by GX Knight
I betrayed her again. I picked up one of the guns at my feet, pointed it at Maeve, and pulled the release spring on the side to cock it. (Thank you video games for teaching me that one.) “No. You’re going to Skip this thing to my home, and you’re going to do it now.”
DONE
I was not scoring any brownie points with Maeve, this much was certain. The look she gave me was an entire swarm of daggers flung at my face. Reluctantly, she changed the Skip code in the strange red and white flashing console on the left side of the dash, and the car sped into a puddle of blinding light. Through a mix of magic and science the car had produced the event-horizon directly in front of us. The motor hummed away, and after we charged through a temporal formation there was only about a second’s worth of travel, and then we flashed back out to reality. We dropped two feet from the wormhole’s exit with a huge clanking sound, right in the middle of a pasture. The car tossed a mountain of churned sod and mud as we slid sideways to a stop before ramming into an oblivious cow munching away on some grass.
I instantly recognized being near a county road close to where the fairgrounds were. We had just traveled through a wormhole. To simplify the wormhole phenomenon I’ll use this question: Is it quicker for a worm to travel around the outside of the apple, or tunnel straight through the middle of the core? It was a big thing in all the science fiction shows I used to watch. I guess I had to wrap my head around the fact that I was living those sci-fi and fantasy tales as something of a strange and twisted reality.
Purple and orange rays of dusk stretched from a line of heavy gray clouds as if the hand of God was about to slap us into the face of the Earth. It was what we deserved. I was a monster. Coming to terms with what I had just learned was not going to be easy. It might even be impossible. No wonder so many Amalgams traverse the world on insane death-reaping rampages. I did my best to maintain my composure, but as I looked around at the familiar sights of home, I began to lose it. I didn’t want to have to fight for every single inch of life. I wanted to coast through bored and unnoticed like I used to.
I dropped the gun to the floor. I wasn’t trying to be cool, or emotional, or play on Maeve’s good nature. I simply asked that she please take me home. It was all I wanted, and I swore, once done, I would be willing to go anywhere she wanted to take me. I was giving up. The sight of my hometown was too much. I knew then that I would not be able to stay no matter how much I wanted. She could go where she wanted. I was so close to the apartment, and my dad, but I was giving her permission to take me away if that’s what she chose. Home was supposed to make you stronger, not weaker, right?
She seemed to take pity on me. She rolled her eyes with a huff and asked two simple words, “Which way?”
My head fell back to the headrest atop the seat back; I pointed us homeward like a silent GPS until we arrived at my apartment complex. The sun was all but gone, and I was thankful we had the sweet spot on the bottom floor. It sat at the end of a handful of solo units. We parked and I cautiously shuffled to the door unnoticed. I now shared Maeve’s dread of public with a fervor that even she couldn’t muster. I think it was the screams of the newlywed couple still echoing in my mind which motivated me.
I paused as the sound of my metal hand clanked against the doorknob. My vision shifted from Dad’s truck, sitting in its normal parking space, to a less than amused Maeve who had taken back both confiscated Street Viper weapons. She scanned the parking lot, and looked for trouble with a warrior’s intensity. After a second or two she caught my eyes long enough to bestow a shred of compassion my way, and then she gave me a comforting nod that said everything would be fine.
It was all I needed to summon the courage to turn the knob. It was an odd sensation. I could still feel the metal between my fingers as I gripped it. It felt cool and smooth, but not as cold as it should have. All feeling was somehow muffled. I guess I should have considered myself lucky that I felt anything at all. I promised to explore the thought later as I entered the apartment and called out, “Dad?”
The first thing I saw was the last thing I had seen when I left, that stupid mirror. I felt deserving of what had happened to me, and I hated myself for allowing this. If I had just stayed home and played cards like he wanted, I would have been at my crappy little job hating my boring life in an unknowingly-blissful state of ignorance instead of sneaking into my home, and hoping I wouldn’t panic the bajeezus out of my own father. Welcome to the more interesting life. I had crossed the fence and found the greener grass only to discover someone had come along and planted a minefield in it.
I stayed glued to the mirror as I walked in, but then I tripped over a stool that was supposed to be beside the door and not in the middle of the walkway. I caught myself before I fell, but not before unleashing a couple bombing runs of profanity. I let another barrage fly as I scanned my home that looked as though it had been ransacked by an entire army of thieves. Nothing was left unturned.
Maeve did her warrior woman thing and cleared each space to make sure no one was lurking. We were alone. Dad was gone. Other than everything being tossed about, the only sign that I could find where anything had happened was from the kitchen. Large dried puddles of blood were everywhere. Some kind of fight went on, and it did not end well for what must have been a couple of people. Just to the side of it a cemented corner of a newspaper clipping stuck to the tile. I tore it free to read:
LOCAL FATHER AND SON KILLED IN COLLISION WITH SEMI
Included in the article about my death was a picture of my little brown Honda hatchback. The front end had been crumpled all the way into the back, and the car had burned. The only way I knew it was my car was because I recognized the license plate number. If I had been in it I would certainly have been dead. I almost wished I had been.
I blinked; I fell to the floor and, in that same kitchen where I left my own father to cry alone, I began to shake. My body wretched, but as hard as I tried, I could not produce a single tear. It then occurred to me: I couldn’t cry. I felt the metal pieces around my eyes with my metal hands and I somehow knew there would be no tears to accompany my sorrow. There was nothing else to do, so I leaned over and my body did the only thing left of its own involuntary capacity. I hurled whatever remained of those cheeseburgers all over the floor.
Maeve was tough. Neither the blood nor the vomit seemed to faze her. I sat up wiping my face with the warm steel of my wrist as she came and sat beside me. She leaned against the counter and pulled her knees up to her. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t try to comfort me with wasteful words. She just sat and let me process the possibility that Dad had been killed as part of a quick and sloppy cover up. It had to be the only possibility. There was blood all over the kitchen, his truck was still in the parking lot, and the paper said all it needed to say reporting we both had died. He wasn’t home, and he wouldn’t be back.
I shook my head, “What now?”
“We go,” Maeve said softly, but matter-of-factly. “Your life as a Slate is over. It’s time to start a new one away from here.”
My voice was as rough as it had ever been. It sounded as if I had smoked ten packs a day since I was born, “And do what? Go serve tables at some Amalgam restaurant? I’m not good at anything.”
“Well, that charm isn’t so bad.” She said with a teasingly playful smile, “That is when you’re not punching out women. We could at least get you a job as a bartender. Amalgams love their ale.”
I started to apologize about the whole hitting her thing, but she held up an understanding hand to stop me. I ignored the bartender crack; at least I hoped it was in jest. I mean geez, look at me, the least I could do was some heavy lifting as supernatural construction guy.
Maeve popped up and helped me stand. I collected the photo of my mom and dad, and then went to the kitchen where I collected my coffee pot, Flip. I cradled Flip as I met Maeve at the front door.
“What is that?”
“Who is that?” I corrected her. “This is Flip, and he ma
kes the coffee.”
She rolled her eyes, and then cocked her head to the side as if a light of curiosity had been turned on inside her mind. “It occurs to me,” she said, “I know your coffee pot’s name, I read something over there that said your Dad’s name was George, but you have not, in all this time, once volunteered your name.”
“You haven’t asked.” I said, “And I guess I just assumed you had been given it as a part of your super-secret mercenary mission.”
“Well, I’m asking now.”
I looked around at the broken remains of life that I had to leave behind. To the world the person I was had died. My old life was gone. Everything about me was no more. It seemed foolish to hang on to a name that would only be associated with the pain of what was, and could never be. I sighed, looked her in the eye and gave her the best answer I could, “I don’t know what it’s going to be, but I promise you’ll be the first I tell when I do.”
She understood.
We climbed back into our stolen Street Viper car, and Maeve played with the Skip controls again. By our emergence into the field and not on a road, it was obvious that such a device was dangerous. I wondered if anyone had ever reemerged from a wormhole in the middle of the ocean or on the inside of a building. Not a comforting thought. She pulled the car around to the back lot. She said she needed plenty of room to get up to speed. I couldn’t help but to laugh, “So do we have to get this baby up to eighty-eight miles per hour? Because you’ll need one-point-twenty-one jiggawatts.”
Maeve ignored, or didn’t get, the movie reference. “You ready?” She asked.
“To get turned in to your boss?” I replied.
She smiled, “How about to get fixed up.”
“Sure, what else do I have to lose?”
“Then hold on.” She laughed as she barked the tires. Maeve then took my hand feigning a serious question, “What the hell’s a jiggawatt?”
All I could do was whisper “Great Scott,” as we plowed through another vortex that promised to take me who-knows-where.
THE NEW GUY
Weeks later…
I had been taken to a white sand beach somewhere well off the beaten path. I stayed in something of a lone harbor house that stood as repeating boxes on pylons that went a couple of stories high. I had a room on the top floor, but I had spent almost every hour down in an underwater basement that ran deep through the surf beneath the building. I had been told little about what it was for or why we were there; the only impressions I had gotten is that it was new, and judging from the sprawling size of the stacked cubes that shaped the structure, they were expecting more company.
Down in the lab I met two friends of Maeve’s. They were actual Amalgam Elves. They were not transformed, they were born with the Elvish gene, but as was the case with ninety-nine percent of Amalgams conceived of two parents, they had human ancestors “mucking up” the family tree. Therefore they were still considered Amalgams and not Puries. I had always wondered what an Elf might look like, and while there had been many incarnations I had seen over the years on television, I was disappointed by the fact that they were not short, they did not have pointed ears, nor did they speak in some ethereal language of eternal enlightenment. Believe it or not, they were socialite party queens who seemed to be as good at downing vodka body shots as they were at re-sequencing DNA. Would you call them, Party Elves?
I thought they were sisters, they acted like they were. For a while I would refer to Kata as the “Blonde One” or the “Nice One.” I think everything she owned was pink. This included the pink highlights in her platinum hair. Her beyond-cold hands were the first things I could ever feel through my new metal skin that actually made me shiver. Those things were ice.
Sway, the other one, was the opposite. That girl was a Gothic Princess, but in an elegant kind of way. She had raven hair, purple streaks, leather and fishnet everything, and I called her the “Mean One,” just not to her face. She was completely in love with her own voice, and demanded that everyone else be too. Unlike Kata’s ice, Sway had some heat going on when she touched me. It felt good through my muffled sense of touch in that hot-stone-massage kind of way. It was beyond me how sweet-Kata could spend so much time with her, but like some kind of Amalgam Yin-Yang they worked and played like a team that was unbeatable.
Thankfully, having spent most of the days knocked out, I had little contact with Sway. Most mornings they would swoop in from a night of partying still smelling like smoke, beer, and God knows what else, and I would go happily to sleep so they could use their genius mojo-enhanced-IQ on me. They had to put me under anesthesia, because of pain, and there I rested comfortably, more or less. When I was out, it wasn’t as bad as what I felt during my Viper treatments. Sway was obnoxious, but she wasn’t cruel, at least not physically. Verbally? Well that’s a whole other issue. But they never pushed me too far in one day. I always had time to adjust and recover from whatever small procedure they performed.
After I came-to they would shove off to another party in the evening with hardly a word. I don’t think they slept. Though all three girls had rooms there at the harbor house, I got the distinct impression that nobody actually lived there. It was kind of like an Amalgam clubhouse on steroids.
The last day of procedure had finally arrived, and it was a long one, and a little harder than the rest. I remember seeing flashes of my dad. I would see the metal that covered my skin jump from me and form into a shapeless beast with a horrible howl. It leapt onto Dad, and turned him into what I had been. I watched this happen about three times, and each time he would embrace the monster with a smile at me before falling backwards into the floor which was actually made of oil. With a black gloopy splash he was gone, and I was left alone screaming.
We were down in the lab. You couldn’t see the water above, but you could just feel that you were deep under it. The fog of sedation lingered as I came around. Maeve’s accent was the first thing I heard. It was always the first thing I heard when I came back to the land of the mostly-living. “It’s okay,” she said, “It’s all finally over.”
I had no idea how metal could process touch, be sore, or even hurt, but it did. Every night when I woke up, excruciating pulses of pain rippled over every minute crevice of my body. At first I was worried about what they were doing to me, but I had lost the will to question. Maeve promised the procedures would help, and she said eventually the daily recovery would get easier. As we progressed, I found that she was right. I now trusted her without question. Maybe it was a mistake, but she was the only person I had in my life since Dad died. If she told me right then she was there to turn me into a circus act, I would have grabbed a pair of tights. I had one friend in the entire world. Every day it caused a coin toss of emotion, because at one moment I would brim over with contentment as we bonded and grew closer together, but then at other times I would retreat into emptiness as I knew Dad would love her, but never get to meet her.
Perhaps it was the excitement of finally seeing their work finished, but I was able to shake off the procedural hangover quickly this time. I jumped up from the table as Kata’s icy hands removed the last of those painful sticky things they use to connect their medical wires to my chest. Maeve held my hand, and Sway actually seemed uncharacteristically giddy, as she clipped across the floor in her black heels, silver-laced fishnets, and white lab coat. She wheeled over a full length mirror and pushed me in front of it, eager to see my reaction.
“What do you think?” Kata asked? The best way I knew to describe Kata, was that she was Valley girl too smart to be from “the Valley,” wherever the hell that was. She was sweet, cute, athletic, and the things you’d expect to see in a cheerleader, but apparently she had a brain that would make Steve Jobs’ surviving think-tank look like a classroom of kindergartners.
“You better love it.” Sway said with a smile, “No returns on worn merchandise.”
Whatever you say, you she-witch. “With you in charge, how could I not?” I pandered.
I’ve never had a makeover before. I’ve seen shows where people get made-over, and I always thought I would love the feeling. You know what? I did. I take back the she-witch thing.
I was a cyborg. There was no changing that. I was dealing with it. Some moments were better than others, but as I looked at the mirror, I had to say I was having a pretty good moment. The girls used the info I took from Drake to genetically, and cosmetically, mend me… mostly. The final outcome was more than I could have hoped for.
My scrub pants hung a little low. I was shirtless, and I ran a hand down the front of my chest. All the black grimy pieces from the front of my torso were gone. I was now all flesh there, and not only that, but somehow they had worked some kind of mojo that gave me a six pack and pecks to die for. I had never lifted weights in my life, but I looked like I tossed around dumbbells for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I shot a curious glance over to the girls as my metal finger circled one of my six showing abdominal muscles.