Fiddlywink Sings The Tun by Joel Tagert | Art by Jason White

For decades now we have been overcome with nostalgia. Our stories take place in a romanticized past, or a simplified present, or a future that looks curiously ancient, swords and spaceships side by side. We seem unable to conjure a plausible vision of what is to come, and maunder listlessly through dystopias and armageddons. We shrink from the future, sensing in technological development the likely inevitability of two possible outcomes: the destruction of humanity, or the rending of reality into an incomprehensible fluid.  — Dr. Zara Deniz

Maya leaned into the reflection, face and forehead swelling, body shrinking away to nothing. There was something disturbing to her about it, a too-apt visual metaphor. She had read the Bean was actually named Cloud Gate, which also could serve to describe the before-and-after of neuroport installation, romantically regarded. But really it was just a big funhouse mirror. Which was also fitting.

No sooner had this thought passed than another figure loomed behind her, a long white face painted with a big red smile, a bright green derby hat three sizes too small perched on a bald pointy head. She spun around so fast she nearly fell into the Bean. 

“What was that?” her cousin Lauren said, looking incredulous. Because there was no one there, just the usual crowd of tourists. A middle-aged guy in bulky flannel and sunglasses lowered his camera.

“I, I — I don’t know. I thought someone was there.”

“I guess someone is. Lots of someones.”

“No, I thought — never mind.”

Lauren raised her eyebrows. “Girl, you are wound up tight, you know that? Need to get you a drink or a joint or something.”

“Sure. Yeah, why not.”

They walked to Miller’s Pub and sat in a dark booth. She ordered a beer and a reuben and then said she had to go to the bathroom. 

Once in the stall she put in her earbuds and said, “Ava?” No answer. “Ava? I need to talk to you. I need help. Come on, please.”

A toilet paper roll squeaked in the next stall over and Maya paused her plea until its occupant had left. “Ava, I don’t know what I’m doing. I think something strange is happening.” 

She waited, but no answer came. In fact Ava hadn’t spoken to her since the operation, which was upsetting because her guardian AI had been a major factor in Maya agreeing to it in the first place. Since then she’d gone about her life, more or less, waiting, following a meager trail of clues that might conceivably lead to her daughter, gone these many years. She sighed, feeling tired and confused, rubbing at the back of her head where the implant was. But the procedure had left no scar and she might as well have imagined it. 

She went pee because she was sitting there already then got up to wash her hands. Maybe she should just go home. Back to Boise. Back to waiting tables and wondering what the hell had happened to her life. As she looked up at the mirror she noticed a spiderweb strung between the two hanging lights above the sink. 

WAIT, the threads read. Her jaw dropped.

She was not imagining it. There was a word in the web, a sign in the spidersilk. As she watched, a largish black spider delicately high-stepped from behind one lamp and began deconstructing the text, line by line, until it was just an ordinary web again. 

But it was a message — the first she’d had in over eight weeks. How had Ava done it? A robotic spider? No, of course not — it was the neuroport, the manipulation of her own optic nerve. 

“Feel better?” Lauren asked when she got back.

“Yes, actually.”

“Good, because you were gone about a year. Listen, we should go out dancing. Celebrate, you know? It’s been, like, years since we went out together. I bet if I call Raph and Pia they’ll come out too. Do they even know you’re here?”

“No, I kept meaning to call them, but— ”

“I’m calling them right now. We’re doing it.”

“I really don’t want to.”

They went back and forth on it, but it was still early in any case and they took an autocab back to the brownstone in Wicker Park that Lauren shared with her friends Nat and Amara. They smoked pot, they drank, and all the while Lauren’s thumbs were flying on her phone until the doorbell rang and Raph and Pia were there squealing Maya’s name. 

Shit, she hadn’t seen those two in a minute. Then Marisol showed up, and Lenny, and Serena and Xan, and suddenly it was like half their old crew was there, and it was a party after all and Maya was wondering why she’d been so damn tense. 

You know why. Her baby girl, gone in a whirl of lights. But Maya deserved her own life.

They danced in the kitchen, and Xan was giving her appreciative looks, asking her where she lived, joking and flirting. She turned, liking the feeling of his height behind her, and opened her eyes to the reflection in the kitchen window. 

The clown was behind her, holding a balloon. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, it said. His eyes were the same yellow as his teeth. She lurched for the door. 

Outside night had fallen. A bat flitted across the light above the door. She peered into the corners of the little backyard, stood on her tiptoes to peer over the fence. 

Xan had followed her. “Hey, you okay? You just like, ran out of there.”

“I’m fine. Sorry. I just suddenly felt sick. Thought I might throw up.” 

“Want me to get you anything? Glass of water?”

It would get him out of her face for a minute. “Sure. A glass of water would be great.”

She thought about just ditching, but where would she go? She turned to sit down at a little patio table but a bat swooped down in front of her face and then — hovered there, flapping its wings. She stepped back. She was sure bats weren’t capable of hovering, but this one was stubbornly hanging where it was.

“Ava?”

“Yes, it’s me.” The bat opened its mouth and made a weirdly electronic beeping sound (was that how bats normally sounded?), but Maya heard the AI’s voice in her ears as though she were wearing earbuds. Like the little beastie was throwing its voice. “Listen, you’re in danger. You’ve come to the attention of a minor power, a daemon named Fiddlywink. He’s looking for you. I think probably he’s working for someone else, and we need to find out who.”

“What are you talking about?” Maya said, in a voice nearly as squeaky as the bat’s. “How are you a bat? How is this real?”

“You need to stop thinking in terms of real and unreal. They’re not useful concepts to you anymore. Now listen. Fiddlywink is going to catch you, but I’m going to help you deal with him. Okay?”

“Okay. Sure, why not.”

“Good. Hold still.”

The bat dove forward and latched onto her neck. It took every bit of control for Maya not to smash it, but in three seconds the bat was off her and hovering again. “Good,” it said. “When he comes, follow your instincts. And remember, we need to find out who he serves. Ask him who his master is.”

Maya had fallen to a crouch, hand at her neck, tears in her eyes, but she nodded. The screen door squealed open. “Here’s your water,” Xan said. 

“Thanks,” she muttered, and looked at her hand. A few drops of scarlet there.

“Are you bleeding?” he asked, newly concerned. “What happened?”

“It’s just a scratch. I walked into a branch. Listen, could you get me a Band-Aid? Sorry, I’m kind of a mess tonight.”

“Yeah, no problem, be right back.”

As soon as he closed the door she went out the back gate. She didn’t have a plan, she just needed to move. She felt the impulse to run and gave into it. 

If her friends saw her sprinting away they’d think she was crazy, but moving felt good, even with the drinks she’d had. She didn’t go far, maybe eight blocks before she slowed to a walk. More brownstones, a liquor store visible a block away as she crossed the street. The moon above late summer leaves. She turned the corner and Fiddlywink was waiting, grinning his yellow grin and waving a gloved hand at her. She turned and ran, but from behind her she heard his voice, which seemed to come from a great distance, like a scratchy phonograph heard through a wall. 

“Fee, fi, fo fum,

Tweedly dee and a rum tum tum, 

Peek-a-boo and out I come,

Biddy biddy bum, biddy biddy bum!”

She turned toward the liquor store she’d seen, but made it not half a block before Fiddlywink floated out from behind a dumpster, still singing:

“Fiddle dee dee, fiddle dee doo,

Fiddlywink wants a new chew-chew,

Bibbity, bobbity, boo, boohoo, 

Chippity choppity you, yoohoo!”

She turned again, down the alley, blindly, going anywhere, nowhere. She went three steps and Fiddlywink popped up like a jack-in-the-box, right out of the pavement, and seized her upper arms in his enormous gloved hands, squeezing hard, lifting her into the air. He grinned with carious teeth, grinned wider than anyone could grin. “Rub a dub dub,” he said, “tub full of blood.”

She screamed, and felt something change in her. With sudden strength she twisted free of his grip and clawed at his face. Long slashes opened on his doughy visage, weirdly pink blood flying, and she slashed at him again, then grabbed him by his polka-dotted outfit and threw him to the ground. He should have been heavy, by his look and height he must have weighed two-fifty easy, but she tossed him down and held him there by the throat. Her body felt on fire, like she was glowing, like she could have thrown a building down as easily. And, she realized, she was hungry — ravenous, actually — his blood smelled sweet — 

Ask him who his master is. So she did, in a voice she barely recognized, something feral. Fiddlywink’s smile was tremulous, yellow eyes twisting side to side, but he didn’t hold out. 

“Hey diddle diddle, girl with a riddle,

Fiddlywink sings the tune.

The cat starts to laugh, the mouse feels the wrath,

And the Archon swallows the moon.”

He started to giggle, but she tore out his throat with her teeth. His blood tasted like cotton candy. By the time she was done his body was starting to soften, to melt away like cheap ice cream.

She turned and a glowing portal opened in the street. Out stepped a small figure, childlike, with bug-eyed lenses and a head-to-toe covering that she knew to be a spacesuit, more or less. She was already numb and beyond surprise, but even aside from the events of the past half hour, she’d met cytobytes before. “What did she do to me?” she asked this one, aggressively advancing. 

“Vampire mod,” it answered. “I think she was improvising.”

“Is it permanent?”

“Nothing’s permanent. You’ll learn.”