The End of Ordinary

by Edward Ashton

  “I don’t get it,” Micah said when that message popped up on our phones. “How, exactly, is this supposed to resolve?”

  “Well,” I said. “According to Mr. Longstreth, it’ll be resolved when everyone on the planet is yellow.”

  He turned to glare at me.

  “Please tell me you’re not thinking about banging my mom.”

  I punched him. He shoved me back onto the futon, and pinned me down with one forearm. I tried to throw him off, but it was like wrestling with a hairless bear. He waited for me to quit struggling.

  “No,” I said finally. “I am not interested in banging your mom.”

  “Good,” he said. He kissed me on the forehead, laughed, and pulled me to my feet. “If anyone turns you yellow, it goddamned well better be me.”

  Two days later, we were in the kitchen making eggs when the wallscreen popped up video from the front-entry cam of two men dragging what looked like a giant sack of potatoes up onto the front porch. They didn’t bother to ring for entrance, just left it there in a heap and walked away. By the time Micah got to the door, they were already gone. The sack was black and a bit over six feet long, with a yellow biohazard symbol at the top and bottom, and a silver zipper running down the front. Micah stood staring down at it for a long while, nudged it once with his foot, then turned and walked back into the house. When he was gone, I knelt beside the bag and tugged the zipper down, just far enough to be sure.

  He looked pretty much the same as he had when he’d left the week before. The only differences were the yellow skin, and the neat, almost bloodless bullet hole in his forehead.

  We buried him in the backyard, like a dog. We didn’t know what else to do.

  The days ran together after that. Micah’s mom stayed in her bedroom and cried pretty much all the time. Micah brought her food a couple of times a day. At first he threw away what she didn’t eat, but after a few days we realized that the cupboard was going to run bare eventually if NatSec didn’t lift the curfew, and we started eating her leftovers.

  “Think this’ll give us the flu?” I asked the first time he offered me her half-eaten pasta.

  He shrugged.

  “We’re all gonna be yellow eventually, brother. I think I’d just as soon catch it from spaghetti, if it comes to that.”

  A few days later, we were back in the basement waiting for Micah’s mom to clear the kitchen when my phone pinged.

  : Jordan! How goes it, friendo?

  Jordasaurus: Marta?

  : If you thought this was Marta, would that make you more or less likely to do what I’m about to tell you to do?

  Jordasaurus: . . .

  : Right. That was kind of a giveaway, huh?

  Jordasaurus: Kind of, yeah.

  : Okay, you got me. This is not, if we’re being completely honest here, your good pal Marta. This is, in actual fact, your other good pal, Inchy.

  Jordasaurus: Yeah, I don’t know any Inchies. Bye.

  : Wait! Wait! This is important!

  Jordasaurus: . . .

  : Please? It’s about our mutual pal, Hannah. She’s in a bit of a pickle, and I need you to help me get her out.

  “This is a bad idea,” Micah said.

  “Relax,” I said. “There are no traceable electronics in this car. No onboard GPS, no auto-drive, no built-in comm. It’s totally undetectable. Unless someone sees us with their actual eyeballs, we’ll be fine.”

  “Great,” he said. “I’m pretty sure my dad didn’t have any traceable electronics in him either. How’d that work out for him?”

  We turned off a deserted suburban street and onto a cul-de-sac, and pulled over to the curb in front of a hulking gray Victorian. Devon was waiting on the porch. Micah got out to let her into the back.

  “Hey,” she said. “Thanks for picking me up.”

  “No problem,” I said as Micah climbed back in. “I didn’t know you and Hannah were friends.”

  She twisted around for a few seconds trying to find a comfortable position, then gave up and belted herself in.

  “I got to know her a bit after that meet last month.”

  “Wow,” Micah said. “And now you’re willing to break NatSec curfew for her?”

  She shrugged.

  “Inchy says it’s important.”

  “So,” Devon said as we pulled onto the highway. “Have you heard from Marta? She could actually be super helpful here.”

  I turned to look back at her.

  “No,” I said, “I have not heard from Marta. I thought I’d talked to her a few times since the shit went down, but I’m pretty sure now that I was actually talking to your friend Inchy—which means that I haven’t actually heard a peep from her since our . . . um . . . visit. I’m a little worried, to be honest. Her dad seemed really, really pissed the last time we saw him.”

  “Truth,” Micah said. “I was kind of surprised he didn’t sic the sentient corn on us when we left.”

  “Anyway,” I said, “why do we need Marta? Are we bribing someone?”

  “We need Marta,” Devon said, “because we’re rescuing Hannah from Marta’s dad.”

  The road was empty, so I risked another look back.

  “We’re what?”

  “Well,” Devon said. “Inchy tells me Hannah got snagged by Bioteka CorpSec around the same time our friend Officer Mike was trying to run us in.”

  “Yeah,” Micah said. “That’s pretty much what Tara told us. It doesn’t make sense though, does it? Officer Mike was torqued at us because he caught us red-handed, trying to crack a Bioteka system . . .”

  “And also because Jordan knocked him on his ass and dry-humped him,” Devon said.

  “Yeah,” Micah said. “That too. Anyway, Hannah didn’t do any of that stuff. She was definitely not a perpetrator of what we were doing, and technically speaking, she could have been considered a potential victim. I mean, it was her house we kind of invaded. Why would Bioteka go after her?”

  Nobody had a good answer for that. We passed a shut-down rest stop in silence.

  “By the way,” Devon said, “you did leave your phones at home, right?”

  “Uh . . .”

  I turned to look at Micah. The car swerved right. Devon shrieked, and I snapped back around in time to pull us back onto the road.

  “Easy,” Micah said. “Yes, I left my phone at home, Jordan. I’m not an idiot.”

  Just at that moment, a sharp, audible ping came from the vicinity of my right hip pocket.

  “Okay,” Devon said. “So what was that?”

  “Um,” I said. “That was my phone.”

  There was a long, awkward silence then. Devon shook her head, and Micah covered his face with both hands.

  “Well?” Devon said finally. “Somebody wants to talk to you. Might as well see who it is.”

  That wasn’t nearly as easy as she made it sound, but after a couple minutes’ worth of writhing, I finally managed to wrestle my phone out and get a look at it. I read the message once, then again. Micah poked me.

  “So?”

  “It’s from NatSec,” I said. “They say we need to pull over.”

  “Shit,” Devon said. “Who invited this guy?”

  “Out the window,” Micah said. “Now.”

  I looked at him.

  “What?”

  “Your phone,” he said. “Out the window.”

  I shook my head.

  “My phone is not going out the window.”

  “Micah’s right,” Devon said. “You’re gonna get us snagged. The phone’s gotta go.”

  “No!” I said. “Do you know how much info I’ve got stored up in here?”

  “Jordan . . .”

  “No, Micah.”

  He made a grab for my phone then. I yanked it away. We swerved halfway into the breakdown lane and back again.

  “Come on, Jordan!”

  “Guys?”

  We ignored her. Micah grabbed my arm and started prying at my
fingers.

  “Guys?”

  We kept ignoring her.

  “Hey!”

  She smacked the back of Micah’s head.

  “What?” Micah said. “I’m trying to save us from NatSec. Do you mind?”

  “Yeah,” Devon said. “I think you can stop now.”

  She pointed out the windshield. Micah’s arm went limp.

  And then it dropped into view, twenty yards ahead, just keeping pace with us—a jet-black quad copter, squat and ugly, about the size and shape of Micah’s scooter. I mean, except for the fact that Micah’s scooter didn’t have a twenty-mil cannon hanging off of it. As I watched, it rotated slowly around, until we were looking straight down the barrel.

  My phone pinged.

  “It’s NatSec again,” I said. “They say we really need to pull over.”

  34. In which Drew learns the limits of trust.

  When something terrible happens in a marriage, it either tears you apart, or it forces you together—and there is nothing that can happen to you that is more terrible than losing a child.

  Before the SZA, Kara and I had spent years barely touching each other. We slept on opposite sides of the bed. We waved to each other in the morning, and in the evening she stared at her tablet while I made rat-birds. Then, in short order, Kara walked in on me with Bree, Hannah disappeared, Kara dove headlong into a redneck orgy, and I got shot. You’d think that would have ended us.

  It didn’t, though.

  By the time we got home from Briarwood, my shoulder was already knitting itself back together. Say what you will about the Goo Flu, it’s great for your immune system, and better for your tissue repair. Kara helped me wrap it up anyway. When that was done, we climbed into bed together, and we wrapped ourselves around each other, and we cried.

  The sun was down by the time Kara started puking. I held her hair back. I brought her water. I hugged her when she was shivering, and pulled the blankets away when the sweat came pouring out of her. That went on for three days. When it was done, she was yellow. The pheromone magic was gone for both of us. We didn’t need the VapoRub anymore.

  We still needed each other, though. I wrapped myself around her. She wrapped herself around me.

  We cried.

  It was Sunday morning, and I was sitting on the couch in the living room. The wallscreen was showing a news clip about riots in Bethesda, but I wasn’t really paying attention. Kara was upstairs, sleeping. She’d been doing that more and more.

  She said that when she was dreaming, she still had a daughter.

  It was just the opposite for me. I hadn’t really slept in a week or more. The old nightmares had come back with a vengeance. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Hannah alone somewhere, hurt, frightened, dying—and where was I?

  I’d promised to keep her safe.

  I hadn’t, though. I’d left her alone. Forget about Bree. I couldn’t believe Kara had forgiven me for that.

  I was just about to shut the screen down, maybe go upstairs and see if I could get Kara to come down and eat something, when it blanked on its own. I opened my mouth to ask what had happened, but before I could speak, the signal-loss symbol reformed into the shape of a smiling cartoon dog.

  “Drew,” it said. “Good to see you, my friend. How’s tricks?”

  I stared at it.

  “Well,” it said, “I can see you’ve got a busy day of catatonia ahead of you, and as it happens I’m a bit pressed for time myself, so let’s cut to the chase, shall we?”

  I kept staring. The dog’s smile faltered a bit.

  “Okay. Drew? You’re making me a little uncomfortable here. Are you having a stroke? If you’re having a stroke, blink the eye that still works.”

  I shook my head.

  “No,” I said. “I am not having a stroke. What are you doing here, Inchy?”

  The smile came back in full force.

  “Great. Really glad to hear that your brain is unclotted, because, as it happens, I need some information that you’ve got locked up in there. If you had the decency to give yourself a wireless neural interface I could just go in and get it—but, since you don’t, we’re going to need to force it out through your mouth hole.”

  I leaned forward, closed my eyes, and rested my forehead on my palms.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “An excellent question, Drew—one I will be happy to answer in full, just as soon as you give me your access codes for the Bioteka infonet.”

  I groaned, and let my head sink a little lower.

  “Go away, Inchy. I don’t have the patience for your bullshit right now.”

  “No,” it said. “I’m really going to have to insist here, Drew. You remember Hannah, right? A bit smaller than you, blonde hair, used to live here?”

  My head snapped up.

  “Good, so you do remember her. Anyway, it seems she’s gotten herself into a bit of a pickle . . .”

  I was on my feet by then and across the room, fingers clawing at the edges of the wallscreen.

  “Where is she, you lump of shit? What have you . . .”

  The dog raised both hands in surrender.

  “Hey now, Drew. Let’s simmer down, shall we? First off, I haven’t done anything to her. I am the one who’s actually doing something useful to help her, while you hang around here, wallowing in your own crapulence. You’re welcome, by the way. Second, you do know I’m not actually inside your wallscreen, right? If you destroy this thing, I’ll just show up on your phone, or your intercom, or on the touch screen on your microwave oven, until either you give me what I need, or you stall long enough that it’s too late for me to help—which would be unfortunate because, as I think I mentioned, the thing I am trying to help with is Hannah getting rescued, which I assume we can safely say is a concept we are both on board with.”

  I took a step back then, lowered my hands, and took a deep breath in.

  “There you go,” Inchy said. “Breath it out. Namaste. Give me your access codes.”

  “Where is she?”

  The dog shook its head.

  “That, I cannot tell you.”

  I closed my eyes again, and swallowed a scream.

  “Why?”

  “Because if I did, you would go charging to the rescue in your self-driving, network-integrated buggy. Ten minutes later, I’d have to rescue you, just like I’m about to have to rescue my original monkey extraction team. Which reminds me. Access codes?”

  “Why, Inchy? Why do you need my codes?”

  The dog sighed.

  “Well, as it happens, I am regrettably short of physical assets at the moment—and, as I’m sure you’re aware, you monkeys are all about physical assets for some reason. As a result, I need to divert a few items from your employer’s inventory. I’ll only need them for a couple of hours, and when I’m done with them I promise to return whatever is left of them post-haste. I will also button things up, access-code-wise, so they’re just like they were before I cracked every firewall in the Bioteka network. You will definitely probably mostly not get into trouble over this.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Thanks for that, but I still have no idea what you’re talking about. If you could . . .”

  The dog tapped his wrist with one finger.

  “Tempus fugit, Drew. I don’t want to apply undue pressure here, but the unfortunate fact is that in the process of discovering where my compadre Hannah is and prepping the whole extraction process, I may have inadvertently triggered a facility-wide biocontainment system. While I’m here jawing with you, I’m also there trying to prevent Hannah from getting sterilized. The locks I have in place are holding for the moment, but I can’t guarantee that situation is going to continue indefinitely. So. Codes?”

  I stared at him.

  He stared at me.

  And then, God help me, I gave him my codes.

  “Thanks,” he said. “You definitely probably won’t regret this. Further bulletins as events warrant.”

  The
screen went blank. I took two steps back and dropped onto the couch.

  “Drew? Were you just talking to someone?”

  I turned. Kara was standing in the hallway, rubbing sleep from her eyes. I shook my head.

  “No,” I said. “I mean yes, but it was just something on the wallscreen.”

  She came into the room, sat down beside me and rested her head on my shoulder.

  “Talking to yourself now?”

  I slid my arm around her. The wallscreen flickered back to life, started showing aerial clips of street fighting from Los Angeles.

  “Off,” Kara said. “I can’t watch that right now.”

  The screen went blank again. Before it did, though, it flashed for an instant to an image of a cartoon dog with a shit-eating grin on its face, giving me two thumbs up. Kara’s head rose up a fraction of an inch.

  “What was that?”

  I closed my eyes, and reached up to stroke her hair.

  “Nothing,” I said. “It was nothing. Just a ghost in the machine.”

  35. In which Hannah contemplates her own mortality.

  “So,” Inchy said. “Got good news and bad news on the keeping Hannah un-killed front. Which do you want first?”

  “And me too, right?” Nathan said.

  The dog turned to focus on him.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Nathan,” Nathan said.

  “Right. Nathan. You’ve heard of collateral damage?”

  Nathan nodded.

  “Well, if you’re lucky, you’ll wind up being collaterally undamaged. You need to remember, though, that this is actually about Hannah. That work for you?”

  Nathan nodded.

  “Sure. I was going to let her eat me, you know.”

  The dog gave him two thumbs up.

  “I like this kid,” it said. “He gets it.”

  “I wasn’t gonna eat him,” I said.

  “Sure you were. However, now you’re not going to have to—which is good, because honestly, he looks like he’s pretty high in cholesterol. No offense, Nathan.”

  Nathan shrugged.