Book I: Part 14: Alison

     ‘Oh bother,’ said Mosses Meddleson.  ‘What a nuisance.  I’m terribly sorry about this Miss Amberginnegan.  Miss Amberginnegan?’
     Alison had not heard the announcement, or at least hadn’t been paying attention to it.  The closest thing Alison Amberginnegan had ever had to an adventure was when, at the age of fourteen, she had traveled to the Orcas installation, a small artificial island in the Wetworks where she and her mother had taken pills that turned them into seals. 
     ‘Isn’t this like magic?’ her mother had said, and she had nodded, and remembered. 
     They spent six days living in the water, where everything was shocking blue.  A sense of weightlessness would overtake her on deep dives, giving her the illusion of flying.  Swimming after fish, going out into the deep to where the coastline and its skyscrapers sank below the horizon, she would surface, adrift on an endless sea, the only civilization the occasional Wetworks installation dotting the waves. 
      And then, when the six days were up, she and her mother made their way back to the Orcas installation, shed their pelts, and returned to the pedestrian life.
     ‘Miss Amberginnegan?’
     ‘What? Oh, sorry.’  She blushed and stared at her lap.  ‘How long have I just been sitting here?’
     ‘About a minute, I think.  Are you all right?’
     ‘Yes, I’m fine.  I was just … reliving a memory.’
     ‘Reliving?’  Mosses Meddleson leaned back in his chair, stroking his beard.  ‘It must have been quite an intense memory, to relive it.’
     ‘Oh, it was.  Well, not for me, that is … um….’  She stared off to the side and bit her lower lip, which quivered.  ‘See the thing is,’ she began in a voice higher than usual, ‘I have this condition?  Called Eidetic Hyperthymesia?’
     Mosses Meddleson frowned in a sympathetic way.  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Amberginnegan, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of that before.’
     ‘It means I have really detailed memories of things?  I remember everything.  I mean, everything.’
     ‘Oh, so your memory’s photographic, then?’   
     ‘Well, yeah, but that’s just the eidetic part.  I mean, I can do all the photographic memory things, like read a book and know all the words in it, or what look at a deck of cards and then recite the order back. But its more…I remember everything that happens to me, ever.  Not just facts, but things that happen to me too.  I can remember any or it, instantly.’
     ‘So, you can recall everything that has ever happened to you? In perfect detail?’
     Alison nodded, her face becoming lost within the bramble of her hair. 
     ‘Why, why that’s astonishing!’ exclaimed Mosses Meddleson. 
     ‘I suppose so.’ Alison’s voice was quiet, barely above a whisper.  ‘Everyone I tell about it tells me that.  It’s pretty normal for me, though.’
     Mosses Meddleson looked flustered.  ‘Oh, well.  Obviously.  Pardon me, I didn’t mean to be rude.’
     ‘Oh, no, I-I didn’t mean anything like that at all!’  Alison squeaked, sinking lower into her chair. 
     Mosses waved a hand in the air, as if to say ‘No, please, think nothing of it,’ and smirked knowingly.  ‘Ah, Miss Amberginnegan, what a fantastic gift you have, no doubt another gift from old Allathir.  My! Think of all the wonderful things you could do!  Why, with a mind like that, you could learn, well, everything!’
     ‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said, smiling.  She thought he was being a little hyperbolic.  Her hand absently began playing with her skirt.  ‘I mean, I just … I just feel lost, most of the time.  I get … confused?  Like, I hear a word, or see something?  Or smell something?  And I’m off.  Like I’m time traveling.  Reliving something I did, or read, or thought sometime.  Sometimes, the memories just keep, like, sparking other memories?  And there’s just all these things going on?  Like, like, being in a department store, in the VAST aisle? And trying to pay attention to everything at once?’
     Mosses Meddleson nodded as if he understood perfectly.  ‘Ah, a kind of sensory fugue state.’
     ‘I, I guess.  And besides, I don’t think I could learn everything, anyways.  I mean I would need forever to learn everything, right?  And I can’t do that, so….’
     For a moment, Mosses Meddleson, looked horribly, horribly shocked.  ‘You don’t?  But how, when…oh.’  He nodded to himself, and looked downwards.  ‘I see, I see,’ he said quietly, to himself, as if Alison had suddenly disappeared.  She imagined herself doing so. 
     His expression changed suddenly, as if to hide some nasty faux pas, and then he was smiling again.  Smugly this time.  ‘Oh, I object to that, Miss Amberginnegan,’ he said, ‘I object to that very strongly.’
     ‘You do?’ squeaked Alison. 
     Mosses Meddleson opened a drawer in his desk, rummaged daintily through it, then pulled out a small bottle, which he tossed lightly over to Alison.  She didn’t manage to catch it, but it landed in her lap nonetheless.  Its cap curved upwards, and there was a lining along the bottom, making it look like a miniature chalice.  The label on the side, after listing itself as the property of Mosses Meddleson, read

        STASIS 50 mg cap zenith
        QTY 60
        By Vail Hall, Dis.
        Take once a week with water.

     ‘What’s this?’ she asked.
     ‘Those are pills, Miss Amberginnegan, pills developed by your father, in fact, long ago, that prolong the human life span indefinitely.’
     There was a weird sensation in her fingers, like energy was flowing out from the bottle and paralyzing her.  ‘Really?’
     ‘Oh yes.  They halt the aging process, keeping the body at a happy equilibrium.  They prevent cancers from forming, make the body resistant to all but the gravest disease—which are all curable now, by the way, if you can afford the treatment.  Which, of course, you can.  Taking these pills, a person can remain at the height of health forever.  Why, I myself am 1066 years of age.’
     Alison started, then looked at Mosses Meddleson with new eyes.  She set the pill bottle down on the table, and tried, as much as a person can who is sitting, to back away.  Somewhere a box opened; the world shifted around her, and became very large and strange. 
     Mosses Meddleson did not seem to notice.  ‘Do you not see what you have come upon, Miss Amberginnegan?’ he said.  ‘Why, you have found a source of eternal life that you can easily afford.  In fact, you own a source of eternal life.  You can do anything.  Everything.’
     Mosses got up hurriedly and walked over to Alison, he grabbed her by the arm and drew her up out of her seat, and began guiding her towards the window.  She came, blankly, cowed by  the man before her, with his wealth, his great age. 
     ‘I had heard, but I did not believe, my girl, that things had been so, so different for you all these years!  But those days are over now!  You have entered a new world! Look!’ 
     They stood at the window, looking out over the city, the wide chasms and shadows and buildings lying below. 
     ‘The people down there, they live brief, pointless lives, with little import but the propagation of their species.  But we, Alison, people like you and me, we are part of the elect.  We are chosen, you see!  Look at them down there.  From this window, you can barely see them.  They scurry about like, like insects, while we stand above, like, well, like Magicians!  No longer must you dwell down there in the darkness, Alison.  You have been selected by fate.  You have been given a destiny.  History will be merely a record of your actions upon the world!  Everything you could wish to accomplish—why, even learning everything there is to know—you can do.  You should do.  Why you almost have to do it.  And why not do everything, when you can live forever?’
     At that moment, the voice that came from everywhere and nowhere returned. ‘Attention residents of Legacy Corps Tower One,’ it said, ‘Due to the actions of the Dread Dadalus, the Winged Anarchist, the structural integrity of this skyscraper has been weakened.  All residents on levels 1852 and above should evacuate immediately, either to a floor below, or out of the building entirely.  As this is 150 levels worth of evacuation, I think that leaving the building would be the best course.  Having a smashing afternoon.’

Book I: Part 8: Alison

     She ate scones and drank tea, and avoided looking at Mosses Meddleson.  His smile had faded into a worried look, the same type of expression her mother would often wear when hiding bad news.  Something about the expression made her uncomfortable.
    Finally, he spoke.  ‘Now, Ms.  Amberginnegan, do you know why I wished to meet with you today?’
    Alison returned the cup of tea to it’s saucer, held it still, nodded carefully.  ‘My father.’
    Mosses nodded sadly.  ‘Yes, Miss Amberginnegan, I am afraid your father, Allathir Amberginnegan, has past on.’
    He had already told her this, on the holograph card.  She kept nodding, not wanting to be rude.  ‘I know’ was all she could think to say.
    ‘I am sorry for your loss,’ said Mosses.
    She smiled, still nodding.  ‘Thank you,’ she said, and felt a little guilty.  In a way, she had never really lost anything, and was really accepting something given for something that wasn’t there.
    ‘Have you … learned how it happened?’ asked Mosses.
    ‘Uh, no.’  Alison set down the saucer; then began fidgeting with her dress.  ‘Nobody told me.’
    ‘Ah,’ said Mosses, leaning back.  ‘Would it be acceptable, that is, would you mind if I was the one to … relate the news?’
    ‘Oh, no,’ said Alison, effecting the tone of overdone sympathy she always heard others use in situations like this.  ‘That would be fine.’
    Mosses Meddleson sat back in his chair.  ‘Well, it is a mysterious thing, Miss Amberginnegan, and truthfully, no one knows exactly what happened.  What we do know is, about three months ago, they were bringing some fresh supplies up to the Oligard—oh, not food mind you. I am told the Oligard is quite self-supporting.  New materials … metals, and wires and such, I think, for the experiments—and they found the station empty.’
    ‘Oligard?  Station?’
    Mosses nodded, looking confused.  ‘Yes, your father’s space station—the Oligard.  It’s where he worked on all of his inventions. ’
    She searched for the word, but it meant nothing to her.  ‘Uh, right,’ she said. ‘Anyways, go on.’
    ‘Yes, well, anyways, the Oligard was completely devoid of life.  A thorough search was done of the premises, and no body was found.  Going off some of the information they found stored in the Oligard’s memory banks, they think either he atomized himself, or his mind moved past the point at which it needed a body.  Maybe both.’
    ‘They?’
    ‘The people in the employ of your father.’
    ‘Employed?  My father employed people?’
    ‘But of course.’
    This made no sense to her.  ‘But, how?’
    ‘Oh, very easily, Miss Amberginegan.  Anyways, no real conclusion could be reached as to what happened, and I am afraid the details are a bit murky, having to do with magic and all.’
    There was a tingling along the back of her skull.  ‘Wait, magic? What are you talking about?’
    Mosses Meddleson looked shocked.  For a moment Alison felt ashamed, and wondered what she had done wrong.  But then Mosses became gentle again.  The tension that had formed in her chest dissipated. 
    ‘Why, Miss Amberginnegan, has no one told you?’
    ‘Told me what?’ she asked, trying to sound as deferential as possible.
    Mosses gave her a charitable look.  ‘Miss Amberginnegan, do you know what a magician is?’
    And then she was nine, sitting alone cross-legged on the floor of a room in her mother’s house.  A small child again, gangly and wide-eyed, a VAST playing on the floor in front of her—Begal Bear and the Circle Gang Battle the Evil Angels—which she wasn’t watching.
    She held in her hands her newest entertainment, a Magic Eyeball, produced, she knew, having checked the box, by Appel Ionian Industries.  It was a smooth white orb, covered in a shiny clear plastic coating.  Faint red veins coalesced around an electric blue iris, encircling the dark void from which the Eyeball issued its answers.  She could ask it any question and it would give her an answer. 
    ‘Magic Eyeball, what number am I thinking of?’
    ‘Nine,’ it replied. 
    ‘Wow,’ she said, with childish wonder.  ‘How did you know that?’
    ‘The technology involved is entirely too complex for you to understand  the answer, so let’s just say I read your mind, shall we?’
    ‘Huh.  You’re pretty fussy for a ball.’
    ‘Well, I am really just projecting an engaging affect, and I think I am quite a bit more than a ball, don’t you?’
    She shook her head.  ‘How are you more than a ball?’
    ‘Alas, another question it is impossible for me to answer in full.  So let’s just say my functions exceed my size.’
    ‘So, what, like, you have more wires than fit inside you?’
    ‘Something like that, yes.’
    ‘Wow,’ said Alison, amazed.  ‘Who could make something as wowsome as you?’
    ‘Why, a magician, of course.’
    ‘Huh?  What do you mean? There aren’t any magicians.’
    ‘Yes, there are.  Haven’t you ever heard the terms used before>’
    Alison squinted into the iris.  ‘Have I?’ she asked, trying to catch the orb up.   
    ‘Of course you have.  The question was merely rhetorical.  You have, however, only ever heard the term used to mean “that which is impossible, but done.”  Indeed, that is the meaning meant to be inferred by my own name.  But the term has an additional meaning; “that which seems impossible, but is done anyways.”’ 
    ‘Oh, said Alison.  ’So, what’s a magician?’
    “A type of inventor.  A creator, designer.  The highest class of such people.  Those who make the impossible seem possible.  Masters of the mind, who learn how to alter matter, travel across time and space in an instant, read minds, see the future.  That sort of thing.’
    ‘Oh.  And one of them created you?’
    ‘Correct.’
     ‘Where?’
    ‘Alas, their greatness cannot be contained by this mundane world, and so many shut themselves away from humanity, to better concentrate on the glory of creation.  Some live under the sea, some under the earth, some high up in the sky.’
    ‘Oh.’  Alison found this astonishing, yet slightly disappointing.  ‘So I can’t meet a magician, can I?’
    ‘Well, no, not right now, but they are very near you, in a sense.’
    ‘What’s that mean?’
    ‘That would be telling.’
    ‘Huh, no fair!  You have to answer what I ask!’
    ‘Alas, my creator’s gifts have given me the will not to answer.  Would it make you feel better if I tell you that one day you will figure it out?’
    Alison glowered into the Eye.  ‘How can you be so sure?’
    ‘Well, let’s just say it’s an educated guess.’
    ‘Educated guess,’ she grumbled, and threw the Magic Eyeball across the room.
    The memory had stuck with her through the years.  Whenever the word ‘magician’ popped up, as a topic or casually referenced, she would flashback to that first encounter, just as she did now.  Over the years, she thought this odd.  The memory was not wholly remarkable on its own, but something about its ubiquity, its omnipresence, made the revelry feel, with each recurrence, more significant, more meaningful, than when it had first occurred. 
    ‘Yes,’ she said, slowly nodding her head.     
    ‘Oh, good,’ said Mosses Meddleson.  ‘You see, Alison, your father, Allathir, was a magician.’
    Her mouth dropped open.  ‘Huh?’
    ‘Yes, quite stunning, isn’t it?  That’s why you could never see him, you know.’
    ‘A, huh, a muh—really?’  She had been expecting the answer, to a certain degree, but the answer surprised her anyways. 
    ‘Yes.  And of course, you have inherited one of the largest fortunes in the whole of the city.’
    ‘I, I have?’
    Mosses nodded sagely.

Book I: Part 2: Alison

    Elsewhere, a clock face flickered blue, marking the time as eleven o’clock.  No one in the room noticed because the only occupant was staring at her hands.

    The occupant’s name was Alison Amberginnegan, and she was waiting for her 11:30 appointment.  Alison was early because she had nothing else to do that day. 

    The room was sparely furnished.  The floor and three of the walls were covered in green carpet.  Along one wall a comfortable padded green bench rose seamlessly from the corner, spanned the entire length of the room, and disappeared into the two walls adjacent.  Dead-center in the adjacent walls were positioned a pair of identical woody doors, full of knotty spirals and swirls.  (Alison had entered from the door to her right.) 

    The wall opposite the bench appeared crystal clear.  It let in streams of sunlight, illuminating every corner and surface.  Outside could be seen the city, section 49-FF.  Buildings rose and fell randomly in height.  Smaller buildings were built upon larger ones, sometimes at odd angles.  Some buildings terminated in height only gradually, forming spirals or steppe patterns when viewed from above.  Small penthouses and apartment complexes grew everywhere upon everything like fungi.  The room was very high up, and the view seemed to stretch out forever, the buildings eventually tapering out along the horizon: it was as if one stood on the high edge of a valley, one whose cracked terrain hinted at untold depths below.  Of course, Alison Amberginnegan did not see any of this; she was staring at her hands. 

    She sat with her legs crossed.  On her feet were a pair of green canvass sneakers with white laces.  Her legs were covered in a pair of red and green tights, which disappeared under a white linen skirt covered in golden sparkles.  She wore a black jacket which was mostly hidden beneath her hair: a large brown scraggly mop overriding her head and torso, through which could be seen a small pale face: a china doll’s head in a barren thicket.  Her face hung forward, its shaded eyes staring intently at her hands clasped bloodless in her lap.  She looked less like a full-grown adult than a small lost child. 

    A mimetic fugue filled her mind.  A shifting haze, each thought unleashing a flood of possible connections, like hypertext.   

    The bench felt velvety, the same feeling as the cloth of the dress her mother was buried in. (The shade of green was off though; her mother’s dress was darker.)  Alison remembered stroking her mother’s hands, clasped over her abdomen, her face deflated and misshapen.  Every so often her fingers went too far and glided over the cuff of the dress.  The green fabric felt better than the skin, which was like wax.  Cold wax over skin, like that time in her sixth year when she had spilled the candle on her hand.  She cried out, but the wax quickly cooled, and then felt fine.  But she had knocked the candle out, and sitting in darkness, fingering the wax, feeling the living flesh pulse under it, then fade away as the surface turned cold and hardened, she breathed heavy and became frightened, and called out for her mother. 

    Her mother, whose name was Igrane Tintagellian.  A pale thin delicate woman with doe eyes, (Alison had never seen a doe, or a deer, not really, only in movies) and long dark hair.  She remembered the hair hanging across her mother’s face, her eyes peering out from between the strands, watching the rain.  Lots of memories of Igrane Tintagellian watching the rain.  She would go out on the balcony and watch the superstorms pass over, the invisible forcefields hovering over the skyscrapers protecting them like an angelic cocoon, the lightning passing overhead in streaks, lighting the frictionless chasm of apartments, a view blurred by the raindrops falling in rows along the forcefield's surface.  A hundred billion pitters pattering in concert, and her mother standing visible through the open doorway (Alison was always to scared to go outside herself), framed as if meant to stay there, waiting, enraptured. 

    It was because Igrane Tintagellian died that she ended up working in the store.  Suddenly Alison, at 19, had to fend for herself.  How very strange.  She never saw her mother work, ever.  For the last nine years she wondered how her mother, with a child at her side, managed to tie ends together.  Where did the credits come from? Who paid for the utilities?  Did the credits all fall from the sky? Igrane Tintagellian was always at home, watching over her.  No answer came with the funeral, and she quickly found herself having to tie ends herself, and the first place she found herself in her wanderings was Pluta’s Cornucopia. 

    Pluta’s Corncopia, a used clothing store, owned by Pluta, a small translucent woman with a pug nose and a tail, who wandered deliberately around the interior of the store, crossing people’s paths, trailing strands of black tassely hair, getting side-tracked and drawn into the orbits of various consumers who she haggled with, the detour causing her to spin around the consumer in a flurry to maintain her momentum, rotating them as they followed the force of her argument, until she disengaged, and continued on.  One wondered how she managed to stay upright, what with all the spinning. 

    Always pulled about by her force was her assistant and lover, Prospero, who when not engaged stood in the middle of the store, where he could get a good view of all the surrounding sea of clothes from an island of cleared floor room.  Often he stood with a book in hand, trying to distract himself from his circumstance, yet inevitably following his consort's calls, sallying forth into the woods—didn’t the clothes lines look like willow trees?—to answer his mistress’ call, where, like clockwork, Pluta would berate and chastise him for his absent-mindedness, then send him back to his island to silently brood.   

    Alison once asked Prospero, after a particularly contemptuous spat, why he put up with her bossing, and he stated that it was to keep close to his daughter, who he didn’t want to lose to the wealthier parent by fault of desertion.  As Pluta owned the business; Prospero was hers to command. 

    To vent, Prospero piled orders and frustration upon the other clerk, Urie Dies: a small olive-skinned man-child with black curly hair and a smooth curvy nose betwixt dark pooling eyes, always hidden among the cloths, lurking about, blending in.  As if just one more item in the store with a price. 

    And above it all, perched upon a stool behind the register like an observant bird, sat Alison, the sea of priced items stretching out before her.  The items seemed to writhe en masse, swaying as if alive due to Pluta’s passing commotion.  A massive pile of refuse: cast away, discarded, exiled, fallen, unloved, unlovely, torn, rag-tag, bedraggled items, waiting to be reborn again upon new bodies.   There she sat, clad in garments rescued from the shelves and hooks: watching, unspeaking, trying to take it all in and catch sight of Urie traveling through the undergrowth.  (Before working there, when living with her mother, she was dressed in long flowing simple dresses of moonlight blue, unadorned by frills or patterns.)

    Sometimes he would come up to the counter and speak with her.  He would always call her Ariel,  his secret nickname. 

    ‘My name is not Ariel,’ she said.

    ‘Ah, but I like Ariel better,’ he said

    ‘What’s wrong with Alison?’

    ‘Why be Alison when you could be Ariel?’

    ‘That’s not a reason.’ Alison rolled her eyes and threw back her head in mock disgust.  There was a stain on the ceiling that reminded her of a land formation she had seen while paging through a picture book while she was seven. 

    ‘It’s a name common in my family,’ he said waging his finger. ‘Petulant.  You should feel honored.’

    She smiled sheepishly.  ‘Well, thank you, but what’s wrong with just being myself?’

    ‘What’s in a name?’

     ‘I’m used to it?’

     ‘That’s no reason.  You should be open to changes.  I bet you don’t even know who you are anyways.   You should try being Ariel, take on a bit of my type.’  Then he scampered off. 

     Sometimes they discussed wanting to quit. 

     ‘Promise if you quit you will take me with you,’ one would say.

     ‘Only if you promise to take me.’

     ‘Let’s quits together then.  That will show them how important we are!’

     ‘Oh, let’s.’

     It was a slow day—the ninth slowest since she started—last Freyday, when the man entered.  He wore a red skintight body suit with arcane copper wire patterns etched all across the surface, and a shallow silver helmet. He opened the door of the shop, letting in a gust of air, and ran straight up to the counter. 

    ‘Alison Amberginnegin?’ he said. 

    ‘Yes? How may I help you?’ she was confused; no customer had ever known her name before. 

    ‘Mizziz Amberginnegin—am I pronouncing that right?—I am here on account of Legacy Corps.  Do you know who Legacy Corps is?’

    She shook her head. 

    ‘Figures.  Legacy Corps is an executing firm.  Um,’ and the red-suited man stared off to one side, ‘It is my regret to inform you that your father has passed on.’

    ‘My father?’ she asked, puzzled. 

    ‘Ayup.  He died about three months ago.  They have just finished sorting through all the electro work, I believe.’ The red-suited man pulled a small holographic card out of the air. ‘Anyways, I have been asked to give this to you.  You have, it seems, inherited something from him.  I have been sent to notify you that you need to meet the executor of the estate, a Mosses Meddleson.  This is his card, for you.  Within it is all the information you need to know.’  The red-suited man handed her the card.  ‘Sorry for you loss.’  he smiled, then was gone. 

    Sorry for your loss.  That sounded odd to her.  It had never really occurred to her that she had had a father.  That is, she was aware that one must have existed (the existence of a father was the excuse for her and her mother’s different last names) but she had never pictured there being a real flesh-and-blood person out there, somewhere, who was her father.  It would not have made the slightest difference to her if she had been virginally conceived. 

    But now she had a father, and as soon as she had found him, he was already gone.  For three months.  She had lost something without even knowing she had had it. 

    But what did she lose exactly?  She looked at the holographic card.  As she flickered it back and forth, different tableaus flashed across the surface. 

Mosses Meddleson

Chief Executor, for Legacy Corps!

Located in Room 7A-D, Level 1852

Of Legacy Corps Tower 1

(LL code 49-FF 2270 1852-7)

Call # 233-377-610-987-1597

The next one looked like this:

Hello, Alison!  I, Mosses Meddleson, commend and welcome you!  I regret inform you of the death of your father, Allathir Amberginnegin.  However, old Allathir has left properties to you in his will, and it has befallen on my humble head to explicate for you the intricacies of your inheritance.  If you could, please call the number listed on another face of this card, and make an appointment with my receiver, Janet/us, for sometime next week, so that we may explain the details to you.  Thank you and have a pleasant evening. 

The third and final image in the card was a smiling face: cheery, aged, but bursting with youthful exuberance, centered around a thin nose and encircled by a thick wreath of curly hair and beard: an image, she could only assume, of Mosses Meddleson.

    Alison was not allowed to use the store holographone, so she had to wait.  Then she had to take the cable car back to her apartment.  (She couldn’t afford a telepass.)  This all meant that she didn’t get a chance to call back until 5:49 pm. 

    The holographone pinged twice before answering.  The face that came into view was a mannish looking woman with an even complexion and short purplish hair done up in a swirl.  ‘Awfully late you are calling, no?’

    ‘What? I mean, I’m sorry?’

    ‘Yes, what is it you want?’

    ‘Well, my name is Alison Amberginnegan? And I have this card, and…?’

    ‘Alison Amberginnegan?’  The mannish woman turned away from the holographone.  Alison heard typing in the distance.  That had been an awfully fast reaction. 

    ‘Uh, yes? That’s me?’

    ‘Middle Initial M?’

    ‘Yes?’

    ‘Ah, yes.  Messer Meddleson was expecting a call… he has open….  He can see you at 11:30 on Wodensday.  According to his notes you will need a ninety minute period.  Can you make that?’

    She had no idea.  To make that, she would need to take a day off, or leave early, and she had never taken a day off, or left early, ever.  She had always been too afraid to ask Pluta. 

    ‘Yes?’

    ‘Good girl.  Messer Meddleson will see you then.  Come to our offices on level 1848.  Not 1852, like on the card.  1848.  People are always following the card and getting lost.  You can’t reach Messer Meddleson’s offices by going straight to his level.  You need to started on 1848.  See you next Wodensday.’ 

    The connection terminated.  Alison stood in her room blinking. 

    Why did she have to start five levels down?  Why did she agree to an appointment on Wodensday, during the day, when apparently they were still open at night?  Couldn’t she have gotten a night appointment?
    Why hadn't she said anything?
    Sometimes Alison noticed, upon a reflection, her brain coming up with random little decisions that added up to the solution to a larger problem she had been dealing with.  That night, Alison wondered, while laying in bed, in her blue-moon nightgown, under her alabaster covers, staring at the ceiling covered in star stickers, if this was her brain doing something like that again.  She hated when her brain did that.  Usually the decisions she was unconsciously making were highly uncomfortable. 

    ‘What do you mean you want an extended lunch?’

    For the next four days, Alison acted as if nothing had happened.  Things went on as always.  Pluta orbited, Prospero came and retreated, Urie popped in and out of view, his absence harassing her.  She rode the cable car to and from labor, enjoying the gentle curving descent and ascent as it glided through the streets.

    ‘Where do you get off asking for something on such short notice?’

    Alison hadn’t mentioned to anyone what had happened on Freyday until the end of Tirsday.  She had never had the courage to face Pluta until she had no choice. 

    ‘I-I’m sorry,’ she sputtered.

    Pluta stared at her crossly.  ‘Well, you can’t skip work.  It’s not allowed.’

    ‘A-all I need is a lunch break from 11:00 to 1:00.’ She figured maybe she could get out of the meeting early, and be back at work by the time it actually ended. 

    ‘You know you don’t get a lunch break!’

    ‘Well…Could I have one?’  Alison had no idea where this thought came from.

    ‘No!’

    ‘Just one?’

    ‘Of course not!  What if consumers come?’

    Usually no one came in during lunch hours.  She tried counting all the people that ever came in between 11 and 1 but gave up.  Some of the time she didn’t keep track of the clock at work. 

    ‘Couldn’t you get someone to fill in?’

    ‘Hah! Like who?’

    ‘Well, Urie could, or Melinda…’

    ‘I’m not making my daughter come in early!’ boomed Pluta.  ‘Look here, either come in tomorrow, for all of the day, or you’re gone!’

    ‘Gone?’

    ‘Gone!’

    ‘But, I need to go…’

    ‘Well, make your decision now.  Either you work all of tomorrow, or you can leave, right now!’

    Alison froze.  Could she reschedule?  What if she couldn’t reschedule?  Was there a penalty for not following the schedule?  Did she forfeit her inheritance?  What if it was a big inheritance?  What if it was pittance, not enough to keep her rent, and then she was out of a job?  Maybe nothing would happen if she missed the appointment. She could reschedule.  But for when?

    ‘I’m waaaiiiit-tinnnnng.’  Pluta stood hands-on-hips glaring. 

    She couldn’t lose what was left of him.  Not for this.

    ‘Well, what’s it going to be then?’

    Slowly, shaking, Alison turned.  She began walking for the door, concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other.  Behind her was silence.  She remembered Urie then, their promises to quit together. 

    Now she was quitting. 

    She was at the door.  Would he follow?  She turned: a slow revolution. 

    And there was Urie, a few feet from her.  Staring at her.  His face pained, eyes wide.  Silently she pleaded. ‘Don’t let me be alone.’ His face twitched, and went blank.  As if pulled by an external force, he retreated behind a hanger of clothes, disappearing into the masses.  Crestfallen, Alison turned, and with moist eyes, opened the door and walked out. 

    ‘I’m not paying you for this week!’ yelled Pluta.  The door closed.  A bell chimed.  Alison ran off.  It was raining gently all the way home, which steamed the air and hid her tears. 

    She remembered a dream she had had the night before.  She was in a boat, weighted down low along the water, full of hooded forms rowing.  Fog drifted off the water’s surface and obscured the distance.  Then suddenly the fog parted, and a tower appeared in the air.  She heard yells and shouts and saw a giant flame on the nearing shore.  Dim figures danced around it in a circle.  She looked up towards the tower, then back down toward the dancing figures, and began to feel afraid.      

    Sometimes, she felt an intuition of future tidings, as if she knew, just knew, what would happen next.  This feeling of fate or fortune filled her with dread.  Dread of the unknown, dread of her powerlessness.  She was feeling that feeling right now. 

    Alison blinked.  Her clenched hands were as pale as the grave.  From the periphery of her vision she saw the window, the source of the light blanketing her.  It was obviously very sunny.  She did not look up.