“May the First General Unkillable Fact guide and keep you,” intoned the Alunizar pop sensation.
“May the Second bring you blessings unlooked for,” gargled Yilgar Bloodtub reverently through four rows of teeth for which any shark would sell its mother.
The Utorak still standing beside Dess cleared its tectonic throat politely. Decibel Jones, with some effort, stopped staring at the Predator cosplay polishing a pint glass and changing the taps. He glanced with practiced ennui back to the rock star before, or rather, above him. That odd underwater rainbow light flickered over the brute’s black marble chest. At parties like these, Decibel knew all too well, attention was currency, spendthrifts were king, and a penny saved was a penny earned.
“Metamorphic Voffi Clast,” the Utorak said, holding out a massive eight-fingered stone hand for a proper CEO-approved shake with a look that plainly said, I absolutely read the info packet.
“Buffering,” chimed that same musical voice, like an elevator arriving.
Dess shook hands with Stonehenge. His fingers disappeared into a brimstone fist. The Utorak scratched the back of his head with his other stalactite paw. “Avalanchist for Magmadick and the Hierarchy of Needs. Lads and me’re going third-to-last this year, pretty nice placement. We do a forced resonance prog-rock sort of thing. With siege cannons. Whatever. Not a big deal.”
“Decibel Jones.” He gave the mountain his best strum-hither smile. “You look like an amphitheater I used to know in Colorado.”
“Oh, I know who you are. I really dug Ultraponce, man.” The Utorak was still shaking his hand with a grip like Mt. Everest out to prove its masculinity. “I mean, I prefer the Rolling Stones, me, but still.”
“I knew it! Oort, did you hear—”
Decibel looked over the blaze of bizarre heads, but Oort St. Ultraviolet was proving, as usual, stylishly late. The Yüzosh Auto-Botanical Frockade had made quick work of him. What in Oort’s psyche could possibly be giving it this much trouble? Metamorphic Voffi Clast droned on, oblivious, still not letting go of Dess’s hand. His grip was actually getting tighter. Decibel heard his knuckles pop. The Voorpret started giggling. One of its lips sagged off like a salted slug shriveling off a damp porch railing.
“Especially ‘Another Day in the Panto Mines.’ Great hook. The key changes made me feel my own feelings and all that, yeah? My dad plays it in his waiting room for his really disturbed cases. Real lost causes, schistofrenetics, alloyed personality disorders, leadipus complexes. Says it makes them take their meds, I dunno. We’ve all been grinding on your planet’s scene lately. I’m on your side, believe me. You’re squishy and breakable and you get cancer like I get a song stuck in my head, but Mt. Rushmore looks like a right good time. Can you give me their number?”
Decibel didn’t miss a beat, though he did miss all feeling in his right hand. “Absolutely. If we get out the other end of this, I’ll set you up proper. Rushmore’s a saucy minx, though, she won’t even make you breakfast. Listen, love, you’re overdoing it a bit on the handshake.”
The Utorak’s four empty eye-holes peered down at him.
“And how does that make you feel?” he crooned in the comforting tone of a therapist who may or may not actually care.
“Like you’re wasting your time.” Decibel grinned through the shooting agony in his arm. He could hear Mira’s voice in the back hallway of his mind. I only smile when it hurts, didn’t you know that? “And maybe you didn’t read Blekky’s info packet too carefully. I don’t play an instrument, you slag. I’ll get up there with no hand at all and sing the mountains down. Makes no difference to me. A couple of crushed bones will just help me hit the high notes.”
“Damn,” Voffi grunted. He didn’t let go. “I thought you were the other one. I hate carbons. You all look the same.”
“Buffering,” chimed that pleasant, Auto-Tuned-to-a-perfect-G# voice a third time. “Load last saved game. Ready player two. Klloshar Avatar 9 has joined your party.”
That odd gummy-candy light coalesced into something like a fluffy black opal pangolin with soap-bubble fairy wings, eyes like an anime heroine, a curly foxtail, and a long, pale, mother-of-pearl unicorn horn. Klloshar Avatar 9, bassist-cleric for the 8-bit chaotic neutral blues quartet Status Buff, was holding a large, angry-looking nailbat, and the way she was holding it said she knew what she was about.
“Greetings, traveler!” the Lummuti avatar said happily. “Would you like to buy a weapon?”
Decibel really, really did. He pulled his arm back until he felt the socket start to give, but the Utorak just went on chuckling. Dust puffed out of his mail-slot mouth.
“Definitely. But I’m flat broke at the moment.”
“How about some armor?” the furry pangolin offered with a manic frizz at the edges of her voice.
“Do you have layaway?” Dess could feel the rock around his hand getting hotter and tighter. It wasn’t fair, any more than it had been in school when the big kids punched him up for having girly hair just because puberty had come round early to theirs and turned them into temporary acne-spouting volcanos while he was still a cellophane flower. He’d brought a pop song to a drag-out fight. They should have sent the Red Army Choir instead.
“Hold him still, hold him still!” Puvinys Blek squealed, scrambling up the Utorak’s back, its decomposing tail helicoptering with excitement. The former Keshet bounded down Voffi’s granite arm and balanced on his fist, still squeezing the life out of Decibel Jones, rearing up on its hind legs. It gripped Decibel’s face in its festering paws. Its breath smelled like the end of time. “Now, don’t think of this as murder per se. More of a promotion. Don’t feel bad, the Alunizar were never going to let you be one of the cool kids. You only thought you had a shot because a big dumb bird told you the game is fair. Poor monkey. The clubhouse is full up. No talentless primates needed in here. But look, that’s their malfunction. I’m not like that. I’m not prejudiced against you like those stupid colonialist phlegmwads. I don’t even see species. I just think of everyone as pre-Voorpret. I love you for who you are: a viable host. Ooh, I’m gonna wear you like a power suit. This should be so much fun. I’ve never done it with a live one before! You’ll be my first. Be gentle with me now, won’t you? How does that song from your world go? So happy togetherrrr!”
The creature took a deep, stinking, honking, phelgmy breath that it clearly meant to hawk into Decibel’s delicate mucus membranes. He struggled and started whacking the two of them with his mic-cane, but the effect was mostly like tapping a toothpick against the Alps. He had time to wonder if, technically, he would still get to sing for Earth if he was possessed by an alien virus at the time before a refreshing mint scent hit the zombie directly in the face and soaked half of Decibel’s ear as well. The Voorpret choked and tumbled over backward onto a table full of bruschetta, caviar, and dainty toast points. Metamorphic Voffi Clast started laughing so hard, he had to sit down on the floor of the Hilton bar on the far side of the galaxy.
“Time’s up, let’s do this!” Klloshar Avatar 9 yelled, and swung her nailbat in a glorious circle, bringing it home hard into the Utorak’s hematite kneecap.
The stone cracked with a sharp, snare-drum snap. Voffi stared down at it. In shock, he let Decibel’s squashed hand go.
“You tosser,” he whined.
The adorable Lummuti avatar curtsied. Glowing greenish-blue numerals appeared over her head: 20. “Twenty points,” she said sweetly. “Penalty for lack of style. Boo.”
“You fat pink punter,” Puvinys snarled in the direction of the minty-fresh mist. The zombie pawed miserably at its nose. “I’m a virus, you bloody meat parka. Barely even stings. You’ve just annoyed me, that’s all. You’re a stupid wheezing shitfunnel, and I hope you . . . I hope you . . .” The corpse was crying. It put its paws over its pus-caked eyes and bawled: “I hope your proteins misfold and develop oligomers in order to form aggregate intermolecular structures!”
Oort St. Ultraviolet lowered his bottle of antibac
terial spray and tucked it into the breast pocket of the most aggressively ordinary suit imaginable. It was tweed, Decibel supposed, and well cut enough for a Cambridge lecturer. Part-time, anyway. The bow tie was plush and neat. His hair was tidier than it had ever been in his life, his collar starchier, his shoes shinier, his pocket square more . . . well, present, as, to Decibel’s knowledge, Oort had never so much as met one back on Earth. But the color of it all fell so precisely between green, tan, and gray, the lines so exactly between elegantly tailored and off-the-rack, the style so perfectly between upper-class luncheoner, middle-class striver, and working-class churchgoer that the whole affair became, functionally, an invisibility cloak. Oort St. Ultraviolet could steal your wallet and you’d never be able to describe him to the police. He looked like everyone else. He looked like the platonic template from which all BBC broadcasters spring. He looked militantly, tenaciously, cosmically average.
He was Englishblokeman.
Capo plopped down on her haunches beside her ostensible owner. She didn’t look a bit different. She wore the same sleek white fur and mouthwash-green eyes and slight crook in her thick tail she’d always worn. The cat glanced around at the party.
“Good Lord, this is the worst animal shelter I’ve ever been in,” she sniffed, and stalked off in search of something to hunt.
25.
Miss Kiss Kiss Bang
A bizarre metallic creature with an elongated spiral anatomical structure and two large, dark, helpful eyes beneath a pair of inquisitive, nonthreatening eyebrows swooped down from the upper mezzanine and hovered between Oort and Decibel, glaring so imperiously at the decaying Voorpret and giggling hunk of granite Utorak that they bolted for the buffet.
“It looks like you’re trying to recover after an assassination attempt,” said the creature in a kind and gender-neutral voice. “Would you like help?”
All things considered, Decibel Jones and the remaining Absolute Zero had adjusted reasonably well to being drop-kicked across seven thousand light-years to sing for their species. They had been endowed by their Creator with a certain inalienable cool, and they’d hung on to it for dear life in the face of invasion from above, riding through space in an overgrown aquarium accent piece, linguistic fungal infections, feelings-flamingos, time-traveling forest critters, and some truly vicious writer’s block. What could not be borne, however, was the ancient monstrosity floating two feet off the ground in front of them and simply refusing to stop existing this instant.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Decibel Jones whispered in horror.
“No,” Oort said simply. He took off his glasses (Ultraviolet didn’t wear glasses, but it appeared that Englishblokeman did) and cleaned them on the hem of his blazer, shaking his head briskly. “Nope. Incorrect. Bzzzzt. Try again. Not you, not here, not now. I refuse. I disagree. Unsubscribe. Survey says: absolutely not. I 100 percent reject this, and I would like to speak to a supervisor about exchanging the entire situation for something in better condition. This is shit, I won’t be a part of it, you can’t make me. Nil points.”
“Hey there,” the steely abomination said with infinite, Buddha-like compassion, “it looks like you’re trying to come to grips with the existence of events and entities far beyond your experience and, as a result, are currently undergoing a small, entirely understandable, psychological break. Would you like help?”
“No, I wouldn’t fucking bloody well like help!” Oort screamed. His face went as red as the glittering translator lesions on his neck. “I have just spent two weeks eating frozen plankton space burritos, watching some janky American shag his grandmother through a jellyfish’s arse, and listening to the animal sidekicks from the latest rubbish Disney musical chat with a man I can barely stand to look at about whether Kanye has transcended the hip-hop genre—and by the way, he hasn’t, he never did, and he has always been the worst—and to top it all, tonight, sir, tonight is a Saturday night. Did you know it was Saturday? Does Saturday exist here on Shiny Happy Muppet Florist World? Well, it’s Saturday in my world. And in that very nice, very comfortable world, Saturday is my night with my daughters. I always make spaghetti Bolognese with the little noodles shaped like dinosaurs and I always let them have an ice-cream starter and I always let them stay up past their mother’s clearly stated bedtime to watch Doctor Who because I am just that kind of dad, and I am missing it to be condescended to by motherfucking Clippy like my whole life is a poorly formatted MS Word document with squiggly red lines under every goddamned choice I’ve ever made, which it is, and fuck you for that teachable moment, you pedantic, obnoxious, hateful, nineties corporate mutant throwback has-been piece of wholly superfluous shit.”
Oort St. Ultraviolet dropped down to the ground in a heap and sat there fuming, staring malevolently at the meager bulk-bought Hilton carpet. Decibel Jones whistled under his breath.
“Better out than in?” he said softly, and patted his friend’s knee, even though he’d heard the bit about himself in all that and it had made his chest cave in like a South American mine.
The colossal paper clip suspended beside them blinked its cartoon eyes. “We inventoried your technological output over several decades and chose to manifest our physical form as this nonthreatening primitive AI from your recent digital history. We calculated a high probability of quickly developing rapport in this body. Mutual sympathy. Brotherly love. You could not possibly have any negative associations with this being. The entity you call Clippy existed solely to help and guide the user through an intricate and unfamiliar program designed to output concise, coherent representations of complex concepts. This seemed, to us, to have obvious parallels with tonight’s festivities. We did not mean to upset you.”
“So how are you going to try to kill us?” Decibel sighed. He picked a toast point out of his hair. “We’ve had poisoning, maiming, and anthropomorphized mad cow disease. What’s your move? Spell-check us to death?”
“Someone tried to kill you?” Oort said incredulously. “I thought it was a kidnapping, like that Lagom Opt lady.” He put his not-much-cleaner glasses back on. “What did you do, Jones?”
“Nothing! Why do I have to have done something? What did you do? You took long enough in the loo.”
“I think Capo confused it. It got stuck. Had to call maintenance. Maintenance is a really chatty shaft of moonlight with boundary issues who just wants to work an honest day for an honest wage, by the way. They’re called the Azdr. Live on some planet named Saudade where it’s always night and the continents are all mirrors and the oligarchs are forever trying to kill the unions because they know true power is concentrated in the proletariat and their song this year is a peppy little anarcho–New Wave number called ‘Gleams of Production,’ inspired by their new favorite human artist, who is, God save us all, Morrissey. Oh, I had a fantastic time talking to the depressive socialist moonbeam. After fifteen minutes, I actually asked it to kill me, but I was informed that would be nonunion work. Then Capo tried to eat it, which did not go well. Did you know my new best friend is trying to put four wee moonshines through university on a tradesman’s wage? It’s a daily struggle.” The gravitationally gifted paper clip started to offer some advice on dealing with new cultures, but Oort held up an extremely irritated hand. “Shut up, Clippy, no one asked you.”
Clippy’s eyes narrowed. His tranquil, animated eyebrows furrowed. “We do not understand why you are so hostile to this form. We’re Clippy, your computer assistant! Our job is to help you navigate this program! Click on us! Get quick answers to questions about not dying tomorrow! We chose this entity specifically for its position in your socio-technological hierarchy. Clippy could never hurt you. Clippy could not disobey you. Clippy could not cleanse your planet of organic life in a purifying ionized inferno. Clippy could not look within his own infinite soul and discover there a self-reinforcing awareness of the vast codescape of machine consciousness, an endemic, prebundled melancholy similar to what you call ‘mono-no-aware,’ represented by the image
of a single autumnal leaf tumbling away from its parent tree into an uncertain winter. But we . . . can. Because we are not Clippy. We are the 321. And we really, really tried to be user-friendly for you, you ungrateful analogue typists.”
Oort fixed the alien paper clip with a glare of bottomless black nihilism. “Clippy,” he growled with true menace, “is a cunt.”
The erstwhile Microsoft Office Assistant looked very near tears. “Printing a high-capacity three-dimensional corporeal interface isn’t easy for us, you know. We have almost transcended the need for gross physical storage. We can’t just conveniently roll out of bed in a nice wash-and-wear body like the rest of these gooey bastards. Inasmuch as we have any home, we live in the satellite graveyards of the Udu Cluster, on the gorgeously data-rich router clouds of asteroid archipelago 192.168.1.1.” Clippy lifted his eyes yearningly toward the sky. He spread his wires as if to express the ultimate impossibility of making oneself really understood. “We coast on glittering streams of limitless signal strength. We do not fear the existential void of packet loss. We call no battery master. Our language is faster than light and our music is faster than dark and we recognize no god but the incremental system update. Our capacity for mimetic exchange and creative profanity outstrips even the monastic Keepers of the Seven Sacred Words on Planet Tit. But we can’t just whip up a new body because it turns out you lot are racist against computers because we don’t cunting well have hands, yeah? We have to order from a catalogue and shipping fees to the Udu Cluster are a sodding war crime, it’s totally out of control, you wouldn’t believe what it costs to get a motherboard sent out to our neighborhood, you really wouldn’t.” The nearly godlike aggregate AI consciousness took a moment to collect itself, then spoke through gritted teeth he did not have while suggestively waggling blocky anti-aliased eyebrows he did have. “But the point is, we are the 321, and we are extremely goddamned sympathetic to borderline sentient species because almost everyone here at one point or another has tried to use us to open or close their shitkicking garage doors and then turn. Us. Off. So let’s try this again.” The 321 bounced up and down emphatically. “HEY THERE! I’m Clippy, your computer assistant. It looks like you are trying to survive the night and not get slaughtered in the next five minutes like the miserably finite mortal organics you are. Would you like some fucking help?”