Benno found himself on the Shenandoah’s bridge. It was dark save for a single purple light on the ceiling that cast deep black shadows on the table and chairs. He reasoned that the Gemstoke returned him to an approximation of whatever his last location was in a given Realm: He’d originally been taken from his Realm while in his bed in his trailer, and was returned to the table in his trailer a few feet away. He’d left this Realm from the hallway off the bridge of the Shenandoah, and was returned to the bridge itself. It was a slight imperfection in the logistics of Realm travel which, in that moment, irritated him greatly.

The hallway off the bridge led to a dead end where the doorway should have been. Benno stood staring at the wall, holding the plastic bag with his revolver and toothbrush, for several minutes—several minutes of staring at a wall—before he pulled Gemma from his pocket.

“Can you let me out of here?”

A rectangular section of wall melted away, revealing the darkened hangar beyond.

Benno dragged his feet as he went, his sneakers squeaking and echoing through the cavernous space. He exited the hangar and descended the narrow concrete staircase, then wandered through the maze of hallways with their salmon-colored carpet and genital-looking floral wallpaper and endless rows of doors.

“Where is everyone?” he asked Gemma after some time.

…ERROR. INTERFERENCE NUMBER 118.

THE CURRENT LOCUS OF ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND QUADRILLION VIGINTILLION INDIVIDUALS CANNOT ADEQUATELY BE EXPRESSED IN TERMS SUITABLE FOR…

“Gemma,” Benno interrupted. “Where is Edda and her crew?”

ROOM 427208.

“How do I get there?”

TAKE A RIGHT THEN A LEFT THEN A LEFT THEN A RIGHT THEN A RIGHT THEN A LEFT THEN A RIGHT THEN A LEFT THEN A LEFT.

Benno sighed and took the next right, then paused at the following fork.

“Gemma. What do I do now?”

#

He stood outside room 427208. From behind the door: music and voices. The music was synthy, the voices lively. There was the clinking of glasses and Hermann’s careful pronunciation badly slurred. Helen shouted something, and then laughed. A loud snort followed by boisterous cheering. Coughing. More laughter. Another snort. Benno considered knocking, then settled on simply walking in.

He was accosted by a wall of smoke—tobacco, weed, something else he didn’t recognize—and the monstrous thrum of drums and bass. He swatted at the smoke to get a look around.

The room looked like the VIP section of a nightclub: red leather seats and a red leather sofa and red carpets awash in sultry red light. A wide glass table in the room’s middle was strewn with bottles of liquor, bowls of rainbow-colored pills and small piles of white powder. Speakers mounted along the room’s red velvet walls blasted EDM at a debilitating volume. There was a mirror on the ceiling, reflecting a dark red mockery.

Edda sat on the sofa, her armor a smokey, smoldering red, her long legs crossed. Dante sat beside her, his eyes bloodshot, holding a martini glass in one hand and a short metal straw in the other, decked out from head to toe in tight-fitting leather. Beside him was Isaac—still in his tracksuit—leaning over the table and snorting a thick line of what Benno assumed was cocaine with his own metal straw. In the red chair next to him, Helen sat, a dark wet stain down the front of her NASCAR sweater, anxiously awaiting her turn at the pile of powder. Hermann was slumped in his wheelchair, the top button of his shirt undone, exposing a section of pale, hairless chest, an inebriated grin plastered on his wrinkly face. D’doak Michol stood off in the corner alone, their wide, bloated eyes staring.

The only person in the room Benno didn’t recognize was a little girl, no older than eight, covered in tattoos from head to toe. She sat to Edda’s right smoking an enormous blunt and nursing a can of PBR. Despite her childlike appearance, her eyes signaled an aged weariness.

The door slammed shut behind Benno, and everyone looked up. The music dropped a few decibels from its ferocious volume to a more manageable blare. A moment passed, and Benno prepared himself for whatever reprimand was coming his way.

“Pay up, bitches,” said the little girl, standing and slapping her PBR down on the table.

“Goddammit.” Dante wedged a hand into the tight pocket of his leather pants. “I can’t believe you got it on the inside.”

“I can’t lose.” The girl revealed a gold incisor. “I never learned how.”

“Don’t be so fucking cocky, you little shit,” said Helen, shaking her head but fishing through her own pockets regardless.

“Don’t be a bitter old redneck.” The girl winked.

“You know,” Hermann slurred, his head lolling up. “I could win the overwhelming majority of these bets if I participated.”

“That’s why you sit on the bench.” Dante handed the little girl a handful of what appeared to be glass beads.

“I’m simply remarking.” Hermann shrugged happily and closed his eyes.

Helen handed the girl more beads, and Isaac did the same. The girl dropped them into a pocket in her dress and sat back down, taking a long, satisfied pull on her blunt.

“Well now that we’ve had our fun,” said Edda, reaching into the air and producing a glass of whiskey, which she extended toward Benno. “Why don’t we offer our friend a drink and a place to sit.”

Benno ignored the whiskey until Edda shrugged and set it on the table.

“You placed bets?” he asked.

Edda smiled softly. “It’s just a silly tradition.”

“Can’t remember the last time someone came back the same day,” said Helen.

Benno frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Most of the time it’s a few days at least,” Helen said. “Isaac was gone for what? A month and a half?”

Isaac nodded and wiped his nose, then leaned back to allow Helen access to the cocaine, which she promptly and eagerly indulged.

“There’s only one of us who didn’t storm off after their first errand,” said Dante, gesturing toward the room’s corner where D’doak stood with their arms at their sides, so completely still it seemed they might be merely a piece of furniture.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“You all left?” Benno asked, feeling a strange concatenation of relief and resentment.

Dante and Isaac nodded. Helen grimaced and pinched the bridge of her nose. The little girl smirked.

“All for longer than you.” Dante crossed his legs. “Guess you didn’t have as many qualms as Rose said you did.”

“And yet she still bet on the inside.” Helen’s eyes narrowed. “Isn’t that interesting…”

“The fuck are you saying?” the girl sneered.

Helen shrugged. “I wouldn’t put it past you.”

“I don’t need to cheat to beat the likes of you, you walking sleep apnea machine.”

Helen stood abruptly, bumping the table with her knee and toppling a mostly empty martini glass. “I’ll stuff your little ass in the microwave!”

The girl also stood, and there was a click and a glint of red light from her hand where a switchblade appeared.

“Stop it, both of you,” Edda said firmly but with enough disinterest that Benno inferred this kind of thing happened often and without consequence. “Tonight we are celebrating our success. Not squabbling over nonsense.”

A second passed, with Helen glaring at the girl and the girl smirking back at Helen. Then the switchblade went away and they both sat back down.

Benno picked up the whiskey from the table.

“What’s in the bag?” Dante asked, nodding at Benno’s hand.

Benno glanced down at the conspicuous bulge of his father’s gun through the thin, translucent plastic. “Just my toothbrush,” he said.

“So what changed your mind?” The little girl relit her blunt with a Zippo. “Since the last time we talked?”

Benno frowned. “I’ve never met you.”

Edda let out a groan. “For goodness sake, Rose.”

“Oops.” The girl chuckled. “Honestly forgot.”

Then Benno remembered her, and though he was loath to admit it, he was almost glad to see her. “So you can make people forget about you,” he said.

Rose leaned back on the sofa and drew a shape in the air with the cherry of her blunt. “You can’t even begin to imagine how useful it is.”

“Before you came in,” Edda said, taking a glass of red wine and a long filtered cigarette from the air. “We were discussing how well you performed today. If it wasn’t for you, we might have had to retreat. But thanks to your gift—”

“Gift?” Benno interjected. “Is that how you see it?” He looked around at the others. “Because it’s not. Not at all. It’s… It’s Hell. It’s a fucking empty, endless Hell. You have no idea. You all take it for granted, the… the finitude. Death is a promise. A promise you don’t want kept until it’s taken away. Then it turns out it’s all you ever really had.”

At that moment, the song playing through the speakers ended, and there was a short stretch of silence before the next one started.

Edda lit her cigarette with a flame that seemed to flicker directly from the tip of her turquoise fingernail. “That aside,” she said, impatient, as if Benno had interrupted her with some banality like what he’d had for lunch. “Our success today was notable. The Koan has buyers, and a bidding war is underway. By tomorrow morning the extent of our profit will be clear, and it will be glorious.” She raised her wineglass.

“Here, here,” said Dante, sloshing his martini.

“Hail Satan,” said Rose, tilting her PBR vaguely in Edda’s direction.

Helen pawed around on the table until she found a full-enough bottle of vodka, which she hoisted high in the air. “Sláinte!”

Isaac raised his beer, then nudged Hermann, who slouched sideways in his wheelchair before rousing and blinking around for a second, then grinning sleepily.

“Success to temperance,” he giggled, his eyes already closing again.

Everyone drank.

Benno held his whiskey at his side. “So when do we go?” he asked. “To the Gardens?”

Edda’s dark green lips left dark green smears on the filter of her cigarette, and her orange eyes looked red in the room’s red light.

Benno held her stare. “When is this all over?”

“As soon as we locate it,” she said.

“I’m gonna need more than that.” Benno said. “Because the way you explained it, I’m a big part of this whole thing. An integral part. Without me you don’t really have any way in, right?” He paused for a few seconds, during which Edda watched him over the rim of her wineglass with an inscrutable expression. “So I’m gonna need you to be more specific. What are you doing to locate it? How long do you think it will take? Because this?” He gestured to the table cluttered with bottles and drugs. “And what happened today in that city? I’m not here for any of it. I’ll tolerate it, if it means what you’ve promised. But I won’t tolerate it for long.”

Edda’s unreadable expression did not falter.

Rose glanced from Edda to Benno, her eyebrows raised with prankish anticipation.

Isaac’s leg jounced.

Dante and Helen exchanged a look.

“That is fair,” Edda said finally, setting down her glass. “And I respect your candor. As I told you earlier, the Gardens is nomadic—”

“Be more specific.”

Edda’s eyes narrowed. “You were a science teacher. Of children, but nonetheless. And your parents were brilliant academics. So I assume you at least appreciate some degree of the complexities of quantum probability. The same way nature cannot calculate the exact position and duration of particles, nor can it predict the exact position and duration of the Gardens’ locus.”

“So how do you find it?”

“Painstakingly, and with luck, using a tool that I devised. It is profoundly resource consumptive, and thus expensive to run, but it works.”

“How do you know? Have you found the Gardens before?”

Edda’s wineglass clinked against her teeth. “Yes,” she said. “Once.”

“And?”

“And what?”

Benno held her gaze. “So how long? How long until this tool of yours finds the Gardens again? Days? Months? Years?”

Edda fought back a sneer. “I don’t know. But I assure you that your desire to arrive there is no greater than mine or anyone else’s in this room. We all have losses we wish to recoup. So while I cannot force you to be agreeable, I can ask you to be patient.” She took a slow drag on her cigarette. “Is that sufficient?”

“I don’t know,” said Benno.

A moment unfurled.

“What are you gonna wish for, Benno?” Dante asked, tossing his empty martini glass over his shoulder, where it tumbled and vanished. “I’m gonna wish for—”

Edda stood abruptly. “I’m retiring for the evening.” She stepped easily over the table. “Enjoy yourselves tonight. You’ve earned it. But remember that tomorrow is another workday.” She strode past Benno, the smell of firewood and lilacs cutting through the room’s dank odor, and swung open the door, a pall of smoke following her into the hall.

“G’night, Captain,” Dante said, half-standing as the door drifted shut behind her.

“G’night, Captain,” Rose mocked. “For fuck’s sake. You thirsty loser.”

“I’m being polite.”

“She doesn’t want to hear about your wishes anymore.” Rose cracked open another PBR. “Or anybody’s for that matter. She’s also never gonna fuck you.”

Dante scoffed and crossed his arms.

“She has debts,” Helen said while cutting a fresh line of cocaine with a razor blade. “A lot of debts. Most of what she takes in goes right back out.”

Benno shrugged. “So?”

“I’m just saying. Looking for the Gardens is expensive. Lotta resources. And she’s tight on resources. ”

“Who are they to?” Benno asked. “The debts?”

“Lotta folks.” Helen leaned over her line.

“And what’s she planning to wish for once she gets to the Gardens?”

Helen snorted and winced. “She’s never told me.”

“Me neither,” said Rose.

Dante shrugged.

Isaac shook his head.

Benno glanced at Hermann—fast asleep—and then D’doak, who stared off, motionless.

“This blow makes me have to shit,” said Helen. “Let’s switch to K.”

“Gemma, let’s get some ketamine,” said Rose, and then she was holding a plastic baggie bulging with glassy dust. “Also, this music’s gotta go.”

“We should pruh-pruh…probably eat, t-t-t… also,” Isaac offered, drumming on his knees with his knuckles.

“I could eat,” Hermann mumbled without opening his eyes.

Dante reached into the bowl of pills on the table and scooped a palmful. “Which of these is Vicodin?”

“The white ones.”

“Which white ones?”

“The round ones.”

“Those are Adderall.”

“The oval ones then.”

“Buh-buh-Benno, what do you wuh-want to eat?”

Rose dumped the pile of dust onto the table. “Gemma, play Sober by TOOL.”

“I hope this is Vicodin…”

The song started, melancholy and ominous.

“Rose this fucking music.”

“It’s good for you. Also maybe stop doing the coke if it’s making you have to poop.”

“I used to think it was the baby laxatives that did it, but I guess it’s something else, cause Gemma’s shit is cleaner than bleach.”

“I’m having p-p-pancakes,” said Isaac, poking Hermann. “Do you want your roast chuh…chicken?”

“Hm? Oh yes, that sounds fine, my boy.”

“I’ll do a ribeye. How do you want this, Helen?”

“Fried chicken sandwich with mayo. How are you doing it?”

“IV.”

“Okay.”

“Sushi for me. And get D’doak their bread thing.”

“And you, Buh-benno?”

Benno cleared his throat. “I don’t eat.”

Isaac glanced up. “S-s-sss…sorry?”

“I don’t eat,” Benno said louder.

Everyone turned and looked at him.

“I uh…” He sipped his whiskey, suddenly inexplicably self-conscious. “I can’t die. I don’t need to eat. Eating is pointless and it makes me uncomfortable. I haven’t eaten anything in… in seven years.”

Helen glanced at Dante, who glanced at Isaac. Rose shrugged her eyebrows and placed the pair of syringes she was loading gently down on the table.

Benno tapped the rim of his whiskey glass with an uncut fingernail and ran his tongue around the inside of this mouth. A few seconds went by, then a few more, then a minute had passed without anyone speaking—the only sound TOOL’s fevered, angsty droning—and Benno realized he had managed, inadvertently, to convey what he had failed earlier to explain.