by Sean Platt
“Isaac, I keep telling you. He’s gay.”
But of course, Isaac knew that, too. Gray had millions of screaming female fans and a debonair, handsome onstage persona. But in person, the illusionist was gayer than Christmas.
You’re trying to pick a fight, he thought. Because this time you’re wrong, and you want to be punished.
That was far too insightful for his internal compass. Isaac wanted to dismiss the idea on principle. But that, too, was only deflection. Usually, from Isaac’s perspective, Natasha was the manipulative, self-serving, duplicitous one. But this time Isaac held the secret. He’d committed an atrocity leading to deaths. They were criminal deaths and people best taken out of circulation anyway, but in the end those people had died to help Isaac lie to his wife.
He’d wanted her appreciation and respect, but cheating left an aftertaste. The more Natasha tried to respect him, the more he withdrew. He hadn’t seen that bit of self-sabotage coming.
Isaac sighed. He let go of Natasha’s hands, crossed to the conversation pit, and sank into a chair. He looked up at Natasha. She was wearing a gown not much more casual than she’d wear onstage. An elegant thing that came to her ankles. She was a star, even off duty.
“I’ll just be glad when this is all over and we can get on with our lives,” he said.
“Over” meaning the lies. The cheating, in mind and body. The schemes within plans. The uncertainty over who is friend and who is foe — although that never really ends.
Natasha sat next to him, squeezing in. The chair had been meant for one, but Natasha was tall and thin like Isaac, and they fit together like pencils sharing a drawer.
“Me too,” she said.
“Have you talked to Micah?”
“You mean since that first night?”
“Yeah.”
“No. Why would I?”
“Because he’s Enterprise.”
As well as she could in their confined arrangement, Natasha looked over. “I traded parties, not brothers.”
“I just thought he might want to advise you.”
“He might,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to listen.”
“Oh.” Pause. “Thanks.”
“How did it happen, Isaac? I’ve known Micah as long as I’ve known you, and you’ve always been on opposite sides. Brothers but not really. Like you had to associate, so you did, but every other moment was spent trying to be opposite the other. You were Directorate, and he was Enterprise before Directorate and Enterprise existed. Why?”
It was a complex question with a complicated answer. He gave Natasha the simple version — the one she more or less expected.
“Sibling rivalry, maybe. We were just different. Micah is competitive, and seems to think I need tough love. Being Micah’s brother has always been like running a gauntlet.”
“But no matter how much you were at each other’s throats, you kept meeting regularly. Even when it’s as if a war was brewing between your camps, you got together in a closed room. What do you talk about, when things are at their worst?”
That question was even more complicated.
“Brother stuff.”
“Do you think he loves you?”
Isaac turned to look at Natasha’s face. From this close, she took up his entire field of vision. At first, he wasn’t sure how to answer. The question was presumptuous and intensely personal. It was also intimate — the kind of thing loving wives and husbands discuss, but that Isaac and Natasha never had. It felt uncomfortable at best, awkward at worst.
“I guess.”
Natasha seemed satisfied with his non-answer, but then Isaac saw something else enter her expression. A sense of guarding, as if there was a reason she’d asked after all. Something she wasn’t saying — not because it was a secret, but because she was nervous.
“What?”
Natasha looked like she might deny whatever he was implying, but then sort of broke and said, “I talked to him once. Just on a voice call. But he called me; I didn’t call him. And it was short.”
She said “very short” as if in justification, as if Isaac might be angry, the way a woman tells her husband, after an affair, that “it just happened.”
“And?” Isaac asked.
“He asked me to that big event on Wednesday.”
“As a date?”
She pressed her lips together as if slightly ashamed. “Because I’m going to be Enterprise. And the guy running it is Enterprise.”
“Do you mean Braemon’s thing? Craig Braemon?”
“I guess? Micah probably said. The one who lives in the ritzy part of Harlem.”
“Are you going?”
Again, she gave that expression.
“Natasha, what?”
“He asked me to go, and I was thinking I wouldn’t because…Well, it just seemed like an insult to you. And this was just after the whole thing at The Sap, so I was going to say no, on principle. But before I could say anything, he said he wanted me to invite you, too.”
“Me?”
“He didn’t say it like a concession. I didn’t even get a chance to decline.”
“But let’s face it — the Violet James stuff is just an excuse. This is an Enterprise thing, and I’m Directorate. I’m the face of Directorate.”
Natasha gave him a helpless shrug.
“If he wanted to invite me, why didn’t he invite me? Why are you supposed to?”
“Probably because I know Jameson better than he does. Because Micah knows that Jameson has always been a good friend to me, almost like an advisor.”
Isaac’s eyebrows drew together. The illusionist again.
“What does Jameson have to do with it?”
At this, Natasha’s smile grew wide. “Oh, this is the fun part. Will you go?” She said it excitedly, and Isaac realized that’s what a lot of this buildup had been about all along: Natasha wanted Isaac to go. Whatever was brewing, she found the idea delightful and enchanting, and just needed to break him in.
“What does Jameson Gray have to do with inviting me?” Isaac repeated.
“Jameson is doing a stage show at the event. And as part of it, he’s going to teach Micah how to do a trick, in the spirit of the occasion.”
“What does that mean?”
Natasha smiled wider. “Seeing as Directorate will clearly win Shift, they thought a lighthearted way to poke fun at it all and show that there’s no hard feelings would be for Micah to make you disappear.”
“Honey,” said Jameson Gray, “you’re a shitty beautiful assistant.”
Natasha made her face faux-offended. She was doing a fine job. She’d watched all the old 2-D vidstreams of white-gloved magicians in tuxedos waving magic wands, gesticulating while circling their illusions. She’d paid closest attention to the magicians’ assistants and had, she thought, prompted the Viazo immersion to dress her in suitably similar attire and style. While her body reclined in her office behind a locked door (she didn’t want Isaac peeking), her virtual self was decked to the nines. She had her hair in a ridiculous pile of blonde whorls. Her dress was tiny, silver, and covered in blinding sparkles. Her long legs ended in tall heels, and they were currently engaged in making her ass look fabulous.
“Excuse me?” she said.
“You’re giving away the whole illusion. You keep looking back at me like you’re waiting for a prompt. Don’t you know the first rule of illusion?”
“Make stuff vanish?”
“Misdirection,” Jameson said. “You need to have your own attention in one place, but to project it somewhere else. A good magician shows the audience the right hand in a flourish at the moment the left must be unseen.”
Natasha looked at the contraption in front of her. It consisted of a tank, a drape, and a hoop she was supposed to drop at the right moment. It wasn’t the illusion they’d perform onstage; it was a starter to get her primed and earn her chops. But she’d missed a trick, it seemed. If Jameson was doing something with his hands, she sure h
adn’t seen it.
“Not literally my hands, stupid,” Jameson said.
“Don’t call me stupid.”
“Why not? Micah will call you stupid, stupid.”
“Micah’s not here.”
Jameson sighed. He fell backward like the culmination of a trust-building exercise, except that nobody was behind to catch him. A large divan appeared beneath him before he crashed to the floor. Not even a couch. Jameson had asked the immersion for a divan.
“Thank West for that,” he said.
“Do you not want to teach Micah this trick?”
“Illusion. Not trick.”
Natasha rolled her eyes, summoned a divan to match Jameson’s, and slumped down opposite him. She wasn’t sure if she was mocking him or not. They were both divas, inches from requesting bare-chested men to feed them grapes.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. Do you not want to teach Micah to prestidigitate and craft masterful illusions like you?”
Jameson made an annoyed little wave. “Oh, I already showed him. I had to modify the whole thing because I didn’t want him knowing the way I normally do things. And not because I think he’ll spill the beans. I just don’t like the idea of him, of all people, knowing my craft.”
Natasha resisted an impulse to mock the pompous way Jameson said “craft.” Then she asked, “If you don’t want him to do the trick, why did you agree when he asked you?”
Jameson’s eyes bristled at Natasha’s use of the word “trick.”
“I sort of owe him one. Or his mother, anyway.”
“What does Rachel have to do with it?”
“Oh, who cares about them? Deed is done. Micah knows magic. He’ll do fine this once, and everyone will clap for him, which I’m sure will be horrible for His Highness. It makes me a whore, just like my mother. But if I’m to be a whore, I won’t be a bad one. If you go out there at the party and assist like you just did, everyone’s going to figure it out.”
“Everyone knows it’s not real, Jameson. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but nobody will be crushed to find out that Micah didn’t really make Isaac vanish.”
Jameson put a finger against his thumb, held in front of his face. Natasha thought he was giving her a sideways A-Okay until the finger flicked out and a small wad of crumpled paper hit her in the forehead. Then Jameson did it twice more, striking her with moist wads both times.
“Are you flicking spitballs at me?” Natasha said, swatting at the things.
“For pretending that performance is about proving defensible reality? Damn right, I’m flicking spitballs at you.” To underscore the point, he flicked another. This time, Natasha dodged. It struck the divan’s pillow then blipped out of existence. “You’re a performer, honey. You should know better than to pretend the stage is about reality. Are your little tits really that perky when you wake up every morning?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you’ve had enough help. Your personality then. Are you that sweet to Isaac?”
Natasha’s lips pursed. “Point taken.”
“You don’t need to convince the crowd that the illusion is real. You just need to create an aura of illusion. People don’t attend my shows because they literally want to see me do impossible things. They come because I spin them a feeling. If you blow your job, you’ll crush that feeling of magic — not as a real thing, but as an emotion.”
Natasha felt her cheeks puff with held laughter. Jameson looked over.
“What?”
“You said, ‘blow your job.’”
“Did you hear anything I said?”
“I heard you. Now say it again.”
Jameson rolled his eyes and looked away. When his attention returned to Natasha, he’d dropped both his feigned irritation and his sense of importance. Before, he’d been Jameson Gray, spellbinding illusionist. Now he was just Jameson, Natasha’s friend and confidant.
“You’re giddy,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not unflattering. Do you know how few times I’ve seen you with a genuine smile?”
“Oh, come on.”
“Serious, Nat. What’s got into you?”
Natasha gave a small shrug. “Thing have just been going well with Isaac lately.”
“Your husband, Isaac? You must mean someone else.”
“I mean him. He’s been sweet.”
“Isaac?”
“Don’t be mean,” Natasha chided.
“Honey, it’s you who’s usually being mean about him. Why the change?”
“He’s different since that night. And it’s like I’m seeing new things in him. Between you and me, I sort of feel like newlyweds again.”
“That night? You don’t mean when those people tried to break up your little shindig, do you?”
Natasha nodded. “It let me see Isaac in a new way. Maybe in an old way. An Isaac I’d forgotten.”
Jameson’s eyes narrowed. “Honey.”
“What?”
“People don’t change overnight.”
“He didn’t change, I don’t think. Maybe I just got to see another side of him. I’ve always known he loved me, but we were so caught up in his politics and how angry it all made me that it just sort of escalated. Just goes to show, all a man needs to do to prove himself to a girl is to ride in on his white horse and save her life.”
Jameson’s eyes were still narrowed.
“Jameson, what?”
“I’m glad you feel good about Isaac. But don’t get carried away, okay? Keep your feet on the ground.”
“Why are you being such a wet blanket?”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Why would I get hurt? I’m happy in my marriage.”
“Hmm. Because he saved you.”
“He did save me!”
“Just…”
“Oh, come on, Jameson. Be a sport. Let me be happy. I know Isaac is Isaac, and despite knowing you, I still don’t believe in magic. I’m not dumb enough to think that one heroic act solves decades of problems. But it’s a start, isn’t it?”
Jameson looked like he was weighing a decision. Natasha, watching, found herself annoyed at his presumption. No matter whether Isaac would remain new Isaac or not, he’d shown up with the cavalry when she needed it most. That was a fact. Regardless of what came next, they’d had that moment, and no amount of brow-furrowing contemplation on Jameson’s part would change it.
“I suppose it’s a start,” he said. “But please be ca — ”
“Oh, shut it, Jameson.” Natasha wasn’t actually annoyed. It was a jibe, nothing more. The artificial room’s tension broke, and they both relaxed.
Jameson stood. Natasha looked up expectantly.
“Get off the couch. We need to practice.”
Natasha stretched. “Why? I’m comfortable here.”
“Because everyone knows my name is on Micah’s little illusion, and if you’re going to be part of it, your skinny little ass had better not embarrass me.”
The new configuration struck Serenity like an itch she couldn’t scratch.
It was the sort of thing that the children would understand but that most people wouldn’t — though that wasn’t entirely because the children were special. They were special, of course, but at least half of most people’s refusal to see what was all around them was exactly that: a refusal. Once, an artist had visited the school for a lesson, and he’d explained that talented artistic children drew what they saw…but that those who were less artistic drew what they thought they saw.
This was like that. Just as most children saw a square from an angle and still drew a square rather than the trapezoid it was in perspective, most people saw reality according to their expectations.
But this change in the puzzle that surrounded Serenity, here and now, was obvious. Just like ubiquity was obvious. There may have been a day when Serenity, like most people, would have felt her current sense of unease and dismissed it instead of seeing it as a real thing worth
paying attention to. But as she’d taught her children, so had they taught her.
There wasn’t really a way things were supposed to be.
But there was a natural order. There most certainly was a way things were.
In the network, a disturbance looked like a glitch. The trick, in what most people called reality, was to understand that a disturbance in the programming of life looked (or felt) exactly the same.
Serenity saw a man in black, his face invisible. It took her a moment to realize that she had never actually seen the faceless man, and that it was Leah who’d seen him. Just as it was Leah who’d once melted into The Beam. It was Leah — not SerenityBlue — who blurred the liquid border between The Beam and what they touched every day.
The children were sweet. They didn’t understand Serenity’s worry. When she’d walked back with Sapphire, the girl had turned suddenly around. She’d been in the lead, but she’d confronted Serenity as if she’d spoken. “It’s all fine,” she’d said and then resumed walking. And that had been that. Because it was fine, if you looked at the big enough picture.
In meditation, Serenity could sense a nexus — some sort of a junction point in the process of forming. In her mind’s eye, it was like a cluster of nerves, a converging of many roads. A ganglion. Maybe a node. Signals were usually scattered, many things happening with apparent independence. Deep down (and this, Serenity knew from her birth), few things ever turned out to be truly independent, but for most, it was usually true. Not anymore. Not here, not now.
Stephen York now touched Leah. Leah touched Leo. Thanks to Serenity’s nature and those of her children, all of them touched the school. There were others Serenity could sense but not see — people that seemed vaguely familiar only because they were linked to her connections. Each of those was related to the others.
The world was full of coincidence. As was the network.
The world was the network, and the network the world. For the children, there was little difference.
The children, who’d all been outcasts in their old lives, were prodigies here. Their innocence was addicting. Serenity had watched them walking back and forth from one world to the other, proving that the only boundaries were human-made walls. And that all that stood in the way from widespread realization, here and now, was a lack of language. A lack of a means to interface.