“Elkin!” Muzi screams. “What the bladdy hell did you do? I told you to be careful!”
“I didn’t do anything. The thing crashed on me for no reason.” Elkin growls in frustration, then shakes off Muzi’s grip.
Muzi pulls the alphie into his lap, rubs his hand gently over its dome, smoothing down the worn edges of decals from his favorite brood bands, a couple holographic peace signs, and a sticker of the evolution of man—starting with the figure of a hunched ape and ending with the silhouette of an alphie. “It’s okay. I won’t let him touch you again, promise,” he coos as he fishes underneath it for the reset button. The alphie’s lights blink, once, twice, then it chimes the familiar chime of a successful startup.
“So you’re going to let my alphie rot out there? Who knows what kind of information I’ve got stored on that thing.”
“Don’t get mad at me. It was your responsibility. Not like I was the one who lost it.”
Elkin lifts his lip and holds out his hand. “Fine. Give me my Riya ticket.”
“Your Riya ticket?”
Elkin paces the length of his room, stomping around all the debris and clutter and filth under which might or might not exist gray wall-to-wall carpeting. “I’ll hock it for a few hundred rand and buy a used alphie so my parents don’t find out and shit a ton of bricks.”
“First of all, they were my tickets, and second of all—”
“Were? What do you mean, were?”
“I gave them away,” Muzi mumbles. Saying it now, it sounds pretty swak. Pretty stupid.
“Don’t dick me around, Muzi. That’s not funny.”
“I’m serious. At our game, I kicked the ball and hit some little kid in the face, and she wouldn’t stop crying and . . .”
Elkin cocks his head, eyes tight and unforgiving. “And you gave her our tickets?”
“My tickets. You never wanted to talk to me again, remember?”
“Ja, but I would still have gone to the concert with you!” Elkin throws his hands up in the air. “There’s not a lot of talking that needs to be done at a concert. You know how much I love Riya’s music!”
“You were just about to sell the ticket, bru!”
“I was scheming on it a bit! I wouldn’t have actually done it. I’d give my right nad to see her live.” He starts humming the tune to “Midnight Seersucker.”
Muzi fumes. Yeah, he’d felt bad about knocking that girl in the head, and the way she was crying, he would have given her the shirt off his back to calm her down. But deep inside, Muzi knows he’d given those tickets away to piss Elkin off. Payback for him keeping secrets. And on top of Elkin being the athletic one, the handsome one, the witty one, and the adventuresome one, now he’s the smart one, too. But there is still one thing Muzi has over Elkin—the fact that he doesn’t blow his entire allowance on dagga and drug paraphernalia. Muzi’s got enough cash saved up to buy an alphie . . . not a nice one like his own, but one at least as functional as Elkin’s old one. Elkin’s still his best friend, after all, but that doesn’t mean Muzi won’t enjoy making him grovel for it.
“I’ve got some money—”
“I’ve got an idea!” Elkin interjects. “I can hack into Will Call and put our names on the list.” He reaches for Muzi’s alphie with a nervous tremble in his hand, but Muzi yanks it away.
“You’re not touching it again.”
“I swear, I didn’t crash the damn thing!”
“Maybe not, but I promised. Besides, what do you know about hacking into anything?”
Elkin gives a one-shouldered shrug. “I don’t know. I just do.”
“You just do?” Muzi asks suspiciously.
“Ja. I know stuff. All kinds of stuff. Ask me anything.”
“What’s the distance between Earth and the moon?”
“Three hundred and eighty-four thousand, four hundred and three kilometers; that’s just an average, of course. If you’ve got a particular day and time in mind . . .”
Muzi raises a brow. Hell if he knows if that’s right, but it sounds good enough. “What’s the largest mountain range?”
“Well, if you mean the highest, that’s the Himalayas which is eight thousand, eight hundred and forty-eight meters at its highest peak, but if you mean the longest, then that’s the Andes. Of course that’s not counting the mid-Atlantic ridge if you’re considering all of Earth, and not just above sea level.”
Muzi’s jaw drops. This is Elkin Rathers who failed geography twice because he couldn’t name more than three continents and thought “peninsula” was one of the states in the United States. “Okay, who are you and what have you done with my best friend?”
“I’m me. It’s just that for the last couple weeks I’ve been me prime.”
“Since you started sniffing godsend?”
Elkin nods. “Right after that. I didn’t say anything at first, because it’s a pretty lame power. I mean, you can control people! But then I figured out how to use it. Put me in front of an alphie and it’s as good as magic. I can get us on the Will Call list, I guarantee it.” He reaches for the alphie again, more insistent this time.
Muzi swaddles it under his arm like a rugby football and stiff-arms Elkin as he crosses up and over the bed. “Give it up, okay? I’m not letting you put your grubby hands on my alphie.”
Elkin jumps, bounces on the bed, and angles his body toward Muzi, flying at him through midair. Muzi ducks, slips under Elkin’s grip, and bolts to the other side of the room.
“Oh, so this is going to come down to who’s the better rugby player? No contest! Prepare to eat carpet, bitch!” Elkin dives again, and this time connects, sending himself, Muzi, and the alphie crashing to the floor. Elkin pins Muzi with one hand and tries to access the alphie with the other, but Muzi bucks and slips from his grip. His escape, though, meant that Elkin’s got the alphie with both hands now. Muzi wraps his arms around Elkin’s plump calf and takes a bite.
“Eina, freak! There’s no biting allowed!”
“Give me back my alphie, damn it!”
“I just need a couple minutes,” Elkin says, tapping at the keyboard, mostly unsuccessfully with Muzi landing punches on his ribs.
Elkin may have turned idiot savant all of a sudden, but he still doesn’t understand the connection Muzi has with his alphie. Yeah, it’s just a bunch of wires and circuits and code, but lately, he feels like there’s really someone there behind all that glass and metal, listening to his innermost thoughts. Blipping and chirping at him when he’s feeling down. He knows it’s just how the alphies were programmed—part computer, part personal assistant, part virtual pet—but some days, it feels like it’s much more. There’s one possession Elkin feels as strongly about. Muzi snatches Elkin’s prized bong from its perch on his dresser and raises it into the air. “Don’t make me do it!” Muzi says, watching Elkin’s eyes go wide.
“You wouldn’t!”
Muzi lifts it higher, bong water sloshing inside.