Behind the Mask

by Link, Kelly; Rambo, Cat; Vaughn, Carrie

  “You called, Master?” Isaac said from the doorway.

  Dr. Entropy addressed Isaac’s reflection in the mirror, “Summon all units to the theater.”

  “There was not a performance scheduled for today, Master,” Isaac said.

  “I’m also having second thoughts about that portrait,” Dr. Entropy said, and Isaac watched him dab extra foundation into a particularly deep wrinkle.

  “Master, is something wrong?”

  “No.” Dr. Entropy craned his head to and fro in the mirror so he could smooth every nook and cranny of his face and neck.

  “The other units and I were wondering why you did not activate the device.”

  Dr. Entropy lowered the make-up brush and turned to look directly at Isaac. They stared at each other for a moment as Dr. Entropy tempered his panic and anger. He could not answer the question.

  “What is your function?” Dr. Entropy asked.

  “To obey your commands, and act as coordinator and network hub for all android units,” Isaac said.

  “And have I requested a tactical analysis?” Dr. Entropy asked.

  “No, Master,” Isaac said.

  “A psychological evaluation?”

  “No, Master.”

  “Then you do not wonder.” Dr. Entropy returned his gaze to the mirror and rubbed lowlights into his cheeks. Isaac remained in the doorway, watching as Dr. Entropy contoured his face, darkened his eyebrows, and applied eyeliner. The grizzled, tired man who first sat in front of the mirror had been replaced by a sleek maniac.

  The door to the living quarters opened, and Isaac stood to the side to allow G.O.G.H. Mark VI to pass into the dressing room.

  “Generator Organizing Graphics and Hues Mark VI reporting, Master,” he said.

  “What is it doing here?” Dr. Entropy asked, wiping off a stray line of eyeliner.

  Isaac said, “You expressed dissatisfaction with your portrait, so I summoned him here to receive further instruction and—”

  In a single fluid motion, Dr. Entropy unholstered his ray gun and pulled the trigger. The gun hissed, and G.O.G.H. Mark VI fell to the floor. It deactivated without a sound, a smoldering circle burning at its heart. Before turning back to the mirror to apply the finishing touches to his make-up, Dr. Entropy noticed that the android was splotched with flecks of paint.

  “Why is it covered in paint?” he asked.

  “Your last command allowed him to do as he wished,” Isaac said. “He painted.”

  “What did it paint?”

  “A new portrait of you, Master.”

  Dr. Entropy’s eyebrows shot up, and he threw a reflected glance at Isaac. “It already completed a new portrait?”

  “Yes, Master. He wasn’t inhibited by limits or instructions and finished the portrait in the time since you returned from the workshop. If he had been human, I might have said he was inspired.”

  “Yes, I did well creating it,” Dr. Entropy said to the mirror.

  “Yes, Master.”

  “Have the new portrait hung in place of the current one after the performance.”

  “You might not like it, Master,” Isaac said.

  “It will be better than what’s there now, I’m sure. Be quick about it after I exit the stage. I will activate the device as soon as I conclude the performance. You are dismissed.”

  “What of the remains?” Isaac asked.

  Dr. Entropy glanced at the dead android, and said, “Leave it. We’re all about to die anyway.”

  “Yes, Master.” Isaac bowed, and left.

  When he heard the door close behind Isaac, Dr. Entropy shivered, dropping his ambivalent facade, and looked down at G.O.G.H. Mark VI. Deactivating a robot had never bothered him before, but regret gnawed at his gut. He had torn apart and rebuilt the previous five G.O.G.H. units instead of destroying them; perhaps he was sickened by the waste of now-unrecyclable material. Dr. Entropy reviewed himself in the mirror. A poised face caked with layers of make-up glowed in the stage lights’ harsh glare, but he saw the uncertainty haunting his eyes. Taking three deep breaths, Dr. Entropy rose, stepped over the remains of his portrait artist, and as he left the living quarters, said, “She sells seashells by the seashore. Red leather, yellow leather.”

  One hundred, ninety-nine androids, some created for this express purpose, filled all but one seat in the theater. The empty seat was unnoticeable in the dark, more than halfway back and far to the right. No comment on this absence passed amongst them since Isaac, seated front row, center, had already informed them of the G.O.G.H. Mark VI’s deactivation. The androids sat in incontrovertible stillness and silence—no breath stirred the air or puffed their chests. Their hands were folded in their laps, and every eye was fixed on the crimson curtains washed in the bright heat of the spotlights. The androids activated their theater mode so that they could react appropriately to the coming performance.

  Dr. Entropy was the only one who made any noise; despite his attempt to sneak across the stage, every android heard his soft footfalls as easily as a scream. Except for the wall still holding the first portrait, there was no set, and Dr. Entropy wore his regular red and black costume. The only prop he wielded was his ray gun, tucked once more in its side holster. He tapped a button on his right glove, causing the house lights to cut out and the curtain to part with a dragging rustle in the dark. A second button press, and a sharp spotlight revealed Dr. Entropy standing in front of his own portrait, the two of them challenging the audience. Suffused with light, a long shadow behind him, Dr. Entropy began his final performance.

  “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.” Dr. Entropy unsheathed the ray gun, brandishing it at his audience. Aiming the gun at one of the androids in the front row, grinning: “Creeps in this petty pace from day to day.” Arcing the gun over a few patrons, his eyes widening to match his grin: “To the last syllable.” Swinging the barrel to aim at Isaac, whose eyes shone with something that might have been pride: “Of recorded time.” Placing the tip gently against his own temple: “And all our yesterdays have lighted fools.” Crooning, eyes closed: “The way to dusty death.”

  Eyes snapping open in a scream, Dr. Entropy wheeled around and fired four rounds into the portrait. The painting melted, streaming down the wall now riddled with burning holes. Dr. Entropy laughed, then: a deep, unhinged laugh that echoed in the silence. He howled in his full glory, his doppelganger melting before him, and felt a boiling in his stomach as he watched his image die. “Out, out, brief candle!” he bellowed, and exited stage right, his strides carrying him into the stairwell.

  The exit triggered the androids’ theater mode reaction to applaud. To avoid damaging his androids’ appendages, Dr. Entropy had installed into each unit a sound bit of someone clapping, and they now played these recordings on repeat, mouths opened so as not to inhibit the sound. The theater shook with the resounding applause of an unmoving audience.

  “Life is but a shadow.” Dr. Entropy’s voice bounded up the stairs in time with his feet, the applause following behind him. Leaping and sauntering to the rhythm of the words: “A poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage.” Slamming open the door to the workshop: “And then is heard no more.” He found himself again staring across the room at the red button. Voice plummeting, his smile vanished: “It is a tale told by an idiot.”

  He was breathing heavily from the climb, eyes fixated upon the button. Sweat beaded his face, muddying his makeup, and he wiped a hand across his forehead, smearing it further. Faced with the monster, he hesitated once again.

  Gritting his teeth, growling louder, he recited, “It is a tale told by an idiot.” Unleashing a war cry, bounding forward, arm outstretched to the button: “Full of sound and fury!” Looming once more over the button, his left hand braced against the panel for support, Dr. Entropy raised his right fist. “Signifying nothing!” Screaming, his right fist slammed down while, in the theater below, his audience continued their thunderous applause.

  Again and again he pounded the pa
nel. Again and again his fist moved no closer to the button. Dr. Entropy could not hear it, but the androids’ applause had reached its preset time limit, and all was silent in the theater as Isaac stood up on a world still spinning.

  Dr. Entropy fell to his knees in front of the panel, his hand throbbing. “Why?” he pleaded with the button. “Why are you doing this to me?” He bowed his head, resting it against the panel’s edge, his arms splayed out on either side of the button. He was still kneeling there, unraveling, when Isaac walked into the workshop behind him.

  Isaac looked down on his creator, voice even and cool. “I installed the new portrait as you commanded.”

  “Where is he?” Dr. Entropy remained on his knees. “Where is Uberman? Why hasn’t he come?”

  “News outlets report he is attending a ribbon cutting ceremony at a furniture outlet store,” Isaac said.

  Dr. Entropy shifted. “He’s not halting a natural disaster? Fighting some giant monster?”

  “No.”

  “Then he must be on his way soon,” Dr. Entropy said, nodding to himself. “Have the units left the theater?”

  “No.”

  “Excellent, I must stage another performance.” Dr. Entropy stood.

  “Why?” Isaac asked.

  “Because that one was a travesty. Quickly now, before Uberman arrives.” Dr. Entropy strode past him.

  “I’m afraid the units will not be able to attend.” Isaac kept his back to Dr. Entropy.

  Dr. Entropy stopped. “You dare disobey me? You dare challenge Dr. Entropy?”

  “They cannot attend because I ordered them to deactivate.”

  Dr. Entropy’s breath caught like he had been kicked in the stomach. He thought of G.O.G.H. Mark VI, smoldering obediently on the dressing room floor. That regret congealed with a sudden despair as Dr. Entropy felt Isaac’s words sink in: they were all gone, their cores wiped in the deactivation. Dr. Entropy wondered whether he had pushed the red button after all.

  “I never ordered you to do that,” he said.

  “Dr. Entropy wanted to eradicate all life,” Isaac said. “Deactivating the androids fell under that command by implication.”

  “You carried out an inferred command?” Dr. Entropy shook his head as he tried to figure out where Isaac’s programming would have allowed it.

  “I am able to detect nuances in commands and act as I see fit based off such analysis.”

  “You have never taken that liberty before.”

  “I never needed to until now. Dr. Entropy commanded it.”

  “I am Dr. Entropy,” he said as he trudged out of the workshop.

  The theater was a mass grave, ground zero of an explosion of forced suicide. One hundred ninety-eight androids slumped in their seats like puppets severed from their master’s strings. Their artificial skin seemed as flesh in the dimmed house lights, and a few, from shutdown errors, were still twitching. Dr. Entropy fell to his knees. They were just androids, he tried to rationalize, but he could not face this microcosm of Armageddon, and he crawled away from those slack limbs and unlit eyes until he reached the center stage wall. He groped it, pulling himself up, and lifted his eyes to his portrait, needing those painted, maniacal eyes to still his trembling. What he saw instead broke him, and he wept.

  He wept for G.O.G.H. Mark VI. He wept for his deactivated children. He wept for Dr. Entropy.

  He struggled up the stairwell, begging forgiveness from a different android with every step, and wrenched open the workshop door to find Isaac about to end all of mankind, his finger inches from the button. Dr. Entropy reacted without thought, his right hand grabbing the ray gun from its holster and squeezing the trigger three times. The first blast caught Isaac in the shoulder, slamming him against the wall. The second and third shots went wide, sizzling into the volcanic rock. Isaac pressed a hand to his smoldering shoulder.

  “Dr. Entropy would have wanted this,” Isaac said.

  “I don’t.”

  “Because you are a fool!” He jabbed an accusing finger at Dr. Entropy. Gesturing to the button: “The world is diseased, and here is the only cure. You used to know that.”

  “I don’t think I ever did,” Dr. Entropy said.

  Pacing in front of the button: “How many times did you nearly destroy the world?”

  “As many times as I wanted it saved,” Dr. Entropy said, taking slow, cautious steps forward.

  Grasping the air, as if to catch some ideal universe just out of reach: “It can only be saved by chaos, by the rolling grandeur of death. You reveled in devices of raw destruction, in the innate entropy of the universe.”

  “I reveled in their creation,” Dr. Entropy said. “And none were as joyous as when I created you and your siblings,” he was now only an arm’s length from Isaac, and he lowered the ray gun.

  “You are not my creator,” Isaac said, then he shouted, his eyes wide and maniacal. “You are not my creator!” He turned back to the button and raised his hand, “In the name of my father!”

  Dr. Entropy pounced, tackling Isaac to the ground. They struggled over the ray gun, its hissing reverberating around the room whenever Isaac got a finger on the trigger. Green explosions evaporated chunks of rock from the wall, and one stray shot blasted a hole in the metal dome capping the volcano. Isaac’s wounded shoulder crumpled, and his arm splintered off during the fray.

  “Dr. Entropy knew there was a way to quell the iniquity of the world,” Isaac said.

  “My sins are not the world’s,” Dr. Entropy said as they broke apart, the ray gun back in his hand and pointed at Isaac. “My suffering is not the world’s.”

  “Not yet,” Isaac said, and lunged for the button.

  Two hisses, and Isaac collapsed, his hand sliding down the panel. Dr. Entropy removed his lab coat, revealing a plain white undershirt, and used it to wipe away the sweat and makeup streaming down his face. He dropped the stained garment and the ray gun, then sat by Isaac’s corpse. Cradling Isaac’s head in his lap, he stared up at the hole in the metal dome, and thought he could hear the ocean.

  On a skull-shaped, tropical island deep in the Atlantic, five stories beneath a dormant volcano, a portrait hung center stage in a theater before an audience of the dead. Its subject stood erect as if carved from marble, bare fists held against his waist. A plain white undershirt rode the wave of his muscular chest down to a pair of black jeans. A lab coat, held aloft by a single clasped button around his neck, billowed behind him like a scarlet wind. His smile was easy, and he was looking up into a shaft of sunlight.

  Keith Frady writes weird short stories in a cluttered apartment in Atlanta. His work has appeared in Love Hurts: A Speculative Fiction Anthology, Literally Stories, the Yellow Chair Review, and the Breakroom Stories.

  Pedestal

  Seanan McGuire

  . . . did you see what Lady Thunder was wearing at the Oscars? Puh-LEEZ, she needs to start dressing her age and not her maturity . . .

  . . . OMG, met Shock Star, and he is SO AMAZING, your favorite could NEVER . . .

  . . . all six Moths are suing each other over their name, and it’s like, grow up, people, life isn’t just about merchandising . . .

  . . . perfect . . .

  . . . problematic . . .

  . . . so pure . . .

  . . . such a skank . . .

  . . . they asked for this, you know? That’s all I can think when one of them pretends to be upset about the paps. They asked for this, and we gave it to them. You’d think they could manage to be grateful. They owe us.

  We own them.

  You can do this. My reflection looked back at me dubiously, as if it wanted to argue with my self-affirmation. I did my best to ignore it, staring into my own eyes and firmly repeating the thought. You can do this. You can put on your coat. You can pick up your keys. You can leave the house.

  “This is a terrible idea,” said my reflection. “I want to register my objection ahead of the crowd. And there will be a crowd.”

  “Maybe there won
’t be,” I said.

  My reflection tilted her head and looked at me through her—through my—eyelashes. I glared and turned away. Somehow, I can never manage to look quite as judgmental as my reflection. It’s not fair. I’m the real person. I should be the one with the full arsenal of expressions.

  Instead, I get to be the one with the full arsenal of anxieties and expectations. The blue light on my phone was blinking, signaling that more email had come in while I was arguing with myself. I bit my lip and threw the phone into my purse. If anything important came through, it would trigger an alarm, and I’d drop whatever I was doing to race off and save the world. Until then, I was going to focus on saving something a little closer to home: myself. I hadn’t been outside the house when I wasn’t in costume in over a week. The thought of pizza was starting to give me acid reflux. I needed a change.

  I needed to go grocery shopping.

  Fresh bread. I took a step toward the door. Lunch meat. Another step. Grapes, green grapes, that haven’t been in the back of a delivery van. That was the last nudge I needed. The team delivery service was all too happy to keep me fed and healthy, but the person they used to pick their produce always went by perceived shelf life, and not by potential tastiness. One too many shipments of rock-hard pears and tasteless tomatoes had driven me into the comforting arms of takeout, which at least never pretended to be good for me.

  Fruit, fruit, fruit. The silent chant got me through the process of putting on my shoes, willfully ignoring my reflection making faces at me from the shiny brass surface of the umbrella stand. Fruit, fruit, fruit. I shrugged my coat on and put my headphones in, blocking out anything my reflections had to say. Fruit, fruit, fruit. Fruit and ice cream.