All the Birds in the Sky - Charlie Jane Anders Page 0,125

on a single yellow flower beyond the metal fence, and just as Ghost Laurence said the words “emotional phototropism” the sunlight hit the flower and it actually raised its motherfucking head to greet the sun, and Patricia lost her shit all over again, the tears just cascading out of her as she clawed at the ground she was salting.

The message ended and vanished forever and Patricia kept weeping and digging the stony dirt with both hands, until the sun was upon her.

When she could see again, still dry-heaving and bawling a little, she looked at the Caddy, which was perched in the grass looking innocent, and she had a pretty shrewd idea who this was but that was the least of her worries. “Fuck,” she said, “you.”

“I thought you needed to hear that,” the Caddy said.

“The trap that cannot be ignored,” she said, “is fucking bullshit.”

She sat, head on dirty knees, looking out at the city. She felt like there was nobody in the world she could talk to about how she was feeling, as sure as if a plague had killed every other human. This thought led her back to the Unraveling, the way every thought eventually did.

She banged on Laurence’s door, not knocking and pausing and then knocking again, but rather a steady pummeling that says “I’m going to break this door down.” Her hand bruised up and she kept going.

This time, Laurence had probably been asleep. He looked even more disheveled than before, and way more disoriented. He had one sock on and an arm through one T-shirt sleeve. “Hey.” He squinted.

“You promised you would never run away from me again,” she said.

“I did promise that,” he said. “And I don’t remember you promising not to destroy my life’s work. So you have me there.”

Patricia almost turned away, because she could not deal with any more blame. But she still had dirt under her fingernails.

“I’m sorry,” she said. And then she couldn’t get any more words out. She couldn’t find words, any more than she could feel her extremities. “I’m sorry,” she said again, because she needed to make this totally unconditional. “I feel like I owed you more trust than I gave you. I shouldn’t have destroyed what I didn’t understand, and I shouldn’t have done that to you.”

Laurence kept looking at her with a dull expression, like he was just waiting for her to shut up and go away so he could go back to sleep. She probably looked like a mess, sweating and covered with dirt and tears.

Patricia made herself keep talking, because this was another situation where there was no way but forward: “I think part of me knew all along that you were working on something that could be dangerous, and I thought that being a good friend meant not judging or asking too many questions. And that was messed up, and I should have tried to find out sooner, and when I saw the machine in Denver and realized that it was yours I should have found a way to talk to you about it instead of just finishing the mission. I screwed up. I’m sorry.”

“Shit.” Laurence looked as if she had kicked him in the junk instead of apologizing. “I … I never actually thought I would hear that from you.”

“I mean it. I was a colossal dick.”

“You weren’t a colossal dick. Just kind of a regular dick. We were playing with fire in Denver. No question. But yeah, I wish you had talked to me.”

“I listened to your voicemail from before,” Patricia said. “Just now. CHNG3M3 forced me. He wouldn’t let me delete it without listening.”

“It’s a pushy bastard. It goes by Peregrine now.”

“Listen, I have to tell you about something really important. And it’s not something I can discuss out in the open.”

“I guess you ought to come in, then.” He stepped back and held the door open.

They sat on the same sofa where they’d shared the elf-shaped bong, facing the wide-screen TV where they’d watched Red Dwarf with Isobel. The apartment was a lot more cluttered, Hoarders-esque even, and there was a millimeter-deep layer of gunge on everything.

Patricia told him about the Unraveling. And then, because he couldn’t have grasped even some of the enormity of it, she told him again. She found herself lapsing into clinical terms, instead of conveying the full gut-wrenching experience. “The population would drop within one generation, but some people would still manage to breed. Breeding would be highly unpleasant. Most babies