Lincoln, Fox and the Bad Dog

by D Roland Hess

  “Can I use your phone?” I said, hopefully loud enough that Gwen could hear me over the sound of the water.

  “Help yourself!”

  I dug her phone out. She didn’t have a password on it.

  My internal Risk Mitigator suggested that I disable Location Services, so I did. I also disabled her cell service and went purely through the WiFi. My gut told me that if the Praecants were looking for us that they wouldn’t do anything as mundane as tracking us via our mobiles, or that they would even know how to do something like that, but why even take the chance that one of them actually had some horizontal thinking capabilities?

  I wanted to dial into my system at home, but I didn’t have my phone. It was a standard Secure Shell though, so I pulled an SSH client onto Gwen’s mobile. Still being in risk mitigation mode, I shelled into a VM that I rented out on the Interwebs, and then from there into my SparkleOS system at home.

  Once again, probably unnecessary, but I didn’t want to get caught by someone clever if they were doing the kinds of things that I would be doing in their position.

  I would love to have been able to download diagnostics from Fox, but I didn’t have the hardware with me to hook him up. I really needed to get the wireless stuff working. The AI had worked flawlessly during the incident in the park, but I had bigger things planned for it.

  > how are you? I typed. It was a little clunky doing a terminal on a phone with on-screen keyboard, but I’d survived worse.

  Great.

  > Reality testing?

  100% over the last twenty hours.

  That was impressive in several ways. First, I hadn’t even asked a full question like I had in the past, like “What’s the status of your reality testing?” The AI was making lots of assumptions to understand my meaning. Second, Fox was either telling the truth, which meant that he was flawless in answering various Internet-sourced questions over the last day, or he was lying, which was also cool in its own way.

  > Do you know where I am?

  Tons of assumptions bundled into that one.

  There was a lag.

  Erie, Pennsylvania?

  > It seems like you’re asking a question.

  It’s a good way to indicate that you are not fully confident.

  > Fair enough. I have two assignments for you.

  I’m ready.

  > First, learn everything you can about accidental gas explosions in Western Pennsylvania. Second, write me a poem.

  What kind of poem?

  > Your choice. Don’t make it too long though.

  And since I’d always hated creative assignments that were completely unbounded…

  > Make it about pizza.

  I was curious to see what, if anything, he’d come up with.

  How much time do I have?

  Good question. It showed an awareness that when given an assignment, there might be a deadline.

  > Tomorrow

  I closed the connection.

  I was thirsty, so I went to the kitchenette, found a plastic cup in one of the cupboards and poured myself some tap water. I chugged it, then refilled the cup right away.

  Back in the living room, I dug out the four phones we’d taken from the Guard and laid them out on the floor. Two Androids, two iOS. I rummaged around in the kitchen until I found a paper clip, then used it to pop all four SIM cards. I needed to power up the phones and didn’t want them showing up on the nearest cell network, broadcasting their locations.

  After the SIMs were out, I turned them on. They all booted up eventually. Not a single one of them had a lock code. Stupid stupid stupid Praecants. I disabled Location Services across the board, didn’t find any Device Management policies or Locate-My-Phone-like apps. Once I’d done all of that, I started going through their messaging and email.

  Most of it was pretty boring, mundane stuff, and it quickly became obvious that these people had normalish jobs. Working for the Guard did not seem to be a full time gig. But there was magical stuff in there. Emails and IMs to and from Guster and each other.

  They had been scared of Dan, Guster most of all.

  Like, really scared.

  And rightly so, I guess.

  Gwen came out of the bathroom, wearing a tank top and sweatpants.

  “Find anything interesting?” she said.

  “Nothing really,” I said. “Just stuff that confirmed what Steven was telling us.”

  I handed her one of the phones I’d powered on but hadn’t gotten to dig through yet.

  “Start reading,” I said.

  As we worked through the emails and IMs, a stronger picture emerged.

  There were a couple of forwards from Guster to two of the Guard that showed he had been reaching out for help to other Praecants outside of the Pittsburgh area. The responses could be uniformly summed up as, “You made your bed, now sleep in it.” These outsiders didn’t seem to be Guster’s biggest fans, so maybe he’d burned some bridges.

  Piecing together the timeline from the phones and some clues from what Steven had told us, I thought it went something like this:

  Dan gets arrested multiple times for breaking some kind of magic laws.

  The last time, he escapes.

  Guster and others don’t bother catching him because they are scared. He’s too big of a fish.

  Eventually, they decide to crack down or maybe just figured that they had their shit together enough to finally do so.

  Dan had been grooming a special surprise for them: me.

  He takes out Stoneface, followed by Carol Dee, with my help.

  Guster tries to call in reinforcements from out of town, but no one wants to help him.

  Dan murders Guster.

  That sounded about right. So, my immediate questions then were What was Dan up to now? and How much danger were Gwen and I in? That was really what everything else hinged on.

  “Hey, take a look at this one,” said Gwen. She handed an iPhone to me.

  The email had a “known accomplices” list in it with names and pictures. I was in there. So was Gwen. It had been cc’ed to at least two of the addresses we’d identified as outsiders.

  That was bad. The panicky feeling of pursuit slammed back into me, and I was suddenly hyper aware of every noise outside of the cabin. They knew who we were, and as we’d seen Dan do, they could locate us magically if they were so inclined.

  I honestly didn’t think we had anything to worry about from Dan. He’d clearly gotten his use out of me, and it wouldn’t make sense now that he had what he wanted to expend additional effort trying to do something horrible to me. Then again, not everything that he did made sense.

  “Damn it,” I said.

  “Yeah. I’m sorry,” said Gwen.

  “You’re sorry? For what?”

  “Getting you into all of this.”

  “Um, I was the one who dragged you into this.”

  “No,” said Gwen. “I mean a year ago. When you killed that thing in your apartment. I knew Dan from all of the stuff I was into. I called him.”

  “You were just trying to help.”

  “Yeah. But I also wanted to impress them.”

  She took a breath, and indecision flashed across her face.

  “Them?”

  “The whole group. I’d been hanging out with occultists and a bunch of other weirdos. Some of them said they were real sorcerers and talked about a whole community of people like that. I wanted to be in on it so badly. I’d seen Dan and Brigit do some things that looked real, but there were chemicals involved that weekend, so I was never really sure. But when you called me that night, it was like I had a chance to show them I could be a part of all of that stuff too.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That makes sense.”

  “And you.”

  “?”

  “You, Lincoln. I wanted to impress you. That I knew more about anything in the world than you did because you’re so goddamned smart all the time. I wanted to show up with resources you didn’t have access to and be
awesome.”

  “Well, you were. You really were.”

  “I didn’t do this out of the goodness of my heart.”

  It wasn’t very well lit in the cabin, but I could see the tears rimming the bottoms of her eyes. She was blinking and looking upward to try to keep them from falling.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “I don’t think it is.”

  “No,” I said. “It worked. I think you’re awesome, so mission accomplished.”

  She laugh-snorted, and a tear escaped down her cheek.

  I suddenly wanted to put my hands on her just to comfort her, because that’s what people do, but I knew that if I did it wouldn’t be taken that way. And if I was being honest with myself, she’d be right not to take it that way.

  Tricky, brain. You’re very tricky.

  “But I need you to know it,” she said and looked me square in the eyes. “I’m sorry for doing that.”

  She took my hand.

  Lava.

  Lava on my skin, spreading up my arm.

  How were our faces suddenly only inches apart?

  I tried to shake my head a little.

  “I thought you said-”

  Her mouth. Her lower lip, in particular. I’ll admit that I’d looked at it sometimes when she was talking to me but glancing in the other direction. Now it was locked onto mine. Lava engulfed my head.

  We were kissing, but it wasn’t wild like back at the warehouse. It was a steady, satisfied thing that seemed to be softly saying the word yes … yes … yes … over and over again.

  Somehow the aches and bruises and even the nagging throb in my head faded, warmed away by the spreading lava. And it wasn’t just on my skin, it was inside me too, finding its way into cracks and crevices that I’d not known were there. Burning. Warming. Tunneling.

  Her hands traced lines down the sides of my face, drawing my eyes closed. It was like magic.

  For an instant, the feeling of pursuit returned—was this real? Was this really Gwen? Was some external force manipulating us?

  “What’s wrong?” she said, pulling back about an inch.

  I put my arms around her, feeling the contours of her back through the thin fabric of her tank top. She wore no magical jacket. No spells hung in the air, other than the ones we were making for ourselves. No one was looking for us, at least not tonight.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just a lot on my mind.”

  I inhaled, and I smelled like her now. Like the lava.

  I kissed her again.

  It’s hard to stay upright on a couch for any length of time when you’re making out, and there’s no good reason to keep fighting gravity.

  I had the fleeting image in my mind of asking Fox to describe the universe for me, and the reply being the universe is an eight-foot-by-four-foot-by-four-foot space consisting of Gwen, Lincoln and a couch.

  As we kissed, I drew my hands up her sides, and my forearms brushed the sides of her breasts. She wriggled and breathed faster.

  “Get the door,” she said.

  I looked up. The cabin had a main front door with a screen door outside of it. The main one was open, letting the night air in.

  I got up and basically teleported to the door.

  As I put my hand on the knob, a giant sound from outside the screen nearly made me shit my pants. I jumped back, my head still swimming in the lava. In my peripheral vision, I could see that Gwen had somehow found Fox and was pointing him at the door. Her eyes were panicked.

  The sound happened again, but this time it made sense.

  A dog sat on the gravel walkway outside the screen door and barked a third time, a huge throaty sound.

  “Oh hey,” I said.

  The dog was a large, brown German shepherd.

  “Hi,” said Babd.

  “You picked a hell of a time to show up,” I said.

  “This body is very hungry,” said Babd. “Do you have food?”

  Now that my thoughts were collecting, I could see that the animal was very skinny. Ribs were obvious along its sides, and its eyes held a hollow look.

  I opened the screen door, and she came inside.

  Gwen was already getting up and taking the few steps toward the kitchenette. She pulled two cans of vegetable beef soup out of the cupboard.

  “Should I bother heating these up?” she said.

  “No,” said Babd, so Gwen grabbed a can opener, cracked them both and poured them into a bowl.

  Babd laid into it without another word.

  I looked at Gwen. She shrugged, which meant… ?

  I don’t know.

  I’d ask her later.

  “When you come up for air,” I said, “could you tell us where you’ve been?”

  Babd raised her head for a second, nodded, then went back to eating. By the time she was done, she had a paw planted inside the plastic bowl to hold it down and was licking it vigorously.

  I noticed that Gwen had grabbed some blankets from the bedroom and arranged them into a comfy spot on the floor in front of the sofa. Babd sniffed the air, then paced over to the blankets. She laid down like a sphynx.

  “So, what’s up?” I said.

  “I followed trails, of those we know and those we do not know. I listened, and followed other trails, and learned.”

  “You were spying? On Dan?”

  “Yes. And others. There is much concern around the planet regarding the events here. There is debate and strong disagreement. I am concerned for you, Lincoln.”

  “You and me both.”

  “Uh… let’s not forget me,” said Gwen.

  “I am concerned for the two of you, but more so for Lincoln as he is breaking the Compacts.”

  The Compacts. That was new to me.

  “Why exactly are you concerned?” I said.

  “If they decide to come here to remedy the situation, they will no doubt seek you out as well. They will possibly attempt to locate you regardless.”

  “What for?”

  “The breaking of a Compact.”

  “Okay, what are the Compacts?”

  “I do not know for sure, but the implication I gathered from their speech is that the Compacts are the basic rules for good behavior in the use of magical power. They are that which Dan has broken in several ways.”

  “Like the ‘no screwing with people’s brains’ thing?” said Gwen.

  “It would seem likely. That is a guess as I was unable to obtain a full enumeration of the Compacts.”

  One more thing to add to my mental list of stuff I didn’t know that could kill me.

  “But,” said Babd, “during their debates, it was noted that the first Compact is that magic is a tautology. It exists because it exists and is only to be wielded by those with the correct structure.”

  “So, they’re pissed because I’m using magic, and I’m not in the club.”

  “Partially. Their greater concern is your research into the mechanisms behind it. What you are doing is strictly forbidden.”

  “Any idea why?” I said.

  “You seek to break the tautology,” said Babd.

  “Ooo, you’re an outlaw,” said Gwen, smiling. “You do forbidden shit.”

  “I’ve been known to dabble,” I said. But this was, like so many other things lately, really bad. It cleared nothing up and only lead to more questions. Instead of giving me a better view of the chessboard, it just let me know that the chessboard was probably much larger than I’d previously thought. Well, I guess an increased awareness of your own ignorance is valuable information to have.

  “What are they going to do?” I said.

  “It is undecided.”

  Okay. None of this provided an immediate guide to action, but I’d just gotten the same feeling that I do when I’m working on a systems problem. I can tell when I have enough knowledge to actually solve the thing, even though I haven’t solved it yet. Something in my brain pings me and says, “Hey, we’re good back here. Go get a sno-cone and let us work.”

>   The times I’ve listened to that voice it’s worked out well. The times I’ve forced it, it hasn’t. Talking it out wouldn’t help, and might even hurt at this point.

  “Guys,” I said, “this is going to sound really arrogant, but I think that if I can just let this ride mentally for a little bit, I’m going to come up with some way of solving for all of this.”

  Gwen threw up an eyebrow.

  “That doesn’t sound arrogant at all,” she said. “It sounds narcissistic.”

  It did.

  “And I believe you,” she said.

  “As do I,” said Babd. “I told you before that you were structurally damaged, but I believe I was wrong. Having engaged more recently with your kind, I can tell that you are structurally different, which my inexperience revealed to me as damage.”

  “The what?” I said.

  “I believe that your suggestion is the best course of action,” she said. “We shall bide while you compute.”

  Gwen sat on the sofa, her feet to the left of Babd on the floor. Babd lowered her head onto Gwen’s feet.

  “Aw,” she said. “Good doggie.” She reached down and scratched Babd’s head. Babd arched her neck into it.

  “Harder please,” said the dog. Gwen really laid into her, and Babd seemed to like it.

  If I sat on the small sofa beside Gwen, there would be nowhere to put my feet, so I plopped into the stained recliner next to it.

  “So, we just wait until your mental egg timer goes off?” said Gwen. “Is that how genius works?”

  Not really. I’d just… figure it out whenever I figured it out. I couldn’t control it. But I could feel the parts kicking around up there. It wouldn’t be long.

  “A day or two,” I said. “If I can think about something else for a day or two, I’ll have it.”

  “Oh,” said Gwen. “I thought we were talking, like, fifteen minutes.” She gave an exaggerated sigh. “I guess you’re not as smart as I thought.”

  Babd did something that sounded like a grunting woof.

  “Laugh it up, fuzzball,” I said.

  “Lincoln,” said Gwen, “are you saying that you need something to keep your mind off all of this for a while?” She lowered her head at me a bit, and I felt a twinge of lava begin to creep toward my brain again.

  “Uh, yeah,” I said because that’s all I could think of to say.