Чарли Андерс - Six Months, Three Days, Five Others

“In fact,” said the bird, “I think I saw her just a little while ago.” He was gesturing at someone whom the sausage couldn’t see, and she realized that their friend, the mouse, must be someplace nearby. The bird kept talking, trying to stall the dog. “She makes all the rules hereabouts, and in fact, you better watch out, because I think you’re violating a bunch of her regulations and ordinances and statutes. For reals.”

“I don’t know.” The dog sniffed the air. “I think I would have smelled it if there was any such authority around here. Authority has a very distinct scent.”

“I’m pretty sure she’s right around here,” the bird said, looking around in a panic.

“This is your last warning,” the sausage said, with zero conviction.

“Nah,” the dog said. “I think I’m going to eat this sausage now, and then there won’t be any evidence left anyway.”

He bent his head to scoop the sausage up in his jaws, ready to gobble her up once and for all.

“WHO DARES?” came a thundering voice through the forest.

The dog dropped the sausage, his tail going between his legs by some instinct.

“UNMOUTH MY SUBJECT,” said the voice. And the source of the voice came close enough for the sausage to see. It was the mouse, riding on top of the sausage’s mobile DJ rig, using the microphone on its highest reverb setting. The mouse had found a big mushroom, which she was using as a hat, and had covered herself and the DJ rig with a big velvety red blanket.

“Hey,” the dog said, with a bit of a whimper in his voice. “I found her. She had forged papers. She’s free booty, man.”

“YOURS IS THE BOOTY THAT WILL BE FREE,” said the mouse, “IF YOU MOLEST MY SUBJECT. GO NOW! BEFORE I BRING MY MIGHTY ARMIES DOWN UPON YOU.”

The dog hesitated one moment longer, but the mouse bellowed, “GO!” He turned his lowered tail and ran off into the forest with his legs flailing. The sausage was so amazed and relieved, she fell on her back, wobbling as if she was being grilled.

“That was a near thing,” the sausage said.

“That dog will be back, I bet,” said the mouse, disentangling herself from the DJ rig, the mushroom, and the blanket.

“We’ll just have to make the Super Ultra Duchess more convincing next time,” said the bird. “We’ll all have to work together on it, since she’s like our insurance policy.”

“Ow.” The mouse cringed as it exposed its patchy fur to the open air. “I am actually in pain, all over my whole body. I tried to get into the hot frying pan to season the food with my body, and my fur did not like it at all. That’s why I was here in the woods when that dog attacked you. I came here to ask you for advice on what I was doing wrong. I burned my poor feet, so I had to ride here on your DJ rig, and it’s lucky that I did, too.”

“There’s a whole art to wriggling around in a frying pan and seasoning it with your body,” the sausage said, still expanding with relief.

“Really?” the mouse said.

“No, not really,” the sausage said, with an exasperated laugh. “You just have to be a sausage, dude.”

“Oh,” the bird said. “That actually makes total sense.”

After that, they carried on more or less as they had before. Except that now, they had a house meeting once a week or so, just to make sure they were all happy with the arrangement of the jobs. Some days, the bird skipped fetching wood and went flying off to look for cool stuff that they could sell to the scrap merchants in town. The sausage’s DJ gigs started bringing in enough money that they could hire some part-time help. The mouse got better at pretending to be a Super Ultra Duchess, until they finally received an embossed invitation to join the Confederacy. They framed the invite and put it on the mantelpiece, over their PlayStation’s big screen.

“It just proves,” said the bird, who would not stop extolling his own cleverness for a minute, “anybody can be a big deal, if they just have a posse.”

“Yeah,” the mouse said, curling up between her friends. “It just makes me wonder. Why doesn’t everybody just invent their own nation?”

“I think maybe they do,” said the sausage. They were playing a side-scrolling shooter, and the sausage had just gotten to the Final Boss, so nobody talked for a while after that. Until it was time to climb into the frying pan and make dinner.

1. She was warned.

The doorbell rings as she’s giving the brain its nutrient bath. The Hyperbrain likes it when she scritches behind its temporal lobe, like a cat—if a cat was a biomimetic neural network that filled up your entire basement. Margot whispers stories about heroes to the Hyperbrain, which likes Rosalind Franklin best.

Margot changes as she walks along the hall of her creaky rowhouse, lined with photos of dead people: her wife Sukey, other lovers, all worry-smiling. By the time Margot reaches her door, she’s playing up her non-threatening slouch and the way she favors one leg.

The man from the Brain Brigade looks uncomfortable to be in the Lowdown, talking to someone like Margot. “Ma’am. Miss. Ms. Baxter,” he says. “We’ve had reports of an unlicensed A.I., in contravention of 37 use cases.”

She glances past him, upward, at the place he comes from. Crystal skyways cris-cross, rippling with light. Above it all dwell the Immortals, playing their Wall games. Occasionally a gamepiece falls and blocks the street down here. Everyone’s GPS just re-routes around the obstruction.

The man talks for ages, but has no warrant. Margot keeps saying, “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re speaking about,” but doesn’t let him inside.

2. She was given an explanation.

The brain, which Margot has taken to calling Rosalind, already knows everything and predicts the weather years from now. But Rosalind still purrs louder whenever Margot tells stories of people who stood up for truth. Borrowing those seeds was the best decision Margot ever made.

The Brain Brigade keeps sending notices, which float outside, singing the legal code to the tune of a Bach fugue. She drowns them out with some good zydeco. Pale, fragile men shiver on her welcome mat. She stopped answering the door.

Then an ice sculpture comes from Margot’s refrigerator. A bull of a man, with a cunning smile. The statue looks around and raises a frozen hat.

“Ms. Baxter, my name is Arthur. I run the Brain Brigade. I must counsel you: An uncontrolled Hyperbrain could cause unimaginable chaos. Most of all, under no circumstance should you attempt to connect your own mind to your illicit Hyperbrain.”

“Ha,” Margot says. “That’s reserved for the Immortals up top, is it?”

“Actually,” the figurine says, “no. None of the Immortals has connected to their own Hyperbrain in over a century. The Hyperbrains engineer wealth and eternal youth for people, and we leave them to it.”

“You have the most advanced consciousnesses in creation,” Margot almost spills hot tea on herself. “And… you don’t even use them to think ?”

The iceman laughs, not entirely at Margot. “Believe me, there’s nothing worse than being both immortal and intelligent. Imagine the boredom! Plus you start to ask questions, and the worst thing about questions is that sometimes, they have answers.”

The statue melts, leaving a wet mess on her parquet.

3. Nevertheless, she persisted.

Every network airdrops a reporter onto Margot’s lawn, and they intone that Margot is destroying the fabric of society. Why does Margot hate ordinary people? What gives her the right to be better than everybody else? A salt-of-the-Earth man named Jeff the Chair Maker has built a chair that bursts into flames every five minutes. All the reporters want Jeff to shout at them on camera. The police wear riot gear to hold back the mob. Men and women in white spacesuits prepare to breach Margot’s house, but they’re alarmed by Jeff’s self-immolating chair.