"That's not an oyster mushroom." Alma looked up at me from her squat on the ground, staring at the mushrooms in my hand. I wasn't sure if she saw the mute, blank expression on my face.
She straightened up, examining them with a hungry focus, then bit her lip and said "Yeah, I don't know what that is. You'll want to ask Rosemary about that."
"Okay," I said, "but it's, like, the same shape as the ones over there."
"No, it's not," Alma replied, with a bite in her tone that made me heat up slightly. "Look, these are a little flatter, like stumps. Also, they're not growing over there in the woods." She pointed behind her, to the pathetic excuse for woods behind us. "They're growing out here in the lawn. In the mud. That's not where an oyster grows. I seriously doubt these are edible."
I rolled my eyes. "Well, goddamn it, Alma. You shouldn't have given the edible mushrooms to that old fart in the tracksuit."
Alma shrugged. "He was hungry."
"He was eating them raw. Edible or not, he's not hungry, he's crazy, and he'll probably be sick now."
Alma looked at me with a sad pout that made me want to punch her in her face. "You should've said something."
I glanced down the hill, trying to spot the old man. He was probably long gone by now. We had been treading along the edge of the woods next to the Terrabank complex, and the impromptu moat that had become the park's defining feature. The moat surrounded the park entirely by accident, as if the open air was a castle that had to be protected. But the putrid smell of this castrated yellow woods still offended most people, so we'd been more or less alone.
Alma had coaxed this foraging spot out of Rosemary after making me buy her several vodka sours. She'd tried to get Rose to come back to my place and make me watch them do it. Or something like that. Anyway, that would have been nice. At least something different than the usual weekend routine. But Rosemary was not interested in any of that — only mushrooms and vodka sours.
And then this stupid skinny old man, who seemed like he could barely stand upright, let alone go jogging with an L3 strapped on his back, had bounced over to us like a child to ask about the mushrooms she was plucking. He came up to her from behind, though, so he was obviously just trying to get a better look at Alma's ass. Probably the only thing he had the sanity left for — an animal urge to get a good look at women's butts. Probably had forgotten what mushrooms were.
Alma had given him our stash, being the sickeningly sweet girl that she was. So now we were empty-handed.
"I wish I knew what these actually were, though." I said, turning the blob of fungus over in my hand, looking at the white meat. "Do you know?"
Alma shrugged. "I only know what's edible."
"You shoulda given him some of these, then," I said, tossing the mushrooms to her feet. "He would've eaten them and gone home and then puked his guts out. Every last organ in his body."
"Don't say that," Alma said, her nose wrinkling. "That's disgusting and cruel."
"Well, I'm a disgusting and cruel person."
"No you're not," she said.
The thick fog that hung over the undome was a little lighter than usual, and the fuzzy shape of the sun was visible through the haze. I wondered why Alma liked coming here at all. The park itself was rather dull, just a plain squarish lawn with a slight hill in the middle — more of a lump, really — pockmarked by a few awkward groups of boulders, among copses of pathetic-looking trees. And the steep, continuous curve of the plexiglass dome that covered the city, keeping this haze out of the more populated area, was broken by gray support rigging and a number of billboards planted on the dome's edge.
There was one billboard that towered above the rest — an airbrushed woman with an inhuman smile, wide and joyless and with incredibly white teeth, her head and shoulders advertising DO MORE. BE MORE. FONISAL. It was designed with a complex holographic surface. At night, when the floodlights around its border flashed and spun, it was supposed to project shapes across the lawn of the undome, to the amusement of those that might still be there after dark. Presumably they would be tripping on Fonisal.
Alma skipped down the hill. She might've been on a low dose of the stuff herself. Personally I was sober as a rock, as I plodded behind her with hands in pockets.
Alma would go off for a bit, see that I wasn't catching up, and come jogging back to my spot. Then she would skip down again. This game continued until we were on a patch of level ground.
At some point, she had clambered onto a rock and looked down at me from her perch. "Do you think there's, like, a lot more people here than usual?"
I glanced towards the far end of the park, down by the main entrance. We had quite a bit of bothersome company. Clusters of eccentrically dressed kids laid out in isolated sections of lawn, drinking and smoking. Why did people consider this a good hangout spot? It was already enough of a drag for us to get here, and we lived only six blocks away. But in that six-block walk, two cars had nearly run us down in the same crosswalk, and Alma got more than a few lecherous stares from unsavory pedestrians. And all the while lugging our Apaks, of which Alma's was heavier.
But there was an even more surprising-looking crowd coming in through that main entrance, and through another entrance to its right on the opposite wall. They trickled in slowly, but seemed to move as a mob, and the longer we stared at them, the bigger the mob became. Bundled in dark coats and rain-jackets with out-of-place accessories — tall hats and scarves and thin gloves. Some of them were in wheelchairs. Couples clung tightly to one another, as if scared of the open sky overhead without the glass and steel protection of the city dome.
And there were more people, walking in clusters from the other end of the undome, along its edges. They seem dressed for cold and not for the muggy heat of the park, these long trenchcoats and gowns, black and brown and somewhat dirty. They looked like they'd just all emerged from basements and windowless apartments, and had never once been outside before.
A lot of their Apaks looked brand new, but poorly attached, or ill-fitting. "Those are big ones they're carrying," I observed. "Level 6 at least. If not 7."
I looked up at Alma and saw that her face was pale, her eyes wide open and her mouth shut tight. Her gaze was fixed at the influx of strangers gathering in one off-center area of the park. The procession was growing slowly.
Alma turned to me and said, "I think they're going to kill themselves."
At this I couldn't help but laugh. She could be morbid sometimes. Most times.
"What makes you say that?"
She shrugged, the image of her dark fantasies left her face. "I dunno. Just… think they're going to do something dangerous." Then her haunted expression returned, and she stared across the field of yellow grass and stones.
Melodramatic. "They're already a danger to society by leaving the house. Maybe they're trying to spread a sewer plague. Better turn up your Apak."
She raised her voice suddenly. "I'm serious! Don't fucking joke about this." She hopped down from the rock with a childlike clumsiness. "I've got a feeling."
"Well, they're definitely here to do something," I said. "They look like a fucking weirdo flash mob."
Alma pouted. "Maybe we should leave. Or… no. Actually—" She bit her lip. "Let's check 'em out. Let's get closer. I wanna see."
"What, are you trying to off yourself too?" I looked at her, radiating with that sweet stupid innocence. "You don't seem into that sort of thing."
"No! Shut up. I just… wanna see what's going on."
"Okay, but if you get blackpilled I'm not pulling you out of the kool-aid party."
"Whatever," she said, and resumed skipping down the hill. I grumpily followed at a jog, each step skidding into soft earth.
The darkly-dressed strangers milled about, taking in the unfamiliar environment. There must have been a hundred people. Some of them were adjusting the Apaks of the more naive members of their troupe who had installed them incorrectly or inefficiently. The Apaks pumped cleaned air into their nostrils through long transparent tubes, filtering out the pollutants that made the Undome uninhabitable for all but those with a death wish. They gingerly stepped over any grass, even the little weeds poking out of cracks in the flatstones, as if they were delicate or poisonous. They looked up at the sky and down at the ground, but never seemed to meet each other's eyes.
The freaks clung close to each other, as if being surrounded by open air and daylight on all sides would be too painful. And the daylight was growing. I was beginning to think that there would be a rare full sun today in the Undome.
Alma had gotten close to the edge of the crowd and was trying desperately to make eye contact with one of these weirdos, or at least chat them up. Not one of them would meet her bulging curious eyes. I arrived behind her, gasping for breath, and put a limp hand on her shoulder to pull her away. She turned briefly and shrugged my hand away when she saw me there, then returned to her attempt at first contact.
"Hi, what's your name? I'm Alma."
She reached out a hand to this pudgy androgyne with a dirty face, wildly unkempt black hair, and a wet mouth. Unlike most of the people in this crowd, this person looked straight-up homeless. But they still had some of the strange accessories other people in the crowd had, such as a winter hat and a little piercing in their brow. They stared at Alma's hand, and after a while replied, "Yes."
Alma looked puzzled, but undeterred. "No, I mean your name. What's your name."
Their words were made unintelligible by a raspy voice and the interference from the oxygen tubes running into their nose, along with a childish speech impediment and a swollen lip.
"Someone… fire alarm… cancer men…" was all I could pick out.
The stranger turned away, leaving Alma and I both baffled, but for different reasons.
"What the fuck, Alma? Why'd you pick the weirdest one?"
"Seemed accessible."
"Accessible? Of all the… Accessible as in handicapped-accessible, more like."
"Shut the hell up!" she said very loudly. Some of the crowd turned to look for the source of the outburst. She was a loud brightly-dressed woman in a sea of quiet dark-clothed strangers. "I'm trying to talk to these people, and you're being a real —"
"Christ, could you keep your voice down? Why are you trying to talk to these freaks at all?"
"Why are you calling them freaks?" she blubbered furiously.
"Are you blind? Where is—" I looked around but couldn't find the tramp she'd been talking to.
She pouted. "You're being annoying and rude." She was acting like a child, like a moody preteen snapping back at her father; I had no doubt she was defaulting to that in her psyche. I could hear it in her voice, whiny and frustrated while still having the moral know-it-all of an overbearing bitch. It really pissed me off, and to top it all off it was embarrassing.
But the crowd was not paying attention to Alma and me, and never had been — the majority had already drifted away from us. They were forming a circle elsewhere in the center plaza, slightly further up the hill. I could hear murmurs coming from within the mass of bodies. Some individuals were pointing up at the sky, a sky which was still becoming noticeably lighter. They were squinting hard. It wasn't so bright that I was craving shades or anything, since there was still quite a lot of smog — but I suppose if you're a cellar-dweller even that would have been pretty intense. Most of these people had to keep one hand permanently at their brow, to shield their eyes from the glare.
As I was scanning the crowd for more unique specimens, one person stuck out as being unique in the opposite way as Alma's victim. She was a little taller than the rest of the crowd, but that was maybe just because she was standing straight up like a skyscraper. Everyone around her was stooped over with heavy Apaks, but it didn't look like hers was that heavy. It also seemed like she was holding some kind of fan behind her, as if she wore a peacock tail. She had the same build as Alma, but skinnier, less shapely, and with much paler skin.
She was kind of cute.
The woman was pacing along the perimeter of the packed circle that was taking shape, staring at the ground. Every so often she would stop and turn around. At one turn she caught me looking at her, and quickly averted her eyes. That's when I noticed that the fan decorations behind her back were supposed to be bat wings.
Thoughts and fantasies drifted in… her stiffness was alluring, in a frustrating way. After not wanting to talk to anyone of these bizarro people, I wanted to pick her brain a little bit. Maybe I could convince her to leave this charade, go back to her basement or wherever she'd come from… take me with her while she's at it...
Alma was distracted trying to make first contact with some other straggler, so I snuck out of her field vision and made my way over to this new girl. She was walking rapidly with a stiff gait, so it was tricky to get her attention, but I managed to grab her arm.
"Hey," I said.
She stopped and turned to me, looking me dead in the eyes.
"What are you doing here?" I asked.
She looked to her left and right, then back at me. Her eyes were cold and bright, her pupils tiny. Thin exotic eyeliner surrounded them, making them look quite scary.
"Me?" she said to me, in a high whine. Me? as her voice pitched upwards into infinity.
"Yes, you," I said. "You, specifically."
She continued to peer right at me. Her nose was very thin and her face was gaunt. She didn't look quite so attractive up close. Especially not with the kind of eye contact she was making.
"I am here for the visitation," she said.
I almost burst out laughing. Just as I had suspected, in the back of my mind. These were E.T. freaks. Still believing in UFOs after all these years. After all this time.
I remember when Alma got into UFO stuff, briefly, very briefly. It'd been a while since it had been a fad. I read about the flying saucer craze and the abduction reports from the 1970s. How it all ended up being disseminated bullshit from government agents trying to distract people from the fact that they were building advanced aircraft. Craft designed to kill brown people millions of miles away.
And that technology was ubiquitous now. There were drones all over the city, in clear view, doing everything except killing brown people. So I found it hard to imagine still believing in UFOs. Truly, these people did not get outside enough.
But this scary but still somehow very cute girl had piqued my interest regardless. When Alma was into UFOs, she believed all sorts of crazy stuff. The classic abduction and butt probe kind of stuff. It wuz alienz! I wanted to see what this motley crew was looking for.
"When are they coming?" I asked.
"In a few minutes," she said, her voice flat and dry.
"Why are they coming here? What are they going to do when they get here?"
She looked around guiltily, then leaned in with a whisper. I could practically hear the hot synthetic oxygen being pumped into her nose, and the stale CO2 going out.
"I'm not supposed to tell you," she said.
That was frustrating. I had to gain her trust first, before she could lay the bullshit on me. I looked around for Alma, to see if I could use her feminine friendliness to help woo this woman, but she was nowhere to be seen.
"I'm not going to try and stop them or anything," I said. "I'm just curious."
Maybe I could throw a little coyness in there? In a low voice I told her, "I've never seen a UFO before."
"UFO?" she said, her brow furrowing, and I caught the first glimmer of emotion in her voice. The emotion was disgust. "We aren't looking for UFOs. Did you think we were?"
"Honestly, yeah," I said, shrugging. I figured honesty was the best policy. "I thought you were some kinda close-encounters nerds. But… now I'm even more curious."
She scoffed gently. But then a whispered message started passing through the crowd. She turned to listen to the huddle as I stood outside of it, trying to catch a word or two, but I heard nothing.
The girl turned back to me. "We talked it over," she said, "and you can stay."
I was confused.
Was someone else in the huddle watching me?
The girl held out her hands. She had small hands, but they looked soft, pale, with long and delicate nails. Like the hands of a model. I looked up at her. That emaciated face, those harrowing eyes, had transformed into something resembling a welcoming smile. There were dimples in her cheeks.
I felt a warmth in my heart. I couldn't remember anyone ever looking at me like that before.
Alma certainly hadn't.
I almost popped my head up to look around for Alma, but discovered she had escaped my brain's concerns. It was no use looking for her, she wasn't curious like I was. She hadn't been invited in! With a collective whisper of deep understanding.
It seemed as if the world fell away, and I found that I wanted to stay.
Still didn't know what these people were doing though.
I took the girl's outstretched hands in my own. She told me her name was Clime. I was officially in love.
"What are we looking for," I said, "if we're not looking for UFOs?"
The hell, I thought. Why'd I say we?
"We are looking for the answers," she said, in a breathy monotone. "We expect them to come soon."
My heart dropped in my chest.
I was in for it now. These people were mad.
It's just a bizarro flash mob, I thought. Gotta be. But as I thought those words, I realized I was trying to convince myself of something I didn't quite believe.
I'd read about apocalyptic cults. I was half expecting someone to pass around some fruit punch laced with arsenic, and slug it back in order to be with Jesus sooner. Or maybe they were all going to go into a feeding frenzy. Possessed by some unearthly demon, they would start writhing on the floor, then murder each other. The imagination reels.
But one thing that apocalyptic cults tended to have in common was a strong, charismatic leader, and up to this point I'd only seen an amorphous blob. I couldn't find anyone who seemed to radiate social power, identifiable in some way. Though I'd felt like I was being watched, Clime hadn't indicated that such a person existed. She certainly wasn't it.
Clime… where was Clime? My thoughts had wandered but I still gripped her hand, but to my shock I found that she had dragged me deeper into the huddle, and now I was surrounded by sweaty, unhealthy goth weirdos on all sides. The mob had swallowed me up.
Oh well. Might as well enjoy myself. Go along for the ride. Try to keep an eye on the perimeter in case I get… sacrificed. I planted my feet in the ground so Clime couldn't bring me any further into the mob.
A murmur began to dissipate amongst the crowd. They were getting excited. I tightened my grip on Clime's hand and pulled her closer to me, whispering in her ear.
"I don't understand, and I'm scared," I said.
A wind began to blow. Slowly, through the stale air.
"All will be revealed soon," she said. "You are safe."
The wind picked up speed. A gust seemed to fall directly out of the sky and swoop down over our heads.
I looked up. The sky, normally a sickly even purple, was lightening into lavender. Here and there, over the swooping glass of the city dome, teardrop-shaped spots of bright white broke through the smog. They seemed to be glowing.
Whispers scattered throughout the huddle, and this time I could make them out, when my head was lowered. It's clearing! The fog is clearing!
I turned back to Clime, my impromptu guide to this madness. She was looked up, her thin neck craned at an awkward angle as if she had never looked up before. She gasped with wonder along with the rest of the crowd. My heart raced in my ears.
I looked up again. The holes in the smog were growing noticeably larger, and the wind was picking up, as if the air was being sent forth from them from the heavens. I coughed with surprise as the hot winds struck my tongue. It was sweet, like a sugar replacement, but also managed to taste just a little bit like shit.
The wind itched at my nose and I reached up to fix the air tubes instinctively. But Clime reached her hand out to stop me.
"Let it fall," she said, a mysterious note in her voice.
Light began to shine through the white openings in the sky. Rays of unfiltered sun struck the Fonisal billboard and scattered rainbow shapes across the park and the walls of the dome. There was a sudden uproar in the crowd. Murmurs, growing louder. All around me, people reached up to their faces.
To my astonishment, one by one, people began disconnecting their air tubes from their noses. These poor people, overburdened with heavy apaks, unable to breathe without them, were turning them off. They were blinded by the prisms of light, which seemed to fall directly on us.
The fog is clearing!
Clime got a sad look in her eyes, and I realized this was part of the show.
But if I take these tubes out, I thought, something bad is going to happen.
As if reading my mind, she repeated, "you're safe." She said it with a look in her eye that betrayed a depth of a thousand years, a reassurance that two hundred souls in the park would not perish on this day.
Her apak was of a higher level than mine. My nostril tubes were only clasped to the end of my septum, going no further. But hers were —
Slowly, she reached her hands up to her own face and began pulling on the tubes in her nose. Bit by bit, hand over hand, she extracted two long snakes that had coiled themselves deep in her sinuses. Without breaking eye contact with me, she pulled out inch after inch, very slowly — she squinted with the sensations flooding her nostrils. A full five inches lodged in her head, covered in snot.
No doubt her first time installing an apak, at a high level, only to have to pull it out — why??
Clime gasped for air, and her wide eyes opened wider. Her jaw fell to the floor and her hands shook, still holding the ends of the tubes. Her eyes vibrated in their sockets, darting from left to right and left again at a barely perceptible speed.
The hot and shit-smelling wind blew harder. I tried to look outside of the mob to see if anyone else in the park, the innocent bystanders, were receptive to this surging of air. But I could see no one over the thrall of people and the increasing brightness of the sky. I was staggering over, shielding myself from the gale, near to vomiting with the taste of the air.
There was an array of shouting as the strangers began to breathe the polluted air. An ocean of suffering, of howls and groans, of people who dared attempt to breathe unfiltered smog and particles and god knows what else was in the purple haze. Clime still shivered with the shock. But still, the fog was clearing, and the openings in the sky grew wider. New cracks appeared in the sky, as if it was about to give way.
In all the confusion I'd forgotten about Alma, I'd forgotten the mushrooms, I'd forgotten how I got here. All I could was the wind whipping at my face. There was chaos in the crowd, there were people hollering, retching, screaming, on the ground writhing. All had disconnected their air filters.
A dainty pale hand reached out and yanked the tubes out of my nose.
And I was hit with the full force of…
of…
In a flash, in a quite literal flash, everything went white.
Wilton Barber, having made his last lap around the perimeter of the park, headed back to the east gate, and saw a young girl standing underneath it, staring out at the undome. It was empty, except for the two of them.
The girl had a puzzled look on her face.
He walked up to her, panting, and said, "Thank you for the mushrooms. They were delicious.”
“My pleasure,” Alma said, beaming, and turned her hips toward him. “Do you like my ass?”