The Ones We're Meant to Find(7)

“Bert, love. Do you think we’re going the right way?”

“Want a hear a joke? Okay … guess not.”

“Want to hear it anyway? Why don’t oysters give to charity? Because they’re shellfish. Get it? Shellfish? Selfish? Okay, I’ll stop now.”

“Why don’t you ever define my curse words?”

“Joules, you’re worse than U-me. Why can’t you say something?”

I stop talking to Hubert after a week, because I run out of water.

I had to make a choice: Pack enough water that it’d slow Hubert down or hope for rain. I’d hoped for rain. On the island, it rains at least twice a week.

But there’s no rain.

Until there is.

I’m trying to nap—the only way I can ignore the desert growing in my mouth—when something plops onto my head. At first I think it’s gull poop, but the skies are quiet. I sit up. Another plop, and I almost weep with joy.

Rain. Fat droplets falling out of the gray heavens.

My face tilts back and I part my lips, catching the cold, sweet drops on my tongue. Then I dive for Hubert’s locker and wrestle out the empty water bin—not so empty when the first wave crashes into us.

For a stomach-dropping moment, we’re shoved under. Bubbles burst before my eyes—I think I scream—and then I’m coughing, eyes stinging with salt and rain, pelting down, because we’ve resurfaced, thank Joules, and I’m clutching to Hubert’s gunwale as the ocean thrashes, waves blacker than ever, and among all that black is a speck of white.

My water bin. Washed overboard, quickly swirling away from us. My taro biscuits, too, dusting the waves like dandruff. The door to Hubert’s locker is gone. Torn off. My supply pack is nowhere in sight and I’m sitting in more seawater than not.

“Fuck.”

I almost expect to hear U-me, defining my word in response. But she’s not here. It’s just me and Hubert, volleyed from wave to wave, a toy to the sea. I turn off his motor, hoping it’ll help. It doesn’t. Think. Lightning splits the sky and rain lashes into my face and a wave looms over us out of nowhere, casting us in the shadow of its maw.

Thinking time is over. I start the motor and seize the backup oar, rowing with all my might.

Slowly, we move.

In the wrong direction.

The wave curls us into its grasp. Crushes us.

My ears pop as we plunge. But I still hear it: the scream of tearing metal.





4


THE NEWS HAD RIPPED THROUGH the city like an explosion. The fallout lingered for weeks.

Celia Mizuhara, elder daughter of eco-city architect David Mizuhara, lost at sea.

It was a missing-persons case from pre-Intraface times, when holoing wasn’t a way of life, biomonitors didn’t correct neurotransmitter imbalance–driven behaviors, and a person’s whereabouts wasn’t a geolocation query away. And yet, authorities verified the authenticity of the public cambot footage. Prior to sunrise, Celia had indeed taken a duct down to the boat rental below the eco-city. Now both boat and body had vanished, leaving behind a ready-made news story. Friends and exes emerged from the woodwork, eager to fill in Celia’s blanks.

Only one relation was absent.

“Kasey Mizuhara!” She evaded the reporters; they holo-ed to her location whenever they could track her down in the public domain. “How are you coping in the days since city authorities declared your sister missing?”

“Presumed dead,” Kasey supplied, thinking they’d go away if she kept it concise. Instead, the sound bite went viral. People lambasted the monotone of her voice. Others defended Kasey, explaining her stoicism as if it were a mask concealing her grief. That disturbed Kasey more than the vitriol. Hope was a drug. Why self-medicate when the numbers were right there, time-stamped on the cambot footage? Three months and twelve days, her sister had been lost at sea. Celia was many things, but still mortal. Dehydration would have killed her first, given that she’d taken the boat as is, packing no additional supplies. Who did when going on a recreational spin?

Unless recreation wasn’t the intention.

“Attempts to geolocate your sister have failed,” reporters were always quick to mention. “Her Intraface seems to have gone completely off-grid. Kasey, would you like to comment?”

“No. No comment.”

“Might this be deliberate?” they’d press, and that would stop Kasey, wherever she was—usually at the ducts, waiting for an up-ride home after school, commercials blaring in the background, but even they couldn’t drown out the unspoken question.

Might your sister not want to be found?

What could she say? The Intraface was more likely out of range. The boat and body could very well be at the bottom of the seafloor. Possibility didn’t equate high probability, and anything was more probable than a conspiracy theory.

But sharing what she really thought would only appall people, so Kasey would simply shake her head at the reporters and step into the duct when it finally came.

Now, as her moving-on party continued in the virtual domain, she stepped out of her stasis pod, closed the door behind her, and left the room she was fortunate to call her own. Make no mistake: The Mizuharas practiced what they preached. Their unit, like most designed by David for a family of four, was only thirty-five square meters. But at least they had individual rooms connected by a narrow hall, and a window at the hall-end. Everyone else had filled in their walls to boost their units’ thermal efficiency scores, causing voice support for windows to be discontinued across the board.