Corpus Chrome, Inc.

by S. Craig Zahler

  “False accusations persist, and I intend to dispel those.”

  The lungs in the pulmonary cylinders expanded.

  “During the final explosion that destroyed the building, there was a millisecond during which the blast that killed my father, his partners and many others disconnected several computers that should have been connected, and fused together other circuits that were never meant to be fused. As a result, a fully loaded emergency signal was sent to our space station, and this signal included an override command.

  “Our lunar diamond vaults were sent contradictory ‘lock’ and ‘unlock’ signals. The security system was overloaded and defaulted to release. The rooms depressurized, and diamonds valued at over ninety trillion dollars were sucked into the vacuum of space.

  “On Earth, the mannequins received two contradictory signals: ‘freeze the brain’ for cryogenic storage, and ‘heat the brain’ to bring it out of stasis. The simultaneous application of these two temperatures destroyed the minds within.

  “That is what happened.

  “I miss my father dearly…but I am glad that he was not alive to witness this genocide. It would have…” Steven Cord shut his mismatched eyes, wheezed and leaned forward. In two of the cylinders, amber fluid effervesced.

  “He’s sick,” said Snapdragon, his voice freezing the pixels in the mote aquarium.

  “He’s dying. Those machines are keeping him alive.”

  “Oh,” said the boy. “Resume play.”

  The misshapen man shuddered, raised his head, shifted in his divan and resumed his speech. “During the past year, Global Senate scientists have dissected the mannequins and the two giant kidneys that survived the blast, yet they have not reached a consensus as to how these machines functioned.

  “I will explain how the mannequins and the kidneys functioned to the best of my abilities, but I am not a scientist. The people who created these devices are dead or have chosen to remain anonymous, for obvious reasons.

  “I should mention that the reason we at Corpus Chrome, Inc. secreted our technology was because we needed a tremendous amount of capital to achieve our goals, and we did not want competition in the marketplace to slow our progress.

  “At this point in time, there is no need for secrecy.”

  Steven Cord paused, and beside him, two cylinders rotated.

  He said, “The kidneys were schools.

  “Inside each school was a solution filled with quadrillions upon quadrillions of microbacteria, and two hundred human minds that Corpus Chrome, Inc. had purchased from families or received as donations. These minds—the scientists called them playgrounds—were dead except for one small area that lacked one specific chemical— perhaps glucose or oxygen, or a neurotransmitter like glutamate or GABA.

  “The microbacteria that learned to make or deliver the needed chemical to this part of the brain were allowed to reproduce. The others were destroyed.

  “The trained microbacteria were culled from each of the schools, and then combined in a solution of hyperconcentrated fuel sources. This microbacterial colony could create and supply all the material that a brain needed to function for a century, if not longer. Communications betw—”

  Steven Cord wheezed, and his lungs deflated in a nearby cylinder. Pained, he closed his eyes.

  Murmurs rippled through the offstage crowd.

  A stocky Thai woman in a sky-blue wool suit who was an attendant ran to the cylinders and twisted two dials. The lungs inflated, and Steven Cord’s eyes flickered open.

  “Thank you,” said the misshapen man.

  The Thai attendant nodded, adjusted three blood filters, sponged sweat from her patient’s blistered face and departed.

  Trembling, Steven Cord faced the crowd. “Communications between a living brain and a mannequin unit were achieved through the quadrillions of two-way nanosatellites that we installed throughout the cerebral tissue.

  “Motor commands from the brain were carried by microbacteria to the nanosatellites, and the nanosatellites converted these commands into ultrasonic frequencies that activated mechanisms throughout the mannequin unit.

  “At the same time, sensory data gathered by lenses, microphones and gelware were converted into ultrasonic frequencies, relayed into the nanosatellites and taken by microbacteria throughout the brain, where they were chemically translated into thought and sensation.

  “That was how Corpus Chrome, Inc. resurrected the dead.”

  Bubbles gurgled in the cylinders behind Steven Cord. His blue eye and glistening prune surveyed the crowd.

  “I would like to take a moment to tell you about my father.

  “Lawrence Robert Cord was born in North Carolina in nineteen-seventy-eight. When he was nine years old, his youngest sister died of pneumonia.

  “Shortly thereafter, Lawrence Cord’s father was diagnosed with stomach cancer. The man died a slow and painful death over the course of three years.

  “When Lawrence Cord was twenty, his mother was diagnosed with a very aggressive case of macular degeneration and went blind. He dropped out of college to care for her, taking a job at a local pharmacy.

  “While at the pharmacy, Lawrence Cord met a woman named Allison Warton and fell in love with her. She helped him with his responsibilities at home, and supported him financially as well.

  “Three years into their relationship, a pulmonary embolism unexpectedly killed Lawrence Cord’s mother. After the funeral, the couple left North Carolina and never returned.

  “Lawrence Cord and Allison Warton were married. Allison encouraged my father to finish his bioengineering degree, and she financially supported him while he did so.

  “She became pregnant. The pregnancy was an accident, but they decided to have the child. She died when she was in labor, but I lived.

  “My father never remarried.”

  Steven Cord paused as his lungs sucked air from an oxygen cylinder.

  “Lawrence Cord was a religious man.

  “When I was a boy, he took me to church every week. We said grace before every meal, and when I was older, we discussed scripture.

  “Lawrence Cord’s devoutness perplexed many of his scientific peers, but even they recognized that it was his faith in God that had helped him survive the many terrible tragedies of his early life.

  “His scientific knowledge and his spiritual views defined him, and are the reasons that Corpus Chrome, Inc. came into existence.

  “He did not often explain himself to people, but he once articulated his views to his minister, who had questioned the ethics of this enterprise.

  “My father said, ‘God gave us the ability to reproduce so that we could grow as a race and become smarter, but he also gave us flawed bodies so that we wouldn’t be content. He gave us bodies that got pneumonia, bodies that got cancer and bodies that could not endure the cold. He gave us bodies that functioned optimally for only a small portion of our lives.

  “He gave us bodies that died.

  “‘Look at our arts—at the fantastical fictions we produce as a species. Our towering giants, fountains of youth, invulnerable superheroes, immortal vampires, shape-shifting werewolves and indestructible robots are all rooted in the same exact thing: We are dissatisfied with our mortal bodies.

  “‘I feel that we can and should do more for ourselves than just accept that life ends when a disease comes along or when our ninety-year battery runs out. I believe God gave us the intellectual tools to build something better.

  “‘If we can engineer it, why not have a branch of humanity that removes itself from the continuous cycle of birth, growth, procreation, decline and death?

  “‘What could a man who lived for two hundred years conceive of? Or a woman who lived for two thousand years on a distant planet?


  “‘What if people could design their own bodies, and each person lived in a different, unique body that was a true expression of his or her inner self?

  “‘The mannequin is just the beginning—a starting point for all of us.’”

  Steven Cord surveyed the crowd of thousands and said, “That was his dream.

  “That was my father.

  “That was Corpus Chrome, Incorporated.”

  The pixels dispersed and rearranged to show

  an aerial view of the kidney-shaped chrome platform. The blue bulbs that were held in the disembodied mannequin hands changed to an amber hue and pulsated, imitating candlelight.

  Steven Cord said, “The Corpus Chrome, Incorporated Memorial is dedicated to all of the innocent people who were killed here on August thirty-first, two thousand fifty-eight or in connection with this tragedy.”

  The pixels dispersed.

  “That was depressing,” said Snapdragon. “Can we watch some robots pound each other?”

  The Jewish girl fixed her brown dress and turned to face the Asian boy. “I’d be very interested in watching something with robots.”

  Snapdragon smiled, and suddenly, Autumn kissed him on the mouth. Her soft palms held his cheeks, and his body sang.

  The boy wished that the kiss would never end, but they had to breathe, and so it did.

  Epilogue II

  New Compositions

  Autumn, 2059

  The foam-rubber cab drifted alongside the curb that delineated the western edge of Prospect Park.

  “Stop here,” said Lisanne, who was embraced by pseudopodia in the back seat of the vehicle.

  The cab halted.

  Brushing long hair from her eyes, the petite blonde looked through the window at the tuffgrass field, where children who were wrapped in baggy blue uniforms ran, smiled and shouted. Standing like a gorgeous giant amongst the maelstrom of boys and girls was the tall beauty of Swedish and Indian descent whom she had not seen in more than a year.

  The sight of Osa both gladdened and pained Lisanne.

  “Do you need assistance getting out?” inquired the cab driver, an amiable Iranian man who smelled of cloves.

  Lisanne said, “I would like to sit here for a moment. You may keep the meter running.” She wanted to calm herself before she approached her former mate.

  “Sit as long as you like.”

  The Iranian man turned forward, double-tapped his lily and spoke Arabic. Near his right knee, the meter quantified time monetarily.

  Lisanne looked through the side window once more. Thirty meters away, Osa walked to a fallen child, knelt beside the boy, said something to him, listened to him, stood up, helped him to his feet and guided him back to the tumult of limbs and laughter. The tall beauty drank water from a clear bulb, its fluid sparkling like a hidden sun revealed.

  On August thirty-first, twenty-fifty-eight, Lisanne had awoken with a concussion and a fractured skull in a Nexus Y hospital. She did not speak to anybody for forty hours and had refused all visitors. Her thoughts had been alternately detached and morbid.

  Osa had left a message in which she extended her condolences and proffered her company. Lisanne had listened to the recording many, many times during her hospitalization. She desperately wanted to weep upon the tall beauty’s shoulder and hear her words of comfort and hold her tightly beneath a heavy blanket, but she neither accepted the offer nor returned the call. The petite blonde’s terrible despair was not something that she could share with the woman whom she had neglected.

  In the bleak, hopeless period that followed her release from the hospital, Lisanne had gone to Berlin to stay with her first husband Garren, his wife Sofia and their two boys Owen and Karl, both of whom were superb young athletes. She attended the boys’ sporting events, ate fine meals, went to the opera and shopped, rarely discussing the sibling whose blasted remains she had privately buried. Lisanne had tried to forget her sister’s second life, which was little more than a brief, difficult and occasionally nightmarish epilogue.

  After five weeks, the petite blonde left Germany and went to a mountain chateau in the Russian Timan Ridge that was owned and inhabited by the librettist Petr and his choreographer mate Wyl, both of whom she had worked with prior to developing sequentialism with her sister. This activity-filled sojourn (like the one in Berlin) included important people from her past and helped her reclaim her identity, though still, her thoughts were morbid.

  After two months abroad, Lisanne returned to Nexus Y.

  She felt better than she had when she left, but there was an emptiness that pulled at her like an undertow. The thought of building a deep attachment to another temporary person filled her with an awful melancholy.

  It was then that Lisanne decided to have a child.

  The doctors took an egg from her. She wanted a girl, but would still love a boy and so did not opt for sperm selection.

  When the doctors called to tell her that the fertilization had succeeded, she had wept. Later that same day, she began a new musical work that was very different from her sparse sequentialist compositions—a lush and joyous double symphony. The music had poured out of her.

  Seated in the rear of the cab, Lisanne clicked the release button. Pseudopodia retracted from her pregnant belly.

  The car door opened, and a cool autumn wind stirred the petite blonde’s bright yellow sundress.

  Double-tapping his lily, the Iranian cab driver turned around. “Don’t strain yourself! I’ll help!”

  The man leapt from his seat and raced to her side, as if she were filled with nitroglycerin rather than a human child. “My wife delivered last year,” he explained as he helped her to her feet.

  “Danke.”

  The cabbie nodded and climbed inside his vehicle. “Should I wait for you?”

  “Please do.”

  On aching arches that were supported by foam slippers, the seven-months-pregnant woman strode across the tuffgrass, toward the flock of children and the person who towered above them. As she walked, there was a brief independent motion within her abdomen.

  The skinny black boy named Pinto pointed. “It’s Miss Boychin!”

  Osa turned around and saw Lisanne.

  Their eyes met.

  The tall beauty’s gaze was a universe.

  Clearing her throat, the petite blonde said, “Guten Tag.”

  “Um…hi,” replied Osa, stunned. Her dark eyes glanced at the petite woman’s swollen belly and widened. “Wow.”

  The women hugged, mindful of Lisanne’s aquatic hump.

  They parted, and looked at each other for a silent moment.

  “This’s a surprise,” said the tall beauty. “Um…a shock, actually.” A long index finger pointed at the occupied belly. “I don’t imagine that’s from drinking too much beer.”

  “It is not.”

  “I never knew you wanted a kid.”

  “I did not want one until recently,” said Lisanne.

  “Was it…um…intentional?”

  “A Petri dish was involved.”

  “Oh.” Osa ruminated for a moment. “I have no idea what I’m supposed to say right now. It’s nice to see you, but it’s been a year and you ambushed me. And you’re pregnant.”

  Lisanne looked directly into Osa’s dark eyes and said, “I want to apologize for not returning your call last year, when I was in the hospital. I appreciated your offer, but I felt that I could not see you…considering what had happened between us. Accepting your support…nein…I didn’t think it was the right thing to do.”

  “I wanted to help you—be there—but I knew why you didn’t get back to me.” The tall beauty nodded her head and then lowered her gaze. “I’m sorry I hit you, I was just…I
was really, really upset with what was going on with us. I was a fucking mess.”

  “And I am sorry that I neglected you the moment that my sister came back into my life. You are the only person who ever mattered to me as much as she did.”

  Osa clenched her jaw, and her eyes sparkled. “Don’t say things like that.” After a moment of interior warfare, she said, “I’m seeing someone. And it’s serious.”

  Lisanne had assumed that this would be the case. “What is her name?”

  “Nadine.”

  “I hope that you two are happy.”

  There was an awkward silence, during which the former mates were unable to look directly at each other. A child fell upon the tuffgrass, laughing, and small life stirred within the pregnant woman’s belly.

  “I wrote several new pieces.” Lisanne reached into her clutch, withdrew two loaded tickets and proffered them with a shaking hand. “These are for the premiere. You may bring Nadine if you wish.”

  Osa took the tickets. “I don’t know if…if that’s such a good idea. But thanks.” She wiped tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m glad to see you’re okay. Really glad.”

  “Danke.”

  Osa sniffed, and asked, “Is it a girl?”

  “Two girls.”

  Epilogue III

  Manifestation of the Fuzzy Gray Entity

  Winter, 2060

  It was a fuzzy gray entity.

  A familiar voice said, “His fingers just moved. There—on his right hand. That one and that one. Did you see them?”