woke
walked into the front room. Before he even faced it, he could see the glow shining from the screen of his talk-box.It had been off when he went to bed last night. He moved to stand in front of it.
A woman stared back at him from the screen. She was beautiful, solemn. He could not determine the color of the dress she wore; even if his were not a gray-shade talk-box, his eyes did not offer him the range of colors that human eyes did.
She did not react to his nakedness. “Joseph,” she said, “Duncan Blackletter is looking for you.”
“He’s dead,” he said.
“No. He’s just been living on the grim world.”
He knew it was the truth. The gods did not love him enough for Duncan Blackletter to be dead. “Who are you?”
She hesitated. “My name is Gabrielle.”
“Leave me alone.” He turned off the set, and she faded to a tiny white dot.
Harris, still blinking sleep from his eyes, walked into the laboratory with the new box in his hand.
Doc, Alastair, and Gaby sat on bar stools at one of the tables. Gaby was wearing a belted knee-length dress in dark green, obviously one of the fair world styles, and black pumps. Doc looked like his former self, with weariness in his eyes and darkness under them the only visible signs of what he’d gone through. Seeing Harris, Doc smiled and smacked his hand on the tabletop. “It works.”
Harris looked at him, confused, and waved the box, a black metal thing about the size of a VCR tape. “I found this on my bed when I woke up. The note said to turn on the switch and come to the lab.”
“My note,” Doc admitted. “And my box. Yours, now.”
Harris moved over to join them. The table, he saw, was piled with