Sublimation(56)

In the middle of the lab, there’s a set of steel-looking bars that are set at parallels in the floor. The test version of the Mitosis machine, reminiscent of a guillotine. The clean steel lines of the gate hid an insanely complicated piece of technology. In front of you now, the machine looks like an inert piece of metal. Surprisingly delicate, with seams where it could be taken apart.

You had watched video interviews taken after the Mitosis machine was tested, where each instance was asked questions about their life. Each instance of the subject had seemed scattered. Like a lobotomy, you had thought. Even separate from the logistical issues that helping Soyoung might cause for you, you didn’t want her to end up in a trial that had her looking at that.

You poke around at the main computer terminal, attached to a black-box server severed from the rest of the network. You click through file trees. You skim documents. There are nine-hundred-page-long technical specifics and research papers and Excel files. You cross-reference against your notes on the existing trials. You keep glancing at your watch, watching the minutes tick by. It’s getting late. Your eyes hurt.

But you find your target: documentation on a research study that included a final separation of the subject. It would start within two weeks. There’s an Excel file of subject names, contact information. You scan the list. Soyoung wouldn’t be out of place here.

Now it’s just a question of whether you should add her. You rub your eyes, you look away from the terminal. You don’t want to think about this while sitting here.

You get up. You turn the computer off. When you get back to your floor to pick up your bag, you glance at the security camera in the corner of the hallway. You don’t think this was particularly suspicious, but you don’t know. Maybe you shouldn’t have done this. But you felt like—well. You checked for her. It still doesn’t mean that you’ll say yes.





YUJIN


Your doorbell rings, but you’re not paying any attention. You aren’t expecting any visitors—your friends and coworkers don’t usually visit you at home, you meet them outside, in cafes and bars and places where your mother isn’t around. You hear her get the door.

“Ah, wrong apart—” you hear your mom say in her accented English. You swivel in your chair. You open your door and peek out into the hallway. The front door is open, and you can see the faintest silhouette of a woman’s body. You can’t tell anything about them—probably a delivery person, or a lost foreigner.

Then the stranger speaks, in clear American English.

“I’m sorry, does Yujin Lee live here?”

You get up, walk out of your bedroom.

“Hi,” you say, in English. “Who am I speaking with?”

“Yujin-ah, who is this?” your mom says, in Korean, ceding the door to you.

“I think this is one of YJ’s friends,” you say in Korean, even though you have no idea if this is true. Your primary thought right now is that you want to get this woman away from your mother, before she starts asking questions. If this is YJ’s mess that you’re cleaning up, you don’t need your mom getting in your business.

The woman looks at you at first as if your face is familiar, and then her expression shifts to something more guarded. She smiles like she’s trying to be reassuring but landing on concerned.

She’s an ordinary-looking woman, you think, other than the fact that she’s a foreigner, and you can’t place a name to the face. She’s definitely not Korean. She’s wearing professional clothing. She doesn’t look like she’s slept.

She does a shallow, unpracticed bow, like she’s heard this is the thing to do but hasn’t internalized the motion in her body. You dip your head.

“Hi, Yujin? You don’t know me, but your instance does. I’m Megan. I worked with your instance. It’s very nice to meet you.”

“Hi,” you say, again. “Can I help you?”

“I don’t mean to intrude. Is there somewhere we can talk?”

You don’t want to do this in the living room, where your mom will be eavesdropping from the kitchen, where she’ll bring tea and ask questions. You don’t want to take her back to your room—who is this woman? What will she learn about you, if you bring her back to your bedroom? Would it be bad for you to be in public with her? Why didn’t YJ tell you that she would be visiting? Does he not know?

“We’ll go talk in the hallway,” you say, and lead her outside.



* * *



Some international students at wealthy international schools are deliberately coached to adopt a specific sort of feeling toward the country where they attend school. They’re pushed toward emotional statelessness, a feeling that they don’t belong in anything so gauche as a country, or a deliberate emotional closeness, a patriotism, because their families believe that an instance would be professionally or politically useful. The kids aren’t told anything, of course, although they might suspect. The knowledge would alter the shape of the feeling in their heart. It might tilt the scales in one direction or another.



* * *



Megan looks around the corridor like she’s never seen an apartment complex before. You guess they don’t have these sorts of buildings in the United States, or at least you hadn’t seen them in New York. YJ has told you about traveling out to the suburbs and it being like the countryside, except without the rolling mountains and rice paddies.