MARTians (21 page)

It is me, and there I am, dropping that bag and running away. There is a bright spot that highlights me in the crowd, but it is still impossible to see my face. It doesn’t matter how many times they show it; I am nobody.

There must have been other cameras. There are cameras everywhere. There might have been a drone above me. There might have been someone doing self-surveillance with a phone who caught me and the bag in the crowd. My fingerprint may not be in any system, but my face? If there is a glimpse of my face in any footage, facial recognition software can match me to my crime.

If I tell Timmer, he will try to help. That’s why I can’t tell him. There is no doubt what is coming, and it is coming for me. I’m the one. I left the baby in the bag on the sidewalk. Nothing can save me. If Timmer tries to hold on to me, it will be like one satellite touching another; we will all shatter and fall. I have only one choice. I have to be arrested for my crime, and the best thing to do is make that very easy. I just have to be where I’m supposed to be — behind the gun counter in AllMART’s Great Outdoors.

That night I read from the book about the Martians.

“Tumbleweed. Fragile. Names,” says the book.

I hope 5er remembers when I’m gone.

He puts his hands on my cheeks.

He doesn’t say a word, but then, he never does.

It is quiet in the store this morning.

I can hear the sparrows flutter overhead. They are building a nest on top of the surveillance camera. I worry. It doesn’t look like a safe place to raise babies to me, but there is nothing I can do about it.

I take out the spray cleaner and start polishing the glass over the guns. The sparrows tend to leave a mess down here below. I will need to get a ladder and clean the top of the polar bear’s case too. These are the consequences of changing Kral’s bird-murdering policy. These are the consequences of choosing life. Worry and messes.

There is a rumbling noise. An odd one — not the sound of a warehouse ladder, not the sound of a forklift groaning to life. It is the sound of running feet.

Men in black body armor are rushing down the aisle.

They are coming for me.

There is nothing I can do about it.

I knew this moment was coming.

They move in formation, but there isn’t enough room for that. The endcap display of canoe paddles crashes down. The stampede is over as quickly as it began.

I move out from behind the counter and begin picking up the paddles.

The men in black armor will discover their error and come back for me soon. There is no point in running. I can’t outrun them. There is no point in taking the keys, removing a nice little gun, and putting up a fight. I can’t outgun them. So I do what I can do; I let ZERO tidy up the aisle. It could have been worse. Paddles don’t shatter. It’s an easy cleanup.

Overhead, a camera drone wobbles and dips in the air. The sparrows flutter.

I’m sliding the last paddle back into place when I see them returning. I take a deep breath and wait, standing right in the middle of the aisle. The first of them pushes me along in front of him until I fall out of the way. The black force sweeps by, and in the middle there is someone being dragged along, stumbling, blind. They have put an AllMART bag over her head, but I know her. It is Juliette.

The clumsy black suits collide and jostle for space. Things are pushed over; the destruction is contagious, a chain reaction. The polar bear teeters and topples. The glass case shatters and the broken glass shines like a thousand diamond rings. I pull myself back up onto my feet. I turn and lift the intercom handset. “Cleanup on Aisle 125, the Great Outdoors,” I say. My voice is calm and patient as a recording. I don’t want to alarm or confuse the customers. Then the handset slips out of my hand, and I slide against the wall until I’m curled up on the Ergo-Rest mat that absorbs the painful pressure of being on my feet all day.

It takes all day to put the Great Outdoors in order. The broken glass is swept away, but it seems to leave a ghost behind. I move my head slightly so it catches the light. A sparkle party where I last saw Juliette, the trace of silver glitter from her shoes.

Finally, my shift is ended. I can clock out and go home.

So that’s what I do.

I slide my badge through the scanner, walk out the employee exit, and then go around to the front of the store. I walk with purpose across the parking lot. I climb the stairs to the pedestrian bridge. I pass over all that traffic. And I’m invisible. I’m even invisible to a drone that flies up and over the mesh of the bridge. I am invisible because no one is interested in my story.

I’m not the Bag Baby.

I’m not the Girl Who Was/n’t Eaten by a Tuna.

I’m just AllMART employee Zero.

I walk back across the bridge, then I circle around the parking lot. I circle until I arrive home, at the Warren.

“Can we save her?”

No one answers because we know the answer. The answer is no.

We are all together, standing shoulder to shoulder watching Channel 42.

Over and over again, the camera shows us Juliette, dragged blind and stumbling out of our world.

We share this heartbreak. In this way we are all united.

But the camera doesn’t show everything. It doesn’t see that Juliette’s shoes are falling apart, and that, after she is gone, there is a little track of glitter that marks her passing. The drone surveils, but it doesn’t hear her calling softly for Raoul. The camera doesn’t know what I know: that Juliette did the right thing. She saw someone who needed help, and she gave it, best as she could.

The camera never does see those things.

And there’s still no verdict in the tuna-girl custody case, and the dark neighborhoods are still on fire, and ammunition is in short supply, and tonight we should all look up to see the shiny sparkle of the satellite rain.

They run new video of the arrest. We see more this time. Through the drone we see Juliette being grabbed at her station at Fancy ManiPedis, the bag pulled over her head, the moment when they tased her and she collapsed, a small bright figure swallowed by a churning clot of black helmets.

That night, Juliette never thought about surveillance. Her eyes were on the baby, and that baby was her blind spot. We see her close up, cradling it in her arms, and though we can’t hear what she is saying, there is so much tenderness in her face when she rubs her cheek against that drowsy lump of baby that it makes my insides ache. We see her gather things the baby might need, we see her winding through the aisles of AllMART, we see her exit, and we see her walk away with unswerving purpose.

We see her walk straight toward the Warren.

She broke Raoul’s rule. She walked directly home. And what this means we don’t yet know, but it cannot be good.

ZERO knows that model of gun. It is a
kawaii
accessory. It can fit in a small purse. Sadly, it is out of stock and future orders cannot be filled. Sad. It’s adorable. And demand will be high now that the television audience sees how adorable it looks in Sallie Lee’s hand.

The gunshots sound louder than most heard on the Channel 42 News. I guess that’s because these aren’t recorded and volume controlled. The sound is being picked up live through the mic clipped to Sallie Lee’s business-fashion corset.

What is that? What? It takes a while to see, but I’m pretty sure that is Sanjay on the floor, although I’ve never seen him before. Sanjay was a behind-the-camera guy, until now. Sanjay is dying on live television. But then the segment loops and repeats. Sanjay dies again. He was the behind-the-camera guy. He was probably in charge of switching from feed to feed. Now that he is dead on the studio floor, who knows which button to press to change it to a different feed? Sanjay may be getting shot for hours.

“Guys,” says Luck. “Guys, we need to go.”

And Luck is absolutely right.

“We’re heading east,” says Pineapple, pointing to the place where the sun will surely rise.

“We’ll go some other way,” says Timmer.

“See you,” says Pineapple, like it is possible our orbits might touch again.

“Bring it in,” says Timmer. “Bring it in.” And he opens his arms wide. We all huddle and hold one another close.

“What we got,” says Timmer, “is yours.”

Pineapple and Luck each take a box of cereal.

“Gas money,” says Timmer, and he holds a card out to Pineapple.

“Man, can’t do it.”

“No!” says Timmer. “You damn well will!”

Pineapple takes the card.

“But there’s a condition,” says Timmer. “The deal is you be looking. You be looking for the ones you need to help.” That’s when Timmer buckles. He puts his hand over his eyes and his shoulders shake.