chapter four
I walked back into the clothes shop to say hi to Shim again, and as I stepped into the store, I caught a glimpse of her scurrying through the darkness at the edge of the store. "Hi, Shim!"
I was suddenly ambushed and picked up by Shim, who spun me around once or twice. "Hey, Tams, you made it! You survived yesterday and look at you!" she said in her, I dunno what to call it, human voice?
"Hi! I made it?"
"Yeah, you did one of the toughest things you could have ever done, you made it through yesterday! But can you do it again?"
"Probably!"
"That's the spirit! Hey, business is dead so if you want, I could introduce you to some friends in the back room! I live here, too, it's not just a storefront!"
"Uh... sure."
Shim held me firmly as she celebrated enthusiastically. She then scurried into the back rooms (with me still in her arms), into a sort of living room. It was really hot in this room, with the heat coming from orange lamps hanging overhead in grated boxes. "You wait just right there!" she said, looking at me with wide-eyed enthusiasm.
I still held to my beliefs that Shim was so adorable when she was excited and when she wanted to be, I was so unsure of why she came off so cold to others. Shim scurried into another orange-lit room and screeched, "Ｗｈｏ ｗａｎｔｓ ｔｏ ｃｏｍｅ ｍｅｅｔ ｍｙ ｈｕｍａｎ ｆｒｉｅｎｄ?"
Two more Lizi stepped out from behind that room's curtain and into the living room, one with green scaly skin and black hair shaved on one side of her head and grown out on the other, wearing a blue shirt and jeans with reflective sunglasses, and the other with dark tan scales with red markings and a short haicut, wearing a small red T-shirt and a black skirt. The two of them sat around Shim, who gestured to me to come sit with her. She pulled me into her lap and displayed me to her friends. "This is Tams! She washed up on the beach yesterday and doesn't remember a thing about who she was!"
"That's terrible, Shim," the green Lizi said.
"ｗｈａｔ ｄｏ ｙｏｕ ｗａｎｔ ｍｅ ｔｏ ｄｏ, ｐｉｔｙ ｔｈｅ ｔｈｉｎｇ?" said the other.
"No, she's super cool, and so much fun to hug!"
The green Lizi put one of her hands on my shoulder, and I looked up at her. "Hmm, I mean, she's cute, but like Shaw said, what are we supposed to do with her?"
"I mean..." Shim started, "uh... here, Tams, go sit with Shaw."
"Um... okay," I said.
On one hand, Shim's enthusiasm was kind of infectious, I was excited to meet them probably as much as Shim was excited for them meeting me, but I was just kind of being passed around now. I sat with the tan Lizi, and she wrapped her arms around me slowly and carefully. Shim was beaming at the sight. "Isn't she so warm?"
"Ｉ ｇｕｅｓｓ? Ｉｓ ｔｈａｔ ｉｔ?"
"No, like really give her a squeeze, it's so great!"
"I..."
Shaw wrapped her arms tighter around me, and I looked up at her. "Ｓｈｅ ｌｉｋｅｓ ｉｔ. Ｉ'ｍ ｎｏｔ ｓｕｒｅ Ｉ ｄｏ, ｔｈｏｕｇｈ."
"Can I try?" said the green Lizi.
"Ｓｕｒｅ, Ｊｅｖ," said Shaw.
Jev picked me up and held me like a small cat, and looked down at me through her sunglasses. "This isn't bad, Shim, but, eh... I dunno, you're a whole lot more affectionate than us, maybe that's just it."
She looked down at me. "You want me to put ya down?"
"Yes, please."
"Aww, Tams, not feelin' it?" Shim said.
"I just don't like being passed around. I'm a person a lot like you. Not exactly, but you get the idea."
"Hmm, I suppose that's fair!"
Jev was now laying face-down on the carpeted floor. I looked over at Shim, who dismissed the question before I could even ask one. "Eh, she's basking. That's how she likes to stay warm, that's why we installed all these heat lamps!"
"Can I ask a couple questions?" I asked, knowing full well I was asking a question with a question, which I dunno if that was breaking any grammatical rules, but it just didn't feel right to me.
"Sure!" Shim said.
"So, how many are there of you guys?"
"Oh, Lizi? I think... maybe a few dozen thousand here in the Afterward!"
"Oh! What's the breakdown, like of male and female?"
"Eh... that's a bit tricky. If you wanna get technical, we're an all-female race. Now, we don't call it that, we're all just Lizi, but I know you humans, you come in lots of types!"
"How does that work?"
"Tams!" Shim gasped.
"No, I--"
"No, just messin' with ya! It, eh... it just does. We just kinda... come from the ground? I dunno what answer you're lookin' for."
"Oh... and you're all cold--"
"Cold blooded, yep!"
"That's why she likes hugs so much," Jev mumbled, "humans and afters are warm-blooded."
"Ah. And I think I've got one more question, this one's not about Lizi."
"Lemme hear it!"
"So, my doorman Flant was talking about the Nexu--"
I suddenly found myself pulled into a hug by Shim, who was shushing me. "Don't you worry about that, everything's gonna be fine!"
"No, I was asking, like, what is it?"
"Trust me, you don't wanna know."
"Heh, could you imagine Tams fighting off the Nexus?" Jev said, half asleep.
"Oh my gosh, yeah, wi—with, like, a sword and shield, all heroic?" Shim replied, cracking up at the thought.
"Ｉ'ｍ ｔｈｉｎｋｉｎｇ ｈｅｒ ｗｉｔｈ ａ ｇｕｎ, ｌｉｋｅ ａ ｂｉｇ ｒｉｆｌｅ ｏｒ ｓｏｍｅｔｈｉｎｇ," Shaw said.
"Ha, that'd be pretty great! Imagine you with a gun!"
Gun... oh my gosh what is this flood of memory coming back to m
I was face down on the ground in a dark alley, rain pouring off of rooftops and from the skies above right onto me, around me. I got back up and swung at the shadowy figure again and again, watching as it dodged every punch. Quickly, I reached for my holstered gun, my father's Browining Hi-Power, and fired at the figure that adamantly stood before me. A hole punched clean through it, I waited for the figure to collapse, but it continued to look at me with white eyes before suddenly filling the hole. A bony hand reached out for me, and I screamed in anguish
e, what the heck was that all about who was that man, was that me, where did he go and what happened to hi--
"Tams, you alright?" Shim said.
"I... I think I remembered something when you said gun."
"What was it?"
"I shot at some shadowy figure in the rain, and it put itself back together and attacked me, but that was it."
"You're sure that was you?"
"I don't know what it could be!"
Shim looked me over again, then pointed in an "I have an idea!" pose. 539Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdvWQXVKFqy
"I have an idea!" she said.
She grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me to face her better. I shifted awkwardly to make eye contact better happen. "You could go meet Memmi! She's all the way on a whole other island here in the Afterward, but she knows everything there is to know about memories, and maybe she can help you remember who you were!"
"Um, okay, how would I get there?"
"You'd need to get to the metro station and take the little train in. It's gonna cost you some Dosh, though, so you better have some!"
"I could pitch in for her train ticket," Jev said, "it's still 5 Dosh, right?"
"Ｔｈａｔ'ｓ ａｗｆｕｌ ｇｅｎｅｒｏｕｓ ｏｆ ｙｏｕ," Shaw said.
"Hmm, she caught me in a... mmm, in a good mood," Jev replied.
"Awww," Shim said, "tell ya what, I'll give her the Dosh and you pay me back tonight!"
"M'kay..."
Shim handed me a slip of paper with an old man on it, adorned with "D5", and then set me down next to Jev and laid down, her head on Jev's back. "Shaw, before we send the human on her way, come lay with us! I mean, if that's alright with you, Tams."
“That's fine. Thank you for as--”
“Yay! Get over here, Shaw!”
Shaw shrugged and laid facedown in the pile with the rest of us, basking both in the heat from the lamps and also probably myself. Shaw was running her fingers up and down my back, and it felt great. I started dozing off with them when I heard a sound come from my pocket. It was Constantine. I pulled out the bag and opened it up, and he assembled himself in front of me.
"Tam-a-rama, I think I figured out wh... I'm, eh, I'm not inturrupting anything here, am I?" he said, making a sweeping pointing gesture at all of us.
"I dunno," I said.
"Wh..." Shim started, "you stole a hotel droid? That's hardcore, Tams!"
"Wh-- I'm not just a hotel droid! My backstory is I'm Smooth-Jazz Jones, a hardboiled vet working the tough as nails streets of Chicago's Levee district! I'm sympathetic to the struggles of the people living and working there, but the Alderman wants the crime out and ooh boy, am I gonna get the crime ou--"
"Constantine, what are you talking about?"
"You wanted me to take a look inside myself, to make up a cool backstory and a name for myself, yeah?"
"No, I... I said to look inside yourself, as in find out who you actually are without a server or any other pre-concieved notion as to who you should be."
"I... oh. But, eh, it was a cool backstory, though, right?"
"I don't even know what a Chicago Levee is."
"Oh. Um... back in the bag?"
"Sure."
"Cool, alright, I can do th--"
Constantine fell silent, then apart, with every stone falling right into the bag. I shrugged and laid back to enjoy basking with Shim and her Lizi friends. We laid there for quite a while, easily one half of an hour (there was probably a more convenient name for that amount of time, I couldn't remember it right now) just taking in the warmth.
Shim was the first to get up, and she asked if I wanted anything before I headed off. I told her no, wondered why we weren't just using regular quotations, figured it was to keep this gentle, easygoing feeling going, and then she sent me on my way up town, with some Dosh to my name and hope that things would go over well.
ns 15.158.61.20da2
