The One-Forty-Seven

The bus smelled like chewing gum and motor oil, and the old woman across the aisle wouldn’t stop staring. The dog on her lap shook in a vibratory manner, head periscoping wildly as it tried to see everything at once. It whined and I glanced back up at the woman; still she stared, the thin line of her mouth admonishing me. All of a sudden I felt naked and looked away, toward the front of the bus, like if I let her look into my eyes too long she’d know who I was and what I doing. I should have stared back at her, given her the evil eye or something to make her look away, but once my gaze had fallen on the girl sitting near the front of the bus I didn’t really care anymore. She was bundled up in a puffy coat, one of the ones where it looks like after they made it they filled it with marshmallows or something, and she wore a long skirt and striped orange and purple leggings. I’d say they were panty-hose, but I don’t think that’s right. I couldn’t see her face really, couldn’t see much but the ear and her jawline, and her dark curly hair, but from where I sat I imagined she was beautiful. And maybe she was. She was probably the most beautiful girl on the bus, anyway.

I didn’t see any other girls.

I started to have this feeling in my chest, like maybe I was going to pass out, and so I closed my eyes and thought about how great I was doing so far. How I was so close to getting out of the city, and away from the life I didn’t feel I wanted to be a part of anymore. I was putting it behind me - my dad, my school, my job. My sisters, I’d probably miss them. They’d be missing me right about now, and knowing that made the feeling even stronger. I touched my pocket and felt for my wallet, because that’s all I had. The clothes on my back and eighteen-hundred dollars. It ought to be enough for something, somewhere. I was thinking out west. Kansas, maybe, but I hadn’t made up my mind yet.

I looked back at the girl, and imagined she could be part of my new life. I would walk up to her and say, “Hey, I’m getting out of here, and I want you to come with me.” She’d smile and say she’d been waiting her whole life for someone to say that. It was a stupid thing to think, but I thought it anyway. Then I thought about Emily and Elizabeth getting out of school and walking to the car. Waiting for me, and when I didn’t come, shrugging and leaving anyway. I felt really greasy inside, but I told myself the feeling would go away once I’d gotten on a train.

The bus stopped at red lights, made its turns, ingested and excreted people at regular intervals. The girl with the puffy coat got off at the Marchant Street stop, and as she walked past me her real face destroyed my fantasy. The old woman across froma me continued to stare, and her dog continued to seize.

“What?” I wanted to say, I wanted to scream at her. “What are you looking at?” But I held my tongue.

She got off at the next stop, bringing from her side a previously hidden red and white cane and allowing the dog to lead her out the back door.

And, figuring my adventure was over, I got up and followed, leaving the smell of chewing gum and motor oil and cowards behind.

Brought Home (Complete)

As the sun burned the early morning fog away, a crouching figure loped through the knee-high grass of a neglected lawn and came to rest on the bottom step of a rotting porch. Attached to it was a little white house with dark blue shutters and windows frosted with grime; a house much smaller and uglier than every other house on the street. Weathered rolls of peeled paint and moldy roof shingles littered the porch and the screen door hung out by its bottom hinge, wedged in place by a stack of soggy newspapers. Faded flyers covered the front window, from which several small circles of glass had been punched out.

The porch breathed with every gust of wind, a creaking wheeze that built harmoniously with the whimpers of the figure resting on its steps. Its torn pajama pants were faded and stained dark brown and red, and only reached halfway down its shins. A shrunken, once-pink sweatshirt fell about the thing’s shoulders, a smiling cartoon cat printed on the chest. It wore socks of mud and blood and grass, and its hair fell like greased rope to its midsection, decorated with bows of burrs and the skeletons of insects. Its eyes were squinted tight, wary of the sun, and covering its face was a crust of oily dirt. It was a girl, or had once been, before being left to grow up in the dark of some sick man’s dungeon, sibling to the mice and spiders that had kept her company. She was more it than she now, more animal than human; the only thing attaching her to this world a memory of a place, a beautiful happy place.

The hanging screen door clattered against the newspapers and the thing in little girls’ clothing whimpered again. Idly it grasped at a soggy piece of paper and squinted at it, and perhaps it recognized the image in the faded box, and perhaps it read the block letters below that spelled out “BRING OUR JENNY HOME.” But perhaps it didn’t, as it just as quickly discarded the paper and grabbed up a shingle. Cars passed by on the road, some slowing as their drivers gawked, some pulling telephones from their pockets and purses, and amid whimpers the girl thing snarled at them.

The house began creaking with a hesitant rhythm as something moved inside. Stairs groaned and into a dusty living room stepped an old woman with white striped hair and a limp. When she stepped forward to peer out through the broken window caked with grime, she saw something more than a dark figure masquerading as a girl. She saw a daughter she’d lost years ago, and as the first sirens broke the morning silence, we might imagine that instead of snarling at the old woman and darting away into the tall grass, the girl fell into her mother’s waiting arms and began to sob.

Chapter 5 of ...Untitled Novel

It was like seeing into eternity. It thrilled him, ripping at him in a way that was almost like terror. It could only have been the sea, and it was stretched out in front of him like a desert. He became aware after some moments that he was seeing through another’s eyes, that he was standing in another body on the peak of a tall cliff several hundred meters above the water. The man’s body was like his, tall and strong, with a coarg jutting from the chest - but it wasn’t his. It was old, taught and wrinkled and from within he could feel the perpetual sense of exhaustion the man felt.

Ah’ro tried to look about him, but the old man’s body controlled the vision. He could only look into the sea, into the fog and harsh stormy distances where the greensky was still present. It was beautiful, and even with the old man’s eyes he felt as if there were no way he could be seeing this much at once. He felt the warmth and thickness of a set of robes that hung about him as they were buffeted by the breeze. He felt the icy finger of the wind on the old man’s cheek and the warming of the yellowsky at the same time, and he began to wonder how long this vision would last.

Then, suddenly, the man’s focus shifted and Ah’ro felt the uncomfortable nausea that came from being trapped within another body. It was as if something had turned his head for him and forced his eyes down. Of course, this was interesting. The old man was looking at a speck, or what looked like a speck, that had washed up on the rocky shore at the base of the cliff. It was moving. Before he had a chance to puzzle over what it might be, the old man’s body started doing things.

There were a series of what felt like small rumbles to Ah’ro then, coming from the man’s coarg. It was like the electricity he’d felt before, within his own chest, but this was different...more measured, controlled. He paid close attention to the way it felt, and what happened next. The old man’s hands flew up from his sides and met each other at the wrists, crossing perpendicularly. Then they slid apart, palm of the right hand falling over the other back of the left, until they met only at the thumbs and forefingers in a diamond. Then he felt the old man’s coarg pop, a gently crisp thing, and then there was a membrane of light within the space between his hands. He spread his hands apart then, keeping the shape and stretching the membrane...and at once Ah’ro understood what the old man had done.

Looking through the membrane he saw what only moments ago he’d thought of as a speck was actually a much larger thing. It was a man on a raft, a particularly ragged looking man on a rotten and rather submerged raft. He had the pale clay coloring of one of Pick’s people and similar clothing, although the clothing was almost nearly gone. His tattoo, however, looked just like the ones he’d seen on the chests of Yornif and Jorgen. A circular knot, split in the middle with the image of a spear. He was pulling himself from the raft and onto the rocks, and from the looks of him it seemed as if he might die right there.

The old man turned completely around and put his hands to his coarg. A low humming started within it, and he felt a sudden powerful connection to several other beings, like himself. And though Ah’ro had guessed now what this vision must mean, he was still surprised when he heard the old man’s voice resonate through that connection.

”My fellow God-Blood...we have a visitor.”

--------

“Ah’ro.” The voice cut through his vision and the blue man opened his eyes, startled. He blinked several times to shake the sleep loose from his eyes, and saw, sitting in the entrance to his little room, the expectant shape of Pick looking back at him.

Ah’ro took stock of himself, quickly, noticing the lack of feeling in his legs and lower torso. How long had he been laying here, in this cubby?

”Hello, Pick. Have I been asleep...long?”

”The daycycle of mourning is almost at an end. You’ve slept far longer than I had imagined you might, but perhaps that is the way it should be. You have been through many things, and your body is still healing. Do you feel rested?”

Ah’ro thought for a moment, remembering vividly his dream and wondering whether it was something he should tell Pick...indeed, of course, if it contained information the old man would need to know, he should...but for now he would keep it to himself. At least until he started getting the information he had requested, about the Reapers and the magic. The magic. He remembered the motion the old man had made, and the small puffs of power from his chest that had made the looking surface...and he decided he would try it later, as soon as he was alone.

”Yes, I am rested.” He watched Pick look about the room, at the spilled food on the ground, and then the old man nodded.

”Good. I’ve been by several times already this daycycle, and during none of them you’ve been awake. I need to show you something. Come, we will grab something to eat on the way.”

”I thought today was to be a day of mourning.”

“It is. For those at Grob, and Yuuka. The rest of us are fasting, but I don’t force that upon guests - especially guests who are healing from wounds.”

Ah’ro stood, and came to the entrance into the passageway, lowering his massive body through the small hole. “I will fast as well.”

”Very well. Come, I would like for us to go quickly. Most of my people are within their homescoops today, but I would not have them see us go where I’m taking you.”

The little man sped off down a passageway, the same Jorgen had used the night before, and the Ah’ro followed, feeling the numbness in his legs translate into pain -which he ignored.

They took several other passages, most sloping and curving upwards, until Ah’ro was certain he could feel some slight vibration in the floor. When he touched a wall he felt it as well. When he asked the old man about it, Pick said simply that it was wind against the mountainside.There was none of the glowing rock here - the passages were lighted with fire, and as such Pick had to light them with a torch he carried. It was clear that these passages were not those that were visited by many other people of the Scoop, but it was not because they were off limits...simply out of the way. Finally, in the middle of a long and flat corridor that looked plainer than any they’d seen before, that Pick turned to him.

”This is it.”

Ah’ro looked around. Was he missing something?

”This?”

”Yes.” The old man turned to an unlighted lamp on the wall and put his torch to it. It didn’t light. Pick kept the flame against it, however, and as the lamp heated, something else happend.

The wall around the lamp seemed to push in, collapsing toward the middle and opening into another, previously unseen passage. Ah’ro stood agape. “Magic?”

”No, no, nothing like that. Simply ingenuity. It’s designed in such a way that others won’t find it. The type of rock making up the entrance to the passage is one that changes shape when energy is applied in different places - and others would pass it by simply because they’d assume the lamp was faulty and they’d move on. Instead, the lamp enhances the energy from my torch and tells the rock to change shape, and in what way.”

A rock that changed its shape. The idea astounded Ah’ro - would it work the same if he poured his energy into it the way he’d used the glowing rock in his room the night before? He would have to find out - when he had time, though, because at the moment Pick was pushing himself into the little corridor and Ah’ro was eager to follow. Just what did the old man have to show him?

The smaller passage was dark, and the light from Pick’s torch was all that would have lighted the way, but for the fact that it stood in front of Pick’s body and the old man’s body was almost too big for the passage...which meant Ah’ro’s actually was too big. He had to duck his front shoulder and suck in his gut as he crawled along on his knees. He was slower this way, but it didn’t much matter. The passage opened up into the room it was leading to soon enough - so soon, in fact, that almost as soon as the giant blue man had crawled forward two or three body-lengths Pick had hurried to the end of the tunnel and popped out, spreading the light in a way that immediately brightened the rest of the tunnel - Ah’ro could finally see where he was going.

He pulled himself out of the hole just as Pick finished lighting all of the lamps in the chamber - and it was indeed a chamber, with a tall ceiling and walls that were covered in tapestries and several thousand similarly shaped obects. What he was supposed to be looking at, however, became immediately clear. In the center of the chamber, suspended by long cables, was a giant pair of luxurious metallic wings. They were held together at their bases by something extremely familiar...a coarg.

“Great L’aan.”

”This,” Pick said, “Is something I found, almost eight hundred season-cycles ago.” He cleared his old throat and sat down in a large chair that stood next to the wall.

“When I was a young man, I spent many of my season-cycles in politics, rallying people to my causes...one of which was to convince them that further settlement was needed - that simply being content with our place here at Roll would ultimately be our destruction. After a time they agreed, and we took our people far and wide and planted them everywhere we could comfortably live. Underground, mostly...at the time, the Hundif people to the west were doing the same thing. It didn’t work out for them, as they first incited the anger of the Reapers and were all basically extinct by then anyway.” He chuckled and yet the look he gave Ah’ro was not a jovial one. It was a baleful, horrible look. “You can see what good all the colonization has done, can’t you? I’ve sent them all to their deaths...but of course I could not have known that - I was still only a young man. Anyway, on one of these colonization trips I came along, and this was to build a city within the walls of the Ba-L’aan river. We spent tens of daycycles digging out the first of the homescoops, and on one of the daycycles I brushed away dirt that had covered something beautiful. Something that could only have been made from the coarg metal.

“It is when I cleared away the rest of the dirt that I found the wings...and the God-Blood they were attached to.”

Ah’ro breathed in - he had seen the coarg and recognized that it had come from one of his people, but had simply assumed the wings had been added later, after its removal from the body.

“Why are you showing me this?”

”Because these wings, if we can get them to work with your coarg...these wings will give us one of the most essential things we need in the fight against the Reapers. Flight.”

Ah’ro stared for several moments at the wings, then looked to Pick.

”But...”

”Yes, Ah’ro?” The old man watched the God-Blood intently, as if fearing refusal.

“The wings...they must connect...through the back, yes? And yet my coarg only escapes my body from the front.”

Pick cleared his throat. “The wings must be implanted...for them to connect properly, we will have to put them through your flesh, just behind and in between your shoulder blades...of course, that is if we can learn how to connect them. I have my theories, of course...this other God-Blood has done it somehow. Talk of how to implant them within your own coarg is useless, however, if I cannot remove them from their original owner’s coarg. The are fused in quite an...interesting manner.”

Ah’ro imagined the wings hanging out the back of his own coarg, limp and useless. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. But then again, the thought of flying...was much more pleasing to him.

“How do they...how did they work?”

”I don’t know that they did. The God-Blood did end up dead in a riverbank, after all. But I’ve done calculations, and the weight to lift ratio with a fast enough wing motion should have been more than enough to carry the weight of the God-Blood and much more, I should imagine. Why he failed or crashed is unknowable...perhaps he was attacked, even. But if they did work, and he did fly, it was most likely with the help of the magic contained within his coarg.”

”So you say that even if the wings could be attached to my coarg...there is no guarantee they would do anything at all. They could be useless. Is it necessary? Must the wings be used?”

Pick sighed, looking down.

”If there had been more of you, perhaps not. Perhaps a smattering of God-Blood and the magic they held would have been enough to hold the Reapers off. However, you are the only one, a newborn with very little knowledge of the magic that flows from your chest. And you would learn little more from the texts that have been left me regarding this magic - much of that which contained the more extensive information was taken when the God-Blood fled south, because they feared the knowledge would be used for evil if it ever found itse way into the hands of the enemy. Of course, it didn’t end up mattering...the Reapers are plenty strong without it.

So, for now, the answer to your question. Is it necessary? I’m afraid it is, as it must be. You would be little help to my people on the ground, as several of my guards and warriors could do the same work. We, however, cannot fly, and therefore the advantage will always go to the Reapers. A God-Blood in the air could change much of that.”

“And what if the wings do not fuse correctly, or if they fuse and then do not work? Can they be removed?”

”If they do not fuse, yes. However, if they do and do not work, the operation to remove them would kill you. We would have to cut the wings off just above the flesh, and you would be left with stumps. And I do not know how that would effect the power from your coarg. Let us say it is not...a desirable outcome. But, the risks must be taken. I’ve gone over all scenarios. If only we had...if only we had made contact with the God-Blood in the south.”

The lamentation reminded Ah’ro of his vision. He regretted, at the moment, the decision to keep the knowledge to himself. Unless, of course, the vision had been a fabrication of his sleep-deprived mind...but he did not think it so. It had been too real.

He moved toward the wings and began to stroke them, absently noting the fine craftsmanship of the metalwork. The surface felt as if it were water mid-flow, etched and inlaid with patterns that were both beautiful and suggestive of an ancient power. Beautiful.

“Pick, I have had a vision. It may mean much to your people, and to our struggle against the Reapers.”

”A vision? Of what sort?” The little green man hopped out of his seat and waited.

Ah’ro told Pick of his vision then, of his feeling of being trapped within another’s mind, with the arrival of the messenger from Pick’s man on the raft, and the message the man in the vision had relayed to the other God-Bloods.

“By L’aan, the man on the raft is Grundif. I recognize him by the description. He made it...by L’aan he made it,” Pick said after the tale had finished.
“Was there any more of the vision? Did they help him? Did they hear of our situation?”

Ah’ro shook his head. “I do not know. The vision ended with the message to the other God-Blood.”

”The message,” Pick mused. “Is this connection with the God-Bloods the reason you were able to see all of this, do you think?”

Ah’ro shrugged. “Perhaps. But it is good news, yes?”

”It will not help us, if that is what you mean. Even if Grundif tells them what is happening, they may still refuse to do anything. And if they did do something, the journey is much too far for their effort to impact much. The Reapers will have struck by then, I fear. By my estimations they will try to take Roll within the next thirty daycycles. If the time of Grundif’s voyage holds true for the return trip, the God-Blood would not reach us for another forty days. By then my people will have been slaughtered.”

”Unless I can help hold them off.”

Pick nodded.

”You are the factor in my estimations that I cannot predict. I do not want to put to much hope into you, but you are all L’aan has given me, and the fact that L’aan has given anyone at all sparks more hope within me than I’ve had the entire four hundred season-cycles I’ve been Lore-Father within this mountain. I cannot predict what your presence will bring us, but I believe it can be nothing but good. How much good is yet to be seen...and yet, without the wings...there is no more hope at all. Do you understand me?”

Ah’ro did, and as he touched the smooth metal of the wings he felt a great sense of responsibility rising in him. He would do this.

“We must fuse them as soon as possible,” he said, “If they will let me fly, I will need as much time learning with them as can be given.” And the doubt dropped away. He saw it as clearly as he’d seen from the eyes of the ancient God-Blood on the cliff-peak. He would have the wings, and with them he would fly.

With them he would battle the Reapers.

Day 4

He was waiting for me when I got home, standing in the doorway with the biggest grin I’d ever seen him wear. I couldn’t help it; I had to laugh. The two six packs of beer (MGD for me, PBR for him) clinked together in the bag I cradled, giving away my surprise.

”Here,” I said, putting the bag down and pulling the Blue Ribbon out, “To celebrate.”

The grin quickly soured.

”Steven, you shouldn’t talk about celebrating. It’s bad luck to do it beforehand.” He didn’t, however, take his eyes off the beer.

”Suit yourself,” I said, “Not like you really have to thank me, that stuff is cheaper than water.” Owen looked around, as if suddenly unaware of what he was doing. He recovered, and the grin showed up again.

”Steven. She’s ready.”

”Yeah? Let’s go fire her up.” I’d already popped the cap off of one of my beers and taken a pull. Steven didn’t notice - he was bounding down the stairs like a little kid.

”Come on! Look, she’s all set. All we have to do is hit this button.”

“Mmm...” I grabbed another beer and started down the stairs. “Congratulations, Sally. Tonight is the night.”

It wasn’t. Three hours later, my beer was gone and Sally was still humming her low, scratchy tune. Owen was sitting next to me, head in his hands.

”So...how do we know it’s working?”

He sighed, as if I hadn’t already asked the same question multiple times.

“We know, Steven, because she’s awake. She’s not idling, and she’s not errored. If that had happened, she would have printed an error message.”

“What if the error message was really the title? How would you know?” I tried not to laugh, but it was hard. I was far from sober, and felt like funning with the guy a little. He always assumed I was serious, even if my questions were, in actuality, ridiculous. That’s one of the things I enjoyed about Owen, and I took advantage of it often.

”Really, Steven! Would the greatest title in the world really be “Error Message”? Besides, I’ve already thought of that. If there’s an error, the error message will print the three safe words I’ve chosen beforehand. So I’ll always know what the output means.”

“What are the safe words?”

”What? Oh....Sandwich and jelly and something else. I don’t remember. I’ll know if I see it.”

”Peanut butter?”

“No, Steven, that’s not it! How is that even one word?!” Frustrated, Owen stood up and puffed his chest out, taking a deep breath. “She’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. I’m going to bed.”

With that, he pounded back up the stairs.

”Night, O.”

Day 3

Her body was a string of processors snaked together within a giant heat sink, each whirring and clicking in unison to create what Owen described to me as a sort of semi-consciousness. She wasn’t aware of anything but herself, and the series of specific and limited tasks he’d programmed into her. Owen told me she was a marvel of modern computing. Maybe I believed it. Maybe I still thought it was just a bunch of metal and plastic sitting in a bin in the basement.

Sally was built for the idea - which was, ultimately, to write the greatest novel anyone had ever read. To do it in a way that wouldn’t leave anything up to chance. Wouldn’t leave me, for example, writing something that may or may not have been anything good (or anything at all). She had two tasks in this regard, two main functions. First, as Owen had explained to me several times, she’d compile, from a database, the titles of every book ever written - so long as those titles could be translated into English. And from those, she’d spit out a single title. That, my friends, was to be the title of the greatest book ever written. I could cope with that. That seemed feasible, forgetting for a moment all the millions of books that had been written with titles, and their varying qualities (we kept them all in the mix so as not to disqualify bad titles for great books and the opposite...Owen said this would give us a much more empirical answer than if we’d culled any). We had just, he told me, to hook Sally to the internet and wait maybe a day for her answer.

The second task was the one I wasn’t sure could be done. What Owen proposed was that he could, based on various rating systems and user reviews around the world, program Sally to collect full texts for a hundred thousand of the best books in the world - more, even, or less. We controlled the limit. Of course, she’d then be asked to compile, from all those, a novel that would have all the best attributes of each and none of the filler. It would, essentially, be the best book ever written. By anyone. By me.

Yes, I’ll admit it. The only reason I even listened to Owen for a second after he started telling me his idea was because I was the sole beneficiary if his plan worked.

"This book, Steven,” he said, “can only be written once. And it has to look like it was written by a regular guy. The world wouldn’t tolerate the news that a machine wrote it. You’d get it all - the advance, the royalties, the fame that follows. All you have to do is let me live with you, so we can work on it together. So you know just what’s at stake.”

I was sucked in. I couldn’t think of a reason to say no - if it didn’t work out, I’d still be in the same place I’d always been. Working at the bookstore, planning to be a novelist. So that’s what brings us here - a year later. To the day of the title test.

Day 2

I was going to be a novelist. That’s what I told myself then. That’s how I justified working at a university bookstore a full two years after I’d graduated from the same university. I told myself that when the time was right, when it was meant to be, I’d write my novel. And then, I’d sell it. I’d live off the royalties for the rest of my life, doing whatever I felt like. Heck, maybe I’d even write another one if I got bored of that.

I was a stupid kid. I spent all this money on writing books, magazines, and every piece of software that came out promising to help me write the thing, or to effectively write it without my having to do any real work. I told myself I was going to be a novelist. And I believed it. That’s why, the summer before Owen Sinclair and I got an apartment together, I told him my plan.

It was a party he didn’t belong at. Heck, I don’t know if I belonged there, but I was closer to the type who did. It was a forty-hands night, the type of thing that had everyone in attendance floundering up and down stairs and through hallways, giant brown bottles duct-taped to each hand. The rule was you couldn’t pee or free your hands until you finished both, and you couldn’t do that too fast unless you wanted to puke. The purpose of the party, apropo of nothing, was to drink.

I was halfway through my second forty, sitting in the basement near a girl I was trying to impress - she wasn’t interested, but I didn’t care. “I write books. I’m going to be famous.” The truth was apparent - I was drunk and would do no writing, and would do no being famous either. She knew it, and I think when she got up to leave I knew it too. Plans don’t matter to anyone until they’re no longer plans.

I stared at the ends of my arms for a few minutes, at the two glass apertures that had replaced my hands. I took a long drink of the second bottle, and belched. When I looked up again there was a boy sitting where the girl had been.

“I’m Owen Sinclair.” I stared. His bottles were, from where I sat, full.

”I was sitting over there listening to you talk to that girl. Are you really writing a novel?”

My mouth was dry, my tongue was numb. I squeezed my bottles with every bit of strength in my fingers.

”I’m writing the best novel anyone will have ever read.”

He clicked his bottle tops together and leaned forward, interested.

”Really?”

“Sure, why not? Why the hell do you care?”

“Let’s say I help you do it.”

”You? What can you do? Babysit me? Tell me everything I’m writing needs to be rewritten? Jesus, man. No one can write it but me.”

The alcohol was beginning to take hold. His shoes were extremely large. Velcro shoes - I hadn’t seen those since middle school.

“Listen, man. It’s all real simple. You see, a hundred million books have been written so far by humanity, maybe ten or twenty thousand of those were any good. Now, what if I could...”

That was the first night I heard it. Owen’s idea. And it might not have made much sense then, seeing how I was. But after hearing it again, and again (the idea was always the topic of our conversations after that, after I remembered I’d seen Owen Sinclair in the newspaper for doing some really groundbreaking work with computers) it began to make a majestic sort of sense. Whatever he’d done before, whatever computer thing he’d done had apparently been big; big enough for the university to award him a five-hundred-thousand dollar grant to work on his next project.

And his next project was Sally.

Sally lived in the basement.

Day 1

The important thing was that I knew him - a lanky boy with greasy hair and bad acne. I put his books (calculus, general computing, and advanced programming) into a bag and cleared my throat.

”One-sixty-four eighty-five.”

He sighed. “You know, Steven, I don’t even need these books.”

I nodded. “Of course not.”

He pulled a card from the satchel strapped to his waist - a tassled black leather fanny pack that hung all the way past the crotch of his jeans.

“I could have written these books, Steven. Heck, I could have written books that would have taught the writers of these books to write them better than they’re written.”

I nodded and scanned the card. It beeped, and began the authorization process.

”Debit or credit?”

”Sheesh, you know I have like zero funds - credit.”

The credit card slip printed. I pushed it across to him, along with a pen. I knew he wouldn’t have a pen.

”Thanks. You know, I think I’m almost there, Steven. I’m almost ready for the title.”

He pushed the slip back - there, on the signature line, was what looked like a drop of ink that had been smeared across with a fingertip. I watched him put my pen in his fanny pack. He licked his lips. I decided to humor him.

”The title, huh? What do you think it’s going to be?”

I threw his receipt in the bag and pushed the whole thing across the counter. He scooped it up and gave me a look before he began to walk away.

“I’ve explained this to you before, Stephen. There’s no point in wondering what it’s going to be - she’ll tell us when she knows. And I think she’s going to be ready for her title performance very soon...I can almost feel it.”

At that point he was around the counter and throwing open the door, sucking the flakes of snow that had been swirling just outside into the store and sending them into kamikaze dives toward the muddy carpet, melting as they went.

”I’ll see you at home, Stephen. When do you get off work?”
”Seven. Later Owen.”

And he was gone. I turned to the next girl in line. She gave me a peculiar smile.

”You live with Owen Sinclair? Wow. Is he really a genius like they say? My sister had a class with him and she said he basically ended up teaching it, and the TA just sat there with his mouth open the whole time. Why did he get those books if he didn’t need them?”

”He’s...really big on adhering to the required course material. And yeah, he’s smart. Did you want all of those?”

She ignored me, and stared out into the blustery cold beyond the plate glass windows.

”I wonder if he has a girlfriend.”

I pulled the books from her arms and started scanning. I tried not to clench my teeth.

”Of course he does. And besides, you wouldn’t be a good match for him.”

“No?”

“Not enough circuitry.”