In this issue: In a climate-stressed future, a stubborn grandmother resists evacuation from an extreme weather zone. But her equally stubborn daughter is determined to preserve her legacy. See what plays out in Zach Hyman’s story, third-place in our protocol fiction contest, Ghosts in Machines!
The Adaptation Force’s glideskiff floats above a half-submerged road. Molding lowrises and glistening scaffolds, slowly being overtaken by algae from above and floodwaters from below, flank the ship. Inside, a team runs flood calculations, reviews the latest evacuation protocols, and pings the public surveillance network to search for signs of remaining residents and match them to knot records.
“Network indicates reports of about 30 residents still onsite,” the team’s field engineer and pilot grumbles, shaking his head at the incomplete profile flags blinking in the console. “Most are coming across as probable non-compliant… mostly Pre-AMOC Shift folks.”
The Pre-AMOC Shift generation was the last group born before the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, back when the planet’s weather systems were still moderately predictable.
Shaking her head, Ping, the meteorologist and team lead, mutters, “Why is it always the elders?”
“Maybe it’ll make sense one day when we’re old and grumpy, eh?” grins the engineer. “We’re closing in on high ground docking coordinates, ETA six minutes.”
As the glideskiff slows to a halt in front of the old school-turned-field-ops base, Ping is the first out the door, kicking out a folding set of stairs as anchors drop. She steps out of the calm, climate-controlled cabin into air perfumed with bruised citrus and scalding engine components. Her first few footsteps draw squelches from the sodden turf. Looking up, Ping freezes, her back straightening: a view she’s revisited often in her dreams, but not seen in reality for decades. Her heartbeat crashing in her ears, Ping sees the refracted purple glow of a flickering neon sign reflected on the rainslicked, potholed street. Lin Store 47 – 林家商店47號 – ร้านยามาลิน สาขา ๔๗
Ama had renamed it years ago, after the chain that originally owned it, Lucky Star, went under during the Second Credit Collapse. She kept the store number for familiarity’s sake, although Store 46 and Store 48 had surely long since disappeared.
The only remnants of the old corporate structure were its long-deprecated management system, which Ping recalled for its colorful personality.
Ping signals the team to continue checking for holdouts and strides across the field towards the store, her pulse quickening with each step.
Through the smeared glass, Ping eyes shelves cluttered with emergency protein gel sticks, family-sized electrolyte bricks, colorful stimpatch narcotic strips, and dusty solar kettles. Inside, several Pre-AMOC residents calmly go about their business; a couple argues over whose turn it is to choose the flavor of electrolyte brick they’re buying this week before settling on Calamansi Lime, while a woman loads chives and ginger into her battered old Piaggio Gita cargo bot.
Step inside the store? → A steady soundtrack of frantic chirps and wailing sirens provide background ambiance, as customers’ comms devices plead with them to evacuate.
Presiding serenely over it all from her perch behind the scuffed duracrete counter, now a pockmarked terrazzo of patches of thermobamboo laminate after years of repairs, sits Ama. The smell of her sobacha mixes with the plastic tang of damp stimpatches and the faint mustiness of ionized refrigerant, an aroma cocktail that instantly transports Ping back to long-ago rainy afternoons.
Ama looks up, quietly regarding Ping.
Suddenly, from behind Ping, a voice: “Dearie, where are the State Ration Packs you folks always hand out?” Ping turns. A gnarled old man regards her quizzically from behind arms piled high with neon green, Pandan-flavored electrolyte bricks. “I want those ginger-flavored energy biscuits they always put in there… y’know, the chewy ones!”
“Ginger biscuits?! How can you possibly be thinking about cookies in a time like this?!” Ping replies indignantly. “My team is here to help safely evacuate you all! This place is going to be underwater!”
Another elder, juggling a battery of onions, nudges her. “Hey, Ms. Helpful, are you just going to stand there and let an old lady be crushed to death beneath her vegetables, or are you going to help carry all this?”
Huffily, Ping grabs the onions and follows the woman toward the door. Crossing the threshold, a chipper voice calls out, instantly transporting Ping back over twenty years into the past:
Customer Lanna Heng: Lucky Star loyalty program member 27 years, autodiscount applied… conventional discount system overridden, Lin Store Elite Cucumber-level loyalty tier program member 227 years, discount applied; extreme weather event discount, applied; friends and family discount, applied; total bill of three credits, have a wonderful day!
As Ping steps back inside, Ama laughs gently, saying, “Don’t mind Lanna, she just wants what she wants.”
Putting a hundred burning questions aside, Ping leans against the counter, feeling the deep grooves worn by decades of scrubbing. “Grandma, please tell me you’re going to evacuate.”
Ama quietly looks at Ping with her trademark gaze, equal parts sharp and warm, much like the first few seconds after applying a stimpatch. Ping opens her mouth again, then hesitates. Ama reaches across the counter and squeezes her hand.
“Where would I go, child? Your mother still won’t talk to me, and I will not be put into some climate adaptation center where I’m treated like cattle. This store is my home. It needs me. These people need me.”
Step closer to Ama? → Ping feels her face flush, sensing everything she wants to say boiling beneath the surface.
A shrill comms alert splits the air, followed by the team engineer’s voice struggling to conceal anxiety: “Ping, uh, listen, we’ve got a critical blockage on infra-subgrid 14. The drainage sensors... they’re stuck in this weird feedback loop, and I can’t patch in to fix it remotely… I think we need an on-site override.”
With a heavy sigh, Ping turns to jog out the door into the intensifying downpour.
● you are here — The Glideskiff That night, Ping lays in her bunk, listening to the static roar of the rain, her face illuminated by the glow of her comm as her husband’s face flickers into focus. Blearyeyed, he struggles to hold their squirming daughter on his lap.
Lights out aboard the skiff? → “She’s still awake?” Ping asks.
“Refused to sleep, kept saying ‘mama’, so I thought better of arguing with her.”
Ping smiles through her fatigue as her daughter waves madly before clambering off of her husband’s lap and crawling away from the viewpane. Her Beaing, a glowing green tortoise, follows her, supervising.
“My dear, you look positively deep-fried...” his voice tinged with concern.
“Long day. Look, you won’t believe this, but I found Ama. She’s alive. Still running the store like it’s… like a time warp. Nothing’s changed.”
“Whoa. After all this time…”
“Yeah, right?! She didn’t even flinch when I walked in! I always imagined all the things I’d tell her if I saw her again, all the things I’d ask, but now, I just felt... sadness? Anger? Regret?”
“Did you ask her why she cut ties?”
“No way – that’s way too much right now... I just want her to evacuate safely, this whole area is sinking.”
“So, she’s going, right?”
“Completely refused. She says her customers, a bunch of Pre-AMOC old-timers like her, need her. She’s patched the store’s outdated systems so many times, and filled it with so much of her own personality and preferences for all her friends… I think she’s just too attached to it all.”
“To be fair, she’s probably poured a lot more of herself into that store than we’ll ever know.”
He pauses.
“Look, love. If she really won’t evacuate… what about getting her to upload herself into your Airloom?”
Ping’s comm illuminates the tears she struggles to hold back.
“Is that really the only option?”
“Maybe. But if she won’t leave, how else will our daughter ever know her? We never get all the time we want with our loved ones, but an Airloom is better than nothing, right? And you keep saying the Airloom is thin on your side.”
“It is! Yours is a cathedral. Mine’s… well, basically a falling-down convenience store.” She laughs bitterly.
“Love, this isn’t about winning some ancestral arms race.”
“Isn’t it?! You’ve seen what our friends’ kids can do when they can converse with fullspectrum Airlooms spanning generations! I just want that same thing for her...”
Ping’s husband rubs his temples and shuts his eyes, “I want that too! But if she won’t leave… what else can you do? Can I come and force her?”
“No, no, that’d only make things worse… if you think I’m stubborn, well, you wouldn’t believe how stubborn Ama can be. Probably why she and Mom don’t speak anymore. You should see this store, she’s made it to be like the inside of her own head.”
“I get it… then the Airloom is our best option, right?”
Ping closes her eyes and grimaces.
“I know, it’s just that… I spent so long feeling angry at her. And now that she’s suddenly back here, I don’t know what to say. ‘Hey, glad to know you’re alive. Can you please upload all your memories into this thing?’ What if she just wants to… disappear?”
Morning. Back to the store? → Ping hesitates for a moment before stepping over the threshold, out of the rain and back into her namesake store.
A warm chime, followed by a staticky voice, crackles:
Customer Ping Lin: Lin Store Hyper-elite Durian-level loyalty tier program member 1,348 years, welcome! Hyper-elite status loyalty discount applied!
Ping’s eyes narrow. “This old store OS was supposed to be decommissioned decades ago, Ama… this system isn’t even on the certified registry anymore! If it glitches during the flood…”
Ama rolls her eyes like an exasperated teenager. “I know every fuse and wire in this place. I’ve patched its code more times than I can count. Don’t worry so much!”
As if on cue, the store chime sounds:
Drought-Season Discount now active. Hydration bricks 16% off if purchased with an umbrella!
Ama smiles faintly. “Well, it usually works well enough.”
Listen to the old OS on the counter? → “Ama, won’t you please reconsider and leave with us? The team has to move on to the next evacuation site in a few hours, but there’s still time to get a space on the vessel that’s leaving. Please?”
Ama clucks her tongue. “Ping, I can’t do that. I’m the only one who can keep this store running. I’d be betraying those who remain here, people who I’ve known for decades, people who…”
“You have more loyalty to these people and this falling-apart store than to your own family?! You don’t care if your great-granddaughter never knows you?!”
Ama casts her gaze downwards, considering the worn countertop.
Ping fumbles in her satchel, and pulls out a small, black, polished disc, etched with circuits. She slides it across the grooved countertop surface towards Ama.
The token slides across the counter → “This is an Extensible Airloom Token. If you truly refuse to leave, then won’t you at least add your memories to our family’s Airloom? Your great-granddaughter deserves the chance to know you. Even if you don’t care whether you know her.”
Ama regards the token warily. “What is there to know? I’m just an old woman who runs a falling-apart convenience store, right?”
Ping sighs exasperatedly, leaning against the counter. “Ama, spare me the theatrics. You know, you were the one who taught me to love people. To feed them. To care. You taught me kindness.”
A gust of wind rips a turbine loose from the store’s roof. It clatters to the sidewalk.
“Ah, my dear, it’s not that simple. Why do you think I patched this store’s inventory systems in the first place? This store… it knows about the data I had to spoof after I found out your grandfather had been stealing the store’s lottery tickets… it knows about the milk powder that I had to alter the expiration dates on so it would let me discard them, so that I could feed it to your mother when she had just been born and we had no money for such things…”
Ping gazes across the counter, trying to read the wrinkles in Ama’s face like the lines on an inscrutable map. “Ama, come on! I know you did the very same things for your customers! You gave credit to the families that couldn’t afford food, just like you’d give free candies to students on the last day of school!”
Ama sighed, shaking her head. “That’s why I can’t leave, my dear. No other surviving stores in this place have any conscience. Prices are algo-dictated. There’s nowhere else that recognizes them not just what they can pay, but what they’re going through. There’s only me. What other store would give discounts to people buying emergency supplies during this storm? Where is the Adaptation Force for these people?”
“Ama, these people don’t need discounts, they need to escape! You need to get out of here! This place is going to be underwater! It isn’t going to exist anymore!”
Ama’s back straightens, eyes sparkling ferociously. “As long as they are here, then I’m here. Even after the floodwaters come and go, this place will still exist. The corporate algorithms and Adaptation Force teams may not care if this community survives, but I do.”
Ping clenched her jaw. “And what happens if you don’t survive? What good is a principled stand if you and this store are washed away?!”
Ama leans on the counter, leveling her gaze at Ping. “Then I disappear. You think the Airloom would understand this store, and how it and I work together? You’ve always wanted everything to be fair and correct, Ping. I know. You inherited that from me. But the world rarely lets you be both right and kind. This store… it showed me how it’s one thing to break the rules to help yourself, but another to break them for the ones you love.”
Ama reaches out, absentmindedly spinning the token like the coin of an ancient realm. It whirs drunkenly over the patterns and grooves of the counter before catching an edge, and rolling to a stop in front of Ping. “It’s not that I’m afraid, Ping. It’s that I don’t want to be remembered as a tidy file of nice sayings. I want to be remembered in the way that this store, this community, remembers me.”
As if on cue, the store’s chime sparks back to life:
Rain event category updated to: Beyond Severe. Spicy Mango Jerky Flash Sale activated! Buy two, get two free! For residents with barometric sensitivity, antihistamine bundles are now nine credits with ration point matching enabled. Stay dry out there!
Ping stared at her grandmother, unsure whether to laugh or cry.
The rain lashes harder, ten thousand fingers drumming anxiously on the store’s battered roof.
“... but if that thing can hold all of this,” she said softly, gesturing around the store, “the full story… if it can remember me inside of the store, and not apart from it… then yes. I would do it. But it has to hold everything.”
Ping nodded, throat tight. “I’ll try my best to keep it all intact. I promise. Although, full disclosure, I have no idea what happens when you try to upload… an entire store…”
They’re interrupted by a shrill alarm over the store speakers:
Warning: Water ingress level critical. Emergency systems nearing operational threshold. Final backup containment protocols recommended. Engage now?
Engage? → Ama gives a small nod, “It would seem it’s apt time to find out.” Looking up, Ama barks, “LS-OS, stand by to engage final backup containment protocols.” Ping hurriedly speaks a few code-incantations while waving her hand over the token, then instructs Ama to place her hand upon it.
At first, nothing.
Then gradually, a quiet humming fills the room, forming a counterpoint bassline to the rain’s frantic drumming. The OS crackles through static:
Initializing memory uptake. Cross-system integration sequence engaged. Please do not remove object during sync. Stay safe out there, everyone!
The humming bassline intensifies as the store’s lights begin rhythmically dimming and brightening, long-forgotten protocols being awoken. Then, a new tone. Not quite warning, not quite celebratory:
Sync anomaly detected. Context capacity inadequate, engaging override protocols to sync with auxiliary nodes recommended. Engage now?
Ama blinks. “Hmm, that’s a new one… I’m not even sure what that means. LS-OS, can you explain what…”
The new tone again, impatient this time.
Inadequate time. Engaging override protocols, mirror-syncing to Lucky Star mesh network and KnotLine v.3.7 protocols. Please do not remove object during sync. Enjoy discounts on high-protein tofu shakes for the next hour! Stay hydrated out there, everyone!
Ping’s comm device buzzes violently as an Airloom notification illuminates the screen:
ALERT: Node type mismatch detected – expected “Individual Memory Object,” received “Multi-sensor Retail Complex.” Proceed? Y/N
Grimacing, Ping chooses “Y.”
Generating hybrid mnemonic-store schema: “AmaStore_L47_HeartVariant1.0”
WARNING: Object memory exceeds recommended bandwidth parameters. Packetizing irregularities into sub-narrative threads.
WARNING: Latency expected in moral alignment calibration.
Ping’s comms device continues to light up with floods of nonsensical notifications, as the thrumming mechanical bassline intensifies and the store’s lights flicker even more frantically.
Outside, water laps at the top step of the store’s entrance.
Ping, blinking back tears, reaches over the counter, wrapping her arms around her grandmother, as the lights cut out.
Weeks later, across the province → In the following weeks, Ping would activate the Airloom and suddenly find herself transported to familiar aisles, surrounded by fluorescent lights and refrigeration units.
Other times, it was only Ama’s voice, disembodied but clear, offering unsolicited advice on electrolyte brick flavors or explaining how to reheat leftover dumplings.
Simultaneously, Ping began to hear reports of unexplainable events across the province’s snack kiosks and convenience stores. Grandparents purchasing heatwraps were thanked by name. Children buying spicy mango jerky were auto-credited with coupons for free second bags, each one reading, “just this once!” Across the tangled mesh of KnotLine protocols and deprecated Lucky Star store codebase residuals, Ama’s consciousness had scattered like light through a prism.
Step up to the ghost machine? → And sometimes, late at night, as rain pelted the windows, Ping would sit with her daughter and whisper stories about a stubborn old woman who ran a magical store that always looked out for you.
Loyalty · written at the Good Ghosting workshop · Protocolized (Summer of Protocols), 2025