horrible, we thought, and how sad. Maybe you remember the conflict in Chechnya?”
I told her it was still going on.
“Is that so? Well, that’s where Miach was from. She was the child of a minority group there, a very small community, the admedistration official told us. Their facial features resemble ours quite a lot, and she was only eight years old when we got her, so they told us she wouldn’t have any problem getting used to our family and our way of life. All of which was very good news to us. They did mention she’d seen some pretty rough times, but that she’d gone through heavy therapy for her trauma already, and all we needed to do was provide a warm, loving home for her.”
Miach, a war orphan? I was sure she’d never said anything about that. And neither I nor Cian ever doubted she was Japanese. She spoke fluently, and though she’d had a certain exotic beauty to her features, they fit well within the margins of Japanese variation.
In the course of my work I’d had several opportunities to meet child soldiers—one of the many scenes AI social filtering kept out of the admedistration media due to a risk of trauma to viewers.
I remembered them in one of the many African countries I visited, carrying the customary AK-47s and a few M-4s from America. Children. Their country was sluggishly transitioning from an antiquated government to an admedistrative system, but there were still armed factions here and there, and the embers of conflict still smoldered.
We were at the negotiation table across from a twelve-year-old boy. A boy who happened to be the leader of an armed force 140 strong—I won’t call them “men” because they were boys too. His boys’ eyes were blank as they looked over the firepower we were offering them in exchange for their cigarettes and drugs.
Chechnya I’d never been to, but I’d heard plenty of rumors.According to the Helix inspector for the region, the military goods dealer on contract with the Geneva Convention forces there had made a mess of the place with various abuses of the law, only serving to increase the small republic’s hatred and distrust of its larger neighbors.
And Miach had been there, in the middle of that tragedy. I knew the crimes that children experienced in war zones. Now I considered the possibility that Miach had seen or experienced many of them herself. For the first time I had learned that Miach was carrying something inside her, a darkness she hadn’t told anyone—not even her coconspirators. The fact that she had come from such a hell on earth made her hatred of the admedistrative world—which must have seemed heavenly by comparison—all the more impressive.
“At first she was fine. Everything was normal. But when she got into middle school, it was like she became someone else, possessed almost. She started trying to kill herself. I told you how she attempted to cut her wrists. Well, eventually she found a way to hurt herself without anyone knowing. She came by these drugs—I don’t know where—that stopped the body’s absorption of nutrition from food. She and some of her friends made a pact that they would kill themselves that way.”
I was one of those friends.
I was that little girl who failed thirteen years ago and hadn’t forgotten it for a moment since.
I and Miach and Cian had taken those pills together in order to strike a blow against the world that had tried to suffocate us by making us too important to be lost. We wanted to hurt the world, and we were willing to hurt ourselves to do it. Well, some of us, at least.
Of course, I said nothing. All I had to do at that point to keep her talking was nod at the appropriate times and occasionally ask a suitably leading question.
“Of course, even when they took the drugs, it still looked like they were eating well. I didn’t notice anything. Nor did the parents of the other girls. By the time I did realize something was
I told her it was still going on.
“Is that so? Well, that’s where Miach was from. She was the child of a minority group there, a very small community, the admedistration official told us. Their facial features resemble ours quite a lot, and she was only eight years old when we got her, so they told us she wouldn’t have any problem getting used to our family and our way of life. All of which was very good news to us. They did mention she’d seen some pretty rough times, but that she’d gone through heavy therapy for her trauma already, and all we needed to do was provide a warm, loving home for her.”
Miach, a war orphan? I was sure she’d never said anything about that. And neither I nor Cian ever doubted she was Japanese. She spoke fluently, and though she’d had a certain exotic beauty to her features, they fit well within the margins of Japanese variation.
In the course of my work I’d had several opportunities to meet child soldiers—one of the many scenes AI social filtering kept out of the admedistration media due to a risk of trauma to viewers.
I remembered them in one of the many African countries I visited, carrying the customary AK-47s and a few M-4s from America. Children. Their country was sluggishly transitioning from an antiquated government to an admedistrative system, but there were still armed factions here and there, and the embers of conflict still smoldered.
We were at the negotiation table across from a twelve-year-old boy. A boy who happened to be the leader of an armed force 140 strong—I won’t call them “men” because they were boys too. His boys’ eyes were blank as they looked over the firepower we were offering them in exchange for their cigarettes and drugs.
Chechnya I’d never been to, but I’d heard plenty of rumors.According to the Helix inspector for the region, the military goods dealer on contract with the Geneva Convention forces there had made a mess of the place with various abuses of the law, only serving to increase the small republic’s hatred and distrust of its larger neighbors.
And Miach had been there, in the middle of that tragedy. I knew the crimes that children experienced in war zones. Now I considered the possibility that Miach had seen or experienced many of them herself. For the first time I had learned that Miach was carrying something inside her, a darkness she hadn’t told anyone—not even her coconspirators. The fact that she had come from such a hell on earth made her hatred of the admedistrative world—which must have seemed heavenly by comparison—all the more impressive.
“At first she was fine. Everything was normal. But when she got into middle school, it was like she became someone else, possessed almost. She started trying to kill herself. I told you how she attempted to cut her wrists. Well, eventually she found a way to hurt herself without anyone knowing. She came by these drugs—I don’t know where—that stopped the body’s absorption of nutrition from food. She and some of her friends made a pact that they would kill themselves that way.”
I was one of those friends.
I was that little girl who failed thirteen years ago and hadn’t forgotten it for a moment since.
I and Miach and Cian had taken those pills together in order to strike a blow against the world that had tried to suffocate us by making us too important to be lost. We wanted to hurt the world, and we were willing to hurt ourselves to do it. Well, some of us, at least.
Of course, I said nothing. All I had to do at that point to keep her talking was nod at the appropriate times and occasionally ask a suitably leading question.
“Of course, even when they took the drugs, it still looked like they were eating well. I didn’t notice anything. Nor did the parents of the other girls. By the time I did realize something was
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