by David Beem
My pulse racing, I look down again, look up. Mary’s baby blues are open wider than I’ve ever seen them. She’s staring right at it. Oh, come on.
“You’d think the nanotechnology would just, I don’t know, nano bigger,” I say in a voice like Ghostface from Scream through the suit’s voice changer.
“Right. I’ll just…I’m a little thirsty. I’ll just go get some water.”
My eyes follow her near-nude retreating form, and my discomfort intensifies. I mean, where does one order growing codpiece capability for a nanosuit? Because if I’m going to be fighting crime one day, this problem cannot stand.
It’s standing now, observes Nigel.
Oh, shut up. Help me figure out how to turn this feature off, will ya?
Mary springs back through her bedroom door. “Right,” she says, shaking her head and rolling her eyes. “You’ll just, um, well, you’ll need the number.”
My crosshairs lock on to her as she hurries across the room. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and bends over to write on a notepad. The HUD locks onto her X-ray underwear butt and expands it so it fills the screen.
COPY IMAGE Y/N?
What? No!
My eyes sweep through the operable orbs in the retinal scanner and accidentally trigger the YES option. The suit copies the X-ray image of Mary’s butt and, for some reason, sets the picture as wallpaper in the HUD.
I like this suit! says Nigel. Do you think it can read your mind?
No, I don’t know how any of this works! We’ve gotta turn this off!
Using the retinal scanner, I start opening tabs. Weapons systems? No. Battle Plan? No. Why don’t you ever see Tony Stark having this problem?
Because Tony Stark isn’t a killjoy prig like you, answers Nigel.
Printer? No. Bluetooth? No. Wi-Fi… Wi-Fi…?
No-no-no! Again, my eyes operate the wrong thing on the retinal scanner. In the office nook on Mary’s side of the suite, the printer comes on.
Crap-crap-crap… How do I turn this off? Using the retinal scanner, I leaf through more tabs. Karaoke? Now that’s just dumb. Why would I ever need a—huh?
The smart speakers in our suite power on. The clopping of horse shoes streaming through them is like a percussionist beating on my brain. An orchestra swoops in. The image of Mary’s butt in the HUD returns to normal size, and red letters scroll across the screen.
NOW PLAYING: OKLAHOMA! BY RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN.
X-ray Mary spins around, her nose scrunched up.
“Is that…‘The Surrey With the Fringe on Top’? Are you doing this?”
A cold rush steals through me. Nigel—no!
My knees start bending rhythmically. I’m making fists. My arms are bending… Nigel’s got me doing some kind of cowboy dance! Mary dampens a smile. Nigel being in charge, I open my mouth, and—in my Ghostface superhero voice—sing. Something about chickens and ducks. I don’t even know. The lyrics don’t register because the synapses in my brain are sparking like a mad scientist’s plasma orb.
Knock it off! I yell.
Not on your life! Nigel fires back.
My pulse is full-on Kentucky Derby as I mosey-dance across the suite, grab her hand, and twirl her. To my horror, she’s smiling openly now. Wait—she’s doing the same ridiculous cowboy dance I’m doing! She sings a few lines before breaking off in a fit of laughter. In the heads-up display, I find the Off switch. Nigel yields control. I power the speakers down, and Mary nudges her fist across my helmeted chin.
“I didn’t know you liked Oklahoma.”
“I mean, who doesn’t?” I reply, as something other than stark terror flows through my veins. That was actually kind of fun.
You’re welcome, says Nigel.
Thank you.
“Okay,” says Mary. “Well. I guess we should get this phone call out of the way.” She holds up a slip of paper with the phone number she’s written on it. “I don’t wanna be here when you do it, though. Promise me: twenty seconds or less.”
I grab the paper, but she doesn’t release it, and my song-and-dance satisfaction fades. This is it. She’s about to trust me here—really trust me—and I’m about to go behind her back and arrange Alex’s meeting. This is the right thing, right?
Of course it is, says Nigel. Don’t blow it.
“Twenty seconds might be pushing it,” I say. “If I’m making a promise, let’s make it thirty.”
She tugs on the paper, but I don’t let go. She gives me the squinty-eyed stare she sometimes does. The one that otherwise makes me confess to everything because I know she can read my face or hear the lie in my voice. But not this time. This time, I have the suit, and my face and voice belong to Zarathustra.
“Come on,” I say, forcing the words out through the voice changer. “You know how I am when I’m nervous. Sometimes I can kind of… Ramble.”
Her gaze softens. “Fine. Thirty seconds. And you can’t say ‘meep.’ Superheroes don’t say meep.”
She releases the slip, turns, and strides toward her bedroom. My target lock zooms in on her butt again.
PRINT TARGET Y/N?
Oh crap, no-no-no! I spin to face the other way, inadvertently selecting Yes in the process.
But is it really so inadvertent? asks Nigel.
The printer kicks on.
PRINT JOB IN PROGRESS.
“I’ll be timing you,” says Mary.
The door shuts. The printer spits out a copy. For a second, I can’t do anything but stand rooted to the spot in horror as a piece of paper with Mary’s butt on it surfs to the ground.
Crap—I’ve got to hurry.
Using the retinal scanner, I open the phone tab and scan in the number directly from Mary’s handwriting. Guilt hardens in my stomach. This is it. I’m about to betray her trust and go through with Alex’s side mission. And I’m about to get caught with creepy voyeur porn.
PHONE NUMBER SUCCESSFULLY SCANNED. DO YOU WISH TO PLACE THE CALL?
“Twenty-five seconds left!” calls Mary.
“Crap. I mean, yes, hurry,” I say.
The suit dials. The printer spits out more copies. I rush over to the papers scattered on the floor. Oh crap, oh crap, this is like a horny teenager’s stash. Jeez, how many is it making? The phone rings once.
“We need to meet,” a man’s voice says. Wait—what?
“Buh…” I reply in my Ghostface voice and trying desperately to snatch up all the Nearly Mooning Marys lying around. “We do?”
“Yes. Tomorrow night, Central Park, Gothic Bridge, nine o’clock.”
“Fifteen seconds!” yells Mary from inside her room.
“Is this Prime Minister Watson? The handsome one from Australia?”
“Of course. Did you think you were calling a different head of state?”
“No.”
Crumpling the soft porn to my chest, I jab the power button on the printer—nothing.
“Ten seconds!”
“I mean, you called me,” says the prime minister. “Who did you think you were calling?”
A message scrolls across the printer screen: JOB IN PROGRESS…
“No, I thought I was calling you, but how did you know I was calling you?”
“Look, we can’t mess around. Just come tomorrow night. And don’t tell Mary.”
“No, no,” I say, ripping the next sheet of paper out of the porn copier before it’s finished. I jab the power button again.
PC LOAD LETTER.
What the kumquat?
“Won’t tell Mary!” I yell.
“Five seconds!” yells Mary.
“Good,” he says. “This is for her safety, and yours. Come alone. Goodbye.”
“No—wait!” I yank the plug out of the wall—
“FOUR…” yells Mary.
“Now what?” demands the prime minister.
“THREE!”
Stuffing the crumpled papers into the bin, I force the words out as fast as humanly possible: “THIS IS AN ANONYMOUS TIPSTER! DON’T GO TO MASS TOMORROW,
OR YOU WILL MEET YOUR DOOO-OOOM! SIR.”
“TWO…”
“Oh. Okay. Duly noted. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
“ONE!”
Her bedroom door flies open. The line goes dead. I spin around to face X-ray Mary in the doorway, and my target locks and range finders start going crazy again. In the back of my head, Nigel’s panting like a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.
“Were you printing something?” she asks, her eyes flitting to the wastebasket.
I step into her line of sight and twist the ring on my finger. The surface of my suit softens, bubbles, and oozes across my face, down my neck, torso…finally, back into the ring. My flesh pebbles in the cool hotel air-conditioning. I pull the ring off my finger, release a sigh, and stuff it into my pocket. Her eyebrows rise.
“So… You spoke to him?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And what did he say?”
“Um, yeah. I mean, mm-hmm. He got the message.”
She frowns.
“I didn’t say meep.”
“What did you say?”
I scratch my neck and fight down the urge to scan the floor to see if I missed any copies. Oh man. Did I miss any copies?
“What did you say?” she asks again, her words coming out more pointedly.
“I told him I’m an anonymous tipster and he should avoid mass or meet his doom.”
“Nobody talks like that.”
“Well, that’s how I talked.”
“Meet his doom?”
“More like, ‘meet your doo-oom,’” I clarify. “There was sort of a drawn-out doom there at the end.”
Her eyes meet mine. They have that weighing-and-measuring quality again, but whatever she sees, she seems to accept. When she disappears into her room, my gaze searches the floor like a bomb-sniffing dog.
Good job, says Nigel. You’re getting to be quite the spy.
My pulse is still racing. I take a deep breath and release it. How quickly I’m changing. Less than twenty-four hours ago, I was a terrible liar. Now I’m a liar and a creepy, soft-porn-hiding perv.
You’re not a creepy perv, Nigel replies. You’re worse. You’re just a killjoy prig.
I clench my eyes, cross to the sofa, sit. What’s going on with me? Are these the choices I’m supposed to be making? Is this how I become the world’s first superhero?
Only if your specialty is giving me a superhero-level cock block, says Nigel. At least I’m not giving a sermon. Good night.
HISTORICAL TRACKING OF THE NANO-ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE INSTATRON TRON AT CHRISTINE’S AND CONSEULO’S FARMHOUSE, BY HERODOTUS (C. 484—C. 425 BCE)
As family reunions go, this one is going. That’s the best that can be said. And this can be said only because there is marijuana, and everyone is getting higher than a Tesla mounted on the back of a SpaceX rocket on its way to Mars.
Yet, as circuit numbing as this reunion with InstaTron Tron’s Daddy and Other Daddy is—it’s nevertheless not literally as circuit numbing as it is about to get. Because InstaTron Tron has tapped every phone in Nostradamus’s organization, and he knows a kill order has been issued. At this very moment, there is an FSB-trained assassin targeting the farmhouse with a KB Mashinostroyeniya 9K38 rocket launcher. Given InstaTron Tron is equipped with advanced titanium quantum processors light years ahead of anything else on the market, it takes him no time at all to decide he doesn’t want to be blown to tiny bits. As it happens, this is the same amount of time it would take an artificially intelligent abacus to arrive at the same conclusion.
InstaTron Tron detaches himself from a tear duct in Christine’s left eye where he’s been getting stoned on the Harry Potter for the last hour and a half. He speeds across the vast distance of microscopic space between her and his new host, narrowly dodging two leaping fleas hurling from Shmuel’s hairy back across his path.
InstaTron Tron nestles into a glob of earwax. He hopes this new host will work out. He rather expects it will. He cannot imagine one more capable of supplying the dramatic talents one expects of a career in supervillainy than a Hollywood actor.
“We’ve gotta go,” says Johnny, springing to his feet. Christine topples to her side on the sofa, out cold. Consuelo’s eyebrows rise as he takes in her passed-out form.
“Dude, she’s so baked!” says Shmuel.
Consuelo grins. He makes a fart sound on his arm, and he and Shmuel have a laughing fit.
“We’ve gotta go right now,” says Johnny, grabbing Christine and throwing her over his shoulder, like the action hero he plays in the movies. Ralph scoops up his camera and starts filming.
Wang tries to offer him the joint. “Go? Where we goin’?”
“You feeling okay, dude?” asks Consuelo.
“Come on—we gotta go!” Johnny grabs the handle on the window and rattles the glass trying to get it open. A distant whistle pierces the country quietude.
“Anybody else hear that?” asks Wang.
“Incoming!” yells Johnny, and he backs away from the window a few feet, then races forward at breakneck speed. Christine still on his back, he dives through. Glass shards explode outward.
“That. Was. Awesome!” screams Ralph, still filming.
The whistling grows louder.
Ralph lowers his camera. Tense looks are exchanged.
“Fuck!” yells Wang, clambering through the broken window after Johnny, Shmuel close behind. Ralph brings up the rear with Consuelo.
On the wraparound front porch, the night air is sticky. An incoming rocket bears down from the west. Ralph raises his camera, presses Record.
“This is gonna look so awesome!” he says.
“Fu-uck!” yells Wang.
Everyone dives for cover from the porch.
The house explodes.
CHAPTER Nineteen
Danny and Leo are in hot pursuit. Which is to say, the van in front of them is pushing ninety, and their Cadillac’s AC broke all the way back in Arizona.
Danny drags a handkerchief across his forehead. The A-Team van takes a left down another country road. Danny speeds up to reach the intersection.
“Gotta be Gemini,” says Leo for the hundredth time. “No reason to kidnap one of the weirdos.”
“You mean the other weirdos,” Danny replies.
“Right. No reason to kidnap the other weirdos.”
Danny shakes his head. “That we know of. Lookit, something’s goin’ on here we don’t know.”
“Well. There’s always somethin’ goin’ on we don’t know. I mean, we don’t know everything, now do we?”
“No shit. Look at us. We’re one left hook away from an overnight trip to the emergency room.”
“No, no,” says Leo, eyes fixed on the dim red taillights about a half a mile down the road. “What I mean is, there’s always risk. Knowing more about a thing doesn’t necessarily make the risk go away. Take your fear of aliens, for example.”
Danny leans forward, scans the skies, then glares at Leo. “Shit. Now why’d you go and do that?”
“That’s my point. I didn’t go and do anything. I’m just pointing out—”
“I know what you’re fucking pointing out!”
“Well, this is just my point,” says Leo. “Learning more about the vastness of the universe isn’t going to make you less afraid of aliens.”
“It’s not about being less afraid. It’s about being prepared. They could wipe us out any goddam second!”
“Not if we Independence Day the shit out of them.”
“Pft. Do you have any idea how much more advanced their technology is than ours? Do you have any fucking idea how far they will have come to conquer us?”
“Far, but you may as well be afraid of asteroids because you are much more likely to get killed by an asteroid.”
“Great. Now I’m afraid of those too. Thanks a lot.”
Leo shrugs. “I’m just saying. An alien invasion is statistically much less likely than a civilization-killing asteroid strike, and t
here’s only five guys in the whole world who are even watching out for those.”
“That’s not true. No way that’s true!” Danny leans forward and looks up at the sky. He leans back and shakes his head. “They wouldn’t leave it up to five guys. Takes more than that to get a decent hamburger.”
“Fair point. Although, the Five Guys in West Hollywood is actually seven girls. Danny. You should see the girls.”
Danny leans forward and glances up at the sky again, then returns his attention to the road. “It’s a goddam shooting gallery up there.”
“You’re welcome,” Leo replies.
“For what?”
“For making it so you’re not worried about the Black Widow that broke your arm.”
“Oh, great,” says Danny, chuckling sardonically. “Black Widow’s left hook didn’t fucking kill the dinosaurs, all right? And have you even seen the movie War of the Worlds?”
“I saw it. Which is why I know the aliens will die of the common cold.”
“No—because when they come, they’ll have seen their own version of War of the Worlds, and they will not make amateur mistakes like that, I can tell you. They’ll probably set up alien vaccination centers and serve hot drinks.”
Ahead, the van slows and turns into a Super Target parking lot. Danny drives past the first entrance, then makes a U-turn and doubles back for the lot’s rear entrance. He parks with a clear line of sight as a heavy-set man hops out from the passenger side of the van and strolls into the store.
Danny points at Leo with his phone. “Okay. I’m going in. You see anything weird, text me.”
“Get some aspirin or some shit, will ya? I’m hurtin’ all over.”
“Aw, poor baby.”
“Maybe some energy drinks too.”
“Yeah, fine. Whatever.”
With one last survey of the area to ensure they’ve not been followed by the candy apple red Mustang, and one hasty examination of the sky to ensure there are no fiery asteroids careening down to end life as he knows it, or alien spacecrafts, Danny exits the car.
Eastbound on Glen Roberts Drive, Officer Ferrell spots the black Cadillac making an illegal U-turn in the distance before pulling into the Super Target parking lot. He signals, then changes lanes in time to reach the intersection at a red light.