The Flux

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  Paul had drawn up endless pros-and-cons lists, crunched numbers: he gave it a ninety percent chance that Imani would accept the news that her daughter was a ’mancer with compassion. He’d seen Imani go to great lengths for charity – after she’d canvassed her neighborhood to help get Aliyah her reconstructive surgery, Imani hadn’t stopped after Aliyah’s face was rebuilt to the best standards that modern medicine could provide. Imani turned those initial donations into a full-on foundation, managing fundraiser events that helped get other burned kids their necessary treatments. Imani might see Aliyah’s videogamemancy as just another special need, and adapt to it. Aliyah had picked up her stubbornness straight from her mother; if any non-’mancer could get Aliyah to master her flux, it was Imani.

  But that ten percent chance....

  We don’t allow processed sugar in this house, Imani had said. I moved to a new apartment with no windows.

  As much as Paul wanted to give his ex-wife the benefit of the doubt, it was also possible Imani would react to the news by instituting greater control. Imani had always believed in outside help – sneering at the parents who suggested Aliyah might benefit from home schooling, sending Aliyah to endless battalions of psychiatrists and pediatric trauma experts despite Aliyah’s shrieking protests, interrogating teachers to get their recommendations.

  And the federal troops were the only experts. By law.

  He tried to push the image away, but it kept recurring: Imani, picking up the phone to call 1-800-SMASHEM. Aliyah, tear-gassed and hooded. Aliyah, out in the Arizona desert, tortured until her spunky rebellion leaked away.

  Paul mouthed the words, figuring out how to tell Imani what was really happening. And as always, he imagined a doctor holding up a hypodermic needle that contained an experimental cure:

  We think this treatment has a ninety percent chance of curing Aliyah’s psychological problems, the imaginary doctor told him gravely. But if we’re wrong, this shot will destroy your daughter’s brain beyond repair.

  Are you ready to risk that?

  His phone alarm buzzed. It wouldn’t do to be late to the mayor’s office when he was being called on the carpet.

  “I have to go,” Paul said. “I promise I will call you later.”

  “All right.” She breathed in through her nose, regaining composure. “Thank you, Paul. It’s not fair to dump this on you, I know. And… you’re a good man. I just wish we could have…”

  Paul hung up before she could finish that sentence. He stormed off to the mayor’s office, swallowing back frustration. Paul hated lying. He hated liars. Yet Imani had divorced him because he’d had to lie about his love of ’mancy to her.

  And now, to save his daughter, he had to layer falsehoods on top of falsehoods….

  Paul’s tension rose as the mayor’s office came into view. All the paperwork flowed through City Hall, New York’s beating heart, where things got catalogued and approved.

  Politicians, Paul thought, were fatty clumps sticking to the walls of an aorta – clogging the flow from time to time. But the strength of bureaucracy and good records kept New York City functioning. Paul had read histories of the time before building codes, when cheap landlords built wooden fireplaces and uninspected meat markets had sold horrific surprises…

  Bureaucracy was the best tool humanity had to fight dishonest men.

  But aren’t you dishonest, Paul? a voice at the back of his head whispered. They’d lock you away if they knew what you really were. You don’t try to fight City Hall, you slither in and subvert it…

  He’d do anything to protect Aliyah.

  A secretary escorted Paul to a small meeting room. No one was there, but he’d expected that; Paul had learned that in City Hall, some people waited for you to arrive, and others you waited for.

  The meeting room was furnished in a way Paul could only describe as “stately”: leather upholstery on polished wood chairs, gilded frames with oil paintings of New York’s turn-of-the-century skyscrapers, a cut-glass pitcher of ice water waiting for him. A cozy place, designed to impress.

  Paul closed his eyes, summoning up the strength to face down the mayor himself.

  The door opened.

  “…David?” Paul spluttered as his ex-wife’s new husband, David Giabatta, entered the room.

  “I am a senior member of the mayor’s cabinet, Paul,” David said coldly. That chilly tone was unusual for David. He turned everything into a joke, that politician’s trick to transform vindictive insults into jocular ribbings. Paul couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t seen David smiling that salesman’s grin.

  David was not smiling.

  Well, Paul thought, at least I know why he’s not at home with Imani. The mayor had summoned his hatchetman to talk to Paul.

  David sat down across from Paul, as far across the table as he could get. He straightened his tie – Imani had once confided in Paul that David had his tailor cut his suit specifically to display his muscular form. He looked presidential, solemn, disappointed.

  He lowered his face into his hands.

  “You could have had it all, Paul.” His palms muffled his voice. “You could have made this office look magnificent. Instead, you pissed it away.”

  “It’s a setback, David,” Paul said.

  He glared at Paul. “The fact that you do not realize how bad things are, Paul, shows me exactly how ill-suited you are for this job.”

  Paul squirmed. “It’s one bad fight. But catching ’mancers is what I do. We’ll get there.”

  “And if your job was to catch ’mancers, I would be reassured.”

  “My job is to catch ’mancers. That’s right on the paperwork.”

  “No.” David shook his head. “Your job is to make the mayor look good. Which you do by making New York’s citizenry feel safe. You have failed at that job, time and time again.”

  “…you’re telling me that I’m a figurehead?”

  “No. Though that is why we appointed you to the job – a man without a scrap of political savvy who nevertheless made headlines. Imani assured me you could pick up the skill of making connections.”

  Paul winced. He’d disliked lying to City Hall, assuring everyone how bad ’mancers were, how he took great satisfaction in tracking those universe-warping bastards down. So he’d skipped the meet-‘n’-greets, hoping sheer efficiency would keep him in the role.

  “But no,” David continued. “We’ve gone almost eighteen months with no ’mancers. After Anathema promised we’d have a tide of magicked-up freaks storming our bastions. You could have claimed credit, told the news of the horrible things that would have happened had not Mr Paulos Costa Tsabo scared the ’mancers away. But no! You expressed bafflement – repeated bafflement – that Anathema’s dire predictions weren’t coming true. You asked for more funding to investigate this strange quiescence. Truth be told, you sounded a little disappointed more ’mancers hadn’t arrived.”

  Paul had been disappointed. Anathema had told him all sorts of ’mancers would be popping up all across New York. That’s why he’d taken the job, even though he’d known the politics would be interminable: as the first responder to any ’mancer incident, he’d planned to shunt the helpful ’mancers off to safer places, playing a sort of Oskar Schindler.

  Paul had anticipated moral dilemmas, sorting out which ’mancers were worth saving.

  What he hadn’t anticipated was no ’mancers at all. None.

  “Don’t you think it’s a little odd?” Paul asked, leaning forward. “No ’mancer activity for eighteen months? In a city this size? Not so much as a single bookiemancer? Hell, Los Angeles averages ten ’mancer incidents a year, Chicago twenty–”

  “And we are safe, Paul!” David spread his hands. “That’s good news! Why couldn’t you tell the media that was the result of your fine preventative work?”

  “Because it’s not true?”

  “How do you know it’s not true? Maybe they’re terrified of your manly presence. Christ, Paul, I’m not asking y
ou to lie, I’m just asking for good spin.”

  “You know I don’t like talking to the media, David.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s

  a strange allergy for someone who’s in fucking politics.”

  “Politics,” Paul shot back, “often stops shit from getting done.”

  A cold silence.

  David reached for a glass of water with the aggrieved air of a man cutting Paul some major slack. It was all Paul could do not to remind David that oh, yeah, remember how you slept with my wife while we were still married, and I haven’t brought that up even once?

  “It sounds,” Paul said stiffly, “Like you’d be happier if Lenny hadn’t gone after Psycho Mantis at all.”

  “No.” David planted his index finger on the table’s dark-wood surface. “We should scour the city for all ’mancy-related threats. Yet Psycho Mantis was not a risk at the time. Lenny didn’t scout the zone, and he endangered lives – all on an anonymous tip.”

  Paul winced. David had a point.

  “The media wants someone strung up,” David continued. “Lenny Pirrazzini seems like an excellent target. Well, him and – well, let’s say you suspend your five weakest officers without pay for a week, just to show the papers we’re taking it seriously. I expect Lenny’s resignation in time to make Monday’s headlines, and then you and I will discuss what, exactly, you are supposed to do as a Task Force Supervisor.”

  “No.”

  David tilted his head. “No?”

  “Lenny’s cock-up is... it’s my fault as a manager. I should have been working more closely with SMASH, training my force in the newest anti-mancer tactics. I should have been riding Lenny’s ass; everyone knows he’s a hothead. And his men, they were... they were following orders.”

  And, Paul thought, I don’t talk to SMASH because I’m worried they’ll figure out what I am. I don’t trade tactics with them because I don’t want our Task Force to be that good at capturing ’mancers. It’s unfair that the squad gets punished when I set up them up to fail.

  “Paul,” David said prissily, then paused, as if that one word should have been warning enough.

  “I’ll reprimand Lenny. Officially. A month off, no pay. But the man doesn’t deserve to lose his job.”

  “Someone’s going to.”

  “No,” Paul said, digging in. “We had one major goof-up against a very cunning opponent. But we got some more information on this ‘King of New York’ fellow. The papers are making this look bad, that’s their job, but… it’s not a rout.”

  “Paul,” David repeated. “I’m here with orders from His Fucking Honor himself. I don’t have a lot of love for you. You spoil your fucking kid, and I have to clean up the mess. You make my wife neurotic that she’s a bad mother. And if I, a man personally authorized by the greatest fucking power in New York City, tells you heads will roll, then you fire Lenny Pirrazzini and suspend some officers… or you turn in your resignation right. Fucking. Now.”

  Oh, we’ve gone personal, have we? Paul thought.

  “I will not.” Paul got up from the table. “I’m not going to sacrifice good men so we can lie to the newspapers. This will pass. And when it passes, we will have a stronger and more diligent Task Force, and you will thank me for not caving in to simple politics.”

  Seven

  Yup

  Of course they fired him.

  Eight

  The Woman In The Shy Castle

  On Sunday night, just in time to make Monday’s headlines, the mayor proudly announced David Giabatta would be taking over the Task Force.

  The man who’d stolen Paul’s wife now had Paul’s old job.

  Paul decided to allow himself precisely four days of self-pity, ending when Imani dropped Aliyah off at his apartment on Thursday. He took to it with gusto.

  Of course, Paul’s “gusto” consisted of managing the tiny details that went with being freshly unemployed. He called up the firm that held his unemployment insurance – not Samaritan Mutual – to ensure that everything was handled. He cut back on all his unnecessary expenses, canceling his cable and renegotiating his cell phone plan; paying for both his and Valentine’s side-by-side apartments would be tricky on sixty percent of his old salary, even with the rent-controlled deal he’d gotten. He compiled a list of potential future employers, ranked them by potential, culling a sub-list of people to call come Friday morning.

  His former employer Samaritan Mutual was conspicuously not on that list.

  And all the while he did not shower, he did not shave, he did not sleep. He did not change the bandage on his ever-bleeding left arm. He ignored all incoming calls. (Though he did send a text to his drug overlord Oscar saying “We’ll talk soon” before locking his phone away in a drawer. Thankfully, the King either had no ability, or no interest, to track Paul down when he wasn’t brewing Flex.)

  Occasionally Paul would take the Scotch down from his liquor shelf and weigh the bottle in his hands, imagining precisely how drunk he could get given the number of ounces of alcohol compared to his own meager body weight.

  Then he would put it back, and make some more lists.

  And at 4:35 Tuesday afternoon, when Paul was happily lost in comparing Internet service provider plans, there came the videogame chunk-chunk-chunk noise of Aliyah teleporting into her bedroom.

  Paul felt the surge of bad luck lunge after Aliyah – a dangerous surge, one that indicated Aliyah had done magic she felt conflicted about. He grabbed for his legal pad, scribbled a notification of legal guardian status onto it; the surge changed course and slammed into him with such force that the Scotch tumbled off the shelf.

  The flux squeezed in all around him; it was like being shoved into a closet full of rubber balls, a soft probing from every angle, asking What could go wrong? What could go wrong? And Paul, unprepared for this, didn’t have a good answer. He could normally hold his flux for a day or two until he could direct it towards some bad luck he was prepared for – but this wave hit him when he was already distracted by worries about incoming bills, bad credit ratings, what would happen to the men on the Task Force–

  The flux wriggled away, leaving Paul to wonder what whammy he’d triggered.

  He pushed himself away from the desk, feeling shamed. Aliyah shouldn’t see him like this – covered in sweaty stubble, clothes in shambles, stinking of freshly splashed Scotch. Paul buttoned his stained shirt, trying to regain some semblance of authority.

  He stormed into Aliyah’s bedroom. “Aliyah Rebecca Tsabo-Dawson!” he bellowed, in his best angry dad voice. “You do not do ’mancy without warning Daddy!”

  Aliyah sat on her bed, surrounded by three suitcases; she must have teleported them in with her. She gazed up at her father, unruffled.

  “Valentine’s in the maze,” she said.

  Oh crap.

  He had forgotten about Valentine.

  * * *

  The door to Valentine’s apartment had been transformed into a flat sticker pasted onto the wall, an image of a door so lifelike that Paul was fooled until his key skidded off the hole-less lock. It was one of Valentine’s standard-issue privacy tricks; there were plenty of unopenable doors-as-scenery in videogames.

  “All right,” he told Aliyah. “Get us in.”

  They walked back to Aliyah’s bedroom in Paul’s apartment next door. Aliyah unpacked her Nintendo DS from her suitcase – which, Paul noted, had all her favorite dolls from her mother’s house neatly arranged inside.

  Before he could ask further questions, Aliyah plugged in the Super Mario Bros cartridge, flicked on the game, and curled up in Paul’s lap. She twisted her neck around to interrogate him.

  “When was the last time you went in?” Aliyah asked.

  “Last month,” Paul admitted.

  “Daddy!” she cried. She’s chastising me? Paul wondered, amazed how easily Aliyah could trigger his guilt reflex. “What if you forget?”

  “I’ve committed the levels to memory. I don’t forget.”

  �
�Do you remember how to squash the turtles?”

  Paul sighed. His daughter was a tiny drill sergeant when it came to videogames. “My reflexes aren’t as good as yours.”

  “You take lead, Daddy.” Aliyah thrust the Nintendo DS into his hands. “You always have to be able to find us.”

  Paul pursed his lips. She had a point.

  He hit the start button. Super Mario started up; Paul felt the subtle tingle of Aliyah’s ’mancy connecting her world to Valentine’s.

  Paul manipulated Mario through the opening level’s blocky cartoon world, his fingers feeling fat and clumsy. He’d never liked games, but Aliyah had insisted he master at least one videogame.

  So over the past few years he’d dedicated an hour each evening to play Super Mario. It was like swimming laps in the pool for Paul’s physical rehab classes; a tedious, necessary task that brought him no joy.

  Playing also involved a surprising amount of memorization, as the levels were packed with “hiddens,” as Aliyah called them – secret paths uncovered by breaking this particular block, or crouching in a certain pipe. Aliyah quizzed him on the hidden locations, even though getting to her secret area in Mario took one circuitous route.

  Aliyah perched on his lap, vibrating with excitement as she shouted suggestions: “Jump now, Daddy! Don’t forget the bats! That bomb’s about to go off. YAY! You did it, Daddy, you did it!”

  At the end of each level, she gave him her “princess’s reward”: she kissed his cheek. That was a better reward than any imaginary gold coin: seeing how thoroughly Aliyah was rooting for him.

  He liked that she was better than him at this, that it took him hours to finish the game while she could have whipped through it in minutes. There had always been something immeasurably wild about his daughter – and where Imani had wanted to lock that rebellion down, Paul treasured Aliyah’s stormy enthusiasm. It made for rocky days as a parent, but he secretly adored how you couldn’t force her to do anything – you could only convince her to agree with you.