The Peripheral

43

Her mouth was full of pork tenderloin with garlic mayo, on a big crusty white bun. “Don’t choke,” Janice advised, seated beside her on Burton’s bed. “Be a sad end to whatever you’ve been up to. Drink?” She offered Flynne her black Sukhoi Flankers water bottle.

Flynne swallowed tenderloin, then some water, and handed the bottle back. “It’s a body,” she said. “Got a phone built in. Like a Viz, but it’s inside, somewhere. On-off and menus on the roof of your mouth, like a keyboard.”

“You got a lot pointier tongue than me.”

“Really small magnet, just in the tip.” She’d counted back to zero again, just a little wobble then and she’d opened her eyes in the Airstream, her neck stiff, looking up at Burton and Macon and Edward and Janice, hungry as she’d ever been in her life.

“You going back?” Janice asked her, now. “Tonight?”

Flynne bit into the sandwich again, nodded.

“Maybe you don’t want to eat all of that now. They were worried about you puking, before.”

Flynne chewed, swallowed. “That’s a first-time thing. People who use them get used to it. I need food. Need to be able to stay there longer.”

“Why do they call them that, ‘peripherals’?”

“Because they’re extensions? Like accessories?”

“Anatomically correct?”

“Didn’t think to check.”

“Put that in Hefty Mart, there goes the neighborhood. Probably there goes vintage flight sims too, ’cept for old folks and the church people. Could Madison learn to pilot one?”

“Guess he could.”

“Nobody’s going to kick the one they got you out of bed for eating crackers. Macon showed me a screen-grab.” Janice smiled. “Impressed you told Burton and them a lady needed time to collect herself.”

“Lady fucking did,” Flynne said.

“You don’t think that’s really the future, do you?” Janice asked, her best game face, no tells.

“Or am I batshit insane, you mean?”

“I guess, yeah.”

Flynne put what was left of the sandwich down, on the plastic Janice had brought it in. “Might as well be. We went upstairs, in an elevator, and there was this big fancy old house. Then out onto a kind of walled patio in back, at night, with these two Tasmanian tigers.”

“Extinct,” said Janice. “Seen ’em CG’d on Ciencia Loca.”

“These aren’t really them. They tweaked Tasmanian devil DNA. I could smell all the different flowers, dirt, hear birds. It was almost dark. Like the birds were going to sleep. Weird.”

“What was?”

“Hearing birds. Because we were right in the city. Too quiet.”

“Maybe it was too late.”

“Quiet as here, at night.”

“So what do you think it is?”

“If it’s a game, it’s not just another game. Maybe a whole new platform. That would explain the money.”

“Would it explain how they can fix the state lottery?”

“They aren’t telling me it’s a game. They’re telling me it’s a future. Not ours exactly, because now they’ve messed with us, even just first getting in touch, we’re headed somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“Say they can’t tell. That it’s not like time travel in a show. Just information, back and forth. Minute later here is a minute later there. If I waited a week to go back, it would be a week later there.”

“What’s in it for them?”

“Don’t know. Lev, it’s his house, but really it’s his dad’s other house, so doing this is like Dwight gambling on Operation Northwind. Rich man’s hobby. He pays Ash and Wilf and another guy to run it for him, handle the details. But Wilf, he fucked up, over some woman, and somebody else got in here, where we are, and hired those dead guys from Tennessee to kill my family.”

Janice made her eyes wide as she could. “Brain ’splode.”

“Don’t have the luxury of ’sploding,” Flynne said. “Whatever it is, it’s rolling. With a lot of moving parts, and my brother thinks he can steer it. He’s making deals with Corbell Pickett, he’s setting terms with Lev and them, and it’s about me. Not about me, but I’m the one who saw that asshole. I might be the only one who saw him.”

“Then the first order of business,” Janice said, reaching over to squeeze Flynne’s hand, “is you getting a say in what’s going on.”