by Landon Wark
“What happened?” he asked anxiously. For a moment he was actually curious. This might turn out to be a good chance to collect results.
She said nothing as she walked past, eyes fixed squarely ahead. By now he was certain he was in the clear. The world decompressed around him as he hurried after her, his curiosity now piqued.
“What happened?”
She wheeled her tremendous bulk around in the middle of the sliding doorway. The gust of it nearly knocked him over and he had to fall back a step to regain his sense of space.
“My insurance doesn’t cover orange thumb,” she hissed.
His face went flat. “Oh. Look, like I said, I can handle this.”
“Stay the hell away from me,” she said menacingly and for a moment Jonah was struck by disbelief that he had aligned himself with such an ugly creature. He swallowed the thought before it could reach the front of his mouth.
He could not let her go now, of that he was certain. There was too much riding on this now. If he couldn’t win her over then he would have to leave town. The probability was too great that she would tell someone and that would bring in too many questions he did not want asked, at least not at this point. But what could he do to stop her?
Outside the wind was howling, throwing the dust that laced the streets into his face as he hurried after her, actually he did not even really have to hurry, even at a run there was no way she could outdistance him. Still, out of respect and out of self-preservation he kept his distance.
“Would you just stop,” he pleaded.
No answer other than an unattractive increase in pace.
“Christ, this was a big mistake.”
What could make someone of that size stop?
“I can show you more,” he whispered, a snake in her ear.
What the hell are you doing? A small voice in his head demanded.
"You want money? You wanna learn how to make things out of nothing? I, uh, saw the book you were reading. If you want that, we can do that. You want to be that funny looking woman on the cover. I... we can work on that."
She froze in her tracks, the fat continuing a step or two before rejoining her skeleton and a feeling of nausea wormed its way into Jonah McAllister stomach. He was promising something that he had no idea how to deliver on, little better than a snake oil salesman. But, it was something he had to do, didn't he? If he had any actual friends he might later pull up a stool to a local bar and ask them to validate his decision.
Somewhere in the immense tumblers of his mind a small piece locked into place and then fell into oblivion.
The lips above her fat chin looked about ready to tell him to go to hell, but the thin sparkle in her eye, a rare mixture of cautious hope and reckless abandon told Jonah McAllister that, while he had no idea of how, he had done what he set out to do.
Anyone walking through the aisles between the cubicles of the call centre—at least anyone familiar with the personnel—would have wondered what was going on with the large brunette in the North-East corner. Whispers went around that someone had finally gotten drunk enough to bed her. Normally Sandy would pretend to not hear these sophomoric jabs, but today she legitimately did not notice.
Ironically she was thinking about a moment only twelve hours earlier when she had been lying on the bed of a motel room in the grip of what had seemed like ecstasy.
It was an odd feeling, not quite familiar, but not all together alien. It was something she was certain she had experienced in her childhood. Maybe the first time she had seen an airplane flying in real life. Wonder? Close.
She pulled her head up and looked at the pair of quarters sitting on the floor below the bed. Her hand shook. Security? That was maybe another element. The loosening of the bonds of anxiety that had been gripping her for as long as she could remember.
The recent memory of the way the first coin had quivered and then perfectly split into two was absorbed into her long-term and treasured memories almost seamlessly.
"We..." She looked over at the man she had come to know as Jonah McAllister as she struggled for the first words. "Can make as much money as we want."
"Yeah..." he frowned. "It was a lot easier back home. We have two dollar coins. I can do maybe eight quarters in a go. Takes maybe ten minutes. Twelve dollars an hour."
"And we can't do bills because...?"
"Bills with the same serial number start popping up all over, people get suspicious. And since most people use electronics these days, cash is under harsher scrutiny. Drugs, guns, what-have-you."
Sandy laughed. "It's weird to hear you be so mundane when I just created a quarter out of thin air. What about, like, gold?"
"Any element with an atomic number over thirty doesn't work all that great. Zinc is kind of the limit."
"Oh. Why is that?"
"No idea, really. I think if we can control your accent a little bit you could get up to four pretty quickly. Between the two of us that's eighteen dollars an hour."
"Um, you have the accent around here. And... that's not enough to quit my job."
His frown deepened. "I've been trying to flush out what... I guess the phrase would be 'what common thread binds it all together'. If I could do that then... well, the sky's the limit. The primary problem is that I don't have enough time. And, after a while my voice starts to go."
Sandy pressed her bulk into the bed. The question wasn't even really a question. Do you want to hang out with this potential psychopathic weirdo if there's actual magic that comes along with it?
Uh, yes please.
"I mean, you can stay at my place, I guess. You wouldn't have to pay for this room. We could save up for..." The aspiration that she would ever be able to save up for something had never really taken root in her and she found she had no idea how to finish the thought.
He sighed. "I'm not sure. I like privacy." That, and he was uncertain about his tenuous hold on this friendship. More contact just meant more opportunities to screw up. This he didn't dare say.
Sandy looked over at him. "I guess it's your call, but, we can do more together than we can apart."
Jonah looked around the room with all of its desolate trappings. The dingy curtains that were never opened. The bed that was made once a week. His clothes seemed to smell for the first time ever.
He put his head in his hands. His need to trust this woman was snowballing out of control.
"Yeah. Okay."
"Don't make it sound like your dog just died," Sandy said. "My couch is great for sleeping on."
Jonah looked up at her.
"I need my own bed."
In the Realm of Sandy Jenkins
The sun crept through the thin crack between Jonah's eyelids and a groan escaped from his lips. His neck complained right along with his mouth as he tried to sit up on the sofa where he had fallen asleep the night before. He had been living in this apartment for nearly two weeks and his body was starting to pay for it.
He was beginning to believe that Sandy had misrepresented its sleepability.
She was gone for work now and judging by the clock on the wall likely had been for over an hour.
He yawned, his voice catching against the pain in his vocal chords. The attempt to swallow the dry film coating his mouth failed miserably as he got up and shambled past the gaudy knick-knacks and bookshelves full of second-hand sci-fi/fantasy novels that populated the small apartment, still half asleep.
The two of them had been up until all hours of the night indulging in Sandy's newly found madness for quarters. Although the strain of being around another person for most of the evening was weighing upon him, Jonah was struck by a newfound confidence that for once he had made a good decision for once. A note lying on the tiny dining room table informed him that she had taken the haul, eighty dollars and some change to the local bank. He bit his tongue, trying to trust that she would remember the cover story about starting up a vending machine business. It was a simple story and maybe not even necessary, but it still caused
him to bite his tongue.
He crunched the numbers one more time. At his own rate of twelve dollars it would take three and a half months to save up a down payment on pretty much anything. And that was assuming no other expenses cropped up in the meantime. Worse still, any bank looking at Sandy's (his own was tainted, out of the question) credit rating would deny them a mortgage regardless.
Sitting down at the small dining table Jonah began writing out a long series of phonemes. He tapped the pencil on the pad before tearing off the sheet and writing something else:
Apply for business (vendor's?) licence.
Set up account.
More money.
He frowned at the third entry and turned his attention back to the phonemes. He had felt like when his voice had veered off in one direction the results seemed faster. Maybe there were parts of it that simply weren't necessary. If he could just adjust it in the right place he could increase his yield from the eight threshold. He had the time now. The pressure had eased and he could think straight at last, but he had decided he would have to proceed slowly, remembering the way his recklessness had obliterated the wall in his own apartment. That was something he could not do to his one benefactor.
Tapping the pencil once more he pulled out the chair he was sitting on and sat on the floor instead, wincing at the complaint of his lower back. A quartet of quarters pulled from the nearby coffee table served as his template as he began crossing phonemes off the list and inserting new ones.
Within several minutes he was scouring the apartment for more quarters, carefully avoiding the puddle of molten metal on the floor.
Within an hour he was out of the door and pattering down the stairs intent on changing the five dollars in his pocket into more fodder and escaping from the smell of burning laminate.
With the blistering light of the unforgiving sun he began to perspire almost immediately. A brief thought as to whether he would need sunscreen made his step slow for a moment. He passed within a half a block, down an intersecting street of about half a dozen people holding violent looking signs, asking loudly for funds to support a disgraced politician. He shielded his face upon seeing the two police officers overseeing their barely restrained shouting. Across from them sat a trio of two shaggy looking men and an equally shaggy woman perched beside a cardboard sign whose message Jonah could not read.
Upon seeing the higher than expected traffic on the street leading up to the small commercial area he realized that he had chosen the time when all the office assistants would be out getting morning refreshments.
He stood in line at the coffee shop for twenty minutes, feeling a little giddy as he was reminded of being back home when he was first enthralled by the new power he was beholding. He took a deep breath through his nostrils and allowed the smell of grounds and steam to permeate his being before becoming annoyed at the lack of speed in the line.
Holding his change tightly against the paper cup he went through the ritual of making the bitter brew drinkable with his free hand. He grimaced as the metal became first warm and then searing. Finally managing to put the cup down he peeled the coins away from the indentations they left in his skin.
He thought of the electrons in the metal passing disruptive amounts of heat into his hand. He froze in place for more than a moment, nearly knocked over another patron as he spun towards the door. Leaving his cup behind he burst out into the hot air of southern mid-morning. His still stinging hand clutched the quarters tighter, re-merging them with the imprints they had left in his hand.
"Atomic number thirty. Atomic number thirty," he muttered purposefully, desperate to keep his nonsense spouting under control.
After several failed attempts to use the unfamiliar keys Sandy had given him Jonah burst through the door and ripped his old notebook, battered and worn from the months of hiding and running from its resting place.
"This is going to work. This is going to work," he gasped as he found the list of phonemes that had made the magazine at the department store smoulder and later created the fire under his television. He copied them out carefully, double checking each one as he did so.
"Come on. Come on."
His eyes scanned through the symbols and glyphs he was able to pull out of his notes. There were some parts that would work backwards. Of that he was certain.
A small plume of smoke rising from the coffee table warned him that he was saying certain parts out loud. By the time a flame licked up the joint between the wood and the glass his concentration was broken by the need to run into the hall for a fire extinguisher.
Fortunately the building's fire system was lackluster enough that the brief mistake went unnoticed by most of the tenants.
"WHAT THE FUCK!"
The same could not be said for Sandy.
As her gaze followed from the pile of melted metal on the kitchen floor to the seared coffee table and the blackened floor surrounding it she managed to spy Jonah sitting on the sofa, scrawling frantically on a pad balanced on his lap.
"Can you keep it down?" he asked without looking up. "I don't want to forget this."
"What the hell happened here? What did you do to-" Her eye caught sight of a small toy panda bear on a solar powered swing, its face partly melted off. "Jonah!"
"It was the electron movement," he said triumphantly. "Too much of it."
"What are you talking about? Did you burn my books?"
"A little. The reason atomic number thirty was the limit is that those elements had more electrons. More electrons, more average electron movement."
"Could you start talking English?"
"The reason that I got limited to 8 is that the electrons moving around interfered with things. But!" He exclaimed, shooting up off the sofa and walking towards the kitchen. "If we slow down the movement of the electrons by cooling the object at the same time..."
"If you're cooling things then why are there goddam burn marks all over the place?!"
"Well, it turns out there's a slight temperature elasticity following duplication. But, this took me thirty-seven minutes."
Jonah pulled open the door to the small freezer above the fridge and small, shiny metal discs began pouring from inside, instantly creating a small pile on the floor. There had to be over a hundred on the floor and hundreds more inside the freezer. His other hand, this one covered in small, bright pink burn marks held up a notebook, proudly bearing a series of symbols that Sandy recognized, but was just beginning to understand.
"Now you can quit your job," he said proudly.
Jonah McAllister Buys Some Land
Outside of the small city, in a place where the word rustic still applied, there was a small forest. Given the aridness of the land and the shallowness of the soil a forest was a rare thing to see in those parts and in honesty the inhabitants of the country preferred it that way. A tree or two was acceptable here or there for shade against the harsh sun in the blistering summer, but most in the rural areas, whether consciously or unconsciously referred to themselves as prairie folk. A forest blocked out the sun, closed in the mind and the body, and what was more, in a place that prided itself on the open and familial atmosphere, a forest hid things, brought about a sense of paranoia and privacy that was unacceptable in these lands.
Within this forest there was a road, a path really, that wound its way up from a nearby highway, through the concealing trees, past a few buildings that likely predated the forest itself and toward a house, sitting blissfully on top of a small hill, hidden away from prying eyes and nosy ears. It was unfinished. Whoever had owned the land had abandoned the house before adding shingles to the roof, or even siding to the walls and all those in the surrounding countryside who knew about it said a little thank you now and then that the trees kept the eyesore hidden. Privacy only had value when it hid things about which they did not want to know.
The real estate agent responsible for it, Henderson by name, a man who had once possessed great hopes for the market before the mortgage crash a few year
s back, had since given up on the property, relegating it to the area of his portfolio (getting larger every year) which would never turn a profit. He had regarded the inquiry about it with some doubt, believing that he would show up, clean out the inside of the building, cover any holes made by rats and mice and then wait for a few hours before giving up and going home to his wife, wait a few more hours and then give up on her too. He took a nervous swig of his can of orange juice (which at this time of week would normally be substituted with a beer) as the minute hand of his cheap watch reached the top of the hour.
He nearly spit the juice on the ground as the car drove up the dirt path that served as the road.
It was old, square and beat up, rocking on bad suspension. The paint was fading and spiderwebbed with rust, the antenna was bent and for a moment Henderson considered going home anyway.
“What have we got here?” he muttered under his breath. “More looky-loos, out bargain hunting?”
The car slowed to a stop behind the over-priced, fuel guzzling truck that he had bought to look more like a rural Southerner and out swung what had to be the fattest woman he had ever laid eyes on. The idea of going home redoubled in his mind; no fat women were ever in the market. If she hadn’t parked behind his truck he might have gotten in and driven off immediately.
From out of the passenger’s side hopped a young man dressed in jeans and T-shirt. The idea that they were a couple flashed once in Henderson’s head and then was gone. Brother and sister maybe, cousins maybe, business partners… Not by the way they dressed.
Mentally Henderson scratched his head.
“Hey there, folks.” Despite the fact he had not been born in this state Henderson found use of the local accent profitable. The ‘down home’ (whatever that meant, he could no more understand being ‘down home’ than he could being ‘out back’) air relaxed people to the point where they were willing to part with a few more dollars. “What kin I do ya for?”
