Harmony by Project Itoh

is posted to the AR of the person inside on their wall or something, but they didn’t have any way of doing that before.”
    “So they just hit the door? That’s so, I don’t know, primitive ,” Cian said.
    “It was the easiest way to announce their presence to whoever was inside. They called it ‘knocking.’ You used your knuckles, like this.” Miach demonstrated on the classroom wall. “When a person inside heard the knocking, they would shout out ‘Who is it?’ and the person on the outside would shout back ‘It’s so-and-so from such-and-such.’ And the person inside just had to take them at their word. So, if you think about it, every time you opened your door, you were taking a little risk.”
    Cian and I nodded enthusiastically, starry-eyed at the seemingly limitless font of knowledge that was Miach Mihie.
    “But you got to think people are getting tired of this telling-everyone-who-they-are-all-the-time business. What a drag it is to have to show you’re healthy and you’re taking care of yourself all the time. We’re tired of it, right? People shouldn’t have to walk around with labels over their heads, proving every minute and every second exactly who they are to the world.”
    “Say, Tuan—”
    Another memory.
    “You know privacy didn’t used to be such a naughty word.”
    I shook my head, eyes flitting around the room. I couldn’t believe she had just said that word here in class, in the middle of the day.
    Not that Miach ever cared who heard her proclamations.
    “It was because,” she continued, oblivious, “information about yourself used to be available only to yourself and a few others. That’s what privacy meant. But now, everything that used to be private is public, so the only thing ‘private’ these days is sex. Now, why do you think that happened, Cian?”
    Cian shrugged her shoulders.
    For some reason, a light went off in my head at that moment. “It’s like we’ve offered ourselves to the rest of the world as hostages to guarantee our own good behavior,” I said eagerly.
    Miach smiled. “That’s right, Tuan, it’s just like that.”
    I remember feeling a little elation at having said something to please her.
    “It’s just like Tuan says. By letting everyone else know every little detail about ourselves, we’re making sure we can’t get away with anything. Give up your erratic free will as a hostage to everyone else in society and you’re guaranteed to keep things safe and peaceful.”
    This was how Miach dispensed wisdom, little by little, to us little girls in the corner of a classroom, explaining to us exactly why we were so frustrated and why we felt like we didn’t belong.
    Thinking back on it now, I’m amazed it never occurred to me at the time to wonder what sort of people Miach’s parents were. I had never met them, and I didn’t remember Miach ever talking about them.
    Eventually, I had told Miach who my dad was, that he had written the thesis that led to WatchMe, that he had contributed significantly to the world we despised.
    All Miach had said was “huh.”
    She hadn’t lost it. She hadn’t hated me. She had hardly reacted at all.
    
    Now I found I really was curious what kind of parents it took to raise a girl who could smile while she daydreamed out loud about using a household medcare unit to kill fifty thousand people. I removed my finger from the plate and waited quietly for an answer.
    “Might I ask what sort of business a member of an international organization has with us?” the door said, breaking the silence and snapping me out of my reverie fully back into the present.
    “I’m with the Helix Inspection Agency—I suppose you saw that from my ID. We’re an investigative branch of WHO. I was hoping I could talk to you for a moment concerning the multiple suicides in the Sukunabikona Conclave yesterday.”
    The door opened and a woman emerged. She looked to be in her late fifties. It was Reiko Mihie, Miach’s