“Something’s going to-” she started to say.
Pause. “What?” I asked.
“Oh, God-”
(10)
“-you mean you don’t have time to waste, ” she said. “You’re sick, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“Yes, you are, you’re like, terminally Pythian or something.”
“What’s that?”
“We’ve got to fix this. Lindsay’ll pay the bill whether you’ve quit or not.” The words came out bunched together.
“Marena, come on, stop. I’m not sick.”
“Really? Well, something’s wrong.”
“I’m just not feeling top-tip, uh, tup-”
“You’ve like, seen that you’re going to get sick, in the Game.”
“Um… well…”
“ Fuck, I knew it. Hell.” She bounced up and around the Go board and touched my brow with the back of her hand. “Yeah, you feel a little squeamy. And your pupils are dilated, they’re, like, like ripe olives, how much of the stuff are you on, right now?”
“Not too much, just the regular dose. It’s nothing, it’s like an espresso. Well, like nine espressos. Uh, — si.”
“I want to get Dr. Lisuarte on it right now.”
“No, I-”
“Why not? They made this mess, let’s get them to clean it up.”
“Look, sweetie, I don’t want them messing with me any more right now, okay?”
“So who’s going to deal with it?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m handling it.”
“Handle what? What is it? A brain tumor?”
“No-”
“Fibrous lungs? Blood press-oh, my God, you’re a hemophiliac. You’re going to have a little stroke and it’s going to wipe you out. Right? Shit.”
“Look, however you’re figuring out-well, I’m not sick. Ask me if I’m sick.”
“Are you sick?”
“No.”
She watched me for a few seconds.
“Okay,” she said. Evidently, however she was reading me, she’d decided that last bit was the truth. “So, if you don’t have time, but you’re not worried about, about, uh, your own death, then… oh, hell.”
I know I said that her face didn’t show things, but maybe I was just getting in a little ethnic slur there, because now something in her face did change, slowly but very noticeably, even to me. It showed fear, and it showed it unmistakably.
“It’s me, isn’t it?”
“No,” I said, “It’s-”
“ I’m sick. It’s that EVC thing again. How long do I have?”
“It’s definitely not you. Honest injun.”
She looked at me. She looked at me some more. One thing we auties and pseudoauties don’t do too much, and which normals do way too much for our taste, is that normals fucking look at you.
“Okay, fine. So what is it, did you see something in the Game?”
“Nothing unusual. If I had you’d know about it.”
Pause. As before, she looked at me and I looked back.
“So, so, what are you saying? You do know how you’re going to die, we’ve established that. Right?” She took another drag.
“Well, uh-kind of, but it’s a discouraging topic, let’s talk about something-”
“How? How are you going to die?”
“I’m not going to tell you. I’m done.”
“Okay, when? When are you going to die?”
“Not before any-not for a while, I don’t-okay, look. I didn’t want to get into this because I’m still really vague about it and I have to play some more sessions. But there’s going to be a huge civil war in two years and we’re all going to have to leave and go to, like, Iceland.”
Again, she looked at me. Yet again, I looked back.
“That’s not it,” she said. “Come on, what’s going to happen?”
“If you don’t like that one, then I don’t know.”
“No, I know you’ve been looking in on the future, and you saw something big, but that wasn’t it.”
“Okay, fine-”
“Oh, hell, you found another doomster. Right?”
Better not answer that one, I thought. Don’t answer anything, Jeddiot. Just stay mum, dumb, and schtum and you’ll get out “That’s why you’re not going to die before anybody else, we’re all going to die at the same time, you said there’d be other doomsters someday. And you’ve found out about one and you don’t think you can stop him.”
I shook my head.
“Or else it’s some natural disaster. Right?”
“No,” I said. “No asteroids, no tidal waves, no, no zombies, no lava…”
“Okay, so it’s a nuke. Nuclear war.”
“No, that’s not it,” I said.
“What is it? You gave off a guilty signal just now.”
“It’s-it’s that investment.”
“How many people is it going to affect?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it going to kill more than a hundred people?”
“I-okay, I think so.”
“More than ten thousand?”
“I’m not going to answer that.”
“Fifty thousand deaths.”
“I’m not answering any more. I’m done. I’m a jerk and that’s it.”
“How big of a jerk?”
I got my eyes detached from hers and swung them around the room. The clock said it was to.
Out in the courtyard, the pool lights had gone out and without the contrast you could make out a hedge of I guess pepper trees beyond it. Over in Neo-Teo, Eos Aimatirodactylos — bloody-fingernailed dawn-was grazing the “east” facets of the roof combs. But somehow, inevitably, my focus gravitated back to her face. Our eyes locked.
She guesses, I thought.
She put the last inch of cigarette in the ashtray but didn’t stub it out.
No. No, she doesn’t. Just chill out. Just sit tight. Chill tight and sit it out. Shill sight tit shite chit…
One second. Two seconds. Was something changed in her expression? I couldn’t look away. Yes, it was. Changing.
As of today I was thirty-eight short years old, and I’d already seen more than enough horrible stuff in my exile here on Planet Retardia, and not just on YouTube, either, all the things you’d pay a lot to be able to unsee,
