Technomancer (Unspeakable Things: Book One)

you?” he asked me.
    “There’s nothing here to fry,” I said. “I’m empty. I’m a ghost without a past.”
    “What are you talking about now?”
    I gave him my story, telling him about my missing memories. He stared at me with growing apprehension. Clearly, he figured I belonged in a straitjacket.
    “Where are we going?” he asked.
    I didn’t answer. I headed south, turned east on Sunset, and pulled over at Sunset Park. It was dark now, and there were only a few kids and weirdos around. I dug in the glove compartment.
    “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
    I had figured him for a habitual quitter. I found his pack of emergency smokes and a lighter in the glove box. I took out the lighter. McKesson fell quiet as he watched me. It was as if he suspected I was going to singe his eyebrows with the lighter. I remembered him pulling the trigger of his pistol, and thought to myself he’d look pretty funny without eyebrows.
    I took the picture of my parents out of its case. There it was: a baby in a bounce chair. My smiling parents clustered close around me, my dad’s arm extended to full length to get the shot. If that baby was me, I’d never looked happier.
    I flicked the lighter. It took three tries to get it to catch. These cheap safety lighters always hurt your thumb. I sat there behind the steering wheel, breathing hard. This was more difficult than I’d thought it would be. I told myself the flame would only mar one tiny corner.
    I held the picture in my left hand and the lighter in my right. I didn’t put the flame
under
the picture, but instead brought it down from above to a corner. It took an effort of will, but I touched the flame down to the least interesting corner of the photo. There was no one there, I told myself. The lighter would only blacken what looked like a refrigerator in the background. It would give the picture a bit of character, that’s all.
    The flame touched the picture for a half second, then I pulled it away. I was sweating.
    “Your family?” McKesson said.
    “I think so,” I said, flicking the lighter again. It had gone out.
    “Nice-looking couple. You don’t have to do this, you know.”
    “Do what?”
    “Throw it all away. Burn your past.”
    I studied the photo. Was it a little browner in that corner? It was hard to tell. I turned on the car’s dome light and inspected it.
    “You know, you’ve been through a lot lately,” McKesson was saying. “People often give up when under heavy stress. I know some people you can talk to.”
    I let my hands drop to my lap. “Would you shut up?” I asked. “This is hard to do.”
    McKesson’s soft-guy voice vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “All right, asshole. Just tell me straight, are you going to do yourself, me, or the both of us?”
    I stared at him for a second. “I’m not shooting anyone. I’m trying to see if this picture will burn.”
    Again, he gave me that wary stare. I could tell he still thought I was crazy, but this time, he was certain. I flicked the lighter and held it under the picture again. I touched it there, then pulled away, then did it again. Finally, I held it there for ten long seconds, then I let the lighter go out. I held the picture under McKesson’s nose.
    “There,” I said, “see? It’s an object. That’s why it survived the wreck, my burned house—everything.”
    McKesson’s eyes traveled from me to the picture and back again. “Maybe it has a coating, or something.”
    “No, no, man,” I said. I grabbed the picture again and tried to rip it in half. This act was relatively easy now, as I no longer believed I could damage the picture. The paperflexed and folded, but didn’t tear. It was like the strongest plastic I’d ever tried to rip.
    “You see?” I asked him. “It’s an object. Like your watch. They can’t be destroyed.”
    “Who told you that?” he asked. He stared at me like I was some kind of homeless junkie talking about my secret invisible friends. Was it possible he didn’t know all that much about the objects in general?
    “Let me show you,” I said coldly, putting the picture against his shoulder. I was tired of people telling me I was crazy. I knew what I knew. I aimed my gun at the picture and made sure there were no organs behind the spot.
    “What the fuck are you—” he began.
    I pulled the trigger. Inside the enclosed car, the bang was deafening, followed instantly by the sound of the bullet ricocheting and a weird cracking