“But if you could go back without me and take over…?”
Gama nodded. “…Be worth a thought-about or two.”
“Think you could run a city?”
“No?”
“Everybody can’t be the Godfather. Some people have to be the Sonny Corleone.”
“If you’re going to be in that movie,” Gama said, “don’t be the Sonny Corleone.”
He got up to stretch his legs. He found the attendant, ordered whiskey and soda. It came quickly. He ordered a second, returned to his seat.
“Looking forward to getting back to the city,” Gama said. “Hate being back in the real world like this. It makes my mouth dry. It makes my heart palpitate. It makes my cloaca clench like a fist.”
“What’s a cloaca?”
“That’s the word for a bird’s asshole.”
“I didn’t know there was a word for it.”
“Point is, I can’t take the real world. I’m fucking done with it.”
Stranko: “Is that what you think this is, the real world? The thing that makes people like us people like us is we never had the close relationship with so-called reality most people have. People who have that relationship don’t break laws. People like us, we create our own reality. So the difference isn’t as much for us because we force reality to its knees and throat-rape it. That’s what I live by.”
Simon Stranko turned back to his laptop.
32
Wound tightly as last time, no couch for The Carousel, he talked on his feet pacing before her. The OSD/AXIS treaty created a neutrality zone where Xoir treated both Dr. Playground and The Carousel. Within that zone was a suspension of conflict. Any discussion of the conflict was off-limits. That either side invisibly kept trained on the other two sequences of tracking lasers liberated them from the opportunity for assassination. The logistics of that had kept their sessions to twice in six months.
In the first session his first words had been, “Kate Birkin, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Exactly how do you pronounce the name Xoir?”
“I’m unpronounceable.”
She had then taken his neuromap and begun the work on his custom neuropedix as each one was unique to the brain mapped. She also received his findings on other-dimensional beings. She began their second session with the question, “Why are you a superhero?”
“To stop the OGD from its objective of global domination.”
“Why you?”
“I have the power.”
“Do you like having the power?”
“Yes.”
“Why assume the roles of superheroes?”
“My original intention was to make a new identity sharing cloning hardware when I discovered the carousel model. My theory is they are my personal archetypes drawn from the KM comic books I read as a child. My turn.”
“All right.”
He said, “Have you looked into my findings?”
“Yes.”
“Find anything?”
“You claim you have discovered a part of the population that became lost in other-dimensional space.”
“I have a name for them now,” he said. “Zheroes. Heroes with a Z. Since our last session my observation revealed more about them. Their existence is continually erased by an existential virus. They leave no trace. No one has recall of them after 10 minutes.”
“The possibilities,” Xoir said.
“Please. You people would have them jacking anything that could be stolen in ten minutes.”
“Now now. Are we using the same organic micro technology?”
“I’ve sent you everything the same as I use with software updates.”
“My findings are minimal,” Xoir said. “Minimal detection of activity within an other-dimensional range. Nothing that you described.”
“This makes it look like I’m delusional.”
“In a city like this, it’s hard to look delusional.”
“All too true.”
“And guess what? I am the only person you can share that with,” Xoir observed. “That is the only reason you would ever see me, this is your true purpose. But it has to be under the pretext of therapy, then you can use me as your partner in research, which is ultimately the hunt for Mona Spector. I go along with it because you are yourself a formidable scientist and possibly onto a discovery. Be great if it turned out I’m the one who plucks Mona out of zhero space.”
“To be honest,” The Carousel said, “I never needed a shrink.”
“You, my friend, need a platoon of Jungs working with two teams of Steve Jobs. But I will crack you.”
“Good luck.”
“Are you still identifying Mona Spector?”
“I theorize she was the significant other of the pre-2000 Milo Spector.”
“Your emotional attachment to her is…?”
“She is the avatar of my central enigma.”
“You have no emotional attachments.”
“No.”
“I sense contempt for the weakness of human emotional needs. No human sexual or romantic interaction…limiting your monthly number of orgasms…you see yourself as above being human.”
The Carousel wore a proud sneer.
“Are you that human?”
The sneer faded.
Xoir lit a cigarette.
“You smoke at your age?”
“My age?”
“That came out wrong, didn’t it?”
“These cigarettes improve your heath,” she said. “Breathe the second-hand smoke deeply.”
“It’s weird to think of this city in terms of years and decades. I have vague recall of how long I’ve been here. Like I’ve been here forever. Is your memory intact?”
“I’ve restored thirty percent of pre-2000.”
“What year did you…?”
“What?”
“Move to Brutalia…?”
“I recall 1969.”
“You were a scientist before.”
“Yes.”
“Advanced.”
“Yes.”
“Before ever hearing of Kinner & Membert.”
“Yes.”
“You came here already an advanced scientist.”
“Yes.”
“You had already reversed aging.”
“I was close to it.”
“Then you went to work for KM.”
“Yes.”
“We worked together. Us and Playground.”
“Apparently so.”
“During the 1970s.”
“Apparently so.”
“Until 2000.”
“Apparently so.”
“How much do you directly recall about me?” The Carousel asked.
“Not much. I see a teenage nerd in a lab coat. The youngest in our research team. The only black person.”
“Who deleted any record of me? There is no record of my existence pre-2000. Same goes for Simon Stranko. Kate Birkin came to the year 2000 with too much notability to erase. Your Wikipedia page covers you back to the 1950s.”
“There are all kinds of record of my life,” she said. “I can’t get away from my past.”
“Ever remember being in the White House talking with President Nixon?”
“Yes.”
“What were we talking about?”
“I don’t know.”
“What happened after that?”
“I’m unsure.”
“Do you think for some reason the government erased my record?”
“Possibly,” she said. “But this city keeps a theorist at work.”
The Carousel turned on his heel, paced the other way. “What if it was a time hole?”
“The one the Pentagon was working on?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll call that the time hole theory.”
“Another theory,” he said. “At KM we invented the time hole and the rest of this advanced science and technology.”
“We do seem to know it best.”
>
“KM created superpowers.”
“In inexplicable ways.”
“Since then the science has outpaced its creators. Rebel technology. Yet confined to one geographical area.”
Xoir took a smoke. “This outpacing occurred after 2000. What you theorize as a time hole.”
“Why did your findings not change science?”
“I did not make them public. I was still testing it on myself.”
“Why Brutalia?”
“To complete my work. To see Kinner & Membert for myself.”
“How did you hear of it?”
“Back then it was unknown to the scientific community,” Xoir said. “Only freaks and outsiders knew about it. LSD users. At the time they were the only people who could perceive its existence. I used LSD. I perceived a large urban area that had all at once somehow appeared out of nowhere. Then it got to where everyone perceived it.”
“What was it like then?”
“In Brutalia the first McDonald’s I saw had carpeting. The women’s room had white terry cloth towels. The ice never melted. The fries never got cold. I got a hotel room. The tap water was greenish. At night the color changed to dark green. I looked for the Kinner & Membert Medical Center, had a look at the city. The movie theaters ran NFL games and the TV stations ran the latest Hollywood movies. Sometimes the city fluttered and rolled. People surfed the streets and the buildings, rode vertical surfaces without falling.”
The Carousel stared open-mouthed. But at least he had loosened up.
He said, “Anyone in this city pre-2000 has no memory pre-2000 and perceives this city as always existent. Everyone in the world believes this city has always existed. How many people have you neuropedixed?”
“Exactly three.”
“Making us the only three people in the world who know this city hasn’t always existed. Everyone’s pre-2000 memory of this city was erased.”
Xoir said, “If it’s possible for a large city to sneak into a geographical area unnoticed, this one did. It did that over years of a gradual process. This is an island of landscaped memory surrounded by the camouflaged perception of the familiar. It works but with the superpowers, this city is still conspicuous.”
“Everyone on this planet had their memory altered in some way. That’s bigger than a government conspiracy. If everyone can be altered to believe this city always existed, why for long-termers all memory loss pre-2000? Let’s put this in 1960s sci-fi TV series terms. New theory…this city is beaming amnesia rays that go all over the world. The complete memory loss is the effect of being here too long, living too close to the source of the amnesia rays. It isn’t the coldwave power plants, it’s the amnesia rays.”
“Fascinating,” Xoir said. “My turn.”
“Analyze me if you can.”
“I stick to the classics. Why are you a superhero?”
“To stop the OGD from its objective of global domination.”
“Why you?”
“I have the power. There is a key to taking these powers outside the Brutalia Limit. There’s an unidentified flying behemoth spreading destruction on at least two continents.”
“Not unlike The Kid in the Picture.”
“I wonder which one you are closer to locating. The Kid, I’d guess. He’d be the easier target. But then I’m not allowed to ask am I?”
“Not inside the neutrality zone,” Xoir said. “Just as I am not allowed to discern from your question that you have not located him.”
The Carousel looked pissed.
“Want to know why you’re a superhero?” she said.
“Please tell me.”
“The other reasons are true. But the deepest reason is you’re programmed to be a superhero. Dr. Milo Spector invented you from his DNA with KM science. He erased any memory and identity of Milo Spector before your creation. Like an Asimov robot, your first rule is to fight the OSD or cease to exist. You’re a little bit robot, a little bit clone. You may even be the physical Milo Spector. Either way you’re a little inorganic; but a clockwork orange stays fresh.”
“That’s a lot of theory.”
“I’m just trying it on.”
“Well now. That theory of yours would account for you seeing AXIS as the enemy and taking the side of a grandiose sociopath who sees killing people as his mode of self-expression and global domination as a lifestyle choice. Someone you are superior to, yet you will go down in history as his Leni Riefenstal.”
“I never passed for Doris Day,” Xoir said. “I have my own ideas about good and evil. And neither side covers them. But one side lets me experiment.”
“How do you experiment with good and evil?”
“How can you not?”
“We both make ancient references, don’t we? Leni Riefenstal. Doris Day.”
“We’re from another time. But at least we don’t look it.”
“I need a cigarette,” he said.
“You are so 1970s.” Xoir lit one, handed it to him.
“If that’s true, your theory…” he took a deep smoke like he’d never stopped. “Tastes great.”
“Yes?”
“If your theory is true, there’s a lot it doesn’t explain.”
“This town keeps a scientist busy.” She checked her watch. “I guess the watch says we’ll end here.”
33
That was then. That was not today. Today Kieran wasn’t sure. There was no one way he wanted to go. Chase was his American period. In Quebec there was Gabrielle. She made him not want to commit to one way just yet. She liked him. He wasn’t sure about himself but he knew there was no room for Chase. Chase was getting too weird. The flying thing…But he still felt Chase at strange moments. Maybe he would see Chase and want to go back to that. But how could that ever work? He had to use that as a way to get out. Whatever made it easier. Hurting Chase he could not take. But it had to happen.
The text came in.
Kieran left the house riding a Vespa scooter.
They met at Carrefour Angrignon mall in the parking lot at the far end. Chase was waiting. They had a short hug. Seeing Chase again, he was hit by his stunning beauty.
Kieran said, “You found me?”
Chase said, “It wasn’t easy.”
“Chase…have you been okay?”
“Yeah. You?”
“I’m good.”
“I missed you, K.”
“Missed you too.”
A jeep was rolling toward that end of the parking lot, past the cars.
Chase said, “Can we spend the day together?”
“Yeah. That would be good.” He could spend one day with Chase one last time.
“I want to kiss you so bad.”
“I understand.”
Chase was picking up his vibe. “Are you sure?”
Kieran looked down. “Things change. You know how things change?”
“Things changed?”
“Kind of, Chase.”
“What’s changed?”
“Everything hasn’t it? You’ve changed too. I have.”
He didn’t know how to tell Chase but it looked like Chase was getting it. They weren’t in America now. They weren’t kids now.
The jeep sped their way. Kieran waited for it to pass.
Chase said, “You’ve been…you didn’t want us to text…did you?”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry. You changed. I should have known. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know which way to go. I have to figure that out.”
The jeep braked. Two men got out. One man looked maybe seventy, the other middle-aged.
Chase said, “Like…like…you want to be straight?”
“I don’t know. I’m both.”
The two men approached, held up what looked like police IDs.
34
By the time they were aboard a private jet, Chase figured they weren’t with Canadian police.
Three TV screens ran Brutalia local news. An amateur superhero
named Jack Kirby Man was convicted of second degree murder in the death of Darius Bryant. Bryant had been beaten to death in a night club. Then there was more bloodshed, a helicopter crash, a fatal car accident, then the mayor taking a meeting with AXIS.
The jet had compartments. The two men placed Chase alone in one, had Kieran in another. They left him alone for two hours. He got it. They were being scary, making him suffer, waiting for him to bite his nails down his fingers. It was a day sent by God like a plague: his kidnapping and his first time being dumped. The dumping hurt worse. He folded himself in the seat, hugged his knees, buried his face into the jegging denim. He pictured the day they met. He could see it and hear it as clearly as a movie and from every angle. He could even see it from Kieran’s POV and think Kieran’s thoughts.
Day. The campus. Uniforms, pods, backpacks. Kieran entered the scene in uniform and backpack. He stood there as the students passed him from all directions. Kieran checked his watch.
Look at these uncomplicated little people going to class. They get to have who they want. I never felt like this. There’s an intense excitement all through me. A thrill. A chill. I’m all twisted inside. This is a whole new area. I’ve been visualizing it for days. Everybody talked about Chase Juniper but nobody liked him. He was a super who could fly, he was a gay cross dresser, he was weird and creepy, he was stuck-up, he was gross. But Kieran thought he was beautiful. When you were with Chase you heard a lot of music from throughout time, he was a musicologist. You got to where you heard more music from before your time than of your time. Chase would stand on his toes like a ballerina to music then levitate from the ground then fly. But back to the first meeting…That’s him. Let’s overdo this, make it even gayer. Music starts: “Clocks,” one of Chase’s top flying songs.
Sweatered and plaid skirted in the girls’ uniform was Chase Juniper in the stream of students, horn rim glasses, bangs over his face, nose tucked into the notebooks in his arms. The glasses were a prop he hid behind. The skirt ended at his knees then it was his thin black-tighted legs and shiny black Mary Janes. He drew odd looks. Walking in a path that would intersect then pass Kieran.
Chase passed. Kieran followed him.
Slow down.
Kieran’s lips moved. He croaked, “Hey.”
Chase kept going.
It took octane to keep up with his brisk walk. Kieran caught up to it.
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