Wildbow's Blog, page 2

Sample: Boil 2

“Bear with me,” I spoke to my companion.  I struggled to manage the bulky life-sustaining apparatus.  “This is something of a puzzle.  No money, they’ll be looking for us, and I’ll need a lab if I’m to fix you up.”

My hard shoes sloshed through the shallow puddles, and the water flowed in through the gaps between sole and shoe, laces and the tongue.

“First option would be to suborn myself, put myself in league to some back-alley flesh peddler.  I imagine it would be someone like the man who bought your injured body and patched you into the thinking machine.”

He didn’t reply.  Couldn’t.  I added, “Don’t worry.  That’s not an option.  Too easy to wind up someone’s Igor, and I won’t speak of what happens when one is a young lady.”

It was cold, and I was wet, and I was getting colder and wetter.  The rain was supposed to clean the city, but it felt more like it was stirring up the noxiousness that had been content to lay flat against the ground.  A coppery smell, with traces of offal and sweat.  It was thick enough in the air that I could taste it in my mouth, as if it crept down past my nasal cavities and reached the back of my tongue.

The droplets of moisture that bounced back from every raindrop formed a kind of mist that highlighted the edges and tops of roofs and lamps.

“First priority,” I said, “Is finding shelter.  You won’t handle the cold very well, like that.  Not with the shock to your mind and body so recent.  Trust me, sir.  Give me all of your faith, relax.”

The stroke of God’s hand, I thought.  The original meaning of the term, dating back to the year sixteen-hundred or so.  For ‘thinking machines’, the lack of stimulus and motor function would inevitably lead to a critical failure in the brain, with internal bleeding and permanent damage.  Depending on how heavily the brains were crosswired, how blood supply was shared, and the complexity of the machine, the stroke could impact others, if not the entire grid.

The chances would increase with stress and fear.  It wouldn’t do me any good if my one ally in this were touched by God’s hand, so to speak.  I needed him calm.

Doctors had started lobotomizing the thinking machine operators, maintaining only the necessary functions for counting or theory.

It was more ethical.  It wasn’t an option for me.

It was also telling, I noted, that my partner here hadn’t been treated.  Was it a question of the short time he’d been in the company of the others, or had he been working on something else?  It could be as innocuous as the attempted writing of a great play by machine, where any limitations in the brains would impact the piece.  It could be a part of a larger project.

The question was, what did a back-alley doctor need with a thinking machine?

There were too many uncertainties, here, yet I needed help.  I needed to reach out to somebody, but an honest gentleman would turn me into the authorities.  A dishonest man would sell me out.

The men and women I saw in the shadows weren’t quite ordinary.  The men had thick, broad chests and muscular arms, the women had wide hips and narrow waists, many well past the point of exaggeration.  Here and there, someone had eyes that caught the light in a funny way, like a dog or a cat might.  I couldn’t be sure if they were looking at me, noting the young woman with the head, mechanical heart and jars of blood.

Injections and surgical alterations were available for pennies if one was willing to sacrifice quality or accept a side effect or two.  Those side effects might be hair that grew in thicker, a hardness in the abdomen where an organ had swelled and would remain swelled, a hunger pang for a particular food or at a particular time, to sate something that had been added or taken away.

Horror stories circulated among students in the University, of poorly done reconstructions and alterations.  A mother who ate her child, a man who went too far in reconstructing himself and began dismantling people in a mindless, automatic urge to add to himself.

Maybe they were true.  Probably true, I mentally revised the statement.  There was bound to be some note of truth to them.  Those, however, were the exceptions.  If I objectively separated myself from the student’s mindset, the real horror stories were the most common ones.  The things that ran rampant, in the midst of all this, with thousands of people handing over hard earned money for better bodies, only to pay a price after the fact.

There was the fact that people sought it out.  The University didn’t need to manipulate or leverage anything to make it happen.  They provided a path to changing one’s body, mind or overall physiology, and the people gladly took that road.  All the University needed to do was leave the door open.

All of these things required maintenance.  Chemicals or surgery that altered the body or the brain often needed to be touched up from time to time, issues corrected.

The question was, who required the most maintenance, while wanting the least attention from the authorities?

I made my way down the road, glad to put as much distance between myself and the station as possible.  I was soaked, through and through, and my arms were aching where the life support device was digging through my sleeves.  My wet stockings squished in my soaked shoes, and Dolores was clutching my upper arm tightly to leech warmth from me, until it almost hurt.

“I know where we need to go,” I said.  But we need a little luck on top of that.

I took a winding path through the city.  Part of my reason was to lose the trail, the other was out of a lack of familiarity with the area.

I saw some individuals that were dressed poorly, a little dirtier than most, boys and girls who might not have had homes to return to, one chimerical creation that had gotten loose at some point in the past and was now devouring trash in the ditch.  I was moving in the right direction.

Cities were organisms, with a heartbeat of their own.  Everything was built with some manner of chaotic logic.  Almost always, a city was founded on water.  The first buildings that went down went down near the nearest, clearest source of drinking water, and things unfolded from there.  Roads served as the concourses by which resources were distributed, as veins carried blood, hormones and nutrients.

The most essential buildings were the first to be established.  Homes, facilities, churches, essential businesses.  Less essential businesses would follow, then the least essential.

It should have made sense.  In an ideal world, it would have.  It didn’t.  Perhaps the theory didn’t apply quite so accurately as I’d hoped.  Perhaps I was making a grave error in judgement, in terms of how I classified this type of business.

I knocked, and a tense moment passed.

“Play dead,” I said.  “Better if they don’t think you have a brain, for the time being.”

There was no way for him to answer, so I had to trust he could hear.

Even on the outside steps, I could feel the force of the foosteps inside.  The door opened with such force that the lantern that hung outside swayed.  The tallow flame within cast light through the red-tinted glass, making the light around us dance briefly.

A brute of a man stood opposite me.  He had an underbite, his bad teeth spaced apart, his brow heavy.  He was broad shouldered, hamfisted, a caricature of a man.  He was dressed neat, with a collared shirt and silk vest, his hair parted.  Maybe it was meant to speak to the class of the establishment, or a way of downplaying his appearance.  Instead, it seemed to draw attention to the things that were wrong.

I’d lucked out.  Whether that was good or bad luck remained to be seen.

“I have a proposition,” I said.

“We don’t serve women here,” he said.  He looked me up and down, unashamed. “And you’re a bother to work with.  No.”

“Not that,” I said.  “Not either of those things.”

“If you’re selling that, I don’t want it.”

“Not that either,” I said.  “I need a room.”

“No space,” he said.  “And no reason to give you a room anyways.”

“Room, board, and a few things” I said, “In exchange, you have free use of my services.  I was a student at the University, a scientist in training.  I have skills.”

“I know people, I can get whatever you’re offering already.”

“For free?  In a timely fashion?”  I asked.

“Not free,” he said, frowning.  “For room, board, and whatever else you’re asking for, and no doubt my silence.  On a good night, having one more room helps business plenty, and I have enough secrets to keep.”

“I understand,” I said.  “You took a regimen of the Balfour formula?”

“Little lady,” he said, and his deep voice had a dangerous note to it, “I recommend you find another place to get dry.”

My voice caught, forcing me to stop and swallow the lump in my throat before I could try again.  I wanted to sound confident, but I wasn’t good at it.  I fell back on what I knew, instead.  “Done right, the Balfour formula makes you strong, promotes masculine features, builds muscle.  Just the sort of thing a… service provider like yourself needs to keep customers in check and employees in line.  Done wrong, it induces gigantism and acromegaly.  The pituitary dumps hormones into the body.  You grow, and if it’s done very badly, you don’t stop growing.  Eventually, the heart gives out.  It’s not hard to figure out.”

“You know your babble.  Good for you.  Find another place to hide you.  If I find you sleeping on my stoop, I’ll kick you.  Don’t think I won’t.”

“Balfour’s formula makes you more impulsive.  You’re an adolescent boy at the height of a hormone surge, all the time.  You want… company, you’re always a touch drunk, you want to fight more than you did.  Some people like it.  At first.  Few enjoy it.  Not five years after the fact, when the body still hasn’t reached an equilibrium.”

“Give the girl an apple,” he said.  “Three years.”

“I knew because of your teeth.  When you grow too fast, and the growth plates shift to that extent, your teeth shift position.  Your body can’t grow like that without getting the materials from somewhere, and your teeth are one of those places.  An infected tooth leeches calcium from the bone, and a damaged bone can leech calcium from the teeth.  I can look at it, and I can figure it’s been about three years.”

“Mmm hmm,” he said.

“It would have been excruciating, growing so quickly, so fast.  Your posture is suffering, this late in the day, which makes me think you haven’t stopped growing.  Your hands will hurt, making even holding something painful, the tissues must well.   The teeth bother you more than anything, I’m sure, since you’ll be endlessly hungry but the teeth are falling apart.”

“Everyone has problems,” he said.

I continued, almost unable to help myself.  “You haven’t had them fixed.  You’re spending the money elsewhere.  My guess?  Someone offered you the Balfour regimen, there were side effects, and now you’re still going back to them for regular care, to keep your heart going, to get calcium, and to get pain relief.  Anyone that works for you goes to him too, because it’s convenient.”

“And?”

“And… you’re under his thumb.  Maybe he’s said no other doctor would know the ins and outs of your body like he does.  Or he’s said other scary things.  If you were going to look for help despite that, the nature of your business means you don’t want people looking at it too hard.  I’m offering you a way out.”

He folded his arms, glowering at me.  “You’re saying he lied?  I could go to any doctor, and the care I get would be just as good?”

“No.  He’s right.  Any other care, it wouldn’t be as good as the care you get from a doctor who knows the full case history.  One of the best tools we have are the living ratios.  Charts and scales we memorize, or try to memorize.  Constants and patterns, across medicine and biology.  The more he knows about you, the better he can put the pieces into place, intuitively knowing the measures and doses required to fix you… except he’s the one that broke you in the first place, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“I just finished a year working on a project built on bone and enamel.  Give me one month and some things to start, and I’ll give you new teeth.  Give me a few months, and I’ll fix your jaw.  For as long as you keep me, I can help with the pain.  On demand, with no having to wait until this other doctor can make the time.”

“I am already irritated with you, little lady.  You’re giving me the patter I might expect from a snake oil salesman, you woke me up early enough I won’t be able to go back to sleep.  You want to overturn my unpleasant but tolerable life.  The idea of spending any more time with you is making me want to hit something.”

He’s considering the idea, then?  “I had a roommate.  I know how to be quiet and stay out of the way.  I’d prefer it, working in peace, when I’m not working for your benefit.”

He glowered at me, briefly chewing his lips, before looking away.  He sighed, heavily.

When he finally spoke, he said, “Room, you eat what they cook.  What do you need, for supplies?”

“Surgical implements, but I’ll make do with kitchen knives.  I need a voltaic horse, alive or dead, but it’s going to die, so dead is probably more convenient, cheaper.  A table with a flat surface and a chair, a bed, a hot bath and a change of clothes.  Once I have that, I can manage on my own.”

“The horse will be expensive.”

“I’m suspicious you could buy a voltaic horse every two months with what you’re paying the other Doctor.”

He turned to step back into the foyer, leaving the door open.  I took it as an invitation to follow.

I felt a thrill of victory.  I might not be able to navigate the unfamiliar parts of a city with ease, but I knew my science.

If the streets had smelled like blood and sweat, the interior had a trace odor of other, baser things.

“Stay,” he said, as we reached the sitting room.  Velvet-covered chairs and loveseats littered the area, and a small bar stood in one corner, unoccupied.

Three women, my age, reclined in the open space.  I knew them, in a manner of speaking.

‘Daisy’ was blonde, conventionally attractive with a wasp waist, though she wore a bathrobe.

Both ‘Violets’, by contrast, were brunette, more slender, with a smattering of freckles on their faces.  The freckles varied slightly in intensity and placement, but the shape of their faces and their bodies were the same.  One might have been a year or two younger than the other.

Mass produced people, also known as centuplets, despite the fact that there were more than a hundred of each.

I found a flat space near the fireplace and set my companion down.  The artificial blood pump first, then the head.

“Who’s he?” Violet asked.  Coy, mischievous, but Violets were.  They were also perpetually active, which might have explained why the two Violets were awake so early.

“Leave them alone,” Daisy said, before taking another puff of the cigarette.  I knew Daisy was more businesslike.

“Who are you, miss?” Violet two echoed her sister, smiling a little, in a way that reached the corners of her eyes.  Deliberately annoying Daisy.

“She,” the master of the house said, as he appeared in the entryway, “Has no identity.  She does not exist, you do not mention her to anyone.  You ignore her, unless it’s an emergency.  She receives breakfast and dinner.  If there is a dispute, you win, she loses.  While she is here, the bedroom at the far end of the hallway is off limits.”

“Yes, sir,” the centuplets chimed, in unison.  Practiced.

“I understand,” I said.

“You leave them be.  I paid a pretty penny for them, and I won’t have you spoiling them.  They’re trained, domesticated, know everything they need to know.  Disturb my business in the slightest, and this arrangement is done.”

“I intend to stay out of your way,” I said.

“You’re dripping water on my hardwood.  Come.  Your room.”

I went, leaving the head behind to warm up.

He’d laid out a change of clothes, as well as sheets.  As rooms went, it was smaller than my room at the University.  Worse, the smell I’d noticed in the house was thicker here.

It was a place of business, after all, for those ladies of the night.

Still, I couldn’t be too picky.  He had a reason to stay out of people’s way, to avoid the authorities.

“I’m Lacy, so you know,” I said, giving a false name.

“Linus Gibson,” he replied.  “If there is trouble and you are discovered, I will say I thought you were a student that was renting this space and working from here, instead of the University.  I will be shocked and appalled to know you are not legitimate, and I will do everything I can to ensure I get no blame.  I can play stupid, and I will.  You understand?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Where is your head?”

“The head?  I left it by the fireplace.”

“If I’m supposed to ignore you, I won’t have your things lying about.  Collect it.”

“If I could leave it, just before I get my own fire going-”  I gestured at the little stove.  “It’s cold, and there could be brain-”

He gave me a hard look.

“I’ll go get him,” I said.  “Can I briefly collect your bellows, while I do?  You’ll have them back before lunch.”

The hard look intensified.  I could imagine the thoughts running through his mind.

“I expect them back in working order.  I’m going to try to rest, and you’re to be silent.  You’ll have the other things you need tonight or tomorrow.”

I hurried off, to grab the head.  Bending down and reaching, I could feel my arms and back ache with the irritation of hauling it this far.  I made my way back to the bedroom, almost tripping with the awkward burden of head, machine and bellows, and then closed the door.

Using only my hands, no tools available, I dismantled the least essential aspects of the machine, the cosmetic and the convenient things that made it so it could be carried.

The heard stared, silent, as I rigged the bellows to the series of brass gears.  It was moving slower, with the extra pull.  Was it too slow?  Less oxygen would have a negative effect, given this was already close to a minimum.

The hardest aspect was rigging the bellows to the base of the neck, where a cap of metal had been screwed into place.  There were openings, but the tube was the wrong size.  I settled for a scrap of cloth from the tie at my collar, to block the difference, wadding it in.

“I’m Genevieve Fray,” I introduced myself to the head.

The heart and the attached mechanism raised the upper half of the bellows, then slowly moved them down.  Air moved through his throat and mouth, a long exhalation.

“Will,” he wheezed.  “Will Howell.”

I took advantage of the gear’s upswing, the slow raise of the bellow’s arm.  “Do you need anything, Will?  Are you hurt?  Cold?”

“Thirsty,” he said.  He sounded more like a little boy than a man.  “I’m parched.”

Of course.  There wasn’t anything hooked up to provide hydration.  It was a temporary rig.

“I can put something together.  I’ll need to find if there are any empty jars in the pantry.”

“No.  I can wait,” he said.  He sounded out of sorts.

Well, he was a disembodied head, it couldn’t have been easy.

“Putting water in your mouth wouldn’t help,” I said.  “There isn’t a place for it to go.  I’ll need to prepare something soon.  A checklist.”

“You’re really one of them.  Good god.”

“Yes, how else did you think I would give you a new body?” I asked.  I waited for him to respond.  With him breathing this way, it would be too easy to dominate the conversation.

“N-never understood it.  I left home for three years, came back…” he paused, waiting for the bellows to come down again, he used the delay to close his eyes, hard, as if shutting out the world.  “…everything was different.  The academy is five times the size, people…”

I needed a working relationship with him.  I was patient, giving him the voice he likely hadn’t had since he was thrown from the rooftop.  I stepped over to the fire, to start it.

“…are stranger.  There are monsters, people with horns, skin as white as alabaster, and people treat them as if they were commonplace.”

Everything was already in place in the fireplace, no doubt for a girl expecting a customer.  I started it, then stood and approached Will.  “These strange things are commonplace, now.  Where did you go for those three years?”

“Detroit.  Engineering, Learning to work with hard sciences.  Not so…” his voice pitched high as he tried to rush the last words out before the air stopped.

I reached out, moving the arm away, raised and lowered the bellows myself.  My hand ran over the rest of the machine, checking.  Blood was forcibly oxygenated by natural intake and bacteria cultures, no doubt.

“Not so glamorous…  as you lot.  As the wet sciences…  Frowned on.”

I turned the head around, and then began changing into the drier clothes.

His voice had a different tone to it as he spoke.  Hollow, and not the hollowness of a lungless man speaking.  “Came home with my partner, saw my father…  He had been very traditional, but he had mailed me and told me he had two stitch servants.”

“Voltaic servants?”

“Yes.  He saw my hair, was upset when I… told him I had changed the color.”

I looked at his dark hair.

“He said I have someone else’s hair now.”

“Different genetics.  You had someone change the color by changing your own code.”

“It was inexpensive, easier and less messy than applying bootblack.  It was a lark, my friend and business partner… Hudson…”

He paused, and it wasn’t because he was waiting for air.

His voice cracked when he spoke, “N-not my friend, I suppose.  Hudson pushed… me to do it.  Couldn’t undo it and get home… in time.  Decided to brave it.  I was wrong.”

“What happened?”

“I am no longer my father’s son… not in blood, he said… even if I changed my hair back, it wouldn’t be the same hair I was born with… someone else’s blond hair.”

“He kicked you out?”

Again, the hollowness.  It was hard to listen to, enough that I felt uncomfortable, fidgety.  “Yes.  I went with Hudson… brought money I had saved, to help with his business and pay my way… he used the money for the business, stole the rest and pushed… pushed me from the roof.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.  I finished dressing and turned the head back around.  “Truly.”

“One of you did this to me.”

“One of us will fix it, given a chance,” I said, my voice serious.  “I will fix it.”

“Why?”

He’d uttered one word, for a long breath of air.

“Why fix it?  I need help.”

“Why break out?  Why all this?  I heard them talking…  They would have released you.”

“Would they?  I’m not so sure.  We get locked up for a time, without access to tools, while they check on us.  A lot of upper class men, several upper class ladies.  People from families with money.  Families they cannot readily offend.  But they put a lot into us.  I do not think all of us go home.  Letting too many go with their knowledge intact, it makes for competition.”

“What happens, then?”

“They give us drugs, to keep us going.  Ox, stimulants, depressants, narcotics.  Free access.  If a student dies, it’s their fault, for neglecting ratios and vital numbers.  The family receives condolences, and they do not speak of it to friends.  An accident.  Perhaps the ones that are smart enough to be problematic and too disloyal to work for the University meet accidents, perhaps they use those drugs to lure us back in, while asking if we want a different role, working for the University in a different capacity, dangling the bait of returning, continuing our work.  Perhaps there are other means,” I said.

I met his eyes.  They were green, framed by a brow that was furrowed in concern.

“Don’t believe it.  They wouldn’t…  They can’t.”

“It’s all chemicals,” I said.  “They get the body used to it, then take it away, and the body suffers, the mind craves.  Simple, really.  Except someone like me?  They wouldn’t waste drugs. If they realized my family didn’t have money or influence to spare any longer, that my father is dead, my mother in the care of her brother, they wouldn’t be kind to me.  They’re vast, you understand?  The united Universities have an influence so broad the government couldn’t hope to touch them.  I can’t help but wonder if I wouldn’t become a part of a thinking machine like you were.”

I could see the fear and pain on his expression.  Loss.

Again, I thought of the ‘stroke of god’s hand’.  I had to be gentler, until he had a full body, a way to release the pain and stress that was building up inside him.

“Unlike you, I wouldn’t have had any chance of escape, no hope of getting a body and eventually buying a vat-grown body made from my own cells.  You can regain everything you’ve lost.  Help me, and I’ll help you in turn.”

“You want revenge, too?” Will asked me.

“Yes.  No.  I… I want to answer them.”

“Answer?”

The restlessness was too much.  I stood abruptly from the bed.  I made my way to the window and threw it open.  The rain made tiny droplets on my skin and the nightie I wore, but the fresh air was nice, especially with the thick atmosphere in the room.  Cold, but the house was warmer.  They were perhaps starting up the stoves in the kitchen.

“What did you notice when you returned to the city?” I asked.  “Are they good?  The changes you saw?”

“It’s… God, no,” he said.  “L- look at me!”

His voice had pitched higher, but he couldn’t manage more volume.

I stayed calm, hoping the attitude would convey itself to him somehow, as I might act with a strange beast in the laboratories back at the University.  I shut the window.  “I know.  Besides yourself?”

“We’re making ourselves into monsters, desecrating the dead…  All in the name of vanity and greed.”

“And a share of desperation,” I added.  “A drive to keep up and compete with others who are doing the same.”

“Yes.  Everything I see, it scares me a little more… Just now, back there… the identical women.”

“The centuplets, the ladies of the gardens, whatever term you want to use.  Non-people, no rights by law, as they have no mother or father.”

His voice broke a little, “They’re terrifying.  God, I had no idea, the first times I saw them, but to hear them speak, out of earshot?”

“I know.  I do.  I didn’t like it, but I told myself that it could be better, Will.  That it would find its balance.  I lived by the pragmatism my parents instilled in me, weighing the options every time I thought about using chemicals to get ahead, and always deciding to play it safe, to take the slow and steady road.  I chose to be the turtle, and I lost to the rabbits.”

“I’m not sure I understand… I’m confused.  About everything.”

“I think I was telling myself that if I could play it safe, if I could do things the right way, without compromising, then it was acceptable, there was hope.  But I was betrayed, like you were, by a roommate, possibly by others.  They spoiled my project, and I can imagine any number of things where they have tricked and sabotaged me.  Ox never did much for me.  I wonder now if they stole it or diluted it, to set me back, or because they wanted more than their ration.”

I stopped, hearing sounds elsewhere in the house.  If Linus was going to go find out if someone was looking for me, now would be a time.  But the creaks of the floorboards were too soft to be Linus.

“You’re answering this?”  Will asked me.

Distracted, I tried to return my mind to the thrust of my argument.  “I’m.. looking at the system like I look at Linus, out there.  The owner of this… establishment.  Things have grown too fast, and they’re on the brink of coming apart.  The growth is draining on essential resources, just to sustain itself, it’s ultimately conflicting with itself.  Here, everywhere the Universities are cropping up.  Something needs to respond to it.  There isn’t anything to keep it in check.”

“One person, against that?”

“No.  Two people,” I said.  “Two people and Dolores, here.”

I worked Dolores free of my sleeve, then held her close to my body to warm her.

“Two people and a small monster.”

“And more, Will, if we can manage it.  I want to raise questions, in the public’s eye, because I know they’re aware of what’s going on, that they’re getting shortchanged in this bargain.  I know they’re scared.  I want to rally people against the University, get people angry.  To give the University a reason to slow down, to hold back.”

I could see the doubt on his face.

“There’s a lot of room for this to go wrong.  I know.  I’m not a fool, William Howell.  But what’s the alternative?  We let the University keep growing?  Until it touches everything, more than it already does, and then we watch it die and take everything with it?  We wait for one critical mistake to be made, and a plague takes us all?”

“They’ve assured us that there are counter….” Will said.  “Measures, from the moment the first person raised the idea…  Even before I left for my studies.”

“They’re lying,” I said.  “Or they’re wrong.  I’ve been there.  I didn’t study disease, specifically, but I saw.  I could describe the safeguards they use, and how a disease could spread despite them.  Give me two hours, and I’ll explain it all.”

“That’s not- no,” he said.  “I’m thinking maybe you’re crazy.  Maybe you’re lying, to get this vendetta going.”

But I could see the note of fear on his face.

One person, with a seed of doubt.  Six hundred and seventy thousand, five hundred and ninety-nine to go.

“I’m confused,” he said, again.

“You lost everything,” I said.  “I understand that.”

He blinked, hard.  I respected him by looking away.

“I think I need to wait…” he said.  “To think about it.  I’m not in…”

His voice broke, an odd sound combined with the faint whoosh of the bellows.

“…the right frame of mind,” he finished.

“We have time to discuss it, to lay plans,” I said.  “I promised you a body.  That’s going to take two or three weeks to put together, if not longer.  It depends on how quickly we get the materials.  I should unhook this from your heart, reduce strain on the device, unless you have something more to say?”

“No.  I’m tired.  I need to sleep.  Somehow.”

“Me too.  Let me get you your water, I’ll hook it up.”

I crept down the hall and begged a large mason jar from a Lily that had roused and was going about her routine.  An Eastern woman, by appearance, she was American by dialect.  Prim, proper, demure.  I liked Lilies, I got along with them.

I collected two metal cans, mitts to hold them, boiled water for one, and a length of rubber hose.  Lily was accommodating in showing me where things were, in the midst of preparing breakfast.

Accommodating on the surface.

It didn’t take long to hook up the water.

“What… would happen if you hadn’t helped me?” he asked.

“They would have interrogated you.”

“And then?”

“They would have no use for you.  Who spends the time and money giving you a proper body again, Will?  Do you truly believe a good samaritan would have stepped forward and offered a solution?”

“And you?”

“If we’d met in different circumstances… I don’t know.”

“What of this circumstance?” he asked.

“I don’t function well alone.  I like to feel like I’m a part of something.  There’s a strength in that.  Humans are social creatures.  I had my family, and then I had the University… and I was facing the prospect of having nobody at all.”

“So you take me?  I don’t know you,” he said.

“I don’t know you either, Will Howell.  But that’s okay.  So long as we’re allies in this, it’s okay if you disagree with me.  Having a wall to bounce ideas off of can help with brainstorming.  My best project was a collaborative work.”

I indicated Dolores’ can of water.

“And you’re moving on to… convince the people to join your side?  Going to war against the University?”

“Revolution, not war,” I said.  “Changing perspectives about what’s going on.  Stirring people to act.”

“Perspective is the only difference between revolution… and rebellion.”

“Are we allies in this, Will?  Can you see where I’m coming from?”

“You’re convincing me,” he said.  “But Hudson convinced me too, and I see where that led me.”

“I want a partner, Will, not a subordinate.  Not a slave.  Tell me how you want to approach this, I’ll respect your decision.”

“I- I have doubts, Miss…  I’m tired.  I’ve forgotten.”

“Fray.  Genevieve.”

“Miss Fray.  But I’ll face my doubts on my own, and decide if they need to be shared.  I think I’ll have enough time to think and do nothing else.”

“I’ll give you a body in short order, Will.”

“I know.  Thank you.  For now, do as you wish.  Don’t…” he paused.  His voice had dropped a touch in volume when he continued, “Don’t worry about me.”

“If I may do as I wish, then, can I ask how you want to sleep?  May I pick you up?”

“Yes?” he made it a question.

I answered through action.  I checked the fire, then retreated to the bed, careful of the cords and tubes.  I moved a pillow, so he had a place to rest, and laid him down, before lying down beside him and pulling the covers up.

When we had settled, his head rested in the crook between my bosom and the pillow.

“Tell me if you object,” I murmured.  “I thought perhaps a little human contact would help.”

Dolores splashed in the narrow confines of her can.

Will hadn’t responded.  His eyes were closed.  He looked a touch more at ease.

Not necessarily asleep, but it was hard to tell, when he didn’t breathe.

I needed information, to find this ‘Hudson’, and the man who had turned him into this.

I also needed information on other fronts.  The officers would be upset, after I’d sedated their guards and fled with a witness for another crime, but I wouldn’t be a threat.  Ex-students living in the periphery of the city wasn’t so unusual.

The moment I started working against the University, however, I’d have enemies.  They would start looking for me in earnest.

I needed information before I could find a key point for a dramatic strike against them, or a subtle maneuver that might set them back.

What means did I have?  Gossip?  Too unreliable.  Infiltrating the University?  Suicidal.  Could I go to a private investigator?

Possible.  A safe, sensible route.

A route that needed funds, before anything else.  I needed the information, I needed reputation, and a thumb on the pulse of the community.  I needed to be in a position to deliver a grave blow in a sensitive area.

I was patient, I could wait, to let it happen, but I’d leave too much room for failure if I tried to achieve it as a sequence.  If one step failed, every step that followed would fail in turn.  Without funds, we’d lack information, without information we wouldn’t know where to strike, and without a successful, attention-grabbing form of attack against the established order, we wouldn’t be able to build reputation.

I needed to achieve all of these things together.  I needed to help Will.

What I wouldn’t give for a dose of Ox.  A diluted dose, a placebo, to help the ideas click…

Then I felt the piece fall into place.  An idea, turned around.

“Hey.  Will,” I murmured, half asleep.  “How would you like to become a private investigator?”

Sample: Boil 1

I reached out with one hand, and ten needles sank into the pig’s soft flesh, eliciting murderous screams.  Loud.  It thrashed against its bondage.

Sorry, pig.

“Mr. Bowles, if you please?” Mr. Hayworth spoke.  Not a question, per se.

The young student, an attractive young man in uniform, moved the turntable that the pig was caught on.  The animal’s screams continued as it continued to struggle against the arrangement of metal bars that held it in place.

The injection area now faced away from me, leaving me unable to see the progression.  I was nervous, my mouth dry.  My leg kept wanting to bounce up and down, which would have been unsightly.

Three men, only one of whom I knew, sat at the long table opposite me.  They watched me, and they watched the pig.  The thick tome of pages I had carefully typed out sat before them, untouched.

An older man without a wrinkle on his face gestured at my hand.  I held it up.  Each finger nail had two spurs of bone extending from the sides.  He nodded, then looked down at a piece of paper, frowning as he scribbled something down.

The pig’s squealing abruptly died down.  It would be dead now.  More frowns from the table across me.  They didn’t look impressed.

Had it taken too long?

Had one of the injection sites failed to take?  If I’d succeeded, then there should be five patches of flesh turning color.  This would indicate the injections had been delivered successfully.  Most settled for one injection site and a dye.  For drama, and to show the full breadth of what I was doing, I had gone for practical application.  De-oxygenization, extracellular distortion with high biliruben levels, enzymes to rebind the hemoglobin and break up the capillaries, bacteria to hyperoxidize, as well as a hemorrhagic.

I had set the bar high for myself, in this.  I put my odds at one in forty.  I’d doubled down on each dose, but even so…

Still with my hand raised, I retracted the spurs.  I clasped my hands in front of me before they could start shaking.

“You have three colors,” Professor Hayworth finally said.  He was the only one I knew on this committee.  Unfortunately.  He had light blond hair and he hadn’t even taken off his coat before sitting down, and he toyed with his fountain pen as though distracted or bored.  “Blanched blue flesh, orange with boils, purple bruising… and I believe more bruising.”

“If you’ll please wait?” I asked, even as I felt a cold hand close around my heart.  No, no, no.

“Ah.  I think I see another,” another professor said.  The youngest of the three, he looked no older than thirty.  Not that looks indicated much.  “Green, a touch faint, but distinct.”

Faint?  I’d tested the hyperoxidizer and hemorrhagic any number of times.  Was it the pig’s fault?  Was it from a different farm?  Did it have thicker skin?

“With the demonstration over, we can begin the questioning,” the older professor said.  There wasn’t a waver in his voice.  He didn’t sound old. Only his hair and a poor posture betrayed his real age.

“Yes, professor,” I said.

“What was your source material?” the youngest professor asked.

An easy question.  Something to help me get my bearings.  “Shelley’s third codex.”

“What is the mechanism?”  the old professor again.

“Telescoping series of bone, forming taps, drawn out of the body by synovial fluids in a hydraulic mechanism.  When the bone is fully extended and pressure is placed on the taps, the channel is opened to force the fluids out.”

“Mechanical, then?”

“Yes, professor.”

“You showed mechanical work last year as well,” Professor Hayworth said.  “In fact, there was a great deal that was similar to this.  Telescoping.”

“I did, professor.”

“Professor Pruitt was on that committee, if I recall.  He had a car he was fancying.  He was in a phase of fetishizing machinery, which may be the only reason that project passed muster.”

“You could be right, professor,” I said.  I was being rude, suggesting he might be wrong, but I wasn’t sure how else to respond, and I couldn’t be silent.  I wasn’t about to agree.

“Shelf life?”  the young professor asked.

I was maybe falling a touch in love with him.  He was making this easier, asking the questions I wanted them to ask.  “Lifetime.  Nothing should need replacing, barring a needle breaking in a struggle, and even then it should be easy enough.  The cartridges can be refilled by use of a syringe.”

“Where are the cartridges?” the old professor again.

“Within the proximal phalanx of the respective finger,” I said, tapping the longest bone of my middle finger.

“Show me?  The fingers, not the cartridges.”

I did, extending my hand with fingers down.  He gestured, and I turned my hand around, fanning out my fingers, then closing them.

“No scars,” the young professor said, approving.

Some young ladies were wooed by poems and flowers.  He had inadvertently targeted my weak point, my science.  I smiled a little, curtsying just a bit before I remembered where I was.  “No, professor.  I’d like to say it’s because I’m talented in that respect, but the cartridges are easy to install.”

“I imagine you still have the blemishes on your arms?”  Hayworth asked, almost casual.  As if it were a non-sequitur.

Joy squashed.  Dash it all.  “Yes, professor.  I’ve treated them.  You would have to look carefully to see.”

“Roll up your sleeve, please?” he asked.

Not the subject of this particular discussion, but I couldn’t exactly refuse.  I unbuttoned my shirt at the wrist, then rolled it up.  Stretch marks ran across my skin, only really visible in the wrong light.

The young professor looked too, of course.  I wanted to hide.  There was no need to keep my arm up this long, I’d done as I was asked.  Yet I held firm.  I had made mistakes and I would face them.

Even with everything on the line.

“I don’t have to look carefully to see,” Hayworth said.  “Don’t lie to us, Miss Fray.”

“Yes, professor,” I responded, more offended than chastised.

“This student,” Hayworth went on, for the benefit of the others at the table, “chose to demonstrate her first year project using augmentations to her own body, as she’s doing today.  There are a wealth of individuals in the lower class who will gladly serve as a test subject in exchange for some free care.  Something looked at, something removed, or perhaps some cosmetic attention.  To demonstrate a project using yourself indicates confidence.  Being wrong in the face of that confidence indicates exceedingly poor judgement.  The scars suggest your last project was poorly thought out.”

I momentarily wished Hayworth and the pig could have traded places before this started.

“Hayworth isn’t entirely wrong, we have a great many facilities at our disposal,” the older professor agreed.  “Something to keep in mind.  Let me ask, with such small cartridges, the doses must be small?”

“I used a high concentration,” I said.  “I could do the same to twenty pigs.”

The old professor’s eyebrows raised.  Wrinkles appeared in places that shouldn’t have them, with the uncharacteristic change in his appearance.

“With only four out of five doses working?” Hayworth asked.

“My tests showed all five doses working reliably,” I said.  True, but it felt like an excuse, given the situation.

“A correspondingly high chance of self-contamination, then, with this high concentration dose, and the risk of breakage?”

Could I stab myself?  Or would I infect myself with the poisons or drugs I’d loaded into the cartridges?

“The telescope structure is strong enough I wouldn’t fuss, Professor.” I said.  “The only sort of impact that would put me at risk would be the sort that broke every bone in my hand.”

“A risk, nonetheless,” Hayworth said.

“I know many students who carry volatile chemicals and pathogens on their person.  Any impact that could break a hand could break a bottle they carry.”

The older professor frowned.  “I recommend that you do not let the carelessness of other students lower your own standards, Miss Fray.”

I bit my tongue instead, taking a second.

“Yes, professor,” I finally said.  I even managed to sound proper.

“Market?” the young one asked me.

Another question I was glad to answer.  “Upper class women.  Even lower class women would find it appealing, and the turnaround to produce components is short.  It’s discreet, convenient, easily added once and then forgotten, with no maintenance.  It serves as a means of self defense when out and unaccompanied.  If accosted, they can scratch or inject their assailant.  Our nation’s spies could use them as well, if the situation warranted.”

“Interesting thought, and not a traditional direction,” the young professor said.

“Because it’s a poor direction to take,” Hayworth said.  “Proper young ladies put a priority on appearance.  What message does it send, if a young lady conceals hooks and barbs all over her person?”

“If you would allow me to speak from the perspective of a young lady…” I said.

“I would rather answer your other point.  Please.  Remember you are in a university setting, Miss Fray, and we cannot speak out of turn, or this will devolve into chaos.  You think spies should use these devices to poison America’s enemies?  When the world is on guard against this very thing, in this burgeoning new age?  An actual syringe can be destroyed or discarded after use.  If a spy was searched thoroughly, someone would surely notice the holes in their fingertips.”

An actual syringe can be found readily before use.  “The holes are miniscule, professor.”

“Miniscule holes can still be detected.  My biggest problem, Miss Fray, is the scope of this project,” Hayworth went on.  “Many of your fellow students make a term project out of something more grandiose.  Developing a new lifeform to a certain life stage, a new manner of voltaic life, a pathogen.  What you demonstrate here would be an interesting feature, a detail in another, grander project.”

“I seem to recall you stating that small things can be the most dangerous.  I believe it was in my second class ever, you were one of the professors who spoke.”

“Are you giving me lip, Miss Fray?”

“No, professor,” I said, my voice tense.  “I’m trying to argue the merit of my work.  This is the point of the annual dissertation?”

“If you’re going to be disrespectful, you can step out of the room, and we’ll conclude this without you.”

I pursed my lips.  I can’t afford to fail here.  “Yes, professor.  I’m sorry.”

“Many of our students are here from a young age.  Some exceptional students join us at a later date.  Some less exceptional students join us at a later date, by virtue of luck or happenstance.  I believe you’re one of the latter cases.”

“I only joined two years ago, professor.”

“Sometimes this happens,” Hayworth said, and he sounded unnervingly soft spoken.  “A clever student has an idea, but it’s not one they can prepare in the span of a year.  They take one small aspect of the project, then try to build a dissertation around it.  Sometimes this works.  They scrape by, some geniuses pass with flying colors, and then they stun the committee with their results the following year.  More often, it doesn’t do well because it’s a mere three months of work, when we’re expecting the sum of ten.”

The younger professor wasn’t speaking up.  He hadn’t, not since he saw my arm.

Hayworth continued.  “Tell me, Ms. Fray.  Do you have a hidden project in the wings?”

“I have three other projects that were near completion.”

“Any unifying theme?  Can you tie them together?”

“No, professor.”

“There are no extracurricular activities in your record, as I understand it.  Have I been misinformed?  Have you been working in the libraries, with sales, military, sticks, or the clean up details?”

No time.  “No, professor.”

“Is there anything to add?  Something to add, justifying your use of University resources?”

I paid tuition.  In a roundabout way.  I earned my scholarship, and that money went to you.  Money in exchange for resources.

Very reluctantly, I said, “No, professor.  Nothing to add.”

“I see.  Thank you, Ms. Fray.  If you would return to your residence, someone will be along shortly to inform you about our decision.”

“Thank you,” I responded, not feeling grateful at all.  I headed to the door, giving the table a sidelong glance.

The rumor among the students was that if at least two of the committee members went straight to the paperwork when the meeting ended, then you were in the clear.

None of them even glanced at it.

Sorry, pig, that you had to die for the sake of that.

Other students glanced at me as I strode down the hallway.  The students ranged from ten to twenty-five.  Five boys to every girl.  Dozens.  The vast majority of them had a weariness about them.  Most would be getting a minimum of sleep, trying to wrap up their projects and type out an outline that covered every base.  Some were in the company of voltaic creations or their dissertation projects.  Animals with augmentations and a handful of people with augmentations as well.

I was done.  Career over before it started.  Four and a half years of intensive tutoring with ex-students, preparing my admissions project, six months in-school bringing the idea I had conceptualized to life, two years spent here.

I couldn’t help but feel a kind of resentment over the youngest students that were milling in the hallways.  The ones with families that could afford to send them here from an early age.  They would inject themselves with ox, a way of keeping their brains flexible, free associating easily.  They had been dosing themselves with other substances to stave off the need for sleep for days, to make the most of their time.  By the time I had stepped through the front doors and faced the option of doing the same, they had been dosing themselves for so long they were immune or used to the side effects.

I had started out behind and I had never caught up.

Or, better to say, they had started out ahead.

I loved the building, with the gleaming tile floors and the brown stone walls.  It was warm and just a little disorganized in layout, like a living thing should be.  Crawling with ivy.  The residential buildings that sprawled around the foot of the University were more like the roots of the superstructure than anything else.

It was big, somehow overbearing and every few years, the work done here would touch the world beyond.

It would have been easy to use a human test subject.  I could have gone overboard, taken more risks with safety and the cosmetics of it.  It would have hurt me in terms of marketing, perhaps been a bit of a gamble, but I could have been more dramatic.  It was, I suspected, what many other students had done.

I could have, but I hadn’t.  I had seen a few too many of those test subjects coming through the University.  There was a small but noticeable discrepancy between the number who were brought in for the experiments and the number that left.  Small, only a handful each year, but still enough to note.

There was also another concern that nagged at me, but it was more abstract.  The idea that we were so eager to take risks for the sake of a successful, attention-getting dissertation and then summarily hurrying to rush our ideas out the door to potential buyers… I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a part of that.

In more ways than one, I had been safe.  The self-experimentation was the smallest risk I could have taken.

I returned to my residence room, and my eyes roved over the other projects.  In a tank, Dolores swam, undulating periodically.  Somewhere between an octopus and a jellyfish, she had an open ring for a head.  Smarter than most would consider.  model hands sat on another dresser, carved of wood, with various components arranged on or around them.  The one in front had sections carved and cut off to hold the other spurs I’d made.  Another had the ink reservoir in the palm, as I did in my left hand.

I rolled up my left sleeve and put my arm in Dolores’ tank.

The ring encircled my upper arm.  I withdrew both my arm and Dolores from the tank, letting her four arms wrap around my arm, wrist and hand.  My roommate, still ensconced in her bedcovers, grumbled, annoyed, at the slight splash I’d made.  She would be sleeping off the cocktails of cocaine and other substances she had used to get through her dissertation.  She had passed.

I gave both Dolores and my arm a patdown with a handtowel to dry them, then adjusted Dolores so that one of her oblong eyes were visible.

I pointed, and she reached out with a prehensile limb, seized the book, and pulled it back to me.  It wasn’t strong, and there was a floppiness to the arm that I had hoped to have corrected by now.  Not enough cartilage.

I picked a sugar cube out of a bowl and stroked it along her skin.  I pointed again.

Wrong target.  I splayed out my fingers to stop her, then tried again.  When she was right, I rewarded her with more sugar.  By the time we had a rhythm going, I didn’t need the sugar anymore.  Only an occasional stroke of her head.

If I had four more months here, I could have made a second Dolores, learning from the mistakes of the first.  Or I might have tried something more basic, surgery to restructure her internal makeup.  Shorter, stronger limbs?

I began picking up the various pieces of my room, with Dolores’ help.

“You’re back already, Genie?” Claire, my roommate,  mumbled.  She was still bundled up in her covers, with them over her head and tucked under her legs, but she’d at least turned over to face me.

“Yes.”

She was able to read things from my body language and tone.  Her voice was a little hoarse as she said, “I’m sorry.”

“I won’t hold my scholarship unless they all pass me, and they won’t all pass me.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “You could reach out to your parents?  One year of tuition, do better next year?”

I wasn’t sure I would, and that wasn’t an option anyways.  How nice, that she could suggest it in so cavalier a fashion.

She groaned a little.  It wasn’t for my sake, but for hers.

“Would you like anything?” I asked.  “Water?  Food?”

“Yes.  But you should ignore me.  Be selfish, Genie.  If you’re right about them not passing you, they’ll come and ask you to leave, and you’ll only be able to bring what you can pack in two minutes.  Hurry and get yourself set.”

I nodded.  “Thank you.”

She was being nice, even while under the weather.  She had always been nice.

Why did I feel uneasy, thinking that?

She spoke, but her eyes were screwed shut, and she tugged the blanket over her head.  “People are going to ask what happened.  There are a few of them who like you.  They will think I had something to do with it.”

“They have no reason to blame you.”

“What should I tell them?”

“That I love this.  The work.  The learning.  The creation.  It’s everything else that I hate.  The people, for one thing.  I like new ideas too much to stick to one for the dissertation.  That’s where I went wrong.”

There was more, but complaining about the elite students and the advantages they had from attending at a young age wouldn’t go over well with Claire.  She was one of them.

“I guess you’re going home?”

I nodded, but it was a lie.

No home to go to.  Not really.  My family’s fortunes weren’t doing so well.  I had hoped to finish over three more years and then work for the academy, taking my cut from selling research and projects to support my family.

“Can I give you a tip?” she asked.  “A big tip that you positively cannot tell anyone I gave you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Keep Dolores.  Hide her.  They’ll confiscate anything they can find, but they won’t dare touch you.”

I stared down at the little lifeform, with her pink and gray blotches.  Not my work, not entirely.  I had made it with an upperclassman who had dropped out, just as I was about to.

“Alright,” I said.

I gathered my clothes from the drawers, folding them and placing them with my luggage.

When the knock at the door came, I was nearly done.  Only my library books remained, along with some of the booklets that I’d been given when I arrived.

My uniform, too.  I had worked too hard for too long to take it off now.  Dolores lightly squeezed my arm beneath my uniform shirt.

It was the young professor.  I invited him in.

“It is entirely too late in the day for a young lady to be abed,” he said, his voice stern.  “You would do well to study at the library, if you want to maintain your standing.”

Lethargic, tense, doing a poor job of hiding her scowl, Claire rose from bed, brushed her skirt and hair into a semblance of tidiness, standing awkwardly by her bedside.

My heart pounded.

“Genevieve Fray.  I’m sorry,” he said.

I nodded, wholly unsurprised.

There was a kind of relief, mingled with frustration and anger.  I was out from under a pressure that had weighed on me since my second week in the University, but I didn’t want to be.

I had spent a full third of my life working towards this, and now I was done?

“You will need to turn in your uniform, keys, and you must leave everything behind in your workshop, to be cleaned up by other parties.  With no notes in the pathogens or invasive species files, I understand there’s nothing you need to oversee?”

“No, professor.”

“You’ve read and understand the procedures for exit?”

“Yes, professor.”

“I’ll take you to the sticks now.  You will need to remove your uniform.”

“Alright,” I said, feeling a lump swelling in my chest.

I collected the change of clothes from my belongings and stepped into the washroom.

The professor and Claire were talking in low tones.  He was stern, she was quiet.  I heard his voice drop in volume by one notch.

Confiding something?  I felt a twist in my stomach.

Of course.

I took my time getting dressed, thinking.  A white calf-length dress, a thick red belt around the waist, a blouse with a froth of lace as the sleeves and neck, and a red tie for my short black hair.

I turned my attention to Dolores, who I had placed in the sink’s basin.  I jabbed her with one of my ‘spurs’, and watched as she slowly stopped moving.

My only real friend, here.

By the time I stepped out, the professor was looking somewhat impatient.  I handed him my folded uniform.  As he took the folded garment, he could see my bandaged fingertips, a little blood marking the cloth.

“The components?”

I held out my other hand, showing him the little horns of bone.

“In the wastebin,” he said.

I did as he asked.

“Thank you,” he said.  “We should be going.”

Before we could get on our way, Claire hugged me.

I could feel her tense.

When she broke away, I was smiling.  Her eyes dropped to my arm.  I could see her brow momentarily furrow in confusion, her gaze darting to the washroom.

I smiled a little wider.  “You’ve been ever so kind.  Somewhere down the line, I’ll owe you one.”

No Dolores.

The professor was kind enough to take the biggest piece of luggage for me, leaving me to carry two small bags.

The residences were on the street level, and exit was too quick, too soon.

We passed the military building on our way through the gardens.  The color was startling, the birds garish, the flowers so bright and varied they looked like something artificial, especially with the overcast sky and light rain that fell around us.

I had always preferred English style gardens, where things ran wild, more than a little messy, but in a good way.

An distinguished building like the University deserved something more natural.  Which was ironic, given the focus.

We entered the city.  There was nothing natural about it.  A stark contrast, dingy and gray, with roads that were brown and gouged with wet tracks and holes disguised by puddles.  Shit piled in the street, here and there.

There were crowds of ordinary people, with the uncommon oddity among them.  For every thirty people, there was a voltaic man or woman.  I could safely assume that there were probably more than twice that number, given how well the more recent ones were made, with their stitches and scars hidden by hairline and clothing.

I saw a single voltaic horse, pulling a wagon, alongside the other ordinary horses and wagons on the street, and two cars.  A beast of burden that outlast even the doped horses on the streets.  The voltaic beast had flesh sown together patchwork from two different horses, at a glance, with metal studs where it might be plugged into a wall during a lightning storm.

Three ‘Roses’, two ‘Lilies’ and a ‘Violet’, alongside a ‘Hawk’ and two ‘Colts’.  The women were dressed well, considering the climate and surroundings, their immodest dresses in colors that matched their names.  Red, pink and violet.  They smiled and flirted with passerbys with painted lips while the narrow ‘Hawk’ and two hulking ‘Colts’  unloaded boxes and luggage from a wagon.

A Rose, utterly identical to her sister just as the two Lilies and two Colts matched, cooed at the young professor as we passed them.  Her sister echoed her.

The professor’s neck and shoulders were rigid as we passed.  I clasped my hands behind my back, and he glanced down at me.  “Hands in sight, Ms. Fray.”

More oddities.  Men too muscled to be natural.  People who didn’t quite look right, their faces too smooth, their hair colors one step beyond the ordinary, too red or blond.  Uncanny, more than anything.

I counted myself lucky that there were no corpse collectors.  The smell was always atrocious, and the rare scene where someone decided to sell their bodies – a dime for a pound of flesh – was grisly.  I had worked in every type of lab, but it was typically animals that screamed, not people.

“Many students start working in the periphery of the University when they fail to graduate.  Some are too ashamed to return home,” the professor said.  He gave me a pointed look.

“I can’t imagine working in some back alley laboratory,” I admitted.

“I have escorted many students to the sticks in my time as a professor, and virtually every student said similar things.  Yet the number of people performing illegal, clumsy science and medicine in the area continues to increase.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

He led me to a building I had only seen in passing, on my brief trips through town.  The station.

Officers glanced at me as I was led through the building, but I didn’t warrant more than a second look.

“That way,” the chief said, looking up from his desk.  A bulldog of a man, to look at him.  “They’re all full on this end.”

The cells.  A final indignity.

Brilliance took only the right person, the right time and place, and diligence.  Two such individuals had made places like the University a possibility.

To take that brilliance and catalyze it, stirring all of society, there was a need for war.  War to unite.  War to demand the very best.

We’d finished one war, bringing us to this point.  Rumors stirred of another, on the horizon.  Nobody spoke openly of it, but the professors told the complete story with grim silences and the odd intensity that caught them in certain areas.  The dissertations were only one such area.  Certain classes, certain departments…

An arms race, and we students were the means.  We knew it, even if we did not speak of it.

In a way, my disappointment at my failure was a disappointment that I would not be able to serve my country.  I had wanted to do what I loved, to support my mother, support my country… it had felt right.

To be locked in a cell because I knew too many dangerous details to be allowed to find my own way home was wrong.

Still, I didn’t complain as the door slid shut.

My father had always counseled pragmatism.

My father, I couldn’t help but note, had failed, gone bankrupt, and hanged himself.  There was only my mother, living with family.

“Best of luck,” the professor said.

“I never got your name,” I said.

“Donald Newall.”

“Professor Newall.  Thank you for answering.”

“I hope I never see you in front of the court, Fray.  It would be a crying shame if you were caught up in something dodgy.  We’ve had too many go down that road already.”

“I know,” I said.  I wasn’t sure what else was appropriate.

With that said, he left.  The rain was falling harder outside.

I rested my head against the bars, eyes closed, listening.

He had stopped to exchange brief words with the chief.

My suspicions were right.

As cells went, these special quarters were cozy.  Inoffensive.  Proper beds, dressers, sinks and a stall for the toilet.  It was eerily quiet, with only the occasional set of footsteps or the scribbling of a hard pen nib to disturb the peace.  None of the prisoners talked.

Everything and everyone was docile and quiet.  I remained still, ignoring my slowly churning stomach, and I trained my hearing on the footsteps, listening.

When the captain approached, I knew it was him, from the volume and the way the sound approached.

He held a syringe.

Keeping me quiet, like all of the others.  Just like the University provided the ox, the materials for tweaking our doses, so we could stay up and keep working.  Keep feeding them ideas that they could sell, feed them ideas that would give them a critical edge in the war, as the voltaic people had helped decide the first.

“For your information, you’ll be searched while you’re under.  My wife will do the deed.  I’ve run her through it enough times she knows what to look for.”

“Alright,” I said, still feeling a little uncomfortable.

Pragmatism above all else.

If I was going to rebel or argue, this wasn’t the place to do it.

“You should know the drill, if you read your material.  You step out of line once, you get dosed with something that slows you down,” he said, tapping his head.  “If they don’t outright take something out of that skull of yours.  You do something criminal or practice your work without approval from your University, same deal.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Best you remove anything offending, or tell me now, so we might take measures.”

“Okay,” I said. “Just the ink bladder.  My left palm, here.  I couldn’t remove it before I had to go.”

The lies came easily.

He nodded, following my instructions to drain the bladder of the ink.  He took my offered arm to jab me with the syringe.

I didn’t sleep, but time and reality became decidedly fuzzy instead.

He eased me down onto the bed, and I reclined.

The scenes that played out were incoherent.  The captain’s wife visited, and sure enough, a screen was erected at the cell door, and I was patted down.  What made it weird was that in my dazed state, I couldn’t help but see her as the captain, dressed in drag.  Jowls.

No Dolores, and they didn’t find the spurs in my left hand, even as they stretched and bent each finger until I mumbled in pain.

They removed the bandages on the other hand, and noted the incisions beside and beneath each fingernail.  He tried a few more times to eject the spurs.

When I was dressed once more, I couldn’t help but smile wanly a bit in my dazed state.

I’d been right.  Miniscule.  Ten sets of spurs in place.

I was not leaving without something to mark my time at the University.

It was dark when the next person was brought in.

His mouth opened like a fish on dry land.  I only caught a glimpse, dreamlike, as two officers walked by the door, carrying him.  A head with thick black hair and a standard life support rig, complete with a heart that could beat outside the body, and two jars of blood, each with a filter.  Brass gears spun in jerking starts and stops as the heart beat.

“Found him in a basement.  He matches the description you gave us earlier.”

“The tourist?”  The captain’s voice.

“Yeah.  Him.  What’s the story?”

The chief explained, “Guy was visiting home after a few years away, business partner in tow.  His family kicked him out.  We get witnesses showing up, telling us a guy hit the pavement with a spatter.  Would think it’s him taking the easy way out, but it was the Scarfellow’s place.”

“Business partner has shady connections, you think?”

The chief said, “Apparently everyone thinks, but he was gone, and so was the body.”

“Damn collectors.  We found him hooked up to a thinking machine.  They were probably signaled, because they took everything they could with them.  I thought we’d get him to the University, see if we can’t get him speaking before we tried questioning him here, but they’re too busy, they say.  He’ll keep for a while.”

“Put him at the end of the row.  He can share a cell with anyone that’s not a damn student,” the chief said.

I blinked slowly, and I counted footsteps, tracking who was coming and when.

The lights went out.

I could move a little by the late evening, though without much strength.  One of the officers on duty visited me, jabbing me with another needle, his other hand holding a dozen more.

By early morning, I could move a little once more.  This time, I jabbed myself with one set of spurs on my left hand.

The remainder of the symptoms cleared.  I retracted the spurs, waiting to hear the sound of footsteps.

I made my way to the washroom stall of my cell, crawling inside, and knelt before the toilet.

I drew in a deep breath, I used my finger to provoke my gag reflex.

It took three tries to produce anything.  Already, I was feeling short on breath.

One tentacle.  My throat caught, and I gagged for real.

“Ma’am?” one guard asked.

Don’t come in.

“They test that shit on themselves.  Changes the entire brain or body, but mostly they do it to get sleep,” a guard said.  “But there’s always going to be something ugly that follows.”

I pulled that ‘something ugly’ from my mouth and throat, using both hands.  Dolores landed in my lap.  I bent over the toilet and threw up for real, simultaneously trying to gasp for breath.

“We drugged ’em.  How’s she up?”

“‘Bout time we re-drug them.  It will be wearing off.”

I was damp with sweat, my back drenched, where I’d been lying in the same position too long.  I had Dolores, and I had the spurs.  I had telescoping arms, but they weren’t in working order.  I’d stopped using them when a misfire had stretched the skin of my arms.

Hiding Dolores in my shirt, I crawled across the floor, then lay down on the cool tile.

Disabling the guards was easy.  A poke with a fingernail, an injection of tranquilizer.  When the second approached, I caught his leg with Dolores’ limb, then jabbed him with one of their own needles.  He shouted and fought, standing and kicking me in the stomach, but the drug took hold.

I’d counted footsteps.  But one could be sleeping.  I waited to hear a response.

Nobody was awake enough to hear.

Using the keys, I opened the door.  I staggered across the prison.  Making my way down the hall.

My roommate had sabotaged me.  I had little doubt.  She’d told me to keep Dolores and then told the professor I had her.  It had clicked the moment I’d heard her whispering.

I supposed she didn’t feel the need to be as subtle as before when I was on my way out.

I stopped by the head.  I could see his eyes, frantic, confused.

“You want revenge?” I asked.  “Blink once for yes.”

He blinked.

“Good.  I help you first, then you help me with my thing.  Something a little bigger.”

Three blinks.

“Two blinks for no.  What’s three?”

His eyes moved down, slowly roved over the machine that gave him life.

“I’ll get you a body, too.  Might be a bit crude, but it’s better than anyone else can give you.  Sound like a deal?”

He blinked once.

I hefted the life support machine under one arm, his head dangling from cords over the back of my shoulder.

Free for the first time in my life, I stepped out into the rain and the darkness.

 

Samples: Face 2

The text on the screen changed.

Night 0

One night without festivities, a prelude.

Fifteen days.  Fifteen nights.

Each night, a game.

A festival, a lark.

Prizes and favors to be won by the clever.

Punishment meted out to the dullest.

I struggled to focus, and wound up shutting one eye to clarify my view.

The numbers didn’t add up.  Twelve contestants… one removed each night, for fifteen nights?  With more than one contestant potentially being removed?

“Hey, dumbfucks!  You can’t have twelve contestants and fifteen rounds!,” another voice echoed my thoughts.

“Hey!  I don’t want prizes, I just want to go home!”  Someone else.  “Please take this mask off and let me go home!”

“What do you mean by punishment?” a woman called out.  “We die?”

“No,” I said.  I climbed to my feet, using the bars for support.  I ignored how my hands trembled as I tried to find a grip on the bars at chest-level and fumbled.  I willed it to go away.  I paused for a moment, making sure I had a grip on myself, and then very calmly stated, “That doesn’t make sense.  Unless they plan to bring in others.”

Wolf was standing by the bars, her arms sticking out straight through.  Her mask tapped repeatedly against the bars, as if she could vent that way.  She said, her voice eerily calm, “They intend to kill the losers after the winner is decided.”

That’s not impossible.

The text changed.

Night 0

We anticipate the evening’s entertainment.

Don your masks at day’s end, merry beasts,

to be whisked away to gardens and fields.

The cleverest creature will earn a favor.

To break a rule, or make a rule.

The whimsical nature of the words was at stark odds with our dingy surroundings, imprisonment, and the masks we wore.  I felt a little uneasy.  Maybe that was the point.

My one open eye fixated on the screen. In the periphery of my vision, I could see others approaching the bars of their cell.

Monkey.  He was wearing a glove with metal on it.  Almost a gauntlet.  His brown hair straight was slicked back from the edges of his mask.

A person wearing a fox mask was wearing some kind of shirt that hung well past his hands.  The eyes of his red mask were crescents, with the points facing downward.

Wolf, Rabbit, Fox, Monkey, Spider, and… me.  I touched my mask again.  The short spike was positioned somewhere between where my nose touched the surface of the mask and my mouth, centered.

Was it a beak?

Sparrow?  Crow?

“Break rules?”  Monkey called out.  “What do you mean?”

But the screen changed, and it didn’t answer the question.

Night 0

Beasts slumber in daylight and twilight hours.

A safe place to sleep, to exercise talents,

to set the stage for the night’s events.

An image was displayed below the text.  An overhead view of the city.  Bold lines were drawn along the edges, the area beyond the outlined area shaded dark and blurred.  The sharper, lighter section of the image was a square, three city blocks by three city blocks.  It included stores and a small mall, apartment buildings and a tract of houses.

I recognized the area.  I could spot my apartment, in the corner at the bottom of the image.  My heart was pounding, even as I remained very still.

None of the others spoke, but I could see some of them react.  Tells, as it were.  Monkey shifted his hands, gripping the bars of his cell door a fraction tighter  Rabbit, now kneeling on the floor behind her cell was apparently pretty high strung, almost jumping as she recognized the area.  The little boy with the snake mask leaned to one side of his cell, hugging his arms against his body, stopping, then jamming hands in his pockets.  Different manifestations of nervousness.

I’d bet good money on the idea that we were all from the same general area.

“Th- they’re a-actually letting us go?” Rabbit asked, breaking the silence.

And they expect we’ll be willing to come back, I thought to myself.

Night 0

Clever creatures obey the laws of the land,

The cleverest don’t get caught.

The stupidest beasts are reprimanded at dawn,

and shan’t be invited back.

Those that lose the games or tell tales are dumb beasts,

The ones who don’t play stupider still.

But no beast is so foolish as a dead one.

The nature of this little exercise was becoming clearer.  Over and over, an emphasis on wit.  Two phases.  Night to force our hands, to use us for sport or entertainment.  Bloody, apparently, so violence was in the cards.  Then a day phase to let us rest, sleep or…

I looked around me.

We couldn’t get caught.  That wasn’t to say we weren’t allowed to sabotage each other.  If we needed our masks to enter into the Night phase, then a mask could be taken away.

There was a chance that one of these people might be capable of murder.

The day phase was when we’d search for each other, sabotaging one another to take someone out of the running and remove any need to play in the game that night.  Or, if anyone out there was crazy or desperate enough, the phase where they’d try to kill others.

Night 0

Thus ends our introduction.

A question from each.

A mask floated on the screen, rotating around so that the backside of it was shown, blank and featureless, then slowly turned to face us.  An owl.  The eyes were overlarge, the beak hooked, and the ‘feathers’ crested into points at the edges of the forehead.

There was a series of bangs as the locks for the barred doors came loose.  My eyes traveled over the rest of the crowd.  I could see everyone I’d missed.

I looked for the wearer of the mask, and I found a heavyset man with a large belly.  He wore a blue jumpsuit that wasn’t flattering to look at.

The others I hadn’t yet seen included a tall man, broad shouldered, with light brown skin wore a cat mask, orange-brown with white and black stripes.

A sheep, apparently, a girl, crossed the open space to Spider’s side.

And, finally, a woman, pale, with startlingly vivid tattoos of flowers up her arms.  Her mask was supposed to be a deer or a gazelle, at a glance, but had only stubs for horns.

As near as I could figure it, it was Owl, Wolf, Rabbit, Rat, Spider, Sheep, Fox, Monkey, Cat, Snake and Doe.  And me.

“Hey,” I said, greeting the group to my left.  Rat, Doe and Monkey.  “What mask am I wearing?”

“Does it matter?” Rat asked.  “Damn it.  I just want to get out of this getup and go home and let this stop.”

“I don’t think it’s going to stop that easily,” I said.  “The more information we have, the better.”

“Like the Wolf said, we’re not your allies,” Monkey told me.  “Figure it out for yourself.”

“Right,” I said.  Suspicion.  I could try to find leverage, to coax and wheedle, but I wasn’t sure it was worth it at this juncture.

“Alright, I’m ready to ask,” Owl called out.  “Why the masks?”

Question:  Why masks?

Answer:  To allow Clever beasts to hide in the day.

“Why attach them like this?” Owl asked, but there was no response.  The mask on the screen wasn’t his.

It wasn’t a good answer.  Or, more to the point, it wasn’t a good question.

Wolf’s turn.

“I guess you’re going to tell everyone the answer, which eliminates a bunch of options.  Fine, let’s get it out of the way.  Who are these ‘handlers’?”

Question: Who are the handlers?

Answer: Seventy individuals from twelve enterprises, to assist you and reap fame and fortune from your successes.

The screen flickered, and it showed the series of our masks, one second to each, with a series of symbols beneath, one per sponsor.  It was almost over by the time that I saw my mask, my eye traveling to the list of sponsors, recognizing Sunny, Ascent and Heart, then darting back up to only glimpse the mask itself.

A bird, after all.  A soft brown at the edges and forehead, white elsewhere, with a yellow beak.

A differing number of sponsors to each of us.  Cat had none.  Spider had fifteen.  Most had four to six.

Rabbit’s turn.

Rabbit asked, “Why do you need such clever people?”

Question:  Why do we need clever beasts?

Answer:  To find a worthy winner.

“Fuck,” Wolf said, at the same time the word crossed my mind.

“What?”

We have to be careful what we ask.  It’s going to be as vague as possible, I thought.

“Think about what you ask,” Wolf said.

“It wasn’t a bad question.”

“Phrase it better.”

Rat’s turn.

“Tell me all the rules,” Rat ordered.

Nothing.

“It has to be a question,” Wolf said.

“What are the rules?”  Rat asked.

“No,” I said.  But it was too late.

Question:  What are the rules?

Answer:  The rules are guidelines,

made to moderate the Day/Night cycles,

and to keep the process manageable.

“I think I’ve figured it out,” Wolf said.  “They do want us to kill each other.  Putting me in here with idiots, so I have to listen to you fuck up.”

“Fuck you,” Rat said.

Snake’s question.

Monkey spoke, “Hey, buddy.  Pick your question carefully.  We can’t keep wasting them.”

“I don’t need help,” Snake said.  “Hey, terminal.  What were the locations of everyone but me, at the time you picked them up?”

The overhead map again, with blinking lights.

It stayed there, on the screen.  I could see my blinking dot.

“Hey, kid.  Why the fuck do you need to know that?”  Wolf asked.  “This doesn’t help our situation.”

But Snake didn’t take his eyes off the screen.  He waited a few moments, then said, “Thank you.”

“You little fuck,” Wolf said.  “You’re going to try something?”

“I wanted to see if there was any pattern,” Snake replied.

A lie, probably.

The next question was Spider’s.  The sheep was kneeling beside his limp form, holding his hands as his fingers and legs periodically twitched and jerked.  They made a stark comparison, with her overdone dress covered in ruffles and lace, young, her hair a white-blonde, curly, cut to a boyish length.

He was half-dressed, elderly, with longer hair, shirtless and wearing pyjama pants.  His mask was the only one with red eyes.

Sheep’s hand swept over his hair, pushing it away from his ‘face’.  “They want you to ask a question.”

“Leave me alone,” he said, his voice weak, but it carried.

When I looked up at the monitor to see, I saw that the next face up there was Fox’s.  There were angry and stunned mutters.

“Damn it,” I muttered, along with them.  He’d passed, likely unintentionally, and we needed answers.

Fox was trying to adjust the sleeves, avoiding eye contact with the people that were warily observing him…  Observing her.  I realized it was a woman, with straight black hair.  The shirt with overlong sleeves was a straightjacket.

“For the record,” Fox said, “The straightjacket is a joke.  Not everyday wear for me.”

“Nobody asked,” the heavyset Owl said.

“Fifteen rounds,” Fox said, “Twelve contestants.  Why?”

Question:  Why?

Answer: Too vague. 

Full answer would exceed scope of this window.

Cannot supply a response.  Please rephrase.

“Why are there more rounds than contestants?”

Question:  Why are there more rounds than contestants?

Answer:  There aren’t.

Cat.

“Can we use the rule-breaking to drop out early without you coming after us to fuck us over?”

Question:  Can a favor be used to drop out

without punishment?

Answer: Yes.

Yes?  I was suspecting a catch.  Too easy.  We win the game in one round and we get to live?

It didn’t fit.  It was one aspect of a lot of things here that didn’t fit.

The Doe.  Deer or gazelle, I was going with the neutral label.

“Okay,” Doe said.  She rubbed her hands together.  “You bastards.  Let’s see… Nine hundred and ninety-nine rounds before this batch, who won?”

“The hell?” Rat asked, but the words were already appearing on the screen.

Question.  Who won 999 games prior to this?

Answer: Cannot supply answer.  Please rephrase.

“Who won five hundred games before this one?”

Question.  Who won 500 games prior to this?

Answer: Cannot supply answer.  Please rephrase.

“Who won two hundred games before this?”

Question.  Who won 200 games prior to this?

Answer: Cannot supply answer.  Please rephrase.

“Who won fifty games before this?”

Question.  Who won 50 games prior to this?

Answer: Cannot supply answer.  Please rephrase.

“Who won fifteen games before this?”

Question.  Who won 15 games prior to this?

Answer: Cannot supply answer.  Please rephrase.

“Who won seven games before this?”

Question.  Who won 7 games prior to this?

Answer: Bat.  Sodusco.

Doe nodded.

“Shit,” Wolf muttered.

“I’m good at getting mileage,” Doe said.  “I think that tells us an awful lot, for a two word response.”

The mask that rotated on the screen was mine.  Looking at it in more detail, I still couldn’t guess what kind of bird it was.

Chickadee?  Sparrow?  A hawk would have a hooked beak.

“I’m not much for following orders,” I said.  “Not big on having people decide how I should live.”

“We’re birds of a feather,” Cat said.

“I know I should follow up Doe’s question with something along the same lines, weasel out information, but I’m not really up to playing along.  So here’s my question.  What course of action can we take that’s most beneficial to us and most inconvenient or damning to you?”

Question:  What path would most benefit the beasts while setting us back?

Answer:  Too vague.  Please rephrase.

“Yeah,” I said.  I felt a measure of satisfaction.  The damn thing wasn’t as easy to manipulate as my handlers were, but there were weak points.  “I bet it was too vague.”

“Just ask,” Fox said.  “Some of us want to get home.”

There was restlessness all around.  As one of the last to be asked, I was in a bad spot.  It would be all too easy for them to settle on a target to vent their frustrations at, and this was a bad, bad place to be the designated target.  Especially if this really was something that would extend two weeks.

“What’s the biggest mistake we’ve collectively made so far?”

Question:  What is the biggest mistake made by the beasts?

Answer:  Assuming that dropping out would be beneficial.

“What?” Cat asked.  “I said… fuck, I can’t remember how I phrased it.”

“You asked if they’d come after you,” Snake said.  “Which they won’t, necessarily.”

“Damn it,” Cat said.  “Hey, Monkey, ask it-”

But Monkey was already speaking.  “To come out of this ahead, what course of action should we take in the next bit?”

Question:  Best course of action for the beasts.

Answer:  Study.

You should already know your natural-born talents.

Discover the ones we’ve granted.

Know that talents vary from night to day.

Find the hints already provided to you.

“There’s a running theme, here,” Wolf said.  “But saying they’ve already provided hints?  When?  There’s been the introduction where my handlers said hi, and there was this.  That’s it.”

The last mask rotated on the screen.

“Hey.  Idiot.  Ask a question,” Wolf said.  “I’m done with this.”

“I know.  I’m thinking,” Sheep said, her voice small, as passive as Wolf was aggressive.  “I don’t see a time limit, and this might be our only chance.”

A minute passed.

Some of the others were very blatantly studying each other.  Studying me.  Trying to memorize body types and features.  Doe’s tattoos would be a dead giveaway, for one thing.

And others were less subtle.  Rabbit spoke up, “We can meet.  Right?  We all live in the same area.  If we go to the Rivermouth tea shop on Yonge, noon tomorrow, we could have a signal-“

“And you poison us?” Owl asked.  He was fidgeting, nervous.

“What?  No!”

“Idiotic idea,” Wolf said.  She was more angry than anything.  Like Marlene, in a way, channeling stress into a kind of anger.  She was more casually abrasive, though.

“We’re not friendly,” Monkey said.  “I wouldn’t mind finding a way to make it through this with everyone intact, but that doesn’t mean I trust any of you.  If anything, the fact that you’re here makes me wonder if you aren’t less trustworthy the average people.”

“That’s called projection,” Owl said.

The debate and discussion continued.  In the midst of it, I withdrew my pocket watch from the vest pocket and held it out, catching the light of the spotlight above me.  The light found the lens of Rabbit’s mask.

I saw her head turn a fraction.  I ‘dropped’ the pocketwatch, catching it by the chain, and let it swing for a moment before I caught it.

Would she get the message?

She nodded a little.  When Rat looked her way, she said, “Fine.  I get it.  No meeting.”

A potential ally.  I knew it could be a trap, but I was good at reading people, and Rabbit didn’t seem that cunning to me.  The biggest danger was that someone had caught what I was doing, or that they’d stake out the tea shop.

The sheep had apparently decided what to ask.  “How can we get through this without anyone dying?”

Question:  How to reach the end of Night 15 without any deaths.

Answer:  Don’t kill.

“So it’s possible,” she said.  She sounded genuinely relieved.

But Cat had seemingly found a solution, and it apparently wasn’t so simple.

Owl was reacting.  The eyelids of his mask had flipped shut.  He was blinded.

One by one, the eyes of the other masks closed, all the way around the circle.

The eyelids of my yet-undefined bird mask flipped shut, leaving me in absolute darkness.

Then I smelled that cloying medicinal smell, and perhaps because of drugs lingering in my system, or because the darkness was so deep I couldn’t tell when my eyes were open or shut, I succumbed faster than before.

▬

Back in my apartment, feeling like I hadn’t slept a wink.

I stumbled, making my way out of bed.  I was wearing only boxer briefs, my usual sleeping attire, but I was ninety percent sure they weren’t the clothes I’d worn to bed last night.

Disorientation nearly overwhelmed me.  My recollection of the scene in that odd little prison was so fresh in my mind I was still adjusting from the warped vision.  It all felt surreal, in retrospect.

I had my regular eyes back.  They were the same.  No surgical alterations.

I examined myself in the mirror.  Eyes normal.  Hair a touch greasier from sweating than normal, but…

My fingertips found the points at my hairline where the mask had attached.

Caps, skin tone, were plugged into the holes.  Impossible to see without close investigation.  The spots felt more numb than tender.

I returned to my bedside and opened the drawer.  Sitting there, as though I’d put it away before turning in, was the mask.  Now complete with beak and the transition from white to brown, with tiny feathers painted onto the surface.

I tossed it back into the drawer and then pulled on slacks and an undershirt.

The names and faces were all a jumble.  Too many people at once, too many things to keep track of.

This was reality.  Quiet, still, with only two grieving children to worry about.  I made my way through the apartment, checking windows and doors.  The things I’d unplugged were still unplugged, and everything was locked.

Too many aspects of this didn’t fit.  Something told me it wasn’t necessarily them messing with our heads.  There was a bigger picture at work.

Desperate for a kind of normalcy, I set about preparing breakfast, with a tall mug of coffee, orange juice, and pancakes made from scratch.  I was chopping up fresh fruit when Marlene emerged from the bedroom.

“One minute,” I said.

“I didn’t say I wanted any.”

“Not the time for this, Marlene.”

“I said I don’t want any.  I don’t.”

“Then go back to your room and sleep in.”

“What?”

“Petulance, anger, grieving, whatever else, it’s fine.  I understand,” I said.  “But it’s going to have to wait until I’ve had my coffee.”

“Or?”

It had to be two different things, all at once.  They mingled in an ugly way.  What happened to the kids if I got dragged away at an inopportune time?  What happened if they were used for this nebulous ‘punishment’?

Except there was nowhere for me to send them.  Even if I did send them away, there was no guarantee they wouldn’t be found.

I studied her, the glower, lower in intensity so early in the day.  She was a stranger to me, a face I only knew through a few photos.  I was a stranger to her, had been until only a few days ago.  Still, I felt a kind of fondness.  She was family.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.  “I’ve never really had someone push me to the limit.”

“Never?” she challenged me.

“Not in recent memory.  I’m not saying I’ve never been stressed.  I have.  Believe me, I have.  But I adapt, I’d like to think I go with the flow, that I’m a willow that bends in the wind where an oak would break.  After I’ve had coffee.”

“If that’s true, you’re nothing like dad.  Or mom or me or Leo.  None of us adapt or flow in the wind or whatever.  Kind of the opposite.”

“It’s been a while since I was around family.  Things were ugly when I left, so I made a deliberate effort to change myself.  To put distance between myself and everything I left behind.”

“And now you’re back,” she said.

“Now I’m back,” I answered.  “Maybe at a bad time for you, and apparently at a bad time for me.  But I can face the worst the world has to offer if I move forward with confidence.”

I said the words proudly, clearly, but the memories of those men breaking into my room were crystal clear.

Just the thought made my heart do a quick double-beat.

I managed to keep the doubt off my face, my smile unflinching.  I added, “After I’ve had coffee.”

“I’ve had coffee before.  It tastes like ass,” she said.

“You can be here and be either quiet or pleasant,” I said.  “Or you can go to your room to be negative.  Those are my rules.”

She nodded, but she took a seat at the counter.  She twisted around on her stool to look at the cracked television and blinked twice in succession.  Nothing.  She did the blink again. “It doesn’t work.”

No comment on the fact that she’d been the one to crack the screen.

“It’s not you” I said.  “One sec.”

I checked that things were okay on the stove, and then crossed the room to plug it in.

It was on a moment later, and I could see the three symbols flash across the screen.  Heart, arrow, sun.

Then it returned to a regular channel.  Marlene changed it to a kid’s show.

My ‘handlers’ were there, watching.

I didn’t habitually put my lenses in when I woke up, which made me different from ninety-nine percent of the population in the first world.  I liked to shower early and then put the things in, rather than go back and forth.  I went back and got them.

I wasn’t adverse to technology, but I liked old things and simplicity more than needless complication.  Wearing the lenses often felt like a complication.  Still, I could pry my eyes open and slip them in, watching the little details I’d placed around the apartment coming to life.

Leo was sitting on a stool by the time I got back.  I greeted him, served up the breakfast, then gestured, bringing up a menu for my phone.  Anyone who was wearing lenses that looked at me would see the phone icon near my head.

At a loss for what to dial, I brought up a menu of symbols and selected three close approximations.

How closely were they looking?  How far did this extend, penetrating my day to day life?

“Hello, Wes.  Heart here.”

“Ah, so you are there,” I said.  I smiled a little at the kids as I topped off my orange juice.  “I got your message late last night.  I take it you were upset?”

“We’re not your enemy, Wes.  We’re on your side in this.”

“I don’t know what this is,” I said.  I walked over to the living room, leaving the kids in peace, and started cleaning up more of the mess Marlene had made.  “A game?”

“In a way.”

“I don’t want to play.  What if I decide to sit things out tonight?  Will you do the same thing?”

“If you make us, but then we’re in a bad spot.  You don’t understand everything that’s going on here.”

“What’s going on, then?  Clarify for me.”

“You’re not the contestant, Wes.  There’s a dynamic, there are rules you play by, we get that, but we’re the ones at the helm.  If you cooperate, we both benefit.  If you throw this, then, well, it’s thrown.  You wind up with the worst possible outcome all the same.”

I lowered my voice.  “Or I cooperate and I wind up in the midst of a screwed up situation where people are trying to stab me in the back.”

“We can mitigate that,” she said.  “You reached out to Rabbit, somewhere along the line.  Making alliances with the right people can help you weed out the dangerous ones.  Safety in numbers”

“You’re testing us,” I said.  “All of this, you’re testing us because you want us to meet a certain criteria.  Or because the people running this thing do.  Moving it all towards a singular purpose.  It’s the only thing that makes sense.  Except you’re also making us your enemies.  There are too many things here that don’t make sense.  I need explanations.  Answers.“

“Damn it,” I heard her mutter, on the other end.

“What?”

“I can’t give you answers, Wes.”

I can get answers out of you, I thought.

But not now, while her guard was up.

I worked in silence, leaving the line open.

“Wes.  Are you meeting with Rabbit?”

“With the interest of covering all possible bases, yeah.  But I’m still not sure I’m putting on the mask tonight.”

“You’re proving fairly inflexible, for someone who supposedly goes with the flow, bends in the wind,” Heart said.  Her digitized voice was grating to listen to for any length of time.

“Polite of you to let me know you’re eavesdropping,” I said.  “Kidnapping, vague threats, unsolicited surgery, and nebulous promises of possible murder, or setting me up to be murdered… I think I’m allowed to be less flexible than normal.”

“If you force our hand, we’ll do the same thing we did before.”

“Well, that’s good to know.  Thank you for being honest,” I said.

A bit of anger had slipped into my voice.  I saw the kids’ heads turn.  I flashed a bit of a smile at them to put them at ease.

Heart continued, “I hope you don’t make us.  You’ll try to be clever and stop the men that come to take you in, and it still won’t work.  In the worst case scenario, you get injured in the process, and it slows you down enough that you get hurt or killed.”

“Ah, a vote of confidence from the people who picked me.  Remind me again about how you’re my best friend in all of this?”

“Even if you don’t get hurt, our hands will be tied.  We get only a few chances to manipulate things here.  We have three moves, at the start, to help you out, and we’ve used two of them.  I’m genuinely afraid for you if you strip us of any ability to help you.”

I weighed her words.  I was usually pretty good at telling whether people were being honest or not, and I wasn’t getting a dishonest vibe from her.

Then again, voice modulation, and there was the whole kidnapping thing, the invasion of privacy, and the whole laundry list of everything they had pulled me into.

“I can’t figure you out,” I said.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Heart said.  “I’ve been studying you for months, alongside a few others.  I thought I knew you, and… I don’t.  There’s some part of you I’m not getting.”

“That does make me feel better,” I replied.

“You need our help, Wes.  Once people start figuring out how this really works, it’s going to get messy.”

“That so?  I can manage messy.  Sorry, but I’m not really seeing what you can offer me.  Explain the mask thing?”

“We can’t.”

“At least ring me up when trouble’s brewing and someone’s coming my way?”

“We can’t do that either,” Heart said.

In negotiating with people, a good tactic was to ask them questions, already aware of the answer.  I was already fairly sure she wouldn’t be able to follow through.  So I could hammer her on that front.  You’re useless, you’re useless.

It was rather satisfying, in light of everything that had happened.  I wasn’t one to consider myself mean spirited, just the opposite.  But these were special circumstances.

“Then explain the ins and outs of this whole thing?”

“I can’t.  Wes-”

Here was the moment she tried to break the pattern of attack, my cue to move forward.  “You’re telling me you don’t have anything to offer me.  What are you handling, as my handler?”

Every action had an equivalent reaction.  What reaction would I generate, now that I was pressing her on this?

Would she bounce back, desperate to please, or would she fold?  I opened the balcony door and stepped outside, then closed it.

“I- that’s complicated.”

Ah.  She would deflect.

“Three hours until I need to leave for that rendezvous.  I’m willing to sit down and talk it out with you.  We’ll unravel that untangled mess.  I’ll be in a better place, and so will you.  We’ll be on the same page.”

Reasonable, calm, confident.  A steady pressure to drive the point home.  I rubbed my hands to help ward off the cold.

“It’s not that kind of complicated, Wes.”

Repeatedly using my name to try and build a kind of familiarity.

My eyes fell on the city below.  The street was choked with cars, and my lenses showed ads on every flat surface.  There were different channels,each with different focuses, from ones that would show sales in nearby stores to kids’ games that would show monsters wandering around, almost as real as anything else.

In a city this big, each channel would be choked with advertisements.  People earned pennies each time they deleted one, but there were too many automated functions and paid shills who earned more putting the ads up.

One learned to deal with the visual noise, because the other features of the lenses were too convenient, otherwise.  They were rooted in too many things, from access to buildings to phones and shopping.  One learned to look past the ads, until they reached the safety of their homes and could relax.

Which only reminded me that I was talking with the person who had invaded that home.  In more ways than one.

Could I put her off balance?  I could move to the attack.

I spoke slowly, my voice firm.  “Alright.  Let me unravel my untangled mess, then.  I’ve been thrown into a situation that isn’t sitting right, it’s vague and the pieces don’t all fit together.  You picked me for that, right?  You’re the one that’s throwing me into this situation.  Except you’re terrible at this.  You’re obviously new to it, you’re clueless, you don’t have any direction.”

All different ways of saying the same thing.  Continuing along those lines…

“You’re supposed to protect me or help me somehow, but you haven’t said what you do.  You haven’t inspired an iota of confidence.  The screen back there, last night, it said you’re an enterprise.  You’re in this for fame and fortune, but you’re doing nothing to deserve either of the two.”

She cut in.  “It… could have worded that better.  We’re here for research, to help people.  It’s amazing stuff, but we need funds, and-”

“And throwing me to the wolves and spiders and hares is how you do that?  Come on, Heart.  What is this?  You’re a couple of amoral twits with a gimmick startup idea, operating out of your friend’s mom’s garage, and someone tweaks you onto… this?  A bunch of hackers and entrepreneurs orbiting around some screwed up kind of entertainment that’s never going to poke it’s head out of the darkest, scummiest parts of the deepweb?”

“No, Wes.”

If I was completely wrong, she would have sounded more assertive than she did.  She would have been able to follow it up.

Had I struck a chord?  Landed my remarks somewhere in the right neighborhood?

“Let me give you a tip, Heart.  You’re the one that’s supposed to look after me, right?  That’s your job in this.  Scouting me, keeping me in line, whatever?  You want me to like you, but that battle’s already lost.  Change tactics.  You need to be a jerk.  Be rude, be strict.  Threaten me instead of convincing me that stuff’s for my own good.  Act like that arrowhead guy was.”

“You mean Ascent,” she said.

“Him.  Be aggressive, be assertive.  Get my respect through fear and intimidation, if nothing else.  Come on.  Give it a shot.”

“Wes…”  Her voice was soft.

“That was terrible,” I said.  “If you can’t fake your way through some jerkish behavior or come up with an actual offer you can make me, you shouldn’t be on the phone right now.  You need to be rude, even cold.  When I call you, you shouldn’t even pick up unless you’re absolutely, completely confident you’ve got things under control, with a way to strongarm me into doing what you need me to do, or something valuable to offer me.  Right?  I mean, it’s common sense.  You’re my handler, you need to take the reins here.”

She didn’t immediately respond.

Prodding her, I asked, “Do you have something to offer me?  Bait?”

I waited, thoroughly enjoying the silence.

In recommending a plan of attack against myself, the idea was to head her off.  She would inevitably realize that what she was doing wasn’t working.  By cutting her off well ahead of that particular point, I could pressure her.  I could leave her feeling lost and helpless.  I could handle the handler.

In the wake of that, I’d either see her true colors as she found a plan that did work, or at least worked better than this, or she’d fold and I would have leverage over her.  Something I could use to get information or help I otherwise wouldn’t.

“Wes, when you figure out what we set up for you, we’ll be able to work with you.”

“That’s thoroughly unconvincing,” I said, leaning back against the door to the balcony.  “I think maybe you should hang up.  Get your bearings, say something motivational in front of the mirror a couple times, maybe, to build up some confidence.  I’d love to hear a different, bolder, useful Heart the next time we talk.”

Which I wouldn’t, most likely.  Which would make her feel worse, which would apply more pressure.

I listened to a long silence.

The phone’s icon flashed and turned red.  A hang-up.

If she was capable of watching and listening in on me, I couldn’t allow myself a smile.  A lifetime of training allowed me to keep my expression neutral as I let myself back inside and served my breakfast.

“Who was that?” Leo asked.  Guileless.

“Someone who thinks she’s in business with me,” I responded.  “Now, I’m not going to make you guys go to school, given you’re still early into the grieving process, but-”

“I want to go,” Marlene said.  Too quickly.

I hesitated.

“I want to go where Marlene’s going,” Leo said.

He, at least, sounded genuine.

“You’re not going to run away on me, are you?” I asked.  “This is serious, and I’ve got a lot on my plate.”

Besides, I can’t leave the ‘safe’ territory, or unspecified horrible things will happen.  I can’t drive all the way to Uncle Peter’s to fetch you if you run.

“It’s been a while since I’ve gone, and it has to be better than being here.”  Marlene said.

“Alright,” I said.  “Go wash up and dress.  I’ll call the school to see if I can’t arrange a tour or a quick class assignment.”

Hopefully with enough time for me to meet the Rabbit.

▬

I was late.  I’d dressed down, with a button-up shirt and more moderate shoes, no tie or vest, a jacket folded over one arm.  Even knowing I might have missed her, I took my time, getting in line.

Being in line let me observe.  Rabbit had red hair, but a wig wasn’t impossible.  Nor was a hat.  It was spring.  The others… there were traits I could look out for.  It was more a process of elimination, scanning the crowd.  No kids under thirteen, which removed the possibility of a Snake.  No fat men, so that meant no Owl.

Wolf and Fox were more dangerous.  Too many possibilities for who they could be, but I could scan the collection of people that crowded the tables and counters, and I could eliminate those who were in groups with others, happy, clearly distracted by their own lives and their own things.

I was pretty sure that the others weren’t that good at acting, at slipping into a role.

I found a spot at a counter by the stools, once I had my bacon sandwich and coffee.  The shop’s window showed a scrolling advertisement for the desserts and music.  I withdrew a pocket watch and spun it around with one hand, catching it before it fell.  I ate and drank with my free hand.

“You’re going to break that, if you keep abusing it,” a young woman commented.

“It’s one I keep for more rugged use,” I said.  “I’ve fixed it so many times I could repair it blindfolded.  Rabbit, I presume?”

Rabbit squeezed herself between my neighbor and me, leaning over the counter.  Her hands were trembling, despite her apparent confidence, and the corner of her lip was folded like she was chewing on it.  Her chin-length red hair was in her face, and yet she wasn’t brushing it out of the way.

“Mr. Bird?” she asked.

“It’ll have to do,” I answered.

She nodded, a tight motion.  “Hi, Mr. Bird.  You’re the only one who came.”

“I thought I might be.”

“Have you figured it out?” she asked.

“What?”

“What they did to us?”

I turned my head, studying her.  I could see the fear on her face.

“Invaded our privacy, our homes, they kidnapped us… but you’re not talking about that,” I said.  My eyes fell on her hands, which were still shaking.  “That’s not fear.  That’s a tremor.”

“I was born with that,” she said.  “I’m talking about something else.  But I can’t talk about it here.  They said they’ll punish us if the wrong person hears.”

I nodded.  “Want to go for a walk?”

She bobbed her head, another tight, jerky motion.  Under her breath, she whispered, “F- fuck.”

I took my time getting my jacket and the remains of my lunch together.  We made our way to the door.

She whispered, “Why do you sound as unafraid as I feel afraid, Mr. Bird?”

“Not to worry,” I said.  “I’m very good at faking it.  So good I fool myself sometimes.”

She nodded as we made our way onto the sidewalk.  I pointed to suggest a direction, and she turned.

“I guess that’s your particular talent?” she asked.

“A part of it,” I agreed.

“Lying so well you trick yourself.  Not being afraid when you don’t want to be afraid.  That’s a good talent.  H- how does it hold up when you’re at gunpoint?”

An odd question, odd phrasing and timing.  I glanced at her, and she glanced down, furtive.

Her hands were jammed in her pockets.  The angle, the shape of the resulting bulge…

“I guess we’ll find out, Ms. Rabbit,” I told her.