Recombination

by Brendan Butts

  "TV off," Zenigra said, leaning forward to pick up the cards from the floor. I stood up and stepped over to my bed.

  "Thanks again for letting me stay here."

  "Don't mention it," Zenigra said, also standing.

  "Night."

  "Night Sev."

  Zenigra stepped over my mattress easily and made his way into his bedroom, shutting the door behind him. I laid down on my mattress and pulled a blanket over me. Rolling onto my side I wrapped my arms around the pillow there and closed my eyes. Every once in a while I could hear Zenigra curse in the other room and I suspected he was playing himself in Memory. I thought back to when I had walked up on him playing himself that first day. Looking back, I never could have guessed this was where I would be two months later.

  Chapter 14

  Zenigra woke me up for work each morning.

  I continued to push my body hard each day, trying to find a limit to my endurance. Wherever that limit might have been, it wasn't anywhere to be found on a Switchgrass field.

  As the days passed, growing ever colder, I became more and more worried about Piner. His verbal tirades against me hadn't let up in the slightest since I moved in with Zenigra but he had yet to mention my eavesdropping I supposed it was possible that he hadn't seen me or that he had, but hadn't realized what I was doing.

  Still, I got the impression that he was saving that bit of ammunition for a time when it would do the most damage.

  The weather during the day was becoming almost unbearable for me. By mid-December, I was wearing three layers of my ill-suited clothing when I left Zenigra's hut in the morning. As each day wore on and the sun rose higher in the sky, I would strip layers off, only to put them back on as it started to set.

  The shorter days were no hindrance. The plantation had large portable lighting rigs that were rolled out onto the fields and turned on as dusk approached.

  My status in the plantation remained unchanged.

  A few days before Christmas, I arrived home from working the fields to find Zenigra in high spirits. We had been getting along well since I moved in. We brought dinner back to his hut from the cafeteria each night, both of us feeling more comfortable eating there than with the other workers. We'd play cards, watch the news, and chat about our pasts. Zenigra never went into too much detail about his and I sensed he might have been ashamed.

  "What's up, mano?" I asked.

  Zenigra just grinned at me.

  "Things go well with Lucas today?"

  He nodded. Over the past month, I had been slowly filling in the gaps in my knowledge of what Zenigra actually did for Lucas.

  “What he have you doing today?”

  “Eh… go with him to a meeting.” Zenigra said, his tone evasive.

  “What kind of meeting?” I asked, ignoring his tone.

  “Don’t take this personal, Sev,” He told me one night after I’d asked another slew of questions he hadn’t wanted to answer. “but it’s best you don’t know.”

  It was infuriating, asking direct questions about Lucas or what Zenigra did for him, and having the subject changed on me, or being shut out completely. Part of me understood why Zenigra kept me in the dark. He was worried what Lucas would do if he found out I knew too much about his business.

  My long days working the fields had afforded me plenty of time to come up with carefully crafted questions that might cast light onto the situation. After asking many of these questions of Zenigra and feeling quite bad afterward at having tricked him into answering, a picture had begun to form in my mind.

  Lucas, from what Zenigra had told me, was a genius. He'd graduated from Harvard Business School when he was only 19. I'd heard of Harvard from movies and TV shows, and knew the weight a degree from such a prestigious school carried. Lucas wasn't the owner of this plantation and in actuality, he held no real power here. However, he did have an interest. An undeclared interest that he paid for in cash.

  This plantation was Lucas' home base for the time being. It wasn't, however, the only plantation he had an “interest” in. Of the hundreds of plantations that ran up the East Coast, Zenigra had told me that Lucas had interests in several dozen. All the way from Cooper City up to Boston.

  It had taken another round of questioning to figure out even an inkling of what Lucas used these plantations for. This time, Zenigra had just gotten back from a three-day trip. Lucas had sent him off to visit a couple of other plantations. Zenigra had come back his normal stalwart self, but I had sensed something brewing under the surface.

  He categorically denied it each time I asked him about it. By now, I had come to realize that Lucas wouldn't have hired such a big brute of a man and then equipped him with the highest grade tactical armor on the planet if he hadn't planned to use him for some kind of pain dealing. I decided something must have happened at one of the stops on his trip. I tested my theory out the night after Zenigra had returned.

  "Have you ever, you know, had to… kill someone? In self-defense I mean. Or you know… because you had to." I asked, over a game of Memory.

  "TV off," was his reply.

  I looked up at Zenigra cautiously. I could see a range of emotions flickering across his face. His massive shoulders rising and falling with each intake of breath. I could tell the question had caused him pain.

  I wanted to scream out that I was sorry for asking the question. That I took it back. That he didn't have to answer. He should just forget I ever said anything and let's go back to the game. But I couldn't. I was driven by my curiosity.

  "Why would ya think something like that?" his deep rumbling voice cracked as he spoke the words.

  "You were a ganger, and you've died, right? I figured you might have."

  He nodded his massive head, but I wasn't sure if that was an acknowledgment of the logic of my words or the deed itself. It was a long time before he continued. So long that I thought he might not at all. I watched him while I waited for a response. His eyes were distant for a long while and I suspected he was reliving some past memory. Then he winced and his eyes refocused.

  "It's not summat I want you to repeat but yeah. I have.” He said, turning to face me.

  I swallowed. Murder wasn't what it used to be, now that a good deal of people had clones. And even if you didn't have a clone, it was still possible to clone you from your corpse if you were taken to a tank before too much time had passed. I had no idea how it was possible to download from a dead brain but someone at Genetek had figured it out.

  Murder was still serious business, but there was no more death penalty for it. You could get a life sentence Or two life sentences, And if you died before you had finished, the state footed the bill for a clone and you were tossed back in prison. Perma-death was reserved for stuff like treason.

  "You think different of me now, ain’t ya?” He asked.

  I didn’t answer immediately.

  “That's why I didn’a want to tell ya." He continued. His eyes were wide as he spoke. His voice had an almost pleading tone that was full of emotion. He looked afraid.

  I opened my mouth to say something but found myself at a loss for words. I thought about what Zenigra had said. Did I think of him differently now? His life had been snuffed out no less than three times. He had taken lives. Did that make how I felt about him at that moment any different than I had before I'd known?

  "I guess that depends on why, ya know?"

  Zenigra nodded in acknowledgment of my words and seemed to think for a moment before responding.

  "Been in a lot of gang wars. Killed a lot of gangers. Don't know any proper amount. But it accounts for most of 'em."

  That made sense. Zenigra had been a ganger. He'd had to fight other gangers to survive. I could no more hold that against him than I would hold a lion killing a zebra. That was just the way the world worked.

  "And then," he said, the words seeming to cost him something to say, "people I was paid to kill."

  I winced at those words. My mind flashing back to the gunsh
ots that had ended my parents’ lives. Was that the kind of stuff Zenigra had done?

  "Damn, Sev. If ya want to go back to the dormitory I'll make it okay with Lucas. Tell 'em we jus’ aren't getting along."

  I made my decision in an instant and shaking my head at Zenigra I said, "No. I don't want to go back. You were only doing what you had to do to survive. Just like anyone else."

  Zenigra seemed convinced by the sincerity of my words and hadn't brought it up again, but something in his expression at that moment had told me that while he believed that I was being truthful, he might not have agreed completely with my words.

  I was jostled out of my reverie as something was stuffed into my hands. I looked down to find Zenigra had handed me a portable grid-phone. It was the prepaid disposable kind that worked for as long as the battery lasted. There was no means of charging this type of phone. They were intended to be a temporary and disposable means of communication with the rest of the world.

  "What's this?" I asked stupidly.

  "Christmas present. I didn’a want to wait to give it to you cause the battery isn't worth a damn."

  "You didn't have to get me anything mano. I, well, I didn't get you anything."

  "I didn’a expect you to. You haven't left the plantation in months. I picked it up earlier today when I was out doing something for Lucas. Thought you might want to call that girl of yours and wish her a Merry Christmas and such."

  It was a thoughtful gift and my heart panged with guilt at not being able to reciprocate.

  "Thanks mano, really. This is aces," I said as I turned the grid-phone over in my hands. It was thin and matte-black with the words 'Progia D-3' etched into the surface on the back. It had a small digital display that was meant to show the numbers that had been dialed. The dial pad itself was made up of flimsy buttons that I was sure wouldn't stand up to the test of time. It was very light and I felt as though I could snap the whole thing in half without much effort. The Progia had no antenna, nor did it need one. It used wireless signals to transmit data to the closest Grid station.

  The Grid was a holdover from a previous generation and stations were everywhere. Almost every building had one. It was still the main means of transmitting and accessing data over a secured network, but it was slowly losing ground to newer generations of technology. Stuff that could support full VR immersion.

  I'd grown up using the Grid. Chatting with friends, downloading music and movies like so many generations before me. My parents had pushed me to learn as much as I could about it. They had even bought me the odd node programming book in hopes of getting me more interested.

  Their interest in having me develop a better understanding of the Grid would have seemed weird to me if I hadn't known that my grandfather had been brilliant with computers. Back in the early 21st century he had owned and operated a successful node development company. Back when people were still using the Internet. The original Grid was like the Internet 2.0. It used the same core concepts but expanded on them. The security of information was paramount in the first instance of the Grid. Corporations had been clamoring for years that it was too easy to access secured information.

  All other improvements aside, the Grid's mainstay was that security. New Light Media had developed the Grid over a ten year period and when they released it all the other Corporations jumped on the bandwagon. Then the porn companies. Then the rest of the world.

  The Grid wasn't perfect though, and over time new versions of the infrastructure were released that fixed problems or expanded on functionality. Grid 2.0, the most recent stable version of the infrastructure software had been released in 2081. It had been so hyped up that you would have thought it was the second coming of Jesus. I couldn't tell the difference between it and its predecessor.

  "I'm going to go get dinner from the cafeteria. You stay here and make some phone calls in private."

  I smiled at Zenigra as he left the hut.

  I turned the phone over in my hand and let out a long sigh, my face falling. I had no one I could call. Sasha, she would have moved on with her life by now. My family was all dead. The only real friend I had was the one who had just walked out the door.

  I put the phone to my ear and imagined it ringing, and my father’s voice answering. It was hearty and full of life, the twang of his Hispanic accent just barely noticeable. I had nothing to say and neither did my father. What could he have said anyway? Good job getting us killed? No. He wouldn’t have ever said something like that. He would have comforted me and told me it wasn’t my fault. He would have said he was glad I was still alive, even if it had cost him his life. A wave of guilt washed over me that no imagined words from my father could halt.

  I dropped the phone away from my ear and was awash in the guilt of surviving until I heard Zenigra returning. I lifted the phone back to my ear and found a smile to plaster across my face.

  The door to the hut swung open and Zenigra came in carrying two plates of food covered in clear plastic.

  "Listen, I've gotta go. I'll try to call again soon," I said and hit the disconnect button. Zenny had gone out of his way to get me this, the least I could do was make it look like I was putting it to good use. I didn’t think I could deal with the guilt of him finding out I had no use for his gift. I slipped the Progia into my pocket and turned to face Zenigra. He had put the two plates on the small kitchen table and was pulling the plastic off of them.

  "Get some forks for us, will ya?" he said.

  I nodded and walked into the kitchen. I pulled open a drawer, took out two forks, and held them out for Zenigra. He took them in a massive hand and put them on the table.

  "Get a hold of that girl of yours?"

  I nodded.

  "Well come on, tell me how it went."

  We sat down at the table and started to eat.

  “She’s been waiting for me. Back in Miami. Says she still loves me. Doesn’t care how long it takes for me to get back there, she’ll be waiting.”

  Getting easier, isn’t it-- the lying?

  Zenigra was looking at me earnestly as he shoveled food into his mouth, “You tell ‘er about me?”

  “Well, we didn’t talk for long but I did tell her I made a friend, and that I crushed him in cards all the time,” I said with a grin.

  “Oi. Crush you inta cards, I will.” He said in between mouthfuls.

  “She told me about my friends, they’re all doing well. They miss me. I miss them too. So much.”

  Zenigra's eyebrows crinkled a bit and I could tell that my words had affected him. I think that’s why we got along so well: I treated him like a normal person. Not some giant who wasn't affected by emotional pain the same way the rest of us were.

  We finished the rest of the meal in silence, then went into the living room to play Memory and watch the news. Zenigra didn't mind watching NLM-Miami so we kept that on most of the time. Sometimes, when a commercial would come on Zenigra would tell the TV to flip through the channels for a while until something caught his eye. Tonight we caught the tail end of a news broadcast from Withmore City.

  "The Skywatch Corporation in conjunction with the ION Project announced plans today for a series of manned exploration vessels bound for the further reaches of the solar system. Rioting broke out on the Gold Sector outside of the Skywatch building as both pro-and anti-space exploration activists clashed in a repeat of the riots of 2070," a pretty female was saying into the camera as video of the riot played out in one corner of the screen.

  I'd learned about Withmore City in school. It was the largest Geodesic Dome ever created. Something like three times the size of Miami. Built and governed by mega-corporations.

  "Can't believe they're still sending more people out into space after that disaster on Mars," Zenigra said.

  "What disaster?" I asked.

  "The one that killed all them people, back in the '70s," he replied.

  "Oh, yeah. But we can't let that kinda thing stop us from moving forward." I was very young when the air
system of the biggest dome on Mars had failed completely. Four hundred thousand people dead. It had happened the day before my second birthday. I had no memory of it. July 28th had become a day of remembrance around the world. People from every nation in the world had died that day.

  "You won't see me running out into space anytime soon."

  "I don't think they make space suits in your size anyway, mano."

  "Nah, I don't reckon they do," Zenigra said, laughing. "Still. We got enough problems here without having to deal with all the problems of space too."

  "That’s part of the reason we gotta go out there. To find solutions to the problems back here."

  Zenigra waved a massive meaty hand through the air as if to knock my words away from him.

  "Let's talk about something else, eh? All this political stuff gives me a headache," he said.

  Later that night while I was laying in bed, I thought about what it would be like to be up in space. I wasn't sure I would like it very much. Since leaving Miami, I'd grown accustomed to open spaces. The thought of spending all day, every day, in a tiny tin can floating through space, or in a cramped airtight dome on one of the Lunar colonies threatened to make me nauseous.

  Chapter 15

  My body seemed to continue getting stronger. By mid-January, I was coming back to the hut after working the fields all day and I hadn't even broken a sweat yet. I started doing nightly runs around the outskirts of the compound. This served a dual purpose of improving my physical conditioning and also giving Zenigra some time to himself. My friendship with Zenigra continued to grow. He had even managed to beat me at Memory a few times. Without me letting him win.

  We both worked similar hours, though his were definitely more erratic than mine. When we both got back to the hut at night, we'd get dinner and play some cards. After that was when I took my run. I felt like Zenigra should have the run of his own place for a while. Let him watch what he wanted on TV or whatever he felt like doing.