Brave New Worlds

grinned and did a Joe Cool kind of movement. "Hey! How are you?" he said to one particular camera.
    The camera stayed still, and silent.
    "You can't fool me, I know there's someone there. What's your name?" he asked it. Silence, of course.
    "Aw, come on, you can tell me that, can't you? Listen I have got a terrible name. It's Royce. How would you like to be called after a car? Your name can't be as bad as that. What is it? Grizelda? Hortensia? My favorite aunt's called Hortensia. How about Gertrude? Ever read Hamlet? What about. . . Lurleen?"
    There was a hollow sound, like in a transatlantic phone call, when you talk over someone and it cuts out what they're saying for a couple of seconds afterwards. The camera did that. It had turned off its voice. And I thought, I didn't know it could do that; and I thought, why did it do it?
    "Look. I have to call you something. My sister is called Alice. You don't mind if I call you Alice? Like in Wonderland?" Royce stepped forward. The camera did not have to bristle; its warm-up light went on.
    "You see, Alice. I—uh—have a personal question. "
    The camera spoke. "What is it?" the voice was sharp and wary. I had the feeling that he had actually found her real name.
    "Alice—uh—I don't want to embarrass anyone, but, um, you see, I got this little emergency, and everywhere I look there are cameras, so, um, where can I go?"
    A pause from the camera. "I'm sorry," it said. "there are toilet facilities, but I'm afraid we have to keep you under observation. "
    "Really, I don't do anything that much different from anyone else. "
    "I'm sure you don't. "
    "I mean sometimes I try it standing on the seat or in a yoga position. "
    "Fine, but I'm afraid you'll still have to put up with the cameras. "
    "Well I hope you're recording it for posterity, 'cause if you get rid of all the men, it'll have real historical interest. "
    There was a click from the camera again. I stepped out of the line of fire. Royce presented himself at the turnstiles, and they buzzed to let him through. He made his way toward the john singing "that's Entertainment. "
    All the cameras turned to watch him.
    Just before he went into the shed, he pulled out his pecker and waggled it at them. "Wave bye-bye," he said.
    He'll get us all killed, I thought. The john was a trench with a plywood shed around it, open all along one side. I went to the wire mesh behind it, to listen.
    "Alice?" I heard him ask through the plywood.
    "I'm not Alice," said another voice from another camera. She meant in more ways than one, she was not Alice. "Uh—Hortensia? Uh. There's no toilet paper, Hortensia. "
    "I know. "
    "Gee, I wish you'd told me first. "
    "There are some old clothes on the floor. Use some of them and throw them over the side. "
    Dead men's shirts. I heard a kind of rustle and saw a line of shadow under the boards, waddling forward, crouched.
    "I must look like a duck, huh?"
    "A roast one in a minute. "
    Royce was quiet for a while after that. Finally he said, grumbling, "Trust me to pick tweed. "
    He kept it up, all morning long, talking to the Grils. During breakfast, he talked about home cooking and how to make tostadas and enchiladas. He talked about a summer job he'd had in Los Angeles, working in a diner that specialized in Kosher Mexican Food. Except for Royce, everyone who worked there including the owners was Japanese. That, said Royce, shaking his head, was LA. He and his mother had to move back east, to get away from the gang wars.
    As the bodies were being unloaded, Royce talked about his grandmother. He'd lived with her when he was a child, and his father was dying. His grandmother made ice cream in the bathtub. She filled it full of ice and spun tubs of cream in it. Then she put one of the tubs in a basket with an umbrella over it on the front of her bicycle. She cycled through the neighborhood, selling ice cream and singing "Rock of Ages. " She kept chickens, which was against the zoning regulations, and threw them at people who annoyed her, especially policemen. Royce had a cat, and it and a chicken fell in love. They would mew and cluck for each other, and sit for contented hours at a time, the chicken's neck snugly and safely inside the cat's mouth.
    It was embarrassing, hearing someone talk. Usually we worked in silence. And the talk was confusing; we didn't think about things like summer jobs or household pets anymore. As the bodies were dumped and stripped, Royce's face was hard and shiny with sweat,