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“Goddammit, Ume, I said keep holding his leg down!” Blake barked. “I know it’s exciting that you get to have invisibility and also be the healer, and, yes, I can quite clearly see how important that will be in a combat situation, but,” and he drew a breath, “Goddammit, I said keep holding his leg down!”
They were butchering the bear in the field, a somewhat delicate operation as the light began to fade from daylight to twilight, because Blake wanted that second bearskin for blankets. “Both the girls will have something nice, something special,” he had said.
“Girls?” Sano had responded, but Blake ignored her for the time being.
Umezawa, on the other hand, was running around like a six-year-old, turning invisible, shouting “Catch me if you can,” running a few paces away, then reappearing. Sano laughed with high delight every time he did it, so he did it again and again, soaking in the female attention, just like a six-year-old might do when the pretty substitute teacher laughs at his pratfalls. “Hey!” he said, at one point, “We should play Marco Polo now!”
“That’s stupid,” said Abe. “We’d be the invisible ones in that game.”
Suddenly, Blake said, “I’ll bet my wife is remarried by now.”
“What?” said Sano, blushing a deep red.
“Yeah, if it’s been two years, presumed dead,” he said, sighing. “I’m sure she’s remarried by now. She never was one to endure waiting. It’s why we had three kids right away back-to-back-to-back.”
“What if we get off this mountain through some time chute, and only a few days or weeks have passed?” Abe asked.
Blake paused from his work, fingering the pointy end of his buck knife. “Hm…” he finally said. “…hm…I figure, then,” and his eyes hit Sano for just a moment—
Did you see that, Stoic? Did you see?
“…I figure, then…no, you know, it ain’t likely no-how. I figure it will be like them awkward wartime things, where the soldier gets reported as KIA when he was only MIA, and then a few years later he gets released from POW camp…”
“What’s a kay-eye-eh, Blake?” asked Umezawa, turning his invisibility on and off so that he looked like a blinking traffic light.
“Killed-in-Action instead of Missing-in-Action, held in a Prisoner-of-War camp.”
“Ohhhhhh…” said Umezawa.
Blake looked at him and almost smiled, but he shook his head and said, “Anyway, it was your antics that brought it to mind: reminded me of one of my kids when he was little, tearing through the house to see if he could avoid all the furniture and wall corners. Usually he made it through, but sometimes if the humidity was right, his socked feet would let go and he’d whack the piano with his forehead…” Blake began to chuckle at the memory, then his eyes went into that dark recession.
“So, a soldier would make arrangements in that case,” Sano prodded.
Blake came to. “Yes,” he said. “Rearrangements one way or another. Awkward, like I said, not the end of the world. So she’s probably remarried. Time travel is such a wild thing to consider, ain’t it.” He landed his discourse as a sentence, not a question.
“Yeah,” said Abe, agreeing.
Relationships are a heart thing, not a time thing, not a utility of life: relationships are the essence of life.
Finally, they had field-dressed the bear, rolled up the hide, distributed the meat for packing, and they managed to return to the bower before darkness completely enveloped them. Umezawa, of course, led the way into the bower, bursting into it with the joy of a young man who has discovered his value, and that it is, indeed, valuable. The bionics were taken aback.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“Well,” said Perry Tuck, “what kind of invisibility is it? Is it a ‘Misty Step’ sort of thing, where you can disappear and reappear in another location you can see, or is it a cloak of some sort? Or is it true invisibility, like, total?”
“I think it’s invisibility,” said Umezawa.
“Cloak,” said Blake. “It’s a cloak.”
“How can we find out?” said Perry Tuck. “Can you do it at will?”
Umezawa clicked off and then on again.
“Perfect,” said Perry Tuck. “Now if only we had some sort of fog machine or a nebulizer or something to see if you are totally invisible or not. You know, like, is your being gone from the world, from perception by any senses, or will you disturb the environment with your presence?”
“Let me tell you,” said Blake, “we sure could hear him yapping the whole time, yapping and singing and pitter-pattering about.”
“Well, okay,” said Perry. “So you still have audio; it would be nice to be sure, though.”
“We have Sano,” said Umezawa.
“Huh?”
“Sano has Cloudburst, remember?”
Sano sighed deeply, squatted, pointed her derriere in Umezawa’s general direction, and ripped a gargantuan blast, producing a dense cloud of floating inky black. Umezawa turned himself off and rushed into it.
“No! Wait!” Blake cried out. “It’s poisonous, don’t you remember?”
“No, it’s not,” they heard Umezawa say, “but I am lost in here, that’s for sure.” They saw a purplish-black figure, as it were, struggling to make his way through the aerosol inkblot. “It’s like being high!” he said. “Sort of confused and anxious, but not scary, not really.”
“High?” said Alayna. “Huh…”
“Well, it’s official,” declared Perry Tuck. “It’s an invisibility cloak. We can see your…uh…gesticulations in there.”
Eventually, the cloud dissipated, and Umezawa reappeared.
“Wow,” said Jason, eyes wide. “An invisibility cloak! This is the stuff of science fiction.”
“Fantasy,” said Abe.
“Science fiction.”
“Fantasy.”
“SCIENCE FICTION.”
“FANTASY!”
“NO!”
“SHUT UP THE BOTH OF YOU,” shouted Blake.
Umezawa said, “Lars would have said ‘magic,’ wouldn’t he?”
At that, Abe burst into tears. A few seconds later, he pulled himself back together. Blake’s eyes resumed their dark brooding. Sano, caressed his arm, whispering a few words to him in an attempt to reach him.
Blake snapped back to the moment. “Bear is on the menu!” he said. “I’m hungry now, though. We need one of them MREs while this roast cooks. We’ll have a delicious stew tomorrow, to shove back this ceaseless cold.”
From that moment for a while, Umezawa became insufferable to the Unexpected Companions. His was a series of dumb practical jokes, like switching two people’s dinner plates from one person to another, or smearing ashes on faces, or jump-scaring them by suddenly reappearing immediately in front of them. The party bore his antics with a good nature, however, because, after all, it was Umezawa, and because invisibility was actually interesting.
After a while, James Thurgerson said, “Well, Ume, you’re proving the Ring of Gyges wrong.”
“You can’t really prove it wrong,” said Meredith Donaldson. “It’s a thought experiment; it’s about a test of character.”
“It’s as I say,” said James Thurgerson. “He’s proving it wrong because it’s just stupid.”
“Ugh,” said Meredith Donaldson. “I don’t feel like arguing with you.” James Thurgerson laughed.
A few nights later, Abe felt himself being roused awake. “Abe?” It was Umezawa.
“What?” Abe said, feeling quite groggy. “I was dreaming about candy. What do you want?”
“It’s Alayna. She’s not moving. I think she’s dead.”
Abe bolted awake. He heard Umezawa say, “Shhhh…not so loud! No need to wake everyone.”
Nevertheless, Abe made haste to Alayna’s room where he found her lying in her bed, scantily clothed, with covers askew and tangled in one corner of her leaf-bed.
“She’s not breathing,” said Umezawa.
In the dim bower light Abe saw that her cheeks were flushed red. He reached his hand to feel her temperature.
Warm, but not feverish, Stoic.
He took a deep breath, held it, and put his face next to her mouth and nostrils. When at last he thought he could not hold his breath any longer, he felt a stirring of warm air from her.
“No, she’s alive,” said Abe. His heart was pounding through his chest and into his head. “But something is horribly wrong.”
“Should I heal her?”
“Don’t know,” said Abe. “Better not, until we have a diagnosis, right? What if this is normal?”
Alayna stirred, very slightly.
“What’s going on in here?” Blake’s voice floated into the room. He appeared in the doorway. “What in the hell are you two doing?” Umezawa disappeared.
“Alayna is sick, we think,” said Abe. “She’s really sick!” He felt tears push up into his eyes.
Blake pushed his way past invisible Umezawa into the room. Sano followed close behind.
“Cold,” Blake commanded. “Ume, get a cold wet cloth and bring it here.”
Umezawa reappeared and did as he was told. When he returned, Abe said, “Here, let me.” He took the cloth from Umezawa and laid it gently upon Alayna’s forehead.
“Alayna,” he called softly. “Can you hear me?”
“Aha,” said Blake, in discovery of something.
At the same time, Alayna opened her eyes. They were blue.
“Hm?” she said. She moved her head very slowly. “Oh good,” she said, in a merry dream-state. “You’re all here.” She breathed deeply and closed her eyes again.
“Heroin,” said Blake.
“Hm?” said Alayna again, and she opened her eyes only enough so that Abe could see they were blue. He was stunned.
“It’s all right,” said Blake. He leaned very closely to Alayna. “It’s all right, little girl. I found your package. It’s all right.”
Alayna said, unmoving, “You should feel like we do.” A moment passed. “Feeling like we do. At this moment.”
Abe started to cry. “What’s happening?” he said.
“She’s chasing the dragon, I’m afraid,” said Blake. “Saw this all the time in the woods.”
“Chasing the dragon?”
What’s happening, Stoic? What’s happening to our Alayna?
[https://embodimentandexclusion.files.wordpress.com/2024/01/2.10.jpg]
Alayna spoke again, very softly, from the realm she was in. “Bots hate the junk.”
“That’s why your eyes aren’t amber now, right?” said Abe.
Alayna didn’t answer; she stared. Finally, she moved her attention to Blake again. She said, “Listening device.”
Blake became very interested.
“They’re listening?”
Alayna nodded. After a moment she shook her head. “No, they were listening.”
Blake turned to look at Sano. “Down when Abe was in her trailer. I thought they might not be that dumb.” He returned to Alayna, kneeling on one knee, holding her hand and saying, “They’ll be sending a director, won’t they?”
She nodded and said, “Program director…” With that, she fell back asleep.
“Tuck her in, Loverboy,” said Blake. “She’ll be fine, at least in a day or two.”
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