Sublimation(54)

“You didn’t instance this time, coming back to the States,” Rose’s mom says, and all the wind is knocked out of Soyoung’s sails.

She sits back down.



* * *



When Rose had been a kid and they had moved to the States, it had just been Rose and her mom and the apartment. The apartment had been fine. It had been different than Harabeoji’s house in Korea, but not worse. There were no heated floors. The kitchen had a gas stove instead of an induction burner.

Rose had just finished elementary school, or at least, she had gotten through the first half of her last year. The semesters in America finished at the beginning of summer, while the semesters in Korea finished at the beginning of winter. She was leaving half-done. But it was better to start at the beginning of sixth grade, it was what the adults had decided. So that was when they had moved. It had all been okay. She doesn’t remember how her mother took it.



* * *



“Soyoung,” her mother says. “You didn’t instance when you left Korea, this time.”

“No,” Soyoung says.

“So you’re not staying,” her mom says. “You don’t want to stay.”

Not a question, a statement. If Soyoung hasn’t instanced when returning to America, then that means that she has no intention of being American. It means that this version of her is a temporary visitor in this country.

“Mom,” Soyoung says, a little helplessly. The same pathetic way Rose always talked to her mom, and the same pathetic way that Soyoung always talked to her mom.

“I’m sorry I raised my voice,” Rose’s mom says.

Soyoung wants to tell her mom everything about her plan. That she wants to disentangle herself, that Rose would stay. She wants to tell her mother that she is very fortunate, despite everything, because she has the opportunity to reverse her reintegration, as long as a version of her childhood friend agrees to let her use the Mitosis machine. She wants to tell her mom about how she’s worried that YJ won’t help her. She wants to talk to a version of her mother who would be receptive to Soyoung’s concerns. She wants to reassure her mother, which is an odd feeling.

“Mom, it’s fine,” she says. “I’m going to fix everything.”

“Soyoung,” her mom says. “There’s nothing to fix. You just have to live with your choices.”

“No, you don’t,” Soyoung says, because talking with her mother makes her feel about eleven years old, all the time. “Let’s just eat. I’m sorry.”



* * *



Intention is cheap. Intention has people making proposals they don’t mean, intention has kids declaring majors to make their parents happy, intention has people gambling their entire fortunes on individual stocks and losing every single cent they own. Intention has fathers going out for milk and then never returning. Intention has people leaving and returning and leaving and returning and intention has women turning into people who they do not understand.



* * *



The food comes out. They eat. They talk about easy things. They talk about her mother’s friends and the new television drama that they had both been watching. They don’t talk about the future. Soyoung’s soondubu tastes different than she remembers from Rose’s recollection but she doesn’t say anything about it. They finish eating. Soyoung tries to pay but Rose’s mom doesn’t let her get the bill. Soyoung hugs Rose’s mom goodbye.

She walks back to the bus stop. She checks the messages on Rose’s phone. Social media app notifications, work emails, an old message from YJ.

You get home ok?

Yeah, Soyoung texts back.

Little dots. Pause. More little dots.

Okay, good

No yes or no. She runs her hand through her hair. At least she’s used to waiting.





YJ


You pretend you’re not watching the hallway from your glass-walled office. You pretend to be looking at important documents on your computer that have important words on them that you need to examine in great detail, but really, you’re watching your coworkers’ icons turn yellow in the NY-OFFICE Slack channel, and then occasionally glancing up to see them physically walk past.

A couple of them wave at you. You wave back. Stacey pokes her head in.

“Still working?”

“Still working,” you lie.

“You’re going to end up like Doug if you keep staying this late,” she says, which makes you smile.

“I already instanced once, and I take my laptop home to work.”

“Just watch out,” she says and walks away.

More of your colleagues walk past. It’s late now, dark outside, though the world is still half lit by the little boxes of light from the office building across the street. You putz with your mouse.

Your plan is to go down to twenty-six with your redacted Excel sheet of clinical trials and dates and pick through the paper records and the files that are kept in isolation, since you’ve exhausted the limits of what’s been shared with you on the public network and what you’ve learned from talking to the people who you’re nominally managing. You say “nominally,” because you didn’t really need to do much managing. You had run interviews with all your new direct reports. Half of them were existing colleagues. The other half were being integrated in from Condensco, and all of them were already diligently working on various silos of the Mitosis project. Their research spanned handfuls of disciplines: biology, technology, physics, philosophy. There’s one guy whose degree was in comparative mythology, of all things.