The Uploaded

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  “Clearly this isn’t a productive avenue of discourse.” She fished a pickle out of a barrel, took an experimental bite, tossed a few into her sack before slinging it over her shoulder. “Still, I should thank you for staying my hand. I’d prefer not to kill those with stained souls.”

  Doesn’t anyone care about this world? I wondered.

  “Look, I have to bring you to the processing center – I’m already in a lot of trouble–”

  She jabbed the tip of the knife into my belly.

  “Thanks for teaching me a valuable lesson.” Her smile was irritatingly gorgeous, given how she was a wrist-twist away from gutting me. “If you interfere, I will not kill you; rather, I will slice open your bowels inexpertly.”

  “I stood up for you,” I said bitterly – but even the touch of her knife was weirdly seductive.

  “You were kind.” She kissed me gently on the forehead, a look of regret crossing her face. “But I thought you of all people would understand that not every act is rewarded in this lifetime.”

  She sucked in a deep breath, then pushed open the door to the hallway.

  Gumdrool tased her.

  “Gotcha!” He fired again as Evangeline fell, twitching. “That trashcan trick is straight out of the NeoChristian playbook. We just needed to make sure you couldn’t hurt anyone… you server-bombing bitch.”

  He kicked her in the ribs three times, pausing in between each blow, as if each kick was a special treat he allowed himself. When he finished, he sniffed a deep breath through his nostrils, shuddering with pleasure.

  Then he bowed to me. “Well done, Damrosch,” he said with a note of admiration. “You did your duty.”

  I looked at Evangeline, shuddering. He’d smacked me around… but I’d never seen him go after a noncitizen before. I got the impression that if he didn’t want to capture her alive, he’d have stomped her skull in with no more emotion than he’d show crushing a cockroach.

  The three boys who’d taunted Evangeline wrestled a new restraint jacket onto her.

  “And you fools!” he shouted, advancing towards them. “Practically throwing yourself on her knife! Remember, the dead are always watching. You’re lucky Damrosch saved your ass – if she’d killed you, you would have been judged a suicide!”

  Shocked, they dropped the restraint jacket as they realized what they’d avoided. Suicide was a sure ticket to the void.

  “That’s right,” Gumdrool spat. “You almost voided yourself. You think about that.”

  Gumdrool tied the new restraint vest around Evangeline, clucking his tongue. “She wouldn’t have slipped out, either, if your knot skills hadn’t been so weak. Improve your physical skills! Don’t be as poor stewards of this world as the sprinkler repairmen! We all aim to get to the Upterlife, boys, but this world counts… for now.”

  With Evangeline restrained, he turned to me.

  “You rescued these three idiots from the void, and kept this terrorist scum busy until reinforcements arrived. Commendable. I shall put a note in your file.”

  “No need,” said Frank, his voice crackling to life over the speakers. “Dr Greywoode and I have agreed on a suitable punishment. Amichai will spend the next three months shaping coral.”

  I had to grab a table to keep myself upright.

  “Three months?” I protested. “In coral? What about Career Day? What about… What about Izzy?”

  “Come Career Day, you’ll be eight weeks into your apprenticeship for your new lifetime job. Welcome to the construction industry, Mr Damrosch.”

  9: CORAL-SNIFFING AT THE KIRZNER BUILDING

  * * *

  When I was nine, I’d dreamed of being a coral shaper. I’d bugged Mom until she took me to the toy store to buy an aircoral kit.

  I stood before the three sample models, wringing my hands: did I want to grow a seven-foot replica of the lush Kirzner Apartment Complex? Would I grow a patriotic copy of the World Trade Center III, the first successfully bioengineered building? Would the Drummond Basilica, the tallest organic skyscraper in the world, even fit in my bedroom?

  The Kirzner was the prettiest.

  Real coral buildings were fed by seeding clouds with vitamin mixtures, but my kit came with a tin watering can and a bucket of growth mix. I remember pouring mix on until the building-bed was sopping wet, thinking if I fed it a lot it’d grow superfast.

  Alas, aircoral doesn’t work that way. It grew sixteen inches a week, no matter how much I fed it. It was kinda neat, seeing the pink skeleton interlacing in genetically programmed patterns, forming tiny windows and crenellations. My aircoral somehow managed to be both drab and ugly, but you could see why it had revolutionized the construction industry – no labor necessary, no equipment, just time and food.

  Mostly, however, the coral was dull. You sprayed it once a week. It grew. There were warnings in the booklet about fungal bloom and cancerous outgrowths, along with explanations of what to do if such excitement ever happened, but it never did.

  I got bored, stuck it in the back of my closet.

  It starved to death.

  I remembered my first coral as I trudged up the staircases of the real Kirzner. The Kirzner Complex was meant to impress, the hallways lined with dusty oriental rugs and mahogany tables, lit by tastefully recessed lighting.

  It might have been pretty if anyone lived here.

  My coral-testing kit grew heavier with each floor; each apartment had seven access panels to collect coral samples, each of which were needed to verify the health of the building, each of which involved squirming my scrawny frame into stinking hatches to chip out a sample. I hauled eight hundred test tubes, and had to fill all of them before day’s end.

  It was pointless. A monkey could have done this job. They could engineer coral, why couldn’t they engineer a coral-chipping monkey?

  Because hiring me was cheaper, that’s why.

  At least this job let me save up money for Izzy.

  My earputer’s music switched to its hourly newscast – the latest trends in the Upterlife. The hottest postmortemed body designer had designed a new nose more sensitive than a bloodhound’s; she was petitioning President Wickliffe to seed all the Upterlife’s zones with upgraded scent imagery. Sure, the Upterlife parks smelled fine to humans, but why not add the data to make the odors more realistic to those with doglike hypersensitivity?

  Sure, that upgrade would drain living resources – yet another hardship the living would endure to make our future lives more awesome.

  Then the announcer – postmortemed himself, natch – listed the people who’d voided themselves today. The announcer took time to gravely examine the sins that had barred each person from the Upterlife, thundering in ominous tones how this could be you if you weren’t careful!

  Then back to the mandatory work music: uptempo, so forgettable it bordered on the subliminal, designed by muzakians to prod us into working quickly and efficiently.

  Yet with each floor I thought, I’ll get Izzy into one of these apartments.

  I pictured Izzy’s smile as I unlatched the door and the apartment’s motion-activated lights flickered on. “This,” I muttered, “is all yours.” She’d ask why it was covered in dusty tarps, and the real answer was that the apartment’s inhabitants had died six years ago… But in my fantasy, it was so I could sweep the tarps off as she squeed happily.

  I could see my sister’s smile as I revealed each miracle that came standard with a Kirzner residence – neuroscanning televisions that played whatever story you were most in the mood for! Drink dispensers that read your tastebuds to concoct infinitely delicious beverages! Massage-chairs that triangulated your tensest muscles to squeeze away your tension! No more Bubbler-cramps, Izzy!

  Then I had that other fantasy, the one where I set it all on fire and danced through the flames.

  Sadly, the best toys are kept under tarps for all but the most kissass of the living. Nobody alive can afford to stay here unless the dead subsidize them. Even though the Bubbler had de
vastated New York, the ghosts would rather keep their apartments empty than let the wrong people in.

  Me, I’d been looking at the places I could afford to move to after Career Day. Places with sick coral, all crumbling walls and dead-fish smells. Rent and food would consume 80 percent of my salary. The remaining 20 percent, if I saved up for a decade without any emergency expenses, might buy Izzy a neural adapter so she wouldn’t have to use her hands to play Pony Police Action.

  Test tube in hand, I wedged myself headfirst behind another TV, opening an access hatch and gagging at the lowtide stink of coral.

  “Is there a problem, officer?” said a musical voice. I banged my head in surprise.

  Peaches stood in the apartment doorway, flashing me a wicked smile.

  You’ve never seen her in front of Mom and Dad, Dare had told me. All work clothes and innocence. The transformation was astounding. She’d pulled her long black hair into a tight bun. She’d hidden the gnarled Bubbler scars on her arms and shoulders underneath a demure, full-sleeved business suit. Her lush curves were neutralized beneath that stylish dress – but her hornrimmed glasses couldn’t hide the glimmer of mischief in her eyes.

  “What are you doing all the way over here?” I asked, a goofy grin spreading across my face. The Kirzner buildings were forty blocks away from the orphanage – Beldon made sure getting to my job took an hour’s walk. They wanted to wear me down.

  Yet here was my favorite Blackout Party dance partner, meeting me on the far side of New York. It was a pleasant surprise…

  …or would have been, if I wasn’t in these filthy overalls.

  She sashayed into the room – Peaches always glided from place to place like a ballet dancer, sometimes doing twirls along the way. She lifted the tarps to peek underneath as she spun through the apartment.

  “I was looking for a LifeGuard,” she said. “Izzy tells me you’ve been spamming everyone with job applications.”

  “I need better prospects,” I muttered. “Listen, could you stop touching the tarps? I’m not supposed to disturb anything…”

  “No problems… officer.” She raised her hands as if offering to be handcuffed, which sent naughty thoughts cascading through my mind. Then she pulled her glasses down over the tip of her nose to look me over. “Stylish dress choice, by the way. It’s you.”

  I ran my fingers through my Jewfro to smooth it; my hand came out speckled with coral crap.

  “Coral crap’s an aphrodisiac.” I dabbed a little behind my ear. “Drives the ladies wild.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Izzy’s right. You do look sick. Thinner. Paler. I keep telling her this is what hard labor does to people, but she doesn’t believe me. But even accounting for your employment’s exertions… you have lost some of your charm.”

  I felt decrepit when she looked at me. “I didn’t know you guys were still talking to each other.”

  Peaches tugged a tarp off a chair. “We both survived the Bubbler, Amichai. That’s a bond. And you know me – I check in on people.”

  “That you do.” Maybe it was New York’s reduced population, but it seemed like Peaches knew everyone. She chatted people up at her job at the Khan-Tien Mortuaries, she made pals down at the Blackout Parties.

  She sank into the livefoam seat; its cushioned arms massage-hugged her. “So why have you been avoiding me?”

  “Seriously, Peaches, that chair’s for people who live here–”

  She giggled. “I live here, silly.”

  “…you’re that rich?”

  “Well, I don’t live here,” she clarified, flashing me a daypass. “Not yet. But all us Khan-Tien employees get to live at the Kirzner, once you’ve perpetrated enough drudgery to prove you harbor no interesting aspirations. If I work thirty incident-free years, I’ll get to live here fulltime. But sometimes they give me weekend passes. They want to give me a taste. To keep me hungry.”

  “And are you? Hungry, I mean?”

  She shook her head, stepping close enough for me to smell her perfume. “Not for what they’re offering,” she whispered. “But they don’t know that. Yet.”

  “Well, I’m starving.” I goggled at all this gadgetry. “Dare must be serious about disowning the Khan-Tiens, if he’s giving all this up.”

  “This? This is nothing,” she demurred, throwing the tarp back over the seat. “Scraps. It’s all the dead will offer.”

  “I dunno. You’re rich. To a poor kid like me, man… This is heaven.”

  Peaches’ exasperation made my stomach churn.

  “This is nothing compared to what we could have.” She held a glass underneath the taste-dispenser, filling it, conspicuously not offering me a cup. “Haven’t you noticed all the technological advancements of the last three centuries have benefited the dead?”

  “That’s because we stripped the planet bare. There’s not enough rare metals left to serve the living.”

  Peaches swept the curtain open on the apartment’s picture window, directing my gaze across Central Farm’s patchwork gardens. I noticed how all the apple trees were lit by the golden glow of the Upterlife’s servers. Each skyscraper-sized computing cluster was fed by thick cables that pumped in geothermally-generated electricity. New York was crammed with hundreds of Upterlife servers, each year’s new databanks squeezing out old apartment complexes.

  The dead never had a problem taking from our world to improve theirs.

  “You don’t believe there’s a shortage, do you?” she said, and I realized I didn’t. “This world would be a wonderland, if that was their priority. All the rare earth metals they can mine from asteroids go to new servers. Our remaining gas fuels their mining spaceships. They give us ponies instead of cars.

  “I mean, crap, we’re still gesturing at computers, Amichai! Why doesn’t Izzy’s earputer read her mind? Why wasn’t she genegineered like your pony to be muscular and plague-resistant? Because the dead want all the good things kept in the Upterlife!

  “Only the living can help the living.” She sipped something milky that smelled of roasted almonds. Our hips were close enough to touch. “You call the dead ‘ghosts,’ Amichai. That’s no accident; the living exorcise ghosts. If we could get rid of them, we could shape our own futures…”

  I’d like to tell you how I envisioned ways to improve our political and technological situations. But all I could think was, she’s so close. Does she want me to put my arm around her?

  That was the thing about Peaches. She was flirtatious if you didn’t flirt back. But the minute you reached for her, she was smoke.

  “…we could make this world a paradise,” I admitted. “But what am I gonna do? I can’t leave Izzy behind.”

  My arm hung, pathetically, by my side. I consoled myself with the knowledge I would have just smeared her in coral crap anyway.

  She scowled, draining her glass. “Seriously, Amichai, have you stopped attending the Blackout Parties altogether?”

  “I’m only sleeping five hours a night. Twelve hours chipping coral, then I have to visit Izzy…” I didn’t add, and I take the long walk back through Central Farm, looking for a lost pony. “I just haven’t had time.”

  “You need to come tonight.”

  “I can’t afford to lose this job. In fact, I have to get back to–”

  She placed one manicured finger over my lips. Her cool touch shut my whole body down.

  “The dead want you beaten down, Amichai. But you have impressed certain flesh-and-blood parties.”

  “Really?”

  She smirked. “Those who don’t know who really came up with the IceBreaker, anyway,” she teased.

  “I came up with the idea of looping camera feeds,” I insisted. “I just asked Mama Alex how to do it…”

  “Doesn’t matter. The point is, you’ve got me to help you, but instead you’re filling out forms. Why didn’t you ask me? I could have pulled some strings for you.”

  Because I hate asking for help, I thought. Because Izzy’s been carrying me my whole life, a
nd my parents aren’t reliable, and now I’m too embarrassed to ask anyone.

  “Because I’ve got this, Peaches.”

  She blew a stray strand of hair out of her eyes, exasperated. “What if I told you I could get you a job in the LifeGuard?”

  The LifeGuard? Where’d that come from? But I felt a shock of hope. “I… I’m not really LifeGuard material…”

  “LifeGuards make mad cash, with top-level benefits. If you get in, Izzy’s set. Isn’t that worth the price?”

  “Why… Why would you do that?”

  “Why look a gift horse in the mouth, Amichai?”

  “…Because it’s a pretty mouth?”

  She chuckled. “You’re so sweet when you’re awkward.” She tapped me on the chin with one finger. “But you need a job. I know someone who needs someone with your skillsets. Whereas I need someone I trust placed deep inside the LifeGuard. Call it… a lively expectation of future favors.”

  Izzy had been hot to join the LifeGuard, but I’d never fallen for their propa-game-da. As a LifeGuard, I’d be busting up Blackout Parties, plotting to catch Mama Alex–

  But a career in the LifeGuard would save my sister.

  Peaches rested her hand on my shoulder. “Just come to the party tonight. Please. And if you don’t come tonight, well… I’ll find someone else to dance with.”

  “You never dance with just one boy anyway.”

  “Some of them, I dance with longer.” She kissed me on the cheek. “Don’t keep me waiting, Amichai. This is a one-night-only opportunity, and you’ll never have a shot at something this good ever again. And besides, you…”

  She frowned, all of her carefully studied poise dropping away to express a genuine concern.

  “You need to relax. This job’s eating you alive.”

  Embarrassed, she smoothed the hem of her dress; when she looked up again, she was all business.