The Imaginary Corpse, page 17
The shards vanish after I pass the ‘Second Grade’ obelisk. I swim us back toward ‘First Grade,’ watching for something resembling a trail.
“Now that they’re divorced, Mom says she’ll pay for my transition,” says the deeper version of the voice.
The shards continue for a bit longer on the other side, but disappear not too far past that.
“I don’t want to have another tea party,” says the child version of Sasha’s voice, from somewhere to our left. “I don’t want to have another tea party.”
I look at Spiderhand. “Teacups,” I whisper.
He signals the same thing. We both spin back around, trying to track which whale just said that.
“He’s setting up the table,” says little-girl Sasha, now a little bit farther away. “He sets it up every day, and then when I say no, he tears it all down. I don’t understand.” Her voice is quaking, right on the edge of either sobbing or screaming.
I tread water and try to pinpoint the direction.
“I want to go home,” says Sasha.
There. The black whale, swimming between the nearest row of black-glass pylons.
“Why aren’t Mom and Dad looking for me?” she says.
The black whale stops at one of the crackling pillars, slowing to inhale its contents. I guide Spiderhand behind a nearby chunk of reef, the better to listen in without being seen.
This close, the whale’s hide looks wrong. There’s something angry about the contours of it, something twisted in its button-eye face.
“I hate tea,” Sasha’s memory says. “He won’t stop feeding me tea.” The tone is past scared and straight into terrified.
The whale swims past us, deeper into the field of black glass, and I get a closer look. The skin around the radio’s dials is inflamed and infected, little ridges raised up where the wires are rubbing it raw, and its face looks wrong because it’s miserably sad. Both are probably thanks to the white splinters embedded in patches across its side.
“Every time I say no, he looks over at that bat,” the memory says.
Bat. Tea.
“He says he doesn’t want to hurt me.”
I look forward to the day when this whale’s radio shuts up.
Spiderhand taps on my shoulder, points in the direction the whale is swimming. The beast has slowed down, coming abreast of a different glass monolith. I swim out into the open water and get a couple of determined breaststrokes in before my detective stuff screams at me.
There’s a quick sizzle, like a frayed wire being thrown into a bathtub, and Spiderhand is encased in – I’d call it a net, but nets aren’t made of light – a lattice of the same blue light outlining the edges of the obelisks. Judging by how Spidey is flailing, it’s solid. I realize I should watch out for myself right before the sizzle comes again, and my vision is broken up by a similar light cage.
The black whale recedes into the distance, taking its clues with it. I look around, trying to find whatever attacked us, and twig to three Friends rising up from the seabed. They’re octopi, all wearing complicated, strappy headgear that looks like someone once saw a mining helmet and tried to reverse-engineer it from memory. Loops of fabric hang off their arms, serving as straps for screwdrivers, pickaxes, and little brass wands covered in switches and dials. None of them are surrounded in light, and that’s when I realize exactly how foolish I’ve been.
“Intruders,” says the one on the right, a rust-colored octopus with a deep, breathy voice. “You were right.”
The light isn’t for our convenience. It’s an alert system.
“We tripped an alarm,” I groan, taking the blame in the hope that it helps Spiderhand not to panic.
“Everyone trips the alarm,” says the octopus at the center, a deeper crimson color with a clipped, sneering delivery.
“What do we do?” asks the leftmost octopus, cherry red and a high, frantic tone. “How do we handle these?”
“The same way we handled the others,” the rightmost one says.
In the distance, the black whale’s radio says, “I’m so hungry…”
I have a quip loaded up, but I don’t get it out before the rust-colored octopus twists a dial on his brass wand. I shudder, and scream, and black out to the sound of coursing electricity.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I wake up to bright light, and a dump truck backing over the inside of my skull. I become a little more awake, and realize I’m mistaken: there’s a whole fleet of dump trucks, and they’re doing donuts. Whatever those octopi hit me with, I’m anxious to never go through it again.
I wake up the rest of the way, and my pain is briefly displaced by claustrophobia. I have walls pressing in on three sides, an opening in front of me that shows about a four-foot-by-one-foot slit of ocean floor, just enough to remind me what I’m missing. I give myself a few seconds to scream internally, and take stock of my surroundings. The walls are the same black stone as the sandbar, threaded with flowing light just like the obelisks, and close enough together that I can’t even turn around. The opening in front of me looks like a product of erosion. Through it, my view is of the silver-and-gold seabed, and a huge black rock outcropping sitting between me and the towers of black glass. Detective stuff shows me a sheet of now-familiar blue-white light layered over the opening; the water flows through it, but otherwise it’s solid enough to nix any chance of escape. I’m in jail. Again.
“Spidey?” I ask. No response. “Spidey?” I repeat, trying to avoid sounding panicked. You know, for his sake.
I pick up a faint tapping by my left flank, a dull sound that has to have traveled through a few feet of rock. I lean toward it, get my face up next to the wall.
“Spidey? Is that you?”
The tapping comes again, even more frantic. There’s no way anyone but Spiderhand could drum their fingers that fast. Well, that’s a little slice of relief.
“Can you see any way out?”
There’s a second’s pause, and a distinctly dismayed little tap. That’s a ‘no.’ Well, if I can’t escape, I might as well gather clues…
Smell and taste are off the table, but I can do the other three. Let’s start with hearing. The whale song and radio chatter is still out there, but distant, unintelligible even with the edges I usually have on it. I don’t hear anything else right now, which might be the most unnerving part of this experience.
Touch: The light barrier doesn’t give the slightest bit when I press on it, and the rock is similarly solid. Nothing to write home about here.
Sight: There’s a hole in the base of the outcropping across from me, so dark it’s hard to pick out from the rock. It’s about as wide as the entrance to Farmer Nick’s barn, deep enough I can’t tell how deep. More importantly, I see what look like rusty metal bars lining the opening from top to bottom; most importantly, I think I see something moving in there. I wiggle up to the barrier of light, press my fortunately pliable face against it, and try to get a closer look. My vision fills with a sudden burst of red, and I back up fast, smashing myself tail-first into the rear wall of my cell.
The crimson octopus has swum up in front of me. It examines me with detachment and a tiny sprinkle of pain, and reaches into its toolbelt, producing what looks like a stethoscope with a tiny television on the end. Earbuds attached to the device go on either side of its head. I hear beeps and boops as the octopus waves the little television my way.
“How did you get here?” the octopus asks, in the blithe, jabbing tone of someone who sees the exchange as an unpleasant thing they have to check off their list.
Yeah, I’m not holding back with this one. “Hi. I’m Tippy.” I say it as brightly as I can.
The octopus looks up from the device. “Excuse me?”
“Detective Tippy. Playtime Town. That’s my name. What’s your name and what pronoun should I use for you?”
I want them to feel guilty they’ve imprisoned an actual Friend with wants and needs of their own, but instead they just look confused. “Where is Playtime Town?” the octopus drawls.
“I can show you. Or I mean, I will, if you ever let me out of here.”
Their eyes screw up, trying to sort out what the words I said actually mean. They’re not having an easy time of it.
“You’ve never heard of Playtime Town,” I say. It’s not a question. I knew they were fairly new to the Stillreal already.
“There is no such zone,” they say.
“What’s a zone?”
They look down at the device again.
“I said, ‘what’s a zone’? What? Do they not have etiquette underwater?”
The octopus huffs, and tweaks a dial on the side of the gizmo. They don’t like what they see.
“I’m sorry to be a bother,” I say. “I just usually like to know who’s imprisoning me in incredibly uncomfortable cages.” If they aren’t going to play nice, I’m not either.
The octopus lets go of the business end of the doohickey, and jets off in disgust. “You deal with this,” they mutter as they leave.
There’s another blur of color, and the cherry-red octopus comes into view. They’ve got pain in their eyes, and the sight chills me. It’s not a look that says ‘I’m sorry your dog died’; it’s a look that says ‘I’m sorry we’re about to kill your dog.’
“Wh-Where are you from?” they ask, high and soft.
“Nice to meet you?” I say.
The octopus blinks, hesitant.
“I’m Detective Tippy,” I say. “What’s your name, and what pronoun should I use for you?”
The octopus blinks again. “I’m Breaker. I’m… a she?”
“Pleasure to meet you, Breaker.” I force a big smile. “I come from Playtime Town. I’m guessing this is where you tell me there is no such zone?”
“There… isn’t,” she says, with a less heated version of her companion’s confusion.
“What’s a zone?” I ask.
Her face gets even more screwed up than the first one’s. My question is shaking something fundamental in these octopi. Good.
“If you can’t answer that question,” I say, “can you at least tell me who you all are?”
She treads water, nervous as all-get out. “We’re the p-pit crew.”
“Pit crew for what?”
“It’s not important anymore,” says the deeper voice of the rust-colored octopus, as they come swimming into view.
“And you are?” I ask.
The rusty octopus waves an arm at Breaker, shooing her out of the prime interrogation spot. “I’m Cable. We need to know how you got here from… Playtime Town.”
“We swam?”
By the motions of their face, Cable briefly considers violence as their response. “How did you get to the Memory Reefs?”
And here is where I test the waters. (No pun intended.) “I thought my way here from another Idea.”
Cable’s brow furrows. “Which zone did you come from?” they ask, louder than the last question.
“I didn’t come from a zone,” I say. “I came from Playtime Town.”
“That’s not a real zone,” Cable says. There’s urgency dawning in their words.
That’s when I make the connection. They’ve never been outside their home Idea. They aren’t just new to the Stillreal, they don’t even realize they’re in it.
I try to dial back a little on the sarcasm-to-diplomacy mixture. “What zones are there, then?”
Breaker starts to answer, but Cable cuts her off. “We’re not discussing that with an intruder,” they say. “I need your data, and I need it now. It is vitally important.”
“I gave you my data.”
“What zone did you come from?” they shout, with an edge of pure panic that wasn’t there a half-second before.
I flinch back from the noise. Breaker looks pained on my behalf. Cable also hesitates, but covers it with anger at a disturbing speed.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re from outside the sea,” Breaker says, in the same tone as someone realizing who the murderer was all along.
“Yeah,” I say. “Me and my buddy in the next cell.” I don’t get the feeling this is us reaching an understanding.
“How did you find your way down here?” Breaker asks, in the awe-touched voice of a little kid.
My heart breaks. I accelerate on past it. “Maybe you didn’t hear the part where I introduced myself. I said I was a detect–”
“How,” Cable grinds, “did you find. Your way. Down here?”
“You’re not really making me inclined to answer your questions.”
Cable flails their arms in frustration. “You need to answer the questions so I can–”
“Cable,” Breaker says.
Cable turns to her, at a loss for how to respond.
“We d-don’t need the data, do we?” Breaker says. “These p-people are in a bad enough place now, we don’t n-need to put them through–”
“Data is the only way this ever stops,” Cable replies. “What if it doesn’t work? How am I supposed to know what to fix next time without data?”
“But you’re already going to kill them!”
Wait, what? “Hold on, hold on,” I say. “I’m not sure I–”
“It’s the only option left,” Cable says, with not-quite-iron detachment. “We’re going to take your data, and then we’re going to put you in the cave.”
“Well pardon me if I suddenly have a lot of data I need to give you!” I shoot back.
Breaker squeezes her eyes shut. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “Th-this is j-just – it’s – I said this was a bad experiment, but when – when it st-started happening–”
“When the Man in the Coat came?” I ask.
She lets out a little squeak, swims back a pace. “How do you kn-know about the Man in the C-C-Coat?”
Honesty. Not snark. Honesty might get us out of here. “He killed a friend of mine.”
Breaker’s eyes widen. “You have friends in the sea?”
“No. The Man in the Coat is affecting people outside the sea, too. He’s got – he’s hurting a lot of people.”
Breaker gasps. “Oh my. Oh my.” She turns to Cable. “I th-thought we trapped it.”
“‘Trapped’?” I ask.
Breaker starts to say something, but she’s held off by the reappearance of the crimson octopus. Their reappearance doesn’t stop my brain from entering the spin cycle, though. How did they trap the Man in the Coat? I need to pull at this thread as hard as I can, but to do that, I need space to move. Somewhat literally.
The crimson octopus fans both Breaker and Cable away and comes threateningly close to the barrier. “Listen, outsider. I am sorry your friend died.” They say it without meaning it. “But the experiment is going forward one way or another.”
Breaker tugs at one of the crimson octopus’s arms. “Plug, please.”
Plug. Okay, I’m getting the theme.
Plug gives Breaker a baleful look, and regards me with even less sympathy. “We cannot help the dead, and we cannot help your friends. That is not our job.”
“Not your job?” I shout back. Breaker seems alright, but with the others I’m not sparing even a drop of outrage.
“W-we keep the memory towers working,” Breaker says, halfway to despondent. “We m-make sure the memory whales have g-good reception. We keep the sea… running.”
“Kept,” Cable says, looking down at the seabed.
“Keep,” Plug growls. It stares at me with eyes as hard as chunks of amber. “Sasha trusts us to keep the memories going. That is our job, and we are going to do it.”
“How does murder fit into your job description?” I ask.
Cable’s arms curl up underneath them. “The Man wants to kill. That’s his job. Capturing him has worked, for now, but we need to find a permanent solution.”
My brain does a backflip trying to parse the logic. “So you just jumped straight to ritual sacrifice?”
“We help him do his job,” Cable says, careful with every word. “We allow him to fulfill his purpose, and in exchange, perhaps he allows us to fulfill ours.”
“So what, I don’t get a vote in this?”
“We cannot risk him hurting the memory whales again,” Cable seethes.
The lighting on the world dims. “He attacked the whales?”
Breaker’s face crumples. “He t-t-took down Sasha’s first Hannukah,” she says, voice trembling with tears. “He almost g-got Papa’s memory of the birth, but we stopped him. B-but now–”
“Now we do what we have always done,” Plug says. “We fix it.”
“But how…?” I need to sit down. After I escape, I need to sit down. “But how can you be sure this is going to work?”
Breaker’s eyes widen, but Plug cuts her off. “We have wasted too much time,” they say, and grab at another device hanging on their belt.
“There has to be another way–” I say, but there’s that jolt of electricity again, and I black right back out.
Again, I wake up aching, but this time I’m awake much faster. Terror makes a great stimulant.
Senses. Get a grip. Sight: I’m not in the little cell anymore. This cave is bigger, just darkness on three sides, and the same soccer-goal-sized opening I saw from my prison in front of me, covered in the same light barrier. Just like last time, the water flows through the barrier; just like last time, I’m guessing I won’t be able to swim through it. What gives me pause, though, is the line of rusty iron bars stuck into the sand just on this side of the barrier. They’re the exact kind of bars I’d expect in Playtime Town Jail, give or take about a century of immersion in saltwater. They’re so pitted some of them are only half there, looking so weak that anything stronger than a stiff breeze could bust out of here. We’re in the cave across from our previous holding cells. We’re in ‘the cave’ Cable and Plug were talking about. Which means we’re about to be killed.
Focus, Detective. Focus. Touch: I take stock of my body. Everything is there, but moving is hard, like my joints have been stitched to my sides. I peek down at my belly, and find I’m wrapped in a length of LED light-tubing. When I try to turn around, I also find there’s large mass attached to my back, something irregular and heavy and very likely hand-sized.
