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She could admit that, now, to him. But back on the day she’d run too far she’d been in a panic, her grip on sanity slipping by cogs. It had taken the threat of true isolation, of wandering lost through endless wastelands until thirst or exposure killed her, to make her see the apartment as haven and not prison. So half-blinded by tears she had run back, thanking God that her shoes were cheap. One of them had an uneven sole that scuffed a little crescent-shaped mark into the dusty soil. The moon had led her home.
BLOGSTER login: Welcome Conty!
RED ALERT
[Day 975 (yeah right I actually keep count in my head)]
KT no more kidding. Fight it. Don’t think about the damn cat. Go out and run — you can go pretty far from your house in the grass, can’t you? Eat something.
Hell, eat everything; it’s not like it won’t come back at rollover.
Talk to us.
The emails she sent didn’t always go through. More than once she had to send them again when they bounced or, more often, simply never got a response. She saw the bounce histories in his attachments and knew that he’d had to send his multiple times, too. Just another day post-prolif.
She did not tell the others about the private correspondence, and neither did he. She knew what her friends would have said. It became something special, secret, a little titillating. As the days passed her dreams changed. Now the man creeping about her room had a face and a much less sinister demeanor. Now he looked like a skinny, geeky teenager, whose shy smile was for her alone.
BLOGSTER login: Welcome, Marguille!
[Jan. 37 errordate errortime 12:5g0k p.m.]
SILENCE.
You guys want to chat? I need some facetime. I think KT’s gone.
Over the exchanges she shared her life story with him. Growing up less than middle-class, trying to act less than upper-class. The teasing in elementary school because she “talked proper” and couldn’t dance. Her first boyfriend, a white boy—she’d been too guilt-ridden to bring him home to meet her parents, and they’d broken up because of her shame. Her next boyfriend, the one she’d almost married, until she found out he was cheating on her. Graduating college and feeling the isolation grow in her life. Few friends, none of them local. No lovers. She’d always been an only child, a lonely child; she was used to it. The prospect of a couple of years in Japan hadn’t seemed all that daunting because, what difference did it make, after all?
He told her about himself. Second-generation American-born Chinese, too free-spirited for the rigidly traditional family into which he’d been born, too shy to face the world without the shield of a book. No girlfriends; the girls he’d liked had been more interested in jocks and red-blooded rich boys. Never brave enough to venture far from home, he made the internet his realm, and in it he thrived. He was a Big Name Fan in certain circles, known for his biting wit and brutal honesty. The prolif had barely slowed him down.
She worried about what might happen as the clandestine exchanges continued but never mentioned her fears to him. She’d begun to enjoy herself too much; the “incoming mail” chime was enough to make her heart race with excitement. She had to force herself out for her daily runs.
It helped that the more they talked, the more reliable the relaying became. Pretty soon messages were going through after only two or three tries, and not bouncing at all.
IRC session start: Sun? MarEMBJune datetime error
*** marguille sets mode: +o TwenWen Conty Helen sappjuice
> Log set and active! TwenWen logging!
* Conty sighs.
* Helen observes a moment of silence.
* Conty groans.
* Helen sighs.
* TwenWen waits for Marguille’s spec…and waits…and waits.
* Helen wishes she had a nickel for every egghead spec…but where would she put them all?
*** sappjuice changes topic to “The Egghead Pyramid Scheme!”
* TwenWen giggles.
* TwenWen says, “DEcoherence. And I can use other big words, like ‘marmalade’.”
* marguille is typing.
*** Conty has been disconnected.
* Helen agrees.
* marguille sighs and waves.
*** marguille has logged off.
*** TwenWen has stopped logging.
*** TwenWen has logged off.
*** Helen has logged off.
*** sappjuice has logged off.
Session Close: Mon? Time? Deeeeeeeechgkl#@ ^^^^
Just spec, she told herself over the next few days. Too many people had expected a more dramatic apocalypse; now they cried wolf at every shadow. Some of their theories sounded right, but most were cockamamie—like Guille’s implication that friendship, family, love, could be the reason that some people just disappeared. That would mean the only people still alive across the proliferated realities were those whose ties to the world had been weak from the beginning.
Those who’d lived alone. Those who’d been socially isolated. Not the completely disconnected ones; people without ’net access would’ve gone stark raving within days after the prolif. But the loosely connected ones, who interacted with others only when they had to, or through a screen. Those who’d maintained just enough connection to keep them sane, then. Just enough connection to keep them alive, now.
Just spec, she thought again as the alarm clock buzzed. She hadn’t slept in two rollovers. Not me.
New habit. She sat up and reached over to her laptop, which rested on a low table beside the futon, and tapped its touchpad to wake it up. It chimed as the screen lit; she had mail.
“Helen,
I know this is risky, stupid, cheesy, whatever. But I can’t help myself. I’ve never met you and never will, but…some things you can feel no matter what. They used to say this was all just pheromones, but
that’s crap. I’ve never smelled you and I only have my imagination to tell me what you look like. But I have to say this because it’s true.
I love you.
I wish oh shit I didn’t believe it but it’s true”
No sig. Not even a period at the end of the last sentence. He’d had enough time to send, but not to finish first.
Not me, her mind whispered, and not him. Please, not him.
And as the walls of her tiny apartment began to warp and the barren landscape beyond her window vanished, she had time to click on the bookmark for her blog’s “update” form and type a single line.
“The way out, or the end? Sapp’s gone to see. I’m going too.”
She hit “post” as reality folded into silence.
Skin Dragons Talk
Ernest Hogan
He didn’t want to give the guards one more chance to beat him to a bloody pulp. It would have made them far too happy. The dragons tattooed on his bruised arms and shoulders twitched and asked, What’s so funny?
“I’m getting out of prison,” he whispered in his native Japspañol. “In an old 20th-century yakuza movie, it would start like this.”
Why would that be funny?
“Don’t know. Just is.”
Your limited verbalization skills—we need to work on them.
The big scar-faced guard said something in Standard Lunar Japlish to her nerdish partner, then stuck her face into Goro’s and said something that the croaking electronic translator made “Talking to yourself again?” in textbook Japspañol. “I tell you—you’re not only stupid, you’re crazy!”
Goro grunted and got slapped for it.
You should have known, said the dragons. We knew even though we haven’t fully decoded their language. She has slapped you every time you have grunted like that for the past six months.
Yes, it had been a long six months for Goro since he had been caught in that unsuccessful attempt to hijack a rival corporation’s cometwater probe. Doing time was just part of the job. He’d been through it all before—having yakuza-style tattoos made him a suspected datamule, so he’d been suffering nanobug probing the entire time. It was like a long case of a powerful mutant flu, with occasional beatings thrown in for good measure.
In the cramped corridors of the Pavlov Detention Facility, you couldn’t get away.
It had been some time during that most recent living hell that Goro’s dragon tattoos had begun to move and talk. He hadn’t thought that was strange. Maybe he was going crazy—and that was just part of the job, too.
You should have known that the other corporations would plant guards in the prison, said the dragons.
Yes, Goro thought, his lips moving slightly, but making no noise. But I was ordered to hijack the probe. I am a loyal Motocorp organization member. I follow orders.
Scarface asked the Nerd something in Japlish and the translator croaked out, “The nanobugs find anything in his tattoos?” in Japspañol a few seconds later. They wanted Goro to understand and be intimidated.
“Naw,” said the Nerd, “but the ink structure is unnecessarily complex. Who knows what could be hidden in there? Them yakuza hackers are damn clever.”
Scarface leaned into Goro’s sweat-covered brow. “For the last time—are you a data mule?”
“Don’t know,” said Goro.
“Don’t know,” the Nerd mimicked. “You don’t know anything, do you?” The translator distorted his tone of voice.
“You’re the stupidest prisoner we’ve had in a long time.” Scarface powered up her pain prod, causing the translator to cough up static. The Nerd giggled, his magnified eyes squinting behind his thick glasses.
Goro winced.
Pain, said the dragons, is merely information.
The agonizing information overloaded Goro’s battered nervous system.
A large capacity for input, said the dragons. Still need to work on storage and retrieval.
Goro almost laughed out loud.
He really couldn’t this time. The pain and his thoughts forced his lips into a moronic grin that disgusted Scarface and the Nerd.
All Goro’s life, somebody or other had been working on him, trying to make him better. It never worked. They would always get frustrated and end up lashing out at him, with either cruel words or violent blows, or sometimes both.
As Scarface and the Nerd did.
They kept at him, but Goro’s face was frozen into that hideous grin. After a while, he made a gurgling sound that was a monstrous parody of a laugh.
Scarface and the Nerd stopped hitting and kicking when they heard that awful sound. Their mouths hung silently open as something not human looked them over through Goro’s eyes.
The Nerd wept.
Scarface picked up a package with shaking hands. “Here’s a fresh kimono and a transportation token card. Get dressed and get the expletive out of here.” The translator voice was a lot steadier than Scarface’s.
They couldn’t look at Goro anymore. As if his nudity offended them. Or maybe they, too, could see the tattooed dragons moving and talking. He could feel them move as he slipped into the daynite glow pink prison kimono.
At last, they said, we can get a look at this world.
Goro held his breath as the door hissed open and spat him out. He was free— or at least as free as one could be on the Moon.
At first the light blinded him—in the prison, light came only when the guards could shine it directly into his eyes, then ask questions until he longed for the darkness and the stench of the coffin.
Goro squinted. The light was painful at first, but he could get used to it as he took deep breaths and realized that the air didn’t stink from his own secretions. It was warm, dry, and had a subtly perfumed scent.
He closed his eyes, and took another deep breath. “Yes, Goro,” a familiar voice said in Japspañol, “breathe while you still can.”
Goro’s eyes snapped open. He turned and saw Ironeyes, a notorious Motocorp enforcer who was good enough and rich enough to afford a cometwater pendant, a big one glowing with its own internal light source. Ironeyes smiled with unnaturally perfect teeth, and raised his left hand, grabbing his little finger. With a crisp pop, the artificial finger came off. He held the prosthetic up for Goro to see.
With a nervous smile Goro held up his hands. The little fingers were missing from both. The two thugs standing behind Ironeyes laughed. All three members of the enforcement team had swords hanging from their belts, still in their hilts, and not turned on.
“Both completely gone,” said the tall female thug.
“What a loser,” said the short, musclebound male thug.
“How many years have you been with Motocorp, Goro?” asked Ironeyes.
Goro counted. His eyelids fluttered as his eyes rolled back into his skull.
Ironeyes and the thugs laughed.
Ability for mathematics undeveloped, said the dragons. Must make adjustments.
“Eight,” Goro said. “I’ve been with Motocorp for eight years.”
“Amazing that he has any fingers left,” Ironeyes said.
The thugs dutifully laughed.
Say something, the dragons said.
“You come to take me to Tranquility?” came out of Goro’s mouth.
“Of course,” said Ironeyes. “You’re so stupid that you may never find your way back on your own.”
The dragons squirmed on Goro’s arms and shoulders. The pink kimono itched. He reached under his collar and scratched.
“Uh, you got civilian clothes for me?” Goro found himself asking.
The thugs looked at one another and shook their heads.
Ironeyes flashed his ceramic teeth. “No, bright boy. A third-class thug like you doesn’t deserve to go back to civilization in fashionable dress. Sheriff Moe and the oyabun agree that you’ve got to be made an example, so folks gotta see you in a pink kimono.”
At first Goro’s jaw dropped. Then the dragons took control. He closed his mouth and
stood up straight.
Each thug grabbed one of Goro’s shoulders as they shoved him down the corridor to the waiting mag-lev tube train. It was a freighter that moved supplies and products around the far side, but there was one car for prisoners coming in and out of Pavlov.
They threw Goro into a corner bench. No one talked during the long ride. There were no windows in the car. Motion was barely perceivable. A monitor screen above eye level displayed a public service channel.
Transportation requires patience, said the dragons.
Goro tried not to react. He also tried not to look at the monitor. The dragons made him strain to look at it.
“Been away from vid for a while, huh, Goro?” said Ironeyes, causing the others to burst into laughter that was too enthusiastic for the situation.
The public service channel had only three short programs. First was a word scroll of tourists activities scheduled for the upcoming week in Tranquility City. The next was a nondenominational spot on the cometwater’s benefits to physical and spiritual health; it showed a beautiful young model actually drinking some from a small vial, then smiling with a transcendental glow. (Primitive superstition, said the dragons, something we can take advantage of.) The other was a spot in which Sheriff Moe smiled and said, “On my Moon, if you use a gun, you get your head cut off.”
Logical, said the dragons. Explosive projectile weapons would be destructive to this fragile artificial environment.
Then an actual decapitation, in a spacesuit, on the lunar surface was shown.
The three-part program was repeated in an infinity loop.
During the cometwater spot Ironeyes would caress his pendant.
Every time the executioner’s sword powered up, the thugs got excited. The helmet would fall in slow motion, spilling the severed head—and when they simultaneously hit the surface, raising a cloud of lunar dust, the thugs laughed. They laughed every time the spot was shown, for the entire ride to Tranquility City.
Sunspot Jungle
Mothership