by Cody Sisco
“I’m not sure you can out-lawyer BioScan.”
“We’re not going to give up,” Wonda said. “I know why this is hard for you.”
Victor wondered exactly how much she knew. How many nights had she slept with him, asking him questions? How many had he answered?
“You’re caught in the middle—an employee, an heir, and someone who’s intimately familiar with the challenges of mirror resonance syndrome. We understand that. We’re not asking you to give up everything you have. But you can talk to them directly, and we can’t. They say they’re all for alternative treatment. We need to hold their feet to the fire.”
“It’s not that simple,” he said. The look on her face was one of dashed hopes and bitter disappointment. It twisted his stomach in knots. Somehow in only a few days they’d become intimately emotionally intertwined. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to extricate himself. He needed time to figure things out.
“It’s not that simple,” he repeated, “but I’ll try to help them understand what you want.” If I can figure that out for myself, he added silently.
Her face flashed white, which he momentarily assumed was his synesthesia flaring from her elated reaction, and then he noticed the potentiates looking around. One giddily pointed at the horizon. Two seconds passed. Then a rumbling crack sounded. A quieter echo reached them from the direction of Cemetery Hill.
“We’re a group of storm enthusiasts, you see,” Del said.
The potentiates were passing out sandwiches. Victor took one, smoked salmon on wheat bread with mustard and mayonnaise. They ate and watched the storm blow south of them, billowing rain, lighting striking, and thunder pounding like a hammer on a sheet of aluminum. Del brought out slickers from a storage locker when the rain started, and they all huddled together, wet observers on the tallest object for a kilometer. But the storm wasn’t as close as Victor had thought a while ago. They were safe enough, he supposed.
Eventually, Del fired up the engine again and piloted north and west, back to the dock. They trudged through mud, hearing crickets and frogs and the occasional flapping drama from ducks chasing each other out on the water.
As they neared the main entrance to Lifer Park, Victor spotted Tosh, sitting and chatting with the potentiate who was assigned to gate duty. Tosh looked up, saw Victor, and went back to chatting, though Victor knew Tosh knew he was still being watched. When they reached the gate, Tosh squeezed the potentiate’s knee, got up and walked over to Victor, sweeping him into a close, tight hug. Victor expected some sort of snarky comment whispered in his ear, but Tosh said nothing. He smelled of day-old sweat and barbecue. The embrace relaxed; Tosh leaned over and gave Wonda a peck on the cheek. How had Victor found himself with this intimate surrogate family so suddenly when his mind had decided to go dreamwalking? It was like waking up to someone else’s life.
Wonda said, “Victor agreed to talk to BioScan. And I went and saw the lawyers yesterday. They’re on the case.”
“You don’t quit, do you?” Tosh said.
“Are you going to tell us where you went?” Wonda said.
“To see a friend. And to pick up some supplies.”
“What supplies?” she asked.
Tosh answered, wearing a grim smile. “Weapons.”
28
We are at war. It is not a secret war. It is not a simmering conflict. It is open, unabashed, undeclared war.
How can the American Union look askance and refuse to help? O.W.S. Corps are attacking our youth, our livelihoods, and our way of life. Survival is our goal. Intervention will be our only salvation.
—Republic of Texas senator Alberto Montero, “A Plea for Solidarity” (1990)
1 June 1991
New Venice, The Louisiana Territories
“You’re not serious,” Victor said, hoping it was true. The look on Tosh’s face wasn’t entirely gleeful. He was making a big show of grave concern. But Victor could see right through it. Underneath, Victor could see red haze around the man’s pupils. Tosh had a thirst for violence, and now he was salivating.
“We’ll seek every alternative first,” Tosh said in an accent that sounded just like Karine’s “I’m-being-reasonable” voice. In other words, a liar’s coo. “Legal strategy, fine. You try to convince your unhinged bosses—that’s okay too. In the end, they’re only going to listen to force.”
“Can’t you convince the King to back off?” Victor asked.
Tosh glanced at Wonda, then back to Victor.
“Well?” Victor said.
“The King’s just a story, isn’t he?” Wonda asked. “Though, I guess that would explain where the money came from. Del’s been asking questions.”
Victor could imagine why Del would be concerned. If Tosh was funding the Lifers with funds from the King, what would be expected in return?
Tosh turned to Wonda, smiled apologetically, linked arms with her, and leaned in, saying, “Would you mind if we had a little time to ourselves?”
Wonda seemed agreeable, nodding, walking a few steps with Tosh. She stopped. “Sure. If you have a good reason.”
“There’s something I know,” Tosh said, “that Victor knows too, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want you to know.”
She looked at each of them. “Know what?”
“It’s about him. His past, you could say. It’s not my place.”
Wonda looked at Victor pleadingly. “We’ll talk after?”
Victor nodded. She returned to him, kissed him hard on the lips while wrapping her arms around his lower back and pulling him close. Then she skipped lightly away with such boisterousness that Victor laughed out loud. He envied the speed of her swings toward a good mood; his always seemed to stray toward darkness.
Tosh came over, and then he was close, kissing Victor in a different way than Wonda, more urgently, more needfully. Tosh’s hands pulled on Victor’s lower back, shifted down until they were grabbing his butt cheeks. Tosh smelled of barbecue smoke and sauce. His lips parted, and his tongue darted into Victor’s mouth, rooted around, retreated. When he let go, Victor felt a palpable physical ache at the sudden loss of sensation. Was that how addicts felt when they finally kicked their habits?
“I don’t remember us doing that before,” Victor said. There were emotions rustling deep inside he didn’t know how to interpret. Not bad, per se, but definitely confused at feeling pleasure from the touch of a man he thought he loathed. Even if they’d reconciled while he was blank, he seriously doubted the durability of any detente he hadn’t been conscious enough to remember.
“It’s an animal thing,” Tosh said. “No regrets, Vic, they’re not worth the energy. Sorry I sent her away, the three of us are a good sex pack, but you and I need to talk.”
“Wonda doesn’t know about Circe, does she?”
“You told me a lot of things, but I made sure she wasn’t around to hear that part.”
“Every time I think of what she did, I go blank.”
“Because you’re running, not because you can’t control yourself.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right about that.” Victor wiped his mouth, felt stubble on his cheek. He didn’t think he’d looked in a mirror in days. “Tosh, I don’t think we’re friends, let alone whatever this is.” He waved a hand toward Tosh’s crotch like it was a nuisance.
A look of disappointment crossed Tosh’s face, then was replaced by a smile. Not one of his big lying grins, more of a sad wise smirk. “We’re more than that. We need each other. Don’t have to like each other. Now, about your murdering aunt…”
Victor moved toward blankness, thought better of it. Who knew what Tosh would do to him while he was gone?
“You didn’t go into much detail,” Tosh said, taking Victor’s hand and pulling him forward on the path. They walked hand in hand, Tosh’s large, rough palm surrounding Victor’s. He almost felt embarrassed by how comforted he felt. It reminded him of walking with Granfa Jeff all the many times he’d needed reassurance about his condition and his
worth as a human being.
“Illuminate me,” Tosh said. “Why’d she do it?”
Victor told him he didn’t really understand why and wasn’t sure he wanted to find out. He’d been close to Auntie Circe all his life, and now he didn’t know what to think of her.
Tears formed as he thought about the splotches on Jefferson’s face, his hair falling out, probably wanting to scream the truth at the world, but feeling guilty and not wanting to break his family members’ hearts. It was ugly, as ugly as family could get, and still he’d acted with restraint.
Then, of course, Granfa Jeff had foisted it all on Victor, the person least capable of telling fact from fiction, making him responsible for cleaning up the mess, telling him to rely on people like Ozie, Tosh, and Pearl. Victor almost laughed at the absurdity.
Tosh pulled Victor into a hug. Victor didn’t resist, but let his face be pressed into Tosh’s jacket smelling of dust, solitude, and musty sweat. The hug went on. Victor thought of protesting. Then he felt how fierce Tosh’s grip was and yet also how shaky, and he realized that Tosh was weeping, fighting to keep it inside him, and probably hadn’t shared a genuine emotion with another human in who knew how long. Victor tightened his arms around Tosh’s waist, and they stood, needing the comfort of each other’s arms. Victor knew it would be the last time they were this close. Tosh wasn’t someone he would choose to trust again.
29
I was holding onto my MeshBit and suddenly it was part of me, another limb, like a neuron in the brain, one small piece of totality. I can’t help but think of the Mesh that way, a giant brain the size of the planet. I wonder if it dreams too.
—Victor Eastmore’s dreambook
1 June 1991
New Venice, The Louisiana Territories
Victor walked with Tosh until they reached a trailer, a shiny black model almost as large as a city bus. It was nearly invisible in the dusk. The lights around the trailer park seemed to disappear into, rather than reflect off, its lacquer.
Tosh asked him to come inside. But Victor declined, said good night, and watched as Tosh laid his palm against the side of the trailer and leaned close as a panel lit up, presumably to scan his iris. He heard Tosh and a voice speak back and forth. Then a bright square appeared on the side of the trailer, and a previously invisible door slid quietly into the trailer’s wall. Tosh entered, the door closed, and the trailer was again a featureless black lozenge.
So that’s where the weapons are, Victor thought.
Wonda’s trailer, where Victor had been sleeping, fucking, and blanking for the past week, was down the lane, past the back of the food pavilion, which was loud with the sound of clanking dishes, water spraying and echoing against the sides of large stainless steel sinks, and the raucous chatter of the cooks and cleaning crew, who were by far the most vivacious and loudest of the Human Lifers.
Victor entered Wonda’s trailer. The lightstrips were on a dim, green-blue setting that made it seem like he was in a submarine moving through dark water. Wonda was lying on her stomach reading something on a MeshBit, one of the older models that streamed individual words across a small screen. She looked up when she heard him enter the room.
“Coming to bed?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said wearily. The day—probably the first day Victor had spent the majority of conscious in the last week—seemed to have filled him with heavy fluid, weighing him down.
Victor used the bathroom, stripped, and climbed under the sheet next to Wonda, lying on his back. The trailer was old, not well insulated, and the air inside was already cool. She put down her MeshBit on a side table, standing it on end like a tube of lipstick. Then she snuggled close, face pressed into his chest the way she seemed to prefer. He could feel her breasts and the warmth of her crotch against him. It felt like medicine, a sedative, he relaxed so quickly.
“Tosh didn’t want to stop by?” she asked. “You’re still friends, aren’t you?”
He turned on his side, and she rotated too until they were spooning, he the big one, she the little one. He could tell her everything was fine, knowing it was a lie, but it wasn’t the time for big speeches and taking stands. He needed rest. He squeezed her with his arms and kissed the nape of her neck, then moved away to his side of the bed, as much as he could in the narrow space.
“We’ll talk tomorrow. It’s sleepy time.” As he said the words, he was already drifting away, not really hearing her response, falling into a dead sleep.
He woke, having no memory of dreaming, aware that Wonda had just climbed over him and was using the bathroom. He rubbed his eyes, groggy, and the half-waking part of his brain began showing him things, flashes of his life over the past week.
He remembered being bookended by Tosh and Wonda, their lips seeking his, moving over his face, neck, and chest. Another flash of extreme pleasure, the three of them inside each other, standing, braced against either side of the trailer, sighs and groans in his ears. Though he hadn’t been conscious, he’d been animated, moving with a vigorous passion, mirroring their hungry gestures and sounds.
His erection pressed against the sheets. He gripped his cock, gave it a good squeeze of acknowledgment, then shifted and made his way to standing. Slowly the blood retreated and left him flaccid. He wasn’t sure what to feel about what he’d done while blank. He wasn’t ashamed of it. In a very real way, it wasn’t him who’d done those things. He knew he should be angry that Wonda and Tosh had taken advantage of him. But, really, they weren’t to blame. He had a problem with losing consciousness. His problem, his responsibility.
Maybe what’d they done was good for him—he seemed more comfortable with touch now. Physically he felt a great release had occurred, an unclenching. Mostly though, he was grateful. Without Wonda taking him in, who knows what could have happened? He might have ended up drowned in a canal or causing a fuss on the highway when an autonomous vehicle stopped for him and signaled the authorities. Or any number of other problems. They’d saved him, and he was tempted to continue to let them save him.
But everything else about the situation was wrong: Tosh bringing weapons to New Venice, the Human Lifers beginning to talk about Samuel Miller like a person with rights rather than a monster who could never atone for his actions, and his Auntie, an assassin and zealot bringing the Classification Commission to the broader world.
It was time for him to stop hiding and do something about all this.
Victor dressed quickly while Wonda was showering. He knocked on the bathroom door and called to her, “I’m going to get some food. I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Okay!” she called brightly. She began humming something.
The sun was out, and the sky was clear. He hurried to the dining hall and ate two fried eggs on a thick slice of sourdough toast, crunchy on the outside, still soft in the center. He went to Tosh’s trailer, psyching himself up for a confrontation, knocked on the door, and shouted for Tosh to let him in, but there was no response. He headed back. Maybe he could find Del. He owed him a warning about Tosh.
Ahead of Victor on the path, he spotted six potentiates following Tosh in a kind of pyramid shape, the way birds flock together and follow the leader at the point position.
Victor caught up with one of the female potentiates. “Hey,” he said.
The young woman, who had a small, square face and brown hair in a bob, looked at him, surprised. Then she smiled. She was pleased, he could tell, but something about her expression looked predatory.
“You’re sitting with us?” she said. “That’s fantastic. Tosh made me his second chief because I agree it’s time to demand action.”
Victor’s stomach hardened. Whatever Tosh was feeding people, it was already taking effect. He was awaking a thirst for violence that no person would admit to having yet seemed to be lurking, waiting for an excuse to emerge.
At the end of the lane was a large pavilion made of white fabric. Six entrances allowed people to enter. Inside, a circle of tall white poles topped b
y a spiral lattice supported the synthsilk canopy.
Victor followed Tosh’s posse through an entrance. Two dozen potentiates were inside already, milling about, chatting. There was an excited, nervous buzz.
Tosh’s posse clustered together at first. Then Victor saw a few of them break away, darting though the crowd to talk to Lifers that might be converted to militancy. Some of them returned with apparent converts, and some, rebuffed, tried again with others.
Wonda came in, her hair dry, loose, and a bit wild. There were streaks of colored yarn braided through it. She looked around, spotted Victor, and headed over. She gave him a peck on the cheek and said, “Good morning. I’m just going to go say hi to Tosh.”
Victor watched their interaction from a distance. Tosh broke away from talking intently with one of his pack when Wonda came over. They hugged. Wonda whispered something in his ear. Tosh shook his head gravely, gestured at his potentiates, and then looked pointedly toward Del at the center of the gathering, where he was smiling and chatting amiably with a small crowd clustered around him. Wonda frowned, said something. Tosh shrugged.
Del started clapping slowly, a second between each sound. The Lifers around him took up the clap, which accelerated. Everyone was moving, streaming past each other, hurrying to different parts of the tented area. Wonda came over to Victor and grabbed his hand.
“Come on,” she said and started to lead him toward Del.
“Victor, wait!” a woman’s voice called out. It was the potentiate who’d been excited to have Victor walk with Tosh’s pack. “Stay here,” she said.
Wonda dragged him away. Victor caught a glimpse of Tosh watching gravely, no hint of a smile on his lips.
The movements of the crowd grew still even as the clapping quickened into a synchronized frenzy of sharp smacks. Victor and Wonda were the last into place, standing at Del’s right. Del brought up both hands, the clapping ceased, and eighty people simultaneously dropped into a squat, Wonda pulling Victor down with her so that only Del remained standing.
