Charlie Anders - All the Birds in the Sky

Pretty much every conversation between Patricia and CH@NG3M3 began the same way. Patricia wrote: “God I’m so lonely.” To which the computer always replied: “Why are you lonely?” And Patricia would try to explain.

“I THINK CH@NG3M3 likes you,” Laurence told Patricia as they slipped out the back of the school, handling the big metal door softly as a baby, so as to make no sound on their way out.

“It’s good to have someone to talk to,” Patricia said. “I think CH@NG3M3 needs someone to talk to as well.”

“In theory, the computer can talk to anyone, or any computer, all over the world.”

“Probably some types of input are better than others,” said Patricia.

“Sustained input.”

“Yeah. Sustained.”

Snow crisped every inch of the world, making every footstep a slow descent. Laurence and Patricia held hands. For balance. The landscape shone like a dull mirror.

“Where are we going?” Patricia asked. The school was somewhere behind them. They were going to have to turn back soon if they were to have any hope of making it to the ceremony, at which the five top-scoring seniors were going to recite memorized passages and talk about what the Saarinian Program meant to them.

“I don’t know,” Laurence said. “I think there’s like a lake back here. I want to see if it’s frozen over. Sometimes, if a lake is frozen the right kind of solid, you can throw rocks at the ice and it makes a natural ray-gun sound effect. Like pew-pew-pew .”

“That’s cool,” Patricia said.

She still wasn’t sure where she stood with Laurence. They’d hung out, furtively, a few times since their lunch in the library. But Patricia felt like both she and Laurence knew, in the deepest crevices of their hearts, that they would each ditch the other in a second, if they had a chance to belong, really belong, with a group of others like themselves.

“I’m never going to get away from here.” Patricia was knee-deep in snow. “You’ll go off to your S&M high school, and I’m going to stay and lose my mind. I’m going to be so socially destroyed, I’m going to turn radioactive.”

“Well,” said Laurence. “I don’t know that it’s possible to ‘turn radioactive,’ unless you’re exposed to certain isotopes, and in that case you probably wouldn’t survive.”

“I wish I could sleep for five years and wake up as a grown-up.” Patricia kicked the frozen dirt. “Except I would know all the stuff you’re supposed to learn in high school, by sleep-learning.”

“I wish I could turn invisible. Or maybe become a shape-shifter,” Laurence said. “Life would be pretty cool if I was a shape-shifter. Unless I forgot what I was supposed to look like, and could never get back to my original shape, ever. That would suck.”

“What if you could just change how other people saw you? So like if you wanted, they would see you as a hundred-foot-tall rabbit. With the head of an alligator.”

“But you’d be physically the same? You’d just look different to other people?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“That would royally suck. Eventually someone touches you, and then they know the truth. And then, nobody would ever take your illusions seriously again. There’s no point, unless you can physically change.”

“I don’t know,” Patricia said. “It depends what you’re trying to do. Plus, what if you could make people see or hear whatever you wanted, and just mess with people’s perceptions in general? That would be cool, right?”

“Yes.” Laurence pondered for a moment. “That would be cool.”

They came to a river that neither of them remembered having seen before. It was covered with a white layer, and the jutting rocks looked like the fake sapphires in the necklace that Roberta had gotten Patricia for Christmas. The river current kept the water from freezing, except for a layer of frost.

“Where the hell did this come from?” Laurence poked at the brook with his foot and broke a tiny piece of its shell.

“I think it’s really shallow and you can just step across it most of the time,” Patricia said. “The rocks are easy to walk on, except when it’s all icy like this.”

“Well, this sucks.” Laurence squatted down to examine the river, nearly soaking his butt on the slushy ground. “What’s the point of ditching school if we can’t go make laser noises on the ice?”

“We should head back,” Patricia said.

They headed back. This time they didn’t hold hands, as if getting stymied on their expedition had left them divided. Patricia skidded and fell on one knee, tearing her tights and scraping off some skin. Laurence reached down to help her up, but she shook her head and got up on her own.

This was a metaphor for how it was with Laurence, Patricia realized. He would be supportive and friendly as long as something seemed like a grand adventure. But the moment you got stuck or things were weirder than expected, he would pull away. You could never predict which Laurence you would get.

You could not count on Laurence, Patricia told herself. You just couldn’t, and you should just get used to that idea. She felt as though she had settled something, once and for all.

“I think being able to control other people’s senses would trump everything, even shape-shifting,” Laurence said out of nowhere. “Because who cares what your physical form looks like, as long as you can control how everybody perceives you? You could be all deformed and messed up, and it wouldn’t matter. The key is controlling the tactile as well as the visual.”

“Yeah.” Patricia picked up the pace and tromped back to the back parking lot, so Laurence had to rush to catch up. “But you’d know what you really were. And that’s all that matters.”

When they got back through the parking lot’s gravel slush pit, they found the back door to the school was jammed shut. Locked? Frozen stuck? Patricia and Laurence both tore at the door, since the front entrance was all the way around the building and they would get busted for 100 percent certain. Laurence put one foot on the white-stone wall and pulled with all his Track-and-Field-but-mostly-Field might. Patricia pulled at the edges of the sharp metal handle, which was shaped like a shelf bracket. They both tugged as hard as they could, and then the door swung open. Someone was laughing on the inside of the door. Laurence and Patricia caught a glimpse of not-quite-uniform sneakers and a trio of pudgy hands, before she and Laurence both fell on their asses. Whoever had been holding the door shut from the inside laughed louder, as Laurence and Patricia tried to pick themselves up, and then a blue shape came arcing toward them, and Patricia barely had time to recognize a plastic bucket before a white arm of water sloshed out and they were both soaked. Someone was taking photos.

THEODOLPHUS HAD NOT eaten ice cream since the poisoning at the mall, and he didn’t deserve any now. Ice cream was for assassins who finished their targets. Still, he kept imagining how ice cream would taste, how it would melt on his tongue and release layers of flavor. He no longer trusted ice cream, but he needed ice cream.

Well. So be it. Theodolphus went and got in his Nissan Stanza, deflecting his landlady’s usual attempts at flirtation with a wave. He drove for hours, crossing and recrossing state lines, circling and swerving and doubling back, using every trick he could think of. Then he came to a convenience store two states away, where he bought a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, one of the flavors named after a celebrity. He ate it in the driver’s seat with a spork from his glove compartment.

“I don’t deserve this ice cream,” he kept repeating with each bite until he started crying. “I don’t deserve this ice cream.” He sobbed.