Strange Days

by Constantine J. Singer

  “It makes sense,” Sal says. “We were locking in Live-Tech, so without it the Locusts won’t be able to invade fast enough to win.”

  “Especially if we get the word out.”

  “Word’s out, dude.” Cassandra waves her hand. “Watching Jordan Castle get bug-bit on national TV pretty much did the job—people are going to be ready to fight if they need to.”

  “Now we just need them to get the message about Live-Tech,” Corina adds. “How do we do that?”

  “I have someone,” I tell them. “Someone who can get the word out.” I tell them about my emails with the reporter in LA.

  “You’re gonna need evidence,” Sal says.

  “I’ll get some,” I promise.

  “So that’s it, then? The plan?” Corina asks. “I stay here and glide. Alex goes there and glides. We use Sybil’s thingie to do whatever it does, and then Alex grabs some evidence of some sort on his way out?” She sounds skeptical.

  “Pretty much.”

  “And we’re really going to be okay with . . .” Corina swirls her hand in the air. She’s thinking about Paul, about Maddie, others I never met. “We’re okay with killing them? The witnesses?”

  Nobody says anything. I try to catch Sal’s eye, but he looks away. So does Erica.

  So does Corina.

  “We’re gonna have to, aren’t we?” Cassandra says. “If we don’t, they’re all going to die in a few months anyways, along with everyone else.” Even she doesn’t sound as sure as her words.

  Corina’s still looking down, but she nods. Sal is holding Erica’s hand. He’s looking at her knuckles.

  “I think we have to,” I say eventually, hiding my doubt from everybody but Corina.

  “Alex?” A word. Her voice in my head chases away everything else. Its sound is . . .

  “Yeah, that makes sense.” Sal blows out a breath. “But, fuck . . .”

  We’re all quiet for a minute, then Erica speaks up. “Somebody’s got to go with Alex. He can’t go under without somebody nearby to watch his back.”

  We all look at each other. I look at Sal. I can hear his fear. I hear Erica, more afraid of Sal going than of going herself. Then Corina’s sounds grow dark and weird.

  She knows who it’s going to be, and she doesn’t like it.

  The words come through clearly, like she’s speaking in my head. Like she’s my Voice, with the same nearly knowable overtones: “Jesus, not her.”

  I start to shake my head, to tell her that she’s wrong, but I know she’s right. Cassandra is the only one who doesn’t mind going. She’s excited.

  Again, Corina’s voice in my head. Again, she sounds exactly . . .

  Corina catches my eye. I’m working hard to keep myself blank, but I feel Corina notice that I’m not okay.

  “Yeah,” Cassandra says with a shrug. “I’ll go.”

  I nod. I sense Sal’s and Erica’s relief. For the first time, I wish Corina were not in my mind. I can’t let myself think with her inside.

  And I cannot acknowledge what I now know for a fact: Corina and my Voice are the same. My Voice is everywhere, in the Syllogos.

  She’s untethered.

  Untethered witnesses are dead witnesses.

  Sixty-Five

  “Talk to me, Alex.” I can’t keep a secret from Corina. She knows there’s something seriously wrong and she knows it’s about her. She knows I’m scared.

  We’re standing on the stairs that go up to the school bus exit, because it’s the only place we could have privacy where I won’t get overwhelmed by guitars if I get emotional. When. This is going to be emotional.

  I don’t say anything to her. I look away and shake my head.

  Her annoyance is loud. “Don’t you get quiet on me, Plugzie.” She’s poking around in my mind. She reaches for me, grabbing my shoulder. “What do you know that you don’t want me to know?”

  “I don’t want to tell you.” It comes out as a whisper.

  “I know that. Why not?”

  “Because . . .” I shrug under her grip.

  “Because . . . ?”

  Argh. “I figured out who my Voice is.”

  She looks at me and waits.

  “She has a name,” I say finally. “She told me not to tell you and now I think I know why.”

  She raises her eyebrows, waiting for me. “Well?”

  I blow out a breath. “She calls herself Sly.” I watch Corina’s face change as I say it. I hear her grow afraid. “Are you Sly?”

  She doesn’t say anything, but I hear the answer.

  “She’s you, isn’t she?” While I say the words, the implications press in on me. Something happens to her. All the ways I explained her absence in my self-witness fall apart in the face of the simple fact that Corina will become a hollow disembodied voice, untethered in the Syllogos.

  Her body’s going to die.

  She screws up her face. “Yeah. That’s what my stepdad used to call me, because my middle name’s Sylvia. How is that possible? You’ve been hearing that voice since before I met you, and I’ve been here with you when you’ve heard it.” She shakes her head. “Definitely was not me.”

  “I don’t know how, or why, or anything.” I look her in the eye, which is hard because I can feel what she feels. “I just know that when you spoke in my head in the trailer just now, I recognized your voice.” I wait because I can feel her digesting it. “It’s you, Corina.”

  “How the hell . . .” But she believes me.

  She reaches for my hand. “Look, I don’t know how to tell you this, but if your voice is me, then whatever untethers me up there is gonna happen no matter what because your voice is locked in—you’ve heard her—so there’s nothing we can do to stop that from happening. But I’ll tell you what.”

  I look up at her.

  “It doesn’t have to have anything to do with what’s happening now. I could untether forty years from now for all we know.”

  I flash on my time into the bedroom with Cassandra, and I freeze, waiting for Corina to ask about what I just thought.

  She doesn’t.

  “Maybe you’re right,” I say finally. I hope the relief I feel from her not understanding my memory feels like the relief I would feel if I believed her.

  “I am right,” she tells me. “I would worry more about you than me.” Then: “You’re going to try and rescue them, aren’t you?”

  I look down, but there’s no sense in hiding it. “I promised Paul I’d come back for him . . .” She puts her hand on my cheek. “I’ve got to try.”

  She doesn’t say anything, just strokes my eyebrow with her finger. Then: “You’re going to do what you do and I love you.” She squints. “But remember that this isn’t about you anymore—what you do is about all of us now.”

  “Yeah.” But I’m thinking less about the world and more about her.

  “I still hear you worrying about me—you need to stop.” She pushes me up against the wall. “You’re the one walking into the devil’s playground, and we have no proof at all that any of your cute self survives this shit.” The words are playful, but she’s not feeling it. She’s feeling something else.

  “I don’t want to be away from you,” I whisper as she presses against me.

  She just shakes her head softly and brushes her lips against mine. “Me neither.” She pulls herself closer to me. “Where are the others?”

  We both feel them. They’re absorbed in other things in the trailer.

  In the time we’ve known each other, we can count the collective moments we’ve had with privacy and safety in hours and minutes, not days. Her body is warm against mine, her breasts are outlined against my chest. I can feel her breathe.

  I can feel her want. It mixes with my own into a nearly paralyzing web of need.

  “I think there’s somet
hing else,” she says quietly, her words slow and deliberate in stark contrast to our minds, “that we need to do before you go.”

  The thought, the feeling, is almost too much for me. I focus on my breathing, adjusting myself away from her so the pressure doesn’t lead to early disaster. “Here? Now? Are you sure?”

  She’s sure. I know she’s sure.

  We don’t use words. We undress and press ourselves close together. The warmth of her skin is amazing. With eyes closed, our bodies merge as our minds and hearts are joined in the Syllogos. As I push inside her, I feel her jabs of pain, feel her wince. She feels my pleasure. I know not to move too much, too soon, for both of our sakes. We stay still, locked together. I focus on the feel of her thighs against me, the smell of her hair.

  Slowly she begins to move. I do, too. We are entangled, body and mind, together and complete.

  And then it’s over.

  It’s hard for me not to ask her how it was even though I know. I was there.

  We hold each other and I feel us both wishing together that we would be together tomorrow.

  But tomorrow I’ll be on the road.

  Sixty-Six

  We test Corina’s reach with some of the squatters in Slab City. She has an easier time finding people in the Syllogos than I do. She’s able to zero in quickly on whoever she wants. It’s not music for her. She’s got stacks of books like a library. She can read them and she can write them.

  Cassandra says she’s got books and I’ve got guitars because it’s what we each think about. If Cassandra was connected like us, she’d probably see a liquor store.

  Corina’s more powerful than me. I feel better knowing that if I really screw this up, there’ll be somebody else who can save the Earth. She’s a better choice anyway because she’s smarter.

  The plan is for Corina to wait for us to get to Seattle. Once we get there, she, Erica, and Sal will leave the trailer so she can get to the Syllogos and then we’ll rewrite the guards. Cassandra and me will go in and find Sabazios.

  The goodbyes are awkward.

  “Later, man,” I say to Sal.

  “Yeah.” He sticks out his hand. “When this is all over, maybe I’ll see you back in LA.”

  I smile, try not to look like I’m about to cry. “I want that more than anything, dude. My Tía still thinks I’m a murderer . . .” I take his hand and we start to shake but he pulls me in for a man hug. “Be safe,” I say when we let go.

  “You too.”

  Erica hugs me lightly, barely touching my back. I return the hug the same way. “Don’t die,” she tells me.

  “I won’t. Take care of Corina.”

  She nods.

  “Later, boys and girls,” Cassandra says as she descends the stairs.

  Sal and Erica watch me and Corina, waiting to see what happens.

  “Bye, Plugzer,” she tries to say, but her voice isn’t working. Now that I’m looking at her, I’m totally overwhelmed by our feelings. “When you’re back, maybe I can meet your aunt? Your friends and stuff? Then my mom?”

  “Yeah.” I reach for her and she comes to me, leaning into my chest and pulling herself tight against me. “My auntie will love you.” I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s such a beautiful thought that I don’t want to ever lose it.

  “I love you,” I whisper.

  “I know,” she whispers back. “I love you, too.”

  “I’ll be back soon,” I say.

  She nods her head. “You will.”

  I reach into my pack and pull out my notebook. “Can you hold this for me?” I push it at her and she puts her hand on it. “Keep it safe?”

  She smiles. Warmth. “Yeah.”

  But it doesn’t feel like I’ve made my point. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “Just come back.” She squeezes me once more and pushes back. We kiss.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Plugzer, are you coming or not?”

  Sixty-Seven

  The road is easy. We make it to Seattle in two days with our pockets full of money. I use the trip to practice writing music while I’m awake. I can do it, but I end up in a sort of trance where I’m only halfway aware of what I’m doing.

  Cassandra spends the trip talking endlessly.

  She acts like she’s all in for erasing the witnesses, but I can hear what she feels, so I know better. She’s almost as conflicted as me. I don’t tell her that I have other plans—that’s between me and Corina.

  A helpful lady gave us $17,000 and we use it to buy a car. Cassandra wants to get a used Corvette that can go zero to sixty in 2.3 seconds, make four hundred miles per charge, and has a ten-minute charge capability, but I convince her to get a Cherokee instead.

  “It’s bigger,” I explain, “and it can off-road if we need to.” I don’t mention that we might need the extra room.

  Cassandra drives it over the bridge from Seattle. It takes us a bit to find the right neighborhood, but when we do, we park the Jeep across the street from where Corina and me ran into the park.

  It was less than a month ago, but it feels like years have passed. School is still in session at the high school where we stole the car.

  “You ready?” Cassandra asks me.

  “Yeah.” I lean back so I can get comfortable. I need to find the guards. I can hear the noise from the students at the school; the local Jungle is filled with their jangling. The younger people are, the louder they are. I have to work at keeping them from drowning out the people I’m trying to find. It’s hard because I don’t know the guards. I’ve never met them and I’ve never heard them, so I search instead for Richard, hoping that I can move outward from him, reading the music of those closest to him.

  I search, but I can’t find him. Paul is missing, too. I find Maddie. There are instruments around her and I sort them as best I can. There are two others that are still jangly and loud, probably Billy Williams and another witness. I mute them and listen to the sounds close to them.

  There are several others in the immediate area around the compound. They aren’t complicated sounds—the music sounds bored, like people waiting for something to happen and thinking about things that have already happened or that will happen. I open the drawer and search for the sheet music that matches what I hear. I find it. I read the next bar:

  The man is color-blind. Alan. Alan Garcia. His world is black and white but with brown and green tinges to things. Even so, I know what’s red and what’s green and yellow and purple. Everything is bright. I’m sitting at a bank of security monitors. Driveway, Long Hall, entry hall, pool deck, gym, kitchen, commons, witness hallway, dorm hallway. Nobody’s on any of them at the moment. The kids—he doesn’t know exactly what Sabazios is doing with a pack of teenagers, but he’s never seen anything inappropriate—are all in the non-monitored rooms, just like they are for much of every day.

  My back hurts. I’m hungry.

  I’m bored.

  The others? I put the question in his head to see if he’ll answer it.

  Sabazios’s private detail is somewhere in the main house—separate team. Gordon and Nick are at their stations, Nick at the gate and Gordon at the hilltop.

  I pull out of his mind and set about rewriting his tune. I do the same thing I did to the lady who gave us the seventeen grand—I write Cassandra and me into his music.

  I find Nick and Gordon and do the same.

  I listen for the others that Alan said were in the main house, but I can’t sort them, so instead I mute all the instruments at the compound. There are things besides music here. Undertones. Notes that have been held for so long that they’ve faded into the background of the song. They’re the sound that I imagine a witness in a frozen loop would make.

  And I hear something else. Something that sounds like Sybil.

  There’s a Gentry here.

  I surface.

&nbs
p; “Well?” Cassandra asks, looking up from her book.

  “I rewrote the guards I could find.”

  “Is Sabazios here?”

  I hesitate a moment before I nod. The single harmonic, like Sybil. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure he is.”

  “Richard?”

  “Couldn’t find him.”

  “Bishop?”

  “Gone.” I say it quietly, like he might hear me.

  “Okay.” She shoves her book into her bag and tosses it onto the backseat. “You message your boo yet?”

  Corina’s not available. She’s still inside the trailer. I can’t feel her. “Not yet. She’s not outside.”

  “So we wait.” Cassandra retrieves her bag from the backseat and rummages through it. I watch her, waiting to see what she’s getting. A cigarette. She lights it and cracks the window.

  Annoying.

  We stare out our respective windows.

  “I saw something about us on my self-glide,” she says finally.

  My heart sinks. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

  “Relax, Plugzer. I didn’t see anybody die or anything, but I did see something that I’ve had in my head ever since.”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “We end up together, Alex.”

  I don’t say anything because it takes everything I’ve got to keep from losing my temper completely. I can feel her watching me.

  “You knew!” she says suddenly. “You already knew!” She shrieks and pushes me. “You little dog—you’ve been keeping secrets!”

  “It’s not going to happen!” I’m yelling, but I can’t help it. “I love Corina, and you and me? We’re never going to be a thing, so just forget it.”

  “It’s seen time, Alex. That shit’s fixed in stone. You and me are gonna be together someday and there’s nothing either one of us can do about it.” She makes bug eyes. “We’re destined for each other.”

  And then Corina’s there. I can feel her and she’s the best feeling I’ve ever had. I let her flood in and my anger slips away. “She’s out.” I open the door without looking at Cassandra. “Let’s go.”