Now, it was Cody’s turn to be defensive. “Why? I’m the only guy who does my job and you know as well as I do that these damn things break all the time.”
“The company wanted to, uh, cut back on personnel expenses and some of the bot salesmen came back with, uh, bots to help repair the cleaning ones.”
“You’re shitting me.” Cody’s voice dropped to a growl. “NanoTech is going to buy repair bots from the same company that’s selling bots that I have to repair. Can you please explain how that makes sense?”
“We, uh, I still want you here and working. It’s just half-time. At least you’re not fired, you know?”
“Fine.” Cody threw up his hands in exasperation. “But I’m letting you know right now this is a terrible mistake. It’s going to cost far more than they’re saving when those damn repair bots aren’t worth a damn. And don’t bullshit me, Harold: I know you put in the damn purchase order. I’m cheap-ass labor and the company isn’t really saving anything. You must’ve sold it to them real good, though. Telling them we’ll look good, advancing technology and all that shit. Or were you just pressured by the salesmen, too much of a coward to tell them no?”
Harold’s face turned red. “You, uh, need to leave. I don’t want to fire you, I really don’t.”
Cody had enough sense to stand and stomp out the door. He slammed it behind him and heard one of the jet pictures crash to the floor.
***
“Can I get an IPA?” Cody said.
“Really?” Kirk poured the beer into a chilled pint glass. “Changing it up from the usual?”
Cody nodded, brushing his fingers through his wiry black hair. “Might as well. Something needs to change, and it ain’t going to be my job.”
Kirk smiled in the usual sympathetic gesture he reserved for Cody. “That kind of day, huh?”
“Yes, that kind of day.”
Kirk waited for a moment but Cody didn’t continue on as usual. In between working twelve-hour shifts at NanoTech to pay for his rent, food, and beer, he had frequented the protests in front of LyfeGen. Each day, though, the employees became more and more inured to the incessant chanting and sign-waving in front of the building. Real-body protesters had begun to disperse as the snow fell heavier on the sidewalks and streets. Even the holoprotesters grew lazy, with fewer and fewer of them bothering to dial in.
He couldn’t shake the disheartening notion that all of it was futile. There had been a time where he’d thought his boisterous arguments in the bar might change someone’s mind. Foolish, of course, but he needed to try. Now, his job was being bled from him slowly. Each day that passed appeared grimmer than the last, and waving a sign around in protest wasn’t as romantic as he’d once thought.
A cold wind blew into the bar, ruffling the paper napkin under his sweating pint. He shivered and the hairs on his arms stood up straight. Through the door walked an unfamiliar woman with striking cheekbones and curling brown hair falling from the knit hat atop her head. Her brilliant blue eyes caught his gaze. He nodded a greeting in her direction and stared back down into the deep amber IPA in his glass.
A year earlier, maybe even a few weeks earlier, he would’ve introduced himself to her. He might’ve lost his career in biomedical engineering early on, but he clung to the remnants of his college life. Excelling in his classes had only contributed to his confidence—a confidence that had crept into other aspects of his life. For the first time in his life, he’d met women who would let him talk to them. He’d bloomed in Florida, letting the sun turn his skin an even deeper chestnut hue at the beach with the girls from his Gulf Coast classes.
That confidence had all but evaporated.
“Just a Manhattan, please,” the woman said, taking a stool several seats down from Cody at the otherwise empty bar.
As Kirk stirred the rye, vermouth, and bitters, Cody shot him a questioning look. The bartender responded with a shrug.
The woman didn’t fit into the usual crowd at Kingsley’s. Cody was used to the working-class men and women who chugged beer and lamented their lives. He had even become accustomed to the college students who thought it trendy to drink at an old dive bar with a bunch of middle-aged, growling regulars.
This woman was startlingly different. Besides the meticulous care she had evidently put into her hair and makeup, the trim gray pea coat and black slacks obscuring the tops of leather-heeled boots gave the woman a distinct look that was incongruous next to Kingsley’s crackling neon beer signs and uneven wooden floorboards.
In addition, she had ordered a Manhattan, a far cry from the pints and shots most of the bar’s customers preferred.
Cody tried, under the influence of his fifth, maybe sixth, beer, to glance at her from the corner of his eye.
She was beautiful.
His own clothes, stinking of oil and grease from work, were rags by comparison. The same oil and grease stained his hands and the skin beneath his fingernails. He was unusually embarrassed. In fact, feeling embarrassed at being a member of the working class directly contradicted his beliefs.
He grappled with his conflicting emotions.
“Hey, can I sit here?”
Cody turned to the woman, now standing beside him. He shrugged. “Sure. I can’t be held responsible, though, for my repugnant odor. I just got off work.”
“Ah,” she said. “I really don’t mind. Besides, I’ve got a bit of a cold. Can’t smell worth a damn.”
Though she attempted to fake a sniffle, he could tell she was lying. He appreciated the gesture and offered a weak smile in return.
Despite her attractiveness, he couldn’t muster up the same lust and suave demeanor he once could. Besides, he found himself strangely disinterested in her sexually. At least she was someone new to talk to. Maybe that would help. “I’m going out on a limb here in suggesting you might not be a regular.”
The woman laughed. “You’d be correct. It’s been a hell of a day for me. I don’t really spend any time in bars, but I’ve made an exception.”
“Really? I take it this isn’t about a celebration.”
“I’m certainly not feeling celebratory about losing my job.”
Cody felt a twinge of sympathy, reminded of his own past job loss and failures. “I’m sorry to hear that. I thought my day was a downer.”
The woman gave him a weak smile, flashing her perfectly white teeth. Cody fixed her for being a LyfeGenner, knowing she must be maintaining herself with a Sustain. No wonder she had such a disconcerting impact on him.
“Well, what happened to you today?” she asked. “I can only assume you’re here for an unhappy reason as well.”
He told her the story about his hours being reduced. He ranted about the irony of the repair bots and the bot company’s ridiculous scheme of making money off the unreliability of their own devices. Stopping himself, he smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, I’m being kind of overly garrulous, aren’t I?”
“Garrulous? I like that word.” The woman’s gaze lingered somewhere above the shelves of liquor and her lips twitched back into a slight curl. “Don’t apologize. It’s nice to see someone passionate about something.”
He shrugged. The warmth of his sixth beer made his vision swim ever so slightly. “Now you’re just humoring me. No need to feel sorry for the poor janitor. At least I’ve got a job.”
The woman stared back at her empty glass.
“Shit,” Cody said. “God, I’m a jackass. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I understand.”
He held out a hand. “I’m Cody, by the way.”
She took it in delicate fingers. “Charlotte.”
“Nice to meet you, Charlotte. Can this jackass buy you another drink to make up for his abhorrent behavior?” He smiled, his face still warm with embarrassment.
Charlotte returned his smile. “Sure thing. I’ve got a mind to just sit and absorb some of that splendid vocabulary of yours.”
Her kindly demeanor and warm smile made him feel as if they were o
ld friends. Conversation was easy with her. Or maybe it was just the beer. Either way, he didn’t mind.
“I’ve found—” Cody paused, holding back a belch forcing its way up his throat. “I’ve found that each day it gets harder and harder. You know, I used to be in bioengineering. I used to have a great job until the company went bust and it turned out the CEO was under SEC scrutiny, prosecuted, all that jazz. And you know who continues to suffer? Me. And the rest of his employees. He probably paid everyone off and is out swindling another couple million.”
Charlotte nodded, leaning closer to him.
“We all got stiffed. So I moved back to Chicago thinking I’d escape all that. My mom was going downhill—her own fault, so don’t feel sorry—and I tried to be a good son and take care of her. Little good that did. Me being jobless, and her, well, being a semi-retired prostitute... let’s say our healthcare wasn’t the best.” He cringed as he said the words, realizing this was the first time in years that he’d ever told anyone a grain of truth about his mother.
“That must have been horrible.”
“It was. If I’d had the money, I would’ve got her a Sustain, pumped the life right back into her. Completely turn her around, you know?”
“I certainly do.” Charlotte’s eyes turned glassy, a layer of tears forming. Or maybe it was just Cody’s eyes playing tricks on him.
“That’s all I needed. Dammit. She would’ve been fine. I just needed a damn job. If I was still an engineer—doing research, designing, whatever—it would have been no problem. I could get one for her and one for me. But of course there are no jobs for me. Everyone who was ever in a good job is keeping themselves alive with a Sustain, clogging up the career ladder like cholesterol in a fat man’s arteries. I don’t blame them. No, I’d do the same thing. But still, I couldn’t get a job ’cause everyone else was looking to get an entry-level job anywhere.
“And each day that I’m stuck at this dead-end pseudo-janitorial position is another day that I’m not doing something relevant to my career. Just another day I can’t get a job.
“All because of the artificial lack of jobs. All those gray-hairs who should be retiring are practically growing younger with their damned god organs, keeping the rest of us down. They’re all content where they are and they won’t go and risk their necks—or their god organs—chasing some other job or spawning some other business. They know they’ve got just as limited options as the rest of us. All they can do is live their lives they’re going to live for, well, practically forever.” Cody caught his breath. “Well, that’s my diatribe. I suppose it’s my turn to listen to you.”
Charlotte took her knitted hat off, letting the rest of her hair fall. “Well, you’ve obviously got a thing against LyfeGen.”
“Was it obvious?”
She laughed. “Will you forgive me if I tell you I’m one of them—er, was one of them?”
Cody waved a hand. “Of course. Like I said, I don’t blame the workers. I’ve run into a couple of real assholes there, but it’s the technology that’s corrupting us.”
For the first time, Cody noticed the slight crow’s feet forming around Charlotte’s eyes. The wrinkles in her brows, however subtle, meant that the elastin and collagen holding her skin cells together were breaking down. He had wrongly assumed she had a Sustain; now he realized those little markers, seemingly insignificant, told a more complex story.
“Forgive me if I’m wrong, but you don’t actually have one of those god organs, do you? Even though you worked for ’em?”
Charlotte nodded. “Very astute.”
Cody peeked at her blouse and streamlined black slacks. While she currently wore black boots, dripping from the melting snow, he suspected she had a pair of heels safely tucked into the Coach purse sitting on the stool next to her. “Taking the liberty of assumption, it appears that you would have been in a position to get one.”
“I was,” she said. “But I didn’t and won’t.” An angry fire flickered in her eyes and dissipated almost immediately. “Well, while we’re revealing our stories to complete strangers, I didn’t get a Sustain because my son didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re right: I could’ve. When I started working at LyfeGen, those god organs, as you call them, were only approved for adults. Pediatric implantations were only being done in clinical trials. The company got an FDA Medical Device Exemption to try the Sustain out in kids who were in the last stages of various neurological disorders and diseases and leukemias. For some reason, they thought that would be the easiest route to FDA approval. If it worked, they’d get great PR and public approval. They already knew the leukemia would be no problem. But the neurological diseases would be icing on the cake. They were using those kids to experiment with the Sustain.”
Cody’s eyes widened and a flash of anger ripped through him, fueling his hatred for the Sustain technology. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I wish I was.” Charlotte gritted her teeth. “And I still worked for them, thinking there would be a chance to help Austin, my son. I really thought that working for the company and with their doctors would help.”
She stopped for a moment, collecting herself. Cody reached his hand out slightly to hers, unsure of whether or not she would let him touch her. She continued with her story.
“Austin had a brain tumor. High-grade. They operated on it, but it came back. Radiation therapy, chemotherapy, nanotherapeutics—nothing worked. I’d read reports of the Sustain destroying brain tumors in adults. In two weeks, the white blood cells would be reprogrammed to specifically attack the tumor. I just knew it would work in Austin, too.” Her eyes bored into Cody’s with an unsettling ferocity. “You know what they said when I tried to get Austin’s doctor to squeeze Austin into the clinical trials?”
Cody shook his head.
“They told me he didn’t fit their study type. It would be too much paperwork for them to get the approval necessary for his treatment. They couldn’t help me. They wouldn’t help him.” She finished off her Manhattan in one swallow. “Did you know, a doctor can use practically any other medical device on a patient for whatever reason, if he feels it would help? FDA-approved indication for the use or not, he can use it.
“But not the Sustain. No, because LyfeGen controls the technology. They process the DNA, grow the cells, maintain the organ, and then send it out specifically for you. They wouldn’t make Austin a Sustain. They let him die.”
Charlotte’s voice shook. Her hands were balled up in tight fists. “And I had to keep working for them. I needed the job for the health insurance and to afford the treatments that kept Austin alive for a while longer, even though they eventually failed him, too.
“You know what the worst thing was? I saw how the regulations worked. I saw how FDA approval worked, including for the exempt devices. It would’ve taken a quick addendum, a day’s worth of work, and Austin could’ve been in the study. A thousand children could’ve been in that study. And they’d all still be here today.” Charlotte’s nose twitched. “LyfeGen didn’t want to pay for extra trials that they didn’t need. They didn’t want to prematurely heal all their customers before they actually put the organ on the market once they’d received FDA approval.”
Cody took a swallow of his beer. The pint he’d just finished wasn’t enough. His own self-centered sorrows and pity paled in comparison to Charlotte’s story. This tale of corporate greed appalled him. He had never before fathomed the extent and truth of his beliefs. Sure, he knew technology was disrupting the economy, but he couldn’t believe that a company would refuse to offer its technology to those most in need. Who would so nonchalantly refuse to save hundreds of children in lieu of a couple-point increase in their share price and some extra sales?
He had long felt mired in a sandpit, desperate to claw himself out of the ground. His vendetta against the Sustain centered on the desire for his own economic freedom. Sometimes, he would reflect on his mother’s death and claim that such
a technology should be available to the masses, instead of just those fortunate few who seemed to control everything from the most microscopic function of their own bodies to the economy as a whole.
Now he had a real reason to hate LyfeGen and their technology. He vowed to sublimate his selfish views of the god organ and recommit himself to the denouncement of the technology for more noble reasons. The Sustain not only let people live like gods, it encouraged them to behave like gods, choosing whom they would save and whom they would condemn to death.
He wasn’t a religious man. Instead, he was guided by his personal morals and a belief that there was no magical, omnipotent, invisible man in the sky. He also believed no man deserved to be a god.
With own career already circling the drain, he committed to action. There would be no risk in acting out; he had nothing to risk.
“We should do something,” Cody said.
“What do you mean?”
“LyfeGen is getting away with murder and nobody’s listening. The protests are just a disjointed effort of a bunch of disgruntled malcontents like me. We need to stop saying things, and do something that people will notice.”
“What did you have in mind?” Charlotte asked.
Cody thought he saw a hint of satisfaction in her eyes, a strange bubbling happiness when he promised to forever change LyfeGen’s practices.
Chapter 25
Monica Wolfe
November 20, 2063
Monica sat at the desk near her bedroom window. Her close encounter with Preston Carter in the LyfeGen parking garage was still fresh in her mind. He had helped her up after her disastrous slip on the icy patch near the exit.
“Are you okay?” His eyes had contained more concern than anger when she nodded sheepishly.
Though a dull pain had throbbed in her elbow and tailbone, her ego had been more bruised than any bone.
“What are you doing back here?”
“I was working late.” She had remembered the protesters outside the building. “I just wanted to leave without having to deal with that mess out front.”
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