Chapter Fourteen
"You can get stuff," Squee said as Soma blinked in surprise.
"Right over there," he pointed towards the wall. "You can get like all kinds of stuff."
"What stuff?" Soma shook her head.
"Pretty much anything, it looks like," he told her. "Come on and I'll show you."
Squee started to step off the boardwalk, back into the still bustling throng, but Soma held back, reluctant. There were now more people returning the way they had come than entering, and those who were leaving were all carrying items, some in what looked like bags, some in what looked like boxes, everyone proceeding quite orderly and still none of them saying a word.
"Come on!" Squee was beckoning her from the street. "It's totally safe. No one's going to hurt you or even get in your way. They're like, I don't know, it's like they're tame animals, not really human."
Soma, with Bombarda - now Gowdy - in tow, stepped off the curb and onto the street, following Squee.
"Where did you get to?" she yelled after him as he dashed down the street to the left, but he didn't hear, or at least didn't answer.
"You, too," Soma mumbled. She caught up with him finally way down the road, where the wall actually came to an end. There, beyond it, lay several huge mounds of sawdust and dried grasses and leaves, surrounding the road, which simply ended right there. All around the mounds there were people bending over and picking up whatever they could grab by the handful. Then they would carry it over to the side of the road where, she now saw, a large gray rectangular shape loomed, more than seven feet high and four feet wide. The shape was solid except for a square hole directly in the middle, about a foot on each side, and a narrow slot just below it which opened up onto a sort of short shelf. Squee led Soma and Gowdy closer to the machine, where they watched as people lined up, and one by one each person dumped the stuff they were holding in their hands into the square hole and waited for a few moments. Then several of the small pink rectangles appeared sliding out of the slot. The person gathered these, and started walking back towards the wall. Each person followed the exact same routine. They put in a handful of something - sawdust or leaves or dirt, she couldn't really tell - and received some pink rectangle things from the machine.
"What is it?" she wondered aloud, and Squee filled her in.
"You feed the beast," he pointed at the machine, "and it gives you back bubblegum. Then you take your bubblegum over to the wishing wall. Then you put the gum into one of the holes beneath the picture of the thing you want, and then you just get the thing! Just like that! You just get it like it popped right out of the air!"
"That's ridiculous," Soma said, shaking her head. "Nothing pops right out of the air."
"Wanna bet?" he laughed.
"What kind of stuff?" she asked again, not really expecting an answer, but this time she got one.
"I'll show you," he said, "it's all pictures. The whole wall's full of pictures. Most of it's food. Like every kind of food you could ever even imagine, but there's other stuff too, like things I never heard of, mostly. It's really weird. But come on, let's get some bubblegum first."
He raced over to one of the mounds and grabbed a handful of leaves. Soma followed and did as he did, and they waited patiently in line, although surprisingly it didn't take long. Somehow the math didn't work, and even though there were maybe fifty people ahead of them, and each one took a minute to get their stuff processed, it only seemed a few seconds had passed before there they were, standing in front of what Squee'd called "the beast" and trading in their vegetation for some sticks of slimy but solid pink gooey stuff.
"Now for the good part," Squee yipped, and dashed to the wall, Soma and Gowdy again straggling, unable to keep up with the lad.
"You see?" he shouted, "it's all kinds of food over here."
As they got closer, Soma began to make out the images displayed on small squares covering the wall. She saw pictures of breakfasts, of bacon and eggs, pancakes and waffles, toast and all kinds of fruits. Then there were lunches and dinners, from burgers and fries to sweet and sour pork, onion soup, steak and roast chicken and dishes from all around the world, most of which she couldn't even recognize. There were snacks and desserts, cookies and cheeses, and beverages of every variety. The food part of the wall seemed to go on and on, and most of the people were choosing from those, sticking their "bubblegum" into the slots beneath the tile pictures and just like Squee had described, the dishes materialized as if out of thin air, packaged in the carry-out cartons she'd seen them departing with earlier.
Soma's gum was in the hand that held onto the map. In the other she still kept tight hold of Gowdy, who all this time was letting himself be dragged around like a dog on a leash. He didn't seem to be noticing anything around him. Squee was rushing back and forth and up and down, and kept calling out to Soma to join him and see what he'd seen. She did her best to keep up as he pointed out things you could get, all sorts of odd ends, like umbrellas and bicycle tires and shoes and hats and golf balls and goldfish, washing machines and beach front property, human babies and porcelain coffee cups. Soma was completely mystified. She scanned and scrutinized the wall ever more closely, wondering what she could possibly see next. There were some images of people, several young women in underwear, but also old men playing chess, and grandmothers with knitting needles and kindly old eyes.
Then she saw train engines, and horse drawn carriages and airplanes and cars. She saw pistols and swords, blue whales and tall redwood trees. She saw stacks of firewood, plumbing fixtures, sweatshirts, milk cartons, bar stools, toucans, sunglasses, skin cream, skeleton keys, copper bottomed pots, balls of string, a box of raisins, headphones, and then, at the very bottom right corner, practically on the ground, the last tile on the whole of the wall, there was nothing. An empty white square.
"What is it?" she asked out loud.
"Whatever you want." came a voice from behind her. She looked up, startled, but not shocked to see the gleaming white teeth and happy face of the mischievous Kai.
"Anything?" Squee asked.
"Anything you can imagine," Kai said.
"I want to be with the flock!" Squee blurted out, and stuck his pink rectangles into the slot just below the white square. In a flash, he was changed. By the time he stood back up, he'd already sprouted two wings on his back, and extra folds of flesh were beginning to form on his arms. He stared at them, and then at Soma, and with a shriek of joy he said,
"I love you!" and then he was gone, lifted up in the air, flying off to the north. Soma gazed after him, her feelings all jumbled with excitement and sorrow.
"Anything you can imagine," Kai was saying, now more quietly, "but only until the sun goes down."