Have you ever had a moment, walking down the street from some unfamiliar errand, when the world slews around to reorient itself (left to backward, north to west) and reveal that you’re traveling in a direction orthogonal to the one you thought? If so, you understand the way Eben comes to perceive his own trajectory, over a dry and seedy joint, one cold spring Thursday.
He passes to the left (backward?) and doesn’t bother holding his breath.
“You okay?” asks Josh.
“What have we been doing all winter, Josh?”
“Saving the world,” Josh says, and inhales with the boldness of youth.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
The Ufonian craft hums right into the base, stops and hovers, and dumps its latest load of abductees down a beam of light into the hopper on Mechnozoid’s head. As it fills with hapless fleshlings, its eyes begin to glow; before long it’s grinding its way out of the cavern to shoot lasers at Garmegula. Again.
Delmar and Croesus are two of the first to finish tumbling through its works and wind up, greasy and shaken, on the ground behind it.
“Was that Mechnozoid?” says Delmar, ginger with bruises. “I hate being used to power Mechnozoid!”
“It’s a job,” shrugs Croesus.
“Are those for me?” says Leanne, offput.
“Well, yeah,” says Pedro. He tries to smooth the daffodils. “It was a long flight,” he explains.
Leanne frowns. “Fine,” she says, and sharply fills a glass with water. She extends it; Pedro dunks them. “Thanks, I guess,” she says.
“You’re welcome.”
“Did you bring any for the actual funeral?”
He shrugs.
“I’ll drive,” she says.
Later, at Moody & Sons, Leanne softens a bit. “She always liked you,” she tells him, taking a break from the receiving line to pick ham off the deli plate.
Pedro nods, trying not to study her naked fingers.
The little bat clings to the booster tank until just before they crack atmosphere, then pries its claws free and drops. It’s too thin up here for wings, and his joints barely respond anyway; he just falls, with a startling terminal velocity, until his half-frozen elbows can open enough to send him into the corkscrew of a broken dive.
Buzz breaks the link and pulls off his helmet. “That was so better than skydiving,” he gasps.
“What is it like to be a bat?” asks his operator, shutting down.
“Kickass!” says Buzz, as a wobbly vespertilionid bonks into the window.
Proserpina doesn’t have to make a rousing speech; she doesn’t have to draw a line in the sawdust. “Iala, you owe me,” she says. “Radiane. Ernestine. The rest of you can join us or not. I wouldn’t.”
And in fact, of the core group, four decline. But lumpy, awkward Euphrania Dowell volunteers, as does Emily-Jane Northup, their only third-year. So, to some surprise, does Georgette. Two glances between her and Radiane tell Proserpina everything.
“I don’t suppose we’re waiting for a moonless night to go skulking into the horrid place,” says Iala dryly.
“No,” says Proserpina, “for visiting hours.”
At nineteen Albertine is high on life and Canada, running penny-poor and rowdy with her tight-pantsed friends. She’s trying to learn to smoke. One more, she thinks, stubbing out on the 3 METERS FROM DOOR sign and lighting another. One more and I’ll get it right!
At twenty-nine she’s Californian: naturalized and commuting by Prius, in tasteful skirts and tighter shoes. The cigarettes are filched on furious breaks that leave her dizzy. She hasn’t emailed most of those kids in years.
At nine, Albertine is growing up to be a lion tamer, or, failing that, a fire hydrant.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
“Love potions are three dollars,” says Madame. “Thank you, come again.”
“You’re misunderstanding,” says Natalie. “What I want is a potion to just make him sort of unhappy with her.”
“So that he can go fool-eyed for you, yes? Three dollars.”
Natalie shakes the bells in her hair. “A love potion would be cheating! I’d never know if he really wanted me or not. I just want to have an honest chance.”
“Do you really think that absolves you of anything?” asks Madame, eyes heavy as smoke.
“I’m plenty damned already,” says Natalie, “for letting him go the first time.”
Latifa digs around in the Keyboard Oracle, pulls out a handful and scatters them on the mouse pad. “ctrl L O S T @/2,” they read.
“Whose control?” she asks.
N E !/1 “/’ S.
Her heart begins to pound like a spacebar. “Somebody summoned something wild, didn’t they?” she mutters. “And it got loose. Am I going to have to debug things, or firewall, or wipe it…” She shakes the little plastic container and upends it.
“ESC,” say the keys, all of them. “ESC ESC ESC ESC.”
She makes for the window, and the virals are already splintering her front door.
“That’s the last surgery, Doctor,” says Larissa.
“Whoof,” says Doctor Zhivago, trying to stand in front of the patient’s taped-together belly. “Good thing!”
“Oh, Doctor Zhivago,” sighs Larissa, dawn blinding on snow in the tentflap behind her. “Don’t they exhaust you, the futile symbols of this crushing war?”
“Yeah,” says Doctor Zhivago, “it’s like… snow is white, but there’s blood all over the place in here, which is red. And red and white are, um, I think Communist colors. Or maybe only red is? So that’s symbolic.”
“What?” says Larissa.
“Listen, I’ve never actually read Doctor Zhivago,” says Doctor Zhivago.