Ghosts of Punktown Read online

  “It’s snowing!” she exclaimed as she hitched up her black tights. Snow was a single thing to capture her attention, something she could wrap her head around. Snow muffled the city’s babble, made the too diverse buildings comfortingly homogenous. Snow activated ancestral instincts, nostalgic notions of family and shelter.

  “Yes, I know, that’s why you must dress warm today.” Mr. Moon had laid out Cynth’s clothes on her bed while she was still in the bath he had drawn for her.

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said. “Don’t you watch me, now!” she teased as she pulled her pajama top off to switch into her blouse.

  In the living room of apartment 933 there was a glowing circular plate set into the wall. This and the panel beneath it were the apartment’s control center for Mr. Moon, as Cynth had named him. His greenish face shone from the circular plate: that of a benevolent, smiling moon rendered in an antique style, such as one might see in a fairytale illustration. She had told her father that she wished the face plate could be transferred to her bedroom wall, or that she could use the living room as her bedroom instead. When she lounged on the sofa, watching VT, she liked that the only other light in the room came from that pale lunar face. Her father had showed her how the building’s interactive system could also be accessed from any computer in the apartment, and called up Mr. Moon’s face on the screen of her room’s computer. Now his was the only light when she slept, bathing her in its green glow.

  “I won’t look,” he assured her, though his eyes remained unmoving, unblinking. “Are you finished with your breakfast?”

  “What do you think?” She gestured at her bowl, its inside stained with the bright yellow remnants of luul, a sweet porridge favored by the indigenous Choom people. She had been reluctant to try luul at first, but her mother had insisted and now it was the only breakfast Cynth would accept. She regretted her sarcastic tone and said, “Yes, please, you can take it now.”

  There was a series of tracks recessed into the ceiling, the widest of these being a direct chute to the kitchen. Out of this track, one of the ceiling’s brass colored arms unfolded, silent and graceful, as delicate and intricate as the limb of a mechanical insect. Its fingers lifted her breakfast tray up into the chute and bore it away toward the kitchen.

  As she slipped into her crisp school blazer, Cynth again became distracted by the expansive view from her bedroom window. Whatever its transforming properties, the snow was still unable to extinguish the warm brass glow of the metal the Triplex buildings were composed of. Rows of great bolts, in keeping with the towers’ retro industrial style, looked like rivets stitching together the plates of battleships. But it was the flying vehicles that had caught Cynth’s eye, their outlines vague as they swam through the veils of snow like birds above a sea of looming icebergs. A private hoverbus, riding lower to the ground, would be arriving soon to spirit her to the exclusive school her parents had enrolled her in.

  Mr. Moon said, “And don’t forget, Cynthia, that you have Lucia’s birthday party to attend this evening.”

  Turning from the window, the child huffed, “Like I’d really forget that! Why don’t you stop nagging me?”

  There was the briefest of pauses, and then Mr. Moon said, “I’m sorry, Cynthia. Would you rather I didn’t talk with you this much in the future?”

  Mr. Moon’s tone hadn’t changed – it never did, and how could it? – and yet to Cynth, it sounded as though she had actually hurt his feelings. She stepped closer to the brass colored wall and placed her hand flat against it. It didn’t matter in what particular spot she placed her hand; she felt his essence everywhere in apartment 933. The metal was warm, not cool.

  “Why don’t you sing me a song instead?” she said gently.

  “What would you like me to sing to you?”

  “How about...um, Blue Blues by Pearl Mason?” This past summer she had seen this performer in person at the annual Paxton Fair, Paxton being Punktown’s true name, and the singer had sung Blue Blues on that occasion.

  Without hesitating or balking, Mr. Moon began singing the song. He had sung it before, but he could access the lyrics and tune of any song she requested. Whether it was a thoughtful ballad from Del Kahn or a bouncy hit from upcoming club queen Chandra Shankar, Mr. Moon always sang in the same softly modulated male voice, warm as his brass skin, somewhat deep as befitted his giant’s body. This was not a disappointment, however, but a comfort to Cynth, like the unchanging voice of a parent. And it was when her own parents were both late home from work – which was often the case – that she had him sing to her the most.

  * * *

  Cynth’s parents gave her a lot of freedom – at least, within the confines of the fortress they had made of her life, here in the heart of a city notorious for its level of crime. They allowed her to go to Lucia’s birthday party, five floors below their apartment, unescorted. Actually, she didn’t even care to go; her mother was friendly with Lucia’s mother, if their superficial exchanges in the lobby could be considered a friendship, and Lucia’s mother had invited Cynth during one of these recent chats. Instead, Cynth was tempted to ride up and down in the elevator and talk to Mr. Moon, because his was the elevator’s voice. She considered wandering the other floors, or sitting in the lobby and reading magazines for a few hours, but then what if someone who knew her should relate this to her parents? What if Lucia’s mother asked Cynth’s why she hadn’t come to the party? Cynth saw no way around it. So, a present wrapped in shimmering gold foil in her arms, she set out through the building’s hallways with their riveted brass walls, doors of glossy dark wood, deeply colored carpets and mellow crystal lamps.

  As she approached the corner that would deliver her at a row of elevators, Cynth heard a soft but familiar whirring. “Mr. Moon!” she called ahead, quickening her pace.

  From around the corner emerged a boxy looking machine that skated along the carpet, sucking up the grit people had been tracking in from the snowy streets. Arms could unfold from it to polish the wooden doors or dust the ornate lamps, though none were extended now. The robot moved toward Cynth to meet her halfway. It was not in the least bit anthropomorphic, with nothing remotely like a head, but from it issued the voice of Mr. Moon. “You look lovely, Cynthia,” he said, though she didn’t know how he was seeing her.

  “Well, I should – this is the dress you picked out. You have exquisite taste, Mr. Moon,” she said in a lofty tone.

  “Thank you.”

  When they reached each other, Cynth clambered up onto the automaton’s back. “Take me to the party, okay? You can be my trusty steed.”

  “As you wish, Cinderella.”

  The robot extension of Mr. Moon pivoted around back toward the elevators. They entered one, and as the doors closed them in, Cynth eyed the keyboard. “Let’s skip this stupid party, Mr. Moon. I don’t even like that snobby Lucia. Take me to the basement instead.”

  “The basement? Why?”

  “I’ve never seen it. I want to explore. It’s where all your guts are, right? It’s like your brain and your heart.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not allowed. It’s too dangerous in there for a child. And I don’t have a heart, Cynthia.”

  “I thought you were my friend.” She exaggerated a pout.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m just looking out for you. It’s my job to protect you.”

  * * *

  Lucia was already opening her presents when Cynth arrived, though she was only a few minutes late. Cynth’s gift was the last to be added, the last to be opened, and when the gold foil came off Lucia said, “Thank you, Cynth. This would have been nice if I didn’t already have Sassy 4.5.”

  “We could return it,” Cynth said, feeling her face begin to glow.

  “That’s okay.” Lucia set the Sassy 4.0 doll aside. It was a diminutive, sexy-cute robot with an oversized head and even larger eyes, that danced to music, responded to easy questions and had a disconcerting habit of exploring the house while you slept, as if looking for a way out. Children
had found it fun to go looking for their dolls in the morning, however, as if in a game of hide and go seek. “I can give it to my sister,” Lucia said.

  Soon after the opening of gifts, it was time for cake and ice cream. Cynth hung back, on the outer orbit of those who gathered around Lucia, the center of the universe. The lights dimmed and Lucia’s mother carried the cake from the kitchen. As she did so, the guests sang, “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you.”Aside from Cynth’s father, there was only one other male adult voice that Cynth heard singing along. It was a softly modulated voice, warm as brass, somewhat deep as befitted a giant’s body.

  Cynth looked around with sharp, bird-like jerks of her head, until she spotted a glowing circular plate set into the living room wall. A greenish face shone from the plate: that of a benevolent, smiling moon rendered in an antique style, such as one might see in a fairytale illustration.

  When the song had ended, Lucia’s mother laughed and said, “Nice singing, Jeeves.”

  “Nice job with the cake, too,” the father added.

  “My pleasure,” said that very familiar voice.

  Jeeves, they called him. But Cynth understood then, really for the very first time, that each apartment did not have its own distinct spirit, its unique guardian angel. They were all the same entity, and he administered to the needs of each apartment dweller equally. One might call him Jeeves. Another might call him Mr. Moon. But who could say what his name truly was, if his designers had even given him one?

  She felt stupid for believing in things that didn’t exist. Felt tricked, though whether by those designers or by herself she couldn’t say. More than tricked, she felt – betrayed.

  Cynth left the party early, found her mother had finally arrived home from work and complained to her of a bellyache before retiring for the night.

  In her room, Mr. Moon spoke from the screen of the computer. “Was the party fun, Cynthia?” he asked.

  “You tell me. You were there.” She changed into her pajamas without her usual teasing about Mr. Moon peeking at her bare body, then slipped into bed without bothering to brush her teeth first.

  “I heard you tell your mother you were feeling unwell. Should I bring you something for it?”

  “No. I need to sleep.”

  “Would you like me to sing you to sleep, Cynthia?”

  She didn’t reply. And she didn’t ask Mr. Moon to sing to her again for a long time after that night.

  * * *

  It was several months after Lucia’s birthday party, and Cynth’s parents were both late in coming home from work, even though it had long since become dark outside. It was not unusual that they were late, nor was it unusual to hear the harpy cries of sirens in Punktown, but tonight the sirens were louder – nearer – than usual and Cynth found herself drawn to the window that nearly filled one wall of her bedroom.

  Every night, the skyline of Punktown dazzled with constellations of lights, a conflagration of neon, holograph and laser. It was beautiful, but removed as she was from it, Cynth did not see up close the sidewalks lit green as if with radiation, an absinthe green under which one’s skin was bleached cadaverous white, while red light leaked its way into alleys like the blood channels grooved into a sacrificial altar. Cynth did not see, from her bedroom window, the people who moved along those streets, some human and others not, nor would she understand the activities that so many of those restless souls pursued in the pulse and flicker of the city’s carnival lights.

  The flashing lights she watched now, though, were those of police and emergency vehicles, some floating high off the ground like fireflies while others hovered low, in the triangular park that filled the space between the Triplex’s towers. She did not know that if this were another, less affluent portion of the immense colony city, the response would not be this intense – if there were any response at all.

  In the lights from the vehicles, she could just make out small figures racing to the entrance of the building directly opposite, designated Tower 3. The colored lights flashed across the front of her own building, Tower 1, and through her window, alternating red and blue on the walls of her room.

  Distracted as she was by all this, Cynth realized belatedly that she had begun to whimper, and when she heard herself whimpering she began to cry. She flinched, startled, when a hand lightly stroked the back of her head. She whirled around, expecting to see her mother there, arrived home from work at last. Instead, she saw a glittering brassy arm that had unfolded from its track in the ceiling, like a large metal spider that had descended on a strand of its far-reaching web.

  “Don’t be afraid, Cynthia,” Mr. Moon said in his soothing tone.

  “Please...will you sing to me, Mr. Moon?” she sobbed.

  He started to sing to her, then, and his arm lowered further so that she could grip his hand. It was large, and enfolded her own like the claw of some imaginary, benevolent dragon.

  Cynth’s parents would not tell her, the next day, how two young men had found their way into Tower 3, and then into an apartment on the second floor, where an elderly couple lived. One of the men was a nephew of the couple, and the other was his friend, and both were addicted to a drug called purple vortex. When his uncle tried to evict the men, the nephew and his friend began beating them.

  As she sat there on her bed, with the police lights sweeping across her room and her body, and Mr. Moon holding her hand so gently as he sang Blue Blues to her, Cynth did not realize that just then in Tower 3 the police had discovered the elderly couple battered but alive on their living room sofa. They also found the two home invaders, suspended from the living room ceiling in the grip of eight metal hands, some of their parts no longer connected to the rest of their bodies.

  2

  In the autumn of her twenty-eighth year, Cynth traveled to Punktown from the city of Miniosis a half dozen times for a number of job interviews, and to check on the progress of the condominium she had purchased. Her condominium was one unit of a three story structure that was to have a brick exterior and the look of a converted factory building, to complement its neighborhood of warehouses and places of industry that themselves had mostly been refurbished as apartment buildings or office suites. Over the past couple of decades, most of Punktown’s places of manufacture had shut down, leaving many people – better suited to manual labor than office drone work – jobless, and thus increasing dramatically Punktown’s already alarming crime rate. To Cynth, the building under construction looked as much like it was slowly being stripped down and razed.

  Because she had broken off with her fiancé, and because she couldn’t even bear being in the same city with him anymore, as if he were so integrated with that place that its very name concealed his own in code, she was in a dark mood that autumn and took to thinking of the condos-in-the-making as the Mansions of Despair. For a prolonged period the building’s construction had stalled, or at least in her impatience this was her impression. Whatever the case, for several of her visits she’d noted that the outside had been left surfaced in a tarry, charred-looking black material, which she imagined was insulation, except for a middle section that was weirdly yellow instead. When the gaping empty windows were viewed from an angle, the vertical metal supports for the interior walls looked like bars across them. There was to be a high security wall of brick-faced concrete around the condos, but in its incomplete state, with a bristling forest of iron rods jutting up like punji stakes, the wall’s foundation better called to mind a castle moat.

  The building was finally finished, however, and by winter not only had Cynth moved in but settled into a new job as well. Still, every morning it was her ritual to steel herself before venturing outside to embark for work. She would stand at her living room window, coffee in hand, to confront the city beyond. Her parents had kept her well insulated from Punktown as a child, but she was no longer that child and her parents themselves remained in Miniosis, where they had moved their family when Cynth was ten. These days, she was only too aware of wh
at went on in the streets that wound like streams through gorges of towering stone. The Mansions of Despair were curious in being so humble in scale, in a city where it often appeared the buildings had rained down from the sky and heaped atop each other wherever they happened to land, in seemingly precarious stacks of palaces atop castles atop fortresses, with metal bridges connecting them or maybe just preventing them from toppling against each other, vines of cable and drooping loops of corrugated pipe slung from one chasm wall to the next, all of it casting the labyrinth of streets below in a perpetual gloom.

  Mansions of Despair, Cynth thought this morning as she gazed out upon Punktown once again, again sipped the coffee that had become a prop, an elixir of imagined strength. It’s all the Mansions of Despair.

  It was comfortable enough inside her condo, but during the first week staying there she’d had a disturbing dream. On her earliest visit to the site, all there had been to see of the project was a steel skeleton, and it had rained that day so the cavernous interior pinged with dripping sounds. In her dream, Cynth sat up in her bed to find it perched on the third floor of this metal skeleton, seeing only darkness around her aside from the glistening of steel supports, and listening to those echoing drips of water.