by Shilo Jones
“Couple things you should know.” Clint slips a set of matte-black brass knuckles over his fingers. “One, the house is alarmed. So we’re quick about it. Not panicky, but quick. Two, father fucked up. But he has a teenaged son. Simon. Plays hockey. Big kid for his age. Dad’s a nothin’ lawyer who overstepped. But Simon…you know? Teenagers. Hot-headed.”
Clint asks for the time.
I tell him eleven seventeen in the p.m. Way too early for night-work. Three thirty’s the sweet spot. “Should wait a while.”
Clint runs the knuckles over his lips. “Nah. In this fucking wet?”
On the move, sprinting across the lawn and around the covered pool. Clint’s two hundred twenty pounds of night terror smashes into the patio door at full speed, ripping it from its hinges. Glass shatters. The sound shoots fire up my legs, through my groin, into my heart and head, gets me feeling I’m exactly where I need to be, stars aligned, destiny? Here in the mountains we have ten, maybe fifteen minutes before the cops arrive. Plenty of time. Eons.
I leap inside the house while Clint brushes broken glass from his forearms. Lilac hairspray fills my nose, not from this mansion but from the one twenty years ago, makes me gag, smash the SAP through a neat-o glass sculpture. Race across a cavernous open concept main floor and up a flight of stairs three at a time despite my leg killing me, BLOODFIRE, swinging the SAP into walls, leaving head-sized holes. A landing, right turn, another flight of stairs. Someone’s screaming. Panic. Horror. Screaming terror in their mud huts in Afghanistan, screaming terror in their mansions in Vancouver. Night sounds, bloodletting, trespass. THIS IS OURS AND OURS ONLY. My brother roaring behind me. We kicked down the doors of their huts and made their women scream. We threw flash bangs in their huts and blinded the enemy—
Top landing, sitting area, marble floor, fancy-ass white leather armchairs every rich prick owns overlooking double-height windows facing the city and there’s still a war on, a ragged bit of metal ripping through flesh. Light spills from beneath a door at the end of the hall. I’m tearing smirky contemporary paintings off the walls, art that says nothing, risks nothing, has no conviction. Clint shoves past me. Bedroom door swings open. LOOK AWAY. Desk-jockey lawyer wearing pyjamas with baby-blue sailboats, makes me laugh-scream. Clint’s roaring down the hall. A goddamned bull, head tucked low. An armoured vehicle ripping through the desert and the LIGHTROAR, please help me, we called it down like gods—
* * *
“Still on point, Marky.”
I shrug, but it’s nice to hear. Tuck the SAP in my pocket, step over the kid named Simon, slip into the bathroom. Flick on the light. Look at myself in the mirror, black balaclava, featureless face, everyone and no one, YOU MADE ME AND NOW YOU WANT ME GONE, spit in the sink, realize I got more than that, hurl in the toilet, flush, lilac stink clears a bit, rinse my mouth, find a bottle of Pine-Sol in the cupboard, consider guzzling it and hanging myself with the waist-belt from the kid’s bathrobe, decide Clint would bust in and fuck it up and besides I got a goal, a purpose, and then I’m out. Bathroom’s full of teenager shit. Products, I dunno. Hair gel, avocado skin cream. Nothing catches my eye. Disappointed, I stagger down the stairs behind Clint, trying not to limp too bad. The wife’s on the phone in the master bedroom. 911. Screaming. Hysterical. Totally standard.
Make our way to the kitchen. A gas stove so large it deserves the word range. Clint wraps a hand in his wife-beater, opens a fridge made to blend into exotic-wood cabinetry, pulls out two beers. Hipster microbrew. Only the bestest for these folks. Knock the cap off against the countertop, drink the motherfucker in a gulp, drop the bottle, listen to it shatter, think about Inspector Gadget, my favourite cartoon growing up, those telescoping robotic arms, grab another beer, tune the wife’s screaming out, what can I steal from this shithole, decide I’m feeling not bad.
“Sick crib,” Clint says, slipping the knuckles into his hoodie. “Cheers.”
“Cheers. Gangster crib.”
We clink bottles. Clint hurls his empty across the house, into a glass fireplace in the living room. Poof! It’s a trippy fireplace, sixties-style oval-shaped, looks like it’s hovering above the floor, a real conversation piece. There was a time, not long ago, when we believed we would colonize the moon. Travel to the stars. When we believed robots would labour in our stead and the future looked—
“Simon Bryant.” Clint reaches for another beer. “What a dickbag name.”
Living room’s painted white. Hurts my eyes. Only colour is from a huge painting on the I guess it’d be the north wall, some abstract thing, geometric but with flashy Day-Glo oranges and yellows that make me think of a nineties snowboard jacket. The woman’s still shrieking, the sound echoing and crashing through the room and Clint slides a ten-inch chef’s knife from the oak butcher’s block, Kasumi, honed piece of steel.
“Nice blade,” I say, admiring. “Good hand?”
“Decent weight. Not too flimsy. Selfie, dude.” Clint holds up his phone, leans against the counter. “Get in here.”
I down a second beer, step beside my brother, try and ignore the wife but the sound of her sets off a warning beepbeepbeep and with each beep there’s a red flash behind my eyes like from staring directly into the sun—
Clint brandishes the Kasumi. “Hold the SAP so we can see it.”
“To the happy family,” I say, laughing, trying not to throw up in front of Clint, the kitchen shaking and trembling or maybe it’s me?
“Here’s to family, period.” Clint snaps the selfie, lifts the Kasumi so the blade’s against my neck, and I try and shrug him off but the fucker tenses, keeps the blade pressed against my throat and the woman’s screaming beepbeepbeep and Clint snaps another selfie, this one with him holding the blade to my neck, which is fuck.
Something on the countertop catches my eye as we walk out. Bobby pins in a silver bowl. I lift one up, bring it to my nose. Sure smells like a lawyer’s wife. Exotic. Cloves or cardamom? Sophisticated, highbrow. It’s not perfect, but it’ll do. I’m about to stuff the bobby pin in my pocket when Clint reminds me not to take anything.
“I’m not leaving empty-handed.”
“Stealing weakens it.”
“That what your boss says?”
“I don’t have bosses. I have partners.”
“She won’t even know it’s gone.”
Clint looks about to argue, storms out the shattered door. I sniff the bobby pin, set it down, wish I’d bought some Skittles at the airport. Clint asks for the time as we slip into the woods. I lean toward the light shining from the house because the one on my watch got broke. “Uh, it’s—”
A twig-snapping sound and I’m ducked low, scanning the treeline. Just a branch breaking or the bolt of a high-calibre rifle being drawn back? Out in the open, exposed, easy target? Stare into the black woods. Can’t see a thing. Maybe the soft glint of painted metal? The enemy out there, dug in, waiting, sighting and I swear I feel the crosshairs settling on my chest—
Clint follows my gaze into the woods. Barely breathing, listening, and after a minute or so my brother gets impatient, says fuck it dude there’s nothin’ there.
“You didn’t hear anything? Like a rifle?”
“Maybe an animal?”
“No.”
“Didn’t hear nothing. Relax. That was slick. Plenty of time to piss in the pool.”
Carl “Blitzo” Reed
Countdown to something special. Seated in my sweet-ass monochromatic Tesla Roadster a few blocks from Naam. Rain sounding rainy on the windshield. Inside, ensconced in black calfskin grown in test tubes—no animals harmed—I’m mostly invisible to passersby. It’s cold enough to see my breath, but comforting to know I remain warm on the inside.
Holdout’s pouting. Rubs his whiskered chin against my leg, tells me he got cold waiting for me to wake up, says he felt excluded locked in the car while I was out socializing, says I need to include him more, asks if I’m embarrassed of him. I say you’re a pig, be glad I don’t stuff an apple in
your mouth and fire up the grill. Holdout sniffs, calls me an anthropocentric reprobate, says my species is in decline, says he’s thinking of organizing, asks if I realize my advancing years have spawned a pussy-footed Canadian conservatism, says the nice thing about Yanks is at least they’re genuine assholes, says the only thing worse than an asshole is the guy riding the asshole’s coattails and feeling superior about himself. Then the pig pivots his rhetoric, gets personal again, asks what I’m afraid of in the near term, mentions phoning my wife, hits me in a sore spot.
“Heather? Do I have to? And hey, I left you a warm blankie. Where is it?”
“I ate it,” Holdout answers, spiteful. “Should I talk about your wife some more?”
Then I’m like, “Never mind, where’s my rig, or did you eat that too?”
“How was your meeting with Michael?” Smarmy, flinging two hooves on the dash, in my face like he owns the joint.
“Crystalline. Are you current with the new tech? Seriously indispensable this or that.”
“Wondering how you lived without it?”
“Totally. Wondering how I lived without it in advance of owning it.”
“That ache.”
Scratching under the seat for my rig: “Everything improved. Always and forever.”
“You’re not getting any better though, hmm, Carl?”
Holdout grins in a way that makes me whimper, “Please don’t eat me?”
“What? You need to see me for me. Your one true friend.”
“I’m sorry. The fear bubbles up. A certain light. A stomach growl or ambiguous gesture. Can I buy you a protein bar?”
“You should get out,” the pig says, suddenly serious.
“This is my car.”
“Out of Green Lead. Trust your gut. Disband. Disavow. You guys are old news.”
“You’ve always been jealous.”
Holdout snorts. “Of Zenski? Pernicious bean counter. Leg humper. Who needs ’im?”
I’m silent, listening to the rain, and after a few breaths Holdout says he’s afraid of people who have all the answers and I say me too, me too and that seems to satisfy him because he nuzzles close, rests his head on my thigh, says we’ll pull through, we’ve been through worse, and I watch rain track down the window, glad for the company, feeling bolstered but still worried that the starving pig plans a coup, schemes to eat me alive. I ask him why he sounded so dire when he told me I should get out of Green Lead, tell him his tone gave me the jitters. Holdout shrugs, which is more of a neck than a shoulder gesture for a pig, says isn’t it clear, can’t I sense what’s coming, and when I ask what, he closes his eyes and snuffles to sleep.
Hidden in the patent-protected insides of this vehicle is a tiny mechanical part, no bigger than my pinkie, machined to atomic tolerances, an integral piece of the whole. I’ve forgotten what this part is called, so I call it the Nugget. And because of the Nugget this vehicle operates without sound or blood oil, and because of the Nugget I can afford this vehicle. The shape of nature is a secret I’m sworn to keep. There is justice, but only for the initiated. Green Lead’s first investment triumph is buried in my Tesla. My only and—I will not say—final triumph.
My stomach churns. Pet Holdout to calm myself, feel his leathery pink skin shudder as he snores, count piggy freckle constellations. I’m forcing a delay. A gulf of time opened between having and not having. My rig’s under the seat. Sweating? Cold shakes? Pain is essential to a meaningful life. Those fortunate to live pain-free have to invent ever more unlikely sources of such. The radical decentring of suffering. How long since we’ve had our basic physical needs accounted for? A century, give or take, depending on what part of the world a person hails from? That’s nothing. An evolutionary instant. And who knew? That attaining physical security would be such a problem? Who could predict—futurists, soothsayers—who could predict that what comes next, in absence of a desperate lifelong struggle to be fed, clothed, housed, not eaten alive, properly fucked…who knew that what comes next isn’t necessarily happiness, fulfillment, but rather—
A computer chip stitched to your privates?
Maybe the pig is right. A so-called sentient species that can’t tell if it’s in rapid ascent or irreversible decline. We asked, and so what if we don’t like the answer.
I decide to up the self-inflicted pain ante; phone my wife.
Eventually Heather Elizabeth Reed, age forty-four, loving wife and mother, careerist master of political mindfuckery, embattled minister of the environment for the province of British Columbia, answers. We stammer at each other, interpreting marital moods and signals, then inquire about one another’s day. I believe I tell her I feel like a stoner kid scribbling lyrics to a love song and reading them in the morning, sober and crestfallen. Heather responds by asking if it’s raining even though I know she can hear torrents drumming on the roof. Fact checking. Confirming a hypothesis. She always was the practical one. Competent in a mechanistic, nut-shrivelling way that leaves no room for error, spark of creation, basic human uncertainty.
In other words, back when we occasionally slept in the same bed, I woke up convinced my wife is a living manifestation of my fear of machines. A very advanced robot. Soft on the inside, somehow. But in all things I remain a skeptic, and I think my wife’s murky-soft interiors held me from murder. Either that or I love her.
“Our daughter will be here soon,” I say, with effort, focusing on the Tesla’s gorgeous steering wheel. Sexual organs should be so pretty. “Spring break. I remembered. Did you?”
A prolonged pause that serves as an answer. I’m scrabbling for my rig. Marvellous that I can always count on domestic silence to crumple my will. Holdout wakes up, gets involved in the search, roots around the seats. “A pig’s nose is very sensitive,” I tell my wife.
“Heavens fuck, Carl. This could’ve waited. It’s almost midnight—”
“Mind Night?” Holdout whispers, wide-eyed. “Heard of that program, draconian, psionic experiments done on—”
MIND KNIGHT.
“Uh, Heather? Mind Knight? Cortextual Cavalry? I feel your signal! Did you run an electric current through an iPad immersed in a jar of sourdough starter, take it out, hit I’m Feeling Lucky, utter the magic words? Cuz I’ve heard that sometimes works? Heather…I almost hear you…across vast space-time distances—”
“It’s called a cellphone.”
“I’m clairgustant,” Holdout brags. “I can tell how someone died by scarfing the spirit residue of their last supper. Usually I just taste myself.”
“Holdout, shut up! Heather, wait a sec!” Reach in the glove, find a flashlight, hold it an inch from my face, close my eyes, turn the light on and off, aiming for eight pulses a second, constructing a DIY Dream Machine, arcing Slater-sexy through rolling alpha waves. “Whoa! Heather! I’m opening my mind field to you. Minister of the environment? Ha! That’s my girl! I shoulda known you’re infiltrating some twenty-first-century corporate-state MKUltra, not only henpecking poor people about recycling etiquette. Okay, let’s do this. I’m game for anything, but you know me, last minute willies, kinda freaking—”
“Carl? What’s that clicking sound? What the fuck are you doing? And is someone with you?”
“Not…right now?” Finger getting tired from pressing the flashlight button, managing only two or three flashes a second, way too slow to slip into the hypnagogic sweet spot.
“You wish,” Heather says, which makes me not want to screw around delaying myself gratification much longer. “I’m going to hang up, Carl. I hope you’re doing okay. Really. I’m going to hang up.”
Toss the flashlight at Holdout. He gobbles it whole, belches, puffs his belly to reveal the radiant light within, arcs an overweening eyebrow in my direction. “Yo. Blitz. I ingested the numen. What have you done lately?”
Splay my fingers against my piggy’s illuminated insides, hoping my celebrated Hello Kitty shadow puppet will silence the lippy upstart. See Beelzebub in fly form cast against the Tesla interior. Ho
ldout opens his mouth and the fly zips right in while I try very hard to let Heather hang up. But instead I tell my wife: “She’s slipping.”
“Who? Carl?”
“I mean our daughter? Hannah? I think she’s slipping.”
“What? And hey—pot meet kettle?”
Stern. Unforgiving. Not in the mood for game-playing.
“You know what I mean. At Appleby?”
Making rational sense now, fortified. Talking into the phone on my lap while busily arranging components on the passenger seat. Needle. Strap. Spoon. Multi-tasking. Components arranged in a tidy quadrant in a much larger grid called ad hoc. Holdout perches on the dash, beady-eyed, listening in.
“Stop staring at me like that,” I hiss as the light dims in Holdout’s digestive juices. “I’ve installed countermeasures to you.”
“Carl, what?”
The pig flutters his lashes, fakes innocence. “Me? Staring like how?”
“Accusing eyes! Judging! You know I hate prolonged eye con—”
“Carl? What the actual hell—”
Direct Holdout’s attention to the phone. “Shh! Grades? Heather? Grades…um…Hannah! Right! Jeesh, Heather. Appleby College? Concerns about Hannah not applying her talent. I’m…worried about her.”
“You? Worried? Why? Is your vape clogged? Hannah’s not your pet project. She’s a human being. A sixteen-year-old human being.”
That’s what I’m worried about. “Still? We need to present a united front. That’s what her…uh, maybe the fucking guidance counsellor said. And…in fact I’m disappointed by your rather distanced, um, even callous approach to pare—”
“United? Carl? Against what?”
Against the future. “Against her slipping! Heather? Family much? Hannah’s coming home. Is that what I’m saying? Will you…be here?”
