Archie Meets Stoney

It's after 11 pm by the time all the guests have left. The yard is tidied up, the dishes washed, paper plates and cups all trash-bagged, the kids put to bed, or in their rooms at least. It's after 11, but not yet midnight — so, still July 4. Archie brings the last few things in from the yard. He starts to head into the kitchen, the only room in the house that's still brightly lit, but after standing on the threshold for a moment, walks upstairs instead. He passes by each of the kids' bedrooms, peeking in on Jane, Eddie, and Charley if they're already asleep, saying good night if they're not.

At the top of the third flight of stairs, Archie reaches up, pulls the rope that pulls down the stairs to the attic--one of those pull-down trapdoors that turn into steep stairs--and climbs up. In about twenty years, Meg Ryan is going to turn this space into a beautiful step aerobics studio, but for now it's very much an attic: low slanted ceiling, filled with random cobwebby boxes, dusty and still stifling hot from the day. And filled with puppets.

There's a bare-bulb light up here, but Archie doesn't turn it on. There's enough light spilling up from the hallway below that he can basically see. The puppets throw weird dark shadows. This is where Archie makes them and practices with them; there's a sewing machine up here, a disorganized craft bench, and a couple of versions of most of the Ransom Gang we know, plus a bunch of puppets we haven't met, in different states of completion. ("Count Shasta" is flopped over an old steamer trunk, an alternate Enki coiled beside him.)

Archie sits down at the craft bench and picks up the Sebastian Stone puppet he's created over the last few days. It doesn't exactly look like Sebastian Stone (not that we know exactly what Stone looks like); in fact it doesn't even attempt to look human. It's more like an attempt to capture Stone's energy, in Muppet-y form. It's birdlike, with a long beak. Got some Sam the Eagle energy, some Uncle Deadly energy. Archie's sketches are a blend of this and this.

Archie's been calling him "Stoney," though not to his face.

Stoney is dressed in red-white-and-blue wizard robes. He wears a stars-and-stripes stovepipe hat like Uncle Sam. He has beady eyes, kind of sinister looking, which Archie cannibalized from Count Shasta.

Archie pins the MARPA button Sophie left in his office onto Stoney's hat. Then he puts his arm into the puppet and starts bringing it to life. He opens and shuts Stoney's beak a few times, makes his winglike-arms/armlike-wings flap. Now Archie tries to make the puppet speak in Stone's voice, remembering the last time he heard it.

"Repeat after me ... " That's not it. He sounds like an overdone Alfred Hitchcock impression.

"Rrrepeat after meeeee ... " Worse. A fey Vincent Price.

Archie sits there in the stuffy attic for a while. He looks out the little round window, leans over so he can see Alcatraz and the bay. He pulls out the little bottle of anti-depressants Marshall gave him, still unopened, sets it down on the bench next to Roger's bottle of Bacardi 151.

He sniffs the open rum bottle, makes a face. Then he opens the pill bottle (which involves holding it in Stoney's beak while he twists off the cap with his other hand). Archie takes one of the anti-depressants and washes it down with the last swig of rum in the bottle.

He immediately doubles over, coughing and spluttering. But as he does, the puppet comes to life, and Stone's voice, Stone's real voice, comes out of Archie's burning throat and Stoney's flapping beak.

"Repeat after me: You have a MOLE, you FUCKING BOY SCOUT!"

While Archie gets his coughing under control, Stoney continues to speak — an impressive feat of ventriloquism.

"And so ... the Atlantean completes your Seven. An auspicious day for an initiation, my homunculus. God smiles upon our — SQUAWK!?!" Stoney has just realized he is a bird made out of foam and felt. "What is the meaning of this form? You think to make ME the puppet, you straight-laced little shit?"

Archie speaks seriously to the purple-feathered turkey vulture on his arm. "No puppets, Stone. No masters. This is ... a negotiation between equals." He thinks of his conversation with Roger. "A covenant."

"A 'covenant,'? Hmm ... " Stoney preens his feathers, thinking. "And what is it that you want from me?"

"I want to know if you can do it again," says Archie. "What you did on the roof of the St. Francis."

Stoney cocks his head in a bird-of-prey like manner. "What I did?"

"Okay, what Mitchell did. What you did with Mitch. Maybe we all did it. I want to know if you can do it again."

Stoney's beady eyes catch the light. "You want to perform another Working."

"Not an ontoclysm!" Archie hastens to say. "No flying saucers or dirigibles. And nothing to do with History B. Just ... one small change. Like Emperor Norton. Bringing back one person who was already in this timeline. One life that already belongs here."

Catching on, the puppet cackles.

"Your sentimentality will be your undoing."

"But can you do it?"

"From, quote, 'History C,'" croaks Stoney's voice, making sarcastic air-quotes with the tips of his wings. "C for Charlie."

Flopped atop a stack of boxes in the corner, the Ransom Kid regards them both, saying nothing.