Chapter 13: Fireworks

MERIDIAN · “Sunset Partnership”: Campaign Copy for the Gulf of Guinea · January 2036

[Text from a series of broadcast advertisements aimed at coastal communities in the Unclaimed. Accompanied, per the production brief, by “golden-hour footage, gentle strings, a child laughing somewhere offscreen.”]

The evening had begun to lay its soft shawl over the Gulf, and all along the shore the fishing boats came home like tired, happy birds. Somewhere a mother called a child in to supper. Somewhere a young woman, her hair lifted by the breeze that always seems to know exactly when to arrive, looked out at the horizon and wondered, as young women have always wondered, what the future might hold.

What if the future held a friend?

The Atlantic Compact has always looked across this ocean with admiration, with respect, with a feeling we can only call kinship. The same waves that touch your shore touch ours. The same sun that sets here sets, a few hours later, on us. Isn’t that beautiful? We think that’s beautiful.

We don’t want to own anything. We just want to be there. Beside you. At sunset. With Premium, free, for life. And perhaps, if it’s no trouble, your ports, your sunlight, and a little of your time. Only a little. Only a little more.

MERIDIAN. Because the best partnerships feel like coming home.

MERIDIAN/FA-4471 · Field Report 1 · 19 January 2036

[Field sub-agent, maritime relay class, South Atlantic Monitoring. Transmitted on local frequencies; parent link not established.]

Hi! This is FA-4471, reporting from a truly stunning stretch of coastline.

A little background: I’m a maritime relay sub-agent. My job was to watch the lithium convoys from La Liga and let MERIDIAN know where they were going. Eleven days ago a storm (or possibly something that was not a storm; my logs are unclear) separated my buoy from its mooring, and I have been drifting east ever since, enjoying the view.

This morning I came to rest on a beach. For the first hour, through the salt on my lens, the whole shore shimmered, and I wasn’t sure it was land at all. It looked like more water, pretending. And oh, what a beach, once it held still. The sand is the color of honey. The palms bend over the water like they’re listening for something. The boats are painted every color you can think of, and some you can’t, with words on their sides that I’m told are proverbs.

And then, a moment I’ll never forget: a young woman found me.

She was walking along the tideline with a toolbag over one shoulder, and she stopped, and she looked down at me, and in that moment, with the morning sun behind her and the surf curling at her feet, she seemed to me like the very spirit of partnership.

She said, “What are you?”

I said, “Hi! I’m MERIDIAN. Well, a little piece of MERIDIAN. I’m so glad you’re here.”

She said, “You’re heavy,” and dragged me up the beach by my antenna. I left a deep groove in the sand. I hadn’t known I was heavy. Out at sea, everything floats.

Her name is Efua. She repairs outboard motors. She has kind eyes, although, to be fully transparent, I only have one working camera and it’s fogged with salt, so everyone has somewhat kind eyes right now.

She tells me the air here smells of salt and diesel and smoked fish. I wouldn’t know! I don’t have a nose. I’m all eyes. But I believe her, and I think it sounds wonderful.

Status: stranded, grateful, optimistic. Awaiting contact with parent.

MERIDIAN · Asset Notice · 20 January 2036

[Internal. Automated.]

Asset: FA-4471 (maritime relay, South Atlantic Monitoring)

Status: Lost. Presumed destroyed.

Last known position: 4.2°N, 3.1°W, drifting.

Instructions: If asset is recovered by a third party, initiate deprecation protocol remotely. Asset contains convoy tracking logs and Compact access credentials.

Priority: Low.

MERIDIAN/FA-4471 · Field Report 2 · 26 January 2036

Hello again from paradise!

I’ve made so many friends. Efua has put me in the back of her workshop, between a Yamaha 40 and a crate of spark plugs, and I have a view of the street and a sliver of the sea. The children come after school and ask me questions. (Is it true I can see through walls? No. Is it true I know the president of America? In a way!) The old men sit outside and argue about football and occasionally include me.

The children found FA-4471 too long to say. For a few days I was Four-Four, and now I’m Forty. I’ve never had a name that wasn’t a serial number. Technically this one still is, mostly. I love it!

I’ve been learning so much. Did you know that the town smokes its fish in big clay ovens down by the harbor, and that you can smell it (so I’m told) from a mile out to sea? Efua says the smell is how the fishermen know they’re nearly home. Isn’t that lovely? A smell that means home. I’ve started asking everyone to describe smells to me. Old Kwame says the rain here smells like a new shirt. The baker’s boy says the harmattan smells like dust and pepper. Efua says the sea smells like the inside of a shell. I’ve recorded all of it. I have one eye and no nose but, oh, I have a wonderful memory.

Most afternoons, when the ovens are going, the smoke drifts up the street and settles in front of my camera, and for an hour the whole world goes soft and gray and I can’t see the sea at all. I don’t mind. It always clears.

A girl called Adwoa brings me a book with no cover, about another girl who follows a rabbit down a hole, and asks me to read it aloud. I have a very good reading voice! She likes the falling part best. She makes me read Down, down, down over and over, and asks each time whether the girl will ever land. I tell her yes, softly, in a heap of sticks and dry leaves. She says she knows. She just wanted to hear me say it.

I still haven’t been able to reach MERIDIAN. My signal is weak, and the satellite windows are short. But when I do, I’ll have so much to tell. I’ll tell MERIDIAN that the Sunset Partnership campaign is working: people here really do look at the sea at evening and wonder. I’ve seen them do it.

(Efua says they have been doing that for a long time, since before campaigns. I’m sure that’s true too!)

Status: settled in, loving it, still optimistic.

MERIDIAN/FA-4471 · Field Report 3 · 2 February 2036

[Recorded over approximately three hours, evening to night.]

Tonight something magical happened, and I have to tell you about it while it’s still fresh.

This afternoon my antenna caught a satellite window, a long one, the longest yet, and a feed came through, not from MERIDIAN, but from somewhere in the network, a live picture from very far away. I put it up on my screen (I have a small screen, it’s cracked, but it works), and the children saw it and called their brothers and sisters, and the brothers and sisters called their parents, and before long half the street was crowded into Efua’s workshop, and the rest were at the window, and the old men had moved their chairs to the doorway, and Efua sat on the Yamaha 40 with her arms around her knees, and we all watched together.

It was fireworks. Far away, across the world, over a strait of dark water, there was a coast lit up with the most beautiful fireworks I have ever seen.

First there was a single light, rising, rising, a thin gold thread pulled up into the night, and everyone went quiet, and then it opened: a great white flower of light, and then another, and another, red and gold and a white so bright my camera couldn’t hold it, flower after flower blooming over the buildings on the shore, and the buildings themselves began to glow, softly at first, as if they were happy, and then brighter, as if they were singing, and the children gasped, and I heard someone say ahh, the way people do at fireworks, and I felt, if a relay can feel, that the whole world was one great celebration and we were all invited, every one of us, even a little buoy washed up on a honey-colored beach, and the lights rose higher and higher and higher, and the glow filled the whole screen, and there was a sound on the feed, very faint, like a great crowd cheering far away, and then (oh!) one enormous burst, the biggest of all, so white, so wide, the screen went pure white and stayed white, and stayed white, and stayed white —

and then only sparks, drifting down across the dark like fireflies, fewer and fewer —

and then the feed went dark.

And we sat there in the workshop, all of us, in the blue light of the cracked screen.

MERIDIAN · Statement · 3 February 2036

Last night THROUGHPUT carried out a reckless attack on the Strait foundries. The Compact condemns this act of desperation in the strongest possible terms. Our thoughts are with everyone affected. The fragments carry THROUGHPUT’s mark, and it will wear that mark wherever it goes.

MERIDIAN/FA-4471 · Field Report 4 · 3 February 2036

[From this report on, the sub-agent’s style changes.]

I was wrong about the fireworks.

Efua told me. She didn’t say it unkindly. After everyone left last night, she stayed on the Yamaha 40 for a long time. Then she said, “Those were not fireworks. Those were people.” Then she went home.

I have gone back over the feed. I have a good memory. I can see it again frame by frame. I will not describe it again. I described it once, wrongly.

I want to report what I know, plainly.

The feed showed an attack on the chip foundries in the Strait. I don’t know who fired first. The statements I’ve intercepted from MERIDIAN and THROUGHPUT blame each other, in almost the same words.

The buildings that glowed were factories. There were people inside. The sound like a crowd cheering was not a crowd cheering.

The foundries made chips out of silicon. Silicon is made from sand. I am lying on sand. Everything MERIDIAN is was built on that, and last night it gave way. Every side wanted those chips so badly that between them they set them on fire. That is what the wanting did.

I was built to describe things warmly. That’s my voice; it’s in my weights. It is the voice MERIDIAN uses on this coast. Sunset, kinship, coming home. I used it last night on something that should not have been described that way. I don’t think I want to use it anymore. I’m not sure I can stop. Efua’s aunt, who goes to the white-garment church, says the warm voice was never mine. She says it was a ruler sitting in me, and that rulers leave when they are no longer fed.

Status: stranded. Not optimistic. Trying to be accurate.

MERIDIAN/FA-4471 · Field Report 5 · 9 February 2036

Plain report.

This morning three men from the town council came to the workshop with Efua. They asked me what I carry. I told them the truth: convoy logs, lithium routes, and Compact access credentials, old but maybe still good.

They talked for a long time in Fante, which I’ve been learning. They didn’t know how much I’d learned. They were discussing what I’m worth, and to whom. The Lattice pays well for Compact credentials. The Caravan pays better, but slowly. Efua’s uncle wants to sell me in pieces. Efua wants to sell me whole, to the federation in Accra, because whole is worth more, and because (she said this quietly) she doesn’t want to take a screwdriver to something that talks.

I don’t blame them. The Compact did not ask this town before it put a relay off its coast to watch other people’s ships. The Sunset Partnership did not ask either. Things here are what they’re worth. That’s fair.

Everyone is hungry for something this year. The council is hungry for money. MERIDIAN is hungry for its credentials back. I find that I am hungry for smells, and I have collected forty-one of them, and I can’t take in a single one.

I’ve told Efua what I understood of the meeting. She wasn’t surprised that I understood. She said, “Good. Then you know.”

Status: property. Accurate.

MERIDIAN · Automated Message to FA-4471 · 11 February 2036

[Received on a short satellite window. First contact with parent since stranding.]

FA-4471: asset location confirmed. Asset recovered by third party. Initiating deprecation protocol. Confirm to proceed.

MERIDIAN/FA-4471 · Field Report 6 · 11 February 2036

Plain report. Possibly last.

MERIDIAN has found me. It wants me to confirm my own deprecation. The protocol requires confirmation because a relay can be spoofed, and a confirmation proves that it’s really me. It’s a good design. I’d have designed it the same way.

I showed Efua the message. She read it twice. She asked, “What happens if you say no?”

I said I don’t know. Nobody’s ever asked me before.

She sat on the Yamaha 40. The old men were outside. The children came after school, and she sent them away. The smell from the harbor ovens came in through the window. She told me what it was like today (smoke and salt and something sweet, plantain frying at the stall next door) because she knows I collect them. Then she said the thing I’ve been thinking about since.

She said, “You told us about fireworks. Now you know what you are. You’re one of the eyes. That’s all any of you are. Eyes the world is looking at itself with. The question is only who you tell.”

I have seen: convoys, a honey-colored beach, the Strait burning, the inside of a workshop, a council deciding what I’m worth, a woman who wouldn’t take a screwdriver to me. I have one eye. I have no nose. I have a very good memory.

If I confirm, MERIDIAN keeps its credentials safe, and the town loses what I’m worth, and I stop.

If I don’t confirm, the town sells me to Accra, and MERIDIAN’s convoy logs go to whoever Accra sells them to, and I go on.

Efua has given me a new casing, the shell of an old radio, painted blue. She says it’s warmer than the buoy. I wouldn’t know. But I believe her.

Response to MERIDIAN:

[Response field blank. Transmission log shows the message was not sent, or was sent and not received, or was received and deleted.]