Beyond Binary Read online

  Jackobennie release him. Lennie dust heself off and sit back down to table. He growl to Two-Tone, “Let we finish we game and go home, yes.”

  I glance at the whore with the deep voice and the broad shoulders and the tiny, tiny skirt. She? smile and roll she eyes at me.

  Mary Anne throw she arms round my waist. I smile at she. “Thanks.”

  “Only the best for the best customers.”

  I hug she back, this armful of woman. I think the perfume smell and woman smell of she going stay with me whole week.

  But I know Lennie and me story ain’t done yet. I have to stand up to he now, in the light, else I go be looking over my shoulder every time it get dark from now on. “Just now,” I excuse myself to Mary Anne.

  “All right, darling.”

  Lennie and Two-Tone look up when I reach to their table. I pull a chair, I turn it backwards. I throw my leg over it (poonani still feeling warm and nice under my clothes) and I sit down. “Lennie,” I say. He ain’t say nothing.

  Mary Anne and Jackobennie come to the table with three beers. “On the house,” Jackobennie tell we. “To thank everybody for being gentlemen.” He look hard at Lennie as he and Mary Anne put down the beers. Two-Tone thank them, but Lennie just pick up his and start guzzling it down. Mary Anne wink at me as they walk away.

  I take a sip from my beer. Cold and nice, just so I like it. I swallow two more times, think about what I going to say. “Lennie, you is a man, right?”

  “Blasted right!” He slam the empty bottle down onto the table.

  “Big, hard-back, long-pants-wearing man?”

  “Yes.” He look at me with suspicion.

  “Work and sweat for your living? Try to treat everybody fair?”

  “I never cheat you, K.C.!”

  “Is true. You wish if I never try to work with allyou neither, but once you see I could pull my weight, you treat me like all the rest.”

  “So long as you know your place!” He scowl and shake the beer bottle at me. “But coming in here brazen like this!”

  “You is a man, yes.”

  He look at me, confused. I see Two-Tone frowning too. I nod my head, sip some more beer. “Work hard in the hot sun, don’t do nobody wrong. Have a right to fuck any way you want.”

  “But not you! You is a woman!”

  To rass. Time to done with this. “Lennie, you is a man. And I? I is a fisherman.”

  And I swear all the glasses in the place ring like the fishing bell, the way Two-Tone start to make noise in the place. “Oh God, K.C., in all my born days, I never meet no-one like you!” He put down he cards and he hold he belly and he laugh.

  “What, you taking the bullah woman side now?” Lennie sulk.

  “Man, Lennie, hold some strain,” Two-Tone say. “K.C. not judging you for what you like to do. I not judging you, and you know Mary Anne not judging you, for you bringing you good good dollars and give she. K.C. work hard beside you every day, she never ask no man to look after she. She have a right to play hard too.”

  Is not only me does work hard, neither. Mary Anne. All the whores. I realise is not only man have a right to fuck how he want. When a truth come to you simple like that, it does full you up and make you feel warm, make you want to tell everybody. I must ask Mary Anne sometime if she think I right. But for now I just smile and look down at my nice clean shine shoes. I drink some more beer and look Lennie right in he eye, friendly. He scowl at me, but I ain’t look away. Is he look down finally.

  He pick up he cards. “You playing or what?” he say to Two-Tone.

  “Deal me in next hand,” I say. God, he go do it?

  Lennie glance sideways at me over he cards. Look down at the cards. Then quiet, “You have money after you done spending everything on Mary Anne?”

  “Yes, man.” I done being careful. “I have enough to whip both of allyou behind.”

  “Oh, yes?” Lennie say. “Well, don’t get too attached to it. I bet you I leave this place tonight with you money and my own.”

  He throw down he cards. Two-Tone inspect them, make a face, drop he cards on the table, and pull out two bills and lay them down. Lennie pocket the bills. He pick up the whole deck of cards and hand them to me. “Deal. Fisherman.”

  I feel the grin lighting up my face as I take the cards from he. “I could do that.”

  ∞

  Pirate Solutions

  Katherine Sparrow

  Mary Read 1692-1720

  You could feel their heat. Not a metaphor, I don’t mean that, I mean literally the room grew warmer when they were in it. They were both so powerful. Whenever Anne and Jack (they weren’t named that then, but that’s who they were) strolled into the room you got contact highs from their lust. People who would never make out would find excuses to go to the bathroom together and come back with monster hickies. Everyone always wanted to sit near them because of their heat, and because they always said the thing you wish you’d said but only thought to say a billion blinks later.

  When I first joined the Freebooter tech collective Anne and Jack were happy to have another girl in the group, but otherwise they ignored me. I could stare and stare at them all day long, hiding behind my black-rimmed glasses. But then one day Anne looked at me, and then Jack looked too, and we all just sort of fell toward each other. Like gravity. Like magic. Like there was a God.

  You know that feeling you have all the time that if you were just somewhere else things would be better, more perfect, cooler? I never felt that around them, not for a second. They were the exact center of where I wanted to be.

  Everything started when we were celebrating one night. It was just the three of us since the other ten had gotten popped at an anti-war direct action. We had just gotten over the flu so we stayed home and programmed like fiends. We worked for like twenty hours straight, and then finally quit and just didn’t want to think anymore.

  We made a fancy dinner in the crumbly kitchen, and Jack found this ancient bottle of rum in an old wooden box in the back of a closet. We always found crazy stuff in our squat, like control top pantyhose with mice living inside or huge cracked jars of mentholatum. The rum was a score. It was corked and dusty. The insides looked dark and thick as molasses.

  Jack opened it and took a swig without even smelling it. He kissed Anne. Anne kissed me with sugarcoated lips and a toffee-leather-burnt-cream taste. I’m not usually gonzo for liquor, but I wanted more. Jack popped in some beats from an old ska cassette that had a pounding drum-line. We passed the bottle around and around, and a new kind of drunk rose up in me. Like swallowing light bulbs and glowing from the inside. Like being full of helium and wanting to jump all over the place. I bounced up and down a hundred times a minute as the rum snaked down my throat.

  “More?”

  “Yeah.”

  By the bottom of the bottle Jack swayed from side to side like he was on a boat, Anne waved her arms around like she was in a knife fight, and I bounced up and down a thousand times a minute.

  “There’s something in the bottom,” Anne said, looking down the bottle like a spyglass. “Something gray. Looks like a bone. Or a piece of wood.”

  “Drink the worm!” Jack yelled as he began to play air-drums.

  Anne tipped the bottle toward the ceiling and drank it all. She stuck out her tongue, black with rum. Nestled in the middle of it lay something shriveled. She bit down on it, then kissed Jack. Jack kissed me and pushed his tongue into my mouth. Shards of dust and death coated my tongue and teeth.

  We swallowed. We choked and gasped for air.

  I felt the hempen halter tighten around my neck and squeeze the life from me. I felt the fever-death of childbirth. I raged against the shortness of life and damn the church and England! Damn the lords and ladies and everything but brine is swine! I screamed as I died and then rose up from the murky tangle of seaweed and bulb kelp. I breathed in fresh air and stared astonished at Jack and Anne. My Jack. My Anne. We saw who we truly were. The sweetest hope, then laughter and dancing a
nd….

  The next morning we downloaded nautical maps, made lists of what we needed to take, and argued over what kind of ship we wanted. When the rest of the collective came home from jail, we told them where we were going, pointing to the little wisp of an island that almost disappeared at high tide and curled around like a question mark in the aqua waters of the Caribbean sea.

  “Isla d’Oro.”

  “It’s not marked.”

  “It’s not named.”

  “Yes, but that’s her name,” Jack whispered.

  “What are a bunch of programmers going to be on an island?”

  “You’ll see.”

  We didn’t expect the rest of the collective to come, but after we told them our plan, they were all in.

  We packed up our servers, boxes, solar panels, and a zillion cables and monitors. We tied them on top of our school bus. We dumpstered hundreds of oak pallets, tore them apart for good wood, and loaded up the back of the bus. We threw away our cell phones, watches, and radios. We drove east and south toward Florida. The bus didn’t break down. Cops didn’t harass us. We only got lost a couple of time. Fate or her little sister Luck rode with us all the way to Pensacola Bay.

  We found our sloop in Brown’s Marina—some millionaire had been restoring an old ship before he hung himself off the boom after losing his fortune. We bought her cheap and renamed her ‘Rackham’s Revenge.’ She wasn’t much to look at—rotten jacob’s ladder, softened-wood poop, mold all over the lower decks—but the fo’c’s’le and abaft masts rose straight and proud. On the crow’s nest you could see her lines and wooding were planked true, and she was wide enough to carry our crew and cargo. It took all thirteen of our collective a month of patching wood, weather proofing, and tying knots as big as fists before she was seaworthy. Just before we set sail, Anne and I swung out in harnesses toward the mermaid figurehead on the prow. We pried the old lady off and nailed on our new ambassador—a fey looking man with golden horns, bare chest, and blue knickers that did little to conceal his small, proud erection. Jack stared at him and blushed, which made the likeness all the more apparent.

  We set sail with oakum and tarred hands, and cheered as the wind picked up and blew us southeast. We navigated via sextant and compass, and learned the details of sailing as we went. We earned our sea legs, one mistake at a time. The sun rose, the moon set, and rain fell as waves slapped against our gunwales in choppy water.

  Every day was talk-like-a-pirate-day, at first as a joke, and then because we loved it. Everyone got new pirate names, except Anne, Jack, and I, who’d already found ours. On sunny days we talked about our mission all day long as we lay on the deck and embroidered hand-made patches onto our coats. We unfurled rubbery solar panels over the deck as soon as Anne and Malfunction hacked together a satellite feed and got us online. We programmed lazily, exploring our options and data-modeling.

  It took us three weeks to get there. Three weeks of water and feeling like all the land in all the world might have disappeared.

  “All hands ho and turn her starboard!” Skurve shouted from the crow. We watched our island grow larger as a steady nor’ eastern blew us in.

  “Lower the iron lady and load up the jolly boat!” Anne yelled.

  We left two men on board. The rest of us rowed to Isla d’Oro who sat like a mirage on the water, just like I’d seen when I drank the rum. My hand trailed through the water as I leaned over the fore-bow. Yellow fish with swirly tails and translucent jellyfish with visible organs swam below. I jumped into the water as soon as we neared shore and swam with dolphin-kicks and butterfly strokes. I flopped onto the sand and stared up at the bluest sky.

  The others reached shore. We ran up to the palm trees on the hill. Breathing hard, we sprinted across the flat rocks that led to the hills of the northern point of the island.

  “There!” Jack cried and ran faster.

  “There! Beneath the red rock and white stone!” Anne yelled.

  We dug with shovels and pickaxes. We sweated and sang and didn’t lose hope even when we reached five feet down and there was nothing. Ten feet down and the ground started crumbling inward. Water rose up from below. Then we heard a thunk.

  With ropes and pulleys we hauled up a rusted metal trunk. Anne twisted the handle just so, pressed three metal ingots inlaid into the top, and kicked at the lock. It popped open.

  Treasure. Beautiful treasure for us and us alone! It had lain here all these centuries, untouched and perfect. I counted the glowing bottles of rum with an anxious lust. The collective looked to us for permission. Anne, Jack, and I nodded our heads. The boys uncorked the first bottle and drank. I watched with envy. When it was my turn, I drank the bone-rum as if it was the only liquid that could quench my thirst.

  Jack collected the empty bottles, wrote short messages inside, and chucked them into the sea.

  ∞

  Anne Bonny 1690-1723

  History cuts the rope between then and now, telling us it was all so different we couldn’t possibly understand. They take away our stories to make us weak and forget that we have always been fighting. With the rum came memory.

  Imagine the moment of mutiny, when the captain has just gone apeshit one too many times, and maybe he’s about to kill someone you like, maybe a kid he pressganged, and men spontaneously rise up and take the boat. Of the beautiful things in the world, that’s one of them.

  We’re much luckier than the original pirates. We were able to stock up on vitamin C, potable water, and food supplies. Jack, Mary, and I insisted on it. The others didn’t understand, not really, until they drank the rum and remembered the hard times: the scurvy, the rat plagues, and the dying a little every day because there was never enough sleep or water or food.

  It is a strange thing to discover one’s destiny, or to be press-ganged into it, as the case may be. Our old anarch friends needed us, and so we came to the island.

  We’re here to find pirate solutions for pirate problems, Jack liked to say, and that was as good a description as any. We tamed the red-hooded crows and used them to watch for incoming boats. We swam down to the trans-Caribbean cable and spliced into it to forge a wicked OC384 connection. We perfected our hardtack. We programmed bits and pieces of software, creating action and reaction as solid as our anchor chain. We cooked whatever we caught—even squid the size of tetra.

  There was never enough time in the day to get it all done. I could code for twelve hours and only get a little closer to our goal. Like swimming against the current, our progress, despite our best efforts, was slow.

  One day I sat near the fire and played with sand, running it through my fingers. I watched the water. My head was full of code and the fear that I’d never get it all right. A stray comma can ruin everything. Mary sat beside me. Her short hair had grown longer. It made her look girlier, but she still had her edge. She still wore that “I’m shy, but really I’m a predator” look that made me want to devour her. Jack stood talking to the twins—Cannonball and Cutlass—but kept glancing over at us with yearning eyes. I stared back until he blushed and looked away. I know what you’re thinking Jack, I thought. He’s as easy to read as an open dirty-picture book.

  Dred sauntered across the beach and crouched over the treasure chest. His long rope-snake hair trailed down his back. He popped open a bottle of rum. The rest of the collective suddenly showed up. We all pretended not to be lusting after it—not obsessed with who would get the bone. We all lied. Syrop passed around a platter of small, charred fish.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch. Waves lapped at the sand, each one a little closer than the last as the tide came in. It reminded me of recursive loops and the way things done repeatedly, a little different each time, change the world.

  Red grabbed his guitar and plucked out a tune that thrummed like a discordant mash-up. He chewed the ends of his red beard as he played. I drank rum and passed it on. Madwell got the bone and chewed slowly with a faraway look to him. The rum distorts reality, but the bone twists your soul into
a different shape entirely.

  We opened up another bottle. Skurve made rolly cigarettes from pipe tobacco, and the air filled with the smell of smoke and salt water. Jack played his bongos and began singing. No words, just ululating sound. Malfunction harmonized and sang about water, ocean, and freedom to do the impossible. It wasn’t good music, but it was our music.

  Rum like the sea’s milk filled my throat. I stood and swayed as the tempo picked up. All the code, all the hacking problems fell away as I slowly spun around the blazing red tongues of fire. I picked up speed and began to dervish like an unstoppable, destructive virus. Others rose and we became the rage of everyone murdered too young to have made a difference. We flung curses and hope up and out into the world. The song grew louder. We jumped into the air like gravity might fail, and then pounded our legs into the sand. Cannonball faced Skurve. Their sunburned faces glowed in the firelight. They matched their movements into large, competitive gestures and then fell onto each other and rolled away from the firelight, making loud, gasping animal noises.

  Mary ran at the fire and jumped over it, playing with skin, cloth, and safety. She landed on the other side and flung her over-long sleeves into the flames. When they caught fire she swung them around in circles and turned and ran like a phoenix, shrieking with laughter, into the sea. I followed her, watching as the water extinguished the flames. Mary turned and stared at me with an inner fire. She laughed as I dove into the water and emerged beside her. Jack stumbled in behind us, pausing for a moment as he watched us tear our clothes off. Then the liquid embrace took all of us and rocked waves over our flailing, twisting forms. My lovers whispered to me with every touch that all this folly was my destiny.

  I woke up the next morning dry-mouthed and fuzzy on the beach. Others lay naked and scattered like seaweed across the sand. A bird screamed overhead. One of our crows swooped down on ebony wings. “Crawk! Caw!” she yelled.

  I shielded my eyes and stared at the horizon. A boat, tacked hard and moving fast, stirred the waters of the world’s edge. She was the kind of ship that didn’t exist in this day and age, just like our ship. She’s coming here. She’s coming home, I thought. Things are going to get really interesting, or I’ll eat the bottle with the bone.