Double Vision

by Tricia Sullivan

  'The city we made from the MaxFact and the logic mines. The synchronicity.'

  'Haha, very cute. Here, you want it?' And she pulls her Walkman off her belt and holds it out. The girls cock their heads in unison. You feel Klaski's pulse thunder in her neck.

  'I'll self-immolate,' Klaski threatens. 'Just like the others. You'd better stand back if you don't want to get blown away.'

  And she gropes in her pockets for charges.

  The nearest girl glances over her shoulder.

  'Serge has some questions.'

  'Don't talk to me about Serge. I'm not going in the well, just you forget it.'

  'Are you coming with me or do you want to stay here with the golems?'

  And the children turn and walk out the main door.

  Klaski waits a couple of beats and then bolts after them.

  'I'm coming, see, so tell them to keep their distance.'

  The girls don't say anything. They flash the same smile over their collective shoulders, though. Serge falls in behind Klaski. Outside are many more golems. They all start to walk across the compound, heading for the mine shaft. Klaski looks up. You can see the sky; there is no sign of an aerial carrier of any stripe.

  Klaski stops suddenly and grabs you by the edges. She untangles you from her battle armor. Then you feel yourself thrown in the air like pizza dough, and Gossamer's skin feels all electric and alive for the first time since Arla's crossbow bolt brought you down.

  'Fly, Gossamer, fly! Get help! Go to X and tell them! I've got the you-know-whats! Tell them to come get me!'

  Serge leaps forward and tries to grab you, but Klaski is too quick. Other golems move in on Klaski, too. She shrinks below you, waving her arms wildly from beneath a football-scrimmage of golems.

  The air flows over you, drags you upward, and you are free. You float into a feeling of perfection.

  It's just like old times. On high, you have the glory. You own the sky. Gossamer aches with the effort; even that is a kind of pleasure.

  But there's more than poetry up here. The transmissions of Machine Front come banging into your ears again, reporting the arrival of the Third Wave, calling you back to X with all urgency.

  Below, Klaski is allowed to get to her feet; but now golems mass around her and the girls, pushing them towards the mine, until all you can see is the crowd of them, big and dead and numerous, carrying along the smaller figures like a tide. They go behind the Quonset hut and open the doors of the mine with a squealing sound.Then they disappear into a hole in the ground.

  between a pathological phenomenon and a breakfast cereal

  I found myself watching a 9 Lives cat-food commercial.

  I straightened, rubbing my eyes. I was supposed to be looking at the static on Channel 1 . . . but instead I was watching the late-night movie on Channel 11. The China Syndrome. Hurriedly I switched back to static.

  'Rocky,' I said. 'Have you been playing with the TV?'

  He was lying on top of the warm console with one paw draped over the side. Rocky always liked watching baseball. My mom used to put the Yankees on Channel 11 for him and he'd bat the TV ball with his paw whenever he saw a pitch go in.

  'Don't tell me you know how to turn on Channel 11,' I said. 'But the Yankee game is over. It's almost midnight.'

  I got a little choked up there. Poor Rocky. Mom never told me he knew how to work the TV. He must be missing her.

  Not that he showed it. He jumped into my lap and howled.

  'Go away,' I said. 'You have plenty of food. And you don't even like 9 Lives.'

  Nine lives, I thought, following Rocky into the kitchen. Serge's daughters had nine lives, and one of them was gone.

  I opened some Fancy Feast for Rocky. Nebbie materialized from out of the chaos and spat at him. Absently, I broke up the ensuing scuffle with my foot. I had started wearing my mother's Snoopy slippers and Nebbie was afraid of them.

  I thought:

  You know what, those logic bullets don't look like bullets at all. They look like eggs.

  Little metal eggs.

  Eggs laid by a mechanical chicken.

  Which came first, the chicken or the—

  No, that was too simplistic. But...

  Synchronicity. An acausal connecting principle.

  I might not be able to watch TV, but you'd have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to know about that video with three bleach-blond guys in raggedy clothes on a junk heap.

  I thought:

  IS MY WHOLE LIFE GOING TO TURN OUT TO BE A BAD JOKE?

  I dragged out a few of Mom's books and found some stuff on Carl Jung. What a weird guy. But reading psychological theories felt like a dead end. I was too afraid that I'd find out I was nuts, and then where would I be?

  OK, I thought. Let's see if we can put something together.

  The girls must represent some aspect of Grid intelligence, because they seemed able to control the golems. They staged the first golem raid on the logic mines. But in the process they lost one of their own number, and Dr. Gonzalez, recognizing the corpse as the product of one of her own Island of Dr. Moreau experiments and a potential biological bridge between the Grid and humanity, went straight to Machine Front with the new information. She even sent them the corpse as proof that the Grid could make more than just zombie-like golems.

  Machine Front made no effort to change its posture. It launched the MaxFact, but the missile didn't wipe out the mines because the girls had planned to capture it all along. This left the mines aswarm with golems and all the equipment and personnel at risk of assimilation into the well.

  Gonzalez followed the necessary procedures and ordered a self-destruct for her team. But she didn't follow the order herself. She grabbed the logic bullets and took off into the Grid alone.

  Meanwhile, the MaxFact went into the well, and the girls began to unpack it. They unpacked the obvious, causal associations first. . . and this process destroyed the Grid in a strip leading to the logic mines, while at the same time altering the Grid's structure in the areas adjacent to the dead zone. Making that structure more Earthlike.

  At the same time, the golems (or was it the girls? Or the Grid? What was the difference, anymore?) took control of the mines and the humans couldn't get the logic bullets they so desperately needed for the Third Wave. It was a standoff.

  Then Serge found Gonzalez still alive.

  Gonzalez believed that MF were the source of all evil. She had no intention of giving them the logic bullets. For their part, the girls and the golems seemed to protect her. But for all her willingness to experiment with others, she was afraid to go into the well itself.

  After the MaxFact had unraveled itself into a dream city, the girls began to link it to the logic mines. And – evidently – this was how it became the SynchroniCity, better known as a hit record. Because if we were talking about causality, this linkup between the MaxFact and the mines was the point where causality seemed to break down.

  Because:

  The logic bullets weren't bullets. The mines weren't a case of the colonists raping the planet. The Grid was eating the mining equipment even as it produced logic bullets. Which looked like eggs – to me, anyway. And which had been stored by Dr. Gonzalez in the well, floating like frog spawn, soaking up the Grid's essence.

  So the raped planet produced seed. Rape. Seed. Rapeseed.

  This word was vaguely familiar, so I looked it up and found out it was the old term for canola oil. Low in cholesterol.

  I thought:

  Should we check Gunther's ad base to see if canola oil is a product being pushed? I'M TOTALLY PARANOID NOW. I don't know what means which.

  Besides, I hated myself for thinking this way or even using the rape analogy to think about the Grid. It was the old 'Did she ask for it?' excuse. Or – and speaking of Channel 11, Toyota were the official sponsors of the NY Yankees and the Toyota slogan was You asked for it, you got it: Toyota. So for all I knew, I'd picked up the whole idea during the commercial breaks for the Yankee game
that had preceded The China Syndrome.

  Which brought me right back to my problem of what to believe in – my own eyes, or not?

  And anyway, leaving the Police out of it, there were other interpretations of the unpacked MaxFact meeting up with the logic mines. The term SynchroniCity could also be taken to mean an attempt to unify two kinds of thought: human thought, and Grid thought. To synchronize watches. And then to build this meeting-of-the-minds in physical form. So you could walk around inside the conceptual possibilities.

  But thinking about this made me woozy, like quadratic equations in tenth grade. Too much like hard work.

  OK: back to the facts.

  At around the time Serge and Gonzalez encountered each other in the Grid, Galante recaptured the mines for MF. But the logic bullets were gone, and as soon as Galante went off to look for them, the personnel she left behind were trapped inside the mines – which were now a part of the SynchroniCity. Elsewhere, Serge was betrayed by Gonzalez, and went into the well alive.

  Where she was now having a belated stab at motherhood, the only problem being that her offspring were not human.

  Klaski of all people had gone in the well and come out again, apparently unchanged, and now intended to use the logic bullets to bargain for her own life. The Third Wave MFeels (possibly incorporating data mysteriously gained during examination of the dead girl's body? Was that even possible?) were waiting to launch against and destroy whole regions of the Grid, including the SynchroniCity, in response to Serge's own orders. Except Serge had captured Klaski and her intentions did not look good.

  Whose side to be on?

  It was all so ugly and unfathomable.

  Lucky for me, I've never been one of those people who remember their dreams or I'd have been afraid to go to bed. By the time I turned off all the equipment and got into bed, it was only a few hours before dawn.

  When my alarm went off, I felt like a rusty crane from N-Ridge. I padded barefoot down to the laundry room in my building's basement to drag my gi out of the washing machine, where I'd shoved it the night before. Someone had already started another load of clothes, and my gi was spread across the top of the dryer. It was nearly dry, but creased as hell. I took it upstairs and plugged in the iron. In the steam that rose off the ironing board I tried to send messages to my various body parts to get ready for the pocketbook-and-broom demonstration. I wasn't worried about my kata – I knew it wasn't very good, but I wouldn't forget the moves. I wasn't worried about sparring, either. We wear gloves and shin protectors and I'd promised myself I wouldn't sweep anybody and jump on them, no matter what names they called me. I'd be Bushido Girl. If I lost, I lost.

  But I was deeply afraid I'd crack up laughing in the middle of pocketbook-and-broom and walk away from Mr. Evanovich even as he was hurling himself through the air to fake being thrown by me. Not that I couldn't throw him. He was only a small guy and I'm a big woman, which made the whole exercise even more absurd. As if some geeky little civil engineer like Mr. Evanovich – brown belt or not – was going to come up to a big sister like me at a bus stop and try to rob me! It was pure comedy.

  'Just get through this, Cookie,' I told myself as I showed Rocky that he had the same cat food as Nebbie. 'You can quit the team after today.'

  I was a little late arriving at Passaic High School and the tournament was already under way. There were hordes of people wearing all different gis and patches. Kids everywhere. In the gymnasium, different rings had been set up with corner chairs for the judges, and the stage had been laid out with all kinds of bricks and boards and other equipment for the demonstrations. The stands rang with the talk of the crowd.

  I watched people warming up as I made my way through the throng and I couldn't help thinking they all looked like dufuses. How could anybody be so stupid as to practice a kata that looks like that? I found myself thinking, more than once. Or: why do they put their hands in front of their foreheads when they bow? Duh, that's lame.

  Maybe they thought the same about us. But of course they would have been wrong. What we do is real.

  Gloria hailed me. 'I'm so nervous about the sparring,' she said. 'I wish I could just enter kata. Did you see some of the girls in our division? They look like mooses.'

  I craned my neck. 'There's no contact, is there?'

  'No, only tagging each other. But still, they're scary.'

  'You stand a really good chance in kata,' I said. 'Where's Miss Cooper?'

  'That's what everybody wants to know.'

  Then we spotted Shihan Norman.

  'Excuse me, Shihan,' Gloria said, and we both bowed as he turned to us. 'Hello, ladies.'

  'We were just looking for Miss Cooper – we wanted to say good luck on the demonstration.'

  He frowned. 'She couldn't make it.'

  'Couldn't make it? What happened? Is she sick?'

  He looked uncomfortable. 'She's having some personal problems.'

  Gloria and I exchanged shocked glances. Tanya, miss a demonstration? This demonstration, the day after her test? The day after the greatest day of her life?

  'But who's doing pocketbook-and-broom?' I blurted.

  'Mrs. Canalletto is going to fill in. She's been practicing the moves with Miss Knight. Now, I need you to go help Mr. Juarez organize the kids. Make sure they've tied their belts right and there are no runny noses, OK? Now if you girls will excuse me, I have to go talk to Master Hideki.'

  We bowed to Shihan Norman again and he nodded back, then walked off.

  'Do you ever get tired of brown-nosing this guy and calling him Shihan?' I said.

  Gloria giggled. 'If he gets demoted we'll just call him Sensei. So what's with Tanya? I wonder if she's just hung over from the party last night.'

  'She wasn't drinking when I left. Maybe I should have stayed. It seemed like she wanted me to, somehow.'

  Gloria frowned. 'I hope she's OK.'

  'I'm sure she's fine.'

  'I'm going to go over there and just check,' said Gloria. She made it all sound so sinister.

  'We're supposed to be helping with the kids,' I said weakly.

  Gloria made a face. 'Let Cori do that – look, she's flirting with Mr. Juarez again and he looks like he needs a break from her. We'll just slip off. Tanya only lives five minutes from here.'

  I hesitated. 'Maybe we should call her first.'

  'Let's just go,' Gloria persisted.

  _______

  Miss Cooper lived in a one-bedroom above a pizza place in a Valley Road minimall. She answered the door barefoot, in jeans and a tank top. I had to admire her forearms. She actually had muscle where most people just have bone; where I still had sausages, even after weeks of weight lifting and barely eating. But her pale skin was almost as dark as mine now, except where some of the older bruises were turning yellow.

  Her face was puffy and blotchy and her eyes were red.

  Gloria and I burst out talking at once: 'Oh my God! Are you OK? What happened?'

  'Oh, guys, hi,' she said stiffly. 'Yeah, I'm all right, listen, I'm sorry but I won't be able to be there today. I'll call you, OK?'

  And she started to shut the door.

  'Whoa, whoa,' said Gloria, putting out her hand and stopping the door. 'What happened? Is it your family? Can we help?'

  'No, it's nothing like that, honestly. I just. . . I don't feel very well. I told Shihan. I'll call you later, OK?'

  I would have left it there, but Gloria set her lips firmly.

  'What is going on? Shihan had a really shifty look on his face when we asked about you. What is going on, Tanya? We're your friends. We can help you.'

  Suddenly I had the feeling that Gloria knew more about this than I did.

  'Let us in,' she commanded, and Miss Cooper took a step back.

  'It's a mess,' she said. 'I'm a mess. You guys are going to miss the kata competition. Just go on. I'm all right, honestly. I'm being stupid.'

  'Then come on, if you don't want to tell us, then wash your face and get your stuff and
we'll all go over there together. OK?'

  Miss Cooper shook her head so fast that her hair flew.

  'No, no, I can't. You guys go, really . . . '

  It went on like this for a couple of minutes and finally Miss Cooper said:

  'It's Masunobu, all right? Something h-h-happened with Masunobu last night and I don't want to see him and I don't want to see anybody, I just want to be alone.'

  'Something happened? What happened?' Gloria's eyebrows drew together in a fierce grimace. 'Was he fresh with you?'

  Miss Cooper started crying.

  We all went into the living room and Gloria made everybody sit down. She seemed to know exactly what to do. She sat next to Miss Cooper and gave her a hug. Miss Cooper clung to her, sobbing.

  'What exactly happened, sweetie?' Gloria said. 'I know you don't want to talk about it but you'll feel better if you get it out.'

  'I don't even know how it started,' said Miss Cooper. We were hanging out in his room and I was talking to Masunobu about the wars with the Japanese and how the Okinawans fought the samurai with wooden weapons. It was a whole bunch of us, playing music and stuff. . . and then suddenly all the guys seemed to be leaving. You know Reggie, the guy from Sensei Price's dojo? When he was leaving he asked if I was OK and if I wanted to go with them. He was very protective. I didn't understand. I looked at Masunobu and Masunobu said, We talk goju history. We talk important stories,' and he pointed to me and himself. So I said it was cool and I'd see them tomorrow, and the guys all left. They didn't really want to talk karate anyway, they were going on about baseball the whole time and getting really, really drunk. They said they'd be in the bar if we needed them.'

  Gloria let out a long breath. 'Oh, Tanya. Didn't you think?'