Trip to Arizona

   I don't notice anything strange when we land in DFW--but then again, it's DFW. With 150,000 travelers per day running to meet people, avoid meeting people, pick up luggage, or catch another plane, strange things are normal. When we get on the plane, though, it's hard not to notice the monster-sized guy in urban camo. He's so broad he has to turn sideways and shuffle back to our row, so tall that if he had hair, it would be brushing the ceiling. Over his shoulder is a duffel bag that's big enough to hold a couple of teenage girls, but when he stuffs it into the overhead compartment, I see gun muzzles. I don't recognize then at first, because this gun is not some dinky little pistol; we're talking about a weapon that would be suitable for knocking over a rabid tyrannosaurus,  and then polishing off a horde of zombies as an afterthought. The main barrel has a bore suitable for firing hypervelocity golf balls, with a 40mm grenade barrel above and a dinky twelve-gauge barrel slung below, where it can nurse an inferiority complex.
  Once he gets settled in across the aisle, I catch his eye. "Mind if I ask what you do?"
  "I'm an accountant."

 

Trip to Arizona

    I board the plane and get row 24 seat B. The girl next to the window is wearing a black tee shirt, black camisole, black jacket, black culottes, and pink high top tennis shoes. She has piercings in eyebrow, nose, lip, and four in her ear. Her hair is probably genuine ash blonde, with stripes dyed black. I'd say she looks like a goth, except her attitude is more of a particularly fearful mouse. When I say "Hello," she bobs her head but doesn't look up, doesn't make eye contact, doesn't say anything in reply. She spends the entire flight staring at the lower edge of the seatback tray.
    The man to my right has a cafe au lait complexion, dreads halfway down his back, sunglasses, pinstriped suit pants and a tangerine business shirt with French cuffs. He looks interesting, but he's asleep before the stewardess gets up for the safety briefing. It's the standard briefing, no humor, no razzle dazzle, which is understandable because it's 5:42am. I ignore it.
    The plane lumbers to the runway, thinks longingly about coffee or whatever planes think about, and then rolls forward and lifts off. We--including my irradiated and ionized self--go up into the four dimensional curved space matrix maze of interlocking flight paths. When we come down, it may be that I'm not on quite the same world line that I started on.

Trip to Arizona

  I'm the first one to go through the line this morning, and the Irradiator hasn't warmed up yet. I step through the gate, and my eyes flash violet, my teeth buzz, the hairs on my left forearm stand up, my prostate tingles, and my toenails flex. Aside from that, everything appears normal.
   The TSA supervisor mutters something to his minion about adjusting the machine. The minion sighs heavily, in a dramatic manner intended to convey, without quite crossing into insubordination, that he is the most underpaid, over-supervised, under-appreciated minion of all time. Given that the supervisor has not said "And this is the price of failure", nor cackled evilly, nor torn the minion's heart out, I'm not believing it. Although it is, admittedly, early in the morning; perhaps the evil supervisor just needs to get warmed up. The minion jabs at the control panel and beckons at the next person in the queue. I sit down where I'll have a view of the gate, as I put my shoes, belt, wallet, keys, pen, phone, laptop, coins, and other artifacts back into place.
   The next one is a weightlifter with an artificially blond mullet and Fu Manchu mustache, yellow muscle shirt and purple-and-black leopard spotted pants. He glowers sullenly at the minion, and steps into the gate. He doesn't step out; rather, after a brief indigo flash and a crackle of static electricity he, or his remaining soot, drift gently to the floor. I envision the dozen people coming through and getting soot on the soles of their pantyhose, socks, and feet, leaving trails of sooty footprints which lead to the jetway gates before fading out.

Trip to Arizona

    I get up at 4:14am and, by automatic pilot, stumble into the bathroom where I shower and shave. Pushing a sharp blade around my face at 4:23am is not the brightest possible idea but I won't be awake enough to realize that; as it happens, nothing happens. Volumes of hot water get me semi-functional; I dress, eat something, and drag my carry-on and backpack to the car. I consider getting a little more shut-eye on the ride to the airport, but decide it would be ill-advised, since I'm the one driving. I get to the airport at 4:57am, wave to all my adoring fans here to see me off, then turn stride through glass wall right next to the door. Oh, well, it'll be a little more business for the glaziers.
   I've already gone through the online check-in, so all that remains is to march in, remove my shoes, belt, wallet, phone, pen, backpack, laptop, coins, keys, and all other metal except that actually implanted in my body. And then, fatefully, I go through the security gate. At this hour of the morning, I don't consider all the consequences of me passing through a radioactive search-o-tron....

Restaurant 1

He got to the restaurant early, and waved five people ahead of him as he looked over the menu. Stasia hadn't answered the last text he'd sent, and he didn't know how quick the service was here. He decided to go ahead and order, rather than wait for her. The girl at the counter was less than half his age, chubby, with three green stars tattooed on the inside of her left wrist. He ordered a turkey panini with sharp cheddar and bacon, and sweet tea. The girl handed him a pager and asked his name; he told her "Kyril" as smoothly as if it were his real name.

He spotted an open table in the far back corner, and took it. It put his back to one man, a scholarly looking type who was engrossed in his laptop; of course, an agent would have behaved the same way. At the other table was a black girl, with a miniskirt than exposed too much of her legs, with a nursing textbook a notebook. A grandmotherly type between him and the door, not the type the opposition usually used, but you never knew. Couldn't be helped, and the other open tables were more exposed.

The pager buzzed in his hand, and he retrieved his plate from the counter and sat down facing the entrance. There were screens dividing the restaurant into sections, but there were enough openings in the screens that he could watch the door.

And there she was. In his eyes, her presence lit the room immediately, unmistakably. She wore grey slacks, a grey vest that demurely emphasized her narrow waist and small breasts, and white blouse. Her hair was a long straight splash of pale gold now, although in his mental image it had been curls. Her eyes looked tired, until she saw him and she smiled.

The Rift

They lived against the northern wall of the Rift, the Bright Face that the sun shone on. To the west the floor of the  Rift rose in great broken terraces to become a white salt desert. To the east it stretched on, following the River, to lakes and kingdoms and past them, march after march, to the end of the world. To the north was the striated red rock of the Bright Face; to the south, at a day's march, was the Dark Face.

Knife

He couldn't recall exactly when it had started. He'd had a steak knife by the bed for some reason, probably peeling an orange or something, and he'd thrown it at the wall opposite the foot of the bed. It had stuck in the drywall, the hilt quivering for a moment; then, feeling foolish, he'd gotten it out, wiped the knife clean, and put it away. There was a mark in the wall, and every time he noticed it he meant to patch it, but it wasn't urgent. A couple of months went by.
He noticed there was a second knife mark. He couldn't remember, back in...August? September?...whether he'd thrown the knife once or twice. He could only remember the one time, and he'd remember that kind of thing, wouldn't he? There had only been the one cut in the wall, right? He could only remember one. But there were two now. The second one was smaller than the first, only about a quarter inch long, about four inches from the first one. Maybe he just hadn't noticed. He shrugged.
Two weeks later he saw a third mark. This one was horizontal, nine inches below the first one and a little to the left. It had definitely not been there before, and it was deeper than the others. Three days later, there were two more. New ones started appearing every day. They were all in a rectangle twenty six inches wide by twenty nine inches high, as if there was a picture frame on the wall and all had to be inside. They were opposite the foot of the left side of the bed, just where they'd be if someone were sitting up in bed and threw a knife.

He started waking up to find drywall dust on his hands, and in his mouth.
He bought a piece of sheet steel, thirty inches square. He drilled holes in two corners and nailed the steel sheet to the wall over the marks.

The next morning, the nails were on the floor, there were more marks on the wall, there was sand in the bed. The sand looked like ordinary beach sand, except the nearest beach was over 150 miles away. The steel was gone; he never found it. He started sleeping on the couch downstairs; the marks still appeared on the bedroom wall.