The fence might keep clumsy Bigfoot out but delayed us only a few seconds when we snagged a ragged edge of the cardboard on it and had to stop to free it. Then we climbed what seemed to be fourteen thousand one hundred ten meters of elevation to a place a little below the odd house, where we finally rested, breathing as hard as ancient warriors who’d just dragged their elephant up the Alps.
Timothy’s aunt’s house whirred and clicked, and I looked up. There were no windows, but it had a thousand eyes hidden in the silver rivets that held the metal skin over tungsten bones.
In the white snow it looked desolate, save for a trickle of smoke.
“Hey, your aunt’s house is on fire,” I said. Timothy gave me a look that always made me feel stupid. “Her heat exchanger’s broken. She’s burning gas,” he said. “I know because she asked my dad to get her a new one before Christmas.”
“Does she come to your house for Christmas?”
“Nah. Sometimes she comes video, just like she used to when she lived up there.” He gestured skyward, where snowflakes were crystallizing and falling on us, but I knew he meant higher, one of the space stations or orbiting cities. “It’s better now because there’s no delay when we talk. It’s like she was in Portland or something.”
“What’s she like?” I said, suddenly wondering about this peculiar person who had been a fixture in my community since I was little, yet whom I’d never seen.
Timothy shrugged. “Like an aunt. always wanting to know if I ate my peas.” Warrior Timothy was patting the cardboard elephant sled, making ready to resume our journey in the Alps.
“Why doesn’t she come out of there?”
“My dad says she’s got a complex or something from when she lived up there.” He gestured skyward again.
“What’s a complex?”
For a moment Timothy looked blank, then he said, “It’s like what Joan-John and Lester-Linda Johnson have.”
“You mean she goes to the clinic and comes back something else?” I said, wondering if his aunt used to be his uncle.
“I mean she doesn’t go anywhere.”
“But like to the consumer showcases down in the mall and the restaurant. She goes there, doesn’t she?”
“Nope. Last year when her mux cable got cut and her video wasn’t working she practically starved to death.”
“But why? Is she crippled or something?” The teacher had said he knew a spacer who spent most of his time in a swimming pool, and when he did come out he had to use a wheelchair because he was too old to get used to gravity again.
