(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 53 minutes)

Ring around the Rose-colored Glasses

Was it possible for the spirit to reside on some heavenly beach while the body still walked a mortal plane? Al was really reaching for explanations as to what was going on inside him. Logically nobody should have better insight than him, but at the same time, wasn’t he the least likely person to ever tear himself open, turn his eyes around, and examine the goings-on?

A beach made sense to him because he was getting the sensation of buoying surf, highs and troughs, almost rhythmically now. During the fight, when the lightning should’ve been taking him from medium well to well done, he instead felt nearly weightless, lifted by intangible tides. Then, after it had died down, the low of bruises and shivers.

Now that he was a mere block away from the Ice Palace he was flying high again, brain coated in hyperdiamond, inspiration twinkling. He hadn’t made one in a while. The Safari Collection was complete, all tied for the largest he’d ever made, so nothing that fancy. Most of his work was experiments on the smallest scale, altered ingredients or temperatures or pressure-cooking time. If there was something experimental going on here it was in his flesh, so it was time to just let the process shine through to a goal of the utmost red-golden clarity.

Something for a ring. He had no idea who would wear it, but he knew it would look spectacular on a white gold band. His imagination needed a hand to put it on, so he made one up, and by extension a body, which he then had to give a voice to bring to life. His work wasn’t meant to be worn by mannequins.

Victoria Champion. She was nothing but a voice to him, making her a perfect fit. He wanted to hear it again, before he got to work on the diamond, so that was the first call he made. Louie and Maurine were paid to scuttle down to the Ice Palace at the drop of a hat, while Vicky probably clocked out at five.

Luckily his rotio’s scorched exterior didn’t reflect the internals; it worked just fine.

Caller: 0-0-1-0-0-1

Operator: Ahoy, you’re calling Iron Baltimore municipal reference, this is Operator Kitty Hawk speaking. May I assist you or redirect your call, over?

Caller: Ahoy Miss Hawk. I’ve got another operator following up on something for me and I’d like to touch base with her. Could you redirect me to Victoria Champion please, and tell her it’s Aloysius Grandstand calling, over?

Operator: Please hold, over.

(internal call: station 164 to station 85)

Operator: Ahoy Vicky. I’ve got a fella on the line asking for you, says he’s the Al Grand. Want me to drop a hint or a piano on him, over?

Operator 2: Send him through Kitty, he’s legit, over.

Operator: No foolin’? What kind of answer have you got for Mr. Hypers himself? ‘I do’, over?

Operator 2: Sure Kitty, you can be the flower girl. Now don’t keep us from our romantic rendezvous, over.

(internal call ends)

Operator: Vicky Champ speaking. How are you today Al, over?

Caller: I’m up and down Vicky, currently up. Can you tell me what happened to our lovely sky earlier? It was having its ups and downs too, over.

Operator: That’s most of our calls right now. There was a communications blackout from the air traffic control tower in the Connections. It lasted about five minutes, but it only takes a moment for airships to cross wires, and less for doggybacks to make it worse, over.

Caller: Two types of blackout one after the other? I don’t like the sound of that, especially since the coppers tried to pin the first one on me. I told you I was besieged last time, didn’t I? I sure hope you believed me, and that you’ve got something for me on that Lightheaded, over.

Operator: I sure do Al. I meant to call you earlier, but that was right around the time the sky fell and duty called. I could make the argument that researching for you was just as important though, since I tripped over a doozy down in the archives.

I think I’ve identified your peeping Tonya as one Belladonna Brooks, socialite and heiress to an energy tablet fortune until 1903, when she didn’t spend quite enough of that fortune on some aqua-vim that was just a cup of Joe. She busted out of that very window you saw her looking back through when she changed.

Her family owned that whole floor, but they had previously owned a floor above it, and a floor above that one. They kept downgrading their view to save dough, seeing as the floor was falling out from under their market. That way they didn’t have to fall as far, I guess the logic goes.

As the Dustrious gained ground the caffeinated human labor force lost it. Without a job what does a Youstabee need a Babblin’ Brooks walk-and-talk tab for? Anyway, that whole family was at war with Confabulo, not that he’d know it, untouchable as he was and is.

But do you remember the professor had a wife? She never took his name on account of what it sparks in people. She was called Eudora Nodding and she lived in the Palace when the Brooks clan were declining down the floors. Now perk up those ears Al. She lived in your apartment too, just before Belladonna.

When the Brooks were trying to buy out her floor she refused to move at first. The two women clashed publicly, but only briefly, and, would you believe it, the next thing reported on them was that they’d become inseparable bosom buddies! Hitting the town together at every turn. To them it was pleasure over business I guess. Eudora was running her husband’s Dustrious contracts before they were outlawed in much of the world while her best friend Belladonna was refusing to help her family fight them off. Somewhere in there the two agreed to switch apartments.

Now, as to why the immortal Lightheaded Belladonna checked back in on her old place, I can’t hazard a guess other than homesickness. It wouldn’t be to catch up with Eudora, as she died of a blood clot in 1902 at sixty-three, looking her age because she never touched any of her husband’s concoction or any aquas. Meanwhile the professor is still walking around with his face of thirty-five, over.

Caller: …You are a champion Vicky, my champion. And you’re not an operator anymore, you’re my personal private investigator, if you want the job, over.

Operator: I can do both Al. I can do three things at once too, or four, all of them helpfully. You’re listening to the hum of an I.B. More information engine, and I run hot… I mean… erh… over.

Caller: Steady on Vicky. What I mean is I’m asking for you every time I call into reference, no exceptions. And I’m going to tell you what kind of debacle I’m really in, because I want you to know.

You see, the reason everybody’s eyes have been on me is that, the morning of the day I called you, there was a dress in my apartment covered in witchmelt. I hadn’t puzzled over it five minutes before detectives and press nearly busted my door down, Belladonna flying in for the pincer.

I have it on good authority that Confabulo himself was seen climbing the Palace stairs earlier with a body in his arms. So if I’ve got this right, the god of the Dustrious snuck into my place, his dead wife’s place, and her best friend’s place to dispose of a body. Why? I’m asking you. If you’ve got any idea between three or four other jobs, give me a ring.

Someday, as thanks, maybe I’ll give you one. I think I’m about to make one right now. What’s your size, over?

Operator: Too big for this little rotio call Al. Why don’t I give you my private frequency so I can stop playing and get back to work? I might’ve missed more man-made meteors. You can and should reach for me at 66-9-8-9-2-2-1. Over and out.

By the time Vicky hung up on him, Al was leaning against the Ice Palace’s polished veneer, marble at the base, not diamond until it was out of reach of anyone without a doggyback, or maybe a citizen-giraffe with a thieving tongue. Next to him were the front doors and the doorman, who was actually a woman small and flat enough to be judged a teenage boy by whoever had hired her at a glance through his cigar smoke.

She was called Sandy, and knew Al well enough to listen in on the tail of his call and smirk, tongue between her teeth.

“Don’t just stand there-“

“But that’s my job.”

“Give me a pencil and some paper.” She had a notepad, which she daintily removed from her breast pocket with white-gloved hands to get an extra second of teasing him over his lover boy desperation. Al snatched it, and the following pencil, only to freeze.

“66-9-8-9-2-2-1,” she repeated with a roll of her eyes.

“You’re a lifesaver Sandy.”

“Love lives at least. But that’s still worth something right?” Now it was Al’s turn to roll his eyes as he dug a coin out of his pocket and flicked it to her.

“Listen, Maurine and Louie are coming by in a few with their usual luggage. Send them to the inner stairwell, yeah?”

“You got it Al. What is it this time? A hyena? I like hyenas.”

“Safari’s over Sandy, nothing so exotic. A ring.”

“Was that the lucky lady on the rotio?” Al slipped past her and through the door, heading for the dim corner where the central stairway and elevator shaft could be accessed.

“I’m only married to the idea,” he insisted over his shoulder. A few seconds later he was back on the rotio, ordering his lackeys to get the goods and get there pronto. Louie was in charge of the goods, keeping them in a place so secret that even Al didn’t know where it was. That way, should anyone ever kidnap him, a government or a Dustrious revolutionary, they couldn’t force him to fabricate. He only did it for himself, and only when inspiration struck.

While waiting in the dark of the ground floor stairwell, slouched and pinched in a sharp concrete corner, crisscrossing steel girders of the central maintenance elevator chopping up the light of the cars going by, Al remembered he’d been struck by something else first. Flirting with Vicky made him forget that he’d been splashed with Battery Park’s acid and come out the other side unscathed.

Talking about aquas and ozjoe finally made all the scattered sediment of context settle down. A car whooshed by, headed for the sublevels. Aqua-knack. That was how you not only survived getting electrocuted, but got used to it. And, wouldn’t you know it, there was a perfect memory to explain his exposure, as long as he assumed that Detective Leonid Caliber was disastrously incompetent.

And that was easy enough, seeing as he was a policeman on a force that was scared to operate in at least a third of the city they were stationed in. As part of arresting him for Ohmaha Jolts’s destruction, knowing he was a mucky-muck of the art world, Caliber had attempted a threat assessment to find out if he had any superhuman aqua powers that might make policing him personally difficult.

The detective had mentioned that their testing kit had samples of the real stuff, and he’d abruptly ended the test and released Al under his own recognizance. That was a panic reaction, Al realized, to put as much distance between the detective and his error as possible. In his fervor to handle those materials, to make such a high profile collar, he’d messed up the protocol and accidentally put a drop of genuine aqua-knack on Al’s skin.

One drop was all it took, and boy did it take, enough for Al to fight off the naked dusty while being tenderized by Tesla. And if he remembered his facts straight, some of that electrical resistance would stay with him forever. He could stroll through Battery Park whenever he wanted now, not that he should. If anybody saw, the word would be out on his status promptly, and the papers would have a field day with the world’s only H-diamond maker joining the elite aqua club, completing his transition from artist to sellout.

A single threat. That’s what people would call him now. He wasn’t stuck that way. There was still room to become a double or triple with the other ingredients, but he couldn’t squeeze the knack out no matter how big the juicer. In addition to resilience against anything he survived, Al had gained an inherent immunity to the reformulated primordial soup. Nobody could ambush him with a splashing cup and make him Lightheaded.

Then there was the superhuman power of blackmail. Leonid Caliber’s entire career now rested in the fabricator’s deft hands, and Al was confident he could take the soot of secrecy and compress it into the ultrahard clarity of diamond determination. If he needed a favor from the fuzz he might just call up ol’ Leo and threaten to reveal his mistake.

Substances sometimes inspired him. He had booze hyperdiamonds, caffeine hyperdiamonds, coca leaf hyperdiamonds. This would be his first and only aqua-knack hyperdiamond, since he doubted the rush of his body adapting to all that lightning would ever come again. Screwy Louie and Aquamaurine needed to get there pronto, while the iron was hot in his cerebellum.

“Think of the devils,” Al muttered as he heard the distinct screech-clank of Louie’s loosened gait, louder since he was carrying the goods. Another access door was flung open by foot. In came Maurine backwards with Louie forwards, the canvas cube hefted between them. When they turned Al was overcome by its beauty in a way he hadn’t been in a long time, not since he first conceived it in the wildfire frenzy of creativity that overtook like a fever and simmered forever after.

The cube’s frame was transition titanium, the metal being the most expensive part of the entire device. Polished rivet heads lined every edge, with something different between them on each pair of faces. The top and bottom had circular access hatches with retracting valves so it could sit flat. Left and right were the secondary viewing panes of ash-darkened acrylic, where any audience could watch the hyperdiamond form and grow, watch the world’s one and only master shape it.

Barely a soul aside from the artificial ones sanctioned to haul and hide the cube had ever seen the process however. The fabricator held onto his exclusive medium tightly, savagely. The way he saw it, no one else in the world ever had the opportunity to be the sole expert of an art form. Keeping it secret as long as he could was another form of experimentation: how far could one man take it before there was nothing left to do but belatedly gift it to the world?

Front and back on the cube were the only pair of faces that didn’t match. The back was nothing, a wall of titanium, only called nothing because the rest of it was so extraordinary. On the front was all the action, including the upper edge indentation that held the viewing visor, where the fabricator himself leaned in to watch his hands shape the H-diamond.

Below it were two circular ports sealed with vulcanized rubber. On the other side, inside the hollow cube, were plated gloves of extremely limited range of movement for the digits. Only a few joints could be included thanks to the immense heat and pressure involved in the process, created by the vacuum mechanism sealed away against the back panel.

Neither glove held any kind of cutting tool because there weren’t any involved. That was one of Al’s bigger secrets. Hypers had faces just like typically cut diamonds, but each was carefully shaped by the fanning of fabricator hands inside those gloves that needed the utmost skill to move gracefully.

Down went the seed through the access hatch, a single grain of impurity around which his hyperdiamond dust blend, one of the other big secrets, could coalesce. Then came the pressure that powered the vacuum mechanism, silent because there was no motor involved at all. A pair of Dustrious hands on the innocuous back panel applied it, pressed the device into service.

Without this requirement, Al never would’ve met Louie or Maurine. He knew he needed confidantes, and silence in the crafting process to keep away unwanted eyes. That sent him down to the docks where only the most hard-up and luck-down dusties went looking for work, seeing as the salty air tended to corrode cheaper chassis. Maurine didn’t seem to mind though, wading waist deep around the dock posts, prying shellfish off to make seeds for her own farming venture. Louie was on the sand shouting up a storm at her, since she’d picked up one of his shaken-off pieces to use as her pry tool.

Al made them a one-time offer: work for him, for a long time, and make enough money to live wherever they wanted in Iron Baltimore. No, they couldn’t have time to think about it. Yes, they were sworn to secrecy, on pain of termination if they revealed anything to anyone. If they’d said no there was another pair not too far off that might’ve become his closest chums instead. They were tin can collectors, makers of recycled chassis that looked like everything crushed together to make them. They couldn’t have kept secrets any more than they could hold their salt water.

“What are we making today boss?” Louie asked as they set the cube down. He pulled a hide bag off a belt loop welded to his right hip and tossed it to Al; it deformed in his grasp. The dust. Maurine pulled out the top valve of the canvas cube and started spinning. She sighed as the hatch hissed open, admiring the immaculate seal once more, something she’d never gotten close to achieving herself. The imperfection dripped down one of her shins and made the stairwell smell like Neptune’s restaurant had been dropped in a dumpster.

“A ring,” Al said before pausing. A seed. He slapped his own pockets. Typically he used grains of sand from distant beaches, several bottles of which stood in his medicine cabinet upstairs. By the time he got there the bite pressure of inspiration might be off his throat, so he recalculated. “Maurine, gorgeous, let’s collaborate. You got a pearl on you? How about one of those tiny flat ones that are no good for selling anyway.”

“Course I do,” she answered, moving to open herself up and flood the place. Al and Louie stopped her with loud jabbering and gestured all over their own bodies, suggesting she could just take one off her decorated exterior instead. “Right, right. You’ll pay me back boss, five bucks.”

“I just said one of those bad-for-selling ones!” She picked one out over her shoulder and extracted it from its rough socket, tossing it to his free hand.

“Yeah, but I know you want to buy it, and that you’re good for it.” Al caved. He always caved when he was in a hurry, especially to seal the cube and paint in three sparkling dimensions. “You know it’s big enough to see?”

“It’ll have a unique look, this one,” Al explained microseconds after reasoning it out himself. “Hyperdiamond color with mother-of-pearl opacity, all blending into the base of the ring anyway. White gold, that base. White gold.”

“I’ve got some rings on me,” Maurine offered, “white gold included. More than five bucks though, even with your employer discount.”

“You mean my employer surcharge?”

“That’s the one.” Serendipity. She always had ring bases on her for selling her homegrown pearls, as well as necklaces, earring clips, and a dozen other things to assemble jewelry on the fly, including a soldering gun in the tip of one finger.

Al placed the pearl inside the canvas cube, nudging it to the exact center of the spinning plate, not too different from a pottery wheel. Then he carefully poured the dust in a circle around it. Each piece of the Safari Collection had required far more given their size, ten full bags each, not to mention six hours of continuous work. A ring that was just a honeycombed skin over a flat pearl? They could knock that out on their way up to the apartment.

Kershzzeeww, went the cube as the seal reformed. The squeak that came with the valve’s tightening was Louie’s, not the cube’s. He and it paused.

“We makin’ it here?” the perplexed Dustrious asked. Maurine’s gaze shot straight up, to the brilliant light near the all-diamond tip of the Ice Palace. It was like she just realized they’d accidentally gone through an ’employees only’ door in heaven.

“Yes we are my friend,” Al confirmed. “I’m full of juice and I need to keep my legs moving. I’ve been down for days and now I’m on my way up. I need to feel it,” his hand shot all the way up, a shark fin in a shallow tide, “the verticality. Can’t make this one without that skyward momentum. I’ve got a hunger for the light up there.”

“It does look scrumptious,” Maurine agreed, continuing her stare when human eyes would’ve burned out of the skull by then.

“The staff’ll see the whole thing!” Louie argued, pointing as a rising elevator car went by, one loaded with Dustrious packed in tight as sardines alongside their mops and toolboxes.

“No they won’t; your bodies are blocking the panes,” Al said, largely in truth. They might glimpse the empty side of the chamber, but not the artwork progressing in the middle. “Everyone knows it’s a square already; that cover you put on it doesn’t hide that. Besides, the dusties in this city have overstepped this week I tell you. Twice I’ve been attacked. I can’t find who’s doing it, so I need a bunch of them to see that I’m not intimidated. Those elevators will get the staff and the word out. Al Grandstand’s still here and still makin’.”

“We can protect you,” Maurine offered. Any moment now she might stop looking straight up the shaft.

“As much as I’d love a surcharge every hour in the twenty-four, I couldn’t get any sleep with Louie around, unless he’s offering to tighten up.”

“Might as well put me in the clink if I can’t clank.”

“That’s what I thought. So today we’re sending a message. Start up the stairs sideways and keep the pace steady.” His robotic employees had no trouble following such an order, mechanical precision being their equivalent of animal instincts. Louie was looser of course, but he knew how to adjust for that to keep the cube steady while the boss worked.

On the third step of their journey to the white gold ring the Dustrious applied pressure to the back panel, steadily, powerful as pistons. The canvas cube began to hum and warm like an apartment complex full of people concentrated into a footstool. Creamy campfire light was generated, muddled by the screen of ash on the acrylic sides’ interior.

Aloysius slipped both his shark fin hands into the gauntlet-gloves and pressed his brow into the viewer. Louie and Maurine wouldn’t slip, but he might, so he had to get a rhythm going, of breath, of pumping thighs, of ignoring the acid build-up in his leg muscles. Aqua-knack might help with that too, after a few flights. The change would be minimal. Still, by the time he got to the top, his legs would have a bit more endurance than his arms. He’d better keep that in mind and even it out later. Everything was an opportunity to gain resilience to one force or another now… and for the rest of his life.

They could take their time. The pearl as seed meant it would be most of the object’s ultimate mass. Only two layers of hyperdiamond would be needed: the base coat and the sculpted facets. Al would iterate on the base coat a hundred times, swiping and swiping and swiping with the gloves over the forming diamond, never making contact, having the heated and pressurized air do it by proxy.

Each pass bonded it to the pearl better, pushed the diamond molecules deeper into the pearl’s imperfections as a cement. Quickly it came to resemble an accretion disc, a preliminary formation of a cosmic body. The output of light was immense. Initially humans would’ve needed black goggles to view it, but after so many hyperdiamonds were born via the canvas cube the ashy haze on the acrylic took their place. Al watched, a witness to the birth of a star, fanning like a god afraid to speak to his creations directly. Only an elemental medium could deliver his prophecy, his commandments. If his diamonds didn’t understand why they existed, good, to know it would destroy them. They were there to blaze at room temperature, to be seen by what they could not see, to be worshiped and feared by those an order of existential magnitude away.

“Are they staring at my bottom?” Maurine asked Louie across the gap of the cube. Another car full of lit unblinking eyes had just gone by.

“Trying to stare through it more like,” Louie said. “Hope you’re not lettin’ them!”

“They better not be. I’ve got some of my best affixed down there; it’s great advertising space.”

“Just keep climbing you knuckleheads,” Al warned them. “We’re gettin’ somewhere.” It burned him as he worked, thinking about the Dustrious seeing him at his craft and assuming he was making weapons to use against them. Aside from the Safari Collection he’d only produced a few dozen popgun-compatible hyper plugs, and those were for the smaller handgun size, like what the police carried.

His last hundred hypers could only kill a Dustrious if it was small enough to fit in the palm of a hand, nothing but quirky experimental nuggets and cabochons. This ring would have the clearest vision for its outcome since his most famous series of exotic animal busts. Right, he reminded himself, the robbery. One of his precious collection was in the wind, apparently used to murder the manifestation of the electric company. Maybe that was the justification for their fears, and maybe the hole it left convinced Al he needed to make something new.

The burn in his legs was nothing, not compared to what burned so much hotter right in front of him, before his ash-veiled eyes. Another pass of his armored hands. Another. Waves of fluid creation shaped and reshaped the diamond layer encompassing the pearl, flickering like a candle flame, deforming like a bubble refusing to leave the wand.

Another car. Was that the sound of someone lunging forward, gripping the bars and trying to look closer? Didn’t matter if it was. No one could interpret the interior of the cube except for Al, and whatever distant guardian angel had gifted him the ideas in the first place and lifted him out of obscurity, where he’d been welding all day long, forced to treat the torch as the sun. Now all his caves were self-imposed, the way the true curmudgeonly spirit intended.

He had Victoria Champion’s personal frequency. That sure was something, enough for him to think about it even as he watched the nova of pure artistry at his plated fingertips. What did she look like? All he had to go off was her voice. It had tons of energy, most of it spark, not like the contents of Battery Park. She was all first spark, rogue spark, the single spat one that started a brush fire.

Probably on the shorter side, he guessed. Lots of spitfire women were; they had to make sure they weren’t immediately disregarded because of their diminutive size. The rest was as amorphous as the diamond, though that was about to change. He could feel they were halfway up. Time for the second layer. He had his employees switch sides, balance out any imperceptible listing.

How many faces should it have? Setting it in a ring meant he only had to place them on one side. Five felt nice and straightforward, biggest centered. Having fewer facets meant the distinction between the edges of the diamond and the curve of the pearl would be clearer. The wearer would know it had a core, a foundation. It wasn’t all flash-frozen carbonized fire. Another car went by, with some jeering this time. Some of the passengers of that one had probably spotted them on the way up and were heading back down.

“It’s just a ring you rubes!” Screwy Louie shouted at them over his shoulder, gesture recognized by Al because of its distinct squeal. His neck going left went Eeeeenhkertt. The right was more of a Reeegh.

“Lookin’ plum shiny boss,” Maurine encouraged, feeling more entitled to a wandering eye than normal since she had contributed the seed. Al’s armored hands glided over the loose diamond, air currents flattening the top into a facet, over and over, kneading an air so hot it could kill a Dustrious as fast as a human. If there were any way to unleash it all at once, up and down the elevator shaft, the Ice Palace would turn into an erupting volcano, a new centerpiece for I.B. More.

Another car came by, and someone threw something. Al didn’t look away from his work. Whatever it was, he heard Louie catch it with his back and drop it down the shaft. Judging by its clanks louder than his, it was a wrench or pry bar. Screwy Louie didn’t complain unless he got a dent, and he didn’t get them often, seeing as his loose joints absorbed a lot of shock. He tended to lose washers and bolts and screws and rivets instead.

“The peanut gallery figured out you can throw the peanuts,” he did comment, neck rasping as he looked up. Not many floors left. Their boss was finishing up, swiping the last details into the angled faces, unable to wipe the pouring sweat from his forehead. Maurine produced a rag and did it for him, practiced and precise enough to balance half the canvas cube on one arm. Al told her not to bother and to instead dig out that white gold ring. The whole creation process would be a climb, uninterrupted, no backsliding. Aqua-knack meant he could do that now. Next he might make a hyperdiamond while flying a doggyback, or sinking into the harbor, or while he was getting pinched for another murder he didn’t commit.

“I’m calling it; it’s done!” he declared just twenty steps from his floor. “Tilt it. Yes, tilt it! No, keep walking.”

“Boss you can’t take it out until it cools off!” Louie warned. “You’ll burn your little monkey hands off!”

“Hit the vent,” he ordered them as he extracted his arms from the internal gauntlets. Sweat drenched them both, darkly climbed his bunched sleeves. They looked like a pair of buffalo had swallowed as much as they could and used them as pacifiers.

His cohorts had already released the back panel, the cube ceasing to generate more pressure and heat. It still contained enough to barbecue and blacken a whale. Maurine stuck a finger in the seam on one of the top rivets, actually a disguised valve, and turned it. An orange-gold geyser of hot dust shot out. A dropping elevator car pulled some along down the shaft, leaving a sparkling trail.

“Come on, come on,” Al hissed almost as much as his creation. The door was right there; he just needed it out. Recognizing his impatience, he chalked it up to his fierce artistic instinct mingling with the knack. He wasn’t going to fight; he was going to give it everything. That feeling deserved the world and the darkness wrapping paper crumpled around it.

Maurine turned the valve and opened the hatch, metal hands impervious. Another belch of warbling roseate air shot up and curled into itself: a jellyfish of fire searching for a heart it didn’t have. Aloysius reached for the hole only to have his hand smacked away by Louie.

“I know what I’m doing you two, don’t ruin it!” he snapped, playing Louie’s forearm like a xylophone with his index fingers until his employee took it back. Then Al’s arm dove right back in. It burned. More than he expected. The diamond was already between his fingers though, fingers that might not come out. Al let go and his creation sailed into the air. “Get it!”

Maurine took the initiative, handing the whole weight of the cube off to Louie without telling him. His ankles shouted as he teetered on the edge of the shaft. Meanwhile his fellow underling kicked off the wall and threw herself off the stairs as if she knew what she was doing. She caught it, with nothing to catch her.

Another car came by. She must’ve seen it coming, for the sake of Al’s estimation of her intelligence. Her boot placement suggested she had, perfect for ricocheting off the cage and landing back on the stairs, but she couldn’t finish the maneuver thanks to the passenger hands that popped out and held her like a stuck fly.

“Let her go!” Louie ordered, flailing and smacking at whatever he could reach with the canvas cube held awkwardly against one thigh. Al wished he had his popgun; a good pop would turn the pivotal hand into iron filings. As it stood, and as he managed to on one foot, he could only kick at one weakly.

Aquamaurine was no slouch in her own rescue. She tripped an internal forearm tool, her electromagnet, repelling one side free. Louie and Al pulled on her like a stubborn screen door, and rather than lose any fingers the Dustrious in the elevator cage released her and the hyperdiamond that was their actual target.

“Those louts don’t know that you can’t even make these things without our help,” Louie said bitterly since he didn’t have any spit to donate to the elevator shaft. “Hyperdiamonds are a Dustrious product! Of Dustrious Industry!”

“Of which we are…” Maurine said, twirling once she regained her footing, sloshing arm hoisting the ring skyward, escaping droplets of sea water catching the light the diamond caught first, “Captains!”

“Good work,” Al briefly complimented. “Now hand it over.” Only when he held out his arm did he see the extent of his burn. From the elbow up everything was maroon. Every hair was now a soot-packed follicle. His fingernails were cracked.

“Cheese and crackers!” Louie shouted, smacking his forehead hard enough to chip his paint job. That was the best swear he had, invoking the oft-dreamed of combination he would never get to taste. “Boss, we need to get you to a doctor!”

“Or a deli,” Maurine reinterpreted.

“It’s fine,” Al snapped, losing confidence by the second. He might’ve just crippled himself. Knack couldn’t regenerate so much as a lizard’s tail, only add resilience after the fact. Overfeeding his arm the fiery air of creation was a terrible idea, one he could look past as long as the better idea of the ring was right there in front of him. But now he was staring at his outstretched arm, not the gem, and starting to feel it. He didn’t dare pull it back and put skin against skin.

“At least let me do this,” Maurine said, holding out one of her own arms and popping open the bottom panel. A gush of seawater splashed every inch of the burn. Al’s vision went white as he collapsed against the wall, barely able to keep upright. Spittle bubbled up instead of words.

“What did you go and do that for!?” Louie barked, smacking her this time.

“What? It’s salt water! It sterilizes! Don’t you know about germs? Boss could die of germs!”

“That doesn’t sound right. You ever seen a human with the label peeled off jumping into the briny deep? No! Boss, tell her you don’t get rid of germs with ocean. Ocean’s got germs of its own that don’t care about salt at all.” Al still couldn’t speak, but his arm was out, so Maurine finished the ring, affixing it to the white gold base she would bill him for later. She gently dropped it into his waiting palm.

As his vision untripled from three rings to two to one he regained awareness. His hollowed eyes stared down Maurine’s expressionless expression, lit from behind with the brilliance of confident stupidity.

“See look, he’s more awake than he was before,” she said. “Because I’m a quick enough thinker to treat his burn with cold water. That’s what you do too, cold water. Cold water and salt. Preserves him like a Scandinavian herring.”

“He does look like he’s going a touch fishy,” Louie tentatively agreed as Al gaped. A dry groan welled up into speech.

“Not even cold,” he said, hearing his dead grandfather’s voice in his own.

“No?” Maurine said, testing a hanging droplet on her elbow with a finger that couldn’t feel anything. “It was cold when I got it.”

“Before you hauled a forge in a box up a thousand flights of stairs you dunce,” Louie pointed out. “Boss, you need that deli?” Al was sort of on his feet, sort of walking past them. Zombies had more presence. The only thing that kept his mind suspended over a sea of agony was the focal point of the ring held out in front of him. He could just see whatever was behind it, all else haze.

His employees followed close behind as he found the door to his floor, pushed it open with a shoulder, and brought his newborn hyper into the world proper. Somewhere in his concentrated denial of the torture clinging to his darkened arm there was still pride in his achievement.

In that suppressed suffering was the understanding he had pushed too far too quickly. Knack didn’t make him immortal. Every bit of flame retardant skin he wanted could have been smartly earned hovering through the steam atop a boiling pot of soup over the course of months. Instead he’d stuck his arm between Hephaestus’s hammer and anvil. Even if it did recover quickly those cracks would still be in his nails, reminding him. And there wasn’t a chance in the hell his dominant hand had just visited that any of that hair would ever grow back.

Instinct stopped him in front of his door. There was something else in the way, something white. Al’s sight blurred again; fatigue chomped down. He fell to one knee, arm and ring still outstretched. The white thing turned around; it had sparkling eyes in pools of pink.

“Diamond galore!” gasped Harper Angel as she looked down the barrel of Aloysius Grandstand’s obvious marriage proposal, all but firing a hyperdiamond into her bosom. The burn was nothing, part of his work surely, just as her eyes were always raw and itchy to keep up the church’s appearance.

After her first visit she worried she’d ruined her only shot at bringing the fabricator into the fold. It was those police and press interlopers who made it so difficult; none of her practiced banter was suitable for anything other than two attractive people of similar age standing scandalously close in an otherwise empty high-rise apartment.

Everyone in the clergy, herself included, had put their confidence in both her ability and her appearance, seeing as Mr. Grandstand had been a bachelor for most of his time in the spotlight. If U-COGG could slip some of the holy spirit into his bed they wouldn’t need to get it on his resume or wallet. Love would do the heavy lifting.

But what had she done to possess him during that brief meeting that had seemed so disastrous? He’d clearly thought about it endlessly, his idea of their encounter building more and more until he’d hallucinated a rapport that quickly brought her to saying diamond galore! What was she doing, still thinking it over!?

“Yes! Yes of course I’ll marry you Aloysius!” she cheered. A life of popping champagne corks flashed and sparkled before her eyes, entirely separate from her diamond contacts. Dear sweet Al would retreat to his workshop every night and make her new hypers to wear to church, so weighing down her neck and ears and hands that she could barely walk. Why, she’d be hauling them across the carpet, between the pews for their ceremony, for the christening of their first child, their second, their seventh, for their vow renewals…

She reached for the ring, and Al managed to move his arm, curl his fingers about his creation.

“Darling?”

A scream from outside apartment 433 disturbed the neighbors, noted several operators who answered complaint calls.

From under your Nose for Trouble

“Don’t call me darling,” Al croaked as he opened his eyes. Had Ms. Angel just called him that again or was he remembering it from before he passed out? Either way she got the message, straightening her terrible posture to create some distance between them, but still not enough since they were both on his bed. It was dim, a single lamp half lit in the corner under its slatted shade.

Al lifted his head, saw himself flat on his back, thankfully with all his clothes still plastered to him by the sweat of artisanal genius. Harper’s face was fraught, torn between devotion and uncertainty. She’d let her artificially white hair down, past the top button that hadn’t been undone before the screaming and keeling over.

“You’ve had quite a shock,” she said, her own voice unstable. “Those rude machines of yours and I agreed you needed to lie down.”

“I have a couch.”

“I thought you might like some privacy as well.”

“I guess that’s why she locked herself in there with you without telling us!” Aquamaurine hollered through the closed door.

“We’re right outside boss,” Screwy Louie added even louder. “We just didn’t want to bust your door down or nothing. Say the word and we’ll bust up the whole place.”

“I’m alright,” their boss coughed back. “You two clock out; I’ve got it under control.”

“Whatever you say,” Maurine shrugged vocally. “Don’t worry about the pearl, church lady already paid me the ten bucks we negotiated.”

“Careful boss,” Louie advised, turning and trudging off with the weight of the canvas cube making his normal ruckus sound twice as hazardous to nearby glass panels. Back he would take it, to his perfect hiding spot that accounted for three quarters of his salary.

“How much do you think the deli would give us for that arm?” Maurine’s fading voice asked. “If we took the hand off and said it was cow arm?”

“They don’t eat cow arm,” fading Louie said.

“You can’t just throw ’em away! There’s plenty of good-“

Harper Angel cut them off by clearing her throat. She brushed some hair out of her face that immediately fell back down. Al, a touch paralyzed, angled his head awkwardly and saw that she was lounging beside him, propped up on one elbow, legs doing to each other what she probably wanted to be doing to him.

“Having thought about it,” she said slowly, “I realized you were not actually proposing to me out in the hall.” Her ensuing silence suggested she thought it was very big of her not to push the charade much more assertively.

“Don’t take it personally Miss Angel. Nobody’s gotten one out of me yet. I was just making a ring.” She glanced at his reddened arm. So did he, relieved to see it was already a shade lighter. The blisters were new though. “All part of the process.”

“If you had to do that to yourself for a ring, how on Earth did you survive the Safari Collection?”

“By the skin of my teeth. And now my blood, sweat, and burns are on display to your parishioners inside the Campfire Cathedral.” Harper bit her lip. The seeping wound of her expression convinced him to rise to an elbow of his own, the other one unable to respond without screaming at the rest of his body that its skin was being removed with a tow truck winch.

“About that,” she said. “I did come here today for a reason, being your official liaison with the church and all.”

“It’s not official unless I approve it, which I don’t. I’ve said it a hundred times; I want nothing to do with you people.”

“Do you really doubt our mission Aloysius? Devotion is clarity in our hearts. Diamonds are the way forward, and the Dustrious the imps of the moth-horned devil impeding our progress. Our machine is broken because we let them run it.”

“They don’t run it you daft…” Al stopped short of admitting that hyperdiamonds, the most precious of god’s gems according to the church, couldn’t be produced without their aid. “You’re just like any church, except you’re even gaudier than the Catholics. Money launderers, that’s what you are, double-dipping in the holy water of financial crimes with your tax-free status. Your rubes are true believers, sure, but those Youstabees believe in whatever opens up shop down the street, and you erupted out of their old firehouse.”

“As if it isn’t a public service for the church to scoop them up and dress them for polite company before they become Oughtabees with tire irons. The only thing I launder are these robes that I earned in service to god, thank you very much.” She wadded a tail of her cloth belt in her hand, then straightened it out on the bed.

“What, no underwear?”

“Aloysius!” She stopped, looked at a corner of the room until her volume and tone was internally adjusted. “I came here to share information with you that you, apparently, would never reciprocate.” Her eyes found her new favorite corner again and stayed there this time. “The Seen Viper has been stolen.”

“What?” He would’ve jumped up, stormed around, knocked something over, if not for fear of agitating the burn that was still doing a good job of agitating itself. In a surprising turn, anger became amusement. Finally, some bad luck for terrible people as opposed to just Al Grand and the cloud raining nuts and bolts on him down the street. “Someone snuffed out your campfire? I should go down there and see it then, back to that sterile white.”

Not only had U-COGG managed to finagle one of his Safari Collection into their possession before he wised up and stopped selling, they’d also artificially magnified it into the centerpiece of their entire so-called religion. When they purchased the old firehouse they tore off the roof and built several additional floors above that, entirely from factory-formed diamond. It was opaque in all the right places to hide their shadowy dealings and only transparent in the spires.

Ground floor services had the flock looking up into a startling lattice of sunlight and gem light, that purified cold variant that sunlight became when it bounced around in a labyrinthine diamond enough to transform its character. Even Al understood why so many revelations and epiphanies seemed to happened in there with eyes cast toward the sky.

But the high caste of the church, the reverend-jewelers and the lapidarists, did not want all that white, not ultimately. They wanted hyper orange-gold. Prematurely, they wanted it, unable to surmise that the first articles they read and photos they saw weren’t indicative of a coming hyperdiamond rush. You could hardly blame them, since the church’s own rise was meteoric, leaving a crater in mankind’s spirituality in years, not decades.

That rush never came, since the secret wasn’t out. It was all Aloysius Grandstand. Nobody else could make the hardest material ever discovered, and since he wasn’t an industrialist the trickle they could’ve worked with was a rust dripping spigot in the middle of the Gobi. Even the hyper pebbles he was willing to let go of cost millions.

By the time they fully understood their shortage they’d already rewritten their own doctrine to center hyperdiamonds above the regular stuff. White diamonds were wonderful, holy. Hyper was more wonderful, holier. Their symbol was drawn, then cut by the lapidarists, and on the necks, ears, and fingers of all the faithful who could afford to be members: a pentagonal hyperdiamond suspended in the middle of a larger typical diamond of the same shape.

Harper had one on her pendant just then, and in both her ears, and unbeknownst to Al but still unsurprising was her intention to pierce every viable section of inner ear and stud it with the church’s icon until it resembled a geode. None of the cores were real however; only the uppermost members had genuine pebbles in their ensemble. No, those were artificially-colored typicals, an imitation no more easily recognized than when Al looked at them, scowling.

Doctrine was easy enough to tweak. The hypers were so rare because they were so divine, tools and weapons for the mightiest of god’s warriors to combat the encroachment of Confabulo’s Dustrious into everyday life. But the cathedral wouldn’t be complete, not according to their architect’s vision, without a big enough hyperdiamond to catch and redistribute sunlight to the rest of the structure.

The Seen Viper finally got them their eye-imprisoning effect, if a regular diamond’s ability was only enough to catch. Expertly engineered mirror arrangements lent the color of the hyperdiamond to its colorless lesser cousin, lighting up the old firehouse in blazing glory, striking in different flavors at dawn, midday, and dusk. Like it or not, Al was the best recruiting tool the church ever had. Thousands had been led to U-COGG’s branded salvation through that building ignited by the serpent’s flint-strike eyes.

Except now it was back to normal, drained of blood. Without the lights on, was anybody home? Had god abandoned that roost for another? Al would’ve laughed at Harper’s despair over something so ridiculous, but he couldn’t. Not with the genuine hurt in her eyes compounded by the contacts.

“It is the worst tragedy that has ever befallen the church,” Harper sobbed, only in her voice, managing to keep her face wooden as she moved to a prayer kneel on the mattress.

“I sincerely mean it when I say all of you need to get out more.”

“Aren’t you concerned about the well-being of your masterpiece!? The Seen Viper is the most beautiful, most magnificent, most radiant object ever crafted by mankind. Divine inspiration shone straight through you, Aloysius. That noble passionate color is that of your very soul.” He couldn’t disagree, except to point out that she would’ve said the same for whichever part of the Safari Collection the church came to possess. “You are the chosen tool of the craftsman who made us all.”

“Tell me why my viper wasn’t under lock and key and guard then.”

“It was!” she protested, wrists and hands throwing a tantrum as the rest of her got off the bed. “We have multiple safeguards against Dustrious intrusion.”

“What makes you think it was one of them?”

“Who else? Those machines of his can come in any shape and size, so many of us believe it was a team of smaller ones of unorthodox configuration. That might have allowed them to circumvent our security.”

“Good on them then. They can’t destroy it any more than you could, and they won’t make it tawdry the way you did, dispersing its light into regular diamonds, diluting it, making me see it every time I’m near the market.”

“Setting aside our childish disagreements,” she sniffled, “I don’t think you’re grasping the severity of the situation for you Aloysius.” Al said nothing, then ordered her to enlighten him. “You don’t see a pattern? First the Seen Monkey is stolen, then you’re arrested for supposedly using it to destroy a prominent Dustrious. Now the Viper is gone under similar circumstances and there’s another executive’s broken office toy-“

“Hang on… someone else got scrapped?” Harper was momentarily confused by his confusion. Finding no way to turn the information into a favor owed, she elaborated.

“Mr. Edwind Headstrong. He works in aviat-“

“I know who he is- was,” Al snapped. He’d gotten an earful about the tin man when he researched his first alleged victim. Headstrong ran a union of air traffic controllers, not legally recognized of course. A blimp crashed into his memory. “I forgot the sky fell and hit me on the head three hours ago. That had something to do with this? Just like the blackouts?”

“That’s how we learned of it,” Miss Angel said. “His underlings began a work stoppage the moment they found out, regardless of what was in the air, the heartless boilers. I was rushed over here to see if you changed your mind about using our legal services. It’s a surprise you haven’t been arrested yet. The first words out of their mouths are likely to be that Mr. Headstrong was destroyed by the Seen Viper.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Al muttered, rubbing his jaw with the hand that wasn’t bubbling. “Whoever they are, they already had the Seen Monkey from the first crime. Why steal a second one? They’re infinitely reusable, not a popgun in the world could wear them out.”

“Aloysius… I don’t need to tell you that each is an incredible treasure. If they got away with one heist, why not another? When they’re finished with this cruel trick on you they will probably sell the both of them to the underworld. In the meantime, each of your items they use is another corner of the frame they’re putting around you. Someone is your enemy, someone who enjoys watching you twist in the wind.”

Fed up, steamed up, burned up, the fabricator’s volcanic rage had him chewing on his own mouth. Everything she said felt par for the new hazardous course someone had smacked his ball into. His whole life was a sand trap, and the more he struggled the faster he slid to the bottom of the pit. But things were different now. Being a single threat gave him an edge, and nobody knew about it yet. Now was the time to act, to go on the offensive, as soon as his arm stopped telling him he couldn’t.

What action though? Where would he even go when his enemy seemed everywhere, nebulous except for when they squeezed into a Dustrious and swung their steel fists? Then, like a solemn autumn wind through his hair and bones, he remembered the world didn’t revolve around Aloysius Grandstand. It might revolve around his diamonds, but not him personally. Another being was clearly endangered by this whole affair, the one corner of the Steel Triangle that hadn’t been knocked off the shelf of influence: Madam Fritzi Eclectric. Al recalled her running most of the theater district, though not the premium entertainment found in the Ice Fields. The Brew Haha belonged to her, at least three quarters of the way up, after the bartender Callory and the manager Fizzy but beneath the nameless executive that owned the madam herself on paper.

And Al knew the staff of the Brew Haha. It started coming together. One of them might know where he could find the madam, and if he could talk to her he might be able to clear some of this up. The plan couldn’t finish forming, not with U-COGG around watching him like a ghostly widow. He wasn’t going to risk her overhearing two words of this possibly-ingenious rambling.

“Thank you,” he offered to stun her, “for nursing me back to health. I’d appreciate some privacy now.” He moved to the door, and so did she, fluttering around the knob nervously enough that he didn’t reach for it.

“Aloysius please, you can’t say your back to health. Look at that arm. And you really should come down to the cathedral and speak with our lawyers. They can put your mind at ease. I’ll be right there by your side, through thick and thin, until d-“

“Don’t,” he said, then aggressively waved her out of the way with a hand like an angry garden gate. Once the door was open he ushered her out more gently. With a hiss of recognition, he had to stop her. She whirled around hopefully.

“You’d like me to stay?”

“You’re wearing my ring.” Harper Angel malfunctioned, temporarily metamorphosed into a deaf statue. “On your finger, if you’ve lost track.”

“Ah so I am,” she giggled forcefully, like an ornery opossum forced through a train whistle. “How could I resist? It’s the first true hyperdiamond I’ve ever worn. You could call this the best day of my life! I swear I can feel it tingling… if not the diamond it must be our repartee.”

“Reparteeing is such sweet sorrow. Hand it over please.”

“It fits perfectly,” she said as it glided off easily enough to make her falter. With an exasperated click of her tongue she dropped it into Al’s palm. “Walk a lady home?”

“You don’t wan to be seen on this arm,” he said as they finally made it to the apartment door. Recent experience made him dread several possible figures on the other side; thankfully it opened to an empty hallway.

“You’ve got a spare!”

“Goodbye Miss Angel. You can give me a call if, and only if, you find out where my Safari animals have escaped to.” She stepped outside.

“I don’t have your frequency.” Al shut the door.

Caller: 0-0-2-1-3-9

Operator: Ahoy caller, you’ve reached the missing animal report line. My name’s Heidi Raw, how can I help you, over?

Caller: Yeah hi I’ve got a report to missing animal alright, you bet your bare painted toes I do.

Operator: …Sir, is this a citizen or a pet you’re calling about, over?

Caller: Pet! It’s the most famous pet monkey ever! ‘Cept… cept for King Kong! He got away, didn’t he? So he’s no pet no mo-more hic. That makes this the most famous. Say, what do you think the reward is Heidi? A hundred bucks? That guy wipes with hundreds…

Operator: Sir, I need you to tell me the name and nature of the animal. Rewards are only given out if the animal is recovered, over.

Caller: Th-hic-the Seen Monkey!

Operator: You’ve seen a monkey, over?

Caller: Everybody gone and seen it Heidi! Paper-selling monkey! Not, hah, not a newsie monk… not a newskey! It’s inside of the papers. Oh, uh, over!

Operator: Please sir, just tell me what monkey you are referring to. Does it have a name? How did you know it was missing, over?

Caller: I told you I seen the Seen! Monkey! Monkey!

Operator: Sir please do not shout ‘monkey’ at me. Perhaps you’d like to call back once you’ve dried out, over.

Caller: I forget stuff when I’m out to dry Heidi! Just give me the monk-money and I’ll give him the mone-monkey later hic. Arrange the excharrange! Make the calls Heidi! I’ll throw in a tip for your operatin’ on me, over and out of doors heh heh.

There was no point in worrying about being mugged when he already had to factor in attempted murder every time he stepped foot outside his apartment. Al Grand was going to the Brew Haha and that was final. What wasn’t final was his choice of ordinance for protecting himself in the tough and oiled alleyways of Iron Baltimore.

Two pieces of the Safari Collection were still safely in his possession: Seen Mouse and Seen Elephant. Part of their artistic completeness was their viability inside a popgun, and both would shoot just fine, but Al had another way of wielding them in his back pocket. It had taken hundreds of private lessons and a bribe of the largest hyper outside the collection to jam it in his pocket, and he wasn’t even sure it was still there seeing as he’d never gotten to pull it out and use it. Like an ace in the sleeve of the smartest gambler, it was only for emergencies.

Which of his orange-gold animals worked best with that hidden ace? Practicing on a dummy always resulted in the dummy’s destruction, whether it was made of wood, aluminum, or a pillar of salt-gray industrial diamond. The most grievously ruined dummy, diamond with the very impurities beaten out of it like feathers out of a pillow, had suffered under the Seen Elephant thanks to its tusks functioning as lances alongside its blunt hammer head.

Elephant it was then, he decided, carefully extricating it from its shrine in the wall. He’d already brought out his long popgun from where it was locked up in the closet. A deluxe custom model, the chrome-plated titanium barrel took to the gun oil like marble to polish. Its cherry wood stock was cushioned better than a private car on a private train, to neutralize the kick of the spring. A cable spool in the style of a Thompson drum hung behind the front grip and ahead of the trigger, the cable fed like film to the tension crank on the outer side. Expensive acid etching rolled flourished diagrams of early machines all the way around the barrel, the inspiration of geniuses like Da Vinci and Tesla being birthed via pen, mind, and the matchstick flame of striking one on the other.

Two shots. Al had the best long popgun money could buy, but there were still only two shots before a lengthy and strenuous reload was necessary. It was just the nature of such a simple design, the best way anybody had to drive an unbreakable object through the quartz brain of a nimble Dustrious.

If your first pop missed you tripped the tension crank to reel your diamond plug back in and repressurize. When you missed your second pop your diamond was a dead fish wherever it landed, forcing you to either run to it or start turning the manual recall lever. Twenty seconds later you might have your diamond back, if the thing you shot at didn’t take umbrage and then your head.

Al Grand affectionately named his Gladys, and if asked why he would heft it and say ‘Because sometimes I’m glad dis is nearby’.

Gladys swallowed the elephant snugly, hyper colors capping the gun so extravagantly that the rest of it looked like a sardine tin by comparison. Anybody who recognized him would immediately know what was slung across his back, but for those who didn’t he threw a black velvet bag over the elephant and cinched it tight. If he actually fired it the thin layer wouldn’t save his enemy from his petrified pachyderm flame.

To make it less likely he was recognized, the fabricator threw on his dingiest coat, the pants he wore the last time he painted, and his boots that never stopped smelling like the docks. A fisherman’s cap pulled down over his face and his best scowl made him into quite the Oughtabee. For extra insurance he took some black lubricant putty from his canvas cube paraphernalia and dirtied up both his neck and his ears like a proper grease monkey.

The plan went perfectly until he stepped outside. One ray of sun on his skin made his body go haywire. Suddenly his eyelids trailed behind him as he remembered his last sleep was an involuntary nap beside a watching Harper Angel. His last bite to eat was a breakfast out of his icebox consisting of a garlic pickle wrapped in salami that had been in a barrel on the street for who knows how long before that. Al always knew, one of these days, his habit of bonding with the common citizen and animal through their rankest yet oh so convenient street food would catch up with him. Apparently these were the days.

“I feel like a million bucks o’ debt,” he told the seam in the sidewalk under his nose, and that was before the flaking pain in his burned arm flared up. That settled it. Once he knew where he was going he would stop by the WVA clinic and have Cheekteeth patch him up. Sure she was a vet, but that included all sorts of apes, and humans were on that list too. A million in debt was nothing as long as it was to his buddy Darling. She never called in an I.O.U. if it could potentially cost a scrap of the borrower’s health, even when a hamster owed her a pellet.

First he needed a heading, so he caught a car from Flying Money, human drivers guaranteed, until a street away from the comedy club, where he disembarked quietly and shoved his hands in his pockets. Then he took one out, since it screamed at him for touching lint to blister.

Sometimes Al entered the Brew Haha from the back, reserved for employees only. He had permission, given the crowd that sometimes hung around the front looking for him. The alley stank of the garbage you’d expect, but the odor vanished once he slipped inside, replaced by a strange smell that confused more than it repelled: a heady mix of pet dander, dishes hot from the washer, rust-flecked soap, and fresh vegetal compost.

Technically the Brew Haha served food. If it was ever subject to a human-suitability rating it would score exactly one point higher than Neptune’s Low Tide Lunch, a point earned by not being open-air. If Al was going to get killed by his diet he wanted his favorite squid to do it at his favorite spot, so he never ordered anything other than drinks in order to stoke his appetite for the real triple threat: Neptune’s three-piece lobster claws and tail combo served with a side of corn that somehow looked like it had never been on a cob.

The kitchen of the Brew Haha was a long thin room with steaming machines on both sides. Sinks, grills, backup generators, everything steamed. It was a competition to see which device could produce the most without breaking down. Dustrious servers on unicycle mounts instead of legs rolled back and forth, stacking drinks and plates with perfect poise.

Legs had been swapped out for wheels to protect the janitors, one of whom darted underneath Al’s advancing feet to beat the others to a dropped carrot top. Any scrap produce was pushed to the floor, where the five rabbit employees competed for their salary. A sliding metal drawer underneath the dishwasher was partly open, granting a view of their grass-filled hutch under buzzing electric lights. Al knew a couple of their names.

“You don’t want to be down there right now Roger, I’m on a mission,” he warned the carrot snatcher. He passed between the two Dustrious servers in the back, neither of which turned their heads to look. They’d never bothered to introduce themselves, and the fabricator had never asked. He was looking for- “Callory!”

The bartender passed through the flapping door he was about to use, carrying an empty tray that she tossed to one of her coworkers; it sailed right past Al’s ear. Only then did she look him up and down and identify his stupid disguise. He examined her in turn, from her dainty human hat fit for a tea party to her mismatched waistcoat and downright rustic apron. Underneath the clothes she had a respectable chassis painted charcoal and soft orange, a light under a compound lens dome centered in her breast. Paint and molding worked a coy feline expression around her typically lifeless eyes.

“What are you after Mr. Grand?” she asked, blocking his way out onto the floor rather effectively for such a waifish robot. The sink would’ve been easier to move. She spied the gun across his back and under wraps. “Are you crazy? You’re not bringing that thing into my joint.”

“Why do you think I came in the back?” he said. “And it’s not your joint, its Fizzy’s. And it’s not his either! Its Eclectric’s.” Extra steam hissed out as if bristling at the name. Al glanced over his shoulder, unable to make out anything. A rabbit cleared his shoe and vanished into the hutch, panel sliding shut.

“Did Louie lend you a loose screw?” Callory asked, more anger in her voice than he’d ever heard from his usually blithe acquaintance. “You were picked up for popping the lantern man.”

“It’s a frame job.”

“And now Headstrong’s gone down.”

“They haven’t hung that frame yet, but I’m sure they’ve bought it.”

“And you come here with the Madam’s name in that flesh-mouth of yours and spit it on me. I owe her everything, more than I owe the professor my life. If you’re after her now I’m not letting you out of this kitchen.” Al felt like the steam behind him turned into a brick wall. He shouldn’t have pulled that sass about owning the Haha. Of course the bartender owned it, because she ran it. Only the law disagreed. The fabricator was disgusted by his own appeal to such Luddite authority.

“I’m not trying to kill anybody,” he insisted, hands up and empty. Hopefully the sight of his burned fingers would convince her he was a victim, though that one injury was his own doing, unless he could blame the muse. “Listen, it’s not just the frame-up Callory. I’ve been ambushed, beaten, drugged, electrocuted, and burned. It’s like I’m being used to invent new methods of torture. I need answers. Look at me; does it look like I have any?”

“No,” she answered too quickly.

“I’m one man. If I march up on Madam Eclectric with two H-pops to my name is she going to die by my hand or am I going to by a hundred metal hands at her disposal? After the other two, you’re telling me she’s not traveling with a baker’s dozen armed guards?” Finally the bartender’s posture loosened into a shrug. The tilt of her head even suggested she was back to thinking him a distracting bellyacher.

“You’re just going to talk to her?”

“If she doesn’t have me shot on sight, yes.”

“Alright. Show it to me and I’ll tell you what building you can maybe aim for.”

“Pardon?”

“What am I, transmitting French? You’re on safari aren’t you? Show me. I’ve never seen one.” Al withheld his sigh and an eye roll, given the two dusties lurking in the cloud behind him that could roll them for him. He pulled the gun bag around to his chest and unzipped the end, peeling canvas away as if opening a banana.

The proud elephant’s head emerged, curled trunk perpetually poised to trumpet out a war cry. Its eyes were precision vortexes of refraction, giving it a white hot stare that melted viewers to the floor as opposed to following them around the room. Callory was amazed; she had to be. Nothing else could excuse leaning into it when one tap on the trigger through the bag would turn her into a geyser of crystal dust the rabbits would sweep up in their whiskers.

“If your help gets my monkey and viper back, I’ll give you one,” he offered, realizing how desperate he’d gotten as he said it. “Not a big one. Something you can wear.”

“As if I’d be caught dead…” was all she said. Al had to admit the sentiment would be, at best, mixed for any Dustrious that showed up wearing an original Grandstand. Madam Eclectric could probably get away with it if she wore one defensively, somewhere over her brain. Anything short of that might get a bot labeled a traitor. That’s why he’d hesitated to make any for Louie and Maurine beyond their cranial lining. His ideas around that were changing though, and should he clear this mess up he might insist on his employees pulling double duty as bodyguards and carrying pop pistols with hyper plugs.

“Had a good look?” he asked when she refused to stand back or say anything. She glanced up as if remembering he was there. A nod. Al slung his masterpiece once more. “Where can I find her?”

“Follow the yellow brick road.” Whether or not he received a frying pan to the skull, Al had to let his eyes roll this time. “There’s an orchestra hall on Fool’s Gold Avenue with an empty marquee. Look on the bottom line, and if there’s the top of an ellipsis there, she’s in. She takes remote auditions for rotio serials in there because she likes the acoustics.”

“You’re a life-saver Cal,” Al technically didn’t thank, nonetheless resolving to get to know her better, especially since he was now on the hook for a hyper if she ever came calling.

“You’d have to live for that,” the Dustrious pointed out. “Leave the way you came, and give me a couple days before I have to see your skin-face again.” Aloysius saluted her with two fingers and turned into the steam. “Oh and say hello to Louie for me.” How his clanking screeching cohort drew so much attention from the more feminine dusties would continue to remain a mystery, at least until the case of the witchmelt dress and the double decommission was solved.

The fabricator slipped out and headed off, not to the yellow brick road, but to the first aid station he was going to turn Cheekteeth’s clinic into. That was in the Zoo, on Tinmariner Avenue, just two alleys away from Neptune’s Low Tide Lunch. As he skulked in that direction with his head down and his cap pulled over his face Al wondered how he would get in there without a fuss and manage privacy enough to get bandaged.

He was too damn popular at the Wilderness Veterans’ Association clinic thanks to his Safari Collection. Not only did he invent the best tool for busting up the enemy combatants of the Wilderness War, but he gave the biggest fanciest examples the likenesses of various animals, conveying obvious respect for the battered battleaxes who lived in and all-but-lived-in Cheekteeth’s facility. Her patients treated him like a watering hole. And he wanted to be nice, yet he couldn’t for the life of him understand any lengthy war stories squawked, meowed, or ribbited in his direction. Trying to sneak around was pointless, since they could smell and hear him, some knowing him by individual musk and footstep.

The answer came so suddenly that he stalled out and nearly tripped. He was carrying it. The Seen Elephant could solve a lot more problems than just an attacker or what centerpiece to use for the dining table.

On Tinmariner, the clinic wasn’t quite the tallest building even with the trees on the roof included, but it was the widest: a marvel of a green-tinted glass box that blocked sun mostly with the squares of soil atop further divided into garden plots for clusters of more exotic plants: luxury condos for citizens that might otherwise be considered invasive species.

The whole facade looked profoundly recyclable, signage changing so constantly that they used unfurling banners rather than molded lettering. Patients and beneficiaries and residents needed to know what specialty foods were available, what sizes of vacancy had opened up, and which parasites could hop between which animals. It was sheer luck that ozjoe’s enlightening effect didn’t have enough to build on in the pinpoint brains of the common lice, fleas, ticks, and mites.

Various portals were lined up across the front ranging in size from the leftmost mouse hole to the rightmost elephant and freight garage. Giraffes were sadly relegated to general street legality and no more special accommodations. If more than a zoo’s worth ever lived in I.B. More they might be able to get a petition through.

Al took the revolving door in the exact middle and was immediately greeted with a fanfare of birdsong, sea lion honk, turkey gobble, and the little known shrew whisper. Dogs swarmed him, spoiled with the liberties of being man’s best friend long before the life and times of Professor Confabulo. He had to raise his burnt arm out of their reach to make sure they didn’t lick it and introduce him to yet another novel agony.

An owl landed on his shoulder, neutralizing the height advantage. It was already past time to deploy his secret weapon. Mr. Grandstand opened his bag again and revealed the elephantine hyperdiamond, hushing the citizen-animals and transfixing them. There one was, a crown jewel of Iron Baltimore, what the archaeologists would dig up in a thousand years, forcing on them the perspective that all the other relics were refuse better consigned to the swirling sands.

“I’ve got to get looked at by Dr. Darling,” he broadcast to the wide open lobby at a volume he hoped the vet vet would overhear. “Can I ask you all a favor? I need you to guard this while I’m getting my lollipop. And I already know the best ones are the green ones with the mealworm curled up in the middle.” A salamander perched on the lip of a slow trough fountain along one wall closed its maw, comment preempted. Anyone who wasn’t onboard with helping him was far outnumbered by those who were. Al had no trouble setting his popgun at a lean against a potted palm for the citizen-animals to marvel at and guard in equal measure.

He hadn’t escaped the flanks of the goats at the edge before he spotted Darling on the second overlooking floor, arms crossed in her black physician’s coat with the white trim. A clipboard as long and thin as a card catalog dangled from a belt loop, stacked with thin papers alternating cream, pink, and green.

“I suppose you want me to save what’s left of that arm?” she called down to him.

“No I want you to paint my nails.”

“Paint’s up here.” Darling turned away and disappeared, trusting him to know which cloistered little examination room she’d picked. Al went to the human access stairs, also green glass, also an aquarium, and showed the admiring carp and catfish within the soles of his boots and the hot sparkle of hyperdiamond dust compacted in the tread. A finch could get rich pecking enough of that dust into a pouch to register as more than 0.0 grams on a scale.

Leave it to Darling to suck the fool’s fervor out of a room. Al was doubting his plan before he sat down in the dim dry cupboard, draped in fake vines at the cabinet sides to make her regular patients feel more at home. There were other nature touches too, like round river rocks in the sink, more natural wood patterns holding everything up, and a domed white light with thicker glass wherever the moon had craters.

She had pulled on a roll of sanitary paper and set up a little bench next to a chair where he could elevate and rest his arm, which he did wordlessly while she set out jars of ointment and bandage options.

“What did you do?” she asked, plenty of insults implied.

“Flew too close to the sun.”

“The entire thing’s going to scar. And how am I supposed to paint such cracked nails? If you’re lucky those will be presentable again. Forget any hair growing back. You need ointment every few hours to prevent infection. Plus the areas around your joints are going to hurt like hell the whole healing process, if we can call it that. This’ll be like scraping the top off a wheel of cheese with a fork and expecting the mold to grow back exactly flat.”

She brought out a squat top-heavy bottle, like a torso with a nozzle, that he was very unhappy to see, recognizing its white exterior and red lettering as Parched Camel throat rubbing alcohol. You could drink it, and that was preferable to what else you could do. Suddenly he was desperate to inform his doctor of every little thing that could matter, could make what she was about to slap on his burn unnecessary.

“Before you do that… I should tell you-“

“Aloysius Grandstand!” a voice in the open doorway shouted, a claws-out pounce. Doctor and patient, confidentiality very much violated, whipped to face Detective Leonid Caliber and the polished handcuffs he already had out. He’d oiled his hair too, and put on his best arresting pants. “I have no choice but to place you under arrest, on suspicion of destroying Edwind Headstrong… and Ohmaha Jolts.”

“Ah, just the man I was hoping to see,” Al fired back, wishing he could stand and puff out his chest without facing Darling’s cold wrath at mussing the paper and palliatives. “You should really hear what I was about to share with my doctor as well.” The copper sagged in his shoulders, glanced between the two, and all along the nasty red arm bridging them.

“Erh, isn’t she a vet?”

“And this is my pet moron,” Cheekteeth said. “I can do with him as I please.” A nasal sigh indicated she regretted speaking at all, occasionally having to relearn the lesson that she really preferred the company and conversation of the citizen-animals incapable of mispronouncing their own sounds.

“I thought I was off the hook for that Jolts fella,” Al said, blithe, bitter, yet anticipating supreme vindication.

“In light of new information regarding the Seen Viper’s theft, you’re being reconsidered as a suspect. I’m reconsidering you! I could… I don’t have to though. I might re-reconsider if you were to make a hyperdonation to the department. One pistol’s worth of plug perhaps.”

“The Assembly Line will produce a red human heart before I give you a hyperdiamond,” Al sniped. “If you so much as recover one of the Safari Collection with your bare hands they’re both going to look like this.” He painfully flexed his burnt digits, didn’t let anything other fenced-in rage show in his taut cheeks and clenched teeth. “Only yours won’t heal the way mine will… will they?”

“I… I don’t know what you mean,” Caliber mumbled.

“What do you mean?” Dr. Cheekteeth asked, irritated at having to reconsider the options already laid out for application.

“I’ve recently become a single threat,” Al divulged. All color drained out of the detective; he seemingly borrowed a pair of owl eyes from one of the circling guards in the lobby. “Due to the carelessness of a certain member of the constabulary, I was exposed to aqua-knack. I know it worked on me too, seeing as I took a stroll through Battery Park with the lights on.” Darling’s intrigued expression drifted to the detective the way it might to a toddler actively wetting themselves.

Having her there made the moment all the more satisfying, as she demonstrated Al wasn’t all talk when it came to blackmail. A third person already knew, possibly several sharp-eared animals creeping up behind too. If Leo didn’t put the tightest lid on it right then he could kiss his entire career goodbye. All he had to do was kiss the hyperdiamond ring instead.

“You’re a wealthy man Mr. Grand… you could’ve gotten that stuff anywhere,” he tried weakly.

“And when I tell the chief to open up his threat detection kit and check the logs against how much aqua remains? You could alter the logs, but I know a lot of fine animals right here in the clinic with noses that can identify the slightest trace of anything that might remove ink. Do you want to put that to the test? Or would you rather submit to my extremely reasonable demands that would allow you to mostly continue on as you were, just somewhere well away from me most of the time?”

“Such as?” Leo whimpered.

“For now, barely anything! Don’t arrest me. You couldn’t find me. I’m actually headed off to do your job right now, and one way or another it’ll be settled in a few hours. I suppose you did help, if that puts the milk of magnesia in your tummy, seeing as I’ve got big plans for my new knack.”

“And I need a few minutes to tell him why none of them will work,” Darling added. “You should go now detective. You’re ruffling our feathers.” An actual feather crested over Caliber’s head and drifted down in front of his eyes; he slowly turned to see many animals had closed in to watch, to start growling and hissing at the right moment, right when he saw them. At the forefront was Carmelo Duff, teeth present, accounted for, and bared, wrapped in the black licorice of his snarling inner lip.

“I’ll see myself out,” the policeman said, shuffling forward until the animals made clear they weren’t yet budging, not even the budgie circling his head that had intentionally dropped the feather. Darling would have to speak to her about the alarming development of her intimidation talent, the sort of thing that could get a small bird in big trouble.

“No, they’ll see you out,” Darling corrected. Only then did her patients shift and open a bubble large enough for a human to inch into. An awkward minute passed as the detective was escorted down the stairs and the animals went back to their guard duty, all except Carmelo, the hound inviting himself in and sitting resolutely at Al’s side, awaiting a respectful head pat, promptly delivered via the unmarred arm.

“I didn’t get a chance to thank you for your vigilance,” the fabricator told him. “I still don’t know who you saw in the stairway, but I’m looking into it.” The dog cocked his head; Al knew enough dog speech, mostly through Duff, to catch his meaning. He assumed he’d correctly identified the figure as Professor Confabulo himself. “It might have been that Ohmaha Jolts bot. He wore an antennae for work that looks a lot like Confabulo’s crown, and seeing that he’s dead now it makes his involvement more likely.”

“Before you run off half-cocked and half-armed,” Darling interrupted, “you need a scolding about aqua-knack. I’d call it a lesson if I thought anything less than a scolding would get through to you. I hope you’re not operating under the delusion that it’s going to save this from scarring. Once it does, it’ll be difficult to light it on fire, and you won’t need an oven mitt on that hand, but that’s it.”

“I’ve already been shocked too,” he both reminded and bragged. “What’s the ceiling on the resistance I can have? Could I jump into a volcano if I doggy paddle in a hot spring first?” Darling looked straight at Carmelo when she spoke.

“This is the man you look up to? You hear him, yes? He’d high dive into a black hole if I didn’t stop him.”

“Duff’s an independent dog!” Al defended, petting him again. “If he’s looking up it’s only because I’m taller.”

“He wants to be your dog Al,” she said, taking the wind from the fabricator’s sails. “He’s tired of living here, but he doesn’t want to get his own place. I’ve been keeping him too chicken to ask you, for his own good. Eventually he’ll see the real chickens around here and wise up. Better you reject the idea now.” The dog whined and looked away; she had spoiled the surprise.

“My dog?” he repeated. “Isn’t that title a touch undignified for a citizen of the United States of America?”

“You still don’t know the first thing about smart dogs,” Darling chided. “For a dog it’s the most dignified. Don’t go asking a coyote, or a wolf, and definitely not a wolverine, but ask a dog to be your roommate and you’ll be attached at the hip, a real problem when they run off after autos.” Now it was Al’s turn to look at the expectant dog.

“I’m flattered Duff, really. You want to be my roommate? I’m gone a lot of the time.” A woof died in the dog’s throat, and Al wondered again if he was getting the hang of animal speech, because he somehow knew Duff was saying his work kept him quite busy as well. They wouldn’t be in each other’s way much. “And uhh… there could always be a woman showing up; she might crowd the place.”

“You’re not seeing anyone,” Darling prodded.

“No, I’m hearing someone,” Al barked in his own defense. “She’s an operator. I haven’t asked her out yet, but I’m going to, once everybody knows I don’t break dusties and toss them in the dumpster.”

“An operator hmm? You know if she works for Radiator Rotio they pay her to say those things. It’ll cost a lot more to take her out on the town.”

“Miss Victoria Champion is not a pair of lips making a mic hot, thank you very much,” Al defended despite absolutely no proof in his pocket. “She’s not out to get me; I know that much. I had to reach out and get her. Those are the people you can trust. They’re not like th- yowch!” Dr. Cheekteeth had taken the opportunity to douse a cloth in the rubbing alcohol and apply it to one county of his statewide burn. The nation reacted violently.

Carmelo barked to protest her treatment of his personal hero, and was promptly instructed to can it, solder it, and toss it in the harbor. Now that aqua exposure had made him a single threat, Al was no longer at risk of ever becoming a Lightheaded, but the white blur taking over his vision alongside the alcohol’s sting argued otherwise. Ointments blended and applied proceeded from there, followed by careful expert bandaging that took long enough for man and dog to converse once more.

“You want to know if you can help me with this frame-up?” the fabricator asked, hopefully rephrasing the sentiment in the rescue hound’s concerned stare. The animal nodded gruffly. “It could be dangerous…” He trailed off, knowing the danger was from the Dustrious, and no vet of the Wilderness War would turn down even the most harrowing confrontation that was the slightest echo of their founding event. “But…”

“Don’t,” Darling warned him, making clear with a slight wrist squeeze that the work of the last few minutes could be easily undone.

“What? If he wants to help it’s his choice! Your patients are going to get busted up on their own with or without me. Or have you figured out how to get your gulls to stop swallowing bottle caps?” She vented frustration out the nose, eyes descending back to the bandaging. Al addressed Duff. “Now that I think on it, there’s a radio-isotope I use in H-diamond manufacture. If anybody else ever figures it out, you’ll still know mine by that signature. It’s harmless, but I’m hoping it has a scent. If you put your sniffer on the Seen Elephant, could you try and sleuth out a heading on the pinched ones?” Another nod.

“Now you’ve done it,” Darling muttered as she finished up. Carmelo loped to the open door and began barking for all the clinic to hear, an animal din quickly building up from the floor below. Not quite what he intended, Al stood and rubbed his hair through his cap. He wouldn’t be keeping a low profile with half the Zoo in tow.

“What’s he yipping?”

“That you’re in desperate need,” the vet vet translated, “and only they can help the man who put the Dustrious on the backpedal. It’s time to rally, fall in behind the hyperdiamond wizard, follow him to glory and probable death on the battlefield of slobber, rust, venom, and quartz.”

“He barked five times… maximum.”

“One bark does not equal one word Aloysius, more like one order with ten undergirding assumptions. Don’t take the bandage off, even if you get killed. Hurry up and get out before I have to put up a vacancy sign.” Grandstand thanked her and headed toward his impromptu battalion. “You’ll thank me with your biggest donation yet.”

Back down in the lobby, the veterans made way for Al to reclaim his popgun, clearly expecting some sort of speech before departure. He cleared his throat. Carmelo whined in accommodation, indicating he would translate as necessary.

“Look,” he began, “I appreciate anyone willing to come along, and it’s help I’ll accept, but I don’t want anybody dying on my account. And this is all on my account. I don’t know why it’s happening, but I got a feeling that somewhere in it some of the responsibility is genuinely mine. You don’t owe me a thing, and that goes for the middle of a fight too. Turn tail whenever you want; you’ll get no grief from me.

I’m not looking to hurt anyone either, bots included. This here elephant gun is for defensive purposes only. I ask that you not attack anything or anyone that doesn’t attack first. I think we’re heading to the theater district. We might not be going anywhere if Mr. Duff ‘s nose says different. So…”

Al lowered the Seen Elephant for the dog to perform his olfactory investigation. Experience was plain in his precise technique, wet nose never smudging the orange-gold perfection. Twice he turned away to eject stale breaths like shotgun shells. Something stuck and Carmelo began to pull along an invisible trail snout first. The other veterans cleared a path to the human door, pulled open by two goats who hooked the handles with their horns. Duff exited onto the sidewalk, silently sniffed, then snapped to position with one paw raised, aimed squarely toward the most entertaining part of town.

“Looks like we’ve got a heading,” Al declared, pushing himself forward, spine askitter with uncertainty now that lives other than his own hung in the balance. “Let’s complete the Safari Collection!” There was a collective bray of determination.

Duff led the way, Al right behind, surrounded by countless bodyguards with an average mass amongst them equivalent to the birthday cake of the least-liked coworker. The journey wasn’t particularly far on foot, a notion undercut by the density of citizen-animals within Iron Baltimore. Every street swelled his ranks as he picked up stragglers living the vermin life: rats, pigeons, crows, and mice that could match the cunning thuggery of rats in a pinch. One addition he was well acquainted with, and had to speak to as he slithered up alongside the fabricator.

“Neptune!? Where did you come from?” The squid’s true size was more disturbing now that he wasn’t half hidden behind his counter, wilted arrowhead mantle standing several inches above Al’s scalp. It twisted Al’s way as Neptune wrote his explanation in organic pigment.

“I’ve heard the scuttlebutt. Nobody eludes the iron boot like slippery Neptune Moneyhearts. Besides, you stole my lunch crowd.” To further his point and make clear he wouldn’t do all that much eluding, the squid flashed a heavy cleaver held in a roll of tentacle, its diamond finish demonstrated by the triangular glints of catching light. A well-aimed strike with that could easily split a Dustrious from their arm, and not just on the chassis.

His presence, though tinged with the same slight sadism with which the animal served Al other questionably-fresh animals, was something of a relief, as Neptune was the best animal fighter the fabricator could name in every respect, from size and experience to versatility and tenacity. If any of the other veterans needed quick protection Neptune could encapsulate them in safekeeping arms and still have two left over to swing his knife.

A few more crossings put them on the yellow brick road of Fool’s Gold Avenue. Its sidewalk veneer was pure pyrite, lustrously yellow-bronze, a hell of a lot cheaper than actual gold and still pretty effective at referencing the magic of The Wizard of Oz, priming theatergoers for their night out and occasionally steep ticket prices.

The film adaptation of Iron Baltimore’s most beloved book, outside the works of Edgar Allen Poe, had come out in 1931 and swept the nation, the first and still only motion picture to use a patented layered color-card projector to create the illusion of multiple hues onscreen. Currently there was a court battle over the general availability of the technology, a hushed argument compared to the praise heaped on one image in particular, the path to the ultimate metropolis, the shining yellow brick road.

Its recreation in the theater district was mopped nightly and swept in the morning to keep it as iconic as possible. Whoever those Dustrious were, they would be working double duty that evening when they discovered the dander all along it glued in place by Neptune’s slimy trail.

Had Aloysius paid close attention to his surroundings he would’ve noted many pairs of eyes watching from every window and alley, most lit electric, many receding into the shadows as soon as they had an idea what they were looking at. Instead he was transfixed once again by his own creations, by something new that seemed to radiate off the Seen Elephant like heat off a stove.

As he walked he held his palm near it, turned his hand over and back, felt it swim in the invisible stuff he might call heat if he was in an unimaginative mood. Experimentally he let the hand drift up, fingers outstretched, palm passing over the street and surrounding buildings. Most of the sensation came from the hyperdiamond right under his nose, but there was another detectable source, in front of him, strongest when his palm lined up with Carmelo Duff’s sniffing snoot.

The rush of realization had him salivating; he swallowed it down to keep his composure amongst his recruits. Aqua-knack had gifted him yet another power, really just a nuance of its primary effect. Like Duff, Al could now detect the radioactive aura of his hyperdiamonds, not through smell, but through the effect of repeated exposure to his very being.

Technically, even small doses of radiation were detrimental, causing damage to one’s cells, unlikely as minor sources might be to cause serious long term problems. Still, the aqua-knack in his system didn’t take those effects lightly, going to work giving him greater resistance to his achievements’ errant particles.

A similar sensation was undoubtedly present in Battery Park, and when he burned his arm, both times an undercurrent escaping detection in a sea of pain. This time there was no pain clouding it, allowing him to wave his hands, or even his face, around to find the direction of the radiation’s source. Assuming he survived the day, what a tool it would be! Should anyone steal his diamonds again they would need to immediately escape to at least another city to avoid Aloysius Grandstand chasing them down and reclaiming his hard-earned ward.

For now he put his hands back on his gun and let Duff blaze the trail, tail wagging like a battle flag. Should they wind up rooming together, the dog could stand guard some of the time he wasn’t in, and also follow the invisible trail of any thieves. The logistics of new arrangements kept his mind rambling so much that it took the herd’s total stop for the fabricator to realize they’d arrived and were now stood under the marquee Callory had told him about. The clipped top of the ellipsis was there, so Madam Fritzi Eclectric, last of Iron Baltimore’s triangular figurehead, was in, and Al was itching for his audition.

He didn’t know if another speech was necessary before trying to squeeze his petting zoo through the doubled doors, a conundrum circumvented by the marquee’s apparent objection to their presence. Its slats rattled on one side violently, then separated. The yellowed strips fell to the ground and landed upright, attached as they were to the body of a Dustrious, like plate armor. Some of the letters remained down one of the arms, so Al named this surprise doorman Tonite Only.

“You’ll not have her, hyperdevil,” the bot droned intensely. His torso was coated in cobwebs and leaked pigeon droppings, suggesting he’d been stashed away inside that sign for ages. A first fence against intrusion when Eclectric was in? Evidently not, judging by the behavior of the other half of the sign.

It swore loudly, then rattled like its other half and exploded out into daylight with a less coordinated landing and a more ferocious posture. According to her leg, she was named Balcony Seats.

“You dolt of a bolt! We’re not supposed to break cover!” she hissed, featuring actual steam from the vent of her mouth, source unknown, seeing as the Dustrious didn’t generate any heat natively and tried to foster a dry interior if they weren’t the flavor of insane that put Aquamaurine in the portable oyster farm business. Balcony ripped off an exclamation point and chucked it at Tonite, hitting him on the head. The first response was a falling question mark.

“He’s gonna pop the madam!” Tonite explained. “We break cover and him for that, Guise or no Guise.” Al’s brain flinched. Something about that word. A memory came in like a swerving steamroller. That first dusty that had attacked him at Neptune’s had made a departing threat, said that guys were always watching. Only ‘guys’ might have been a different word, he thought, noting that the paired idiots in the sign had been in disguise as an ordinary object. Was Guise a bot gang? An anti-fan club blowing on Aloysius Grandstand, trying to cool his hot hyperdiamond career?

Whoever they were, they weren’t fully in accord, so he took advantage, slipping between their argument and letting himself into the building. Slippery Neptune was right behind, holding the door open for Carmelo, two owls, three goats, and a flamingo. The flash of pink embarrassed and alarmed the marquee duo, who got their heads on straight and barred the doors with one arm each through the handles.

From there they fended off the rest of Al’s entourage in a standoff of irritated pecking and hurled lettering. Neptune displayed a question indicating he’d made the same connection to the incident at his eatery, Al waving it away and telling him to stay focused on the task at hand. They could hear music, like a whole orchestra stuffed into a spinach can. Together man and animals followed it through the empty lobby, down bright blue carpeted steps and right out onto a balcony overlooking a distant sunken stage.

The Dustrious tended to build down rather than up, easier to get permits for since it didn’t mar the Ice Fields skyline. Al had never seen a show there and never expected the venue to be so large or lengthy. That balcony was too far for the human eye and ear, but Dustrious often had built-in binoculars and keener auditory reception via the vibration of their internal quartz structure.

Squinting his mightiest squint, Al could barely make out two figures on stage, one serenading the other with ten instruments out of one attached speaker: a Dustrious one man band. That was one of the professions completely annihilated among the human labor force, as holding three drums and blowing on a kazoo wasn’t as impressive as the tips of crystal tendrils modulating their resonance until they sounded identical to a euphonium or harpsichord.

That other blur was probably Eclectric; it looked statuesque and colorful enough. Confirmation would have to wait until those other blurs were dealt with first: the ones that had been filling the first two rows and stood simultaneously at the first sound that wasn’t part of the solitary string section.

If only they had stayed blurry, Al thought as they approached, hurdling seat after seat mechanically, automated Olympians. Every jump brought more detail. Before he was ready he could count their rivets. These were unmistakably models ideal for the combat role. Dustrious came in all shapes and sizes, for all purposes and then some, often heavily modifying their own chassis or replacing them outright. It was easy to forget in the I.B. More melting pot that they initially came off the hidden moving assembly lines of Professor Confabulo in large identical batches.

These wore their original shapes as uniforms, modified only with stripes of paint that indicated skills they’d gained through experience rather than swapping out parts. Green stripes meant they had survived combat in some form without so much as a scratch. Gold meant they were for hire and provided high quality service. Vermilion was violence against the men with blood to spill.

“Let them come to us,” Al warned his animal comrades, the birds among them already understanding the strong advantage of the balcony high ground. It was a jump of fifteen feet at least, not a problem for bots with coiling tendrils inside their legs turning into springs. The fabricator readied his long popgun, steadied the Seen Elephant’s tusks on the spot dead in front of him, finger on the trigger. A jab of forward-thinking fear shifted his aim lower, toward where the body would be, less likely to contain the brain.

The line of bodyguards disappeared under the balcony for but a second. Then came the sound of all their crystal springs firing, golden beads colliding with their shells like pistons punching through gongs and hitting a glacier on the other side. They reappeared at the balcony’s edge at the apex of their jumps, grabbing at it.

Popk! The Seen Elephant’s trumpet was its whistle through the air, wind rushing in its long twin nostrils, hollowed so deep in the trunk’s curve that the most devoted hyperdiamond fans didn’t know how far the cavity went. The Dustrious leaping up to Al knew exactly how far: ninety percent through his own hollow. The hyperdiamond shattered the point beneath the brain where the tendrils were bundled, taking out all four limbs at once and leaving him paralyzed. Only gravity moved him, all the way back to the floor in a glittering heap like a shredded tin of flamboyant sardines.

The goats had to wait for their target to get feet on the ground before they could charge in, one getting stopped by steel hands around their horns while another went in from the side and busted up the leg joints, bringing them down. A few more headbutts collapsed enough of the shell that it couldn’t be used well.

Try as they might, their own thick skulls wouldn’t get through a Dustrious brain, an advantage just then for the fabricator, who hoped murder wasn’t going to get pinned on anyone after that day, especially himself. Ironically, his strongest ally was also the biggest liability, as Neptune Moneyhearts had the versatility and know-how to operate a popgun or fully dispatch a dusty in a more creative manner.

Al had to check across one shoulder as he tripped the lever that reeled the Seen Elephant back into the barrel for his second shot, to make sure the squid wasn’t helping too violently. His vigilance was just in time to watch the cephalopod launch himself at a Dustrious still at the summit of their jump, tentacles latching wetly and finding suction purchase all across their back. Neptune’s pliable body didn’t fear a measly fall like that, so he happily rode his newly acquired vehicle down to the cheap seats, where he proceeded to disarticulate it with limb and cleaver alike.

“Peanut gallery, attack!” Al shouted, rather than give the remaining bots time to adjust. Now it was his turn to vault as his hyperdiamond resealed the barrel and pressurized, over the balcony and down to his landing cushion named Neptune. The squid caught him with three tentacles and safely neutralized his momentum. They were quickly joined by the owls and flamingo hovering down on open wings while the goats and Duff took the long way: spiral stairs on each side of the upper level.

Risking a glance at their ultimate goal, Al wondered why Eclectric wasn’t fleeing if she’d already decided to sic her guard on his cohort. It should’ve been negotiation or conflict, not both. Fattening his lip might’ve made him worse in the diplomacy stage, but there wasn’t time to think much else about it as the next wave of bots closed in.

Al pumped his arms, swinging the gun back and forth as he ran for the aisle and the clearer shot it granted. Having witnessed his first elephantine assault, the dusty nearest him instead chose to rip the armrest off one of the seats and hurl it as a javelin rather then get closer, hoping to force him to waste one of his extremely limited pool of pops on a projectile.

The fabricator was going to try a dodge that would’ve failed, only bailed out by one of the owls finding its niche in general disadvantage. She swooped in and wrapped her talons around the item mid-flight, first matching its speed and trajectory before pulling it off course and releasing it.

Her skill was enough of a distraction for the thrower that Al went for his second shot anyway, banking on the bot having not seen from down below exactly how far his H-diamond leash went, almost a yard further than the average. A direct hit to the body. Once again the Seen Elephant trampled its target, collapsing them between the seats and out of the fight for good, crystalline starfish to slither away moments later, retreating to the nearest shadow.

The only problem was that Al now had to manually wind the popgun to get his next round, and that would take a good twenty to thirty uninterrupted seconds that weren’t going to be afforded by the remaining Dustrious.

Emboldened, they closed ranks faster, just as the goats were coming in from the sides, bleating like the bugles of hell to declare a cavalry charge that was already in progress. Not to be outdone in the noise department, pretty much his only department, the flamingo hopped up on a seat and picked a dusty to harass, blocking their view with flapping pink wings and slapping webbed feet, all while honking and squawking discordantly.

Neptune was butchering another. Carmelo had come in behind the goats, directing them with a sheepdog’s barking, helping them identify the best targets to launch their horns at when leaping over the seats. Together they handled all but one guard, and that one was left to Al, his hand frozen on the crank, Seen Elephant still fully extended as if a fishing rod had exploded during its first cast.

There it sat, teetering on the back of a seat, completely up for grabs. Or so Al’s remaining opponent thought as they made a committed dive in its direction, hoping to claim a prize for their employer before Al’s life. Their plated fingers were inches from it, already closing, when the fabricator finally pulled the ace from his sleeve, bearing the fine print product of China.

His leg shot up, found the hanging cord of the gun, and came back down in a practiced stomp, yanking the Seen Elephant in a whipping arc back toward its creator, dealing a glancing denting blow to the diving dusty’s brow in the process. Al twirled in such a way that it looked like he was about to bind himself in the cord, but it was actually winding around his forearm. The gun fell away, the hidden switch that loosed the base of the cord already flipped.

Now he wielded a weapon even more primitive in its essence, yet far more refined in the skill set necessary for its operation. It could be called a rope dart, or a variation on the meteor hammer, Chinese implements originally, none you’d find in any museum bearing a head like the Seen Elephant, an object granting far more power in actual combat, elevating a style typically better suited to performance and intimidation to the front line balconies of Iron Baltimore.

It was a Chinaman who had taught him, paid with a hyper that secured the rest of his financial existence, working with the fabricator for months not only on balance, force, and not smacking himself in the back of the skull, but also inventing new moves to best use the heavier heads Al had planned for the weapon. With the gun abandoned he now had an unlimited number of swings, as long as his stamina held, as long as he could make space intelligently.

To their credit, the Dustrious was undaunted, choosing their own intimidation display, a metalclad classic where they pretended to roll up sleeves that weren’t there, creating a shrieking roll of sparks thrown off to each side. Then they stalked forward, looking to rid Al of the space that now functioned as his ammunition.

Backing up would put him in the seats, so Al held his ground, swung the blazing bright diamond overhead in a circle. He shuffled forward, looking for the right distance to strike. It would pass in a split second, and his rope dart arts had to be in progress before that moment came. Inertia and angle were the names of the game with his weaponized pendulum. He could strike opposite where he was looking, as long as he calculated the cord’s bite on his palms and wrists correctly.

He brought the diamond down, vanished it behind his back to lure the dusty into a pounce. It worked. The Seen Elephant reappeared over Al’s shoulder, pouncing itself like a springing cat, aimed on a delay to hit the approaching shoulder and disable that arm. But almost to a man, the Dustrious weren’t slouches. Many chassis didn’t allow that posture in the first place. This one still managed to anticipate the impact, blocking with their forearm as well as crouching to neutralize some of the force and prevent it from ripping through their armor. A dent was the only damage.

The diamond had created its own bed, and was resting in it long enough that the bot tried to grab it. Again Al wrenched it back; it couldn’t be caught at that speed without injuring himself. Instead the momentum had to be used, swung, redirected and purged, all while his footwork kept him moving toward the stage, prevented his opponent from finding a way to anchor him. Every implement had its weakness, and with the diamond dart it was miscalculations. Just one and he wouldn’t have the space or time to get it back to bludgeoning piercing speed.

Only now, halfway across the chamber, did Al recognize how foolish the version of his plan that had to resort to violence was. If Cheekteeth’s clientele hadn’t volunteered to back him up he would’ve been going in solo with two pops and a dream. He bit his cheek in self-reprimand, thinking he’d fallen victim to the overconfidence of aqua-knack once again. And if he bit that cheek too hard, it would be ready for the next chomp to come from a bear. Added resilience seemed to also make him more resilient against common sense.

As it stood, the animals had gifted him just one bot to battle, Duff-commanded goats already cleaning up most of the others, owls neutralizing as many tossed objects as they could, also avoiding the missiles flung their way. The elongated arena of the largest aisle between the seats wasn’t the best shape to practice in, but it was realistic. Practice, Al thought, his mind tripping on the word. That’s what this was, seeing as it was technically the first time he’d deployed this technique against anyone actually meaning him harm. The dummies had only had it coming in the technical sense.

His approaching the stage did not go unnoticed, with the dented Dustrious picking up speed to keep him from getting there, ready to take many more dents in the process of serving the remaining corner of the Steel Triangle. They already knew how to take blows from the hyperdiamond, so Al switched it up, building his reclaiming tug into his next maneuver. He hit them lighter, on the side, denting less but staying more mobile. It kept them from getting their hands on his precious gem. And in the process they collected dents, sounds of impact ringing out as if Al shot lined-up cans with a BB gun.

Eventually one would get through and his foe would be far more vulnerable. It might have been a winning strategy if Al hadn’t foolishly assumed the bot had succeeded in slowing him down. The fabricator’s back hit the risen stage. The swinging diamond skittered across its floor, losing coordination and purpose. The bot noticed and lunged.

So did Carmelo Duff, to the rescue. The hound came in from behind, both outstretched paws crashing into the dusty’s back, ruining its attack. Al recoiled into a ball and slipped off to the side, Seen Elephant following as pathetically as a can on a string tailing a forgetful child. Carmelo’s added speed rammed the Dustrious into the lip of the stage, neck striking it, shearing head from shoulders. The object rolled to Madam Fritzi Eclectric, who stepped on it gently to stop its further flight.

“I’d appreciate you calling off your dog, and the rest of those animals,” she requested sternly enough for it to sound like an order, voice the trill of an artificial peacock singing itself a laudatory lullaby. Aloysius didn’t get a good look at her until he’d risen back to his feet and secured the hyperdiamond around his arm so that it hung a few inches below his tightened fist.

She was tall, having a full foot on the fabricator more effortlessly than she had it on her employee’s severed head. High heels were built into the chassis, lifting her further. She wore a flowing sequined gown in colors not unlike a peacock, but it hardly looked like it was there next to the iridescence of her blue metal exterior, an alloy or paint technique Al didn’t recognize. Swirling floral embellishments gave her grand shoulders like the molding atop pillars. A headdress, something akin to a thin silken turban, bearing a tucked fan of feathers, sat atop a neon green visor combining her eyes into one. A cast frown like closing curtains hid all but the thinnest strip of her speech grate.

“I just came here to have a chat,” Al said, forgetting to shore up his voice after the exertion. He sounded like a shut-in terrified of and frustrated in a breadline. “You’re the one who started fighting.” He hoisted himself onstage and rolled to hide the difficulty of it. On his feet, he held out a hand toward the audience to still his associates. Carmelo sat and licked his lips. Neptune found a front row seat and crossed several pairs of arms, silhouettes of applause animating across his mantle.

“And what was I to expect when I heard reports of your approach with the entire Zoo in tow, hyperdiamond popgun at the ready?” Al recalled all the electric eyes in the alleys watching them march the yellow brick road, many of whom probably had rotios welded inside their helmet-heads.

“Look, it’s been a rough week,” he said as olive branch, “for both of us. I came as prepared as you were ten minutes ago. And I know what you’ve been hearing, that I murdered your colleagues.” Finally he got his real voice back, the one that spoke only of artistic integrity, the one that hated simpering and lies. “It’s all bunk! I make the diamonds that can, but I have never killed anyone, not yet, and I’d like to keep it that way.

I came here in the hopes you might be able to point me in the direction of the real killer, who just might be the same party framing me, breaking into my apartment and leaving behind witchmelt in a skimpy dress, of all things.” The final phrase gave the madam pause. It was impossible to tell through her visor if she was scanning the entire party or staring directly into Aloysius’s soul.

“I can say with complete confidence that I know you did not murder my associates, Mr. Jolts and Mr. Headstrong.”

“Fantastic…” Al said, “but how are you so sure?” She clapped her hands, a powerful clank that silenced the one-bot-band nearby and got the curtains behind her to rise, revealing the backstage area, where stood two more Dustrious with perfect poise, arms folded behind their backs. Each was as fancy and distinct as the madam; Al could’ve identified them by garb alone even if he hadn’t seen their photos in the papers.

To the left was a brushed brass dynamo barely able to keep still, wearing a striped cinnamon suit, the bow tie punched metal with a wavy edge, the shirt unbuttoned exactly low enough to seduce an engineer without scandalizing any of the reporters at the Stylus. He wore the borrowed iconography of Professor Confabulo on his head, rigid moth antennae, and between them scampered bolts of white static. Ohmaha Jolts.

On his right was a Dustrious drowning in the fine ostrich leather of his pilot’s jacket, face stonewalled by an attached welder’s mask emitting electric orange through the eye slot. Steam spurted from his joints at precise intervals, hissing like lattes sprayed into mugs across the room. Light-up signaling batons for directing blimps and doggybacks were holstered on his belt, inside his jacket, and on both ankles above his black boots, also bearing strings of tiny white lights along the soles’ edges. Edwind Headstrong.

“Neither of you look particularly murdered!” Al honked so authentically that the flamingo looked around for a potential mate.

“Heaven forbid,” Headstrong said.

“You must be shocked,” Jolts added. They strolled over to Eclectric and struck poses beside the tallest piece of set dressing that also ran the place. Al’s exasperation curdled. Aqua-knack wasn’t needed to smell another setup. This whole thing was staged alright, doubly so.

“The downside of a Dustrious costume department is the sheer weight of all that plating,” Eclectric complained. “In its favor is how convincing a complete chassis reproduction or swap is. It has allowed me to furnish many a citizen of our fine sub-city with the perfect body doubles, method actors in identical skins.”

Al looked around at the ceiling, half-expecting another audience to appear from the curtain folds or the rafters. Maybe they were hiding in the sandbags, waiting for the best moment to burst out. All he saw was one of the owls, offering to cut a rope and drop a bag on the madam if he gave so much as a wink for a signal. Carmelo leapt up, joining him on stage and sitting by his side, growling in solidarity. The fabricator gave him a pat, calming them both.

“Those two had body doubles,” Al said, forked fingers flicking between the two dapper dusties at her side. “Like heads of state.”

“Isn’t that what we are?” Edwind retorted.

“The necessity was amply demonstrated,” Jolts reminded. Two were still dead, just not these two. Or none at all, Al thought, eyes narrowing. That costume department could hide all sorts of goodies, like the brain shards of Dustrious long dead, those never documented, never mourned, nothing more than ruined inventory on the human side of the records. Two bodies good enough to fool the police could’ve been cooked up easy. If there were individual patterns in their quartz striations, the law never bothered to learn them.

“Then why didn’t you come forward?” Al asked. “Why let me take the heat?”

“A low flame wasn’t going to cook your goose,” the madam said bitterly, “not with you laying those orange-gold eggs. You were released the first time, and not arrested the second. Any inconvenience on your end seemed well worth it to us, as the true culprit had not yet been located, and it was best they think they had succeeded in destroying us, lest they try again.”

“Well what changed!?” the fabricator shouted, throwing up his hands, swinging the Seen Elephant enough to make the three Dustrious flinch. There was fear, sure, but Al thought he read something else in these ambitious elites. If they could get their hands on enough hyperdiamond to armor their interiors they might not need anything so elaborate as a body double.

“Our own investigation has uncovered the killer,” Jolts said. Al stared hot pokers at the bot. Him, or his double, or at least those rabbit ears, had been in his building, as reported by Duff, carrying the body that had been melted to his chair. It wasn’t much of an investigation if Jolts just had to step forward and raise his red hand.

“Who!?” Al demanded. Without delay the entire Steel Triangle pointed, converging on stage once more, on the one man band who had been so silent since Al’s interruption that he had forgotten they weren’t a prop. In response the Dustrious exited the drumming apparatus they’d been sitting in, as percussion was the weakest part of their musical mimicry.

Presenting themselves to Aloysius for inspection, no part of them eased his frustrations or cleared matters up. She, judging by the gold filament eyelashes decoratively welded on, appeared to be nothing more than a scrawny actuarial labor unit, paint faded, patina drab, not a scrap of actual clothing. Her posture was blank. Were she human she might’ve been cleaning out an ear with a fingertip.

“You killed the body doubles?” Al asked with such thick skepticism that he practically heard the question plop on the floorboards.

“Yes. It was me,” she said flatly.

“What’s your name?”

“Patsy.” Al hiccuped a yelp and yelped a hiccup.

“Your actual name is… Patsy? What’s your full name? Patsy Fallguy?

“Patsy Pinne-Donne.” Al made another sound, now too high in register to be described, though it did make Carmelo wince.

“I suppose you’re the mastermind who also stole half my Safari Collection from a heavily-guarded gallery and a cathedral with transparent walls?”

“Yes. It was me.” The owls screeched alongside the challenging gurgle of the goats. Neptune put up one word as large as he could, big enough to serve as a cue card. Proof? Al merely pointed at the squid and shook his whole arm. It was starting to feel like each word risked his jaw hitting the floor and chattering away to parts more sane.

Patsy’s head twisted 160 degrees to look at the madam, who encouraged her with the slightest nod. The confessing murderer and thief walked back to her drum and used a finger to remove a screw atop it, then two more at the sides. The skin peeled away enough for her to reach inside and extract two hefty objects, each near in size and weight to the Seen Elephant. She held them up for Al to inspect, which he didn’t need to do closely.

No body doubles for the gems could ever fool their creator. And if they could his new sense of their radioactive signature would unmask them. The sensation was there, weaker than that of the elephant’s only because it was several feet closer. Al didn’t feel he could carry all three and still look like he was in control of the situation, so he put his trust in Moneyhearts, cocking his head as informatively as he could.

The cook got the message and slithered up onto the stage, snatching both the Seen Monkey and the Seen Viper from Patsy before squirreling them away under the furling flaps of his mantle. Al would have to get them back as soon as they were clear of the theater, since the squid’s slippery character would surely recognize how many tons of tuna each of them could buy, especially if he got it rat-fresh instead of human-fresh.

“You’re welcome,” Madam Eclectric said.

The supposed killer dropped her arms and stood there, awaiting instruction, unsure who it might come from next. Al stood there too, steaming. The Dustrious weren’t giving him anything else. He’d have to pry it out. Obviously a big jagged piece of the puzzle was missing. Patsy was just that, the Steel Triangle knew why, and most concerning of all, they didn’t care if Al believed any of this charade.

“And what was your motive in all this?” he asked Miss Pinne-Donne. Her memorization skills kicked in.

“I wanted to usurp their positions of power,” she said, pointing over her shoulder at the heads of I.B. industry. “And I stole your hyperdiamonds to frame you. Two birds, one stone.” There was more emotion caked at the bottom of stale coffee cans.

“Then tell me why you donned Confabulo’s antennae, silently broke into my apartment, dropped off a dead body, and doused it in ozjoe.” Patsy’s mind short-circuited. 160 degrees. Pleading. That was the only non-answer Al needed to hear. Neither she nor her handlers behind her knew anything about the slimy dress or the Lightheaded window watcher.

“Mr. Grandstand, that’s quite enough,” Eclectric said, to buzzers of consent from her flanking friends. “Once we uncovered Miss Pinne-Donne’s crimes we convinced her to give it up, turn herself in, and return the stolen diamonds, dutiful community leaders as we are. As soon as you depart she will be escorted to the police station.

It is only as a courtesy that we allow you to know and see all this before the Stylus and the rotio newscasters. Your name has been cleared, at least of this affair. Take your motley assortment and then your leave.”

Al bit his lip. There weren’t going to be any consequences aside from the ones he’d already suffered. The state had so little regard for the Dustrious that it actually created a freight train loophole for Patsy. No charges could be brought against her personally, because she wasn’t personally, instead mechanically.

Any charge would be along the lines of destruction of property instead of murder, receiving of stolen property rather than theft, and they would land on a representative of a large corporation or utility, whoever had technical legal ownership of Patsy. That, if it stuck at all, would be answered with a fine and forgotten so thoroughly that she could be back on the street in weeks. That would explain her nonchalance, and the ease of convincing her to take the fall, no matter her actual level of involvement.

The fabricator guessed she was a nobody, someone willing to do a favor for these Dustrious elite out of profit or respect, both layers of their society veiling the actual plotter behind everything. And there was nothing he could do about it, not now, not there. Angry, pouting in both lips, Al recognized it was technically best to take his toys and go home.

Not that he’d get to keep them. He’d sold the Viper; even the receipt for it was a valuable collectible in private proud hands. If he kept his possession of them to himself he could maybe get a few days of happiness from his near-complete Safari Collection, but once the story broke he’d have no choice but to give them back to their legal owners. The monkey would go back to the gallery circuit alongside the dragon for the duration of their loan agreement, the viper back to its fellow snakes at the U-COGG.

“You flirt with death,” he warned the Steel Triangle, whipping the Seen Elephant up into his hand, holding it as an idol to a war god rampaging ever closer, “and eventually he’ll pop the question. Let’s go fellas.”

Carmelo Duff ran a circle around Al, barking to rally the troops. The goats formed ranks around the human as the birds swooped back and forth, turning it into a military parade. Neptune took up the rear, scooping up Gladys as he passed by to see if he could easily load her up with the monkey or viper, as if Al would ever give him a chance to shoot them. As soon as they were back at the entrance the goats barged through the doors, knocking over Balcony Seats and Tonite Only.

One look over their dingy shoulders at the invaders returning with all their members left the two Dustrious speechless, in part because they ripped off the last of their lettering and threw it at the nearest animals as distraction, so they could flee down the street and hook into an alley. To allay confusion, Duff made quite the speech that escaped the fatigued fabricator while whipping the veterans up into celebration. There were enough creatures there that could serve as steeds for Al to hitch a ride back to the Ice Palace.

Not wanting to face the ire of Darling until after a good night’s sleep, Al split from his friends outside the clinic, promising the dog they’d have at least one more discussion about their living situation. Moneyhearts was thanked and not compensated with either of the hyperdiamonds he asked to keep, or the popgun. Al promised him a new wok or whatever kitchen gadget he could dream up that wasn’t H-plated.

Sandy was at the door to greet him, full of questions. Al tipped her and told her to ask the donkey he’d ridden back instead. Then he briefly stopped existing for the most part, riding the resident elevator up like a lifting ray of heaven’s light, life less flashing before his eyes and more melting into them like soda syrup.

In his apartment, door locked, windows locked, curtains drawn, Al placed his three hyperdiamonds on their pedestals and basked in the glow of the Safari Collection, the most precious gems in all the world, perhaps in all the universe. And he made them. With two hands and a clever box. One day, maybe, the world would leave him to that and stop interjecting with their moral and economic concerns that were ash to the artist, not fit to be swept under any rug he’d woven.

“I saw you,” he whispered to his gorgeous rocks. “In the nothingness. And I pulled you out of it. And the friction set you ablaze. That’s the way you are now.” He lifted his burnt arm, felt the knack between his healing fingers, dancing in the webs of skin. “The way I am now.”

Thirty seconds later he was on bed, too tired to be in it, with plenty of daylight burning.

Continued in the Finale