BZRK (BZRK 1)

Too determined.

She reached for Plath.

The girl, who called herself One-Up, just wanted to touch them.

TWENTY-FOUR

Wilkes was already arriving at the UN. She had a prepurchased ticket for the tour—good thing, there was a crowd waiting. Mostly they were school kids, a happily rambunctious bunch of middle schoolers from some school in Harlem that favored maroon uniforms. And there were tourists, and thankfully there was Ophelia.

“How did it go?”

“I made two hundred bucks,” Wilkes said. She tried to pull off a swagger, but it didn’t go anywhere.

“This is the last tour group before they shut the place down for security,” Ophelia. “You barely made it.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Wilkes said. “Vincent has it all planned out.”

“I have a lot of faith in Vincent,” Ophelia said. “But he’s not perfect.”

Wilkes laughed. “How come you never show anyone else but me this gloomy side of your personality?”

Ophelia didn’t answer, just made a slight harrumphing sound and then shared one of her resigned-looking smiles.

They moved through the main lobby like obedient tourist sheep, threading through an art display of children’s pictures of some terrible conflict. Wilkes hadn’t kept up on current terrible conflicts, having enough to keep her busy with her own. But the pictures were not encouraging. They did not exactly counter her sense of impending doom.

She looked up at soaring windows, at old Sputnik hanging there like a misplaced Christmas-tree ball. She had done a report on Sputnik. When was that? Fourth grade?

She saw a memory image of herself carrying her threefold cardboard display into class, setting it up, trying to act cool even then. But also feeling it would be nice if she got an A.

How had all that been just one life? How could she have ever been that little girl?

“You ever hit on Vincent?” Wilkes asked.

“I don’t hit on boys,” Ophelia said with an edge of disapproval.

At the security line they emptied their pockets into the tray and passed their purses through the scanner. Scanners did not detect the presence of biots.

The trick was to look entirely normal and average, something that was easier for Ophelia than Wilkes.

They saw the famous Chagall stained glass, a beautiful blue full of floating images of peace. Angels or whatever they were.

They saw the General Assembly room, a surprisingly intimate space, despite the fact that it was supposed to be a gathering place for the entire world. It reminded Wilkes of the planetarium her class had visited in what, eighth grade? Is that where she had let Arkady touch her boob?

And they followed meekly along when it was time to go downstairs to the bathrooms, the special UN post office, the café, and the gift shop.

They moved away from the group then. It was safe to do so now.

They sat together eating veggie burritos UN style—not very good, really—and drinking coffee and getting their nerve up.

The gift shop was just next door. It was not called Armstrong Fancy Gifts—unlike the ones in airports—it was just called the UN Gift Shop. Very imaginative. But it had the trademark AFGC products: supposedly homemade cookies in cellophane twists, the books selection that included a prominent display of the bestseller Nexus Humanus: The Next Step in Human Evolution, and the clever, throwaway handheld games that sold for three dollars and included accelerometers and multiplay and inline upgrades that made them the cheap impulse equivalent of expensive pads.

“So a lousy burrito is my final meal,” Wilkes said.

Ophelia looked at her, serious. They didn’t talk often, the two of them. Wilkes was more or less the diametric opposite of the graceful, reserved Ophelia.

“Are you afraid, Wilkes?”

“Hell yes, I’m afraid,” Wilkes said, talking around melted cheese and a dropped bean. “You know what’s weird, though. I’m afraid of never getting down in the meat again. That is weird, right?”