by Brin, David
“Like how come you and the doctor guy are all red and stuff?”
The nurse giggled once more. An irritating sound. “We were an earlier batch,” she explained. “Worth keeping, but not quite there yet. Some call us the one point niners.”
“One point niners?”
“The others—you know, the big ones—they’re Human 2.0ers. We’re the 1.9ers. We’re smarter, faster, stronger, more flexible, more adaptable than regular humans. But our generation didn’t get the right formula. I don’t mind, really,” she said, stroking the red scales that coated her forearm. “I like a bit of a natter with the girls, you know? How am I going to do that if I’m sonar-only?” She opened her mouth wide like a fish.
Kaybe couldn’t help laughing.
“You’re lucky,” the nurse said. “Not everybody gets Level C.”
Level C. That’s what the fat man said.
“What—what’s Level C?”
“Human 2.1,” the nurse said. “Working out some of the kinks and bugs in the GMO.” She patted Kaybe’s hand. “You’re getting the latest, greatest formula. Who knows, you could be the best human we’ve ever created!”
Kaybe was quite sure she did not want to be new and improved. But it seemed counterproductive to say so. She waited for the nurse to leave so she could rip out the needle and try to escape again.
“Won’t be long now, dearie.” The nurse consulted her watch.
“Until… what?” Her hand strayed toward the needle.
“Do you realize you stand on the cutting edge of evolution?” the nurse gushed. “Isn’t it exciting? Oh how I envy you!”
Kaybe grabbed the needle and pulled—only to find a red hand gripping her wrist. The needle stayed.
A gasp. “You’re… strong!”
“I told you,” the nurse said. “I’m a one point niner. Stronger, faster, smarter. And red!” She giggled. “I confess it’s not my favorite color, but it seems a small price to pay.”
Shit. Now what am I going to do?
“And… done.” The nurse said. She removed the needle from Kaybe’s arm.
“That’s it? I don’t feel any different.”
“It takes a few days or weeks before we’ll know if the formula was successful. Can you get up?”
Kaybe swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her toes grazed the floor. “I think so.”
“Put your clothes on, then follow me.” A claw tapped her cheek. “Don’t even think about trying to escape. You really don’t want to see how fast I am.”
She got dressed. They’d even kept her squirrel skin cap. The nurse crooked a red finger, and Kaybe followed.
Where are we?
Something had blinded her, knocked her out—a gas?—when she walked through those double doors. And now? She could be anywhere. On the surface, a mile underground. Escape seemed somewhere between unlikely and impossible.
A horde of little red children raced past them in silence, mouths wide, gills quivering. A ball bounced at Kaybe’s feet and she picked it up. A pair of small feet came to a halt in front of her. She knelt down, held out the ball.
“Here you go,” she said.
The little boy’s gills twitched, he took the ball, and retreated after his friends.
The nurse came to a heavy metal door and pressed a button. The door swung open. They entered a small room and the door behind them closed. A second heavy metal door opened at the nurse’s touch, and they stepped into a corridor.
Two men armed with rifles stood to attention. One held out his hand. The nurse dropped her claws into his, and he bent to kiss a knuckle.
The nurse giggled. “Oh don’t tell anyone,” she said to Kaybe. “My husband would be terribly upset. Consorting with a 1.0er.” To the man she said, “Got a Level C here.”
The man straightened and barked an order at the other man. “Max here will show you the way.” He winked.
Max led them stiffly down the corridor until he came to an unmarked door. He unlocked it and pushed the door open.
The nurse stroked her hair. “I hope to see you soon. Good luck to you!”
A hand pushed Kaybe forward, the door slammed shut behind her, and then she knew for sure.
She was trapped.
A score of other 2.1ers lounged around the large cell—and despite its comforts, it was clearly a cell. Sofas, a ping-pong table, books. A ball for children, but there were no children present. Kaybe recognized no one. They must all have come from nearby towns. Her own community seemed without representation. Kaybe wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Was there another camp closer to home where they experimented on the naughty boys and girls who disappeared?
Several of her fellow prisoners looked up when she came in, but most of them ignored her. Many were in poor condition. The top of the pecking order sat in the sofa, the rest forced to sit or lie on the floor. Some had fused fingers, like Benji with the outlaws. Others had a pink tinge to their skin, but their shirtfronts were covered in blood. Vomited blood. Still others lay flat on the ground, their chests rising and falling the only sign of life.
Time to show some spunk. What would Dad say?
“Hi!” she said, with more confidence than she felt. “My name’s Kaybe. What’s yours?” She put her hands on her hips.
“My name’s death sentence,” croaked a prematurely gray woman on the floor. “Zip it, kiddo.”
“Aww, don’t be so hard on the kid,” a man in a suit said. “She doesn’t know. What does she know?” To Kaybe. “What do you know?”
“I know… they captured me. And put me in a hospital bed. And stuck a needle in my arm. And the nurse brought me here. That’s all I know.”
“Then you know enough,” the woman said. “Prepare to die.”
They had little to say to her after that. The prisoners on the couch frowned at her, as though daring her to challenge them for a seat. Instead, Kaybe slumped down into an unoccupied corner of the room and, much to her surprise, slept.
Level C made you sleepy, apparently, or so the other inmates explained when she woke. She felt no different than before. But each time she woke, there was food, and water, dead inmates to cart off, and new inmates to join them. Camp calculus. It took on a certain monotonous routine. No one wanted to engage in conversation, and Kaybe was too tired to press the point.
Half a dozen sleeps later, she woke with a gasp.
A new proof occurred to her. Several, in fact. She needed something to write on, anything, anything at all. She rummaged through the books on the shelf, looking for loose pages, a pen, a pencil, anything.
“Whatchoo looking for?” asked a newcomer, sprawled on the floor in a puddle of excrement. “No hidden keys. Only way out of here’s in a casket.”
“Pretty sure you don’t get a casket in this joint,” somebody else called out.
But her equation! Maybe if she bit the tip of her finger, she could write it in blood on the wall—
Her hands were red.
Her hands were red and she had claws.
Her hands were red and she had claws and she was some sort of monster!
She pushed back her sleeve. The rest of her skin was red as well. No time to waste. Get this proof down. Now.
Kaybe tapped the wall with a claw. Or maybe scratch the proof into the concrete? She dug the claw into the porous surface, and gray powder trickled down to land at her feet. She wrote her name in the concrete with soft, quick strokes, and stepped back. Legible. More than legible.
Then quickly, quickly, she began.
She covered the wall in squiggles, a long train of indelible truth, provocative, yet undeniable. The others asked her what it was. Some mocked her. Others called for the guards. She worked faster. Kaybe was down to the last two lines when a key jangled in the lock.
“Hey, what are you doing?” a man called out. “Stop that!”
Kaybe bent down, scratching the final bit of proof into the wall. The man grabbed her arm, and reflexively she pushed him away. He flew
across the room and crumpled to the ground.
Oh my God, did I do that?
Quickly now… She finished the proof and stood up. There. She had left her mark in the world. Whatever was going to happen now, she was ready.
“Hey lover,” a voice crooned in the doorway. He leaned against the door frame, a cocky grin on his lips. Those lips. “Didn’t know you were in town.” He was red, and muscular, and gills had begun to form at his neck. But she would recognize him anywhere.
“Brian?” she whispered.
Her former classmate gestured at the wall. “So what is all this?”
“It’s a proof. How did you—”
“—a what?”
“A proof. A mathematical proof. What are you doing here?”
He shrugged. “Same thing you’re doing here.”
“I mean, out and about. Not in a cell.”
He waggled his eyebrows. “You gotta go with the flow with these people. They can hurt you bad.”
Kaybe wanted to touch him, make sure he was real, touch his hair… “What does that mean?”
“It means,” he said, gripping her elbow so hard it hurt, “it means they can hurt you bad. Real bad. Do what they tell you. Or you’ll regret it.”
The nurse swept into the room. “Hello my darlings, how is everyone this lovely day?”
“Dying in pools of our own shit, piss, blood and vomit, no thanks to you,” muttered someone on the floor.
“Fix that for you in a jiffy!” the nurse sang. She bent down, took hold of the man’s head, and twisted. A loud pop ended the remaining conversation in the room.
“Anyone else?” Brian asked. “No point suffering if you don’t have to and all.”
No one said anything.
“Come on, Kaybe, let me show you around.” He took her by the hand, his claws clacking against hers.
An electric tingle went up her arm. “Brian, I—”
“What in tarnation is that?” the nurse demanded. She pointed at the scritch-scratch on the wall.
“Math or something, I don’t know,” Brian said.
“I’ll get someone in here, clean that up right away,” the nurse said. She strode to the door.
“No!” Kaybe shouted.
“Well don’t get your panties in the bunch, dear, now what’s the matter?”
“You need to get someone down here I can show this to. It’s a mathematical proof. Changes everything. Life as we know it.”
“I’d say growing gills and claws and preparing for a permanent move into the ocean changes everything, wouldn’t you?” The nurse patted her cheek. “But I’ll get someone down here. Don’t you worry about it.”
Kaybe felt her throat. Gills were growing there. Did that mean her vocal chords would disappear? That she would be reduced to sonar-only—and soon?
She turned to Brian to ask him, but he was engrossed in conversation with a guard in the hallway. Max. His name was Max. She couldn’t catch everything he said.
“—gone, I mean gone, understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
Kaybe touched Brian’s sleeve. “‘Sir’?”
He laughed. “Bit of joke. They call me ‘sir,’ when really I should be calling them that.”
She eyed the man, who stood to attention once more. “He doesn’t look like the joking type.”
Brian got in the man’s face. “Are you the joking type?”
“Sir! No, sir!”
“I said, are you the joking type?”
“I mean, Sir! Yes, sir! I am the joking type, sir!”
Kaybe looked sideways at Brian. Weirder and weirder.
The nurse pushed past them. “My dear, since you are a graduate, you will need to come with me for a moment.”
“A… graduate?”
“The treatment,” Brian said. “You survived. You’re a 2.1er. Like me.” He grinned, held his arms out wide. “Get it?”
Kaybe felt her throat again. The gills were growing. How was she going to tell people about her proof? “How much longer till I lose my voice?”
“That’s the best part,” he said. “Us 2.1ers will have both. Even better than the 2.0ers.”
“Truly you are blessed,” the nurse said. “Now I must insist. A few quick tests, then off you go with Brian.”
Much to Kaybe’s surprise, the tests were quick and painless. Eyes, ears, nose, throat—on the scale, if you please?—a few blood tests, this won’t hurt at all, dearie—and then she was done.
“The Council are going to be thrilled when they hear about you two,” the nurse said. “First 2.1ers ever. The beginning of new humanity. I am so jealous!” She squealed and grabbed them both in a bear hug. “Now go forth and be fruitful, or whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing.”
And winked.
“Does that mean what I think it means?” Kaybe whispered to Brian.
“It most certainly does!” the nurse boomed.
She led them down a corridor to a cafeteria, pressed plastic chips in their hands and wished them bon appetít.
“Food here’s not bad,” Brian said. “The spicy kelp’s my favorite.”
Kaybe waited for the nurse’s retreating steps to disappear. “She doesn’t know I’m sterile.”
“What’s that?” He pushed her hair behind one ear.
“After you left. They zapped you. Remember? That’s when they sterilized me.”
His hand slipped around her waist, found the small of her back. “Who did?”
“Department of Austerity.”
“Sterile, hmm?” He leaned in to kiss her, but she turned away.
“What will they do when they find out?”
“Who’s going to tell them?”
His hand found her breast, and she pushed him away.
“Stop it!” she said. “This is serious. Our lives are on the line, and all you want to do is make out?”
“Who knows how long we’re going to live? Tell me that.” He crossed his arms. “People getting formula die all the time. They think they’ve got it right, but they haven’t. We could be dead tomorrow, or live for another hundred and twenty years.”
“A hundred and—”
“Met a guy who told me that.” A shrug. “Could be true. Who knows?”
Kaybe’s head hurt. “We have got to get out of here. And do something.”
“Do what, Kaybe? Tell me. Serious now.” He took her hand. “What are you going to do? Hmm?”
“Well, I—”
Everything was jumbled up inside of her. What was she doing here? Math. Remember the math.
“I’ve got a proof I want to show somebody. A mathematician. A scientist, someone. Who do I talk to?”
Brian made a nose. “They don’t talk to riff-raff like us.”
“But I thought you were, like, important or something. The way you ordered that guard around…”
“I’m just trying to stay alive,” he said. “That’s all.”
“What do you mean?”
“The guard wants to play, we play.”
“So you’re not, like, important here or anything.”
“Kaybe, I’m just another experiment. Like you. I—”
“Alright,” she said, thinking. “They don’t want to talk to me, I’ll talk to them. Who are they? Where do I find them?”
“I dunno…”
Hmm… Kaybe leaned into him, her not-quite-finished-growing breasts scraping his chest. She gave him a peck on the cheek. “You sure? I would consider it a… big favor.”
When the red skin around his gills flushed purple, she knew she had him.
“I think,” he said. “I know a way… but we have to be careful. Got it?”
“Got it,” she agreed, and let him lead her through the maze of the underground fortress. They climbed some stairs and down many more. They passed elevators—the moving boxes, that is—but it was better not to draw attention to themselves, he explained.
“Where are the dragonflies?” she asked suddenly. “They have no idea where
we are. No one’s watching us… what does that—”
Brian laughed softly. “It’s true, isn’t it? The Department of Austerity does not like being watched. We could do… anything,” he said, and caressed her hair, “and no one would see.”
“What about escape?”
He shook his head. “One way in, one way out. That’s why we’re free to go basically wherever we want. I mean, what’s the worst that we can do? They can always find us if they need us.”
“Well,” she said, “let’s find your mathematician-scientist dude, who is he again?”
He pouted. “You don’t want to make out with me.”
“I do,” she said, and part of her meant it. “But first things first.”
Another half an hour passed before Brian found what he was looking for. The impromptu tour gave Kaybe a good idea of the layout of the building. They passed 1.9ers who sang out in greeting, 2.0s whose gills quavered as they passed—the sonar was beginning to make sense to Kaybe, but her ears still weren’t ready, she guessed—and many humans with guns who shrank back against the wall at the sight of them.
“Am I scary?” Kaybe whispered.
“Touch the ceiling.”
She reached up, and found it no more than an inch from her head. “But I’m—I’m growing!”
“We both are. Just about done, though. That’s what the nurse said, anyway.”
“I hope so!”
“Cause if they think we’re a threat, they will incinerate us. I’ve seen it happen.”
“Incineration?”
“Not every GMO experiment is a success. Camp calculus.”
They stood outside the offices of Carl Schreobyuir, Chief Scientist. “I am the boss,” a handwritten note said. “Knock and enter.”
Kaybe glanced at Brian. He shrugged. She knocked.
Nothing happened. She knocked again.
Still nothing.
A voice inside cried out, “What part of ‘knock and enter’ do you not understand?”
Put it that way… Kaybe pushed the door open and stepped inside.
A fat man sat behind a desk. His fingers danced across a terminal, one of the few Kaybe had ever seen. He glanced up when they came in.
“Oh, the 2.1ers. Was expecting you. Come in. Yes, come in.”
Brian shut the door behind them. “I’m Brian, and this is—”