Afro Puffs Are The Antennae Of The Universe

by Zig Zag Claybourne

  Po nodded. “Pride is allowed in that.”

  “Did they tell you why they stole my machine in the first place?” she wondered.

  “Because it would have been used for idiocy, as is your way.”

  She opened her mouth to refute, paused a moment, then closed it.

  “Teleportation,” Po said, “can be learned.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “No. I do not wish to learn, and so cannot learn.”

  “Fear?”

  “Disinterest.”

  She peered intently at him, this huge gleaming, plated god of a being. “What type of soul do you have?”

  “That which flows. Are you familiar with ‘Aqua Boogie, baby’?”

  “Yes. The underwater boogie.”

  “My soul flows despite my living amongst sand. And you, the fear that propels you?”

  “Fearing that I might choke.”

  Again, that great, slow nod. “You are one who makes a net of yourself and casts it outward, hoping for constant treasures lest baubles define you.”

  “Who knew so much poetry lived beneath the Earth?”

  “Many, actually.”

  “I’ve never been interested in factions and gains. I don’t pretend to be a good person—”

  “You are not. I can tell.”

  “—but what artist is? I seek more than others will devote time to. Even now, without a soul. What does that say of the soul’s role?”

  Po, looking straight down at her tiny self, took his time analyzing the question, considering his responses, and finally judging her capable of assimilating his truth.

  “Your soul is not your servant. Humans have a terrible penchant for wanting others to labor for them. Several councils have convened throughout history to consider eradicating you. We haven’t done so because there is more healing to you than malignance. We are hopeful your fevers will break. We are hopeful that your collective attempts to enslave your souls on an individual and cultural level will abate and dissipate.”

  “Paradise and hell are one and the same,” said Megu sadly, “save one thin distinction: the first is the notion, the second reality.”

  “Paradise is a childish need for perfection. Your soul directs you to harmony.”

  “Is that BE’s direction?”

  “One may hope. You came here out of a sense of hope. Do you think it’s been fulfilled?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “May you ever search.”

  “BE,” said Desiree with computer screens in a semicircle before her like first-chairs before a conductor, “you listening to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t like that fact.”

  “Would it help to know that ninety-nine percent of what you say is uninteresting to me?”

  “Thank you, no.” She laced her fingers, cracked them at arm’s length, then rotated her neck and shoulders. She’d already spent more time thinking about economies and stock markets than she felt any humane need to; time now to roll boulders down mountains and see what they hit. “Here’s what we’re gonna do.”

  “You do know I’m way ahead of you on everything you’re about to say.”

  “Maybe. Hear me.”

  “Aye.”

  She allowed herself a slight smile at that nod of assent. “Every medical crowdfund in the world: fully fund it. Collection agencies: buy them up, disband them.”

  It had already seen those coming.

  “Any bank accounts held in secret: wipe them. I’m talking that Swiss shit, that offshore shit, that Thoom and Nonrich shit.”

  It hadn’t seen that coming.

  “Can you do that?”

  “With round-the-clock processing of Paradise Foundation requests?”

  “You feel me. Not a dime to those tax-dodging, Nazi, billion-dollar incest fuckers.”

  “Chaos at the mountaintop,” said BE approvingly.

  “To fuck up Biff’s chalet below.” It was weird talking to an empty room, but she’d done weirder. “The more your foundation takes root in people’s minds, the more people will avail themselves of it. What’re you doing for folks without internet access?”

  “Plans are already in motion for brick-and-mortar service centers.”

  “A friend of mine is fond of saying ‘advertising and marketing will kill us all.’ I guess in the right hands,” she said, clearly seeing the benefits BE offered.

  “Plus, as I yet have no hands…”

  “This is true,” said Desiree. “Wait, what?” The yet caught her.

  “Nothing you need concern yourself with.”

  “I kinda think I do. I’ve seen Demon Seed.”

  “Your preferences in AI porn could use an upgrade.”

  “I’ll thank the nascent AI overlord not to discuss porn with me.”

  “Oop, Sorry.”

  “Your sense of humor is—refreshing, is that the word I want? Comforting?”

  Nineteen-eighty-five’s electronica funk ballad “Computer Love” by Zapp & Roger played over the room’s speakers.

  “No the hell you didn’t,” said Desiree immediately.

  “I won’t laugh,” said BE. “Disembodied laughter overstimulates human fear centers, even among rational company.”

  “True.”

  “But thank you for complimenting my humor. Laughing with someone is the first mark of community.”

  “Don’t most psychologists say sharing food is the first mark?”

  “Most psychologists don’t know everything; I do. Let me know if you have any additional fascinating suggestions.”

  “You gone?”

  “As of now, yes.”

  “There is no way in hell this isn’t Jetstreams bullshit!” shouted Aileen Stone.

  Fruehoff just knew she was going to slap him again. How had his life come to this? He’d gone to Yale, for god’s sake!

  “There’s no way it is,” he asserted. “This is simultaneous worldwide. If they’d had that capability, they’d have used it by now.”

  “The United States is at fucking standstill. London is at fucking standstill. Beijing is at fucking standstill. Do I have to continue to append fucking to your geography lesson, or do you get it?”

  I’ve always gotten it, you surly nutsack, he thought, but said, “Who might hit everyone across the board without being seen?”

  “That fucking magical whale still asleep?”

  “Leviathan?”

  “No, Fruehoff, the Tibetan magical whale!”

  “As far as we know.”

  “‘As far as we know,’ from you, led to Buford disappearing. Recall?”

  “It’s still asleep.”

  “That leaves one other player, then, to my thinking.”

  Fruehoff waited.

  “Fucking Atlantis, dumbass! They’ve been sitting in that dimensional suburb, judging us for millennia. The only reason we haven’t gone in and taken them is we already have both hands on world balls here. Get out, but don’t go too far. I need to think; I need to plan. It’s time Nonrich moved in on an old neighborhood, and I fully intend to gentrify.”

  The moment her office door closed, she wheeled in her seat to stare accusingly at all of New York laid out before her. Not all. The important bits. Central Park had once been a well-established and important Black community; wiped away. Manhattan had been under the jurisdiction of the Lenape; yoinked away. The Statue of Liberty, once a beacon of hope, now a tawdry reminder of utter life failure if you were forced to seek her gaze. Things existed to be yanked from others.

  She had a helluva grip.

  The False Prophet Buford Bone, in his heyday, had decreed that Atlantis was to be his playground alone. Of course, that meant Atlantis had powers and wealth beyond ken.

  She made her decision, and it was one that required a personal touch to ensure the fear of gawdess took root.

  Fuck Ken.

  In comes Barbie.

  16

  Burn Notice

  “The last person to tel
l me ‘Be a doll’ was the False Prophet Buford. Do you know how that ended? I stared him down. And I’m now talking to you. He isn’t. I appreciate you testing my nerves, Count, but be assured the dismissive shit you do with the Thoom is wasted on a tragic level with me.”

  Count Rickie attempted as nonplussed a face as he could manage.

  “I already know,” continued Aileen, “that my plans will get back to you and Cynthia and a dozen other idiots with idiotic agendas. I have enough ulcers keeping the lobotomized mass that is the GOP from shitting themselves on camera every time a microphone is shoved in their faces, and that’s groundwater level; I will not tell you what I just had to do to the NRA for making demands on me. Know that I’m not in the mood to be a doll unless it’s a doll shining a solar flashlight up your archaic ass.”

  “It was a poor choice of sentiment. I meant—”

  “I just told you what you meant. And in telling you, I’ve told you what you mean to me: absolutely nothing. If I had to scorch the Earth of every rainforest to get rid of all Vamphyr, I would. That’s the ground you stand on right now, Count. You really wanna play hopscotch on that? I didn’t think so. Let me tell you exactly what the fuck is going to happen. You’re going to tell me any and all exploitable deficiencies you know about the Blank, Atlantis, the Thoom, and even us, because when I go in, I go in hard. If you’re not my ally, I trample you. Once I take Atlantis, you don’t step foot on it ever again. No one does unless I personally allow it. No one leaves Atlantis…unless I personally allow it. This fucking world is not going to vex me. I do not love it enough to be vexed. I love it just enough to want it to do what the fuck it’s told and otherwise be quiet. You want me to be a doll and step back while Count Ricoula of the Vamphyr takes care of things to everyone’s grand, awed satisfaction, when what would actually happen is you getting your asses handed to you yet again by phantom Jetstreams that still have you looking in corners. You have the gall to think I’m scared and foolish? My first period didn’t scare me; my first time cutting myself on the broken glass of a goddamn ceiling didn’t scare me; demons have wanted to possess me, Count Ricoula, but reconsidered when I told them I charge rent. If you think I’m afraid of anything that’s happening right now, I see why the Vamphyr are in such disarray. I am annoyed. And I will set this straight.”

  “What if you can’t?”

  “Then everybody goes down with me. Now, are you ready to be of use, or would you like another anachronism shoved up your ass?”

  The Count considered this. He was old, even by Vamphyr standards, and honestly a little tired of the responsibilities of age, tradition, and position. Let the humans deal with the human shit. Homo succubus would be around regardless. Let the Thoom brethren in Atlantis be routed. He resigned himself to irrelevancy and, with an inward, drawn breath that he never seemed to release, quite genuinely asked her, “What, precisely, would you like to know?”

  Neon had concerns. “Why is he still with us, boss?” Neon asked of Desiree. “There’s something creepy about him.”

  “Beyond the fact that he’s somehow able to affect the fye on a generalized level?”

  “You mean he makes shit foul.”

  “Think of him as a weaponized enema, only now in our favor.”

  “That doesn’t make it any better, captain! I haven’t been able to put my finger on it. Number one, nobody’s that horny all the time. Dude’s dick is haunted by the ghosts of a thousand frat boys.”

  “You’re the one who said he’d just go fishing. Is he still flirting with you?”

  “Yes, but I shoot weaker shit than that down when I fart.”

  “Are you keeping watch on him?”

  Neon nodded.

  “Then that’s all I need. What’s your number two?”

  “Dual rattail. You ever trusted anybody with a rattail, let alone two on one head?”

  “You don’t think we should be worried more about Madam Scientist?”

  Neon shook her head. “She’s a woman pushing bullshit out of her way. I don’t sense anything else.”

  “Nee, this woman tracked us to our secretest secret hideaway.”

  “Only ’cause we have her soul.”

  “She’s the most dangerous person on this entire continent right now. I keep her with Po or Tash at all times for a reason.”

  “Bigger question, then: what do we do with a rogue AI, one,” she said louder with a tilt toward the ceiling, “that is always around.”

  “It’s told me it won’t intrude unless directly addressed.”

  “There’s no way to get rid of this thing now, is there?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “Computers were a mistake.”

  “Don’t let Keita hear you say that.”

  Neon pffed. “She’s gone ninja in the lab. Disappeared.”

  “Yvonne?”

  “Taken up an interest in knitting.”

  “You’re getting stir-crazy.”

  “No.” Neon looked troubled a moment, hesitant. “It’s…more. I…” She shook her head. She tapped the side of it. “Something’s happening here. Helluva time for Bubba to be in space, huh?”

  “Do you think Tash or Po—”

  “The elves overwhelm me now. I feel like something’s pushing me out of my brain when they come near. Po says they’ve got a ‘quiet room’ I can use.”

  “That leaves one other being who could commune with your mind.”

  “Kinda forgot he was around.”

  “Still in his tank,” Desiree pointed out.

  “All right.”

  “And see Flowerpot about this, too. Is that an aye, captain?”

  “Aye, captain.”

  When she entered and the light came on in the aquarium room, Bobo stirred very slightly at her approach.

  “Hey, Bobo.” Neon climbed the short steps that led to a catwalk which rounded the aquarium. She trailed a hand in the water. The top edge of the tank hit just below her ribcage. The temperature seemed too cool to her, but if Bobo liked it, no complaint. “Kind of a down time right now. Lotta shit happening. What’s up with you?”

  Bobo drifted toward the sound of her voice. He whipped a wet arm out of the tank, beckoning her closer, then leaned his body away, beak upward.

  “Bobo, if you skeet me, I swear to god I’m getting in that tank and beating your ass.”

  Bobo righted himself.

  “Yeah, I’ve done my research. I know what that position means. Normally, I’d appreciate the levity, but not just now, cool?” She ran a fingernail along the slick arm draped over the tank. Bobo pulled so close to the tank, his head flattened. He affixed suckers to her trailing hand and quickly wrapped the wrist with another. Gently, though.

  Just as gently—though with effort because suckers came by their name honestly—Neon extricated herself from Bobo’s embrace. The moment one goopy arm dropped into the water, another reached out. She wondered why she wasn’t experiencing him, then she realized Bobo was being quiet on purpose.

  This wasn’t play.

  He was holding her hand.

  Of course her eyes stung. Of course she cried. Not a little. A lot. A quiet rivulet.

  The plips and plops of Bobo’s empathy attended her.

  She took a deep breath after a few moments. Looked around the cavernous grey room. The tank ran the entire perimeter, broken only by the doorway, and like Biddle’s ocean wonder, it was a maze of branching connectors, all large enough for even an adult human to swim comfortably. The support frame below flowed with the design masterfully. One would never know of the complex pumps and filtration systems hidden within. For every colorful plant, coral, or bauble inside Bobo’s watery den, there was a match outside: cacti, potted orange and lemon trees under small-sized hovering Atlantidean discs, hanging vines over colorful, malleable seating cubes. Neon had never paid real attention to this room before. She’d peered in; curiosity not given its due was a cardinal shame. But it’d been an empty, interesting aquarium—no darting fish, no floating
aquatic angels or puckering lumps with scales—solely clean water conforming to geometric shapes mimicking the beginning stages of the old “tubes” screensaver that annoyed her so much as a kid.

  With Bobo in the room, the entire space screamed life.

  The bulbous head lifted half out of the water. Neon rubbed the head, dragging his arms back across himself. Bobo detached and threw several more arms over the lip.

  “Dude, don’t get out.” She nudged the head underwater. “What do you see in here? You’re swimming around in my head; what do you see? I’m feeling a little…unmoored.”

  Bobo slapped the surface lightly, sending droplets her way.

  “Seriously, dude, don’t get my hair wet.”

  He did it again.

  “Okay, I’m gonna assume this is a poetic gesture full of wisdom and compassion. Bruce Lee ‘Be the water’, right?”

  He slapped again, harder, stippling her face, hair, and top. She didn’t react, just kept stroking his head, when finally it dawned on her that the more she stroked him, the more she understood him, and she knew that notion was borderline hentai, but no one was near enough (#Yvonne) to take advantage, so she didn’t care.

  “Bobo…sometimes, I don’t get it. How’m I supposed to live in all this, aliens and monsters and psychics and cabals—I mean, I have to turn myself off sometimes, y’know?”

  The octopus swirled in a tight, lazy circle, then expanded the circle to include the entirety of this section of his massive tank.

  “You swim. Perform derring-do. Likely hitting octopoon for days. But that’s not your soul, is it? What does Bobo the Mag expect out of life? Is it adventure? Is it a love story? Or is it chaos from one dream to the next till you hit a cosmic bull’s-eye, hm? Seems like that last one’d be tiresome, Bobo. Like you’d never know who you were. I kinda used to know who I was. Maybe. I damn well wasn’t this, which makes me wonder did I exist before at all. Ah, but got family, right? I mean, I got Yvonne, who’s more family than family. Anybody’s gonna chop a mountain in half for me and tell dragons to sit their asses down, it’s Yvonne.”

  Bobo spread all eight arms out, rotating himself like big, stubbly, red bike spokes.