Ambient 06 - Going, Going, Gone

Oz the Great and Powerful but no such luck. The voice that came out of the wall was female, and old; grandmotherly, you might have said, but there was a quality in the tone of her voice that made me think grandma was packing heat.
    »Eulalia Bax, Lucidity Institute. Madam?«
    Grandma answered. »Speak.«
    The wall lit up like a movie screen, and then I saw the old battleaxe. The picture was clearer than any movie I’d ever seen. I suddenly remembered an invention I’d read about in Amazing Stories, back when I was a kid, before they’d started running that Shaver nonsense and I realized there wasn’t any future in science fiction – visual radio. Every home was supposed to have it by 1960, but as with so much else whenever the future came into it, somebody missed the boat. I tried to listen to Eulie and Ma Barker as they gabbed away, talking in Estonian or Hungarian or whatever they liked to use when they talked to each other over here, all the while staring up at the big screen. Granny’s head was maybe fourteen feet high; the little hair she had left was chalk-white, and she’d lost her choppers. The veins on her temples looked like snakes beneath the skin. Her eyes were about sixty years younger than the rest of her, and from the looks she threw us I suspected she’d be just as happy to squash us like bugs if the mood struck her. But what I really couldn’t get over was the fact that she was as dark as milk chocolate. I had a hunch she’d have slapped you down if you even brought up the question of passing.
    »This is your man from over the mountain?« I heard her say, surprised to hear anything that was recognizable as English.
    »Node and conduit.« Eulie said.
    »Current status?« Granny’s head started rolling upward, fluttering and I wondered why the projectionist wasn’t paying attention. Then it was brought home hard to me that this was no movie. »Walter,« she asked, »How are you?« I was glancing out the window, thinking I saw something fly by. »I’m speaking to you.«
    Eulie nudged me in the ribs, and I gave the old gal my full attention. »Feel like a top,« I said. »Couldn’t be better.«
    »Fabricator,« she said. »Bestill yourself.«
    Those shifty eyes of hers returned to my tour guide. The two of them started jawing again, louder and faster this time. They sounded even more incomprehensible than the taxi had. Sometimes, as if accidentally, phrases in English burst through the static, but faded out just as fast. Finding my eyes drawn back towards the windows, I watched some kind of little blue helicopter whiz by. The thing didn’t have any windows, and the only thing I could figure was that the pilot used a periscope to get by.
    »Comprehended,« I heard Eulie say. The old woman nodded, and peered down at me, shaking her head. The screen went blank. Her expression hadn’t really changed throughout the entire conversation, so I assumed that whatever Eulie had told her, it hadn’t been anything different, or worse, than what she’d expected to hear.
    »Let’s go, Walter,« Eulie said. »Superior notification continues.«
    »Who was that?«
    »Madam,« she said. »Chairperson Emerita of Dryco.«
    »She’s not the head honcho?«
    Eulie’s face was blank as the clouds outside. »Her granddaughter publics Dryco. We see her now.« Eulie tried out a smile but it looked more like a grimace. »Follow, Walter…«
    »Eule,« I said. »Is everything all right?«
    »With us, yes,« she said. »With everything, no.«
    »I’m sorry,« I said. »I’m sorry about Chlo. I never thought –«
    »Unavoidable event,« she said, pushing open the doors. »Follow, Walter.«
    Then it was back out in the reception room, a nod to the Holiday Girls, out and down another hall and then into another elevator, this one thank Sophia not as see-through as the last. I began to understand why so much time passed between Eulie and Chlo’s trips over to my neck of the woods – clearly, once they were back home they had to spend whole days, maybe even weeks, just going from one office to the next. When we got out of the elevator I was glad to see we’d descended, and not risen higher – it was hard to tell while we were still inside. At least this was what I thought when we emerged; windows seemed to line the hall, and it was only after a minute or so that I realized the blue sky I thought I was seeing was actually a very good paint job. We weren’t the only ones in the halls down here; there were dozens