Skyglass: Chapter 2

PHOENIX

That morning, just after Moss departed, I took one of his little-used kitchen knives and sliced my tongue open so I could spit boiling saliva and blood onto his bathroom tiles. It did the trick–his vomit vaporized quite nicely, and warped the floor into a scorched mess of melted, red-stained bioplast.

With that accomplished, I perched myself on the edge of Moss’s kitchen counter to eat breakfast, hot from the eater-heater, pondering on my fresh state of affairs. My new flea-of-a-roommate hadn’t taken so well to the revelation of my secret–that much was obvious. And while I had no intention of making vomit-incineration a daily occurrence, his refusal to suspend his disbelief might come in handy. Maybe he’d convince himself I was just a figment of his starved mind. If that were the case, at least I wouldn’t have to worry about him blabbing about me to his friends–assuming he had any.

Either way, Moss was stuck with me. He was quiet, and self-obsessed, and for now, that was all that mattered. I crumpled the empty food bag, dropped it in the sink, and opened the refrigerator to retrieve the shirt and jacket I’d borrowed from his bedroom floor (none of his pants fit, but I didn’t mind sneaking around in the super-sexy makeshift loincloth I’d made out of a pillowcase). The refrigerated clothes were chilly, but I didn’t mind. They’d been the cleanest items I could find the day before, and I’d already learned that though Moss avoided many things, his fridge squatted menacingly at the top of that list–which made it the perfect place to hide things. Going out naked would undoubtedly break my cover–after all, my poppers were still out there, panting for my presence, lost and terrified without my gnashing smile to guide them and keep their blood sugar high.

Outside, it was raining. I pouted at the sky, but pressed into the city nonetheless. A little wet wouldn’t put me out, though it could dampen the spiky exuberance of my hair–which made me mourn the unfortunate destruction of my buckle-on hood for yet another reason. I preferred to keep my hair dry as kindling, sure, but I also needed something to hide my face. For now, Raith’s misty haze would do just fine, so long as I clung to the plentiful dark corners of the dreary city.

Patricide was the most important entry on my to-do list, but to my despair, there were other things that needed doing before I could move forward: I needed some sort of hat to replace the hood, and food to fill the giant emptiness of Moss’ kitchen. And so, for the first time since running from my bubbleship, I gave my embedded com a boot in the ass.

Once it was awake, I made it find me something cute and eclipsing to stick on my head. I browsed the skullwear of a dozen boutiques before deciding on an elegant helmet fitted with five swooping golden horns, its shell made of pearly translucent chrome. Using one of my many anonymous aliases, I dialed up a courier and told them to deliver it to me, in the ally where I was crouched, safe and out of sight.

***

I knew something had gone horribly wrong when three heads peeped around the corner of my hiding place. I scowled at them from the alley’s murky shadows. I’d never see them before in my life, but I immediately recognized them for what they were: poppers. They wore their telltale sparkly bodyzips with emotive bioplast squiggles bobbing from their shoulders, vibrating madly with twitches of emotive hunger. It wasn’t hard to guess what they were starving for–they ate me up with their bulging, cotton candy eyes.

A message appeared in my com’s hub: Hiya, Phoenix! Found you. Let’s play!

A needle had broken into my com; I could feel their grimy pricklers feeling around in my digital headspace. They’d gone a-seeking, probably pinched up my position from that pisshole courier I was still waiting for. Or maybe I’d just been careless? Impossible, sweetling. Oh, how I hated those rotting little pricks, slitting open a girl’s elektro-gut like a bloodthirsty digi-surgeon, exposing all the naughty things I might hide in my com–like my no-longer undisclosed location.

The poppers’ trio of high-pitched yelps ricocheted off the alley’s walls as they rushed me, followed by a crowd surging around the corner, close at their kicking heels, led by some guy wearing a helmet made of chrome and horns–the very helmet I’d paid him to deliver to me. I prayed that the goddesses of all things good and righteous would kill that courier with a horn through the skull, then looked for an escape from the dead-end alley.

A fractured window to my right caught my frantic eye. I punched it in and dove through the hole, slicing my stupidly delicate human skin into ribbons. By the time I hit the ground, though, I was a cat, flesh healed and ready to run.

Adrenaline spun round and round my bloodstream, making me quiver pleasurably. But as I scrambled through the abandoned building, I came to a terrible, terrible realization: my com was a liability. It had to go–I had to get it ripped from my head-meat. I had no other choice.

The cries of hungry poppers echoed after me as I bounded through the building. My whiskers tingled and thrummed, and my sheathed claws ached for flesh. True, I wasn’t exactly fond of being pursued by a rabid band of fannish humanoids, but the thrill of running was far tastier than cuddling up with the shadows.

I dashed from one building to the next, running my poor bitty paws raw until I found my way into the Abyss–on purpose, obviously. I couldn’t let a professional remove my second brain. I had to find some sketchy clinic in the city’s lower intestine, some place I could choke into silence with plenty of money. I did a search on my com, ignoring the incoming blip of needle-messages. I didn’t doubt they could guess where I was headed, so I’d have to beat them there. Wherever there was–because of course the sort of clinic I was looking for was exactly the kind that wouldn’t show up in a frenzied search of Raith’s grubbier establishments. Nothing specific popped up, but the search managed to point me in the right direction, at least–deep deep deeper into the Abyss. So down I fled, past shops with smashed windows that leaked throbbing soundscapes, ’til I found exactly what I wanted: a place called, beautifully and blatantly, Removal. It had a picture of a cracked-open skull shivering on the faded soul-paint of its door.

Smoke erupted from my cat-self as I shoved open said door and stomped across the threshold–panting, naked, and all too human.

The door slammed shut, cutting off the slap slap slap of popper feet and the pitched wails of their adrenaline-fed cries. Their fervor was almost enough to make me want to turn around and fling myself into their press and heat and love, to reclaim my place at the stomach-punching heights that only the top popups, those superstars of virtual reality, could ride–but I couldn’t. Not if I wanted to be all tricksterish and coy in my patricidal hunt.

I didn’t want to lose my p-com–I loved it, along with the Blowups it helped me build from the colorful cosmic stew of my wildfire imagination. My com was one of the few things that helped me survive away from the sun. Away from mother and my sisters, away from home.

But my bloodlust was stronger and tastier. More flammable. Anyway, coms were inherently human, and humans were, after all, second on my list of things I most hate. Useful as it had been, I wasn’t going to miss my com–not really. Yeah, I’d be fine.

“I want it out,” I told the woman sitting cross-legged on the front counter.

She looked at me, bored and unimpressed.

I stalked toward her, snarling, “Take it out now, sweet soon-to-be heroine–or I’ll bite off your meat and use your bones for toothpicks.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, pointing her com at the front door, making about a billion bolts lock it up tight. “Get in the dark room. Easier to keep the rotting needles out of your head.”

I followed her into the back, into a thick-walled space, and sat in the chair she pointed me to. A variety of straps and injection grips and drip lines were attached along its reclinable length, and it looked as if it had been squirted with every conceivable bodily fluid at some point in its long, miserable existence.

“You’ll want to transfer your funds to a separate, secret account before going through with all this, right?” she asked me.

“Yes, yes. And the next time I check in on it, I’ll find that a chunk of my finances will have mysteriously vanished, right?”

“Naturally. And for an even larger chunk, I’ll trade your com for a new one that can project whatever persona you like.”

“Nah,” I said. “I’m in Raith, the all-natural city, right? So I’m gonna try to stay in sync with the sweet vibe you’ve got here. No virtual projections for me. And…no new com.”

That last sentence was hard for me to spit out, but it was what I needed. The more discretion, the better. It went against my nature, my passion for orgies and other communal activities, but I’d already exposed myself. One horde of Phoenix-hungry poppers was more than enough for me to deal with.

“I think I’ll stick with secrecy,” I added, “and a hood of moody, obscuring shadows cast over my sweetest, most brilliant visage. Every popper from here to Lunabee’s Merriest Moon Trench will mourn my absence.”

“I’m sure.” The woman snorted and proceeded to arrange my new account. Once she finished the transfer, she looked up. “Now, are you wanting surgery, or should I fry it externally? It’s your choice, really. Either will kill your com pretty permanently.”

I thought about discretion. If I went with surgery, my blood might just melt her tools, and I doubted my money (no matter how bounteous it was) could keep her quiet about my fire-self. A headline like “Phoenix the Spirited Fire-Sprite Tries to Murder Her Beloved Machine” would make her far more money than grazing on my account.

“Fry it,” I told her.

She shrugged and grabbed an instrument that looked like a black wineglass. She placed it over my left ear, then slid the thing slightly upward, so its half-bubble covered the section of my brain housing the tiny machine that had connected me to the shivering, whimsical, intangible existence of my life just days ago. The shell of the murderous wineglass grew warmer, to my great approval, then nastily cold. A jolt cracked through my skull: short, precise. A pocket of death settled in my throat.

“It’s all shrapnel now,” she said, replacing her tool.

I grinned and leapt up, stretching gloriously. My head felt a little tingly, but still seemed to be the same wild, infernal place it had always been. Other than a certain floatiness, like a lovely mouthful of sugar racing through my veins, it mostly just felt like I’d temporarily shut off my com. But there was a starkness, too, like that first moment of waking up on a cold slab in father number two’s satellite–the spine-gouging emptiness of losing a mother and a million-billion sisters. It reminded me how alone I was, and that reminder was so bitter, I wished I could spit it out. Instead, I stiffened my jaw and glanced around the dark room.

“Got any secret escape routes?” I asked the woman.

She nodded her head, and showed me the exit.

***

I returned to Moss’s place wearing a scorching red buckle-on hood that I’d stolen as my cat-self, plus about twenty bags of food delivered by air barge. When I arrived outside the door to the apartment, a message scrolled across the soul-paint:

 

A Notice from Your Irate Building Manager

Dear Moss Wick,

Rent was due two weeks ago. Pay up, or you’re out. I’ve been nice in the past, but seriously, you socially stunted rotsucker, give me money, or you’re gone.

Insincerely,

Quadra Smith

 

I read it, considered deleting it, but decided my new roommate needed a smidgen more excitement in his pitiful existence–I was already giving him plenty in that arena, but diversity was always sweet.

I tipped the barge driver, who’d been waiting awkwardly behind me, then brought the groceries into the kitchen. I stuffed the freezer full of lentil burgers, goat steaks, and beef-flavored chomp’ems; I filled Moss’s fridge with blocks of delicious creamy cheese, eggs, bouquets of kale, and a gigantic carob-and-salted-caramel cake. The cupboard doors were so gorged they wouldn’t shut, overflowing as they were with all sorts of wonderful salty carbohydrates that would hopefully encourage my wretchedly starved roommate to stick something in his mouth.

Once I finished fattening up the kitchen, I stripped out of my clothes, changed into my cat-self, and perched on the counter, tail twitching, to await Moss’s return.

Proceed to Chapter 2, page 3–>