It was perhaps one revelation too many, at least from Nova, as both Corona and Gecko took in a deep breath and held it at the news. Their bodies had clenched up and gone into Medieval Castle mode, turned to stone in an effort to repel any more lobs of insight against their psyches. Nova noticed they both took on an earthier smell, as the bacteria on their underarms exploded in response to the variety of new psychic tensions leaking out their bodies and their nano rushed to compensate.
“And you, Corona?” Gecko asked.
Corona flitted her attention between Gecko and Nova. “I guess I live to be in the middle of you two extremists. I want to balance being and becoming, being here and now, and being anywhere but here and now.” Considering she was walking between them, Nova thought the unwitting body language said it all. “I don’t want to strive so hard to become something I’m not that I lose all ability to be comfortable in my own skin.” Nova could feel Gecko flinch at the comment. Though Nova could tell she didn’t mean it as a dig.
“Techa, could we be any more right for each other?” Nova asked.
“I was thinking just the opposite,” Gecko said, with that stiff, armored voice and body language of his. “We’re like primal forces that will just keep pulling at each other until we tear each other apart.”
They walked on in silence for a bit pondering the point after his proclamation.
“Take the lead, Nova,” Gecko said after a bit. “Take us wherever you want to go.”
“Why?”
“I need to observe you when your guard is down if I’m going to know how to fuck with you.”
“There was a time when I would have decked you for a comment like that. As it is, I can tell it just means you’re warming up to me.”
Gecko’s sheepish grin became more wolfish, perhaps because he didn’t want Nova getting too comfortable with knowing what Gecko’s actual intentions were.
“If you’re just looking for clues on how to activate the god gene in him,” Corona said, “you can just access all our memories together through my neural net.”
“I’ve already done that.”
“You came in and out of my mind without my knowing!” Corona blared more shocked than defensive.
“He’s different with you than he will be with me or someone else,” Gecko said, ignoring Corona’s outburst.
“Not that different!” Nova said defensively.
“Oh, really?” He picked Nova up and lifted him off the ground and pressed him against a light post. He wrapped Nova’s legs around his waist and started kissing him. “Stop it.” Gecko ignored him and pressed on with his amorousness. Nova felt his protests getting more and more feeble the louder he crooned. “Change for me,” Gecko kept whispering in between his tongue work and his stroking Nova. “Change for me.” Each time he said it he sounded more urgent, more desperate, more pleading, more like he was the one begging to be released.
Nova changed into female form. He wasn’t fully conscious of it until he heard Corona gasp. Until he felt Gecko’s hardness between his legs, and it wasn’t the same sensation as when Lockner had come inside him. Because Gecko had entered by way of her vulva, not her ass. The more Gecko begged for it, the more at Nova’s mercy he was, the more Nova attuned to her new role as a goddess. She was even more beautiful than Corona in this guise; she could see it in Gecko’s eyes and in Corona’s longing smile.
They had, all three of them, lost consciousness of where they were. Time and space flowed around them, not through them; they were in their own bubble. Nova wasn’t even tempted to ask Gecko, “How are you doing this?” Despite Gecko spiking his pheromones to prompt the shift, it was Nova who was in control. She owned Gecko, could have ripped his heart out of his chest if she wanted to. His defenses were entirely down. It could have been one of Gecko’s mind games; he was sophisticated enough to simply be acting a part. But Nova just knew it wasn’t so. And she realized something else.
Gecko had just impregnated her.
As he’d impregnated Corona.
Now that did feel like an endgame Gecko was working on to which the other two weren’t privy. Whatever it was, Nova let him have his secrets for now. She was good enough at reading human nature that she might have pried the truth loose. But for right now, the activation of the god gene within her had freaked her out. She wasn’t sure how it set with her “being” nature versus the “becoming” nature of the transhumans. Was it a violation of her raison d’etre or an acknowledgement of it? She was too panicked to tell. The spiking anxiety shut down the reaction, and Nova started reverting back into male form.
Gecko let him down. Their smart clothing resealed around their genitalia. For the first time they became conscious of others again. But no one had much noticed what had gone on between them. As much of life in Robo-Retroville happened high up in the air as it did in the Jetsons cartoon, with private aircars zipping people to and from their daily commutes. And pedestrians on the ground were zipping merrily along to fulfill middle class shopping fantasies in a more egalitarian age where everyone enjoyed more or less the same amenities. So they too had little attention to spare on the three outsiders.
“That was weird,” Nova said.
Gecko pushed him hard, but Nova detected the playfulness in the gesture all the same. While Nova was stumbling to catch his balance, Gecko said, “you’re such a pussy anyway. Boy pussy, girl pussy, no big difference really.”
“Careful, Gecko. Or I might just make you beg for me in boy form,” Nova said.
Gecko tightened so much Nova heard his back and knees and ankle and elbow joints cracking. Nova laughed. “See how that plays with your macho man image.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Gecko threatened.
“You just got a glimpse of the god gene, barely activated. Who knows what I can do with sufficient provocation? Go ahead, provoke me, Gecko.”
Corona smiled. Probably because it wasn’t too often that she saw Gecko out of control and squirming.
Nova let him off the hook. He wasn’t much interested in playing mind games with Gecko, to tell you the truth; that was his thing. Nova needed to finish decompressing from what just happened to him. And Gecko did say to take the lead.
Nova whistled for a taxi. The Jetsons-era aircar dutifully buzzed them before circling and hovering. It looked more like an egg poacher than an aircar, but that was designer-consistent with everything else Jetson-era around here, Nova thought. The three climbed in. “Your nearest poker establishment, please,” Nova said to the dashboard AI. “Something seedy, and underground with only the most inveterate gamblers.”
The taxi whizzed off with a “Yes, sir.”
Both Corona and Gecko were glaring at him. “What? I never gambled before. Figured it was time I parlay my ability to read people into something useful.”
“What could possibly be of use playing such a game at a time like this?” Gecko asked. Nova didn’t immediately respond. His mind was lost wondering what became of their child while he was in male form. Maybe it remained dormant and only resumed growing when he changed back into female form. Maybe the female version of him existed in another timeline opened by the god gene. He’d lost access to the god gene so the truth was he didn’t really know. He came back into the moment and tried to remember Gecko’s question. When he did, he said, “When you’re on the right track, the godhead rewards you with synchronicities. Things you hear or see, words of wisdom coming out of someone’s lips or scrolling across a billboard, that are just what you need to hear to advance on your journey. My ability to read you two is becoming a big part of balancing this three-way see saw, so I want to continue sharpening my skills.”
Gecko and Corona snorted in tandem and said in the same two part harmony, “There is no Godhead.”
“Maybe that’s why you transhumanists are so determined to play god yourselves. If he doesn’t exist then you have to create him, because one way or another you still need him. You don’t have half the strength to stand on your own two feet you think y
ou have.”
“And that’s why you stopped evolving,” Gecko said. “Because you rely on an imaginary entity to do the heavy lifting for you. You believe that somehow everything will work out magically in the end. The Jews who stayed in Germany in the ramp up to World War II thought the same thing. Ask them how that worked out for them.”
“Me thinks you doth protest too much,” Nova said smiling and whistling.
“And if there were a God,” Gecko said, “the first sign you’d get from him is that we’re definitely on the wrong path.”
“Maybe,” Nova said. “But it was the first idea to pop into my head. So however strange and innocuous it seems, even to me, I figured it might have bubbled up from my unconscious for a reason. Maybe learning to dialogue with my unconscious mind better is the way to access the god gene.”
Gecko was gesturing, prepared to hit him with another salvo before he quieted himself down at Nova’s last words. He snorted. A feeble “maybe” ushered forth from his lips. He shifted in his seat and gazed at Corona who looked even less on board with Nova’s idea than Gecko did. “Access to the quantum realm is reputedly through the unconscious. Our conscious minds just can’t process things fast enough to dialogue with eternity. Makes sense that the best way to activate his god gene would be through a better rapport with his unconscious.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Corona said, biting her nails. Nova hadn’t seen her do that in a while.
“I love this place,” Nova said staring out the windshield. All the aircars had glass bubble domes that permitted seeing into one another’s aircars, so he could confirm for himself the happy, confident, goal-oriented expressions on all the citizenry, mostly headed forth in family units. He’d forgotten how pro-nuclear family the Jetsons cartoon was. Sadly the real future would favor single individuals over families, even single-parent families.
Most children were born of multigenic parents, meaning three or more, all wanting to transfer only the best genes to the next generation, and to counter the limitations of their own germ line. Having three or more parents, however, meant each was a lot less vested in the outcome of the child. It was assumed nature and nurture—handled by the public sector would take care of the rest. For the most part it did now that society had been restructured as one giant mentoring machine. No longer were schools and jobs designed to hold you in place so the hierarchy could remain forever as it was. Instead, each level of mind power above you existed for the sole purpose of uplifting and evolving you. Self-transcendence wasn’t just built into the transhuman genome, it was built into society. The intelligence explosion depended on it to sustain itself like a nuclear fusion reaction. Nova, wanting no part of it, wasn’t surprised to find he felt more at home here in Retro-Roboville.
***
“Why are you cackling, Stupido?” the robot seated opposite of Nova at the poker table said. He had the ability to crunch the metal plates in his face together to make somewhat convincing frowns and grimaces. The operative word in that phrase was “somewhat.” All the robots seated around the table looked a little silly. They had chosen Nova’s nickname of Stupido after Gecko made some remark to the effect of, “Relax, guys, he’s as stupid as you are.” The harsh comment had nonetheless gotten Nova a seat at the poker table.
“You ain’t got squat, Copper Face,” Nova said gleefully. “I got you.”
“I’ll have you know I have major bupkus. And you are one card away from the giant robo-compactor in the sky.”
“You want a piece of this, Ratchet Head?” Nova said, panning to Copper Face’s left. Ratchet Head did what ratchet heads do, spun his head back and forth, and elongated his grooved neck, reminiscent of a carjack cranking up. It was his way of showing pensiveness. Ratchet Head sighed and collapsed the jack of his neck, throwing in his hand. “Think I’ll pass. The cards have been making evil faces at me all morning. I think this deck is haunted.” Ratchet Head was schizophrenic, so he saw faces giving him the evil eye everywhere. He just didn’t have much by way of long-term memory, so his haunted reality was a perpetual revelation to him.
Nova panned his head to Copper Face’s right. “Well, Numb Nuts, what’s it going to be?”
Numb Nuts had a head that was all nuts of different sizes. He rotated them against one another and telescoped his face towards the cards in his hand. Shook his head. “This isn’t looking good. Not good at all.” He collapsed his face back to two-dimensions, or so it seemed from Nova’s perspective, and dropped his cards. “I’m out.”
“You’re just out of it, Numb Nuts. There’s a difference.” Copper Face cackled at his own joke. The others joined in.
Nova twitched his eyebrows and said, “I see you one elbow joint and I raise you one pass-through-heart.” He set the items down in the pot between them as Copper Face’s eyes went wide.
“What’s a pass-through-heart?” Copper Face said, holding it up in front of him.
“No heartbeat. Run silent, run deep. Stealth mode, buddy. You’ll be able to sneak up on anyone with one of those. Maybe you can become a master thief.” Nova could tell from Copper Face’s shifting expressions that the idea appealed to him. He set the heart down, checked his own pile for what he had to bet of comparable value. He dropped a keycard on the pile.
And smiled.
“It’s an all-night pass to Droidina’s,” Copper Face said.
“Who’s Droidina?”
There were gasps around the table at Nova’s cluelessness, then laughter. “Can tell this one has never gotten any,” Ratchet Head said, his head still spinning in disbelief. The rocker arm on his head was turning this way and that parallel to the ground, whereas earlier it was turning perpendicular to the ground. This was Ratchet Head’s way of showing disbelief.
“Droidina,” Copper Face said, leaning in conspiratorially, “is Robo-Retroville’s answer to droid prostitutes.”
“Definitely puts the rest of them to shame,” Numb Nuts said zooming his face in and out in fond recollections of the last time he was with her.
Gecko and Corona, watching from the sidelines, couldn’t help but smile. In Corona’s case, she had to put her hand over her mouth to cover her chuckle.
Nova didn’t even want to think what would happen to him trying to have a romp with a defective droid that hadn’t been serviced by the Tinkerer in a while, but he had to put on a joyful, cat-that-just-ate-the-canary face for Copper Face’s benefit, or spoil everyone’s fun.
“Sounds like a fair swap to me he said.” Sterner, he prodded, “Now show ’em.”
Copper Face dropped his hand; it was a straight flush. He cackled. “Top that, Numb Nuts. Ah, sorry, I meant, ‘How’s that for a slap in the face, Stupido!”
Nova just held his impish smile until Copper Face’s laughter stopped and he started looking increasingly concerned. “You’re bluffing,” Copper Face said. “Humans have that thing they do when they bluff. They look all intelligent.”
Nova laid down two cards from his hand face up, a pair of clubs, two’s high. Kept the rest of his cards face down. “Got ya!” he said. The others laughed and Copper Face whooped it up. Nova had him beat, but couldn’t do that to him; the pass-through heart meant everything to Copper Face, and the pot didn’t exactly mean anything to Nova. Forget that Copper Face would have to replace all his squeaking joints before he could sneak up on anybody.
“’Fraid I have to call it a night, boys,” Nova said, getting up.
“No!” came the chorus. Not surprisingly. He’d been losing big to everyone all night to pump up their egos. Truth was, Nova had had the time of his life, but there had been no synchronicities in evidence here tonight. If God was talking to him, Nova was proving tone deaf. Gecko had called his bluff and won. Sadly, for the purposes of cracking the code further on the god gene, or upping their game against the ubermind and whoever was hacking it, the evening was a total bust.
Gecko, who had been passing the time repairing the feet of one of the robots, sighed. “Think that’s about all I can do for
you.”
“Best foot massage and pedicure I ever had!” the little droid said, trying out his new feet. He could suddenly walk like a young robot again, and not look like every step was shooting arthritic pains up his spine.
***
Corona had been running overlays to add to the humor of the moment, as she watched the poker game in progress in some underground garage in Robo-Retroville. Imagining Copper Face chewing a silly cigar, wearing a Mad Hatter’s purple top hat, and a lime green wool scarf around his neck. Ratchet Head she had petting a robo-Chihuahua seated on the table, whose neck ratcheted up with excitement just as Ratchet Head’s did every time he was petted. The dog also placed his bets for him.
She’d been counseling Numb Nuts’ Cheshire cat seated at the table. “I’ve been having dreams of drowning in a sea of catnip,” Cheshire said. “Every time I sink below the surface the drowning fleas bore a hole through me to escape the water. I think, ‘Why would they do this? I’m not hollow inside.’ But it turns out I am. Nothing but hot air. They gasp and relax once inside. But I sink to the bottom even faster with all the holes in me. What do you think it means?”
“Possibly that your litter box needs cleaning, or you’re experiencing guilt over your catnip fantasies, or you secretly hate yourself for being so self-absorbed you’re a world onto yourself.”
“Nah, can’t be that simple.”
Corona smiled. Her overlays were a dim effort to help her think rationally from inside a dreamlike, surreal world, just in case Gecko, or Techa forbid, Neuro-Tech try to come at them in their dreams. When their defenses were down.
She wasn’t running her neural net over the mindnet, just off of her own imagination and what the neural net could data-mine from her neuronal web encoded memories. So she figured she wasn’t violating Gecko’s rule to stay off-grid.
The God Gene (Age of Abundance Book 2) Page 15