What do those glowing eyes see?
They stepped out onto a platform of midnight blue velvet, scattered with diamonds and floating in endless space. Glittering stars and glowing galaxies orbited slowly. Across the platform, up a wide set of shimmering misty stairs, was a building of solid black stone with faceted columns and a slab roof. Its large amethyst door glowed as if lit by a full moon.
EP floated up the stairs, her curves silhouetted against the glow.
“Lucy! We’re here!” Her voice echoed in space.
After a few seconds of silence, the door hummed and faded into nothing, leaving a rectangle of solid darkness. Gradie followed Michael and EP through, and the darkness disappeared.
It was a minimalist modern penthouse, plucked from a luxury condo and rebuilt with nonexistent materials; Furniture of woven nebulae, tapestries of molten plasma, framed portals to living forests, rolling beaches, snowing tundra. What had been solid black stone outside was transparent from within, and the sparkling stars peeked through the walls, floors, and ceiling.
“Hey Lucy,” EP said warmly.
A woman appeared while Gradie was trying to get a grip on his surroundings. She was just as disorienting as the rest of it.
Her skin was porcelain, lifeless and pale, shimmering in the colors of the starry sky. Her eyes were a blue-violet so vivid they seemed to float in the air, and her long straight hair was so black Gradie couldn’t gauge its shape, like a liquid black hole. The stones in her silver jewelry were the same impossible darkness, and her snug cobalt-blue sheath dress shimmered with opalescence.
“You can barely handle the assholes we have on staff, Michael. Is he getting paid out of your cut?” Her voice had a slight twang that Gradie hadn’t expected, and he bit back a laugh. Michael smiled at her.
“He’ll be paid in experience at first.”
“He’s still that sandy?”
“I found him in a Hardworld yesterday. This is his first time in the Otherworld.”
Lucy looked at Gradie like Michael had said he was a ghost.
“What’s your name?”
“Gradie.”
“What’s your full name?”
He didn’t like her tone, like she thought he was trying to get away with something just by being here.
“Gradie Miguel Hernandez. So, what are you, like human resources?”
She looked back at Michael.
“Gradie, just answer her questions,” he said.
“All right. Ask away.”
A door opened in space next to her, leading to a bare room like an apartment freshly cleaned between tenants. The vacuum tracks in the carpet were the most normal thing Gradie had seen since the gas station.
“After you,” she said. Gradie floated through the door and landed hard in the room, where gravity had returned unexpectedly.
“Fuck!”
Lucy walked in and the door closed behind her.
“This will go a lot smoother if you kill your ego and do exactly as I say.”
Gradie stood up.
“Yea, give me a couple seconds to reach enlightenment real quick.”
She got close to him, blue neon eyes taking over the world.
“The first thing I need you to do, is to make absolutely sure this is what you want.”
Gradie was silent. Her eyes had him pinned, and her voice worked him over.
“I know Michael’s little propaganda film can make this all seem very glamorous, but it’s not for everyone.”
Gradie nodded. That annoyed her.
“I don’t mean like, ‘you may not have what it takes’, I mean what we do is mostly boring and briefly excruciating.” It came out like a well-worn phrase.
“Okay.”
“There are a million ways to be excited, fulfilled, whatever—” She waved her hand like she didn’t really believe it “—in the Otherworld. This work isn’t about that.”
“What is it about?”
“That’s a question you have to answer for yourself, but It’s not going to be fun. I’m telling you that now.”
That sealed it.
“I know.”
She rolled her eyes and motioned to a door.
“Your bedroom is behind that door.”
Gradie stopped himself from saying the first thing that came to mind.
“Ok, you want me to go in there?”
“Not yet. When you go in, it won’t just be your bedroom floating in a void. Your entire waking life is behind that door. Do you understand?”
“No.”
“I need to be sure you are who you say you are. This place will draw your memories out naturally. All I need you to do is not fight it.”
“Why would I?” Gradie felt sweat on his back, which he hadn’t thought possible here.
“You don’t need to understand why, you just need to say yes or no. Are you willing to do this?”
“Michael said memories are like currency here. Won’t this be stealing from me?”
“No.”
There was nothing around to look at but her eyes. He thought of them skimming through his memories.
“What will you be looking at?”
“Anything I want. Yes or no?”
He told himself this was his dream, that his subconscious wanted him to join this team to teach him something. No one would actually be looking at his memories. She wasn’t real.
But with her staring at him with those laser beam eyes, he couldn’t believe it.
“All right.”
The door looked just like his bedroom door, and the knob felt solid and real. When he stepped into his room, everything stilled, as if the world had been spinning since the gas station without him noticing.
His bed was just how he left it. All the clothes and junk where they should be. Lingering smells of pan seared somethings and coffee. Dust floating in light rays. The glow behind the blinds and tacked-up sheet curtains confirmed his inexplicable feeling that it was about three pm on a Saturday.
“Show me around.” Lucy’s voice had lost its ethereal quality, and she was just as real as the rest of it.
Her hair was a clearly dyed black. Eyes a more realistic icy blue. Pale skin not without tone and a few freckles. Clothes believable despite being unexpected. Purple acid wash jeans and a black Kalmah t-shirt.
Her eyes caught him, and she repeated herself.
“Show me around.”
He walked out into the hall and pointed.
“That’s the bathroom,” Lucy went in and he heard her open all the cabinets and drawers. He remembered, embarrassingly in some cases, what each little space held as she rifled through them, and got the feeling she could look in his mind just as clearly as opening a drawer.
She went out into the kitchen and dug through everything there. In the front room, she picked some books off the shelves, examined posters, photos, and even counted the weight on his barbells.
“How long have you lived here?” She fixed him with those eyes again.
“About three years.” God damn. Had it been that long? His mind traced the time backwards and his memories played out in front of him. His weight set lost its barbell, his old TV floated into place, the leather duct taped couch he had moved in with, his first bookshelf, only half full. The room shuffled through time in front of him and Lucy studied the changes.
He sensed the memories laid out in order around him, with the older versions of the room dropping down and away. When he shifted into the past, the newer versions passed behind him and rose above. He moved from one to another at will, like his natural process of memory had been enhanced and made more visceral.
“Whoa.” Gradie let the memories fall away, and the room returned to the present. ?” Lucy was right next to him.
“Where did you live before this The house he had rented with his friends after high school fluttered around him and Lucy scanned it with smooth turns of her eyes and shoulders. It was less vivid than the image of his apartment, like a transparent projection laid over it.
“And before that?”
Despite his resistance, his last childhood home spread out from him. His view sailed between rooms, and he felt a spatial sense of his location in relation to things beyond the house. His elementary and middle school, the corner store, the wall mart and strip malls, with the video store and the Game—
“Wait, stop! What the fuck?”
“I told you—”
“What, I have to take you through my entire life just to join? Michael said I’m not even getting paid!”
“He also said you wanted to join, and you have no experience. Have either of those things changed?”
Gradie just stared at her. She moved to the door.
“Let’s go for a ride.”
“What—”
“Either do as I say, or fuck off, and no one will have to dig through your sad little life ever again. Then you can fly around the Allworld trying to get laid instead of wasting my time.”
Something shifted in the room, as if the process sustaining all of existence had changed directions like an alternating current, and the force that had been drawing out his memories suddenly let something in; A feeling of pride, an anger at an injustice, directed at him. He found it in her eyes, and Michael’s voice rang out in his head from memory.
“We were fighting for the only place we ever felt at home.”
If she heard it, or sensed that anything had changed, she didn’t show it. He knew, with that same dream knowledge that was becoming a sixth sense, that she would give her life a thousand times for what he was trying to do. In her eyes, he found a passion not weakened by his ignorance of the history behind it. It was proof of something bigger than him, and he wanted more than ever to be a part of it.
He grabbed his keys off the counter and went out the door.
