Unbreakable

by Will McIntosh

  “Don’t do anything illegal, Beaners,” Celia called after him. “The last thing we need is the police after us.”

  “Don’t worry. I got this.”

  A white-haired woman burst out laughing at them as she passed. A squat, four-legged vaguely beetle-like mechanical thing trailed behind her.

  Across the street, Beaners paused in front of a bearded man standing on the corner holding a handmade cardboard sign that read Homeless Vetran. Please Help.

  Beaners approached him. “Pardon me, sir, but can I borrow your marker?”

  Curling his lip, the homeless veteran pulled a black magic marker out of his back pocket and tossed it at Beaners’ feet.

  “Thank you kindly.” Beaners’ tone was bright, almost musical, as if the man had invited him to dinner rather than treated him like a still-warm dog turd. They followed Beaners into an alley, where he climbed a dumpster, stuck his head into it and came out with a more or less rectangular piece of cardboard.

  Climbing down, he handed the marker and cardboard to Celia. “Put ‘Beaners the Great’ on there.” The sunshine and rainbows had vanished from his tone.

  Celia did as instructed. Beaners accepted the sign without a word and headed for the street, pausing to retrieve half a brick lying beside an old tire.

  After setting his hat on the sidewalk, he pressed the cardboard sign to the building behind them, then positioned his pinched fingers as if he was holding a nail, and intended to nail the sign to the wall.

  Beaners raised the brick and brought it down on his thumb.

  “Owwww!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, clutching his thumb to his chest. Passersby slowed to look. A smiling dad with a young son stopped completely.

  Beaners put the sign back in place, held the invisible nail, and raised the brick again. Celia could barely watch as he slammed the piece of brick down even harder, then let out a truly deafening cry of pain.

  The kid laughed hysterically. A few more pedestrians stopped to watch. This time Beaners took a few practice swings with the brick, counting to three before once again pounding his thumb. The small crowd burst out laughing. More people stopped. Someone tossed a coin in Beaners’ upturned hat before walking on.

  It was remarkable sleight of hand, because each time that brick came down it looked as if Beaners was actually hitting his thumb, hard. And even knowing what a mean and selfish jerk Beaners was, Celia had to admit, he was funny. Each strike of the brick brought a scream of pain an octave higher, and a fresh set of antics. He ran in circles, flapped his hand, sucked the offended thumb.

  He did it again, and again, and again. It should have grown stale, but the crowd laughed harder each time, and grew larger.

  When his thumb had had enough, he used his foot to hold the invisible nail. A chorus of “Uh-ohs” and “Oh, nos” rose from the crowd. Beaners, displaying remarkable flexibility, hit his own raised foot with the brick, then flipped, landing face-down on the pavement. As Beaners dusted himself off and took a bow, the crowd applauded lustily. Change clinked into his hat.

  “There aren’t many things that get funnier with repetition,” Beaners said as they headed toward the Burger Barn. “Self-inflicted pain is one of them. There’s probably a point where the comic value of hurting yourself starts to drop off, but I’ve never found it.”

  “Seems I owe you an apology,” Anand said. “You’re right, you can be funny when you want to.”

  “It looked so convincing, when you were hitting your thumb,” Celia said. “How do you do that?”

  Beaners held up his hand. Inside his tattered, filthy glove, his thumb was swollen to twice its normal size. “I hit my thumb. I’m not a magician, I’m a clown.”

  Inside the Burger Barn, robots built right into the counters took customers’ orders. Behind the counter, a lone human worker moved among machines that were cooking and filling orders. The pungent aroma of greasy meat and french fries saturated the air.

  As they headed up to order, every head in the place turned to stare.

  The human employee rushed out from behind the counter. “Are you kidding me?” He pointed at the door. “Out. Right now.”

  Clutching his tiny hat filled with giant coins, Beaners looked ready to pulverize the giant. Celia grabbed his sleeve and tugged him outside.

  Beaners peered in the window at the hamburgers, making frustrated sounds.

  “We could ask someone going inside if they’ll buy food for us,” Celia suggested.

  A face suddenly appeared down at their level. It was the same teenaged girl as before, her lips the color of candy apples. “Stay right there. We’re on our way. We want to talk to you.”

  Anand stepped close to Celia. “About what?”

  “Hang on. We’ll be there in a minute. Look up.”

  Celia looked up. A train was stopped at a free-standing platform a hundred feet overhead. The platform was made of some porous material, barely visible. A turquoise, teardrop-shaped bubble was descending from the platform. As it came to a stop, two teenaged girls hopped out and ran toward them.

  “Celia, right?” The girl who spoke had hair the color of her lips. It looked as if she’d cut it herself, in the dark. She had a weird face, vaguely hourglass-shaped, but still somehow stunning.

  “How do you know who I am?”

  The redhead giggled and nudged the other girl, who was Asian and half a head taller. “This is so cool.” She offered Celia her hand. “My name is Bage. This is Raelyn. I know who you are because you’re one of my favorite TV performers. Encased in ice. Breath-holding. I saw it all. I’ve been following you since you weren’t even on most people’s radar.”

  “What? I don’t understand,” Celia said. “What’s TV?”

  Bage looked up, thinking. “It’s like movies? Only the stories go on and on, and usually they’re not made up—they’re about real people.”

  Celia took this in, understanding hitting her like a jackhammer to the forehead. A million things began to fall into place.

  “I can show you,” Bage said, “but right now we need to get you out of here. Dominion security is after you.”

  The words sent a jolt through Celia. “How could they possibly know we’re here?”

  Bage shrugged. “Someone probably snapped a picture of you and posted it on the net. Dominion was running a facial recognition protocol, and they were alerted as soon as there was a match.”

  “I don’t understand a word of what you just said.”

  Raelyn bent down and offered Celia her hand. “We can explain later. Right now we need to go.”

  Celia took her hand. Raelyn put her other hand under Celia’s armpit and lifted.

  Celia watched over Raelyn’s shoulder as Bage lifted Beaners. “You are so cute.” Celia tensed, because Beaners looked as if he was about to take a bite out of Bage’s face. His jaw rippled as he ground his teeth. When Bage tried to lift Anand as well, Anand backed away.

  “I’ll keep up.”

  Bage shrugged. “Good luck with that.” The girls took off jogging. Celia hung on to Raelyn’s blouse, jostled violently by her impossibly long strides. She checked over Raelyn’s shoulder: Anand was sprinting, but still losing ground. He looked so tiny on the broad sidewalk.

  A girl’s face popped into existence beside Bage. Next to the face, a rectangular image materialized. It showed three full-sized Redsuits striding purposefully down a street. “They’re on Raglan, turning onto Clyde,” the face said.

  “Raelyn. Left on Arranmore,” Bage called.

  Ahead, a sign on the crossing street read Arranmore Road. The street signs were about the only thing recognizable to Celia; there was so much chaos in this place, so many moving parts. Every fourth person seemed to be accompanied by something mechanical, some on legs, others wheels, all of them different. A guy sitting inside a six-legged vehicle swerved suddenly, heading straight up the side of a building.

  Celia gasped. Hundreds of people were clinging to the outside wall of the building, some of them so
high up they were nothing but specks.

  “Where are we?” Celia asked Raelyn.

  “Dublin.”

  Ireland. They were in Dublin, Ireland. Celia had watched a movie set in Dublin. The city had looked nothing like this, but the accents were right.

  “You were watching me in Record Village?” she asked.

  “Bage watched. Mostly when she was high, late at night, probably while eating a bowl of Chocolate Pinwheel Puffs. I didn’t start watching until you tripped. Major calamity. Set the charts on fire.”

  “All of the movies I was watching were old?” Celia tried to think of the most modern-seeming ones on her phone. “Winners and Other Losers? Green, Yellow, Blue, Repeat?”

  Raelyn made a sound in the back of her throat. “Those were old before I was born. Nobody watches movies.”

  “You watch Circus Town. And me.”

  Raelyn made that sound again. Almost a duck quack. “My gran is too young to watch Circus Town. Dust it off.”

  “Celia!” Anand called. Bage slowed to let him catch up. He was pointing emphatically.

  A tiny man dressed in black leather pants and a cut-off t-shirt was riding a tiny bicycle along a crossing road. He was tiny relative to the rest of the city’s population, anyway; the man was Celia’s size. Her heart soared at the sight of him. Then they weren’t total freaks.

  “There are people like us here?”

  Raelyn glanced at the man on the bicycle. “Mostly rich people get them as novelties. They’re expensive, and not much use for anything.”

  “Expensive?”

  “Don’t worry—you’re different. You’re famous, sort of.”

  Since she’d tripped, anyway. Celia was still digesting what Raelyn had said about watching her since her accident. It sucked as a career move for a record-breaker, but Celia could see how it could be a great dramatic twist if you were watching for entertainment. Plucky girl almost reaches the gold ring before falling off her calliope horse and fracturing her skull.

  Raelyn bounded up a wide set of concrete stairs toward the doors of a towering building.

  “Where are we going?” Celia asked.

  “Bage’s place. Her folks are at work.”

  They piled into an elevator. Bage held it until Anand, gasping for breath, caught up.

  “You can put me down, now,” Beaners growled.

  The girls set them down. Both immediately began tapping their fingers on skintight strips across their palms while staring off into space. Bage’s strip was violet, Raelyn’s orange.

  “We haven’t had a chance to say thanks,” Celia said. “How did you find us?”

  Bage glanced at her. “A friend was at the beach where you washed up. She sent us a nudge.”

  A nudge. Celia watched them tap away. Neither of them seemed to have a phone; the strips must be the equivalent in this place.

  Bage’s apartment was small, and crammed with furniture, unidentifiable electronics, unhung pictures. Three baskets of dirty laundry sat along one wall of the living room.

  “Excuse the mess.” Bage dropped into a chair and waved at the wall. A screen appeared, like on Celia’s phone, only nearly as big as the wall. For an instant Celia watched a guy her age play a guitar, then the image changed, and she was watching Record Village. “This is TV.”

  Celia stepped closer. So did Anand and Beaners. The image was a close-up of Martin Brogna’s face as he flipped through a deck of cards, his eyebrows pinched in concentration.

  “Memorize a deck of cards,” Celia whispered. “He’s trying to beat the record. Fifty-six seconds. Oh my God.” It was as if she’d traveled all this way only to be sucked down a hole and dropped right back in Record Village. At the same time, she felt a billion miles away.

  On the screen, Martin Brogna squeezed his eyes closed and began reciting the order of the playing cards. In the background, the audience rumbled, their excitement growing as he progressed through the deck.

  Another piece of the puzzle dropped into place. “They didn’t want us to know about TV. We would have figured out that we were shows.” That’s what the characters in all of those weird, choppy scenes had been looking at, when that same painting kept showing up. Every TV, every mention of TV, had been wiped from the movies.

  “Why did they go through all that trouble? Why didn’t they just not let us see movies, either?” Celia asked.

  “No clue,” Bage said. “You’d have to ask the producers.”

  On the TV, the scene shifted to the inside of an apartment, where two people were talking in low voices about a teammate.

  “You can watch them in their houses?” Celia had to sit down. She climbed onto a couch, her feet sticking straight out, not even close to touching the floor. She felt four years old.

  “Sure.” Bage waved her fingers at the TV. Four lights set across the back of her hand flickered. “You want to see your old team?” Bage didn’t wait for an answer. Suddenly, there they were, in the living room of the shabby apartment Celia and Janine had found. Janine’s hospitalization and Celia’s disappearance must have moved up the timetable of their eviction.

  Constantine was standing in the kitchen doorway holding a bowl, while Molly, Jacoby, and Fizz ate at the table. It gave Celia a sick, crawling feeling to watch them. She’d been right there with them, with people watching her, reacting to things she said, seeing her cry and laugh, all without her knowing.

  It didn’t exactly surprise Celia that they were having cereal for dinner—she knew what their financial situation was like as well as anyone—but it was still disturbing. It was more disturbing to see the team without Janine.

  “Can you show me the hospital?” She didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if Janine would be there.

  Bage frowned. “There’s a hospital? Sorry, Rock. That’s not one of the subchannels.”

  Because, who would want to watch sick people? That’s no fun. Celia put her hand in front of her face to block the picture. “Turn it off.”

  The screen went blank.

  Beaners was asleep in a chair. He looked like some weird pet, curled up with his knees pulled to his chest. Anand was staring at the wall, his eyes glazed over.

  “You must be exhausted, and starved,” Bage said. “How long were you in the water? Almost two days?” She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “When you drove that truck right into the ocean? That was a-mazing.”

  Celia blinked, her exhausted mind trying to follow. “Wait. You saw that?”

  Bage smiled. “Right. You don’t know about that either. After you videobombed Luckytown, the network spun you off into your own show. They lost you for a while after you got away from security—which was vascular, by the way—but they picked you up again when Beaners hijacked the garbage truck.

  Which explained why they told Lorena to take the garbage truck out there. There was a camera in it.

  “The gunshot.” Anand touched his side. “That’s why I wasn’t hurt. It’s not much of a movie if you shoot the characters in the first scene.”

  “What about Sander?” Celia asked. “Was that part of the show, too?” She’d been free of that haunting image of Sander exploding for most of the past two days, but now it returned, full force.

  “That’s the great thing about reality TV,” Raelyn said. “It’s unpredictable. You never know when someone is going to drive into a tree or something.”

  At first Celia thought Raelyn was joking, or being ironic, but she wasn’t.

  “Oh, yeah, it was great when Sander died,” Anand said.

  “Raelyn, come on,” Bage said.

  “What?” Raelyn looked from Anand to Bage and back.

  “Their friend died.”

  “No, I know. I didn’t mean it was great that the guy died, I meant, it was real, it was powerful.”

  Bage stood. “We need to get you set up before the breadwinners come home. Assuming you want to crash here?”

  Celia nodded. “Thank you. So much.”

  Bage grabbed a box of doughnut
s off the the counter, then lifted Beaners, cradled his head like he was a little boy as she led Celia and Anand to her room. “My folks would not be okay with you being here, so you have to stay hidden when they’re home.” She opened her closet, which was the size of Celia’s bedroom in Record Village, only more rectangular. The two long walls were lined with clothes and cube-shaped shelves filled with shoes and accessories.

  Bage set down the doughnuts and pulled a black band resembling the one on her hand from a pouch on the upper shelf. “If you get bored, you can watch TV on this.” She showed Celia and Anand how to create a small screen on a blank portion of the wall, and how to type in search terms to find shows that might interest them.

  “There are about a million shows, so you shouldn’t get bored.”

  Celia desperately wanted to eat and watch TV, wanted to understand this world better, but she had to sleep. Anand had pulled down one of Bage’s sweaters to use as a blanket and was already drowsing.

  She paused. It would be so nice to curl up next to Anand, and after their conversation on the water, it wasn’t like how they felt about each other was a big mystery.

  Celia knelt beside Anand. “Can I share your blanket?”

  Anand rolled onto his back. He looked flustered. It took him a moment to reply. “When we’re not exhausted, there are things we should talk about.”

  On the water, she’d felt so close to Anand. Suddenly it seemed as if he was a thousand miles away. “What sort of things?”

  “Just—when we were out there on the water, I thought—” he trailed off.

  A burning disappointment washed over her. “You thought we weren’t going to make it, so you said some nice things you didn’t mean.”

  Anand closed his eyes. “That’s not—it’s way more complicated than that.” He pinched his temples. “I’m sorry. I’m so tired. Can we talk tomorrow?”

  “Yeah. Sure.” Celia pulled her own sweater down and settled a couple of feet away from Anand. Except it wasn’t a couple of feet. What she saw as two feet was probably more like eight inches. This day had taken everything she thought she knew, stuck it in a blender and hit liquefy.

  Celia lay awake feeling like she was falling in darkness, with no idea when, or if, she’d hit the ground. Janine was gone. Max was her enemy. Anand’s feelings for her were ‘complicated’. She didn’t even know what she was. Were her parents the size of these people, or had they been small as well?