There is scarcely anything more difficult than humiliation survived alone, Tako says to Pikkoro, offering her a tissue. She has just arrived home from a tough day at school, during which a substitute teacher had criticized her assignment in front of the whole class. Is this an episode of the anime, or fan fiction? Michael can see the scene vividly—Pikkoro, swabbing her tears with a stretched sleeve, Tako’s offered tissue, white, the simplest of lines; an atypically thick tissue, handkerchief-like, anime tissue for anime tears. Did Michael watch this, or read this? Like those two kids who broke into that house—an anecdote, Michael knows, that Bette very well could have made up—sometimes, when you get caught up in stories, when it’s a really good story, one that explains everything, you can be forgiven for forgetting the base reality. Forgetting what’s canon.
Bette has inadvertently downloaded a copy of Inception that is equipped with an English Audio Descriptive Service. Neither Bette nor Michael can be bothered to find another torrent, so they just settle in and keep going. It is surprisingly not distracting to watch a movie at the same time as this voice describes what you are seeing. The voice is a confirmation that you are seeing the same visual cues and interpreting them in an approximately identical manner. The voice supplies words for you to describe things more accurately, things you didn’t realize had a name, like balustrade and portico. The voice describes meaningful glances between characters that you might have failed to detect. The voice even describes the Warner Bros logo animation that plays at the start of the movie. The voice is rapt and attentive, both affectionate and matter-of-fact. It could be British or Australian; it’s hard to tell which.
The climactic moment—when the inception takes hold, when the sleepers ride the kicks up the collapsing dream levels—is a tour de force of rapid, crisp delivery.
In the hospital, Fischer continues to hold his father’s hand. The hospital collapses. The floor cracks open and Fischer falls. In the elevator, Fischer opens his eyes. Eames opens his eyes. But in the hospital, Ariadne is still asleep. In Limbo, Cobb attends to Mal. Ariadne succumbs to the gale. She falls off the edge of the balcony and into the void. She wakes up in the hospital. Cobb sleeps on. The floor cracks and falls away entirely. Ariadne wakes up in the elevator. The elevator slams into the roof in a crash of sparks. Ariadne wakes up in the falling van. Water bursts through the windows.
Bette’s fallen asleep. She leans on Michael’s shoulder, one hand curled in a fist to her chest, the other open on her lap, the tips of her fingers still shiny with Domino’s grease. She’s wearing a purple hoodie from Owls in the Navy that is adorned with the text It’s HarvestTime™ and a screenprint of the HarvestTime™ logo, a tree made of love hearts. She hasn’t worn this hoodie in a while. Michael wonders if this is Bette’s sly way of admitting to writing Rubik. Or if it simply means that Bette has recently revived her interest in Pikkoro and may demand a re-watch soon. Not that she was ever uninterested in Pikkoro. Just that, from time to time, a particular text will come to rule Bette’s life in a persistent, all-encompassing way—like that time in high school when she was obsessed with Battle Royale, and would rank her classmates on how long she’d estimate they’d survive in a Battle Royale, and brainstorm unorthodox weapons that they might be assigned. ‘Syringes,’ she’d say randomly to Michael. ‘Bear traps.’
There’s this trope from Pikkoro where a solid object like a wall turns transparent so you can see what’s on the other side, accompanied by a little piccolo trill. Michael has that moment now—trill!—as he looks to the living room wall, sees through the wall to Bette’s bedroom, where he knows that above Bette’s bed hangs a poster for Pikkoro and the Multipurpose Octopus. It’s Tako, in the form of a hot air balloon. His passengers are Pikkoro and the friends she acquires during the show’s thirty-six-episode run. The HarvestTime™ headquarters are just visible, a dark bruise on the horizon. It’s the most widely available poster for Pikkoro but one that Bette, actually, doesn’t like very much. She liked Pikkoro and the Multipurpose Octopus the best when it was just Pikkoro and Tako—no Yuki the friendly transfer student, no Haruka from the After School Learning To Be Better Club. As far as Bette is concerned, Pikkoro and Tako are all that Pikkoro and Tako require. All of Bette’s Pikkoro fan fiction, when she still wrote it, proceeded stubbornly from the first season—Pikkoro, forever the loner; Tako, Pikkoro’s only friend.
Michael watches Leonardo DiCaprio collect his luggage from the carousel and stride through the airport, nodding to his fellow business-class passengers. The score is triumphantly slow, warm, and if you watch the scene in just the right way, you could pretend that it is actually an advertisement for American Airlines. In spite of it, Michael lets the orchestral waves carry him along. He looks across at Bette, still asleep, and he feels overwhelmed with protectiveness. He wants Bette to be okay. He wants more than anything for them both to be okay.
Bette opens her eyes just in time to witness the spinning top, wobbling, before the screen cuts to black.
That smug bass line of the Hans Zimmer score.
The Audio Descriptive Service voice even reads out the credits. Michael likes the relish with which the voice pronounces Pete Postlethwaite.
‘What time is it, Michael?’ Bette asks.
‘About nine.’
‘Will you go with me somewhere?’
At the public library near Bette’s house, just to the left of the after-hours return slot, she shows him.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
Bette shrugs. She fingers her pink earphones like rosary beads.
‘What’s it playing?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How long have you known about this?’
Bette shrugs again. She winds the earphone cord around her index finger.
Michael wonders whether to ask, decides against it, but then asks anyway. ‘Are you sure that wasn’t you, writing Rubik on LR?’
Bette snorts. ‘What kind of question is that? “Are you sure that wasn’t you, doing a thing that you already said you didn’t do?” Don’t be a dick, Michael.’
‘Well, I can’t think of any other explanation for it.’
‘Will you forget about the fic for a sec?’ She waves at the audio port. ‘We’re here now.’
‘What are you waiting for? Why didn’t you just listen to it when you found it?’
‘Why didn’t you? With the one you found on the train?’
‘I was at my stop—’
‘You were scared,’ Bette says. ‘You were embarrassed.’ She crouches down and pushes the jack into the port. She untangles one earbud for herself and extends the other to Michael. ‘Now, come on. No one’s here.’
No one’s here. For a moment Michael registers her words like a sly joke—no one’s here—as if Bette is a Tyler Durden–esque imaginary projection. He really is standing alone at a deserted library at night and the earphones are actually hanging limply from the port. Michael crouches down beside Bette and accepts her offered earbud. The cord’s short length forces them to lean their heads together as if they are praying.
Michael and Bette each push in their earbud.
—borrow an item from the library, you must first obtain a membership card. To obtain a membership card, you will need to go to the enquiries desk. The enquiries desk is often distinguishable from the loans desk because it is lower to the ground with two chairs facing the counter, whereas the loans desk is typically chest-height with a standing queue. Approach the enquiries desk. State that you would like a membership card. A possible script is: ‘Hello, I am a first-time borrower. Could I please apply for a membership card?’ The person at the enquiries desk will ask you for details such as your name, address, and telephone number. He or she will issue you your card. This card may entitle you to borrow items from other associated libraries—check with the person at the enquiries desk. A possible script is: ‘Does this membership card allow me to borrow books at any other libraries?’
‘What is this?’ Bette whispers.
The voice carries on.
There are two ways to take out a loan at the library. The first way is to approach the loans desk. Present your books to the person behind the counter and he or she will scan them and deactivate any security devices on the loan item. These loans will be recorded in a database. The person who processes your loan will also print out a receipt which specifies the due date of your loan items. You must return the loan items by sliding them into the return slot located inside the library, or, the after-hours return slot located outside the library, on or before the specified date. The second way to take out a loan is to use one of the self-service machines located near the library exit. Each machine is equipped with a series of instructional graphics on how to operate it. Like the person at the loans desk, the machine will also produce a receipt with the due date of your items. There are no particular advantages to using either the self-service machines or the loans desk. They are equally valid methods of processing your loan.
Michael glances at Bette and is surprised by what he sees in her face. Not incredulity, not a mocking sneer, but a look of vast, plain, tender understanding. She is moved, and Michael, if he were honest, would admit that he is moved too. He finds himself meditating on this last insight. It is somehow both reassuring and scary. Neither method is better than the other. They are equally valid.
Today’s new arrival is the Oh, Buoy! tea infuser. It is a hollow silicone ball shaped like a buoy with holes punctured into the detachable lower half. It comes in four vibrant colors—red, blue, yellow, and orange. Best of all, the halves of the Oh, Buoy! tea infuser can be turned inside out, so you can clean out stubborn wet tea leaves with ease. And it is, of course, dishwasher safe. The Oh, Buoy! tea infuser is $14.95.
The ports become easier to find now that Michael knows they exist. Just that morning Bette had Snapchatted him a port she found at the Coles deli counter. There is even a port right here underneath the cash register at Ampersand. Michael is pretty sure it wasn’t there before. The voice conveys advice such as Do not comment too extensively on a customer’s purchase as anything more than the most perfunctory flattery may come across as insincere and During very busy periods it is not so important to greet every customer who comes in to the store, but if the store is very quiet, failure to greet a customer will be especially conspicuous, and every effort should be made to acknowledge each customer in those instances—a simple ‘hi’ will suffice.
As Michael listens, he overlays his memory of the sound of the Inception Audio Descriptive Service voice saying Pete Postlethwaite to figure out whether it’s the same voice that’s issuing forth from the audio port. During Michael’s brief stint in counselling, his psychologist always encouraged him to express his feelings in percentages. So Michael would say that he is about seventy-five percent certain it is the same voice. He looks over at Bette unlocking the jewelry display case for a customer and, he doesn’t know why, but he is reluctant to share this thought with her. Perhaps Bette already knows, and it was not an accident that the copy of Inception that she had downloaded contained the Audio Descriptive Service voiceover. Or maybe it really was just a coincidence; maybe Bette, too, was scared to listen to the audio port alone. Equal validity. Both stories true.
‘Hello,’ says a customer, and Michael quickly yanks out his earphones.
‘Hi, sorry,’ Michael mumbles, as the customer stacks her purchases on the counter. The Falling Cat T-shirt, the Love Of All Things Bolshevik earrings, and the Strawberry Bomb brooch, this last of which, once scanned through, the customer immediately unpins from the cardboard and positions on her green cardigan.
‘That’s a nice brooch,’ Michael ventures. ‘It goes with your cardigan.’ Mindful of the audio port’s counsel, he keeps it succinct.
‘Thanks,’ the customer smiles. Michael feels flush with success. ‘Been busy today?’ the customer asks.
‘Not really. It’s been pretty quiet.’
As the customer unbuttons her wallet and presents her Visa card, Michael gauges her approximate age. Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight? He pulls out the thick ribbon handles of the carry bag and passes it over the counter. He meets her eye. Telepathically projects the question, Are you Rubik3?
‘Have a good one,’ the customer says.
‘You too.’
Michael watches the green cardigan disappear out the glass doors, the brown Ampersand carry bag with its firm, smooth base. He looks over at Bette and wonders if she witnessed him having such effective dialogue with a customer for once, but Bette is watching her own customer weighing the merits of two silver pendants. Michael reattaches his earbuds, invoking Pete Postlethwaite. It’s the same voice, he tells himself. Ninety percent certain.
Rubik was updated six hours ago. Two facts now lead Michael to believe that Bette isn’t behind it: one, six hours ago, Bette and Michael were just beginning their shift at Ampersand; two, this latest update makes reference to Audrey, a character who appears in one of the early chapters of Seeds of Time, and Michael is certain that Bette has never read anything by H.R. Kwai.
Audrey is good at fixing things. I wish you could meet her. She is kind like you, and really clever. Machines just listen to her. When I watch her fix something, it’s like the time we found that injured bird, and it would not stay still for me or even you, but it stayed still for the vet. Machines stay still for Audrey; they will let her help them. I asked Audrey if she could help me modify my PASIV Device but she says that what I am asking is impossible. I wonder if you could turn into a PASIV Device, Tako. A PASIV Device is a kind of transportation vehicle, if you think about it creatively. I can imagine your arms stretching and thinning into neat spools of IV infusion lines, your round suckers expanding to pistons, your ocellus forming the central Injection Activation Trigger. For the meantime, Audrey says, she can help me install a lock on my PASIV Device so that no one can tamper with it. She showed me the most basic premise of a lock, which is creating a series of obstacles, impediments, and it is only through a specific alignment of the parts—the creation of a shear line—that the lock will yield. Tako, some people who I meet, they are so attached to reality. They value it more than anything else. They’re always clutching their totems. They get cross with themselves if they get affected by something that happens to them in a dream, if they wake up crying or with their hearts racing. Then there are others who are attached to dreaming. They abandon their totems. They go down one level and then another and another. They design dreams from memories and memories from dreams. Audrey says that reality and dreams are in the end both stories that we tell ourselves. They are two keys that turn the same lock.
A third fact, perhaps, is that this update shows Pikkoro relying on another character besides Tako, and, given Bette’s penchant for friendships with a maximum population of two, in fiction and in life, Michael can’t see Bette writing this fic, even as a joke. It would go too much against the grain of Bette, the well-worn grooves of her neural pathways.
Michael is scrolling down the Rubik thread on his Seed and, at the same time, he’s jacked into the audio port located just under the window of this carriage of the train. Right now, the voice says:
If you are an able-bodied person who is capable of standing, it is courteous to offer your seat to others in the event that the carriage is full. Some people are hesitant to do this for risk of causing offence; however, there is a variety of reasons why one might require a seat more than you, and an offer of a seat is by no means a speculation or a judgement. Even if you are unsure, it is recommended that you nonetheless make the offer, once, and do not persist if the other person declines. A possible script is: ‘Excuse me, would you like a seat?’ Vacating your seat and extending your open hand towards the seat is also effective. Alternatively, if you anticipate that the train will become crowded, you can pre-emptively leave your seat. Take care not to stand in a position that will obstruct the flow of passengers. Sometimes it is preferable to take a seat rather than cause an obstruction.
The reflections in each
window are almost as clear as mirrors, glossed black by the night, interrupted by the lonely speeding lights of cars on the freeway. The train shudders over the rails. Nobody else seems to be taking any notice of what Michael is doing. Even when Michael brings himself to look directly at another passenger, the other person’s gaze seems to slide around Michael, as if being jacked in to the port renders him invisible. Michael has never seen anybody else listening to one of these audio ports except for Bette. He wonders if he should find this odd.
The Aeris memorial thread is starting to lose steam. There are only two new comments since the last time Michael checked the thread. MikiruBeeeeeam has reposted a photograph of Aeris in which he is actually dressed up as Aeris from Final Fantasy VII—this impressively bearded white guy in his mid-thirties, pink dress, basket of flowers, fuck you smile. What Michael couldn’t tell Bette that day, because she didn’t want to hear it, was that Ares changing his name to Aeris is a reference to an incident about three years ago, when a user named Rhesus incited a flame war against another user for posting a picture of himself in the Cosplay thread wearing a dress, an attack which only earned Rhesus a temp-ban and led the other user—though there’s no way of really knowing for sure—to gradually disappear from Luxury Replicants. In some kind of solidarity move against Rhesus, Aeris and a handful of other male-identifying users posted pictures of themselves wearing dresses or skirts. Sometimes the pictures would have captions like: No shame in skirts. No shame in femininity.
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