Charlie Huston: Sleepless

It looked, upon little or no reflection, like the pustules of a disease spreading inexorably against the feeble resistance of a failed vaccine, carrying infection along the arteries of the city, advancing no matter how many times the medics raised the point of amputation up the ravaged limb.

That it was a symptom of a disease rather than the disease itself was an irony I never chuckled at. There being little or no humor to be found in the prospect of the end of the world.

But I did appreciate it. The irony, and the fact that the disease that was killing us ignored the classifications and borders that defined so clearly for so many who they should be killing and why.

The disease didn’t care for distinctions of class, race, income, religion, sex, or age. The disease seemed only to care that your eyes remain open to witness it all. That what nightmares you had haunted only your waking hours. The disease considered us all equal and wished that we share the same fate. That we should bear witness as we chewed our own intestines, snapping at what gnawed from the inside.

It wished that we become sleepless.

I could sleep.

Choosing, that night, not to.

Choosing, instead, to pour another glass of overrated but still quite good Rhone into an admittedly inappropriate jelly jar, and to settle into an overdesigned Swedish sling chair to watch that small, expensive fragment of the city burn.

Herald, I knew, of worse.

7/7/10

TODAY BEENIE SAID something about Hydo knowing “the guy.” What’s encouraging about this is that I didn’t ask. Hydo called for a delivery and I went over to the farm to make the drop (100 15-mg Dexedrine spansules). He asked if I wanted a Coke and I hung around long enough to scroll through my texts and map my next couple deliveries. Beenie was there, making a deal to sell some gold he’d farmed, but mostly just hanging out with the guys. Hydo passed around the dex to his guys and they all started speed rapping while they hacked up zombies and stuff. One of them (I think his name is Zhou, but I need to check my notes) started talking about his cousin going sleepless. The other guys all started telling their own sleepless stories. Beenie asked if I knew anyone. I said yes. They all talked some more, and the one guy (Zhou?) said he put an ad on Craigslist to trade a level 100 Necromantic Warlord for Dreamer to give his cousin, but the only response he got was from a scammer. That’s when Beenie looked at Hydo and said, “Hydo, man, what about the guy?” Hydo was in the middle of an exchange in Chasm Tide. His front character was on his monitor in the Purple Grotto, getting ready to pass off the gold to a Darkling Heller as soon as one of the guys confirmed that the PayPal transfer had come through. But everyone stopped talking right after Beenie spoke. Just Hydo talking to the Darkling on his headset, telling him he’d throw in a Mace of Chaos for another twenty euro. He was acting like he hadn’t heard what Beenie said. But he gave him a look. And Beenie started shutting down his MacBook and said he had to roll. I pocketed my phone and finished my Coke and said later.

Beenie was my first in with the farms. I met him at a party on Hillhurst. He knows a lot of people. They like him. If he says Hydo knows “the guy,” it might be true.

In any case, I didn’t say anything. I just walked out of the farm behind Beenie. We talked while he was unlocking his Trek and putting on his helmet and elbow and knee pads. He said he was looking for some opium. He has this thing for old Hollywood and read somewhere that Errol Flynn described smoking opium, “like having your soul massaged with mink gloves.” Now he wants to try it. I told him I’d see what I could do. Then he pedaled north on Aviation, probably headed for Randy’s Donuts.

I made a note to ask around about opium. Made another note to look over my list of Hydo’s known associates.

Finished deliveries.

A suicide bomber on the way home.

I did what I could. Not much. I think I stopped a boy’s bleeding long enough for him to get to the hospital. Who knows what happened to him there. Traffic got messed up for miles. Once the EMTs and paramedics showed up, I spent most of my time passing out water. A lady thanked me when I saw her fainting in her car and got her a bottle. A witness said the bomber was a woman, a New America Jesus insurgent. He said he knew she was a NAJi because she screamed “something about Satan” before she blew herself up. He also said she was staggering like she was drunk. NAJis don’t drink. A Guard told me that looking at the size of the crater she left, she was probably staggering under the weight of the bomb. He said that kind of blast was what they got in Iraq from car bombs. I said something about how at least he wasn’t there anymore, and he asked me if I was “fucking joking.” Almost noon before I got home.

Francine had to leave Rose alone with the baby.

She was in the backyard with her laptop. There was gardening stuff lying around, but she was logged into her Chasm Tide account, playing her elemental mage, Cipher Blue, trying again to get through the Clockwork Labyrinth on her own.

The baby was on a blanket next to her, under an umbrella, crying. As I came up, Blue was being dismembered by a skeleton made of brass gears, wire, and rusting springs. Beenie says no one gets through the Labyrinth on their own. You have to join a campaign, but Rose refuses to try it that way. Which isn’t surprising.

She closed the laptop and grabbed a garden trowel and started stabbing the dry earth, digging at the roots of one of the weeds that’s taken over the garden. I picked up the baby and asked how she had been and Rose told me she had just started crying again right before I came home. Said she hadn’t cried for hours before. But I think she was just saying that. Then she started talking about her grandma’s garden, the topiary, vegetables, citrus trees, strawberry patch, and the rosebushes she was named for. She said she wanted the baby to have a garden to grow up in, learn about how seeds turn into plants. She had a packet of marigold seeds she was going to plant. I held the baby while Rose talked, and she stopped crying a little. Rose stopped talking and looked at me and asked what was on my clothes and I had to go in and clean up and when I set the baby down she started crying again.

I called Francine while I was inside and she said she was sorry for leaving, but she needed to get her kids to school. She said Rose didn’t sleep at all. She said the baby might have slept, but her eyes never closed. But she was quiet for a couple hours just after midnight. I told her I’d see her tonight and got in the shower. There was stuff under my nails that was hard to get out. Then Rose got into the shower with me and asked me to wash her back and I had to tell her she had her clothes on. She looked at me and looked at her clothes like she didn’t get it. Then she got it and started crying and told me she was sorry. I held her. She cried and the baby cried.

I’ll go see Hydo tonight.

Maybe he really does know the guy.

PARK KNEW THERE WAS TROUBLE AT THE GOLD FARM WHEN he saw the door hanging open.

That door was never left open.

To get in you had to stand in front of a camera, be identified by someone inside, and run your finger over a biometric print reader before they buzzed you in. Then you were in the cage, and the inner door of the cage wouldn’t open until the outer door closed and locked. So if someone stood out of range of the wide-angle camera lens and held a gun on you while you were cleared, and then tried to come in with you, they’d just end up in the cage. And someone in the box could decide whether to shoot them or gas them or whatever seemed best in the situation.