Self Interest

We left the shop an hour later with lighter wallets and a few heavy bags, making our way back to Lee’s apartment. I could barely resist peeking into my new collection of gadgetry, enduring a barrage of commets from Lee that were all along the lines of “My god, you are such a little boy.”

            I couldn’t be blamed. They sold cool s**t at the Nexus, and if anyone sold cooler s**t than Fence and his pack of demons, I hadn’t heard about it yet.

            “I know this is sick, but I almost wish we could go find some bad guys to rough up, because I really want to try some of this stuff out.”

            Lee scowled. “Take it from me, it’s never too long between catastrophes. You’ll get your chance to crack some heads. Pretty soon you’ll be wishing you didn’t need all that. Although,” she said, rolling her eyes at the two bulging bags I was holding, “I’m not convinced you needed all that s**t in the first place.”

            I affected outrage as we stepped into her place, dropping the clanking gear on her bed. “S**t? These are the finest Thauma…tronic… things you can get! I feel much better about the whole not-getting-killed thing. Honestly, I think the next time we fight someone, I might not break any bones.”

            “Always good to aim high.”

            “I would say ‘shoot for the moon’, but…” I glanced out a window at the gray plain beneath. “Anyway. Now what?”

            “What?”

            “What next? You know, what are we doing?”

            She shrugged. “I don’t know. I was going to read for awhile. You’re welcome to stay, of course.” She went to the wardrobe, producing a flat, gray device I realized was an electronic book reader and flopped into a chair. “What about you?”

            “Um.” I hadn’t given it any thought. “Just going to hang, I guess. I was thinking about looking for a new apartment.”

            “Did you want to live here?”

            “With you?” I sort of stammered. She gave me a look.

            “I meant at the Nexus. There are all different sorts of places you can rent, the restaurants are always open, the light door bank is very convenient.”

            I thought about it, looking out the window. I was hoping to see Earth, but I suspected the Nexus would be placed somewhere that Earth never faced it. We can see the lunar landers with telescopes, a gigantic skyscraper complex would probably have been spotted by now. This was too weird.

            “I do think this place is cool,” I said quietly, “But it’s a little too… separate.”

            “Well, we are on the moon,” Lee pointed out helpfully. I shook my head.

            “It’s more than that. It feels blocked off, in like a whites-only, front of the bus kind of way. I mean, look at this thing.” I pulled the shield ball from one of my bags, squeezed it and released, watching the half-transparent shield whump into reality and vanish. “Don’t you think people deserve this sort of thing? Not just… us?”

            “What do they need a magic shield ball for?”

            “Fence said it’s designed to stop bullets. I think there are millions of people who would sleep on top of this if they had it. And I’m f*****g around looking for bad guys just to try it out. I mean… that’s sort of messed up.” I was becoming dangerously introspective. “It’s one thing to keep a handle on the Texts, those can be misused so easily, but… people are starving down there, and we’ve got 24 hour restaurants next to doors that instantly lead anywhere.”

            Lee nodded. “Well, this was sort of what we talked about when you decided to do the Reader thing. This is why I don’t just go to Conclave parties, I try to really make a difference in the world.”       

            “Well, yeah,” I replied, “But it’s not just you and me, it’s not even just Conclave. There’s a whole society up here that the world doesn’t even know about. Why? You know? People could really use some of what we’ve got.”

            “I… don’t really know. It’s almost like being powerful makes us feel like we’re somehow different. Apart.”

            I sighed and looked into my bags of gear, trying to articulate this sudden doubt. “I guess I just don’t feel completely separate yet. I’m sticking to this, I want to do good in the world, but to me, that means being part of it. Not watching from Olympus.”

            Lee looked a little hurt, and I realized I was sort of implying that she had a s****y attitude since she lived here too. I couldn’t really come up with a way to make her stand out, though. She was different, obviously, and I was starting to see what kind of a person she was, but I felt my point was valid. “We’re Human, you know? I feel like we belong on Earth.”

            She was quiet for awhile. She put her reader aside, pulled up her right sleeve, and showed me her brand, chrome sigils twisting through her skin, reflecting little ribbons of my face.

            “If they could deal with this, I could maybe deal with them.”

            “Who’s they?”

            “They are everyone,” Lee muttered, “But most of all, my so-called family. Top of every class, perfect physical condition, perfect school attendance, obedient, never got in trouble with alcohol or drugs, never even got a speeding ticket… but once I came home for Christmas with a funny silver tattoo…” She shook her head. “You give a hundred percent to people and all that does is make them expect more. You give, you give, and the more you do, the more you belong to the people whose expectations you try so feverishly to meet.”

            I had never experienced this sort of thing. I kept my mouth shut.

            “It gets to the point where, even as you maintain this perfection, even as you work your a*s off day in and day out to be exactly what they say you should, and never let them down… anything you do for yourself, even if it harms nobody, even if it doesn’t affect them in any way, it’s unacceptable. Selfish. Even if you keep the perfect act up, you belong to them, to their expectations, and any effort in any other direction is just a disappointment.”

            Her voice was terribly bitter. “I’ll go down there and take bullets for them, rescue their children, protect them, and all they’ll ask when I’m done is ‘where were you when my uncle got hit by a car’, ‘you can teleport, why don’t you get us some money or some food’, ‘that guy killed my kids, why are you giving him to the police’. Never enough. You show up and save the day and your reward is open, begging hands.”

            “So if we were to share some of this technology, try and improve people’s lives worldwide, they would just…”

            “Just wonder what we were holding back, and why, and who do we think we are. Better to just do what we can and expect nothing in return. We take care of ourselves.” Lee looked at her reader, tossed it back into the wardrobe, and slumped further into her chair. “I’m sorry if I’m bumming you out, I have kind of a hangover.”

            I said nothing. It could have just been that I was naïve, I supposed, but Lee’s anger had crossed from practical into cynical and I didn’t think she’d noticed. After a few minutes of awkward, contemplative silence, I stood up and stretched.

            “I think we could both use some sleep, and I need a shower,” I said, hoping against hope that she would recognize my plea to leave gracefully. She was perceptive, and nodded.

            “Yeah, I think I’m gonna sleep for a few weeks. Did you want to stay, or…?”

            “Oh, that’s all right. I know the way home,” I said, gesturing towards my Text. “Give me a call if anything comes up, all right?” I picked up and shouldered my bags of gear.

            “Will do,” she said, and there was that odd reluctance in her voice, that said she wanted me to go, but she didn’t want to want me to go.

            I had felt the same thing towards Beck on many occasions. I wasn’t sure what that meant.

            I flipped open my Text, Read the words to take myself home, and closed my eyes pointlessly against the disembodied maelstrom of color. It was a rougher ride without Lee to stabilize me, and I stumbled into my apartment clumsily, almost falling.

            Immediately, my cell phone chirped a few times in a row. Now that I was back on Earth, all the calls and texts I’d been out of reception for were arriving together. I flipped it open, curious. One reminder to pay my bill, (ha) one text from Buck, two missed calls from Buck, and a missed call from… Beck?

            She was still trying to call me?

            I held the “1” key until the phone automatically dialed my voice mail, and listened.

“Message one: Hey Trick, just Buck calling, wanted to see if you were alive and un-exploded I guess, give me a call when you get the chance, um… so do you still work at the bookstore, or are you like a professional wizard now, or…? It’s all good, just hit me up. Thanks.”

            I felt a pang of guilt. Buck had been nothing but supportive when I found the Text, and had no doubt covered for me with the boss, and I’d thanked him by being AWOL and out of touch for days in a row. I honestly was about to call him, but the second voicemail stopped me cold.

“Message two: -heard from her all day, I’m starting to get worried… no, I don’t think anything happened to her, but you know how she can be, flaky as anything… seriously, right?... I don’t know, I was supposed to meet her at the mall. She didn’t show, and there were all kinds of cops and people freaking out about something that happened at the bookstore so I couldn’t get in… ugh what time is it? There isn’t much time left and I… s**t!... no, I pocket-dialed Tyler-“

            The accidental message ended, and I stood there, ear still to the phone, stunned. Beck had been planning to meet someone at the same bookstore where I’d battled the renegade Reader, someone who hadn’t shown up. Someone female.

            I thought back to before the fight, trying to remember everything the renegade had said before she noticed me. She’d been talking on the phone about someone, someone female, bossy, someone supposed to meet her soon…

            My phone rang.

            I jumped about two feet, almost dropping the device, and took a deep breath before looking at the little display screen.

            Beck.

            I hesitated for a moment. Considering what I’d just put together, it seemed as though Beck was somehow involved with the renegade Lee and I had dispatched the day before. It would explain where the girl got a Text, it would explain why she knew to be wary of Conclave members.

            What I didn’t understand was why. Why would Beck steal a Text from the Conclave storehouse and give it to some girl? Even if the renegade was some school friend of hers, all she would have to do is mention her at the next yacht party or whatever and the chick would be a shoo-in. Conclave was a sorority of mass destruction, and whatever their supposed stance on achievers and philanthropists and the best of the best of the best, they had people like Daphne in their employ. It was apparently enough to be pretty and rich.

 

            So why sneak a Text to anyone?

            The phone continued to ring. I sighed and flipped it open.

            “Hello?”

            “Trick?”

            “Yeah, hey Beck. What can I do for you?” I let my voice carry the unspoken implication that I hadn’t forgotten our last meeting. The one where she froze me to a wall.

            Her voice had a quality to it that I couldn’t identify. “Nothing, everything is fine… where are you, by the way?”

            “Home,” I said offhand, “Why? Got some frozen shards of my coat to drop off?”

            Click.

            Well, wasn’t that just typical. I tossed the phone on my bed and started sorting through my new gear, pulling things out of bags. For a few minutes I just unwrapped stuff, shoving all the packaging and receipts and junk into a trash bag. My shield ball, a few pendants for various purposes, a pair of boots that would supposedly allow me to fall significant heights without injury, a very cool item similar to a book reader that would allow me to reference and research nearly anything I could think of. Good stuff.

            I paused when I opened the last bag, grinning at the item inside. This was the one I’d been most anxious to try out. Rolling my eyes at my own boyish delight with toys, I pulled the half-fingered glove on over my left hand and strapped it tight. It was a simple leather glove, with one polished gem set into the palm, and another, smaller one on the inside of each finger. Wearing the glove, they felt like calluses.

            I looked around the room for something to try it out on, spotting nothing. Slightly disappointing. After pacing for a few minutes, I had the bright idea to try casting a fireball from my right hand to my left, and retrieved my Text from my bed.

            Someone knocked on my front door.

            “Ah, f**k,” I growled, figuring it was Miss Dean, wondering what the problem was. She’d probably heard me with Lee the night before, I realized, we’d been pretty drunk and the floors here were full of cracks. I braced myself for an extremely uncomfortable confrontation.

            I crossed my kitchen, dropped my Text on the counter, and opened the door.

            It was Beck.

            In one hand, she held her open Text. Her branded hand was opened towards me, palm out.

            She smiled at me, a little bit sarcastically, and said, “I put this off for too long.”