Bill dropped his head into his hand. “Dammit, Roman.”
“That’s right,” Roman said, ignoring Bill. “Everything was going well with not two but four of her clones until her friend showed up, who happened to be a Class A, a telepath, who quickly realized I was just a regular guy, a non-exemplar like all of you. Show me a telepath who isn’t clever, and I’ll show you someone who isn’t a telepath. This telepath was the ultimate cock block. She knew instantly that I was a fake, but she didn’t reveal it to her friend, nor did she do anything about it at first.”
Concern flitted across a few of the faces in the small audience. Everyone knew what a telepath could do to someone, and an unhappy telepath was even worse.
“The thing about lying is—for me, personally—once I start, I can’t stop. It’s a weird addiction, to see how far you can go, how close to the truth you can tread. And by that, I mean when you yourself start believing a lie—like how at the time, I actually believed I had some control over women. I had fallen for my own lie. And I didn’t have this power, obviously. I wouldn’t be here if I had it. If I were an exemplar like the ones at that resort, I wouldn’t be standing before you telling my sad tale.”
Bill crossed his arms over his chest.
“Almost done, big guy. Anyway, I kept parading around like I was an exemplar, and even though the multiplier never asked me what my power was, which is a little taboo sometimes with other exemplars, I could tell she had wondered what I could do. And the telepath wasn’t giving me away, at least not yet, which would’ve made things a lot easier for me in the long run. She was just watching me make out with and undress the multiplier’s clones.
“The law of Centralia states that if you are a non-exemplar, like Bill over here, like you, like me, you cannot misrepresent yourself as an exemplar. There is a clear difference between us, a line that segregates who we are based on our abilities.”
A few in the crowd nodded; one man simply looked down at his hands, shaking his head.
“Exemplars lead a different life than us, we all know that. They have different jobs, live in arguably better parts of the city, experience things we will never experience. They’re better off, you and I both know that. And what non-exemplar wouldn’t want to experience those things? When the ‘outside looking in’ isn’t just a state of mind, what do you do? Who wants to be half-powered?”
Roman sighed. Even though he was making his story up, it was starting to affect him. What he’d just said about non-exemplars being envious of exemplars was true, and now that he was on the cusp of becoming an exemplar, it was even truer.
He didn’t know how long it would be until Ava approved his exemplar status, but once she did, he would be in a completely different world than he currently existed in. He could sell his apartment, he could take a job doing something exciting, he could completely change his life.
And as Roman stood there in front of the group of poor souls, poor souls no different than he’d been just days ago, he simply ran out of lies to tell. The lie that had been unfolding, the one he’d made up on the spot, had lost its manufactured veracity.
It had petered out, crashed into a wall, drowned in its own bullshit. Died.
And this was how Roman found himself standing there, a captive audience in front of him, unable to continue his lie. He tried to excuse himself, but Bill stopped him, the big man stepping before him and telling him he should finish.
“Interesting story,” Bill said under his breath, clearly pissed off, “and now you have to finish it.”
Bill didn’t usually bully people at these meetings, but Roman had seen him step up from time to time when the situation called for it. And he never would’ve thought of questioning Bill before, or getting in the big man’s way, but now that he had power—now that Roman was on the cusp of being an exemplar—a small part of him imagined animating the podium and having it attack Bill.
Of course, he swallowed this down before he could act on it.
You’re too close, he reminded himself.
“Sorry, everyone,” Roman said as he stepped back up to the podium.
“Where was I? That’s right, the telepath, the multiplier’s friend. Has anyone in this room ever had their mind flayed by a telepath?”
He looked around to see everyone shaking their heads.
“It isn’t pretty, and aside from attending these meetings—just kidding, Bill—it was one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me. All this to say: I was caught with my pants down.”
Roman gulped, pausing for more emphasis.
“I suddenly saw everyone, all the multiplier’s clones, as some type of demon ghosts. I was running around, screaming and breaking things, punching at anyone and anything in my vicinity. And this was in a resort full of exemplars, so needless to say, my mania got shut down very quickly.
“In the end, I was arrested. I had three ribs broken, all the bones in my right arm shattered. There was a Type II in the room next door, an aggressive one at that, and that’s on top of the psychological attack the telepath levied on me. The point of my story is this: Be who you are, and don’t try to be anyone else, lest you end up at an exemplar resort having your bones snapped by a brute of a man who has deemed you hostile.”
Roman stepped back from the podium.
“Thank you for that.” Bill placed his hands around the sides of the podium and looked out at the few who had gathered at the Heroes Anonymous meeting. “Roman is right: you should only be who you are, and no one else. Also, Roman, stick around after. I want to talk to you a bit more about your story.”
Chapter Forty: Reopening the Past with Fists
“You really are something,” Bill told Roman, the former still with that weary look on his face. The Heroes Anonymous meeting was over, and Sam had stuck around to put up the chairs, whistling quietly as he stacked them.
Bill and Roman sat at the back of the stage, their feet dangling over the side. Bill had offered Roman a little tea, some herbal stuff from the North that he usually drank after the meetings.
“I just wanted to keep things interesting. No one wants to hear my sob story.”
“I’ve told you this before,” said Bill, “but part of the process is you telling your sob story over and over again. It’s that repetition, that verbalization that ingrains the message in your psyche. I know it sounds stupid, but that’s really how it works, and while I appreciated your story, I don’t think it did your case justice.”
Roman grimaced. “I don’t think there’s anything that can do my case justice. Laughter may be the only medicine here, and by laughter I don’t mean making fun of it—I mean just laughing at our humanity, the humanity of an exemplar versus a non-exemplar. That’s what I’m getting at.”
Bill took a sip from his tea. He stared into the liquid for a moment, watching it settle. Roman didn’t know much about Bill’s backstory, which made the fact that the big man was reprimanding him sort of ironic.
“You know how long I’ve been running these meetings?”
“A couple years, right?”
Bill snorted. “A couple years, my ass. I been running this meeting two or three times a week for the last decade.”
“Haven’t you paid your dues to society?”
“There’s a lot about my life that I haven’t really told anyone, Roman, and I don’t know why I feel like telling you right now—maybe it’s because you’ve been coming to this meeting for quite some time, and you still haven’t learned your lesson. So, I have a new lesson for you.”
“What’s that?”
“What do I look like to you?”
“What you mean?” Roman looked Bill over, trying to decipher the meaning behind his question. Bill towered over most people. He was the biggest non-exemplar Roman had ever seen, and his muscles and shaved head only made him seem bigger and tougher.
“You know I’m a naturalized citizen of Centralia, right?”
Roman’s eyes lifted in surprise. “You never said anything about
that.”
“Well, you’ve mentioned plenty about the fact that you work for immigration, and you can’t tell I’m from another country?”
“You and I both know it’s not that easy to tell.”
“Yeah, maybe that’s true. In the end, we are all just the same. An extension of the same person—at least that’s what I believe. Anyway, there’s a reason I’m here in Centralia, and it has to do with my background and experience. I’m from the Western Province, and when I tell you I’ve seen things a person can never unsee, I have a feeling you’ll believe me.”
“I definitely believe you.” Roman had only heard of some of the devastation in the Western Province. He’d seen it in the faces of some of his appointments. Whenever they spoke of the West, there was a flicker in their eyes that carried with it unbelievable trauma, suffering, unadulterated anguish.
Roman started to back away. He had enough of his own problems; he didn’t want to let Bill put his likely terrible backstory on his shoulders, too. But that wasn’t Bill’s intention, which became clear as he continued speaking.
“There’s always more to a situation, I realize that, and what I’m trying to tell you is just that.”
“Got it.”
“My situation is pretty—well, it’s prettier now, but it used to not be so pretty. You see, you and I share a similarity.”
Roman locked eyes with the strongman. He couldn’t tell what he was thinking; Bill’s eyes were sunk so far into his head that it was hard to read anything in them.
“You don’t have to share anything.”
Bill smiled at him. “What makes you think I was going to share something? You’re free to go; you and I can talk about it later.”
“No, it’s fine, I was just giving you an out.”
“Well, like I said, you and I have a lot more similarities than you may think. So when you’re ready to really open up, which will require me telling you my story, you let me know.” Bill started to laugh. “You know where to find me.”
Roman arrived home via a teleporter to find the place smelling of boiled meat.
“You cooked?” he asked Celia, who was wearing one of, well, Celia’s old aprons over her superhero get up.
“We were hungry,” said Coma. “And we figured you would be hungry too.”
“But you two don’t eat, right? I mean…”
Roman tried to think of whether he’d ever seen Coma eat. He was sure he hadn’t, and it was only when Coma started laughing, throwing her head back, her eyes covered by her black mask made from his necktie, that he realized what she meant.
“I get it, I get it,” he said as he sat down at the table.
“You have to have energy for us to have energy,” Celia told him, a flirty smile on her face. “So I made you some stew. You really need to get some groceries. It’s like you have no food around here. What do you normally eat?”
“I usually eat out at places. Since…” Roman didn’t want to say the next few words, so he didn’t, and Celia and Coma didn’t press him.
Coma knew about his soon-to-be deceased wife. He’d told her just a little, not a lot; it was a hard conversation to have. Plus, like Celia, she knew some things about him, things she had intuited about his past.
“We really want to get some new clothes,” Coma told him as he took his first bite of the stew.
Roman nodded. The stew was surprisingly good. “Where did you get this recipe?” he asked Celia.
“I found a recipe book in the kitchen. It’s okay to use those recipes, right? The book said ‘Celia’s Recipes,’ so I figured it was okay to use them.”
The words struck him like a powered fist from a Type I, but Roman took another bite and let the taste of his wife’s cooking satiate him. He hadn’t expected that answer; it had been so long since he’d tasted the flavor of Celia’s soup, and now he was ashamed he’d forgotten it.
It just went to show him how much he’d been eating out over the last two years.
“Like I was saying, we want to go shopping for some new clothes.”
“Right,” Roman told Coma. “I think it’s a great idea. How about this? Let’s go after I finish eating. You two need clothing, and I’d like to go out.”
The two animated dolls glanced at each other and back at Roman, grins spreading across their soft faces.
“Great,” Roman said as he took some small-denomination bills out of his wallet.
He laid the bills on the table and focused on changing their numbers to higher denominations. To make sure they looked perfectly like the higher-denomination bills, Roman went into his room and got one he kept for good luck tucked between the pages of a leather-bound book.
He set it on the table and made sure the ink looked exactly like it, both sides, checking his replicas for authenticity. Once he was finished, he returned the original bill to the book.
“Now we have some money to work with. What kind of clothing do you want? Let’s start there.”
As the two thought, Roman finished the rest of his soup, drinking it straight from the bowl. He wiped his mouth on a napkin and took the bowl to the kitchen, where he quickly washed it.
“Well, what have you decided?” he asked as he dried the bowl.
“I like the clothing style I have,” said Coma, “but I just want to try some different varieties. Maybe some distinct colors. And some new masks. You like it too, right?”
Roman grinned. “It’s not bad.”
“So that means it’s good?”
“Sure. And you?”
Celia tilted forward on her feet and dropped her elbows onto the countertop. She placed her head between her hands and smiled. “Superhero stuff is fun. I want some more superhero stuff. It’s in fashion to wear exemplar clothing.”
“How do you know that?”
“You had a couple comics in your bathroom,” she said. “They were quite interesting. Lots of nude women, too…”
Roman started to laugh. “All right, and that settles it. Let’s go to one of the garment markets.”
As he set the clean bowl down, Roman mentally ordered a teleporter. A tall, lanky man appeared moments later, a sphere of yellow energy oscillating around his body. He had an odd pair of sunglasses on, with yellow lenses, but he was still in the Centralian-government-sanctioned clothing.
“Hello,” Celia said to the man.
“Hi,” he said, the tone of his voice clearly indicating he wasn’t used to people actually talking to him. For about the thousandth time, Roman thanked his lucky stars that he hadn’t been given the job of a teleporter.
Being a mule just wasn’t his thing.
Coma and Roman joined the teleporter, and they were all about to leave when the man pointed out that Celia was still in an apron. She blushed, took off the apron and draped it over a chair.
“Okay, I’m ready,” she said, her cheeks still red.
The four appeared in a yellow sphere, which quickly dissipated. The market was bustling, paper lanterns suspended in the air to provide light.
“Thank you,” Celia said before the teleporter could disappear completely.
“Since both of you have clearly defined styles, it should be relatively easy to get some custom things made. I’m going to actually leave you, Coma, with the seamstress, while I take Celia over to the superhero section. Can you handle that?”
Coma smirked. “I won’t let you down,” she said, batting her red eyes at him.
“I’m sure you won’t.”
He brought Coma around to the area that specialized in ruffled dresses and assorted Loli accoutrements. A woman greeted them, definitely a Type IV Class C by the way swaths of fabric floated around her, and she bowed slightly at Coma.
Coma explained what she was looking for, pretty much more of the same, and Roman gave the woman several of the bills from his wallet. She took them readily, the smile on her face stretching even further up her cheeks as she realized how much he’d just given her.
“I’ll be back in a bit,” Roman
told both Coma and the seamstress.
“See you soon, Coma, and get something cute and sexy,” Celia said as she waved goodbye to the other doll.
The superhero part of the garments market was filled with both exemplars and non-exemplars, which made it hard to distinguish between the two. There was security here, mostly for the non-exemplars’ sakes, and most of the main shops were busy. Roman eventually found a place that didn’t have many customers, a new shop that specialized in superhero-styled clothing from other countries.
As he’d done with Coma, he let Celia explain what she wanted, cringing slightly as she told the tailor she wanted to look like some of the exemplars in Roman’s comics, complete with a strange head piece.
“They’re men’s magazines,” he started to say as he handed the tailor a stack of cash.
“Interesting magazines, lots of great pictures,” Celia added. “But anyway, back to what I’m looking for. Something that fits, something that is tight, something that makes me look powerful, and preferably not something that just plays off the color of my hair.”
The tailor, a short man in an impeccable exemplar overcoat, merely nodded and led her into the shop.
Three mental messages came to Roman at about the same time he was walking back to find Coma.
The first was from Nadine, telling him that his wife was still fine, that she was being artificially kept alive by some of her contacts, and that the telepath with the dream-walking ability would be available tomorrow night.
Roman paused at this message, the crowd moving around him as he considered it, and he felt guilty for not being there now.
But what could he do? He’d gone through this guilt before, and for the first two months he’d spent nearly every night in the hospital. She wasn’t going to wake up, the doctors had told him that. Only a healer could do it, and healers were hard to come by.
No matter how he tried to frame it, he felt guilty.
The next message was from Harper: You really like playing hard to get, don’t you? Kidding. Just seeing what you’re up to. Work has been really busy lately, and I’ve barely had a chance to breathe. Anyway, now that the weekend is here and I can catch my breath, let’s meet up. Invite your friend, too; that was fun.
House of Dolls Page 19