#

Memory is an infection. It sinks into a person after prolonged exposure. The stronger the source, the proximity to it, and the duration, the more sickening the consequences. It’s why Theo couldn’t help but think of Gin as she looked at the dead man. 

Moonlight colored the stranger’s corpse a pallid blue. She stared down into his sunken eyes and wondered what Gin’s eyes looked like now.

Would they be misted over, cloud-cover white? Eaten completely by grubs? In his rush to flee, he’d forgotten his glasses. He always looked a little off without them. A bit pinched.

The remembrance of him was an illness that ached.

Theo rolled her shoulders forward, then back, doing her best to stretch away the rotten thoughts. She tilted her head back and forth, working out further tension, rinsing her platinum-dyed hair in lunar light. She didn’t have time to dwell on Gin. She had work to do.

The plateau’s winds swept down from the snow-capped ridges and across the sparse alpine grassland she’d wandered into, adding an even deeper chill to an already frosty night. The breeze moaned in the key of isolation. The rustle of abandoned prayer flags, most likely hung in the Disavowed’s final moments, held little comfort.

She sat cross legged before her music gear, the cool earth sapping her own heat from below. Her electronic kit was growing more and more cumbersome. A mass of wires held together the vocoder, mic, synthesizer, sequencer, floppy port, and cassette player. Her rucksack was really putting in work these days—and so was her back.

Theo let herself caress the keys of the centerpiece: her PolyCorpse synth. It was a relic of a lost world fused with technology from the present. She traced her hands over its black-and-white acrylic keys, then the many knobs and switches. Stickers plastered the classic device—each previous owner had added their own over time, creating a collage of tags, slogans, chibi characters, and logos. They were layered so thick, the toxic orange of the synth’s plastic shell barely peeked through. Hell, she’d even slapped on a few to stake her claim on the device.

It was old. It was worn. But damn if she didn’t love it. 

She played a few sharp notes as she eyed the corpse. The dead man lay face up, blank stare aimed at the sky as if looking for a constellation he'd forgotten. He was wearing a green windbreaker that was far too large for his deflated form. 

She continued playing notes and searched for a reaction. On a D chord, the air above his chest stirred like light shifting across a running brook. It always took some experimentation to find the right combination of rhythm, melodies, and samples that spoke to each individual corpse, but once found, their Resonance would trickle out and fall into her trap. 

Theo had yet to come across a Disavowed she couldn’t ensnare.

She hit play on her Hymn Cassette and let the ancient Mongolian chant blare into the fading twilight from external speakers, casting far across the dry plains. She found a refrain she liked and fed it into her sequencer. Isolating it, she chopped it into a tight loop and pitched it down, further deepening the throat song. The loop rolled in on itself to create a maddening rhythm. The dead man’s Resonance wormed out further from his chest, bright and translucent, like a hundred little eel-wraiths poking out of their porous homes. Instinctively, Theo pressed a few bright chords across her PolyCorpse’s keys. 

And so it went. Theo studied the reaction of the Resonance as she added and subtracted from her composition, carefully creating something intimate between her and the deceased and finding common ground between them. Soon, the Disavowed’s energy was in the air before her like a little luminant typhoon. The blue of it danced across her face. It was under her spell. 

Her finger found the switch on the Anima Floppy Disk Drive and flipped it. Its vents spun up, hungrily pulling at the Resonance. The energy seemed to spasm as it resisted, but the pull was too much for it. It flowed inside the device. Her equipment surged with energy and as the drive cooled with a crackle.

It was done.

The carcass had barely changed during the Ensnaring Séance, but there was a sag in his chest that only a trained eye would notice. More notable were the eyes. The eyes always lost something. The extraction had turned the sunken gaze of this Disavowed a dun shade.

Hollow.

Theo remembered Gin squinting through a smile as clear as day. 

Shit.

The horizon careened toward yet another dawn, ceaseless as ever. She was glad to have captured the Resonance as quickly as she did. In the daytime, the energy of the dead receded; it was harder to lure out in the sunlight than in the moon’s shine. Trickier to capture. It was time to pack up her gear and head home behind the city’s thick walls.

She pressed the stop button on her Hymn Cassette, halting the looping rhythm of the chant. Its reels spun down to a standstill. Theo swore she could still hear the baritone of the prayer echoing through the valley and up into the surrounding mountains’ crags. The drive port let out a gasp of frigid mist as the Anima Floppy Disk ejected. Theo pulled the floppy out, brimming with recently captured energy. Its surface was icy to the touch. The square slab’s frosted edges caught the beginnings of the dawn's glow. She gently placed it in a crystal clamshell case and stowed it in her sling bag.

She continued to break down her musical equipment. A crumb of electricity popped as she unplugged the Hymn Cassette player from the FATHER-34 sequencer. Unhooking the cables one by one, she stowed the electronics in the tattered bag. Last, she fit her prize jewel into its case: her PolyCorpse synthesizer. She snapped the case shut and secured it to her pack. Safe.

Theo spared the Disavowed another glance. The dead man was just a lump in the growing dawn light, but she noticed something previously missed. Across his pale hand was the scrawl of ink. She knelt down and inspected the note. It was a string of faded numbers, hastily written and meaningless to her. Still, Theo couldn’t help but think they were important. Most things done in dying moments were. She took out a sharpie, popped its cap, and transcribed them across her own palm. She’d consider them later. 

For now, she had to get back to the city. DehantaPolis.

As the stars retreated, so did she.

#

The rising hustle of the people of DehantaPolis streamed past the diner’s window. The full melting pot was on the move. It had taken Theo a few hours to hike back from The Moor and she’d arrive smack-dab in the middle of rush hour. Between the stacked, post-global architectural low-rises—an eclectic mix of sloped beams, clay tiles, wood shingles, and colorful chipped paint—the torrent of workers pushed toward the energy sector in a wash of blazers and pressed slacks. Saint Exxo Co. logos on the backs of suits caught the rising sun, their reflective material flashing. Foot traffic was at its peak as the daily commute flowed from the surrounding low-city that hugged Dehanta’s industrial heart. Multicolored scooters and electric rickshaws pushed through the throngs, adding a steady holler of honks to the morning.

In the distance, the power plant’s great cylinders bellowed steam into a blue sky, their metal plating gleaming in the morning’s light.

Across the city, the public address system boomed, each intersection speaker combining into a chorus. Muffled only slightly by the window glass of the diner, the robotic Exxo morning announcement declared the week’s Sarif energy numbers into the streets before a woman’s voice rattled off current events and the weather report. Finally, she pronounced the morning prayers, translated across a plethora of languages and covering a wide range of religions—and all slightly altered and bastardized from their original text to encourage Resonance donation.

And that concludes today’s morning announcement. Carry on, and remember, only you can light our future!

Coffee steam snaked up to Theo’s nostrils, filling them with its earthy aroma. The diner sourced some of the best beans the horticulture district had to offer, and the scent made her feel fuzzy with anticipation. 

Despite working all night, she just wasn’t ready to turn in yet. Her tight studio suite had only felt more stifling since Gin’s departure. He’d added a certain human element to the cramped flat that vanished along with him.

She flipped her hand over and appraised the numbers she’d written down, her life line cutting across the ink. What had compelled that Disavowed to write them? She puzzled over the string as she sipped her brew, then gave up. What compelled a Disavowed to do anything out there in The Moor? On death’s door, desperation and madness muddied rational thought. 

Gin’s ghost nagged at her. She needed a distraction to stem the flow of memories. Unchecked, their trickle would become a torrent.

Theo reached into her bag and found her Walkman—something she’d modded heavily over time. Failed experiments, wasted solder, and a ton of frustration and cursing led to the device she now held in her hand. A custom PCB module, etched with circuitry, was stuck to it with electrical tape. Laced with wires, the added block came with a few mechanical switches, dials, and most importantly, a minuscule mic.

She riffled through her bag and pulled out her loop cassettes, snug in their satchel. By cracking them open and chopping the filament, Theo had managed to create what were essentially short, closed loops. Perfect for micro-sampling. She grabbed a pink one that read 10 seconds and opened the Walkman with a satisfying pop, inserted the tape, and snapped it shut. The reels were still visible through the plastic window on the toy-blue tape player.

Theo loved finding the hidden rhythms in the world around her. It was a hobby of hers. She could capture them. Repurpose them. An encapsulated moment of the mundane could carry entire compositions with the right touch. The nearby AC unit clicked in an alternating rhythm. A dripping faucet held a beat of two. A kiltering overhead fan whooshed under it all. She began to count, and on four, she hit record. She started the count over, steadily, and on ten, she stopped recording.

Putting on her headphones and plugging them in, she played it back. Her eyebrows raised in disbelief. The reel looped perfectly. Usually, it took more than one try to capture a succinct loop that ended on beat.

Using her jury-rigged controls, she tinkered with the pitch and speed of the loop, exploring the sample in various ways. She watched the tape reels slow and speed up with the twist of a dial, endlessly circling. The perfect little distraction she needed.

A tinkle of chimes cut through her open-ear headphones as a familiar face pushed into the diner. Sarika flashed Theo a smile below mascara-defined eyes. Her face twinkled a touch, her sweeping neon eyeshadow imbued with glitter. 

Sarika turned to the barista and stepped towards the counter. Theo removed her headphones to catch Sarika saying “Hey, yaar,” to the man as she approached the register. He didn’t move. If you weren’t paying attention, it would be easy to mistake the geezer for a tweed sack of coffee beans wearing an out of style fedora. “Let me pay my respects.” She bent towards the Ngenechen idol on the counter and whispered some unheard prayer to the Mapuche symbol. She nodded at the barista to confirm a job well done. “Coffee for me, yeah?”

The man grunted and started prodding the coffee machine. He took out an espresso portafilter and wielded it like a cudgel, smacking the contraption a few times, then gripped the bean hopper with both hands and began shaking it.

Theo watched as Sarika shrugged and made her way to the booth where she sat. Her lavender bob bounced with each step—she always had a spring in her step that Theo admired. Her friend collapsed onto the torn pleather as Theo stowed her Walkman.

“Not sure why you always do that,” said Theo, gesturing to the Ngenechen idol back at the counter. “Don’t think the owner cares if you pay respects or not. Probably doesn’t notice shit outside a five-foot radius.” She peeked back at the man as he whaled on the grinder. “Seems like he’s on his own frequency.”

The owner glared at the coffee pot, jaw clenched, as it gurgled to life.

“It’s just polite,” said Sarika, “and honestly, I think he cares. Respect for each other’s beliefs is respect for each other.”

“You should put that on a bumper sticker,” said Theo, rolling her eyes. “I didn’t realize we were experts in spiritual respect now.”

“Respect in the city and respect on the job are both important. It’s just different out in the field than behind the walls, among the living. Speaking of which, did you find anyone out there last night?”

Theo thought back to the corpse and the Ensnaring Séance. Had last night been the guy with the red coat, or a different corpse? No, she was fairly certain that last night was the man in the blue windbreaker in the valley, face up to the stars.

Wait, had the coat been blue?

Details had once mattered to her deeply, but now the nights blended together into a cruel slurry. The rate at which these things lost definition made her shudder with discomfort. She should remember. 

“Just one loner Disavowed,” she said. “Enough to fill up one Anima Disk.”

“Are those its coordinates on your hand?”

Theo looked at her palm. “What? These numbers?”

“Longitude and latitude, right?”

Of course. Sarika was right. This was a location. The man had been heading somewhere. A final resting place to hide? “Maybe,” Theo said.

“Whatever,” said Sarika, waving away the topic like a fly. “How far into The Moor did you have to go for this Disavowed?”

“Few miles into the valley. It was a bit of a hike before my EMF reader picked him up.”

“How fresh is he?”

“Fairly.”

Sarika leaned back, eyes looking up as she pondered. “Maybe a bit far for me, but text me the location. I could probably get something out of ’im.”

Theo was usually grossed out by Sarika’s work, but morbid curiosity always got the best of her. She hunched over her coffee, gripping the mug with both hands, still working out the night’s cold from her knuckles. “And you? Anything good?”

“Finally paid a visit to the one in the camper van. Thanks for the tip, by the way. Found a unique… ingredient. Fetched a good price down in the herbalist markets.”

“What kind of ingredient?”

Sarika frowned, glancing back at the diner’s owner over her shoulder, who was making his way toward them, coffee in hand. “You know I don’t like talking about what I do. Especially in public. It’s uncouth.”

“Ah, I forgot how much you care about table manners!” Theo’s words were sticky with sarcasm as she rolled her eyes. “I remember the first time we met. At this diner, actually. You were so proper.”

As she finished her sentence, the diner’s owner placed Sarika’s coffee on the table. The dark brew sloshed over the edge of the cup, making a lake of the saucer. He was gone faster than he’d arrived. Who knew old bones could be so swift?

“See?” asked Sarika. “People don’t like to hear about what I do. What we do.”

Theo gave her a thoughtful look. While Theo’s job had her robbing Disavowed of their ethereal component, Sarika’s work had her taking the purely physical. “Your line of work is pretty gross.”

“Really? I’m sitting here being judged by someone who literally harvests souls?”

“Don’t be so dramatic. And don’t call them souls. There’s nothing that says there’s a link.” Still, the accusation stung. “Would you say drawing energy from the sun is stealing its soul?”

“Ohhhhh,” said Sarika, drawing out the syllable long across the table. “My apologies! I meant Resonance. That super-scientific stuff you play choir songs to.”

“Whatever.” Theo was getting tired. Well, more tired than she already was. She didn’t know when these meetings had become tradition. Her, sleep deprived after a night in the field on the outskirts of civilization, and Sarika, crusted blood under her neon nails, bickering like seniors feeding pigeons in the park. And that's what they were doing, once again. Bickering. 

“All the religious flavoring and procedures around my work, well, like you said, they’re out of respect,” Theo said. “Put people at ease about the whole thing.” She took a long sip of her coffee and wondered if she still believed that.

“There’s that word again. Respect,” continued Sarika. “I’m just saying that Marrowmancers and Itako Techs...” She motioned between them. “We’re the same shit. Same cloth, and all that. Once someone skips town to avoid their Final Obligation, they’re free game. If we don’t take what they have, someone else will—and you’re right, they’ll do it with less respect. Physical or ethereal—a kidney or their Resonance—DehantaPolis needs what they have.”

“Saint Exxo needs what they have,” said Theo, invoking the governing power corporation.

“One and the same, really. Either way, we all know that once we kick the bucket, it’s time to give back, at least according to the bigwigs upstairs.”

A classic Exxo way of putting it. Giving back. Like whatever energy within them was being paid forward. One big ‘take a penny, leave a penny’ jar. She could see the appeal, honestly. It made citizens feel better about forking over their corpse—knowing that whatever Resonance lived inside them would one day power the homes of people across the city. Loners, lovers, families.

Too bad it all had to be burnt up in the generator first.

Theo could feel her mood darkening as she thought about it all. “I guess Gin wasn’t the giving type.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Sarika reached for her hand, but Theo was already standing up.

“I got the last one, so this bill’s on you.”

“Theo, you know I don’t actually buy into all that. I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay. Really. I’m just wiped. See you next time.”

#

The neon light pressed into Theo’s apartment, accompanied by the hum from the glass tube ballasts. The elaborate signage depicting the Saint Exxo Co. mascot, Sockette, relentlessly beamed into Theo’s meager three-hundred-square-foot pad. Fixed to splintering shingles across the alley, the woman with a three-pronged electrical plug for a head raised her noodle arms into prayer over and over in a three-frame loop. At the end of each cycle, her halo flashed on and off.

Buzz.

Buzz.

Buzz.

Repeat.

Underneath in great bubble letters: A future powered by you!

Buried deep in the low-city’s strata of stacked homes—an area the locals lovingly called the favelas—no daylight was present to compete with the sign’s shine. Even in the late morning, its glow managed to illuminate her entire place, painting her walls in pinks and purples, highlighting her mess of a life—piles of dirty laundry, loose equipment, game cartridges, peeling plaster. Down here, it was just her and the fluorescent goddess, Sockette. To make matters even worse, whoever was tasked with designing the grinning cartoon girl had the bright idea to endow her with back-breaking tits.

It was quite the view.

Well, Theo wasn’t really alone. Her hairless sphinx cat, a distant echo of an ancient god, stretched once more to prepare for another long nap. Pancakes folded in on himself, a cozy little ball of crinkled flesh and purrs.

Theo flopped into her desk chair and pushed aside a stack of energy bills as she unpacked her recent bounty: the Anima Floppy Disk. She removed it from its case and popped a Sharpie. With a warble of squeaks, she scribbled Valley. Red(?) windbreaker across its label. She returned it to its case and slid it to the side. Once cashed in, the unassuming floppy was her ticket to another month of rent and food. 

She rolled out a map of The Moor. It was a dense wilderness that skirted Dehanta. A land of past societal mistakes waiting to be forgotten. Over the years, she’d marked up the map with red and yellow ink, denoting hovels where Disavowed attempted to die in peace. The Moor was riddled with places to hide: caves, broken down shacks, old decrepit buses.

As an Itako Tech, she had limited access to the wilds of The Moor outside the walled city. It was a veritable wasteland out there, and it was up to her to track down those who fled the city to pass on, snare their Resonance, and deliver it back to Saint Exxo. Even if a citizen managed to sneak out, becoming Disavowed by shirking their Final Obligation, they still had to find a damn good resting place to avoid her and the other Itakos Saint Exxo employed.

She checked the coordinates on her palm, and with some rulers and muttering—wayfinding was Sarika’s strong suit—found the spot on the map. She marked it with a circled question mark. Theo frowned. It wasn’t somewhere she’d been before. It was a new hiding spot to add to her list, most likely.

Did Gin find this one, she wondered, the worm of his memory writhing back into her brain. She cursed at the thought.

Theo procured her Walkman and played the micro-loop she’d captured of the diner. Slowed it down a touch. Played with the pitch. She maxed out the volume on the device’s external speaker, forcing it to crackle under the strain. 

As the sound looped onwards, Theo unhooked her PolyCorpse from her bag and placed it atop the map. Snatching a patch cable from a bouquet of wires held crammed into a mug, she linked the synth to her ancient speakers. She tied back her long bleached hair—oily, with ends split, black roots a chasm where her hair was parted—and took a deep breath, tasting each mote of dust.

She hummed an E, letting it reel out of her throat, steady and sure, into the onboard mic of the PolyCorpse.

Composing used to help Theo work through her emotions and exorcise her more negative thoughts. From a young age, music had brought her clarity and a sense of calm, like a drug. But since Gin’s exodus, something had come loose in her. Something Theo desperately wanted to fix.

Pressing down on the keys, she underlaid the note with a plush pillow of a chord.

She captured it, looped it, extended the delay, softened the edges with some distortion, and let the tones fill the room.

Theo played a simple melody of threes over the thrum. She inhaled to begin her lyrics, the ones she picked at slowly, day after day, in her mind. Never quite right. Never good enough.

She held her breath.

Despite the music in her ears, she could still hear the silence between it all, an immense absence that inhabited her apartment. Her throat tightened, and the words snagged.

“Nah, fuck it.” She yanked the patch cord out, ending the melody with a thock from her speakers, the hum of feedback filling the room in its wake. 

Pushing the instrument aside, she stared down at the circled yellow question mark.

Theo swore she could hear Gin’s soft laugh.