get from shooting down twenty quadcopters. The ground around the chairs was littered with energy drink cans, beer bottles, and the tiny burned nubs of joints and hand-rolled cigarettes.
Soo-hyun and Kali sat, and Kali opened a waterproof case beside her chair to reveal a drone jammer like a rifle made from black plastic and an old UHF antenna.
“Do they catch many drones here?” she asked.
“Not really. If a drone gets this close, then it means someone fucked up further out.”
Kali nodded absentmindedly and closed the container. She retrieved a battered cigarette case from a pocket buried deep in the folds of her monochromatic sari. The case flicked open to the smell of ganja, and Kali took a joint and put it between her pursed lips. She lit it and inhaled deeply, the cherry at the end of the joint shining bright like a firefly, the dry herb burning with a sharp crackle. Soo-hyun mimicked her inhalation subconsciously, their breaths in sync.
Kali offered the joint to Soo-hyun. They took a long drag, trying to match Kali’s, but they coughed and couldn’t stop, holding the joint out to Kali while they covered their mouth with their other hand.
“I know I should be vaping,” Kali said, taking the joint back from Soo-hyun. She dragged deep again, and her next words flowed out accompanied by bluish smoke: “But the smell of a joint, the taste?…?reminds me of the first time I ever smoked. Vaping’s just not the same.”
She held the joint out to Soo-hyun, who took another drag, this time managing to stifle the cough. Kali’s weed was grown in the former school’s greenhouse—tall, bushy marijuana plants growing beside a few scant rows of basil, coriander, and chives.
“I haven’t figured out the pilot program yet,” Soo-hyun said.
Kali took the joint and cleared the air with her other hand. “We’re up here so you can not think about it for a while.
“Have you always lived in the city?”
“Not this city, but a city, yeah.”
“Have you ever seen the stars? Properly, I mean?” Kali pointed up at the sky. “Look at the light pollution, look at what we’ve done to the sky itself. All those constellations connected to ancient myths from all over the world, and we’ve blotted them out. We’ve cut ourselves off from our mythological heritage.”
Soo-hyun took another drag, their face briefly illuminated by the tiny blazing light. “I can track the constellations on my phone.”
“That’s not the same as seeing them.”
A breeze from the west pushed the clouds over Incheon, and though the sky was clear overhead, Soo-hyun could barely see any stars shining amid that endless black.
“When you’re right, you’re right.”
“There’s talk of terraforming Mars, to make it more like Earth so we can live there, but no one talks about how we deterraformed Terra. Without meaning to, without trying, we’ve set the planet on a path where it will no longer support us.”
Soo-hyun nodded and took the joint, careful not to burn their fingers on the small stump. They took a long drag, held it, and passed the joint back to Kali.
Kali inhaled, squinting against the smoke that drifted up to her eyes. “It’s arrogant to think we could kill an entire planet, but we’re killing ourselves.” She offered the end of the joint to Soo-hyun.
“Oh, no, I am toasted,” Soo-hyun said, watching Kali through heavy-lidded eyes.
Kali had one last hit of the joint, and dropped it into a beer bottle by her foot, where it briefly sizzled.
“If we terraform Mars before we treat our addiction to consumption, we’ll just end up deterraforming it, too. That’s why I need the virus, Soo-hyun. It’s the tool we can use to reverse all the damage we’ve done.”
“But it’s just a virus,” Soo-hyun said, their head swimming calmly.
Kali beamed. “It’s so much more than that. It’s a living piece of software that can grow and change. It can fill any system, any niche. We can use it to run our cities, our countries, our economies. There’ll be no need for money when it can do most of the jobs. There’ll be no greed, no rampant consumption. We will let the code govern us and it will pull us back from the brink of collapse.”
Kali turned her chair to face Soo-hyun. She leaned forward, and rested a hand on Soo-hyun’s knee. “Do you see how important that is?”
Soo-hyun nodded and blinked. Kali loomed large and ephemeral in their vision—her face didn’t shift, Soo-hyun’s eyes did, but the effect was the same. “I do,” they said