Free Sleepless by Charlie Huston

streamlined East German Groma Kolibri, and up to the comical 1980s styling of the Generation 3000, were fully functioning, none were destined to endure greater use than the occasional gentle cleaning such as the Rem-Blick currently was undergoing. In an endless rotation she tended to the machines, oiling moving parts, replacing dry ribbons, carefully blowing away dust with a can of compressed air, and returning each to its lighted cubby on the display wall until its time came again.
    The remaining walls were glass, two vast angles of it, honing her workplace to a point, aimed decisively west, at the ocean, and beyond to her native island home.
    I stood with my back to that place whence she had been spawned, considered typewriters. And her request.
    "Finding things is not generally a task for which I am best employed."
    She picked up a small square of gauze.
    "But one you are capable of executing."
    "Capable, yes. But."
    She ran the square of gauze along the underside of the V key, removing excess oil that had run there.
    "But you would rather not?"
    I twiddled my fingers, an invisible gesture of relative indifference.
    "I'll admit that as I get older I am not particularly interested in work that is less than challenging. Recovering lost or stolen property does not tend to offer many opportunities for new experiences."
    She dropped the soiled gauze in a steel tray that would more traditionally have been used for bloody surgical instruments.
    "You will be paid at your accustomed rate."
    I reserved comment, never having conceived the prospect of working for less than my accustomed rate. I had long passed the point where working for scale, no matter how much I loved the project, was a serious consideration.
    I returned my gaze to the typewriters.
    "There is something I've been wanting myself."
    She looked up from her work.
    "Yes?"
    I nodded eastward.
    "An artwork. Or, more accurately, a fragment of an artwork."
    She set her swab aside, and white-gloved fingers indicated I should elaborate.
    I closed my eyes.
    "In September of 2007, at the Seventh Regiment Armory in New York City, a dozen professional motorcycle riders, led by Wink 1100, skidded about on a 72-by-128-foot plane of black-painted plywood. As they rode, bright orange paint layered under the black was revealed in fishtails and streaks."
    I drew my toe across the glossy floor in a long arc.
    "The work, in toto, was the creation of Aaron Young, who later supervised Mr. 1100 as he rode solo and embellished the piece with various flourishes, including a somewhat legible 'A.Y. '07' as signature."
    I made a squiggle with my toe.
    "Upon completion, the massive work was to have been cut into pieces of sizes varying from quite small bits suitable for wall hanging to billboard panels. There was, however, a fire that destroyed the vast majority of the piece's surface area, leaving just a few corners and edges to be recovered. Instantly recognized as being eminently collectible, these were snapped up by an assortment of real estate barons, investment bankers, rock stars, and third-generation old-money heirs. The most coveted sections being, no shock, those singed by the fire."
    I opened my eyes.
    "One of these sections has become available."
    She pulled the customized four-finger glove from her left hand. The fifth finger on all her left gloves had been rendered superfluous at a time in the distant past when she had chosen to make a point of some kind by cutting off the pinkie on that hand.
    She set the glove aside.
    "It sounds hideous."
    I nodded.
    "Most definitely. In every possible way."
    She pulled off her other glove, this one traditionally fingered.
    "And the price is beyond you?"
    I shook my head.
    "Not at all. Which is not to suggest that it is in any way inexpensive. But no, it is not the work itself I need from you."
    I turned and looked south, where we once could have expected to see, on an especially clear night, smoothly circling dots of light, tranquilized gnats,