Cypulchre

by Joseph Travers MacKinnon

  “ITEM SERIES A43H29: FRGMNTR.....PICK UP.....WEDNESDAY.”

  Q had fully intended to sell Paul the device. There was no need for him to bring his revolver; the Yuan would have sufficed. According to the manifest, Q had the fragmentor serialized and ready for pick up…so it must still be around here somewhere. Paul mouths the series number, and stands up—almost slipping on the shop-keeper’s blood.

  He walks the perimeter of the room, trying to bingo the intersection between A and H.

  “A-forty-three…and H! Here we go.”

  Paul stabs his hand into the pigeon hole. It’s empty, save for a few wet streaks of black goo.

  “God-damn-it!” Paul blurts.

  The opaque band around his arm flashes red, turning the pigeon hole into a demonic eye. Paul sighs, retracts his arm, and flicks his wrist, triggering Monocle. “Yeah?” A dark feed flits over his iris.

  “Paul? Hello. Shouta here.” A live image renders Katajima’s likeness, sitting comfortably in an automated Thorium convertible with the top down, and San Joaquin Valley compressed in the background.

  “Yeah, Funeral’s Friday; we meet tomorrow. I got it.”

  “Do you have time to meet me this evening?”

  “Jesus, Shouta. I’m already giving you a whole day.”

  “I know.”

  Paul pounds his fist against the empty slot, and throws the rest of the pigeon holes a defeated look. “And I’m not exactly jazzed about any of this.”

  Katajima’s contorted face suggests genuine bafflement. “Oh?”

  Paul rolls his eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me…” He tip-toes over the morbid mound, and bows out of the room. “No, I wouldn’t say so.”

  “Oh, Paul. What has passed is the past. The future is undecided…it could very well be ours.”

  “The past is very much alive. I belong to it. It has me.”

  “I was under the impression that was all water under the bridge.”

  “Bridge got washed out in the process…” Paul exits the shop into the alley, and palms his mouth and nose to filter the exhaust enshrouding him. “What exactly do you want?”

  “I would very much like to pick your brain over coffee. We have been seeing some pronounced abnormalities in the CLOUD. Nothing too serious, but we do not want to hazard a second Purge.”

  “Can’t. I’m doing some sight-seeing.”

  He crosses the road, and takes the sidewalk in the direction opposite the SenseDen. The far-off wail of police sirens shakes him—forcing him to accept the reality of the tragedy he just encountered…the tragedy I’m potentially responsible for.

  “I was under the impression you were at the hotel.”

  “Yeah, I am,” Paul barks back, forgetting his Monocle is broadcasting his sightlines.

  “Still prostituting yourself out to luddites?”

  “My business is my own,” Paul answers, thankful Katajima had missed the corpse in the background. His Monocle heeds his audio only intuition.

  “Paul, you there?”

  “Yes.” He meanders past a time-worn red truck, idling with its driver lying on the rusted hood, smoking pipe tobacco.

  “If you make an appeal to Winchester, you may no longer have to lie about your whereabouts. You might even be able to come back to Outland.”

  “Won’t happen,” says Paul, distracted by the acrid scent of the tobacco smoke.

  “Oh, for the love of God. Digest your pride…Fine!”

  Somehow, Paul knows Shouta can tell he’s smiling, and that it’s driving him crazy, just like the old days.

  “Winchester has been talking about you. The less you communicate and the more you deceive him, the more suspicious he will become, and he is already quite suspicious…In any event, regarding tonight: it is imperative that we meet. I will remunerate you for your time and your inconvenience. Hell, I will vice the company for a sky-full of airtime.”

  “Airtime?”

  “Yes, airtime.”

  “No need.” Paul checks his pockets for his Walruses, knowing full-well he’s out of SIKS. He’s out of Walruses, too.

  “Oh?”

  Paul approaches the pipe-smoking man stretched out on the truck, and mimes “Can I buy a smoke?” The man, wreathed in white hair, leans forward, and pulls a cigarette out of his chest pocket. Paul forks out a few blades of Yuan, and nods with a smile.

  “Shouta,” he responds over his Monocle, jarring the cigarette in his scowl. “I don’t have an implant, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “Ha! Of course, Paul. That would be mental. Everyone knows you are forever grounded. Did not mean for you. No, no, no.”

  Shouta’s build-up and sudden silence is emotionally excruciating for Paul. “Huh?”

  “For Rachel and the girls.”

  Dead air. White adrenalin coursing behind the comm.

  “Paul? You there?”

  Eying the idling truck, Paul throws his shoulders back, and pulls out all of the Yuan he has left—a few-thousand-dollars-worth, minus whatever he hemorrhaged at the SenseDen.

  “What about Rachel and the girls?”

  Chapter 12: INTERVENTION

  PAUL CAREENS DOWN a street where he’d, on many occasion, strolled around his colic offspring. With the brakes on his new red rust-bucket squealing like pigs to slaughter, he slows into park at the mouth of the cul de sac, forty feet short of his former abode.

  It’s a ranch-style stone and wood bungalow joined to the road by a cobbled driveway, just far enough away from the downtown core to avoid its shadows. Nice house. Nice neighbourhood. Nice try at normality, at cookie-cutter comfort.

  Now? The place’s a mental sinkhole, suitable for a non-questioning, myopic, Outland exec with a penchant for forgetting—a role Paul wasn’t able to perform indefinitely because of his pride and arrogance.

  At his best, he’d been around but not actively present; an aloof automaton focused on results and the future. Now, after his future’s come and frozen, his past holds onto him tighter than ever, like the wedding band he refuses to take off.

  Two micro maglev-cars sit in front of the garage. One is Rachel’s. Paul has no idea who owns the single-seater jammed behind it.

  Thinking of what to say and what to do, Paul thumbs the ripped pleather on the steering wheel, eyes burning an imaginary hole through the front door to the house. Rush it? Bull right through, snatch up the kids, and save them for their sake?

  He’d mulled over several plans of attack and all the different things he could say en route—he had plenty of time on account of having to detour all the way to Eagle Rock to avoid Outland’s checkpoints. All that scheming, and he still has nothing. Nothing but an ulcer boring a hole through his resolve and a splitting headache fogging his heroic one-liners. Dammit. They’re in there with god-know-who doing god-knows-what. The more he thinks about it, the more his logic is confused and the angrier he gets.

  Paul gets out of the rust-bucket, worth its weight in Yuan. Shoulders forward, he marches to his nuptial lodge, past faceless-neighbours’ manicured lawns set with imported greens to satisfy expatriated northeastern colour palettes. His fists are unintentionally balled, and his mask of civility, chip-thin.

  Doorbell. Pounding. The cul de sac closes around him. His solipsistic world only exists, in this moment, bunched up behind this designer-panel door.

  “Rachel!” Paul beats furiously on the door and rings again.

  A Firefly drone drops from the awning and paints a halo above Paul’s head, IDing him. Paul seizes it out of the air and crushes it between his thumb and index finger. “It’s me. Open up. Rachel?”

  Something stirs inside. Metal on ceramic. Chair-legs grind on hardwood. Someone unbolts the door. It opens to a distressed and disheveled ex-wife.

  Her eyes are white and pastel islands in mascara tar pools. Wrinkles have finally found her, pronouncing her scowl and marking Paul’s fall on her forehead. Her bodacious figure is hidden but hinted at by her favorite mod-black bodice—her prowling garb.<
br />
  “C’mon, tell me you didn’t. Please, tell me you didn’t...The kids too?”

  “Paul,” she sighs. “Now’s not a good time.”

  Her body language, distant and anxious, reads ‘I DID IT’ in bold-fucking-letters.

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  Rachel purses her angler-lips, and throws a hand on her hip. “Oh, you’re one to talk. It’s your creation, after all.”

  “You can’t protect them. Not in there,” Paul says, pointing over Rachel’s shoulder—unconsciously trying to control the dynamic with an unprecedented physical presence.

  Rachel shuns Paul’s point. “You know what I realized?”

  Paul makes a concerted effort to demonstrate his frustration with an embellished shrug.

  She pauses and takes a deep breath. “Maybe that, all things considered, you weren’t right about everything.”

  Vexed, Paul tosses his head back, reloading for a verbal barrage, but decides not to waste the ammunition. “I just want to see them.”

  “Honey, something wrong?” says a man in a gravelly voice, secreted off and out of sight.

  Paul peers in, over Rachel’s shoulder. “Who the hell’s that?”

  “Did Outland let you leave Barstow?”

  She doesn’t get more than a grunt as a response.

  “Paul, go home.”

  Rachel attempts to close the door, but Paul pushes it open and her aside.

  “This is home.”

  Rachel scrambles to block Paul’s passage. “Stop! Paul, Stop!”

  “Pythia! Angela!” bellows Paul, incensed. He plows into the living room.

  Rachel chases after him, clawing and yelling. Paul peeks into the kitchen where a horned man sits hunched over a ration pack and a steaming bowl of noodles with his back to the doorway.

  “Get out. Get out! You’re not supposed to be here,” yells Rachel. She manoeuvres around Paul and steps into his way. “The Court…”

  “Damn the Court. You’ve mutilated my children.”

  The man in the kitchen gets up and charges to the sound of the disruption. “Rachel?”

  “It’s him,” she shrieks. “It’s Paul.”

  “Yo dude, you can’t be in here,” the substitute declares, his illusory horns now faded.

  Paul stops to check the living room for signs of adolescence, letting his substitute catch up with him.

  “Dude!” barks the substitute. He catches up and prods Paul, “Asshole! You’re upsetting Rachel.”

  Paul glares at his replacement. Completely disregarding him as a threat or otherwise, he turns and presses on, down the hall.

  Whispers behind him give way to violent articulation. “He hit you?”

  Paul runs from the territorial show, noticing how all traces of his involvement in his family’s life have been completely erased. Pictures on the walls speak of a single mother and two beautiful girls. Uncle-Stuffing-The-Wife nuzzling Rachel in a strip of selfies. Smiles at the Grand Canyon. Six Mickey Mouse ears. Birthday parties. Science projects. But where is Paul?

  Here, out of place and out of his mind with worry and anger. If anyone wanted his side of the story, they’d have to rely on his word, but that’s no good, not anymore.

  Paul turns to Rachel, catching up—face warped to a Picasso extreme—with her partner barreling behind her. “Rachel, where are they?”

  The substitute steps in front of Rachel, and puffs his chest.

  A real fucking hero.

  “Listen man, I’m going to call the cops.”

  “You do that.” Paul makes sure his revolver is tucked out of sight with a palm-swipe against his shirt. Satisfied that it is, he feigns a smile, and turns to Rachel with a look of manic eagerness. “Where are my daughters?”

  “So this is the guy?” Paul hears the substitute inquire.

  “They’re in their bedroom, sound asleep. You’re going to wake them if you keep on like a—”

  “Like a what?” cries Paul. “Like a crazy person?”

  Anxious quiet.

  “Ha! Well, this crazy person,” Paul indicates himself, “built this infernal house and fathered those kids you’re so keen on butchering.”

  Rachel leans forward and whispers, “Coins and cum.”

  Fury etches deep lines into Paul’s face. He mouths, “What did you just say?”

  A sudden look of pity crosses her visage. She knows she’s wounded him. “You’re not yourself, Paul.”

  “B-bought it inventing the cleaver you put to their minds…Dammit!”

  The substitute gives Rachel a knowing “I’m-going-to-do-something” look. In their trembling sockets, her eyes lock onto his fists balling-up. “Paul,” she stammers, still gathering herself. “You need to calm down before you see them...I think it’d best that—”

  “The hell you know,” belts Paul. He opens a door to his old study, now mired with work-out equipment. He tries the next door, which opens to a pink and blue Disney abomination: the girl’s shared room.

  Paul’s eyes quickly adjust to the darkness. He sees them both lying in their bunks. Little wonders. He feels a hand on his shoulder, warm and strong.

  “Get out before—“

  Paul turns and levels the substitute with a punch that surprises the both of them. The sub spins across the hall into a concealed tech cubby, and then to the floor—the cubby’s contents spilling onto his exposed side. He wrestles to his feet, and lunges after Paul’s legs.

  Paul kicks frantically at his attacker, and yanks himself free. He whirs into the girls’ room, and slams the door behind him. It fails to close. It’s hindered by something soft. There’s a corresponding shriek. Through the rift bridged by a red blotch, Paul sees the replacement keel backwards, gripping a bloody mess. Paul tries again and successfully gets the door shut.

  Leaning against the frame, he checks again to make sure his gun’s hidden so as not to heighten everyone’s panic, and scans for any potential blockade. He pulls over the waist-level dresser and uses it to block the door. Satisfied with his quick-fix, he turns to four starry-eyes.

  “Daddy?”

  The little voice is a beacon in the dark, especially stark and airy against the white-noise machine grumbling beneath the bunks, deluging the room with a stale quiet. Apart from some muffled sobs and the faint sound of pawing, Paul’s spectacle continues under the pretense of false calm.

  “Oh, my princesses!” His face is so hot with rage, he doesn’t realize he’s crying.

  He slowly approaches the bunks. Angela’s sitting up, rubbing her eyes. Pythia is slow to rise, but rolls over, awake, similarly stunned.

  “What’s wrong, dad? Why are you crying?” asks Angela.

  “I just wanted to check-in on you. Wanted to see my babies...”

  They’ve grown up. They’re not babies anymore. The video chats stopped about five years ago. Since then, Paul’s only had pictures for reference—still images freezing his daughters’ development, keeping them pure and naïve forever.

  Rachel or the man, outside, is desperately trying to open the door. Probably Rachel; she has all of her fingers left.

  “Don’t you touch them!” she cries.

  Paul, eying his daughters for any signs of affliction, asks in a trembling inside-voice: “Did anybody touch you? Did anybody…”

  “Oh, daddy! We’ve the coolest thing to show you.” Angela tilts her head, showing a small gap in her lustrous brown hair. “I’m a CLOUD explorer! Pythia too!”

  Paul cautiously approaches, and puts his finger near the implant site. A hot jolt of white adrenalin pulses through his core and he recoils as if proximity-burnt. He picks up Pythia from the top bunk, and carries her over to the dresser. Putting her down, he steps back and turns-on the desk lamp. He shines the outlawed-incandescent bulb over his daughter’s head.

  With all the commotion outside and her disheveled father crying over her, Pythia starts to pout. She throws her hands up, defensively, unsure as to why she’s suddenly the centre of her estr
anged-father’s attention.

  Similarly puzzled by—and perhaps even jealous of—her father’s impromptu check-up, Angela tearfully asks, “What is it? What’s wrong with Pythia?”

  “One minute, baby…No. No. No…” He looks for a mark. “NO!” his finger finds what he feared the most: a cross section of little stitches.

  “Pythie’s okay,” declares Angela. “She didn’t cry when we went. The doctor even printed us dessert bars after!”

  Paul shakes his head, speechless.

  “And guess what!?” Angela points to Pythia. “She can talk now!”

  Paul, dumbfounded, looks to Pythia.

  “What did I do wrong?” It’s no more than a squeaky chain of peeps, but words, words nonetheless, bearing with them a world of meaning, a universe of irrational hurt. Thus spoke Pythia.

  “Oh my god.”

  Paul tries to smile. His lips, jaw, and shoulders shudder. Whatever expression he’s sculpted unnerves Pythia, who begins to panic even more, pushing away her father’s scarred arms.

  “Baby…” Paul blubbers. The darkness has caught up to him, and apparently to his daughters too. “No…”

  In an uncertain voice, Pythia begins: “Dad, it’s okay. We’re okay! Angie and I can take you to Calm Waters. Everyone relaxes there.” She looks to Angela for moral support. “It’ll be fun,” she says dubiously.

  A simulated-serenity forum in the CLOUD, no doubt.

  Paul turns away from the dresser, his daughter still legged over the edge. He falls to his knees, and starts to wretch.

  Hearing their mother bawling on the other side of the door, caving in with the substitute’s intermittent charges, both girls begin to whimper.

  “Shush, now. You’re going to be okay, you hear me?” Paul says, wiping his mouth. He looks up to Pythia—little mute Pythia. She has no need for our secret language now. “We’re going to take those implants out.”

  “But mommy says not to touch them.”

  The door behind Paul begins to cave-in. The other man is making use of some blunt and heavy tool.

  Rachel’s screams, no longer muffled, incite Pythia and Angela to join in.

  “Why’s mommy upset?” cries Pythia.