“So, Erik, how old are you going to be tomorrow? Thirty? Thirty-five?”

He snickered. “Twelve, Auntie Hyacinth.”

She grinned at him. “Yeah, about what I figured. Get your coat on, we’re going to the arcade.”

“I’ll tell my uncle.”

“Tell him, but don’t offer to bring him. He might not approve.”

“Of the arcade?” Erik said.

“Of what we’re going to do in the arcade.”

◈◈◈

They got on the bus and they went to the big one. It was not a simple room with a blinking storefront and a single attendant. It was a complex – with galleries, themes, and even a snack bar. Not complicated snacks, just popcorn and candy and hot dogs and soda, fuel for more games. This place wasn’t meant to use up a few hours and a few sinqs, it was a convenient one-stop destination for all your time and all your money. A few of these had popped up as new construction after the war, repurposing old machines from smaller establishments that had gone out of business or burned down.

The walls were gold-papered and lined with strips of blinking lights. The floors were either carpeted in loud orange with comets and starbursts, or red-and-white tile in the filthier places — the entry, the snack bar and the bathrooms, for example. The machines were an eclectic mixture of old and new, painted with decorative scenery and finished in bright metals for extra attention-getting power. Most of them blinked and played music or sound effects – some on cylinder, mostly geartunes

There were no windows, and no clocks. The passage of time was superfluous to the exchange of coins for entertainment.

In the middle of Yule, with no schools in session, the place was crawling with kids. Later in the evening, families and single adults would begin to show. These places tried to market themselves as wholesome, but there were still a few remnants of the seedy past — fortunate for Hyacinth’s purposes.

Hyacinth broke a ten and fed it into a change machine, one sinq at a time. She gave Erik a double handful of coins. “Okay, go and have all the films. I mean all of them. To see the dirty ones, you have to climb up the side of the machine and hang on to the viewfinder.”

“Yeah, I know,” Erik said. He gave a gasp and covered his mouth with a hand.

“Good to know you haven’t been neglecting your education,” she said with a smirk. “Flatter me by coming up with a few questions to ask afterwards. I’m making my experience available, which is more than I ever got.”

He considered the coins. “I’m not sure I want to, Hyacinth.”

“Yeah, but you have to learn sometime. It’s better me than your uncle. I don’t trust him to do it. I get the idea he thinks you’re a tiny green angel.” She grinned at him. “You and I both know you’re sinful.”

He touched a hand to the tin patch she’d put in his head, then slid it down to hide a snicker. She meant Snful, which he was, and a little bit of copper and antimony. He really shouldn’t let her see he still thought that was funny, it would only encourage her. He was gonna be a teenager soon, right? This was his year to finally become… Cool.

He tried to look a little more jaded. After all, he was green.

She just shooed him away. “Go on. You don’t have to enjoy it. Just learn some stuff.”

He sighed and wandered off, holding the coins. She saw him select an all-ages machine with two viewfinders (one lower) first.

She had kept some coins for herself and she had a few games. The Strength Test called her Weak.

Well, I’m only six, she thought with a grin. There had been an accidental shortage of birthday candles a few years ago, knocking her down to age three. She was due for a second childhood!

She was going to have to find a Perfect Match to see if she still liked herself.

Erik interrupted her midway through a wire maze with a pale, confused expression.

“Why would a…. woman…” he said. “Why would a… swan…”

“A swan?” said Hyacinth. Holy shit, those films had come a long way in the past few decades. “Hang on. I gotta see this.”

He showed her the machine and then he backed away from it.

There was a lot of brass detailing. Cherubs with trumpets and fruit. There were some smaller paintings of pastoral scenes and one larger painting of a woman in a classical dress sort of gently embracing a swan.

The woman in the film was not in any kind of dress and had got rather past embracing the swan.

“How do they get it to do that?” Hyacinth cried. All she could think was maybe birdseed, but that had to be really uncomfortable. She stared into the dark viewfinder a full thirty seconds after the film ended, then she straightened and retied her hair. “Okay. Yeah. It’s classical. There was a god that was supposed to have turned himself into a swan to be with a woman. So that’s why it’s a swan. As for why any woman would do that, I can only guess they paid her a lot.”

Erik closed his open mouth and covered it with a hand. Words were still difficult for him sometimes. “Is it… supposed to be… nice?” he managed, palely.

“I think a little nice,” she said, “but probably more interesting. Unbelievable. So you’ll put in some more coins to see it again.” She sort of wanted to do that, but she wasn’t going to do it now. With Erik.

“I don’t want to see it again,” he said.

“You don’t have to, honey,” she replied. “Are you all done or did that one just bother you a lot?”

“I’d like to be all done,” he said.

“How many do you have left?”

“Those three.” He pointed.

“Well, only one of those is dirty. Look, take a break, watch the two nice ones, finish off with the naughty one and then come see me.”

“Oh, gods,” he said. He staggered off like a convict to execution.

She waited until he was fully engaged with one of the other machines and then she had a look at the swan woman again.

Holy shit.

When he was done, she took him to the snack bar. She bought popcorn and one soda each, and found them a table. It was a little bit separate from the action and an okay place to relax, though there were still audible beeps and pings and visible lights. Hyacinth didn’t think this was a matter to be discussed someplace quiet. She let him eat popcorn and waited for him to talk first.

“People like those?” he said.

“Yeah. I don’t know if they’re really supposed to be sexy, just interesting with naked people. But people like naked people.”

“I don’t know if I like naked people,” he said. “I’d like to know what they look like, but all that rolling around…”

“It’s supposed to look like they’re enjoying themselves.”

“It looks like they’re crazy.”

She snickered. “They’re supposed to be enjoying themselves so much they don’t care how they look. Like if you’re on a rollercoaster and screaming. You’re not too worried about the faces you’re making.”

“Is it that fun?”

“It depends,” she allowed. “But it’s usually pretty fun.”

“There was a lady dancing,” he said. “I liked that one a little better. She was just smiling and I could see what she looked like.”

Hyacinth lifted a brow, “Did you like it a lot?”

He shrugged and examined his soda bottle. “I think I might like it a lot later.”

“Whew, that’s a relief,” said Hyacinth. She sat back in her chair. “I was hoping to get you before you started to like things a lot. I just want questions, not opinions. Pretty sure you like girls, though?” she asked him.

“What else is there to like?” he said.

“Well, boys,” she said. “Or swans, I guess.”

“Not swans,” he said, shaking his head.

“No. But not boys either?”

He tried to think about it. He’d never really considered boys that way. For marrying. He had known about it a long time, John was like that and Uncle Mordecai pretended he was so he didn’t have to be married to that mean lady who wouldn’t let him be in a band, but he had never applied that concept to himself. Or, like, to having sex. And certainly not to himself having sex. How would you even do that with two boys?

He winced. No, no. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

He had to be really careful about rhetorical questions. The Invisibles liked to give him answers, especially if he didn’t really want answers.

“I don’t know,” he said, once he was fairly certain he wasn’t going to get a mental image of two boys having sex from some random god. He’d had enough of people having sex. “There weren’t a lot of boys unless they were with girls. I didn’t mind there being boys.”

“No, but that’s not really the same as liking them,” Hyacinth said. “I never thought about there not being a lot of boys, but you’re right. I think they expect more men to watch the films. Men are supposed to be visual.”

“Visual like how?” Erik said. He didn’t think it was possible to watch a film without being “visual” in some way.

“Well, women are supposed to like talking and cuddling, and men are all right just looking at something.”

“Aren’t there men who like boys?” Erik said.

“Aha,” Hyacinth said. “Yeah, but it’s weird to say it like that. There are men who like men. But not as many of them as men who like women. And there are some who like both.”

“You can like both?” Erik said. “How do you decide who to marry?”

“Well, you pick someone you don’t mind putting up with for the rest of your life.” She snickered. “Or you don’t pick anyone. You just have dates with boys and girls trying to decide.” And sometimes two or three of them at once, she thought, but let’s not get into that now.

“That seems like a lot of dates.” Erik said.

“I don’t know. I don’t think you have to have a lot of dates unless you want to have a lot of dates. But the only one I really knew who liked boys and girls was David, and he didn’t ever want to be married to anyone, so he wanted to have a lot of dates.” Yes. Let us say they were dates. With movies and sodas and innocent intent.

“If I liked boys, would I know about it by now?” he asked her.

“Do you know you like girls?”

He nodded.

“Yeah, I think you would. Unless you had a lot of people telling you to never like boys because it’s bad, but I don’t think you’ve ever had that, have you?”

“I guess I’ve heard it sometimes,” he said.

“You know it’s not true, though, right?” If she didn’t get an affirmative on that, she was going to have to sneak him into the Black Orchid. Ann wouldn’t help, but maybe Cerise…

“Yeah,” he said.

She was relieved and slightly disappointed. No further scheming required. “Then I think you’d know by now if you liked boys,” she said. “It’s a lot easier just liking girls, so you’re lucky.” She shrugged. “Well, it’s easier for you. You got any more questions?”

“Is naked people playing volleyball supposed to be interesting?”

“They still have that one?” she cried.

◈◈◈

She was seeking a place to dispose of the popcorn bag and soda bottles before their departure. She found an old friend. Well, maybe not a friend.

It was shunted off to one side, not on a stage, and there was a sign hanging on it that proclaimed it OUT OF ORDER.

She checked to see if the coin slot was fused shut, but it wasn’t that.

My ancient nemesis, she thought, reverently stroking the metal.

It was a Roll-A-Dance.

“What is it, Auntie Hyacinth?” Erik said, approaching.

“The most obnoxious machine in all creation,” Hyacinth said. She grinned. Boy, just when she thought she’d run out of trouble to make! “Erik, you simply must make its acquaintance. I’ve got to run home and get Milo. Do you want to wait here or wait at home for us to get it going?”

Erik considered. Milo and Hyacinth could probably get a broken airship going pretty fast, so it wouldn’t be too long to wait. “Do I have to have any more films?” he asked.

“No. We are all done with films. We are all about dancing now.”

“Can I be all about playing some of the other games while I wait?”

She gave him all the rest of the coins. “Knock yourself out, kid.”

◈◈◈

Hyacinth made a delirious announcement in the front room with both hands cupped around her mouth, “Hey, is everybody home? If you’re home, get dressed and get ready or get stuffed! We are all going to the arcade! Now!”

Ann peeked out of the kitchen with Lucy in tow. Lucy was wearing a tiara and carrying a stuffed animal. Ann had a teacup.

“Not you, Ann,” Hyacinth said, before she could even get her mouth open. “I need Milo. Get changed. I’m gonna go grab some tools.” She bee-lined for the basement.

◈◈◈

“Can I wear my tea party clothes?” Lucy asked Maggie. Maggie was home for Yule, which gave Lucy a third person for tea parties — an opportunity she was not going to pass up. (Maggie’s Daddy was also home for Yule, because he missed Maggie like crazy since she went away to school, but he had bowed out of the tea party, claiming he had business.)

“Well, you can, but I’m not going to,” Maggie replied, stripping off the feather boa. Adventures required pants.

◈◈◈

“You’re not serious,” the General said, observing Sanaam. He was rapidly dressing.

“Aren’t you even a little bit curious?” he said.

“About something at an arcade?”

“Something at an arcade that Hyacinth is this excited about!”

“Hyacinth is not a terribly rational or stable personage.”

“Yes, sir, but she’s usually mad about things. Whatever this is, it sounds fun!”

“I suppose you won’t be dissuaded from going?”

“No, sir!”

She sighed and rolled out of the bed. “Then I might as well accompany you.”

◈◈◈

Milo climbed the attic stairs and presented Calliope with a lovely hand-printed card.

When she took it from him, the words faded and a red heart blossomed in the centre of the decorative frame.

She smiled at him. “Babe, I need my glasses.”

He nodded. He knew. He expected it to reset by the time she got them on.

“Aw,” she said, a few moments later.

He was signing it for her when she looked up — IUL — with a small, genuine smile.

“I need my shoes,” she said.

Milo sighed. Calliope could be hours looking for one shoe. Lucy was better about shoes. He had once found one of Calliope’s shoes in the cold box in the basement. He signed at her: OK… WHERE SHOES YOU SEE LAST [TIME ASK]?

◈◈◈

“So this is a game?” Mordecai said, struggling into his coat.

Hyacinth hoisted it onto his shoulders for him and began buttoning it as well. “Yes! But it’s musical. It’s a rhythm game. There are four buttons. You have to hit the buttons when the game tells you to. You hit them with your feet, so it’s like dancing. There’s a band organ in the back that plays the songs, and the steps are on the paper roll in the front. You have to keep up or it starts playing flat notes and it boos at you.”

“It boos at you? Damn it, I can do my own coat!” He swatted her away. She had already done his coat.

“Yes! There’s a part of the organ that’s only there to boo at you. It’s like a big metal bellows. It’s the most irritating thing you’ve ever heard!”

“And you’re happy about this?”

“Yes!”

“Why?”

She giggled and hugged her own shoulders. “Because you’re going to hate it so much!”

◈◈◈

The bus was the only conveyance big enough for the whole house. They rode up top. Hyacinth expounded about just how awful Roll-A-Dances were. The others listened with varying interest, Sanaam and Milo at the high end of the spectrum, Calliope and the General at the low.

They descended upon the arcade en masse and immediately split up. The General stood just inside the door with her arms folded. Calliope wandered off to look at the films. Sanaam wanted to try the claw machine, or maybe the Whack-A-Mole. Maggie took Lucy to find a bathroom. Mordecai went looking for Erik. Hyacinth and Milo went straight to the Roll-A-Dance.

Hyacinth eschewed the screwdrivers (it looked like it needed a hex key, anyway), stood with her back to the machine to conceal the bright flash, and undid the back of the coin box with her hand. She turned and had a quick look at the results. “Okay, we got some wires and things in here. What have you got over there, Milo?”

Milo had a hand on the console and a serious expression, as if he were comforting a friend at the loss of a loved one. There was a lot of magic in this machine, but it wasn’t very well done. It was cheap and fraying and burnt out. The machine itself didn’t seem to be in too bad a shape, but he was still going to need to have the console open. There were a lot of lights and dials and buttons and it looked like he was going to need to have a lot of them off to get at the main body of the thing. With something approaching glee, he selected a screwdriver and began the assault.

Hyacinth snickered and backed off a few paces. “All right. You just tell me if you need anything welded or made.”

The arcade attendant approached them only once, when Milo had most of the guts of the thing out on the floor and it looked a complete mess. “Excuse me! What are you doing?”

Milo ignored him, if he even heard him. Hyacinth addressed him, “We are fixing your broken Roll-A-Dance. For free.” She hung the OUT OF ORDER sign around his neck and nudged him away. “We are eccentric.”

He picked up the sign and read it upside-down. Well, he was aware that the machine was broken. Had been since before he’d come to work there. They couldn’t possibly break it worse, could they? “It isn’t going to explode or anything, is it?”

“Maybe you’d like to back off and go into your little booth just in case it does,” Hyacinth replied.

There was a brief flash and the enchantment Milo was repairing died in a curl of purple smoke.

The arcade attendant vanished, just like magic.

Soon after, Milo looked up and signed a big sweeping, OK! Hyacinth didn’t know sign language, but she knew that much. He managed a smile and gestured to the vaguely Roll-A-Dance-shaped pile of parts: It’s all fixed!

Hyacinth had a look around. “Milo, how is this okay?”

He shrugged. Well, I only have to put it back together.

That wasn’t too hard. It took him about ten minutes altogether, but that was because all the screws were in his shirt pocket. He didn’t have a worktable where he could sort everything.

The glass front of one of the light boxes was the very last thing. It said Try Again? in red printing on a milky yellow background. There was also one that said Perfect! one that said Free Play! one that said Boo! one that said Sing Along! and one that said CHALLENGE. A dial on the console had settings marked Easy, Normal, and Hard. Above it was a menu of songs with numbers and letters beside them like vending machine candy, and a pad with numbers and letters that you could select. Centrally located, at eye-level, was the gaping slot for the music roll. The light boxes were blinking in a regular pattern, demanding your attention and money.

“Awesome, Milo,” Hyacinth said, grinning. “I’m gonna go break some more sinqs.”

Milo shook his head. He indicated the coin slot and drew an X over it with one finger.

“No coins? It doesn’t need coins?”

He shook his head.

“You are the best person,” Hyacinth squealed. “May I hug you?”

He shrugged and then nodded.

She did so. “Eee! Now I have to go find everyone!”

◈◈◈

Sanaam, Lucy, and Maggie were standing in front of the claw machine surrounded by about fifteen different stuffed animals. Sanaam was going after one of the last two with Maggie directing him.

“It works a lot better if you hit everything with soft-stick charms,” she told Hyacinth.

◈◈◈

The General was having a minor altercation with the shooting gallery attendant. A stuffed animal was also involved, as was a small appreciative crowd.

“I do not want it,” she said.

“Madame, you have won six of these,” the attendant said patiently. “People are looking. Please.”

“I have no use for six enormous stuffed bears!”

“Then why were you playing?”

“I like killing things.”

“You know, you could just give them to people,” Hyacinth suggested. There were several children in the crowd.

“None of these people have earned an enormous stuffed bear.”

“I suppose you could set them on fire,” Hyacinth said.

“It would set off the sprinkler system,” the General said.

“All right, I’ll come back for you,” Hyacinth said.

◈◈◈

Calliope was watching the swan film. “It has to be bird seed,” she muttered.

◈◈◈

There was a somewhat larger crowd now.

“I should think you’d be happy I’m not cutting into your overhead!”

“You are cutting into our reputation!” the shooting gallery attendant cried.

“Spare me,” said the General. “It is not possible to play for more than five minutes without realizing you are managing the scores by deadening the sensors. A hit does not register unless it is within one-sixteenth of an inch from the centre of your deceptively large bullseyes. And the sights on that gun are off by a country mile!”

◈◈◈

“I don’t know why you would put money in something called ‘Frustration’!” Mordecai cried, fumbling the pieces.

“It’s not that hard,” Erik said, laughing. “You just have to match them up.”

“There are a million of them!”

“There are thirty-six,” Erik replied. “They’re all very different.”

“There are, like, five different squares!”

“No, there’s a big square and a little square. All the others have different angles. Don’t you see it?”

“No!”

“Five seconds, Uncle.”

“This is pointless!” said Mordecai. He threw up his hands and backed away.

There were only ten pieces left. Erik commandeered the machine and slotted them in.

The machine let out a delighted ding, and a blinking array of tiny red lights spelled out: Success! A metal cover slid closed over the slots and pieces. Next Round – 20 Seconds! the tiny red lights proclaimed. Play?

“I think you may be cheating,” Mordecai said suspiciously.

Erik adjusted his metal eye. “Possibly…”

◈◈◈

“Madame, if you do not take your six enormous stuffed bears and cease telling everyone that our games are rigged, I am going to call the police!”

“Oh, for gods’ sakes!” Hyacinth cried. “If you don’t want six enormous stuffed bears, why don’t you just change them into something else?”

“Such as?” said the General.

“Well… What about six very small stuffed bears?”

“I still don’t want them.”

“Give them to Erik for his birthday!”

“Isn’t he a little old for stuffed bears?”

“I am trying to keep you out of a holding cell,” Hyacinth growled. “Work with me, sir.”

“…All right.”

The smell was dank and hideous. Several of the more sensitive members of the audience, who did not approve of such obvious magic in public, collected their offspring and walked away.

The General pocketed her bears.

◈◈◈

“All right,” Hyacinth said, stepping onto the dance pad. “I’m not going to be good at it, but I know how to do it, so I’m going first. You all have to play,” she informed them, pointing a finger. “Except maybe Mordecai.”

Mordecai snorted and folded his arms across his chest. “What, because I’m old?”

“Because you don’t breathe very well and I’m afraid it might kill you. But yes, also, you are old.”

“You’re not exactly young, Hyacinth.”

“No, but I have regular meat lungs that work better than yours.” 

“And whose fault is that?” he cried.

She tipped up her nose. “Furthermore, I am more than willing to humiliate myself to have a good time — which is not required, but helps.”

There were a few snickers from the group of them, Sanaam and the kids especially.

“Okay!” she said. “Don’t stand on the frame. Stand on the buttons, the left and right buttons. When two arrows come up at once, you have to jump and hit both. You need to hit the arrows when they come up to the line. They follow the music. This looks like a newer machine, so they’ll probably light up and disappear. Songs are here, difficulty is here.” She left it on Normal, her pride would not allow her to dial it back to Easy. She had played these things before, damn it. “I think that’s all, but it’s been a while since I’ve played. If I remember anything else, I’ll say it.”

She selected “Nina, Pretty Ballerina.” A simple tune of five notes played as a metal arm bearing a thick scroll of paper slid into the gaping space at eye-level and spooled from bottom to top. A thin gold wire across the top of the page flickered to light.

Nina, Pretty Ballerina — ABBA was printed at the top of the scroll. The paper began to roll. One of the boxes lit up with a ping. Sing Along! it advised.

“You are forbidden from singing along,” Hyacinth said quickly. She was trying to remember the damn thing after maybe thirty years. She did not require vocal accompaniment, especially a goofy-ass song like “Nina, Pretty Ballerina.”

There were rectangular punches on the scroll, lyrics, and arrows. When the punches reached the top, the band organ cranked up and cheerfully began to play. There were drums, whistles, a xylophone and the organ itself available, as well as various sound effects, such as the boo and a cheer. The arrows were magicked and they glowed. When they reached the gold line, they flashed and vanished.

Oh, my damn dress, Hyacinth thought, as she landed two steps and flubbed a third. It wasn’t as bad as some of the numbers David had put her in, but it was ankle length and it interfered when she picked up her feet. She hitched up the skirt in both hands, then rolled it into her left and held it against one hip.

Boo! the machine admonished her, regardless, blinking the sign.

“You hear it?” she said breathlessly, grinning.

Sanaam was grinning back at her, he nodded. Milo was rocking back and forth with a vague smile; he liked the music. Lucy was dancing in place with a big smile; she liked it too. Maggie and Calliope were watching the scroll, Erik was watching her feet. The General had her arms folded and was examining the ceiling.

Mordecai said, “It’s deliberately annoying.” He winced as she missed another step. “And flat.”

“I told you!” she cried. The Boo! sign was blinking regularly now, warning her against further errors. Aw, come on, she thought. Let me finish! I’ve almost got it!

Boo! The sign lit up solid. The roll spooled rapidly to the top and ejected.

“Crap!”

She got a smattering of applause. Mordecai and the General abstained. Lucy was particularly enthused. “Play it again!” she demanded.

Hyacinth bowed. She shook her head and threw down the skirt of her dress. “I’ve had my turn. Someone else try.”

“I wanna!” Lucy cried, lifting a hand.

“Well, you might be a little short for it, but okay…” Hyacinth read off the songs for her.

“‘Butterfly’!” said Lucy. “I want that one!”

Hyacinth punched it in. “B… 6…”

Lucy had absorbed that you needed to push the buttons and look at the arrows. Everything else had gone over her head. She also did not seem to notice that the machine was chastising her. She smiled the whole time. Calliope also smiled the whole time. Everyone else winced. The machine gave her twenty seconds of missing every single step before it ejected the roll.

“Aw, it’s so fast,” she complained. “Can I go again?”

“Everyone gets one song,” Hyacinth said, helping her down. “To start. You can have another later if you like.”

“Okay…”

Milo had a go next. He wasn’t familiar with most of the songs, but he did like that first one. He selected “Intermezzo No. 1.” It was by the same group. Also, it had a number in it. The scroll slid into place. Sing Along! did not light up for this particular piece.

He stood on the left and right arrows and considered the scroll.

That’s a little stiff. It needs oil.

So, what am I looking at here?

The punches were for the band organ. Vertical axis for timing, horizontal for which note and which instrument. Simple enough. But some of the punches weren’t playing.

Is that supposed to happen? Did I screw up?

“Milo, you’re supposed to hit the arrows,” Hyacinth said.

Milo frowned. This music was unpleasant.

Oh, wait, I see. The punches it plays are contingent upon the arrows. If the arrows are entered incorrectly, then this set of punches engages. Correct entry plays a completely different set.

“Was he not here when I explained about the arrows?” Hyacinth muttered aside.

It’s meant to be unpleasant. The arrows are…

The scroll spooled and ejected.

Excuse me, I was looking at that!

Milo selected “Intermezzo No. 1” again. The scroll slid into place and began to roll.

Okay. I get it now. This is all code. The punches are code for the machine and the arrows are code for me. We’re supposed to compliment each other. It’s playing the music so I have an auditory cue for when to enter my part.

“Mordecai, do you think he’s hypnotized or something?” Hyacinth said.

If I enter my code properly, it will reward me with nice music. Let’s see, that means jump, and that means turn in a circle. Ah! And the arrows with trails on them are sustained. This is easy! I don’t have nearly as much to do as the machine!

The scroll spooled and ejected.

Milo selected “Intermezzo No. 1” again.

“Auntie Hyacinth, he’s had three plays,” Lucy said.

“He’s not playing,” Hyacinth replied.

Milo started to play. For the first little bit, he kept glancing down at his feet, but that threw off his timing so he quit it. The buttons were pretty darn big, anyway. It was supposed to be easy for him. It was a game. He landed his first jump partway on one of the spaces between the buttons and frowned at himself. He was disappointing the machine. He pulled back his shoulders and tried to be a little more machine-like himself.

Up. Down. Left. Right. Eighth note. Quarter note. Oh! The different beats are different colours! This is so simple. It’s telling me everything I need to know.

Except where the buttons were, but if he metered his motions and paid attention, they were no trouble either.

“Holy shit, he’s good at it,” Hyacinth said softly. This wasn’t a thing you were meant to be good at. You were meant to be sort of mediocre at it and just frustrated enough to keep feeding it coins.

The cheer engaged.

Hey! All right! Best possible code version!

What a nice machine. With all the information and the feedback, it was like it was holding your hand the whole time. He nailed the rest of the song, despite the code’s occasional playful attempts to get him tangled in his own feet.

When the roll ejected, it applauded him.

So did his friends.

He smiled.

That was really fun! I like doing code! Why am I tired?

He had just been pushing buttons the whole time. They weren’t even that far apart.

It’s rather fast, Milo.

He subtly shook his head. Ann, I work on an assembly line. Don’t talk to me about fast.

Calliope took his hand to help him down and she wrapped both arms around his waist. “That was really cute,” she told him. She planted a light kiss on his cheek.

He gazed longingly at the machine. Aw, I want to go again.

But, maybe breathe first. Maybe breathe for a while, actually.

Maggie wanted to hear “Butterfly” as it was meant to be played – not in punishment mode. She commandeered the pad next and selected the song. She was good enough to keep it from ejecting immediately, but she still lit up the Boo! sign at regular intervals. It did not help that Milo kept leaning in, pointing at the scroll, and saying NO LOOK NO LOOK, like she didn’t get she was supposed to be doing the steps on the scroll.

“I see it, Milo!” she snapped finally, and that got him to back off. She got through the song, but the machine was not overly impressed with her. It did not applaud. Yeah, well, screw you too. She offered it a sign of her own.

“Magnificent!” the General cried.

“What?” said Maggie. “What do you want me to do? Apologize to it?”

“Apologize to Lucy and Calliope!”

Maggie sighed. She dropped a sarcastic curtsy, with her fingers plucking empty air above her trousers. “I am so sorry Miss Otis and Miss Otis. I will warn you the next time I intend to be rude so that you may avert your sensitive eyes.”

“S’all right,” Calliope said.

“Huh?” Lucy said.

“That thing is a bad influence,” the General muttered.

Grinning and nodding, Hyacinth replied, “It’s meant to be!”

Sanaam imitated the curtsy and snickered.

Erik wanted to go next. He had a careful perusal of the music list. He knew some of them, but he also knew Hyacinth reacted very badly to Elton John. He went with “Nina, Pretty Ballerina” again just to be safe. He positioned himself on the buttons and waited out the annoying five-note melody that played while the scroll was clicking into place.

Okay…

He wasn’t sure if he screamed or not. Probably not. Everyone would have been a lot more upset if he really screamed. In his head he was screaming. There were flashing colours and then scrolling lines and he staggered backwards and fell off the dance pad.

Sanaam had been nearest and caught him.

“Erik!” Mordecai cried.

“Toast,” Erik said faintly. His metal eye had rolled up in his head and was showing the blank gold backing.

“Pardon?” Sanaam said, blinking.

Erik brushed off Sanaam and Mordecai and wobbled upright again. He tipped his head forward and took out his eye. “Okay. I’m… okay. Eye. Not brain, eye. It doesn’t like that. I think it’s trying to read it and do it at the same time. I’m okay, though.”

Mordecai offered to take him someplace he could sit down. Milo offered to have a look at the eye.

Erik shook his head and put up both hands. “No, no. I’m good. Somebody take the next song. I’ll try it again later with no depth perception.”

“I don’t think you should!” Mordecai said.

“But, Uncle, it looks so fun,” Erik replied. He smiled. “Besides, I’m positive it was the eye. Everything straightened right out after I took it out. I’d try again right now, but I can still kind of smell toast.”

“Toast?” said Mordecai.

“Oh, I hardly ever smell toast at all anymore, Uncle,” Erik said soothingly.

Mordecai did not appear much soothed. “What the hell is that about toast?” he hissed at Hyacinth.

She shrugged at him. Maybe a mild seizure? But she didn’t say that, of course.

Sanaam bravely took the next song. He attempted to be distracting. He succeeded at this, but not because he was very good. Quite the opposite.

He selected: In the Hall of the Mountain King — Grieg (REMIX, Captain Jack) — 2:42 — A4.

Captain Jack, huh? he thought, re-reading the missive at the top of the scroll as it spooled into place. Pleased to make your acquaintance, I’m Captain Sanaam. He didn’t know what Captain Anything had to do with “In The Hall of the Mountain King.” He thought that was one of those old songs that kept getting used in movies because it was public domain.

He thought, also, that it started slow and subtle and got loud and fast, but something had been done to this version of it. It started loud and fast and it got louder and faster.

He seemed to be missing some kind of important connection between his eyeballs and his legs. He was aware that there was supposed to be some kind of timing involved here, but he was unable to pull it off. He did not dance. He staggered for twenty seconds and then the machine rejected both the scroll and him.

Milo was looking at the floor and just shaking his head.

“A commendable effort,” the General said, stone-faced.

“I never claimed to be graceful,” Sanaam said, dismounting. “You have all the grace in our relationship, dear.”

“Mom is graceful?” Maggie said. She grinned. “Mom! Show us how graceful you are!”

“No.”

“Oh, come on, sir!” Sanaam put in.

“Keep it up and I shall smother you with six low-resolution enormous stuffed bears.”

“That seems very specific,” Sanaam said.

“It is not an idle threat,” the General replied.

Erik was sufficiently recovered to have another try, at least he repeatedly claimed to be. It was enough for Mordecai to allow him back on the pad, but he remained hovering near and looking unhappy about it. Erik selected “In the Hall of the Mountain King” again. That one had sounded interesting, if flat and punctuated by booing.

The arrows did not scramble him this time, and he was so relieved that he briefly forgot he was supposed to be pushing the buttons.

Boo!

Oh! Right! Sorry!

He incurred two more boos catching up to the beat of the music, but then something seemed to click into place. There was a specific step you were supposed to be doing. The arrows came in clusters. 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3. The pattern repeated, like the music did. You could anticipate it.

And then sometimes the pattern did not repeat and he got booed again.

It does that on purpose, he thought, grinning. Hyacinth was right about it being obnoxious.

He made it through the entire song, but the Boo! light was blinking continuously for the last thirty seconds of it. He got very careful, and he did not make that final, game-ending mistake. He garnered no applause, however.

He hopped down from the pad and smiled at his uncle. “No toast!” he said.

Sanaam and Maggie began pleading with the General again.

“No,” she replied.

“I’ll try it,” Calliope offered, lifting a hand.

Milo took that hand and helped her up onto the machine. He gestured poetically at the gap where the music spooled. CALLIOPE [EXCITEDX3 EXTRA] MACHINE [SMART FUN [EXTRA] SMART FUN] EVERYTHING YOU NEED HERE [RIGHT HERE] CODE CODE CODE CODE FUN [EXTRA] «calliope! this machine is so smart and fun! everything you need to know to play is right here! it’s code! yay! code!»

“I think a lot of machines know how to play music, hon, but it’s cool you can see how on this one,” she said, while signing. “Yeah.”

NO… MACHINE… OH DARN NEVERMIND. He hid his eyes in a hand for a moment, then he had to take off his glasses and clean them. She wasn’t teasing this time, she really didn’t understand how he meant it, but he wasn’t sure how to say it any better. He’d have to let her figure it out for herself.

She selected “Dancing with Myself,” possibly because it was numbered A1. She stood in the exact centre of the pad.

“No, Calliope, on the buttons,” Hyacinth told her, as the music was spooling.

“Which buttons?”

“Left and right!”

She leaned forward and examined the console.

“No, on the pad!”

Calliope had twenty seconds of off-key Billy Idol before the roll was ejected. She frowned at it. “Aw, that’s too bad. I’d like to hear the whole thing that way.” She looked over at Milo, who was watching her with a pained expression, and smiled. “Babe, can you fix it so it plays the whole thing that way?”

Milo’s mouth fell open. OH DARN (They were using that as a generic, child-safe exclamation.) SERIOUS [ASKX3]? That seemed like an appropriate level of disbelief.

“No?” she said.

He sighed and nodded. NO [NO] YES. POSSIBLE. I DO. The machine did not have real feelings. Calliope did. If tormenting the machine would make her happy, then okay. He put a hand on the console and rewired a couple of the enchantments, then he hit A1 again.

“So awesome,” Calliope said. She climbed off the pad and wandered around the back to watch the band organ having a hysterical fit. Lucy joined her. Milo hesitated for a moment, watching the roll plead helplessly for the input of the arrows, then he went around back too.

Wow. So many pipes and levers and pieces. And a flywheel! The organ hadn’t needed any repairing, so he’d left it alone. It was interesting to watch the music being made. Now if only the poor thing wasn’t begging so loudly to be allowed to stop.

“It’s got a triangle!” Calliope said. “And the drums are backwards!” She signed slowly for Lucy’s benefit LOOK LUCY SEE DRUMS [ASK]? The tiny hammers were striking the skins from the inside.

I KNOW [NO PAST] DRUMS GO [BACKWARDS] WOW, Milo signed. «i didn’t know drums could work backwards!»

It was almost enough to distract one from the music.

The roll disengaged with one final desultory Boo! The metal arm retracted the paper roll and filed it with the rest, the tips of which were just visible from behind.

“Can we have another one?” Lucy said.

Milo waved both hands and shook his head. He lifted one finger, ONE SONG ONE.

“Aw,” Calliope said.

Around the front of the machine, Maggie and Sanaam were begging the General to play again. Hyacinth had joined them, “Come on! Everyone else has gone! Why did you come if you’re not going to play?”

“To watch everyone make fools of themselves,” the General replied, arms folded. “I am satisfied.”

“She won’t do it because she’s afraid,” Mordecai said.

The General turned towards him with a withering glare.

He was insufficiently withered. “Everything has to be perfect with her. She’s never done this before and she won’t get it perfect. She can’t handle that, so she won’t play. A Brigadier General with multiple bullet wounds is afraid of an arcade game.”

“Why, thank you for voicing my internal monologue so well,” the General said. “I was unaware the Invisibles were gifting you with pointless information now too.”

Erik cleared his throat and turned awkwardly away. He attempted to examine his eye.

Mordecai just folded his arms and smirked. “Lady, I don’t need the Invisibles. I’ve got two decades’ experience on you. I can read you like a cheap tabloid.”

She advanced two steps upon him. “Your continued insolence and idiocy is noted, and not entirely unexpected.”

“Mom,” Maggie said. Her mother was getting that time-to-take-people’s-eyes-out look again.

“Uh,” Sanaam said, lifting a hand.

“Don’t protect me,” Mordecai said. “If she kills me, she’ll only be twice as wrong.” He addressed her again, “The only way you’re going to get out of this gracefully is to play the game. Or you could spontaneously combust. Right here. Right now. If you’re more committed to that sense of dignity you’ve cultivated than your pride.”

“Wow.” Sanaam said.

The General turned from them all and mounted the dance pad. She selected “Ode to Joy.” It was the longest available option. As the five note melody played and the scroll spooled, she climbed down from the pad and stood on the floor behind it. She remained facing the machine.

Something had also been done to this piece. It started bombastically, with the most recognizable refrain. She folded her arms across her chest and waited for the arrows.

She hit the buttons, from where she was standing, without lifting a single toe. You could see them depressing slightly and lighting up as she smacked each one with an individual enchantment.

“Cheating,” Mordecai said.

“Taking a third option,” she replied. She smiled faintly. “I am pressing the buttons. I have not automated a system. I am following the scroll. Mr. Rose can tell. Can’t you, Mr. Rose?”

Milo nodded, flinching. He really wished she wouldn’t do that. He’d repaired the magic pretty well, but there was just so much of it. If she hit the console, she was going to blow up the machine.

There was a faint odour of hot metal.

Milo took Lucy by one hand and Calliope by the other and backed them away from the machine. Hyacinth, Mordecai, Erik, Maggie and Sanaam all followed suit.

The General hit the buttons.

Two minutes in, the Perfect! sign lit up with a ping and began to blink.

“You’re a quarter of the way through and you haven’t made any mistakes,” Hyacinth said.

“I know,” she replied.

After four minutes, Sanaam became possessed of a morbid desire to grab his wife suddenly around the middle and see what would happen. There was only a small uncertainly about the consequences. Either a) she would blow up the machine, or b) she wouldn’t. And then she would blow him up. That second part was sure.

“Mag-Pirate,” he said softly. “Can you give me a really good reason to live? I mean, a really good one?”

“Pie à la mode?” she offered him.

He considered it.

But she would make such a hilarious sound!

“Nope, gonna need a little bit more.”

“Pie à la mode and a soft kitten?”

“Do we have a soft kitten?”

“I think we could get one if you really need one to live, Dad.”

Pie à la mode and a soft kitten got him to six minutes and thirty seconds. The Perfect! sign was still blinking.

“It would be really hilarious to scare her right now,” Maggie intimated through taut lips.

“Mag-Pirate, you’re supposed to be more mature than me,” Sanaam replied likewise.

Maggie tilted her head to one side and smiled. “Yeah, you’d think that’d be a lot easier than it is.”

Erik faded in behind them and spoke softly, “Seriously, you guys, don’t do it.”

“Ah!” Sanaam said, but quietly.

“Can you give us a real good reason to live, Erik?” Maggie said, grinning.

Erik frowned and thought about it. “What do you guys think about naked people playing volleyball?”

“Not as funny as my Mom blowing up a Roll-A-Dance,” Maggie replied. Sanaam nodded agreement.

“But safer,” Erik said.

“If I were worried about safety, I never would’ve married that woman,” Sanaam said.

“You guys have any opinions on swans?” Erik said.

Mercifully, the song ended before he could elaborate. The Perfect! sign lit up solid, and the machine practically blew a gasket producing cheers and applause, but did not blow anything else. Milo slumped with visible relief.

Free Play! the machine informed them, piping a merry tune.

“Ah,” said the General. “Shall I have another go?”

“One song!” the household cried in voices of legion. Milo signed it again, repeatedly

The General bowed. “I concede my free play to the elderly gentleman who has so recently been proven incorrect in his hasty assumptions.”

Mordecai nodded once placidly, suppressing a smile. Not only can I read you like a cheap tabloid, he thought, I can fold you into a paper hat if I want to. It was a slightly differently-shaped hat than he had intended, but he could still wear it and feel smug if he wanted.

As to the matter of playing, he deferred to Hyacinth, “Well? Am I allowed?”

Hyacinth considered him. She mounted the machine and racked the dial from Normal to Easy. The light box offering Free Play! blinked out. “There. Now you’re allowed. But you have to stop if you can’t breathe.”

“I think I would have done that without you telling me,” he said. 

“You’re very stubborn sometimes,” Hyacinth said.

“Perhaps.” He removed his coat and jacket and handed them to her. She dropped them on the floor. Erik retrieved them. “Thank you,” he said, more sincerely to one than the other.

He climbed up on the pad and had a look at the songs. Elton John seemed like a good choice, in light of Hyacinth’s treatment of his belongings, but he was afraid it might be a bit disproportionate. The General had failed to blow up the machine, he did not now wish to blow up Hyacinth. There was a fine line between teasing and sadism and he preferred to toe it exactly.

By the gods, there was a lot of ABBA on this thing. He’d forgotten how popular they were. He had blocked it out.

“Oh! Here we go. ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’…”

“No!” Hyacinth shrieked. She slapped her hand over the selection pad and physically prevented him. “That song is six minutes long, you maniac! You can barely manage it on the ’cello!”

“I don’t have to magic this thing to make it play,” he said.

“No! You have to dance on it. That’s worse!” She looked over the songs. “Here. Have this one.” She selected “Dum Dum Diddle.” She grinned. It wasn’t the shortest thing on there, but it was only half the length of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and she thought the lyrics might wind him up.

“Damn it, my mother used to listen to ABBA!” he said, as the scroll clicked into place. One light box lit up, Sing Along!

Hyacinth turned to address the household with a smile. “I no longer forbid you to sing along. In fact, I encourage it!”

They all gathered nearer to have a look at the lyrics, even Milo and Lucy, though the one could not sing and the other could not read. It was highly unlikely that the General intended singing either.

Hyacinth and Sanaam broke into immediate, joyful harmony when the lyrics reached the gold line.

Mordecai picked up a couple of boos nailing down the concept of hitting the arrows when they hit the line, but he had much fewer steps to deal with and more room to think.

Maggie read ahead on the scroll and cackled aloud. She nudged Erik and they both joined in gleefully.

Or he would’ve had more room to think if everyone around him, now including the General, were not singing him badly rhymed words of encouragement about playing a violin.

Oh, my gods, it would’ve been a mercy if she’d blown it up. What’s a little shrapnel?

He wished to eloquently inform them all how much he loathed them, but he didn’t have the air for it. He had to settle for a gesture which Maggie had earlier directed at the machine, now directed at his friends and family.

Maggie broke off cackling and Sanaam joined her.

The Boo! sign lit up solid after two minutes, but Milo had never undone the thing he did to get the whole song to play for Calliope. He had to keep playing.

Oh, gods, they tried to rhyme “smiling” with “violin” twice? ABBA should be taken out and shot!

The roll spooled and ejected. He leaned on the console, panting for a few moments. When Hyacinth reached out a hand to check on him, he shrieked at her, “Violoncello!”

“And you’re only mellow!” Maggie sang, giggling. “When you play your violoncello!”

“That is equally horrible!” he cried. He doubled over coughing. Hyacinth and Erik both climbed up on the dance pad to help him off. “Fine,” he informed them, though he was happy to leave. He smiled at Erik. “No toast.”

Milo commandeered the dance pad like a ship’s captain and shooed his hands at all of them. All right. Enough playing it wrong.

He didn’t know what the problem was. They weren’t even consistently bad at it. They had each picked a different fundamental concept to screw up. Even the General, who had the code right, had elected to hit the buttons with dangerous magic that could hurt the machine.

It was like doing it wrong amused them.

Well, he had his breath back and he intended to do it right. Just to get the taste out of his mouth. Just to make certain it could be done right. He clicked the dial back to Normal. Easy mode was a little bit patronizing, though he understood its utility.

First thing he was going to do was replay that last song. It seemed nice. He’d like to have it without the boos and the flats.

No, wait.

He laid a hand on the machine and redid some enchantments. The first thing he was going to do was lower the tolerance for bad playing from twenty seconds to ten. All right. Now the song.

“Oh, gods, Milo, why?” Mordecai cried, observing the scroll.

Because there is something seriously wrong with all of you, Milo thought to himself as he waited for the arrows.

Maggie picked up the lyrics again and began subbing in “violoncello” for every mention of “violin” or “fiddle.” Sanaam joined her, and then Calliope — presumably for moral support.

Milo was aware that they were singing, but he didn’t think it required any action on his part. It had nothing to do with the arrows. It was superfluous.

He got the cheer engaged after fifteen seconds and the Perfect! sign blinking after forty-five. He completed the song to the machine’s satisfaction and also his own. It was a nice song. He’d have to look for it on a record. The Perfect! sign lit up solid, and then Free Play! The band organ showered him with applause. He smiled. How sweet of the machine to offer him a free song. It didn’t know they weren’t putting coins in it. It knew he liked code and it was trying to give him more code.

“I suppose you could’ve done it that way if you wanted to,” Mordecai said to the General.

“I did not need to,” she replied.

Milo selected “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Mordecai had wanted to hear that one, and he hadn’t seemed very happy about “Dum Dum Diddle.” Milo had a suspicion the others were teasing him with it. The run time of six minutes did not impress him as anything but more mathematical information. It would take him a minute and a half to get the Perfect! sign blinking, then.

Milo, you were tired after three minutes and fifty…

Shh, Ann. Busy.

Sing Along! the machine offered them.

“Should we, Uncle?” Erik said.

“Think you can keep up with Freddie Mercury?” Mordecai replied.

“Not possible,” Hyacinth broke in. She smiled. “But if we’re all singing, maybe it won’t be too obvious how terrible we are.”

“I just hope we can keep up with Milo,” Maggie said.

Milo, once again, ignored them. But he did have an idea they were singing because they liked the music. He would’ve wanted to play it right anyway, but he wanted to play it right a little bit extra because they were singing.

The spectacle of a band organ flawlessly thundering out “Bohemian Rhapsody” while a man danced on top of it and a small group of people sang it, occasionally punctuated by cheering, was enough to draw the attention of some of the other people in the arcade. That resulted in more people singing and even more wandering over to have a look at it. “Bohemian Rhapsody” was a classic.

“What is that thing?” someone asked.

“That is Milo Rose,” Hyacinth replied. “And the machine he is playing is a Roll-A-Dance. You have to hit the buttons with your feet.”

Hyacinth had to stop singing entirely to field questions. Most frequently asked was the one she really couldn’t answer: “How does he do that?”

Milo didn’t notice any of that either. He did notice that it seemed to be getting a little more difficult to breathe, and that his legs didn’t want to respond as easily to the code he was reading. Especially the jumps. He had to start giving himself a little bit of an allowance for the timing. That was puzzling, and a little bit frustrating. He knew what he was supposed to be doing. He didn’t get this tired coding for enchanted things in the basement. He could do that for hours. And this was so much more fun! The machine was coding for him!

There were about fifteen people singing as both the song and Milo wound down. Milo might have noticed the people at that point. He might have felt embarrassed, or afraid, or both. He might have dashed off and hid in a photo booth somewhere, panting and trying to collect himself. But the machine didn’t let him. The Perfect! sign lit up solid, then it blinked and chimed happily. Free Play! was also still engaged. The cheers and applause were delirious.

Milo smiled, breathing hard. Hey. Okay. Made it. He might need another break…

A klaxon blared. A series of red lights began to flash on either side of the machine. The organ played a strikingly familiar refrain. Mordecai blinked at it. He remembered doing that one for silent films, usually the monster ones. The light box reading CHALLENGE lit up solid. The letters were bright red on a black background. There was some applause from the audience and a few people said, “Woo!”

Hyacinth’s mouth fell open. She leaned in nearer to Milo and spoke softly and rapidly, “Oh, my gods, Milo. You have unlocked ‘Toccata.’ I’ve only ever seen one person do that, and he was…”

Super weird-looking, she had been about to say, but then she remembered she was talking to Milo.

“…He, uh, he seemed like he practically lived at the arcade.”

Milo smiled at the machine. Aw. Another free song! He had a look at the selection pad. There was nothing called “Toccata” on there. A secret free song! Just for me!

Well, he was a little bit tired, but…

“I think maybe it killed him,” Hyacinth said.

Milo cast a brief glance at her. How’s that?

The difficulty dial ratcheted itself over to Hard with a decisive clunk.

The scroll that spooled into the gap read TOCCATA in glowing red letters that blinked on and off like a warning light. Bach (REMIX) — 9:35 was written slightly smaller beneath it.

“Hm,” said the General. So “Ode to Joy” wasn’t the longest option on the machine.

“Milo, you don’t have to,” Hyacinth said urgently.

Milo, there is no way in hell…!

He smiled and shrugged. He pointed to the scroll. But it wants me to.

The arrows and the music began concurrently. The familiar horror-movie refrain played again. Then the drums and the other instruments kicked in, and the band organ really took off. The red lights on the sides of the machine blinked to the beat. It seemed to have gotten louder. There were also a lot more steps to it, practically one to a note, and a lot of notes. It was fast and a little bit unexpected, but not impossible. It was fun.

Then the roll stopped. It just stopped. The red lights lit solid and also stopped. Milo accidentally hit a button he had been expecting to come up to the line, then he backed off it and replaced his foot on the right arrow. Did I break…?

He did not have time to coherently wonder if he broke it. He had a vague impression of the concept of it maybe being broken, then the roll started up again. Faster. He missed the first step.

Hey!

It booed him, but did not play any flats.

Well, I’m sorry, but you…

It didn’t give him any time to put that thought into words either. It did give him a solid minute of rapid jumps and steps before it stopped again. He examined the roll with a narrow gaze, leaving one foot hovering over the next arrow. There wasn’t anything in the code that said it was going to stop! Not that he could see on the paper, anyway. The split-second warning he got when the gears of the machine whirred to life again was enough for him to land the first step, but his timing was off for the next dozen.

Boo!

This is…

No. No words in brain. Arrows.

A thick red line was approaching at all speed from the bottom of the scroll.

“Ah!” Hyacinth said. “Milo, that’s…”

The red line hit the gold line. The entire scroll flashed white for a moment and the machine booed him again.

“Milo, that’s a shock!” said Hyacinth. “No feet on any buttons! Stand in the middle of the pad like Calliope!”

A shock? He could not gather the cognitive ability to remember whether the machine was capable of actually shocking him. Also his own name or the fact that he could stop playing and leave the pad whenever he wanted. Another red line flew up the scroll and scrambled his ability to read the arrows like Erik’s metal eye.

He couldn’t put it into words, he did not have enough processing power for words, but the red lines were wrong somehow. Feet always on buttons was necessary, it was right. Feet on no buttons at all was wrong. You weren’t supposed to do that. That wasn’t how the game was played!

It is if I say it is, asshole, the game told him, sending up another red line.

This time he managed to stumble into the middle of the pad in time. The red line lit up gold and the machine cheered him. Then it coughed up three rapid steps that he missed two of and booed him again. Still no flats. It seemed to have some appreciation of the fact that this was hard.

That made it worse, somehow. This was on purpose.

Didn’t Hyacinth… eighth step, quarter step, eighth step… say… jump, jump, jump, eighth step, quarter step… word… circle, now hold this one down and hit all the others… very unkind word… SHOCK!… something about…

The roll stopped again.

I can’t breathe, Milo had time to realize. Then, arrows. He was having to run arrows and I can’t breathe concurrently, like two enchanted gears that intermeshed badly and were grinding the teeth off of each other. His hands, which were not required for arrows and capable of some autonomous function, reached up and undid his top two buttons, and then yanked his braid out of the back of his shirt. That freed up a little more processing power for arrows.

At six minutes, with I can’t breathe steadily gaining in urgency, the arrows reversed. That was, they began to scroll downwards while the punches scrolled upwards. It only did it for six steps and they were mirrored exactly so it was like they were still coming up from the bottom, but it scrambled him even worse than the shocks.

No! You can’t…

No, it could, and he couldn’t even piece together a strongly-worded protest. It just felt wrong. It shouldn’t really matter about it being up or down or buttons or no buttons, but the damn thing had trained him. It held his hand and said, Here, this is exactly what I need. These very predictable patterns. It hadn’t asked him for anything else, so he hadn’t thought it would ever need anything else. This was a game about code.

Ninety-eight percent of the time, it was still a game about code. It had simply added a variable two percent about screwing with the code, and that was enough to throw him off for all of it. He wasn’t able to rattle off the arrows like a machine anymore, he had to be suspicious of them. He still hadn’t started the Boo! sign constantly blinking but Perfect! was far beyond his grasp. It did not help matters that his legs didn’t want to work.

Yet it didn’t seem to disapprove of him. It wouldn’t play flats. It was like it was showing off, and teasing him, and pushing him. I can do this! What can you do?

Not think, or breathe, or even do basic math. But hit arrows. Yes.

For someone whose brain was usually so filled up with fear he could barely function, having it filled up with code had been oddly peaceful. Having to deal with code and suspicion was no longer peaceful. It was a sharper experience, maybe like having to wrestle a bear, but not a scary one. It was an exercise in determination. It was really complicated and he couldn’t relax for one second, but it was still kind of fun.

He just wished he could breathe. Vaguely. Without words.

He saw another coloured… something… approaching. He couldn’t focus more than about an inch down the scroll, and his glasses were misty. He felt jaded at the idea of another new problem to deal with. He would’ve thought, All right. What is it? if he could have. The arrows slowed. He slowed also, gratefully but guardedly. It might speed up again. Or something else. That coloured thing.

The coloured thing rose gracefully to the gold line, at which point he could process it.

It was not arrows. It was a flashing word that cycled from purple to aqua to pink.

The machine erupted in deafening applause. All the lights lit up and cycled. Except Perfect! He did not get Perfect!

Everyone watching — there were about thirty of them by now — also erupted in applause. There was also some cheering and a lot of “Woo!”

He didn’t notice it too much. He leaned forward on the console and gazed at the scroll. Oh. What? No more arrows? Hooray. He sat down in the centre of the pad and put his face in his hands. He had undone all of his buttons, the tie had fallen out of his braid, and about twelve inches of his hair had come loose. His shirt was almost transparent. His glasses were opaque.

The roll began to move again and showed credits. People who had worked on the machine and written the code and arranged the music. The machine played “Crocodile Rock.”

I think half of the enchantments I fixed were for that one song, Milo thought. Oh. Hey. I can think again. Great.

Not well. But he didn’t really mind that. If Ann was trying to scold him for getting his brain caught in a machine that didn’t care if it killed him, he couldn’t hear her.

Hyacinth was kneeling next to him and possibly trying to help him up. He could only sort of hear her.

“Oh, my gods, Milo. That was amazing! Are you all right? Do you want water? I kept trying to get someone to go bring you some water, but nobody wanted to leave!”

Water? Oh. Yeah. He nodded. Very much. And also possibly a cold shower. With or without clothes.

The entire household, as one body with one will and a lot of hands, helped get him down from the pad and began escorting him to the snack bar, where there was water and also chairs.

“You are going to make ABBA popular again,” Mordecai scolded him, but not unkindly.

Hyacinth pulled a blue-haired teenager aside and told her, “It doesn’t need coins, but tell everyone to keep it under their hat, okay?”

Someone had selected “Dancing with Myself” and was playing it a little bit better than Calliope. A little bit. Some voices were also attempting to sing it. Milo glanced back over his shoulder at the machine. There were kind of a lot of people around it now, probably because it played so loud for so long.

Obnoxious. That’s what Hyacinth called it. An obnoxious machine.

Well, she wasn’t wrong. But maybe people liked obnoxious.

◈◈◈

Water was free, but it came in annoyingly tiny paper cups. Milo had about a dozen of these littering the table in front of him. Calliope was standing behind him and trying to fix his hair. He had only just begun to notice this. He sort of liked it. It was wet and tangled and it pulled because she didn’t have a brush, but she was also combing her fingers through it because she didn’t have a brush. That was worth a little pulling.

People kept coming over to tell him he was awesome. He sort of liked that too. He wished they would give him a little bit of a heads-up before they started talking to him, but they never wanted to talk for long. “You’re the guy who was dancing? That was so amazing!” or “That was really cool!” No conversation. Which was the best type of talking he could expect out of strangers. He just had to nod. And all his friends were around him to jump in and answer questions if needed.

Erik and Maggie wrote down the snack bar menu on a napkin so he could just circle anything he wanted. (He knew Erik helped because some of the letters were backwards.) It was really sweet of them. Minimal communication was what he wanted for Yule every year!

He decided he also wanted an orange soda. He did not really want an ice cream sandwich, but they kept asking him to pick something that was food. Hyacinth still wanted him to have a hot dog. Mordecai protested, “It’s not like it’s any better for him.”

He got an ice cream sandwich.

The rest of the household blitzed the menu for anything dinner-appropriate, mostly hot dogs and popcorn. Even the General was persuaded to abandon the idea of pigeons — it had gotten too dark to hunt.

They split up again after that. There was a long line at the Roll-A-Dance and not all of them were interested in it, anyway. Maggie, Hyacinth and Sanaam got in line. Milo and Calliope mainly hung out where there were chairs. Lucy sat on the floor near them and played with two paper bags full of fifteen different stuffed animals. The General found a nice, safe shooting game that dispensed tickets, which she did not have to cash in or even detach from the machine. Mordecai found some old wire mazes in a relatively sedate corner and hid there from all the pinging and flashing. Erik popped his eye back in to see if it gave him any edge with wire mazes. (Answer: Some, but it didn’t help keep his hands from slipping.)

At the Roll-A-Dance, some of the kids discovered you could perform a purely physical hack by putting two people on it at once and having one foot to each button. Maggie and Sanaam were able to complete several songs this way, but no one managed to unlock “Toccata.”

When he could stagger a straight line, Milo crept up behind the machine and put the coin requirement back on. Only Hyacinth noticed him doing it and she scolded him about it later. He could only shrug. If it didn’t want coins anymore, the arcade people would put it out of order again. He was saving the machine so they could play it again later.

Besides, he could get free plays out of anything whenever he wanted.

The household departed at nine o’clock, while the buses were still running. Milo certainly could not be expected to walk, although this was not entirely due to “Toccata.”

“I dunno, I think it’d be interesting to pose you that way,” Calliope kept saying. “You do have a classical look to you. I can make you a blond. Totally. I’m just not sure where we’d get a swan.”

They had two paper bags full of stuffed animals and a third paper bag full of tickets, which the arcade attendant had finally requested the General take with her because of the fire hazard. They also had six tiny enormous stuffed bears which Lucy had discovered and claimed as her own. She now wanted the General to make her a tiny tea set. “I will teach you to shoot,” the General told her. “When you start making bullseyes, I’ll start shrinking pieces.”

“Hey, Milo,” Calliope said, “if you fix the swan film so it doesn’t need coins, I can make some sketches!”