Chương 177: CDM 3, Chapter 53: Language Barriers

"We haven't done this in a while," Beth said, carefully accepting a hot cup of tea. Out the window to her left, a steady drizzle fell on Smallman Street. I set my tea on the table and sat.

"No, we haven't. We've both been pretty busy."

"Yeah…"

"Oh, I agree. We shouldn't wait that long again. I don't mean this in an offensive way, but I still feel like I'm getting to know you. I want to spend more time doing that." Beth sipped her tea and reached for the sugar.

"I feel the same way, to be honest. I still see the Dorion I knew, but so much can happen in four years."

"The last 12 months alone have been packed with changes for both of us. How are things with Frank?"

"Really good. His big focus for me right now is learning how to read the grain on a stave. I'm kind of getting the hang of it, but Frank makes it look like a superpower. Any time I pick a stave, I have to show it to him first. He writes down a few notes on a piece of paper and folds it up. After I finish and test-shoot the frame, then I can read what he wrote."

"What kind of things does he write?"

"His opinion of the stave, how he would have oriented the frame relative to the woodgrain, imperfections or oddities he saw that concerned him, and predictions for how well it would shoot."

"That's an interesting teaching method," I said. Beth chuckled.

"Yeah, interesting. For the first several staves I chose, the only thing the note said is 'this is going to break,' followed by an explanation of what he saw when he assessed it." I tried to suppress my smile.

"How often is he right?"

"Every fucking time, Dorion. When I come back into the shop after the test fire, he doesn't even look up from his workbench. He just asks, 'Do you understand what you did wrong?' Then I start on the next attempt."

"I wonder if I'll ever get to be the wise old teacher," I mused.

"You would be unbearable." We laughed.

"You are improving, though."

"I am. I have to make 10 perfect bows in a row before I'm allowed to try working with ironwood. My current streak is 6."

"What changes about the process when you move to a different kind of wood?" I asked.

"They all have their own unique character. The density changes. Some are softer or harder. Some have more natural give than others. Tillering them feels different too. Making a good bow is like some sort of arcane art sometimes."

"I'm glad all I have to worry about is how they feel to shoot. That sounds too delicate for me." Beth shrugged.

"'Patience and confidence.' That's what Frank always says."

"His marketing seems to be going well too." She perked up, her back getting a little straighter.

"He's booked for the next two and a half years," Beth said proudly.

"Interest in voidwood went way up when Kielar was killed. Frank is still complaining that the assassin didn't let him know to stock up ahead of time."

"Very inconsiderate." Was Frank that good of a liar that he made jokes like that, or was my hunch that he was Kielar's killer way off?

"Frank thinks so." I stirred my tea to distract myself for a moment.

"I'm sorry that Baker is back in the news again."

"I'm really scared of the full videos going public," Beth said, her posture slumping again.

"Seeing even a still-frame of Jonathan's face would be hard. If the full footage gets out… I feel so sorry for all of those people that see their loved ones killed."

"Maybe they won't watch," I offered, grasping at any straw that might ease her mind.

"If it were Jonathan, I would think I owe it to him. I didn't get to be there for him when he died. Bearing witness to what he went through is the least I can do." I reached across the table for Beth's hand to be certain she paid attention to what I was about to say.

"You loved him when he was alive, and you missed him when he was gone. That's all that matters. I don't think he would want you to watch that because making yourself suffer doesn't do anything for him." Beth nodded, staring into her cup.

"How are you handling it?" she asked.

"I'm okay. I don't know that I will feel much different until this is over, but that's a long way off. This case is going to attract a lot of attention."

"Why does it feel like his popularity grew with the controversy?" I shrugged.

"I've seen that too, but I hope it's a vocal minority situation. I'd like to think the people who enjoy that bloodlust are rare exceptions.""'You'd 'like to think.'""Some days, I believe that humans are inherently good. Stuff like the Baker reaction makes me think that more people have evil in their hearts than I want to admit."

"Most people are evil," Beth said.

"You sound certain." My little sister nodded.

"I think there is brave evil and scared evil. Baker is brave evil because he acts on those desires. All the people around him who knew he was dangerous but didn't do anything? They're scared evil."

"Even if they feared for the safety of themselves and their families?" Beth didn't reply.

"To be clear, I don't think you're wrong necessarily. I just don't think it's as binary as you describe."

"What do you mean?" I thought about how I wanted to put this.

"Yes, we would like to think that a good person would have come forward a long time ago, but if that person is a mother or father, they have to think about what happens to their children. At that point, the choice is less about good and evil and more about basic, primal survival. People will suffer through all kinds of pain if they think it protects or helps someone they love."

"Making me sound like a real asshole here."

"You know that's not what I meant. Ideas like right and wrong change in strange ways when people are desperate. Among the homeless, I noticed a sentiment of 'us versus them.' At a certain point, it's hard not to feel like the rest of the world is your enemy. They look down on you. They ignore you. You feel like the choices they make and the lives they live actively threaten your ability to survive. Stealing from an enemy doesn't feel wrong at all."

"You don't talk about that part of your life very much," Beth said.

"It was less than a year for me. A lot of the people I saw at that time had been homeless for years. Compared to them, I was just a tourist."

"You experienced it long enough for it to change who you are." Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

"I'll give you that," I conceded.

"It affected your values that much?" I nodded.

"When we were kids, hearing about gang bangers and drive-by shootings and grade-schoolers selling drugs or playing lookout for people who did, it was easy to point at the television screen and say, 'That's bad. They should all choose not to do that.'""I remember that too."

"If I hear one of those stories now, I think more about how desperate that kid had to be if shooting someone was the best solution in their minds. That ten-year-old playing lookout? So much has to have gone wrong in their world for that to feel like the right choice. Poverty is like backing a dog into a corner. That claustrophobia, that feeling like the end of your life is a few breaths away…"

"Can force the nicest dog to bite," Beth said, completing my thought.

"Yeah. No one is shocked when a desperate animal lashes out, but if a desperate person lashes out, they're seen as crazy or evil. And to be clear, I'm not saying that being poor justifies killing another human being. I'm just saying that many people can't fathom what that corner feels like and don't want to admit the role it played in getting that dog to bite." Beth absentmindedly folded and refolded her empty package of sugar.

"Is that what the church was like for you?"

"I thought so, but that was only one dimension of being trapped. I wasn't in danger of starving. I got to sleep in a bed. No one was going to jump me in the night or steal all my things. A random cop or asshole wasn't going to stomp through and trash the little bit of life I had built for myself."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked."

"Why?"

"Your whole mood just changed, like you feel trapped all over again." I hadn't realized my chest tightened to the point of aching. I was more alert, glancing about to be sure nothing snuck up on me. My legs and arms tingled, my body preloading adrenaline for when I inevitably had to fight or flee. I was back under a tarp, waking up at 3 a. m. to someone outside tugging on the edges, looking for a corner to lift.

"It's not your fault," I said.

"I'm sorry, Beth. I need to walk this off."

"But it's raining."

"I'd rather be wet and cold than feel like this." The Wilds: Race Asia took an unprecedented week off from releasing episodes. Never before had the producers deviated from the schedule and withheld an episode. The rumors about footage of dead locals being cut and deleted by the showrunners evolved to sound like a massive cover-up. LootLootLouis tweeted,"IDGAF about my contract. The most important and most interesting part of the show is being withheld over politics.

If the showrunners don't reverse their decision, I will quit mid-race and boycott every production of The Wilds from then on." Valcuree posted,"My team experienced what Louis' team did but on a much, much smaller scale. I haven't seen the footage, but Louis told me about it. I stand with him on this. Release the content, or I'm quitting the race."

The usual theories about all of this being manufactured drama designed to pump ratings swirled around the internet, but a scheduled episode not going up suggested that this was a truly contentious situation, not something invented. So when it was announced that the footage Louis demanded be aired was in fact, going to be released, we had to watch. We ended up having something of a watch party in the guild house.

The lounge area on the third floor was finished, but we didn't have new furniture to go with the fresh paint and fuzzy carpet, so we relocated our grimy second-hand couches and chairs for the time being. Nathan put paper towels beneath each of their legs for fear that the gross would migrate to the rest of the house if left unchecked. All of the Divas were present, as were Beth and Kwame.

"I'm betting it was a fight between the crawlers and the natives," Giago guessed. That sounded plausible to the rest of us.

"Or it's going to be the biggest anticlimactic bait-and-switch in reality television history," Nathan added. That too sounded entirely plausible to the rest of us. When the show began, everyone went quiet. The following episode contains scenes of extreme violence and other content that might be distressing. Viewer discretion is advised. Louis, with his long dreadlocks and a flamboyant pink robe, appeared on the screen to give a confessional.

"As soon as we saw an A gate on the report, we knew we had to hit it," he said.

"If we didn't, Val's team would, so we double-timed it all the way there." The camera cut to Louis and his party running through the wilderness in a downpour. A map in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen showed their location as well as the location of the A gate. When it zoomed all the way out, the borders of old countries faded in. Louis and the A gate were in the northeastern corner tip of what used to be India, just south of Tibet.

A factoid popped up in the lower thirds, which was common in The Wilds' style of storytelling. The places participants traveled through were alien to most viewers, so there were always opportunities to highlight an interesting historical detail or an explanation of a plant or bird species. Monsoon season in this region starts in May and doesn't end until September. And it faded out. The rear member of Louis' party, a Defender, yelled over the rain for the party to stop. A voice yelling, "Wait! Wait!"

was faint in the roar of rain pelting a dense forest, but the party heard it.

"Who is that?" Louis asked. The voice came again.

"That sounds like Eric," someone off-camera said. The party and the crew backtracked, finding a man in a blue plastic poncho with a backpack and a headset. His arms were raised, and his eyes darted about, straining to somehow see the man holding a sword in his back despite. That man wore a poncho of cured leather. The hood was up, and it looked heavy.

"Eric…" one of the crew said.

"Are you okay?" Louis reached for his sword.

"Wait! Don't!" Eric yelled. Eight figures emerged from the undergrowth wearing similar ponchos. Two had bows, and three carried swords. The other three were empty-handed, but they had the bent knees of mages ready to move and evade when the fight began. One of the empty-handed ponchos spoke. The natives are speaking Assamese. Since Louis' party did not have a translator, we are presenting this footage without subtitles to preserve their experience. Future airings will feature the translation.

"Does anyone understand them?" Louis shouted, looking around at his party and the five or so crew members carrying cameras and mics. The same man spoke again, this time more forcefully. Eric yelped as his captor relocated the sword, pressing the blade against his throat instead. The sword glowed with a faint golden light, and runes ran from the hilt to the tip, fading in and out of bright white as if the weapon itself breathed slowly. Louis looked around at the other figures.

"Their gear is nuts," he muttered to his party.

"I think we could win this fight, but we'll lose a lot of people doing it."

"That's better than all of us dying," a white mage hissed back.

"We walked right through here 30 seconds ago," Louis countered.

"If all they wanted to do was kill us, they could have ambushed us then. We were sitting ducks." Louis stepped forward with his arms high.

"We don't want to fight," he said.

"Please don't hurt him. Everyone, put down your weapons." His party hesitated.

"Did I fucking stutter? Put down your weapons, you wankers." One of the men in ponchos stepped forward and collected swords, bows, and knives, and then bound their hands one person at a time. Strangely, they didn't confiscate the cameras, so we watched the whole march through the thick growth. Twenty minutes later–which the show fast-forwarded through–the party climbed stone stairs up to something akin to a castle wall but with no palisades or other barriers.

A barn-like structure was straight ahead, and a squat tower with a dome was off to the side. Talatal Ghar was completed in 1765. The project was begun by Swargadeo Rudra Singha, the 30th king of the Ahom Kingdom. Every member of Louis' party looked around in awe as they were led to the tower and directed to go inside. They sat in the dark for more than an hour before the door opened again. A man with dark skin and long dark hair entered, carrying two furry pillows under one arm and a piece of slate in the other.

He set both pillows in the center of the room and claimed one for himself, sitting cross-legged with the slate in his lap. He gestured for someone to take the empty pillow. Then he put his head down to draw on the slate with a nub of chalk. After some murmuring among the crawlers and the crew, Louis stepped forward. When he was settled, the man offered Louis the slate. The camera zoomed.

Two adult stick figures stood in front of three smaller stick figures–children, presumably–and depicted three arrows soaring toward them. The man indicated the people as he pointed to himself. When he indicated the arrows, he pointed to Louis.

"Us?" Louis asked.

"No, we didn't come here to hurt anyone." He held out his hand for the chalk. When it appeared in his palm, Louis drew an X over all of the areas and exaggerated shaking his head side to side. Then Louis brought his hands together, attempting to show respect and civility. The man studied Louis for a long minute before standing abruptly. He shooed Louis off his pillow, took it back, and left. The room turned black again when he shut the door.