FITTER-INNERS

Accessing media files.

Accessing.
Accessing.
Accessing.
Found.

Year: 2012.
Month: April.
Location: Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Source: KGWN-TV Nightly News.

Playing.

“Well, folks, it seems that’s it for Buford! After twenty years of operating under
a single resident, Don Sammons is saying ta-ta to this small town. His
departure marks an official shift into ghost town classification, leaving ten
acres and his beloved Trading Post behind. An auction for the acres is set to
occur on April the—”

Eject.

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Accessing further media files.
Found.

Year: 2012.
Month: April.
Location: Laramie, Wyoming.
Source: KWYP-DT News at 6.

Playing.

“After a fifty minute live auction and minimal following negotiations, the
small town of Buford has been sold for just under a million dollars to chemical
manufacturing company Cheros. The EPA held a conference shortly thereafter,
discouraging this purchase due to Cheros’ continued anti-environmental
history. Of all their chemicals, a spokesperson says, it’s PFAs they need to
worry about. Colloquially known as forever chemicals, the toxicity of these
substances have half lives in the thousands of years—”

Eject.

Accessing further media files.

Found.

Year: 2029.
Month: January.
Location: Clinton, New York.
Source: WHXT-19 National News.

Playing.

“Breaking news occurring in Buford, Wyoming tonight. This is, of course, a

continuation of the coverage on Cheros, the chemical manufacturing giant,
that has been ongoing since September of last year.”

Fast-forward.
Resume.

2
“—using the ten-acre reservoir carved out of the leveled town to store its
chemical waste. This, of course, is directly following their forced removal from
Ohio due to the excess of PFOA substances found in the blood of residents
whose drinking water was pulled from the Ohio River. Scientists warn that
further contamination and leaching of broken soil may carry these harmful
chemicals south to water sources. Anonymous Boyd Lake State Park workers
have come forward, expressing concern that this leaching may occur in due
time for the summer rush of patrons with intent to swim—”

Eject.

Accessing further media files.

Found.

Year: 2035.
Month: November.
Location: Parker Dam, California.
Source: KWP 88.9 FM “The Enviro-Show: Local Trimmings.”

“—as a result of this study. Children, pregnant residents, and those with auto-
immune deficiencies are encouraged not to play, touch, or walk in the grass as
doing so could increase risk of—”

Fast-forward.
Resume.

“[Secondary voice: “At this rate, we’ve surpassed the point of no return, I
think, and—a-a-and—and I think… Gosh, I think… We’ve reached out to
the higher courts, you know, and, uh… Surely they’ll… do something, once
they’ve got the numbers right in front of them.]”

Eject.

3
Found.

Year: 2039.
Month: May.
Location: Washington, DC.
Source: Library of Congress Archives.

“Now, therefore, I, [redacted], President of the United States of America, by

virtue of the authority vested in me, hereby declare this national emergency,
that which has existed since the seventeenth of May, 2039, would be nothing
short of cataclysmic if it weren’t for those great Americans on the front lines,
our working class who, with calloused hands and open hearts—”

Eject.

Found.

Year: 2040.
Month: January.
Location: New York City, New York.
Source: MSXBC-HD “Morning Espress-a with Tessa.”

“Leading experts are saying that—and can you believe this, ladies?—that two
glasses of red wine can combat the effects of mutant-C8 poisoning. Now, I’m
not saying I believe this, I’m just saying… Ha-ha, I’m getting the shake of the
head from Producer Tom on the video call—sorry, Tom! I’m just! Telling the
people what the experts are saying. … Don’t look at me like that. Sorry,
everyone, Tom’s just a little tight around the… What. What do you want me
to say? I’m trying to sow a few seeds of hope, here, give people a little morning
pick-me-up before they pull on their plastic suits to go out to the stores, take
their tests, see their families. You want me to say—no, don’t go to
commercial—you want me to say it’s hopeless? Is that what you want? [A
slurping sip of wine.] No. Not on my show, not on this… this… l-lovely
Monday m-morning… [The sound of a glass breaking.] Fuck.”

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Eject.

Found.

Year: 2040.
Month: February.
Location: Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Source: Cherombies.net, Chatlog Day 23.

[user90213: i think i saw my teacher out in my yard.]

[user90213: she’s like 81yo.]

[user22015: was she all busted like the others]

[user38170: my gramma says it’s all a ploy to sell more aspirin]

[user90213: @22015 yea she’s busted.]

[user90213: it was dark but i could smell rotn meat, like they said]

[user16989: guys i think somethings wrong w/ my mom]

Eject.

Accessing further media files.

Accessing.
Found.

Ah. This one is Frye’s favorite.

Year: 2040.
Month: December.
Location: Tampa, Florida.
Source: Mosaic Report I.D. #2099.

5
Loading.
Buffering.
Troubleshooting.

Save file corrupted.

“Oh, dear,” Frye mutters, grimacing at the blare of an internal

alarm. “Another already?”
He tucks the Discman into the front of his trousers, pushing the
broken foam headphones to rest around his neck. Its warped and bent
plastic clinks against his metal panels.
Sound carries easy in abandoned cities. He can only imagine how
loud it had been when they were full.
He bangs at the side of his head with his palm until the alarm stops.
His technology rattles around inside. “Come on, you stubborn old
thing.”
His data stores have become so very difficult to maintain. He isn’t
sure what causes them to fizzle out and corrupt like this. They never did
that at the start. Any and all plausible causes have been accounted for, he
entertains them often.
The power grid stopped operating in 2045, his birth year,
immediately following the mass exodus. No workers to maintain already
warped and weary lines and systems, wires snapped and networks broke
down within weeks. He watched those beautiful towers begin to tilt and
melt and he wondered if he would too. Enough time had passed to make
him think he was self-sufficient. It appears that now he too needs repairs.
Fifty years awake, this silly body he’s got, and nearly ten years in
decline.
Frye opened his eyes in 2045. Late 2045. He opened his eyes in an
empty laboratory, in fact, still plugged in at the neck. The humans had
been gone for the greater half of the year—either already infected and
wasted away or hiding out, creating their camps of living things,

6
protecting themselves from the non-living ones. He woke up nameless in
the silenced city of Frye, Maine and he had to make do with the pieces
he had.
In truth, Frye doesn’t think he’d ever seen a human before recently.
His systems are not able to compute visual data, only auditory. And
the bookstores and paintings had all been burned in the fires, so he
hasn’t had the pleasure of seeing much at all. Those news reports are
some of his favorites, the Fires of the Early ‘40s, the brave human
reporters out in the streets as the scary enemies prowled in the
background. Frye has those memorized, he listens to them as he
scavenges around for remnants of life.
Not much life left out here, really.
Merely empty streets with broken windows. The occasional broken
television. The occasional broken Discman. And so, so many corpses.
Frye is glad he didn’t know what humans looked like when they
were living. It made his lifetime much less scary, before he knew what he
was walking through. These corpses are no longer what he assumed to
be people-shaped, more like heaps of rot-dark flesh and rain-rounded
bone. It makes it easier to walk through the towns, stepping over the
remnants of the lost, his headphones unplugged as he listens to the old
news in his head.
Humans wore headphones on their ears, he knows that about
them. They had ears. They didn’t have radios in their heads. Must have
been difficult for them.
While he'd never seen a human, he’d also never seen one of those
creatures they had spoken about. They sound frightening, limited as his
imagination is. All that he knows is that humans are the nice ones. He
learns this from the data, the recordings that loop in his head, and he
learns this from what he finds on the ground. Sweaters and toasters and
sneakers that will never fit him. How difficult it is to find things that fit
him. But he must before they reach Kansas City. And he is running out
of time.

7
 It's one of the last remaining human forts, there in Kansas City. He
saw their posters pinned beneath a dismembered hand. They seemed
incredibly adamant that they’d only permit their own kind to cross into
their community with trespassers risking penalty of being disintegrated
in a deluge of projectiles.
Frye’s no human. But … he is also impenetrable, according to his
warning label. He can handle a deluge of projectiles. It is merely a
matter of dressing up in mortal fashion, learning their customs, learning
them well enough to get close and, hopefully, befriend them through
the sharing and trading of valuable items.
He found the Discman in Texas. He found his pants in California.
He found his backpack in Washington State. He has been wandering at
his own pace for fifty years around this vast country, one year for each
state [excluding the one that floated away], collecting pieces to mimic
humanity. Putting on his costume, as it were, to finally belong to a
community.
Oh, Frye is so excited.
Today is November 14th, 2096. Today he is a few miles out of
Lawrence, Kansas. Only half of a day away from the rest of his life.
Perhaps the humans will have a solution to his steadily decreasing
databank. Perhaps his creator is among them.
The Kansas City Cluster, their living human alliance, is supposedly
nestled in the belly of one of the abandoned sports arenas.
Ah. Sports. Frye likes sports.

Year: 2014.
Month: February.
Location: Kansas City, Kansas.
Source: “Summit Basketball Tournament Highlights.”

Playing.

8
“—spinning on Alec, out of the left block, double-team, pass out to Easley,
right wing to Shireman, back to Easley—driving dooooown the right side of
the lane, Easley! All the way in for a right-hand lay up off the glass! Back to
the Jacks it goes, and they’re off, and Seventeen for the steal, another
jackrabbit for ya, then the turnover—"

Eject.

Frye doesn’t understand sports. But he likes the man’s voice. Deep
and authoritative. Strongly American. Frye has never heard any voice
like his own, not in any of the recordings. He wonders if it’s on purpose,
the way he sounds, or if he’d been broken from the start. Did his
scientist sound like this? Like two voices at once, one organic and one
technological, fighting tooth and nail and screw?
Only half a day until he finally finds a home.
He bends at the knee to pick up something shiny that’s lodged in
the dirt of this lot’s scorched earth. He brushes his thumb across it,
polishes it as best he can.
It’s cold. Metal, like him, but different. Reflective, he sees the
squared and blurry silhouette of himself in it. He smiles at himself. He
thinks he smiles. Frye doesn’t know what a smile looks like. His metal
lips squeak and grind apart, sparking orange and white, and his black
wiry tongue slithers into view.
What is this? Not him, but the thing he sees himself in. A silver
mirror-like puck with a red leash attached. He stares, dangles it, squints
until it makes sense.
“Oh!” he says, and his voice echoes once again. The dulled
fragments of once-useful things lodged in the ground buzz with the
sound. “A medallion!”
What a wonderful final souvenir to pick up! An award. Well done,
Frye, the award may as well be engraved, for traversing the entirety of the
States.

9
 He yanks the flimsy headphones from around his neck, cramming
them into his pocket with little grace, replacing it with his new
medallion. It feels good, a welcome weight around his neck. Save for the
usuals. His bag and his… his, um… Oh, dear, he must have misplaced
his…
He pats his pockets. He looks around on the ground.
Where on earth did she go?
She was just here a second ago, he could swear by it. She was
chatting the day away back when they were walking along the highway,
when she was hanging from his neck, her legs around his waist, pinning
his backpack to his shoulder blades.
Frye frowns. How does one lose an entire human?
“Phoebe!?” he calls, continuing to pat the pockets of his pants
despite the damn things having huge holes in them. (He lost his river
rocks in Mississippi and is still very upset about it.) “Phoebe, where in
the world did you… goodness gracious, have I lost you again?”
He feels worriedly across the chipped ridge of his medal as he
begins to trace his steps. This is hardly their first time getting separated.
When he loses his friend, she never really gets far. Humans are funny
that way, he’s found.
“Phoeeeeebeeeeee!” He tries for a bellow, he tries for an
authoritative voice. “Come on, we’re nearly there! Can’t have you
leaving me right when we’ve gotten to the… the… finish line!”
Finish line. Sports.
He walks and scans for lifeforms with his long broken scanner. It’s
an underwhelming tour as always, peering around jagged barriers and
broken-down brick walls. All the signs have been burned and blackened.
He wonders if this was one of the news stations. It’s hard to listen to so
many reports, the shuffle of papers clicking on a desk, the compliments to
the new studio, and never have the ability to visualize.
If this was a news station, they likely saved many lives.
How sad to see a life-saving building in such a state.

10
 “It’d be much easier if you’d fit in my pocket, you know,” he tells
the air. He checks beneath a ragged, melted plastic bag. No, not there
either. “I dunno why I… You’re not small enough…”
Frye scratches at his jaw. He checks his pockets again, he checks his
bag. Phoebe can’t fit in any of these but it always feels right to check.
People lose things all the time, he hears. Basketball games and car keys.
It’s always in the last place you think to look, the old recordings say, right
under your nose.
His bare foot slides across a patch of cold wetness. Something
cracks beneath his heel. He stumbles forward with a gasp and apology to
the fly-covered mound that once held a solid, fleshy frame.
“Ah, sorry, stranger!” he says, eyes wide, “Hadn’t seen you there!”
The mound of expired meat does not reply. They never do.
His outburst carries for what seems like miles, filling all the empty
gaps in the abandoned city. Frye frowns and glances around. The
recordings from his birth year often warned against loud noise, that it
attracts the undead. The infected, they say, are drawn to signs of life. As
if trying to reclaim it. Or, rather, to steal it. How horrid.
He stands still and waits for everything to get quiet again. He stands
still and waits for any sign of one of those scary monsters that he’s never
gotten the displeasure of meeting.
Instead, there is a squeak. And then another.
Frye’s shoulders round. If he could breathe, he’d sigh in relief.
He follows the squeaking through the streets. The squeaking and,
then, the unmistakable sound of a rodent crying out for help. He wishes
he had ears to cover. It’s one of his least favorite noises, right behind
alarm sirens.
He grasps onto the edge of a toppled wall as he swings around and
into the crater opening of another ruined building. The sun is grey but it
illuminates the scene.
There she is. His human. With a rat hanging out of her mouth.

11
 “Phoebe,” Frye tries for a scold, he isn’t sure how to do that yet.
“We’ve talked about this.”
“Mmrgh,” replies Phoebe. She looks at him. He looks back, harder.
Reluctantly, she opens her mouth and lets the poor thing thud to the
ground between her feet.
She’s so terrified of rats. And so quick to try and kill them.
Frye found Phoebe the Human back in Ohio, a few months back.
He had been feeling so down and lonely that, when he found her
swimming limp and face-down in that lovely Ohio River, it was as if an
angel had answered a prayer he didn’t know how to form.
This is what he has learned: humans are slow. Some humans have
stronger accents than others. Humans have grey skin and yellow nails.
Humans cannot walk but for a mile or so at a time or else their skeletons
begin to poke out from their bodies. Humans wear clothes with holes,
humans have only one ear, and their teeth peek out from their left cheek.
He remembers fishing her out of that river, muttering all of the
chemical statistics he remembered about it—once the most polluted
concentration of PFAs, a woman with a chirping voice had said, second
only to the new Cheros waste reservoir in Wyoming—and being so excited
when she had blinked at him when he flipped her over.

Year: 2096.
Month: March.
Location: East Liverpool, Ohio.
Source: Self-formed Memory.

Playing.

“Oh! Oh, my goodness, you’re—oh, you’re a human! And you’re awake! I

didn’t—Humans swim all the time, yes, I know this about you. Hello, my
name is Frye, I am forty-nine years and eleven months old, I—”

“Raaaaarngh.”

12
“Oh! [A laugh of joy.] Oh, I’ve never laughed! Oh! Oh, my—[Dialogue
muddled by intense splashing noises.]—hello, there! You sound amazing, this
is—”

“Ffffeeeeeeeeee. Brrraaarh.”

“[More splashing noises.] I see, Phoebe, so very nice to meet you! My goodness,
what a voice. Oh, my, ohhh, my—[Splashing. Phoebe moaning.]—I’ve got
you, I’ve got you, just… try to hold onto… Dear, is your leg meant to bend
that way?”

“Aaaaghn. Ffh.”

“Here, let me assist. [Water muffling his recording apparatus.] I hear humans
only have one knee joint, typically, I assume there’s a… [The crack of a bone
reset.] There!”

Eject.

After so many days and nights spent together, it feels as though he’s
known her for all his fifty years. Of course, for all his forgiving qualities,
he’ll never understand her affinity for putting rats in her mouth.
He stares at it where it’s fallen. The little thing’s leg seems to be
hurt. It takes a moment to roll on its stomach, bewildered, before it jolts
itself awake. The rat patters and sprints across the rubble, running across
his foot as it goes as if to thank him.
“You can’t keep killing them. There’s enough death around as it is.
And, besides, that’s no part of a balanced diet.” He steps around the
dried black stains on the ancient tiles, reaching to swipe the red from her
blue lips. “I know it has been a rough journey but you’ll need to recall
your etiquette before we reach the Cluster.”
She concedes, her face rolling forward and into his hand. “Uhhhd.”
There’s a spot of light reflecting onto her chin, illuminating all of
the flecks of blood there. He glances down and immediately recalls the
excitement.

13
 “Oh, look, Phoebe,” he takes the medal between his fingers, holds
it up for her to see. Its lanyard is as red as blood. “I found a medallion.
You humans gave these to soldiers and Spelling Bee contestants, and
now I’ve got one.” She drops her head to take it between her teeth.
Testing it for authenticity, he assumes. “I think I’d be good at human
Spelling Bees. Don’t you think?”
Phoebe spits out the medal and, after considering that, a tooth.
Frye forces out a huffing laugh and a crooked shiny grin.
“Come on, then, Phoebe.” He works his arm around her bony
waist, lugging her up to drape across his shoulder. She doesn’t weigh as
much as she did when he first pulled her from the river. He figures all
the heavy water drained out of her by the time they reached Dayton. It is
another human tradition, sweating. “We should be able to reach the
halfway point by sundown.”
His souvenirs clink and rattle around in his bag as they advance in a
leisurely pace. Her skin is soft and dented on her back where he’s pressed
his fingers in, creating a little handle for him to hold onto. Humans are
great companions, so very flexible and accommodating.
“Mmmmm,” hums Phoebe, her nose pressed to his ribs, her legs
kicking idly and arrhythmically against his back.
“We’re in agreement there, old chum,” he scans the area for scary
monsters before stopping at the edge of the road, looking both ways for
vehicles that have not been driven for many years. He shakes his head,
shuffling out across the cracked pavement to walk along the white lines
of the old freeway. “I mean, what are the chances that there would be no
unattended bed between here and there? I had high hopes for
Cincinnati, I’ve got countless mattress advertisements from that local
station, but… perhaps we missed the era.”
She wheezes a sigh.
“I know.” He pats her back. She starts to slip down his shoulder. He
catches her, adjusts, holds on. “The humans must have taken them to the

14
camps. That’s good news, isn’t it? We’ve only got a few hours before we
have a nice bed. Our first. That… that’ll be… exciting.”
She wraps warped hands in the lanyard, tugging it weakly. “Aah.”
“What is it?” He frowns down at her. “Are you alright?”
Phoebe lets the medal go. She pats down until she can pull at the
wire peeking out of his pants.
“Oh!” He rolls his eyes in relief, and she makes an indignant noise.
“I’m sorry, you know, you’re… You can be hard to understand
sometimes, try as you might. You’re certainly no newscaster.”
Frye pulls up his list of recordings. Phoebe gets bored so easily, she
likes hearing them too—though she can’t hear them as he does, so he
recites them for her accordingly. It’s a good exercise in memorization.
It’s a good exercise in friendship.
“What station do you want today?” he asks, ducking under a
swinging, smoldering highway sign. “Sports?”
Phoebe is silent.
“Hm.” He scoots around a semi-truck whose bed has caved in on
itself. “Talk show?”
Phoebe is silent.
“Hmmmm.” Frye looks down at her. “Cooking show?”
She jumps, digging claws into the panels on his stomach, “Fffaah!”
He laughs and it sounds like gears grinding, like something
breaking. “As you wish.”

Accessing.
Found.

Year: 2013.
Month: May.
Location: Upstate New York, New York.
Source: WABC-2 “The Rachael Ray Show.”

15
Playing.

“—Mary is gonna put the “cute” in charcuterie by showing us three different

ways to show off boards and take it beyond wine and cheese—”

“Wine and cheese,” he mutters, interrupting himself. “That’s one

thing I’ve never understood about you humans. All you eat is wine and
cheese.”
“Mmmf,” says Phoebe, who hates it when he interrupts Rachael.
“All I’ve got on your cuisine is this charcuterie tradition,” he stops
in place if only to be dramatic. “How am I meant to feed you properly if
I don’t have your two main ingredients?”
She cranes her neck to look at him. Sinew snaps like rubber bands,
lays greyed and frail over the tattered collar of her shirt. “Daaahn.”
Frye feels her waist and torso begin to separate again, like welded
pieces melting themselves free. It seems she’s starting to fall apart as well.
His data leaves and her body follows suit.
“I’m sorry, I know you’re hungry.” He lets her fall to land feet-first,
he can hear her knees clack into other, softer bones, shoving things to
the side. Back to the other carrying position, woman laid across his arms
like a burned blanket full of holes. She rests her sole ear to his chest with
a heavy breath. “The other humans will help us. We’re so near to them,
can you sense it? Food for you and wires for me. And a bed to share, if
they’ve got extras.”
Phoebe grumbles about nothing.
“You’ve gone these months without eating much other than a few
rat’s legs, you’ll live another night.”
“Grang.”
“What’s that?”
There’s a shallow hole in her temple, the insides are black. She lifts
her head and lets it fall again. His chest sounds full while she sounds
empty. A demand, he’s learned.

16
 “Ah.” He chuckles, a copied sound from a newscast he listens to as
he sleeps. “Yes, my apologies.”
They return to Rachael. Along the journey, he finds himself
ruminating on the pleasantries they exchange and how easily they are
traded. In an empty world, company is as lucky as it is useful. They cover
another seven hours of land together like it’s nothing, weaving and
chatting and remembering the old days of humanity, long before either
of them can really remember.
His steps begin to grow heavy once they reach Perry Lake. His
threshold for work seems to be closing in on itself. He focuses instead on
the way that Phoebe grows restless in his arms as they approach the
bank. She always seems to get nervous around water.

Year: 2010.
Month: August.
Location: Unknown.
Source: “Top Tourist Attractions in France.”

“Famous for its wines and cheeses, France is the world’s most popular tourist
destination, receiving 82 million foreign tourists annually—”

Fast-forward.
Resume.

“—including the Cite de Carcassonne, an historic fortified city in the

Languedoc-Roussillon region—”

“Perhaps we could have lived in France,” Frye says softly. “Fortified.

How lovely.”

“—and taking in the scenery by picnicking in the park. Enjoy wine, small
bites, sweet treats, and sweet kisses with your loved one.”

17
 Frye trips over his feet. Phoebe pushes at his face with distaste.
“Aaargh.” It’s an accusatory tone. Her pinky nail flakes off.
He barely manages to keep the both of them upright, wobbling like
a weak flag pole, “S-sorry, I hadn’t quite expected—”

“Capture the beauty of the city of love from the comfort of your bed.”

“That’s.” He smacks quickly and firmly at his head to get the file to
conclude itself with haste. “That’s quite enough of that, I’d say.”
For the past fifty years of his Frye’s life, there have been very few
certainties.
This is to say, one of his few certainties is that files behave in one
particular way. When he pauses them, they are paused. When he
dismisses them, they are dismissed. When he hits his head to make them
stop, they stop.
The file does not stop.
Instead, he sees sparks behind his eyes.

“Bed. Bed. Bed. Bed. Bed. Bed.”

The file chants.

“Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love.”

The file fizzles, stutters.

“C-cah-ah-p-t-ture.”

18
 The file moans like Phoebe.
And, then, its alarm blares.

Error.

It sounds distressed. He shuts his eyes tightly, his grasp on Phoebe

loosening. She snorts in offense.

Troubleshooting.
Troubleshooting.
Troubleshooting.

Save file corrupted.

File category corrupted: International Facts.

He frowns. There is a heat behind his eyes and at the base of his
headpiece, like someone’s set a fire in there. Fires smell like smoke. Frye
cannot smell. But surely it can’t be a fire. Fires require sticks and
friction. Fires require human intervention. He thought, at least.
Mankind’s greatest invention, and yet it continues without mankind?
The alarm chirps again. Its warning lingers like a sharply rung bell.

System corrupted.
Data corrupted.

Frye doesn’t understand.

19
 Phoebe is chewing on the medallion, he can hear the sound of
gargling spit and unyielding metal, but all he can do is stare forward at
the evening fog that’s begun to appear over the lake.

System corroded.
Data corroded.

“I don’t understand,” Frye says.

Concentration of mutant-C8 in bodily frame.

Acceptable level: 70 parts per trillion.
Current level: 8,000 parts per trillion.

Slowly, surely, he lowers himself to sit in the dirt of the bank. His
knees break the soil off in hard, brittle chunks. He stares down at it.
Children, pregnant residents, and those with auto-immune
deficiencies are encouraged not to play, touch, or walk in the grass as
doing so could increase risk of… risk… of… Risk of what? He can’t
remember.
He sets Phoebe down on the ground.
He is fifty years old. Nearing fifty-one. With a steady hand, he
brushes the shredded strap of his bag from his shoulder, letting it fall
behind him with a thud.
There is a tiny inscription, there, just above the crease of his arm.
Name and what he assumes to be make and model. And, beneath it, a
worn yet legible grouping of numbers.

02.13.2085.

20
 “Oh, goodness,” he whispers. He touches it gently. It’s shined and
polished from so many years hidden beneath the bag. “Oh, I…”

Initiating corruption protocol.

Estimated files affected: 53%

Estimated files to be deleted: 53%
Estimated duration of protocol: 20 hours, 29 minutes, 11 seconds.

They’ll be with the Cluster by then, he knows this for certain.

They’ll fix things, the humans, that’s what they tend to do. Their
intuition and their compassion. Their inventive spirits. A good meal of
wine and cheese for Phoebe, a good wire to the neck for Frye.
Thirteen hours and twenty minutes from a home.
Phoebe makes a noise in the back of a tired throat.
“Not to worry,” he says, sounding worried. He taps his inscription
lightly as if to show her. “Seems I’m merely overdue a decade or so.
Nothing a bit of rest can’t fix.”
Within the hour, they’re settled into their respective corners of a
patch of grass by Perry.
It’s sad to imagine how busy and happy the world used to be.
They’re surrounded by evidence of what used to be community. The
concrete paths of the park have worn, the benches splintered from heavy
and acidic rain. The dam stopped operating but the water seems only to
lap at its edges, curving it but not breaking through. The water, even
sick, behaves.
Frye learned about rest from Phoebe. After a full two days of
exploring, she’d begun to grow limp, even limper than normal, and the
lake was draining down her chin, and she began to slip down his sides
like she was thawing.

21
 Humans need rest. Once a night, or else they become incredibly
hard to deal with. Humans also like to sleep very, very far away from
their friends.
Frye stares at the night sky. He tries to take inventory of his pieces
but it seems that whatever he looks for has already been cued for
deletion. He’ll miss his international facts. He’ll miss his cooking shows.
He’ll miss… well.
What good does it do to miss something he can’t even remember?
Perhaps some rest is warranted after all.

Accessing media files.

Searching for file category: Bedtime Stories.

Searching.
Searching.
Searching.

Category deleted.

He frowns. He pats his hands on his stomach, and the empty sound
distresses him. He stares a moment longer.
“Phoebe,” he says, turning only his head to regard her. His cheek
hits the soil. The very soil that’s corroded him. He does not wince. “Are
you awake?”
Tonight as with all nights, once their location had been chosen, she
crawled as far away from him with an almost athletic sort of
determination before collapsing on her face and assuming her position.
Curled into herself like a tiny, fleshy tire. Looking in the opposite
direction.
“Aaaaaan.” The ridges of her back are sharp through her shirt. Her
voice rolls across the overgrown grass like a heavy tire. “Unnnn.”
He laughs weakly, “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

22
 “Mmh.”
“My bedtime file was the first to be deleted,” he rolls onto his side,
propping himself awkwardly on an elbow, “And I’m having a great deal
of difficulty achieving rest without it.”
“… Dnnn.”
“Right, yes—I’m merely… thinking.” Frye cannot remember the
human rituals to combatting embarrassment. “Did you mean what you
said, back in Lorain?”
Phoebe falls over and onto her back. She grunts, her arms getting
stiff before relaxing on the concave of her belly. It takes a minute, he is
patient, for her to meet his eyes.
“Luhhg,” she repeats.
“Yes, Lorain.” He doesn’t know how to lay. He doesn’t know how
to approach. “When I asked… how you felt. About me. And your arm
fell off, and I reattached it, and you put your teeth into my shoulder.”
He waits for a flicker of recognition. None comes.
“… If you didn’t, that’s alright.” Embarrassment. How to deal with
embarrassment? Why hadn’t that been corroded as well? “I simply think
that, perhaps, we might… achieve rest together.”
Phoebe stares at him, her jaw slanted sharply to the right.
“Would you like to lay close to me tonight?” he tries again.
Phoebe’s jaw cracks. She offers no other reply.
He clears his throat and swiftly turns over, putting his back to her,
arms folded close to his chest like a shield. The grass he rests his head on
is yellowed. It snaps under his weight.

Accessing further media files.

Accessing.
Accessing
Found.

23
Year: 2022.
Month: September.
Location: Los Angeles, California.
Source: Match.net “How to: Flirt after C8 Poisoning.”

Loading.
Buffering.
Troubleshooting.

Save file deleted.

Frye shuts his eyes and tries to remember the bedtime file. This is
unprecedented. He’s never tried to remember something that’s been
deleted. It makes sense that it doesn’t work.
He wants to smack his head some more to see what data comes
tumbling out. He’s afraid he’ll start another fire. He’s afraid he’ll lose
something worse, like Phoebe’s first word to him, like Phoebe’s first arm
dislocation. Like Lorain, and the feelings he learned in Lorain.
In all truth, he isn’t afraid of losing the data. He is, though, very
afraid of losing his friend.
“Eeeeeeeeeg.”
Frye pretends not to hear.
“Eeeeeeeeeeng.”
There’s a rustling sort of scuffle behind him. He hears the breaking
of fragile grass and the scratching of nails into pavement-dense dirt. The
labored panting of a woman whose lungs were punctured long, long
ago.
He looks over his shoulder.
Phoebe is trying to crawl. Or, rather, she is crawling in her own
time. Her legs bend in their strange ways, her feet pushing and her
hands pulling, swimming without water, swimming to him.
“Eeeh,” she says.

24
 “Oh.” He reluctantly returns to his back, extending an eager arm.
“Are you certain?”
“Aaaaaamng.”
She rests two shaking wrists into the palm of his hand. She really is
skin and bone. There’s barely any flesh left, barely any of the waterlog
and bloat he met her with. She must be so terribly hungry. She is losing
her own mass, somehow, with each passing second. If she shrinks any
more, she may no longer exist.
He drags her across the difference to rest beside him anyway. They
fit, he assumes, like a pair of lovers in France. Taking in the scenery.
“Is this alright?” he asks, and his voice shakes like it never has
before.
She drops her hand to slap in the center of his chest, the bone of
her cheek scraping against his arm as she nods idly. She nods until she
falls asleep.
The morning arrives far too soon in his humble opinion. Phoebe
chews on his hand as she waits for him to wake. It seems his alarm files
were one of the many casualties lost as he slept. Along with the index
finger on his right hand.
Only fourteen hours remaining until half of his files are gone. Only
thirteen hours and twenty minutes until they reach Kansas City.
The files that disappeared make him feel much lighter in all the
worst ways. It leaves ample room, though, for new files to be created.
Like his first night in true company. He’ll fill the gaps for now, just until
he’s in the care of someone who can mend him.
Frye props Phoebe up on what appears to have been a trash
receptacle, now a complex of abandoned bird nests. One of her eyes is
pinned closed by something sticky, the other tracking his movement as
he grabs the heavy bag from where it had been discarded.
“Hm,” he says. He rotates it in his hands, its contents roll and
rumble inside. He looks to his friend. “Phoebe, I think I might need to
put you in the bag again today.”

25
 She spits out a tooth.
“I just…” He unzips it, looks inside. “I figure… all these things I’ve
picked up, surely the other humans have them in the fort. Right?”
“Uughn.”
“And… I’ll need to have my hands free when I meet them, you
know, so that they know we mean no harm. And so that I can
participate in the hand-shaking tradition,” he adds, a little bit excited
about the last part.
“Grrrrhg.”
He will miss his souvenirs, he thinks. Even if the humans have
newer versions. But he’ll be losing things either way. His files and his
Discman, his facts and his lucky dice. Throw things out to find new
ones. Yes, that will be nice. Humans are nice.
He flips the backpack upside down and lets all of his treasures
tumble out in a pile around his feet. He can see, through the pieces of
her that have begun to peel, that Phoebe is mourning.
“All will be well when we reach our new friends, when all of their
valuables become ours,” he promises, stepping over his first tangible
memories like corpses, “Are you ready?”
It gets easier and easier to fit her into this sack every time he tries.
Only a few limbs need to be displaced, only a few grumbling grievances
need to be exchanged, but she’s folded neat like a parcel and zipped up
to the neck.
“Aaaagh, aaaaagh,” she complains as he lifts her up by the straps,
wearing her like a coat. Her head falls forward, chin on his shoulder.
Her eyes are foggy today from the heat like windows plagued by
humidity. They typically clear out after a while. “Sthhhhn.”
“Oh, don’t be too down about it.” He reaches back to push the
greasy hair from her eyes. “We’re going to reach our destination today!
Buck up!”
Phoebe squirms around as if she thinks she can take him down. She
gives up easily. She’s too hungry, too weak to stage a coup.

26
 It’s a relatively simple journey as the crow flies. Any routes he once
had are gone but they’re lucky to run into all of the most legible signs.
He walks on the grass, steps in puddles, balances on the curbs, arms out
to his sides. His friend’s breath is light and raspy on his nape. Frigid.
Frye takes inventory once more. There are only so many files left to
take advantage of but certainly it is his right to flip through them until
they’ve been purged.

Accessing media files.

Searching for file category: Music.

Searching.
Searching.
Searching.

Three files remaining.

“Oh, would you look at this, Phoebe!” Frye hops up onto one of
the semi-truck tires that had lost its vehicle. His cargo grunts as the metal
teeth of the zipper dig into her throat. “What are the chances, of the last
three songs I’ve got—”

Year: 1959.
Artist: Wilbert Harrison.
Genre: R&B/Rock and Roll.
Title: “Kansas City.”

Playing.

“I'm going to Kansas City / Kansas City, here I come. / I'm going to Kansas
City. / Kansas City, here I come. / They got some crazy little women there. /
And I'm gonna get me one.”

27
 “Why don’t you ever sing to me?” Frye asks, bouncing on the balls
of his feet to the beat as he skirts around glass and broken mirror shards
on this final stretch of highway. Millions of reflected Fryes and Phoebes
dance around their feet. “Humans sang all the time. You’ve never sung
to me.”
“Pffft.”
“I’m sure you’ve got a lovely singing voice. You’re just modest.”
“… Shnnnh.”
He laughs. He feels light and dizzy. He feels as though he’s left the
last several years behind him and all that is left is this—this day and the
night before, this lovely sun and this lovely company. And goodness, this
wonderful song.
“Kaaansas City,” Frye tries to replicate. It takes him at least a year to
replicate things. Best start now. “I’m g-gonna get me ooone.”
He listens until Phoebe begins to gnaw at the straps of the bag to
free herself. Message received loud and clear. The other two songs are
classical music, less repetitive, less easy to hum and bounce and dance
along to.
So, he simply walks at a heightened pace while Phoebe babbles.
Phoebe bites but without intention. Phoebe talks and talks about
nothing at all.
Human voices really have changed since the 2040s. Her accent is
incredibly strong, her words are incredibly vague. He thinks he finds the
spirit in them first before hearing their meaning. Frye likes her spirit. He
likes her quite a bit.
Time flies while marching to the beat of a concerto. He sees the
peaks of the sharp buildings stabbing the clouds overhead in no time.
“Phoebe!” he says. “Look at that!”
He points. It takes her a while to follow his direction.
“Ough,” she grunts in excitement.

28
 So many of his files are gone, so much space to fill. He feels he’s
drowning in excitement. Drowning so much that his technology flickers
and his feet go offline for half of a blink, sending him stumbling and
tumbling to the ground.
He catches himself on his palms. Phoebe coos and noses at his
shoulder.
“Waaaarg,” she says.
“No, no,” he sits back on his heels, wiping his eyes with the backs
of his hands to rid the sparks and steam from them, “I’m perfectly fine.”
He can feel her worming an arm out of the bag long before it’s
draped over his shoulder, scratching at his chest. He lays his four
remaining fingers over hers.
“We’re nearly there,” he says as he’s said for the past few months,
finally able to mean it. “I’ve lost the map but they say it’s impossible to
miss. Big and round and gleaming like a diamond.”
“Douagh,” she repeats.
“I don’t know what a diamond looks like,” he admits shyly, “but
I’m certain that I can identify a gleam.”
He wobbles as he stands. Extra weight on his back and less weight
on the inside. Wide stance, shuffling feet outward, staring at the road
ahead, the glimmer and the glamour of their final stop, the noise and the
people and the songs and the facts and the wine and the cheese within.
“We should prepare our greetings,” Frye says.
Phoebe agrees with a cough.
The Kansas City Cluster. They find it situated in the belly of a wide,
barricaded dome.
It’s… not quite as welcoming as he’d hoped.
The gleam is undercut by the way it’s been dented by what seems to
have been half a century of constant blows. Cars and trucks, burned and
battered, create a runway-like path from the street to its front doors that
are similarly covered by a tangle of scrap metal and toppled light poles.
Fortification is not the beautiful castle system he was thinking of.

29
 “Well,” he whispers, stopping at the very end of the runway,
“Perhaps it… will be nicer on the inside.”
Phoebe is silent. She looks ahead with two glassy eyes. Ahead to the
arena, ahead down the stretch of road, ahead and somehow beyond.
“Here we go,” Frye tries to make the sound of a deep breath.
Something sparks behind his eyes again. “Brave new world.”
After all of his journeys, this is somehow the most difficult walk to
make. All of his conversation starters are gone. All of his quips, all of his
practiced and memorized laughs. He walks forward and all he can think
about is what will happen when those big doors open and they’re
welcomed inside. What if he makes a fool of himself? What if they don’t
like the Kansas City song?
Perhaps a hello will be all that is required. The poster offered no
detailed instructions.
Mere seconds from home.
Excitement bubbles up in a stomach he does not possess.
“H-hello!” he calls. He raises his arms over his head, beginning to
wave to no one in particular. His shoulder joints creak and shriek like
rats. “Hi, I—I saw your flyers! About the community! I’m here for
friendship and minimal first aid! And souvenirs!”
They reach the halfway mark. There’s a harsh white line painted
here. He steps over it carefully, not wishing to ruin it.
The metal barriers creak and groan eerily.
Phoebe retrieves her hand from his chest and tucks it back into the
backpack.
The cars are more tightly packed together down here. Securely.
Forcefully. They get closer and the pathway gets tighter. Like a funnel.
Like… what is the word… the word for the apparatus created with
intent and purpose to capture something inside it? The apparatus that
allows entry but does not permit exit.
Oh! Yes, Frye remembers!
A trap.

30
 There is a sharp and loud noise, right then. A boom. It bounces
around the steel cage they’ve found themselves in—cage, yes, trap, that’s
what the word is—and Frye stops mid-step, squinting through the light
that reflects off the building, off the barricade, off the pavement.
He waits for the boom to fade before he drops his arms, officially
finished waving, officially confused.
“Huh…” He turns to look toward the other end. “I…” Back
forward, now, he puts on another, weaker smile, “Hello? Is anyone out
there? I’m here for friendship!”
There is a long silence. Phoebe’s breathing and the creaking of
metal.
And then, all at once, fifteen guns open fire.
The bullets thud and punch and thwack against his metal pieces,
they burn at his shoulders and arms and legs and cheeks. The ones that
don’t reach him instead pierce the vehicles around them, crack and
shatter glass. He is fortunate to not be made of aluminum.
Bullets do not breach his body but they certainly serve to bewilder.
“What…? What are you doing?” He staggers forward, holding up a
hand to block the sun, wincing at the sparks and heat. Phoebe moans
quietly behind him, tucked safe in her bag. “I’m—I said I, I said I’m here
for friendship, I, I don’t understand!”
Ricocheting. Clanging. The loud and constant whip-crack-boom of
gun and gun and gun and gun and—
“We’ve come a l-long way to see you!” he cries over the ruckus,
shielding his face with his arm. “My hands are up! Please, my. My mind
is falling apart, can you help us? Can you help me?”
They continue. Brass and copper and steep projectiles crumple and
fall away from the tough of his skin.
But they hurt.
But how?
They hurt somewhere in the inside, somewhere in between the hits.
Somewhere in the empty grouping of files he sacrificed, somewhere in

31
the empty bag. The thrill has boiled itself away and now it is merely…
whatever is left over. And what is left over seems to hurt.
“Please—please don’t.” He is pleading but his voice sounds tired.
“I’ve got a woman with me, she’s very nice—”
A stray projectile clangs against his throat, snipping the lanyard,
cutting his hard-earned medallion which slips from around him and
plunges into a puddle of dried cadaver at his feet, taking his pride with
it.
One by one, guns run out of ammo. The thunder idles piece by
piece until it’s finally over. The rumble is gone yet the storm remains.
He doesn’t know why he keeps walking, but he does. Small,
shuffling, afraid steps. The glass crackles beneath him. The crushed shells
jingle as he kicks them ahead like pebbles.
“We’ve come a long way,” he tries to speak but it’s only a whisper.
No one shoots. No one interrupts. “We’ve… I’ve come a long way, I…”
He stares at the ground as he walks forward, forward, forward,
trying to reach someone, anyone that might welcome them. The exterior
mirror to one of the trucks disconnects from its attachment, dropping
from its place several feet overhead to crash on the road. The sound is
much less than a gunshot and yet it makes him wince.
“We are so… very… very nice,” he promises, because humans are
nice, because certainly they’ll allow kindness, because certainly they
won’t continue to shoot at kindness. “I’m overdue and my friend here,
she’s… she’s in desperate need of a meal, if you’d please spare—”
“We can smell the rot from here!” someone shouts.
Frye stills.
That… was a someone. With a voice. It’s crisp. It says words just
like the recordings. It says words without an accent. It says words with
feeling and with clarity. It is not a groan, moan, grunt, or lisp. It is not a
gasp, choke, cough, or drool.

32
 He lifts his head. He regards the towering, curved, stricken
building, the absent glass panels leaving squared voids, black holes so
deep that they could fit entire states inside.
There is movement, all the way up there. He sees it now. Inside the
voids, like windows.
He squints through the light and the ring of his stressed head.
Bodies begin to peek out.
But not just any bodies.
They are pink and deep amber as their heads come into view. Their
hair is lovely and vibrant. Their cheeks and arms are absent of bone, of
grey, of peeling, of black and blue veins. Their voices sound like the
voices in the recordings, their voices sound so unlike Phoebe’s.
Frye understands his mistake now.
“I…” He shakes his head, reaching back to rest his hand on one of
Phoebe’s exposed bones that protrude from the bag. Humans have bones
that protrude. Don’t they? “I don’t understand.”
“We don’t let the Dead in,” says one of the humans, real humans,
hanging its arm outside to show the gun it holds.
“She’s… she’s not… I’m not…” Frye’s chest aches. He thought that
impossible. Perhaps it isn’t the presence of ache and rather the absence
of something more important. “She’s… I assure you, I think if you’d
take the time to meet her, the both of us, she really is—”
The human raises its arm, its gun-wielding arm, and points it right
at them. Another shot, another bullet. It crackles so loud that the clouds
stop moving.
Frye ducks his head with a whimper. He hears the whistle as it
misses him. He hears, too, the thudding squelch as it lodges into
Phoebe’s neck.
“Nnh,” she murmurs, pressing a cold cheek to his shoulder.
Humans do tend to react when hit with a bullet.
There’s a click from above. Then, fourteen more. The last bleeding
humans reload their guns and Frye watches them with parted lips.

33
Surprised. Disappointed. Confused. Betrayed. He intends to say
something more but his greetings are gone. Excitement turned to steam
and now all he’s got is something deeper, something he lost the meaning
to as well.
Fifteen arms extend.
Frye holds up his hands and they are shaking again.
Surrender. He surrenders.
Humans are pink and deep amber. They have guns at the ends of
their arms and they are not kind. Humans do not have souvenirs and
they are not inviting.
He swings his friend-stuffed bag around to his front, tightens the
straps around his shoulders, tightens them until the fabric is squeaking
like it might snap apart. Phoebe’s eyebrows are gone, for the most part,
but they are drawn upward as she looks at him so close to his face. Afraid
that he might put her down, that he might leave her here.
Frye interlocks his arms around her back. She relaxes as much as
she can while folded in so many halves. Cold, colorful, bright, living
eyes watch from their higher ground as they back away in tandem, Frye’s
legs beginning to limp in embarrassment, and something more than
embarrassment, a pain he cannot understand, one that locks his legs and
arms and mouth, that makes it so hard to move.
“Farewell,” he says, because he can’t remember the greetings but he
can surely remember the inverse. “We’ll be going, now.”
He and his best friend in the whole world walk out of a steel trap
with bullets on their heels. He keeps her hidden from their fire. He
keeps her safe. He keeps her held tight like that until they’re out of view,
until they’re out of the city and back on that highway, passing the same
trucks and the same glass and the same patches of grass.
“Fruuuhg,” Phoebe murmurs against his chest, choking on his
name, choking on the bullet, black blood pooling in the divot of the
bag, “Rrhy, ffuh.”

34
 “They shot you,” he tells her. Not because she doesn’t know but
because he’s the one who took her there. “Oh, Phoebe, I…”
“Fruuh,” she forgives him too quickly.
Her head falls forward, landing heavy on his nose. He noses her
back until he can see the wound. It looks dreadful. The undead don’t
feel pain, the undead can’t die, and he knows this to be true. But that
does not mean he enjoys the sight. The circumstance. The lost potential.
He kneels in the center of an empty road. He settles her in the
basket of his legs, props her up for analysis, for removal. His hand is on
her broken, diagonal jaw before he can understand quite why.
“I got you all wrong, my dead friend,” he says softly. She chews on
the tough synthetic flesh of his left palm while he reaches into the side
of her throat to remove the shrapnel. “You weren’t kind because you
were human. You were kind because you weren’t.”
Phoebe clacks her tongue. The bullet is discarded. She slumps
forward, wiggling around.
“Alright, alright,” he laughs and it is a sad sound. “Yes, I’ll free you
from your binds, I suppose. Let you stretch your legs. I must have broke
them, then, getting you in there.”
She nods, solemn. “Haan.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asks, unzipping the sides, letting
her roll out like a marble into a heap of dislocated joints. “I am so
embarrassed.”
“Mngnn,” she replies guiltily.
“Of course I’d still like you, Phoebe.” He starts at the shoulder,
popping her back together. “No one ever talked about the charm of the
dead ones, you’re incredibly well-natured.”
She blushes at that, her cheeks growing dark and moss green.
They can only make it to Prairie Village before Phoebe is wilting
from such a long day. A long day after a longer grouping of months. She
deserves rest and she deserves a meal and a good and nice bed but he’s
beginning to fear that, perhaps, there may not be anything left.

35
 The one building that hasn’t been burned or smashed is a tiny
diner, tucked into the corner of the downtown area. Rather quaint,
perfectly sized for two. Its windows are thick and almost plasticky, the
material curves slightly when he puts pressure on it.
“This may be good,” he says. Phoebe groans and collapses into the
window like she might be able to walk right through it. He scoops her
up, ushering her through the rickety door that he swiftly bolts shut. “It’s
no fortress but it should be good for the night, yes?”
She shimmies around him, all jagged angle and swinging tendon,
and falls into one of the dusty booths. The plastic salt shaker is knocked
off the table. She grumbles, muffled beneath the table, like she wanted
that to happen.
“Woah, there,” he pulls her upright. “Are you alright?”
Phoebe blinks slowly. That’s a yes. He smiles and takes his seat
across from her. The old thing creaks as it settles.
He folds his hands. He looks around. He nods. He nods some
more.
“I think this will work,” he decides. “Yes. Yes, I think so.”
His friend looks at him strangely, sinking down in her seat, flesh
twisting around her spine like cubes of meat on a skewer. A Rachael Ray
delicacy.
“Humans enjoy small… comforting spaces.” He brushes the dust
and the severed bug appendages from the table. It’s proper and silver
beneath all the age. “See? All it needs is some attention and I think… I
think this might be perfect for us.”
“Unnh,” says Phoebe.
“You think so?” he holds his hand to the paint, tilting his head, “I
think I’m a bit shinier.”
A moment passes, the two of them sitting, the two of them staring
at the inconsistent color match. Phoebe is hungry, he can hear. She
degrades just as he does.

36
 “I’ve got no wine and cheese,” he says gently, closing his fingers
into a fist that then knocks on the table. Defeated. “I’ve got no scientist
either.”
Phoebe’s head rolls forward. She stares at the dust-free spot on the
table and drools a puddle into her lap.
“Nonetheless,” he sits straighter, smiling wide, he thinks. “We’ve
got each other, don’t we?”
Phoebe moans. He reaches over, pressing his rusty knuckles to her
forehead, pushing her upright again.
She’s smiling too.
“I’ll look for something tomorrow. Something edible.” Frye
watches her slide down the slant of the booth until she drops to the
ground, thunking her forehead against the ridge. “Goodness. If I can
remember what edible means.”
“Wrraahn.” A cold hand wraps around his ankle and tugs.
“Fruuuugh.”
“Yes, I suppose.” It is hard to fit his body in the thin space she has
chosen, a thick pole between them. It is managed. It is wonderful.
“Goodnight, Phoebe.”
“Grog.”

Accessing media files.

Searching for file category: Bedtime Stories.

Searching.
Searching.
Searching.

Category deleted.

37
Searching for file category: Comforting Tales.
Category deleted.

Searching for file category: Optimistic Framing.

Category deleted.

Searching for file category: Romantic Interludes.

Category deleted.

Estimated files deleted: 53%

Protocol complete.

Phoebe hears a rat somewhere in the diner early the next morning,
so early that the sky dyes everything a dull orange. He feels her crawl off
of him, hears her tongue and joints click as she prepares to hunt.
He doesn’t have the cause to stop her anymore. Undead women do
not exclusively eat wine and cheese. They quite enjoy the taste of blood.
Allegedly.
So, he lays beneath the two-top all on his lonesome, trying to
remember how to dream. Every article, recording, chatlog, song or news
story has already been deleted. He only has memories now. Memories
and functions.
All he can do is sit and listen to her noise. It’s hardly
unentertaining. The slap of her steps, the minor-key of her hunting song,
the thud of her body as she falls into stools and walls and counters. The
squeak of the poor rat who was merely looking for a home itself.
A noble chase. Buckets are punted and baskets of silverware are
overturned. He thinks, in the fuzz of the morning, that Phoebe is
laughing. Laughing like someone who can finally do what she’s good at
doing.
There is a crunching for several minutes.
“Good breakfast?” he asks, opening an eye, staring up at the
wooden roof he huddles beneath.

38
 “Rrraaaaaaarrnng,” comes the distant reply, muffled and rounded
by the animal she’s got between her teeth.
“That’s good,” he interlocks his fingers. He hears her footsteps
patter-shuffle-pattering back into the main room, dragging her feet
through the various things she’d thrown to the floor. “Perhaps it had a
family, too. That should… keep you for a few days, yes?”
Phoebe takes a wheezing breath. He can hear the gargle and squish.
He brings his hands up to his eyes, thankful that the file on rodent
family dynamics is long disappeared.
“Mumm, mummh, mumm,” she mumbles as she chews, sounding
so happy, sounding more like herself than he ever thought she would.
Good.
If, one day, all of his first memories are gone, he will gladly take
these. Happy memories in Prairie. Prairie, the city of… of… He forgets
the word. Started with an L. Or an M.
“Fuuuuuuuursh,” she summons him.
He lifts his head. She’s standing by the table, now, her toes turned
in and her legs bent backward. Her knees are green-speckled and rough.
Frye constructs the start of a reply, it would begin with alright or so
impatient or why don’t you rest a while longer, but a quiet noise from
outside reroutes him entirely.
Flipping onto his stomach, he scrambles out from the little nook.
Phoebe, whose face is so covered in blood that she almost appears
human, looks at him like he’s ridiculous.
Gunshots. Faint but present. A popping through dull, plastic glass.
“Eeeth,” Phoebe says, scratching his arms as he immediately sweeps
her onto the ground. She continues to scratch as he pushes her back into
the shadows, holding his finger to his lips. She continues anyway.
“Luuummg.”
“Give it a moment,” he promises. She dislikes that idea but he’s got
the upper hand here, blocking her in. “Just ‘til it stops.”
Pop. Pop-pop, pause, popopopopopop!!

39
 Had they followed, those humans? He doesn’t understand. All his
life he’d gone without running into danger and, in this single day, he’s
gotten quite tired of it. He misses the quiet. He’d just like to stay here in
this diner with his Phoebe and his thoughts, however few of them
remain.
Pop, pop, pop, pop. It gets closer, it gets louder. Pop–pop–pop.
And then, clear as an orange day: “Shit!!!”
Frye waits for further warfare but it seems they’ve exhausted their
weapons. He presses a hand to her chest as he makes his way up to his
knees, peering over their own humble barricade. Phoebe whispers
something even he can’t understand.
He straightens his back to see better through the dust and steam of
the window.
A human is running quick and desperate toward their fort. It looks
to be a young one, far younger than fifty years, smooth skin that shines
with slick sweat in an early morning light. Must be one of the children
of the Cluster, must have lost its way. It must be a steep and frightening
drop, he imagines, for a threatener to suddenly lose its ability to
threaten.
It seems to have company, too. A grouping of grey and angular
figures at least fifteen yards out, shuffling, stumbling. Hungry. Familiar.
“Aaaaahn,” she whispers, ripping at metallic beam forearms.
He wonders if this is what he and Phoebe had looked like to those
unkind humans in Kansas City. The human is pathetic, tripping over its
own feet, over curbs and debris, its eyes wide and searching for
someplace to hide.
It seems to see Frye. With squinting eyes, it mistakes him for
humanity. It runs even faster, mistaking him to be a good sign, reaching
their diner with no present amount of grace.
“Hey!” it says, gaze darting around the empty room it can see,
whipping its head around to look backward to the impending doom,
and then inside again. “Hey, dude! Little help?!”

40
 Frye can’t even think to say anything. Because what is there to say?
Hardly a time to ask for an apology. And, in truth, he barely recalls what
an apology means.
The human begins banging its awful fleshy hands on the fiberglass
door of the diner, smudging the material with its oils and its spit and its
frantic yelling.
How horrid.
Frye stands with no hurried pace, staring at it, searching for
something good that might come from this. His metal lips curl into
something they’ve never formed before. A deep, disgusted frown.

Searching for file: “How to Greet a Neighbor.”

File deleted.

Searching for file: “How to Welcome Enemies with Compassion.”

File deleted.

Searching for file: “How to Transcend Grudges.”

File deleted.

He smooths his hand down his chestpiece, which sparks with an

unfriendly, unnatural friction. He begins his journey to the door. It’s
rattling something terrible with the human’s insufferable banging.

Searching for file category: Morality in the Face of Devastation.

Category deleted.

Searching for file category: Empathy Toward Those Who Devastate.

Category deleted.

Searching for category: Forgiving Attitudes Despite It All.

Category deleted.

41
 He pauses with his hand on the metal bar there, so close to this
human, studying it up close, finding nothing spectacular, finding
nothing appealing.
He waits for an apology. He waits for something kind.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” it shouts, its teeth straight and
white and sharp, its eyes small and green, its healthy hair hanging into
its thick, blood-swollen face. “Let me in, you—you fucking—what are
you, psycho?!”
It grabs at the handle and begins to pull at it. Frantic. Afraid.
Sweating. Not seeming to notice the clear PUSH TO OPEN on the door.
Perhaps humans are not as smart as he thought them to be.
Frye looks over to the table. Phoebe has unhinged her jaw, her neck
seeming longer, her nails seeming sharper as she slithers out from her
hiding place, keeping low, keeping quiet. Her skin peels away from the
joints, unfolding like paper, like clothing.
He’s never seen her eyes look so bright. The red of the blood down
her chin makes the yellow around her irises glow.
The lock of the door struggles to unlatch itself. The human’s
banging must have bent it somehow.
That’s no matter. He welcomes their guest anyway.
It stumbles inside with no intent of gratitude on its horrible
tongue, clutching at its heaving chest with pink fingers, gasping with its
unpierced lungs.
“Christ,” it’s saying, which Frye doesn’t understand. “I—Christ,
they said they were all gone, are those fuckers procreating or something?!”
Frye remains by the entrance. He waits for gratitude. He waits for
kindness. He looks to the swarm in the street. They seem to have
forgotten what it was they were chasing in the first place. The poor
darlings, starved for fresh meat.
“You are a long way from Kansas City,” Frye bows his head.

42
 The creature pays him no mind, patting its hole-less pockets,
pulling out its useless gun. It curses beneath its breath. It mutters
coordinates beneath its breath. It doesn’t seem to hear Phoebe’s bones,
beginning to creak as she unfurls like a rotten flower. It doesn’t seem to
notice the rot.
It seems gratitude is not a human concept. So, he pinches the lock.
It clunks when he turns it. It sounds like a decision.
The human looks at him, confused. It glances down at the tiles, at
the fresh red footprints that are so clearly missing toes, at the black
residue on Frye’s wrists and chest. Tacky like tar, opaque like shadow.
The human takes a deep breath. It seems to notice the smell, then.
If nothing else, it is a good study in human fear; the way it becomes
board-stiff, spinning slow on the heel of its heavy-duty blood-black boot.
Frye clicks on a recorder out of sight, a spark between his eyes. He leans
on the wall and watches the human as it sees, as it hears, as it begins to
understand.
“W-wuh-wha-h,” the human stammers, sounding very much like a
creature indeed.
“Aaaaaaannnnh,” Phoebe agrees, perching on the back of the
booth, smiling at the bag of bone and beating blood, much bigger than a
rat, much more fun to catch.
The human screams.

File created.

Year: 2096.
Month: November.
Location: Prairie Village, Kansas.
Source: Self-formed Memory.

File designation: Phoebe’s first kill in the new house.

43