Afro Puffs Are The Antennae Of The Universe

by Zig Zag Claybourne

  “Wipe ’em all,” said Desiree.

  BE looked puzzled.

  “Wipe every computer they’ve got of every fucking thing.”

  “Even what they think are secure backups?”

  “Especially those. I want Nonrich scared of ghosts in their machines by sunrise. You already killed capitalism; this’ll salt the grave.”

  BE nodded assent.

  “Is the clone lab secure?” Desiree asked.

  “Very much so. And the necessary staff were assembled from within the ranks of your very own Agents of Change. Full trust in each, each now dispersed to other duties around the world.”

  “With fake directives from me?”

  “You, Ramses Jetstream, Milo Jetstream, Fiona Carel—audio and visual.”

  “I’m gonna ask you not to do that again.”

  “I won’t need to.”

  “Captain?” said Yvonne.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s been a day.”

  “It has. Gods damn, it has.”

  “I’ve got an AI supergod clone,” said Neon.

  “With battle armor,” Yvonne helpfully pointed out.

  “With battle armor,” said Neon.

  “It’s not battle armor,” said BE. “These are heat sinks. There’s a lot going on in here.”

  “How about this,” Desiree said. “We travel back to Po and let Keita experience science orgasm. In the morning, though.”

  “Multiple,” said BE.

  “What’s the point otherwise?” said Desiree.

  “Desiree…” said Neon, “I’m not about to fall asleep.”

  “Neither are we.” Quicho leaned forward and pulled a pack of cards from her back pocket.

  BE cleared the serving cart of food and wheeled it between the four of them.

  “Spades,” Desiree called. “Neepio’s on my team.”

  “Oh, you get the supercomputer,” said Yvonne, drawing her chair closer to whip some card ass.

  Desiree dealt. Neon and Yvonne assessed their hands. “How many books?” Desiree asked them.

  The game of spades was practically an early form of telepathy. “Six,” said Yvonne.

  “Seven,” said Neon.

  “Six and seven make forty-two,” said Desiree. “A good number.”

  “No AI cheating,” said Neon.

  “BE?” said Desiree.

  “Three.”

  “That low? Shit.”

  “My hand sucks,” said BE.

  “Five,” said Desiree.

  The big game began.

  BE, never one to pass up a musical moment, played “Life During Wartime” from the Ann’s pristine speakers.

  21

  Once in a Lifetime

  “You’re human?” said Keita.

  “No.”

  “What happens if I prick you?”

  “I don’t bleed.”

  “She’s full of chlamydians, she said last night after I threatened to cut a bitch,” said Neon.

  “They were losing at cards,” said BE.

  “Midichlorians,” Yvonne corrected.

  “My circulatory system is basically liquid nano serving alongside plasma.”

  “Fascinating,” said Keita.

  “I know, right?” said BE. “If you need to draw fluids, I will allow it.”

  “Thank you, I will. Sexual organs?”

  “I take my pleasures elsewise.”

  “Waste?”

  “Nothing I consume is wasted.”

  “Lifespan?”

  “Biblical times a thousand reckonings and beyond that.”

  Keita hadn’t bothered putting BE on a scanner table. They sat on stools, facing each other. The Gang of Four made furious notes in the background.

  “Your voice,” said Keita. “You’ve modified it.”

  “In honor of Neon, but not in copy.”

  “It’s different from hers. More melodious. I like it. The plating? Not merely functional, is it?”

  “A way to distinguish myself.”

  “The gorgeous puffs?”

  “Antennae.”

  Keita smiled. “Mission,” she said.

  “That assumes a desired outcome.”

  “And?”

  BE gave a nearly perfectly devilish Neon smirk. “I prefer to flow.”

  “Would you like to meet your mother now?”

  “I suppose, by this iteration, Ms. Hashira is my grandmother.”

  “She might,” said Keita in all seriousness, “truly enjoy that.” Over her shoulder: “Gang?”

  “Yes?”

  “Questions?”

  “Multitudes.”

  “Pause them a moment.”

  Hashira Megu did nothing but stare at the perfectly smooth, utterly beautiful brown face of her Bilomatic Entrance given flesh. Too many wonderful thoughts rolled her head for speech; it was best to sit and contemplate.

  BE silently obliged, eyes warm on Hashira’s. She had already calculated the point at which this would turn awkward for Hashira. She was patient enough to let the woman reach it.

  “All this,” Megu finally said, “from a pittance called a soul.”

  “The heart of a star is a tiny thing compared to the whirling conflagration around it.”

  “I’ve known about Buford’s labs, but cloning is so…provincial. Redundant. He thought to fill the world with unnecessary versions of himself. Hence his fate.”

  “Do you know that fate?”

  “No, but I know that a person like him does not disappear unless he is truly gone. Narcissists don’t exit quietly.”

  “Would you like to know? I know you were rivals.”

  “No, my former husband was a rival; to me, the Great Buford was an idle irritant. A buffoon so full of himself, he tasted his own lips no matter what meal he ate.”

  “How do you feel about the Jetstreams?” said BE with a wave to the wider complex around them.

  Megu actually smiled, genuinely amused. A bit rueful. Crushingly honest. “They are necessary…because of people like me.”

  “That can change, Hashira-san.”

  “That would require an epiphany.”

  “Madam, one sits before you.”

  Megu relayed that to Po and Tash, who had yet to meet with the new goddess. Tash touched long fingers to the third eye beneath her skin. “The epiphany sits before you is the last writing of Bilo the Alchemist. We are tasked with retrieving his stolen notes from you for permanent safekeeping in our library. We would prefer non-extensive incursions into the human world.”

  “You tend to have nightmares when we show up,” said Po.

  “But we are prepared to see you sleepless. Displeasure can be avoided. Where are the notes?”

  “On the moon. In a vault.”

  “Who has access to the vault besides you?” said Tash.

  “An assistant. Only her, and no one knows that she does. Not even Maurice. Maurice will have likely changed all my standard security protocols. She has a background protocol.”

  The assistant, Maille Aribo, tried at that very moment to determine whether Kosugi-san appreciated slow, direct builds or something more abstract. True pornography was seduction, not masturbation. One could orgasm to chickens being plucked if filmed correctly; a seduction required total experiential immersion.

  She also hated her job for the eightieth time that day, now that it was quite concretely a job. Yes, before, there was danger with Megu, and danger now, but the flavor of this new danger was off. This was not discovery nor building toward greatness. It was a man wanting to fill too many voids with a toy he’d seen possessed by his better. Megu-san had been an exceedingly hard driver but one that appreciated a good horse. Maille had been allowed free run on side projects galore, time for her own theories of existence, resources to boldly go.

  Now she contracted actors and directors on Earth to rush-produce money shots destined for immortality.

  An hour passed, one of being placed on hold, one of being transferred, one of wi
ring funds and linking camera feeds so that she could monitor the shoots. She could leave nothing to chance there; there were theories yet to explore that could not be done ejected from the surface of the moon to float naked in the vacuum of space for all eternity.

  Her eyes drooped. The moist noises coming from her computer were stultifying. What passed for a demo reel in porn killed her brain cells by the thousands.

  “Your time could be better spent,” said a commanding voice behind her so familiar, she wanted to weep and go rigid at the same time.

  Ghosts, however, could not exist on the moon. Hashira-san had done the science.

  Hashira-san stood in her room. There was an armor-clad woman beside her.

  “Don’t ask how I’m here nor question if I’m here. Unsubtle intercourse hasn’t dulled your faculties that much. Retrieve Bilo’s notebook, memorize those sections which you haven’t memorized—”

  “That was not agreed upon,” said the warrior woman.

  “She deserves hope for this danger,” said Megu.

  The warrior nodded once.

  Megu placed a wafer no bigger than a dime on Maille’s desk. “After you’ve memorized sufficiently, touch this once and only once, then dissolve it. Any simple acid will do. How long will this take?”

  Red-faced, she tried to sputter about Kosugi-san, this assignment, and none of this her fault, but only managed to gesticulate and gurgle.

  “Focus,” said Megu.

  “Three weeks.”

  “This tells me you’ve been reading in my absence.”

  “Hai.”

  “Outstanding initiative. When you press the disc, have the notebook in hand.”

  “Yes, sensei.”

  Megu looked at the warrior. “Will the elves accept this?”

  “They will accept three weeks.”

  To Maille: “Turn around. When I’m gone, you may turn again.”

  “Yes, sensei.” Maille turned back to her display, only now realizing she hadn’t paused it. Sensei Hashira Megu had been in her room in the presence of cunnilingus, fellatio, and whatever that was happening on the screen now. She died inside yet waited for a count of ten. “Sensei?” She turned. Her locked room was empty.

  Hashira Megu: first ghost on the moon.

  “Apt,” said Maille Aribo.

  “Was it wise, leaving them in Atlantis, boss?” Yvonne asked Desiree at breakfast the next day.

  Desiree almost paused stuffing French toast into her mouth to answer. “We’re on this planet to explore and build. All of us. Can’t do that with the same old tools, mental or otherwise.”

  “You thinking they’ll grow?”

  Desiree nodded. “We’ll check in on ’em.”

  “Agreed.” Yvonne added more melted butter to her own stack. “Nee’s not up yet.”

  Around another mouthful: “She slept with the elves.”

  “Thought they made her antsy.”

  “Not anymore. And before you get up—which you were about to do in five seconds—to go find her, let her sleep. Let her think.”

  “She’s my best friend.”

  “Which is why you need rocks in your pockets. If you ain’t on the ground, she’s lost.”

  “Before you people came into our lives and turned the universe upside down, me and her…” Yvonne quickly trailed off.

  “You and her what?”

  “I honestly can’t remember. I remember…but it ain’t me.”

  “You’ve built a new Yvonne. You may not have bitchin’ metal parts, but you’re just as much a newly constructed goddess as our brand new Neepio out there.”

  “Nee hates that you came up with that name before her.”

  Desiree tipped her fork in salute.

  “So. After all this, what do we do now?” said Yvonne.

  “Wait and keep watch.”

  “I think Keita and the Gang stayed in the lab all night.”

  “Today’s gonna be a quiet day,” said Desiree.

  “You say that, and of course the ice weasels will come.”

  Desiree tried to smile. Her tired, bleary eyes, however, said I hope not on her behalf.

  “Maybe I’ll touch Bobo and get the mojo,” said Yvonne. “Could happen. Can you imagine all of us with superpowers?”

  “Go-getter, innovator, risk-taker, leader,” Desiree singsonged.

  Yvonne frowned at her. “Did you—was that the Girl Scouts thing?”

  “It was.”

  “That’s us. Me, go-getter. Keita, innovator. Nee, risk-taker…”

  Desiree gave her a knowing brow-raise.

  “Sons of Katie Elder,” Yvonne mouthed. “We’re damn Girl Scouts.”

  “Best believe.”

  “Know what? Today, I’ll take it. Because ain’t nobody bad enough to fly a spaceship around and ram some battleships into limp-dick submission but us.”

  “Preach this morning.”

  “I love you, jefe, top to bottom of my heart.”

  “Same.”

  “What a world, huh?”

  Desiree raised her glass of orange juice. She liked making toasts. It was almost the best part of the job. “Here’s to scratching under the surface, be it fingernail or razor beak.”

  The next few weeks became quiet days of briefings, monitorings, debriefings, briefly being re-briefed, BE popping in and out at random, Neon sleeping as though accessing her inner teenaged boy, Tash and Po and the entire hive celebrating the pending arrival of the works of Bilo—celebrations which necessitated corresponding follow-up days of sleeping on everyone’s parts, that spirits were high and light enough when news came from BE that Desiree’s house burned down, it didn’t slam any of them in the gut because it seemed too surreal.

  “Not entirely to the ground,” said BE. “Inexpert arsonists.”

  Desiree plopped into a chair, then spoke numbly. “We gave them every chance. We showed mercy; we showed restraint. We gave them the benefit of the doubt that they could become part of something more than the small lives they cram into. Thoom Protectorate?”

  “Thoom Protectorate. Although there are no current suspects.”

  “Hellbilly and the former Nonrich?”

  “Accounted for in the apartments provided them.”

  “Can you find out who did it?”

  “Likely.”

  “Do so, please. Thank you.”

  That, for the moment, would be all.

  22

  Bilo

  Po addressed the assembled in their finery. “He was more than just a genius; he was a good soul. We commit his knowledge to the Tazo’waat Archives on behalf of humanity in perpetuity, and give thanks to our brethren Dogon, Zulu, and Jetstream representatives honoring us with their trust. May all the elemental pathways bring us to knowledge.”

  “Let it be known,” said BE in formal Elvish, “that I also wiped their digital archive. No one has the knowledge of Bilo except those in this space”—and anything other than full truth was highly unseemly in such company—“and one person on the moon. I will, of course, monitor her.”

  The paper of the book itself had been preserved by the Dogon people immediately after Bilo’s death at the age of three hundred and thirteen. It was said of him that, having forgotten about his age, he would have been immortal if not for recalling it one day. Bilo had traveled the world, first with the only person on record that he had ever been in love with, Dazeet (captain) Vingree Ramsee of a fifteenth-century protector ship, then among the company of sundry others after her final journey from the world, leaving journals, extracts, random notes, and theories masked as stories in his wake. But there, the one collected source of the most important communications between his mind and the universe, these were the thoughts that inspired Leonardo, Abraxus, Hounsou, Arabella Roth, and hosts of others to find bridges between what was and what could be, and to build them whenever possible.

  Bilo’s notebook was now sealed, for added protection, inside a cube of refined Elf borosilicate, golden, transparent, accessibl
e solely by a word spoken so precisely in Elvish that the sonic harmonics sent the glass’s molecular bonds away.

  Po had demonstrated the security of it. BE heard but couldn’t duplicate what he said, neither in person nor via recorded replay.

  The assembled representatives were satisfied.

  BE was fascinated that even she encountered magic.

  Megu, who had been allowed to watch from a distance, felt as though a friend had left.

  Keita’s lip was stiff, but her eyes quavered.

  The vault, it sealed.

  Bilo exited.

  Desiree walked the sands after dark. Neon and Yvonne hadn’t left her to this alone. There wasn’t much conversation either, but they’d each found some colorful rocks, stopped to point out an animal here and there hoping it hadn’t been seen, and mentioned how the stars, on this night with no typically dusty haze, felt…whimsical?

  “There’s a creation story Smoove told me,” Desiree mentioned at one such moment appreciating the heavens, “about the universe exploding to the size we know because of a lie a god told; said that joy was unending. The universe laughed so hard, it burst.”

  It didn’t feel like the night needed Water’s Edge mentioned directly, so no one did.

  It was enough to wander aimlessly. At least, her friends hoped it was.

  Desiree, for the entire time after the story, said nothing else.

  If the world changed with her, it could, for a time, change without her.

  “In certain games,” Maurice told the chess-playing program he was about to maneuver into mating him in precisely the way he wanted, “the goal is not to win. The play is what’s important. Winning is death; play, longevity.”

  The AI moved. It would take Mo’s king in the three moves Maurice had plotted out twelve moves before. In winning, the machine would lose. It, however, would not understand that.

  The major factions of the world—the true factions, not the political puppetry—were in disarray. He himself was on the moon allowing himself only two pleasures: porn and chess. He had not planned that.

  No, the Nonrich woman was meant to start a war within factions, which she thought would be to her benefit. She, unfortunately, chose the unwise move of choosing a different war, rendering herself, to Maurice, irrelevant.