3.
 The supervisor slid up close on his smoky sled. "Maggner Eon, you are not in focus," the disapproving voice said. "Your mind is not on your work lately. Get with it, man." The bearded face was furrowed with worry, but there was no personal concern. The eyes had no special focus, and did not look directly at him. That was a truly old maggner. Time spent wrestling with stray l!ght beams had irradiated him until his skin and hair turned white as sugar. That was an old maggner's fate. Either you literally fell apart, disintegrated into the l!ght that sucked you up into the pylon, the column doling to the obersole, or you lingered as a dry husk and they made you supervise newer maggners. The relief of maggners was their sleep, which was like being dead but enjoying it. Their only hope was for eternal rest.
Pine scent.
"How did you find me?" Eon asked. He was falling in love with her, and why not? Were they not both ghosts?
"The music store, the pawn shop, do you remember?"
He thought hard. "Yes, the music store. I pass it each night on my way from work. You are in there?"
"Think, Eon, think!"
"I walk along, thinking some strange thoughts about a sea that curls up on a shore in tall white waves that break on the beach outside the gravity drop. I walk on cobblestones and a fog coats everything with silence. Then I hear a faint music, a singing. I think it's just the music store and I pause to glance at the window. There are some statues in the dust behind the glass, some knobs and some crystals, some bows and some papers, some tusks and some watches, some trumpets and some harps."
"Harps, Eon, that's it. I thought you might have noticed."
"Two harps," he continued feverishly. "Two harps, one on each side of the showcase, a black marbled one on the left, and on the right a rich dark cherry wood."
She clasped her hands. "Yes ! Yes! The cherry wood, I'm inside of that. Oh you are so observant, you will be a fine musician for me!"
"What do you mean? I am no musician."
"You will carry me onto the Galactic Bridge and we'll be gone from here. You'll have a life again. I'll make the music, don't worry, all you have to do is bring me where I want to go."
"I am dead, Bridget."
"That's only part of you speaking, in the haze of your sleep. I'11 bring you life again. Look, Eon." She rose and peeled off her suit. Her perfect young body shared the color of the moonlight, her nipples a nutty color on full breasts, her hips curved like a song. "Don't you remember?"
"I remember," Eon said remembering how the touch of a woman had felt. Lana. But when he reached for Bridget, he could not touch her.
"That's the only problem. I can't be a woman to you, not all the way. I can excite you, take you all the way by suggestion, but there is no way we can touch. Because I am what I have become. I'm not sad about that, not anymore. I'm excited by what we can do together. If you'll let me."
"Why here? Why this way? Why in my sleep? Why not in the shop window when I am awake?"
"Because I am afraid, Eon. The other one, she is a regular biosynth, a bitch of a harp. Just a biosynth, mind you, a Noma-class construct, not an echo of a real life that was, of a woman who was real, from the days when structers stole souls and put them out for song. If ever she found out—her name is Noma—she would kill me, and she can, all she has to do is sing High Sea and she'll fry me away, all circuits cooked like calamari squid on a Boston menu, but I would not expect you to understand what that means, it means nothing anymore because that's such ancient history. So I wait until the shop is closed and Noma's shut herself down for the night and then because I have a soul I can probe for a carrier. Which the soulless Noma cannot do. A musician, who can take me out of here. I fear for my life, Eon. I have survived these centuries by my wits."
"High Sea? What is that?"
"The carrier wave. The biosynths use it to tune each other. Works fine for them, but it would blow a real life person like me away into oblivion. Turn the cherry wood harp you want to own into a piece of wood with a soulless piece of software. You wouldn't want to see that happen to me, would you?"
"What do I have to do?"
"Buy me, Eon. Take me away from here."
"But I have no money."
"Sure you do. You have creds piling up. Enough to buy me and exit on the Bridge."
"And then what?"
"You could leave your sorrow behind. Look for a new life. I could keep you company. We can't go all the way, but I could be your friend, your dream, your ghost, your song."
"I could buy you, yes, " he said. Yes, he thought while circuits in his mind snapped on. She would be good company. Always there for him. Challenging, erotic, a personal friend. She dumped it into his mind, hard, for she was desperate, and she could see there was little he in him anymore.
"I'll think about it." He was afraid, yet curious.
"Don't think too long, The Nomas are competitive, vicious. Spiders without souls. I was a girl once, Eon, I still have a soul, that's all I have anymore. Don't let me be wasted after all this time."
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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