A week later I happened by a bistro on the way back from a soccer game. A group of Orwellians sat at a table out front, and one of them remarked to his fellows that it was too bad that Kauppinen was only inconvenienced and not killed.
I went up to them and, placing one hand on the table top and the other on the back of the jerk’s chair, I said, “My name is Cristobol Ng. I’ve recently learned that it is possible to get around the angelnet and kill someone if I’m clever enough. You will now withdraw those remarks you made about my friend Lemmikki Kauppinen if you wish to live to see the next Festival Season, baka boy.”
“Get lost, you arrogant, boot-licking puppy.”
His features indicated possible Dai or Viet ancestry. I lifted my leg, grabbed the ankle, and set my foot atop the table, the sole facing him. My guess about his cultural background proved correct. His eyes went wide just before his face contorted with anger. “You son of a whore!”
The fight, such as it was, didn’t last long, the angelnet converting the local nanbots into restraint mode, and the Regulators were on their way before I even showed him the bottom of my foot. But it took them awhile to break the grip my teeth had on his arm. The arbitrator had a field day with us. I refused to apologize unless the Orwellian withdrew his remarks, which he refused to do. The arbitrator exiled baka boy from the city for a period of ten years. Being a registered parent, I was able to avoid exile, but I was ‘bound over’ for three years. Another public disturbance during that period and I’d find myself barred from the city for a decade. I promised to be good and went home.
I was sitting in our courtyard and watching a u-fog snake eat a u-fog gazelle (yes, I was in that kind of mood) when Swaantje came home and plopped down on the ground beside me without bothering to morph a chair. “How goes it with you today, Colonel-Brigadier?”
“Colonel-Adjutant,” she spat out. “Shifted from line to staff, damn it all. Guardian of virtual file cabinets.”
“Well, it’s not like you’d have to fight in a real war.”
“Ya, but it’d be nice to know I could if I needed to. I’d be better off painting my face black and playing Pieter to Sinter Klaus. Except that Tano does a great Pieter, so I’d be a wash at that, too.”
“Tano hasn’t played Pieter in years.” When the twins were little, Jafar would dress up as Sinter Klaus and Tano as Pieter the Moor for the Feast of the Wise Men. They’d go through town in a mockup of an old Spanic treasure ship and hand out gifts to the city’s children.
I reduced the snake and its dinner back into u-fog particles. “We live in utopia, Swaantje. Why aren’t we happy, you and I?”
“Happiness is transitory.”
“What exactly does that mean?”
“It means, husband, that you and I are having a bad week. Or a bad month. As grandmother used to say, ‘He who attempts too much seldom succeeds.’”
“Did we attempt too much, then? But Grandfather Thanh once told me, ‘Venture all, and see what fate brings.’”
“Great-grandmother said, ‘Little pots soon run over.’”
I glanced over at Swaantje and considered that. “Grandfather Thanh also said, ‘The higher you climb, the heavier you fall.’”
“My paternal great-great-grandmother said, ‘A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains.’”
“My uncle Ferdinand would say, ‘How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest afterward.’”
Swaantje fought a grin, and said, “Grandfather Wilhelm said, ‘The seeds of the day are best planted in the first hour.’”
“Great Aunt Isabel was fond of saying, ‘If you can’t bite, don’t show your teeth.’ ” Somewhat apt, considering I’d tried to mix it up with an adult while wearing a ten-year-old’s body. And sank my teeth into his arm in the process.
“My mother’s cousin’s great-aunt’s grandfather used to say that ‘A dog with a bone knows no friends,’” Swaantje said.
“‘Life is uncertain, so eat your dessert first.’ That’s from Prefect Kauppinen’s grandmother.”
I looked up and saw Swaantje staring at me. “Okay,” she said. “You win.”
I opened up to Swaantje, then, and told her everything I could remember about the time I spent with Lemmikki Kauppinen and how I felt I’d let the Prefect down.
“Could be you’re reading too much into this,” Swaantje said after I finished. “It could be more basic. She might have taken a liking to you, and offered a helping hand. Like, um, the twins when they were little — they’d be drawing a picture with carbon pencil, laying down thick and heavy lines and then trying to erase something they didn’t like; I’d suggest a lighter line, tell them to sketch it in, make corrections, and only then lay down the thick line over their sketch. The Prefect might have been telling you something like that. Sketch lightly, make corrections, then finalize the concept.”
I thought it over. “You could be right. But I have this nagging feeling that it’s something more than that.”
Festival Day, and the family is running around in last minute preparation before heading downtown. The twins burbling about what to see first – dragon boat races, lantern show, peacock dances, folk music and dances from a score of cultures – and darting this way and that as another adult sent them on an errand (“fetch my comb, please,” and “see if my earrings are on my dresser, dear”). Tano and Swaanjte discussing the merits of last year’s ceramics exhibition – the porcelain-making demonstrations, study tours, tea ceremonies, symposium – and how hard it would be to surpass it this year. Cai and Jafar urging me to attend the Lantern Show instead of going off to a sporting event, and me agreeing good-naturedly. Tano suddenly announcing we’d best be off or we’d miss the Promenade of the Lords and Ladies through the flower-bedecked streets, and thereby sending the twins into squeals of dismay for fear of not seeing the avatars of the Moon Princess and the Child Empress (their favorites) in the flesh.
And suddenly the family is flowing out the gateway and down the street, like a tidal wave of joy.
“It is theoretically possible to engineer a Renaissance event among modosophonts given certain preconditions and some careful memetic engineering, even but as late as the Early Empires era the necessary memetic conceptual tools had not been fully developed. (The failed FreedomWorld project at the foundation of Daffy is a case in point). Even today, despite huge advances in memetics, most Renaissance events appear to be natural rather than planned. Transapients’ explanations as to why this should be so are not consistent with one another.”
— Stephen Inniss, “Renaissance Events, Cultural Impacts, & Cultural Refugia From the Nanoswarms,” 36 A.T.
More about the author, M.K. Capriola, here.
I truly enjoyed this story. OA fiction like this is a rare delight.
Kudos! I’m lovin tha newzletta!!1
An gem that, unfortunately, will almost certainly never get the attention that it deserves. I applaud your skilled evocation of vivid imagery and full characters.
I look forward to reading another of your works; should the temptation comes to pass.