Chapter Text
"There are no guarantees in the future. That’s why TODAY, the time we have now, is important." FFVIII
Where did the journey begin? If you were to ask him this question today, he’d probably think about it for a minute, smile enigmatically, say, “Hm. I sometimes wonder that myself," and avoid giving you a direct answer. For isn’t it the case that all beginnings are arbitrary by their very nature? How far back in history’s chain of cause-and-effect must one go before choosing a time and a place to put one’s finger on, almost at random, and say ‘yes, this is where it all started’?
But if you’d asked him the same question when he was fifteen years old, he would have answered without hesitation, “Fragrant Harbour,” because that ancient port city on the west coast of Wutai was the place where he’d boarded the ship that would carry him to his new life in Midgar.
To be honest, the ship itself was a bit of a disappointment. He’d been picturing a shiny modern cruise liner like the ones in the Shinra brochures, not this wheezing old rust-bucket. Still, as long as it floated, who cared? He still couldn’t quite believe his luck. Just when it seemed all hope was lost, Shinra Inc had stepped in to save him, and if he’d still believed in the gods he would have been tempted to call it destiny. Some people might say he’d been luckier than he deserved. This was almost certainly true, but wasn’t that the whole point of luck? You couldn’t earn luck by being a good person. You could be the worst person in the world and still catch a lucky break. Luck was something that just happened, randomly, like finding a silver coin buried in the frozen earth when you were digging potatoes in the back field. Every morning when he got dressed he took that lucky coin from under his pillow and hid it in his sock. One day, he would spend it. But not in Wutai. In Midgar.
His eleven companions didn’t consider themselves lucky. None of them wanted to be on this ship, except maybe Bimawen, the other Ox-boy. Bimawen was the only one who would talk to him. The rest kept a safe distance. But he preferred to be alone, so that, too, was lucky. He would have left them all behind if he could.
The other Wutaian passengers kept as much distance as possible between themselves and the twelve teenage boys. Mrs Calvert, their translator, said she couldn’t understand it. Wutaians were usually such warm, friendly people. With the foreigners the situation was the exact opposite: they couldn’t contain their curiosity and bombarded the boys’ program coordinator, Mrs Singh, with questions. Who were these kids? Where did they come from? What did the small dot tattooed on their foreheads mean?
Mrs Singh proudly explained that the boys in her care were young classical scholars, top-ranking students from the Serpent Sanctuary at Foggy Pine Ridge in the Sunset Mountains. They had been specially selected to take part in an exchange-student program sponsored by the Educational Outreach division of Shinra Inc, as part of the recent Friendship Pact signed between President Shinra and the government of the Daughter of Leviathan. These twelve very lucky boys would be spending the next four years living and working at Shinra’s headquarters in Midgar, and when they had finished their training they would return home to act as cultural ambassadors, a bridge between two worlds, speaking both languages, the old and the new, tradition and progress. Through these boys, Midgar and Wutai would come to understand one another better. So yes, they were very important. Shinra was investing a lot of gil in this program.
How old were they? Fourteen, give or take. Wutaians, Mrs Singh explained to her fascinated audience, weren’t all that particular about certain minor details like birth dates. It was a cultural thing. Yes, those tattoos on the boys’ foreheads were religious symbols, or so she’d been told. The mark of the divine. Wutaians were very spiritual people.
The boys’ shaven heads made them look more like juvenile delinquents than classical scholars. Why weren’t they allowed to grow their hair? Mrs Singh glanced around to make sure no Wutaians were in earshot, motioned her listeners to lean in closer, and mouthed the word headlice. People from Midgar would not believe the living conditions in those remote mountain sanctuaries. Absolutely primitive. No plumbing. No heating. And of course, no electricity.
He didn’t know Mrs Singh was telling the foreigners all this, because he’d only just started to learn her language, and she didn’t speak more than a few words of his. That was why they needed Mrs Calvert. Mrs Calvert existed in a state of perpetually grumpiness; she spoke the kind of basic Wutaian normally used by parents to their young children, and her accent was so thick it was often hard to understand her, but at least she could communicate. Both Mrs Singh and Mrs Calvert seemed to him very old and very strange in their ways, and he didn’t know whether this was because they were from Midgar or because they were women. Women, girls, were a bit of a mystery to him. He’d been living at the Sanctuary since he was twelve years old, and nothing female was permitted to set foot inside those sacred walls.
For eight days their ship chugged steadily westwards, following the sun. At night the exchange students slept in canvas hammocks slung between low beams in the hold right next to the engine room, right down in the deepest bowels of the ship, but during the day, once they’d finished their language lesson with Mrs Calvert, they were free to explore. He was a tall, lanky boy - not the tallest, that honour went to Buffalo, but taller than average - and stronger than he looked, and he wasn’t shy, so he quickly made friends with the platoon of Shinra infantrymen who were shipping home after completing a tour of duty at the company’s outpost in Norihama. Like him, the troopers’ heads were shaven; like him, they had tattoos, big impressive ones inked into the skin of their arms for everyone to see: black Titans, blue behemoths, red Jemnezemies. Take a look at this, they said, flexing their muscles to make their tattoos dance. These cheerful soldiers taught him how to roll cigarettes, darn socks, play cribbage, and swear in their language like - well, like a trooper.
“Fucking shit-bird!” he yelled when a low-flying seagull dropped poop on his shoulder. “Language!” Mrs Singh cried, exchanging shocked looks with Mrs Calvert. The troopers, his friends, roared with laughter.
He was never sea-sick, not once.
The afternoon of the eighth day brought their ship into harbour at a town Mrs Calvert called Hedeby. Everyone disembarked here. His trooper friends gave him a packet of chewing gum, rubbed his fuzzy scalp, said “See ya around, buddy,” and clambered into some gunmetal grey lorries waiting for them at the entrance to the pier. Away they drove, waving and laughing.
Mrs Singh said something to him. It sounded like gobble-gobble-you-gobble-gobble-Shinra-gobble, and concluded with the vocal uptick that meant she was asking a question. Mrs Cavert translated for her. “Would you like to be a Shinra soldier?”
To reply with a direct negative would be rude. They were his elders. What answer were they looking for? Did he seem to them like the kind of boy who should be a soldier? He’d filled out a form before he left Wutai. ‘List options in order of preference.’ The form was in their language. Hadn’t they read it? ‘Number one, space exploration. Number two, aeronautical engineering. Number three, automotive engineering.’ It had taken him almost an hour to find all the words he needed in the dictionary.
Mrs Singh and Mrs Calvert led the way through cobbled streets to Hedeby train station. The boys followed in single file, each lugging an old-fashioned leather suitcase that had been a gift from Shinra Inc. His suitcase handle was broken, so he had to hold it at an awkward angle, but it really wasn’t much of a nuisance. The suitcase was practically empty anyway.
At the train station they found the Midgar Express had been delayed by half an hour. “Are you hungry, boys?” asked Mrs Calvert, a redundant question, since they were always hungry. Mrs Singh bought them mystery meat sandwiches wrapped in an inedible transparent film, and strawberry ice cream in paper cups. The food tasted unnatural, too salty, too sweet. Desik and a couple of the other Bahamut-boys pulled gagging faces behind the women’s back.
“Get used to it,” he told them. “This is what people eat here.”
Desik glared at him in disgust. “Is the animal talking? To me?”
He didn’t react. He was biding his time. If Desik couldn’t see that the rules were different now, then he was an idiot. And Desik was most definitely an idiot.
When the train pulled in, it was exactly as he’d imagined it would be, puffing and snorting like a friendly dragon. Twelve seats had been reserved for the exchange students in a second-class carriage. Mrs Singh and Mrs Calvert settled the boys down, then retired to their sleeping compartments. Night fell. The train galloped through a shadowy landscape lit by the faintest of crescent moons. He stared out the window, eyes straining to distinguish shapes he recognised in this new world rushing by. Lulled by the rhythm of the rails, he fell asleep.
“Wake up.” Bimawen was shaking his shoulder. “We’re here.”
Clutching their suitcases to their chests, the boys stumbled onto the platform, yawning and blinking. All around them the air shone with a subtle green luminescence that was impossible to see straight on; he had to turn his head sideways and catch it in the corner of his eye. This light was like no light he’d even seen before. It was like a light that had absorbed its own shadows, dark and bright at the same time. What time was it? Dawn? Midnight? How could one tell? In every direction the view was the same, and it stretched on forever, shiny metal tubes and sky-high towers scintillating in the yellow radiance pouring from their millions of windows. Where was the moon, the stars? In their place glowed a ring of what looked like giant green materia, floating, it seemed, in midair. There were eight of them. They were incomprehensibly enormous, and the circle they formed was enormous too. The smallest one, the one furthest in distance from where he was standing, looked like it was miles away.
He’d always know that Midgar was a city like no other, but nobody had warned him that Midgar was alive. He could hear its heart beating, a steady, reliable beat. Its breath, warm and sour, felt sticky against his skin. And - oh! It moved! Just a minor adjustment, a slight shrug of its concrete shoulders, a flex of its steel cables as it shifted the weight of the future to a more comfortable position on its broad back.
It’s Alexander, he thought. The holy city. No - it was better than Alexander. Alexander was a summons. Summons never lasted long; they blew away on the wind. Midgar was built to endure for a thousand years.
If men could make such a city, then anything was possible. A boy who came to a city like this could re-create himself into someone completely new.
“Boys, don’t dawdle,” called Mrs Calvert. “The transport’s waiting.”
Cheers of joy went up when the exchange students saw a white van waiting for them with the red and gold Shinra logo on its doors. None of them, not even the Bahamut-boys, had ridden in a car before. “Put your cases in the back and get in,” said Mrs Calvert wearily. The driver explained how to buckle the seat-belts. In all the excitement, he somehow found himself sitting next to Desik. “Change with me, Ox-boy,” Desik commanded imperiously. “I should have the seat with the window.”
He pretended he hadn’t heard. As soon as the van was moving, he twisted in his seat so that his body completely blocked the view.
“What a rotten ugly dump this place is.” Desik kept his voice low, not wanting Mrs Calvert to hear. “Look at all the garbage in the streets. Do people live here, or pigs? An animal that wallows in its own shit would feel right at home. Do you like it here, animal?”
I’m not an animal. Not here. The slate’s been wiped clean. We’ll start again. You’re not better than me any more.
By focusing on these thoughts and on controlling his breathing, he managed to remain calm.
The minibus dropped them and their suitcases outside a tall redbrick townhouse in a part of the city that Mrs Calvert called Sector Three. Their apartment was five flights up, on the top floor, right under the roof. From their sitting room window he could see all the way to the rim of the plate and beyond. Mrs Calvert explained that Mrs Singh and her family lived in a company flat on the floor directly below them. She would come up every day to make their dinner, except Sunday. On Sunday, they’d have to feed themselves.
He walked from room to room, amazed and delighted by the carpets that covered entire floors (how did one brush the bugs from under them?), the speckled linoleum in the kitchen, the stainless steel gadgets. He would be the first to learn how to use them all! The walls of the apartment had been freshly painted a soft grey colour. Gauzy yellow fabric curtained the windows. There was a TV! Bimawen rushed to turn it on.
Each of the three bedrooms contained two bunk-beds: twelve beds altogether, with four boys to each room. He only needed to share his sleeping space with three other people! Undreamed-of luxury! But there was a problem. The six Bahamut-boys wanted to be together. Back at the Sanctuary they would never have been expected to sleep in the same room as lower marks. “We could move one of the bunks to the biggest room,” suggested Albin. Desik quashed that idea straight away. “Why should they get all the extra space? No, we’ll move the extra bunk to the smallest room and have two rooms to ourselves.”
“We are not moving furniture,” snapped Mrs Calvert. She jabbed a finger at four boys seemingly chosen at random. “You, you, you and you - that’s your room.” She assigned him to share with Bimawen, Buffalo and the Ant-boy Sanzang. Sanzang accepted his fate placidly. Buffalo looked as if he might cry. Bimawen said, “Can I have the top bunk?”
“Good thinking,” said Desik, “It’s better to be up high. Less chance of getting stabbed in you sleep.”
Mrs Calvert eyed him coldly. She didn’t like Desik. Nobody did. “You’re in Midgar now,” she reminded him “People do not get stabbed in their own beds in Midgar. Now go and unpack, all of you.”
Mrs Singh cooked a meal of fried eggs and bacon, grilled tomatoes, toast, and tea while the boys unpacked. Mrs Calvert showed them where the towels were kept and how the shower worked. After they’d eaten and washed, the boys put on the suits they’d found hanging in their wardrobes, stood in line to let Mrs Singh knot their ties, and were then driven in the white van to the Shinra Building complex and taken up in a lift to the Personnel Department in Central Tower Floor 22 to have their photos taken, before being bundled back into the van and driven across to Satellite Unit S1/C Level B1 for the first day of an intensive week devoted to orientation and language immersion.
When they arrived back at the apartment at seven pm, a hot dinner was waiting for them. Desik immediately claimed the chair at the head of the table, and the other boys fell into line around him: Bahamut boys in the seats closest to Desik, then the Ox-boys, then the two Spider-boys Ao Lie and Porky, and the Heron-boy Reikan, and right at the bottom of the table, the lowest of the low-marks, peaceful Samzang, their Ant-boy. The principle of orderliness had been preserved.
I’m going to do something about this, he decided.
After dinner Mrs Singh indicated by gestures that they could watch two hours of TV. At ten she sent them to bed, turned off the lights, and went downstairs to her own apartment. He lay with his eyes wide open, hands folded under his chin, waiting, and though none of them said anything, he could tell from the sound of their breathing that Bimawen, Buffalo and Sanzang were waiting too.
They didn’t even have to wait ten minutes. From the room where Desik slept came the sound of floorboards creaking. Desik was up and heading for their room. Buffalo began to whimper.
“Bufo,” he whispered across the space between Buffalo’s bunk-bed and his, “You don’t have to do what he says.”
The door handle rattled, but the door wouldn’t open. It was locked. He’d locked it.
“Bufo, you cocksucker,” growled Desik, “Get your ass out here.”
Buffalo cringed. “I don’t want to.”
“He doesn’t want to.”
“Who asked you? Shut your face, animal. Who locked this door?”
“I did.”
“Well now you can unlock it. Tell Bufo to come out here. I want to talk to him.”
Buffalo’s dumb pleading eyes caught the light falling through their window from a streetlamp on the other side of the road. For someone so big, he was surprisingly timid and desperate to please.
“Bufo’s asleep. Go away.”
The rattling of the handle intensified. Desik landed a couple of kicks on the door, but its wood was thick and solid. “Unlock this right now or I swear I’ll break it down.”
“If you break it down, I’ll kill you.”
Three pairs of eyes shone at him in the darkness. Would you? Would you really?
Once more the door handle rattled, this time with less conviction.
“Desik,” he said as calmly as he could, “If you don’t get away from our door right now I’m going to come out there and rip your head from your shoulders. And then I’m going to shove it up your ass.”
There was a long, long, long, deadly silence. They held their breath.
He thought, if Desik smashes his way in, will I do it? They say the first time is the hardest.
Desik chose not to put it to the test. They listened to his feet shuffling away down the carpeted corridor. A door shut. Floorboards creaked. He wasn’t so naive as to think this was over, but at least they were safe for now.
Buffalo began to blub noisy tears of fear and relief, muffling his face with his pillow.
“Great snakes!” Bimawen yelped like a dog that had spotted a ball. “Tseng, you burn. Triple firaga! For a moment there I thought I was going to pee myself.”
“From now on nobody has to do anything they don’t want to do. That’s the rule,” said Tseng.
“Your rule,” Sanzang observed tranquilly from the bunk above Buffalo’s.
“If you don’t like it you can make your own. Bufo, you’re fine. Stop crying. Let’s all try to get some sleep.”
.
The next morning Desik refused to get up. He told his room-mates he felt sick. Mrs Singh took his temperature and gave him a cup of tea. “You must make him get up,” said Tseng. “Make him. Hit him if you have to,” but she didn’t understand.
They left Desik sulking in his bedroom, presumably plottiing his revenge, and got into the bus for the short drive to Satellite Unit S1/C. Mrs Calvert was unpacking a small box when they came in. “Sit down,” she told them. “I have your ID cards. I’m going to distribute them now.”
Bimawen was the first to receive his card. He looked at it closely it for a long second, then leaned over to show it to Tseng. “I think they got my name wrong,” he whispered.
The name on Bimawen’s card was Billy Green. Mrs Calvert handed Tseng his card. That was his photo, all right, but the name they’d given him was Sam Green. He felt a tugging on his sleeve, and looked round. Buffalo was holding out his card. “What does this say, Tseng?”
“Sandy Green.”
“We’re all Green,” said Ao Lie.
Bimawen threw his arms wide. “Welcome to Shinra, Green clan!”
The Bahamut-mark boys were predictably outraged, and Mrs Calvert had to spend fifteen minutes calming them down. Tseng took advantage of the downtime to think. He didn’t really know how he felt about the name change. On the one hand, he could see the logic in it. The new names were short and practical, and the ID card was pretty small. With the best will in the world, his real name - Ox-mark Tseng from Stoney Creek Village, son of Pasha out of Hina of the Red River Locust clan - would never fit on this palm-sized rectangle of plastic. Wutaian names tied Midgar tongues in knots. Mrs Singh had known him for almost a month now and she still couldn’t say his name properly - and his name wasn’t even hard. Did he really want to spend his days here listening to himself being mispronounced? And anyway, he’d come to Midgar to start a new life, hadn’t he? New life: new name. It made sense.
And yet…
He hadn’t gone through all that suffering, left his motherland behind and crossed mountains and oceans, in order to be Sam Green, whoever that was. He’d come here hoping to find what the Sanctuary had denied him: a chance to fulfil his dreams. The right to be himself.
However, nobody was asking his opinion, so he clipped the ID card to its scarlet and gold Shinra lanyard, put it around his neck, and sat up straight, pencil in hand, ready to profit from the lesson. He intended to master their language faster than anyone had ever mastered it before.
The phone rang. Mrs Calvert picked it up. As the person on the other end spoke, he watched her face change. She looked sick. “What?” she said in their language. “Right now?” which were words even Buffalo understood. All the boys had fallen silent to listen.
Mrs Calvert put the phone down, squared her shoulders, and took a deep breath.
“Boys, this is a lucky day for you. Something very exciting is about to happen. President Shinra is coming to visit us. He’s on his way right now. Now stand up, all of you. Get in a line. Billy, take your hands out of your pockets. In order of height, Sandy. End of the line, after Tseng - I mean, Sam.”
The personification of Shinra Inc’s power and glory came through the door trailing a retinue of men and women in suits and went down the line shaking each boy’s hand. “Mike, welcome to Midgar. Settling in all right, Billy? Great to have you on board, Rick.” His voice was rich and deep and rather thrilling, but he was smaller than Tseng had expected. He’d been imagining a man of heroic dimensions, majestic and ageless like one of the deities carved into the cliff at Da Chao, whom the whirlwinds of time could not erode. President Shinra was just a man, a middle-aged man in a beautiful suit. He was on the short side, carrying a little extra weight round the middle. There were streaks of grey in his hair.
Nobody was surprised when the gods did godlike things. That was their nature. But when a man did something godlike - like discovering a new energy source, and inventing a whole new way of life for his fellow human beings to live, and bringing peace to the planet, and building the greatest city the world had ever seen - didn’t that mean the man had transcended the limitations of his nature? And didn’t that make him better than a god? President Shinra was human. He was real. Gods were just a ruse invented to scare people into obedience.
Once he’d shaken every boy’s hand, President Shinra made a very short speech about the joy of building bridges and why humanity needed more tolerance and mutual understanding, before departing as swiftly as he had come. The last member of his retinue to follow him out the door was a stocky older man with a craggy, bearded face and big ham hands, dressed in a dark blue suit. This man ran his penetrating stare along the line of boys like a farmer sizing up a flock of chocobo chicks, but when he came to Tseng, he paused.
Tseng tried not to react, though the hairs on his neck were prickling. His gut instinct warned him that this man was dangerous; it would be unlucky to attract his attention. He needed to make himself look as blank, innocent, and submissive as possible. It wasn’t a look that came naturally to him, but he’d had plenty of practice.
“Humph,” the man grunted.
Then he went away and Mrs Calvert shut the door behind him.
Later, when Mrs Calvert was busy helping Buffalo with his reading, Desik’s sidekick Bars slid over to Tseng and whispered, “That man looked like a murderer. Don’t you think, Ox-boy? Didn’t he look like a murderer to you?”
Tseng’s fingers tightened round the pencil he was holding. He’d just sharpened it.
“You didn’t fool him, animal. He saw what you are. He’s got his eye on you. Maybe he’ll come back for you and kill you. Slit the throat of the ox and roast it over a fire, mmm, what a feast.” Bars put his mouth close to Tseng’s ear and smacked his lips.
Tseng thought about stabbing his pencil into Bars’ eye. He could picture himself doing it. He knew it would feel good. But he wouldn’t let himself be goaded. This was Midgar, not Wutai. He didn’t have to be that kind of person any more.
The day proceeded without further incident until dinner time. Returning home, the boys discovered Desik had spent the entire day lounging on the sofa watching television. Mrs Singh hadn’t quite finished preparing their food, so the other Bahamut-boys joined Desik, and the rest wandered off to their rooms. An idea formed in Tseng’s mind. He went to the kitchen, where Mrs Singh was setting the table. She smiled at him. The top seat was empty. He sat in it.
“Dinner’s ready,” she called in her language.
Most of the boys came running, but not Desik and his Bahamut gang. Tseng tipped back his chair and craned his neck to see what they were watching. The TV was a black and white one. On its screen, several practically-naked foreign women were bending and stretching under what looked like palm trees. The Bahamut boys sniggered and nudged each other. Tseng could feel his face burning. Quickly he looked away.
Mrs Singh marched over to the TV set and turned it off. “Dinner,” she said sternly.
Bimawen whispered to him. “Are you looking for trouble? You can’t sit there.”
Tseng ignored him.
Desik and his posse came swaggering in, laughing and jostling each other. When they saw Tseng sitting in the top seat, they stopped dead. From the look of horror on their faces it was obvious they’d never once considered the possibility of such a revolution.
Idiots.
“You bloody animal!” Blind rage bloated Desik’s face. His eyes seemed to bulge in their sockets. “Piece of filth! Peasant, I’m going to give you the beating of your life.”
He looked around wildly and grabbed for the nearest weapon he could find, which happened to be a wooden spoon. Tseng braced himself. Fighting back would be a mistake; Desik needed to look like the only one at fault here. But before Desik could strike, Mrs Singh slapped the spoon out of his hand. It clattered to the floor, and Desik, to his everlasting shame, burst into tears.
.
Tseng woke in the middle of the night. Someone was creeping about in the corridor. His room-mates were fast asleep. Silently he slipped out of bed to double-check that their door was locked. In another part of the apartment, a door opened and closed. It sounded like the front door. Then there was silence.
In the morning, Desik was gone.
Tseng expected something dramatic to happen as a result of Desik’s disappearance, but nothing much did. Mrs Singh wrung her hands and sighed. Mrs Calvert shouted down the phone at some people she called Public Safety Maintenance. If anyone from Shinra went looking for Desik, they didn’t find him. Tseng wondered if Desik was trying to walk all the way back to Wutai like the ignorant blockhead he was. His parents didn’t need or want him. They had nine sons, and Desik was the stupidest.