“I’m waiting for the fireworks,” said Diane, working on a root beer float that she’d bought from a vendor. Someone behind them was kicking Jeff in the middle of his back. He twisted around. A twitchy, apologetic man was holding a toddler on his lap.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said.
Jeff was frowning. “That last kick was sharp!” he complained.
“Oh, don’t start tweaking out,” snapped the man’s wife, who was holding a larger child on her lap. “Watch the frikkin’ show, why dontcha.”
Diane felt guilty about the snobby feelings that welled up in her, and sorry for Jeff. Awkwardly they scooted forward a bit on their benches. Sid and Rawna were laughing like hyenas.
Finally the emcee started the countdown. His face was visible on the stadium’s big screen, on people’s smartphones, and even on Jeff’s shirt. But after the countdown, nothing happened. Instead of a blast of fireworks, yet another video image appeared, a picture of the Declaration of Independence, backed by the emcee’s voice vaporing on about patriotism.
“Like maybe we don’t know it’s the Fourth of July?” protested Diane. “Oh god, and now they’re switching to a Ronald Reagan video? What is this, the History Channel?”
“Hush, Diane.” Jeff really seemed to be into this tedious exercise of jingoistic masturbation. His shirt unscrolled the Declaration of Independence, which then rolled back up and an eagle came screaming out from under his collar and snatched the scroll, bearing it off in his talons.
Up on the scoreboard, there was a video of Johnny Cash singing “God Bless America,” including some verses that Diane hadn’t heard since the third grade, and then Bill Clinton and George W. Bush appeared together in a video wishing everyone a safe and sane Fourth. By then, others were grumbling, too.
The announcer did another countdown, and the fireworks actually began. It had been a long wait, but now the pyrotechnicians were launching volley after awesome volley: bombettes, peonies, palms, strobe stars, and intricate shells that Diane didn’t even know the names of — crackling cascades of spark dust, wriggly twirlers, sinuous glowing watersnakes, geometric forms like crystals and soccer balls.
“Au revoir,” said Rawna Roller, rising to her feet once the show was well underway. She and Sid made their way out to the main aisle. Sid cast a lingering last look at Jeff, with the fireworks scintillating in every facet of Sid’s polyhedral lenses.
Looking back at the show, Diane noticed that the colors were turning peculiar. Orange and green — was that a normal color for a skyrocket shell? And that shower of dull crimson sparks? Was this latter part of the show on a lower budget?
The show trailed off with a barrage of off-color kamuros and crackling pistils, followed by chrysanthemums and spiders in ever-deeper shades of red, one on top of another, like an anatomical diagram or a rain of luminous blood.
Out of the corner of her eye, Diane could see Jeff’s squidskin shirt going wild. At first the shirt was just displaying video feeds of the skyrockets, processing and overlaying them. But suddenly the Jeff-plus-shirt system went through a phase transition and everything changed. The shirt began boiling with tiny images — Diane noticed faces, cars, meals, houses, appliances, dogs, and trees, and the images were overlaid upon stippled scenes of frantically cheering crowds. The miniscule icons were savagely precise, like the brainstorm of a person on his deathbed, all his life flashing before his eyes. The million images on Jeff’s shirt were wheeling and schooling like fish, flowing in jet streams and undercurrents, as if he’d become a weather map of the crowd’s mind. Jeff began to scream, more in ecstasy, Diane thought, than in agony.
In the post-fireworks applause and tumult — some of it caused by people rushing for the exits en masse in a futile effort to beat the traffic — Jeff’s reaction was taken to be just another patriotic, red-blooded American speaking in tongues or enjoying his meds.
Diane waited for the crowd to thin out substantially, to grab its diaper bags and coolers and leave the stadium under the cold yellow glare of the sodium vapor lights. Jeff was babbling to himself fairly quietly now. Diane couldn’t seem to make eye contact with him. She led him across the dimly lit parking lot and down Rosemont Boulevard, towards where they’d left her car.
“This simple, old-fashioned tip will keep you thin,” mumbled Jeff, shuffling along at Diane’s side. “Embrace the unusual! Eat a new food every day!” His squidskin glowed with blurry constellations of corporate logos.
“Are you okay, Jeff?”
“Avoid occasions of sin,” intoned Jeff. “Thieves like doggie doors. Can you pinpoint your closest emergency room?”
“Those fireworks tweaked you out, didn’t they, honey?” said Diane sympathetically. “I just wonder if your shirt is having some bad kind of feedback effect.”
“View cloud-based webcam of virtual population explosion,” said Jeff. “Marketeer’s simmie-bots multiply out of control.”
“That’s an actual answer?” said Diane. “You’re talking about your growbox on the web?” For a moment Jeff’s squidskin showed a hellish scene of wriggling manikins mounded like worms, male and female. Their faces all resembled each other. Like cousins or like — oh, never mind, here was Diane’s car.
“To paddle or not to paddle students,” said Jeff, stiffly fitting himself into the passenger seat. “See what officials on both sides of the debate have to say.”
“Maybe you take that shirt off now, huh?” said Diane, edging into the traffic and heading for home. “Or at least the beanie?”
“We want to know what it’s like to be alive,” said Jeff, hugging his squidskin against himself with one hand, and guarding his sailor cap with the other. “We long for incarnation!”
Somehow, she made it home in frantic Fourth of July traffic, then coaxed and manhandled Jeff out of the car and into the apartment. He sprawled uneasily on the couch, rocking his body and stamping his feet in no particular rhythm, staring at the blank screen, spewing words like the Chirpfeed from hell.
Tired and disgusted, Diane slept alone. She woke around six a.m., and Jeff was still at it, his low voice like that of a monk saying prayers. “Danger seen in smoking fish. Stand clear of the closing doors.” His shirt had gone back to showing a heap of writhing simmies, each of them with a face resembling — Jeff’s. He was totally into his own head.
“You’ve taken this too far,” Diane told him. “You’re like some kind of wirehead, always hooked up to your electronic toys. I’m going to the office now, and by God, I want you to have your act together by the time I get home, or you can get out until you’ve straightened up. You’re an addict, Jeff. It’s pathetic.”
Strong words, but Diane worried about Jeff all that morning. Maybe it wasn’t even his fault. Maybe Rawna or that slimeball Sid had done something to make him change like this. Finally she tried to phone him. Jeff’s phone was answered not by a human voice, but by a colossal choral hiss, as of three hundred million voices chanting. Jeff’s simmie-bots.
Diane made an excuse to her boss about feeling ill and sped home. A sharp-looking Jaguar was lounging in her parking-spot. She could hear two familiar voices through her front door, but they stopped the moment she turned the key. Going in, she encountered Rawna Roller and bugeye Sid, who appeared to be on their way out.
“Cheers, Diane,” said Rawna in her hoarse low voice. “We just fabbed Jeff one of our clients’ new products to pitch. The Goofer. Jeff’s very of the moment, isn’t he? Rather exhilarating.”