Shadow of the Mothaship | Page 7

are now
trickling home in twos and threes and looking at the gap in the smile
with looks of such bovine stupidity that I stalk away in disgust, leaving
the reel bonded to the middle of the road forever.
I build a little fort out of a couch and some cushions, slop fix bath over
the joints so they're permanent, and hide in it, shivering.
#
Tricky-treaters didn't come knocking on my pillow-fort last night.
That's fine by me. I slept well.
I rise with the sun and the dew and the aches of a cold night on a
mattress of clothes and towels.
I flip open my comm, and there's a half-doz clippings my agent's found
in the night. Five are about the bugouts; I ignore those. One is about the
kite.
It crashed around Highway 7 and the 400 in Vaughan, bouncing and
skidding. Traffic was light, and though there were a few fender-benders,

nothing serious went down. The city dispatched a couple-three guys to
go out with solvent and melt the thing, but by the time they arrived, an
errant breeze had lofted it again, and it flew another seventy kay, until
it crossed the antidebris field at Jean Paul Aristide International in
Barrie.
I'm hungry. I'm cold. My teeth are beshitted with scum. Linus comes
tripping Noel Coward out of his front door and I feel like kicking his
ass. He sees me staring at him.
"Did you have a good night, Maxes?"
"Spiff, strictly nift. Eat shit and die."
He tsks and shakes his head and gets on his bicycle. He works down at
Yonge and Bloor, in the big Process HQ. His dad was my dad's
lieutenant, and since they both went to the confab on the mothaship
(along with all the other grownups on my Chestnut Ave), he's sort of in
charge. Shit-eating prick. He lisps a little when he talks, and he's soft
and pudgy, not like Dad, who could orate like a Roman tyrant and had
a washboard for a gut.
I hope he gets hit by a semi.
#
I pass the morning with my comm, till I come to the pict of Mum and
Dad and their Process buds on the jetway to the shuttle at Aristide,
ascending to the heavens as humanity's reps. They're both naked and
arm-in-arm and as chaste as John and Yoko, and my eyes fill up with
tears. I crawl back into my fort and sleep and dream about buzzing
Chestnut Ave in a shuttle with a payload of solvent, melting down all
the houses into trickles that disappear into the sewers.
#
I wake for the second time that day to the sound of a gas engine, a
rarity on Chestnut Ave and the surrounding North Toronto environs.

It's a truck, from the city, the kind they used to use to take away the
trash before the pneuma was finished -- Dad pointed out how it was a
Point of Excellence, the plans for the subterranean pneuma, and his
acolytes quietly saw to it. Three men in coveralls and reflective vests
ride on the back. It pulls up into my drive, and my comm chimes.
It's a text-only message, signed and key-crypted from Linus, on Process
letterhead. The first thing it does is flash a big message about how by
reading it, I have logged my understanding of its contents and it is now
officially served to me, as per blah blah blah. Legal doc.
I scroll down, just skimming. "-- non compis mentis -- anti-social
destruction of property -- reckless endangerment of innocent life --
violation of terms -- sad duty of the Trustees --" and by the time I'm
finished the message, I'm disinherited. Cut off from the Process trust
fund. Property stripped. Subpoenaed to a competency hearing.
The driver of the truck has been waiting for me to finish the note. He
makes eye contact with me, I make eye contact with him. The other two
hop out and start throwing my piles of ballast into the back of the truck.
I take my bicycle from the shed out back, kick my way through the
piles of crap, and ride off into the sunset.
#
For Christmas I hang some tinsel from my handlebars and put a silver
star on the big hex-nut that holds the headset to the front forks.
Tony the Tiger thinks that's pretty funny. He stopped into my sickroom
this morning as I lay flat on my back on my grimy, sweaty futon, one
arm outflung, hand resting on the twisted wreckage of my front wheel.
He stood in the doorway, grinning from striped shirt to flaming red
moustache, and barked "Hah!" at me.
Which is his prerogative, since this is his place I'm staying at, here in