Static Mayhem

by Edward Aubry

  "But magic?" Harrison blurted. "What the hell do any of you know about magic?"

  Reuben sighed. "Not every citizen of New Chicago," he said softly, "is human." The secretary managed to keep the statement generalized and subtle, taking care not to divulge more. Tucker had a substantially less developed sense of subterfuge, however, and as soon as Reuben said it, he looked, blatantly, at Susan.

  Harrison looked, too. Susan gave him a sly smile and nodded toward his glass of water. The water began swirling. It picked up speed until a little bit splashed out the top of the glass, and he was able to look down into the eye of the whirlpool. He saw a dry circle at the bottom of the glass.

  "She's a naiad," said Reuben, mildly annoyed that her cover had been blown. "Her name's not really Susan. At least, we don't think it is. She tends to communicate nonverbally." As he said these things about her, Susan batted her eyes at Harrison. They were a deep, briny green, and they rippled as she fluttered her lashes.

  There was the other shoe. He had thought she was a teenager. She was probably the oldest living being at the table. This community, at least in part, consisted of humans and magical creatures working together for a common good. Harrison had been part of a team like that, once, and suddenly he imagined he could do it again.

  Or was it a common good? He already knew, with a grim certainty, that there was someone out there who had an agenda that included spying on him and trying to kill him. What if these people were the bad guys? No, he had to consider this possibility, but then he dismissed it out of hand. They had had him in custody for days. If they had been spying on him and had wanted him dead, dead is what he would be right now. If nothing else, then, these were not the same bad guys. He wondered if they knew that somewhere, someone was up to no good. Should he say something? They hadn't asked. Then he wondered if he might be an even greater resource than they thought he was. These were less immediate questions, though. The salient point, right now, was that they didn't want him dead. They wanted him employed. His moment was now.

  "I want my kids back," he said.

  "That may be possible," President Hatfield replied, and at that moment, Harrison knew he was negotiating.

  "Have they been placed in homes yet?" he asked. "Alec said something about adoption." This was going to be a deal-breaker. There was no way he would pass Mitchell and Dorothy off to some random parents, not after caring for them and protecting them, literally from monsters, for so many weeks.

  Dr. Lee spoke up for the first time. "If I may?" Hatfield nodded. Lee looked at Harrison. "Under New Chicago law," she said, "Dorothy and Mitchell are already legally adopted."

  Harrison felt the blood drain from his head. He tried to count the number of days since the CVS. It seemed too short a time to wreck a family. "Is there some sort of appeal?" he asked. He wasn't even sure what he meant by that, other than some desperate attempt to make the bad thing stop.

  Lee frowned for a moment, then offered him a wide-eyed smile. "I think you have the wrong idea," she said. "Adoption law grants parental presumption to a child's first adult human contact, post-May 25. In a dispute, the onus is on the State to demonstrate unfitness. As soon as you crossed the barrier, the three of you were granted automatic probationary citizenship, so your claim was immediately recognized by default." Harrison watched her pause to let him absorb what she said. He was struggling to believe that it meant what he wanted it to mean. "Congratulations, Harrison," she said, and she winked. "You're a father."

  His heart began pounding. "I think I owe you all cigars," he said, to a round of polite, tension-breaking laughter.

  Before the final terms of his employment could be agreed upon, an object the size of a ballpoint pen in the president's pocket began to buzz quietly and flash a green light.

  "I need to take this," she said. She took the object out, held it to her mouth. "Yes?"

  "Sorry to interrupt," said the small object. It was speaking in Alec's voice, and Harrison could hear it clearly from where he sat.

  "No trouble," she said. "Do we need a secure line?"

  "No. I just arrived at the Welcome Center," he said, "and there's a fairy down here asking for Mr. Cody and swearing like a sailor."

  Eyebrows raised, the president looked at Harrison. She probably expected him to consider this, at best, poor timing. "Is there something you'd like to share at this point?" she asked.

  Harrison's entire body had gone rigid. He posed his next question with great care. "What," he asked, "is she wearing?"

  "Did you catch that?" she asked the object.

  "Affirmative," it said. "The fairy is wearing a white sweater with a capital B on it. And a pink poodle skirt. No shoes."

  Harrison refrained from screaming long enough to say, "Take me to the Welcome Center. Right now."

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tiananmen

  The Welcome Center was a shorter, broader building near the building they had just been in, and so they were able to get there on foot in less than ten minutes. Harrison was led there by Dr. Lee, who was greeted several times and treated with respect. From the outside, the building looked nondescript. There were no huge signs identifying it, nor any official government looking symbols or logos visible. Harrison presumed that they would eventually get around to adorning it, but he supposed they likely had other priorities.

  Inside, the structure and activity reminded Harrison of every bureaucracy he had ever known. The front door opened into a narrow hallway, which led to an enormous room that was filled with people sitting in rows of hard plastic chairs, waiting. Many were reading paperbacks or magazines (all of which were either hopelessly out of date or anachronistic). On the wall just inside the door was a rack of pamphlets describing various attractions in New Chicago, plus a variety of advantages to becoming a citizen. Along the back wall was a row of desks, each with a person seated on either side, filling out paperwork. Harrison recognized Alec Baker, standing near one desk, looking disgruntled and probably taking it out on the hapless caseworker sitting behind it. He recognized the pixie pacing across the top of the desk. She was gesticulating and, no doubt, venting her own frustrations.

  "Excuse me," Harrison said to the doctor. He made straight for the desk, ignoring several people who started complaining about his inability to identify the end of a line. His heart was racing. It was still, he told himself, theoretically possible that this was some other pixie, or even a faerie, as Baker had described her. He completely ignored his thoughts.

  "Glimmer!" he shouted over the din as soon as he thought he was in earshot. The pixie looked up, straight at him, and instantly became a streak of light that smacked him in the face. Their reunion was shocking, and abrupt, and the background murmur of voices grew briefly louder. Still in mid-air, she was holding his face, one arm under his chin, the other around the back of his ear, her face nuzzling his cheek. Trying to determine the procedure for hugging a pixie, he lifted his hands, then decided that she was doing a good enough job on her own. That whole side of his head felt like pins and needles. He closed his eyes and soaked it up. "I thought you were dead," he whispered.

  "Shhhh," she whispered back.

  Alec and Dr. Lee reached them, from opposite directions, at the same time. "Is this making anyone else uncomfortable?" Alec asked. The comment was intended for Harrison, who did not open his eyes. One onlooker raised his hand.

  "Right, then." Alec tried again. "Mr. Cody? If you're quite through snogging Tinker Bell-"

  Glimmer looked up. "Hey!" she shouted. "That's one crack too many out of you, Mister! I can put up with you being a total prick if you say it's your job, but I will not have you dragging Tinker Bell into this!" She flew toward him, stopped an inch from his face, and hovered there, wagging her finger threateningly. As she did this, Harrison noticed a detail that Baker had omitted from his description of her attire. She was wagging the index finger of her left hand. Her right hand was covered in bandages. The sweater was pulled down over it, so he could not tell how far up her
arm the bandages went, but the hand was entirely covered.

  "I knew Tinker Bell!" she scolded, and Baker's face went one shade paler than perturbed. "Tinker Bell was a friend of mine!" She paused for dramatic effect, then slammed him with, "Senator, you're no-oh, damn it!" She rubbed her eyes, giggling. "I was sure I could do that with a straight face." She flew back to Harrison, lighted on his shoulder, and sat, resting her head against his cheek.

  Baker and Lee shuffled, both looking as though they hoped desperately that the other would break the awkward silence that followed her outburst. Unfortunately, Baker chose to do so. "Did you really know Tinker Bell?"

  Glimmer stared at him. "No," she replied, very, very slowly. "Tinker Bell is made up." She turned to Harrison, and asked, apparently seriously, "Is this guy retarded?"

  "Yes," said Harrison, and Glimmer nodded.

  Baker turned to Lee, expecting to have better luck with her. She was maintaining her professional composure, but her eyes were smiling. "We're through with the fairy here," he said. "If you still need Mr. Cody?"

  "We do," she said.

  "She's a pixie," Harrison said to Alec.

  "You forgot to say asshole," Glimmer said.

  "Fine," said Baker shortly. He turned back to Dr. Lee. "Why don't you take them both back upstairs. Barring any more unforeseens, I'll be here the rest of the afternoon."

  The doctor nodded.

  "Hey!" Glimmer looked around, suddenly frowning. "Where's the kid? You didn't lose him, did you?" She pointed an accusing finger at Harrison, and again he noticed she was using her left hand and hiding her right.

  "No," he said calmly. "Mitchell's in school right now. I get to pick him up a in a few hours. I think?" he added, looking at Dr. Lee. She nodded. "He'll be thrilled to see you. You'll get to meet his sister, too." Harrison measured his own reaction to his first use of the word "sister" in reference to Dorothy. He found himself quite pleased with it.

  "Sister?" Glimmer repeated. "That sounds like a story!"

  "It is. It turns out I'm a father now."

  "Wow." Glimmer cupped her chin in thought. "What does that make me?"

  "Hmm," said Harrison. "Good question. Um … crazy aunt, I guess."

  She nodded. "That sounds about right."

  Dr. Lee raised her hand. "Excuse me. Sorry to interrupt. My name is Jeannette Lee," she said, addressing the pixie. "Harrison was in the middle of a very important meeting when we heard you were here. If you don't mind, I'd like to introduce you to the Secretary of Esoteric Research, Miss …?"

  "Glimmer," she replied. "I'd like that, too. We need to talk about your inhibitor. It'll work on the rubes, but it won't keep the beasties out."

  "I don't think that will be necessary," Alec, only a few steps away, interjected. "That spell was put through some rigorous field tests before we used it. We have a panel of experts in that department."

  Glimmer just looked at him. "Your sword is showing."

  Baker glanced down to his right side, lifting his hand slightly.

  "Made you look," said Glimmer. She was not smiling. Baker scowled and walked away.

  "What was that about?" Harrison asked.

  "He's wearing a short sword," she said. "It's got at least two charms on it. You'd probably be able to see it if you looked at his crotch and blurred your eyes."

  Harrison thought about how little interest he had in looking at Alec's crotch, blurry or not. Still, he was curious, and as he watched Alec walk away, he unfocused his eyes. The sword came into view, hanging from his belt on the right-hand side. It was a bit like looking at a magic-eye image. Once he knew it was there, it was easy to spot, but he never would have looked for it.

  "Shall we?" asked Dr. Lee. They did.

  * * *

  The rest of the meeting went well. Glimmer was introduced all around, after which she and Harrison gave an extremely abridged description of their travels. Secretary Reuben, in particular, took an interest in her stories and admitted that they filled some of the holes they had regarding Harrison's origins. Harrison had been expecting to be in some sort of trouble for holding out on them, but as it turned out, he was not. They had all guessed that he had been withholding something of this nature. Evidently his new status was already affording him some latitude.

  An hour later, Harrison had a job and a place to live. There were three large hotels still standing within the environs of the city, and Harrison was put up in a double room in one of these. It would be a little bit tight to house one adult, two children, and one pixie, but it would suffice. He was grateful not to have been put in one of the log cabins, although he learned, to his surprise, that most of the citizens of the new nation had been moving into the cabins by choice. The cabins gave the people more space and privacy, and more importantly, a sense of independence that many felt they needed. Most of these people had traveled hundreds of miles on foot, sleeping on bare ground, and by the time they arrived, many had felt a real unease at being coddled. He wondered if that was an effect of the circumstances, or if, somehow, the remaining humans had been selected for this trait. He hoped it was the former.

  The kids, he was told, were staying in the Adoption Shelter (the tactful way they had for not referring to it as an orphanage did not go unnoticed). He would have a chance to spend some time with them after school that day, but it was agreed that they would have a smoother transition if they waited until the weekend before moving to the hotel. He found it frustrating, but conceded that in light of the past few days, getting a good night's rest was a wiser use of his time than setting up his family in their new home right away.

  From the meeting, he was taken to the hotel and dropped off at the entrance. His clothing, he was told, was waiting for him, cleaned and pressed, in his new room, along with his pack and his gear. He was to report to a meeting the next morning, but had no other commitments until then. Since their reunion at the Welcome Center, he had not had a moment alone with Glimmer, and he had many, many questions for her. He was immensely grateful that when he got to the hotel, he was finally and truly free.

  There was a sizeable crowd in the lobby. "Let's check out the room," he said to Glimmer. He wanted to get away from the noise so they could talk, and, now that the initial euphoria had worn off, he was nervous. He wasn't sure how to ask what he wanted to know, or how much she would want to tell him. So far, all she had offered on the topic of what had happened to her was, Shhhh.

  "Why don't you grab something to eat first?" she asked. "You must be famished." Harrison took this as a sign that she was not ready to talk. He did not want to push it.

  The hotel restaurant had been converted to something akin to a cafeteria, and Harrison now received his first introduction to what most of the people of New Chicago ate most of the time. Early on, someone had discovered several processing machines that converted the raw molecules from practically any kind of organic matter into an edible, highly nutritious substance. The machines appeared to be military in design (and, indeed, the most logical explanation anyone had offered so far for their existence was that they had been used to create field rations) and were efficient and portable. Stations had been set up around the city where anyone could come by and be fed at virtually any time of day. The machines were fueled primarily by waste vegetation, collected from the process of clearing and developing the land. In theory, they could be loaded with animal tissue, but the government had been extremely careful about not allowing that to happen. They wanted to keep the Soylent Green jokes to a minimum. By spring, most people were saying, there would be enough farmland cleared that they could start growing their own real food again. Until then, they would have to subsist on whatever canned goods the salvage parties brought back. And on the products of these machines.

  The substance was served in the form of a small rectangular solid the approximate size, texture, and flavor of a kitchen sponge.

  "Eeuuw," Glimmer opined when she saw what they served Harrison.

  "Yeah, well," he said, "I wonder why I w
asn't served these during my stay in the basement."

  "They probably thought you wouldn't identify it as food." She was making a joke, but he supposed it was probably true. He casually inspected one of these, and noticed that it was embossed with a symbol comprising a straight line and a wave. He shrugged and placed it on his tray.

  It was late afternoon, and many people were trickling in to get their share. The tables were mostly full, and since the only people Harrison knew were upper echelon government types (probably off somewhere eating the world's last duck or something), he tried to find a table that looked as empty as possible. As he scanned the room, a shock of white caught his eye. "Hey," he said, recognizing it, "I need to take care of something."

  "Okay," said the pixie, agreeably following him.

  Seated at a round table, with several people Harrison did not recognize (out of ten thousand such, he reminded himself), was Claudia. The streak of white in her otherwise dark hair contrasted with her dark skin and made her stand out like a lighthouse on the rocks. The table had a wide array of condiments on it, all hopefully to make the sponge things at all palatable. He saw a bottle of ketchup, some pancake syrup, vinegar, salt, honey, and a variety of other things he couldn't readily identify. Claudia had an open can of chocolate frosting, and was applying its contents generously to her sponge.

  "Is this seat taken?" he asked timidly, indicating the seat next to her. She looked up and, mouth full, shook her head. She waved him into it. Relieved to be invited, he sat. Glimmer lighted on the table, stuck her left hand into the frosting, and licked it clean.

  Claudia smiled. "Wow! What are you?"

  Harrison winced at the faux pas, but Glimmer took it in stride. She had seen the kind of community they were building here, and with an influx of unusual creatures of every description, this question must be commonplace. "I'm a pixie," she said cheerfully, whereupon Harrison reflected that his own first question to Glimmer had not exactly been a beacon of tact.