MOM

by Collin Piprell

  He can see. Otherwise this is his worst nightmare. He has been buried alive. Buried inside his own body. He can breathe, although it's an effort to get enough air. Other than that, aside from his eyes and his fingers a bit, he's immobilized. This is bad shit, he thinks, and with that thought things get worse again. A tiny voice inside him is going “batshit, batshit,” and his chest threatens to burst with an internal pressure. He wants out. He does not want to be here; he doesn't want it to be now.

  Once more he's threatened with losing himself. Focus. The internal voice is his and it isn't. He also hears Sissie, except she isn't whining, the way she always was in the pod; she's trying to give him advice, although he can't hear exactly what she's saying. But Sissie's dead. They're all dead. Sissie, Eddie Eight, Joy. ESUSA is no more. Probably ESSEA, too. And Leary?

  “I guess you figured you'd be hand‐in‐glove with your chum Leary by now. Nobody expected old Brian to hijack the star of the whole show. Hah! Easy as pie. Overrode the system and hijacked your pod. Just call me The Man. It's funny, eh? I'm listening to Leary, only a few minutes ago—I know that raises questions, but they'll have to wait—and I hear him talking to himself. He's saying: 'I think we're still okay. If anybody can pull this off, it's the Kid.'”

  Leary's still okay; a glimmer of hope.

  Brian laughs, messily. “And guess what? I do believe he was referring to this same kid I've just shot. But now you're all mine, my boy.”

  “Mine, too.” The mummy is alive.

  “Yes, my sweet. Yours, too. Of course.

  “Anyway, I had to make sure I got at least one of you here in one piece. If all I get is half of Ellie, then I'm doing okay. It's called laying off your bets, eh? But I do want all of her, so I need both of you. And Leary is coming. ETA tomorrow morning.”

  Cisco is overwhelmed with sorrow for departed friends, not to mention fear for friends who may still be alive. But he tells himself he has to let things go. He has to hold to himself, but he can let the rest of it go. Push things away to a safe distance. Focus on what's at hand. On what can be done, not on what cannot be. He has questions that need answers. Where is Leary, for example, and what's he doing?

  Another mystery: where's Sky? Was the promised wet encounter a ploy? If so, why was Cisco sprung from ESUSA and delivered here, halfway around the world? But first things first. He needs to map this world beneath the oasis and try to understand it. Look for ways to establish control.

  “There's a good test pilot. Check things out, why don't you?” Brian waves his stick around as he surveys his domain, incidentally banging the rabbit, who tsks and steps back, still trying to shield Brian with the parasol. The mummy, too fast for the old man, has already moved out of range.

  “Check away, my boy.” Brian is clearly enjoying this. “It's all wysiwyg here. What you see is what you get.” His eyes dart beneath exuberant white eyebrows, antic blue gems alive with unholy delight at secrets that probably best remain unrevealed.

  The mummy totters. It giggles as it moves towards Cisco. Where Brian merely looks very old, the woman appears long deceased and then maybe half‐successfully reanimated, her glittering eyes wild anomalies in that ravaged face.

  “Wait, Sweetie.” Brian's voice brooks no argument.

  The mummy stops. She staggers forward and then back. Her eyes close as she subsides against the wall, to all appearances stone dead. Cisco only has her in his peripheral vision, so he isn't sure, but he thinks he sees part of the roach carpet shift in her direction.

  “Sweetie never did get medibots installed. A pity. She could have done with repairs from time to time. I don't have them either. That was for reasons of security, of course. But I'm fine. Doing okay without them. Hargleharglehargle.” He nearly strangles on the laugh.

  “Right, then. Let's get on with the reality check. To begin with, we've got no Mondays here, my boy. No Worldsdays, either. All we've got are Briansdays. So tell me: who's the dude? That's right. You can call me God.” Arms spread wide, Brian gazes heavenward. “Fuck!” he adds, pawing at an eye. “Batshit.”

  Muttering apologies, the rabbit gets the parasol back into position all the while trying to avoid a whack from Brian's stick.

  Cisco subvocalizes: Request ID. Urgent. ID, please. There's no response. He tries a trick inherited from the childhood he can't remember: if he presses his fingers against his eyeballs, he gets a pattern of lights that has remained constant throughout his life. He has used that device, in extreme circumstances, to reassure himself that he is still the person he has always been. He tries it now, the hands‐free version anyway, but he can't scrunch his eye hard enough.

  •

  “That's right, my boy. I'm playing the God game.” Brian waves his stick all around at the universe. “And,” he proclaims, “your God is a mightily pissed‐off god.”

  He swings the cane like a polo stick to connect with something on the ground beside his chair, eliciting a yowl sharp enough to reanimate Sweetie, who staggers forward and yawns right in Cisco's face. The HIID identifies the stench as rotten teeth. It also claims that the animal rocking from side to side on the floor in pain and frustration is a cat. A real cat. Smoke's biological prototype. But this is a grossly distended cat, a cartoon cat, its legs sticking out as uselessly as the fins on an inflated blowfish. No matter how much the cat wants to scramble away, its limbs won't reach the floor.

  “What's up, Pussycat?” Brian gives the creature another whack, a gentler one this time, and, mewling, it rocks some more. “Pussy eats because he's unhappy.” He pokes at Pussy with his stick, rocking the animal back and forth, grinning as its legs scrabble for purchase first on one side and then the other. “Much like a mallster. If you don't feel right, just stuff a bunch of goodies into your face till you're nicely sedated. If the Dolls didn't keep tabs on them, the mallsters would all be bigger than their apartments. Or dead. But hang on a minute. What the hey, they are all dead. Except for you and Leary. And you're only provisionally alive.”

  Aside from the wheelchair, he's barely recognizable as the guy from Shaky's. This Brian, despite the aura of decay around both the place and its denizens, manages at the same time to project an electric vitality. The way he talks, in fact, is reminiscent of Eddie Eight. Cisco makes the necessary mental adjustment, distancing himself from the well of sorrow at absent friends.

  “So welcome to the real world, my boy. Where you've just been shot. It's merely a paralytic dart, so you'll live, for now. It's like curare. Some 'natural' shit, I believe, so you're probably okay. But there's nothing your medibots can do about this. You're helpless. Just as helpless as Pussy, here. At my mercy. And Sweetie's. Isn't this going to be fun?”

  “Fun.” This is Sweetie's cue to giggle. Her face is fringed with frazzles of yellow‐white‐gray hair. Her eyes gleam as she breathes into Cisco's face. What happens if he pukes while paralyzed? He subvocalizes the query: Can the medibots fix the paralysis? Here's one more active faculty: his vocal apparatus works to this extent, and he can swallow. His HIID scrolls back: Chemical structure indeterminate. Please specify.

  Fuck me! Once again, he subvocalizes. The Lode recognizes the rhetorical nature of his directive and does not respond. But that's what his medibots are supposed to be doing, specifying exactly this data, or what are they good for? He tells himself to calm down. He tries, again, to look down at his locket. If he can't see it, and he kind of hopes he can't, then this isn't mondoland after all; it's a bizarre World. Or maybe only a nightmare. But he can't move his head, so he can't tell whether the locket is there or not. Cisco's magic circle has contracted to a murky hundred‐and‐eighty degree sector that reminds him of Soi Awol. He wants to boost the lighting and saturatio, tries to read titles on the book spines. More locally, given the raddled, pocked skin on Sweetie's face and bosom, he would prefer to dim it all. And he catches himself trying to switch to the less‐than‐full‐pain option. It doesn't work, of course. And he keeps trying to bail out of this situation altogether. Worlds‐sty
le bailing, that is. Bailing in the other direction would be easy, but he's doing what he can to resist that way out.

  Brian is beaming. “This game is all about survival of the fittest, my boy. And you've almost made it to the highest level, like a salmon returning to its spawning grounds. Home again, home again, jiggedy‐jig. And you are indeed well and truly fucked. Too bad. Nevertheless, I'm impressed with your overall performance. In fact, I've lost a bet with Sweetie, here; I told her there wasn't a chance you'd make it this far. You want to know what she won?”

  Cisco says nothing.

  “You, my friend. She gets to do anything she likes with you. You see, we receive so few visitors here, none in fact, and so rarely can she indulge her special appetites.”

  Saliva bubbles at the corner of Sweetie's mouth. “Wet sex,” she says, her voice thick with the idea.

  “I can't give her wet sex, you see. It's all GR, and, as Leary likes to say, it just ain't the same.”

  Cisco is scared. Who wouldn't be? But he feels a dread that lies beyond this, part of an ancient history that is him while at the same time it isn't.

  “Wait a minute, Sweetie. Take it easy, okay? Sorry, my boy. We can't let her claim her prize yet; you have questions to answer first. I believe you've got something for me. Something very precious.”

  •

  Sweetie is right up against him, saliva dribbling, eyes gleaming with ferocity as she puts a hand on Cisco's thigh. She runs it higher, wheezing and bubbling with phlegmy delight. He recalls her smell from somewhere—not her teeth, her body odor. Or maybe it's him; the stink of fear and pain. “So nice,” she says, and stops to gasp for air. “Nice you're back.” And that confirms that she's crazy. Cisco doesn't know this person.

  “I've never seen Sweetie so excited. Take it easy, honeybuns; we don't want to blow a fuse. No, we don't, not when there's so much fun to be had. And if there's any blowing to be done, it won't be fuses, by God.”

  Sweetie presses down on Cisco, tries to heave herself back to her feet.

  “Last time she worked on you, my boy, you didn't come equipped with medibots. That was quite a while ago. But now she can tear you up again and again, and they'll keep repairing the damage. Like that Muslim hell where sinners get to have their skin burned off again and again because it keeps on growing back.”

  Sweetie, from her kneeling position, does a nasty thing that Cisco can't see.

  “I wish you could tell me how it feels, my boy. But never mind. Mostly I want you to listen. At least for now. If I do need answers, however, you'll blink once for 'yes' and twice for 'no.' Got that?”

  Cisco does nothing.

  “Sweetie?”

  She twists into him again. Something runs down his leg. Piss, he guesses, or blood. The medibots will be busy.

  “I'll ask again,” Brian says. “Do you understand?”

  The pain recedes, and Cisco blinks yes with his one functioning eyelid, dislodging a tear that tickles down a cheek. Whatever other effects the drug is having on him, he feels the tickle, and the trickle. And the pain. These are signs of life, though not entirely welcome ones. He can also sense the medibots already at work, no doubt in a state of red alert.

  “Okay, then. Tell me about the memocube. Is it inside you? Yes or no?”

  Cisco has no idea what the whacko wants. To stave off Sweetie's ministrations, however, he blinks twice: No.

  “Aha. So it's on you, then?”

  Blink, blink.

  “Don't fuck with me, boy. Mondoland is a big place, and boring, and I don't have time to explore the whole world with twenty questions. So where is it? Yes or no. Do you have the 'cube with you now? Eh? Do your thing, Sweetie.”

  She hurts him.

  “Come, come, now. Spare yourself. Once for yes, twice for no. It's simple.”

  Sweetie hurts him some more.

  “Forgot the question? Let me rephrase it: Where the fuck is the cube? Shit. We need yes‐or‐no questions, don't we? Okay. Is it inside you?”

  Cisco blinks twice.

  “So it must be hidden somewhere on your person. See how easy this is? Stop that, Sweetie. Give the boy a chance.”

  She simpers. “Sweetums come back to play with Sweetie?” The fingers of one hand tangle in the wisps of gray hair between her legs.

  “Jesus Christ, Sweetie,” Brian says. “I'm trying to extract information, here.” He resumes his interrogation: “The cube. Is it on your person?”

  Cisco blinks twice.

  Brian whacks the cat again. “No? No? It isn't inside you and it isn't on your person? So where is it, then? Once more, Sweetie, but this time with feeling. By God, we'll take the lad apart piece by piece if we have to. I want that cube. Search him.”

  Sweetie launches an enthusiastic investigation of every part of Cisco she can get to. She inserts a forefinger between Cisco's lips and pulls downward. “Open up, now,” she says. Her finger is bony, and it tastes of her. She feels around his gums, under his tongue. “Open wide,” she tells him, and she tries to grab his tongue, but it slips from between her fingers. Cisco gags. Her investigations move on to other areas. Her hands move in imaginative ways in places Cisco doesn't want to consider. Maybe losing track of what she's meant to be doing, nips at him with her teeth.

  “You like that? Wet sex. Real sex. Down‐and‐dirty, who‐gives‐a‐fuck‐about‐diseases sex.” Brian chortles. “This is so much better, right? Really real sex.

  Face2face; belly2belly. And this is as wet as it gets, my friend.”

  Things are crowding in from both the outside and the inside now, and he begins to slip away from himself. Just a moment's inattention and he could duck out. Escape.

  “All I get to do is watch. But what the hell. That's all most of us have been doing for years. Watching. Never getting right in there and getting wet. Down and dirty and wet. But that's what real life is all about. So we're doing you a favor.” He runs his chair back and forth.

  “The pendant,” says the rabbit, shuffling from side to side to keep Brian under the parasol.

  “What?”

  “Check out the pendant.”

  “Glory be.” Brian taps himself on the forehead with his cane. “Sometimes we don't see what's right there in front of our own eyes. Trite but true. Sweetie, you dumb, dumb, wrinkled all to shit dumb bunny. Look there. What's that hanging around our boy's neck?”

  “Pretty,” Sweetie says. She grabs the locket and tugs the chain till it cuts off most of the blood to Cisco's brain.

  “Give me that.” Brian sounds impatient.

  Sweetie fumbles with the clasp.

  “Just yank it off! Come on. Give it here. Now, you demented dipstick. Ah, shit. Rabbit?”

  Rabbit tsks. Looking as apologetic as such a machine can, he pushes Sweetie aside, forget any laws of robotics, jerks the chain hard enough to snap it, and hands the locket to Brian.

  The chain has sawed a cut in Cisco's neck. It hurts like a bastard—one more job for the medibots.

  “So who's the sweetheart, lover boy?” Brian opens the locket and takes a long look. Then he holds the portrait up towards Cisco. “Check it out,” he says.

  The woman is smiling. She's been happy ever since the pod landed. Brian is also smiling. “Well, well, well. What have we here, eh?” Sweetie, who has also seen the portrait, looks saner than she has since Cisco arrived, and she isn't smiling.

  “Rabbit!” Brian says. “Take this and lode it. Right now.”

  Brian pokes Pussy with his stick, more like a caress. “I have an announcement, as Joy might say. If she weren't dead. In the light of this new information, I no longer want to destroy the world. Not all of it. I've decided, in my infinite mercy, to spare myself and my loved one.”

  Sweetie simpers. Then she changes her mind and looks apprehensive.

  “It seems my Ellie isn't as dead as I'd first thought.”

  “Ellie,” Sweetie says, and digs so deep Cisco's afraid she has killed him.

  “My loved ones, I meant.�
�� Brian reconsiders. “Eh, sweetums? But don't you kill the boy. Not yet. Not if you plan to be part of the program.”

  •

  “See how happy she is.” Brian, chain wrapped around a hand, bestows sloppy little kisses on the locket. He's in a transport of delight and doesn't care who knows it. Sweetie in no way appears joyous.

  Brian licks the portrait. Smacks his lips. “You do know who this is, don't you?” he asks.

  Blink, blink.

  “No? You have a lot to learn. But I'm here to teach you—your head coach and moral tutor from the old days. Hey, I'll bet you don't recognize me either, do you?

  “Answer me, boy!”

  Blink, blink. Meanwhile, for lack of a better stratagem, Cisco subvocalizes a Worlds test‐type report to the Lode: Sweetie has obvious issues. She's jealous. And sometimes she isn't as spaced out as she pretends. Whether or not the message gets processed by anything with the wit to help, Cisco has to feel he's at least trying.

  “All these years you've been wearing this bauble, and you never even knew what it was. You dickhead. What I'm holding here in my hand is roughly half of your own dear Mommy.”

  The woman in the picture. Cisco has long considered the likelihood. More recently, he even considered the possibility the person now kneeling between his legs was his mother. This other story is better.

  “And you had no idea. Still and all, for a dickhead you've done a hell of a job. Head of your class, last assassin standing, second prize to Dee Zu, bronze medal to Lars King. Then you get out of ESUSA alive and make it all the way here to my hideout, never mind I helped with that. Congratulations, my boy. You deserve a reward. Something special. So here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to introduce you to your ever‐lovin' mother. The woman in the locket. And then I'll reveal the identity of your long‐lost father. Isn't that exciting? Yo. I asked a question.”

  Blink.

  “But wait, there's more. The grand finale. You're going to get to watch me roger jolly old mumsie till her eyes spin, and then I'll have you kill your old man—no more than he deserves in light of all he's done to mumsie. What do you think of that, eh?” Brian whinnies, rocking away in his ruts, the chair squeaking furiously.