Emergency Contact(39)

“Whatever,” said Maya. “They’re both wicked unlikable.”

“Oh, because a weather phenomenon that’s on a murder spree is so likable,” retorted Andy, the British-Chinese kid. Penny shot him a grateful look. He smiled.

Penny didn’t know what was so hard about sympathizing with a computer-generated video game character or a Korean woman, but that seemed to be the general consensus.

Penny started out with the mother talking to her lawyer. That much she felt was solid. It was a secure, accessible place from which to world-build. She figured she’d lull the reader into a false sense of security—begin as Law & Order that transmogrifies into The Matrix without warning.

She made herself a cup of tea, sat back down, and tried to imagine the woman’s appearance. Penny began by picturing her hair. Did Korean women get soccer-mom haircuts? Penny settled on giving the mom a bob and dressed her in a gray maternity dress. According to the papers, she was pregnant again by the time she and her husband were sentenced.

What did this woman want? Did she feel bad? How bad? As bad as you should if you ignore your baby to death? How engrossing can a video game be that you forget your baby?

“I am not a bad mother,” said the wife. Mrs. Kim was subdued, with no makeup, and her lips were chapped. Her hand shook as she drank from the white paper cup. She was diminutive and of indeterminate age. As he flipped through her file, he saw she was younger than her husband by twenty years. She’d gone to a good school yet had never held down a job. Mrs. Kim met her husband at an Internet café, and according to witnesses, they were affectionate and companionable.

“I’m not a bad mother,” she repeated in a daze. “I loved my babies more than anything.” She took a sharp intake of breath and corrected herself. “Baby.”

The lawyer glanced up from his notes. The wife’s chin trembled. He jotted down that she still considered the video game baby to be real.


J.A. advised the class on “voice” and how a good way to work through a story was to make it sound as if you were explaining it to a friend over e-mail.

Penny figured texting was as good.

SAM HOUSE

Yesterday 1:13 AM

Wait

Hold on

I want to ask you something

Don’t be offended

Haha does that ever work?

Nope!

Fine

Say it

Be nice though

Writers are sensitive

How does your story count as fiction?

This woman exists

The couple’s real


Sam found a documentary on the couple and they’d watched it together. Not in the same room. Just at the same time, while texting. Every article and TV segment treated them as though they were Internet oddities or space aliens. The documentary, in particular, may as well have been about talking dogs the way they presented the parents. Penny wondered if the perverse fascination would have been as extreme if it had happened in America. A country, by the way, where a guy in Minnesota tried to raise his kid to speak Klingon.

That’s why I want to write about the baby in the video game as well

That’s the fiction part

The fantasy

Does the baby inside know that the real baby is dying?

IDK if the video game baby cares Collateral damage etc

Jesus that’s dark

Is it though?

VG baby lives in constant violence

That’s why SF’s the greatest

You make the rules

San Francisco?

No dork

SCIENCE FICTION

SAID THE DORK WHO CAPS LOCKS science fiction Hahahhahaha

Fair

I like this

I can’t wait to find out what video game baby wants Penny couldn’t either.

J.A.’s homework schedule was no joke. Every week there was a new short story due, and for those Penny wrote about squirrel crime mobs, post-apocalyptic plagues that only took out people over nineteen, colleges in the future where the entrance exams were assassinations, and a Buddhist who died and came back as a toy. Building a world where you rappel in, set up some characters, and ejector seat your way out was a breeze.

J.A. had no patience for breezy, and when she called Penny in for office hours, she told her as much. Her teacher’s room was filled with succulents in rainbow-glass planters, and Penny halfway expected her teacher to extend an offer of friendship she was so pleased with her last story. It was about a crew of powerful moguls and politicians who were set adrift in a spaceship since the planet they were destined for wasn’t where they’d thought it would be. The astrophysicist eggheads they’d left behind had been wrong. These men were the 1 percent of the 1 percent who had abandoned the rest of civilization, and still their billions couldn’t save them. The universe had told them the first no of their lives, and the fight scene was hilarious.

“These are great,” said J.A. began, “but . . .”

Penny hadn’t been expecting a “but.” She braced herself.

“They’re rhythmically one-note,” J.A. continued. “You’re inventive and funny—that’s clear on the page. I want you to work on character motivation. I can’t invest in protagonists when I don’t know what they want, and just as important, why they want it.”

Penny felt color rising on her neck. That wasn’t fair. It was clear what the men in the spaceship wanted.