If Else Paradise by Benjanun Sriduangkaew EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author:Benjanun Sriduangkaew
- Language: English
- Genre: Science Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
The Seoul evening is black on red, and I’m standing over a corpse, trying to
divine whether she is my soulmate.
Soulmate is an imprecise word, a makeshift piece of vocabulary I’ve
chosen for myself because it commands a little more poetry. The official
terminology for it is an anchor—the person with a quantum link to you, the
one who’s supposed to be your compass in the dark as you glide from
timeline to timeline: a beacon for your safe return. That is what I am in
want of, what I’m looking for; the thing that I have pursued with too much
zeal and insufficient good sense.
The woman is—was—well-made, handsome and sharp in the face. Midforties, and graceful in aging. I turn her over. Death by a bullet: the wound
is bright in her sternum, a flower of injury. Above us the sky is rumbling,
showing flashes of its true intention. It will rain soon, heavily and thickly,
the kind of monsoon that feels like it’s going to wash everything away—
me, this city, this body, the parameters of my discontent.
No such luck, though. My need isn’t the sort of stain simple water can
purify. I could stand here and let the sky drown me and still know no peace.
Footsteps. Whoever did her in is coming back to make sure the job’s
well and truly finished. What was the casus belli, I wonder; was this woman
involved in crimes, or was she in the wrong place at the wrong time,
bearing witness to something she wasn’t meant to see. For a second I
hesitate. Would I defend her, if she is the one? Yes, even the body; I would
see her to a dignified burial or cremation, whichever her religion or
preference happens to be.
But she’s not the one. I’m surer of that the longer I linger. The aliens
may insist on indecipherable calculus. I rely on instinct. There’s something
in the human hindbrain that operates faster, sharper than any quantum
computing.
I straighten. I am away. By the time her killers come, they’ll find only a
corpse and I will be halfway across the world.
The act of translating across distance has become so second nature that
it feels as though I’ve been doing it all my life, but you get like that with
any practiced skill—piano, ballet, firing a gun. It becomes a part of you, as
natural an appendage as any limb with which you were born. Muscle
memory, but for quantum activation.
My apartment is bare the way all my places tend to be. Just the
necessities—a microwave and a mini-fridge; a wardrobe that holds a few
changes of clothes and not much more. There’s skincare and toiletries I
purchased from elsewhere, my one nod to luxury. I like to feel comfortable,
look well-groomed and polished.
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