The Lindworm Lily
Boundary Shock Quarterly #28: Halloween Issue--Science Fiction Horror
Jo and her older sister Maggie are in line to see a rare exhibit at the museum. A viewing of the nearly extinct Lindworm Lily, which blooms for a day, is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
But the line is long, the day is swelteringly hot, and Jo wonders why they didn't just stay home and watch this thing bloom.
"Because it's real," her sister says.
Soon Jo is going to discover just how real.
"Why couldn't we have just watched it instead?" Jo asked. She held her hand to shade her eyes from the sun. Ahead, a line of people stretched to the corner around a large, windowless red-and-brown brick building.
Jo turned to her sister. A trickle of sweat trailed down Maggie's face and neck, darkening her too-large blue tee. Maggie shook shoulder-length brown hair, cut ragged.
"Because it's real, Jo," Maggie said. "You have to see it."
Around them, unmoving figures in tans and browns seemed statues in the relentless heat, as if pinned to the ash-gray sidewalk.
"Aren't I supposed to enjoy my birthday?" Jo asked. "We've been here an hour at least."
Maggie smiled, gave Jo's shoulder an affectionate touch. "This is about the world we used to have, baby. You should know it."
Jo felt as if she were being watched. But then, who wasn't? She looked around.
READ MORELeaning against the red brick, an old man looked back. His face was blotched with age and stubbled with gray. A ratty white tee damp from armpit to hem sagged over jeans with holes and oilspots.
"Right, what she says," he told Jo. "Happy birthday, kid."
Maggie's smile vanished. She took a step, putting herself between the old man and Jo.
He grinned wide with a yellow-toothed smile, the front two missing.
"Can't be worth this," Jo muttered.
The man gave a grimace and a small shrug, the response adults sometimes made when they didn't have a good answer.
"Should at least be shade," Jo added.
"Shade's for the Haves," the man said. "You're in the Means Line, kid."
"Means we get in free," Jo replied, amused at her own pun.
The man gave a short, rasping laugh. "Clever child. _Means_ we're Have-nots."
_Have-nots._ She and Maggie were poor, Jo realized. She'd known that, of course, but here, with the sun blazing down, air so hot it was hard to breathe, waiting, and more waiting, it was suddenly so clear.
"Hey," Maggie said sharply to the old man. "No one asked you."
"I just tell it, lady," he said.
"Tell it somewhere else," Maggie replied. "You even in line?"
Jo looked around anew. No one around wore clothes that fit. Too big, too small. Worn, stained. Jo's own overlarge green-and-white striped shirt, tied at the waist, with loose cargo pants snugged up with a cheap belt. All used, all gotten at the Means stores.
And to get here? They'd had to walk down twenty-two flights from their one-room share because the elevator was broken again. But whenever Jo complained, Maggie reminded her they were lucky to have a place at all. Not everyone did.
Like this old guy, judging by the stench wafting off him.
"I ain't in line," he answered Maggie. "Just like to watch people."
"Find something else to do, creep." Maggie reached one hand to the other, hovering over her tracer ring on her left-hand middle finger. Pressed or voice activated, it would call a warder, a flying autbot the size and shape of a fire hydrant. The warder would come, look, and call police if it decided to.
"Lady, they don't patrol here," the old man said. "Warders are all up front, making sure the Haves with their luxe tickets get in fast and cool."
This conversation had gained them cautious attention. Glances over shoulders, a few direct stares. Everyone had tracer rings, Jo knew, but some had other servots as well. The couple in front, for example, each with a single black earvo. Expensive things. Or maybe they were deaf, and got them Means-wise.
Or maybe they just weren't as poor as Jo and Maggie.
Jo knew that servots--the fancy autbots the rich wore like jewelry--could be very pretty. They could do things, all sorts of things. Solve puzzles, fetch items. Play music and vid. Some could even change shape.
Maybe make shade for you when it was hot. Wouldn't that be nice.
"Get," Maggie snapped at the old man.
Maggie wouldn't call for a warder, Jo judged, not for this. Maggie was always warning Jo not to use hers if she didn't have to, because if the warders decided you were a cry-wolf, they wouldn't come when you really needed them. Jo fiddled with her own ring. A smaller one, kid-sized.
The old man scowled. He pushed himself off the brick wall to stand unsteadily. Maggie put a hand on Jo's shoulder, giving her a warning squeeze.
The old man coughed--a deep, wet, wrong-sounding cough. People flinched away, heads tucked, shoulders hunched. Plague-fear, Jo knew. There had been another bad one just before Jo was born. Maggie still had a scar on the back of her neck.
As the man wobbled forward, the line contracted away from him, clearing space for him to pass in front of Jo and Maggie. He took a few steps into the newly open space and stopped, weaving a little. He stared at Jo.
"Ain't no one poor in everything, kid," he said.
"Oh yeah?" Jo asked him. "What are you rich in?"
"I remember when machines didn't rule."
"So, you're rich in your mind?" Jo asked.
The man half-laughed, half-coughed. He looked at Maggie's hand, still hovering over her tracer ring, then held up both his hands, dirty, but empty. "I'm rich because the bugs don't wear me the way they wear you."
COLLAPSE
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