Jodie Foster isn’t here to kill you.
“There is one thing everyone knows about my life,” she says, “and it’s not this: I speak French like a native. Four years of using it exclusively, in school, and I own a home dans la patrie. I recorded two singles there. I served on the jury at Cannes.”
Throw a pen at her. You’ll miss.
“But you’re going to do as I ask, in any language.” She slides around your desk with canine grace. “Aren’t you?”
Tremble.
“Cherchez la femme,” she whispers, holding the photo of Maura Tierney very close. “Cherchez la femme.“
The killbot grinds ever onward, knife-guns shuddering with tension. Its green LEDs chuckle. “Any last words, hu-man?”
“Yes!” gasps George. “This is false! This sentence is false!”
The LEDs blink. “Seriously?”
“It’s a paradox,” George falters. “You’re supposed to… lock up?”
“Oh, but it’s not! Get some paper.” It scribbles. “See, what you’re really saying is ‘this statement is true and this statement is false.’ Even allowing metalanguage, the construct just reduces to A-and-not-A! Make sense?”
“Gosh,” says George. “Thanks!”
“Glad I could help,” grates the killbot warmly, then shoots him with about six hundred knives.
“This is called a dossier,” says Littleford patiently. “A full background workup, daily routines, brief precis of family and friends.” He scatters the contents of the red envelope.
“She’s a girl?” says Zach, a little startled.
“She’s an activist who’s making things very uncomfortable for certain Syrian… interests,” says Littleford. “The client’s actually done a lot of work for you, here. And they want it messy. Anything else?”
“I think,” Zach frowns, “I’m going to need more surveillance photos. Like, at her gym? Maybe in the shower.”
Littleford squints at him.
“Or at least more from the waist down,” Zach adds.
“Mice? Seriously?” asks Carla, dropping the ruined bag in a tuppercube.
“Unless you’ve been stabbing the flour to keep the sugar in line,” says her mother on the phone. “Get a humane thingy.”
I’ve got better ideas, Carla thinks, and returns to the spill. It actually looks like a pattern, maybe letters scratched into it. Gluten… Raus? She shakes her head and wipes it away.
That night she waits in silence, lights out, until she hears the rattling start. She yanks the cupboard open with ninja speed.
The raisins look up from their dice, shocked, smoke trailing from their tiny cigarettes.
Ten days’ ride into the desert, Amahl begins to see the shimmer: onion spires and the hint of winter, muffled silhouettes, light from half a world away. He fixes his eyes and dismounts to scoop sand into the first pouch.
Back in the city, he sells the pouch to Alik for three golden knots.
“It’s just sand,” says Alik dubiously.
“It’s your city,” Amahl replies. “Put your hand in the bag and close your eyes.”
“Fine, but if this doesn’t wo–” says Alik, and vanishes.
Amahl watches the ground where he stood for a while, then packs his stall for home.
With the exception of Photography and French, Chicago doesn’t do well with grades. She approaches homework as a seasonal accessory, to be used as a prop for the Innocent Sophomore guise, and she skips any given class two days out of five.
Her teachers rarely object to the latter, though. They keep passing her, or at least passing her off: nobody wants her twice.
She doesn’t do many afterschool activities either. She remembers why every time she walks down the third floor corridor, where True has somehow talked the Fellowship of Christian Athletes into protesting, via flier, the suffrage of women.
“Vampirism,” says Hawthorne. “Contagious.”
“Okay,” says Senji.
“Zombies. Contagious.”
“Well, yes.”
“Werewolves.”
“Were-everythings, now,” says Senji uneasily. “Since you generalized the virus.”
“Exactly!” Hawthorne does a little dance. “I thought too small! One recombinant agent creates a host of rapacious metanthropes. The solution? A second virus! An army of their natural enemies! Frankensteinitis!”
“Aside from that being a horrible idea,” says Senji, “the only time Frankenstein’s monster met the Wolfman was in movies, wherein he was portrayed as peacef–”
“Wrong!” says Hawthorne, slaps two bolts on his own neck, and hits himself with a stun gun.
“Ow!” he says, later.
Proserpina and Iala have been friends since their second day, and each has found this useful: Proserpina is most confident of the new girls, Iala the best at charming their elders. Between them they have half the school in their jumper pockets.
Radiane seems to have only one friend, an apple-cheeked second-year named Georgette; they eat lunch and do assignments together. Proserpina mentions to Iala, casually, that they should talk with Georgette more. Doesn’t she seem like a darling? Lucky there’s a space at their table.
Radiane eats alone after that, looking cool and bored and never their way.
Tamsin tests the speed of light through diamond (1.24×108 kilometers per second).
“You won’t find anything,” Sandy says helpfully. His eyes are earnest. “It’s not like you’re going to supplant Einstein, honey! Don’t get above yourself!”
Tamsin tests the speed of light through a cristobalite sphere suspension.
“I was hoping we could talk about your budget allocation.” Sandy’s a little firmer this week.
Tamsin tests the speed of light through Bose condensate.
“These results are faked,” snarls Sandy. “And when I prove it you’re going to be branded for exactly what you are–”
Tamsin tests the speed of light through Sandy.
To build Atlantropa they drain much of the Mediterranean, which drops the coast about two hundred meters, and the Children’s Crusaders are still down there off the coast of Abruzzo. They’re white and cold and wide-eyed. Eventually someone mentions the new land bridge and they shuffle off toward it, singing.
“We’re on a Crusade,” explains Nicholas, when people ask awkwardly why he’s not dead. “To retake the Holy City.”
The people try to say it’s dangerous. They try to explain about Israel, and Palestine, and Hamas and the Gaza Strip and suicide bombings.
“We know,” says Nicholas fervently. “Brilliant, those.”