THE PARTY

Dumarelos rose in the cockpit’s curved glass. The city seemed to have sprouted around a particular island where an imponent castle proclaimed to all it saw that it was lord and master of the realm. Or at least it may have done that, once. New, modern buildings, of shiny steel had long overtaken it in height, hill and all. Now the castle looked like a squat, angry senior, perpetually glaring at its neighbors and muttering to itself about youngsters and respect.

The sun had just set. The sky was still lit behind the city, and behind them everything was dark. The Wave was nearly invisible, except the eye kept being drawn to a certain line just over the horizon, where something terrible was taking place. You know it was there, even if you couldn’t exactly tell what it was and why it upset you as much as it did.

Still, it was strange knowing it was coming. That if you stopped to sleep, you’d wake up to find it nearer that you’d left it, a tireless predator.

“Where are we headed?” Des asked.

Silence.

Kae asleep, curled up on the navigator’s seat with her head against the curved sleep. Her face was neon under the darkening sky, and lightly tan with a smatter of darker freckles. A crease had formed between her eyebrows as she dreamed. Her mouth was open, and a thin line of spittle had fallen out the corner of her lip.

Des smiled and shook her gently.

“Hey,” she said when the girl’s eyes fluttered open.

A friend had once explained waking to her. People – untrained people, Des corrected herself – tended all to wake in much the same way. As their brains reconnected with reality after wandering through a much more vibrant and colorful environment, they went through a set gamut of emotions. Confusion, then fear at finding out they weren’t living whatever they’d been dreaming about, then realization as the fact that this happened at least once every 24 hours asserted itself, and finally acceptance when they smelled coffee. You could see it all in their eyes if you were watching closely.

Kae added a final emotion to the mix, right at the end: extreme embarrassment. She reddened, shot up straight in her chair, and wiped at her face with both hands, surreptitiously wiping away the little bit of drool. It was decidedly adorable.

“Sorry,” she said, her voice still rough, sleepy. “Must have drifted off. We’re here?”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t have woken you, but I need to know where we’re headed.”

Kae looked outside. They were cruising at low altitude between the tall buildings. The city wasn’t as empty as Eletes. They still had time to evacuate, after all. A line of abandoned vehicles pointed towards the still-functioning portal. Des looked down at the streets, where people watched them fly by with idle curiosity more than genuine interest.

“Do you know the way to the castle?”

Des shook her head.

“Turn right ahead.”

They turned into a boulevard that followed the river. It was beautiful under the night sky.

“You know the city?” Des asked.

“Did my bachelor’s here,” Kae said, nodding. “The uni is known for tech rather than ancient studies, but you can’t beat the academic spirit.”

Des turned the dark pools of her sunglasses to her.

“You picked this university because you wanted to party?”

“I picked it because I wanted out of my little town,” Kae answered. “Partying was a plus. Also,” she added, in a smaller voice. “I didn’t get accepted to Atlantis.”

“I thought you were a little genius,” Des said. There was a provocation there. Who did I invite into my ship?

Kae seemed to pick up on it. She answered in the same tone.

“Hah. I didn’t get my act together until my last year here. Broke up with my first boyfriend and sorta had a mental breakdown about how I was wasting my life. Applied myself and got into a master’s in Atlantis.”

“So you are a little genius. Just want to make that part clear.”

Kae rolled her eyes.

“Not really. I had to bust my ass off to get where I landed. But don’t worry, you’ll meet a genius soon enough.”

“This friend of yours?”

Kae smiled. “You can park there.”

Right as soon as they passed the island with the castle, they came upon a low, very large building, cornered by four towers, one at each angle. The building was squat in the middle of its own plaza, surrounded by green grass where at least three different parties seemed to be in progress.

“Oh, no,” Des said, unable to hide the hesitation in her voice. “Students.”

“Oh yeah,” Kae replied. “Students.”

The words Work hard, play hard were engraved above the service stairwell that led to the roof, only someone had stretched over the first portion of the sentence. From there, it only got worse.

The students had taken over the building. Corridors were filled with people and strewn about with papers. They had conquered the classrooms and loud, senseless music streamed from more than one of them, along with accompanying lights.

Kae kept stopping and asking people if they knew where someone name Ludo could be found. If they asked for more information, she told them he was the mechanic. More than one group pointed out a path for them.

“Is your friend famous?” Des asked. The amount of eyes on her had her nervous.

“Yes. More for the, uh, academic spirit than for his academic expertise, but I swear he’s just as good at that. Are you OK?” Kae’s eyes narrowed. “You seem a bit… discomfited.”

“Just… lots of people. Lots of men. Lots of eyes.”

“Right,” she took a look around. “I see your point. Well, if someone bothers you just put them through a wall. How about that.”

Des sighed.

“Kae, I can’t—”

“I’m kidding. Just tell yourself their brains are only half-formed and the other half is too boozed up to know what’s what.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“No,” Kae smiled brightly. “But it’s the right thing to do. Or put one through a wall. I promise that probably will work.”

Then she turned and sauntered off down the corridor.

Des looked around. A tall kid with greasy hair and a half-forgotten beer in his hand gave her a mad, hopeful smile. He was surrounded with equally inebriated friends. He opened his mouth.

She sighed. Sometimes doing the right thing was too difficult.

Des removed her sunglasses. Her gaze could have warmed their beers, and it stopped the kid’s momentum in his tracks, who suddenly looked like someone who’d found himself with an audience yet nothing to say. A space had opened between him and his friends, who were all intently staring somewhere into the distance.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Hum… Uh.” She saw his Adam’s apple bob nervously up and down. “Hi?”

Des stared. She considered her options. Putting people through walls tended to get you in trouble with the paper-pushers, but just looking at his terrified, smarmy face made the walls seem too attractive an opportunity to pass up.

Des huffed out of her nose and walked off after Kae. Almost immediately, she was sure she heard a sigh of relief, and she hadn’t walked far before the kids were laughing together about what had happened.

She shook her head. Losing my touch. Used to be a time that staring at a young man the way she just had would have stunned him for at least an hour.

It hadn’t been the spell, either. Not exactly. Well. Part of it would was the spell. It didn’t matter the number of words, they always did something to the wielder, and she didn’t mean physically. It made them more solid. Confidence was part of it, but not just, not only. People with spells in their minds always seemed more real, somehow, even if, paradoxically, they also become so different from everyone else. It was part of why it was so hard to meet people, after…

Des looked up across the packed corridor. While she was busy dispensing ogling etiquette and lost in thoughts, Kae had disappeared in the throng.

She cursed. The girl didn’t even have a communicator, what was she doing leaving her behind? Des sighed. Then she turned and strode back, opening space in the corridor like a battleship through water. The circle of drunk young men were still jostling each other when she approached. They looked the type to know what she was looking for.

“Hey,” she said. They froze. “Where can I find Ludo? Ludo the Mechanic.”

The kids looked at each other, relief patent in their faces. They were familiar with her quarry, and they were all eager to help.

“He’s in the Tech Tower. I heard he and his team were building something there. I know him pretty well,” said Greasy Hair. He was speaking with a confidence he clearly didn’t feel, trying to save face. He smiled, did a strange thing with his eyebrow. “Want me to take you there?”

His friends laughed, slapped his back, called him a host of words Des had never heard before. Grease was looking her in the eye. He’d finally found his courage. He had, metaphorically, slain the dragon. In his drunkenness, he didn’t seem to notice the dragon was very much alive, and now she was interested.

Des smiled, showing teeth.

“Well, that sounds great. What a gentleman. That would be just lovely,” she said. She let the words hang in the air, asking the world who it would be lovely for.

Grease gulped.

Kae had walked up a stairwell and through a press of shot-happy bodies before she realized Des was missing. Cursing, she turned turned back, but then stopped herself.

She really wasn’t looking forward to introducing Des to Ludo, and Des wasn’t a hard person to find, exactly. Yeah. Best they talked alone before getting someone else involved.

Kae asked a couple more people about Ludo. They corroborated what she’d already been told, that he was either in the basement party, the Chemistry wing party, or in a dorm party across town. The third person she asked was handing out fliers.

“Ludo the Mechanic?”

The girl grinned and pushed a flyer into her hand before vanishing into the omnipresent party. Kae looked at the hastily printed piece of paper, groaned, then made her way to the Tech Tower.

The elevators were unusable on account of the elevator party, so she made her way up the stairwell party where electronic music boomed and echoed like something alive.

In another time, she would have stopped to dance, maybe flirted over a couple of drinks with someone interesting enough. But the flyer had her incensed. Things she’d tried hard to forget were bubbling to the surface, wrapping her up in memories and getting her all worked up.

She finally made it to the Experimental Tech floor, pushing the door into a suspiciously quiet corridor. It wasn’t the most auspicious of signs, even though she was early. Ludo tended to build a party around himself. Then she spotted the group standing guard outside Lab One.

She was warm and sweaty from the climb, which didn’t help at all. On top of that, a bearded, smiling man with a blonde mohawk blocked her way, shaking his head.

“Party’s only in a few hours.”

“Yeah,” Kae said, raising the flyer. “Apparently I’m the entertainment. See?”

In garish colors and a zany, whacky font, the flyer announced that Lucilee and Faeman would be giving their goodbye show in the Tech Tower at midnight. A photo of the duo followed. Faeman was Ludo, goggles and bald head shining over an intense pair of eyes. He wore an open dark leather coat and nothing underneath.

And Lucilee. She wore a cat mask and facepaint. You couldn’t see what she was wearing beyond a generous low-cut top, shoulders glistening with paint and sweat. Kae didn’t remember the photo being taken. Those had been some wild nights. But she remembered coming up with Lucilee lying on Ludo’s bed, drawing her in a notebook while he massaged her naked back and joints passed back and forth. She remembered the parties and the drugs and life happening mostly between sunset and sunrise, passing and stand still.

Kae pointed to the mask. “That’s me.”