Shift: A Novel

CB

Red letters, green background. But that wasn’t what caught BC’s eye. It was, rather, the words below the name:

Hoover Vacuums

How could he resist?

It took twenty more minutes to find pants that matched the shirt’s green, a belt, a pair of battered shoes (he wasn’t about to destroy another pair of Florsheims). But the real coup was the cap. It wasn’t an actual Hoover cap, but it did bear the motto “Suck It Up.” After waving it around in what was probably a futile effort to dislodge any lice eggs, BC tried it on, glanced in the mirror. But even through the healthy coating of dust on the glass, all he saw was a G-man in a goofy cap.

For some unfathomable reason the cashier had to record each purchase in a notebook.

“Pa-a-ants,” she said, drawing out the word as she scrawled it into her spiral-bound notebook. “Twen-ty-fi-ive cennttssss. Shi-i-irt, twenty-five cents. Sho-o-oes, fifty. Ca-a-ap, fifteen.” BC felt like a barbarian standing in front of a Roman tax assessor tallying up the worthlessness of his life.

The woman held up the belt, which, though not snakeskin, was every bit as wrinkled and cracked.

“I’ll just give you that,” she said. “Will that be all?”

BC was about to nod his head when he stopped.

“Just one thing. Where’d you get your wig?”

San Francisco, CA

November 8, 1963

At 10:36 p.m., Keller made a final note in his log:

“BOTH SUBJECTS SLEEPING.”

Sidewalk Steve had ripped hundreds of shoe boxes into confetti, which he’d burrowed inside of like a hamster or gerbil. There was some interesting theta wave activity on Chandler’s EEG, which Keller suspected was some kind of deep dreaming: a fantasy taking place at a level before cognition, before consciousness even. Tomorrow the doctor would hook Sidewalk Steve up to the EEG to see if, as he suspected, Chandler was somehow able to produce his images in other people’s brains, as opposed to a peripheral stimulation of the optic nerve. If that was indeed the case, they would be irresistible. You wouldn’t be seeing them (or hearing them or feeling them): you would be thinking them, and your mind wouldn’t be able to distinguish them from reality, no matter how fantastical they seemed. Fire would seem to burn you, bullets to pierce your skin. It was quite possible that Chandler could kill you with his thoughts—with your thoughts, rather, manipulated so that your body couldn’t tell the difference between an imaginary knife in the heart and a real one. How Melchior’d come out unscathed was anyone’s guess. “I’m used to living in a fantasy world” was all he’d said before he left, and, well, he was CIA. One was tempted to take him at his word.

But all that was for another day. Right now the doctor’s brain felt stuffed with cotton batting. Conducting scientific experiments while on Thorazine was difficult to say the least. Among other things, he needed to see if he could add some kind of amphetamine to the Thorazine to improve his own functionality. But for now he needed to sleep. He could examine the data with a clearer head in the morning.

Chandler could feel Keller moving outside his room, but the doctor’s brain remained closed to him. He was like a finger pressed against a taut scrim, discernible in outline only. But at least Chandler knew when he was there—and when he left.

He waited twenty minutes to make sure. Only then did he attempt to fire himself up again. It was difficult. He was so tired. All he wanted to do was sleep. In fact, he was sleeping. What he wanted was to be in a coma. But he had work to do. And it was the doctor who had shown him how to do it. It wasn’t going to be easy, however. Not on him. And not on Sidewalk Steve either.

Deep inside his paper cocoon, warm, sweating, safe, Sidewalk Steve felt his body start to change. His muscles, grown slack from a diet of scavenged sugars and starches, began to firm, to bulk. His bones, soft from years without calcium or protein, hardened, lengthened. He had known the dark man and the mad scientist wanted to change what he was. He had thought they wanted to make him into a monster. But now he realized: they wanted to make him a hero. A superhero. A super soldier, to be precise.

Captain America.

He’d been Sidewalk Steve’s favorite hero when he was growing up, not least because they shared a name, but also because Steve Rogers had been a bullied weakling like Sidewalk Steve, only to be transformed by the Super- Soldier serum into an avenging angel. Now he, Sidewalk Steve, would take up that mantle.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been in the stasis capsule. Several months, no doubt: it would’ve taken a while for the serum to achieve its full transformation of his body. But when the capsule’s cover hissed open, Sidewalk Steve felt as though he was emerging from a single restful night’s sleep.

He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror mounted in the wall. His muscles bulged through his rags—a bit more Incredible Hulk than Captain America, but hey, this was a new era, right? Men in tights probably wouldn’t be taken seriously by the average American.

Now, to get out of this cell.

The door appeared to be made from tempered steel. It looked like it wouldn’t budge if a speeding truck rammed into it. But he was more than a speeding truck. He was Sidewalk Steve.

He slammed a foot into the center of the door. It rattled on its hinges like an alarm clock, but remained in place. The vibration traveled up the bones of his ankle. For one brief moment it felt painful—it felt like tibia and fibula were splintering along their seams—but then the sensation passed, was nothing more than a tingle, a tickle. He was Sidewalk Steve. He was indestructible.

Again he kicked. He felt the door give, just slightly. A small dent appeared in the steel sheet.

He set his mouth in a scowl of grim determination. This was going to take a while.

On the other side of the wall, Chandler heard the dull thuds of Sidewalk Steve’s foot striking the door. He also felt the stress fractures in the man’s ankle, the multiplying microbreaks in his tarsals. It took all his concentration to keep the image of the invincible hero front and center in Sidewalk Steve’s mind, to