Month: October 2016

 

“I think this company needs a new name,” Jesse said. 

“It ain’t midnight, and we ain’t moving,” Michel said, agreeably. They’d been sitting for an hour.  The cab was starting to fog up.

“I hate waiting around and then jamming through the last bit of the night. My stomach hates it too.”

Michel was not a fan of the human tendency to personalize stomachs and cocks and ears and machines and animals. “Me and my stomach are all one person, as far as I can tell,” Michel said. Then, as if this triggered something, he said, “George says you’re a smart human, what do you think his hair is?”

Jesse watched the road, praying for a light, wishing he was driving so he could tell Michel to shut up and quit distracting him without getting a slap for his comment. “You zero-hearted son of a sea-slug.” He did expect a slap, but it didn’t come. George’s promised lecture about manners must have worked.

“Why insult me? Are you trying to confuse me? I can be more sober than George, sometimes.” Michel folded his arms and looked saintly. The pleasant face atop the bulging, muscular form was funny, but not enough to laugh at.  Michel had better facial expressions than George. At certain fixed distances, George looked a trifle weird. Once he’d bobbled like a video game glitching, and then said he’d done it deliberately. Michel was seamless in his presentation. He could look like anything at any time, including nothing at all. He said Kima was even better at disappearing, but that watermorphs usually were.

As for Michel’s assumption of saintliness, Jesse was repulsed.  He was still mad at Michel for deliberately farting in the truck, a completely silent onslaught, wave after wave of terrifying fumes.  Jesse had rolled down the window, despite the rain, gasping; the inrush of damp air was welcome. It had been so bad at one point he thought his colour vision was changing, possibly due to some kind of deadly alien gas in his corneas. The stinging was so intense he thought maybe he should flee, and screw the move. But it wasn’t deadly.  It was just Michel, fucking with him. He could contain the gas and let it out at a different time, but had decided to share about a month’s worth at once.

Remembering this with irritation, Jesse said, “I thought I was telling you to back off politely.  Next time, maybe I’ll say I don’t enjoy being put on the spot. I think George likes me so much he’s made a kind of pet out of me.  I’m probably not as smart as he says. I can’t speculate.”

“Your thoughts on the subject would be entertaining, at least.”

“I don’t want to speculate,” Jesse amended.

“Now you are starting to sound like a politician. Next you’ll be calling for the police to be allowed to do their jobs, which always seems to involve use of force on disadvantaged populations. And hey, it’s only pandering if I haven’t seen it, with what I got for eyes. I lived in Montréal for years, you know.” He always gave it the French pronunciation, never the English, making it into a smooth sexy word filled with promise. He also liked repeating things, another of his human-like tics.

Sensing Jesse meant it when he said he didn’t want to speculate, he said, “I’m gonna come back to you on the hair. I wanna complain about something else instead. It’s one of the great things about being friends with humans.  If you complain to another – it’s Sixer, right, that’s what the focus group finally settled on?” (Here the contempt in his voice was rich and vast.) “Anyway, if you complain, you’re advertising lack of breeding fitness. I used to put it a different way, much more colourful, but George really didn’t like it.  He’s trying to get me ready for television appearances, and he wants me singing one song, all the time, and only that one song, which is bullshit. I’m with you, I should be able to say what I want.” Michel had seemed charmed by Jesse’s lecture about free speech. What he really thought was often obscured by nonsense and frequent changes of subject.

Jesse saw what was coming, and said, “No, no, no. If I say there’s some shit you don’t talk about, you don’t.”

“When you tell me there’s shit I can’t say, you make the whole world a place of stinky darkness,” Michel said.  “Everything’s always one hundred percent with you people.”

“I warned you about ‘you people’; it’s a red fucking flag,” Jesse said, turning his head to look at Michel.  Michel obliged by turning his bottom half into the Disney Genie, including weird little stripes that made it look like he was reproducing the image based on something a badly aligned VHS might spit out.

Michel said, whining, “Can I at least complain about something? I really want to, so I’m going to. George’s love affair with the police creeps me the fuck out.”

Jesse frowned at him. “Why don’t you stop before you get sued? The last time he messed with the popo he thieved some zip ties,” he said, addressing the question. “That might be foreplay in some places, but I don’t think so.”

“That was the last time you saw him play with the cops, ‘cause that’s what he wants you to think. In secret he’s kissing them and hugging them and telling them they are very pretty.”

Jesse considered this. How to phrase the question without asking the question?

“I’m sure your time in Montréal left you with no respect for the cops.”

“Shotgun Bob was okay. You know, the people with guns shift around; it’s all the same kind of person, but sometimes they get paid by the Queen and sometimes they don’t.”

“I wish I knew some cops personally, I’m sure they’d be thrilled to hear about your take on their oath. May I also point out there’s a difference between a soldier and a sociopath?”

“Oaths are bullshit. You either understand what your duties are and what they mean, or you don’t, and fondling a book with one hand while saying solemn things in public doesn’t mean a fuckin’ word you say is true.”

“Leaving aside that public ceremonies about how you mean to live by certain rules is a hefty chunk of what humans do, which makes that comment speciesist, and you a speciesist clownbag so full of shit it should squeeze out your non-existent eyes, I really don’t care what George is up to,” Jesse said, wanting to bail from the conversation.

“You don’t think he’s planning something bad, getting all cozy with the police?” Michel asked, not at all disturbed by his verbal shellacking.

“I am not George’s human enabler.  I’m not responsible for him at all.  His actions don’t reflect on me any more than yours do.”

The only way I can confirm this story is by asking Michel. Or Kima. George is manipulating my natural curiosity.

Aloud, he said, “I notice you’re not keen on promises, so I don’t know how to put this.”

“You’re going to have to put it some way, if it’s about Michel,” George said.

Jesse thought it should be pretty obvious, but said it aloud anyway. “I want some assurance you, your hair or Michel won’t wake up some day, decide I’m an asshole, and kill me.”

George resumed his human appearance. Jesse’s relief was thorough enough to make him sag.

“I know looking at me’s a strain,” George said.  “You handled it very well, as well as my hair mauling you, and there’s no reason for me not to look human, now you know the truth. No! I’m not changing the subject.” He had, in his set of expressions, a close-eyed smile with a wolfish glint. “Michel won’t hurt you. I won’t hurt you. You’re the fifth human being I’ve ever talked my hair into accepting, and I didn’t have to try too hard. It even told me when it decided to like you.”

“I wish I knew whether you were even telling the truth,” Jesse said.

“You guessed I was saying something rude when I lit up. If you can read me that well, and you’re kindly disposed, how can you be anything but my friend? Why wouldn’t I speak the truth to a friend?”

Thanks, chuckles, but I really don’t think I can read you that well. My guesses are getting luckier.

George continued, “I’ll tell you when it happened. My hair started its one-sided interspecies bromance with you the night you closed the tailgate and started the truck, during the British Properties move. One of the hairs was keeping an eye on you while I was indoors.”

“On your orders?” And how long can those little suckers get?

“I was quite preoccupied at the time; it kinda snuck out while I wasn’t looking. Caregiving behaviour is not common among my species. I thought it was cute, and it worked out well for me,” George said.

“Oh my god,” Jesse said. “You just never can tell what your hair is thinking! I know I have the same problem.” He grabbed a chunk of hair, pulled it down over his nose, and blew it away.

Jesse was growing it out again, mostly because it pissed Raven off. The only other people whose opinions mattered were too discreet to comment on his appearance, except to make practical or complimentary remarks.

He also hated wigs, and wanted it long for a decent Scythian warrior ensemble, which Raven had promised a fabricator hookup for.

“To recap,” George said.

“Does this mean you’re leaving soon?” Jesse asked hopefully.

“Tired of me, are you?”

“Exhausted. I used to be a tube made out of pain, but now I’m just one of — how many people is it exactly? — who know about this.” He took a quick breath and said, “I don’t expect an answer. I’m also happy you quit lying to me about one thing, and sad because all of a sudden what seemed like the truth appears to branch into whole new kinds of lying.”

“Could you call it ‘prudently concealing the truth for strategic purposes’ and ‘prevaricating’ instead? I don’t have the energy to lie to you. It’s far, far easier not to. I have to lie, and I do lie, but if I have an option not to, I don’t.”

Jesse felt a memory percolate to the surface.

“You told the client you could smell blood.”

George sighed, and made what Jesse secretly called his ‘Kermit face’. “I did, didn’t I. Wish I could have stopped myself.  I can smell it a long way off, if I’m expecting it.”

He suddenly stopped looking perplexed and seemed angry. “Just so we’re clear, I’m only going to say this to you once, and I’m not going to talk about it again, and I don’t want you to talk about it.”

“What painful revelations await our poor misguided young hero?” Jesse said, in a creditable imitation of Sideshow Bob. He was still happy he wasn’t looking at George the monster any more.

“Shut up, shut up! This is awkward and unpleasant for me, so give it a fucking rest,” George had sworn twice in one day, a new record. Grimly, he said, “I love the smell of human blood.  Although I don’t need to eat, every month to six months I get a tremendous craving and I ingest some.”

“Oh, hell no,” Jesse said.

“I’m not going to ask you for a tablespoon of blood just because I feel like a snack,” George said, frowning.

“That’s no way to make me feel better. I know you could yoink a tubeful faster than I can move,” Jesse said.

“But I won’t.  It’s all perfectly safe, legal and consensual, and it’ll never be connected to you,” George said. “I know how you feel about not giving consent, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you who I am a lot earlier.”

“When’s the day.”

“Don’t ask.”

“When’s the day.”

“Not for years.”

“Seriously?” Jesse asked, disbelief overriding his good sense.

George lost it.

“As far as I can tell, your brain is functioning normally, and yet you say the most ill-advised, inutile things. I’m trying to bring a city to its knees, and then stand it up again, facing a different direction.  Nothing like this has ever been tried in human history, and I’m doing it on my own. You can mock me all you like, but my only meaningful goal in all this is that there be not a single casualty, not one, in the first seven days after the announcement.  If I can prevent a mass panic and evacuation event, keep major services including emergency and hospitals running, and not have Vancouver implode into a world-class dumpster fire of riotous hooliganism, then phase one of me coming out as an alien, including the rapid rollout of Michel and Kima, will be at an end.”

George stuck a finger, which Jesse knew was no finger, in his face.

“You have no idea the amount of coordination and planning will go into this. I could stroll down Granville tomorrow and announce my presence, but what would happen to the two police officers closest to me? Would they be killed in the crush? What would happen to the EMTs? How many people would be killed in accidents and road rage incidents as they flee town? What will happen at the airport, the train stations, the bus stations? What happens when the army’s called in and tanks roll up and down the Burrard Street bridge? What happens when the local phone system crashes and the internet slows down and the transportation authorities panic and cancel all the buses and shut down the Skytrain and you can’t get through to 911 to get your sister to the hospital and the entire city is gridlocked and the looting starts?”

Jesse shrugged. It all sounded a little over the top.

“Yeah, shrug all you want. The only way this works is if I keep the city safe; world leaders will see that I’m being responsible, and a city that’s already used to the world showing up and then leaving three weeks later will at least survive intact.”

“I don’t think it will be that bad.”

George was silent.

“It’s a good thing you’re not on the planning committee, then,” George said tightly. “I’ll leave you to your cup of tea. Call you in a couple of days,” he said, and left.

Jesse made himself herbal tea and went back to bed.

“I’m sorry, I can’t imagine what you mean,” George said blandly.

“I’ve just spent a day with my guts on the puke’n’poop seesaw. It’s pretty obvious it was Michel’s fault. Unless he confesses, I’ll never know for sure. What the fuck makes you think I’d want to work with Michel?” Jesse said, his patient tone fraying toward the end.

“Nothing. But Michel, who will probably admit it if you ask, is going to view it as you failing a test. You were tested to see if you’re really as tolerant a stand-up guy as you seem to think you are, and I’m being tested on my management skills for joint Sixer-human projects.”

All of the bitterness Jesse felt for having been used formed itself into a conversational spearpoint. “What am I bid?” he said.

“Fuck you,” George said, with completely unexpected heat. His hair rippled.

“What?”

“I said, a most hearty and convinced ‘Fuck you!’” George said, “And I’ve got plenty of reasons to say it.”

“Oh, really? You admitted you’ve put my life in danger every time I’ve been with you. Somehow that does not give me the right to some little consideration, maybe compensation.”

“For the physical work you do, you are compensated. For the secrets I hope you keep, you will be compensated. For you telling me that we can solve our trust issues with money, I think ‘Fuck you’ covers it.  You’ve never been motivated by money.  Money merely represents autonomy, the freedom to choose what you do next, the freedom to live your life within your health constraints as pleasantly as you can.”

Jesse, breathing a little hard, said, “Please feel free to tell me what you have to offer beside money.”

George started to jiggle all over. Under different circumstances, Jesse might have laughed. As if sensing this, George stopped, and then extended a tentacle and rested it, like cold, somehow fizzy, plastic, on his hand.

“Friendship,” he said.

Jesse didn’t flinch.

“Let me touch your hair,” he said.

George’s hair slowly gathered itself and then slowly extended itself so that it rippled above Jesse’s hand. Jesse reached out and touched it.

“Don’t touch the ends. They’re sharp as hell,” George said.

It felt smoother than anything Jesse had ever felt. Slowly, it roughened until it felt like burlap, and then like the surface of a brick. He pushed a finger into it; it pushed back.

“Is it computational?” Jesse said. He tried to imagine any brain or computer being able to run something so sophisticated, and then curiosity ran on ahead. “And how long does it get?”

A section of the hair gently but snugly wrapped around Jesse’s body. Four more sections wrapped around his arms and legs. It lifted him into the air, until he was staring straight down at George.  The springs in the sofa underneath George made protesting noises.

“I’m really sorry it’s fondling you like this,” George said.

“Why? This’ll be an awesome story for my memoirs,” Jesse said, trying to maintain the steady demeanour George seemed to like him for.  The hair re-oriented him so that he was coasting around the room. It was painless and almost pleasant, and he knew for a fact that freaking out or thrashing was a really bad idea.

“My hair is not a bad sort, but it’s —“ and here George paused.

“‘Of diminished moral capacity’ should cover it,” Jesse said, from a corner of the ceiling.  His voice sounded weird to himself.

“‘Inconsistently understood and applied moral capacity and extremely variable responses to perceived threats’ is more like it. I’m ecstatic you’re taking this so well. I’ve asked it to set you down gently, and it’s thinking about it.”

The hair, responding to George’s request, set Jesse back in his chair, and returned to home position.

“Remarkable,” George said. “My hair has freely promised never to injure you.”

“You can talk to your hair.”

“To a certain inconsistent and limited extent, yes. You have no idea what a relief it is.  When I completely let go and let the hair do whatever it wants, I have no clue what will happen next.  Sometimes it makes art. Sometimes it goes completely limp. Sometimes it stabs me repeatedly, and since it’s the only thing that can stab me it’s really not nice to have it on my head all the time. Sometimes it supersonically kills every flying insect within ten metres.”

“Hair that breaks the sound barrier — no gel on earth can restrain it,” Jesse said, theatrically. More seriously, he added, “Did your hair say why it likes me?”

“Because I do,” George said simply. “Now, do you really want to talk about money, or would you rather talk about perks?”

“Do I have to work with Michel?”

There was a long pause.

“I’m afraid of what Michel will get up to if you don’t. He likes the work, because it solidifies his defiance of Sixer norms, and makes him a hero to most humans who learn of it. Never underestimate Michel’s desire to be viewed as a devil may care hero.”

“That makes me wonder how you want to be seen.”

“As a protector of humanity,” George said.

“Oh, shit,” Jesse said, and fear sharpened his voice. “Sounds like we’ve got incoming alien troop ships.”

“Not that I’m aware,” George said, tartly. “I was thinking along the lines of big hunks of rock flying at Earth from the sunward side.”

“Rocks.”

“Space rocks. Planet smashing ones, which we haven’t seen yet. The Chelyabinsk event is pressing on my mind.”

“So, no spaceships materializing over Washington.”

“I have reason to believe that if my species ever had spaceships, they have cloaking technology and you would not see them on radar or with the naked eye. And if they haven’t shown up in eight millennia, which is how long we’ve been here, I’m betting they aren’t coming now.”

Jesse sat with this information for a while.

“Promise me you’re not lying.”

“I’m not.  Ask any Sixer about it.  They’ll all have opinions about the facts, but the facts will be more or less consistent. You know, Jesse, I’ll think more of you if you don’t ask me to promise that aliens aren’t coming. For all I know, a different species altogether wants to steal your junk food and toy with your women while threatening planetary extinction.”

You’re such a comfort, George.

Jesse found the hair the creepiest thing about George, so he stopped looking at it. Inspected more closely, George was splashed with freckles, which were not so much coloured as variably reflective. George, noticing (with what?) that he was looking at the freckles, lit them up.  George, puckishly, was lighting up the preliminary flash to request sexual access, which Jesse had no way of knowing.

Jesse was flippant. “You’re going to have to kiss me first,” he responded. George’s hair turned into a pompadour, pointed directly at Jesse’s face.

“Wow!” Jesse said. “Is your hair a watchdog? What did I say to get its attention?”

“You read the light flash correctly.  My hair takes exception to humans doing that.”

“So your hair’s a security guard?”

“I have not actually figured out what my hair is for, why it behaves the way it does, and how I can control it. If it thinks I’m under threat it can be — skittish?”

The hair soundlessly relaxed into its usual fountain shape.

“What can it do?”

“It could kill someone.”

“You’ve been working with me for —“ and Jesse’s outrage was mixed with a weird kind of acceptance.

George was soothing.  Jesse didn’t like it when George was soothing. “And if you don’t want to work with me in future, so be it.”

Jesse screwed up his face and nodded slowly. “Right.  So you’re going to fire me and work with Michel, but when you need your reference I’m supposed to cough it up like a good stooge.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” George said. “Why would you think I’d fire you? To have a human friend, who can provide cover for me while I perfect my tedious and safety-oriented plans? That would be the best possible outcome of this conversation.”

“You want me to keep working with you,” Jesse said.

“Well, no,” George said reluctantly. He didn’t know what to say and let Jesse work it out.

“You want me to work with Michel!?” Jesse squeaked. Full realization came. “And you told him first — and he fucking poisoned me! Thinking it would drive me off.”

“Thinking it was the lioness cuffing her cub at the commencement of a lesson,” George said. “We’re apex predators, and we’re not fantastically social. It was a warning that we’re showing a pleasant and constructive side, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t tell you that others of our kind will be infuriated and possibly quite anti-social when they get wind of our plans.”

Jesse felt a cold blossom of fear in his vitals. “Somebody as strong as you and Michel could decide to take it out on me?”

“We’re not supposed to kill humans.  It’s a long-standing tradition.”

“I suppose you don’t kill each other.”

“Oh yes, sometimes.  By the numbers we’re more violent than humans, but if you examine what’s really happening, it appears that one of the more unpleasant members of my species is selectively killing males to improve his breeding odds.”

“Yuck,” said Jesse. “So he’s a serial killer.”

“I think so. I can’t prove it. I won’t visit him to find out.”

“You know where he lives?”

“Everyone does.”

“I don’t suppose your people have cops.” Jesse wasn’t hopeful.

George shook his head, for lack of a better term. It was what his hair grew out of, so, close enough. “Nor judges, nor governments, nor laws that don’t take the form of custom and precept, nor lawyers, nor social workers, nor court appointed anger management counsellors, nor —“

“Getting the picture, thanks,” Jesse said. “You folks are full-on anarchists.”

“Solitary people who’ve lived without authority for a long time evolve beyond theoretical anarchism,” George said. “Each of us is a sovereign territory, with our own chosen customs and languages. We have vastly different agendas, and with our different body types, we often don’t live close to each other.”

“So the short version of your social organization is: if things fuck up, you just go somewhere else and who cares, ‘cause you’re solitary.”

“We still have to have enough social organization to schedule breeding opportunities,” George said.

“Sounds about right, although I don’t want to breed,” Jesse said blankly.

“You and Michel share an outcome. You won’t breed, and he can’t,” George said.

“Neither can you, he commented on it,” Jesse said, wanting with sudden desperation to push George away from his usual lofty calm.

“He did,” George said. After a pause, he twisted himself in his seat and his arms stopped looking like wavy mannequin arms and started looking more like tentacles. It was rather unnerving and Jesse said, quiet and fast, “Holy shit.”  George’s round belly and doughy legs stayed the same, which was both comforting and weird.  “I find it interesting that he thinks you would care about it.”

“Care how?” Jesse said.  It had always been a possibility that he’d be discussing an alien’s sex life when he got up this morning, especially after he’d admitted to himself that George was either an alien or a really persuasive hallucination. “I don’t care about it enough to think it’s my business, that’s for sure. I don’t know why you’re convinced that having offspring is a big deal, because it isn’t, except to the offspring.  If the offspring’s never born, the problems associated with being alive never happen.”

“Your comments are all very pleasantly nihilistic, but that is not our deal. Kima and I are on a schedule, and this is supposed to happen so we can get on with our lives, and it hasn’t happened yet, and we’re stuck.”

“Stuck? Do you love her?”

“More passionately than human language can encrypt,” George said. Jesse was tempted to laugh, but George seemed dead serious.

Jesse splayed his hands. “You sure are good at changing the subject. I had you in a corner there for a second, and you sprang loose like a dirty great kangaroo.”

“Where’d you find him?” Jesse asked slowly.

“I didn’t, he came recommended, and I can’t otherwise speak about him because of some elaborate promises I made.”

“You weren’t really born on Earth, were you,” Jesse said.

George grinned. “Oh yes, I was. That part I’m quite sure of.”

Jesse got up to boil water for tea.

“Are you angry with me?” George said.

“Would you care if I was?” Jesse asked softly.

“I respect you. I like you. I can tell you’re angry, but I can’t tell what is making you feel thwarted, or lower on the hierarchy, which is what usually makes humans mad. So I’m asking because I’m curious, and it will affect what I say next.”

Jesse, unlike most people, tried to think before he spoke.  George, unlike most people, gave him the space to think.

“No,” Jesse said. “I’m angry because I feel ignorant. I want to know more than you can tell me.”

“I’ve made a lot of promises. Some of them you’d approve of, and some of them would likely —“ and here he paused.

“Piss me off,” Jesse supplied.

“No doubt,” George said, his tone broadening into derision. “I’ll tell you what I can, when I can.”

“What role do I play in your plans?” Jesse said, lingering over each syllable.

“What, you think I’m going to tell the cabbie to pull over so I can eat you? This isn’t a Supernatural episode; I have real world problems.”

“It is a Supernatural episode.  You don’t eat.”

“I’m physiologically different from other … Sixers.”

Jesse took a deep breath and said, “Show me what you really look like, because I know you don’t look like —“ and he waved his hand, fingers splayed.

“You really did figure it out faster than anybody I ever met,” George said. “And you kept your mouth shut.  Smart and discreet don’t always go together. You can laugh if you want to, but you’re my coworker reference.”

“What?”

“I need to have a coworker, so I can prove I can behave appropriately, provide customer service, put other people’s needs ahead of my own, be useful, show compassion, entrepreneurial drive and all those behaviours which placate various people. Also, I was told to do it by one of the people I made a promise to.”

“I don’t know, George, it sounds like you’ve made a lot of promises.  Why not just take what you want?”

George laughed.  He said something, probably in Greek, that sounded like a song and a moan. Jesse raised his eyebrows.

“Because I can’t.  I can’t take what I want, even if I thought I was justified in so doing! I need human help to get what I want, and I can’t do it in secret, because as limp and meretricious as contemporary journalism is in most places, I cannot keep it secret. All I can do is make the day it’s no longer a secret one of my choosing.”

“You think I’ll keep your secret?”

“Yes. Let me ask you a question.  When did you guess?”

“Weeks ago,” Jesse said. “I wanted more evidence.”

“Wise, and able to put off immediate gratification. Unusual. As for our secrets, for you know of three of us now, I know you will keep them, unless we do something violent or truly barbaric. Have you told Raven?”

“No,” Jesse said heavily. “She thinks I have mental health issues already, and she’s right. She’d march up to you and demand proof, and I don’t think I wanted to see what you might do to keep her quiet. You announcing ‘We’re here!’ could start a nuclear war.”

“I won’t mock you. I know that’s true,” George said.

“As for barbaric, don’t you think infecting me with something is barbaric? Or was that Michel putting you on the spot and I was just the way he could do that?”

“He’s testing both of us. I am very sorry he chose to be such an ass about it.”

They looked at each other for a while.

“It would be best,” George said, “If you didn’t expect Michel to apologize.”

“I’m used to that,” Jesse said.

There was another long pause.

George pulled at his nose, or pretended to.  “I’m not human.”

“Are you hideously ugly?”

“Not to my mates,” George said, and stopped whatever internal processes allowed him to generate his appearance.

The white man in Edwardian garb disappeared, and a blob, roughly the shape of a human, sat in his place.

“Hoo boy,” said Jesse.

George was naked. There appeared to be nothing that could be called eyes, nose or face; no external genitalia, no nails, fingers or toes. His skin was mottled; some patches were grey, some beige, trending to pink, and some cream, trending to white. The patches moved, slowly and steadily, as if his surface was a sped up map of tectonic plates moving above and below each other.

The only thing that seemed human was his hair. It, too, was moving, and it did not rest on his skin, but stuck up and out like one of those optical fibre fountains you see in Chinese restaurants sometimes. It was dense, and dark, and it was hard to see what colour it really was.

Jesse woke up around ten, his eyes full of gravel and his mouth stuck shut with something akin to bat guano. He felt like an island of life assaulted by a sea of death, in this case the heaving, slimy bag that currently restrained his guts.

He just barely made it to the toilet, and was very putridly sick from both ends for what seemed an improbable span of time. He was just about to call 911 before he passed out, when the door rattled and Raven came in. “Hello this house,” she called.

“In here,” Jesse said, his voice cracking.

She saw him, slumped against the toilet, and said, instantly, “When’s the last time you drank anything?”

“Beer last night,” he admitted. His throat was on fire; he hardly had the strength to push air past his voice box.

“I wonder if I caught this from the dog shit,” Jesse mumbled.

“What were you doing with dog shit?” Raven asked, disgusted, but also unsure she’d heard him properly.

“What indeed?” he asked an uncaring universe, and flipped ends while Raven stepped away from the bathroom to ‘give you your privacy and get some liquids happening’.

Jesse wasn’t much of a cook. His downtrodden refusal to learn to cook, no matter what his mother said or did, was one of the ways he stayed autonomous, and Raven had gotten tired of hauling what she considered staples to his house the odd time she’d cook for him. He had organic chicken broth, thanks to one of her shopping trips. She even acknowledged once that it was pleasant he had a Choices market so close. She nuked up a mug for him and asked him if he was okay with drinking it ‘in there’, where hideous gurglings still ruled, and she could hear the shudder in his voice as he said, “No, thanks.”

The cramping pain subsided enough to permit him to hose himself off. With the last of his strength, assisted with no nonsense by Raven, he crawled back into bed.  Raven had put down garbage bags to prevent him from destroying his mattress, and remade the bed, so he could sit up.  The broth was welcome, though he knew it wouldn’t hang around long, and he dozed for about half an hour before he woke up and puked into his kitchen garbage can, which Raven had repurposed into a lined emesis basin.

“How’d you know to come over?” Jesse said weakly.

“Some guy you work with called and said you’d been in terrible shape the night before and he was worried about you. I called and you didn’t answer.”

“I didn’t even hear it ring,” Jesse said. He had accidentally recorded the audio of his interpretive dance, although he would not know that until the next time he looked at his phone.

“So I called him back and asked where you were and he said he was sure you were here, because you’d texted him when you got home.”

Michel, you fucking asshole.

A thought occurred. “Did he say who he was?”

“No.”

“Did he have a French Canadian accent?”

“What? No, I don’t think so, just sounded like your average west coast working dude.”

I’ve heard him mimic George, so I’m sure he could manage without the identifying accent for a phone call.  Why he picked up that outrrrrageous accent has not been adequately explained. Of course, I say things with cartoon voices all the time, but not day in, day out…

Raven stayed with him until she was sure he could keep himself hydrated, and with a wave from the doorway, beetled off to make her afternoon shift at the shelter.

The illness poured through his body for twenty-four hours, and then trickled away to nothing but appalling gas. To his wonderment, the gas was completely odourless, but on consideration, and with a teensy ball of opium to calm his guts and soothe his nerves, that made perfect sense. Then he lost his train of thought. He prayed to his appendix, night and day, to recolonize his spent and flaccid tubes, which now accepted toast with a small amount of butter.

Thanks to Raven, he’d been able to sleep. Looking fierce, she had said, “I only brought one, I carry it for emergencies, only. You owe me twenty bucks or like in kind.”

“Jesus. Don’t you know I’m glad you didn’t bring me fentanyl? And I have no idea where to score opium, you’re better connected than me. You think I’ll get addicted?”

“Shush you. Bye.” The door banged and her key rattled and scraped.

He got a call from George cheerily asking if he was up for a move, and he said, voice still hoarse from puking, “No, thanks to Michel.”

A pause. “What do you think he did?”

“Infected me with giardia, or maybe it was radioactive tap dancing e. coli, but definitely something pathogenic that did unspeakable things to my colon,” Jesse said. “Perhaps if you mention dogshit to him his memory will work.”

“He is a prankster,” George said. “I take it you are too debilitated to work.”

Jesse was too tired to raise his voice, but the ire was unmistakeable. “I lost four pounds in one day and didn’t get more than groggy little naps the whole time, what do you think? But I suppose I should thank him for calling my sister, I might have gotten really messed up.”

The conversation ground to a halt.

George said, without particular emphasis, as was his custom when he was angry or alarmed, “Michel spoke with your sister.”

“Yeah, but he didn’t identify himself, according to Raven. And he wasn’t using an accent, so for all I know you called her.”

“No,” said George. “I haven’t contacted your sister. I don’t want to have this conversation over the phone. May I come over?”

“Why not?” Jesse said. “Whatever I’ve got, you can’t get.”

George arrived by cab about an hour later. It was midday, so Jesse was trapped in the house anyway.

Without preamble, George said, “I’ve spoken with Michel.”

“I’m sure him poisoning me came up.”

“I’m sure it did too, and I was a party to the conversation,” George said mildly. “You’re right to be annoyed. Michel is testing me in front of a mixed group of humans and my kind.”

“Your kind, which doesn’t have a name,” Jesse said. “I’ve taken to calling you ‘the great unknowable rubber and glue people’ since you haven’t gotten around to picking a name for yourselves.”

“We don’t have a legally enforceable or trade-markable name in English, as things are,” George said.  “My lawyer advises me that if we call ourselves Squids, there’ll be more race-hatred, faster, whereas Sixer calls out some of our architectural differences and doesn’t have as many negative connotations.”

“I don’t know which is worse,” Jesse said.

“What’s worse?” George said.

“I don’t know which is worse,” Jesse repeated, “that you have a lawyer, or that you’re an alien.”

“Oh, that,” George said. “You’re okay with it, right? When you’re hiding money in many places, you really need a competent and quite improper lawyer.”

They continued their walk to the Night Bus stop.

Michel pulled out a dark red plastic swizzle stick, with a stork embossed on it.

“A treasure of global significance,” Jesse said, glancing at it.

“We’re not much into stuff,” Michel said. “But I like this. It’s a souvenir. My capodecina took me to a nice club for whacking some guy.”

“From mobster to dog euthanizer,” Jesse said. “What a career you’ve had.”

“You can’t hurt my feelings,” Michel said.  “Kima’s here in town at the same time as me.”

“Have you stopped killing people?”

“I’m even a vegetarian now,” Michel said.

“What?”

“I used to kill and eat animals. I never was as fond of cats as … never mind.  Anyway, I don’t anymore,” Michel said. “And George says that while I was living in Montréal I had ‘diminished moral capacity’.”

“Montreal has that effect on some people,” Jesse said. “Mike Wilmot once said it was ‘like Disneyland for alcoholics’.”

“I didn’t understand why it was wrong to kill bad people,” Michel said, as if the matter still confused him, but he’d changed his behaviour to avoid trouble.

“Now you pistol-whip them,” Jesse said.

“You prefer I turn him off with a lecture? Guys like that don’t learn until they meet a bigger bully.”

“But you’re still glorifying bullying behaviour.”

“If your heart has no muscle in it, how can it beat?” Michel said, rhetorically.

Jesse took a breath, expelled it, and then said in a tight voice, “I don’t want to live in a world where masculinity and bullying are so close to being synonymous. I don’t think you’ve got a heart at all.” He added, “And if you do, I bet I couldn’t tell the difference between it and a rancid hunk of gristle.”

Michel sounded prim now. “If I got no heart, it’s cause I never had one. I started life with a different set of assumptions than you, and I can’t rely on a heart to tell me how to behave any more than you can.  I prefer George’s way of explaining things. I’m caught between two worlds. I love the human world of guns and cell phones and airplanes and loud noises and rockets. My love makes me an outcast.”

“You and Kima and George.”

“Ah, now you’re starting to see.  We’re all freaky like that.”

“You and George are sharing her,” Jesse said, and immediately wished he hadn’t.

Michel took his time responding, and spoke with care. “Kima is the one with the final say. You say you’re polyamorous. Why would you say that we ‘share’ her, like a pizza, rather than have an understanding with her and each other, like we’re all people?”

After a decent pause, Jesse said, “I truly and seriously fucked up, dude.”

Michel’s reaction to this continued to be calm. “Kima’s not like other people. She does her own thing, and she and George have a project.”

“The twenty million dollar plan.”

Michel was quiet again. 

More time passed than he would ever admit to before Jesse turned and realized that Michel was either gone or transparent.

He wasn’t that drunk.  He got home okay.

Before he went to sleep he thought, I can’t drink when I’m around them.  I get too desperate. I’m too obvious. I want to know everything. It’s the awkward stage. I know enough to be trouble, and not enough to understand what the hell is going on.

During his childhood, Jesse had eaten lies with his porridge, and splashed through lies in his bath. He expected lies, except from Raven, and his hyper-vigilance fought with his naïvety at every turn, so one minute he’d believe anything — and the next, he’d be back in his right mind, and filled with enervating cynicism.  Then Raven would kick his ass, with “Cynicism is the game you’re forced to play when you admitted capitalism won. Ya gotta get up and let the hope back in!”

Worse than the cynicism, which was a mood, coming and going like weather, were the times when he thought he might be lying to himself. He thought that his childhood was a cramped and poisoned container he could not escape. Everyone thought he had escaped. That was the biggest lie of all. He told himself it was okay to cry.

Fuck that noise.

He started his breathing exercises and worked backward through his day.

He sat straight up like a marionette, eyes staring.

What the hell happened to the gun?

He lay back down, breathed deeply, sighed deeply, and tried to calm himself again.  It didn’t matter.  Michel had it, or he didn’t, and even if he did have it, it had no bullets.

He was drifting asleep, in a sweet state of safety, knowing his mother was hundreds of kilometres away, and she didn’t have his phone number or address. He was thinking about how he sometimes missed the chickens, and the cats, and then one of the riddles from The Hobbit came into his mind, and like a clockwork toy, he was sitting bolt upright.

Michel was exactly the kind of person who would be carrying around ammo.  Perhaps even ammo for that bad boy Glock 17 that disappeared after the shooting.

He lay back down.  “So he’s got a gun,” he said to his ceiling. “And maybe ammo. Do I sound worried? I’m not worried.”

There were plenty of other things to be worried about. Or perhaps ‘concern’ was a better word.

How do they know where the cameras are?

What is the true relationship between the three I know about?

Who’s Hermes, and will I ever meet him?

Are there more of them living in Vancouver I don’t know about?

“I’m sure you’ll meet her sometime soon,” Michel said. “As for the getting shot part, it won’t happen if I’m around.”

“Duly noted,” Jesse said.  “Are you armoured?” He started feeling around Michel’s clothes and patting him.

Michel slapped him away and said, “I didn’t give no permission for you to fondle me. No! I am not armoured.  Not like you understand armour.”

“It must be built in, somehow. How can you feel so – bleugh!” Jesse exclaimed in disgust.

“Dogshit,” Michel said genially.

Jesse flung his hand away in horror. His upbringing had left him with very little ‘give’ when it came to nasty smells and bodily functions, which was part of the reason he’d been so traumatized by the hoarder move.

Michel was still working his head around it, too, but for different reasons. “I hate having to kill animals,” he’d said. Jesse was past being rational on the subject, except to thank Michel and George for doing what he had neither the strength nor the compassion to do.

Jesse loved a good prank, but dogshit was too much.  Michel tried to correct his error.

“Hold still, quit twisting,” Michel crooned. Jesse went rigid, and Michel somehow mopped him up, including the spatters of dung he’d gotten on his own clothes in his panic.

Jesse turned away, sniffed, and composed himself.

To the alley wall, he said, “I guess it should come as no surprise that you keep dog crap on your person. I’m sure you are full of surprises.”

Michel silently scanned for functioning cameras.

He pulled out a diamond engagement ring.

“You never know when you’re gonna meet the right girl,” Michel said.

“You can’t mate with humans,” Jesse said, perplexed.

“You worked that out by yourself… no, I can see George said something. Since reproductive sex is not the sine qua non of human marriage, and since inter-species marriage is probably only a couple of decades away, I’m taking the long view.” His voice became bland and professorial, and his accent shifted into a weird mid-Canadian/vaguely European blend, in open mockery of George.

“I’m sure Kima feels fine about that,” Jesse said. George had warned him that the best way to frame a genuine dialogue with his kind was never to ask a direct question.

“She feels fine about everything, because apart from learning new kinds of math and having babies, she gives precisely no shits about anything.”

“She gives a shit about you.”

“She likes the way I make her feel,” Michel said.  “I got more style than George.”

That was a difficult point to argue, as it bent the word ‘style’ like a pretzel.  Michel was a vision — if you thought a man forcefully stuffed into a beige and yellow polyester disco suit, hung with a kilo of garish chrome chains, and sporting a dirty blonde afro and matching pornstache was the height of masculine aesthetics.

“You look like you ran naked through a 70’s disco and randomly ripped clothing off strangers, including that colony of caterpillars catching z’s on your upper lip,” Jesse said.

“Zeds. Please,” Michel said.

Jesse got tired of pretending he was fine. He could hear sirens, and knew the pistol whipped guy was going to get medical attention, which was a relief.  His moral compass swung wildly.  Was it okay to pistol whip a rapist? Michel was so expansively casual about it, as if this was how to be. It fit a Hollywood narrative, but Jesse didn’t want to be an extra in such a violent view of reality, or to find himself taking such glee in someone else’s brain damage.

“I need to breathe for a while. I’m still flashing on the gunshots and the dogshit.”

“Sorry about that,” Michel said. He was often quick to apologize, without seeming in the least to have understood what an apology was supposed to mean, or its components.

“I’ll show you what else I got, while you get your vitals into spec,” Michel said.

“Kima gave me this,” Michel said. It was a gold coin, heavy and shiny and perfect. “Pirate treasure. Minted in Mexico City in 1716.”

“Wow,” Jesse said. The coin disappeared, apparently into a pocket. He began to smell trickery again. 

“From the same haul, she also gave me this.” It was an enormous pearl, easily 4 cm across. It almost looked like an eyeball.

“They look like expensive gifts. She must be one hell of a deep sea diver,” Jesse commented.

This struck Michel as amusing. “I’ll say,” he said, chuckling. “They weren’t expensive.  They were lying around on the sea floor. She can smell a wreck a long way off.”

“A useful skill,” Jesse said. “George has a highly accurate sense of smell too.”

“Oh, he’s the best. It’s the hair,” Michel said, as if that explained everything.

“I don’t understand, but that’s okay,” Jesse said. “It’s not like reality depends on my understanding.”

“That attitude is the best thing about you,” Michel said.

Jesse sent his eyebrows in opposite directions and then frowned at Michel.

“I’m sure you have more goodies to show and tell,” he said, after a moment.

“I got a lot of pockets,” Michel said.

He pulled out a syringe.

“Shit,” he said. “I picked this up a week ago and forgot to put it in a sharps container.” He hurriedly stuffed it back into a pocket.

Jesse said, narrowing his eyes and trying not to sound overly concerned, “I’m impressed that you walked around for a week with that in your pocket without giving yourself a good dose of Hep C.”

“I can’t get that. Nor anything else, from leprosy to syphilis.”

“You must have an amazing immune system.”

“So amazing I don’t even know it’s there,” Michel said.  “That’s one of the many things George wants to find out, when he finds his scientist.”

“You make it sound like he lost a scientist.”

“No, but he still hasn’t found one,” Michel said.  “Or he’s waiting on some other development, or he needs money.”

“That pirate booty must be worth something.”

“Oh sure. Mebbe ten grand for both of them if I had to sell in a hurry, more if I could take time to fake up provenance documents. That’s George’s trick, not mine.”