No, yes. A simple equation for a normal day. It's either black or its white, or somewhere in between. Choose, decide. Take a stand or make a guess. It's not rocket science, is it? Will it come down to this, standing in a puddle of sweat, a gun to my head, making a life decision, dictating my will over the will of many?
She touches my arm, and leaves me here, alone. A soft, furtive glance, then less as her eyes fall and her eyelids flicker like house lights in a thunderstorm. She left me. I touch my arm, wrap my fingers around the flesh feeling the warmth of her caress fade. That was her goodbye, what comes next is not for her, but me alone. I know it, but am loathe to face it. Alone I must, and I turn.
I can remember little of the preceding days, maybe a week. They pulled me from my berth, yanked the wires from my shaved head and set me upright. It was hazy, coming up from my séance, and the figures were tall, strong, shoving me from place to place, cleaning, dressing. Without knowing how, I found myself reclining on a couch in a fresh robe, a cup of tea in my hand. Sipping, foam on my lip. Her back was to me, a slight hand shrugging aside a corner of the curtain and a shaft of light piercing my gaze. An amazing butterfly, dripping with viscosity and heartbreaking chromaticity, adorned her left shoulder blade, whence the linen sheet had had fallen from. She had one foot wrapped haphazardly behind an ankle and then her head tilted on a fine, porcelain neck to rest upon her shoulder. I heard a sigh, then she turned.
“Oh,” she said, seeing me seeing her. I set down the cup and wiped the back of my hand across my wet mouth. “So, are you with us now?” She pulled the sheet up and made her way to my couch, crossing in front then sitting down. As the lucidity returned, I remembered her, at least the memory of her. My assistant, handler, gopher and lifeline.
“You're like an old bag of bones,” she said. “Do you want me to cut your hair? It's getting...” she made a face. I probably needed a shave as well.
I studied her face, the raised eyebrow, and my gaze fell to the sheet that covered the butterfly tattoo. Its wings had been bright, fantastic, but its head was one of a small child, perhaps a porcelain doll. “Leave it,” I said, then reached out to her and flicked the sheet away from her shoulder. It fell off revealing white skin and the sheen of moisture. I felt like grasping her and twisting her body around to prove my memory correct. She pulled it back and jumped up.
“Get dressed,” she said as she crossed the room and disappeared through a doorway. She left me there, sitting, trying to recall her name.
–
My last memory was of her shrouded, we were in a foreign land and our communicators had frozen. Eliza...was her name. Here, in this place at least. With our goggles on the sentients here may as well have been twelve foot tall and naked, wearing the heads of an antiquate bestiary. We couldn't begin to know their intentions, having never seen or heard of them before, or since. Eliza toggled the randomizer and we reset to Home. I wondered for a moment if we would reach out again, across the immense divide. If we can, will we see them for what they are, or as a blur in a cloud of images?
“They're better off left alone,” she says, Eliza, coming into the room dressed now. She puts a foot up onto the coffee table and bends to tie up a shoe, then the next. Her hair flops loosely over her face but her fingers know the trick and have the boots laced up in seconds. “We've plenty of day left, gear up old man, we'll be on our way.” Eliza, all business. She's always been one for keeping on schedule.
I grab the unit she tosses at me and turn it in my hand. The lights are all blinkity. Holding it to my ear I thumb the slide and frown. “Did you do a diagnostic on this thing? What happened back there?” A downed com-unit could have meant our deaths. Thankfully the override had worked and brought us back. “Those...things. They were huge. Damn it,” I curse and snap the com onto my sash, but I leave it at that. It's done.
“The basement heads can't figure it out,” Eliza answers. It's moot. “Fuck it, their heads are screwed on backwards, you know that. Don't know a plug-in from ass. Put it out of your mind. We've work to do.”
“Cripes,” it's all clear to me now. We're the front line, expendable. I may be the lead, but Eliza's the crack and snap. “Okay bitch, let's go get ourselves murdered.” She just smiles, wickedly, and gives me the thumbs up. It's the same every time, a little 'welcome back, now pull yourself together' routine. We tether, remotely of course, and I toggle.
–
A swirl of lights, woman and her child, another mass of swirling lights. The show is synchronous, but in processing I try to discern the images; are the swirling lights identical? Is that possible? A woman, a bear – something like a bear – playing music, some creature exercising or operating machinery, more random women; some unclothed geometric shapes. They're red, a Gothic painting, cartoon birds, broken pipes spilling black ichor.....
There is no telling where the randomizer will land us. Eliza thinks the images that flood our bulging skulls are more subconscious then extraneous input. I'm not sure, but I lean toward the external. Either way, the impressions are beginning to mould my brain. Nothing strikes my fancy, but I concentrate and gravitate toward the red geometry. “Maybe,” whispers Eliza ethereally. A bank of clouds begin to part and I wave my symbolic hands through the mist. “Here we go,” I whisper and zero in. Eliza takes aim and shoots, feelers land and she hauls us in hand over hand. “Stand by for soft landing,” she chants, I laugh; there's never a soft landing. We're standing on a beach. My feet are dry but I feel the pressure of the lapping waves, sand slipping around my ankles, sucking the fine particles around my imprints into the swirling expanse. She's twenty yards away, laying face down in the surf.
“Eliza,” I cry out then surge forward, but even as I move I can see her pushing up from the wet sand and sucking in air. She shakes her head, whipping her hair, and the sand mixed with pulpy strands of vegetation flip away. I kneel into the beach and pull her up into a kneeling position. Eliza gasps.
And pushes me back. “Elucidate,” she barks. All business. Okay. Even as I pull the com-unit up I do a visual. There's nothing on the beach, but I can't see beyond the heavily vegetated dunes to our left. Eliza rolls onto her side and lays back into the sand. The waves gently lap at her suit, but that and our microsalve lotion protect us from any foreign particulates.
Nothing. “Obfuscate,” I say, getting a dirty look. “Alright, nothing according to sensor readings. Not within readable distance. We're alone.” I stand up and face the water. “It's an ocean,” I can see nothing but water fading to the horizon. Can smell the brine, hear the surf gently rolling in and out.
She pushes up to her elbows and puts out a hand. I pull Eliza up and she stamps on the sand. “It's no day on the beach, slugger.” Eliza makes notes on her com-unit. She looks up and I can see the beginnings of night as a dome of stars alight in the eastern quadrant. She holds up her com and it flashes, makes the computations. “We're nowhere,” she says, reading the result.
According to randomizer theory that's not possible. I say as much. “Give it time to cycle. We can't find nowhere from a distinct point,” and for sure we can't get somewhere from nowhere, not knowing left from right, up from down. Eliza snaps another picture. It would be quite something if we had somehow stumbled upon the unknown domain, and lived to tell.
Eliza wrinkles her brow and spits. “Those assholes pizzled these coms. When we get back I'll kick their balls through the roof of their mouth.”
Yeah. “I'm going to weave their intestines into a fruit basket and feed it to their syphilitic whore girlfriends,” I counter, but it doesn't help the situation. My com fares no better, and I set up a continuance field then strap it onto my sash. “The basic functions seem to work. More importantly, it's warping our forms to the environ,” so we won't seem out of place to indigents, not at first glance.
The light is fading now, rapidly, and we haven't begun to set up a perimeter. From 'nowhere' we can't exactly take flight. The randomizer could cook the coordinates further, make it even harder to backtrack. No, we'll have to bivouac and sort it all out in the morning. And as soon as the com-unit processes the grid we'll probably have a better idea of our surroundings, hopefully get some exploration notes. “We can't set up here. Com is computing, but not enough data yet. Doesn't quite have a handle on the tides yet...” Eliza taps at the screen.
Nothing for it. I move up the beach and lower myself against the dune. The grasses here are dry and rustle against my suit. I pull my cowl up and stretch out, then pat the sand at my side. “I saved a spot for you.”
–
I wake, half dreaming, expecting her to be snuggled in, close to my back. But I'm alone. The blankets are disheveled and my right arm aches from the pressures of my sleeping position. I sit up and stretch it out, rubbing out the pins ans needles. “Eliza,” I begin.
My eyes are adjusting to the light, but everything by the curtains appears as negative relief. Swinging my legs over the edge of the mattress I try to assimilate, rub my eyes and blink rapidly. I rise and move over to the couch; a cup of tea sits beside it on a little table, steam curling up off the swirling foam. Soon I find myself there, pressed into the cushions, staring down at my boots, a gloved hand wrapped around the mug.
Am I missing something here, my mind feels like hieroglyphics – I can't translate my surroundings. The door opens and someone walks in, but I can't tell her from the Madonna wearing a cape. The com on my belt squawks and I retrieve it.
“Wake up.” I feel a boot in my ribs and groan, but in an instant I'm sitting. Eliza pulls me to my feet, she's holding the randomizer, her thumb poised above the toggle. Around us meander a troupe of creatures, a motley bass-ackward conglomeration of hideous malformed beasts. Some kind of truncated limbs dangle from bulbous bodies, devoid of noticeable heads. They seem to lean down to sand, shuffling, snuffling grotesquely, while dribbling grit trickles and sputters out their asses. “Let's move out, slowly,” she leads me zigzagging through the wandering monsters. At least the continuance field is working properly – the things take no heed of us, probably mistaking us for more of the same.
The light of the rising sun is snaking through the grasses that sway over the rising dunes and Eliza leads me from the troupe. My com-unit is taking notes as I hold it behind our retreating backs. She is looking forward however, assessing the land ahead and to all sides. “Eliza, slow down,” I say, but feel as if I'm dawdling. She turns sharply and parts the vegetation in a sparse patch. My feet are leaden and I can't keep up. On all sides appear crystalline figures, mobile humanoids donning the headdress of familiar shapes. A womanly shape rises, her face obscured by a star-field of skin hugging plastic, small translucent ears poke through golden brows and wave like the feathered tresses of a night moth.
Suddenly we're surrounded, their costumes are so diverse our com can't engage. We stand alone in our human forms, naked to the eyes all around for what we are – strangers in a foreign land. Eliza toggles the switch.
–
Once again I am sitting on the couch, or one just like it. The cup in my hand is too hot, but I just now notice and quickly put the drink down, rubbing my scorched fingers together and softly cursing. A door opens and Syrus Flood comes in, takes the seat across the room and leans forward, the white coat falling open across his knees. He looks into my eyes.
“Daniel, are you ready to go on?” he asks. There is a com-unit on his belt.
I don't know if I can continue, even with a thousand soldiers pushing me from behind. I look around the room, begin to see shapes looking out at me from the folded curtains and shadows. Images of fire begin to cloud my senses, a girl kneeling in a field, beseeching the heavens. “Is that thing on?” I gesture to his sash where the randomizing blinks. Of course it's on... There's a fish floundering, tossed by currents, or is it a saucer floating in a palaver of galaxies? I'm reeling. Syrus opens his mouth and spews flowers like an epitaph. A Wisconsin farm blanketed in January...robotic babies dusting the floor...reposing nude...many men wearing a single mustache.
“Daniel!”
She's dead, she's alive. She's a construct.
Behind me I hear a sound, the creak of a door where none existed moments ago. Eliza walks in, suited up, her com gleaming on an acrylic sash. She crackles with interference, then reassimilates fully. Her finger, seemingly, solidly, brushes my arm and I reach up to feel the warmth of her touch. The tingle of a lingering...
“I'm waiting,” she mouths and I stand reluctantly, joining her, and we vanish together into the void.
I couldn't decide what to dress as this year, as willow insists on a masked ball. I've got this crazy elephant head, and the trunk is great as it will hold a wine glass and leave the hands free for other stuff...but this being an election year I thought to stay away from anything even remotely political...Drinks and politics don't mix, and Glenn is always about with a sword or muskets...
An empty Box on wheels is always a good idea...I guess my date could pull me around and feed me drinks and cookies through a hole.
In the end I've decided to come as an Octopus...that way my many hands will confuse the multitude of guests and nobody will be able to guess which one is Dinosaur Hand. He'll like that...a lot!
