by Drew Magary
“I dunno. That rules, but I’m still sleeping in.”
“Oh come on, let me take you to the Druskin Inn to celebrate! If we get there before the crew team does, they might even have some bacon left.”
Asmi tried to pull Anna’s comforter away. Anna gripped it like a mother hawk.
“I can’t. I’m sick.”
“You muppet. Quit playing around.” Asmi grabbed the corner of the duvet and gave it a hard tug. Anna screamed loud enough for the whole dorm to hear as Asmi stared at her roommate’s lobster-red face, now fully exposed.
“What the—”
“I told you I was sick!” Anna said.
“Fucking nonsense. You been on holiday?”
“Asmi, you’re the greatest, but I can’t talk about it.”
Just then, an enraged Jubilee exploded into the room and pointed her finger at Anna. Something about those angry fingers always got to her, more than any verbal abuse ever could.
“YOU BITCH!” Jubilee screamed.
Asmi stood up and planted herself between Jubilee and Anna. She was a good four inches taller than her blonde dorm-mate.
“What do you want?” she asked Jubilee.
“Get out of my way.”
“Pardon? This is our room and I don’t recall inviting you in. Can’t you see my roommate is gravely ill? Look at her! She’s appallingly red! Her temperature is 103! This room has microbes in it the size of gorillas! She needs rest, and certainly she doesn’t need the stress of answering to some bouncy twat like you!”
Jubilee stepped back. Asmi put her hands on her waist and cocked a hip.
“Piss off.” Asmi told her. “Piss off or I’ll pitch you down the fucking stairwell.” She held up her fist and pointed to an ornate spoon ring wrapped around her middle finger. The grooves in the ring were encrusted in black gunk. “You see this shit in my ring? That’s old blood. From a boy. If I can make a geezer bleed, I can do much worse to a two-bit slag like you, Judy.”
“It’s Jubilee.”
“I’ll call you what I please and there’s fuck all you can do about it.”
“All right,” Jubilee said, slowly backing into the big room but giving Anna one last jab. “But you, Anna Huff: you’re a fucking rat dyke. And everyone knows it.”
“Jubes,” Anna told her, “You have no idea how big my mouth can get.”
“BITCH.”
Jubilee stormed out. Asmi locked the door and leapt back onto Anna’s bed. Anna thought Asmi was about to strangle her. The way that girl told off Jubilee, it was clear that she wasn’t shy when it came to kicking off violence.
But now, Asmi flashed a devilish grin. “You! What have you been up to?”
“I can tell you some of it but not all of it.”
“Can you tell me why you’re sunburned?”
“No.”
“Whatever. Give a shit. So tell me then why Juniper—”
“It’s Jubilee. Please don’t get her idiotic name wrong.”
“Jumper Cables. Whatever. Naff piece of shit that one is. Spill it. What’s tickling her ass about you?”
So Anna told her about Lara, and their night out on the bridge, and the dastardly security guard, and the visits to Vick’s basement. She left out the small detail of how she truly felt about Asmi’s predecessor. Maybe everyone already knew, but she didn’t wanna know if they did.
“Oh my god, Vick! The fucking gall of that man. Shouldn’t you go to the trustees? The police?”
“I don’t think so,” said Anna.
“Well, I promise I won’t tell a soul.”
“Actually, tell everyone. Paint it on the Academy Building for all I care.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Yes, I do. If people are gonna talk shit about me, I’d at least like them to get the facts straight. And no one’s gonna believe it if it’s coming from me. Better they hear it secondhand. Just don’t tell anyone I managed to get sunburned in October.”
“Fair enough. I can tell Mrs. Ludwig you’re ill, but I can keep it vague, so she doesn’t send you to the infirmary. You really could pass off as feverish if you tried, love.” She put the back of her hand to Anna’s forehead and Anna flinched in pain.
“GAHHHHHHH!”
“Oh. Right. Sorry about that.”
“I think I need aloe. And maybe that bacon you mentioned.”
“I can get you both of those things, but first…”
Asmi walked back into her bedroom and grabbed a small gold pocketbook. She took out a crisp hundred and laid it on top of the comforter.
“What is that?” asked Anna.
“That’s your cut from last night. I figured you could use it in advance. My dad left it at the Gate. Says there’s gonna be a lot more where that came from.”
Armenian Separatist Leader Denies Group’s Role In Austin Massacre
AP
10/10/2030
(YAREVAN, ARMENIA) — Serj Magulian, publicly identified by PINE officials as the leader of terrorist group Black Shard, has again equivocally denied playing any role in a 2024 mass shooting in Austin, Texas, that left over 500 people killed.
“We do not claim responsibility for that attack,” Magulian said in a video released on his official WorldGram this morning. “U.S. officials have not produced one shred of evidence that our people were involved in this unholy massacre. If you watch the video of the events on October 5 of that year, you will see that the gunmen’s faces are completely covered by masks. We do not do this. We are proud to show our faces because we are proud to be Armenian.”
Magulian has long been the leader of the “Guardians of Ararat,” an Armenian nationalist group dedicated to maintaining the Armenian border in the wake of, in his words, “port colonization,” and to lobbying the government of Turkey to recognize the Armenian Genocide of 1915, something that Turkish President Kemal Uskudar has steadfastly refused to do. U.S. officials claim that the Guardians of Ararat are a political front and that Magulian’s real intention is to coordinate terrorist attacks under the banner of Black Shard.
“I have a problem with America, it is true,” says Magulian in the video. “They won’t recognize the horrors inflicted upon our people. They invented porting, which kills the soul. We are flesh and bone. We are not data. And yet Americans want us all to reduce ourselves to mere files, to be sent around here and there and everywhere. They think everyone should be able to port where they please. This is our land. Barbarians have attempted to wrest it from us and kill us all, and yet here we remain. No matter what new technologies they invent to try to steal our land away from us, and no matter how docile our current government remains in the face of these threats, we remain.
“No place can be special without its people, and we’re not going anywhere. Like the Chinese and the Israelis, we are borderists. The Guardians of Ararat will defend Armenia’s proper boundaries at all costs, but we are NOT murderers. Robb Caraway calls us Black Shard? There is no Black Shard. What does this name even mean? They say we are Muslims. Our group is not affiliated with any religion. I myself am a Christian man. This is all made up to scare dumb Americans. It is fantasy. There are only the Guardians of Ararat, and we were born to defend ourselves, not to attack.”
Magulian says that his group could not have ported to Texas because he and his members have taken a consecrated oath to never port, nor to ever venture outside their defined border of Armenia, which occupies a greater landmass than the officially recognized borders and includes the officially Turkish area around Mount Ararat, the fabled resting place of Noah’s Ark.
Regardless, U.S. officials immediately condemned the video, dismissing it as extremist propaganda and reasserting that Black Shard does, in fact, exist.
“If you watch the whole video of Magulian’s tirade,” says State Department spokeswoman Sarah Strong, “you will see that he contradicts himself by promising to hunt down executives of PortSys, including the entire Kirsch family, and ‘drowning them in their own blood.’ And if Bla
ck Shard doesn’t exist, then why are militiamen wearing Black Shard emblems porting around the globe and opening fire on people at random? There’s ample evidence of that.” Indeed, one such gunman named Aren Vulcanyan was detained by PINE agents after gunning down three tourists in Palm Beach, Florida, and proudly swore loyalty to “General Magulian and the holy struggle of Black Shard” in his written confession.
Magulian denies having any association with Vulcanyan, and remains adamant that the existence Black Shard is a fabrication. In the full video, Magulian propagates a theory some have dismissed as “truthering” that U.S. Officials conspired with PortSys to stage the Austin attack as a way of frightening the masses into submission.
“If you want to find the true murderers, look to the vipers in your own midst,” he warns in the video. “For if you do not cut out their hearts, we are surely prepared to.”
HOUGHTON, MI
Anna didn’t want to port to Michigan alone and unarmed. She enlisted Bamert to be her muscle. In true Bamert fashion, he embraced the job with gusto, borrowing a varsity Druskin Football jacket from Matt Raidl down the hall in exchange for a six-pack of smuggled Molson Ice. For security, he ported back to Virginia and grabbed a light handgun from his old man’s arsenal. Edgar Bamert owned so many guns that he had an entire subsection of the basement remodeled to house them. Bamert offered to grab a gun for Anna too, but she politely declined.
She missed nearly a full week of classes. Her skin was peeling off in wide flakes. She snuck into to the bathroom twice a day, making sure it was deserted before entering, and then sloughed her face raw with a sweet-smelling apricot scrub, destroying as much physical evidence of her time on that pristine Aussie beach as she possibly could. Asmi covered for her by taking notes in the chemistry and ethics classes they shared, and bringing her paper trays from the dining hall piled high with cold, chopped fruit.
Anna followed along with the class syllabi online, sequestering herself in bed and plowing through one unreadable book after another. For Nolan, she typed out rote papers in the largest font and spacing she thought she could get away with, following the time-honored format of quoting the book, writing a little about that quote, quoting the book again when she couldn’t think of anything else to say, and repeating the cycle until finally nailing the page requirement.
By Saturday, her sunburn had cooled off for good. At 5am that morning, Bryce Holton’s blue dot showed him loitering around the Lake Superior canal. Anna and Bamert assumed their usual positions near The Crater and got under the weighted blanket. By now, Bamert had slept with the cover so much that it had taken on all of his personal attributes: the feet, the meat, the sweat, even a trace of stale urine.
“You know,” Anna told him. “There is a laundry service at this school.”
“They lost one of my suits last week,” he complained.
“You have a hundred suits.”
“Only one that’s teal with bananas on it, though. The cleaners are dead to me. I won’t let them touch Moby Dick.”
“You named the blanket Moby Dick?”
“Yes, and do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because it’s heavy, man.”
Bamert laughed at his joke so loudly that Anna hit PORT before he did to leave him behind. When she emerged in Houghton, it was colder than the wormhole. She was on a bike path right beside the Michigan Tech campus, along the canal. In the distance, a massive vertical-lift bridge opened up to let an icebreaker pass through. In the predawn darkness, the rising lights of the bridge made it look like a flying saucer was lifting away from the Earth before jumping to light speed and zooming back home. Jupiter, that great ball of violent sky, hovered far above the canal.
You know it rains neon on Jupiter, don’t you? Wouldn’t that be gorgeous to see?
Oh, to leave this planet and leave it fast. Anna was certain there was intelligent life out there, and that it was better than life here. PortSys claimed they hadn’t yet engineered a way to safely send yourself away from the Earth’s surface, but maybe that was a lie. Maybe they already knew how to pull it off, but wanted the Earth spent before introducing that particular option exclusively to their most elite customers. Lara would be one of those customers. Lara would need a trusted shipmate to keep her company on that long, quiet voyage across the cosmos.
Bryce was standing on the canal and spotted Anna right away. He pulled out a gun. Bamert popped in right beside Anna, his timing once again faulty.
“Okay that’s very funny,” Bamert said to Anna. “But don’t—”
“Paul.”
Anna nodded toward Bryce.
Bamert cocked his eyebrows. “Ah.”
“Who the hell are you two?” Bryce asked. He was drunk.
“Are you Bryce Holton?” Anna asked.
“None of your business.” He took out his PortPhone.
“There’s no point,” Anna told him. “We know where you go.”
“My ass, you do.”
He hit PORT.
ROCKVILLE, MD
They tracked Bryce to the corner of Nebel Street and Randolph Road, porting onto a strip of unkempt grass tucked between a row of shabby auto mechanic shops and the train tracks. Bamert had his own gun drawn this time. He tucked his chin into his neck to finish off the intimidating football player look. Bryce reached out with his own gun like he wanted to slap them with it.
“I don’t want any of the crap you’re selling,” he shouted at them.
“Sarah Huff,” Anna said. “Do you remember a girl named Sarah Huff?”
“No.”
Anna showed him Sarah’s photo. “She looks like me, but older. And prettier.”
Bryce cautiously walked forward to get a better look at the screen. “Ehhhhh, could be a lot of customers I’ve met.”
“She was with you in Houghton on the day she died. August of last year. Did she buy something from you?”
“Are you guys cops?”
“We’re high school students, sir,” Bamert told him.
Bryce lowered his gun and Bamert did likewise. He squinted at the photo of Sarah and nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, all right. I remember her.”
“What did she buy from you?” Anna asked him.
“I don’t remember.”
“Don’t lie. I fucking hate liars.”
Bryce took hit off a vape pen. “She bought a .22.”
“Why?”
“I dunno, some asshole was stalking her.”
“Do you know who?”
“What am I, her goddamn bestie? Look man, I’m just a dude out in the free zones selling shit to people who need it. Your girl bought a gun, a couple bullets, and that was that. It was a zit on my day.”
“Did you know someone killed her with that gun?” Anna told him.
“So what? People get got all the time. Doesn’t make a difference to me.”
“Watch it.”
“You watch it. Watch me port to the desert and open fire the second I feel a stiff wind. No one’s gonna give a shit about another pair of deadass teenagers.”
Bamert put his hands up as a gesture of peace. “We’ve stumbled out of the gate, it seems. We’re not here to harass you.”
“Speak for yourself,” Anna said. “I’m gonna follow this guy around and throw a dildo at him everywhere he goes.”
“Hush up, you,” Bamert told her. The only thing Bamert had ever learned from his years observing his old man, apart from how to mix a Cuba Libre, was how to charm people using fluent business-ese. “In fact, Mister Holton, I would love to make a purchase of your fine, sticky wares if I might.” He pulled out a fifty-dollar bill. “Personally, I don’t smoke weed. It makes me believe I’m fireproof, which I am not. But I might know a fertile market for your product, one to which you would have exclusive access as long as we do business together.”
“Bamert.”
“Anna, he has already given us information out of the goodness of his heart. It’s only fair we offer something in retu
rn. Isn’t that right, Bryce?”
“You’re full of shit,” Bryce said.
“I’m not. You see this jacket?”
“I’m not impressed.”
“Nor should you be. It’s not even mine.” He pointed to the great D on his breast. “But this school, Druskin, is protected by a portwall that you would shit hot knives to get past. Because there are many angsty teens past that wall in need of your contraband services.”
“Weed?” Bryce asked him.
“Weed, vape carts, booze, molly, Adderall, especially Adderall. Tell me that’s not worth something. Tell me that isn’t worth regaling us with every last possible detail you know about Sarah Huff.”
“I told you, man. I only sold to her once. She said a guy was harassing her, and she said that no matter where she ported, he could find her. He could get past even good portwalls, like whatever your dipshit prep school’s got.”
Bamert held out the fifty and Bryce stared it down. He took out a prescription bottle with a small nugget of weed resting inside.
“This is sativa,” Bryce told them. “The pure stuff. They don’t even spray it for bugs. Pass that around and see what the little rich kids think. And I got carts of the same shit that can last kids months. But if you come to my pin again, you better text me beforehand, or I’ll put you the fuck down.”
Bryce ported out and left them standing among a tangle of uprooted cement parking stoppers, the rebar sticking out of them like broken bones. A mighty CSX train came roaring down the track: a set of four linked locomotives pulling over 100 hydrogen tanks behind them. When the train cleared and continued on its way to Illinois, Bamert exulted in his purchase, taking a heavy whiff of the weed nugget.
“That’s good and stanky. We can sell this for triple on campus, darling.”
“You just made a deal with the guy who helped kill my sister.”
“You’re right. We should have chased him around the world and then gotten shot. That would have been highly productive.”