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

by Harmon Cooper

  FORTY-THREE∞

  Armored, masked and helmeted, Bill Bleak stood in the center of his very unhappy security detail. They were in the main lobby of the BlurYou building in Seattle, separated from the parking lot by a motoglass door. The rest of BlurYou was locked down and deserted; the employees had fled to the EOTWAWKI bunker in the basement in record time.

  “Mr. Bleak, I don’t think … ”

  “TAKE me to the goddamn parking lot. That’s an order!”

  The Assistant Team Leader and five of the detail fanned out of the door and formed a cordon. Bleak could see a column of smoke over their heads. Whatever had happened was close.

  The Team Leader opened the door and yelled, “Two coming out!” as she and Bleak exited the building. “Stick close, sir. Follow me.” The last team member took a knee inside the door as the six outside folded around Bleak and the Captain.

  “Contact front!” the leading team member shouted.

  “HALT! HANDS UP OR WE WILL FIRE!”

  “Contact?” Bleak asked. “A person?”

  “A woman,” the security team leader said.

  “Let me see!” Bleak pushed through them and saw a woman who looked exactly like the MercSecure droid who’d assaulted him in LA. She stood in front of a black MercSecure aeros that had crashed into some of the employees’aeros in the parking lot. Her knees were slightly splayed and her hands were pressed against her temples, as if she had a pounding headache.

  “Holy SHIT! Shoot her!” Bleak yelled hoarsely. “SHOOT HER NOW!”

  “No! Don’t shoot, PLEASE!” The woman shouted. “I’m Gene X … I’m … ” She fell to her knees. “Please, please don’t shoot me. Bill Bleak! I’m here for Bill Bleak! GENE X!”

  “Approach her cautiously!” Bleak’s mind raced back and forth like a Richard Gere Gerbil ® up a celebutard’s butt. Did she say Gene X? “Who has ocular enhancements!?”

  “I do, sir,” another guard said.

  “Scan her!”

  The guard did as instructed; his mouth dropped open and he lowered his weapon.

  “What is it!?” Bleak asked, jittery with anticipation.

  “She’s … both.”

  “I’m Meta,” the woman said, raising her hands over her head.

  “Step aside,” Bleak told his men.

  “But sir … ” said the guard with the ocs.

  The team leader caught his eye, shook her head slightly, pointed to her eyes with two fingers and then described a horizontal circle with her pointer finger. Watch all around.

  Bleak pushed through them and nearly tripped over his own feet. “You’re … the results of the Gene X Project?” he asked. Bleak knew instantly that she wasn’t Rinchi. The woman didn’t have the subtle tells of a Humandroid, nor had her eyes dilated. There was something completely human about her movement.

  “What happened?” Bleak asked.

  “I need your help!” Meta said, sobbing lightly.

  A crying Humandroid? She’s not a Humandroid!

  “Help?” he asked, moving closer to her. “What do you mean?”

  “I need you to take the DL agent out of my back. They’ll kill me! They’ll kill me! I’ve disconnected from iNet, but they can still detonate the DL agent.”

  “Who?”

  “MercSecure!” she cried. “I broke free, I stole the aeros … had to kill the driver when he tried to stop me … ” Meta nodded over her shoulder at the smoking vehicle.

  “And you came here? Why?”

  “I saw your press conference,” Meta said defiantly. Her eyes flashed with fury. “I knew that you would help me. I knew you would understand. I have no one else to turn to but you.”

  Bleak nodded, his chest filling with the pride of being a hero, of being someone’s last resort. His eyes blinked shut and he sent a message to his assistant.

  Bleak: Contact Dr. Palmer at the Seattle Institute of Biomimetic Sciences. He’ll know what to do.

  His voice hardened as he said, “Guards form a perimeter! We’re taking her to the hospital!”

  FORTY-FOUR∞

  “So you guys have someone on the inside?” I asked Tim7.

  Memito here. Yes, this is still my story, although it has ballooned into something else entirely. I guess that’s just the way the psyche crumbles.

  “Yes, Sauria’s personal assistant droid, Heidi. This is how we knew about the tracking device they attached to your aeros transport.”

  “Why doesn’t she show us her video feed?”

  “She doesn’t want to appear suspicious in any way,” he said. “She updates me in batches through a language we invented.”

  “A language? That’s right, Yeshi told me about this.”

  “Heidi sends one update a day, unless it is something urgent, like the tracking beacon.”

  Breakfast finally comes – toast with bacon and eggs and cream cheese. Thank God for food. I almost take my sunglasses off to eat (it’s a principles thing) but I decide against it. I’d rather keep my pink eyes to myself for the time being.

  Tim7 continues while I stuff my face. “We’ve thought about having Heidi kill Sauria, but that wouldn’t solve the problem. There is a Board of Directors with lists of potential candidates to replace him. Having seen these lists, Sauria may be the least evil out of all of them. Hence our mission to disrupt, rather than overt opposition.” The way Tim7 says this hints that part of him would like to overtly oppose Sauria right into the grave, but at the same time, he knows better.

  “So you guys didn’t dose me just to think of a way to disrupt, did you?” I ask with my mouthful.

  Dr. Hewman laughs. “No! And we didn’t dose you, you dosed yourself.”

  “Putting a bowl of M&Ms in front of a fat kid and telling him he can’t eat them is sort of fucked up.”

  “Fair enough,” the good doctor says, “but the reason the red snail was placed where it was placed was more about your pollute addiction, rather than a strategy. That being said, your idea of switching with Sauria is brilliant. It needs some work, but it is brilliant.”

  “Did you really think it would cure me?” I ask. Noah brings out a pot of coffee. He’s wearing a frilly apron and an Easter-y cravat, looking dandier than Wanking Willy Wonka at Studio 54.

  “It worked for me,” Dr. Hewman said.

  “You were into pollutes?”

  “Pollute cigarettes. I tried the red snail cure and I haven’t smoked one since.”

  “Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” I say, grinning at Nelly. “But I’m not exactly cured. Or at least I don’t feel cured. Let’s put it this way, if someone busted out some BlackAgua USA Morning Body Dump, I’d be all over that shit right about now. All over it.

  Tim7 rolls his eyes and shakes his head in a very credible what a fucking surprise gesture.

  “Hold on lil’ Timmy,” I say, sipping my coffee. “That being said, I’m totally committed now. I may partake from time to time, but not if it jeopardizes the mission in any way. I’m not a cured man; I am a changed man.”

  Tim7’s expression changes just enough to convey what a buncha bullshit. (I am moved to observe that he’s picked up quite a repertoire of human gestures and expressions, and that the Dr. Lamar part of me is just delighted – he really has come a long way.)

  “As I was saying, I’m committed and I’ll try and watch my pollute partaking.”

  Dr. Hewman says, “That’s fine, Meme.”

  Nelly asks, “So we’re going to LA?”

  “I miss LA!” Noah shouts from the kitchen. “The valley is part of my soul!”

  While Noah blabbers on about the best places to shop in LA, I quickly wolf down my breakfast sandwich.

  Me: Damn, I wish you could eat this. It’s better than crack!

  Yeshi: You smoked crack?

  Me: Of course not. I don’t do hard drugs. How dare you stereotype me!

  Yeshi: Haha. :-p

  “Noah! Another sandwich,” I say with a portion of the old sandwich still in my mouth.r />
  “Coming right up, Meme.”

  “Memito!”

  Dr. Hewman says. “This operation may take a couple of weeks to set up. Once it is planned, I suggest leaving Noah and the baby here, and the three of you going to LA.” He looks from Yeshi to Nelly to yours truly – the former man, the killer nymph, the addict.

  “Got it,” Nelly says, finishing her coffee.

  “And no killing Sauria like you did Antimeria,” Tim7 tells her. “That complicated things considerably this time. If the three of you didn’t already know, Manuel is dead and Rinchi has been recovered.”

  I nearly drop my cup. “Manuel is dead?”

  “Fed to his own pit bulls,” Tim7 says in a low voice. “What a way to go … ”

  I nearly take off my sunglasses and snap them in half. Nearly. While Manuel and I weren’t exactly homeboys, he was my amigo, and he did do me the service of getting me the fuck out of Dodge when shit was going down. I’ll need to pour a forty out on the curb for him later.

  “Rinchi has been recovered?” Yeshi asks.

  “Yes and she’s being repaired now,” Tim7 says. “I’ll transfer you all the details I have on her rescue. They are … interesting to say the least.”

  Dr. Hewman says, “The point remains – once Meme has made the switch with Sauria, we need to keep the big man alive. If we can actually pull this off, we’ll need to play by the books. Having Sauria could provide leverage later. No winging it, no screw ups.”

  “I’ll make sure she doesn’t kill him,” Yeshi says, nodding at Nelly. “I’ll also provide as much protection as possible.”

  “I won’t kill him. Antimeria and I had some … some … issues to work through, issues that could only be dealt with by me killing him.” She kisses baby Rebel on the forehead, as if this sweet motherly gesture can cover the fact that she killed her baby’s sperm donor.

  “So what do we do until then?” I ask. “It has been a pretty … pretty fucktaculous last couple of weeks.”

  “Fucktaculous?” Tim7 asks.

  “It’s the first word that came to me,” I tell him. “What I’m trying to say is that we need a break. Yeshi, Nelly, Noah, Rebel and … Okay, that’s everyone. Yes, a break.”

  Dr. Hewman clasps his hands together. “Great, relax and enjoy Cuba; this will give us some time to work on the logistics of all this.”

  I smile. “Good, I’m glad we cleared that up. I’d like to start my vacation by getting a tan. Ogawa’s skin is way too pale for my tastes.”

  Nelly shakes her head.

  “What? A day at the beach never hurt anyone. You in?”

  “Sure, Meme,” she says. “Sure.”

  FORTY-FIVE∞

  “It’s working.” Lorem Ipsum paced back and forth in front of Sauria’s desk. Heidi stood in the corner, her hands behind her back. She had unbuttoned the top buttons on her blouse, revealing her well-filled black lace bra.

  “This is genius!” Sauria said. “I can’t believe Meta came up with this, and that it’s working! You see, Lorem? Risks pay off!”

  A video feed from BlurYou”s parking lot was playing on the holoscreen. It showed the crashed aeros being cleaned up and the MercSecure driver’s remains neatly lying in a body bag.

  “I wonder when she’ll reactivate her iNet feed,” Lorem asked.

  “Not for a while,” Sauria said. “She wants to make sure it seems as authentic as possible. Bleak may be able to tell if she’s trying to contact someone. She needs to get on his good side.”

  While Sauria still hadn’t dealt with the Anonymouses? Anonymi? The first Anonymous and then the second one? he was about to deliver a punishing blow to Bleak, whose death needed to look like an accident. Of course, this was also one of Meta’s plans, and what she planned to do would be easier to pull off in a hospital anyway.

  “Would either of you like a beverage?” Heidi asked, springing into action.

  “Sure.” Sauria relaxed into his chair. “Just cucumber water for me. Make sure they take the skin off the cucumber. You know it gives me indigestion.”

  “Mr. Ipsum?”

  “Black coffee with two inches of heavy cream and nutmeg stirred in. Oh, and would you bring it in a non-recyclable styrofoam cup? The recycled cups leave a funny aftertaste and they don’t keep the coffee hot.”

  “No problem,” Heidi said as she stepped out of the room.

  _∞_

  Bill Bleak was in the back of an ambulance holding Meta’s hand.

  The hybrid being was laid out on a stretcher, her vitals projected onto a floating holoscreen. The vehicle hurtled through the air in a special airlane designated for emergency vehicles, its sirens shrieking.

  His security detail had tried to stop him from getting in the vehicle. After all, if her DL agent detonated, the explosion might kill him too. This hadn’t fazed the Tech Icon. He knew she wasn’t going to kill him; he knew that the woman in front of him – an actual mix between a human and a Humandroid – was being honest. Still, two members of Bleak’s security detail sat with him, just in case they were needed.

  “Hurry!” Bleak shouted to the driver.

  “He’s going as fast as the vehicle allows,” one of the security guards said. He was a lanky man with a small head and prominent neck tattoos.

  Bleak scowled. The stupid fuck. He really needed to hire better security, but Pinkerton Security was the only company that compared to MercSecure, which he couldn’t hire on principle. He felt much more protected when South African Max was around, but it would be a while before Max was fit for duty again. Still, Bleak would pay him well for eliminating Keva.

  One step at a time, Bill, he glanced down at the exquisite specimen in front of him.

  “How are you?” he asked Meta, squeezing her hand. God, it feels so real!

  “Headache,” she said with a faint smile.

  Bleak had already separated her face from the face of the Humandroid who’d attacked him. That droid was vile, evil, programmed to kill indiscriminately. Who knew what would have happened if his security detail hadn’t come for him!

  The hybrid being lying on the stretcher in front of him was different. She was real; Bleak didn’t doubt her authenticity for a second. She had a human heart and a human brain – and human courage.

  While what the FCG and Sauria had done was evil, there was something totally engrossing about it, totally impressive. Of course he would never admit this, but all it took was one glance at the woman to remind him just how ingenious humankind was. Money and evil fund more masterpieces than most people could even fathom. Still, progress was progress.

  The aeros began to descend.

  “We’re almost there,” tattoo neck observed.

  “Shut up!” Bleak hissed at the man. “She needs … she needs rest.”

  A smile formed on Meta’s face. “Thanks, Mr. Bleak.”

  “Please, call me Bill.”

  “Thanks, Bill.”

  FORTY-SIX∞

  Later that day.

  Bill Bleak was a ‘breakfast for dinner’ kind of guy, hence the orange juice and bagel and lox sitting on a metal tray in front of him next to a cardboard delivery package plastered with recycling symbols. It was dinnertime – EBAYmazon food delivery drones never failed.

  A smiling Doctor Palmer, the expert in Humandroid physiology, burst through the swiveling door.

  “Good news?” Bleak asked as he set his bagel down.

  “Yes, we removed the DL agent and rendered it safe.”

  “Never mind that,” Bleak said, “how is she? How is Meta?”

  “She’s fine.” The doctor’s brow furrowed. “I must be honest with you – I’ve never seen anything like this before, I mean how they did this … it is groundbreaking, Mr. Bleak. Truly stunning. It deserves further study.”

  “She’s not an it, she’s a she! Is she conscious now? Is she able to speak?”

  “Meta is fine. Like a Humandroid, she has tactile perception but doesn’t perceive pain as such, and they’ve also fl
ashed the pain receptors in her brain, so she’s completely immune to pain.”

  “I see.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a few days to perform some scans and other tests. I still have yet to figure out how they managed to merge human and Humandroid in such a clever way. When I was at Stanford, I took a theory class on the conversion of the two species, but most of this was in relation to people with cybernetic enhancements–”

  “Sorry to cut you off, Doctor,” Bleak said, “but she’s going home with me tonight. I’ve already arranged a place for her to stay. She’s already a target and I’d prefer that she not be at a hospital with civilians around.”

  “But – ”

  “Doctor, that will be enough. Can I see her now?”

  The doctor looked very seriously at Bleak for a moment.

  “Well?”

  “Right this way, Mr. Bleak.”

  _∞_

  “Still no word on Meta?” Heidi asked. She had just returned to Sauria’s office with Connard Branleur. Connard was in a blue suit with subtle pinstripes, dapper as ever.

  “Nothing,” Sauria said.

  Branleur sat, already having been prepped on the matter at hand. He had come from a California Ethics Committee meeting and still had his Business Executives for National Security pin on his lapel. “Have you checked all hospital feeds in the area?” he asked.

  Lorem nodded. His shirt was now untucked and his tie loosened. “ExEx has run everything it can possibly get its hands on.”

  “Well surely she had a hospital that she was planning to go to,” Branleur said.

  “She did, but she didn’t go there.”

  “Did you follow the ambulance?” he asked.

  Sauria shook his head. “Meta was supposed to release a few B-drones as soon as she… landed. She didn’t, and now we have no idea where she is. Like Lorem said, we’re trying to locate her.”

  “Has she gone rogue?”

  “I sure as hell hope not.” Sauria placed his hands over his bulging belly. “Heidi,” he said to his personal assistant and sex toy, “will you place an order for Chinese takeout.”