Chapter Four: Alternative Lifestyle

“Hey, have you ever played Half-Life?”

Ace spun the middle section of the cube around experimentally. “Half-life of what? Uranium?”

“Half-Life the GAME, man. Are you even listening?”

“I’m listening fine. Maybe you should be easier to understand.”

Cody stretched out long-wise on the bus stop bench. “Whatever. Half-Life puts you in the game as a scientist, Gordon Freeman. When the game starts, you’re already on the train heading for your job, and you have only the vaguest awareness of the background of your character and the game world itself. The sequel is even more like that, dropping you off on a train with absolutely now warning about what you’re going to run into.”

“I’m reading zero on the Point-O-Meter.”

“The point is you are in exactly the same situation. Nothing but academic background information, no ideas what you have done or what to do next.”

“Oh. Oho. I see. We’re in a videogame.”

“…that is totally NOT what I meant.”

“Are you a ventriloquist?”

Cody and Ace both froze, turned towards each other, then looked down the street. An old lady with a cane and a massive shawl that was more like a poncho on her withered frame limped forward.

Cody yawned and licked his muzzle. “No, I’m actually a talking dog. Crazy old biddy.”

“Sorry about that, ma’am, I can’t take him anywhere.”

The woman glowered at Ace and sat down at the end of the bench. Cody looked back towards Ace and saw him still absorbed in the puzzle cube. Grinning, he turned to look at the old woman. “Sooo… what’s a nice girl like you doing in this part of town at this time of night? Would you like to come back to my place and watch me lick myself?”

The lady’s cane whipped over Cody and struck Ace on the back of the head. The puzzle cube dropped as his hands came up to grab the point of impact. “HEY! What the hell! Hit him! He’s the one who said it!”

“I could see your lips movin’!”

“She’s right. He’s a terrible ventriloquist, isn’t he ma’am?”

“You are THIS close to getting turned into a decorative rug, Cody!” Ace yelled, holding up a finger and thumb scant millimeters apart.

***

When the bus came and the old woman finally left, Ace stood up.

“This is not getting us very far. I haven’t even gotten one side yet.”

“Hey, you have an apartment, right?”

“I do?”

“The paper, dumbass. It said that an apartment key was hidden in the… the, uh… dammit.”

“Wainscotting. That raised bit of wood on walls near the floor, I think.”

“So let’s go find that key and that apartment.”

“Okay, that sounds like a good idea.”

“I’m filled with good ideas.”

“True. Lead on, MacStuff.”

“Me? I don’t know where it is!”

“Oddly enough, neither do I.”

“…huh.”

There was a short pause as the man and dog stared, then Cody started looking around, his ears perked up.

“What is it?”

“There should have been crickets chirping. Or a tumbleweed. Those things roll by every time there’s an awkward pause.”

“Mr. Zimmerman, I think your grasp on reality has grown very loose.”

“I’ve been turned into a fucking dog! Reality can suck on my dick! Which is kind of… oh, HELL that’s depressing.”

“What?”

“I just realized that this is probably the only time in my life I’m ever going to get any.”

“There is a joke about doggy style in there, but I refuse to touch it without protective gloves.”

***

“Almost sunrise. This apartment hunt thing is not working very well.”

“We’ve only got one more building and one of those villages to check.”

Ace scratched his head, wincing as his fingertips hit the bullet wound. The pain triggered a small chain of recent memory that ended in a glaring, cut off blank. If memories were wires, this one would have been spewing sparks like the girl in a robotic remake of The Exorcist.

“I am SUCH an idiot.”

“How can you tell?”

“I was so focussed on getting my stuff back that I never even thought to check with them to see where they found me. All I know is some dickhead shot me in the…”

“The head, I know, you-”

“And the bullet is STILL IN THERE! What the FUCK?!”

“Wait, what??”

“I knocked out the pathologists before they could make any cuts! No wonder my head hurts.”

“Considering how long you’ve been walking and talking, maybe it’s not serious.”

“It’s seriously OW.”

“Seriously what?”

“What I said. Ow.”

Cody cocked his head to one side. “Oh yeah. Good thing I’m a super genius. Otherwise we could have had a who’s on first scenario on our hands.”

“A what scenario?”

“Who’s on first. Comes from a comedian routine by Abbot and Costello. It involves baseball, unusual names, and the complete inability of the comedians to elaborate on their questions to eliminate the multi-value options of lang- …hello.”

Ace looked up from the sidewalk and saw that they had reached the apartment building. It was not a well built place, and the overall structure had the faint odor of human waste — both that produced by live humans, and that made from dead ones.

“Just my luck.”

***

There were no signs saying that pets were not permitted in the building — probably, Ace reflected ruefully, because pets counted as groceries for people who had no place to go but here. They had begun a systematic search of each floor, which proved totally fruitless. Trudging up to the top floor, Ace started to lose both hope and patience. And he was running out of patience faster.

“I should have known. Of course the apartment wouldn’t be in the same city as I was. It’s probably on the other side of the fricking country.”

“Do not count your deviled eggs before they crack.”

“That is the stupidest proverb I’ve ever heard.”

“How would you know? You can’t even remember any proverbs other than that.”

“I can SO remember a few. A watched pot never boils. Don’t throw the baby out with the baby monitor.”

“Wait, the hell? That’s supposed to be bathwater.”

“Don’t throw the bathwater out with the baby monitor?”

“GAAAAH! No, it’s the baby part! Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater that you used to clean the baby!”

“What are you yelling at me for? I don’t even have a baby!”

“Maybe you do and you forgot that too.”

Ace was about to form a response so witty and clever that Cody would not be able to talk for five minutes, when he noticed someone else in the hall, wiping some shaving cream off his chin with a rag.

“Oh, dear. I knew you were having romantic troubles, but this is stooping too low for even you, Mac.”

“Oh har… har? Wait a second, do you know me?”

“As much as you know yourself, minus one cornish hen. It’s tax season in Sri Lanka, you know.”

“…no. No, I didn’t know.”

The man in the hall looked strangely at Ace, then shoved the rag into the back pocket of his pants and stepped forward. It occured to Ace suddenly just how much of this man was both very muscular and very messed up.

“Mac, if I were to tell you I was a man on a mission for the ugliest face in the Northern Hemisphere, where would you tell me to look?”

Ace looked at the man’s biceps, tattoos, and scars. Especially the scars. A man does not accumulate that many signs of injury unless he’s very good and maiming people who would injure him.

“I don’t really know. Ugliness isn’t really localized, is it? There’s ugly people pretty much everywhere.”

The man looked a little bit sarcastic, and sounded a lot sarcastic. “Good greif man. You forgot. What is it this time? A hedgetrimmer that makes that hedge art? A mannequin that stands still for hours just to scare the fuck out of some homeless drunk? Or another one of those hunter-seeker machines?”

Ace opened his mouth, closed it again, then opened it to actually speak.

“Are you on drugs? Your sentences and words are not making ANY sense to me. AT ALL. I don’t even know who you are. I’m not even sure why I’m here! Jebus. Come on Cody. Let’s get out of here before he starts screaming there are invisible spiders on him.”

As Ace turned around, the man stepped forward. Very fast. Faster than any normal man could have done.

“Mac! Wait a second!”

“And what’s with this Mac stuff? Do I look like colorful home computer to you?”

“Only when I’m drunk. But I call you that because that’s what you are, and you were never able to tell me WHO you are. Or were.”

Ace stopped walking towards the stairs and turned back to the man, who was only a few feet away now. “I know you? I mean, I knew you?”

“Yes. You decided to start over again, I see. I thought you said you were going to leave me a note next time.”

“Stop. Speaking. Of. Things. Out. Of. Context. It’s driving me crazy!”

The man looked at Ace speculatively, then nodded. “You’re right. We’re communicating at cross-purposes. There are too many assumptions involved on both sides. Look, come back to my apartment. I’m going to call Mitch. He’s the one with communication skills. He’ll be able to ask you the right questions and give the right answers.”

Ace hesitated. On the one hand, he wanted answers. On the other hand, the guy’s appearance did not inspire confidence, unless it was confidence in the dark side of human nature. On a completely seperate third hand his mind was starting to obsess on certain fragments of the man’s statements.

“Well… okay. If Cody can come.”

The man looked at Cody and nodded. “The more the merrier. Is he self-aware and sentient? Speech capability?”

Cody stuck out his tongue at the man, which for a dog was fairly impressive. “Why not?”

The man didn’t even blink. “Cool. And now the time has come for re-introductions.” He held out his hand to Ace.

“John Reeso, at your service. Or not. Dun dun dun.”

“Dun dun dun?”

“Okay, it wasn’t a good joke. Sorry.”