No Small Bills Read online

  There was definitely a problem here somewhere. I could feel it. Hell, I could see it, in that weird hitching half-step it was doing. I just had to figure out exactly where the problem started. And then how to fix it. Great.

  Piston-engine thingies—check. Fans—check. Horns—check. I studied each component in turn. Monitors—down, but that’s probably a symptom of the problem rather than the cause. I could try randomly pushing buttons and tapping gauges but I remembered what’d happened to Tall the last time I did that and shuddered. No way I wanted to start accidentally zapping the entire universe!

  Besides, I had a feeling buttons weren’t the problem. They wouldn’t cause this hiccupping movement. There was something else going on here.

  “Um, DuckBob?” Ned hollered. I was on the far side of the matrix, sidestepping a small mountain of cigarette ash—some people are so inconsiderate!—so he had to yell for me to hear him.

  “Yeah? What?”

  “You might want to hurry!”

  “I’m looking as fast as I can!”

  “I know, but you really might want to hurry.” I was rounding the far curve again, and froze as Ned and the others came into view. They were all on their feet now, and Tall was—

  Well, Tall was pummeling the air.

  Or something fluttering in the air. Something we couldn’t see.

  Oh, hell.

  “They’re starting to come through again!” Tall shouted, stamping on something else I couldn’t see. “Hurry up and do whatever it is you’ve gotta do!”

  “I agree!” Mary added, smashing a surprisingly effective-looking right hook into something unseen near her left side. “They are clearly agitated and in full aggressive mode!”

  Pissed off and on the warpath. Gotcha.

  I forced myself to turn back to the matrix instead of running to their aid. They could handle themselves. And they needed to keep the intruders at bay. I had to figure this thing out while I still had the chance, before the invaders broke past them and swarmed me as well. Because once that happened it’d all be over.

  I focused on the matrix again. Where was the problem? Where? My eyes glided over it, past the ribboning cords and cables and streamers, along the curls and sweeps and bows, over the gap between—

  Wait.

  Gap?

  Why was there a clothing store in the middle of the matrix?

  I sprinted a few paces to catch up to that spot again. Yes! There was a gap in the matrix! It was between one of the fans and two of the streamers, and at first I’d just thought it was part of the design but it was the only space I’d seen between the components anywhere around. This had to be the problem!

  Now I just had to figure out how to fix it.

  I reached out and grabbed one of the streamers in one hand and the fan in the other. Yowtch! It was like trying to hold a live wire. Two of them. My whole body tingled, and my hands felt numb. And the matrix’s rotation slowed. Damn, had I just drained the power somehow? Tripped a breaker circuit or something? But no, it was still moving, just not as fast. And the rhythm—was it my imagination, or had it gotten a little bit smoother?

  “What’d you do?” Tall shouted. I could tell from the way he was gasping that he was talking in between beating on things.

  “I found the problem!” I yelled back. “I’m just not sure how to fix it!”

  “Well, figure it out!” he replied. “And fast!”

  Okay, I had the two separated pieces in my hands. The jolt had faded, though I could still feel that tingling sensation. So I tried to pull my hands together.

  No go.

  I tried again, putting all my strength into it.

  Still nothing. I’d never been able to win the kewpie doll at those “Test Your Strength” things at the circus, actually. And that was before the modifications—now I had trouble swinging anything overhead. Not enough leeway.

  Okay, I couldn’t just pull them back together. So what could I do instead?

  “DuckBob!” Mary called. “Please!”

  Damn, my lady friend was in distress! Yeah, I was calling her “my” lady friend in my head—let’s hope the Grays hadn’t made her telepathic, too! But I had to do something! And fast!

  There had to be a way to bridge the gap here!

  Maybe if I took a closer look . . .

  I stepped in a little close, and craned my neck to peer into the space between the two pieces. Maybe there was some way to extend one or both of them . . .

  . . . which is, of course, when I tripped.

  “NO!!!” I heard Mary scream. Then I didn’t hear much of anything except—

  ZZZZZZAAAAAPPPPPPP!!!!!

  Ow.

  Owowowowowow.

  And, also?

  Ow!

  Because, of course, when I tripped, I stuck my entire head into the gap. Yep. Me. Whole head. In gap.

  Great.

  There was a loud whine, and a thunk, and then a single melodic note—I know because all of it was echoing through my head and my entire body.

  And then the matrix stopped moving.

  “He killed it!” I heard Tall shout, though it sounded like he was far away. Y’know, because I had streamers shoved into one ear and a fan in the other.

  “DuckBob! Speak to me!” Mary sobbed. Aw!

  “Hey, wait a second . . .” Ned said. Thanks, Ned.

  But he was right.

  Because shoving my head into the matrix?

  Maybe the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.

  Or possibly the smartest.

  You’ve heard a computer start up, right? That little chime it makes, one if it’s a Mac and one if it’s a PC? Okay, imagine if that chime is an entire symphony instead.

  Now imagine the computer is the size of a small building.

  And that your head is stuck inside it.

  I’ve never felt that musical in my life.

  And then—

  Lights!

  Colors!

  More music! But not as loud this time, thank God! And quickly settling down into something like background noise, even. But prettier.

  “I think—” Ned offered slowly. “I think he did it.”

  “He did?” Ah, thanks, Tall. Always my biggest fan. Still, I was right there with him. I did? Did what? I didn’t mean to! I’ll put it back, honest! It was only for a second! It was a mistake! An accident! You can’t even prove I was there!

  Oh, wait . . .

  Thinking with music vibrating through your body? Not as easy as you might think.

  At least there weren’t any lyrics.

  “Did it work?” I asked. I may have been a little loud. I was shouting to be heard over the music, but judging by the way the others stared at me I’m probably the only one who can hear it.

  I remember, when I was a kid, wondering if I could cut out the middleman—in this case my crappy headphones—and just plug myself directly into my stereo system. Didn’t work so well then. Apparently I just needed a big enough opening.

  Or to have my head rebuilt by aliens. Whichever.

  “It’s not moving!” I pointed out, then lowered my voice when I saw they were still flinching. “It’s not moving. Is that good or bad?”

  “Everything’s lit up,” Ned answered. “All the monitors are online again, every piece is glowing evenly—I really think you did it.”

  “And no more invaders,” Tall added, mopping his brow and then wiping his hands on his legs. “It looks like they’ve stopped.” He gave me a grudging nod. “I think Ned’s right. I think you fixed the matrix.”

  “You did it!” Mary was, not surprisingly, the most enthusiastic. “You realigned the quantum fluctuation matrix!”

  “Apparently you were the missing piece,” Ned mused. “The invaders must have somehow torn a hole in the thing and set it wobbling, and your modified brain chemistry allowed you to function as a bridge. Once you inserted yourself—bold move, by the way!—and completed the loop the matrix shut itself down and rebooted, which res
et its frequencies and resealed the barrier between the dimensions. Nice work!”

  “Thanks.” I was starting to feel pretty good about myself. I’d stopped the alien invasion! I’d saved the universe! Me! DuckBob Spinowitz! That called for some celebrating. “Hey, Mary, how about a hug for the conquering hero?” I asked. I’d have fluttered my eyelashes at her if I had any.

  She laughed. “Happily!” she said, and started toward me—

  —but Ned pulled her back.

  “Sorry, it might not be safe,” he pointed out. “DuckBob’s been attuned to the matrix and can handle the energies coursing through it, but I’m not sure the rest of us would survive the contact.”

  “Oh. Right.” I twisted my head slightly to glance around. “Okay, so how do I get out of this thing, then? Guys? Guys?” There wasn’t any answer, and when I turned back to them I saw they all looked pretty sad, even Tall.

  My heart sank.

  “Oh, come on!”

  “I’m sorry,” Ned told me. “We’ll have to run some tests, check some readings, but right now you’re part of the matrix. Removing you would leave a gap again.”

  “Yeah, but they’re gone, aren’t they? And the wall’s back up?”

  “For now,” he agreed. “But who knows what’d happen if the matrix was thrown off again? It might shut itself down until it could be repaired properly. Or it might just wobble like it did before, leaving enough of a gap for the invaders to find their way through a second time.”

  “And this time they’d hit us fast and hard,” Tall added. “I would if I were them.”

  “So you’re saying I’m stuck here? With my head in this thing? Forever?”

  Ned looked away. “I don’t know. Hopefully not. But I can’t promise anything.”

  I looked at Mary. She had tears in her eyes. “I will confer with the Grays,” she assured me. “There must be something we can do.”

  “I hope so. I don’t want to be a permanent piece of the hard drive!”

  She nodded and tried to smile. “We will do all we can. But no matter what happens, DuckBob, you have saved the universe. We are all in your debt.”

  Yeah. Great. In my debt. If that was anything like any other kind of debt, it would mean years of letters back and forth, lots of “it’s in the mail” and “my dog ate it” excuses, a bunch of trumped-up late fees and other silly charges, and not a whole lot of result in the end.

  I’d prefer the cash.

  Hell, right now I’d settle for a tuning knob. Surely this thing, which was the focus of the universe and maintained the quantum frequencies and all that, could get some classic rock?

  Or at least talk radio?

  Epilogue

  Stuck in a soap bubble

  Okay, so things aren’t quite as dire as I made out.

  Yes, I am stuck in the matrix.

  Sort of.

  Ned did some checking, and confirmed that yes, the matrix does need a living component. Turns out, that pile of ash I saw before? Yeah, not from a sequoia-sized cigarette. We’re not sure if the previous matrix operator got shot and killed, maybe by an intruder-sympathizer like Tansy, or just overloaded and went up in smoke. Regardless, that’s all that’s left of him.

  Some retirement plan, huh?

  Still haven’t found out why the Grays didn’t just tell me up-front that I needed to interface with the matrix directly. Would’ve saved us a lot of time and trouble, not to mention a few pants-wetting moments.

  Maybe they figured I wouldn’t do it if I knew I was being asked to play the high-tech equivalent of Atlas.

  They might have been right, too.

  At least, back then.

  I think I’ve grown up some, though. Or maybe just learned to contain my more childish impulses from time to time. In public.

  Which may be the same thing, anyway.

  Thing is, they offered me a choice. The Grays. After the matrix was running again, so was their translocation doohickey, so they popped right up for a quick inspection tour. And congratulated me on “accomplishing my goal, albeit in a roundabout and much delayed fashion.” So yay me, passing marks, something I never got in college!

  Then they told me that I’d displayed “a surprising degree of intelligence, coupled with impressively creative strategic problem-solving.” Which I took to mean I wasn’t as dumb as I looked, and that I sometimes had these crazy ideas that actually worked. Mostly.

  Anyway, they told me I’d “performed admirably,” and “justified their practice of bodily modification,” and that if I wished to I could go home now.

  And go back to being normal.

  I don’t just mean my definition of normal, which includes prank calls to nature shows. I mean NORMAL normal. No duck head, no feathers, no webbed feet. REAL normal.

  No-more-DuckBob normal.

  I thought about it. I did. But honestly? What did I have going for me back there? A dead-end job, some loser almost-friends, a squalid apartment, an endless succession of boozy nights and possibly loose women? Okay, the last part didn’t sound so bad—or wouldn’t. Until I saw there was more out there.

  Until I saw I could be more.

  So I said no, I’d stay this way, thanks. And stay here. Why not? I’m actually needed here. That’s pretty much the first time that’s ever happened.

  They gave Mary a choice, too. Told her she’d “performed exceptional service”—I try not to think about that one too much—and that if she wished it, they could undo her modifications and return her to her old life. She didn’t even need two seconds to turn that down flat. Seems that, before they got to her, and despite those twin degrees (I know, right?), her last job? Hooters. Because every time she did get an interview for a real academic job, the fuddy-duddy old-guy professors wouldn’t take her seriously. At one school they even tried stuffing dollars down her shirt!

  Nice to know I’m not the only one around here who’s banned for life from certain college campuses. Hell, all I was doing was cadging free food. They’re allowed to feed the ducks!

  Anyway, she said no, too. Which means she’s still their intermediary to the human race, and sort of an advance scout and problem-solver on other jaunts.

  She’s away about half the time, but she tries to come back some nights, and weekends.

  Guess who else stuck around? Tall! Yeah, he says it’s just to keep me from screwing up again, but I know that’s not it. Well, not entirely. I mean, you can’t go through as many weird and dangerous things together as we did and not bond a little, right? Deep down, I think he really likes me.

  He’s still a MiB, of course. But his bosses agreed that they should have a liaison to the Grays, and an eye on the matrix, and it made sense to assign Tall since he’d already, y’know, been here. So now he drops by maybe once a week to check in, see how things are going, and all that.

  Mostly that means he shows up with a six-pack of Omegan fire-beer (“You’ll burn up from the inside out!”) and watches Madrigoran spikeball with me. That’s like hockey only the players are all a cross between a bull and a really big guy and a tank, and the ball has spikes and can move on its own and occasionally explodes, and the sticks are more like the Grim Reaper’s scythe crossed with a lightsaber and a cattleprod. Fun to watch but they go through players pretty fast—each team’s bench is something like a hundred deep. Anyway, we have fun, even if half the time we’re rooting for opposite teams (“Let’s go, ChaosFiends!”).

  The good news is, Ned—who asked to be assigned as the matrix’s new resident techie, so he pops in on a regular basis as well—managed to rig up a helmet for me, and spliced its cord into the juncture. At least I can walk around a bit. The cable for it is thin and looks like it’s only about twenty feet but it stretches to twenty times that length, so I can literally reach anywhere in the main matrix space and some of the adjoining rooms besides.

  Including the bathroom they set up for me. Ain’t that a relief!

  He’s looking into a wireless setup, which would give me the run of
the entire skull.

  Because that’s what it turns out this place really is.

  A skull.

  The crystallized head of some ancient and impossibly huge beastie. Those towers along the top? Spines. The balconies off to the sides? Horns. The openings here and there? Eyes, nose, mouth, ears, a few others I don’t recognize.

  I’m living inside the biggest head in all creation.

  I feel like I should have a shirt that says, “Hey, I’m your subconscious” and should go around whispering naughty thoughts and snide comments.

  Yeah, all right, I do that part anyway.

  Regardless, it’s not like I can find new digs. I’m skullbound for the foreseeable future.

  Still, it ain’t so bad. I’ve got a nice little bedroom set up in a nook right off this main area, and a mammoth projection TV at the far back end. I get cable from over five hundred different worlds and civilizations. Over thirteen million channels. And guess what?

  There’s still nothing on besides reality TV, soaps, and cooking shows.

  I am getting to be a fair hand at making a Janalusian trill-flip omelet, though. The trick is not to blink. Or stop whistling.

  So this is now my new job. Guardian of the Matrix. It’s a lot like my old job, in that I don’t really have to do anything except show up. I surf the Internet a lot—you don’t even wanna know what some of those porn sites are like, though the spam emails are pretty damn amusing, especially the ones that start “Dear Mrs. Matrix!”—and watch TV when I can stand it. Ned managed to connect Earth’s networks up here as well, so I can watch movies on InstantView, and catch up on American TV shows on the network sites.

  I’ve also got a blog. It’s on my website. DuckBob.com.

  Yes, I get bored a lot.

  Oh, here’s one really good thing, though. That truck stop diner, Red’s?

  Turns out they deliver.

  Yep.

  Some other good news—turns out I may not be all that special after all.

  More to the point, Ned’s figured out that, while my modified noggin was needed to jumpstart the matrix, now that it’s running smooth again any old brainbox will do. At least for short periods. So he, Tall, and Mary take turns spelling me at least once a day so I can get out of my skull—like that?—to wander over to the shopping center and generally just get away from all that pink. I can’t stay away too long, but I can get a few hours out, which is enough time for Mary and I to go out for dinner or catch a flick or go particle-sledding or something.