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A Clear Picture by Erin Tyler You probably think life with The Mistress was rough for me. Don't get me wrong: it wasn't all fun times. She was just as cynical and misanthropic as she had ever been. However, it wasn't all bad. In fact, it was actually pretty nice. The Mistress -- my mistress -- recognized that her mistress, Sheila Tucker, had been completely insane. Mistress Sheila had been a slave driver to my mistress and a nightmare for the town of Parkside. My mistress couldn't avoid being the latter, but she took great pains to avoid being the former. She played music when the feeling arose; she cracked jokes when she had a good one; most of all, she grew more patient with me and was unafraid to give me the occasional compliment. My access to the telescope was cut, but that became unimportant once I received my monocular. According the bylaws of the Sisters of Galileo, all apprentices receive two things upon induction into the order: a full round of vaccinations from the Blood Witch of Atlanta ("Because fuck this shit if I'm gonna drop dead from tetanus," The Mistress said), and a monocular. The Mistress dug her old apprentice monocular out of a pile of junk by her bed. It had less power than the telescope, but I could still see Parkside from the roof clearly through it, and it was small and lightweight enough for me to keep it on a thin loop of leather around my neck. And thus, in the weeks after Father Fitzpatrick's attempt on my life, my generally bad situation turned into something that was kind of wonderful. I learned a ton from repairing the Lane Plan robots and building the glider with The Mistress, and hanging out with her got to be really fun. I was no longer her broken android, or even just her apprentice. I was her friend, and I was more than fine with that. I was happy. Actually, truly happy. But, like I said, it wasn't all fun times. All of the terrible things from The Mistress' past -- her apprenticeship under Mistress Sheila; the death of her family; the constant danger of living in a hostile environment -- had clearly affected her. She tried not to let it show, but it was still popping in time and again to say hello, how are you, go fuck yourself. There were her occasional snaps at me when I asked her something personal; her aversion to close or prolonged physical contact; her complete inability to think or say anything nice about her neighbors. All of that was underscored by something deep and troubled within her. Like the night when I awoke to her screaming. There was no anger, only panic and fear. I had been asleep on the floor of the junk-lab, hidden under a table and behind Miki-chan. I awoke to the sound of The Mistress' wails before I heard Miki-chan. "Natsuko!!" Miki-chan was crying, over and over. I scrabbled out from under the table, grabbed a hard steel something on my way out of the junk-lab, and darted left, toward the bedroom. I expected to find her in there, grappling with some crazed invader. I expected to find Tiny and Leviathan, miniguns out and raring to go, but unable to do anything because of the risk they'd hit The Mistress. I'll bash that shithead's brains in, I thought. He won't even see me coming!! I'll be out of the darkness and on him-!! Nobody. It was more startling to find The Mistress thrashing in bed with nobody around than to find her thrashing against somebody. She was screaming something unintelligible as Teeny, Tiny, and Leviathan kept back, ready to help, but without any idea or programming on how to do that against... ...What? What was it? An invisible enemy? I dropped my hard steel something on the floor and ran up to The Mistress' side. "Mistress!!" I cried, grabbing her shoulders. "Stop!! Stop!!" She almost threw me off of her. "Mistress!! Wake up!! Mistress!!" Her head was tilted back, her fingers twisted, like they were gripping something. Or someone? Just how close had her real-life invader come before Leviathan reduced him to a stain on the wall? In seconds, she stopped screaming. A few more, and she stopped thrashing. Gasping for breath, she wheezed, "...Nat-Natsuko?!" "Yes, Mistress!!" "...Where-where-" "-You're home, Mistress!! You're safe!!" She slowly looked left and right. "You were having a nightmare!! You're safe with me!!" "...Uhhhh..." Her breathing slowed, and I heard her swallow. "Le- leggo...," she complained meagerly, trying to shrug me off of her. "Leggo of me." I got a little closer. I tried to comfort her, but, "No!!" she snarled, pushing me away. She fell back into her bed. "I-I'm fine! It was nothing, just a stupid dream!" "Was it?" She huffed and said nothing, then turned onto her right side. I watched her lie there for a moment. "...Go away," she complained petulantly. "Stop watching me." I sighed, then laid next to her in the bed. "What are you doing?!" she barked. "I'm just lying here." "Get out of my bed! This is my bed!" "You're not using it all!" "You don't sleep! Get out! Get-" "-I'm doing it for you!" She said nothing. "You're screaming in your sleep now?! Jesus!!" I rubbed my optical sensors. "I just... I want to help you. That's all. I'm your robot. It's what I'm supposed to do!" She didn't complain. She didn't shout. "...Stay on your side," she grumbled before turning over. And I did, for the rest of the night, until my internal clock awoke me before sunrise, and her, the next morning. When I wasn't paying attention, Gary went and became a post-apocalyptic housecleaner. It came out of nowhere. The day before, I had noticed nails had been hammered into the walls of Mariel's stockroom. They weren't sticking out very far, and they weren't harming anything, so I ignored them. The next day, I walked into the stockroom and saw that most of the tools had been hung up on the walls. Even more surprising: they were grouped by function. Power cables had been strung up next to other power cables, hammers next to other hammers. What little clutter was left had been shoved to the sides, leaving the floor area mostly clean. Gary had left my clumsy art-robot alone, and he was sweeping up what little mess remained when I walked in that morning. I hesitated in the doorway, taking in the distinct lack of mess. "...Nice!" I chirped. "You like it?" "Definitely!" "Think The Mistress will lower the rent?" I showed a moment of doubt. "...I can bring her down here," I said. He immediately sighed and turned in dismissal. "I can show her you're taking care of the place!" "She won't care." Although Gary had set himself up some tarps to catch dew and rainwater on top of some nearby buildings, I was bringing him bottles of fresh water from The Mistress' tap. "She's not entirely unreasonable," I said as I got busy putting them in a cupboard. "You're not destroying her stuff. She'll like that." "...'S your stuff," he mumbled. I had missed what he had said. "...Uh?" I asked. Gary was looking sideways at me, his nose crinkled in a curious, confused way. "Do you like her?" "Yeah, a little." "I mean, do you like-her, like her?" I froze. After four centuries, I thought, does that still mean the same thing? "What do you mean?" I asked slowly. Gary kept sweeping. "I've been talking to my dad," he said (and I was perfectly fine with him changing the subject). "He's been wondering where you are." "...Yyyyeah, sorry about that. The Mistress has been keeping me busy, so I haven't had time to talk to him." "It's okay. He knows you're helping me. He's been busy, too. He's got the girls, and he's looking for steady work. I offered to watch the girls for him." "I don't think that'd be a good idea." "Yeah, he said the same thing!" Gary laughed, but it sounded winded. He was feeling lonely out here, cast out of his home, away from his friends and neighbors. There was only so much I could do to ease his isolation. "I told him about The Mistress' group, the Sisters of Gal... Galil... something... Galilal-la-lal?" "Sisters of Galileo." "Right. I messed up the name when I told him." "No problem." "Anyway, he told me that from the way you describe her to me, he thinks you like The Mistress in a 'special' way. I don't know what that means. Do you?" ... Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and The Lord Himself, I thought, please don't make me have The Talk with this boy! "Do you like her in a special way?" he asked. "-Uh!" I sputtered, coming out of my shocked trance. "I! I don't! I..." I scratched my head. "I... don't..." "You don't like her in a special way?" "W-w-well, I... I... haven't considered her... I mean, I haven't..." I was grasping for words. I hadn't even entertained the possibility -- it was ridiculous. "I don't think of her-" "-What is a 'special' way, anyway?" He puzzled over it. "...Is it some kinda se-" "-Hey, what's that?!" I blurted and pointed in a random direction before trying to think of a reason to draw his attention to a small pile of junk in the corner. Gary thought of a reason before I did. "My bedroll is still under there," he said. "'S another trick Dad taught me: if you're trying to get some sleep and you don't have much in the way of security, then conceal yourself as you sleep. If you're outdoors, then sleep in a hollow log or under some leaves. If you're indoors, then use spaces that don't get a lot of outside light. In here's easy: I just built a little shelter under some of this metal stuff." He grinned. "Oh, hey! Dad stopped by earlier and left you something in there. The entrance is right below those..." He paused, then closed his eyes to try and remember... "Copper cables! I finally remember that! Under the copper cables!" I got on my hands and knees and crawled into the short tunnel in the junk. It was very short -- just a foot from the entrance was the tail end of Gary's bedroll. I could see the rolled-up coat he used as a pillow at the head. And in between... Had I a heart, it would have skipped a beat. I reached in and pulled out two plastic bags filled with... "My clothes!!" I cried victoriously. "Oh, my God! Gary, thank you!!" Gary smiled broadly. "Thank my dad. He found out the merchants that Junior sold the clothes to couldn't re-sell them to anyone else, so he got them for nothing. Turns out, nobody wants to buy clothes when everyone thinks they've been cursed by a demon." That's me, I thought, feeling a little proud to be feared. Tremble before my evil pants! Nyeh-heh-heh! Gary looked a little sheepish. "...So... do you think you can get The Mistress to bring down the rent now?" I looked over my clothes and considered the wear I was already putting on my blouse and skirt. "I think we can leverage something with these," I replied. My life was getting better, but life in Parkside was getting worse. Mayor Fitzpatrick's electoral base began experiencing what voters in the early 21st century called "buyer's remorse." Calm minds and cooled tempers helped people realize that a man with 14 year's experience, who had never abused his power, and who had the love and support of all of his neighbors shouldn't be cast out of his leadership role so readily. In addition, those who had decided to sleep in a little the morning following January's Witch-Burning Festival didn't like that nobody had asked them who their new leader should be. Alan Carson had never been the mayor. He had been the chief, a role that existed in society as long as society had existed, because it was a role that worked, and it was a role that the Parksiders had implicitly respected. As Alan's base grew, so did its resentment of Mayor Fitzpatrick's shrinking pool of supporters. Within just a couple weeks, Parkside had become a simmering pot of political unrest, even with Alan trying his hardest to douse the flames. He called in as many favors as he could to watch his little girls as he stopped fight after fight. This isn't what I want, he told everyone. Calm down. Cut it out. Everything will be okay. If only he could make himself believe that. The new laws concerned Alan and pissed off more people. The mandatory every-other-day prayer service at dawn cut into business hours and private time, and there were some Jewish and Muslim families, and at least one Zoroastrian couple, that didn't want to attend Christian ceremonies. The curfew riled people, and the fact that it only applied to women and children riled more. Then came the travel ban: nobody was allowed to enter or leave the town, including merchants, without the mayor's express permission. It soon became clear that nobody who was trying to move away could do so. Within three hours of the law's announcement, one of Mayor Fitzpatrick's most stringent supporters lost a few teeth, and nearly an eye, in a fight. After that, Alan decided he couldn't just wag his finger at people anymore. He had to take action. Then he heard about what was happening with Grant's Gate (more on that later), and he knew he had to hurry. After Mayor Fitzpatrick's election, a couple people would be waiting outside Alan's front door every morning. The morning he left to meet with the new mayor for the first time since the election, there were 15 people waiting for him. They immediately swarmed him, peppering him with questions about what he was going to do, what he wanted to do, what he wanted them and others to do, etc. "Ho!" he called out, placing one hand on Annabelle's head and another in front of him. "People, people! C'mon! We just stepped outside!" "We can't take this anymore, Alan!!" a man growled "Junior's deputies broke my horse-cart!" a woman cried. That was news to Alan -- he quietly groaned. The crowd was growing more restless. "He's keeping me in town!" a merchant barked. "I've got customers up in Portland waiting on a shipment, but I'm stuck here!!" Clouds were gathering outside his house; Alan was in the middle of a small, but growing, storm. People were starting to shout over others. Soon- "-People!!" Alan called out loudly and clearly, lifting a hand into the air and drowning out the other voices. "Calm!!" He said nothing for a moment, allowing the growing furor to die before it could take flight. Then, "I hear your complaints! I know things aren't as good as they used to be-" "-Aren't as good since you left!" someone called out. Chattering, then- "-Hey!" Alan barked, lifting his hand into the air again, calming the crowd. After another moment, "I'm prepared to address this with the mayor today! I'm sure what we're seeing isn't anything malevolent -- it's just our new mayor struggling to find his feet. It's only inexperience! Don't make anything more of it!" The crowd was grumbling, but nobody protested. "Listen, like I said, I'm going there now to take care of this. It's not formal, so I don't need a show of force, and I don't want a show of force. Please go home." Everyone mulled around. "Go home! Go to work, go to a friend's, just... please go!" A few people in the rear wandered away. "Please don't follow me! I'll be fine!" A few people grumbled at Alan. "I know you want something now," he stressed, "so... listen, I'll..." He rubbed his mouth and looked around. "...I'll have... I'll get him to relax the curfew a little by this afternoon. How's that?" Some people nodded, and even more wandered away. "I gotta go. C'mon, move." People stepped aside for Alan and his daughters as they walked down from their stoop, and nobody followed the Carsons as they strode toward the mayor's office on the south side of town. On their way there, Annabelle tugged at her father's pant leg. "Daddy," she said. "Daddy!" From the way she was speaking, Alan knew she wanted to whisper something to him. He slowed down a little and leaned over. "Can you really do that? Can you get him to stop the cur... curf-" Whisper-whisper from Charlotte. "Curfew?" "...I, uh... ahhh..." Alan looked at Annabelle. Charlotte was behind her. Bee was holding onto his left arm, awaiting his answer. "...Yyyyeah," he said. "Sure I can. It's just a matter of-" He looked at Charlotte's face and was startled. Annabelle believed her father and was patiently awaiting an explanation. Bee took his word at face value. But Charlotte? Oh, boy. Charlotte. As Alan and his daughters got closer to the white-paneled house that had been rented for the mayor's office, he ran into one more angry supporter. Roger Tims, one of the locals, came grumbling out of the office and saw Alan immediately. "This is fucking ridiculous!!" he yelled, without regard for who heard him. Alan immediately knew what Roger meant. "Listen, Roger-" "-No, Alan!!" Roger stormed up to Alan and got in his face. "Do you know what that shithead had the balls to tell me?! That it was the will of God!! The will of God, Alan!! Whuh-" Roger's steam temporarily blew out when a large glass jar was shoved under his chin. Bee was holding it aloft. "Is 'balls' bad?" Annabelle asked Charlotte. Charlotte nodded. "Fifteen cents!" Annabelle demanded of Roger. "What the fuck?" Roger asked. "Now it's twenty cents!" Bee clamored. "They made a swear jar," Alan sighed. "Five cents per bad word." "Wha! This is fucking stupid! I'm not paying!" "Twenty-five cents!" Bee barked. "We can keep going," Annabelle warned. "Don't fight them, Roger," Alan sighed. "I've tried. It'll only end in a headache for you." Roger was in no mood for the ABC's games. "I'll- comp-you," Alan mouthed. After a couple seconds, Roger huffed in frustration, fished a tarnished quarter out of his pocket, and threw it into the jar. "That ffff...," he looked at the ABCs. They stared back. "...That... jerk..." Annabelle nodded approvingly. "Told me that God wanted my house to burn down! That He sent a lightning bolt to blast a hole in my fffff- roof! During the last thundersnow! Because I've upset Him, or some sssshhhh... junk! This isn't satisfying." Alan nodded in understanding. Mayor Fitzpatrick had raised a fuss after the firemen put out Roger's house, saying that since it had been a bolt of lightning that started the fire, that Roger must have done something to displease The Lord. And although Roger would have seriously hurt someone before he let anyone restart the fire, Mayor Fitzpatrick was able to prevent Roger from doing one other thing. "Now he won't let me fix the roof! Can you believe it?! He's got an injunction against me!! Can you believe this shhhhhhhh..." He gritted his teeth. "Oh, I'm just gonna say it!" he barked at the ABCs. "Shit!!" He fished a nickel out of his pocket and plunked it into the jar. "Oh, no...," Alan groaned. "Oh, yes!! Here, look!!" Roger yanked a crumpled piece of paper out of his jacket and shoved it at Alan. Alan straightened it and quickly read it. "...I've never heard of anything like this, Roger." "This is some ridiculous C-I-S-style bull-!! Errrrrrg!!" "Girls, can't you make an exception for Roger? He's under a lot of stress." "No exceptions," Annabelle said. Roger was crestfallen. "He has to spend his money renting a room for his family!" Alan said. "They can't stay in their house because there's a big hole in their roof, and the mayor won't let him fix it!" The ABCs paused, then huddled. After a few seconds, their huddle broke. "Okay, he can curse," Annabelle said. Roger lifted his head toward the sky. "Ffffff-!" "-Quietly," she stipulated. Roger paused. "Crap!" he sighed. "...Okay, I'm feeling a little better, actually." Despite his rough nature, Roger was actually a nice guy. He had a wife, a young daughter and an even younger son, though, and the four of them were sleeping in a room built for only one person, two doors down from their silent, damaged home. The crow's feet under his eyes were getting longer as his patience with the new administration got shorter. "You gotta do something about this, Alan. I can't take much more of this!" Alan's eyes darted over the injunction. "I can't just give you the supplies you need, Rog. This says you're not allowed to possess roofing tar or shingles." "I know!" Roger groaned. Alan nodded, then raised his head in thought. He looked down at his daughters, then at Roger. He grinned. "...However, it doesn't say I'm not allowed to possess roofing tar or shingles." Roger slumped. "...You'd do that for me?" "Of course! Any day of the week. Although... could you do me a favor in return?" Roger nodded in appreciation -- his anger was gone. "Anything." "I'd hate to put an extra burden on you, but do you think you can watch the girls for me? If I'm gonna get anywhere with Fitz, I can't be watching..." Alan turned and looked at Bee, and that's when he noticed the long, leather-wrapped handle sticking out from behind her for the first time. "Kiddo, what's that?" he asked her. Bee blinked curiously, then reached back and pulled a small tennis racket out from under her sweater, where she had been keeping it. "What, this?" she asked, holding the racket in both hands. "What is that?" "It's a thing-hitter." "...A what?" "A thing-hitter." Annabelle and Charlotte took a step back, allowing Bee to swing the racket wide. "It hits things." Alan paused. "Okay... first, where did you get that? And second, why did you bring it with you?" "The mayor's a big jerk, and I'm gonna hit him with it!" Alan groaned and face-palmed. Roger silently grinned and nodded a little. "He was mean to Gary!!" "Bee... no!! And where did you get it?!" "...I... didn't..." Bee looked guilty. She glanced at Charlotte for help, but her sister couldn't lend any. "I didn't steal it," she mumbled. Alan knew what that meant. "Bee, have you been running around in the ruins again?!" "No." A pause. "Maybe." Another pause. "Yes," she mumbled. Alan growled in frustration. He yanked the tennis racket from her hands. "Once we get home, we're going to have a serious talk about your night-time activities, young lady!!" he barked. "One of these days, I'm going to tie you to a chair again!!" She rolled her eyes. "Oh, don't you dare start!! I'm using double the rope next time!!" Roger was barely containing a smile. "Do you want me to watch them?" he asked. "Do you think you can do anything about this one?" Alan grumbled, jerking his thumb toward Bee. "...I can try." "Good enough." Alan turned back to his daughters. "Girls, Mr. Tims is going to watch you while I meet with Mayor Fitzpatrick." Things could have gone differently here. Had the ABCs responded to Alan in any other way, events would have proceeded down a vastly different path. I realized this after hearing this story, and after I figured out the role the ABCs played in it. Try not to focus on them too much, though; otherwise, you'll miss a big part of the story. I can't explain everything right now. You're just going to have to trust me on this. The girls looked up at their father, then huddled together. Alan wondered why his daughters needed a huddle. Then, they broke. "But we wanna meet with the mayor, too," Annabelle said. "Yeah," Bee said. "We wanna show him we're not afraid of him." Charlotte silently nodded in solidarity with her sisters. Alan was a little surprised that his daughters felt that way. "...Well, uhhh..." He scratched his beard. "We're going to be talking about a lot of... adult stuff." Alan knew he was kidding himself: the girls heard "adult stuff" all the time. "We don't mind," Annabelle replied. "Yeah! He's got a lot to explain!!" Bee crowed. "Hear, hear!" Roger called back, then went quiet when Alan looked over his shoulder and gave him a look. "Okay, girls... look, things could get heated in there." He tapped the swear jar. "And I don't think this is big enough to store all the change that'll be needed to make up for all the mean things that could be said." The ABCs exchanged a silent look. "It's okay," Annabelle said. "We'll put our swear-jar on hi... hia..." Whisper-whisper. "Hiatus." Alan looked each of his daughters in the eyes. "...Are you sure about this?" he asked seriously. They were. He sighed. "Okay. You can come with me, then. Lord, I give you three so much leeway..." Bee reached for the tennis racket, but he held it away from her. Instead, he handed it off to Roger, out of her reach. "Here, hold this for her. C'mon, we're going inside. I'll see you later, Roger." Alan led his daughters into the mayor's office. "See you, Alan." After Alan closed the door, Roger's fingers twitched. As he walked away, he practiced Bee's swing. "Pow! Heh, yeah!" he chuckled. Houses in Parkside came in two floor plans. The smaller floor plan had a living room, a kitchen, and a half-bath on the first floor, and a narrow staircase that went up to two bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor. The larger floor plan had an extra dining room on the first floor, and two extra bedrooms and an extra bathroom on the second floor. Both floor plans included a basement. There was no more indoor plumbing, so none of the bathrooms were useful for their original purpose; dirty business was usually done in an outhouse behind the houses. Mayor Fitzpatrick's office was a small-plan house with a fireplace and a desk for a receptionist in the living room. All amenities had been stripped from the kitchen in the rear to make room for another desk and file cabinets. In truth, the house's conversion to an office had been done long before Mayor Fitzpatrick's election, when a C.I.S.-based business had tried to expand into Parkside. The Parksiders had little use and less patience for them, though, and the business pulled out within months of getting started. Now, the whitewashed walls housed the few records kept of the mayor's business over the last 80 years, along with a pretty little receptionist who was barely done being a teenager, and the mayor himself. "Hey, Delilah," Alan said to the girl. "I've got a nine-o-clock meeting with Fitz today." Delilah looked around her desk, then dug a ledger out of a pile. She flipped it open and went several pages in, then traced her finger across a line with a name and time. "...Yeah! I have you here at nine." "...I know. I just said that." "Oh! Uhhhh..." She traced her finger across the page again, then looked out the window, then back down at the page. "It's nine right now," Alan clarified as patiently as he could. "Delilah, is that Alan out there?" Mayor Fitzpatrick called from his office. "Send him in!" "The mayor will see you now," Delilah said. Alan parted his lips in a thin grin. "...Yes, thank you." He led his daughters toward the office in the rear. Annabelle looked back at Delilah and mumbled to her father, "I did it better." "I know, ssshhhh," Alan said quickly and lowly, taking his daughter's hand. They walked into Mayor Fitzpatrick's office and found him waiting at his desk, Junior standing by his side. Junior's hand was at his sidearm, and Alan almost immediately guessed why. He stopped his daughters in the doorway. "I'm not here to start trouble," he said. "You have many who wish to start trouble for you," the mayor replied calmly. Junior remained silent. "If you know that, then you know I've been telling them to back off. I just want to talk." He looked down at his daughters, then up at Junior, then back to the mayor. "C'mon. I'm just the old boss trying to talk to the new one. No hard feelings." The mayor looked doubtful. "Do you want to pat me down? Junior, pat me down." Junior looked to the mayor for guidance. The mayor nodded, and Junior walked over to Alan and patted him down for weapons. Finding none, he turned back to the mayor, then thought twice and looked down at the ABCs. "...Oh, for Pete's sake, Junior!!" Alan snapped. "It's okay, Brother Galen," the mayor said. "Brother Alan would not arm his daughters." Alan noticed something shift in Junior: a twitch in his eye, a brief grinding of his teeth. Junior had a name, and it was Junior. Not Galen. Never Galen. Junior. Alan knew that, and he knew why that was the way it was, and he respected that. "You may leave, Brother Galen," the mayor said. "Please take Alan's daughters with you on the way out." "If it's all the same to you," Alan said, "I want to keep them by my side. My usual babysitter is out of town." A pause from Mayor Fitzpatrick. "This isn't a place for children, Brother Alan." "They'll behave. Won't you, girls?" "Yes," Annabelle replied dryly. Bee glared wordlessly at the mayor. Charlotte's expression was blank and indecipherable, although when he looked at her, Alan couldn't help but imagine Parkside's new leader perishing in the near future after contracting food poisoning or falling from a great height. He told himself he was being ridiculous -- that could never happen. Charlotte simply stared and said nothing. Mayor Fitzpatrick didn't notice anything unusual, and Alan felt a little alarmed by that. "...All right," the mayor said. "They may stay. You may leave, Brother Galen." Junior stiffly bowed to the mayor, turned and met Alan's gaze, then left through the door behind his old boss. After it clicked shut, Alan took a seat in front of the mayor's desk. Alan put Annabelle on his knee. He heard Bee dash behind him, but he ignored it -- she had nowhere to go. "Nice place you got here," he said. The mayor eyed him suspiciously. "...Thank you," he said. "Yeah, you got these walls painted nice. Remember all the crrrrr-" Annabelle looked at him out of the corner of her eye and frowned. "- Stuff that CoalitionCorp had pasted up?" "It's still there," the mayor said. "I had it painted over." They heard a tearing noise come from Alan's left. Bee was there, pulling a piece of whitewashed paper off the wall, revealing an ugly brown pattern underneath. Mayor Fitzpatrick let out a small, exasperated sound. Alan placed Annabelle on the floor, then reached over, picked up Bee, and put her on his knee and began bouncing her up and down. She wouldn't sit still unless he kept her moving -- the trick was to not bounce her too fast. "I didn't come here to talk about your furnishings, Fitz. I want to know what you're doing with your new job." "I've told you that already: I'm saving Parkside." "Really? Because from my perspective, it looks like you're ripping it apart." The mayor looked irate. Alan temporarily stopped bouncing Bee to put up a hand. "Okay, that was too inflammatory. What I mean is, a lot of your new rules are putting people on edge." Bee was already fidgeting, so Alan started bouncing her again. "The prayer service, the curfew, the travel ban, the Tims' roof..." He paused. "Dad's Gate." He gave the mayor a somber look. "What's the point of all this?" "I'm saving Parkside's soul." "You can't give me that." "It's true. As the shepherd of the Parkside flock, it is my sacred duty to lead it upon the path of righteousness." Alan looked puzzled. "...Okay... but... weren't you doing that already?" "Indeed, I was." "You're just leaving me with more questions, Fitz." Mayor Fitzpatrick's face twitched in frustration -- maybe it was because Alan wasn't calling him "Mister Mayor," but the mayor wasn't complaining about that explicitly, so it could have been something else. But what? Ever more questions. "Why... do you need my job... to do your job?" "Because I saw how you were doing your job, and I saw how inadequately you were performing your duties." "...Uh-huh?" Alan's knee bounced Bee a little faster. "All you ever did was react, Alan. I am working proactively to save Parkside, and to undo the damage your useless administration caused." "...Uh-huh." Alan's knee was now working overtime; Bee was shaking rapidly. He gently lifted her off his leg, set her on the floor, and let her dash off like a giggling human Micro Machine. "Listen, Fitz, there's no need to be rude-" Something made of glass went smash. Mayor Fitzpatrick stood up, alarmed. "Oops," Bee said. The mayor turned his head back to Alan, with a look on his face that demanded compensation. Alan waved dismissively. "I'll pay you back. I'd punish her, too, but my administration of discipline is useless." The mayor looked livid. Alan held his hands up in supplication. "Anyway, you think I was a bad leader. That's... fair enough. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion." He reached over and placed Charlotte on his lap (it was her turn), upon which she sat with her legs crossed to make herself smaller. "You're wrong when you say I was only reacting, though. I made deals with the traveling merchants, remember? I increased trade within my first four years. You crunched the numbers yourself." He grinned. The mayor looked a little ashamed. "What was the number you gave me? Thirty-five percent?" The mayor said nothing. "Or maybe... was it forty-five?" "...Forty," Mayor Fitzpatrick mumbled. "Forty percent! I don't know much math, Fitz, but that's a big percent, isn't it? And I did it all while keeping neutrality with the R-O-N, and while keeping the C-I-S plutocrats out of our hair! Do you think that made me useless?" The mayor said nothing. Alan sighed. "...Look, I'm not here to argue my record. I really, honestly want to understand what you want. What do you want out of Parkside? What do you want out of her people?" "As her leader, I have no obligation to explain myself," the mayor said quickly. "I'm the leader. I lead." Alan shook his head. "...No, no. Fitz, you gotta explain yourself. You gotta let people know you're working for them." He jerked a thumb toward the door. "Those people out there want answers. If you want my help, I'll give it to you, but first thing's first: you can't keep dropping that 'save Parkside's soul' nonsense." Mayor Fitzpatrick appeared to be varying degrees of irate through their whole conversation. "Spell it out for me, Ossie. Stop feeding me..." He paused, then thought. After a couple seconds, he looked to Charlotte. She looked back. "...Help me out...," he whispered. "Ambiguity," she whispered back. "Ambiguity!" he announced. "I need specifics. The people need specifics." He shook his finger at Mayor Fitzpatrick, with 40% power. "If you want to remain mayor, you'll provide them." "Is that a threat?" "No, no threats. No 'promises,' either. I won't have to lift a finger or say a word, and I don't plan to, except to keep the peace. That's why I'm here: to keep the peace." Mayor Fitzpatrick continued to give him an irate glare for a couple more seconds before it broke. There was the Oswald Fitzpatrick that Alan wanted to talk to: thoughtful, serious, kind of nerdy, but very earnest. The mayor rubbed his eyes. "...I think your daughters should leave, Alan," he sighed. "I'll keep Bee in check," Alan replied. Bee let out a little sound of protest that went ignored. "If you want to discuss Parkside any further with me, then there are matters of a confidential nature that need to be brought up." Alan paused. "Will they be okay in your lobby?" "Delilah will watch them, yes." The mayor leaned forward and whispered, "I know she's not the most... astute person, but she can watch children." Alan nodded, then set down Charlotte and herded his daughters out the door. "Girls, wait out here. Bee, don't touch anything." Her eyes went wide. "But touching stuff is what I do!!" she cried. "I'm touching the air!! Can I touch air?!" He closed the door. "I need to breathe!!" she cried through it before being led away by Annabelle. Alan sat back down. "So where do you want to start?" The mayor leaned back in his chair. "...How is your son, Alan?" Alan said nothing. "Come on. I know you've been sneaking out to see him. I would be more concerned if you weren't." "...He's fine. He'd much rather be home with his family. His family would like that, too." Alan let out a puff. "You can't honestly believe he did something with Natsuko." "We found him under extremely suspicious circumstances, Alan. You know. You were there. That vile odor they shared-" "-Was from the hospital," Alan said, finally copping to it. "We've been there before, Fitz. You know that place has all kinds of weird stuff." "And what were they doing in there?" "I dunno. Checking out some kind of... old... medicine thing in the basement. It sounds like some kind of... organ-harvesting place?" Mayor Fitzpatrick's expression twisted in disgust. "And you think that's not unholy?!" "They didn't build it! They were just looking around because they wanted to know what was down there! Everyone does that somewhere at some point. You did that at the old college across the river. I was there with you!" The mayor averted his gaze. "For goodness sake, Gary wouldn't even know how to start... doing... a girl. I haven't had that talk with him." The mayor raised an eyebrow. "You don't get to judge. You don't have kids." Alan's voice turned softer, his tone almost pleading. "Lift the banishment order, Oswald. Let me bring my son home." The mayor thought about it. "...I will consider it." Alan nodded in respect. The mayor looked perturbed. "Now, as for what I wanted to talk to you about..." He shifted in his seat. "...My earlier statement about your administration being useless was not... entirely accurate," he admitted. "You think?" The mayor slowly nodded. "I'm certain that if I were to ask you to name every resident in Parkside, you could do so, right here and now." Alan puffed his chest out a little in pride. "Were you to wager that... you could name who was who's child, who was married to whom, who was born, who died, who arrived and left, all within the span of the last fourteen years... I would not take that bet. You possess a complete knowledge of that side of this town." Alan almost felt complimented. "...That side?" The mayor took a deep breath. "Alan... can you tell me which men are cheating on their wives?" A pause. "Can you tell me which of those men are doing so... with another man?" Another pause. "Can you name the citizens who have stolen from their neighbor's houses? Or name those who abandoned families elsewhere to start anew here?" Mayor Fitzpatrick awaited a reply. None came. "Can you count the number of citizens who have committed murder? I can." Alan stared at the mayor, then his chin dropped. He looked at the man behind the desk with growing outrage. "...Fitz... what did you do?" "What do you mean?" "You're playing a dangerous game here, Fitz. People aren't going to take this kind of shit." "...Alan, I... have no idea what you're going on about." "I'm talking about you blackmailing your neighbors!" The mayor leapt to his feet. "I have done no such thing!!" he roared. "The rite of confession is sacred, Alan!! I would sooner die than reveal any of the secrets entrusted to me!!" Mayor Fitzpatrick was damn serious. Alan backed off immediately. "Okay, okay, calm down. I apologize." "You should be sorry!! How dare you suggest such a thing!!" "Really, calm down." The mayor fell back into his chair. He looked irate again. "Do you think my faith is merely for convenience?! This is what I believe!! This is who I am!! If you can't accept that, then I really don't have to justify anything to you!!" "Okay, okay, calm down!" The mayor huffed. "And that's not my point! You, Alan, only see the good. You behold the sun-lit side of our town, the side that her people show you. What you ignore are the cautions they take in doing so. You draw the line between the public face of Parkside and the private face." He leaned forward. "I do not. On a daily basis, I am exposed to her darkness. Her cruelty. Her hateful, wicked ways. I see the weaknesses in every man here, Alan, because that's my job." Pause. "No, it's more than that. It's my God-given calling, my sacred duty. Do you expect me to sit back and allow those secrets to tear this town apart from the inside? I am here, on this earth, to give people hope, to let them know they're not ruled by secrets, that they're worthy of love and lead them back to the light. That's what I am: a shepherd. A leader! So when you ask me why I need your job to do my job, my answer is, I already had your job. I merely formalized it!" Alan was speechless for a minute. When the mayor saw that he didn't have a response, and was simply sitting there silently, he did some paperwork. When Alan broke the silence, it was with a grin. "Well, I sure sucked!" he chortled. Mayor Fitzpatrick looked up from his work, nonplussed. "You're over-thinking things, Fitz. You can lead people to the light all you want. I'm the guy they call when two merchants get in a fight." "I call Junior for that," the mayor quipped. "Yeah, but I can break up a fight without bloodying anyone's face. You say I live in the sun-lit side?" Doubt flashed across his face. "...Okay, that's fine. But I think you forget that bad guys aren't always afraid of a little sunlight. On my side of town, good and evil isn't black and white. Bad things can be done for good reasons, and vice-versa. Trying to separate them into neat little categories just leads to embarrassment and hard feelings all around. You're a smart guy, you know that. So... again, why do you need my job to do your job?" The mayor grimaced at him. When Alan saw that he wasn't going to say anything, he sighed. "...Okay, fine. Forget it." At that moment, he wished he was talking to me. He sat up straight and got serious again. "Tell me why you ordered the full-stop on the repairs of Dad's Gate." I should explain Grant Carson's Gate. When I looked out over Parkside from the top of Sky Tower for the first time, I had noticed long, high walls of debris stretching across roads and between buildings outside the town. At first, I thought they were just randomly scattered ruins, but after studying them a little longer, I realized that they were too organized for that. The Parksiders had built a wall of debris and old buildings to the south and west of their town. With the river to the north and the ocean to the east, Parkside was protected pretty well against large groups of bandits, and even armies. The wall wasn't perfect -- small groups of evildoers could still sneak in through the cracks, and it wouldn't stand up very long against a determined horde (of, let's just say, religious extremists from the Great Lakes area) -- but it was impressive given Parkside's lack of engineering knowledge. Grant's Gate, as it was popularly called (or "Dad's Gate" by Alan), had been built, along with the wall, in the years following Sheila Tucker's attack. It was a large wood-and-metal sliding door, mounted on wheels and operated with weights and levers, which, when closed, sealed off the largest break in the wall: Parkside's western entrance. It had been completed just before Alan took over, and it was only then that people realized it didn't protect them from Sheila Tucker, who was the whole reason they took such extensive and expensive protective measures to begin with. That, coupled with the lack of armies in the former state of Massachusetts, resulted in Grant's Gate going without any maintenance for 14 years. Now the town had 8000 reasons to make sure it worked. Nobody was currently working on it, though, under orders from Mayor Fitzpatrick. "It's an unnecessary expense," he said. "Unnecessary?! We've got an army marching on us!!" "I have faith that Parkside will see its way through this trial. We don't need to hide behind walls -- we have The Lord on our side." "Can The Lord come down here and give me some guarantees?!" "Don't bait Him, Alan," the mayor growled. "I don't think it's too much to ask to make sure my friends aren't murdered! And if he can't come down, then we'd better fix the gate!!" "All souls must experience hardship to reach Heaven, Alan. Win or lose, Parkside will triumph with righteousness alone, not guns and walls." "They'll help!!" Mayor Fitzpatrick glared at Alan; he had never really stopped glaring. "...You understand so very, very little, Alan." "Then educate me!! What the hell are you thinking?!" The mayor rubbed his hands. "Do you remember my career in finance?" "...Of course," Alan replied, slightly confused. "You did good work. You... helped me reach that 40%." The mayor looked a little distracted, and not very proud. "I did, didn't I? It was a stressful job, though. Very stressful. It's how the devil's drink got to me." "...See, I never understood that. It's just addition and subtraction, right?" The mayor looked deeply uncomfortable. "...There's something I never told anyone about my old job," he said. "It wasn't just math. Something... happened to me, Alan. Something happened while I was looking into those books." "...What?" The mayor sighed. "It started the day we went to the old college, and I found that old math book. It did give me the skills I needed to later perform my duties, but it also did... something else." The memory of it looked almost painful. "It planted... ideas in my head. Thoughts." His face twisted. "Questions. Those... infernal questions!" Alan was thoroughly confused. "Questions?" "As I studied the book, I learned a great many answers to questions I had about mathematics. However, I realized that when one question ended in an answer, another question took its place. Sometimes, there were two questions, or more." The mayor closed his eyes. "I followed those... unending lines of questions for years, far into my career in finance, far past the point where it was healthy. It became an obsession. My mind became clouded with questions. The numbers on the page, Alan... they began to... act for me, like... people, except... not. They had... behaviors. As I added and multiplied them, I watched them react in... strange, yet predictable, ways." Alan raised an eyebrow. "It's crazy, I know! I wasn't in my right mind! I turned to alcohol to ease the questions, but I ended up replacing that cloud with a haze of inebriation! And when that faded, the infernal questions returned!! I was in a terrible state, no matter how drunk or sober I was!!" He spread his arms wide and looked up in rapturous relief. "And then He came to me! The Lord, Our God! He led me past the cloud and the haze, and he brought me into the light of truth! It was glorious!! Now, I want nothing more than to bring everyone -- everyone! -- into the light with me!" "...And what was this 'truth' He showed you?" Mayor Fitzpatrick looked back down. "The truth is, His creation is not ruled by questions and answers. It is ruled by the light, and what is good and pure. On that blessed day when you see it for yourself, you, like me, will have no more questions beyond it. You will only have the beautiful certainty that you have always wanted." Maybe the mayor expected Alan to be awed. Instead, Alan rested his cheek in his hand and grinned with incredulity. "Do not mock me!!" the mayor snarled. "We're not being threatened by questions, Ossie. We're being threatened by men with guns." "And I'm telling you why they're not a threat: because God is just. Because this is a test put before us by The Lord to try our mettle and bring us into His graces." "Aaaand you know this because-" "-Because all things are a test!! All temptation is the true question, all sin the failing mark!! And people like Nat-Suko and the Metal Mistress are there to put questions -- infernal, distracting questions - - into your head, so you'll ignore the true test!! That is what demons do!!" "...That's not the way the world works, Ossie." The mayor breathed out heavily, "...Ohhhh, Alan!" He stood up, walked around to the side of his desk closest to Alan, and sat on it. "I'm certain Nat-Suko has told you things, and she's answered many of your questions, correct? But how many of those answers led to more questions? I'm willing to wager it was all of them." Alan said nothing. "Yes, I've walked down that dark path. And in a way, they're correct: the world does present us with many questions and many answers. But the world, Alan -- this world -- is but a tiny, tiny pebble sitting at the base of a vast mountain. I say the pebble is white, and they pooh-pooh me and show me, through questions and answers, that the pebble is blue. They prove, conclusively, that the pebble is blue." He spread his arms wide. "But Alan! The mountain is white!!" Alan stared wide-eyed at the mayor. "You're insane," he stated plainly. "Hah!" Mayor Fitzpatrick panted. "Is it insane to favor the vastness of all Creation over a meager pebble?!" "Deh-stop with the word-play, Fitz!!" "Metaphors," he heard outside the door. "Stop with the metaphors!! This is Parkside you're talking about!!" He quickly looked behind him and saw that the door was still closed (it was, however, paper-thin). "No, Alan. This is the latest chapter in the ongoing battle between good and evil." "This is crazy!! You're leaving the door open for a-a-a-" "-Tyrant," he heard again through the door. "Stop listening in, Charlotte!" Alan barked. A pair of tiny shadows moved away from underneath the door. Alan turned back to the mayor. "You're blindly throwing your faith into-into what?! That some miracle will save us?!" "There is nothing else that can save us, and I have never seen so clearly!!" "Jesus, Fitz!! Have some-" "-Do not take The Lord's name in vain!!" the mayor screeched. And Alan stood up. And he stared down Mayor Fitzpatrick. And he said, "I would rather be a-a-a-" "-Heretic," Charlotte said outside the door (she hadn't left). "I would rather be a heretic... and have faith in my neighbors...," and here he jabbed his finger into the mayor's chest, "than be a frothing cynic like you!!" The mayor's face turned bright red. "...You... rotten egotist!! You... lap-dog of The Mistress!!" Alan paused. His face turned soft as he experienced a small moment of clarity. "...You are just like her. You know that?" Mayor Fitzpatrick's eyes went wide. He was shaking with rage. "Get out. Get out! Get the fuck out of my office!!" Alan let out a loud, derisive laugh, turned, and went to the door. He opened it to find Annabelle and Bee standing there, their ears pressed to it, and Charlotte standing between them. All three froze, like any child caught misbehaving, but Alan couldn't care less -- he shooed them away only so he could get past them. "Get the fuck out of my office!! Get the fuck out!! Get the fuck out!!" Alan turned and looked levelly at the mayor. "You owe us twenty cents!" he spat, then slammed the door shut. As Alan shuffled his daughters through the lobby toward the front door, he shot a dirty look at Delilah, who was busying herself with her nails instead of watching his girls. Annabelle and Bee were peppering him with questions: Annabelle was asking if the yelling meant that things went badly; Bee was asking if the yelling meant they had gotten in a super-awesome fist fight, that'd be so cool, yeah. Charlotte stayed silent. The door to the outside opened before they reached it, and Junior walked in holding a letter. Alan looked at Junior. Junior avoided Alan as he made a strode purposefully toward the mayor's office door. And that's when it happened. I promised you two things that I haven't delivered yet. The first was more information on who taught Gary to read. The second was the ABC's part in this story. As Alan herded his girls toward the door, he realized he was one short. He looked back and saw Charlotte standing there, watching Junior walk into the mayor's office. She seemed very focused on something. "Charlotte!" he called. She turned and looked at him. Her mouth hung open. Her head was a little tilted. Alan knew that look, and it sent a tiny chill down his back. "...C-c'mon, kiddo," he said, waving her toward him. "Let's go home." She blinked twice, then tottered toward her father. On the sidewalk outside, she pulled on her sisters' sleeves. They leaned toward her, and she whispered something to them. Annabelle and Bee's eyes went wide. "...Whoooooaaaa!" Bee breathed. "That's really important," Annabelle said seriously. Whisper-whisper from Charlotte, and Annabelle and Bee looked confused. "Huh?" "Numbers?" Bee asked. Charlotte nodded. "What's important?" Alan asked. Annabelle and Bee looked at Charlotte. Charlotte looked at them, then up at Alan. "...Tell him," Annabelle said, but Charlotte didn't. "Go on! Tell him!" "Anna can't talk for you all the time, Char," Bee said. "...Uhhhh..." Charlotte pinched her lips in thought. She pulled on her father's pant leg, and he leaned down. She put a hand up to his ear. "I want to draw a picture," she said softly. Alan felt that chill down his spine again. "...Yyyeah... that'll be better," Annabelle said. "Yeah," Bee agreed. "Adults do weird stuff when they wanna keep secrets. I don't get it." "W-what? What?!" Alan said, realizing he was missing something. It was too late to do anything about it, though: Bee was running toward the north end of town, where the Tims were staying. "I wanna get my thing-hitter back first!" she hollered as Annabelle trailed behind her. The ABCs: Annabelle, Beatrix, and Charlotte. Alan had some idea of how his daughters worked. Annabelle was inquisitive. Beatrix was nuts. Charlotte was... ...Well, he had some idea. Had Alan remained the leader of Parkside, he would have named Annabelle as his successor (but only when she was older, of course). Sure, it would have caused a stir among people who didn't think a girl could be the leader... but frankly, screw them. Gary was too anxious and stumbling to trust with the job, and he didn't want it anyway. Annabelle was patient, thoughtful, and could get along with people as well as her father. Alan was slowly introducing her to some of the more practical skills he had learned from his father, although she didn't have the muscle mass to handle the bigger tasks yet. He had confidence in her, though. She could make it. She would make it. Alan was not afraid for Annabelle. But he was afraid for Bee. She climbed everything. She got into everywhere. She was the only five-year-old in Parkside with a police record. It wasn't that she was bad or thieving -- it was just that her curiosity was far more "hands-on" than it should have been. Her mysterious "thing-hitter," which she had pulled out of a ruin somewhere, likely without any supervision whatsoever, was only one example. Here's a better example: the previous summer, Bee climbed to the top of the Mitchell's house. Twice. Per day. For a week! It became the hot topic of conversation in Parkside. She was so small! How was she getting up there? All handholds from the side of the house was removed, the tree next to it was pruned to death, and Bee was literally tied to a chair in a different house and locked in a guarded room, but that didn't stop her from appearing on top of the Mitchell's townhouse every day, once just before noon and again about six to seven hours later. She would dance and spin like she was having a great time up there. "How the hell are you doing this?!" her father roared up to her after she did it the eighth time. That was the full extent of her misbehavior that summer, though. When the firemen would lay the ladder on the side of the house and climb up, she would mull a bit before willingly going with them, without struggle, every time. After the fourteenth time, she announced she was done. She gave no explanation of how or why she did what she did, but she never climbed a house again... ...That anybody knew of. If Alan had to choose Bee's future profession tomorrow, he would have made her a scout. Parkside kept a small contingent of men and women who circled the outskirts of town, watching out for any elements that could be harmful to their friends and families. They weren't always successful (as the K-H-E creeps proved), but they were very useful nonetheless. Bee was adventurous and at least a little crazy, which were two important qualities of any good scout. And then there was Charlotte. Oh, boy. Charlotte. Alan wasn't quite sure what to make of Charlotte. He wasn't sure what she was or where he would put her. She was smart... at least, that's what he thought. She was so damn reticent, it was difficult to speak to her unless she spoke first, which she rarely did. Alan was afraid that she was afraid of him. He was afraid that as her sisters found their own ways in the world, she would end up alone. He was afraid of the unknown, and he was afraid there was a lot that was unknown about Charlotte. Most of all, he was afraid that she was more than he could handle. Although he couldn't express it or even understand it, a slow, dawning horror was creeping up on him: the fear that he wasn't doing enough. Annabelle required instruction. Bee required discipline. Charlotte required... what? He thought about it after she drew her first picture. He thought about it when he caught Gary sneaking away to meet with her in the basement, where her mother had kept a collection of books. After pondering it over for so long, Alan figured that maybe all she needed was space. But that didn't sit right with him. Children need things from their parents, and needing nothing was counterintuitive. He needed to take action. He needed to make a decision. He had no idea what action to take, however, or even what his options were. And so his fears were allowed to sit. A week after Bee climbed the Mitchell's house for the last time, Gary and the girls were over at a friend's house, and Alan entered his daughters' room to pick up their dirty laundry. When he opened the curtains, he saw they had made a great big mess all over the walls of the room with black, brown, and blue crayons. But then he realized it wasn't a mess. It was the skyline -- the whole thing, all 360 degrees around Parkside. It was all drawn onto the walls of their bedroom: every visible building, every distant landmark, every collapsed heap of rubble. It wasn't very detailed -- it was mostly silhouettes -- but it was clearly recognizable (Sky Tower, especially). On the ceiling above him, they had drawn little circles, and it took him a couple minutes to realize what those were: stars. The ABCs were drawing their entire world onto the walls of their bedroom. That's when Alan started to put things together. All information flowed through Charlotte: every answer that Annabelle received, every thing that Bee encountered, everything was reported to Charlotte. Whenever any one of them learned anything, Charlotte learned it. Even Gary reported to her, to ask her about their mother, to ask her how to read. (It's impossible, I know. It's why I laughed when Gary told me who taught him. I'm just relaying it.) There was so much about Charlotte that Alan didn't understand. He was afraid he never would... ...And that she would suffer for it. While Alan met with the new mayor, I found The Mistress on the tenth floor, fixing up the last of the Lane Plan robots. I held up my bags and crowed, "Guess what I got!" She tilted her head. "Plastic bags?" "Clothes from Mariel's! I found them earlier, but the Parksiders took them. Gary just returned them to me." The Mistress went back to her robots. "Huh! Because he wants something, no doubt." "Well... yes, he'd like to get the rent lowered." "Tccchhhh," she sighed disapprovingly. "But it's nice! I don't think it's unreasonable." "It's your stuff," she said flatly. "They took it." "Yes, and Alan did the work of getting it back." She groaned. "How about this: we go upstairs, I show you what I found, and if you don't like it, you can keep charging the regular rate. If you do like it -- and I really think you will -- then at least knock a couple hundred off for one month. What do you say?" She pulled her head out of her robot's chest and chuckled. "Are you honestly saying you're going to put on a fashion show for me?" Am I, I asked myself. "...Well... yes." "And do you really think I'd be into something like that?" I looked at her. She looked at me. The Mistress liked the red one-shoulder evening dress with the silver high heels best. She didn't mind that I could barely walk in the shoes. "Woo!!" she shouted as she leaned back in her chair, with Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy" playing on Teeny's speakers. "Shake your money- maker!!" I laughed and spun around. As a man, I should have felt humiliated and refused to do anything. However, I was a disembodied amnesiac brain in a robot body surrounded by other robots, and their mistress, on top of a dilapidated skyscraper in the middle of a mostly-abandoned city. My life had taken a very strange turn, and an impromptu fashion show was just a drop in an ocean of weirdness. Plus, it was fun. Thus, I tried to strut toward The Mistress at the end of her "catwalk" (actually just a space she cleared out in her shop and surrounded with Lane Plan robots -- my "audience") and ended up stumbling from robot to robot instead. "Yeah! Yeah!! Uhhh..." The Mistress scratched her chin. "...Swing those hips!!" I did, and walking in the high heels became a tiny bit easier. I smiled broadly. "Yeeeeeaaaahhhh!! Wooooooooo!!" "There's a babydoll tee in there, too," I said. "It's my second favorite, after the blouse." The Mistress took a swig from her bottle of brandy. "Yeah! Robot's choice! Bring it out here!" I took my shoes off, then plucked the bottle from her hand. She leaned forward and groped the empty air like a child whose toy had been taken away. "-Ah! Wha?! Hey!!" "You've had enough," I said. "Excuse me?! I'll tell you when I've had enough!!" "Will that be before or after you pass out?" She tried to say something else. "Please don't make this a habit, Mistress. I don't want you turning into an alcoholic." I pulled my babydoll tee out of its bag, then worked on pulling off the dress. "...I'm not an alcoholic," she grumbled. "I know you're not, but you will be if you keep this up." I shook the bottle, causing the liquid within to slosh around. I put it on the floor, then struggled to pull the dress off. I didn't like the garment because it was easy to put on, but very difficult to take off. Whenever I removed it, I came dangerously close to ripping it. I suddenly felt a release of pressure in back. "You're supposed to unzip it, you dope," The Mistress said. The release nearly went all the way down to my lower back before I turned my back away from her. If I had blood vessels, I would have turned bright red. The Mistress tried to slip the strap off my shoulder, but I blocked her. "I, ah... I got it," I said. For a few moments, the wrongness of the situation sat heavy on me before I pushed the feeling away. I slipped out of the dress, keenly aware of The Mistress' gaze, then quickly ducked down and slipped on the babydoll. Christ, I thought, I hope she didn't notice the missing power button. "You're weird, Natsuko," The Mistress said. I turned my head. Her shoulders were slumped; she seemed to be relaxed. "What do you mean?" I asked. "I mean you've gone from being obnoxiously irresponsible to being obnoxiously responsible." She picked up her bottle, then screwed the cap back on. "You've somehow got it into your head that I need a caretaker, even though I'm a grown woman, and I've been taking care of myself since way before you came along." "...Well, ah... I... just-" "-Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's pissing me off. It's just weird, is all. Otherwise,