Alone Again Or | Page 8

take you in deep metal busses to The Old City where there are no cars or people and you can walk under the sky for an hour. If you cut and run, you get shot in the back. I saw a boy go down when I was nine."
Syd didn't know what she meant by The Old City, but assumed she meant the city outside of the newer Steeple City walls, where people had lived before mass disease lowered populations everywhere.?
She slowly rotated her cup in circles on the dark wood table with both hands, looking at the surface of the water.
"The busses were charged so you couldn't telepathically bother anyone on the outside," she said quietly into her glass of water.
Syd regretted the topic.?
"How can doctors tell if you're telepathic?"
"I was a strong case. I was unlucky. An anti-telepath police raid was going on at the time, and I projected onto on of theirs."
Syd nodded. He'd heard of the roaming troops of police with captured teles. They'd pay weak willed telepaths extravagant amounts and put them in high class hotel rooms.?
Or that's the rumor on the street, anyway, Syd thought.
It seemed to him that there was nothing else to talk about. He looked at Somnam. She seemed to be looking at something behind Syd, just above his shoulder.?
He knew there was nothing behind him but the faux-wood of the booth they sat in.
"So what do you do for money?" Somnam said.
Syd looked her in the face.
"Do you know what a sleeper is?"
Jennifer lay next to the sleeping University boy. He'd been asleep for several minutes; the music still pounded out of his computer's music system. She laid facing away from him. One of his arms was around her, cupping a breast.?
The music hurt in her head. It shook her teeth. She needed a drink.
She held her breath and lifted the boy's arm carefully. He did not stir. She slid herself onto the floor and stood up. He appeared to be sleeping soundly.
She put her clothes on. As she began to search, a young girl walked into the dorm room through the closed door. The girl resembled Jennifer.
Except in the details, Jennifer thought, and they're some big fucking details.
The girl's eyes weren't blue and bright like Jennifer's; they were solid milk white, pupil-less polished marbles above her cheeks. She wore a pale blue dress. The flesh of her neck sagged onto the collar, white as paper and with a similar texture appearance. It bunched in flaps on her wrists and ankles. Fluid dripped off the girl's black hair onto the brushed metal floor.?
Jennifer could hear the drops splating noises over the music.
The girl stepped forward and held a pen like cylinder out to Jennifer.?
Jennifer saw that the girl's eyes were spinning in their sockets fast enough to make them appear solid.?
A strong smell of smoke and ammonia leached into the room.?
"Want a hit?" the girl said. She had Jennifer's voice.
Jennifer turned around and reached under the boy's bed for her shoes. She sat on the floor and began to tie her sneakers up. The girl stood in the center of the room, and began to pirouette. Jennifer ignored her; whatever the girl's legs looked like under the dress, Jennifer had no desire to see them.
Behind her on the bed she could hear the boy mumbling in his sleep and she began to hurry.
Water flushed into the dormitory and soaked the few inches of Jennifer closest to the floor. The water came up out of the floor with lily pads and an earthy smell. She felt the water slip up past her asshole and the cold was unpleasant.
She stood up and began to look through the boy's drawers. She could hear the girl, or someone, sloshing in the water behind her. In one drawer she found a bottle of whiskey. She picked up his wet pants from the floor and took his little brown wallet from the back pocket. In a corner she saw a backpack crumpled on the floor; she put both the whiskey and soaked wallet inside the bag and left the room.?
Now that kid had fucked up dreams, she thought.
The dorm hallway was carpeted. As she walked by one door, the carpet turned into grass and the hallways expanded into a field of soft green blades. Children ran with Frisbees, throwing them at garbage cans. Jennifer stretched her left hand out and felt for the wall. She used its invisible existence to guide her until the hallway faded back in again.?
She decided to risk a drink and stopped to take a long drink from the bottle of whiskey in the hallway.
No one bothered her. She heard no alarm.
She stood waiting for the drink to take hold of her brain, breathing quietly in case anyone moved or awoke on the