Okay. I could forgive a lot of patronizing for that.
He walked down past an empty bedroom to another closed door, and opened it, again without knocking.
I peeked inside. The room was blank, just gray walls and wood flooring, its windows sealed like the rest in this house. It contained only one thing, but a cloud of glitter shifting through a rainbow of colors as it swoops around the room like a gymnast’s ribbon doesn’t need much framing.
“Hello, Penelope,” it said in a voice I couldn’t classify as man or woman, girl or boy. “I’m delighted to meet you. My name is Epiphany. Assume I have heard and seen everything since you arrived.”
The swirling didn’t stop, and my head wobbled in circles and figure eights as I followed the figuratively hypnotic designs. “You’re a robot?” It looked like dust. Beautiful dust, admittedly.
Epiphany chuckled. “The issue has been debated more than once, but I agree with the term. My body is composed of… well, they’re too big to be nanites. I call them microites. Like you, I am transhuman. We were both once patterns of thought operating on proteins and ions. Now my pattern plays across the signals between tiny airborne machines, and yours plays in mechanical sonic rhythms in a very complicated shell of steel.”
I laid a hand over my chest, eyes going so wide I could feel them strain. “You know how my heart works?”
The wild swirling changed, forming a spiral facing me, although still just as colorful. “I do. I have very complicated perceptions now. They give me some awareness of what you’re going through, but mostly I know because I’ve been there.”
Recovering a little from the surprise, I reached up and tugged on one of my braids. “You said you were human.”
“Yes, and I know how you feel. Losing my human body was not my choice. Neither was losing my human identity. No matter what I did, I could not regain my old life, could not interact with humans the way I once did, and they could not truly accept me as human myself. Gothic and Raggedy supported me in my despair, until I worked through my emotions and found the me I had become.”
“You sound happy,” I said. He looked it, if colors and geometric patterns could be an expression.
“Much more than I ever was as a human,” it assured me, warm and sincere.
My hand flapped at the grey walls. “In an empty room? At least Cutting Edge has the Internet. Or are you hooked up to it wirelessly?”
“No.” I could hear the smile Epiphany had no face to display. “I could be, but I let go of human desires, and embraced the opportunities of this body. You like Gothic’s art. I carve air into shapes you don’t have the senses to perceive. I rearrange myself, stretching the limits of the patterns my mind can hold. My microites send and receive transmissions on a scale my biological self could not have imagined. Rather than other computers, I communicate with the Earth, the weather, sources of power throughout Los Angeles, and even the sun itself.”
“Communicate? They talk back?”
He chuckled. “You would have to be at least halfway to what I am now for the answer to that to make sense. I can describe the processes to a human with enough knowledge of physics, but not what it’s like.”
Wow. Yeah, I got that. Describing pigment chemistry, shapes, and electromagnetic frequencies would never tell someone born without sight what a colorful painting was like. My imagination reached uselessly but with wonder at the thought of being able to detect all the radiation emitted by the sun, and vibrations so tiny that they traced the contours inside my steel heart.
Beside me, Gothic beamed with pride. This was the whole point of the visit, for him and Raggedy. Epiphany’s story was supposed to sell me on letting go of being human. No one could meet this beautiful cloud creature and think he was worse off in an artificial body. There would be possibilities, a new perspective, a new life and relationships and happiness available to me if I stopped being Penny Akk and lived for this new combination of mind and body.
I was not even remotely tempted.
Although I did try hard not to let that stain my happiness for Epiphany. He found what he wanted. What I wanted was my life back from the monster that stole it.
A voice so loud I could hear it all the way from the street said, “Goshagollyroo! I know I left a little girl around here somewhere. Hey, Mister Brick! Did you see a girl with flappy pigtails like these?”
Something broke, with a loud crash and tinkle.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I told Gothic, and ran for the stairs. No, it wasn’t the most polite way I could have refused his well-meant offer, but I had to hurry to prevent his house from being ripped open. Any second, Gerty would decide this was a game of hide and seek, and jump up to meet me in the hallway. She still hadn’t mastered the concept of walls.
I skidded to a halt in the front room. Raggedy was already out of her chair and hobbling towards the front door, but it wasn’t Raggedy who stopped me. I still held the fat, fluffy, yellow stuffed rabbit in one arm. Placing it gently in Raggedy’s hands, I hardened my mechanical heart against its longingly reaching arms and waggling feet. Where I go, little bunny, you cannot follow.
That done, I threw the front door open and charged up the stairs to the street.
I made it in time. Gerty stood in the middle of the road, but nothing obvious on the street had been broken yet. Best guess for the earlier noises: she ate a mailbox.
First her head swiveled to look at me, then her upper body turned, then her head turned again because rotating her body had turned it too far. She lifted and opened her arms. “Who’s a Gerty Girl?”
“I’m a Gerty Gerty Girl,” I assured her, stepping in close. Oversized arms closed around me in a hug whose gentleness would surprise anyone who had only seen her break things.
From basement level, Raggedy’s voice cried out, “You found her! Gothic, come quick! Penelope found the mystery robot!”
A few seconds later, Gothic helped Raggedy climb the steps enough for them to both look over the cement edge. The old man stared in wonder. “Bless my soul, it is. Look at her. I’ve never seen the like. Every mad scientist in the city has been talking about this newcomer, but they would never describe her.”
Raggedy nudged him with an elbow. “Gothic, dear, I do believe that is one of those animatronic displays from a restaurant. You know? The ones that opened in the eighties?”
He pursed his mouth sourly. “You know I’ve never approved of those. They exploit and degrade artificial intelligence with their crippled parodies.”
The heavily bundled old woman, on the other hand, could not have smiled more joyfully. Waving a hand, she beckoned, “Her name is Gerty, correct? Please, bring her inside!”
I shook my head fast, and just to be sure held up one arm to cover Gerty’s mouth with my hand. “Not a good idea. She’ll wreck the building, and everything in it. Gerty is my friend, but she’s awfully clumsy.”
“That’s me!” Gerty crowed, “Why, I once broke the sound barrier by tripping over it. The only thing I’ve never broken is a child’s heart, and I hope I never do. Speaking of which…”
One of the arms tenderly enfolding me slid aside, then behind my legs. She only moved in simple stages, but she could move through them fast. It only took her a second to scoop me off the ground in both oversized, carpet-upholstered hands. Lifting me to eye level, she said, “This old nanny goat knows when one of her kids is hurtin’.”
Fast, and perceptive. She was right. Meeting Cutting Edge and Epiphany had been pleasant distractions, but now the dull ache set back in. I did not want to remember my mom’s expression—
“How about a game of upsy-daisy?” shouted Gerty, and threw me about twenty feet in the air.
“AAAAA!” I said.
As fast as I went up, I fell back down into Gerty’s waiting arms. Then she flung me into the air again.
“AAAAA!” I repeated.
Shocked and alarmed I might be, but one thing I did not feel was panic. Gerty’s programming would not allow her to drop me
, no matter how clumsy she might act.
And again, she saw my thoughts turn serious. Her elongated goat face looked into mine for less than a second before she said, “My poor little Gerty Girl. This isn’t working at all. How about I bake you a chocolate cake? Everybody loves cake!”
I slid out of her arms to the ground. Gerty didn’t try to stop me. She was busy opening up a large panel in the front of her apron, baring her mechanical insides. The base of a cannon unfolded from her stomach, and other hatches opened up in her arms, shoulders, and legs, extending bits of equipment on skinny folding arms, until it all clicked together to form a gatling-style gun, each barrel as thick as my arm.
“Oh, my goodness,” said Raggedy, and Gothic wrapped his arms around her protectively.
With a sigh, I said, “Hey, Gerty, how long can you hold your breath?”
“Nine hundred two seconds! Just watch!” she recited, followed by a raspy, loud inhale, and her jaws clamping shut.
That was how intermission started in her restaurant shows, after all.
I leaned against her arm, wincing at having had to deceive her when she was trying to cheer me up. It felt totally different from the game of getting her to play the silly game that would be useful to me.
Up the street, a girl shouted, “I want chocolate caaaake!”
Gerty blinked. The barrels of her cannon started to rotate, with an increasingly loud whirring noise.
Oh, criminy. I dove for the ground, huddled by Gerty’s feet.
Not a moment too soon. The gun reached operating speed, and with a thud-thud-thud-thud rapid-fired brown blobs. Cupcakes. They were cupcakes. Her upper body rotated, splattering the front of Gothic and Raggedy’s house. With a shriek of alarm, they hurried back down the stairs and slammed their front door.
Peeking around Gerty’s skirts, I saw Marcia, face twisted in a snarl, running up the street towards us. She was maybe fifteen feet away when Gerty finished swinging around and pelted her with cake and frosting, knocking her off her feet.
Realizing I probably should have done this sooner, I shouted in a stern, scolding voice, “Gerty! I hope you haven’t lost count and have to start over.”
The gun barrels slowed and stopped. The seven-foot-tall animatronic goat announced bashfully, “Oops. I’m a goober goat. But nobody in the barnyard can hold their breath as long as Gerty, you’ll see!”
She did the inhale thing again, and froze.
On her back, her front a smeary mess of chocolate, Marcia laughed hysterically, and waved one arm. “Help me up? Please?”
I took her hand and pulled, dragging her to her feet. She spent those few seconds licking cupcake off her fingers. “Thanks. Man, this is tasty. Now that I’m standing, can you keep me from falling over again?”
Marcia leaned, then collapsed against me. Despite the mess, I hooked an arm around her waist to support her. Up close, I could both see and feel her body trembling.
I turned my disapproving scowl on a new target. “You used your super power to run all the way here from… where?”
“Your teammate’s house. The blonde one, with the chest fit for a senior. I missed the tests, but was just in time to see your goat go tearing off after you. Boy, can she move. Bakes a delicious cake, too.” Despite her wheezing and trembling, she scooped up some more chocolate frosting and stuck it in her mouth.
At the appreciative mention, Gerty blinked again, but I glared at her and she went back to pretending to hold her breath.
My face pinched in a grimace as I corrected Marcia, “Not my teammate anymore. Ray and Claire both believe the parasite.”
Marcia blew that off with a literal puff and snort. “They’re being ridiculous. You’re obviously the real Penny.”
I sighed. I couldn’t even walk away from this conversation, because I didn’t want to leave Marcia in this condition. “Not really comforting, coming from… wait. Is this another excuse to fight? Are you going to attack me as soon as you stop… internally bleeding, or whatever?”
Completely without guilt, she gave me a sunny, dizzy smile from a few inches away. “Yep! We’re up to the one where I tried to trip you and freaked out when I failed.”
“It was Ray you tried to trip, and I’m not in the mood.”
She bumped me in the chest with her fist. “What, because they fell for your duplicate’s line of patter? It doesn’t matter what they think. You know who you are.”
I rolled my head in frustration and groaned. “Marcia, I get that this is your crazy new version of friendship—”
“No, you don’t get it,” she interrupted, face and voice hardening.
She couldn’t keep that up for more than a couple of seconds before the shaking came back, but it got my attention. I stayed silent as she poked my chest with her index finger. “You know this, Penny, but you’ve never thought about it, never really gotten it. I was miserable when I met you. All I’d ever heard was that I had no right to be human like other people. The best I could possibly do was ‘good enough.’ That’s it. Anything less than perfection was failure. My friends were fake, only there as long as I made them look good. Trying to satisfy other people broke me down until I was empty inside. I didn’t know Marcia Angelica Bradley. My whole life was spent with people telling her to shut up and die so I could be a beautiful, smiling zombie.”
The sheer venom with which she spat those last three words made me flinch. Horror kept me quiet, so she kept talking. “You took my beauty and my smile and my perfection away from me. I had nothing left, so I went looking for Marcia Bradley. I found her. No one else did it for me. I made myself who I wanted to be. This is the Marcia I want to be, the one I chose. Now we’ve come full circle, and it’s you who is empty from caring what others think. Forget them, and tell me—who. Are. You?”
I didn’t even need time to think. I knew. “Penelope Justice Akk.”
Marcia boggled. “Justice? Your middle name is Justice? Ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
Her laughter should have hurt, should have made me angry, but it didn’t. Up close, all I could see was how different she looked from when we hated each other in middle school. Before, she’d been tanned bronze, her hair bleached blonde, her laugh harsh and sharp. Now it wobbled with honest joy, and her ragged, naturally black hair bounced around a face that… well, it still wasn’t pale, but the touch of brown was strictly natural.
Her laughter reminded me of Ray and Claire, who were my friends, whether they knew it or not, who would be my friends even if the parasite kept them wrapped in a lie the rest of their lives.
Recovered enough to push away from me and stand on her own wobbly legs, Marcia let her laughter trail off, giving me a knowing grin instead. “But there’s one more thing. You pushed me there faster, but I’d been heading towards that crash all my life. It was inevitable, because I couldn’t live like that. Maybe I’ve helped you see this a little faster, but you would have figured it out without me. I know it, because Penelope Justice Akk is Penelope Justice Akk, and can’t be anyone else.”
I ran my hand back over my hair, and gave a pigtail an absentminded pull. “Yeah, okay. But can I at least wallow in my misery a little? I think I’ve earned it.”
She cocked her thumb like the hammer of a gun, and pointed her index finger at me. “It doesn’t matter what I think. If that’s what’s right for you, go for it.”
Not that I could. I wasn’t exactly happy, but the unhappiness had also gone missing. While I looked for my missing emotions, a thought popped up instead. “You… don’t have any of those plastic hero figurines in your lair, do you? The one you gave me?” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “I just found out, they’re all enchanted. Gothic uses them to spy on people.”
She nodded. “I know.”
“…what? You do?”
She lowered her voice too, leaning shoulder to shoulder with me conspiratorially. “Oh, yeah. My grandfather was a superhero back in the day. If you think my father is creepy, you should have met old Jake Bradley. He had this whole
collection of custom-made dress-up dolls for heroines and villainesses he knew. It was messed up. When I was six my father caught one of those dolls moving. I’m not sure if he melted them down or locked them up or what, but they’re definitely not anywhere they can see or hear anything anymore.”
I shook my head, amused despite myself. “Your family is a freak show, even by hero standards.”
She laughed. “Oh, you know it. I’m getting letters from some woman now claiming I’m her great-granddaughter, and I know for a fact that’s not true.”
Wind whipped around us, released in a blast from Gerty’s mouth as she slumped forward. “Nine hundred two!”
Marcia pumped her fist. “Yes! She’s awake again! Hey, food goat, I’m starving. Do you make anything besides cake?”
I ran for cover. In the recessed doorway of a nearby house, I remembered the text message I’d gotten earlier, and checked my phone.
It was from Misty Lutra: You can still depend on me. Nothing has changed.
You could plan an epic confrontation, but people kept on being themselves. Including me. So, to the backdrop of gargling noises and a menu being sung in the distance, I composed a letter.
Mom and Dad,
There’s always a day at camp when your homesickness gets so bad, it feels like you’ll never get to go back to your family again. Today was that day. I want you to know that I got through it. I love you too much to give up. I will come home. We will be a family again. I promise.
Missing You So Much,
Your Daughter Penny
dragged my teammate by the arm up the main street of Chinatown.
“I do not want to be here,” Ampexia reminded me for the twentieth time as her shoes skidded over the pavement.
Lowering my face, I gave her my second-best ‘peering skeptically over my glasses’ expression. It couldn’t be my best until I got my malfunctioning meat eyes and actual glasses back. “Who doesn’t love watching supervillains relax and literally blow off steam?”
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