FIFTY

“This is way over my head. I’m just a guy from Queens, ya know?”

The Builder moved his hands. He didn’t know.

Brooklyn had found the place by accident, his frenzied pacing building up to a need to escape, the need driving him to ask Andy where his crew was, and the desire to avoid talking to anyone he knew pushing him to go in the opposite direction. He’d turned the corner at random and spotted the gathering, a dozen of the horned-builders gathered at a bar.

“Don’t know the finger thing for ‘Queens’, sorry.” Brooklyn tried again, speaking as slowly as he gestured the words. “I don’t have the right tools for this job.”

The Builder asked what the right tool would be.

“Probably a bullet.” Brooklyn tapped his forehead. “Right there. Get me off this damned ride. Least I’d forget she asked me the question.” He rubbernecked for a bartender or waiter. Or any sign of imbibing. “No booze in Builder bars, huh?”

This is a rehearsal room, the Builder said. The performance is called, Always Check Your O-Rings. We will present it tonight.

“What part do you play?”

The love interest who distracts the inspector from their work at a crucial time.

Brooklyn clapped the Builder on the shoulder. “Gonna be great, pal. Break a leg.”

Leaving a room full of confused and offended Builders in his wake, Brooklyn retraced his trudge through pastel corridors to the hanger and into the apartment Andy had set him and the kids up with.

You’re the best human I know. I need you to help me decide. He growled. Way above my fuckin’ paygrade, Andromeda.

Brooklyn hadn’t listened well to Andy’s directions, but his little robots helped him out by painting a directional arrow on his retinas. He stopped short and cursed for several seconds when he realized he’d been following the thing without thought or question. The door to the apartment slid open on his approach.

“Look who’s here!” Kyra said.

Most Designed bodies had been crafted along human lines, so the furniture in the large, warmly lit room needed little explanation. Chairs, couch analogs, fat pillows… most of them filled with kids. The seat of honor, a bronze-colored lozenge with the square footage of a queen-sized bed was occupied by a black-clad woman with blood-red hair.

“Guessing you brought that Caliban guy with you,” Brooklyn said.

“We all came,” Razer said. “I’m supposed to bring you to him.”

“Now?”

The cyborg looked from him to the cluster of kids hanging on her every word. “Do you mind if we hang out a little first? Just a couple of minutes.”

“Fine.” Brooklyn threw his jacket on a chair. He had a bottle in his go-bag, which allegedly had been moved to his room. “Holler when you’re ready.”