Rock On (44 page)

NVM: But are your thoughts—any of your thoughts—your own?

SA: What are you—hey, kid, fuck you, all right? You think because I got a few doses of the Twelves, I can’t think for myself?

NVM: I thought—

SA: I’ve worked hard to forge my own personality out of all that mess. You think it’s been easy?

NVM: —that was your whole message.

SA: Message? What message?

NVM: That you were full of so many personalities you couldn’t tell which were your own—you never had a chance to find yourself.

SA: Sure. My psyche formed in the shadow of huge archaic structures, but me, I grew in the dark, I’m one of those things, a toadstool, I got big and tall and I knocked those old monsters down. I don’t owe them a thing. You can get strong, even Twelvin’ it. We turned the whole process against the dults. That’s our message, if you can call it anything. To the kids today, don’t let them stick their prehistoric ideas down your craw—don’t let them infect your fresh, healthy young minds with their old diseases. If you have to Twelve, then inject each other.

NVM: Now you’re sounding like Shendy the notorious kiddie-rouser.

SA: You gonna blame me for the riots next? I thought you were sympathetic.

NVM: Our subscribers are curious. Shouldn’t they be able to make up their own minds?

SA: I never incited any riots. The fact is, every kid already knows what I’m singing. It’s an insult the way dults treat them—us. As if we’re weak just because we’re small. But hey, small things get in the cracks of the street, they push the foundations apart, they force change from underneath and erode the heavy old detritus of banks and museums and research centers.

NVM: Should adults fear you?

SA: Me? What am I but some experiment of theirs that went wrong in a way they never imagined but richly deserved? No . . . I have everything I need, it’s not me who’s coming after them. They should fear the ones they’ve been oppressing all these years. They should fear their own children.

NVM: What are your plans for the future?

SA: To grow old gracefully, or not at all.

I’m with the Band

The whole “tot”=“death” connection, it was there in the beginning, but none of us could see it.

I can’t deny it was an attractive way of life, we had our own community, Twelving each other, all our ideas so intimate. We felt like we were gardeners tending a new world.

This was right after the peak of the musical thing. Wunderkindergarten was moving away from that whole idea of the spectacle, becoming more of a philosophical movement, a way of life. It had never been just pure entertainment, not for us, the way it hooked at you, the way Shendy’s voice seemed to come out of our own mouths, she was so close to us—but somewhere along the way it became both more and less than anyone supposed.

I was in the vanguard, traveling with the group, the official freezeframer, and we’d been undercover for so long, this endless grueling existence, constantly on the run, though it had a kind of rough charm.

Then it all changed, our audience spoke for us so eloquently that the dults just couldn’t hold us back anymore, we had turned it all upside down until it became obvious to everyone that now we were on top.

Once you’re there, of course, the world looks different. I think Shendy had the hardest time dealing with it because she had to constantly work it out verbally, that was her fixation, and the more she explored the whole theme of legitimacy, the more scary it became to her. You could really see her wanting to go backward, underground again, into the shell—at the same time she was groping for acceptance, as we all were, no matter how rebellious. We were really sort of pathetic.

Elliou was the first to drop out, and since she and I were lovers then, after I broke up with Shendy, naturally I went with her. We started the first Garten on Banks Island, in that balmy interim when the Arctic Circle had just begun to steam up from polar evaporation, before the real cooling set in.

It was really beautiful at first, this natural migration of kids from everywhere, coming together, all of us with this instantaneous understanding of who we were, what we needed. We had always been these small stunted things growing in the shadows of enormous hulks, structures we didn’t understand, complex systems we played no part in—while all we really wanted to do, you see, was play.

That was how most of the destruction came about—as play. “Riot” is really the wrong word to describe what we were doing—at least in our best moments. The Gartens were just places where we could feel safe and be ourselves.

It didn’t last, though. Shendy, always the doomsayer, had warned us—but she was such a pessimist it was easy to ignore her.

The Six had been the original impetus—the best expression of our desires and dreams. Now the Six were only Five. We found ourselves listening to the old recordings, losing interest in the live Five shows.

Then Five turned to Four, and that broke up soon after. They went their own ways.

Then Elliou and I had a huge fight, and I never saw her again.

The Gartens disintegrated almost before they’d planted roots. Hard to say what the long-range effects were, if any. I’m still too much a product of my childhood to be objective.

But forget the received dult wisdom that puberty was our downfall. That’s ridiculous.

It was a good two years after I left the Garten before my voice began to change.

A Quote For Your Consideration

Intense adolescent exploration, as far as we know, is common to all animals. Science’s speculation is that such exploring ensures the survival of a group of animals by familiarizing them with alternatives to their home ranges, which they can turn to in an emergency.

—Barry Lopez

Where Are They Now?

Elliou Cambira:
Wife, mother, author of
Who Did I Think I Was?
Makes occasional lecture tours.

Dabney Tuakutza:
Owner of Big Baby Bistro snack bar chain. Left Earth’s gravity at age thirteen and has resided at zero gee ever since, growing enormously fat.

Nexter Crowtch:
Financier, erotic film producer, one-time owner of the Sincinnati Sex-Change Warriors. Recently convicted of real estate and credit fraud, bribery of public officials. Awaiting sentencing.

Corinne Braub:
Whereabouts unknown.

Likki Velex:
Conceptual dance programmer and recluse.

Shendy Anickson:
Took her own life.

Shendy’s Last Words (First Draft)

I’m sick—sick to death. There’s nothing to say but I still have the vomitous urge to say anything, just to spew. My brain feels burned, curdled, denatured. Scorching summer came too early for us orphans. Straight on into winter. I don’t remember spring and know I’ll never see another. Too much Twelving, none of it right—it wasn’t my fault, they started it, I ran with what I was given/what they gave me till I ran out of things to say, new things, meaningful things. Nothing to push against. My mind was full of big ugly shapes, as bad as anything they’d ever injected, but these I had built myself. I’d knock them down but the ruins covered everything, there was nowhere to build anything new. I knew who I was for the first time, and I hated it. Straight from infancy to adulthood. Adolescence still lies ahead of me, but that’s only physical, it can’t take me anywhere I haven’t been already. Everything’s spoiled—me most of all.

I wanted to start again. I wanted to go back to what I was before. I got this kid, this little girl, much younger than me, she reminded me of myself when I was just starting out. I Twelved her. Took a big dose of baby. It was too soft; the shoggoths came and almost melted me. The brain slag turned all bubbly and hardened like molten glass plunged in icewater; cracks shot all through me. Thought to recapture something but I nearly exploded from the softness. All I could do to drag myself out here to R’lyeh Shores. Got a condo—bought the whole complex and had it all to myself. Corinne came out to visit on her way to disappearing. She brought a vial of brainsap, unlabeled, said this was what I was looking for, when I shot it I’d see. Then she went away. I waited a long time. I didn’t want another personality at this late stage. Twelve. Killed me to think that I was—finally—twelve myself. And that’s what I did. I Twelved Myself. I took the dose Corrine had brought—just this morning—and first I got the old urge to write as it came on, but then the shock was too great and I could only sit there hang-jawed. It was Me. A younger me. They must have drawn and stored the stuff before the first experiment—a control/led/ling substance, innocent unpolluted Me. The rush made me sick so sick. Like going back in time, seeing exactly what would become of me. Like being three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten-eleven-twelve all at once. Like being a baby and having some decrepit old hag come up to me and say, this is what you’re going to do to yourself, what do you have to live for anyway? See how awful it’s going to be? you think you’re cute but everyone will know how ugly you really are, here, why don’t you just come understand everything? And baby just drools and starts to cry because she knows the truth is exactly what she’s being told by the stinky old hag who is herself. Is Me. All at once and forever. This is final. What I was looking for—and I’ve ruined it. Nowhere newer; no escape hatch; no greener garden. Only one way to fix what they broke so long ago. I loved to hate; I built to wreck; I lived to die. All the injections they doped and roped me into, not a single one of them convinced me I should cry.

Marc Laidlaw
is the author of six novels, including the International Horror Guild Award-winning,
The 37th Mandala.
His short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies since the 1970s. In 1997, he joined Valve Software as a writer and creator of
Half-Life,
which has become one of the most popular videogame series of all time. In recent years he has been contributing lore and one-liners to the competitive online game,
Dota 2.

Paedomorphosis

Caitlín R. Kiernan

Nasty cold for late May
,
rain like March; Annie sat on one of the scrungy old sofas at the front of the coffeehouse, sipping at her cappuccino, milkpale bittersweet and savoring the warmth bleeding into her hands from the tall mug. The warmth really better than the coffee, which always made her shaky, queasy stomach if she wasn’t careful to eat something first. Beyond the plate glass, Athens gray enough for London or Dublin, wet Georgia spring hanging on, Washington Street asphalt shimmering wet and rough and iridescent stains from the cars passing by or parked out front. The rest of the band late as usual and no point getting pissed over it, baby dykes living in their own private time zone. Annie lit another cigarette and reminded herself that she really was cutting back, too expensive and no good for her voice, besides.

The door opened, then, and the cold rushing in, sudden rainsmell clean to mix with the caffeinated atmosphere of Bean Soup, air forever thick with the brown aroma of roasting beans and fresh brewing. Jingled cowbell shut again, Ginger and Mary and Cooper in one soggy clump, stupid happy grin on Mary’s face and Cooper sulking, wet-hen disgust and she set her guitar case down beside Annie.

“What’s with this fucking weather, man, that’s what I want to know? I think my socks have fucking mildewed.”

“Maybe if you changed them every now and then,” Ginger sniggered and Mary giggled; Cooper groaned, shook her head and “These two have been sucking at the weed all afternoon, Annie,” she said. “It’s a wonder I finally pried them away from the bong.” Mary and Ginger were both giggling now.

“Well, you know I got all day,” Annie said over the steaming rim of her mug, and that was true, three days now since she’d quit her job at the diner, quit before they fired her for refusing to remove the ring in her right eyebrow.

“Yeah, well, I’m about ready to kick both their stoner asses, myself,” and another hot glance back at the drummer and bass player, Ginger and Mary still blocking the doorway, sopping wet and laughing. “I’m gonna get some coffee. You see if you can do something with them.”

“Okay, ladies, you know it’s not nice to pester the butch,” and of course that only got them laughing that much harder, and Annie couldn’t help but smile. Feeling a little better already, something to take her mind off the low and steelblue clouds as cold and insubstantial as her mood.

“She’s such a clodosaurus,” Mary said, tears from giggling and stuck her tongue out at Cooper, in line at the bar and her back to them anyway. “Hey, can you spare one of those?” and Mary was already fishing a Camel from Annie’s half-empty pack.

“No, actually, but help yourself,” and Cooper on her way back now, weaving through the murmuring afternoon crowd of students and slackers, Cooper with her banana-yellow buzzcut and Joan Jett T-shirt two sizes too small to show off her scrawny muscles. Annie still amazed that their friendship had survived the breakup, and sometimes, like now, still missing Cooper so bad it hurt.

“Thank you. I will,” and then Mary bummed a light from Ginger.

Cooper sat down in a chair across from them, perched on the edge of cranberry Naugahyde and sipped at her mug of black, unsweetened Colombian, plain as it got, no decaf pussy drinks for Cooper.

“They still going at it down there?” and Cooper stomped at the floor like a horse counting, and Annie nodded, “Yeah, but I think they’re winding up.”

And “See,” Ginger said, mock-haughty sneer for Cooper, “it’s a good thing we were late. The sad widdle goffs ain’t even done yet,” and Cooper shrugged, “Unh huh,” and she blew on her coffee. “We gotta find another fucking place to practice.”

Honeycomb of identical rooms, gray cubicles beneath Bean Soup rented out for practice space, but down here the cozy scent of fresh-ground espresso replaced by the musty smell of the chalkwhite mushrooms they sometimes found growing in the corners, the mildew and dust laid down like seafloor sediment.