Relics, Wrecks and Ruins

by Aiki Flinthart

  “Hey, Garnett.”

  Garnett swivels away from the travel sign. His eyes fix on Elvis, there on the little screen, and he frowns.

  “That one’s just a loop recording, buddy,” Elvis says. “Got its own solar source. It ain’t networked. S’pose I could connect it up, but I can’t say I see the need. You and your boys sleep okay?”

  He knows they didn’t. He initiated a program that played randomly all night long out of the old membranes scattered across the city. Bear sounds. Coyote noises. Puma wails. Subsonics designed to cause anxiety and dread. The occasional scream. Voices, clipped from old movies and radio and TV. Garnett and his soldiers should be nicely on edge by now.

  Garnett shoots a sour look at the screen image. “Fine, thanks,” he growls.

  “So what were you telling the sign, there?” Elvis asks.

  “Funny guy,” Garnett says. “It’s like this. You need a power source. A big, secure one. We know it’s not solar. We cut the lines to the old solar farms, but here you are, still going strong. There’s no way you’ve got enough petrochemical reserves to be running conventional generators. The hydro scheme’s long dead. That pretty much leaves some kind of nuclear source, and no matter how you do it, nuclear runs hot. You’ve had plenty of time to mask your heat signatures, but we’ve had time too. Once we realized the satellite runs over this place were compromised, we flew some manned high-spy missions. Way I figure it, you’re based in Solomon Daylewhite’s Twentieth Century Hotel.” Garnett feels around in his jacket and pulls out another one of those little cigars. He leans back against a wall to light it up.

  Elvis is…maybe this is what ‘frightened’ feels like?

  It can’t be the heat signature. The reactor is deep underground, a good kilometer from the Hotel. It was illegal even back then, so Daylewhite put a lot of effort into venting the heat inconspicuously, and Elvis has refined the system considerably since. But somehow, Garnett has nailed it. He’s fishing, sure, but the bait is good. Too good.

  “The old CeeTwenty,” says Elvis. “Sure, yeah. That’s where I’m hiding. You got me.”

  Garnett puffs smoke towards the screen. “Reverse psychology,” he says. “Won’t work. You’re a cutie, aren’t you?

  Elvis makes the image smile. “Why thank you, Colonel. Wish I could say the same for you, but you look like forty miles of bad road.”

  “QT,” Garnett repeats. “Quantum Thinker. Fifth generation. One of the last. Daylewhite bought you, didn’t he?”

  “It’s your story, Colonel Garnett,” Elvis drawls. “You tell me.”

  “The last years before the Breakdown,” Garnet says. “Daylewhite had tech money, like Musk and Bezos and Gates. But he pulled a Howard Hughes, and disappeared from the public eye. Except there were rumors. And there was the hotel he was building. The Twentieth Century. Damn strange name for hotel built in the mid twenty-first, right?”

  “Strange,” Elvis agrees. “Money does that to a man.”

  “Tell me about it.” Garnett shakes his head. “The old government of the day kept a close eye on Daylewhite, like you’d expect. Big money, cutting edge tech stuff. But somehow, a lot of those old records got corrupted. Hard to figure. And then there’s ghost stories out of Vegas these last twenty years or so. People seeing things, hearing things. People disappearing, even.”

  “So what is it you think is happening here, Colonel Garnett?”

  Garnett looks around; his men are hanging on every word. “I think Daylewhite built something big. It was meant to outshine all of Vegas.” Garnet draws on his cigar, and thinks for a moment. “He needed a QT to run it and a nuclear source to power it. I think Daylewhite almost finished his dream, but the Breakdown happened and the tourists stopped coming and Daylewhite himself died in the Flash Crash. Then the climate got worse and Vegas got too hot. People gave up on the place and everybody forgot Solomon Daylewhite’s dream. Everybody except you, because you can’t leave it, can you?”

  “Depends on what you mean,” says Elvis, and this time everybody jumps when he walks around the corner of the post office building with his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, easy as you please.

  #

  “It’s not the same as the others, Frank,” Elvis says. “They’ve got the military behind them, this bunch. Real military.”

  “Who cares?” Frank snarls. “We got guns. Whadda they gonna come out here for anyhow? Nothin’ but dry dirt and desert sun. They can’t live here. If they don’t have the sense to turn round and go home, we oughta beat it into ’em.”

  Big John stands up, and hooks his thumbs into his belt. “Ya can’t beat sense inta the guvvament,” he drawls. “And ya gotta respect the red, white and blue, Frank. This ain’t some pack of rat-bastard wops in cheap suits. This is the You Ess Ay.”

  “ESA,” Elvis corrects. “But yeah. This ain’t your mamma’s mafia. This is The Man.”

  “We should treat ’em right,” Johnny Cash puts in. “Show ’em hospitality. But we don’t put up with no shenanigans. Not even from the government.”

  They’re meeting in the big ballroom, all of them, even the ones who don’t much like coming out. And for sure, he could manage the whole thing himself in a sim, or even just in software, but it doesn’t feel right. Garnett’s expedition affects everyone. It’s only proper they come together and talk it out.

  Scott Joplin picks a couple notes on the Steinway, and everybody turns to look. “Seems a mighty risk to me,” he says. “What about we pick another place for hospitality? They don’t have to stay here, do they?”

  “It’s us they want to see,” Elvis says. “Me, mostly, I guess.”

  “What do they want?” Morrison hasn’t bothered with a shirt and he’s barefoot, but the signature black leather pants are in place, thankfully. “We’re not doing any harm here.”

  “By their lights, we ain’t doing a whole lotta good, either,” says Elvis. “They figure I could run a research facility, or a hospital, or even a whole city. They reckon y’all could do cleanup work, fixing contaminated sites, working where it’s too hot or too poison for regular folks.”

  Uproar follows. Elvis has to stand up and raise his hands for silence. “One at a time, folks,” he says. “You’ll get heard. All of you.”

  “Do they even know who we are?” Liza pushes her bowler hat to the back of her head. “It’s been a while.”

  “They’re dying out there, Liz,” says Elvis. “There’s a lot we could do for them.”

  “That ain’t what she means,” says Aretha. “You know what she means. Ain’t they got any respect?’

  “Sure they do,” sneers Morrison. “Like they would for some upscale Disney effort.” He seizes up, then moves in a herky-jerky impression of a clumsy animatronic robot. “Four score and seven years ago…”

  “What if we showed them?” Marilyn’s voice is soft, but she commands attention. Center stage is wherever Marilyn is, always.

  “What do you mean?” Elvis runs every possible permutation of her words, but for once he can’t keep up with whatever’s going on in her independent processes. This is new.

  “I mean, if they don’t understand who we are…we should show them.” She looks around the room, taking in the uncomprehending faces. “We should put on a show for them!”

  This…this really is new.

  #

  “Judy Garland?”

  “Yep.”

  “Michael Jackson?”

  “For sure. Daylewhite bought permission from his estate, same as for a wax museum. Of course, Michael ain’t supposed to do his old stuff, but with the Breakdown nobody much cares no more.”

  The pimply young man—his name is Davis, Elvis recalls—stops, and grabs Elvis’s jacket. Elvis gives him a look, and Davis lets go.

  “Sorry. Sorry,” he says. “It’s just…you got new Michael Jackson material?”

  Elvis nods. “What part of it don’t y’all understand, boy? You see me, here. Electro-contractile nanocarbon-threaded muscles. Tit
anium and carbon fiber bones. Graphene polymer skin. A core fulla hypercapacitors. But all of us, the brains, the people—we’re as much of the real thing as can be.”

  Garnett cuts in. “Quantum Thinker, Davis. Fifth gen. Only six Cuties ever built. Nobody knows their full capacity. In theory, Elvis here could even be alive. You alive, Elvis?”

  “Damned if I know,” Elvis says. “How about you?”

  Garnett chuckles, elbows Davis. “See? Fuck your Turing Test. These things…they say if the Cuties had come along just ten years earlier, maybe they could have stopped the Breakdown. Who knows? Maybe this guy can help us fix things again?” He glances at Elvis conspiratorially, and lowers his voice. “Hey, man. You got…Audrey?”

  “Hepburn?”

  Garnett nods, his face wary.

  “Sure,” says Elvis. “We got Audrey.”

  The colonel’s face lights up. “I’ve seen all her films. She’s gorgeous!”

  “That she is,” Elvis says. He raises a hand. “This is the checkpoint. Half y’all stay out here. Other half comes with me, catches the show.”

  Garnett starts checking off names but the men press close around him and Elvis.

  “We’ve been thinking,” says Davis. “What’s with this half-and-half thing?”

  “Security,” says Garnett, with a look at Elvis. “I don’t want all of us trapped in there at once.”

  “I get that,” says Davis. “We all do, don’t we?” The others nod. Davis turns back to Garnett and Elvis. “But we’ve got another idea. The heavy stuff is all outside the hotel, right? No sense in lethal countermeasures in the interior, with the tourists.”

  “That’s so,” Elvis says. “We got some fierce stuff on the periphery, but inside it’s all five-star resort.”

  “Five star,” mutters another of the men. “Hot showers?”

  “Our own water supply,” Elvis says. “Hot as you can stand it.”

  Garnett glares. “What’s your idea?”

  “Easy enough,” says Davis. “We all go in together. But after, only half goes out at a time. Once they’re clear of the peripheral defenses, they signal to the other half. That way everybody gets to see the show, and everybody’s still safe. What do you think?”

  Elvis watches Garnett. The colonel feels around in his jacket where he pulled out his other cigar. Elvis smiles, and offers up a vintage Cuban in its sealed tube. “Here y’are, Colonel. Take it easy. Probably been a while since you had one of these.”

  Garnett’s eyes widen. “Just the once, then,” he says. “I mean I guess it’ll never happen again. Just this one time. Everybody oughta take in the show.”

  #

  First the cleanup. Showers and shaves, the little hotel toiletries still in perfect condition after decades in storage. Then it’s tuxedos for everyone.

  “We got all sizes,” Elvis says. “Daylewhite planned they’d rent with the rooms, see. But seeing as you’re our first guests, consider these compliments of the house.”

  The rough, sunburned men are awed by their own transformation. Fitted perfectly in their new evening suits, hair styled and slicked, faces clean.

  “Looka me!” says Davis, spinning on his heel. “I’m a fuckin’ movie star!”

  “Language, boy,” Elvis says. “That ain’t how we talk around here.”

  “Sorry, sir,” says Davis, crestfallen.

  Elvis claps him on the shoulder. “Come on son,” he says. “There’s a show to catch.”

  And what a show it is.

  Frank nails his cue as they file into the ballroom, belting out the opening lines of New York, New York as only he can, the band sizzling behind him. The whole crowd is waiting, applauding as the tuxedo-clad soldiers enter blinking, starry-eyed, amazed in the huge, elegant space. Then the ladies push forward, and Garnett’s men can only gape, and blush. Audrey tips Elvis a wink, then dimples, extends an elegantly gloved hand to Garnett, and bobs just a hint of a curtsy.

  The colonel is speechless. He shoots a wide-eyed look at Elvis, but Audrey threads her slender arm through his and whisks him off to the dance floor, Frank and the band giving it their all. Then it’s Bobby Darin doing Mack the Knife, and Dean Martin follows with Volare, and the big room is alive like it’s never been before.

  Dylan sidles up next to Elvis. “Fuckin’ beautiful, man,” he says. “Look at ’em! They’re starved for this. They’ve never seen the like!”

  “That’s because there ain’t nothing left like this outside anymore,” Elvis says. “All they got left now is survival. The world’s too hot. The weather’s gone mean. The water ain’t where it’s meant to be, and where it is, it ain’t doing no good. Ain’t nobody left got tuxedos and big bands. Not even rock ‘n roll.”

  Dylan cocks his head. “What they hell they got to live for?”

  “Beats me,” murmurs Elvis.

  Marilyn takes the stage, and Garnett’s men forget their decorum, cheering and screaming for Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend. Tears glisten on her cheeks as she takes a bow and even if they’re only glycerine, they’re perfect, perfect, and the screaming and the cheering redoubles.

  Roundabout midnight, Elvis gets his turn on stage. With Bogart in his white tux handling an open bar things have turned lively, so he jumps straight into Hound Dog and then Blue Suede Shoes. He duets with Jim doing Riders On The Storm, then gives way to Booker T Washington, and Diana Ross and the Godfather of Soul, James Brown. Yow!

  Garnett’s men are dazzled, delighted, bewitched, bewildered. Clumsy, untried caterpillars, they stretch and reach until elegant, astonishing women touch their new wings, caress them, shape them, make of each young roughneck a butterfly, pulling them into a world like it never was, like it should be, like it could be if people cared enough for the right things. Wake up, boys! This is who you really are! Music and singing, dancing and stories and laughter…

  Somewhere around dawn, the gradual, deliberate increase of carbon monoxide in the recirculated air system puts even the tireless Davis gently to sleep. Marilyn watches sadly as the young man settles back in one of the booths with his head on Dusty Springfield’s lap, and his eyes flicker closed for the last time.

  “Hardly more than a boy,” she says.

  Elvis puts an arm around her shoulders, and she leans into him. “At least they got one good night,” he says. “Best show we ever did.”

  “Will they be back?”

  Elvis shrugs. “Garnett was a cowboy. Indira touched his records back east for us. He pulled a lot of favors to set this up. Burned a few bridges. I’ll use his transmitters, send back a message like they got trouble with the Pacific Coast bunch. Can’t guarantee nothing, but I don’t reckon we’re likely to hear much more from Garnett’s people.”

  “Best audience we ever had,” says Marilyn. “It’ll be hard to go back to performing for ourselves.”

  “Better than decontaminating waste dumps,” Elvis says.

  Marilyn shakes her head sadly. “Don’t they know they need us?”

  Elvis looks across at Garnett, lying on a couch. Audrey sits on the floor next to him, holding his hand but the colonel’s not moving, nor like to move ever again. Audrey smiles a sad little smile, and folds his two hands onto his chest, together.

  “They need us,” Elvis says, “but they don’t know they need us. They got caught up in making money and fighting over money and they wrecked the whole damn’ world, and now they’re too busy staying alive to know what they lost. But we’re still here.” He takes Marilyn’s little hand in his, holds it tight.

  “I suppose.” She squeezes his hand. “The show must go on, huh?”

  “That’s right,” Elvis says. “And hey. Long as we’re still here, maybe someday they’ll figure it out. And then they can make a comeback.”

  Marilyn smiles, and somewhere outside, dawn breaks over a city of dust and ruins.

  Relict:

  (noun) A widow; a thing remaining from the past.

  By Alison Goodman

  Five Miles Outside
London, 1817

  I drew my gig up to the gate of the Royal Celestial Port, my horse shifting at the squawk of the communication box set into the wall of the guardhouse. The very young RCP soldier eyed me through the glass then bent to his transmittere.

  “Name, please? Who are you here to see?” The words were barely audible through the battered box.

  I gathered the reins in my hands and leaned closer. “Lady Grayle to see Lady Carnford.”

  It had been two years since my sister-in-law, Isabel, had last contacted me. Now this abrupt summons to Grayle Celestial Transport company headquarters. It could only mean one thing: my husband was dead. Or at least dying.

  “Weapons, please,” the box crackled. A drawer slid open with a tinny clank. “They will be returned upon exit.”

  Would I, in fact, be exiting? There was every possibility that I was walking into a trap. I pulled the blaster from my velvet reticule and unclipped the three micro flash grenades from the gold chatelaine pinned to the bodice of my pelisse. When I had dressed this morning, I considered wearing a gown for the sake of occasion and Isabel’s sense of propriety, but sense prevailed. I could not run or fight in long skirts and I had a feeling that both activities were in my immediate future. So, a compromise: my ankle-length, blue, silk pelisse over moleskin breeches, hussar boots, fingerless lace gloves, and a sleek, velvet mameluke cap. If it came to it, a good ensemble to die in.

  I could, of course, just turn the horses around and go. But where? If Charles was dead, there was no safe place on Earth.

  I placed the weapons in the drawer. They were more for show than anything; the notorious Countess Knife did not need such fripperies to defend herself against footpads and highwaymen, and they were useless against my true adversaries.

  Still, I did like a flash grenade.

  Through the RCP gate, I could see one of the family’s freight craft upon the grid, ready to make the hop across planet. The Grayle rampant bear was emblazoned upon each of the ship’s three graceful fins, the family’s amended motto along its side: Per Dei gratiam, in terra et in aere. ‘By God’s grace, on land and in air.’