Nebula Awards Showcase 2016 (42 page)

“Did I hurt you?” I hollered, when ten minutes had gone by and he was still standing under the water.

“What? No.”

“Oh.”

He wasn't moving. Wasn't soaping or lathering or rinsing.

“Is everything okay?” Making my voice warm, to hide how cold I suddenly felt.

“Yeah. It was just . . . intense. Sex usually isn't. For me.”

His voice was weird and sad and not exactly nice. I sat on a bench and watched him get harder and harder to see as the steam built up.

“Would you mind heading up to the House ahead of me?” he said, finally. “I need some time to get my head together. I'll square up things with the director and be there soon.”

“Waiting is cool.”

“No. It's not. I need some alone time.”

“Alone time,” I smirked. “You're a—”

“You need to get the hell back, Angel. Okay?”

Hearing the hardness in his voice, I wondered if there was a way to spontaneously stop being alive.

“I got your cash right here,” the director said, flapping an envelope at me.

“He'll get it,” I said, knowing it was stupid. “My boyfriend.”

“You sure?”

I nodded.

“Here's my business card. I hoped you might think about being in something of mine again sometime. Your friend's only got a few more flicks in him. Twinks burn out fast. You, on the other hand—you've got something special. You could have a long career.”

“Thanks,” I said, nodding, furious, too tall, too retarded, too sensitive, hating myself the whole way down the elevator, and the whole walk to the subway, and the whole ride back to what passed for home.

When the train came above ground after 149
^th
Street, I felt the old shudder as my cloud port clicked back into the municipal grid. Shame and anger made me brave, and I dove. I could see the car as data, saw transmissions to and from a couple dozen cell phones and tablets and biodevices, saw how the train's forward momentum warped the information flowing in and out. Saw ten jagged blobs inside, my fellow cloudbounds. Reached out again, like I had with Case. Felt myself slip through one after another like a thread through ten needles. Tugged that thread the tiniest bit, and watched all ten bow their heads as one.

Friday night I stayed up 'til three in the morning, waiting for Case to come knocking. I played the Skull Man level on
Mega Man 2
until I could beat it without getting hit by a single enemy. I dove into the cloud, hunted down maps, opened up whole secret worlds. I fell asleep like that, and woke up wet from fevered dreams of Case.

Saturday—still no sign of him.

Sunday morning I called Guerra's cell phone, a strict no-no on the weekends.

“This better be an emergency, Sauro,” he said.

“Did you log Case out?”

“Case?”

“The white boy.”

“You call me up to bother me with your business deals? No, jackass, I didn't log him out. I haven't seen him. Thanks for reminding me, though. I'll phone him in as missing on Monday morning.”

“You—”

But Guerra had gone.

First thing Monday, I rode the subway into Manhattan and walked into that office like I had as much right as anyone else to occupy any square meter of space in this universe. I worried I wouldn't be able to, without Case. I didn't know what this new thing coming awake inside me was, but I knew it made me strong. Enough.

The porn man gave me a hundred dollars, no strings attached. Said to keep him in mind, said he had some scripts that I could “transform from low-budget bullshit into something really special.”

He was afraid of me. He was right to be afraid, but not for the reason he thought. I could clouddive and wipe Araby Studios out of existence in the time it took him to blink his eyes. I could see his fear, and I could see how he wanted me anyway for the money he could make off me. There was so much to see, once you're ready to look for it.

Maybe I was right the first time: It
had
been hate that made it easy to talk to my mom. Love can make us become what we need to be, but so can hate. Case was gone, but the words kept coming. Life is nothing but acting.

I could have:

1)
Given Guerra the hundred dollars to track Case down. He'd call his contacts down at the department; he'd hand me an address. Guerra would do the same job for fifty bucks, but for a hundred he'd bow and
yessir
like a good little lackey.

2)
Smiled my way into every placement house in the city, knocked on every door to every tiny room until I found him.

3)
Hung around outside Araby Studios, wait for him to snivel back with his latest big, dumb, dark stud. Wait in the shower until he went to wash his ass out, kick him to the floor, fuck him endlessly and extravagantly. Reach up into him, seize hold of his heart and tear it to shreds with bare bloody befouled hands.

The image of him in the shower brought me to a full and instant erection. I masturbated, hating myself, trying hard to focus on a scenario where I hurt him . . . but even in my own revenge fantasy I wanted to wrap my body around his and keep him safe.

Afterwards I amended my revenge scenario list to include:

1)
Finding someone else to screw over, some googly-eyed blond boy looking to plug a hole he has inside.

2)
Becoming the most famous, richest, biggest gay porn star in history, traveling the world, standing naked on sharp rocks in warm oceans. Becoming what they wanted me to be, just long enough to get a paycheck. Seeing Case in the bargain bin someday; seeing him in the gutter.

3)
Burning down every person and institution that profited off the suffering of others.

4)
Becoming the kept animal of some rich, powerful queen who will parade me at fancy parties and give me anything I need as long as I do him the favor of regularly fucking him into a state of such quivering sweat-soaked helplessness that childhood trauma and white guilt and global warming all evaporate.

5)
Finding someone who I will never, ever, ever screw over.

Really, they were all good plans. None of it was off the table.

Leaving the office building, I ignored all the instincts that screamed
get on the subway and get the hell out of here before some cop stops you for matching a description!
Standing on a street corner for no reason felt magnificent and forbidden.

I shut my eyes. Reached out into the cloud, felt myself magnified like any other signal by the wireless routers that filled the city. Found the seams of the infrastructure that kept the flow of data in place. The weak spots. The ways to snap or bend or reconstruct that flow. How to erase any and all criminal records; pay the rent for my mom and every other sad sack in the Bronx for all eternity. Divert billions in banker dividends into the debit accounts of cloudporters everywhere.

I pushed, and when nothing happened I pushed harder.

A tiny
pop,
and smoke trickled up from the wireless router atop the nearest lamppost. Nothing more. My whole body dripped with sweat. Some dripped into my eyes. It stung. Ten minutes had passed, and felt like five seconds. My muscles ached like after a hundred push-ups. All those things that had seemed so easy—I wasn't strong enough to do them on my own.