The Ones We're Meant to Find(8)
Undeterred, Celia would manually open theirs after sundown. She’d made the task look easy; it was anything but. Kasey had calluses as proof. Tonight, as she had the night before, she grasped the handle beneath the sill and cranked. Turn by turn, the sheet of polyglass opened like a protractor’s arm.
On the tiny balcony outside, a ladder was bolted to the wall. Kasey gripped the rungs and climbed until her head met the stratum overhanging theirs. The ceiling—or rather, the stratum’s ground floor, was still voice-supported, thankfully, and at Kasey’s command, a circular entryway opened like an eye.
She hoisted herself through, into the moonlit unit above. It was devoid of life, unless you counted the cleaningbot, to whom Kasey was indebted. She wouldn’t last a minute here without it, for the Coles had been avid collectors, and aside from their stasis pods (lofted), they’d furnished the unit with a coffee table crafted from driftwood and armchairs upholstered in turquoise velvet, the degradable materials a magnet for particulates. The first time her parents had taken her to visit their upstairs neighbors, colleagues, and friends, Kasey had sneezed nonstop. She’d sneezed again, years later, when Celia dragged her back up the ladder even though Kasey said they shouldn’t. They were no longer invited. This wasn’t their home.
But Celia couldn’t resist the call of the windows. And what windows they were: 360 degrees drawn from floor to ceiling, the unit on stratum-100 a gleaming cone at the pinnacle of their teardrop-shaped city. Celia would sit on the chaise by the glass like their parents once had, their mother and Ester Cole, both policymakers, discussing the latest humanitarian crises while their father and Frain Cole compared microhousing blueprints. The two most influential families of the planetary protection movement, bathed in light.
In the dark, Kasey now sat and looked out beyond the glass, to the panorama of sea and air surrounding their eco-city and seven others around the world. The eight, collectively, housed about 25% of the human population. Seventy-five percent still lived in the land-bound territories—and not all by choice. Sky-bound immigration had risen to unsustainable levels; admission was now limited by rank. Rank was calculated from the planetary impact of an individual’s Intraface-tracked behaviors—and the behaviors of their ancestors. Territory denizens, many with family histories in carbon-heavy industries, decried the system as stacked against them. Was it? Kasey supposed it was hard for people to accept their own insignificance, their actions like droplets in a sea created by their antecedents.
But even in a sea, every life rippled far beyond its end. Rather than blame systems or ancestors, Kasey blamed human nature. People weren’t hardwired to think generations ahead. Entities like Mizuhara Corporation, who’d sponsored the first eco-cities for communities displaced by the arctic melt, were few and far between. So were the Coles, ranked number one for curing diseases such as the common cancer to curtail the effects of pharmaceutical production on the biosphere. More than doctors, they were humanists. To give people more agency over their lives, the Coles had invented the biomonitor, an Intraface app that put health in the hands of individuals, alerting them when corrective action was needed.
Like now.
Ding. The notification rung in Kasey’s head. She opened her biomonitor app and found her neurotransmitters reading in the MILDLY DEBILITATED range.
Odd. She didn’t feel debilitated. Functioned more or less fine. She stared at the corrective option in her mind’s eye.
ADJUST SEROTONIN LEVELS
Blinked it away, only to have it replaced by another.
COGNICISE RELEVANT* MEMORIES
*memories of SISTER, CELIA MIZUHARA
Cognicision therapy embargoed memories that triggered the body’s stress response, then reintroduced them gradually. But memories didn’t distress Kasey. They were unreliable and degradable, subject to the wear and tear of time unless you recorded them religiously like Celia, which Kasey didn’t. History was her least favorite subject for a reason. Even her memories of their mother, Genevie, were piecemeal at best. A manicured hand, reaching to fix Kasey’s bangs. An authoritative voice, telling her to go play with the Coles’ only child, a boy as silent as his pet rabbit. Too-loud laughter, from Genevie and Ester, when Kasey refused to, hiding behind Celia.
What she did remember: the weather—25°C, humidity at 38%—that day David Mizuhara had taken the girls to see Genevie and the Coles off on their disaster relief trip to an outside territory. In a show of solidarity, they opted to travel in the flesh—a choice that proved fatal when the autopilot malfunctioned and sent the copterbot into a mountain face.
After the funeral (four urns of sea salt: three for the Coles and their boy, one for Genevie), David had disappeared into his room, where Kasey assumed he’d stay for a few days, like he usually did while working on his blueprints. It was to her surprise, then, when he emerged the next morning, clean-shaven and suited, leaving for the eco-city’s HQ as Genevie would have. But David wasn’t Genevie, and Celia wasn’t David, and Kasey’s confusion grew when her sister did stay in her room. For hours. Sobs came through the wall between them, and Kasey listened, helpless, unable to understand why her sister and dad were acting so out of character.
Finally, at noon, she hacked into Celia’s Intraface. Found files of her sister’s unfinished homework. Completed it for her. Saw a biomonitor recommendation to restore falling neurotransmitter levels.
That had to be the answer to her sister’s strange behavior, thought Kasey, selecting YES.