by Jenn Polish
>
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
Chapter Seven
HE LIKED JAMES well enough. A little too much, he feared sometimes. Like when James smiled at first seeing the fluorescent butterflies and their light reflected on his skin, on his circuitry, in his eyes. Or when he stared out at the ocean, steel in his gaze but looking for all the world as though he wanted to be able to dive in, to feel the salty wetness soaking his body without pain, without being punished for trying to escape.
But James wasn’t Mir. Peter had failed.
And no one had come out of the last vortex he’d found but not created. It had opened—Interface must have opened it—but it was empty. Interface was monitoring it while he wept and James slept, but he didn’t think anyone was coming. It had been hours.
He’d retreated down the beach to a spot near the lagoon, cut off from the rest, shielded from view by dune upon dune. He’d flown over the dunes and floated, unable to get up enough strength to fly higher and faster. He just floated in the air, hovering above the surf, right above the crashing waves. Their rhythm soothed him, even as he pulled himself into a ball and sobbed.
He was failing Mir.
More to the point, Mir had abandoned him. Chose death over him.
He focused on the easier part, where he’d failed with not one vortex, but now, with two.
Peter stayed that way, curled into a ball, his face wet from tears and the waves beneath him, until a voice jarred him out of his misery.
“Hey. Hey, kid. Boy. Why are you crying?”
The voice behind him was soft, gentle, curious, but not invasive. Still, Peter sank out of the air unceremoniously with shock, just as a wave crashed beneath him. It enveloped him, dragging him under.
His stomach scraped against the sand as the wave tugged him along, but he let it take him. He didn’t know why, but he trusted it. The dragging didn’t hurt with his binder protecting his skin underneath his shirt, and anyway, it felt, even as it took his breath from his lungs, like home.
Not the home he’d come from, but the home he’d always fantasized about.
Knowing he would surface soon, Peter hoped, more than a little bit, that he might this time catch a bit of the songs James swore he had heard when he was being shocked in the water.
Sure enough, just as his lungs started burning, an ethereal melody rose in his ears. He strained to hear more, but then the wave relented, pulling back, and Peter scrambled to his feet, gasping for breath.
“Look out!” that same voice called, and before he could brace his legs or turn around, another wave slammed into the back of Peter’s legs.
His knees buckled, but this time instead of slamming into the sand and salt, his fall was broken by a firm set of hands and a pair of thighs wrapped in an ancient blue woven material.
“This material,” Peter gasped as soon as he had some of his breath back, as he peeled his skin away from hers and looked up into her angular face, “used to be called…corduroy, right?”
“Denim. A denim miniskirt. But seriously, though. Girl shows up on island. Girl walks in on you crying. Girl practically gets you drowned, and then girl saves you from being wiped out again. And the first thing you say—before thanks, mind you—is a question about the make of my clothes?”
Peter grinned as he shoved himself up to his feet.
“Makes sense, though, doesn’t it? I’ve seen a girl before. I’ve been wiped out by waves before, but I’ve never seen something crafted like that before. Not where I come from, anyway.”
The girl just shrugged, her focus leaving his dripping face to scan the island keenly, almost hungrily.
“Tink sent me to get you. Said I should introduce myself.”
“Tink? You mean…you mean from back home, or is there someone else on the island, or—”
The girl tilted her head and furrowed her brow. “Little machine, about your height, kinda looks like…I don’t know, a fairy or something. Screen on her stomach?”
“You mean Interface.” Peter rubbed at his eyes irritably with his palms.
“Yeah, I figured she needed a better name—”
“She.”
The girl shrugged. “She seemed to like it. She did that thing where she chimes like a little laugh. Have you heard her do that? And her interface screen went a little red—do you think machines can blush?”
“What are you… Can you slow the hell down? Who are you? Interface—Tink?—sent…you?”
The girl nodded. “Just got here. That little faerie machine apparently believes in putting people to work quickly.” She stared off over her shoulder, in the direction of the portal, now disintegrated. “And apparently in seriously impressing newcomers with her dashing good looks.” She leaned into Peter unexpectedly, and he jumped back. She smirked and whispered, “Know if she’s seeing anyone?”
“She’s a machine, I don’t—wait. Wait, so Interface finally got someone to come through the portal she opened then? You came through the portal, right? It worked?”
His heart sank, and he wanted to curl back into that ball and never uncurl.
Not Mir.
“Big swirly thing came and sucked me out of my world and spit me out on some island that can’t possibly be on Earth because we destroyed it too long ago for this to be anywhere near real? Yep. That’s me. Portal girl.”
Peter laughed despite himself, but as he looked up into her face, something else registered. Something deeper, something more painful than the wave knocking him down.
Her face. Her voice. The way she’d recognized his boyness right away. The way she’d asked him why he was crying.
Why is that boy crying? a voice rang out in his head. Her voice. This girl’s voice.
“I know you,” Peter murmured, scrambling to his feet, distracted for a moment from his grief.
“I’m sorry?” she asked, backing away.
Maybe he was wrong. He didn’t want to scare her. Or, if she was scared, he didn’t want it to be of him.
“Sorry, I just thought… I came to this island—programmed it myself, actually—to…to find someone. My…my friend. My enbyfriend. To save them, really. And I… The morning I lost them, I think I saw you. In a silver speeder. With some stuffy old man. Thick mustache. You asked him why I was crying, and he told you I was a girl and that my keeper should take better care to keep us off the streets, I…I could swear it was you.”
The girl frowned at him, looked him up and down. “No,” she said. “Weird green pants like yours? I think I’d remember seeing you. But…but my uncle does have a silver speeder. And a thick mustache. And he’s stuffy and he’s old and he’s a man, so I…” The girl shivered, nodding to warn him of another wave about to crash on the backs of his knees. Peter braced. The girl did too, and for a moment, she seemed to forget Peter, losing herself in the feeling of cool, salty water crashing into her legs.
“I don’t know, kid. I don’t remember you, but hey, I guess it could have been me. Or else some weird coincidence. Lots of old stuffy white men have thick mustaches and silver speeders, right? Weird, but like…whatever. Not nearly as weird as getting sucked out of your life and into this…place. But I guess it could be better than there.”
The girl paused, frowning like she was looking at something that wasn’t in front of her; something that was behind her, and maybe, surrounding her. She shook her head like she was trying to get water out of her ears, even though Peter was the one who was sopping wet.
“I’m Gwen, by the way. You gonna show me
this island while Tink rests, or am I gonna have to show myself?”
<
<
<
{interference detected}
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
analog interface
primary mission failing>>
<
<
<
<
<
analog interface>>
<
processing
processing>>
<
<
four new children>>
<
<
Chapter Eight
HE HAD DAYS to show her, to discover more about the island himself. He learned to swim and he learned to swordfight. Gwen said it was some kind of ancient sport, and she would laugh when she knocked the sticks they used out of his hands, but somehow, the laughter was never unkind. James took to it with ease, using his hook as leverage when he could; he took to Gwen too, sharing stories with her and Tink late into the nights while Peter brooded, calculated. He tried to take comfort in the fact that time passed much quicker in holomaxes like Neverland than they did back in the world. It would have only been a few hours for Mir. But still, a few hours could be…
They started building a boat. It was Gwen’s idea. “So you can come on the water without getting wet, James,” she’d offered with a twisted grin. Peter wanted to just program it, but Gwen got in his face about Tink still needing to rest from those damn portals. So he put his hands to work using the blueprints and instructions Tink downlinked from the archives in her system. It was a good distraction.
But not good enough.
He was so occupied with trying to find Mir that he barely noticed anything about the next four children, all boys, who came through the following four portals he begged Interface to stir up the power for. He barely noticed anything about them, except for the fact that they weren’t Mir.
“What’s the problem?” he raged, right in front of their newest and youngest boy, lost in time, in space, in their holomax, whose name was Michael. Michael frowned and cuddled back into Jon, who at seventeen, was the oldest child on the island. He’d taken a protective stance toward Michael since the moment the eleven-year-old plopped out of the portal. Jon covered Michael’s ears with sandy palms and sent Peter a devastating glare.
Peter ignored it.
“Are my calculations wrong? Is it something in my coding? Are you diverting power elsewhere just to spite me? What is it, Interface?”
“No need to yell at her like that, Peter.” Gwen glared even harder than Jon, and Peter took an unconscious step back. Gwen smirked and Tink whirred in satisfaction.
“Yeah, man, come on. We know you miss your enbyfriend, but nobody’s trying to get yelled at, you know? Even Gwen’s computer girlfriend—”
“She’s not my girlfriend, Nibs!” Gwen blushed furiously, and Tink made a series of breezy, chiming tones that Peter couldn’t interpret. James could, and he smirked; Gwen could, and she blushed even harder and refused to look at Tink; while Slightly gave Nibs a she’ll-realize-eventually shrug.
Tink, on her part, switched to verbal, rather than tonal, interface mode, and said flatly, “Programmer cannot expect programming to function at maximal efficiency with such immense continuity. Tink also would request that programmer make a note of the fact that program existed before programmer, and the island does not require these continuous interruptions in—”
“No!” Peter interrupted, and the force of his protest blew Tink back a bit, her wings caught off guard at the human unpredictability. “No, I built this place. I built it, I dreamed it—I came up with it, with you, Interface, and if you wanna be all artificial intelligence on me, fine, okay, whatever, but you still have a purpose, and that purpose is finding Mir and bringing them here from the war. Saving them! Not some half-human lab rat or pretty girls for you to flirt with or boys who are so lost half of them can’t even remember their own names even though I keep trying to tell them what they are!”
James bristled, digging his hook into the fleshy part of his side irritably. Gwen’s fists were balled and James used his own fleshy hand to keep her from launching herself at Peter. Jon staunchly continued to cover Michael’s ears, even though the younger boy squirmed in protest. Nibs bit his already-stubby nails, looking at the sand as he kicked it; Slightly dropped out of the spot where he’d been hovering in the air and collapsed sloppily on the ground, belly-first.
All the boys were silent.
Tink was silent, crashing out of the air, something she was doing more often with each new portal Peter opened.
Gwen, though, jolted forward, breaking free of James’s grasp to steady Tink before stalking over to Peter, fists balled up and eyes narrow.
“Look, Peter, none of us asked to be here. None of us asked for you. But here we are, and somehow, none of us have conspired with Tink to keep this paradise all to ourselves and send you packing. Why? Two reasons. One: we feel bad for this Mir kid you keep going on about. And two: Tink created some pretty sweet living arrangements. I mean, neon butterflies that fly in formation to make dragons? And Slightly says he saw a mermaid the other night? Not that I believe him—”
“Hey, what’d I ever do to you?”
“You can’t remember your own name, you little lost boy. You think I’m gonna trust that you’re remembering that you saw some water-breathing human with a flipping fin?”
“Well, I—”
“Exactly. My point, Peter, is that neither of those two reasons is that we like you.” Gwen poked him in the shoulder at her final word, and Peter glared his hardest.
“I mean, he’s a pretty good guy when he’s not in panic mode,” James murmured, and Gwen sighed.
“Can I get some solidarity over here, Hook Boy?”
Again, Tink chimed with laughter. James grinned a little, but Peter scowled.
“Fine. None of you like me. Whatever. I mean, you used to, Gwen. I know you don’t remember, but it was you. I’m sure of it. You asked some man why I was crying, just like you did when you got to the island. You were nice to me then. And you know why? Because I was crying. Badly. Is that what you want me to do, huh? Cry? Sob, make a big show of it? I was crying because of Mir, Gwen, so just…please. Can you tap into whatever kindness you have in that sarcastic body of yours and just please ask Interface—Tink—to try one more time? Please? Just once. And we’ll get it right this time, I know it. We’ll find them. Please.”
He turned to Tink, looking down since she couldn’t fly any longer. Not today, anyway. “Please,” he repeated, his voice softer.
A whirring and a series of clicking sounds served as his only answer.
He waited, brow furrowed, heart hammering.
And then the island shook, and the last portal ripped open.
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
mir
found>>
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
tink>>
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
<
imminent>>
Chapter Nine
THE BEACH QUIETED, as it always did when Tink conjured up a vortex. Slightly’s hair was swept back by the wind the tunnel between realms created, and some errant sand and salty ocean water swept into his eyes, but he didn’t blink. Nor did Gwen, hovering by his side, holding Tink’s handlike sensor tendrils. Michael, less used to the vortexes, held his arm in front of his face but squinted around the sides, eyes feasting on the blue tunnel, which had opened this time right above the surf, a bit above his eye level.
James, for his part, stood far from the others, far from the portal. The mere sight of it, the mechanical sound of it, made his insides squirm. He’d adjusted, in such a short time, to the humming of the island, the tinkling of magic replacing the mechanical clangs of metal in his mind so deeply the sounds were now even more hateful to him than they’d been when he first arrived. His eyes were the only ones on the beach focused, not on the portal, but on Peter.
On the boy whose eyes were the first he’d seen when he was being flung through that portal. He’d collapsed in a small pocket in front of the opening, like the hanging bill of a pelican, invisible on Neverland but very present from the inside of the vortex. He’d had to pull himself up and tumble out, on his own, through the hole. And Peter’s wide eyes were the first things he’d seen. Even before he noticed the water, even before he’d registered the rich salt smell, the crashing of waves and the fluorescence of the moon. A real sky.