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"Omigod guys, G.Y.U.R.N.'s back." That was Stace coming out of the carpark. She had changed her hair. Molly noticed. But where was the Car Park Guy, who was supposed to return Molly's television to her, fixed? And what would the coming of G.Y.U.R.N. mean for her this time? Because last time it hadn't gone well for Molly. That was the end of the whole thing between her and Alex, the end of the whole Good Times between her and her Mom, not to mention the radical reshaping of the planet by the ominous and downright impossible tidal forces of the Clinefelter Mode, the start of a brand new Space Type, the type you would find glowing and growing in weird places, I mean like, half the mall had to be restructured because physics were different over by the Dillard's. Alex, O Alex, where was Alex now, that cutie arithmetic freak who had (classic mistake) calculated in front of a cloaked Egotarian. And broken up with her, too, just before that. But that was history, long long ago...
"You see the Car Park Guy?" Molly asked Stace.
"Oh, shit, Molly!" said Stace, "Shit, I literally looked at that Stapleton book and was like 'I gotta get this back to Moll.' And I didn't. Bad friend, bad coworker."
Molly smiled. "Did you see Leonard?"
"The Car Park Guy? I never see the Car Park Guy. Min always sees the Car Park Guy. The Car Park Guy was saying some crazy shit to Min the other day. Did Min tell you? About the Car Park Guy talking about how tires were the world's last hydra? You slash 'em and they keep making more?"
"He said he was gonna fix my TV," said Molly, "My TV got fucked up."
They spent the rest of the shift small talking at the double registers. Jackson came up and talked to Stace, and they talked about G.Y.U.R.N. coming back. God, Molly thought, Look at these two. Look at this Jackson and this Stace. So casual about the return of G.Y.U.R.N. They're so carefree cuz neither of them gives a shit about math. I should be carefree. I don't give a shit about math. But god damn. It's my type, my goddamn type. First Alex, now I know those bullshit Egotarians are gonna come down and find Steph doing some godawful calculation. I gotta stop hanging around the side of town where all these math cuties get coffee and do fucking math on their math computers. Who the fuck even owns a computer, would take that risk in G.Y.U.R.N.-era where physics barely matter and keep changing all the time anyway? But that's the way it is. With me anyway, thought Molly, because first of all, God and Jesus, Millman's Coffee smells so good and it tastes almost as good as it smells. But also: GOD and JESUS, if that isn't what makes those math freaks so hot. Lugging their computers and calculators around against all odds, proudly displaying their little freak fuck calculator watches like they don't give a damn that Time itself has created goons, unfeeling ever-present cloaking warping Goons to hunt down the Big Idea, to hunt down anyone with any chance of knowing anything about how life works how life /really/ works, /really really/ works. Ugh, shit, shit, GOD. Steph, my sweet sweet Steph. G.Y.U.R.N.'s back, G.Y.U.R.N.'s back, blah blah blah, Jackson wonders if that means Macy's is going to sell more or sell less. I'm trying to kiss this fucking math head, this fucking math head Steph's fucking head is probably exploding right now before I can kiss it again! I don't give a fuck about Macy's!
"Oh!" said Jackson, turning to Molly, "Forgot until now. Ran into the Car Park Guy. Says the TV's in his truck. Says you oughta come get it when your shift's over. Says it works good as the day it was made."
"Oh, shit yes," said Molly, "Leonard knows what the fuck is up."
"Leonard knows what the fuck is up," Jackson agreed, "Dude fixed my kid brother's fuckin' /light up shoes/, he can do anything."
"Wanna go to Marlowe's later?" Stace asked the both of them. But Molly declined. There were things to think about.
--
When her shift ended she pushed her way through the mall. Jesus Christ, everyone was talking about it. G.Y.U.R.N. G.Y.U.R.N. G.Y.U.R.N. You don't /have/ to talk about it. It's not a /requirement/. There /are/ other things to talk about.
She gave Rachel her Bondell book back and Jesus Christ, now /she/ wanted to talk about it. But Molly remembered Rachel was dating some weird loser but some weird loser who was a numbers freak. Something in common.
"So what're you gonna do?" asked Rachel.
"I dunno," said Molly, "Steph doesn't even read. I tried all the good books, the ones even math freaks like. Steph hasn't even read Carter of Wimbell or the Narratives, Rache."
"Oh, God," said Rachel, "I mean... I convinced Bronson to stop wearing the nerd shirts with the math jokes. Like a giant flashing sign for the Egos, fucking dumb move even for math fucks. Although sometimes he still wears this Pi shirt, like it has a picture of the Pi symbol and then a piece of pie... I mean that's stupid enough, right? That's not Time Theory bullshit that'll get you instantly obliterated? I dunno, Molly. Why do we date these weirdo fucks, right?"
"You know why," said Molly. They smiled at each other.
Then down in the Car Park, Molly got her TV back from Leonard. He helped her move it to her car.
"Headlights," he said, "You aware of the concept?" That was one nice thing about Leonard the Car Park Guy. He never wanted to talk about G.Y.U.R.N.
"The concept of headlights? I believe so?" said Molly.
"Of why deer stop for 'em?"
"Deer? Why?"
"Future vision," said Leonard, "Deer eyes. Special photoreceptors. Psychic photoreceptors. Foretellers. S'posed to help them premonish with the moon. Sun's too bright, they won't look. Moon gives 'em a lil' gleep into the next day. Just enough to be wary of the next little danger. But headlights are too bright. Takes 'em to the end of time. They see the Last Thing, the Final Hour. Stops 'em right in their tracks."
"I can't believe you were able to fix this thing," said Molly, shoving the trunk closed on the old TV.
"Anytime," said Leonard.
--
That evening, even with the sun just below the horizon, the sky was bright. All across it, the slick filament of the Clinefelter Mode glistened with about half the brightness of any given star. Six or seven red ovals hung among it, moving slightly, ever so slightly, against the direction of the motion of the sun. Molly knew tomorrow there would be hundreds more.
She met Steph at a late night cookie shop under a short skyscraper. Steph looked unworried. Of course Steph looked unworried. Molly tried to look unworried too.
"I don't even wanna talk about it unless you want to," said Molly.
Steph smiled a little.
"I mean," Molly continued, "It's stupid, for one. So fucking dumb. And you --" Jesus Christ, her voice was already breaking, "You, god damn... I want you to live your life, Steph. How you want. Right? You wanna find out how many digits there are if you take the end of predicted time and divide it some fucking way? I'm not gonna take that from you. I dunno. Jesus."
Steph leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. And then Steph started talking.
"I already know how many digits there are. In all the ways. All division. All multiplication. I know basically everything, Moll. I know basically every number. I told you. I'm pretty sure there's only three more numbers. Just three more numbers, and then I have it. There might actually only be two. I think there's a number between five and six. But there might not be. I'm not sure. There's no general consensus about that one. The other two, there's a pretty fair general consensus about. We're all pretty sure that there's a number between 1,435,435,354,326,890 and 1,435,435,354,326,891. So we have to find that. And we're all pretty sure there's one more number hiding out between negative i3.43249i8320984 and the Cousinford Digit or at least something related to a number, something that'll lead us to a number. We have to find that one, too. We're pretty sure of those two. But here's the thing. I told you about this the other night, right? How everyone's basically given up trying to find the number between -455,555,334 and -455,555,333? Right? Well," Steph leaned closer, "Hon. Honey. Honey bunny. Honey honey bunny. Not a WORD, not a WORD of this to anyone, but... I found it. I fucking found it."
Steph leaned back in the little chair, arms crossing. "I did it. I know more numbers than anyone else on the god damn fucking earth."
"Holy fuck," said Molly, "You are so fucking hot."
It was right then. It barely lasted a second. The Egotarian was visible for less than that. Big purple splotch, looking a little too much like a comic book grim reaper. And then Steph had no head.
Bragging about numbers in front of a cloaked Egotarian. Classic mistake.
"God fucking damn." said Molly.
That was her. Shitty TV keeps breaking, shitty Macy's job pays pennies, shitty thing for math freaks ruins her life one hottie to the next. And now G.Y.U.R.N.'s coming back, and from the looks of it, in full force. Probably gonna end up having to sleep on the ceiling of her apartment tonight, or the wall. Nothing made sense any more. But couldn't it at least kill some bookworms and keep her number crunching cuties alive and ticking?
--
fin
--
--
--
--
She came down the flight of stairs in one giant leap. "EVENING NESTOR!!!" she shouted at the top of her lungs screaming and flailing. She kicked at the wall down by the baseboard and slapped her hands on the kitchen counter bang bang bang.
Nestor looked up from her seat at the kitchen table. She was thin and sickly, looking like a ghoul. Her eyes had changed color overnight from blue to dark gray. Her hair had faded from cherry brown to dark brown. Her fingernails had chipped and crumbled away at weird angles. Her tattoo of an angel holding a knife had just about faded away completely. The hair on her arms was sticking up. Her shirt collar looked to be stained from the inside by some strange substance with gel-like consistency, darkening the shirt's blue and white pattern. Sunlight filtered in, highlighting Nestor's almost translucent ears. She blinked and a number of her eyelashes fell out.
"Keep it down, Jerry, I've got a headache," said Nestor.
"You'll never believe who I saw at the mall today," said Jerry, whispering extremely loudly, doing stretches, crossing and uncrossing her arms in different ways. "Actually I saw two people. Guess. But I bet you won't get it."
"I said quiet, Jer." Nestor looked out the window. Something was happening out there. A bird, no, two birds had landed on the clothesline. They were standing very close to each other, almost like they were overlapping with each other. One of the birds slowly opened its mouth. Then it closed it. Then the other bird opened its mouth. Then when that bird closed its mouth the other bird opened its mouth. There was always one bird with its mouth open.
Suddenly Nestor got a strange feeling, something she had never felt before. Like she could read lips, but not human lips. That was it: she could read bird lips. It didn't seem like the birds were making any noise but she could tell they were saying something. They were telling her something. One bird would say a word and the other bird would say the next word.
NESTOR
YOU
THERE
ARE
YOU
THERE
NESTOR
YOU'VE
GOT
A
LOT
OF
GALL
NESTOR
FOOL
YOUR
END
COMES
FOOL
YOUR
END
COMES
Jerry was running around the kitchen, "Oh Nes would you guess? Guess guess guess."
"I'm not feeling good," said Nestor.
"Juniper Fontaine," said Jerry, "And her MOM! And they gave me a cookie for FREE!"
--
Later, Nestor stepped outside. A walk would do her some good. Immediately the sun burnt a hole in her arm. She could see bone. Somehow, it didn't hurt. She took a step further outside. The sun burnt a hole in her head just above the eye.
"Well, shit," Nestor said.
A hardheaded individual with a checkered past, Nestor determined to spite nature. She removed an umbrella from the crowded umbrella stand and held it as parasol against the sun, stepping further outside.
"Hey there Nestor," said an old man she'd never seen before. He was crossing the lawn.
"Hi there," said Nestor, "Who are you?"
"You really fucked up, Nestor," said the old man. His eyes looked shiny like they were both made of glass. He looked quite old. Nestor suddenly realized he was wearing one of her shirts. It was her favorite shirt. He was too big for it. It was ripping at the sleeve. It looked ragged and worn. The man's pants were baggy and formless. His shoes were too small for his feet. His toes popped out.
The man continued speaking. "I'm not really here to warn you. I'm usually one who enjoys pointing fingers. Narrowing down the blame. Explaining the enemy. But I can't even help you there. Everyone's out to get you. If you could still feel your feet, you'd notice you're already sunk to the ankles into Earth. You've noticed already the sun's out for you. Look up at the clouds. See how they're all moving in the same direction? They're all moving towards you? They're all getting lower? Watch out for the air itself, Nestor. Air is one of the weaker of spitshines but enough of it gathered together can pack a punch. I'd say you don't have much time left. As for myself?" The man reached forward and snapped the pinky finger off of Nestor's right hand. "Simply in search of a memory. A ward to carry me to the next. Now I'd caution you to stay inside."
The old man blinked out of existence.
--
It was the shittiest headache Nestor had ever had. She sat in her room. Jerry knocked at her door.
"Nestor," she said, "Something's throwing rocks at my window."
"I'm busy, Jer," said Nestor.
"No you're not," said Jerry.
Nestor opened the door. Jerry led her to her room adjacent to Nestor's.
"I don't see anything," said Nestor.
"They must have stopped throwing them," said Jerry, frowning.
Nestor looked out the window. Everything seemed to have disappeared except for the house. There was only endless lawn in every direction. Sunlight seemed to be coming from everywhere. The moon appeared to be closer in the sky. A small cat walked through the grass and looked up at Nestor. The cat's eyes flashed. Nestor felt around in her mouth. One of her teeth had suddenly disappeared. The cat walked off.
"I'm a little scared," said Jerry, "I don't have any rocks to throw back. There's no equality. I'm rockless. I'm thinking of getting a new tattoo. Juniper Fontaine had a new tattoo of a guy rocking out on a guitar. I want to get a tattoo of a saxophone cuz I play the saxophone. When you go away, I'm going to use your pillow. It's more comfortable than mine."
Nestor could barely remember who she was anymore. But she was definitely Nestor. The word "tattoo" was one of the only things she could remember. It sparked in Nestor's mind. She looked down. Her tattoo of the angel with the knife had almost faded away completely. It smiled at her. It was a comforting smile. "Next time, Nestor, next time," the comforting angel with a knife seemed to say. The comforting angel with a knife winked.
Then Nestor went boop and it all turned over.
--
fin
--
--
--
I wasn't paying attention when the car lurched forward. The whole thing started rumbling, screaming. I looked over and her hands had gone white knuckle on the wheel, the needle on the dash jumping 5, 10, 20 mph. She had the same expression she always had, though -- that scrunched brow and the little bemused frown like everything was very mildly surprising.
"Hey, whoa," I said, words coming out in mumble. She mumbled something back but the car was screaming too loud to hear. She was swerving into the lane to our left, buzzing past a couple cars on our right. She skipped out fast in front of another car that was crossing from the far left lane toward an exit ramp.
"Why? What's happening?" I said.
"It was on board," she said, "On board. The sticker."
"What?" I said.
The needle on the dash climbed higher.
--
She'd had the 1999 Saturn since I'd known her. I think her parents gave it to her in the 9th grade. It was the old tan color you saw on cars from back then. One shade darker than the beige they put on old computers. The seats were some kind of gray felt or cloth. It was a car pretty well at the end of its life. The floor of the cabin on the passenger's side was so rusted somewhere underneath the thin carpet that it had become squishy. You could push with your foot and it would depress a couple of inches. Sometimes you could get it to go down far enough that you'd hear scraping from the road beneath.
It was the car we'd used to drive to Colorado back in college. We went to see mercury in transit over the sun. We parked at a Dollar General and hunkered over my telescope. The sun made the shape of a small yellow circle on the telescope's pitch dark filter. Then mercury crossed over, a tiny black dot making it's way slow across the yellow circle.
"That's it," I'd said when it was over. She had the same old look of mild bemusement on her face. She did a little nod.
That night, we checked into a hotel room. It was an awfully cheap hotel but the room was nice - wood-paneled with a loud minifridge. She went to the bathroom and didn't come out for like thirty minutes. When she came out, she showed me a sketch she'd done of us sitting with the telescope.
"Tag yourself," she'd said, "The sun or mercury."
I was very impressed with the sketch. That was the night we watched infomercials for almost two hours. That was her idea.
"They're so funny," she said, "I don't know. Something about the cadence."
--
Thinking about it, that was probably the best trip we took together. We took three. But one we also brought along Hanne Rich, and that threw the whole dynamic off, so it was a bit of a lost cause from the start. Hanne would always try to shake hands with the checkout people at gas stations. Most of them would take her up on it.
"I get it," Hanne would say when she was drunk, "I think that's what pisses people off. I think I actually get it, how it all fits together. And people don't like that."
When we were out past Seattle Hanne found someone staying in the same hotel she wanted to sleep with and we had the room to ourselves a couple nights. It was a strange hotel. The two wings were long rectangles dense with wood planking and wood siding. The staircases tunneled around inside, hallways appearing around corners at odd angles. It was simple once you got used to it, but for a while it felt like a real maze. We had to keep taking out our room key and looking at the number, trying to puzzle out how that number fit in to all the numbers we were seeing around us.
She'd brought paint. She had an easel too. I set up on the floor opposite her. This was late at night in the little room. We'd gone to the shop down the road and bought pizza rolls on a whim. Neither of us had eaten pizza rolls in at least ten years.
"I want to cut off my leg and grow it back," she'd said, "I really think I could."
This was a joke she told a lot, which I never figured out how to respond to.
I painted a cat, and the three of us riding on its back. She painted her and me by the cold Olympia beach. It was incredible how much detail she could get onto the canvas in such a small amount of time.
"I love your cat," she said.
--
I keep both those paintings in a box downstairs. I'm afraid to look at them.
Not that anything's happened. But an amount of time passes and it becomes terrifying to remember anything, even if it's a good thing.
Or maybe, because later that night in that strange hotel I'd gone down to the beach alone, wanting to look at the waves without anything else to bother me. And I looked out at the waves and drew a cube in the sand the way you do when you doodle. And felt rather good. And when I came back she was huddled in front of the little TV with some local game of volleyball on. She was watching volleyball, which I think was supposed to be a joke. And again, I had no idea what to say.
--
On a sandbar by the river, I set up my telescope and we looked at Andromeda. That was yesterday.
"How long's it been," she said, "Since I looked down into here."
She squinted. Then she stepped aside to let me look.
"It doesn't feel like stars," she said, "It feels like a microbe."
Now we were speeding down the highway in the Saturn. My family's home was just out of town. She was going to spend the night. We were going quite fast.
"The sticker," I repeated back to her.
"It was like, something on board. Like a gag," she said. She hit the brakes. We lurched the other way this time, heads flung forward. She veered hard into the right lane. In front of us was a battered subaru with a bumper sticker.
crazy cat lady on board, it said.
"Mm," she said, "Boring. Boring."
We kept driving.
--
--
--
"I figured it was more of a second date thing," he said, twirling around to look at me, walking backwards down the narrow sidewalk. "Gotta get to know each other. Right? I like you. I think I get you, at least enough, now. Right?"
Did I like him? Yeah, sure. Jude, he was tall and had a good way of smiling. And he smiled a lot.
We were somewhere by an industrial park I'd driven past a bunch on the way to my last job.
"So what is it?" I said.
"Well, when you see it you'll know," said Jude. He was walking next to me now, gave me a pat on the back. "Okay. Through here."
Gray day, and a little chilly. I was wearing my cute coat, but it was the coat that had stopped zipping up right, so I was holding it closed with one hand. We ducked under a big metal rectangle connected to the side of a concrete wall and came up on an opening in the ground sealed by a big circular grate. He grabbed my hand and pulled me past that, around the corner.
"Oh my god," I said.
It was very clear what it was, even though it was mostly made of wood and tape. And what looked like parts from at least two old boats. You could tell because it was tube-like. With a big plastic window on the front.
"It... works?" I said.
"Oh, it most definitely does," said Jude. "It works, it's worked dozens of times at this point. Jude's little baby." He pointed to the big circular grate nearby. "Help me get this up, 'kay?"
I looked at him. "Oh, Jude," I said. "That's... I mean, that's..."
"It's the only opening big enough to get it in there. But don't you worry. Sewer really opens up around here. Industrial waste. We can cruise for hours, get lost and take hours gettin' back through completely different tunnels."
I didn't know what to say.
But hey, that's what dates are for, right? New things. New people. New experiences. The first date -- well, it was one of what I would definitely call "the good ones." Dinner at Max's. And a long walk in the park. Jude knew a lot about a lot of different stuff. My god, we even talked about Burning Rights, and, my god, we'd even seen them at Cooperton Stage the same night years ago. That was one of those fate signs, right? You got to the same show as somebody and meet up years later? And then on the second date you board their shit submarine and go spelunking in the brown waters of the industrial sewer system?
I was fun, though. Wasn't I? Got dammit. I had to be fun.
"Alright," I said. We moved the grate.
--
On board, there was more room then I expected. Jude flipped a couple of switches and turned a crank once around and something started to hum, and then a light came on.
There were two chairs on swivels in pretty tight quarters at the front of the thing, looking out the plastic window. And at the rear was a little cabinet and a panel full of what looked like homedone wiring.
"Snacks if you want any," Jude smiled, pointing at the cabinet.
We were bobbing lightly on the surface of the water just two feet or so beyond the opening in the ground. Jude reached under the rudimentary dashboard and pulled something into place. We started to sink.
"Okay," he said, eyes focused on the waterline through the window, "Couple things about sewer travel differ from the rest of the world's waters. Different but not worse. Different for the challenge. Right?"
He coughed.
"One. Visibility. Hard to see out there lotta times. But don't you worry about that. Got this place mapped out crystal clear, back of the hand. Know where you're goin' and you won't run into any trouble at all."
We were completely submerged. Jude fiddled again with the dashboard, pulling a heavy-looking lever. Then he flicked a switch and grasped the joystick that took center position on the dash. Ever so slowly, we moved. We were heading in.
"Two. Air. Joyride on a makeshift sub lakeside, you've got easy air access long as you don't drop too deep. Here, no so much. If we run into any danger, you run back there and put on that mask," he gestured behind us, "That's got enough air to last an hour or so. Easily enough time to find an opening."
I swallowed. This was starting to feel real.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
"Anything," said Jude.
"Why this? Why the makeshift sub? Why the sewer?"
He took his eyes off the window for the first time to look at me for a second.
"Same reason anyone does anything," he told me, "Like: a very specific and nigh-unrepeatable set of life events, nudge nudge nudging you in a certain direction. Bit by bit. Dad hated submarines. I hated dad. And so on. You know how it goes."
So there.
--
We talked about all sorts of things. He had never been west of Colorado. He saw Big Picture Mary open for Matt Eustace before she was headlining. I told him about the new job, that big canvas I'd bought and hadn't done anything with, the neighbor who'd just given me a pair of shoes.
We both had recurring dreams that started out with fireworks, but his ended sad and mine ended strange. We both knew Fox Manlow, him from college, me because he'd dated Parker. We laughed because both our bikes were still sitting chained up at our old apartments.
All the while the dim headlights of the makeshift craft alit on dark blobs of what I assumed to be shit.
He was really funny. God he made me laugh. He would tell a joke and stop and look and smile. To be perfectly honest, it was really cute.
And I could tell he liked me too. My god, I'd never talked this much to anyone but Syd in, like, a whole year.
It was pretty close quarters in the front of that shit submersible. Swivel chairs close together. He put a hand around my shoulders.
I put my hand on his thigh.
---
fin
---
.