Xiuying didn’t know who the lead architect of the American University of Nineveh’s library was but she hated them. She figured they were American or British; only the arrogance of the English-speaking world could compel someone to design a building’s exterior almost entirely of glass and then place it right in the Middle East. It looks like a watchtower, six-stories tall and round, and if you can see someone inside they can probably see you. The glass roof was perpetually spotted with various kinds of bird shit, mainly gulls. Visiting it at noon was a constant dance, trying to stay out of the rays of the overhead sun. It felt like being an ant under a magnifying glass.
That’s why she’s here with Jasmine in tow at eight-thirty in the morning. It’s a Thursday morning, meaning that it isn’t as full of students as it could be. Half of them are early risers with coffees and expressos in hand from the building’s cafeteria. The other half of them are presumably knee-deep in studying for midterms, tired and ragged from all-nighters. Xiuying tries not to make eye contact with them lest they turn lycanthrope.
Every time she steps foot within this building she makes a beeline for the cafeteria and orders a medium-sized iced coffee with two tablespoons of vanilla-sweetened soy milk. This time is no different except that she gets a third tablespoon because Xiuying has a very tall, very out-of-place looking child with her no older than a university freshmen with her.
Jasmine’s wearing a suit and tie because it’s the only thing she has in her wardrobe. People are wearing pyjamas on the upper floors and nobody would’ve batted an eye at her tracksuit. Xiuying looks at her, the black blazer hanging loosely over her slim frame and the white, rumpled shirt that she didn’t bother tucking into her pants, and then to her green eyes, blinking quickly. She orders Jasmine a coffee and pays for it herself, with a black credit card stamped with Ashara Wolfe’s name.
“Ma’am?” Jasmine asks when Xiuying offers her the coffee. It’s hot against her palms but holding it by the plastic top seems like an easy way to cause problems for the janitors.
“For you.”
Jasmine is quiet for a moment. Then…
“Oh!” She takes it with both hands.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
She takes a long sip and very, very clearly doesn’t like the taste but powers through it anyway. Coffee’s an acquired taste, she’ll get used to it eventually.
Xiuying leads the way to the registry desk. Jasmine scurries after her, her long strides easily covering the ground. She walks like a giraffe, or some long-legged quadruped. Which is to say very carefully, as if the ligaments in her knee will explode if they twist the wrong way.
The two stand at the registry desk for a good few seconds, and the woman at the desk looks at them. She’s also drinking a coffee from the building’s cafeteria, steam rising from the light brown liquid in the cup. Xiuying estimates four creams and four sugars. The attendant has perfectly round glasses that were the style a decade and change ago, and decades prior to that and a poofy white sweater out of place in the environment of Nineveh and short brown hair lopped off above her shoulders in a bob. She looks from Xiuying – a familiar face – to Jasmine – not – and back again.
“Miss Li?” the attendant asks, her voice a whisper.
Xiuying looks at Jasmine. She widens her eyes, silently telling her what to do. Jasmine almost jumps into action – she unslings the black backpack from her right shoulder and places it on the desk with a loud thwump that echoes through the building. Then she begins unloading every book within – one of them is that Fireforce book from yesterday, the laminated cover an easy clean-up. There wasn’t that much blood on it. There’s a baker’s dozen of books in that bag and Jasmine neatly stacks them on top of each other, creating a tower of several thousand pages. Most of them are early modern European history when everything was ten percent more fractious than it is today, everything from the Thirty Years War to Napoleon to the Crimean War and the last years of the Ottoman Empire and even to the formation of the German Empire, and some fun stuff in between – the book about the Dutch inventing the joint stock company was a breezy read. The rest are tomes of political theory. Boring stuff that gave Xiuying no answers to her myriad ideological questions.
“So, what do we do now?” Jasmine asks, voice unadjusted in volume from outside. It rings off the walls and corners and bounces back to Xiuying’s ears and the woman at the desk sternly looks at Jasmine.
Xiuying puts her hands on the books and tries to sound sheepish.
“I am really sorry about the late returns, it’s just that work has been torrentially busy lately. We’ve barely had time to breathe.”
Her voice is low and muffled underneath the black cotton mask covering the lower half of her face. Flu season and coronavirus season; aether poisoning can suppress the immune system for up to a week. Best not to take any chances.
“You’re still missing four books,” the attendant says, sitting up straight in her chair to see over the leaning tower of academia stacked before her.
I am? No I’m not!
“Which ones?”
The attendant turns her computer monitor around, letting Xiuying see the books outstanding. Two are books about aquacultures and growing plants without dirt. The third is about the Chinese carp-rice growing method. The last is about potential rocket fuels and propellants ostensibly for a journey to the outer solar system and back.
Ahhhhhhhhh. Three are Dimitri’s. One’s Sophia’s.
“Can I get an extension?”
“No.”
Xiuying slumps her shoulders. Not even Dawn has this kind of authority.
“I’ll do my best to get them back.”
“Good. No more borrows until they’re back.”
Xiuying freezes. Her phone as a dozen more books she needs to read.
“What if I asked politely?”
The attendant sighs.
“I cannot possibly fathom the amount of late fees that you owe us.”
“I’ll pay,” Xiuying says, presenting Ashara Wolfe’s card. “I’d like a remote renewal of the four outstanding. I’ll have them back within a week.”
The librarian sighs. Presents a small tablet. Xiuying presses the card to the screen and adds in a hundred-dollar tip.
“Consider the rest a donation,” she says. Xiuying winks at the attendant and takes possession of the empty bag and walks off, leaving the woman blushing behind her. Jasmine follows along.
“So, where now, ma’am?” She’s lowered her voice to acceptable levels.
“Now we find out where you’re from.”
“Um, I’m from Oklahoma, ma’am.”
“You know exactly what I mean by that.”
Jasmine is quiet for a moment. They keep walking. Xiuying knows this route perfectly. A right, down a long hallway, then a left and into a small stairwell.
“How, exactly, ma’am?”
“We use something called the Mosaic network.”
“But, that’s connected to the internet, right?”
“If you use the internet in Oklahoma it’s completely different than if you use the internet in Beijing. It’s all divided up now, firewalls and propaganda and censorship and transparency laws and advertisements. You can get access to certain resources in China that you couldn’t in America and the other way around. At least in China there’s less ads. Less spyware.”
“So, this Mosaic sort of, puts it all together?”
“Pretty much.”
“And we can’t just access it from your computer?”
Xiuying softly laughs as she descends the long, spiral staircase. She walks past windows of the basement, then of the second and third basements.
“I’m not a computer person, but Ashara says that it’s impossible to build a wireless version of this. Everything is plugged into everything else to get around the firewalls and barricades.”
“But, why?”
“Jazz, I don’t know.”
“Well, what does it look like, ma’am?”
Xiuying answers her question by reaching the bottom of the staircase and entering a small hallway. Down here is a small vending machine and a gender-neutral washroom and a small computer lab containing about twenty monitors and wires splayed across the floor like a spider’s web. Nothing all that fancy. The room is occupied by a pair of graduate students sitting as far apart as possible.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“This.”
Jasmine looks puzzled. Underwhelmed, maybe. Its cold – Jasmine pulls her blazer tight over her shoulders. The A/C is running on full-blast all the time to make sure nothing overheats and causes a full-system meltdown.
“Your silence makes me think you were expecting something more visually dynamic.”
“I suppose, ma’am. It just looks, so, old-fashioned.”
All the monitors are old flatscreen models, twenty or thirty years out of date since the holographic models came onto the market.
“It’s never as exciting as it sounds.”
“But why is it here? I thought this was a library, ma’am.”
“An academic library, yes.”
Xiuying takes a seat at one of the empty computers. Pulls out an eyeglass case, pulls the pair on – thin rimmed aviators, reading glasses, tinted orange ever to slightly to reduce eye strain. Jasmine pulls an unoccupied chair from another computer and watches Xiuying’s fingers dance over the old keyboard. The University of Peking has its own Mosaic system, similar to this. The logins are the same – her graduate student ID, then a password that’s far too long for its own good. She has the fingers and the early years of training to be a concert pianist, but she hasn’t touched a piano in years. Other things have become more important.
“So,” Xiuying starts, inhaling. “In most of the world, academic papers published through journals are for sale, so you’ve got to buy them. Except in Cuba, where they’re all free and on a website that’s blocked in every nation that isn’t Cuba. The same thing is with Janissary networking; America and China and the rest keep it all hidden but a bunch of small European states, uh, Lichtenstein and Monaco and Andorra and Switzerland, I think, they have laws that if a company operates within their borders they have to make all ‘New Modern Soldier’ documentation public. So they cordon it off on a website with an incomprehensible web address…”
Xiuying pulls out her phone and copies from a note:
Ykyf8lyktksktt21skkxyum46rnjsdmkfb721yxnsnsgkjdk5y4jfwnt.mc
And is directed to a page entirely in French. It’s horribly barebones, no background or search interface, just a simple search bar in the middle of the screen.
“Like so.”
And then she types in ‘Jasmine Anderson’ into the search bar and gets only a blank screen in return.
“Hmm?”
Maybe Permanent Solutions Security doesn’t operate in Monaco?
Jasmine peers over her shoulder.
“Oh,” she squeaks. “Two esses, ma’am. I think a grandpa might’ve been Norwegian or Swedish.”
Xiuying first types in ‘Jassmine Anderson’ and immediate Ctrl+A+Backspaces and retypes it as ‘Jasmine Andersson’ and gets one singular match. She clicks on it and is greeted by a headshot of Jasmine staring back at her, eyes big, looking vaguely surprised that someone would take a picture of her. Xiuying ventures down the page – she attended Trinity Christian Soldiering Academy from the ages of four to graduation, and upon graduation she was contracted to Permanent Solutions Security. No known aliases – common for Janissaries to change their name after changing patrons or locales. So she is a Janissary after all. Her birthday is September 21st, 2086; she was born in a small town of Murphy, somewhere in Oklahoma. Her current area of service is supposedly Mogadishu, Somalia. That’s obviously not true.
And she keeps scrolling down until she finds a column of numbers and French words. ‘Beauté,’ 'Adresse au Tir,' the sorts of things that make a good Janissary. Each score is out of a hundred. And each of Jasmine’s scores are high, high. 99 out of 100 after 99 out of 100, with the occasional 98 and 100 thrown in. Her final tally is 1882 out of 1900. Xiuying goes over them again, slower. The website isn’t lying. The scored are verified by a group called ‘JTEG,’ the Janissary Training and Evaluation Group. Xiuying remembers their tests. A week-long process where she got maybe three hours of sleep each night. On the good nights.
She reloads the page. The scores haven’t changed.
“That’s, impossible.”
Jasmine looks over her shoulder.
“Ma’am, what does those all of that mean?”
“This is the highest score I’ve ever seen.”
“Score, ma’am?”
Xiuying looks up herself. Ku Xiuying, also known as Li Xiuying, sometimes Zhao Xiuying, Graduate of the Popular Shanghai School of Soldiering, contracted to Tao Shu Conglomerated, current whereabouts of Nineveh, Twin Rivers Republic. JTEG-verified score of 1878/1900. Then she pulls up Tecumseh Sherman – graduate of the Imperial London Academy of New Modern Soldiery, contracted to Standard Aether, stationed in Nineveh, Twin Rivers Republic, JTEG-verified score of 1876/1900. While it may be a roundabout way of bragging, it serves a greater purpose.
<
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Jasmine’s green eyes go wide. She looks away from Xiuying, focusing on the computer’s monitor.
<
Jasmine keeps staring. Her eyes are narrowing again, aware that this is a test.
<
Jasmine’s eyes dart nervously around Xiuying.
“Was that, Spanish, ma’am?”
“It was. Do you know what it said?”
Jasmine thinks for a moment, then shakes her head.
“No, ma’am.”
“How many languages can you speak?”
“English. Some Spanish. Hebrew, for some reason.”
“Okay.”
Xiuying tabs over to her file. Her Langues score is 99/100. Very impressive.
“I can speak seven languages. To get in the high nineties, you need a solid grasp of five, on top of your birth language.”
She then pulls Jasmine’s file back up. It’s a perfect 100/100.
“Do you think that your performance justifies a perfect one-hundred?”
Jasmine freezes.
Maybe that was too harsh.
“I mean, does it make sense that your score is higher than mine?”
Jasmine shakes her head.
“Well,” she asks. “What about Miss Dawn’s score?”
Xiuying hesitates. Under her mask, a small smile turns the corners of her lips upward. She’s been curious herself but Dawn and Jake and Davison have always kept the pair’s JTEG scores from her. Now she’ll see who really deserves to be in charge.
She types in ‘Dawn Howard’ and gets Dawn’s file. Graduated from the King George V Royal Soldiering Academy of South Georgia in 2099, contracted to the Coalition of Peace’s Special Activities Regiment. C-SPEAR for short. Her hair still has those white streaks through it, even at the young age of eighteen. Or seventeen. Whenever this picture was taken – years ago at this point. Her mismatched eyes stare back at Xiuying, like they’re from some other dimension, haunting her from years in the past.
Other Aliases: Classified
Birthplace: Classified
Birthday: Classified
Current Status: Classified
JTEG-Verified Scores: N/A
“Huh.”
Xiuying leans back against her chair. She looks at Jasmine and the young woman is just as befuddled as she is. Xiuying tries to go in-depth on the scores, but all nineteen of them…
Beauty, Marksmanship, Medicine, Close-Quarters, Survival, Languages, Aquatics, Airborne, Stealth, Intelligence, Personability, Engineering, Explosives, Technology, Hospitality, Endurance, Athletics, Tradecraft.’
Have little N/As next to the category out of 100, where a score would normally be. Should normally be. There’s a small footnote at the bottom.
‘Tier 0 schools are not required to publicly release evaluation scores.’
Tier 0 schools?
Xiuying types in Jake’s name – Jacob Gillman – and gets his silver eyes staring back at her. The white streaks also present in his hair are there, yet again. Same with the gold rings around his pupils, standing out against the silver making up the rest of his irises. What did Dawn say about ‘Aether Exposure Treatments’ yesterday?
Graduated from Graduated from the King George V Royal Soldiering Academy of South Georgia in 2099, contracted to the Coalition of Peace’s Special Activities Regiment, just like Dawn. Bound together forever, apparently. But just as before, other aliases and birthday and birthplace and current status are all marked CLASSIFIED and every single evaluatory category is marked N/A.
“What’s tier zero?” Jasmine asks.
“Don’t know.”
Jasmine straightens to her full height, while Xiuying fetches Cyrus’ profile. Born in San Antonio, attended Loyola Houston Soldiering Academy from 10 until graduation. Some schools pay small stipends to their parents. Hard financial times, maybe. Birthday of June 21, 2086. A solstice and an equinox. His score is 1554 out of 1900. An average of 81 and change on everything. Very, very far from bad, maybe the best at his school. Also contracted to Permanent Solutions Security, also supposedly stationed in Mogadishu, Somalia. Xiuying prints off the files of the new team members and gets up to fetch and staple them. Then, she hesitates.
“Is that it, ma’am?” Jasmine asks.
“Not in the slightest,” Xiuying replies. She’s gotta be out of here by eleven because her message is at eleven-thirty and sitting in this chair is killing her lumbar muscles. Her butt may be wonderful but this chair is uncushioned.
Xiuying pulls up every single Janissary contracted with Permanent Solutions Security. Names and faces of people appear on-screen, names like Maya Khan of the Uttar Pradesh School of Soldiering and O Gyeong-Hui of the Korean People’s Soldiering Academy – apparently Janissary exports aren’t affected by international sanctions on the hundred and fifty-year-old Kim dynasty. Much more women than men, two-thirds to one-third, many recent graduates of their respective soldiering schools. Xiuying complies all the data into one jumbo-sized document and prints it. While it prints, Xiuying pulls up a different note on her phone and hands it to Jasmine.
“I have a job for you.”
Jasmine looks at the screen, and gently takes it in her hands. The list contains a dozen books, all but two on Chinese history. The Gospel of Hong Xiuquan, the Rebellion of An Lushan and His Dynasty of Yan, the Blue Eyebrows Movement in the Early Qin Dynasty, the Revolt of Ma Ang, on and on. One was for Jasmine – a book titled Late Victorian Holocausts. Xiuying made Dawn and Jake and Sophia all read it, then Tecumseh and Eva and Anastasia and Dimitri. Now she has two more people to impress the lessons in the book upon.
“These are all books?”
“Yes,” Xiuying replies. “I’m going to be down here for a while because I need to look up information on this Khanpasha Mateev person. But it’s boring with two people. So I want you to try and find as many of those books as possible. Meet me at the front desk at eleven.”
“What if I don’t find them all?”
“I’ve gotta be back here in a week. Find the ones you can, and don’t be afraid to ask for help.”
“What if I get lost, ma’am?”
“That’s part of the fun.”
Jasmine looks at the notes. The printer keeps spitting out paper in the background. She’ll have to pay a lot at the front, again. She can charge it to C-SPEAR and its army of accountants. Jasmine takes a deep breath.
“Then I’ll see you at eleven, ma’am.”
Xiuying waves goodbye, and when Jasmine ascends the stairs she pulls down her mask and mouths ‘Sorry’ to the nearest grad student. He gives a thumbs up and goes back to his work, and Xiuying goes back to hers.
That should keep her busy. Half of the list is completely fictional. Blue Eyebrows Movement? Really?
She fishes a pair of Bluetooth headphones out of the pocket of her bright orange Shanghai Sharks windbreaker, and she plugs them into her ears. Then her hands search for her phone and when they come up empty her heart rate doubles. All her brain can think is…
My phone
Her hands return to the pockets of her windbreaker and come up holding her vaporizer. The pockets of her grey sweatpants are empty too.
Myphonemyphonemyphonemyphonemyphonemyphonemyphone
That I just…gave…
Jasmine’s probably three stories above her, maybe more. She can probably clear three steps at once with her strides. Xiuying leans back in her chair, defeated. No music for her today.
She clears out all the tabs and fetches the printed sheets, separating the two-inch stack into quarter-inch thick sections and then drives a staple through them with an industrial-strength stapler and all her body weight.
Jasmine also took the bag, so Xiuying places the sheets where Jasmine was sitting.
She opens up a new browser and types in Khanpasha Mateev’s name. The first sites that pop up have .ru addresses.
All right. Let’s find out who you really are.