The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

“What are you talking about?” Fahima asks.

Patrick smirks his most Patrick of smirks. “The scientific mind of Fahima Deeb,” he says. “Did it ever bother you that in seventy-five years, Owen Curry is the first of us to go really and truly off the rails? Didn’t that strike you as statistically aberrant?”

“We all know what Kevin did,” Kimani says. “I was there. I helped. The people he took off the board were—”

“I’m not talking about that,” Patrick says. “I don’t have a problem with that. You think I’m out there converting people back to the fucking flock? I’m continuing his work. That’s not what I’m talking about. We all followed him. Not just those of us who knew him. Every fucking Resonant on the planet listened to what he told us and kept ourselves secret. He said sleep and dream, and we closed our eyes. Did that never strike any of you as odd?”

“Maybe we listened because he was right,” Fahima says. Doubt creeps in. What Patrick is talking about is obedience across a wide spectrum. Why didn’t she see it before? It was glaring at her out of the data.

“What do all of us have in common?” Patrick asks. “What binds us all together?”

“The Hive,” says Fahima.

“And who built the Hive?”

The question hangs in the air, unanswered. After a second, Fahima carries the argument forward. “He talked about it like a lens,” she says. “It’s not just a place or a conduit energy passes through. It bends the energy as it passes. Light through a lens.”

“He built it to keep us complacent,” Patrick says. “I don’t even fault him for it. It’s a fucking brilliant idea. But he built the Hive in such a way as to keep us docile. So what happens now that he’s gone?”

“Black flowers,” Fahima says.

“This is some bullshit,” Kimani says. “This isn’t what we’re here for.” She starts fixing another drink.

“They showed up when he got sick,” Fahima says. “When his control started slipping.”

“That’s enough,” Kimani says, slamming the shaker down on the table. “That man is in the ground five minutes and you’re going to start this shit? That is enough. The things he did, he did for us. They weren’t all good, and he’d’ve been the first to tell you. Where we go from here, that is up to us. But you will not sit here in judgment on him. Not today.”

“You’re right,” Patrick says. His hand stretches across the room and finds Kimani’s shoulder. “Not today.”

Sarah, relieved the conflict has been diffused, nods in agreement. Kimani bites her lower lip and goes back to making drinks. Patrick and Fahima exchange a look that says they’re not done, not by a length.

—

Sarah passes out on the couch, and Cortex curls up next to her. Patrick drinks himself into a state of tenderness and kisses Sarah on the temple before hugging Fahima and Kimani and having Kimani drop him off at Bishop’s house on Oceanside Way. Patrick’s been clearing out some of Bishop’s things. He says it’s helping him deal with the loss. She wants to go with him, but the point is for him to be alone.

“One more?” asks Kimani, eyes already swimming. The needle on the record player scratches against the label, giving the room a soft pulse.

“Yeah, but I’m driving,” Fahima says. She steps past Kimani to fix the drinks. She does this exactingly, with the care Kimani lacked. Care that Fahima learned from Bishop. Kimani’s a beer drinker. To her a decent martini tastes the same as an excellent one. Fahima knows you can taste the attention to detail when it’s done right. Anything worth doing and all that. As she swishes dry vermouth in the base of the glasses, she watches Kimani move around the room, the sound of Prince in her head. She knows this space the way Fahima knew the house she grew up in, which stairs creaked and what it sounded like as it eased itself to sleep. Kimani knows this space because it’s part of her.

“Kimani,” Fahima says. “Where are we?”

“Here at the end of all things,” Kimani says dreamily.

“Kimani,” Fahima repeats. “Where are we?”

“In the Hive,” she says. “All of this. The Hive.”

“But in our actual bodies,” Fahima says.

Kimani nods. “A piece of physical space, embedded in transspatial Hivespace. That’s what Kevin used to say. He helped me build the room. Expand it out. I was in a tiny, dark space when he found me.” Fahima hands her the drink, and Kimani sips it. “That’s good,” she says. “That’s better than mine.”

“When you see the world,” says Fahima. “The real world. Is it—”

“Like looking at a map,” Kimani says. “I put the door where it needs to be and open it.”

“All of everything,” says Fahima. “Like a map.”

“Hivespace is everywhere at once,” Kimani says. “Wherever I want to be, I’m already there.”

Fahima thinks about something Emmeline Hirsch said to her. Sometimes I’m already there. But Emmeline was talking about time.

“You remember Emmeline?” Fahima asks. Kimani looks at Fahima like she’s an idiot.

“Emmy’s in here all the time. Good kid.”

“Is it like that for her, too?” Fahima asks. “Like a map she’s looking down on?”

Kimani shakes her head. “From what she can tell me, it’s more like a cube,” she says. “I’m at a point in Hivespace, which is everywhere, right? But Emmeline is everywhere in Hivespace. Which is maybe everywhen? She’s me squared.”

“That’s some scary shit,” Fahima says.

“Fucking right,” Kimani says. She perches on the arm of the couch behind Sarah’s head.

“Was it true what Patrick said?”

“What are we all trying to do but tip the tables toward the good?” Kimani says, an edge of anger in her voice. “That’s all he did was tip the table a little.”

“Is that all he did?” Fahima asks.

Kimani takes a gulp of her drink and coughs. When she recovers, she says, “Too many of us would be a bad thing. The energy we add to the system could burn it