Mae-Ying Allen ~ 3-19-2029, 10:29 AM GMT
They arrive in Bolton. Niva parks the sedan near a shopping center. She and Mae-Ying get out and make their way down a sidewalk towards a discount department store, the kind of place Mae-Ying wouldn’t be caught dead in under normal circumstances. She has to remind herself that two hundred pounds won’t get her very far, and she has no idea if or when she’ll ever get back any of the money she has in her bank account, now that she’s legally dead.
Once inside, Mae-Ying heads directly to the clearance racks in the women’s department. Niva hovers over her shoulder, observing Mae-Ying’s process with a frown.
"Is it possible for you to teach me about other people?" she asks.
Mae-Ying shrugs. “Sure.”
"I think that would be helpful,” Niva says. “I do not understand the people here. I was brought up in a different sort of place. I was taught that what a woman should say and do is very different from what I see here. I do not understand it, and I never have."
“Where’d you grow up, anyway?”
"I was raised to be Haredim, in Beit Shemesh. My father was a rabbi. He was very, very strict. I tried to do as he instructed, but it was hard." She pauses, then says, as though confiding a deep, shameful secret, "At times, I believed it was impossible to be a pious girl."
"How did he want you to behave?" Mae-Ying asks, pulling a pair of black pants off the rack.
"I was educated at home, because my father did not believe that any of the schools near us were capable of teaching a woman properly. I was to dress modestly, and to be subservient to the leaders of society. I was not to go about in public with any men who were not of my father's choosing." Niva sighs. "And I was not to read the Torah."
Mae-Ying tries not to show her disdain. "Okay. In other words, you were raised in a community that prioritizes a specific moral code."
Niva nods emphatically.
"Most people are raised under no such code whatsoever,” Mae-Ying says. "For the very most part, even people who might call themselves religious are raised in a global culture that’s based on the free market economy. Money and status are what stand in for moral righteousness, when it comes to figuring out how much respect a person gets."
“Why is that?” Niva asks.
“God, that’s complicated.” Mae-Ying holds up a grey cardigan to see how big the shoulders are. "Do you know what moral relativism is?"
"No. The terms together make no sense to me."
"Okay. So I'm not trying to say this is bad or good, it just is. But as different cultures encountered each other, over the course of history, first they tried to impose their moral codes on one another, since everyone believes theirs is the right way."
Niva nods.
"But as more countries began to cooperate economically, it became less and less beneficial to each country to confront other countries about moral differences,” Mae-Ying continues. "This is a gross oversimplification, but I'm trying to be brief. People had to justify these discrepancies to themselves, so they learned to see morals as relative to the culture you grow up in.”
"I think I am coming to understand,” Niva says. “They did not have any higher authority to guide them, and so they bickered and then were forced to...agree to disagree?"
"Right, but it's a slippery slope,” Mae-Ying says. “If you can admit that your morals would be different if you were born in another place, well, really, how can you say yours is the correct way? And who is to say what is right and what is wrong?"
Niva frowns. "This is what I mean by a lack of conviction. Even if you do not have the true Law, the mind can tell you what is right and wrong, if you merely listen to it."
"Well, I agree with you,” Mae-Ying says. “I'm not a relativist. I think it's wrong to treat women differently than men under the law, for example. And I think it's wrong to abandon the poor."
As Niva considers this, Mae-Ying picks up several more garments and heads toward the fitting room. Niva follows her.
"I would like you to help me act in a fashion that is not… strange to others," Niva says.
"Okay, well, no, I can't do that,” Mae-Ying says. "There's no such thing. Every person might be strange to someone else."
"But I am strange to everyone," Niva says. "You have suggested this."
Mae-Ying goes into a stall and closes the door behind her. "Here's the thing. I can help you act more relaxed. I can give you suggestions for how to do stupid social stuff like making small talk. But wanting people to think you're normal is counterproductive. It'll just make you more anxious."
Niva leans on the wall outside the stall, thinking.
"Yes,” she says after a minute or so. “The stupid stuff and relaxation. We should try that, at least."
Mae-Ying laughs. “Okay.”
Two hours later, Mae-Ying and Niva head out of the discount department store. Mae-Ying carries two shopping bags full of the least expensive clothing she could find. She wears a cheap windbreaker and new pair of flats, the most expensive item she purchased; she abandons her battered heels in a trash can in the women’s restroom.
“Can we go to a drugstore next?” she asks Niva.
“What is a drugstore?”
“Oh, a chemist.”
“Oh. Yes, of course.”
Niva leads Mae-Ying out of the shopping center and down a side road. There are few other pedestrians. Mae-Ying can see why; it’s freezing outside. Across the street is a churchyard. Niva’s gaze lingers on the rows of tombstones that can be seen within the cemetery gates. Her breath quickens, becomes shallower.
"Niva?” Mae-Ying asks. “You okay?"
"I… yes. I do not like that place. Death has seeped into the soil."
“All right…”
"There are dark places in the world,” Niva says. “It is unsafe to enter such places--for anyone, but for the blessed particularly."
“This is one of them?” Mae-Ying asks.
“Yes.”
“How can you tell?”
"If you are inside them, they become colder than they should be. You will feel watched. Sometimes you can see them when you have the light in you. They appear darker and vision within them seems distorted." Niva pauses.
"Sometimes you cannot see them. They are like spiders lying in wait."
As they turn to go, Mae-Ying sees a deathly pale little boy watching her from between the bars of the cemetery fence. He smiles at her in an unsettling way. He watches them as they pass down the street, until they turn a corner. Mae-Ying draws her shoulders up towards her ears.
“You saw him?” Niva asks.
Mae-Ying nods. "Are all cemeteries like that, or what?"
"No, not all. Older grounds, where death and pain have had time to take root,” Niva says. “Humans fear death, and that fear impregnates the land with terror."
“Okay,” Mae-Ying says, trying to remain calm. ‘So… was that a ghost?”
Niva nods.
“Can they hurt you…?”
“Yes. Many spirits can. And most spirits, but especially the spirits of the dead, are attracted to the blessed. They hunger for our light.”
“Great,” Mae-Ying says, laughing anxiously.
They arrive at a store with a neon-lit red cross emblem displayed on the placard outside. Niva steps through the automatic doors; Mae-Ying follows her, still looking back over her shoulder, towards the graveyard.
"Sometimes, also, the sites of atrocity will also be thus corrupted,” Niva says. “They are gateways to another place, a land of the dead. It is like the flaw in reality that I spoke of yesterday. Pathos wells up from them. Our enemies seek refuge in such places."
Mae-Ying picks up a handbasket. "Okay, this is going to sound super flaky, but I have always been scared of Alcatraz.”
“What is Alcatraz?”
“It’s an abandoned prison on an island in San Francisco Bay," Mae-Ying says. "It's like it radiates pain. My parents think I'm crazy."
Niva looks at her grimly. "You are sane."
"It's a tourist attraction! People find it entertaining."
"They would not, if the Light Keepers did not intervene to restrict their knowledge and protect them from what lies in wait there," Niva says. “Such places may be useful in finding latent Initiates, such as Emry. When faced with such darkness, one reaches for the light, instinctively.”
Mae-Ying shakes her head. She makes her way down the cosmetics aisle, pulling items off the shelf here and there and placing them in the basket. Niva pulls out a small plastic vial of clear goo and holds it up to the light, visibly confused.
"That's makeup primer,” Mae-Ying says. “You put it on before your foundation so that your foundation stays on."
"The painting of one's face is so complicated..."
Mae-Ying shrugs. "I enjoy it."
"You are a fashionable woman,” Niva says, putting the vial back in Mae-Ying’s basket.
“Compared to the folks back at the manor, sure."
"How did you learn to do all of this?"
"Oh man.” Mae-Ying laughs. “It's almost impossible to grow up female in the United States without having that knowledge foisted on you."
"My mother died giving birth to me, and I had no sisters,” Niva says. “Nor did my father let me speak to the women of the community very much…”
Mae-Ying looks stricken. “That’s terrible. I’m sorry.”
Niva shrugs.
"But really, fashion isn't everything,” Mae-Ying says. “For me it's a hobby. I follow it like some people follow sports. I'm not sure it isn't stupid, but I like it."
Niva looks around at the shelves full of cosmetics. "So much is devoted to such little things..."
"People are superficial,” Mae-Ying says. “I'm superficial, honestly."
"Do you believe so?"
"Well, I mean, case in point." She holds up the basket.
Niva shakes her head. "I think you build a shell around yourself. I think inside of it you are as deep as the ocean."
Mae-Ying blinks, taken aback. She has no idea how to respond.
“Thanks,” she says. “That’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.”
Niva merely nods and picks up a bottle of fake tan from a nearby shelf. "I would not like to look this orange, I don’t think."
Mae-Ying laughs. “No, you don’t need anything like that. Your skin looks great the way it is. Anyway, if you ever want to know about this kind of stuff I'd be happy to teach you.”
Niva looks into the basket. "Perhaps. Though I do not think my stipend from the Knights would permit me to do it often."
“Oh. Well, if I can get access to my savings account I’ll buy you whatever you want.”
Niva looks at her. "Why would you expend your own money on me?"
"Why not?"
"I… I do not know. I have not thought ever thought of it that way." She puts the bottle of spray tan back in its place.
#
That night Mae-Ying lies awake in bed on top of the heirloom quilt, wearing a new pair of pajamas and her glasses. Her Avatar is still set to operate in offline mode; she can only access the files on the little hard drive implanted underneath her right breast.
Her hard drive contains standard-resolution video files that chronicle her life over the last month. Every time she puts on her glasses, they record everything passively. She normally uses this function to keep track of all the meetings she attends and the people she meets, but every so often it serves another purpose. The night Walsh died, her glasses recorded everything.
She pulls up the file from that night. Watching it all again makes her nauseated, but it doesn’t make her cry. Watching it a third time, she feels nothing at all.
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