Year Zero (7 page)

“Riiiight,” she said softly, still struggling to process everything without going into shock.

I turned back to the vacuum cleaner. “So where did you Wrinkle over from?”

“Somewhere … local.”

“Well, you better cough up more detail than that, or you’ll be spending the night in the local jail,” I bluffed gruffly. “And trust me—the inmates there will make short work of a little plastic vacuum cleaner like you.”

“Goddammit, I’m
not
a stupid vacuum cleaner,” he shrieked indignantly. “And I’m certainly not made of plastic. I’m made of metal.
Heavy
metal. The heaviest metal—in all of the cosmos!”

“Seriously?” That actually sounded kind of cool.

“Yes. That’s why they call me … Özzÿ.”

“Wa-wait,” Manda said. After all the organic chemistry she suffered through in college, she couldn’t let that one go by, however freaked out she was. “You’re saying that your metal can form into … organic life?”

“Yes. It’s a superheavy element that your scientists haven’t encountered yet,” Özzÿ squawked. “You’d probably call it something stupid like unseptiquadrium.
¹
But we call it
metallicam. Because it’s the heaviest metal that can possibly exist in this universe.”

Manda looked at him blankly.

“Look,” I told her. “I’ve got a lot to explain to you. But the CliffsNotes are that these guys
really like
human music.” There was a pause. Then—

“Wait,” she said. “Metallicam?”

I nodded.

“As in—’Metallica’?”

“Yep.”

“As in … 
the band
?”

“I was disappointed, too,” Özzÿ said, making a shrugging gesture. “I was hoping for ironmaidium. But back when we renamed it, the votes were with Lars and the boys.”

“And what other … superheavy metals do you have?” she asked, clearly more stunned than ever.

“Well, there’s vanhelium, which is tough as steel but has a negative mass that lets it float heavy objects. Defleppimite, which is used in prosthetic limbs.
And of course, slayerium, which is the most energetic element in all of creation. And then, let’s see, you’ve got your megadeathium, your ledzeppimite, then there’s anvilium, sabbathide …”
As he went through this list, Özzÿ’s voice seemed to be getting higher, raspier, and softer.

“What about bonjovium?” I asked. I’ve always had a weakness for “You Give Love a Bad Name.”

“Of course, it exists. But bonjovium is
certainly not
a heavy metal by our standards,” Özzÿ sniffed. “It has an atomic number of just fifty. You call it ‘tin.’ ”

“Well, thanks for the science lesson,” I said, remembering that a Wrinkle would be pulling this guy out of our hands in a few minutes. “But it’s time for you to tell me what you’re doing on Earth.”

“What would a metallicam creature do, anywhere, but handle metallicam?”
This aphorism seemed like a bumbling attempt at being cagey. But it came out in such a harsh rasp that it was hard to interpret.

“Hey, what’s up with your voice?” I asked.

“My … atmosphere is quite … sssssimilar to yours,”
Özzÿ hissed, now sounding almost woozy.
“Except there’s a teeeeeny lit-tle trace of iodine in our air. And I seem to be more sssssensitive to its absence than expected. It’s making me—what did the bards say? Dazed and confused …”

“Well, that Wrinkle of yours will have you out of here in a jiffy, so I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said, angling to keep him calm and milk his growing delirium for useful information. “Meanwhile, what were you saying about … handling metallicam? On Earth?”

“I’m sorry,”
Özzÿ slurred.
“Must not say anything about … canceling our debts to humanity.”

“
What
debts to humanity?” I said slowly and succinctly, hoping he wasn’t about to clam up. I wondered if Google had any thoughts on how to waterboard a vacuum cleaner.

“Ssssso sssssorry. Feels like … going off the rails. On the crazy train …”

I looked at Manda. “I think we’re losing him.”

The need for action yanked her out of her daze. “He needs to inhale iodine,” she said, dashing into my eensy kitchen. “So let’s burn up some fish, fast! Do you have any?”

That threw me. “In my
kitchen
?” In my world, fish comes from restaurants.

“Exit light, enter night,”
Özzÿ rasped, drifting around my living room in a vague figure-eight pattern.
“Off to never-never land …”

Manda was already ransacking the refrigerator. “You seriously have nothing in here but
beverages
.”

“I’m sure there’s some butter, too,” I said defensively, trying to keep myself between Özzÿ’s swaying form and my plasma TV.

“On my way to the promised land,”
Özzÿ gasped weakly, waving his spindly arms like a televangelist leading a pledge drive.
“Na na na, highway to hell!”

Manda was now rummaging through cabinets that hadn’t been opened since the day I moved in. “You literally have
one pan
!”

“Seriously?” That was precisely one more than I thought I had.

Özzÿ was now holding out a beseeching hand toward Meowhaus, like a dying sensei imparting life’s secret to a loyal apprentice.
“If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now,”
he advised in a hoarse whisper.

“Salt!” Manda was gazing in disbelief at another empty cupboard. “You
simply must
have salt. Where is it?”

“The spice drawer,” I yelled, and with one small step I burst into the kitchen
²
and yanked open the cache of
ketchup, soy sauce, and mayonnaise containers that years of takeout had deposited in my home. Several packets of Burger King salt were among them.

Manda splashed my lone pan with scalding tap water, set it on a gas burner (which amazed us both by working), and threw in the salt. “It’s iodized, so it may help. Get him over here so he can breathe it.”

The heavily salted water boiled quickly as I rolled Özzÿ into the kitchen. Figuring he took in air like your basic vacuum cleaner, we stood to either side of him and lifted, positioning his base over the rising steam. This involved bracing ourselves against each other, because he was remarkably hefty.
³
So we ended up cheek to cheek again. And once again, I felt a sudden, mad loyalty toward the creature who had brought this about.

“Come
on
, Özzÿ,” I urged.

Nothing happened. The water boiled. Manda spied an additional salt packet, and added it to the brew. But Özzÿ was silent.

Just as I was losing hope, Manda held up a finger. “Did you hear that?”

“What?” I asked.

“Shhhhhhhh.”

Listening intently, we barely detected a faint whisper. I pointed at a small orifice at the top of Özzÿ’s handle. “It’s coming from there.” We lowered him to the floor and hovered our ears over it.

Moments later we heard an even fainter whisper. It began with something indecipherable, followed by
“over the water.”

I was about to hoist Özzÿ over the boiling pot again, but Manda stopped me. “I think he’s trying to tell us we’re doing something wrong.” Then, “Özzÿ, can you hear me? If you can—say that again!”

There were several seconds of silence. Then, as we both held our breath, we could barely make out
“I’m not a goddamn vacuum cleaner! That’s my
ass
you were putting over the water!”

“Flip him over,” Manda shouted.

“Right!”

We lifted Özzÿ, turned him upside down, and held him over the boiling pan. Within moments, we could feel a tiny breeze trickling into the opening at the top of his handle. And within seconds, he was sucking in air like—well, like a vacuum cleaner; inhaling every puff of iodized water vapor rising from the pan.

“Thank you,” he said in his normal atrocious, high-pitched wheeze about a minute later. We flipped him over and set him down on the kitchen floor.

“You’re welcome,” I said as he settled onto his little rubber wheels. “And by the way, there’s no need for any secrets between us. Your boss told me everything.” I’d been wondering who his boss was since he first mentioned having one, and figured this lie might trick him into shedding some light on that.

“He told you about humanity … destroying itself?”

Manda’s eyes widened with horror. I just nodded at the now-familiar theme.

“Yeah, we seem to have a knack for that,” I said obtusely, hoping to provoke a reaction.

“A
knack
for it?” Özzÿ wheezed. “You mean you think you’re
good
at it? Please. We hacked every firewall on your stupid little Internet looking into this last week. And trust me—you
suck
at it!” This fact seemed to personally offend him. He started pacing again. “A devastating ice age should have started in the nineties. I can show you the data! But your
stupid CO
₂
emissions
staved it off completely,” he wheezed. “Then a tropical bacterium evolved that should have wiped you all out. Some clueless grad student sequenced its DNA, and parked the data on a genomics site that we’ve examined. It was a
monster
! But some idiot ranchers burned down its corner of the Amazon before it could infect anyone! And you think you’re
good
at destroying yourselves? Please.”

Özzÿ’s voice was getting higher, and more strained again.
“Then back in ’03, Saddam came within days of figuring out how to trigger a war between Pakistan and Israel. But then
you
had to go off and invade Iraq. And that was the end of that, wasn’t it?”

“That was close,” I said, feeling guilty about my decade of anti-Bush tirades.

“Close? That was nothing! Just a few months ago, an al-Qaeda cell in Chicago came within hours of getting its hands on a Russian H-bomb!”
Özzÿ’s voice was definitely fading fast again.

“And uh—remind me what happened with that one?” I asked.
Holy shit!

“Some idiot gave them an Arabic copy of the new Glenn Beck book, and they weren’t even five chapters into it before
they all defected and joined the Tea Party movement!”
The effort of shrieking this left Özzÿ gasping, and brought his pacing to a halt.

“Whoa,” Manda murmured after a long, stunned pause. “There goes my entire worldview.”

“The parrot told me that you felt passionately about all of this,” I said. Özzÿ’s appetite for our self-destruction had given me a feeling that the two of them might be working together. I was going out on a limb by mentioning the parrot, because if they weren’t working together, there was no reason for Özzÿ to know that I’d met the guy. But my hunch was strong.

Özzÿ instantly confirmed it by bubbling over with incredulous joy.
“Really?
Really?
What else did he say about me?”

“That you’re … a mean go-getter.” That was lame. But Özzÿ was too starstruck to notice.

“He said
that
? About me?”

“He did.”

“Wow! You know—he’s a Senior OmniSteward. And he selected me for this mission. Personally!”

“It’s impressive that he recruited you personally,” I said, now angling to drive a wedge between him and his boss before the Wrinkle took him away. “But he’ll be so disappointed that you let me catch you searching my apartment.”

Özzÿ started pacing again.
“You’re right. But how was I supposed to know when you’d get back?”
His voice was getting fainter and fainter.

“You couldn’t have,” I said, sympathetically. “But Senior OmniStewards expect so much from their protégés. And he seems to be very hot-blooded. So I suppose he’ll fire you.”

“FIRE me?”
Özzÿ was now pacing at an Olympian
speed.
“But that’s not fair! Where was I supposed to hide before the Wrinkle opened?”

I sighed. “You know … you’re right, Özzÿ. It’s not fair. And back when I was starting out, I had some pretty tough bosses myself.” I pretended to carefully weigh the situation. Then, “Okay—I’ll tell you what. I won’t let on that I caught you here. It can be our little secret.” I prayed that Özzÿ would go along with this. The parrot was clearly the brains of the operation, and I didn’t want him to find out how much information I’d clawed out of his underling.

“You’ll keep it a secret? Really? Oh, I’ll never forget this. Truly, never! And—well, I’d say more, but I better go. The Wrinkle’s open now, and I’m feeling a bit faint again, and there’s iodine back at the local base.”

As he said this, Manda’s eyes widened with astonishment—which seemed odd, as this was far from being the most jarring thing Özzÿ had said. Then I realized that she was reacting to something that she’d just seen over my shoulder, toward the living room door. I was about to turn and look when she said, “Before you take off, Özzÿ, don’t you think you should vacuum up the mess you made in here?”

I cringed. This was not going to go well.

“GODDAMMIT, I AM
NOT
A STUPID GODDAMN VACUUM CLEANER!”
Özzÿ bellowed. Or tried to bellow—his voice was straining mightily with the effort.

Manda rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. You are so. And I’ll tell you what. I have a hot little Electrolux over at my place. What say we get the two of you together so you can—
make some DustBusters
!”

Özzÿ said nothing, but I thought I could see him trembling slightly. There was a long pause.

“You know,” Manda said. “By … fucking?”

Okay, he was definitely trembling. Make that vibrating.

“Because DustBusters are like baby vacuum cleaners?”

Make that shuddering.

“And they’d be, you know—your offspring?”

Massive undulations …

“Hey, Hoover—are you even getting my joke?”

Oh, but he was.
“
VERY FUNNY!
”
he finally exploded.

Manda caught my eye and we both started giggling despite the crazed situation.

“
HARDY-HAR-HAR. YOU’RE SO FUNNY THAT
—”
Özzÿ gasped.