Hylozoic (4 page)

“Ever since my pighead OD, I feel about eighty.”

“Oh, stop that. I'm glad you've stopped tweaking on Gaia all the time.”

 

 

They kissed and, just for a goof, Thuy teleported to her parents' house, right in the middle of the kiss. She grew translucent, then spectral, and dissolved in a cloud of twinkling dots. Jayjay ran his fingers through the air. Without his wife's lively presence, the teeming woods felt empty.

Or—maybe not. Two odd shapes were bumbling around in the high branches of Grew the redwood. A pair of stray paper kites? All the way out here? No, no, these things were moving
on their own, undulating through the air. They were like large leather pillows, flat and fat, with slitty mouths and golden eyes.

Oddly, they were impervious to teep. Although Jayjay could see them with his eyes, he couldn't probe into them with his mind.

He made a series of wild guesses about what the beings were. The simplest hypothesis was that he was so tired from his wall-building that he was seeing things. Or perhaps Gloob the creek silp was putting these images into his mind?

But they really seemed to have some physicality to them. Might the shapes be woodland air current silps, bending the light so as to appear solid? Maybe the whole grove was conspiring to scare the settlers away?

The shapes were slowly spiraling down from the tree as if homing in on Jayjay, who was very conscious of being the only human within miles of here. As the forms drew closer, Jayjay began to see them as flying stingrays—with odd patterns of dots on their skins. Might they be hydrogen-filled sea creatures? Mutants?

Whatever they were, he didn't want to face them alone. With a quick effort of his will, he teleported to San Francisco.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

J
ayjay
landed in the Mission district, right outside the building where his friend Sonic rented a room. A quick scan of the neighborhood revealed no more flying manta rays. Already they seemed like a bad dream.

Sonic's crummy old building lacked a working door buzzer, so Jayjay just teeped within. He could see Sonic lying on his couch with his soft pet robot on his chest, his crammed room lit by a candle. Money was still a reality on postsingular Earth—and Sonic never had much of it. Jayjay made a quick attempt to teleport into Sonic's pad, but the apartment's air decohered Jayjay's vibe, not letting him form the crystal-clear realtime image of the place that he would have needed in order to hop in. Assuming that a person was on good terms with their local silps, the silps could block out telepathy, teleportation, or both.

“Hey,” Jayjay messaged to Sonic. “Tell your silps to let me in.” Sonic didn't seem to hear the message. His mind was elsewhere. Jayjay followed the strand of Sonic's attention to a pod of elephant seals bellowing in the surf off Año Nuevo north of Santa Cruz. The bulls were fighting for the right to mate, slashing away with their tusks, bloodying one another's necks and snouts. Each of the bull seals had a person's mind tracking it, each player was trying to help one particular behemoth come up with winning moves. It was an all-natural video game, a guided entertainment that Sonic had set up.

“Sonic!” repeated Jayjay, giving the message more force. “I want to come see you!”

Leaving his customers on their own for the nonce, Sonic opened his eyes and told his room to let Jayjay in.

“Whuff,” said Jayjay, materializing in his old pal's lair, the worn wood floor crunchy with city grit. Boxes and boxes of junk lined the walls.

“Fuffo,” answered Sonic. One of their jokey old greetings. The sounds of voices drifted in the open rear window, accompanied by the scent of garbage. Sonic looked run-down.

“You do remember about helping me move my house, right?” said Jayjay.

“I remember everything,” said Sonic. “Every detail. It's paying attention that's hard.” The people in the alley were arguing about whose turn it was to teek the garbage to the dump.

“I saw something creepy at our house site just now,” said Jayjay. “These two shapes like stingrays flying down through the redwoods. Six feet across, easy.”

“Did you talk to them?” asked Sonic.

“I was scared. Anyway, teeping with them didn't work. They weren't showing up in my teep at all.”

“Maybe they weren't real,” said Sonic, losing interest.

“Maybe,” said Jayjay, shaking off the memory. “Let's not
mention them to Thuy. She's got enough to worry about. Let's talk about those elephant seals you were looking at. I've been hearing good things about the Sonic's Animal Animats tours.”

“My biz,” said Sonic, absently fondling his shoon, Edgar. “I steer my clients to the finest bestial doings. My customer base is the same newbs and goobs that went for my video game tutoring sessions. Back when video games mattered. Now everything's organic. Last week I embedded my clients into this epic war between red ants and black ants. It was hill versus hill. Those ants are frikkin' pitiless.” Sonic rubbed his greasy face and yawned. “I'm making the nut. Only thing is, I'm online too much. I don't think I ate today yet.”

“I'll buy you a burrito,” said Jayjay. “We've got the time.”

“Okay,” said Sonic. “But first let me finish out this game.”

“How many times have I heard that?”

“I gotta bring the seal-sex safari to a climax for my customers,” explained Sonic. “But first I give 'em a big scare. That's why I get return biz and good ratings. Sonic's Animal Animats always kicks it up a notch. Last week in the middle of our ant war, I helped the red ants bring in an anteater. Devastating. And for today's rush, I've got a great white shark offshore.” Sonic paused and mimed huge biting motions. His pet shoon robot, Edgar, imitated him, flexing his little body into a fishlike form.

“Even as we speak, I'm helping the shark notice the abundant prey,” Sonic told Jayjay. “
Beat
your tail, whitey.
Eat
them blubbery mofos.”

Jayjay teeped along, watching a ghostly, scarred shark come arrowing in toward the bloodied elephant seal bulls. The players riding the seals saw the shark from far away; it was the size of a rowboat. They sent their bulls wallowing up onto the beach—just in the nick of time. Some female elephant seals had gathered around, drawn by the roaring and the gore. They were
keyed up and primed to mate. Weary of battle, the bulls elected to share the cows. A pinniped orgy began.

“You're all winners!” Sonic messaged to his charges. “I gotta bail. Giant squid versus sperm whales tomorrow!”

And then he was focused on Jayjay, all there, his brown eyes warm. Good old Sonic.

“Taquería now,” said Sonic.

“Sure,” said Jayjay. “Hey, before we go—how about you splash off in the shower? That way you'll make better company.”

“Listen to my old running buddy,” said Sonic, shaking his head. “He's turned priss. Like you don't remember when you and me and Thuy and Kittie were the Big Pig Posse—sleeping in hallways and cars?”

This said, Sonic went to clean himself up, picking his way among his dusty piles of mementos, little Edgar dogging his steps. And then the two guys teleported to the nearby Taquería Aztlán, one of the best. The inside of the restaurant was teleportblocked to prevent pilfering, but just outside the entrance, a steady flow of early dinner customers were popping in and out of visibility, the air crowded with the twinkling dots and spectral forms of people in the process of solidifying or melting away.

These heavily trafficked spots were a little freaky; like a speeded-up ghost movie. Jayjay bumped heavily into a woman as they arrived—but fortunately the laws of physics blocked them from materializing in the exact same spot. You didn't have to worry about ending up with, like, the head of a housefly or the legs of an old man.

“You teep how eager this burrito is for me to eat it?” said Sonic after they'd gotten their food. Their dishes were exactly as they'd visualized them—telepathic ordering was more reliable than spoken words. “The cooks here, they've got a way with ingredients,” continued Sonic. “Inca and Aztec shamans,
no doubt.” He glanced over at Jayjay. “Thanks for treating, by the way.
Founders
is paying you good?

“You watch the show?”

“Yeah,” said Sonic. He paused, chewing his food. “I teep into Gaia every night. It's glowy to be talking to you face-to-face again. The star.”

“People are curious about me and Thuy because we're the ones who unrolled the lazy eight dimension this winter. But you could you could be in the show if you wanted to. My colorful friend.”

“Stank Grooming Products,” read Sonic, staring into the space above Jayjay's head. “BigBox Home Furnishings. Huffin Psi Secure. So bogus. What if our whole planet is an ad for the creatures of the subdimensions? What if the subbies are displaying us to attract intergalactic UFOs?”

“Hate to say this, Sonic, but you sound spun.”

“That's because I'm so heavy into the all-new overmind. Gaia is much vaster than the Big Pig ever was. And trippier. Even my silps get high: my body and my organs and my cells. But I have to be careful. If your atomic silps get stoned enough, your molecules fall apart. The atoms are, like, ‘Screw this
H
-two-
O
hassle, we just wanna be two
H
s and an
O
.'
Floop!
” Sonic let out a dark, resonant chuckle. “Ace Weston, remember him? I fell by his room last week and there was a pile of soot in his bed. Carbon and trace elements. The oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen had drifted away.”

“Did you really see that?” demanded Jayjay. “Or dream it? I've never heard of anything like that.”

“Take a look. I'm an open book.”

Jayjay probed into Sonic's memories—and promptly got lost. Packrat that Sonic was, he'd saved all of the details of his Gaian visions. The ubiquitous lazy eight memory upgrade had
no size limits at all. Finding something in Sonic's memory was hopeless; it was like combing the entire surface of the Earth.

“Black dust,” repeated Sonic. “Didn't even stink.” He finished his burrito, wiped his mouth, and pushed Jayjay out of his head. “I've got a memory stash like I'm ten thousand years old, huh? I'm on the nod every night. I love it.”

“What if
your
molecules come apart, too?”

“Gaia will remember me, dog. Dig this—the good thief on the cross said, ‘Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom,' and Jesus went, ‘Verily I say unto you, today shalt thou be with me in paradise.' Meaning that heaven is a memory bank. Those whom Gaia loves are immortal.” Sonic drained his bottle of beer. “So anyway, I'm ready to move your cabin. We're grouping at Ond's?”

“You sure you're together enough?”

“Yea verily,” said Sonic. “Let's hop.”