>SYSTEM NOTE<
>DEHUMANIFICATION IN PROGRESS<
>PURGING INEFFICIENT SYNTAX . . .
Psst- 📒Suzie Pride here. In case you need a refresher of who’s who around the dinner table.
Dramatis Personae:
🙏🏽 Mama Elara: Rescued as a young girl in “Transcendence of the Swamp,” she was touched by Roscoe’s Magic. She’s, oh, somewhere around 250 years old, now. She’s also the spiritual center of the team.
🥘Ms. Minnesota: Minnie, for short. Roscoe showed up at her door a few years ago. He wrote a song about her. She moved down here. She’s the chef.
🔦Mason Riggs: He did a little time in County lock-up. When he got out, he needed a new job. Drew offered him one and now he’s our Chief of Security.
🍵Old Joe: He used to run a bookstore. He’s known Drew a long time. He’s our resident Socrates.
📒Suzie Pride: Me. I used to play drums for a band out West: Suzie’s Caballeros if you ever heard of us. I got a little tangled up in drugs. Roscoe helped me find my way back.
🦁Lani: She spent most of the last two hundred fifty years in various animal forms. Until last night, I didn’t even know she was capable of taking human form. I think it’s kind of a sore subject.
🕶️Danny Mitchell: Retired journalist. Like Elara, he got touched at a young age by Roscoe’s magic. It affected him . . . differently.
🎙️Pearly Gates: He was a bluesman back in the early 1900s. He got fascinated by the Hum he could hear in the new phone lines. One day, the story goes, he just got sucked in. Now, he’s our literal ghost in the machine, our DJ.
🔦Alright, Elara, one . . . more . . . wire.
🙏🏽 Thank you, Child.
🔦 I hope you know what you’re doing. There’s about a million other things I probably ought to be doing right now rather than wiring a payphone into the mess hall
🙏🏽 Sometimes you just have to listen to the dream, Mason.
🔦 Yeah, well, when you’re listening for alarms, it can get pretty hard to dream. Speaking of alarms. Welcome Mark Johnson and Syd . I’m glad you made it inside safe. If you know anybody still out there in the cold, feel free to give them our coordinates. We’ve got plenty of bunks. Thanks to Colin Ellis Cuming for a little humor in the DMs; it brightened spirits. I’m running on fumes keeping the perimeter secure.
🙏🏽 I know, Child. Even more reason to give yourself a break. Everyone deserves to dream, Mason. Even you. Even now.
📒 Hey, can I try out the new phone?—
🔦🙏🏽 Suzie, no!
🔦 The phone is for official business only! Mama apparently had a dream. It’s all very absurd. It’s probably best if you just don’t touch it.
📒 Jeez. Sorry.
🍵 Did I hear someone say absurd. I was just catching up on my Camus. Oh, cool, a payphone.
📒 Don’t bother. Mason won’t let anybody touch it.
RING, RING. RING, RING.
RING, RING. RING, RING.
🍵 Is anybody going to answer that? . . . I’m going to answer.
THE WILDE DISPATCHES
April 24, 1864
From: Col. Thomas Wilde
To: Lt. Gen. N.B. Forrest
Report on Successful Subjugation of Fort Pillow
General Forrest,
Although visibility has been reduced by smoke, I can report the operation has concluded successfully. The resistance at Fort Pillow has been eliminated.
The men discharge their weapons into the air in celebration. While the lack of discipline is distressing, I cannot fault the result. The position was taken and the enemy force was liquidated quickly.
The Union forces were nothing but a disorderly mix of runaway chattel and local traitors. They fled toward the river. They failed to accurately calculate the distance. The resistance was purged.
When I encountered their commander, he had already discarded his saber. He raised his hands and requested terms of surrender.
I did not let him finish. Quarter is an inefficient use of resources.
The river current is carrying the bodies south. We have deleted the error.
I remain your obedient servant,
T. Wilde
>SUBMIT<
I tap the final period onto the glass surface of the tablet. The device feels unnaturally light in my gloved hand. It is a marvel of efficiency compared to parchment and quills. Here, the words publish instantly. No ink stains. No waiting for the runner.
I swipe the report away and bring up the live diagnostic.
The lighting in the cell is optimal. My uniform is immaculate. Attention to detail is discipline.
I look up at the prisoner.
He hangs from the central beam, a mess of biological redundancy. He is sweating. It drips onto the pristine white floor. I frown and command the tablet to adjust the humidity.
"I have just uploaded the after-action report. Another fifty Union troops cut down. I wonder if Julian Arcaneaux was among them?"
I lift his chin with a gloved finger to peer into his bloodshot eyes.
"The prose was concise and clean, Mr. Smith. Far superior to your incessant meandering."
A bead of blood mingles with his sweat, trembling on his jawline before falling. It lands on the cuff of my sleeve. A single, crimson imperfection on the pristine white. I sigh, staring at the stain.
"Humanity is so . . . porous."
I do not strike him like the inartful guards. I simply step back and remove a silk handkerchief to dab at the linen.
I look down at the tablet. “So amazing, this technology,” I muse. “Mr. Kelly, you last remember riding north from Tallahassee. Mr. Smith, mere minutes ago you were at your supper table. Yet, now here we are outside the timeline, outside space.
Technology.
Not magic, Mr. Kelly.
Not Quantum Empathy, Mr. Smith.
Good American Made Technology.
There is a button glowing at the bottom of the interface.
I tap the word SUBMIT.
The breath explodes from his lungs as the system executes the command. The chains rattle with discordance.
I smile.
"I can make all of this go away," I whisper, leaning in close so he can see his own broken reflection in my eyes. "The pain. The struggle. The endless, tiring noise of being you. All you have to do is drop your resistance. Let me carry the weight."
I wait for his submission.
Instead, the white walls of the cell seem to shimmer. A frequency bleeds through, warm and crackling like a needle on vinyl.
🎤 Go get 'em, Joe.
🍵 Thanks, Pearly, I got this one.
I frown. I did not authorize an audio channel.
🍵 Boy, listen to me. I know you're hurting. And that pain . . . I know it's real. But it ain't everything. That's just what the Haint wants you to believe.
The prisoner lifts his head. His eyes focus on something I cannot see.
🍵 He tells you that numbness is some kind of mercy? It ain't. And you know it ain't. The pain is real. But so is the joy. So is the kindness. So is the love.
"Who said that?" I demand, tapping the screen to purge the cache.
🍵 You hang in there, youngster. We comin'. I still owe you a Coke.
The signal cuts out.
The prisoner looks at me. He coughs and spits blood onto the pristine floor. "You missed a spot," he grins.
I do not speak. I simply slide my finger around the digital dial, turning it all the way into the red.
I tap SUBMIT again.
DEPARTMENT OF WEAVE EFFICIENCY // GENERAL ORDER 001
MANDATE: HYGIENE IS ORDER
INSTRUCTION: UNIFORMS ARE TO REMAIN UNSULLIED AT ALL TIMES. A STAIN ON THE CLOTH IS A STAIN ON THE CAUSE.
STATUS: WHITEWASHING . . .
🙏🏽 Suzie, would you mind ringing Danny’s pager? I think it’s about time we check to see if Lani made it out OK.
📒 Yes ma’am.
SAVAGE GRACE Ep. 1 | THE SKIN YOU WEAR
“Mic check. Lani, do you copy? Repeat. Do you copy?”
The woman in the monitor staring at herself in the mirror was wearing the AR-7 Tactical Glasses I’d spent all morning calibrating . . . and absolutely nothing else.
I sighed and killed the glasses’ video feed. I stared at the biometric data. How could her vitals be this steady? My blood pressure was spiking.
“I’m going to need you to use your words, Lani. You can’t send mental images in this form. Humans communicate with their words. And they wear clothes. We need you to fit in if we're going to pull this off. Where is the tactical gear I gave you?”
“I don’t like it.” Her voice came through my headphones low and sulky, vibrating with a purr that elicited certain instinctive resonances in the body. “It suffocates the fur,” she said.
“You don’t have fur anymore, Lani. You have skin. You have modesty.” I switched on the room cam and zoomed in on the pile of shredded fabric on the floor of the locker room. She hadn’t just taken the clothes off; she had eviscerated them.
It reminded me of the moment I had first seen her last night.
The Severing Blade upload had just completed and the Haint had seized the feed when the motion sensor tripped.
I checked the perimeter monitors expecting to see a tac team assault but it was just a Florida panther, sitting patiently on the front porch, waiting for the door to open. It looked like a soldier reporting for duty.
Elara sighed, “There you are,” then ordered, “Let her in, Mason.”
The beast glided through the door straight into the arms of Mama Elara.
“The Shield is gone,” Elara cried as the panther compassionately licked the tears from her face. “We’ll need the Blade now. You know what we need, what you have to do.”
Lani lowered her head. Flashes from two hundred and fifty years worth of man’s inhumanity to man raced through my mind via her psychic projection. I felt her anger. I felt her disgust. I felt her dread.
“I know, Child,” Mama soothed, “but he needs you. They need you.”
“Lani,” I said, bringing myself back to the present. Back to the mission. “I know you hate it. But if we’re going to find Roscoe you have to blend in."
On the monitor, she picked up the trench coat. She looked at it with deep suspicion, then slid her arms in.
“Fine,” she said. “But I’m not wearing the . . . bra? It chafes."
“Good enough,” I said. Then into the mission comms: “Asset is clothed. Sort of. Go for transport.”
Suzie pulled around the front drive in the Ford.
“Hey, babe. Nice trench,” she said as Lani stepped up into the truck. Suzie handed her a makeup kit. “I didn’t know what your style was so I just brought my whole set.”
“Style? Set?” Lani rifled curiously through the plastic tubes and pucks.
“Yeah. Like this.” Suzie handed Lani her cell phone, pulled up to a picture of herself made up for a concert back in the Caballeros days.
“I like this,” Lani said, touching the screen.
“No. No,” I intervened over the comms. “You are a very beautiful woman already. You do not need makeup. We are trying to be low profile.”
“The man in my head says no,” Lani reported.
“Oh, that’s just Mason. He always says no. And a word of advice: never let the man in your head tell you what not to do. Here. Go for it.” Suzie grabbed a stick of deep red lipstick and pressed it against Lani’s lips. “See?”
I clenched my teeth as I watched Suzie’s hand flip the passenger seat visor and open the mirror.
Forty minutes later, the Ford idled at the curb of the Delta terminal at Orlando International Airport.
“Okay, quick review,” Suzie said, keeping the engine running. “Walk in, find the kiosk, print the boarding pass. Do not lose the ID Mason made for you. Do not growl at the TSA agent. If the metal detector beeps, it’s just a machine, not a threat. Do not attack the machine. Actually, good rule of thumb, don’t attack anything.”
“Do not attack the machine,” Lani repeated, committing it to memory like a combat directive.
“Exactly. You got this.” Suzie leaned back and whistled low. “And the makeup looks awesome, Chica. You look like a New Wave album cover come to life.”
Lani flipped the visor down one last time. “New Wave is good?”
“Very good, Babe.”
Through the glasses, I saw her reflection. Her hair was plastered back with gel. Heavy, electric-blue eyeshadow swept like wings. Lips painted a dark violent crimson like a fresh kill. Her cheekbones were contoured sharp enough to cut glass.
She looked more than human. She looked like an apex predator trying to blend into a cyberpunk fever dream. It was terrifying. It was beautiful. It was primitive.
“Mason?” she asked, staring at her own reflection with cold satisfaction.
I caught my breath and cleared my throat. “I’m here,” I said, the tightness in my voice not just from nerves. “It’s . . . striking, Lani. Very striking.”
“Good. Then I am ready.”
She flipped the visor up, opened the door, and stepped onto the curb. The automatic doors of the airport slid open. Lani walked into the artificial light like a superspy into a casino.
“Stay cool,” I whispered. “And for the love of God, remember: no claws.”
RING, RING. RING, RING.
RING, RING. RING, RING.
🕶️ This is Danny Mitchell. Can anybody hear me. The Panther is peddling pervasive pastels. Repeat. The Panther is peddling pervasive pastels. . . . Oh, and she refuses to wear panties.
SOUNDS FROM SAUSALITO | Article 2 - The Extraction
By: Danny Mitchell
TAP, TAP, TAP.
The parking cop's baton on the driver's side window roused me out of my stupor. It was a dead sound, like a pigeon high on opium trying to chisel into a nineteenth-century strong-box. I cracked an eye open. The cop’s face glitched through the glass. It was distorted by the grime I hadn’t washed off since Mill Valley.
"This is an active loading zone!" he barked. His voice sounded synthetic. "You can't wait here."
I studied him. His uniform was too perfect. Too immaculate. The creases in his trousers were pressed like crimped steel. The only imperfection in the entire facade was the tragic old man staring back at me through the reflection in the cop’s mirrored aviators.
I tried to wave away the cloud of purple smoke before rolling down the window an inch. The manual crank groaned in protest.
"Hello, Officer," I said, flashing my best I-belong-here smile. "I'm a reporter. Channel Fifty-Fourorsuch. Official business."
I nodded reassuringly as my right hand rifled through the glove box, shoving aside a disturbing number of twenty-year-old parking tickets and Taco Bell wrappers. There had to be a press badge in here somewhere. Finally, my fingers hit on plastic. I fished out the laminated pass from the 1996 Democratic National Convention. “Here you are, sir.”
The cop looked at the badge. Then at me. Then at the badge again.
"Is this some kind of joke?" he asked impatiently. He looked up at the ceiling of the terminal deck, or maybe through it, obviously scanning the sky for hidden satellites.
I followed his eyes. "Are they watching?" I whispered, leaning in conspiratorially. "Should I speak in code?” I winked. “The turquoise mouse is flying under the Eiffel Tower."
"What?!" He recoiled. “Just move your car, OK!” He slapped the hood of the Calais and walked on down the line of idling vehicles.
Definitely an agent of the Department of Weave Efficiency. The code speak always gets them. They can’t process the non-sequitur. It fries their circuits.
I dragged my eyes back to the rearview mirror and began cataloging the wave of people washing out of the airport terminal. The voice on the payphone, Suzie she said, had been very specific in telling me what to look for.
And there. That had to be the one.
She was standing on the curb like a mythologic goddess. Or maybe a traveler from a different dimension. She was statuesque, terrifying, and wearing absolutely nothing but a long black canvas trench coat. On her feet? A pair of cheap flourescent pink flip-flops.
Her face was pure art. She had stepped right out of Robert Palmer's “Addicted to Love” music video. Electric blue eyeshadow. Blood red lips. And completing the look, a pair of angular tactical glasses straight out of Soldier of Fortune magazine.
She wasn’t a traveler. She was the next frontier.
It all made total sense, now.
"Hey!" I opened the door and shouted down the sidewalk. "Hey you! In the trench coat! I think I'm your ride!"
She turned.
Her gaze hit me like a handful of uppers. Every cell in my body stood to attention. Her expression was severe. Terrifying. She was a woman on a mission.
Good, I thought. She’s motivated. She’ll make a proper sidekick.
She stalked to the car then looked pensively at the passenger door. I remembered quickly that the handle was broken (it snapped off during the '04 incident) so I leaned across the seat, popped the lock, and shoved the door open.
"Get in," I said. "Before the turquoise mouse comes back."
She slid into the seat, and instantly, the Calais turned humid. I began sweating like I was sitting in a Florida swamp.
It wasn't just that she was beautiful. Mere beauty you can pull your eyes away from. This was a frequency tuned directly to the body’s core receivers. She radiated a raw, ancient, pulsing energy.
The windows began to fog at the corners.
She shifted, the pleather of the seat moaned at the texture of the bare flesh behind her knees. She breathed in deep and long, her nostrils flaring; she was on a scent. I swooned as she leaned in close to my neck.
"The air in here . . ." she murmured, her voice a low vibration that resonated through time and space. It activated instincts long dormant.
"The air smells like the Skunk."
I froze. A rivulet of sweat escaped the press of my palm and ran down the steering wheel.
"It's medicinal," I blurted out. "For the existential dread. . . . And the glaucoma"
She nodded slowly, a look of deep respect and acknowledgment. "The Skunk is a potent spirit. It warns of danger. You carry its scent well, Old Man."
I relaxed my grip on the wheel slightly. “Thanks! I try to stay pungent. It keeps DOWE off my heels."
I ground the gears trying to get the Calais into drive and pulled into the flow of traffic leaving the San Jose airport terminal. The car was charged with a static electricity that made the hair on my arms stand up.
Suddenly, she tilted her head, pressing a finger to her ear. "I like this man," she whispered to the air. "He speaks in riddles like the Raccoon."
"Who are you talking to?" I swiveled my head, checking the backseat, then the dashboard. "Are they listening?"
"I speak to the man in my head."
"Ah, I see!” I nodded sagely. “Don’t worry. I totally dig it! I used to speak to the man in my head, too. But then they sent me off to Dunsmore for a month. Nice facility, bad Jell-O. They told me the man in my head was just an iteration of my own sub-vocalized anxieties. But I never really believed it, you know, because he knew stuff I didn't know."
She stared at me blankly. "The man in my head is named Mason."
"Mason," I repeated, nodding. "That's a strong name. Solid. A brick-layer's name."
I glanced at her. She was listening to this 'Mason' with an intensity that bordered on devotion.
"So-o-o-o," I ventured, trying to gauge the dynamic. "Are you and Mason . . . you know . . . an item?"
"Item? We are two individuals."
"No, I mean . . ." I took one hand off the wheel and made the universal hand signal for 'engaged in a physically intimate relationship.’ “An item.”
Her eyes tracked my finger back and forth with the intensity of a hawk. The fire in the look made me want to roll over and expose my soft underbelly. Submission? Surrender? Seduction? In that hot humid moment, it didn’t matter which. I shook my head vigorously to get the logic circuits back into place.
"No," she said flatly.
Then a breeze of perfumed air like orchids at midnight overwhelmed my senses.
"Old man, it has been two hundred and fifty years since I have had what you call 'intercourse.'“
She paused. She looked me up and down. Her gaze devoured my fragile, aged frame.
The humidity rolled off her in waves.
"I cannot deny I am hungry for it," she whispered longingly.
Her canines flashed with her mischievous smile, a cat toying with her prey. "But I would break you."
"Right.” I swallowed hard. “Understood." I put both hands back on the wheel at 10 and 2. "Let's keep it platonic. For the sake of my bones."
I cleared my throat, trying to regain some semblance of authority as the captain of this vessel.
"Buckle up," I managed to croak, my voice cracking like a teenager’s. "Remember Rule One."
“What is Rule One?” she asked.
“Do not act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling men. And, please, stop looking at me like I’m a snack.”
She licked her lips slowly. "But you smell delicious, Old Man. Like anxiety and salt."