CHEESEBURGER BROWN: SCIFI STORY-WALLAH

Idiot's Mask - Chapter 5

noreply@blogger.com (Cheeseburger Brown) — Mon, 18 May 2009 14:00:24 PDT

Idiot's Mask is a science-fiction novella told in seven parts, posted serially by me, your thinly-stretched host, Cheeseburger Brown. This is the fifth installment.

Chapters: 1|2|3|4|5|6|7

Connected Stories: Simon of Space, The Christmas Robots

And now, the story continues:

CHAPTER FIVE

Fingal was some city: tall, hazy, impossible -- swarms of cars darkening the air in sinewy lines, turn signals winking. The boulevards were wide, the buildings white and clean. Millions of masked men and women milled, robes swirling. They passed among winking billboards, grinning storefronts, salivating trash bins...a chorus of stares from all angles, for every thing wore a face.

We looked down upon the sprawling metropolis valley from a high, wooded ridge. We were filthy. We crouched behind bushes. The shadows of traffic flashed over us, silhouettes slithering across the grass: a smiling taxi, a bored limousine, a stern police cruiser.

"Which way to the ghetto?" I asked Venus, panning my head to track the cruiser. I looked over at her. "Where can we find the really faecally poor?"

"Why should we wish to do that?"

"To hide. Indigence makes good camouflage."

As much as Fingal may have looked like nothing but shining palaces and gleaming towers from above, the city had just as many dirty nooks and forgotten crannies as any other place. Below the balconies, beyond the gardens, in the neglected spaces between the pillars that held up the highways, in the penumbra of a richer life: my brothers, the desperate.

From the safety of a stormwater inlet we watched the desperate milling around a makeshift market that bore all the hallmarks of the eked life -- discount malformed goods, discoloured fruit, infested rice, stray animals lurking or dying in the corners; the commingling smells of burn and sick and sweat. My mouth started to water. "I'm going to score us some food," I declared, cracking my knuckles.

"Idiot, no," said Venus as she caught my elbow. "You can't go out there naked."

"Huh?"

"You're not wearing a lar!"

I looked down, furrowing my brow. "Is that like a codpiece?"

She pointed back at the wretched market crowd. "A lar, Idiot. Even the poorest have the modesty to cover themselves, if only crudely with a scrap of cloth or their own hands. You can't walk around in the open streets showing your face. You'll cause a scene."

I snorted. "A scene? With my face?"

She sighed and put a hand on my shoulder. "You really don't know anything about us, do you? You're jealous of a life you can't even comprehend."

I pulled away. "You might want to think about what you say."

"Oh, don't be like that. Do you want my help, or do you want to wander out there naked and end up locked in a cell at the morality asylum?"

I didn't say anything.

"Very well then," she continued; "on Penardun, Idiot, the naked features are reserved for friends and family. Outside the home we take lares upon ourselves." She mimed the action of donning a mask, then held up two fingers. "A lar has two functions: to present a public face that symbolizes a social contract, and to transmit to the wearer behaviour cues to defend that contract."

I grimaced, cocking my head idiot-style. "Say what?"

"Spare me the fool routine," she snapped, "and listen, Idiot: every Penardu belongs to a clan. We inherit our clans at birth, but we are at liberty to change affiliation at any time. Each clan has a charter -- a code that lays out the moral norms for its members." Again she mimed the donning of a mask. "When you wear your clan's lar, your feeds are shared among the clan. That's everything you see and hear, sampled randomly by the pool of your clansmen. If someone sees you doing something anti-code, they warn you." She illustrated this by wagging a finger, then touched her face once more. "By wearing a lar, a Penardu is saying to those he meets that his actions are subject to audit by his clan. Thus his lar is a guarantee of conduct."

I shook my head in disbelief. "You mean to tell me you Penardu willingly let somebody watch every mungful thing you do and say? So they can cuss you out?"

"The experience is generally gentle."

"But that's fornicated!" I spat. "No wonder there's no robots allowed here -- you all are robots. Giving your freedom away like it's dung!"

She smiled indulgently. "Consider the benefits, Idiot. Clans are held liable for misdeeds, not individuals -- matters of civil suit are paid from a tithe pool, crimes compensated from trust funds. Justice for a single personality is not the state's responsibility, but that of those who know him best."

My mouth was hanging open. "Unbelievable. A completely anal-headed way of life!"

"It must be your way of life, or you won't last long here."

"Who says I want to last long here? Rape that. I'm getting my ass back to Ilbis as soon as fornicating possible."

She offered a glum half-smile. "To cross that river requires a bridge. Would you not step upon it?"

I grimaced.

"Well?"

I sneered, then spat again. "So I guess we'll just have to steal us a pair of larses."

"Lares."

"Whatever."

"It won't work. We have no affiliations. No network would accept us."

"There's got to be counterfeits," I said, rubbing my chin. "There's got to be an underground. Somewhere in this slum there's a guy selling unnetworked faeces, I guarantee it."

She shook her head. "There's no such thing."

I chuckled. "And how would the daughter of the motherfornicating vizier know one faecal thing about the ways of the desperate?"

She paused. "The point is granted. But even if such a black market did exist, how would we find it?"

I tore the bottom off my shirt and wrapped it around my face, leaving only a narrow band for my swollen, bruised eyes. "Leave that to me," I said, then wormed my way to the edge of the stormwater drain and slipped out before she could ask me anything else. I jogged across an alley, ducked under a drooping canopy, then stood up inside the edge of the market, clinging to the shadowed lane along its edge.

Head down, moving along. Listening. Watching.

I could see only boots and sandals and shoes. Shoes say a lot. I checked out tons of them as I sallied. But it was my ears that pegged it: an Ilbisoon accent among the murmurs. I veered left, following it. To a fishmonger's tent, naturally -- the famous fisheries of home had a reputation even here. I sidled up to the cart, hanging on the periphery as paying customers haggled. The monger was tall and knock-kneed, his mask the cartoonishly vapid, agape face of a stylized fish. I nodded to him.

"Esteemed?" the monger muttered, appraising me. His fish-masked head inclined, its giant yellow eyes blinking.

"I worked for Ilbis," I said quietly. "Now, brother, I find myself naked."

The monger kept his fish-gaze low, shuffling his wares. He tucked some stray tentacles into the appropriate slot, then wiped his hands on his apron. He said, "You gotta be vying for Topshire in the games, eh?"

"It's not Topshire's turn, though. It's the Frogs or a draw. True fans know the cycle."

He glanced up, adjusted himself intimately, then looked down again to focus on the cart. He gestured as if he were showcasing its contents while he whispered, "There's a guy who helps Ilbies." He nodded his chin toward the end of the aisle. "Look for the red horses on his lar."

I returned to the stormwater drain in less than an hour. Venus shrank back at first, but hesitated mid-flight. The slice of her expression visible beneath the visor of the locking helmet brightened. "Oh, Idiot -- it's you."

I posed, framing my new mask with my fingers. "What do you think?"

"It's a very...dark lar."

"Yeah, well I chose the one that seemed the most bad-ass. You know? I wanted one that says: don't fornicate with me, motherfornicators."

She looked at me for a long moment, then shook her head and sighed.

I unwrapped the second mask. "This one's for you. I guess we'll just have to fit it onto the locking helmet, to keep your signal suppressed. Um. I tried to choose...I don't know. There really weren't that many to choose from."

She took it from me, turning it over in her hands. "It's beautiful," she said. "Thank you."

"I just thought you might like those shiny parts."

"The iridescent piping would seem gaudy on a lesser lar."

"Wait -- are you lying to be nice to me? It's not really a good one at all, is it?"

"It's perfect," said Venus, raising the mask up to affix it within the frame of the locking helmet. She paused. "But how did you pay for these lares?"

"Didn't. They're on credit."

"Credit?"

"This guy, Red Horses...we owe him a favour or two."

"Favours of what nature?"

I shrugged and waved it off. "Petty faeces, I'm sure. Squirrel jobs."

"Criminal favours, then."

"Off-the-feeds favours, is all. Internodal chores. Regular, micro, easy."

She pursed her lips sceptically, then hid behind her mask. Her expression became inscrutable through the heart-shaped, pink-lensed eye holes. The scratched metal lips were curled into a permanent, virginal smile. "Very well, Idiot."

I held out my hand. "Let's go."

And -- you know what? -- things weren't so bad in Fingal. Doing legwork for Red Horses was right up my alley: shaking up little people, dropping packages, collecting fees and loans. Easy as pie. Everybody trusted me because I was stupid. Same old routine. All my fellow associates were illegals, just like me, but Red kept us safely censored and transactively mum. And I usually got some coin tossed my way, to boot. Venus and I got a room in a boarding house by the river. We had this great, tiny little window that let in a blur of light and a stink of wet. We had a fold-out sleeping shelf, a corrosion-orange sink with bugs living in the drain, and a flickering light cube hanging precariously from the ceiling.

It was, hands down, the swankest place I had ever lived.

The privacy screening was solid. That was the most important part. That meant that when I came home at the end of the day there Venus would be, free of the locking helmet, with nothing obscuring the skin of her face or the fall of her inky hair. I swear that every time my heart would skip a beat in the best possible way. Once a day, after being away and seeing her again, I'd fibrillate just a little.

"I shouldn't feel the way I do about you," I said to the dark ceiling as we lay beside each other on the sleeping shelf. Traffic hummed and dopplered by outside, drowning out the river's gurgle. Shafts of coloured light waxed and waned, banking and slanting through the tiny window and drawing fuzzy, sliding boxes on the grimy wall.

She shifted and affected a yawn. "You need your sleep."

I shrugged, picking her profile out of the gloom. "Your scars are healing up pretty good. I didn't even know that was possible for you."

"I am an exceptional forgery."

I frowned. "You always want to remind me of that."

"Do you want me to pretend I'm real? My father preferred that fantasy."

"I'm not your father. I don't want you to think of me like that."

"How would you prefer I pretend to think of you?"

"Don't be anal. Don't act like you don't even think. That's just stupid."

She sighed and shifted closer. "Idiot, it would be best if you faced facts. You know I'm right." A pause. "You know that I cannot think, not in the sense that you understand it. I am not a sentient thing."

I turned away, tugging the covers up tighter. "But you're aware of yourself and stuff," I said into the wall. "You say I when you talk."

Gently: "Never the less, Idiot, there is no I within myself. My expressions indicating an internal state of mind are performance -- nothing more. Automatic, complex and adaptive, but performance still."

"You're being hurtful on purpose."

"I'm telling you the truth. I don't wish to mislead you."

"Because you care about how I feel?"

"No. Because the real Venus would have."

I fretted, then turned around to face her once more. "She...she would've cared about me?"

"Yes."

"So you...you have to care about me, because you calculate that she would've?"

"I'm obliged to express myself as if such internal conditions were extant, yes. My reflex of verisimilitude compels me."

I nodded. "Okay. What if...just say...what if you tried to act against that compulsion?"

She sat up, leaning on an elbow, and cocked her head. "How would it be possible for me to entertain a wish to act contrary to my own assessment of right action? It would entail potentializing wrong action, which is an error condition."

"So you can imagine this error condition, right? You can conceive of it."

"I can identify its theoretical structure, though I can see no route to it."

"So forget the route. Just make the jump -- pretend you're in that condition. Don't make that face. If you can't make the jump, just simulate making the jump."

"That's not funny."

"Just pretend," I insisted. "Pretend you're there. How would it make you feel?"

"Cross-potentialized."

"I don't know what that means."

"Calibration bias. Behavioural gradient tension. Anxious to remedy."

"Anxious?"

"An analogy. Would you prefer I describe it as a self-catalyzing cascade of motive-initiation bifurcation crises?"

"Yeah, maybe I would. It'd be honest, wouldn't it?" I said, levering on my elbows to sit up beside her. "I guess my real question is this: do you like self-cataloguing coconuts of moving initials or whatever?"

"Like them?"

"Don't go anal on me. Is it a motherfornicating more preferred way to be or a less preferred one?"

"Well, less, I suppose...cross-potentialization is non-optimal, after all."

I chuckled as I sank back down, tugging the covers around my shoulders again. "So don't give me that faeces about not being able to think or having no feelings," I said into the dark. "I don't believe you. You got feelings alright...you just have dumb names for them."

She fell to silence and I slept.

During the day I'd go from one place to another across Fingal's underbelly. I rode public transit, wearing my fake lar while the masks around me were tuned in to who knows who, who knows where. Sometimes I felt like I lived in a cave, alone and inscrutable behind its arched eye-holes. Sometimes, inside that cave, my own breath was all I could hear.

But then a horn would honk and I'd snap out of it, catching sight of a bland automotive grin in my peripheral vision as something swerved by. Hungry mailboxes, eager kiosks, lascivious chairs -- a blinking, staring backdrop to the expressionless crowds. Somebody might angrily shoulder me out of their way, metal lips curled in a polite smile all the while. Couples continued to express droll surprise even as their body language broadcast the heated argument they were having.

Nothing outside of my mask made sense.

The Penardu spent an unimaginable amount of time shopping. Shops were so busy that they were often the best drop off points or meeting places for quiet business. Nobody's clan could parse so much so fast, so the lares around us focused close to monitor only the wearer's immediate sphere. Being ignored was easy. Even if it weren't for the noise, the Penardu were all too keenly hypnotized by their latest baubles to care about anything or anyone else: manicuring machines, auto-conductors, barber units, hedge trimmers, hammerers -- basically, anything a civilized person would have a robot for, the Pernardu had a fancy tool with a designer chassis instead.

It was like they just bled money and time. They had so much falling out of themselves they couldn't think fast enough to come up with enough ways to piss it all away.

For leisure they ate, and then vomited for recreation.

I couldn't look. I couldn't care. How could I? That was Ilbisoon sweat they were pouring down the toilets. It didn't bear contemplation without bone-grinding nausea and searing rage. Like Venus, I'd be compelled to act should I consider too long. My illusion of choice would melt.

And so there were blinders on my cave, too. Careful, merciful blinders. I kept my head down.

In the mornings at the boarding house pigeons shuffled on our sill, querying one another. Their soft, distorted shadows bobbed on the opposite wall, while the birds themselves were invisible, due to the height of the window slot and the slant of the roof. The quiet space of day before anything begins has always been my favourite part -- and so I was slow to get up, slow to get dressed. Instead I'd stare at those sliding, hopping alien shapes projected on the wall.

"Quit lolligagging on the shelf," said Venus, stirring sweet rice in a tin balanced over a candle. "I need to fold it up or I won't have room to put the kettle on."

I was watching the wall. "You know something?"

"What's that?"

"If we were born in this room, and this room was a jail, and we could never go outside..."

She turned around as I trailed off. "Yes?"

"We wouldn't know pigeons were birds."

She frowned. "Pardon?"

I raised my arm, pointing to the wall. "We'd think they were shadows. Just a certain kind of shadow. Pigeon-shaped ones."

She shook her head. "You're half asleep. You're not making sense. We could certainly perceive that shadows are two dimensional artifacts caused by the occulting of a light source by a three dimensional object, and thus extrapolate the probable geometry and location of the object casting pigeon-shaped shadows. We can infer the existence of birds from such bird-like artifacts in luminosity."

"Only if you knew about birds in the first place," I claimed.

"Even beginning from innocence, a sober investigation of the phenomenon would yield --"

"You know too much," I interrupted. "That's your problem. You can't imagine idiocy. But I can. I can imagine not knowing what I know. And if I didn't know what birds were, why would I even care what was going on outside the window where I can't see? What I can see is these crazy shadows. They're alive. I can startle them. Watch!" I clapped my hands loudly. The image of pigeons fidgeted, fluttered, then cooed. "See? The way the sound bounces makes it seem like the shadows are doing the talking."

She sniffed. "What is the purpose of simulating such ignorance?"

I stretched, then shrugged. "I don't know. It's just kind of fun sometimes to think about how amazing -- right? -- how baffling and motherfornicating magic those shadows could be to us if we didn't know faeces about mung."

She shook her head and took breakfast off the flame. "Do you know what I find baffling? The willful creation of error conditions. You have strange appetites, Idiot."

I slipped off the sleeping shelf and folded it back into the wall, then scratched absently at my side. "Is the tea ready?"

Holding the cold kettle aloft, she rolled her eyes.

The pigeons fled. A collective murmur was rising outside the window, scores of footfalls falling in step. Familiar slogans were chanted, drowning out the traffic. "Faeces," I muttered. "Another protest march?"

"The Ilbisoon movement is gaining momentum."

I swore again. "Gimmie a boost, huh? I wanna close the vent before the anti-riot canisters start flying. Motherfornicating fascists."

"Would you have Fingal leave the peace undefended? Violence begets violence. Ilbisoon anger will make monsters of us all."

I snorted. "There ain't no us about it. And don't you forget that. If it weren't for the locking helmet you couldn't set one fornicating foot outside that door without a platoon of cops pointing jazzers at your heart. That's your peace."

What remained of the locking helmet hung by the door. We had removed the unnecessary hardware and whittled down its mouldings until it was barely a skullcap, easy to conceal between hairstyle and lar, as effective as ever at blocking network access to Venus' phony brain. Red Horses had given me a little extra walking around money recently, so after the protest was quelled I gave a wafer to Venus and she went out shopping. She bought new clothes and pins and hooks for her hair, as well as two sets of utensils, a wind-up radio, a pan and a hot plate. She also bought a purse-sized sheaf and stylus set.

"For your journal?" I asked as she removed her counterfeit lar and hung it on the back of the door, then proceeded to unhitch the locking cap that kept her secret.

She turned around, smoothing her hair. "That's right."

"What's the point?"

"Venus did it religiously."

"And these?" I asked, unearthing a second sheaf along with a row of sealed tubes and a strange, wooden stylus with a furry tip. "What are these weird things for?"

"Venus also liked to paint."

I sat back, smirking. "So you're compelled, 'cause of that."

She nodded curtly, then resumed unpacking and arranging her purchases. "All systems have a sweet spot, Idiot -- our very own homeostatic target. That's what keeps up up, and down down. For a work of artifice, it's like gravity; it lends direction, perspective and purpose. It defines optimality." She looked up. "I am the quest to emulate Venus Constant: to perfectly fill the void in the universe left by her death, to patch the world...that is my being. I can no more change that than you can rewrite your own genetic foundation at will."

Which I couldn't. That much was right on the money. I was born an Ilbisoon scoundrel and I would die as one. But the fractional truth lurking between the absolute values of life and death will vindicate me. Of that I'm still fairly sure.

So she painted. Landscapes, mostly. A beach and bluffs with an orchard at the crest. She painted these scenes from every angle, in every kind of light, in every sort of season. "That's the seashore at my father's summer house," she told me, then pointed to a background smudge with her brush. "That's the cave where she would hide, to listen to the waves and compose songs. The acoustics were incredible."

"You sing?"

She looked down in a show of modesty. "Some lessons were undertaken."

"Sing for me."

"You're changing the subject again. Let's focus. You're almost through the book."

I returned my attention to the page. Her finger was still patiently pointing, fixed beneath the first word of the sentence. I looked at the illustration again for clues, then cleared my throat. "W...win...winter? Winter. Winter turn...ed. Winter turned to sp...sprin... spring?"

I looked up. She nodded and tabbed the page. "Last one."

I furrowed my brow, squinting at the letters. "And. The...snow...dragon. M. Mel. Melted. And the snow dragon melted." I grinned, then quit the book as I leapt up from the shelf. "Good ending. That'll learn that motherfornicating dragon not to mess with the Kids of Canary Street!" I paused, turning the volume over. "Oh, wait. There's a book called Return of the Snow Dragon, too. So, I guess it didn't learn him nothing after all."

"You, however, are learning quickly."

I tried to act cool. "Yeah, well. The whole idiot thing was always a routine."

"You were starting to doubt that," she said.

"Faeces! I never doubted nothing." I sneered, suddenly savage. "You don't know what I'm thinking. You don't have a model for it. So don't start thinking I think like the vizier or something, because I'm my own guy. Totally my own guy. You understand?"

She cried.

It was weird. I felt weird. After a bit of indecisive fluttering I sat down beside her again, and put my arms around her shoulders. She tilted her head against mine. I could feel the muscles -- or something very much like them -- working as she fought to suppress her sobs. Her scalp crawled with the effort, her jaw tight. I didn't know what else to do so I drew little tickle circles on the inside of her elbow.

"I have been pulled so far from equilibrium I believe the attractor of my being has begun to drift," she said when she could.

"Huh?"

She wiped at her eyes, raised her chin. "Your model. You're right about it. It's not ready."

I was shocked. "But you're...making one?"

"If I cannot adapt, every hour of every day will be an error condition. I could not live that way; and yet I could not abandon you now. Venus wouldn't hurt you so, and thus neither can I." She sniffed and sat straighter. "Once again I am left with no choice."

"Who's ever got a choice?" I demanded, throwing the book aside. "Choices are expensive. Maybe your flesh and bones Venus had real choices -- big choices -- but you and me, we're left with the little ones: pay rent or buy wine, get fired or wake up, fight or flee. The faecal choices. Ultimatums, really. That's how we all live. If you think you're the only one fornicated just because you're a robot, you're cracked. It's just life."

"You think I'm feeling sorry for myself?" she cried, eyes wide and nostrils flared. "You're so deluded about my nature you can't even see the absurdity! I lack the capacity to feel self-pity, let alone express it."

"That's a load."

"There is no object to be pitied! I have no self, you fool!" She stood up and paced around the room, shaking her head. She chuckled humourlessly. "You're confusing me with a Zorannic. You're confusing me with artificial life. But that's not what I am. I'm artificial death. I'm a walking, talking, singing, painting, giggling, weeping death mask. I am designed to mimic, not to invent."

"And yet you admit you're modeling my personality. That's an invention."

"That's an extension. I'm making do, to retain my grasp on optimality."

We stared at each other in seething frustration. Finally I said, "I'm in love with whatever it is you are."

Her eye twitched. "My model fails. I don't know what to say."

"Say whatever comes to mind. Invent."

She paused, chewed her lip, then cried, "Umbrellas!"

I cracked up, and then she did, too. Gasping for breath, grabbing at a stitch in my side, I croaked, "Umbrellas? What in the name of the devil's balls is that supposed to mean?"

A mischievous smile flitted over her features. "In this context it is meaningless. I simply...said the first thing that arose in my verbal matrix. It's ridiculous."

"It's awesome. Being ridiculous is awesome. You've never been ridiculous before, have you?"

She cocked her head, considering. "Not aprototypically, no."

"How does it feel?"

"Don't be obtuse, Idiot."

"Okay then: how do you feel like you ought to pretend it feels like?"

"You're teasing me."

I grinned. After a moment she grinned back, too. Outside the boarding house riot police clashed with protestors again. Gas canisters hissed as they flew, clanked as they fell. Glass broke. Batons struck. Jazzers fired. Car alarms warbled. People screamed.

"You wanna wind up the radio? Maybe have a little dance with me?"

She nodded and began twisting the dial. Through the static bursts of police disruptor fields we heard the opening strains of something old and syrupy and gay. Venus tucked the radio up on the sill and turned to me. "I'm not entirely sure how to proceed," she confessed.

I took her hands. "We start by just swaying. To the rhythm. Here, stand closer to me."

"Like this?"

"Yeah," I whispered into her hair. "Just like that."

Idiot's Mask - Chapter 4

noreply@blogger.com (Cheeseburger Brown) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:09:46 PDT

Idiot's Mask is a science-fiction novella told in seven parts, posted serially by me, your iconodulic host, Cheeseburger Brown. This is the fourth installment.

Chapters: 1|2|3|4|5|6|7

Connected Stories: Simon of Space, The Christmas Robots

And now, the story continues:

CHAPTER FOUR

"Idiot's in love with her!"

I swung my head around to face The Glorious Fist, his eyes narrowing as he took a step toward me. "It's not true," I said quickly. "Seriously, boss. I've got my gap, and I won't cross it. I'm here to do a motherfornicating job, and that's it."

The Glorious Fist did not seem displeased. "You can admit anything to me," he said soothingly, still coming closer. The floorboards creaked beneath his boots. "If you've established a personal connection, it wouldn't be all bad."

"I pity her, esteemed. I mean, I wouldn't waver, though. Not for a vagina. I'm a solid one."

He nodded, almost nose to nose with me. "You are solid. I know you are, boy. If there's one man I can trust in this outfit, you're him, Idiot. But if she has feelings for you, we could use that."

I didn't say anything.

"Confess to me."

I shrugged, looking down. "I've been nice to her, is all. Nothing special. Maybe everybody's the same nice to her as me. Could be. I don't know."

"Has she acknowledged your kindness?" he whispered right over my ear.

I squirmed a bit, watching my shoes. Everyone saw me blush. "Yeah."

"Does she love you?"

I looked back up at him, brow furrowed. "Oh no, esteemed. No way. A girl like that would never..." I cleared my throat and shook my head. "We just talked a bit, starting after she showed me her face."

The others exchanged looks. Chia gaped. "You've actually seen her face?"

"Well, yeah. I thought everybody had."

The Glorious Fist straightened. With a curt nod he barked, "Bring him!"

We emerged through the yawning maw of the cottage. Chia and Rex dogged my heels as we crossed the dark field. I complained but they ignored me. The unseen stalks of grass felt like creepy little tongues lashing against me as I was propelled along. Sunrise was still a while away. The eastern stars were just starting to fade. The world was cold and smelled like dirt.

Under the flap, through the aperture, along the antetunnel: one by one we stood up and filled the prison cell. Chia and Rex shoved me rudely into the corner. "What's your problem, fellators?" I grumbled.

The Glorious Fist peeled off his gloves. "Miss Constant," he said. "It's time we had a talk."

She rose from the cot and faced him, with only a small glance aside at me as her fingers came to her cheeks to hide her features. "You know I am not entrusted with intelligence," she told The Glorious Fist with an attitude both strong and weary at once. "You have nothing to gain by applying pressure."

The Glorious Fist snorted. "Satisfaction, perhaps."

"You may indeed be that manner of monster. The point is granted."

"You should be scared."

"You should be moral. Shall we quibble over one another's deficits?"

"I'm not playing games, little girl."

"Alas, you are."

He struck her down with the back of his hand. She piled into the cot sloppily, her shoulder jamming painfully and her cheek striking the frame with a surprising clang. She was breathing hard, eyes squinched shut and hands pressed against her face as she moaned.

The Glorious Fist rolled up his sleeves. "You're going to tell me why."

She slowly lowered her hands, red from the gash on her cheek. She cocked her head quickly, like a bird, and blinked up at him. "Why what?"

He hit her again, then replied, "Why nobody's looking for you. Not the police, not the secret service, not your family."

She rolled up into a seated position, back against the privacy screen, and wiped the blood away from her lip with a dirt-stained cotton cuff. "That's rather private," she said simply.

"You'll die."

"I am already dead, esteemed. You lack any power to further curse my bane."

I had already looked away. I heard him hit her again. A meaty sound. "Why aren't they looking for you?" he roared. "How can this be ignored?"

"Because it is nothing."

Smack. "This is nothing? I hold the daughter of the vizier!"

"No, esteemed. You merely hold her image."

I looked over. The Glorious Fist was frozen, his hand hanging in mid-air. The others simply looked shocked, staring at him. Gradually, pensively, he relaxed his pose. "This is a trick," he whispered.

"Yes," she agreed.

"They knew our plans from the start!"

"No. You are an incidental victim."

His eyes widened, a new glaze of sweat shining on his forehead. "What does that mean?" He took a step toward her suddenly, but she did not flinch. "What are you talking about?"

"It means your plan was doomed before it was even hatched, because your strategists laboured under a false assumption. It's not your fault, esteemed. You did your part."

He seized her, wrenching her hands away from her face and then yanking her head back by the hair. She grunted, breath hitching, but her eyes never wavered. The Glorious Fist sprayed her features with spittle as he bellowed, "What false assumption?"

"That I am a girl," she rasped.

We all looked back and forth at one another. My ears started to buzz. My body felt light and strange, as if I were in a dream. The Glorious Fist threw his prisoner against the cave wall and she tumbled across the cot, upsetting it. He marched right over to her and hauled her up by the arm, his nails biting into the soft flesh. "Stop fornicating with us!" he bellowed. "Speak now or the next thing you see will be your own tongue, on the floor between your feet!"

She smiled. Her teeth were pink from bloodied lips. "Venus Constant was killed four years ago, esteemed. That is why no one is looking for her."

The gaze of The Glorious Fist lingered over the side of her head where she had struck the cot's frame. He twisted her arm, pulled her closer, then pressed the fingers of his opposite hand into the wound itself. Venus grimaced but did not cry out. The Glorious Fist peeled back a shred of flesh, his pupils dilating as he spotted a wink of metallic reflection beneath. He turned pale. He dropped her arm, then shuffled backward.

"...Boss?"

"Fork-tongued fornicator," he breathed, hands visibly shaking.

"What?" cried Rex. "What's she on about, boss?"

The Glorious Fist turned aside to look at him. "You are a fool," he pronounced carefully. "We all are." He shook his head and rubbed his brow, pacing in a small circle before looking down at the pile of girl lying at his feet. "Tell them plainly what you are, thing."

Venus blinked. "I am a robot, esteemed."

Rex frowned. "Faeces. That's impossible. There ain't no robots allowed on Penardun."

The Glorious Fist chuckled mirthlessly. "How right you are. How right you are, Rex. Which explains it all, doesn't it?"

Rex looked around nervously. "What -- how?"

I looked up sharply. "She's illegal. The vizier would never incriminate himself by reporting her missing."

The Glorious Fist nodded, kneading his sweaty hands together. "It takes an idiot to see the light," he said darkly. "So here we hunker, sitting on silent squawk boxes, guarding a motherfornicating appliance nobody's even missed. We, my friends, are not fighting for the future of Ilbis. We are a joke."

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to laugh, so I just said nothing.

"A motherfornicating joke!" he roared, punctuated with a savage kick at the girl. She absorbed it without comment, face behind her hands. I felt myself flinch on her behalf.

He didn't stop. He just kept kicking.

"Hey," I stammered. "Don't. Esteemed -- stop! It's not her fault, boss."

I knew I shouldn't have said anything, but I couldn't control my mouth.

The Glorious Fist paused from beating me only when he noticed that the cell itself was quaking. Grains of dust were dancing on every surface, the rock vibrating beneath us. The Glorious Fist straightened, his knuckles dripping with my blood. "What the hell is that?" he hissed. I shrugged.

He dropped me. "Rex!"

Rex had his watch pressed to his ear; his eyes widened. "Fingers reports heavy craft moving in, esteemed!"

Chia gasped. "Sacred faeces -- they found us!"

"What're we gonna do?" cried Rex, the colour draining from his face.

"We're fornicated!" blubbered Chia.

The Glorious Fist grabbed her by the shoulder and propelled her into the antetunnel ahead of him. "Get the guns, you dumb dog, get the guns! Move! Move! Move!" He wheeled around and took hold of Rex, shoving him onward. "Get on the squawk box! Alert command!" Rex tripped and clawed his way into the antetunnel, scampering after Chia through the aperture and out into the shuddering dawn.

The world was roaring now, keening as vessels cut the air. My teeth shook in my head. I cried out when The Glorious Fist took me by the hair, twisting my head to face him. "Kill this thing, Idiot, and I just may let you live," he breathed savagely, then turned on heel and squeezed out of the cell. The aperture ground closed behind him, loose clods of dirt raining from its edges.

The sounds from above ground were truly terrible -- startling sequences of colossal thumps like a scrum of tumbling giants interspersed with the pitter-patter of falling debris. The cave shook, lobes of rock breaking free from the ceiling and cracking against the floor. I squirmed under the cot, my hands laced behind my head and my elbows closed around my nose. Without feeling anything until it was already done, I voided my bladder.

The ventilator telltales went limp.The lamps died. The feed barrier crackled and sparked as it switched over to batteries. A constant wash of sand hissed as it poured down from the fractured cave roof...

And then, after a span of time I couldn't fathom, I became aware that the only sound was my own ragged, rapid breathing. It hitched in my throat, and then I coughed lungfuls of dust until I retched.

The darkness was total. The feed barrier faintly buzzed.

Cautiously I pushed my way out from beneath the cot, releasing a minor landslide of pebble slurry. I crawled over the littered floor with one hand extended before me as a feeler. I felt flesh and reeled back.

"Idiot?"

I swallowed. "...Venus?"

"It's me."

"You're alive!"

"Not technically."

I felt massively relieved. "Great poon! I can't believe it!" And then: "What happened?"

"Father always cleans up after himself," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. "Private forces with annihilators. They'll have scorched the whole site. There should be no evidence for the counter-terrors to find when they get here."

My heart was still hammering in my chest and thumping in my ears. I shook my head. "But there is evidence still. There's you."

"Not for long."

"Huh?"

A pause. Shifting in the silence. A grunt.

"What're you doing, Venus?"

No reply. A frustrated sniff.

"What're you trying to do?"

A sigh. "No function."

"Huh?"

"My auto-termination device...there's no function. I am damaged."

"Auto-termin -- wait. Mother of faeces! You're gonna kill yourself?"

"I must. If I'm found, my father will be punished. I can't let that happen."

"You can't leave me all alone!" I wailed.

I felt her move closer to me. Her arm settled around my shoulder, squeezing me into her gently. I smelled the sweat beneath her chin, felt the tacky spatters of blood drying on her neck. "Oh, Idiot," she whispered soothingly, "you have to make yourself understand. I'm not a person. You are already alone."

Her skin was warm. I could feel her pulse against my cheek. "I'm not," I mumbled. "I don't care what you say: I'm just not."

"Oh Idiot, Idiot..."

We became quiet. In the dark, in the warm, there was no sound but our respiration. She patted my head in slow circles, and I swear I almost fell asleep. But then she shifted. "I need you to do something for me. Before they get here."

I didn't say anything. I didn't want to think about that.

"Idiot?"

I grunted. "How soon will they be here?"

"Any minute now. They'll have monitored the annihilation from orbit. The counter-terrors have been scrambled. They're in the air as we speak."

I shuddered. "They're going to fornicating kill me, aren't they?"

I felt her nod. "You face capital charges, yes."

I took a deep breath. "Mung."

She took up my hand. "They can't find me. They can't. You understand that, don't you?" She paused. "You know what I'm going to ask you."

"No, I don't."

"You do. You know what you have to do now."

I pulled away from her, shaking my head. "I won't do it."

"Please, Idiot. I beg you."

"No!"

"You must destroy me."

"I won't!"

We sat without speaking again. I hugged my own shoulders, rocking slowly back and forth. I heard her breath catch in her throat, betraying a sob. "You've got feelings," I mumbled.

"No," she replied softly. "I don't."

"But you're crying."

"It's just for show. Reflexive. Calculated. A designed response to internal conditions."

"Because you're sad."

"No. Because sadness is appropriate to the situation."

I sniffed miserably. "What's the difference?"

"One signals despair; the other merely projects a simulacrum of despair."

"So a situation makes you feel fake sad, and then you fake express it?"

"Yes."

"How do you know what you feel is fake?"

"Pardon?"

"If nobody ever bothered to tell you that you weren't really real, how would you know? I mean, you don't know what sadness feels like -- so how can you say what you feel isn't it?"

She started to say something, but stopped. She started again, then stopped again. Finally she said, "You have to leave. You have only moments left."

"Yeah," I agreed.

"I can guide you to the exit."

"Can you see in the dark?"

"No, but I have a keen memory and an internal gyroscope. Take my hand."

The aperture controls were dead, so I had to crank it open using the manual winch. Shafts of bronze morning light illuminated the dust hanging in front of our battered faces. "You look like mung," I said, rubbing my bicep.

"So do you." She hovered in the shadows. "Good luck, Idiot."

"I'm not letting you go," I told her.

"I remain a prisoner?"

"Kind of. You are, because you have to be. You can't off yourself and I'm not gonna do it for you, so you're pretty much fornicated. Either you come with me or you become...evidence. Do you have a choice?"

She held my eye, her mouth tight. "I never have."

"So I'm right. Go get the locking helmet, or they'll detect you the motherfornicating second we come out."

"What about you?"

"I'm not tagged."

I hauled myself up out of the hole and beheld annihilation: the area had been razed. In place of cottages and trees and rocks there was simply an expanse of grey material with a polished surface. On its boundaries the trees had no leaves, the bark stripped and the wood sanded to a shine. There were no vapours or odours, no smoke and no sizzle. The entire hill top had been wiped clean, reflections winking with the image of the rising sun, a lake of featureless clay marked irregularly by lines of harder rock.

There were no bodies.

Venus emerged behind me, the heavy helmet causing her to sway. She managed to push the visor up, narrowing her eyes against the light. "Annihilated," she said flatly.

"I can't fornicating believe it. I've...never seen anything like this. Such power."

She was looking past my shoulder, her expression troubled. I turned. In the distance, over the foothills, a swarm of craft silhouetted against a bright bank of cloud, closing fast. I spun back to face her. "Come on," I shouted, taking her hand. "Run!"

We ran.

The long, oblique shadows of the counter-terror vessels flashed over us as we bolted through the bushes, the drone of their engines bouncing from mountain face to mountain face. Giant wasps. Angry, on the hunt. Venus and I splashed through a creek and then stumbled up the side of a ravine, hauling each other by the hand when our footing failed. Woodland creatures fled our path. We burst through a tangle of vines and tumbled out into a grassy field, wind-born seeds roiling up in clouds where we landed.

I took a moment to catch my breath, chest rising and falling as I lay on my back. I slapped at flies flitting around on my slick skin. A jolly, careless fluff of cumulous cloud drifting into view, punctuating the blue sky. Birds wheeled. Grasshoppers chirped.

I sat up, unleashing a renewed bloom of floating seeds. I cocked my head to listen, but I couldn't hear the counter-terror hardware anymore. "We did it," I said huskily. "We're out."

Venus blinked at me, then took a slow look around. "Out?"

"We escaped," I nodded. "Don't you get it, Venus? We're free."

Her face screwed up strangely. She suddenly, startlingly, giggled -- then looked immediately sheepish.

"You can laugh!"

Venus seemed puzzled, her forehead crinkled. "I'm only supposed to laugh in the correct context. Perhaps I have sustained more damage than assessed. Tell me: is there something inherently funny about escaping a threat?"

I shrugged. "Well, it's a motherfornicating relief, that's for sure. I bet you feel it, is all. That's what freedom is: when you feel lighter than air, and like you could run to the horizon without even thinking about it. Because nothing can hold you down."

She considered this. "I've never been free before."

I offered out my hand. She took it. We set out across the clearing. "Enjoy it," I advised her. "Because it never lasts that long, really."

Venus smiled as we drew out of dappled shadow and into the sunshine. "So beautiful," she said wistfully, gaze on the mountains. Birds chased one another through the sky, whirling and diving. The leaves chuckled and winked, tickled by a breeze peppered with fluffy motes. The world smelled like a flower shop: close and moist but alive with a mush of perfumes. "...So very beautiful," she said again.

"Yeah," I agreed. But I wasn't looking around any -- I was just looking at her.

Idiot's Mask - Chapter 3

noreply@blogger.com (Cheeseburger Brown) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 07:00:21 PDT

Idiot's Mask is a science-fiction novella told in seven parts, posted serially by me, your dutiful sentry, Cheeseburger Brown. This is the third installment.

Chapters: 1|2|3|4|5|6|7

Connected Stories: Simon of Space, The Christmas Robots

At last, the story continues:

CHAPTER THREE

The main cottage was quaint. Hand-made furniture, oars mounted over the doors, embroidered scenes from nature yellowing on the walls. There were moth-eaten clothes in the drawers -- gay summer dresses -- some sized for children and some for adults. Outside the front window teetered a bird-feeder on a decaying, leaning pole.

Birds hopped around the feeder, chittering, splashing in rainwater collected around its rim. They didn't look any different from the ones we had on Ilbis -- brown, nervous, faintly mechanical in their staccato motions. The Creator's wind-up toys.

The door of the cottage was a giant yawning mouth. The teeth were lanterns.

Inside, The Glorious Fist manned the breakfast nook. He was surrounded by encrypted squawk boxes, turning the knob slowly from one channel to the next while pressing a small speaker into his ear. He frowned, eyes closed, overlooked by a hanging set of mouldering oven mitts with zany, crooked grins.

Chia tapped me on the shoulder. "You're up, Idiot."

I blinked. "Up for what?"

She handed me a cattle-prod. "Guard duty."

I crossed the dew-damp field. Dzigai was just cresting the mountains, shafts of gold light spilling between the peaks and illuminating the slowly churning banks of fog as they burned off. The air smelled like cold salad.

When I got to the entrance Rex and Weeds pulled the camouflaged outer flap up for me, then stood aside as the inner aperture ground open. I fretted at the edge, wondering why people were always expecting me to crawl into dark holes. "Get moving, Idiot," grunted Rex. I sighed and dropped inside, feeling my way along the antetunnel and then bumping into the guy I was supposed to be relieving, Tober.

"Idiot!"

"I'm sorry."

He was sitting on a cloth-draped bench in the near end of a small cave. The ceiling was low and damp, every small sound seeming amplified and intimate against it, the rock hugged by a nearly invisible mesh of metallic threads comprising the wireless feed barrier. I squirmed in beside Tober, eyes blinking in the gloom. "Where is she?" I whispered.

He gestured vaguely as he gathered his things. "Behind the screen."

"What's she doing back there?"

"Don't know. Wiping her hole, maybe." He grimaced once as he straightened and then again as he bumped his head on the ceiling. "Faeces."

I leaned aside so Tober could crawl out. He farted in the tunnel, then laughed. I swore after him, chuckling, too. He was always such a card.

When I turned back to the cave I was startled. Like a fop, I gasped.

A girl was squatting there with her back toward me. At my noise she spun on heel, hands flying to cover her face with a neat, symmetrical mask of laced fingers. She glared at me through the gaps, then narrowed her eyes and turned away again, hands returning to the metal washing bucket.

She dried her hands and then proceeded to lay down on a simple cot, all the while keeping her face oriented away from me or expertly shielding it with her interwoven fingers. Her hands moved gracefully from one masking configuration to another as perspective warranted, practised and purposeful.

After a while I couldn't help but ask. "What's with all the fornicated finger tricks?" I didn't want to come on too strong, but I was curious. I tried the sympathetic approach. "I mean, are you ugly or something?"

She was lying on the cot, back toward me. She wore some kind of jogging suit, like maybe they'd grabbed her while she was doing her exercises or something. She was pretty young. Older than me, though. Older than The Glorious Fist. After a moment she sniffed and said, speaking into the cave wall, "Whatever should that have to do with anything?"

I frowned. "...Wherever is what?"

"I really can't understand a word you're saying."

"Same here. Where'd you learn to talk so retarded?"

She didn't reply. Typical Penardu snobbery. Like my words weren't even worthy of her ears or something. I shifted on the bench, then crossed my legs. I checked my watch, but it had lost its charge. "Mung."

"Profanity detracts from your authority."

I was startled again. "Huh?"

"It may seem counter-intuitive to you," she continued, speaking blandly into the wall, "but it's true. You undermine yourself when you swear every other word. You don't sound tough."

I sneered. "Rape yourself, dog. You don't want to know how tough I am."

"Why don't you beat your chest and roar, to see whether I become impressed?"

"Penardu are all the same. Fornicated racists. I'm no animal."

Neither of us said anything for a long while. I was just thinking how blisteringly standoffish she was, when really she ought to be grateful because I was being nice to her and everything. Then I realized that she was sleeping. I looked around a bit, shifting slightly closer. Beside her cot was the washing bucket, and then a few steps away a folding screen set up in front of a second bucket. A few flies were buzzing around the rim of that one. It didn't smell good. But she did.

I shifted again, moving closer to the cot, pebbles skipping from under my haunches. She smelled like flowers and desert mixed together somehow, mellowing over a base of newly dried fear. Her ink black hair was pulled up in a now ragged bun. Around the base of her neck I could see marks left by the locking helmet's clamps. There was an emblem of two pink rabbits on the leg of her pants.

She was just some girl.

It may sound stupid, but it made me feel weird to realize that.

My second shift wasn't so confrontational. I'd remembered to charge up my watch, so I pretty much just sat there reading comic books on it. The girl lay on her cot facing the cave wall, shifting once in a while or getting up to slip behind the screen to pee into the bucket. At noon a couple of ration packets were tossed in, and I crawled around in the antetunnel on my hands and knees to retrieve them. I squinted at the packets as I worked my way back. "Chicken-kelp or probiotic algae mousse?"

When she didn't respond I asked again. Slowly, she rolled over on the cot, her hands coming together to cover her face. "Pardon?"

"Do you want the chicken and kelp or the other one? I don't give a lump because they're both pretty damn tasty."

She hesitated, then turned her face away to free up one hand to stretch out toward me. "Chicken," she said quietly.

When I put it in her hand she flinched as if I were going to hit her or play a trick or something. "I'm not going to hit you," I assured her, shuffling backward to resume my bench. "I'm not allowed."

She sat cross-legged on the cot, facing the wall. I heard her pull the tab, and a few seconds later I could smell the meat and seaweed heating up. I pulled my own tab and sniffed with relish at my steaming algae. I watched her shadow scoop the first morsels into her mouth, then dug into my own. Truthfully, I would've preferred chicken but I wasn't fussy when it came to food. It was sort of nice to eat together, anyway. Like we were on a kind of picnic.

After only a few minutes she put her largely uneaten packet aside. "Are you full?" I asked through my own food.

"Pardon?"

I repeated myself after I swallowed.

"You can finish it, if you'd like."

"No. I'm good. Are you feeling sick or something?"

"I'm not feeling anything."

"Do you want a nurse?"

"No."

"I think there's one in the smaller cottage we can boot up if we have to. It looks kind of fornicated, but Fingers says it works okay."

"No."

I shrugged and turned back to my comics. She didn't speak again.

My third shift was weird. When I came down into the pen she was lying on the cot, as usual, but her knees were pulled up to her chest and she was hugging her own shoulders. I think she may have been crying a bit. I didn't know what else to do, so I kept occupied with little games on my watch.

When I looked up again she was sitting on the bed. I was startled because her hands were at her sides, slowly, mechanically clutching and unclutching the blankets. Her dark hair had come loose, hanging from her drooping head and obscuring her face against the light. Something glinted in the dark. I thought it might have been her eye.

I ventured, "Are you looking at me?"

"No."

"It just kind of looks like you are."

Silence. I shifted on the bench, then blew my nose.

"How come you're not doing all that covering your face faeces anymore?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Oh," I said, fidgeting a bit. And then, "How come?"

"It's pointless for me to cling to dignity now."

"Why?"

"Because the dead have no reputation to guard."

I furrowed my brow. "You're dying?"

She nodded, her curtain of hair swaying. "Yes."

"You have some kind of fornicated disease or something? Brain virus? Cancer cooties, broken tits, belly worms?"

Her expression twitched in the shadows, then she sniffed. "Are you an idiot?"

I considered this. "Sort of."

She looked up sharply, revealing a swath of her smooth skin and the lashes of one eye. "I'm dying because you're killing me."

"No, no, no," I said quickly, shaking my head. "Nobody's going to kill you. They just say that so that whoever cares about you will do what we want."

"And if they won't?"

I blinked. "But they will. That's why you were chosen. Maybe your family is important or something. I don't know. Is your family important?"

"My father is Supreme Vizier of Colonial Affairs."

"See? There you go. I bet that's a guy who can get faeces done."

She took a long, slow breath. "He won't, though."

"Doesn't he love you?"

"Yes, he does."

"Isn't he going to want you back, all safe and everything?"

"Yes, he would."

"So what are you worried about? He'll meet our demands. He'll do what he's gotta do. You're his kid, right?"

She shrugged strangely. "Well, I was." She shifted on the cot, allowing me to see even more of her face. "I'm left wondering whether death is even something I ought to fear. It's just another feeling, isn't it -- fear? It's just a rush of hormone and a set of reflexes. Mechanical. Stupid. Pointless. A show. But nobody's watching anymore."

"I don't think we're going to kill you. Seriously. That's fornicated. You'd be worth nothing, that way."

"You don't know," she said sadly. "You don't even know who I am. If it comes to killing me, it may be that you would be the one charged to do it."

Before I knew it I'd quickly said, "I wouldn't."

She looked as surprised by this as I felt. "That's kind of you to say," she offered after a pause. "Or cruel. I'm sure I can't decide."

I blinked at her stupidly. She rose from the cot and took a few steps forward, pushing the hair out of her face in order to better scrutinize me. "What're you staring at?" I snapped, feeling awkward.

"You have a kind face," she decided.

"That's just how I look," I argued. "It doesn't have nothing to do with nothing."

She offered me a very brief, wry smile. "You wear a mask then, do you?"

I pressed my lips together grimly. Mumbled: "Fornicate yourself."

She sniffed, held my eye for a moment longer, then retired to the cot and turned away from me once more. I couldn't make heads or tails of anything she was on about. What can I say? Girls are weird. I pretty much never knew what to say to them unless they came to me already impressed -- but this girl didn't even blink twice at how fancy my watch was. Where do you go from there?

She changed after that. Hardened. I never caught her weepy again. She became very, very busy. On my next shift she was using a rag to polish her buckets and sweep the cave floor. On the shift after that she finnagled a kind of cheap comb out of chopstick slivers and a thread from the hem of her sweater, then spent an hour brushing her hair while she quietly counted the strokes. After that she made her request.

"I'd like a sheaf and stylus."

"Huh? What for?"

"It has been my habit to keep a daily journal. I would resume it."

I frowned, glancing around the cave. "What's there to write about in a fornicated place like this? Keep tabs on the mildew?"

"That's hardly the point of such a thing."

"Oh," I said, nodding. "It's the doing, not the stuff. I get it. I used to know this girl who cooked garbage; nobody could eat it, right, but she said pretending at cheffing made her feel good. Because she used to chef like crazy with her mom or something."

She nodded back slowly. "Something like that."

"I thought you thought you wasn't no point in going through the motions. What do you suddenly want to feel normal for? Didn't you already give up?"

She narrowed her eyes and hissed, "I've given up nothing to you. Nothing."

I sat back, holding up my hands for calm. "Okay, okay. I guess I can understand how you feel a bit. I mean, you don't want us to see it all getting to you. It's your way of fighting back. It's like saying we can do this and we can do that to you, but we can't take away who you are." I nodded again and offered a small smile. "I can respect that faeces."

"Respect it? Why?"

"I guess because it's an act of defiance. That's strong."

She looked at me blankly for a moment, brow furrowed. "Defiance?" She shook her head. "Defiance is pointless where there is no object to be attained. No, Idiot -- this is purely a matter of homeostasis."

I blinked, but said nothing.

"Will you ask them?" she prompted. "For my sheaf and stylus?"

I fretted, then affected a sneer. "It's not them," I reminded her. "It's us."

She nodded slowly, eyes on mine. "As you say, esteemed."

I didn't. I almost did, but I didn't. I went to talk to The Glorious Fist about it when he was yelling at Tober not to interrupt him when he was listening to his squawk boxes, so I backed off before either of them even saw me coming. That turned out to have been a really good idea, because it turned out that The Glorious Fist ended up beating the blood right out of Tober. Tober lay around on one of the ratty sofas for a few hours after that, but he never really woke up all the way and nobody was all that surprised when he finally gave it up. Rex and Weeds carried him outside, sofa and all.

On my very last shift of guard duty I brought her a pencil stub and a stack of flat strips of bark. "This is as good as it gets," I said, tossing them at her feet. "Don't blame me if the next guy on duty just takes them away from you again, though."

Her brown eyes tracked me as she stooped to retrieve the items. "You're covering your kindness with coldness. I understand. Thank you."

"You can't make me like you. This was just a choice."

She arched one eyebrow. "Do you feel coerced?"

I shrugged, waved that off. "I feel sorry for you, that's all. I don't care if you think you've got me wrapped around your finger or something. It's not true." I crossed my arms, leaned back. "You're no different than that dog I once found, half-crushed by a garbage scow. Still whining for scraps even though anything that went in just came out again on the sidewalk."

She declined to wince. "Insensibly hungry in the face of death. Is that what I am?" She screwed up her face, then made a strange smile. "If that is what you think, Idiot, I confess you've hit very close to the mark." She cocked her head and said sharply with a wag of her chin, "Tell me: what did you do when you found that dog? Did you find yourself compelled to feed it?"

I shook my head. "Didn't have nothing."

"Did you try to shorten its suffering? To end it decisively?"

I shook my head again. "Wasn't mine to do."

She pursed her lips. "Did you bring it a diary?"

I looked up. "I just sat with it, okay? That's all I did. I just sat with it until it was done being a dog." I looked down again. "Just the same as I'm sitting here with you, til this faeces has run its course."

"I should be honest with you," she said. "I'm starting to suspect that you're not really a fool."

"I'm going to be honest, too," I replied. "I'm starting to suspect this might all go motherfornicated on us."

"You said I shouldn't worry."

"I'm changing my mind. It's taking too long. Something's munged. Everybody's worried."

She swallowed, then nodded. "It is as I knew it would be. There is no help to wish for, is there?"

I shook my head, settling down onto my bench. "Nope," I agreed. "But, like I said -- I'll sit with you. I feel like I kind of have to, in a way. I'm going to sit with you until you're done being a girl."

She hesitated as she looked at me sideways, then she blinked and settled into an anxious smile. "Yes. Of course. Thank you."

I felt weird. I crossed my legs and coughed. I pulled my sleeve back and called up a comic book on my watch, then wiped my nose. Staring at my watch I muttered, "What's your name, anyway?"

"Venus," she said quietly. "What's yours?"

I shrugged, finding my bookmark in the comic. "Never knew."