The End of Ordinary

by Edward Ashton

  As Mara often said, I was a crappy manager.

  Meghan lived in Santa Monica, in one of the new towers they’d put up a few blocks back from the beach. My phone pinged just as the cab rolled to a stop in front of her building. I fished it out of my pocket, and tapped the screen.

  “Drew,” Meghan said. “What are you doing here?”

  Meghan looked rough, and not in an “I haven’t been working for the last week because I’ve been having constant sex” kind of way. More like “I haven’t been working for the last week because I’ve had dengue fever.” I remembered her as a pale, freckled redhead, but that morning her hair was a long, dark tangle, and her skin looked like she’d tried to use a self-tanner while she was falling-down drunk. She was wearing a white cotton shirt, and even on my tiny screen I could see that there were brown and yellow stains around the collar and running down the front. Even allowing for the fact that it was early and she’d probably just woken up, she looked like crap on a biscuit.

  “Oh,” I said finally. “Hey, Meghan. Is this a bad time?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “No, Drew. It’s a great time. It’s always a great time when your project manager shows up at your door unexpectedly at seven thirty in the morning. That always means good things are about to happen.”

  I sighed, and rubbed my eyes with one hand. The cab made a throat-clearing sound, and a message popped up on the payment screen telling me to please exit now. The door was standing open. I slid across the seat and climbed out.

  “Look,” I said. “You know why I’m here, Meghan. You haven’t made a project meeting or produced a deliverable in ten days. You sent me a scary-ass call-me-now last week, and then went completely dark. I’m glad you’re getting laid or whatever, but DragonCorn is in danger of being shoved off the rails, and you’re the one who’s doing the pushing.” I walked up three steps to the door of her building. “We need to talk. Will you let me in, please?”

  Her eyes narrowed, and she shook her head.

  “No, Drew. I don’t think that’s a great idea.”

  I could feel my jaw sag open.

  “Meghan,” I said. “I’m standing on your front stoop right now. I’m standing on your front stoop in ninety-degree heat, after a night spent on the couch and a morning spent on a suborbital with a douchey hipster and a sweet-looking middle-aged psycho. I’m standing here because I am responsible for making sure that you are doing your job, which by the way you are not, and for the past week you have ignored every attempt I have made to get in touch with you. Forget about staying employed, Meghan. If you want to avoid a breach of contract lawsuit that’ll have you giving depositions to Bioteka lawyers until you are a wizened old woman and I am long dead, you need to let me in.”

  She scowled, looked away from the screen and then back. I could see the muscles in her jaws clenching.

  “Fine,” she said finally. “Come on up, Drew. I’ve got some really awesome stuff to show you.”

  As it turned out, Meghan’s apartment was in even worse shape than the rest of her. There was a dozen or more pizza boxes piled up in the living room. Not all of them were empty. Pepperoni doesn’t rot, but sauce and crust apparently do, and the smell when she opened the door was like a slap in the sinuses. Meghan poked her head out, looked up and down the hallway, then glared up at me.

  “Right,” she said. “Come on.”

  She stepped back, and held the door just far enough open to let me squeeze in.

  “Wow,” I said. “I guess you haven’t been skipping work to catch up on your cleaning, huh?”

  “Bite me, Drew.”

  She slammed the door behind me. There were heavy blinds covering the windows, and with the door shut, the only light in the room came from the screensaver bouncing around the wallscreen hanging opposite the garbage-strewn leather couch. The dimness hid some of the stains on her shirt and her pajama pants, but somehow that just made her look more crazy rather than less.

  “So,” I said. “Uh . . . how’ve you been, Meghan?”

  She rolled her eyes again, turned away and walked through an arched doorway into what looked to be the kitchen. I glanced around. This was actually a really nice apartment underneath all the rotting food and grease-stained napkins. The floors were hardwood, the wallscreen was high-res and at least 120 inches, the furniture was all either leather or solid oak or both. Apparently Bioteka did almost as well by their testers as they did by their engineers.

  “Look,” she said, and I heard the refrigerator open and close. “I’m not really interested in chitchat at the moment, Drew. If you’re here to fire me, you should probably just do it and go. If you hang around, I’m gonna show you some stuff that’ll make your life a lot more complicated.”

  I heard the snap and hiss of first one bottle opening, and then another. When Meghan came back into the living room, she was already drinking from one of them. She held the other out to me.

  “Seriously?” I said. “Is that your breakfast?”

  “Take it,” she said. “You’re gonna want to be buzzed soon.”

  I stared at her. She shrugged, took a long pull at her beer, and winked the wallscreen to life.

  “Fine,” she said. “Your loss.”

  She put the second beer down on the coffee table, then gestured at the wallscreen. A series of folders popped up. She gestured again, and one of them zoomed in and opened. A wave and a poke brought up a rolling schematic on one side of the screen, and a genetic map on the other.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  She folded her arms over her chest and smirked.

  “I’m just a tester, Drew. You’re the engineer. You tell me.”

  I stepped forward, minimized the diagram and zoomed the schematic. Neither representation was really meant to be human-parseable, but I figured I’d have a better chance at recognizing something familiar there.

  As it turned out, I did not.

  “Okay,” I said after about five minutes of poking and staring. “I give up, Meghan. What am I looking at?”

  “Good God, Drew,” she said. “You really are just a manager now, aren’t you?”

  She nudged me aside, minimized the schematic, and pulled up a molecular diagram.

  I stared at it.

  This one, I recognized.

  “Meghan?” I said.

  She laughed, and finished what was left of her beer.

  “What’s the matter, Drew? Aren’t you happy to see your baby?”

  16. In which Hannah meets Marta, and hilarity ensues.

  The morning after my first run with Micah, I woke up to a quiet house. Ordinarily, Mom and Dad both would have been rattling around by then, making breakfast and coffee and grumbling at each other, and eventually yelling at me to get my lazy backside out of bed. That morning, though? Nothing. Weirdly, I think that actually got me up earlier than usual. It was barely six when I rolled over and sat up—still dark outside, but with just a hint of a glow on the horizon outside my window. I sat there for a minute, knowing something was off but unable to put my finger on exactly what. Finally, when it became pretty clear that it was too late to try to go back to sleep, I got to my feet and started rooting around in my dresser for clean underwear and socks.

  By the time I got downstairs, I’d figured out that Dad was not, in fact, anywhere in the house. This was a problem, because Dad was my ride to school. Mom could have substituted in a pinch, but she didn’t seem to be around either. I’m not sure why my parents both being completely AWOL that morning didn’t bother me more in and of itself, but it didn’t. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t miss first bell.

  As I was toasting my bagel, I ran down a mental list of people who might possibly give me a ride. My friend list hadn’t been particularly long before the whole Climb to Failure thing, and it was considerably shorter afterward. There was Sarah, but she lived on the Syracuse side of Briarwood, and coming out to get me would add almost sixty miles to her ride—besides which, she only seemed to be my frien
d when Tara wasn’t looking, and I wasn’t positive she’d be willing to be seen showing up in the parking lot with me in her car. Micah had been friendly enough as a running partner, but our relationship had definitely not reached the come-pick-me-up stage. Devon? Ha! Even if she’d gone to my school, I felt like I was tighter with Inchy at that point. Who did that leave?

  Jordan.

  My bagel popped. I slathered it with cream cheese, carried it over to the breakfast table, and gave him a ping.

  Wilma17: Jordan? You awake?

  Jordasaurus: Not really.

  Wilma17: It’s Hannah.

  Jordasaurus: . . .

  Wilma17: Jordan?

  Jordasaurus: What can I do for you, friendo?

  Wilma17: Um . . . Any chance I could catch a ride to school?

  Jordasaurus: . . .

  Wilma17: Please?

  Jordasaurus: Sorry. Not 100% sure I’m going in today.

  Wilma17: Oh. You sick?

  Jordasaurus: Not exactly.

  Wilma17: . . .

  Wilma17: Okay, I get it. Sorry to bug you.

  I dropped my phone, sat down at the table and crammed a quarter of the bagel into my mouth to keep myself from crying. Apparently, I didn’t rank nearly as high on Jordan’s friend list as he did on mine. Not too surprising considering our relative social standings, but . . .

  My phone pinged.

  I picked it up and thumbed the screen.

  Jordasaurus: Look, Hannah. Things are weird right now, and you might actually be able to help. Want to ditch with us today?

  I was sitting on the porch when they rolled up. Micah was riding shotgun, elbow jutting out of his open window. He waved.

  There was somebody crammed into the cargo space behind the seats.

  They stopped in the driveway. The doors popped open, and Jordan and Micah unfolded themselves like clowns coming out of one of those tiny circus cars. Jordan groaned and stretched as the girl in the back hauled herself out. I recognized her mod package right away. It was a super-exclusive thing. I’d seen examples in one of Dad’s brochures, but as far as I knew the only people who actually had it were a couple of celebrity kids, and one popular fashion model named Raven Blue. She was a Spooky—dead white skin, jet black hair, limbs just a bit too long for her spectrally thin torso. The package came with some internal mods too, but I couldn’t remember exactly what they were. I stood, and walked down the steps and over to where they were waiting.

  “Hey,” I said. “Who’s your friend?”

  “Him?” Micah said. “That’s Jordan. Not really a friend, though. More of a hanger-on.”

  Spooky scowled at him and stepped forward.

  “I’m Marta,” she said, and held out one fist. I gave it a half-hearted tap.

  “Hannah,” I said. “I haven’t seen you around. You go to Briarwood?”

  She laughed.

  “Me? No, Hannah. I do not go to Briarwood.”

  I looked at Micah, then at Jordan.

  “Wait,” he said. “I thought you two were friends?”

  Marta turned to look at him.

  “What?”

  “Last week,” Jordan said. “Didn’t you tell me that you and Hannah were tight?”

  “No,” Marta said. “I definitely did not.”

  He looked at me.

  “Nope,” I said. “I mean, we’re not enemies or anything. I’ve never seen her before.”

  “Seriously,” Marta said. “What are you talking about, Jordan?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Care to explain?”

  Jordan looked at me, then at Marta, then back at me.

  “Not really,” he said.

  Micah grinned.

  “Anyway, Hannah—Marta’s our new sidekick.”

  Marta gave him a quick shot of side-eye.

  “Sidekick?”

  “Sure,” Micah said. “Like Bat-Boy, or Corporal Punishment.”

  “Oh no,” Marta said. “I’m definitely not a sidekick. If anything, I’m the hero here.”

  Micah laughed and shook his head.

  “I don’t think so. Heroes get to ride in the front seat.”

  “Actually,” Jordan said, “I think you’re probably a villain who’s on a redemption arc.”

  We all turned to look at him.

  “You know,” he said. “Redemption arc: villain has a change of heart, defects to the heroes’ side, gives them critical aid in defeating the forces of evil, winds up with reduced jail time and a sweet job in the prison cafeteria.”

  I swear, at that moment, I heard a cricket chirp.

  “Prison cafeteria?” Marta finally asked.

  “Sure,” Jordan said. “Way better than working in the laundry—quieter, less humid, and you get to see who spits in what.”

  “Huh,” I said. “When did you come down with verbal diarrhea?”

  Micah snickered.

  “Oh,” he said. “That’s nothing new. Jordan’s mouth has irritable vowel syndrome.”

  There was that cricket again. Micah looked at Marta, then back at me.

  “Too far?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Too far.”

  He shrugged.

  “Can’t nail it every time.”

  “Right,” Marta said. “Can we go back to the whole redemption arc thing? How, exactly, am I a villain?”

  “Well,” Micah said. “Maybe not a villain per se. You’re definitely villain-spawn, though, which I’m pretty sure qualifies you for a redemption arc. Unless, of course, it turns out you’re actually leading us to our doom. In that case, this would be a fake redemption arc. Are you leading us to our doom?”

  “No,” Marta said. “I am not leading you to your doom.” She looked at Micah. “Well, maybe him. He’s annoying. Probably not Jordan, though.”

  “Hey,” I said. “What about me?”

  She gave me an appraising look.

  “Probably not, but let’s see how the day goes.”

  “Hmmm,” Jordan said. “I’m not sure how to classify that.”

  “RA-EFGO?” I said.

  Micah raised both eyebrows.

  “What?”

  “Redemption arc,” I said. “Exception for giant oafs.”

  Micah looked at Jordan. Jordan shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t think that’s a thing.”

  “Yeah,” Micah said. “That’s just dumb. Get it together, Hannah.”

  Incredibly, the space behind the seats in Jordan’s car was even less comfortable than it had looked from the outside. It was only meant to hold a few bags in the first place, and if it weren’t for the fact that Marta was as scrawny as I was and twice as flexible, squeezing us both in there at once would have been completely impossible. As it was, it was just kind of improbable. That, and very, very awkward.

  “Just for the record,” Marta said. “I am not intentionally molesting you right now.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Good to know.”

  Jordan twisted his head around to look back at us.

  “Hey,” he said. “If we see the gendarmes, try to duck down. It’s kind of illegal to have humans back there. Or livestock either, now that I think about it. Actually, I think it’s illegal to have anything at all back there bigger than an old pizza box. So yeah, try to be inconspicuous, huh?”

  “Got it,” I said. “If we happen to see any troopers, we’ll be sure to camouflage ourselves. I mean, we can’t actually move or anything, but maybe Micah could throw a blanket over us?”

  “Don’t have a blanket,” Jordan said. “Just try to look like CPR dolls or something.”

  I tried to smack the back of his head, but Marta beat me to it.

  “Hey,” he said. “That was a compliment.”

  “Right.” I tried to wriggle around enough to keep the cargo hook on the back of Micah’s seat from digging into my spine, but I just wound up making it worse. “Would you mind telling me where we’re going? If this is gonna take more than another five or ten minutes, I think I’d rath
er just run along behind.”

  “I agree,” Marta said. “Hannah would be much better off running along behind.”

  “Relax,” Micah said. “We’re almost there.”

  I twisted my neck around until I could see out the windshield. We were driving under power lines.

  “Just out of curiosity,” I said, “where, exactly, are we going?”

  “Our top-secret headquarters,” Jordan said. “We need to make plans.”

  “You have a top-secret headquarters?”

  “Well,” he said. “Technically it’s the IHOP on Culver, but it’s pretty secret.”

  “Sure,” Micah said. “Totally secret. Except for the billboard on 104, I mean.”

  “Well yeah,” Jordan said. “Obviously except for that.”

  I tried to catch Marta’s eye, but she’d buried her face in both hands.

  “So,” Jordan said. “I suppose you’re wondering why we brought you here.”

  I looked around the table. Jordan and Marta were watching me expectantly. Micah was cramming a cheese blintz into his mouth.

  “No,” I said, and picked a hair out of my breakfast scramble. “I wasn’t wondering that at all.”

  I picked up my phone and pinged Sarah.

  Wilma17: Hey. What’s the sitch in GeneChem?

  SM37: Quiz. You sick?

  Wilma17: Nah. I’m at IHOP.

  SM37: Really? That’s what you ditch for?

  Wilma17: Not my idea. Can you forward any notes?

  SM37: Sure. You gonna tell me what this is about?