Read Online Harmony by Project Itoh - Free Book Online Page A

mom was so enthusiastic about the idea.”
    “Why not let them have their party? It could be fun.”
    “I have nothing to talk to them about.”
    “What are you saying? You could tell them about the Sahara, or where you were before that—Colombia, was it? You’ve been to so many places and seen so many things, Tuan.”
    Yeah, I could tell them stories. Like the one about the child soldiers drugged up and made to shoot their own parents and siblings for target practice. Or the bloody severed arms and legs piled up in heaps like firewood. Hardly anyone who bought into the admedistration’s protected life had the faintest clue about the realities of war. They were far too busy being nice to everyone in their immediate vicinity to care. Cian was as ignorant as any of them. Ignorant and innocent. Nothing had changed in that regard.
    “And I think they’d want to hear about what you’ve been doing,” Cian was saying.
    “I’m just not interested.” I sighed for effect. “Cian, you volunteering at all?”
    “A little. Three days a week. Delivering meals and taking care of the elderly, that sort of thing.”
    “Morality sessions and health conferences?”
    “Online, yeah. About fifteen hours a month. It’s not too bad.”
    What was this? One of my friends, a girl who couldn’t stand this world, who tried to kill herself just to leave a mark on its perfect face, had conformed completely to a typical, publicly correct lifestyle.
    Or maybe it was less personal. Maybe it was just that kids grew up and became adults.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    Miach’s ghost hovered nearby, a cold smile on her lips as she whispered.
    This body, these tits, this ass, this uterus. These are mine.
    Aren’t they?
    So after our failure, Cian had taken the plunge headfirst into the adult world. The only one dragging her heels was me, and I couldn’t decide whether that was admirable or pitiable.
    I hung, suspended in space, somewhere between Miach Mihie’s ghost and Cian Reikado’s innocence.
    “Look, Cian, I’ve been overseas a long time, right? So I just don’t know the people who live around my home. I haven’t volunteered with them or gone to health meetings with them. I’m just not very connected to the community.”
    I explained to her that being a globe-trotting Helix agent meant:
    
    
    
    
    
    
    Because we lacked a conclave to assess us, the admedistration awarded us an arbitrary SA score in order to account for the inconsistency that resulted from doing something very important to the continuation of the admedistration’s lifestyle while, by necessity, being forced to operate independently of that admedistration.
    “Oh. Really?”
    “Really.”
    As I was explaining my life to Cian, I couldn’t help but feeling that I had somehow become Miach. Miach explaining how to use a medcare unit to make a chemical weapon capable of killing fifty thousand people. Miach who could make a pill that would shut down your entire digestive tract.
    Miach who could wear a cool smile as she told you she wanted to watch the world burn.
    I felt like she must have back then, filled with knowledge no one else had, talking openly, brazenly, full of confidence, fearing nothing, giving every word a declaration.
    Hey, Cian, did you know that if you install DummyMe, you can spoof your physical data before it gets sent to the server? Hey, Cian, did you know that you can