Liminal States

by Zack Parsons

  The door was opening behind me as I blurted out, “I promise.”

  “What’s that?” asked Bishop. “Promises?”

  He swooped in on her, and they kissed. The sight of it sent a shudder through me. His eyes cut to mine as he pressed his lips to Veronica’s and slid his hand across her belly.

  “Such a blushing bride!” he said, his lips marked red by her lipstick. “Well, my dear, I’m afraid you need your rest. Your friend must go now. Say good-bye.”

  “Good-bye,” she said.

  The Gideons in the white coats were already dragging me out of the bedroom apartment. Bishop was on my heels, closing and locking her into the room.

  “Let me go.” I fought against the orderlies.

  “Of course.” Bishop smiled. “Right this way.”

  The Gardeners were waiting on the other side of the door. There were three of them, dressed in dark suits, their faces mine but their hair the same stark white as the man I’d seen through the observation window. They easily overpowered me. Two of them held me pinned against the wall.

  “I said twenty years,” said Bishop. “But the Gardeners felt you needed the fullness of a life of peace and quiet.”

  There was a clicking of metal, and I realized one of the Gardeners was holding the device I’d found in the Center. He raised it toward my head, and I began to fight even harder, kicking and punching at the two men holding me against the wall.

  “Now, now,” said Bishop. “The Undercroft here is much nicer than the Center. You’ll have plenty to do working down there. Lots of jobs to keep you busy. You’ll be a productive member of society again.”

  The metal cradle was cold against my forehead. Calipers closed against my temples, further immobilizing me in the device. The Gardener operating the Harrow pulled the trigger, and the machine’s drilling mechanism began to whir loudly.

  “I will see you in fifty years or so, Mr. Cord,” said Bishop. “Enjoy your rest.”

  The bite of the drill into my flesh was a minor pain, followed immediately by the searing heat of the Harrow against my skull. I squirmed, still fighting it, but no matter how much my body moved, my head remained immobilized within the device. The heat on my skull was excruciating. I screamed, and there was a pop and ...

  1973

  The Sister

  TRANSCRIPT OF A RECORDING OF A MEETING BETWEEN THE PRESIDENT AND ADVISORS IN THE OVAL OFFICE ON MARCH 20, 1973

  Participants: PRESIDENT (POTUS Ronald Whiteacre), HEIDEMAN (White House Chief of Staff Bert Heideman), KISSINGER (National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger), BISHOP (Civilian Economic Advisor Ethan Bishop)

  PRESIDENT: Well, I’m trying to figure out with Bishop what the strategy should be on this, uh, Westward (unintelligible) the real problem here.

  HEIDEMAN: You know my position on that, Mr. President. I’ll, uh, be happy to repeat it in front of him: cut him loose.

  BISHOP: Thanks.

  PRESIDENT: I’ve been a friend of his family for twenty-five years. I can’t do it.

  HEIDEMAN: Then you’ll face a bloodbath in the midterms over this freak show. You’ll give O’Neill the votes he needs to start articles of impeachment.

  BISHOP: The President said he can’t do it, Bert.

  PRESIDENT: I stand by that. I’d like to be paid back with some goddamn honesty. Uh, the ... give me my glasses ... The, uh, Post from this morning, front page, has pictures. You and a retired general named Shiftman, you and Greenwald, you and some engineer working in Alabama. There’s even a picture of your father as a young man. All of them identical.

  KISSINGER: There are also the military men, the Lieutenant Gardener, and the, uh, fighter pilot from the cinema.

  HEIDEMAN: And the women.

  KISSINGER: There is also the matter of the photographs the Israelis passed to CIA. From the Jewish slave doctor working at Buhlendorf. Very incriminating if those leak.

  PRESIDENT: What about that, Ethan? How much of this is true, and, uh, how much is bullshit?

  BISHOP: I’m afraid they’re on to something, Mr. President. Those leaked files are real. Some of the details are wrong, some of the pages missing, but real. Operation Westward was more than rocket tests in the desert.

  PRESIDENT: So I had guessed. So, what was it?

  BISHOP: My father began the project under a different name, without the military’s help, during the Great War. He was experimenting with medical rejuvenations for injured veterans. Ways to regrow limbs and heal lungs burned by gas. It worked, after a fashion, but the treatment had some unintended side effects, including, I am sorry to say, the political consequences for you, Mr. President.

  KISSINGER: The situation is graver than you know. Your therapeutic explanation will not pacify the Soviets. Brezhnev has deployed tanks to the border in East Germany. The Fulda Gap is threatened because they believe the President has violated the laws of decent science to forge an army.

  HEIDEMAN: We need to go a step beyond cutting Bishop loose. We need to arrest him and his cronies, seize his assets (cross talk)

  BISHOP: Not nationalizing my goddamn (cross talk)

  HEIDEMAN: (cross talk) show of authority is the only way we (cross talk)

  KISSINGER: Mr. Bishop has too many assets to seize.

  PRESIDENT: So what do we tell them? The, uh, press corps are like piranhas every day in the goddamn briefing room. There’s blood in the water, and they’re not going to stop biting until their bellies are full of meat.

  BISHOP: If Montague can’t handle the heat, then you go out there.

  PRESIDENT: And say what? What do I tell them?

  BISHOP: The truth.

  HEIDEMAN: Christ, no.

  PRESIDENT: These duplicates, uh, how many of you are out there? And the others?

  HEIDEMAN: Last night CBS was talking dozens.

  BISHOP: Our conservative estimate is around two thousand.

  PRESIDENT: (unintelligible)

  HEIDEMAN: You son of a bitch (unintelligible) and let the Soviets drop an H-bomb on White Sands.

  BISHOP: The Oscura facility is abandoned. Woodward dredged that much up following the money.

  KISSINGER: Mr. Bishop, you say your conservative estimate is two thousand. What is your liberal estimate?

  BISHOP: Over eighty thousand.

  HEIDEMAN: You want us to tell them that? Tell the press and the Russians you’ve grown a division?

  BISHOP: No, I want the President of the United States of America to go out there tomorrow and tell them the truth.

  KISSINGER: So you said, but what truth is it you want the President to tell?

  BISHOP: I’ll stand beside the President while he tells the American people that immortality belongs to the United States. Tell them that at San Pedro my scientists and the US Government have perfected a treatment that can make a man live forever. We can cure any disease, stave off the ravages of time, and restore every friend, or enemy, of the United States to youth and health. We can make Brezhnev twenty again if he asks nicely.

  HEIDEMAN: Madness. I’ll not be a part of this.

  BISHOP: We can do more than build an army. We can preserve the world’s firsthand knowledge indefinitely. It sells itself. The Founding Fathers, Edison—they all could have been saved. It is the power to control the course of human history. And they have to come to us.

  KISSINGER: These are strange times. If this is correct, we would wield tremendous influence here and abroad by offering the treatment or withholding it.

  HEIDEMAN: Mr. President, please, you’re not seriously considering this, are you?

  PRESIDENT: Eloise. My sister. Have you met her?

  BISHOP: Yes, just once, at the picnic before The Cremation of Care. She is a beautiful young woman.

  PRESIDENT: That was a long time ago. She’s forty, and she’s dying of bone cancer. Horrible (unintelligible) the, uh, process of that, her face ... I don’t recognize her when I go to see her. I don’t want her to die. Do you understand me?

  BISHOP: Absolutely. I can fly
her to San Pedro, and she will be on her feet in a day. And you’ll announce it to the world?

  PRESIDENT: If you can save her, I’ll sell your damn treatment to the world.

  BISHOP: I always knew my father was right to pick you. It’s a deal, sir.

  PRESIDENT: I don’t want her to end up like you. No more new lines of these duplicates.

  BISHOP: Don’t worry about that. It’s all taken care of, Mr. President. Everything will be fine.

  2006

  The Mother

  CHAPTER ONE

  Polly gave the order with a single tone over the radio. They moved in on the apartment from both ends of the hall and wrapped up the lookouts before the surprised type twos could alert their gang. Breaching was easy. Bad Tower was full of cheap doors, kicked in a dozen times, patched up, never replaced. The team’s battering ram slammed into the locked door of unit 2814 and compressed a semicircle into the wood. The second blow broke loose the dead bolt, sent splinters and strips of wood cladding flying into the apartment, and smashed the door wide open.

  “Pit Security! Hands up!” Polly’s cop-voice was honed by a half dozen years of no-knocks raids.

  The beams of their flashlights stabbed through a haze of wood particles and illuminated the confused angles of the apartment interior. Fetch was first. His jaw was set, his gun up. He went through and didn’t ask again to see the hands. Nobody was grabbing air, so he opened up with the matte-black carbine against his shoulder. The rapid-fire boom of the gun was painful in close quarters. A shaggy-haired type two stood dumbfounded in the face of the onslaught. Shots chewed foam from the arm of the decaying sofa beside him. He stared at the flashing gun and died.

  The dead man’s friend, another type two, cast aside a plate of microwave slop and fled into the kitchen, spilling through trash and empty bottles. Men and women screamed in the deeper darkness of the apartment. Polly knew the sound. Junkies always made that same animal wail of fear as they were torn out of their highs by danger.

  Polly advanced past Fetch, her vision tinted by the amber curve of her shooting glasses, a trickle of scarlet hair spilling from beneath her helmet and over her forehead. She stalked into the kitchen. Her boots crunched in the trash. The dupe fumbled in a drawer for something. She put two rounds into the small of his back and threw him away from the cabinets. Dead batteries, packets of soy sauce, and a Stillman holdout in the drawer.

  He was still breathing, neck bent awkwardly against the lower cabinet as he writhed in open-mouthed pain. His skin was pale and glistening with sweat. She put a thumb to his cheek and sagged open his lower eyelid. Shivering pupil. It was the fever of the bliss. The first scrawls of blood vessels were visible beneath his waxy flesh. He was a fresh addict. Maybe three or four days.

  “This is big,” said Fetch over his radio. “Get over here, Foster.”

  She cuffed the dying junkie and left him in the trash on the kitchen floor. They would clade-type the bodies later for retrieval at the Pit.

  Fetch , Canton, and Nineteen were against the wall near the entrance to the hallway. The stench of squalor was billowing out of the darkness, bringing with it the strong musk of the distillers. Every window was blotted out by electrician’s tape. Canton aimed his flashlight down the hall, passing it over a trunk of cables snaking into the darkness. They were hacked into Bad Tower’s grid, a sure sign there was a major distiller in use. Open doors yawned on both sides of the hall.

  “Looks like your informant was right,” said Fetch. “Goes on forever like that.”

  “They’ve cut into the surrounding units.”

  “It’s a nest,” said Canton. “We need everybody in here.”

  Polly clapped him on his shoulder. “Fine, get them up here, but we’re going in now. Before these maggots burn the caps.”

  She went first. Two of them came at her, one from each door, tube-fresh type-two maggots, heads still shaved from processing. One of them was still wearing the jailbreak-green of his Los Angeles Rejuvenation Center coverall. They were armed with wrenches and knives. She put a shot into each, center mass, left them flopping and gasping on the floor. She swung the gun around and into the room on the right.

  The overhead bulb was a useless, jagged eggshell. The beam of her gun light played across overturned nursery furniture, a moldy doll, sagging carpet, and a Pool of brown water. Crayon scribbles decorated the peeling wallpaper. The dusty smell of the spore was in the air. She checked the detector clipped to her belt. Still green.

  “Left is clear,” said Canton.

  Polly picked up the doll and shook off some of the filth. One cantilevered eye blinked as she turned its head.

  “Right is clear,” she said, and she dropped the doll back into the water.

  Two more rooms. Someone had been using dozens of broken-down cardboard boxes as a bed. Cases of a chemical fertilizer called Magic Grow. Maybe something to cut the drugs with. The other room was a flop. Single-sized mattresses and filthy sheets. Needles, ashtrays, food wrappers, and empty bottles of Brown Barrel—the usual accumulation of junkie garbage.

  The rest of the maggots hiding in the apartment had fled behind a door. She could hear them shouting and banging on the other side.

  “Give it up,” Polly shouted. The voices on the other side went silent. “Nobody else needs to get hurt. It’s only five years in the cannery for distilling. Come out with your hands up, and we’ll get this over with.”

  There was no answer. Polly motioned for Canton, and he hammered the door again and again with his ram. The door broke completely from its hinges after only a few blows, but it was held in place and upright by an unseen weight. The junkies must have wedged something big and heavy against it. She motioned for Canton to stop. He leaned the ram against the wall and hunched over, panting from exertion.

  “Jensen will be up in five,” said Fetch. “We can have him blow it.”

  Five plus another minute or two to get charges set, reckoned Polly. Plenty of time to burn the caps, break down the distillers, and dump all the bliss down the drain. Weeks spent running this place down, and they’d be no closer to the supplier and his grow op. The Bishops were breathing fire about bliss. They wanted to clamp it down before word got out to metro that dupes were brewing something new and nasty.

  “We can’t wait. If they destroy all the evidence, we lose our leverage. We need to make them give up the grower.”

  “We can’t get through this.” Nineteen traced her gloved fingers down the door frame.

  “Right,” said Polly, and she rapped her knuckles against the wall beside the door. “We’ll go through here.”

  The drywall was deformed from water damage and decades of mold. Once Canton put a hole into it, they got their hands in and pulled crumbling chunks of drywall out. The frame inside broke apart. The wood was nearly black and soft with rot. They cleared a space big enough for a single person to enter.

  Polly scored the back of the drywall with her knife and motioned for Canton’s ram again. She raised her gun, and so did Fetch and Nineteen. The drywall exploded in a single hit, showering the surprised junkies with dust and bits of rotten wood. One of them had a big old gun that fired with a painfully loud thunder that set everyone’s ears ringing. Canton staggered back, grabbing at the gory path of the bullet in his jaw, flaps of skin wobbling between his fingers and blood gushing down the front of his uniform.

  Through the drywall dust and smoke Polly spotted the fat-ass type one with the iron. She smiled. Didn’t see the type ones in Bad Tower too often. She thumbed to three-round and squeezed off six shots into his center mass. He shook and spun away, flopping boneless on the floor, the gun flying from his hand. She went in through the ragged hole in the wall, popping bursts into two more dupes trying to flee with plastic jugs filled with brown liquid.

  A type three with wide eyes and hair matted into dreadlocks came at Polly from behind the refrigerator they were using as a barricade. She had the sharp-edged face of a cheap cut job and a kitchen knife in her hand. />
  “Worm has got us, bitch,” the junkie girl screamed. “It’s gnawing at our guts, and you can’t see it. You think this matters? You dumb. You fucking dumb.”

  Polly batted the silver blade away and threw the woman to the ground. Bliss did funny things to the way the junkies perceived time. She’d heard it all before in bliss detox, waiting for the junkies to clean up and answer her questions. These moments, reality, didn’t matter much to them. Just some television joke, blink of an eye, compared to the time-distorted, epochal high of the bliss.

  “Offa me!” The woman kicked and scratched and scampered back to her feet. She howled and came at them again like a feral animal.