whoosh. and i suppose it makes a kind of sense that the chapter which took me longest to get up here signifies the longest passage of time in the story. something was wrong with i believe. it did not want to play dice. then again neither did i, i just wanted to upload my frigging chapter.
in any case i'm happy now, since i finally managed to fufil my ambition of slipping the word 'bunnies' into the story. it's all a writer could ever hope for sniff
Part Ten- A Final Touch
The storm failed to break that day, or the day after. The week slouched on, dragging reluctantly from one sullen morning to the next. With New York trapped between sticky heat and cloudy skies, true summer seemed to have got itself lost somewhere. Sporadic showers, never more than a tired spritz of warm mist, did nothing to alleviate the pressure in the muggy air.
Around the river, the heat was magnified by the death of the refreshing sea breeze that usually prevailed. On the morning of the fifth day, another faint drizzle started to fall, choosing as its target the abandoned district of old commercial buildings that ran up the length of the Hudson on Manhattan side. The ancient formula of light rainwater added to several square miles of fried ground resulted in a strange, heady scent rising from the dampened earth. It filled the air as the drizzle finally petered out, moving along to the more receptive neighbourhoods up north.
The remains of the rain trickled apathetically across the dilapidated warehouse roof. Inside, patches of the floor were dark and slippery, the drifts of dust bunnies dissolving to form a treacherous coating where water had leaked through the missing shingles. What little determined light could escape from the overcast sky gave up when it hit the cobweb-shrouded windows, deciding instead to go illuminate somewhere with a shade more party atmosphere, like perhaps a cemetery.
It was just was well, given his surroundings, that Otto didn't need natural light. The surface of the desk where he was working was bathed in a bright scarlet glow from the heart lights of his smart arms, an even, high-wave flood that never fluctuated and suited the meticulous nature of the project admirably. No matter what the weather outside was doing, no matter what time it was, he and his 'assistants' could carry on without interruption.
And, for the best part of five days, that was exactly what they had been doing. Hour after hour, Otto remained bent over the cluttered desk, his attention entirely occupied with the parts in his hands and the plans in his head. Outside the warehouse, the moon and shrouded sun played a nonstop game of tag across the sky, but inside the shadows creeping across the mottled walls passed unnoticed, the passage of time only marked by the slow growth of the pile of crumpled blueprints and calculations that lay scattered around the legs of the desk and the chair where he sat. This evolving scrapheap began as a small drift, but by the time the sun rose on the fifth day it had grown to a sprawling Everest of discarded creativity, sliding noisily across the floor in avalanches whenever he stood up. The paper mountain wasn't disturbed often, however- such breaks as he took were infrequent, sporadic, and short. For long stretches, the only sounds were the faint spit of the circuit welder, and the tiny reports as he and the dextrous manipulators of his creations trimmed wires, scored circuitboards, and sifted, endlessly, through the vast reams of neurological research he had gathered from sources all around the world. These pages and pages of studies harvested from the humming computer by his side were invaluable, the key to unlocking the potential of the Mindmap chip which, for the moment, lay securely in a static-free holder on the desk.
The perfect template it contained was of little use to him without the functions he was painstakingly building into the goggles. What it could do on its own was to scan and apply the information stored within it to to create an accurate map of his brain, which it could then hold in its memory for immediate access, updating with each successive pass. What the goggles were designed to do was to interpret this information, recognising certain signals and where in his mind they were coming from, and then act upon it.
Otto turned the goggles over, a claw reaching down to steady them while he added a couple of final modifications to the intricate socket that waited to hold the all-important chip. The original plan, or Mk 1. as he now dismissively labelled it, had been to use the device to better link the smart arms to the specific areas of his brain that dealt with outside information, visual signals, and logic. This would make for quicker, less conflicted communication between his own thoughts and the smart arm A.I, cutting down reaction times and cutting out the arguments and confusions that sometimes reduced the arms and their host to the symbiotic equivalent of two Olympic rowers trying to steer in opposite directions in the same canoe.
Mk. 2 did all this, and more. The completed goggles, linked directly both to his tentacle's process centres and to his own brain, would create a cycle of analysis that rescanned his brain instant by instant, searching ruthlessly for one particular target.
This enemy- or strictly speaking, enemies, because an average human brain contains billions of them- were ultramicroscopic strings of amino acids called neuropeptides, or N.P's. These energetic little chemical messengers are found throughout the brain, specifically in the frontal cortex, the temporal lobe and a very important quarter-pound of knotted neurons called the diencephalon. (To get an idea of where that is, poke the skull behind your left ear. Congratulations, you have just come within an inch and a half of squishing your diencephalon and putting yourself into a coma. Thank goodness you have a skull, huh?)
Whenever a neuropeptide hits a neuron cell, in the diencephalon or elsewhere, the resulting reaction triggers our emotions. Feelings, sentiments, personality- everything that distinguishes the character of a human soul, all of these are initiated by the sparks of neuropeptides that happen second-by-second in the depths of our brains.
That was the main subject of Otto's researches, and that was where the Mk. 2 goggles were calculated to come in. Put simply, they were designed to turn the data provided by the Mindmap chip into precise electrical impulses, fritzing the N.P molecules before they could spark. With the two pilot nano-electrodes in position, Otto's mind would be wiped of anything resembling human emotion. Goodbye to human error, goodbye to clouding conscience, goodbye to guilt and regret and the restraints of morality.
Goodbye, in fact, to Doctor Otto Octavius.
'It's finished.'
The faint click of the welder on the tabletop echoed in the musty, dripping space. Otto laid it down and sat back, picking up the goggles in both hands so that the socket in the nose-bridge faced upwards. Two tentacles dipped over, one standing by as the other angled down and delicately lifted the Mindmap chip from its holder, placing it in the socket. Otto cradled the bridge steadily while the fine manipulators of both upper arms worked on the dozens of tiny connectors, settling the chip into the cavity with the sort of care that befitted such a unique treasure. So far as the smart arm A.I could have been said to 'respect' anything, superior technology headed the list.
A claw reached up to take the completed goggles from his hands, placing them on their protective stand. With the layers of circuitry concealed beneath the smooth black metal and plastic surfaces, they looked just like an ordinary pair of radiation goggles, although slightly heavier and graced with a number of unusual features. Firstly, there was the snaking length of articulated metal that attached to the band at the back, about four inches long and ending in a spiny socket. Then, the pair of shining alloy studs on the sidepieces, each with its own nano-electrode pointing inwards like tiny fangs. And finally, the Mindmap chip itself, mounted between the two lenses, a silvery glow against the dull black bridge.
Otto regarded his handiwork. He'd expected to feel satisfied, even pleased. This was, after all, the culmination of two months of planning, week after week of schemes and research and hard, hard work. Instead, he just felt slightly worried, a nagging forboding that felt a little like a perpetual stomach ache.
Tomorrow night, Otto. That will be the real triumph.
The heads turned, opening, leading his gaze to the bright splash of colour tacked to the wall by the desk, an insanely cheerful mix of flowers, trees, fairies, and psychedelic lettering that looked very out of place on the decaying rust-shot brickwork.
OPENING NIGHT PERFORMANCE
The Orpheus Theatre Presents
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
Shakespeare's Dazzling Tale of Love, Lust and Magic
starring LINDA CURTIS as HELENA
ANDREW SCHWALM as LYSANDER
MARY JANE WATSON as HERMIA
WILL MADOC as DEMETRIUS
July 29th to September 1st
'Yes.' said Otto, standing up. He took a couple of faltering steps back and nearly fell, the smart arms whipping around to stabilize his stiff, tired limbs. 'It's the perfect opportunity. Parker, his girl, and plenty of witnesses to spread the word.'
And then there will be no one else to challenge us.
'No more interruptions. No more errors. No more me.' he said with grim satisfaction. 'We will be perfect. Complete union at last.'
Otto allowed his creations to lift him off his feet, carrying him fluidly across the warehouse floor. Even when he was at his weakest, they remained unaffected; while his existence endured, they would never tire.
'I won't ever let you down again.'
But there was another worry, a small pang of guilt that had been prodding him for days. He had tried to ignore it, but whenever he had stopped thinking about his work for more than a few minutes it would return, niggling at his mind like an itch that refused to be scratched. It had to do with the small rectangular shape that was currently lying on top of a pile of printouts in the corner of the chaotic alcove of his 'study'. He had discovered it lying on the floor shortly after returning to the warehouse to complete the goggles, and he still couldn't decide what to do with it.
A claw extended and caught the thing up from the pile, dropping it onto the desktop. Sitting back down, forehead resting on his hands, Otto stared at the black, pencil-marked front cover of Escher's sketchbook as if it was a cryptic crossword.
Get rid of it.
'No.'
What, then? It is occupying your attention. Destroy it.
'No! It's…someone else's…work. I'd like to think that we understand what that means.'
The Mindmap chip is someone else's work, the whispers reminded him. We still took it. We recognised its use. But this is worthless.
'Not to her.' Otto said, picking the sketchbook up. Pencil lead on black shone slightly as the light caught it, revealing hidden patterns, words, odd scribblings.
We could take it back…
Even unspoken the words sounded feeble, the uncertain germs of a thought which he didn't dare voice. Nevertheless, the arms heard, and were puzzled.
Why?
For a long time, Otto couldn't think of an answer. The smart arms stirred, sensing his struggle and trying to understand what was distressing him. A claw brushed his cheek, and with the touch of the slick, chilly metal came the memory of a human handshake, skin on skin…
He flipped through the book's crowded pages, sketch after sketch flicking in front of his eyes. Right at the back, a jagged, torn ridge sticking out from the spine binding sparked another memory, sending a hand feeling into the inside pocket of his trenchcoat. Something crackled under his fingers, and he withdrew a crumpled, folded piece of paper. The pencil had rubbed and faded, but the sketchy eight-limbed figure traced across the wrinkled surface was still just about visible.
In the bottom left hand corner, a faint series of dark marks bled through from the opposite side. Otto turned the page over.
This Book Belongs to Escher G.
If found, pleeeeeeeze return to 17 Lyndstrom Heights, 156 72nd St, M, NYC.
Thank you!
This sharpie-scrawled request was followed by a smiley face with a protruding tongue and, for no apparent reason, a big stitched lobotomy scar across its forehead.
Otto folded the page and tucked it inside the book. Glancing up at the dripping roof, he rummaged in a pile of old paper wrappings that he'd found in a crate in the warehouse's basement, selecting a large envelope. He slid Escher's sketchbook into it, and sealed the flap.
'Tomorrow night, this will all be over.' he said, trying to sound decisive. Or at least less pleading. 'No more distractions. I promise. But, tonight, we're taking this back to its rightful owner. Because…because it's right thing to do.'
What is 'right'? Otto? Remember the last time you decided to do 'right'? Remember your reward? 'Right' is not a profitable equation.
He shuddered at the edge to the words in his head. The smart arm A.I never got 'angry'. It didn't need to. It just got…insistent, and in its insistence it knew all his weak spots, everything that made him sting. Every painful mental scab.
'Just once.' he whispered. 'One last time.'
The arms clicked, heads flexing, their blood-red lights arcing through the damp, dusty air. They had been designed to protect their creator and aid his Work. Their intelligence had evolved since the accident- some might say their original logic had bent, twisted under the pressure, but still...
Yes, they had interpreted their purpose on a higher, all-encompassing level, a purpose far from the glorified safety-gloves that the original fusion experiment had needed them to be, but the basic laws of their programming remained the same. In the face of this tangled emotional turmoil, and knowing they were so close to finally becoming truly one with their host, the cybernetic intelligence was uncertain.
We need absolute commitment, Otto…
'And you'll have it. I promise,' Otto repeated. He knew that the smart arms had long since picked up on the meaning of 'promise', laboriously grasping the notion of words-that-bind and how they could use them to their advantage. 'Just let me have tonight. We can be there and back in an hour. That's all I want.'
He looked up into the unblinking stares of his creations; the once-upon-a-time dumb assistants that catastrophic fate had turned into the eloquent black-cap judges of his free will.
'Please?'
There was a silence. Finally, the heads closed, shutting off the heart lights and casting the warehouse walls back into semi-darkness.
Yes.
'How now, my love? Why is your cheek so pale? How chance the roses there fade so fast?'
'Belike, for want of rain, which I could well between them from the tempest of my eyes. Mine eyes, I mean. Aghhh! I can never get that straight.'
Peter smiled, riffling through the pages of the heavily-annotated script in his lap. Beside him, leaning up against the peeling bark of the willow tree that shaded them from the threatening sky, MJ let her head flop forwards into her paperback copy. Frustrated, she started to bang the cover against her forehead as if trying to force the words directly into her skull.
'You're doing great.' he reassured her, putting a hasty hand between the book and her head. 'Do you want to go on?'
MJ sighed, brushing her hair back from her face and dropping the book onto the grass. Around them, the few optimistic New Yorkers who had decided brave the ominous clouds to eat lunch in Central Park strolled by, around the edge of the breeze-ruffled waters of the aptly-named Pond. 'Yeah.' she said. 'I've got to learn this before this evening. If I start mixing up my mines and thees and thys in the dress tonight, Wegman's going to freak. Which he does about nineteen times every rehearsal anyway.'
'Ah, me!' said Peter, tracing his finger along the script. 'For aught that ever I could read, could ever hear by tale or history, the course of true love never did run smooth.'
His girlfriend took a deep breath, and summoned a look of heartfelt passion. 'Oh, hell! To choose love by another's eyes! Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, war, death, or sickness did lay seige to it, making it as momentary as a sound, swift as a shadow…' She dropped her head for a moment, lips moving soundlessly, then raised her chin, her sky-blue eyes flashing with a fierce triumph. '…short as any dream, brief as the lightning in the collied night, that in a glance unfolds both heaven and earth, and 'ere a soul hath power to say, behold! The jaws of darkness do devour it up…so quick bright things come to confusion. I did it! I actually nailed it!'
'Okay, that means you get a…Z, two B's and a K.' said Peter, poking through the bright little shapes in the bag on his lap. The candy-alphabet approach to learning lines had sounded bizarre when MJ had first explained it to him, but she swore it worked, and it definitely helped diffuse the pressure created by her need to learn five months of lines and blocking arrangements in a week. It's hard to get involved in a screaming match over the inflection of a rhyming couplet when you know it's going to cost you two day's worth of sugar-coated vowels.
'N 'ee do th' last scheen nuh?' said MJ, indistinctly.
'Huh?'
She swallowed. 'I said, can we do the last scene now?'
Peter pulled a face. 'I thought you knew that one. We've done it loads of times.'
'Ahh, you just don't like it 'cause you know it's the one where I have to kiss Andy.' said MJ, grinning impishly and flicking a Q at him.
'No!' laughed Peter. Yes. 'I told you, I absolutely don't have a problem with that.'
'Yeah, only because I told you he felt like slugs.'
'No, anyway! Really, I'm not jealous or anything, I swear.' He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling it starting to grow hot. He had seen Andrew Schwalm only once, while picking MJ up from a late rehearsal; her co-star was a tall, golden-haired, and extremely talented actor with the features of a young Greek god. After their brief meeting, Peter had reflected that there really was such a thing as hate at first sight. And what's with the "Andy"?
'Then you should sue your face for libel.' MJ touched his flushed cheek and poked out a purple-dyed tongue. He caught her wrist, and she ducked under his arm and kissed him, lightly. Then, suddenly, she pulled back, all seriousness.
'Speaking of libel, I heard Jameson's getting edgy about losing his exclusive story on that kid.'
Peter stared down at the printed type of the script in his hand. He looked at the words without seeing them as he answered.
'Yeah. He keeps getting different people to phone back, but she's smart. All he gets is a new excuse every time. And of course he's terrified of overdoing it and annoying her mom. I mean, I met her mom, so I'd say that was a good call on his part.' His expression darkened. 'But now he's saying that if she won't talk, he'll write a 'dramatic reconstruction' based on the police reports and whatever else he likes.'
MJ was similarly outraged. 'Oh, he's…that's…just unbelievable!'
'He's done worse, believe me.' said Peter, grimly. He had been on the receiving end of enough barbs from J. Jonah Jameson's poisoned pen to justify the stoniness in his voice.
'That poor kid…' said MJ.
'Huh, Escher Griffin doesn't care about Jameson.' Peter leaned back against the broad treetrunk, knitting his fingers together in his lap. 'It's like she's immune or something. I talked to her for less than ten minutes and I could tell that she's got a better understanding of Doctor Octavius than most of this city. I don't know how, but I think she managed to get through to a side of him that the Bugle would say doesn't even exist anymore.'
He looked up, met MJ's concerned gaze, and smiled sadly.
'We owe that side our lives, MJ.' he said.
MJ was about to reply, but before she could open her mouth her boyfriend suddenly sat bolt upright, a familliar expression of stunned concentration stamping across his face.
'What is it, Peter? Is someone in trouble?'
In one rapid movement, Peter slid upright, pulling her up after him. Grabbing her book and the remains of their lunch, he took her hand and bolted across the grass towards the distant railings that seperated Central Park from the surrounding streets.
'Yeah! Us!'
As MJ raced after him, a fat spatter of water made a startlingly loud tik on the paper of the script in her free hand. It was followed by another, and another.
'…We're gonna get soaked!'
Peter might have been far less happy to help MJ rehearse for her performance if he could have glimpsed the kind of hands that Mr. Wegman's publicity material was ending up in. The eye-catching flyers had been circulated and displayed throughout the city for the last week, and some of the eyes that they were catching were very interested indeed…
Harry Osborn stood in front of the huge window in his father's study, watching as sheets of water dashed themselves against the panes. The storm was really getting the hang of it now, becoming more like a vertical sea with little slots of air in it than anything else. It was barely seven o'clock, but the thundery clouds had already blotted out most of the weak daylight.
Turning away, he transferred his attention onto the flyer in his hand. Even now, hours after he'd first read it, the thought that MJ hadn't even bothered to let him know that she had landed such a great role felt like a dull stab in his guts. In his current frame of mind, Harry saw her relationship with Peter as yet another way in which Spiderman, in the guise of his best friend, had managed to stab him in the back. In a way, it made what he was about to do a little easier.
He caught himself looking up, across the long room to the big mirror on the far wall. He'd had the wall rebuilt, the glass replaced, blocking off the hidden room and its unthinkable secrets. If only out of sight could ever be out of mind, he might have been able to meet the eyes of his own reflection willingly.
Instead, to escape the accusing glare of his mirror-image, he turned his back on it and walked back across the room. Sitting down at the desk, he spent a few minutes tapping the flyer against the lacquered wood, then let out a decisive breath and pulled the phone across to him.
'Hello? Harry Osborn. Yeah…you got the photograph I.D? Good…good…uhuh…what? Room service? Don't worry about it, I'll take care of…how much? No, uh, no…that's, um, fine. Okay, well, I told you I'd call and give you the when and the where…'
For a moment, Harry hesitated, studying the flyer in his free hand, trying to get his thoughts straight. Then he remembered Mr. Elmore's patronising smile, and his grip tightened reflexively. The glossy paper ripped, providing a harsh counterpoint as he spoke.
'I think the perfect, uh, opportunity…has just presented itself.'
For the second time in as many nights, Escher Griffin found herself in charge of her own little apartment kingdom. Her domain; eight large rooms, her subjects; one, five-year-old, asleep. The power was dizzying.
Her mother had been summoned to a series of emergency meetings at Emma Rose HQ, a crisis situation having apparently arisen over a shortage of beluba in Beirut (or possibly the other way round). She had been unwilling to leave Escher alone for the evening, but had finally succumbed to the pressure of her constantly bleeping pager and her daughter's wide-eyed assurance that she was perfectly capable, and, yes, she was taking her medication.
It wasn't a lie. Escher was taking her medication, in fact she was taking it, cheeking it, spitting it into a piece of tissue and flushing it down the toilet. Blissful zombification was not a condition she desired.
The spiky Gorey clock on the wall above her bed crawled towards eleven. Escher's bedroom was quite big, with large French windows leading out onto a small balcony, overlooking the street nine floors below. At the moment, however, visibility was limited to about two inches past the glass, everything else being lost in the torrential rain that poured from the sky, turning into vicious spray where it struck the balcony and whipping away into the night. The fierce rattle of the water was muted inside the room, the purple-painted walls reverberating to different sound- that of Johnny Hollow with the base turned up to max, though quiet so as not to wake the sleeping sibling across the hallway.
Escher was drawing, or at least trying to, on pieces of odd paper that she had tacked together and pinned to the slanting stand on her desk. Her pencil slipped off the edge of a sheet, and she sighed.
Life without sketchbook, day five.
The floor was littered with other doodles, not to mention books, mixed-up CD cases, and the other assorted detritus of a creative fourteen-year-old's life. There were some posters on the walls, a few of which were carefully framed, and a scattering of blu-tacked drawings. Escher did try to keep tidy, but the inevitable overspill of ideas from her head made things very hard. As did her goldfishesque attention span.
Now, she sighed again, clicked her pencil lead, and got up. She had let things get out of hand recently, finding that the memory of her 'adventure' made things like cleaning her room seem mundane and irritating by comparison. The fact was, that whenever she read or saw on the news anything relating to the theft of the Mindmap chip, she got an acute feeling of uneasy malaise, mixed with an indefinable guilt. It was in her nature to hate leaving loose ends, and in her view Doctor Octavius represented a whacking great big one. She couldn't help feeling as if she should have done or said something more to help him, while she had the chance. Now, back in this well-known world of safe, familliar things, Escher felt helplessly out of the big picture.
Her mother had been understanding, as far as she could understand, but Escher was prepared to bet that not even Suzanne Griffin trying to be understanding would put up with such decorative features as popcorn on the rug or dismantled bike saddle parts spread across the bed. She picked up a pile of books, and started to slot them back into the bookcase by the window.
Half an hour later, there was a definite improvement. Escher stuck the four dollars and sixty-two cents she'd found in the process into the pocket of her jeans, and looked around at the neat room with a grin. The cleanup had also unearthed a pair of favorite stripy socks, an unopened packet of gum, and a treasured book which she had given up for lost, finally located down the back of the wardrobe. This she opened, sitting back against the newly-made pillows on her bed, her clean white sneakers denting the chequered bedspread while she leafed through to a well-thumbed page. Outside, over the hammering rain, the first thunder grumbled.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping
Clk
Escher looked up. She could have sworn she'd heard a faint noise…a little impact just audible under the din of the storm. After a moment of rainy silence, however, she returned to the page.
rapping at my chamber door
CLACK
That was definitely a noise.
'Hello? Mom?' The empty room sucked at her voice, which wobbled slightly despite her best efforts to the contrary. She shook herself, and when nothing further happened, she tried to carry on reading.
Then into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping something louder than before
WHUMPclackTHUD
'NnnaaAAaahhAAAhh. Shrimp, if that's you, I swear I'm going to skin you alive!' yelled Escher, bouncing off the bed as if it had ignited and wrenching her bedroom door wide open. The hallway was in darkness. There was no light under her brother's door.
About a year earlier, on another unsupervised night, Escher had decided to watch a very scary film. It was Japanese, and it involved a cursed videotape which killed you, or rather killed the film's characters who were full enough of plot-driven stupidity to watch it. The feeling that Escher had got when, at exactly the wrong moment, her mother had happened to ring her to see how she was getting on, was extraordinarily similar to the way she felt now. Every single hair on her body seemed to be trying to get to safety on the top of her head.
She stood in the darkened doorway for some time, then swung resolutely round and sat back down on the bed. I have read this poem hundreds of times. I am not ten. I am not easily frightened.
Slowly, she made herself pick up the book.
"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore
TAP WHAPwhapTAP
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token
THADUNK…hssssssssrattle…
Escher sat bolt upright. The last sound had made the window jump in its frame, and even through glass and chucking rain there there was no mistaking that low, mechanical murmur.
'No.' she mouthed, an incredulous, half-scared grin spreading over her face.
She slid off the bed, flipping the heavy weighted catches that held the balcony windows. A push, laboured against the wind, and the glass door slid back, letting in a blast of icy rain-laced air that blew her hair back around her ears. Squinting against the storm, she leant forwards and peered over the edge of the narrow balcony…
…and stepped back, retreating to the doorway, her backwards paces mirroring the forwards movement of the arm that had snaked up over the railing. The digits of its claw were fully spread, the red glow at their centre casting an intense light into her face. Nervously, she shielded her eyes, bright spots dancing in her vision.
'Uh…hi.' she said to the arm.
Two more tentacles snaked over the balcony, snaking up and around to ground their human host on the streaming tiles. As the guard arm neared her head, Escher backed off a little further, standing just inside her room. A jagged fork of lightning arced across the clouds, and as Doctor Octavius landed on the balcony his heavy silhouette was suddenly backlit in a split-second blue-white glow. There was no denying, it was a hell of an entrance.
'Good evening.' he said, and the fourth arm flexed gracefully upwards and removed his shades.
'Whg.' said Escher. After a moment she explained; 'Eeee.' Then, when sheer surprise finally let go of her lungs, she managed; 'Sorry…I, uh, I'm on my own here and when I heard thumping I kind of thought you were ghosts.'
Otto gave her a quizzical look. The initial shock of his arrival had made her overlook for a moment how completely drenched he was. His hair clung to his forehead, the blustery downpour whipping tangled hazel strands into his eyes. Wiping his face pointlessly on his sleeve, he spotted the book in her hand.
'Ghosts. I see.'
She followed his glance, feeling rather slighted at the dry amusement in his tone. 'I was reading The Raven. You know it?'
'Poe. Of course.' Escher wasn't sure, but through the rain she thought she saw the hint of a smile flick across his shadowed features. 'It was one of R-'
There was a nasty little pause. It might well have developed into a much bigger one, but at that moment another burst of lightning flashed the sky white to the north. The smart arms stirred anxiously, and one of the heads dipped into the pocket of Otto's trench and extracted a thick envelope. The sight of it appeared to remind him what he was supposed to be doing.
'-Anyway. We were, uhh, in the area, and I thought I might as well drop this back to you.'
Escher took the envelope and ripped it open, her fingers fumbling with the flap in her excitement. 'My sketchbook. My sketchbook.' she squeaked. 'My sketchbook.'
'Don't mention it.'
'My. Sketchbook.' She hugged the book to her chest, jiggling on the spot with glee, and looked up at him. Her eyes were full of open, delighted gratitude. 'Thank you so much! Oh, god…I'd hug you, but you're a bit, um, kind of…wet.'
Otto looked away. The girl's heartfelt appreciation was unexpectedly painful to him, after so long with so little like it.
'Yes, it's raining pretty hard out here.' he managed.
Escher wandered back into her room, She had eyes only for her sketchbook, flipping through the pages like it was the lost Rosetta Stone translation. Vaguely, she waved a hand.
'Sorry, yeah, come in.' she said.
Otto froze with surprise. 'Oh, no, I don't think-'
Lightning struck yet again, much closer this time. Otto's hurried refusal was cut short as all four of his smart arms made an unanimous decision to get away from the huge amounts of natural electricity currently bouncing around in the sky, jerking forward mid-sentence and dragging him through the open French windows and into the room beyond.
Escher put her book down on the desk and turned around. 'Hah, you know, it's never this tidy in here normally. It's just that oh my god.'
'What?'
'You…you look terrible.'
Otto blinked at her. She nodded towards a mirror on the wall by the door.
He looked.
She had a point, he had to admit. He probably hadn't looked particularly healthy at the time of their last meeting, but now, after five days of no daylight, food, or sleep, the cadaverish look had well and truly set in. His skin was the colour of something found under a rock, and the shadows around his eyes would have prompted a 'Jeee-sus, buddy…' from even the most chronic of insomniacs.
'I've been busy.' he said. Escher didn't say anything, but her look of horrified sympathy was enough to make him search for a change of topic. He found it in the small plastic bottle that was sitting innocently on her bedside table. An arm snapped out, examining it closely.
'"Scyllazine"? What's that for?'
She shrugged. 'It's supposed to help me sleep. They all think I'm nuts because I haven't cracked up yet. Though if you ask me, I'd say you look like you need it more than I do.'
Otto ignored her. The smart arms were still scanning the room, taking in all the new details with interest. One of them arched past Escher's shoulder, its head opening to study the blank screen of her elderly PC. She drew in a little, but her eyes were curious.
'What's with the pick-n-mix look on this one?' she asked, as the tentacle swung around to regard her. It was the mended one, where the bright new sections had not yet dulled enough blend in with the scarred, corroded surfaces of the older segments.
He shrugged, lacking the energy or the words to tell her about the night he'd been forced to spend in his old home. The strangeness of the present situation was not lost on him. Tomorrow night we intend to commit cold-blooded murder in front of hundreds of witnesses. Tonight, I'm standing in a teenage girl's bedroom trying not to drip rainwater on the carpet.
'I was…um, I mean, I've been worried about you.' said Escher, picking at the hem of her t-shirt. For the second time, Otto found himself at a loss for words. Here, in the protected, promising world she belonged to, she had even less conceivable reason to concern herself with his well-being than she had had before, when she had so bafflingly chosen to believe his word over that of the entire city. What could she possibly see in him that made her even think of trusting him, let alone worrying about him? Certainly, it was nothing he could see himself.
'Escher, I-' he began.
Click.
Footsteps, startlingly loud, in the direction of the distant front hall.
'Honey, are you still up?'
Escher's face suddenly became a rictus of panic. 'It's my mom!' she hissed. 'Hide!'
Otto stared at her. Around him, his smart arms rose in agitation, their massive lengths brushing the walls and ceiling as he asked the inevitable question.
'HOW??'
Desperately, Escher stuck her head into the hallway. 'I'll be right there!' she yelled, then turned back into the room, barely in time to see a retracting claw withdrawing through the window.
'Wait!'
She raced to the window, stopping short as another streak of lightning ripped the darkness. Doctor Octavius was standing balanced on the balcony rail, steadied by the tentacles that curved around his back to grip the metalwork. His tattered trenchcoat fluttered around him, the slit lengths lifting like ragged wings as he touched his forehead in a silent salute, then dropped backwards into the drenching void.
Escher stood in the square of light that spilled from her room, breathless, bewildered, and angry. Rain plastered her fringe to her forehead as the slippery tiles beneath her feet shuddered with the fading treads that marked her visitor's journey towards the ground. She gritted her teeth, small fists balling in frustration. She had been so close, she knew it. The right words had so nearly been there. So near, and yet so unfairly, stupidly, far.
'Aghhhhhh…damn.'
She stomped back inside her bedroom, pulling the windows shut with a rattling whump. As she did so, something rustled under her foot. Glancing down, she saw that it was the torn envelope that Doctor Octavius had used to keep her sketchbook safe and dry. It was still spotted and damp to the touch as she picked it up, turning it over in her hands.
And there, in faded sepia-tone ink just under the crumpled flap, a small miracle.
Elysium Cannery Ltd.
Wharf 21 29b, West St. Dst.
WM NYC
Escher folded the envelope carefully in half, and smiled.
well I hope y'all enjoyed the biology lesson. i certainly learned a lot today, mom. and now i'm going to go to the late-night store, cuz i skipped dinner and my neuropeptides are making me feel sick. fzzzt.
dodgy science mainly courtesy of my head and the national geographic, vol.187, no.6, june 1995.
hee hee I managed to get hold of an official press pack CD for spidey2 taps nose sooo many sound clips, and the trailer twitches
thanks everyone for being patient and sticking with it so far, even with the waits. I 'preciate it.