—No. I never eat magic animals. Wait here.
Abby slides back down to the floor and pads over to the utility closet. When she returns, she’s holding a length of twine. She dangles it over the back of the oven.
—Grab on to the knot I tied. Use your front paws.
The rat tentatively takes hold, and she reels him up onto the countertop. It reminds her of catching fish, although sometimes she used to catch trash rats too. She pries up the snapped-down hammer of the mousetrap and the lab rat yanks his tail free. There’s a bloody indentation in the snaky pink flesh, but he doesn’t seem to have broken any bones.
—thank you, goodbye.
Abby grabs him around the middle before he can escape. His little legs paddle uselessly in midair.
—ABORT. ABORT.
—Where did you come from? What are you doing here? Why were you inside my head?
The rat twists around, trying to nip her fingers, but she doesn’t loosen her grip.
—Don’t bother peeing on me either. I won’t let go.
—ACCESS DENIED. FORBIDDEN. FORBIDDEN.
Forbidden. Just like the data in her Bean.
—Who are you?
—LOG IN TO CONTINUE.
Abby opens a cabinet with her free hand. Pots and pans clatter until she finds the colander Trank uses to make pasta.
—you will eat me!
Abby tosses the rat on the counter and slams the colander upside-down over him, containing him in an aluminum prison dome. She weighs down the top of it with an industrial-sized can of peas.
—ERROR. cookware detected.
—Calm down! I just want you to answer my questions.
The rat hesitates.
—state source designation.
—I’m Abby. I’m a human.
—but you speak lab rat.
—This is the language of all magic creatures.
—INCORRECT. this is our proprietary code.
—“Our”? Who’s “our”?
—…the colony.
—So there are more of you? More lab rats?
—also some controls.
—Where is your colony? Did the others send you here? Were you looking for me?
—FORBIDDEN. FORBIDDEN. ACCESS DENIED.
—Can you at least tell me who you are?
The rat calculates the question’s permissibility before answering.
—i am GEN 103 ID: 4923801—TYPE SCAVENGER. my role is information retrieval.
—Why were you retrieving it from me?
—FORBIDDEN.
—You can’t try to steal my thoughts and not even tell me why!
—INCORRECT. i am FORBIDDEN to disclose data to unknown sources, especially human sources, when data could compromise the colony’s security or mission. even the threat of termination cannot override this directive.
—You’ll die before you tell me?
—CORRECT.
—Why?
—85 GENS ago, humans destroyed our colony. 73% of our kind were stomped underfoot. also some controls. we do not disclose data to unknown human sources.
Abby frowns.
—I don’t want to hurt you or your colony. I just want to know what you were looking for. Why you were looking in me.
—state the purpose of your query.
—I don’t know who I am. Or where I came from.
The rat pauses for a long moment, computing.
—GEN 103 is the first generation in 85 GENS to return to the colony’s original location. we too seek to reconstruct a timeline of our history and origins.
—What does that have to do with me?
—UNDETERMINED. maybe nothing.
Abby musters up her determination. She’ll come back and find Dunk later. She has to do this, even if she has to do it alone.
—Take me to your colony. Right now.
—FORBIDDEN.
This is getting her nowhere. Abby feels drained. She never had lunch today. She ignores the rat as she gets a jar of peanut butter out of one of the cupboards and starts eating it with her fingers. Back on her Island, a jar like this would have been a real find, a treat that she saved for the coldest time of winter when ice floes dotted the waves and the fish could not be lured. Today she can barely taste it. It’s no longer enough just to sustain herself, to cling to life and scrape the surface of the world. She wants to belong.
—ID: ? - TYPE ABBY?
—I’m not going to let you out, Scavenger.
—i propose a mutually acceptable solution.
—What?
—communication with known sources does not compromise the colony’s security and mission. you will become a known source. then i will bring you to the colony for a reciprocal information exchange.
—How long will it take for you to get to know me?
—long enough to gather empirical evidence supporting the hypothesis that you pose no threat.
—And you won’t try to sneak into my mind? Or run away?
—CORRECT.
She wants to trust him. Magic animals hardly ever lie.
—Do you promise?
—i am TYPE SCAVENGER, not TYPE DECEIVER.
—You’re just being nice because you want my peanut butter.
Abby moves the can of peas, lifts up the colander, and feeds him a dollop off her thumb. While he licks peanut butter from his little pink paws and nose, she pets his white coat. It’s glossy and smooth, so different from the patchy, scabby pelts of the rats she used to skin on the Island…yet somehow, also familiar.
—So we’re friends?
—friend request accepted.
24
THE FIRE READERS
“Why the snuff,” says Ripple, “do we go out to fight the fires at dawn?”
The wind is freezing, with bits of glassy sleet in it. Dead leaves mingle with trash in the streets. It’s been a long fall since Ripple left home.
He and Trank walk in the gray pale light of early morning, taking turns pushing the hot-dog cart down a side street in Hollow Sidewalk Village—in addition to fire skills, Ripple’s been getting to know the neighborhoods. Growing up, he was mostly just at his house, or at underschool, or sometimes at the Tangs’ mansion, which is also in the Heights and a lot like his mansion except it has a shark tank with a tunnel you can walk through and none of the paintings the Tangs own are of themselves, kind of weird if you think about it. But anyway: being a fireman has finally taught Ripple how the other half lives, “other half” meaning the non-celebrities of the upper middle class, and “lives” meaning used to live, because damn this place is dead.
Take where they’re walking now. It’s a cute neighborhood, with little shops along the road—a florist, a dry cleaner, a juicery, an outpatient burn clinic—and apartments up above. The kind of place where, on a sunny spring day, people with normal jobs like lunch lady or sex stylist probably used to look out their barred-up windows and think, This two-room crap pad is sure no mansion, but at least my life does not completely suck. Only now almost all of the apartments are empty, the stores are all boarded up except for the burn clinic, and oh yeah, shocker, one of the buildings is on fire.
“Someplace is always on fire,” Ripple continues, tugging on his neoprene gloves. “We could start after lunch and there would still be fires. We could go out at midnight and there would still be fires. I need my Z’s, pro. I need my balanced breakfast.”