Midnight, Water City by Chris Mckinney

Author:Chris Mckinney [Mckinney, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781641292412
Google: WsECEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B08L5VJGS3
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2021-07-12T23:00:00+00:00

16

During lunch in the cafeteria, prisoners dressed in old, broken orange foam fits attack their food since the sea is calm for now, and they know that, for at least part of the afternoon, they’ll be able to hold down their chow. I find that I’m hungry, too, but I’m worried and can’t eat. The half-life of my space-grade anti-anxiety and sleep pills has passed, and I’m wondering if I’m experiencing hallucinations as a result. What I saw just now is impossible. I know Vomit Island isn’t the most secure on the inside, but breaching the plumbing with some kind of magic ink? Only Akira could come up with a trick like that, but she’s dead. Maybe I saw it because I’m surrounded by murderers. Like the small man about my age that I’m sitting next to, the white roots of his hair coming up against the dyed black strands. Not salt and pepper, exactly, just the real color beneath cracking tar. His eyes match his hair, cloudy lenses spreading over his dark pupils. He is jarred by the crackle of incoming feed.

I follow his eyes to the vid being projected so strongly on the wall that it renders the graffiti underneath it invisible. It’s prison, so we only get 2D. It’s a recap of Akira’s funeral. The procession. The six pallbearers, each an old person of notable importance, guiding the floating, closed coffin down Santa Monica Boulevard. Row upon row of people in formal dress, some with synthetically feathered hats, others wearing kimonos in her honor, heads down, almost bowing. Everyone polished in this rich, rich world. The prisoners mindlessly watch. The cafeteria looks like an emergency room after a three-day holiday, packed with the idiots who overindulged past a reasonable, healthy point.

Onscreen, the talking heads explain that Akira will be pushed coast-to-coast across each continent like the Olympic torch. California to New York. Paris to New Alexandria. The casket will be decorated in full splendor from India to Southeast Asia. And finally, a boat to her home country of Japan, where she will spend thirty days before being shipped to the island. She was a world treasure after all, the one who saved it. Every human on Earth should be given the opportunity to thank her before she arrives at her final resting place. This journey around the world will take months and end at the island, at The Savior’s Eye, where she will be laid to rest at the feet of a giant statue of her now under construction.

But then begin the tears and the audible sobbing arising from this pomp and circumstance. This turns into full-blown mourners’ wails. It makes me think of what Akira once told me: everything acts differently when it’s being observed. On a primitive level, we have always known this. The zoologist who needs to observe animals from afar to prevent altering behavior. The botanist who discovered that plants act differently under our gaze. Even subatomic particles will change trajectory under the watch of the human eye.

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