Upgrade(17)

Two hundred million people starved to death, but that number doesn’t come close to the total impact of the chaos we unchained. The downstream effect on economies, healthcare systems, entire species, and the biosphere itself was incalculable.

“Yesterday, my daughter told me she’s studying the famine in school. And…um…”

“It’s okay.”

I let the tears fall.

“It’s just a lot, you know?”

“It is a lot.”

“I’ve gotten used to not caring what the rest of the world thinks of me, but…”

“I’m sure your daughter sees you as the wonderful father you are.”

She handed me a box of tissues.

“Logan, when I look at you, I see a man who’s still very, very hard on himself.”

Something broke loose at the core of me. She was touching a wound that would never heal, which I’d wrapped in two decades’ worth of scar tissue.

“How could I not be?” I asked, my voice now barely a whisper.



* * *



—

Specks of snow flurried down out of the charcoal sky, and the wind coming off the Washington Channel was brisk and eye-wateringly cold. I entered the square exedra and gazed up at the thirty-foot pillar on the granite platform.

Though I knew it by heart, I read the inscription engraved in the rock:

IN MEMORY OF THOSE WHO LOST THEIR LIVES

AT HOME AND ABROAD DURING THE GREAT STARVATION





WE WILL NEVER FORGET




Officially, it was also called the Shenzhen Famine.

Informally, it was Ramsay’s Famine.

I took a seat on the granite bench beside the pillar. I came here several times a year, usually on the way home from work, when I knew the weather was bad enough to keep the tourists away.

It was dusk now and snowing hard enough to turn the mammoth profile of the New Pentagon into an ominous, featureless monolith.

The horn blasts of rush-hour traffic were dampened by the storm.

Footsteps approached.

I turned and saw a figure approaching, their face concealed by the upturned collar of a burgundy wool coat.

Fuck. I knew that coat.

Nadine walked over and sat beside me.

“Following me,” I said. “Wow.”

She shrugged. “Saw you heading this way when you left work.” And then, “I know you come here sometimes.”

“What do you want, Nadine?”

“You seemed upset earlier.”

“I had my final therapy session this morning.”

“Didn’t go well?”

“Maybe too well.”

She had never asked me directly about my past. Between us, there was just this quiet understanding. I know. And I’m here.

“We don’t have to talk,” she said. “It just made me sad to think about you sitting all alone out here. Getting snowed on.”

I watched the steady stream of delivery drones flying across the water into Arlington and Alexandria.

“Why’d you take this job?” I asked.

“I love guns.”

I looked at her. She smiled.

“I’m kidding. Policy creation was so damn ethereal. I wanted to actually do something, you know? It’s the difference between designing a house and building the thing.”

“I hate this job.”

“I know.”

“But I think I would hate not doing it more.”

Nadine said, “There are times I love it. Moments when it feels like we’re improving the world. I just wish they came more often.”

We sat in the cold, watching the lights wink on across the channel. I started to tell her what I suspected was happening to me—all the small changes that were becoming more impossible to rationalize away. But I wanted to see the results of the new genome analysis first, and asking her to keep secrets from the GPA wasn’t a position I felt comfortable placing her in.

“Buy you a drink?” she asked.

“I should probably get home.”

Nadine stood, rewrapped the scarf that had come loose around her neck.

She said, “If the job makes you unhappy, quit.” I looked up at her. The snow was frosting her hair. “I get that you had some atoning to do way back when, but you’ve cleared your debts.”

And with that, she thrust her hands into her pockets and walked away.



* * *



—

That night, after dinner, I beat Ava in three games of chess. None of them were even close, and the last one required only twelve moves to checkmate her.

“What the actual hell is going on here?” she asked, tipping her king over when she saw the inevitable end. “Have you been going easy on me all this time, Dad?”

“No.” I laughed.

“How are you suddenly this good?”

“What’s going on?” Beth asked from the couch.

“Dad just shellacked me for…” Ava counted up the losses in her head. “…the ninth game in a row.”

“Impressive,” Beth said.

“Impossible,” Ava said, staring at me suspiciously.



* * *



—

Memories were coming back to me, and not just of every book I’d ever read. Random moments of insignificance. Pivotal events that had shaped my life.