The Burden of Clarity

Chapter 1

The morning mist clung to the Mekong like old memories, reluctant to fade. Duc pressed his weathered palm against the small device behind his right ear—barely larger than a fingernail—and felt the familiar tingle as it synced with his thoughts. The second-hand neuro-electronic interface still felt foreign after three months, like wearing someone else's shoes that weren't quite your size. But Minh had been right to insist. Better to fish with borrowed clarity than to burden the family with a grandfather who forgot names, faces, the way home.

He cast his net with movements honed by eighty years on these waters. The friction of its filaments whirred through the air before quietly plunking into the murk. Through the NEI's gentle hum, he knew the water temperature, current patterns, even the faint bioelectric signatures of fish below. Technology compensating for what age had stolen from his sense and insights. Still, he struggled to fathom the importance of knowing that the water salinity would drop 0.2% by evening.

But for now, in this suspended moment between cast and haul, Duc allowed himself to simply be. The sun broke through the morning clouds in golden columns, painting the water in shifting patches of light and shadow. A white egret stepped delicately along the far bank. The world felt whole, purposeful. Even the empty net didn't trouble him—not yet.

Then the water began to change.

It started as a shimmer, like heat waves rising from summer pavement. But this was wrong, organic. Something large moved beneath the surface, then another, then dozens. Not the coordinated movement of a school, but something chaotic, desperate.

The first fish broke the surface belly-up, its scales catching the light like scattered coins. Then more. Within minutes, hundreds of carp and catfish bobbed around his boat, some still twitching in ways that made Duc's stomach clench. He'd seen die-offs before—pollution, sudden temperature shifts, oxygen depletion—but never like this. These fish writhed as if something were eating them from within.

A notification flickered at the edge of his vision—news alerts, weather patterns, water quality advisories scrolling past faster than he could process. The NEI's attempt to contextualize what his eyes were seeing only added to the chaos. His headache, which had been dormant since morning, began to pulse.

Duc stared at the floating bounty. His family hadn't eaten meat in two weeks. Rice and vegetables stretched their savings, but barely. Linh grew thinner each day, and the baby needed nutrients his granddaughter-in-law's body couldn't provide on their meager diet.

He knew better. Every fisherman did. Dead fish meant poisoned waters, and poisoned waters meant sick children, empty beds, the kind of guilt that followed you to the grave. The wisdom of eighty years whispered warnings through his body—a truth felt in muscle memory and instinct, older than any device.

But then the NEI stirred, unbidden. Information cascaded through his consciousness like water through cupped hands—fragments of data, expert testimonials, government educational videos. Most fish die-offs are harmless thermal shock events. A warm presence in his mind, helpful, authoritative. Traditional fishing communities often exhibit unnecessary fear of natural population fluctuations due to generational misinformation.

The voice wasn't his own, yet it felt reasonable, scientific. Behind it loomed something vast—the collected knowledge of humanity, dark and towering like a monolith in the depths of his awareness. Who could argue with such certainty? His grandfather's warnings suddenly seemed small, provincial. Superstition.

Big agricultural corporations profit from your dependency. Self-sufficiency threatens established supply chains. The information felt cool, rational. A Ministry of Agriculture bulletin: Die-off events classified as safe for consumption within the first hour. These fish were alive when you cast your nets.

Duc's weathered hands trembled slightly as he reached for the largest carp. It had been thrashing moments ago—surely still fresh. The old knowledge felt suddenly foolish, manipulated. Who benefited from his hunger? Who wanted him dependent on expensive market fish when the river provided freely?

The net felt heavier than usual as he hauled it in, loaded with silver bodies that caught the light like fractured mirrors. Most were still, but a few still moved—not the clean thrashing of fresh-caught fish, but something else. Stuttered spasms that seemed to follow no natural rhythm, as if their nervous systems were misfiring.

One carp—smaller than the others, unremarkable—fought the net with proper fury. Clean, strong pulls. The desperate thrashing of a creature that wanted to live. Its movements were everything the other fish weren't: predictable, vital, right. Duc's hands moved toward it instinctively, reading health in the quality of struggle.

Then the NEI pulsed gently, redirecting his attention to the larger specimens, the ones that had gone still. Maximum protein yield. Optimal size for family portions. His hands changed course.

He turned the boat toward shore, the morning's peace spoilt by new uncertainty. Behind him, more fish continued to surface, spreading outward from where he'd cast his net like ripples from a stone.

The egret on the bank took flight, its wings beating hard against air that suddenly felt too thick to breathe. Its beak was empty—despite the feast floating just beyond the shallows, the bird had taken nothing.
===============

The fever came three days later. By the second evening he couldn't stand without Minh's arm beneath his shoulder. The third supper, even Lan's gentlest coaxing couldn't make him eat—his stomach had become a furnace that rejected everything. Then the spasms started. And the hallucinations.

Now the room held its breath around him.

The space was small, walls of weathered wood and concrete, a single window filtering afternoon light through thin curtains that had once been white. Duc lay on a sleeping mat, blankets piled despite the heat radiating from his skin. Lan knelt beside him with a damp cloth, her movements practiced from three days of this vigil. Minh sat cross-legged near his grandfather's head, fingers hovering over the NEI interface, his young face creased with worry that aged him. His wife held their infant in the corner, swaying, keeping the child quiet.

Others came and went—neighbors, relatives—but the core remained: daughter, grandson, the dying man. In the doorway, the old fisherman who'd mended nets and sampans beside Duc for forty years stood with his hat clenched in both hands, watching.

Duc's breathing rattled. His eyes moved beneath closed lids, tracking something no one else could see.

"Not me," he mumbled. The words slurred, barely recognizable. "No... not me."

Lan pressed the cloth to his forehead. The heat coming off him was impossible. "Ba," she whispered. "Ba, we're here."

His eyes snapped open, unfocused, searching the ceiling. "Who's there?" The words came sharp, almost angry. His body tensed against the mat. "Who's—say your name!"

Minh leaned forward. "Grandfather, it's Minh. You're home. You're safe."

But Duc wasn't seeing the room anymore. His gaze darted to the corners, the shadows, tracking movement that didn't exist. His breathing quickened. Fear rippled across his fever-slick face.

Behind his right ear, the NEI began to glow faintly. Minh noticed immediately, reaching to touch the device. It was hot—too hot. The small indicator light pulsed erratically, colors shifting through patterns Minh had never seen.

He pulled out his phone, trying to sync with the interface. Nothing. The connection request timed out. He tried again, adjusting the proximity, the protocol. The screen showed only errors. The NEI wasn't responding to external inputs at all.

"What's wrong?" Lan asked, not taking her eyes off her father.

"It's... it's locked. I can't access diagnostics. It's like—" Minh's fingers moved faster across his phone screen, trying different approaches, different backdoors. "It's processing something. A huge workload. I've never seen it run this hard."

Duc's body went rigid. "Hắc Hổ!" he called out, the words torn from somewhere ancient. "Hắc Hổ, protect me!" His arms thrashed weakly, trying to ward something off, trying to shield himself.

The old friend in the doorway straightened, his weathered hand moving instinctively to touch the small tiger-claw charm at his throat. Others in the room shifted, murmured prayers. Hắc Hổ—the Guardian Tigress, protector of the village's fishermen, keeper of their families. To hear her name so desperately called was as if illness was not the only enemy.

Lan caught his hands, held them gently. "Ba, nothing's going to hurt you. We're all here. You're safe."

Duc's thrashing slowed. His breathing changed, became less frantic. The tension began to drain from his limbs.

"Warm," he murmured. Almost peaceful. "Warm..."

His body seemed to sink deeper into the mat, muscles releasing. The fear left his face. Something like contentment softened the lines around his eyes.

In the doorway, the old fisherman's hand slipped from the tiger charm to brace against the frame. Sweat had begun to bead on his temples, running down the deep grooves of his face. He shifted his weight, swallowed hard. His other hand moved to his stomach, pressing against something that hurt.

Minh stared at the device, at the diagnostic errors on his screen, at his grandfather's suddenly peaceful expression. None of it made sense.

"Minh." Lan's voice was soft. She'd moved to sit beside him, one hand still on her father's arm. "You gave us three more months with him. Three more months of him knowing our names, telling his stories, teaching you how to read the water." Her eyes were wet but steady. "This is illness in a worn out body. You can't fight it with technology. Let him go."

The old fisherman's legs buckled. He slid down the doorframe, settling heavily into a seated position on the threshold. Someone noticed, moved toward him, but he waved them off with a weak gesture. His breathing had gone shallow. His eyes stayed fixed on Duc.

"But if I could just access—"

"Let him go."

Minh's hands fell to his lap, phone screen going dark. The NEI continued its frantic pulsing, but he stopped trying to reach it. Lan rested her head briefly against his shoulder, then returned to her father's side.

Duc's breathing had grown shallow, each breath a little farther apart than the last. The room fell into the rhythm of it—everyone's attention focused on the small rises and falls of his chest. Someone was praying softly. The infant made a small sound and was hushed.

Minutes passed like hours.

Then Duc's eyes opened. Not the unfocused gaze from before, but something clear. Something present. His chest expanded with one deep breath, as if drawing in all the light in the room.

"This is God," he said.

The words were perfectly clear. Perfectly certain.

His eyes remained open, but the light behind them was already gone. The breathing stopped. The fever-heat began its slow fade.

The NEI's frantic pulsing continued for several seconds more—long enough for Minh to notice, long enough to wonder—then went dark all at once, leaving only the faint smell of overheated electronics and the gathering silence of grief.
==============

They tried to hold the funeral two days later, but by then six more villagers had fallen ill. By the fourth day, twenty. The gathering that should have honored Duc's eighty years dissolved into a scramble to care for the living. His body waited in the small temple, but there were no monks to chant, no neighbors to carry the casket. The able-bodied were too few, stretched too thin among the sick.

The old fisherman who'd stood in the doorway never left his own mat again.

Two weeks after Duc's death, when the village stopped counting its losses and the bodies waiting at the makeshift shrine for wandering souls outnumbered the faithful still praying at the Tigress's temple, they burned him with the others. A small ceremony, masked faces, hands that shook from exhaustion or early fever—no one could say which anymore.

The smoke rose over the Mekong in the morning light, carrying him back to the water that had sustained him, that had killed him, that continued to flow regardless.