Yarn by Jon Armstrong

her jacket, and she arched her spine.
    She pushed me back. Her face was flush, her nostrils flared. She reached down, touched the single, large round button on the front of her jacket and pulled it open. Underneath she wore a white suit as thin and transparent as mist.
    I undid the front of my slacks. My hard root was covered with a layer as thin as paint-the blue flowered patterned sensi-silk of my Mr. Troy. Grasping her coat, I moved myself toward her buttonhole.

SEATTLEHAMA: SKIVVÉ BATTLES IN THE FOUNDATION WAR
    Each morning I would head to the cuisine court down the hallway for cups of double-concentration java and ice curry doughnuts for breakfast. At noon I picked up whitened fish rolls, hairy pork sticks, and juice pizzas. The rest of my days were filled with cleaning the lint trays, carrying boxes, and unpacking crates of liqui-yarn. I asked Kira about tools, about yarn, about her skivvé. Her answers were in warTalk so I didn't learn much, but for a while I was glad to be safe.
    Worm Jacket and Giraffe came by daily to chat and see what she was up to. Once after Kira left them to attend to a customer, I stepped beside the two men.
    "How do you find out if someone died?" I whispered.
    Worm Jacket peered at me oddly. "Who?"
    "Someone I met a while ago."
    "Good luck getting real news in Seattlehama!" scoffed Giraffe.
    "If it's not on a coupon," quipped Worm Jacket. "I could check for you. Who died?"
    I recalled drap-de-Berry's frozen scream. "I was just asking."
    "Was it another saleswarrior?" asked Giraffe.
    "It was just something I saw in a hallway a while ago."
    "They don't tolerate offenders." Giraffe leaned in. "I'm sure it was fixed."
    Worm Jacket asked. "What happened?"
    Shrugging as if it were nothing, I told him, "I thought someone was hurt."
    In the mornings, Kira did most of her knitting. Once she was done, she would warTalk with customers, and then head out to lunch with clients or meetings with investortroopers. During those times, when the front door was locked, I began to sneak into the design room to first look at, then touch, and finally test the heat crimpers, the water-shears, the button extruder, the ribbon maker, the seam braider, the elasti-matic. And then after several weeks, when Kira headed to Melancholy Mouse Burger with a creditwarrior for what I figured would be a long lunch, I stepped before the Stanton-Bell.
    Basically I was not to touch anything , but at least a dozen times she had expressly and explicitly forbidden the Stanton-Bell in particular. "Refrain from even depositing the dead follicle, the dead platelet of skin even near this glorious sister." But it was too tempting. I had watched Kira knit a hundred times and was sure I knew exactly how it worked. I wanted nothing but to try.
    The thing looked like the offspring of some upper-body aerobic exercise machine with steps for one's feet and two long handles for controlling the floating knitting heads. After taking a deep breath, I stepped on and gripped the handles. For a minute, I just stood there and imagined. My heart was racing. My palms were wet. I told myself to get off, get out of the design, and get back to my duties.
    I didn't. Instead, I reached forward to the round green button and switched it on. It emitted a slow hum, a faint, but powerful vibration, and the magnetic knit heads quivered like the mouthparts of some chrome insect.
    My heart beat in my fingertips as I pressed the right handle forward. It moved. The knit heads spun in air and created a thin row of knit. I was doing it! I wanted to laugh out loud. I pushed the handle again and it made another row. Slowly circling the left handle, I began to form a wide loop.
    An inch. Two inches. Five inches. This is what I had been born to do. I spun the handle again and again and again.
    I had enough for the sides of a skivvé and was approaching the crotch. I didn't really like nor even understand their men's fantasy skivvé, so instead of making one of Kira's, I made a