Patrick Griffin's Last Breakfast on Earth (16 page)

“What's up with this pattern, anyhow?” he asked. It looked like a bee costume.

“Awesome, right? Bing was
very
stylish.”

Patrick looked down and saw the hideous, black-and-yellow fabric gathered across his chest in folds like the neck of a turtle with its head pulled in.

“I'm guessing he was pretty skinny.”

“They didn't call him String Beansley for nothing,” said Kempton, touching up his makeup in a locker-door mirror. “Kid was a total beanpole.”

Kempton slammed shut the locker. “These mirrors are ridonkulously small. Let's go stop at the grooming station and touch up. That'll kill a few terts anyhow.”

“What?” said Patrick.

“Our cosmetics,” said Kempton, pointing at his face in exasperation. “We're a mess after the game. You, in particular.”

Patrick looked at himself in his binky mirror. The eyeliner Kempton had put on him had smudged in the corners so that he kind of looked like an Egyptian pharaoh. An Egyptian pharoah wearing an ill-fitting bee costume.

“You know,” said Patrick, running a finger along his eyelid, “I think I'm just going to take this stuff off.”

“Oh, no,” said Kempton. “You
can't
.”

“What? Why not?” said Patrick.

“You'd look, you know, impaired.”

“Impaired?”

“Like a belty. Mentally challenged.”

“In my opinion,” said Patrick, “I look like I have issues right now. I mean, if anybody from my school saw me like this…”

“Well,” said Kempton. “Maybe you need to spend more time thinking about what people in
this
school think.”

“Look,” said Patrick, a little fed up. “Some adult would have come and
told
me what to do if it were that important.”

“You're the first Earth emissary since Rex,” said Kempton. “Nobody will come and
tell
you to do anything. Tenet Twelve says ‘Disobey the Minder's emissaries in nothing.'”

“Who is this Minder, anyhow? Is he, like, your God?”

“A god? What are you, being funny?”

“Well, I don't know who he is and you guys talk about him like he's some big deal.”

“Some big deal? The Minder is the Creator and Sustainer of Worlds!”

Patrick decided that sounded like God to him. “Anyhow,” he said, “so—if I'm this Minder's
emissary
—and if you can't boss emissaries around—then why did your parents make me wear makeup?”

“They only
suggested
you wear makeup,” said Kempton. “For your own comfort.”

“They didn't quite make me, did they?” said Patrick, a smile stealing onto his face. “Where's a sink?”

“Wait,” implored Kempton. “Really—”

“Tell the emissary where to find a sink, Citizen Puber,” said Patrick, kind of enjoying his newfound power.

Kempton put a hand over his eyes and pointed off to his left with the other.

“Thank you,” said Patrick. He walked past the boy and soon found himself in a large, bright, soapy-smelling locker room. Opposite a wall of toilet stalls, a row of sinks and sanitizer pumps was set in a large counter scattered with abandoned lip gloss, eyeshadow, and mascara containers. Above it was an enormous mirror upon which, written in red lipstick, was a block-lettered message:

THE SEER LIVZ WELL

CUZ SHEEZ KWIK TO BE LED

DA HEARER DINT LISSEN

SO DA HEARER IZ
DED

“Well, maybe that explains why I don't know anything about a Hearer,” said Patrick. “Sounds like he got whacked.”

“Oh-my-goodness-oh-my-goodness-oh-my-goodness,” said Kempton.

“Should we get somebody?” asked Patrick.

Kempton, pale and shaking, glanced at his binky and nearly dropped it in surprise.

“Seer gone blind!” he exclaimed, thrusting the device at Patrick. The screen was bright blue except for a single white-lettered statement:
nō
sign
Ə
L
.

“The INTERVERSE is down,” Kempton said in a terrified whisper.

“You guys don't lose service often, huh?” asked Patrick.

Kempton began to stutter a reply but was interrupted by a reedy, singsongy voice: “Aw, poor little baby lost the teat!”

There was movement in the mirror and the two boys wheeled around. A shadowy figure emerged from the toilet stall directly behind them. It was a slight girl in a skin-tight ninja outfit—though of mottled gray, rather than the usual black.

“Hi, I'm Squirrel,” she said.

“Squirrel, like—” asked Patrick.

“It does sound like the name of the arboreal rodent but I think on Earth you'd probably spell it S-K-W-U-R-L.”

“Oh,” said Patrick.

“Whatcha holding there?” she asked.

Patrick looked down at Neil's ruined They Might Be Giants shirt.

“My shirt kinda didn't do so well in the, umm, cleaning machine,” he said.

“Ah,” said the girl.

Kempton, meantime, appeared to have forgotten how to breathe.

The hood of the girl's one-piece outfit was pulled back, exposing a shaved brown-haired scalp and a lean, big-eyed face streaked with black-and-gray face paint.

Patrick judged she was smaller than his sister Carly and, yet, somehow—from the way she moved, or her proportions, or the confidence in her voice—she seemed older, maybe even Eva's age.

“You're a girl!” shrieked Kempton.

“Ya think?” said the girl named Skwurl.

“This is a
boys'
locker room!”

She cocked her head and gave Kempton an expression somewhere between pity and annoyance.

“And what kind of makeup is that on your face!?”

Patrick put a hand on Kempton's shoulder to calm him down.

“Not that it's any of your business, but the makeup I'm wearing is far superior to the kind you employ.” She gestured at the smudges on her face. “It's the difference between
purpose
and
programming
.”

“That might as well be dirt!” shouted Kempton, shaking Patrick's hand off his shoulder.

“You should really try thinking your own thoughts one of these days. It's no fun growing up to be a puppet, Kempton Puber.”

Kempton dropped his jaw. “How did you know my
name
?”

“Oh, I don't know. Is it possible you spend so much time on electronic devices that there's a database someplace that contains your name, your birthdate, your favorite color, your entire DNA map, the names of your best friends—or, sorry, it says
you don't have any best friends
—so sad.”

Kempton waggled his jaw as if trying to say something, but no sound came out.

“Kempton, you are so obviously one of those people whose minds run along in the narrow little courses set by the hypocritical bullies in charge of this place. The ones who find profit in the fear and stupidity they harvest from people, like you, who are only too comfortable Not. To. Think. For. Themselves.”

“You're one of the, one of the—” Kempton spluttered.

“Better-looking people you've ever met?”

“What?! No—”

“Least-deluded people you know?”

“Anarchists!” gasped Kempton at last.

“Ah,” said the girl. “That's what the Muckers are still having you call us, isn't it? Such clever practitioners of the reputational sciences. Portray us like we're trying to destroy rather than save.”

Patrick was confused. This girl seemed pretty weird for sure, but somehow he highly doubted she was in league with a bunch of flying monsters and some organization that had killed 99 percent of the people on the planet.

Kempton bolted for a red button mounted on a pedestal between two of the sinks and began to pound it with his fist.

“You'll find the panic buttons have been shut down along with all other ancillary informational systems in this subprefecture. You're welcome to keep banging at it all you want; just do me a favor and please try to work toward a rhythm of some kind? You're giving me a headache.”

Kempton punched the button for a few more seconds and then—not having elicited anything other than a faint clicking noise—slumped in place, dropping his narrow shoulders like somebody had let half the air out of him.

“Well, what do
you
call yourselves?” asked Patrick, genuinely curious.

The girl named Skwurl turned to Patrick and, with a sparkle in her eye, said, “I know it sounds weird, but we like to refer to ourselves as Commonplacers. We're kind of an underground group whose chief mission right now is to
wake people up
to the warping influence of the Seer and the Deacons, to help people see that this
isn't
the real world around them and that they're being kept in a glass cage. I'm sorry to be abrupt. I realize much of what I'm saying may seem rude and hypocritical—especially without you yet knowing the wider context here—but we don't have much time. It is a supreme thrill to meet you, Patrick of Earth,” she said, dropping a mock curtsy. “But the Powers That Be will soon reactivate their panic buttons and precious security cameras and I really can't afford to have the Peepers get my image.”

Mostly he followed what she was saying. Could all that Kempton and Bostrel and Mr. Puber and others have been saying be a bunch of propaganda? And was this why Oma had seemed a little cynical about things? “What are Peepers?” he asked.

“Employees of what they call POP,” said the girl. “Peepers, Oglers, and Perverts.”

“POP is the Public Operations Panel!” screamed Kempton.

“Public operations? More like proletariat
oversight
panel. And it also comprises undersight, around-the-corner-sight, through-the-wall-sight, secret-camera-in-your-restroom-sight—”

“There are no secret cameras in lavatories!” yelled Kempton. “Every POP camera on Ith is plainly visible and identifiable via the Camera Locator App!”

“Oh yeah?” asked Skwurl, pointing at the message on the mirror.

“What!?” demanded Kempton.

“One-way mirror,” said Skwurl. “With a
camera
behind it.”

“That's a lie!” yelled Kempton. “They don't put cameras in a locker room. That would be an Invasion of Privacy.”

“Yeah, privacy's a
huge
concern of the Peepers',” sneered the girl.

“There are no—” Kempton started to say but then a wild look came across his face and he ran—arms outstretched—straight at Skwurl.

“Kempton!” shouted Patrick.

Skwurl sidestepped the charging boy, leaving him to crash with a
Whang!
into the stainless steel stall partition.

“Take it easy, Kempton,” said Patrick as the red-faced boy regained his balance.

“I'm undertaking a citizen's arrest,” roared Kempton. “Help me apprehend her, Patrick Griffin!”

The girl gave Patrick an amused eye roll and offered him her upturned wrists. It was a gesture, Patrick suspected, a real terrorist would never have risked.

“In the name of the Seer—” said Kempton, rushing the girl once more.

“Kempton!” shouted Patrick, now more than a little embarrassed by his host.

Skwurl ducked and swung out her left leg, knocking the charging boy's feet from under him. Then she pounced upon his fallen body and hog-tied his wrists and ankles with some black tape.

“Help me, help me!” screamed Kempton.

“Don't be a baby,” said the girl, brandishing the roll of tape. “And stop interrupting or I'll seal your mouth shut and give you a wedgie!”

Kempton gave her a slow nod, genuine fear glinting in his oversized eyes.

“Well, I'm glad for at least
that
much consideration,” said the girl. “Even if it's only yielded under duress.

“And now,” she continued, “I suppose we have just a moment to get to the bottom of our previous disagreement about cameras.”

Reaching over her shoulder, she produced a ten-inch baton. With a quick wrist-snap, she extended it into a vicious fifteen-foot-long metal whip that she flicked against the mirror. The glass shattered into a thousand pieces to reveal a cramped cavity containing a turret-mounted, fat-lensed camera.

“It's a plant!” shouted Kempton. “You must have put it there! This is a private area—there's no way the Deacons would have allowed a camera in here!”

“You think not?” said the girl. “And what did we just say about interrupting?”

Kempton clamped his mouth shut.

“Listen,” she said to Patrick. “I've got to go, but I'm supposed to give you a message, and that message is this: ‘The Minder is slipping, and the worlds are falling into a Tyranny of the Senses.'”

“Worlds?” asked Patrick. He'd been following her up to now but that last bit hadn't made much sense—had almost sounded religious or something.

“Yes, the three worlds,” said the girl.

“You mean, like Earth, Ith, and…”

“And Mindth,” said Skwurl.

“Mindth,” said Patrick. “So, let me guess—people have big ears like me on Earth, they have big eyes like you on Ith, and they have big giant brains on Mindth.”

Skwurl laughed.

“No, Mindth is a place unlike the two Sense Worlds. Eyes are for Ith, Ears are for Earth, and Dreams are for Mindth. The people there—Mindthlings—come in all shapes and sizes. You'll meet some of them soon.”

“Here on Ith,” said Patrick.

“Yes,” said Skwurl. “The Deacons call them abominations. Like in the video games. Or in the hunts you hear about on news programs. But they're not monsters. They're beings like us, only not
human
ones, obviously.”

“You mean, so—”