CHAPTER 12: More Exposition.
The morning sun peeked into the room, the smartshades only allowing the sky to have a presence, the awful pulse of The City blotted out by the dark glass. I woke to find a slim arm with sharp fingernails slung across my chest, and Erin’s warm body curled up next to mine. The sheets were rumpled and strewn over the bed, and I thought back fondly over the past several hours. Hell of a way to end the day. I reached up gently, and brushed her auburn hair out of her eyes. She blinked slowly at me, first with some confusion, and then smiled a lazy smile, relaxed and content. “Hi.”
“Hi yourself. Sleep well?”
“As far as I remember, there wasn’t much sleeping to be had.”
“Says you.” I checked my watch, previously tossed on a mahogany bedside table. “It’s ten o’clock already. We better get ourselves ready to face the day.”
Erin sighed and rolled onto her back, the sheet slipping past her body, reminding me of how she was put together, the endless contours and curves of her hips and breasts. The she frowned, and Paradise was Lost. “The Ocean…”
“What is it? Why does this bother you so much?”
“Do you want to hear a story?”
“From you? Always.”
“Well…”
…I was eight years old. Just a girl. My parents took me to The Ocean for summer vacation, the first time we had been outside The City since I was born. As we crossed the Emperor Cheney Memorial Bridge, I could feel The City falling away from me. Can you believe it? That scared me. The creeping horror of The City… I missed it. I remember scrunching myself down in the back seat, not wanting to look at the suburbs, the flat lines, the even planes.
It was the first time I saw birds… They were like erratic airplanes, with broken wings, or huge, meaty flies. I actually had to ask what they were. I didn’t believe my parents at first when they told me. I guess eventually my curiosity took over, because soon I had my face pressed to the window, and later, when Daddy said it was safe, I rolled it down, and felt the strangest sensation: Cool air rushing past my face. It was probably the happiest I had ever been.
When we actually arrived at The Ocean, I couldn’t believe it. I screamed when I saw it, half in delight, and half in terror. There was nothing there but water! No buildings, no cars, no billboards… No people either. At the time, I didn’t know if that was strange or not, but looking back on it, well… It didn’t matter to me at the time, because the next thing that caught my attention was the sand. It was blisteringly white, like glass dust lit from below, and it was smooth, with slight ripples from the tide. I ran towards it, and was shocked when I felt the grains give way beneath my weight. I turned, and saw my parents laughing and grinning. It was something I wish I could have framed…
…So cut to an hour later. I had gotten up enough bravery to dip my toes in the water, and even feel the waves splash up against my calves, before running back up the beach where the towels were. Mommy and Daddy were building a sand castle, and laughing. That was when I heard it. A sickening “thud” sound, right behind me. Turning around, I saw, half embedded in the sand, the mangled corpse of a man, mostly naked, mutilated. I screamed, and then I saw more of them falling, falling out of the blue sky. It looked as if they were falling out of the sun. I shrieked again when a pair of hands grabbed me, and swept me off my feet. I think it was Daddy, but at the time, all I could see was bodies, and blood, and the endless Ocean.
A voice was shouting at me, asking me what was wrong. I just kept screaming, about the bodies, about the gore, about how flayed limbs and gutted corpses were falling out of the sun. I felt a sharp pain in my cheek. Daddy had slapped me. He told me to stop making stories. I looked at him. His eyes were furious. I realized that he couldn’t see the bodies, even as they littered the beach, thumping into the ground, splattering the white sand with dark red blood, and pulverized organs. I think at that point I had something of a nervous breakdown, because the next thing I know, I’m waking up in a doctor’s office, and he’s mumbling to my parents about the dangerous psychic effects of bringing a City-born child out into the open so suddenly.
But my parents still blamed me, somehow…. I haven’t been out of the City since then.
Erin sat up quickly and perched at the edge of the bed. “L,” she said, “I afraid of what’s going to happen if we go out there.”
I reached out my hand, and she took it in her own. “Don’t worry. I think I can help. Just let me make a few calls while you get dressed. Oh, and one more thing…”
“Yes?”
“How do you like you coffee?” I smiled. “Mal showed me a few of her other tricks, as well.”
I stood up, stretching, feeling old muscles complaining. Grumpy old bones, I thought, as I slipped on my pants and shoes, and threw my shirt over my shoulders. Padding out into the kitchen, I turned to see a flash of Erin’s Long, smooth leg as she disappeared behind a corner to get dressed. My coat was in the living room, and I snagged a small bag of coffee beans from one of its pockets. I never go on a case without some coffee if there’s even a chance it’s going to be a late night. And yesterday, well…
As I was prepping the beans, I noticed a phone on the counter. I picked it up, and heard, “Not default authorization. Please enter passcode. D.O.D.B. 1723.”
“Erin?” I called out. “You have a code lock on your phone?”
From a room far in the back came the reply, “Well, after all that weird stuff with my cell, I figured someone might have had access to it. So I called the phone company, and they put a lock on it.”
“Yeah, but from the Department of Defensive Bureaucracy?”
“What?” Erin was at the doorway of the kitchen in a moment, dressed only in a lacy bra, panties, and a button down shirt just halfway buttoned. She was a vision to behold, but the look of panic on her face drove out any further ideas I might have had at the moment. “You mean…”
“Yeah. Government, Inc. has had total access to your apartment ever since you put the lock on the phone. Don’t say anything. Shh.” I went back into the living room, got my coat, and fished around in the inner pockets. Where is it... Ah. My fingers wrapped around a small device, and I could feel it twitching in my palm. With Erin watching, I pulled out a chrome cylinder, about the size of a tube of lipstick. I could see her wanting to say something, ask a question, but I raised my finger to my lips.
Walking back to the phone, I tapped one end of the cylinder, and gave the middle a half turn. A seam appeared at the halfway point on the cylinder, and slid apart, revealing a slip rod, jointed in the middle. The ends of the cylinder slid out, and the entire device folded in half. Practically turning itself inside out, more rods began snaking from the inside of the cylinder, which folded upon itself revealing an insect-like robot as big as a dinner plate, delicate legs and feelers moving gently in the morning sunlight. It seemed attracted to the phone, and when I tapped on the counter three times, it quickly moved to the phone and began dismantling it.
It extracted a small silicone chip, drew it close to the center of the bot’s body, where a tiny bit of phosphorous vaporized it. A few more furious moments, and the phone was reassembled. Three more taps on the counter, and the bot scurried down a cabinet and began exploring the rest of the house for bugs. As Erin and I watched, the bot quickly found and destroyed 13 other devices spread throughout the apartment. With some mild sense of sorrow, I noticed that it had found a camera in the bedroom, and quickly vaporized it. Should have held onto that, I thought.
After a few more minutes, the bot returned to the kitchen, twitched, and collapsed back into the small cylinder, which I returned to my coat pocket. Again, I reached for the phone, and said to Erin, “Ok. We’ve only got 30 minutes before Government, Inc notices that all the bugs have been erased. I’m going to make a call, you’re going to keep getting dressed, and then we’re out of here. Oh, one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
I drew Erin in close, my arm wrapping around her waist, and kissed her long, and hard.
“Bring a wet suit.”
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