The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

Davenport’s pretty kush,” he says. “Chances are she’ll sleep all day and he’ll sit around watching porn.”

“I was better off not knowing that,” says Fahima.

“You asked,” says Omar as he steps into the elevator.

When they redesigned the building to accommodate the new floors above thirteen, Fahima decided on a mag-lev shaft. The ride is fast and smooth, and unlike an Einstein-Rosen bridge up the building’s spine, there’s no risk of rending space-time, which is a plus.

A pack of students load in with them, conversing in the stage voices of teenagers, asserting their place in the world by sheer force of volume. Below thirteen, the students own the building. Fahima insisted on it. What goes on above the old headmaster’s quarters, in the new floors obsidianists built after the armistice might be antithetical to everything Bishop believed in, but the original building Kevin Bishop bought and loved remains a school.

“I’m telling you, I could see her down there,” says one of the kids.

“Bullshit,” another retorts.

“You have, like, a passing interest in her,” says the first. “I’m a superfan who happens to have telescopic vision. I’m a student of her work, and I am telling you I can identify Leida LaPlante by the top of her head from eight stories up.”

“We’re all sorry that your ability is basically doesn’t need binoculars.”

“Five bucks says Harris used his ability to look down her shirt and jerk off.”

“No one is going to take that bet.”

“Fuck every one of you and I’m telling you it’s her.”

“Who’s she even playing?”

“I heard she’s playing Ji Yeon Kim.”

“They got a white lady to play Ji Yeon Kim?”

“Not a white lady. Leida Fucking LaPlante.”

“It’s some bullshit.”

The doors slide open at the fifth-floor cafeteria with a ding, a digital approximation of the physical bells once installed on every floor. We should have left them, thinks Fahima, the tinny facsimile in her ears. We should have kept one real thing.

“You ready for this?” Omar asks once they’re alone.

“Not remotely,” says Fahima.

The elevator hits the ground floor and bounces like a proverbial dead cat. One more thing she keeps meaning to fix.

The Bishop lobby is slipping into slow decline. Flakes of gilding peel off the columns, tile floors are scuffed to the texture of rough pumice. A senior art sculpture old enough it took damage in the siege sits in the center of the lobby, waiting for a student to announce their brilliance by replacing it with their own work. Building resources are unlimited, but Fahima balks at the idea of new floors, erasing the desire paths worn into the tile by decades of rushing students.

“Good morning, Dr. Deeb,” says Shen. He’s the only person who attaches the proper sobriquet to her name, and she’s endlessly grateful. “Big day all around.”

Like the lobby, Shen is getting old. In his case, it’s physical degradation related to his ability. Shifting sizes ravages his joints and connective tissue, but Fahima’s afraid metal hips and knees wouldn’t shift along with the rest of his body. Resonant-specific medicine is an infant field. He’s useless as a security guard; he moves with leaden slowness. Fahima can’t bring herself to replace him for the same reason she hasn’t had the lobby redone. There are so few remnants of the old Bishop. So much has been changed and written over.

“Where do I take a dozen international diplomats with various dietary exclusions for breakfast in this city?” Fahima asks Shen.

His brow crinkles. “Breakfast’s tough,” he says. “Foundation’s dime?” Fahima nods. “Norma’s at the Parker on Fifty-sixth and Sixth. It’s not what it used to be, but they can cook an egg.”

Shen’s understanding of the changes in the city is unique. For him, the displacement of millions of non-Resonants from the city primarily resulted in a restaurant holocaust, hundreds of the city’s finest chefs shunted off to the Wastes, or at best, the Bronx. Where Fahima built a miracle of urban planning, Shen sees an apocalypse for takeout options.

“Make a reservation,” says Fahima to Omar. She’s already lost the name of the restaurant in a tide of names, titles, hobbies and interests, lactose intolerances, gluten allergies, and religious restrictions.

“Don’t worry, Dr. Deeb,” Shen says. “They’re only people.”

There is a way they’ve taken to talking about the world outside that catches Fahima’s ear strangely. The implied sentence is, They’re only people, not like us. It’s the product of a war won, a verbal expression of the policy of “separation as protection” that followed. It’s also the seed of an ugly form of racism, one today’s meeting, along with the government’s discussions of reunification, might stamp out. Equality was built into Kevin Bishop’s teaching, and it was the first thing discarded when the situation came to open blows. Shen is one of the kindest people she knows, but he looks down on common humans with bemused contempt, as if they’re children. Because of this, he thinks today’s stakes are low. Assuming a group is weak blinds you to their strengths.

Once they’re through the revolving doors, Omar doubles again so he can stand on either side of Fahima, guiding her through the scrum of people out front. Lexington Avenue is drenched in lights. Fahima turns back to look at the Bishop building. Lit up as it is, something about its appearance that’s teased at the edge of her brain finally comes to her. With the black glass stripped off the lower floors of the edifice, all the floors that still held classrooms and dorms, and the new upper floors that housed Black Rose Faction offices and Patrick’s quarters all reinforced with black glass, the spire that was once the Bishop Academy looks like a match stood on one end.

Racks of kliegs are aimed at the building and cameramen hover above checking shots. The street is snaked with electrical cords and blocked off at either end by trailers. Tanks and JLTVs are parked with their fronts oriented at the academy’s entrance. Trucks full of weapons sit ready, and men in Homeland Security uniforms make small talk sipping