Norje, 5 April 2084
"Take me to the Tsangpo River!" shouts Daria at 5 AM.
"I tawt yah were educated ehnuff ta be polite," I slur sleepily. I don't care for snotty Russian children. Especially not before sunrise.
"I'm not snotty. Or Russian," she says flatly.
"I sehd dat ow loud...?"
"No, I just have an upgrade you don't. And I'm Georgian, yeah? Take me to the river."
"It's five en da morning!"
"Take me."
---
Daria, 5 April 2084
Our hike down the Tsangpo River is too dull to mention, not nearly as good as my virtuals. But the return is something else. We wade in incrementally rising water -- a centimeter, then four, then far too many. The village is waterlogged. We make for the highest spot, the barley field. Here stand Norje's parents, his father activating an emergen-copter, his mother checking someone's Ether status -- my Mama's -- on portable life support. What?
Norje is shell-shocked. His father embraces us at once. "I'm sorry," he breathes. "There's nothing we can do."
I stare at my limp mother.
We clamber into the emergen-copter silently, dutifully. Safety is reached on the Himalayan slopes, where we make camp. Norje's mother tells me the Tsangpo River overflowed at its lower end. My mother, she says, nearly drowned. Is comatose.
My face feels moist and hot. "You were right all along," I tell Mama. "I'm stupid."
---
Daria, 9 April 2084
"You know Tibetan, don't you?" I ask Norje's father, who is munching reconstituted tsampa.
He pauses, examining me with suspicion.
"We're too remote for the Ether to track our spoken dialogue," I explain. "Remember?"
He exhales sharply. "Yes. I know Tibetan. Not as much as my wife. China's Ether is programmed to keep us from it, but she's clever."
"How?"
"She writes in a flexi-stone."
"An analog notebook, you mean?"
"Same thing. But the Ether evolves, you know." He glances at sleeping Norje. "We're taking risks."
Blennies are too expensive for most Tibetans, so they're likely not among the technologies tracked in Tibet.
What if I made a Tibetan blenny? They wouldn't afford it, stupid.
What if I hacked the tracking system? If it were possible, someone would've done it already.
How could I keep Tibetan alive? Surely, any action by my coddled self would be worthless.
What about Mama? Oh, she'll live. But she hasn't been alive for a while.
---
Norje, 10 April 2084
"Your mother's gonna be fine," I say.
Daria glares at me. "You a doctor?"
"The Ether made me a doctor."
"Yeah? Then my blenny made me a linguist. A human, I'd say." She sniffs. "Know what? I'm sick of waiting. I wanna do stuff now!"
"What stuff?"
She shrugs. "I have a language no one else speaks. A life-language. You have one too. Is yours disappearing, Norje?" Her face reddens. "Are there thoughts you're afraid to share? If you don't use them, they'll --"
"Daria, I store my thoughts on Ether. I never forget them."
She gasps. "You're leaving your thoughts on the open cloud? Don't you know they could be hacked?"
"We have no choice," I mumble. "It's mandated."
Daria blows into her tea-mug. "Norje, how do you know you think your own thoughts?"
I numbly examine my own cracked mug. "Though the cup was broken, the pattern lingers in the mind. Say my ancestors. What was done will not be forgotten."
Words get lost in translation, like people. A shadow of culture remains: the legends in our homes, the tsampa in our bellies. It's a radioactive shadow, dangerous beyond belief, capable of uprooting the most basic of expectations. It inspires us to have pride in our lingual identities, to own our ideas and thoughts and fantasies, to live free of exploitation. But the shadow decays, says the Ether, becoming some other, more easily manipulated element.
YOU ARE READING
Rog Pa Je (Help!)
Science Fiction2084. 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.
