by Ned Rust
“Yes, please,” said Paul.
“Here, we can do it like this, don’t you think?” said Mr. BunBun, tossing a pawful of excavated earth into the hole.
Paul reached down and did the same and the three girls followed suit. BunBun then turned and quickly shoveled the remaining soil into the hole with his rabbit-like hind feet.
“And now,” he said, turning back to the enraptured children, “how about a prayer?” And here he sang a little Commonplace song that reminded the Griffin children (the Tondorf-Schnittmans didn’t attend church) of a certain Easter hymn:
We all fear an ending
For an ending is change
And we like what we know
And we abhor the strange
Though we say we like fresh
Versus what has grown stale
Let’s sometimes hold breath
And not always inhale
Be-cause—
Expiring can be inspiring
And there is no ascending
Without a real ending!
“Again?” said Cassie.
“You like it?” beamed Mr. BunBun. “It’s one of my favorites.” He repeated the song three more times, pausing after each line till the children were mostly able to sing along.
“What are you?” asked Paul afterward.
“Ah, well—scientifically speaking—I’m a cervidic lagomorph. What you might call a rabbit-deer chimera. In common parlance, as I think I mentioned, I’m a jackalope.”
“Rabbits have big ears,” said Paul.
“I didn’t say I was a rabbit; I’m just sort of related to them. Much in the way a mule is related to a horse. Or a liger to a lion. Or a griffin to an eagle—”
“Our last name is Griffin,” said Cassie.
“Is it?” remarked BunBun. Before the children had arrived his binky had shared with him some local police news report about a missing boy with the same last name.
“And do you have a brother named Patrick?”
Paul and Cassie nodded.
“He’s a good boy?” asked BunBun.
“Patrick likes dinosaurs,” said Paul.
“What a small world,” said BunBun, thinking through the odds of running into the siblings of the boy he’d just caused to be transubstantiated to Eyeth.
“My hands are dirty,” observed Chloe Tondorf-Schnittman, displaying her muddy palms.
“Hmm,” said Mr. BunBun, turning out his own paws. “Mine, too. Shall we wash them in the pond?”
Cassie Griffin began to laugh.
“There’s no soap!!” exclaimed Paul.
“There’s soap in the bathroom,” suggested Phoebe.
“Let’s go to the bathroom!” laughed Cassie.
Paul nearly collapsed to the wet turf in a fit of high-pitched laughter.
“Bathroom?” asked Mr. BunBun.
“Yes,” said Phoebe bossily. “Let’s go, Deer Rabbit.”
“It would be a pleasure,” said Mr. BunBun, clearing his throat. “But I’d really best be on my way—”
“And we can have a snack!” announced Cassie.
“Do you like carrots, Deer Rabbit?” asked Paul. “There’s carrots.”
“Yes, I very much enjoy carrots, young man, but I’ve got a long way to go today. Speaking of which—do you know of a place called New York City?”
“There are dinosaurs there!” said Cassie. The American Museum of Natural History was the Griffin twins’ favorite place in their so-far discovered world.
“And mammoths!” said Paul.
“Dinosaurs and mammoths?” said Mr. BunBun.
“And a giant sloth,” said Cassie.
“And a giant squid,” said Paul.
“And a blue whale,” said Cassie.
“Ah,” said Mr. BunBun, furrowing his brow ever so slightly. “And there are people, too, right? In the city? A lot of people?”
The children gave him a blank look.
“It’s crowded?”
Cassie nodded emphatically. “The lines get very long.”
“My dad got mad one time,” said Paul.
“Oh, good,” said Mr. BunBun. “Not about getting mad—I just mean it’s good that there are a lot of people there. I need to see a lot of people.”
“Why?” asked Cassie.
“Well, I’ve got to put on a, umm, show of sorts,” said Mr. BunBun.
“You do magic tricks?” asked Chloe.
“Well, in a manner of speaking, yes.”
“Will you be on TV?” asked Phoebe.
“TV? Television, is it? Well, yes, I do hope so.”
“When?” asked Phoebe.
“In a few days, I expect.”
The children seemed awfully impressed.
“Well, it’s been a pleasure meeting all of you, but I really must get going.”
“Aw,” said Chloe, looking like she might cry.
“Thank you for helping me with the funeral,” he said. “And are those pens?”
Chloe nodded emphatically and proffered three capless markers she had taken from the playroom.
“May I, really?” asked Mr. BunBun, touched.
Chloe handed them to him.
“Thank you very much—they may prove to be quite useful,” he said as he delicately touched one of their felt tips. “I don’t suppose they have some sort of covers?”
Chloe shook her head.
“Don’t stain yourself,” said Cassie.
Mr. BunBun nodded somberly, accepting the markers with good care.
“Bye bye, Deer Rabbit,” said Paul.
“Goodbye, my friends,” said Mr. BunBun, bowing nearly to the ground. Then he turned and hopped across the five yards to the mainland and onto the early spring golf course.
CHAPTER 33
Baseline Conditions
The physiological assessor looked up from the screen of her red-and-white-skinned binky.
“Well”—her voice tinny and distant through her mirrored faceplate—“you have good LDLs, excellent nerve conductivity, top-level immune indicators, blood pressure within normal limits, adequate dentition, no evidence of scoliosis, dermatitis, gingivitis, halitosis, psoriasis, or any viral or bacterial infection.”
“That was it?” asked Patrick, impressed. “That was the test? You were able to tell all that just now?” He’d just emerged from a glass-walled cylinder that basically resembled the cleaning machine that had destroyed Neil’s T-shirt. The procedure had taken less than thirty seconds and had been entirely painless.
“Yes, the holiscan is complete. You’re cleared for normal travel and physical activity. The only significant suboptimal condition itemized”—the woman paused to lift her faceplate. She had a thin face and a long nose that hooked sideways at the tip—“is that you would appear to be at risk, due to an enzymatic conformational issue expressed in some of your lymphocytes, to an immunological hyperresponse to certain glycoproteins.”
“What?”
“It’s a fairly narrow range of molecular structure. I don’t think it will pose an issue as such conformations naturally occur only in mollusks.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m allergic to seafood.”
“Seafood?”
“Well, fish are okay, but I’m not supposed to eat clams and things.”
“No,” said the medical technician, raising her cosmetically enhanced eyebrows. “Now, do you have any subjective complaints?”
“What kind of complaints?”
“The objective portion of your examination is complete. Now we check for any subjective issues that may have been missed by our instruments. Do you experience any pain or discomfort on a recurring basis? Headaches? Stomachaches? Tiredness? Soreness of throat? Excessive itching of the skin or mucous membranes? Stiffness of limbs? Frequent diarrhea? Difficulty with micturition?”
“What-er-ition?”
“Micturition.”
“What’s that?”
“Do you have any difficulty passing urine?”
“Um, no,” s
aid Patrick. At least not since he’d figured out how to work their waterless, high-tech toilets.
“Good,” said the woman, scanning her binky. “Then the examination is complete.”
“That was it?”
“Unless you have any questions.”
“Actually,” said Patrick, “you’re like a doctor, right? Like you know about health and exercise and how much sleep to get and things?”
“That is my subject matter expertise, yes.”
“Good,” said Patrick. “Because I think I’ve been getting too much sleep and was wondering if there are any techniques for waking yourself up? You know, so you don’t sleep too much?”
“You don’t have alarm apps on Earth?” asked the woman.
“Well, I was thinking more like are there any ways to do it yourself—like, say you’re in a dream and you decide to wake up from it, how would you do that?”
“Dreams are the Minder’s province,” the woman quipped. “You are not supposed to have any control over them.”
She glanced at her binky again and said, “I’ve just summoned your escort.”
“Thanks,” said Patrick.
“Now you’ll just need to swallow this,” she said, handing him a silver pill.
“What is it?” asked Patrick, glancing at the little shiny capsule.
“It’s your PB.”
“My what?”
“You don’t have personal beacons on Earth?”
Patrick shook his head.
“The beacon contains a transponder that inertly knits to the wall of your small intestine, monitors your vital signs, and, in the event of a medical emergency, allows you to be located by an MHY, especially in the event you lose your binky or are incapacitated.”
“So is it, like, permanent?”
“The beacon? This latest model has a hundred-yie lifespan. Should you live longer than that, you will be issued a replacement.”
“Everybody has one,” said a voice behind him. He turned to see Oma had entered the curtain-partitioned exam chamber.
“That’s precisely right,” said the woman. “Now would you like to wash it down with wheat grass, tomatillo, kale, celeriac, yucca, or grapefruit juice?”
“Uh, grapefruit, I guess,” said Patrick.
“We have a sweet tooth, I see,” said the woman, smiling woodenly. As she turned to retrieve the proper beverage from a small refrigerator behind her, Oma quickly grabbed the pill from Patrick’s hand, passed it through the loop on the ankh pendant she was wearing, and handed it back.
“It’s okay now,” she whispered. “I’ll explain later.”
Patrick looked down at the pill in the palm of his hand as the woman rummaged in the fridge for his drink. “Where’s Kempton?” he asked.
“My brother wanted his oat snacks and smoothie—and I guess he felt he’d weaseled his way into enough vidfeeds with you already today—so he agreed to let me take over for a bit. Why? Would you rather we switch back?”
Patrick started to blush. “I just meant—”
“Well, he’s not happy with the situation; I can tell you that much. But that’s what happens when you don’t think things through. I mean, I suppose it was slightly unkind to suggest his Lasters treats might have been sent home for him, but I certainly didn’t say for sure that they had.”
“You mean he thought he was going to get his dessert from the school and it wasn’t actually there?”
“What’s worse, the Code Crimson means he’s confined to our house with my parents and without any Interverse access. He’s probably having a nervous breakdown as we speak.”
“Here’s your juice, Patrick Griffin,” said the assessor, handing him a plastic specimen cup filled with a dingy yellow liquid.
Oma winked and whispered, “Time to become one with the Deacons!”
Patrick didn’t much like the idea of swallowing something that would stay in him for the rest of his life but it was just a dream, after all, and whether it was Oma or the assessor who was on the level, he guessed it wouldn’t kill him either way. He put the pill on his tongue and swallowed.
The assessor looked up from her binky and nodded approvingly.
“It’s transmitting just fine,” she said. “Now, no solid food for one dunt.”
Patrick nodded and decided against asking her to remind him how long a dunt was. Provided it was shorter than a week, it didn’t really matter—he was far too queasy and tired to even think about food.
“And don’t forget your garment,” she said, indicating the ruined T-shirt.
“Oh, yeah,” said Patrick. He picked up the singed piece of clothing and, in something of a daze, followed Oma out of the examination chamber.
CHAPTER 34
Loco Parentis
Rick Griffin had been prepared for his wife, Patrick’s mother Mary, to be worked up, and even devastated about Patrick’s situation. But, finding her sitting on the damp front steps, staring at the sky, he hadn’t quite imagined her to be so quiet.
“Where are my children?” she whispered, more statement than question.
“He’ll turn up.”
“You didn’t listen to my message, did you?”
“Oh,” he said, folding his hands, “sorry, no, Neil and I had a bit of trouble getting home and, well—”
“You can always listen to it later,” she said with a weird little laugh.
“I’m sorry, honey. What was the message?” His heart seemed to fall into a lower chamber as it occurred to him that something bad actually had happened to Patrick. Could he have really gone missing?
“Cassie and Paul are gone, too.”
“What!?” said Rick, startling to his feet.
“I expect,” she said, “that they’re probably just fine. Laura Tondorf-Schnittman apparently left the back door unlocked and they wandered off.”
“What?”
“With her kids, too. You may want to go over and help them look. She thinks they’re probably just out on the golf course.”
“What?” he said, not knowing what to do beyond sitting back down and giving her a hug.
“What’s wrong with your truck?” she said, noticing its missing rear bumper.
“Somebody ran into us on Benedict. That’s why I was late. Everybody’s okay.”
“Three missing children and a car accident in a single morning,” she said.
“What a day,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, the flatness in her voice cracking. “I’ve been sitting here, Rick, trying to figure out what to do—should I go help with the Twins, should I stay here for Patrick, should I worry about the other kids—but, really, more than that I’m just wondering if it’s even really happening.”
She buried her head against Rick’s chest and began to cry. “Maybe we just never woke up this morning,” she choked out between sobs. “Maybe it’s all just a nightmare. And, honestly, I don’t know why, but Patrick’s the only one I’m worried about.”
CHAPTER 35
Talking to Girls
Unlike most girls Patrick knew, Oma was not a big talker. And the strange thing was, he wouldn’t have minded if she had been.
It wasn’t just that she was pretty—she certainly was, at least in a weird, big-eyed way. The thing that got to him was that she seemed to have more expressions, and combinations of expressions, than anybody he’d ever met. He kept finding himself staring at her as if she were saying something really interesting—telling a great story, perhaps—only she wasn’t saying anything unusual, or even necessarily speaking at all. But the movements of her dark eyebrows, the flickering tension on her cheeks, the different ways she could shape her mouth … he found himself constantly wondering and guessing what was going on inside her head, like she was a book he’d been reading but whose final pages were glued shut.
And so, as they walked back toward her house across the school grounds, he kept trying to think of things he could say to get her talking.
He’d already asked her if it was normal—
since there was kind of a state of emergency going on—that they were being allowed to walk home by themselves. She’d explained that they only had a few blocks to walk and that the entire area was in lockdown. So, really, nothing bad could happen to them.
But she’d said it all very flatly, clearly not interested in the topic. He wondered if he should talk about something more personal. Maybe he could ask why she wore less makeup than most people. Or, maybe he could inquire how had her own game of kill the carrier been? But that just seemed stupid. He toyed with the idea of finding out whether she liked any music—she’d seemed interested in Neil’s They Might Be Giants shirt—but that was the cheesy sort of thing teenage boys were always asking teenage girls.
“So what was the deal with the silver pill?” he finally managed. That, at least, seemed a reasonable question. After all, he’d swallowed the thing.
“It’s a PB, like the technician said,” replied Oma, offering a bemused sideways glance.
“Right, okay.”
“Why do you ask? Didn’t you trust her? Or, is it me you don’t trust?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that.”
She laughed. “I’m just messing with you. You absolutely should be curious about the fact that a machine was put inside your body.”
“A machine?”
“Yes, one that broadcasts your vital metrics to the government.”
“I guess, when you put it that way…”
“And that mechanically adheres to the wall of your small intestine for the rest of your natural life.”
“Well, she was a medical expert—and you yourself said it was okay to swallow it, right?”
“But think about it. It really does make you want to ask a whole bunch of questions, doesn’t it?”
Patrick recognized the same line the superattendant had used and gave her a quizzical look.
“Hey! What’s that on your arm?” She grabbed his wrist and examined the burn.
“Oh, yeah, I bumped it against this hot pipe at home. The letters kind of transferred, only backward—”
“Does it hurt?”
“That’s the weirdest thing—it doesn’t really at all unless I pinch it or something. I keep forgetting it’s even there.”
