Johnny Winger and the Europa Quandary

by Philip Bosshardt

  ***In time, your questions will be answered. For now, know that you will be part of a small group, a sub-element that works from within the Net. The Normals call this group MARTOP. You will go to a place called Buckland Center. It’s in Alaska. There, you will enter the Net and complete your mission***

  He still had millions of questions, but Liam felt himself getting sleepy. It came up like a faint breeze, like snuggling deeper under the covers on a snowy, Saturday morning.

  Then he woke up. Was it a dream? He looked around.

  This was no soft bed on a Saturday morning.

  Liam Winger came to with a violent start. He was lying in a street gutter. Trash and dead rats and broken glass and empty cans were everywhere. It was dark. It was cold.

  He learned, or maybe somehow he knew, that he had awakened in downtown Boise. Some side street. He sat up. Light snow flurries drifted down. What the hell had happened?

  Then he had a vague memory of the rally…all the pushing, the shoving, the fights, the police and their shockwands, the Hellcats. Sitting up, he could still see the rally grounds down the street, torn bunting, smashed fences…had he fainted? Or was he just hammered, stupefyingly drunk? He didn’t remember drinking anything.

  Maybe I got knocked out and just staggered out of there, crashed in this gutter.

  He dragged himself to his feet, clinging for balance to a light stand and meandered down a sidewalk. He nearly ran into a sign: Lynx and Foxx. It was a women’s clothing store. Mannequins posed in the store front. And there was a mirror. Might as well inspect the damage.

  Liam studied his reflection for a few moments. Maybe there was something on the storefront glass, a smudge or something. His reflection looked funny, kind of fuzzed out.

  He found that his appearance had changed, in subtle ways. That’s what these rallies will do to you, he surmised. He raised a hand to what looked like a bruise on his temple, only to find that his hand smeared out, like a bad photo. What the hell? He waved his hands around. No, he hadn’t imagined it. Then he looked at his hands directly.

  It was a hand, five fingers and a palm, but it appeared blurred, out of contrast. Yet when he held his hand still, it solidified and seemed real enough. But when he moved his hand or any of his fingers, the blurring came back. Same thing with his other hand. What on earth—

  His hand looked like a horde of bees or flies, sparkling in the yellowish street light. Both hands did. As he looked closer in the display front mirror, he saw his face had the same look.

  Somehow, his skin was malleable, like dough, soft, kneaded, flashing with little pinpricks of light.

  Then it came to him, clear as the winter night sky. He had been deconstructed. He was an angel. He was a swarm of nanobotic entities.

  You have a very important mission. The words appeared in his mind like a flashing sign. And whose voice was that, anyway?

  By playing with his hands, by concentrating just so, he found he could change his face, his shoulders, his legs, anything he wanted. He could make himself a comic-book stick figure. He tried it. He could make himself Mr. Potato Head. He could make himself an ogre. He could make himself a vid star. He could flatten his head, elongate it, distort it. Anything he wanted.

  Cool. And a bit scary. He could shape himself into just about any form he wanted, just by thinking of it in a certain way, a way given to him, by Symborg, he now remembered.

  Now he felt compelled to move. To leave, to go somewhere. Without fully understanding any of this, he knew somehow that he had to be somewhere else, somewhere far away.

  You have a very important mission.

  He re-sculpted himself into a basic human form—that wasn’t so hard, he was getting the hang of it now—and set off down the street. He came to an intersection, noting on a clock over a nearby bank that it was almost 3:00 am and spotted a taxi, parked by the curb.

  He went to the taxi, woke up the groggy driver and told him he needed to get to the airport. The cabbie sat up straight and fingered sleep from his eyes.

  “Sure thing, mac. Hop in. No traffic at this hour. We’ll be there in ten minutes. You got any bags?”

  Liam told him he did not.

  The taxi sped off toward the airport, heading out Idaho Street toward 184.

  “Where ya headed at his hour, mac?”

  Liam looked up into the driver’s face, a mustachioed little moon in the darkened rear view mirror.

  “Alaska.”