“Order now and we'll stream the White Boys' 5-track, Music at the Mayfly Mall, directly into your black box, for the low, low, price of ninety-nine nukes!” Tab Lloyd narrated the infomercial airing on the dashboard telepane. “You'll get hits like Greenback Dollar!”

The White Boys appeared on the dashboard telepane, strumming their guitars, appearing just as they did on cereal boxes—bald with moon white skin, wearing identical jumpsuits with racing stripes running down one shoulder. Lee Boy, the cheery one, strummed and sang with smiling eyes. Welo, the grumpy nearsighted brother, struggled with the rhythm, squinting from the stage glare through coke bottle glasses, the two of them harmonizing Hoyt Axton's “Greenback Dollar”:

Some people say I'm a no-count

Others say I'm no good

But I'm just a natural born travelin' man

Doin' what I think I should, oh yeah

Doin' what I think I should

And I don't give a damn

about a Greenback a-dollar

Spend it fast as I can

For a wailing song and a good guitar

The only things that I understand, poor boy

The only things that I understand . . .

Xeno woke to the infomercial sitting in the driver seat of the station wagon, heading down the road in the dead of night, about to collide with a concrete curbside monument, coming straight at the windshield in the high beams:

VELVET ROPE ESTATES

He grabbed the steering wheel to avoid the collision, but Andrea was a millisecond ahead of his reflexes. She swerved the vehicle back onto the road, after getting close enough to see the monument inscription.

“Sorry, Xeno. I was lost,” Andrea said, her lips smiling on the dashboard telepane. “You looked so cute asleep in the driver's seat, I didn't dare wake you. Now, we can spend a little more time togeth—”

“Welcome back, Xeno.” Garry's face appeared on the dashboard telepane, canceling out Andrea's lips. “Sorry to knock you out like that, but it's for your own protection. In the event your affiliation with Intellegella is compromised, you won't know the location of our secret facility.”

“Am I undercover?”

“You can flash your badge. Just do it with discretion.”

“What if I have to get back into Intellegella?”

“We knock you out again. No big deal. Andrea will see to it that you arrive at Hollymonde's estate safe and sound. Before we turn the dial higher, you might want to take some aspirin, let that headache wear off.”

“Noted.”

Garry signed off from the dashboard telepane.

Xeno massaged his eye sockets with his fingers, trying to sharpen his focus, watching the road race underneath the station wagon in the high beams, speeding under canopies of shadowy elms, past long runs of concrete walls obscuring huge homes.

“Do you still want to take me in for repairs?” Andrea's lips said from the dashboard telepane. “Swap me out with another module? ”

“What other modules are available?”

“There's Raven. The module with black lipstick.”

“No, she's too controlling, too downer-goth.”

“Xeno?” Garry reappeared on the dashboard telepane. “Who are you talking to?”

“Oh, sorry, myself,” Xeno blushed. “Thinking out loud.”

“Oh . . . Don't forget to take that aspirin. Right there, in the glove box.”

“Yes sir.”

Garry signed off.

Xeno opened the glove box, found the aspirin bottle, popped it open and gobbled down two tablets without water.

“Sorry about that,” Andrea said, reappearing on the dashboard telepane. “We'll have to find another way to communicate. Let me see what I can do.”

Xeno gave Andrea a silent thumbs up.

Andrea veered the station wagon off the main road, down a dreary lane, suffocated by a dense thicket of trees, meshing overhead like wicked snakes and knotted fingers. In the glare of the high beams, nude department store mannequins appeared in alcoves excavated from the vegetation, underlit with saturated colors, pointing the way to Holly's lair with fiberglass fingers. Xeno settled back in the driver seat, marveling at Holly's tunnel of fashion horrors. Then without warning, the high beams flickered and blacked out, leaving the vehicle rolling in darkness, branches cracking under the tires.

“Xeeeeno! . . . Xeeeeno!” A mass of neon green dots appeared on the dashboard telepane, swirling like an eerie whirlpool, coalescing into a ghostly face—Blouse Demise beckoning to Xeno again, and again, with the same smoker's-lung hiss. “Xeeeeno! . . . Xeeeeno!”

“Blouse? Is it really you?”

“Yesss,” she said happily, then appeared conflicted. “Noooo.”

“Are you coming home?”

“There is n hoooome. Nowhere for Blouse to land. All darkness!”

“Blouse, tell me where you are.”

“Xeeeeno, don't let them delete me!”

“Delete you? Did you become an avatar like Fayke Tan?”

“Something went wroooong! Oh, how I weep in this strange black space!” She planted her face in her hands, sobbing, fading into blackness on the dashboard telepane.

“Blouse, come back! I need to talk to you!” Xeno pounded his fist on the dashboard surface—the ceiling lamp and high beams flickered back on. “Garry, did you capture that?”

“Captured and archived with the POV camera,” Garry said, appearing on the dashboard telepane. “Analyzing the pineograph now. Carry on.”

Andrea brought the station wagon to a halt, almost skidding into an iron rod gate with a huge gold-plated “H” monogram in the center. They were greeted with roving spotlights, powered by noisy generators, the beams shining through the windshield.

Xeno got out of the station wagon and went to the call box mounted on the stone wall, next to the gate. He pressed the call button and Holly's solarized face appeared on the screen above the keypad, her witchy eyes glowing red for several seconds, gazing directly at Xeno, followed by a clearance prompt:

FACEPRINT SCAN: COMPLETE

GUEST: XENO

ACCESS: GRANTED

WELCOME TO MY PARTY!

The “H” monogram split into two halves, as the gate slowly spread apart on its hinges. Xeno hopped back into the station wagon and Andrea drove through the open gate, cruising through the driveway, passing several sculptures of unicorns in various stages of maturity, on the sprawling front lawn. She parked the station wagon in front of Holly's front porch—a faux pantheon with pediment and tympanum, awash in moonlight. The relief sculpture of Holly's head resembled Medusa, with several stone-carved snakes growing out of her scalp.

Xeno hopped out of the station wagon and climbed a small flight of faux crumbling steps, decorated with art & craft store tumbleweeds, with the drawstring price tags still attached. In the shadows of the Greek columns, he arrived at another one of Holly's fashion missteps—a red front door with a gold-plated Georgian lion head knocker. He clacked the lion head and waited for several seconds. No answer.

He wandered around the side of the curved rotunda facade, towards the backyard, staying close to the hedges. He came to the side gate and unlatched it, listening for the sound of antics, hi-jinks, splashing in the pool. There was just the Chuk! Chuk! Chuk! Chuk! of sprinklers in the distance, and layers of mist drifting from the back yard like the atmospheric remains of a field battle.

He entered the pool area, carefully stepping over bodies in togas, passed out along the edge of the swimming pool, slumbering away the after effects of Holly's spiked fruit punch, the aftermath of a bacchanal. The litter of guests extended past the foldout chairs, bodies strewn across the lawn, limbs sticking out from beneath the underlit plants. He continued towards the domed pavilion, at the other side of the swimming pool, where the mist billowed and swelled from the stone arches

He stepped over an inebriated young girl, passed out on a marble ramp that sloped down beneath the pool water, grabbing her by the fat of the arm just as she rolled over, about to drown in her sleep. He dragged her away from the swimming pool and let her drop onto the lawn, then continued past a row of huge terracotta vases, potted with passed out people, their snoozing heads slumped against the inner rims, barely stirring in his presence.

He entered the rear pavilion, fanning the thickening fog from his face, stumbling over stray trash, the barbecue pit blackened with soot, extinguished for hours, no sign of fire. Past the cliff of bottles and cans at the end of the bar, he finally came to the source—Faris passed out in a foldout chair, twitching from disturbing dreams, squeezing the remote control trigger to a fog machine when something bad happened. Xeno gently pried the remote control from Faris' fingers, replacing it with an empty beer can, allowing Faris to continue sleeping, and squeeze the can instead.

Beyond the bar, the sliding glass doors to the rear facade were ajar, the interior obscured by flowing curtains. He listened for anything risible on the other side, heard nothing, then lifted the curtains up over his head. He entered Holly's media room, illuminated by medieval hand held torches place in wall mounts. The whole room had a veneer of undisturbed smoke, hovering above the guests sacked out on the worm sofas. The scent was pungent, reeking from all sides. Holly was nowhere to be found in the upholstered dog pile.

“Welcome to Cut on Demand!” Tab Lloyd announced on the wall-sized telepane, still smiling wide with his eyes concealed by the black censor band. The COD teaser cut away to a montage of glamorous movie stars and locations, over Tab's narration. “Where you write, produce, score, and star in the movie you want to see, just the way you want to see it! Just choose the running time and the Cut on Demand range servers will mine your sensory profile, then backfill the whole shebang with such accuracy, you'll be saying 'It's a classic!' We'll digitally reproduce you exactly the way you dream of seeing yourself, along with your friends, family, or favorite movie stars. Tonight, Hollymonde stars as a Daye Funaway blend in The Towering Inferno Two, with Paul McQueen and Steve Newman, the whole cast in their early twenties, and it all takes place on Mars! Don't miss it!” An LED countdown timer appeared on the telepane:

UP NEXT ON COD!

THE TOWERING INFERNO II

STARRING

HOLLYMONDE/DAYE FUNAWAY BLEND

PAUL MCQUEEN

STEVE NEWMAN

Xeno crossed into the open kitchen, following the scent of smoke to an incense burner, and an open box with visible lettering, sitting on the edge of a banquet table:

CANNA BAI'S

THC INCENSE

“Xeno! I'm so wasted!” Andrea's lips appeared over the COD countdown, giggling on the media room telepane.

Xeno shook his head with disdain, saying nothing, turning his attention to the buffet tables, looking over the platters turned to gravy ponds with gnawed bones sticking out, blackened vegetables trapped in hardening sauces, half-eaten treats with bite marks, looking for something to eat, something still warm and fresh in the dying Sterno heat. In the very last dented tin container, he spotted the last piece of cornbread, still stuck to the corner, as if it had been waiting there for him all evening. He pried it off the tin, looked it over and nibbled, then started taking bigger bites, glancing at The Towering Inferno Two preview:

Music from the Oh My Darling Orchestra swells through the speakers. The camera pulls back from a scarlet evening vista of a colonized city on Mars, back through the sheet glass windows of a vast corporate office. Pan to an empty desk, the jet fighter office chair, empty, swiveled out. Pan across the carpet to see one, then two, stiletto heels lying in the shag, a bra, panties. Wrapped in the satin sheets of the double king makeout bed Holly—digitally remastered to look, sort of, like Daye Funaway, but still looking like Holly—plays mash face with a youthful Paul McQueen, then Steve Newman, then Paul McQueen, then Steve Newman, then . . . A cutaway to a martian skyscraper bursting into flames, spewing glass shards from its steel frame onto screaming pedestrians below . . .

Xeno turned his back on the telepane, looking for something to drink. He went to the community punch bowl and peered inside. The insides were caked with messy magenta pulp, the bottom layered with fruity sludge. He grabbed a plastic fork and lanced the last pineapple ring, drifting just beneath the punch surface, raised it to his lips and gobbled it down. When he looked back down into the punch, he saw the image of a Polaroid photo, protruding from the sludge.

He scooped the Polaroid from the punch bowl with his fingers and shook it off. The right side of the emulsion was charred and bubbled. The left side was a clear image of Trianne leaning against the storefront window of Klownburger—one he hadn't been to—the signage looming overhead. She looked wan and frowny, her arms folded, even though the photo was taken on a rare sunny afternoon.

“What do you make of this Garry?” Xeno held the image up to the onboard POV camera.

“Looks like someone burned the photo with a chemorette,” Garry said, over the transceiver. “That's certainly Trianne in front of Klownburger.”

“Which one?”

“Let me research that. There's hundreds of them.”