Jessica Lee Richardson
Bloom pop and shift, 6. Crest is singing and Shade, yes. Centering an eye, cheek squeegee up to it, little lift.
But no. Disdain. I know that one. I know Dial.
I know 6. Her acute molecules and painted traverses.
But try to read my wife's cheek lift, my boss's cheek lift, and it may as well be a cherry asunder in a bear jaw.
My wife is my boss.
I forgot, you don't know all the codes for what 6 does. I'm sorry. I watch 6 all day, so I forget to explain.
A cherry asunder is like what I dream you say to the back of my hand.
The problem with your wife being your boss is like today. When she tells you you'll be suspended if you tell one more greeter they look nice and then just stand still in front of them.
I didn't choose to have my social inhibited.
Or maybe I did?
I do know that in order to observe M.6 or M.7 or M.8, even, with any authority, the M.'s can't feel you're interacting with them. If they do they will change and merge and it will be like MMM. Too many M's.
That's what they said in our training video.
"No one wants MMM," the training video insists.
But everyone wants MMM, so reminding people of tasty snacks or sex noises was the wrong move for that part of the video.
Tasty snacks are like when M.6 moon digs.
Of course that's not what they meant about MMM. They meant that each M will lose its individuality if they can feel us judging their carrier crashes from afar. Or crying over their zip to the sing patch like it's personal.
And an M will try to please you. Like most everyone.
Unlike my wife, who paces in her clompy heels and glares when I even brush by a greeter.
Don't tell anyone, but I do feel sad M.6 and M.7 zipped to the sing patch.
M.8 is okay. Living the single life. Lipping the trill fish. Taking it all chapter by chapter.
I see my wife whispering to Godrich over there and I wonder, "What now?" They look at me between whispers, which I know signals attention even when my social has been inhibited. Bowman whispers in my ear something about fire and I instinctively move toward M.6. She pickles into a flowery lane. But I see there is no literal fire. Bowman grunts and swings his eyes to and fro, from my wife and Godrich, back to me, then back to my wife and Godrich.
As in lose my job, fire?
Why? Because I complimented a greeter?
Bowman thinks no, that's not why. It's because my social is coming back on its own.
That shouldn't happen.
My first response comes in like a thick pick to my breath center and it is: What about my M.6?
She's not yours I tell myself.
I suppress the rise of what might be my social.
Is it your social if you kind of want to marry a Misplaced you're supposed to be studying?
I don't want to marry all the Misplaced. Just 6. She twists her head slowly to the side whenever she rivers the foam plane. It is so slow this turning that it makes me whisper.
We give them whole gymnasiums, so my wife says it's not cruel to test them. The gymnasiums are speckled with various glories for adults. There are hordes of lanes and activities to choose from.
M.6 goads the shrapnel and suffers the shafts like any Misplaced, but even when she comes upon a rabbit feast or a warble she doesn't bounce like the other M's. Even if she is greeted all day she is bounceless.
My wife/boss got to keep her social because she doesn't observe or test the M's, she observes and tests us testers. She holds the tablet around here.
She must sense how lost I become each day in M.6's hairpieces. They slap her neck as she turns away from even the best games in the gym.
We don't want the M's to be bored while we study them and we don't want them to try to please us and become MMM's or a pronouncement made after a feast.
Do we?
I don't know what we want.
I lost that knowing with my social and I wonder how I'm different from an M.
Perhaps I'm not. The thought vibrates in my middle.
Is that my social?
I know I want M.6 to look at me like she did last week. I want to give her the note I wrote when I took a weekend break.
On weekend breaks you get to go away and sightsee or visit loved ones. My loved one is my boss and she wasn't on a weekend break, so I went alone to a locomotive museum. They give you your social back for weekend breaks, but I didn't really need it among the train parts. I used it for writing M.6 a letter at night in my corporate motel room, in the muggy indoor pool area. An unattended swimmer kept staring at me like an accusation. But I plunged on.
My wife and Godrich have stopped their eye swinging now and she just left the test area for her office, thank the pelican lights.
Pelican lights are like gods to M.6. Who knows why? Must have had them wherever she got lost from.
Can you imagine a pelican?
I can't.
I'm glad we have the lights at least. M.6 is glad too. I'm glad to have something we are both glad about.
Today I find a slip in my locker. It has my name on it and most of the normal boxes checked. It has one box checked that is not normal at all.
I go to my wife's office to ask her about this change in residence. Secretly my heart is doing the hiccup swing, which is an activity that even M.6 will sometimes join if it appears in her lane. It gives you a lift to feel your arms swing wide and your legs jump in a rush.
My wife says the box is correct. I will be moving into the gymnasium with the M's for the time being.
That means people like me will watch me, but I don't mind. I vibrate a little at the thought. I will live in the same gymnasium with M.6!
I try to act upset with my wife. Even without social I know a residence change like this is a cause for great upset. A Placed should not become a Misplaced, it isn't enjoyed.
She explains that it is a great moment for science. For history. For the company.
I like when my wife talks like this.
They are happy at the company that they can observe a Placed living comfortably among the Misplaced. This makes me hope, even through my inhibited social. Maybe the reverse can be true too. Maybe 6 can be placed, and placed right beside me. Maybe if we are Placed we can join in something even better than tasty snack merging.
I construct a face that is like brave sacrifice I think. I hope she cannot see that it is really brave longing.
I suit up.
The first few hours in the gym do cause a great upset. First of all, they forget to change my social back to normal and I wanted a normal social for M6. I wonder if the other M's will think I'm too cold to befriend.
They certainly think I am something. They can hardly mask their staring. They pool in packs and totally ignore the things that come into their lanes, even warble pistons and great droughts. I feel ashamed by their watching, even when the M's I know (and named myself!) watch. I see Dial and Crest stare and I shrivel with the piston in my hand, I shrivel in all my gut pockets because maybe this is how I have made M6 feel. After all, I have watched and watched her.
The thought haunts me so much I can barely sleep on the first night. The other M's have created separate barracks for me, but even in the private space I am restless. In the morning I wake up with none other than M6 staring at my face.
My social is definitely back.
I want to touch her so much, but instead the most amazing thing happens. She touches me. She touches me right in the face and says three short things:
I loved your note.
I know you are not a threat like the Placed think.
You have to get out of here.
She said loved. I am swarming too badly to even pick up the jelly burden someone sends me from out there where the Placed watch the Misplaced and then the Misplaced then watch me.
I am even more Misplaced than a Misplaced, I realize in this layered watching.
M6 doesn't wait for me to catch up and figure out that my presence has rendered the M's Placed by comparison. I guess all it takes to be Placed is to have someone more misplaced than you around. I try to touch her back and she shakes her head and says not now. Then she disappears.
I think for a moment about how my wife is watching me. Then I start doing a crazy dance until I'm dripping with sweat and I know they'll have something for their notebooks.
I try to ignore how the M's are the ones walking by with clipboards now.
I try to ignore everything for the next few days, especially my deafening loneliness. I don't even play with any of the games I imagined delighted the M's when I was out there observing them. I single-mindedly search for M6.
I ask and ask, but no one will tell me where she is.
Eventually, I do meet a shy M, number 113, who will sit and roll a ball to me. It is better than nothing, so I sit and roll a ball with her until something alarming happens.
Godrich walks right up to me.
I am happy to see someone familiar in the gymnasium, but he looks like he has "seen a ghost" as the Placed say.
"What are you doing in the tank?" I say. The tank is slang for here.
He shakes his head. "Charlie," he says. Charlie is my wife's name. But Godrich doesn't finish his sentence about my wife. He trails off, noticing something behind me.
I turn around and who is strolling toward us but M6. She is carrying a clipboard. When I smile at her not a single muscle in her face moves.
"I've thought about your plan," I whisper. Because I have thought about it constantly. I've thought about how if she and I escape into Placement, we would just find ourselves in the company that surrounds this whole gym. And in the company the bosses watch the Placed, so it wouldn't be too much different from here. But if we could convince the Placed we are useful to them, they might relax their gaze and maybe we can then run off even further, to the locomotive museum, perhaps, where we can look at all of the obsolete parts from the days when no one really studied each other. But I don't know how we'll survive. Unless the museum will hire us.
But what do we have to offer the museum?
These are the things that have been keeping me up. What will keep me up tonight is that M6 has not responded to me. She looks like she has no idea what I am saying, but is mildly, distantly interested in it. Like maybe someone turned her social off. She makes a note on her clipboard and walks away.
It is then that I see a folded piece of paper sticking halfway out of her pocket. Ordinarily, I would not go reaching for the paper in someone's pocket, but in colored marker it says, "Grab Me!" So I grab it.
I want to say to Godrich, "Good to see you, Buddy," and slap his arm and walk away so I can read the note in peace. But my social has come back enough to see that he is freaking out. So I drag him back to my barracks and sit him down. It's not private, but it feels private.
"It's not as bad as you think," I tell him. "The bandy rolls are thrilling." They are not that thrilling, but perhaps Godrich needs something to look forward to.
"It's worse than I think!" Godrich practically shouts this, and I can see the M's moving about in the outer circles of the gym. Poking each other and moving closer with their pads. I motion for him to be quiet with the note buzzing violently to be read. It's in my pocket and my body crumples toward it. Godrich can see this, I guess, and he shakes his head.
"She's just bait," he says. "Just like you were for me."
Maybe my social isn't as back as I thought, because I can't interpret this.
"And now I'll be bait for Charlie, but she hasn't figured it out yet. She still thinks she's in charge."
"Why would anyone bait us into the gym?" I say. I laugh. The laughter is a mix of genuine and display laughter.
Godrich shakes his head at me like I am a real "piece of work" as the Placed say.
"Because the bandy rolls aren't for fun." Godrich punctuates his sentence with a hand flick in my direction. "Each time you complete one, you are earning our bosses money though a combination of labor and data gifting."
I stare blankly. The M's move closer. A few are close enough that I can see their nametags and I am a little alarmed. They have changed. M85 is now Patricia. M61 is now Armond.
Godrich shakes his head at me again.
"The Misplaced are trained to train other Misplaced so that the data mining is exponential. Through the process, they eventually become Placed. The Placed need someone to work for them in order to stay Placed. So someone's got to become Misplaced. It's Econ 101."
I laugh again. This time it is pure display.
A couple of M's shoot Godrich a sharp look and he puts his head down and starts unpacking his things.
I am hot in the chest and excuse myself to go to the restroom with my note.
It was true that there were other barracks set up, like mine, with others about, brandishing tools and engaging with the activities in their lanes. But no one had ever come around giving us paychecks.
I feel like I have moths in my brain trying to understand how simple observation has turned into such an ugly mess.
I climb in a stall and hunch over the note so the cameras can't see that I have it. I appear, I hope, like I have a stomachache. Which is appropriate, because as soon as I start reading, I do have a stomachache.
It says:
My Dear Misplaced One,
They will soon inhibit my social, and I won't be able to recognize the face that always peered so gently at me, when all the others felt sharp and pinching. You were, for a long time, my only comfort here. While I have my social I wish we could run off together, but I know there is no "off." I also know that without my social, I will not respond to you anymore. It pains me to acknowledge how fleeting it is to feel a fever for the skin and strong legs of another. But I guess this is a kind of goodbye. I want you to know there's a key in the wading area, if it ever gets to be too much.
Love,
M6 (AKA Sandra Maris Osborne)
What a cramping this letter gives me. I stay there hunched for a long while and finally flush.
Godrich is waiting outside the door with eyes like lost dogs. Eyes like I had given M6. It dawns on me then what it means that he called me his own bait. Godrich must feel a hungry wide mouth in his heart for me. I don't feel the same way for Godrich, but it charms me that he feels it.
"Do you want to go to the wading area?" I ask.
He nods and I toss him a towel. The M's seem interested but I try to ignore it.
A shock awaits us when we enter the bathing and recreation room.
There is my wife, straddling a floaty in the shape of a noodle. She has on sunglasses, so I cannot see how she stares at Godrich then, but within minutes I will figure out what Godrich meant by being bait for my wife. He sighs audibly when he sees her and motions for me to come to the other end of the lazy river with him. He is not charmed by what she feels.
It can't only be our need for one another that misplaces us.
We immerse in the water and its sheen slicks our warm skin. It is as if we are in a movie, the kind that garners awards for its intimate camera work.
"A key," I say aloud.
"A key," Godrich repeats.
My wife noodles over lustily. Instead of feeling hurt, I understand how we watch and long until we become. It is the sad, wet way of the world.
Perhaps that is the key? I vow to learn to watch the right thing. The thing I want to become.
So I stare at the door, willing it to open.