"... I duhneed Tibet! Lemme stay virtual!" I yell.
"Daria," says Mama, "this is an organized trip. We will meet new people. An adventure - "
"The Ether says people are the same everywhere!"
"No. Tibetans drink butter tea -- "
"Sounds gross. Worse than khurma fruit."
She sighs. "Child, this is educational."
"I know everything already -- you paid! Anyway, Mama, I'm getting into whatever college I want. I'm gonna do whatever I want with my life. You even got me a Mandarin blenny!"
The blenny operation was painless, though my head throbbed for days afterward. Random Mandarin words had drifted through me, like hairs trapped in the back of my throat. Now, I can speak Chinese with the vocabulary of a native and the cultural background of a Martian.
My mother has five blennies, one for each lingua franca besides Russian. She can make presidents cower at her feet, but not me.
"Not going!"
My lifelong act: put on preschoolers' tantrums. In drawing more attention to myself, isolate myself. Be as undeserving of my luck as possible.
Come twilight, I am obedient (as usual). I board the copter with unusual silence.
"You aren't ripping endangered languages off the Ether, are you?" asks Mama.
I give her the evil eye and continue scanning the lingua-shelves in my blenny, deftly placed by lines of mental code.
"You, cow," snarls Mama, "don't know what consequences are, do you? The only things you care about are worthless, punishable by death, or both."
I face the window, staring at murky, moonlit water. Tsangpo River, whispers Ether. You've nearly reached your destination.
"God," mutters Mama, "what sort of daughter am I raising?"
YOU ARE READING
Rog Pa Je (Help!)
Fiksi Ilmiah2084. The Ether, which internally connects and tracks humans, permeates global society. Tibetans are one of many groups that face oppression, their language nearly snuffed out. One Tibetan family has chosen to sell itself to tourism.
