Living Forever & Other Terrible Ideas

by Emily C. Skaftun

Well, we did it. Those files are on this computer too, all decrypted for you. But here’s the summary: Koko2 is really Koko14. This technology didn’t come out of the box working perfectly, and by the time Koko13 rolled off the assembly line Dr. Kim was deeply troubled. She’d been saying since Koko3 just twitched and twitched that the project needed to slow down, but Caleb would have none of it.

  One day Dr. Kim walked in on Caleb in his office, changing his shirt. He tugged it down immediately, turning away from the door, but Dr. Kim still saw his belly. With no belly button. At this point Dr. Kim’s notes, though still coded, verge on hysterical, with rantings about pod people.

  She became frightened of him.

  Koko13? She was almost perfect. Just like your Koko2. I don’t know what became of her because Dr. Kim never knew. I hope she’s in a zoo or another lab, and isn’t one of the chimps in 14-H. The last pages of Dr. Kim’s notes are musings about quitting and going public. But she didn’t get to. I found her in the freezer. Two of her. One is waif-thin and pale, scrawny but otherwise perfect-looking, except for the bruises around her throat. The other is Dr. Kim, a real body with a life behind it. That one looked like it put up a fight.

  So I went a few doors down, and I was only a little surprised to see a body growing in the aquarium there. It was just bones and a little muscle, but I felt sure it was me. That was a few days ago already. I’m afraid of what I’d see if I looked now.

  I’m afraid, Reva of the future. I think the technology will work this time, and you’ll be effectively me. And so I will continue, sort of. But I will die. I don’t know when or where or how, but once Caleb is satisfied that it worked he’ll kill me.

  So I’m not waiting around for it to happen. After I say goodbye to Kokos 1 and 14 I’m leaving, and I’m taking Lucy with me. I hope that that leaves a hole in your life. If it doesn’t, it will mean that you’re not really me after all. If it does, well, I guess I’ll see you again.

  Sitting in my little office, I felt the old Reva’s presence strongly. I looked again at the framed photo that I knew used to mean the world to me. Big red boots on little feet. Waves. Rocks. A pearl-pink seashell. It didn’t mean anything now.

  But I put it in my pocket anyway.

  #

  When I walked into the lab adjoining Koko’s habitat, my colleagues almost jumped out of their skins. I hadn’t been down there since my re-birth, and I guess they weren’t expecting me to come back. But after a moment of shock they crowded around me, mouths agape as they studied me like a specimen, throwing questions faster than I could answer. Behind the one-way glass, Koko shrieked.

  “It’s nice to see you too,” I said, forcing a casual laugh. “If you like my face, you’ll love this.” And I pulled my shirt up, exposing my alien belly. Just like Caleb’s, I thought. I was dying to know how long Caleb had been a pod person, but since I’d never observed a change in him—and since Dr. Kim had discovered his secret—he must have died well before hiring me. I wondered what he’d been like before. Could this explain his almost psychopathic behavior? Could this explain why he’d murdered me and Dr. Kim? For I was now certain that he had.

  The gathered techs seemed shamed by my mild exhibitionism, backing off sheepishly. “I’m here to visit Koko2,” I said.

  And now all eyes were on me again, but it was silent. Even Koko had calmed down. A young tech named Scott broke the spell first. “Of course she doesn’t know,” he all but exclaimed, as if solving a riddle. Immediately he clamped a knuckly hand over his mouth, but it was too late.

  “I don’t know what?” I asked.

  They exchanged nervous, almost guilty looks, before seeming to elect Maria, a soft-spoken graduate student, to break it to me. “Koko2 is dead,” she began, using a tone reserved for the very worst of news. I almost laughed then, amused that they thought I’d be heartbroken over a chimp. But then she went on. “We had to put her down after she . . . killed, um, you.”

  And if I’d hypothesized that this body was incapable of feeling emotions, my reaction then provided significant counter-evidence. My legs went wobbly and my heartbeat jumped, and I almost sat down right on the lab’s cold floor. I’d never felt that way hearing news before, always thought asking people to sit for shocking news was silly.

  Still, it only took me a moment to pull myself together. I’m not sure the techs even noticed my near-swoon.

  It took them longer to try, vainly, to prevent me from pulling up the footage and watching myself die.

  The chimp lounges on a cushion, arm around a stuffed shark. She ignores Reva as she enters the enclosure, pretending to sleep. So Reva kneels next to the cushion and lightly tickles the chimp’s foot. But instead of laughing like the first chimp, this one just pulls her foot away.

  Reva signs to her, trying to say goodbye, trying to wish her luck, using concepts that she must know are too advanced to do the chimp any good. Still, she tries to get the chimp’s attention. She reaches for the stuffed shark, and as soon as she touches it the chimp springs into furious action, pummeling Reva with her fists and anything else she can grab. Anything but the shark. In-between blows her hands form quick signs.

  It goes on and on.

  Even looking at the footage in slow motion I couldn’t make out what Koko2 had tried to tell me. The techs all avoided me while I watched the footage, but I pulled Scott in when he walked behind me on his way somewhere else. “What’s she saying?”

  He shook his head. “We think she’s saying ‘teeth.’ The words, ‘no,’ ‘hurt,’ ‘touch,’ and ‘teeth’ come up a lot. Our best guess is that it was the shark. She got wicked pissed that you—she—touched her shark.”

  And I laughed then, hysterically. I laughed like I remembered laughing at things that were genuinely funny. I laughed until tears leaked out of my new eyes and Scott scurried off, probably afraid I’d go berserk like Koko14 and murder him. Which only made it funnier.

  I didn’t even care right then that Koko14 had killed me.

  Koko14 had cared.

  #

  I was so excited about Koko14’s emotions that it took me a while to realize the other important factor: Caleb hadn’t murdered me. Sure, he’d copied me without my consent, but the first Reva would still be alive if it hadn’t been for a chimp’s love of her stuffed shark.

  If Caleb wasn’t my killer, maybe he didn’t kill Dr. Kim either.

  On my way out of the lab I cornered Maria. “What happened to Dr. Kim?”

  She stuttered, then started to tell me that the woman had left.

  “No, Maria. What really happened to her.” Behind her, I could see the other techs slinking about and eyeing me. I raised my voice. “Is there footage of her death? I know she was scared. I know she knew about—”

  “Dr. Kim quit,” Scott said, his booming voice drowning out the name on my lips. “Now get out of here and stop harassing the interns.” But as he came toward me as if to muscle me out of the lab I saw something conspiratorial in his eyes. I let him guide me into the hallway.

  Instead of angling toward the exit, Scott led me to his office. “You know there are cameras everywhere, right?” he said under his breath. “I don’t think they pick up audio, but you can’t be too careful.”

  Scott rummaged around in a drawer and eventually pulled out something that looked like a thumb drive. “A backup?” I asked. “Your backup?”

  He rolled his eyes, clearly exasperated with me. “Dr. Kim was a friend of mine. I wish I could see her again.” He pressed the backup into my hand, and as I realized what it was, I tried hard not to let my face show anything for the cameras.

  #

  I left the office after that, but I didn’t have anywhere to go, so I just walked and walked for at least an hour. Caleb called me several times, but I ignored his calls. At best, he wanted to pressure me some more about going public. At worst, he saw my breakdown in the lab and wanted to “talk” about it.

  I ended up collecting Lucy from her father’s apartment. It was his day to have
her, but he didn’t protest when I suggested a trip to the park, and soon my walking was livened up by her excited prattle as we headed for the playground she thought was her favorite, the one with the biggest play structures and the zipline I’d never let her ride. The park wasn’t really her favorite, because she left in tears almost every time. We had a pattern going, in which she’d start out all excited to climb the big monkey bars, then she’d trip over her own feet before we even got to the playground, then I wouldn’t let her do any of the dangerous things she wanted to try, then she’d throw a tantrum and we’d leave.

  We started out true to form. Lucy wanted to show me more of her cartwheels, and face-planted into the grass on maybe the fourth one. But she sprang right up, blades of grass stuck to her forehead, and thrust her arms up and pelvis forward just like every gymnast ever saluting the judges. I laughed, then gave her a round of applause. “A perfect ten,” I told her.

  A blade of grass peeled off her face and drifted to the ground like a leaf. “Momma, can I go play?”

  “Of course,” I said. “But stay low, okay?”

  She rocketed off toward the play structure and I watched after her, wondering what Reva1 would be feeling. A love that made her chest tight, I thought. I didn’t feel that.

  My phone buzzed, this time with a text message from Caleb. I still hadn’t listened to any of his voicemails. Press conference tomorrow, 10:00 a.m., it read. You’re the star.

  The fingers of the hand not holding the phone curled into a fist and my heart beat faster. I felt rage, real physical anger. Without even thinking I unflexed my fist and typed a reply: I never agreed to that.

  But I remembered a thing or two about anger, so I paused before hitting “send” and took a deep breath. I looked around.

  Over at the huge play structure, Lucy had her foot on the bar that I’d long ago set as her upper limit. She looked toward me as she did it, like a guilty kitten, testing to see if I’d let her get away with it. I knew the old Reva would have shaken her head, no. I knew because her old nightmare scenarios ran through my mind: Lucy’s foot slipping off the rung, her face slamming into a bar, teeth cutting through her lip, blood running down her chin, her wailing through broken teeth. But then I kept the what-if going. We’d go to the hospital, she’d get a few stitches. Her adult teeth would grow in fine, and her scar would fade with time. And she’d be okay.

  I shook my head, but only to clear it.

  Encountering no resistance from me, Lucy climbed tentatively higher. Another girl, much bigger than Lucy, approached her and they conversed with some gesticulating and the occasional sound shrill enough to carry to where I was. The other girl ran off, and Lucy ran toward me, obviously on a layover between the play structure and her next destination.

  “MommycanIridethezipline?” She asked what she obviously considered a futile and perfunctory question as fast as she could, poised to explode either with joy or temper tantrum. I’d denied this request many times.

  But today I really looked at the zipline, watching the kids play. It was a rubber swing dangling from a cable stretched between two posts. At the high end, kids had to pull the swing up onto a platform, then the bigger ones pulled it back as far as they could, running and jumping on at the last minute to collect as much momentum as possible. They zoomed down to the other end, where there was a stop in the cable, and the swing arced up before turning to its return journey. A kid could fall off, I figured. But the thing wasn’t very high, and it ran over a wide sand pit that looked soft enough. If a kid flew off the end, she might go some distance, but if she didn’t hit the well-padded end post she’d land in the sand. The most dangerous spot seemed to be the wooden platform at the high end. Some of the kids came back to it at a fairly high speed, and its edges had only minimal, crumbling padding. But, I told myself, I could stand watch at that end. I could catch Lucy if she came in too fast.

  I looked down into her face, which was looking up at mine with so much hope it made me laugh out loud. “Okay,” I said, and before she could completely dissolve into hysterical happiness I hastened to add, “But hold on really, really tight, okay?”

  Her head moved up and down at an incredible rate.

  We went over to the zipline and waited in line while some other kids took their turns. None of them hit their heads on the platform and died, so I was somewhat comforted. But still I whispered in Lucy’s ear, “Are you scared? It’s not too late to change your mind.”

  She squirmed a little, and I realized that she was scared. I patted her back. “You’ll be fine. Just don’t let go.”

  She was too small to pull the swing back while climbing onto the platform, so I held it for her. She stared it down for a while before wiggling her butt onto the seat. “Are you sure it’s safe?” she asked, her face pale. I felt a pang then, not of doubt, but of guilt for how thoroughly I—the old me—had conditioned fear into this child.

  “I’m sure,” I said.

  Lucy gripped the chains with white knuckles. When she was secure I pulled it a little farther back and let her go. She seemed to drop away from the platform fast, but when the swing came to the stop at the end it only made a gentle swoop before coming back. I needn’t have worried about the platform; Lucy barely made it halfway back before the swing started to head the other way again. It rocked a few times before coming to rest about three-quarters of the way down, and I jumped off the platform and lifted Lucy out of the swing.

  “Can I go again?” she asked, before I’d even set her feet in the sand.

  We took half a dozen more turns on the zipline—I even went a couple of times, to the surprise of the other kids, and it was fun!—so it was a while before I got back to my phone and Caleb’s text message. I deleted my angry reply unsent. I’ll be there, I replied instead, on one condition. The backup drive in my pocket felt like leverage: if Caleb wanted my endorsement, Scott would see his friend again.

  But all that could wait. For the moment, I walked my ecstatic daughter home from her favorite park.

  Lucy grabbed one of my hands and I shoved the other in my pocket. I was feeling for the thumb drive, but instead it brushed against something hard and round. I pulled it out: the seashell.

  “Why do you have that?” Lucy asked.

  I looked between the shell and my daughter, wondering the same thing myself. I knew I was supposed to feel something, but the shell still just seemed empty. I knelt in front of her, seashell in hand. “Do you remember what I told you about hermit crabs?”

  She nodded. “They live in shells like pretty dresses.”

  Close enough. “Well, I think we should take this back to the beach and throw it in the water. I think we should put it where someone like a hermit crab can use it for a home. Or a dress. What do you think?”

  Lucy’s face fell, but only a little. “But I gave it to you,” she whined.

  “I know you did, but it’s too small for me.” I mimed like I was trying to climb into the shell, and she giggled.

  “Momma, you’re silly!” When she smiled, I felt something like happiness.

  And you know what? That was good enough for me.

  ***published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, October 2014

  Story notes:

  Some tropes are used so often and so unthinkingly in genre fiction that they are taken as a given. Putting a person into a new body is one of them. But surely things wouldn’t be as simple as all that.

  One of the things that sparked this story was reading an article about how fingerprints are formed in utero. A body reproduced from DNA would never be exactly the same as the original, whether it’s a calico cat with new markings or a human with moles in new places.

  How a person in a new body would feel is, of course, entirely my speculation.

  Last of the Monsters

  Scaling tarp-covered hurricane fence, I survey the landscape. A guard sleeps below, rhythmic snoring barely audible in the breeze. I drop to the ground, quiet as a myth.

  In the moonlight, one sto
ne looks like another. Any ruin, any boulder-strewn field. A desolate spot, but not without its beauty.

  Could it really be my sister's grave?

  I laughed when the gods died out. One by one, they crawled off like dogs to die alone, and I danced on their unmarked graves. It was difficult for me to control my eyes in those days; the rage and bitterness within me was still fresh, white-hot like a spearhead fresh from the forge.

  The only grave I could never find was Athena's, that bright-eyed bitch. But if I understand the news bites and rumors that have found their way to me, a Texas rancher seems to have stumbled upon the goddess's final resting place—and her gorgon-emblazoned shield—and paid a terrible price.

  I imagine poor Tex's wife: he goes out onto the land one day, like any day, except that tonight he doesn't come home. She waits, she worries, but he has stayed out late before. In the morning she makes phone calls, friends come in, parties go out to search the hills and fields. But she is the one who finds the statue. The corner of the ranch in which it crouches is remote, but the place is not unknown to Tex and wife. The statue must be new. Some sort of joke, perhaps?

  It looks just like him.

  It is before me now, a stone figure, bent over like a boulder in the field. A boulder with a cowboy hat. He stretches his hand out as if to brush dirt from something embedded in the earth. The moonlight makes his cold flesh eerie; it glows like marble. The folds of his shirt sparkle with glints of quartz. There are certainly uglier ways to die.

  Mythology remembers my sister as a monster. Her sheer ugliness would freeze you where you stood, or so the legend goes. And yes, she turned a few people to stone. But it was rage, not ugliness, that turned my sister's gaze to killing beams. Raped, vilified, and hunted like a beast. Can you blame her for being angry?