FATHER’S PEN

From porthole of the harrier was an image of desolation but once, father said—before he got too sick to talk any sense—there had been a line of something called mountains. This was well before the womb expelled Crospinal, before father found refuge in the pen and tethered himself to the capricious world. And not viewed out this particular lens, up in the harrier’s console, but from another, peered through during his frantic search for a refuge. Crospinal tried imagining these mountains now—magnificent, his dad would say, a tear in his eye, every time he reminisced—as Crospinal had tried imagining them many times throughout his dozen or so years of life, conjuring several possible and incongruous visions of the aberrations. Yet he failed, as always, not only because of the limitations of his imagination but because he was no longer sure he believed in such things, whatever they might have once been.

Despite his obvious infirmities, Crospinal had managed the climb up seven rusty ladders to the harrier console perhaps a hundredfold—when he’d first discovered it, as many as three times a day—to loiter here, among other pastimes, straining his eyes through the thick, etched polymethyl: all he ever saw out there was the eternal grey flatline of ash, with a paring of orange at the horizon—some orb or other, whether rising or sinking was impossible to tell.

Rumblings, coming up from the floor grille, and through the thin soles of his boots—and what sounded like a dim explosion of sorts, possibly the engines misfiring—made the world shake lightly. Dustings of dry polymer from the composite panels settled over him. Crospinal picked at his nose, making capillaries in his mitt tingle as they tried to deal with the crusted mucus he rolled between his thumb and forefinger.

He watched out the porthole a moment longer.

To doubt the word of father, Crospinal thought. Was that how it all began?

Glittering, refracted through the plastic, watered his eyes. When he turned aside, green after-images of the occluded orb remained, but he tried to blink them away—

The controller, well accustomed to Crospinal’s moods and brooding self-indulgences, expended little energy on recent visits, though it faced him now—a grey sphere, the size of his eye—without speaking, having dropped from the ceiling to hover at the exact epicentre of the small chamber; Crospinal frowned, hoping the controller would go back to where it came from, or at least remain silent (the latter of which, thankfully, it did). Crospinal looked away first. The controller continued to study him.

He fidgeted, getting tense.

Time he’d spent dreaming had not, evidently, driven away doubts, nor kept them at bay for even the shortest of whiles: scents inside the dream cabinet had been weak today, vapours thin and vague, and the dream, when it finally pulled him under, was so inconsequential that details were now entirely forgotten. Therapeutic value, nil.

Crospinal lifted the console's cover and flipped it back. The gently rotating image rose from between the holes—two hands, pressed together—and then wavered. Without much further consideration, he shoved both forearms deep inside, felt the connection, a shudder passing through the Dacron of his mitts, up through his skin, into his bones, building in strength. He said, too desperately for his own liking, “Are you there? I know you might be . . . busy. But can you visit? Just for a second? I wanna tell you something.”

Nothing. Unfathomable energies of the world went about their business, as they did, passing through him, on their way from father’s range out into landscapes Crospinal had not yet travelled and landscapes he never would. Crospinal had been stalling. Dark ideas and memories of rejection were too recent, and daunting; his girlfriend showed up less and less anyhow. And when she did show, she seemed distracted, distant, almost incohesive, if that was possible. Silent. Crospinal wanted to feel angry at this life of pain and the vagaries of phantoms but instead felt the same dullness spreading through him that was always there, as if his damaged nerves were trapped, keening on some standing wavelength between the surface of his epidermis and the snug lining of his sleeves. His molars sang. Under the thin shield, fountained by the uniform’s collar, to cover his head, sparks crawled through the stubble of his recently depilated scalp.

Nothing.

About to withdraw, give up, return to the lower floor, there to get on with killing time, Crospinal saw her at last, flickering faintly, becoming almost opaque, positioned so she seemed to be sitting on the ill-formed shelf to his left. (Though a good part of the structure penetrated her hip. Or vice versa. Most days, Crospinal could easily ignore these minor aberrances. He was used to them. A second of his girlfriend’s attention made everything worthwhile, and he was outnumbered anyway by entities that could transcend such mundane physical collisions.)

Dressed, as always, in a fresh, dark uniform, similar to his own but heavier, with a circular collar, like no uniform any dispenser had ever offered. With breast pockets, too, tinted mitts, no helmet. She wasn’t facing him. Made of light, of course. His girlfriend had a glow to her, a faint pixilation, an allure that always caught his breath. He could smell her energy. Around him now, an aura of faint ghosts circled.

“Hi.” He managed to speak, heart fluttering, as if this meeting, like all other meetings, were their first. “I, uh, father’s still sick. He’s really sick. I mean, his bones are so, you know? And he won’t stop coughing.” Crospinal had not meant to say these things. He never did. But the keening he carried around came forth nonetheless, propelled by a force within him bent, no doubt, on sabotaging what might be considered his best interests. The plan had been to remain positive, to impress, to make this beautiful manifestation laugh and regain her dwindling affections. A simple plan, but already messed up. He cleared his throat and tried, for a moment, without luck, to think of a recovery line, or endearing witticism. “I’ve been over, uh, to the—”

His girlfriend had not yet responded. She had not even moved. Crospinal stopped talking. Was she okay? Posed there, wavering a bit, wavelengths faltering, her hair pulled back so tight that the corners of her eyes tugged, all squinty.

She had not moved.

He wanted to take his hands out of the holes, touch her, hold her, pull her close, wanted to do these things so much they were an awful ache that had settled into his core ever since he’d met her: that ache flared now, but his girlfriend would vanish long before he could lift a finger. His hands—if she were able, by some miracle, to stay—would pass right through her.

“Have I done something wrong? Upset you?”

Frozen there in such a way that she, too, seemed to be looking out harrier’s porthole, at the ash beyond. The profile of her cheek, her nose, a narrowing of her eyes, all through a shield, was enough to cause Crospinal duress. A slight flickering, overall, but no movement. (Was it possible—her seeing anything, that is, outside? The horizon, blown across by hot winds, the curve of a reddened orb burning across the sky? Like he saw, every time he looked out. Could she see it? He’d never asked, though he broached nearly every other topic. She had heard him blubber, confess, profess, ramble. Once even heard him laugh. Had waited patiently while he stared down at his own boots, too morose to speak.

Would asking his girlfriend about the horizon outside, and the possibility of mountains, sully the only tie remaining between him and his ailing father? Would he be cast further adrift, or was the damage already done?)

“Why you so quiet?” His own words a whisper. “What’s up? I . . .” All this time his beleaguered heart had been lugging something heavy up his throat to his mouth, to dump it there, like refuse. He could not swallow. Slower poundings in his chest. “I, uh, I’m—Shit. Things are falling apart. I’m, well, I’m scared.” Another long silence. On his part, growing despair. Anxiety. Could girlfriends cease? Everything else seemed to, so why not—

Mercifully, though, stuttering to life (such as it was), moving one arm, turning toward him, to engage—

Consumed by relief, as their eyes met, Crospinal felt such a rush, and he grinned idiotically, though he knew already what was coming.

“Don’t call me anymore.” She was smiling. “I thought we had that clear.”

The ghosts whirled and faded.

Elation, which he only wanted to nurture, maybe even let soar, like it had done at rare but glorious times in the past, plunged and crashed. Maybe his body was the one assembled out of photons, and projected here, not hers. Maybe he was unsubstantial. He said: “What?”

“Your memory’s atrocious.” Still smiling. (Him being flayed alive by it.) “This area’s being subsumed. The influence of your passenger’s waning. You need to leave. But you don’t need me anymore. Remember? You promised. So I came here, one last time, to remind you. You need to leave.”

“But I—” What had he promised? He wanted to say he loved her, and that he missed her, and that he needed to be with her forever. But those sorts of statements had already precipitated trouble.

“Time for you to leave, Crospinal.”

Seldom did she say his name. It invoked hot torrents in him. He swallowed—hard—at last. “But there’s nowhere to go.”

Narrowing her eyes in that lovely way of hers, glazed and unfocussed, she said, “They’re searching for you.” Her lips—also exquisite—were not quite synced with the words that tore Crospinal apart like teeth of the hardest polycarbonate. “Don’t call me anymore. Don’t come back here. For both of us.”

“Who’s searching for me?”

A hint of movement passed though the space that would be behind his girlfriend, were she sharing his realm: slim dark shapes shifted through the composite that comprised the counter—

And Crospinal was alone again.

The empty harrier console. Stupid controller, hovering there, watching.

“I suppose you were talking to your girlfriend again?” it said.

“Shut up.” Glare, from outside, stinging Crospinal’s eyes. “You’re just mad because you’re fading, too. ’Cause this station’s going.”

“I’ll relocate. I’m due for a transfer.”

Dragging his forearms clear of the holes, Crospinal stood for some time, feeling utterly gutted.

Later, returning home, he stomped in his bow-legged way along the catwalks and narrow grates that had emerged when he was born, and solidified when he was a young child, but were now starting to crumble. Knees popping, he kicked at debris, knocking fractured chunks and residue of the formations through the grille onto dimmer structures below.

As soon as he got within father’s range—smaller even than yesterday—a dog coalesced, and tried to cut off his passage.

“Crospie,” it barked. “Crospie! Crospie! Nice to see you back! But you’re making too much noise. Welcome back! All that clattering! Ringing about. Could have threaded that bolt back on. We saw you kick it. We saw you! Could have helped. Stem the tide, you know? Remember when you were showed? Remember that, Crospie? Remember? About bolts? The haptic about nuts and bolts and metal?”

“Go away, dog. That wasn’t a bolt. Just some hardened polymer crap. I was doing you a favour. Keeping entropy at bay.”

“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Remember?”

Crospinal stopped. “Father says a lot of things like that. You should know. It doesn’t mean anything. And I suppose you’re part of the solution? All you dogs and spirits and shit? Floating around. Can you leave me alone? And you’re the one making too much noise. Yapping all the time. You make way more noise than me.”

He kicked, but half-heartedly: the dog easily dodged. Both the kick and the dodge were pointless. Now the apparition looked up through narrowed eyes of light.

“What’s gotten into you? You’ve changed so much. What goes on out there?”

“Father has no idea where I am. Even if I’m standing right in front of his face. He’s so out of it. He has no idea if he’s awake or asleep. Now leave me alone.”

At the remote end of the hall, other apparitions appeared.

“Call off your stupid friends. I’m fine. Go back to your kennels. Go back inside his head.”

The dog cocked its own to one side, sniffing. “Were you crying again, Crospie?” The second kick would have passed right through it, had reactions been any different. Moving in to mock-sniff again at Crospinal’s boot, the dog—all dogs, all apparitions, and father, too, lost in the abyss of his ailment—knew, that instant, the truth.

Crospinal resumed walking. Stoic, bones protesting, knees akimbo, heart heavy.

The little apparition caught up, and trotted next to him.

No dog could stay quiet for long.

“It’s okay, Crospie. People cry. That’s what you do. You cry, eat, worry, sleep. Dream. Lie awake, trying to remember. You should talk to us more. We’re here for you. We worry about you. We don’t know where you go anymore. We don’t, Crospie. We don’t, and we worry.”

Glancing aside, and down, to flash the dog a look meant to wither, but this time the dog didn’t look up.

“You aren’t meant to know,” he said. “That’s the whole point. I’m not doing anything. Just thinking.”

“For now are you returning? To father? To his throne? Are you going to sleep in your own daybed tonight?” Panting, as if the dog really did have to breathe, and was winded. “He asked about you, earlier. He’s always asking about you, Crospie. You’re everything to him. You’re all he’s got.”

Taking a deep breath, a real one, air filling his lungs, coming through the shield, filters hissing, chestplate expanding, microbes and other unwanted guests cycling through the unit of his uniform, Crospinal wiped at his moist cheeks with a sheathed knuckle. He had stopped again. Peed a bit, into his catheter, felt the processor deal. As he bent to rub at his knees, which had been hurting a lot more these days—excruciating—he said, “Father asked about me? Really? I mean, he was awake? He spoke?”

“Well.” The dog reconsidered. “Not really. Not per se. He was sort of alert, a while ago. Briefly. Eyelids flickering. He’s asleep once more. But he would have asked about you, if he were awake. He would have, Crospie.”

Now they looked at each other. Crippled human, in his stale uniform, lovelorn and feeling sorry for himself, and this luminous projection, here to protect, instruct, and fetch him back. Resentments that Crospinal tried to sustain were fading. He felt sorry for the stupid dogs. They were distilled emotion, thoughts with singular-minded agendas, neurons riding on weak sine waves.

Crospinal experienced a degree of envy, for identical reasons.

“That makes no sense,” he muttered.

“Crospie?”

Tensing for more bad news, he blinked. The sound in his ears was a roar. One day, all this would be gone. “Yeah?”

“I’m afraid, father, his body that is, has been coughing up blood.”

Coughing up blood.

“Maybe you could come back for good? Like old times. Father would love to hear your voice. Please come back.” The dog had starting to whine, getting worked up, words pitched higher and higher. Since father’s condition had taken a sharp downturn, all apparitions were less stable. Which stood to reason.

Crospinal wanted to ask: How much blood?

He rubbed at his scalp instead, the shield crackling about his head.

“We know,” said the dog, quieter now. “We know he hears you.”

“Look.” Crospinal’s cheeks were getting hot. “I’ll come by, all right? I’ll come by. Later. But take it easy. You’re gonna burn out.” This was meant to be a joke, though Crospinal felt horrible as soon as he said it.

“Come by? Come by!” The dog spun, happy; it didn’t care about insults. The projection struggled to keep up. “Oh, that would be great! Just great! Thank you so much.” Circling his feet now, dashing about. “We miss you, we miss you, we miss you!”

He ignored the litany of high-pitched questions and the further pestering of the dog. At least, he tried to appear that way. Why waste breath telling an apparition a joke anyhow? Why tell a joke at all?

“Okay,” Crospinal said. He meant it this time. He would pay father a visit. He would spend time in the pen, sleep in his own daybed. “But don’t call me Crospie. I tell you that all the time. Crospie was my baby name, and I’m not a baby anymore.”

The apparition, happy for any concession, for any bone tossed its way, moved its hind quarters from side to side so vigorously it shook itself apart.

He was pretty sure he could not remember what it was like to be that baby, Crospie. Memories of memories. Haptics and replayed files. Naturally, there were recordings by eyes of the world, stored in the banks behind father. Not many, but enough.

He’d had a sister then, apparently, the same age, at first, though she disappeared at some point during the first two years of life, and seemed to age at a different rate. Father had immersed Crospinal in a few dozen scenarios: two infants—Crospie and the girl, Luella, in tiny uniforms. Crospinal dragged himself forward, crooked thighs splayed, while his sister began crawling, pulling herself up, and toddling, long before him. Flesh and blood. Two babies, tumbling together.

Side by side in the garden, taken from a remote perspective, or playing with father’s garrulous projections in the halls outside the pen’s core while the two elementals he had called Fox and Bear watched, begrudgingly, over them both.

Maybe mnemonic triggers were set off by the sight of the children, but he was absolutely certain he had no recollection of the feel of another person’s palm against his own, no living hand, mitt in mitt. He watched contact happen—at least on two occasions—on floating screens, and within the haptics, but that was all.

Generally, in the years since Luella surpassed him and then vanished, father and he kept their distance, ostensibly to prevent the exchange of unpleasant organisms, but Crospinal, even at a young age, sensed a whiff of shame. He was sure he smelled the faintest tinge of repulsion.

In one such recreational file from the library of haptics, the siblings were naked together, actually naked, without any latex or neoprene, no processor, nothing, splashing in the collecting pool, bathed by the clumsy elementals. They must have been days old, bandages still on their arms. Their pale, fresh skin, a rare and incredible sight. The damp folds of their genitalia, glimpsed but once, dimpled buttocks, large heads. Before any uniform went on, before catheters drilled in and the clinging spandex covered their limbs, before delicate shields swung up, over their faces to filter the air. Bodies were pink and sudsy and gleaming clean.

But he could never recall contact.

Fox was thin and upright, a smart machine, casting a thin shadow. Bear was the same. Like all elementals—there were a few that came and went, assisting around the pen—they had cold, red eyes. Clearly, father had sent a few spirits in, too, to watch over proceedings: spectral shapes hovered in the background, translucent and fleeting, stymied by the trees.

Now, Fox and Bear, like Luella, and all the other elementals, were long gone. Of this Crospinal was also certain. The pen and environs were crumbling as father sickened. Composites encroaching again, the way it was before he’d come. Even haptics were changing, edited, or unavailable. Vanished from within father’s diminishing range and what few external areas Crospinal had lamely explored. Maybe the machines—and his sister, too—were broken in adjacent landscapes, whatever configurations they might be, unable to return. Batteries might have died. Oxygen could have ended. Truthfully, Crospinal did not miss the machines much, though he often wondered what had become of Luella. Despite Fox and Bear being tangible, their titanium fingers had been cold, their movements slow, their silence and awful eyes unnerving.

Spirits still drifted around. They didn’t get in the way much. And ghosts. And dogs, of course, father’s dogs, all over the place.

In another haptic, baby Crospie, unaware of anything the future might bring, or take away, slept fitfully on his back, arms flung wide, curved legs canted. In a fresh uniform, maybe his second or third, with fresh boots and fresh mitts. His sister, awake, managed to lift her head and stare out at the lens recording the shot: her expression, under the patina from the collar’s shield, showed evidence of a rapture that clearly defined the wonder she felt in her life and perceptions. Crospinal could tell by the gaze, the partly open mouth, the intake of breath. Her blue eyes were almost round. Behind her, even in sleep, Crospinal’s contrasting pain and angst were visible. He had never felt wonder, nor assurance, or security. Not to this day.

Luella was gone.

Impossible to pinpoint when, exactly, she had vanished. Impossible for him, anyhow. In one haptic, she appeared twice his age. Impossible for him to pinpoint any event, really. Like Fox and Bear, like the past itself—and like the baby called Crospie—all he knew was that his sister was no longer around. Times when he had wanted to ask father about Luella were also gone. Times when he might’ve gotten a straight answer. All he ever got now was blank stares, catatonia, or fragmented lectures from the apparitions as father unravelled more and more toward madness and his demise.

Bloody drool, dangling . . . 

Crospinal had stopped asking anything. Most of his time was spent wandering the edges of the disintegrating pen, or beyond, in the less defined areas he was warned so many times, as that child, to avoid.

The clutch of carbon tubes clattered together like bells as they plummeted. He had snapped the tubes away from where they’d been rooted, separating the brittle material at the base. Not long ago, this entire area had been distinct and hard-edged. Now, sheets of hardening polymers encroached on the landscape and curtains of light swept back and forth over areas, reconfiguring, instilling information. Building machines—dumb, six-legged, carapace the size of his fist—watched from the walls as the tubes fell until the roiling mists below broke them down. Other movements down there, through a lazy rent in the clouds: beams of white energy suddenly revealed, magnesium bright, a growing extension, coaxing fullerenes from the composite foundation. Two hovering drones watched, in a swarm of data orbs, as construction splayed where none had been before, the world shifting, growing down there.

Crospinal turned, reluctantly, from the abyss.

There had been a thought, a flickering thought, about following the tubes down.

Past the remaining platform ringing the aperture, a layer of tiles, marred purple with toluene, had formed, completely separating the main rib from the pen, compromising the transfer tube he’d planned to take in such a way that Crospinal would have to hunch to walk under its sloped ceiling. Even now, strings of allotropes dripped from the seam of the split to the fresh tiles, where they were absorbed into the world with tremendous stench. He stood in wonder at the transformation that would sooner or later eradicate everything he knew. Data streams webbed the opening, information pouring over the freshly exposed material, programming reform, telling polymers to join forces. Changes were afoot up here, too, reconfiguration in the old as well as the new. What would father say about this, if he knew? Change was no longer kept at bay.

Not foolish enough to pass, for transmogrifications of the layout might not cease because of his presence, Crospinal held his nose pinched, capillaries crackling (these mitts were not new, and also compromised by wear). After a brief inspection, he took a narrow passage into what remained of the original structure, into a crawlspace, shimmying sideways between old plates.

The tunnel that had formed here was quiet. Sometimes he felt a breath of stale air, and he thought he heard movements, but he did not see indications of what, if anything, might be travelling. Ambients in the wall kept the lighting dim. At his back, the construction was warm, almost hot. Getting increasingly rough. If the structure changed abruptly, he could find himself plunging—not as appealing a concept as it had just been. He wondered if, on the other side, lay the barren horizon he’d gazed out on, not so long ago, from porthole of the harrier. Was there truly another world, with another set of rules, outside this one? The wasteland Crospinal always saw could not be what father coveted, where there had been mountains. His insistence meant there could be a third, or dozens more, for traces lingered, through fragments of memories and jumbled knowledge: the gate connected to father’s brain once supplied the ability to burn brightly, and project, but proved inconsistent and, as he died, unreliable.

Life had not always been this way.

Putting his hands against the ancient surface of the construction, Crospinal felt tremors of energy through the thin layer of his mitts. He thought again about his girlfriend’s words. Just as there was no way to see what lay beyond this shell, he had no chance of understanding the motives of the manifestation he had fallen in love with. Portholes did not open on this facet of the world. His girlfriend was unfathomable.

If he could break through, arid waste spilling in, the nothingness of the outside that he saw might sear his lungs to cinders and etch the flesh from his bones, bringing oblivion, freedom from torment, and relief.

His breath caught, shuddering—at least one more time—in his chest. The tricot rose and fell.

At one point, moments later, still navigating the tunnel adjacent to the blocked transfer tube, Crospinal got wedged. He wondered what the dogs would do, or not be able to do, if they could see him there, stuck in the wall. With his tongue he hooked his siphon into the corner of his mouth. He took a very small sip; water from his processor, wicked by the lining of his uniform, was distilled from his own waste. Since a recent lesson father might not even have meant to show him, but had done so as his judgement failed, Crospinal could not help but taste the bitter iodine.

After some amount of half-assed struggle, he managed to free himself and continue, on his way, back to the pen, where father was tethered, trapped, and almost dead.