Where the Lost Things Are (3 page)

“Hold your water, ma'am,” said Jack, putting on a cowboy accent. “I want me a giant bluegene pill.” He dug his titanium knees into the crow's neck, and off we soared toward the bumpy pastel peak of pills.

“It should have been my turn right now,” said Darly sinking into a sulk.

“Hush up and help,” said Amara, as we approached the mountain of pills. The sorters had been slacking here, and the pills were all colors. Guided by Jack, the crow circled until Amara spotted the right one. The bluegene pill was hard to snatch, being the size of a Christmas turkey, but soon it was stored beside my big hearing aid and the oversized guitar pick. And now we buzzed the earring pile.

“There it is!” cried Darly. “That cluster of shiny sticks on top.” She leaned out, reaching for it like a kid on a merry-go-round—but the crow forestalled her, snatching up the jangly earring with his beak.

“Hey!” squealed Darly.

“
Kaw!!
” answered the crow from the deep in his throat, holding tight to the earring in his beak. Some of the other crows had noticed our crow's score, and they were swooping towards him, as if wanting to steal his cargo, or wanting to tag along.

With the grace of a trained athlete, our crow arced up into the apricot-colored heavens. He did a loop, an Immelman turn, and a barrel roll. We held on for dear life. And now we'd shaken the pursuing crows.

“What's happening?” I shouted to Jack.

“Hang on!” he cried. Far from steering the crow with his knees, he was clinging to a feather with his legs trailing behind him like pennants.

Pale peach mist surrounded us. Amara was screaming and Darly was whining and I was about to throw up. Like a stunt flyer at an airshow, the crow executed a wrenching screwball loop. I closed my eyes in terror. I felt electricity in the clouds.

I saw a flash of light. And all went dark. And all was still.

I opened my eyes. Darly, Amara and I were still clutching each other. The crow's wings were outstretched like a vulture's and we were gliding out of the clouds. Jack was smiling.

“What the hell was that?” I asked.

“Aerobatics,” he said. “Climaxing with the most difficult maneuver of all, the Mobius Twist. Designed by the legendary barnstormer Lincoln Beachey, but never publically performed. The Mobius Twist is thought to be what caused Amelia Earhardt to disappear. It must be what the crows use to get from our universe to the alsoverse and back.”

“They do?” I said. “We're home?”

Jack pointed down. Below, I saw lights, a stream of lights like stars. I saw the familiar shape of the London Earl's shabby roofs. The crow lighted on our porch slab and, with a fluff of feathers—rather rudely, I thought—deposited us and our recovered cargo on the concrete. He flew off with Darly's golden earring jingling in his beak.

“Thief!” screamed Darly.

“We're home,” I said. “Was that by design, Jack, or dumb luck?”

“Both,” said Jack. “I suspected the crows could somehow fly back and forth between our world and the alsoverse—without changing their size. So I steered the crow to Darly's shining earring, it awakened his thieving soul, and voila…”

“But how did you know he would stash it right here, in Goshen, Kentucky?”

“That part was the dumb luck,” said Jack.

“There's still a problem,” Amara reminded us. She pointed at the corner of the porch where her cat was eyeing us hungrily from the shadows.

We four humans hadn't grown back to normal size at all. We were so small that, compared to us, Jack's bluegene pill was the size of a turkey, Amara's pick the size of a surfboard, and my hearing aid the size of shipping box.

“Shit,” said Jack. “We're in the wrong position on the space-time-scale continuum.” I nodded in solemn agreement.

“Karing Kate has a product that could help,” said Darly, opening her pink leather case. “
Supersize Me
. It's experimental. Hold onto your loot while I rub this stuff on.”

And that's the end of the story, more or less.

The girls slept over with Jack and me for a change, and we woke up happy—all of us smelling faintly of Karing Kate Supersize Me. Not only had the ointment grown us back to proper size, it had amplified the bluegene pill, the guitar pick, and the hearing aid along with us

So ever since then, Jack chips his daily bluegene dose off his turkey-sized pill. No more grubbing for tiny pills on the bathroom floor. I hooked my oversized hearing aid to my squid phone and we use it for a boom box, and so what if I'm half-deaf. Amara made her giant guitar pick into a coffee table. She says she can see supersized Waddy fingerprints all over it.

As for Darly's earring—like I said, it ended up the size of an earring, spirited off by a crow the size of a crow. Darly shakes her fist at every crow that flies by. But she does it in her signature good-natured way—and her gesture looks like a kindly wave. Just as well. You wouldn't want to offend the secret masters of the cosmos.

Oh, and Jack won his Golden Pi! He submitted some video clips from Amara's google glasses, and the high academic mandarins sent Jack the award via UsFedEx drone. The drone even hovered there to listen to Jack's acceptance speech, wherein my friend thanked all of us, even Chandler, even the crows.

The award was round, of course. And quite shiny, almost like real gold.

Jack lost it, of course. He thinks it might have rolled off the porch.

That's why he's on his hands and titanium knees in the weeds.

Me, I'm looking up at the sky.

Nothing is lost.

 

Copyright © 2014 by Rudy Rucker and Terry Bisson

Art copyright © 2014 by Chris Buzelli