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

It holds Ruth and twelve worried diplomats like fruit floating in a Jell-O mold. As it descends, it casts thirteen shadows on the grass, surrounded by a vague ring. Its shape becomes more definite, flattening on the bottom until it looks like a proper UFO, a pie plate upended. It lands silently, each bureaucrat’s feet gently set on the ground, before retracting like a tablecloth yanked back by a magician and disappearing somewhere inside Ruth.

“Gentlemen,” says Ruth Hammond. “Welcome to New York.”

Fahima walks up to Ruth and kisses her on the cheek. Ruth grabs Fahima’s hip and holds her close for a beat before letting her go. Ruth’s hair smells like ozone and rain.

“What kind of time you make?” says Fahima when she’s back at arm’s length.

“From London in a half hour,” Ruth says.

“They puke?”

“Not a one.”

“Good girl,” says Fahima. She’s aware of her habit of infantilizing Ruth to keep her at a distance. Awareness doesn’t stop her from doing it. Fahima turns to the assembled bureaucrats, who wobble on shaky legs. If Fahima had her way, they’d stay punch drunk and susceptible the entire visit. There was talk of putting the psychic whammy on the lot of them and skipping the show, but Fahima decided determining the global future that way was morally unacceptable. Plus, no one on the Bishop staff had the psychic chops to pull it off.

Omar distributes universal translators the size of jelly beans. The British representative attempts to shove his in his ear, and Omar explains via gesture that they’re to be swallowed. Fahima allows a minute for the gel caps to dissolve, releasing floods of nanites. Tiny sexy genius machines, Alyssa used to call them. Fahima’s mind drifts through Alyssa’s nicknames for Fahima’s inventions, the small of Alyssa’s back and how the smell of hospital disinfectants on her skin drove Fahima wild, the series of body-blow accusations Alyssa landed in their last fight, leaving Fahima too stunned to cry until Alyssa was out the door and out of her life. She tugs at the hanging edge of her hijab, pulling her head a tick to the right and returning to the moment she’s in.

“Gentlemen, I hope you had an amazing flight,” she says. “In case Ms. Hammond didn’t tell you, you were traveling at ten times the speed of sound, in a craft that requires no fuel other than a hearty breakfast for the pilot.” She winks at Ruth, and immediately understands it as a mistake. “Which, incidentally, is our first stop.”

Omar motions for them to follow, and eleven of them fall in line. He’s singular, presenting as a perfectly average personal assistant. Fahima finds it’s best not to show them any abilities that raise serious existential questions, like What does identity mean when you can spread your consciousness over several bodies? Abilities like Omar’s have been fodder for late-night stoned conversations at Bishop since the academy opened its doors. At this stage, it’s easier keeping the metaphysics out of it.

As Fahima hoped, one of the diplomats points to the spectacle at the bottom of the hill, his mouth gawping like a fish. She notes the anchor-shaped mole on his cheek, flips through her mental Rolodex, and determines that it’s Eito Higashi, the Japanese minister of economy, who’s holding his translator pill pinched between his thumb and forefinger. He repeats the same phrase over and over. Fahima doesn’t speak Japanese, but what the fuck is that is universal even without tiny sexy genius machines to translate. She takes his hand and lifts it slightly toward his mouth, then mimes putting a pill into her own mouth and swallowing. Higashi repeats whatever he’s saying.

“I call it the Glitch,” says Fahima. “I like giving things capitalized common nouns for names. It makes me feel like I’m in a science-fiction story.” Behind her, a Yemeni boy sits in the grass. He grins as his eyes follow the parabola of an invisible object above him. On the crest of the hill, three men unshoulder bulky weapons and take aim at the spot the boy is watching. A fourth man points to the invisible object, raises his hand, and clenches it into a fist, then points again. An ignorant seagull repeats a half circle of flight, jumping back to her origin point each time she reaches the end of her arc. After two seconds, they reset and repeat. They’ve been doing this for seven years.

Once, there was a boy in the air, the focus of everyone’s attention. The boy is gone and there’s this tableau, locked in a looping piece of time. “It’s a reminder our potential is also a threat when used improperly. When used in fear, or anger.” It’s a message, landing them here. Be fucking afraid of us. Be amazed, but also pants-shittingly afraid. Notice I said when and not if.

She’s glad Bishop isn’t here to see her do this. He thought they could win hearts and minds cleaning up oil spills and curing crippled kids. He thought they’d get power through democratic channels and the moral arc of history. She wonders if he’d be proud of where they are or horrified at how they got here.

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