Ch 5: The View-Master

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In stereo, two identical images fitted to the eyes illusion depth. Methyl knows this is how her toy worked when she gave it, her most prized possession, to Richard. To get a picture of Angela beyond Francesca, because that’s what she’s ostensibly here to do, in this hometown that is feeling less and less like home—Methyl has no memory of a community this wealthy existing in Dayton—she asks her opener again.

“What’s your most prized possession?”

“Is that a rich-poor question?” Angela says.

“What’s your favorite,” Methyl says. It’s a hedge against knowing the person who stole her mother’s car. It worked with Richard. What will you fight for? You usually get the truth.

“This is morbid, maybe. I have my own original of her,” Angela says. She takes her phone from her small desktop and shows Methyl the screen. “It’s a dashcam shot of my mom the night she died, when I was a baby. Francesca sent out the last few seconds after she realized they were going to crash. I guess this is the only copy. Depending on where Francesca is.”

They had dropped talking about her mother’s car instantly, like something burning hot, Methyl thought.

On the phone is nearly the same image Francesca showed Richard and Methyl the night of the attack at the e-waste pits.

“My brain is on again. I ran, I slept, so here we are.”

Bruises stamped under her eyes. Two treadmill machines in her room.

“Ha, ha,” she says, noticing Methyl peering around. “I’ve got miles to go before I sleep.”

“You’ve heard of skrip, right? I’m assuming Xavier paid you a visit. Or his bricked bot did, before I was the one to brick it. We aren’t alike.”

“I like to see her,” Angela says. “It’s not unusual. Too many people hold that opinion that that’s unusual to have this photograph.”

“What in the world do you want to see,” Methyl asks Angela.

“What’s that from?”

“A toy. It asks you, what in the world do you want to see and click, you turn and see a beautiful place in depth, from the light hitting you this place comes up and click, another place.”

Angela’s face was somewhat slack.

“What?”

“You said skrip. You did say skrip-something, right?”

“Never mind. What, yes, something. I just was wondering.”

“It’s why I can still live here. Xavier bought my father out completely for some billions, and I stayed. Because who wants to go on the last not-trashed tours of the world with new billionaires? Not when you have running to do. Can you help me sleep? I broke my arm against the banister for the morphine. I pray I have to get my appendix out for the anesthesia. What do you want to see? I see we’re dead pretty soon. Monster solar flare, I think, from the looks of it.”

Angela crosses to the sheet of windows and looks out. The dog barks.

“There’s a dog—”

“Loose in the woods. You told me,” Methyl says. “Are you doing okay?”

Angela’s bloodshot-eye bruises are darker, or her complexion around them has further drained of color.

Methyl sees emptiness in her eyes. She’s not certain Angela’s going to be all there for much longer. Solar flare, then. It’s a place to start.

“We have very little time left,” Angela says.

“Before?”

“Time left to leave this universe, I realized. Solar flare first, then the dark. You can’t find anything in the dark.”

“What are we finding before time runs out, then, Angela?”

“Something not dark, not light. Greyness. The color of grey.”

Angela seems becalmed for a moment before her face comes crashing down into exhaustion and misery again.

“Do you know where Eric is?” Methyl asks. She feels a slipping away happening around Angela and does not know what to do.

Angela pitches forward limply, knocking her forehead against the window and sending spidery, white cracks up the glass, then collapses lifelessly onto the floor.

Methyl is turning on her heel, snatching up Angela’s phone and before she realizes what’s happening, she is out the mansion’s front door, screaming for a taxi.

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