Telomir pulls the fabric and the surface of the world rushes by: trees, hills, a cliff. Corinna’s white-shock hair stands out against the horizon.
“Found you,” he grins, touching the rune in his belt called Zoom In. The veil blurs, and he’s there.
“Corinna,” he starts. She glares at him and spits: tentacles with teeth boil out of the rock. He touches Edit This Page and turns them to butter. She’s already flickering; when he gets to the edge she’s flapping away, a monstrous bat.
Telomir breathes deep, whispers “true name of the hawk,” touches I’m Feeling Lucky, and jumps.
Neveah and Cinjun meet Ormond at a charity auction.
“A million dollars for a night with your wife,” says Ormond.
“No!” say Neveah and Cinjun. They think about it. “Yes!” they say.
Neveah never gets to show off her teddy: she and Ormond stay up late talking, drinking good wine, walking the riverfront. Around four she’s asleep in her recliner. He covers her with a coat.
At eight-thirty she walks out, groggy, leaving their number on a paper towel; she takes the heavy briefcase with her. A week later Ormond calls.
“Listen,” he says, “I’ve got another million to burn.”
In Steganopolis everything’s a game.
“Because people like me started seeing the hidden patterns in everything, without our medication,” says Yevgeny. He twists the elevator button to the left and pops it open, revealing the biomet pad underneath. “They built this city so that, somewhere, it’d be true.”
“I can barely even beat the puzzler on my cell phone,” mumbles Minzhu. “I don’t think I belong…”
“You can read people,” says Yevgeny. “Their tells.”
“Yeah,” she admits.
“Then remember that everyone else here is playing for pennies.” Yevgeny scans his thumb; the elevator starts moving laterally. “You’re in the currency market.”
Conversation lulls as they pull off 65, and at the exit there’s a man with a sign. He doesn’t even bother to check out their car. They keep their eyes straight forward; Larch signals left.
“See, that’s where the minimum wage can actually hurt people,” mutters Gina.
“Oh please,” retorts Larch. “That’s about as widely obeyed as the speed limit. I wonder if the immigrant walkout guys, lobbyists like that, if they consider food or cash under the table–not that he was getting either–”
Judd just fidgets. The WILL WORK FOR BANDWIDTH on his shirt feels heavy, hot and flat.
Dashiell doesn’t want the futon with Becky, who will lie about it and has the beer farts besides, but it beats the floor or (worst of all) another dude. She took the extra pillow; he doubles up and makes do.
Around godawful o’clock he’s awakened by her insistent rump, scooching against him. He’s appalled, if a little flattered. Surely she can’t be? In a room with eight people?
Dashiell rolls over and sees that she’s asleep, after all. Her face is almost pure with it. There’s no intent there, just that simple, clumsy mammalian bump: I’m here. You’re big. Warm me.
“Next, the water-planet, third from the medium star,” gurgles the attendant. “Your judgment, Arbitrix?”
But before she opens her mouths, the Arbitrix is caught in a quantum lasso: her consciousness snatched, bound and stuffed into a tiny biped body. She’s born wailing. She learns human language and human love, the colors of sweat and sunlight. She swims and bleeds, sings, grows taller; she discovers the Secret Order of Cognitists and their cruel but necessary capture of her mind, one last desperate attempt to save their race. She ages, loses, aches, dies.
“Arbitrix?” says the attendant, uncertain.
“Smash it,” she grates.
Huey tears out of his bedroom, rumpled, bloodshot. “Shit you guys!” he says. “Safuckin! Enda world!”
“You notice the world ending, Jeeb?” says Zariel, mashing on her controller.
“Watch the tank,” G.B. retorts.
“Six Six Oh-Six today, gotta do this right!” Huey tugs at his hair. “Set some fires, walk around with barcodes, you know? Art! Anarchy!”
“Was yesterday,” says G.B.
“Eleven days ago in Julian,” says Zariel.
“Happens every decade if you only count the last digit.”
“No Arabic numerals in Revelations, now will you go back to bed?” Zariel cranes around.
Huey grows seven heads and eats her.
Sabra grabs other people’s sleep where they lose it: in stairwells, under bridges, in hospital waiting rooms. You can fill a bottle from the open window of a house with a new baby. Road work downtown leaves a thick and grumpy wake.
But sometimes. Entering the last week of rehearsal, when the crew slumps into each other as they leave in the wee hours–when sweet young Skipper begs for a neck rub, and Sabra finds a knot with her fingers. So much locked up in there. So easy to extend the fangs under her tongue, lean down, puncture, drink deep.
She’s already bound into her cryotube, jacketed and manacled, wearing a mesh mask: but when her mic clicks loudly on everybody jumps. Achene might be smiling.
“You can tuck your criminals away in space,” she murmurs, and it echoes through the hall. “You can exile us to Binary Five and pretend we never happened, and soon enough you’ll see it: Hobbes, Locke, Schmitt. Your foundation is murder. You’ll crumble without us. Welcome to nasty, brutish and short.”
Silence. They start to wheel her away; her tiniest gesture turns them back.
“Sorry,” she says dryly, “was I supposed to just recite ‘Invictus?'”
Mocha’s got a two-ton hearse, which isn’t as big as you’re probably thinking but is the only one in town big enough to haul the hermetic casket of Long Jim the Sailor’s Friend. A speaker at his gravesite will play recorded clicks and whistles for visitors. People line the procession route for the hometown hero; children throw origami life preservers and cry.
But we were talking about the hearse.
“Why do you even have one this big?” asks Joule, black-suited in the passenger seat.
“Pair funerals,” says Mocha shortly, “were supposed to be huge,” and smokes a gray cigarette.