Year Zero

by Rob Reid

  I caught Carly’s eye, then drifted over and mentioned this to her.

  “I thought that might happen,” she said. “Since you’re so close to the Perfuffinite genome, the planet’s Health Vigilance system probably gave you an ambient wetware upgrade.”

  “You know, I figured it was something like that. Only …”

  “You have no idea what I just said.”

  “Exactly.”

  Carly explained that just like humans, the Refined species are in a constant arms race with the diseases that prey on them. Only while our cures and treatments are like clubs and slingshots, Refined doctors are packing the medical equivalents of kinetic lepton implosion rays.2 Their arsenal includes surveillance systems that constantly monitor the disease base of every Refined planet. When new threats emerge, they develop countermeasures in the form of small changes that can be written right into the genetic code of the local Refined species. Nano delivery systems can distribute these changes throughout an Earth-sized planet in just hours. Once an upgrade enters the body, tiny molecular robots replicate trillions of times, and bring the new instructions into the nucleus of each and every cell, where the changes are entered into the DNA.3

  “Once they’re done, it’s like every part of your body is suddenly operating from a new script,” Carly said. “Even certain physical, structural changes can take place in your body, as trillions of cells shift around to take up new positions.”

  “Wow. So then … where did my cold go?”

  “The planet’s Health Vigilance system probably identified you as a Perfuffinite, checked your DNA, found a bizarrely broken version of the species genome, and updated it. If I’m right, your cold is gone because you’re now genetically immune to it—thanks to a long-ago update to the Perfuffinite genome that you now have.”

  “So you think your doctors came up with a cure for this year’s North American cold virus back in the day?”

  “Actually, I’m sure they came up with cures for all cold viruses back in the day. Along with all flus, infections, cancers, and autoimmune disorders. In fact, I doubt if there’s a remotely common disease that you’re vulnerable to now.”

  “Seriously? That’s … an incredibly valuable gift.” I’d definitely downgrade to a cheap HMO the next time we signed up for insurance plans. And that was just the start …

  “Well, let me verify this before you get too excited.” Carly pulled up her stereopticon and peered at me through it. “I have an app in here that detects genetic version numbers. And you are … up to date with the current Perfuffinite genome. But don’t take my word for it. See if you can do this.” She arched her shoulders back far enough to give a yoga master the creeps.

  I tried the same impossible move, and … found that it was easy. “What happened?” I asked, thoroughly freaked out.

  “Frampton told you that Perfuffinites are double-jointed in the shoulders. So the system identified your lack of double-jointedness as a genetic flaw, and … repaired it.”

  “Christ, that’s eerie,” I said, arching my shoulders again.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t give it much thought. It would change your life if you were a pitcher. But otherwise, it’s just an oddity that I’m sure you’ll forget about.”

  “You know, you’re right,” I said, feeling a bit better. “And it’s not like it’s a visible change that other people can see.”

  “Yeah, well—about that.”

  “What.”

  “I’m sure the system also … fixed the mutation that was depriving you of your six missing toes.”

  “My what?” I ripped off my shoes and socks, and saw that she was right. I now had eight digits at the tip of each foot. They were all proportionately smaller, so my shoes fit fine. But anyone spotting these … tines would run screaming. Now, if I ever actually won Manda’s heart, I’d need an excuse to keep my socks on. For like sixty years.

  All of this seemed to put Carly into a giggling fit, which struck me as awfully insensitive. I was about to chew her out when I realized she was gazing at me through her stereopticon again, and laughing at something that she saw in it.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “Just a junk joke,” she snickered.

  “What’s a junk joke?”

  “Well, every time the bioengineers push out a genetic update, they write a bunch of jokes into the junk DNA. Then the rest of us can read them whenever we scan someone’s genome.”

  “Wait—junk DNA?”

  “Yes. Your body only pays attention to about two percent of your genome. The rest of the DNA’s just along for the ride, which is why it’s called junk. But every base pair can carry two bits of information. That adds up to over a half gigabyte of space for jokes, rumors, graffiti—that sort of thing.”

  “I don’t think I like that.”

  “Well, get used to it. Millions of junk jokes are now written into your cells. Mine, too, and Frampton’s, along with every other Perfuffinite. But don’t worry—it doesn’t affect your health one bit.” She turned to her brother. “Hey, you’re gonna love this new one.”

  “Oh, let’s hear it!”

  “Why did the Octarian Weevil upload its ganglions to both instantiations of the OverNet, instead of just one?”

  “I don’t know, why?”

  “Because it wanted to have … second thoughts!”

  This turned out to be even funnier than my fondness for the Paradise City skyline.

  “Can you please delete that?” I asked after what seemed like ages of cackling.

  “Sure … sure,” Carly said, still giggling. “Junk DNA can be personalized. I’ll log a request with Health Vigilance.” She started manipulating her stereopticon furiously. “There. Within an hour, all the jokes in your cells will be wiped out. And instead, we’ll upload … this!” The chorus of “Never Gonna Give You Up” filled the omnicab. She paused it before she or her brother could slide into that musical delirium of theirs—although by now, the two of them were laughing so hard they could hardly get any giddier.

  “You’re putting a song into my genome?”

  “Sure, there’s a half gigabyte in there,” Carly tittered. “That’s enough room for entire albums. How ’bout some … Simply Red?”

  That put Frampton into hysterics.

  “That’s a really respectful use of the Code of Life,” I grumbled to no one in particular. I not only had sixteen toes to live with, but was now lugging trillions of Rickrolls around in my cells. As Carly and Frampton cackled madly, I went back to my deep breathing. Within seconds, I was sound asleep.

  * * *

  1. Actually, I later learned that they’re more like a race of busboys. Although they showed some early promise after joining the Refined League two billion years back, the Perfuffinites eventually settled for being a migrant labor force scattered across a half-dozen backwater galaxies. They tended toward simple, dirty jobs that were too boring or undignified for more eminent races. Then the fallout from the Kotter Moment hit them with the most implausible windfall since the Big Bang. This was nothing but the dumbest of luck, as most Perfuffinites will bashfully acknowledge. But a few of them confuse their outrageous fortune with Destiny, and write interminable ballads pushing this idea. They drive their audiences crazy whenever they insist on weaving these songs in with their lip sync shows, because the premise is so arrogant, and of course nobody wants to hear their crap music.

  2. I have no idea what these are, but I totally want one.

  3. And yes, strange as it may sound, DNA-like molecular structures are wildly abundant throughout the universe—because it turns out that the ickily-named “panspermia hypothesis” is largely accurate. This posits that the core building blocks of life spread throughout the cosmos by piggybacking on asteroids and comets. Add a high propensity for proto-life-bearing rocks to find their way into Wrinkles (a complex phenomenon that I don’t pretend to understand), and you have a formula for incredibly widespread, distantly related life-forms.

  ELEVEN
>
  BŌNŌ

  I woke up flat on my back in normal gravity. Stretching and blinking, I saw Carly and Frampton doing the same on either side of me, and noticed that the omnicab had popped out of the pit. Darkened mountaintops were now zipping beneath us, as a brilliant night sky spangled above. Moments later we crossed a ridge line, and the floor of a mammoth performance canyon plunged below us. It was an awesome sight. There had to be tens of millions of beings down there, gathered before a stage that was many times larger than a football field, and so brightly lit that it could surely be seen from space. It was surrounded by acres of video screens, and packed with amplifier stacks the size of office towers.

  Carly pointed at a live feed of an energetic singer on the main video screen above the stage. “That’s Dad.”

  He looked like a fifty-something Sonny Bono, only with the shaggy hair, drooping mustache, and groovy threads of the young Sonny of the seventies. As he mouthed lyrics and sashayed across the stage, he made melodramatic crooning gestures that were so exaggerated I thought he might dislocate his neck. After a few seconds, the live feed toggled to a canned scene of Dad running while a sexy blonde chased him in a red Mustang. The background shifted from freeway, to desert, to lunar wasteland as he repeatedly looked back at his hot pursuer in mock terror. Then the scene cut back to a few more seconds of Dad on stage—and then to a slutty Pocahontas stalking our hero through a forest, bow taut and arrow drawn. Then to a bit more live Dad; then to a mob of ecstatic, sobbing teenyboppers; and then finally to a leggy redhead in a trench coat and a fedora chasing Dad through an Egyptian temple at night.

  “I’m kind of dying to hear the audio,” I admitted.

  “Only for a moment,” Frampton said. “Me and Carly can’t afford to freak out right now.” He made a flicking gesture, and the music streamed in briefly. Dad was faking it to “It’s Not Unusual” by Tom Jones. Perfect.

  “So your dad can stop the secret about the Townshend Line from spreading any further?”

  “I suppose he can if he wants to,” Carly said cagily.

  “Great. But how?”

  “Dad’s a very influential journalist,” Frampton gushed.

  I thought journalists were more in the business of spilling secrets than containing them. But I knew better than to press when Carly had made up her mind to be evasive. “I see,” I said. “And can he help us with the Guild, given that they already know the situation?”

  “Maybe,” Carly said. “And no matter what, he should have insights into how they found out. Which could help us figure out how to get them to back down. Anyway, the show’s ending, and we need to get backstage.”

  We dropped violently and leveled off about twenty feet above the ground, where we drifted above a towering rank of creatures who looked like praying mantises in executioners’ hoods. They held tiny flames in their appendages and waved them in humble supplication for an encore, as their fangs dripped acid that made the ground sizzle and burn. We slid forward, passing over acres of vile antlike creatures the size of boxcars. Next were some glowing red cubes whose surfaces were covered with alien text that changed at blinding speeds. Then there were these puppylike critters who danced on their hind legs and backflipped with joy (they were outlandishly cute, but like everyone else down there, they had zero sense of rhythm). Overhead, the sky was dense with soaring raptors that made Mothra look like Tweety Bird.

  Soon we were closing in on the stage, and I could plainly see the great man himself, preening for the folks in the fancy seats. There were at least fifteen guitarists up there, positioned every few dozen yards to give everyone toward the front someone to look at. They windmilled their arms over phony Stratocasters without a trace of synchronization among them. Meanwhile, the dozen-ish drummers made valiant but doomed efforts to fake a beat.1 Inept as they all were, it was charming to see everyone trying so hard to mimic our forms. And this turns out to be the whole point of Zinkiwu—authenticity. No matter how primitive the technology, how awful the design, or how revolting the cuisine (for those who can digest it), if they have it at Lollapalooza, they ape it on Zinkiwu. Thus the set’s patently un-Refined design, and the atrociously Earthly clothes that everyone was wearing onstage.2 The audience members were also in on the game, doing their best to scream like humans, clap their appendages, and sing along.

  As Dad flounced off the stage and the crowd went wild, our omnicab zipped through a gap in the wall of lights, amplifiers, and video screens. Right behind the stage was a small warehouse-like building with an opening in its roof that we dropped through. It was empty inside, apart from a spread of sofas, easy chairs, and lamps that looked to be straight out of Pottery Barn.

  “Welcome to the backstage lounge,” Carly said as we landed next to it.

  “It looks very … Earth-like.” As I said this, Frampton walked right up to a sofa and flopped onto it. Given that he didn’t smash his nose on an invisible wall, I figured that our pod must have soundlessly unfurled a cargo door.

  Carly nodded. “People like to see Earth-like furniture in our shows, because it helps them imagine that we’re always acting human.”

  “So you use this stuff as props onstage?”

  “No, this is where we shoot backstage scenes for our broadcast show. It’s the most popular reality program in the universe.”

  “Wait—the Refined League does reality shows?”

  Carly gave an embarrassed nod.

  “But I thought you were all highbrow. Theater and sculpture, and découpage, right? Are you telling me reality programming is one of your—what do you call them? Noble Arts?”

  “No, it’s a Vulgar Art, clearly,” Carly sniffed.

  “We discovered it when The Osbournes came out,” Frampton said.

  “And the entire universe found the very concept to be perfectly revolting,” Carly added righteously. “But quintillions of metal fans held their noses and watched.”

  “And then—let me guess,” I guessed. “They decided they liked it.”

  “No. Loved it,” Frampton said.

  I nodded. “So now you have your own show. What’s it called?”

  “Sonny & His Sirelings,” Frampton said proudly.

  “It’s named after Dad,” Carly explained. “And it’s about our immediate family, which is about as famous as it gets. Dad’s been famous since the Kotter Moment, because Sonny Bono was already a celebrity back then, and Dad’s obviously a dead ringer for him. Several years went by, and then a couple of singers emerged who looked a lot like me and Frampton.3 And this suddenly turned us into a family with three human celebrity look-alikes.”

  “The only one in the universe,” Frampton said.

  “So when they decided to do an Osbournes knockoff, we were the obvious stars,” Carly added. “Anyway, I’m not exactly proud of Sonny & His Sirelings. But we learned about the Townshend Line situation through our work with it, so it could just save humanity.”

  “Wait—this is the program you guys work for?” I asked.

  “Well, duh.”

  “But I thought it was a government program. Espionage, or something?”

  “That was your own odd conclusion,” Carly reminded me. “I just referred to it as a program.”

  “Well, gee, thanks for not letting me get confused about things.”

  She shot me an icy look. “No problem.”

  I felt like chewing her out, but decided against it. The brief, giggly mood of our trip through the planet’s core was long gone, and Carly was back to her crabby, sarcastic self. What’s with her? I wondered. She was gorgeous and smart—and apparently spectacularly rich and intergalactically famous. So why was she always such a … brat? “So now that I know more about your program,” I said carefully, “could you please tell how it helped you discover the truth about the Townshend Line?”

  Carly shrugged awkwardly. “Sure. Our show has a research staff that rivals the major intelligence services in terms of resources. They’ve cracked into every email server and phone exchange on Ea
rth, and they’re always making huge discoveries. We found out about Schwarzenegger’s love child five years before humanity did. About Lohan’s arrest as it was happening. And we have stuff on Ryan Seacrest that would shock even a Fark reader. Anyway—I don’t know how, because nobody ever tells me anything—but somehow, our team got the facts about the Townshend Line out of the Guardian Council.”

  “Even though it’s the best-kept secret in the universe?”

  She nodded. “They’re that good.” She didn’t sound remotely proud of this.

  “But it won’t be a secret for long, because the truth’s about to get out, right?” I asked.

  Another nod.

  “How so?”

  “We’re uh … going to tell them.”

  “We? As in …”

  “Our program,” Carly finally confessed. “The whole purpose of our research team is to dig up juicy facts about humanity and human celebrities for our writers to weave into our story line. And nothing makes Dad happier than getting a huge scoop.”

  “Remember, he’s a very influential journalist,” Frampton burbled.

  Carly rolled her eyes. “Please. Before the Kotter Moment, he used to serve snacks to a small-time editor in a backwater globular cluster, and he never got over it. He’s about as much of a journalist as a—”

  “Whoa,” I said. “Wait! Let’s not change the subject here. You’re telling me that the entire universe is about to find out about humanity’s complete defenselessness because of your reality show?”

  “Our bad,” Frampton confessed, holding his hands above his shoulders like a surrendering soldier.

  “But it wasn’t our idea!” Carly blurted. “They just handed us these scripts a couple days ago, and had us perform these horrified reactions to learning the truth about the Townshend Line. That was honestly the first that Frampton and I heard about any of this! And even when we were acting out the scene, I figured they were just going to use it for a dream sequence.”