"before i die" - chapter one

chapter one

Tamaka’s low jazz music floated out of the window and onto the street below the dorms. Someone needs to tell her that everyone can hear her bath time jazz every night; or at least, all of the students here can. Two girls start giggling behind me, pointing to the third floor window, where Cho is singing along to the lofi jazz music, braiding her waist-length black hair. “Everyone is falling in looooove…”

“You’re in that dorm, right, Mika?” says Ken, tapping me on the shoulder.

I reluctantly nod, and Ken and Minato laugh.

At Kei Ito University, singing isn’t really considered normal. Well, not for robotics and engineering majors like me, Ken, and Minato.

The singing and jazz get louder and louder until I’ve reached the third floor, unlocked the door with my face ID, and kicked off my shoes by the door. “I wish I could have had an autokura,” I say, leaning against the wall. The stairs seemed to get lengthier and lengthier each walk back from the school at night.

“You could have sent a comm,” Emi says, lying stomach-down on her bed and drawing a star chart. “We all have the line programmed into our autogeitas.”

“You know, Professor Sato was talking about how one day we might program things into our fingertips one day,” I say. “Phone numbers, addresses, credit cards, and even the previous illness of someone.”

Cho’s low singing stops and she turns around. “Program IDs into our fingertips? You engineers are crazy.”

Tamaka steps out of the bathtub with her silk robe and her hair wrapped in a towel. “How does that even work, Mika?”

“Well, Sato thinks if the information is in a physical chip, we can insert it into any body part,” I explain, setting my bookbag on my desk.

“But what if there was a glitch? What if you put the wrong—”

“Nothing is for sure yet, Emi,” I interrupt. “Nothing is ever for sure in the engineering world.”

“Or the medical world,” says Tamaka. “They haven’t found a cure for quenxis.”

Quenxis. My stomach feels raw just thinking about it. The disease that kills one slowly, not painfully. You couldn’t tell by looking at someone if they had quenxis; the cells are only found within the bloodstream, where they slowly stop the blood from circulating, until one day, the heart stops beating. And there is no cure.

“I’m sure they’ll find one some day,” Emi says, waving a hand. She turns back to her chart. “Where is the planet Edrema 6 again?”

“Next to Barvine IM1U,” I say, sinking down into my desk chair. I look around my desk, brushing through some old papers, pens, books, and my red origami crane. “Wait, where is Zoombo?”

A twelve-inch, self-programmed android sputters to life next to Tamaka’s bed. “How can I assist you, Takahashi Mika?” it recites.

“I still think he deserves a better name,” Tamaka says, taking the towel off of her head and shaking her hair out.

“Time to recharge, Zoombo,” I say, ignoring her. Zoombo obediently rolls over to my desk and steps inside the charging outlet, first saying, “Good night,” before entering Sleep Mode, his sensors shut down and he folded himself closed.

I take a screwdriver from my desk and start to take Zoombo’s back apart. “I need to change that,” I say, sighing, and a hologram screen materializes in front of my eyes.

“You engineers are crazy,” Emi says again as I start typing on the screen.

“Like you techno musicians aren’t,” Cho says, and Tamaka laughs.

I don’t finish reprogramming Zoombo until close to midnight. I do more than fix the “good night”; I fix some bugs and get rid of any possible viruses. Zoombo is my favorite creation, after all.

“Go to sleep, Mika,” Cho murmurs. “It’s a weeknight.”

“Shh, go back to sleep,” I whisper.

“Go back to sleep, Cho,” Zoombo whispers, matching my tone.

“Shut up, Zoombo,” Cho whispers back, turning over in her bed.

I smile and put on my headphones. Since I was a child, I always wanted to make my own android. Back when I lived in what was once First Tokyo, with my mom in our old condo next to my best friend’s house. Before Japan remodeled after the third world war; before the government forced everyone not of Japanese descent to leave. I haven’t seen my oldest friend in over five years.

Thinking of him makes me nostalgic. I flip open my autogeita, and a hologram of my saved contacts popped up. In Second Tokyo, you can’t call international phone numbers, which means I have no way of getting to New Seoul, where he lives. But I still have his contact saved. Just in case I ever leave and get to call him again.

Just in case he would remember me.