Atoma and the Blockchain Game

by Gerard O'Neill

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “Surely you know?” The nurse asked, raising her eyebrows as if in disbelief.

  The nurse stood beside Mom and gazed down at me. It was the way a mourner who barely knew the deceased might gaze into an open casket.

  “The Doctor says you’re not human.”

  3

  The Doctor

  I was gasping as if I was starving for oxygen because it had hit me. Hadn’t I always suspected as much? It could have been the way Mom gave me that odd look she did when I was venting on her when things weren’t going the way I wanted. I don’t mean a look of fear, or shame, or even of regret. It was more like the long, knowing look a nurse might give a patient as they weighed up the costs and benefits of telling them really bad news.

  “That’s ridiculous!” Mom exclaimed.

  Mom, in turn, looked like the air had been sucked right out of her. She had the face of someone who had been found guilty of committing a crime and was now readying herself for the ax to fall.

  Sure, it wasn’t like I hadn’t noticed that I barely resembled my brother and sister. When I was a good two inches shorter, I had already decided I was a hybrid of some kind. I heard the stories of how hybrids are bred to test out the experimental cures for disease. They were even bred to correct the genetic dispositions of some parents to give birth to babies with mutations triggered by all the heavy metals and radiation that hammered us on a daily basis. I decided I wasn’t one of those but I remained suspicious I was more than likely the result of a different experiment. What I couldn’t figure out was how the rest of my family fitted into all if this. Surely they must know about me!

  My mom is a neuroscientist specializing in cybernetics. That’s a specialist who focuses on how synapsis and machines are best brought together in a human being. In my worse moment, I even toyed with the idea she had me created in a laboratory. Now she was going to tell me I really was an experiment. I had the odd queasy feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you know for sure the very worst thing you thought you had prepared for was actually going to happen.

  “Mom, what’s she talking about?” I yelled.

  “Nothing,” Mom snapped, but she didn’t look at me. “She simply drew a conclusion from an assumption. You’ll be fine.”

  I could see the skin on Mom’s thin face looking tighter and whiter than usual. I suppose she was allowed to look a little stressed. She had in all likelihood, gone straight from a meeting in full swing to the Critical Condition ward of the Colman and Tanker’s Rapid Emergency Hospital.

  “The Doctor doesn’t make mistakes like that,” the nurse said indignantly to my mother then turned to stare at me. “It checks everything, especially DNA when it re-assembles bodies in the kind of condition yours arrived in.”

  Mom gave the nurse a particularly cold stare.

  “I want you to leave us for at least thirty minutes,” she said, reminding me of what a sergeant major might sound like. “I will monitor the console while you’re gone.”

  “You’re not doing anything of the sort,” the nurse said, her face aghast, but she quickly recovered. “You are not to touch anything. I want you to leave this room now, or I will call security.”

  Mom didn’t move.

  “You do know the guardians will be here soon,” the nurse continued. “The Doctor is programmed to report—”

  “To report to the authorities whenever it detects a non-human,” Mom said finishing the nurse’s sentence for her. “Yes, I know.”

  My mother took her white Bricard out of her handbag and held it flat in her palm. She pressed the tip of her finger on one corner. Her social ranking stood out in the cube of light that instantly floated above the shiny surface.

  “By the way, that’s not my social ranking score. What you are looking at is my pay grade.”

  The nurse blinked in surprise.

  “You work at Biosyntech,” she said in surprise.

  She stared hard at the hologram again as if she could not trust her own eyes.

  “I am the team leader in the Cybernetic Department,” Mom told her. “I also teach surgical procedures to biosynthetic students at New University of Illinois.”

  “Okaaay,” the nurse said, wiping sweat from the palms of her hands onto her smock.

  “And we both know a Bricard can’t be hacked,” Mom pointed out.

  “I don’t think the Doctor will recognize your bio-print,” the nurse said.

  “We’ll see about that,” Mom replied.

  She walked over to the console and placed her palm down on the outline of a hand. The panel before her lit up. She turned her head to see the lights flash on and off down the giant arm above me and grasped the ball.

  What could the nurse do? She was outranked by Mom. She could have refused to cooperate and reported the two of us. She had every right to do that. I would have if I were her. But, I could tell she was sympathetic, and that really surprised me

  “I’ll give you ten minutes,” the nurse told Mom. “Then you must leave the room.”

  “Don’t worry,” she told me. “That is more than enough time.”

  “What are you thinking of doing?” The nurse asked with a worried look.

  But Mom was already concentrating on setting the Doctor to the task she had in mind.

  “Ten minutes,” the nurse repeated and walked through the doors.

  “Mom?” I asked. “What are you doing? You know what? I think I am good to walk out of here.”

  I swing myself out of the mold and landed with both feet on the floor. It made no difference to me if my clothes were nowhere to be found, I was ready to walk out of the hospital wearing only the smock they gave patients.

  Mom waited until the doors closed before she swung around and pushed me to the table.

  “Get back on, right now!”

  “Mom?”

  Seeing a mix of determination and fear in her face I refused to move.

  “Right now. We have no time for this, Atoma!”

  My heart was pounding like never before. As I climbed back onto the table and with some difficulty pressed myself into the mold.

  The Doctor had already begun to hum.

  It was when the edges of the mold pressed over me again that I hit panic mode. My own mother was going to operate on me.

  “Mom?” The words came out slurred as the Doctor quickly took control of my body. “You haven’t told me what you are doing?”

  “Darling, there’s no time. You have to trust me. We can talk when you wake up. Now, I want you to breathe deeply.”

  “Not until you tell me what’s going on,” I wailed, the words coming out more like a burble, but she understood.

  “There’s a tiny implant embedded in you that I need to remove. It’s just under the skin between your shoulder blades. I put it there soon after you were born. It’s close to your spine, so I can’t have you moving an inch while I remove it. You will only be unconscious for five minutes.”

  I didn’t care about an implant. All I wanted was to leave the hospital far behind, but I couldn’t utter a damn word.

  Then, just like that, I opened my eyes and there was Mom standing over me.

  “We’re done,” she said cheerfully. “How are you feeling?”

  “Get me off this table,” I mumbled and tried to sit up.

  There was no pain. I wanted to spit and possibly even throw up, but the urge to do so passed the instant I felt the cold floor under my feet.

  She held me by the arm as I steadied myself. I was feeling, well, normal. Pretty much like I did before the crash. Now that I was no longer human, I suppose I ought to feel different. If I could only be certain how being human was supposed to feel in the first place.

  She pointed to a tiny glittering thread on the metal tray.

  “If you were to examine it under a microscope, you’d see there were several long filaments running from a very small glass-like oval. Each filament is half the thickness of a human hair. It was good
enough to convince any machine checking your bio-identity that you were legally human. It wasn’t good enough to fool the Doctor during your rebuild. When it went through each strand of your DNA piece by piece, it discovered it was banned. I must have made a mistake when I designed the hack because it was meant to prevent that kind of discovery.”

  The doors opened. The nurse was back. From the look on her face, our time was up.

  “Never mind,” Mom said, and she placed the tiny object on her tongue and swallowed. “Now, it’s gone.”

  “How could you let the situation go on this long?” The nurse asked Mom. “I don’t understand why you didn’t correct whatever was the error and enter your daughter in the Blockchain.”

  Her voice was shaking with indignation and fear. There was no way she wanted to be involved in an investigation by the Guardians. No one wanted to be noticed by the guardians.

  “It’s a long story,” Mom said, doing her best to sound apologetic.

  “I am already in so much trouble,” The nurse said. “As soon as you touched the Doctor.”

  “Tell them I overpowered you,” Mom said.

  “That won’t work,” the nurse said.

  “Tell them you were overpowered,” Mom said.

  The nurse stared at her a long moment. Then she swept back her hair and stepped up to my mother.

  “Punch me in the face,” she told her.

  “I think that’s a little extreme,” my mother replied. “How about I simply tie your hands and gag you with your uniform?”

  “Punch me in the face first, then once I’m tied and gagged, lock the door on your way out. That should convince them you attacked me.”

  Mom shook her head.

  “I can’t do that.”

  “I can’t afford to lose my job,” the nurse replied quickly. “I have a young child, and I am all he has.”

  “Alright,” Mom said with a sigh. “But, this is going to hurt.”

  “Wait,” the nurse said. “I haven’t told you how to lock the doors. There are foot pedal locks in the walls on either side of the doors. Kick the pedals to lock them. Let me get out of my uniform first. You can use it to tie me.”

  She passed her blue scrubs to me.

  “You are close to my size, so you must be the nurse and your mother will be the patient,” she told me. “Wear my cap, and tuck in your hair. It’s too long to be convincing.”

  I put on the uniform and the red-faced nurse tucked up my hair under the cap.

  “That will have to do,” she told us.

  She stood in her underclothes with both hands clenched at her sides in front of my mother.

  “Do it!” She said firmly.

  Mom’s jab was faster than either the nurse or I expected.

  The woman sprawled on the floor, but, she sat straight up and rubbed her jaw. A trickle of blood seeped from the corner of her mouth as she got to her feet.

  “Hit me again.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Mom said. “Once is enough.”

  “No, it isn’t. Break my nose. Don’t worry, it happens to us from time to time. Then it’s the nurses who end up treated by the Doctor.”

  Mom’s second jab was as just as fast as the one before. Once again, Mom caught the nurse unawares, and there was the awful crunch of cartilage.

  The nurse sprawled on the floor, and this time she did not get up again.

  “I’m sorry,” Mom told the still form. She turned to me. “Remember to act as you belong here. You’re the nurse now.”

  “Don’t forget the door locks, Mom.”

  The red paint panels were just above the floor on either side of the doors. Mom delivered a kick to both, but the locks refused to activate. I kicked each red switch twice and this time the tumblers clicked into place.

  A woman wearing prescription glasses peered up from her desk in the booth at the nurse station. Prescription glasses? Hmm, well, that’s something you don’t often see outside of a museum. She must be allergic to the Doctor.

  We were only halfway down the corridor when a bell rang to announce the elevator doors were opening.

  There were three of them. I glimpsed the gold insignia on a black tunic of the Universal Guardians. They were big men who would be very disappointed if they didn’t walk outside with a prisoner. But they barely glanced at us.

  Mom was doing a good job of looking ill. I nodded my head to the officers. Like it was an everyday event to see them in the ward. With my hand on her shoulder, I pushed Mom into the elevator. As soon as the doors had closed, I let fire.

  “Why is my DNA banned?” I hissed. “What else haven’t you told me?”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Atoma. Not now!”

  “You are going to tell me everything, aren’t you?”

  “Of course, I am. But, let’s concentrate on getting out of here first, without getting ourselves arrested.”

  4

  Escape

  The train station was only a five-minute walk from the elevators. The maglev would arrive at the platform on time. Mom pointed at the alert flashing on the board.

  “That’s our train.”

  “Where are we going, Mom? They’ll be waiting for us at home.”

  “We’re not going to our house,” she told me. “We’re going to Mother’s.”

  It had been two years since Nan’s funeral. She used to tell me her corner of town was far too quiet for her liking. Boring was how I always saw it, and today that was exactly what we were looking for. What could be a safer place to hide than a boring, unassuming corner of Chicago.

  “We need to get out of this place fast,” she whispered to me. “If we take a pod, my Bricard will alert the Guardians the moment we hop in. But if we take the maglev to Nan’s station, I can avoid showing my Bricard to the reader. It will take them longer to find us.”

  Mom pulled me into the crowd lining up for the train.

  “When we get on the train keep your head down. If we look up at any time, we’ll be spotted by the cameras above the doors. We can’t make this too easy for them.”

  “Mom, they already know we’re in the station…”

  But she wasn’t listening.

  The gleaming blue train hissed into the station and settled on its track. The barrier gate lifted and the crowd streamed on and we let them envelop us. I clutched her hand like I was a little girl again. We stood close to the doors and gazed steadfastly at our feet. I’ve heard the cameras can catch the faintest reflection off a surface. From that information, the AI puts together a composite of our faces to match the images the Guardians give it.

  At the first stop, we found seats and I rested my head on Mom’s shoulder. I wasn’t feeling tired; it was pure instinct. Our journey was not going to be a long one, but it would be time enough for the day’s events to run through my head again and again in a jumble of jarring images. To blot them out, I comforted myself by remembering how normal my day had started out.

  5

  Empty House

  Nan’s house was located in a sedate old residential suburb where no building was taller than two floors. It was not a part of the city where tenement blocks were found. There you would find quaint, authentically ancient cottages. Houses old enough they might look as though they could collapse before your eyes from old age, yet far too well built for that to happen.

  Nan’s place was going to be devoured by the garden long before it fell down. Vines and trees covered more than half the house. The old metal gate squeaked in protest as Mom and I pushed on it with all our force. The path to the front door was cracked and barely visible. Tall grass and bushes all but hid the stone walls and a thick mass of old dry ivy curtained the windows.

  “Wait here while I find the mains and switch on the burn-box,” Mom told me.

  The burn-box is what people call the technology taking power from a radio-transmitted grid, pulling electricity right out of the atmosphere as if by magic. Free power was one benefit given to the world populations following the thi
rd Great Depression after they rose up against their governments. A carrot offered by the world government together with my old history teacher told me the majority of the people believed some prosperity had returned when they accepted the new state of affairs.

  Dad had always told us there’s nothing free in this world, and every cost is a tax, whatever that means. He always put on a cheerful face as he said the words, but I could tell Dad was just the teensiest bit uncomfortable with that explanation.

  When we stepped through the front door, we saw that everything was coated in a layer of dust. Cobwebs had filled every corner. It couldn’t have looked more like a haunted house if it tried.

  “They will find us eventually, won’t they?” I asked Mom once we were inside.

  She gave me a nod but then, almost as an afterthought, she flashed a small smile.

  “I am hoping they will get lost and we will have a little more time together. But we best not waste too much time.”

  My head was spinning as I tried to think of a way we could extract ourselves from the situation. They were coming for us that much was clear. We might never see Dad again, or Ellie, or little Tyler. Mom was putting on a brave face, but I was finding it more and more difficult to continue to do the same.

  “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  I ran into the bathroom and stood in front of the large sink. I placed my palm on the surface and spoke to the wall in a loud clear voice.

  “Wash my face.”

  I closed my eyes waiting for the jet of mist, but apart from water running from the taps nothing else happened. I splashed my face with water and wiped the surface of Nan’s old-fashioned dust covered mirrored glass. The quality of the Doctor’s work on my face amazed me.

  It was a new me that stared back.

  It looked like the old me, only this one was a complete rebuild. The tiny scar above my lip I earned chasing my eight-year-old brother, Tyler, three years earlier had vanished.

  Yet, it was not the version of me I was used to presenting to the world. It was my dark brown hair that touched my shoulders. For the last year, my twelve-year-old sister Ellie had been pleating my hair in the Drape fashion. She showed me a holovid of the latest style worn by the sharp-girls from the mainland and I liked it. The next thing you know, she had it mastered and in less than a season it became my signature fashion statement.