Diaspora Ad Astra (16 page)

***

It was already dark. Joan saw that Sean, who had sat on a rock for almost an hour looking at her, had gathered thorn bushes. She’d been burning for an hour. Sean walked
up to her with a thick piece of wood in his hand and held it to the flames burning on her arm. She looked at him, insulted, but then she noticed that his face was blank, as if he were in shock. He
went back to the pile of thorn bushes, lit them, and warmed himself at the campfire. He sat himself on the rock again, next to a fresh batch of clothes and a towel, and looked at the burning
Joan.

“You’re such a boy scout,” she said to him.

He said nothing and continued to look at her. Joan could see he was deep in thought, of running away perhaps, but she appreciated that he was still there, with a batch of fresh
clothes to cover her up once she stopped burning.

“I saved your Rolling Stones shirt, but I’m sorry I burned your jeans,” she said again.

He said nothing again. The look on his face was a mix of shock and guilt.

“You could leave, you know. I could just hitch a ride from here. Just give me the clothes and be off.” Joan said impatiently of his silence and his stares.

“So this is why you’re wanted.” He finally said. His voice seemed to echo in the silence that followed.

Joan sighed and nodded. “I’ve been experimented on by the military. I can’t control it. I just burst into flames at random. Before you saw me naked back in
that gas station, I’d just had an episode. I burned my last batch of clothes back there.”

“Why can’t your country save you?” Sean asked her.

“I can’t let them. My country doesn’t want to save a criminal. That’s all they know—that I’m a criminal. Everything else has been covered
up. Besides, if they knew, they’d just want to use me as a weapon. You don’t know how desperate my country is to get to the top, after years of being at the bottom of the economy. If
they had me, they could do whatever they want. I am a Filipino citizen after all. They’d practically would own me. I’m just glad to know they left my family alone and haven’t
deported my dad from Saudi Arabia.”

“Why don’t you come quietly, then? They’d probably pay you for your services.” Sean suggested.

“Or they might harvest my blood or something...” Joan muttered under her breath.

“Well, I’m just saying if I were you I’d...” but Sean didn’t continue what he was about to say. The look Joan gave him told him he was out of
line.

Sean stood up. Joan’s body emitted smoke once again; the burning had stopped. She covered her privates with her arms. Sean, who tried not to look at her, covered her with
the towel and led her to the campfire.

“You smell of sweet burning butter.” Sean said.

“I do?”

“You’re hot,” he told her, still holding the towel around her. He looked at her now. She looked at him with a confused but amused look. Sean, who realized his
mistake, cleared his throat and looked away. “I mean, literally. You’re burning up.”

“I feel fine,” she replied honestly.

***

Joan was naked, strapped onto a cold, metal bed. She could see doctors and nurses around her in medical gowns and scrubs. She saw a large mirror on one side of the room. It was
obvious: someone was watching her from behind that mirror.

The next couple of minutes were the worst of her life. They tried to burn her with a welding torch, a branding iron, and a cutting laser. She struggled and thrashed furiously
against her straps and started screaming. When each of the burning apparatuses made contact, she felt nothing. She would scream each time in anticipation of the pain, but  each time, she felt
nothing. By the time they were through, there wasn’t mark on her.

This went on for days, each time with different tools, different weapons: from things that merely burned to things that exploded. They tested if she could survive a grenade
explosion at point blank. It was a risk the doctors were willing to take. Luckily, not only did Joan survive, she came out of it unfazed. Her ears didn’t even ring. It seemed that her body
was impervious to any form of fire and heat, including any of its effects on other senses of the body.

One day, while she was strapped on the metal bed once again, she happened to see a man in a military uniform talking to the doctors and nurses inside the room with them. He was
old, with a strong jaw line and sunken cheeks. His greying hair was parted on one side, and he had a lot of medals on his uniform. The others referred to him only as “the General.” He
talked loudly and kept looking at her with hunger in his eyes. Everyone seemed to want to kiss his ass.

“She has improved a lot.” Joan heard him say to the doctors. “What else do you need to study her for?”

“We’re still trying to study how her body reacts with extreme heat and temperature. So far we saw her cells are moving rapidly, creating a friction that makes her
body adjust to the heat,” said one of the doctors.

Another one said, “We need samples of her blood and try to replicate her body’s reaction to flames like what we’re currently doing with the other
subjects.”

“Yes. It’s hard to replicate the three test subjects’ reactions. After all, their Neuroenhancers reacted to different stimuli. Number One cooperates with the
tests. However, Number Two and this one, Number Three, make it hard for us. They have to be kept restrained and tranquillized,” the first doctor said.

“We noticed that the formula works with first-generation mixed bloodlines. You know, directly mixed blood? Number One is Irish-American, Number Two is American-Hispanic,
and this one is Filipino-Chinese. We’re going to try to see if it works for non-halves, fourth-generation mixed bloodlines,” said another doctor.

“Other than that, we haven’t quite fully understood the effects of the Neuroenhancer. Based on the reactions of the test subjects, it’s quite random.
We’re testing it further on a new batch of volunteers,” added the first doctor.

“Well, then, you may proceed—but I hope you’re not wasting our time,” the General warned. The doctors nodded, and continued kissing more ass.

Joan cried and screamed, demanding to be released, but no one listened to her.

All of a sudden, her body began to emit smoke. A couple of nurses noticed. They all gathered around her. Without warning, Joan burst into flames for the first time, melting the
straps off the metal bed and sending the nurses into a blinded frenzy. She stood up, while still burning. She screamed, not out of pain, but out of shock. She heard people shouting around her. The
General called for units. A team of armed and uniformed men arrived.

“We need her alive!” The General screamed over the frenzy.

One of the doctors went for a fire extinguisher and sprayed her, but it did nothing. Joan had triggered the sprinkler system of the building. She felt the water touch her skin
but the fire didn’t go out.

“Tranqs!” She heard one of the uniformed men shout. Joan saw a gun barrel directed towards her. The soldier pulled the trigger and released the tranquillizer dart.
It melted in the flames enveloping Joan before it even reached her skin. She took this as a sign to run away. She heard the General shout behind her, “Call Number One! Send Number
One!”

She met no one on her way out. They probably left when the fire alarm and the sprinklers were triggered. By the time Joan reached the parking lot of the building, her fire had
gone out. She saw a security guard’s jacket on an empty parking attendant’s booth and took it. She escaped.

***

They saw the sign saying “Welcome to Little Rock, Arkansas.” There they would take Route 30 to reach the first of the smallest towns in Texas near that route. In
Sean’s map they saw that it was a small town called Bloomburg, population: 375, East borderline of Texas and South West of Arkansas.

“Why don’t we stop over here for something to eat?” Sean asked Joan.

“I think stopovers are a bad idea. I might have another episode. Let’s just go.” Joan told him.

Sean ignored her and hit the brakes and parked near a diner. “I just have to make a phone call.” He got out and Joan was left in the car to wait.

Suddenly, a chopper and three military humvees arrived and surrounded the little, green Honda Civic. Joan suddenly panicked. Armed units poured out of the military vehicles,
pointing tranquilizer guns at her. Barking commands at them was the General in fatigues and a bullet proof vest.

“Joan Tan, get out of that car!” he ordered.

Joan got out with her hands up in the air. Someone yelled “Fire!” She closed her eyes and expected the worst. But the worst was yet to come.

Slowly peeling her eyes open, she couldn’t decide which was worse: whether it was that hundreds of tranquilizer shots floated in mid-air in front of her, or the fact that
she saw Sean Rhodes stand beside her, concentrating on the tranquilizer shots, as if he controlled them, as if he told them to stop in mid-air.

“Number One!” the General shouted at Sean. “What are you doing?”

“I said no tranqs, didn’t I?” Sean replied to the General. “She’s to come without being shot at.”

“You don’t know what you’re going against, Number One!” the General shouted again.

“Number One?” Joan looked at Sean. He was injected with the Neuroenhancer too. He was the first test subject to succeed. He was a telekinetic. He knew what she
really was from the start. That was why he seemed so helpful; too helpful in fact. That was why he didn’t leave her when he first saw her burst into flames. She trusted him, and he had been
working for them all along.

Sean looked at her, the tranqs still in mid-air. “Look, just come with us calmly. I’ll make sure they’ll treat you right. I’m sorry I didn’t tell
you, but I can make sure they won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do. They’ll train you to control it. They’ll even pay you. Joan, I’ll make sure they
won’t hurt you. Trust me. I promise.”

Joan shook her head. None of that was true. To them, she was just a guinea pig. She felt betrayed. She wanted to make these people pay. She felt anger coursing through her. She
saw her hands suddenly emit flames but the fire did not spread throughout her body. For the first time in days, she no longer felt helpless. She felt in control.

By Eliza Victoria

Let me tell you about madness.

Ilyena initially planned to compose her paper in her head, but after an absurdly long wait for her air cab on the side of Highway 55, she thought, fuck it, might as well amuse
myself.

“Let me tell you about madness,” she said to Zee, who of course didn’t move a muscle. He had his eyes trained on the traffic above their heads. It was eleven,
a Friday night, and Ilyena could tell just by glancing at the sky that the entire populace of Rizal had decided to come out and party. Above them were several tiers of air cars and air cabs, bright
and twinkling. To Ilyena, it was like looking up a living stairwell. Air cars bumper-to-bumper, the sky completely obstructed, the air cloying and foul, a place of rotten fruits.

Back home, if she looked up from the sidewalk, Ilyena could still see swatches of sky, black though it was. Starless. But still, a glimpse of endlessness. Here in Rizal,
sitting under a waiting shed flashing advertisements above her head and beneath her butt, her bag containing her clothes sitting beside her, she could feel the atmosphere’s limits.

Let me tell you about madness, she thought.

She called her police guide Zee because his serial number began with Z140. A 0-ender (the first three places of the serial number determined the model), so he was one of the
new ones: low maintenance, programmed with more skills, supposedly more human. His voice didn’t have the unworldly, staccato grating of the older models, and he did have human-like skin,
though all Ilyena could see at the moment was the skin of his neck. He was completely wrapped in black: black uniform, black gloves, black boots. Even his Hover Cycle was black, humming right
beside him, squawking every now and then.
Intersection to turn red in 10
—squawk—
All roads clear
—squawk—
Minor pedestrian altercation on V.
Luna
—squawk—
guards coming to scene
—squawk—
over.
Right now, his entire face was covered with a black shield, a mask dotted with the lights of the air
vehicles and the city.

“A lot of people went mad after the Great Quake,” Ilyena continued, firing up a cigarette. Still no reaction from Zee. Ilyena fervently wished he would say
I
know my own city’s history, you know
, or something equally bitchy. That would be something—a serious bitchslapping from a robot who was not a sexbot. Ilyena had heard the juiciest
one-liners from ownerless sexbots working the streets, raging and smelling of spunk. But here, a 0-ender, top of the line and new, and she was getting
nothing
.

Sentient robot, my ass, Ilyena thought. What’s the use of sentient robots without built-in sarcasm?

Anyway.

“The Great Quake destroyed almost seventy percent of the metropolis. That’s seventeen cities clustered together, suddenly made flat—” Ilyena snapped her
fingers for drama “—just like that. It was a beautiful evening, the sky clear, no storms on the weather screens, then the ground shook, visions blurred, lights went out, and seconds
later, when movement ceased, the city looked as if it had just gone through a grinder. There were families who spent years paying for their homes, years planning their lives, and all of that was
destroyed. Just like that.”

Ilyena looked up and almost fell off the bench. Zee’s shield was lifted—and he was looking straight at her.

“Oh,” she said. “So
that
got through to you.” She couldn’t believe it.

But all Zee said was, “You had an Alter, and you programmed it to have a secondary transformation of an ashtray.”

It was not a question. Ilyena used to think Alters were overrated, but they were sturdy cell phones, they were small, they could hover in mid-air like an air car, and they
could turn into something else.