Double Vision

by Tricia Sullivan

  'Mohammed! Stand guard. Debbie, pick up that body and bag it. We'll put it in the hold with the other one. The rest of you, get on with the takeoff preps.'

  Klaski found a chair and sat down in it. Her ears rang and the room seemed to pitch and flash, as if the Grid still had a hold of her sensory perception.

  She couldn't believe what she had just seen. But what was she supposed to do about it?

  Her mind felt like a wilted lettuce. The futility of it all.

  Oh, well.

  After a while, not very long, the emotional color began to fade.

  It was nice to be back indoors. Maybe there would be a shower in her near future. And a bed.. .

  Eventually she noticed that there was a Tupperware box of cold rice pilaf mixed with chicken and vegetables on the table: someone's interrupted lunch. It didn't smell bad. While she was eating, Klaski looked at the computer screen and saw supply lists and orbital timing schedules.

  Major Galante came back in. Klaski licked rice off her dirty fingers and swallowed.

  'Joanne Klaski, I could kiss you,' said Major Galante. 'Forty-seven logic bullets, all of them functional, recovered from the alien body outside. And you brought them in. You're a hero.'

  Klaski glowed. This was more like it. Finally her contribution was being recognized.

  'Ma'am, the scopes can't find Captain Serge. Do you want me to go out and look for her personally?'

  'Don't be crazy' barked Galante. 'Leave her to MF. They'll find her. What do you think Fliers are for?'

  Then she came around behind Klaski and slapped on the restraints.

  'Don't get me wrong, Klaski. You saved my ass. However, officially speaking, our records show you responsible for the loss of your commanding officer in one incident of recklessness, and for the wilful murder of Arla Gonzalez in another. I'm sorry about this, but you're under arrest.'

  Klaski felt waves of indignation and disappointment surging up her throat. Then Galante said,

  'Now get into the ship and consider yourself lucky. You can forget about the Grid. You're going home.'

  And she pushed Klaski ahead of her into the last transport vessel.

  'Thank you, ma'am,' sobbed Klaski as the airlock thudded shut.

  Half an hour later, Klaski was listening to Major Galante's Walkman and singing along to Men at Work.

  A hand tugged the headphones off her ears from behind. Klaski whipped her head around and saw the barrel of a ray gun about an inch from her mouth.

  She actually let out a feeble squeak and took a couple of fish-gulps of air before she recognized it. The Grid had altered it. The gun's shape was the same, but instead of lead-gray metal and plastic casing, it had an iridescent snakeskin look, and the barrel itself was a lurid chemical orange. From within the barrel came a faint neon gleam.

  The crew were strapped in their seats with their backs to Klaski, facing the viewscreen, preoccupied with corns and last-minute checks. It was noisy. Major Galante was arguing with her personal zebra about flight trajectories.

  'I failed,' Serge said in a low voice. 'I failed to hidewhip the Grid and then I failed to save it. Why did my girl bring them the logic bullets? Do you know why, Klaski?'

  'Please,' Klaski whispered into the barrel. 'I just want to go home, ma'am.'

  'Home? Where's that?'

  Klaski was already crying, because it came easiest. Serge was always so sarcastic.

  'Back to Earth, ma'am.'

  She heard Serge sigh; but the barrel didn't waver.

  'I hate to burst your Hubba Bubba, but there ain't no such rutabaga, Klaski. Or if there is, you're already there.'

  Klaski could hear a little flute solo coming through the displaced headphones. It sounded remote and insignificant.

  As usual, she couldn't really follow Serge's meaning. Wasn't a rutabaga some kind of vegetable?

  'You know why she did it, don't you, Klaski? I ask her and I ask her and she just says it's to do with being a starfish above the tide. What the hell is that, Klaski?'

  Klaski licked her hps.

  'She wanted her body back. She said she couldn't be whole as long as the body was somewhere else.'

  Serge didn't move. Klaski didn't think she was breathing. After a while she said, 'Thanks for that. Kid.'

  The barrel moved away from Klaski's face and pointed towards the viewscreen, where the attention of Galante and her crew was focused.

  'Ever since I got gobbled by the well, I been wondering,' Serge said, 'whether this here equipment still works, after all it's been through.'

  And Klaski rifted her gaze, over the Grid-stained battle armor that covered Serge's chest, past her chapped lips to her flared nostrils, and finally to a pair of black eyes, where the reflection of the gun's flash shone pure white before Serge's pupils had time to contract.

  easter

  DATAPLEX EXPLOITED MENTALLY ILL EMPLOYEE

  By Susan Briggs, staff writer

  The Mahwah woman recently convicted of aggravated battery against her karate teacher may have suffered from mistreatment in the workplace at Dataplex Corporation, it emerged today.

  Karen Orbach was routinely expected to work up to 90 hours a week in Dataplex's Woodcliff Lake R&D department, according to her lawyer, Rita Schickworth.

  'Our information indicates that Dataplex executives were aware that Ms. Orbach suffers from a mild form of delusional schizophrenia which is aggravated by stress, yet they took no action.'

  Schickworth added that Dataplex 'will be investigated by the appropriate state and federal agencies in connection with my client's complaints.'

  At her trial last week, Ms Orbach declined her option to plead guilty by reason of insanity and received an 18-month prison sentence.

  A Dataplex spokesman said that the gruelling R&D project in question has been 'indefinitely suspended.'

  The victim, John Norman, returned to his Wanaque home Tuesday after a five-week hospital stay involving reconstructive facial surgery and treatment for a ruptured spleen. Norman is a fifth-degree black belt and the founder of Minnehaha Karate Academy.

  'Violence never solves anything,' said Ellen Payne, MSW. Her name tag glinted on her cheap polyester blouse, one of those with a ribbon-tie neckline that was supposed to disguise its wearers' flat-chestedness but never did.

  'Karen, were you ever abused as a child?'

  'Um, no,' I assured her, shaking my head. I could feel myself pulling the old politeness around me like a fur coat. The deference. It was safer.

  'OK,' she said, sounding doubtful. 'Because if you had been, I think it would be really beneficial for you if we could talk about it. Abuse isn't always physical. Did your parents take drugs?'

  I could almost see the mental checklist she was running down, ticking off the boxes, categorizing me. Questions about whether Uncle Marty had ever asked me to sit on his lap were bound to follow.

  If there's one thing that really annoys me, it's people insulting my intelligence. What would Gloria do now?

  'You know,' I said softly. 'I'm really offended by this line of questioning.'

  'Do you want to hit me?' said Ellen Payne, MSW.

  'Not yet,' I said. 'Violence never solves anything.'

  'You're being sarcastic'

  'Well!' I laughed.

  'What do you mean by 'Well'?'

  'Well, is that really what you think? Have you ever seen a movie where violence isn't the solution? Have you read the paper lately? Violence seems to be the preferred solution all over the planet, and if it's officially sanctioned it's wonderful heroism and if it isn't it's a crime. I lost my temper with that. . . that. . . A-hole.' I couldn't quite bring myself to say the full curse word but I think, for me, 'A-hole' was big progress. 'And I'm glad I did it because he deserved it and nobody else was going to step up to the plate. If I could do it all over again, I'd do exactly the same. Did he threaten me? No. Did I hear voices? No. Am I a mental case? Maybe. So what? I have every right to be here, Ellen Payne, MSW. So stop trying to mak
e me feel like I'm broken and I need fixing. I don't want any counseling. I don't want to be rehabilitated.'

  She listened to my outburst dispassionately, then cocked her head a little and pursed her lips.

  'You know, Karen, most of the inmates here have below-average intelligence. Many of them come from deprived backgrounds or an abusive home life. Some of them have emotional problems. You're going to have to live among them for the duration of your sentence. You could have gotten an insanity plea, but you wouldn't even consider it. You ought to have been on medication in the first place. You are on tranquilizers now, I see from your file. Is that right?'

  'I don't need them,' I said. I rolled my tongue around in my mouth. I had a celery string stuck between two molars.

  'Does that mean you're not taking them? Come on, I know there are tricks. Are you not taking your medication?'

  'Of course I'm taking it,' I lied.

  'Well, it might be very satisfying to you to sit there and tell me that you don't want to be rehabilitated, but when reality sets in I think you're going to change your mind. You don't belong here, Karen. Wait until you make a wrong move. Wait and see who's the aggressor and who's the victim when you're up against some of these women, and then you can tell me that violence is a good solution. It wasn't a good solution for you, and if you can't see that now, you're going to.'

  I sighed. Nothing like a good lecture on top of a bad night's sleep and an inedible breakfast. 'Now,' Ellen Payne, MSW continued. 'Something went wrong in your life to make you do this thing, and I'm here to help you work out what that was and how you can make sure nothing like this ever happens again. If you cooperate with this process, you could get out sooner.'

  'Maybe I'm not interested in that.'

  'Well, frankly, I'm having a lot of trouble understanding why.' She stood up and gathered her stuff. 'I'll check back with you in a few weeks, in case anything changes. I hope you'll reconsider.'

  'I hope you reconsider your Aunt Pat's nursing home,' I heard myself say. 'She gets bedsores and the nurses steal her romance novels. When was the last time you went to see her?'

  Ellen Payne, MSW slammed the door. I heard her heels go tripping down the corridor. She sounded like the seventh race at Belmont.

  That night, I went to the TV room for the first time. The cigarette smoke made my eyes water. I wasn't the fattest person there. I wasn't the blackest, either. A sister the size of Rochelle Park took up most of the sofa. She was talking back to the TV.

  'Aw, come on, can't you see that little weaselly guy done it? How stupid you want to get?'

  'It can't be the little guy, it's always the guy with the English accent.'

  I folded my arms across my chest and looked sideways across the TV. Playing safe.

  The big woman glanced at me, said, 'Got a cigarette?'

  I shook my head. I was petrified. Four skinny girls were crammed into a loveseat, whispering to each other and giggling. I could tell they were talking about me but I didn't dare look at anyone directly.

  'Check it out,' a middle-aged redhead said, 'She's like a friggin' statue. You see that show the other night about them stone idols, she looks like one of them. What was that place called?'

  'Easter Island,' answered one of the skinnies, couldn't have been more than nineteen. 'Hey, Easter! Newgirl, I'm talking to you.'

  I looked at her.

  'My name is Karen,' I said.

  'You do voo-doo, Easter?'

  I snorted. 'Do you?'

  She licked her lips, wiggled her fingers in front of her face. 'Cuz I heard you spooked out Microtits this morning. Told her a message from her dead auntie or something.'

  'I didn't mean to spook her out,' I said seriously. 'I just accidentally said something I shouldn't.'

  'Don'tyousmokethen?' It all came out as one angry word, from Rochelle Park.

  'No.'

  'You know who did it, Easter? Who killed the heiress?'

  At first I didn't know what she meant. Then:

  'I don't like to watch TV,' I said, still deliberately avoiding looking at the screen, although I could hear the sound.

  'Everybody likes to watch Tom Selleck,' said the redhead in her flat voice. 'Unless you're a dyke.'

  I didn't want to be marked as a dyke in a women's prison, did I? Reluctantly, I turned to the screen.

  It wasn't the Grid. It was Hawaii. Even I knew who Magnum was, because I often read TV Guide so as not to appear totally clueless when chatting with colleagues at the watercooler. But it was hard to follow the story. The women were making a racket, talking back to the TV, occasionally throwing wadded-up gum at it, making fun of people's clothes and imitating their voices. 'Oooh,' they'd say frequently to Magnum. 'You gonna take that from him?' Or: 'Psych! Lookit her face, any more mascara and she's gonna need a forklift just to get her eyes open.'

  I'd never seen anything like it. In my houses, and my friends' houses, we always watched TV quietly. It was rude to do otherwise. These girls kicked their legs in the air and threw stuff at the screen.

  Where were you guys when I was letting the Grid freak me out? I thought.

  Then I started to join in. Nothing big, but I couldn't help laughing sometimes, or pointing, or muttering remarks of my own. And the TV stayed TV. No other planets.

  It was pure magic.

  'Get a nose job,' I heard myself say to one of the cops. The redhead heard me.

  'Hah! You hear that? "Get a nose job," Easter says.'

  'Don't mind Shannon,' said Rochelle Park to me. 'She don't know you beat up a karate master. Otherwise she wouldn't call you Easter, she'd call you Kung Fu.'

  'What are you in here for, Shannon?' I managed. I wanted to smile but I couldn't make my face do it.

  'Armed robbery. Oi, look out he's gonna—'

  '—Left-hook you,' I finished, wincing empathetically as Magnum went flying over a table.

  Maybe that's the key. Don't just watch. Don't just let them use you.

  Maybe it's time for a little audience participation.

  Back in my cell, I spent my nights working on a game plan.

  It was no good being able to watch TV and interact with it and not see the Grid, if what I wanted was to see the Grid and act on it. What good is watching Magnum, P.I. in that situation?

  It was true that at home I'd used a TV tuned to the static between channels, but I couldn't do that here because any private use of the TV had to be sanctioned through Ellen Payne, MSW, and I wasn't about to confide in her. All she knew was that I had delusional problems when watching TV. I could ask for therapeutic TV time, but if I then tuned in to dead air the guard would tell that to S.P., MSW, who would think I was yanking her chain.

  Then again, there had been that time when Rocky had tuned in to Channel 11 in his attempt to watch Yankee baseball. I had flown through the Friday-night movie. I could do it.

  But I had to do it right this time. I had to try to duplicate the conditions that had been used at Dataplex, but take control of them on my own terms. I was pretty sure that Miles had been right about what I had been shown at Dataplex: videotapes, not a blue screen at all. The blue screen probably came up when the nex snapped – when the video ended, in other words, or someone turned it off.

  And the video I had been shown, complete with proposed commercial advertising, could only have been one thing.

  Cookie Starfishes came on at 5:30 a.m. and again at 1:30 p.m. There was no way I could get to watch it in the afternoon during All My Children because, as I'd learned in the past few days, beautiful young Jenny had recently gone to New York to become a model and had no idea that the virginity she'd kept from and for her beloved Greg was about to be stolen and her good name besmirched by unscrupulous underwear-catalog photographers. Not to mention the fact that she was being stalked by a psycho.

  So 5:30 a.m. it would have to be.

  Ellen Payne, MSW did not come to see me again. I guess the Aunt Pat thing had upset her. Instead, she informed me by memo that a viewing could be a
rranged for my benefit on Thursday. Wednesday night, I didn't sleep. At the appointed hour, one of the guards let me into the TV room with a muttered, 'There ya go, Easter.' I was hungry, shivering, sweat-palmed as the guard went into the observation area and picked up the remote contol. The TV came on in a blast of happy music.

  I sank into a chair and licked my lips.

  'Right,' I heard myself mutter self-consciously. 'Interact. Talk back. Give 'em hell.'

  The guard had her head down. She was doing paperwork.

  'I'm not doing it, Dante,' I said, louder. The guard didn't even twitch. Who would, after the antics of Shannon and Rochelle Park - whose name turned out to be Malinda (car thief), by the way – and their cohorts?

  'Go ahead and try me and let's see what happens,' I added. I leaned forward in my chair. I gesticulated. 'I'm gonna fly now and I hope you recognize that I don't belong to you anymore. You can't make me do anything. You can't make me do anything.'

  I kept repeating it, but pretty soon I couldn't even hear my own voice, because I was there. The sky was loud with eventuality, with the sound of things being finished once and for all. I kept opening my mouth and forcing air past my vocal cords anyway, talking myself into existence just like the girls had sung up their city within the Grid.

  I won't stay quiet anymore.

  into the wishing well

  When the MFeels first came down they looked like Thread. And maybe, in that they were mindless and blind, they were like Thread.

  Now they're loaded up on logic bullets and, like Miles on Cheez Doodles, they're coming after whatever they consider to be a problem. The problem of the day is the girls of the Grid. You lie on the air and watch the MFeels' metallic, muscular bodies undulate and dive among the branches of the Grid. You watch them shrug off pollen and dodge lightning flashes. You watch them skim the well and then, bouncing invisible questions off Gossamer's eyes, they home in on each child.