MZD's The Familiar discussion

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25 – Cas: Cas and Bobby head to the hotel Paisano to meet up with Deakin, though he doesn’t show up in the lobby and doesn’t answer the phone when they ask the concierge to ring his room. They try to trick her into taking them to his room, but she doesn’t acquiesce. Cas, growing worried about Deakin, also fears having left the orb alone in the Airstream. After waiting in the lobby for a long time, they are able to convince the night manager to take them up. Knocks go unanswered and so he takes out his key to open it up—once opened, smoke start pouring out.

The chapter then flashes back: Cas has had the orb for sixteen years and she affectionately refers to it as “Scry Baby.” Whenever she turns it on, there are “flickers” the look like smoke. After the text shows a representation of the orb, it plays “clips” which seem to be short videos of moments in time. Clip #1 features a man and woman (Audra and Toland) drowning in 1962. Evidently, Cas found their bodies in 1964. Another clip features someone named Alvin Alex Anderson as a baby in a crib. It’s unclear to the reader (and to Cas and Bobby, et. al) exactly how to operate the orb, though Cas seems to be the most skilled at “scrying” it. Bobby seems to think the orb can be used to track where Recluse is.

They got pulled over (on their wait to the hotel), and Cas freaks out, worried they’re not really cops. She hides the orb in case Recluse sent them as it would cause something called The Distribution to fail and allow “Recluse’s VEM Identity” to “triumph,” an even that would institute a “culture of sustained oppression lasting potentially centuries if not longer.” The cops were just cops and say they were suspicious the Airstream was being used for drug production. Bobby claims that they’re meteor hunters and shows them some equipment. When one notices the orb, Bobby passes it off as a meteor and the cops leave.

Cas and the other people involved with the orbs seem to use Parcel Thoughts to share news of their colleagues, each with a unique code name, e.g. Cas is the Wizard. Parcel Thoughts is where Bobby found out about Realic S. Tarnen (author of connected MZD story, “Clip #4”) was cut up and spread across the street. Cas has been sending hints about things to Realic, though never told him about things like VEM, The Distribution or Recluse.

Back to the present, they enter Deakin’s room and Cas discovered a destroyed orb in the bathroom (the source of all the smoke). Fearful of the worst, Bobby and Cas make it back to the Airstream and start planning to hit the road. On Parcel Thoughts, Sorcerer says he wants to meet up with Cas and Bobby. Cas re-watches Clip #6 which involves a man and his daughter. Sorcerer claims to know them as he’s good friends with the father and the girl’s name is Xanther.


26 – Astair: X and Anwar have returned home and Astair greets them as they pull up. She panics upon seeing X’s state (cut up and bleeding from the rescue), wondering if there was an emergency and also why Anwar didn’t take her to the ER. Anwar explains they’ll have to head back out to retrieve X’s glasses she dropped in Venice when Astair notices the cat in X’s arms. At first, Astair thinks they got a different dog (Chihuahua) instead of the Akita, but X tries to explain while Astair, internally, worries over and over about X having had a seizure but neither X or Anwar talking about it.

Finally, Anwar explains they never made it to the trainer and that X saved the cat’s life. X shows Astair the cat, but she claims they can’t keep it due to Astair’s allergies (and it seems like she’s just upset about them not getting a dog, since it was her idea along to get one for X, mostly for the selfish reasons of wanting a dog). Anwar admits he didn’t realize Astair is allergic (is it a lie?). Astair then thinks the cat looks like it won’t make it overnight and again reiterates she doesn’t want it in the house.


27 – Jingjing: Tian Li takes off her necklace and hands it to JJ, who has never seen her take it off. He hangs it on a wall. All the doors and windows are open at their place when they get back from Zhong’s, but no signs of burglary. Tian Li is acting noticeably different, asking for things like ice cream, which JJ runs out to pick up. He returns and it seems like she’s almost forgotten who he is. Then she goes to sleep, another thing JJ has never seen.

JJ heads down to the void deck to hang out but is struck by a feeling like something is off—more so than Tian Li acting weird, more like something is missing. Entering the void deck, JJ is ignored. He sees Spencer and they begin arguing. JJ pulls out one of the gold coins he took from Zhong’s. Spencer takes the coin and examines it, saying he will give it back to JJ for a beer. JJ won’t agree and Spencer drops the coin, ultimately doing a trick where he pulls it out from behind JJ’s ear. Then, he crushes it in his hand and chocolate dribbles out, confusing JJ. JJ runs back upstairs and realizes the cat is what’s missing. He wakes up Tian Li to tell her and she says, “Not lost. Just gone. Gone at last. Gone for good.”

28 – Anwar: Anwar takes the twins with him to find X’s glasses—they locate them, only minimally damaged. They stop back at the pet store, only this time to pick up cat food. Back home, X warns Anwar that Astair is acting weird. She’s on the bed, seemingly depressed. Anwar cheers her up a bit and starts talking about X finding the cat and the vet saying it probably will not survive. Astair then shares the grade on her paper: an F. Incomplete.

X makes up a bed/box for the cat using the dog bed Astair purchased earlier. It seems clear that Astair doesn’t have allergies/reaction to the cat’s presence, but X and Anwar ask her about how she’s feeling. After everyone’s in bed, Astair and Anwar have sex that seems unfulfilling for either one of them, but they don’t talk about it. Anwar heads downstairs and Astair follows. Anwar reveals the news about the check not coming in yet, but not to worry. He suggests that maybe it did come through, but he doesn’t know because of the info-jam on his phone. Going through the spam, they fail to find news.

Anwar then thinks about “Cataplyst-1” a game/project he’s contracted to help on from a company called Enzio. He’s been tapped to help resolve some of the bugs for $9,000. He considers pausing Paradise Open to focus on it, but spends the night working on the game engine instead. Anwar and Astair hear noises in the walls, thinking they have rodents but can’t afford to take care of it now. Anwar sees that the cat is no longer in the box when he checks and finds it in X’s room with her, thinking she snuck down to bring it to her bed.

Anwar thinks about how she asked him to save the cat in the car, and how he performed CPR on it. X took the cat from him and Anwar has a flash back to Dov’s funeral, realizing he, too, is still upset over Dov’s death. The cat then began to move. Anwar checks in on the girls and finds them all asleep.

29 – Luther: Luther is drinking, thinking back on what had transpired earlier—most of the chapter is in flashback. When Luther had “walked on water” in his previous chapter, it scared his crew, especially Juarez who started to run away. Luther had originally intended to jump in and drag Hopi in with him, however, the pool was only about ankle-deep. Afterward, Luther dragged Hopi to another hole and it seemed like Hopi had given up the fight. Just as Luther was about to try to drown Hopi, he jumped into the hole himself. Knowing he can’t swim, Luther and crew believe Hopi has drowned in the hole and they head back to the van.

In the present time of the chapter, Luther stops thinking about Hopi for the moment and steps outside to note his relief that the rain has stopped. He inspects the cars and decides he’ll call Zavaleta the next day to clean them. Luther then keeps drinking until he is out of beer and smashes the bottles once they’re all empty.

Flashing back to earlier, as the crew was getting into the van, Tweetie sees Hopi crawling out of the hole. Luther picks up a nearby shovel and walks back over to Hopi whose hands are still clasped together in a kind of prayer. Standing over Hopi, Luther brings the shovel down on him, presumably killing him.

30 – Xanther: X wakes up from her sleep and sees the cat, thinking Anwar had brought it into her room. But the sight saddens her as she thinks about its prospects for surviving. It reminds X of a time when living in Georgia that she found a dying hummingbird on their family’s back patio. She picked it up in hopes Astair could help save it, but it was convulsing like it was in a seizure and died. Then X happens to notice that all of the windows and doors in her room are wide open, unsure of why (or how) they were opened. She wants to close the windows but stays in her bed.

She then turns her thoughts back to the rescue. Anwar tried taking X to the hospital, but she demanded they take the cat to the vet and he obliged. The techs at the vet office offer to keep the cat overnight but X doesn’t like the idea. During the check-up, when taking vital signs, the techs say they were “next to nothing.”

The Narcons chime in to give a flash-forward about the lives of the vet techs, with an ominous note that they won’t remember “this day” and “what they will hear about on the news later will only remind them of their good fortune.”

The vets gave X a note on what to do to help the cat’s chances, with instructions such as to feed the cat every six hours and that if it survived six weeks (the vets supposed it was about 2 weeks old) they could begin giving it inoculations. Once back home and Anwar had left to retrieve the glasses with the twins, Astair helped clean up X’s scratches. There were only minor scratches that didn’t match up with the amount of blood—had she healed supernaturally? Or been bleeding supernaturally?

Still in bed, X lays down to go back to sleep, feeling things are okay and safe and feeling like she is no longer filled with questions. She places the cat next to her and falls asleep. The cat can barely move on its own and cannot open its eyes, but she feels calmed by its presence, ending the chapter thinking, “even if nothing seems to have changed, everything suddenly feels manageable. Or better: answerable.”

ENTRE’ACTE Five - Two-page spread of a picture of the universe.