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dynamoe · 3 years

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Prologue | Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5 | Ch 6 ← You Are Here | Ch 7

In the height of Network TV days, popular sitcoms would do a special "sweeps week" double-length episode filmed in an exotic, trendy location. Consider this chapter one of those. (It's skookum long, man.) ** read it on A03, it's easier on your eyes

THE STORY SO FAR: It's the mid 1990s. To get discounted "Boy Genius" admission to a prestigious Super Science conference, Billy shaves 10 years off his age, gets a bad haircut and wears very short pants. Now, they've finally landed in Jet City.

“How can they lose our luggage? That thing was the size of a frickin’ planet,” Billy spat, incandescent with rage, while storming out of the door from baggage claim of SEA-TAC airport.

“Our bag is not lost, it’s in St. Louis,” White said slowly and calmly, a practiced master in the art of Billy-whispering.

“A direct flight. Point A to Point B. No stopovers. HOW do they lose a bag?!” Billy muttered, still furious.

“They have our number at the hotel and they will contact us when they can get it back to us.”

“All our clothes were in there and all the ConjectTech merch and— ,” Billy suddenly remembered, “Our invention for our presentation was in that bag! Fuck!”

“It’s fine, Billy,” Pete rested his hand on Billy’s head with gentle pressure, “Do you want to ride around on the baggage carousel for a while until you can calm down?”

“Oh no! I have to keep wearing THIS,” Billy furiously indicated the hated and now extra-rumpled short pants suit he had spent an uncomfortable three hour flight pulling out of self-administered wedgies.

“Seriously, don’t worry,” Pete said with more force, tipping down his sunglasses, “All of the essential paperwork I have on my person and I always take the liberty of putting five-large in unmarked bills up where no security’s gonna look for it, if you get my meaning.”

Billy processed. “You put… five-thousand dollars in cash… up your ass?”

↓ continues under the fold ↓

“Yeah, while you were in the x-ray line,” White said casually, looking through his shoulder bag for the plastic raincoat, “I do it before I fly anywhere as extra insurance in case something goes down.”

Billy still processed. “Why would you… I mean, it’s not illegal to have $5000 in your wallet.”

“It’s a habit I picked up when I was flying down to Mexico every week when I was doing a lot of… recreational traveling,” White said, squeezing way too much sunblock onto his palm, “Just puts my mind at ease knowing it’s there.”

Billy stopped struggling with the ‘why’ and shifted to the mechanics “How big around is five thousand dollars? I mean, even if it’s only 50 hundred-dollar-bills coiled really tightly it’s gotta be a diameter of–”

“Let’s get a cab into town,” Pete slapped the oozing sunblock roughly onto his face, “Airports are depressing.” --

Bagless, they grabbed the first free taxi at the stand.“Take us to the SPACE NEEDLE!” demanded Pete.

“Can’t do it, man. It came over the radio–- bomb threat,” the cabby said, “They evacuated and closed the ‘Sneedle down for the rest of the day.”

Pete and Billy looked at each other. That was unexpected.

The driver continued, “People are always trying to blow up the Space Needle. Like, pick somewhere else to blow up for once, y’know? They never actually do it either. Just... lame...”

Is there somewhere else you could take us? We’re never been to Seattle before,” Billy asked, almost apologetically.

“Yea, sure. The Fremont Troll. The Fremont Rocket. The Fremont Lenin statue,” the driver suggested, “I live in Fremont so I kinda know it best.”

“How about where they throw fish?”

“Pike Place Market? Laaaaaame,” the driver dismissed.

They both felt very small and uncool. Schooled by a local.

“Actually though, you should go to the Gum Wall. It’s under the market,” the driver concluded, pulling onto the highway, “It’s a wall... covered in gum.”

“Oh,” said Billy, confused, “Sounds... irreverent?”

“It fucks the paradigm of what an ‘attraction’ is, dude. The semiotics of tourism, like, blown to shit.”

“Lemme guess, you’re a grad student,” Pete leaned forward.

“Naw, man. I got my Masters in Philosophy two years ago.”

“And he’s driving a cab,” Pete emphasized to Billy with heavy ‘I told you college doesn’t matter’ overtones. Billy was more interested in where this philosopher-driver was taking them. Pete leaned back and looked out the windows as they drove. Overcast. Misting. Dark.

“Hey Billy, what time is it?”

Billy checked his watch, “Bit after four. Three hour flight. One hour of BULLSHIT!” Pete rested his calming hand on Billy’s head to stave off another rage attack.

“Jeez. Looks like it’s already, like, dusk out there,” Pete said, admiring the haze.

“We changed latitudes. Higher on the globe, the sunlight is at a more oblique angle,” Billy shrugged, unimpressed by planetary tilt’s effect on climate.

"Nah, It’s more than that,” Pete turned to the cabbie, “Is the sky supposed to be that color?”

The cabby stuck his head out the window, “Yeah, seems normal. The weather’s pretty much always like this, y’know. Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, yeah?”

“I thought it was supposed to rain a lot in Seattle,” asked Billy casually, as if he hadn’t memorized the annual rainfall of every American city.

“It rains, yeah, but mostly it does this,” the cabby gestured to the sky, “It’s just sort of blah, y’know. No sun. Just gray all day.”

Pete looked like he was about to cry, “It’s so freakin' beautiful.”

“It’s a wall. Covered in gum,” Billy stated the obvious, “This is disgusting. Why is this an attraction?”

“Not every city has Carnegie Hall, “ Pete shrugged with his back to the wall, looking up at the sky. They were in a sunken alley, outdoors but lower than street level as the lay of the land sloped down towards the waterfront.

“We should have gone to see the Fremont Troll,” Billy complained, studying a particularly grody chunk of spearmint smeared into the form of a smiley face, “People put all this gum here waiting to go see an improv show, can you believe it?”

“Believe the gum or believe anyone would wait in a line to see improv comedy?” asked Pete, yawning.

Billy looked down all 50 feet of gum-covered brick and shuddered. He pointed back up at the stairwell to the street above, “The market’s just over there. We could buy some clothes to wear until we get our luggage back,” Billy suggested,

He turned to where Pete stood a minute ago but nobody was there. Billy looked down the alley and caught just the sight of Pete disappearing around the corner, onto the Pike Place Hillclimb down to the piers.

Pete pulled off the plastic rain poncho. It wasn’t even misting anymore. Didn’t need it. He dropped on the stairs without stopping. Actually, he didn’t need his hat either. Dropped. He had a better view of the sky here, walking down the terraced stairs.

The sky was half-lit and overcast, the air was clammy, and he was just walking outside unprotected like it was normal. He kept going down these stairs under an overpass, passing quaint shops full of old tourists just disembarked from an Alaskan cruise ship, stretching their sea legs for a stopover and buying casually-racist native-themed knick-knacks for their friends back home.

No sunblock. No hood. No face cover. No umbrella. No nothing. Don’t need my arms covered. (Jacket dropped, too.) He got a strange look from a retired couple in matching windbreakers he passed going the other way. Fuck ‘em. They don’t know how great this feels. He defiantly stripped off his fuzzy cardigan, balled it up and lobbed it behind him.

“Hey! Mmmphh!” shouted a stranger who just got served a faceful of thrifted angora.

“Sorry, man,” Pete whiffed casually, but he was already on the move down the steps.

I can just... walk around with no real destination in mind, just being freed to go wherever I feel like. It’s like being in an open-world video game but real life, Pete theorized. Like King’s Quest VI but you don’t actually do any rescue-the-princess missions but go out and feed the ducks instead, maybe get a coffee. NPC, solve your own problems, I’m gonna sit on a bench and chill.

He could just make out the edge of the waterfront another flight of stairs below him– a street, the pier, a cruise ship in the bay and the far shore of Bainbridge Island. He bet they’d look even better without his sunglasses. Yeah, he didn’t need these either. He pitched them over his shoulder

“Hey, those are prescription. You need those to see, idiot,” Billy shouted from 3 staircases behind/above him, hopping down two and three steps at a time to catch up. His arms already full of Pete’s cast off laundry, he strained to pick up his glasses with his foot.

“It’s not sunny, Billy,” Pete shouted back, smiling like he was three-glasses-in wine-drunk, “Why would I wear sunglasses when it’s not sunny?”

“Because you’re mostly blind from lack of pigment in your retinas, bonehead,” Billy dropped boring reality like a hammer, cranky at being forced to be Pete’s clothing mule for whatever this disrobing euphoria was.

“This city is the true homeland of the Albino Nation,” Pete declared.

Billy looked behind him at a clump of tourists congregating at a beaded necklace kiosk. “Those weren’t albinos, they’re just Norwegian,” Billy dismissed.

Pete’s pupils were pinholes as he unbuttoned his 1970s cabana shirt with the pink squiggles on it.

“No, like, I’m home. THIS was where I was always meant to be.”

“The Aquarium?” Billy pointed dumbly. The Hillclimb ended at Pier 59, the Seattle Aquarium.

“Not specifically.” Pete mumbled as shrugged off the vintage shirt and pitched it into the bay. Billy watched it fall. Down to one layer.

“I’m not going in after that,” Billy said flatly.

Pete ignored him and kept walking along the waterfront.

“Whatever this is a demonstration of is counterproductive to us not having our luggage. We don’t need to lose MORE clothes when we only have what we’re wearing,” Billy punctured.

“I’m free. I never want to leave here. I don’t need any cover,” Pete whipped off his t-shirt and waved it over his head, “YEAAAAAH!” A ferry in the bay tooted at him.

“Aw, c’mon,” Billy whined, “after I just said—”

Pete pitched the shirt into the bay and darted for a bench in front of the Ivar’s Seafood Bar. He stood on it and threw his arms wide to the sky. His putty-colored rubbery torso stark against the purpley-gray clouds above him.

“C’mon, White. Put your clothes on,” Billy tutted, “People are trying to eat and your nipples are putting them off.”

“SEATTLE WEATHER IS THE GREATEST!” Pete screamed to the ocean.

“People are staring,” Billy said, embarrassed. He suspected Pete was suffering from some kind of lack-of-sun-stroke; he couldn’t cope without being boxed in by oppressive sunlight.

Some dick in the crowd pitched a full cup of Ivar’s Famous Clam Chowder at Pete, splattering him from neck to navel. At least it was the cream-base chowder with bacon bits not the tomatoey one so it matched his aesthetic.

“I AM NOT DETERRED! STILL INTO SEATTLE!” Pete continued screaming while dripping.

The dozen-odd pier seagulls caught the scent and stopped picking french fries off discarded trays and rummaging in garbage cans.

"It’s kinda damp here," Billy noted, feeling the air.

"You’re just too used to the desert," Pete muttered out of the side of his mouth, nearly drowned out by the beating of wings and a chorus of shrieking.

The gulls started swarming around him, dive-bombing to nip clammy nubs clinging to his skin and pants.

"You made your point, whatever it was. Can we please go to the hotel now?" Billy begged, protecting remaining eye from gull-strike.

"NO!" Pete screamed into the ocean over the bird riot clawing at his chowder-speckled carcass.

As if on cue, the drizzle started, growing quickly to a full-on pissing rainstorm. The pier cleared. People ran for cover. The gulls dissipated.

Billy pulled the rain poncho out of the pile of Pete’s discards and draped it over himself.

Rainy clam chowder residue ran down his torso onto his jeans. Angry red beak gouges and bleeding scrapes peppered his pallid skin. His waterlogged stringy hair stuck to his face.

"Ok, fine. Let’s go to the hotel."

The hotel was mid-level at best but to Billy who had spent every night sleeping on a brick of disintegrating upholstery foam claiming to be a cabin-bed, the standard room was filled with inconceivable luxury.

As he bounced on one of two (two!) king sized beds in the room he screamed, “This is so sweeeeeet!”

“You know you don’t have to be 11 once I close the door, pally,” Pete said wearily, slipping a ‘a do not disturb’ door hanger over the knob.

He sniffed at the T-shirt he was wearing, hastily bought from a tourist shop on the pier. Day-glo salmon or orcas or something leaping in front of the Space Needle and mountains, already dotted with dark patches where he had bled through. He couldn’t tell if he could still actually smell clam chowder or it was just traumatic sense-memories.

Billy rolled side to side and then front to back over the mattress, calculating, “You literally could fit nine of me on this.”

“Great, I’ll collar whatever cloning lab guys are at the science conference and tell ‘em to lay off the sheep and get busy on those Quizboy nonuplets.” White deadpanned.

He sat on the edge of one of the beds, “I can’t get that excited about a bed unless it’s got a breakfast tray of Eggs Benedict or a passed-out teenage girl on top of it.”

Billy stopped bouncing on the mattress, and looked stern, “Ew, White. No!”

“I didn’t really mean it. I was just trying to get a rise out of you,” White waved off, “Poached eggs are nasty.”

“We have about an hour before the Conference Cocktail Reception,” White unpacked his carry-on of the essentials: blow dryer, hairspray, curling wand, surge-protector, “We should get cleaned up.”

“I call the shower first,” Billy yelped, running for the bathroom.

“Certainly, you get the first shower. Gotta get all that clam chowder some yutz throw on you washed off, right?” White called after him, “Oh wait, that happened to me, you selfish little pick.”

“Oh my god, feel these towels, White.” Billy’s eyes grew even wider, “This is luxuriously PLUSH. Like... the pelt of a mythical animal made of absorbency.”

“Shave your legs again. You’re showing,” Pete demanded, Billy scowled.

“I oughta get a shirt printed -- ‘My mother shot me up with $20,000 worth of hormone therapy and all I got out of it was extremely aggressive leg hair,’” Billy muttered.

“I’ll do your hair and make-up after. Throw me the suit, I can steam it while you’re in there.”

“Only if you promise me you won’t throw it in the bay.”

“I feel like one of those inbred dogs at the Westminster Kennel Club show,” Billy griped as White hovered around him with a blowdryer and curling wand.

“Toy breed or non-sporting?”

“This is humiliating.”

“Nah. It’s just like school picture day. Remember? Didn’t your ma brush your hair hard to get all the knots out, even though it hurt your scalp real bad, bad enough for you to cry and even a whole bottle of No More Tears didn’t make a difference? And she said she’d burn you with her cigarette again if you didn’t stop simpering like a little girl?”

Billy stared blankly for slightly too long. “… No?”

Pete shrugged and curled the edge of Billy’s bangs under. He was going for the complete mushroom cap effect. Sleek, symmetrical and very “I swear I’m genuinely an actual child” chic.

“I hated School Picture Day,” Billy remembered, “The photographer was always pissy because he had to reframe his shot when I showed up even after finding two phone books for me to sit on.

“But now you have those precious memories forevah.”

“I managed to get a picture of me flipping the bird into the group photo of the Varsity Quiz Bowl team,” Billy perked up, “They printed that in the yearbook!”

“Little victories matter the most,” Pete nodded.

“Remember, you’re eleven,” Pete muttered under his breath as a final director’s note as they entered the Conference Welcome Cocktail Reception.

Billy picked out their name badges from a tray near the entrance, handing one to Pete and attaching one to his lapel.

“I know!” Billy snarled, “I’m in character. Get off my back. Why aren’t you ‘in character?’ You’re supposed to be my loyal sidekick.”

Pete turned icy, “I’m not you freakin’ sidekick”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m a ‘parent and/or guardian.’ That’s what the application said.”

“Check your con badge, numbnuts.”

Pete looked at the laminated card on his lapel for the first time:

MR. WHITE (Sidekick to Master Billy Quizboy, B.G.)

“You little shit.”

“I put the name you wanted, Harvey,” Billy burbled in a stomach-churning sweetie voice.

Pete hissed through gritted teeth, “If it wouldn’t put my back out I’d come down there and slice your friggin’ ear off.”

“But you can’t so you won’t,” Billy teased with a cruel smile, “Get your master a drink.”

Pete walked off and stood sourly in the bar line. “But you can’t shssccho you won’t. Meh!” he mimicked to himself, making sure his Billy impression was extra slushy and dumb-sounding.

“Oh, hello,” said an elderly scientist standing next to him in line. Great, now he had to make small talk, too. The duffer leaned in to read White’s badge.

“With what do you assist Master Billy?” an elderly scientist asked, benignly.

“Oh, whatever he demands. I owe my existence to him," Pete rattled off in a high nasal whine, letting his pupils drift in opposite directions, "If I displease him he shows me the others he made. He keeps them stacked like cordwood in the walk-in freezer, waiting for activation to remind me I can be replaced. He took away our pigment so we can not escape into the ‘brightworld’ to mix with the real humans.”

The elderly scientist looked confused.

“I would kill for Master Billy,” White said blankly, his colorless eyes staring into infinity.

The scientist wandered off, waiting for a drink didn’t seem worth it.

Billy found Pete in the crowd, holding two drinks, “What the fuck are you telling the other people about me? I just got the stink eye from the world’s foremost expert on microbial biodegradation”

“Just how I dress you and change your bedsheets whenever you have ‘a rough night’ and ‘piss the bed,’” Pete air-quoted unnecessarily.

“Jesus, White! What the hell's wrong with you?”

“Ooh, canapes,” Pete made a bee-line for the cater-waiter.

Sticking close to the hotel bar, the two looked over the half-full welcome reception. Billy nursed a rocks glass full of apple juice as Pete gave him the breakdown of the room

“The scrum of buzz-cuts and clip-on ties in the corner-- Aerospace. Probably locals. That table of the Eddie Deezens – software executives. Reassuring success hasn’t changed them since they look the same as when they recruited at my college ten years ago. Except now they all have Rolexes.”

White pointed around the room “Academic. Academic. Government. Private Sector. Don’t Know. Private Sector. Military.”

Billy followed his finger “Everyone here is, like, super old.”

“Welcome to Super Science,” White said through a mouthful of bacon-wrapped dates, his eyes never leaving the cater-station by the kitchen door, “Ooh, stuffed mushrooms are coming.”

Billy climbed on a banquet chair to get a better view, “There’s probably more green people than black people in this room.”

“Not a lot of girls either,” White glumly observed, spraying canape crumbs out of his mouth.“Weird that no other ‘boy geniuses’ took up the half-price deal, huh? ”

Billy shook his head, “There are five other Boy Geniuses registered for the Conference. Two are flying in from Asia and haven’t arrived yet. One is missing the first day of the conference to compete in a robotics tournament that overlaps. One is an extreme fundamentalist and refused to enter a facility where alcohol is being imbibed— that’s his mother saying that, not him. He’s up in his hotel room. Can’t speak for the last one. Total mystery.”

“Fun bunch,” White muttered sarcastically, “Aren’t there any Girl Geniuses? We could breed more of you.”

“Geniusing is a Boy’s Club. Maybe in a couple decades they can get out of the Girl Detectives ghetto but the infrastructure seems just as sexist as when I was coming up the ranks.”

Billy sipped his drink and looked across the room, “That old creep in the wheelchair keeps staring at me.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. He probably just wants to fuck you.”

“WHAT!?”

“It’s a room full of old weird scientists,” White shrugged, popping another mini-taco in his mouth, “Swing a cat, hit a pedophile,”

“Master Quizboy? A pleasure to meet you,” a suave gentleman extended a hand, startling Billy who now was imagining kid-touchers with tenure slinking around every corner.

“Dr. Alonzo Superwash, chair of the Conference Board. This is my graduate associate, Ms. Krutzburg, who will be assisting me for the conference.”

An unsmiling dark-haired young woman nodded in acknowledgment.

“Um, hello. May I introduce my associate, Mr. White,” mirrored Billy, not wanting to open the “sidekick” can of worms in front of strangers. Pete was tunnel-focused onto the cater-waiters. Billy nudged him to bring him back.

“Oh. Right. How are ya?” Pete inelegantly got in on the hand-shaking. He finally clocked there was a woman in their midst and his eyes lit up.

“Master Quizboy, could I trouble you for a minute of your time?” Dr. Alonzo gestured into the crowd, indicating he wanted to break away from the scrum.

Billy hopped off the chair, internally cursing his luck that he wasn’t going to witness the epic foot-in-mouth embarrassment sure to follow when leaving White alone with the doctor’s young female assistant to deploy his charm offensive.

Billy knew he should feel guilty about the glee he felt watching Pete fail with women but made him feel better about never making an effort himself. Billy had literally never spoken to a woman who wasn’t his mother, a quizbowl judge, child prodigy pageant administrator or working in the service industry while he interacted with them. He was too self-conscious of his limitations to even try.

Pete White was a fascinating case study -- with his mouth shut, he was tall, cool and handsome (after the initial color shock wore off) but within thirty seconds of Pete talking, most people-- regardless of gender-- developed an instinctive revulsion. The harder he tried to be charming the faster the dislike took hold. Billy witnessed total strangers take a swing at White, or denounce him for crimes he had nothing to do with. He was the universal recipient of “How Dare You, Sir” speeches, whether they were applicable or not.

The Germans had a word for someone with a punchable face (“Backpfeifengesicht”), but Pete White was the only man alive with a punchable personality. And his accent certainly didn’t help.

Billy made a note to study the phenomenon. Was it micro-expressions triggering a universal, inborn behavioral reaction? Maybe it was chemical, like a kind of reverse pheromone? Could they synthetically recreate and bottle it? Were there industrial applications?

Dr. Superwash had walked them just a dozen feet into the crowd, talking the whole time, which Billy only caught half of, so lost in his analysis of his best friend’s repulsiveness. Billy could still see the back of White’s head and the grad student’s face from where they were standing. He could tell just from White’s hand gestures he was name-dropping celebrities as the polite attention strained, wavered, and then fully drained from Ms. Krutzburg. She was transitioning to the ‘outright hostility’ phase right on schedule.

“Going going gone,” Billy sighed, before realizing Dr. Superwash was still talking.

“—our residency program in Geneva. Would you say?” Dr. Superwash paused for response.

“Sorry. I missed part of what you were saying. It’s noisy down at floor-level.”

Superwash chuckled benignly, and leaned in, “Of course. I should have considered that.”

“I was inviting you, Master Quizboy, to join our international pilot program for the up and coming generation of Super Scientists. I believe I’m not overstating it to predict we’re on the cusp of some big discoveries in fields as varied as subatomic particles to human genetics.

“That’s what I’m planning on getting into after I finish medical school,” Billy jumped in, neglecting to mention he was attending the esteemed University of the Breakfast Nook, daily lectures by Professor Library Card, “I mean, genetic research and neurology. Both, y’know, for personal reasons.”

“The Human Genome Project has only just begun but it’s doing wonderful things. And I’m sure you could take some time off from your studies to get some hands-on experience.”

“That program sounds incredible. I don’t know what to say.”

“Our foundation has partnerships with several campuses doing research in Germany, Japan and here in the States: locally at the University of Washington, a few sites in Texas and of course, at MIT.”

Billy stifled a squeal of delight. He could actually go to MIT! Better late than never.

“It can’t have escaped your notice that the entire field is at a crossroads. Super Science is ‘graying’ and losing focus in a post-Cold War environment. We need to support and highlight promising young talent.”

“Young, right.” Billy repeated. He forgot this was a scam. He was a liar. He was at the conference under false pretenses and these were not real offers he could actually accept. He turned away to not have to look Dr. Superwash in the eye, only to catch the glance of that old creep in the wheelchair across the room, staring at him intensely.

“We’re having a panel tomorrow on youth outreach, I’d encourage you to attend.”

“Dr. Superwash, do you know who that man is?” Billy asked, pointing at the wheelchair across the room..

“Considering your background I would have assumed you had met Prof. Putnam already.”

Billy’s good eye nearly popped out of his skull. Shit.

“I would be more than happy to introduce you, if you like.”

“No. Please don’t. I mean, don’t trouble yourself. That’s ok. I have to go. I’ll consider the offer but, yeah, I have to leave quite suddenly right... now,” Billy stumbled backwards before he bolted.

Shit shit shit shit shit shit.

–

“Of course, no one had checked the server connection so I said…”

Billy clipped alongside Pete in his best this-isn’t-running-just-walking-casually-as-quickly-as-possible scramble and stage-whispered, “We gotta go. We gotta go. We gotta get out of here. Like, now.”

“Where’s the fire?” White jovially, throwing in a fake laugh. He threw an arm around Ms. Krutzburg's shoulder who visibly shuddered with revulsion at the liberty taken, “We’re all just getting acquainted.”

Billy pointed accusingly at Ms. Krutzburg and bellowed, “You’re off the hook. Scram!”

She let out a sigh of relief, shrugged White's arm off of her and disappeared back into the crowd.

“D’aw, Billy!” White groaned, “I was really getting somewhere with her.”

“Halfway to another black eye,” Billy leapt onto a chair to get into his face, “I’m serious, White. We gotta GET OUT.” Billy was foaming with panic as he jerked his metal thumb behind him.

White looked back where Billy came from and saw the palsy-faced wheelchair geezer inching their direction, dragging an oxygen tank and a net of breathing tubes. Pete didn’t wait for the whole story – there’s no way this ends well – he just bounced. Skidding in the entryway, Pete whipped his centrifugal momentum into a slide through the door with Billy hot on his heels.

They ran but the old man in the wheelchair followed. Slowly. Steadily. With seething hatred pouring out of every inch of his desiccated 90-year-old face.

“We need distance. We need higher ground. We need camouflage,” Billy strategized.

Just jogging the distance between the hotel bar and the front door had totally spent White, left bent over and wheezing asthmatically on the sidewalk 10 feet behind him, “What are we running from?” he shouted.

“Long story, just don’t let him catch up,” Billy shouted back without breaking pace.

“Why am I running away? He doesn’t even know me.”

“Because if Prof. Peebo Putnam catches me, he’s going to murder me with his bare hands and you don’t know how to work the coffeemaker back home.”

Whatever advantage youth gave them was undercut by Quizboy’s piddling stride length and White’s near-religious devotion to the art of laziness and, of course, the old man having wheels and a battery-powered motor.

All of downtown Seattle was built on an incline. It's practically as hilly as San Francisco but they didn’t make a whole “thing” out of it. The slope probably was worse for the wheelchair but it wasn’t doing Pete any favors.Despite having a head start and years of practice of running away from threats, Pete was barely keeping up with Billy’s hustle.

“Go for the Tsutakawa!” Billy yelped.

“The what?”

“That Jetsons-looking sculpture fountain thing” Billy pointed at a mid century modern piece of public art in front of the Central Library.

Billy leapt into the fountain’s pool and clambered up the base, grabbing for the central stalk to pull himself up higher into the bronze sculpture like monkey bars.

“Aw, I’m gonna get wet again!”

“Do I have to cover you in clam chowder to motivate you?” Billy’s head popped out of a hole in the side of a blobby modernistic bronze form punctured with oval openings to whisper-shout, “ MOVE!”

Pete stepped reluctantly into the pool and onto the first level of the fountain. He grabbed Billy’s extended hand. Billy pulled and Pete kicked off, climbing higher into the sculpture – off the fork-tines of the lower crown shape into the open-sided egg spheroid and out over the lilypad platform on top.

“George Tsutakawa's fusion of Asian, Native American, and Abstract Expressionist forms is deeply evocative of the Pacific Northwest,” Billy tensely whispered as the whine of Putnam’s electric motor grew closer and louder before zooming past the fountain entirely. He had overshot by five blocks at least when Pete lost his balance and fell backward into the reflecting pool with a splash.

Putnam’s chair spun around, searching for the cause of the noise but saw nothing. He started rolling away slowly.

Pete couldn’t hold his breath underwater any longer and exploded from under the water’s surface in a white arc. Peebo’s wheelchair whipped around again to face him but only saw a drenched albino he didn't know gasping for air, sitting up to his elbows in a pool.

Peebo’s chair rotated away from the fountain again, Billy took the window of opportunity to slide off the lip of the fountain and into the pool. Finding his feet, he shook off as much water as he could and then darted up a side street.

“Jesus, Billy, don’t leave me, “ White whined.

Being over 90 hadn’t dampened Putnam’s hearing and he revolved again back to see the wet albino stagger up a side street, presumably also in pursuit of Billy Quizboy (née Whalen). Facing a sleep incline, Peebo shifted gears on the electric wheelchair and started to climb.

Pete padded up behind Billy at a wavering pace, alternately surging and falling behind. Pete wasn’t much of a “running” guy. Or a “physical activity” guy, if he was truly honest.

“Billy!” he shouted, breathing ragged and hard.

“What?” Billy shouted back

“You know I respect you as (pant) a full human being and would never (wheeze) consider you “less-than” based on your (gasp) size or disabilities?”

“I never assumed you would,” Billy shouted, confused, “Why bring that up now?”

“I wanted to establish that ON RECORD,” Pete wheezed and panted harder, “In advance of what I am about to do.”

He took a bracing breath. He scooped up Billy by the knees, threw him over his shoulder like a bag of laundry and leapt on top of a dumpster.

“What the fuck?” Billy screamed, dangling upside down over White’s shoulder, “Don’t drop me! Don’t drop me!

“I’m being heroic over here and your screaming is really putting me off, fella.”

Pete looked at the nearest building – a 19th century wreck, probably abandoned and condemned. A distant sound of a jackhammer echoed from within. He shimmied up a sturdy drain pipe for a few feet before he could just reach the bottom-most rung of an ancient rust-pitted fire ladder. He gripped the ladder and used the last of his panic-strength to heave both of them onto the fire escape. From there they rolled into the building through a half-open window.

They could hear the grinding gears of the motorized wheelchair from their point of departure below before it was drowned out by a repetitive pounding and feedback whine from above them. Pete collapsed to the floor, dropping Billy on his head.

The pounding was even louder now. “We go up through the interior stairs, out onto the roof. Jump to the next building over, go down those stairs and come out…” Pete mapped out their next steps, still collapsed on the floor with eyes closed. Pound pound pound.

Billy shook White's shoulder. White sat up. Billy pointed. A pause in the pounding.

A group of stoned-looking, long-haired dudes in flannel with guitars were staring back at them. The building wasn’t condemned. It was a rehearsal.

“Sorry,” Billy murmured apologetically, “We were just in the neighborhood.”

“Don’t mind us. Just passing through,” White staggered to his feet, “Don’t want to impose on your hospitality.”

They hustled out the door as quickly as they could. The band looked at each other and just shrugged.

The drummer counted them in to start the song over but White leaned his head back in the door,“The bassist’s E is flat. Give that peg a little twist there, pally.”

Billy grabbed him and yanked him back out into the hall.

It was getting late and Prof. Peebo Putnam had probably rolled back to the hotel to wait for them. They still had a room and they were still attending the conference, but going back to the hotel was a risk. They walked a dozen blocks south, just to be sure they were out of Putnam’s orbit. Billy had a destination in mind and consulting his hand drawn-on-graph-paper map, he led Pete to an unmarked door in an industrial district.

“Are you sure we should be here? Doesn’t look too ‘tourist friendly,” Pete asked over the sound of his shoes crunching on broken glass. Broken car windows or spent syringes were equally likely.

“Sorry grandma. I don’t go to a new city just to see if the Olive Garden here has the salad bar in the same place as the one back home,” Billy mocked, throwing his whole body weight into attempting to wrench the steel fire door open.

Pete resigned himself and opened the door for him.

“I got this tip off ALT.CITY.SEATTLE.REAL_SEATTLE. It’s not some Disneyfied rip-off for boring suburbanites. This is the genuine authentic stuff,” Billy declared snobbishly, as if Americanized chop suey was the greatest problem facing them today, not homicidal-minded old geezers with wheels.

A dark, windowless room. It smelled vaguely like formaldehyde. There was a pile of shrink-wrapped counterfeit (maybe?) designer purses stacked in the corner of the room for some reason. A huge aquarium in the back of the room seemed to be filled with more slime than fish but was wired some kind of color-shifting neon that cast green, blue then purple light around the room.

The two approached a sour-faced eight-year-old-girl sitting at a cash register. She looked up briefly from her math homework and then nodded in the vague direction of a table. “Ba! Người da trắng!” she shouted.

Billy and Pete grabbed a plastic covered table decorated with a jar full of chopsticks, an ashtray and a bottle of murky sauce with no label.

“Anh ơi!” Billy shouted aimlessly towards the back of the restaurant.

A man in a shiny silk shirt rose from the only other occupied table. He and the other men appeared to playing some kind of card game that also involved mahjong tiles and huge wads of cash thrown on the table. The others looked over to glare at Billy for interrupting them. The card-player, now acting as waiter, approached the table-- a tough wearing sunglasses despite the darkness of the room with recently inflicted knife-scars on his cheek-- and made a face that dared them to ask for anything.

“Great, now we’re going to be murdered by a Triad gangster” Pete panic-whispered, “We shoulda just gone back to Ivar’s Acres of Clams!”

Billy shushed him.

“Anh ơi, cho con hai chai bia một tô phở” Billy said rapidly before turning to Pete, “How hungry are you?”

“I could eat,” he shrugged, his panic dissipated by confusion.

“Một tô bún thịt nướng.” Billy said, pointing at Pete.

“Phát âm của bạn thật tệ,” the waiter grunted, looking slightly amused as he wandered off in no real hurry.

“You speak Vietnamese?” Pete asked, baffled.

“Not really. I picked up a couple phrases. Enough to get by,” Billy shrugged, “You know like ‘Good morning,’ ‘How are you,’ ‘My father is the British ambassador and will not pay the ransom if I am bodily harmed.’ “

“‘I did not conspire with the Cần Lao Party to rig the 1955 referendum for Ngô Dinh Diêm.’”

“Sure, phrases like that. Basic stuff.”

“Cậu bé xấu xí điếm và ma cô của anh ta muốn một ít bia!” Billy heard the waiter yell at the kitchen staff.

He didn't bother to translate that one for Pete as he pulled a cigarette from his pocket, still soggy from the dip in the fountain but smokable. Billy pulled the ashtray towards him.

“I can’t believe you’re smoking,” Pete shook his head.

“I’m under a lot of stress,” Billy defended himself, “I think you’d understand that after today. Actually, I can’t believe you’re NOT smoking.”

“You’re studying to be a doctor. You gotta know better.”

“All doctors smoke and the ones that don’t are alcoholics,” Billy stated flatly.

“Smoking is so dumb.”

“I’d take that more seriously from a man who didn’t spend a decade shoveling 70% of the output of Columbia up his nose.”

“What do you want me to say? It was the ‘80s. I worked in TV and I was a radio DJ in LA before that. I was paid in cocaine. It was just part of the culture,” White waved him off and threw to profile, “It would be an insult to GOD not to use this for blow. This is a gorgeous coke nose. I was made for snorting rails.”

Billy rolled his good eye.

“God, I wish we had some cocaine right now. You’d really love it. It’s so… great,” Pete got misty, “Ask your scary gangster friend if he has any hookups for blow. What’s Vietnamese for an eight ball? I’ll ask myself.”

Billy folded his arms. Pete got defensive.

“I have been stone-cold sober since the day you moved into the trailer,” White protested, counting on his fingers, “No blow. No smokes. No hash. No go-pills. No dust. No rock. No H. No booze.”

Billy raised an eyebrow as the waiter dropped a couple of sweating bottles of Tsingtao on the table

White reneged and grabbed one, “Within the rage of standard deviation it rounds down to ZERO.”

“The only time I got to leave my desk at work was for ‘smoke breaks’ so I just picked it up.” Billy explained, stubbing out his cigarette and slamming the bottle on the edge of the table to pop the bottle cap, “To be sociable.”

“You’re not twenty-one yet. You shouldn’t be drinking that,” Pete noted. Billy really wasn’t 21 but at this point what age he was or wasn’t seemed just academic. And confusing.

“I know, I know. I’m eleven,” Billy said hoarsely. He had sweated off all the make-up in the chase. His worry-lines, eye-circles, stubble and acne re-emerged, making him the most haggard-faced 5th grader who ever lived, “But I’m also smoking, swearing and talking about scoring you an eight of a phiện trăng, so a beer with dinner is a drop in the bucket.”

The waiter breezed by and indifferently dropped a bowl of phở and a grilled pork chop over rice noodles on the table with a clank.

“At what point do you want to tell me why some old fart on a hoveround chased you 20 blocks with murderous intent?”

Billy grimaced as he slurped a seemingly endless mass of noodles out of the broth.

“Holy shit, this is really fucking good,” Billy lit up-- the happiest he’d been all day, “Nice one, USENET.”

“You’re stalling.”

“No, try it. This is fucking incredible.”

“I will, but I still want an answer,” Pete warned, scooping up some of Billy’s phở.

Billy sighed, “I’ve told you before I was kind of a shit when I was a kid.”

“Yeah, I know. I was there, remember?”

“No, before that. When I was a kid kid. When I really was a boy genius, not whatever this is,” Billy waved his chopsticks over his soggy conference disguise.

“And I absolutely was not a shit when you met me, by the way,” Billy added defensively. White just shrugged.

“The old man in the wheelchair was my agent. Or maybe was he a manager? He was the guy my mother had hired to make me famous.”

White didn’t like the acid Billy spiked the word ‘mother’ with. White had never met Billy’s mother. She wasn’t chaperoning him at any taping of Quizboys, which seemed odd but he wasn’t paid to care about that and he had better things to snort at the time.

“That guy Putnam stuck to us for years,” Billy fumed, “I blamed him for making me do all the stupid contests and publicity stunts. I thought if he went away... if it went back to just my mom and me our lives could be normal again.”

Billy sucked down another tangle of noodles and swallowed hard. It was hard to “eat angry.”

“He absolutely was banging my mom, too,” Billy seethed, “So I got rid of him.”

“You got rid of him?” Pete tilted his head, his mouth stuffed with rice vermicelli.

“I blew up his car,” Billy said.

Pete choked, “You blew up his car?!”

“And I burned down his house,” Billy scratched his head, straining to remember the details, “One of his houses. I flooded his other one with raw sewage.”

Pete looked perversely proud of his junior partner, “You did all that?”

“I was trying to kill him,” Billy said icily, “I didn’t, obviously.”

“No kid likes mom’s new boyfriend but that’s… intense.”

“After that he just left without saying goodbye,” Billy said, staring into his phở, “Mom was pretty upset but I assumed she’d get over it.”

“People tryin’ to murder us is, like, almost routine now,” White considered, “But, y’know, this is the first time I think the guy actually has a real justification.”

Billy sighed, “But Putnam wasn’t the real problem. With him gone I found out Mom was calling the shots the whole time. It just got worse. I finally figured out what she was doing. Doing to me, I mean.”

Pete looked worried and asked cautiously, “What was she doing?”

Billy looked up, “Are you sure you want to hear this? It gets pretty fucked up.”

AO3 | Prologue | Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5 | Ch 6 ← You Are Here | Ch 7

Author Notes

Uploaded this chapter to A03 for easier reading

The Tsutakawa fountain in front of the Central Library is way too small to for two people be able to hide in it. In reality, it's like the size of a large birdbath.

I like the idea Billy learns dozens of languages, enthusiastically tries them out and speaks all of them near-unintelligibly. (I have him speaking slushy Spanish in another story.)

Seattle today has as many pho shops as coffee bars. My historical consultant said, unlike other cities with big Vietnamese communities, Seattle had no Vietnamese restaurants in the '90s. (The details of wandering into a restaurant that's clearly not meant for you {with self-appointed Anthony-Bourdain-Jr. foodie dudes insisting on going into them} is based more on New York Chinatown experiences.)

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