Iced
Page 123
Why would sound vanish? Because everything stopped vibrating the instant the HFK appeared? Why would things stop vibrating? Because it was sucking energy? What exactly is the HFK doing? What attracts it to where its being attracted? What is the fecking commonality? Until we figure it out, we have no hope of stopping it. Were sitting ducks.
I examine the icy tableau before me. I need answers and I need them now. Before I went into the White Mansion I might have had a little time to play with, but since Ive been gone, things in my city have gotten critical. Theres too much snow and the colds getting too extreme, and if the HFK doesnt kill folks, cold alone will.
How many hundreds, even thousands more people will die before we figure out how to stop it? What if it goes to the abbey next? What if it takes Jo from me? What if everybodys generators run out of gas and they all die holed up, alone?
I sigh and close my eyes.
I shiver. What I need to see is right here in front of me. I can feel it. Im just not looking with the right eyes, the clear eyes that suffer no conflicts. I need a brain like mine and eyes like Ryodans.
I focus on the backs of my lids, take the grayness of them and cocoon it around me. I make a bland womb where I can begin the process of erasing myself, detaching from the world; the one where I exist and Im part of reality and everything I see is colored by my thoughts and feelings.
I strip away all that I know about myself, all that I am, and sink into a quiet cavern in my head where there is no corporeality, no pain.
In that shadowy cave, I dont wear a long black leather coat, or skull-and-crossbones panties, or crack jokes. I dont love being a superhero. I dont think Dancer is hot and Im not a virgin, because I dont really even exist.
In that cave, I was never born. I wont die.
All things are distilled to their essence.
I go inside my head and become that other me, the one I dont tell anybody about.
The observer.
She cant feel hunger in her belly or cramped muscles from being in a cage for days on end. She isnt Dani. She can survive anything. Feel nothing. See whats in front of her for exactly and only what it is. Her heart doesnt break a little every time her mom leaves, and she holds no price too high for survival.
I dont let go of myself and seek her often because once I got stuck there and she took over and the things she did
I live in terror that one day I wont get to be Dani again.
But, fecking-A, shes one smart cookie! Tough, too. She sees everything. Its hard to see like she does. Makes me feel like a freak. She thinks Im a wuss. But she never refuses me when I come.
I open her eyes and study the scene. Shes a receiver. Things go in and come out. She processes. No ego or id. Nothing but a puzzlehere, and all puzzles can be solved, all codes decoded, all prisons escaped. No price too high for success. There is an end and there are means, and all means are justified.
The facts, void of emotion, look completely different.
Folks bang cans. Fist-pump the air. Some clap. Others warm themselves. I pick and discard. I strip to bare essence.
Their bodies are bent and moving in ways that suggest intended, even relaxed motion, not the instinctual, tense muscular and skeletal flexion of panic. Everyone whose mouth is frozen open appears to be making an elongated E. Their eyes are nearly closed and the cords are tight in their necks.
I couldnt see it, but she can.
Its right there, in front of us. It was there the whole time. She thinks its obvious and Im stupid. I think shes a sociopathic nut job.
I have my answer but cant rejoice in it because she doesnt feel. I close my eyes to detach but she wont let me. She wants to stay. She thinks shes better equipped than me. I try to leave the cave but she hides all the doors. I visualize brilliant lights in it, like those on top of BB&B. She turns them off.
I open her eyes because I cant stand the darkness.
Ryodan is staring at me, hard. Dani, he says. Are you okay?
He uses a whole, unadulterated question mark, a bona-fecking-fide interrogatory that rises just like a normal person, and that simple thing penetrates. It surprises me the things that rattle her. It loosens her hold on me and I slip free. I guess my sense of humor is more Dani, not her, than anything else about us because when he cracks me up, just like that, shes gone. For a few fleeting seconds I know Im going to forget her again. I think she makes me forget her and I wont remember until I need her or I get pushed too far.
Then I dont even know that anymore.
I replay all my filed scenes, looking forand findingthat single commonality it took me so long to see. It was right in front of me all this time but I couldnt drop my preconceptions. I saw what I expected to see and that wasnt what it was at all. Holy frozen frequencies, Dancer, I say softly. Its drinking sound Slurpees!
What? Dancer says.
None of them were screaming. All the folks I thought were yelling in fear and horror at the end were singing.
The music changes beneath my feet. A heavy metal song just came on in Chesters and the vibrations increase in tempo and intensity. I feel the blood drain from my face.
If Im right
And I am right.
There are thousands of people below us, in Chesters, and although Im not real impressed with their choice of a lifestyle, the race were in now needs all the humans weve got left.
I examine the icy tableau before me. I need answers and I need them now. Before I went into the White Mansion I might have had a little time to play with, but since Ive been gone, things in my city have gotten critical. Theres too much snow and the colds getting too extreme, and if the HFK doesnt kill folks, cold alone will.
How many hundreds, even thousands more people will die before we figure out how to stop it? What if it goes to the abbey next? What if it takes Jo from me? What if everybodys generators run out of gas and they all die holed up, alone?
I sigh and close my eyes.
I shiver. What I need to see is right here in front of me. I can feel it. Im just not looking with the right eyes, the clear eyes that suffer no conflicts. I need a brain like mine and eyes like Ryodans.
I focus on the backs of my lids, take the grayness of them and cocoon it around me. I make a bland womb where I can begin the process of erasing myself, detaching from the world; the one where I exist and Im part of reality and everything I see is colored by my thoughts and feelings.
I strip away all that I know about myself, all that I am, and sink into a quiet cavern in my head where there is no corporeality, no pain.
In that shadowy cave, I dont wear a long black leather coat, or skull-and-crossbones panties, or crack jokes. I dont love being a superhero. I dont think Dancer is hot and Im not a virgin, because I dont really even exist.
In that cave, I was never born. I wont die.
All things are distilled to their essence.
I go inside my head and become that other me, the one I dont tell anybody about.
The observer.
She cant feel hunger in her belly or cramped muscles from being in a cage for days on end. She isnt Dani. She can survive anything. Feel nothing. See whats in front of her for exactly and only what it is. Her heart doesnt break a little every time her mom leaves, and she holds no price too high for survival.
I dont let go of myself and seek her often because once I got stuck there and she took over and the things she did
I live in terror that one day I wont get to be Dani again.
But, fecking-A, shes one smart cookie! Tough, too. She sees everything. Its hard to see like she does. Makes me feel like a freak. She thinks Im a wuss. But she never refuses me when I come.
I open her eyes and study the scene. Shes a receiver. Things go in and come out. She processes. No ego or id. Nothing but a puzzlehere, and all puzzles can be solved, all codes decoded, all prisons escaped. No price too high for success. There is an end and there are means, and all means are justified.
The facts, void of emotion, look completely different.
Folks bang cans. Fist-pump the air. Some clap. Others warm themselves. I pick and discard. I strip to bare essence.
Their bodies are bent and moving in ways that suggest intended, even relaxed motion, not the instinctual, tense muscular and skeletal flexion of panic. Everyone whose mouth is frozen open appears to be making an elongated E. Their eyes are nearly closed and the cords are tight in their necks.
I couldnt see it, but she can.
Its right there, in front of us. It was there the whole time. She thinks its obvious and Im stupid. I think shes a sociopathic nut job.
I have my answer but cant rejoice in it because she doesnt feel. I close my eyes to detach but she wont let me. She wants to stay. She thinks shes better equipped than me. I try to leave the cave but she hides all the doors. I visualize brilliant lights in it, like those on top of BB&B. She turns them off.
I open her eyes because I cant stand the darkness.
Ryodan is staring at me, hard. Dani, he says. Are you okay?
He uses a whole, unadulterated question mark, a bona-fecking-fide interrogatory that rises just like a normal person, and that simple thing penetrates. It surprises me the things that rattle her. It loosens her hold on me and I slip free. I guess my sense of humor is more Dani, not her, than anything else about us because when he cracks me up, just like that, shes gone. For a few fleeting seconds I know Im going to forget her again. I think she makes me forget her and I wont remember until I need her or I get pushed too far.
Then I dont even know that anymore.
I replay all my filed scenes, looking forand findingthat single commonality it took me so long to see. It was right in front of me all this time but I couldnt drop my preconceptions. I saw what I expected to see and that wasnt what it was at all. Holy frozen frequencies, Dancer, I say softly. Its drinking sound Slurpees!
What? Dancer says.
None of them were screaming. All the folks I thought were yelling in fear and horror at the end were singing.
The music changes beneath my feet. A heavy metal song just came on in Chesters and the vibrations increase in tempo and intensity. I feel the blood drain from my face.
If Im right
And I am right.
There are thousands of people below us, in Chesters, and although Im not real impressed with their choice of a lifestyle, the race were in now needs all the humans weve got left.
