The Way of All Flesh: Illusions Can Be Real

by Corey Furman

  “We’ve lived together a long time… some of it was good, much was bad. But a change is coming, and I need to explain it to you.”

  They anxiously waited for him to continue.

  “Our lives have been pretty far removed from contact. No neighbors, no people… and no other simulants. If you had been around others of your kind, you would have learned about a normal part of the simulant lifecycle… look, the hard truth is in about six months, give or take, you will expire.”

  Luna didn’t seem to comprehend, but fear bloomed in Maré‘s expression. “You mean…?” she said.

  “I mean, you’ll die. Slow at first, but once the pain and muscle cramping starts it will be almost over.”

  Luna blurted out, “why? We’ve been so good!”

  “I don’t think you understand, girl,” he said in harsh frustration. “This isn’t a matter of good and bad. It is a thing that’s just a part of your nature.”

  “What can we do?” Maré asked. “Can you help us? Are you willing to help us?”

  “Do? I can’t do anything about this, any more than I can protect myself from my own mortality. I just get more of it.”

  “We’re copies of humans. Why don’t we live as long?” Maré asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said with a wave of hand. “I don’t have those answers.”

  Luna appeared shocked. “It isn’t fair!”

  “Life never is,” he said. The hard edge in his voice said more than his words. “The good news is you don’t really have to get used to it.”

  “Will it… hurt?” asked Maré in a whisper so low he had to strain to make it out.

  “There will be a couple of weeks of cramping that will get worse. If it goes long enough, the body fights back and the pain stops right before the end. Also… it could come any time within about two months of your birthday. Chances are that you will go at different times.”

  They sat there stunned looking at each other than to him. He could tell they wanted him to fix this, make it go away, do something, but there was nothing for it. He could tell that this was scaring the hell out of them. Maybe I should have found a way to avoid telling them, but it’s too late to change now… He nearly said he was sorry, but instead he crushed the tiny twinge of feeling he had for them.

  “I can do this much for you. When your time comes… I will let you decide if you want to go easy. You may even go together if you want.”

  Maré was holding Luna as she began to sob. Since the accident she had grown a thick emotional shell, and she was trying to pull it over Luna. They had both changed, really.

  Maré turned Luna’s face up so that she could see into her eyes. “Pull yourself together, Chroma. Not here.”

  Luna gave her a wan smile and sat up, trying to compose herself. She kept a tight grip on Maré‘s hands, though.

  Maré said, “if there’s nothing else, may we go, Sir?”

  “No, that’s it,” he said with a sigh that seemed to lift the pressure off of him. “Go to your room.”

  “Thank you, Sir,” she said, and they left the kitchen in each other’s arms.

  Joss found his wife in the living room listening to music. “Did you finally tell them?” she said, as she turned the device off.

  “Yes. They took it… well.”

  “It must have made you happy to see them twist over it.”

  His eyes went wide with astonishment. “No, I… I don’t want them to suffer.”

  “Don’t you?” she whispered.

  “No… What the hell are you talking —?”

  “Put me to bed, Joss. I’m tired.”

  “Yes, my queen.”

  In their room, Maré undressed Luna and helped her into bed. “Lie on your stomach, Luna,” she said, and she complied. Maré turned out the light, stripped, got onto the bed and straddled her Chroma. She began to massage the muscles in her neck and shoulders, kneading slowly and firmly. Along her spine she lightly used her elbow to press and twist. Working her way down, she kneaded her lower back with greater pressure, then her buttocks. She turned around so that she was straddling the other way, and proceeded to press her fingertips firmly along the edges of the muscles first in one leg, then the other. She moved to sit lower alongside her so she could massage her feet. Luna’s feet always ached, so Maré took the time to carefully do it the way she liked.

  When she was done, she pulled their soft, heavy blanket over them, then laid down on her back next to Luna. “Come to me, Chroma.”

  Luna rolled and put her head on Maré‘s breasts, her hand up on her shoulder, and Maré put her arms around her. “I love you, Luna,” she breathed.

  “I love you tooo…” she said, now crying.

  Maré smoothed her hair, just as they often did for each other, humming soft noises. She knew that Luna enjoyed the soft vibration in her chest as she did it. It mixed pleasantly with her heartbeat. Luna began to nurse at Maré‘s breast. Maré smiled at the sensation, knowing that Luna would nurse her afterwards. No matter what else happened, they would always have each other’s love.

  Twelve

  After a few weeks of hard study and diligent effort, Maré had become a contributing member of the staff. There was a certain amount of satisfaction in that, as if her accommodation represented something of a minor victory in stretching past her limitations. It would be a stretch to say that she enjoyed the situation, but she had made peace with it. Certainly she wouldn’t have been able to come so far without Luna. Her Chroma had not only saved her life, but had helped guide her to find a measure of comfort and purpose.

  Looking out upon the still sleeping pairs of their sisters, Maré had the strangest feeling of observer and participant. Crazy, I could yet be out there among them…

  Luna took her hand, leaned into her and whispered, “We are among them.”

  In confusion, Maré turned to her. “How did you know…?”

  Luna smiled and squeezed her hand. “We all think the same thing when we really look for the first time.”

  The Crop, as she had heard Dr. Almeida refer to their bloodline, was about three and a half months from maturing. No other pairs had contracted meningitis, and both the doctor and the crop’s simulant care takers were grateful – though for different reasons. Whereas the simulants cared for the growing pairs almost as if they were extended family, all Almeida was concerned with was efficiency and results.

  Maré quickly came to understand that he was a small man, and not so different from them, for all his humanity. His attitude generally ranged from curt to surly. His incessant smoking had stained his fingers and teeth, making him seem even older, and the mildly sickening stench clung to his clothes. He often pawed the girls carelessly under the guise of “examination”. He must have enjoyed the demonstrations of power, since the only evident purpose seemed to be to make them uncomfortable. To her way of thinking, humanity wasn’t all that special, if Almeida was any indication.

  And he had played a direct role in Luna’s abuse.

  It had taken some time that night for Luna to tell her everything. In the beginning, Luna and 85 had had a friendship. When 85 had brought her awake, she didn’t have the complication of memory loss that Maré did. 85 had emphasized their sameness, and that it could be a place from which their relationship would proceed. It had seemed to work at first; there was a honeymoon period where 85’s loneliness was temporarily dimmed. Luna could have had her own room, but 85 had manipulated Luna’s feelings into thinking that they would be better off as a pair, that she could better help her navigate this unknown and scary new environment. It had been nice to face the darkness together, but nearly from the start she could tell there was something wrong under the surface of 85’s demeanor. Not long after waking up, she began to try to get Luna to call herself Maré, even refusing to talk to her at all when Luna openly defied her. It had gotten better for a time, but then her emptiness returned worse than before, and that was when the pressure to have sex starte
d. Finally, 85 intimidated her into yielding completely. She had given in, both to the fear of abandonment and from physical violence. Luna spent the rest of that night lying next to her softly snoring abuser, crying and wracked with shame. Unwilling to risk another episode, she went to Almeida the next day.

  “Why should I be concerned about it? Is it going to influence your responsibilities?” he replied with mild indifference and a lot of annoyance at the disruption. “Otherwise, I don’t care.”

  Luna goggled incredulously. She was still new to all of this, but couldn’t believe him. If something was going to change, she would have to deal with him on his level. There was no way she was going to sleep with 85 again.

  “Doctor, this will affect me. I can’t stay in her room!” She paused to get a hold of herself. “We have an unused room. Please let me have it so that I can rest at night – it’s the only way I can maintain my productivity.”

  “Fine.” Almeida sighed and nodded his head. “It may take a few days to get to it, though. You’ll have to make the best of it until then.”

  Luna had tried to sleep in one of the chairs in the common room, but before the night was though he himself had come down to rouse her. He even brought two security androids with him, as if she might dare attack him.

  “Let’s go, 183 – you cannot make the common room a place to crash!”

  Terrified, she said, “but Doctor, what am I supposed to do?”

  “You’re going to get in the room assigned to you, that’s what!”

  Out of options, she complied and went to the room. 85’s smile was both triumphant and cruel. She spent that night and the next five sleeping on the floor, listening to both sharp insults and 85 pleasuring herself up on the bed where she’d been raped. All she could do was cry herself to sleep after 85 finished, fell asleep and was snoring.

  During that time, Almeida would sometimes stand and watch her work during the day with a smile that for once seemed to light up his eyes. He had known what was going on in the room at night, and he had enjoyed the voyeurism. She tried to internalize the humiliation, but she still withered under his smug gaze.

  The worst came the day before Almeida had the androids reconfigure the rooms. He had taken both 85 and Luna into one of the examination rooms and had them strip. First he forced Luna to hold 85’s limbs as he performed a detailed internal exam. It was a preview for her own. 85 had laid there motionless and impassive during hers, but Luna could tell that she enjoyed helping Almeida when they switched places, as if he were violating her with 85’s fingers. All Luna had been able to do is lay there and wail noiselessly in utter shame.

  Maré listened to the instruction that Luna and the twins gave her each night. She asked questions and she tried to take initiative – until the others discouraged her. Do well, was the message she got, but not too well.

  Sometimes she would stare at the twins still encased in the iridescent gel of the transparent pods. They were physically complete now. They looked so peaceful, sleeping in each other’s arms, row after row after row. She wondered if they ever dreamed.

  85 kept to herself, eating at off times and working in the sections away from the others. Luna hadn’t asked her to participate in the food sharing plan, but they would sometimes find some left on one of the tables in the common room. The twins attempted to talk to her and console her a few times, but she mostly spurned their efforts at conversation. It seemed best not to push her, so the others left 85 to her self-imposed isolation.

  Within a week, Maré would occasionally feel like she was being watched while she worked, but whenever she looked around she wouldn’t find anything. It happened a few more times though, so she asked Luna about it in bed afterwards.

  “Well,” Luna said, “you’re probably just sensing LabSys. It’s everywhere in the complex, and it nothing escaped its notice. Besides, it can sometimes feel that way out in the crop surrounded by our chromanity, if you let your mind wander.”

  It seemed like a reasonable enough explanation. Maré let it go, and the feeling became a part of the background noise of life.

  Maré and Luna were quite happy in each other, just as the twins had wished. They ate and talked together, they shared laughs and held each other in the night when they were scared. Still, Dr. Almeida was always around, with his odd proclivities. Maré learned that life – their life, at least – was cheap. It hadn’t happened, but if something went wrong with one of the pods, then its entire contents would be rendered for any value it might contain. It really didn’t matter that the contents were living, thinking – albeit unconscious – beings, because they were merely simulants. It was a crushing realization to learn that one’s worth could be established with simple buying and selling transactions.

  She also learned deep love from her Chroma, written large in her caresses and caring eyes. Perhaps the intensity came from the distilling nature of their situation, as Luna had put it. With no frame of reference and as inexperienced as she was, it took a little bit to figure out, but she discovered that no matter what anyone thought, meaning was found in the eyes of loved ones. If you had that, then it was enough.

  There were many such soft lessons, and she was hungry for them, even desperate.

  A few nights after she had woken up, she had slipped from Luna’s arms, gotten out of bed and, as silently as she could, padded over to their desk and turned on the small light. She held her nose close to her upturned arm close to the light, studying. As she watched, she could see the delicate heartbeat pulsing in arteries that were a shade or two darker than her complexion. Flexing her forearm, she could feel the muscles contract and see them writhe under the skin. Turning her arm up, it seemed she could sense each of the tiny hairs as she watched them stand on end as the skin beneath them pebbled in the cool air that seeped into her nakedness.

  She heard Luna stir and rise behind her, then join her by the light. She went to her knees and moved her face close to study the same arm. “Is everything okay, honey?”

  “What are we made of, Chroma?” she asked, sounding like a small child in her own ears.

  The words lingered for a few seconds, as if she was deciding on an answer. “We’re flesh and blood, Maré,” she said. “Real flesh and blood.”

  She turned to her slightly and held the limb out between them. “That’s what it looks like,” she countered nearly soundlessly, “but how can we know?”

  “Hold still and close your eyes,” Luna whispered. When Maré nodded and her lids fell, she felt Luna touch just the tips of the hairs on her arm with her fingers, against the direction they were angled, and the electric sensation of the intimate contact coursed around Maré’s body. She gasped and surrendered an involuntary tremor. “That’s how we know, Chroma.”

  It was a soft lesson she’d always remember, and fondly.

  Sometimes they would read to each other, or Maré would ask her about their parents and what growing up was like.

  “Tell me about our room, Luna.”

  “Actually, we had separate rooms.”

  “Really? Why was that?”

  Luna pursed her lips as she considered the question. “Well, I don’t know, really. I suppose because they could give ‘em to us.”

  Maré smiled. “What was yours like?”

  “Ha! It was pink, lots of ruffles and stuffed animals. You hated it.”

  “I wouldn’t have guessed you for a girly girl.”

  Luna belted out a big laugh. “That’s because you’ve only seen me in scrubs. Well, that and nothing I suppose. I should see if I could fashion a few ribbons from the medical supplies tomorrow. What do you think?”

  “I dunno, it’s hard to picture; we can try it and see. What about my room?”

  “Guess!”

  “Oh, C’mon. I have no idea, Luna.”

  “Guess, anyway.”

  “Um… green?”

  “Nope, but close – yellow. Green would have been better though – I didn’t like the c
olor of your walls.”

  “Books?” she asked tentatively.

  “You had so many books, Maré. You always had your nose in one.”

  Maré was fascinated by those stories; seeing it through Luna’s eyes made her feel even closer to her. It also made her feel less two dimensional, more real.

  Still, she wondered if previous occupants of this room had had the exact same conversation.

  Occasionally, they would take their dinner to the sky walk overlooking the roof tops. As Jupiter royally dominated from the background, they sat on the floor with their backs to the wall and fed each other, just as the twins often did elsewhere. Though they hardly spoke during those hushed times, they often made a game of playfully nipping at each other’s fingers and laughing if they scored a hit. Sometimes they would just sit holding each other, staring out into space, mesmerized at its stark serenity.

  But Maré’s feeling of being watched returned scalpel-sharp. When she looked around the first time, she spotted 85 staring at her. 85’s eyes went wide for a single heartbeat, but then she composed herself, gave Maré a small smile and backed away. Maré had been silently loathing her for what she had done to Luna, but it still made her a little anxious. She could feel that 85 was capable of doing something dangerous.

  It continued to happen. Every couple of days, she would find 85 watching; each time, she was a little closer, a little less surreptitious about it. Finally, Maré went towards her, but 85 eluded her. A confrontation was probably a bad idea, anyway; as long as 85 only watched, Maré would let it go.

  It didn’t take long to test her resolve – just one day. When Maré pointedly refused to acknowledge her, 85 surprised her by coming up to her. It was a bold, unexpected move that, despite Maré‘s best efforts, managed to set her teeth on edge.

  “Hello, Maré.”

  Her resolve cracked and she responded with a snort. “You don’t get to call me that, 85. What do you want?”