“Aw, come on, this is loads of fun!” Mack protested. “Eating publicly funded slop, attending classes mid-semester that we have no hope of getting caught up in, drifting by the various cliques and hearing them all mock us with the same ol’ jokes?” He tugged at the hem of his shirt. “And the uniforms! I’ve never been so well dressed!”
Jean, who’d been baking for the last hour owing to the local humidity and the mini-sauna that her skirt was forming around her legs, groused in response. “I wanna take this shit off and burn it.”
“Never got to see you in a skirt before,” Mack said, kneeling to examine her legs where the skirt ended and her socks began. “Ya look good, Jeannie.”
Were it anyone else, she’d have kicked him in the face for gawking the way he was. But Mack was harmless, and one of the few she trusted completely. So she smiled back at him and said, “See ya when you get home. Have fun, okay?”
*
Basic Bionic Engineering was technically a lower level class, but Leria had put off taking it for several semesters, uninterested in knowing how her synthetic limbs worked, satisfied enough that they functioned at all. It was also where she’d met Rina, who sat several seats adjacent.
Ms. Katzhen had begun lecturing, with most of Leria’s classmates rapt in attention. Every inch of Omna Katzhen’s body was geometrically perfect, and she was often the subject of salacious stares, no matter how professionally she presented herself. It was another reminder of what Leria’s peers looked for in a woman, and all that she herself was perceived to be lacking. Illicit copies of virtual idols were often passed around for masturbatory pleasure, and Leria had heard programs containing representations of Ms. Katzhen were in the circuit as well.
Shortly after class began, the door opened. Leria looked up from the monitor embedded in her desk as the boy with the stitched eye sauntered in. Murmurs quickly surfaced: “Ew, what’s wrong with his face?” “Isn’t that the guy that Ruelim tried to beat up?”
Ms. Katzhen paused her lecture. “Can I help you?”
The one-eyed boy seemed momentarily dismayed, but shook it off, moving toward an unoccupied desk in the back row. “I’ll just take a seat—over here.” Settling in, he gave a dismissive hand wave to the teacher, asking in an upper-crust accent that she “Carry on.”
Ms. Katzhen resumed her lecture, with the one-eyed boy offering no further disturbances.
THE RINSTER: That’s him, right? One of the transfer students?
Leria wrapped an arm over her inlaid monitor, lest Ms. Katzhen realize that she and Rina were passing notes.
Lear_E_Uh: Isn’t it obvious? He’s pure skin.
THE RINSTER: You don’t know that. He might have some hidden parts.
THE RINSTER: Still … you’d think he’d fix his eye at least.
Leria sneaked a glance at the one-eyed boy, who watched Ms. Katzhen’s lecture and slides as though he’d gotten front-row seats at a holo-play. She’d met others like herself, who weren’t in love with the idea of chopping off their old body parts in favor of a socially accepted upgrade. Even they wouldn’t have left such a blatant and crippling disfigurement.
Lear_E_Uh: Maybe he has some kind of condition. Like his body can’t handle the implants.
THE RINSTER: Maybe he’s just weird.
THE RINSTER: You gonna ask him out?
Lear_E_Uh: …
Rina responded with an image of zeroes and ones, forming a teasing face with its tongue sticking out. Leria returned with the same deadpan ellipses, then glanced back at the boy. He hadn’t given her any notice. Rina muffled her snigger, no doubt assuming Leria was reconsidering her options. In truth, she did want to speak with him, if only to understand why he was the way he was.
THE RINSTER: So, what’s his name anyway?
Lear_E_Uh: How would I know?
Leria watched her friend type something, but no note came. It took the one-eyed boy several minutes to realize he’d been messaged, and several more before he gave up on reading it. With dismay, Leria concluded they’d have to interact the old-fashioned way.
Now with purpose, she became antsy in waiting for class to end. Though she avoided sparing him another look, she suspected her classmates were making up the difference, and that half the notes being passed concerned him. No sooner than the bell had rung did the boy depart without a word, not bothering to check the homework assignment or spare the oft-fetishized teacher a second glance. Leria scrambled to gather her belongings and took off after him, leaving Rina in the dust.
“Hey! Hey, wait up!”
Whatever attention Leria’s calls were earning her, she tried not to care. She had never been very popular, and didn’t see her lot improving so close to graduation. To her relief, the one-eyed boy heard her and turned around, asking, “Yes’m?”
“Hi. Sorry. Hi.” Leria took a moment to compose herself.
“Hi! No worries. Hi!”
Though she’d seen him before, it was Leria’s first chance to genuinely study him. Up close, he was alarmingly thin, his small uniform featureless as it hung over his wiry frame. While he didn’t appear ill, it baffled her to know so much food was wasted in the lunchroom and yet meet someone who looked so malnourished.
“Hi. I’m Leria,” she introduced herself. “Leria Rujet.”
“They call me…” The boy gave a dramatic pause. “Mack.”
Leria blinked, waiting for the rest. The boy smiled back at her.
“Just … Mack?”
“You prefer Mack-Mack?” he asked quizzically.
“No, just … Leria Rujet,” she emphasized her last name. “Mack…?”
Mack pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes, as though about to say something clever. “…Smith. Mack … Smith.” He nodded knowingly.
Leria’s smile was a polite one, and she beckoned Mack to follow, that they might move to a less traveled hallway. As they walked on, she asked him where he had come from.
“Oh, that is the question, isn’t it?” he replied. “You mean like today or last month or last year? ’Cause it’s quite an extensive list!”
“So, you transfer schools often?” It wasn’t the answer Leria was hoping for, and she decided to get to the point. “It’s just, I’m surprised to see three people who are pure skin coming to a place like this.”
“I know, right?! I feel like such a pariah! It’s like being back home!” Mack’s enthusiasm was confounding, and he went on, “But this place is great! The cuisine is unrivaled and we’re only locked in until 3 o’clock. Easily the finest prison I’ve ever been to!”
Prison? Leria blinked. “So, you and your friends … you’re all from the same place?”
“You’re two-thirds right,” Mack confirmed. He gave some thought before adding, “Not sure where we’re going though. Or when.”
“So you don’t expect to stay?” Leria was dismayed; she’d hoped to meet the others as well, and learn how they’d gone so long without having their bodies altered.
“Nope! We’re nomads, through and through! Which reminds me: I’ve gotta hurry back home! All my chums are probably waiting on me. And Charsy. Me and Charsy both.”
As Mack moved to leave, Leria instinctively reached out, catching his sleeve at the wrist. “Wait, Mack—” she implored, and he stopped to twist back. “Would you … would you mind if we met up later? I’d like to talk some more, get to know you better.”
Mack chewed on his lip, shrugged, then said, “Yeah, sure,” before slipping from her grip and skipping away.
As Leria watched him go, she dwelled on this encounter. While Mack seemed a bit strange and very asymmetrical, it occurred to her that that’s what had made him so interesting.
*
Were Annora like any other city Chariska Jerhas had known, she’d be making at least the most casual strides down the walkway. Here, the avenues carried the traveler, with each individual moving at their own preferred pace. To even dream such a conveyance eclipsed anything the theocracy she hailed from could muster, but
now she only found it a curious inclusion for a people whose mechanical legs ensured they should never tire.
While those around her hurried to and fro, Chari was content to let the world drift steadily by. Mack slid close, looking antsy. Unlike her, he was in a hurry to get home.
Home.
Her real home was a place she no longer sought to return to; indeed, she dreaded it. There was nothing Chari missed of the world of TseTsu—save that there, she was literate. It was the sole downside of attending the poorly named Education Center 2/5, which had been an otherwise refreshing experience. Her role as priestess had restricted her studies on her home world, but now Chari’s own inadequacies were her only limits, and the pleasure of this caused her to smile.
Mack leaned in to comment. “Yer lookin’ awfully chipper.”
“Each day, I learn something new and fascinating. Though of little use for our journey, perhaps.”
“Mack’s most recent educator was as robot as you can get,” he replied, less enthused than Chari. “She had a lot of neat slides, though!”
Picking teachers had become an art of careful planning. The first lectures Chari had intruded on were incomprehensible, but she realized eventually that not all the teachers had fully severed their humanity. One of the first she found taught History of Synthetics, and it was there she learned that the artificial bodies the Brethian people lived in were not always intended to replace what nature had given them.
In fact, there was something unsettling about Breth’s global development: the earliest prosthetics were developed to replace lost appendages, but became such a status symbol that some people would deliberately mutilate healthy limbs to qualify for replacements. It was only to stop this practice that the populace was eventually allowed to upgrade their bodies without the pretense of injury.
Mack watched a little girl hobble by, adapting to a recently installed leg. “Why do ya think they do it?” he asked passively.
“Utilitarianism, for some,” Chari replied. “Vanity for others. Most, I suspect, no longer know why.”
Since arriving, she had felt her share of odd looks and heard the whispered gossip of her fellow students, all while trying her best to pity them. The struggle to fit in and gain acceptance was all too familiar, and if even one of them was putting up appearances to avoid becoming an outcast, then in that Chari could empathize.
In time, she and Mack left the endless strip of neon stores and automated walks, returning to the unfinished building they were squatting in. If Flynn and the others had returned, it might mean an end to this experience and a return to the uncertain road. It wasn’t meant to last forever, Chari reminded herself, knowing that however much she wanted to stay, her obligations were greater. But still she feared where they might end up.
Upon opening the door, they were met with Zaja, who stood wearing an unused school uniform. She was in the middle of adjusting her holographic tie, and momentarily had an expression that would have turned her face beet red if only her blue skin was capable. “I just wanted to try it on,” she at last said in a small, indignant voice. There was a conversation swelling in the next room, and Zaja left to join without another word of acknowledgment.
They all followed her, and found the others in uneager conversation. Chari looked expectantly at Flynn, whose downcast glance said enough, and inwardly she felt a guilty relief.
“I’ll leave again tomorrow, once I’ve had time to study the train routes,” Flynn said. “The plan—riding the rails through as many island chains as possible—is solid. We just need a rift to someplace more habitable … or at least familiar. Even Earth would be welcome.”
Jean’s mouth scrunched, but she said nothing. Chari would have followed suit, save that she didn’t like where things were going. “Perhaps we’ve gone about this wrong? It may be we missed something where we came from—”
“You mean that crappy moon?” Jean asked. “After three weeks on that shit-hole, ’scuse me if I ain’t keen on goin’ back.”
“There was nothing there,” Flynn said, shaking his head. “No other passages, no signs of life. We don’t even know if Airia meant to send us there, or if it was just a chance landing.”
“But we must consider what we do know,” Zella reminded them. “We seek Einré Maraius, the Mystik of Growth. She is the caretaker of the power that our Guardian Poe is meant to inherit.” And here, she looked at Chari. “She is also the sister of Hapané Maraius, the Mystik of Endurance and your Saryu Goddess.”
“I have no goddess,” Chari rasped bitterly.
“What few myths we have heard state the sister-goddesses have never strayed far from the world that birthed them,” Poe said. “Venturing to TseTsu now stands as our best option, and so I would have you put aside your pride, Chariska.”
“Show a little fuckin’ consideration,” Jean snapped. “She ain’t exactly in a hurry to go runnin’ back to a place she was happy to ditch.” Poe glared condescendingly, but spared no reply. “None of us are,” Jean added darkly, glancing at Flynn.
“Aw, come on, everyone!” Mack declared. “Cheer up! Things’ll work out eventually! Just wait and see and give it time!”
Chari didn’t share Mack’s optimism, and she wasn’t alone. Flynn seemed no better off than the others, standing up only reluctantly. “Mack’s right. So we’ll call it a day, and we’ll try it again tomorrow. No matter how often we get knocked down, we get back up. We don’t have another choice.”
Whatever her reservations, Chari would stay the course. If they did nothing, even if the Living God was unable to succeed and rise free, leaving the offices of his counterparts vacant could end with all fading away. It was a cruel system to be shackled to, but because of that, she knew Flynn was right: they had no real choice.
*
The Rujet family lived in an interior apartment that felt more like the drawer of a massive filing cabinet. The unit was long, but never as proportionally wide as Leria would have liked, and it enjoyed no sunlight to speak of. Very seldom was everyone actually home. Leria’s brother had moved away, and her parents both worked on different islands, with contrasting hours and long train rides to and from their jobs.
This left Leria and Rina by themselves, the former reclining on her bed while the latter tapped away at the computer embedded in her desk, its framework larger than the school’s systems. Leria needed a custom model that wouldn’t require plugging in to interface with its more advanced features.
“So what was he like?” Rina asked, glancing back.
“Who the what are you talking about?”
“Tall, mysterious,” Rina teased. “Pasty, cyclopean.”
Leria scowled.
“I wasn’t spying on you,” Rina casually continued. She opened a message on Leria’s system and beckoned its owner over. As she read, Leria’s eyes widened in shock.
“WE WEREN’T MAKING OUT!”
“That’s not what Ádenvé told Essephy, according to a message that Paza Derrin hacked out from Tahmah’s account after Cetus overheard Tahmah making fun of her during lunch.”
“So why am I being dragged into it?” Leria demanded.
“Probably so Paza can make people forget about her wearing glasses,” Rina reasoned.
Leria fell back on the bed with a huff. “Paza Derrin is so lame.”
“Sooo … what was he like?” Rina reiterated with a curious grin. “Start with the lips. They looked all crackly.”
“We didn’t make out,” Leria repeated firmly. She let Rina hang for a moment before going on. “He was … he seemed okay. He had to hurry home, so we didn’t get to talk long. Said he won’t be around forever. I guess his family moves around a lot.”
Rina showed some excitement, and turned back to the monitor, asking, “And his name?”
“Mack … something,” Leria tried to remember. “Smith.”
“Smith? Weird name.” Rina’s face stretched into a mischievous grin. “I’m gonna look him up.”
Leria felt like she sho
uld object to such an invasion of privacy, but said nothing. Beyond the walls of one’s home, there were few real secrets left in the world. As vast as the net was and for all the information caught within it, trying to disappear would be a Sisyphean task.
And yet…
“There’s … nothing.” Rina’s glee dried up as she tried to comprehend the possibility. “No listings anywhere, not even an address on Annora.” Leria approached to take a look, and Rina leaned back and looked up at her. “I knew that name sounded bogus. Smith? He was probably just pulling your leg.”
“Well, what about SIN? He’d have to be registered there, right?” Leria knew well that intent to forego implants and upgrades deemed ‘socially essential’ required the offender be registered with the Societal Integration Network. The registrar had been a recent development when Leria applied as a little girl, and having a SIN ID number at her age had been a point of pride for a time.
“He’s not there, either,” Rina said, concerned.
Leria’s intrigue, meanwhile, was growing. “What about his friends?”
Rina had to bounce a few messages out in order to find the names of the girls Mack kept company with. Both Zoë Hecrest and Paza Derrin confirmed the purple-haired girl to have called herself Chariska Jerhas. At seeing Paza’s name, Leria gave her friend a sidelong glance, and was met with only an apologetic shrug in return.
It was a longer wait for Jean’s name, and Cetus Vellum admitted to being unsure if he remembered it correctly. After some intense prompting from a teacher who staunchly avoided addressing anyone on a first name basis, she’d called herself Jean Dìzhèn.
Neither name produced a whit of information, incriminating or otherwise. “It’s … probably nothing.”
“Nothing doesn’t keep you off the net,” Rina said. “Even if you’re boring and lame. Unless … what if their parents are radicals or something? Those anti-techs who believe in bodily purity?”
“It’s not impossible—” Leria started.
Killers, Traitors, & Runaways: Outcasts of the Worlds, Book II Page 4