Novelists From The United States

"So, as I've warned you," Henry says as they approach the doors to the Royal Box, "Philip will be there. And assorted other nobility with whom you may have to make conversation. People named Basil." "I think I've proven that I can handle royals." Henry looks doubtful. "You're brave. I could use some of that."

"I was hoping you two would start talking dirty," Pez says. "Please, do go on." "I don't think you could keep up, Pez," Alex tells him. "Oh really?" The picture returns to Pez. "What if I put my co-" "Pez," comes the sound of Henry's voice, and a hand with a signet ring on the smallest finger covers Pez's mouth. "I beg of you. Alex, what part of 'nothing he cannot do' did you think was worth testing? Honestly, you are going to get us all killed." "That's the goal," Alex says happily. "So what are y'all gonna do today?" Pez frees himself by licking Henry's palm and continues talking. "Frolic naked in the hills, frighten the sheep, return to the house for the usual: tea, biscuits, casting ourselves upon the Thighmaster of love to moan about Claremont-Diaz siblings, which has become tragically one-sided since Henry took up with you. It used to be all bottles of cognac and shared malaise and 'When will they notice us'-" "Don't tell him that!" "-and now I just ask Henry, 'What is your secret?' And he says, 'I insult Alex all the time and that seems to work.'" "I will turn this car around."

""It's public knowledge. It's not my problem you just found out," his mother is saying, pacing double-time down a West Wing corridor. "You mean to tell me," Alex half shouts, jogging to keep up, "every Thanksgiving, those stupid turkeys have been staying in a luxury suite at the Willard on the taxpayers' dime?" "Yes, Alex, they do-" "Gross government waste!" "-and there are two forty-pound turkeys named Cornbread and Stuffing in a motorcade on Pennsylvania Avenue right now. There is no time to reallocate the turkeys." Without missing a beat, he blurts out, "Bring them to the house." "Where? Are you hiding a turkey habitat up your ass, son? Where, in our historically protected house, am I going to put a couple of turkeys until I pardon them tomorrow?" "Put them in my room. I don't care." She outright laughs. "No." "How is it different from a hotel room? Put the turkeys in my room, Mom." "I'm not putting turkeys in your room." "Put the turkeys in my room." "No." "Put them in my room, put them in my room, put them in my room, put them in my room-" That night, as Alex stares into the cold, pitiless eyes of a prehistoric beast of prey, he has a few regrets."

"Even before Alex's parents split, they both had a habit of calling him by the other's last name when he exhibited particular traits. They still do. When he runs his mouth off to the press, his mom calls him into her office and says, "Get your shit together, Diaz." When his hard-headedness gets him stuck, his dad texts him, "Let it go, Claremont.""

""Just so we're clear," Alex says, "I'm about to have sex with you in this storage closet to spite your family. Like, that's what's happening?" Henry, who has apparently been carrying his travel-size lube with him this entire time in his jacket, says, "Right," and tosses it over his shoulder. "Awesome, fuckin' love doing things out of spite," he says without a hint of sarcasm, and he kicks Henry's feet apart. And it should be- it should be funny. It should be hot, stupid, ridiculous, obscene, another wild sexual adventure to add to the list. And it is, but... it shouldn't also feel like last time, like Alex might die if it ever stops. There's a laugh in his mouth, but it won't get past his tongue, because he knows this is him helping Henry get through something. Rebellion. You're brave. I could use some of that."

"Someone else's choice doesn't change who you are."

"Alex wouldn't say he likes Henry, but he does enjoy the quick rhythm of arguments they fall into. He knows he talks too much, hopeless at moderating his feelings, which he usually hides under ten layers of charm, but he ultimately doesn't care what Henry thinks of him, so he doesn't bother. Instead, he's as weird and manic as he wants to be, and Henry jabs back in sharp flashes of startling wit."

""That's not your emails-from-Zahra face," Nora says, nosing her way over his shoulder. He elbows her away. "You keep doing that stupid smile every time you look at your phone. Who are you texting?" "I don't know what you're talking about, and literally no one," Alex tells her. From the screen in his hand, Henry's message reads, In world's most boring meeting with Philip. Don't let the papers print lies about me after I've garroted myself with my tie."

"Outside Kensington Palace, Alex takes Henry's phone out of his hand and swiftly opens a blank contact page before he can protest or sic a PPO on him for violating royal property. The car is waiting to take him back to the royals' private airstrip. "Here," Alex says. "That's my number. If we're gonna keep this up, it's going to get annoying to keep going through handlers. Just text me. We'll figure it out." Henry stares at him, expression blankly bewildered, and Alex wonders how this guy has any friends. "Right," Henry says. "Thank you." "No booty calls," Alex tells him, and Henry chokes on a laugh."

"Alex rolls his eyes and sends back, the harrowing struggle of managing the empire's blood money. Henry's response comes a minute later. That was actually the crux of the meeting- I've tried to refuse my share of the crown's money. Dad left us each with more than enough, and I'd rather cover my expenses with that than the spoils of, you know, centuries of genocide. Philip thinks I'm being ridiculous. Alex scans the message twice to make sure he's read it correctly. i am low-key impressed. He stares at the screen, at his own message, for a few seconds too long, suddenly afraid it was a stupid thing to say. He shakes his head and puts the phone down. Locks it. Changes his mind, picks it up again. Unlocks it. Sees the little typing bubble on Henry's side of the conversation. Puts the phone down. Looks away. Looks back. One does not foster a lifelong love of Star Wars without knowing an "empire" isn't a good thing. He would really appreciate it if Henry would stop proving him wrong."

"It's not a grudge, really. It's not even a rivalry. It's a prickling, unsettling annoyance. It makes his palms sweat. The tabloids- the world- decided to cast Alex as the American equivalent of Prince Henry from day one, since the White House Trio is the closest thing America has to royalty. It has never seemed fair. Alex's image is all charisma and genius and smirking wit, thoughtful interviews and the cover of GQ at eighteen; Henry's is placid smiles and gentle chivalry and generic charity appearances, a perfectly blank Prince Charming canvas. Henry's role, Alex thinks, is much easier to play. Maybe it is technically a rivalry. Whatever."

"She tosses the magazine aside, folding her arms on the table. "Please, tell me another joke," Ellen says. "I want so badly for you to explain to me how this is funny." Alex opens his mouth and closes it a couple of times. "He started it," he says finally. "I barely touched him- and he's the one who pushed me, and I only grabbed him to try and catch my balance and-" "Sugar, I cannot express to you how much the press does not give a fuck about who started what," Ellen says. "As your mother, I can appreciate that maybe this isn't your fault, but as the president, all I want is to have the CIA fake your death and ride the dead-kid sympathy into a second term.""

"Alex clenches his jaw. He's used to doing things that piss his mother off- in his teens, he had a penchant for confronting his mother's cilleagues with their voting discrepancies at friendly DC fundraisers- and he's been in the tabloids for things more embarrassing than this. But never in quite such a cataclysmically, internationally terrible way. "I don't have time to deal with this right now, so here's what we're gonna do," Ellen says, pulling a folder out of her padfolio. It's filtered with some official-looking documents punctuated with different colors of sticky tabs, and the first one says: AGREEMENT OF TERMS. "Um," Alex says. "You," Ellen says, "are going to make nice with Henry." You're leaving Saturday and spending Sunday in England." Alex blinks. "Is it too late to take the faking-my-death option?" "Zahra can brief you on the rest," Ellen goes on, ignoring him. "I have about five hundred meetings right now." She gets up and heads for the door, stopping to kiss her hand and press it to the top of her head. "You're a dumbass. Love you.""

"I am terrible at estimating human ages because it’s not one of the few things I care about. Also most of my experience is with the humans on the entertainment feed, and they aren’t anything like the ones you see in reality. (One of the many reasons I’m not fond of reality.)"

"Yes, the giant transport bot is going to help the construct SecUnit pretend to be human. This will go well."

"That sounded like a great plan, in that it didn’t involve me."

"They’re academics, surveyors, researchers, not action-hero explorers from the serials I liked because they were unrealistic and not depressing and sordid like reality."

"SecUnits don’t care about the news…mostly because the news was boring and I didn’t care what humans were doing to each other as long as I didn’t have to a) stop it or b) clean up after it."

"They were immigrants into the sea; like all immigrants they longed for the Old Country. Then the second generation. Like all second generations they had no patience with the old people or their tales. This was real, this sea, this gale, this rope! Then the third generation. Like all third generations it felt a sudden desperate hollowness and lack of identity. What was real? Who are we? What is NEMET which we have lost? But by then grandfather and grandmother could only mumble vaguely; the cultural heritage was gone, squandered in three generations, spent forever. As always, the fourth generation did not care."

"Of course, I shouldn’t be telling you state secrets, but I've noticed at home that a state secret is something known to everybody who makes more than fifty thousand a year and to nobody who makes less."

"God help the human race if you thugs are its fighters for liberty."

"“He began with the complicated salute of the Astral Confederation and got down to business. ‘Brother Kazam,’ he said, ‘I wish to show you an ancient sacred book I have just discovered.’ I laughed, of course. By that time I’d already discovered seven ancient books by myself, all ready-translated into the language of the country I would be working at the time. The ‘Isba Kazhlunk’ was the most successful; that’s the one I found preserved in the hide of a mammoth in a Siberian glacier.”"

"Greed advise with hate; greed wins; greed always wins."

"Maybe exploring every possible outcome of each action in an inescapable loop of paranoia and anxiety wasn’t the most normal reaction-state but hey, if it was, there would be a lot fewer stupid murders."

"You have a sense of humor, Mr. Kazam. That’s a rare thing in the religious."

"I can’t tell if that’s you being passive aggressive or you being willfully obtuse."

"It was then that I drifted into the nut cult business. I found out that all you need for capital is a stock of capitalized abstract qualities, like All-Knowingness, Will-Mind-Urge, Planetude and Exciliation. With that to work on I can make my living almost anywhere on the globe."

"Since she was human she was doing it slowly (it was like watching algae grow)."

"But I couldn’t ignore it. I mean, I guess I couldn’t. Ignoring stuff is always an option, up until it kills you."

"Wow, that sounded pathetic. Like the “I want to be special! How come I’m not?” crap humans pull all the time."

"Because change is terrifying. Choices are terrifying. But having a thing in your head that kills you if you make a mistake is more terrifying."

"It wasn’t a foolproof method but it was 90 percent effective. (Foolproof is another weird word. Shouldn’t it be smartproof? It’s not like you’re going to breach and seize control of a ship attached to a space dock by tripping or forgetting to bring your weapon or something.)"

"Self-determination was a pain in the ass sometimes but it beat the alternative by a lot."

"For a being as sophisticated as you are, it is baffling how little understanding you have of the composition of your own mind."

"The big danger to humans is not raiders, angry human-eating fauna, or rogue SecUnits; it’s other humans. They kill each other either accidentally or on purpose and you have to clear that up fast because it jeopardizes the bond and determines whether the company has to pay out damages on it or not."

"I had archives of everything that had happened since I hacked my governor module, but I hadn’t had as much relevant experience in that time. But what I did have were thousands of hours of category mystery media, so I had a lot of theoretical knowledge that was possibly anywhere from 60 to 70 percent inaccurate shit."

"(If I got angry at myself for being angry I would be angry constantly and I wouldn’t have time to think about anything else.) (Wait, I think I am angry constantly. That might explain a lot.)"

"It was very dramatic, like something out of a historical adventure serial. Also correct in every aspect except for all the facts, like something out of a historical adventure serial."

"I’ve had clients who thought they needed an absurd level of security. (And I’m talking absurd even by my standards, and my code was developed by a bond company known for intense xenophobic paranoia, tempered only by desperate greed.) I’ve also had clients who thought they didn’t need any security at all, right up until something ate them."

"“I don’t want to be human.” Dr. Mensah said, “That’s not an attitude a lot of humans are going to understand. We tend to think that because a bot or a construct looks human, its ultimate goal would be to become human.” “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”"

"This lobby was on multiple levels and had large square biozones depicting different ecologies, with furniture arranged around them. It looked nice, inviting humans to sit around and discuss proprietary information in the hotel’s choked feed so the hotel could record it and sell it to the highest bidder."

"Disinformation, which is the same as lying but for some reason has a different name, is the top tactic in corporate negotiation/warfare."

"Humans have a bad tendency to use weapons unnecessarily and indiscriminately. Of the many times I had been shot, a depressingly large percentage of hits had come from clients who were trying to “help” me."

"Real humans don’t act like the ones in the media."

"Data suggests family dramas bear a less than 10 percent resemblance to actual human families, which is unsurprising and also a relief, considering all the murders. In the dramas, not Mensah’s family."

"The company is like an evil vending machine, you put money in and it does what you want, unless somebody else puts more money in and tells it to stop."

"Possibly I was overthinking this. I do that; it’s the anxiety that comes with being a part-organic murderbot. The upside was paranoid attention to detail. The downside was also paranoid attention to detail."

"I know that’s actually not a permanent solution and pretending bad things aren’t happening is not a great survival strategy in the long run, but there was nothing I could do about it now."

"Hard work really did make you improve; who knew?"

"This was another reason I didn’t like human security consultants. Some of them enjoyed their job too much."