I shuffled up to the diner on my four misshapen limbs, the corns on my backward foot aching with each step. The hyaloid-designed handle mocked me by being a few inches out of reach, so I pressed my stubby, three-fingered hand against the glass door. A greasy smudge appeared where I placed my palm, and a tall hyaloid sitting at the counter looked over, his face-lights flashing at the edge of his mouth instead of the center, indicating a frown.
The door creaked as I entered. Many translucent hyaloid eyes turned toward me, and I felt self-conscious about my flabby, fur-covered flesh and my lack of transparence. My windblown head fur stood up, and I tried to smooth it with the hand that came out of the back of my neck. I smashed my rotten-tomato-shaped body into a booth, feeling constricted by the table. Only five of my seven eyes still worked—the other two were obstructed by cataracts—and I used my working eyes to inconspicuously take stock of my surroundings.
Two hyaloids talked in unison two booths away, their voices tinkling in beautiful harmony. They pressed their square glass hands together and puffed air into each other’s palms, a hyaloid sign of affection. Their face-lights glowed in warm hues, demonstrating their positive feelings. A fellow antediluvian worked behind the counter, but he was less primordial than me. He stood tall enough to see over the grill, had only two mouths, and was nearly hairless. I felt a rush of jealousy, but swallowed it down; ugly emotions were unacceptable.
The hyaloid at the counter sat with his broad back to me. I could see a pool of gloss cooking on the grill through his rectangular torso. A group of four young hyaloids sporting the chartreuse lamps of the university in their chest chambers laughed in coordinated chimes. When one of the hyaloids spoke, faint echoes reverberated through all the others in harmonious, bell-like music. It brought a tear to my right lower eye to hear.
A short hyaloid levitated toward me, light twinkling through her face. Neon pumped through the hexagonal orange lamp floating in her internal cavity, behind the latched door of her chest. It sent dazzling designs throughout the diner.
Fat globs of sweat gathered in the ridges of my wrinkled flesh. I tried to remember which frequency was appropriate in this setting, at this time, in this part of the country. Of my thirteen mouths, I narrowed it down to two possible accepted frequencies.
The hyaloid’s face-lights indicated a smile at me.
“Hi,” came her gentle voice, echoing faintly through all the other hyaloids present. “Do you know what you would like?”
I ventured with the mouth closest to my left armpit, “I would like—”
Abruptly, all the hyaloids stopped talking. Even the other antediluvian looked over, his single eye reproachful. The hyaloid server looked shaken and a little embarrassed on my behalf. “Er, that frequency isn’t appropriate,” she whispered.
Of the two mouths, I had guessed wrong. I wanted to sink into the booth and never speak again. The shame rattled me, but I concentrated on closing that mouth and opening the one on the top of my head. “I’m so sorry.”
The hyaloid smiled, waving her hand as if to say, “Don’t worry about it.”
“I would like liver and intestine,” I said, “and a cup of hot bone marrow.”
The server tried to hide a face-light grimace and nodded. “You got it.”
The antediluvian cook scooted the blue gelatinized gloss into a bowl and placed it in front of the hyaloid at the counter, alongside the cup of sparkling prism cubes. I’d tried gloss a time or two in college, mainly to try and fit in with the hyaloids, but I just couldn’t acquire a taste for it. You could always tell when an antediluvian had abandoned the carnivorous diet because they were usually rail thin, partially transparent, but still soft edged and formless. They couldn’t achieve the sharp angles or total clarity of hyaloids no matter how hard they tried.
I smelled my food as it began to cook and had to wipe saliva from all my mouths. The server carried the bubbling marrow over on a tray.
“Careful,” she said, “this is very—”
She bumped into the side of the booth and the cup of marrow tumbled over the lip of the tray. Scalding bone marrow landed in one of my eyes and on the skin of a half-formed nose.
“Oh my Glass! I’m so sorry—” she said, large triangular lights pulsing in her glass eyes. “Somebody! Call a polisher!” She bobbed in agitation, clearly wanting to help, but afraid to touch my bubbling skin.
I clamped all my mouths shut, pressing as many hands as could reach over them. Excruciating waves of pain pulsed out from the epicenter of my ruined eye. I writhed in agony and shock, falling out of the booth as the server called out for a polisher. I swallowed the sounds bubbling up to my mouths. Don’t scream! Whatever you do, don’t scream! It will only make the situation worse!
My mouths trembled as I tried to suppress my voice, but they all burst open as one, thirteen discordant wails making hideous noises of pain.
“No! Please—” the server said as she vibrated in the onslaught of frequencies. “Please st—” She burst into fragments that clattered to the tile floor.
The hyaloid at the counter floated toward the door at a reckless pace, his lower half cracking and then shattering and his upper half falling to the floor. He then crawled toward the door on his sharp elbows as fissures snaked up his body. He fell into a pile of shattered glass a few feet from the door. The four college hyaloids and the couple had taken shelter underneath their booth, but they too shattered in the frequency of my voices, their broken pieces interspersing in the seats.
The pain began to lessen slightly, and I regained control of my mouths. I stared around in shock at what I’d done. I’d just shattered eight people! I thought of the warm face-lights of my server and looked over at the pile of broken glass, choking back the desire to vomit. The antediluvian cook gaped in stunned silence, the spatula trembling in his hand, the liver and intestines burning on the grill behind him.
“Glass,” the cook said in a stunned whisper. His mouths pinched and he slammed the spatula down. “I’m calling the damn Glass upkeepers!”
“No, no please!” I begged. “They’ll hollow me! I’ll be a zombie—”
He picked up the emergency chime from the wall. He hesitated for a second, his eye flicking toward me. I held my half-melted face, breathing in ragged gasps.
“I’m not going back to the savoir faire ship for you or anybody. I got a good job here and no dirt on my rep.” He shrugged and shook the chime furiously. It pealed a refined but urgent plea. Upkeepers in anti-frequency suits would be shifting to the material plane any minute. I looked around with my good eyes and spotted a repeller key in the remains of the hyaloid who’d been at the counter. I stumbled over to it and pulled the small crystal on the transparent string from the pile of broken glass. I slipped it over one of my ears, as I didn’t really have a neck to wear it around.
“You’re just making it worse for yourself,” the cook said. “Turn yourself in. You’ll go to the ship for a few years, but they probably won’t hollow you. I been to the ship. Just participate in the program and they’ll cut you loose. Even set you up with a job on your relea—”
“I just shattered eight hyaloids! Are you gonna vouch for me that it was an accident?” I asked as I dragged my backward leg toward the door.
He looked at the ground.
I pushed open the door, trying to distance myself from the shock of guilt and panic. I had no choice but to run.
“I know it was an accident, so I won’t record you,” the cook muttered as if in consolation.
I hobbled out the door and saw a row of repellers—transparent, circular discs that hovered off the ground a few feet and served as the hyaloid equivalent to cars—parked in front of the diner. I waved the crystal key in my hand and a gold glow pulsed in one of the discs.
Behind me, I heard a crackle of energy muffled by the closed door of the diner. Flashes of multi-colored lights followed, and I knew the upkeepers had arrived. I stepped onto the repeller, hoping to Glass it would hold my weight. It wobbled and its hum sounded labored, but it rose and I steered it into the street as I heard hyaloid voices tinkling in angry agitation. Something shot past me as I sped away, and the paralysis bead struck the wall of a building ahead of me, splattering its gooey neurotoxin all over the street. I steered toward the left, ducking the unfamiliar vehicle down a narrow alley, almost hitting a parked repeller.
They wouldn’t shift against a moving target! That would be too dangerous! I just have to keep weaving—just keep mov—
I heard a crackling sound and shielded my eyes from a bright flash of color as one of the upkeepers shifted in front of me. A male hyaloid voice howled in pain as he materialized partially in a wall. Despite the required padding, the underlying structural steel shattered his glass feet. He’d never hover again. The rest of his body fell to the ground, cracks running up his arm as he tried to slow his fall by repelling with his palm.
Why did he try that? That’s insanity! But I’m going to be blamed. I’m—
A fountain of guilt bubbled over inside me. Another person hurt because of me! Who cares that it was an accident? Their families will still grieve. I am a monster. I’m worrying about getting in trouble when others are dead. For a second I considered stopping the repeller and giving myself up, or even purposely crashing into a wall above the padded line. Simple, selfish survival instinct propelled me forward.
After several miles my weight became too taxing on the repeller. Its gold light flickered and it hovered down to the ground. I had made it to the outskirts of the city, where more antediluvians lived. I found a dumpster behind a business and climbed in, hoping to Glass no one saw me, or worse, recorded me. I reasoned no hyaloid would venture near a dumpster; they found the fact that antediluvians created trash repulsive. I hoped to hide out until night and try to get to my sister’s co-op then.
I rested in the garbage for what felt like hours, breathing in the stench of rotting food. One of my shoes had come off in the chase and I felt something warm and damp seeping into the sock of my backward foot. At first I swatted at the flies around my face, but eventually I just gave up and closed my eyes and mouths. The light coming from the crack between the dumpster and lid turned red, and then purple, and finally became the faint glow of moonlight. I pressed the lid open as gently as possible, wincing as it creaked. The air felt crisp as I quietly climbed out. Had my situation been different, I would have called it a beautiful night. I squinted at the street sign and realized my sister’s place was only a few blocks away; subconsciously I must have been heading in her direction even when I thought I’d been traveling a random path.
I yanked a plastic bag off the half-formed arm that came from my ribs, brushed pork rinds out of my fur, and hobbled down the street. The dumpster aroma followed me. My anatomy didn’t allow me to run, so I shuffled as best I could, my feet making the familiar slap—slap—slap—squee of my three useful legs followed by the dragging of my backward foot. My sister’s cooperative domicile came into view, its rounded roof glowing in a corona of moonlight.
I stumbled around to the back of the domicile and found her window. The sharers in her family treated me with varying degrees of acceptance: some viewed me as an endearing anachronism and were generally pleasant, but others considered me dangerously primitive and were hostile. I couldn’t risk one of those sharers coming to the door and shooing me away.
“Hey! Sis! Wake up! Let me in!” I said as I rapped on her window with my knuckles.
A knobby antediluvian finger parted the organic grass weave curtain and three bleary eyes peeked through the opening. She slid the window open. “John! What are you doing here? Glass! What time is it?”
She yawned as I climbed through the window. “Sis, I’m in some serious trouble.”
She stood alert, her semi-translucent skin flushing. She’d been eating the hyaloid diet in hopes of adapting to modern society better, but couldn’t escape her flesh and blood bodily responses. “What kind of trouble?”
“The big kind. Do you have any marrow I could drink?”
She stiffened. “Er, we don’t really drink that in our co-op . . .”
I waved all of my hands. “Yes, yes, I forgot. Sorry. Did you see the news? About the diner?”
She raised her seven-fingered hand to the side of her largest mouth, something she’d always done when nervous. “That was you?” she whispered.
“It was an accident! They spilled marrow on my eye and I screamed. Look!” I showed her my ruined eye and the blistered skin around it.
She shook her head. “This can’t be happening.”
A light came on in the domicile common room. A long-necked antediluvian peeked in the doorway. “Hey Ginny, what’s going on in—oh. Hello, John.” He glowered at me with the two eyes on the underside of his chin. I couldn’t remember his name, but he was one of the less accepting sharers in the co-op.
I nodded and mumbled a greeting.
“Can you excuse us, Charlie?”
I watched Charlie make his way to another bedroom door across the hall. He spoke to a short female antediluvian who was almost completely translucent and appeared to have pruned some of her extra limbs with surgery. They exchanged furtive whispers and periodically looked over at me. I shifted nervously.
“Hey John!” came another voice from the doorway. It seemed the whole co-op was waking up from the hubbub. A long, tubular body supported by dozens of legs pattered into the room.
“Hi Betsy. Nice to see you again,” I said. Other than my sister, Betsy was the only sharer in Ginny’s family I really felt comfortable with.
“Betsy, John and I need to talk—”
“No, it’s okay, Sis. I trust Betsy.”
“What’s going on?” she asked, curling her body so her head rested on her coiled lengths.
I stared at the ground. “I’m the one who caused the diner massacre.”
She gasped. “What happened?”
“I got burned and . . . and . . . I screamed.”
“Oh no, John. With which frequency?”
I shook my head miserably. “All of them.”
She chewed on one of her toenails positioned close to her mouth. “Those poor people! I’m so sorry. I know you wouldn’t ever hurt someone on purpose. What are you going to do?”
The tears came from all of my eyes. I wiped at my noses with my hands. “I’m a shatterer. A wanted shatterer. Ginny, can you take me to Mom and Dad’s old farm to hide?”
Ginny plucked at her thumb as she shuffled in place. “My repeller can’t take two people on it.”
Betsy piped up. “Charlie’s can!”
Ginny didn’t meet any of my eyes as she walked into the co-op commons. “Yes, I’ll go ask him.”
Betsy put one of her hands on mine and gave me a gentle, empathetic smile. My sister and her sharers were just out of college, only five years younger than me, but I felt ancient around them, like some kind of obsolete prototype long since abandoned for the newer, better models. Still, Betsy had always been kind to me, and her comfort did quiet my pounding hearts a bit. We shared a tender moment—me crying, and her giving me silent comfort.
“We can’t have any frequency criminals here, John.” Charlie’s authoritative voice came from the doorway. “Our reputations are at stake. We’ve got to be good citizens—”
“Wha—” I started.
“I’ve contacted the proper authorities.”
“You—you called the upkeepers?” I shouted.
“Charlie! How could you—” Betsy said, jumping down from the bed onto her row of legs.
“I had to, Bets. Our whole co-op is at risk of a scandal here. If we turn him in, it will show we don’t tolerate dangerous frequencies—”
I screamed, standing, “It was an accident!”
“I don’t care what your intention was, you backward primordial!”
My fur stood on end. “You better watch your mouths!”
He smirked. “Or what? You will—”
I looked past him. Ginny stood in the common room tugging at her long fur, watching the floor.
“Ginny, were you in on this?” I asked.
She shuffled her feet. “John, I’m sorry. I had to. We can’t take the risk of association—”
“With your own brother? With family?” I screamed, causing her to flinch.
“This is my family now,” she said quietly.
All of my mouths went dry in unison. I felt like I’d been punched in one of my stomachs. I shook my head and whispered, “Alright. I’ll leave.”
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” said Charlie, crossing his four arms over his chest.
“What, are you going to stop me?” I asked.
“If I must.”
I barked a short, sharp laugh. “Okay.”
I picked up my bad leg and ran at him as hard as I could. He was tall and broad, but I was close to the ground, and I surprised him. I bowled him over and he tumbled back into the common room, smashing through a bamboo end table. I heard a crackle to my left, and a kaleidoscope of color painted the stark white room.
They’re here! The upkeepers are ten feet away from me! I’m done for!
I was turning toward the front door, running in my awkward gait, when I felt Charlie kick one of my legs from where he lay in the rubble of the table. My feet tangled together and I fell, snapping my teeth together on one of my tongues. I tried to get back to my feet, but the upkeepers pelted me with paralysis pellets. The toxin burned and my limbs felt clumsy. A hyaloid in anti-frequency armor stepped beside me as I crawled on the ground with my uncoordinated arms. She pulled out her silencer and stuck the needle in my flesh. The cool rush of the vocal-cord-paralyzing drug ran through me. My screams became gurgles, and then pitiful gasps. My body felt frozen. My voice was gone. I stared around the room, my eyes frozen in place. Ginny cried in the doorway to her bedroom; Paul and Connie, the other two sharers in the family, comforted her. Charlie stood, brushing wood splinters from his fur, a look of dutiful determination on his face. Betsy was screaming in the corner.
“Shut her up!” said one of the upkeepers. “She knows that frequency isn’t allowed!”
Charlie murmured calming words to her, and she buried her face in her arms, her screams turning to muffled moans.
The upkeeper pulled another syringe from her belt. This time it was a sleeper. “Time for a little nap.”
I felt a dull pain in my arm and then I drifted into sleep.
Something prodded my side. I dozed. Something prodded me again. I tried to open one of my eyes, but it felt leaden and immobile.
“Hey!” said a male antediluvian voice. A prodding came again, this time much harder. I gurgled a response.
“He’s still got the silencer in him. He won’t be able to talk for a while,” said the commanding chime of a female hyaloid voice.
I felt one of my eyes pried open with sweaty fingers. Through my bleary, unfocused vision, I saw a blob of antediluvian flesh. “You’re an ugly one, aren’t you?” he said as he looked me over. I grunted, trying to form words. He let my eyelid close and there was darkness again.
“We’ll try later,” said the hyaloid.
#
At some point later I came out of my stupor and managed to open my eyes enough to take stock of my surroundings.
The room was blindingly white, sterile, and clearly hyaloid. Dimpled white pads lined the ceiling and walls. The room had no corners, just rounded edges covered in the same protection. Two empty chairs stood in front of me, one short and wide, made for an antediluvian, and the other a flat disc repeller, which allowed a hyaloid to release the pressure of levitating on their feet, their equivalent to sitting. I pulled at my bound limbs, but the restraints held me fast. The chair bit into my back, causing one of my good legs to tingle.
The door opened and a tall hyaloid drifted into the room, her glass feet making the small skating motions hyaloids made to levitate. A hunter green lamp turned slowly in the repeller stasis of her chest cavity.
It’s the Provost of the Upkeepers! Glass Almighty! I’ll be hollowed for sure.
I sagged in my bonds, but the arm of the chair dug into my back worse, so I sat upright.
She floated forward and hovered within the stasis field of the repeller chair, relaxing her delicate glass joints. She looked polished, regal, and even beautiful in a distant sort of way, but her reputation was anything but gentle. Countless antediluvians had been sent to the savoir faire ships or hollowed at her order. A life sentence to the ship was probably the best thing I could hope for. I feared the drill more than death.
A pudgy antediluvian hobbled in, the transparent patches on his skin revealing innards shifting as he walked. White scar tissue stood out on his torso where he’d had extra limbs removed. He wore a wooden box strapped to his midsection by six hemp ropes. I heard the faint clinking of metal against wood as he walked toward me and took his seat next to the hyaloid.
“They call me the remediator. We’ll be getting acquainted real soon,” he said with a sardonic smile.
The melodic chime of the hyaloid’s voice filled the room. “No frequency restrictions here, John. The room is echo-proof. You can speak freely.”
I swallowed and said nothing.
“Speak to her when she tells you to, you stupid—” started the remediator.
“Enough,” the provost said.
The antediluvian closed his mouth, his eyes skewering me with daggers.
“Can you tell me what happened in the diner, John?”
I blinked rapidly, trying to keep the tears from my eyes. I didn’t want to cry in front of them—I didn’t want to share that intimacy with them. But a tear drop gathered in one of my eyes and ran down my arm, depositing itself in my empty palm. “I got burned by marrow.” I gestured toward my ruined eye. “It hurt so bad I screamed. It was . . . an accident.” I closed all of my eyes, knowing how pitiful I sounded.
She breathed in; it sounded like a brush on wind chimes. “John. This is tragic. For them, and for you.”
Her words jarred me. I’d had several hyaloids treat me kindly—including the waitress I’d accidently shattered—but someone in a position of power acknowledging an antediluvian’s pain was unprecedented. I treaded lightly, worried I was being lured into a rhetorical trap.
“Yes,” I said noncommittally.
“You don’t think you can trust me because of my position. That’s fair. But I mean it—it is tragic. Society assumes antediluvians use their frequencies for purposeful harm. I think it is much more complicated than that. I think each situation is unique.”
The remediator drummed his fingers on his box impatiently. “Provost, stop being so nice to this primordial. He killed—”
“Please wait outside,” she chimed gently.
“But—it—that’s—” the remediator fumed in outrage. “You’re mine, shatterer!”
He turned and stormed out of the room.
“I promise you we aren’t playing ‘good cop, bad cop.’ That’s really how he is all the time.”
I ventured a small laugh and the lights of her face changed to reflect a smile. “Listen, John, I’m going to be straight with you. I don’t hate antediluvians or think they are all backward or hateful or unenlightened. But what happened at the diner puts me in a really bad position. All of those hyaloids had loved ones.”
I thought about the waitress again, and the tentative pink flush of her face-lights. She’d seemed so sweet; like someone who treated people with kindness without thought of personal gain. Just because. I’d shattered her, intentionally or not. The tears came and I couldn’t hide them. “I’m sorry,” I said limply.
“I believe you,” she intoned matter-of-factly. “But the families don’t. The student coalitions don’t. The news sites don’t.”
I nodded miserably.
“There’s an angry mob outside right now calling not just for the ship, or for you to be hollowed, but for your head. That’s not fear tactics, John, that’s fact.”
I searched for words and found none. My life was completely in her hands. I wouldn’t beg and she didn’t seem like the type who would want me to do that anyway.
“If I let you off without punishment, it will be chaos. The mob wants blood. I won’t give them blood, but I’ve got an idea for something that will satisfy them, but also save your life.”
My three hearts plummeted. “You are going to have the remediator hollow me.”
Her face-lights flashed from side to side, the equivalent to shaking her head. “I don’t hollow antediluvians unless there was intent to harm. I don’t think there is malice in you. Those who use their frequencies to harm hyaloids usually see me float through the door and start screaming in every frequency they have to try to shatter the provost.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you. I’d rather die than be hollowed.”
“But I can’t just let you off with a trip to the ship. The crowd needs something . . . visual. Remediator, you can come back in.”
He returned, looking smug. “I’ve got my tools.”
“You will do a closure, but you will use anesthetic. This is not some sadistic torture—make it as painless as possible. But use large, colorful stitches so the crowd’s bloodlust will be satisfied.”
She turned to me, her face-lights a deep shade of blue. “I’m sorry, John. I don’t want to do this, but the enlightened demand retribution.”
“Please. Please, no,” I whimpered.
She turned and left through the door. The remediator pulled out a fuchsia string and a giant sewing needle. “Oops. I seem to have left my anesthetic at home.” He smiled with sadistic glee.
I wiggled in my bonds and screamed as he grabbed the lips of one of my mouths.
#
“Go get the barrel of gloss from the back, John,” said the diner cook. I hobbled back toward the pantry. Just walking across the diner made me winded. I only had two noses, and one was too malformed to be much use. So I breathed hard through my one good nose, which made a comic whistling sound. I hadn’t realized how much I used my mouths to breathe until they’d been sewn shut. I picked up the gloss bucket and humped it back to the counter.
“Glass! What’s taking you so long!” shouted the antediluvian who’d been there when I’d shattered the people. He was now my boss. “Did they hollow you before they sewed you up or something?” he asked sarcastically.
I shook my head and set down the gloss barrel. A group of college hyaloids sat in the same booth where I’d shattered kids about their age all those years ago. They whispered conspiratorially to one another, and then a big male hyaloid floated up to the counter, his face-lights a sheepish yellow. “Um, excuse me.”
I flinched, worried he’d heard the story of what I’d done and had come to berate me as so many in the past had done.
“My friends and I just wanted to know, like, how you eat,” he said.
I got that question a lot. I put my finger in the air and grabbed a pad and paper. I knew most hyaloids still knew how to read print, even if they’d never handwritten anything themselves.
I jotted the explanation on a piece of paper.
I put my food and water in a blender, and under my shirt I have a tube that goes directly to my stomach. I don’t get to taste anything, so I just put healthy stuff in there. That’s the only good thing about it.
He read it, his lower face-light flickering as he mouthed the words in his mind. He laughed a bit to himself at the last part, then looked up, embarrassed. “I’m not laughing at you. I don’t want you to think that—”
I shrugged and waved my hand, meaning “no offense taken.”
He looked like he had something else to say but didn’t know how to say it. I braced myself for the insults.
“I just . . . well, my friends and I wanted to tell you that, you know, we think what they did to you was wrong, back then. We don’t think people should like, be punished that way, especially for accidents. We just wanted to tell you that.” His face-lights turned bright red.
I breathed a sigh of surprise. No one had ever said that to me before. I scratched out another message on the paper.
That’s very kind of you. Please tell your friends that means a lot to me. Antediluvians used to have a custom called hugging. Can I give you a hug?
He read the message. “I read about that one time in my history class! Sure. Just show me what to do.”
I wrapped my arms around him gently, feeling his cool glass against my skin. After a moment, he put his glass arms around me and blew air from his palm onto my back, the closest thing he could do to returning the pressure of the hug. I hugged him and cried, and his face flickered through a kaleidoscope of colors, the equivalent to crying for a hyaloid.
He floated back to his seat and I went back behind the counter.
As I poured the gloss on the warmer, I felt hopeful for the first time in a long, long while.