"People Like You"
by Acey
Disclaimer: Nadesico isn't mine, and you more than likely know it. Or ought to, at any rate.
Notes, warnings: A fic within a fic, really, set around the first few episodes, goes backwards-- from alternate universe to borderline normal(even the "normal" part is rather A/U-ish, to warn you; they don't ever even get close to the Jovians, in this tale), and then back again to alternate universe. This is mainly a story about the earliest version of Ruri we saw at her driest, most impassive stage of character development, and how a character like that might survive and adapt to a situation that others might not. Any out-of-characterness can probably be blamed more on the situation at hand than anything else, I hope (if not, then by all means please flame me to the ends of the earth). Violence, angst, mentions of possibly underage drinking, and a harsh look at the totalitarian form of government. No profanity, but that doesn't mean that the rating isn't fully meant. I would love to write a sweet, humorous little fic, but it seems that I can't . . .
Day by day, the computers would scan her in, proclaiming in bold lettering across their screens her vital statistics: name, serial number, age, height and weight. It was almost natural now to walk into work, climb up the six flights of stairs to get to the office cubicle she shared with another young woman fresh out of vocational that bumbled through all she did, always with loud, high-pitched jabbering. The uniform she wore fit her to a standard among her coworkers, the drab gray of internship, a gray that served its purpose and faded her into the background. She had cut her hair some time before and it now hung about her chin in a pale, monotonous bob. She didn't care about it. She had never cared about it. The cubicle was the thing of most importance now.
It was cold in the room on late winter days such as this one, with the windows perpetually up to keep the workers awake. When it rained she and the other worker would stuff the windows with towels and hope for the best. There in the minute cubicle was her one comfort and solace, the only thing the State had done for her that kept her from going mad.
And they had done so much to make her mad, drive all the sanity from her body, leaving only a shell. So much they had taken, like greedy children hungry for sweets. In the end the State would take everything.
But this was not the end, not yet, not now. They had employed her with one weapon unthinkingly, foolishly; they had left her with her greatest asset in hopes that it would become their own. They had left Ruri Hoshino to work with the computers.
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Five hours of staring at a screen went by too quickly for her liking, and the bell for lunch rang. She took her tray back to the cubicle and sat down, eating the food without tasting it, for the only thing that did have a truly discernible taste was the thin slab of chocolate half the size of her pale hand, and even that comfort was a stale one. The State had decreased the amount of rations, but Ruri had typed so many reports to the contrary earlier that she began to believe them herself as she drank the bland tea and chewed the day-old bread. Ruri did not have time to contemplate the reduction before the bell to go back to work rang out and her co-worker stumbled up the stairs from the cafeteria and ran to her chair, booting up her computer in the same movement. Ruri turned back to her own machine and started it. She had not gotten into the programs before the coworker began to speak, hesitatingly, as usual.
"Hoshino, the computer won't--"
She was there in a half-second, idly checking the wiring and then the machine itself.
"You left the cords unhooked."
Her co-worker murmured a relieved thanks and all returned to silence, excepting the quiet sound of keying. Keying, at outrageously fast, practiced speeds that could have won competitions had there been any, keying with few backspaces besides those necessary to edit documents. The typists seemed to go on forever in this manner, and almost did. It was three-o'clock when the mandantory break was held and the workers could stop for five minutes, wrap tired fingers in gauze for such, they said, might reduce strain. Ruri closed her eyes, ineffectively trying to black out the after-image of the bright computer screen. She opened them and unwrapped the gauze when the break was finished and returned again to the computer.
The dull sound of keys being hit sounded like the unpleasant pitter of constant rain on a roof, enjoyable to only the poets and dreamers that thought they could make something out of the sound, and not those forced to hear its endless light noise.
But they enjoyed it, for with the sound came the knowledge that yes, indeed, work was getting done. They enjoyed it, and that was the painful thing. Those in the State liked to hear it-- it enthralled them, kept them sickly occupied to see them work as the years melted away. For they had melted away; Ruri knew that just as well as the other workers did.
She stopped these thoughts when she noticed that she was typing them down in the document, hastily pressing backspace and hoping her head had covered the words. Ruri turned to her coworker intently, but she was intent on her own work and did not seem to have noticed. She sighed, relieved for a moment. The other girl did not have reason to suspect her, then, of the traitorous thoughts and plans that had plagued her for six years. If she had, Ruri would have forcibly left the office building before this.
Her fears amounting to nothing, she continued as the hours passed like shadows, fading silently by.
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Ruri filed out of the building with her co-workers at five-thirty post meridian, aware as if for the first time of the severe contrast in height between her and the others. Painfully small even as a child, the smallness had extended into these her late teens and would probably extend into the remainder of her life. It made her look like a juvenile-- innocent, frail, almost, except for the hardened look in her amber eyes which kept the fey picture from being completed. It might work to her advantage at some point, she decided.
She walked to the apartment, dodging only human traffic and a few bicycling children that were oblivious to the rows of adults coming home. The looks in their eyes were cruel from the lot they had been given in life, cruel and almost impudent, as they carelessly rode the bicycles down the road. Ruri hoped fervently for a moment that someday a passing streetcar would hit them and take that rude arrogance out of them as she narrowly missed a collision with one of them and watched as the boy sped away. She shrugged the thought off as she entered the apartment and the room she had there.
The other young women were there already, a jovial bunch when compared with Ruri. They greeted her with complaints, for apparently their salaries have been reduced. She said nothing on the subject.
"I bet yours was cut, now, wasn't it?"
It was a thought she had not considered lately. Before Ruri could reply, she heard another voice, sardonic, cutting.
"Don't you know it? Hoshino doesn't care about the cuts; she only cares about the computers!"
She ignored the speaker, knowing it was almost the truth.
"It was cut last month, actually."
"How much, Hoshino?" one of them said with a mixture of envy and curiosity. The job of typist was more lucrative than the job of janitor that the questioner had.
Ruri brushed the comment away.
"It isn't important."
Their interest was unfortunately piqued by the words.
"Come on, Hoshino, how much?"
She evaded them.
"Why are we even talking about this? The cuts are meaningless. Our jobs are safe, they always have been. You should be ashamed to complain when. . . ." and she continued, reciting words she had almost memorized, words that contained the message that the State would be pleased in. The other girls were not happy with her chiding, but they nodded anyway, most sulking as they did.
"Maybe they're meaningless to you but the rest of us have to eat more than the lunch rations--" one of the girls stopped there, as she realized that Ruri was not looking at her but at the glass bottle that another young woman was holding, half full with liquid, bearing the inscription they all knew.
It was alcohol, gin, easy to find on the black market but hard to purchase. Ruri glared at the bottle and at the woman holding it, for she knew what the bottle cost and how the inflation had risen as the amount of pay for workers had decreased.
For a second, Ruri wanted to grab the bottle, throw it on the floor, and watch with muted glee as it explodes into a thousand shards, the gin with it. The one holding the liquor sobbed, but Ruri felt no pity for her, felt no pity for anyone now. She straightened herself to her fully unimposing full height.
"You're wasting your money," Ruri said softly, angrily. "I hope you know that I don't intend on sharing my food with you when the gin wears off."
She knew she was overreacting, knew this was uncharacteristic of her. She would have been annoyed, surely, but there would have been no reprimand, not even a change in facial expression. She would have been impassive. Why should she be concerned on how the others spent their money? What was it that was making her react to a drunken fool so harshly?
She turned and stalked away, closing the curtain that separated her daybed from the rest of the room, falling asleep to the sounds of the offender shuffling off and crying into the night.
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The next morning, Ruri credited the outburst to the lunch ration cut, knowing that was not the problem but pinpointing it there anyway. She considered apologizing to girl with the liquor but decided against it when she remembered that they didn't have the same shifts and wasn't at the apartment when Ruri was, and wouldn't be until night.
She changed into a uniform identical to the one of the previous day, starchless and wrinkled from the wash. Ruri had noticed some co-workers in the same state of disarray of dress in the past few months. She and most of the other girls in her apartment used the sink to wash clothing, but the girls used the iron to try to curl their hair besides for its general purpose and so it rarely was not in use enough for Ruri to get her hands on it often enough for her to always have a ironed uniform.
She sat down to a lukewarm breakfast, half a small, empty omelet and powdered milk in a plastic container. The meal had a diluted taste, with hardly more flavor than the lunch ration from work, but it was sustaining enough even though the omelet was dry and the milk slightly sour. She would have to buy some more today. A tiny grin appeared on her face as she thought of that. Today, her week's paycheck would come in, all of forty dollars. Forty dollars to buy with, an amount that seemed huge to the other girls but that she knew was miniscule. Still, it was something.
On again to work, on to the solitary cybernetic endeavors that Ruri almost enjoyed. Not even the persistence of her co-worker's trite complaints when her computer downed itself every other moment ("Hoshino, the computer won't start." "How do I edit this type of textual format, Hoshino?" "They never taught us this back in vocational. . .") could ruin today for her, not completely. That Ruri was sure of.
"It's payday for you, too, isn't it, Hoshino?" came the other worker eventually after another thank-you for rewiring her computer during break. Ruri nodded. "It's mine. Every one of them makes me glad I got the chance to enter vocational, because people like you and I, typists, make a much better living than those-- below, the janitors and such. They're such dreadful people, so jealous! It makes me wonder if it is fair, to have them have a little less because they're unskilled. . ." Ruri's co-worker realized what she had said and put her hand to her mouth. "I mean... don't tell them--"
"The janitors only make a dollar or so less than we do. It isn't much. Actually I'm surprised they don't make the same amount. The break's almost over now."
The other girl nodded nervously, not reassured. Conversation ended, Ruri returned to her desk, to hour after hour spent composing into the computer. She stopped only to turn the pages of the stack of papers that she was supposed to write and rewrite into the processor, edit them until her amber eyes saw after-images of the screen when she blinked.
Then it was five-thirty and work was over. She walked down the flights into the main office and waited in line for her check. The line moved slowly, ineffectively, until finally she was at the desk.
"Ruri Hoshino."
"Hoshino--" the worker scanned through the list. "Hoshino. Here you are." The man held out her check in one hand, the stub of a State cigarette, the tip faintly flaming, in the other. She took it and read it.
"'Pay to the order of Ruri Hoshino, thirty-seven dollars.'"
They had cut her pay again without informing her. She turned quickly away from the man lest she show her upset, her anger at this, lest they take everything faster than she wanted them to, before she could even manage to try her counter, her plan--
She left the building without a word and went immediately to the grocery. Ruri wouldn't have come there at all after what had just occurred if there had been any more food in her small shelf of the shared pantry.
She got a cart and loaded it as economically as was possible, buying the powdered milk again, and cans of beans, corn and instant soup. Ruri mentally totaled this and went to check out the items. The total came out to be twenty-two dollars, more than half of her paycheck. She paid the money glumly, but the man at the booth was cheered by something-- a strange thing, because he must be getting a pay cut, too, Ruri thought. He noticed her dour expression but instead commented on why he was cheerful.
"They've decided to give my wife and I a permit to become parents," he said with as much pride in his voice as if what babies he imagined had been born already. "It's taken four years of asking the State for permission, and now-- I'm just so happy I can't stand it."
She nodded dully. The State would allow childbirth with a permit to married adults, wasn't it wonderful. Test-tube babies, fertilized in Petri dishes, who wouldn't even resemble their parents. It was not such a call for celebration.
"My wife's so tickled about it. I guess it's a little strange of both of us to be excited like this; I know my father and mother were never this pleased to be allowed to have children, and neither were hers-- but it's fine. Once the baby's here this excitement will wear off, I'm sure, so don't worry. I think I'll mark this day. March fifteenth, correct?"
Ruri looked up, wide-eyed.
March fifteenth. Fifteenth, the Ides of March, her brain recalled in textbook-thought out of some recess, the day that Caesar had been warned of and had been killed on, the day the Nadesico had--
"Ruri?" the man asked, reading her name off of the pin on her uniform, concerned.
"Yes, that's correct," and she rushed out of the grocery and into the street, and back to her apartment.
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She had forgotten. She had impossibly lost track of the days, somehow, a ludicrous thing, an abysmal thing. It had taken the cashier to remind her of it, horribly, painfully. How she had thought it to be a happy day was now beyond her. Memories had filled her thoughts, the pleasant with the bleak, the terrible with the grand.
And now, six years later, she refused to let them leave her alone.
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Six years previous the Nadesico had been in pristine condition. So had her crew, if youth was a sign of pristine condition. For her crew was young, eccentric, yet ultimately positive overall, positive with the naivety that comes along with youth, with those unhardened by years and trials.
It had been the Nadesico's first mission, with its inexperienced crew setting off to attack Jovian forces. Ruri had begun to inexplicably like her crewmates during the few days they had been up in space despite their quirks that threw her off and aggravated her, Ruri of the calculating mind and the impervious, calm exterior. There was something oddly likeable about all of them, something decent.
The crew seemed to have gotten to like her better than she liked them, to be blatantly honest. They had gotten attached to their youngest crewmember, tried to reach her. Three days into the mission they probably realized it was a futile struggle (or so Ruri thought), but they plodded along with it besides. That was, when they were not haplessly running after Akito for whatever reason. Ruri was starting to wonder what was attracting more than half of the female crew to the poor young man; he wasn't the only male on the entire ship, for goodness' sake, and it wasn't like they'd never get off the Nadesico. . . Ruri came close to feeling sorry for him. He didn't like being chased around.
But even Ruri could admit at least to herself that he was fairly--
She stopped that. Akito was too old for her. Let the other girls fight over him; they actually had a chance at snagging the cook, Yurika most likely of all. She, Ruri, was not going to entertain thoughts of her crush being fulfilled when she was older like some idiot, ordinary pre-teen fantasizing over a movie star; she would stick to her job. She glanced at the screens again, checking to see if each one was normal, on-target. She glanced at Minato, on the bridge today, a confused, uncharacteristically worried look in her eyes. Ruri paused in her work as Minato spoke.
"Captain," she said quietly, "we're going too fast."
There was a pause, and Yurika questioned as to the exact readings. Minato gave them.
"What? That's way too high! Can you adjust them?"
"Yes, Captain."
An adjustment, a reduction in speed. Minato did it and looked at the reading again.
"It's increased."
Ruri spoke, a rare note of worry in her monotone. The Nadesico navigated itself to its destination; why, then was the ship heading-- what kind of malfunction--
The situation was tense, tense with strain and nerves stretching to the point of rupture. Technology had befriended them in its way up until now with its simple convenience, its easiness. Now it had become their enemy, their sole preventer of reaching their destination.
Ruri heard a command from Yurika in a tone that had lost its ever-present blissful cheer and brightness, a tone that chilled the rest of the crew because of that lack. Ruri started to obey it, to respond, leaning forward toward the control panel, eyes calculating the new development, mind deftly trying to invent a way of fixing it. She had just begun to enter in information when she felt something propel her forward-- propel everyone forward in a forceful motion, and just as suddenly back. She cringed at the ache of the whiplash as she tried to begin again. In the back of her mind she imagined what disasters that must have had on the chef and cooks' baking had they been mixing or frying anything.
Another jolt, worse than the first. Ruri thought she heard a yell from behind her-- one of the pilots, or was it someone else from the bridge?-- a childlike yell of bewilderment that echoed everyone's sentiments.
Ruri hardly managed to hear a word of news above the tumult.
"Captain . . . the ship just won't slow down."
"I know." Gone was the hope that everything would be all right. Ruri stumbled in to make a comment.
"We're completely off course. Systems report less than half the fuel necessary to return to Earth."
"What are our options?"
"We have two. We can send calls for help and try again to decrease the speed. The chances of anyone coming to our rescue from Earth from here before we run out of fuel are slim to none. We're too far off course for that. Or, we can see if there's anywhere to land on the course the Nadesico is taking that might be habitable."
The crew was silent after this reply. Yurika did not hesitate.
"The second option, then. Search the area."
Ruri did so.
"Most of this is stars, Captain. A few planets have been detected, one that has the capacity for life."
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Two days later they made it in spite of absolutely everything. A quarter of all the systems on board had shut themselves down or malfunctioned to the point of not being repairable by then, a nightmare no one had thought conceivable, a nightmare they watched in slow motion like a scene from an ancient movie. Most of the crew was quiet during the forty-eight hours, and while they were not trying to work what systems remained they ate without tasting the food, read manga without seeing any pictures, idly flipped through novels and magazines with no point. At night the Nadesico's entire crew had all succumbed to insomnia by reason of both anxiety and the jolts of the ship-- they had not stopped since the malfunctions. The speedometer and the communicator broke in the morning of the second day, four hours before their arrival, causing most to swear obscenely at least in their minds and try to keep from tears.
"We'll never get home now."
The thought was in everyone's mind but was left unspoken. Some managed to relax a little by some means that Ruri could not understand, trying to be cheerful about it all when there was little to be happy about, not realizing some of it was for her benefit, that they attempted to smile and go on because they thought everyone else was naturally doing the same, and because there was a twelve-year-old aboard-- a precocious cynic of a preteen, but a preteen nonetheless. She knew already that Earth was no more than a distant dream now, that their mission to Mars had been aborted for the higher mission of pure survival. The crew would not allow themselves to let her watch as they, the adults, fell apart, a noble effort that went unrecognized.
There was a bit more relief visible among the crew after the ship managed to make it to the planet. It had not crashed and formed a crater, shattering itself and the people aboard when it landed, somehow, a miracle in itself. Ruri had no idea how the Nadesico had managed that but was too grateful to care how it had happened. They had made it alive. They had all made it.
The last readings they had gathered had determined that the planet was suitable for human life and might have some of its own. Perhaps they were advanced enough to be able to help the crew, fix the ship, be able to send them back home. 'To Mars,' Ruri corrected herself, 'we're going to Mars.' Mars after all of that, all the anxiety, the resign, the practical elegy for themselves they had all made when the ship went off course. Yes, they would go to Mars if they ever managed to get off of this planet, in spite of everything. Unlikely that they would, but there was still that pleading that they would from everyone from the cooks and chef to the pilots to the people on the bridge to the captain- all wanted for it all to be so.
With the luck they had had it was more likely that the only inhabitants of the planet would be prehistoric reptiles or gigantic moths. If they were fortunate enough to find humanoids they would probably be cavemen, or something similar. There was a chance of them being more advanced than that, but it was as likely as winning the lottery after buying a single ticket.
But Ryoko claimed to have seen what looked like a building during their descent, so it might be possible-
Someone opened the door to the outside, and the crew filed out of the ship Nadesico for what would be the final time.
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The ship had landed in a vacant field that recalled to mind an old Army field used for war games and dropping paratroopers. It was dense with half-dead grass, unbeautiful, normal. They saw it as close enough to home.
Yurika was trying to decide whether to organize the crew into groups and search for sentient creatures or stay where they were and wait for the creatures to appear to them. Their food needs were taken care of for the time being; the chef with her endlessly vast amounts of supplies for any number of last meals had seen to that. They would not need to search for food for a good while yet. Sanitation would be spare; the Nadesico was not equipped with enough water to bathe the crew every day for more than a month or two at extreme best, and they might spend their entire lives on the planet. Without the ability to send or receive messages from Earth there was no hope of getting aid from there. Their last shot was the inhabitants of this planet.
Yurika had not yet come to a decision on whether to find what thinking race there might be on the planet or wait for it to come when it did come less than two hours after they had stepped off the ship.
"Look!" someone had said in a mix of astonishment and sheer joy so apparent that Yurika turned instantly, blue hair flying. Ruri turned too, quickly, a shocked look in her honey-colored eyes as she gazed upon the figures moving in their direction.
They were people. Not cavemen, barbaric and uncivilized and idiotic, but real people, people with uniforms that looked like they had come from factories-clean clothes, and shoes and combed hair and . . .
And weapons. Bayonets attached to rifles, the metallic tips shining in the noonday sun.
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In retrospect Ruri could blame no one for their initial reactions. How they had forgotten everything in the delight of coming into human contact again besides the other crewmembers, how they had eagerly come near as foolish children expecting a puppy from a stranger if they'd just come to their car with them and wait.
How the soldiers had answered their cries of hellos and we are from Earth in turn, coming upon them like flies on a piece of meat, aiming their guns at them before they could blink, forcing them in the direction they wanted them to go. The crew obeyed for their lives and walked for half a mile before they came upon a building surrounded by grassland and scattered trees and were forced inside.
Ruri remembered the staleness of the building most, the dry air blowing in through the open window and doing no good. There was an unvarnished wooden desk near it, half-filled by a square object that was covered with some sort of plastic. There were two electric lights overhead. No chairs.
The militia questioned them extensively, harshly. Their words were brutally clipped and snappish as they listened to the replies of the crew. They were there from another planet. They didn't want to fight them. They were not spies--
The soldiers laughed at that.
"Not spies? Ludicrous. No foreigners come to the State for any other reason. You will stay here until my superior can be summoned and we can find a use for you. Likely it's only for draining our arsenals of bullets." The highest-ranked one, the captain, spoke this before he left, and the rest chuckled along and joined in, feigning poking the crewmembers with their bayonets and grinning when they recoiled in horror, making lewd comments toward the female crewmembers, mocking the men that tried to stop them, tried to make them leave them alone.
It continued for hours, the sounds of the soldiers talking amongst themselves and on occasion directly to the Nadesico's crew, ringing without melody in Ruri's ears. She and the others huddled in a corner of the room, trying to block out the noise, block out everything. At last the captain returned with two other men behind him. His expression was one of cold calculation, malicious, horrible
"Spies, you are fortunate that the State's mercy extends even to you. It and those that work to maintain it have decided that you may live if you pledge to become its citizens, accept its supreme power and authority over you, work for and obey its laws. Dissever what bonds you may have had with whatever country you came from or we will consider you traitors.
"This is a rare offer. The State suggests that all of you accept it. But first-- your spaceship that you say you came in. We have inspected its remains and found them to be nearly as advanced as what the State has at its disposal. We decided that the skills you supposedly acquired on board may be beneficial to the State."
He gestured toward the box, uncovered it.
"This is one of the State's computers. We would like whichever of you can to work it. Now."
Ruri stared at the machine, knowing its simplicity in comparison with the equipment that had been aboard the Nadesico. No one came forward for several moments.
"Well?" The captain touched his gun lightly, absently attaching and detaching the bayonet from it.
She moved toward it even as Akito grabbed her sleeve to hold her back for some inane reason, as though he and the others did not wish to see the next day. Ruri got to the computer, found a switch that must start it, started it up.
"So the little girl has more of a brain than the rest of you! Shameful. Very well, go into this program--" he pointed to an icon on the screen, "and I want to see you copy down this information."
He threw a pamphlet down in front of her and she picked it up from the floor. Ruri set it next to the computer, biting down fear, and put her hands to the keyboard to type--
Someone snatched it from her before she could put in a word of it, the hand of a crewmember. She turned to take it back, but Ryoko was reading it, first to herself, then aloud. She heard her read it, heard her say it was propaganda, lies. One of the men who had come with the captain came in front of Ryoko, a man with periwinkle eyes, holding out a pistol in his right hand, daring her to speak again.
But they had all heard. All heard the words but realized unconsciously that they were lies beforehand by the words the captain said, he and the other soldiers, about the State and its virtues. They were words saying that income and rations had been increased, their soldiers in the battlefield were winning the war, the State was above all in every field and industry. The State was infalliable and was working to ensure everyone's needs were met and met accordingly. They must remember the evils of those that were opposing them and know that the State was taking care of them as well, was killing them, and that every rally served to boost the moral so much that they the citizens of the State had much to rejoice in. All this Ryoko had taunted, knowing that it could not be true, sickened at having let Ruri start to try to type it out. No, she would not be silenced. This was madness, this State of theirs was sheer madness, nothing but a dictatorship. She said that he could point his gun at her all he--
A bullet sounded from the pistol, sounded and hit her straight in the heart. She hit the ground, eyes glazed over, unmistakeably dead.
The crew stood shocked, then enraged, all of them spouting accusations for the murder, yelling obscenities as the periwinkle-eyed man only smiled and raised his gun again before they finished their words, not even giving them the chance to take them back to preserve themselves. A dozen times he shot, a dozen or more as the living onlookers watched, screaming only moments before they too were shot down. Akito saw the gun fire in Yurika's direction and ran in front of her, trying desparately to shield her at his own sacrifice, falling dead into her arms in an inferno of blood and bodies. ,
Ruri watched with horror as her crewmates fell, one after another in a matter of minutes, as each bullet met its mark. Yurika, her captain, still clutching Akito's body as she died, the bubbly, cheery captain, the capable captain despite everything. Megumi, communications officer, Megumi who didn't want to fight. Hikaru, the one that wanted to write manga! Seiya, Akito-- Akito that she had had a crush on, now gone, gone always.
She waited for the last shot, the one that would complete the circle of murders, put the crew of the Nadesico out of existence. She waited for her shot, for the bullet meant for her.
It didn't come. The captain ordered his men to take away the bodies, congratulated the one with periwinkle eyes on his exceptional marksmanship, and the man responded in like. The captain then fixed his eyes upon Ruri's small figure and turned back to the marksman.
"She thinks you'll kill her, too."
"If the State says the word I will most gladly satisfy the thought. Do you have a cigarette, Captain--" and the captain bestowed him one, and a lighter. "Thanks."
The other nodded absently and bent down, retrieving a piece of paper stained red, setting it on the desk. Ruri realized with a sickening lurch that it was the pamphlet they had given her to type, before--
He gestured toward the bodies being carried out, the bodies of her comrades, her friends.
"Finish it."
Shaky hands touched the keyboard, watery eyes that could barely see the words on the pamphlet turned to the captain and then to the marksman who now held his pistol to her back.
She began to type.
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Ruri never let herself forget it, forget her betrayal. When they had let her go and sent her to work directly for the State in a city and not a military base she was still tormenting herself. Her shoulders slumped slightly now, not from any medical problem but from an utter shattering of the world she had known. She was a mere shadow of her former self, submissive, so awfully submissive, quieted, seemingly cowed by life.
Months after the even she condemned herself daily for what she had done, for the way she had turned her back on the rest of the crew, gone on living while they perished at her feet, a coward, a traitor, like Brutus stabbing Caesar in the back. Ruri woke every morning for weeks with the images of the dead in her mind, nightmares vivid even as the sun rose, all the same, every member of the crew calling to her, talking to her, begging her to help them, to come to them. It grew worse as the nightmares went on, for in them the dream Ruri would walk toward them and find them dead with a fresh horror, see the red stains on their clothes trickling down to the earth. The dream Ruri would shriek and, if she did not awaken, hear the crew's accusing words and think they were justified.
It continued, the unbearable torment of her dreams during the night and the terrible, masochistic thoughts that she allowed herself to think as punishment during the day, a vicious cycle. The roomates she had gotten upon release to the world thought her too good to talk to the likes of them, not realizing what had happened, and Ruri never saying. There were times when they muttered things about her in the minutes before she got to the apartment.
"She thinks she's better than us. Even if we're only doing janitor work and she's a typist, she ought to acknowledge us. We don't have to put up with her."
And so forth and so on the comments said in irritation went, with no one trying to get through to her, and Ruri trying to get through to no one. Her soul had all but vanished when the crew was murdered. There was no point in pretending otherwise. No point in dryly stating "idiot" under her breath when the girl she now shared a cubicle with caused the computer screen to be filled with error messages, even when it was called for. For that insult had been meant for the crew of the Nadesico, and using it in this place would be a heresy, a blunt statement that she had forgotten them. And she would not forget them.
The day came when she got her sixth State paycheck, idly placing it in a pocket to take home with her, even more idly, upon getting there, tearing it to shreds. She watched herself as if from a distance do so, feeling a dangerous glee come upon her, maddening, as Samson's blind rages must have been when he slew animals and men. She was tearing up her livelihood and she knew it; they could keep that kind of livelihood, the State could keep it-- she would die, then, she would rather die than--
Ruri heard a profanity from the other side of the room and raised her head.
"Stupid-- what're you doing, Hoshino?! You idiot, I just watched you rip up your paycheck! Are you crazy?"
One of the girls. Ruri dropped her gaze and looked away, rage passed immediately by the sound of her roomate's words. Unable for once to come up with a comeback, she went to her bed and pulled the covers up like a child, while the roomate shrugged and went to sleep, wondering if she should report Ruri for reason of insanity. But Ruri did not sleep.
She never tore up her State paycheck again.
*************************************************************************
The rage had given way to coherent thought. Tearing up her salary would do no good to anyone, least of all herself. Self-torture like that was idiocy-- hadn't even the practically illiterate roomate that had watched her said that? Yes, and it had been true. Ruri sighed, contemplative.
Yet there must have been something she could do to redeem herself for her cowardice, something that might have some impact save the impact of the traitor's death she was sure she would receive in exchange for the redemption. Something that would for a time relieve her of the aching remembrances of the crew and how they had died, and how she should have died with them, a martyr as well. Something that might cause something more to happen in its event, a vague stirring of emotion in the ranks of the State's people, some sort of thing that might lead them astray from the State and into freedom, the freedom she had so taken for granted on Earth so many months before but now realized and cherished now for what it was, beautiful, wonderful.
And so she had decided. She would write someday, after she had understood the people and the State better, of what was wrong about their flawless State. Ruri would recount all their supposed victories and banish them as the lies they were. She would throw away the tied-upon rag that covered the people's eyes, show them their government as it was, and then, as it could be.
She had it worked out that night. She would type it one day instead of doing her paperwork, type and send it before anyone knew. Ruri was not sure what would happen then but knew that it would cause something more, perhaps not a rebellion yet, but some awareness--
Now she was eighteen. The time had come, if she were ever to do it, to cast aside her fears and manage, if not for herself, then for the crew, and for the people who lived in this land.
Yes, she decided as she unlocked the door to her apartment, she would do it tomorrow.
*************************************************************************
The next morning at work became a blur to her, fading swiftly. She started up her computer without hearing the first of several pleas from her co-worker on what was wrong with her own machine and how she might please fix it for her. Her fingers keyed the letters with matchless speed and consistency, accurate, almost inhumanly accurate. It was as though an entity had come upon her and was writing the words. But the lettering and style of writing was Ruri's own.
The documents she was to type were on her desk, forgotten in a neat pile, ignored. She was concentrated on a new task, the task at hand, a task as self-destructive as it was necessary, a redeeming task, a task made from hope.
She was typing a warning. It had taken her years from the time that the Nadesico had been burned and the other members of her crew forever silenced to write it, and write it as a prediction as well an epitaph, an incite to fight as well as an elegy.
Ruri keyed madly for six pages, six blissfully uninterrupted pages full of facts such as the people of the State had never seen before, full of truths that the people of the State had never heard before, would never have known.
"Hoshino? Hoshino?" her co-worker repeated. At last she stood beside her computer and tapped her shoulder. Ruri turned.
"You weren't answering me. The computer froze itself again, do you know how to keep that from happening?" Her eyes stopped at Ruri's unmoved stack of papers. "Hoshino! You haven't--"
Ruri was swift.
"Those are yesterday's papers."
"But then, where are--"
"Today's are for the most part being printed out by the other co-workers. The one I've been typing is the only one that they managed to get before the mimeograph malfunctioned." Ruri waved the topmost paper.
Understanding spread into her co-worker's face.
"Oh. How could I have suspected you of not working, Hoshino? Silly of me."
Ruri hastily saved the document and closed out of it before the other girl could see it. It would be sent later to the State. Her voice sounded hollow even in her own ears.
"Yes."
*************************************************************************
They called her into the office during lunch the next day, her superiors. The main one issuing the call was a tall man with periwinkle eyes that misinformed the onlooker of his true nature. Here was a man more imposing in his State-issued uniform than anyone in the office, pristine, polished, deadly and debonair.
Ruri knew why they had sent for her when she initially received the message, knew instinctively but emotionlessly, as though she was witnessing this happening to another person. They had found her out.
She went up the seventh flight of stairs to her superior's office, blandly, without much in the way of the appearance of hesitation. Her thoughts were numb and came slowly to her as she willed them along. Only in her eyes was the outward appearance of fear, those small amber windows to the very soul that was Ruri Hoshino, a mix of fear and dread and drowned hopes in them.
They had caught her. They had seen her blasphemous documents, read them, frothed at the mouth at the words of their most effective, most dedicated typist. And now, she would pay for every word.
Ruri opened the door and went inside.
The dashing superior of no more than thirty was already seated at his desk, bold, handsome, with a cigarette trailing gray smoke in his hand. Something in his light blue eyes flashed as he saw her figure in the doorway, a flash of half-hidden malice and amusement. He waved her in.
"Miss Hoshino! Have a seat. We are all glad that you could spare the time out of what would have been your lunch to come."
She said nothing.
"The one you share a cubicle with, does she normally have lunch in the cafeteria, or does she sit at her desk as you do?"
Ruri did not ask how they knew that.
"She eats at the cafeteria."
"I expect she talks to her other co-workers. They must be quite hospitable."
"They must be."
"Yes." The corners of his mouth hardened, and he leaned slightly forward in his chair, maintaining eye contact with Ruri.
"Well, we should come to the point of this meeting. Doubtless you know already what you have been called here for."
She nodded.
"Mockery of the State in writing, accusing the State of crimes which no civilized society would dream of ever putting its people through, attempting to stir controversy and rebellion throughout in this writing. I would have expected much better from you, Hoshino. In all the years you have worked here, you have been without blemish until now. For this reason only, the State might have let this recent act pass. But Justice is blind, and no virtuous conduct of the past can even begin to make restitution for what you have done. I believe you understand the graveness of your situation; however, let me proceed."
He flicked the ashes from his cigarette into the ashtray before continuing, keeping his sharp, cruel eyes fixed on Ruri.
"I expected you to behave yourself correctly and not be let away by passing rages, as you had demonstrated to me, and, indeed, to the State in the past. The State watches all of its citizens, and it has watched you with pleasure, for it's people like you that survive, Hoshino, people without scruples about anything, people with the instinct and the will to live that goes above everything else. The State knows everything about you, Ruri Hoshino. The State knows everything."
"No," she said, grasping the edge of the desk with a death grip.
"You think not? I assure you it does." He absently put his cigarette into the ashtray. "But we will pursue that topic another time, won't we? Now--"
"I have scruples."
"Scruples enough to watch as your crewmates died for what they believed in. They had something that a democratic society would call integrity. Honor. In other words, they were fools, Hoshino, full of nationalism and pride."
"I--"
"Don't defend them for whatever reason. They've been dead these six years, let them answer for their doings."
"I was twelve years old."
He grinned.
"Is that meant as an excuse? If you had had half their courage, Hoshino, you would be as they are, a bunch of bodies rotting in unmarked graves. The other crewmembers couldn't stop that from happening. But no, you did what would keep you from ever becoming a martyr. You adapted. You changed with changed circumstances, rose from the ashes."
How did he know of the crew? He hadn't even been in the same office building as Ruri when she arrived, she was sure of that-- yet a memory triggered her, bothered her. Those eyes, such a pale, conniving blue, the blue of a merciless winter day that froze one's soul... she looked at them one last time and understood it with a certainty.
"You were the one who shot them."
His expression did not change with his voice, harsher, more like a predator than ever.
"How bright the mild typist is. Yes, I was the officer assigned to execute criminals at that time, and even now you will find the effects of my term as executor. I am as good of a shot now as I was when you first met me, Miss Hoshino."
He waved away the words with his hand.
"But no matter. And then when we thought that you had sworn us your loyalty, you backstabbed the State. You forgot how good to you it had been when you were an outsider and a foreigner. How it let you live even though you were unused to our policies for the greater good. How the State fed you, clothed you, gave you a place to stay as though you were one of its own.
"But now, with this--"
He gestured toward the papers she had typed with a motion that signaled utter contempt.
"Look at these, Hoshino. Go on." He held them an inch away from her face. "Read the lines for your benefactors. Prove that the fittest will do anything to live, as Darwin said centuries ago. Prove to the State this and we will let you continue with your life. Read them."
She hesitated, amber eyes scanning through the page, looking back at the words, the true, typed words, pale, near-albino face paler still now.
"Read them."
'Ruri-Ruri, Ruri-Rur--' the name sing-songed in her ears, Minato's voice, Yurika's, Hikaru's-- every one of the fallen from the Nadesico, saying the name in her head. All the patriots, the ones that had gone down rather than live in the fear and the shadow of the State, the brave ones, they echoed the words as though alive again. The captain, the cook, communications expert, pilots, the others from the bridge in a chorus now, loud and strong though six years had passed since last they drew breath.
"I won't! Don't you hear me, I WON'T!"
She was screaming now, a watery film over her eyes as she spoke, fiery, enraged for the first time in her life.
"I won't write for the State any more! I won't write your propaganda, your lies that say that we are supreme, that say the rations are increasing; I won't do it anymore! The State took the crew, the ship, even my free will from me. If I was to be let on the computers, it was to type what THEY said to type, what THEY wanted written. If I was to have room and board and food, it was theirs, not my own. If I was to say a word it would have to be one pleasing to the State. The State tried to crush me into doing what it wanted me to do and as the most submissive and youngest of the crew the State almost succeeded."
Ruri's eyes blazed, ethereal and golden. She snatched the paper from his upraised hand.
"And now, if I am to read this paper at all, I am going to read it on my own terms!" she shouted, triumphant, suddenly looking taller, more imposing, brighter. Ruri leaned out the window, the forever-opened window, the one made, designed to keep the workers awake.
"'The State is starving its people! It is reducing your rations, not increasing them! Your pay is going to be reduced even more than it already has been for their purposes! Half of you will die within five years if the cuts continue at this same rate, if you keep bending under the State's will! Citizens of the State, separate yourselves from the State and figh--'"
Her superior had grabbed his pistol from the drawer of his desk as she read the words to the people outdoors, shot a bullet straight into the back of her head. A thin trail of vermillion blood trickled down her neck and she fell, fell out of the window and down into the street below.
*************************************************************************
They said later that the girl that had shared her cubicle with Ruri ran down the stairs and away from her computer when she heard the commotion, had her hand on the office doorknob when the shot fired. Startled, she swung open the door and saw the last glimpse of her co-worker as she slumped into her descent to the ground, her pallid bobbed hair stained crimson. The State said it was an unfortunate, senseless suicide of their brightest mind, but one must wonder.
The girl was taken into questioning the same day. The State released her afterwards, and she is still working in the same cubicle now, a year later. The workers in the building are all thinner now this year, for a reason that everyone knows but no one has the courage to admit. There is a new girl sharing the cubicle with her, a ruddy-faced carrot-top of a teenager who seems as though vocational school did nothing for her. No one has yet mentioned her predecessor to her.
Once the redhead came into the cubicle with her tray instead of going into the cafeteria as usual to talk with her co-workers. The door was unlocked, and she came in with the usual amount of nonchalance, shutting off her computer again--
Again? She had turned it off a moment before, of that much she was certain . . . hastily she canceled the shut-down, checking her documents to make sure no one had tampered with them. The teenager was almost finished looking through the documents in the computer's files when one unfamiliar to her caught her eye. She opened it and read.
'Ruri Hoshino. The State is starving its people. It is reducing your rations, not increasing them. Your pay is going to be reduced even more than it already has been. . . .'
The teenager's eyes widened like a child's first hearing a peer use a curse word as she read, disbelieving, the words of the dead. Six pages stored on a file, single-spaced, formatted in the same manner as all of the State's documents. She continued, lunch untouched, forgotten.
'If you are reading this, the State is either in the process of or has already killed me. They tried before when I was a child, a cynical and cold excuse for a child, and failed. I mocked the fallibilities and silliness of others then, not realizing that it was this that kept them human, and that to truly be human is to be decent, kind, something the State never was nor ever will be, and something I learned too late. Impassiveness is the key to nothing, and bending to authority when the authority is a totalitarian one merely eliminates one more of your rights as a person. I know that now.
'So the State has killed me, a rebel. They have killed their best typist so that the truth does not get out. What they do not realize is that one rebel's death only spawns more rebels, regardless if anyone tries to silence it. The blood of patriots cries from the ground for vengeance, vengeance, and it will receive it, someday . . ."
The redhead checked; it ended there.
'Someday . . .,' someday, when the world is able to give it.
finis
by Acey
Disclaimer: Nadesico isn't mine, and you more than likely know it. Or ought to, at any rate.
Notes, warnings: A fic within a fic, really, set around the first few episodes, goes backwards-- from alternate universe to borderline normal(even the "normal" part is rather A/U-ish, to warn you; they don't ever even get close to the Jovians, in this tale), and then back again to alternate universe. This is mainly a story about the earliest version of Ruri we saw at her driest, most impassive stage of character development, and how a character like that might survive and adapt to a situation that others might not. Any out-of-characterness can probably be blamed more on the situation at hand than anything else, I hope (if not, then by all means please flame me to the ends of the earth). Violence, angst, mentions of possibly underage drinking, and a harsh look at the totalitarian form of government. No profanity, but that doesn't mean that the rating isn't fully meant. I would love to write a sweet, humorous little fic, but it seems that I can't . . .
Day by day, the computers would scan her in, proclaiming in bold lettering across their screens her vital statistics: name, serial number, age, height and weight. It was almost natural now to walk into work, climb up the six flights of stairs to get to the office cubicle she shared with another young woman fresh out of vocational that bumbled through all she did, always with loud, high-pitched jabbering. The uniform she wore fit her to a standard among her coworkers, the drab gray of internship, a gray that served its purpose and faded her into the background. She had cut her hair some time before and it now hung about her chin in a pale, monotonous bob. She didn't care about it. She had never cared about it. The cubicle was the thing of most importance now.
It was cold in the room on late winter days such as this one, with the windows perpetually up to keep the workers awake. When it rained she and the other worker would stuff the windows with towels and hope for the best. There in the minute cubicle was her one comfort and solace, the only thing the State had done for her that kept her from going mad.
And they had done so much to make her mad, drive all the sanity from her body, leaving only a shell. So much they had taken, like greedy children hungry for sweets. In the end the State would take everything.
But this was not the end, not yet, not now. They had employed her with one weapon unthinkingly, foolishly; they had left her with her greatest asset in hopes that it would become their own. They had left Ruri Hoshino to work with the computers.
*************************************************************************
Five hours of staring at a screen went by too quickly for her liking, and the bell for lunch rang. She took her tray back to the cubicle and sat down, eating the food without tasting it, for the only thing that did have a truly discernible taste was the thin slab of chocolate half the size of her pale hand, and even that comfort was a stale one. The State had decreased the amount of rations, but Ruri had typed so many reports to the contrary earlier that she began to believe them herself as she drank the bland tea and chewed the day-old bread. Ruri did not have time to contemplate the reduction before the bell to go back to work rang out and her co-worker stumbled up the stairs from the cafeteria and ran to her chair, booting up her computer in the same movement. Ruri turned back to her own machine and started it. She had not gotten into the programs before the coworker began to speak, hesitatingly, as usual.
"Hoshino, the computer won't--"
She was there in a half-second, idly checking the wiring and then the machine itself.
"You left the cords unhooked."
Her co-worker murmured a relieved thanks and all returned to silence, excepting the quiet sound of keying. Keying, at outrageously fast, practiced speeds that could have won competitions had there been any, keying with few backspaces besides those necessary to edit documents. The typists seemed to go on forever in this manner, and almost did. It was three-o'clock when the mandantory break was held and the workers could stop for five minutes, wrap tired fingers in gauze for such, they said, might reduce strain. Ruri closed her eyes, ineffectively trying to black out the after-image of the bright computer screen. She opened them and unwrapped the gauze when the break was finished and returned again to the computer.
The dull sound of keys being hit sounded like the unpleasant pitter of constant rain on a roof, enjoyable to only the poets and dreamers that thought they could make something out of the sound, and not those forced to hear its endless light noise.
But they enjoyed it, for with the sound came the knowledge that yes, indeed, work was getting done. They enjoyed it, and that was the painful thing. Those in the State liked to hear it-- it enthralled them, kept them sickly occupied to see them work as the years melted away. For they had melted away; Ruri knew that just as well as the other workers did.
She stopped these thoughts when she noticed that she was typing them down in the document, hastily pressing backspace and hoping her head had covered the words. Ruri turned to her coworker intently, but she was intent on her own work and did not seem to have noticed. She sighed, relieved for a moment. The other girl did not have reason to suspect her, then, of the traitorous thoughts and plans that had plagued her for six years. If she had, Ruri would have forcibly left the office building before this.
Her fears amounting to nothing, she continued as the hours passed like shadows, fading silently by.
*************************************************************************
Ruri filed out of the building with her co-workers at five-thirty post meridian, aware as if for the first time of the severe contrast in height between her and the others. Painfully small even as a child, the smallness had extended into these her late teens and would probably extend into the remainder of her life. It made her look like a juvenile-- innocent, frail, almost, except for the hardened look in her amber eyes which kept the fey picture from being completed. It might work to her advantage at some point, she decided.
She walked to the apartment, dodging only human traffic and a few bicycling children that were oblivious to the rows of adults coming home. The looks in their eyes were cruel from the lot they had been given in life, cruel and almost impudent, as they carelessly rode the bicycles down the road. Ruri hoped fervently for a moment that someday a passing streetcar would hit them and take that rude arrogance out of them as she narrowly missed a collision with one of them and watched as the boy sped away. She shrugged the thought off as she entered the apartment and the room she had there.
The other young women were there already, a jovial bunch when compared with Ruri. They greeted her with complaints, for apparently their salaries have been reduced. She said nothing on the subject.
"I bet yours was cut, now, wasn't it?"
It was a thought she had not considered lately. Before Ruri could reply, she heard another voice, sardonic, cutting.
"Don't you know it? Hoshino doesn't care about the cuts; she only cares about the computers!"
She ignored the speaker, knowing it was almost the truth.
"It was cut last month, actually."
"How much, Hoshino?" one of them said with a mixture of envy and curiosity. The job of typist was more lucrative than the job of janitor that the questioner had.
Ruri brushed the comment away.
"It isn't important."
Their interest was unfortunately piqued by the words.
"Come on, Hoshino, how much?"
She evaded them.
"Why are we even talking about this? The cuts are meaningless. Our jobs are safe, they always have been. You should be ashamed to complain when. . . ." and she continued, reciting words she had almost memorized, words that contained the message that the State would be pleased in. The other girls were not happy with her chiding, but they nodded anyway, most sulking as they did.
"Maybe they're meaningless to you but the rest of us have to eat more than the lunch rations--" one of the girls stopped there, as she realized that Ruri was not looking at her but at the glass bottle that another young woman was holding, half full with liquid, bearing the inscription they all knew.
It was alcohol, gin, easy to find on the black market but hard to purchase. Ruri glared at the bottle and at the woman holding it, for she knew what the bottle cost and how the inflation had risen as the amount of pay for workers had decreased.
For a second, Ruri wanted to grab the bottle, throw it on the floor, and watch with muted glee as it explodes into a thousand shards, the gin with it. The one holding the liquor sobbed, but Ruri felt no pity for her, felt no pity for anyone now. She straightened herself to her fully unimposing full height.
"You're wasting your money," Ruri said softly, angrily. "I hope you know that I don't intend on sharing my food with you when the gin wears off."
She knew she was overreacting, knew this was uncharacteristic of her. She would have been annoyed, surely, but there would have been no reprimand, not even a change in facial expression. She would have been impassive. Why should she be concerned on how the others spent their money? What was it that was making her react to a drunken fool so harshly?
She turned and stalked away, closing the curtain that separated her daybed from the rest of the room, falling asleep to the sounds of the offender shuffling off and crying into the night.
*************************************************************************
The next morning, Ruri credited the outburst to the lunch ration cut, knowing that was not the problem but pinpointing it there anyway. She considered apologizing to girl with the liquor but decided against it when she remembered that they didn't have the same shifts and wasn't at the apartment when Ruri was, and wouldn't be until night.
She changed into a uniform identical to the one of the previous day, starchless and wrinkled from the wash. Ruri had noticed some co-workers in the same state of disarray of dress in the past few months. She and most of the other girls in her apartment used the sink to wash clothing, but the girls used the iron to try to curl their hair besides for its general purpose and so it rarely was not in use enough for Ruri to get her hands on it often enough for her to always have a ironed uniform.
She sat down to a lukewarm breakfast, half a small, empty omelet and powdered milk in a plastic container. The meal had a diluted taste, with hardly more flavor than the lunch ration from work, but it was sustaining enough even though the omelet was dry and the milk slightly sour. She would have to buy some more today. A tiny grin appeared on her face as she thought of that. Today, her week's paycheck would come in, all of forty dollars. Forty dollars to buy with, an amount that seemed huge to the other girls but that she knew was miniscule. Still, it was something.
On again to work, on to the solitary cybernetic endeavors that Ruri almost enjoyed. Not even the persistence of her co-worker's trite complaints when her computer downed itself every other moment ("Hoshino, the computer won't start." "How do I edit this type of textual format, Hoshino?" "They never taught us this back in vocational. . .") could ruin today for her, not completely. That Ruri was sure of.
"It's payday for you, too, isn't it, Hoshino?" came the other worker eventually after another thank-you for rewiring her computer during break. Ruri nodded. "It's mine. Every one of them makes me glad I got the chance to enter vocational, because people like you and I, typists, make a much better living than those-- below, the janitors and such. They're such dreadful people, so jealous! It makes me wonder if it is fair, to have them have a little less because they're unskilled. . ." Ruri's co-worker realized what she had said and put her hand to her mouth. "I mean... don't tell them--"
"The janitors only make a dollar or so less than we do. It isn't much. Actually I'm surprised they don't make the same amount. The break's almost over now."
The other girl nodded nervously, not reassured. Conversation ended, Ruri returned to her desk, to hour after hour spent composing into the computer. She stopped only to turn the pages of the stack of papers that she was supposed to write and rewrite into the processor, edit them until her amber eyes saw after-images of the screen when she blinked.
Then it was five-thirty and work was over. She walked down the flights into the main office and waited in line for her check. The line moved slowly, ineffectively, until finally she was at the desk.
"Ruri Hoshino."
"Hoshino--" the worker scanned through the list. "Hoshino. Here you are." The man held out her check in one hand, the stub of a State cigarette, the tip faintly flaming, in the other. She took it and read it.
"'Pay to the order of Ruri Hoshino, thirty-seven dollars.'"
They had cut her pay again without informing her. She turned quickly away from the man lest she show her upset, her anger at this, lest they take everything faster than she wanted them to, before she could even manage to try her counter, her plan--
She left the building without a word and went immediately to the grocery. Ruri wouldn't have come there at all after what had just occurred if there had been any more food in her small shelf of the shared pantry.
She got a cart and loaded it as economically as was possible, buying the powdered milk again, and cans of beans, corn and instant soup. Ruri mentally totaled this and went to check out the items. The total came out to be twenty-two dollars, more than half of her paycheck. She paid the money glumly, but the man at the booth was cheered by something-- a strange thing, because he must be getting a pay cut, too, Ruri thought. He noticed her dour expression but instead commented on why he was cheerful.
"They've decided to give my wife and I a permit to become parents," he said with as much pride in his voice as if what babies he imagined had been born already. "It's taken four years of asking the State for permission, and now-- I'm just so happy I can't stand it."
She nodded dully. The State would allow childbirth with a permit to married adults, wasn't it wonderful. Test-tube babies, fertilized in Petri dishes, who wouldn't even resemble their parents. It was not such a call for celebration.
"My wife's so tickled about it. I guess it's a little strange of both of us to be excited like this; I know my father and mother were never this pleased to be allowed to have children, and neither were hers-- but it's fine. Once the baby's here this excitement will wear off, I'm sure, so don't worry. I think I'll mark this day. March fifteenth, correct?"
Ruri looked up, wide-eyed.
March fifteenth. Fifteenth, the Ides of March, her brain recalled in textbook-thought out of some recess, the day that Caesar had been warned of and had been killed on, the day the Nadesico had--
"Ruri?" the man asked, reading her name off of the pin on her uniform, concerned.
"Yes, that's correct," and she rushed out of the grocery and into the street, and back to her apartment.
*************************************************************************
She had forgotten. She had impossibly lost track of the days, somehow, a ludicrous thing, an abysmal thing. It had taken the cashier to remind her of it, horribly, painfully. How she had thought it to be a happy day was now beyond her. Memories had filled her thoughts, the pleasant with the bleak, the terrible with the grand.
And now, six years later, she refused to let them leave her alone.
*************************************************************************
Six years previous the Nadesico had been in pristine condition. So had her crew, if youth was a sign of pristine condition. For her crew was young, eccentric, yet ultimately positive overall, positive with the naivety that comes along with youth, with those unhardened by years and trials.
It had been the Nadesico's first mission, with its inexperienced crew setting off to attack Jovian forces. Ruri had begun to inexplicably like her crewmates during the few days they had been up in space despite their quirks that threw her off and aggravated her, Ruri of the calculating mind and the impervious, calm exterior. There was something oddly likeable about all of them, something decent.
The crew seemed to have gotten to like her better than she liked them, to be blatantly honest. They had gotten attached to their youngest crewmember, tried to reach her. Three days into the mission they probably realized it was a futile struggle (or so Ruri thought), but they plodded along with it besides. That was, when they were not haplessly running after Akito for whatever reason. Ruri was starting to wonder what was attracting more than half of the female crew to the poor young man; he wasn't the only male on the entire ship, for goodness' sake, and it wasn't like they'd never get off the Nadesico. . . Ruri came close to feeling sorry for him. He didn't like being chased around.
But even Ruri could admit at least to herself that he was fairly--
She stopped that. Akito was too old for her. Let the other girls fight over him; they actually had a chance at snagging the cook, Yurika most likely of all. She, Ruri, was not going to entertain thoughts of her crush being fulfilled when she was older like some idiot, ordinary pre-teen fantasizing over a movie star; she would stick to her job. She glanced at the screens again, checking to see if each one was normal, on-target. She glanced at Minato, on the bridge today, a confused, uncharacteristically worried look in her eyes. Ruri paused in her work as Minato spoke.
"Captain," she said quietly, "we're going too fast."
There was a pause, and Yurika questioned as to the exact readings. Minato gave them.
"What? That's way too high! Can you adjust them?"
"Yes, Captain."
An adjustment, a reduction in speed. Minato did it and looked at the reading again.
"It's increased."
Ruri spoke, a rare note of worry in her monotone. The Nadesico navigated itself to its destination; why, then was the ship heading-- what kind of malfunction--
The situation was tense, tense with strain and nerves stretching to the point of rupture. Technology had befriended them in its way up until now with its simple convenience, its easiness. Now it had become their enemy, their sole preventer of reaching their destination.
Ruri heard a command from Yurika in a tone that had lost its ever-present blissful cheer and brightness, a tone that chilled the rest of the crew because of that lack. Ruri started to obey it, to respond, leaning forward toward the control panel, eyes calculating the new development, mind deftly trying to invent a way of fixing it. She had just begun to enter in information when she felt something propel her forward-- propel everyone forward in a forceful motion, and just as suddenly back. She cringed at the ache of the whiplash as she tried to begin again. In the back of her mind she imagined what disasters that must have had on the chef and cooks' baking had they been mixing or frying anything.
Another jolt, worse than the first. Ruri thought she heard a yell from behind her-- one of the pilots, or was it someone else from the bridge?-- a childlike yell of bewilderment that echoed everyone's sentiments.
Ruri hardly managed to hear a word of news above the tumult.
"Captain . . . the ship just won't slow down."
"I know." Gone was the hope that everything would be all right. Ruri stumbled in to make a comment.
"We're completely off course. Systems report less than half the fuel necessary to return to Earth."
"What are our options?"
"We have two. We can send calls for help and try again to decrease the speed. The chances of anyone coming to our rescue from Earth from here before we run out of fuel are slim to none. We're too far off course for that. Or, we can see if there's anywhere to land on the course the Nadesico is taking that might be habitable."
The crew was silent after this reply. Yurika did not hesitate.
"The second option, then. Search the area."
Ruri did so.
"Most of this is stars, Captain. A few planets have been detected, one that has the capacity for life."
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Two days later they made it in spite of absolutely everything. A quarter of all the systems on board had shut themselves down or malfunctioned to the point of not being repairable by then, a nightmare no one had thought conceivable, a nightmare they watched in slow motion like a scene from an ancient movie. Most of the crew was quiet during the forty-eight hours, and while they were not trying to work what systems remained they ate without tasting the food, read manga without seeing any pictures, idly flipped through novels and magazines with no point. At night the Nadesico's entire crew had all succumbed to insomnia by reason of both anxiety and the jolts of the ship-- they had not stopped since the malfunctions. The speedometer and the communicator broke in the morning of the second day, four hours before their arrival, causing most to swear obscenely at least in their minds and try to keep from tears.
"We'll never get home now."
The thought was in everyone's mind but was left unspoken. Some managed to relax a little by some means that Ruri could not understand, trying to be cheerful about it all when there was little to be happy about, not realizing some of it was for her benefit, that they attempted to smile and go on because they thought everyone else was naturally doing the same, and because there was a twelve-year-old aboard-- a precocious cynic of a preteen, but a preteen nonetheless. She knew already that Earth was no more than a distant dream now, that their mission to Mars had been aborted for the higher mission of pure survival. The crew would not allow themselves to let her watch as they, the adults, fell apart, a noble effort that went unrecognized.
There was a bit more relief visible among the crew after the ship managed to make it to the planet. It had not crashed and formed a crater, shattering itself and the people aboard when it landed, somehow, a miracle in itself. Ruri had no idea how the Nadesico had managed that but was too grateful to care how it had happened. They had made it alive. They had all made it.
The last readings they had gathered had determined that the planet was suitable for human life and might have some of its own. Perhaps they were advanced enough to be able to help the crew, fix the ship, be able to send them back home. 'To Mars,' Ruri corrected herself, 'we're going to Mars.' Mars after all of that, all the anxiety, the resign, the practical elegy for themselves they had all made when the ship went off course. Yes, they would go to Mars if they ever managed to get off of this planet, in spite of everything. Unlikely that they would, but there was still that pleading that they would from everyone from the cooks and chef to the pilots to the people on the bridge to the captain- all wanted for it all to be so.
With the luck they had had it was more likely that the only inhabitants of the planet would be prehistoric reptiles or gigantic moths. If they were fortunate enough to find humanoids they would probably be cavemen, or something similar. There was a chance of them being more advanced than that, but it was as likely as winning the lottery after buying a single ticket.
But Ryoko claimed to have seen what looked like a building during their descent, so it might be possible-
Someone opened the door to the outside, and the crew filed out of the ship Nadesico for what would be the final time.
*************************************************************************
The ship had landed in a vacant field that recalled to mind an old Army field used for war games and dropping paratroopers. It was dense with half-dead grass, unbeautiful, normal. They saw it as close enough to home.
Yurika was trying to decide whether to organize the crew into groups and search for sentient creatures or stay where they were and wait for the creatures to appear to them. Their food needs were taken care of for the time being; the chef with her endlessly vast amounts of supplies for any number of last meals had seen to that. They would not need to search for food for a good while yet. Sanitation would be spare; the Nadesico was not equipped with enough water to bathe the crew every day for more than a month or two at extreme best, and they might spend their entire lives on the planet. Without the ability to send or receive messages from Earth there was no hope of getting aid from there. Their last shot was the inhabitants of this planet.
Yurika had not yet come to a decision on whether to find what thinking race there might be on the planet or wait for it to come when it did come less than two hours after they had stepped off the ship.
"Look!" someone had said in a mix of astonishment and sheer joy so apparent that Yurika turned instantly, blue hair flying. Ruri turned too, quickly, a shocked look in her honey-colored eyes as she gazed upon the figures moving in their direction.
They were people. Not cavemen, barbaric and uncivilized and idiotic, but real people, people with uniforms that looked like they had come from factories-clean clothes, and shoes and combed hair and . . .
And weapons. Bayonets attached to rifles, the metallic tips shining in the noonday sun.
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In retrospect Ruri could blame no one for their initial reactions. How they had forgotten everything in the delight of coming into human contact again besides the other crewmembers, how they had eagerly come near as foolish children expecting a puppy from a stranger if they'd just come to their car with them and wait.
How the soldiers had answered their cries of hellos and we are from Earth in turn, coming upon them like flies on a piece of meat, aiming their guns at them before they could blink, forcing them in the direction they wanted them to go. The crew obeyed for their lives and walked for half a mile before they came upon a building surrounded by grassland and scattered trees and were forced inside.
Ruri remembered the staleness of the building most, the dry air blowing in through the open window and doing no good. There was an unvarnished wooden desk near it, half-filled by a square object that was covered with some sort of plastic. There were two electric lights overhead. No chairs.
The militia questioned them extensively, harshly. Their words were brutally clipped and snappish as they listened to the replies of the crew. They were there from another planet. They didn't want to fight them. They were not spies--
The soldiers laughed at that.
"Not spies? Ludicrous. No foreigners come to the State for any other reason. You will stay here until my superior can be summoned and we can find a use for you. Likely it's only for draining our arsenals of bullets." The highest-ranked one, the captain, spoke this before he left, and the rest chuckled along and joined in, feigning poking the crewmembers with their bayonets and grinning when they recoiled in horror, making lewd comments toward the female crewmembers, mocking the men that tried to stop them, tried to make them leave them alone.
It continued for hours, the sounds of the soldiers talking amongst themselves and on occasion directly to the Nadesico's crew, ringing without melody in Ruri's ears. She and the others huddled in a corner of the room, trying to block out the noise, block out everything. At last the captain returned with two other men behind him. His expression was one of cold calculation, malicious, horrible
"Spies, you are fortunate that the State's mercy extends even to you. It and those that work to maintain it have decided that you may live if you pledge to become its citizens, accept its supreme power and authority over you, work for and obey its laws. Dissever what bonds you may have had with whatever country you came from or we will consider you traitors.
"This is a rare offer. The State suggests that all of you accept it. But first-- your spaceship that you say you came in. We have inspected its remains and found them to be nearly as advanced as what the State has at its disposal. We decided that the skills you supposedly acquired on board may be beneficial to the State."
He gestured toward the box, uncovered it.
"This is one of the State's computers. We would like whichever of you can to work it. Now."
Ruri stared at the machine, knowing its simplicity in comparison with the equipment that had been aboard the Nadesico. No one came forward for several moments.
"Well?" The captain touched his gun lightly, absently attaching and detaching the bayonet from it.
She moved toward it even as Akito grabbed her sleeve to hold her back for some inane reason, as though he and the others did not wish to see the next day. Ruri got to the computer, found a switch that must start it, started it up.
"So the little girl has more of a brain than the rest of you! Shameful. Very well, go into this program--" he pointed to an icon on the screen, "and I want to see you copy down this information."
He threw a pamphlet down in front of her and she picked it up from the floor. Ruri set it next to the computer, biting down fear, and put her hands to the keyboard to type--
Someone snatched it from her before she could put in a word of it, the hand of a crewmember. She turned to take it back, but Ryoko was reading it, first to herself, then aloud. She heard her read it, heard her say it was propaganda, lies. One of the men who had come with the captain came in front of Ryoko, a man with periwinkle eyes, holding out a pistol in his right hand, daring her to speak again.
But they had all heard. All heard the words but realized unconsciously that they were lies beforehand by the words the captain said, he and the other soldiers, about the State and its virtues. They were words saying that income and rations had been increased, their soldiers in the battlefield were winning the war, the State was above all in every field and industry. The State was infalliable and was working to ensure everyone's needs were met and met accordingly. They must remember the evils of those that were opposing them and know that the State was taking care of them as well, was killing them, and that every rally served to boost the moral so much that they the citizens of the State had much to rejoice in. All this Ryoko had taunted, knowing that it could not be true, sickened at having let Ruri start to try to type it out. No, she would not be silenced. This was madness, this State of theirs was sheer madness, nothing but a dictatorship. She said that he could point his gun at her all he--
A bullet sounded from the pistol, sounded and hit her straight in the heart. She hit the ground, eyes glazed over, unmistakeably dead.
The crew stood shocked, then enraged, all of them spouting accusations for the murder, yelling obscenities as the periwinkle-eyed man only smiled and raised his gun again before they finished their words, not even giving them the chance to take them back to preserve themselves. A dozen times he shot, a dozen or more as the living onlookers watched, screaming only moments before they too were shot down. Akito saw the gun fire in Yurika's direction and ran in front of her, trying desparately to shield her at his own sacrifice, falling dead into her arms in an inferno of blood and bodies. ,
Ruri watched with horror as her crewmates fell, one after another in a matter of minutes, as each bullet met its mark. Yurika, her captain, still clutching Akito's body as she died, the bubbly, cheery captain, the capable captain despite everything. Megumi, communications officer, Megumi who didn't want to fight. Hikaru, the one that wanted to write manga! Seiya, Akito-- Akito that she had had a crush on, now gone, gone always.
She waited for the last shot, the one that would complete the circle of murders, put the crew of the Nadesico out of existence. She waited for her shot, for the bullet meant for her.
It didn't come. The captain ordered his men to take away the bodies, congratulated the one with periwinkle eyes on his exceptional marksmanship, and the man responded in like. The captain then fixed his eyes upon Ruri's small figure and turned back to the marksman.
"She thinks you'll kill her, too."
"If the State says the word I will most gladly satisfy the thought. Do you have a cigarette, Captain--" and the captain bestowed him one, and a lighter. "Thanks."
The other nodded absently and bent down, retrieving a piece of paper stained red, setting it on the desk. Ruri realized with a sickening lurch that it was the pamphlet they had given her to type, before--
He gestured toward the bodies being carried out, the bodies of her comrades, her friends.
"Finish it."
Shaky hands touched the keyboard, watery eyes that could barely see the words on the pamphlet turned to the captain and then to the marksman who now held his pistol to her back.
She began to type.
*************************************************************************
Ruri never let herself forget it, forget her betrayal. When they had let her go and sent her to work directly for the State in a city and not a military base she was still tormenting herself. Her shoulders slumped slightly now, not from any medical problem but from an utter shattering of the world she had known. She was a mere shadow of her former self, submissive, so awfully submissive, quieted, seemingly cowed by life.
Months after the even she condemned herself daily for what she had done, for the way she had turned her back on the rest of the crew, gone on living while they perished at her feet, a coward, a traitor, like Brutus stabbing Caesar in the back. Ruri woke every morning for weeks with the images of the dead in her mind, nightmares vivid even as the sun rose, all the same, every member of the crew calling to her, talking to her, begging her to help them, to come to them. It grew worse as the nightmares went on, for in them the dream Ruri would walk toward them and find them dead with a fresh horror, see the red stains on their clothes trickling down to the earth. The dream Ruri would shriek and, if she did not awaken, hear the crew's accusing words and think they were justified.
It continued, the unbearable torment of her dreams during the night and the terrible, masochistic thoughts that she allowed herself to think as punishment during the day, a vicious cycle. The roomates she had gotten upon release to the world thought her too good to talk to the likes of them, not realizing what had happened, and Ruri never saying. There were times when they muttered things about her in the minutes before she got to the apartment.
"She thinks she's better than us. Even if we're only doing janitor work and she's a typist, she ought to acknowledge us. We don't have to put up with her."
And so forth and so on the comments said in irritation went, with no one trying to get through to her, and Ruri trying to get through to no one. Her soul had all but vanished when the crew was murdered. There was no point in pretending otherwise. No point in dryly stating "idiot" under her breath when the girl she now shared a cubicle with caused the computer screen to be filled with error messages, even when it was called for. For that insult had been meant for the crew of the Nadesico, and using it in this place would be a heresy, a blunt statement that she had forgotten them. And she would not forget them.
The day came when she got her sixth State paycheck, idly placing it in a pocket to take home with her, even more idly, upon getting there, tearing it to shreds. She watched herself as if from a distance do so, feeling a dangerous glee come upon her, maddening, as Samson's blind rages must have been when he slew animals and men. She was tearing up her livelihood and she knew it; they could keep that kind of livelihood, the State could keep it-- she would die, then, she would rather die than--
Ruri heard a profanity from the other side of the room and raised her head.
"Stupid-- what're you doing, Hoshino?! You idiot, I just watched you rip up your paycheck! Are you crazy?"
One of the girls. Ruri dropped her gaze and looked away, rage passed immediately by the sound of her roomate's words. Unable for once to come up with a comeback, she went to her bed and pulled the covers up like a child, while the roomate shrugged and went to sleep, wondering if she should report Ruri for reason of insanity. But Ruri did not sleep.
She never tore up her State paycheck again.
*************************************************************************
The rage had given way to coherent thought. Tearing up her salary would do no good to anyone, least of all herself. Self-torture like that was idiocy-- hadn't even the practically illiterate roomate that had watched her said that? Yes, and it had been true. Ruri sighed, contemplative.
Yet there must have been something she could do to redeem herself for her cowardice, something that might have some impact save the impact of the traitor's death she was sure she would receive in exchange for the redemption. Something that would for a time relieve her of the aching remembrances of the crew and how they had died, and how she should have died with them, a martyr as well. Something that might cause something more to happen in its event, a vague stirring of emotion in the ranks of the State's people, some sort of thing that might lead them astray from the State and into freedom, the freedom she had so taken for granted on Earth so many months before but now realized and cherished now for what it was, beautiful, wonderful.
And so she had decided. She would write someday, after she had understood the people and the State better, of what was wrong about their flawless State. Ruri would recount all their supposed victories and banish them as the lies they were. She would throw away the tied-upon rag that covered the people's eyes, show them their government as it was, and then, as it could be.
She had it worked out that night. She would type it one day instead of doing her paperwork, type and send it before anyone knew. Ruri was not sure what would happen then but knew that it would cause something more, perhaps not a rebellion yet, but some awareness--
Now she was eighteen. The time had come, if she were ever to do it, to cast aside her fears and manage, if not for herself, then for the crew, and for the people who lived in this land.
Yes, she decided as she unlocked the door to her apartment, she would do it tomorrow.
*************************************************************************
The next morning at work became a blur to her, fading swiftly. She started up her computer without hearing the first of several pleas from her co-worker on what was wrong with her own machine and how she might please fix it for her. Her fingers keyed the letters with matchless speed and consistency, accurate, almost inhumanly accurate. It was as though an entity had come upon her and was writing the words. But the lettering and style of writing was Ruri's own.
The documents she was to type were on her desk, forgotten in a neat pile, ignored. She was concentrated on a new task, the task at hand, a task as self-destructive as it was necessary, a redeeming task, a task made from hope.
She was typing a warning. It had taken her years from the time that the Nadesico had been burned and the other members of her crew forever silenced to write it, and write it as a prediction as well an epitaph, an incite to fight as well as an elegy.
Ruri keyed madly for six pages, six blissfully uninterrupted pages full of facts such as the people of the State had never seen before, full of truths that the people of the State had never heard before, would never have known.
"Hoshino? Hoshino?" her co-worker repeated. At last she stood beside her computer and tapped her shoulder. Ruri turned.
"You weren't answering me. The computer froze itself again, do you know how to keep that from happening?" Her eyes stopped at Ruri's unmoved stack of papers. "Hoshino! You haven't--"
Ruri was swift.
"Those are yesterday's papers."
"But then, where are--"
"Today's are for the most part being printed out by the other co-workers. The one I've been typing is the only one that they managed to get before the mimeograph malfunctioned." Ruri waved the topmost paper.
Understanding spread into her co-worker's face.
"Oh. How could I have suspected you of not working, Hoshino? Silly of me."
Ruri hastily saved the document and closed out of it before the other girl could see it. It would be sent later to the State. Her voice sounded hollow even in her own ears.
"Yes."
*************************************************************************
They called her into the office during lunch the next day, her superiors. The main one issuing the call was a tall man with periwinkle eyes that misinformed the onlooker of his true nature. Here was a man more imposing in his State-issued uniform than anyone in the office, pristine, polished, deadly and debonair.
Ruri knew why they had sent for her when she initially received the message, knew instinctively but emotionlessly, as though she was witnessing this happening to another person. They had found her out.
She went up the seventh flight of stairs to her superior's office, blandly, without much in the way of the appearance of hesitation. Her thoughts were numb and came slowly to her as she willed them along. Only in her eyes was the outward appearance of fear, those small amber windows to the very soul that was Ruri Hoshino, a mix of fear and dread and drowned hopes in them.
They had caught her. They had seen her blasphemous documents, read them, frothed at the mouth at the words of their most effective, most dedicated typist. And now, she would pay for every word.
Ruri opened the door and went inside.
The dashing superior of no more than thirty was already seated at his desk, bold, handsome, with a cigarette trailing gray smoke in his hand. Something in his light blue eyes flashed as he saw her figure in the doorway, a flash of half-hidden malice and amusement. He waved her in.
"Miss Hoshino! Have a seat. We are all glad that you could spare the time out of what would have been your lunch to come."
She said nothing.
"The one you share a cubicle with, does she normally have lunch in the cafeteria, or does she sit at her desk as you do?"
Ruri did not ask how they knew that.
"She eats at the cafeteria."
"I expect she talks to her other co-workers. They must be quite hospitable."
"They must be."
"Yes." The corners of his mouth hardened, and he leaned slightly forward in his chair, maintaining eye contact with Ruri.
"Well, we should come to the point of this meeting. Doubtless you know already what you have been called here for."
She nodded.
"Mockery of the State in writing, accusing the State of crimes which no civilized society would dream of ever putting its people through, attempting to stir controversy and rebellion throughout in this writing. I would have expected much better from you, Hoshino. In all the years you have worked here, you have been without blemish until now. For this reason only, the State might have let this recent act pass. But Justice is blind, and no virtuous conduct of the past can even begin to make restitution for what you have done. I believe you understand the graveness of your situation; however, let me proceed."
He flicked the ashes from his cigarette into the ashtray before continuing, keeping his sharp, cruel eyes fixed on Ruri.
"I expected you to behave yourself correctly and not be let away by passing rages, as you had demonstrated to me, and, indeed, to the State in the past. The State watches all of its citizens, and it has watched you with pleasure, for it's people like you that survive, Hoshino, people without scruples about anything, people with the instinct and the will to live that goes above everything else. The State knows everything about you, Ruri Hoshino. The State knows everything."
"No," she said, grasping the edge of the desk with a death grip.
"You think not? I assure you it does." He absently put his cigarette into the ashtray. "But we will pursue that topic another time, won't we? Now--"
"I have scruples."
"Scruples enough to watch as your crewmates died for what they believed in. They had something that a democratic society would call integrity. Honor. In other words, they were fools, Hoshino, full of nationalism and pride."
"I--"
"Don't defend them for whatever reason. They've been dead these six years, let them answer for their doings."
"I was twelve years old."
He grinned.
"Is that meant as an excuse? If you had had half their courage, Hoshino, you would be as they are, a bunch of bodies rotting in unmarked graves. The other crewmembers couldn't stop that from happening. But no, you did what would keep you from ever becoming a martyr. You adapted. You changed with changed circumstances, rose from the ashes."
How did he know of the crew? He hadn't even been in the same office building as Ruri when she arrived, she was sure of that-- yet a memory triggered her, bothered her. Those eyes, such a pale, conniving blue, the blue of a merciless winter day that froze one's soul... she looked at them one last time and understood it with a certainty.
"You were the one who shot them."
His expression did not change with his voice, harsher, more like a predator than ever.
"How bright the mild typist is. Yes, I was the officer assigned to execute criminals at that time, and even now you will find the effects of my term as executor. I am as good of a shot now as I was when you first met me, Miss Hoshino."
He waved away the words with his hand.
"But no matter. And then when we thought that you had sworn us your loyalty, you backstabbed the State. You forgot how good to you it had been when you were an outsider and a foreigner. How it let you live even though you were unused to our policies for the greater good. How the State fed you, clothed you, gave you a place to stay as though you were one of its own.
"But now, with this--"
He gestured toward the papers she had typed with a motion that signaled utter contempt.
"Look at these, Hoshino. Go on." He held them an inch away from her face. "Read the lines for your benefactors. Prove that the fittest will do anything to live, as Darwin said centuries ago. Prove to the State this and we will let you continue with your life. Read them."
She hesitated, amber eyes scanning through the page, looking back at the words, the true, typed words, pale, near-albino face paler still now.
"Read them."
'Ruri-Ruri, Ruri-Rur--' the name sing-songed in her ears, Minato's voice, Yurika's, Hikaru's-- every one of the fallen from the Nadesico, saying the name in her head. All the patriots, the ones that had gone down rather than live in the fear and the shadow of the State, the brave ones, they echoed the words as though alive again. The captain, the cook, communications expert, pilots, the others from the bridge in a chorus now, loud and strong though six years had passed since last they drew breath.
"I won't! Don't you hear me, I WON'T!"
She was screaming now, a watery film over her eyes as she spoke, fiery, enraged for the first time in her life.
"I won't write for the State any more! I won't write your propaganda, your lies that say that we are supreme, that say the rations are increasing; I won't do it anymore! The State took the crew, the ship, even my free will from me. If I was to be let on the computers, it was to type what THEY said to type, what THEY wanted written. If I was to have room and board and food, it was theirs, not my own. If I was to say a word it would have to be one pleasing to the State. The State tried to crush me into doing what it wanted me to do and as the most submissive and youngest of the crew the State almost succeeded."
Ruri's eyes blazed, ethereal and golden. She snatched the paper from his upraised hand.
"And now, if I am to read this paper at all, I am going to read it on my own terms!" she shouted, triumphant, suddenly looking taller, more imposing, brighter. Ruri leaned out the window, the forever-opened window, the one made, designed to keep the workers awake.
"'The State is starving its people! It is reducing your rations, not increasing them! Your pay is going to be reduced even more than it already has been for their purposes! Half of you will die within five years if the cuts continue at this same rate, if you keep bending under the State's will! Citizens of the State, separate yourselves from the State and figh--'"
Her superior had grabbed his pistol from the drawer of his desk as she read the words to the people outdoors, shot a bullet straight into the back of her head. A thin trail of vermillion blood trickled down her neck and she fell, fell out of the window and down into the street below.
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They said later that the girl that had shared her cubicle with Ruri ran down the stairs and away from her computer when she heard the commotion, had her hand on the office doorknob when the shot fired. Startled, she swung open the door and saw the last glimpse of her co-worker as she slumped into her descent to the ground, her pallid bobbed hair stained crimson. The State said it was an unfortunate, senseless suicide of their brightest mind, but one must wonder.
The girl was taken into questioning the same day. The State released her afterwards, and she is still working in the same cubicle now, a year later. The workers in the building are all thinner now this year, for a reason that everyone knows but no one has the courage to admit. There is a new girl sharing the cubicle with her, a ruddy-faced carrot-top of a teenager who seems as though vocational school did nothing for her. No one has yet mentioned her predecessor to her.
Once the redhead came into the cubicle with her tray instead of going into the cafeteria as usual to talk with her co-workers. The door was unlocked, and she came in with the usual amount of nonchalance, shutting off her computer again--
Again? She had turned it off a moment before, of that much she was certain . . . hastily she canceled the shut-down, checking her documents to make sure no one had tampered with them. The teenager was almost finished looking through the documents in the computer's files when one unfamiliar to her caught her eye. She opened it and read.
'Ruri Hoshino. The State is starving its people. It is reducing your rations, not increasing them. Your pay is going to be reduced even more than it already has been. . . .'
The teenager's eyes widened like a child's first hearing a peer use a curse word as she read, disbelieving, the words of the dead. Six pages stored on a file, single-spaced, formatted in the same manner as all of the State's documents. She continued, lunch untouched, forgotten.
'If you are reading this, the State is either in the process of or has already killed me. They tried before when I was a child, a cynical and cold excuse for a child, and failed. I mocked the fallibilities and silliness of others then, not realizing that it was this that kept them human, and that to truly be human is to be decent, kind, something the State never was nor ever will be, and something I learned too late. Impassiveness is the key to nothing, and bending to authority when the authority is a totalitarian one merely eliminates one more of your rights as a person. I know that now.
'So the State has killed me, a rebel. They have killed their best typist so that the truth does not get out. What they do not realize is that one rebel's death only spawns more rebels, regardless if anyone tries to silence it. The blood of patriots cries from the ground for vengeance, vengeance, and it will receive it, someday . . ."
The redhead checked; it ended there.
'Someday . . .,' someday, when the world is able to give it.
finis