
Anna flinched.
Such behaviour was considered taboo among her people. That wasn"t to say there weren"t any brash young men with difficulties respecting boundaries, but most would be compelled to keep their mouths shut by the stares and frowns they received from their peers. The driver of that car ought to have scolded him.
She looked down at herself.
Anna still wore the gray pants and black blouse that she had been wearing during her pursuit of Denario. “Except now they"re starting to smell,” she muttered in her own language. “I need to blend.”
Not far ahead, the door to a shop swung outward, allowing a woman in a black skirt and white blouse to step out onto the street. Her face seemed frozen in a tense expression, golden hair falling to her shoulders.
A child came out behind her.
No older than four or five, the boy wore a pair of overalls and a red shirt, a tiny cap on his head. “I want McDonald"s!” he shouted, stumbling up to his mother. “Mom, I want McDonald"s for lunch!”
He looked over his shoulder.
In a heartbeat, he was waddling up to Anna, craning his neck to stare up at her with enormous blue eyes. “Who are you?” the boy inquired. “You got crazy hair! Why do you got crazy hair?”
She dropped to one knee.
Chuckling softly, Anna smiled and nodded to the boy.“You shouldn"t run away from your mother,” she told him. “If you get lost, you won"t be able to have any McDonald"s.”
“Why are you talking to my son?”
The woman strode forward with arms folded, her chin thrust out as she stared down her nose. “What"s wrong with you?” she said, seizing the child by his shoulders.
Anna said nothing.
Such hostility. Did the woman actually believe that she would harm a child? What kind of people were these? Doing her best to remain inconspicuous, she started down the sidewalk again.
child?A queasy feeling settled into her stomach when she added the factors together. In two days on this planet, she had encountered all sorts of people, and every single one of them had displayed mistrust. Those first few interactions – when she had not yet grasped the rudiments of their language – had been particularly difficult. Thank the Companion for her Nassai.
A few minutes later, she came upon one of the currency-dispensing machines these people used, built into the concrete wall of a skyscraper. The bright blue screen displayed words in a language she could not yet understand. She could speak but she couldn"t make sense of any of the letters. She looked around to make sure she had enough privacy; after a few months of this, she"d be as distrustful as anyone else in this city.
I cannot believe I"ve been reduced to this, she thought to herself. A Justice Keeper made into a petty thief.
I cannot believe I"ve been reduced to this,A Justice Keeper made into a petty thief.She retrieved her multi-tool – a small metal disk that fit in the palm of her hand. After pushing a few buttons with her fingers, she watched lights blink on its surface. The tiny screen lit up with the words “scan mode.”
A blue ray of laser scanned over the intake slot that she had seen people use to slip plastic cards into the machine. A moment later, her multi-tool went silent as it processed the slot"s dimensions.
Tiny nanobots emerged from a groove along the tool"s outer edge, trillions of them building on top of one another, forming a gray rectangle in the shape of one of the cards she had seen people use.
Anna fed it into the slot.
The screen on the disk blinked a few times. Her multi-tool was sending electrical signals, learning the currency dispenser"s circuit architecture. In just a few moments, it brought up a series of menus.
Turning her face up to the sky, Anna blinked when the sunlight hit her eyes. You"re really going to make me do this? she thought at the Companion. No last-minute twist of fate to spare me the blow to my integrity?
You"re really going to make me do this?No last-minute twist of fate to spare me the blow to my integrity?No reply there either.
Running the macro she had programmed, her multi-tool sent electrical signals into the currency dispenser. A moment later, a slot at the bottom of the machine popped open, offering three glossy green bills.
Anna took them.
That"s three, she noted. Three times I"ve stolen from these people. The brief lull in pedestrian traffic allowed her to slip away unnoticed. If anyone had spotted her from a distance, they would see nothing more than an ordinary woman retrieving currency from her bank account.
That"s three,Three times I"ve stolen from these people.The sun was halfway to its zenith, hidden behind a glass spire that seemed to be a shadow to her eyes. Not a cloud in the clear blue sky. On the road, a young man upon a bicycle – amazing that these people had invented a device almost identical to those of her own world – eyed her as he passed.
Anna continued on.
It wasn"t long before she found a man sitting with his back pressed to a concrete wall. Lanky and slim, he wore a pair of old brown pants with a matching jacket. His face was covered by a scraggly gray beard and unkempt silver hair sprouted from the top of his head like a lion"s mane.
He craned his neck to stare up at her with haunted eyes. “Excuse me, miss,” he said before pressing a fist to his mouth to stifle a wheezing cough. “Do you think that you can spare me a few dollars?”
Poverty.
Throughout her life, Anna had known that word only as an abstract concept, a note in the back of a history textbook. No wonder these people had such difficulty with trust and openness. She knelt before the man.
Anna shut her eyes tight, tears running over her burning cheeks. “I"m so sorry for your pain,” she said, pressing a twenty-dollar bill into his hand. “Please take this and buy yourself something to eat.”
He watched her with his mouth agape, then shut his eyes and turned his face away from her. “You"re awfully kind, ma"am.” The man shivered as though her touch brought pain. “I thank you for it.”
“It"s my duty.”
The look of confusion on his face made her want to explain further, but that would expose her as an outsider. Justice Keepers opposed suffering wherever they found it. No one should endure what this man had endured.
Bright sunlight came in through a window in the front door, leaving a rectangle of light on the steps that led down into the thrift shop. The floor-space was dominated by round racks of clothing up near the counter and tall metal shelves near the back of the room. A few bins in the corner held children"s toys.
The morning shift was, in Jack Hunter"s estimation, quite possibly the worst kind of cruel and unusual punishment ever devised by the human race. Especially on days when he had been working at the restaurant the night before.
Sadly, one job just wasn"t enough to pay the bills in today"s economy, so he spent most of his time transitioning from evenings at McDougall"s to mornings here with four or five hours" sleep in between. Joyous. How this was possible was beyond him; on some level, he knew that something didn"t add up.
McDougall"sHow was it that people were buying enormous houses in gated communities with salaries that would barely let them keep ahead of the mortgage payments? Hadn"t the big financial meltdown of ten years ago done anything to convince them of the need for more frugal practices?
Planting his elbow on the counter, Jack rested his chin in the palm of his hand. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath. Welcome to my life, he thought to himself. There"s no turning back.
- Writer
