Midnite Moving Co

“What are you going to do about all of those threats?” Anh asked, after a silence. She looked at Michel, who was petting Kima again, and wondered why, when George said she was his mate, he wasn’t the one touching her.

“The biggest problem is a local problem, so I’m coming up with local solutions. I can’t talk about all of them since many of the people I’m negotiating with are far richer than I am, and much more shy.”

“Could you at least give me a rough idea of your strategy?” Sparrow asked. “I’m the one who has to stay here, whatever you have planned. The rest of you are settlers.”

George sighed. “Rich people aren’t very nice,” he said. “But they consistently focus on three things: fondling the levers of power so as to acquire or spend other people’s money, protecting their children from harm, and finding ever more esoteric way to cheat on their taxes. So my solution to the local problem is to come up with a way to grease people who are already rich so they don’t bother me or my …”

“Retainers,” Jesse said.

“Minions,” said Avtar.

“Enablers,” said Sparrow.

“Are we playing a game now? Staff,” Anh said.

“Chums,” said Michel.

“Associates,” said Kima.

“These and more besides, but I’m going to say associates since it doesn’t automatically imply a hierarchical relationship,” George said.

And Kima said it, everyone else in the room thought, eyeing each other.

“I’d feel better,” Avtar said, “If your style didn’t peg out between anarchic trope-smasher and secretive plot-hatching supervillain.”

George acknowledged the hit, throwing up his hands. “Me too. It’s a shame that my birthright of spaceflight is being held up by my sentimental desire to prevent Vancouver from becoming an ongoing mass casualty event. After all, if I went to NASA and told them I’d make all their rockets fall over unless they sent me into space, I’d get my wish, but I’d also be condemning my children to either making peace on my behalf, at the cost of many lives, or deciding that human beings are feedstock for whatever plans  they make for themselves.  I want to leave a legacy of some form of legal way of dealing with disputes between humans and Sixers.” Michel wrapped his arm several times around his neck and and mimed hanging himself.

“Summary justice aside, another sapient species on this planet is going to cause all kinds of problems. If I can’t make one major city safe for Sixers, there will be no way to convince them that it’s safe to live with humans anywhere.”

“I thought humans couldn’t kill you,” Sparrow said, confused.

“If we’re sick, asleep, tricked or trapped, humans can kill us, and have killed us. We don’t kill you because there appears to be a species wide lockout. Which I’ve broken.”

“What?”

“I’ve killed human beings.” George spoke flatly.

All the humans looked at each other.

“So have I,” Michel said.

“I ate a dead human child once,” Kima said.

“Holy shit,” Sparrow said blankly.

“Yeah,” Jesse said. “Not shit you want on your resumé. Who did you kill?”

“I killed two concentration camp guards, during the Second World War,” George said.  “I was very, very angry, and I’ll never do it again. Michel, you probably shouldn’t talk about it.”

“What? This is the fun part. I was a hit man for the Mafia, in Montréal, back in the sixties and early seventies.”

“Oh my god,” Anh said. “You can’t spin that.”

“I’m a reformed character,” Michel said primly. “I don’t even eat meat anymore.”

“Did you eat the men you killed?” Anh cried in horror. “Please tell me you didn’t eat them.”

“No, it was bury and dump,” Michel said, frowning.

“And Kima!” Anh said, clearly horrified.

“It was before I got my brain,” Kima said.

“What, just picked it up at Save-On?” Avtar said.

“It is an expression,” Kima said. The rise in volume indicated annoyance. “I was swimming in the ocean and found the body of a drowned child. I dragged it to the bottom and ate her over time. I would never kill a sentient child, although I probably would kill an orca calf if I had to.”

“We hate orcas.”

“That’s an inconvenient loathing, here in Vancouver,” Avtar said.  Kima had already shared that tidbit with him.

Anh was still working through how to deal with alien murderers, as their publicist-in-training, and seemed to be having a rough go, if her facial expressions were anything to go by.

George said, in a strange voice, “Jesse.”

Jesse started. What the hell did George want him to do about this situation?  Fix it? It was best to start with a question.

“Anh?” he said.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” she said impatiently. She wasn’t making eye contact with anyone.

“No, you aren’t. Your breathing is shallow and you’re jumpy.”

“I’m like that all the time.”

George shook his head slightly.

Jesse said, “Fine, let’s put that to the test. How would you deal with this little —“

“Background problem,” George supplied.

“Works for me,” Jesse said.

“Is there any physical evidence linking you to these alleged murders?” Anh asked.

Michel grinned. “Oh, no,” he said.

“No,” George said.

“Then how do I know it happened at all and you’re not jerking me around?” Anh said.

“Because it was a very important event in making me understand how summary justice, however sweet in prospect, is virtually always a bad idea in practice,” George said.

‘Because I was jealous of George for breaking the taboo even if he obviously felt like shit about it afterward and I wanted to try it.”

“You waited 20 years to try it yourself, you dirty great clownbag,” George interjected. “You had lots of time to understand what a terrible idea it was.”

“You told me about it, remember? You could have hidden it, because of that thing we don’t talk about in front of the humans.  The trouble was I liked it a lot, way more than I thought I would, and way more than you ever would, and then one day I sat down and tried to do the math on how many lives I’d wrecked by killing some asshole.”

“That was when you called me to ask me how to do it,” Kima said.

“Well, yeah, and also —“

“Chut,” said Kima, and George gave his one-bark laugh.

Michel pushed red, glowing eyes out of his face until they bounced off George’s face.  George did not startle or move; he looked like a plasticized concrete statue of himself.

“What’s the thing you don’t talk about in front of the humans?” Anh said.

“Which one?” Michel asked with interest. “Is it regarding physical deformities? Mental health troubles? Being too cozy with his mother?”

“Shut the hell up,” George said.

“Make me,” Michel said. The conversation switched over to Greek.

“This,” Anh said.

Sparrow said, “I don’t envy you. The water taxi is all the alien shenanigans I want.”

“What kind of a deal did you make with George, anyway?” Jesse asked.

Sparrow grinned and his eyebrows briefly flashed upward. “A decent hourly rate plus fuel,” he said.

“You know that’s not what he meant,” Avtar said.

“You’re all settlers to me. If George won’t tell you don’t expect me to fill you in.”

“What,” Anh said. “George cut a deal with the —”

“Jesse, Anh,” George said, briefly breaking away from his huddle with Michel, “Give it a rest. There’s lots you’ll never know, try to get acclimated to that.”

“I need full disclosure,” Anh said.

Sparrow got up, said, “Goodnight everyone.  Michel, Kima, I’ll see you back at the boat.”

He stopped in the doorway, turned and said, “I want you to know, I think you’re all fucking crazy.”

The door closer sighed. The door banged shut.

“Well, that’s kind of ableist,” Anh said blankly.

“Avtar,” Jesse said conversationally. “Let’s go drink beer.”

“I’m not invited?” Anh asked

“Engineers never hang out with PR and marketing people.  It doesn’t work out for us, and we keep getting asked to meetings about our feelings on website layout,” Avtar said.

“And I’m not going to tell you why I won’t drink beer with you unless you buy the first round,” Jesse said, his face unnaturally straight.

“No, the first two, there’d be three of us,” Avtar said.

“And then we leave after the second round? Diabolical old chap, let’s see if  she falls for it,” Jesse said.

“You’ll only go drinking with me if I buy the first two rounds — are you fuckers negging me?”

Jesse and Avtar exchanged a look.

Jesse said, with suspicious dignity. “I thought I was trying to lighten the mood by teasing my new colleague, but I can see I went too far. By all means, let’s go drinking. We’ll tell the server we want separate cheques, so Anh can be spared from breaking her perfect record for never having had to buy a man a drink.”

Smiling now, Anh said,”That’s bullshit. I’ve bought men drinks before.”

“Well, what’s stopping you then?” Avtar asked, with what appeared to be genuine curiosity.

“Check, and mate,” Jesse said.

“This meeting is officially over, get lost,” Michel said.

“What he said,” George said. “Avtar, put the whole thing on my tab.”

“You’re the boss,” Avtar said.

“No, I am,” Kima said.

They all looked at her.

George laughed.

“I can’t believe it,” he said.  “She’s joking.”

“Really?” Michel said.

The humans left to go drinking. And eating. There had to be some eating in there too.

George thanked Kima and Michel for coming. Neither of them responded; thanks weren’t required. He and Michel assisted Kima out to the taxi-van. Michel carried her, and George made all three of them invisible.

Jas, their driver, a turbaned Sikh with a narrow, kindly face, greeted them. George liked Jas because his first reaction to finding out that George was an alien was to consider what his religion demanded of him, which was brotherhood and assistance to the stranger. On occasion Jas was troubled that food never formed part of that friendship and assistance, and from a scientific viewpoint it didn’t make sense to him that George never ate. Learning that every other Sixer did eat, like everything else alive, had been a relief, but it outlined how unusual George was; he was a bridge between two species, not subject to everyday rules.

Jas drove them to the boat, which idled up to the public boat ramp at Vanier Park. With obvious relief, Kima vanished and jumped into the water.  Michel waded after her. George followed, and brought the bucket, which Sparrow secured. Kima had told Sparrow it was very pleasant to hang onto a boat and get dragged around by it. Michel, who like most landmorphs preferred to be in the air, stayed on board to talk to Sparrow, whose practicality and humour he much enjoyed, although he found his reverence for Kima to be convulsingly funny, since it was pretty much how he and George felt about her too.

The humans didn’t know, because the Sixers didn’t tell them, that the three had been linked, in various combinations, for the entire meeting. Michel had sat out on the balcony to give Kima and George a turn. It was easy to link and speak at the same time; all the landmorphs did it habitually. They’d link to one person, as if that person was some kind of sentient security blanket, while conversing in a larger group. They didn’t talk about it, because it seemed as rude as pulling out one’s cell phone at the dinner table, although not as overt.

While Kima was getting her escort home, a haunt at the southern end of Saturna Island, Anh, Jesse and Avtar were scratching off the tequila menu at a Mexican restaurant in Kitsilano. Jesse had texted Colin the coordinates, and as he joined them, he was careful to sit as far from Anh as possible.

“Got me some catching up to do, I see,” Colin said as he strolled up, looking at half an hours’ worth of carnage at his associates’ table. There were shots on the table.  “God, I could so pig out on some carnitas, too.”

“I already ordered some,” Anh said, and snapped her finger. Their plates arrived. 

“Well done,” Colin said, and inspected them as they went by. Jesse had ordered a bean burrito, saying, “What? What? I live alone!” at Avtar’s raised eyebrow. Avtar went for the shredded chicken enchiladas. Anh had ordered double carnitas.

“Go ahead, have one,” Anh said, shoving it off her plate onto a napkin and handing it to Avtar, who handed it to Colin. “You’re lucky I feel like sharing, I literally haven’t eaten all day.”

“You should not go into a meeting with Sixers on an empty stomach,” Jesse said.

“You really shouldn’t,” Avtar said. “Kima, when she winds up, she’s the smartest person on this planet. You gotta have carbs on board when she’s in the room or you are at a big disadvantage.”

“George is much the same,” Jesse said.

“Kima is socially backward, compared to the boys,” Anh said.

All three men, their mouths arrested in various stages of chowing down, looked at her, and slowly started eating again.

“You guys are like a circus act. How long have you known each other?”

“Him and me?” Jesse said, pointing at Colin. “Two, three months.”

“Never met either of them before tonight,” Avtar said. “Are they crazy or is it us?” he said, waggling his eyebrows.

“Right,” Colin said. “The night of the murder.”

“What? They’ve murdered someone since they came to town?” Anh squeaked, blowing food out of her mouth. Colin snorted.

Jesse said, “No, no, I found a dead body.  Didn’t mean to upset you.”

It was Avtar’s turn to be horrified. “You found a dead body?”

“I’ve had an interesting year,” Jesse said, and decided to quit talking until his food was gone.

“You’re lucky,” Avtar said. “You work with Michel and George.”

“But not Kima,” Anh said.

Avtar said, “Yeah, for me it’s mostly Kima, and tiny bits of Michel and George. Is Michel as crazy and cartoon-like — and as menacing as that — all the time? I think ‘oh, he’d never hurt me’.  Then I wonder. And somehow —”

“Well, yeah,” Colin said. “That’s our lot. We’re sidekicks, and part of that is dealing with how wilful they are compared to humans.”

“We had the sidekick discussion — I thought we were fine,” Jesse said, offended.

“He gave you food poisoning,” Colin said.

“Oh god,” Jesse said.

“Michel gave Jesse food poisoning?” Avtar asked.

“Can we not fucking talk about this right now? The food’s fantastic and you’re harshing my wallies.” Jesse said.

“I don’t have any problem being a sidekick,” Anh said. “Especially when the hero says ‘Go party on my tab!’”

“This isn’t partying. Ever seen George give a light show?” Colin said.

“A light show.”

“Oh yeah,” Colin said.

“You mentioned it about a hunnerd twenty-nine times,” Jesse said.

“He can make Laser Floyd look like a hand-painted stereoscopic image of Niagara Falls,” Colin said.

“Eat your food before it gets cold,” Anh said.

“I’ll order some more carnitas,” Colin said, “in part to repay my debt. But I think I’m gonna hold up on any more alcohol.”

“Why, man?” Jesse said. He saw no hypocrisy in saying, “I’ve never seen a man puke with such grace, it was revelatory.” He offered illustrative arm-waving and nearly poked Avtar with his fork.

“Hey!” Avtar muttered.

“I try to bring polish and precision into everything I do,” Colin said coldly.

“Tell that to your knob collection,” Avtar said, and Jesse, warmed by food and tequila, exploded with laughter.

“You know you guys look like a lifestyle ad,” a boho woman in her thirties said as she passed their table on the way to the restroom.

“I am not the token white guy,” Colin said, but quietly.

“You totally are, you dumbass. I’m the one who’s nobody’s stereotype,” Jesse said.

“You were right to ask,” Anh said to Avtar. The last of her carnita disappeared into her mouth, and she shoved it into her cheek so she could talk. “It’s definitely them that’s crazy.”

“Ooooo! Who’s being ableist now,” Jesse said.

“It’s not a contest,” Anh said.

“Yes, it totally is,” Colin said, staring after the boho woman with resentment.

“When you’ve always been on top, equality feels like a raw deal,” Jesse said.

“Can we have a proper meeting, when you guys have finished with whatever this bizarre verbal death match is?” Anh said.

“I thought it was a demonstration of reproductive fitness,” Jesse said. He stuck out his tongue and flexed his left arm. His tongue did not reach his arm.

Avtar said, frowning at Jesse, “Winnie’s expecting our first child, so I win.”

Anh asked, with exaggerated disbelief, “You’re married?”

“Yes.”

“She must be hella brave,” Anh said, thinking of Avtar’s association with George.

“Marrying a Guyanese guy? I guess,” Avtar said, cheerfully taking it the wrong way. Anh pointed a finger at him and made a face.

“Wait a minute,” Colin said. “I remember George saying something about Avtar also being part of an interracial couple – he was joking about him and Kima.”

“So you married a white girl,” Anh said.

“Second-gen Taiwanese, eckshully,” Avtar said. “Her parents hate me, of course.”

“Because you have a tan?” Colin said. It was not how Jesse would have followed up, and he felt sorry for Colin.

“Because I’m not Christian,” Avtar said, straight-faced.

His dining companions burst out laughing.

“This too is our Vancouver,” Colin said, recovering.

The boho woman pulled up a chair and said, “I know it’s none of my business, but I’m asking anyway. What are you guys – coworkers?”

“We’re a LARP team,” Avtar said. As the oldest among them, and the most experienced, he produced the lie with easy confidence.

“Really?”

“Yup, ‘Aliens take over Vancouver’,” Anh said.

“It’s called, Run Sixer Run,” Colin said. He had recently re-watched Run Lola Run.

“No it isn’t, it’s called ‘Last Stand on Granville Island!’” Jesse said.

“I wanted to call it, “We are so fucked,” Avtar said, “But Run Sixer Run works.”

“It seems like it! Well, have fun guys,” she said, and went back to her table.

“You bastards,” Avtar said.

“What?” Jesse and Colin said.

“Now I have to go home and build a website.”

“Like Google Calendar for Sixer lovers,” Anh said. “With snacks.”

“Next you’ll be wanting the Minecraft mod,” Avtar said, gloomy.

“I’ve always found more to enjoy in lifting weights and consensual sex,” Jesse said.

They all looked at each other.

“Hide in plain sight,” Colin said.

“With snacks,” Anh said.  “Without snacks, it’s just trolls.”

Jesse found himself smiling. “You know what’s going to be really fun about this, if we pretend it’s a game?”

“What?”

“Laying the city out on a grid and looking at it.  I mean, really looking at it. If we’re trying to prevent our city from burning down, then we need to look at every inch of it and assess it for threats.”

“Most of the work’s been done,” Avtar said.

“Really? You know how to lay hands on it?” Colin asked.

“No,” Avtar said. “In the game, that’s not my area of specialty.”

“Ri-i-ght,” Colin said.

“And we don’t mention details in public,” Jesse said. “You know, I think you’re the biggest security risk in the Sixer cabal.” He was looking at Colin.

“But we’re allowed to say Sixer,” Colin said, frowning.

“We’re normalizing it.  You normalize ideas (in other words, bring uncommon ideas into commonality) by normalizing them (in other words you speak, purchase, make, do, practice, worship, enact ideas.) I know that sounds recursive, but that’s how advertising works,” Anh said.

The men sat with that for a moment.

“You guys are unbelievable,” Anh said.

“How so?” Colin said.

“You were actually thinking about what I just said.”

“You included worship,” Jesse said.

“Yeah, I tripped on that one too,” Avtar said, splaying his hands and nodding in agreement at Jesse.

Colin said, snottily, “I thought it was a little over the top, myself. Do we have to descend into fourth year discussions of bad philosophy?”

“Says the man who went to trade school,” Jesse said under his breath.

“Oh, so now you’re ganging up on the PR person again, in the fight that has gone on since the dawn of marketing.” Anh was signalling the server.

“But we don’t want to normalize the fact that we’ve all done illegal shit to play the game,” Jesse said, dragging the conversation back to the subject. “What are the rules of this game?” His dining companions spoke all at once

“The Sixers are neutral good,” Colin said.

“Kima is the smartest,” Avtar said.

“We can’t talk about the First Nations. Nothing about them without them,” Jesse said.  He added, “If they want to write their own module and keep me out of it, fine,” Jesse said. “Or invite me in with a password, I don’t mind either way.

Anh said, “Three more shots and a Shirley Temple,” to the server.

“So we can talk about fight club but we can’t talk about one of the groups that comes to fight club,” Colin said.

“We make all the secrecy about the First Nations part. All the alien stuff is pretty much lying around, in layers of course,” Avtar said.  “Colin,” he asked in a wheedling voice.

“What?”

“Can you host the game server?”

Colin said, “Er. You know I’m living with my grandparents, and my grandmother is a couple of weeks away from dying at home?”

“Omigod, I’m so sorry,” Anh said.

Colin was solemn. “It’s been a privilege. ‘I want sympathy from no-one for a pain I would not trade for anything.’”

“What’s that? it’s —,” Jesse said. He suddenly thought of Lark.

“It’s something my grandmother said before she stopped being able to talk; I think it was Catalonian poetry, but who knows, and I can’t ask her now.”

“I bet you really needed a break from that.”

“She’s got a caregiver, I’m mostly hanging ‘round with grandad, and he’s mostly okay,” Colin said heavily. “I miss laughing.  There’s not much happening at the house these days.”

“My family’s expecting, Jesse found a body and got beat half to death, Colin’s grandma’s dying… what’s your big dark secret,” Avtar said. His voice was richly encouraging.

“I judge men on how fast they comment on my height,” Anh said, “and assume that I’m Chinese, and assume I can’t speak proper English, and make jokes about massage parlours.”

“I thought we managed to avoid all that,” Avtar said in horror.

“Yeah,” Anh said.  “There’s a bunch of other stuff on my list, and you managed to avoid all that, too.”

“Not quite, Avtar said crazy,” Jesse said. “And so did you!”

“So it is a contest,” Anh said.  “Am I the only person around here who wants this to be a co-operative venture?” She mimed cocking a handgun, and Colin lost his heart.

“When you’re trying to be a better person,” Colin said, stepping up and swinging for the light standards, “It’s always a contest, and you’re almost always losing. And we were talking about a game. So the game is Save Vancouver From Burning Down When Aliens Come Out. The Side Quest is Can We All Be Better People.”

“You first, privileged white guy,” Anh said.

“I am not the token white guy,” Colin said, but this time you could see the tremor in his lip from trying not to laugh, and he was looking right into Anh’s eyes when she started to giggle. Jesse leaned right into Avtar’s ear and whispered, “Warning, crush in progress.”

Most humans involved with Sixers would have argued, with passionate elaboration, that they knew what they were doing, what they were getting into, and what the risks were.

Jesse was more simple-minded about it. There was no way in hell he could know what the risks were. Whatever happened, it was still better than living with his mother. He chose not to claim a higher purpose; in his experience, that shit never works out. Instead, he took the position that he was being loyal to a person – George – and an idea – that sentient (language-using) creatures are created equal. He figured that no matter how smart anyone sent to argue with him was, he could defend those choices. He knew he was taking any notion of a reward for loyalty on faith; George had promised that he’d never spend a day in jail, and yet he’d publicly repudiated Jesse when he’d been called on it.

Jesse still believed. He didn’t tell anyone about it, and when conversation slid, as it always did, toward the miraculous post-coming-out party, he always took the darkest view. “Act like you’re already dead. Humans are crazy and violent when they’re afraid, and never more crazy and violent than after they’ve calmed down from being afraid. Maybe the Yanks’ll nuke Vancouver from orbit, or send in the drones.”

Everyone in earshot would groan and roll their eyes. 

He also thought he could argue that the coming of the Sixers was a nail in the coffin of the nation state, but that contention was going to be tougher to prove, and he’d need to do more research, and the business was, well, busy.  He thought November would be the slowest month ever but they did ten moves, every last one of them in the rain.

A couple of days after Halloween, he and Colin, subbing for the unavailable Michel, did their saddest move thus far.  The woman was moving out for cause because her male partner had taken to his bed. They literally had to move around him.

The plan had been to send him to his mother’s place, the last place bar the doctor’s office and the ER you could still get him to go, and then move overnight so it would all be over when he came home in the morning. 

Their client, Abbie, got the worst of both worlds.  Her soon to be ex was in the house, not helping, and she had to move in the middle of the night.

His name was Cary, and he was so depressed that his expression never changed and he moved with extreme sluggishness.  Michel was right to have skipped this one, Jesse couldn’t imagine what kind of hostile mischief he’d play on a poor guy like Cary. Colin, waspish as always, had volunteered.  “God,” he’d said, “It’ll be good to do something with you that doesn’t involve drinking,” to which Jesse concurred.

“Pro-social, too,” Jesse said. He was trying to stay upbeat. Lark had finally called back. As he’d suspected, he was now too holy to have sex with. Or something. None of it had been welcome, and even less of it had been coherent.

He tried to reframe it. All of his problems were ordinary problems. Trouble with boss, trouble with coworkers, trouble with health, trouble with family, trouble with friends and lovers.

He had to admit that since they’d moved to Vancouver  Raven had been everything she promised and then some. There was some family not worth complaining about. His mother still walked next to him through almost everything he did. He counted as part of the memorableness of any event her departure from his thoughts.

The problems were ordinary. Their contexts were not. Sometimes he experienced it with a kind of spastic grandeur, thinking that he was moving boxes as part of a criminal conspiracy with the potential to both yield and destroy trillions of dollars of assets across the global economy.  Then he’d think of Kima whispering in his ear, and he’d shiver, and say to himself, ‘I thought she asked me to volunteer to carry her, and so I did.’

Though capable of figurative speech, George had said once, it’s quite an effort for her.

Jesse had taken her literally — the horror on everyone’s face but the Sixers had been worth the risk of asking to pick her up and learning he was taking liberties. He thought afterward that he was lucky George had been telling the truth about her comment when she’d seen his picture.  

He had watched her with her two lovers — George, who did everything he could to not physically touch people, and Michel, who never met a boundary he could respect, and determined that for whatever reason it was the handsy (tentacle-y?) Michel that seemed to have her true affection.

For that whisper in his ear, that personal connection, for her cold and slithering form, miraculously dry, held briefly in his arms, it had all been worth it. 

After that, he thought Kima would come and get him, if George didn’t.  It might take a while and she’d be brusque about it, but she’d do it. Let the others mock him for being so gauche.