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Mandatory Keshet Öö scrunched up his cream-colored face and wrinkled his black nose. Capo wanted to bite his cream-colored face and his black nose so badly her fangs itched. “That’s got Lennon all over it,” the uncatchable time-traveling prey animal said doubtfully.
“Yeah, well, so do I, mate.”
Oort St. Ultraviolet began to strum softly in the long dark between worlds, singing about a lake as big as the ocean.
“Do the scream, though,” the red panda insisted.
“Come on, that’s the worst bit. I’m more of a cerebral crooner than a screamer.”
“This is why we’re worriedworriedconcerneddubious about your sentience. How can you sing a song without a scream from the gut of your soulmindbodyheartsoulsoulsoul? What even is a songsonganthemchantsong without the screamy bit? Listen, this will be very awkwardweirdawkwardsociallytwisted for you, but I hatehatecan’tbear this part I want to skip pastpastfuturepresentpast it as fast as we can. Come on, let’s go fasterfasterfaster. We are always already friends. I have had this interaction with you twelve thousand six hundred and three times alreadybeforealreadyalready. I have already scrambledclimbedwiggled back and forth through every interaction we have ever had or ever will never have but might, every permutation of our mutual sympatheticemotionalempathicintellectualsnuggle experience, every outcomewinlosedrawnuclearannihilation of the Grand Prix, of your band, of your marriage, of every cell that makes up you and me and the future and the past. This is our first real conversation for you, but it is the billionth for me. I currently rank you fifthfifthfourthsixth of my favorite entities of all time. And I know you can do the screamy bit really really good. You can. I don’t know about your crooning. But I believe utterly in your screamy bits. Do the thing, Englishblokeman. Just onceoncetwiceinfinityforever.”
Oort St. Ultraviolet shut his eyes in the depths of space, took a deep breath, and screech-sang the ghost of Yoko Ono proud. He stopped short.
“Lennon got shot right after he recorded that, you know. Played away the afternoon, didn’t make it through the night. He was holding the final tape in his hand when he died.”
“I knowknowwentsaw. I was thereheretherethereeverywhereallthetimenowheretherehere.”
Oort’s eyes went dark and wet and pained. “You might have a point about us.”
“I know that, too.”
Whiskers quivered. Eyes shut. Eyes open again.
“I’m sorry, Oort. I’m so sorry. You’re right. You’re always so bloody right. I hate that about you. I was just . . . I was happy, then. For one stupid minute. I was happy. I was in the middle of things and I wanted to stay there, I wanted it to be like that forever, and Mira wanted to write all these Important Songs about What’s Going On and you wanted to do, like, concept jazz or something, and I felt it slipping away. I felt like I was the only one who understood that the only wall we could ever build against What’s Going On was the glitter and the shine and the synth and the knowing grin that never stops knowing. The show. Because the opposite of fascism isn’t anarchy, it’s theater. When the world is fucked, you go to the theater, you go to the shine, and when the bad men come, all there is left to do is sing them down. You didn’t get it, I didn’t think you understood, you can’t sing a dirge to the reaper, he’s already heard them all. You gotta slaughter him with joy and a beat like the best of all possible shags, and because somehow, somehow, my nan’s cartoons always had it right and the Care Bear Stare is the most powerful force in the world, and I wanted to shine and you wanted to scream, and we just failed, we failed at both and neither because of me.”
“It’s always all about you, somehow. Even when you’re apologizing. It’s kind of impressive.”
“I’m trying.”
“So you were an arrogant, selfish arseface because ‘the world, man’? Or because me and Mira were just too thick to comprehend your genius?”
“God, you just do not crack, do you? What is this about? Why do you hate me so much? You used to love me. I still love you.”
“I don’t hate you. I just don’t like looking at you too much these days.”
“Fine. Don’t tell me. Don’t use your outside voice like a grownup. Go back to interfering with your panda friend. Is this because of Edinburgh? Do you really still hate me for that? Because I didn’t marry her?”
Capo watched her human set the device she was named for down carefully on a knob of black coral. He spoke very quietly and clearly. “Go fuck yourself, Funshine Bear. You’re the stupidest man I’ve ever known. Even if the rest of us are sentient . . . And you? Are decisively not. She didn’t want to marry you, you arse. Everything was on fire and all we could do was watch it happen on TV. It was a weird night. She got weird. It was a natural reaction.”
“None of us stopped her. None of us even saw her leave. You didn’t either. Neither did Lila. How is it still my fault?”
“It’s your fault because if you’d just told her you loved her, because you did, and not to cry, because that’s what a human being does, and that everything was going to be okay, because who knew, maybe it would have been. Instead of laughing in her face like a goddamned monster, she wouldn’t have had to go calm herself down by driving, and she would be here in this horrible, stupid, gorgeous, fucking spaceship with us, and the song would already be written and nothing bad would ever have happened to us. It’s your fault she’s dead, and I’ve never much felt like forgiving you so just leave me be.”
A long silence. Long enough to lie down in. Long enough to forget you ever knew how to talk.
“We’re not, you know.”
“Not w
hat, Oort?”
“Sentient. Nobody sentient would have let any of it happen. Would have let that night come, or go on after. I’m not either. Nobody sentient would have let Mira drive.”
Eyes slid closed. Eyes slitted open.
Decibel Jones lay in the dark alongside the roadrunner’s long, lithe, blue body. “Were you afraid, before the Grand Prix?”
“Very much.”
