Set This House in Order Read online

  The sight of all the hardware in the tent triggered another odd reaction from Penny. She pulled her arm loose from Julie’s grasp, went over to the worktable, and made a very authoritative-sounding observation about the collection of computer parts. I couldn’t really understand what she said—she used the techno-dialect that ex-employees of Bit Warehouse are supposed to be fluent in, but which I’d never learned—but it impressed Irwin enough to bring him partway out of his sulk.

  “That’s right,” he told her. “Have you worked with one of these before?”

  Instead of answering, Penny examined the other two workstations, the ones that hadn’t been taken apart. She ran her thumb over a rough spot on one computer’s plastic-and-metal shell. “Did you sand off the brand names?” she asked.

  “They came that way,” Julie spoke up. “Part of a special deal.”

  “Yeah,” Adam said. “Ninety percent off, with no serial numbers…”

  “Be quiet.”

  Penny was staring at me.

  “Oops,” I said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean you.”

  “Andrew hears voices in his head,” Dennis explained, smirking. “He’s got family up there.”

  “Family…?”

  “It’s complicated,” said Julie. She shot a warning glance at Dennis. “Andrew will explain it to you himself, if he feels like it.”

  I definitely didn’t feel like it, not just then. “So,” I said, hoping to change the subject, “what demo are we going to run?”

  Dennis sat down at a computer terminal and punched a few keys. “What about Dancing Cripples?” he suggested. “You like that one.”

  Dancing Cripples was a demo version of the application Julie had dreamed up to pique my interest back when I’d first tried Eidolon—the application that a paraplegic was supposed to be able to program himself, using the headset-and-glove Landscaper interface. Though the interface had not yet materialized, I’d asked Julie about the application itself so many times that she’d finally had Dennis code a demo the hard way—and a representative from the Veterans Administration (we were careful not to call it “Dancing Cripples” in front of him) had liked it enough to give us a five-thousand-dollar research grant.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s do that one.”

  “Good,” said Julie. “Andrew, why don’t you be the guy in the wheelchair? We’ll let Penny wear the data suit.”

  A data suit was a full-body version of a data glove. The Reality Factory had three data suits, each in a different size: one for large adults, one for small adults, and one for kids. Julie grabbed the kid-sized one for Penny.

  “You’ll have to take this off, Mouse,” Julie said, tugging at one of the sleeves of Penny’s oversize sweater. Penny looked startled again, and made no move to do as she was told. “Here,” said Julie, “let me help you…” She stepped behind Penny, grabbed the sweater at the waist with both hands and started tugging it upwards.

  For just a moment Penny went rigid, resisting. There was an incredibly fast flickering of expressions on her face, as if she couldn’t make up her mind whether to be frightened or outraged or cooperative. I even saw—or thought I saw—a flash of anger so intense that it seemed Penny might turn around and hit Julie for presuming to undress her. But the anger vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and Penny became passive; she let her arms be lifted into the air and let the sweater be lifted over them, and off.

  She wasn’t wearing much, underneath. In fact the only article of clothing beneath the sweater was a very skimpy tank top that bared Penny’s shoulders and collarbone, and left no doubt that she didn’t have a bra on. The tank top was bright pink, and had the words FUCK DOLL printed across the front. I must have blushed when I read that—and Penny, seeing me blush, hearing Dennis whistle, crossed her arms over her chest as if we’d caught her naked. Meanwhile Julie, crouched behind Penny and unable to see any of this, tried to get her to step into the legs of the data suit: “I need you to lift your right foot, Mouse…Mouse?”

  I went to get the wheelchair I’d be using for my part in the demo. The wheelchair itself was totally ordinary—more army surplus—but the data glove that went with it had been specially programmed to interpret individual finger movements as the movement of whole limbs. After I’d seated myself in the chair and, with Irwin’s help, got the data glove plugged into the network, Dennis punched another key at his terminal that caused a computer-generated mannequin figure to appear on the monitor in front of him. I curled my index finger in the glove, and the mannequin figure raised its left leg, kicking back; I curled my middle finger, and the figure raised its right leg; I tapped my index and middle fingers together against a sensor pad on the wheelchair armrest, and the figure clicked its heels and jumped in the air; I wiggled my thumb and pinky, and the figure waved its arms.

  “Looks good,” said Dennis. Next he turned his attention to Penny, who, with much coaxing, had finally let Julie zip her up inside the data suit. This part of the systems check took longer, because checking out the data suit requires that the person wearing it actually stand on one foot, jump up and down, wave his or her arms, etc., and Penny had become extremely self-conscious—but eventually, with still more nudging from Julie, the check was completed successfully.

  Now it was time to put on the headsets. As I’ve already mentioned, Irwin had designed these to be comfortable, but they can still be a bit claustrophobic at first, before the power is switched on—like heavy blindfolds with cables attached. As Irwin adjusted the strap on the back of my headset, I could hear Julie crooning, “Relax, Mouse. It’ll only be dark for a second.”

  Irwin plugged my headset into the network and turned it on. A 3-D test pattern appeared in front of my eyes. Dennis ran a sound check: an invisible locomotive rumbled past my left ear, then past my right ear, then past both ears at once. I gave Dennis a thumbs-up.

  “All right,” said Dennis. “Here we go…” As he tapped out a last sequence on his keyboard, I crooked my index and middle fingers in the data glove, bending them like the legs of a sitting man.

  The test pattern dissolved into a first-person view of the Eidolon universe, which in this demo consisted of a giant ballroom with a white-and-black checkerboard floor, ringed by blue marble pillars. The ballroom had no walls or ceiling; the checkerboard floated in a void that started out dull red but would grow brighter, shifting color like a sunrise, as the demo progressed.

  I panned my head down and examined my “self”: not my real self but my Eidolon self, a mannequin figure in a cartoon wheelchair. The illusion was surprisingly convincing, and would have been even more so if I hadn’t felt my real legs to be in a slightly different position than those of the mannequin. I made a flicking motion with my index finger; while my real leg stayed put, Eidolon Andrew swung his left foot forward, proving that he wasn’t such a cripple after all.

  I looked up and saw Eidolon Penny facing me across the dance floor. Eidolon Penny was taller than real-world Penny: she had thicker arms and legs, a larger frame, and much bigger breasts; her face was a texture-map of some swimsuit model’s face that Dennis had scanned into the computer, with an expression that never changed. But while she might not look like the real Penny, she moved like her: shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, crossing and uncrossing her arms, glancing back over her shoulder as if she expected a monster to materialize behind her at any moment.

  The music started. The song was Lyle Lovett’s “The Waltzing Fool,” a slow piano-and-guitar ballad that I really liked even if it was a little sad. As the first strains sounded, I straightened out my index and middle fingers; in the real world I remained seated in the wheelchair, but in the Eidolon universe, Eidolon Andrew stood tall on two good legs. I twisted my hand counterclockwise and swung my index finger to the side; Eidolon Andrew turned halfway around and kicked out at his wheelchair, which shattered, morphing into a flock of doves that flew up into the air and began circling the ballroom, weaving between the marble pillars. I twisted my hand clockwise, c
urled my thumb in front of my index finger, and dipped my hand forward; Eidolon Andrew turned back towards Eidolon Penny, crossed his left arm in front of his waist, and bowed.

  Eidolon Andrew was careful to keep his distance from Eidolon Penny. If I had approached her, there was a subroutine in the demo that would have allowed our two eidolons to actually join hands and dance together, but unless we simultaneously touched in the real world, we wouldn’t have felt any contact—and embracing someone you can see but not feel is a very disorienting experience, one that I thought would probably freak Penny out completely. So I stayed back, and just air-danced with her: Eidolon Andrew stretched his right arm out to the side, kept his left arm curled in front of him, and swayed in time to the music. Eidolon Penny swayed too, but she wouldn’t raise her arms, and she kept looking up nervously to see what the doves were doing.

  Then Dennis’s voice cut in over the headset speakers, saying, “This song is bo-o-oring!” and Lyle Lovett’s soft ballad was replaced in mid-stanza by the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar.” I jerked my head involuntarily, and something in my headset came unplugged. The goggles went dark, even as the earphones kept blasting away.

  “Damn it, Dennis!” I said, reaching up to yank my headset off.

  Dennis paid no mind to my complaint. He was gaping at Penny, who still had her headset on and was still dancing. Only it wasn’t the same dance anymore.

  The self-conscious sway had disappeared. Now Penny’s whole body was in motion, hips, arms, legs, hands, feet, all gyrating to the beat, without a hint of shyness. And the way she moved…well, as Adam later observed, all of a sudden the slogan on her tank top didn’t seem so inappropriate.

  Dennis stared, transfixed. Irwin stared too. I stared. The only one of us who didn’t stare at Penny was Julie—and that was because she was staring at me, instead, with that same funny smile on her face. Eventually I noticed this, and when Julie saw that I noticed, she inclined her head in Penny’s direction and raised her eyebrows as if to say: So, what do you think? “Adam,” I said, “what the hell is going on?”

  “Well gee, Andrew, I don’t know,” said Adam, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “but if I didn’t have my head up my ass, I might think Penny was acting like a different person…or maybe like a whole bunch of different people.” Then he broke up laughing, and added: “I just love a parade, don’t you?”

  SECOND BOOK: MOUSE

  4

  Mouse is lying in a strange bed, in a strange house, with her hand pressed between the thighs of a man she has never seen before. She doesn’t know what day it is, or what city; she has no idea how she got here.

  A moment ago it was Sunday evening, April 20th, and she was sitting in the kitchen of her apartment, checking the movie listings in the Seattle Times. She was drinking a glass of red wine—never a good idea, but she had an overwhelming craving for it, and someone had left an open bottle in the cupboard above her sink. So she poured herself a glass, took a sip, and traced her finger down the column of showtimes, trying to decide between The English Patient and the new Jim Carrey movie.

  —and now she is not there. There’s no sense of having lost consciousness; all she did was blink, and suddenly everything is different. Where she was clothed and seated, she is now naked and lying on her side. The fresh taste of wine has become the stale aftertaste of vodka and cigarettes—she doesn’t drink hard liquor or smoke, but she recognizes that aftertaste as if she does both, a lot. The cool roughness of the newsprint under her finger has become the warm clasp of flesh around her hand. And the face of a stranger has materialized, just inches from her own, snoring gin fumes.

  She doesn’t scream. She wants to, but a lifetime of losing time—and covering up the fact—has left her skilled at controlling her reactions. She screams inside; outside she only squeaks, a short sharp note like a hiccup. Even this is muted, as her lips clamp together to bottle the sound before it can grow.

  It’s a bad one. Losing time is never good—it is a symptom of insanity, which in turn is evidence of what a worthless and terrible person she is—but there are degrees of badness, and finding herself in bed with a stranger ranks near the bottom of the scale. Not that this is as bad as it could be: this stranger is asleep, at least, and only her hand is touching him. Mouse has come back from missing time into tight embraces, into the middle of intimate conversations; once she found a man on top of her, pushing her legs apart, and that time she did scream out loud.

  This isn’t that bad, but it is bad enough. And yet even as she thinks that, thinks what a horrible insane person she must be to find herself in these situations, another part of her mind she thinks of as the Navigator detaches itself, rises above her fright and self-loathing and becomes coolly analytical, seeking to reorient her in place and time. It feels like morning; dim gray light seeps through the window of this tiny bedroom, suggesting dawn. Just which morning is harder to figure. Monday morning, she hopes; that would mean she’s only lost a night. But subjectively, there’s no difference between losing a single night and losing a whole week—and she has lost whole weeks before, even whole months. Once, when she was younger, she lost an entire year. No matter the duration, all missing time feels exactly the same: like no time at all.

  There are ways to tell, though. With her free hand she touches her scalp to see if her hair has grown. Mouse likes to keep her hair short and as plain as possible, but during her blackout periods she forgets this; the sudden development of a hairstyle is often her first clue that she has lost significant time. This time her hair length doesn’t seem to have changed. Then she remembers that she bit the inside of her cheek during lunch on Sunday. Her tongue probes the spot and finds the wound still there, still fresh.

  Monday morning, then. Most likely. And if it has only been one night, and if she spent most of that night…being with…the stranger beside her, she can’t have traveled far. She must still be in the Seattle area, close to home. That’s both good and bad: good, because finding her way back shouldn’t be too difficult; bad, because she might have told him where she lives.

  She tugs at her captive hand. It pulls loose easily, but as she withdraws it her forearm brushes the cold rubbery lump of a used condom lying on the bed sheet. A cry of disgust passes her lips before she can stop it.

  The stranger’s eyes move beneath still-closed lids; his own hand comes up, pawing at his mouth and nose. He snorts. And then, as Mouse holds her breath, he rolls over, turns his back to her. He settles again into sleep; but the sound of his snoring has changed now, becoming shallower, closer to true waking.

  The Navigator gets her moving before fear can paralyze her. She’s light; the bedsprings hardly notice as she slips off the edge of the mattress. She ends up in a crouch on the floor beside the bed and freezes there, listening, but this time the stranger doesn’t react.

  Her clothes are over by the bedroom door. Her shoes and jeans are, anyway; she doesn’t actually recognize the black lace panties or the pink tank top, but as they are part of the same pile it seems reasonable to assume they belong to her too. She notes with passing annoyance that there’s no bra. Though she’s small enough that she doesn’t actually need to wear one, she thinks it looks slutty not to. Not that she’s in a position to complain about looking slutty.

  She dresses as quickly and quietly as possible. As she does so, she scans the room for other possessions. When you don’t know what you brought with you, you can’t be sure you aren’t forgetting something, but she finally concludes that there is nothing else—and if there is, she can only hope that it’s not irreplaceable.

  Dressed and ready to leave, she checks herself in the mirror that hangs on the back of the bedroom door, and notices for the first time the obscene phrase printed across the front of the tank top. At first she thinks it’s a trick—the words must be written on the mirror somehow, as a curse or an admonition to the kind of woman who would find herself sneaking out of this room at dawn. But no—she looks down—the words are on her clothing, on her. />
  She cannot go outside like this. Her anxiety rising in a tight spiral, she turns and scans the room again. A carelessly discarded sweater lies draped over the top of a dresser beside the bed. It’s not her sweater—it’s too big—but it will serve to cover her until she gets home. She snatches it up, dislodging several small articles from the dresser top; they clatter noisily to the floor. The stranger stirs, and Mouse, clutching the sweater, bolts from the room.

  The cramped passageway outside the bedroom reminds her of the side-corridor of a train sleeper car, with windows along one wall and doors along the other. This triggers a fresh wave of alarm as she wonders if she might really be on a train. But no, the Navigator points out, real train corridors aren’t this messy; passengers aren’t allowed to store their personal effects in the halls. And besides, it’s not moving.

  What kind of house looks like a train car, but isn’t one? A trailer-house, she realizes. She’s in a trailer. This simplifies finding a way out: if the bedroom is at one end of the trailer, the exit must be somewhere towards the other end.

  She follows the corridor. Halfway down the trailer’s length, it opens out into a living-room/dining-area furnished in classic trailer-trash style: there is a sagging couch, a battered TV set, a fake plug-in fireplace, a splintery dining table piled high with beer cans and dirty plates. A counter with a peeling linoleum top separates the living room from a tiny kitchenette, where more beer cans are stored.

  Trailer trash. It is ridiculous, but Mouse is shamed by the tawdriness of the place, shamed far more deeply by that than by the simple fact of being here at all. For all the times this sort of thing has happened to her, she has never once woken up in a nice house. It is as if the mad spirit that constantly disrupts her life meant to impress upon her that this is what she deserves, that gutter is the best she can aspire to. Never mind that she strives to keep her own home tasteful, orderly, and neat—she will always come back to this.