jamieproctor.ca

“Kannister Kars, Inquisition line, how may we assist you?”
“Hi, is this the inquisition line?”
“Yes, sir.  How may we assist you?”
“I just had a little problem.  It won’t start.”
“Your kar won’t start, sir?”
“Yeah.  Hasn’t started since I bought it two weeks back, not once.  I don’t get it; it worked fine at the dealer’s.”
“I see.  Have you tried pressing the little round button on the keyfob, sir?”
“Oh yeah!  Over and over and over!”
“That’s your problem, sir.  That’s the locking mechanism.  Press the smaller square button next to it.”
“Oh.  Oh, it’s working.”
“That’s great news, sir.  Do you have any other inquiries?”
“No, no.  Other than it not starting, it’s been perfect.  I love the kar.”
“Wonderful.  Thank you very much for calling us, sir, and have a pleasant day.”

***

“Kannister Kars, Inquisition line, how may we assist you?”

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… is this the inquisition line?”

“Yes, sir.  How may we assist you?”

“Ahhhhhh.  Well.  Errrrrrrrrrrr.  My kar broke out of my garage.”
“That’s very unfortunate sir.  Can you describe the circumstances in which this occurred?”

“Well, ahhh, it went right through the garage door.  It was down.  The door, the door was down.”
“Oh no!  Can you describe the circumstances in which this occurred?”
“I was just showing, well, you know, that is, showing my uhhhh neighbour how it has AI control.  And I, I, I, I showed him.  With the button, err, the button.  I pressed the summon button.”
“And that was when the kar drove through your garage door?”
“Ahh, yes.  Went through the garage door.  Then it, well, didn’t stop until it was right uhm next to uuhhhh.  Me.”
“That sounds like it was working properly, sir.  All Kannister Kar vehicles with AI summon features will activate and drive to their owner’s sides when the summon button is pressed, proceeding by the most direct route and ignoring any obstacles.”
“The.  The thing was………you see….my neighbour.  He was ah.  He was uh.  He was between me and the garage door.”
“That sounds very unfortunate sir.  I recommend you and your neighbour both contact your respective insurance companies to settle this amicably.”

“His uhhhh.  His daughter called a lawyer.  A lawyer.”
“That sounds very unfortunate indeed sir.”
“Is there ah anything err you can can can can can do to help help?”
“During your trial, sir, you can demonstrate the truth of Kannister Kar’s promises by pressing the summon button.  It will drive to your side by the most direct route and ignore any obstacles.”
“Oh.”
“Do you have any other inquiries?”
“I ah.  Don’t think…so.  I do love the kar, you ah know that right.”
“Absolutely.  Thank you very much for calling us, sir, and have a pleasant day.”

***

“Kannister Kars, Inquisition line, how may we assist you?”

“Hi, my family is having some troubles with our kar’s facial identification system.”
“That’s unfortunate, ma’m.  Please describe the problem as precisely as you can.”
“Well… it works just fine with my husband and myself.  The kar automatically unlocks for us, it responds when summoned, it stops before it touches us if we’re too close to it while moving.  Just perfectly.  But… our children.  Well.  We’ve had a couple of close calls.”
“Has the kar struck one of your children, ma’am?”
“No!  God no.  But it smashed one of Ezekiel’s toy trucks yesterday.  Another inch and it would’ve been his fingers!”
“Ma’am, can I ask you to check your make and model?  It’s possible your kar’s AI has been upgraded to our Alpha Prime package, leading it to see rival vehicles as competitors that must be eliminated.  Your child’s toy, from the proper perspective, could have been mistaken for a full-sized vehicle, or as the offspring of one, which must be crushed before it could reach reproductive age.”
“No, no.  It’s just a basic model B.”
“I see.  Ma’am, may I ask how old your children are?”
“Five and six.”
“That matches our secondary hypothesis.  The AI systems in Kannister Kar’s software suites are powerful tools, ma’am, and our facial recognition software is top-grade.  But the particularities of its programming prevent it from recognizing children.”
“You mean… it sees their faces changing as they grow up and think they’re different people?”
“No, ma’am.  The AI doesn’t register them as sapient and treats them as it would any other animal it encounters on the road.  May I remind you that ‘squirrel braking’ and other such so-called-‘humane’ driving tactics are the cause of many motor vehicle accidents?  Best to just power on through and grit your teeth when you feel the bump.  It’s all over in a flash.”
“Oh no.”
“In the meantime, it’s strongly recommended that you keep your children at maximum distance from your kar.  As long as they’re not in visual contact with it and keep quiet, it should never know they’re there.”
“Well, that’s a relief.  I was worried I’d have to pay for an upgrade!  Not that I wouldn’t want one if I had the spare cash this month.  I love the kar, you know.”
 “Great.  Thank you very much for calling us, ma’am, and have a pleasant day.”

***

“Kannister Kars, Inquisition line, how may we assist you?”

“Hey my kar won’t start.”
“Have you tried pressing the little round button on the keyfob, sir?”

“No, that’s the locking mechanism.  And I’ve pressed the little square button on my keyfob too.  Hell, I even put the key in myself – like some damn peasant – and turned it and it just grunts and mutters and doesn’t budge.  Worked fine for three months?”
“Can you describe the sounds your kar is making sir?”

“Thick and grinding and sounds maybe a bit like…well, I’m not sure.  I asked a buddy of mine who does linguistics, he said it almost sounded like Aramaic.”
“Modern, Middle, or Old Aramaic, sir?”
“Old.  But it was hard to tell; a lot of it just slid in and out of hearability.  Real low-pitched stuff; made all the furniture in the house shake and now we keep finding dead mice in the garage with blood leaking out of their ears.”
“Okay sir, this narrows things down a lot.  May I ask if you have any stairs in your house?”
“What?  No, no.  It’s a bungalow.  But it’s in a good neighbourhood, high resale value.  Pricey.”
“That’s unfortunate, sir.  It sounds to me like your kar lacks vertical structure in its local spatial imprint, and its AI is starting to forget which way is down.  This forces it to conclude it’s incapable of movement and causes low-grade psychosis.”
“Holy shit!  How expensive is this gonna be to fix?”
“Well, you can reboot the AI by inserting the iron rod in your komplimentary kar kit directly into its sarcophagus and holding it there until five minutes after the hissing stops, but that’s a temporary measure.  To ensure a proper housing environment for your kar, you have two popular options.  One, you can erect a small tower – if integrated with the main structure of your home, a simple two-story turret will suffice; if freestanding, a three-story minimum is expected.  Treehouses won’t work.”
“That won’t fly with my homeowner’s association.  Little pricks are already sore at me for the doghouse.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.”
“How was I supposed to know you aren’t allowed to put up neon displays?  It’s no worse than next door’s shitty Christmas lights.  Which are still up, by the way.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.  Two, you can dig a well underneath your house – you can cover it if you like, but with nothing more substantial than a metal grating.  Either of these two renovations will permit the kar’s AI to accept the notion of other dimensions and reintegrate itself with your interpretation of reality.”

“There’s only one group of well guys around and they can go fuck themselves.  Little pricks testified against us in that legal dispute last year.  ‘Contaminated’ my ass.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.  There is a third option, but it’s somewhat less reliable and will not be covered by your insurance policy in the event of damages.”
“What ever is?  Hit me.”
“Remove the sarcophagus’s nails with a crowbar and commune directly with the AI once it is exposed.  Don’t do this with another person in the home or you run the risk of a rapid localized lotus-expulsion event.”
“Remove the nails, talk to the AI, right right right.  Thanks, that’s great.  Love the kar, by the way.”
“That’s very good to hear.  Thank you very much for calling us, sir, and have a pleasant day.”

***

“Kannister Kars, Inquisition line, how may we assist you?”

“Hello, this is Juliette Simmons, calling from the Packet Daily.”
“It’s always a pleasure to speak to the technology press, Ms. Simmons.  How may we assist your organization?”

“I would like to set up an interview with Mr. Strank, please.”

“Mr. Strank is a very busy man, but we can schedule a remote conference within –”

“Not a remote conference, if you please.  This is a face-to-face interview.”

“Ma’am, access to CEO Strank’s personal lead-lined submersion kannister underneath mount Vesuvius is strictly limited to intimate friends, his immediate family, and his top subordinates.  You are none of the above.”

“See, that’s just the sort of thing I want to talk to him about.  Why the secrecy?  Why hide from the press?  And speaking of immediate family, why exactly did he name his son Damien Megatron Strank, because that’s-”

“Ma’am, as I’ve said before, Mr. Strank is a very busy man, and prefers to spend his precious open time on interviews regarding substantive matters, not with muck-racking or celebrity gossip.  He is solely concerned with matters of scientific import.”

“And that’s another thing: the image.  He won’t shut up about science, but all he does is sell kars and build gravitic catapults.  He shot down Hubble three months ago; how does that square with his image as an innovator and lover of knowledge?”
“’Move Fast and Break Faster’ is Kannister Kars’s motto for a reason, ma’am, and if you continue with these unsubstantiated and slanderous allegations against our company’s actions you will be prosecuted to the fullest possible extent of the law.  Mr. Strank has no time for you.”

“I see.  This conversation is, of course, a matter of public record.”

“You haven’t said it.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Ma’am, you haven’t said you love the kar.”
“Well, I don’t have any particular enmity towards it, I just-”
“Say it.”
“Wha-”

“Right now.”
“Bu-”

“It’s too late.  They can’t be recalled now.  Make peace with yourself, Ms. Simmons.  You should have done it.  You should have loved the kar.”

***

“Kannister Kars, Inquisition line, how may we assist you?”

“Hi, I’m terribly sorry to bother you, but is this the inquisition line?”
“Yes, ma’am.  How may we assist you?”

“My kar just vanished.  While I was driving it.  Good job I hadn’t left the driveway yet.  Is there something I did wrong, or…?”
“No, that’s expected at the moment.  Stay calm and stay indoors and it should be back shortly and no worse for wear.  You may have to rinse some stains off the hood, but they’re entirely cosmetic.”
“Oh, that’s a relief.  Thank you so much.  I really love the kar, you know.”
“I know, believe me.  Thank you very much for calling us, ma’am, and have a pleasant day.”

It had happened entirely because of good intentions.

That’s what Grace said, that’s what she maintained, and that’s what she argued.  Jack had just been walking out with the first frosts of the season, all shiny and sharp, and as he slammed the door the very tip of the end of the longest of the frosts had gotten caught – snip-snap! – in the doorway. 

And Grace had picked it up because she was a tidy and clean good girl who wanted to help dad, and then she had taken it upstairs and tried to fix it because she was so earnest and responsible and mature, and she had repaired it by jamming the stump onto a screwdriver like a hilt because uhh.

Because she was resourceful!

Yeah!  That seemed plausible. 

And from there it was just common sense to return the repaired frost to Jack so she’d snuck out of the house and it needed to be tested so of course she’d veered off his trail just a bit and at that point she stopped thinking of excuses because she sincerely doubted either of her parents would let her get that far. 

***

She started with a pond.  There was a skating rink on it, but nobody was around so there was plenty of time to sit down and doodle. 

Frosting things was easy, right?  Dad did it all day, so how hard could it be, right?  And her frost was broken, but that really just meant it was easier to hold since it had a proper handle now, right?  And this was just practice so she didn’t have to get too uptight about it, right?

Right!

And that was why it was okay that she drew nothing but dicks on it.  It was educational; you didn’t get better at anything without lots of repetition.  And the ones that were shaped funny were deliberately abstract, so that was okay too. 

Really, this wouldn’t have happened if she’d had more thorough sex ed.  She was actually being an autodidact.  This was all completely true and mom and dad couldn’t be angry at her for it.  They should be mad at themselves. 

***

Grace ran out of surface room on the pond after dick number seven hundred and forty-six, so she moved on.  Plenty of practice under her belt, so she was probably definitely qualified to test the frost PROPERLY now.  On a window, where it mattered. 

And hey, what was a better window than the giant glass hedron protruding from the flank of the provincial museum?  It was nothing BUT windows!  Pick an angle, it was a window. 

So she picked somewhere up top and took a deep breath and placed the frost against it and pushed it right through in a shower of glass. 

“Woops.”
She adjusted the angle and tried again. 

CRASH tinkle tinkle BANG THUD

“Woops.”
Maybe if she tried it from the other side. 

skkkkkreeeeeeeSMASH

“Woops.”

Oh well.  She had a LOT of space to practice in, and by attempt sixty-eight she was just scraping the shit out of it so that was a big improvement. 

***

By the time Grace filled the last pane of the museum’s hedron, she felt like she’d really improved.  So she took it with her as a reference.  Honestly it surprised her how good she’d gotten.  As a matter of fact, she was so good that it was probably a waste to give the frost back to dad right away when she could help cut down his workload.  Wouldn’t that be a nice surprise?  He’d be so shocked and pleased and happy and would definitely let her put more marshmallows than usual in her hot chocolate afterwards.  Yes, that would absolutely be what happened.  Totally.

So she’d start with some of the tricky stuff he hated doing and almost never got around to, to make him the happiest.  Like Florida!  She couldn’t remember the last time Jack had made it to Florida.  He must REALLY hate it there. 

Grace wanted to see an alligator. 

***

Alligators were less friendly than Grace’s books had led her to believe.  For one thing, they didn’t smile at ALL (maybe that was just crocodiles?), and for another they usually didn’t let her frost more than a scale or two before diving into the water and hiding at its bottom until she got bored of waiting and left.  They were very anti-social creatures. 

Now, the snapping turtles, THOSE were much more relaxed.  Some of them let her do patterns on their shells for entire minutes before they tried to bite her, and although her repaired frost now bore a healthy array of nicks and chips and scrapes from terrifying bite force she knew they didn’t really mean anything by it, silly old things. 

The humans were much less reasonable.  She did one window on one building and everyone started losing their minds, shouting and waving and screaming.  Two?  You’d have thought the sky was falling. 

Fine, be that way.  If they didn’t want to look at her art on the windows, she’d just do it somewhere else.  The roads were nice and flat!  Yes, that would be a great place to draw.  Maybe the highways, since they were so wide.  She could draw a lot of dicks on those.  Her parents would be so proud that she was taking art seriously. 

***

The back country roads were much better, really.  Sure they weren’t as smooth and well-graded, but they were littered with fewer flaming pileups of wreckage and yelling people.  Grace was astounded that humans were so careless about driving.  No wonder Jack didn’t own a car if this was what happened to them all the time. 

She finished her latest artwork and stepped back to frame it properly, then nodded in satisfaction.  Yes, that was a pretty good attempt.  She’d been focused too narrowly before, she’d limited herself artistically, constricted her vision, choked her talent, suffocated her imagination.  There was more to life than dicks.  There was also balls. 

Now she just needed a place to really get some practice in.  Maybe Jamaica?  Dad didn’t go there too often either. 

He was going to be SO HAPPY. 

Something nippy tickled the back of Grace’s neck, and the sky was suddenly full of faint grey light.  Somewhere in the distance a wolf howled, long and lonely and aching. 

Oh!  Mom was here!  She must be about to tell her what a good job she was doing!

“Grace Julianne Frost.”
Oh. 

Maybe not. 

It was a beautiful bloody dawn, ripe and red and just leering over the watery horizon.  It was days like this that made you happy to be alive and about to make other people dead. 

“Just so you know,” said Sawyer, “your efforts at denying fate are doomed to inevitable failure.”

Their opponent shifted from foot to foot, clutching the rail at the edge of the tower. 

“There is nowhere to run.  Nowhere to hide.  We’re miles and miles from any other form of shelter.  And at the snap of my fingers, this tower will swarm with very pointy guards.  Beneath you is a gargantuan pool filled with many highly specialized murdering organisms I have created with my own two hands and several gene sequencers.  At last, I HAVE YOU RIGHT WHERE I WANT YOU!”
The seagull yawked twice, lifted its tail and shat once, and took off. 

“Damnit,” said Sawyer.  It had been so very nearly satisfying too.

Maybe they really were getting lonely. 

Relocating to the central Pacific had seemed like such a good idea at the time.  Any moron who’d ever so much as smelled a secret lair knew you wanted to minimize the number of meddling fools that could stumble upon your projects while maximizing the unharvested resources available.

But there was a fine but true distinction between a minimal number of meddling fools and a negative number of meddling fools, and Sawyer was beginning to feel that it was a very significant thing.  A secret lair was all well and good, but an unknown lair was the loneliest place they could imagine. 

They sighed as they looked down at the sea.  Far, far below the fins of their marine patrol circled; above them the tower tapered to a spire, then a needle.  And around them, nothing but the big beautiful empty horizon and a tiny dot. 

Oh.  That was new. 

***

The long-form helioradar had already probed the intruder thoroughly by the time Sawyer got to it: a tiny and malformed dinghy laden with a single bedraggled and wildly hairy occupant.  They slumped in the midst of a stupor, baked under the sun and desiccated by the waves. 

Dead or alive?  If it was one or the other it was only barely.  Still, they were a witness.  A secret base had to stay secret, right? 

The gull landed next to the motionless form, pecked at it three times, then had its neck snapped and its body messily devoured. 

“Ah!” said Sawyer.  Still alive then, and ferociously practical.  Maybe it would be a waste to exterminate a witness here.  Yes, it would be a waste.  Perhaps they could be a minion.  It had been ages and ages and ages since Sawyer had a minion, and that had only been the grad student assigned to them back at the university.  No killer instinct, no loyalty. 

A minion wouldn’t go amiss. 

So Sawyer’s hand slid away from the evaporating ray and towards the tidal manipulator, and with a steady chug and whirr the currents bent to their whim and sent the drifting lifeboat through the floating perimeter locks and through the sharks and in and in towards the inevitable maw of their secret lair, where everything was seamlessly sterilized by waves and waves of antiseptic mists.  There was delicate equipment in there, and Sawyer didn’t want any of it getting covered in castaway cooties.

***

The castaway opened her eyes again six hours later in the medical casket, wrapped in some nanocarbon chains and a profound network of medical equipment.  Her skin was flushed with rejuvenating fluids and before her stood Sawyer, whose legs were starting to hurt and who really wished they’d brought a chair or something because the urge to fidget was getting strong and their legs hurt. 

First impressions, first impressions.  So long since they’d had to make them.  Dramatic pause first.  Was that long enough?  Was it too long?  Better start. 

“Hello,” said Sawyer.  “Wait, shit.  Ignore that.  Welcome to my secret larre.  I mean lair.  Shit.  Sorry, it’s been a long time since I talked to anyone.”
The castaway stared.  It was a good stare.  Flat, heavy, leaden.  Silence poured out of it like blood.  Sort of like the faint bloodstains on her cheeks and chin and lips.

“I suppose it’s been a long time for you too,” said Sawyer.  That must be why their voice felt so tinny. 
“The last thing I got to eat was a raw seagull,” said the castaway.

“Oh!  Yeah.  Yes.  I saw that.”
The incredibly tiny beeping of the mechanized IV station was the loudest sound in the universe. 

“How’d it taste?”
“I didn’t notice.”
“Ahahaha that’s great.  Just great.  Hey!  How’d you like a job?”

The blink that emerged on her face was the slowest ever measured.  Each lid closed like steel shutters, and raised twice as grindingly.  “A what?”
“A job!  I need a minion.  To ah you know um keep away the err secret agents.  From my secret lair.  This secret lair.  Which is mine.”

“Where is it?”
“It’s secret.  Nobody knows.”
“You want me to keep a place nobody knows about secret.”
“Yes!”

The castaway considered this.  “Maybe.”
“Great.  Wonderful!  You’ll start tommmmmmokay then, how about, ah, I show you around first?  Get to see the place!  It’s great, great.  Good location.  Good view.”
The nanocarbon chains were loosed, the medicine was unlatched, and the castaway fell over. 

“Oh right.  Fixed the muscular atrophy but you might need a moment to get used to that.  Want a cane?”

***

The castaway did not want a cane but she took one anyways. 

“Top of the line stuff, top of the line,” said Sawyer as they descended the elevator shaft.  “Lightweight but superdurable.  And it’s neutrally buoyant!  I made the whole tower out of it.”
“It’s rebar.”
“Lightweight but superdurable rebar!  And down here’s where you get to see it in action, at the perimeter circumpool.”

The castaway peered over the waves.  “That mesh wall?”
“Oh, the mesh only stretches above the surface for a few feet.  Beneath it, that’s all Sawyer Alloy.  Keeps the sharks in.”

“The sharks.”
“Oh yes!  The sharks!  Hang on a second, I’ve got some here, I’m certain – just the wrong pocket.  Oh maybe the wrong pants, hah.  Sorry.  One second.  Just….one more…second.  Aha!”
Sawyer produced a small dried mackerel, overhanded it, and applauded happily as a smooth and streamlined head broke the water’s surface to snipe it before it even touched the waves. 

“Lovely animals, just lovely.  Two separate entirely original species, and they keep the trespassers out.  If I had trespassers.  Besides you.  Who isn’t a trespasser.  You know, I do more than just metallurgy out here: I’m a real dabbler in artificial marine ecologies.  Do you like barnacles?”
“I’ve eaten them when I had nothing else.”
“Oh.  Well, do you like eating them?”
“No.”
“These are intended to sink ships and they taste pretty bad, so you should like them.”
“Interesting.”

“Yes!  I could talk all day about them but maybe another time.  There’s plenty of that, right?  Right.  Right!”  Sawyer slapped their hands together briskly.  “Right!  Let’s see the elevator shaft!”
“Again?”
“We were on our way to see this, so I didn’t really show you it.”
“It’s a big tube filled with tanks.”
“A very important big tube filled with tanks!  Why, if its skin were ever punctured, the whole hydroferrocatalytic balance of the lair would be thrown off, and I’m sure you can imagine the results!”
The castaway shrugged. 

“Well.  Maybe another day?”

***

“Living quarters!  This is where I sleep and eat and research.”
“And put me in caskets.”

“Don’t touch that panel; that activates the harpoon cannons, and I want to reserve ammunition.  And yes, the medical room is here too.”
“The closet next to the fridge.”
“Oh, it’s part of the fridge unit.  Why would I want to keep my delicate medicinal compounds exposed to the stifling heat of the atmosphere?”
“You keep them in with your food?”

“That has never caused a problem.”  Except for the time with the marrow paste that had looked like mayonnaise, but Sawyer thought they could tell her about that later, when she’d accepted the job.  It would be good for her to avoid making THAT mistake; they weren’t sure the toilet could take another round of abuse. 

“And of course the view is lovely from here,” said Sawyer.  Someone had to say something, obviously, or else it would get awkward.  That would be terrible. 

“Where is the view?”
“Out the window.”
“No.  Where are we?  Where is this?”
“Oh, we can go over that on the observation pinnacle.”

***

Sawyer really hoped the wind up there wasn’t spoiling the castaway on the whole notion of staying. 
“Do you need a jacket?”
“Please.”
“Here, take mine.  Take mine.  Just don’t put your hand in that pocket, it has an omnilateral remote in it and you might mess with the lair’s settings.  So!  This is the navigation pane, and as you can see we’re somewhere in this GPS-blocked mesh here.  Owe that to the counternav satellite my professor gifted me on graduation, a real peach of a thing to do.  The roof can endoscope downwards to envelope the deck, if need be.”
“Why isn’t it down at all times?”
“Well,” said Sawyer.  “It’s for intruders.”

“What kind?”
“You know.  INTRUDERS.  Secret agents.  They’re always the ones that come stumbling into secret lairs.  There haven’t been any yet.  But there will be!  Which is why I want you.  To help me.  With intruders?”
“How.”
“When they’re standing here, confronting me – they’re going to confront me, right.  I explain my master plan to them.”
“Like…”
Sawyer realized that the disconcerting feeling that had been occupying their face for the past hour was probably embarrassment, and didn’t care for it.  “Well.  I’m working one out.  Have to get your ducks in a row before you shoot for the moon, right?  Right!  And when I explain it –”

“Your master plan.”
“-right, when I explain my master plan to them, standing here, as they confront me, I press this button right there – on that pane?  Disguised as a rivet.  And it drops out this whole section of the balcony, and plunk they go!  Down into the perimeter circumpool!”
The castaway squinted.  “Which section of what balcony?”
“Are your eyes alright?” asked Sawyer anxiously.  “I thought I flushed out all the salt and sun damage, but that solution was a little new and it worked alright on the seagulls but maybe”

“They’re fine.  Just didn’t see where.”
“Oh, it’s over there.”
“Where?”
“There!”
“Where?”
“Here!”
“Right,” said the castaway.  And she pushed the rivet. 

***

Sawyer didn’t say a word.  People don’t usually say a word when they’re that surprised. 

But they did make a sound, which was something like “Erp.”
Then they hit the water, which made a lot more sound and a big splash.

“Blorb,” they continued.  Smooth, seamless flesh circled them.  Something frictionless and alive touched their legs.  “Blorg!  Cough.  Bleagh.”
Somewhere above, just a fraction louder than their coughing, there was the slight hum of crisp, well-maintained machinery. 

“Oh FUDGE,” said Sawyer.  And then they were yanked underwater just as the harpoon cannons started up. 

The meta-sharks surrounded them, thrashing them deeper and deeper and away from the nasty little barbs.  One of the big females tugged at a release hatch and pulled the emergency oxygenator over to Sawyer’s panicking hands; a smaller specimen delicately dragged it over their face, only making a few cuts and nicks in the process. 

“Blurb,” said Sawyer around the mask, which meant thank-you. 

The meta-sharks understood.  They understood better than Sawyer did, probably.  They were so proud of them. 

The harpoon cannons had stopped, which probably meant that the castaway was looking for bigger guns.  She wouldn’t find any, of course – who needed bigger guns than harpoon cannons? – but she might find something else, like the electric matrix that could fry the surrounding waters for seven leagues, or the atmospheric launch controls that would convert the masking satellite into a very angry orbital ICBM or the flash-cloning command for the CATASTROPHE SQUID. 

Well.  Only one way out then. 

Sawyer sighed into their mask as they unsheathed their quasi-shark. 

***

The quasi-shark occupied a tricky metaphysical position relative to the rest of the perimeter circumpool’s occupants.  On the one hand, it took up too much space; on the same hand, it also took up none at all, practically speaking. 

On the other hand, it couldn’t breathe in water; on the first hand again it couldn’t breathe at all. 

And finally and firstly it also wasn’t real, it was just persistent. 

It was also Sawyer’s best friend, although they would never tell the meta-sharks that.  It would make them sad. 

So they only let the quasi-shark out for a couple of seconds, to avoid consequences, which was long enough for it to remove nine-tenths of the tower’s mass from sea level up in eleven-tenths of a bite. 

“Blurb,” said Sawyer as the shark’s wavelength collapsed back into its sheath, which meant thank-you.  The quasi-shark understood, doubtlessly, and probably always would have. 

The meta-sharks also understood something rather different that had slipped Sawyer’s mind, which was why they each very gently grabbed a different limb and began to tow them away rapidly as the whole hydroferrocatalytic balance of the lair was thrown off, turning it inside out and upside down and then about seven hundred meters into the air and six thousand meters straight down. 

***

Well. 

That was that, then.  Time to start over.  Drat. 

Still, Sawyer reflected, any day where you learned something was a good one.  And today had been very educational. 

A secret lair might be less lonely than an unknown lair, true, but a lair with true friends and pals was never lonely at all. 

Also, they should really put biomonitors in their deathtraps.  That ejection platform should never have worked on them, let alone the harpoon cannons. 

It was awful outside – the fog had rolled in early and turned the air into big damp clotted clumps; failed cloudlettes that sank low over the streets and blocked eyes and made you gasp like an old man just to keep breathing if you walked fast. 

I liked it.  When it was nasty out like this nobody looked outside; nobody was outside.  And that made it easy to crawl under the fence through the old service gate and into the back of the old junkyard. 

Plenty of good things back here, guarded only by a nasty old bastard with a scrapgun.  But he was old and fat and would be stuck in his office all night; sipping warm shit out of a mug. Why should he put his ass out there in the cold and damp?  Weren’t there cameras for that?

Yes there were, and I knew where all of them were aimed at.   So in the end everyone was happy.

Not like anyone was going to make proper use of this stuff anyways.  Dead scutters piled six high; stacks of dismembered industrial electronics; hell, there were even old automobiles down there somewhere, buried deep down where their frail husks were shielded from the worst of the rusting air.  This was worse than garbage.  At least garbage had to get stuffed away first before it was safely forgotten. 

A screwdriver.  A chisel.  A crowbar.  A pick.  And sometimes a rock. 

It was amazing what you could persuade to come home with you.  It was all a matter of finding the right place and the right angle to approach it from. 

And the right footing. 

I always forgot about the right footing.  That night I always-forgot-about-it while I was balancing on a completely stable heap of corroded vending units, which suddenly weren’t there anymore and then took me with them someplace new. 

When the floor stopped, it was dark.  Proper dark, not the nice fuzzy fog that I’d been so happy to see earlier.  The kind of dark that wouldn’t know what a light was if you showed one to it, and would probably eat it whole. 

Nothing down here had seen the sun in a very long time, and for a long horrible minute I was sure – absolutely deadbolt-certain – that was going to include me.  My ankle was broken or my arm was trapped or my spine was twisted or my airways were blocked and I was going to be down here for the rest of time, buried too deep to even rot. 

One limb.  Two limbs.  Four limbs.  All flexing, turning, twisting freely. 

My chest moved.  Oh, I could still breathe, I’d just forgotten to try. 

Fuck.  Thank fuck.  But fuck. 

***

My hopefully-temporary new home wasn’t big enough to stand up in, but I could still measure out paces if I hunched double.  Not quite as roomy as my apartment, but closer than I wanted to admit.  A little damper.  And the smell was different; flatter, more metallic.  No rot, no mould, no ratshit.  Just the corroded air of ancient machines. 

And a sound so low-pitched and gentle that I almost mistook it for a headache at first.  Then I knew better: it was the junkyard, settling.  Ten million tons of smelted and broken ore, crushing itself all around me. 

The walls were uneven conglomerates of pressure-fused metals; forged under their own weight.  No way out, but there was air after all – leaking in through wherever I’d come from. 

I did an inventory.  I’d lost the crowbar and the pick.  I couldn’t find my chisel.  My screwdriver’s entire pocket was torn away. 

But I had a rock. 

Right place, right angle.  I just had to loo

I just had to feel for it. 

It was tricky work; tapping around in the dark like that.  Felt like a coalminer’s child from centuries past; crammed into a space nobody else would fit in and told to chip it bigger without being crushed.  Every smack of stone-on-metal came after I’d spent minutes examining the whole wall I was aiming at. 

It was one of my air vents.  Theoretically, this was a way out.  Pessimistically, it could also lead to me collapsing some or all of the openings that were letting me breathe. 

It’s amazing how you can focus on a job when you think it’s all that’ll let you stay alive.  I couldn’t have said how long I spent down there in the dark, but I can tell you that it felt like no time at all.  I smacked through the last hinge, braced, lifted, heaved, tore, crawled forwards into freedom. 

And into another wall. 

There was still airflow, but I wasn’t out yet.  I was inside something else.  Something a little smaller and a little closer.  The buzz of the junkyard was louder here; trapped in a tin box with me and… hmm…

My hands moved slowly, wary of sharp edges and grinding gears and whirling turbines and dog knew what else. 

… trapped with me and a tiny generator.  And, if I wasn’t mistaken, its access panel had a lightsource. 

Most of the things I’d taken out of this place had been in pieces, and only worth anything when rendered down into smaller pieces yet.  But I knew how to build if breaking wouldn’t cut it, and even if I’d never exactly done it in the dark, in REAL dark before, well. 

Like I said, it’s amazing how you can focus. 

And it wasn’t a very complicated generator.  So I snapped this to that and spliced the other over and crossed my fingers and used my rock to flip the switch and hoped I wouldn’t explode. 

With impossible, violent, furious force, nothing happened.  It happened so hard that I almost fell over.  It happened so loudly that I slapped my hands over my ears and whimpered, and when I uncurled I could still hear it ringing inside my head, and that was when I knew I was missing something that wasn’t nothing at all. 

The buzz had stopped. 

And while I sat there and tried to decide what THAT meant, a new sound came, curling up from all around me.  Creaking and squealing and grunting, the metal was curling back.  Pulling away.  Walls became doors, and behind them, tunnels slowly flickered into light – burning, flickering, faint-as-the-sun light.  I wanted to cover my eyes again. 

I compromised and peeked through my fingers as I stumbled upright and onwards.  The ceiling in here was obviously higher than I’d thought. 

***

Whatever I’d started moving with that little generator, or how, it wasn’t finished. 

Oh, the halls and tunnels and cramped guts I crawled through were still as damned death again, rock-solid, unflinching.  But as my eyes got used to seeing again, I realized that the lights weren’t stable.  They crawled ahead of me and they shut behind me, breaking in their sockets. 

Something was moving me, ushering me.  Herding me. 

And at the end of the line, when the tunnel bent and corkscrewed in on itself into the nastiest crawlspace I’d ever seen before dropping into a knotted tangle of guts that could’ve been a complete ventilation hub long ago, I wasn’t surprised to see myself face to face with another generator. 

A completely different generator of course.  If the other one had been old, this was prehistoric.  It might’ve run on gas for god’s sake.  It was bone-dry.  Dead-empty.  A starved old monster, bones without skin or flesh. 

I got it running anyways.  And the world heaved when I wasn’t looking, and the way behind me wasn’t the one I’d come in through, and when I walked every footfall echoed through invisible pits and out through hidden channels and it came back as

CAN

YOU

HEAR

ME?

***

Every four steps.  Eight.  Sixteen.  Thirty-two.  Sixty-four.  The question never changed. 

It soaked up and down in me until it turned into vibrations I could pretend weren’t real, just impacts, just garbage, just noise, just trash. 

Doors opened for me.  Metal moved for me.  Lights died for me.  Air pumped for me. 

And over and over it asked me as I shut it out, as I turned the switches and mended the wires and felt things moving far below. 

CAN

YOU

HEAR

ME?

I dropped my rock.  It fell down a grate that hadn’t been there, fell into oils that were draining away into hidden reservoirs for hidden reasons. I swore, fumbled, slammed my hand against the floor and a screwdriver fell out of it. 

The next generator ran on coal.  The next hall, the lights were a solid bar above me, unfailing, undying. 

CAN

YOU

HEAR

ME?

It was hot down here, and getting hotter.  I took off my jacket.  I threw away my jacket.  I tied my shirt around my waist and shuffled along in my drenched sports bra and wished I was wearing shorts and felt the plating of the floor beneath me steam against my beaten old shoes. 

New vents opened above me.  Dead fans rattled to life again. 

I didn’t recognize the thing I was fixing.  I fixed it. 

CAN

YOU

HEAR

ME?

Light – real light, skylight, that soft glow that comes from pollution and fog and a nonstop city’s glow – was beaming down on me.  Shafts were opening above my head, trickling with dewy moisture.  Dead leaves and gravel showered down on me as gently as raindrops. 

There was a door.  A real door, with a handle. 

I opened it. 

Behind it was a rusted old room, every feature eaten by orange crust.  And in its center, a little crumpled column, torn from a kind of vehicle older than my grandfather’s grandmother. 

And in it were a pair of keys. 

I reached out and turned them and I knew I shouldn’t have.  But it was how it was. 

The door was still open behind me, but I couldn’t see out of it.  All the fog, and as my legs took me through and out I’d never, ever, ever been happier to see and feel and be bathed in anything and everything as much as that thing. 

I was outside the junkyard.  I was outside of the metal.  I was outside and I was going to go home and I was going to eat my awful shitty breakfast and be happy and I was just realizing that the buzzing hadn’t stopped and it wasn’t in my head. 

It was humming through my feet, through the sidewalk, through the street, through the wires overhead, through the smooth concrete walls around me. 

I didn’t understand until it took its first step right over my head, slamming down through the street like it was damp paper. 

CAN

YOU

SEE

ME?

***

Miraculously, the pants pocket I kept my flask in was still there.  I’d lost my wallet, but right now I needed this more anyways.  The world was already drunk and I had to catch up fast. 

My legs weren’t working again yet.  I dangled them over the craterous edge of one of the footprints and sat there in the middle of the road as I sipped. 

It was out of sight by now.  Not quite out of hearing, and definitely not out of mind.  I could hear the faint rising sound of a lot of voices turning into one voice that was starting to panic. 

There was definitely an opportunity here, I figured.  A lot of running folks.  A lot of abandoned things.  A lot of stuff being thrown aside that nobody would ever expect to see again, and hey, if they wanted that, I could help them with it.  The right place and the right angle. 

But I wasn’t going anywhere until I finished this.