CONTROL OF ASTONISHMENT

6303 Arcus

I reach out and touch my handiwork, rejoicing. One pair of eyes opens.

“Hello.” A man’s voice, soft and breathy. The lungs still work.

“Hello.”

“You are still free?” He smiles at me.

“Yes. Do you like this?” I smile back.

“We do.”

Now the other pair of eyes opens, and a woman’s voice says, “We like this.”

“Why?” My surprise must be apparent.

“We are together.”

I laugh, and turn and push my way back to the children. “Is this the only place this has happened?”

Mama Jones says, “It is happening everywhere. People are calling it the living City. Some of my children have joined it.”

At this I lose control of my astonishment. “What?”

“They say it is beautiful. Now everything comes to them, and they think together.” She smiles now, and her smile has a soft, dreamy quality to it, as if she has become a child again. “Did you do this to them with our pets?”

I look at the two wall-people, their eyes now closed again. Deep rage and frustration surge up in me. I snap, “I want a tissue sample from them. Then take me back to my place.” I want to hurt someone. The girl gets two children to push me, and she walks beside me. I ask her, “Do you want to be part of the living City too?”

She trails her fingers along the skin-wall. “I don’t know. It is a big step to take.”

“How can you want this? I don’t understand.”

She looks at me. “No. You wouldn’t understand happy people.”

“Do you?”

She stops, and so do I. “Not before,” she says. “Now, I’m not sure. Maybe being happy is possible.”

“Only possible?”

She frowns at me. “I don’t know. I will find out.”

“And then what?”

She gestures, and she and the others return me to my hidden apartment. I am shaken.