Mindsurfing Suteki in their jet-and-neon simulator suits, Eamon and Cohn lean into the synaptic wind and plunge down toward the root of his hippocampus.
“If he ever knew it, it’s here,” crackles Eamon over the comm.
“Damn well better be!” says Cohn. “We’ve looked everywhere, and the multiplier’s dying!” Over his shoulder, a power pack blinks orange.
Eamon soft-lands on the obsidian vault, an abstract of Suteki’s deepest secrets. Cohn fires up the torch. They heave away a glowing-edged disc, and within–
“This is a Post-It,” says Eamon slowly.
“In email (?!)” says the note.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Instead, Hidebound steps forward and picks up Zach by the throat. Sara scrambles to her feet. Hidebound shoots her in the knee. She goes down again, screaming between her teeth, but no one in the hospital wants to hear. Shouldn’t the nurses handle that?
Hidebound grinds Zach’s face into shattered fruit bowl on the floor. It’s glass. Zach’s screaming too, until Hidebound finally pulls him upright with the silencer to his cheek.
“Vode, molim,” mumbles Zach through bloody lips.
“What?” says Hidebound.
The little girl sweeps aside the curtain, snarling Croatian curses, and pulls Zach’s stolen gun from between her pillows.
There are a few tricks museum exhibit constructors use that are both cheap and unfailingly effective: faint conversations repeating in the background, matte paintings, soft scoop lights from underneath. They transport Eoin every time. Magic, but less in a sparkling Disney sense than in sympathy, similarity and correspondence. The kind of magic people write graduate theses about.
They tempt him, the artifacts placed carefully-carelessly on the other side of railings and velvet ropes. What would happen if he stepped over? Magic fails so often, under examination. Eoin leans over and cocks his head, listening for the hiccup of the loop.
The Rapture makes serving divorce papers difficult. “Consider yourself–” is all Shyler gets through before they disappear–pop!–leaving just their shoes behind. Does everyone in Heaven, she wonders, float around in sockfeet?
After a few weeks Shyler starts thinking that the number of deadbeats getting assumed into paradise is really high. Might she be God’s unwitting messenger? She prays lots of cuss words about that, on hold for hours with the Vatican. A raspy prelate tells her she needs witnesses.
So next time she takes Eugene along but the Rapture gets him too, which sucks (he had the car keys).
“It’s not the defacement of my property I mind,” says Mackenzie, “it’s that she really has no talent.”
“She’s three,” says Zenya.
“She’s a hack,” sighs Mackenzie, surveying the blue-scrawled stucco. A gigantic figure stalks from a rickety charnel house; it grins in rictus, eyes empty holes.
“You could get her those markers that only color on the special paper.”
“I’m a critic, not a fucking fascist. I am also cheap.”
“Then time-out chair and scrubbing sponge must suffice.”
“Can’t I eviscerate her in print? Just a little?”
“Sure,” says Zenya, “but the public loves a martyr with tantrums.”
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Preston saunters up after yoga (not in a bar; never a bar) and coughs. She looks up. His mag grabs a few portraits, guesses at genetic background, combines that with what little else he knows and runs two hundred thousand approach simulations. The most successful queues up in his vision.
“So,” he says, with a [self-mocking smile] as indicated, “just how flexible are you?”
She straightens and socks him in the face. Preston sits down hard, nose gushing blood.
“Oh geez!” she says, hands to her mouth. “Sorry! My mag said you’d like that!”
Preston, to his surprise, really does.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Fall, winter, spring: Catkin runs rampant with his spiritual cousins, feral pets left behind when vacation’s over and they’re not kittens anymore. They’re always hungry. So is he, but squirrels and garbage spills don’t yield what he needs.
Things finally pick up toward the end of May. Catkin walks the resort in human form, then, rangy at first but growing sleeker by the hour. His eyes are strange. His grin is cruel and young.
June is coming. Soon he’ll feast on wine coolers and boredom, skinny joints and skinned knuckles; taut boys, and tan girls in white tennis dresses, eager to apoplex Dad.
CHUNG CHUNG!
“Hey, guys, g’morning,” says a sleepy Consuela. “Listen, that sound effect is really loud–”
“There have been some important murders in here,” says Fontana. Green is running caution tape back and forth across the shower.
“It’s just I have a friend coming to stay, and it would be really nice to have both bathrooms.”
“Where were you on the night of last night?” frowns Fontana, notebook out.
“Upstairs,” says Consuela weakly. “Like every night this month.”
“We’ll have to investigate.”
“We’re detectives,” Green chimes in.
“There has to be a better way to get my SAG card,” says Consuela.
“I liked it!” says Alex, as they push out the back exit.
“Everyone liked it, nobody’s saying they didn’t like it,” says Tyler.
“IT WAS A 112-MINUTE STROBE-LIT CINEMATIC ORGASM,” Daniel announces to the parking lot. Behind them, someone whoops.
“Are you getting orgasms confused with epilepsy?” says Phillip.
“Are you not?”
“It was really, really a lot of fun,” says Tyler. “Particularly considering that nothing was at stake and the girls didn’t get enough screen time.”
“I just can’t believe they gave Toe’s part to Michael Cera,” says Dylan.
“I’m not Michael Cera!” says Toe. “I’m Michael Cera?”
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED! PURPLE HEART! chirps Leggatt’s headset, audible only in the open-mouthed silence as they stand around his writhing body in chagrin.
“I’m not sure this is the best way to get a full unlock,” says Cormac, clutching his rifle.
“Everybody does achievement parties!” says Leigh, bravefaced if a little gray. “How do you think those 27th guys stay on top of the leaderboards? If we didn’t help each other out it would take, like, years to get a MoH!”
“I’m starting to wish I’d spawned in Kunar,” says Cormac.
“Ggghhhhhh,” says Leggatt, one hand fumbling around for his eye.
Thursday, August 12, 2010