The Pedestal

by Daniel Wimberley

  “It’ll be relaxing,” I plead. “A chance for us to spend some real quality time together. Isn’t that what you want?”

  “I can’t just blow off my job, Wilson,” she says. “Besides, I get seasick.” I try not to let my irritation show, but it’s hard. She’s been at her job less than a month, and so far, she’s done nothing but complain about it. And the inner-ear stabilizers built into her NanoPrint are calibrated to counteract motion sickness simply by enabling an add-on. It takes no effort at all.

  She knows I’m upset, but she’s not budging. Instead, she offers a weak mollification. “Some people get seasick for a reason, Wil. We aren’t all meant to sail. Besides, I hate relying on my implant for things like that. It just seems petty.”

  Wow. Suddenly, she’s a budding purist. I’m normally incapable of perceiving hints—particularly from the opposite sex—but I’m getting this one loud and clear. We aren’t going anywhere.

  I’m pretty sure that if I share the truth with Adrian, she’ll cave. We’ll be on the next plane out of here, and everything will be okay. But I’m not positive—what if, knowing what I know, she still refuses to flee?—and even the smallest doubt leaves room for cowardice to work. So far, the few people I’ve opened up to have died; I’m a curse to everyone I’ve ever loved. And with Stewart gone?

  My God, this woman is literally all I have left in this world to cling to.

  Through my indignation, Adrian must sense my anxiety—and that it goes deeper than a romantic gesture gone awry—because her demeanor abruptly softens. “Why don’t we just play hooky here for a few days? I just don’t like boats, that’s all.”

  My automaid picks this precise moment to roll by with its bristles whirring against my baseboards. In that brief moment of distraction, my confused little brain forms a thought and sends it on to my mouth.

  “Adrian, as much as I’d like to spend some quality time with you at home, the point of this trip was to get away from here. You know, to get some perspective.” Oh my God, did I really just say perspective? As if my innate inability to talk to women isn’t enough of a crux, my stupid automaid has clearly been programmed to kick me while I’m down.

  Not that we haven’t already been struggling a little, me and Adrian. Things have been a little tense. I’m not exactly sure when things changed between us; one moment she’s lugging around an overnight bag, the next her stuff is all over my condo and her apartment is on the market. Now I’m talking about needing perspective like I regret her living with me? Good Lord, is there no bottom to the pit of my ineptitudes?

  “Some perspective?” She hisses the word as if it was made of something utterly repulsive.

  Oh, scrap. Here it comes.

  Just as I feared, her eyes are narrowing dangerously, her lips stretching into a thin, menacing line. It might be my imagination, but her nails appear to grow before my eyes, curving into feline claws. This is not a woman to be trifled with.

  I need to get this tram back on the track. “Not perspective, really—sorry, wrong word,” I blurt with a nervous laugh. Chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga. We can do this, Wil. “I mean, um, I just don’t think I can really relax here with everything that’s going on right now. Do you understand?”

  I expect her to drag up last night, to demand again—as she did for nearly an hour—to know everything there is to know about my unexpected guest. To my relief—and confusion, that anyone can shift emotional gears with such ease, I mean—Adrian smiles suddenly and reaches out to take my hand in her own. The claws have retracted. Choo-choo! “Of course I do,” she says in a throaty purr. “Tell you what: why don’t we just take it easy here tonight, and tomorrow we’ll figure something out. Maybe we can fly to Australia—that would give us more time there anyway.”

  Until this moment, my instincts have been pushing me away from here—as quickly and as far away as possible—but as the moments pass, my sense of danger begins to feel more and more irrational. Before long, it begins to feel almost dreamlike, as if from the onset, it was nothing more than my overactive imagination. Also not helping: Adrian’s so incredibly beautiful, and everything about her body language promises that I’ll be handsomely rewarded for playing this her way.

  I’m putty in her hands.

  You think you know a person when you occupy living space with her. When you share flatware and sheets and a sink, whispering good nights and the occasional I love you when the mood is right. You think you know what she’s thinking most of the time because you luck into finishing a sentence for her once in a while.

  You think you know a person until you open your eyes one sunny morning to find her standing over you with a gun pointed at your chest, wearing an evil smile that is altogether unfamiliar to you, yet perfectly at home on her face.

  Adrian’s always despised guns—at least, she’s led me to believe this. Seeing her now, with her dainty finger expertly caressing that trigger like she’s just aching to pull it—like she’s done it before and wants so much to do it again—so much becomes clear. In a split second, all the deception loses opacity, revealing the disturbing duplicity of everything I held dear in this woman. At once, I realize that, while I’ve never been happier with my home life than I have been in the last six months, I’ve also never been more alone—even if my mind has failed to connect those dots.

  It’s all been a lie.

  “I don’t understand,” I try to say, only my words blur together into an unintelligible mass of collapsed syllables.

  Her eyebrow raises—the one with that tiny, sexy scar—in mild amusement. “You know,” she says in a breathy growl, “Another day with you and I might’ve used this thing on myself.” She jiggles the gun for emphasis and it gleams in the morning sun. Above, the ceiling trembles as our upstairs neighbor makes his morning pilgrimage to the vending machine in the hall.

  Adrian notices as well and begins to chew her lip—perhaps contemplating her next move, perhaps relishing her power in the moment. I see frustration gathering behind those beautiful eyes, and with a start I realize that my fate isn’t sealed just yet. Adrian can’t shoot me without alerting the neighbors, and she knows it. Emboldened by this glimmer of hope—however fleeting—I snap into a side roll toward the side of the bed.

  And smack my head against the nightstand.

  That’ll show her.

  I don’t offer any resistance as Adrian handcuffs me to the headboard, though a yearning glint in her eyes dares me to. With me secured, she pulls the drapes and leaves me alone in the darkened bedroom. Her muffled voice creeps from the living room, speaking to someone in short bursts. I have no idea who she’s speaking to, and I’m too distraught to care.

  After a few minutes, the front door shuts with a faint click, and she’s gone.

  In a fog of helplessness, I submit an emergency transmission on my NanoPrint and settle in to wait for salvation. A half-hour later, when the cavalry has yet to bang down my door, the fog begins to lift, and I realize that I may be in serious trouble.

  How long can I lay like this before I die? I wonder. The nexus returns an array of unpleasant figures, none of which bode well for me.

  I close my eyes, defeated, swaying to the mournful heartbeat pulsing in my head.

  I awaken with a start. The bedroom seems darker, yet daylight still silhouettes the window drapery in a burning rectangle. I doubt I’ve been out for long. Adrian hasn’t returned, which doesn’t really surprise me—neither does it make any sense. The throbbing in my head has calmed, but an area just above my right temple feels as though a giant bug is perched there, its spiky legs latched into my skin.

  An hour crawls by as I lay motionless, arms pinned uncomfortably to opposite sides of the bed. My scalp stings; my head aches fiercely.

  My heart is completely broken.

  Though I know it only adds to the torture, I pass the minutes revisiting my fondest memories with Adrian. It’s funny how obvious the warning signs are in retrospect. I’ve been such a fool to miss them. I don’t want to j
ump to any hasty conclusions, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Casablanca isn’t really her favorite movie.

  My anger feels so palpable that I might well rip myself free by its power. Yet before I can put this theory into action, the bedroom door bursts open and I’m blinded by the overhead lights. For a fraction of a second, I feel hope surge through me, because—in a confused daze—my rescue seems more logical than reality. But the fantasy passes quickly, and I’m deflated by its absurdity.

  As my eyes slowly adjust to the lights, I discern the shape of a man standing over me—thick and powerful. Squinting in the brightness, my eyes slowly dilate until a face slips into gradual focus. Smiling down on me, it fills me with immense dread, yet I can’t look away. Peering deeply into this man’s eyes—empty, reptilian things—I realize there are far worse horrors a man can experience than a quick death.

  The shame of peeing one’s pants, for example.

  The gears of my mind are beginning to shudder and creak to life in a groggy slush. I suppose I’m not completely surprised that he’s here—on some level, I think I’ve understood since the day Keith invoked the man’s name that he was somehow at the bottom of everything. I have to assume that Mitzy marginalized his significance because she simply didn’t know better. Or, in the grand scheme of things, maybe she was right. Only, scaled down to real life, it doesn’t matter much who’s pulling the strings—when you’re looking down the barrel of a gun, the triggerman is considerably less significant than the velocity of his bullet. There’s no room in that equation for politics or puppetry.

  I don’t care what brought this devil to my door. The inescapable truth is that no one crosses Palmer Gunn and lives to tell the story.

  I have no reason to think I’ll be an exception.

  Mr. Gunn has me delivered to an old warehouse, where he promises we can talk as loud as we want. Once there, the door is locked and three of his minions immediately start to work me over. No effort is made to restrain me—save for the beating itself, that is—but I doubt I’d get far anyway. I lose consciousness almost immediately, but I don’t think that stops them. When I come to, they’re still going—grunting and yapping like a pack of wild dogs—only they’ve moved from my ruined face down to my hands, snapping fingers like pretzels with their booted heels. My screams are blood-curdling, and I’m as traumatized by the sound of them as I am by the pain that spawned them.

  Then, as suddenly as it began, the beating stops. Whimpering like a starving puppy, I try to open my eyes; one is unresponsive, but the other permits a sliver of light, just enough to see that we’re not done, merely on a break. My attackers have retreated to make way for their boss, who is standing over me again with pistol in hand. He rests the weapon against my forehead and smiles.

  Despite the horror of all this, I’m not really afraid. The worst is over, after all—dying should be easy by comparison. Gunn doesn’t pull the trigger, though. Rather, he hunches at the waist and speaks—and what he has to say is far more menacing than the prospect of death.

  “I’m gonna start with her toes, understand?” he says. I don’t, though my face is surely too swollen to express it. “Then I’m gonna fillet her legs, and work my way up north.”

  I stare at him through the slit of my eyelid, dripping blood on the concrete floor in a steady trickle.

  “And when she thinks she can’t handle any more, when she’s ready to beg me to just end it all? I’m gonna light that little hag on fire.” The gun leaves my head, though I scarcely notice. Gunn chuckles in a low, wheezing vibrato, scratching his chin with the barrel of his gun. I guess it’s too much to ask for him to pull the trigger while he’s at it. “Any idea what something like that feels like, kid?” he whispers. “To be on fire? To feel the flesh melt right off your bones?”

  I have no idea who it is with such a lovely evening ahead of her, but I’m truly afraid for her. I open my mouth to speak, but I have no words. Not that it matters—my tongue is too swollen to permit intelligible speech, anyway.

  “Poor little Mitzy,” he says wistfully. I feel my heart lurch in my chest and I groan. I don’t know which Mitzy he’s referring to, and it doesn’t even matter. I’m petrified by the thought that either one should suffer, particularly on my behalf.

  “Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way.”

  I spend a few blurry nights in a hospital. Doctors dope and stitch me up without a single question—my condition must be self-explanatory. Throughout my stay, I’m in and out of consciousness as steroids and stem-cell injections are administered to my throbbing hands. On what I estimate to be day three, I’m discharged with a clean bill of health. I step into the sunshine, more or less healed on the outside, still aching on the inside.

  My muscles are weak, rendered flaccid by days of inactivity, but the sun feels fantastic on my skin. Tears spring to my eyes, and I make no effort to hold them back. Birds are chirping; a river barge bellows a tenor hello.

  I can’t believe I’m still alive.

  Looking around, I tap my implant to establish some bearings in this unfamiliar part of the city. Glancing behind me, it occurs to me that this place can’t be a hospital; it has the look of an abandoned office building—decrepit, unkempt and utterly forgotten—and there’s no listing for it in the nexus directory. Pondering this, I hobble on stiff ligaments—wobbling like a weak-legged fawn—to the curb. There, I slump to the sidewalk in an exhausted heap to wait for a tram. Everything feels off, like my brain is free-floating in fluid, bouncing around as I move and sending out fragmented signals.

  Three hundred years later—or eighty-five minutes, for those who prefer to split hairs—I reach my front door. My condo is trashed. Adrian—or perhaps Gunn’s guys—has taken the liberty of picking my belongings clean of anything worth saving before fleeing the building. I half-expect to find a note from Adrian—some weak attempt to justify what she’s done, some impotent apology—but then I remember: she probably thinks I’m dead.

  Worse, she wanted me dead.

  This thought swells in my chest, and it hurts. It hurts so badly that I truly wish I was dead, because the pain of betrayal can’t follow me there.

  Now that I’m home—in my comfort zone, despite the state of disarray I’ve found it in—my mind finally begins to make a contribution to my survival. For the second time in my life, I enable the privacy settings on my NanoPrint. Similarly, I clear my MentalNotes, in case they’re in some way accessible. I know this won’t befuddle anyone with direct database access, but it feels like something. When I’ve finished, I step into a steamy and precarious shower, reveling in the hot spray even as I gasp with every painful move.

  My body is healing, I know, yet my heart festers in its wounds. How could I have been so blind? Adrian walked into my life within hours of my discovering Arthur’s list. She pretended to like the things I like—real coffee, old movies, et cetera—and I bought the lie wholeheartedly. I forsook the physics of romance in fair trade for keeping Adrian in my life. I am—and will surely always be—the polar opposite of the man whom women are purported to desire. I lack the credit account, personality, physique, sense of humor, style, and charisma to explain how someone like Adrian could be in any way attracted to me. I know this with certainty now, and I must’ve known it on some level then, too. Maybe I was just afraid of jinxing my profound luck, of allowing my objectivity to crowd out the woman of my dreams.

  I don’t know why I’m beating myself up over this—I feel like I’ve been adequately punished for my stupidity, already—especially now, when I should be concentrating on more important things. I have precious little time to work with, and absolutely no game plan. If I don’t come up with one soon—now, in fact—bad things are going to happen.

  I agreed to Gunn’s conditions under extreme duress, yet I’m no less ashamed of myself. If only he’d just shot me dead. If only that devil hadn’t dangled hope in my face. If only I had been a better person—a stronger, braver man—in that moment, I’d have left this world wit
h some dignity—if not peace—and my worries would have died with me.

  But that’s not what happened. The despicable truth is, I begged for my life. And, like some demigod, Palmer Gunn granted it—with some strings attached. Thanks to my weakness, I’ve been dealt an impossible decision. Somehow, I have to locate Mitzy—or Misty, if you prefer—and personally deliver her to Gunn. If I fail to do this, Misty’s young, beautiful—and completely unwitting—scapegoat will die in her place. Either way, I’m pretty sure my life is over. Actually, that might be the worst part of all—not my death, but that I would sacrifice another human being, just for the privilege of living a few more days.

  With a gun to my head, I was revealed to be a hopeless coward. But now that I’m free—if only for a short while—I intend to redeem myself.

  I don’t know how, but there has to be a way.

  They’ll be following me, I’m sure; waiting for me to clear a path straight to one Misty Edwards. I’m expected to deliver her myself, but guys like Gunn don’t leave much to chance. And with good reason, in this case. I have no intention of looking for her, much less giving her up. Right now, I have more important concerns. Misty is safe enough for the moment: her whereabouts are a mystery to us all, and frankly she’s proven far more industrious than anyone might have imagined.

  As for Mitzy 2.0—my Mitzy?

  Thanks to me, she’s in imminent danger, and I can’t protect her on my own. I need help, yet I have no one. For all my uncertainty, one thing is quite clear: I need to get moving. That’s easier said than done, I’m realizing. After all, where can anyone go to escape the watchful eye of the nexus?