Page 3 of Arch Conspirator
“It’s not you I don’t have faith in,” she said, “it’s ‘things going right.’”
“Well, I need you to find some.” I reached into the bag hanging off the back of the chair and took something out. It was a metal instrument about the size of my hand. Pointed at one end,thick at the other, almost like a syringe. An Extractor. I put it on the table between us.
She recoiled from it like it was a snake.
“Just in case,” I said.
“Get that thing away from me. You’re not dying.”
“Just in case.”
She leaned over the table, her wide eyes fixed on mine.
“Do you have any idea what it would do to me if I lost you?” she said in a harsh whisper.
“Yeah, I kinda do,” I said. “Same as what it would do to me if I lost you. And lately that seems more and more likely.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
The thing about her was, nobody could hide from her, but she thought she could hide from everybody. Like she was some great actress. Like I wouldn’t notice my own sister going limp by fractions, all the fight gone out of her.
“Sometimes you stare into the future,” I said, “and you don’t like anything you see.”
“Don’t you dare tell me you’re doing this for me.”
“Not just you. God, how long do you think we can go on this way? Any of us?”
A city of seven districts. Kids chanted about it in the North:Seven houses crumbling on a Theban street. One’s got no fire, one’s got no heat. One’s got no water; one’s got no meat.Saw them once jumping rope to it; got scattered a few minutes later by the police.
Antigone touched the Extractor with just her fingertips.
“What if I don’t believe in this shit?” she said, nodding to the instrument. “What if I don’t think a person can be reborn?”
“You don’t?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, doesn’t really matter either way, does it?” I said. “I believe in it. And if I die, I want you to promise to store my ichor inthe Archive. I want you to make sure I can be remade. Consider this my will and testament. Okay?”
“Okay,” she whispered.
“Promise?”
“My word is my word,” she said, scowling at me. “But yes, I promise. If you promise not to plan on dying.”
I smiled. “Promise.”
She closed her eyes as another wave of wind swept across us, dusting our coffees. Tears spilled down her cheeks, and she wiped them away with her scarf. By the time the air settled again, she looked unaffected. She sipped her coffee, dust and all.
“This coffee is shit,” she said.
“Everybody’s a critic,” I replied, and chugged the rest of mine.
3Antigone
The Archive stood in the middle of the city, where the land sloped steeply upward into a hill that looked more like a shelf. It was a building of chalky beige stone, and the land surrounding it was the same, rough and bare. It had been so difficult to move materials up there, the story went, that no one had wanted to repeat the experience, so the Archive was a lonely place, a place for pilgrims.
I worked my way down narrow side streets, where my fine clothing drew the eyes of those who wanted to sell or pilfer, and my recognizable face sent those eyes away almost in the same moment. Still, wherever I went there was the jingling of change in cups, voices strained by coughing up dust asking me to buy, church tracts pressed into my hands that I let fall rather than grasp. I should have had an escort. I was viable and young. Like a crystal glass, fragile and precious and useful only for what I might contain.
