by Linden Storm
“The rest of the team won’t be here for some hours,” she says, making the decision to avoid easy for him. “I need more sleep.”
“Right. They’ll get in contact when it’s time for us to meet them at the airport,” Paul says.
Marina’s face in profile is the last thing he sees before he drops off sleep again, a deep, insensible slumber.
∆∆∆
Marina lies awake for a time next to Paul. His face in repose looks young, and she thinks she can see the child he’d once been. She wonders how he grew up and remembers her own childhood. It’s odd how the mythology of childhood encompasses the rosy, the sweet, and the cozy, but it also includes the evil, the torturous, the horrible. Marina’s childhood spanned both ends of the spectrum. When she was very young, before the war, she was a princess, brilliant and protected.
After the war hit and her parents disappeared—and they're surely long dead by now—she had been responsible for her two brothers. For the first time in her life, a task was beyond her abilities. Post-adolescent mathematical geniuses with eidetic memories aren’t necessarily good parents. And her brothers are the kind of young men who are prone to stupid stunts that involve extended absences from home, guns, explosives, and buying and selling illegal goods.
They are old enough now to take care of themselves, and in any case they won’t let her help them. They don’t heed her advice, either.
But now she is in America, where she has always wanted to be. She has money. She is a leader of a successful sports team. She has friends.
Her visa may be in jeopardy, but she thinks with the help of her team, the patronage of Rupert Jones Jr., and the pressure of the fans, she will be all right. Her biggest fear is that if the team stops winning, she’ll lose everything, including her life.
Still, right this minute, she feels safe. She and Paul will reunite with the team in a few hours, and all will be well.
She wonders briefly if she should set her alarm, but she decides against it. They’ll be able to rely on the alerts from the team when they arrive in the early afternoon and it’s time to go meet them.
She sleeps.
∆∆∆
Paul is standing in the doorway in Tashkent. It seems as if he is always there. There is an unruly crowd outside, pushing to get in. Paul can see the crowd losing control, and he can feel himself losing control of the crowd.
Not again, he thinks. Something comes over him—the determination to make things go right this time—and he lifts his rifle and begins firing into the crowd.
Pop, pop, pop.
People fall at regular intervals. He is showing these people it is a bad idea to attack him and his friends. It feels right to let them know they can’t take advantage of him or the situation.
And then he looks at the faces of the fallen, and they have transformed.
He has killed Belle, William, Nick, and Marina.
And then the kid he cracked in the head is standing in the carnage. Blood gushes from his head wound. He is laughing, and Paul knows he is looking at a ghost.
Paul starts awake.
Marina is jumping off the bed. She looks scared.
“Was I having a nightmare?” Paul says.
“Yes,” Marina says.
Paul is aware of his heart pounding, an encompassing sick feeling. “Sorry. Please don’t be afraid of me.”
Marina waves her phone in the air. “Never mind that. We need to find the team. We slept a long time. They’re hours late.”
“Wait. What?” Paul says.
“Look. I was expecting them by noon. Two or three at the latest. We have slept most of the day away. It is now nearly six in the evening.”
“We’ll just call them.”
“They’re offline. All of them.”
“Maybe they forgot to turn their devices back on?”
Marina just looks at him.
“You’re right,” he says. “That is not a likely scenario. But what can we do?”
“I don’t know. But we cannot just sit here and do nothing.”
“Maybe we can call someone else. That sheriff in Nevada where they got thrown in jail. Rupert’s people. Someone must know where they are. Maybe they got arrested again.”
“That is not a bad idea,” Marina says.
She hands him his phone.
Half an hour later, Paul is stumped. The sheriff’s office is pleading ignorance—all their spokesperson will say is that the group had been released on bail.
All of their devices had gone dead in the middle of Yosemite National Park. This makes sense. It was after Marina told them to disable their devices. But they should have turned their devices back on once they were close to Oakland, and they would have done so if they could have.
But they had not.
Marina paces. Every now and then she stops pacing and jumps on Paul’s computer to try some new way to find them.
“We have to go to this location in Yosemite Park,” she says, finally. “Someone must have seen them. It is not far away.”
“True, but we have no car, and the rental companies won’t let you rent one unless you use your credit. I don’t know about you, but I have no credit.”
“I have a little credit, but if I use it, Jimmy and his friends will trace us,” Marina says. “What are we going to do?”
“We could buy a car for cash, I suppose,” Paul says.
“But won’t any seller issue reports to the government on the identity of persons buying the car?”
“Yes,” Paul says tentatively. “But that information might not be available to the cops right away.”
“I don’t like that idea.”
“I don’t like it very much either.” Paul thinks for a minute. He doesn’t know anyone here, except at the VA Treatment Center, and they’re the last people who’ll help him hit the road. Leaving town without official permission is strictly against the rules. And then he remembers a certain blue-clad Brit, and the ads that have been popping up in every stream he watches or listens to.
He grabs his phone, pushes a button, and says, “Find Chagrin.”
The screen blips to a video feed of a convention floor. A banner is visible in the background: SpaceCon SF.
And thirty yards from the camera, a woman mugs for another camera. She’s wearing a bright blue, sequined costume.
“That’s Rupert’s part-time assistant, Gemma Gosnold,” Paul says. “She’s in San Francisco this week at SpaceCon.”
“What? Chagrin the Lizard Queen works for Rupert?” Marina says.
“She does voice work for Spigot Games, but she also fills in as some type of assistant for Rupert. I guess her acting gigs don’t quite keep her going anymore.”
“And how will this help us?”
“I happen to know she has a car. It’s kind of famous.” He points to his screen. The Chagrin-mobile is pictured there in all its glory. It’s an ancient VW camper van painted Chagrin blue, with the logo of the Alien Invasion franchise and Chagrin’s gleeful face painted on the side, horrific sucker-tongue extended.
“Impressive,” Marina says.
“Let’s go,” Paul says. “We’ll BART over.”
∆∆∆
Marina thinks the train ride into the city is comfortable and efficient, but she can’t help but notice that Paul is bothered by the crowds. He crosses his arms, curls into himself, and goes silent.
He seems to get even more anxious as they reach Moscone Center, which is mobbed. People in all kinds of bizarre cosplay are lined up by the thousands. Paul and Marina stand outside the ticket booth, where large SOLD OUT signs cover all the windows.
“What now?” Marina says.
“Did you see all those creepy guys patrolling around in the shadows around the block?”
“Yes?”
“They are scalping.”
“Scalping?” Marina says. She’s never run across that idiom.
“Selling tickets illegally for inflated prices,” Paul says. “They’re probably st
reet people being paid a percentage. It’s illegal as hell, but it’s hard to enforce, and it’s our only option if we want to get into the Con.”
“Let’s go,” Marina says.
She’s glad she’s walking beside a scary-looking man, because this group of scalpers looks scary and dangerous, too—her warzone nerves are sending warning thrills throughout her body. She steps back into a doorway, pulls Paul in beside her, takes a handful of bills out of her bag, and hands them to Paul.
“Winnings from Las Vegas,” she says.
He whistles. Then he nods and takes her hand, and they approach a scalper. He’s a wiry, pale, older man wearing a plastic mask and a cheap cape. There are scabs on his neck. Meth or something like it, Marina thinks.
“We need two tickets, just for today,” Paul says.
“They’re a thousand each, man,” the scalper says, showing broken, gray teeth.
“I said, just for one day.”
“I said. One. Thousand. Each.” He glares at Paul, challenging him.
Wrong strategy, Marina thinks, but she opens her bag. Paul gently closes it again.
“Nine hundred total,” Paul says.
“This ain’t Ebay,” the scalper says.
Paul puts his hand on the man’s shoulder. The man winces. Paul then puts his face up close to the scalper’s and gazes into his eyes.
“Guess where I just got back from, man?”
“Don’t tell me, soldier-boy. You’re a Navy-fucking-Seal, right?”
“No. I’m just a legally insane army sergeant with a brain injury who is in need of two one-day tickets for a total of eight hundred dollars cash,” Paul says.
“You said nine,” the man says.
Paul pauses for a couple of seconds. He looks crazy enough, Marina thinks.
Then she hears him whisper something else. “Legally, officially insane.”
The scalper begins to choke, and Marina notices how Paul’s strong, scarred hand is clutching the man’s dirty neck. Paul leans in and says something in the scalper’s ear. The scalper takes the money, hands over the badges, and runs away, disappearing into the crowd.
“I’m not really legally insane,” Paul says.
“Okay,” Marina says.
Marina leads Paul through the crowds. They study a map and then jump on a packed escalator, heading for the celebrity meet-and-greet area.
The mood of the crowd is as various as their costumes, but what everyone seems to have in common is a joyful sense of satisfaction and belonging. They are living their fantasies out on the open, with people who won’t judge them. It adds up to something strange and quite wonderful.
People are dressed elaborately at this Con, since it’s a prestigious one. Few slapdash costumes, much cosplay that had been created lovingly with creative ideas and many, many big 3D printers. Colorful capes, filigreed armor sets, spiked headdresses, cartoonish swords and guns. Some people are wearing what can only be described as creatures—monsters with multiple limbs and heads and tails. Body parts that move. Everywhere around Marina and Paul, it's a free-for-all—fans recognizing characters with gasps of delight and holding their phones aloft.
In contrast, the meet-and-greet ballroom, a vast space taking up nearly an entire level of the San Francisco Convention Center, is packed but carefully organized, with celebrities roped off into large and small franchise fiefdoms, the size of each determined by its popularity, measured by its earnings.
Marina surveys the floor. Star Wars and Star Trek take up their venerable blocks of space, but newer franchises like The Expanse Universe and Incline Strike have healthy chunks of floorspace too. Each offers up every star they can muster, from iconic starship captains to voice actors who once played a computer-generated alien in a single bygone episode.
There’s also an area for Battlestar Galactica, two of the Stargates, and a Wormhole Pioneer. Plus the upstart Arcadia VR franchise, several artful anime series, the superheroes, and a few old-time movies like Flash Gordon and Bladerunner.
Gemma Gosnold, also known as Chagrin the alien lizard queen, is tucked in a smallish booth in the back.
Marina leads Paul toward Gemma. Paul is jumpy and sweating. He holds her hand too tightly.
Marina stands for a time and watches Gemma Gosnold at work. She is completely ornamented with Chagrin regalia—an electric-blue snakeskin bodysuit, thigh-high platform boots, a billowing cape, a pointed headdress, and full blue makeup.
People step forward and pay, which entitles them to time with the star. Still photos are included in the base fee, but vids and holos are extra.
Every time someone coughs up the extra fee for a holo, Gemma unfurls her blue tongue, slapping a mannequin set up for that purpose and making the familiar noise, a smacking, sucking sound-effect controlled by Gemma’s assistant, a nervous young man who looks like he hasn’t eaten in days. His pasty face is contorted into a rictus of fear which deepens every time Gemma looks at him.
Not every celebrity has fans. Some sit alone, waiting for the opportunity to earn back the considerable fee they paid to be at this King of the Science Fiction Cons. Gemma is not one of those. She has a respectable line.
Marina turns her attention back to Gemma. She is good at this—whatever this is—performing?
Her vamping approaches the creativity of dance, Marina thinks, as she takes note of repeating choreography—the looming greeting, the aggressive display, the sing-song upsell, and the recording of the agreed-upon performance.
Gemma never breaks character. Her costume is in good repair, at least from a distance.
Paul hangs back, and Marina tells him she’ll stand in line and talk to Gemma. Marina takes note of Paul’s position by the restrooms and moves up into the holding area.
“How much are you getting paid?” Marina says to the assistant as she is checked in on his pad.
“I’m an intern,” he says, matter-of-factly. “We don’t get paid. We get a discount on our Con tickets.”
“You don’t even get in free?” Marina says.
He shakes his head and raises his index finger as Gemma struts in a circle, his signal that a tongue lash is coming up shortly.
Marina is still eleven people away from Gemma in line when she hears a commotion behind her.
She turns around and sees Paul where she’d left him by the restrooms. He is yelling at a cosplayer to get away from him.
The poor guy, a shirtless body builder—she thinks he’s a Goku from the venerable old anime Dragon Ball Z—is shrinking back, hurrying away.
Marina can see Paul is losing his composure. He’d warned her he couldn’t handle crowds, and now she understands how serious he was. She waves her arms to get his attention and gestures to him to wait for her outside. He looks relieved, nods, and hurries toward the escalators.
She grabs the boy, preventing him from touching his pad at the appropriate moment, when Chagrin’s tongue slaps the dummy.
The boy whines and grapples with her for the tablet, which Marina has successfully confiscated and holds away from him.
Gemma peers at the fracas, then does her preparatory spin and lets the tongue fly again.
Still no sound effect.
She bounds toward the boy, moving swiftly on her towering platform boots.
The boy cowers. Marina steps in front of him, holding the tablet up, her other hand raised in the universal gesture for “stop.”
Gemma stops and stares down at Marina.
“Belle?” she says.
“I’m not Belle, I’m Marina.”
“The missing one?” Gemma says. “Oh, my. You do look alike.”
She tilts her head like a curious parrot and says, “It’s nice you’re found, honey, but you’re interfering with my job.”
“We need your help,” Marina says. “Please, may we go somewhere quiet?”
“We, sweetie? Who’s we?” Gemma pauses, surveys the line, and peeks at her intern’s pad.
“The team. The Battlecraft team. You remember?”
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Then she shrugs. “I have a queue going here. Those people represent next month’s rent.”
“Would you care more if I told you Rupert Jones is missing?” Marina says.
Gemma frowns. “What? Rupert should definitely not be out of touch at present. His company is about to go public.”
“He is missing.”
“For how long?”
“Hours.”
“How many hours?”
“Four, nearly five.”
“No one has been able to reach him?”
“No one. We believe he is with Belle, William, Nick, and Harold. We can’t reach any of them.”
“That older fellow, Harold? He’s missing, too?”
“Yes.”
“I like Harold. There’s something about him.” She says nothing for a time, then nods. “Fine. We can go to the loading dock. It’s the only place they let you smoke in the entire State of California.”
“You smoke real cigarettes?”
“Only during a Con, dear. Only during a Con.”
On the tablet, Gemma authorizes refunds and waves and smiles at the remaining fans.
“It’s an emergency, darlings,” she says, projecting as if she’s on stage. “Come back tomorrow morning and I’ll give you extra time.”
“I don’t think you’ll be here tomorrow morning,” Marina says quietly as they move away.
“I hope I am, my dear,” Gemma says. “there’s money to be scrounged and a limited amount of time during which to scrounge it.”
All the way down the six levels, Gemma works the crowd, flinging what Marina assumes are famous lines from the old show. “When I escape, you will comprise my first meal!” “I will puncture your beating heart, my sweet!” And the ever-popular, “Let me lick that for you.”
Marina is getting more and more worried about her friends. There has to be a way to convince this odd woman to help.
∆∆∆
Paul spots the two women from his quiet spot by the door and makes his way to them. They all head out a staff-only door and stop amongst the dumpsters in the alley behind the convention center.