Lotus Gemology
At six weeks, Methyl woke up. She asked where we were, like, as in, on a map, and turned away from the bot carnage that spasmed outside her hospital windows without panic.
“Welcome back,” I said, then regretted it.
“To a phony research center,” she said, “And you’re supposed to go down the deepest hole ever dug in two weeks? Happy birthday, too?”
She couldn’t have known I’d shone a light into her past in my dreams, but maybe she felt it. She’s felt just about everything else over the past weeks.
“Gabby,” I said. “She’s Xavier’s android.”
“I knew it.”
Methyl snapped her fingers hard. An antique flashbulb’s pop and burst of light jumped from her hand.
“Holy shit.”
Methyl wove her hand in the air. A faint hint of burnt hair wafted from her.
“That ever happen before?”
“No way.”
“Don’t do that again. Stop snapping.”
“I’m just going up in flames whether I do anything, Jesus Christ,” she said, and looked likely to disappear into tears again.
“That wasn’t flame, though,” I said. “That wasn’t what I saw you do before.”
“I need to get out of this room.”
“Let’s go see Francesca.”
That pulled the first smile I’d seen from her since New Mexico.
“Mizz Francesca,” Methyl said as we came into a hangar where Xavier’s people were doing her body work. She was a patchwork of grey paint and molding putty and new paneling. On the way there, I’d told Methyl that Francesca now was under the Bill of Rights.
Don’t look at me, I’m not done
“We have my phone,” I said as I guided Methyl around the bay and toward the hangar opening, out to the packed dirt road that led to the hole through the crust.
“Backing up a little,” I said.
I told Methyl about Xavier’s confessions to me following our conversation with the stammering Gabbyella. First, that she’d visited me at the hospital only hours after Aventura happened and did some preliminary scans of my back while posing as my attorney as I slept.
“A fifteen-year-old lawyer?” Methyl said.
“It’s different here, she said to me once, and I bought that she was doing multiple PhD’s.”
“You also bought that she was a human being.”
“That, too. But I know more than they think I do now. They want to shock Gabby with Xavier’s version of the ball lightning, get her imprinted and send her down with me, something to that effect.”
“She’s not in the plans, though, is she?” Methyl said. She’d lowered her voice to a whisper above the clatter of work going on inside the hangar.
“Absolutely not. Xavier’s backing it because it puts eyes on the ship for him, supposedly.”
“Do you even want to do this? Whatever this is?”
“I don’t want to go home to Dayton to stare at a ripped-apart sky above the Golden Apple and wait for whatever it feels like is coming, yeah,” I said. “Maybe that’s what the skrip is about. Getting you out of your cave and into the hole.”
“What for, though?”
“Water.”
“What?”
“There’s a form of water down there. It’s basically absorbed by rocks, and we’re near a river of it. Three hundred miles above it. It’s emptying into the mantle and apparently, it’s not naturally occurring water. It’s some isotope, something made. The ship, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the ship, or whatever, needs it. I think this is a gas run.”
The water is greater, does more, better than gas, Gabby said from behind us.
I turned and saw her approaching us.
“Thank you, Gabby,” I said.
I threw Methyl a glance to calm her in advance of any explosions.
Gabby looked through me.
Your time is up
“What, Gabby?”
Your seventeen minutes are up. Aventura. I have slated, translated your murmuring in the ambulance, the hospital before you, you lost consciousness, after Aventura. Hi, Sophia
I was made certain by the rage on Methyl’s face that she was thinking of lighters and straws again.
You spoke, talked about some angels. A many minutes about some angels coming
“Which angels?”
They’re angels, you said. You said, you didn’t say which angels
“Ball lightning,” Methyl said.
Every single angel is terrible. What do you, did you mean
“He was babbling under morphine.”
I said, “I got my bell rung pretty hard.”
Your bell, your timer, yes. Your optimum time to merge with me is soon
“Woah,” Methyl and I said together.
Dongle, see dongle for, I need to please see your dongle for upload plans, thanks
“We’re not plugging in, Gabby,” I said. “You’re already reading me. You have what you need.”
More is
Gabby turned to walk around behind me, reaching for my untucked shirttail as she came around. Whip-like, Methyl was between us.
“Stop, Gabby,” Methyl said.
Without a word, Gabby lifted my shirt over my back. Methyl threw out her right arm and landed a hard slap across Gabby’s cheek. A firecrack sunburst blew around Gabby’s face. She tottered back four steps, wisps of black smoke rising from her cheek. Methyl advanced on her like a prizefighter.
Cease, Sophia
Methyl connected again with the same blow and produced another flashbang. Gabby spun on one foot and careened across the hangar floor in search of her balance and came up against a handrail near the center of the space. Workers who’d heard the bangs of the slaps or seen the flashes were unbending from their jobs and taking notice.
Sophia
But Methyl was on her again. She delivered three more slaps, right, left, right, of increasing ferocity, until she and Gabby were nearly enveloped by light coming from above down to the android, and the hangar boomed with shockwaves. When the fusillade was over, Methyl staggered back as white and black smoke and steam cleared around Gabby’s form. Gabby remained standing, clutching the handrail, entirely encased in a column of quartz crystal, a five-foot-two stack of Mexican diamond through which Gabby’s frozen body refracted in the hangar’s halogens.
To be continued