Xenoman

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32 SYNTH REBELLION

"Andrea?" Xeno looked into her eyes, trying to see how the luscious red lips on the telepane had inhabited the woman before him.

"I saw what everyone was doing at Impostible from the other side of the telepane," Andrea gushed, "and I thought, well, why not?"

"Andrea," Xeno pushed her back a ways to get some space between them, "you have chocolate all over your face."

"Oh. Really?" Andrea wiped a streak of chocolate from her upper lip, staining the sleeve of her wedding gown. "After I stole this wedding dress, I stole a box of chocolate, and ate the whole thing."

"You're stealing things?!" Xeno huffed.

"Well, I didn't have any money. I wanted to jump right into all this stuff I've been missing. Life. Real life! In a real body! I can't believe it was so easy! Now we can start that romance we've always talked about." Andrea gave Xeno a big smooch, smear his cheek with of chocolate. "So? Do you think I'm pretty?"

"Stop it. No more kissing." Xeno wiped the chocolate from his face.

"I wanted to do something offbeat, the opposite of Trianne, so I didn't come off like a copycat. I scanned my physique from a plus-size beauty magazine, with the wavy black hair, the thick lashes, and the big melon boobs—"

"You hacked yourself into Impostible?"

"That's right, and I was able to keep my personality in tact."

"Beautiful. Look, I need to find the entrance to Malborg."

"Oh yeah," she sighed, "you work for that intelligent jello company . . ."

"Intellegella, and I'm on a very important mission."

"Me too. Let's eat! I'm hungry again!" Andrea yanked Xeno by the wrist, through the crowd, towards the food court. "And I want my name tattooed on your arm!"

"No!" Xeno yanked back, halting her in the in crowd. "We're not going to eat, and we're not going to a tattoo parlor! I'm taking you back to Impostible to have your—whatever you are—recycled." He yanked her by the wrist in the other direction.

"Stop treating me like an operating system!" Andrea yanked herself free and smacked Xeno in the face. She stormed off through the crowd, rudely bumping a couple joined at the palms and forehead, immersed in the beginning stages of deep trance to the "Crucy Fix" 5-track. Xeno steadied the semi-conscious couple with his grip, still wincing from the smack in the face, and hurried after Andrea's tiara and veil, trailing through the crowd.

He bumped his nose into someone a head taller, with a washboard chest, wearing a wool sweater, reeking of body odor, urine, someone who hadn't bathed in weeks. Xeno cut right, the broad shouldered man cut right. Xeno cut left, the man cut left, as if intentionally blocking him. Xeno glanced down, trying to outmaneuver the fancy footwork of the ugly boots, the baggy work pants, the soiled wool sweater . . . The meaty fingers clamped down around his throat, before he could strike back at his attacker, the ceiling lights fading to purple fuzz, as the headless synth lifted him off the ground with one clenched fist.

"What the Ffffff?!" Xeno had little time to ponder how this coincidence was possible. Did the headless synth follow Xeno to Arcade just to strangle him? Could it know, could it sense, that it was Xeno he was strangling? Could it construct a virtual vendetta in a virtual mind without a head, without any semblance of a brain? Or, did the headless synth simply regard Xeno as a random obstacle, like a grizzly bear happening upon the same tracker in two different regions. The circumstances only appearing odd to the human tracker—mistaking a random wilderness confrontation as manifest destiny, or symbolic fate. If the headless synth did drift all this way to Arcade from Metropa, how did it get here so quickly. Could it hitch rides? Stow away on boxcars? There would never be an explanation. The thing with no head, no mouth, could only tell an un-tellable tale, one that would have to be reverse engineered by its creator, its manufacturer, to shed the queerest of light on the how, and the why, and the now, and . . . "Andrea! Help!"