Calling Out

Night in the city was never dark nor quiet enough for proper rest unless you slept in a closet. Thalia wished her excuse for not being asleep at that moment was because there was too much outside noise and too much light seeping into Alden's bedroom, but the real problem was that she couldn't turn off her mind. There was a thought convention going on in her head, and it simply wouldn't adjourn for the evening.

She sighed once more and extracted herself from the covers, crossing the room to the window. She turned up the window fan, hoping it would drown out her thoughts with its white noise. Thalia had increased its speed twice already; maybe the third time would be a charm. She carefully slipped back into bed, aware of where Alden was so she wouldn't disturb his peaceful slumber. At least one of them was at rest, although Thalia thought it would be nice if Alden's ability to sleep through anything, probably even through nuclear war, was somehow contagious.

When Thalia couldn't force her eyes to stay closed for more than a few seconds at a time, she pulled the covers over her head. When it became too stifling to breathe comfortably beneath the blankets, she pushed them away from her and stared at the ceiling. When she could no longer stand staring at the dancing shadows cast by the city lights outside, she conjured images from her memory to fill the passing hours. When she worked up the image of her late father, she knew it was time to leave the bedroom.

Oh well, there would be time for naps in the afternoon.

Thalia threw on one of Alden's big t-shirts she'd grown accustomed to borrowing and headed to the dining nook in the living room. The worn vinyl floor felt scratchy and sandy to her bare feet; she cursed the floor for being dirty already. She swept yesterday, but sand was a perennial nuisance and one of nature's backlashes against the continued existence of Juand City. Maybe nature had a point. Juand was built with little care for aesthetics and even less care for the environment. The dingy, prefab buildings, covered by a blanket of smog just harmless enough not to be deemed toxic, washed out the usual blue skyline and leeched precious resources from the desert it was surrounded by.

Thalia sat down at the dining table and scooted her handheld closer to her. She swished it back and forth along the table for a minute; she wasn't fully certain she wanted to turn it on. Handhelds were useful but such a distraction, and she'd lose track of time flipping through all the channels. Daybreak would come too soon. Thalia leaned back in her chair and peered down the dark hallway. Just past Alden's bedroom was her old room, a place she hadn't spent much time lately. Maybe she could get some sleep there, but would Alden be offended? She sighed as she let all four of the chair's legs hit the floor and slumped her chest and arms forward, onto the table. She eyed the handheld again; the flat gray box with its dead gray screen was getting more rest than she was. She really shouldn't disturb it.

She hovered her right index finger over the power button but hesitated. She wanted to call someone. She wanted to call her father, to be more precise, but wouldn't you know it, technology hadn't progressed to the point of contacting the dead yet. Thalia wondered if she had some dormant ability to invoke her father's spirit. Of all her extraordinary abilities, it would have been nice if at least one of them was something she wanted and not merely something she stumbled upon by accident.

Thalia sat up and rapped her fingers on top of her handheld, thinking about her father and running through her memories of him. If she searched for his name in the network, would she find something about him, maybe? Probably not. After all, who cared about an ornery old farmer with a walnut orchard, an adopted untag for a daughter, and more skills with a rifle than with the public?

Thalia recalled a time her father dispensed some of his peculiar advice while cleaning his old rifle: "You let your actions do the talking around here, Ty, and this here is a whole lotta action."

Well, his rifle certainly supplied action at times, fending off wild animals, desperadoes and whatever wandering piece of robotics the government sent their way in the name of "remote monitoring," with monitoring being a nice way of meaning enforcement. There were days when Thalia thought her father gave in a little too much to paranoia, but he had been right all along. Self-defense and privacy were rights only Thalia seemed aware of among the millions of people in Juand City. She looked at the wall locker across the room where her father's rifle had been stored for more than a year. Was she doing her father a disservice by locking away those "rights" and feigning the life of a citizen in Juand? Suddenly her right shoulder started to itch.

She scratched at her tattoo, her tag that made her identifiable as a legal citizen. Lately it had bothered her with a hot, tingly sensation somewhere between a mild rash and a bruise on the verge of healing. She guessed that her tag--as well as everyone else's--was supposed to be a replacement for the lack of privacy, a sacrifice towards safety and conformity. Her tag was, of course, a fraud, but it had fooled everyone it needed to fool until recently, when all of a sudden scanners took two or three checks to pass her tag for access to places she needed to be, like the bath houses and supermarkets. More and more, Thalia had begun to allow Alden to do everything for her, and she only moved between his apartment and his store. In short, she was becoming fully dependent on Alden. The system her father had shielded her from was now swallowing her whole.

Thalia's head met the table and she sobbed into its melamine top.

"Dad! Where are you? I just want to talk with you. I need you!" She bawled. "Please! Please talk to me!"

Thalia did not notice her handheld turned on.

"I can't do this without you, Dad!"

On its own, the handheld scrolled through the citizen directories.

"I need to talk to someone! Please!"

The device stopped at the surname Castrén, first name Sigurd. It dialed. Thalia still heard nothing.

"I don't know what I've gotten myself into!"

Another voice, deep and groggy, entered the living room. "Hello? Hello? What the... Ty? My god, is this Ty Ravel? Petru's girl?"

Thalia gasped and bolted upright. It didn't take her long to notice her illuminated handheld in the darkness. She grabbed it and looked at the screen. Sigurd? She didn't know anyone named... oh, but Castrén! She knew who it was! "Ward!! I... I... why did you call me just now?" Her hand was trembling.

"What the hell are you talking about? Who is this? Is this Ty?"

"Yes! Yes, Ward. It's me! I mean, it's Ty! I... I can't believe you called! I was sitting here, thinking about Dad, and..."

"Ty, you called me. That is, unless I'm dreaming right now, which is entirely possible because it's four in the morning. So is something wrong? Do you need me to come get you? Where are you, anyway?"

Thalia couldn't speak. As much as she'd fussed about needing someone to talk to, she had difficulty rationalizing that she somehow activated her handheld and called her old neighbor, Ward Castrén. Impossible.

"Uh, Ty? I really need to know what's going on."

Where should Thalia start? The afternoon she first learned how to sense people dying? The morning her childhood home was razed and she was thrust abruptly into adulthood? The day she set foot inside Juand's limits? The moment she shoved a gun into Alden's neck, or the first time she shared his bed? Thalia dropped her handheld on the table and stared blankly at it. It had been over four years without her father, but in all that time, until now, she'd never called out to him.

"Thalia! Are you there?"

The dam burst. "Oh, Ward!" Thalia cried. "I'm in Juand City posing as a citizen and living with a guy named Alden who's 18 years older who lost his family back in Outer Prasides and I'm making money by robbing dead people but I can't go anywhere anymore because people are starting suspect me and I'm scared that I'll get hurt or that Alden will get hurt and I don't know what to do!" Her voice trailed off into sobbing.

The other end of the line went silent for several moments. Ward finally said, "At least you didn't mention anything about drugs."

Thalia stopped crying and frowned at the handheld. "Ward, that is... well, it's..." Her expression began to soften. "That's..." She was smiling. "You can't..." She found herself laughing. "Damn you, Ward! I'm being serious!"

"I know you are." He let out a huge yawn that Thalia heard clearly on her end. "So anyway, tell me more about this Alden and your criminal hijinks. You're a citizen now? How'd you manage that?"

Thalia took in a deep breath and started from the beginning.