Deadrock

by Jill Sardegna

They dodged the traffic and crisscrossed through double-parked trucks to the McDonald's on the corner. Inside, Max marched toward the order counter and scanned the menu in vain for the Big Mold.

  "I'll have a Big Max, er, Mac," Nickie said, blushing, to the teenager behind the counter.

  "You want fries with that?" asked the teen.

  "Sure. And a diet Coke. And he'll have the same." She smiled at Max. "Don't look so offended. After all, I'm paying and I don't want to go over our food allowance.

  "Well, at least let me carry your tray, oh Master," he said.

  "Okay, you carry everything and I'll get us a table." And she turned, leaving him to balance the full tray plus the load of packages. "Just kidding," she said, laughing, and taking the bags of items out of his arms and finding a table.

  "This place must be new to you," said NIckie playfully. She sat and immediately dug into her burger. "Seeing as how you live in the future and all."

  "Oh, no, we have one on every outlying planet. Over one hundred gazillion served."

  "Uh-huh, and on Mars they order a big Galactic Burger with cheese, right?

  "Nope, Martians are a vegetarian colony. They order McTofu and seaweed strings," said Max, stealing one of her fries.

  She slapped his hand. "So how did you get here? Just come in your little time machine? Or did you beam yourself here?"

  "Nickie, Nickie, Nickie. What do you think this is, Star Trek?"

  "Oh, but you have Star Trek where you come from?"

  "Of course! Original and Next Generation and Deep Space 9, my personal favorite. They got so much right!"

  "Uh-huh."

  "No, really! We teach The Original in school. The Trouble With Tribbles is required viewing. I even have it on cerebral chip. Do you want to hear a short selection?"

  "I dunna have the power," she laughed.

  He was reminded of some other image of a woman laughing. Some photo or painting, maybe. He quickly skimmed his art files but came up with zero. No, he thought. There really is nothing quite like this girl.

  Chapter 11

  That evening in the motel room, Max perched on his bed and yelled into the Linker. "Leo, I'm – hello? Leo? I can't get the connection," said Max to Bird. "I hate these old things! They can't connect well through time!" He tossed the flexible tube down on the bed. "Why won't they just let us use the MindLink?"

  "Let's take a walk," said Bird. "Take your mind right off your troubles. And we'll work off our dinner."

  "Ugh, don't remind me," said Max. "That's the last time you pick the restaurant, Bird. No wonder they call them falafels. One bite and you feel awful."

  "It's healthy!" said Bird. "Better than that meat and fried food you brought me for lunch."

  "Beef! When was the last time you had a chance to eat beef and fried food? I thought it'd be a treat for you."

  "I never eat beef. Out of respect for Bluebell. Speaking of her, let's take her out for a walk!" Bird's hand flew to the holopet coop on his belt.

  "Forget it, Bird! All we need is to get arrested for walking a big, blue holopet buffalo in Central Park."

  "No problem. I always curb her."

  "No way. We're going to stay in and wait for my call."

  "Sure. Why not? You've been out all day walking with pretty Nickie while old Bird here's been shut up inside. Do you know what happens to a Native American who's shut up too much?"

  Max grinned and shook his head.

  "We EXPLODE! No, really! Just spontaneously erupt. Better let me out now and then. Let me go with Nickie and you watch the office."

  "Forget it!" said Max.

  "Oh, that's how it is, huh? Afraid a tall, dark, good-looking braided guy like me will woo her away from you, huh?"

  "Shut up, Bird."

  "I didn't know sergeants fell in love! Max's got a girlfriend! Max's got a giiiiiirrrrl friend!"

  "Shut up, Bird!" Max grabbed his pillow and swung it into the man's chest.

  "Ooopphh," said Bird, knocked to the bed. "I can't help it! It's my tribal custom to mock a man! It drives him on to war honors to redeem himself!" Bird jumped up on the bed, snatched his pillow and smacked it soundly on Max's head. "Don't worry, Max, I won't tell Nickie you're in loooovve!"

  Max retaliated with a pillow punch across the nose that sent the big man flying.

  "Max, are you there?" a crackled voice rang out in the room.

  "It's Leo!" said Max, grabbing the Link.

  Bird sat up and rubbed his nose with exaggerated dizziness, "Max, are you there?" he echoed.

  "It's Max, Leo, " he said into the Link. "We've got a bad connection so I'm going to talk fast. You've got to postpone the Spinelli thing for a while. We know the victim gets murdered in ten days, see. Then I'll come home."

  Leo' voice sizzled, faded, then rose again. "I'm trying Max, but O'Malley wants to go in Friday. He thinks Spinelli's getting nervous."

  "Talk to the Chief, Leo. She likes me. She'll help us out."

  "I don't know, Max, I'll try, but don't expect miracles,"

  "I have faith in you, Leo. You can do it. See the Chief, okay?"

  "Okay, Max, I'll-" But his voice faded away with the connection.

  Max collapsed the tube and put it in the nightstand drawer. "O'Malley, that slime dribbler. He wants my promotion."

  Bird swung his feet off the bed. "Maybe a game of Coup Sticks would help."

  "Sorry, Bird. I'm not up much on martial arts."

  "No, Max. Coup Sticks is a tribal game. It improves your strategy. Also a boon to the reflexes."

  "Well, okay. One short game."

  "Actually, one plays the game over a number of days," said Bird. "Kind of like the old Slasherball World Series."

  "So, how do you play?"

  "Well, it's sort of a sneaking-up-on-someone game. In my tribe, a brave would sneak into another camp and touch the enemy with his coup stick. Touch him, but not hurt him. Sort of like: I gotcha!"

  "Like tag?"

  "Yeah, only we hide and try to take the other by surprise. Each touch of the coup stick is worth one point."

  "What do we use for coup sticks?"

  "Hmmmm," said Bird. He thought for a minute, went into the bathroom and emerged a few minutes later with two empty toilet paper rolls in his hands. "Taa-daa!" he said. "Okay, we'll use this one square city block as our territory tonight. Ground-floor only and outside of buildings only. We leave the building at the same time, but go in opposite directions."

  "How will I know when the game's over?" asked Max.

  "It's over when I score," said Bird.

  "Or when I score," said Max.

  "Yes, well now that you've brought it up, it is customary to speculate on the outcome…"

  "In the form of a friendly wager, right, Bird? Forget it! No gambling!"

  "Gambling? Did I mention gambling? Wow, you really have a suspicious nature, Max. Makes for a good cop, but not much for a great friend. Losing will be good for your character," said Bird.

  "Who says I'm going to lose?"

  "One hundred Regis 3 credits says you will – by fifty points at least!" said Bird, sprinting for the door.

  "Hey!" said Max, chasing him. As they fought for the knob, Bird's belt coop began to beep and flash.

  "Don't you dare let her out!" said Max.

  "She can hold the bet!"

  "No bets, I'm warning you, Biiirrird!"

  Chapter 12

  Planetary Earth Date: 15.7.2015

  The next morning on their way to work, Max realized that these walks were going to seem unbearably long if he didn't start winning more coups. A jet roared overhead and he used it as an excuse to pretend that he didn't hear Bird gloating over his latest win.

  "I said, so what's the score now, Max?" asked Bird.

  "You know the score is 3 Bird, 1 Max," said Max stepping along a little faster.

  "I got you good by the deli, didn't I, Max?" crowed Bird. "I snuck up behind you and GOTTCHA!" He poked Max in the ribs and drew stares from fellow
pedestrians.

  "Yeah, well, I got you pretty good this morning," said Max.

  "As I said at the time, I don't think that was a fair coup."

  "You didn't say, 'Game Over' the night before, so you were fair game," said Max, crowing a bit himself.

  "But getting a coup on a man sound asleep isn't exactly kosher," said Bird.

  "Didn't you tell me that braves in your tribe thought it was the highest coup to touch a corpse? Well, believe me, you looked dead."

  "I warn you, Max, you're upping the stakes. I may have to start playing hard-ball," said Bird.

  "Just don't scalp me," said Max entering the office building.

  "Now there you go. You new-comers always get that wrong. Native Americans rarely scalped anybody! And we were taught the practice by you people who invaded our lan-"

  "Yeah, yeah," said Max.

  They entered the offices of Rhoades Through Time. Nickie poked her head out of her cubicle door.

  "Ready to go, Max?" she asked.

  "Ready," he beamed.

  Bird whispered, "All I have to do is get you a picture of Nickie to moon over and I'll be able to coup you a million times. Gottcha, gottcha, gottcha!"

  "Just get to work – and stick to Ted," Max hissed.

  As he walked toward her, Max thought Nickie looked even better than yesterday. Who says blue sundresses aren't appropriate in an office?

  They neared their first stop, Rasputin Used Records store.

  "What's a record?" Max asked Nickie.

  "Yeah, I know," she laughed. "I'll put in some CDs, too, but I think the capsule should have some vinyl."

  Max entered and followed Nickie through the arches of the stolen goods detector. He closed his eyes tight to protect his corneas. They'll all be blind by age 102, he thought sadly.

  As Nickie wended her way down the aisle marked Heavy Metal, Max stopped to consider the grubby poster of a blonde, scantily clad woman wearing a crucifix.

  "Who's that?" he asked a clerk who stuffed square, flat boxes into a wooden bin.

  The clerk gave him a snarky smile and adjusted one of two tiny gold rings that pierced his right nostril. "I'm with ya, dude, but some people still dig Madonna."

  Madonna? The people of the twenty-first century picture the Madonna looking like that? I wonder how they picture Joseph and the Wise Men, Max wondered.

  "And she sings?" muttered Max.

  "Some people think so. Mostly old," said the clerk. "Personally, I like more combative stuff, you know, full-body-contact, retro-fusion, nihilist rock and roll!"

  "Yeah," said Max, "I like a good Scream-In or a Howling, myself," said Max.

  "Scream-In? Where do you go for that, man?"

  Max was just trying to figure out how to give the clerk directions to a Howl Dome that wouldn't be built for another 98 years when Nickie placed a tall, teetering stack of vinyl records on the counter.

  "Would you send these to this address?" she asked the clerk, handing him her business card and a credit card.

  She turned to Max. "I really need your help, Max! What should we include? Rock, pop, jazz, hip-hop, country, rap? And which artists?"

  Max stared at the rows of records and antiquated CDs, the crude predecessors of the liquid sound tube. He tried to remember the name of that ancient band Grandma collected. What was it…Red something? No, I got it! "Pink Lloyd!" he said.

  "Hmm, yeah, Pink Floyd. We could put some classics in there. Maybe we'll just load up a computer with a little of everything and include a loaded flashdrive. And classical, too? Who should we get? Beethoven, Mozart, Bach…"

  "Elvis."

  "C'mon, I'm serious!" she said.

  So was I. He's practically a deity, after all, thought Max. "Does it really matter what you put in the capsule?"

  "Yes it matters!" she said, fumbling with the returned credit card. "I think of it as planting an archeological garden. Something to say here's what we thought about, here's what we worried about, here's what we wanted to be-" She broke it off and hurried from the store. Max ran after her.

  She was halfway down the block when he caught up to her. But keeping up was another matter.

  "Nickie, could you, do you think you could slow down a bit? I'm a little dweeb, remember? I've got short dweeb legs!" he panted.

  "Oh, Max, I'm sorry. Every time I think about my future I-" She stopped short in front of Hicklebee's Children's Book Store.

  Books! They still have paper books, thought Max.

  Nickie spied a book in the window and without another word, pushed past Max and entered the store. Inside, he found her perched on a pint-sized yellow wooden chair, reading the book from the window, The Runaway Bunny.

  "The bunny baby runs away and hides but the mother bunny always finds her," said Nickie, showing him the first page. "I used to beg my mother to read this to me every night. And she would. No matter how bored she must have gotten with it," Nickie said softly. "I miss her so much."

  "Oh, don't – don't cry, Nickie," said Max. Don't cry! I don't know what to do if you cry. Should I hold her? No, wrong, wrong, wrong.

  Nickie put down the book, and threw her arms around Max's neck, sobbing. Hold her. Right, hold her.

  "Oh, man, I feel so stupid," she said, wiping the last of her tears. Max sat on the bus stop bench beside her and offered her his open arms. "You can cry some more if you want, I don't mind," he teased.

  She gave him a little shove. "The people in the bookstore must have thought I was crazy."

  "Probably just thought it was a really sad book," said Max.

  "I don't know what it is, but sometimes, just out of the blue I start crying over her. I mean it's been a year and a half, you'd think I'd have better control," she said.

  "No, my dad died over two years ago and I still feel sad sometimes."

  Nickie nodded. The bus came and they got on, the bus trailing a plume of smelly exhaust.

  Max sat by the window. "I used to get real mad at my dad for dying."

  "I'm not mad at my mom. She didn't want to die. It was a car accident. They called me into the principal's office. I knew it had to be something really bad because we were right in the middle of a test. My dad was there. He just looked so, so sad. Like he didn't want to have to tell me and make me sad, too."

  The bus stopped, they got off, and waited at another bus stop. Max went to an ice cream cart parked on the sidewalk and bought two fudgesicles. He handed one to Nickie and they ate in silence while another bus came and went.

  "I wish I'd known my mom," said Max, licking the last of the fudgesicle off the stick.

  "Did she die when you were a baby?" asked Nickie.

  "No, she was a Breeder," said Max.

  "A breeder? You mean like a surrogate?"

  "A surrogate? Yeah, that's it, a surrogate mother," said Max.

  Nickie's ice cream dripped unnoticed into her lap. "You're kind of alone, aren't you, Max? Except for Mr. Bird, that is."

  "Bird? Oh, yeah. We're, uh, inseparable, you might say."

  Nickie sighed. "Well, I'm glad I've still got my dad. He's kind of A.D.D. but he's there for me when I really need him. And he needs me a lot, too."

  But Ted's going to be murdered, thought Max, with a stab of guilt. Or murder someone else, which is just as bad. What's she going to do without him?

  Max turned to Nickie. "C'mon, let's go back to the bookstore. I think that book deserves to go into the vault."

  Back in the office, Nickie and Max had listed and tagged most of the items from Bird's desk by three o'clock. She packed The Runaway Bunny, a stack of records and CDs, a turntable, a PlayStation console, a box of Huggies, Play Dough, the fishing pole, a New York City roadmap, a pair of Hulk inflatable Slam Hands, a gel pillow, a Swiss Army knife, a Nerf football, a roll of Mentos, a liter of Coke, a cuckoo clock, a can of Raid, and a snow cone maker.

  "I'm sorry you missed lunch, Max," she said, glancing at the clock on the wall. "I thought maybe you could join my dad and me, but it looks like
he forgot our lunch date. Again."

  "No problem. That fudgesicle was very filling." His stomach growled loudly and he shifted in his seat. "Actually, I'm more concerned about Mr. Bird. Did he send you a text saying where he was going?"

  "No, but don't worry, he's probably just taking a break," she said.

  "We've been here two hours. That's a pretty long break."

  Nickie stopped packing and gave him a concerned look. "Don't worry, Max. He doesn't seem like the type who'd abandon you. You've been together a long time."

  "Yeah, but it's still sort of a trial relationship."

  At that moment, Ted wandered in through the glass door, took a clipboard off a hook next to it and studied the attached list as he wove his way to his office.

  "What's that?" asked Max.

  "Shipping list," said Nickie. "The hard copy tells how many capsules we ship each day. Dad's in charge of keeping the shipping records straight." She called to her father, "Dad, where have you been? I thought we were going to have lunch together."

  "Oh, sorry, honey, it just slipped my mind," Ted said. His eyes never left the clipboard as he wandered on past the doorway.

  "It just slipped his mind," she said to Max. "How can your own daughter just slip your mind?" Without waiting for an answer she hurried after her father.

  Max sighed and loaded the rest of the items into the cardboard boxes and onto a cart. He took the elevator downstairs to the basement and lifted them into the shiny steel vault the size of their motel room. He circled the vault half-full of boxes, furniture, toys and electronics. He stepped around a life-size cardboard cutout of Michelle and Barack Obama, then sat in the plaid La-Z-Boy recliner and leaned back. A shiver went through him. Bad place to die, thought Max. It would take some time for the oxygen to go, but all along you know it's gonna run out sometime.

  The heavy metal door crrrrreeeeaaked and started to close. "Hey, wait! I'm in here!" Max jumped from the chair and rushed to the door.

  "Hey, Max!" said Bird at the entrance.

  Max panted, "Bird! Gnartz!"

  "I've been looking for you. How long you been back?" asked Bird as he took the empty cart and rolled it back into the elevator.