Creatrix Tiara · @creatrixtiara
19th Jun 2017 from TwitLonger
Just Like Old Times
The moment they heard about Dad, they took me in.
They've known Dad for ages, long before I was even anywhere in the picture. Dad and Mum moved to this country fresh off the first war, knowing no one except the colleagues that would soon invite them into their homes, their cultures, their lives. They were not related by blood or marriage, but they were still family, still accorded the same respect and position as the siblings and cousins of my parents. Still Uncles and Aunties.
Our family's outsider nature would always plague us, especially me as I grew within a world getting further obsessed by Us vs Them and didn't know how to deal with those of us who never neatly chose a side.
But my Uncles and Aunties chose us. They chose my parents, and when I arrived they chose me too. Sometimes they chose me even in defiance of my parents, encouraging them to see and accept my own outsider nature for the gift that it is. They were a misfit lot, in some ways, even with their middle-class jobs and middle-class lives; the poster models for the country's so-called Values of Unity, every racial background represented, but defeating the norm by choosing to unite with the one race that usually gets pushed away from such Values.
These Values of Unity really became tested when the kaiju came. You would think that would have redrawn the lines, put more people in the Us side. The kaiju were clearly Them and we would all be united, neat and tidy.
Yet nothing is neat and tidy in an apocalyptic crisis. People buckle down on their lines, blame the outsiders for drawing the monsters in. If they did shift the sizes of the sides it was only to put us further away from the border.
My Uncles and Aunties also buckled down on their lines - but their lines were based not on demographic but on kinship, and our family definitely counted as kin.
Dad should have been long done with engineering by the time the kaiju came, but his work was his purpose and he was feeling listless with not much to do. He was the sort of man who'd go in to file his retirement and come out with a one-year contract. The one-year contract was to develop the rigs that would then go on to fight off the kaiju. They had a hard time acknowledging Dad's efforts back when he was building the state's first racing track and a number of townships, and they were likely to still give him trouble even after a lifetime of solid achievements.
But my Uncles were there with him, they supported his return - and at this point, they didn't really have the luxury of being selective. At least Dad got to work with the same buddies from the start of his career. Just like old times.
Mum and the Aunties, meanwhile, signed up for an experiment: running drift tests for the rigs their husbands were building. Usually the drivers would be young and spry, with brains still plastic enough to enable new headspace compatibility. But the experimentors wanted to test the limits of neuroplastic connection-building. Could you override the issues with less pliable brains if the subjects have already built compatibility by other means?
The experiments seemed daunting at first. There's emotional intimacy, and then there's emotional intimacy. What kind of secrets, feelings, trauma could be untethered by giving another person direct access to everything your brain has ever recorded? More than one person? A pod of six?
To everyone's surprise, however, drift compatibility seemed to be a lot easier to establish than they anticipated. The neural pathways of vulnerability were opened up long ago. These people would have already known about their pod partners' secrets and histories - they were THERE for most of it. Decades-long friendships built their own kind of headspace. This was easy! Just like old times.
Then Dad was hit by the toxin.
His worksite was under a kaiju attack. A small one, but only in relative. They had a guard rig ready to go, but it was new and clumsy, and didn't make the cleanest kill. The fight ended in a messier than usual splash, blue perhaps-radioactive blood falling like drizzle on a day that can't decide what weather pattern to wear. It was small but no less potent; the drops that landed on Dad's arm were enough to induce tumours.
Mum dropped out of the pod experiment to care for Dad. The experiment wasn't a full-time thing, but caring for Dad would be, which meant I would be at loose ends. I could help with Dad, but I was barely old enough to fend for myself.
Then the Auntie Pod stepped in.
Mum's dropping out was seen as a possible danger: one of the key pathways has gone! Like a road that suddenly caved in! How will they be able to build drift compatibility if one major chunk was missing?
The Aunties knew, though, that I was high priority. I was kin. I was one of Us and they weren't going to push me out.
They coordinated between themselves to make sure I was never alone any night. They sent me to school, brought me to their home, fed me (oh how they fed me!), kept me company. And they did all this as a pod, united not perhaps by the kaiju but by their adopted sister's kid.
That kind of unity was enough to maintain drift compatibility even with Mum's absence. I wasn't hooked up to their pod, but my presence activated the same neural pathways. Their commitment to my welfare was its own kind of mission, giving the pod focus and direction.
I'm at the house of one of the Aunties now. She's made me fried okra and rice. I normally hate okra - surely they would have heard this from Mum even before all the shared headspace stuff?
But no. This is delicious: crisp instead of slimy, salt and oil and spice. I reach for seconds. Did the collective pod hivemind figure out a better recipe?
Mum calls to check in. Dad is recovering, though it will still take time. How am I doing? Is the pod OK?
I tell her I'm in good hands. They're taking care of me, and in turn taking care of each other. Just like old times.