Sublimation(33)

He smiled at you, and he managed to make it seem sheepish. “Look, honestly, it’s a paper promotion, things are really moving too fast to bring another person in, and it was kind of—between you and me—fucked of Megan to leave now. But hey, I don’t mind you getting the glory instead of her.”

“Why me?”

Drew had looked surprised you would ask. “Because she recommended you.”

And then Drew had gone into detail about the project, the point people, the actual process you’d be going through (mostly overseeing R&D, and integrating the Condensco team, and there would be a significant media-outreach component, you weren’t the boots on the ground, you were doing strategy), how you would be Drew’s direct report now. You didn’t ask any questions until the end.

“This is the first new product in a decade, isn’t it?”

“Look at you, little company scholar,” Drew said. “Yeah. We’re patching up our five percent.”

And you didn’t say: The promotion would look really good on your application. This was the opposite of losing your H-1B1 status. This was the sort of role change that might allow you to apply for citizenship under the extraordinary ability visa clauses. An EB-1–1, with the addenda about your instance having abilities that would augment yours, giving your dual-citizenship addendum at the IIS the weight that an ordinary person might not be given.



* * *



Dual citizenship is a status where a person holds a passport to two countries, and every potential instance of that person is considered the same legal person. In effect, it means that an individual can reintegrate and be a citizen of two countries simultaneously, which is a status unavailable to most individuals. In the United States, a dual citizenship petition can be strengthened by having a particularly specific job, being a prominent individual within your field, or your instance having a particular skill set that would be of benefit to the United States. Dual citizenship requests are considered on a case-by-case basis and are considered addenda to the holistic citizenship application.

Between South Korea and America, an American acceptance of a dual citizenship petition automatically translates to a Korean one. It allows the individual to reside permanently in South Korea. It gives the individual all the benefits of American citizenship. It removes the Korean military service requirement. This is an extraordinarily lenient rule set, dating back to the historical backing of South Korea and the American military presence that continues in Korea to this day.



* * *



“YJ?” Stacey says, snapping you out of your thoughts. You blink. You try to dial your smile and body language up to “confident.”

“Right, sorry. Facilities can box my stuff up. Can you get me a keycard to twenty-six?”

“Of course.”

She leads you out of the fishbowl and back to the reception desk, then farther behind to a different, private area. She hands you a stack of paperwork.

“The only difference between this and your previous agreement is that this one comes with a heftier NDA, and a higher salary. But of course, read before you sign.”

She rummages in a drawer. You feel that if this is such a confidential project, the cards shouldn’t be kept so easily accessed. But then you watch her press the keycard to a machine and tap some buttons on the attached terminal, and then you feel a little stupid for assuming Mergebreak wouldn’t have good operational security. You turn to the paperwork while the machine hums.

You don’t know what you’re looking for, other than them not screwing you over too badly. You don’t mean that with any malice. Mergebreak’s using you for whatever it can bleed you for, but you’re using them as well—first for the H-1B1, and then for sponsoring your green card, for the chance at being labeled important. Workers in the instancing industry have a 34 percent better success rate at petitioning IIS for dual citizenship, across all visa pathways. It’s all for Yujin. Except, no, that’s unfair. If you reintegrate, Yujin gets your life. And you get the memories of your family, your friends in Korea, all that warm familiarity back. You’re both using each other. And you’ll both get both places, if you’re dual citizens. Free travel between borders. Live wherever you want. All your memories, all Yujin’s memories. No military service, either.



* * *



In a best-case scenario: You instance at the airport, and you fill out the rest of the paperwork that confirms that you were ready to instance, and confirm that your new instance is being sponsored by your university, your school, your family. In the best-case scenario, you had previously applied for instancing approval, rather than having to do it postmortem. Your heart and your paperwork are aligned. You know what you want and you get it.

In a worst-case scenario, you instance when you are ripped away from your family and your community and your life and you are trafficked across state borders when you catch a glimpse of the sign that demarcates where your country ends. Or somewhere in between, you instance because you realize that the only real choice you have in life is to leave your beloved, broken shithole, and cross the border into a different broken shithole, one with more access to capital, an overripe melon that you will be able to gnaw the rind from before sending back the scrapings. Lands of opportunity, which don’t want you and would never approve you if you went clean and legal. But, too bad. You know this is the only opportunity you have, to leave.