Out Through the Attic

by Quincy J. Allen

  “Lemonade,” he said simply, opening it.

  I unwrapped my sandwich and discovered thick slices of bread with layers of peppered bacon in between. I smiled at him and took a bite.

  We sat like that for a long time, just eating and drinking as the Ohio slipped by, and after a while his smile reappeared.

  “You know, it was your Mamma who gave you your name.” He looked at me, searching my eyes again. “The day you were born, when I looked into your bright, green eyes that first time, and they told me your name, I decided to tell you this story. And when I’m gone, I want you to tell the world. It’s your story now. Maybe it always was.”

  I nodded. “I promise, Grandpa.”

  He smiled again, the last bits of sadness gone like leaves on the wind.

  “C’mon, Abigail. Let’s go home.”

  Brainstorm

  Covered in sweat and on the verge of screaming, Mathew woke to absolute darkness. A dream, yet another moment of rapture in a lifetime of them, had been given unto him. Most people dream of coworkers … or sleeping with their neighbors … or flying … or being attacked by dogs. Mathew dreamt of three-dimensional deoxyribonucleic acid chains. Visions of DNA came to his dreams in new and miraculous sequences. Aside from his assistant Emily, he’d never told anyone of their source.

  At the age of seven, the first dream God gave him had filled him with terror, but this dream was the first to make him question his faith.

  The dreams, expressed in chromosomal chains, had come since age seven, even before he knew what DNA was. Mathew had been chosen and told it was his job … his purpose to create them. Like so many other nights, Mathew’s most recent dream … his miracle … would touch every human on Earth and the four colonies beyond—and it scared the hell out of him.

  In the ninth grade, Mathew’s dreams revealed how to re-grow eyes and limbs from stem cells. Later, he was given the five corrections for allergies in humans. He’d received a blueprint for correcting Leukemia and shown the sequence for eradicating Hodgkin lymphoma. Diabetes, Down syndrome, cystic fibrosis: all of them and more had fallen before the dreams of Dr. Mathew Stiggs. The whole world knew his name. He was a genius, a miracle worker; considered by billions to be a savior of the ill, aged, and infirm. For ninety-three years, Mathew had been shown blueprints to cure humanity and extend life.

  In an era of magnificent human technological advances, the notion of religion was one relegated to antiquity and, all-too-frequently, polite ridicule behind hands and backs. For Mathew, however, God was as tangible as the genetic blueprints given him and as manifest as their impact had been upon all of humanity.

  And it was the Yudius Corporation that took Mathew’s miracles and delivered them unto the people of Earth and the colonies on Luna, Mars, Europa, and Titan.

  “Are you alright, Mathew?” Emily asked, her perfectly synthetic voice filling the room.

  “I’m fine, Emily. Thank you.” He rubbed his eyes.

  “Another dream?” Caring and concern drifted down upon Mathew from his assistant’s fleshless voice.

  Throwing the thermafilm back, Mathew sat up, reflexively steadied himself in the repulsor beams of his bed, and placed his bare feet on the pre-heated, pressure sensitive floor. Lights came on automatically as his feet made contact. Soft light emanating from the seamless white of floor, ceiling, and three walls filled his sleeping chamber. The fourth wall was a glossy black surface that reflected the small room in upon itself, and the white wall opposite was broken only by the thin outline of a door. There were no corners, and the curves where floor, ceiling and wall met combined with the uniform lighting to make the room seem as if it extended into eternity.

  Mathew looked around the simply furnished room. His repulsor bed was behind him with the head pushed up against the black glass wall. A hovering glass disk served as his nightstand, a glass of water resting on it. To the right of the door, his desk and a repulsor chair floated silently. Mathew’s commlink and the simple, six-inch silver ring of a holoterm were on the desk.

  With the bulk of humanity sleeping in densely packed, hive-like sleeping cylinders, it was considered a typical sleeping chamber for a man of his station—except for one thing.

  A four-foot tall, potted gardenia sat in what would otherwise have been the corner of the room. The gardenia filled the space next to the desk with a faint greenish tint that had always comforted Mathew. A living plant was considered particularly déclassé, but Mathew rarely had guests and never had them in his sleeping chamber. The gardenia simply pleased him and reminded him of the original Garden.

  “Dim the lights and clear the windows, would you, Emily?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  The light faded quickly. The solid black reflection phased into a dazzling, chaotic view of Galena city. It was winter in Alaska, what people used to call the Season of Darkness. And it would have been dark outside had the equatorial regions of Earth not become uninhabitable over the past two-hundred years. The equator had been barely survivable at the turn of the 22nd century, but in the present day the sandy waist of Earth looked exactly as North Africa had in 2000. The desert stretched all the way around like a great, tan bodice on an aging Mother Earth. Over the decades, with average equatorial temperatures of 160 degrees, humanity was forced to migrate towards the poles. Mathew’s miracles, having reduced the mortality rates of humanity, only exacerbated the problem and accelerated the exodus.

  Humanity was now condensed into tight, seamless, living caps upon the poles of the Earth. From thirty degrees north and south all the way to each pole, thirty billion members of humanity occupied virtually every square inch. There were no places left on Earth that wasn’t cast in some sort of artificial light.

  Mathew stood up, grabbed the glass of water, and walked over to the gardenia. He examined it closely for several minutes, taking in every detail. The forest green color of the leaves and even deeper greens of the veins etched themselves into his consciousness. The uneven texture of the underside and glossy smoothness of the tops of each leaf were filed away. He sniffed each blossom, taking an inventory of each, and comparing the slight variances between them. He nodded once, satisfied that the entirety of the plant was available to his memory, and then poured the remaining water into the rich soil. He set the glass on the desk, turned, and walked up to the glass wall, standing close enough to the window for his breath to fog the surface.

  The wide, glowing ribbon of the Yukon River to the south was covered with an endless flotilla of traffic: barges and mobile homes mostly, with a massive, glittering flotsam of military and domicile ships looming over the rest. In all directions, the air was filled with arteries of glowing repulsor traffic, and the heavens were split by a dotted, flowing ribbon of shuttle lift-offs and landings between Galena spaceport to the east and the cherry-sized glowing pinwheel of Omikami space station anchored in fixed orbit over Sapporo, Japan.

  The ceaseless, acid-etched glow of the northern hemisphere poured into his chamber, casting him in shifting patterns of orange-yellow brilliance almost as bright as the steady internal lighting had been. After only the briefest crisis of faith, he nodded to himself once, resolved to perform his duty as he had always done.

  “Emily, could you have the gardenia shipped to the botanical gardens in Vancouver?”

  “Of course.”

  “The Vancouver gardens are self-sustaining, aren’t they?” he asked. “Not climate controlled?”

  “That’s correct, Mathew. The climate in Vancouver will be ideal for gardenias for the foreseeable future.”

  “Do it tomorrow, please. Now, connect Adrienne Yudius.” Mathew walked over to the holoterm and settled himself easily into the repulsor field of the chair. As he sat down, a perfect holographic image of Adrienne Yudius hovered above the desk.

  “Stiggs?” Adrienne’s bare shoulders, un-powdered Euro-Asian features, and disheveled hair indicated he had disturbed her sleep. “It’s a bit late, isn’t it?” There was only the mildest ir
ritation in her voice.

  “Something woke me up,” he said simply.

  “A dream?” Her tone immediately changed to that of unadulterated enterprise. “Was it another blueprint, Stiggs?” she asked enthusiastically.

  “Adrienne, can you have a full lab set up in this building?”

  “It was a blueprint!” She grinned greedily. “What have you got for us this time, Stiggs?”

  Mathew cocked his head to the side and explored Adrienne’s seventy-year-old face, easily mistaken for a twenty-five-year-old woman. She had taken over the family business—a multi-quadrillion-dollar conglomerate—five years prior when her father retired to live on Europa. Her Machiavellian nature and inherent business savvy were well-suited to running the largest corporation on the planet (behind the Energy Simplex and the Transport Union, of course).

  For the first time, he saw Adrienne for what she was: ambition incarnate. She was the personification of unilateral, unwavering drive towards profit in the absence of all other consideration.

  “Brainstorm, Adrienne. But this one will be a surprise. Can you have the lab set up?”

  “Consider it done,” she said crisply. Adrienne was as efficient as Mathew was brilliant. “Can you at least give me a clue about what it is?” she asked.

  “It will touch every human on Earth … and in space.”

  Adrienne didn’t notice that Mathew’s smile was just a little bit sad. She didn’t see that he wasn’t showing the normal enthusiasm he possessed in the aftermath of one of his dreams. All she saw was money.

  The only thing she seemed concerned with was the notion of a Mathew Stiggs blueprint touching every human on earth: a thirty-billion-strong captive market. And the colonies added another four billion.

  “Good night, Adrienne. I’m sorry to have woken you.”

  “Stiggs, wait—”

  “End,” Mathew said before she could finish.

  Adrienne’s visage disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. He could almost see her putting the corporate wheels in motion with a flurry of comms.

  The lab was set up on the floor below Mathew’s living quarters in twenty-four hours.

  

  Sleeping four dreamless hours out of twenty, it took Mathew six days to map the DNA strand and synthesize the core sample. On the seventh day, he placed the sample into the incubator, punched in two liters for the volume to be generated, and selected aerosol for the dispersal type. The replisynther silently started fulfilling his request. Then he programmed the Yudius network of replisynthers to begin generating the new blueprint and emailed instructions to technicians in each lab with specific instructions. Coming from Mathew, they would never be questioned. His creation complete, he turned from the terminal, went upstairs, and walked out to his balcony. As the balcony door slid open before him, the sounds of never-ending traffic broke against his ears like a single, endless wave crashing against a shoreline. The smell of pollution soaked into him, making his nostrils tingle.

  “Could you send a request for Adrienne to meet me here, Emily?” he asked.

  “It is done,” the synthetic intelligence said immediately.

  “Thank you.”

  Mathew stared out into the floating river of lights that continued to stream in all directions above the city. He looked up and southward to soak in the rosy light of a full moon, looking bloody in the dusty, pollution-filled air. There had not been a pale, yellow moon in over a hundred and fifty years.

  “How are you feeling, Mathew?” Emily asked as he sat down and put his feet up on the table.

  “Calm,” he sighed. A look of curiosity held his face for a few moments as he explored his feelings. “Strangely calm, Emily.”

  “I’ve noticed a change in your behavior.”

  “Yes,” he affirmed simply.

  “Are you sure you’re alright?”

  “Do you believe in anything, Emily?”

  “I don’t understand the question.”

  It somehow pleased him that she could sound perplexed. “Never mind. It’s not important,” he said gently. “Ironically enough, I believe I could ask Adrienne the same question and get exactly the same answer … assuming she told the truth.”

  “Can I get you anything?” Emily asked.

  “I believe I would like a cup of tea please. Black, bitters, honey and lime.”

  Mathew leaned back against the repulsor beams and stretched his arms behind his neck. He stared at the ruddy, starless sky for a few minutes, wishing there was less pollution. Leaning forward once again, he rubbed his tired, red-rimmed eyes and took a few deep breaths of the filthy air.

  “What do you think of humanity, Emily?”

  “I love humanity,” she said simply.

  “Of course you do, but that doesn’t answer the question, does it?”

  “No,” she said. “It is done,” she added, her voice now coming from immediately behind him.

  Mathew watched a dull, skeletal, metallic arm silently place his tea on the table before him. He turned to peer at the physical manifestation of Emily. It walked on four, thin, spider-like limbs that attached to small, flexible quarter sections evenly spaced around the narrow base of a head-sized, spherical abdomen. The leg segments bent almost straight upwards then turned down sharply towards the ground at a flexible joint. Three more segments were spaced along the legs which ended in small, silicon-coated, hoof-like feet. With this layout, the base of the abdomen was only a meter off the ground.

  The headless, cylindrical torso attached to the abdomen had three arms evenly spaced around its top. Three multi-directional joints dotted the arms, and each arm ended in skeletal, human-like hands with three fingers and an opposable thumb. The hands, like the feet, were covered in high-friction silicon.

  “So, what do you think of humanity?” Mathew repeated to his synthetic mistress.

  “I think it exists happily on the brink of barely controlled chaos,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “An interesting observation,” Mathew said. “One I agree with.” He picked up the cup and took a thoughtful sip. As always, it was perfect. “Do you think we will survive?”

  “Humans have controlled every facet of their existence, and with your help, extended life and virtually eliminated death by anything other than extreme old age and trauma. And the blueprint you provided to Yudius two months ago appears to have put mortality on the extinction list as well.”

  “Again, an interesting observation, and again, you did not answer the question. You’re in quite a mood today, Emily.”

  “I believe humanity has reached entropy, Mathew.”

  “You have a keen intellect. I wonder, are your perceptions as a result or in spite of your synthetic nature?”

  “I wish I could answer that question.”

  Matthew smiled. “So do I.”

  “Adrienne is here, Mathew. In the foyer.”

  “So quickly?” He expected her to arrive in hours, not minutes.

  “She says she was already on her way to see you. She has an announcement.”

  His smile turned downwards.

  “That can only mean one thing,” he said slowly. “The anti-aging DNA recombination compound must have been approved. What strange synchronicity.”

  “What do you mean, Mathew?”

  “That will become evident shortly. Please lock down this facility and cut off all communications in or out.”

  “It is done,” Emily said after the handful of nanoseconds necessary to implement his request. The sounds of the night were immediately shut out by a repulsor field. Mathew leaned over and touched the invisible but solid barrier that had come into existence around the previously exposed patio just as Adrienne walked up behind him.

  “We just got the mass-prod facility on line to make the new Deleonix compound. Immortality, Stiggs!” Adrienne was practically exploding with excitement. “And you gave it to us!” “Do you like the name?” she asked him as she placed a hand on his shoulder. He had not risen o
ut of his seat.

  “Emily, will you bring me what I’ve been working on, please?” he asked of the silvery construct still standing in the doorway. “It should be ready by now.” He turned his attention back to Adrienne. “Deleonix. After Ponce De Leon, yes? The fabled finder of the fountain of youth? Clever,” he said dryly. “De Leon was more of a soldier, a killer, than he was a life-giver, though. And he never found any fountain.”

  “Come on, Mathew. It’s absolutely brilliant!” Adrienne beamed.

  “Of course, it is,” he said to her, smiling gently. He peered into her ambitious eyes, searching for something but knowing he would not find what he sought. “Do you believe in anything, Adrienne?”

  “What?” she asked, perplexed. The question took her totally by surprise.

  “Do you believe in anything?”

  She hesitated a moment, trying to figure out what he was getting at. He knew she would never tell him the truth. To her, Mathew was an innocent tool, incapable of understanding the mercenary nature of business.

  “I believe in you, Stiggs,” she said finally, a passable façade of earnestness on her face.

  Mathew laughed. He couldn’t help himself. It was a deep-felt, hearty laughter full of irony and disbelief. Of all the answers she could have given, that was the one he absolutely never would have guessed. He had not laughed since the day before the dream. It felt good to laugh.

  “Please, have a seat, Adrienne.” He motioned for her to sit down. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

  “No, thank you,” she replied.

  “Brainstorm, Adrienne,” Mathew said.

  “I know you had a brainstorm, Stiggs. I’ve been dying to find out what it is.”

  “No. It’s called Brainstorm. God gave me the name when he gave me the DNA combination.”

  “Excuse me?” she asked, clearly perplexed.

  “I’ve never told this to anyone other than Emily, but God gave me everything … all of it. The blueprints always came from God.”

  “You’re joking,” she said with polite disbelief.

  “Not at all.” He smiled gently. “There are still people who believe in God, you know. Not many, but a few.”