“Here I come…” Len says, smirking and laughing and pushing me down in the captain's chair. “Even the worst comedians need an audience. So watch and learn, funny boy.”
Aquilia wants to spit at Len, but Andy and the others nod at the threat behind Len's words. So we simply sit and watch as our ship slips between worlds.
* * *
There's nothing to see as you approach the barrier surrounding Earth. One second you are on your Earth, the next second on another. But that moment in between also stretches – reaches out and holds you tight, like Len on the night she first met Couran. Holds you and kisses you and whispers that you and the barrier are one forever, no matter what may happen to the flesh which, while it seems so important right now, is only temporarily in need of caresses.
As we pass into the barrier, I feel our moment stretch before us. But where before this was when the ghosts always came, this time the barrier feels empty. For some reason the barrier god stays away. I miss its laughter. How it always knew exactly which ghost to throw into my sad excuse for a mind.
Len smiles, but not the smile she gave Couran on that Mardi Gras night. Instead, it's an evil smile. A hateful smile. A smile of looking forward to all the hurt she'll do on our Earth. How she'll twist our metals and plastics and nanotech and computers against us. How she'll spin our very minds into mirrors of the anger she feels against all living creatures. A smile much like the one Andy Kaufman once flashed when his jokes collapsed in that fine line between funny and cruel. Between anger and laughter.
Inside me, Andy curses and apologizes, but that doesn't matter. Because I know Len wants an audience. As she destroys my world, I'll be forced to watch. I'll watch knowing that, in the end, all the horrors Len visits on my home will be gifted back to me ten-fold.
Len laughs, happy I finally understood her obscene joke. But as we near the end of the barrier, the laughter leaves Len's lips. She gasps as the barrier ripples and reaches for us. The barrier pushes through our consciousness and, in that push, the truth becomes so clear. The barrier is Len. Or, more accurately, the barrier god is an alien ghost not unlike the one inside Len.
The barrier god stands before us, rippling across dimensions I couldn't see even if I stood inside them. The barrier god is as powerful as Len's ghost. It's also as old. But where Len's ghost has spent an eternity killing other creatures, the ghost surrounding our Earth has spent that same time protecting life.
The barrier god wraps itself around our ship, first making sure we have no hard technology onboard which might enable the creature within Len to replicate and survive. Satisfied there's only flesh and blood here, the barrier god grabs Len and steals her powers. It pulls Len's ghost apart. Severs the creature's contact with the universes powering it. Plucks each mite of power from Len's ghost before returning to what it had been before, a barrier.
Len screams and falls to the deck at my feet. I lean over, wondering if Len is now Len again, only to see the flicker of the ghost still behind her eyes. But before the ghost can recover, all the humans the barrier has copied swarm Len.
Nefertiti, Alexander, Marc Antony, Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, Lincoln, you, me. We fall into Len, each of us tearing out a piece of this ancient evil. Each of us shredding away memories of killing and death until there's nothing left to the ghost except the body of Len, laying on the deck and shaking in pain.
And then, in an explosion of light and sizzling air, we are back on our Earth.
* * *
We splash down far out at sea, the ship rocking on gentle waves as white clouds scud a sun-blued horizon.
I pull off my suit's helmet and cut a large hole in the bridge fibers. I quickly pull Len onto the ship's outer skin, wanting to take her to the captain before she dies. But without the ghost to power her damaged body, Len screams in agony. I try to hold her guts in, but she screams even more. Knowing she has only moments left, I sit on the ship's skin and simply hold her.
The wind blows clear and sweet as I lean over Len, hoping the ghost hasn't destroyed everything I love about my friend. To my pleasant surprise, Len smiles.
“I pushed it in,” she says in a weak voice. “When we touched. Do you still have it.” I nod. I still have the memory. I can see from Len's eyes she no longer knows which memory she gave me, only that the memory had been important and she didn't want the ghost to destroy it.
“It's all good,” Aquilia says gently in my voice. “You really did save the day.”
Len laughs, looks at the sky, and is gone. I hold her as the ship rocks to the waves. As Captain Couran and the surviving crew open their airlock and rush to us. Couran grabs Len and cries deeply, her razor eyes no longer cutting to anything but pain.
We really did it, I whisper to Andy and Aquilia and the others. We really did save the day. Andy tries to crack a joke in response, but to his eternal shame comedy fails him. So he shrugs and walks off the stage into the back of my mind.
As I sit on the radiation-heated skin of our dead ship and watch Captain Couran cry, I know when the time is right I'll tell her of the memory I've saved. How Len clung to that memory more than any other in her life.
And even though I've shielded enough ships to now be free, I'll volunteer for the captain's next voyage.
Not because I care about those other Earths. Instead, I want to spend another moment in the barrier around our world. To let the barrier god and the ghosts which protect us have their way with me – to swirl in and out, to steal my memories, to replace my soul with their own essence.
And if Captain Couran doesn't accept that response, and wants to know why a free man would volunteer to shield, I might even give her the truth. That before each trip I'll be praying for Len to ghost me. That I want to reunite Len with the memory she loved so dearly.
That I desperately need to show this damn universe how the only true laughter comes from those who survive.
Millisent Ka Plays in Realtime
This isn't the way the future should be. But still, here it is. And here's Millisent Ka, born to a doting mother and father in a neo-feudal musical fiefdom, their cement-dusted house perfectly balanced between the cracked asphalt plains of L.A. la la land and the rich-fool castles on the Pacific Palisades. Never mind that those castles rise so far above everything else – hopes, dreams, reality – it's hard to remember only dirt and rock exist beneath their gilded skies, same as anywhere else.
The first thing Milli hears as she leaves the womb is music. Her dad, a musical vassal with dreams of itinerant musicianhood, plays the saxophone as Milli screams newborn outrage. Her mom, who has grudgingly streamed gospel day and night since it blew revival, mutters for her husband to stop his foolishness. But he merely smiles and fingers his sax as the midwife injects the artificial chromosomes into Milli's wrinkly body. For good measure, the midwife also slaps a pain patch on Milli's mom, figuring the poor woman needs a little help putting up with her husband's antics.
By the time Milli latches onto her mother's breast, her mom's all sighs and happiness – maybe from the music, more likely from the meds. “You're an idiot,” she whispers to her husband. “But damn, you're a lovable one.”
Milli's dad laughs and opens the window to the hot Santa Ana winds. As Milli suckles contentedly, her dad blows the notes of an improvised ‘California Dreaming' while his wife's haunting mezzo voice hums the words of that ancient folk melody.
Sometimes dreams are all people have left.
* * *
To celebrate Milli's birth, the next day His Lordship's wife – the grand and amazing Lady Amanza Collins – grants a free performance. Her edict is simple: His Lordship, ruler of the world's biggest musical fiefdom, waives all rights to his vassals' performances for one hour. People may play what they like. Debt as they wish.
The vassals are stunned. Who is this Millisent Ka to elicit such unprecedented generosity from their Lord? But the musicians know better than to question an official decree, so they sweep out their dusty performance hall and break into c
elebration. Pianists, guitar players, drummers, flutists, sax players, and acapella toners – all performing for no one but themselves.
Downloads fly off the charts. Instacritics praise the sublimely joyful music. Realtime views surge beyond comprehension. And if a few vassals mutter when the performances go past the designated hour – netting His Lordship a tidy sum in exchanged debt – well, those naysayers are rightly ignored.
But on that joyful night, Milli's parents don't take part in the celebrations. Instead, they lay across their double bed and debate their child's future.
“Maybe we should leave,” Milli's mom says, still hurt and tired a full day after giving birth. “The music scene in New York isn't totally dead, even though they're still monetized.”
“Lots of musicians starving out there,” Milli's dad says, his dainty hands cradling Milli. “I mean, here we have food, a home, good friends. And His Lordship really loves music.”
“Yeah, lovely man. Making me sing nothing but f'in gospel. What if he does that to Milli?”
Milli's dad sighs. He knows his wife hates that historic genre. But he remembers well the horror stories of the old cash world – nightmarish tales told by his grandmother when he was a child growing up in China. How one person could earn enough to buy the sky while a hundred others lacked food to eat. At least here there's work for all who are willing. His friends in those few places still using cash payments continually contact him, begging to become vassals to the lords of time-debt.
“Maybe this isn't the best for Milli,” he says, “but it's far from the worst.”
Milli's mom curses but doesn't argue with his reasoning. By morning, there's nothing to do but present their daughter to His Lordship.
* * *
Setting: The Musical Fiefdom, top of the Pacific Palisades off Sunset Boulevard. Milli's parents scrape their way across His Lordship's castle, passing obscene mixes of marble, velveteen paintings, and gened bear-skin rugs until they reach the Tonal Hall, where His Lordship and the Lady Lord sit wrapped in an Egyptian illusion straight out of Pharaoh's grandest dreams.
Milli's parents bow to the golden-encrusted Lord and Lady Lord. His Lordship sniffs away the Pharaoh illusion, revealing a youthfully slimmed body in an Italian three-piece suit. His avatar floats over Milli's parents, where the simulation scans their genetic debt.
“You're behind on performances,” His Lordship proclaims.
“Complications with my pregnancy,” Milli's mom says. “Singing too much gospel made me throw up.”
His Lordship groans as if he's heard such excuses before. “We entered into an agreement. Perhaps you don't like being my vassals?” With a wave of his hand, fresh numbers and debt demands tumble the air.
But before His Lordship can crack on Milli's parents, Lady Amanza Collins laughs and swishes her sculptured hand through the projections. The numbers cascade along her perfect blonde hair to the floor, shattering in dramatic displays of fiscal irresponsibility.
“No need for all that,” she tells her husband. “We're here to celebrate Millisent's birth, not condemn it.”
Milli's mom and dad glance nervously at each other – it's rarely a good thing when a lord or lady lord takes a special interest in a vassal. Worse, while most lords prefer to only wallow in their vassals' time-debt, these two are different. Have always aimed so damned high. His Lordship funded the initial research behind time-debt, while the Lady Lord is an acclaimed genetic engineer who helped create the artificial chromosomes which encode libraries of information alongside each person's genetic material. Many people dream of changing the world. His Lordship and the Lady Lord are among the few to actually do so.
When Milli's parents first became His Lordship's vassals, they couldn't imagine serving anyone else. But lately, they've heard disconcerting rumors. Of secret experiments. Of mysterious infant deaths. So when Lady Amanza Collins locks her gene-perfect eyes onto Milli, her parents regret not having fled when they had the chance.
“We can't thank you enough for your interest in our daughter,” Milli's mom says, her lie flowing with jazz-improv smoothness.
“No need,” Lady Collins says. “Your daughter is destined for great things.”
That grabs the attention of His Lordship. “You suspect the child might be a virtuosa?”
“Millisent Ka will surprise even you,” Her Lady Lord says. “Care to wager? Say, twenty years' debt?”
His Lordship laughs as their accountant scurries over with a portable scanner and encodes the bet into their genes. To show how pleased he is, His Lordship decrees Milli will only have to pledge an initial ten years of her life as his vassal, instead of the usual fifteen.
Her parents bow in thanks as His Lordship waves an end to the ceremony. The accountant walks over and stamps a tiny transponder into Milli's right hand, squalling Milli to tears as his scanner both downloads debt notices into the data grain and signals she is His Lordship's future vassal.
“Remember,” the accountant whispers. “If the transponder isn't removed within a month of her eighteenth birthday, and her accumulated debt burned into her genes, she'll lose that hand.”
Milli's parents nod understanding. They bow again and back across the castle's faux marble floors, grateful to leave with no more debt than they came in with.
And Milli? Milli cries because her hand hurts – and what baby's pain doesn't matter more than all the silliness which abounds in any lord or lady lord's fief?
* * *
What is debt? How does what you owe turn into what she owns turn into what unknown people on the other side of the world collect as payment while you sleep soundly in a bed which isn't your own?
Ask an economist to explain how the world goes around and said egg-head will lie about the world being interconnected. That it's a vast web of earning and paying and trickling down the line. Well forget such babble-speak. Forget money. Forget gold and diamonds. The only true payments are our days left on this Earth.
What if we could trade that time? What if the only things worth a damn were the moments we might one day live? What if each grain of rice or drink of water ticked against the future seconds of your life?
For millions of years our genes have created the lives we're meant to live. Now we tinker and rewrite those genes at will. So why not inscribe a running debt against our future days?
Maybe this isn't the way the future is. Or maybe it is. But either way, it's the future Millisent Ka receives.
* * *
Milli grows like all the kids in the musical fiefdom. She learns to play a viola donated by the Lady Lord – only ten seconds of debt per day, carefully recorded on the data transponder imbedded in her right palm – and she learns to read in the donated school – a few minutes of debt for a day's learning – and she plays basketball on the courts – five seconds of debt a game – and turns her lovely brown skin even browner on the beach – thirty seconds of debt for a day's swim – and she loves her mom and dad, which of course is still free.
Her parents teach her about debt. How to balance the accounts of her life so in her older years she'll be free. They then turn around and teach her that nothing in life is free. Milli shakes her head at the inconsistency.
“I'm going to do things differently,” she says. “Find my own way.”
Her mom and dad nod happily, remembering how they were once young and naïve like their daughter.
When Milli is eleven, a castrati family moves into the house next door, having been traded to his Lordship for the debt of eight musical families, including the kettle drum player across the street. When Milli's dad hears the loud drummer has left the neighborhood, he falls to his knees and cries “Praise His Lordship!”
Milli ignores her dad's melodrama. “What's a castrati?” she asks as she watches the family move in. She's curious because they don't carry any instruments.
Her dad blushes and mutters about a gig he has to prepare for. Milli's mom laughs and grabs her husband in a massive bear hug.
; “A castrati is a man whose voice is similar to a soprano, mezzo- soprano, or even a contralto,” her mother says. “You create such a voice by cutting off a certain part of the male anatomy.” As she says this, Milli's mom snips the air with her fingers, causing Milli's dad to blush even more.
“That's horrible,” Milli says, although she now stares even harder at the family moving in. They have a son her age, who sits in the samlor without moving. He's pale white and looks ill.
“Castrati debt terms are very good,” Milli's dad states matter-of-factly. “But if you're going to do it, you have to make the cut before puberty. A lot of pressure to put on a kid, a decision like that.”
Milli leans out the window for a better look as the boy's father gently lifts his son out of the bicycle taxi. He takes care not to jostle the boy, as if he has a hurt which, if pointed out, could only cause Milli's dad to blush even more.
* * *
The boy's name is Alessa. Milli can't play with him for the next month because he's still recovering. That's the term his parents use – recovering. But Milli still hangs around his window and talks to him, and when school starts before Alessa can attend, Milli snags him a good handheld reader and downloads his assignments.
Alessa's father talks in a sweet sing-song voice, and Milli must admit it sounds nice. Eerie, but nice. She's dying to ask Alessa about the operation, but her mom reminds her not to be nosy.
One day Milli walks home from school to find Alessa not sitting beside his bedroom window.
“He's feeling much better,” his father sings, warming up for a simulcast performance at His Lordship's castle. “He walked to the playground.”
Milli glances up the dusty sage-brush hill to the distant playground. None of her friends go there. They all know better. She thanks Alessa's father then runs to an abandoned house, where she twists a rusty rebar rod out of the dust-raining cement.
Never Never Stories Page 17
