It’s gotten kind of foggy, Ripple’s noticing now; he squints, shifts from DESC to FLY and clicks on the beams. Outside, it’s almost like that commercial, only instead of forming a city, these clouds are more like a cave—a gray one, closing him in. He’s going to be late to dinner. He hates having to eat with the kitchen staff. The beams are showing him nothing but dense vapor. Ditto the brights.
The first time Ripple took his new HowFly up, his father rode along. Ripple had already taken driving lessons from his impulse-control coach, a squirrelly little guy with an annoying habit of wresting the glide-thrust lever out of his hands, but this was worse. The smell of Humphrey Ripple’s toupee glue filled the air car as he pointedly strapped himself in. What kind of butt nugget doesn’t trust his own son?
“Dad, I got this,” Ripple said, bringing it up nice and easy, just like he’d learned.
“This isn’t one of your immersive simulations.” Humphrey depressed a phantom brake pedal with his shoe. “You have to take into account variables that run counter to your expectations. There’s no foreshadowing in reality.”
“I understand reality. I star in reality.”
“Starred, past tense. And you don’t understand it, Duncan. You understand narrative constructs, virtual realms. I’m talking about cause and effect here, harsh and brutal. The kind without a laugh track.”
Ripple wished his dad would stop bringing up laugh tracks; the Toob series hadn’t used one since Ripple was in the fifth grade. Which Humphrey would know if he ever watched it at all.
“Why did you even buy me a dragon wagon if you don’t want me to drive it?”
“I want you to drive it cautiously. And referring to the vehicle in those terms doesn’t do much to set my mind at ease. If I ever get an inkling you’ve been using it to taunt these monstrosities, or—”
“Relax, I’m not stupid.”
“Wiser men than you have made worse mistakes.” Humphrey’s LookyGlass pinged with a stock update; to Ripple’s surprise, he ignored it. “Listen, Duncan. I was sixteen once too.”
“I’m eighteen.”
“I’m speaking developmentally here. I know you feel invincible, especially behind the wheel. But you’re not. None of us are. Even if you’re not seeking out the dragons, you aren’t completely safe. Stay attuned. It’s best to keep them in your sight. You may find it hard to believe, huge as they are, but they can have a way of sneaking up on you.”
But now, Ripple isn’t attuned. And that’s why he’s fiddling with the buttons on the dash when he glances up to see the dragon tail whipping toward him in the fog. He has time to notice the spikes protruding from it—knobby, bone-colored, like exposed vertebrae—the puffy scars amid the dull green scales, the dried starfish and anemones that cling on still, despite the many years that have passed since the creature rose from the seas. It’s as though he’s never seen anything so clearly in his life. It blocks out all view of the sky, and it’s still swinging nearer.
It’ll stop.
It’ll stop.
It smashes through the windscreen.
Ripple closes his eyes. Pellets of glass hail into his face and hair; the wind gusts around him. He has a sudden sensation, not of falling but of weightlessness, suspension, as though he’s been thrown loose of gravity’s pull. The breath leaves his lungs; he lets it go. He doesn’t need it anymore. A new city, beyond the sky, opens its gate and bathes him in radiance.
Warm radiance.
The HowFly is on fire.
And falling fast.
Every light on the dash is flashing. The hood’s popped up, the engine’s blazing, and the heat of it pours in through the glass-fanged hole where the windscreen used to be. Ripple slaps every button, twists every dial, yanks up and down on the throttle to no avail. Alarms sound. A cheerful female voice chirps, “Flyby assistance has been contacted. Please be patient. Flyby assistance…”
Ripple wheezes. The world’s rushing up to meet him. He gropes the floor mats for his inhaler. He feels Sin Bun wrappers, currency, a pebble beneath his hand. He knocks a lever with his wrist. A new light starts flashing.
“Flyby assistance has been contacted. Please be…”
Ripple coughs. Dark, gritty smoke tears his eyes. He can’t breathe. He sees the light flashing EJEC, EJEC, EJEC, sees the moon roof pop up. Then he passes out.
* AF, meaning the current era—after the human discovery of fire.
2
CASTAWAY
The Lady brought the Girl to the Island in a big green tub. The Girl bailed out the bottom with a small pink cup. The Girl does not remember this, but the Lady once told her, so it must be true. What the Girl does remember is the water all around and the sky that drizzled into it. Their world was just a rift for water to pass through. No amount of bailing could keep it at bay.
The Island was a Human Nature Preserve, beyond the dragons’ reach. Mountains of garbage formed a new horizon there. Shiny black trash bags, tire towers, a piano with a gappy smile. Rusty machine parts. A fridge with magnets still on it. Dead flowers wrapped in plastic. A mannequin’s outstretched hand. A kitchen sink, part of a couch, broken bottles, an iron lamppost. There was no interruption, no bare place for the eye to rest. The litter was the land. The Lady stood at the water’s edge with the Girl on her hip, looking in.
The Lady did not bother tying up their tub. She let it bob away. The first house she built was made of rotten crates. The second one was a smashed HowFly with the seats torn out and pink insulation for sleeping. The third house she never built because by then most of her had been eaten by the vultures and the gulls. The Girl couldn’t keep them away, but she didn’t try too hard either. She needed the company. She liked the vultures best. Their faces were haggard and creased, like the Lady’s had been.
The Girl lived on the Island alone after that. She learned to cast the Lady’s pantyhose nets to catch the mossy fish. She scraped out the insides of unlabeled cans. When the barges came, tooting, to pile more trash on the shore, she hid, as the Lady had taught her. In time, her memories of the Lady became vague, crowded out by the cries of the gulls. In time, the barges stopped coming.
There were still things she couldn’t forget, though. The Lady had told her the Truth about the city, a Truth that God had told to her. This was a Truth that only God, the Lady, and the Girl knew, and now that God and the Lady were gone, the Girl would not forget it.
“That city is the land of the dead,” the Lady had told her. It had been in the early times on the Island, when they still lived in the crate house. The night was full of thunder, and the wood so wet that the Girl could press marks into it with her fingernails. “Don’t let nobody tell you different. The only people left there is the People Machines.”
“People Machines?”
“Unholiest thing there is, People Machines. It’s what comes of an unholy union.”