Down in the Sea of Angels

by Khan Wong

Genres: Fantasy; Fantasy action & adventure; Urban Fantasy; General Fiction; Science Fiction; Dystopian; Time Travel

Synopsis

An intense and thoughtful time-travelling dystopian fantasy where three individuals, psychically linked through time, fight enslavement, exploitation, and environmental collapse. A great read for fans of Emily St. John Mandel.

In 2106, Maida Sun possesses the ability to see the entire history of any object she touches. When she starts a job with a cultural recovery project in San Francisco with other psions like her, she discovers a teacup that connects her with Li Nuan, a sex-traffificked girl in a 1906 Chinatown brothel, and with Nathan, a tech-designer and hedonist of 2006.

A chance encounter with a prominent political leader reveals to Maida his plan to contain everyone with psionic abilities, eliminate their personal autonomy, and use their skills for his own gain. Maida is left with no choice but to join a fight she doesn’t feel prepared for, with flashes of the past, glimpses of the future and a band of fellow psions as her only tools. She must find a way to stop this agenda before it takes hold and destroys life as she knows it. Can the past give Maida the key to saving her future?

Release date: April 22, 2025

Publisher: Angry Robot

Print pages: 400

Sample

1.

MAIDA

March 4, 2106

Marshall Cove, San Francisco

A dozen drones buzzed right in my face when I got there. Beside the bonfire, a scruffy guy in coveralls fidgeted with a tablet, tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth in concentration, presumably controlling these things. A tinkerer of some kind? Amber and green telemetry twinkled in the glass of his goggles. The drones turned away from me and back towards him in a sort of swooping torus configuration, the trails of their little lights making loops in the air. It was quite lovely, actually.

“Hi!” someone called, waving. The fire roared behind them, masking their face in silhouette and haloing the cloud of their hair. “Are you Maida?”

“That’s me.” Something whirred by my head – a mosquito? Big one, it sounded like. But then the blinking light caught my eye – another drone, larger than the others, flying obnoxiously close. How many could this guy fly at once?

“I’m Aviva,” said the stout, brown-skinned woman who greeted me. “Lead Archivist.” My new boss. She bowed her head and shoulders. Was this a thing with cultural workers, or this city in general, or was it her own personal thing?

“Happy to meet you.” My return bow was more awkward than I wanted, and the growler I had hooked on one finger hit my sternum a couple of times. “I brought some Old San Francisco amber.”

“Oh, you’re fancy.” Her laugh rang bright as crystal. “I hope you didn’t expend luxury credits for this.”

“What are they for if not to expend? Anyway, I was raised better than to show up at a party emptyhanded.”

“That’s kind of you. Just put it with the rest of the drinks over there.” She pointed to a spot on the other side of the fire.

“Hey –” a jovial voice wavered toward us. The drone flyer, obviously tipsy, set one of his devices whirring around us in low, overhead circles as he ambled up to me and Aviva. It looked like he’d put the others away, and his goggles were now atop his forehead. “Are you the new psychic?”

“That I am.” It was a struggle to keep my annoyance at the term “psychic” out of my voice. Nul-psis – that is, people who do not have psionic abilities, which was most of the population – tended to default to the term “psychic,” an old-school term that evoked associations with turban appropriating charlatans waving their hands over crystal balls. I wasn’t going to say anything, since I was going to be working with these people for a while, plus the tide of common vernacular was sometimes just too big a thing to hold back. At least he wasn’t being hateful about it. Still, I decided to push myself and establish boundaries, given the opportunity. “The proper term is ‘psion’.”

I managed to keep my voice steady, but my palms were damp and my face flushed hot and felt warmer than the bonfire-toasted breeze. I hated confrontation, no matter how minor. Luckily, my pulse sounded only in my ears. I hoped there wasn’t a telepath around.

“Right,” he said, nodding. Was he really taking it in? “The last one was clairvoyant. What kind are you?”

“Roan, you could at least introduce yourself before you start demanding typology.” Aviva met my eyes with a sympathetic look and seemed to be apologizing for her colleague – now my colleague, too.

“I’m Roan Flynn, Technology Specialist for the Cultural Recovery Project.” He performed an exaggerated bow. “I get old devices to talk to us again and help maintain the Precursor Cultural Database, as well as our division’s archive of field recordings. And now that I have shared my specialty, won’t you share yours?”

“Psychometry. Do you know –”

“Is that the one where you talk with animals?”

“No. That’s a telepathy variant.”

Roan whispered “psychometry” to himself over and over. “You know the distance of things?”

“Maybe you could let Maida tell us,” Aviva chided. She gave me a little nod with a hint of a smile.

“It’s the ability to know the history of an object by touching it. Where it’s been, who’s owned it. All the way back to where, when and by whom it was made.”

“Maida is a recent graduate of the Circle of the Eye Academy,” Aviva explained. “One of the quickest to pass the trials. She was recruited for the Islais Cove haul. But I’m sure her talents will prove useful in other areas as well.”

Roan’s eyes narrowed as he examined me with refreshed interest, his drone buzzing over his shoulder. “I don’t know much about psych – psion training. What does it mean you passed the trials quickly?”

“We spend eight years at the Academy, both for standard curriculum and training our abilities,” I explained. “In the final year, we concentrate on mastery of our own psionic discipline and control of our brainwave states. There are written and practical tests. Some folks attempt the trials multiple times over a year or two before they pass. I passed my first

try.” I didn’t really expect a nul-psi to get it. Really, only other psions that have graduated the Academy understood the rarity of what I’d done. Talk about limited clout.

Roan didn’t follow up on the topic, and instead asked, “Is this your first work assignment?”

“I’ve worked on remediation projects, like everyone. But this is my first specialized vocation assignment.”

“Well congratulations and welcome to the team. This haul is from a lost neighborhood of San Francisco, one that seemed to have a lot of character pre-Collapse. I bet you’ll have fun with it.”

The process of using my ability was intense and draining and beautiful at times, but I wouldn’t have called it fun. But that was a me thing. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Let’s get you a drink and I’ll introduce you around.” Aviva walked me over to the refreshments area where I poured myself a cup of ale, mostly just so I’d have something to do with my hands. A stream of faces and names flowed into and out of my consciousness as Aviva led me around.

The birthday girl had donned a sparkly tiara and a bow of what must have been fake feathers – throwbacks to fashion elements of the precursor world. Fake feathers were a thing for some reason, but where did that tiara come from? The sparkle of the gems mesmerized in the flickering light of the bonfire – were they real or fake?

“It’s an artifact,” she said when she noticed me looking. “Cubic zirconia, not actual diamonds. Aviva would never have let me wear it out otherwise. I’m Lorel, by the way.”

“Maida.”

Recognition lit up her eyes. “You’re the new psion. Psychometry, right?”

Well, someone had paid attention to the personnel memo. That was a check in the positive column for Lorel.

A bright eagerness swept over her face when I nodded. “I don’t want to impose, since we just met and you just got here and all, but do you think you could…?" 

She touched the tiara.

Using psychometry as a party trick really chafed, but she had been considerate enough to pay attention to who the new team member was. And anyway, it was her birthday. So even though I normally wouldn’t have, I held out my hand to receive the tiara. Besides, I wanted to make friends – I knew no one in San Francisco, having spent most of my life moving around for my father’s assignments and then up north on the Mendocino coast for my time at the Academy.

A few folks standing close by noticed the interaction and a hush descended. The tiara was heavier than I’d expected. I closed my fingers around it and breathed deeply. Tendrils of stories reached out through the psifield, reached through time and tickled the edges of my awareness. At first, it was all a rush – darkness broken by sudden light, then a face. A face of someone I had met earlier in the flurry of introductions. What was his name? Bertrand. Then a box inside a larger box, in a closet, in a house underwater where it had lain for years. A young woman put it away – she was unsure what to do with it and had set it aside, thinking she’d deal with it later, but she never did. It had been her mother’s, who had just died, who had received it from her grandmother. Now, a younger woman: the grandmother, when she was young, wearing the tiara and a slip of a dress, sheer, barely there, dancing in a desert. A huge bonfire. And fireworks and pounding electronic music. Maybe she was high on something? A man, also barely dressed, took her in his arms. An argument – crying, tears, recriminations. A broken engagement. The final polish of the maker before delivery to the bride–

“It was made in 1998 by a maker named Theo Lovelight. He was a friend of the woman who commissioned it, Lola Chen, who had ordered it for her wedding. She discovered her fiancé had been cheating on her with her sister and called off the wedding, but she kept the tiara. She was a party girl, and a devotee of the music festival scene of the early two thousands. She wore this to go dancing, quite a lot. She met the man she’d eventually marry at one of these festivals – on the dancefloor, while wearing this tiara, in 2004. Her daughter wore it to something called “prom” in 2023, then again to a gala in 2033. A fundraiser for the Symphony. After that, it remained boxed in the closet of the house on Beach Street, where it sat on a shelf, 

forgotten and abandoned. There it remained from the start of the Collapse in 2052 until two months ago, when it was discovered by Bertrand Lowell, marine archaeology, at the site recovery of January 4, 2106. Currently, the item is claimed by the Golden Gate Cultural Recovery Project, in the possession of the San Francisco unit, and currently in the temporary possession of you –” I handed the tiara back to the birthday girl, “Lorel Santiago.”

“It’s true,” someone said. “I did find it.” A man with round glasses and tufts of auburn hair poking out from beneath a beanie took a bow. Bertrand Lowell, presumably. People seemed to bow a lot around here.

Everyone clapped, and my face flushed – just a quick bit of hot. The last bit of the tiara’s story faded, and I got that feeling of being left alone at a party by the person I had just had a great conversation with who went to go say hi to someone who just arrived.

“I wish we’d recorded that,” Aviva said. “Will you remember what you just spoke? Can you repeat all that to a scribe?”

“Sure.” I really didn’t mind; this sort of thing was what I was brought on for, after all.

“I got it.” Roan tapped a slender recording device and slipped it into his pocket. “I’ll attach it to the item’s record.”

“Thank you, Roan,” Aviva said. “Always prepared.”

I looked at him with new appreciation – he definitely rubbed me the wrong way at first, but competence almost always balanced out pushiness. Almost.

“Thanks,” Lorel said as she placed the tiara back on her head. “So how does it work, exactly? Your ability, and psionic abilities in general?”

I groaned a little bit on the inside. It got old, explaining it over and over. But still, these were my new colleagues, and they were only trying to understand my experience. “Are you familiar with the psifield?”

Party chatter had 

 resumed, but Lorel, Roan, and Aviva still paid me keen attention.

“Okay. So you know how we’re surrounded by microwaves, and broadcast transmissions, and wireless communication frequencies all the time, but unless we have the proper device and tune into those frequencies, we don’t perceive them at all?”

I waited for my new colleagues to communicate their understanding before I continued. “Well, there is a range of sensory perception that is constantly around us that psions are able to perceive when we bring our attention to it. This field emerges from the overlapping waves of the fields of consciousness and matter – that’s a whole big infodump I won’t get into now. But that’s what we call the psifield, that gradient of wavelengths. Telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance, clairaudience, claircognition, clairsentience, and my ability, psychometry, are all different ways of perceiving different types of information and energy within that gradient. In the case of telepathy and telekinesis, it could be argued practitioners are manipulating the energy too, not just receiving information. Think of it like: telepathy is a two-way radio, but clairvoyance is television, and psychometry is… I don’t know, television through a time warp. Nul-psis, people without psionic abilities, like yourselves, are unable to tune in, but the signals are still there.”

“Okay, I get it,” Roan said. “I think.”

“That was a good explanation.” Aviva looked at me with a sly smile. I got the sense that she was giving me her approval or that I had passed some sort of test.

“So this tiara hasn’t been worn since 2033?” Lorel asked.

“That’s right.”

“Have you encountered many items that have gone unused for as long as that?”

“Not many. But I’m just starting out doing cultural recovery work, so we’ll see what the future brings.”

“So am I part of the record now?” Her eyes were wide with hope and curiosity.

“Not unless you take possession of it. You’d have to purchase it, or be gifted it, or steal it.”

She laughed. “I don’t think any of that is happening.”

After some getting-to-

know-you party chat with Lorel and a few others, I took a seat on a log at the edge of the fire and gazed into its flickering tongues. The mesmerizing crackle, light, and shadow couldn’t quite distract from the looks that everyone was trying really hard not to throw at me and that I was trying really hard not to notice. It had been thirty-four years since the Bloom, when the abilities of those who came to be called psions were switched on all at once. The how and the why of it remained a mystery. And although most folks knew at least one psion, even if only distantly, we were still a novelty to a lot of nul-psis.

“That was cool to witness.”

Pulling my attention from the fire, I turned to see Roan standing close by. He gestured at the empty spot beside me and I nodded. “You put the drone away,” I noted.

“Yeah. Lorel asked me to record some of the party, but I’ve imbibed too many intoxicants to fly responsibly.” He paused, the fire igniting his eyes for a second before he turned to face me. “It was like you went into a trance.” He picked up a stick and began tracing lines in the sand.

“It does kind of feel like that at first.” I hadn’t meant to leave an opening for follow-up questions, but I reminded myself that making friends required making an effort to talk to people.

“What do you mean ‘at first’?” His expression was earnest, and his curiosity seemed to be the kind that sought understanding rather than titillation.

“When I begin a scan of an object, I get a rush of images and feelings – emotions – first. That part feels like a trance, like the ‘me’ part of myself is pushed aside to make room for all this stuff coming off the object. It doesn’t always make sense and it isn’t always chronological. But I’m still aware of myself and my own thoughts. Then that settles down, and the story of the object clicks into place – the provenance and bits of the life of the object become clear. It’s like I suddenly just know everything about it. That phenomena is called claircognizance. Are you familiar?”

He shook his head.

“It’s when the knowledge of something you’re focused on just comes to you.” 

“That’s fascinating.”

Sometimes, when I took a step back and considered my situation objectively, I understood the fascination nul-psis had for us. But I didn’t like talking about it all that much. Mostly, I preferred not to reveal my psion status at all, though social occasions with people who didn’t know had been rare since I started at the Academy. But this was a specialized vocation posting, and everyone knew I was the new psion on board, so of course I’d get questions.

When my ability first manifested, other kids stayed away from me. They didn’t tease or make fun, but they were clearly scared, and I couldn’t even move things around with my mind or hear their secret thoughts. Not that I had to hear their thoughts to know what they thought of me.

“I’m sorry if I came on too strong when you first got here,” he said. “I let my enthusiasm get the better of me sometimes. I’m fascinated by psych –” He caught himself. “By psions. I guess everyone is though, huh?”

“The ones who aren’t freaked out.” Most people were curious about us and found our talents useful, but every so often, I would encounter somebody who got flustered once they knew what I was. They often couldn’t get away fast enough. I had it explained to me once that they were afraid we’d all read their minds, as if every psion was telepathic. Ironically, it was a telepath who told me that. Maybe that’s why I tended to keep it to myself unless whoever I was talking to had reason to know – like co-workers.

A burst of laughter rippled over to us from the distant side of the fire, the birthday girl at the center of it, firelight glinting off her tiara.

“My parents always said in the years after the Bloom, it was like everyone snapped awake. They were kids when it happened, but they always told me about how the sky was lit up with auroras for a whole year and people were crying in the streets. My mom said people were filled with joy and wonder for a while, and that’s when the confrontation of history

 began, and the Reconciliation. It seemed like humanity took a big step forward, but then slowly the effects of it wore off. But some people still get powers.”

I couldn’t quite parse his look; was he resentful that I got something he didn’t? I’d run into that type before. Maybe I was just being paranoid. A telepath would know.

“Is it like you’re there? When you do your thing? Like you’re in whatever time period the object is from?”

“Not exactly. Sometimes it’s like watching a movie sped up. Or cut up into random scenes that are all out of order. Once in a while, I get a burst of emotion if an owner had some charged feeling around the object. Grief. Anger. I scanned a trophy once that had been used as a murder weapon. That was fun in the sense that it was horrible.” An echo of rage, a flash of blood splashed against green tile. I shoved that memory aside – not my memory, not really. A memory locked in an object that I perceived. Someone else’s memory. Yet it popped into my head during a casual conversation, so did that make it mine? Did every story I received with my talent become part of my own? I didn’t want that to be the case, but I’d come to terms with the fact that my want was futile in matters related to being a psion.

“Oh, wow. You never know what you’re going to get, huh?”

“Nope.”

“Well this assignment will be an adventure for you, won’t it?”

I chuckled. “I guess we’ll see.”

Aviva called my name and waved me over. “Come meet some folks!”

I stood up and brushed off my pants. Roan stayed seated, kept tracing little circles in the sand. Now I was the one leaving someone alone at a party. “Welcome aboard,” he said.

Aviva welcomed me warmly into the circle she stood in and made another round of introductions. I made a mental note to review the personnel manifest over the next couple of days; there was no way I would remember everyone’s names in that moment. What was that old saying? “Strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet”? I wondered which of these folks might become friends, and which would just be faces in the crowd, colleagues I knew by name. I supposed that time would tell. My ability gave me windows into the past, but I walked into the future just like everyone else.

2.

LI NUAN

January 17, 1906

Chinatown, San Francisco

Laughter and chatter and the occasional curse from the gambling house next door clatters in through the window as Li Nuan brings the Boss his tea. He likes to take it in the back parlor with the shades drawn; they’re a good shield against the midday glare, but they do nothing to dull the noise. Why does he not settle in a quieter spot like the front room? She would have.

She serves with the jade tea set, his favorite according to Madam Bai, who had told her once that Boss Fong’s family had received it as a gift from the emperor himself. Li Nuan doesn’t really believe that, but it is a nice set. It felt familiar the first time she saw it. And the cups, in particular, vibrate with light and color and almost seem alive, or enchanted.

Now is when she admonishes herself for allowing her mind to take such flights of fancy and her attention snaps back to cold, hard, reality. On paper, she is Boss Fong’s orphaned niece, but actually, her father had sold her to cover his gambling debt. When she was told she’d been sold to this stranger and was being sent to Gam Saan, a name which in English is Gold Mountain, she had sobbed and pleaded. Her mother told her to submit and do her duty to the family. Was that a girl’s place in this world? To be passed along from man to man to cover a debt, to serve? Was she mad to hope that one day she could choose her own path?

Today, Boss is meeting with one of the Chinatown merchants. She doesn’t know who this one is, but sweat beads on his brow and he can’t stop shaking his right leg. He flinches when she steps up from behind him to place his cup. He is in trouble, isn’t he? When she pours the first cup for Boss, he just stares at the other man, face utterly still. Though his face is blank nothing, fury burns behind his eyes. She breathes a prayer of compassion over the guest’s tea as she pours it. Nobody gets called before the Boss for no reason. It isn’t her place to know these things, but she is glad she does. Knowing is better than not knowing. After setting steamed buns and pastries on the table, she takes her leave, avoiding eye contact with the pair of the Boss’s men who stand silently by the door.

The son that everybody calls siu wong dai or “little emperor,” accosts her in the corridor. He is supposed to be learning the family business, but the only thing he seems to be interested in is reminding everybody who his father is. He doesn’t know anything of running anything and does not seem to want to. He wants the glory of the role but not the duty. He would probably take his role seriously if the Boss disciplined his son the way he disciplines the girls at the Lotus Pearl. She had hoped he wouldn’t be around, but she should have known. Little Emperor is always waiting to pounce.

“My favorite flower,” he says like he does all the time, “You are too lovely to be a housemaid.” And as she does all the time, she presses herself up against the wall and sucks her breath in tight and fast to avoid contact. His breath smells of rice wine, though it isn’t yet noon. “You should be the prize blossom at the Lotus Pearl.”

She hugs the empty 

tray across her chest and forces her face to stay calm even as disgust roils inside her. She knows what the Lotus Pearl is. She knows what the flowers there do.

“I know my father promised yours to keep you from all that. What a shame.” He leans with both hands on the wall at her back, his fingers drumming on either side of her face.

“I have more work to do.” Her voice is quiet and soft, yet her tone does not waver. “Housekeeping, and then the evening meal.” They both know who she works for. And Little Emperor wants the evening meal too.

“I could take you if I wanted to. You would enjoy.”

“Please.” She releases the tension of her held breath, the tray a shield pressing Little Emperor away. “Your father will get angry if I do not complete my duties.”

He scoffs, taking neither her nor his father seriously. “You will service me one day.” His gaze is intense, but she avoids it, avoids his eyes, casting hers instead to the stained cuffs of his sleeves. To the dust on the table across the hall that she still must get to.

Finally he relents, lifts his grubby hands from the wall, stands back. “Get back to work, dutiful girl.”

She makes her way back to the pantry and chokes down her useless rage. What is the point of being angry? She cannot do anything about it.

“Anger is a luxury our sex is not allowed,” Madam Bai likes to say. She manages the Lotus Pearl. She has a special relationship with the Boss and visits frequently. After her first beating at the Madam’s hands, even though she wasn’t one of those girls, Li Nuan understood their relationship.

She hangs her apron and grabs her coat. It’s time to go into town to fetch the laundry, and a chicken for the night’s supper, and the teahouse should have a new shipment of the Boss’s favorite tea in by now. Wu Jun, her assigned escort, waits by the servant’s entrance when she gets there. He knows the day’s agenda and is always right on time. She isn’t allowed out without him.

The pair step out of Sullivan’s Alley and onto the bustle of Jackson Street. She’ll pick up the chicken and the tea first, then make the laundry the last stop before returning to Boss Fong’s. She refuses to call that place 

home. Cantonese chatter fills the street, and for a moment, she can almost believe she’s someplace in Guangdong Province, where she’d spent her girlhood, maybe even Hong Kong. There are docks and ships there too. She hasn’t been anywhere near the ones here since her arrival, but she remembers the shadows of the ships in the night, the salty sea air, the sound of lapping waves. As a child, she thought that ships setting out to sea meant adventure, seeing the world, but now all she can think of is being brought to a strange land against her will. All she can think of is those ships taking people away from their lives, making their lives and their bodies the property of others.

Most men on the street – and it is nearly all men – cast pitying or lustful gazes at her before taking note of Wu Jun and looking away. They know she belongs to someone – she is maybe even a whore sent out to run errands. Her escort’s presence is a deterrence from even lewd comments, and a moment here and there, she is grudgingly thankful for his company. But of course, he isn’t there to protect her. He is there to make sure she doesn’t run.

Moon Goddess Teahouse is her first stop, and Bao, the proprietor’s son, is sweeping the sidewalk out front as Li Nuan approaches with her guard. He smiles warmly as he does every time she comes by, a rare gesture of kindness that she appreciates.

She meets his eyes with a slight nod as she scuttles into the shop. “Old Man Chan,” she says in greeting.

The shopkeeper behind the counter grins in welcome – father and son have similar smiles. “How can I help you, little sister?”

“Pu-erh.” She hands over an empty tea tin. “For the Boss.”

The shopkeep nods, taking the tin and knowing just how much to measure. “You know, my son thinks you are lovely,” he says as he brings a jar of loose tea over to the scale. “I could arrange for him to be behind the counter next time you come.” His eyes twinkle as he measures out the

leaves, then scoops them into the tin Li Nuan had handed over.

She can’t believe the old man would speak of such things. As if she could speak to the son if she wanted. As if she could be courted like a normal girl. But maybe her life is normal, and what she always thought of as normal was a fantasy. Whatever the case, she likes being talked to like a person.

Old Man Chan hands back the tin; there is no price on the tea since it is part of the shop’s tribute. She takes it back and drops it into her satchel. “I never know when that will be.”

“Hmm. Maybe customers will like seeing his handsome young face back here? Or will they wonder what the little monkey knows about tea?” He laughs at his pet name for his son. “Bao cannot even say a proper hello with the guard at your heels.” He meets her eyes. “Not your fault, I know.”

Her cheeks flush.

“Oh, I know! Next time you come, I’ll offer the guard some dumplings and tea and make you stay. Then you and Bao can talk.”

Does the old man really believe any of what he says is possible? This idea of a future with his son that he offers is meant as kindness – she knows this – but in light of the reality of her life, it feels cruel to offer hope and a dream of courtship. “The Boss won’t be happy you said that.”

“Don’t tell him.”

Despite herself, she laughs. Every little bit of lightness is a boon.

As she exits, she nods again at Bao, with a bare hint of a smile this time. He is sweeping the same area of sidewalk as when they arrived. At what must be a stern expression from Wu Jun looming behind her, he quickly looks away.

The Garden Corner, what the Americans call Portsmouth Square, bubbles with gossip, and the clack of mahjong tiles, and old men practicing tai chi or else smoking cigarettes. No women. What would it be like to have leisure time to sit in a park all day, doing this and that, doing as she pleased? The thought brings a rush of guilt, like she’s stealing a comfort she has no right to, and she pushes it aside.

As they draw close to the market, the calls of the fishmonger grow louder, along with her, ...