if you cross your fingers, ghosts will pass right through

good grief, I’ve heard people say it
what a phrase, what a state to be in
but I don’t know where they go to get, get
that feeling

They don't believe you. You suppose you can't blame them; maybe they could have handled you at five, even eight or ten, but you're an adult with more than a decade on either of them, twice her age and rapidly approaching twice his. Nothing in the words and actions they were built from could prepare them for the idea of you—or for the idea of them, remade in light by machines and fragmented memories.

You close your eyes when you shut down the simulation so you don't have to watch them flicker out of existence.

The parameters are surprisingly easy to adjust. You spare an idle thought for wondering whether Mairead has already assigned anyone to sift through the systems, then another for morbid amusement at the idea of dissecting digital corpses; however useful any insight to the current state of Capitol technology may be, you're glad that spending hours reprogramming and replaying simulations to examine the shape of the system underneath will be someone else's job. All you have to worry about right now are settings and names, bending time by one year and by thirty, and sitting still enough for a dress that hasn't been fashionable since the summer of 53 to materialize around you.

"I hear you have a lovely voice, Aisha," you say, forcing a smile onto your face—onto the face of Angerona Marcius, Capitol radio host—as you all but watch the data spiral as the digital ghosts of your parents race to justify what happened to the first part of the interview you've arranged. You barely made it through one round of introductions; you can't handle another today, not one where you give them fake names and watch them cling to one another and give you smiles through their blatant terror and try to remember what a stranger should know about them from broadcasts alone while ignoring that despite everything you're little more than that stranger yourself. You can't.

Fortunately, Roro lights up at the comment, genuine adoration breaking through his half-nervous and half-sullen stare. He and Mother are already curled together on a plush recording booth seat, but he reaches out for her hand and smiles softly at her. "The best in Seven."

"I don't know about that," Mother says, and although the hint of a warm blush touches her brown cheeks, she makes no effort to hide the smile that accompanies it. "You're biased, babe."

"I'm right."

You lace your hands, count your pulse, feel the bony press of your right hand's joints against the soft parts of your left hand's metacarpals, hold yourself still as a photo or a corpse. Angerona Marcius. "Maybe you could sing a little for us," you say, and perhaps you know from Mairead shaking her head at you and Peacekeepers eyeing your bags that you're a hopeless actress, but they're too distracted and too scared of Angerona—of you—of Angerona to call you on your obvious false beam. As far as they know, after all, a good impression here could mean sponsorship money next week. "I'm sure our listeners will be happy to decide the question." You take a sharp breath and then, because if Kawehi had successfully taught you not to twist the fucking knife you wouldn't be here, add, "Perhaps something you hope to sing for your daughter—?"

You're not prepared for how bizarre it is to see Mother rest a hand on her stomach and lean against Roro's shoulder, her face soft and fond in a way that wrenches something in your heart—count your pulse, feel the shift of heat and cold between your hands—even as you wonder how far the simulation runs, whether a baby version of you screams its way into temporary existence if someone replays the right fight. You shake your head a little, the most you can move without disrupting the hologram thinly layered over you. "Aisha?"

Obligingly she sits up and leans toward her and Roro's microphone. It's as fake as the rest of the recording booth, so she can swivel it toward her as she takes a breath; and you're expecting one of the songs you faintly remember from Roro, the ones Jana picked up from him and sang the best she could—the one about the mangoes, maybe, or the one you always asked for because maco chat allez mangé ou made you shiver in terror in a way you suppose you must once have loved, before you realized the world was actually terrifying—

"Hush, little baby," she begins, and you phase directly through the dress as you stand up.

Maybe she really would have sung that song to you. Even if not—even if the simulation has simply pulled it from some pool of what a Capitol assumes is common knowledge—this is definitely how it would have sounded in her voice. Which is one of the things you were looking for here, and one of the things you told yourself even a fake could offer you, because she never had the time or the heart or both to sing on camera but they have enough voice samples; and half of you wants to keep listening, wants to know, but...

"Not like this," you say, your voice at once shakier and colder than you intend. "Not like this."

This time, when you turn off the simulation, you keep your eyes open.

and my knees stay clean, not much for praying
I do my own stunts and my own saving
but there's something amiss,
something I been missing, maybe, maybe

Title song is "Don't Be Afraid" by The Paper Raincoat; lyrics song is "Good Grief" by Dessa. "Maco chat allez mangé ou"—a big cat will come to eat you up—is a line from the Trinidadian French Creole folk rhyme/lullaby "Petit Popo."