by Myles, Eden
He looked at Snow’s serene face, realizing this was the last time he would ever see this creature— Subject BL-009-8123—the woman he loved. Resigned, he started closing the capsule latch. That’s when he heard the commotion in the hallway outside the launch room. Someone was arguing with the guardsman, there was a muffled blast as if from a sonic handgun, and the door was forcibly irised open.
The agent was another of Helix’s genetic triumphs—or mistakes, depending on how you wanted to look at things. It was at least nine feet tall, and seemingly mixed with shark DNA. Its skin was mottled grey, its flesh bulged with artificial muscle, and its head tapered into a sleek hammerhead shape. Although William knew the shark to be a creature once native of earth, the bizarre commingling of genetic material made the monster look grotesquely alien. Its open mouth was full of jumbled, yellow teeth. Its dead, mechanical black eyes centered on William, and it shambled forward, dressed in the scarlet uniform of the Helix Agency, the company that took care of troubleshooting for Helix Laboratories.
It roared and raised both hands, taking aim at him with a pair of sonic handguns like some kind of ancient gunfighter. William dropped to the floor as the sonic signals arched overhead, knocking out the communications system in the ceiling of the launch room. The wiring sparked and spat, and the acrid scent of ozone filled the small, egg-shaped room.
Smoke quickly filling the room and made William cough into his lab coat sleeve, but it didn’t stop the agent at all. He lunged forward and grabbed William by the collar of his coat. He lifted the man up easily, as if he were as light as a rag doll, and when William was eye to eye with the agent, the drooling, teeth-filled mouth dropped open and an electronic voice came out: “Dr. William Hunt, you are under arrest for conspiracy to commit a crime against your employer, Helix Laboratories…”
“Sorry, I quit…” William answered and raised his knee and sank it deep into the agent’s testes. The creature croaked and dropped him. He tried to shift away, but it roared in rage and pain and kicked him, bunting him back into the far wall. More sparks filled the confined space, and emergency sirens began to wail as the room turned a lurid shade of red, though William had a feeling no one would come to his aid.
The creature lumbered forward, snarling through its misshapen mouth.
William had to think fast. He turned and jammed his elbow into the nearest computer panel, and it gave an angry hiss as he damaged several circuits. The creature was almost upon him, ready to pummel him into the floor, when he reached for a cable as large as a cobra, hissing and spitting sparks. He grabbed it by its insulated outer barrier and jammed it against the creature falling upon him.
The agent screeched like a machine before part of it exploded into fire and flotsam. The room quickly filled with the stink of burning fish, flesh and circuitry. He dodged away as the creature toppled like a mythical Goliath and lay lifeless and sizzling on the floor of the launch room.
At first, he thought about running for the door, but surely more Helix agents would be waiting for him. He realized there was really only one option left to him. His cover had long since been blown, which meant that both he and Snow were fugitives already. He moved to the side of the capsule and climbed inside, triggering the hatch from inside the compartment.
The launch automatically initiated and the computer told him to prepare for stasis. He lay down, clutching Snow’s body in the dark, and wondered what it was he had started, what war was to come, and if he and Snow would ever be safe. Then the stasis gas hit him and all went black.
* * *
He woke to the hum of the computer. A slight breeze ruffled Snow’s hair against his cheek.
He sat up on the moon of Sirius and looked up at a vast violet sky full of scudding clouds. He wondered if this was how the skies of earth looked before war and pollution had turned them into a miasma of black, poisonous gasses through which the earth sun could no longer penetrate.
Sitting up, he saw long, lush, rolling gold grasses and small but sturdy trees. Small insects with multi-colored wings flitted past his face. Far off came smoke from a cooking fire down in one of the many lawless colonies that dotted the moon. He felt his heart lift at the sight. He and Snow could hide there, change their names, never be found—maybe.
He looked down at her, sleeping so soundly. “Snow,” he said. And then again. “Snow.”
He leaned down on impulse and laid a wet, consuming kiss on her lips. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked up at him from under heavy, drowsy eyes. “William,” she said with excitement, sitting up. “William, are we there?”
“We’re there,” he said, climbing from the capsule and helping an unsteady Snow down to the springy grass. A small repto-mammal darted past them and disappeared into the tall grass.
She looked around at the various wildflowers and creature with wonder in her eyes, and he realized this was the first time she was seeing real, living things—not just the images of datawaves. “Oh, they’re beautiful,” she told them. “They’re perfect.”
But when she finally turned to him, she saw the worry in his eyes. “William, what is it?”
“They know what we did.”
“I see.”
He looked off into the distance, shielding his eyes against twin suns. “Now we’ll never be safe.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“What do you mean?”
“The information about the machines that Helix has tampered with…all the things they’ve done…that was on your tablet, yes?”
“Yes,” he said uncertainly. He still had the tablet with him.
She offered him a clever smile. “While I was sleeping, I was also reading datawaves, and sending a few of my own. I sent that information to the largest media companies on earth. They’ll all soon know exactly what Helix has been doing with the sex toys. Will that keep them from hunting us?”
William felt his heart catch in his throat. He pulled Snow close amidst their new wonderland and kissed the hair atop her heard. He couldn’t say for certain that another Helix agent would never come looking for them, but he knew that Home Office would be facing much larger issues in the near future.
He was about to tell Snow how wonderful and smart she was, but then he spotted something a few meters away. “Look, Snow,” he said. He released her to walk to the foot of one of the small, dwarf trees. It had strange, bluish foliage, but what grew on its branches was familiar to him. He plucked what looked like a bright red apple and gave it to his life-mate.
* * *
THE DOLLHOUSE SOCIETY: DANIEL
By Jay Ellison
Book I: Eyes Wide Open
“Maybe he’s an asexual,” Sheri mused beside me in the lecture hall while I half listened to Professor Linden droning on about the ancient economy of Mesopotamia and how it affected us today. “Maybe that’s his problem.”
“What the hell’s an asexual?” I said as I doodled on a corner of my notebook.
“You know. A guy who doesn’t like sex.”
“I don’t think that exists,” I told Sheri.
I looked out over the lecture hall and found Simon sitting near the front. He was here at Columbia like me on scholarship, but it was a football scholarship, not the World Leader Scholarship I’d gotten for my paper on economics. I wondered if he got teased a lot, being a jock with a name like Simon. He paid me to edit his papers, along with a bunch of other students, but other than that, we’d never had a real conversation or anything, even though the rumor went that he didn’t have a girlfriend. And all jocks have girlfriends, right? Unless they’re queer as fuck.
I was still thinking about that when Sheri kicked my seat and said, “Earth to Daniel. You gonna stop daydreaming about your toy boy and get a coffee with me or what?”
Professor Linden was done and students were drifting out of the lecture hall and I hadn’t even noticed. I jumped up and said, “Actually, I’ve got an interview for a job this afternoon.”
Sheri raised her eyebrows.
“You still editing? ‘Cause I got a few papers for you to look at.”
“It’s a weekend type of thing. In-home care,” I explained as we exited Stafford Hall. I yanked my jacket closed against the blustery chill and adjusted the strap of my shoulder pack. It had been hot for most of September, but now it was definitely starting to feel like fall. I thought again how the east was totally like Jekyll and Hyde, one extreme or the other.
We checked out Simon and his pack of jocks as they headed for the Stadium, probably to warm up for tonight’s game against Rutgers. I didn’t actually like football but I always showed up for the games to watch Simon play. “You gonna talk to him already?” Sheri asked as she loosened her uniform tie. “You know in this town the country mouse attitude doesn’t get you anything but the back of the line.”
The thing with Sheri was, she didn’t mess around, which is why I liked her. She was forward and a little pushy while I was quite and docile. Almost from the first day I’d landed in New York, she’d taken me under her wing. I knew that if she’d liked Simon, she would have already “bagged and tagged” him, as she liked to call it. With her blonde, cheerleader good looks, that probably wouldn’t have been a problem. Sheri had like fifteen exes on the school campus alone, and every last one still wanted to get with her.
“Yeah,” I said, watching Simon’s fine ass. “Eventually.”
“When the moon is in the right phrase.”
“Shut up!”
“Okay, so you won’t talk to Simon and have a real weekend life, but you’re willing to take care of some old dude,” she said when we reached the parking lot. She shook her head with exasperation. “Makes sense to me.”
She made it sound like it was a job scrubbing toilets or something. But Sheri and her friends were loaded, so what did they know about trying to make it in an Ivy League school like Columbia on a scholarship and student loans?
I shrugged. I’d taken care of my dad through his chemo treatments. I didn’t see how this was any different. Besides, the last email I’d gotten from my mom had been a little disturbing. My dad had been laid off from his job for reasons that just didn’t add up but screamed liability, and the six months of his worker’s comp was quickly running out. Mom finally admitted that they were “a little behind on the mortgage,” and she was looking for work in town, but I knew her arthritis was going to make that nearly impossible. Apparently, the money I sent home every month didn’t amount to shit anymore. My mom hadn’t said that, of course, but I was smart enough to read between the lines.
So I wheeled some old guy around a couple days a week. The pay was good. And it would leave me plenty of free time to edit papers or just try to think of ways of talking to Simon without sounding like some brainless dolt. How hard could that be?
* * *
The address was for an old, stone, south-facing townhouse on a quaint, tree-lined street in the heart of the West Village, the kind of place Manhattan billionaires retired to when they fell on hard times and had to sell that third vacation home in the French Riviera. I got off the bus and went up to the big, wrought-iron gates surrounding the property and wondered what my chances here were of being arrested for vagrancy.
The call box sprang to life and I jumped as a female voice said, “Thanks for coming. Daniel, right? Go around to the west entrance, will you?”
“Okay,” I said into the box, then realized I had to hold a button down and repeat myself.
The gate clicked open and I let myself in and followed a long, curved, cobblestone path around the side of the house to what I assumed was the west entrance, surrounded by a gigantic stone pavilion. A young woman in her early twenties stood by some French doors. She was tall, model thin, with short black hair and almost black eyes. She had a pretty, horsey face and amazing cheekbones, like some European actress I didn’t know but should. “Thanks for coming by, Daniel. Did you find the house all right?”
“Sure,” I said, big talker that I am, and followed her inside to an industrial-sized kitchen with stone walls and all stainless steel appliances. I thought how my mom would get such a kick from a kitchen like this.
“I’m Kate. You’re an undergraduate?”
“Yeah,” I said, and kept looking around the place, which looked like a poised magazine layout. I finally snapped my attention back to Kate so I didn’t come off as too ghetto. At least, that’s what Sheri always said. Don’t look around rich folks’ pads because it makes you look ghetto. Or, in my case, country mouse. I shook Kate’s hand and said, “From Columbia.”
“Ivy League,” she said and whistled. “I bet you’re super smart. This job must sound pretty boring to you.”
“I took care of my dad,” I said.
“Was he disabled?”
“Cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s cool,” I said, and slid my hands into the pockets of my jacket. “He’s okay now.”
“Does he live in the city?”
I didn’t want to say he lived in Kansas with my other family, so I just said, “No. He’s out in the country.”
Kate nodded and led me into a gigantic living room done in royal red with vaulted ceilings and Greek statues. Wow. “I wish I could get my dad to move out to the country. I have a house out in Martha’s Vineyard? But Da’s a stubborn old codger. When he first came to this country, he settled here in New York, and now he won’t leave it at all. He says the house reminds him too much of my mother, who passed on a few years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “He’s the one you need in-home care for?”
“Yes. Da’s disabled. I mean, he’s fine around the house, and he can manage if he goes into the office, but I don’t like him going out on his own. I landed a gig with the new X-Files reboot that’s filming in Vancouver? So I won’t be down here in the city to look after him that much. You understand.”
I raised my eyebrows at that. No wonder Kate looked familiar. I think I recognized her from a sitcom I’d seen one night. Shit, a celebrity. I wondered if it would be impolite to ask her for her autograph. Up ahead I spotted a pair of big, oaken double doors. Faint strands of classical music drifted from the room. “Is your dad an actor too?” I asked.
“No. Da’s in container shipping. Have you heard of NorthStar?”
“Oh yeah,” I said.
“He stepped down as CEO about ten years ago, when things started getting hard for him, but he still has controlling interest, and he likes to go into the office on Saturdays and look things over. Do you think you could handle taking him into the city?”
“Sure,” I said.
“He also likes to visit with his friends.”
“Okay,” I said. The old guy sounded pretty active. And if he wanted to sit around Central Park and play checkers with some old dudes or feed pigeons or whatever, that was fine. I figured I could do my papers or editing while I waited.
Kate pushed the doors open and we stepped into a gigantic conservatory with a glass ceiling. The music hit me full on, the kind of rolling crescendo you normally only hear from concern pianists. I worked at keeping my jaw from dropping to my shoes while Kate led me across the hardwood floor to a giant black grand piano where her father sat playing. “Da, I’d like you to meet Daniel Collins. He’s here to look after you.” She hugged the man at the piano and kissed him on the cheek. “Daniel, this is my dad, Alexei Karenina.” Her cell went off then and she snatched it up. “I’ll let you two get acquainted while I take that,” she said and excused herself from the room.
Holy Christ, I thought as my heart stopped for one second in my chest, and then, as if to make up for it, started galloping like crazy. I gripped the straps of my pack and just stared at Kate’s dad, who’d stopped playing the moment we’d stepped into the room. He looked like a forty-something, male version of his daughter, tall and slim in his dark suit, with a lean, angular face and those incredible actor cheekbones and almost pitch black eyes. His black hair was brushed neatly back away from his face, with just a few strands
of virile grey at the temple, and the lashes that framed his eyes were dark and lush, like the little hairs along the backs of his hands.
“Daniel Collins,” he said, staring at me somewhat blankly.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-three,” I told him. “I go to Columbia. I’m studying economics. I’m hoping to land a job with a firm as a CPA one day,” I babbled on.
Shit. I never babbled until I saw a hot guy. Then I couldn’t shut up.
He blinked. “I didn’t ask what you’re studying or what your plans were. I just asked your age.”
I flushed at the steel in Mr. Karenina’s voice. “Sorry.”
“Why are you sorry? Because you’re studying economics? Or because you want to be a CPA?”
“No,” I immediately answered. “I mean…never mind.”
Mr. Karenina gave me a cold look out of those dead, unblinking eyes and reached for a bottle of expensive scotch sitting atop the piano. Jesus, great going Daniel, I thought. Retarded much? I watched him stick two fingers into a tumbler and pour until the amber liquid reached the halfway line. Then he got up and carried the tumbler across the room, navigating with amazing accuracy for a blind guy. He reached a dark, plush, leather sofa opposite a wicker chair and sat down. “Are you going to hover or are we going to conduct this interview?”
The steely sound of Mr. Karenina’s voice made me flinch inside. He rolled his “R’s” and clipped the ends of his sentences. I though German, at first, then figured, Karenina…must be Russian. He sounded like a fucking drill sergeant from the Soviet Union. Comrade, we are Red partisans, and we SHOOT deserters!
I went over to the wicker chair and dropped down, my pack at my feet.
Mr. Karenina sat there opposite me, his dead black gaze centered just a few inches below my chin. I felt the sudden, intense need to stick my tongue out and cross my eyes at him. “What did Kate tell you about the job?”