If I’m honest, I don’t wrap my sari tighter around my shoulders because I’m cold, or to hide my latest tattoo. It’s because I don’t want my clothes to brush up against anything when I walk through the War Memorial Hologram. The holo is only audio-visual, so this isn’t a rational fear. This is just the entrance to work, the ground floor that all employees pass through to get to UniGov offices. The Memorial reminds us of where humanity has been, why we’re here, and why we celebrate each day of peace.
My first step into the holo isn’t so bad today. The historical recording is on a one-month loop that covers a hundred years of religious atrocity and war. So although the odds of seeing fresh blood are high, this time I’m lucky to be crossing the smouldering fields of an agricultural zone destroyed by bombs. There are no bodies that are recognizable as such. The sound-surround has little to record but the hissing of burning structures and their intermittent collapse. No one is here to tug on my clothes as I walk on the path through the holo.
If I were completely honest, though, I would say that I start to smell smoke before I leave, and that when I glance over my shoulder, there is a young girl peering at me from a charred hole in the earth where no one could have survived. But I don’t have to be honest with anyone today. I’m a sex worker for the Enforcer department, and I’m here for my next assignment…
This is an excerpt from Ghost in the Machine, written by Susan Pieters. The full story can be read in Compostela (Tesseracts 20), an anthology of science fiction published in 2017.