Electric Albino Sheep 1
I hate when people preface works with the disclaimer, "This isn't any good." I generally think they're either fishing for compliments or are being honest and never should have posted it in the first place. I gotta level with you, I fall squarely in that second category with this one. This is a really rough draft. There's a good chance that everything in this section will be hacked away with a machete at a later date, a sacrifice to the gods of structural integrity. If it doesn't get cut, it will still need massive polishing and will have to be Britished up.
That said, I will literally explode if I don't share this with someone. And then my mother will have to hire one of those crime scene clean-up crews to scrape pieces of me off the ceiling.
On a side note, I need a better last name for John. Something that sounds like the name of an English professor in London. But a cool English professor. And that sounds good with the name Mike, too.
Electric Albino Sheep
John received exactly five responses to his ad for a new flatmate. Considering the convenience of his location, he'd expected more. He'd certainly hoped for better responses. One week after posting the ad, his options were an "experimental" violinist, a nudist, one of John's own students, a man who had apparently been drunk when responding to the ad, and a 19-year-old.
The 19-year-old was an albino named Eleven White--and John felt for him with a name like that--who was currently one year away from a PhD in ancient textiles. He attended King's College where John taught and held an internship at the British Museum. He was young, yes, but John doubted he was the drunk and noisy type.
There were problems, of course. Issues that didn't add up. Everyone tried to look like a good potential flatmate when in the market, but Eleven's story was a little hard to swallow. Who earned a Masters by the time most people were just starting at university? Then there was the issue with his age. Eleven's profile on Flat Finder put him at 19, but the photo registered at 16 to the software in John's cybernetic eyes. Diagnostics came up clear, and his eyes were top of the line.
At the end of the second week, he'd only had one more response to his ad. It looked promising enough until he ran a background check and discovered the man in question had set fire to three out of the last four flats he'd lived in. When a background check on Eleven confirmed his child prodigy story, John contacted him. He figured Eleven had just used an old picture in the profile.
They made plans to meet in person at a café near King's College at 3:00 that Tuesday. John arrived early, rubbed the November chill out of his hands, and selected the club sandwich and a Coke from the table console. Then he spent ten minutes looking up every time the door opened.
The St. Martin's clock was still chiming three o'clock when Eleven entered the café. John knew it was Eleven because his facial recognition software told him it was. He also recognized the curly mess of white hair. And really, he thought, if Eleven did move in with him, he wouldn't even need software to recognize him. An albino dressed all in white, in a coat that made John think of mad scientists, and wearing goggles. Face blind or not, John felt confident he could pick Eleven out of a lineup.
He was so busy trying not to look startled by Eleven's appearance--needlessly, in all likelihood, if what his brother said about his poker face was accurate--that the boy had got his goggles pushed up into his hair and had spotted him before he noticed that the number next to his name wasn't the expected 19, but 16.
He didn't have a chance to react to this information. Or he just wasn't quick enough. Before he'd figured out how to tactfully ask the boy if he'd lied about his age, or even decided if he should ask instead of simply informing the local police he'd encountered a potential runaway, Eleven had stepped up to his table and held out his hand. The cuffs to his dress shirt fell over his hands and had little holes for his thumbs to fit through. He wore white gloves. John shook his hand.
"Mr. Madison," Eleven said. His voice sounded flat, but two words wasn't a lot to go on.
"John, please," John said, because it was what he was supposed to say. Then he said, "have a seat," because that was part of the script too. He'd had an idea more worrisome than runaway teenagers.
Eleven sat and looked over the table console. John looked over his face. Looking at people's faces felt odd, like there was some emotional disconnect, like the information was being lost somewhere between reception and full analysis. But John could look at parts of Eleven's face, at his eyes for instance--red and, as far as he could tell, organic. He didn't see any of the small details that indicated mod-work. No little scars or triggers or plugs. Eleven didn't have any visible piercings, either, not even on his ears. He didn't have any visible tattoos. His hair and skin were their natural colors, unnatural as they looked. The red eyes and dark goggles suggested photosensitivity, an easily-corrected condition.
Over the past year, Purists had vandalized John's brother's mod shop three times and assaulted one of his employees. The anti-modification fanatics often refused to color their hair, tattoo themselves, or wear piercings as a sign of their objection to more extensive body modification processes. Some of them, usually the Isolationists who wanted to live in settlements all their own, turned terrorist.
And now John was sitting across the table from a kid who'd lied about his age, who didn't wear a single piece of visible jewelry even, and who'd apparently opted out of a simple corrective medical procedure.
A waiterbot rolled up to the table with John's sandwich and soda. He took them while Eleven placed an order on the console. He folded his hands in front of him when he was done.
"I haven't interviewed a potential flatmate before," Eleven said. His inflection did sound off. "But I looked it up on the Network. I'm supposed to ask you for references, but I don't really see the point in that. I wouldn't know anyone who vouched for you. I did, however, bring a letter of reference from my last flatmate." He pulled a paper out of his pocket and passed it across the table to John.
John bit into his sandwich and glanced over the letter. According to Conde Stephens, Eleven was a quiet, conscientious flatmate. Eleven was right, it didn't mean much when he didn’t know Eleven's previous flatmate, or that Conde Stephens even was Eleven's previous flatmate.
"Do you have a lot of guests over?" Eleven asked. "You didn't say in your ad."
"Not many," John said. "Do you?"
"No. I'm uncomfortable in crowds and around strangers," Eleven said. "And in high-stimulus environments."
"Ah," John said.
"I just made myself sound abnormal, didn't I? Let me rephrase. I tend to be quiet and reserved." Eleven's sandwich arrived then, earlier than John had expected. Grilled cheese and tea. Eleven wrapped his hands around the mug as though they were cold.
"Everyone's abnormal in some way," John said. He sipped his Coke. "I am curious as to why you haven't had your irises treated with pigment augmentation. The photosensitivity can't be convenient." He watched Eleven's hands closely for any signs of … of something. He wasn't sure what.
"I'm not comfortable letting a stranger do things to me," Eleven said. John couldn't read anything in his voice or his hands. "And I like the way the goggles look."
"So you haven't got any mods?" There. He'd said it.
"I have a series of small LED's plugged into my spine," Eleven said. He tapped his mug with a finger. "I'm not a Purist. I have no moral objections to modifications; I simply don't find it easy to trust other people to install them." He slipped his thumbs from his cuffs long enough to remove his gloves. Picked up a piece of sandwich and dipped it in a little bowl of balsamic jam. "You've been staring at my hands since I placed my order," he said.
"Oh." John looked up at his face. His hair crinkled over the goggles. "Face blind. I tend to focus on hands."
"Face blind?" Eleven said. "That's interesting." A pause while he took a bite of his sandwich and then, "But you recognized me when I came in."
"I'm not completely blind," John said. "And I've got cybernetic eyes with facial recognition software. I set your face from the profile picture in my memory--the eyes' memory--under 'Eleven White.' Your name shows up under your face for me. So does your age."
"Growth hormone deficiency," Eleven said.
"Easily treatable."
"Phobic of doctors."
"Then how'd you get those LED's on your spine?"
Eleven paused then, twirled a piece of crust on his plate. "There may have been alcohol involved," he said.
The boy was made of answers. And good ones too. He had a letter of recommendation. John didn't have any other options, unless he developed a taste for free-form violin. "Well if you're phobic of doctors, you should know I have a PhD," he said.
"That's not the kind of--"
"It was a joke." He possibly should have known better. Eleven didn't talk like the kind of person who picked up on irony.
"Ah, of course."
"The flat is 20 minutes away if we can catch the 3:50 Bakerloo. Would you like to see it?" He still had half a sandwich left, but he could always eat it later.
"Yes."
"Great," John said. He retrieved some cellophane from the take-out counter. "My brother's still got some stuff lying around, so don't be alarmed if you see anything that looks like human body parts. They're just prosthetics."
"Michael Madison, artist and successful business owner," Eleven said. He'd pulled his gloves back on while John wrapped his sandwich. "I looked you up. Your brother's opening a new shop on the Strand next month."
"Yeah," John said.
Outside, it was sunny for once, if still cold, so the sun glinted off their breath. Eleven pulled the goggles down over his eyes, and John fumbled with a loose button on his coat.
"How do you tell people apart?" Eleven asked. "I'm guessing hands, by the way you keep watching mine, but what else?"
"Hands and forearms, actually. And unnaturally colored hair," John said. "Unusual styles help too. I also notice body size and the sorts of things that would stand out to anyone. Your albinism and goggles, for instance."
Eleven looked around them. John imagined he was calculating the percentage of people with odd-colored hair. Even this close to a campus full of individualistic young students, the number was low. Manageable.
"Is that why you have blue hair?"
That wasn't what most people asked. Most people asked if he could recognize himself in the mirror. But then, Eleven was some sort of genius, so maybe he didn't need to ask that. "Yeah," John said. He pulled up his coat sleeve enough to show a wrist and the blue stripes banded around it. "Also these."
"Why blue?"
"Why White?"
"Genetics. And it's my name."
The Waterloo station was a sprawling mess of people when they came to it. Eleven tucked his hands into his pockets. John made sure he had his tube pass ready. "I just like blue," he said. "Nice soothing color."
They ended up standing on the train. John didn't mind so much--Tuesday was his short day so he'd only been on his feet a few hours. Eleven had to stretch to reach the handle. The train was too noisy for conversation, so John studied the map on the opposite wall. He already had it memorized; he'd drawn it out once just to check.
The Elephant and Castle station let them out into John's patchy neighborhood. In the ten years he'd been living there, revitalization efforts had chipped away at the area's original air of mediocrity.
He pointed Eleven to the young elms, winter-bare. "In spring, the leaves come in bioluminescent," he said. "They're not as good as street lamps, but they're very pretty. There's also a community garden three blocks from the flat, and we're building a playground five blocks in the other direction."
"You're very involved," Eleven said.
John shrugged. "Yeah, well, Mike got involved, mostly for the good publicity, and then I got drawn in. Participation in community-oriented activities is not a requisite for moving into the flat, by the way."
"Good," Eleven said. A moment later he stiffened and tugged at his coat sleeves. "I mean, not good, just…" John reigned in a smile and counted in his head. If Eleven made it five full seconds without recovering, then he'd step in. Eleven took a breath. "Community service is admirable, but I dislike mandatory group activities. I'd not mind offering assistance of an impersonal nature. I'm very good with computers."
"Nice save," John said. "The flat's on the next block up." Two stories, three if you counted the basement, and brick, the three hundred year old building faded into a row of similar structures. The door was painted a bright teal. It was the first thing Mike had done when he'd bought the place.
"It looks old," he said. "Well, it is old. But the important features are all in good shape. We've got proper insulation, 22nd-century plumbing and electrics, and 21st-century heating and air. The second half of the 21st century, so it's pretty decent." John closed the door behind them but didn't lock it.
Eleven closed his eyes for a moment. "The wallpaper?" John said. Eleven didn't seem like the type of person who liked patterns, or color for that matter, and the hall was papered in Victorian Era visual noise.
"It's good practice," Eleven said. "I need to desensitize myself." He opened his eyes. "Are all the walls like this?"
"Just the hall," John said.
They took the stairs to the first floor and John told Eleven about the neighbors. The reclusive Valkyre England lived in the basement. Digital artist and shop girl Starling Reed lived with her dentist husband, Jules More on the ground floor and liked to invent stories about the mysterious Ms. England. "She's as mundane as the rest of us," John said. "But I can't bring myself to spoil Starling's fun. Ah, here we are."
There wasn't much to say about the flat that wasn't self-evident, so John just told Eleven to "have a look around" and pointed out the bathroom and bedrooms. He'd already moved his things into Mike's old room with the better view and room for a desk.
"I have a chair I'd like to put in the living room," Eleven said.
"Sure," John said. "There's even an empty spot there where Mikes lounger used to be."
"When can I move in?" Eleven asked.
"Next week, if you like." And that was it, John thought. For the first time in ten years he'd have a flatmate who wasn't his brother.
That said, I will literally explode if I don't share this with someone. And then my mother will have to hire one of those crime scene clean-up crews to scrape pieces of me off the ceiling.
On a side note, I need a better last name for John. Something that sounds like the name of an English professor in London. But a cool English professor. And that sounds good with the name Mike, too.
Electric Albino Sheep
John received exactly five responses to his ad for a new flatmate. Considering the convenience of his location, he'd expected more. He'd certainly hoped for better responses. One week after posting the ad, his options were an "experimental" violinist, a nudist, one of John's own students, a man who had apparently been drunk when responding to the ad, and a 19-year-old.
The 19-year-old was an albino named Eleven White--and John felt for him with a name like that--who was currently one year away from a PhD in ancient textiles. He attended King's College where John taught and held an internship at the British Museum. He was young, yes, but John doubted he was the drunk and noisy type.
There were problems, of course. Issues that didn't add up. Everyone tried to look like a good potential flatmate when in the market, but Eleven's story was a little hard to swallow. Who earned a Masters by the time most people were just starting at university? Then there was the issue with his age. Eleven's profile on Flat Finder put him at 19, but the photo registered at 16 to the software in John's cybernetic eyes. Diagnostics came up clear, and his eyes were top of the line.
At the end of the second week, he'd only had one more response to his ad. It looked promising enough until he ran a background check and discovered the man in question had set fire to three out of the last four flats he'd lived in. When a background check on Eleven confirmed his child prodigy story, John contacted him. He figured Eleven had just used an old picture in the profile.
They made plans to meet in person at a café near King's College at 3:00 that Tuesday. John arrived early, rubbed the November chill out of his hands, and selected the club sandwich and a Coke from the table console. Then he spent ten minutes looking up every time the door opened.
The St. Martin's clock was still chiming three o'clock when Eleven entered the café. John knew it was Eleven because his facial recognition software told him it was. He also recognized the curly mess of white hair. And really, he thought, if Eleven did move in with him, he wouldn't even need software to recognize him. An albino dressed all in white, in a coat that made John think of mad scientists, and wearing goggles. Face blind or not, John felt confident he could pick Eleven out of a lineup.
He was so busy trying not to look startled by Eleven's appearance--needlessly, in all likelihood, if what his brother said about his poker face was accurate--that the boy had got his goggles pushed up into his hair and had spotted him before he noticed that the number next to his name wasn't the expected 19, but 16.
He didn't have a chance to react to this information. Or he just wasn't quick enough. Before he'd figured out how to tactfully ask the boy if he'd lied about his age, or even decided if he should ask instead of simply informing the local police he'd encountered a potential runaway, Eleven had stepped up to his table and held out his hand. The cuffs to his dress shirt fell over his hands and had little holes for his thumbs to fit through. He wore white gloves. John shook his hand.
"Mr. Madison," Eleven said. His voice sounded flat, but two words wasn't a lot to go on.
"John, please," John said, because it was what he was supposed to say. Then he said, "have a seat," because that was part of the script too. He'd had an idea more worrisome than runaway teenagers.
Eleven sat and looked over the table console. John looked over his face. Looking at people's faces felt odd, like there was some emotional disconnect, like the information was being lost somewhere between reception and full analysis. But John could look at parts of Eleven's face, at his eyes for instance--red and, as far as he could tell, organic. He didn't see any of the small details that indicated mod-work. No little scars or triggers or plugs. Eleven didn't have any visible piercings, either, not even on his ears. He didn't have any visible tattoos. His hair and skin were their natural colors, unnatural as they looked. The red eyes and dark goggles suggested photosensitivity, an easily-corrected condition.
Over the past year, Purists had vandalized John's brother's mod shop three times and assaulted one of his employees. The anti-modification fanatics often refused to color their hair, tattoo themselves, or wear piercings as a sign of their objection to more extensive body modification processes. Some of them, usually the Isolationists who wanted to live in settlements all their own, turned terrorist.
And now John was sitting across the table from a kid who'd lied about his age, who didn't wear a single piece of visible jewelry even, and who'd apparently opted out of a simple corrective medical procedure.
A waiterbot rolled up to the table with John's sandwich and soda. He took them while Eleven placed an order on the console. He folded his hands in front of him when he was done.
"I haven't interviewed a potential flatmate before," Eleven said. His inflection did sound off. "But I looked it up on the Network. I'm supposed to ask you for references, but I don't really see the point in that. I wouldn't know anyone who vouched for you. I did, however, bring a letter of reference from my last flatmate." He pulled a paper out of his pocket and passed it across the table to John.
John bit into his sandwich and glanced over the letter. According to Conde Stephens, Eleven was a quiet, conscientious flatmate. Eleven was right, it didn't mean much when he didn’t know Eleven's previous flatmate, or that Conde Stephens even was Eleven's previous flatmate.
"Do you have a lot of guests over?" Eleven asked. "You didn't say in your ad."
"Not many," John said. "Do you?"
"No. I'm uncomfortable in crowds and around strangers," Eleven said. "And in high-stimulus environments."
"Ah," John said.
"I just made myself sound abnormal, didn't I? Let me rephrase. I tend to be quiet and reserved." Eleven's sandwich arrived then, earlier than John had expected. Grilled cheese and tea. Eleven wrapped his hands around the mug as though they were cold.
"Everyone's abnormal in some way," John said. He sipped his Coke. "I am curious as to why you haven't had your irises treated with pigment augmentation. The photosensitivity can't be convenient." He watched Eleven's hands closely for any signs of … of something. He wasn't sure what.
"I'm not comfortable letting a stranger do things to me," Eleven said. John couldn't read anything in his voice or his hands. "And I like the way the goggles look."
"So you haven't got any mods?" There. He'd said it.
"I have a series of small LED's plugged into my spine," Eleven said. He tapped his mug with a finger. "I'm not a Purist. I have no moral objections to modifications; I simply don't find it easy to trust other people to install them." He slipped his thumbs from his cuffs long enough to remove his gloves. Picked up a piece of sandwich and dipped it in a little bowl of balsamic jam. "You've been staring at my hands since I placed my order," he said.
"Oh." John looked up at his face. His hair crinkled over the goggles. "Face blind. I tend to focus on hands."
"Face blind?" Eleven said. "That's interesting." A pause while he took a bite of his sandwich and then, "But you recognized me when I came in."
"I'm not completely blind," John said. "And I've got cybernetic eyes with facial recognition software. I set your face from the profile picture in my memory--the eyes' memory--under 'Eleven White.' Your name shows up under your face for me. So does your age."
"Growth hormone deficiency," Eleven said.
"Easily treatable."
"Phobic of doctors."
"Then how'd you get those LED's on your spine?"
Eleven paused then, twirled a piece of crust on his plate. "There may have been alcohol involved," he said.
The boy was made of answers. And good ones too. He had a letter of recommendation. John didn't have any other options, unless he developed a taste for free-form violin. "Well if you're phobic of doctors, you should know I have a PhD," he said.
"That's not the kind of--"
"It was a joke." He possibly should have known better. Eleven didn't talk like the kind of person who picked up on irony.
"Ah, of course."
"The flat is 20 minutes away if we can catch the 3:50 Bakerloo. Would you like to see it?" He still had half a sandwich left, but he could always eat it later.
"Yes."
"Great," John said. He retrieved some cellophane from the take-out counter. "My brother's still got some stuff lying around, so don't be alarmed if you see anything that looks like human body parts. They're just prosthetics."
"Michael Madison, artist and successful business owner," Eleven said. He'd pulled his gloves back on while John wrapped his sandwich. "I looked you up. Your brother's opening a new shop on the Strand next month."
"Yeah," John said.
Outside, it was sunny for once, if still cold, so the sun glinted off their breath. Eleven pulled the goggles down over his eyes, and John fumbled with a loose button on his coat.
"How do you tell people apart?" Eleven asked. "I'm guessing hands, by the way you keep watching mine, but what else?"
"Hands and forearms, actually. And unnaturally colored hair," John said. "Unusual styles help too. I also notice body size and the sorts of things that would stand out to anyone. Your albinism and goggles, for instance."
Eleven looked around them. John imagined he was calculating the percentage of people with odd-colored hair. Even this close to a campus full of individualistic young students, the number was low. Manageable.
"Is that why you have blue hair?"
That wasn't what most people asked. Most people asked if he could recognize himself in the mirror. But then, Eleven was some sort of genius, so maybe he didn't need to ask that. "Yeah," John said. He pulled up his coat sleeve enough to show a wrist and the blue stripes banded around it. "Also these."
"Why blue?"
"Why White?"
"Genetics. And it's my name."
The Waterloo station was a sprawling mess of people when they came to it. Eleven tucked his hands into his pockets. John made sure he had his tube pass ready. "I just like blue," he said. "Nice soothing color."
They ended up standing on the train. John didn't mind so much--Tuesday was his short day so he'd only been on his feet a few hours. Eleven had to stretch to reach the handle. The train was too noisy for conversation, so John studied the map on the opposite wall. He already had it memorized; he'd drawn it out once just to check.
The Elephant and Castle station let them out into John's patchy neighborhood. In the ten years he'd been living there, revitalization efforts had chipped away at the area's original air of mediocrity.
He pointed Eleven to the young elms, winter-bare. "In spring, the leaves come in bioluminescent," he said. "They're not as good as street lamps, but they're very pretty. There's also a community garden three blocks from the flat, and we're building a playground five blocks in the other direction."
"You're very involved," Eleven said.
John shrugged. "Yeah, well, Mike got involved, mostly for the good publicity, and then I got drawn in. Participation in community-oriented activities is not a requisite for moving into the flat, by the way."
"Good," Eleven said. A moment later he stiffened and tugged at his coat sleeves. "I mean, not good, just…" John reigned in a smile and counted in his head. If Eleven made it five full seconds without recovering, then he'd step in. Eleven took a breath. "Community service is admirable, but I dislike mandatory group activities. I'd not mind offering assistance of an impersonal nature. I'm very good with computers."
"Nice save," John said. "The flat's on the next block up." Two stories, three if you counted the basement, and brick, the three hundred year old building faded into a row of similar structures. The door was painted a bright teal. It was the first thing Mike had done when he'd bought the place.
"It looks old," he said. "Well, it is old. But the important features are all in good shape. We've got proper insulation, 22nd-century plumbing and electrics, and 21st-century heating and air. The second half of the 21st century, so it's pretty decent." John closed the door behind them but didn't lock it.
Eleven closed his eyes for a moment. "The wallpaper?" John said. Eleven didn't seem like the type of person who liked patterns, or color for that matter, and the hall was papered in Victorian Era visual noise.
"It's good practice," Eleven said. "I need to desensitize myself." He opened his eyes. "Are all the walls like this?"
"Just the hall," John said.
They took the stairs to the first floor and John told Eleven about the neighbors. The reclusive Valkyre England lived in the basement. Digital artist and shop girl Starling Reed lived with her dentist husband, Jules More on the ground floor and liked to invent stories about the mysterious Ms. England. "She's as mundane as the rest of us," John said. "But I can't bring myself to spoil Starling's fun. Ah, here we are."
There wasn't much to say about the flat that wasn't self-evident, so John just told Eleven to "have a look around" and pointed out the bathroom and bedrooms. He'd already moved his things into Mike's old room with the better view and room for a desk.
"I have a chair I'd like to put in the living room," Eleven said.
"Sure," John said. "There's even an empty spot there where Mikes lounger used to be."
"When can I move in?" Eleven asked.
"Next week, if you like." And that was it, John thought. For the first time in ten years he'd have a flatmate who wasn't his brother.