by Forbes West
“Oh! My! God!” he says, taking the gray tubes off the racks and stuffing as many as he can into his backpack. “Shit, yes!”
“What is that?” you ask as you hear something snuffle and groan in the dark around you.
Guy’s celebratory mood dampens. He lifts the visor off his helmet, looking towards where the snuffle came from. He pops on his flashlight, smacking it a couple of times since the batteries seem to be loose or weak.
Seeing nothing, Guy goes back to what he was saying. “Syn-Simulator.” He holds up a gray tube with what looks like a metallic mouth at its top end. “You can shoot yourself up with this and be off in a dream world for what feels like a good three hours, but in real time is about five minutes. A perfect, unmatched little dream world that feels one hundred percent real in all ways. Like a lucid dream. You ever had one of those? It's the dopest dope on anyone’s block.”
He looks at the tubes in fascination. “It’s also horribly addictive and as illegal as shit. People start burning out their synapses on this crap. Back in Las Vegas you could sell these things for three, four hundred bucks a pop right on the street. Nevada still keeps it legal.” Guy smiles and slaps you on the ass. “Wooo!”
You hear that snuffle again. “Goddamn Snuffy. Why do they always...?”
Guy snaps out his ori-baton. “Let's move out.”
Returning through the open mall you listen hard, looking for anything moving. All you hear is the wind outside that makes an eerie sort of howl and your own sneakers beating against the tile floor. You take out your own flashlight and see that there is a large hall to your left leading further into the base of the star.
“Turn yours off, you’ll probably see his outline easier,” Guy commands. He flips off his flashlight as well. “Our lights attracted him. That’s good, though.”
You look at Guy like he’s gone batshit insane. “What? You want him to lay in wait?”
“The light drives ‘em fu-” Guy can’t finish his words. A pair of red eyes rushes up to you. You spin and with your mind send a jet of flame shooting out of the ori-baton, igniting the creature and showing its true form—a scaly, disgusting-looking ape-like thing with octopus tentacles coming out of its foaming mouth.
“Oh Christ!” you yell, setting the thing aflame before it can slash you in half with its claws. It jumps backwards with a growl so loud it hurts your ears. Guy opens up with his bolt-action gun, sending shot after shot into the creature by quickly turning the bolt back and forth. Loud and large blasts come out of the muzzle of Guy’s gun. The thing stumbles backwards and turns to run away, trying to disappear back into the darkness.
As it does so, Guy takes out a grenade that you didn’t even know he had on him. You watch as he lets the limping thing get farther and farther away before hurling the grenade after it, like someone doing shot put. You hear a clink as the bomb bounces on the tiles and then an explosion that makes your ears ring. An orange ball of flame destroys the creature, reducing it to ruin.
“Goddamn right,” Guy says, wiping his mouth. “Well. I didn’t even see that thing.”
He takes out his flashlight again and heads towards the still-burning corpse of the infamous Snuffleupagus. As you reach the smoldering creature, you’re amazed at its odd simian/lizard-like shape and overwhelmed by its skunk-like smell that you hadn’t noticed before.
“It’s dead,” Guy says, looking it over in the beam of his flashlight. “It gives off that stink when it dies. It’s officially dead.” One of its tentacles twitches, making you take out your own rifle to pop it so it stops moving. “There are usually one per level in these buildings, so we should be okay.” He sounds like he’s talking to himself more than you.
“Eww,” you say. “Sooo freakin’ weird.” You are in a long, dark corridor of the star. “Where we going? Maybe we should just leave. I mean, how much money do you have on you now with those gray tube things?”
Guy touches your empty backpack. “We ain’t leaving until we fill up your little backpack. Come on, this has been so far so good.”
A couple of red sparks shoot out of the corridor ahead, and then a bolt of red lightning stretches from one side of the corridor to the other. Static electricity builds around you, making the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Guy suddenly is pulled towards the ceiling some seventy feet up in the air.
“Shit,” Guy swears. “Don’t move.”
You hear the crackle of electricity. “Oh.” You stop in place.
“We triggered a catcher,” Guy says slowly, his face smooshed up against the ceiling. It doesn’t look like there is anything holding him up—he is seemingly just pressed against the ceiling by an invisible force. “Oh, this is scary.”
“I can bring you down.” You point your ori-baton at him in order to telekinetically drag him back to the floor.
“Stop! Stop, don’t you do that, it’ll fry me. I’m supposed to be caught and to wait for the ancient police to show up and pull me down. If you use ori around here...” Guy coughs. “If you use ori, it’ll fry me, so please don’t.” A loud announcement in some strange language that sounds similar to Perchta but isn’t starts to ring out over everything.
“I can’t move either so what the shit am I supposed to do?” you say, trying to speak over the freaky announcement.
“It’s okay to move now.”
“Why now?” you ask.
“Shut up and let me think.” You move forward a bit. “The system will think you’re just another customer and not an accomplice running away from the scene.” He lets out a breath. “Last time this happened, Winniefreddie found a controller station a couple hundred yards up the way. It should look like a giant orange iPad thing on the wall. You touch it so it glows blue instead of red, and the system should be turned off. I think.”
“So, I got to walk in the dark by myself, oh Christ. You know, Guy, I thought I had you figured to be a veteran and expert about these things. So far you’ve been shot in the face with an arrow and caught by a Star Trek trap.” You pop another pill. “I wanna go home. I wanna go home.” You realize that you have not been thinking much lately, but rather just going with the flow about everything—even into this scary, late night activity. You’ve been just drifting along, a subconscious death wish pulsing in the back of your brain.
Farther away from Guy you drop to your haunches, crying a little, shaking and jittering all at the same time. “Goddamn it.” You take a deep breath and then throw off your helmet, tossing it away since it’s so damn hot on your head. It bounces against one of the tall blank walls with a slight bonk. You take out the Voice of the Four Winds and consult it before walking further.
Stepping through one section of the hall that looks solid but isn’t, you see in the near dark a glowing red panel against an interior wall. You walk up to it, hearing it speak that not- quite-Perchta language in repetitive tones. It flashes repeatedly with Antediluvian hieroglyphics. Not knowing what to do, you simply put your palm against the panel. It stops flashing red and turns to a more subdued blue. You hear Guy scream somewhere and say, “Oh shit!” at the top of his lungs. You bite your hand in fear, thinking you might have just killed him.
There’s no sound for quite a while, and you fear you’ll have to walk back by yourself. You head through the invisible wall again and come back into the corridor.
“I’m perfectly alright,” Guy says. “No thanks to you. Some warning would’ve been great, Sarah Orange.”
You sigh with relief, only to see farther down the corridor a few flashlights swirling in the pitch-black of the star’s interior. Someone else is here.
You take out your rifle in a hurry. It could be Mathias and Petty and their people. Guy sits on the star’s floor with his helmet off.
“What the hell, girl? No warning? You could cry out,” he says in an increasingly high-pitched voice, his eyes looking up to the ceiling and back to you as if to say “Look how far that drop is.”
“Shh.” You hear voices coming from the far end.
“What the hell,” Guy whines. “Do you realize I had to telekinetically push off …”
“Shut up for once and just listen,” you tell him.
Flashlight beams dart out of the hallway ahead, probing into the darkness.
“Who?” Guy asks, trying to stand but unable. You shake your head. “Who got here before us?”
“Come on,” you say.
Guy points to his ankle. “I landed funny, heal me, come on.”
You can see the bone. “Holy God,” you mutter.
Guy shakes his head and points. “Heal it! Come on, now, heal it!”
You point your baton right at the wound. Green flecks stream out as usual, fixing the broken ankle. You help him to his feet so you two can run but the flashlight beams are on you. You can’t see who’s behind them. One nasal voice says, “That a Network uniform?”
Four flashlight beams converge on your face. “You Counters?” the nasal voice says again.
“Sorry Officer, but this star was just open. We have our paperwork. We know it’s after operating hours, but you see…” You cross your arms to cover the little S.B. Crue patch that you slapped over the Network flight suit.
“Is that so? What do you think, Officer? What do you make of this situation?”
Guy looks at you if you’ve just gone crazy, but quickly recovers. “Well, I don’t know boys, this seems like… well...We got a whole squad at the front looking for you fellas. We better radio this in.” Guy is careful to stay behind you so they don’t get a good look at his uniform.
The one with the nasal voice puts down his flashlight. “Oh, oh!” You see the shadowy outline of a bearded man, probably around your age. “Here.” He takes an object out of his denim jacket and tosses it to you. “We didn’t find it off a dead hawk or nothing. Honest to god, ma’am, that guy back there’s been dead.”
You and Guy look at each other for a moment, confused. It’s a glowing purple square he’s thrown to you, the size of an iPhone. You touch one part of it accidentally as you are turning it over to look at it, and it turns a bright orange. Suddenly your body feels very heavy and sluggish. You press it again, and it turns a brighter shade of purple. Suddenly you feel as light as a feather. Messing with the device makes you think that it must change the gravity around you somehow.
“Grav-Mod?” Guy says, confirming your thoughts.
One of the men curses under his breath and seems to reach for his pocket. “These assholes ain’t Counters.”
You immediately point your gun at them on instinct. So does Guy.
The other three men put down their flashlights and hold up their hands. “You’re messing with the Love and Terror Kings, girl.”
“What’s that, asshole, your Girl Scout club?” Guy says. “What else you boys got on you? Move a goddamn inch and I’ll put one in your skulls.”
They toss over another couple of those purple squares, which you throw into your backpack. “Ten four, Officer,” you say.
You back slowly down the corridor, watching the men carefully. You can see now that they wear denim jackets with some sort of motorcycle club patch on their chest pockets; they also have gas masks hanging from their necks.
“Okay, okay.” Guy backs up. One of the men makes the wrong move, and Guy puts one into him with a blast, and then turns to run as everyone scatters. Gunfire rings out through the corridor as you take off, running with Guy as fast as you can back through the lobby. Guy tosses another grenade, which blows behind you with a loud bang. You hear someone scream.
“Ha ha, fuckers!” he yells.
You take out one of the squares Guy called a Grav-Mod and make it a bright purple. Suddenly you and Guy are able to run much easier than you ever could before. You run up the hillside of gravel like it is nothing and keep running all the way back to where you started. You meet the subway car again at one of the Network subway stations after a tense and long ten minutes.
* * *
You jump back into the Ghia, laughing. Guy’s eyes are watering from all of it. “Are you nuts? You totally just rolled with that asshole’s comment! ‘Isn't that right, Officer?’ He must’ve just thought your Network uniform…What a moron!” He starts up the Ghia with an uncharacteristic roar.
You hold your stomach and can feel your face turning red. “What is that, your Girl Scout club?” you spit out, repeating Guy’s words.
Guy just shakes his head. “You ever see The Sopranos? There was this same situation, so I just threw out that comment. Same situation! God, what morons. You know I wanted to be a biker when I was little, but I never had the balls. Now, God, if that’s who you hang with in off-world’s biggest biker gang...” Guy keeps laughing and you do too, before you start crying.
Guy looks at you, confused. “What’s…What I do?”
You shake your head. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Guy. I never want to do that ever again. I really don’t. I hate going out there. It’s so scary. We could have died back there.”
Guy puts an arm around you. “But we didn’t.”
You stare out the passenger window, looking at the ruins all around you. “I never should have left Earth.”
Guy doesn’t say anything for a long time but just gives you a hug. “I try not to think about it,” he says weakly. “I...” He doesn’t complete his sentence but just holds you. He kisses your cheek lightly once and then twice. “I always got a thrill out of it,” he adds, honestly.
You look at him. “This whole thing’s insane.”
He nods sheepishly, and then looks you directly in the eyes. “I know.”
You and he kiss deeply. You blush a little afterwards, then you kiss him again, this time tasting him, your tongues meeting together. “Let’s go home,” you say. He ignores you. You make out with him more and he starts to unzip your flight suit, all the way to your crotch. Still kissing you fully, he slides one hand into your panties. Soon you are doing everything short of making love. When you are done, you zip up. So does Guy.
Guy turns the car around and flips the radio to Radio Oberon. You are back at the Benbow before dawn.
* * *
You sleep on the couch during the day while Saki’s at work. When you feel something fluttering on top of you, you wake up to see thousands of Dii-Yaa mixed in with regular US dollars covering you and the sofa. Guy has just opened a suitcase stuffed full of cash and dropped it right onto your face.
“What the heck is this?” You sit up and grab clumps of cash. Guy does a happy dance.
“Guess how much that is? How much do you think that is? Come on, girl, guess. How much you think that is? The Rhodesian Mafia came through big time!” He snaps his fingers, dancing around Saki’s apartment. “You ever notice Saki is doing the same pose in all these pictures?” Guy mentions, looking at Saki’s pictures. “Saki is awesome.”
You hold the money in your hands and do a quick count. “With the regular cash and the Dii-Yaa money, it’s about sixty-three thousand, two hundred eighty-five dollars. Not counting what fell under the couch.”
Guy stops dancing. “How’d you do that?” he asks, looking at you bug-eyed. “I had to count that shit slowly and use an abacus in the Free Zone to come up with that number. How’d you do that?”
“Just good with numbers, that’s all. Good God, do you really make this kind of cash?”
Guy shrugs. “Mostly less, sometimes more. We only go out when we need to score some cash. And only when it’s good tips. We’re kind of juiced in here with my contacts being excellent. We know how to get the best scores.”
“Why would you keep going out? I mean, it was a hundred thousand last time. I know, split four ways, but still...”
Guy sits down next you and takes away the clumps of cash he just dropped on you. “Well, we all have our spending habits. When the portal opens up back to Earth during the summer solstice, Winniefreddie and Treena go traveling around the world. Did travel around the world, I guess. I have my houses in Quadling and in Cuba.”
You stare at him, shocked. “In Cuba?”
Guy nods. “Me and the Castro brothers.” He twists two of his fingers together. “Tight. I have Oberon citizenship, not US. You should look into it. Freakin’ awesome and I’m not paying jack for shit in taxes.”
“Does Saki have money?” you ask. “She used to go out…”
Guy nods. “She does. Her family has an Afer station, a ranch not that far from here. She stays as an SSR so she can get her slot into Solomon’s House University.”
You remember that briefly you wanted to go to Solomon’s House University and become a xenoarchaeologist, like your sister, but you just gave that up like it was nothing. You look back and realize you didn’t even make a conscious decision. You think of the cave and meeting your sister there, and wonder if that meeting was real or the start of your mental destruction.
“What money can be made.” You look at it, pleased. “Unlike the USA.”
“Unlike the USA nowadays, yeah. Now it’s all Mitt Romney-Ivy League-Walmart exec types who’ve sucked up all the money,” Guy says. “I miss having my USA citizenship, dumb as it sounds. But the USA...” He makes his hand into a little airplane and pretends to crash it right into the ground while making a humming noise.
“You have a house in the Quadling?”
He nods. “Magician’s Hideaway. Paid cash for it. You know, I think it’s time we took a little cruise down that way. You and me. Saki will be away for a little while and then she’ll come down...” He looks at you intently. You put up a hand to his handsome features, a little rough with stubble right now because of the late night you both had. He isn’t what you would call movie star handsome but there’s a nice symmetry to his face, a boyishness and a ruggedness mixed together.
“That’d be nice.” You kiss him. “I like you, Guy.”
Guy smiles. “I’m going to collapse now. It’s been a long day.”
Later that night you get stoned with Saki while Guy is asleep on her bed, and listen to the radio. She gives you a glass of wine from one of those odd triangular bottles that you know to be Antediluvian in origin, and you disjointedly talk together.