A few months before the Bubble burst, Cora’s sister was stopped at the border and denied entry into Mexico.
“Why would they detain Luz?” Her father called her as soon as they got back to Bakersfield. He sounded genuinely befuddled.
“Dad . . .” Cora struggled to put it in words that her father might understand.
Her sister Luz had light blue hair and light purple skin and she levitated when she wanted to, but also, she emanated a radical calm. It was this serenity more than anything that was threatening to those with guns and uniforms. Border agents didn’t want to feel calm, they wanted to feel in control. They wanted those crossing to know they were in control.
Luz had access to a higher power and was herself evidence of a higher power. Of course they weren’t going to let her cross.
“They took her passport. Could you look after her until I can sort her paperwork out?”
Cora agreed, even though her dad had never sorted out a single piece of paperwork in his life. That had always been her mom’s job.
Her dad was eager to return to his hometown after too many years away. Bacalar was said to be the next Tulum, which meant it was being colonized by American expats. It was mostly hipsters with remote tech jobs, gleeful at the cheap rent and clean air. Their mom had hated to travel—now that she was gone, he felt free to go. He wanted to get back to whatever was left of it before it disappeared completely.
He wasn’t a great caretaker for Luz anyhow. Cora’s sister was so holy she would forget to drink and eat. She would sit out all day in the sun and meditate while sunburn turned her purple skin pink. She had to be reminded to do normal things. Their mother had been the one to take care of this. But then she passed away suddenly one night in her sleep. This had happened last year.
Cora’s dad and sister seemed oddly unbothered by this. The sentiment was, well, she’s in the next life—we’ll see her again.
“Okay, but Dad, I’m technically homeless.” Cora was squatting in a San Francisco studio she’d been evicted from. The utilities had been shut off. There was an encampment of anti-gentrification protestors outside her front door. That was pretty much the only thing keeping a roof over her head.
“Luz can earn money.”
In Bakersfield, where they had grown up, Luz would levitate at the edge of the Walmart parking lot. Such was the radiating calm of Luz that people would actually throw money in her tip jar. If she could make $20 a day in Bakersfield, she might be able to make ten times that in San Francisco. Then Cora could afford rent on an apartment, one that had both electricity and running water.
“It might be nice to have her company.” Cora suddenly realized she was lonely. There was another path forward, but she couldn’t walk it alone.
* * *
Luz was too weird to ever make it past security at an airport, so their father put her on a train north. Should Luz be traveling alone? Cora didn’t know. But she arrived safely at the station and was easy to spot. No other people are purple. Luz wore her usual monk’s robes and clutched her ticket stub in one hand, a bouquet of flowers in the other.
“Are you okay?” asked Cora.
Luz nodded.
“The ride was okay?”
Luz nodded again.
“And someone gave you those?”
People were always giving Luz presents. It was one of the perks of being holy. Luz handed the bouquet to her sister. Milkweed and orange poppies—a handpicked bouquet of wildflowers, beautiful and mostly wilted.
Luz had no luggage. Not a spare set of robes or even the bell set she liked to ring. If she was still alive, their Mom would have packed for her. Would probably have ridden the train with Luz, too. No point in bringing this up with Dad, who would just insist that Mom was there
“in spirit.” He would declare that there was no need to pack for Luz. The things she needed would find her.
And this was true in the sense that Cora would buy Luz more bells and robes when she could afford to. Luz didn’t need much; all she liked to do was meditate and ring bells. She was very close to attaining enlightenment. It would either be this life or the next.
Cora and Luz didn’t look much alike despite supposedly being sisters. They had the same high cheekbones and the same shape and color of eyes. But Cora had normal-colored skin, that is to say brown, like the rest of the family. Luz was born lavender, like many babies, but unlike most babies, she had stayed that color. Her hair didn’t turn blue until after she graduated from spiritual high school. It had been black like Cora’s before.
Cora put Luz to work right away. She didn’t like putting her sister on display like this, it felt like exploitation. But the food stamps had run out and she was hungry.
Cora set her up in Mission Dolores Park, under the shade of a tree. Luz sat on the ground, shut her eyes, and after a moment, began to float. She bobbed for a while until she found her elevation, about a foot off the ground.
“Wow, how does she do that?” a hipster asked.
“I don’t know,” said Cora, because she didn’t. The hipster rummaged around in his pockets for some money to throw in the tip jar, but came up empty.
“Does she take Venmo?”
“Sure,” said Cora, and then wrote her own handle on Luz’s sign. Cora had gone to spiritual high school as well, though she hadn’t been valedictorian like her older sister. At spiritual high school you learned you weren’t supposed to feel entitled to gifts from others. Cora had always struggled with this. Why shouldn’t those who had less feel like they deserved more? She looked over at her serene sister and tried to feel serenity herself.
People brought Luz offerings. It was almost an instinctive thing, a form of worship. Offerings came in the form of money (most useful), but also flowers (least useful) and food.
“What does she like to eat?” a white girl in expensive sunglasses asked.
“She will only eat vegan food, but I will eat anything.” It took a lot of willpower not to put in a request. There were $20 burritos at Papalote that Cora had always wanted to try. Sandwiches at Rhea’s were supposed to be good, but they were $18, same price as a cheese plate at Bi-Rite.
The girl returned with two bowls of vegan curry from the health food store, and Cora thanked her. Bowing deeply, she did her best to hide her disappointment.
Some of the onlookers joined in the meditation. It was a calm and quiet corner of a crowded and busy park. Even the rowdy, poorly behaved dogs that liked to chase Frisbees seemed to pick up on the energy. The dogs walked over and sat calmly with the others.
Luz would chant om when she was finished and Cora would take her home. Cora knew she would meditate after they went inside. She never slept. But Cora needed a good night’s sleep because tomorrow she would be back at the job center.
Their mother had practiced acutonics, a type of healing that uses tuning forks. Their father was a “professor” of magic at an online “university.” They had been puzzled at Cora’s insistence on participating in the mainstream capitalist economy, and in tech, no less. All Cora knew was that she didn’t want to live in a trailer in Bakersfield. The dusty air was filled with pesticides and viruses. If you got sick no amount of acutonics would save you.
Cora had moved to San Francisco and brought her meditation practice with her. She struggled each day to clear her mind. Meditation is serious business, and dangerous too. Every time you sit down with yourself you run the risk of encountering an insight that will change your entire existence. For Cora the insight was this: the entire economy revolved around the whims and biases of rich people. Every middle-class person was part beggar, part slave. You could either start a revolution or you could become ultra-wealthy yourself. Cora decided to learn how to code.
Being a college dropout will lend your app credibility in San Francisco, but only if you are white and male and your parents are rich. Cora had an app that would put you in contact with people you knew from your past lives. She had an app that would take a photo of your aura and then analyze it. She had an app, inspired by her mother, that would use the phone’s vibration capabilities to send a pattern of “healing vibes” to the user. These were all high-rated apps that had improved the lives of dozens of people, yet none had made a million dollars. You could not capitalize on the spiritual well-being of the public. On the contrary, the market seemed to reward karmically negative practices.
Or maybe Cora just didn’t know the right people. Success was all about access. She spent her time at the job center applying for positions at prestige companies like Google and Apple. Her counselor tried to steer her towards more menial work, saying that Cora lacked the “proper qualifications.” Qualifications were things like 5+ years’ experience in C++ or a BA/BS in Computer Science or a related field. But every job wanted a “problem solver” and Cora was great at solving problems (actual problems, not the bullshit made-up dilemmas of the ego-driven). All she needed was an in-person interview. Then they would hire her. Then they would see. She sent several psychic messages to top CEOs, but none got back to her, telepathically or otherwise. She understood then that no one with power was ever going to help her.
Before the Bubble burst it deflated a little. Tech companies began laying people off. Cora knew firsthand how unhelpful traditional job centers were. In the lower floor of her abandoned apartment building, Cora set up an alternative job center. She gave out coupon codes for free copies of her app and provided catering in the form of the leftover offerings from Luz’s increasingly lucrative Mission Dolores sessions.
There was no electricity, but you could steal wi-fi from the Pilates studio across the street. The Pilates studio had remained open despite the squatters and protestors. In fact, they had begun free community classes so the protestors and squatters could get in touch with their cores and realign their centers. This was one of many signs an age of enlightenment was about to hit the city.
Cora’s job center in the basement apartment was lit by candles and the glow of screens. For the first meeting, Cora performed chakra cleanses. There was a lot of energetic buildup in the throat chakras of laid-off techies, lots of blockage in their third eyes. Cora decided her next app would focus on sound healing, and though nobody at her meeting claimed to have any money, several developers offered to code for her in exchange for founders’ shares.
During the day Luz would float in the park and at night Luz would float in the alternative job center. She brought a lot of calm to a lot of people.
“Don’t you want any alone time?” asked Cora.
Luz shook her head no, and Cora thought that Luz might feel her job was to be among the people, among seekers and pilgrims. Cora didn’t know if that was an original thought or one Luz had transmitted telepathically.
In the park, during the day, Cora collected donations on Luz’s behalf. At night, in the job center, Cora refused all donations. She believed that she was following Luz’s intentions, but Luz didn’t speak and telepathic messages were hard to parse.
After a few days of park sessions, there was enough money coming in to pay rent, but rent is for serfs. Cora decided the money would be used for vegan food and to help the needy.
But who were the needy? All the unenlightened were needy. Cora bought a string of Christmas lights to decorate her job center and powered them with stolen electricity. The job center was part of Cora’s project to aid the unenlightened. Rather than trying to help laid-off techies find new jobs, the point of it was to help them realize that they didn’t need jobs.
But someone at the job center did get a job offer. And that person was Cora.
To read the rest, you can purchase the Spring 2023 SomaFlights special issue here.
