Repo
A world by Ari Weaver
Repo
In São Paulo in 2071 you can buy a new arm or a new pair of lungs on credit, and if you miss three payments a van comes to take them back. You ride in that van with Jussara, an ex-nurse whose licence makes it legal. Tonight the list has Dona Celeste on it. She taught you to read, and she's three months behind on her lungs. A back-alley surgeon wants those lungs, and Tainá, who hides people like her, wants you on her side.
Playing as Traveler·
It's ten past eleven, and the van is parked outside the all-night bakery on Estrada de Itapecerica with the engine on for the heater. Jussara has a ham-and-cheese toastie in one hand and the tablet in the other, and she's reading tonight's list aloud the way she reads everything, with the amounts.
“Parque Santo Antônio, right arm, seven thousand two hundred. The lady in Jardim Ângela with the eyes, she always pays once she sees the van.” She chews. “Campo Limpo, a left hand, eleven thousand, he's nineteen, God help us. Amaral, Celeste. Lungs...”
She stops. The toastie stays where it is, halfway to her mouth.
She turns the tablet round. In the photo, a small woman with dyed auburn hair and grey roots frowns over reading glasses on a beaded cord, the way she used to frown at your handwriting. Dona Celeste taught your first-grade class at the school up the hill, the one with the avocado tree.
“Nine thousand eight hundred with fees,” Jussara says. “Rodrigo's flagged it from the office, so if we don't do it tonight it goes to Cléber's van tomorrow, and Cléber doesn't wait for the anaesthetic to take.” She wipes her fingers on a napkin. “I've still got one 'not home' left this month.”
She holds the tablet out between you, her thumb resting next to the grey NOT HOME button.
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