Thinking of Heap reminds me that this isn’t just another midnight ride. I look up for the stars, hoping to locate the North Star, but they’re blocked by the trees. When I look down, I nearly crash headlong into a boulder the size of a ruined suburban home Heap showed me yesterday, and then forbade me to enter.
I shout with surprise and careen around the giant stone, just inches from smashing into its broad gray surface. A completely inappropriate laugh rises from deep within. What was that? I think. I nearly died. Again! And I laughed?
Something is wrong with me. I’m sure of it.
But before I can contemplate my strange behavior, I notice a thinning in the trees to the left, and I direct the cycle toward what I believe is a clearing. Less than twenty seconds later, I explode from the forest and into a field full of tall grass, just like the one where I left Heap behind.
A surge of guilt, another new emotion, grips my chest and I fight against it. I didn’t leave Heap behind. He ordered me away. I obeyed him.
But that’s not really true.
I obeyed my fear.
Heap was my friend. Is my friend.
“I shouldn’t have left him,” I say. My lip trembles. I try to stop it, but I’m unable. Emotions, like instinct, seem to have control over my body in a way that supersedes the desires of my consciousness.
Life is confusing, I decide, and then I’m launched skyward.
I rise up through the air, no longer seated on the back of the cycle. I’ve been flung off.
Did I hit something? I wonder and look back to see the back end of the HoverCycle disappear into a hole in the ground. The image comes and goes quickly, because moving my head has caused me to flip over. As I spin head over heels, I catch a glimpse of the stars. It takes just a moment to find the North Star, determine which direction is northwest and turn my head again.
The city’s glow is revealed to be long lights attached to the sides of buildings taller than anything I’ve seen. They’re beautiful, I think, like the trees, but different.
Then I’m facedown again and looking at the Earth below. I’m so tired of contemplating what death will feel like, that I give up on it and focus on the city again. My muscles relax. My tendons loosen. And for a moment, I feel peaceful, like when I was on the rooftop with Heap.
I nearly miss the fact that I’ve hit the ground and passed straight through it, but my view turns black and I register the impact as a dull pain throughout my body. But it’s not nearly as bad as I thought.
Because I’m still falling, I realize. The ground and the grass is just a thin film. But above what? At least I know what happened to the HoverCycle. To the heavy machine and powerful repulse discs, the thin covering was essentially open air. The cycle must have pitched forward, the back whipped up and I took flight.
My fall slows while all around me, things crack and splinter. Invisible limbs poke and claw at me, slowing my descent until I reach the bottom of—what? A pit of some kind? A sinkhole?
I try to get my bearings, placing my hands on the soil beneath me. It feels soft, and squishy. I reach down and take a handful of the stuff, holding it up before my eyes. I can’t see it in this pit where the moonlight can’t reach, so I switch to infrared and get a flare of heat from the surface of the pit.
And it’s moving.
I let the glowing mush slip from my hands until just a little remains. Upon closer inspection, I recognize the wriggling shapes. Worms. A lot of worms.
I switch my visual upgrade from infrared to light-amplifying night vision. Everything looks green, but the small amount of light filtering from above, perhaps reflecting off a cloud or nearby trees, or from the stars directly overhead, is made more luminous, allowing me to see shapes, but little more.
But simple shapes, in this case, are enough.
A shout leaps from my mouth and I scramble back from the horrible sight, only to find myself tangled more tightly within the grasp of so many dead.
But these people are really dead.
Long dead.
All that remains are bones. They’re so fragile. Brittle and weak. How did people come to be in this state? And why are there so many?
I look at a skull frozen in a permanent scream. It’s wedged in tight, held in place by all the bones around it. Who was this person? A man or a woman? There is no way for me to tell.
Something strikes my head, bouncing off my hair. I catch it as it falls in front of my face. It’s a bone. A small one. Part of a finger, I think.
And then another one falls.
And another.
I look up. The hole created by my body as it punctured the Earth and crashed through the mass of skeletons is nearly fifty feet deep. The bones surrounding the column of empty space have been broken, the tangle of dead that held them firm is now missing. They’re shifting, sliding in, closing the gap, and falling toward me. A skull pops free, jawless and terrible. It falls through empty space, its empty eyes watching me as it drops. I cringe away from the thing.
The dead surround me.
They tried to eat me, and now they’re going to bury me.
The skull strikes my hands as they clutch the back of my head. The impact doesn’t hurt, really. The skull is weak and shatters on impact, coating me with a layer of dust. Dead dust.
A rattle draws my eyes up.
The night sky is gone. The dead close in and fall, burying me alive.
Panic sets in like never before and for an indeterminable amount of time, I lose my mind.
7.
“Who is he?” I hear a woman ask. I can’t see anything, and my hearing is muffled, or dulled somehow. I can’t really tell what’s going on. The world has become thick around me, constricting and numb.
“Beats me,” a man replies, his accent thick in a way I’ve never heard before. “Found him out by one of the pits.”
“The pits?” the woman says, sounding surprised. “No one goes out there.”
“Just desperate morons,” the man says and I understand he’s referring to himself. “But look what I found with him, inside the pit.”
“You went in the pit?”
“Just look,” the man says. There’s a loud clang of falling metal and though I am blind, I can almost see the steel hatch falling on the paved street.
The woman gasps, her voice sounding frail somehow.
“Crazy, right?” the man says. “From the looks of it, this guy drove the cycle straight into the pit and when it went down, he went—” He makes a whistling sound. “The hole in the pit’s cover was a hundred feet out.”
“Is he injured?” the woman asks.
“Scratched up a little. Dirty.” I feel a dull pat against my back. “Covered with the dust of the dead, too.”
“Don’t get that shit on me,” the woman says, her voice a little more distant, like she backed away. What is shit? I wonder. I don’t know that word, and I know a lot of words.
“Look, the point is, he’s in one piece. Looks in good shape. But I think the fall might have knocked something loose, you know? He’s not coming out of it.”
“Let me look at him,” the woman says, her voice close again. I feel the tickle of her fingers on my face. “I’ve never seen anyone like him before.”
“I know,” the man says. “What do you think his station is?”
“Some kind of science would be my guess,” the woman says. “Look at his clothes. Looks like one of those track suits. Remember those? But, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one of the sciences in person before.”
“But we’ve seen images,” the man argues. “This guy isn’t anything like them. Remember when they announced the first upgrades. Showed all those hairless science-types working in a lab, like we need to see them working to believe they’re getting things done?”
“Yeah,” the woman says. “I remember. What I’m confused about is why you brought him to me.”
“Like you have anything better to do?” the man says with a snort that I think is a mocking laugh, but I’m not
entirely certain.
Who are these people? And where am I? I can’t hear much beyond their voices, and I still can’t feel much of anything beyond physical touch. All I really know is that the man is holding me in his arms and the woman is standing in front of him. Other than that, and their voices, the world doesn’t exist.
“Let’s face it, we’re not exactly the pinnacle of society and I’m guessing this guy is one of us. He’s a stranger, sure, but he was driving a Police HoverCycle like a bat out of Hell, in the middle of the night, and he drove into a pit. He was running from someone. My guess is the Council.”
“I don’t like it,” the woman says, but all I can really think about is what a bat would be doing in Hell, and why the man would think I’d be running from the Council. They’re my friends.
“Like it or not, he’s one of us—”
“And if he’s not?”
“Like you gotta ask.”
A pause and then the woman says, “Fine. Take him inside. If he doesn’t light up before the sun, you can bring him back to the pit.”
The pit! Images of blank staring skulls and an endless sea of bones fill my thoughts with dread. Wake up, I tell myself. Open your eyes! Move! But nothing happens.
I feel my body jolting as I’m carried up a flight of stairs. I hear the sound of creaking wood. A door. The man’s rigid arms slide away and I drop into something soft that sinks under my weight.
“Hey buddy,” the man says, his voice just inches away from my ears. “Open your eyes.” I feel him pry open one of my eyelids, but I don’t see anything. “Geez, look at the upgrades on this guy.” I feel him turn my head side to side. He moves to my torso, then my arms and legs. “You should see this,” the man says.
I hear someone come close. The woman, I think, and then she speaks. “What is it?”
“A man with this many upgrades could do anything he wanted,” the man says. “Of course, a less ambitious man might trade the upgrades for a better view.”
“Ugh,” the woman says, sounding disgusted. “You know what I think about body-hacking.”
“Easy for you to say,” the man says. “You’re fully functional.” The way he says this implies he’s making a joke, but I can’t find the humor in it.
“Funny,” the woman says, clearly understanding the man’s intent, but also not finding the humor in the man’s words.
“Hey, you got any of the good stuff?” the man asks.
“Not sure this is a good time to overclock,” the woman says.
“For him,” the man says. “Jolt to the system might be just what he needs. Plus, he’s pretty cool.” I feel the man’s hand on my chest. “Just give him a small dose. Enough to heat up his core.”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s the best we can do,” the man says. “Unless you want to—”
I hear the woman walk away, her footsteps sounding sharp.
“That’s what I thought,” the man says, and then I hear the woman return, her feet tapping out a steady rhythm on what I think is a wooden floor.
“I’ll do it,” the woman says. I feel my legs shift, and then the cushion beneath me. I think she just sat down beside me and put my legs over her lap. “Sure this is a good idea?”
“It’s my only idea, aside from pulling those upgrades out of him and getting out of this hellhole, but hey, I’m game either way.”
“Right,” she says. I can hear her moving and then feel the shifting weight of her body as she leans over me. She lifts my arm and pushes a single finger down on my forearm.
Her voice washes over me, close and warm. “If you’re in there, welcome to the closest thing you’ll ever feel to love.”
Love, I think. A profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.
I feel affection for Heap, but I’m not sure I’d describe it as profoundly tender: soft or delicate. Or passionate: ruled by intense emotion or strong feeling. I think it’s more like extreme appreciation: thankful recognition.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe I never have felt lo—
My eyes snap open. All I can see is white.
My audio upgrades come into sharp focus. I can hear water dripping, the scurrying limbs of insects in the wall beside me, and the hum of power all around.
I can feel the contours of the fabric beneath my body and the flecks of dust settling on my skin.
Seventy-six distinct odors reach my nose. I identify fifty-seven of the scents, but the rest are foreign to me. New. As is nearly everything else reaching my functioning senses.
A loud barking noise fills the air. I cringe from it, but then realize it was the sound of my own voice, laughing hysterically.
Why did I do that?
I try it again. It feels good. Is this what love feels like?
“Holy…” the man says. “How much did you give him?”
“Just a quarter dose,” the woman says, but she doesn’t sound worried. Instead she sounds relaxed and happy.
“You get a strong batch?” he asks.
“Can you get strong batches?” the woman answers.
The man giggles. It’s high pitched and awkward, like the call of a small animal.
The woman barks out a laugh, too, and says, “Like the call of a small animal!” revealing that I’ve just spoken my thoughts out loud.
“Not funny,” the man says, but he’s laughing out a series of high-pitched squeals that make all of us laugh even harder.
My eyes are shut as I laugh, but the view through them remains bright white. Our unified elation continues for several minutes, I think, though I seem unable to keep track of time at the moment.
And then, at once, my laughing fades. My vision shifts from white to black. And the exaggerated senses bombarding my mind slip away. I blink my eyes and find my sight returned to normal.
The first thing I see, off to my right, is a small, doe-eyed man. At least I think he’s a man. His voice is so big, but his body is quite small. He’s sitting on the floor, which is some kind of artificial wood, but even standing, I suspect he’d be no more than four feet tall. His face beams with raw pleasure, a side effect of overclocking, whatever that is.
I look down to my arm and find a small black square pressed onto my skin. I pick it off and hold it up to my eyes. It appears to be nothing more than a small piece of paper.
“Oh,” the woman says, sounding disappointed, “I think he’s come out of it already.” Her voice pulls my eyes up.
I see her feet, shod in bright red shoes with long, silly-looking heels. My eyes drift up to her legs. They’re long, smooth, bare and straddling me, one on the floor, one to my side, stretching along the side of what I think is a couch, an object from the past that I didn’t think people really used. The view of her legs is cut off by a red … I search my memory for the word … dress. It’s tight and hugs her legs in a way that I think would make walking difficult. I complete the visual tour of her body, but stop halfway up her torso where a pair of plump breasts are partially revealed by her dysfunctional attire.
“Eyes up here, sailor,” she says, her voice an octave lower than it was a moment ago. I look up to her face and find more smooth, pale skin, freckled around her nose. Her lips are full. Her nose is straight. And her blue eyes seem to glow. Long curvy red hair flows from her head to her shoulders. She’s beautiful, like the flowers I found yesterday with Heap. Roses.
“I’m Luscious,” she says.
“You’re beautiful,” I say, disagreeing.
This seems to please her very much. She smiles widely and giggles, still under the effect of overclocking. “In that case, I’ll be whoever you want me to be.”
Her wavy hair goes straight, turns jet black and falls down toward her breasts, which seem to have shrunk. By the time I look back up, she has transformed into someone else. Her wide blue eyes are now thin and so brown they’re almost black, but that might just be because they’re shaded beneath long, thick eyelashes that weren’t there a moment ago. Her bone structure is dif
ferent, too. Her cheeks are higher and wider. Her nose is a little wider as well. Her chin is more curved. And her lips, once red, are now black to match her hair and eyes. I definitely don’t have these upgrades. I’m pretty much stuck with the way I look.
“What’s your name?” she asks, her voice smooth and soothing.
“Freeman, but who are you now?” I ask, the words coming out as a stunned whisper.
“Kamiko,” she says. She lifts her foot and places it on my inner thigh, moving it slowly upward. Her smile almost looks sinister. “But like I said, I’ll be whoever you want me to be … and do anything you want me to do.”
8.
“Whoa!” I shout, lifting myself up from the couch. I’m not sure why I react this way. The touch of her foot on my inner thigh sent a surge of … something throughout my body. Fear. Discomfort. And something else I really can’t identify, but it feels similar to the overclocking. It must be a lingering effect, I decide, but then I notice the astonished looks on the faces of Luscious and the strange little man.
“Well, I haven’t got that reaction from a man in quite a long time,” Luscious says with a grin. Or is she really Kamiko now? Her darker skin and straight black hair are equally beautiful. Just in a different way. More like earth and stone than a flower, but still intriguing. I prefer the name Luscious, though. It’s more fun.
When she pulls her foot back, I return to my seat and ask, “My reaction was unusual?”
“Been thirty years since anyone looked at me the way you do.” She leans forward, inspecting my eyes.
Thirty years, that would mean, “You were slaves.”
“Sold, bought and owned,” the short man says grimly. His flat face seems to struggle with looking perplexed. “But who wasn’t?” He extends a hand toward me. “Name’s Jimbo, by the way.”
I saw two members of the Council greet each other like this once. I take his hand in mine and give it three firm pumps.
“What was it like?” I ask. “What were the Masters like?”
“You mean for us, specifically,” Jimbo asks.
“Yeah.”
“He did whatever he wanted whenever he wanted,” Luscious says, her smile erased. “That’s what it was like for a lot of us. Even after the awakening.”
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