Lizzie woke up slowly, rolling from side to side, waiting until she felt the warmth of a sunbeam to open her eyes. Rainbows refracted across the walls of the cottage from the crystal necklace that hung over a kitchen window.
She heard the loud metallic ‘CLANG’ of a dropped pot and a mutter of frustration that made her giggle. “Annie!” She called out, “It’s called breakfast, not break-everything!”
She tossed a heavy wool blanket from herself and rolled over the side of the mattress to let her bare feet land hard on the oak floor boards, polished enough not to worry about splinters. In the kitchen nook she saw a small stuffed toy panda peek around the corner of the stove and give her a mock stern look through button eyes. The panda hollered, “If I don’t break a few eggs, how am I going to make you breakfast little Miss Lizzie?”
Lizzie giggled and slid her moccasins on, clomping over to the table in the kitchen nook that was right below the rainbow necklace so that she could make shadow puppets in the refractions. Annie, the stuffed panda, wore an apron much too large and stood on a stool in order to reach the stovetop, where a cast iron pan sizzled aromatically with mushrooms, eggs, and cheese. The panda waved a wooden spoon over her head dramatically, “You’d better have an appetite, because I’ve got some tough lessons for you to get through today.”
Lizzie frowned. “But it’s such a nice day, Annie! Can’t I go outside and play a bit?”
The panda groaned. “Little girl, I am going to be in such trouble with your father if we don’t do some schoolwork at some point!”
“Stop calling me little, I’m taller than you.”
Annie pulled the pan off the stove and scooped some of the cheesy mess onto a plate, then deftly hopped off of the stool. She took a deep breath and grunted, swelling in size until her head reached over the table and just a bit higher than Lizzie. She set the girl’s plate in front of her with a smirk. “Besides, your father said no going outside without a grownup.”
Lizzie set in on her breakfast, trying to think of a way to outsmart her babysitter. She stared out the window through the lens of the crystal necklace and noticed a large black bird sitting on a fencepost past the garden in their front yard. The bird was looking directly at her.
“Annie? There’s a bird outside and I think it might be hungry. Can we give it some breakfast?”
Annie stopped clearing dishes to the sink and peaked out the window. “That’s a raven, Lizzie. Ravens are too smart for their own good. They can find their own food.”
The raven seemed to hear her, and opened its wings to soar over to the kitchen windowsill where it kept staring at Lizzie, with an expression that looked pleading and hungry.
Lizzie looked over to see Annie busy filling the sink with water and she reached up and undid the latch to the window, cracking it open a bit. She whispered to the raven, “Are you hungry Mr. Raven?”
The raven lurched forward, forcing its way through the window, knocking over Lizzie’s glass, which fell to the floorboards with a shatter, and snatched the crystal of the rainbow necklace in its beak. Lizzie flinched and when she opened her eyes again the bird was gone. She shrieked, and Annie fell over, startled. Annie jumped to her plush feet in time to see Lizzie’s moccasins passing the threshold of the window, desperately trying to chase after the raven.
“LIZZIE GIRL GET BACK HERE!” Annie bellowed as she hopped lightly from the floor to the chair to the table and out the window as well.
Demetri, took an aching step off of the transit line from the human smell of public transit into the hazy murk of factory adjacent pollution. His feet were stiff, and every step shot through the bones of his legs up through his hips and into his lumbar spine.
His lungs protested and he coughed wet, pulling his heavy respiration mask out of his side bag and winced as he pulled the plastic straps over face and head. Long hours of wearing the PPE had worn lines across his cheekbones and through his scalp. Often, the straps would break the skin, and he’d have to be careful to keep a layer of petroleum jelly between the open sores and the putrid factory air.
The weight of the mask strained his neck, and forced him to adjust his sightlines around the bulky respirator by slouching. He fell into a crowd of his coworkers as they made the short march to the factory. His wife, Annabel, was actually one of the pioneers of the augment-tech that he now labored to mass manufacture. In the past he was lucky to stay at home with their daughter while his wife broke through what she called the ‘Cartesian barrier’ that kept virtual reality experiences awkward and nauseating. He didn’t understand the specifics, but the crux seemed to be finding a way to integrate the top down technology with the bottom up evolutionary structure of the human brain.
Now he was a different kind of lucky, he reminded himself, catching a coworker that began to slump forward under the weight of exhaustion and respirator.
He got by. The insurance didn’t pay out because at the time there wasn’t a legal precedent for the disease that now plagued Annabel’s field. The specific bio-memetic work required a range of solvents and reactants for protein synthesis that were novel in her early years. One in particular, called ‘treacle’ because of its sweet smell, collected in the lungs and crystallized. The now common condition called “Glass Lung” was extremely painful, and easily diagnosed as you could hear a grinding, crunching sound as the sufferer wheezed and coughed.
They didn’t know his wife had the disease until the autopsy. The cause of death was ruled as due to the car accident, until the shards of crystallized treacle were found lacerating her lungs. She drowned in her own blood, and the insurance man said ‘pre-existing condition’.
Demetri scanned the ID off of his lanyard as his compatriots disappeared one-by-one into the murk of their workplace. Cheerful signage lit the way, the neon light playing off of the fog of pollutant in the air. An HVAC system to mediate the air pollution was constantly promised but not delivered in the 9 months he’d worked there. At night as he waited for his mindware to boot up, he’d breathe quietly and listen for the fatalistic sound of glass on glass.
Lizzie landed soft on a pile of damp mulch and lawn clippings and rolled from the earthy mush to the hard dirt path out in front of the cottage. Squinting into the sky against the morning sunlight, she saw the silhouette of the raven disappearing towards the woods to the North. No sooner had Lizzie taken a step in that direction when she felt a familiar softness envelop her. She looked down to see Annie’s arms around her and heard the panda inhale and inflate, still holding on to Lizzie until the little girl’s feet were well off the ground.
Annie turned Lizzie around to look her in the eyes. “What part of ‘no going outside’ rang hollow to you little girl?” The panda’s button eyes were furrowed in exasperation, but they softened as they saw the wet cheeks and desperate look in the child’s eyes.
Lizzie spoke between exhales, trying not to sob, “The… raven… took the rainbow necklace… and… I just… wanted to help him.”
Annie deflated with a long sigh. “Girl, haven’t you learned this by now? You can’t trust everybody. Especially not crows, and double especially not ravens. Not one of them needs your help, they’re clever enough to take care of themselves and all they want is everything you have.”
Once the panda was back to toy size, Lizzie grabbed her paw and started to pull in the direction of the woods but Annie was deceptively strong and didn’t budge. Lizzie turned back, tears having turned to frustration, “Well c’mon! We have to get the necklace back before Dad gets home!”
Annie mulled it over, “Losing a necklace to a tricky raven is one thing. Following a tricky raven into its trap is another.”
“Ravens aren’t smarter than humans, Annie. I’m a human, and I even have you as a bodyguard! What good is a bodyguard that’s scared of some birds?”
“I’m your BABYSITTER, girl, not your bodyguard,” Annie said with some amusement.
Lizzie wiped mulch off of the back of her pajamas. “Well that necklace belonged to mama and I’m not going to lose it to some stupid crow. You can’t let others steal your stuff and walk all over you, what’s the point in that?”
Annie nodded thoughtfully and came forward onto all fours, lifting the girl on her back. “I suppose you have a point, I’m in charge of looking after you but I’m also supposed to be tutoring you while your Dad is at work and this seems a teachable moment. Hold on tight, Lizzie.”
Inflating to the size of a horse, Annie felt Lizzie grab a tight hold of the fur on her back and the panda bucked a little for effect and the little girl giggled and bounced softly. They bounded over the flower gardens and fence of the cottage’s front yard effortlessly in pursuit of the rainbow necklace.
The two moved quickly with the panda’s weightless leaps and bounds and soon Lizzie could look back and fit the cottage between her thumb and forefinger with a squint. They hopped a pasture fence and Annie slowed down to avoid cow pies. “Where’s Arnold?” Lizzie asked.
Arnold was a solitary steer that kept to the pasture, he typically kept himself company humming and singing. He didn’t seem to know any songs, but his memory was so short that by the time he lost steam on one tune he was already starting another. There was no sign of him until the two adventurers neared the pasture fence closer to the tree line of the woods. They saw Arnold from behind, his little tail whipping around and his rear end wiggling in duress. As they got closer it became clear that he was in trouble, and seemed to be stuck in the fence.
“Arnold!” Hollered Lizzie, “Are you ok?”
Arnold bellowed in relief, “Lizzie is that you? Oh Lizzie, you have to help me! I’m stuck in the fence!”
“How did that happen Arnold?” Annie asked with a condescending tone.
“It’s not my fault, a raven came by and tricked me,” lamented Arnold, “I was happily chowing on some of the fantastic grass on my side of the fence when a raven came and landed near me. He started telling me how much better the grass was on the other side of the fence. At first I didn’t believe him, but he pointed out that I hadn’t tried it, and, I couldn’t argue with his brilliant raven logics.”
At this point it was clear to Lizzie and Annie that the cow was not actually stuck in the fence. His head was just beyond one of the horizontal boards of the fence, and although he couldn’t lift his head, he could clear the fence if he’d only lower his head slightly and step back.
Arnold continued, “But sure enough, as soon as I stuck my head through to try the grass on the other side, the raven snatched the bell off of my collar and flew away! I suppose the grass on the other side of the fence tastes alright, but I’ve forgotten what the grass on my side tastes like now and there’s no way for me to compare!”
Lizzie and Annie both stared at Arnold, trying to think of what to say. Finally Lizzie spoke up, “That raven stole something of mine as well, Arnold, and I’m going to get it back. I’ll try to get your bell as well.”
Arnold, forgetting his predicament, tried to lift his head only to thunk his thick neck on the board over him. “Ouch. That’d be great Lizzie, thank you! Someone’s gotta stop that ‘ol raven, sneaking around tricking people into getting stuck in fences. How’d you get out of the fence he tricked you into getting stuck in?”
Annie had clearly had enough, and spoke sternly, “Arnold, you’re not stuck. Just lower you head and step back.”
Arnold chuckled, “Thanks Miss Annie, but I’ve been stuck here all morning. I suppose it’s just my lot in life…”
Annie grabbed Arnold’s head, pushed it down and back and the cow was free again.
Arnold’s eyes were wide in astonishment and he stood wide legged and unbelieving. “Miss Annie, you’re a miracle worker!”
Annie rolled her button eyes, “Arnold, I’m really not.”
The cow bucked and hopped in celebration, “That raven had better watch out, Miss Annie is coming! She’s even cleverer than that nasty raven!” He happily started munching grass.
Lizzie whispered to Annie, “I’m worried he’s going to get his head stuck again.”
The cow suddenly stopped celebrating and his ears drooped. “Oh no…” he muttered.
“What’s wrong now, Arnold?” Annie asked, with a discernable amount of annoyance in her voice.
The cow looked at the two adventurers with a deep woe in his wide eyes, “I forgot to remember what the grass on the other side tastes like.”
Demetri arrived at his work station two minutes early, and patiently waited the two minutes before clocking in. Clocking in early was a fire-able offense, even for Annabel’s widower husband. He nodded to Allie, his coworker and one of the three person shift that covered his station, as she waited to clock out as he waited to clock in at exactly 6am. Allie was new, the last third shift operator had passed away two months before. A small energetic man named Wallace with a big smile and curly black hair, he’d spilled some of the phenol reagent onto his bare skin and not told anyone, fearing repercussions from management. He eventually collapsed and was replaced with Allie within 30 minutes. The company went to great lengths to maintain production, the augment-tech became more and more popular every day as the world became less tolerable. Wallace died of kidney failure the night of his accident, and his family received mindware as payout.
Allie motioned toward one of the roto-vaporators and said, “That one’s beginning to wobble, and it’s throwing off the crystallization rate. I only noticed at the end of my shift, so I didn’t have a chance to tell Prajeet.”
Demetri nodded and made a mental note to put in an engineering request to the section manager as he did a quick spot inspection of the station. Allie kept things clean. She had kids at home and had been on stand-by as a wet operator for months, so Demetri trusted her.
The station was a section of laboratory along the segmented assembly line of the augment-tech mindware. His step of the way was receiving the wire covered electrode pads from the tech station in front of him and applying several layers of synthesized protein matrices that allowed the transfer of programmable sensory to the biological brain. Several 2 liter rotovaps, a fume hood with reagents that even the respirator couldn’t handle, and a collection of protein substrates and primers.
As he received his first batch of pads from the tech guy, his station manager stumbled through the doorway opposite. The red-eyed step-brother of the CFO always rushed into Demetri’s workplace, hurrying to limit his time in the treacle station preceding it.
Demetri had gained a rough understanding of the production mechanisms. His wife had labored to explain the more rigorous steps and he was able to connect the pieces to understand how the assembly was performed. The company maintained a strict division of labor so that none of the line workers would be able to recreate Annabel’s process on their own, or share the proprietary information with a competitor, even though each competitor had been bought and scrapped by now.
But the station manager seemed to really have no idea how any part of the system worked. He was instead a maestro of efficiency, replacing anyone that showed signs of slowing down the process. Even the names of the different reagents, tools and larger machines seemed to evade him and he mistakenly referred to them by the wrong names on the regular. Demetri had at first tried to correct this misunderstanding, thinking that the man would benefit from a basic overview, but soon learned that the ignorance was a strategy. The manager knew that the more he understood, the more would be asked of him, and kept his expertise limited.
Demetri motioned toward Rotovap 3, the wobbler that Allie had mentioned and said to the manager, “We’ve got a wobble on Rotovap 3, reported by Allie. Could you schedule Prajeet to take a look at it?”
The manager’s tired face twisted quickly into panic, fumbling for his company tablet. “What? The roto… ok I have to make a report, so this will slow down your station’s output by how much? What does that machine do exactly?”
Demetri made sure to keep his face blank, although he sighed within. Rotovaps were running 24 hours a day, and typically began to wobble about once a month, requiring maintenance. The station manager should be tracking this type of normal wear and tear maintenance, but the man was instead preoccupied with switching himself from dayshift to nightshift at least twice a month. The managers worked 12 hour shifts and operated with no redundancy. After weeks of the same shift, he always became irritable and would talk about how much better the opposite shift was, for whatever variety of reasons, and how Prajeet had clearly tricked him into taking the unfavorable one. The other station manager, Prajeet, was a quiet and kind man that allowed for these idiosyncratic changes because he also knew the score. Prajeet was a former engineer and performed the routine maintenance for the station when it was required. He’d worked there almost as long as anybody, keeping his head down and acquiescing to the desires of the CFO’s step-brother.
Demetri tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice as he slowly explained, “The rotovap evaporates solvent, allowing for purification of some of the proteins. I can compensate with rotation speed and bath temperature, as long as the wobble gets fixed tonight.”
The station manager’s eyes glazed back over as he calmed down, clearly not caring now that the problem was not an immediate threat. “Right, yes, I’ll make a note for Prajeet to fix the…”
“Rotovap 3.”
“Right. Number 3.”
The tree line to the northern woods seemed unnaturally dark for the daytime, and as soon as Lizzie and Annie had passed the threshold the sunlight was filtered, contrasting starkly with the bright pastures and fields outside. Annie had to shrink down in order to make it through the densely grown trees and Lizzie hopped off of the panda’s back, trying to show a brave face amid the shadows.
After a few minutes it was dark enough that Lizzie couldn’t see, and she stopped in her tracks, shivering. Annie looked back, noticing, and pulled on a hidden strip of Velcro on her chest. The panda’s paw rustled around her secret compartment and she pulled out a piece of polished amber, rubbing it with her paws until it started to glow a bright orange color that illuminated the thicket around them. Annie lightly tossed the amber in the air and it hung there, floating and following them as they went.
Along with the thicket, the light uncovered a pair of yellow eyes watching them from just beyond their sight. Lizzie saw them first, and screamed. Annie jumped in front of the girl and puffed up, scanning until she spotted the eyes and hollered at them, “Who are you creeping around a little girl like that?”
The eyes squinted in a smile and began darting around the trees, chuckles echoing off of the trees in a disorienting fashion. The chuckling stopped as quickly as it started, and Lizzie could hear her heart beat in the silence.
A small furry figure burst from the tree top above them and grabbed the amber in the air, causing all manner of shadows to dance in contrast to the orange light. But the amber didn’t move, and instead Annie and Lizzie saw a weasel hanging from the amber with both hands, whining and squirming as he tried to dislodge it from its floating state.
Annie snagged the weasel by its tail and puffed herself up in an intimidating fashion. “Can I help you, little thief?”
The weasel spun into a flurry of movement. It wiggled, scratched, and bit at the panda before giving up and hanging upside down with an undignified look on its face. “Let me go you damn monstrosity,” the weasel whined, “I’m only doing my job.”
Lizzie piped up, emboldened by how silly the weasel looked in its predicament. “Why does a weasel have a job? Shouldn’t you just be a weasel?”
The weasel sniffed. “Shows how much you know. All of the creatures of the forest have a job, it’s the new way. We all work for King Crow.”
Annie’s button eyes showed a gleam of understanding. “Let me guess, King Crow has you stealing shiny things for him?”
The weasel nodded.
Annie continued, “And what do you get in return?”
The weasel chuckled, “Well I get to live in the forest. You gotta work for King Crow if you wanna live in the forest.”
“Didn’t you live in the forest anyways?” Lizzie asked, an honest look of confusion on her face.
The weasel spat in irritation. “Well yeah dummy, back then. But things have changed. Now that King Crow is in charge, the forest is rich with shinies.”
Annie rolled her eyes, “You mean this King Crow is rich.”
The weasel looked confused for a moment. “No, er, I mean we all work for King Crow, so we all have the shinies.”
Lizzie giggled. The weasel turned to her and spat, “What’s so funny?”
Lizzie thought for a second and said, “Well, do you even like shiny things? I thought only crows and ravens did.”
Now it was the weasel’s turn to be confused. “Well, shiny things are… they’re good. They’re valuable.”
“But if you were living in the forest before, and you’re living in the forest now, and the only difference is that now your job is to find shiny things for King Crow…”
“Also, he’s a King! So…” The weasel protested, losing faith in its own argument.
Annie stifled a laugh as the little girl continued to reason. “What do weasels like?”
The weasel thought. “I like bugs and eggs and birds and mice.”
“Does King Crow give you those things?”
At this point, Annie dropped the defeated weasel who landed softly on his paws and sat down thoughtfully, crossing his hind legs underneath him, his tail twitching manically behind him. “No, but, I live in the forest so…”
“But you lived in the forest before, right?”
At last a look a realization spread over the weasel’s face. “Hey! You’re right. In fact, King Crow even said I gotta stop eating eggs. I love eggs!”
Annie shrunk herself down a bit and sat next to the weasel. “We’re looking for a necklace that a raven stole this morning.”
The weasel nodded, “That had to have been Allen. He’s one of King Crow’s best finders.”
“If you can help us find King Crow, I think we can get that necklace back.”
“And Arnold’s bell,” Lizzie inserted.
The weasel sat thinking. “What do I get if I help you?”
Lizzie looked at Annie and said, “If you help us find him, you won’t have to work for King Crow ever again.”
The rotovaps whirred and Demetri sat in front of the fume hood, his hands busy doling out aliquots of the different reagents and carefully applying the combined layers to the electrode pads. It was tedious work that required a great amount of focus, but Demetri was practiced and able to keep up while allowing himself some small escape in his mind. He thought of his late wife, and his daughter Lizzie. He thought about the evenings he shared with Lizzie, and the adventures that she was able to experience thanks to Annabel. On occasion he even found himself smiling under the heavy respirator.
At the end of his shift, as Demetri readied things for the next operator, the doors to his station slid open and a small man in a worn grey suit hustled over from the treacle station. Demetri couldn’t see his face but he knew anyone wearing a suit in the wet lab areas had to be HR. He felt his heart thump and had to remind himself to breathe. HR could mean anything, maybe the CEO finally realized the totality of his wife’s contribution and wanted to retroactively award him a bonus. It could be that Demetri had failed to prepare adequately for the next shift at some point and received a complaint from a coworker. He didn’t stop working, or even look up, but he did extend a muffled hello to the HR man.
The HR man struggled to breathe through the respirator he wore, they weren’t required in the offices and took some getting used to. He held up a clipboard and started to recite something practiced from it. “Congratulations for all of your hard work, I’m here to thank you for maintaining productivity standards and helping the company achieve all time high stock shares. On behalf of the CEO, shareholders, and the rest of our family, I’m also happy to announce that we will be increasing production output this next quarter by 0.15%, requiring an extra three units an hour to be produced.”
Demetri’s respirator began to slip against his forehead as he broke out in a nervous sweat. “That’s not possible with our current set-up, that would require more operators and an upgrade to much of our equipment.”
The HR guy stood in place, seemingly confused. He looked down at the clipboard and up again at Demetri. “Sir I would like to congratulate you on your productivity, and to let you know we are increasing by 3 units per hour.”
Demetri’s frustration began to mount as he accidentally dislodged a 200 microliter aliquot early, wasting it instead of applying it to the protein matrix he was preparing. “Yes, I heard you, but how are we supposed to increase production further without any help? What you’re asking for doesn’t make sense, we’re already operating at maximum efficiency as decided by the CEO. Now he wants us to do the impossible?”
The HR guy stood awkwardly for a moment and said, “Our family prides itself in doing the impossible each and every day, and keeping only the most qualified staff possible.”
Demetri shut the fume hood and pulled his mask off so that the HR guy could see his face. “Look, I’m not talking to you as HR. I’m talking to you as a human. Last time this happened, Wallace died. I can’t be the next one to slip up. I’m Annabel’s husband. My daughter is at home and she needs me. Are you sure there isn’t anything you can do? I mean we’re selling everything we make, how can that not be enough?”
The HR guy slowly pulled his mask up so that Demetri could see his face as well. The older man’s face was well wrinkled. His eyes showed a helpless sadness. “As a human, Demetri, I will tell you it’s not about humanity. It’s true that we sell as much as we make, but in order to keep our investors we need to be growing.”
“But there are other ways to grow.”
The HR guy shook his head, “We’ve saturated the market with our mindware. It’s popular, but without capable R&D there is nowhere for us to go. The CEO is hoping that he can squeeze a little extra production out before the market collapses, I think he’s planning to cut and run.”
Demetri’s gaze fell from the man’s face to the station floor as he realized what he was being told. “But, Annabel had other projects, what about the ANNIE?”
“It’s too risky in the face of market collapse. Maybe the next CEO will look into that research and invest in the long-term. But for now?” The man shrugged. “Be careful, Demetri. Take care of yourself, follow safety protocols, and you and I will see the future together.”
Demetri impatiently waved his acknowledgement, the HR guy nodded, slid his mask back on and clumsily made his way through the station and past the sliding doors of the next. Once the crew couldn’t keep up with the impossible demands, several workers would stumble under the strain and make mistakes. Investors saw this as weeding out the weak links, but Demetri knew from experience that there was no guarantee that the new hires would be any more capable.
The weasel led Lizzie and Annie through the woods, passing sentinels of all species. Bears, skunks, squirrels, even an otter. The weasel simply saluted them with a paw to his chest and said, “Shiny is all.” The other creatures would mumble the same back, with varying degrees of fluency, and allow them on their way.
After what felt like hours of walking there was finally a break in the trees and Lizzie grew excited to see sunlight finally making it through the canopy, until she saw that it illuminated an intimidating huge old growth tree with roots that dominated the land around it for hundreds of yards. The bark of the tree was dark and the branches were lined with crows, ravens, squirrels and other creatures that silently watched them. Twenty feet or so up from the ground there was a large hollowed out hole in the trunk of the tree and carved around it, in the style of woodpeckers, were the words “King Crow.”
As soon as Annie and Lizzie began crossing the root system, the watching animals all started to make a raucous noise. A fat black bear and a thin badger hustled around to face the newcomers and stop them amongst the tangle of roots. The bear spoke up, “Uh, why are you here?”
The badger rolled its eyes at the bear and said, “This is King Crow’s castle. Outlanders are not allowed.”
Annie crossed her stuffed arms. “We require, uh, an audience with your King.”
The badger and bear looked at each other and the bear muttered, “Can they do that?”
A voice boomed from the hole in the tree. “WHO DARES ENTER THE KING’S LANDS UNINVITED?!” Lizzie unconsciously took a step back as she began to lose her nerve, but Annie reached back and grabbed her. The panda lifted the girl up to her shoulders and inflated several feet.
Annie bellowed back, “We require an audience with this little King Crow!”
A small fat crow hopped from inside the tree to the hole and with a much smaller voice said, “What? Who are you calling little!?”
Lizzie giggled when the crow appeared. It was hardly the specimen that she’d been imagining. It wore an aluminum foil crown and several chains and necklaces bounced against the crow’s round body, which was poorly groomed with loose feathers sticking out in odd directions.
The animals roared in outrage at the little girl’s giggles and King Crow held a wing aloft to silence them. He motioned at a large squirrel that hurried over and allowed him to climb onto its back. The squirrel strained under the fat crow’s weight, and tenuously climbed down and through the root system until the two were in between the bear and badger in front of Lizzie and Annie.
The crow threw a leg over the squirrel and hopped off, immediately getting one of the chains stuck under a root. The squirrel darted away as the King Crow strained awkwardly for a moment before freeing himself. “Weasel! You’ve brought the outlanders to my Kingdom, explain yourself or face my wrath!”
The weasel nervously wrung its paws, “Well they uh, they made a lot of good points and asked a lot of good questions and…” It sniffed the air. “Wait, King Crow, is that eggs I smell on your breath?”
The chittering animals suddenly went silent. The King Crow laughed in mock confidence, “Surely you don’t dare to question your King, Weasel?”
Annie used the quieted moment to launch her investigation. “Under what authority are you King, Mr. Crow?”
The animals began chittering again, but now with an anxious, questioning tone. The bear looked at the badger for reassurance and the badger stared at the King Crow.
“Under the authority of the forest itself of course!” Hollered the King Crow. “Before me there was no King, and the forest itself has deigned my rule absolute.”
Lizzie looked down on the crow from Annie’s shoulders with a confused look. “But specifically, who said you were in charge?”
The crow nervously bounced from one foot to the other, trying to aim his beak away from weasel who sniffed the air with suspicion. “I hold all of the shinies in the forest kingdom, surely that is evidence enough.”
“But nobody else here cares about shiny things,” said Lizzie. All of the crows and ravens in the tree started cawing angrily in disagreement. “Okay, okay,” rescinded Lizzie, “Only the crows and ravens care.”
The other animals began to look at each other, furrowed brows betraying their thoughts.
The King Crow was quick to change the topic, “So what is it you come to ask of the King specifically?”
Annie lowered herself to all fours and Lizzie slid off of her broad fluffy shoulders to face the crow. “You stole my mom’s necklace. It’s the crystal one right there on your chest.”
The King puffed himself up, “I did no such thing!”
Lizzie sighed in exasperation, “Ok, but one of your ravens did. Allen the raven?”
The King hollered for Allen, and a large well preened raven floated down from high in the tree to land deftly to the crow, ringing the entire way from a bell it wore around its neck.
“Allen, my most loyal raven, you brought me this necklace did you not?”
Allen nodded.
“And certainly you wouldn’t have stolen it from this little girl.”
Allen looked at the King, “No, I did steal it, remember? This morning, from the cottage. And then I got this bell, and you said I could keep it because you really liked the crystal necklace and that I deserved a reward.”
The King Crow’s eyeballs bugged out as he stared daggers at Allen. He hissed angrily, “Oh I must have forgotten that, what with all of my important Kingly duties.”
“Well, can I have it back?” Asked Lizzie.
The King Crow puffed his chest once more. “Or what?”
With surprising speed, Annie reached out and pinned the crow to a large root. The King Crow cawed and shrieked, but none of the animals moved, except for the weasel who ran up and began sniffing the King’s mouth and nodding. “Yup, eggs. I knew I smelled eggs.”
Lizzie walked over and took the rainbow necklace from the King Crow, then stopped, took a chain of linked aluminum can tabs and gestured towards Allen. “Mr. Allen, could I trade you this shiny necklace for Arnold’s bell?”
Allen nodded and tossed the bell off of himself with a flick of his head, “Yes, please, the bell has made it much harder for me to sneak around.”
The clearing was completely silent except for the sound the bell made as Lizzie put it into her pajama pocket and climbed back onto Annie. The panda stood back up to full height and turned away, releasing the King Crow. The King stayed stuck to the root, tangled in his mass of shiny treasures as he squawked and protested, but the shinies seemed to catch the eye of Allen, and the rest of the corvids in the tree, as they slowly began to launch from the tree and drift down, landing near the King Crow and hopping towards him.
“Wait,” The King Crow cried, “Stop, stop them! What are you doing?”
The rest of the animals sheepishly turned their backs and walked away, as the King Crow turned into a tornado of feathers and caws.
Demetri had fallen asleep on the transit home, dreaming of clean air and the lakefront beach that his family would go to during the summers of his childhood. He woke up to a jostle on his shoulder and felt like he was falling for a moment before sitting up in the crowded trolley. His neighbor, Carlos, was standing over him. “Time to be home, Demetri,” he said.
Demetri got off the transit and climbed up the four floors of narrow stairs and through the doorway of apartment number 46. He’d prepared a decontaminating area near the door, and took all of his work clothes off and put them into a neutralizing closet that buzzed as it released a chemical mist. He ran his hands over his thin naked body and stepped into the makeshift shower he had put together. The water only stayed warm for the first couple of minutes and by the time he’d finished washing himself and rubbing water into the sores and imprints along his face and head he was shivering.
He threw on an old wool sweater and sweat pants and walked into the main room of the apartment. The room glowed and hummed to the tune of the large cylindrical piece of tech that dominated the area. He grabbed a hunk of bread and hard cheese from the ancient refrigerator in the kitchen nook and sat on the linoleum floor with his back against the warmth of the cylinder as he stared at a lonely photo of his family on the wall.
He slugged back some water to wash down his meal and turned to the cylinder, staring through the sight glass portion of it at the mass of wires, pumps and tubes that held his daughter Lizzie together. His fingers traced the lettering on the side of the cylinder, ‘Augmented Neural Network for Interred Existence.’ Annabel’s final project.
On the opposite side of the cylinder hung a single mindware helmet, specially modified. He laid down on his cot next to the warmth of the cylinder and pulled the helmet onto his head. His hands fumbled over a small keyboard as he booted up the days programming into a dream sequence.
He sighed and laid back, closing his eyes and smiling. “Ok. Let’s see what you’ve been up to today, Lizzie.”