Rood | Page 5

big eyes were heavily circled with black eye shadow, the pupils thick pools you could fall into, braer tar he'd never come back from. Fed realized he was staring. She was beautiful.
The girl took the cigarette out of her mouth and puckered her lips at Fed; let a ragged stream of smoke tumble out at him. She tossed the butt on the ground, and as she stamped out the ashes and turned to tug open the doorway Fed saw a sign overhead. "Greener Pastures," it read.
Fed pulled his goggles off his forehead and down around his neck, chewing his lip before deciding to follow the girl inside. The door was heavy, probably metal core for security, and beyond it was a short dark entranceway of stained, gray-painted cement. Matching grey steps met the edge of the real wooden floor beyond, otherwise deliriously expensive real wood from real trees scarred and dented and stained into sub-plastic value. This place was old.
Just beyond the steps sat a huge metal dentists' chair, an antique in chrome and black plastic barely containing the swollen folds of an enormously fat man. He was getting a tattoo etched on his bare pink belly. The artist, a tall, intensely black-skinned man, glanced once at Fed over the girl's shoulder as she squeezed by. The man's head was a mass of steel-capped nubs, a style Fed had heard described in newsgroups but never seen.
In the background, a twangy Thai band was playing on tinny speakers. It was a German metal song Fed had heard on the streaming music channels he listened to while coding, something that had caught the music world's ear this week. It was an angry, growling song, but the way the Thais played it the metal seemed lollipop sweet. Fed liked it. There was something about the way tonal languages interpreted guttural Germanic ones that sounded more... authentic.
He stepped onto the stairs and past the black man. He was arranging the naugahyde straps of the big silver tattooing machine over the fat man's stomach. The fat man looked nervous and sad and excited, and he stank. Fed crept by, trying not to touch either of them. The girl was gone. The walls were lined with old soda- and snack-dispensers, those 6-foot high machines you used to put real coins into and which would pop out plastic packets of food and chilled drinks from their glass covered shelves. They were full of tattooing and bodmod equipment now, and a huge assortment of ink jars filled one marked "Fanta." The place reeked of fluorochlorocarbons and bleach.
At the end of a room a hugely solid metal desk filled almost its entire width, and on the desk was a massive, ancient waldo. A big black helmet was attached to the waldo by a fat data cable, and someone had stuck a Hello Kitty logo in bright pink right on the forehead. As Fed got closer, watching the man wearing the helmet wave thick rubber sensor gloves in the empty air, he got the eerie realization that he knew him, that this guy behind the shiny black plastic must be his brother, and that his brother was miles and miles away in a little tiny space between atoms or cells or Swedish avatars or something, thinking about anything, anything but here.
"Hey, Fed" came a muffled voice from under the helmet. "Be with you in a minute."
Chapter #3
Tony pulled off the helmet and smiled at Fed, his crooked grin bringing back 16 years of brotherhood all in a rush.
"What's up, bro?" he asked. Before Fed could answer he called out to the black man running the tattoo machine, "Hey Mil, this here's my brother! Came all the way down from the house-parks to see me."
"'Come down here to stare at Cass's ass is what he did" said Mil without turning around. He punched a button on the control box sitting next to the fat man. The machine began to hum, and the fat man groaned.
Tony steepled his fingers, his hands still encased in the thick waldo gloves. He watched Fed for a moment. Fed watched back. What do you say to your estranged brother after two years of nothing?
"Why'd you leave, Tony?" he asked, the words out of his mouth before his mind had a chance to think about them.
Tony's smiled widened. "Tonx" he said.
"What?"
"Tonx. Call me Tonx. Tony died a long time ago. I'm Tonx now. Changed the name when I left MIT."
"'Tonx'?" asked Fed, "Why Tonx?"
Tony's smile deepened. "Don't remember? When I was a kid I could never get the hang of writing a 'y'. I always wrote it as an 'x'. Teachers used to give me hell, for a while. Called me 'Tonx' to make fun of me, to try to shame me into playing by the rules.