Broken: A Plague Journal (14 page)

She wondered how different she was from the Alina on the other side, if there even was an Alina on the other side.

“What’s on the plate for today?”

smash and grab mission. we’re meeting up with remnants of the fort john wayne fleet.

“Frosty’s fleet?”

captain frost, yes.

“Wait.. This is a frag or a bleed?”

bleed.

“Oh.”

well, lock and load, kid. we’re hitting the stream.

“Jim?”

shut up.

“Jimbo?”

shut UP.

“Come on, pardner. You gotta talk to me sometime.”

no i don’t.

“You just did.” Hank grinned from his command chamber. “Anyhow, what’s it look like out there?”

whiter than jo’s inner thigh.

“That white, huh? That must be pretty white. You know, one time I was at a saloon in—”

for the love of all things holy, shut UP.

Crawl, crackle.

“You feel that?”

certainly did. initiating full sensor sweep.

“Looks like we ain’t alone out here, buddy.”

They fell through time.

 
tomorrow and tomorrow and

just make a thread that says “no” and

“Hey, dude.”

I won’t lie. His voice caught me off-guard. No one had ever been with me before, not there, not in the little bubble I’d carved for myself, just for myself, deep within the registry of the Judith ME.

“What’s goin’ on?”

I’d thought people into existence before, but they’d only been characters. Whistler and Hank. Benton and West. Jacob’s voice slammed into and through me, echoed through the sphere of nothing within which I floated, and all became my parents’ living room: the old green carpet snaked with guitar cords, the bite of woodsmoke, brownies for us in the kitchen. I knew this without vision; I was too tired and broken to open my eyes.

Lithe fingers climbed over nylon strings, coaxed forgotten songs from a long-dead soul.

“I don’t know anymore.” I knew that choke in my voice.

He stopped playing.

They’d told me, of course. I’d asked to be inserted into the fourteen-seven variant, just two years into the future from which West and Benton had removed me. Hope had come with me, had stood with me behind the mourners at the burial. Wraiths. She’d held my hand between its frequent trips to my mouth, choking back sobs that no one but she could hear in that when.

When my future self placed a guitar pick on the coffin and touched it, he looked up for a moment, and in those eyes, I saw everything that I knew I must end. What tragic cycle, what series of events could inspire such madness in those once-forever eyes? The then-gaunt frame sweating under a gray suit suddenly entirely too big, the sun-burned nose a red foil to those pools of teared ash, hands and wrists shaking, scarred with

He was the madness I must end.

Other friends would have asked if I wanted to talk about it. He knew better. He started playing the guitar again and

bonfire, scorching the leaves of the ice storm-tilted tree that was now entirely too close to the pit and the wind was entirely too cold for the early-summer night I knew it was from the taut skin on my nose and arms and neck, the slivers of chaff now roiling beneath the surface of my forearms, placed there not tenderly by hundreds of bales of hay stacked mindlessly into the mow.

His song never changed, never faltered. He hummed along sometimes.

“I miss you.”

A string snapped. His hand went to his neck, found the speck of blood and wiped it away, red from flesh too lifeless, too gray. I thought color back into him.

“Miss you, too, dude.” He pulled the broken string from the guitar and threw it into the fire. He kept playing; he could do that.

There were so many things I wanted to ask: the hows and whys of his hanging, those last moments. What happened after the electricity had flickered away? But I knew that there were no answers in this place. No one within the Judith or Judas programs had any idea what happened when we died. I guess I’d written it that way for a reason. I didn’t really want to know.

“We’ll have to get together the next time you’re home. I should be around.”

The broken string crimped and danced as it burned.

“Yeah.” From that side of the fire, he couldn’t see eyebrows furrow, lips twitch, two lines of tear slip down stubbled cheeks. “I should be home again soon.”

“It’s easier when nowhere feels like home.”

Jagged exhalation. I struggled to maintain.

“Well, the bed is looking pretty good right now.” He placed the guitar back in its battle-scarred case: stickers, newspaper clippings, scatter of plectrums. Snapped the snaps, stood up, brushing ash and bark from his knee-holed jeans.

“Damn, I want some eggnog.” He smiled that sly, shy smile. “Goodnight.” He started to walk down the driveway.

“Jake?”

“Yeah?”

“What do I—How do I—What am I supposed to do?”

He frowned. “Huh?”

I forced a smile. “Want me to drive you home?”

“Oh. Nah. I’ll walk. Stars are out.”

“Be careful.”

“Yeah.”

He walked down the driveway and the image faded to nothing: bubble.

I sat there for a long time.

 
midsagittal plane breached
it’s spread into
ready lesioning probe on my
physiologic confirmation of the target location
initial pass in three
two

but if i take a few days between sleeping, my dreams have answers in them, and

a pain so great and sudden that he dropped his cup of coffee to the table.

“Paul?” Hope’s voice: confusion and concern.

He felt tissues give way as blood surged from his nose. He coughed in reflex, a fine mist of red spattering his hand as he clamped off the flow with a napkin entirely too flimsy to contain it all.

“Jesus, boy.” West pulled more napkins from the dispenser at the table’s center. “You okay?”

He waved away the extra napkins. His eyebrows furrowed, and the blood was gone as he thought it away. “Don’t know where that came from.”

Benton’s eyes met West’s.

“You need to sleep. You can’t stay awake like this.”

“I don’t need sleep.”

“That wasn’t normal, kid. Nosebleeds don’t just happen like that. Maybe you have high blood—”

“Cardiac shield’s not beeping, is it?”

“Well, maybe—”

“I’m fine. Just have a headache.”

“You need sleep.” Benton touched his hand.

“I’ll be fine.” His words were cold and final. He pulled his hand from beneath Hope’s.

She’d noticed the shaking.

“Seems empty here tonight.”

“Lots of ships are out. Myers meeting up with John Wayne, Spear and Riley for a Fuck-Run-and-Go.”

Benton shook her head. “You boys and your cute little names.”

“Behind your back,” Paul took a sip of coppered coffee, “we call you ‘Sugartush.’”

“Now I
know
you’re sleep-deprived.”

Paul and West looked at each other and grinned.

“Hi!” Honeybear jumped onto the table.

West flinched. “God, I hate this bear. Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

“I’m sorry, Mr. West! How are you today?”

“Shut up.”

“Okay!” The bear sat down between Benton and West, glassy-eyed smile directed at Paul.

“I guess we have to take him out on a run sometime?”

“Yeah... Should be able to get a pretty good lock on Windham with him.”

“Great.”

“Oh, he’s not so bad.” Benton patted the bear’s scruffy head.

West grumbled.

“Big run tomorrow. You two should get some sleep.” Paul picked up his cup to take another sip of coffee, but Benton took the cup from him. It snapped from the construct.

“You, too. No more coffee.”

“Yes, dear.”

 
“We close enough yet?”

fleet on scope.

“Bring Mindel up on gel.”

calling.

Alina slumped against her interfaces and leaned into the warm slurp of the neuroflux gelatin. She blew a few bubbles from her mouth, which danced outward to her command chamber’s metallish crust.

Eddies wrapped, swirled into a form a little taller, a little more angular than Al’s. Static snap and the form sculpted a translucent smile, swam forward to embrace her. Sam adjusted the gelatin consistency accordingly to make the contact convincing enough.

“Frosty!” The two young women, one molded in flesh, one carved in jello, giggled and covered each other’s cheeks in slimy kisses. “It’s been forevers.”

“Too long, babe. How’s it hanging?”

“Oh, you know. Mediocre, but it gets the job done.”

“Ready for a little midnight special?”

“Fuck and run, you know it. How’s your fleet holding up?”

“Just fine until they pulled us out of the Jag. Sent us to patch up hotzones closer to A-Point. Lost our fort sometime last—Well… A while ago.”

“Time flies in the mind of—”

“Minolta. Oh! You’re going to hate me for not telling you sooner, but I met him.”

“Met who?”

The gelatin form’s eyes pinched to mischief.
“The
Author
.”

The bridge slime Alina inhaled took on a bitter cool. “Really?”

“Jud’s little retrieval team misfired into our Jag When. Kate and I got to personally deliver him to the suspected Delta bleed at Lascaux.”