There are Still Parrots in Pasadena

The first thing K learned about magpies was that they were known for brutally killing small songbirds and their young. Magpies tore apart songbird nests and destroyed eggs, often eating the young or smaller parent birds in the process. Because of this and more, they earned a bad reputation for being the menace of the bird world. They were the meanest of all the corvids yet also one of the smartest, which in turn probably inspired much of their said meanness.

Someone once told K that intelligence breeds meanness. She’s heard the same said about stupidity. In the end, intellect doesn’t matter. More so than any bird, it’s people who breed the worst forms of meanness.

K doesn’t have any infatuation with magpies, but it bothers her how badly the birds are represented by the informative literature written about them when they still existed. When she learned of their negative image, it felt like a personal attack, since K is a magpie herself. She’s not a bird, but people in Mi-Byeok and the Southern California Zones call her a magpie because of her profession. Implant sourcing and extraction. Artificials, mostly, but K and a few other magpies with steady hands and mediocre surgical knowledge manage to extract synthetics just as efficiently. As much as they might detest them, the world’s remaining human population relies on magpies like K for their survival.

Birds were the first to die, falling from the sky in great feathered downpours and painting the earth with blood and the smell of rotting organic tissue. Some birds not yet affected, like magpies, saw this as a carrion feast, but soon they, too, became part of the same putrid menu. Before the last birds began their descents, humans were already infected. It’s understood that the rot found its way to humans through the birds. Because humans do not naturally fly or live amongst trees, rooftops, and bridge arches, their limbs would not fall as far and make as great a mess when making their final departure from their hosts. But the smell was the same.

Over ninety-three percent of the world’s population experiences organ failure and limb loss from what is commonly referred to as the rot. Limb decay is the most common symptom, with the rot affecting internal organs at only half the rate. Luckily for nature’s demigod turned underdog, humanity hung on with the help of corporations nestled in the south western coast’s walled city-state of Mi-Byeok which had already been producing a wide variety of implants and advanced prosthetics years before the rot made its first mark upon human flesh. What first served as the final nail in the coffin of the world’s collapse, eventually turned into something as mundane as scheduling an appointment with your dentist for wisdom tooth removal. It’s not fun, painful for sure, but at some point, everyone will need to plan a replacement for a finger, hand, or arm, depending on how quickly the rot spreads and where they stand on the waitlists for their procedure. If they’re especially unlucky, they’ll be coming back to their local grinder—not everyone can afford a licensed implant surgeon in Mi-Byeok—for that tongue they swallowed in their sleep or the eyeball that all of a sudden went dark on them then fell out of their head while they suffered through a coughing fit spurred on by a failing lung.

Then there are people like K. The rot won’t touch her and seven percent of the world’s human population. Her flesh is unaffected, entirely her own. Her arms, legs, eyes, and beating heart. These rare individuals live and deteriorate at the natural pace humans were once more used to fearing. The slow decay of cells. Old age drapes it’s foul smelling and wrinkled blanket over a person’s flesh before their heart gets lazy or that liver gets too fatty. K has learned to be hated by most people for one or both of these reasons. She is a magpie, and she is a seven-percenter, unafflicted by the rot.

*** 

The client ends their previous meeting ten minutes past schedule but offers no apology. K doesn’t mind. Since entering the room, she’s been more interested in the client’s physical form than why she had to wait a little longer than scheduled. A torso of nude organic flesh, breasts, vampirically pale skin drawn taught over a ribcage, a winking navel, is all that seems untouched by replacements. A section of the client’s head seems organic as well, the area just above their eyebrows curving back to their occipital bone at the rear base of their skull. Every other aspect of the client’s form is comprised of distinctly non-humanoid replacements. A stasis providing egg without a tube of alien colored liquid or otherwise essentially props the client’s torso and connected upper skull up in a proper posture to face whom or whatever the client addresses. K has been staring since the meeting began, but she can’t bring herself to end her impolite inspection of how the egg manages to stay balanced, whether or not it moves, and more questions that she is still too entranced to voice.

“You will go to Pasadena, then?” the client says with their flat, genderless voice. “Today?”

“What?” K momentarily forgets where they were in the conversation. “Yes—No, I mean, I’ll head out tomorrow. It’s going to take fourteen hours or more to get my travel permit cleared.”

“Not an issue. Rose acquired a two-day yellow permit for you the moment the contract was signed.”

“Who’s Rose?”

“My assistant. You’ve already met her, just outside.”

K realizes that Rose must be the woman with extensive facial replacements, both synthetic and artificial, that sits behind the desk in the waiting room. Rose gold plating is a questionable choice, but the sleek lines of her eyes and the confident curves of her nose bridge and cheekbone carry an alluring air of refinement. While waiting, K watched the woman’s plump pink bottom lip crease under the soft habitual bite of her white teeth as her gleaming, rose gold forehead edged slightly closer to her monitor so that she could better read or inspect whatever was displayed there. That woman’s replacement work is incomparable to the client’s current situation.

“I’ll go today, then.” K sighs, readjusts her lazily crossed legs. “It’s going to be hot today, way out there...”

“It’s always hot in Pasadena.”

“I guess so, never been.”

The egg shifts forward with the soft purr of whatever technology keeps it afloat from the ground. “Magpie, did you know that there are still parrots in Pasadena?”

“Like the actual bird?”

“Yes. Not a human adopting the name of a bird, like yourself, but a real bird, with real feathers and a real voice.”

For a moment, K broods on how strange it is for the client to imply that she doesn’t have a voice. It’s more annoying than offensive. To satisfy her irritation, she imagines herself tipping over the ridiculous egg-torsoed creature floating before her. K takes to thinking of the client as the egg rather than the client, but she knows better than to address them as such.

“I doubt that’s true,” she says, trying to sound calm, “that there are Parrots or any other birds in Pasadena.”

The egg makes a noise like a hum. “Just let me know if you happen to see one while you’re there.”

K is silent, unsure if the egg is serious.

“Parrots or not, you’ll bring me what is in that man’s chest.”

“Right, the heart,” K says. “Is it an artificial? You didn’t—"

“And make sure you leave his body, his face especially, unrecognizable. I want bloody pulp and nothing less.”

“You know, that kind of thing is not really our forte…”

“Magpies are cruel things. I’m sure it’ll come naturally. You won’t be paid otherwise.”

*** 

After leaving the egg’s office, K learned that the Parrot’s brightly colored feathers were a common symbol of tropical relaxation. People would even wear shirts with images of parrots printed all over, leaving little space between beak and tail of one bird and the next. K tries to imagine the egg wearing one of these parrot print shirts over their scrawny torso while being supported by their hovering artificial structure. She laughs stupidly. Parrots may have been more loved than any of the corvids. The poor magpie never stood a chance.

Pasadena proves to be hot and boring. Nobody from Mi-Byeok or any of the zones comes out here, so K can’t come up for a reason that the host she’s been hired to track would. But she doesn’t find the host in Pasadena. Instead, K finds the host just beyond the northwestern corner of what used to be considered Pasadena in a place called Descanso Gardens. The gardens, which had been neglected for years then quickly thereafter entirely consumed by one wildfire or another, are also quite boring. When asked to clarify about the host’s most recent whereabouts, K’s data broker swore that the host would be here and not somewhere more central to Pasadena. They were right, but they didn’t mention that the host would already be dead.

By no explanation that K is willing to explore, a mostly intact blue tiled roof lies half supported by two half-split pillars and wedges of fractured concrete. It is beneath this uniquely preserved roof where the host’s body lies. K works her way over large slabs of concrete partly swallowed by the earth and beneath rotten piles of lumber before cautiously stepping under the roof. The host is fully organic male, a seven-percenter like herself. She knows this at a glance because his dried blood is red, brownish and black in some spots but not the blue and purple of those with artificial or synthetic replacements. A recently made precise incision at his chest causes her to fear the worst. With a hand buried to the wrist inside the open cavity, K’s fears are confirmed. There is no implant, only a dark, cold, cavity of pink flesh. She pulls the incision wide, the skin resisting the pressure of her fingers and forearms, and spots a glint of light. Her fingers reenter the opening in the man’s chest and fish around until her fingernail scratches something hard. She grabs it.

Pinched between K’s forefinger and thumb, a golden locket in the shape of a heart shines under the not-quite-Pasadena sun. K spits on the locket and wipes off the blood with her shirt before prying open the locket to see the tiny photo of a young woman inside. The woman’s face looks vibrant and healthy, but when K holds the locket closer, she notices a bandage on the side of her head, where her ear would be.

*** 

“Sorry to tell you,” K says, “but I didn’t see any parrots.”

The egg hums. “And you didn’t hear any?”

“Don’t think so”

“The sound a parrot makes when flying overhead is more like that of a child or small dog being violently strangled and shaken than any sound a songbird might make.”

K makes a point of furrowing her brows. “Sounds like a wonderful bird.”

“Not as wonderful as the magpie.”

K stands up, putting her head a full foot above the egg’s pale, fleshy skull cap.

“Are we done, here?”

More humming. “How about the body?”

“Pulp.”

“Was it easier than you thought?”

K doesn’t respond.

“Speak with Rose to receive your payment.”

Before leaving the room, K takes one last glance at the egg. The heart shaped locket is held against their chest by an extended mech hand previously hidden somewhere within the egg’s structure. K thinks she hears a sound like soft, human crying, but it ceases when the door closes behind her.