Parched

by Georgia Clark

  A single lamp lights the otherwise darkened living room. The clock on the wall reads just after three. I cross to the basement door quickly, feeling like a thief.

  “Can I assist you, Tess?”

  I squeak and whirl to see Kimiko behind me, her bright eyes cutting twin paths of light in the darkness. “Be quiet!” I whisper furiously.

  “Can I—”

  “No, you can’t assist me with anything,” I mutter irritably, gingerly moving behind her. Creepily, the top half of her body swivels around with me. “Stop moving. I’m trying to turn you off.” I just hope these new models aren’t so sophisticated they don’t have an off switch.

  “Dr. Rockwood never turns me off.”

  “I’m not Dr. Rockwood,” I reply, finally finding the switch with relief. “Bye-bye, Kimiko.”

  “But why would yooouuu . . .” The lights in her eyes power down. Then a series of tiny beeps begin chorusing from around the house. The air- and smell-conditioning, the sole lamp—they all begin turning off. The time on the clock disappears. Moonlight casts the whole house in ominous shades of silent gray. Huh—that’s different. Apparently substitutes now control all the electrical stuff, like a central computer. Maybe Kimiko was even linked to the lock on the red door. No, no such luck—it’s still active.

  My fingers hover over the keypad. I know Abel. He’s sentimental and he’s lax with security. My guess is he’d choose a loved one’s name.

  My first guess: Pascuala. My aunt who died when I was five. “Password denied. You can make two more attempts.”

  I bite my lip, heart beating fast. I enter Tessendra.

  “Password denied. You can make one more attempt.”

  I exhale in frustration. I could try Tess, But I don’t think that’s it. You know who it is.

  I have to enter her name. Her nickname. The one only Abel uses. Frankie. My mother.

  “Password accepted.”

  The basement is pitch-black when the bright red door swings open. My heart is kicking against my ribs as I slowly descend. Then, in flickering shards of pale light, the basement laboratory is revealed to me: an unhinged, sprawling mess.

  Holos of DNA, strangely beautiful twisting ladders, spiral slowly in the air, beamed from glowing gold scratch. Streams of complicated algorithms are everywhere, as are holos of dark pink neurons, like webby spiders aching to connect. I see one, two, three floating models of the human brain, all slightly different, all shot through with light and wires and whirls of movement. Confusing mathematical formulas flicker as holos in the musty air. My eyes travel the cracked spines of ancient books—actual books—on philosophy and consciousness and free will.

  I know what all this is for. The familiar-looking tropes of science’s next frontier.

  Artilects.

  Ling was right about Abel.

  Abel, the kind old man who actually teared up when I arrived on his doorstep, the man who just agreed that what was happening in the Badlands was unfair. No, I tell myself. The man who’s in the pocket of the Trust. The man who lied to me. The man I have to stop.

  Amid the mess on a long, stainless steel table, I notice one of Abel’s Simutech security swabs. The pliable, palm-sized silicon swab would get me into any restricted access areas in Simutech itself. I push it into my back pocket. Abel usually has two or three because he keeps misplacing them—he might not even notice this one is gone.

  I pick up the model of an arm, cut through to the bone so you can see all its layers. Dermis, epidermis, muscles, bone: the strange, otherworldly ecosystem that pulses beneath our skin. Next to it is a bone-shaped piece of dull gray metal, about as long as my arm. It is as hard and cold as death itself.

  Then I see him.

  In the corner. Standing upright.

  Magnus.

  It takes me a full ten seconds to accept that the dark gold, human-shaped artilect is just a dead, harmless shell. His eyes, once a burning silver, are now black. He stands at over six feet tall, as broad as a football player but so much stronger.

  My own horrified voice rings in my ears, the distant echo of a ghost. “Get away from my mother!”

  Perversely, I find myself moving toward him. Something deep inside me wants to feel the exact texture and temperature of this weapon. To feel beneath my own hand the brilliant death my mother made for herself. My fingers hover above the space where a human’s heart would be. I realize I am holding my breath.

  “You’re teaching him to do the dishes?” I slouched against a stainless steel counter in the Simutech break room, brightening my obnoxious blue manicure with another coat of gloss. I was there because I was grounded. Again. I blamed Izzy. It was her idea we take a swim in a plaza fountain.

  “Handling something as fine as a plate requires the complex coordination of many joints and muscles,” Mom replied, hovering around Magnus, whose hamlike hands were plunged into a sink. “We need him to be able to mimic this level of control. It’s part of his motor training. Plus, I haven’t programmed him to do this. He observed me, and now he’s doing it all by himself, which means—”

  “He’s a constructivist system—a system that learns,” I parroted, blowing on the wet gloss. “You’ve only mentioned it five billion times.”

  “I don’t understand you, Tess.” Mom sighed. “You used to have such an aptitude for this.”

  “For painting my nails?”

  “For scientific study.”

  Magnus was awkwardly maneuvering a soapy plate out of the sink—a boy learning to keep house. Around us, streams hovered and whirled to record the constant conversations of his synthetic synapses and neurons. Magnus was rarely undocumented, the constant center of everyone’s attention.

  “A little respect, please, Tess,” Mom tutted. “His processing speed is ten to the thirty calculations per second.”

  I shrugged. So what?

  “Humans only process at ten to the sixteen, Tess.”

  “So, he’s good at math?” I guessed.

  Mom all but ground her teeth. “Good at—Tess, at those speeds, he is math. He’s calculating algorithms in a trillionth of a second that took me years!”

  “Who cares? He can’t even catch.” I wave my hands at him. “Magnus! Catch!” I toss the nail polish at him. His arm moves up, but his reflexes are seconds too slow. The little bottle hits him in the chest with a sharp clink, then falls to the floor and smashes. Polish spills everywhere, like a messy puddle of blue blood.

  “Tess!” Mom exhaled in annoyance. “You’ll have to clean that up. Interesting, though . . .” She can’t help swishing a note about it into one of the streams.

  “I apologize, Tess,” Magnus said.

  “That’s all right, Magnus,” Mom answered for me. “Please keep trying to pick up the plate.”

  His hands plunged back into the sink. “So, how human is he, anyway?”

  Mom blew air through her lips. “The human body inspired his physical design. He’s beginning to display free will. No empathy. Not sure about morality, it’s too early to say.”

  “But, he’s alive, right?”

  “Depends on who you ask.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Personally?” Mom narrowed her eyes. “No. I don’t think so. Not yet.”

  “I am experiencing difficulty.” Magnus’s deep voice was somewhere between human and machine. The plate slid out of his hands and plopped back into the soapy water.

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m experiencing boredom.”

  “Try this one.” Mom handed Magnus a champagne flute.

  “I am not able to guarantee the safety of this object.”

  “Try,” Mom urged.

  “I am not able to guarantee the safety of this object.”

  “Just try—”

  A high, almost musical, crash. I jumped, startled, as thin shards of glass scattered across the floor. “Can you not do that?”

  “I am sorry, Tess. I do not like upsetting you—“

  Mom sighed, addressing the arti
lect. “That’s okay—Wait, what did you just say?”

  “I do not like upsetting Tess.”

  “What? Why?”

  Magnus paused. It almost looked as though he was thinking. “Because I like her.”

  Mom squealed with excitement, flinging her scratch into the air. “You like her? He likes you! I can’t believe it! Tess, do you know what this means?” Mom curled an arm around Magnus’s bicep, looking starstruck. “He might actually be feeling something!” She giggled hysterically, feet crunching over the glass. “Tess. He likes you!”

  This is what I remember when it comes to Magnus. Things that break. Now, back in the present, my hands find his cold, hard body. Rage wells inside me. My hand clenches into a fist, about to snap back—but then it falls to my side.

  I’m not angry. I’m devastated.

  I grab a sweater hanging over the back of a chair. When I scream, it’s a wail that’s primal and painful. I cry for everything: for my mom, for the fact that I will never, ever see her again. I cry for having to always pretend that I am okay, that I am tough enough to survive this. And I cry because I am so completely alone.

  After the worst of it is over, I let the sweater drop, my throat sore, my face hot.

  I have to get out of here.

  Outside Abel’s house, I gulp in cool night air and try to slow the hammering of my heart. Breathing deeply, I focus on making myself feel numb.

  But it isn’t working. And then I realize, I don’t want to feel numb anymore.

  I am hurt and I am ashamed and I am scared. But I am also motivated. And alive. And angry.

  Because now I have a purpose. Now I have a way of making up for what I have done. A mix of revenge, sadness, and anger funnels into a decision that’s so simple and neat, it could fit my pocket.

  I will help Kudzu destroy Aevum. Just like Magnus destroyed my mother.

  And then, standing alone on the silent street that smells of fresh-cut grass and safety, I begin to smile.

  chapter 6

  I wake with a gnawing, anxious sensation squeezing my stomach, at once painful and familiar. Hunger and adrenaline. Just like a Badlands morning.

  “Tess.” Abel glances up from his morning tea with a pleasant smile. “Your suspended sensory activity is complete.” The steam from the cup drifts and curls as fluidly as a stream.

  “Morning.” I’m unable to add a good in front of it. I sit down to a plate of lukewarm scrambled eggs and begin shoveling them into my mouth.

  Abel studies me from across the dining table. I guess as far as he’s concerned, last night bought us closer together, not farther apart. “Is everything all right?”

  I almost laugh. Everything might get close to being all right, however, if Ling shows up to meet me today. It didn’t take long to work out how to reply to her slew of friendly forest folk. I chose a baby deer wobbling on toothpick legs to tell her I’d be at the filtration plant at noon. I have no idea if she’ll show.

  “Everything’s just great,” I tell Abel, speaking through a mouthful of food. “Peachy as peach pie. With extra peach.”

  “Good to hear,” he murmurs. He’s watching me. It takes all the will-power I have not to glance at the red basement door.

  Instead I meet his gaze, and swallow. “What?”

  “I’ve been thinking about my plan for you.”

  A tiny chill skids through me. “Sounds ominous.”

  His gnarled hands jitter in front of him. “I mean, our plan for what you’ll be doing. If you’re not going back to education today.”

  I relax a little. Of course. It’s Monday morning. “I’ve been thinking about that too,” I say, licking some egg off my fork. “I think I just need a few weeks to get back on my feet. Eat. Sleep. Exercise at a Hub. Check out some art, spend some time at the park. Then I’ll reenroll.”

  He nods slowly. “Sounds like you’ve put some thought into this.”

  “Children are the future, Uncle A,” I say innocently. “Gyan said that himself. I need to take my future seriously.”

  He can’t tell if I’m being sarcastic. “Yes. Of course.”

  I resist the urge to lick my plate clean and instead scrape my chair backward. “I’m out, Uncle A. See you later—”

  But Abel stops me with a raised palm. “Just a moment. Until you go back to education, I have some requirements of my own.”

  I sit back down with slow caution. “Oh yeah?”

  “I’d like Hunter to tutor you,” he says. “In the evenings, after he’s done at post-education.”

  “What?”

  “Tess, you’ve been out of the education system for a year,” Abel continues calmly. “That puts you at a considerable disadvantage to the other students.”

  “This is a joke, right?”

  “Hunter’s very responsible, very bright—an excellent teacher. And he lives right around the corner. You’ll be able to review what you’ve missed. I dare say you’ll be caught up in a matter of months—”

  “Months?” I spit hotly. I’m on my feet. “I can handle a knife, I know how to defend myself, hell, I even know how to kill and cook a damn prairie chicken. Those kids should be learning from me—”

  “No one is questioning your . . . abilities, Tess,” Abel says, “but this is not up for debate.”

  “What if I say no?” I ask, daring him.

  “If you want to live at my house, then you will have to obey my rules,” he says with surprising authority.

  He’s got me. I don’t have anywhere else to stay. Abel barrels on hurriedly. “Right, he’ll be here at seven o’clock tonight and every week-night for the next month. He has access to the house. I might be here, I might not. Kimiko can fix you dinner.” He pauses, eyeing my reaction.

  “Fine.” I groan. “But, can we start tomorrow?” I have no idea what’s supposed to happen at Kudzu, assuming I even get there. I don’t want to cut anything short because I’m being babysat.

  He nods. “Oh,” he adds as I turn to skulk out. “One more thing. Did you turn Kimiko off last night?”

  I freeze, eyes popping wide. Then I relax my face and turn to face him sheepishly. “Yeah. I came down for a snack and I didn’t want her to wake you.”

  “Next time, just put her to sleep. Shutting her down resets everything in the house.”

  I look at the man who’s constructing an artilect from the blood of my mother. The man who is working for the Trust. The man who keeps his sister’s killer six feet below us in a secret basement. I smile, sweet as syrup. “Sure thing, Uncle A. Whatever you say.”

  At first, the Trust kept Moon Lake clean with a large-scale filtration system. A few years ago they developed a microorganism, a simple bacteria that cleans water a hundred times more effectively. Bioremediation. They trumpeted that breakthrough on the streams for months: “That’s what you get for putting your trust in the Trust!”

  Eventually the old plant will be turned into offices or housing, but for now, it’s abandoned. If it weren’t for the bright sunlight and high twitter of unseen birds, it’d definitely feel a little spooky. Some of the glass windows are broken, spiderwebbed with cracks. Giant black pumps, once endlessly sucking and spitting water, are now motionless, sprayed with dark red rust. My footsteps echo from the high concrete walls. It’s just before noon. I find a concrete ledge to perch on, and I wait.

  At 12:30, I wonder how much longer I should stay.

  Then I hear it. A low drone, growing louder every second. I stiffen. A floater.

  Ling rounds the corner. She’s wearing tight white pants, sturdy boots, and a loose white sweater. Even though it’s a typical Eden outfit, she still looks like a badass. Maybe it’s her eyes, which are narrowed suspiciously at me beneath blunt black bangs.

  The hovering floater zooms straight past me. At the other end of the plant, Ling circles around, looking every which way, scoping the place out. Then she rides back to me and stops a good ten feet away.

  I slip off the ledge and take a couple hesitant steps towar
d her. “Poká. Coméstá?”

  “Empty your backpack,” she orders.

  “Huh?”

  She glares at me. “Now!”

  I shrug it off my back, zip it open, and shake everything onto the ground. I don’t have much: the scratch she gave me, a muesli bar, a bottle of water, and Mack.

  “Is that the scratch I gave you?” she asks.

  I nod, holding it out for her to see. “Yeah. Look, Ling—”

  “Shut up.” She putters forward on the floater to snatch the scratch from me. She smooths it open and spends a minute swishing through some streams. Satisfied, she scrunches it back into a ball and shoves it in her pocket. “So,” she says, “where were you?” I open my mouth, but she cuts me off. “You know what? Let me guess.” She presses her fingers to her temple like a mind reader. “You bought clothes in the Hive, then took an airbus to a salon in Charity. Pretty fancy one too. Later, you took another airbus back to your uncle’s from the Animal Gardens.”

  I gape at her. “You were following me?”

  She gives me a withering look. “Your new ID, genius. Way to lay low.”

  I’d forgotten how hooked up Kudzu were. Of course they could trace my ID. “Ling, I can explain—”

  “Save it,” she says, turning her floater around. “We don’t deal with traitors.”

  “I’m not a traitor!” I cry. “I’m not!”

  “See ya, Rockwood,” Ling calls over her shoulder. “As in, never again.”

  “Ling, wait!” I race to catch up with her, throwing myself in her path. She pulls the floater to a stop, inches before it crashes into me. “I’m not a traitor. Okay, so I got a new ID. I freaked out when I got to Abel’s. I didn’t think I could handle it, that being an Edenite would be better. I was wrong. I want to join Kudzu, Ling.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because . . .” I rack my brain for a way to make her believe me. “Because yesterday at the salon, I told Izzy and the stylist and anyone else listening that we all should be using less water, and that I don’t think Gyan should’ve cut off Moon Lake!”