by Ned Rust
With one, two, three powerful wing strokes, it launched itself at the underbelly of the nearest slate-gray sky-car, raking the craft with scimitar-like claws. The eviscerated vehicle angled toward the left horizon with a trail of smoke and a tapering scream.
Patrick inserted his index fingers into his ears as the hideous creature let out a blood-curdling shriek and plunged back into the forest canopy.
A series of interlocking metal hoops now emerged from the floor around Kempton’s chair, enabling it to detach from its pedestal and pitch, roll, and spin with his piloted surroundings.
“What is this?” Patrick said to Oma.
“I think it’s called Abomination Redress Squad 5D.”
The room slanted violently as Kempton dove. Instinctively Patrick shifted to his left foot and found himself waving his arms for balance. With a gentle laugh, Oma grabbed his shoulder to steady him.
Kempton meantime landed his sky-car in the forest. The game view shifted abruptly to third person—his helmeted, flight-suited avatar appeared before them, exiting the sky-car as the real-world Kempton undid his safety harness and climbed out of his chair. The pivoting rings folded themselves back down into the floor.
“Are all games like this?” Patrick asked Oma.
“Well,” she whispered into his ear, “for Kempton’s demographic, most are actually pretty much exactly like this. The chance for young males to safely indulge in senseless acts of violence has been a wonderful boon to worldwide order and not a small part of the Deacons’ success. Keeps young men off the streets and, at the same time, ensures the government a constantly renewing crop of well-trained young soldiers. Should they ever need them.”
Patrick looked at Oma to see if she was being serious. She certainly seemed to be.
Kempton’s muscle-bound character was now running through the forest at superhuman speed—veering left, dodging right, jumping rocks, ducking limbs. Blue vector lines blinked ahead, and a shimmering yellow-orange-red series of blotches began to grow.
“I got him on Mo-Rez!” he shouted as the blotches coalesced into what was shortly recognizable as a four-legged, two-winged lion-shaped creature bounding, banking, and generally sprinting for its life through the vine-draped forest.
“S-R-Sitzen, D-Con Soldja, get ready—keep that trash locked down. I’m going hot!”
Kempton’s gun exploded to life, mowing down the vegetation as he closed in on the fleeing monster.
Torn leaves swirled, and widening shafts of smoke-filled sunlight opened all around.
“I feel carsick,” said Patrick to Oma.
“Try to keep an eye on the horizon.”
Patrick couldn’t see any horizon, just churning forest. It was like being inside a salad spinner.
The creature’s digitized orange shape had been growing increasingly yellow, and now nearly white as Kempton closed in.
“All. Most. There,” Kempton said, and then: “Disengage Mo-Rez!” The blotchy shapes disappeared and they could now see—maybe fifty yards distant—actual glimpses of the creature as it madly scrambled through the forest, banging into trees, leaping ditches, plowing through thickets.
And then it was gone.
“What the heck?! Any of you got him?! Where’d he go?”
“I dunno,” said a particularly twerpy voice. “Sensors are dark.”
“Engage Residual-Sensitivity I.R.!” Kempton screamed.
The world around them became a green-gray realm inhabited by spots of blue, purple, red, orange, and yellow—most of which seemed to be on the ground. Patrick realized these must be the creature’s paw- and claw-prints.
Kempton inclined his head toward the glowing footprints and, the room’s view bobbing as he walked, followed them right up to where they disappeared in a quivering thicket of brambles.
A waist-high, violet-streaked black area appeared on his sensors.
“There’s a cave behind these bushes!” yelled Kempton.
“Could be a trap!” shouted one of his buddies.
“Could be a full-on lair!” shouted another.
“There could be dozens of them down there—wait for backup!” yelled a third.
“And give you guys point-share?” snorted Kempton. “Yeah, I’ll just sit and eat a BLK till you catch up.”
“Don’t be stupid, ABK-96, wait for us—”
Kempton didn’t wait.
* * *
The only other time in his life Patrick had seen something that had actually, physically made him want to throw up had been the day Neil and his friends had taken him to see a road-killed fawn on Old Post Road.
Neil and especially his six-foot-tall, chinless friend Andrew Shandler were kings of gross-out—forever flicking boogers at each other, making jokes about dead nuns, reveling in their ability to turn enemy soldiers into clouds of “pink mist” in Call of Duty and the other military video games they played. So it probably wasn’t surprising that they had shown great interest in the rapidly bloating carcass. Still, the worst any of them had done was poke the animal’s eye with a stick.
Patrick reminded himself this was just a video game—and a video game within a dream at that—but the realization didn’t stop the cloying taste of maple syrup from creeping up into his throat.
Kempton, having tracked down and single-handedly killed the monster—the abomination, as they called it—had just finished using his combat knife to saw off one of the creature’s clawed toes for a trophy. His friends wanted more.
“Stick a frag in its mouth!” yelled one.
“Yeah, that’ll open it up!” observed another.
“That’ll only explode its head,” said Kempton.
“Try its anus!”
“You are sick in the head, D-Con,” replied Kempton, placing his boot on the edge of the creature’s gaping neck wound.
“Do it!” said the others, and then they began to chant.
“You want to do the honors, Patrick Griffin?” asked Kempton, turning to Patrick.
“Uh, no thanks,” said Patrick.
“Okay, but don’t say I didn’t offer.”
Kempton’s avatar carefully placed the grenade on the edge of the wound and then, with his foot, he pushed the grenade inside the creature’s throat cavity.
“Set fuse five quats! Mark!” he commanded, then turned, jogged, crouched, and re-exited the cave.
The ground shook and another dust cloud billowed from the cavern’s mouth, this time suffused with a slightly pink hue.
Glowing point totals cascaded around the scene as Kempton and his friends hooted and cheered.
“Lovely, right?” said Oma as she took Patrick by the hand and led him from the room.
“You know the joke about cave mushrooms and gamers?” asked Oma as they emerged into a bright, beach-themed hallway.
Patrick blinked at the brightness and shook his head.
“What’s the difference between them?”
“A cave mushroom and a gamer?”
“The cave mushroom is a better conversationalist.”
A portion of Patrick’s brain got the joke but he was preoccupied by the fact that she had just let go of his hand. She had grabbed it in the first place in order to lead him out of a fairly dark room. That had to be all there was to it.
“Let’s see if Mother needs any help with dinner,” she said. “Are you hungry?”
Patrick shrugged. He was still feeling a bit queasy from the game.
They turned a corner and stepped through a doorway into what—judging from the small steel-topped island and four chrome-legged stools—appeared to be a kitchen. There was no sink and no visible blenders, mixers, dishwashers, ovens, range-tops, coffee grinders, toasters, or any of the other appliances Patrick was used to seeing. Also, there didn’t seem to be any conventional cabinets or drawers; the featureless electronic walls were displaying an ultrarealistic summer meadow.
Mrs. Puber, rouge-cheeked and oblivious to their arrival, stood against the island wearing a metallic blindfo
ld. The rest of her face was a churning sea of emotion—smiling one moment, disapproving the next, horrified the one after that.
“Is that some sort of, umm, binky on her face?” Patrick asked Oma.
“Yes, it’s her binky,” said Oma.
“It’s, like, some special model?”
“You don’t have binkies on Earth, do you?” she asked.
Patrick shook his head.
“Visor config,” she said to her own device, causing it to fold open into two eye-covering panels, complete with elastic headband. It was now identical to her mother’s.
“Oh,” said Patrick.
“You’ll have learned all its features soon enough,” said Oma, and then turned to her mom. “Mother! Oh, Mother! Sorry to interrupt!”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Puber, turning to them with her device still attached to her face.
“Almost dinnertime, right?” asked Oma. “Anything we can do?”
“No, the pod just arrived and the prepbots are at work. We should be ready to begin in—let’s see—five terts. Go sit with your father and I’ll be right there.”
“Sure thing, Mother.”
“Her favorite dysma’s in its first release window,” Oma explained to Patrick as they left the kitchen, “so she’s a little out of it right now.”
“Dysma?”
“No dysmas on Earth, either?” she asked.
Patrick shook his head.
“I think I might like Earth,” said Oma. “A dysma’s a video entertainment produced in Silicon City. There’s a new episode every day and they’re basically about these people in a made-up town that doesn’t have the benefit of the Seer’s oversight, so there’s scandal, murder, theft, and treachery and all kinds of deep stuff like that going on. You see, they’re dystopia and drama rolled into one badly acted package, hence, dysmas.”
“Oh,” said Patrick.
“Yeah, another advance in social sedative technology, brought to you by the Deacons.”
“What does that mean?”
“Think about it. How do you keep people from thinking their own thoughts? How do you keep people from figuring out that they might want things to be different? How do you keep discontent from breaking out around the world like a bad disease?”
“By keeping people happy?” he suggested.
“That would be a logical choice. But think of all the empowerment that comes with happiness. Why cure a disease when you can prevent its symptoms with absolutely zero risk to the status quo?”
“The shows keep people in line?”
“Shows, games, online discussion forums, you name it. Keep them numb and self-satisfied, as opposed to open-eyed and curious. Make them expert at made-up stuff so they don’t learn to be expert at real-world stuff.”
“Oh,” said Patrick, wondering if he should maybe not play so much Minecraft when he got back to his real life.
They stepped out of the summery kitchen and into what at first appeared to be a redwood forest. An obsidian-black table—at which Mr. Puber was sitting—and the fact of a polished wood floor beneath their feet (plus realizing that the Pubers probably couldn’t fit an actual forest inside their home) made Patrick realize that once again he was experiencing an immersive holograph.
“Ah, there’s our famous guest!” said Mr. Puber.
“Been snacking, Father?” asked Oma, gesturing at the side of her own face.
“What?! No. Wait. Umm.” His forefinger found the moist brown paste on his cheek.
“Right,” he sighed, realizing he couldn’t deny the evidence. “I had a very light lunch, you see.”
He wiped his finger on his red napkin and turned back to the display—about the size of a place mat—on the table in front of him. It showed an animated, three-dimensional map.
“Watching a hunt, Father?” asked Oma.
“Yes, this live-scene,” he said, gesturing at the forest displayed around them, “is from the very area where a Class II was spotted last night.”
“Father enjoys watching feeds from ARSO missions,” explained Oma. “Next to watching the World Champions’ League, it’s his favorite entertainment.”
“It’s not entertainment,” her father objected. “It’s a citizen’s right and responsibility to review ARSO feeds. ‘Many eyes make right work,’” he quipped.
“Oh,” said Patrick. “What are ARSO feeds?”
“ARSOs,” said Oma, her voice dripping with mock formality, “are Abomination Redress Squad Operations.”
“It’s no joking matter,” said Mr. Puber. “The Anarchists aren’t content to interfere with human society; they want to disrupt the planet’s fundamental natural order! Have you been told of the abominations?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Patrick. “Like in Kempton’s game?”
“Precisely!” said Kempton, entering the dining room, rubbing hand sanitizer into his hands once again. “That one you saw me frag was a Class III—one of the very worst!”
“Yes,” said Mr. Puber gravely. “The mission I’m contributing to now is on the trail of a Class II, a variety known as a Shambling Mound. Highly camouflaged, very hard for our sensors to detect.”
“So. Wait. There are, like, real monsters out there?” asked Patrick, remembering anew that this was—it obviously had to be—all a dream.
“Real monsters!?” said Mr. Puber. “Quadrupeds with twelve-inch teeth and razor-sharp claws that live only to kill and maim! Flying chimeras that can pluck a child from a sidewalk on its way home from school! Humongous, hirsute humanoids that can tear a man limb-from-limb!”
“Are there real monsters?!” Kempton said with a snort.
“Why would anybody make such things up?” said Mr. Puber.
CHAPTER 15
Household Odors
Mrs. Griffin and Lucie watched as Mr. Coffin’s unconscious body was loaded into the ambulance.
“Medics say he’s going to be fine,” said the returning policeman. “Had a little accident with some bear spray is all.”
“Bear spray?” asked Mrs. Griffin.
“Yes, ma’am,” said the officer. “That’s the third accident with that stuff since the Peekskill sighting. People have been stocking up on it, and I guess getting a little trigger-happy. Just three weeks ago a guy over in Pleasantville sent two barbecue guests to the hospital because he thought it would be a good idea to test the stuff on his patio.”
“That scream we heard was Mr. Coffin?” asked Lucie.
“Yep,” said the officer, hooking his thumb at the ambulance. “Pretty high-pitched for an old guy, right? Like I said, stuff’s very powerful. And, obviously, painful.”
“And there was no actual bear?” asked Lucie’s mother.
“No bear. The old man was actually babbling about rabbits and deer before he passed out. I shouldn’t speculate, but it’s possible he was under the influence of something or other. You notice anything odd about him lately?”
“He never comes outside except to complain about the noise of my husband’s lawn mower. He’s basically a hermit,” Mrs. Griffin replied.
“He doesn’t even answer the door on Halloween, even though we know he’s in there,” added Lucie.
“Yeah, well,” said the officer, taking off his hat and mopping his brow with a coffee-stained paper napkin. “Anyhow, why don’t you go back in the house and check for any hiding spots we may have missed. We’ve alerted the entire force, so if anybody sees him around the neighborhood, they’ll know to call it in. But I’m sure he’s fine, ma’am. Just give him a couple hours. Boys will be boys.”
A silver Mercedes sedan with tinted windows slowed down in front of the house just then.
“Neighbor?” asked the policeman.
“I don’t know whose car that is,” said Mrs. Griffin.
The car sped away.
“Probably just a looky-loo,” he replied. “You know how people are—they see flashing lights and they gotta go stick their noses in it. All right, we’re going back to the station but give us a c
all as soon as he turns up, okay?”
“Thank you, officer,” said Mrs. Griffin.
As she and Lucie watched the policeman return to his car, she began to sob.
“Mom, don’t cry. You heard the policeman. Everything’s fine.”
Mary Griffin looked at her daughter. “I see why what you’re saying makes sense, but I’m just—I’m just … I have this terrible feeling. It’s not a regular feeling, Lucie.”
“You’ve had a scare, Mom. That’s all,” said Lucie, squeezing her hand.
“What kind of mother am I leaving him all alone like that? He must have been scared to death waking up in an empty house.”
“Patrick’s the least likely person in our family to be scared. Plus, he’s twelve, Mom. If he’d had a real problem, he would have called, right?”
Mrs. Griffin tapped in her password and examined her call history.
“I didn’t miss any calls.”
“You see?” said Lucie. “He was okay. And he is okay—he just went off someplace or is hiding because he knows he’s in big trouble.”
“I’m a terrible mom.”
“You’re a great mom,” said Lucie, surprised at herself for feeling so concerned about her mother’s feelings.
“You don’t mean that, but thank you, Lucie,” she said, squeezing her daughter’s hand. “What if there was a bear?”
“A bear didn’t come into the house and eat Patrick, Mom. That’s crazy.”
Mrs. Griffin smiled at her daughter. “You’re right.”
“Come on,” said Lucie, pulling her mom toward the open front door and thinking to herself it was almost as if she were helping her own kid. “You check the basement and first floor closets and I’ll check the upper floors. And if that little creep went into my room, well, then you can worry about his safety.”
“No jokes now,” said Mrs. Griffin as they stepped inside. “Please.”
“Gosh, I know that smell,” said Lucie.
“I do, too.”
“It smells like, like—is it?”
“Incense,” whispered Mrs. Griffin. “It smells like Easter Sunday in here.”
CHAPTER 16
Twinning
