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INVENTORY:
* COIN
* TROPHY 1
* MYSTERIOUS SCROLL
* COMPACT DISC
In the moonlit shadows of Moffett Field, there’s a quiet place, out of sight from streets and overhead surveillance alike. The long-abandoned light rail tracks run at ground level except in one fenced-off area where the line dips out of sight behind a concrete barrier, a roofless tunnel.
Amidst the piles of wind-strewn leaves and trash is a old trampoline, propped up on rocks and covered with enough layers of duct tape to form a crude ceiling. Whoever dumped it here must have been really determined—the fence is at least ten feet high and doesn’t have any large breaks for at least a click in either direction. Molly ducks underneath, and Max follows.
“How did you know about this place?” Max asks.
“I made it,” Molly says. After an awkward pause, she continues, “I mean, I made it homey. Are you OK?”
“This is homey? Yeah, I’m fine. But Hemera’s pure evil. She needs to be stopped before somebody gets hurt.”
“Like that’s going to happen,” Molly says. Max scowls, and she changes tack. “No, wait, that came out wrong. I mean… Ugh.”
Max peers at her. She looks away. “Why do you talk that way?” he asks.
“What way?”
“People at the camp call you robot girl. I always thought it was them being jerks because they were jealous that you didn’t have to put in factory time. But now…”
Molly makes eye contact, but she turns away after less than a second. “Now you think I’m like that,” she says quietly.
“No, not like that,” Max says. He expects to see a hurt look on Molly’s face, but it doesn’t happen. Her face remains neutral.
“It’s okay,” she says. “It’s nice to be seen for once.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“You always say things the way they sound in my head. You don’t jumble up the words when they come out of your mouth, the way they do for me,” Molly says. “I like that.”
“Thanks, I guess,” Max says. He sighs and lets his eyes focus on the far-away stars until a cloud rolls in and blocks their view.
“What do we do now?” Max sighs. “That cartridge was our only clue. Hemera’s probably got half the trophies by now.”
“You mean this?” Molly asks, producing a circuit board with narrow copper fingers along one edge.
“Is that—?”
Molly smiles. “At least the important parts of it.”
“And Hemera?”
“Not exactly a detail-oriented type of person,” Molly says. “But she’ll figure it out soon enough. We shouldn’t stay here.” She stops talking, but her eyes flicker with deep thought. “We don’t have to live like a refugee. That’s what the scroll said. That sounds like life before Damage.”
“We need to go back to the camp and help people get out while they still can.”
“In the middle of the night? Who’d believe us?” Max asks. “The way we save the camp is by finding the trophies before Hemera does.” Max sighs. “We need to get online to see what we can find out. We’re going to need a safe place to run searches from. Can’t be any of the backbone ISP; Hemera’s got her hooks into all of them. We need to find a local operator. Someone we can trust.”
“You need an off-book internet drip?”
“Less of a drip, and more of a torrent,” Max says.
“OK, let’s go then,” Molly says. She gets her feet under her and stands.
“Wait, go where?” Max asks.
“To go see someone you need to talk to,” Molly says.
“Oh? Where is this?” Max asks. But he thinks he already knows the answer.
“To see the Muses,” Molly says.
Sans horse, a trip into the city is less straightforward and more dangerous. But Molly seems entirely comfortable, as if she’s made the walk a thousand times. Max was starting to realize that maybe she had.
They enter a part of town that could charitably be called on the edge of abandonment.
Damage didn’t much slow down construction, at last not initially, because there were plenty of building materials and strong arms with nothing better to do, so vast swaths of every city got remade in a fashion that better suited the scaled-down economy. Where strip malls might have once lined a busy street, now tightly-packed warrens of one-room apartments took their place.
In the case of the building Molly leads them to, the older storefront wasn’t even torn down first. Like a wasp nest in a glass jar, the interior space of a taqueria was lined with claustrophobic corridors and tiny stacked rooms, each not taking up much more space than a coffin.
“This way,” Molly says. “The deluxe suite.” She leads them around a tight bend toward what used to be a kitchen.
Molly called it deluxe without a hint of irony. It’s a slightly larger coffin room, tucked into the far corner of the building, with a door only a child could walk through without stooping.
Molly knocks in a halting pattern:
Knock-knock-knock – knock – knock-knock-knock – knock-KNOCK – KNOCK-KNOCK – knock.
“Morse code?” asks Max.
Molly nods. The door swings open, smooth as a servo.
Max ducks through the doorway. The room is brightly lit with luminous baseboards that run along the edge between the corporate carpet and the battered drywall. But the room’s completely empty, not even furniture.
“What is this?” Max asks.
“We’re here to see the Muses,” Molly says, as if that explains everything. Molly steps past and puts her palm flat against the right-side wall, alongside a full-length photograph of an elderly Japanese man.
The photo frame slides open, revealing another room beyond. A wave of warm, moist air nearly knocks Max back a step. It doesn’t stink, per se, but it’s clear that many bodies have been in close proximity for a while.
The room is tiny, barely big enough for the three people reclining inside, much less visitors. The inhabitants, feet-to-the-door, wear silvery athletic outfits that flatten their bodies into sleek angular shapes. They have no hair, not even eyebrows. The front of the room holds three screens, one for each of the Muses, and a fourth one unused. And not bulky CRTs, but honest-to-goddess flatscreens, each showing a dizzying array of charts, graphs, and text too small to read from where Max cranes his neck.
“To answer your several questions,” the first Muse says, “Yes, this is our home. No, we don’t get out much. You may refer to any of us as ‘she’ or ‘her.’ The clothing is to help circulation. And we do enjoy helping people, but we are very busy and only do so in return for something of value to us—and there are few things we truly value that we do not already possess.”
Max stammers. He hadn’t even thought about what he wanted to say, but had he managed to put together questions, those answers would’ve fit exactly.
“Better let me handle this,” Molly says. She addresses the first Muse. “Din, we beseech you—”
“No time for beseeching,” Din says. “The Lockheed habitation is in about to fall. You’ve come here to seek assistance for the four hundred souls living on the hill.”
“There is more,” the second Muse says. “A key that unlocks a mouldering mystery.”
“Are they ready for what they will face?” Asks the third.
Max’s mouth makes a sound as it opens and shuts again.
“We’re ready,” Molly announces.
“What do you offer us in return?” Din asks.
Molly hesitates, then holds her game console out to Din.
That little box means the world to her; Max instinctively feels how much it must hurt her to offer such a sacrifice. There has to be a better way. But Max has no earthly possessions. Nothing at all, except—
Max gently puts his hand on Molly’s game and lowers her hand.
“I have something from Hemera’s vehicle.”
Din’s hairless brow arches. “You’ve been on her personal network.” Not a question. “Data.” She moves her chin toward Max, and he hears a sound, like the chime of adding to inventory, except played backward. He doesn’t need to look to realize his Compact Disc is gone from inventory.
“Approach. Let me get a good look at you.”
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