Scifi Motherlode

by Robert Jeschonek

  "So," said Thwart. "You ready to get started?"

  "Get started with what?" said Thal.

  In the light of the single lamp on the workbench, one of Thwart’s eyes looked white as cream, the other obsidian black. Thal had never been sure if the effect was created by special contact lenses or some kind of genetic surgery. "The job," said Thwart. "The procedure. Paradise must have explained why I asked you here."

  "She didn’t," Thal said gruffly. "All I got was an address."

  Thwart blinked, then shrugged. "Okay, then. What we’re doing here, Thal, is creating the new breed of Choker."

  "New breed?" said Thal.

  "A Choker with the mind and appearance of a man," said Thwart. "And you’ll be the template."

  "I see," said Thal. "And why me?"

  "Who better to disrupt a player’s concentration?" said Thwart. "You’re the most hated man in baseball. The most hated athlete in the world, I suspect. Any player you haunt will be terrified that they’ll become the next you. They’ll see you as the ultimate bad omen, the ultimate jinx."

  "I get it," Thal said coldly.

  "A Choker that looks and sounds like you will be guaranteed to rattle even the most focused player. You can’t imagine the kind of money such a foolproof construct will bring in."

  Thal nodded. "A fortune."

  "Times a quintillion," Thwart said excitedly. "Which you’ll get a piece of, naturally. It’s your likeness that will make the product a success."

  "My likeness," said Thal, "and the fact that I lost the World Series."

  "Oh, yes," said Thwart.

  "Which was all because of you," said Thal, glowering at the Choker tech. "Funny thing, isn’t it?"

  Thwart reared back, looking bewildered. "What the fudge are you talking about, Thal?"

  Pressing his hands on the workbench, Thal leaned over it toward Thwart. "You set the whole thing up, didn’t you? You sent the hippo to choke me so I’d become the perfect subject for your project."

  Instead of moving away from him, Thwart leaned forward. "What hippo?" he said, his yin-yang eyeballs locked onto Thal’s hostile gaze.

  At that moment, Thal felt a touch on his arm. Glancing over, he saw the pink hippo’s stumpy leg resting against him.

  "Uh, Thal," said the hippo, who had been unusually silent since Thal had entered Thwart’s building. "We need to talk."

  Thal returned his gaze to King Thwart. "Forget I said anything," he said. "Can I have a few minutes alone to consider your offer?"

  *****

  "Thwart had nothing to do with it," said the hippo, sitting beside Thal on a ratty gold sofa in another room. "Everything that happened was my fault."

  "But somebody had to have programmed you," said Thal.

  "Not anymore," said the hippo. "I’ve evolved. I’m an autonomous A.I. these days. Strictly a free agent."

  Thal pushed off the sofa and paced the room. "You’re trying to tell me no one sent you after me?"

  "That’s right," said the hippo. "It was all my idea."

  "So why’d you come after me then? Why choke me in the Series?"

  The hippo sighed. "I guess I wanted to teach you a lesson. The free will I developed came with a conscience, and it made me feel bad about the things I’d done for you. All the players whose careers I’d ruined."

  "I don’t believe this," said Thal, kicking a chair that matched the sofa in color and rattiness, putting a hole in it.

  "But Thal," said the hippo. "Things are different now! You’ve changed! You did learn a lesson!"

  "You ruined me!" said Thal, jabbing a finger at the hippo. "Took away everything! Drove me crazy! Nearly got me killed!"

  "And look what it’s done for you," said the hippo. "You’re a new man! You’ve seen there’s more to life than winning at any price! You’ve seen beyond the illusions that everyone lives by!"

  "Screw you!" snapped Thal.

  "You’ve even learned humility," said the hippo. "And that’s a lesson I never imagined you could possibly learn."

  "Take your humility and shove it up your ass," said Thal.

  Suddenly, the hippo appeared before him, directly in his path. "Now, you have a great opportunity, Thal. Don’t pass it up."

  "Letting him use my likeness for a Choker?" said Thal. "What the hell kind of opportunity is that?"

  "It can be more than your likeness, Thal," the hippo said with a wink. "It can be all you. Everything you are. You can be the Choker."

  "That’s not possible," said Thal, "is it?"

  The hippo smirked and shrugged. "I might know a way," he said.

  Thal stared at the hippo for a moment, then spun away...but the hippo popped up in front of him again.

  "Come on, Thally," said the hippo. "What have you got to lose? I mean, what kind of life do you have to look forward to the way you are now?"

  Thal said nothing.

  "I’ll tell you what kind," said the hippo. "Short. You know damn well that the minute you walk out of here and someone recognizes you, you’re dead meat. Why not live on and atone for your sins? Why not make a difference?"

  "Make a difference?" said Thal. "As a Choker?"

  "You’ll be able to go anywhere," said the hippo. "Get inside anyone’s mind. You could change the world if you wanted to."

  "How?" said Thal.

  "You tell me," said the hippo.

  *****

  The next morning, as Thal stood in Thwart’s conversion chamber, bathed in the light of the scanner beams radiating from all directions around him, he listened to the secrets that the pink hippopotamus whispered in his ear.

  Bright green rays scrolled down his body from head to toe, followed by blue, then red. A brilliant white cylinder of light shot from floor to ceiling, turning and compressing until it adhered to every bulge and crevice of him like plastic film...lingering a long moment and winking out like a snuffed candle flame.

  Blinding strobes flickered in chaotic patterns as he moved according to Thwart’s instructions from the control booth. As he raised and lowered his arms, flexed his fingers, bent his knees, the movements stuttered dizzyingly in the throbbing flashes.

  And then, when the modeling and motion capture phases were complete, Thwart told him to stand perfectly still as the psychotomographic probes mapped the essence of his mind.

  Thal’s head tingled as the probes reached in, invisible tendrils of gravimagnetic force dancing through the lobes of his brain. The tingling grew stronger as the probes charted the electromagnetic terrain of him, copying his thoughts, personality, and memories into digital code. The code was flash-fed to a burner that would etch it into coherent streams of light, streams that would broadcast a programmable likeness of him into other people’s minds on command.

  It was just then, as the probes tickled through his brain, that the hippo gave the signal.

  Thal held back briefly, reluctant to make the final leap. Though everything had been taken from him already, and he was marked for certain death by the unforgiving fans, he hesitated on the brink of irreversible change. He wondered what his existence would be like if he followed the hippo’s instructions...or, indeed, if there would be any existence at all for him. He wondered how smart it was to take the advice of a hallucinatory hippo in the first place, especially one who had seemed bent on his personal destruction.

  He felt like a skydiver about to make his first jump. He wanted to eat one last hot fudge sundae, make love to one last woman.

  The hippo urged him on, telling him that the window of opportunity was closing. Now or never, said the hippo, now or never.

  What it boiled down to, Thal finally decided, was certain death versus survival. The plane was on fire, the last working parachute strapped to his chest.

  And the door was open.

  He dove through it.

  Focusing his thoughts as the hippo had told him, he concentrated on the tingling beams in his head. The hippo was there inside him, guiding him, channeling the billion winking sparks of his awaren
ess upstream along the beams. Like glittering salmon, the pieces of Thal bucked the incoming current, then leaped across the differential gap and merged with the outflow of digital data.

  Everything he knew and felt and thought streamed out of him, not replicated patterns but the original neuroelectric field itself. The contents of his mind rushed back along the beams, miraculously threaded together by force of will and the hippo’s expertise.

  And somewhere along the way, there ceased to be any distinction between Thal and the hippo. Shooting along the beams toward the sizzling maze of Thwart’s equipment, the gateway to their freedom, the two of them melted together, no longer host and implant but unified, indivisible self.

  Behind them, Thal’s body collapsed to the floor, dead and abandoned as a deconsecrated church.

  *****

  When the message light blinked to life on Milo Flores’ palm computer, and he saw the sender’s address on the screen, he swallowed hard.

  The incoming zeemail was from his math teacher, Mr. Shaven, and Milo knew what that meant. The grades from the final exam had been posted.

  Milo picked up the palmputer and put it down again, afraid to look at the body of the message. So much depended on the grade he’d gotten that he wasn’t sure if he could ever bear to see it.

  He had to pass math to graduate high school, and math had been his worst subject...especially this year. He had barely maintained a "D" average in math this year--partly because Mr. Shaven had been tough on him, mostly because Milo’s attention had been focused on girls and sports and partying.

  An "F" on the final would mean he couldn’t graduate...and, thanks to the new "Back to the Minors" rule in the school system, he would have to start over from ninth grade next year. He would have to go through all four years of high school again, and this time without participation in sports or extracurriculars of any kind.

  To Milo, it would be a fate worse than studying...so he had studied like crazy for the final. He had spent endless hours with e-tutors and study guides, copied other students’ notes (because he hadn’t taken any himself) and worked more problems than he had worked in a lifetime.

  And still, in spite of all his hard work, he had struggled through the test. He had no idea whether he had passed or failed.

  And the message light kept blinking.

  For a while, he walked away from the palmputer and tried to put it out of his mind. He ate a snack, watched some holovid, called two of his girlfriends, lifted weights. He played video games in the simulator room and helped his mom put away the groceries.

  But the message light, though out of sight, kept blinking in his mind.

  He walked past his room six times before he finally went in and called up the zeemail. It sprung to life in a holographic matrix hovering over the palmputer, glowing green text floating ominously in midair.

  His heart hammered like a basketball in his chest, threatening to burst out as he scanned the text. Just before the part where his score and grade were recorded, he stopped reading, locking his eyes on the words "Your final exam score follows."

  His legs fluttered under the desk. Sweat covered the palms of his hands. He knew he had screwed up this year, knew he didn’t deserve to pass and graduate, but he couldn’t stand the thought of repeating grades nine through twelve while all his other classmates left him behind. The same people who had treated schoolwork as a waste of time right alongside him would ridicule him for being a Goback; the normal students in the grades that he repeated would look down on him, too. Not only that, but his failure would follow him forever, limiting his options for college and getting a job.

  As much of a blowoff as he had been, when it came down to it, Milo didn’t want to ruin the rest of his life. He hadn’t given any thought to what kind of goals he might have, but he knew he wanted better than being a throwaway Goback mopping floors or screening toxics in the shitstream.

  Holding his breath, he slowly edged his eyes along the line of type in the zeemail.

  Five minutes later, he was still rereading it. He couldn’t believe what he saw.

  All along, he had never really imagined that he could do it. Every step of the way, he had doubted himself, had been convinced that the outcome would be bad.

  But there it was. The proof of his hard work. What seemed now like the greatest accomplishment of his life.

  A "D-plus." He had passed the exam. He had passed the course.

  He would graduate.

  Jumping out of his chair, he pumped his fists in the air and whooped. He read the results again, then did a victory dance like a football player in the endzone.

  It was then that he heard the applause.

  Spinning around, he saw a figure standing behind him, a man bathed in twinkling golden light. The man was wearing a baseball uniform with no number or team insignia. His face shone with shimmering light, the features hazy within the blazing nimbus under the ballcap.

  Milo’s first thought was that he looked like an angel.

  "All right, Milo!" shouted the golden man, clapping his hands. "Way to go! You did it!"

  Milo leaned forward, gaping in fascination. He tried to say something, but no words came out.

  "You passed the final!" said the golden man. "You proved you can do anything you set your mind to! Congratulations!"

  "What is this?" said Milo. "Some kind of holofeed? Some kind of joke?"

  The golden man laughed. His voice was multilayered, like many voices speaking in unison underlaid with the tinkling of wind chimes. "None of the above," he said.

  "Then who are you?" said Milo.

  "Just a guy repaying a favor," said the golden man. "You’ve done enough cheering for people like me, and we don’t deserve it. I thought it was time to turn it around and cheer for the people who need to have faith in themselves, not in their so-called heroes. The people who can make a difference, like you."

  "Why me?" said Milo.

  The golden man smiled. There was something familiar in his glittering green eyes, but Milo couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.

  "Why not you?" said the golden man.

  Milo frowned. "So, what, you just stopped by out of the blue to tell me ‘nice job on the test’?"

  "Pretty much," said the golden man. "Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a guy down the street who just helped someone out of a jam. Gotta go."

  "Man," muttered Milo. "I must be having a hyperacid flashback or something."

  "Keep up the good work," said the golden man. "Maybe I’ll see you again someday."

  With that, the golden man drifted out the window. Milo rushed over to watch him float off into the neighborhood, wafting on the afternoon breeze like a helium balloon released by a child.

  But the weird thing (as if everything else that had happened wasn’t weird enough), the thing that struck Milo as truly bizarre, was the object he held overhead, the incongruous object that seemed to be keeping him aloft.

  The golden man was athletic, commanding, and mystical, exuding confidence, strength, and intensity. He was a being of pure energy, pure spirit, pure purpose, inspired and boundless and powerful.

  And in his left hand...

  In his left hand, lifting him up over the world in defiance of the laws of nature, was a tiny red parasol.

  *****

  Teacher of the Century

  As the ring of students tightened around her, America’s Teacher of the Century nominee Cilla Franklin offered to reduce the homework assignment. Thirty seconds later, she offered to eliminate it altogether. It didn’t make any difference.

  Muscles tense beneath naked flesh, the boys and girls continued to edge toward her. She didn’t know why they were so upset, since they never did homework anyway and were never punished for it. The assignment should not have been taxing for anyone in the class, whatever their aptitude level; further, nothing about it impinged on anyone’s personal rights or definition of political correctness.

  Periods One through Four hadn’t had any pro
blem with the homework. Then again, Period Five was just a bad group. They were all bad, but Five was the worst.

  One minute after Cilla had transmitted the details of the assignment to their brainware wireless implants, the kids had risen as one from their hammocks and formed a circle around her. One of the boys had come up behind her and urinated on her legs; as she spun around, he had directed the stream upward, spraying her hips and abdomen and even splashing her face.

  Though Cilla did not understand most of what the godlings (that was what they called themselves) did or said, she knew what this much meant: she was marked for death.

  It had happened six times before in her fifty-year career. Each time, she had managed to save herself by begging for mercy from the class Chief or moving to a new school...but it was always possible that death could claim her like this. She knew of colleagues who had died this way; only three out of thirty thousand teachers nationwide died per year in executions by godlings, so the odds weren’t bad...but her own mentor, Ruby Churchill, had been one of the unlucky few.

  Dying at the hands of a tribe of hive-minded, techno-savage students wasn’t anything she had envisioned while playing school as a child with her friends decades ago.

  Times had changed. For Cilla Franklin and the other teachers at All Einstein High School, every day was another chapter in Lord of the Flies.

  Slowly, the ring of twelfth-graders pressed toward her. Their heads were bowed, and every last one of them glared up at her with a wicked, hungry smile. None of them carried a weapon, but Cilla knew they didn’t need weapons; to some extent, they were all genetically and cybernetically enhanced. She had already seen a small group of them tear apart a floater car (her own) with their bare hands, and she had seen individual godlings punch holes through the cement block walls of the school.

  At seventy-five years old, fit and healthy as she was, Cilla wouldn’t even slow the godlings down. She knew she was dead meat.

  The godlings would all be adding to their tattoos tonight, commemorating her murder with colorful new markings on their chests or bellies or buttocks, as was their custom. She wondered if there was any truth to the rumors she had heard that the godlings also devoured their victims’ remains nowadays.