Alex Reynard
The Library
Alex Reynard's Online Books
Inside the walls of the CTR, it was exactly as bad as Junella's most unkind assumptions.
She'd seen weirdos in Phobiopolis. Plenty of them. The difference here was stark. Just inside the lobby, there were a half-dozen examples of just how car-crash, mirror-breaking, octopus'-asshole fugly a furson had to be to get a room here. Underneath a potted palm tree, a gentleman with bristling insect feelers clogging the entire left half of his torso stood reading a newspaper. The janitor carried his face in a sling. Behind the reception desk was a wolf who looked like several clones sent through a paper shredder. A laughing child darted past, propelling herself at great speeds on her gargantuan hands despite her corkscrew-shaped lower body. And over by the elevators, a man covered in fingers and a woman who looked like a half-eaten shark corpse were sharing a sensual moment.
They were actually kissing. With those unspeakable mouths. Junella thought she might pull her own eyes out.
She pulled herself close to Zinc. "Let's get up to your friend's room before I start reflexively shooting these people."
Zinc was bemused by her unease. "Awww. You mean you wouldn't wanna settle down here? Find a nice three-headed fella and raise up some plug-ugly rugrats?"
All sorts of responses flew through her mind. But she was trying to be nice, goddammit. "I would prefer not to," she ground out, needles scraping out curlicues of plastic.
Zinc was occasionally good at knowing when to stop teasing someone. "Okay, okay."
The lobby was tacky but not run-down. Cheap but clean. Yellow and gold linoleum. Wood paneling. Zinc headed towards the elevator and tossed a wave to the concierge.
The shuffled wolf took one look at him and simply nodded.
Zinc passed by with a smile.
"You're not insulted in the slightest by how easy that was?" Junella asked in a whisper.
A chuckle. "I ain't no magazine idol, I am perfectly aware."
She huffed and puffed. "He better think I'm your attractive date..."
At the elevators, Zinc searched his brain, trying to remember the right floor. Maybe they could just go knocking on doors till they found him. 'That would send Juney into paroxysms. Oh wait! Ain't I a genius? 'Four rhymes with floor' he said.' The canine tapped the button with a wrenchtip.
Junella twitched while watching the numbers lower. "Your pal... He's gonna be allright with us droppin' in unannounced?"
"Oh sure, sure!" Zinc said with confidence. "We go way back! He useta sell equipment to the doc what kitbashed my head. Fellow fan of dirty hands and toolboxes. He'll be over the moon to see me again."
She sure as hell hoped so. She didn't want the door to open and see a shotgun come poking out.
The elevator was prompt and the hallway it took them to was dim and grey and narrow. To Junella's great consternation, the residents were very friendly. It was the kind of place where people could leave their doors open, wander over to catch the game on a neighbor's TV, and let their kids run around unattended. As soon as she and Zinc exited the elevator, a scorpion kid and a tractor-faced kid nearly knocked them over. An otter with a gaping wound from his forehead to his thigh, peppered with tiny rebar nubs, leaned against a wall nursing a cigarette. He gave Junella a quiet "Howdy" as she walked by. The skunk stared in revolted fascination.
She nearly bumped into someone coming down the hallway in the opposite direction, whose gangly limbs scraped the floor and ceiling with a plethora of right angles. "Ziiiinc..." she whined.
He arched an eyebrow. "You're bein' kind of a scaredy cat about this, aren't you?"
Her cheeks got hot. "This place gives me the super-creeps. Maybe it's like you said. Maybe it brings out my insecurities."
"Awww. Don't worry. I take it back; never in a million years would this place offer you a room."
Her cheeks got hotter for a different reason. "Um. Thank you."
Not all the doors were open. About half were shut, and one of them was the one they were looking for. "Here it is! Number sixteen!" Zinc shouted. He gave it a few loud thumps. "Conrad!!" he boomed. "Hope you're not on the shitter!!"
The door suddenly flew open with a startled, overjoyed, "ZINC!?"
Junella did not initially take notice of the occupant. She was preoccupied with the several gallons of horrifying green sludge that had just flooded out of the room, all over her feet, as soon as the door opened.
She did not waste time shrieking. In a wink, she had leapt to the ceiling and was hanging by her needles.
"Wow!" said Conrad. "Is your girlfriend a gymnast!?"
"She's not-"
"WHAT IS THAT SHIT!?" Junella spared a hand to scream.
Zinc's friend came out into the hallway to give her a reassuring smile. Several, actually. Conrad Glen was a short, long-limbed bullfrog kid. Mostly normal for his species, except for a bumper crop of vestigial mouths. They were all over his head and upper torso like surrealist acne. Only the one with a larynx spoke, though the others all moved their lips eerily in sync with it. "It's shlime! Isn't it great?" he said joyfully, with a bit of a gummy speech impediment. "Don't worry, it'sh clean! I mean, as much as slime ever gets!" A snorting giggle.
"In hindsight, I probly shoulda mentioned it," Zinc said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head. "It kinda just... follows him."
Conrad wiggled his green, drippy fingers. "Like a mysteeeeeerious fog!" More giggling.
Junella was, to put it mildly, upset. But she wanted to be nicer to Zinc. And that meant being nicer to Zinc's friends. With every part of her body in full-on cringe, she let go of the ceiling and dropped down into the goo. It squooshed between her toes. She bit her tongue. Thinking of the stuff as a weather phenomenon actually helped to prevent vomit.
"You'll learn to love it," Conrad assured her. Then he turned to Zinc. "So what bringsh you by, old buddy? Just cruising around the neighborhood?"
"To be honest, I need to borrow some hardware. Not that it ain't an added bonus getting to catch up with you."
The frog's grin was almost bigger than his head. "Ditto! And don't feel too bad about ashking for a favor. I've got so much cool shtuff to show you!!"
"Aces!" Zinc's tail wagged. "By the way, Conrad Glen, meet Junella Brox. She's my boss."
"Oh really? I like a lady who can take command." He attempted a debonair wink. It did not succeed.
"Th-thanks," Junella said, staving off Category Five Heebie-Jeebies.
The frog reached out to take her paw, and brought it suavely to his lips for a kiss. "A pleasure to be sure. Come on in, madame. Mi casa esh shu casa."
Junella blinked several times. She looked at her hand. It was glistening with a residue the color of lime Jell-O. Twitching, she turned to Zinc. "I would like to wash my hands for the rest of my life now."
~~*-*-*~~
Conrad vanished back through the doorway, causing several wobbly waves of slime to come sloshing over the two-foot barrier at the bottom of it. Junella stared. The entire apartment was filled. Like a swimming pool.
Zinc observed her reluctance. "You wanna go wait in the lobby? Or, there's a pizza place a few doors down that's friendly with the residents. Could grab us dinner."
Junella realized she was acting like a complete baby in front of a subordinate. She jabbed a needle in her thigh. Partly as punishment, partly to jar her alertness. "No. I'm bein' stupid. I'll come in, we'll have us a nice visit. I am a grown-ass woman."
Zinc clapped her on the back and nodded. He followed after Conrad. "Don't trip on the dam."
Junella watched Zinc hike up his shorts and submerge his legs up to the knees in that... stuff. She chewed her lip. 'It ain't gonna be as bad as you're imagining it,' she said. She stepped forward. She lifted her paw. She tucked in the ends of her scarf so they wouldn't dangle.
She took the plunge.
It was warm. Oh God.
She pulled her other leg over and in. "Hey Zinc."
"Yeah?" His partner looked like she had a mouth fulla chili peppers.
"You remember that old nasal spray commercial? The one with the little cartoon germ walking around inside a runny nose?"
"I have not seen that, but I can guess why you're bringin' it up."
She nodded, glad they had an understanding.
Aside from the entire apartment being flooded with vaguely luminescent viridian goop, it was a pleasant little place. Not too small, though the shelves made it seem fairly cramped. (Something to distract her. Good.) Every wall of Conrad's abode had shelves all bulging with electronics. Cameras, audio equipment, cables, vacuum tubes, cardboard boxes of labeled parts. It was all very organized. Everything shiny and clean. The frog obviously cared a lot for his stuff. She hadn't noticed it before, but there was a soft, omnipresent background hum in the apartment. Static and power.
A toy submarine suddenly scudded past her in the slime. Roaming around like a pet.
'I'm gonna roll over and wake up any minute, aren't I?'
The frog himself was busy clearing away armfuls of gizmos from the living room couch and chairs so his guests could sit. He looked around. Every other surface was also crammed full, so he darted into the bedroom and dumped his junk on the covers. "Zinc, you are not gonna BELIEVE it!" he shouted over his shoulder. "I finally got one! I'd been hearing about them for months now!"
"Wuzzat?" Zinc asked. He nudged Junella towards the sofa.
She instead chose a chair. It looked less slippery. She tried to think of anything to say about Zinc's friend that didn't involve slime or mouths. She remembered that he'd only come up to about Zinc's chin. "He looks... young."
"Looks," Zinc replied pointedly.
"Ah." Phobiopolis regressed everyone to childhood on influx. People could choose to age or not from there. It was entirely possible to meet eight year old eighty year olds.
Conrad returned carrying a gargantuan ugly silver box. "It's a VCR!!!" he exploded rapturously. "Just LOOK at it! It'sh gorgeoush! Finally, someone remembered one!"
Zinc attempted to appear impressed. "Cat's pajamas. What's it do?"
Conrad chortled at such a question, but recalled that his slapdash pal was usually behind the times. He skittered to put the heavy device back in his bedroom, then dashed back out to plop on the couch (Junella put her hands up to shield against the splash). "It'sh the absolute latest in technology. You know how you can record voiche on magnetic tape?"
"Yeah."
"Now people can do that with video! Oh my god, right? And it goes in theshe little boxes. Much smaller than a reel-to-reel, lemme tell you. You shtick the box in the VCR, push play, and then you can watch whatever they recorded!!"
Zinc blinked, not sure where a picture would come out of that thing. "Does it, like, project it on the wall?"
Massive giggles. "No, ya goober! You get a coaxial cable and hook it up to a TV shet. Thankfully, I got puh-lenty of those." He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at a cluster of eleven televisions. He leaned towards Junella. "I'm kind of an expert. Lady Crynight herself hired me to shet up the monitors in her office," he bragged.
The skunk simply raised her hand and dumbfounded the Certificate Of Access. "I met her too."
"Whoa!! No WAY! So you guys're, like, on a mission!? That's AWESOME!"
Junella caught herself smiling. Gross or not, the little guy seemed harmless. "You could say that. And allright, you got me curious. How does one go about getting a VCR? Or all these other fancy doodads?"
Conrad's eyes sparkled with joy. The only thing a nerd loves more than his favorite obsession is being asked to explain his favorite obsession. "S-sure!! See, I'm all about new technology."
"It's his specialty," Zinc added.
A vigorous nod. "Whatever it is, I wanna be the first guy in Phobiopolish to get it. So I've got friends in Hypoxia, Stoma and Dropsy."
Junella nodded: the three small towns closest to the forest where most new souls appeared.
"After a few days to get their bearings- for politenessh shake- they ask any new people about technology they remember. If they've got shomething good in mind, I send over imaginite, my friends get the newbie to concentrate, and there it is!"
Junella's eyebrows went up. She'd never really thought about where stuff came from here. Between imaginite and dumbfounding, it never seemed like it'd be difficult to find anything you could ever want. Although a furson had to conceive of something first in order to want it. What Conrad was really buying was new ideas. "That sounds... really smart, honestly. And profitable, I assume?"
His widening grins said 'absolutely'. "I'm not the only one to think of the idea, but I'm the besht at it."
"No matter how much crazy new shit gets built here, someone's always gonna be homesick for bits of Earth they still remember," Zinc observed. "You got any of these VCR boxes we could watch?"
"Oh yeah! About a dozen. Stuff that people have fonder memories of are WAY easier to get ahold of. And a lot more people love a movie than the thing they watch it on."
"Makes sense."
"Although," he blushed, "I haven't even hooked it up yet. It just got sent through yesterday. I've been shtaring at it, totally in love, for hours! Plus I shtill gotta find a place for it, and another outlet, and keep it above the slimeline so it won't short out."
Junella had, amazingly enough, actually forgotten about the stuff she was currently sitting shin-deep in. She looked down and could vaguely see her feet through it. The viscous pressure of the slime on her lower legs did feel almost, sort of, potentially, hypothetically comfortable.
Conrad bounced on the couch. "Hey!! Now that you're here, we could hook it up together! Take in a flick! That'd be great!!"
Zinc put a wrench on his shoulder. "Pump the brakes, kemosabe. We're here on official business, remember?"
"Ohhhhh right. I got ya. We can have fun later. Businessh up front, party in the rear." He clapped his hands and pointed two finger-guns. Then he sat bolt upright. "HEY! Is thish about what happened to the wall!?"
Junella jolted forward. "How do you know about that!?"
The frog was briefly worried she might arrest him. "A man of my position tends to pick up more than tech."
She returned a 'fair enough' expression, then turned to Zinc. "Least we don't gotta waste time explaining it to him."
"Yup. Kinda figgered our boy'd have his finger on the pulse of the city." Zinc gave Conrad an approving backpat, resulting in several dozen smiles.
Junella sat back in her seat. "Awright then, mutt. You brought us here. You had an idea. Roll it out."
Zinc nodded to her, then turned and fixed Conrad with a serious gaze. "Surveillance equipment. You got any?"
"Cameras? Mics? Absholutely! Do you even have to ashk?"
"Tops. There's a rude bastard somewhere out in the desert who's 'sponsible for that dent in the wall. Juney 'n me wanna scope out his pad before we break up the joint. I figured you were the frog for the job."
All of Conrad's mouths 'hmmmmed'. "That'sh a little different. I've got stuff that'd be good if you wanted to hide in the bushes and sneak snapshotsh. But there's no cover out there to hide behind."
Zinc blanked. Then an absolutely wonderful idea landed on his head. "You got any remote control cars!?"
"Sure. A few. Though..." Conrad nibbled his finger. "All the video cameras I have are bulky. They'd put a strain on the motor, or outright kill it. I don't think you want shtatic photos. You wanna see, and hopefully hear, exactly what'sh going on wherever this guy is."
"That'd be good, yeah."
Conrad got an idea of his own. He looked right at Zinc's eyes. The eyeballs themselves, held in place on their little wire frames. "Remember all the pranks you used to pull on me with those? Sneaking one in my cereal? Pretending you were psychic by watching my back?"
"Yeah!" The full implications hit. "YEAH!! We don't need a camera!" He reached up and plucked out his left eye. "I already got one!"
"You can still see through it?" Junella asked, surprised.
He pointed it towards her. "Good as ever."
"Huh." Things here did tend to work in whatever ways people assumed they would. "Your ears hear too?"
Zinc unclasped one and held it up. "Like a fuzzy li'l radar dish."
Ideas were filling Conrad's mind like popping corn. "What'sh the range on them, d'ya think?"
~~*-*-*~~