Target Practice

Every day, DASI and I go out for target practice. Derek watches Gretchen while we're gone. He's so good with her. When I come back, they'll be playing with her blocks, or maybe just be asleep together on the couch. He really likes having some time alone with her. And I like having time outside - and time with the laser weapons.

First, we make sure there were no ERMs within camera range. I love having the surveillance cameras set up - it's almost as good as having windows. I bet DAISI would whip up some curtains to hang around the monitors to make them look more window-ish if I suggested it. She's awfully Martha Stewart for a monkey.

Once we we're confident that the coast was clear, we open the basement door and step out into the sunlight. It's always such a shock, going out into the world again. The sun's so bright that I stand there blinking and squinting for a few minutes, and the light looks unnaturally brilliant. And you know how sometimes you sneeze when you look at a bright light? (It's something about how the optic nerve is really close to the nerves involved in sneezing - and lots of bright light confuses them.) So we spend a little while with me blinking and sneezing and my eyes watering. DAISI carries the laser rifle for the first few minutes and covers me.

I have seriously got to get some sunglasses.

I don't know if I can describe how beautiful it is in this city right now. It snowed a week ago, and while most of it has melted off the roads and sidewalks (luckily for us, or we'd leave tracks!) there's still a good few inches on the grassy parts. What little snow is left on the sidewalks is the dried-out brittle kind, and you can hear it crunching under our feet as we walk along. It's utterly silent - have you ever been in a completely silent city before? There's no background noise of traffic or people talking - just the pigeons and sparrows and crows flying around and calling to each other.

A few days ago I saw a dog skulk around a corner, but that's the only time I've seen anything alive besides birds.

This city has the desolate beauty and silence of the Arctic now. DAISI and I don't talk as we move through the streets. I have my little razor scooter and DAISI huddles on the handlebars. She holds on with one hand and holds the laser rifle with the other hand, so that she's ready if we're attacked. It hasn't happened yet, but I don't assume that means it never will. It's just a matter of time.

What we do is get a good safe distance away from the basement, and then we look for an abandoned house that's good for target practice. We like ones with big fenced-in back yards.

Sometimes there are people in those back yards, lying stiffly in the sun. The ground is frozen so I can't bury them - I just write the address down in a little notebook, fumble through a prayer I don't believe, and then tell DAISI we need to find a new house to practice in. They won't rot until spring.

The house we pick today is one of those big suburban houses that looks just like its neighbors. It had a big cedar fence, though - we like the fences because it helps us feel a little more secure, and because we can put targets up on the fence to aim at.

DAISI draws shapes all over the fence for me to aim at - different sizes and at different heights - and then she starts drilling me. FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! and I pull the gun, aim, fire, practicing for speed and accuracy.

At first, it feels a little awkward, but as the day's session progresses, it all starts to feel more fluid. I'm a little worried about that - when we're attacked by monkeys, I won't have the luxury of a warm-up period. So I do my best to focus at the beginning of every session.

After a while, DAISI decides that I'm good enough at stationary targets, and she rigs something up with rope so that I can work on moving targets. She stands at one end of the fence and pulls the rope, and it's my job to fire at it. She doesn't pull smoothly, either, of course, so it's pretty hard.

I miss the first few, then settle into it. The target's just a paper plate, but in my mind, it's more than that - it's everyone who's ever hurt me. It's monkeys, of course, but it's everyone who has ever annoyed me, or insulted me, or simply not loved me as much as I thought they should. I start working through my list of grievances.

After a while, though, that starts to feel wrong. What we were doing out there - it involved so much more than me, you know? It's much bigger than what my sixth-grade teacher said, or why my boyfriend my sophomore year in college cheated on me with his whorish Linguistics professor, or even what happened that one time in Kansas - well, anyway, it's bigger than all that.

It's not about me.

It's about the monkeys, and it's about the survival of the human race, and so I let go of all my other issues and just focus. Look, aim, fire, Look, aim, fire, over and over again, until I can do it without thinking, until it's part of me, until I stand exhausted, legs and arms quivering from the exertion, panting savagely.

Then we go home.

I have never been happier.