Getting Aaron aboard the Caribbean Odyssey was no trouble. Javier left the baton in the cab, put his clothes back on, and carried the boy on his back up the ramp. He watched as the kid waved a key fob at the primary entrance. The doors slid open and a faint chime sounded and they were let into a room that closely resembled a log cabin. A blast of cold air hit them immediately. It smelled of pine and cinnamon. Aaron had to verify his identity again, this time with a shouted password: “TANENBAUM!”
This whole thing probably happened all the time, now that Javier thought about it. He’d been on a cruise ship once before, in Panama, and it was equally full of drunk humans.
But this ship was better. It had a casino floor.
Javier discovered this fact in an elevator, where he left Aaron. Purging his guts had helped some, and now he was up and walking and pointing at things. The mezzanine featured a lot of shops with things travellers might need, like extra sunblock and insect repellant and money belts and rape whistles. There was also a private mail carrier. Javier made note of it as they passed.
“At night there are these shows,” Aaron was saying. “One for each country? Or something?”
It had taken Javier a good while to understand that when Americans did this with their English, they were not actually asking questions. Still, he nodded. Aaron was talking. That was the good thing.
“And they have these things for kids, you know, like games and whatnot.” Aaron bent at the waist and gripped his knees again. He leaned himself up against the wall of the elevator and just waited, breathing.
“You gonna be sick?” Javier asked.
“Please don’t bring that up right now,” Aaron said.
“Sure, sure.”
“I just need to find my centre. Then I’ll be good to go.”
Javier had no idea what finding centre meant, but English was completely weird that way. Learning it, he found that if he just piled enough similar words on top of each other, the meaning became apparent eventually.
“They had this one? It was a mystery? And you were supposed to solve it? That was fun. All the staff were in on it. It really blurred the…” He raised one hand and snapped his fingers, as though doing so would summon the word like a dog. “The boundaries. Blurred the boundaries. Made it feel real.”
“Real is good,” Javier said.
“Oh, shit.” Aaron peered up at him. “I didn’t, like, mean that in a bad way or anything. I think you’re real, I think you’re a real person–”
“I know. It’s OK.”
“No, seriously, dude, you don’t even know, you’re so nice, and you really helped me out, and I know you’re, like, programmed to do that or whatever, but I still take it really seriously when someone’s nice like that, and–”
“Aaron.”
“What?”
“You have to push the button.” Javier pointed at the panel. “We’re not going anywhere.”
Aaron frowned at it. “Fuck.” He leaned closer to the panel, pushed 5, and leaned back. “I’m staying with my parents. They thought I was at one of those game things. But I went out, instead.”
“You’re in some trouble, then.”
“Oh, my God, for real. I am in the shit. The shit.” The elevator started climbing, and Aaron gripped the railing tightly with his right hand. He had started to sweat. “They’re gonna get a divorce,” he said. “This is like their last trip as a couple, you know? The one where they try to patch things up. But it’s not happening.”
“No?”
“No. Mom caught Dad with, like, this special kind of porn. Frankenpussy? It’s like all these images of dead girls? From funeral videos? It’s like the New Eden game, but with dead girls. And he was jerking off and everything. Fucked. Up.”
“That’s…” Javier tried to come up with a word that would penetrate Aaron’s alcohol haze. “Unattractive.”
Aaron snorted. “No. Shit.” He peered up at Javier. “What’s your dad like?”
Javier thought for a minute about how to answer that. The more time passed, the more he realized he really hadn’t known Arcadio at all. There was the man who staged nightly raids on other vN camps to get their food and told him stories when he returned, and there was the man who walked away during Javier’s arrest and left him to rot in prison. Both men happened to inhabit the same body. In retrospect, this fact made his affection for Amy make perfect sense.
“He was a real piece of work,” Javier said, finally.
The elevator chimed, and Aaron shuffled out. “Don’t let anybody give you any trouble on the way out for being dressed like that,” he said. “You look just like the staff.”
Javier held the door back from closing. “What?”
“The staff. They all look like you.” Aaron smiled. “That’s why I told you I was coming right back. I thought my folks sent you to come get me.”