Eternal Life Inc.

by James Burkard

  The wind swept beach along the Mexican Break dissolved in a swirl of colored pixels and then went dark. It took Harry a moment to realize he was looking into a darkened room at night. He could make out faint, silvery phosphorescence coming through a thin sheath of drawn curtains behind a shadowy figure sitting in front of the camera.

  “I have to be careful and do this after everyone is asleep,” a voice whispered and once again Harry had the uncanny sense that he was hearing Diana instead of her twin.

  “I’m putting this on the Vampire. I’ve only used it once before, testing it with a sequence from my first meeting with Rielly. I haven’t used it since. You told me only in an emergency. I think this is an emergency. I can’t trust putting anything else in my notebooks or the extra data cores I brought. They’re all compromised. I don’t even dare transfer them to the vampire for fear it too will be corrupted. I don’t understand how they did it. I have the best security system Jericho and Chueh could give me. Even the military couldn’t hack it.”

  Harry glanced at Diana. “You didn’t tell her about the Norma-genes’ back-door ability?” he said.

  Diana shook her head. “We weren’t aware of it until six months ago. By that time she was already in Las Vegas.”

  “I’m certain they’ve gotten in somehow,” Isis continued. “When I went back in, things were missing from my logs, important things. There was a pattern to it. At first, all the video clips of remaking, the whole process, were gone. Then, the written records went. Then, all the clips of Rielly’s pet wolf and all the other wolves wandering around the city were wiped. I’m beginning to be afraid, Di. I think I’ve walked into one of Jake’s prophecies, one of the real bad ones.

  “I should have seen it coming as soon as Rielly told me the name of his pet wolf, Nubis. It’s short for Anubis, and you know where Rielly makes his home? You’re going to love this.” She gave a short, choking laugh of despair. “He’s got a penthouse on the top floor of the Great pyramid of the old Faro Casino Hotel. He had the pyramid specially rebuilt. I’ve been living up here with him almost from the day I came and never put two and two together. Some scientist, huh?

  “I think they’ve built a gateway, a small one, on the outskirts of town. It’s been there ever since I came. I never paid it too much attention, too busy…too busy banging Rielly!” Once again Harry heard that short, bitter, choke of laughter.

  “But when I wasn’t too busy, I began to get curious about a lot of things going on here. If you scratch the bright shiny surface of this brave new world, things begin to look decidedly flakey, and when you begin looking too closely at that building on the outskirts of town, things begin to get downright scary.

  “Di, I think Rielly’s opened a gate and is bringing in the Anubis. It’s starting all over again. “I…” She stopped and looked over her shoulder. “I thought I heard something. I think someone’s…” A shadowy arm reached out for the Vampire and the darkness dissolved once again into a rainbow swirl of pixels.

  Harry blinked and looked over at Diana. “What was that all about?”

  She held up an admonishing finger. “Let Isis tell it,” she said and started to hit the key and hesitated. “It’s not pretty,” she warned.

  29

  The Bride of Frankenstein

  When the pixel swirl cleared, they were looking into a large luxurious apartment. Once again, the view went from floor to ceiling as if there was no wall between. This time the green linoleum floor gave way to a thick pile carpet as white as an avalanche. The truck stop interior of Formica topped tables and beige walls gave way to sloping walls of dark tinted glass edged with black silk curtains.

  The camera was focused on the end wall and a pair of sliding glass doors. Through the tinted glass, Harry could see what looked like a balcony and a low balustrade and beyond that sky and clouds. It was like looking out at the world through dark sunglasses.

  The camera drew back and focused on a large black leather sofa with its back to the sliding doors and a low, black marble coffee table in front. On the table was an ashtray, a crystal tumbler filled with ice cubes and amber liquid, and a bottle of cheap whiskey, half full.

  Harry recognized the brand immediately. An old favorite, he thought and felt the old, familiar craving twist his gut. He thought he’d gone beyond that, but it looked like his body still remembered the “good times”. He pulled his eyes away from the bottle and looked at Isis.

  She lay stretched out on the sofa, with one leg hitched up over the back and one arm bent behind her head, and stared up at the ceiling, smoking a cigarette. She lay there as if unaware the camera was running. She was dressed according to the latest, creepiest, “little girl” fashion to sweep New Hollywood; bobby socks, shiny red, patent-leather, platform heels, a short, hot pink, plasti-silk jumper, and a yellow T-shirt that was two sizes too small. Her long blonde hair was braided into pigtails, each tied with a bright yellow bow.

  Her short skirt rode high up on the thigh of her raised leg and the position of her arm behind her head pulled her breasts up tight against the undersized T-shirt. She wore nothing underneath and her nipples pressed impudently against the fabric. Harry wondered if this pose of wanton relaxation with its obvious sexual overtones was on purpose. If so, he wondered to what purpose? He glanced over at Diana. She was watching him. He looked away embarrassed.

  Isis suddenly swung her leg down from the back of the sofa and sat up. She looked into the camera and took a deep drag of her cigarette. Harry studied her face through the haze of smoke. He was shocked by what he saw.

  It wasn’t that she had physically changed that much from the twin he’d seen in Diana’s locket holo. Perhaps she was a little thinner but she still kept that deep bronze skin tint that was so startling against the platinum of her hair.

  What shocked him was her makeup and what it did to her face. In the locket holo she’d applied makeup with a light touch that tended to underline the strength and beauty that was already there. Now, it looked like she’d applied it with a brick-layer’s trowel and wore it like a grotesque mask.

  Her lips were exaggerated, brightly painted, ruby rosebuds. A thick coating of blusher turned her cheeks into rouged bruises, while dark eyeliner, mascara, and false eyelashes turned her eyes into kewpie doll caricatures.

  Harry realized that that was just the image she was aiming at. The little girl clothes, the pigtails and bobby socks, the painted doll’s face. Not a woman but a doll, not a person but a perverse sexual toy. What the hell was going on here?

  Isis blew a long stream of smoke into the camera. “How do you like my new look?” she asked in a breathless Marilyn Monroe whisper so like a Norma-gene’s. “Do you think it will blow Rielly’s skirt up?” She laughed. It sounded like glass breaking.

  She crossed her legs, stretched her arm along the back of the couch, and smiled at the camera. She took another deep drag of her cigarette. Harry noticed that her hands were trembling. Behind the false lashes, mascara, and liner, her eyes had the look of a caged animal.

  For a while she said nothing, just smiled into the camera and drummed her fingers on the back of the sofa. The smile never left her face and never changed because, Harry suddenly realized, it was painted on. Those rosebud lips had been given a permanent upward quirk like the smile on a clown’s face. The effect was ghastly.

  “Where to start, where to start,” she muttered to herself. At last, she reached for the crystal tumbler on the coffee table. “A toast!” she cried and raised the glass. “To the Bride of Frankenstein!” Her voice lost its breathless Norma-gene quality and instead became a sharp-edged screech, a razor scraping a line of coke across a mirror.

  She threw back her head and emptied the tumbler and slammed it back on the table. “It’s whiskey, whiskey, whiskey that keeps us all so frisky,” she sang as she reached over and refilled the glass from the always friendly bottle.

  She ran a finger around the rim of the glass and stared at it thoughtfully. “To the Bride of Frankenstein,”
she repeated in a normal tone of voice so like Diana’s. “I guess that’s as good a place as any to begin.” She puffed on her cigarette drawing the smoke deep into her lungs and letting it out slowly. Her eyes took on a sad wistfulness so at odds with her painted smile.

  “When I first met Rielly, I thought he was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen,” she said. “He was like some fantastic, romantic hero, riding that futuristic, blue stallion with the wind blowing through his silver hair, and Nubis running beside him. Like something out of a fairy tale.” She gave a bitter bark of laughter. “A real Prince Charming!”

  She smoked the cigarette to her fingertips and then stubbed the butt out in the ashtray. She reached behind her and pulled out a little purse. It was bright red with yellow polka dots and a thin shoulder strap. Just the thing for a little girl out on the town, Harry thought.

  She took out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She shook out a cigarette and threw the pack on the table. Then she lit the cigarette, grabbed the whiskey glass, and leaned back with the glass in one hand and the cigarette in the other.

  “I have to admit I was smitten,” she said. “Head over heels, love at first sight. No, let’s not bullshit. The time for bullshitting is long gone, isn’t it, Di? You were right when you said I loved him before I even saw him.” She took a sip of her drink and waggled the glass. “And Rielly, the bastard, knew it.”

  “Just listen to me.” She shook her head in disgust. “I sound like a self-pitying school girl who’s been dumped by the captain of the football team.” She smiled her painted clown’s smile and looked down at herself and spread her arms. “At least I’m dressed for the part!”

  She started to laugh and then stopped herself. She put her drink down and looked directly into the camera. “I’m sorry, Di. This isn’t the way it was supposed to be. I should have listened to you. I should have at least suspected something was wrong but…God, he was so handsome, so intelligent, so understanding.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “…and he had the body of a young god.

  “They all did, and they were all Norma-genes, and that was impossible. Everything about them was impossible, from their too perfect bodies, to those horses they rode, to that wolf that followed Rielly everywhere and talked to him.

  “Oh yeah, Nubis talked and when he did, Rielly listened. I know. I heard. Not with my ears but in my head. That damned wolf was telepathic, can you believe it? This was sensational stuff, and I was in on the ground floor. Nothing anyone told me prepared me for this. I mean, this guy not only had the body of a young god but some of the powers too.

  “O-o-h, Rielly.” She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Let’s face it, even if I knew then what I know now, I’d still go with him. I’d walk over the dead bodies of every friend and relative I ever had, you included, just for the chance to follow him back to Las Vegas.

  “God, he was beautiful,” she said, lying back down on the sofa with one leg hitched up over the back like before. She took a drag on her cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke at the ceiling. “Just beautiful, the son of a bitch!” She was silent for a while watching the cigarette smoke drift towards the ceiling. She smoked the cigarette down to the butt and crushed it out in the ashtray until there was nothing left but shredded paper and loose bits of burnt tobacco.

  “He really knew how to turn on the charm and sweep a girl off her feet,” she said at last. “Not that I needed much sweeping. When we started back to Las Vegas, he asked if I wanted to ride with him. Did I? Hell I would have killed for the chance. It was like a dream come true, pressed against his back with my arms around him, feeling the heat of his body, smelling his musky male smell.” She closed her eyes. “I can still feel the tickle of his hair blowing against my face as we raced towards Las Vegas.

  “Those horses are unbelievably strong and fast. They’re also slightly telepathic and Rielly and his troop rode them without reins or bridles. Instead, you just held onto their mane and thought what you want them to do and they did it.

  “They never seemed to get tired, rocking us together mile after mile,” she sighed. “You can’t imagine how wonderful it was. A little more of that and I would have been ready to give Rielly anything he wanted and that was just what he wanted.

  “After we rode up the beach and across the sand dunes for a few miles, Rielly decided no one was following us, and said it would be safe to take a “shortcut” to Las Vegas. He and his troop turned down into a hollow between the dunes where an old woman was waiting for us. She was an unremade witch, a weirding, and she was dressed like a queen.

  Rielly never remakes his weirding witches or warlocks who control the special powers he needs. For some reason Norma-genes lose these powers when they’re re-made. Most of the time they’re so weak and uncontrolled it doesn’t matter; but for the few who control real power, remaking is a lost world. They’re richly compensated for their loss and are second only to Rielly himself in wealth and power.

  “When we were all gathered around her, the witch pointed her finger at the air in front of us and drew a large circle. It was as if her finger was a laser that could cut out a piece of reality. A pencil thin line of darkness appeared where she pointed and when she closed the circle, the landscape inside just fell out onto the ground like a big round picture postcard.

  “It left a hole in the world at least eight feet across and looking through it was like looking into a fairy tale, the Arabian Nights maybe. It was as if we were standing on a high bluff above a tropical rainforest. In the distance I could see the spires and domes of an exotic city surrounded by a vast checker-board of farmland while we stood surrounded by sand dunes and the smell of the sea.

  “Rielly looked back at me and said, “Shall we?” as if he was asking me to dance and we stepped through. Without waiting for the others, he kicked his horse and we raced headlong down off that bluff and out onto a dirt road, cut ruler straight through the rainforest.

  “Those horses ran like the wind and never stopped, never seemed to tire.” She closed her eyes and smiled dreamily. “God, it was wonderful, the wind in my face, that racing horse between my legs and Rielly’s body pressed against mine and all my dreams coming true.

  “We raced for miles through rainforest that gradually gave way to vast plantations as we neared Las Vegas.” Her eyes remained closed and her voice took on a soft, dreamy quality as if she was seeing it all again just as it was that first day. “Gangs of men and animals worked the fields, and everywhere we saw these beautiful, godlike Norma-genes on their great, multicolored horses with their pet wolves trailing in their wake. There was something barbarically feudal and romantic in their bearing, in their clothes with flowing capes and high riding boots and light chainmail armor; in their swords and whips and pistols, in the turrets and colonnades of their whitewashed mansions sitting in the shade of huge, impossible oaks. It was a land of wealth and beauty, and all this Rielly had accomplished in less than twenty years. It was unbelievable, but just a pale preview of the New Jerusalem.

  “The heavy rain clouds that had been piling over the forest gave way to open blue sky and as we raced into the city, the sun shone down on it like some celestial spotlight.” Her words trailed off and she sat perfectly still, her eyes closed, her features relaxed.

  The camera stayed focused on her face that started to twist and contort as if something inside was trying to get out and print its features over hers. A dribble of saliva bubbled from her lips and she began to sway and moan. Suddenly, she opened her eyes wide. They were filled with fear and loathing and showed too much white. Her pupils were mere pinpricks as if she was staring into the sun. “Get away you son of a bitch!” she screamed and then answered herself in a spitting, hissing, mewling obscenity of speech.

  She twisted and turned. Her back arched up and slammed down, arched up and slammed down as if she was receiving electroshocks. She threw her head from side to side, screaming and kicking and swinging her fists as if she was fighting some unseen enemy. Her a
rm shot out and knocked over the tumbler, splashing whiskey across the black marble tabletop. Her eyes rolled up, showing only blood-shot whites, staring into the top of her head.

  With an inhuman howl of triumph, she grabbed for the whiskey bottle, but her other hand seized hold of her arm, and the inhuman howl morphed into human speech. “You don’t want that!” Isis screamed. As she dragged the arm away, her body seemed to go into hissing, spitting convulsions that left her foaming at the mouth and shaking like a rag doll.

  “You can’t have me!” she screamed, throwing herself from side to side on the couch and kicking out her legs and beating the air with her fists. Tears ran down her face, smearing her makeup into long black mascara stripes that dripped down her face like black tears.

  Finally, she shrieked, “Gottcha, you son of a bitch!” and her hands clawed at the air, closing around an unseen enemy, twisting it, snapping it, and laughing hysterically.

  Suddenly, she stopped, as if some infernal motor had cut off inside her. She relaxed with a deep sigh of relief. Her body sprawled bonelessly across the sofa. She opened her eyes and looked around in momentary confusion, her eyes still limned with flitting shadows.

  Finally, she sat up and made a desultory attempt to straighten her clothes. Her yellow T-shirt had ridden up, exposing one firm, round breast. Harry noticed dark purple bruises and scars that might have been cigarette burns just before she jerked the shirt down and straightened her skirt. Her pigtails had come undone and she combed her fingers through the tangled platinum snarls and pulled out one of the yellow ribbons. She held it in her hand and looked at it as if she was seeing it for the first time.

  Then, she shook her head. “Nodded off again,” she said half-to-herself. “Been doing that a lot lately. Gotta watch it.” She looked up at the camera. Her mascara was a black smear around her eyes with two, long, black tear-streaks running down her face. She looked ghastly before; she looked even worse now.