The Body Scout: A Novel

by Lincoln Michel

  “Time for the tests already?” he said, letting the straws drop from his mouth. He was jogging in place. “Great, I’m almost finished.”

  He nodded for me to follow him inside. Jogged ahead of me into the living room.

  His place was sparsely furnished. There was a couch. A large wall screen with different video game modules. I could see the top of a pop-up fridge beside the couch. Otherwise, the room was filled with workout equipment. Free weights next to a muscle-stim bed and an AR rock-climbing rig on the wall. Only a few photos on the walls and no other artwork or plants. It was the kind of place where you felt like the person living there had never lived in it at all.

  “No offense, brother, but you look pretty pale. Do you need an energy shot? Immune boost? Activation chew?”

  “I’m okay,” I lied. I kept my injured hand in my jacket pocket.

  “If you change your mind, I got it all.” Kang sucked furiously on the blue smoothie and then the yellow. His face turned red as the glasses drained. He slammed them on the table while continuing to jog in place. “I’ve been following the instructions. Every morning. Protein and swellers in one, vitamins and stabilizers in the other. No fat, dairy, or sugar. See, I’m committed?”

  “Committed?”

  “To getting off the bench,” he said. He flexed for me while he continued to jog. His arms were slathered with something that shined under the fluorescent lights. “I’ve got the whole routine down. Activate my organs the moment I wake up with charcoal-infused amino water. Half cup of nut sand, half cup of fiber nobs, and a half cup of detoxed yogurt. Half hour weights, half hour resting muscle-stim, half hour overclocked cardio, and two hours hand-eye training in the SluggerSim. One, two, three, four, repeat. Been trying that Neanderthal fitness craze at night with the free weights. It works. My bones are like steel. I bet I could punch a woolly mammoth in the trunk right now.”

  “That’s good,” I said, sitting down in the room’s only chair. He had a handful of photos on the wall. A couple video and a couple still. Official team photos. One of a young girl with angry eyes that reminded me of the Edenist I’d just seen at Reunion Square. Two of Kang and a woman smiling by beaches. One where the same woman was in a hospital bed. A framed copy of his Pyramid Pharmaceuticals contract. Nothing else.

  “It feels good, it feels good. Yeah, good as hell.” He whooped. Bent down and touched the ground. Then did a set of suicide sprints across his living room. I watched him go back and forth a few times. “Do you have your test kit? I’m ready to go.”

  “I’m not here to test you. They’ll be doing that later.” I’d need to be quick. Whoever he thought I was might be on their way. I looked out the window to see if any medical teams were walking up the street. “I’m just going to ask you some questions. It won’t take long.”

  Kang came to a stop. His smile collapsed. “Fucking hell.” He fell hard into the couch. Threw his inflated arms across the back and spread his legs wide. “Do you know how hard it is to get yourself all ready?” He gazed over his arms and legs as if he was selecting cuts at the butcher and the meat was himself. He shook his head again. “I’m humming on way more than the recommended doses here. I feel like I’m vibrating so hard I might come apart at the seams. I need to get into the playoff lineup. If I don’t, I’m cut in the off-season for sure. What the hell am I supposed to do then?”

  “You’re looking good. I should know, I’m a scout.” I figured some false encouragement might loosen his tongue.

  “Thanks, brother!” His smile was toothy and his eyes were bright.

  I pulled out an eraser cigarette. Began to light.

  “Wow, please. Not in the house.”

  I put it out on my metal arm and slid the cigarette back in the pack.

  “I’m here about JJ Zunz.”

  I expected Kang to freeze up, show me a sign that I knew about something I wasn’t supposed to know about. But instead he bolted up like he’d just had a stimulant injected in his rear. “Do you have the money? Is it on you? I knew you didn’t look like a doctor.” He slapped his hands, then looked worried. “Shouldn’t we be doing this at the club?”

  “Which club?” I said.

  “We only went to one club.” Now Kang started moving slowly. He leaned back in a businesslike fashion. Flattened his voice. “The late Mr. Zunz owes me some money, that’s all. I thought maybe you were delivering. God rest his soul.”

  “Money for what?”

  Kang squinted one eye almost shut, looked at me with the other. His voice had a whine in it now. “Sorry, that’s private. Let’s just say he owed me some money and now that he’s dead, I’m screwed. As usual.”

  “What was he buying from you? Headquarters isn’t mad. We just need to know. We’re trying to figure out how he died. Was it micronetics? Biometal pills?”

  Kang looked at me like I’d dropped a centipede in his smoothie. He stood. “What the hell are you talking about? You think I’m selling illegal upgrades? I’m not risking my career. You know, I’ve never seen you before. I don’t think you work at Pyramid at all!” Kang pulled out his screen. With his other hand, he flapped his fingers. “Hand over your credentials and I’ll just give them a little check.”

  “Calm down. Wait a second.” I was rusty with my interrogation techniques.

  “Calm!” Kang threw his arms in the air. “Calm! Dude, you interrupted my routine before a playoff game. You don’t have any money for me. Guess what? You better get me money. Now. Or we’ll see how security makes you pay.”

  I debated whether I should try more drastic tactics. Kang might have been strong, but he didn’t look like the type who would take kindly to even the softest roughing up. Not with the way he was obsessing over his physique.

  Kang was still waving me at me to hand over whatever I had in my pockets. I made a fist of my broken hand. Figured I could get at least five punches in before something else in my hand broke.

  Then the doorbell rang and the whole scene froze.

  It rang a second time.

  I looked at Kang warily and he looked back with exasperation. He put his screen next to the smoothie glasses. Walked over to the peep feed and sighed. “Jesus Christ. I’m never going to get my workout finished.”

  Dolores walked in with her badge out, security code blinking. She looked at me, lifted one finger, and wagged it back and forth.

  “Are you doing the exam? I need a couple minutes to get ready,” Kang said, already forgetting about me. He began jogging in place again.

  “I’m here for this one,” she said, walking over and grabbing my collar. “Smith, I told you not to bother the players.” She shook her head for Kang, gave him the what-can-you-do-about-underlings face. “A new hire. Overeager. I told him the players were off-limits in the playoffs, but he’s a huge fan.”

  “Of me?” Kang said.

  “He’s got all your cards. Posters. Even owns your VR simulator.”

  “Really?”

  Dolores stared at me with eyes grinning behind the goggles.

  “Yeah,” I said. I tried to nod enthusiastically. “I’m a big fan.”

  “And now he must go. We’ve got that presentation in twenty minutes, remember? I’m sorry he distracted you before the game. I’ll put a good word in your file.” She took my hand, yanked me up. Mouthed “you fucking asshole.” Hurried me out the door.

  “Hold up!” Kang yelled. “One second here.”

  I looked back to see him jogging in the doorway. He pointed at me.

  “Don’t you want an autograph?”

  12

  THE HUMAN PHONE

  As Dolores flew us out of the Pyramid compound, she shook her head back and forth.

  “Grief is no excuse for being stupid. Did you think Pyramid wouldn’t notice two people using the same eye access? And did you think I wouldn’t notice you gazing at me like a malfunctioning robot while we were fucking?”

  “I’m sorry, Dolores. Stealing your iris was a dirty trick.”

  �
��You’ve been naughty. And not in the ways I enjoy. I should have let the Sphinxes’ interrogation teams pull you apart.”

  I felt jittery and sick. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the injury, the medicine, or the fact that I’d failed my brother again.

  I took out another eraser, let the smoke dull me.

  “How many of those poison sticks have you smoked today?” Dolores said. She rolled down a window and I blew into the sky.

  “Not enough,” I muttered. “I can still feel the tips of some of my fingers and a few of my toes.”

  Dolores reached over and grabbed my hand. Pulled off the glove. Blue fluid had coagulated into plastic globs around the edges of the hole the Sassafras sisters had rammed through my palm.

  “Jesus. Kobo. You need to see a doctor.”

  “Doctors are expensive.”

  We were approaching Manhattan now. I could see the storm wall snaking around the island. There were scattered buildings on the other side of the wall, like a child had colored carelessly outside the lines. Buildings sacrificed to the surging waters. The waves lapped at their foundation.

  “Kang said Zunz owed him money. He’s a clue. I need to go back.”

  “Are you going to steal my other eye?” Dolores said. I started to apologize again, and Dolores cut me off. “Oh, zip it, Kobo. You’re going to make it up to me.”

  “With what?”

  “With information. You’ve got information on the Yanks plans, information I can use to get a leg up on the competition. And maybe a bonus. I’m a little tight on money myself right now. My parents’ medical bills eat up half my salary.”

  I said I was happy to tell her what I knew, but that it wasn’t much. I was just a freelancer at the Yanks. I never sat in on the big meetings.

  “Start with Arocha.”

  “Arocha?”

  Around us, taxis honked and a couple blimp buses puttered by on a school trip to study clouds or something.

  “You think the Yanks and the Mets were the only ones eyeing her? I was planning to scout her after the season.”

  I told her everything I’d found out about Arocha, and how I’d lost her to the Neanderthals. Although I skipped over the most embarrassing details. “She was working on zootech, close to a serum to stabilize them,” I said. “Get around the genetically wired obsolescence.”

  “So she’s an idealist. I wonder what on earth the Mets wanted her for,” Dolores said, looking out toward the glittering city. She seemed to be calculating something. “Well, that’s a start. We’ll talk more later. Think of it as getting back at the Yanks as much as helping me out. And, hey, lucky you.”

  “Lucky?”

  “You get a partner.”

  “You don’t want to get mixed up in this.”

  “You should have thought of that before you crawled into my bed and scanned my eye to sneak into my employer’s compound.”

  It was a fair point. I didn’t argue.

  “All right, drop me home and I’ll send you what files I have.” I looked out the window as we flew over white construction cranes that stood around Manhattan like the skeletons of enormous birds. It was a bright day with thinning smog. I was feeling hopeful and numbed.

  Dolores laughed, flipped up the lenses of her goggles to stare me square in the face. “Kobo, I said I’d help you. Not be your chauffeur.”

  Dolores offered to drop me off outside of the Penn Station Hub. “Be a little more careful next time,” she said as we landed.

  “I’ll try.”

  “Okay, now I’m going to go get screamed at about how I let someone steal my access. I’ll just turn off my transcription and nod my head appropriately.”

  I watched her fly away.

  The Penn Station Hub towered over me. It was composed of gigantic steel-and-glass arches and a central hub of tubes that spilled out in different directions. I could see them above me, snaking out toward the rest of the city, like the station was the dark heart of the city pumping blood to every distant limb.

  Outside was a buzz of activity too. I pushed past a group of protestors projecting slogans in the air. Some about this war or that one, others about the last election or the next one. A group of Nu-Buddhists chanted by a levitating taco truck while a line of people waited to drop their blood into the TempVendor stations to see if they qualified for any job openings.

  A thin man walked by with a placard flashing info on an Ill Uprising protest happening later that day. He caught my eye and raised his fist, saying it was time to “start the revolution.”

  “Isn’t it always time?” I said.

  “But this time it’s really the time, comrade.”

  I bought two lab-grown tongue tacos and a double-hydration water. Ate on a bench while staring at a wall of screens cycling through the channels. The baseball news was just about the opening game of the World Series. What lineups were projected, who was injured, what the odds were at the bookies, and more accurately, what the odds were at the stock market. Investors were betting on the Sphinxes, and Monsanto’s stock had tanked 4.3 percent since Zunz was killed.

  Otherwise, the world had moved on. In the NNBA, the Plethora Suns had just acquired Maximus Diggs for a half-dozen lab prospects. In entertainment, the lead story was Stanton Dune severing both of his legs for his latest movie role. The limbs were being put in cryopots, and the talking heads were assuring fans they could be reattached when shooting finished. Dune was a Hollywood star known for extreme body modification. Taking intravenous lard to beef up for a sumo biopic, then working with a team of genochemists to shrink his bones down to fifteenth-century levels for a three-part historical epic on the War of the Roses. “I act with every part of my DNA,” Dune told the reporter.

  Overhead, a Plethora Emporium blimp floated like a gigantic airborne grub. I checked my bytewallet. Tried to calculate how many days I could last on the number it displayed. I was constantly checking numbers. Reopening my accounts and spreadsheets, hoping some magic of math had changed them. Now, like always, I was exactly as broke as I knew I’d be.

  I did have enough to buy a cyber patch kit and another pack of erasers. A few seconds later a drone shaped like a pelican fell out of the sky, my purchases in its pouch. The drone was covered in plastiflesh and feathers, but it was designed with Disney in mind. Gigantic eyes and a smile carved into the bright yellow beak. It was caught in some grotesque tug-of-war between machine, flesh, and cartoon.

  I figured the animal-shape trend was nostalgia, a pining for the biodiversity we’d lost. A lot of the national parks had even purchased animal drones to roam around the hills and geysers, letting tourists pretend the wilderness was still wild. Personally, I disliked the pretense. I hoped the chrome robot style would make a comeback soon.

  I slipped into the dank stench of the public restroom. Held my breath while I fixed my hand up as well I could. Which wasn’t very well. At least the patch closed the gash and still let me bend all the fingers. But the damage had worked its way into my brain, made me start feeling a third arm. A crooked, injured thing flexing with pain. My original arm. The one that had been crushed in the cave-in, and then sawn off when I joined the Cyber League. The phantom limb was occupying the same space as my broken plastic and steel arm. A ghost trapped inside of another ghost.

  Outside, I sat down, inspecting my hand and debating what to do next.

  “You’re looking rough, pal.” The man sitting beside me wore tattered clothing, odd fungal growths erupting through the holes. He was so dirty he blended into the bench. When he smiled, I could see yellow gunk along his gums.

  “Just having a bad day,” I said. “Couple of days,” I corrected.

  “Bad life more like, am I right, pal? I can relate.” He guffawed. A sweat smell, like fresh blood, followed his laugh. He reached into his pocket and held out some black pills in his trembling hand. “You want to buy some nuroids? Off the back of the blimp, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’m okay.”

  The pills smelled o
f burning oil. The casings were half dissolved. The man chuckled, then groaned. He grabbed his side and leaned forward. He’d pumped himself up with rancid upgrades like these. Black market stuff stretched with microplastics and laboratory runoff. There were people like him all over the country. Poisoning themselves with medicine. Infected from the inside out.

  The tremor passed. He leaned back and made a gurgling sound. “Hey, you got any change you can spare, bud? I’m an oiler too. We gotta stick together. Screw the norm bods, right?” He lifted his many shirts to show me a kidney pump sutured into his side. Little dials spun and blinked. Home surgery. The skin was purple where the flesh met metal, poisoned red veins spidering off along his yellow stomach.

  I told him I was broke and offered him an eraser “for the pain.”

  He looked confused, then angry. He snapped the eraser in half. Threw it at me. “I don’t smoke that shit.” He slapped his chest, sending the growths dancing. “This is all me. Pure reality! I’m not hiding from it.”

  “It helps with the pain. I smoke them all the time.”

  “Fuck you, asshole. It’s my pain.”

  I nodded and walked off. Looked around for another bench, one that was empty.

  When Zunz and I were kids, we used to have a couple guys like that sleeping in the park across the street from our burrow. If we failed a test or came home late for dinner, his mom would drag us upstairs to the ground floor, pull us to the park by the ear. “You fail at school, you end up the same as those bums.”

  Now, I was another run-in with the Sassafras sisters away from being like him. If I didn’t find a way to pay off Sunny Day soon, they’d find a way to take back what they’d paid for. Reverse surgery. The only kind they didn’t charge you for.

  As I was looking up information about Kang on my screen, trying to find any info on his connection to Zunz, I noticed a man with an orange ball cap staring at me. He was trembling, barely able to stand upright. But somehow he managed to put one leg in front of the other until he was at my bench.