And I heard nothing. Not a sound, for the first time in all the time I had been
in the bat-house -- no distant shouts and mutters. I was alone, in a vast,
personal silence, in a private ocean. My pulse beat under my skin. Tiny fish
wriggled in the coral, tearing at the green fuzz that grew over it.
Slowly, I turned around and around. The ocean-wall that faced into the apt was
silvered on this side, reflecting back my little pale body to me. My head
pounded, and I finally inhaled, and the sound of my breathing, harsh through the
snorkel, rang in my ears.
I spent an age in the water, holding my breath, chasing the fish, disembodied, a
consciousness on tour on an alien world.
The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla brought me back. He waited on the rim of
the tank until I swam near enough for him to touch, then he tapped me on the
shoulder. I stuck my head up, and he said, "Time to get out, boy, I need to use
the ocean."
Reluctantly, I climbed out. He handed me a towel.
I felt like I was still flying, atop the staircase on the ocean's edge. I felt
like I could trip slowly down the stairs, never quite touching them. I pulled on
my clothes, and they felt odd to me.
Carefully, forcing myself to grip the railing, I descended. The guy who thought
he was Nicola Tesla stood at my side, not speaking, allowing me my reverie.
My hair was drying out, and starting to raise skywards, and the guy who thought
he was Nicola Tesla went over to his apparatus and flipped a giant knife switch.
The ocean stirred, a puff of sand rose from its bottom, and then, the coral on
the ocean's edge _moved_.
It squirmed and danced and writhed, startling the fish away from it, shedding
layers of algae in a green cloud.
"It's my latest idea. I've found the electromagnetic frequencies that the
various coral resonate on, and by using those as a carrier wave, I can stimulate
them into tremendously accelerated growth. Moreover, I can alter their
electromagnetic valences, so that, instead of calcium salts, they use other
minerals as their building-blocks."
He grinned hugely, and seemed to want Chet to say something. Chet didn't
understand any of it.
"Well, don't you see?"
"Nuh."
"I can use coral to concentrate trace gold and platinum and any other
heavy-metal you care to name out of the seas. I can prospect in the very water
itself!" He killed the switch. The coral stopped their dance abruptly, and the
new appendages they'd grown dropped away, tumbling gracefully to the ocean's
floor. "You see? Gold, platinum, lead. I dissolved a kilo of each into the water
last night, microscopic flakes. In five minutes, my coral has concentrated it
all."
The stumps where the minerals had dropped away were jagged and sharp, and
painful looking.
"It doesn't even harm the fish!"
#
Chet's playmates seemed as strange as fish to him. They met up on the 87th
level, where there was an abandoned apt with a faulty lock. Some of them seemed
batty themselves, standing in corners, staring at the walls, tracing patterns
that they alone could see. Others seemed too confident ever to be bats -- they
shouted and boasted to each other, got into shoving matches that escalated into
knock-out brawls and then dissolved into giggles. Chet found himself on the
sidelines, an observer.
One boy, whose father hung around the workshops with Chet's father, was
industriously pulling apart the warp of the carpet, rolling it into a ball. When
the ball reached a certain size, he snapped the loose end, tucked it in and
started another.
A girl whose family had been taken to the bat-house all the way from a
reservation near Sioux Lookout was telling loud lies about home, about
tremendous gun-battles fought out with the Ontario Provincial Police and huge,
glamorous casinos where her mother had dealt blackjack to millionaire
high-rollers, who tucked thousand dollar tips into her palm. About her bow and
arrow and her rifle and her horses. Nobody believed her stories, and they made
fun of her behind her back, but they listened when she told them, spellbound.
What was her name, anyway?
There were two boys, one followed the other everywhere. The followee was
tormenting the follower, as usual, smacking him in the back of the head, then
calling him a baby, goading him into hitting back, dodging easily, and
retaliating viciously.
Chet thought that he understood some of what was going on. Maybe he'd be able to
explain it to The Amazing Robotron.
#
I never thought I'd say this, but I miss my exoskeleton. My feet ache, my legs
ache, my ass aches, and I'm hot and thirsty and my waterbottle is empty. I'm not
even past Bloor Street, not even a tenth of the way to the bat-house.
#
The Amazing Robotron seemed thoughtful as I ratted out my chums. "So, I think
they need each other. The big one needs the little one, to feel important. The
little one needs the big one, so that he can feel useful. Is that right?"
"It is ve-ry per-cep-tive, Chet. When I was young, I had a sim-i-lar friend-ship
with an-other. It -- no, _she_ -- was the lit-tle one, and I was the big one.
Her pa-rent died be-fore we came of age, and she left the Cen-ter, and when she
came back to visit, a long time la-ter, we were re-ver-sed -- I felt smal-ler
but good, and spec-ial be-cause she told me all a-bout the out-side."
Something clicked inside me then. I saw myself inside The Amazing Robotron's
exoskeleton, and he in my skin, our roles reversed. It lasted no longer than a
lightning flash, but in that flash, I suddenly knew that I could talk to The
Amazing Robotron, and that he would understand.
I felt so smart all of a sudden. I felt like The Amazing Robotron and I were
standing outside the bat-house, _in_ it but not _of_ it, and we shared a secret
insight into the poor, crazy bastards we were cooped up with.
"I don't really like anyone here. I don't like my Dad -- he's always shouting,
and I think he's the reason we ended up here. He's batshit -- he gets angry too
easy. And my Mom is batshit now, even if she wasn't batshit before, because of
him. I don't feel like their son. I feel like I just share an apt with these two
crazy people I don't like very much. And none of my mates are any good, either.
They're all either like my Dad -- loud and crazy, or like my Mom, quiet and
crazy. Everyone's crazy."
"That may be true, Chet. But you can still like cra-zy peo-ple."
"Do _you_ like 'em?"
The Amazing Robotron's idiot lights rippled. _Gotcha_, I thought.
"I do not like them, Chet. They are loud and cra-zy and they on-ly think of
them-selves."
I laughed. It was so refreshing not to be lied to. My skin was all tight from
the dried saltwater, and that felt good, too.
"My Dad, the other day? He came home and was all, 'This is a conspiracy to drive
us out of our house. It's because we bought a house with damn high ceilings.
Some big damn alien wanted to live there, so they put us here. It's because I
did such a good job on the ceilings!' Which is so stupid, 'cause the ceilings in
our old house weren't no higher than the ceilings here, and besides, Dad screwed
up all the plaster when he was trying to fix it up, and it was always cracking.
"And then he starts talking about what's really bugging him, which is that some
guy at the workshop took his favorite drill and he couldn't finish his big
project without it. So he got into a fight with the guy, and got the drill and
then he finished his big, big project, and brought it home, and you know what it
was? A _pencil-holder_! We don't even _have_ any pencils! He is so screwed up."
And The Amazing Robotron's lights rippled again, and a huge weight lifted from
my shoulders. I didn't feel ashamed of the maniacs that gave me life -- I saw
them as pitiful subjects for my observations. I laughed again, and that must
have been the most I'd laughed since they put us in the bat-house.
#
I'm getting my sea-legs. I hope. My mouth is pasty, and salty, and sweat keeps
running down into my eyes. I never even began to realize how much support the
exoskeleton's jelly-suspension lent me.
But I've made it to Eglinton, and that's nearly a third of the way, and to
celebrate, I stop in at a coffee-shop and drink a whole pitcher of lemonade
while sitting by the air-conditioner.
I got the word that they were tearing down the bat-house only two weeks ago. The
message came by priority email from The Amazing Robotron: all the bats were
dead, or enough of them anyway that the rest could be relocated to less
expensive quarters. It was barely enough notice to get my emergency leave
application in, to book a ticket back to Earth, and to finally become a murderer
all the way.
Damn, I hope I know what I'm doing.
#
The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla told me all kinds of stories, and I was
sure he was lying to me, but when I checked out the parts of his story that I
could, they all turned out to be true.
"I don't actually _need_ to be here. I've come here to get away from all the
treachery, the deceit, the filthy pursuit of the dollar. As though I need more
money! I invented foam! Oh, sure, the Process likes to take credit for it, but
if you look up the patent, guess who owns it?
"Master Affeltranger, you may not realize it to look at me, but I have some
_very_ important friends, out there in the Great Beyond. With important friends,
you can make a whole block of apts simply disappear from the record-books. You
can make tremendous energy consumption vanish, likewise."
He spoke as he tinkered with his apparatus, which hummed alarmingly and
occasionally sent a tortured arc of electricity into the guy who thought he was
Nicola Tesla's chest.
It happened three times in a row, and he stamped his foot in frustration, and
said, "Oh, _do_ cut it out," apparently to one of his machines.
I'd been jumping every time he got zapped, but this time, I had to giggle. He
whirled on me. "I am not trying to be _amusing_. One thing you people never
realize is that the current has a _will_, it has a _mind_, and you have to keep
it in check with a firm hand."
I shook my head a little, not understanding. He waved a hand at me, frustrated,
and said, "Oh, go have a swim. I don't have time to argue with a child."
I climbed into the ocean, and the silence embraced me, and the water tingled
with electricity, and my consciousness floated away from my body and soared over
an alien world. Like a broken circuit, I disconnected from the world around me.
#
Chet's father came home with a can of beer in his hand and the rest of the
six-pack in his gut. He walked over to the vid, where Chet was researching the
life of Nicola Tesla, which took forever, since he had to keep linking back to
simple tutorials on physics, history, and electrical engineering.
Chet's father stooped and took the remote out of Chet's hands and opened up a
bookmarked docu-drama about the coming of the bugouts. Chet opened his mouth to
protest, and his father shouted him down before he could speak. "Not one word,
you hear me? Not! One! Word! I've had a shithole day and I wanna relax."
Chet's mother dropped a plastic tumbler, which bounced twice, and rolled to
Chet's toe. He stepped over it, walked out the door, and took the elevator to
the 125th floor.
Chet burst into the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla's apt and screamed.
Nicola Tesla was strapped into a heavy wooden chair, with a metal hood over his
head. Arcs of electricity danced over his body, and he jerked and thrashed
against the leather straps that bound his limbs. Unthinking, Chet ran forward
and grabbed the buckle that bound his wrist, and a giant's fist smashed into
him, hurling him across the room.
When he came to, the electric arcs were gone, but the guy who thought he was
Nicola Tesla was motionless in his straps, under his hood.
Carefully, Chet came to his feet, and saw that the toe of his right sneaker had
been blown out, leaving behind charred canvas. His foot hurt -- burned.
He hobbled to the chair and gingerly prodded it, then jerked his hand back,
though he hadn't been shocked. He bit his lip and stared. The wood was quite
weathered and elderly, though it had been oiled and had a rich, well-cared-for
finish. The leather straps were nightmarishly thick, gripping the guy who
thought he was Nicola Tesla at the bicep and wrist, at the thigh and calf and
ankle. Livid bruises were already spreading at their edges.
Chet was struck by a sudden urge to climb into the ocean and _stay_ there. Just
_stay_ there.
Under the hood, the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla groaned. Chet gave an
involuntary squeak and jumped a little. The guy who thought he was Nicola
Tesla's body snapped tense. "Who's there?" he said, his voice muffled by the
hood.
"It's me, Chet."
"Chet? Damn. Damn, damn, damn." His right hand bent nearly double at the wrist
and teased the buckle of the strap free. With one hand free, the guy who thought
he was Nicola Tesla quickly undid the straps on his upper body, then lifted away
the hood. He pointedly did not look at Chet as he doubled over and undid the
straps on his legs and ankles.
Gingerly, he stood and stretched, then sighed tremendously.
"Chet, Chet, Chet. I hope I didn't frighten you too badly. This is Old Sparky,
an exact replica of the electric chair at Sing-Sing Prison in New York. Edison,
thief and charlatan that he was, insisted that his DC current was safer than my
AC, and they built a chair that used my beautiful current to execute criminals,
by the hundreds.
"Nicola Tesla and I became one when I was eight years old, and I received a
tremendous shock from an electrified fence. I was stuck to it, glued by the
current, and after a few moments, I just relaxed into the current -- befriended
it, if you will. That's when the spirit of Nicola Tesla, a-wandering through the
wires for all the years since his death, infused my body.
"So now I use Old Sparky here to recharge -- please forgive the expression -- my
connection with the current. I once spent eight years in the chair, when I
needed to disappear for a while. When I woke, I hadn't aged at all -- I didn't
even need to shave! What do you think of that?"