by Gentry Race
Their focus was down as they typed furiously into their second skins, trying to schedule an emergency session. Panels of hologram diagnostics tracked with the motion of their arms. One panel said Aden and the other Malick.
“Officer, he might be in this state forever,” one of the teammates said.
Solari picked up her steps as she thought about having the first human in a coma on Annulus and what it represented. It could unwind the hard work Chellis had done to establish Annulus as the future of mankind.
This was the very situation he did not want to happen here. Solari wiped the tears from her cheek. She knew what needed to be done next would take all her mental strength.
The question now was, what would Aden’s father say?
Malick laid on the gurney, reflecting while being tended to by the medic robot arms around him. He remembered the first time he was in a medic unit years ago. That was the defining moment in his life—the day he lost his wife. Aden was just a young boy, so curious and so fragile.
It takes so much effort to forget, he thought.
He slapped the robot arm in quick recall. “Easy!”
“Sir, your wounds,” the medic responded.
“I’m fine,” he said coldly.
Malick’s arm chimed a soft noise. He raised his forearm, activating the temporary second skin strapped around his arm. He accepted Solari’s entry as lines creased in the wall and created an opening. Solari nPrinted the scans for Aden on her second skin. The vitals and expected time of recovery for Aden. She handed him the digital release form.
“What’s this?” Malick said.
“Aden is in a coma. We need your authorization to have him Naturalized,” Solari said.
Malick winced, knowing what needed to be done.
“You are the next of kin, and we would like to request permission to enter Aden’s consciousness into the collective backup to save him.”
“Save him?” Malick asked.
Solari looked at the bandages wrapped around the worried father’s head. He looked at her with near contempt as the Med Bots tended to his wounds.
“Malick, your son is in a coma!”
His brows furrowed into deep lines. “What would you have me do?”
“Approve the request.”
“Aden knew the risks of coming to Annulus. The human soul should not live forever.”
“Consciousness,” Solari corrected him. “Besides, that’s ancient scripture, General.”
“And I should follow the rules your station amended? The soul is a stateless form of energy. Living forever is blasphemous!” Malick fired back.
“Is that what you think of us? That we’re blasphemous?”
Malick remained silent, his eyes never leaving hers as his anger built. It didn’t take a genius to see he was close to losing control, even while in as much pain as he was.
Solari turned and walked to the door, pausing for a moment with her hand on the knob. “I’m sorry for your son.”
Malick flailed in anger, shoving the Med Bots’ hands away as he sat on the edge of the bed. “And what of your sister? She is responsible for all this!”
Solari couldn’t answer that. Her own situation brought on its own unique set of complications and pain. She would not walk away from this untouched. Elise had to pay for what she did, but she couldn’t bring herself to speak the words—even to a grieving father.
Steeling herself, she opened the door and left without answering. She didn’t need to. They both knew he was right. Elise was responsible for everything.
Solari approached the Axiom Detainment Center like she had a hundred times before. The bay doors opened as she stopped, the retinal scanners recognizing her immediately. Without being a Neopract, she was unable to open the survey doors at the end of the long, angular passages that housed pre-processing. She would need someone else’s identity.
She accessed her second skin, typed in a command, and put her eye to the scanner. “Welcome, Aden,” the mechanized voice said.
Solari walked into the survey room and swiped through the menus, looking for Elise. She stopped when she saw her sister’s face and ordered the nPrinting of her presence to a survey dark room.
Solari entered the room but kept to the shadows. She found Elise with her hands restrained. Above her was a single bright light shining directly down on her face, blinding her. She squinted against it, struggling to see. Even from where Solari stood in the shadows along the walls, she could tell Elise had heard someone enter.
“Hello?” Elise asked.
Remaining hidden, Solari used her second skin to deepen the tone of her voice enough she would sound like a man. “Elise Ducard, you have been convicted of a terrorist attack against Annulus. How do you plead?”
“I… I’m not guilty,” Elise said.
Solari heard the quiver in her sister’s voice and debated continuing. She wanted answers, and she wanted to do it face to face. She stepped into light, but Elise didn’t seem even remotely surprised.
Elise’s eyes locked on Solari’s. “The tables have turned.”
Solari nodded, taking a single step closer. “They have. You have to tell me what you know.”
Elise looked around hesitantly, motioning with her head toward the wall. “They are listening.”
“No one knows I am here,” Solari reassured her sister. “Now tell me—why did you do it?”
Elise lowered her head, shaking it back and forth. “Don’t you get it? Chellis is an eradicate!”
“I have checked the naturalization records and there is no evidence supporting your claims.”
“Chellis is catching and releasing the eradicates to gain sympathy from the UN,” Elise said.
“That makes no sense. Besides, Chellis had me double my efforts in finding eradicates on Annulus,” Solari said.
“He wants that! He’s hiding something far worse.”
“Like what?” Solari asked.
Elise sighed. “You are a slave. We all are.”
Solari had heard this debate before. Some nPrints rejected the thought of being free since their consciousness was digitized. “Ridiculous. We have free will.”
Elise shook her head. “No. Not free will. You are being copied and sold.”
Solari’s brows furrowed as she thought over what her sister had said. That was an insane thought—wasn’t it? “What? To where?”
“I don’t know, but Dad always seemed to—” Elise started.
“He’s not our dad,” Solari said.
Exasperated, Elise continued. “Fine, but you know the greatness of every prosperous society is built on the backs of slaves.”
“How can I trust what you are saying is true?” Solari asked.
“He hired me,” Elise whispered, her head falling so she could avoid direct eye contact. It seemed too much at that moment to see the disappointment in her sister’s eyes.
Solari paused. “What do you mean he hired you?”
“He hired me to make a substance that would hide erratum.”
Solari’s eyes widened as she struggled to process that information. “You made the memCache for him?”
“Yes, that’s why I knew it wasn’t causing the transformations.”
Solari’s second skin lit up. It was a message from Chellis. It was a summons. “I have to go.”
“Sol, you can’t leave me here. I am not safe,” Elise pleaded her focus once again back on her sister as she realized she would be left alone within a few short moments.
“You’ll be fine. I will be back to talk more.”
“No, Sol. Please, don’t leave me here!”
Solari had taken a few steps toward the door, but she stopped. She turned, her eyes boring into those of Elise. “I will be back for you, Sis.”
21
Jantzen hurried behind Boson through the Upper Cruft, sidestepping the occasional muddy waterways left from the rain. He smelled large doses of rotting funk followed with a tinge of burnt metal as he trailed his guide.
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br /> He couldn't help but notice Boson’s neck as it stuck out from his grey one-piece jacket. There were a series of black plated vertebrae stacked and bolted to the outside of his skin. Individual black wires ran over his skull to a semi-exposed cerebral cortex that connected to his blocky eyes in front. Jantzen had never seen a Mod job like that before.
“What kind of Mod is that?” Jantzen asked Boson.
“I can see the spectrum,” Boson replied.
“What spectrum?”
Boson shrugged as he continued moving. “Light, infrared, gamma rays, etc.”
“That’s cool.” Jantzen nodded.
Mods of all types lined the bridgeways of the Upper Cruft as they walked past them. Boson seemed to exude a presence as he walked by, and the Mods made a clear path for him and his client.
Jantzen inspected all the different cybernetic appendages of the Mods that stood in line. As he drew closer to Annulus, he noticed their skin tone changed to a paler color. That was a clear sign they had waited a long time.
How long have they been waiting?
“When low light comes, everyone marks their spot for the next morning,” Boson said, still walking past hordes of Mods.
Jantzen took notice of the crest-like marks in the ground. Some of the marks were scraped away chaotically. “Low light?”
“Nighttime,” Boson said, annoyed.
They arrived about one hundred yards from the base of the Annulus intake center. That was where all Mods had to get pre-screened to be accepted into the program. Jantzen’s eyes almost teared upon seeing the facility so close to him.
“This is your spot,” Boson said, inserting his hand in between two Mods, separating the distance between them.
The looks on their faces were priceless to Jantzen as he stepped in line. He felt the grooves in the ground beneath his shoes. The markings of the many Mods who had been there before him, waiting to experience the next step in evolution—nPrintation.
A Mod behind Jantzen had the large frame of a wrestler. His pale skin was redder around the entry points of his Modular enhanced exoskeleton. Out of his peripheral, Jantzen took notice of the large man’s composite clavicles, swelling in and out as he breathed.
In front stood a Mod shorter than Jantzen with two cyber-enhanced arms lacking synthetic skin. The twisting bands of the metal that was his forearms were exposed. He bobbed his head and rapped to himself. Despite the upgrades and the peculiar singing, Jantzen did not mind being unaltered. They all would be the same soon.
Differences are a thing of the past, he thought.
The shorter Mod’s singing grew louder, observing his surroundings as he rapped lyrics:
“Get a new body on this different type of journey;
I'm a west coast Moddy dodgin’ suns dat wanna burn me;
Wanna turn me into sometin’ else;
I see myself, another whitey wit’ his cards dealt;
Nothing helps;
Been waiting months, I’mma’ fuckin’ go boast;
You must be hella dumb if ya think ya’ cutting so close.”
While not oblivious to the direct reference, Jantzen pretended to not hear the other man or notice the tension growing.
The little Mod in front turned around, looking at Jantzen’s chest and eyeing the tattoos. “You trying to cover up that skin?”
“You looking too dark to be up this close,” the Mod said from behind.
Jantzen held in his rage. Too many times he had been in this place with these kinds of people. He had enough with fighting. “Boson—”
“The Fixer just gets you here. Doesn’t guarantee your place in line. You gotta earn respect,” the short Mod said, pushing two fingers into Jantzen’s chest.
“Turn around, pasty,” Jantzen quipped. He grabbed the shorter man’s fingers in a fit of rage and spun the man around, twisting his cybernetic limb behind him and pulling. With a crunching metallic sound, Jantzen stood with the short Mod’s arm in his hand, ripped from the socket.
The short Mod screamed in pain. As he dropped to his knees, the stout Mod took a swing at Jantzen. The crowd erupted and piled onto him, and he felt the sting of blow after blow to his head.
Boson stood far enough away not to be seen while the fight took place. He smiled, watching the spectrum of purple, red, and green dancing before him. Things had happened exactly as planned.
Jantzen awoke in a small white room, sitting half slumped in a chair and tasting the coppery flavor of blood in his mouth. This time, his shoes were still on, but his face felt battered.
He touched his cheek, feeling the swollen, beaten tissue risen with pooled blood under the skin. He was thankful all of his new teeth were intact this time. Across from him was Boson, who stood reading a chart from his bistable armband strapped to his forearm.
“What happened?” Jantzen asked, his new set of teeth sparkling in the bright light above him.
“You couldn’t keep your mouth shut,” Boson said.
Jantzen was almost amused by his response. “Yeah, well, never had the knack for it.”
Boson scanned the holographic charts, flicking his wrist upward as many names passing by.
“So, what now?” Jantzen asked.
Boson was quite for a moment as he analyzed the data. He stopped and focused on Jantzen. “What if I told you I could get you into the processing facility with no wait.”
Jantzen didn’t understand why that wasn’t an option before. “How?”
“There is a demand for bodies back on Earth. Depending on the condition, I could sell yours,” Boson said.
Jantzen thought a little further. Why would he need a body after being Naturalized? To him, that was the deal of a lifetime. “Hell, yeah,” he said.
Boson walked over to Jantzen, inspecting his mouth further. He could smell the metallic odor on Jantzen’s breath. “There would be a discount for the false teeth, but I think I can arrange a decent sale price.”
“I’m in,” Jantzen said without hesitation.
“There is just one condition.”
“What’s that?” Jantzen asked.
“When I make this sale, there is no going back. These buyers don’t play games. You would need to guarantee me your body whether you made it through the processing or not,” Boson said.
Jantzen considered the risks for a moment. He remembered hearing some of his family had been processed successfully. What did he have to worry about? If they could make it, so could he.
“I’ll do it,” Jantzen said, trying to smile even with a bloody mouth.
22
Solari entered Chellis’s plush office and saw the creepy monolith housing the bodies of the first nPrinted of Annulus. This had always given her an uneasy feeling since she could see the larger nanites printing the flesh. Just ahead, a large man shrouded in a drab blue blanket behind a desk gazed out the window, watching the red lights flash along the side walls of Annulus below.
“Chellis?” Solari asked.
“Sol,” Chellis said with a harsh voice.
“Are you all right, Director?”
Chellis sat in his large chair, his back turned to her. “Naturalization records show you grew up in the Dead Zone.”
“The Far Side, sir,” Solari corrected him.
“Tell me about your time there,” Chellis asked without acknowledging her correction.
She stood tall with her hands clasped behind her back. “Sir, all my past recorded surveys can be found in the archives.”
Chellis turned around, and she noticed the blanket covered the majority of the left side of his face. “Yes, I know.”
Solari sat down reluctantly. “My sister and I were brought here with my mother. We were sick from radiation. The ship crashed on the Far Side, but close to the Lower Dregs, and we were taken to Annulus for Naturalization.”
Chellis pulled the blanket over his face more. “Who took you to get Naturalized?”
“A human. His name is Arthur Biggleston,” Solari said.
&n
bsp; Chellis’s eyes widened. “Arthur Biggleston?”
“Yes, he is my step-father,” Solari said.
“Arthur worked for Enconn many years ago. He was a key player responsible for the very technology that spawned the trans-humanist movement.”
“I know,” Solari said. She knew that all too well.
Chellis reached into a desk drawer and picked up a piece of the shrapnel from the bomb. He held it in the light and inspected the black goo that did not reflect any specular light. He was careful not to touch it directly. “He also found something unique years ago. An element so black it did not reflect light.”
Solari was puzzled by what he said. “Sir, I haven’t spoken with him in years. They live like nomads, moving their camps around on the Far Side.”
Chellis thought for another moment. “A terrible tragedy is upon us, Solari. Our home is being attacked from all fronts.”
Solari nodded her head. “I agree, sir, which is why I am glad you called me in. Elise told me something.”
“She did?” Chellis asked.
She nodded before continuing. “She said we are slaves… that we are copied and sold.”
Chellis changed his demeanor. “You know, I watched you take her down outside the tower after the bombing. You were fast, a little too fast.”
She looked at him with obvious curiosity. “Sir, I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t play stupid with me. You know your sister has an erratum. Perhaps, you have one too.”
Chellis stood. The blanket fell to the floor, revealing the hideous wounds that marred his face from the attack. His back was bulbous and crusted over with cocoon-like patches. Solari shot up and stepped back, disgusted by the grotesque imagery.
“Sir, your back—”
Chellis still held the piece of shrapnel, and in a fit of rage, he threw it at her. Solari reacted instinctively, breaking up into tiny bits and swirling out of the way only to reform a few feet away from Chellis.