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***** * * ***** ***** **** ***** ***** * * *****
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* ** * * * * * * * * ** *
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* * * * * *** **** * *** ** *
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* * ** * * * * * * ** * *
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***** * * * ***** * * * ***** * * *
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Volume 2, Number 6 November-December 1992
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
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FirstText / JASON SNELL
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Seven / RIDLEY MCINTYRE
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Circles: A Romance / KYLE CASSIDY
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Reality Check / MARK SMITH
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The Tired Man and the Hoop / JASON SNELL
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------------------------------The InterText Staff--------------------------
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EDITOR ASSISTANT EDITOR PROOFREADERS
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Jason Snell Geoff Duncan Katherine Bryant
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jsnell@ocf.Berkeley.edu gaduncan@halcyon.com Loretta Griffin
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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FirstText / JASON SNELL
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Hi. I'm Jason Snell, and I've been known to sleep all day.
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If that statement sounds familiar, it's because that's how Dan
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Appelquist began the first issue of Quanta. And while Dan seems to sleep
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all day on occasion because he finds it fun and relaxing, I sleep all day
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long because I've got mononucleosis.
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This is a lengthy way of explaining why this issue of InterText is a
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little late, but it's also a fun way of being able to complain to a large,
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worldwide audience about my personal problems. And, you know, I just can't
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pass up an opportunity like that.
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As I continued my work as a graduate student here at UC Berkeley, I
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discovered two things: one, I was starting to feel ill, and two, I only had
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a handful of stories for the next InterText. When the sickness got worse
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and worse and I was forced to retreat to my home in scenic Sonora,
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California for 10 days, InterText suddenly became both scanty on material
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and late.
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I brought all of this upon myself, of course. At noon on election day,
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November 3, I sat down in front of a Macintosh at the School of Journalism
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and started laying out our special election newspaper, despite a high fever
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and a sore throat. We got finished at 4 a.m. The next day, I was sicker --
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there's a shock. The day after, I paid a quick visit to the doctor and then
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made the two-hour drive home.
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But here we are, a bit the worse for wear but up and running
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nonetheless. I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things, and we've
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got a decent issue for your reading pleasure.
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The centerpiece of this abbreviated issue is Ridley McIntyre's
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"Seven," which I think is one of the best stories we've ever run. I'm a
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sucker for cyberpunk, I'll grant you, but this one's well-written and well-
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crafted, and I know you'll enjoy it.
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Also inside we have another story by Mark Smith, who brought us "Back
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from the West" last time, and two other stories, "Circles: A Romance," and
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"The Tired Man and the Hoop."
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"Tired Man," I should warn you, is a bit of indulgence on my part. If
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you're read any Ernest Hemingway, especially _The Old Man and the Sea_, you
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might enjoy it. If you've read Hemingway and played a game of one-on-one
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basketball, you're especially qualified.
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But, heck, if you haven't done anything of those things, why not try
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it anyway? Perhaps it will encourage you to do so. Both reading Hemingway
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and shooting hoops are fun pursuits.
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The next issue of InterText is scheduled to be released sometime in
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January, which means that we're going to need to find some stories before
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the holidays really crash in and take people away from their computers. So
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once again, I encourage you all to submit stories to InterText. We can't
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pay you, and if you've written a story so good that you think you can sell
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it to a professional magazine, I encourage you to do so.
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But if you'd rather support the idea of electronic publishing and just
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want to get your story read by our audience (an international audience of
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over 1,000 at last check, though who knows how many people read InterText
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on CompuServe and other systems), submit your stories to us in e-mail. If
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you're interested, mail me and ask for a copy of our writers' guidelines.
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Well, that's all for now. When next we meet, it will be a new year. I
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hope your holiday season is a healthy and happy one, and wish you all the
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best. See you next year.
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Seven / RIDLEY MCINTYRE
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1. Thomas Morrison.
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"So that's it, Tommy. That's the end."
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Her face disappears from the screen, angular features flickering to
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black. But the trace of her is still there; a two-second imprint on the
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tube. I feel myself trailing my fingers over the lines of her nose and chin
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as they fade in front of me; see my blue reflection in those Sony eyes.
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She's gone now.
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The rage erupts in my stomach like a bursting ulcer, burning pain
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forcing me back from the vidfone screen, and I'm looking for something
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plastic and unbreakable to throw. The coffee cup she gave me looks the most
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likely missile, and I scream out "Stupid Bitch!" as I hurl it straight
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through the open rectangle of the living room window.
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Looking down from the window, I can just manage to see the white cup
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turn to a speck as it melts into the dark shadows eighty floors below me, a
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falling angel in a London Dustzone owned and run by the local company,
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Lambs Conduit, after which the whole neighborhood is named. The red midday
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sun burns my wet face and I have to go back inside again.
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Through the walls I can hear Jayne's headboard smacking a dull,
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arrhythmic beat accompanied by the grunts and moans of sexual pleasure.
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Jesus, I wish she'd stop sometimes. It reminds me how hard it is to find
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love in this 'plex.
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The sun has lifted my brain out of my head and I find I'm just doing
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things without realizing I'm doing them, with no reason why. I'm going back
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to the gray vidfone and pressing the PLAY button on the answering machine.
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Hers is the only message I've saved. Her face flickers onto the screen,
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that rough shag of chestnut hair cut into a bob around her ears.
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"Uh, hi, Tommy. I really don't know where to begin."
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Tracing the lines of her face again with rough fingers, I can hear the
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whisper of my own voice talking to that high-definition image.
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"Just start at the beginning."
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A week earlier I'm in this place called Chevignon in Lambs Conduit.
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The large worker's bar reeks of bad business. Couriers from the Outzone
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wearing stolen Lambs Conduit gray-blue worksuits do their best to see as
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many people as they can, desperately trying to move pills, microsofts,
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cheap digital watches and whatever else they can fit in their jackets.
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I'm drinking Tiger beer with my spar, Falco, when one of the couriers
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takes the third seat at our wrought iron table. The glow from the fuzzy
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orange strip lights above us makes his skinny face look almost healthy.
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"Namaste. How are you doing?" he says, grinning broadly like he's
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known us for years. "Amber Roy." A powerful introduction.
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"Not so bad," Falco replies. "How do you feel?" Falco's sarcasm is so
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thick I could almost reach out and touch it.
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"No worries," the salesman says. "Listen. I've got this great deal for
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you. You seen these?"
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Like a TV evangelist on one of Disney Guild's religion channels, the
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Salesman pulls a sleight-of-hand trick, making a clear plastic ziploc bag
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of brown and yellow lozenge pills appear out of thin air into his moving
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hand. He throws it instantly to Falco, who catches the bag in his left hand
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with lightning-fast Italian reflexes. It's as if the salesman was just
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guiding the bag to the right buyer in one simple, fluid motion.
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"What's it called?" Falco says. I sip from my beer bottle.
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"Chloramphenildorphin-5. The Outzoners call it Primer. Great for
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getting you up in the morning and keeping you there. The best thing about
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it is that that bag is running at less than half price. I've just cut a big
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deal with the Sodha roughriders and I've got some left over that I have to
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get rid of. So I put them in bags of ten and I'm letting you have them at
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the price I got 'em for. See Phil over there?" He takes a breath to point
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to some guy at the other end of the bar, past the empty slampit, who may be
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another courier, but the salesman is trying to make out that he's another
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buyer. "He just bought five packs off me. Five, man. I mean, this is going
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great, by the time I get out of here, they'll all be gone."
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Falco hands the bag back. He keeps away from chemicals, preferring
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microsofts if he can afford them.
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"Hey, but I can tell you just want to see what else I've got before
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you make your final decision. I see you both have NST plugs? Excellent.
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Well, you'll love this."
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Falco's face shines when he sees the jet black microsoft in the
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salesman's hand. He looks like his mind's already hooked on the thing, and
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the two tiny Neuro-Sensory Transfer sockets placed in his skull just behind
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his right ear are calling to him: "Feed me, feed me." The salesman's grin
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grows wider as his confidence jumps up another notch. And I watch the two
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go through the ritual of haggling a good price for the cleanest drug in the
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world.
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Her face is pained. Like something off-camera has pierced her flesh
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and is slowly twisting a danse macabre through her nervous system.
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"I felt like I knew you the first time I met you, Tommy. You have this
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way of opening your eyes so your whole soul pours out of them and touches
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me. That's what you did outside the bakery. I didn't know what was going on
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then. I wish I didn't know now."
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"Yeah," comes my voice again. It's sort of disconnected, like it isn't
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my voice, but a damn good impressionist's. "I wish I never knew, too."
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Outside the bakery. In a back alley not far from the monorail station
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at the cross where the Paddington to Islington New Road meets the Gray's
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Inn Road. On my route to the huge fortress building at Euston where I work,
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I stop to ghoul at what looks like a traffic accident. There is a company
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ambulance, rentacops and a small crowd of local bakery workers all milling
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around the scene. I get in closer and it's Falco.
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His arms have been sliced laterally, across the middle of each
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forearm, and then down deep in diagonals towards each wrist. With cuts like
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that he can't have lasted long. A Lambs Conduit medic flashes some
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snapshots for the local rentacops while another one dodges the blood as it
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streams out into the road. Flies buzz around his head, competing for the
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sweetness of his eyes.
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"Name's Lyle," she says to me. Her skin is too clean and soft for a
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Dustzoner; the clothes she wears -- black baggy bermuda shorts and a short-
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sleeved Hawaiian shirt with popper buttons down the front -- and the
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attitude she carries are 100 percent pure Outzone. She's been standing next
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to me all the time, but my mind has been on that corpse.
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There's a Federal I.D. tag pinned to the pocket of her shirt with her
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videostat hardcopied onto it and the name now has meaning. Mandy Lyle,
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Federal Department of Investigations. Her I.D. tag shows her serious face,
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knowing that the people she has to spy on must never see it. Lyle is a
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fake, an applejack in the Dustzone. Trouble. And this fact is kicking me in
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the face, telling me to stay away. But I'm ignoring it. Fighting it.
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I look for some sign of recognition, but all I can see is my own twin
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reflection in the permanent stare of her Sony Guild cybernetic eyes; blue
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cusps which fit neatly into the cheek and brow bones over her eye sockets.
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Lyle has a cold face. Poised, angular and clean.
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Those eyes are digging into me. Thermographic vision watching my heart
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thump, and my stomach churning at the mixed stench of fresh bread and fresh
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death. I emulate her face, hoping that those eyes can't see what I feel.
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That I want her like love at first sight and I've only known her for a
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minute and a half.
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"Did you know him?" she asks me.
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I turn back to face him and I nod, letting my facade drop, my face
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scrunches up with memories of Falco. I try to remember him as I knew him,
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rather than this blood-spattered stiff that's crumpled in the doorway of
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some Lambs Conduit bakery.
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"He was a good friend of mine. Falco Batacini."
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High above us all, a monorail Sprinter speeds past, bound for
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Tottenham Court Points. Four green-jumpsuited medics lift Falco out of the
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doorway and into the back of an ambulance.
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"You don't exactly seem cut up about it."
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"I worked with him at the processing plant. Running loaders and stuff.
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You need NST jacks to manipulate the exoskeletons. You have to be careful
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how much you lift. People die of sensory feedback all the time. Fact of
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life. But you're an applejack. You wouldn't know."
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I can sense her voice tighten after I call her an applejack. Those
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born in the Secure Zones take that as a pretty major insult these days.
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Maybe I meant it that way.
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"Looks like suicide, doesn't it?" she says, as if I did it. "What
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would you say if I told you that's the twelfth body we've found like that
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in the last three days? All with that L-shaped cut in their wrists. I might
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need to talk to you again. Have you got a vidfone where I can reach you?"
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I look back to her, standing with her back against the wall, my
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haggard loader's reflection in the blue shine of her enhanced eyes. "Sure,"
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I reply. And she taps it into a Sony hand computer the size of her Federal
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I.D. tag.
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2. Falco Batacini.
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"Well, this is the last time I'll use this number. The last time. Life
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doesn't get any better than last night, Tommy. It just doesn't."
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She takes a breath, and as she does so, I reach for the pause button.
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There's a bottle of tequila hidden inside my brown sofa. It has a hole in
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the corner where the stitching has come apart and I can keep things like
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that where no one can find them if my apartment ever gets searched. The
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rentacops like to do that sometimes. Dawn raids. If they get a tip off that
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someone's hiding something in one apartment they hit the whole block. Keeps
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the rest of us on our toes.
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As a loader, I'd get canned for possession of alcohol. It dulls the
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nerves and interferes with the NST jacks. Doesn't stop me from keeping
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some, though. I only drink when I'm depressed, and I know that alcohol only
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makes it worse, but that's usually exactly what I want. Right now, I want
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to be as depressed as I can get. And then some. I want to feel like Lyle.
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And Falco.
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The London Outzone has the kind of close, rotting atmosphere that
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scares the shit out of us Dustzoners. I'm in there on some kind of mission,
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I guess. I need to find out what happened to Falco two days previous. It's
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like a deranged curiosity I keep inside me that takes over from time to
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time. Right now, it's in complete control.
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Soho. The Year of the Rat. I ask one of the streetkids where the Blue
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Cross is and they laugh in my face. One of them looks as though he wants to
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bleed me with the hunting knife he's twiddling between his fingers. He has
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wild eyes, with those glaring wide pupils that the speed junkies at Lambs
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Conduit have. I can imagine the slicing edge of that blade, all nine inches
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of it, running along the skin of my gut, letting my insides spill out for
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the rest to gawk and laugh at. I must be oozing with fear. But the others
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must think I'm too stupid to even bother with, and the threat ends when I
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finally round the corner of the next block.
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And there in among the frozen death throes of a decaying building sits
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the Blue Cross.
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Nothing like I imagined it. In the Outzones of New Atlantic City, the
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local teams police the streets and keep the areas safe from harm. They
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charge a hefty price for their services, but it's worth it all. With that,
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you get good bars, nightclubs, shops that sell stuff made in the Outzones
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-- what they call shadow industry -- and a semi-decent cycle-rickshaw taxi
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service. Here in Thames Midland, it's only just starting to pick up. The
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London Outzone is anarchic, a playground for the roughrider teams, with
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maybe a dozen or so neutral places scattered around. The Blue Cross, a
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steamer's bar built in the ground-floor ruins of an unfinished tower of the
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Outzone, doesn't even have a roof. This is one of the few places left where
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body armor isn't essential. Anything heavier than a fistfight gets blasted
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outside by the bar security's riot weaponry. It's one of those places where
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you feel safe, but scared, like being in a Metropol rehab cell.
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I'm here because Falco mentioned it once. Out of the two of us, I'm
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the one who never leaves the Dustzone. He was always the adventurous one. I
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stayed home and watched TV or drank at Chevignon or sometimes wasted some
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ration credit on the "Raid Port Said" game at the FLC games arcade. Never
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leave the Dustzone. Yet I'm here. Having snuck out of the Dustzone past
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heavy security after curfew hours and dodged some roughriders, I'm at the
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Blue Cross.
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Striding over to the tiny bar area, past the slampit crowded with
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long-haired raja steamers and a parade of twenty rupee kittens, I pay for a
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lukewarm bottle of a local variant of Elephant beer, called Rhino. They
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make the stuff in the cellar here, the barboy tells me, and bottle it in
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Paddington, which affiliates the place with the Sodha roughrider team.
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"I'm looking for a courier who knows something about microsofts," I
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say to the barboy.
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"What?" The sound system by the slampit is deafening at this end of
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the bar.
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I pass over twenty marks. With that, he can probably buy himself a
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week's worth of kittens.
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"Microsofts," I remind him.
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The barboy points at one of the many clustered circular wrought iron
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tables on the other side of the slampit, populated by rajas in leather
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roughrider's outfits and Hawaiian shirts with fading prints. "Over there.
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Ask for Amber Roy Chowdhury."
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I thank him and push through the jumping rajas in the slampit.
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Chowdhury's companions see me coming and vacate the table, moving just far
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enough to give us some privacy, while keeping close enough to protect their
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man. My mind is scrambling for the lines I rehearsed to myself on the way
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out here. I know I can't afford to fluff this one up. Not on their
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territory.
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"Namaste. Remember me from the Lambs Conduit Dustzone? Two nights ago.
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Dealt a microsoft to my spar."
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He nods. I can see sweat breaking out between the lines on his
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forehead. Could be the heat, I tell myself. Or it could be him.
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"I want one, too. Same price."
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The look in his eyes as we cut the deal leaves a hard ball in the pit
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of my stomach. Walking back to Lambs Conduit I wonder which of us looked
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more scared.
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I press PAUSE again. Lyle continues in her broken voice.
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"Of course, you don't really understand, do you? I went back to see
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Nukie again. Routine procedure. He told me everything. Now I'd better tell
|
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you..."
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PAUSE. I take a swig from the bottle. I've had too much already, but I
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can't stop now.
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"Yeah, yeah. Spit it out, Lyle, you stupid bitch. Run through the
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whole routine again. You came here and I showed you the microsoft. You said
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that Falco never had his, but some of the others were well-known microsoft
|
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users. So you took me to see Nukie, thinking he could solve everything, but
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all he did was make you curious. How could you, you stupid bitch?"
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We are standing in the burned-out shell of the lift when she notices
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the sprayderm patch over my hand. It covers a stapled gash that runs along
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the life line of my left palm.
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"Where'd you get the cut?" The concern in her voice is overlaid with
|
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suspicion.
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"I got stressed out and smashed a cup against the wall of my
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apartment. It was stupid. The guy a few doors down from me's a doctor
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friend of mine. He patched it up for me. Only charged me half price."
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She takes hold of the hand and runs her clean, soft index finger over
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the sprayderm. "Not bad."
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"Yeah, but it means I can't afford to eat for two weeks."
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The lift stops on 57 and we wrench open the concertina doors. The
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corridor reeks of rotting vomit and the floor, sticky with old piss, tugs
|
|
at the soles of my trainers. Lyle tries to reassure me by telling me this
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typical of a block in the Outzone. It makes me feel lucky to be born a
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Dustzoner.
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"At least it still has some electricity," she reminds me.
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"Probably tapping it from the monorail lines," I reply to myself.
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She agrees with an audible sigh.
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"Bet your place ain't like this."
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She shakes her head and laughs softly. "No. Tottenham Court Points
|
|
ain't the greatest Secure Zone in the world, but it's better than this. I
|
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couldn't live here. Not on my own, like Nukie. I can't even handle the SZ
|
|
alone, sometimes. I still live with Sean. My brother."
|
|
"Tell me more about this Nukie, then. Where's he from?" My curious
|
|
side takes over the conversation again.
|
|
"He's one of you," she replies. "His father worked for South Shields.
|
|
And his father's father, and ever was. He'd be there now if Sony Guild
|
|
hadn't closed the Dustzone down. He freelances for deckers, building cyber
|
|
decks for them and stuff like that. He's bound to have something that can
|
|
read your microsoft. Then we can find out if there's a connection, see what
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it was that made someone want to kill your friend and make it look like
|
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suicide."
|
|
We get to the old-fashioned door, and it's already open, with a crack
|
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of orange sunlight seeping through the gap. The Geordie's voice beckons us
|
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in.
|
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Nukie's a tower all by himself, with long scraggly hair and broken
|
|
teeth set in a thick-lipped maw. Sitting himself down in a big red velour
|
|
armchair that's been heavily slashed across the back by what could have
|
|
been a scalpel blade, surrounded by his Aladdin's Cave of electronic
|
|
circuitry and plasterboard that forms a bizarre silicon/plastic/wire
|
|
collage around his living room, he assumes his designated role of Rat King.
|
|
In a way, he kind of reminds me of Falco, and I feel I can get along with
|
|
him easier that way.
|
|
Lyle gets straight to the point, handing over the microsoft. "Can you
|
|
tell us what this does? I need a full schematic rundown. Any hidden data it
|
|
may contain, subliminals, anything that'd make anyone want to kill for it."
|
|
"Ooh. This is something to do those suicides, isn't it?" He plugs the
|
|
smooth black cylinder into the side of a small box black box fitted with
|
|
some sort of pedal switch and jacks a thin blue lead he finds lying on the
|
|
floor between the box and a Fednet PC so brutally customized that it's
|
|
barely recognizable. The image on its blue screen is a Guild Profile with
|
|
my Videostat on it.
|
|
Nukie instantly senses my apprehension. "Relax, matey. I ran a go-to
|
|
on you as soon as my camera could get a good shot of you in the lift. No
|
|
voodoo here. So, do I call you Tom, Tommy, or Thomas?"
|
|
"Tommy," I reply.
|
|
The Geordie offers us seats of upturned cardboard boxes set amongst
|
|
the detrius. He directs most of the conversation at Lyle, but occasionally
|
|
he gives me a wink to see if I'm still awake.
|
|
"I hear you found number thirteen this afternoon. Unlucky number where
|
|
I come from. Ruth White on Disneynews reckons there's a psychopath on the
|
|
loose. She's nicknamed him the L-Razor."
|
|
Dustzoners labor under the misapprehension that Outzoners use TV's as
|
|
fireplaces, and I'm about to say something to that effect when Lyle cuts in
|
|
on me.
|
|
"Ruth White's just a computer-generated digitized image, what the fuck
|
|
would she know about it?"
|
|
Before then I was one of the gullible millions who believe that Ruth
|
|
White and the other Disneynews anchors are actually real people. Now I know
|
|
better. Television is just living proof that half-truths are more dangerous
|
|
than lies.
|
|
Nukie clears the blue screen and keys in a few more commands before
|
|
pressing the pedal switch on the black box. The screen lights up with
|
|
strings of what looks like endless random alphanumerics in a chaotically
|
|
aesthetic pattern.
|
|
"What the hell is that thing?" Lyle asks him.
|
|
Nukie strokes the metalwork of the black box proudly. "It's a military
|
|
squid. A Superconducting Quantum Interference Detector. Used for reading
|
|
fire-control programs in combat machines. It's good for other stuff, too. I
|
|
usually use it to check people's viruses for bugs before they run them
|
|
against anything. The housing's my own, and I've made a few small
|
|
improvements. I'd sell it back to the MGAF, but I like life. Fella two
|
|
floors down's gonna finally wake up one of these mornings and find that his
|
|
octaver effects pedal's missing. Serves him right for letting me look after
|
|
his guitar in the first place."
|
|
He turns and reads the random data on the screen. After scrolling
|
|
through over twenty screens of symbols his pensive face turns to us.
|
|
"I think I'll have to get back to you on this one, Lyle, it's pretty
|
|
much got me stumped."
|
|
"What's wrong with it?" Lyle asks him.
|
|
"Nothing wrong with it, per se. It's just different. It's written in
|
|
MAX, like any normal microsoft, but this seems to be some sort of dialect
|
|
of the programming language. Like American English for computers. I don't
|
|
know. It's slick, I can tell you that. It's called Seven. Puts pretty
|
|
filters through your senses, but beyond that, you'll have to wait. It's
|
|
imported, no one here could manufacture something this slick."
|
|
Lyle and I sit forward on the edges of our boxes. "So what do you want
|
|
to do?" she asks him.
|
|
"Well, I'll put some feelers out, see if anyone knows the dialect.
|
|
Until then, I can run it through a codebreaker program and try and compile
|
|
some kind of lexicon for it. I've never done it before, but it's an idea
|
|
I've been working on for a while. If it works I might be able to translate
|
|
it myself."
|
|
We leave Nukie's flat in silence. Both of us know that we've gone to
|
|
see him and we've scraped the iceberg. But, try as I might, I just can't
|
|
make myself believe that Falco was killed over the number seven.
|
|
|
|
3. Mandy Lyle.
|
|
|
|
"I saw what happened to all those people, Tommy. It was like a
|
|
hallucination, completely taking over the senses. Some of them survived,
|
|
you know that? Some actually carried on beyond that. The ones with the
|
|
strongest wills. But that's a high, Tommy. You can't get higher than that.
|
|
Never."
|
|
My heart's being swallowed by a pit of guilt in my stomach, I can feel
|
|
it tearing at the flesh of the fast-beating muscle, strangling it into
|
|
submission. I stumble down into my sofa, throat gasping for air, guilt like
|
|
a fat demon sitting on my chest. I'm going to die. I know I'm going to die.
|
|
Just like Falco, and Sean, and Amber Roy Chowdhury.
|
|
"Just what the hell happened at that arcade, Tommy? I just can't
|
|
believe you could do something like that."
|
|
The message just keeps playing. In my drunken stupor, I roll from the
|
|
sofa and try to switch the vidfone answering machine back onto PAUSE, like
|
|
it will save my life or something. It won't. It can't.
|
|
I know now, that even if I live through this heart-pounding episode, I
|
|
won't be able to live long with the events of the last five days sitting
|
|
there like some mutant fetus of ours on my conscience, waiting for the time
|
|
to enact its own Oedipal desires. It's all my fault. Everything.
|
|
|
|
The door buzzes angrily for the seventh time as I get there and punch
|
|
the LOCK stud. Wrenching the thing open, the first thing I see is the blue-
|
|
chrome image of a sleepy Thomas Morrison in Lyle's Sony Guild eyes. Her
|
|
cheeks are all puffed up and she makes one last spit into the corridor
|
|
before I invite her in.
|
|
She's crying. I remember watching an old movie on the TV once about
|
|
someone who had cybernetic eyes and couldn't cry through them. Instead, the
|
|
tear-ducts are re-routed into saliva glands, and you have to spit.
|
|
"Can I use your bathroom?" she asks me.
|
|
I point her in the right direction and she follows my finger. Pulling
|
|
the glue from my eyelids, I head into my cluttered room to pull some gray
|
|
canvas jeans on. I walk back into the living room and she's there, looking
|
|
utterly lost.
|
|
"Lyle, it's three in the morning."
|
|
"I brought you a present." She offers me a plastic coffee cup.
|
|
I just look at her straight. I'm trying to use some kind of empathy,
|
|
to feel her own problem, so she won't have to tell me. But I'm a man, and
|
|
men aren't so good at that kind of thing.
|
|
Her voice is broken, croaking like a misused engine. "Sean's dead,
|
|
Tommy."
|
|
"Your brother?" I can feel a tiny part of her emptiness in her stomach
|
|
as she nods. There's a few seconds of pure silence, and I'm screwing my
|
|
eyes up, too, holding the tears back.
|
|
"I got back from work and found him in his room. He had his modeling
|
|
scalpel in his hands. There was blood everywhere. I puked for a while, I
|
|
couldn't stop puking, then I was able to check the wound. There was no
|
|
forced entry, and no one had been at the door, I checked with security. But
|
|
that L was there, Tommy. It was there, on both arms, just like the others.
|
|
So I checked the jacks on his neck. I found this."
|
|
She hands me the smooth black cylinder, hot from the palm of her hand.
|
|
It's the same microsoft I gave to Nukie two days before. I look up at the
|
|
suddenly frail figure of Mandy Lyle as she gestures at the thing in deep
|
|
frustration.
|
|
"It killed him, Tommy. Seven killed my little brother."
|
|
I can't think of anything to say to her as she spits into the carpet.
|
|
But somehow, I know that after the police, medics, and probably another FDI
|
|
agent ransacking her apartment, she could do with a friend. So I move close
|
|
to her and she grabs me around the waist and my muscles ache in resistance
|
|
as she squeezes me, forcing me to feel her pain.
|
|
I just stand there and take all the pain she wants to give.
|
|
|
|
Her face flushes red with embarrassment. Eyes are the windows to the
|
|
soul, and Lyle's eyes are nothing but mirrors. So I have to try and read
|
|
the other signs that unconsciously emanate from her face. The way she
|
|
spits, the color of her face (or as close as my vidfone screen can
|
|
emulate), the shape of her cheeks and lips.
|
|
"You held me in your arms and somehow things were right again. We
|
|
could've made love, there on the sofa, but instead we just talked until we
|
|
couldn't stay awake, and you left me in the morning with a note to tell me
|
|
you had to go to work. I hated you that morning. I felt like a twenty rupee
|
|
kitten in the Outzone. But I was just emotionally wasted after that night.
|
|
I had died with Sean and you gave me new life. Well, there's more to life
|
|
than sex and death, Tommy. Much more."
|
|
Between each rasping breath I'm trying to form her name with my numb
|
|
lips. It's grotesque. I can almost look at my self from outside my body and
|
|
laugh at how stupid and feeble I look. I feel like someone with an elephant
|
|
sitting on his chest trying to talk after just being anesthetized at the
|
|
dentist's. Like a flashback of the evening after Sean died.
|
|
|
|
After work I'm in the Blue Cross again, but Chowdhury isn't.
|
|
Trying to get the attention of the barboy, a very tall thirteen-year-
|
|
old raja with a few whiskers of black hair along his upper lip, I instead
|
|
manage to attract who I can only assume was one of the rajas around
|
|
Chowdhury's table the other night. The kind of person who makes you think
|
|
of where you've kept your cash, and if it's safe. This trip, I've got it
|
|
rolled into a neat bundle and hidden in the pocket on the tongue of my
|
|
trainers with the velcro strapped across it. I'm determined not take any
|
|
chances.
|
|
"Looking for Amber Roy, again, chuck?" His voice is like sharp ice in
|
|
my ear. I turn to face him and he's a massive fat guy, something unusual in
|
|
the Outzone, where food is nearly legal tender.
|
|
My heart pounding in my ears, I emulate a casual nod as much as I can.
|
|
"Yeah. Seen him around?"
|
|
"What do you want him for, chuck?"
|
|
I try my best to soothe his violent tone. Chuck isn't really an
|
|
insult. It's just what the rajas call non-Asians. Same as us chucks call
|
|
the Asians in Thames Midland rajas. Just a name. But he makes a simple word
|
|
like chuck sound like shithead.
|
|
"Just seeing if he's got any more deals for me. I liked the last one
|
|
he did."
|
|
He shuffles in his cheap black plimsoles for a few seconds. His fat
|
|
face seems to light slowly, like someone twisting a dimmer switch behind
|
|
his eyes.
|
|
"No worries, chuck. I'll take you to see him. He's in Paddington. Come
|
|
on."
|
|
"Yeah, what do you want?" the barboy asks, his hand scraping a filthy
|
|
rag that could once have been a green t-shirt around the inside of a steel
|
|
tankard.
|
|
I look at the barboy, and I look at the big raja, and instead of
|
|
trusting my instincts and asking the barboy anyway, I follow the raja out
|
|
into the street.
|
|
We must be about two blocks down the street when he hits me. It's
|
|
something flat and hard, like the business-end of a cricket bat right
|
|
across the back of my skull.
|
|
The last thing I remember is the sensation of being turned over and
|
|
over. I can tell he's looking for my money, checking the pockets of my blue
|
|
plastic rain jacket and my gray canvas jeans. Then he feels around in my
|
|
socks and I can feel him sliding his hand in my trainers, checking under
|
|
the arch of my feet for the stash.
|
|
Then I can't seem to fight it anymore. The feeling that my brain's
|
|
going to expand out of my head and that my eyes are going to pop out onto
|
|
the cracked concrete wash over, and I'm out.
|
|
|
|
4. Amber Roy Chowdhury.
|
|
|
|
Swimming in my own long death, I try to think of a way out. Lyle's
|
|
broken voice is still stabbing at my mind.
|
|
"There's no way out for people like us," she's saying. "We're all on
|
|
some downward spiral. I know. I was born blind. I've never seen through
|
|
real eyes. Then I saw myself for the first time as if I was out of my body
|
|
and looking down on myself and I could see what kind of shit I was in. How
|
|
stupid everything looked. How stupid and pointless my whole existence had
|
|
been. It was the greatest feeling in the world, Tommy. I'd never felt that
|
|
good before."
|
|
...out of my body and looking down on myself... That's what I'm doing.
|
|
I'm having one of those near-death out-of-body experiences. I'm willing
|
|
myself to live, to do something to save my own life, but I've got no power
|
|
out here. I'm all spirit.
|
|
"The light, Tommy. It shines there like the ultimate high."
|
|
But there's no fucking light here. Not even a dark spot to signify
|
|
where the Devil can get you. And damn it, after I found Amber Roy
|
|
Chowdhury, the Devil deserved me.
|
|
|
|
The rain spitting on my face brings me around, and I'm alone on a
|
|
heat-cracked pavement in Soho, the London Outzone. My head is pounding,
|
|
there's a pain in my ribs like I've been run over by a robot racehorse, and
|
|
it takes ages for the dizziness to wear off. I stumble along pipes of
|
|
streets distorted by tunnel-vision. Falling over the rubble of crumbling
|
|
buildings. Dodging the threats of local teamsters and streetkids. I don't
|
|
even know where I'm going, let alone where I am. It's my mad hour. And it
|
|
finishes in an arc of red neon as my weak and tired legs finally give out
|
|
under me outside some club, amidst a gaggle of distressed voices.
|
|
I wake up in the back of a moving Metropol truck.
|
|
"Awake at last," one of the fat officers in the back with me says, his
|
|
face peering at mine. I can smell chocolate on his breath. "You did well.
|
|
Trying to crawl into a Tottenham Court club is a neat trick. You nearly
|
|
made it, too. If someone hadn't accidentally found your Lambs Conduit dog
|
|
tags, we'd have probably killed you. We don't take well to Outzone scum
|
|
turning up on our doorstep."
|
|
My dry mouth parts to speak. "I was attacked. I got lost and was
|
|
attacked. Then I woke up and tried to find my way home."
|
|
"That's okay," the fat cop says. "We're taking you to the monorail
|
|
station. You can get home from there, can't you?"
|
|
I nod. It seems like the headache's gone now. I still have that pain
|
|
in my ribs.
|
|
They let me off at the monorail station, and I thank them. I can't
|
|
really thank them enough. It must be a busy night for them. I've heard
|
|
rumors of Metropol cops shooting on sight anyone who looks remotely like
|
|
they could come from the Outzone. But these are stories told by the
|
|
rentacops of Lambs Conduit, and they've built up quite a rivalry with the
|
|
official Federal police.
|
|
I check to see if my cash is still in the pouch in my trainers while
|
|
waiting for the monorail and it is. Counting what's left, I have about
|
|
thirty-five marks. It's just enough to feed me for the next week, if I'm at
|
|
the stores at the right times to get what I want. Otherwise, I'll have to
|
|
make do with the processed crap they feed us in the canteens at lunchtimes.
|
|
Seeing the monorail train arriving, I quickly stash it back into the pouch
|
|
and tighten up the velcro flap to hide it.
|
|
The sleek silver bullet takes me back to Lambs Conduit, but I don't
|
|
want to go home just yet. I somehow need to feel the electricity of some
|
|
local life. Just one of those whims I occasionally have, like when you want
|
|
to go for a walk or get some fresh air. I need to be around people. My kind
|
|
of people. I need to smell the sweat of a workforce, and the nearest place
|
|
I can think of is the FLC games arcade.
|
|
I walk in past a pair of rentacops on their way out and feel a little
|
|
safer. Only five or ten minutes into watching a raja jacked into the NST
|
|
"Raid Port Said" game, his arms and legs still, while his mind controls the
|
|
wild nuances of a fighter simulator flying against some ancient Middle-East
|
|
threat, and I need to take a piss. So I head to the gents at the back of
|
|
the arcade.
|
|
And there's Chowdhury. A sleek black cylindrical microsoft sticking
|
|
out from behind his ear, and his hands shaking as he makes the first pain-
|
|
filled lateral slice across his left forearm with a kitchen knife.
|
|
I race over and grab the blade from his hand. His face,
|
|
uncomprehending, looks up in a fearful gaze. Black eyes staring into me as
|
|
if I've spoiled his final pleasure.
|
|
Rage is swelling through me. I can't believe that he's so stupid to
|
|
die from his own product, and I don't want to let him have the
|
|
satisfaction. So I grab the collar of his jacket and throw him into one of
|
|
the cubicles with all the force I can muster.
|
|
I can hear his skull cracking against the pipe leading from the
|
|
cistern to the bowl, and it nearly knocks him out, and I do it for him.
|
|
After making the slices I can finally see it. I'm covered in blood and
|
|
Amber Roy Chowdhury's sat on a toilet bowl dying. And on his arms I've
|
|
etched two sevens on his arms. Each one a lateral cut across the forearm
|
|
and a diagonal cut from there down the wrist to the hand.
|
|
Dropping the knife into his lap, I run home. But Lyle's gone.
|
|
|
|
Her face, cupped in the lines of that bobbed hair, looks so angelic
|
|
now. She gives me the last half of the speech. "Nukie just said it was a
|
|
dialect from Rio. That the only subliminal in there was the number seven.
|
|
It's like something you know in a dream, but it doesn't actually manifest
|
|
itself. It's extraordinary. I jacked it in and I understand the whole thing
|
|
now. There was no L-Razor. Just a feeling of utter uselessness. So you have
|
|
only one more useful thing you can do with your life after you've jacked
|
|
seven. And that's to end it."
|
|
But I don't feel like ending it. So Lyle had an out-of-body experience
|
|
that revealed the final truth to her. My experience is doing the same. Only
|
|
the truth is that I'm a loader for Lambs Conduit that's guilty of murder,
|
|
even if the bastard did deserve it, I didn't need to do it. And so I really
|
|
deserve to die, too.
|
|
But not tonight.
|
|
I'm walking calmly back to my gasping body and I know I have to
|
|
somehow climb back in to take it over. So I lie down on the sofa where Lyle
|
|
and I could have made love, and I enter myself. Once there I force my
|
|
fingers into my throat, and my gut spasms, retching onto the carpet.
|
|
"So that's it, Tommy," she says for the second time this night.
|
|
"That's the end."
|
|
And her face disappears as I suffer my third blackout of the night.
|
|
|
|
I'm waking up to the sound of the door buzzing. The smell of vomit
|
|
hits my nostrils, forcing me to dry-retch until I can make it to the door.
|
|
It's another suited guy from the FDI. Guilt may have left me to live
|
|
last night, but the FDI won't.
|
|
The penalty for Chowdhury's murder would be death, even for an
|
|
Outzoner -- we were in the Dustzone when it happened. And they know it was
|
|
me. Someone must have seen me do it. Someone must have.
|
|
I'm looking for something with a sharp edge. I'm in the kitchen,
|
|
looking for a knife. Where did I put them? The door still buzzes. There, in
|
|
one of the cupboards, and I'm out of my head again, watching myself,
|
|
thinking, this'll fuck their theory...
|
|
This time I can see that light Lyle talked about. It's there. It's
|
|
waiting for me. But it's gray, like a fading light. Like a dimming light
|
|
all around me.
|
|
I sit on the tiles on the floor of the kitchen; the knife edge slides
|
|
across the skin. At first the wound is clean, white, shining in the
|
|
reflection of the knife.
|
|
Then the blood comes, flowing steady like the emergency water pump out
|
|
in the square. And I make the second cut. A single, bloody seven down my
|
|
arm. Fading like the pump as the flow slowly runs dry.
|
|
And stops.
|
|
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
RIDLEY MCINTYRE (gdg019@cch.coventry.ac.uk) was born in 1971 in London,
|
|
England and now studies Communications at Coventry University. He has been
|
|
playing in his own worlds since 1985, when inspiration hit him to put on
|
|
paper the weird stuff often seen flying around in his head. His ambitions
|
|
are to escape to Canada before he gets conscripted and to make some sense
|
|
of the Real World.
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Circles: A Romance / KYLE CASSIDY
|
|
|
|
"That's where my kitten got stuck," says Bernie, pointing up the
|
|
thick, blank trunk of a limbless tree, which rises straight like a dowel
|
|
perhaps eighty feet into the air.
|
|
"The fire department doesn't get cats out of trees -- that's a myth.
|
|
Our neighbor finally got him down. He worked for the phone company and he
|
|
had one of those belts, those climbing belts, and he went up the tree and
|
|
dropped the kitten down. I was seven or eight and my friend and I were
|
|
standing at the base of the tree, holding a stretched-out blanket.
|
|
Prometheus -- the kitten was maybe twelve weeks old -- hit that blanket
|
|
screaming and going so fast that it tore the corner of the blanket out of
|
|
my hands. He was on fire, running across the ground and up onto the porch
|
|
and into this box, this cardboard box that he lived in. He hit the back of
|
|
the box so hard he knocked it across the porch. He'd been up in that tree,
|
|
meowing, for three days, and for three days I'd been outside watching him
|
|
up there and crying.
|
|
"My neighbor said it was no problem, but my dad gave him a case of
|
|
beer for it -- good beer -- and the guy got drunk and ran into our car in
|
|
the driveway. My dad had to take him to court to finally get him to pay for
|
|
the damage."
|
|
We were walking around his house and into the backyard, where we were
|
|
barbecuing tofu dogs and corn on the cob in the surprisingly cool June
|
|
evening. In a few hours it would be dark and the only light would come from
|
|
the glowing coals and from the illuminated sign at The Hat Trick. To get
|
|
there you follow the long dirt driveway (or short dirt road) and cross 202
|
|
-- it's about 300 yards away.
|
|
Bernie had called and said that he'd seen Daphnie in that bar near his
|
|
house and that she had spoken fondly of me. Remembering only the good
|
|
things, my thoughts flew instantly back to that time at the beach and the
|
|
music that she had played over and over again on her stereo, knowing that
|
|
we were too young to die and too old to ever make a mistake. They came back
|
|
to me with the catchphrases she always used: "you bet," and "false,"
|
|
meaning "no." I thought of the way her smile curved back from her teeth
|
|
and the way she trembled when we were together in bed.
|
|
He'd begged her to meet us there the following week, then called me. I
|
|
was thrilled and frightened. I'd been trying to find Daphnie for a year,
|
|
ever since she had vanished from my life one evening and left no forwarding
|
|
address, phone number, or reason. And now, to have her suddenly there
|
|
again, once more with no reason, left me weak and agitated.
|
|
We sat on Bernie's porch and watched the sun go down through the
|
|
trees, drinking the cheapest beer we had been able to find (Igor's Yellow
|
|
Belly, $4.98 a case) and cooking dinner, waiting for 10:30 -- the time when
|
|
Daphnie would show up at The Hat Trick. I fretted, chewing my cuticles, and
|
|
Bernie languished over the woes of his own life, which I couldn't remember
|
|
as he listed them.
|
|
We drank beer.
|
|
"Agg. God," says Bernie as it starts to creep into his brain. "I
|
|
haven't been laid in three months. I lost 120 pounds and I still can't get
|
|
laid." Bernie used to be huge, though he's looking pretty good these days.
|
|
I noticed a sign on his fridge that says "nothing tastes as good as thin
|
|
feels."
|
|
"It'll happen," I reassure him, laying low in my seat and belching.
|
|
"Don't sweat it."
|
|
"Easy for you to say," he moans. "You always get laid." He flings his
|
|
empty bottle into the yard.
|
|
From there the evening begins to degenerate into a festival of
|
|
masculinity, and by beer number seven we're laughing like maniacs and
|
|
pissing gleefully into the yard from the second story bathroom window.
|
|
|
|
It's quarter after ten. Bernie is drunk and depressed about his two-
|
|
week-old leather jacket: it's shiny and new and flawless. He drags it
|
|
forlornly behind him in the dirt by one sleeve. As we approach the bar, he
|
|
puts it on and a cloud of dust rises from him like some desert rat out of a
|
|
Clint Eastwood film.
|
|
"You'll have to take the lids off," says the bouncer and I say "Lids?"
|
|
"Hats," he says, motioning towards my head. "No hats in here." We take our
|
|
hats off and I shove mine in my back pocket, thinking that it will look
|
|
better if it's rumpled. Although he doesn't ask, I shove about twelve forms
|
|
of I.D. at him, managing to drop them on the pavement. He picks them up and
|
|
hands them back to me without really looking at them.
|
|
I notice that my hands are shaking.
|
|
Bernie has already walked in and is waiting for me. He says something
|
|
drunkenly that I don't hear and stumbles a step backwards with a blank look
|
|
on his face. I follow him up the stairs.
|
|
We enter a quiet and brightly lit game room where somebody calls out
|
|
Bernie's name, rushes over, and pumps his hand. Bernie mumbles something
|
|
incoherently and slides away.
|
|
"High school," he says to me, taking his leather jacket off and
|
|
dragging it on the floor behind him.
|
|
Florid pink-eyed people stand like robots before the video machines,
|
|
engrossed cyborgs. I can still hear the music from downstairs, though it
|
|
might just be in my head.
|
|
Bernie leads me quickly through a maze of small rooms where people are
|
|
playing pool or sitting on wooden stools, drinking. There are well-groomed
|
|
men with surfer haircuts and women in huge shorts with banana clips on
|
|
their heads. If I was sober I would probably hate this place.
|
|
Bernie goes down another flight of stairs, which opens up into a wide
|
|
and loud room with a very low ceiling. Immediately I see Daphnie sitting at
|
|
the bar. She's smiling (I have never known her not to), wearing gaudy
|
|
multicolored shorts/white legs/cowboy boots/sports jacket. And probably
|
|
nothing on underneath the sports jacket, I think, though I am wrong. Her
|
|
hair is a little shorter than when I last saw her, but it is still in the
|
|
same style, admitting and closely framing the oval of her face which,
|
|
frankly, looks very egg-like when her hair is wet.
|
|
"Hey," she says, taking her feet down from the stool next to her so
|
|
that I can sit down.
|
|
"I was saving a seat for you," she says to Bernie, "but somebody took
|
|
it." He's pretty hammered. His mouth is open and he is looking right
|
|
through her head like a bullet. Daphnie is drinking something pink from a
|
|
plastic cup. In the cup there is also a coffee stirrer and a lot of crushed
|
|
ice.
|
|
I straddle the stool and look at her -- aware that I am so nervous
|
|
that I'm liable to do something stupid, like knock her drink over, and
|
|
aware that after all this time, I can't think of what to say to her.
|
|
"You look great," I end up saying, and it's the truth. The words come
|
|
out of my mouth with a surprising calmness and clarity and this makes me
|
|
feel at least a little confident.
|
|
"Oh, your hair," she says, leaning over to me and stroking it. "I love
|
|
your hair."
|
|
"I just got it cut," I interject. "It was down to my navel, but it
|
|
kept getting under my arm when I tried to sleep. I couldn't sleep."
|
|
"You took all the blond out," she remarks, still petting it. I swivel
|
|
on the stool to give her a better look.
|
|
"Yeah, well, I can't stand being the same person for too long at a
|
|
stretch. Hey, look, is there someplace we can go to talk? Someplace quiet?
|
|
There's a lot..." Things have been weighing on me for a long time.
|
|
"Sure," she says. "We can go to the game room." Bernie has vanished to
|
|
somewhere, like bigfoot into the trees. Daphnie tosses back the last of her
|
|
drink, straining it through the ice, and then sets the cup back down on the
|
|
bar. I follow her back up the stairs, but all the stools are taken. My
|
|
vision is narrowing.
|
|
"We can go outside," she says, and I notice that there is a door
|
|
leading out side on the far wall. It's open, and two bouncers are leaning
|
|
back up against the outer wall. We walk past them and into the parking lot,
|
|
sitting down on the curb. I lay down my jacket so that she can sit on it.
|
|
"It's been a long time," I say. "I've... It's good to see you, really
|
|
good. I've been looking for you."
|
|
"Yeah, that's what Bernie said."
|
|
"You just vanished and I didn't know what happened to you. You stopped
|
|
returning my calls."
|
|
"I did?" she asks.
|
|
"Yeah, you don't remember?"
|
|
"I don't know. I don't remember why."
|
|
"Oh, God, Daphnie... There's things I wanna tell you. I've been trying
|
|
to find you. Every second I spent with you was magic -- you're the best.
|
|
I've never had more fun with anybody else. That time at the beach was so, I
|
|
don't know, so real. Larger than life. Everything we did, the way you'd
|
|
melt almost when I held you--"
|
|
"That's my weakness."
|
|
"I have pictures of you hanging up all over my room."
|
|
"From the beach?"
|
|
"I don't know if anyone's ever told you this, but you're beautiful."
|
|
I'm drunk and the words flow quickly and easily now. I'm worried that
|
|
I'm coming on too strong, that I'll scare her away, but either I can't
|
|
control myself or I no longer care. I just need for her to know how I feel
|
|
about her. She looks first down at the ground and then into my eyes.
|
|
"No one has."
|
|
I lean down and start flicking pebbles with my finger. They skitter
|
|
across the parking lot. I want very much to reach over with both my hands
|
|
and lay my palms against her cheeks and feel their smooth warmth and say
|
|
over and over again. "You're beautiful," until she believes it and believes
|
|
that I believe it.
|
|
"I think about you all the time. There's nothing that I've been able
|
|
to do which has given me one-tenth of the magic that I felt with you, just
|
|
that short time that we were together. You're fun to be with, there's so
|
|
much to you, and you were my best friend, too.
|
|
"I mean, it wasn't always sexual -- really. I thought you were a
|
|
lesbian the first time that I met you, but I just wanted to be around you
|
|
because... Daphnie, I think I may be in love with you."
|
|
There is a derailed silence between us and, stumbling, I continue,
|
|
lost now somewhere in the past. "I'm so nervous right now. I had to drink
|
|
ten beers before we came here. We split a case, Bernie and I. Do you want
|
|
to come over to his house with me and just talk or something? It's right
|
|
across the street. I don't want to sleep with you. I mean, I do, but I
|
|
don't. I want to have something with you that lasts." I haven't touched her
|
|
and I want to reach out and take her hand, but I don't, purposefully
|
|
leaning further away from her, making the space between us real.
|
|
"Sure, I'll come," she says. "I'd like to have a beer."
|
|
Walking back through the bar we see Bernie, beer in hand. He leers at
|
|
me, eyes like pencil-points, sweat pasting hair to his forehead.
|
|
"If only my students could see me now!"
|
|
Bernie teaches history at Millard Fillmore High School. Often he
|
|
causes me to reevaluate my own teachers and my conceptions of them.
|
|
"We're going back, okay?" I say.
|
|
"The two of you? Hot damn!" he replies bawdily, slapping me one the
|
|
back. A cloud of dust dislodges itself from his jacket and wafts around us.
|
|
Then to Daphnie he says: "He really likes you."
|
|
"I really like him," she says and takes hold of my arm, pulling
|
|
herself close. It is the first time we have touched in a year.
|
|
We walk back to Bernie's house. On the way, I hold her hand and we
|
|
talk about incidentals: where she's living, working, people she sees. She's
|
|
graduated from the university; her degree is in engineering.
|
|
When we get back to the house I put the Pearl Jam tape in the player
|
|
and we go out on the porch.
|
|
"Dance," she commands, taking my hand. We dance on the soft wet
|
|
boards. I am drunken and graceless; she thrashes without abandon like Siva
|
|
and things are born out of her and I am so glad to be with her. My hair
|
|
tangles and sticks to my face.
|
|
Finally we sit down on a long, white, plastic sun chair. The barbecue
|
|
grill is still glowing faintly in the yard. Daphnie has an ounce and a half
|
|
of marijuana in her purse, which she pulls out and begins meticulously
|
|
picking through, rolling a joint. It's the dope she got in Ecuador while
|
|
working for the Peace Corps and smuggled back in a tin of tea bags. It is
|
|
wrapped in an old sock.
|
|
I hold the bag in my hands, amazed -- I've never seen this much at one
|
|
time before and I've never known anyone with the audacity to carry so much
|
|
of it on her person. Daphnie's father though is a state trooper, and I've
|
|
always suspected that she is trying to attract some modicum of lost
|
|
attention from him. Daphnie proceeds to get stoned and I comb her hair
|
|
softly with a brush I find in her purse. She sighs while I do this. I rub
|
|
her neck and slowly lean forward and kiss her shoulder where it meets her
|
|
neck. She leans back against me the way she did at the shore, and I know
|
|
that everything will be all right. I feel warm and very happy and acutely
|
|
aware. I think all my sensory neurons are firing at once.
|
|
"How were things after you left?" I ask.
|
|
"Left where? Ecuador or here?"
|
|
"After you left here, last summer."
|
|
"Okay, I guess." I can tell by the tone of her voice that they were
|
|
not. "I got fired from my job, the one I had last summer, and I just went
|
|
away to Ecuador."
|
|
"That was the best way to leave that job." I mean this as a joke; it
|
|
wasn't a very good job. Suddenly I realize that there is a good deal more
|
|
to her than I had ever thought. There was so much that I didn't know about
|
|
her.
|
|
"Seeing anybody? I mean, do you have a boyfriend?"
|
|
"No." She says this quietly. "Not since January."
|
|
"Oh. Do you want to talk about it?"
|
|
"No," she says again, than adds, "I always get damaged."
|
|
"Even with me?" I ask.
|
|
"Even with you," she whispers, and I am ashamed. We are silent for a
|
|
long time and I am thinking about how I could have hurt her and wondering
|
|
why she stopped calling me. What nameless, unseen thing had taken place
|
|
between us at the height of my happiness? In my euphoria, was I blind to
|
|
her pain? And what had she suffered in January?
|
|
"Are you tired?" I ask, kissing the tips of her fingers.
|
|
"You bet," she says, shaking the gloom, reaching down and putting a
|
|
hand on my leg. "Wanna lie down?"
|
|
"Yeah, I do."
|
|
We go upstairs, into the spare bedroom and undress, lying down on top
|
|
of the sheets. The window is open and we can still hear the tape playing
|
|
quietly downstairs. She lies frail and trusting in my arms and I hold her
|
|
tightly. We are silent and I am stroking her hair and later I feel her
|
|
tears on my chest.
|
|
I roll over and hold her fragile face between my hands and feel that
|
|
she is breaking apart and that I have to hold her together, tenaciously,
|
|
lest all things abandon her. I kiss the tears on her cheeks and they are
|
|
salty on my lips.
|
|
"I want to hold you forever," I say, "and kiss your tears away. I
|
|
don't want to be apart from you again. It took me a year to find you and I
|
|
want to make you stop hurting." She kisses me hard on the mouth and I
|
|
tangle my fingers in her smooth hair.
|
|
Before I close my eyes, I see the red LED of the clock. It says 1:35.
|
|
|
|
Bernie has somehow, and somewhere, during the course of the night, met
|
|
and brought home the Beast From 40,000 Fathoms, who jiggles lugubriously
|
|
around the house the next morning in her gruesome underwear, chanting the
|
|
mantra "Bernie-Bernie-Bernie-food." She is as white as a sheet of erasable
|
|
bond, alternately scowling and laughing shrilly at everybody in the house
|
|
like one of Perseus' blind hags. In a deep pan of sputtering lard she
|
|
prepares and consumes -- to the stupefaction of all -- a dozen runny eggs.
|
|
Bernie in the corner holds his head, looking miserable and hung-over.
|
|
I kiss Daphnie on the mouth and her lips fit mine in a hermetic seal
|
|
and there are things that have passed between us in the night which we will
|
|
not mention again -- words spoken on the loose fortune of wine -- yet we
|
|
are closer for them.
|
|
I put my arms around her and kiss her again, this time on the
|
|
forehead. I let go of her, knowing that now it will work for us, at least
|
|
for a time, and that nothing is important but today. She promises that she
|
|
will call me and she goes out the door, taking with her the corpulent glob
|
|
of chins she'll drop off at home, or work, or the swamp, or whatever.
|
|
Cthulhu blows multitudinous kisses at Bernie before oozing into the front
|
|
seat of Daphnie's tiny car.
|
|
The windows are tinted black, so I cannot tell if Daphnie looks back
|
|
as the car drives down the road, past the mailbox, past the lawn gnome, and
|
|
past the tree that Bernie's kitten was stranded in for three long days and
|
|
two frigid nights.
|
|
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
KYLE CASSIDY (cass8806@elan.glassboro.edu) is 26 years old and a senior at
|
|
Rowan University where he is majoring in English and Political Science. His
|
|
mother wishes that he would get a haircut.
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Reality Check / MARK SMITH
|
|
|
|
Stetson had careened like a cue ball through the whole raucous evening
|
|
of his party. Host extraordinaire, he had obliged all comers. Asked to
|
|
dance, he danced. If the music needed changing, he manned the platters.
|
|
When someone suggested martinis, Stetson fished the olives from the door of
|
|
the refrigerator.
|
|
Because he had been partaking liberally of various intoxicants, he
|
|
periodically performed what he thought of as "reality checks."
|
|
He would slip into the bathroom, lean over the antique, chipped sink
|
|
and peer into the mirror. If he didn't find a scarecrow-faced stranger
|
|
leering back at him, he considered himself to have passed the reality
|
|
check.
|
|
Leaving the bathroom after the latest check, Stetson found that the
|
|
crowd had begun to thin noticeably. The party had hit its zenith of noise
|
|
and confusion and was now obviously downshifting. Soon the only ones left
|
|
would be insomniac keg-draining diehards and hangers-on.
|
|
No matter -- it had been a great party complete with all the requisite
|
|
elements of fun: deafening music, a dazzling smorgasbord of mainly illegal
|
|
drugs, general intoxication, and enough athletic dancing to require days of
|
|
muscle recuperation. But Stetson was no more ready for the evening to end
|
|
than a bulimic is to leave the Thanksgiving table: his eight-ball had yet
|
|
to find its pocket.
|
|
About this time, Joni Ricketts came to say good-bye. She floated out
|
|
of the darkened living room, where several rollerball, spike-haired couples
|
|
were bouncing to a Bow Wow Wow record popular that weekend, onto the wide,
|
|
generous front porch to where Stetson stood with several keg-hangers,
|
|
sipping beer, passing a fifth of Beam and cursing punk rockers.
|
|
Joni put a bony hand on Stetson's arm. "Going now, super party, had a
|
|
great time," she said as she wafted diaphanously down the steps and half
|
|
the distance of sidewalk out to the street.
|
|
"How're you getting home?" Stetson asked.
|
|
"Walking."
|
|
"You can't do that."
|
|
"Why not?"
|
|
"I'm coming with you."
|
|
"You don't have to do that. You still have guests."
|
|
"I'm coming with you," he repeated.
|
|
"Okay."
|
|
"Hold on a sec."
|
|
Stetson turned back into the house, shooting a glance at Riddle where
|
|
he sat rocking silently on the porch swing. A homicidal grin spread like a
|
|
rash across Riddle's face.
|
|
Inside he grabbed a half-empty jug of California red, noticing as he
|
|
did that his girlfriend Olivia, forgotten early in the evening, lay
|
|
sprawled fully-clothed across their bed, snoring.
|
|
He dashed back out the front door before anyone could ask him where he
|
|
was going or delay him with their good-byes. He met Joni at the curb. They
|
|
walked along a broad avenue that led from Stetson's neighborhood downtown
|
|
along which stately Victorian houses, once dominant, now stood cheek-to-
|
|
jowl with convenience stores, daycare centers, and laundromats.
|
|
It was very late, nearly four, and a cool, light breeze had sprung up
|
|
and lifted their hair behind them as they walked in silence. Strolling with
|
|
Joni through this quiet, slumbering city filled Stetson with a dreamy
|
|
weightlessness. He stopped walking, swigged deeply from the bottle, and
|
|
passed it to Joni who took an equally hearty pull. He watched
|
|
appreciatively as the muscles of her throat moved rhythmically up and down.
|
|
She handed the bottle back and they resumed walking.
|
|
"Good party," she said.
|
|
"You thought so?"
|
|
"Lotsa people."
|
|
"That's all that counts," said Stetson facetiously. Joni chuckled
|
|
politely.
|
|
"How's Olivia?"
|
|
"She's there."
|
|
"Everything okay with you guys?"
|
|
"I guess. We fight a lot," said Stetson, telling a marginal truth. In
|
|
fact, they fought only occasionally. The rest of the time, they ignored one
|
|
another, but Stetson felt the need to cast the relationship in a harsher
|
|
light.
|
|
"And you? Any prospects?"
|
|
"Oh. One or two," said Joni, effecting a coy, eye-batting gesture.
|
|
"I'm not surprised," said Stetson. He felt his face flush as Joni
|
|
turned to look at him. He caught her eyes briefly, then turned away. They
|
|
met in a college class several years before, found they had friends in
|
|
common, and had been good friends ever since. During that time, each had
|
|
served as collaborator, confessor and commiserator to the other's unsettled
|
|
love life. Tonight he saw her differently.
|
|
They turned the corner and walked past a grand colonnaded mansion that
|
|
sat atop a crest down from which an obsessively manicured lawn declined on
|
|
each side toward retaining walls that ran along the sidewalk. Stetson
|
|
stopped and looked up toward the house.
|
|
Joni said, "Well?"
|
|
"Come on," he said, vaulting to the top of the wall and reaching for
|
|
her hand. Stetson pulled her up onto the top of the wall and, still holding
|
|
her hand, ran up the lawn until they almost reached the porch. He plopped
|
|
down onto the grass under a spreading live oak tree.
|
|
"I don't know, Stetson," said Joni, biting her lip and looking
|
|
reluctantly at the house.
|
|
"It's okay. They're lawyers' offices."
|
|
"Really?"
|
|
"Trust me."
|
|
"Never," she laughed, dropping onto the grass beside him, her leg
|
|
touching his. He laughed too and helped himself to a great glug from the
|
|
bottle.
|
|
From the crest of the high lawn where they sat, they could see the
|
|
downtown spread before them with its motley assortment of bank towers,
|
|
church steeples, and older stone and brick buildings. Light from the street
|
|
lamp broke through the trees to dapple the shade with medallions of
|
|
counterfeit moonlight that spilled down the lawn, across the sidewalk, and
|
|
into the street.
|
|
"It seems so perfect," said Joni, reaching across Stetson for the
|
|
bottle, her arm draped lazily across his chest. He caught her elbow and
|
|
pulled her toward him. She smiled slightly and allowed him to brush his
|
|
lips to hers. She laughed nervously and pulled away against the light
|
|
pressure of his hold.
|
|
"We should behave," said Joni.
|
|
"Why?"
|
|
"Olivia."
|
|
Stetson sighed. "Yes. Olivia." He let go of her completely. She
|
|
wrapped a languid arm around him and patted his shoulder as a mother would
|
|
a child.
|
|
"I'm done with Olivia."
|
|
"But you're still together."
|
|
"Barely."
|
|
"Does she think so, too?"
|
|
"Hard to say what she thinks."
|
|
He drank but the wine tasted like mud. He offered the bottle to Joni.
|
|
She shook her head.
|
|
He said, "We've been friends for a long time."
|
|
"Yup."
|
|
"How come we never...?" He paused. "You know."
|
|
"I don't know. Maybe we thought it might ruin something special."
|
|
"Did I ruin something just now?"
|
|
"I don't know," said Joni. "I'll have to think about it."
|
|
At once all the booze and drugs of the evening came crashing down on
|
|
Stetson. His head began to swim and he felt nauseous and faint.
|
|
"Better go," he croaked, staggering to his feet. He felt ten years old
|
|
again and stepping off the merry-go-round, at the motionless, dizzying
|
|
vortex of a madly spinning cosmos that stretched away from him out to the
|
|
edges of the Milky Way, tilting dangerously with each slight movement of
|
|
his head.
|
|
He managed to walk down off the lawn, but the face of the night had
|
|
changed. He became mortified at the thought of puking in front of his old
|
|
friend, worsening a situation he already found intensely embarrassing. He
|
|
felt the old reliable emotion of self-disgust returning and all he could
|
|
think of was getting drunker, partying more. They walked the short blocks
|
|
to Joni's apartment, a tiny carriage house, the manor which it once served
|
|
having long since been torn down for parking.
|
|
"See you soon," said Joni, planting a tiny kiss on his hot cheek. She
|
|
bounded into the house and Stetson started back.
|
|
The sidewalk rose up too quickly and he felt as though he were
|
|
running. Maybe he did run, because his own house appeared before him almost
|
|
at once. The urge to retch had passed and his thoughts returned to revelry.
|
|
He regretted the episode with Joni, but he had a drunk's confidence that
|
|
come tomorrow he could put things right again.
|
|
The house was dark and still but for an orange glow floating on the
|
|
front porch. Riddle sat in the swing where he had been sitting when Stetson
|
|
left with Joni. Stetson stopped on the sidewalk, weaving visibly.
|
|
"Well, asshole," said Riddle, "you manage to get your dick wet?"
|
|
"Shut up, you swine. Where is everyone?"
|
|
"They went home. I should, too."
|
|
"No," said Stetson. "Let's do something."
|
|
"Fun's over, partyboy," said Riddle. "What did you have in mind?"
|
|
"I don't know,"
|
|
"Of course you don't. You've killed more brain cells tonight than most
|
|
folks are born with." He rocked for a few moments, then flipped his
|
|
cigarette butt so forcefully that it cleared the yard and bounced into the
|
|
empty street, where it burst apart in a shower of orange sparks. "How about
|
|
breakfast?"
|
|
"Now you're talking!" yelped Stetson. He reeled a broad step backward
|
|
into the grass. "Lemme hit the head first."
|
|
In the bathroom, Stetson leaned on the sink and tried to square his
|
|
shoulders for a reality check, but he kept slipping from side to side. He
|
|
looked into the mirror where his disembodied face floated like a conjured
|
|
visitor at a seance. Every pore seemed a crater and his eyes had narrowed
|
|
to bloody slits. His lips stretched over his yellow teeth like the mouth of
|
|
a corpse.
|
|
|
|
The dawn wind blowing through the windows of Riddle's pickup truck
|
|
began to cool Stetson's fevered brain. Riddle's truck was a mess. Coke
|
|
bottles rolled across the floor over piles of yellowed newspapers. Empty
|
|
cigarette packages and fast-food trash littered the seat. Reams of papers
|
|
were folded and rubber-banded behind the sun visor. Stetson didn't notice a
|
|
thing.
|
|
Riddle listened unsympathetically to the whole story of his walk with
|
|
Joni Ricketts, occasionally shaking his head and grunting.
|
|
"Do you think I really fucked up this time?"
|
|
"Would serve you right."
|
|
"I guess it would."
|
|
They pulled into the parking lot of Hill's Cafe. Even though it was
|
|
not yet six, the lot was jammed with cars and trucks most in worse repair
|
|
than Riddle's. Riddle and Stetson piled out of the truck and started toward
|
|
the front door along the sidewalk that ran the width of the building.
|
|
Suddenly, without warning even to himself, Stetson tumbled over a
|
|
scraggly box shrub and fell in a heap onto a narrow strip of St. Augustine
|
|
grass between the sidewalk and the building. He lay next to an old
|
|
buckboard wagon bereft of seat and spring that served as someone's idea of
|
|
appropriate decor for an all-night redneck diner specializing in greasy
|
|
breakfasts, club sandwiches and tough steaks.
|
|
Riddle regarded Stetson without trace of sympathy. He shook a
|
|
cigarette out of a crushed pack, lit it and let a cloud of blue smoke waft
|
|
away to join the grease and smoke hanging above Hill's.
|
|
Stetson looked up at the rust-rimmed wheels of wagon with the
|
|
incomprehension of an infant.
|
|
"Well?" said Riddle. Stetson looked up.
|
|
"Well, what?"
|
|
"You coming?"
|
|
"Coming where?" said Stetson.
|
|
"You asshole."
|
|
Stetson looked puzzled. "Why do you say that?"
|
|
"Because you are one."
|
|
"I am?"
|
|
"Get up," said Riddle.
|
|
"Do I have to? It feels so good here."
|
|
"Suit yourself," said Riddle and started to move off.
|
|
"Wait."
|
|
Riddle stopped. Stetson said, "You just gonna leave me here?" He
|
|
looked up at the wagon. "Here in the goddamn O.K. Corral?" He started
|
|
giggling like a twelve-year-old at a slumber party.
|
|
"Jesus, Stetson, get your ass up off the ground. For chrissake, take a
|
|
look at yourself. What the hell's wrong with you? Someone might think you
|
|
had real problems or something."
|
|
Stetson looked up at Riddle, wanting to answer, but unable. He loved
|
|
Riddle like a brother and his disapproval was crippling. He had always
|
|
appreciated Riddle's honesty, and felt all the worse to find it directed at
|
|
himself. He wanted more than anything to spring up, to prove himself. To
|
|
prove Riddle wrong. But the grass was cool and soft and, with the weight of
|
|
forced merriment lifted, he felt more depleted than he could ever remember.
|
|
A thin, middle-aged, weathered man in western clothes stalked down the
|
|
sidewalk, pausing when he came to where Riddle stood. The cowboy cast a
|
|
cold eye down at Stetson, then up at Riddle, his face pinched into a squint
|
|
under the brim of his hat.
|
|
"Drunk," he said, summing up the scene.
|
|
"Adjective as accurate as noun," said Riddle, nodding grimly.
|
|
The cowboy looked suspiciously at Riddle and went on his way, shaking
|
|
his head.
|
|
Stetson knew that standing would not absolve him of the crimes of the
|
|
evening, but along with a big breakfast and pots of coffee, it might break
|
|
the spell of self-absorption under which he had languished for what seemed
|
|
like years.
|
|
He rose and stepped over the hedge back onto the sidewalk. Riddle
|
|
nodded at him much as he had nodded at the cowboy a moment before.
|
|
Standing at last, and with sober voice, Stetson looked at Riddle and
|
|
said, "I think I'm finally ready." They stalked into Hill's Cafe, where
|
|
Stetson ate like a plague of locusts or a man returned from the dead.
|
|
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
MARK SMITH (mlsmith@tenet.edu) has been writing fiction and non-fiction
|
|
for over ten years. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in
|
|
_Window_, _Spectrum_, _Malcontent_, _Epiphany_, and the _Lone Star
|
|
Literary Quarterly_. "Reality Check" is from Mark's collection of
|
|
stories, _Riddle_, winner of the 1992 Austin Book Award. Mark lives
|
|
in Austin, Texas.
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
The Tired Man and the Hoop / JASON SNELL
|
|
|
|
(With slight apologies to Ernest Hemingway)
|
|
|
|
The man drove to the baseline, allowing sweat to drip into his eyes.
|
|
"Nice try," he said. "You can try to defend against me, but I will keep
|
|
driving until I can take a clear shot." He began to bounce the ball with
|
|
his other hand and jerked his head to the left. The defender took his bait.
|
|
He dribbled the ball past the defender. The ball dropped through the net.
|
|
"You make it, you take it," the defender said.
|
|
"I do," the man said.
|
|
This time won't be as easy, he thought, because that trick won't work
|
|
again. I need a new trick, he thought. But what kind of trick? A kind he
|
|
has never seen before. But he has been playing this game for a long time. I
|
|
will have to be resourceful.
|
|
The man put the ball between his legs, his tired legs wrapped in
|
|
flimsy sweat pants. He wiped the sweat off his hands onto the pants, and
|
|
then retrieved the ball. I will have a better grip on the ball now, he
|
|
thought. Such a grip may serve me well.
|
|
He stared into the eyes of the defender and knew how difficult his
|
|
task was. He could not pass the ball to teammates because he had none.
|
|
Being alone was what made one-on-one the challenge it was. The defender was
|
|
also sweating, not only because he was tired, but because he was losing by
|
|
two baskets.
|
|
The man started dribbling; he worked his feet back and forth in false
|
|
drives to the basket and switched the ball between his hands. He moved to
|
|
the far right of the court, the cracked high school court he had always
|
|
used for these challenges. It had been a long time since he had lost. He
|
|
did not like to lose.
|
|
"You're bad luck for me," he said to the right side of the court. "I
|
|
can't ever make a good shot from this side."
|
|
The left side would be better, he thought. I can get past my opponent
|
|
there.
|
|
He kept his dribble and moved to the left. It was a better side, less
|
|
cracked than the right. Just then a wave of fatigue washed into every crack
|
|
of his body. It had been a long game, and there was only so much his body
|
|
could take.
|
|
"I will defeat you," he told his opponent.
|
|
If I don't collapse first, he thought.
|
|
He turned to look at the basket and saw it hanging in the sky behind
|
|
his opponent, beckoning like a comfortably rickety front porch in someone's
|
|
hometown.
|
|
"I am coming for you," he told the basket. He shook his fist at it.
|
|
He became angry when he realized that shaking his fist had caused him
|
|
to stop dribbling the ball.
|
|
In a moment, the opponent was close. He jostled the man repeatedly,
|
|
knowing that the man's only recourse was to shoot the ball. Such a shot
|
|
would certainly miss. The opponent had the man covered too closely.
|
|
You have me in a bad situation, the man thought. But your situation is
|
|
even worse than mine. You are four points behind me. How did I allow myself
|
|
to be trapped in this corner, without my dribble? I must be getting very
|
|
tired. Or I was looking at the basket and was distracted by my thoughts.
|
|
Now I will perform my trick and then I will score the basket. He will be
|
|
defeated.
|
|
"Look up in the sky," he said nonchalantly. "It's the space shuttle."
|
|
The opponent looked up, not because he was stupid, but because their
|
|
basketball court was not too far from where the space shuttle lands.
|
|
Astronomy was the opponent's pastime, other than one-on-one
|
|
basketball. And the man knew it.
|
|
The man turned as his opponent was looking, and hurled the ball
|
|
through the air. The ball a high arc and bounced off the backboard. They
|
|
watched the ball drop through the soft net and onto the hard pavement
|
|
below.
|
|
"That was a dirty trick," the opponent said.
|
|
"I know," the man said.
|
|
He picked up the ball, and knew that he was now leading by six points.
|
|
I will win, he thought. He will not score eight points in a row.
|
|
"You make it, you take it," the opponent said.
|
|
"Yes," the man said.
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
JASON SNELL (jsnell@ocf.Berkeley.edu) is a first-year graduate student at
|
|
UC
|
|
Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. This is the last in a series of
|
|
seemingly pointless imitations of famous authors he wrote for the final
|
|
writing class he took as an undergraduate. (Previous victims were Virginia
|
|
Woolf ("A Reality of One's Own") and Hunter S. Thompson ("Gnomes in the
|
|
Garden
|
|
of the Damned"), both of which appeared in Quanta. Now, shoo. You don't
|
|
want
|
|
to read any more about this guy.
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
THE FOLLOWING ARE ADVERTISEMENTS. INTERTEXT'S EDITORS AREN'T
|
|
RESPONSIBLE FOR MUCH, INCLUDING THE VERACITY OF THESE ADS.
|
|
|
|
_Quanta_ (ISSN 1053-8496) is the electronically distributed
|
|
journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy. As such, each issue contains
|
|
fiction by amateur authors as well as articles, reviews, etc...
|
|
_Quanta_ is published in two formats, ASCII and PostScript(TM)
|
|
(for PostScript compatible laser-printers). Submissions should be
|
|
sent to quanta@andrew.cmu.edu. Requests to be added to the
|
|
distribution list should be sent to one of the following depending on
|
|
which version of the magazine you'd like to receive.
|
|
|
|
quanta+requests-ascii@andrew.cmu.edu
|
|
|
|
or
|
|
|
|
quanta+requests-ascii@andrew.BITNET
|
|
|
|
Send mail only -- no interactive messages or files please. The
|
|
main FTP archive for _Quanta_ issues and back issues is:
|
|
|
|
Host: export.acs.cmu.edu
|
|
IP: 128.2.35.66
|
|
Directory: /pub/quanta
|
|
|
|
--
|
|
|
|
In addition to InterText and Quanta, there are lots of other net-
|
|
distributed magazines out there. Here are a few we know about. If you know
|
|
about more, feel free to drop us a line!
|
|
_CORE_ is available by e-mail subscription and anonymous ftp from
|
|
eff.org. Send requests and submissions to rita@eff.org. _CORE_ is
|
|
an entirely electronic journal dedicated to e-publishing the best,
|
|
freshest prose and poetry being created in Cyberspace. _CORE_ is
|
|
published monthly.
|
|
DARGONZINE is an electronic magazine printing stories written for the
|
|
Dargon Project, a shared-world anthology created by David "Orny" Liscomb in
|
|
his now-retired magazine, FSFNet. The Dargon Project contains stories with
|
|
a fantasy fiction/sword and sorcery flavor. DargonZine is available ASCII
|
|
format. For a subscription, please send a request to the editor, Dafydd, at
|
|
white@duvm.BITNET. This request should contain your full user ID, as well
|
|
as your full name. Internet subscribers will receive their issues in mail
|
|
format.
|
|
THE GUILDSMAN is devoted to role-playing games and amateur fantasy/SF
|
|
fiction. At this time, the Guildsman is available in LATEX source and
|
|
PostScript formats via both email and anonymous ftp without charge to the
|
|
reader. For more information, email jimv@ucrmath.ucr.edu (internet) or
|
|
ucsd!ucrmath!jimv (uucp).
|
|
|
|
--
|
|
|
|
Submit! You will submit to InterText! No, we're not trying to
|
|
dominate the world -- we're just trying to put out issues every two
|
|
months. And we can't without submissions from people out there in the
|
|
net. Write to: jsnell@ocf.Berkeley.edu for guidelines, if you want
|
|
them. Basically, any genre is fine and length is rarely, if ever, a
|
|
concern. We like it if you haven't posted the story to a network
|
|
newsgroup, and we won't allow the use of copyrighted (i.e., stolen)
|
|
characters. Submissions can be in ASCII or, for those with the
|
|
ability, RTF (Interchange) format.
|
|
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
InterText Vol. 2, No. 6. InterText is published electronically on a bi-
|
|
monthly basis. Reproduction of this magazine is permitted as long as the
|
|
magazine is not sold and the content of the magazine is not changed in any
|
|
way. Copyright 1992, Jason Snell. All stories Copyright 1992 by their
|
|
respective authors. All further rights to stories belong to the authors.
|
|
The ASCII InterText is exported from Macintosh PageMaker 4.2 files into
|
|
Microsoft Word 5.0a for text preparation. A version of InterText also
|
|
appears on the Electronic Frontier Foundation Forum (GO EFFSIG) on
|
|
CompuServe. Our next issue is scheduled for January 20, 1992. A PostScript
|
|
version of this magazine, including PostScript art on the cover, is also
|
|
available.
|
|
For subscription requests, e-mail: jsnell@ocf.Berkeley.edu
|
|
->Back issues available via FTP at: network.ucsd.edu (128.54.16.3)<-
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
What did you expect, a clever joke here or something?
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|