Interviews

Remember how much I hate interviews?

Dear Leo,

Do you remember how much I hate interviews?

I haven’t had a single one in years. So I was already annoyed, sitting slightly drenched (I’d forgotten to take a laminar again) and waiting for my turn in the lobby. After about half an hour, a secretary showed me into a room. 

Behind the mahogany desk, a middle-aged man looked me up and down and asked me to sit down. 

He really shouldn’t have been the one deciding my fate, but beggars can’t be choosers, right?

He was still working on an old-school laptop. A small bronze nameplate proudly proclaimed him as “Deepak Kanwal, Editor”. The dull glow from the screen lit up his face and also the big logo behind him. “Amba Arsa” in a blocky red typeface on a white field. (Yes, I know, I didn’t have a lot of options.)

He spoke up finally after a silence had taken over post the initial pleasantries.

“I read our pieces and they’re quite good. So why did you choose to leave the Times?” 

I looked at my clenched hands in my lap, “It wasn’t my choice. I picked the wrong hill to die on.”

He nodded understandingly, then scrolled some more on his machine. His eyes seemed to catch something, and he turned back to me.

“I’ll be honest. We are not really looking for a new English writer. We are actually cutting down on all our other languages. So maybe we can have you as maybe...someone who comes on for op-eds, as long as you can…”

He didn’t complete the sentence, but I knew what went unsaid. The opinions had to conform to the publication’s new nationalist outlook. 

I thanked him for his time and told him to keep me in mind if he had any work for me. I got up and nearly left. That should have been the end of it.

I was at the door when he said, “You know you could go into government service? Your genome patrika lists that as a secondary career.” 

I turned, stormed back in. 

“How the fuck do you have access to my genome patrika?!”

He seemed startled, “It’s common practice, we have to do background checks for any new hires, it’s just a small fee..” 

He ducked in time to avoid his nameplate that went through the acrylic logo behind him instead. He didn’t have time to call security, I had already slammed the door and walked out.

But fuck that, right? How dare he?

I was so angry. I didn’t bother trying to call a cab, I just kept walking, even though it was drizzling. Their office was in a Green Corridor so I didn’t have to bother worrying. Would you believe that the Green Corridor has only grown by 20% since you left? The bad thing is obviously that places that were lost, stayed lost. The good thing is we all developed muscle memory for where you could stray to, where you could walk to, where you couldn’t even try to enter.

I lost myself in the walk, I raged inward the entire time.

That might explain why I found myself in Shakti Street, with a sudden beeping in my pockets. 

Look, Leo, I know the story gets weird here, but cross my heart, this is what happened. After the SATARC agents visited, I became really careful about the SRNGA stick. I couldn’t afford it going off anywhere, especially if I was not around. So I had taken to carrying it on my person every time I left the house. I had it with me when I met Kanwal, and honestly, he’s lucky he got his nameplate and not some electric death beam.

But right then, it was beeping frantically in my pocket, and suddenly there was that feeling creeping up my scene, like something terrible was about to go down. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow behind me. I slipped my hand over the stick, soothing it, the beeping slowing and deadening. But as soon as I loosened my grip, it started ululating again.

They crept up behind me, reaching for my shoulder. My old self-defence training kicked in, and I dropped and rolled away. As I turned, I saw a glimpse of the shadow. A black waterproof overcoat, and a full facemask, but nothing else that could give me a clue as to who it was. He stepped towards me. 

That’s when the buzzing started. Four or five iCleaner drones flew into view, all of them circling the stranger in the overcoat. The beeping was frenetic now. The stranger was completely distracted by the drones. The poor sod didn’t have a chance. Something whizzed into him, from behind. He looked at me, as his torso separated and flew to the ground, his lower half crumbling after him. A serrated disc lay embedded in the tarmac, coated in blood. 

I tried to look to where the disc had come from, but there seemed to be a brilliant light there. I used my left arm to shade my eyes. I heard a booming voice. 

“RISE, CHILD. YOU ARE SAFE.” In the distance, where the voice was speaking, a new sound. Like a conch ringing out, and I felt the stick in my pocket resonate and beep with the same vibration. 

I got to my feet but I still couldn’t see what was happening. The drones had vanished. The disc on the floor, buzzed, rotated and levitated back into the blinding light.

“Who the fuck are you? What’s going on?!”

There was a pause, my hand closed around the stick. Then the voice spoke, giving my hand pause.

“I AM THE PROTECTOR.”

 Leo, I swear, I nearly laughed. I pointed at the severed body.

“Who was that? Who did you kill? What kind of protector does that?” 

“I AM THE PROTECTOR, AND THAT WAS SOMEONE WHO WOULD DESTROY YOU. I PROTECTED YOU.”

I looked at the body, now lit up fully in the blazing light of whatever was speaking. Something glinted in its stiff hands. The rain was spattering the overcoat and making a steady staccato noise. The blood was...black and slick. The smell of it suddenly hit me. I held my stomach and doubled up. The light seemed to move a little closer. The voice became less sonorous.

“You may not realise it, but you have a choice now. You possess something.”

My hand involuntarily clenched around the stick, I just knew it was talking about it. 

The voice continued, “You can use it. I can teach you. I can fund you. You can help me protect this city.” The voice paused momentarily, then continued, “Or you can go back to your worthless life, no job, no way to protect or support your parents.”

I looked into the light. The brightness seemed to be dimming. 

“How do you…”

“I KNOW EVERYTHING.”

I got back to my feet.

“I don’t think you understand. I don’t believe in you, whoever you are. I don’t believe you.”

The voice tempered itself.

“Your faith is of no matter.”

“I have no faith at all, really.” My voice was steely, I have no idea where I found any of this courage.

You are probably thinking how I could do any of that. I honestly wish I could explain it. You know me, you were the braver of us. I could barely stand up to Mom and Dad. But something about this...fucking voice trying to boss me around was a bit much.

The light flickered, brightened and the voice boomed again.

“CHOOSE WISELY, CHILD.”

I think you’ll agree that two gruesome dead bodies was more than I should ever have been okay with in my whole life. But I wasn’t just thinking about the bile rising in my mouth, or the Matsya that had left the stick to me in the first place. I was not thinking about the anger that was rising in me. I was not thinking at all. I was thinking about you. I was thinking about Mom and Dad. I cared very superficially about the city, Amba was a cesspool. But if the only thing I was stuck here for was to keep them safe, I had to do more. 

When I went home, Mom asked me about the job. I told her I got it. She was so excited that she didn’t even notice the small black implant that a drone had sutured into the back of my left ear. The Betaal over my shoulder spoke, “We begin training tomorrow. Rest well.”

So I guess I am now going to protect my city and I have no idea how I’m going to do it. I’m going to be helped by a bodiless voice in my ears, something I don’t believe in. So yeah. That’s really all that’s new. How are things with you?

Love

N

PS I took the thing that was in the dead body’s hand. I don’t know what it is yet and I’m not sure I want to experiment with it with the Betaal watching. (I had to write this practically blind.) Wish me luck.