Page 7

CASPIAN

Julia takes us onto the helicopter and, after she puts the wheeled crate in the back, she straps us to the luggage pod at her feet. It’s as if we’re too important to keep in the hold and too precious to be in the front without a seat belt.

Or the opposite.

What’s the difference between precious and important?

As we lift off, it occurs to me that this should be obvious, but it’s not. I wonder, maybe not for the first time, if being a screwdriver is making me stupid. I feel I was smarter once, but I can’t actually grasp the idea of what that means.

Maybe that proves the point, but I can’t see how. Which also, maybe, proves something.

What do I know about anything?

I was a man once, and these other tools were my friends. Kind of friends. More? Less? Is friendship always up and down or is there some other back and forth scale?

Whatever. I don’t have the capacity.

Something happened, and now we’re here.

No. That was lazy. I skipped over who I was to myself.

I start over, because I wasn’t just a guy walking around on two legs, going through the motions.

I was a big man. An important man. I had power.

I did things.

Big things.

Bad things.

I squeeze my mind to get a drop of a memory. Something happened, and we were all in a box. I can’t remember what the something was, just the shock that it landed me here. This box.

We were still and in the dark for a long time, and then… not. We were owned by a man. He took us out. He screwed, hammered, chiseled, and leveled. It felt so good to be useful to someone. Then Julia came along, and I wasn’t just useful. I had purpose again. To be useful to her.

I wish I could tell her and the guys what I remember. What’s the point of knowing anything about yourself if you can’t share it?

A spider crawls over my shaft. It’s the demon fly/dust mite again. It already knows about me. The last time it came, it was going to make it possible for me to protect Julia. Maybe even love her.

“You’re almost on,” the spider says, spinning silk around the base of my handle. It doesn’t say anything for a while. It just spins and spins. The web fibers are nice. They relax me. “You have to gain her consent.”

How? Now I feel seized by terror. I can’t gain consent when I can’t even speak. And even if I could, what am I supposed to do? Ask this woman to please stick a screwdriver inside her? How would I even phrase that politely?

“Can you relax please?” the spider says. “You’re going into her dream. You have to plant the seed that fucking you when she’s awake is a good idea.”

I’m a screwdriver. How am I expected to be subtle and charming? I’m a hand tool who barely remembers his own name.

“It’s the dream realm. So it’ll be hard to talk to her directly. Whatever you say will get twisted by what you feel and think.”

Will I be able to warn her that the woman on the phone is tricking her? That Jaeger Duke is behind it? I don’t trust Carol and Duke.

But that’s not something I can just explain. I haven’t used words for too long. Now I have to warn the woman I love—who’s not scared of anything and who’s convinced she can handle herself—that there’s danger? How am I supposed to talk to her?

“Less talking,” the spider says, finishing up the project. “More doing. Got it? Keep your shit together. Don’t blow this.”