There was a quiet desperation to his madness, as quiet as the rhythmic clink of a stainless steel spoon against ceramic can allow. The sound was lost in the chaos of the place, orders shouted and steam escaped, the various startup beep-boop-beeps of laptop computers and the omnipresent tide of cell phone rings. Maybe a talent strummed a guitar in the corner. Maybe the world was falling apart.
Sip. He spilled some coffee as muscles twinged.
It was the wrong coast, the exile city, the embodiment of that place within us all, that darkest and most hidden place, the snarling, echoing graveyard hacked deeply into the most shielded hearts. He lit a cigarette and no one noticed. He hadn’t written them to notice.
He felt the silver crawling through him, the ocean of machines still replacing flesh with metal. The body is strong and reluctant. It fights to the final beat.
But he suspected that there was a measure of surrender in his being there, Cafe Bellona on those days and in those times, the intersections of impossible histories, the unbelievable coincidences. He had to see. Had to know. Maybe he didn’t know how to live if he couldn’t tear himself apart. Maybe it’s not really living if the heart is intact.
He was beginning to feel the approach of the ending, knew that soon the machines would have finished their purpose. He wanted to see the bleed before it was gone. Needed Seattle, that coffee shop. Needed to know. Needed something, anything, to show him that this war was worth fighting.
Reached into his pocket for his lighter and inventoried the contents, a glass ring, a blue, cracked marble, a tiny wooden puzzle piece shaped like Michigan. A silver bracelet he could no longer wear, couldn’t because he needed no gripping, constant reminder of loss.
Lit another cigarette and stirred the coffee again.
President Jennings was on the link. Joseph Windham walked in from the rain, brushing the wet from his black leather trench as he surveyed the establishment for Helen Lofton, who waved to him with one gloved, shielded hand. Simon Hayes was engaging in a lively discussion of Hesse with Maggie Flynn. Michael Balfour read the entertainment section of a newspaper. A headline: Hank the Cowboy Gets the Boot. A child walked by, carrying a Honeybear Brown. Helen Lofton looked up and through Helen Lofton, holding Hunter’s hand, Hunter’s hand holding Honeybear. Uncle led a parade of little boys; angels escorted the shielded Lilith child. James Richter and Hope Benton paused outside, long enough for James to point down the street and recommend a restaurant. Simon Hayes stumbled by, almost knocking into Hope, his mind working over one word: Brigid. Jacob guitared in the corner. Susan and her drummer came in. Her pants were covered in paint; his pants were stitched with Kente cloth. She grabbed a job application from the basket on the counter. Susan stood behind the counter and smiled at her. She merged with the poet, who stood behind the counter, who walked in, talking to old friends from Sussex and someone new, a stranger Paul couldn’t see but hated with what he had left. There would be a slam. She would win. Alina stared at him from behind the counter, and his heart was broken.
He saw himself run by again, run by with West and Hope, on their way to locate the bear. Honeybear was under the couch. Hunter and Helen were dead. Hope’s cry echoed from a cave a world and lifetimes away as Maire murdered her. Alina grasped his hand.
We are machines of a horrible beauty.
Love is, after all, sacrifice, whether borne out in bitten tongues, arms wrapped around and stifling fears, nighttime combat over sheets and vying for higher percentages of a bed’s square footage. No one will admit to the fraction of hate rippling under love’s frozen surface, because to acknowledge that dichotomy would undermine the hesitant interplay that defines desire. Love is, after all, defined by loss.
Suddenly you’re looking back and a week is gone, a month or a year, five, a decade, a lifetime, and it feels like a lifetime, a decade, five, a year or a month, a week, a day, hours, minutes, you’re here, seconds, you’re here and we’re together, instants, you’re here, moments, here, now, you’re here, now, here forever, here, walking together down thin paths into broken futures and todays and
They’d all left him, all ended up here eventually, and he knew why, now. The bleed was palpable, the merging of everything he’d tried to write, from the adolescent crap a decade on to his last book. There’s danger in writing reality into fiction. It was time for him to unravel it all.
Dregs. He still stirred. The rhythm and consistency of the sound just barely grounded him to that reality, a faint beacon as everything inside split apart and rewrote itself.
And it was gone, the people and cell phones and hissing machines, and again the Bellona was the silence it had been with his Omega. The wind picked up across the empty city outside, and something was in the back room, scratching and crashing and coming.
Everything he’d built, everything he’d erased, it’d all come down to this imperfect solitude. He thought of the poet and Alina, tried to separate the two, failed. He’d written her into fiction, or, worse, into nothing at all. Silences, silences. And in the perfect silence of the cafe, he knew how he’d end those universes of war.
An instant, a perfect moment of sound, the echoes of the dead, the enemy and the end, all those he’d let inside, all those who’d left. He heard their voices and knew that madness is beautiful.
Alina’s door spiraled open. She knew it was him.
“Can I come in?”
She walked from the door and slinked into her chaise. Paul could differentiate the habits of the women combined in Alina.
She looked on in silence.
“Let me talk to Jud.”
Alina looked hurt. “Something you don’t want me to hear?”
“Just let her out.”
Alina’s eyes narrowed a huff, but she relented. A static flash, and Paul knew she’d been buried under the god.
“Good to see you’re out of the pool, Paulywog.” Jud grinned with Al’s rabbit teeth.
“I need a pilot.”
Jud nodded slowly. “Well, thanks to your time taking a dip, pilots are in short supply.”
“I have one in mind.”
“Nobody’s been able to find Naught-Four or Simon.”
“Not Michael.”
“Hunter? And Lilith? Not exactly Judith or Judas material, kid.”
“Alina.”
Jud sat up at that. “Me?” She was suspicion and frown. “For why?”
“If we’re going after Maire, I need someone to pilot—”
“You’ll have your pick of the rides, Hughes.”
“—me.”
She let the statement soak in. Alina’s face broadcast Jud’s incredulity. “Pilot you? Pilot you?”
No sound, no motion.
“Unless I missed something being underneath Miss Becky Bananaboobs all this time, I don’t follow.”
He grabbed her hands. The shift was frigid and instant, the silver working out through his pores as it rolled behind his eyes. Jud hissed an inhalation as Alina’s hands grew colder, pins and needles, the screaming, reaching need of the machine sea. The silver latticed up his arms and paved his shoulders, neck. He was growing. Increasing. Multitudes. Plates of metallish slammed down to define lines and planes. His form melted into something shiny and terrible.
“I need a pilot.” His voice was static and distortion. It was still a growl.
“Paul…” Jud’s voice was calm, and he could feel pieces of Alina shouting through.
“I can use Sam’s shell. With Al in the pilot’s chair, with you there…”
Jud stood up, pulled her hands from his with a tacking slurp. Head shaking, arms wrapped securely around herself, she walked to the window that looked out on the vacant birthing fields.
“This is your chance to kill Maire.” He shifted back to skin and hair and scars.