Molly and Desmond are out genderfucking when the allegory descends.
“Heads up!” Desmond shouts. “Robots!”
The robot fleet is red-eyed and jetpacked; they pour out of their mothership statement in defensive format.
“OUR SENSORS DETECT AN ABOMINATION,” they clang en masse.
Molly points to the two of them. “What, us?”
“AFFIRMATIVE.”
“This from a rampant AI with laser-hands?”
“YOUR ACTIONS HAVE SOILED THE PURITY OF THE BINARY!”
Desmond tilts her head. “Boolean gender-programming is a nasty bug.”
“THEN GENDER MUST BE DESTROYED,” howl the robots, lasers thrumming.
“No,” Molly grins, charging up their powerfist, “it must be constructed.”
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
“Oh Jesus oh fuck,” says Zach, stumbling through a panicky crowd. The police, hair-triggered, have pounded into the square with shields high; kids with vinegar kerchiefs are squeezing through gaps to whip masonry at them. Gas and smashed vegetables underfoot. One of the cops pulls off his mask and becomes Hidebound, looming, grinning, aiming, and then the Vulpine Phalanger hits him so hard they both tumble back into the ranks.
Zach scrambles up, takes a rock to the head, blinks away light and blood and gets up again. There. Finally.
The kid he shot makes a mess of his shirt.
“Strange happ’nins round these parts of a fortnight,” says the innkeep, leaning over the oak bar with a conspiratorial glance.
“Oh no,” says Aberdeen.
“Children afeart, animals missin’. Some say that old hermit what lives in the foothills has–”
“Look, I’m sorry, but I’m not an adventurer,” says Aberdeen, embarrassed.
The innkeep’s dialect fades. “But your sword! Your travel stains! Your mismatched traveling band!”
“We’re a theater troupe.” Aberdeen waggles the sword. “Prop. The stains are a postmodern homage to–”
“That is obviously just to throw the dark hunters off your trail,” he snaps.
“Well, yes, but mostly for tax reasons.”
“If you actually do know magic,” says Silhouine, “this would be an excellent opportunity to–”
“I’m not a magician,” sighs Yael. “I’m a spy.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Oh.”
They take a few dozen more steps in silence. The spiral is wide but the stairs around the outside narrow; the light of the candle Sanguoît threw in after them gives no sign of how deep it goes. It’s almost more useful for detecting the little currents of air that whistle from the stone at regular intervals. It’s cool and fresh.
Whoever’s buried here, Yael thinks, was serious about proper ventilation in the afterlife.
“You’re right,” says Sara, tossing the hammer behind her. “I’m not going to hit you.”
“You could have saved us some time, dear,” says Nasser, regarding the ruins, “and me some money.”
“Hogy a mellény.”
István grins and leaves. Nasser frowns.
“I do speak a little Hungarian, you know,” he says, “but I fail to see what ‘vest’–”
“It’s time you knew how it feels,” she says, “to be the one manipulated.”
“We all manipulate each other, Sara,” he says, but with an unusual sobriety. “Every one of us.”
“Not every one,” says Sara.
Meanwhile, Zach shoots an eight-year-old.
The doctor’s mask is mouthless, beaked, its eyes covered by red goggles. It wears a broad black hat and has no skin visible under its leathers. It carries a stick.
Fairfax only sees the doctor in crowds, and usually from a distance. It (he?) isn’t a hallucination; Fairfax has asked, and other people see it, they just don’t seem to care. “SCA nerd,” they say. “Steampunk. Cosplayer.”
Fairfax isn’t sure how he knows the figure is a doctor, but he doesn’t think it’s the kind that treats people.
It’s the kind that tells everyone else when you’re going to die.
“We could double back–”
“Won’t he have posted guards or something?”
“If I were guarding a cave mouth in the middle of the desert…” says Yael, dubious.
“Ah,” says Silhouine.
“Water could be a problem, but–”
“I think I’m going in anyway.”
Yael looks at her with green eyes.
“What have I got in the city? Trouble and debt, fear and no prospects. I don’t know if he’s crazy, but there’s something in here. If we find it, it’s ours.”
“That may be,” says Yael.
“All right,” says Silhouine, and knocks the ancient chain off the tomb door with a rock.