by Jon Skovron
She came and sat down across from me at the table. “Tell me.”
If it had been anyone else, I would have kept my mouth shut. Shrugged it off, mumbled something about annoying parents, and that would have been it. But even after she dissed me, I was still such a chump that I couldn’t say no to her.
“I just found out that my parents are going to ship me off to live with the Frankensteins in Switzerland.”
She squinted her glittering eyes at me for a moment, then said, “Wow.” But the way she said it sounded impressed, not outraged.
“No, this isn’t cool,” I said. “This is seriously screwed up!”
She shook her head. “Your dad is just doing whatever he can to get you the hell out of this dump.”
“What are you talking about?”
She got up and started pacing. “They don’t appreciate you here. You deserve better. Your dad is trying to make sure you get it.”
“Deserve better? Are you messing with me?”
She stopped and glared at me, shaking her head. “No, of course I’m not messing with you. You can leave. You proved it the other day. And you’d be an idiot not to do it!” She leaned back against the wall, looking off into the darkness. “This place is just holding you back. It’s a dead end. A zoo for freaks.”
It was difficult to see in the dim light, but after a moment, I realized she was crying. Liquid draining from colorless gems.
“What were you doing down here, just now?” I asked her. “All by yourself in the dark?”
“Nothing.” She pushed the tears away with the backs of her hands.
I waited.
Then finally she said, “Just…thinking.”
“Do you wish you could…Do you want to leave The Show?”
“You said it right the first time. I wish I could. But I couldn’t pass out there. Not like you can. This,” she slapped her hand on the rough stone wall. “This is all I have to look forward to.”
“Liel, I—”
“So you think about that, huh?” She turned on me, her eyes fierce, her lips pulled back in a snarl to show a mouth full of sharp teeth. “The next time you feel like whining about the opportunities your dad is fighting to give you, you remember me. Okay?”
Then she was gone, moving too fast through the dark tunnels for me to see.
MY PARENTS WERE both out when I got back home, which was great. They were probably going to expect me to apologize for freaking out in front of Ruthven, and I was definitely not ready to do that.
I got an energy drink from the fridge and sat at the table, chugging the cool, sticky sweetness. The PC tower I had picked up from the fly crew earlier sat on the ground in front of my bedroom door. I’d almost forgotten about that. Mom probably picked it up and brought it home at some point. She was good like that. The mystery of how part of my new virus escaped was the perfect thing to take my mind off everything else.
I took the tower into my bedroom, closing the door behind me and began testing. I guess I should have been a little concerned that the virus had gotten away from me. But really, it proved that I was on the right track. It’s impossible for a regular computer program to do something truly unpredictable. Anything a program can do can be predicted by the programmer because computers can only do the things the programmer explicitly teaches them how to do. They don’t learn or adapt or try new things. They can’t be random.
But as far as I could tell, my project had just done something totally unpredictable. It did something I never explicitly taught it how to do. It analyzed my security measures, located a breach, adapted its own code to exploit that breach, and escaped. And I had no idea why.
Which was…amazing. A first in computing history. I was a fucking genius.
There was pounding on the front door of our apartment. I heard my mom’s footsteps walk toward it. She must have gotten home sometime after me. A moment later, there was a knock at my bedroom door.
“Boy,” said my mom. “Come out here please.” She never said things like “please” unless she was pissed about something and there were other people around. I quickly unplugged and went out to the living room.
Mom was over by her pile of junk in the corner, acting like there was nobody else in the room. Charon stood in the doorway, his brown robes crooked on his bony frame, like he had just been running.
“Boy! We need you!” he said.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“The Siren just had a complete breakdown onstage in front of an audience. Nearly killed them all.”
“Oh, no,” I said, wondering if she and the Minotaur had finally broken up. “Where’s my dad?”
“He’s taking care of her.”
“So what do you need me for?”
Charon looked at Mom for a moment, but she was still pretending like he wasn’t there. So he turned back to me.
“The Diva has taken this moment, while your father is occupied and Ruthven is managing the panicked audience, to pitch a fit. She wants company in her dressing room. You. Face-to-face. Immediately.”
“But…”
“Yeah. You have to switch off.”
“No,” said Mom from her spot over by the pile of junk.
“Bride…” said Charon. “You had to know it would happen sooner or later. Your husband can’t be in two places at once.”
“She can wait.”
“No, Bride. We can’t risk that. Not with her. Do you remember the last time? Twenty humans and three creatures dead. She could ruin everything. And you know she won’t accept you in his place.”
My mom still stared at the pile of junk. She picked up part of an old toaster oven and examined it.
“Please, Bride,” said Charon. “For the Company.”
She stared at the toaster while we waited for her to answer. Slowly, carefully, she compressed it into a small lump of metal. Then she let it drop back on the pile.
“For the Company,” she said. Her face was as expressionless as ever, but the stitches on her forehead vibrated with tension.
“What about you, Boy?” he asked. “Are you up to it?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Wise answer. Will you do it?”
I looked at Mom, trying to see what she wanted. But then I thought, He didn’t ask her. He asked me.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
I sat on the stool that I had seen Dad sit on so many times. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my temples. Mom walked slowly over and stood behind me for a moment. I felt her gently loosen the stitches at the base of my skull.
“What does it feel like?” I asked.
“For most of it, it feels like nothing,” she said. “Then at the end, it feels like everything.”
I could feel her push aside muscles and tendons to locate the nerves.
“I know this is hard.” Charon sat on one of the chairs at the table. “I’ll talk to Ruthven about some extra food vouchers, or maybe a special trip to the junkyard.”
Mom didn’t reply to that. I could feel her working deep into my spine now, slowly, methodically exposing the nerves.
“Okay, Boy. It’s time.”
BRIDE: How do you feel?
BOY: Like IRC
CHARON: What?
BRIDE: It stands for Internet Relay Chat.
CHARON: I still don’t understand, but okay :/
BRIDE: Go quickly, Boy. The less time you spend like this, the less trauma there will be at the end.
Boy exits apartment.
Boy returns to apartment twenty-six minutes later.
BRIDE: Well?
BOY: She’s fine now.
Boy sits on the stool.
BRIDE: Are you ready?
BOY: I don’t know.
Bride loosens the stitches and releases the clips.
I couldn’t breathe or see or hear. Emotion crushed down so hard that it blocked out everything else. I’d heard people talk about “emotional pain” before, but I didn’t realize it could be literal,
like my guts were getting wound up around a spiked pole inside me. I caught visual flickers of myself falling from the stool and hitting the hard floor, but compared to the relentless pressure inside, I barely felt it. My mom tried to pick me up, but any touch, even hers, made it worse, so I pushed her away. All I could do was lay there, dimly aware that my body was convulsing, as I lived through the emotional experience of the past half hour but compressed into a short, hard burst.
I LEFT THE APARTMENT and walked unhurriedly down the main corridor. I could tell my posture was different. Straighter, more purposeful. People stopped and looked at me as I passed them, like they could sense something was off. And they were right. Something was way off. It was almost like I was two separate people in one, the acting me and the feeling me. I was having the emotions but they hit the back of my skull and just sat there, while the acting me—the disconnected me—just kept going.
This time I didn’t hesitate when I knocked on Medusa’s door, and I wasn’t quiet or tentative about it.
“Yes?” I heard Medusa say. But this time no chill ran through my body, no ice-cream brain freeze.
“It’s Boy.” Internally, I recoiled at the flat, robotic sound of my own voice. It sounded so much like my father. But that emotion pooled up at the disconnection point, just like all the rest.
“Wonderful,” said Medusa, her voice silky smooth. “Come in.”
I jerked the door open immediately and stepped inside. All the same sensual elements were there: the smell of cedar, the dim lighting, her lounging silhouette behind the white curtain. I stood there with dumb indifference, waiting for my next instructions.
“My, my. Your mother fixed you all up, didn’t she?” said Medusa, her voice teasing.
“Fixed me up? Clarify.”
“I just mean that now we can talk face-to-face.” She pushed the curtain aside and I saw Medusa for the first time. The pressure on the back of my skull spiked as I took it all in. Her smooth snakeskin gleamed white except the green and brown diamond patterns that ran from her neck, across her shoulders and ended halfway down her upper arms. Her thick head of snake hair writhed slowly and her body swayed with the same motion. Her face was absolutely perfect, with full red lips and glittering black eyes. She was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. But her waist tapered off into a long, thick snake tail that coiled up under her, supporting her back as she lay on her purple velvet divan.
“I always thought you had legs,” I said.
“Yes, I imagine it must be a frustrating realization,” she said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you want to have sex with me but now you know it’s a physical impossibility.”
Deep inside my own head, I was screaming. Out of embarrassment. Out of horror. And okay, sure, maybe a little out of disappointment, too. But all I said was yes.
“Some say sensual lust is the root of my power,” she said. “Lust unfulfilled.”
“Is it?”
“It’s merely a facet. Others say my power is feminine rage, but that, too, is but an aspect. Scholars have always tried to fit me in their tiny boxes and they always fail.”
“What is the root of your power then?”
“To look into my eyes is to stare into the void and see Truth in all its terrible grandeur. Now that you have seen my performance, you have at least a vague understanding of that. That even veiled, Truth is tremendously powerful and dangerous.”
“Why does truth turn people to stone?”
“It doesn’t. Not literally. But they are frozen for a time, locked in a despair so all-consuming that it’s as if their hearts, their minds, their very muscles have turned to stone. Lesser creatures, like human men, usually can’t survive the experience. And yet they long for it. Truth. Or perhaps death, since death is the ultimate truth. This is why all heroes have tragic endings. They use Truth as a weapon, as Perseus used my likeness to defeat his enemies. But the hero can’t understand, or perhaps can’t accept, that in worshipping Truth, they are consumed by it.”
“Why does it not freeze me now?”
“Truth is more than mere facts. In your current limited state, you look upon Truth, but you don’t know it.”
She slowly rose from her divan and moved toward me, her eyes never breaking contact with mine.
“Did you talk to any humans while you were out shopping with Ruthven?”
“A man and a girl.”
“A girl?” She stroked my cheek with her fingers, smooth and cool on my skin. The pressure in my skull increased with her touch. “How old was she?”
“Approximately my age.”
“Did you like her?”
“Yes. She was nice.”
“Were you attracted to her?”
“Yes.”
“More than Liel?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t get to know her well enough.”
“Such a sweet boy.” She patted me on the head. “I’m going to miss you.”
“Miss me?”
“Yes. When you leave The Show.”
“I do not know if I want to leave The Show.”
“Why would you stay? To follow in your father’s footsteps here, placating temperamental actresses and repelling magic-addled humans? Accepting your place at the bottom of the social ladder in a tiny, bitter, narrow-minded lot of has-beens? Existing entirely at the mercy of a manic-depressive vampire? Does that sound like a good choice to you?”
“The alternative does not seem much better.”
“Ah, yes. Your father has spoken to me of that. Switzerland.”
“Yes.”
“And this doesn’t sound appealing to you?”
“No.”
She ran her fingers through my hair. My skull throbbed with pressure now, making it difficult to think.
“Why has your father chosen this path for you?”
“I don’t know.”
“No? Surely you can guess, though.”
“Perhaps when I am fully myself again.”
“Let me suggest something for you to ponder in the meantime. Could it be that your father is not sending you to Geneva for your good, but for his? I imagine that he would have loved to have been accepted into the Frankenstein family, studying at the University of Geneva…. Perhaps he daydreams of it sometimes.”
“He has never spoken to me of it.”
“No, of course not.” She leaned in close, her dry, glistening snakeskin lips brushing my ear. The roar of pressure in my head grew so strong I could barely hear her voice. “Think of this, though. He has created a being almost exactly like himself, only smaller, neater, less threatening. You. And he has offered you up to the Frankensteins, almost like a…promise?”
“A promise of what?”
“What would your father give to unite his family with the Frankensteins? His firstborn son, perhaps?”
“I…I do not know. I cannot…”
A smile curled up on one side of her mouth. “Oh, dear. I think I may have pushed you a bit too far. Ah, well. I think you see my point. Or you will in a few minutes. It’s time to grow up and start thinking for yourself, little Boy. It’s time to start your journey. Not on your father’s path, but your own.”
She glided back to her divan.
“You may go. This has been extremely stimulating. I think I’ll have a nap now.”
I left the dressing room and headed home. I still had no sense of urgency, even though my skull was screaming with pressure. It needed release. But I knew the moment Mom removed the clamp…
NOW, I LAY on the floor with my face pressed against the cold, rock floor as I rode out the last dregs of the storm of emotions. After feeling so unbearably full, I now felt completely empty. I slowly sat up and looked around at our tiny, little, rundown windowless apartment. Charon had gone at some point, so it was just Mom and me.
“How are you?” she asked.
“Tired.”
“Do you…want to talk about it?”
“Not now, Mom.”
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She nodded, and touched the side of my face with her hand.
“Sorry,” she said.
“It’s not your fault,” I said.
She stared at me, and all of a sudden I wished so much that she could express herself. A smile, a frown—anything other than vague surprise. Instead, she just nodded again and turned to the kitchen.
“Your father will be home soon. I need to make dinner.”
I LAY IN my bed, my mind racing from the endorphins brought on by the emotional backlash pain. Was Medusa right? Was my father sending me to live with the Frankensteins so I could live out some fantasy of his? I bet he hadn’t even checked if there was a good computer science program there. And he probably expected me to kiss their monster-killing asses the entire time I was there. No, going to Geneva was completely out now. It made me angry just thinking about it.
But staying here wasn’t any better. Now I knew firsthand what Dad went through every single night. There was no way I could do that. But what else was there for me?
I looked over at my computer and realized that I already had my golden key.
I jacked in and launched my IRC client.
poxd: jezuz, how do you stay offline so much?
s1zzl3: don’t you get the shakes ;P
surelee: he’s cooking up something big, i can tell
b0y: big, yeah…guys, i’m gonna need yr help
poxd: bshit
surelee: the one and only b0y needs help?
b0y: yup. lemme send you each a snip of what i’ve been working on. put it someplace it won’t get loose before you extract. i mean really tight security. then take a look and tell me if you’re in.
It was time to stop playing by everyone else’s rules. I was meant for better things than Ruthven’s assistant security guard or a rich Swiss family’s pet monster. It was time to show everybody what I could really do. It was time for my project to go live.
I worked pretty much nonstop from that point on. I hardly ate or slept. It was just energy drinks, runs to the bathroom, and coding. Before, it had seemed like the project still had a ways to go. But now that I was committed to finishing it, it came together in a matter of days. It was beautiful. Code wrote and refined itself. Text snaked through my virtual fingers like silk, pushing my computer’s CPU so hot you could cook an egg on the smooth casing. This was more than just poetry. I was writing a symphony, and when the world saw this, they would realize that they’d spent their entire lives on mute.