Ethanol burned his skin as Charlie rubbed down their bat inflicted cuts with a scrap of cloth. The wounds looked angry, red, and raw, but at least now he knew that it was clean and uninfected.
He sighed and glanced at the bedroom door where their spouse slept away eir injuries, Li had really saved their ass today so the least he could do is get some work in before ey woke up.
With great reluctance Charlie flipped out their phone and scanned through his schedule till he found the days date. The attached note read: ‘Streaming: Cooking with Mr & Mx Tan’ a show which was thoroughly unlikely with said Mx tan currently collapsed in eir bed. Ever the creator Charlie pulled off the ruined shreds of their shirt and flicked the camara on to start a vlog – everyone loved a good vlog, right?!
“Hey folks, this is Charlie’s Naked Truth comin’ at ya pre-recorded from A Street Nominally Associated With Your Reality for a classic day in the life vlogggg!”
The brawny Scotsman punctuated the sentence with a wink and a lone finger gun as they continued.
“Now I know what y’all gonna be think’in! What did you do with Li! Eir the only reason I’m even watching your OnlyFans Charlie! And ya know what, that’s fair – Li is the greatest. But the thing is me and Li had a hell of a battle getting the WiFi back up today. It was a tale of love, violence & Error Lights, buuuuut whilst ey did save me, Li got pretty clawed up, so eir in bed resting. AND SO INSTEAD ITS VLOG TIME!”
He stopped the recording and perused the selection of assorted cameras memory sticks, and tripods in the office. After he checked the weather (a warm dry breeze blowing in from the north of the street), and the drift (light and almost earth normal) they elected to take a shoulder mounted facecam.
Upsides: High-quality audio-visual quality and low levels of camara shake.
Downsides: Required a shirt to prevent chaffing.
He paused for a second, looking around the office for a spare shirt and sure enough found one neatly folded by the keyboard, a curious wireframe statue of a bull placed atop it. Intrigued Charlie kept glancing back at the statue as he shrugged on the fluorescent shirt and shoulder brace. Camera setup prepped they drop the curious little statue into their pocket and exit onto the street.
He took a second to figure out which way to go, white cliffs left and up so Biz’s lab must be to the right and began to jog down the street. As he fell into a steady gait, he turned the camara on and continued his vlog.
“Rightoh saucy people, today I’m givin’ our local chemist Biz a hand – Now I’m 90% sure that ya’ll have not met Biz before, but Biz is a crackin’ person. An, er, absolute genius, but, ah, less exciting than Red if you get me, always on about safety and such like. – Oh speak of the devil, there’s Red now! HEY RED”
Charlie paused to wave enthusiastically at Red as they dashed past him, a smouldering box tucked under one arm. She waved back in vague acknowledgement as she passed, weary determination in her every uneven step as she struggled home with her slightly scorched parcel.
As was traditional Charlie attempted to make conversation with them as they passed but was only able to make out the words “Need Sleep”. Excited to show his friend, Charlie pulled out the little figure of a bull that he'd found with his shirt to show her, but before he was able to re-establish conversation, Red made her unsteady escape and passed into the distance.
In a desperate attempt to cover his embarrassment Charlie examined the upheld figure more closely, rotating it in the hazy light of the midday suns. The wireframe figure looked incredibly fragile, silver filigree wires delicately following the curves of the bull’s form, and yet it had withstood the violence of the run with ease, its elegant form unbent and unmarred by the travel.
Proud of his spouse’s work he held the bull up in front of the camera and resumed his recording.
"Still on my way, but I just realised that I'd not actually shown you this thing yet!
So I found this with my shirt, and I'm assuming that Li made it for me or maybe ey bought it? Either way look at how awesome it looks! "
The creature caught the light of the suns as he held it up, flickering blue and red as he rotated it.
"But yeah, figured you'd appreciate that, next stop Biz's lab, you know what why don’t y’all come with me I’ll give you a bit of an update on today’s events."
Charlie put the tiny bull back in his pocket and chatted away as he jogged, his words tracing an erratic and semi accurate outline of the day’s events to their viewers as he made his way to the lab. The Lab, Biz's lab, was a particularly out of place building, it's off-white cubism a stark contrast to the ancient Edwardian architecture typically arrayed to either side.
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The lab had been a real boon to the street when it first appeared. A modern medical facility jam packed full of state-of-the-art equipment that had materialised during a particularly vicious stretch of drift. Of course, that was a few years ago and whilst Biz had kept safety a key feature of xyr new jury-rigged devices Charlie couldn’t help but wonder at their effectiveness. But Biz insisted that it all did approximately the job required, and besides it was hardly Charlie’s place to comment on the safety of complex chemical equipment.
Charlie approached the door and rattled out the secret knock he had learned from Sai: tap-tap-tap, pause, tap-knock, pause, tap-tap. Silence hung around Charlie for a few tense moments as the noise echoed through the corridor behind the door to be answered by the sound of shattered glass and muffled swearing.
The swearing cut off abruptly, replaced by the rhythmic click of high heeled boots as the person within moved towards the entrance door. A heavy thunk signalled the doors opening as Biz stepped through and glowered down at Charlie, gaze heavy with irritation.
“Where the hell have you been Charlie, this shit needed picking up hours ago.”
Biz paused as xe noticed the camera brace strapped to Charlie’s shoulder and without asking stepped forward and snatched the camera off of its mount.
“Oh for fucks sakes, you’re streaming? Fine, fine whatever.”
Biz took a deep calming breath and smoothed down the worn fabric of xyr lab coat as xe addressed the camera directly.
“Greetings electronic invaders into my daily life, I want you to know that I have no desire for you to be here right now, distracting Charlie and I from the transportation of vital medical supplies for the other denizens of the street.”
“My name is Bismuth or ‘Biz’ for short, and I use a variety of pronouns depending on the fluidity of my gender on any given day; including He/She, She/her, He/Him, They/Them and Xe/Xem. If you are unaware of the correct pronouns to use on a specific day you will need to use Xe/Xem as a default, otherwise consult my badge.”
Biz tapped a finger against the faded metal badge embossed with “Xe/Xem” and continued.
“And before anyone asks, no I am not a reformed meth dealer. I am a trained scientist and the first black nonbinary person to win a noble prize. Before I got trapped on this damn street my specialty was biochemistry and the synthesisation of estrogen, testosterone and progesterone specifically.”
Charlie took the camera back gingerly and carefully stepped back to give Biz some space.
“Err, its actually for a vlog rather than a stream… Y’all right buddy?”
Biz shrugged and gestured for them to come inside.
“Yeah, sorry Charlie I am just a little bit stressed – today would have been… You know what it does not matter, just come give me a hand with all this stuff – you can stream or vlog or whatever whilst we do it, but I am doubtful that it will make for good content.”
Charlie followed as Biz lead him through the building, through the tiled and dusty reception and into the meticulously polished and sterile workspace beyond.
The room itself was a familiar masterpiece of mad science a complex array of vials and tubes carefully constructed to filter and condense exotic compounds into the medicinal supplies the street required. Familiar with one exception: off to one side, amongst a nest of cables and screen read outs was a new item, an open topped cage of copper mesh which held within it a tiny wire frame statue of a raven.
“Oh hey, I didn’t know Li made you one of those too!”
Biz brow furrowed as xe turned back from the stack of boxes.
“What?”
Charlie waved at the copper cage.
“You know this cute little statue! Li made me one too! Why is yours in a cage?”
They pulled the matching bull statuette from his pocket and waved it at the confused chemist. At the sight Biz recoiled away from the oblivious Scotsman.
“Where did you get that, was that thing IN YOUR POCKET?!?!? For fucks sake put it in the cage before you kill us both!”
Confused, but appealing to the higher scientific authority Charlie threw the bull into the copper box. As it landed, it connected with the raven and the resulting explosion of light and air that burst from the two statues knocked Charlie and Biz onto the floor.
The crumpled pair shared a look as the light faded to reveal a glowing vortex of swirling silver threads suspended a few centimetres from the cage bottom. After a moment Biz cleared xyr throat and pulled xemself up from the ground. Then paused for a second clearly pulling xemself together as xe brushed xyr coat clean.
“Charlie, could you be a dear and deliver this package to Red please? And could you maybe tell her what happened here? I feel that this…” Xe gestured at the still glowing vortex of metal within the copper cage. “…may require more than just my skills.”
“Er yeah, sure thing buddy. I’ll tell her you have a weird silver fireball in a cage, good luck with the science-ing I guess?”
Charlie picked up the required boxes and cautiously backed out of the room as Biz began to mutter to xemself. After a moment they were out on the street secure in the knowledge that the weird science phenomena had been left to those better equipped to deal with it.
The route to Red’s fell away quickly, the image of the exploded statues pushing away all thoughts of vloging as they knocked on Red’s door.
Red looked exhausted, their hair stuck out at odd angles and deep dark bags under her worried eyes. As Charlie explained the incident, she nodded along growing more agitated as the day’s adventures were laid out before her.
As the story concluded and it became clear that no one was in immediate danger fatigue took over and she mumbled something about “sorting it after I have a nap” before she gently ushered charlie away from the door and closed it in his face.
At this point Charlie checked his camara, amused to find it had managed to record the entire interaction and pondered how he would make good vlog content from it. They smiled to himself; it was a problem he could solve easily enough.
Hopefully Red and Biz would find the mysterious silver vortex just as simple.
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