Halfskin

by Bertauski, Tony

  There were six monitors arranged on the wall in two rows of three. The one in the middle, bottom row, was the largest. Numbers scrolled down a column that she occasionally stopped with a mouse-click. Several submenus expanded with another series of clicks. She sat back and let the numbers continue to run. The analysis was taking too long, but the program needed time.

  Time was the only thing she couldn’t afford.

  Biomites were humanity’s greatest invention. Forget telecommunications, forget transportation… bionanotechnology changed everything. Once humanity controlled the human body, they could cure disease, heal bones, alter brain chemistry. Biomites were the answer, the one big answer to every question.

  Only one side effect. It was a big one. They were malignant.

  They were exact duplicates of the body’s cells but, for some unknown reason, wouldn’t accept enzymatic cues to stop dividing. No matter what coding bionanoengineers inserted into the DNA, they always reverted back to runaway division, replacing the body’s natural organic cells.

  Cali had a theory.

  She believed the biomites intuited the weakness of organic cells—their susceptibility to random DNA variability, cancer, disease—and logically replaced them. Biomites were doing what we wanted; they were making the body sound and impervious.

  Perfect.

  The monitor to the left, bottom row, chimed. Another email arrived and filed at the top of a long column of unread messages. The office manager confirmed Cali’s paid leave of absence was nearly depleted. She’d spent her sick days and vacation long ago. Pretty soon, her leave of absence would convert to unpaid. Her employers had been very sympathetic. They gave her more time than they should have. She was a valuable asset, a deserving individual, but a Fortune 500 company can only bend the sympathy branch so far. Pretty soon, they’d prune it.

  Cali finished the water and rubbed her eyes. She saw her reflection in the dark monitors. The shadows across her cheeks were long and dark, disguising the red rims of her eyelids and cracked lips. Oily blond hair hung over her eyes. She retied the ponytail.

  She rolled the chair to the right and touched the electron microscope. Images lit up a dark monitor, obliterating her deathly reflection. The previous batch of biomites that percolated from the espresso machine was still active. Under magnification, they looked like grains of sand jittering on meth. Excellent stability, that was good. She wouldn’t know if they possessed runaway division until further testing, but she didn’t care about that. Not anymore.

  Priorities change.

  She was looking for biomites that would disappear. Not physically, but virtually. Every biomite emitted a frequency that could be monitored. That’s what M0ther watched, the frequency with which biomites spoke to each other. M0ther was an eavesdropper, downloading everything they did. There weren’t enough zeros to count how many biomites were in existence, but everyone had them.

  So M0ther knew what everyone was doing.

  Cali wanted to change that.

  So far, nothing worked. There was still hope. There was still time. But not much of either.

  Someone squealed upstairs, followed by a fit of laughter. Avery was about to pee herself. Only Nix could make her laugh like that. She loved that sound, her favorite sound in the entire world. Without Nix, she might not hear it ever again.

  This is all my fault. All mine. I knew this day was coming, knew his redline potential, but I waited. I waited because I’m selfish. Nix is going to pay for that. We’re all going to pay.

  The numbers continued to scroll in a fuzzy line.

  She rubbed her eyes and tried to focus, but it only smudged the images further. She didn’t have time for this, not now. She could sleep when this was all over; she just needed to focus, to see the data come together so that she could hide her little brother.

  Get him off M0ther’s map.

  M0ther didn’t care what he meant to her, what he meant to Avery. They would come, they would take him, they would take him from her life, from Avery’s life, and he was all she had, all she had, he was all she had—

  She closed her eyes.

  Breathing slowly, breathing deeply.

  She relaxed before opening her eyes. The images around her weren’t sharp, but she could make them out. She could read them. The analysis was almost over. Once that was done, she could get the next batch started and then lie down for a nap. She’d done it earlier that day (or was it night, there were no windows in the basement), fallen directly into REM. Twenty minutes later, she was brand new.

  She took the water bottle to the bathroom and filled it. She heard a bell ring and leaned out the door to see if the analysis finished early. The numbers were still scrolling. She sat back down and took another deep drink—

  BING.

  That was upstairs.

  The doorbell.

  Cali stayed completely still, ears pricked with attention. There were muddled voices. A long silence. She remained as still as a stowaway.

  The basement door opened and snapped closed.

  Little feet danced down the steps. “Mommy,” Avery said, “there’s some guy at the door talking to Uncle Nix.”

  Cali stood too quickly and braced herself on the desk. “Who?”

  Avery shrugged. “They want him to go.”

  Cali stumbled to the steps, barely seeing the door at the top rush towards her. She punched it open, slamming it against the wall.

  Time is out.

  3

  Nix just finished draining the dishwasher when the doorbell rang.

  He stopped to turn the television off, where cartoons blared loud enough that his sister would hear them in the basement. He was going to take her something to eat and considered mashing up a sleeping pill in some cottage cheese. She swore she was taking naps, but her face was caving in. He’d laced her food once before, when she pulled a week’s worth of all-nighters to finish the coding on a new batch of biomites in time for a presentation at a global convention.

  He dried his hands and slung the towel over his shoulder. There was a car in the driveway, a black four-door sedan with an unassuming man in the driver’s seat. No sunglasses, no badge. Just an ordinary guy sitting like a waxy replication of a normal everyday somebody.

  BING.

  Nix slowed. He thought-commanded a self-analysis of the biomite population in his body.

  39.8%.

  He was composed of less than 40% biomites; that meant over 60% of his body was good, old-fashioned organic cells. That meant he wasn’t redline. That meant it couldn’t be them. But biomite patrol didn’t make house calls to see how you were doing. They showed up for one reason.

  There’s some mistake.

  He gripped the door handle.

  They’ll understand. Gear sometimes needs calibrated.

  The door opened.

  The man standing there, unlike his partner in the driver’s seat, was wearing sunglasses, the reflective kind.

  They stood there, facing each other. There were no words. No greeting or informal nods. Just a silent recognition. They’d never seen each other, but they knew what the other was about.

  “I’m not redline,” Nix stated.

  The agent didn’t flinch. He unclipped a cell-phone-sized gearbox from his belt. He held it up like a badge and waited. Nix took a half a step forward. The agent lowered the box, pressing it against Nix’s flesh between the breastbone and bobbing Adam’s apple.

  Nix felt the thing whir hotly. Its effect scattered over his skin like electric spider webs, wrapping over his shoulders and across his back, penetrating his body like feeder roots to estimate the biomite population. The agent pulled the gearbox away, leaving Nix feeling weak. He looked at it and turned it so Nix could see the number.

  “It’s wrong.”

  “We’ll confirm at the office.”

  “It’ll say the same thing, and it’s wrong.”

  “You need to come with us.”

  Nix took a step back. He considered running. The agent sh
ook his head one time. There would be no running. Any attempt to resist would be met swiftly. M0ther was in Wyoming and Nix in southern Illinois, but she could see him like he was standing right next to her. She knew what his biomites were doing, what he was thinking. If he ran, if he disobeyed a biomite agent, M0ther would flip a switch. He’d hit the floor.

  Obey. Or else.

  It’s the law.

  “It is my duty to bring you into a Detainment and Observation Center to be fully analyzed. You are not under arrest, simply detained for further observation. If our readings are wrong, you will be brought back to your home and compensated for your time. Do you understand these rights?”

  Nod.

  He brandished a stiff metal ring, the color of a cold weapon. “For your safety and ours, I’m going to place this suppression ring around—”

  A door cracked inside the house.

  “NO!” Cali bounded across the room and wrapped her arms around Nix. “He’s not redline. You can’t take him.”

  “Ma’am, this will be your only warning. Do not interfere.”

  A car door shut. The driver approached the house.

  “Look, look.” Cali fumbled her own reader, slimmer and colder, against Nix’s neck and shoved the reading in the agent’s face. “38.8%. He’s under; we still have time.”

  “He’ll be verified at the satellite office. If there is a mistake, he will be back before dinner.”

  The driver stopped behind the first agent.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Ma’am.”

  Her hand clamped on Nix’s arm.

  There was a long moment of staring. Nix could sense all the thoughts floating around them like transparent bubbles. He couldn’t hear them, but he sensed them. Thoughts of escape. Thoughts of apprehension.

  Violence.

  Nix reached up and gently squeezed her hand. It would be bad enough to be taken away. He wouldn’t be able to handle watching his sister punished for it. She was still shaking her head, mouthing the same word over and over.

  The agent reached up and lowered the suppression ring over Nix’s head to rest around his neck. It was cold against his skin, warming quickly.

  Heaviness fell on him as the biomites in his body slowed down, diminishing their activity. They were not deactivated, just reduced to keeping him alive, to keeping him subdued for his safety and others. Thoughts became dull; memories began to pale.

  But worst of all… Cali is alone.

  Nix was guided to the car. A few of the neighbors watched. One leaned on a rake, relief on his face that it wasn’t one of his kids.

  Cali wasn’t in the doorway when Nix sat in the backseat of the new-smelling sedan. The front door was closed. She was already in the basement.

  The suppression ring wasn’t fully powered. There was still time to say goodbye.

  Nix laid his head back and closed his eyes. The car rocked as it backed over the curb. Traffic sounds faded. He no longer heard the cars passing or felt the pavement grind under the tires. The world around him disappeared. Nix went to his safe haven, went to a place he discovered many years ago, a place that protected him from the world. Where he wasn’t different.

  He went to a lagoon deep inside his mind.

  4

  The lagoon was deep and clear with striped mussels and bright starfish on the sandy bottom. Sometimes sharks would find their way through a small channel that funneled water from the ocean. They would skim near the beach, their dorsal fins cutting the surface. They’d come so close that Nix could run his hand over their slick skin.

  A fire smoldered from inside a pile of sticks, a thick column of smoke withering in the still air. There was no scent, no sting in his eyes. He smelled very little in this dreamland, good or bad.

  The smoke obscured the view across the lagoon where, above the palms on the far shore, blue cliffs rose up. Halfway up was an opening that spewed water like a giant faucet, its roar heard a mile away. The water poured forth and sprayed misty droplets, leaving an ever-present rainbow stretching into the palms.

  [Away.]

  The smoke twisted away like a vacuum simply pulled it in the other direction. The waterfall hadn’t changed much over the ten years he’d been coming to the lagoon. In fact, it was exactly like the day he first saw it. He was only eight. In fact, it was the day after he showed his best friends, Alex and Parker, the biomites in his finger. Even though he was just a kid, he knew the dreamland wasn’t normal.

  But, then again, Nix was anything but normal.

  He knew his body was in the back of a biomite agent’s car. Time between the dreamland and fleshland wasn’t synced. Dreamland time went so much slower. Still, the ring would suppress the biomites that powered dreamland.

  Maybe he’d never visit again.

  He looked around for Raine. The fire was there; she must be getting ready for something. Nix pulled a stick hard against his shin, heard it crackle until the dry fibers gave way and split open. The pain on his shin was dull and slight.

  He dropped the branch on the smoldering fire. Sparks spit out from the bottom. He gathered the bark that flaked off and piled it onto the embers, waving and blowing it back into flames. Smoke billowed up. He squatted, rubbing his hands, as if he could feel the heat. Perhaps he could, but it was tepid. Like day-old dishwater.

  The foliage rustled behind him. Something dragged through the weeds and then across the sand.

  “Is the fire ready?”

  Nix smiled.

  “Such a slacker.” Raine pulled a cord with a wild boar tied to the end, the tusks curled out of its mouth. Raine’s skin was brown. Her black hair, cropped and choppy. Her eyes green, like the green of verdant forests when the sun rises.

  She was about Nix’s age, he guessed, eighteen years old or so. Her body was taut with muscle roiling around the bikini top. She showed up at the lagoon about five years ago. Before that, he would explore on his own, but now they did everything together.

  She slid a knife from a holster tied on her leg and cut the hog loose. Nix piled more sticks on the pathetic fire and watched her dress dinner. Grit and sweat smudged the perfect skin on her shoulders. She wiped the back of her neck with the knife wedged between her fingers.

  He swore he could smell her, that her fragrance—that essence that was Raine—permeated everything inside him. He knelt behind her, kneading the cords of muscle that flexed over her shoulder blades. She agreed with a guttural mmmm.

  “You know, I’d rather have a fire than a massage.”

  Nix pushed his thumbs into her back and worked the knots loose. He kissed her neck, a distant taste of salt.

  “Stop, now. I want to catch some waves and that fire looks like an ape built it.” She clapped. “Chop-chop!”

  She finished dressing dinner while he set up the spit. Reluctantly, he shaved more bark and gathered kindling. A fire was roaring before she was ready. He watched her wash tubers in the clear water of the lagoon and slice them into the beast’s splayed belly.

  They rested against a fallen palm trunk while dinner slow-roasted. If it all ended, he wouldn’t be disappointed. This was a good way to say goodbye. She nestled into the crook of his arm and lightly snored. He never got tired of that sound: the sound of her sleeping against him. The way her lips fluttered. The way her fingers twitched as dreams came.

  Did she dream? Did she snore when he wasn’t there to hear it?

  Nix always thought that question exposed the self-centered nature of humanity. If a tree fell with no one around to hear it, did it exist? The snoring question was different, though. The lagoon was his dream and Raine was part of it. Sometimes, he wasn’t so sure, but perhaps that was wishful thinking. The only thing that existed at the lagoon was what he wished to exist.

  The sun was close to setting when Raine pulled the meat from the roasted carcass. He wondered where the car was in fleshland—how close it was to the satellite office—as Raine dished the meal onto primitive coconut bowls and piled cooked tubers onto it.
They ate with their fingers. The food didn’t do much for Nix’s appetite. He didn’t have one. And he hardly tasted it. Raine moaned with each bite. Grease glistened on her lips. She licked her fingers. Her joy pulsed through him.

  “You crying?”

  Nix wiped the corner of his eye. No, he wasn’t crying, but she caught him wishing this moment would never end. This might be the last time he watched her eat like an animal, listened to her snore, watched her swim…

  So, no, he wasn’t crying. “The fire… smoke… making my eyes itch.”

  They left the fire burning, left the meat for scavengers if they got to it in time. Raine grabbed a well-worn surfboard that she carved from the trunk of an ancient tree years ago. “Come on,” she said, shoving his on the ground. “Let’s catch a wave.”

  He lay there in the sand. The sun was low. Her skin, darker.

  “Something wrong?”

  He shook his head, smiling. “Go on. I’ll catch up.”

  She hesitated, sensing the secret inside him. Or did she already know it, preferring to enjoy their last moments instead of soaking in them. He watched her push into the glassy surface, plowing the water with sun-kissed arms, powerful strokes driving her towards the narrow channel that led to the ocean, where she’d catch perfect waves.

  Always perfect waves.

  The water shimmered. Turned white.

  Then black.

  Nix stared at the black sedan’s roof. The biomite agent stood next to the car with the door open. He helped him out and led him toward a small brick building where they’d test his biomite population again. Where they’d officially call him a redline.

  Where they’d power up the suppression ring.

  Where he could say goodbye to dreamland.

  5

  Albert Gladstone turned fifty years old.

  That was a few days ago. He ate birthday cake. It was vanilla with chocolate frosting. His wife and two teenage kids were there. They sang “Happy Birthday” and watched him blow out the candles. Someone cut the cake and took pieces to his family. His son ate. His wife and daughter didn’t.