Mus Numena 7: Orders of Magnitude (Patreon)

When Ted came to—just a few seconds later, he hoped—he was staring at the ceiling, hearing disconcerting dragging noises.

Pushing himself to a sitting position, he watched as Aurora pushed the two policemen together back to back, handcuffing them to one another. She’d returned to her normal appearance, although she remained seven feet tall. How the hell did she know—

—or get that big—

No. For now, never mind. He staggered to his feet. His ribs were tender, and he’d have a mother of a bruise, but they didn’t feel cracked. “Aurora, we have to go.” He headed to the bedroom, quickly pulling out clothes at random and shoving them in his smallest suitcase.

“Where? Do you still have to go into the office?”

“No. The office clearly thinks I stole you, and if it was going to be tough to explain what actually happened before, it’s gonna be a lot harder now, because these two are going to say we assaulted them.”

“They were going to hurt you,” Aurora repeated, sounding offended. “If I eat them, will it help?”

“Eat?” one of the officers mumbled, groggily but clearly alarmed.

Aurora turned back toward them. “It would be absorbing you,” she explained. “I am not big enough to swallow a human yet.”

“No! It will definitely not help!”

The mouse sighed, straightening up.

Ted hurried out of the bedroom with the suitcase, to the glare of the officer who’d regained consciousness—the first one, the one who’d slammed him against the wall. “You can still explain your side of the story.”

“I tried to earlier, and you smacked me against a wall and beat me with your baton. You want it now? The mouse woman asked me for help, I took her home because I didn’t know what to do, my company’s security office got you to execute a search warrant, and you slammed me against a wall and beat me with your baton. Boom, you’re caught up.”

“If you just call my supervisor, we’ll work this all out. No charges.”

Nuh-uh. He’d read how police were legally allowed to lie. “Yeah, anything else I say to you guys will be through a lawyer.”

That earned him another glare.

Ted headed toward the door, motioning Aurora to follow, and pointed at him. “Remember, I kept the mouse from eating you this time. You’re welcome.”

“Fuck you.”

He glanced at the raincoat he’d given her yesterday. “I doubt this will fit because you’re huge now. Can you make yourself smaller?”

“Yes, although not easily.”

“Aurora, it’ll be easier if you’re smaller. And dressed.”

She looked down at him. “I will try to make myself look clothed, if you like.”

“I…you can do that?” He hurried down the staircase, massive mouse woman close behind.

“Maybe.” She had to duck to get through the door to the garage.

Dammit, he had no idea how to be a fugitive, except from watching TV shows. And knowing what he did about computers. Crap. They’d be able to trace his license plate, and his credit cards, and his phone. He switched the phone off; he wasn’t willing to give it up yet.

“All right. Uh, we can—whoa.” He paused with his car door half-open, staring at Aurora. Somehow, she’d formed what looked like a form-fitting jumpsuit—one made of copper metallic fabric.

“Is this good?” She tilted her head at him.

Wasn’t that a loaded question. It wasn’t unattractive, but it didn’t call any less attention to her than being in the fur did. He swallowed. “Uh, yes.” He got into the car.

Aurora took a moment to study the seat, then tilted it back a few inches and managed to lithely fold herself into it.

“Okay.” He started the car and headed out of the garage, part of him expecting flashing police lights to appear in the rearview mirror at any moment. “We’re going to have to figure out where to hide out, and who can help us, in that order. God, are we going to have to find another car? And by ‘find’ I mean ‘steal.’ Jesus Christ, I can’t believe I’m saying any of this. No. We can’t do that, but they’ll be looking for this one.” He pulled onto the freeway.

“Could other Dynamice help?”

“Not help in the way we need it right now. We have to get legal advice. Maybe one of the groups suing us can able to help. Well, suing Nanolab. I’m pretty sure I’m not ‘us’ after today.” He took the ramp off US 101 onto CA-84, heading east across San Francisco Bay. “We’re going to need cash, so we need to find an ATM.”

“Automatic teller machine,” she said after a moment, nodding. “You withdraw money from your checking account that way? Do you have enough?”

“Yeah, but I expect to get my accounts frozen soon. Although they want to see if I’m stupid enough to keep using it and leave a trail behind. Which I guess I am, because I don’t think there’s any other choice.”

She looked downcast.

“It’s not your fault.” The response was near automatic.

“It is,” she responded softly. “I thought… I did not know by asking for help, that… There is so much I don’t know. It’s…” She shook her head, eyes growing distant. “It’s everything. Everything you say, everything I see. I don’t know any of it. I’m constantly looking things up.”

“Do you understand how incredible it is that you can do that? We—I mean, humans—we talk about how we get smarter by talking to smart people, but with you or any of your kind, it’s literally orders of magnitude of difference. Just a minute ago I mentioned ‘ATM’ and you not only learned what it meant, you learned the basics of currency and banking.”

“That is an exaggeration.” She looked self-conscious. He could tell that if she were human, she’d be blushing right now.

“I don’t think it is.” Ted looked over—and up—at her. “Do the scientists at Nanolab fully understand what you all can do? Do any of the companies buying you for experiments? Or the VIPs they’re apparently giving some of you out to as ‘personal companions?’” His grip tightened on the steering wheel.

“I do not think so.”

“I don’t know whether you should keep hiding it.”

She looked thoughtful at that. “I don’t think we are hiding it,” she said at length. “I think you’re the first human who’s asked.”

He blinked rapidly. “Oh.”

They drove on in silence for another few miles, until they’d crossed over the Bay and reached Union City, back off the freeway. “Aurora, it isn’t your fault that trying to help you—to do the right thing—is this damn difficult. I don’t want to be a fugitive. Until this morning, the biggest run-in I’ve ever had with cops was a speeding ticket. I have no experience in this at all. But if we’d let the police take you, they’d have arrested me—on grand theft—and taken you.”

“And killed me.”

“Yeah. Probably. So that’s why we’re doing…whatever the hell it is we’re doing.” He turned into a parking lot for a Wells Fargo. “Okay. This isn’t my bank, so maybe that’ll slow things down. Or not. No idea.”

Aurora leaned down, looking out the windshield, and pointed. “The ATM is full of cash?”

“Right. I put in my debit card, it deducts it from my account, spits out the cash.”

“Let me come with you to the machine and find if there is a way to take money without the card.”

“Uh, that’s what they call ‘robbery,’ Aurora.” He looked around. The teller machine was on the side of the building, with no visibility from the entrance, and trees partially blocked the view from the road. “Even setting aside the ethics, which we shouldn’t, robbing an ATM during the day will attract attention. Especially if you’re a seven-foot tall alien mouse woman.”

“I am not alien.”

“You know—”

She laughed, and got out, walking toward the bank.

Wincing, Ted got out, too, and hurried behind her. “We’re going to be on so many cameras.”

“One of the other mice might know how to disable those.” Aurora bent down, examining the machine, and her eyes lost focus.

Ted looked around nervously. Still no one coming.

She snapped back to attention, and leaned down further. “This machine uses a cam lock with a tubular key.” She pressed a finger to the lock. “But I think I need to put it into maintenance mode first.”

“Can you…do that?”

She moved her other hand over the keypad and typed a rapid series of numbers onto it. The colorful display vanished, replaced by a simple white-on-green screen reading OFFLINE FOR MAINTENANCE.

“Oh.”

The finger over the lock shimmered, and sank into the machine. She pressed, turned, and the machine’s front panel opened. “There.”

“Holy…how did you…”

She pulled her finger away. It had changed into the shape of a tubular key, and stayed that way for a second before she shook it, and it shimmered back into normalcy.

“Okay. Uh.” He swallowed, and slid out one of the black plastic cash cassettes, then withdrew a stack of twenties without counting. “I don’t even believe in hell, and I think I’m going there now.”

“Hell?”

“Never mind.” He slid the cassette back into place. “If you can figure out how to close this and make it look like nothing happened, that’d be great.”

“I can close it, and the video camera by the ATM and the closest one in the parking lot will not turn back on for another two minutes. Now, you mentioned stealing a car…”

“No.” He raised both his hands. “No no no. The bank is at least insured. Stealing somebody’s car screws them. We’re going to have to take our chances.”

She nodded uncertainly again, and got back into the passenger seat of his car.

“You know you’d fit better if you made yourself smaller again.”

“I like being seven feet tall.” She flashed a smile that could only be described as mischievous. “I think mice should be bigger than humans for a change.”

“I hope you’re not planning to get so big I could fit in your hand, like a normal-sized mouse could in mine.”

“Oh!” She clapped her hands together. “I am now.”

He squinted at her, and she giggled.

“So what are the limits on the shape you can make yourself?” He pulled onto Mission Boulevard, heading along the foothills.

“I don’t know.”

He shook his head. “I’m kind of surprised you’re not bulletproof.”

“I’d need a few seconds to form armor.”

He cleared his throat and nodded. “Right. Uh, maybe you can look up the activist groups that have been protesting the way the company’s been treating the Dynamice. I think we need to find any law firms they work with.”

“I will try.”

He drove on, trying not to glance around nervously. Was that a cop? Were people glancing over at them? Was anyone noticing the giant mouse woman? Could anyone not notice her? Maybe he should have let her steal another car. A minivan she could stretch out in the back of.

And that would make him a car thief. Cool.

But so what? As of a few minutes ago he was a bank robber, and, oh yes, as of an hour ago he was an accessory to assaulting a police officer. And all that on top of whatever charges he’d face from having “stolen” Aurora. Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, what was he doing, what had he done, he was never going to see his apartment or any of his stuff again, the best case was that he found a country with no extradition laws and spent the rest of his life as a fugitive, the worst case was that he spent the rest of his life in jail, there was no fucking way he could beat any of the charges he was racking up—

He took a deep breath, gripping the steering wheel again. Stop it. Take one thing at a time. Just take one thing at a time. Find lawyers. Find a place to stay. Find lunch. 

“Are you all right, Ted?”

He glanced over at Aurora, who looked back down at him with a worried, sad expression. For a moment, he wondered if she could read minds, too, but she wouldn’t need special powers to know his thoughts right now. Swallowing, he reached over and patted her knee. “Yeah.”