by SM Reine
Feeling ripped through my center, animal-like—almost painful.
In my defense, I’d only heard about them that night, and the fact that their affair started three months earlier, while I’d been blissfully happy, thinking Jaden and I were mutually in love. According to his bass player, she’d started hanging out with them after shows, eventually winning him over with flattery, pouty lips and enormous tits.
She was babbling something to him and her friends now, half-hysterical, her arm bleeding profusely from where I’d slashed at her with the bottle, her red-painted lips another dark wound on her face.
I stared at them both, thinking, this can’t be real. It can’t be. This isn’t me.
But it was.
1
MR. MONOCHROME
So yeah, I got arrested that September, and it pretty much changed everything.
Forever and ever...in my life, at least.
Why did it change everything, you might be wondering?
Well, not for the reasons you’re probably thinking.
Okay, yeah, it was really humiliating. I got thrown in jail for two nights. The cops treated me like some kind of PCP-smoking weirdo and wouldn’t let me call my mom for twenty-four hours. My mom flipped out. My brother Jon really flipped out. My friends all flipped out. I got a psych eval, as mandated by the state of California for all new violent offenders with no previous criminal records. I got a blood test...again. I had to pee in a jar.
Then, after all of that, I had to do community service. I couldn’t leave town. Worse, I had to check in with the authorities, and yes, wear a shiny new GPS bracelet that was even more awkward to explain when I finally got back to my job at Lucky Cat diner.
Who thankfully, by some miracle, hadn’t fired me.
None of that was the real issue, either, though.
The real problem, as they explained to me much, much later in time, was that I made myself visible. That little freak-out of mine with Jaden and the broken bottle and the bimbo band groupie was like sending up a great, big, noisy flare, one that got all the wrong people looking in my direction.
Why is that, you might be wondering?
Well, it’s simple. See, what I did was only crazy if you’re human.
If you’re not human, I was later to discover, it’s pretty much run-of-the-mill normal.
I tried not to fidget as I stared around the courthouse room.
I should be used to being in this place. I wasn’t. Nor did I really want to be.
I hoped I wouldn’t be called last. That desk jockey I spoke to promised me he’d try to get me put at the top of the list, but I was pretty sure he’d just been angling for my number. I still needed to stop by my mom's place before work, and the clock was ticking.
Just as I was starting to wonder if I should call my manager, Tom, and give him a head’s up that I’d be late again, the court clerk appeared in the narrow doorway on the other side of the low wall, wearing a portable monitor. He cleared his throat, and the sound echoed in the featureless room, a bland, institutional-looking space clearly designed to make us feel like rats in a cage, or maybe just numbers instead of names. The four off-white walls were broken only in a few places, by that pony wall that served almost like a balcony, and a one-way window above the two sets of double-doors at the back of the room.
A row of scuffed up wooden benches held most of us waiting on the clerk, with a few extra people perched on cheap-looking folding chairs that stood against the walls to the right and the left of me. The off-white linoleum had stains I didn’t want to know about.
I watched as the court clerk unfurled the monitor from around his wrist and spread it out on the podium-like table in front of him. He squinted at it for a few seconds, then drew on it with a finger, probably going through the list of our names.
Meaning, the ex-convicts’ names. Meaning people like me.
The thought still boggled my mind.
The clerk looked up at all of us a few seconds later. He squinted at us, too.
I wondered if he needed eye surgery, or if it was some kind of facial tic.
Finally, he motioned at me.
“Verify identification,” he said, indicating the small podium that stood across from him.
I walked up to that same podium, feeling suddenly like I should have dressed better for this. It was just a monthly check-in to make sure I hadn’t run off, or found some way to put my GPS tracker on my dog. I’d done six or seven of these already, but this time, I was nervous for some reason. I’d never seen this guy before, so maybe that was it. The last guy was more laid back.
He was also quicker about it, jamming through the list without a lot of bureaucratic grandstanding. When this new guy made another pointed gesture towards the microphone, I cleared my throat.
“Alyson May Taylor,” I said.
"You go by Alyson?"
I cleared my throat again. "Allie."
“Place of residence?”
“2119 Fillmore Street, San Francisco.”
“Race cat?”
I held up my arm, showing him the “H” tattoo on my inner arm.
“Speak into the microphone, please.”
“Human,” I said.
“Birth parents?”
I hesitated. “Unknown.”
The man’s eyebrows went up, changing the shape of his thick face. The elongated skin pushed up the short bangs framing his square cheeks, confirming he’d had some kind of cosmetic surgery to tighten his skin. It struck me that he looked a bit like a cartoon pig.
“I’m adopted,” I clarified.
“No registered birth family?” the man said. He leaned closer, staring at me with an open, and somewhat morbid-seeming curiosity.
“No, sir. I was found.”
“Found?”
“Yes, sir. Under a bridge.” A little flustered, I amended, “...Overpass. Registered as a ward of the state, January 13, 1984. Status transferred August 19, 1984. Adopted. Carl and Mia Taylor. Birth parents unknown.” I hesitated after my usual litany, feeling every eye in the room on me now. “My blood’s been verified. About a hundred times now, sir...”
The clerk continued to frown at me.
I glanced around at all the other house-arrest criminals, like me, who sat on the scuffed benches or on metal chairs in the white, featureless room. Some of them were probably coming down off more deadly forms of domestic violence charges, statutory rape, petty larceny, drug dealing, assault, identity theft...God knew what else.
But I’m the freak, because of something I had no control over. Something that happened before I’d worn diapers. Well, that and the occasional homicidal freakout regarding cheating boyfriends...apparently that was a thing of mine now, too.
The thought made me feel tired.
My grandmother warned me once that nothing in life is ever secure. No matter how stable, boring or predictable the different components of your life may seem...everything can be gone with a single bad decision. In my case, it was a very bad decision.
One I still couldn't quite believe I'd made.
Now, not only had I lost my boyfriend of six years, in about the most permanent way I could have managed it, I'd made myself into a violent criminal.
I wasn't the only one in shock at what I'd done. My brother still couldn't believe it. He didn't come out and say anything––well, at least not now that he’d finished giving me the third degree and going through my apartment looking for drugs––but I could still see it in his face. He just couldn't believe I'd done something that, well...crazy.
My mom, as per usual, was pretty much in denial. She fluctuated between blaming the alcohol (I hadn't been drunk) and saying everyone just kind of lost their shit now and then, that I should just learn from it and not do it again.
Yeah, great advice, mom.
The thing is, I’d been pretty sure me and Jaden would get married at some point, have kids, do the whole domestic thing...so when I found out I’d been replaced by the newer, sluttier model,
I didn’t take it very well.
I kind of went nuts, I guess.
Looking back on it now, it felt almost like I’d become a different person. A person I didn't like very much, truthfully.
Now I had a tracker on me. One of those GPS numbers I had to wear on my wrist, and occasionally explain to customers at the diner where I worked. According to the State of California, I wasn’t going anywhere for awhile.
Which was too bad, really. After everything died down and I faced the fact that I was on my own again, I wanted nothing more than to leave town...take a nice long sabbatical.
But the man at the podium was talking again, so I forced my mind back to him.
“They weren’t able to track down birth parents?” the clerk persisted. “Through DNA records? Through medical records? Those were all international by then, weren’t they?”
“No, sir,” I said. “And yes, sir...they were.” When the clerk continued to stare at me, I felt my face flush. “Is this strictly relevant?” I said. “I’m going to be late for work.”
“Place of employment?”
I felt my jaw tighten.
To avoid glaring at this pompous jerk maybe, and just escalating things, I glanced around at the other people waiting with me in the courtroom instead.
A big, biker-looking guy covered in tattoos winked at me, folding massive arms across his leather-clad chest. The big guys always liked me for some reason. Maybe because I’m smallish for my age.
Then I saw the other guy.
Starting a little when I saw his pale eyes on mine, I stared back at him briefly, then forced my gaze back to the front of the room. He looked the same as he always looked.
Tall, even sitting down. Strangely silent. Focused. Weird eyes.
Those were the first words that popped into my head, anyway.
Jon and I had dubbed him Mr. Monochrome. With his black hair, pale skin, light eyes of some indeterminate color, the nickname seemed almost funny to us at the time. He even wore a black jacket, as if the contrast of his skin and hair wasn't quite enough.
I took another breath, just as the clerk’s voice sharpened.
“Place of employment?” he repeated.
“Lucky Cat,” I said. “It’s a diner on Divisadero.”
“Other sources of income?”
“Freelance.” At the clerk’s quizzical look, I explained, “I’m an artist. I do tattoo designs for Fang’s on Geary. Also Gorilla Joint, up on Haight...”
The clerk didn’t seem to be listening, though. His eyes had gone almost blank in the pause, like he was listening to a faraway tune. I watched his face, fighting another flush of irritation. Was he just messing with me? Or did he have a VR implant?
Now that I knew Mr. Mono was there, I just wanted to get out the hell out.
At least now I had a real excuse to spring for a cab.
The tall, dark-haired Mr. Monochrome had been following me for weeks. I first noticed him hanging around not long after I got out of jail, and first got the GPS locked onto my wrist. Maybe he was into chicks with anger management issues, Jon and I joked. Or maybe he was just hoping I'd go postal on someone else, and he'd have front row seats.
Either way, Jon was right; I really needed to report him.
The problem was, he hadn’t really done anything yet. Nothing but stare at me, and I didn’t want the cops to think I was paranoid, on top of everything else. I wanted to be able to give them something more concrete. Something other than, “Well, you see, a lot of weird people seem to like to follow me around, officers.”
Even as I thought it, the court's clerk nodded, marking something on the portable monitor with his thick index finger. At least he finally seemed to have gotten over his interest in my weird parentage. Peering down at my records, his eyes looked almost bored now. Or at the very least, preoccupied as he perused the relevant lines.
“Okay. Eight more months on your sentence,” he said, motioning for me that I could leave the podium. “Same time next month, Taylor.”
He crooked his finger at the biker on the bench next to me.
“You, Daniels...front and center. Verify identification.”
I walked back to my end of the bench and gathered up my shoulder bag and my jacket, still feeling stares on me from some of the other people in the room. The one I felt the most was the hardest to ignore. I glanced in the direction of Mr. Mono again, even as I shouldered on my jacket, tugging my hair out of the collar as I turned.
But he wasn't there anymore.
The chair where I'd seen him, only seconds before, was empty; the door still swung silently on its hinges, but Mr. Mono was definitely gone.
Riding down Divisadero Street towards my mom’s, I leaned against the cab’s window as it paused at a red light.
I’d been spacing out, not really paying attention to anything outside, when I realized that I was staring at someone.
She stared back at me, her sharp, blue eyes eyes openly hostile. Framed with stiff, dyed braids that came off her head like a white and orange headdress, her heart-shaped faced had an almost unreal beauty to it, even beyond the heavy layer of foundation and eye make-up she wore. I read the name of the fetish bar on the marquee behind her, and realized abruptly what she must be. I’d heard about the place opening up, but hadn’t been by to see it like everyone else.
It just felt weird to me, I guess. Gawking at them, like they were animals.
The woman’s opaque blue eyes drank me in without apology or fear. Her hands rested on her hips over a white, lace bodysuit.
I receded into the cab’s seat so I would be less visible.
I caught the cabbie watching me in the rearview mirror and blushed.
“Yeah,” he commented flatly. “They got a few of them now.”
“I know...just forgot.”
He didn’t seem to hear me, or care maybe.
“They just keep bringing more of them over here,” he complained. “Like we need our own damned glow-eye army. Fucking animals. I don’t trust ‘em...collared or not.” He glanced at me in the mirror. Looking over my tangled hair and hastily applied makeup, he smiled.
Maybe he thought the dishevelment was deliberate.
“You seen one before, honey?” he said.
“Yeah.” I glanced out surreptitiously, but the seer was no longer looking at me. Smiling seductively at a man on the street, she touched his arm as he passed. The man jerked away as if burnt, glaring at her.
The seer laughed, but I saw those blue eyes turn cold, predatory.
“Really?” the cabbie said. “Where?”
“At the Coliseum. With my dad.” I couldn’t take my eyes off the seer. “On the street too, you know. Downtown.”
The man nodded, absently. He’d already lost interest.
I ventured, “They’re allowed to just walk around like that? What if she, you know...hurts someone?”
The cabbie pointed, tapping his window. “See that collar?”
I followed his pointing finger to the circle of brushed metal around the female’s neck. Finger-width, it had no markings I could see, other than the pulsing blue light at the base when she turned her head.
Feeling the cabbie watching me, I nodded.
He said, “They’re coded to the owner, see? They can’t do nothing with that on...blinds ‘em. They take it off when they’re, ah...you know, working.”
I nodded again.
I knew about the collars, of course.
I hadn't actually meant that, when I'd been asking about her being outside...I'd more been wondering why she was on the street without her owner, if maybe they worried they might just run away, saw the collar off. Most of the seers I'd seen had some kind of human chaperone with them; I'd assumed it was for a reason.
Not like I enjoyed seeing the whole seer-human dynamic in the first place. But I supposed I had to get used to it, since seers were getting to be so common in the city.
Seers had been around since the early 1900s, in one way or another...ever
since humans first found them living in those snowy caves in Asia. I’d read about them in high school and college. History mainly. Studying the wars, of course, but also the history of Seer Containment, or “SCARB,” the World Court, organic machines, sight ownership, the trade wars in Asia, the Middle East and Europe. And learning about Syrimne, of course, the seer who led the one and only rebellion against humans.
Syrimne had been telekinetic, and scary as hell, from all accounts.
But that was pretty rare, telekinesis. In fact, Syrimne was the only documented case of verified telekinesis in any seer...at least officially. Meaning according to anyone who didn't read the same nutty conspiracy theories espoused by my brother, Jon.
Lately, everyone with money seemed to have one...their own pet seer, that is.
I used to think of that as a New York thing, but it had spread to San Francisco faster than I could have imagined. Sex and fetish shops specializing in seers had popped up all over town. If the laws changed or SCARB was loosening its controls, no one bothered to say so on the feeds.
I did wonder that some of them wouldn’t be smart enough to figure out how to get the collars off. Without their human owners, that is.
I almost understood the driver not being thrilled with the sudden influx of seers all over the city. Heck, maybe Jon’s conspiracy stuff was true, about how the government was in secret collaboration with seers to mind-warp the rest of us. Jon was convinced we all might wake up one day inside a dream created by a bunch of seers to keep us all docile.
Looking at that female seer, though, I had trouble seeing her as colluding with anyone, much less a bunch of guys in suits who wanted to feed us all mental straightjackets.
No, she looked like she’d rather just shoot me in the head.
The cabbie dropped me off on Fell Street. He pulled up in front of the familiar, purple Victorian, and I transferred money to his cab number from my headset as I was sliding off the back seat. Trying to hurry, I slammed the door and promptly tripped over a dented juice bottle. Bending down to pick it up, I tossed it in my mother’s neighbor’s yellow recycling carton, then noticed that the neighbor’s bin was empty, along with my mother’s section of curb.