BZRK: Reloaded (BZRK 2)

The wire was simply ripped up, like pulling up a half-buried garden hose. Rip and tear, rip and tear, and oh, that definitely brought the white cells pulsing and oozing. But what to do with the wire? It was spooled out from within the nanobot when it was laid, but there was no procedure for retrieving it.

So Bug Man set two of his nanobots to the job of collecting the used wire, spooling it, stacking it in a central location, a deep fold where the cerebral–spinal fluid current wouldn’t carry it off.

“I feel,” Jessica said. “Do . . .”

“What? What do you want to ask me?”

“Do you want sex?” It was a plaintive voice. A confused voice. “No, babe. Not now. Maybe later,” Bug Man said.

“Those go

ggles scare me. You look like a monster.”

He hesitated then. The nanobots all froze in place. What if she utterly rejected him? What if she was disgusted by him? What if she said, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I’ve been with you. You!”

You toad.

You nobody.

He sucked in a deep breath. It wouldn’t be like that. Probably. But anyway, it didn’t matter anymore, because he was doing it, and whatever happened happened. This was the game, for now.

“Can we go out now? I want to go out,” Jessica said.

“What if I don’t want to go out?” Bug Man asked as he ripped up a long strand of wire that pulled a few cells loose as it came up.

Jessica hesitated. The hesitation went on for quite a while.

“What if I say no, we can’t go out, Jessica?” He was pulling an encrusted wire, like a robin pulling an earthworm from the dirt.

“I want to go out,” she said.

Bug Man pulled off the goggles and set them aside. He took off the gloves.

He stood up and said, “Okay then. Yeah, let’s go out.”

SEVENTEEN

Here is what Plath knew about Vincent after what felt like a lifetime sticking pins in his brain: that he was anhedonic; that he once stuck a pencil into a boy’s arm when the boy called him a wuss and shoved him from his place in the elementary school lunch line; that he didn’t understand why people liked animals; that he experienced drunkenness in an extraordinarily self-aware way; that he had been slapped by his mother for failing to appreciate the cake she made for his eleventh birthday and then had watched helpless and lost as she broke down crying.

Plath knew about the mild allergy to cashews and mangoes. She knew that the combination to his locker in tenth grade was 11-41-23. She knew that he once became furious watching a film in school about atrocities in the Congo and vowed to kill the bastards responsible. He was suspended for three days for inappropriate language.

Once she had touched the spot where he first experienced the nano world. But the memory did not lead her anywhere. “I’m tired,” she said. She had eyeshades on. She had her feet up. She had a soda with a bendy straw within reach at her side. “We’re all tired,” Wilkes snapped. Wilkes had taken over for

Nijinsky. He had gone with Anya to observe Vincent, the actual physical Vincent, upstairs in the church. “Ophelia’s dead tired.” That hadn’t made any sense, but it caused Plath to fall silent. After a while Plath began to confuse Vincent’s memories with

her own. Was it Vincent or her who had ridden the pony? Was it her

or was it Vincent who had gotten poison ivy? Was it Vincent or her

who had recruited Nijinsky?

First bloody nose.

First bath as a baby.

First time he had slid his hand up a girl’s leg.

First time tumbling out of his crib.