What Did You Wish For?
By Myna Chang
Maria peered at the items locked inside Trillion Mart’s display case. The packet of birthday candles cost only $25, but the environmental tax was 300 carbits. That would put her way over her monthly carbon footprint allotment.
She sighed and leaned against the cool surface of the display. She’d hoped to give little Gabi a special birthday, like the ones she remembered from her own childhood. Her mom had always made her a pretty cake with fluffy frosting. Friends from school sang the birthday song, then her mom lit the candles, saying “make a wish, sweetheart!”
Maria recalled puffing out her cheeks and blowing as hard as she could, but it often took two tries to extinguish all the candles.
“What did you wish for?” her friends always asked in giggly little-girl voices. Maria knew not to tell, otherwise her wish wouldn’t come true. Sometimes, though, she couldn’t help letting slip her wish for a pink pony or neon markers.
An alarm shrilled, yanking her out of her daydream. The display case launched an anti-theft video—she’d maintained physical contact with it for more than 2.5 seconds without buying anything. She jerked away, but screens flanking the aisle had already erupted with the trillionaire’s face, amplified in all his high-def smarm.
“Now, now,” his recorded message scolded. He wagged a finger. “We wouldn’t take more than our fair share, would we?”
Maria noticed the footprint-shaped logo emblazoned on his crisp white shirt. Her own hand-me-down blouse had been patched and re-patched to avoid the exorbitant carbit tax of new clothing. She smoothed a loose thread as the store attendant approached. He wore the pressed green uniform of all the trillionaire’s minions.
After confirming she hadn’t stolen anything, he pointed at the door. “If you’re not buying, you have to go. Can’t have freeloaders in here, breathing Trillion’s reconditioned air.”
“Sorry,” Maria murmured.
She secured her filtration mask and stepped outside, into the brown haze that had hung in the air ever since the trillionaire took power. Maria secretly thought the pollution had only grown worse with the introduction of his complicated carbon footprint scheme.
His doughy face leered down from electronic billboards lining the street, with his current catch phrase rotating above his head in blocky letters: Engineering A Cleaner Future!
The camera angle zoomed out, showing ten shiny sports cars parked in front of a mansion—all environmentally neutral, as defined by his personalized carbon-offset calculations. The image shifted to a close-up of ten seedling pine trees, and then the camera tilted up to focus on a crystal blue sky.
Maria hadn’t seen a blue sky in ages. The atmosphere had been brown and thick with soot since long before her daughter was born.
The thought of Gabi filled her with warmth. Such a smart little girl. She didn’t ask for silly pink ponies for her birthday. No, Gabi wanted a science kit. She was still innocent enough to think she could save the world when she grew up, that she could be an even better engineer than the rich man in charge.
Maria coughed, particulate matter irritating her throat with each breath. Her Trillion Air Mask was on the fritz again.
She glanced at the time. Gabi’s school didn’t get out for several hours. Maybe Maria couldn’t give her child a perfect blue-sky birthday, but at least she could scrape together the ingredients for a proper cake.
• • •
Maria paused behind a dumpster, trying to calm her nerves. She’d never been to the underground market and was unsure which grimy doorway was the entrance. She scanned the alley ahead, and then she spotted it. Her heart thumped in anticipation—and fear. What if she got caught?
She shook the thought away. Lots of people visited the underground market, especially since the carbon allowance had been cut again. Most folks couldn’t make ends meet if they didn’t cheat a little.
The neighborhood had been crowned with lush cherry trees, once upon a time. Now, electronic billboards sprouted in their place. A new video burst to life with a buzz that set Maria’s teeth on edge. This time, the trillionaire juggled weird-shaped balls. No, not balls. They were . . . feet? The image shifted and Maria realized they were his logo—little plastic footprints, each emblazoned with a source of pollution: fossil fuels, beef, luxury goods.
He explained how each person’s carbon footprint was calculated, including the rate of carbit taxation, and how this was tied to shareholder value and population malleability and the amount of greenhouse gas people emitted when they exhaled.
Maria didn’t understand any of it.
A group of teenagers across the street started throwing rocks at the nearest billboard. They chanted, “No more carbits,” while continuing to hurl stones and pieces of trash from the gutter. Maria had never dared anything so brazen, but she couldn’t help smiling when a crack split the screen.
The damage didn’t stop the video, though; the trillionaire kept juggling and laughing.
Maria’s apprehension washed away, replaced by a wave of disgust at his oily voice and his legion of carbon-neutral billboards. No amount of fancy math could justify those monstrosities.
She squared her shoulders and marched into the underground market.
• • •
The market filled an abandoned neighborhood library. Maria remembered visiting as a child to watch puppet hour and look at picture books. The space was now packed with vendors selling everything from homemade baskets to decades-old music chips.
Maria gaped at a table stacked with vintage exercise shoes; all that plastic and rubber in one place. The shoes looked comfortable, but she remembered how much pollution spewed into the atmosphere when petroleum was refined into plastic and rubber. The lesson had been drilled into her head when she was in school. She trailed a finger along a pair of neon pink and purple sneakers, then walked on.
She finally found a table with cooking supplies. Selection was slim. An older woman with widely spaced teeth smiled warmly at Maria and helped her find most of the ingredients for the cake. Altogether, it cost less than even one item would cost at a Trillion Mart, so she splurged and bought a whole cup of sugar.
“What about the tax?” Maria asked. “You don’t charge carbits?”
The gap-toothed woman shook her head. “No, dear. We don’t play that man’s scam here.”
Maria smiled. She still had a little money left. “Do you have any candles?”
The woman scratched her chin. “I don’t get many requests for combustibles.” She rummaged through a tattered box. “Ah, here we go.” She held up a single birthday candle; pink and white wax braided into a tiny pillar of childhood whimsy.
“Oh,” Maria whispered. The sweet swirl of colors conjured images of her mother, of birthday parties past. She still remembered the sugar-ache of that first bite of cake, and the way her mom beamed when the girls said how they loved her frosting.
Grinning, she reached for the contraband candle. “How much?”
The woman winked. “It’s on the house. I hope your kid’s wish comes true.”
“Thank you,” Maria breathed. The unexpected kindness caught her off-guard. She blinked as she tucked the candle into her bag with the other items. “Thank you,” she repeated softly.
A loud boom shook the walls and screams erupted near the front of the building. Maria staggered, gripping the edge of the table. “What’s happening?”
Tables of goods overturned as panicked people stampeded toward the exits.
“Hurry,” the woman yelled, motioning Maria out a hidden door. “It’s a raid!”
Pulse racing, Maria followed her down a short flight of concrete stairs, through a dilapidated fire door, into an unfamiliar side street.
The sudden miasma of acrid air and billboard buzz hit her like a truck. She paused, disoriented. Which way to go? The old woman had already disappeared. Sirens wailed somewhere on her left, so Maria turned right and sprinted as fast as she could, securing her mask mid-stride.
Two blocks later, she had to stop. Each breath burned her throat, searing into her lungs. The filtration mask was useless. She pulled it off to check the connections and found the filter mechanism loose. Etched into its plastic housing was the green footprint logo, with another product slogan: Trillion Air! From your favorite trillionaire!
Maria slammed the mask on the ground and kicked it away from her.
Ahead, tires squealed on pavement. Hardly anyone drove cars anymore, so Maria knew it must be the trillionaire’s raiders.
She bolted toward a different alley, but a pair of soldiers emerged. They wore body armor with the green footprint logo emblazoned on their chest plates. Each one had a long-barreled gun slung around his shoulder.
“Stop!” one of them yelled.
Frantic, Maria spun, seeking somewhere to hide. A huge green SUV careened down the street and jumped the curb, heading directly at her. She lurched behind the dumpster, tripping over the stupid mask she’d just discarded. She hit the pavement hard, knocking the wind out of her and skinning the heels of her hands.
Stunned and gasping, all she could see was her bag, its contents spilling across the cracked asphalt. Hundreds of tiny sugar crystals bounced, the pure beauty of each grain sparkling for an instant, before melting into the gray sludge ringing the dumpster.
“No,” Maria rasped. She wanted to rise, take her things and run back home. She wanted to hold little Gabi and rock her to sleep, to sink backward, into a better time, where her own mother called her sweetheart and she still believed the world’s problems could be cured with a secret birthday wish.
A green boot slammed down, inches from her face. She flinched away from the thick rubber sole, curling into a ball. “Please,” she whimpered, “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Oh, yeah?” the soldier’s voice boomed. “Trading contraband goods at an illegal market isn’t wrong?”
He grabbed her by the arm and hauled her up. Something inside her shoulder joint crackled and she cried out. Vomit rose in her throat. She retched, emptying her stomach onto the ground.
It splashed his boots and he cursed. He shoved her toward a second soldier, who caught her and held her upright, pulling her hands behind her back. She gasped at the jagged bolts of agony that radiated from her shoulder down the length of her arm.
The first man opened her bag. Only a few items remained: her ID and carbit card—and the candle. He sneered at her.
“A black-market combustible, purchased without the required carbit tax,” he said. “This is a Class One offense.”
“But it’s just a little birthday candle,” Maria stammered.
The man stood tall, jutting out his chin. He locked eyes with her and grinned, mashing the candle into his chest plate. It left a pink smear. He flicked what was left of it at Maria. She winced when the ruined wax struck her cheek.
“Wax is a petro product, you dumb bitch. And it makes nasty shit when it burns.”
The soldier holding her arms pulled a zip tie around her wrists, launching fresh waves of pain from her shoulder. White spots filled her vision and her knees buckled.
“Guess what the sentence is for cheating the carbit tax?” He yanked her upright with a tight grip on the back of her neck. “You’re going to carbon re-education camp, sweetheart.”
“No!” she cried. She’d heard rumors of people disappearing into these work camps, but she’d never believed it was true. “I have a daughter! I have to get home to my little girl!”
“Should have thought of your kid before you went on this crime spree.” He laughed and turned to his partner. “Think they’ll let her make wax at the refinery?”
The man with the vomit-stained boots grunted. “I hope they send her to the rubber factory.”
He stomped his feet, dislodging some of the vomit. In her dazed state, she noticed that the soldier’s boots left prints in the same shape as the trillionaire’s logo. All this time she’d believed his carbon footprint referred to the environment. Now, too late, she understood its true meaning.
The soldiers dragged her to a large open-backed cargo truck and shoved her to a seat between two other prisoners. They loosened her zip tie, freeing one hand and securing the other to an overhead rail. She moaned, twisting to relieve the pressure on her tortured shoulder.
Several additional trucks and SUVs were parked near the underground market. She recognized one of the teenagers who had been throwing rocks earlier, as well as vendors she’d encountered inside the market. The kindly old cooking vendor slumped next to her, barely conscious. Grime in the shape of a boot tread was imprinted on the side of her face.
A small vid screen in the cargo area played a message on loop: “Get ready for carbon re-education camp, where you’ll work off your debt to society! All while helping me engineer a cleaner future!” The video glitched and froze, stuck on a close-up of the trillionaire’s face.
Maria realized she was crying. Through blurred vision, she made out the footprint logo on the truck’s metal floorboard. She spat a glob of bloody phlegm at it and wiped her face with her free hand. Mingled with tears and crusted vomit, she found a fleck of pink wax. It must have stuck when the soldier threw it at her.
She squeezed the happy-birthday wax in her fist and closed her eyes, wishing she’d never gone to the market, that she was on her way to Gabi’s school right now. What would happen to her little girl, alone and waiting for a mother who wouldn’t be there? A raw sob tore from Maria’s throat. The candle shard dug into her palm, and she wished she could erase this day, stomp out the brutal raiders, sweep away the trillionaire’s bloated footprints.
More than anything, she wished she could do more than wish.
Outside the truck, a raider banged his hand against the cab. “Take ’em to the smokestacks!” The engine backfired as the truck rocked into motion. Maria’s gaze filled with thick smoke; the whole sky blackened with it.
Myna Chang (she/her) is the author of The Potential of Radio and Rain (CutBank Books). Her writing has been selected for the Locus Recommended Reading List, Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and WW Norton’s Flash Fiction America. Find her at MynaChang.com or on Bluesky at @MynaChang.
Photo by K-B Gressitt 2025
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