Those That Wake 02: What We Become

by Jesse Karp

  He rose, a wounded behemoth swaying to its feet. He staggered forward, glancing against a woman who focused just long enough to say “fucker,” and then hazed back out behind her cellenses and hurried along. Higher powers had polished up the city, made it bright and shiny to cover up the decay beneath, and his bloody body was an unacceptable assault on that world.

  He came to the spot, fell against the wall to steady himself, then pushed off and disappeared into one of the city’s forgotten places.

  Laura

  “I MUST CONFESS, I FIND your credentials quite impressive, Ms. Westlake,” said the man with the judgmental eyes and the thick, thick head of blond hair, styled into a fashionable sweep. “For an eighteen-year-old,” he added with unconcealed distress.

  “Thank you, sir,” Laura said from the other side of the rich, wooden desk, inlaid with a plexi-optic surface that projected the screen and keyboard in a hovering crystalline image above it. Dr. Richard Innes, as the plaque on the door identified him, also had a large window that looked down into the hospital parking lot and the small forest of surrounding trees.

  “Of course, being eighteen suggests other issues. Oversleeping, for instance.”

  “Um, no, sir. I am sorry to be late. There was only a single elevator working downstairs.”

  “Yes. We have stairs as well, you know.”

  “I did know that, Dr. Innes, but security wouldn’t let me into the hallway.”

  “You might think about arriving earlier, to head off such problems.”

  Seriously, dude? Laura worked hard to keep it out of her face. Seriously?

  “I’ll try to remember that.”

  “Do.” He cleared his throat, his expression proclaiming that he was doing her the favor of starting fresh. “I see you’ve selected your major already. I believe you’re still a freshman, is that not right?”

  “That’s correct, sir.”

  “Are you not concerned with limiting your options?”

  “I’m very committed to psychology. I’ve been committed to it for a few years now.”

  “Yes, I see that by your advanced placement work in high school. Yet no internships until now. We decided to shoot for the very top on our first outing, didn’t we, Ms. Westlake?”

  She blinked once, over her unfaltering smile.

  “I had a family emergency during my senior year in high school, Mr. Innes. It didn’t leave me any time to pursue internships and keep my grades at a high level. So that I could be considered for such top-level positions.” Had he detected the note of sarcasm she was striving to quash?

  “Doctor Innes,” he corrected. “Perhaps this family emergency would explain why you’ve failed to qualify on the new Voight-Kampf Diagnostics programs.”

  “As you noted, sir, I’m still a freshman. We don’t generally train on diagnostics software until the final term. My adviser has assured me, though, that I’ll be permitted to start during the next semester.”

  “Impressive for you, I’m certain,” Innes said. “Somewhat too late for us, I’m afraid.”

  “I . . . see.” Laura could feel her jaw muscles tightening. She never had an easy time with officious middle-echelon corporate lackeys. Less so when her own adviser had commented that she was more capable already than many of the seniors they were sending out for similar positions. Less still, when the interview had pushed back a reunion with her boyfriend, returning today after a three-day absence he playfully but frustratingly refused to explain. Her boyfriend, who was, even now, probably waiting for her under the flagpole back on campus. “I’d thought that the hospital might be more interested in someone with an ability to connect with people rather than hook those people into machines and dispense brain-deadening medication.”

  “Excuse me?” His judgmental eyes sharpened to an executioner’s glare.

  “Well, Mr. Innes, I can see that the budget that should have been spent keeping the elevators working so that visitors or—oh, I don’t know—your patients wouldn’t have to wait in the lobby for ten minutes has instead gone to your antique desk and fancy computer screen.”

  “Ms. Westlake,” he said, leaning back in his chair, his voice going low, “it’s clear you’re not the material we’re looking for. And it’s Doctor Innes.”

  “Sad,” she said, rising. “Sadder still, you’re clearly not the material I’m looking for, Richard.”

  She closed the door gently behind her before he could mount a response. God, these corporate bureaucrats buried in their technology. She didn’t know whether it was the men or the machines she could stand less.

  She found the stairway entrance up here, not blocked off by security, and went downstairs, pleased for the opportunity to blow by the seated guard downstairs who had blocked her path before. She went out to the parking lot and got into her car and pulled her cell. Plenty of people she could call about this development, a few who would even be upset if she didn’t. Or call her guy. That was most tempting. But holding the cell, even pulling it out, felt distasteful. In minutes she would actually see him, not on a miniature screen digitally sharpened until he looked more like a special effect than a person, not transmitted across miles of space, but actually him, right before her. Good enough to touch.

  She drove the miles to campus, found a space near her dorm, started walking toward the main square, and soon found herself half running with excitement. It was just three days, but that was somehow three days too many.

  There was the massive flagpole, with both the college’s gold, white, and blue flag and the Stars and Stripes fluttering serenely in an early spring breeze, a glare of sun cutting majestically between them. Lots of kids gathered at the base, the college’s unofficial Place Where Things Happened. Too much of a crowd to see if he was—

  “Laura,” came his voice, from behind. She turned into his soft smile and put herself into his open arms. “You okay, Button?”

  She nodded into his chest, suddenly not sure she could speak without cracking.

  “How was the interview?” he asked, his breath falling on the top of her head.

  She shook her head.

  “Crappy,” she managed to say.

  “Is that the problem?”

  “No.” It wasn’t. She barely even cared about that now. “No problems.” She looked up at him, the sun blinding her from behind his head. The sun, or just seeing him. “Just glad you’re back, Josh.”

  He nodded.

  “Glad, too.” They kissed and held on to it, students flowing around them, the hubbub receding to the back of her mind. Her hands found his cheeks, cupped his face. She kept going until her finger touched something small and metal. She stopped dead.

  She pulled her head back, tilted her neck so she could see it.

  “You got one,” she said. “That’s where you were the last three days.”

  “Yeah, Button. Surprise.” It came out a little lame.

  “We were . . .” She stepped back but caught the tone in her own voice and smoothed it out. “We talked about doing it together.”

  “I know, Laura.” Big smile. With those deep, dark eyes and that slim, jagged scar down his cheek that brought the perfection of his features out, and that shaggy head of dark hair, it could defuse a protest before it even heated up. “Don’t be upset. You kept putting it off, kept talking about how nervous you were about it. I just thought if I did it, you’d see it was no big thing, and I would still come with you when you got yours. You’re not mad, are you? Don’t be mad,” he started with the funny wheedling voice. It usually worked. “Much better if you’re not mad. Come on, come on.”

  She wasn’t mad, not exactly. But looking at the thing, the tiny little metal disk lodged just in front of his left ear, right over the jawbone, it made her queasy, almost made her feel like she was talking to someone who wasn’t quite Josh. She worked hard to put a smile on her face and keep it there.

  “So,” she said, looking at his eyes, looking to see if something was there—she wasn’t even sure what. “How w
as it?”

  “It was nothing at all. Like getting an ear pierced. They knock you out for, like, an hour and implant the transponder. Then they put the magnetic patch on.” He reached up and touched the disk, maybe a third of an inch in diameter, and removed it, leaving a tiny patch of shiny skin beneath. “I can make and receive audio signals just by thinking about it, Laura. It’s unbelievably awesome. I almost made you my first call, but I wanted to surprise you. And”—he pulled out a pair of slim, black sunglasses—“you clip it into these.” He put them on, the small disk of the cellpatch on his temple clipping into a small circular interface in the earpiece of the glasses, and his deep dark eyes disappeared behind the cellenses. “I can get visuals on calls, Internet, watch movies. And games; with the biosync . . .” He raised his eyebrows hyperbolically. “GTA 8 is vicious in these. It’s unbelievable, Laura. I’m telling you—you’re gonna love it.”

  She looked up, waited for him to take the cellenses off, which he did after the barest moment of silence. His smile never faltered, laboring to support hers, too.

  “It doesn’t hurt at all?”

  “No, not at all. The implantation only took an hour. The rest of the time, they were locking the biosync and teaching me to subvocalize my calls and stuff. Didn’t hurt a bit. Isn’t even sore.”

  He sounded like the web ads and infocasts that the companies ran on the process.

  “They even said they’re going to have a wireless link to contact lenses in less than two years, and we can get rid of the glasses.” He was watching her expectantly.

  She looked around her, at the other students coming, going, and sitting. Four, five, six, eight others that she could spot had the patches, too. They didn’t come cheap. These would be the kids without student loans, with enough money to eat off campus if they wanted; the kids like Josh. And Laura.

  “Dude,” a student, someone Josh knew and Laura knew in passing, shouted out as he went by, pointing at the spot near Josh’s ear. “Sorry about the brain cancer.” He smiled and swept by.

  “Nice timing,” Josh’s voice rose after him, then quieted. “Dick.” He looked back at Laura, worried. “That’s a totally false rumor,” he said. “They talked all about it. The rise in brain cancer only has to do with—”

  “A higher incidence of the fallout from the ozone-layer satellites, I know. I read all the same websites you did.”

  “Come on, Button”—his voice sounding strained now—“I’m back. I’m cool. We should be thinking of something better to do than this.”

  She felt the tension, wanted it to vanish.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, touching his face again. “The interview got me messed up. I’m so happy you’re back. Meet me in an hour at the café, and we’ll come up with something good.”

  “Okay,” he said uncertainly. “What are you gonna do?”

  “Just want to talk about the interview. I’m going to call my parents.”

  “Honey!” Laura’s mother was delighted to hear from her as always. It didn’t matter if they hadn’t spoken in a week or ten minutes, the brightness of her mother’s exuberant smile nearly blew out the screen of Laura’s cell.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “What is it, Laura, what’s wrong? Was it the interview?” Did Laura let something slip into her voice, or was it her mother’s seemingly preternatural ability to key into Laura’s mood even across an expanse of miles? For God’s sake, did the woman have anything else in her life but her daughter?

  “No,” Laura said. “Yes. No. Maybe.” It would be easier to talk about the interview than what was really bothering her. “I met with a guy; he talked about the diagnostic programs. They don’t care about how people work there, Mom. They care about how machines work and how machines can fix people, and then they don’t have to worry about dirtying themselves by acting like actual human beings.” Laura was surprised to hear the anger in her own voice. She hadn’t even been this angry after the interview.

  “I’m sorry, honey.”

  “Is that how it is everywhere, Mom? I swear, half my teachers have the same attitude. Is everyone in the world an asshole?”

  “Laura . . .” Her mother’s voice suddenly hushed in a tone of admonishment. She could bear the cursing if they were face-to-face, but somehow on cells it always troubled her, as though they were performing for an unseen audience.

  “Sorry, Mom,” she said by rote. “But I’m finding it really hard to take right now.”

  “I can see that, honey. Are you in your room?”

  “Yeah.” It was a tiny, cramped little place, which Laura loved dearly. Her roommate, absent at the moment, left her side as neat as if a maid came through every day. But it echoed her mother’s obsessions and left Laura with a sense of home. Her own side was filled with pictures of Mookie—leaping up for a Frisbee, peeking out of his dog house—with a framed arrangement of dried flowers and her father’s proud addition to the room, a vintage poster that screamed LET’S GO, METS GO! to cap it off. All of Laura’s electronics were hidden away, under the bed, in drawers. They might not have even existed.

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yeah, Mom.” She could hear it coming.

  “Well”—her voice went quiet again, as though that would do any good if someone was monitoring their cell conversations—“are you having those headaches again?”

  “They weren’t headaches, Mom,” she corrected, already exasperated.

  “Well, the episodes.”

  “They weren’t episodes. It was a transient, self-limited loss of consciousness.” Always a comfort to retreat into the technical, though it turned her mother’s face sour.

  “Well, you know what I’m talking about, anyway. Is that happening again?”

  Laura took a deep breath in and let it out in a not-quite sigh.

  “No,” she said, but had paused too long.

  “Laura, please tell me the truth. Are you having those flashbacks to high school again?”

  “They weren’t flashbacks, Mom. I never had any flashbacks. I was—there was confusion about some things in senior year.”

  “It was more serious than that, Laura. You went to the hospital.”

  “For observation, Mom. And they didn’t find anything.”

  “That’s serious. The hospital is serious. You know how your dad and I worry about that.”

  “You and Dad, huh? I have the feeling Dad’s managing okay.”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “You noticed.”

  Her mother stared back at her, silent, through the miniature screen.

  “No, Mom, that’s not happening again. I’m just, I don’t know . . . feeling uneasy about things.”

  “Like with those episodes.”

  “They weren’t episodes. Christ, Mom.”

  “But like with those things.”

  “Yes, a little bit. The uneasiness, but without the panic attacks or syncope.”

  “You speak just like a professional, Laura,” her mother said with equal amounts of frustration and pride. “You should come home until it lets up.”

  “I’m not going to do that.”

  “Laura, what could it hurt? You could get home by dinner. I’ll fix mac and cheese with franks and—”

  “That doesn’t actually have an effect on brain chemistry, Mom.”

  Her mother’s face fell.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. Thank you. I don’t . . .” Because no part of the small dorm room was not visible from any other part, Laura saw a small white fold of paper being slipped beneath her door. “It’s not that serious.” She sat, transfixed by the tiny arrival.

  “You should still think about—”

  “I’m not coming home, Mom. I’m seeing Josh in twenty minutes, and I’ve got a paper due in two days.” Laura rose from her bed but stood in place, looking at the note. Why not a text? It would have scrolled right beneath her mother’s face, assured instant receipt. Who left actual notes anymore?

  “Laura, what’s going on?
”

  Laura’s attention snapped back to the cell.

  “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  “Laura. Go see the counselor. Okay?”

  “I don’t need to see the counselor.”

  “It helped last time, honey, and if you’re not coming home, then at least do that. I know you don’t want my help, Laura. That’s a way you can help yourself. Please.”

  Laura was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of how far away and helpless her mother must feel.

  “I love you, Mom,” she said softly.

  “I love you, too, Laura. So much. Go see the counselor.”

  “I will.”

  “Promise.”

  “I do.”

  “Okay. Tell Josh I said hello.”

  “I will. Bye, Mom.”

  The screen flickered out on her mother’s smiling face, leaving behind a scrolling advertisement for soothing, comforting hot chocolate mix.

  Without her mother’s presence, the room was filled with Laura’s growing unease. And that note wasn’t helping. She wished Kari, her roommate, were here, just so someone would be around when she read it.

  She walked over and picked up the note and held it, still folded, before her. What the hell was going on with her? It was just a goddamned piece of paper. Open it.

  She did. A silly, innocuous message; probably slipped under the wrong door for all it meant to Laura. It contained only one sentence:

  Where is the Librarian?

  Rose

  MAL WOKE FROM A TWITCHING nightmare, his face crusted to the concrete ground with his own vomit, the glints of grim gray light pricking his brain like long needles. He was, by some way of thinking, fortunate to be waking up at all, though fortune felt as foreign to him right now as a smiling face and a warm embrace.

  He pulled himself to a sitting position, his stomach somersaulting and the dry matter on his face crumbling into flakes as he winced. The space around him reflected the tone of his thoughts just now: a large room filled with toppled wooden chairs and tables, a forlorn kitchen filled with rusting pots and pans seen through a long galley window. Once it had been a soup kitchen, when such things were allowed in the city. The homeless, though, had been shipped out of the city by ranks of MCT officers in riot gear, shuffled off, and dropped into neighboring cities, into hastily constructed and just as hastily disintegrating camps. City government had mandated a shiny, flawless façade that would present an inviting picture of a hopeful future to its inhabitants. Problems like poverty were more easily denied and coated over with gleaming new surfaces than actually addressed. So, what use were homeless shelters? This one, far past simple abandonment, had been forgotten. Like the forest Mal had once woken in to find himself trapped by a power beyond his understanding, this homeless shelter had been torn out of the memory of Man, interred in the graveyard of the past, lost to everyone. Except Mal.