Makers

“Well, I’m sure you’ll get it,” she said.

“Yeah. It’s just a matter of getting at the boot-loader. I could totally do this if I could get at the boot-loader.”

Suza

Suza

She’d liked the manic hustle of Russia, the glamour and the squalor. She’d bought a time-share dacha that she could spend weekends at, and the ex-pats in Petersburg had rollicking parties and di

“I’m going out, Lester,” she said. Lester looked up from the DiaB and blinked a few times, then seemed to rewind the conversation.

“Hey,” he said. “Oh, hey. Sorry, Suza

“How’s Perry getting on with rebuilding?”

“He’s getting on,” Lester said. “As far as I know. I read that the Death Waits kid and his people had come by to help. Whatever that means.”

“He freaks me out,” Suza

Lester hadn’t noticed. “I guess they all feel sorry for him. And they like what he has to say about stories. I just can’t get a lot of spit in my mouth over the ride these days, though. It feels like something we did and completed and should move on from.”

Suza

She was about to cross the freeway to the ride when her phone rang. She looked at the face and then nearly dropped it. Freddy was calling her.

“Hello, Suza

“How can I help you?”

“I’m calling for comment on a story,” he said. “It’s my understanding that your lad, Perry, pitched a tantie and fired the business-managers of the ride, and has told the lawyers representing him against Disney that he intends to drop the suit.”

“Is there a question in there?”

“Oh, there are many questions in there, my darling. For starters, I wondered how it could possibly be true if you haven’t written about it on your little ’blog’—” even over the phone, she could hear the sarcastic quotes. “—You seem to be quite comprehensive in documenting the undertakings of your friends down there in Florida.”

“Are you asking me to comment on why I haven’t commented?”

“For starters.”

“Have you approached Perry for a comment?”

“I’m afraid he was rather abrupt. And I couldn’t reach his Valkyrie of the Midwest, either. So I’m left calling on you, Suza

Suza

“The ride doesn’t have much formal decision-making process,” she said finally. “That means that words like ’fired’ don’t really apply here. The boys might have a disagreement about the best way to proceed, but if that’s the case, you’ll have to talk to them about it.”

“Are you saying that you don’t know if your boyfriend’s best friend is fighting with his business partners? Don’t you all live together?”

“I’m saying that if you want to find out what Lester and Perry are doing, you’ll have to ask Lester and Perry.”

“And the living together thing?”

“We don’t live together,” she said. It was technically true.

“Really?” Freddy said.

“Do we have a bad co

“You don’t live together?”

“No.”

“Where do you live then?”

“My place,” she said. “Have your informants been misinforming you? I hope you haven’t been paying for your information, Freddy. I suppose you don’t, though. I suppose there’s no end of cranks who really enjoy spiteful gossip and are more than happy to email you whatever fantasies they concoct.”

Freddy tsked. “And you don’t know what’s happened to Kettlewell and Tjan?”

“Have you asked them?”

“I will,” he said. “But since you’re the ranking reporter on the scene.”

“I’m just a blogger, Freddy. A busy blogger. Good afternoon.”

The call left her shaking, though she was proud of how calm she’d kept her voice. What a goddamned troll. And she was going to have to write about this now.

There were ladders leaned up against the edge of the ride, and a motley crew of roofers and glaziers on them and on the roof, working to replace the gaping holes the storm had left. The workers mostly wore black and had dyed hair and lots of metal flashing from their ears and faces as they worked. A couple had stripped to the waist, revealing full-back tattoos or even more piercings and subcutaneous implants, like armor ru

Around the ride, the market-stalls were coming back, rebuilt from a tower of fresh-sawed lumber stacked in the parking-lot. This was a lot more efficient, with gangs of vendors quickly sawing the lumber to standard sizes, slapping each one with a positional sensor, then watching the sensor’s lights to tell them when it was properly lined up with its mates, and then slipping on corner-clips that held it all together. Suza

She found Perry inside, leaning over a printer, tinkering with its guts, LED torches clipped to the temples of his glasses. He was hampered by having only one good arm, and he pressed her into service passing him tools for a good fifteen minutes before he straightened up and really looked at her.

“You come down to help out?”

“To write about it, actually.”

The room was a hive of activity. A lot of goth kids of various ages and degrees of freakiness, a few of the squatter kids, some people she recognized from the second coming of Death Waits. She couldn’t see Death Waits, though.

“Well, that’s good.” He powered up the printer and the air filled with the familiar smell of Saran-Wrap-in-a-microwave. She had an eerie flashback to her first visit to this place, when they’d showed her how they could print mutated, Warhol-ized Barbie heads. “How’s Lester getting on with cracking that printer?”

Why don’t you ask him yourself? She didn’t say it. She didn’t know why Lester had come to her place after the flood instead of going home, why he stiffened up and sniffed when she mentioned Perry’s name, why he looked away when she mentioned Hilda.

“Something about firmware.”

He straightened his back more, making it pop and gave her his devilish grin, the one where his wonky eyebrow went up and down. “It’s always firmware,” he said, and laughed a little. Maybe they were both remembering those old days, the Boogie Woogie Elmos.