Mind-Share
Chumps, all of 'em, I thought.
There we were—me, Gary, and Jill—standing on one side.
On the other side were the Raccaws. The freaky raccoon-birds. Looking small and ugly. And stupid.
It seemed silly, carrying it out this far. I had my gun. Jill had hers. We could’ve flashed our heat and said, Look, we’re taking what we want now. This ceremonial face-off shit is over. Thanks for letting us in. Guess what, you were wrong about us. I, leader of my small pack of humans, am not going to take part in your “mind-sharing” ritual.
The Chief was the ugliest of the bunch—three feet tall and squat, with pointy teeth and pink eyes. Crazy underbite. His grubby little dark hands were pulling twigs off a big branch from a grotesque tree. One of those they engineered to grow in landfills. Stinky neon things. He threw the sticks in a pile between us.
He kept one stick and went around his group of shorter, slightly less ugly versions of himself, tapping each of them on their beaks with it.
A couple of them eyed me after he touched them, cocking open their long black chompers and waving their pink tongues at me. I could’ve yacked.
After everybody in his group was touched, the Chief tapped his own beak—crooked, like he’d smashed it at some point. Then the little man, no higher than my waist, waddled pathetically over to our side. I smelled him as he held up the stick, too short to reach my face. He smelled like bad chicken.
For a couple of seconds, I did nothing but stare into the little freak-bird’s soul.
“Kyle,” Gary whispered, eyes pleading. “He wants to—”
“I know what he wants,” I snapped. “I’m just not sure I want that stick touching my nose.”
“But it’s part of their mind-sharing ritual. This is the part where you agree to the shedding of your bad spirit. The ritual brings together the best of each of your spirits, to learn and grow—”
“Yes, yes, I know. You told me,” I cut in. I didn’t even know why I was waiting. Jill kept giving me side glances, her hand in her pocket. Clutching that Colt .45 of hers. She wouldn’t have fooled anybody with half a brain standing like that, but this group was mentally challenged. Myself included, since I bent over and let the Chief tap me on the nose with that neon twig of his. Got a big whiff of his bad chicken smell before he moved on to Gary.
Gary was all simpering deference. Such a dope. I heard his knees pop as he knelt in the dirt. He looked like he could’ve cried when the Chief tapped him. This was his dream, this mind-sharing ritual. Too bad it wouldn’t happen, I thought. But I was going to let it go on just a little longer. Maybe I’d let Gary watch them chant or dance or whatever came before the mind-sharing part really began. And then I’d say, Enough is enough. We’re getting our trash and leaving. Cue Gary’s shocked face. Probably tears. But he’d get over it. He always did.
After the Chief tapped Gary on the sniffer, he started to walk over to Jill, then stopped. Jill looked so tense I thought she’d pull out her pistol and pop him right there. I kept shooting her glances to cool it.
The Chief raised the stick to his crooked beak, and his face somehow got uglier. He turned around to look at his fellow birds, then turned to us. Shook his head. Opened his beak.
“De-ceiv-er,” he creaked. His voice grated like nails on glass. I could’ve punted him right then.
Behind him, the other Raccaws started shivering and moaning as a group.
“What’s happening?” I said, stepping backward.
Gary’s mouth was open, yellow teeth exposed, wordless. Clearly he didn’t know.
“DE-CEIV-ER,” the Chief creaked again, even louder. And he broke the stick in his hands.
My gun was out. A freshly oiled Glock. I looked at Jill and she started to pull her hand out of her pocket. Then she dropped the gun. Fucking idiot. She cowered away until it was clear the gun hadn’t discharged, then she picked it up. Cheeks red like a baboon’s ass.
Gary yelped, fat hands over his mouth when he saw we were packing. I didn’t acknowledge it.
I raised my weapon and stepped back. “Let’s just forget this whole thing, huh? We came here for trash, and we’ll get the trash now.”
And there it was. Gary’s shocked face. Most gullible man on Earth. Which was probably why he was my only friend. Because who else would keep coming back after so many lies, so many let-downs? That was his nature and this was mine.
The Chief’s pink eyes weren’t looking at me. They were narrowed on Gary. He and his fellow birds didn’t seem to notice or care about our guns, or what I’d just said. They closed in on Gary, absolutely surrounded him, while ignoring me and Jill.
I half-considered firing a shot in the air. I was annoyed. Didn’t they see I had the power here? That plans had changed?
The Chief kept yelling “De-ceiv-er,” as the birds, a dozen or so, circled my friend—my oh-so-gullible friend. He shook his head at me in that pathetic Gary way. I looked at Jill in a way that said, I’m about to start getting physical with these birds—cover me. I couldn’t tell whether she understood, dim as she was.
“There be a de-ceiv-er amongst you!” creaked the Chief, and he climbed up Gary like a tree. Gary actually let him do that, even though he outweighed the bird six to one. Even for Gary, I thought this was a new low. Letting some mutated bird leader scale you.
“Alright, that’s enough,” I said, and I cuffed the first bird in my way. I heard a hollow sound where the butt of my gun hit his head, and the little guy fell over. I did it again to his buddy beside him.
Then they all turned on me. I cocked the hammer on my pistol and raised it. “Stand down. This isn’t going to go your way—” I was ready to say more when suddenly a great cloud of dust ejected into my face.
I squeezed off a shot. Nobody let out a cry, so I figured my shot missed. I tried to shoot again, but my gun wouldn’t fire—it was jammed.
I heard Jill let out a yelp, and then something pierced my leg. Very quickly my body got heavy. My legs turned to wood. And just before the lights went out, I was cursing myself, cursing Gary and Jill as well, cursing my uncle for not having the balls to simply make a few bribes and creating this whole mess to begin with. Most of all, I cursed the birds. The stupid, ugly, smelly little bird-freaks that had gotten lucky this time and fooled me.
Lights out.
*
Yesterday, I had popped into my uncle’s office, found all the blinds closed, saw him sitting in the dusty armchair in the corner, misty-eyed.
“What happened?” I said, even though I knew what had happened.
My uncle let out a choked sob, tried to speak, shook his head. I wanted to slap him, but I kept my cool. I gave him a minute.
“Some kind of malfunction,” he sputtered, mucus running down his face.
I nodded, pretended I didn’t know what he was talking about. The nanobots, under strict government regulatory scrutiny, had escaped. Calls had probably come in. The news would soon be broken to authorities. Temporarily, at least, my uncle’s trash disposal facility would be shut down.
My uncle made a fist and pounded the chair’s armrest, springing dust into the air. “I just don’t understand. Somebody messed with the controls. Who would do that? Why?!” Then he started weeping like a little baby, and my hands ached so badly to wring him by the neck. How did he not know it was me? How stupid was he? Also, what was the big deal?
So some nanobots with insatiable plastic-eroding appetites were on the loose. It had happened before. The owner, if I remembered correctly, blamed it on a hacker. Then he paid off the regulators so he could keep his license. The same could happen here. Only my uncle was too weak-willed to grease the palms of a few inspectors. He just wanted to cry and cry and shake his head, take whatever punishments they threw at him.
“When are the inspectors supposed to come?” Already I had hatched a plan to save my uncle’s sorry ass. Yes, I had fudged with the controls for my own money-making scheme and created this problem, but boy, would things have been easy if my uncle wasn’t such a blubbering goody-goody.
“Tomorrow,” he said, barely above a whisper. “Who was it, Kyle? Do you know?” My uncle leveled those pathetic watery-pink eyes at me.
I looked right at him and shook my head. The fool had no idea whatsoever. Even though I’d lied to him countless times before, berated him when he was weak, expressed how much better his life would be if he grew a goddamn spine. Some people just behave like sidewalks. They beg to be walked upon.
But I needed my uncle, and I needed my position at the facility. I needed a paycheck, and I also needed some discretionary earnings from the leftovers I had been scrounging from trash brought in before the nanobots escaped. I would tweak the nanobots’ controls once more, unbeknownst to my uncle, but not so much as to allow the nanobots to escape. That mistake needed correcting. But before that, I would have to lure the nanobots back before the inspectors came. There was one place where good ol’ fashioned trash could be found, and if I dug it up and brought it back to my uncle’s facility, there was a good chance the nanobots would come back to feed. They loved old trash—anything pre-2030s—and plastic was their jam. And there was one place I could find that.
The city landfill, underneath the Raccaw Preserve. And to get into the Raccaw Preserve, I would need to talk to Gary. Right then, we weren’t on such good terms. But I knew I could change that. He was such a gullible schmuck.
*
I came to with slobber running down my chin. It was still night. I looked at my watch and saw a couple of hours had gone by.
Instinctively, I touched the ground around me for my Glock. Instead, I found a dead bird. So I had gotten one of them before the dust flew. But they’d taken Gary. That didn’t bode well at all.
I got to my feet and spotted a lump of shadow in the distance. Jill. From fifty feet away I could hear her snoring. Clearly, she’d tried to run—abandoning Gary and me—but they caught her anyway. I half-wished the freak-birds had taken her as well, just for abandoning ship in my time of need. But I needed her to help dig up the trash. And now we had a rescue mission and no guns.
Jill’s cheek was pressed to the dirt, her mouth open. I pushed her onto her back with my foot.
“Wakey, wakey, Jill. We’ve got a job to do,” I said.
Jill moaned, and I nearly shivered in disgust thinking about her and her husband. Against my will, anytime I’d passed by my uncle’s front office, I had to hear about her kids. I knew she had three. All boys. All scouts. She was always gushing about some badge they’d earned, some ludicrous high honor they’d gotten playing survival games in the woods. But maybe that would come in handy now.
I nudged her more forcefully, this time into the soft rim of her gut.
She jerked and bolted up. The whites of her eyes gleamed in the slice of moon above us.
“Easy. We were knocked out. They took Gary. We gotta get him back, then get our trash,” I said.
Jill frowned and shook her head. “No way. I’m out. This is beyond my pay grade,” she said.
“How about double? Twenty Gs,” I said. I’d offered her ten initially—five up front and five later. I also signed a completely bogus paper claiming that I forced her to break into the Raccaw Preserve, so she wouldn’t be liable were we to get caught. The dimwit didn’t understand that taking payment completely nullified any kind of letter like that.
“Nope, sorry,” Jill said, still shaking her head. I’m not a lady beater, but I could’ve smacked her then. I was pissed. I’d given her five and she’d done nothing. Hadn’t even stuck around to cover me when the freak-birds covered me in dust.
But I knew better than to get angry. People like Gary could be bullied, but not Jill. Those mom hormones made her different. Even though she was an idiot, she would stand her ground.
“Uncle Fred needs this bad, Jill. What will it take? Stake in the company? A college fund for the kids? How about a four-week trip to Europe—paid vacation, expenses paid—plus the twenty Gs, plus ten percent of the company?” I was just making shit up. My uncle would never agree to any of this. He wouldn’t even have agreed if we’d done this out of the goodness of our hearts. He followed all the rules, even the nonsensical ones, like crossing crosswalks when a street was completely dead—no cars, not even witnesses. If there was a rule, he knew it and followed it to a T. So none of this would pan out for her, but I needed to get her on board.
“Five weeks,” she said, arms crossed.
“Deal,” I said, and offered a hand.
Jill started looking around for her Colt .45, and I said they were gone.
Right away I could see she was regretting this new deal of ours, so I told her how Raccaws couldn’t fire guns. The bone structure of their hands was too small; they didn’t have the hand muscle strength to hold the weapon steady or even squeeze the trigger. It was all bullshit, but I also had this hunch there was probably some truth in it.
Jill hesitated, and then I said we would turn around at the first sign of real danger, and she relented.
“So where do we start?” she asked.
“Let’s get the trash first,” I said, and took the folding shovel out of my backpack.
“What about Gary? Isn’t he in trouble?” Jill asked.
“It’s already been two hours. If they wanted to harm him, they could’ve already. Plus, I want to have the trash ready in case things get dangerous. You can leave and take the trash back to the facility. Just open up the bag in the nanobot consumption area.”
I could see Jill’s dim mind working, trying to work through the logic of this.
“Did you tell your uncle about our agreement?”
“Yes,” I lied.
Jill nodded and helped me unload all the digging tools. In the back of my mind, Gary was being tortured a bit. I didn’t think they’d kill him. I’d never heard of Raccaws doing things like that. And probably the torture would toughen him up—give him a spine for once.
*
After leaving my teary-eyed uncle, I drove to Gary’s. On the outside, Gary’s apartment looked as sad and pathetic as him. There was a dead tree in front. Weeds had overtaken the mulch beds under the windows. There were cracked blinds in one of the windows. Mildew was growing on the siding. Gary paid rent, so he could’ve easily bitched to his landlord to have this spruced up. But he didn’t. And so, like my uncle—though a bit less industrious—he let people walk all over him.
I knocked on the door. A bit too forcefully, perhaps.
I heard a thud inside. I pictured Gary getting up from his computer station. He had this absurd-looking wrap-around desk with three screens so he could “work faster” for the people paying him. He solved IT issues. None of his colleagues, I imagined, had three screens. And I doubted his employer had paid for them. But surely they benefited. The thud was his computer chair whacking the desk, because he moved quite awkwardly. He was a lumpy guy. Overweight. Potato-headed. A bit of a foot-dragger. Always had been. Even when I met him in first grade.
I heard him shuffle to the door. Then there was a pause. He was eyeing me through the peephole. Probably having his doubts.
Gary opened the door just a few inches and fixed one of his sad eyes on me.
“What do you want?”
“First, I want to apologize,” I said.
And right then I was trying to recall the specifics of our last encounter. Something about borrowing his Jeep to haul junk out of my uncle’s facility to sell to some guy on the other side of town. Gary wanted to know what was being hauled. I told him it was sawdust and soil. It was actually four dozen kilos of angel dust, but I knew he wouldn’t have helped if he’d known that. When we got to the bad neighborhood, parked across the street from a group of thugs sitting on a porch, and one of them brandished a gun, Gary started freaking out. Nothing bad happened, but Gary whined the whole way home, saying we could’ve been killed, they could have robbed us. He kept glancing in the rearview mirror, thinking somebody was following us. I told him to chill out. He wanted to know what was really in those boxes and if he’d been an accomplice in a crime. I told him to stop worrying. That was six months ago.
“I should’ve been more forthright with you about what was in those boxes,” I said, trying to put on my most regretful face.
“What was in those boxes?” Gary said, still hiding behind his door, cowering from his good friend.
“A bunch of things,” I said. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to be implicated.” That was a lie, but I thought it was a pretty good one.
“What kind of things, Kyle? Illegal things?” Gary said, chewing on his beard. Such a dope. What kind of question was that? How stupid could he be? Did he think those thugs wanted discount powdered milk?
“Some of it, yes. But some of it was life-saving stuff, too,” I said. I created this vision of people saving their own lives with PCP. It didn’t seem likely, but it wasn’t strictly impossible either. What was I, a chemist? The human spirit could benefit from all kinds of toxins, taken at the right time.
“You mean like insulin?” Gary opened the door a bit more. His potato head had yellowed in the months since our car ride. He looked terrible, but I showed no sign of receiving him that way.
I simply nodded, trying to keep a straight face. Hilarious to think of hawking boxes of insulin to a group of thugs in a bad neighborhood. Diabetic thugs?
“That’s what you came to tell me? That you’re sorry?” Gary asked.
“Well, yes, but also I have an opportunity for you,” I said, trying to smile my most genuine, convincing smile.
Gary nearly shut the door. “My Jeep is off-limits. Also, I’m not giving you any money. I’m saving for a house.”
“Nothing like that. Remember what you told me about Raccaws? How they have that joining-heads ritual?” I had to be careful here. I knew that if I told Gary my real reason for wanting to go to the Raccaw Reserve, he would shut that door. We were on tenuous ground here. I’d pretty much used him time and time again the past few years. His mother called me a vampire.
“Yeah... why?” Gary looked wary as ever. I could feel him waiting for the scheme, waiting for me to confirm this was just another use-job. So I decided to take a different route.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about how messed up I’ve been to you over the years, man. I’ve used you, I’ve lied, I’ve treated you badly. I’m trying to make amends for that, but I keep coming up short. I was born bad, Gary. Selfish. A liar. I don’t want to be that way anymore.”
Gary opened the door fully, and that was how I knew I had gotten him.
“What’s that have to do with the birds?”
“You go to the Raccaw Preserve. You talk to them. Would you be willing to do a joining-heads ritual with me? I want to come clean for everything I’ve done, man. Clean slate. I want to be a better man,” I said.
I think I’d actually forced tears out of my eyes. I hadn’t cried in so long, they hurt. They stung. And I felt like an idiot, but I could see it was working on Gary.
“I can try, but I can’t guarantee anything,” he said, scratching his crusty chin. I spotted a piece of macaroni in his beard. I tried not to wince.
“I’m desperate. What are you doing later today? Do you think they’d take us this evening?”
Gary practically flinched. “That soon? I don’t know. Um, I guess we could try...” He looked a little wary again, but I could see he was already in my grasp, he’d already agreed.
“Great! How about I pick you up around six?”
Gary nodded warily, pale-faced, and closed the door.
Was this probably the final scheme I could pull on him? Maybe. Or maybe not. Give him a couple of years and perhaps we’d do it again. Was this a friendship? I thought so. Did friends use each other? They did. Did they sometimes use each other unevenly? In my case, always.
*
I unfolded the shovel to its full length and activated its hypersonic vibration mode. It slid easily into the packed dirt, and I threw spadefuls over my shoulder. Jill had to sidestep me. She was unfolding a large bag-tarp while I worked.
Then she turned on the metal detector I’d handed her. “It says here there’s something about four feet down.”
That was the metal rivets they put on the rubber cap of the landfill. I’d read all about it yesterday. This landfill was one of the last to close, and per standards of the day, they sealed all the trash they buried with three-inch-thick rubber sheets, bound together with steel rivets.
Five more minutes of digging and the metal detector started to whine. When we hit rubber, I took out my blowtorch and turned it on the dirty black circle of rubber. Once it was soft and gooey, I brought the ultrasonic shovel down on it. It gave like fresh putty.
Ten more minutes of digging and Jill and I were into the golden age of trash burial. Plastics of all shapes, sizes, and varieties. Plastic dishes, bags, boxes, appliances, furniture—even in the clothing. Among it all, tons of food waste. Putrid decay. Jill pulled the collar of her shirt over her face, exposing her midriff flab. Her C-section scars. No shame in the slightest.
I shoveled a few cubic feet of plastics into the bag-tarp and threw in the nanobot deactivator beads—little Bluetooth devices that would shut the trash eaters off when they came to roost. I pulled the bag closed and handed it to Jill.
“In thirty minutes, all the nanobots will be in this bag, sound asleep. First sign of danger, you just run out of here. Take it to the facility and throw it in the disposal area. Don’t worry about me and Gary,” I said, knowing she couldn’t give two shits anyway. She would run regardless, and probably without the bag if I didn’t threaten her. “If you don’t bring the bag back, the deal’s off.”
She gave me a hostile look. “That wasn’t part of our agreement!”
I shrugged. “It is now. What good is a ten percent stake in the company if Fred loses his disposal license?”
I could see her mind working out the logic. All three brain cells working their damnedest. “Fine,” she said finally. “Now what?”
“Now I need you to put your tracking skills to use. We have to locate Gary.”
*
My third stop yesterday was back at my uncle’s facility. I parked in front, like a customer dropping off a load of trash.
In the front office, I found Jill playing on her phone. She was still here for some reason, even though the disposal arena operators had all gone home.
“Big K,” she said, not looking up from her phone. “You hear the news?”
At some point, Jill had just decided to call me Big K. The name hadn’t come from anybody or anything. I wasn’t really that big of a guy—6’2”. Taller than her. Taller than her kids and her husband. But I think she was just one of those idiots who needs to have a nickname for everybody. My uncle was Bossman. Her husband was Hubby. The mailman was Mister T, which I know he hated. Terrance. I could see it on his face anytime he had to roll into our office. If he saw me standing out front, he would make a beeline to drop the mail off to me to avoid Jill entirely.
“I did hear the news. What are you still doing here?” Apparently, the dimwit had to be told she could go home, even though there was nothing for her to do.
“Bossman hasn’t told me otherwise. He’s been in there all day making calls. Who do you think it was that’s been messing with the nanobot safety controls?”
I shrugged. “Probably some hacker. Listen, my uncle has a job for you,” I said, lowering my voice to a whisper. There was nobody else with us, but I wanted her to think I was nervous and worried.
I explained everything about the inspectors coming tomorrow, how the Raccaw Preserve sat on a landfill that we could excavate from to lure them back.
“We aren’t allowed to go there,” she said in a low voice. “As much as I like the Bossman, I’m not going to break the law for him.”
She always spoke like she knew what she was talking about, but she was clueless.
“First of all, if the Raccaws permit us, then it isn’t illegal to enter. Second, you will be paid handsomely.”
Jill cocked an eyebrow, waiting for me to say a number.
I told her the number, and she nodded slowly.
“Why isn’t he asking me himself?” she asked.
“He’s embarrassed. You know how much pride he has in this company. Plus, he has to deal with the inspectors. He’s talking to them now, trying to explain the situation,” I said, trying not to sound annoyed at her inane questions.
“Digging up the trash is illegal, though,” she said, biting her lip.
“I’ll take the heat for that,” I said.
“But I’ll be an accomplice,” she countered.
“So I’ll write you a letter, saying I forced you to do it. How about that? This is really important, Jill. If we can do this, we’ll save my uncle a lot of grief,” I said, in my best pleading voice.
“Okay, Big K. But I want half up front,” she said.
I kept my cool. I had to respect her shrewdness, even if it was idiotic to ask for money up front and the letter at the same time. Jill didn’t have much brains, but she didn’t let people walk on her.
“Deal. I’ll handle getting us into the Raccaw Preserve. I have contacts,” I said, keeping it vague. Jill was a nosy person, and I didn’t want her knowing any more than she needed to.
“Heads up. I’m bringing this,” and Jill pulled out her Colt .45.
I had to respect that. It was probably the thing I respected most about her. Though it didn’t make up for her stupidity. The letter I would write for her wouldn’t make any sense if she was carrying a gun.
“I don’t trust those birds,” she added.
I told her fair enough. I penned her stupid letter and told her to meet me and Gary at the little park next to the Raccaw Preserve at six-thirty that evening. Then I went out back and got our supplies from the shed next to the disposal arena: the hypersonic shovel, the tarp bag, the Bluetooth nanobot deactivator beads, and the metal detector.
In a safe next to all the equipment, I took out my uncle’s Glock. I’d watched him enter the number a dozen or so times, unbeknownst to him. He took it out every couple of weeks to oil it, even though he never fired it. Such a diligent dope.
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