Diamond Girl, Paper Boy

"Tell me a story."

"Dad, that's not why I came."

"Why then?"

The son looks around the small room. The porous walls are draped with flexible touch displays that have all been turned off. He takes the chance to run the custom app he's bought for his ocular display to see if the services he's paying for here are being used. They aren't and with a flick of his eyes, he sends a memo to his assistant about it.

"The doctor said you're getting worse." With another flick, he answers a call from work and sics his auto-responder on it. The little app is handling three other calls and the transcripts of the AI imitating his responses and voice patterns flow down the left side of the display. That app has been a life saver.

Amid all the other information on the display, he sees a smudgy, dark icon in the area beside his father's bed. Not an icon, really. A blur. A black void. It must be a glitch in the custom app from the healthcare facility. He's never seen it before.

"Then tell me a story," the father says again. He's small in the bed, wrinkled and wan, hooked to a series of beeping machines that look like they came from the middle of the 21st century. The son glances a note to his assistant about it, then another about one of the calls he's on.

"Like I used to tell you. When we lived on Earth. Before you sent me to this rock."

"It's the best care facility in the system, Dad–"

The father holds up a quivering hand.

"It's a fine asteroid. A fine facility." The simple gesture has drained him and the strange shadow at the bottom of the display shudders slightly. The son dismisses it. It never ceases to amaze him how the healthcare industry can be so advanced in some therapies and drugs and so behind in tech. The facility’s app is a dinosaur.

"Tell me about the diamond girl," the father sighs.

"Dad." He stalls but a version of the old fairy tale — prompted by their conversation — is scrolling onto his display.

"Humor me," the father says.

"Fine," he says, skipping to the synopsis. "Once upon a time, Michael and Jennifer lived with their mom and one day, they came home to find a new video game console–"

The father coughs, a wracking cough that dances clumsily amid a coterie of ancient and high-pitched beeps. The shadow bounces like it's trying to say something. He tries to focus on it with his eye, but it doesn’t select.

This app is worse than I thought.

"That's not right,” the father says.

The son frowns, then skims the rest of the story, stops and sighs.

"More tech-shaming, Dad?"

"What?"

"Diamond Girl and Paper Boy is generally thought to be a Luddite story where the goblin and his mirror represent the evils of technology..." he reads.

"You're reading it from the 'works? Don't you remember it?"

"Really, Dad? If you'd just get an implant or two, you wouldn't be here."

The father shakes his head.

"That's not what the story's about. At least not when I told it."

"Really? Then what's it about?"

"Just tell it," the father says, convulsing into another, wet cough. "Like I told it."

The son glances through the summary. It's replaced everything with the technology modern scholars have determined its supposed to represent, but he thinks he can remember and tries to swap as he goes.

"So Michael and Jennifer come home and find a goblin, who offers them a magic mirror that can show them anything. Michael looks, but Jennifer helps their mother with the chores.

"When the goblin returns, Michael learns another look will cost him a piece of his flesh. He agrees and replaces the chunk with a piece of paper." He looks up. “I never understood that part honestly. How did he do that?”

The father waves it away.

“It is a fairy story, son, and if you thought harder, you’d remember there was more to it than that, but I will take what I can get from you. Go on.”

The son pauses, distracted by something in one of the transcripts and the bouncing of that unfamiliar shadow. Is it a different app? Bouncing on his peripheral? Maybe some malware that came with the facility app?

"Go on," the father says. The son shakes himself.

"The mother grows ill and Jennifer goes out to get work, but the world is dark and terrible, ruled over by a wicked king who oppresses the people with heavy taxes. Still, she's kind-hearted and good and helps everyone she meets. The work is tough, however, and as she toils, she becomes sick herself and pieces of her body begin to fall off. But the kind people love her and secretly replace this fallen flesh with diamonds they've hidden from the king.

"So Michael sells more and more of himself to become lost in the mirror and becomes made entirely of paper. And Jennifer works to help the people until her body has been entirely replaced with diamonds...."

He stops, suddenly remembering what comes next.

"And they lived happily ever after," he says lamely. The old machines beep. Somewhere far off, a ship is taking off.

"Well?"

"What?"

"What about Death?"

"Dad."

"You don't remember? Or doesn't your app tell you? How Death comes in the end and tells them he's come for them?"

The shadow becomes more insistent and the son tries to glance it away and fails. He blinks a note to start the diagnostic AI behind his implant, but it tells him nothing is wrong.

"What happens next?"

The son squirms.

"Death takes their mother," he says finally. There's another call, and the notification that the auto-responder has reached his limit.

"Death takes their mother," the father says. "Do you remember? The boy is overcome by guilt that he has done nothing to help her, has barely spoken to her in years, so he weeps and his tears consume the flimsy paper body he's traded for.

"But the girl, she sheds tears of diamond and uses these to help the downtrodden people overcome the wicked king—."

He coughs violently and the shadow flares up. The son suddenly and stupidly realizes that it's not on his display. It's a real thing in the room. He shouts, standing.

"You never understood," the father croaks.

"What is this?"

"You know."

The shadow turns and the son sees a pale face, a jutting, bony finger. His ocular display alerts him that his heart rate has risen dangerously high.

"Father—"

"I've always wondered which of the two—"

The father's rasping words are swallowed by his ancient machines, their chirping replaced by a single whir.

The son gapes at the empty tabernacle in the bed.

Death smiles and says, "I do not wonder."

Then he is gone, leaving the son alone with his notifications and the body of his father and the tears flooding up behind his ocular implants.