Getting Real

“Neither do I—not even slightly,” Razmara said. “I wish I could think of something that might make that happen.”

An avatar appeared in the middle of the office. It had to be an avatar. He didn’t think a woman with bright blue hair and bright red eyes, wearing a hot-pink Victorian-era dress, complete with bustle, could have just walked in without anybody noticing. It was L.A., so you couldn’t be a hundred percent sure, but all the same....

“If you can get out of town, you’d better do it.” The avatar had a raspy baritone voice that suggested thirty years of cheap cigars. What was going on with that? Either a programming glitch or a Chinese with a one twisted sense of humor. The avatar looked around and nodded. “Yeah, you’d better bail. Your dumbshit government’s really screwed the pooch, and L.A.’s gonna pay for it. I know that sucks, but life sucks sometimes. You’ve got”—the avatar glanced down at a wristwatch she/he/it wasn’t wearing—”two hours. Two and a half, tops.”

“Why are you telling us?” Razmara said, at the same time as somebody else was asking, “Why should we believe you?”

“Well, if you want to believe your own stupid, fucked-up people, you can do that. But you’ll be sorry,” the avatar said. “I mean, if your own people had all their shit in one bag, you wouldn’t’ve lost power here, right? Right.”

“How can we go anywhere if all the power’s out?” Stas Kyriades called.

The avatar shrugged. “Unicycle? Horse? Elephant? Feet? All kinds of ways, sucker. Hey! Who wants to get Real?” Without waiting for an answer, the thing started throwing little cardboard squares all over the office. Then it thumbed its nose and vanished.

One of the squares, a bright blue one—about the color of the avatar’s hair—landed on Shapur Razmara’s desk. He stared at it as if it were an Ebola bomb or a vest-pocket nuke. “Waddaya think we oughta do?” Kyriades asked.

Razmara’s chair squeaked when he pushed it back from the desk. “Get the hell out of here.” He headed for the stairs.

The sergeant followed him. “What if this is all bullshit? What if we’re freaking on account of nothing?”

“Then how come the power’s out—the power and our phones?” Razmara asked. “If they want to can my sorry ass for cowardice, they can do that. I’ll get another job. I can’t get another ass.”

“Yeah...” Kyriades followed him down the stairs, too. He tried his cell again. It remained resolutely dead. “Shit. Wish I could call Sophie.”

“Maybe she’ll get an avatar, too,” Razmara said, wishing he had somebody who mattered that much to him.

“Yeah...” Kyriades said again, sounding surprised. “Maybe she will.”

Out on the street, all the cars and trucks, hydrogen and electric alike, were dead. So was an ancient gasoline-burner. Some drivers were peering under the hood. One gal was kicking her machine. That made as much sense as anything else, and did as much good.

“Which way do we go?” Kyriades asked.

“They gotta come from the coast,” Razmara answered. “So if we head north, like toward Pasadena, we’re moving away from ‘em, anyhow. Maybe that’ll do some good, maybe it won’t. But it looks like the best shot to me.”

“Makes sense.” The other cop paused. “But when you see an avatar like that one, you start wondering how much sense making sense makes.”

“Right,” Razmara said. “C’mon.”

Before long—right about the time Razmara’s feet started to hurt—they walked past a bike shop. Actually, instead of walking past, they walked in. A million dollars later, they rode away on two cheap bicycles. Razmara would have liked to know what time it was, but his cell stayed out. Kyriades had a wristwatch ... which was also out. They started getting scared then. The only people in L.A. who knew what time it was were antiques freaks with windup clocks and watches. And...

“I’m glad I’m not on the operating table right now,” Razmara said. Kyriades made a horrible face. They both pedaled harder.

Well, they tried to. Bikes were nimble critters, but traffic still bit the big one. They were riding past Caltech when Kyriades looked back over his shoulder. “Oh, fuck,” he said, and hit the brakes. Razmara was glad for an excuse to stop. Both out-of-shape, middle-aged cops were sweating like pigs.

Then Razmara looked back over his shoulder. “Jesus Christ!” he said once more. Yeah, he was assimilated. Better to assimilate than never. Or something like that.

What looked like an almost-clear dome had been plopped down onto L.A. Not an inversion layer. More like a Pyrex bowl you’d nuke veggies in. God’s Pyrex bowl, upside down on top of Los Angeles. God must’ve been an even bigger dude than Razmara figured. The leading edge of the bowl-thing was like eight blocks behind them. “Wanna go back and find out what that is?” Kyriades asked.

“Your mother!” Razmara squeeped.

And that was even before lightning started lashing inside the bowl.

* * * *