Beta

by Rachel Cohn

  “Hey, Greer,” Ivan mumbles. “Maybe not today.”

  “What’s that?” Greer demands, pointing at me.

  “We got a Beta,” says Ivan.

  Greer appraises me, staring deep inside my glassy eyes. “They’re making teen replicants now? Guess I better watch my back! Don’t want the pirates to capture and turn me into the undead.” She fondles a piece of my hair. “Your First had great hair texture. I wonder what moisturizer she used. Do you have a name?”

  “Elysia,” I say.

  “Lusardi picks the weirdest names. Do you play tennis?” Greer asks.

  Ivan answers on my behalf. “She’s here to play with me. Not you, Greer.”

  “Don’t be like that,” Greer says, pouting. “I’m just trying to get a good game going.” She walks back up the stairs, turning to us one more time. “We’ll be on the courts if you two want to join us. Or maybe we’ll see you later at the club.”

  Greer sprints away up the stairs.

  “Who was she?” I ask Ivan.

  “Her dad is the envoy to Demesne,” Ivan says, rolling his eyes. “She lives on the property adjoining ours. He basically represents the military’s interests on Demesne. I’m pretty sure being named an envoy is just a sweet gig for rich or influential military people with no actual tactical skills. The military sends them here to be happy but useless.”

  “So, Greer’s father is happy and useless. Is she also?”

  Ivan shrugs. “She’s all right, I guess.”

  “Don’t you like her? She’s very pretty.”

  “I like her okay. She’s just always around. She’s kind of a slut. There’s nothing, like, interesting or mysterious about her.”

  Speaking of mysterious: “What’s a dementia?” I ask.

  “Dementia is Greer’s best friend. Her real name is Demetra.”

  “Then why call her Dementia?”

  “Datacheck the word. Then the name will make sense once you meet her.”

  Dementia [di-MEN-sha]: Mental deterioration of organic or functional origin.

  I cannot imagine how this word could be personified in a real human girl, and I cannot wait to find out.

  Ivan taps my shoulder to resume another chase. I race along the shore, running as far as I can. Ivan runs and runs, but he cannot catch me.

  From the signal of satisfaction my chip sends me, I understand: humans like winning.

  Apparently, so do I.

  We circle back to the stairs to race back up them. Ivan reaches the top of the stairs about a minute behind me, out of breath.

  “You cheat,” he says. “You drank a strawberry shake before that last lap.”

  Indeed, I drank a strawberry shake that had been left for me at the top of the stairs before our last sprint, but Ivan too fortified with a wheatgrass shot left for him.

  “You’re right,” I tell Ivan. “I had extra help.”

  Sweat pours down his face while mine remains clear and smooth. I could continue climbing another thousand steps. Ivan folds his torso down over his legs, exhausted.

  “Tomorrow we’ll make even better time, right?” I ask him.

  “You’re killing me,” he moans.

  “What’s a slut?” I ask him.

  “A girl who puts out too easily.”

  “Puts out what?” I imagine Greer putting out dinner and don’t understand what Ivan wouldn’t like about that.

  “Puts out, you know.…” His face, already beet red from our run, turns a darker scarlet. “Sex.”

  I wonder where Greer puts the sex out.

  It’s no wonder the word insurrection is not found on my database. What could there be to revolt against on Demesne? Life here seems, as Ivan puts it, “major sublime.”

  Ivan and I sunbathe on the deck of the floating pool at Haven. Built in the middle of Nectar Bay, which flanks the country club, the pool is made of glass so that swimmers can view the colorful striped and spotted tropical fish teeming outside the pool but not ruin their feet by having to walk across the coral on the bay’s shallow floor nor tamper with the marine ecosystem in the bay. The sun beams bright in midday glory, turning the violet water surrounding the pool to a bright pink. My skin goldens as Ivan and I relax on rafts lightly bobbing on the water. In the distance, I see the sunbathers on the beach. Those people are so idle and happy, they’re almost comatose. They couldn’t manage a protest even if they tried.

  “Nap time,” says Ivan from the raft next to me. He places a towel over his eyes to block out the sun. “You about killed me today, Elysia.”

  Our floating rest is jostled by the arrival of the mentally deteriorating human girl.

  Dementia joins Ivan and me in the floating pool at Haven by way of a cannonball. We hear her yelping with excitement as she races down the pier toward the pool. She wears one of those collections of strings called the bikini. I too am wearing a two-piece suit, but a more secure-fitting, navy-colored sports bra and briefs I found in Astrid’s pile of discarded clothing. Once Dementia approaches the pool’s ledge, she leaps into the air, folding her knees and clutching them to her torso. “Cannonball!” she shouts before splashing down into the pool, creating waves so strong they nearly knock off us from our rafts.

  She emerges back into the air to grab the side of Ivan’s raft.

  “Hey, sexy beast,” Dementia says to Ivan. “I heard your mom got a Beta.”

  Ivan points to me. “That’s her. She’s called Elysia.”

  Dementia dives back underneath the water, swims under Ivan’s raft, and arrives at the side of mine. She is as pretty-looking as her pretty-sounding name, with dark olive skin, black hair, and olive eyes to match her skin tone. She places her hands on my raft and checks me out. “So shiny. So pretty. Ivan, your mom has great taste.” She places one hand on my forearm, drawing her fingernails in a straight line down my arm. The gesture is something between a tickle and a scratch.

  “Dementia!” Ivan splashes her from his raft. “Don’t cut her. How many times do we have to remind you? Cutting is something you save for yourself. It’s not to be inflicted on others.”

  Dementia’s hand grabs my raft instead of my arm and she casts her eyes down, contrite. “Sorry.” With her olive eyes not staring at me, I notice the temple on the deeply scarred right side of her face. It appears she used some sharp edge—perhaps a razor—to try to sculpt her own fleur-de-lis design but gave up halfway. Perhaps she did not have the proper anesthesia. Her eyes look back up at me, with an eager expression on her face. “So, Elysia…can you, like, do stuff?”

  “What kind of stuff?” I ask her.

  Ivan answers for me. “She’s an ace swimmer. Show her, Elysia.”

  I drop off my raft and place my feet on the bottom of the pool. Then I leap forward with my arms extended in front of me, dive underneath, and launch into the butterfly stroke. I race across the pool as quickly as my arms and legs will move, wondering if the underwater apparition of manly gorgeousness I discovered in the pool at Governor’s House will decide to make himself known to me again once I am submerged.

  He does not. I don’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved.

  When I come for air at Demetra’s side, her jaw is slightly dropped.

  “I’ve never seen a stroke that fast and that perfect,” she says. “You’re like a machine.”

  Ivan says, “I think we should take her to Hidden Beach and see what kind of dives she can do off the rocks there. This pool’s too shallow for diving.”

  “Plus there’s all the old people hanging around here,” Dementia says in disgust. In fact, we’re the only three in the floating pool at this moment, but on the beach there are several sun worshippers of late middle age—the late thirties–early forties, human kind of middle age that does not require the expiration date mandated for clones of comparable seniority. The old people have been watching us, as if waiting for us to leave. “Not very ’raxic-encouraging,” Dementia adds.

  I scan my database but can find no clues whatsoever as
to what Dementia meant. However, I nod my head knowingly to her statement, to seem like I am part of their crowd, which is my job.

  Ivan swipes his arm to Relay. He communicates a message, then returns his glance to Dementia and me. “Farzad’s at Hidden.”

  “Ask him how’s the water?” says Dementia.

  Ivan Relays. “He says total ’raxia.”

  “Let’s do it!” says Dementia. She shakes her head wildly so that her long hair whips and sprays water across her shoulders. To the people on the beach, she loudly calls out, “You can have your pool back now, olds!”

  WE TAKE A SMALL SAILBOAT FROM HAVEN TO A beach spot a short way up the island. Ivan beaches the boat onshore and leads Dementia and me to a set of nearby rocks. We climb the precarious formations. Once we reach the tops of the rocks, we are perched above a cove of violet water lapping golden foam onto crystalline pink sand. This is Hidden Beach.

  We jump down from the rocks toward Ivan and Dementia’s friend Farzad, who is on the sand, buffing his surfboard. He looks up from his board for a first glimpse of me. Farzad speaks the same native tongue as Ivan.

  “Whoa,” he says to Ivan. “Way to Beta.”

  “Admire but do not touch,” Ivan says.

  Dementia giggles. “If you break it, you have to pay for it.”

  Ivan and Dementia sit down on the sand opposite Farzad, so I sit down too. The warm sand offers a gentle, massaging heat against my backside.

  Like Ivan, Farzad wears only board shorts, but the display of Farzad’s physique shows him to be lean, with taut muscles where Ivan’s are bulky. He has dark brown skin with eyes to match, and shoulder-length black hair tied back in a ponytail. He tells us, “I took a Jet Ski out to the breaks earlier. Met some kids from the Rave Caves surfing the gigantes out there.”

  “What are the gigantes?” I ask. My database has no definition for the word they pronounce hee-GAHN-tays.

  “Giant waves,” Ivan says, pointing to the ocean in the distance, where I can see the white tips of monster-size waves forming, at least a mile out from where we’re sitting.

  “That must be very dangerous to surf,” I assume. Not only are the waves huge, but they are blue-gray because they are outside the periphery of Io’s ring, the violet crests demarcating the line between the Io Sea and the ocean beyond. The ring has been bioengineered to push back the rising waters that have destroyed other coastal places around the world. The pure waves on the other side of Io’s ring look as if they would gobble any human who tried to ride them.

  “Danger is a state of mind,” Farzad informs me. “Conquer it, and you ride heaven.”

  “The perfect water inside the ring not good enough for you?” Ivan teases.

  “I had the wave controller dial it to max,” Farzad says, referring to the wave control on designated surf beaches inside the ring that surfers can have Demesne staff manipulate to suit their desire of thrill seeking. Inside the ring, the water is modulated to maximize fun but ensure safety. Apparently, safety is a bore to Farzad. “I asked him to go gigante size, but he said that wasn’t allowed. It was snoozer on this side. I was only going to get more by going directly to the source. I need to understand what’s out there in the gigantes. Because of Tahir.”

  Ivan and Dementia nod knowingly.

  “Did you score from any Rave Cave kids while you were out in the wild?” Dementia asks.

  Farzad’s hand dips under the waistband below his finely cut abs. He pulls out an airtight plastic bag containing several white pills.

  “Scored,” Farzad says.

  “What are the Rave Caves?” I ask.

  Dementia grins at me. “It’s so adorable how new clones don’t know anything.”

  It’s true. I don’t. But I am eager to learn.

  Ivan points to some small islands in the distance, beyond the gigantes. “Those islands out there. They’re part of Demesne, but not really. Our island was just the only really habitable one that could be developed.”

  “So no one lives on those islands out there?” I ask. According to my locator chip, the islands in the distance are mere dots on a map, nameless and unremarkable.

  Ivan tells me, “People live there, supposedly. It’s just totally illegal, and lawless. The terrain is very rough, untamable. Runaway kids from the Mainland hang out on that island on the left. They call it the Rave Caves. It’s supposedly a totally wild party scene.”

  “Have you been there?” I ask him.

  “No! My father would kill me if I tried.”

  Farzad adds, “There’s no Relaying available in the Rave Caves, or even proper bathrooms or showers. It’s completely wild. Surfing the gigantes nearby is great, but civilized people don’t hang out on the islands nearby, for sure.”

  I ask, “If it is so wild, who goes there?”

  Ivan says, “People from the Mainland sneak off to those islands by boat. They figure if they can get to those closer points, they might be able to gain entry to Demesne.”

  “How?”

  Ivan says, “By swimming here from there. Which is virtually impossible. Or maybe paying a pirate ship to try to Jet Ski them to a place like here, at Hidden Beach.”

  “Does it work?” I ask. “Do people get here that way?”

  Dementia chimes in. “Nope. Mostly they die trying. Then they become clones. Lucky!”

  Today I have learned many things. I have learned what insurrection means, that sex can get put out, and that Demesne’s archipelago includes things like the gigantes and Rave Caves. I have also learned that scoring does not only apply to numerical values used in a game to determine a winner. Scoring can also mean obtaining illegal drugs—in this case, the drug the kids here call ’raxia. Currently Farzad, Ivan, and Dementia are experiencing this drug. They lie on the sand wrapped around each other, their eyes closed, content smiles spread across their lips. Dementia lies topless on the sand, but, like Ivan and Farzad, she has left her bottom covered.

  “It’s kind of overdoing it, in my opinion,” Greer informs me. I have also learned today that there is no subject on which Greer doesn’t have an opinion, including the fact that Farzad, Ivan, and Dementia should have told her they were going to do ’raxia before inviting her over here and wasting her time. “I mean, this whole atmosphere on Demesne—the sweet air, the soothing water, the luxury homes, whatever—was designed to create a state of ataraxia. Why fake more of it? It’s just greedy.”

  Ataraxia, I have also found out, is an ancient Greek concept synonymous for pure happiness, and Demesne’s founders designed the island using the term as its central design premise. It is the region’s youth who have taken this word and applied it to their version of pure happiness, the drug they call ’raxia.

  Greer and I sit on the bluffs above Hidden Beach, overlooking Io, watching the three ataraxic teens on the sand below. Greer says, “I don’t know why those guys have to, like, chemically induce even more of it. They’re just afraid to experience something real. They’ve lived here practically their whole lives. They have no idea what real even is.”

  “Ivan said doing ’raxia is better than sex. Preferable to it, even,” I tell Greer, in case she doesn’t know.

  “I’ve done both,” Greer states. “Real sex is better.”

  “Where have you done the sex?” I ask her.

  “That’s a bold question.”

  “It is?”

  “I guess you don’t know any better.” Greer sways her legs as they dangle over the bluff. “I’ve had sex here, and back in the city where I’m from originally from.”

  “Is the sex good?”

  Greer laughs. “Yeah, it’s mighty mighty, I have to say.”

  I do a quick internal dictionary scan but can only determine that she has doubled the word mighty without giving it any meaningful relevancy.

  “Do you mighty-mighty often?” I ask.

  She stares at me with the human facial expression I identify as meaning: You must be an idiot.

  Greer says, “I ‘mighty-mighty’
when it’s available with a like-minded, hot-bodied kind of person with whom I share a mutual attraction. But I’m only eighteen. It’s not like I’ve ‘mighty-mightied’ with that many people.”

  “Who have you mighty-mightied with?”

  Her tone turns agitated. “Stop calling it that. It was just a play on words.” A play on words. I imagine children seesawing over blocks spelling out words like FUN and FAIRYLAND.

  “I am sorry. I shall recalibrate the question. Have you had the sex with Ivan or Farzad or Dementia?”

  Her white skin turns scarlet. “Maybe,” she mutters. She gestures to the slumbering bodies beneath our feet. “But as you can see, they prefer ’raxia. And maybe you are getting too personal, so I would suggest if you have more questions, you recalibrate the subject matter as well.”

  I can do that. “You have not always lived on Demesne?” I ask her.

  “No. We only moved here a few years ago, when my dad took the envoy job. Most people on Demesne don’t live here full-time. If they did, it wouldn’t seem so special. Farzad, Ivan, and Dementia are the only teens on the island who live here year-round now that Astrid’s gone. And now you, I guess. Not sure if you count.”

  “Do you prefer to live here or in the city?” I ask her.

  “Depends on which kind of city you mean, old or new?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Well, the old cities are so floody. Like, it’s cool how as the water rises in those places, it’s made for really interesting elevated buildings and parks, hilarious water-sloshing fashion, awesome end-of-the-world dance parties. But I prefer the new cities. Before my family moved here, we lived in Biome City. The deserts are sick with cool people now.”

  “So the desert is for cold hospitals?”

  “No. Don’t be so literal. I mean more people are moving inland. Places that used to be nothingness are somethingness now. Think about it. Farzad’s family owns the biggest compound on Demesne. Know why? Because his uncle invented the mechanism that controls the water that allowed the new desert cities to be built in previously inhabitable places, like BC.”