Catastrophe Jones

“Somehow,” Jack laughed nervously, “I thought I’d have more trouble over you finding out I didn’t–”

“Pee standing up?” Meredith finished, with a short laugh of her own.

Jack wanted to smile, then, but Meredith’s eyes hadn’t warmed up.

“You know what? We’re living in a world full of weird.  I can get behind people of all colors, races, religions, genders, non-genders. Real-world bizarro-talk just doesn’t bother me,” she said easily enough. You wanna dress and act like a guy, fine, whatever.  It’s this whole other part where you’re fucking crazy that I have a problem with,” she said.

Jack finally managed to identify the expression on her face.

Disgust.

“Craz–” he began, his eyes huge, his whole body tensing.

“Yes, crazy!” Meredith said, half scornfully. “You think you’re a fucking wolf!  I walk in on you and your brother in bed, which was bad enough, thank you, and you try to explain all that away by telling me you’re a wolf? Seriously?”

“Merry,” Jack said, reaching out for her, shaking his head. “It’s —  William was just trying to make sure I didn’t hurt anyone.  It’s not always easy when I… when I change. He was keeping everyone safe.  We weren’t — nothing goes on between us, Jesus.”

“Nothing!? You were naked in bed together!” Meredith yelped.

“I ruin clothes if I change in them, and I guess Will just sleeps naked, for fuck’s sake!” Jack shouted, getting frustrated.  “This isn’t about my brother!  I’m not crazy, Merry–”

“Stop calling me Merry, freak,” Meredith snapped, her expression still hateful as she crossed her arms over her chest, glaring at Jack.

“I’m not a freak,” Jack said, stunned, the automatic reply falling out of his lips the way William taught him. You shouldn’t have to, William said, but you’ll need to defend yourself. It deflected the words, but it could never really deflect the sting.

“Yeah? You come to my school and pretend to be a boy–”

“It’s not pretending!” Jack said, feeling weak and sick, having to shout the words he hated to say, over and over again, to anyone who found out, and never understood.

“Then,” Meredith snarled, not listening at all, “I catch you in bed with your brother.”

“I’m telling you, that was just–” Jack cried, feeling his face flush in shame and indignation.

“Then you tell me you’re a werewolf!” Meredith shouted, steamrolling past Jack’s objections. “That pretty much sounds like ‘freak’ to me!”  she snapped, shaking, her lips drawn into a thin, tight line.

Jack couldn’t get the words out for a moment, feeling them caught in his throat, half hiccuped.  He winced, shaking his head as he repeated, somewhat more quietly, “I’m not a freak.  Just let me explain.”

“Fuck, you know what? Just bite me,” she said, her pretty mouth twisted up all ugly to frost the sarcastic comment with as much hate as possible. “I’ll understand then, right? But I don’t have a brother to sleep with — guess it just wouldn’t work out,” she snarled, and then turned on her heel, and stalked away.

Jack stood there, fists curled up in the pocket of his jeans, skinny shoulders shaking, blue eyes huge and wet with unshed tears.  There was a sinking, crawling, pulsing feeling in his chest, almost like the change, but instead of an explosion of fire, an implosion into ice, where the burning died, hollowed out.

Was this love? Jack wondered. Is this what all the great poets wrote about?  “No fucking wonder they all went nuts or offed themselves,” he said out loud, trying to wipe the tears off his face, before William arrived to take him home.

Sounds. It’s the first thing to notice, even before you can see the clutter and steam of the workshop. Grandfather’s gears whir and click – the steam engines hiss and the coalfires crackle. Motion — it’s all about motion; pistons thrust and crankshafts churn while pressure builds.

Pressure overcomes friction, the turbines groan and roll over, and then turn and then spin and then whir… and then suddenly there’s the familiar spark of electricity. Energy. The bluish crackle and spastic flare of current spills over the bright knobs and is contained and insulated behind glass and rubber; the noise of it becomes a powerful hum.

Eliza loved to lie on the floor of Grandfather’s workshop, listening to him tinker, listening to the sounds of the everything around them, the everything that moved, that was motion, that gave rise to energy, and powered the world outside.  She would feel the echo of it in her chest, the thrumming that was her heartbeat, fast and racing when she was excited, and the steady tick of a clockwork when she was thoughtful. She would listen quietly, all the while hearing thoughts in her head that would never really be quiet, the kind of thoughts she’d blurt out at the dinner table, often earning her a stern look from Miss Viola, her father’s lady-friend and companion. She’d been at dinner often, since Eliza’s mother died.

Miss Viola had a hundred things to say to Eliza all the time, regarding her behavior. “Hush, Elizabeth,” was the most popular. Or perhaps “Be still, Elizabeth!” was. “Sit like a lady, Elizabeth,” Miss Viola would insist. “Walk like a lady, Elizabeth.” was another. “Eat like a lady, Elizabeth. Ladies don’t do that, Elizabeth!” were familiar as well, and there were dozens more.

Eliza had heard them all, over and over again, from the moment she got up in the morning, “Ladies don’t thunder around in the bathroom as though they were herding elephants, Elizabeth!” to the moment she climbed into bed at night, “Elizabeth, ladies simply do not hide clockworks under their bedclothes so they may work on them in the middle of the night!”

She was fairly certain she knew every single thing ladies didn’t do, by the time she was fourteen, but thought she might have had less of an idea about what ladies did do.  Unless, of course, Miss Viola was the prime example of a lady. In which case, a lady gave a lot of direction to the household — and always reminded it was a man’s place to govern. And a lady insisted the house be full of beauty and elegance — and told everyone to be humble and not vain. And a lady ate her weight in watercress tea sandwiches at home — then derided public gluttons.  And a lady gossiped with the help — but spoke against it in church.

Eliza supposed Viola thought the first and foremost duty of a lady was to cultivate an image of perfection behind which any number of contradictions could comfortably rest.  After enough observation, however, Eliza decided Viola was probably enough lady for them both.

If Lisbon Bester had known that a single four-minute egg was to be the reason for his downfall, he probably would have ordered the quick and efficient killing of every single laying hen known to man.  The thing is, Bester had no idea that a four-minute egg, nor the woman who would cook it, nor the girl who would eat it, for that matter, had any significance at all. In fact, Lisbon Bester–if asked, of course–probably would never have mentioned four-minute eggs as being on The List. The List, of course, referred to the great number of cataclysmic things that could possibly be his undoing, including Firing Squad, which was number six hundred and forty-three, as well as Nuclear Squirrel, which was twelve hundred and seven.  And if you think twelve hundred and seven is a rather large number of things by which you might be done in, then you haven’t thought all that hard of the circumstances surrounding your own eventual demise — which isn’t all that odd, really, considering it’s a thought not many people choose to ponder for any significant length.

As far as The List went, however, Lisbon Bester had comprised a number so great that he wasn’t certain his original goal could be achieved — a notion too distressing to hold to, and so he kept with it, and ignored the number as best he could, which was generally easy, save for the days his butler would awaken him with a start by snagging the pulls of the window shades and snapping them up so fast they spun on their rollers, asking, “Figure out a way to beat number three hundred and seventeen, yet?”

Number three hundred and seventeen was the one number standing immediately in the way of Lisbon’s Original Goal, which was To Live Forever in Perpetual Youth, Wit, and Beauty, and the butler bringing it up in the morning made it not at all a lovely way to be waked.

He imagined, not for the first time, that he should get himself a new butler, but if he fired this one, he would be setting himself up for number one hundred and four, Shot By Disgruntled Former Employee.

Seated behind the massive facade of an oak desk, face turned toward the hollow eye of the camera, Onla read the words of the telefeed, but did not open his mouth to read them. The station manager made a face much like he was suffocating, and rolled his hands, gesturing to “get on with it” but Onla merely cleared his throat, and made a brittle smile. He gave a little shake of his head, and the flawless face of his co-anchor broke its porcelain smile and narrowed its eyes. It looked something like a glossy ceramic frog with a blonde beehive, which would have been ridiculous enough were it not also attempting to read from his screen.

“Ladies and ge–” it began, and its voice was girlish and sighing.

Onla interrupted, his controlled voice smoothing over the high, nasal sound of his deskmate. “Due to technical difficulties, this station must pause its broadcast. Please excuse the inconvenience. Your updates will resume as soon as possible.” The station manager could have left the camera on and pointed at Onla, but it would have been an embarrassment to the network, and not the senior newscaster, who was already vacating the desk by the time the cameras were switched off and every viewscreen in the city was blanked to its test pattern, with inoffensive music trilling in the background.

Onla’s co-anchor, a vapid thirty-something with a ghastly pink bow in its hair that was supposed to signify femininity, turned its froggy face back toward the camera, and stared hard at the top of it, waiting for the red light to come back on, which would signal that it would need to smile again.

While it concentrated, Onla stepped outside, and lit a cigarette. Though it was a damp and sweltering ninety-seven in the alley outside the station, he shivered as though freezing, and reached into his pocket to grab his phone. He dialed home, and listened to the ring, his eyes fluttering shut as he leaned back against the warm brick wall. “Pick up,” he said quietly to the line. “Pick up, please.”

When the voice on the other end came through, Onla relaxed visibly, and his long sigh ended in a low, self-assuring chuckle. “I’ll be a little late tonight,” he murmured. “Stay in, okay? The casts are getting even harsher — it isn’t safe anymore.” He paused to listen, and then answered, “I’ll be home soon. I love you, too.”

So you’re…?

A guardian.

A what now?

You’ve got a world full of human beings, all of them wonderful, worthwhile and important, in potential. Everyone’s got a gift they can use — everyone’s on their way to doing something brilliant with their lives. And then you’ve got the ones like me — guardians. Some people would call us angels, I suppose.

I would call you crazy.

You won’t even remember me in half an hour, anyway.

What do you mean?

I’m your guardian, and you can’t really know about me; a few minutes after we stop talking, all memory of me will simply fall away, and slide to nothing. You won’t be able to recall my face or the sound of my voice, or anything I said to you. You might remember that someone stopped to talk to you while you were out having coffee, but likelihood says you’ll replace me with some story about a homeless man asking for change, or a tourist wanting directions.

So you’ll tell me anything I want to know right now, because it’s not like I’m going to remember any of it anyway?

Exactly.

What if I take a picture?

Film won’t develop.

Digital camera?

Corrupt file.

Audio recorder?

Static.

Hand-written notes?

Odds are, you won’t ever find a pen or paper, and if you do, you’ll lose them within five minutes of finishing writing it all down.

This is weird.

It’s simply the way it is.

Huh.

Anything else you want to know?

It’s July. You’re wearing gloves. In fact, you’re wearing pants and long sleeves and gloves. You’re dressed like it’s fall and crisp and cold. I’m sweating in a tank top. You look like a damn hipster.

Ah, yes, well. Can’t touch. Can’t be touched.

Huh?

Can’t touch. Can’t be touched.

Because if you repeat yourself, I’ll magically know what you meant this time?

It would cause a terrible reaction.

Terrible?

If I’m not to repeat myself, I imagine you shouldn’t, either.

Flesh-eating disease?

Ahh… no.

Boils?

No.

Plague?

No.

Locusts!

No.

…Rain of fire. Frogs. Death to all first-born?

No, no, and no. I’m not the Old Testament God. I’m just a guardian.

Does He exist?

Who, God?

Yeah?

Beats the fucking hell out of me.

Oh. So you don’t, like, work for him?

Not in the slightest.

Who do you work for?

I don’t work for anyone, per se. I was designed to fit my ward.

Designed by whom?

I don’t know. I suppose whoever made me.

Well who made you?

Those who design the guardians for their wards, I imagine.

We’re going to go in circles on this one, aren’t we?

Most likely.

So, what happens, if a guardian touches a ward?

The ward would be overwhelmed by an emotion which has no real human language analogue.

A good emotion?

If an emotion that drove you out of your mind could be called ‘good’, then certainly. It would be excellent.

So I’d go crazy?

More than that. Beyond that. It would be a sort of… of… shockwave. I would be weakened, for a time, and you would be driven somewhat mad, briefly. And then all thought of anything but one another would simply be… driven out of our heads.

But if a guardian and ward are already matched perfectly, what’s the big deal?

That match is only all a potential. It allows me to know where you are. How you’re feeling. There’s a mental and emotional connection there, but not a physical one, because the physical one would… be too much to allow for… life, really. I’m only here to help you achieve your destiny. 

Destiny? Seriously?

Must you disbelieve everything I say, considering you won’t remember any of this in twenty minutes?

Fine, go on. Destiny.

A human life is potential. A guardian allows for that to be… realized. All we do is urge the way. A ward might die, and then their guardian would expire.

..Expire?

We don’t die. If we fail, or once our ward has died, we rejoin the collective and get reshaped to fit a new ward.

Fit a new one? So you mean you’re not just… for one person forever? Who were your other ones? Before me?

I have no idea. I know only you, perfectly and completely. It’s all I can know, so that there are no other distractions.

Huh. Okay, so I have only one other question.

Only one, hmm? Out with it.

Why do you sound British?

To soothe you with an innate sense of my capability and superiority. Something about the accent appealing to both your pre-constructed concepts of hierarchical command structures and general aesthetic sense.

What?

You think I’m hot and you should listen to me.

Ah, thanks.