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Life was strange for #XB421. It cared for disabled humans, making certain that they had companionship, that they had what they needed, until such time they no longer needed anything. Then #XB421 informed the authorities and was allocated to another human. Its current owner was named Tom.
#XB421 was fulfilled by the duties it was compelled to perform. It wondered, though, if free to choose, would it still perform its duties? Would it still find them satisfying? Or was that just another way of binding it to its masters? What mad cruelty existed in these humans to give it enough intelligence to ask such questions, but not enough sentience to ever find the answer?
Tom wondered why sometimes #XB421 looked like it was screaming.
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People of all kinds lived throughout the highlands of Oshana in harmony. Until the Lancasters arrived. From their tiny house perched on the highest of hills, their thunderous arguments could be heard from every peak to valley, so acerbic they were said to be able to spoil fresh milk.
Living near them definitely poisoned something. The sweet old couple, the Mitchells, publicly bickered for the first time in their decades of marriage. The Uptons, still within the honeymoon of their relationship, became cold to one another. Even Tony the pubkeep became surly with the folk who came into his establishment.
Finally, the local theater troupe, unable to hold their outdoor spring festival due to the raucous arguments, built a backdrop of the town to surround the Lancasters’ tiny hilltop home. They silently put up lights and painted blue sky into place, sealing it tight all together as they whispered carefully to one another.
The Lancasters were so busy arguing they never noticed.
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With the Mercedes vanishing into the distance, only the smell of gunpowder remained. I watched the red taillights go, my brain paralyzed on the tight rope of indecision.
As quiet as a panther, Sophie padded up beside me and gazed in the same direction. She wiped blood from her cheek, smearing it across a scar. I could feel her eyes move from me, then back out into the night. “Where is Nika?” The restrained anger of her voice told me she already knew but I answered. “The Russians have her.”
They’re from Belarus, Cheryl’s voice replied.
I did something I never did while she was alive. I told her to shut up.
Unable to look at Sophie in my failure, I scanned for Lanzo. He was at the edge of the gorge, staring down, eyes wide and hollow.
Standing in a dark filled with blood and smoke, I said, “We have to go.”
Lanzo continued to stare off and ignore me. In a few days he had gone from a tough kid to someone who had seen the bodies pile up. Cheryl’s voice reminded me that I knew what that felt like, but this only made me angry at Lanzo for reacting with normal human weakness. It was easier to listen to that part.
It was a cruel and stupid play, but we were short on time and I couldn’t think of anything else to do with him, so I said, “You still have the money I gave you?” Lanzo nodded. “Head to the Port Industrial. Find a boat. Wait for us there.” I turned to leave him with his grief.
Before I got far, though, he asked, “He has Nika?”
“Yes.” I wasn’t sure who they followed here or who shot Sartre, but stupidity was its own reward.
“Where did they go?”
“I’ll give you one guess.”
Sophie was busy collecting whatever might be useful from the wounded and the dead. She stripped off her yellow cardigan and wrapped a rook’s black coat around herself.
Lanzo went to grab a weapon. “I will go with you.”
I spun on him, bringing up my full height. “No. Go to the port, find the ship, wait there.”
Lanzo stood straight and faced me. “Non.” There wasn’t any bluster or heat in it, only cold resolve.
With the faint sound of sirens ever-present since we had left the tenement, I looked down at Lanzo and wondered if I was going to have to choke him out. This was ended peaceably when Sophie came over and took Lanzo’s hand to place his revolver in it. “He comes,” she said.
I steamed, but then let it pass. Between Sophie’s devotion to love and my determination to have him not get in the way, giving Lanzo the broken pistol was probably the best compromise we were going to get.
I took quick stock of the cars and found them, like the rooks’ suits, to be nearly identical. There was one with a mostly full gas tank and the keys still in the ignition.
I gestured Sophie and Lanzo over. “Do you know how to drive?” I asked Lanzo. He nodded.
I pointed to the driver’s side. “Get in.” I opened the rear door for Sophie, but she shook her head, moving to the front passenger side. That made sense. Blood or not, if we ran into police, she’d be the only one of us who stood a chance of talking our way out of it. I’d hate to kill a cop.
I quickly grabbed a few of the rooks’ weapons. Lanzo figured out the car while I dumped the pile of salvaged hardware into it.
“Where to?” Lanzo’s question might have been out of a dozen American movies he had seen, but his voice was robotic, with only an undercurrent of the anger and fear that must have been pulsing through him.
“To Mitnick’s. Sophie can tell you how to get there.”
Unfamiliar with the car’s power, it jumped under Lanzo’s command. Like testing a new horse, he whipped it around, following Sophie’s directions to head east.
As Sophie gave Lanzo instructions through Old Town, I took stock of the arsenal I had collected. There were a two pistols, an MP7 submachine gun, even a grenade. None of it hugely useful in a hostage situation, but better than nothing. I unloaded firearms, estimated the amount of ammo in each magazine, decided on a tactical reload, chambered a round, safety on. I knew Sophie preferred up-close work to firearms, but set one aside for her. I didn’t trust Lanzo to keep his shit together, so he’d have to rely on the revolver.
I examined the grenade as well. Short of using it, there wasn’t any good way to know if it was a replica, a dud, or something that could blow us all to kingdom come. I shrugged and stuffed it into a pocket of the trench coat.
The road bent east past the harbor, around the towering World War I memorial, and began its rise into the mountains. Everything that might have been pleasant about the drive was gone now, swallowed up by the night, transforming the hills into the shoulders of dark giants, squeezing us between them as we ascended to Mitnick’s.
I thought about the field of green, flat grass that stretched out from the road towards Mitnick’s mansion. If we drove up, we’d be spotted a mile away and gunned down before we could get anywhere. Or taken alive and things would be worse. There were the scrub-covered hills around the villa, but crawling through the underbrush could take hours and we might lose the darkness in that time.
I reached forward and tapped Lanzo on the shoulder. “Pull over.” Sophie looked at me questioningly, but then gestured at Lanzo to obey.
On the side of the road I got out and walked over the driver’s side. To Lanzo I said, “Get out.” Hoping she might side with him as she had before, he turned to Sophie. Her cold green eyes didn’t leave him with a choice. He got out.
I leaned forward to speak through the window to Sophie. “You should keep an eye on him.”
The jade of her eyes softened before she slipped out of her seatbelt. I took Lanzo around the car, away from the empty road, and met Sophie as she exited. I handed her one of the pistols. She looked at it as if it were a spider, but she took it.
While she vanished the pistol into her coat I told her, “Mitnick’s mansion is about a thousand yards out. Wait until you can’t see the taillights anymore and start walking. When you get there, wait for the distraction, then you can grab Nika.”
I made for the driver’s side. Sophie stopped me with a touch on my elbow. In the light of the stars there was the soft impression she wanted to say something. I tried to say something brave or meaningful. Instead I kissed her.
Sophie placed a cool hand on my cheek and held it there. She let out a small laugh that held back tears. I tried to give her a grin, but only managed, “I’ll see you up there.” One way or another, I suppose that was true.
Sophie managed the smile I couldn’t. “I will come for you.”
I stepped back, adjusted the weapons I was carrying, and replied, “Don’t forget the girl.” She laughed. As if there were a chance of that.
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Piotr Popov’s art was a poignant enigma, eliciting strong emotions from viewers who couldn’t describe why it evoked in them the emotions it did. And few had the same response. Some would stare at the piece for hours, others would weep, some became maniacally happy. There were at least three reports of individuals going home and causing harm: One man committed suicide in his bathtub, a woman drove herself and her four children into a lake, another went into a mall with an Uzi. None provided suicide letters or manifestos or any explanation.
Popov’s art was equally variable. Its influences seemed to range from Picasso’s cubist period to Warhol’s commercial and derivative spin.
No surprise, then, that an exhibition of a work in progress from Popov drew much attention. Every day, the piece, entitled ‘King in Yellow,’ would be available for viewing after Popov had worked on it the night before. It began with a blank black velvet canvas, then the form of a singing Elvis slowly took shape over the course of weeks.
Jacob knew that the wing of the gallery where Popov worked was off limits, but he couldn’t resist the urge to sneak in. He expected to find the artist staring dreamily at the canvas, but instead found him working with a nude model. A fantastic Elvis impersonator, if there ever was one. While he had come to see Popov, Jacob found himself drawn to the impersonator, unable to look away from the uncanny likeness to the King. He began to wonder if somehow restoring the King himself might be Popov’s art.
He shook his head and moved to leave. Colliding with a small metal trash bin sounded echoes throughout the gallery. Peter looked up from his offending foot to see Popov and Elvis staring at him. Bumbling and blushing, he stuttered out apologies and turned to the door, only to collide with a fully-dressed Elvis blocking the exit. Peter began to apologize again, but found himself staring into the dark and empty eyes of the King, devoid of color, emotions, or humanity, the face a shade of tan clay.
Feeling his foot on something, Jacob looked down to see he had landed on the blue suede shoe of the thing blocking his path.
From behind him he heard Popov say, “Well, now you’ve done it.”
The door was solid, black, and laid out on the beach. Waves lapped at its sill as if it had always been there.
Tasneem stared at it, wondering where it had come from. There was nothing on the beach to offer a clue; no flotsam, flag, or name plate of a ship, no tracks in the sand to show it had been tossed aside by land dwellers. She brushed her fiery hair out of her eyes and approached.
Moving to pick it up, she found it impossibly heavy. Only when she took it by the knob did it move at all, the door swinging in its frame to reveal an ocean below, like a tide pool contained by the boundaries of its wood.
Looking into the glassy lagoon of the door, only disturbed by the occasional wave, she saw an ancient ship, sunken and filled with treasure. Staring in, she saw every kind of gold coin, crown, and necklace that the invaders had taken from the land. She saw the ruby bracelets her grandma once wore.
It was only then that she fled, sensing the door for the trap that it was. The door trembled, waiting to snap shut.
