short fiction
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My name is Nene. My ID card says Nai, the Thai word for Mister, followed by a long boy’s name my father chose from a monk’s list. I will not write it here, and no Thai law will let me change it.
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Andrea “Andi” Burns opened her emails and was amazed, maybe shocked, by what she saw. It was a positive response to the job application she had sent months ago to a criminal law firm, located in Richmond, California, about 16 miles from downtown San Francisco.
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There are three things you need to know before you read this. Firstly, I loved living alone. After years of sharing rooms and dealing with intrusive family members, this was the dream. Second, I was shy and hated engaging in conversation with strangers first. And third, I was a clueless girl and didn’t see the signs.
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Colonel Bridges laid my first brick; he slathered the first layer of mortar. To that mortar he added a strong dose of his spittle. From there I rose over the city of Jackson, absorbing it into myself until I became the city, serving to lift the effluence from the works below into the heavens above.
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Domestic optimization was the norm. Doubtless the digital annulment date was preset, with the standard option to revoke if both parties agreed. Counselors would be notified and the newly decoupled would be placed back on the affinity market, with their newly developed partner preference tastes biometrically optimized.
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In my line of work, you see every kind of person there is. The overly dramatic, who’d jump in after the casket if no one watched them close. The screamers, who wailed and spoke to God as if He were an old drinking mate. The stern-faced uncles and hollow-faced aunts. The confused little kids wondering…
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“I know darling. You’d let the world burn for me. But I don’t want you to. Please. Please.” “Why?” Why would she want to die? I held her face gently. She leaned into my touch.
