The Breeders

by Matthew J. Beier

  They dragged Dex down a hallway and threw him in an isolated jail cell lined on all surfaces with painted-white steel and lit round the clock by those same blinding LEDs. It would be his home for the foreseeable future, they said. Every hour, a new guard came to poke fun at him. Torture in any form was strictly prohibited under New Rainbow Order law, but the Queen had signed an amendment four years ago giving Bio Police clearance to interrogate “biologically.” Fight to destroy the world again with reckless heterosexuality, and the homosexuals would catch you, punish you, and use their own alternative to make you see reason.

  It didn’t take them long to realize that sexual torture was not the key to Dex’s secrets. But they kept his clothes, which made the blood trickling down his thighs feel extra sticky and extra cold. It dried against the frigid steel floor, tearing at his skin whenever he moved.

  Isolation. It was a perfect way to think.

  This is what I get for walking away from Grace. For being a coward. It serves me right.

  It was an honest judgment. Dex had always despised cowardice, but when courage had become the moral option, he failed the test.

  In the night, shivering, he cried.

  THE BIO POLICE gave him clothing the next day. Detective Riley seemed to have had his fun and left Dex alone, and now the younger homosexual minions were left to watch over him. There was more questioning, more verbal abuse, but no more bodily harm. One jail guard, a young man who approached Dex with unexpected gentleness, attempted to claim they weren’t out to hurt him badly, but the words wobbled out with shaky uncertainty. He was young and blonde, and Dex saw something familiar in his face: an irresolute sway toward cowardice, knowledge that his actions were wrong but also tethered to the paralysis of fear.

  Dex had always known this section of the government was an entity entirely separate from general law enforcement, but he had never seen up close and personal the anarchistic disorganization that could only be the brainchild of a government terrorized by possibilities. Bio Police had no rules for investigation, because protection for potential enemies would defeat the purpose. Therefore, detectives like Lance Riley were free to do anything.

  What happens when population can no longer keep up with a socially and economically balanced society? Dex thought. What’ll you do then, Detective Riley? Do you really think three thousand engineering facilities can populate an entire civilization?

  Maybe the entire plan was for homosexuality to kill off humanity once and for all. Let Earth reclaim itself, free of human greed, destruction, and shortsightedness.

  Dex chuckled. If that was their vision, it would almost be noble.

  He knew some things for sure. The Opposition facility beneath Sterile Me Susan’s had been shut down for good. Its discovery and containment (probably his and Grace’s fault) had been a grand victory for the Bio Police, yet it was thus far proving to be insignificant. That morning, when two guards had brought his clothes and shoes back to the freezing cell, Dex heard them talking in the hallway. Yes, most of the people in the hideout had escaped through a tunnel in Sheiks Cave, but no, the Bio Police had not learned of any other significant locations for Opposition activity. Opposition emergency procedures had been quick and efficient. Its members had erased all links to external com data servers, run self-destruct programs on each local system, and then fled. The Bio Police had uncovered medical facilities that suggested illegal reproductive activity, but they had not captured any pregnant women.

  Dex visibly breathed his relief for Grace at hearing this, and the guard handing over his clothing noticed.

  “What, did you know one of them?” he asked, bringing his face to Dex’s level. “Were you trying to breed with a woman, little man?”

  Dex grinned. “You’re no Detective Riley,” he said. “You might want to practice being an asshole before you try and act like one.”

  This earned him a punch in the face, but he got to keep his clothes. And, of course, they gleaned no useful information from him.

  I hope you made it out of there, Grace Jarvis, Dex thought. If I ever get out of here, I’ll find you.

  But the promise died as it hit his mind. Yes, Sheila had mentioned some sort of Cliff House on Lake Superior, but she had also mentioned that the time frame for them to get there was tight, which implied something more: wherever this Cliff House was, it was not Grace’s final destination. It would not be her safe haven for long.

  Which rendered Dex as ignorant as the Bio Police. Perhaps for the best.

  In his cell, he waited, wondering every so often what the time was. It was all a jailed criminal without a window could do. And the lights. Those goddamned LEDs. So bright at all hours of the day that he found no sleep, no refuge.

  A MEMORY (HER)

  GRACE IS SITTING in her Grandpa Jarvis’s study on Easter morning, tired of all the fuss over Jesus and tired of the snow outside, which should have finished melting weeks ago. She is playing the game she used to play as a little girl: spinning Grandpa Jarvis’s antique globe with closed eyes and a pointing finger. The globe has all the world’s old boundaries marked on it, from before the Bio Wars, when most of Earth’s people died. Now that she is almost thirteen, it is sobering to play this game. As a child, she had never appreciated this old world’s country borders, what their absence nowadays really meant. It is exciting to imagine a world that was divided in more ways than just the continents.

  I’m going here! she thinks as the spinning globe stops under her fingertip.

  Srinagar. Northern India. Funny! It actually is a place that still is fixed up and civilized, because it’s near some of India’s best fresh water sources.

  Playing this game makes Grace sad, because she has a dream to see the world. Both her father and dad are like most other people here: afraid to travel, afraid to step out of the safe bounds that the government has set for them. Oh, people travel, and she might be able to sneak some money for a plane ticket someday, but all in all, the risk of a terrorist attack happening is just too great. Her fathers have never been off the continent, and they prefer to keep it that way. What if one of the remaining sects of God’s Army were to strike again, and they got stuck somewhere?

  Grace sighs, then allows herself to feel what she is really feeling: sadness and fear.

  Grandpa Jarvis—her one remaining grandfather—is about to die. Everyone knows it, but nobody wants to talk about it. He has a cough that hasn’t gone away in a year, and this winter, it’s gotten a lot worse. “It’s our last year with him, I think,” her dad has been saying when her father isn’t around to hear it. James Jarvis doesn’t like the idea of death, even though his two fathers engineered him very late in their lives. They could have died when James was much younger, and it would not have been unusual.

  Irresponsible of them to have had kids when they were so old, Grace thinks, even though she loves Grandpa Jarvis.

  But people can always die. So many crazy things are happening in the world, so Grace thinks maybe Grandpa Jarvis is lucky. People are screaming and protesting on the news every night, because they say there won’t be any freedom anymore. The new Secretary General, Vincent Metzer, is a drag queen who never shows his real face, and he is as sexually conservative as they come. Grace barely knows what this means, but she knows it isn’t good for heterosteriles like herself. Not once but three times, her parents have begun discussions about Metzer that ended in outright screaming matches and separate bedrooms for the night. Her father is excited about Metzer, and her dad is absolutely terrified. Something about how Metzer got into office and about the General Assembly that voted him in being “a conservative majority.”

  Because her dad is the nicer parent, Grace trusts him and is nervous, too, even though (and she would never admit this) most of the politics don’t make sense to her.

  She spins the globe again, realizing that nowhere her finger lands could ever be her escape if everything her dad worries about comes true. It settles on her own continent, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, whic
h is now part of the Unrecoverable Territories. She is disappointed and thinks: At the very least, Globe, send me over an ocean.

  Grace worries they have cancelled dessert, because she is getting what her father calls “chubby.” Nobody comes to fetch her, so she continues to spin the globe, over and over. Here in her dying Grandpa Jarvis’s study, lands beyond the North American continent are hers to experience, if only—and forever—in the caverns of her imagination.

  CHAPTER 27 (HER)

  THAT PEOPLE SPOKE of the Cliff House in context of being just one of many Opposition stations spread around the planet left Grace with the stunning realization that perhaps she would, after a lifetime of burning desire, see the wider world. The Cliff House itself, a classically decorated mansion on its three aboveground floors, was simply a façade for what its caretakers claimed was the largest Opposition facility in North America and the third largest on Earth. It was nothing unusual for politicians to have summer mansions on the Great Lakes, especially if they were engineered and raised on the continent. Lake Superior was still considered a haven for those who could afford homes on it, as it had both the largest and the least populated shores of all the five lakes. This was due partially to the extreme development restrictions placed on its North Shore by none other than Frederik Carnevale’s great grandfather, who, Grace learned, had also been an underground government dissenter and third-generation owner of the Cliff House.

  Albert Redmond was the base’s unofficial director of operations. A tall and chiseled male with eyelashes so dark and thick they mimicked mascara, Redmond had the looks, wardrobe, and persnickety attitude to pass as a perfect homosexual male.

  “But he’s not a fag,” Sheila whispered as he ushered them out of the cold night into the seemingly empty mansion. “Trust me on that. I’ve visited with him in Minneapolis a few times.”

  Grace did not ask for details, and the only explanation Sheila offered was a wink and a grin.

  Albert Redmond did not smile once at Grace and appeared to mean only business. After collecting and deactivating her pocket com, scanning her TruthChip, and reading her public record, he led them directly to a hidden door in the basement’s wood-paneled wall. Through it was a gallery-like hallway decorated with at least forty paintings, three of which Grace recognized.

  “Sheila! Look! Are those wheat fields Van Gogh originals?”

  “Beats me,” Sheila said.

  But as Redmond approached what appeared to be a security system control panel on the far end of the hallway and began punching in a code, he said, “Yes, they’re originals. Salvaged from the Bio Wars, obviously. Frederik really likes art.”

  Frederik. Albert Redmond was on a first-name basis with one of the most powerful movers and shakers on the planet. This was the first time Grace really sensed the new reality of her life, that she had accepted a one-way ticket toward an extremely vulnerable chance at living out a new ideal.

  The blinking red light on the security panel turned green, and a white door seemed to appear out of nowhere. Its rectangular panel moved into the wall at least twelve inches, exposing a breadth of solid metal gears that mechanized the door. It slid left to reveal a spiral staircase carved out of the cliff’s igneous rock, leading downward. At its base, the cliff rock met with steel walls and another blast door. It reminded Grace of the facility at Sterile Me Susan’s, only this place already felt cleaner, stronger, and safer.

  Through the blast door, Grace met her new life.

  What they called “the first floor” turned out to be the highest of the underground levels. It housed what Redmond called the communications room, a glassed-in mini-office covered top to bottom with wall and desk coms. Below, on the second floor, were the medical stations. Comprising the third and fourth floors farther down were individual living spaces; these were closest to the cliff’s base in case of an emergency evacuation. The third floor was for visitors like Grace, and the fourth was reserved for regular Cliff House personnel. The spaces on both of these levels were not much more than furnished bedrooms with a bathroom for every four.

  What appeared to be glistening night views of Lake Superior on the hallway walls were revealed in the morning to be holopanels. Today, through these false windows, it was summer, sunny and warm. In the distance, Grace saw a lone sailboat moving out onto the grand lake.

  “Almost makes you forget where you are, doesn’t it?” Sheila said as she accompanied Grace to breakfast. As the fifty-room capacity for visitors was nowhere near filled, Albert Redmond had invited Sheila to remain a guest until they figured out her best option. At this, they had both exchanged glances that made it obvious there was more to the decision than Grace would be privy to.

  What aren’t you telling me? she wondered at them but could not bring herself to ask. She was at the Opposition’s mercy now, and she would learn its secrets in due time, perhaps at her first doctor appointment, which was scheduled for the third of January. The Cliff House’s resident medical professional, Dr. Sylar Kovak, was out on business of some sort and would not return until then.

  There were eighteen other pregnant women at the Cliff House, only seven of whom were accompanied by the failsafes who had impregnated them. Four more, however, were accompanied by current failsafe partners who, Grace learned through Sheila’s gossip, were not the babies’ real fathers.

  Where there were social barriers, Grace was on the outside. Sheila Willy tried to serve as a buffer over those first few days, occasionally making unwelcome rounds in the kitchen and cafeteria during meal times. Some of the women regarded her with skepticism, eyeing her frizzy red hair and peculiar outfit, which was the same celestial-like ensemble she had worn to Sterile Me Susan’s. It was clear by the residents’ few words and body language that they had already settled into a routine at the Cliff House, and they had enough other people around to brighten their lives. They did not invite friendship, though one woman, a bouncy blonde named Hilda, did make the effort to introduce herself to Grace in the cafeteria food line. “Pretty crazy what’s about to happen, huh?” she said, piling salad on her plate. Before Grace could respond, one of Hilda’s friends interrupted them and ushered the young woman off to their usual table.

  It seemed Hilda knew something about their future that Grace did not, which made her even more nervous. Sheila seemed purposefully to be avoiding the subject, much to Grace’s frustration. “Just let yourself acclimate to all this. Relax for a few days. Dr. Kovak will let you know everything once he examines you and everything is good to go with you and your baby.”

  So there it was: her value to the Opposition was the baby growing inside her and nothing more. It could be assumed, then, that if the baby was not healthy, her involvement would be cut short, perhaps cast aside completely. Of course, she knew too much now, and they could not simply release her back into society, under the eyes of the Bio Police.

  The hypothetical alternatives kept Grace awake at night.

  She found herself craving solitude in the tiny bedroom, where she could soak in how alone she really was. Everything she had ever known was stripped away forever, all because some rebel scientist had decided her life would not have been important enough were she to be a normal heterosterile. And there was grief at the thought of never seeing her fathers, brother, nephew, and friends again. Yes, half her family would have turned her in to the Bio Police, but could she not have spent just one last day, one last minute, appreciating them as the people who had always meant the most to her?

  And there was Dex. Always Dex, in the back of her mind.

  I could have loved him, Grace thought. And if I’d had more time, I could have convinced him to stay.

  Now, he had been captured by the Bio Police. Reports of the raid had finally surfaced on Twin Cities Com. “Minneapolis Raid on God’s Army Facility Exposes Dozens of Insurgents,” read the headlines. They had put the “God’s Army” spin on the story, fueling rage among civilian homosexuals, many of whom, when interviewed, expressed a desire just to exist peacefu
lly, without heterosexuals threatening their families, government, and lives. Twice, she saw Dex’s mug shot on the news, along with about twenty others. It frightened Grace how similar they all looked.

  I hope they don’t keep him alive in misery, she thought. It’d be better for him to die so he doesn’t have to suffer.

  But Dex was water under her bridge. She had a baby to worry about now, and there were seven other women without partners at the Cliff House for her to befriend. One of them in particular, a seventeen-year-old girl named Marvel Suture, formed an instant bond with Grace. She was sitting alone at an empty cafeteria table on Grace’s fourth evening at the Cliff House. Still being maddeningly evasive, Sheila had slipped upstairs that afternoon to “visit” with Albert Redmond, so Grace went to dinner alone for the first time.

  “Is anyone sitting here?” she asked Marvel, who, according to snippets of female chatter Grace had overheard, was the closest thing to an outcast the Cliff House had.

  “No! No, not at all,” Marvel said, looking up with a violent flip of her jet-black curls. “Say, you’re the new chick.”

  “I think I’m too old to be called a chick,” Grace said. “Lord knows I’m about to lose my body anyway.”

  “You’re Grace, right? I remember from yesterday. Too old? What are you, like, twenty-three?”

  “Try twenty-eight,” Grace corrected with a grin.

  Marvel took a bite of her taco salad but spoke through it. “You’ve been hiding out all week. I saw you the other day when you first got here. You looked like a nice person, you know. One of those real people.”

  Grace flushed. “Well, thank you. I’m glad you think so.”

  Marvel’s entire upper torso rose in a shrug. Her curls bounced. “I’m new here, too. Got here about a week before you. Did you menstruate much before getting pregnant?”