Free Ambient by Jack Womack

instruments. I drank my gin quickly, hoping
to exit before midnight. The band introduced themselves by
throwing a table into the audience. They began bashing the first
song; a composition of their own, I suspected. The audience
thrashed about, hopping up and down, smashing heads together,
clapping stumps, flapping flippers, bouncing from side to side,
wailing and baying and howling for the moon. Ambient singers
are prone to tonelessly shout all lyrics at voice's top; this fellow
was of the traditional school. Two-thirds of the way through their
first number the clock read midnight, and Happy Hour began.
The red lights on the ceiling flashed and the sirens blared. I gulped
my gin and made for the side door. The audience pulled out their
toys and began to play. The chainsaws were revving up as I ran
to our apartment.
    At the top of the stairs, I stepped over the homebodies who
had bedded near our door; they were called such because their
bodies were their homes. There were seven in our hall. Many
places provided floor space for them-even the Army let some
spend each evening in Grand Central, perhaps a thousand, by
their count. The official government tally, much lower, enumerated only those who died before morning.
    I unlocked the five locks on our door, then the two on the gate,
and went inside. I relocked the locks and slid the gate shut and
put up the police bars. Enid was there, watching TV; Margot
lurked unseen.
    "Hi-de-ho, Seamus," she said.
    "Ola." Something about her was different; for a moment I
couldn't tell what. "You painted your nails."
    "Finified bright and embaled dark," she said. She'd painted
them black; they'd been red. Enid, tired of her head simply shaved,
had six months earlier wheedled the Health Service-she'd gone
to high school with a doctor in the appropriate field and had something on her-into implanting nails, points up, in her scalp.
There were seven great spikes above her forehead and fourteen
smaller ones scattered over her skull. Officially the Health Service refused to treat Ambients, much less offering to adapt those
who wished to become such.

    Enid's presence awed the most jaded. She was my height-six
three-and not dissimilar in bulk, for she had worked with weights
since she was seventeen. Tonight she wore a black blank tee, her
spike bracelets, and pink tanga lacies.
    "They're you," I said, sitting beside her, kissing her cheek.
Stuffing oozed onto the floor from the sofa as I sat; a rat pattered
off to the kitchen as if to bring me my slippers. I removed my
hardhat and my boots and pulled off my ears, laying them carefully on a nearby crate. Enid gave me those earrings for Easter,
three years before; I was quite protective of them. The throb of
the drums and the bass and the chainsaws resounded through the
soles of my feet; I lolled to the lulling sound of breaking glass.
    "Fizgiggling and wandering far, I viz," she said. "How does
downstairs go?" She was drinking from a bottle of Stolichnaya;
she drank two quarts a day.
    "Bloody fucko, I'm told."
    "Beat me. Pestered full and joyful?"
    "Looks that way. Little bitty surly one near?"
    "Don't meanmouth," said Enid. "You think her such a whipperginny. Consider her mode."
    "Dreadful thought."
    She looked at me, quizzical. "Does alky wash your mind?"
    "I had one drink."
    "Tu?''
    "None other. I left when Happy Hour got under. Idolators
fawning the great bore me."
    "Eyeing you guzz would appall," she said. "Stolly?" she asked,
waving the bottle.
    "I'll use a glass, thanks."

    "A glass!" she laughed.
    "Try it," I said, "You won't break so many teeth."
    She tossed a lamp at me; I brushed it away, walking to the
kitchen. In that room's dark I heard the voice of the refrigerator:
Door ajar. Please shut. The door was not ajar, but the computer-a number three-couldn't know; dust had gotten in the
chips. Thousands of times, day and night, the refrigerator cried
Door ajar, please shut. We never had appliance