Nestled in a cocoon of thick trees and vines, it is barred from the world.
The iron teeth of its gates spring from the ground and guard it with a jealous ferocity.
A sliver of its slate-dark roof juts out of the foliage, flanked by willowy gothic spires. A single orange light burns in the tall, narrow window; flickering in the dark, and pale during the day.
The house admits no visitors, and none but the foolish wish to enter the property anyway.
On its grounds, a serpentine hedge maze sits and waits, coming alive when the mist descends. Though it would be more accurate to say, when it rises.
No one can tell you for certain how it looks, or how large it is, or whether it hides something.
Whispers, thin and uncanny, became legends, that make conjectures about walls and shrines inside the maze, and howls echoing in the thick, consuming mist, floating on the silent night air, occasionally reaching the slumbering city.
Inside the house, they say, the architecture changes at will. Walls erect themselves, or else obligingly crumble; stairs move, and grow taller or shorter, tripping up unwelcome walkers and leading them into frustrating dead ends. Doors slam and curtains draw when the house’s ire is awakened. Lights go out and rooms drop precipitously into freezing temperatures. Even figures in paintings – figures no eyes have seen – move alongside you, eyes snagged on your form, peering beyond their frames and at times hopping into adjacent ones, to help or deter.
There are all sorts of critters around, that much at least is verifiably true. They can be seen crawling close to the gate, spilling into the land beyond. Never too far, though. Spiders, fat-bellied and astute; black cats with white sigils on their chests and white mittens on their large paws - a sign of luck. Critters that defy description and cataloguing, bugs in glimmering armor, even shadows, agile and articulated, guard the house and grounds.
The Steward of Ravenwing wanders around, rarely seen by anyone. He sleeps most of the day and takes up his nightly vigil when the Sun is long past its zenith. He looks lost and disheveled, often shoeless, in overlarge jeans and a worn shirt, like he’s not of the world. At least not entirely of this one. He talks to ghosts and shadows and spiders, and clams up around people.
Martin is a strange, harassed boy, and many days, he’s barely alive.
I never knew what love was, or how it vanquished terror, selfishness, or even common sense – until I loved him.
Summary: modern!Osferth; sent to investigate crimes happening within the church, Osferth faces life outside the cloisters he is used to. Struggling with his heavy burden and the temptations that lurk on every corner, he succumbs to the charms of a neighbor.
(light on plot and heavy on angst and fluff/midly suggestive, part of a larger fic)
WC: ~1.1k
*
This new life Osferth was living, like a borrowed shirt, felt all new. Tight and chafing in odd places, but exciting, vivifying. It made him different.
One night, he followed a vague lead into a steamy basement night club that smelled like sweat and perfume and alcohol, where he watched scantily clad people walk and dance around. He let some drunk woman over a foot shorter than him drag him onto the dance floor and touch him in places he had no interest in being touched. Not by her, at least. He was indifferent, if a little disgusted at points, and in the wee hours before dawn, soaked in his small tub until the water went cold.
Another time, he met with a liaison and had a cigarette just to do it, just because they offered. Just because he could. It stank and made him cough, almost nauseated.
Those things he did not terribly enjoy.
But there were things he liked.
He even thought about getting a pet. The simple, small joys of feeding it and scratching his nails into its soft fur, seeing it sleep in some corner carved out just for that purpose.
He’d never thought he would miss jeans. Or, to be more precise, he never noticed he did miss them. An open collar. Beat up converse like he wore as a kid.
He even liked doing laundry, especially since that one night.
Basket perched on your hip, passing him in the doorway. You’d meant to go, and he meant to let you, but the conversation just kept going, easy and wonderful, only stopping when the constant readjusting of the basket became ridiculous and conspicuous, and you both finally accepted it was time you went.
On his floor, books were littered and splayed open, and he had an enormous undertaking ahead of him. He was searching for things he only half believed could be found, and half hoped were exaggerated if real. Black masses, and Sin Eaters, and too many dreadful deaths. He couldn’t bring himself to face them tonight. It was raining and the world felt small, shrunken to the dimensions of his tiny apartment and he wanted to breathe, wanted to feel something other than despair.
He was allowed to leave his order, and temporarily relinquish some of his duties. He wore everyday clothes, he didn’t have to pray or attend mass when he had other work, didn’t have to follow strict doctrines on comportment. Even vows of chastity and poverty could be bent and ignored on occasion, if it brought him closer to the answers he was seeking. More and more, however, he sought not to bend, but break. Break unbreakable things, he reminded himself, and it felt like drowning on dry land.
His wishes, half-concealed even from himself, brought you out in the hallway at the right time, as he stood in the doorway, leaning his long, lean body against the frame, unsure where to go, what to do with himself. He wondered if his throat pounded as you chatted, his heart firmly lodged in it.
He accepted the drink you offered, if he had nothing better to do. He would have dropped it all, even if he did.
No, he didn’t want wine. It reminded him of church too much. You didn’t need to know that part.
So now he stood in the doorway of your kitchen, shoes off and toes curling on the floorboards, watching as you looked around for something else to drink. Body moving casually, like he wasn’t on pins and needles, opening cupboards, stretching to reach the elegant glasses stacked in a neat row; the silence thick and heavy.
He fought and dismissed the urge to run, to close himself off, and let the moment wash over him, wondering had he ever really been on a date?
Was it like this?
Talking vacuously, not even hearing the words that fall on your ears as you try to appear fine, nonchalant; telling your hands to stay put, ordering your body not to move on theirs; cursing at your eyes when they glance at what you want, sure you’ve been caught and found out…
He didn’t avert his eyes over the rim of the glass when he drank. You looked away and flushed, and talked so sweetly, low and intimate, susurrating like the rain batting at the windows.
He draped an arm over the couch and listened, not bothering to extinguish the stars of infatuation in his eyes.
Was it like this?
When people like each other, unabashedly, when they don’t struggle against the pull they feel?
From one moment to the next, he knew, it revealed itself to him, forcefully and beyond doubt. It was exactly like this. His cheeks burned. He was in the middle before he knew anything had started.
He watched your nails, painted a shade of purple and dusted with iridescent glitter. You made a quick little wave with your fingers, and he looked away instead of meeting your eyes, wanting to keep his desires and affections, like an open wound gaping in his gaze, to himself.
Did he like the color, you asked, meeting his shyness with tenderness.
He did, he admitted, running the tips of his fingers over the length of your fingernails, feeling the gritty texture of glitter and the smooth coat of polish, and then your skin against his palm. He liked everything about you.
*
Kissing was easy enough. He met you in the middle, and it was a light brush of lips on lips. He pressed closer and sighed when you touched his face, running your thumb over his cheekbone. The kiss fell away with a gentle pop, and his head swam. Again. Please. He was afraid he’d said it out loud when you smiled and leaned back in. It was longer then, and deeper, and he was sure he died a little when your mouth parted and his tongue smoothed over yours. Osferth was firmly in his head, eyes snapping open every now and then, checking if you liked it.
When he moved away, face hidden in the crook of your neck, his stomach twisted. Oh, god, you would know. You would figure out any moment he had barely any clue what he was doing, hands unsure and flitting away before they really touched or grasped anything, palms buzzing to stay. Would it be too much?
Did you mind that his open mouth was on your neck? Maybe he was going too far, too soon? It seemed too easy, too simple, to just do what he wanted, get away with it, be welcomed. There had to be some catch.
He was rescued from himself when your hand slipped into his, one finger at a time slithering between his and curling around the knuckles to hold him fast, body arching under him. He fell, and fell, and fell, and was caught.
Summary: Mills’s further misadventures, escape attempts, late night talks with a southern bartender, and vacillations in mood and mental state
CW: strong language, dark ruminations, space opera bleakness, my usual gallows humor
WC: ~4.5k
*
Mills strode purposefully down the corridors, working up a sweat and touching every panel along the way. Some of them lit up with mostly useless information, but often he received no response for his trouble.
At last, two sets of doors slid open, one vertically, the other horizontally, and he was given access to an elevator.
“Please, buckle up and secure any loose items. The elevator will experience a brief lapse in gravity.” Mills absorbed the information impassively, too preoccupied with other thoughts to act. It was only when his limbs started floating of their own accord that he looked up. By then his body slowly, but inexorably started peeling off the seat and ascending into the empty air. He twisted like a cat midair and grabbed for the two loose sides of the seatbelt, now also floating above the seat. They were already out of reach and he watched the map that showed his location as the elevator looped, hurtling towards its destination. He eventually bobbed up to the ceiling and pushed off it, aiming to get nearer to the ground. When he stopped, which would be any moment now, the landing would be less rough. Gravity seized his body and yanked harshly. The air was knocked out of him when he roughly landed ass first on the floor. He scrambled to his feet and dashed out as the holo informed him he was at the Grand Concourse.
It looked like an enormous mall. Or one of those tacky hotels rich people pay thousands of dollars per night to stay in. Floors stacked high with a cavernous hole in the middle, all polished chrome and sleek lines, as aggressively bright as anything he’d ever seen.
“Hello, welcome to the Grand Concourse aboard the Icarus,” a holo pad poured forth its light and took on the signature Homestead blue sphere shape. “Can I help you?”
Relief and worry clashed in him and reached a stalemate, so when he approached, Mills felt nothing at all. “I need to speak to a person. A real living homo sapiens human person,” he overqualified for the dense machine to understand.
“What kind of person? A personal trainer? A therapist?”
Mills allowed himself a short sigh and steeled his resolve once more. “Someone in charge. Part of the crew.”
“The ship’s steward handles passenger affairs.”
Yeah, yeah, and the Sun rises in the East. Very helpful indeed. Prick.
“It’s on level three of the Grand Concourse.” Oh, hey. Actually useful for once. Optimism sparked in him finally and he sped off with renewed vigor.
“Thank you!” he called out over his shoulder and heard a faint happy to help as he disappeared behind another sliding door.
The room marked as the steward’s office was dark as he approached it. Lights flickered to life as he entered, but nobody was inside. Mills stood and watched the empty chair at the empty desk and swallowed thickly. He pushed off his panicked disappointment as he doubled back and engaged the useless machine again.
He alternately growled questions and commands and tempered them with please’s squeezed through his teeth, until he was ultimately directed to find the captain on the bridge. A few bumpy zero gravity elevator rides later, and he was in a different sector, with more official looking cabins. He found the one that led onto the bridge and pressed his cuff to it.
“Bridge access requires special authorization.”
He tried two more times and got the same impassive response in return.
“Oh, gimme a fucking break,” he heard the oncoming hyperventilation as he huffed, peering into the window separating him from the life- and sanity-saving equipment just feet away. He kicked the metal door and pounded his fist on it for good measure. He was aware this would help him absolutely none, but he couldn’t stop himself.
*
With the leisurely amble of a man lost in every conceivable way, he wandered listlessly around this new sector. Eventually, he stumbled onto a narrow room which stretched far to the left and right of him.
“Welcome to the observatory,” a male voice, deeper and more commanding than the female voices doing the greeting and soothing, boomed and echoed in the vast chamber. “What can I show you?” it asked and projected a long, sprawling image. As more details coalesced, he recognized the route the Icarus was taking, mapping its voyage from Earth to Homestead II. A golden thread weaved through countless stars that hung in the air, stretching from where he couldn’t see far into the distance, to their destination.
“We’re making landfall soon,” he informed and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I’m the only one awake as far as I can tell.”
If the holo was able to process this kind of information, it wasn’t doing a good job of showing it. “Is there something you would like me to show you?” it tried again, in its ineffectual bureaucratic way.
“Show me Homestead II,” Mills shrugged. That was a start.
“Homestead II is the fourth planet in the Bhakti system,” the holo rumbled as it showed a projection of the planet. Mills didn’t need to hear the fact rundown again and he stopped the info dump.
“And where are we? Where is Icarus?”
“The Icarus is in transit from Earth to Homestead II. We will arrive in approximately ninety years.”
The projection condensed the sprawling image of the route so that it fit in the several feet of space directly in front of Mills. The wispy golden thread connected Earth and their destination and a single point pulsed golden bursts of light about a quarter of the way between the two.
Cold sweat instantly enveloped Mills and he felt his knees cut off. “What?” he breathed and was surprised the holo picked up the sound.
“The Icarus arrives at Homestead II in ninety years, three weeks, and one day.”
He shook his head, and the shorter strands around his face tickled his high cheekbones. “No, that can’t be right. How long ago did we leave?”
“Approximately thirty years ago.”
“I woke up too soon,” he muttered and sank into a crouch. With his head in his hands, he locked his legs back up and stuffed his head between his knees, taking deep steadying breaths.
When he willed himself to believe this was just a minor hiccup and he would see it resolved soon, he turned back towards the Grand Concourse, finding his legs felt hollow and wobbly.
*
“I need to send a message to Earth,” he sternly told the spherical greeter holo.
“Messages to Earth are sent by laser array. This is a costly service.”
“Suck my dick,” he spat as he blew past the machine and took a seat at the desk.
“Happy to help!”
“Planet and connection?” the operator asked jauntily.
“Earth. I need to contact the Homestead company.”
“There are 30,826 contacts listed under ‘Homestead Company’,” the screen displayed a crawl of several rows milling in front of him, all working for this damn place.
“I am en route for the exploratory mission scheduled for ninety years from now. There’s a bit of an emergency,” he rubbed his eyes, the excessive amount of sarcasm really taking it out of him.
“I can put you through to the customer helpline.”
“Would you? You’re a peach.”
A red button flashed Recording and the holo told him to begin his message.
“I am a passenger on the Icarus. For some reason, I was awoken far ahead of schedule. Ninety years, to be more exact. Something must have gone wrong with my pod. Nobody else is currently awake, as far as I’ve been able to tell. I need to know my next steps.” Mills was satisfied with his steady tone and clear delivery. “Thank you,” he remembered to add as his thick finger hovered over the send button.
The pad chirped and the voice told him his message was sent. He nodded to himself, pulling his dark brows together and leaning back in the chair. It would be agony waiting for the few minutes it took for someone to respond. He hoped it wouldn’t take hours – he would drive himself mad. Leaning back into the chair, he threw one long leg over the other and took a deep breath.
“Message will arrive in nineteen years.”
“The fuck?” he lurched forward, nearly launching himself out of the wheely chair, gliding too smoothly under him.
“Earliest reply in fifty five years.”
“Fif—“ his fists balled up.
“We apologize for the delay.”
He was still processing the number. Fifty five years. By then, he could be…
“That will be $6,012.”
“You can go fuck yourself six thousand and twelve times, bitch,” he muttered.
“Happy to help!”
*
In fifty five years, he would be… ninety four, he balked at the outrageous number. With a grisly humor, he corrected himself inwardly. In fifty five years, he would be fucking dead, more than likely. Stress and space dementia were not conducive to longevity. Sure, his manifold instruction manuals and informative videos did not specify this was the case, but he was willing to stake his life on that he was right.
And then, in another thirty five years – oh, and three weeks and a day, excuse him very fucking much – when the Icarus does touch down on Homestead II, the mysterious pile of bones piled up in some corner, or scattered around the ship from being tossed around some space shithole… Well, that would be a problem for the folks a century from now. Mills would be dead long before anyone came asking any questions, or sending any helpful, concerned messages from the ironically named helpline.
He trudged along the gaudy mall-like environment of the Grand Concourse, still pinching himself and trying to suggest scenarios to himself – he was just dreaming, this was some post-hibernation delirium, someone was yanking his chain…
So absorbed in his wretchedness, he didn’t notice the tinkling music as it discreetly began to fill the air. He only reacted when some movement in his periphery caught his eye. He did a double take and ran inside the bar-like environment. The long bartop was a deep, polished wood and the whole place had a southern sort of charm. But he only had eyes for the bartender.
A man about his size, with one prosthetic hand and a gray shirt buttoned all the way up to his throat, stood behind the bar and polished a glass with a serene look on his face.
He looked up after Mills stood there panting for a few beats, eyes as wide as saucers. “Afternoon, sir,” he greeted in an accent Mills couldn’t place instantly, but there was an unmistakable drawl to it.
“I thought I was the only one awake,” Mills croaked. Didn’t you hear me hollering all day, he thought, but was pleased he didn’t start on such a combative note.
“Who’d wanna sleep on a nice day like this?” the bartender’s voice was quiet and soothing. “Clyde’s the name.”
“Julian Mills. But everyone calls me Mills.”
“Pleased t’make yer acquaintance, Mills. What can I getcha?”
“Huh?”
“T’drink? Ya look like a whisky man. Or bourbon?”
“Bourbon’s fine.”
A whirring sound revved up and Clyde slid smoothly towards the bourbon bottles and spun 180 degrees like he was on a turntable. Mills gripped the bartop and leaned over it to find that under his dark shirt, tentacle-like machine parts coiled under Clyde and propelled him mechanically.
“Ugh, you’re a robot,” Mills sank into his seat.
“An android, technically,” Clyde said, no hurt feelings in his tone. Of course. He wasn’t a fucking person, Mills reminded himself.
“Wait! How much do you know about this ship?”
“Oh, I dunno. I know some things. Why don’t ya lay a question on me?”
“What can I do if my hibernation pod malfunctions?”
“That doesn’t happen. Hibernation pods are failsafe. They never malfunction,” Clyde offered a reassuring smile.
“Well, mine did. I’m here.”
“Can’t happen,” Clyde was satisfied with his answer and went back to polishing a glass.
“When do we reach our destination?” Mills swirled the brown liquid in his glass.
“’Bout ninety years or so.”
“And when are passengers scheduled to wake up?” he took a drink and sucked his teeth, winding up his killer blow.
“Four months b’fore we touch ground.”
“So how am I sitting here with you – with ninety years to go?” Mills set his glass down just a little too forcefully. Clyde was frozen, staring back at him unresponsively and Mills wondered if these androids just shut down when confronted with something they consider a paradox.
Clyde’s amber eyes darted side to side nearly imperceptibly fast and he huffed, arriving at a satisfactory answer. “S’not possible fer you t’be here.” He offered a serene smile and went back to his work. It was so easy to be an android, unbothered by the tragedy and incongruity of life.
Mills downed the rest of his drink and gave Clyde a rictus smile. “Thanks, buddy.”
*
“Good morning, Julian! It’s a beautiful day here on Starship Icarus. So rise and shine – it’s time to enjoy your stay!” The voice that greeted him was overly chipper and Mills groaned, folding a pillow over his head to drown it out. He never enjoyed an attitude like that much and in his present state of mind, it was torturous. He would rather take the incessant high-pitched beeping of alarms back home or even those metal bastards that ring and clank so loud they pierce your ears. He sat up and retrieved a cigarette from the panel. Opting for a quick, soothing smoke before breakfast, he was shown out to a special designated chamber for smoking. It collected the soiled air and purified it, protecting the other passengers. It also had the added feature of issuing warnings about how bad it was for him to be smoking, displaying disgusting images of impacted gums, yellowed fingers and teeth, and black, tar-laden lungs.
“You know what else is bad?” he asked, sucking in a defiant lungful of smoke and tossing his head back sumptuously as he savored the rich notes of tobacco. “Waking me almost a century too early and dooming me to die alone,” the cigarette dangled and bobbed in his mouth as he spoke, leaning his long body against the wall. When he was done, a tray protruded from the wall, but he tossed the butt on the floor and watched with contempt as some fancier cousin of a roomba came scuttling in to clean up.
When he entered the mess hall to get some breakfast, he finally became conscious of the fact he hadn’t had any food in the whole time since he’d been up. His empty guts roared with a painful, nauseating growl, demanding sustenance. The enormous room was outfitted to seat five thousand people and it showed. Even more so when his soft solitary steps padded dully as he approached one of the large hive-like contraptions that doled out food.
“Please, make a selection,” it prompted after he activated it with his cuff.
“Sorry, the French roast is reserved for gold-class passengers.”
Fucker. They conveniently left that out from the myriad promotional materials. Who did he have to blow to get some decent coffee, then? He pressed it again, and a few more times after he received the same response, feeling unabashedly petulant.
“Sorry, the French roast is reserved for gold-class passengers.”
“Well, I want it,” he responded futilely, anger distilling into a hot ball in the center of his chest. It growled at him to punch the fucking thing, but he decided against it.
He went down the line, pressing every button on the panel, like when he was a child and pressed all the buttons on the building call box when he was let in, just to make the people have to come to the door and yell into the receiver when they realized no one was there.
”One black coffee,” the machine finally acquiesced.
He would have preferred it with creamer, but screw it.
Mills’ head was clearer after a night’s sleep, a few robust cups of coffee and whatever the hell soylent-green-only-beige concoction they served to passengers with his clearance for breakfast.
Consequently, he was able to think more productively. He scoured the areas he did have access to, and found things that would come in handy. For the next several days, he looked through assorted equipment he found in storage, and manuals - medical autodoc, the bar service model android guide, hibernation pod. Bingo, cocksucker. He took the last one with him and read it religiously cover to cover, and then flipped right back over to the beginning, until he could recite it backwards and forwards. He raided the storage some more, rummaging through every box that would open for him. For several weeks, according to Clyde’s sporadic updates, he worked on the pod, trying to fix it. When he was too tired, fingers too sore from work and eyes too tired from reading, he would go up to the bar on the Grand Concourse and hang out with his de facto friend.
The one armed – correction, one-handed - bartender Clyde came preloaded with his own story, if passengers wished to be regaled by listening to it. He was full of amusing superstitions, Tom Sawyer-esque stories about his childhood and family, delivered in a funny accent and loaded with folksy wisdom.
“Couldn’t they even spring for a whole hand for you?” Mills teased one night as he downed one in a string of bourbons.
“People prefer some imperfections. Slight irregularities in the face, a lack o’symmetry, some filler words as we speak… It sets ‘em at ease.”
“Well, that’s the least comforting way of putting that,” Mills’ face soured. Just as he had forgotten himself enough to be ribbing Clyde like a friend, he was rudely reminded of how pathetically alone he was. “Pour me another.”
“Comin’ right up.”
*
One such evening at the bar, a solar flare disrupted the ships electronics for a few unhappy seconds, just at the moment when Mills was, unfortunately, engaged in conversation with Clyde. The bartender glitched uncannily and his illusion, what part of it Mills could hold on to thus far, was shattered. He didn’t come to wet his whistle for a few days, didn’t even leave his cabin much, except to smoke and sulk. It was getting to be weeks before the utter despair of hopeless loneliness started to nag at him to pretend to talk to the android again.
Mills tried comforting himself that he was making progress on the pod. After weeks of tinkering with it, finally, it gave way. The oval contraption hissed as it filled with some foggy gas and opened in segments in front of him, like a mechanical flower blossoming. He stood in awe as his heart raced. He did it. As if someone spurred him on with a whip, he leapt inside triumphantly, and relief washed over him as the mechanical petals began to fold in around him, ensconcing him safely inside. He closed his eyes, chest shaking with laughter and unshed tears.
He lay as still as he could, wondering if the pod sensed his activity and was refusing to proceed with the next steps until he was calm. He waited for an indeterminate amount of time, realizing something was seriously amiss. The temperature inside was rising, from his body heat and breaths. His breathing accelerated as his body tried to extract enough oxygen out of the rapidly dwindling supply inside the pod. The damn thing was not working, no systems were engaged. Mills pressed his hand against the glass, prying it open, but it wouldn’t give. He tried pushing harder against it, but it stayed put. Fight mode engaged, he felt the icy pricks of panic stab along his vertebrae like pin pricks. He pushed off the ridges of his mattress, slamming bodily against the lid of the pod. He pushed to the limits of his strength, growing dizzier with every burst and finally pooled into an exhausted heap. His flailing body finally set off sensors inside and the pod automatically opened, programmed to do so if something apparently living stirred inside it. Mills shot out like Dracula bursting through his coffin and sucked in greedy lungfuls of air as the black dots cleared from his vision. He climbed out of the death trap and steered well clear of it.
*
In all that time, while he thought he was at least semi-successfully overriding the programming of the pod and making it functional again, all he really managed to achieve was to fix the opening and closing mechanism. And even that was debatable since he nearly suffocated in there. He would hardly call that fixed.
As he wallowed in his defeat, a thought came to him. Maybe he could finagle the opening and closing mechanism on some of the crew’s pods. It was a shit thing to do to someone, but crew had clearance he didn’t. Surely they had ways of communicating directly with the Homestead Company, or they knew better than he did what to do. At the very least, how to put him and themselves back under.
*
“Crew pod room access requires special authorization.”
It didn’t even come as a surprise to Mills anymore. His plan hadn’t even really included the door cooperating. It would have made for a nice shortcut and an overdue bit of good fortune, but he came to terms with this restriction easily.
He launched himself into the task of trying to bust into the crew pod room. If there was one thing he had done successfully in all his wretched time, it was picking open door mechanisms. He threw all he had into it – the tools he acquired over time, short circuiting the panel, busting it with a mallet, welding it open, spraying some of that pink liquid from his water dispenser at it.
After several more days of his siege, he finally took a break. It smacked of defeat again, but Mills told himself he’d keep trying.
He finally ventured back to the Grand Concourse, embarrassingly excited to have a chat with someone again, even if it was a stick figure on a wall or a volleyball with a bloody handprint on it.
Mills strode purposefully towards the bar, the hum and greetings of the machines around him having become white noise to him. Had he moved slower or grown less desensitized to it, he might have taken note of how, behind him, the door started to shut, but then went a little haywire. It sputtered its words.
“Grand Con—please—make—going dow—level—“ it kept yawning and chomping its double lipped mouth. Then it seemed to stabilize, shutting properly. “Grand Concourse,” it announced and guttered out.
*
“Missed me?” he called out to Clyde as he took a seat.
“S’good t’see ya, Mills,” Clyde smiled and appeared friendly, as always. It may have been just a shadow on the wall, but Mills took what comfort could be had. “The usual?” Clyde offered.
“Why not?”
Clyde poured him his drink and left room for Mills to talk, if he so wished. He made for a good replica of a bartender, not pushing for people’s confessions unless they were eager to unburden themselves. Mills let the drink burn its way into a puddle in his gut and stared into the prism-like bottom while Clyde polished his little glass, undisturbed by anything around him.
“I’m so fucked, Clyde,” Mills laughed joylessly.
The bartender stared blankly for a few moments as he searched his scripts, locating a response that seemed to fit. “C’mon now. Every could has a silver linin’.”
Mills kept chuckling dryly and all his elan seemed to evaporate. “I never thought about it that way,” he feigned being profoundly moved by Clyde’s words, taking cold comfort in the fact that even sarcasm as egregious as his went over the android’s head. “That’s so helpful.”
“M’glad t’hear that.”
“Yeah. I guess I’ll lose my mind long before I ever fall deathly ill, so I won’t even be present mentally for my total physical and spiritual collapse,” Mills said cheerfully and toasted the air with an empty glass.
“That’s bad luck,” Clyde warned and Mills rolled his eyes. Oh, no – would something go wrong if he toasted with an empty glass? Whatever would he do?
After a pause, Clyde went philosophically on. “Well, we all die, don’t we?” The thought did not seem to disturb him in the least. “Even us androids end up on some scrap heap somewhere.”
“You don’t mind that at all, huh?”
“Well, the way I reckon, whether we tie ourselves in knots over our fate, or let it wash over us, we still end up in the same place we were headin’ anyway.”
“Do I sense you’re about to lay some of that famous bartender wisdom on me?”
“If ya’d like,” Clyde said in a remarkably convincing display of coyness, smirking and averting his eyes like some saucy hussy.
Mills nodded. Not like he had better prospects lined up.
“Yer not where ya want t’be. That’s fair enough,” Clyde tossed a rag over his shoulder and leaned on the bartop confidentially. “Ya feel like yer s’posed t’be somewhere else.”
Great summary of everything he’s been saying since day one. “Two for two, Clyde, old chap.”
“Say ya could snap yer fingers and be wherever ya think ya should be. Chances are ya’d still feel the same way. Not in the right place.” Mills wanted to disagree energetically, but Clyde went on with his ruminations. “Point bein’, ya shouldn’t get so hung up on where ya’d rather be and squander the chance t’enjoy where y’are,” Clyde said and gave Mills a penetrating stare.
Mills raised a brow. “You coming on to me, Clyde?”
“’Fraid not.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Take a break. Play a trick on yerself. Breakthroughs come when yer mind is relaxed. Often, when yer too focused on the problem, ya get tunnel vision. But when ya distract yerself, focus on other things, let yerself enjoy something…” he paused. “The answer jus’ comes.”
Mills’ silence confirmed Clyde was on the right track.
“Live a lil’,” the bartender gave him a friendly nudge.
“Live a little, ay?” Mills considered. “Alright then. But only a little,” he grinned, indicating with his thumb and index finger, like he was being offered some cake and he was trying to cut down.
Clyde mirrored the grin and the gesture. Mills slapped the polished wood of the bar and got to his feet with a renewed sense of purpose.
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