The reality meltdown, p.11
The Reality Meltdown, page 11
“Criminy… all banged up and drenched, and look at those clothes,” Florence says, giving us the once-over. “But thank goodness y’all made it.”
“’Bout goddamn time,” the guy next to her says.
Sofia puts her hands on her hips and looks skyward. Florence hesitates, clearly bothered, then glances directly at me.
“I don’t believe you’ve met,” she says. “Matthew Beren, this is Anthony Alfaro… Sofia’s father.”
EIGHTEEN
I DON’T QUITE stifle a gasp. Sofia’s father? This is how, and where, I’m meeting my father-in-law for the first time?
He steps forward, allowing a bit more of the porchlight onto his face. The guy looks old… Moses old. His scarred facial creases are similar to Ty’s but sprinkled with white sprouts, as if his ear hair spread like mushroom patches. He’s wearing an Einstein T-shirt tucked into saggy pants that seem hand-woven, maybe hand-dyed.
“We’ll talk in the morning,” he says—to Sofia, as if I’m not even there. “That is, if you can bother yourself to stick around that long.”
He points a bullhead cane at his daughter while speaking. The skin of his arms sags like a quilt kicked to the edge of a bed. I’ve only seen him in pictures, but I don’t remember him looking this old.
“Maybe,” she says. “Maybe not. We’re only here because the reservoir failed.”
He nods. “And the reservoir only failed because you weren’t here. Poetic.”
Sofia curses under her breath as her father goes back inside The Tiny.
“Okaaay then… welcome home?” Florence says, exchanging an awkward glance with Sofia.
Home? Of course—Anthony is here, so this is Sofia’s home. But I never knew their last names were different. Sofia sees my questioning look. “Ty and I use my mother’s name,” she says. “Lesser of evils.”
Florence gestures toward the house. “You three must be ready to fall over. Let’s get you set up, so you can grab some sleep.”
We follow her inside. To my relief, there’s no sign of Anthony—and he’d be easy to spot because the place is a dollhouse come to life: pink walls, dainty window treatments, and parlor furniture with ruffled, fabric edges. Everything from the maple end tables to the leafy davenport seem miniaturized; the parlor fireplace is as small as a waste basket.
It’s all so charming that you almost miss the captivating things taking place right before your eyes, like billowing tissues riding air currents across the room, jellyfish-style, and steaming coffee stretching a full inch above the edge of its cup, as if peeking out.
Subtle things are happening, too. Atop an entry desk, sheets of paper arch themselves around a pen tip, then drop back down, exposing a freshly written “welcome.” Below the TV, a trash can for recyclables is ever-so-slowly growing in height, even as the paper within is ever-so-slowly lowering. Then there’s my instant favorite: smoke rising from a tray of pillar candles has formed a wispy image of Sofia’s face.
Three people are seated on the floor, Sukhasana-style, and apparently have something to do with the unusual happenings in the room. One, a fortyish man with mutton chops, has his hands clasped around a sealed soda can, eyes focused on it as if he’s in a trance. Maybe in the midst of interfacing, as Sofia mentioned earlier? Two others, both women, are concentrating on a silver tape measure as it extends and retracts.
“More of an obsession than a home,” Sofia says, seeing my mouth agape. “People with Amalgam come here at all hours to practice interfacing. They’ll coax expressions, or capabilities, trying to learn the best ways to work with each type of object.”
The longer I look, the more I see, and it’s wondrous. How can any place where smartphones lounge on tabletops, exchanging affectionate tones, not be great?
“We’ve documented sentience in millions of elements,” Florence says. “Not just here—there are about sixty of us, in locations all over the world. We’ll try interfacing with anything, emphasis on ‘try.’ Your wife, though… she’s the princess of paranormal. The rest of us, we’re more like commoners.”
Her reference to ‘we’ redirects my attention. With so much happening in the room, I hadn’t noticed there were several people coming up a staircase from some sort of basement. Nearly every one of them is riddled with acupuncture needles, concentrated in patches; knees that look like pincushions, backs that could double as a bed of nails. One, a twentyish male, has so many in his eyebrows that they are his eyebrows. Even the people who don’t have needles stuck in them bear the scars of having repeatedly done so, their limbs and faces covered in so many tiny dots they look like motion-capture film actors.
Sofia turns to Halston. “It’s nearly three-thirty in the morning—you should get back into the city before people notice you’re gone.”
His eyes shift my direction. “What about him?”
She shrugs, like she’s that parent who brought a toddler to an adult party.
His sigh hemorrhages frustration. “Okay, then what about us?”
Florence does a doubletake.
“There is no us,” Sofia says, shooting Halston a venomous look.
“I meant everyone here at The Tiny. We can’t have this guy exposing things.”
“Matt’s my husband. Your cover’s safe.”
He scoffs. “Don’t think I don’t read you,” he tells me.
The screen door slams as he leaves. Through the window, we see him climb into a small pickup and drive off. I’m not at all convinced he’s actually leaving.
Florence hands us clothes to change into—basic jeans and tees, but they’re the perfect size, and dry, and I’m grateful. “Glad you two got here in one piece,” she says, as she leads us to a guest bedroom. “Me and Ty had a good bit of sass from our picket fence yesterday. Doesn’t compare to asphalt and a reservoir, but it seems no one in this family’s safe right now.”
“You’re both okay?” Sofia says.
Florence nods. “Ty’s already met with the folks here.”
“Good, he can be the one to fill us in, instead of… Option B.”
Florence frowns, deepening her dimples. “Sorry, sugar. ‘Option B’ already sent Ty off on some sort of assignment at the Whitmore Art Center. You’re stuck with Anthony. I’ll stay with you, though. Might help him swallow the bitter pill.”
She glances at me while saying “bitter pill.”
The guest bedroom is the size of a horse stall but decorated for unicorns. We collapse onto our rainbow-colored bedsheets the moment Florence leaves the room. When I wake, I’m feeling like a few hours have passed, which is why it’s annoying to discover the “few” isn’t much more than “two.” Sofia is already up, sitting at the foot of the bed. Her legs are tucked up to her chest, arms wrapped around them, head perched atop her knees.
“What if Doug and Dad are right?” she says. “What if the only reason we’re facing a null is because I left?”
I sit up, rub the sleep from my eyes. “How could that possibly fall on just you?”
“Because no one else had the same rapport with objects. I could’ve convinced the null-triggering elements to reject the plan long before they ever gathered together.”
“And you would have, if your family hadn’t driven you away. Seems to me that puts this mess on them.”
She offers a half-hearted version of her special smile. “Maybe. But even that would never have happened if not for my big mistake a few years ago.”
“You mean the modest change you mentioned after the restaurant collapsed? Dampening your own communication skills?”
She looks like she’s sorry she brought it up. “What a pleasant word: ‘modest.’ But no, this was part of a serious enough decision that it set something terrible in motion… something that never should have happened.”
“But you said you can still correct the problem, right?”
Her hand squeezes mine. “I’m honestly not sure. Maybe, but… look, I’d tell you everything, but I gave my word to the others involved that I wouldn’t, and…”
I give her hand a squeeze in return. “We’re married, not fused. You’re allowed to keep things to yourself.”
She seems to appreciate the support, but I can tell it’s still bothering her.
After a morning shower, I transfer Agnes Waterhouse from the waterlogged pants to today’s dry pair then head to an early breakfast—Florence’s southern biscuits and gravy, because of course. The first hint of daybreak glistens as we finish. It’s a relaxing setting, but Sofia and Florence look anxious as the three of us walk to the staircase I saw when we arrived.
Anthony is already there, waiting. The man offers no greeting, no welcome, nothing more than a neutral expression, as if he’s spent so much time with the objects in this remote, diminutive home that he’s forgotten how to interact with people. Behind him, the stairs wind downward into darkness, headed somewhere beneath The Tiny.
“You’ve got five minutes,” Sofia tells him.
He grunts. “Unless you’ve changed, that’s four minutes more than we’ll need.”
“Unless I’ve changed?”
He turns and heads down the staircase without a reply. Florence is already following. Sofia looks conflicted but gestures for me to come along. The spaniel starts to follow too, then seems to think better of it. Pathway lights activate as Anthony plants his feet on the stairs, but it’s still a dim journey. Some fifty steps down, the steps feed us onto a concrete slab, the pathway lights deactivate, and everything turns pitch-black.
Something snicks shut.
“Light it,” Anthony says. His voice is smooth for a man who looks so old.
A match flares, igniting the wick of a single pillar candle. That’s when I see that we’re surrounded by the needle-people I saw last night, except more of them. Standing in silence, their expressions solemn as candlelight flickers reflect off their cheeks, I feel like I’ve unwittingly walked into a sorcery ritual.
Unlike The Tiny’s entry parlor, this room—or possibly cave, it’s too dark to tell—has no visible furnishings, no electronics, no décor, nothing. So far as I can tell, it’s completely empty, except for the candle and the twenty or so people gathered.
Mutton Chops is one of them, sporting so many needles in his dark-skinned chest that he looks like a porcupine. Somehow, he and Sofia manage a hug. Pin-cushioned chest notwithstanding, he’s a lean, scarecrow of a man.
Sofia glows as the others rush forward to greet her. They shake my hand as well, so many of them that names are flying faster than I can attach them to faces and features. What’s clear is their genuine admiration for Sofia, as if Babe Ruth just returned to take a few hacks in the old ball field.
Mutton Chops motions for everyone to remove their pins. “We’ve got a guest, gods’ sake,” he says, pulling his in bunches.
“Interfacing pins,” Sofia tells me, softly. “Helps the connection.”
“So, they… what, strengthen the signal?”
“Basically, yeah.”
Does that mean Sofia once used them too?
“And all of you can communicate with objects?” I say, to the group.
“No, we’re just the pretenders,” an Asian woman says, twisting her hair into a slender braid as she answers. “Your wife’s the only real-deal here.”
Nearly everyone in the room bursts out laughing, as if they’ve finally alleviated a long-simmering tension over their sub-par skill levels.
Sofia’s father clears his throat. “Time is short, people, and there’s only one question for us to answer here this morning,” he says, then looks at Sofia. “Are you going to help us, or not?”
The glow she exuded while greeting the others fades. “Depends on whether you’re ready to apologize.”
He grunts his disgust. “Goddammit Sofia, extremists are about to trigger a null. Get your priorities straight.”
The way he’s described it makes me remember: Sofia and Halston used the word ‘advocates,’ not ‘extremists.’ Are they talking about the same group?
Sofia seems confused too. “You mean extremist objects—the Leopards?”
The candlelight intensifies Anthony’s craggy face as he steps closer.
“Forget the Leopards, you know exactly who I mean: the idiot Leopard sympathizers who used to be part of Amalgam,” he says. “Sure, we tossed them, but now they’re out there killing people every day, and building this apocalyptic nightmare because they think they can use the scratch to wipe out anyone who’s trying to keep the Leopards under control. They’re insane.”
I’m taken aback. After worrying about human-hating objects for so long, it’s startling to hear the conversation transform into what sounds like some sort of schism that’s divided Amalgam’s ranks.
“Pretty sure they call themselves ‘Advocates,’” Sofia says. “Not extremists.”
“Yeah, and terrorists call themselves freedom fighters. Same difference. These are the same idiots who support elements that, right this minute, are triggering attacks that are about to cascade into Asia and will probably escalate into the next World War.”
“Even if that were true, creating a null would be an entirely different level of crazy… an existential threat to all beings, themselves included. That doesn’t sound like something they’d want.”
Anthony waggles a finger. “Well, this time it is. Florence, show them.”
Frowning, she pushes her way through the group, disappearing into darkness. When she returns a few second later, she’s carrying a scrubby plant no taller than a pencil. In the candle’s glow, it looks like a bee: fuzzy black stems with yellowed bands, a few petal-less flower corollas eyeing its surroundings.
Turns out Florence has a small comb in her hand, which she runs against the plant’s stem, collecting the fuzz against the comb’s teeth. Soon she’s built up a dandelion’s worth of fluff, which she grabs between two fingers and smothers across her flattened palm. The fuzz sparkles, and sounds electrified.
Sofia unzips her belt bag and passes her sister-in-law a small pouch filled with the same type of acupuncture-sized interfacing pins I saw Mutton Chops remove. Without hesitating, Florence punctures her own fuzz-filled hand with at least a dozen of them, driving them deeper than any acupuncturist.
“She’s interfacing with a zero-zero-three share, if we include the I-pins,” Sofia whispers to me, as if that makes perfect sense. “The percentage of object-to-flesh immersion improves communication. I typically use a bigger share, but this is just a simple mood request, not a full interface.”
“And the fuzz?” I say, trying to pretend I’m following.
“Air is an object, or more accurately, a community of objects: gas molecules, aerosols, pollen… all sorts of tangible stuff,” she says. “The spores give her inanimate allies… sentient ‘middle-men’ to vouch for her, again facilitating better communication.”
Pins waggle from Florence’s palm as she “rubs” the sparkling fuzz into the air, giving the emptiness a circular polish. The “sky” she’s creating turns a satanic rainstorm color I’ve never seen before, more shocking than a red but lined with darker highlights. If Florence had lived two centuries earlier, she’d have ended up one of my persecuted witch Melds for sure.
“Crazy number of components here,” she says, studying the color, “but that’s where they agree we’re at.”
“We’ve dealt with worse,” someone behind us says.
“That’s what I thought too,” Florence says. “But watch what they say it’ll look like by this time next week.”
Sparks fly; the tinted red fades… but so does everything else. The entire room turns pure, dull white. I wait for something else to happen, but it doesn’t. No colors at all, nothing but the looming, pallid air, smothering us from whatever lay beyond. The weird thing is, there’s also a déjà vu component to it, as if it’s something I should be familiar with.
Then I realize I am familiar with it. In fact, I’ve seen this before, and just recently.
It’s Outset.
NINETEEN
JUST THINKING ABOUT Outset claws at my consciousness, yanking my emotions in ways I don’t understand. The filthy white palette gives me an odd mix of shivers and thrills. It’s like the nothingness Florence is showing us, an entire world embalmed into a bleak, powdered void.
“What am I seeing right now?” I manage, trying to act strong though I’m frightened to my core.
Sofia’s face tightens. “That,” she says, “would be a null.”
Everyone around her seems to agree.
“You’re telling me Outset was an impression of a null?” I say. “It looks like a postwar holocaust.”
Sofia’s throat is dry enough, and perhaps clenched enough, that I can hear her swallow. “No. Something much worse.”
“What’s worse than complete annihilation?”
She closes her eyes. “Complete creation.”
Her eyes remain shut while she draws me into a weary embrace.
“I know, creation sounds like rainbows and flowers,” she says, “but when you’re rebooting, so to speak, it’s the most destructive act imaginable.”
“Because the people creating the null will tear things down in order to rebuild?”
Anthony steps forward, lifts the candle flame straight into the pallid color, then sweeps left and right… wiping it away.
“You poor, ignorant man… it’s so much more drastic than that,” he says, as warm candlelight returns both the room’s glow and its shadows. “You see, ‘null’ literally translates to ‘empty,’ and genuine emptiness, Beren, is way beyond a tear-down. It’s more like a blank slate.”
Sofia’s reopened eyes look scuffed. Anthony, on the other hand, seems pleased, as if he thinks discussing this is yet another way to rub past decisions in her face.
“Think about it,” he says. “Bomb everything, you still have rubble. True creation requires a void where people, objects, and land have dissolved into a generic substance.”
