Xeno yearns to have access to The Nth Dimension like The White Boys, famed telepaths who suffered brain damage when they made contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. Out of work as a bartender since the Shoki Pao dance club mysteriously burned d...
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Trianne stopped at a defunct Sunlite pill silo, just outside the entrance of Food-4-All. It was a phone booth-sized cylinder, with a cracked and faded logo above the doorless entry:
S LIT
She peered inside, taking one last drag of her chemorette before flicking it off. Through the electronic wiring dangling from the ceiling, she saw Hollymonde fliers plastered all over the dark interior, her celebrity face obscured by wild streaks of graffiti. In the center of the floor was a rusted metal stump where a luxurious leather chair once rotated, the self help kiosk nothing more than ghostly black slots in polyurethane molding.
"Is Xeno ready for his acting pill?" Trianne said into her black box transceiver.
"Well . . . he's standing," Zoom replied. "Now, we just have to get him to walk and talk."
She exhaled her last wad of smoke and blew through the glass doors of Food-4-All, steering clear of the cashier with dark eye circles who always looked like he was plotting to set off a bomb, the cockeyed bagger who leered at her through mangled surfer bangs as he lowered groceries into the cart, the goth stock girl with Sharpie black eyeliner who glared at everyone as if they didn't deserve to have a soul. The shoppers drifting past Trianne looked like flesh-colored trout, navigating carts through the aisles with their mouths hanging open, accompanied by the sound of plastic items, never to be re-shelved, cracking under the raw black wheels. She made her way through the cereal aisle, past the elderly man in bathrobe and corduroy baseball cap, the gaunt woman in curlers and emergency red lipstick, avoiding boxes on the floor with ugly shoe prints, long since punctured, bleeding out corn flakes and multi-colored shapes. Every step making a crunching sound.
"It was her . . ." Xeno balanced himself with his hands planted on the sink counter. His trench coat hung over his tall frame like a black curtain, his disheveled black bangs glistening with perspiration, falling forward over his face like a tangle of black vines. After a few wobbly moments, he looked up, wincing from the nuclear panel light, looking around for Zoom among the arctic urinals and metallic stalls. "She spoke to me!"
"Xeno, there's no implant in your brain." Zoom caught Xeno in his arms as he stumbled back. "It's just the Black Magic." He shoved Xeno back towards the sink, allowing him to catch his balance, then went back to contouring his spiky orange hair in the mirror with moistened fingertips, working around the black node affixed to his forehead.
"She seemed so real," Xeno gazed into his delirious reflection alongside Zoom, his black node still affixed to his forehead beneath sweaty bangs, "ever since the Zener test at the Intellegella job fair." He centered his black box over his chest, buttoned his coat, trying to conceal the perspiration marks on his dress shirt.
"Who made Intellegella the authority on psychic powers?" Zoom centered his black box over his frilly poet shirt, adjusted the collar of his leopard fur pimp coat. "If the manager thinks you can read minds, that's all that matters. I'll communicate with you through the earphone on a hidden frequency, and in no time we'll be catching shop—" Zoom coughed, put his hand to his mouth, catching specks of red discharge, thought nothing of it, then continued cycling through his concealed camera angles of the market floor on his black box holopane.
