Outlier

by Kyle Harris

  “We’re talking legal protection,” said Sandiford, folding his arms on the countertop. “You put a bullet in someone, fine. Cameras tag your ID, cops come, say hello to a bunkmate who’s got a rap sheet of sexual assault. You want that? Be my guest.” His eyes searched her for something. “I thought you knew about these cameras.”

  “Yeah, whatever. It just seems like you’re ripping people off.”

  He pointed a greasy finger at her. “Protection is a commodity, like anything else. People would package up oxygen if they could make a buck off it. I’m just trying to keep this shop running, keep a roof overhead.”

  Chaz nodded. “All right, I’m out,” she said. “Thanks for the repairs.” She headed for the exit.

  “Bonjour.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Over the days that followed, Chaz got a so-far-so-good impression in regard to Libby—if gay intuition could be trusted. It was that little-known muscle next to the hindbrain and one of the gifts from living in the greater reality of the gay dimension. Right alongside astral projection and black magic. Which was why it was unwise to get on a gay person’s bad side—they might cast a hex.

  Chaz was actually full of mana right now. She was just waiting for the right douchebag. Piss me off and I’ll drop a spaceship on your head.

  Yeah, if only.

  She first thought about popping the question when she tagged along with Libby to the Crystal City Oceanarium and Marine Life Museum. It had been forty-eight hours since Cliff’s jawbone had said hello to her bootheel. Still pretty fucking soon. But she and Libby were already holding hands. It wouldn’t be long until the kissing—the swapping-spit phase, as Beverly had termed it. It had its origins in a K-pop song: Lick it, lick it, lick it; swap my spit and taste it; now put your face in it; go on and baste it.

  Sometimes lesbians lived up to the stereotypes. In completely unnegative ways.

  “‘The prickled slugfish,’” Libby read off an info terminal. “‘Immediately recognizable by its optical tentacles and yellow scales, the slugfish is one of only a few documented aquatic species that is hermaphroditic—meaning that each fish contains both male and female sex organs. While this may seem beneficial for reproduction, only one living member of each colony is designated as the female. The other adults will engage in complex courtship rituals that often involve swimming maneuvers and food gifts to win her favor.’”

  Chaz tapped her finger on the glass of the aquarium; the nearest slugfish swam over to investigate the noise. It glided just above the pebbled floor like a small hovercraft. A comparison chart popped up showing the fish’s similarities to the slug—an Earth gastropod, whatever that was. Probably the scientific name for looks like a turd, because that’s what the slug looked like: a dog turd that had gained sentience. It was fucking gross.

  “Aw, that’s sad,” said Libby, suddenly.

  Chaz paused from trying to make a new friend and looked over at her. “What is?”

  “It says that after the female has laid her eggs, she will swim away to die by herself. Some have been seen to travel more than ten kilometers away. Then the father of the spawn becomes the new female, and the cycle continues.”

  “Just don’t knock her up,” said Chaz. “Life’s one golden rule.”

  “There’s more.” Libby had swiped over to the DID YOU KNOW? tab. She read: “‘Sometimes the spawn-bearing member of the colony has been observed to abstain from eating to starve her offspring or grind her abdomen against thornweed in an apparent attempt to rupture the eggs before they have been deposited in a nest. While marine life biologists have yet to provide an exact explanation for this unusual behavior, some have theorized that the hermaphroditic nature of the slugfish can make it susceptible to violent mood swings. If the male mind becomes dominant before spawning, it may see its own pregnancy like an infection and attempt to cure itself.’”

  Damn, that’s hardcore, thought Chaz. The slugfish that had been drawn over to the glass was looking up at her like it expected something. She put out her fist to give it a bump, but it moseyed away.

  Once Libby had satisfied her knowledge woody, they walked on.

  The oceanarium consisted of the bottom two levels of the building. Mainly it was just glass cages of fish and various aquatic life for the kids to stab their fingers at while the parents filled their monthly family-outing quota. Above was the museum portion—fossils and taxidermy and informative displays ahoy.

  From what Chaz understood, zoos and aquariums had been a thing back on Earth too. Said something about humanity that, even on another planet in another star system, they couldn’t stop themselves from trapping the local wildlife in cages all in the name of tourism.

  One of the temporary attractions was a TRIDENT AND EARTH: SIDE BY SIDE exhibit. There were flashy displays comparing the planets’ dimensions, masses, compositions. Cutaways of the layers. Differences in weather patterns, climate zones, tides, orbits. Everything to make a science nerd drool.

  There was even a kids’ area where the youngsters could stand on a scale and see how much they would have weighed on Earth—Trident’s gravity was 0.87 g. Chaz made sure to keep a wide berth around anyone who looked like they might not be potty-trained.

  Some presentation was happening for a grade school class. A booming voice talked about how Earth circa four hundred million years ago was a whole lot like Trident today. “In a few million years, the very first amphibians may evolve from the sea creatures we see right now.”

  Those first couple days after the club were the grace period: the dance floor smackdown had bought Chaz some goodwill in the heart of Libby, but it took more than fight moves to build a friendship. The hand holding was a test. The Crystal City Oceanarium and Marine Life Museum was a test. And more such tests included an afternoon at a bakery convention where Chaz stuffed her face with a sandwich-sized brownie called The Chocoliath, with Libby polishing off the crumbs; a stopover at a bistro where Libby gushed over the pomegranate slushies, which Chaz found to be not so deserving of the rave, but she was bound by the job obligation to share a straw; an evening stroll through a park capped off with ice cream cones. Like that slugfish and its dozens of feelers for scoping out the ocean depths, they were scoping out what was next in the relationship, testing the waters ahead.

  Sometimes Libby talked about God—not so coincidentally, that was usually around the same time Chaz turned off her brain and let the autopilot handle the nodding and attentiveness of someone who gave more than one brain cell of fucks. Libby also talked about helping people, like wanting to be a teacher. “I haven’t decided what I would teach,” she said. This was while share-strawing the pomegranate slushie. “History, art, I’m not sure. I don’t feel like an expert of either, and to teach you have to be an expert.”

  Chaz proposed an alternative: “You’re an expert on God.”

  Libby smiled. That was around the time Chaz had begun looking forward to those smiles, and she would say jokes to coax them out. “Like a pastor?” Libby took a sip, swallowed. “The Bible was the first book I ever read—my parents didn’t give me much choice. They thought most children’s books were written by sinners. But I don’t know if I’m an expert on God. But you’re very sweet.”

  Besides the moments like that, Libby never said a word about her family. And that was kind of a flashing alarm. Because to get inside the Pruitt household, Chaz would need an invitation, and Libby might not want Mom and Dad to interfere with her new relationship. If Chaz were in Libby’s shoes and had a father like Matthew Pruitt, she’d keep her new girlfriend the hell away from home too, the same way she’d stay away from a wildfire. Just common fucking sense.

  On the other hand was the money, and she didn’t want to ride this slow-ass date train for a month or longer to reach the LESBIAN SLEEPOVER destination.

  Chaz would have to come up with something.

  It was all so fucking bizarre, though—the dating, the pomegranate slushie, the chatting it up with God’s number-one superfan. If it
weren’t a job, Chaz would have jumped ship long ago. The religious illness was a huge fucking turnoff. And yet, yet, she couldn’t help but feel a warm little rush every time the corners of Libby’s mouth dimpled, or when her blue eyes caught the light, or during her tendency of leaning toward Chaz while having those chats: just a couple of queer confidants in a strange hetero world.

  Yeah. Fucking weird.

  “Do you believe someone can be born wrong?” asked Libby. They had sat down on a bench after the nature walk through the park, ice cream cones in their hands. The evening was almost warm enough for short sleeves.

  “Wrong in what way?” said Chaz. “Like born without limbs?”

  Libby shook her head and looked away as if she were suddenly embarrassed. But she went on: “A common misconception that Christians have is that God judges you on your morals, and it’s not true to say that. It would be more accurate to say He judges the choices made with your morals.”

  Again? Chaz could see her own mind’s eye already rolling. She’d heard enough God garbage for a lifetime. Maybe a few lifetimes.

  “I was just remembering what you told me the other day in the diner,” continued Libby. “That this isn’t my fault.”

  “It isn’t,” reiterated Chaz. “You’re gay. You gotta fucking wear that shit.”

  “And I think you are right.” She hadn’t touched her ice cream in a while; it was starting to melt and ooze down the wafer. “I’ve repented more times than I can remember, Chaz. I confess, I feel a lightness inside me, like I have been lifted out of the mud of what I was, and I have undergone a change from having sought His forgiveness. But these feelings—they always come back. And sometimes I think that this is the challenge that God has placed on me. That I have to overcome these desires.”

  This time, Chaz reached out for the girl’s hand. “No. Stop lying to yourself, Libby.”

  The hand squeezed back. “I once thought God was speaking to me through my father when he was sending those men after me. But now I’m beginning to think He is speaking through you.” Her eyes came up, and they wouldn’t let go. “It could have been anyone else in that club. At any other moment. Anyone. But it was you. Right when I was about to do something I was going to regret, when I had made that awful choice to sedate myself with alcohol. You came along. I think it means something.”

  Chaz shrugged. “It was me.”

  Libby leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “I have been a witness to so much wrong. But evil can’t act alone; there must be a counterbalance. And I think I have met her.”

  This rich girl wasn’t so bad after all.

  All the message from Okocha included was a time and an address.

  Todd was standing guard outside the door to 333. He had this macho thing: when he was standing still, he would pose with his muscles flexed, but without looking like he was flexing. She only knew he was doing it because, when he moved, his upper body sort of deflated.

  She imagined opening up a textbook on human psychology authored by the greatest minds, and flipping to the chapter on masculinity. It was short: ACTUALLY, WHO THE FUCK KNOWS?

  “What is it?” she asked him, when she’d reached the apartment.

  “Boy stabbed one of our dealers and took his supply,” he explained. “Won’t be happening again.”

  When he didn’t provide any more info, she said, “Sounds like it’s taken care of. Why am I here?”

  “Okocha wants you to check out his desk. He’s wearing the threads of some cult. Okocha wants to know who they are. Get a list of whoever he’s affiliated with.”

  “Uh-huh.” She pushed the door open.

  Won’t be happening again, Todd had said. It wouldn’t, because the fucker was dead on the floor beside the bed, chunks of his brain decorating the cream-colored wallpaper next to the bathroom. For all the blood that had been blown out the back, his face was amazingly clean of it. From the look of it, he’d been executed on his feet, had dropped where he was standing.

  His life had departed him so quick he still looked flabbergasted.

  Chaz crouched and patted him down, finding a wallet but zero cash or credit chips—Todd or another had already looted the dough. The name on the ID was Simon Dodders. Sixteen years old, first-gen native, matching address. The pocket opposite the one with the wallet had a Galaxy tasker, but it was password protected. She also found a few sticks of germ-killing gum and condoms. Nothing else inside his faux leather jacket, which had a patch on the left breast: BEGOTTEN SONS, the type stitched in gold next to a bloodied crucifix.

  Another religious whackjob. And the name on the patch must’ve been the cult Todd had talked about.

  The only item of significance was the tasker, but it was next to worthless anyway—no one on the net had decoded Galaxy’s top-layer security. Getting through the password screen would mean—drum roll—knowing the password. And if Dodders here had implemented the biometric security features, that turned already-slim odds into a fat fucking chance.

  Chaz took a look around the rest of the tiny dwelling. The place wasn’t any bigger than a trashy hotel room. The fold-out bed was the centerpiece, bathroom and kitchen space behind the wall, general living area whatever was left over. Having a visitor would’ve created a logjam.

  On the other side by the room’s single window was a small wooden table laden with framed portraits and larger pictures propped up, the universal theme being Christian scriptural imagery. She recognized The Last Supper, but that was about the extent of her knowledge of Bible paintings. The general order from left to right seemed to be chronological, starting with the birth of Jesus to the Virgin Mary—How the fuck does that work?—then a young Jesus, an older Jesus, and finally Jesus cashing out on the cross. Around the pictures, candles had been shoved into every square centimeter of space.

  At her feet was some kind of prayer mat, a verse printed on it.

  AND JESUS BEGET IN NATHANAEL THE BREATH OF GOD, SON AND LORD

  TIMOTHY 14:21

  Chaz just sighed, trying to think of an insanity that was as well-defined and pervasive as religion. Her mind reported back with silence.

  Parked in the corner to her left was the desk. She dropped into the swivel chair and poised her hands above it, its acrylic glass styling a couple notches up the luxury ranks compared to its habitat. The operating system beeped out a red, flashing error underneath her fingertips: BIOMETRICS NOT RECOGNIZED.

  Chaz bit her lip and looked back at her dead pal.

  She moved the swivel chair aside and dragged Dodders’s limp body by his wrists across the laminated wood floor. When she got him over to the corner, she raised his hands over the desk for sensor verification. The system chirped, and a monitor slid up. Success.

  “Good afternoon, Simon,” said a woman. One of the Lionel OS defaults. Chaz knew the voice actress from a few porn sims. “If you’re going out, I advise a medium jacket. There is a fifty percent chance of snow flurries after six o’clock. You have zero new emails.”

  She shoved the body out of the way and pulled up the chair. The operating system layout was the out-of-the-box preset: calendar, news, and weather tiled on the right, personal data and shortcuts on the left. She took in the austere arrangement of the file folders before diving in.

  Launching a command prompt, she wrote a little five-line code that arranged the contents of his drive by the most-visited directories. At the top of the list was a folder titled THE NEW REVISIONIST STANDARD. Chaz browsed to it; there was a single document a couple thousand pages long. The title page said it was a Bible. Boring.

  Next down the list: SINNERS.

  Sixteen folders, incrementally numbered. She clicked the first.

  Ah, shit.

  The girl had been beaten. Bruising all over a body that, as Chaz looked closer, didn’t have the right form. Like she’d been bludgeoned so many times that all her bones had been shattered, the sleeve of flesh over them reduced to a crude suggestion of a woman’s shape. She couldn’t have been any older than the
dead fuck decomposing in this apartment. There were pictures—ninety-seven in total—of this pale thing and several figures in dark jackets—the Begotten Sons, presumably. As Chaz flipped through the photos, the girl’s body looked less like itself and more like something shaped out of black-and-red dough.

  There were videos too. Chaz didn’t bother.

  And at the end of this fucking dreadful slideshow, the mystery girl was hanging by the neck, outside, in some public square. The photographer had made sure to capture a close-up of her abdomen, where there was a knife-carved inscription: HOMOSEXUAL DEMON.

  Lynched for the city to see, along with fifteen others. Why in the fuck were these assholes not behind bars?

  She placed her tasker on the desk and accepted the connection between the two devices. Then she transferred all the photos from Dodders’s drive to hers and opened the facial-rec software. The morons hadn’t covered their faces. In less than ten seconds, there were hits. Three of the cult members and eight of the victims had matches. Of the victims, the split on gender was even, and all the ones with IDs appeared to be gay, according to their social media profiles.

  Chaz composed a message for Okocha, including the known identities and pictures of the cult members and their MO. Short and simple. She sent it out.

  Everything else was saved into a folder.

  Before leaving the apartment and telling Todd that she was finished, Chaz looked down at Dodders one last time. She muttered, “I wish I’d been here to pull the trigger myself, you fucking piece of shit.”

  This deserved a pack of cigarettes.

  The lettering might be gone, but you could still read the shadow of TANNING SALON where the dull ceramic hadn’t been bleached by sunlight. The building was slotted next to a dozen more commercial-grade identical blocks.

  The filter of a Pall Mall stomped out under her heel, Chaz pulled out her tasker. The money from the Ziegler job had been deposited into her account. She immediately pushed the next three months of rent on to her landlord so she wouldn’t have to worry about it for a while. Next, a quick look at the news: she instituted a search algorithm to filter out everything except articles containing a few choice keywords, but there was zip about religious lunatics roping up dead people in public squares.