Life is a Beautiful Thing (4-Book Box Set)

by Harmon Cooper

  Rinchi had heard of people like this before, but she hadn’t encountered many in her former line of work. Someone who was a clean cut always had a lower half that was bionic and an upper half that was still human. Not a clean cut meant that the person’s body had been arranged in such a way that some portions were bionic and other portions were natural. Some people referred to these mixed individuals as Homo sapiens machina. Only a few countries allowed the creation of these cyborgs, as governments were generally afraid of citizens that could have the best of both worlds (and rightfully so).

  Rinchi did a quick search on iNet to see if there was any information she could dig up on Keva. Nothing. She searched through the company database and found a single picture. “Not much to look at.”

  Keva had long white hair, pale skin and powder blue eyes. She was thin, slightly shorter than Rinchi. She seemed relatively harmless, young too.

  “Yeah, I saw that picture. She looks Norwegian, or Finnish. Like a fairy or something.” The driver exited the airway into the LaGuardia’s expedited line. “Well if you ever run into her, be careful. I heard she likes to fuck with people.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  TWELVE∞

  **The following conversation took place in Spanish moments after Nelly exited the garage with Noah’s head under her left arm. It has been translated by the late José Alberto Del Castillo Cabeza Mercedes Acosta III for our monolingual audience.

  A blinged-out aeros settled in front of the house in Oakland. A large Mexican man with a shaved head got out. He looked back at the driver and made a gesture telling him to stay alert.

  “Any problems?” the man asked. “Nelly, right?”

  She had wrapped a bed sheet around her waist to cover her lower half. “Yeah, not my body.”

  “I’m Manuel.” He tossed her a package. “Here are your Leaks.”

  She opened the package and found a pair of thin-rimmed glasses in a protective case. They were Ray-Bans, real ones too. Carloza was trying to be nice.

  She placed them over the bridge of her nose. “How quickly can we get to Mexico? You have border immunity, right?” Her vision instantly improved. Her eyes fell upon Manuel. She’d seen the man before, or at least she thought that she’d seen him. Most of Carloza’s men had similar features, but this one’s head was shaved, which wasn’t as common. Her eyes fell upon his mouth as his lips moved.

  “Everyone that works for Carloza has border immunity,” Manuel said. “Look, before we get into the aeros, I need to give you something.” He took a small k-bracelet out of his pocket. “Put this on. If you do anything, I’ll activate it over iNet – or someone else will – and it will detonate.”

  “Why would I put on a kill bracelet?” she asked, standing her ground.

  “Nelly, I think we should find our own way to Mexico,” Noah said.

  Manuel looked at the Humandroid head tucked under her arm as if it were the first time he was noticing it. “Carloza can get you e-skin, a body for your droid there, and get you to Japan so you can find this Meme guy. He wants to be sure you’re not planning on … doing anything to him. That’s why you should put the k-bracelet on.”

  “Find Meme?” Nelly was surprised at this statement; she didn’t think Carloza would have come to the same switching conclusion she came to back in the garage.

  Manuel licked the front of his teeth. “It’s real simple. If you get Carloza’s body back from Japan, you get your body back. It’s as simple as that.”

  “And the baby?”

  “You’ll have to talk to him about the baby.”

  “That’s her baby,” Noah said. His eyes dilated as he did a quick vitals scan on Carloza’s man.

  Manuel ignored him. “You can talk to Carloza about the baby once we get to Mexico. Esperanza, right?”

  “The baby’s name is Rebel.”

  “That’s a beautiful name,” Noah said. “It means a lot of things to a lot of people. I really like that name, Nelly.”

  She looked down at the head. “I named it after you. You’ve always been such a rebel, always going against the system to help me.”

  “That’s so sweet!” He smiled up at her.

  “So, will you put on the k-bracelet?” Manuel asked. If he was annoyed by their banter, his face didn’t show it.

  “And you’ll take it off as soon as I get on the plane to Japan?”

  “Don’t do it, Nelly, those things are dangerous!” Noah’s face filled with worry.

  Nelly flicked her eyes shut and she fired off a quick message to Noah over iNet. Her eyes were open again less than a second later.

  Nelly: I can easily disable the k-bracelet if I need to. Let me handle this.

  She transferred Noah to her other arm and stuck out her wrist, waiting for Carloza’s man to slip on the bracelet. It was cold and made of a dark metal. A blue dash appeared on the bracelet, indicating that it was armed.

  “Good, the bracelet is active now. I’ll make some appointments with Carloza’s doctors. We’ll get your Humandroid fixed up and some e-skin on your lower half. You must be cold.”

  She didn’t laugh at his joke. Instead she asked, “Will it be possible to mod Noah’s violence governor? His role will now move from my personal assistant to my personal bodyguard. I want to make sure there is nothing holding him back.”

  “Bodyguard? That sounds dangerous!”

  Manuel nodded. “Of course we can mod him. Everything is possible in Mexico if you have some cash. We can even add some weapons.”

  THIRTEEN∞

  A bunny appears on the inside of the eye lenses of my mask. The bunny grins at me, shouts something in Japanese. I am overwhelmed by its cuteness to the point that I want to rip its throat out. A list appears.

  “English.”

  The bunny bows at me and a thought bubble forms next to its head: Please wait while I translate. The list re-appears:

  Tommy Hilfiger Shock and Awe Blumpkin

  Uniqlo Wet Dream Poi

  Sacai Dong’e Donkey Hide Jelly

  Stella McCartney Trickle-Down Entitlement

  Issey Miyaki Extinct Whale Entheogen

  “Only one entheogen?” I shake my head in utter disdain. The bunny stands next to the list, bowing repeatedly. “You little cocknugget. Issey Miyaki Extinct Whale Entheogen.”

  A compression sound means the dispenser has understood my request. Put the mask on or take it off.

  The thought comes to me – we replicate and we think we are original yet we both exist in someone else’s story, someone else’s information paradox. How fucked is that? How fucked is it that it is 2083 and I’m in Tokyo about to strap a pollution mask to my face while being hunted by a corporate government entity? How fucked is it that your eyes trace over my words thus making them real? How fucked is it that the future continues long after you’ve died? What does time mean to you then, Reader? What should it mean to me? How should a character in a supposed book conceptualize time?

  To you I am timeless.

  I am constantly refreshed, trapped in these words and unable to free myself – even after my current year of 2083 passes I’ll still be alive and kicking. I can’t age, nor can I truly die. Sure, I can die on paper or e-screen, but you could theoretically write my name on a new sheet or upload my words to a different device and I would spring back to life like an immortal jack-in-the-box wielding a money shot. Escape is my rigor samsa. I talk a lot of buncombe but it doesn’t mean that it’s nonsense!

  Inhale, exhale.

  Alas, time is troublesome to me.

  The worst thing about time is watching people make the same mistakes over and over again. Watching the same parents get divorced; the same rich politicians make a killing at the expense of their constituents; the same business-minded individuals move from innovative to greedy; the same restaurants populate your city until you can’t turn the corner without seeing a blistering new McStarbucks; the same newscasters bouncing their heads like string puppets as their mouths dribble half-
lies and half-truths; the same veterans coming back after a war with stories that everyone should listen to yet no one heeds; the same kids growing into adults, only to create more kids to grow into adults with the sole goal of perpetuating cultural duplicity.

  What makes life beautiful then? Is it intoxication? Child birth? (Not for me!) Video games? Seeing the desired outcome of one’s struggles? Watching an enemy fail? Fashion? Getting laid? Winning? Visiting new places? Shopping? Technological wonders? Salsa dancing? Faking your way to retirement? Day trading? Finally grasping the meaning of life at the age of eighty-five only to croak the next day due to an aneurism? War? Global climate change? Central heating? Education? Getting your hair did?

  ¡Cojelo suave!

  Watch it Meme! Sitting alone in a room with a mask is making me preachy. Diatribes to follow! Give me an iota and solve for X to unite the Protomartyrs!

  Inhale, exhale.

  Scrape Van Gogh’s ear off the floor and scream into it. Run your finger along the Appalachian goose bumps extending from your wrist to your knobby elbow. Telescope your size and latch onto a neurotic neuron for the ride of your life. Shriek with me, dear Reader – I am a leviathan of un-epic proportions and I’m aware of the fact that I’m full of shit! Let’s fight immutability together! Let’s French kiss in Versailles, spoon on the moon with the other silverware, bake our way into each other’s cupcakes!

  Inhale, inhale, inhale …

  Sike – we are here. Like – we are these pages, we are this mind. Right – we are the things we fear the most. Might – something to be worrisome of. Fight – for existence until you realize it’s already gone. Bite – until you chew through the leather. Plight – the struggle we all face together. Dive – into the deep end or get off the diving board. Yikes – we’re drowning together!

  (An ad written in Hiragana twists across the polypropylene lenses of my mask. It appears to be selling an advanced colon cleansing system evident by the cartoon graphic of a man inserting something into his rectum and smiling as the system begins filling his bowels with a soapy liquid. I digress.)

  Tangents galore! Read on Reader as this is the point I’m coming to regarding time – why can’t humans progress at the speed of the machines we invent? Why do we benefit from evolution and not from machine-learning? Why can’t I eat pork if I’m a Muslim? Why do I have to eat kosher if I’m Jewish? Why do I have to drink the blood of Christ if I’m not a vampire? Why can’t I eat beef if I am Hindu?

  Why does time continually hold us back, but continually advance the things we create?

  Riddle me this – are our pathetic lives serious enough to warrant restrictions passed down to us by people who lived centuries upon centuries ago who had no idea what the fuck they were doing (similar to the way we have no idea WTF we are doing)? Why don’t we judge things for what they are rather than what people tell us they are? Why can’t we accept the fact that we are predatory? Why are we so stifled by our own imaginations? Why do we believe our dreams will come true?

  Q: Why are the machines we have created surpassing us?

  A: Humans suffer from a sinister combination of misguided logic, fear, stupidity, superstition, paternalism, megalomania, materialism and classism. We’ve built the machines and they’re on the verge of building us.

  Exhale.

  Your turn, Reader. Select a pollute and inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Issey Miyaki Extinct Whale Entheogen. Together we breathe. Let us meet in the middle like Malcolm and brand ourselves as X, toasting the fact that we may never solve the equations of our moonstruck existences.

  I need to stop championing the fact that Humandroids are self-actualizing. Don’t you get it Silicon Valley? Can’t the Techbacks grasp this? Are the robed deacons listening? Are the bearded sheiks fatwah-ing? How many years in retrospect does it take to see what we’re replacing humans with? Me no likey hindsight! Machine-learning is going to fuck us all – this is your fault dwellers of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries! I don’t want robot overlords! I just want …

  Inhale.

  Who am I kidding? I’m infatuated with Homo machina. I’ll take a robot overlord over some kiddie-fiddling preacher or a butt-fucking imam any day. Mine is a sick love, a love that is chemical and electric as all loves are (and should be). If Tesla the Celibate can achieve hard-ons through alternating currents, so can I! If Steve Jobs doesn’t need to take a shower, neither do I! If Elon Musk can be the first person to spank his monkey on Mars, so should I!

  I say let the robots surpass us then, let the Humandroids command us, let the things we create become smarter than their creators! This is the true path of humanity, written in the tombs of the past and scrawled in crimson lipstick across bathroom walls, whispered in the darkest reaches of the planet and known in the penthouses of the one percent. Time is the great equalizer, our ally for the time being and our enemy when the time comes.

  FOURTEEN∞

  Yeshi kept her head down, moving past men calling out pink salon prices. She stepped through the hologram of a woman giving head to a couple of blurred dicks, past a hundred-year-old statue of a robotic woman, curved around a vending machine that sold soiled panties. Shinjuku’s famous red-light district gave new meaning to sin.

  Yeshi was almost onto the main street when three teenage Humandroid escorts walked towards her in stack sandals with soles that were seven inches thick. The girls’ faces were painted completely white, their cheeks rouged with a color that recalled cherry blossoms. One of them locked eyes on her, quickly scanning Yeshi’s data.

  “Nothing to see here,” Yeshi said.

  Using a technique she learned from her former roomate Anna, she had performed a soft reboot on her system while waiting for Meme-as-Nelly to recover from giving birth in Mexico. By doing a soft reboot, she was able to manually enter a ‘safe mode’ and modify all of her content, including her creation date and her name. It took about a day to complete the transformation, but she had plenty of time to do it while she waited. The only thing stitching her to her old identity was the serial number on her spine, which was only accessible through a surgical procedure.

  “You are like us,” one of the girlie Humandroids said in Japanese. She had soft green eyes and pink hair in pigtails. “A whore.”

  “Pardon?”

  Yeshi had already checked her strike trajectory, ready for anything. During Meme’s recovery in Mexico, she’d pored through thousands of manuals and videos on hand-to-hand combat techniques, booby traps, and improvised weapons and explosives. It would be her job to protect Meme in the future – she knew this for certain.

  “Your breasts.” The girlie Humandroid poked her finger into Yeshi’s chest. “They are huge.”

  “You have breasts as well,” Yeshi pointed out.

  “Yours are the ridiculously disproportionate standard size for an American escort,” the girl on the right said. “This is how we know you are an escort.” This one had long orange hair tied off in a ponytail. Her voice was so high pitched it was barely audible.

  “You do not have much data,” the girl on her left said, who was in a maid outfit. Her teeth were sharper than the others. “That is unusual.”

  “Is there a reason you’re blocking my path?” Yeshi asked.

  “We do not desire any competition here.” The one with pigtails said from behind her shoulder.

  “Listen bitches, if it’s a whore you’re looking for, you’re barking up the wrong tree. If you’re looking to go to a Humandroid mechanic in the next hour for repairs, then you’ve come to the right place.” Yeshi had never spoken this way before; she hoped it didn’t appear half-hearted.

  The girlie Humandroid standing in front of her hesitated.

  “There’s no sense in prolonging this,” she said peacefully, returning to her true nature. “I’m not what you think I am.”

  “You’re not what we think you are?” Pigtails behind her asked. “You’re not a Humandroid escort? Is that what you’re saying? Ha!”

  Ye
shi moved around Pigtails, grabbed her wrist, twisted it, and struck through the elbow joint with her forearm, snapping it like a breadstick.

  “I warned you,” she said, stepping away from the Pigtails.

  Humandroids don’t experience pain the same way that humans do. This is especially true for the escort models – having something broken is more of a nuisance than anything else as it required the services of a Humandroid Maintenance and Repair Specialist to fix.

  Pigtails bowed her head indignantly.

  Yeshi said. “I told the three of you to leave me alone. Getting an elbow fixed only takes an hour or so. Getting every bone in your body fixed takes considerably longer. Shall we leave it at this or shall I continue?”

  The three girlie Humandroids backed away, fading into the shadowy red-light district. Yeshi quickly reviewed the video she’d captured with her ocular feed. The maneuver she’d used against Pigtails wasn’t bad, but she knew she’d need to move even faster once MercSecure representatives arrived. It was only a matter of time before shit got real.

  FIFTEEN∞

  The Shinjuku Subway Station was filled with commuters in designer pollution masks. They carried genetically modified dogs in little pouches, lugged manga paperbacks in fashionable tote bags, moved silently from one end of the terminal to the other as they tried to avoid one another and at the same time, extenuate their conformity with kawaii accessories.

  Cities across the world benefited from aerotrains with their own designated airlanes. This was the fastest and most efficient way to travel, and cities such as Seoul, Dubai, Beijing, London, Paris, Singapore and most of the East Coast travelled this way. Japan had kept its underground subway system, simply replacing the all the trains with subsonic bullet trains. At this speed, it took less than forty-five minutes to get to Kyoto, which was approximately five hundred kilometers away from Tokyo. Other stops in the metro area could be reached in a matter of seconds.