Why hadn’t he bought it that day? Why hadn’t he bought it when his son could have held it in his hands, even if it might be heaped the next day with the many other toys he neglected? They had eaten lunch in the mall that day: twenty munits. Shit it out the next day. Why hadn’t he bought the doll sooner? He’d forgotten it after that; he supposed now that it hadn’t been in stock again for a while. He should have looked elsewhere for it; ordered it. He might have brought it to Ian in the hospital. They had, in fact, brought him other gifts. But they had forgotten this particular doll, which Declan had only seen again today, when sleep-walking through the toy store.
He got up from the bench, walked again. He seemed to float along without the weight of his wife at his side, and without the weight of his son in his cart. He felt like a ghost that haunted a former home, without knowing why it did so. But he imagined Ian at his side. He even spoke to him in his mind.
“Wow,” he muttered softly under his breath, “look at all that, huh?” A miniature Santa’s castle had been erected in the center of the main hall, and holographic elves went tirelessly through their film loop labors. Declan watched it for a while. He imagined his hand on the top of his son’s hairless and blighted skull. He did not see the other children who gazed raptly at the display; even the elves were more alive to him.
He went to all the places in the mall his child had loved best. He looked through the children’s section in the book store. He stared in at dogs in little cells, and tiny fish darting in tanks. He could hear Ian exclaim, “Dog!” Declan had been so proud of him for that. People might have thought it was the dogs he was smiling at, now.
It was a daily seance, and he the medium. But he knew it was all fakery.
In the men’s room of a major department store, he splashed cold water in his face and then lifted his eyes to the long, dirty vidplate, which considerately reversed his reflection for him so he saw his appearance just as others did. He saw hatred there, but wondered if others could. It was too profound to show on mere flesh. He hated that flesh, for its handsomeness. Hated his blue-black hair, clear blue eyes...resented even the soundness of his mind. He would have preferred his son’s vast innocence. He would have liked to obliterate that sound mind in favor of some sort of oblivion.
As he heard Ian’s voice in his head, so he heard Rebecca’s; she seemed dead to him, too. (“You blame me for all this.” Her eyes redder than ever. “Because I wouldn’t abort him. Because I made them let him live...”)
She didn’t believe him that he felt otherwise. That it wasn’t her he hated. That it might not even be God—or science—he blamed; might not be so simple to focus his hatred. How could he tell his wife of ten years that he had never loved another person as much as he had loved his beautiful boy?
A sound behind him made him break his lost gaze from his own eyes. Two men entered the restroom noisily behind him, and self conscious, he dried his hands hurriedly. As he did so, he caught a glimpse in the vidplate of the two men standing spread-legged before the urinals, joking loudly to each other. One jetted a little urine on the other’s leg. The other returned fire. They whooped and barked and exchanged a few shoves. Urine spattered the floor. Declan started for the door. A lot of extremely rough kids in Punktown, and unlike many, he had never carried a gun to protect himself and his family.
As he reached for the door, he threw one look back, probably drawn by an extra loud yell. One boy was trying to seal his fly but the other was still pushing. The one who was pushing was in profile, and had long dark hair parted on the side, held with a red barrette, and features so attractive they were almost pretty, full lips spread wide in a bright smile against bronze skin.
For a moment, Declan hesitated at the threshold.
Someone drew the door open from the other side; an elderly Choom man entering the restroom, his huge mouth devoid of teeth so that his head looked half caved in upon itself. Declan flinched, but he quickly slipped past him and back into the store before the two friends had turned and seen him staring.
* * *
He pretended to be studying a display of powered screwdrivers in the hardware section as the youths emerged from the men’s room and passed him. Moments later, he trailed in their wake, his shopping bag bouncing against his leg.
He followed them out into the mall proper, down one pipeline and into the next; following the shit through the sewers, he thought. When they entered a music store, however, he paused outside, hovered there vaguely. He watched them through the windows. At last, blankly, he turned away, and a few shops over bought himself a coffee...sat on another bench to sip it.
But he could only think how the three of them had sat on this very bench, numerous times. Rebecca also with coffee, and Ian always with a chocolate frosted doughnut...the frosting smeared around his lips which were about the only untainted part of him.
Declan stood up, dropped his full coffee into a trash zapper, and retraced his steps to the department store, and its hardware section. There, he looked at screwdrivers and hammers, knives and flammable gases and liquids. At last, he drifted into the camping section. How Ian might have loved to play in that tent they had erected.
Walking briskly now where he had drifted wraith-like only a half hour earlier, Declan returned to the music store. The boys were not there. He was partly relieved, and greatly disappointed. He started toward the food court...but hadn’t gotten far before he saw the pair through another window, inside a trendy clothing store.
Declan entered it. Though none of what he saw appealed to him, he made a purchase before he shadowed the two young men out into the mall again. But it soon became apparent that they had had their fill of the mall for one day, as they made their way toward one of the exits into the parking levels.
The two friends descended a staircase to their garage level, rather than take an elevator; the stairwell echoed with their tramping footfalls and boomingly enclosed voices. The metal steps ended in a landing before turning and plunging downward again. Below, a wall light fluttered like a bright dying moth against the sickly hospital-green tiles.
Above them, Declan paused on the landing, rummaged in several of his bags. Then, he too plunged below. His own footfalls did not clang or reverberate; he might have been a spirit.
The boys crossed the garage, slipping between closely filed vehicles of every description, reflecting the over-rich blend of Punktown’s cultures. Their own vehicle, when reached, was a much dented and scratched black hovercar with Mexican Day of the Dead skulls and figures stenciled all over it, so that it was like some jubilant hearse.
For several moments, from behind a support column, Declan anxiously watched a man in a cloned leather jacket and a woman in an orange leotard duck into their own vehicle and drive off toward the exit ramp. Then he stepped out briskly, and covered the remaining ground between himself and the black hovercar.
“Merry Christmas,” said Declan behind the long-haired boy, who had just opened his door but turned toward the voice.
Declan extended his hand as if to offer a gift. He seemed more like some trick or treater at Halloween, however, as his head was covered in a sequined Mexican wrestler’s mask.
The bright red flare gun was for campers, to save them if lost. He was lost. It had six chambers in a revolving cylinder. Like Randy Atlas with his helmet and his guns, Randy Atlas the avenger and protector of the innocent, he fired shot after shot directly into the face of the beautiful boy with the long hair.
The murky, low-ceilinged parking garage now danced with flicker and fire. The boy fell back howling against a neighboring vehicle, his hands batting at a pink and molten inferno of a face, like that of an enraged demon. Inside an almost liquid caul of flame, Declan thought he saw its core of flesh half cave in upon itself. He was sorry that the eyes must be melting. Sorry they would not be able to regard that face when at last it cooled. For he would live, Declan trusted. Science could see to that.
The flare gun clicked dry. Declan wheeled and ran. The beauti
ful boy had fallen, shrieking, between two vehicles, his sputtering glow seen underneath them. The friend, also shrieking, had ducked down out of sight as well, though unscathed.
As he ran—the bag containing the Randy Atlas doll still tucked under one arm, clutched tightly against his chest like a rescued infant—Declan no longer saw fire reflected on the skins of the many vehicles, cold and ranked like coffins in these vaults. Fire no longer glittered on the sequins of the ugly mask he wore over his handsome face, or on the tears in the eyes that shone through it.
– For Colin
THE PRESSMAN
Immanuel Glint didn’t like the new pressman. It was a robot, of course, and in appearance it put Glint in mind of a mating pair of praying mantises that had been sculpted from steel by Salvador Dali whilst on hallucinogens. At least the many-limbed monstrosity had only one head (which again reminded Glint of romantic praying mantises, since it was the female’s habit to chew the head off her lover while in the throes of passion). The new machine was immaculately clean—unnaturally so, as if it were what a robot would look like when it went to heaven. None of the dents, scratches, ink stains on its armored skin that the other pressmen sported. It gave the new pressman a preening, prissy look, in Glint’s mind.
Of course, he had to admit his feelings were tainted by the perhaps too-vivid imagination of an artist, since Glint was the art director for Paxton Printing.
He approached the pressman now, a chip of information in his hand. The robot had interfaced with its press by inserting its connectors into the press’s control board. Glint saw sheets of paper, letterheads, passing out the other end on a conveyor belt, and alighting into a catcher. The vibrating catcher jogged them into a neat stack.
“Good morning, Manny,” the robot said to him in a pleasant male voice (though it had no mouth), sounding to Glint irritatingly like the talking action figure Randy Atlas and swiveling its insect-like head to face him. “You must be bringing that job you need me to run for the new catalog.”
“Hi, Buddy,” Glint said. If there was one nickname he hated worse than Manny, it was Buddy. The Press Supervisor, Scott, had christened the new worker. “Yes, I have it here.” He held up the chip for the huge blank eyes to see.
“Excellent, Manny. You may insert it into my secondary port—don’t worry, you won’t disturb me.”
“Thanks...I am in a bit of a hurry for these samples,” he said with a twinge of bitterness, feeding the chip into the automaton. “Deadlines, you know,” he continued in a murmur. He added, “Unrealistic deadlines.”
“I’m sorry to hear you’re feeling stressed, Manny. Who is imposing these insensitive deadlines on you?”
“Maya Gendron, from the Corp Head. She’s visiting here this week, too...breathing down my neck.” Glint couldn’t believe he was unburdening himself to a machine that was only programmed to banter in the way that the intercom was programmed to play lulling music. But it was like talking to himself, so he vented further by adding, “She’s a tyrant. Ugly little troll of a tyrant who could benefit from the company of a man.”
“My goodness,” said Buddy sympathetically. “She sounds terrible; I’ll be sure to stay out of her way. Well, Manny, I’ll give you a beep as soon as your samples are ready, and I’ll get right on them.”
“Great—thanks,” he said, turning back toward the offices and his little one-man art department area.
It wasn’t even an hour before Buddy beeped, and summoned Glint back to the vast press room. The robot waved a slender bird-like claw at a dozen neat stacks of printed Bar Mitzvah invitations for the latest dealer catalog. “That was quick,” Glint had to compliment the sparkling machine, and he examined one of the cards. He frowned at it for a few moments, then motioned Buddy to come closer. “Hey Buddy, this green is very different from the one in my design. Has your system been color-checked for accuracy?”
Buddy peered over his shoulder at the card. “Oh yes, my system is quite accurate. It’s just, to be honest, Manny, I felt the green in this design was a little on the yellowish side. I really admire this artwork, but I found that a bluish green had a more agreeable effect.”
Glint looked up at the machine slowly. “Hey...now you listen...I’m the art director, do you understand that? You can’t change my color scheme, here!”
“But, Manny, with all respect...”
“No. No. You do not change my designs! This is ridiculous!” Glint reinspected the sample. “Look at this—look! These children! Some of them have brown faces...”
“I thought there wasn’t enough ethnic diversity before, Manny.”
“They’re Jewish kids—in Israel!”
“There are black Jewish people, you know, Manny,” Buddy seemed to scold him gently.
“What? You are just a machine, a tool! You do not, do not redesign my work, or so help me I’ll have you thrown in the trash zapper! Do you comprehend me?”
“Well, if you insist, Manny. I was only trying to help...”
“Shut up,” Glint growled. “Throw out that dung, run my job again, and don’t ever tamper with my color schemes again!” With that, he stormed toward the offices...but he stopped long enough to shout back, “And don’t call me Manny! To you, I’m Mr. Glint!”
A little over a half hour later, Glint was again beeped by Buddy to come out to the press area. Glint saved the program he was working on, and strode with determination out to the plant—determined not to accept any more insubordination from the new “equipment”.
He almost stopped in his tracks when he saw Maya Gendron standing beside Buddy at the end of his press—Maya Gendron, the Chief Art Director at Corporate Headquarters on Earth.
“Hello, Immanuel,” said Maya, examining two samples of the Bar Mitzvah invitation. “Buddy was just showing me your card. Nice work.”Glint drew nearer to her. She was comparing two different cards, he realized—his version, and Buddy’s. Maya went on, “I have to say, though, that I prefer this first color scheme. The blue-green is much prettier, and the mix of different children is a nice touch...”
Glint couldn’t believe his ears. He glared at the robot, but its face was unreadable. He could feel the blood rising in his own. “Buddy, I ordered you to throw out that first batch, didn’t I?”
“What are you talking about, Immanuel?” Maya said. “I just told you, I prefer...”
“But Maya! I gave this...this insolent piece of junk specific instructions...”
“I truly hate to complain, Miss Gendron,” Buddy cut in with his soothing voice, “but Mr. Glint has been most unpleasant with me, when all I am trying to do is give our customers the best possible product...”
“That’s enough!” Glint bellowed at the device. “Shut up, shut up!”
“Mr. Glint!” Maya huffed.
Then suddenly, Glint heard his own voice speaking...but it was not coming from his own mouth. It was a recording, he realized, that the robot had somehow made of his words earlier, and now played back. The recording said, “Maya Gendron, from the Corp Head. She’s visiting here this week, too...breathing down my neck. She’s a tyrant. Ugly little troll of a tyrant who could benefit from the company of a man.”
When the recording was over, Buddy added, “As you can see, Mr. Glint can be most unpleasant to work with, Maya.”
Maya’s head cleanly swivelled on her neck as if she were a robot herself, so as to face Glint. “I can see that now, Buddy,” she said icily. “I can see that very clearly.”
Immanuel Glint could find no further words to say. Buddy had stolen them. And, of course, his job as well.
THE PALACE OF NOTHINGNESS
Titus stopped for lunch at J. J. Redhook’s Crab Cabin. Writhing masses of these “crabs”—actually more of a lobster-sized cousin to the silverfish with porcelain-white armor—waited in mesh holding bins in the water outside the cabin, bobbing half-submerged. This body of water was a large cooling tank formerly used by the now closed down Plastech Foundries. These days, the above-mentioned white-crabs call
ed its murky depths home, seeded with the help of Mr. Redhook, who also grew a sort of tendriled weed in the pool, which when cooked had a noodle-like consistency and agreeably salty taste. Titus had had a bowl of this weed plus a single pale ale. Now, he left the Crab Cabin with a large coffee-to-go.
He stood at the fenced perimeter of the former cooling basin, sipping his coffee, which steamed in the chilly air. He loved a good coffee but found that even bad coffee like this had a certain junk-food charm; unacceptable at a nice restaurant but perfectly fine for carnivals, park concession stands, crab cabins and their ilk. The cold, dreamily slurping waters of the large tank steamed as well, in great clouds around the legs of J. J. Redhook, which half-projected out over the pool. The white noodle-like weed mostly grew at the pool’s bottom but here and there, tangles of it like the hair of drowned women spread out over the surface. The red paint and glowing windows of the wooden Crab Cabin were a friendly warmth in the misty, towering grayness of the surrounding city of Punktown.
By profession, Titus found the Crab Cabin interesting. He found the looming Plastech Foundries, in whose shadow J. J. Redhook dwelled as a little red parasite feasting off its remains, even more compelling. He was a Properties Investigator for one of Paxton’s leading real estate companies. Space was at a premium in Punktown, which could only build up, out and down so much. He scouted out, examined and initiated the purchase of troubled or abandoned property that could be changed into a new housing development where an old one had burned, a new mall where an earlier had failed, a parking garage for a Spartan, icy office block where an outdated factory had once churned with greasy, sweating life.
He took in the cityscape which all but walled up the sky alive, as softly out of focus as a distant mountain range. His reaction to a failing or failed structure was curious, even to him. He loved buildings, architecture. It pained him to see a beautiful Choom theater which predated Earth colonization shut down after a hundred and fifty years. But another part of him perked up in eagerness at the opportunity this presented. A darkened school in which children would no longer swarm energetically, a plant like Paxton Printing now hollowed out and stripped down like a flayed whale while its robot workers were recycled and its live laborers despaired for another place to make their living—these images filled Titus with melancholy. There was nothing quite so lonely as a deserted building...unless that was a deserted house.
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