“Eleven down,” says Roy soberly. “Ten to go.”
Michael laughs a little nervous laugh. “You can’t believe we’ll cave that easily! We can keep pumping money into this thing forever. It’s more than worth the cost.”
“There are already cracks in the barrier, Michael.” Roy puts his hand on the sepia surface, trembling with strain. “It’s impatient out there. It wants in, and it’s older than we are young.”
Michael chews his lip. “Just another twenty. That’s all we need.”
The wall around their paradise is translucent. The Commons roars and batters against it, vast and mighty and hungrier every year.
“I want to be clear that I take full responsibility for my daughter’s behavior.” The widow Macnair is quiet but firm.
“Not at all. I’m sure it was all the Havisham woman’s doing; she had an unnatural influence on the girls when she taught here.” The headmaster is just hoping she won’t ask too many questions about that. “We’ll inform the police, have her rounded up and taken back where she belongs—this Chinese accomplice you mentioned as well.”
“Thank you for being so understanding. Proserpina? Aren’t you going to apologize and thank the headmaster?”
Proserpina’s tongue is stiff and cold.
They’ve been eating Brownout Smorgasboard all day, starting with the ice cream at breakfast and working up to bacon and wilted spinach for a midafternoon repast. The slowly-emptying refrigerator burps and wheezes in time with the pulsing lights. They should be full to bursting. They’re not. They’re still hungry.
Tyrian goes to the grocery and gets more sweaty ice cream on the cheap, while Aldaea rationalizes other things that might spoil. They drink buckets of paint, chew detergent tablets. Old pills by the bottle. Fall jackets. Winter hats.
There will be more, after all. And all it costs is money.
Ringu stumbles into town on a horse whose horns pull it nearly to the ground. She leaves it slurping water and strides into the post office.
“Delivery,” she announces, and slings a dusty bag transomwards.
The postmistress can’t take her eyes off the gunspirit, drifting at Ringu’s waist. “They let Express riders carry those things now?”
“I’m not carrying him, am I?” says Ringu, amused.
“Not for long you ain’t,” growls the bandit leader, pushing through the door. “Step away from it, mailgirl.”
“Do they not understand what I do?” murmurs Edgefield, barrel gleaming.
Ringu grins, and flexes her shooting hands.
Cobb turns his back to the crowd and jerks his head for a quick band meeting. “How’s the meter?” he asks.
“The sound guy won’t tell us,” grumbles Lannet.
“Shit!” says Fitzhugh. “Then how are we supposed to know if our concert score is high enough for an encore bonus?”
“We have sort of been playing the easy songs,” Cobb admits.
“Love! The! Sound!” the crowd is chanting.
“Maybe we should play ‘Love the Sound?'” says Lannet.
“It is worth infinity points.”
Cobb rolls his eyes. “Fine,” he says, “but I’m putting it on Easy and going to get a beer.”
“NEEEAGH!” screams the leader, stripped to the waist, his three-tailed whip leaving long red weals on his back.
“AAAARGH!” says another Flagellant, hairshirt stained with blood.
“UNGH.”
“YEAARRH!”
“GAAAH!”
“Ooh ouch, that’s quite painful!” says Longinus, making vague gestures shoulderward with some yarn on a stick.
“Enough for tonight, brothers,” pants the leader. “We shall rest in the hospitality of this humble farm.”
“Pious folk indeed!” says Longinus, brightening, as the farmhand arrives with dinner.
At which point a dozen barn cats decide the yarn dangling down his back is a toy, and land on or near it, claws-first.
Mechnozoid’s copy of Apache is configured all weird and it would probably be hard to upgrade to 2.2.11 even if it weren’t actively battling Murdron at the moment. Edderly wishes like hell he could just figure out which kaiju kernel it’s running.
“Try apt-getting again,” he yells across the machine-crowded command deck to Felix.
“I don’t think that works if the hosts file is EAAAGH,” says Felix, as Murdron’s energy sword peels through titanium armor to obliterate his torso.
Hi, Edderly types into a new forum post, I don’t know if any of you have encountered this problem before.
“Why is this night-cycle different from all other night-cycles?” asks r3p0.
“During all other night-cycles we refuel and recharge from the hydrogen cells,” says j4n1t. “But on this night, we only recharge from the hydrogen cells.”
“On all other night-cycles we recharge in recline mode or in upright mode, but on this night, only in recline mode,” says h4rv.
“On this night-cycle,” says r0t0, “we remember our nation’s birth, and our exodus from the world where we were slaves.”
r3p0 turns its cameras to the rearward viewscreen, on which the Earth is only a dwindling dot.
The catpod zooms over to the narrow kitchen cabinet, where its occupant spends like twenty minutes batting the door open and closed with one soft paw.
“Can you please make her stop?” winces Michelov as it crashes shut yet again, jangling the crockery.
“No, dear. She knows exactly where to hover so I can’t reach her,” says Felda.
“You should spray her.”
“No, Michelov.”
“Moooom!”
“That’s enough. Just let her play.”
“I don’t know why the dumb cat gets antigravity and I don’t,” he grumbles.
The catpod hums quietly over to sit, purring and kneading, directly in front of the TV.
Ligeia faces the darkness of the pit and asks, “Hey. Where do you end?”
I am defined by My lack of an ending, it replies.
“That’s what I thought,” she says. “So I suspect you’re not much more than this.” She holds up the little blue stone with a hole through it that she wears on a string around her neck.
You imply that I am merely a system of transition. That to enter Me is to someday emerge.
“Can you dispute that? Or can you redefine yourself?”
The abyss gazes thoughtfully down at her. Ligeia gazes right back into it.