by Ned Rust
“It’s not done.”
Patrick looked over at the sideline. The entire school seemed to be there. He spotted Oma standing a row back, smiling as if at an inside joke. He locked eyes with her long enough to feel a blush coming on.
The medics helped Breeden to his feet and the boy gave a celebrity-style half turn, giving his well-wishers a limp-wristed wave. The crowd, with a few exceptions—notably an amused-looking Oma—burst into cheers and applause as the medical technicians backed away.
“But, don’t worry,” said Kempton. “You’re an emissary—you probably won’t even get in any trouble for this.”
“Puber!”
Kempton jumped with surprise.
A small man had come up behind him. He was thin-waisted, big-chested, had a fresh crew cut, and generally looked like a comic book superhero except that he was wearing gym shorts, a tank top, was a little on the short side, and—like everybody Patrick had met today—his face was covered with makeup.
“Hello, Kempton,” said the man.
“Hello, Gymnasiarch Frayne,” said Kempton.
“Erm,” said the man to Patrick, and then, “Umm.”
“I’m Patrick,” said Patrick, offering his hand and then—as the man’s eyes went wide—remembering to stick out his elbow instead. The man looked greatly relieved and quickly knocked elbows—rather harder than Patrick would have preferred—with him.
“There’s been a change of plans,” said the man as he turned back to Kempton. “Your appointment with Provost Bostrel has been moved to two twenty-five.”
“But—but—” said Kempton, whipping out his binky and confirming the update with a sigh, “well, maybe we’ll still have time to grab smoothies and oat—”
“No time. Get cleaned up,” said the man. He made an unconvincing effort at a smile and stalked back to the school building.
“But that’s not—” said Kempton, but his words were drowned out as the ambulance roared into the sky, forcing Patrick to stick his fingers back into his ears.
“—and anyhow I don’t see why we have to go in now,” concluded Kempton as the aircraft disappeared over the trees. “I mean there are still three full deuces to kill before our meeting with the provost. But getting you cleaned up will only take a few terts.”
“What does he mean by ‘cleaned up’?” asked Patrick.
“Look at yourself!”
Patrick looked down at the grass and dirt stains on his jeans and T-shirt.
“Oh,” he said. “But I didn’t bring other clothes.”
“Why would you need other clothes?”
“But … what am I supposed to wear while we wash these ones?”
“What?”
“Am I supposed to sit around in my underpants while they get washed?”
“You don’t wash your underpants on Earth?”
CHAPTER 24
Four-Child Garage
Though hired gardeners and maintenance men did the bulk of the groundskeeping, the Tondorf-Schnittman garage held a decent collection of power tools—a WeedWacker, a hedge trimmer, a cordless power drill, a leaf blower, and a reciprocating saw. And, though these implements perhaps held even less fascination for the children than they did for their father, Mrs. Tondorf-Schnittman was not one to take chances with her daughters’ safety: she kept the door between the garage and the playroom locked at all times.
A lock best prevents passage when the latch is shut, however, and on this particular Saturday, Mr. Tondorf-Schnittman, in his haste to get to tennis, had not quite secured the door behind him.
And so it happened that as the four twins became first bored and then frustrated with their tower-building project, Cassie Griffin noticed a shadow around the door’s edge, went over to investigate, and casually pushed it open.
“Garage?” she asked Phoebe.
Phoebe nodded emphatically at this delicious observation.
Paul Griffin reached up high along the wall inside the dim doorway, feeling for the light switch but instead finding the button for the automatic garage door opener.
A grinding mechanical sound filled the room and a widening slit of light appeared on the floor, gradually revealing the glinting silhouettes of Mrs. Tondorf-Schnittman’s Toyota Sequoia and Mr. Tondorf-Schnittman’s beloved but never-driven-in-the-rain Maserati.
Like civilians staring into the glowing interior of a just-landed alien spacecraft, the four-year-olds gawked past the cars into the expanding brightness beyond.
Mrs. Tondorf-Schnittman, hands-free Bluetooth in one ear and the blender just then grinding up her morning’s second kale-mango-supplement-powder breakfast smoothie, didn’t hear the thunk as the door reached its apex and the motor disengaged. And she certainly didn’t hear the four silent, wide-mouthed children descend the three steps to the concrete floor and then pad softly past the barely used power tools and out to the rain-dampened driveway.
CHAPTER 25
Sannytation
Kempton stepped inside the clear cylinder he’d called a sanny. It basically resembled an airport security body-imager.
“How does it work?” Patrick asked.
“Wide-spectrum sonic agitation and hyperpolarizing antistatic fields, mostly. Some antibacterial ultraviolet, too.”
The sanny’s door slid shut as Kempton looked at his binky. Then he closed his eyes and the machine began to whir and thunk. His sweater vest billowed, his hair whipped about like he was standing in the teeth of a storm, a bright blue light bathed him from head to toe. A humming noise began, then stopped, there were a couple moments of silence, and then a dysphonic buzzer sounded.
Patrick had to admit he did look pretty clean after the process—not that he’d had any visible dirt on him to begin with.
“Your turn,” said Kempton.
“What do I do?”
“When you’re inside, just select Activate on your binky and follow the instructions. All you have to do is stand still and close your eyes. It won’t start if you leave your eyes open. Safety feature.”
Patrick stepped inside the capsule. He looked at his binky and saw a big green aktƏvAt cube in the center of the screen. The icon swelled and grew brighter, and then winked out of existence. The door slid shut. His binky’s screen was now occupied by a countdown clock and the two instructions Kempton had mentioned: kLŌZ IZ and bE stiL.
He obeyed both requests and a moment later the process began. His hair and clothes tousled and flagged, and his skin felt warm, kind of like he was taking a shower only he was completely dry. But then the center of his chest started to get a little too warm and he wondered if he should open his eyes or say stop or something because it was getting pretty uncomfortable—really starting to burn, actually—but before he could make up his mind, there was a ripping noise, a whiff of smoke, and a wheezy buzzer sounded.
The They Might Be Giants logo on his T-shirt—squid and all—was simply gone.
The decal had been fairly wide and both his nipples and his navel were now visible through the smoldering, black-ringed hole where it had been.
“What happened to your shirt!?” Kempton exclaimed as Patrick stepped outside.
“I have no idea.”
“Well, we can’t take you to the provost like that.” He rubbed his chin as he thought aloud: “Where. To. Get. You. Another. Shirt … Bing Steenslay!”
“What?”
“Bing Steenslay got niched!”
“What got what?”
“Well, most of us have emptied our lockers for break, but Bing was niched last week and they won’t have gone through his stuff yet.”
“He was neeshed?”
“On-boarded,” said Kempton as he led Patrick down a row of lockers. “He was granted his career niche last week.”
“Oh,” said Patrick. “So he, like, graduated early?”
“Yeah,” said Kempton, stopping and opening a locker. “He’s a publicity cadet, working for MuK.”
“Who’s Muck?”
“MuK’s not a who
; it’s a what—M-uh-K, the Ministry of Communication.”
“Oh,” said Patrick as he tried to make sense of the hideous black-and-yellow garment Kempton had just passed him.
“As you might expect of a future publicist, Bing was pretty cleanly,” Kempton said, nevertheless wiping his hands with a fresh dollop of sanitizer.
“Great,” said Patrick, holding the garment out in front of him. It appeared to be a long-sleeved exercise shirt and he doubted it was going to fit. The label read, x-L-sm, which he took to mean extra-long small. At least it didn’t smell bad. And he supposed he really couldn’t go around all day with his chest bare. He took off his ruined T-shirt.
“What’s up with this pattern, anyhow?” he asked. It looked like a bee costume.
“Awesome, right? Bing was very stylish.”
Patrick looked down and saw the hideous, black-and-yellow fabric gathered across his chest in folds like the neck of a turtle with its head pulled in.
“I’m guessing he was pretty skinny.”
“They didn’t call him String Beansley for nothing,” said Kempton, touching up his makeup in a locker-door mirror. “Kid was a total beanpole.”
Kempton slammed shut the locker. “These mirrors are ridonkulously small. Let’s go stop at the grooming station and touch up. That’ll kill a few terts anyhow.”
“What?” said Patrick.
“Our cosmetics,” said Kempton, pointing at his face in exasperation. “We’re a mess after the game. You, in particular.”
Patrick looked at himself in his binky mirror. The eyeliner Kempton had put on him had smudged in the corners so that he kind of looked like an Egyptian pharaoh. An Egyptian pharoah wearing an ill-fitting bee costume.
“You know,” said Patrick, running a finger along his eyelid, “I think I’m just going to take this stuff off.”
“Oh, no,” said Kempton. “You can’t.”
“What? Why not?” said Patrick.
“You’d look, you know, impaired.”
“Impaired?”
“Like a belty. Mentally challenged.”
“In my opinion,” said Patrick, “I look like I have issues right now. I mean, if anybody from my school saw me like this…”
“Well,” said Kempton. “Maybe you need to spend more time thinking about what people in this school think.”
“Look,” said Patrick, a little fed up. “Some adult would have come and told me what to do if it were that important.”
“You’re the first Earth emissary since Rex,” said Kempton. “Nobody will come and tell you to do anything. Tenet Twelve says ‘Disobey the Minder’s emissaries in nothing.’”
“Who is this Minder, anyhow? Is he, like, your God?”
“A god? What are you, being funny?”
“Well, I don’t know who he is and you guys talk about him like he’s some big deal.”
“Some big deal? The Minder is the Creator and Sustainer of Worlds!”
Patrick decided that sounded like God to him. “Anyhow,” he said, “so—if I’m this Minder’s emissary—and if you can’t boss emissaries around—then why did your parents make me wear makeup?”
“They only suggested you wear makeup,” said Kempton. “For your own comfort.”
“They didn’t quite make me, did they?” said Patrick, a smile stealing onto his face. “Where’s a sink?”
“Wait,” implored Kempton. “Really—”
“Tell the emissary where to find a sink, Citizen Puber,” said Patrick, kind of enjoying his newfound power.
Kempton put a hand over his eyes and pointed off to his left with the other.
“Thank you,” said Patrick. He walked past the boy and soon found himself in a large, bright, soapy-smelling locker room. Opposite a wall of toilet stalls, a row of sinks and sanitizer pumps was set in a large counter scattered with abandoned lip gloss, eyeshadow, and mascara containers. Above it was an enormous mirror upon which, written in red lipstick, was a block-lettered message:
THE SEER LIVZ WELL
CUZ SHEEZ KWIK TO BE LED
DA HEARER DINT LISSEN
SO DA HEARER IZ DED
“Well, maybe that explains why I don’t know anything about a Hearer,” said Patrick. “Sounds like he got whacked.”
“Oh-my-goodness-oh-my-goodness-oh-my-goodness,” said Kempton.
“Should we get somebody?” asked Patrick.
Kempton, pale and shaking, glanced at his binky and nearly dropped it in surprise.
“Seer gone blind!” he exclaimed, thrusting the device at Patrick. The screen was bright blue except for a single white-lettered statement: nō signƏL.
“The INTERVERSE is down,” Kempton said in a terrified whisper.
“You guys don’t lose service often, huh?” asked Patrick.
Kempton began to stutter a reply but was interrupted by a reedy, singsongy voice: “Aw, poor little baby lost the teat!”
There was movement in the mirror and the two boys wheeled around. A shadowy figure emerged from the toilet stall directly behind them. It was a slight girl in a skin-tight ninja outfit—though of mottled gray, rather than the usual black.
“Hi, I’m Squirrel,” she said.
“Squirrel, like—” asked Patrick.
“It does sound like the name of the arboreal rodent but I think on Earth you’d probably spell it S-K-W-U-R-L.”
“Oh,” said Patrick.
“Whatcha holding there?” she asked.
Patrick looked down at Neil’s ruined They Might Be Giants shirt.
“My shirt kinda didn’t do so well in the, umm, cleaning machine,” he said.
“Ah,” said the girl.
Kempton, meantime, appeared to have forgotten how to breathe.
The hood of the girl’s one-piece outfit was pulled back, exposing a shaved brown-haired scalp and a lean, big-eyed face streaked with black-and-gray face paint.
Patrick judged she was smaller than his sister Carly and, yet, somehow—from the way she moved, or her proportions, or the confidence in her voice—she seemed older, maybe even Eva’s age.
“You’re a girl!” shrieked Kempton.
“Ya think?” said the girl named Skwurl.
“This is a boys’ locker room!”
She cocked her head and gave Kempton an expression somewhere between pity and annoyance.
“And what kind of makeup is that on your face!?”
Patrick put a hand on Kempton’s shoulder to calm him down.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but the makeup I’m wearing is far superior to the kind you employ.” She gestured at the smudges on her face. “It’s the difference between purpose and programming.”
“That might as well be dirt!” shouted Kempton, shaking Patrick’s hand off his shoulder.
“You should really try thinking your own thoughts one of these days. It’s no fun growing up to be a puppet, Kempton Puber.”
Kempton dropped his jaw. “How did you know my name?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Is it possible you spend so much time on electronic devices that there’s a database someplace that contains your name, your birthdate, your favorite color, your entire DNA map, the names of your best friends—or, sorry, it says you don’t have any best friends—so sad.”
Kempton waggled his jaw as if trying to say something, but no sound came out.
“Kempton, you are so obviously one of those people whose minds run along in the narrow little courses set by the hypocritical bullies in charge of this place. The ones who find profit in the fear and stupidity they harvest from people, like you, who are only too comfortable Not. To. Think. For. Themselves.”
“You’re one of the, one of the—” Kempton spluttered.
“Better-looking people you’ve ever met?”
“What?! No—”
“Least-deluded people you know?”
“Anarchists!” gasped Kempton at last.
“Ah,” said the girl. “That’s what the Muckers are still having you call u
s, isn’t it? Such clever practitioners of the reputational sciences. Portray us like we’re trying to destroy rather than save.”
Patrick was confused. This girl seemed pretty weird for sure, but somehow he highly doubted she was in league with a bunch of flying monsters and some organization that had killed 99 percent of the people on the planet.
Kempton bolted for a red button mounted on a pedestal between two of the sinks and began to pound it with his fist.
“You’ll find the panic buttons have been shut down along with all other ancillary informational systems in this subprefecture. You’re welcome to keep banging at it all you want; just do me a favor and please try to work toward a rhythm of some kind? You’re giving me a headache.”
Kempton punched the button for a few more seconds and then—not having elicited anything other than a faint clicking noise—slumped in place, dropping his narrow shoulders like somebody had let half the air out of him.
“Well, what do you call yourselves?” asked Patrick, genuinely curious.
The girl named Skwurl turned to Patrick and, with a sparkle in her eye, said, “I know it sounds weird, but we like to refer to ourselves as Commonplacers. We’re kind of an underground group whose chief mission right now is to wake people up to the warping influence of the Seer and the Deacons, to help people see that this isn’t the real world around them and that they’re being kept in a glass cage. I’m sorry to be abrupt. I realize much of what I’m saying may seem rude and hypocritical—especially without you yet knowing the wider context here—but we don’t have much time. It is a supreme thrill to meet you, Patrick of Earth,” she said, dropping a mock curtsy. “But the Powers That Be will soon reactivate their panic buttons and precious security cameras and I really can’t afford to have the Peepers get my image.”
Mostly he followed what she was saying. Could all that Kempton and Bostrel and Mr. Puber and others have been saying be a bunch of propaganda? And was this why Oma had seemed a little cynical about things? “What are Peepers?” he asked.
“Employees of what they call POP,” said the girl. “Peepers, Oglers, and Perverts.”
“POP is the Public Operations Panel!” screamed Kempton.
