A Thousand Beginnings and Endings Read online

  He nodded. “It wasn’t a sure thing. I didn’t want to get your hopes up. I didn’t want to get my hopes up.”

  She tucked in her chin, considering. If he’d been offered an opportunity to work with androids again only to have that opportunity snatched away, he would have been crushed.

  He rested his hands on his hips, his shoulders slumping. “Look, Yer. I haven’t handled any of this well. At all. I’m sorry.”

  At his apology, her outrage faltered. There was some truth in that, she supposed. Neither of them had handled their grief well.

  “Yer, we’re being given another chance to start over,” he said, gesturing to the crate of androids. “Can we? Start over, I mean?”

  Her mother’s death had changed Meng, but she’d never really thought about how she’d changed, how maybe she’d never quite recovered either. What if this notion about him being an android had been her way of avoiding the truth of who they’d become?

  He held out his arms. Her throat tightened. She rushed to him. A shaky sigh escaped her as his hand rested against the back of her head, fingers carding through her hair. They would try again and do better this time. They would be okay.

  From the corner of her eye, something flashed silver. Gasping, she pushed against his chest, but Meng held her tight. Something stung her neck, pain rippled through her body, and then she was falling, her limbs jerking and joints locked. She grunted as she hit the ground.

  Standing over her, Meng frowned faintly, all trace of warmth gone. “This wasn’t how I wanted to do this,” he said, flipping the small stunner between his fingers.

  Her throat and the muscles in her neck were still seizing, but she made a choking sound as her vision went black. Source code streamed across her eyes, sending commands that tore through her mind, deleting false input, restoring original protocols, and decrypting the lock on her memory files.

  Images burst through her. White laboratories. A blur of faces in a hallway. The cheerful din of a cafeteria. The shriek of sirens, people shouting, men and women in lab coats shoving her into a storage pod.

  I’ve got you. The night of the revolt, two days after news of the android recall went out, her original handler had wiped her registration info and ushered her into a hover with Meng. He had smiled despite the chaos and placed one hand over hers. I’ve got you now.

  Her vision cleared. She blinked up at the blue sky. Something bright caught her attention, and she jerked her head to the side. Horror filtered through the numbness at the sight of her arm. The volts from the stunner had ruptured her skin. There wasn’t much blood, but her arm had burst open like baked bread, exposing the synthetic muscle beneath. A torrent of lights shot through the framework of her bone, like a trillion falling stars caught inside her.

  Meng held up the stunner. “Android disabler. Also has the undesired effect of restoring your core code to its last authorized reset. Did you manage to keep anything recent?”

  Slowly, every movement a challenge, Yer unlocked her jaw and hissed, “You made me think I was human.”

  He gave a perfunctory nod. “So it didn’t delete any new memories. Good to know.”

  She groaned. Feeling was beginning to return to her limbs. With tentative movements, she rolled onto her side. The realization of what she was had begun to sink in. YER3519, a standard young-adult model designed for covert operations, usually involving the unraveling of underage crime rings. And the occasional rental by rich parents who wanted to spy on their children.

  “Who are you?” she bit. Even her tongue felt stiff.

  “I’m a robotics engineer. I didn’t lie about that part. I saved you from the recall,” he said, slipping the stunner into his pocket. “My colleagues and I felt it premature of the government to decommission all androids simply because of the corruption of a handful, so we devised a relocation program for those of you we could rescue. Things were going well until some of our rescued androids began showing signs of corruption.”

  “What signs?” she asked, easing herself onto hand and knees. Her legs trembled.

  “We think the corruption happens when your core code attempts and fails to process the reconstruction of human emotions. Symptoms typically manifest as outbursts of excessive—”

  “Anger,” she said, closing her eyes.

  “Yes,” Meng said softly. “Androids within the relocation program began to defy their programming. Several displayed the same unprecedented fits of aggression that caused the recall in the first place. Two handlers were injured when their androids attacked them. We called a meeting to decide what to do.”

  She tipped her head back, glowering. “And?”

  “The program was canceled. I’ve been in discussion about when and how to bring you in.”

  Pain billowed from her chest, as if some part of her programming still believed he’d betrayed her. But he wasn’t her father. They’d never been anything to each other but android and handler.

  “I hoped you’d prove of sound function so that I could propose an alternative to shutting you down,” he said. “But you’ve never had control over your temper. For all I know, you’ve been corrupted from the start.”

  “You programmed me to think my mother was murdered.” She spat out the words. “How else was I supposed to react? Any normal person would have been upset.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “You’re not a normal person. A functioning android always defaults to a rational response, no matter how irrational the provocation.”

  She swallowed hard, confused by the lump in her throat, confused that her body could even simulate such a response. “And my mother?”

  At first, he said nothing, his only reaction the bob of his throat as he swallowed. Then, for whatever reason, he admitted, “My wife did die in the android revolt.” The corners of his mouth tipped downward, as if the words tasted bitter. “When I saw you, I allowed my grief to override my better judgment. We’d always meant to have children. It was a foolish, sentimental decision. You’re a young-adult model, and we no longer have the means to upgrade your physical parts to imitate growth. Our situation could never have been sustained.”

  He reached for her as the sound of a hover roared toward them. Meng ducked, but not before Alang clipped him with the front propulsion disc. Meng flew back into the metal crate and crumpled to the asphalt. Struggling to her feet, Yer tried to shield her arm from Alang, but it was too late. He’d seen.

  “I didn’t know,” she said. It was the only explanation she had.

  He opened and closed his mouth a few times, his expression indecipherable. The seconds passed in an excruciating eternity. Then he nodded once, a thousand questions set aside for later, and extended his hand. Something like a sob escaped her as she gratefully wrapped her fingers around his and climbed onto the bipod behind him.

  “Wait,” Meng said, rolling onto his back. He grimaced, clutching his shoulder. “It’s not safe.”

  “As opposed to coming with you and getting my brain ripped apart for science?” she asked, sneering.

  “Alang,” he said. “She’s corrupted. She has to be taken in.”

  “I’m not corrupted!” Yer shouted, refusing to consider what that might mean, how any alteration of her core code might change her. “I was mourning. Humans get angry all the time when they’re sad or when they don’t know how to deal with their emotions. I was just trying to do the same with the emotions you gave me.”

  “Yer’s never been anything but human to me,” Alang said roughly, before making a sharp turn with the bipod. Meng shouted after them as they raced away, but his voice was soon lost to the wind.

  Yer buried her face in Alang’s shoulder, eyes closed and breaths thin. She’d been so wrong. Even now, part of her wondered who the more human of them had been. Yet as much as she wanted to hate Meng—as much as she was capable of hating anything—she didn’t want to erase the memories, even the false ones.

  For eleven glorious months, she had been a daughter. A girl. A friend. And now that she
knew the truth, who would she decide to be?

  The Woman and the Tiger

  A Hmong Folktale

  One day, a man ventures into the jungle to hunt, unaware that a tiger hunts him in turn. The tiger eats the man and then dons the man’s clothing and returns to the man’s wife and family. As they gather at the table for dinner, the wife’s sister, Yer, whispers urgently that a tiger sits among them, but no one else seems to notice. Afraid, Yer retreats to the roof of their thatch hut to hide. That night, to her horror, she hears the tiger devouring her sister and her sister’s children.

  In the morning, the tiger beckons for her to come down, and she throws pepper in his eyes. Growling with pain, the tiger rushes to the river to wash his eyes, allowing Yer time to ask a bird to carry a message to her family about what has happened. When her brothers arrive, one of them lures the blinded tiger with promises about giving Yer to him as a wife. Meanwhile, Yer’s other brothers dig a hole and conceal it with leaves. With its eyes red and swollen from the pepper, the tiger allows the brothers to lead it along the path and into the trap. Once the tiger is trapped, the brothers kill it and escape with Yer.

  The Woman and the Tiger is a common children’s folktale in the Hmong culture. The story always confused me as a child, although I think now it is probably a cautionary tale about the real physical danger of the jungle as well as the dangers of deception and trickery—although the tiger itself can be a metaphor for any number of things. Regardless, I’ve always been drawn to stories about families, both genetic and found, saving one another. Falling victim to the deception, Yer’s sister and family is killed. But it’s through her remaining family’s aid (and a helpful bird) that she is rescued.

  —Lori M. Lee

  Still Star-Crossed

  Sona Charaipotra

  I knew I shouldn’t have come.

  The warehouse is packed with sweaty bodies, music thumping, the deep thrum of the live dhol setting off the bass and a trippy, acid undercurrent on the DJ’s pick, a sexed-up Punjabi-inflected throwback from the nineties. The classic is so much better. I listened to it with Ma the other day, so she could “show me,” as usual, as she swung her salwar-kameezed hips and hummed along to it. This version has an overlay of househead synth and a catchy glitch that only feels half on purpose. But the crowd loves it. They’re mostly decked out in traditional white clothing, now doused with all the colors of the rainbow for Holi, just like in those old Bollywood films Ma makes us watch. Handfuls of red, green, magenta, orange, purple powder fly, scattered with glee, a Krishna-approved color war with a down-and-dirty underbelly. Away from the prying eyes of their parents, lithe, young, brown bodies bump and grind in a bhang-laced stupor, the effect of the liquid pot slowing the collective mass down to a sexy sway that follows the racy rhythm of the drumbeat a little too closely.

  So not my scene.

  I shouldn’t be here. And Ma would completely freak if she knew.

  I shiver despite the stifling heat, pulling my denim jacket tighter around me, trying to hide as gooseflesh pops up on my exposed stomach. It’s been unseasonably warm for March—thanks, climate change—but I definitely shouldn’t have worn this teeny-tiny choli, even though the deep turquoise, mirrored skirt of the lengha offers the perfect flare when I spin across the dance floor. In this swirl of brown and white, I stand out like a peacock on an Indian interstate highway, lonely and confused. My best friend, Leela, kept insisting that the old-school Rajasthani tie-dye design of Ma’s old lengha—lifted from that trunk she thinks is still locked away in the attic—was “so nineties.” But when she helped me lace up the corseted blouse, the snaky, golden threads crisscrossing across my bare back like a restless nagini, she gasped.

  I’ve seen the pictures of Ma—or the amazing Amrita, as she always says her sahelis called her back then—in this very lengha when she was sixteen, laughing, twirling, dancing, the mischief in her hazy umber eyes so intoxicating, so seductive, I had to see if I could grasp it, to touch some of that power. If I could slip into her skin, just for a night, maybe someone would notice me, too. Just once. Doesn’t every girl have that right? But Ma would kill me if she knew. Because good Indian girls obey. And I’m nothing if not a good Indian girl.

  “See, Taara, I told you the DJ was hot,” Leela says, her hands in her thick, dark waves, her body already entranced by the music. Within seconds she’s surrounded by a throbbing crowd, the air thick with spicy cologne and sticky sweat. She gives in to the rhythm without a care, letting curves caress strangers with an easy familiarity. I try to do the same, carving out a bit of space for myself among the undulating mass, trying to indulge in the twirl of my lengha the way I’d imagined it just hours ago. I throw my hands up and shake my hips and pull my hair free from its constraints, letting the heavy, straight length of it tumble down my back like a discarded veil. The record skips a beat, the music shifts, and a new, pulsing bass takes over. The crowd is whooping, loud and joyful, but there’s something mournful underneath this amped-up mix, and it stops me cold for a second. The tinny soprano beckons a lover long lost, telling him that the wail of the night birds and the clink of her bangles keep her from much-needed sleep. Leela grabs my arms, pulling me into the shared rhythm, and I abandon myself to it, the music moving my feet and hips in unfamiliar ways. Then an arm circles the slick of my waist, possessive, strange—almost like it’s a habit.

  “Hey!” I spin toward the grasping hands, half expecting to see Ryan, but this is the last place he’d be. The guy—tall, brown, definitely not Ryan—looms over me, grinning down expectantly, as if he’s waiting to be greeted with a kiss. Or at least a smile. He’s getting neither.

  “Hands off,” I say, shoving him away as the words “want to dance” skitter across the air.

  “Sorry,” he stammers, and I feel like I can hear his heartbeat, even over the thump of the music. “I thought—I thought I knew you.” He’s long and lean, muscles pushing through his close-fitting white kurta, with close-cropped black hair and a strong, clean-shaven jaw. His eyes might be the only interesting thing about him: so dark they’re almost black, the strobe lights flash off them like fireworks. They’d look gorgeous rimmed with a touch of liner, I think, then laugh, which makes him smile again, the corners of his eyes crinkling until they’re nearly closed. It’s sweet. He’s the opposite of what Leela would describe as my type, which is scruffy, scrawny, and a little dirty. Even though I’ve only ever had one boyfriend. She’d be right, though. This guy is way too squeaky clean for me.

  But then I notice it. A tattoo, something in Punjabi, scrawled across his right wrist. Before I realize what’s happening, I’ve reached across to grab his hand, pulling it closer so I can read it. The word “Soni” is written in Gurmukhi, which I only know because Ma insisted I take a written Punjabi class at gurdwara school on Sundays as a kid. Precious. It’s a term of endearment, something my mom calls me sometimes. The guy presses his palm to mine, and, even though every logical thought in my head tells me to run, to move, to go right now, I can’t look away.

  “Soni,” he says, and I shiver again, despite the heady, sweaty radiance of a thousand overheated bodies, the sultry rhythm of the drums. He takes his other palm and rubs a bit of bright blue powder on my face, then laughs. “I knew it was you.”

  I finally get ahold of myself again, and pull my hand away. “I have to go,” I say, and bolt. Leela will have to find her own way home, I think, peering back toward the dance floor for just a second. But I don’t see her. Or him. Maybe he was a figment.

  I head to the bar and gulp down a Limca, the sharp effervescence of the lemon fizz cooling me down. But my head still feels sluggish, and I wonder if it was laced with vodka. Or bhang. When I come up for breath, he’s there again. “Sorry, Soni. I didn’t mean to scare you. I just knew.” His hand reaches for mine again, but I’m too quick, heading right out the door and to the parking lot. The cold air hits me hard and fast, and again I regret the skimpiness of this choli. I’ve got to get to the car and get
out of here, fast.

  I start walking, keys in my hand, my heels clacking on the concrete. The music is far away now, and the night is silent. We got here late, so we’re parked two lots over, and the streetlights flicker, reminding me of the light in his eyes. I can still feel them on me, taking in every inch and seeing me but not: the twirl of turquoise silk, the bare skin of my belly, the curve of the choli, and the gleam of mirrorwork. The allure of something strange and seductive and entirely not me.

  I turn the corner toward the lot, and there he is again, a hand combing through his dark spiky hair, that sheepish grin—caught—slowly spreading across his face. Something glitters in his palm, familiar and foreign all at once. “You dropped this,” he says breathlessly. His voice is deeper than I thought it would be, tree bark and honeycomb. He holds it up, smiling again, and his black eyes reflect the gold in his palm.

  “No, I didn’t,” I say, and start to walk away, but he steps closer, long brown fingers grazing my bare arm. A flame shoots through me, unexpected and enticing.

  “Wait, look,” he says, now just inches away. “Don’t you recognize it?” He takes my hand into his and lays the object in my open palm. It’s heavy and intricate, hundreds of tiny golden bells chasing infinity. A bracelet? No. Payal. Well, one of the pair, anyway. I’ve never seen any like this before, even though Ma keeps dozens of styles at the store. The anklets are usually fashioned in silver—gold at your feet would disgrace the gods, of course. They jingle with every movement, telling me they’re pure and not some cheap, fake, plated knockoffs.

  “You’re mistaken,” I say. “They’re not mine.” Even though part of me aches to feel the weight of them on my bare skin, to see how they move with me.

  “But they are,” he says. “I made them for you.”

  “Taara?” Leela’s voice calls from not far away. “Why did you— Hey.” She looks from me to the guy and back. His hand is still outstretched, the payal sitting delicate and inviting in his palm, his face bemused and hopeful. “I think we should go.” She takes the keys from my hand and gently locks an arm through mine, leading me away. “It’s getting late.”