Little Billy glitched, cut out, came back.
“I haven’t long. Old age ... or what we think of as old age, has caught up with us. Me/him. And when I go, the world as I know it goes, and the world I have created goes. And our knowledge of who we are and why we are, goes with us. And by the way, Grace, three points for not wearing a top.”
“Now let me get a handle on this shit,” Steve said. “We ain’t really androids neither. We ain’t nothing but a dream?”
“You are what you are,” Little Billy said, and there was a glitch, and his image jumped away, jumped back, then faded.
And was gone.
We stood stunned, and when I looked back at the way we had come, there was only the table, and I could see the end of it, and beyond it, the dimly lit wall of the room. Finally, I said, “I’m as real as I want to be, friends. And I say we do what we’ve always done. Charge on. Live what life we have for as long as we have it.”
This was considered. Grace stuck out her hand, palm down. I put mine on top of hers. Steve and Reba joined in. We said, “Hooyah!”
“Now,” I said, “might I suggest transportation? The toy plane? It’s a four-seater.”
“What the hell?” Steve said. “Why not?”
We made our way over there. The plane was pointed toward the back wall. Steve and I had Reba and Grace climb up on the checker box and step inside the plane. Grace took the little wheel in her hands.
“Do you think it works?” she said.
“Don’t know,” I said, peeling off my tied-up clutch of spears, tossing them on the ground. “We’re gonna turn it so it faces the window. Then we’re gonna wind it up, climb in, and let it go.”
“How?” Grace said.
“I have an idea. A spark inside my little brain that is neither flesh nor computer chip, but the makings of an old man’s dream. His brain is my brain. And that brain tells me we are going to turn the plane around, me and Steve.”
We struggled to do it, but managed, then shoved it up close to the checker box again, pointed it in the direction of the window.
Steve and I went around front, got hold of the propeller, and began to wind it, grabbing each new propeller blade as it came to us, winding it tight.
“When we have it wound tight,” I yelled up at Grace, “take your bundle of spears from your back, and stick the whole bundle between the blades, and you and Reba hold the propeller in place till we get inside.”
We kept winding, and soon it was as tight as we could wind.
“Now,” I said.
Grace stuck the bundle of five spears between the blades, and with Reba helping her hold them, we let go. One of the spears snapped, the propeller moved a bit, then held.
Steve and I scrambled on top of the checker box, slipped into the back seat of the plane.
“When I say,” I said, “jerk up the spears and toss them away.”
Grace nodded.
“Now,” I said.
She and Reba jerked them back and tossed them loose of the plane, and the little toy rattled and roared and wheeled across the table, came to the edge of it, and launched. It dipped at first, then rose up and glided, wobbled a bit, then headed straight on toward the open window.
“How long do we last?” Steve said.
“As long as the old man,” I said. “As long as life gives us. As much as life gives us. Hell, nothing’s promised to human or android or dark little dream, so goddamnit, we’ll live what’s there.”
The plane sailed smoothly out of the window and into the moonlight and into a cool fall breeze that swept under the plane and lifted it higher. White moths burst in front of us and beat wings to the sky and became white flakes in the darkness. Above us, stars—real stars as my false memories remembered them—shone above us, bright and sharp. And there was the moon. A great silver plate lying on the black fabric of night. The air smelled of fresh-mowed lawns, and there were warm lights in house windows and a long dark yard where grass grew, and I knew instantly, that this was the world I had come from; this was my East Texas as created for me by my android sire who lived here in his East Texas created for him by ... Whoever.
I took in a deep breath of cool night air and felt good and strong and strangely alive.
I thought: There’s no reason to write anymore, so I will not. I tore open my pack, took out my journal of composition books and pages, tossed them high to the sky.
The fluttering pages evaporated in the air like cotton candy birds licked wet, then the front of the plane faded, and I laughed, and I saw Grace and Reba fade, and Steve looked at me, and smiled, and faded, and so did—
EPILOGUE
The end ain’t the end, and the mystery ain’t the mystery, and the grooves of the pseudo-mind are dark and, well ... groovy.
FADE OUT
FADE IN, DEAR HEARTS.
We were back.
“What the fuck was that?” Grace said.
“I thought the old man died,” I said, “taking us with him.”
“He must have had a moment,” Reba said. “A mild stroke.”
“Don’t matter,” Grace said. “Tree!”
The plane, which really had no guidance system other than windup, aim, and point, went straight for a large oak. I threw my hands over my face, and the plane hit the tree and knocked me loose of the seat.
I woke up lying on the fresh-cut lawn.
I sat up slowly. Nothing seemed broken. I eased my pack off my back, tossed it aside, made it to my feet, staggered toward the wreckage. I saw Grace crawling out of the cockpit. There was a thin line of blood across her forehead.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” It was Reba, calling from the other side of the plane.
When I got there, Reba was on her knees, bending over Steve.
“He’s dead,” she said. “His neck.”
Steve’s neck was twisted in such a way it reminded me of a neck-wrung chicken. His teeth littered the moonlit grass around his head.
Grace came around the plane slowly, her forehead bleeding more now, running over her pretty features like a flood. She looked at Steve, then eased toward him. “Goddamnit,” she said. “Goddamnit.”
She dropped down on her ass, cradled his head in her lap. It rolled over as easy as a sock puppet’s head. Blood ran out of her mouth and onto her bare legs. Her naked breasts heaved in the light.
I looked away, back at the house. The lawn was littered with my journal papers.
“And the fun just keeps on coming,” I said.
“Yeah,” Reba said, reaching down to touch Grace’s shoulder. “Look.”
She wasn’t excited, just stating a fact. The distance was squeezing in. The yard was constricting, the houses were fading. It was like an invisible fire had surrounded us and was burning toward us, taking everything in its path. Where there had been something to see, lawn and trees and houses, now there was darkness.
Above us, the moon and the stars winked out.
We, me and Reba and Grace, the body of Steve, our plane, were at the center of a long, narrow, valley. The walls that rose on either side of it were dark and bumpy, pulsing and sparking. Wires ran along the bumpy walls like veins. The sparking gave off spotty, strobe-like light, so it was hard to see how far the valley, or to be more accurate, the trench, ran.
“Now what?” Reba said.
“His brain,” I said. “The old man’s brain. Made of flesh and wires and micros smaller than virus-sized chips, made of this and that and things we don’t know. His brain’s business, my friends, we’re inside it.”
“That makes less sense than being part of an android’s dream,” Reba said.
“He can’t create the world out there anymore,” I said. “Can’t project his thoughts the way he could before. He’s dying. It’s all pulling into the source. We’re inside his head. We’re impulses in the grooves of his mind. He’s probably in a coma. We were never part of any kind of dream. We were invented. And we are real. What happened to Steve is real. How I feel about it is real. He has sp
arked us to life. He is God, and we are his creations.”
“You don’t know that,” Reba said.
“No, but it’s as good a theory as any, and it’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”
Grace rose up slowly and laid Steve’s head carefully on what served as ground—pulsing meat.
“I wonder if there’s anywhere to go,” she said.
“One thing I’ve learned from you, Grace,” I said. “Don’t be a quitter.”
“That’s the goddamn truth,” she said, taking off her ragged fur bottoms, using them to wipe the blood from her face. She tossed the rag aside, stood there in all her magnificent naked glory.
“Look there,” she said.
It was the drive-in world mist. It was flowing down the brain-corridor, white as a geriatric’s head.
“As Steve would say,” Grace said, “ain’t that the shits?”
She turned to us, put out her hand.
“As long as it lasts,” she said.
“He could be in a coma for moments, or years,” Reba said.
“Or there may be more to it than we know,” Grace said, “if as soon as we peel one layer off the onion, we find another. My guess is there are plenty more layers, more truths to discover. Fact is, we don’t even know how true our recent truth is.”
“It’s really nothing new,” I said. “It’s just like the way we thought life was, and certainly must be. Unknown. Unfocused. Unpromised.”
“You are one fine-ass philosopher, Jack,” Reba said.
“How long do I hold my hand out?” Grace asked.
I smiled, put my hand on top of Grace’s. Reba placed hers on mine. We said, “Hoooyah!”
Slowly, we gathered ourselves, then, standing shoulder to shoulder, we started down the long, dark, sparking corridor through the mist and all its specters, moving onward to someplace or no place.
It was our mystery to discover.
The Complete Drive-in
Copyright © Joe R. Lansdale 2009
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Underland Press
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Portland, Oregon
eISBN : 978-0-982-66399-8
First Underland Press Edition: May 2010
Joe R. Lansdale, The Complete Drive-In
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