“Abby, chillax, it’s me. Hold still for a second. Abby, seriously, this is what you wanted.”
Abby’s eyes go in and out of focus: Dunk, People Machine, Dunk, People Machine. Dunk. The device in Dunk’s hand beeps, says, “Forbidden. You are not authorized to access this data.”
“Yo, Trank, it didn’t work this time either.”
“Must be corrupted. That scanner’s government issue—bypasses all security measures.”
“This sucks so much. I’m done, Abby, you can sit up now.”
Abby does. She’s in a bed shaped like a HowDouse, on a raised platform in a strange little room with only three walls—the fourth is missing—and an untrue window with a painted scene of the star-strewn sky past its glass. A bright light shines down on her, a circle of radiance as blinding as the sun when she looks directly up. It reminds her of the Contraption’s searchlight, how it sought and held her in its glare.
“Where are we?” she asks, shielding her eyes.
“This is the Hall of Prevention and Safety,” says Trank. “They used to put on plays here, for the kids. Stop Drop and Roll, Fire in the Night. A grown man dressed as a Dalmatian. Never one for theater, myself.” He has on his false face now, but Abby’s seen his real one. She knows what he’s really made of. And she knows better than to ask for Dunk’s help this time.
“Dear God,” she prays. “Make it die.”
The two men exchange glances.
“Amen,” Abby adds, just in case that’s the part that counts. She isn’t surprised when nothing happens. She’s gotten used to her prayers not coming true.
“So we checked your Bean,” Ripple tells her. He’s still holding the BeanReader, a clunky plastic scanner gun with a big red button and a readout screen. It looks like a weapon to Abby. “Did you, like, step on a magnet sometime? Because nothing came up.”
“It didn’t say my name?”
“It didn’t say anything.”
“Maybe it’s scared.”
Ripple exchanges another glance with Trank, who snorts.
“Female intuition,” Trank says. “No reasoning with that.”
“I know what you are,” Abby tells Trank. How could he think that skin would fool her? It’s even on a little crooked. At the corner of his left eye, she can see a sliver of titanium glinting. “I know where you come from.”
Trank’s eyes train on her. His lenses whiz into focus. He has her in his sights. “And where’s that, missy?”
“When a skin-and-bone woman gives in to her lust for a machine, the Devil lets form a terrible thing.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d leave my mother out of this.” Maybe those are the words he says. Abby hears his machine parts hum, Let my secrets be.
But Ripple doesn’t hear that at all. “Not cool, Abby, not cool!”
Tears fill her eyes. No one will listen to her. No one ever does. She tries again anyway: “Can’t you see, Dunk? He’s a People Machine. I’m sure this time. He’s going to empty you out, replace you piece by piece!”
Ripple turns away toward Trank. “Don’t take it too personally, pro. I think she has brain damage. It’s not just her parents—she doesn’t even know her name. I found her out on Hoover Island. The garbage dump.”
Trank’s jaw parts grind out a smile. “Sounds like you saved her.”
“Huh.” Ripple nods. “Yeah. I guess I did.”
“Hero-in-training already. I’ll let the two of you get some shut-eye.”
Abby feels sick. Everything in this place is wrong, even Dunk’s story. Doesn’t he remember? She saved him.
After that, Trank switches off the spotlight and leaves them in the dark museum hall, onstage without an audience. Ripple reaches for her halfheartedly, but when she doesn’t respond, he rolls over with an exhausted groan, his back a wall between her and his dreams.
Abby tries to sleep. But she cannot. The day has been long and puzzling, a story without an end. Thoughts of all she’s seen—the stump-footed pigeon, the library, the fire, the museum’s objects so silent and still, her own face glinting back at her, reflected in the eyeholes of that mask—churn in her until she can no longer stand it. She leans over and pukes over the side of the bed. Pineapple, jalapenos, butterscotch, mozzarella cheese…
“What the snuff, Abby! I could’ve shown you where the bathroom was!”
Abby, emptied now, stares in disbelief at the hot mess coagulating on the floor. The colors have mixed into a single nuclear orange, radiating in the darkness. “I could taste it.”
“Taste what?”
“The chemicals!”
“Wench, everything’s made of chemicals. You and me, we’re made of chemicals.”
“No!” Abby is hysterically emphatic: “God made me! I want to go back to God!”
“Umm…”
But Abby is through trying to explain. Ripple tries to hold her still as she squalls herself into forgetfulness, a tide of salty tears erasing every footprint from the shore. She thinks of the Island before he arrived, how strong she was amid the birds and the fish and the rats, the last human in the world.
“I wish you had never come,” she weeps. “I wish I’d dreamed of you forever.”
“Look, if anybody should be mad, it’s me,” Ripple hisses. “We’re out here, totally on our own. This fireman gig could be a good thing for me. And you’re obsessed with fucking it up. Paxton Trank was an elective official, OK? His mother did not bang a robot!”
“I’ve forgotten how to survive alone.”
“Then chill the fuck out, because I cannot handle your psychodrama right now.”
“I saw what he wants you to do. On the big screen. He wants you to go into the fires. He wants you to die.”
“I’m not going to die.”
“Yes, you are.”
“You’re supposed to believe in me.”
“I don’t want you to die.” She presses her ear against his chest, lets her breathing match his. She listens to his heartbeat, like she did that first day. All animals have hearts. After a long time, he starts to stroke her back. “Dunk. You said we would find my name.”
“Yeah, but we tried reading your Bean, Abby. The data’s corrupted.”
“Corrupted?”
“You know. Ruined forever. Fucked.”
“Fucked means that?”
“Um…yeah. It means there’s nothing you can do.”
Abby weighs this in her mind. Duncan fucked her. She is ruined forever. Now there’s nothing she can do.
* * *
Nightmares spread in our city. In the small hours, the gas-masked fireman—the People Machine—comes to pay Abby a visit. He looms at the foot of the bed where she sleeps with Dunk. She isn’t sure it’s Trank. She isn’t sure he’s really there. If she reached to touch this figure, her hand would pass right through him. But she doesn’t touch.
His mask is dull brown, sooty, worn—nothing out of this world. But how can she even see him, here in the night museum, unless he glows in the dark?
She asks, “Were you once a man?”
“I was once a man,” says the People Machine. “I was born and grew up and fell out of the grace of God.”
“No, you were never a man,” Abby says.
“I was never a man,” admits the People Machine. “I was made by the hands of my kinsmen, from rubber and wires, and they named me and called me good.”