Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

by Anthology

  “All on sale. Half price from market rates. Complimentary navel installation if you want it. Take your pick.”

  Charlotte rolls between the chairs and examines her options, zooming in her biochamber’s cameras for a closer look. She disregards the three males outright. Of the three remaining, she can instantly see that none of them are Charlotte, not properly. Too young. Too pale. None of them have belly buttons, as the salesman said. One of them is so thin the cheap, generic pelvis looks like it might cut through the skin over the waist.

  “Is this it?” Even her artificial voice doesn’t disguise the disappointment.

  The male corpus grins. The risorius contracts, but not the zygomatic major. “You can always upgrade it later. Still cheaper than buying new.”

  It’s a fair point. And the used corpus in the middle isn’t so bad. It’s young, and a little too thin for Charlotte’s taste, but the frame is good quality, and the height about right. And anyway, it’ll age, and with enough peanut brittle, she can round it out. “That one,” she says, “does it have a palmaris longus?”

  He grabs the corpus’s right hand and scrunches the fingers together until the little muscle pops out like cord. “There you go. You want it, then?”

  Charlotte remembers her sensory marooning during the accident. There are no guarantees in life, no corpus waiting for everyone. It could be now or never. “Yes, please.”

  She logs in to her bank and arranges the money transfer. He asks her to mark it as a gift. Then he hauls the limp corpus upright, and works open the skull bolts, which look a little sticky. Charlotte at last, she thinks.

  The skull pops open with a sound like a tooth yanked from its socket. The man reaches inside and rips out something wet and gray. It isn’t moving.

  “Oh God,” says Charlotte, “that’s a person!”

  The salesman slings the body into a pail lined with a black trash bag. “It’s okay. They’re dead. I’ll rinse it out for you, if it bothers you.” He fishes a yellow pail from behind one of the chairs and raises a soapy scrub brush.

  “But that’s a dead person!” Charlotte protests. “They died inside that corpus!” She’s amazed when the salesman just shrugs and starts soaping out the inside of the skull.

  “They’re not using it anymore. Might as well let someone else get some use out of it when they’re gone.”

  Charlotte cannot process all the thoughts barraging the wrinkled folds of her insula: disgust like sour milk smell, horror like the color mauve, terror like the dark apartment when the internet is down and the roaches skitter over her. Why did Shanti send her here? Did she know? “Is this what they wanted?”

  “Of course,” he answers a little too quickly.

  Charlotte knows corpi, though. She knows what it means when the eyes drop down when they’re speaking. And she knows. She knows she can’t do it. She can’t take a person’s most personal possession, their own hard-won Charlotte, without their permission. You were supposed to be buried in your corpus. Your corpus was you. “I don’t want this. I’m going to reverse the transaction.”

  Instantly the salesman’s corpus stiffens. His chest puffs and his arms cross. “Sorry. No refunds. And I should warn you. You know what’ll happen if you talk about this place, don’t you?”

  Charlotte suddenly remembers there is more to fear in the world than bus accidents and dead dreams. “Please. Just let me go home.”

  She leaves broke and with no corpus. Outside her apartment, Charlotte passes the person in the gutter again. They have made it to the safety of a puddle today. Another precious life extension for the wretch. A day’s reprieve. And tomorrow? Well, tomorrow, look for another puddle, and call it a life. With her nest egg gone, Charlotte’s own puddle is receding, all her dreams washing down the drain.

  Corpi walk past, but Charlotte sees only stolen cadavers ripped from their owners, a dead gray mass in a bucket. They drink black coffee that Charlotte cannot smell from cups that Charlotte cannot cradle warm between two hands. Her audio feed presents her with a spectrum flat on both ends, as if she won’t miss what their curated reality never offers to begin with. As if Charlotte won’t notice how half her nerves disconnect, how they don’t feel anything at all.

  Charlotte scowls, though there are no muscles to answer the call of her neurotransmitters. Defiance prickles through her anyway. It will have to be enough. She will make it be enough. Some parts of a person cannot be bought or sold or owned, no matter how large the birth-debt. Funny how often the incorporated forgot that.

  Back at home, Charlotte carefully mists her little cactus. Then she calls up the file containing her corpus design and deletes the extra kidney, the gallbladder, the left ear’s cochlea.

  The palmaris longus stays.

  Jason Kimble

  http://processwonk.wordpress.com

  Broken(Short story)

  by Jason Kimble

  Originally published by Escape Pod (episode 509)

  My favorite part about skimming is that I'm not broken when I do it. It doesn't matter that I don't have levels, that I'm on or off, because that's how everything's supposed to be when you're in the hypernet. Even if I'm not supposed to be in the hypernet.

  I'm only able to skim because Kaipo left my interface node on. That was the day he told me I could call him Kaipo instead of Dr. Singh. His eyes are different than mine, but that's not because of the Skew, and even if it is I wouldn't care, because they're pretty and dark and they twinkle a little bit when he smiles. We'd had sex twice when he told me I could call him Kaipo if we're alone. Sex is almost as good as skimming, only it doesn't last as long, and sometimes I'm stinky afterwards, which I'm not a fan of. Sometimes Kaipo smells like pumpkin, which I'm totally a fan of.

  "Overshare."

  "Hi, Heady," I say, rolling onto my side on the bed to look at her. I frown, which I know because the muscles at my jawbone ache a little when I frown. "Did you hear all that?"

  Heady raises an eyebrow and purses her lips. Heady's my big sister. Like, really big. Eight and a half feet big. That's what the Skew did to her, blew her up bigger than life, but I think it suits her. She's not as tough as she looks to most people, though. She's totally as tough as she looks to me right now.

  "Sorry," I say, sitting up. "Sometimes I get confused about outside and inside my head." That's what the Skew did to me: broke my head. You can see that when I cut my hair or trim my beard, because the hairs change colors each time. Other people tell me it's silly, but I like it. I can never decide if I like red or blue or green or purple or yellow more, and this way I get to have them all, and all's better than some.

  Heady sighs.

  "Don't worry, Sy," she says, because Sy's my name. "You never have to apologize to me."

  She smiles, and the muscles in my cheeks tense up so I know I'm smiling, too. She's a good big sister, Heady. Even if she's not real.

  ***

  Well, Heady's real, but she's not real here. She used to be. The room felt even smaller and tighter back then, because my interface node was turned off and no one would turn it back on. The world was only four walls, and they were right on top of me. The window didn't matter; it was just part of the wall, wasn't it?

  The door, now that mattered. Heady came through the door. She left through the door. One of those times, she introduced me to Dr. Singh. That was before he let me call him Kaipo.

  "Neuroelectro therapy," I said after Kaipo did. It was just sounds.

  "It means your node turns back on, Sy," Heady said. She smiled. She has a good smile, too. Not the same way as Kaipo. It's not like that. The muscles in my cheeks ached a little.

  "I've been looking over your files since I was assigned your case, and…I think we can actually use our interactions through the node to re-map some pathways."

  "My node turns on," I said.

  "For our sessions, anyway," Kaipo said. It was the first time I saw his smile. My ears tingled.

  He left us alone after Heady signed some paperwork, and then
she sat us down on my bed.

  "Sy, I have to go away for a while," she said. Her voice was soft, like all her hair. Her hand was light on my shoulder even though it could swallow mine.

  "How long's a while?" I asked. I'm good with time. It's a pattern. I'm very good with patterns. While isn't a good pattern. It isn't time. It's pretend, like a code loop that never finishes.

  "I don't know," Heady said, still soft. She hugged me to her, and I could hear her heart pounding. I remembered how mine slammed in my chest when I was trying to think of what I should say to Pointy Teeth and Bone Knuckles. Heady always knew what to say. She let me go, kneeled in front of the bed, then wrapped her sprawling hands on my shoulders. Her round eyes were a little wet, but she smiled as she looked me in my eyes. It wasn't quite as pretty as usual.

  "But Dr. Singh is going to take care of you," she told me. "And once I've got things sorted out, I'm coming back for you."

  I bit my lip. Not enough to hurt, which I sometimes do.

  "But you have to stay here so I can find you, understand?"

  I nodded.

  "And then no more doctors or secrets, just you and me. I promise."

  I didn't talk. I hugged her. It's not always easy, wrapping my arms around her, but I did it. I didn't squeeze too tight, because Heady's bones aren't as tough as normal-sized people. I held on until she hugged me back. Her hair fell around us and made the world go away. She smelled like ginger and cumin, which don't go together, except with Heady they do. I listened to her heart pounding, to the little sniff she made. I held her with my arms, then I let her go with my arms, and then she walked out the door.

  "How about that doctor?" the other Heady said after the door clicked closed. That's when the other Heady started, because I'm very good with patterns, and I only let Heady's go with my arms.

  "He's a cutie, right?" Heady prodded, smiling. "There's definitely potential there."

  The muscles in my cheeks ached again, but only a little.

  ***

  Kaipo has access to turn my interface node on and off because that's how we do neuroelectro therapy. That's when I have to call him Dr. Singh.

  "It's getting more tranquil here, Sy," he says with a smile when he joins me in the closed server where we do therapy.

  "That's totally good, right?" I ask.

  "It totally is," he says with a little laugh. He smiles. I really like his smile. Right now it's simulated through the code, but the real one is nice, too. He shows all his teeth, even the canines that are a little crooked. It's open, his smile. I'm totally a fan of that.

  So I've been practicing, smoothing out the abstract shapes and the code mutations that make being in the server interesting. They worry Kaipo. If I'm ever going to build filters, real filters and coping whatchamahooies, I have to listen to him. Plus, my chest gets a little tight when he cocks his head and frowns that worried frown. I like the smile more.

  Kaipo takes us through the exercises. I make the right shapes and say the right things. I'm very good with patterns, so this feels natural. When we're done and we're back outside the server box, but inside the room box, he taps notes into his tablet.

  "You weren't too good at the coding bits?" Heady asks. I bite my lip. It hurts a little this time. I shake my head.

  Kaipo says being accelerated too much in one area puts me out of balance in the others. There's a middle. He's helping me find out how to present it. I can't talk out loud to Heady, though, when Kaipo is around. That definitely gets a frown and isn't what I ought to present. So I keep my mouth closed, because if I don't say anything, I can't lie. Which I'm bad at, anyway.

  "This is maddening!" Heady calls out, walking around behind Kaipo. She leans down to see what's on his screen.

  "Just tap in already," she says, pointing to me and then pointing to the tablet. She knows she can't really see what I can't. I shake my head.

  "Come on," she drawls, kneeling next to Kaipo. She leans her head on his shoulder. "Just one little skim and you can see—"

  I feel a pinch in the muscles on both the top and the bottom of my mouth, and that's how I know I'm pursing my lips. I try to wave Heady off.

  "Sy?" Kaipo looks up. It's not a frown or a smile or even pursed lips exactly. That arch at his eyebrow means he noticed. He walks over. "Are you all right?"

  Heady throws her hands in the air.

  "If you just listened to me, you wouldn't have to—"

  I stand up and smile at Kaipo and bite my lip just enough. He smiles. I like his smile.

  "Okay, fine. You got this," Heady says, and walks sideways until she's not here any more.

  Kaipo taps the tablet to put the security feed on a loop. I let him think I didn't do that a minute and a half ago.

  I touch his fingers with mine. My cheeks feel warm. Other places, too.

  I don't just like Kaipo's smile. Or his eyes. Or how he sometimes smells like pumpkin. I like that his skin is a kind of pale, not-exactly copper. I like that there's a little bit of hair around each of his nipples, and a tiny dusting of it on his sternum, but not much anywhere else under his shirt. I like the feel of his waist when my legs are wrapped around it. I like the rough sides of the spine ridges the Skew gave him. I like how soft his lips are on mine, and on my neck, and on my nipples even though they have more hair than his. I like that I don't have to talk but he knows what I need and want, and I know the same for him.

  I don't like how tight my chest feels when I think about what he'll need and want once I've run away.

  ***

  When they first brought me (I'm not supposed to talk about them), Heady—real Heady—came to visit every day. She held my hand, and told me what she'd done that day, only not everything, because she knew if she told it all, I might open my mouth and it would all come out.

  That was how I got put in to begin with. We're special, Heady and me. It's hard—like, super duper hard—for people to have babies up here on the Rim, because one of the ways the Skew hurt just about everybody is that they can't make babies. One baby is a party. Two babies is the kind of new that's scary.

  They didn't want scary, because scared makes people do even more scary. They raised us separate for a while, helped us figure out what we were good at. Heady was good with people. I was good with not-people, with patterns. They fitted me with an interface node, and it felt right. At first I could just tap the local network, and I felt less cramped in my head, but it was still small. Pycha Gol is supposed to be one of the better roids, but home was still just a floating rock in the Rim. Everything was cramped and close and slow and stinky, which I'm not a fan of.

  But the planet below? They've got the hypernet, which is big and bright and open and has more to know floating around inside it than I think anyone could ever know. Even any-one-hundreds could probably never know it. I'm totally a fan of that. Which is why I started learning to skim.

  I'm good with not-people, but Kaipo's been teaching me: talent is different than perfect. Especially when you're excited about something and don't really get that you have to be careful. And aren't very good at being careful even when you know to be.

  The woman who came first was big. Not as big as Heady, but the Skew gave all her teeth points, which made her scarier. Her partner was a man who rode in a chair. He had bone on the outside of his knuckles. I think maybe the Skew knew they wanted to be in security. Which is weird, because everyone tells me diseases can't think.

  The room was cramped and close. All smudged metal and streaky glass. The chair hurt my back, but I think maybe it was supposed to. Heady and I were eighteen. The hair at my scalp was orange from my most recent haircut. There was still some purple on the tips, though, and all the green and pink from the two cuts before that. It helped me feel a little brighter when I saw it in the smudged mirror, but then Bone Knuckles crunched his fist into the table, and Pointy Teeth leaned in and smiled. Her breath was stinky, which I'm not a fan of.

  I don't think she liked the face I made when I smelled her and tried to
turn away. She grabbed me by the cheeks and made me look right at her.

  "So, you're going to tell us who hooked you up with hypernet access codes, and then maybe we can see about making sure you don't have to do rehab time at a conversion station."

  "That's a deal you want, kid," Bone Knuckles said, wheeling his chair around to my other side. "I've been in the atmocite plant. For a place that makes our air, it is damn hard to breathe inside."

  "Scrawny thing like you?" Pointy Teeth said, "I figure you might not even make it through a term before you wind up too damaged for life after." She stood back up and moved over to the wall, leaning against it. That made me feel better, because then I couldn't smell her breath. I thought how bad it'd be if I had to work in the conversion station, where it would be stinkier than anything.

  "I just asked nice," I told them, because that was the truth, and I thought that's what people wanted. Bone Knuckles wheeled his chair back again and laughed.

  "You hear that, Sonja?" he said. "Asked nice. That's all."

  "I had to ask a lot," I clarified. Which was true. I knew it was called encryption, and I knew what I was doing with protocols and algorithms, but I knew that none of that made sense to most people the way it did to me. I was trying to make it easier for them to understand. They were still mad and confused, though. I wasn't good with people. Heady was.

  That's all I was thinking when I said, "Maybe we can call my sister, and she can help me explain better, because Heady's good with—"

  "Woah," Pointy Teeth said. She looked to Bone Knuckles, and he wheeled closer again while she stalked in from the other side. They looked at each other, and I looked at them, then they looked at me.

  "You have a sister?" Bone Knuckles asked. I'd already remembered by then that I wasn't supposed to tell about having a sister, but it was too late. I wanted Heady there more than ever. Heady's really good at lying, but I'm no good at it at all. I'm either talking, or I'm not talking.