He had the biggest apt I'd ever seen. It spanned three quarters of the length of
the bat-house, and was five storeys high. The spots where he'd dissolved the
foam walls away with solvent were rough and uneven, and rings of foam encircled
each of the missing storeys above. I couldn't imagine getting that much solvent:
it was more tightly controlled than plutonium, the subject of countless
action-adventure vids.
At one end of the apt stood a collection of tall, spiny apparatus, humming with
electricity and sparking. They were remarkable, but their impact was lost in
what lay at the other end.
The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla had an ocean in his apt. It was a clear
aquarium tank, fifteen meters long and nearly seventeen high, and eight meters
deep. It was dominated by a massive, baroque coral reef, like a melting castle
with misshapen brains growing out of it.
Schools of fish -- bright as jellybeans -- darted through the ocean's depths,
swimming in and out of the softly waving plants. A thousand neon tetra, a flock
of living quicksilver sewing needles, turned 90 degrees in perfect unison, then
did it again, and again, and again, describing a neat, angular box in the water.
"Isn't it beautiful? I'm using it in one of my experiments, but I also find it
very _calming_."
#
I hail a pedicab and the kids back on my adopted homeworld, with their accusing,
angry words and stares vanish from my mind. The cabbie is about nineteen and
muscular as hell, legs like treetrunks, clipped into the pedals. A flywheel
spins between him and me, and his brakes store his momentum up in it every time
he slows. On the two-hour ride into downtown Toronto, he never once comes to a
full stop.
I've booked a room at the Royal York. I can afford it -- the stipend I receive
for the counseling work has been slowly accumulating in my bank account.
Downtown is all foam now, and "historical" shops selling authentic Earth
crapola: reproductions of old newspapers, reproductions of old electronics,
reproductions of old clothes and old food and other discarded cultural detritus.
I see tall, clacking insect-creatures with walkman headphones across their
stomachs. I see squat, rocky creatures smearing pizza slices onto their
digestive membranes. I see soft, slithering creatures with Toronto Blue Jays
baseball hats suspended in their jelly.
The humans I see are dressed in unisex coveralls, with discreet comms on their
wrists or collars, and they don't seem to notice that their city is become a
bestiary.
The cabby isn't even out of breath when we pull up at the Royal York, which,
thankfully, is still clothed in its ancient dressed stone. We point our comms at
each other and I squirt some money at him, adding a generous tip. His face,
which had been wildly animated while he dodged the traffic on the long ride is a
stony mask now, as though when at rest he entered a semiconscious sleep mode.
The doorman is dressed in what may or may not be historically accurate costume,
though what period it is meant to represent is anyone's guess. He carries my bag
to the check-in and I squirt more money at him. He wishes that I have a nice
stay in Toronto, and I wish it, too.
At the check-in, I squirt my ID and still more money at the efficient young
woman in a smart blazer, and another babu in period costume -- those shoes look
painful -- carries my bag to the lift and presses the button.
We wait in strained silence and the lift makes its achingly slow progress
towards us. There are no elevators on the planet I live on now -- the wild
gravity and wilder windstorms don't permit buildings of more than one story --
but even if there were, they wouldn't be like this lift, like a human lift, like
one of the fifty that ran the vertical length of the bat-house.
I nearly choke as we enter that lift. It has the smell of a million transient
guests, aftershaves and perfumes and pheromones, and the stale recirc air I
remember so well. I stifle the choke into my fist, fake a cough, and feel a
self-consciousness I didn't know I had.
I'm worried that the babu knows that I grew up in the bat-house.
Now I can't make eye-contact with him. Now I can't seem to stand naturally,
can't figure out where a not-crazy puts his hands and where a not-crazy puts his
eyes. Little Chet and his mates liked to terrorize people in the lifts, play
"who farted" and "I'm gonna puke" and "I have to pee" in loud sing-songs, just
to watch the other bats squirm.
The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla thought that these games were unfunny,
unsophisticated and unappetizing and little Chet stopped playing them.
I squirt extra money at the babu, after he opens my windows and shows me the
shitter and the vid's remote.
I unpack mechanically, my meager bag yielding more-meager clothes. I'd thought
I'd buy more after earthfall, since the spaceports' version of human apparel
wasn't, very. I realize that I'm wearing the same clothes I left Earth in, lo
those years before. They're hardly the worse for wear -- when I'm in my
exoskeleton on my new planet, I don't bother with clothes.
#
The ocean seemed too fragile to be real. All that caged water, held behind a
flimsy-seeming sheet of clear foam, the corners joined with strips of thick
gasket-rubber. Standing there at its base, Chet was terrified that it would
burst and drown him -- he actually felt the push of water, the horrid, dying
wriggles of the fish as they were washed over his body.
"Say there, son. Hello?"
Chet looked up. Nicola Tesla's hair was standing on end, comically. He realized
that his own long, shaggy hair was doing the same. The whole room felt electric.
"Are you all right?" He had a trace of an accent, like the hint of garlic in a
salad dressing, an odd way of stepping on his vowels.
"Yeh, yeh, fine. I'm fine," Chet said.
"I am pleased to hear that. What is your name, son?"
"Chet. Affeltranger."
"I'm pleased to meet you. My name is Gaylord Ballozos, though that's not who I
am. You see, I'm the channel for Nicola Tesla. Would you like to see a magic
trick?"
Chet nodded. He wondered who Nicola Tesla was, and filed away the name Gaylord
for making fun of, later. In doing so, he began to normalize the experience, to
structure it as a story he could tell the other kids, after. The guy, the ocean,
the hair. Gaylord.
A ball of lightning leapt from Tesla/Ballozos's fingertips and danced over their
heads. It bounced around the room furiously, then stopped to hover in front of
Chet. His clothes stood away from his body, snapping as though caught in a
windstorm. Seen up close, the ball was an infinite pool of shifting electricity,
like an ocean of energy. Tentatively, he reached out to touch it, and Tesla
shouted "Don't!" and the ball whipped up and away, spearing itself on the point
of one of the towers on the opposite side of the room.
It vanished, leaving a tangy, sharp smell behind.
The story Chet had been telling in his mind disappeared with it. He stood,
shocked speechless.
The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla chuckled a little, then started to
laugh, actually doubling over and slapping his thighs.
"You can't _imagine_ how long I've waited to show that trick to someone! Thank
you, young Mr. Affeltranger! A million thanks to you, for your obvious
appreciation."
Chet felt a giggle welling up in him, and he did laugh, and when his lips came
together, a spark of static electricity leapt from their seam to his nose and
made him jump, and laugh all the harder.
The guy came forward and pumped his arm in a dry handshake. "I can see that you
and I are kindred spirits. You will have to come and visit again, very soon, and
I will let you see more of my ocean, and maybe let you see 'Old Sparky,' too.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for dropping in."
And he ushered Chet out of his apt and closed the door, leaving him in the
featureless hallway of the 125th storey.
#
I had never been as nervous as I was the following Thursday, when my regular
appointment with The Amazing Robotron rolled around again. I hadn't spoken of
the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla to any of my gang, and of course not to
my parents, but somehow, I felt like I might end up spilling to The Amazing
Robotron.
I don't know why I was worried. The guy hadn't asked me to keep it a secret,
after all, and I had never had any problem holding my tongue around The Amazing
Robotron before.
"Hel-lo, Chet. How have you been?"
"I've been OK."
"Have you been stud-y-ing math-e-mat-ics and phys-ics? I had the supp-le-ment-al
mat-e-rials de-liv-er-ed to your apt yes-ter-day."
"No, I haven't. I don't think I wanna be a pilot no more. One of my buds tole me
that you end up all fugged up with time an' that, that you come home an' it's
the next century an' everyone you know is dead."
"That is one thing that hap-pens to some ex-plor-a-tor-y pilots, Chet. Have you
thought a-bout any o-ther poss-i-bil-i-ties?"
"Kinda. I guess." I tried not to think about the 125th story and the ocean. I
was thinking so hard, I stopped thinking about what I was saying to The Amazing
Robotron. "Maybe I could be a counselor, like, and help kids."
The Amazing Robotron turned into a pinball machine again, an unreadable and
motionless block. Silent for so long I thought he was gone, dead as a sardine
inside his tin can. Then, he twitched both of his arms, like he was shivering.
Then his robot-voice came out of the grille on his face. "I think that you would
be a ve-ry good coun-sel-or, Chet."
"Yeh?" I said. It was the first time that The Amazing Robotron had told me he
thought I'd be good at anything. Hell, it was the first time he'd expressed
_any_ opinion about anything I'd said.
"Yes, Chet. Be-ing a coun-sel-or is a ve-ry good way to help your-self
un-der-stand what we have done to you by put-ting you in the Cen-ter."
I couldn't speak. My Mom, before she fell silent, had often spoken about how
unfair it was for me to be stuck here, because of something that she or my
father had done. But my father never seemed to notice me, and the teachers on
the vid made a point of not mentioning the bat-house -- like someone trying hard
not to notice a stutter or a wart, and you _knew_ that the best you could hope
for from them was pity.
"Be-ing a coun-sel-or is ve-ry hard, Chet. But coun-sel-ors sometimes get a
spec-ial re-ward. Some-times, we get to help. Do you re-ally want to do this?"
"Yeh. Yes. I mean, it sounds good. You get to travel, right?"
The Amazing Robotron's idiot-lights rippled, something I came to recognize as a
chuckle, later. "Yes. Tra-vel is part of the job. I sug-gest that you start by
ex-am-in-ing your friends. See if you can fi-gure out why they do what they do."
I've used this trick on my kids. What do I know about their psychology? But you
get one, you convince it to explain the rest to you. It helps. Counselors are
always from another world -- by the time the first generation raised in a
bat-house has grown old enough, there aren't any bats' children left to counsel
on their homeworld.
#
I take room-service, pizza and beer in an ice-bucket: pretentious, but better
than sharing a dining-room with the menagerie. Am I becoming a racist?
No, no. I just need to focus on things human, during this vacation.
The food is disappointing. It's been years since I lay awake at night, craving a
slice and a brew and a normal gravity and a life away from the bats.
Nevertheless, the craving remained, buried, and resurfaced when I went over the
room-service menu. By the time the dumbwaiter in my room chimed, I was
practically drooling.
But by the time I take my second bite, it's just pizza and a brew.
I wonder if I will ever get to sleep, but when the time comes, my eyes close and
if I dream, I don't remember it.
I get up and dress and send up for eggs and real Atlantic salmon and brown toast
and a pitcher of coffee, then find myself unable to eat any of it. I make a
sandwich out of it and wrap it in napkins and stuff it into my day-pack along
with a water-bottle and some sun-block.
It's a long walk up to the bat-house, but I should make it by nightfall.
#
Chet was up at 6h the next morning. His mom was already up, but she never slept
that he could tell. She was clattering around the kitchen in her housecoat,
emptying the cupboards and then re-stacking their contents for the thousandth
time. She shot him a look of something between fear and affection as he pulled
on his shorts and a t-shirt, and he found himself hugging her waist. For a
second, it felt like she softened into his embrace, like she was going to say
something, like it was normal, and then she picked up a plate and rubbed it with
a towel and put it back into the cupboard.
Chet left without saying a word.
The bat-house breathed around him, a million farts and snores and whispered
words. A lift was available almost before he took his finger off the summon
button. "125," he said.
Chet walked to the door of the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla and started
to knock, then put his hands down and sank down into a squat, with his back
against it.
He must have dozed, because the next thing he knew, he was tipping over
backwards into the apt, and the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla was standing
over him, concerned.
"Are you all right, son?"
Chet stood, dusted himself off and looked at the floor. "Sorry, I didn't want to
disturb you. . ."
"But you wanted to come back and see more. Marvelous! I applaud your curiosity,
young sir. I have just taken the waters -- perhaps you would like to try?" He
gestured at the ocean.
"You mean, swim in it?"
"If you like. Myself, I find a snorkel and mask far superior. My set is up on
the rim, you're welcome to them, but I would ask you to chew a stick of this
before you get in." He tossed Chet a pack of gum. "It's an invention of my own
-- chew a stick of that, and you can_not_ transmit any nasty bugs in your saliva
for forty-eight hours. I hold a patent for it, of course, but my agents report
that it has been met with crashing indifference in the Great Beyond."
Chet had been swimming before, in the urinary communal pools on the tenth and
fifteenth levels, horsing around naked with his mates. Nudity was not a big deal
for the kids of the bat-house -- the kind of adult who you wouldn't trust in
such circumstances didn't end up in bat-houses -- the bugouts had a different
place for them.
"Go on, lad, give it a try. It's simply marvelous, I tell you!"
Unsteadily, Chet climbed the spiral stairs leading up to the tank, clutching the
handrail, chewing the gum, which fizzed and sparked in his mouth. At the top,
there was a small platform. Self-consciously, he stripped, then pulled on the
mask and snorkel that hung from a peg.
"Tighten the straps, boy!" the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla shouted, from
far, far below. "If water gets into the mask, just push at the top and blow out
through your nose!"
Chet awkwardly lowered himself into the water. It was warm -- blood temperature
-- and salty, and it fizzled a little on his skin, as though it, too, were
electric.
He kept one hand on the snorkel, afraid that it would tip and fill with water,
and then, slowly, slowly, relaxed on his belly, mask in the water, arms by his
side.
My god! It was like I was flying! It was like all the dreams I'd ever had, of
flying, of hovering over an alien world, of my consciousness taking flight from
my body and sailing through the galaxy.
My hands were by my sides, out of view of the mask, and my legs were behind me.
I couldn't see any of my body. My view stretched 8m down, an impossible,
dizzying height. A narrow, elegant angelfish swam directly beneath me, and
tickled my belly with one of its fins as it passed under.
I smiled, a huge grin, and it broke the seal on my mask, filling it with water.
Calmly, as though I'd been doing it all my life, I pressed the top of my mask to
my forehead and blew out through my nose. My mask cleared of water.