by Reed King
No one answered. I closed my eyes, certain now I had imagined the voice, and began to relax again into a dream.…
“Oh, no. Not again. Ça suffit. You’re not the only one trying to sleep around here.”
Once again, I jerked back from the edge of sleep as the curtains flew open, and the goat pointed his long snout at me. Although it was difficult to tell, because he was a goat, he looked pissed.
“You snore,” he said.
The health ward was waking up. I could hear the squeak-squeak of the health managers’ rubber soles, the familiar dings, whistles, and groans as everyone swiped into their decks to check messages, the burnt-sugar smell of CrunchCoffee™ Double Caffeine Caramel Mocha Cups.
It was obvious, however, that I was still asleep, and dreaming. So I didn’t think twice about answering him. “You’re not real,” I said. “I’m only imagining you.”
He sighed. In a goat way, he sighed. “That would no doubt require an imagination,” he said. Then, to himself: “All night, he goes like a rotor, and now he tells me I’m not real.… A real philosopher, this one.…”
I blinked a few times, pinched myself, even prodded a bit at my new scar. Still, he didn’t disappear—he just lay there, miserably gnawing his pillow. Just to be sure, I reached out and poked him.
He lashed out with a hoof, catching me on the elbow.
“Jesus,” I said. I was definitely awake. Pain splintered all the way up to my shoulder. “You nearly broke my arm.”
“Am I supposed to apologize? I’m not one of those Dakota giggle-pillows. You can’t go around sticking fingers in me. Who knows where your hands have been?” His voice was awful, like a five-year-old trying to hit all the notes in a scale at once.
“Hey, now.” I sat up, holding my elbow, trying hard not to show how much it hurt. “You aren’t exactly squeaky clean. You stink, by the way. I could smell you even in my sleep.”
He sniffed. “Synthetics give me gas,” he said primly. “It isn’t my fault the linens are so cheap.” He had, in fact, already mawed half a pillow and a solid corner of the blanket.
I remembered then what Dan Ridges told us just before Billy Lou busted his grand entrance. “You took a shit in the gendered bathroom, didn’t you? On the floor.”
“I have a nervous stomach,” the goat said matter-of-fact-like. I could tell he didn’t even feel bad about it. He went back to chewing again, this time trying to work his teeth through the bedpost. “If only he’d managed to throw me over.… If only.… Or I could of cooked in the explosion. But no luck … not so much as a singed nose hair.…”
“Wait. Wait a second. You were trying to die?”
As the goat shifted in its bed, I scanned his two hind legs were jackstrapped together. He was collared to the bedpost too.
“I knew what Mr. Ropes had planned,” he said. “I’m a firm believer in the right of every man, woman, and animal”—he turned a fierce yellow eye on me, as if expecting me to pipe up a protest—“to end his or her life by choice, with dignity. We don’t choose the moment of our birth, and we certainly don’t choose the form our lives take on this pitiful planet. But we may choose the manner of our passing into the Great Pasture.”
It was time to tackle the issue of the goat head-on.
“You talk,” I said. “You’re a talking goat.”
He stared bleakly at me. “Observant. Truly. What phenomenal perspicacity—I don’t know why they say that Crunch, United, doesn’t educate its young ones.”
“But…” I cranked my eyes to the ceiling when he shifted to lick his privates. You don’t stare at a man when he’s handling his junk, even if they’re furry. “How?”
He didn’t answer right away—his mouth was full anyway. But finally he lifted his head. “Have you ever heard of the Burnham Prize?”
“Sure,” I said. “Who hasn’t?”
The Burnham Prize was maybe the only piece of prehistory that every crank from the Dakotas to the Free State of New Hampshire understood—possibly because it was the last piece of prehistory. At the start of his first term6 as president, Mark C. Burnham pledged a one-trillion-dollar prize to anyone who could fix the Mortality Problem: the fact that, despite his money, power, wealth, dozens of sports cars, and excellent cultivated silver mustache, he and everyone else on the planet, including his mistress, Whitney Heller—the world’s most famous sidepiece, the Legs That Launched the Second Civil War, the Smile That Split the Union—would die.
Mark C. Burnham vowed to cure death. But death, it turned out, was more than up for the challenge.
The goat’s eyes glowed in the dawn light. “I was born in the research labs of the Laguna-Honda Military Base, to Albert Cowell’s team of biologists—”
“Albert Cowell?” I interrupted him. “The Albert Cowell?”
“No. A different San Francisco–based Albert Cowell with an army of neurologists at his disposal,” the goat snapped. I couldn’t help but think he was pretty touchy for an animal that regularly farted out synthetics. “Their goal was to find a way to perform brain transplants between individuals. They thought the human body could become a shell, and the brain could be surgically transitioned into a new body once the old one started to decay.” He shrugged again. “They started with animal trials. Rats. Then goats. They would have moved on to primates. But by then the secessions started … and of course, President Burnham died. Whitney Heller, too, who’d been his reason for launching the competition in the first place, or so I understand. Flattened by a garbage truck in San Francisco, not two miles from the lab where I was conceived.”
I knew that President Burnham and Heller had died during the riots, but not how, or where. “You’re telling me you have a human brain?”
“No, thank God.” The goat’s voice jumped volumes. “They put a human brain in my father and it destroyed him. He couldn’t even stand the sight of his kids. He couldn’t touch the mother of his children.” He turned away, and I pretended not to notice how he nuzzled his pillow to wipe dampness from his nostrils. “Do you know how hard it is to have a father like that? A father ashamed, horrified, by the very sight of you?”
“I don’t know what it’s like to have a father at all,” I admitted.
“You’re lucky. They’re not all they’re cracked up to be.” The goat looked me up and down as if my very existence proved that fathers were bunk in general. And in truth, I’d never missed even the idea of him. I kind of liked having my mom to myself.
You and me, Truckee, against the world, she used to say. One plus one equals everything, no matter what they scam you in school. She was right.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
The goat made a vague gesture with a hoof. “After he died, the team made some adjustments. Roughly forty percent of my brain comes from human neural tissue. The remaining sixty percent is au naturel.”
The goat was only 40 percent human, but he spoke better than 100 percent of the humans I knew. I said so.
“During dissolution, I took refuge in an abandoned library,” he said. “I ate my way through nearly every book on those shelves, except for the ones I simply couldn’t stomach. Borges never sat right, for example. And Melville simply gave me gas. I read the books first, of course,” he added quickly.
“So if you lived through the dissolution, you must be—”
“Pushing fifty, yes,7” the goat said. “A tragic side effect of the hybridization of my brain. I’ve had to watch everyone I ever knew—my cousins, dumb as they were, my aunts and uncles, even my stepsisters and brothers—die.” He gave a low, mournful bleat. “Every year, I think it will be my last. I think, How long can this possibly go on? I have heart arrhythmia. Splinters between my toes. Aching joints like you wouldn’t believe. My sense of smell isn’t nearly what it used to be. Used to scent out a rotting marshland from half a mile away.” He sniffed wetly as if to demonstrate how much his powers had degraded. “I’ve thought many times about ending it all. Oh, yes. Not a day has gone by when I haven’t though
t about it. But how? My anatomy makes it impossible to hold a gun. Besides, I have no money to buy one. I’ve thought of taking pills, of course. But even if I could get my hooves on some, there’s no guarantee they would work. I’ve digested metal fencing and whole sheets of fiberglass in my day. Imagine eating a bottle of pills only to get sick for a few hours. What a disappointment.”
Abruptly, the goat fell into moody silence. I watched the nervous twitching of his nostrils. And suddenly, I understood.
“You’re scared,” I said.
Now, his nostrils flared. “I’m not scared,” he said quickly—too quickly. “I went along with Mr. Ropes, didn’t I? I would have gladly made myself the sacrificial lamb, if you’ll excuse the pun. For a noble cause”—he drove a hoof down forcefully on the bed—“I would have gladly thrown myself from a height and died a painful chemical death—for what man or beast can say no to the chance to die with purpose, if he has lived with none? What man, or beast—?”
“Enough.” A health manager yanked apart the curtains that separated us from a view of the ward. “Enough, you flea-riddled little monster. I’m sorry, Truckee,” she said, and turned her grinning holo to me. Her name, Sherri, shed explosions of pixelated glitter. “Is this slice-and-dice bothering you?”
“He wasn’t bothering me,” I said. “We were just talking.”
“Talking,” she said. Even her holo appeared to turn up its nose. Which was impressive since, as a smiley face, it didn’t have a nose. “These genebenders…”8
“My genes, madam,” the goat said, “have nothing to do with it.”
“You shut it,” Sherri said. “Or I’ll turn you out to the strays. I’d like to see you try and conversate with them.” She turned back to me. She had a face as round and flat as a panel and so many freckles, whole portions of her face appeared to have been colored in. Her hair was a frosted blond that looked pink. “I suggested a ball gag, but Mental Wellness just can’t spare one. If you ask me, we shoulda put a slug in him.”
“Believe me,” the goat muttered, “I wish you had.”
She ignored him. “I told everyone you should have peace and quiet, total power down, especially because of the summons.…”
“What do you mean?” My stomach gave a funny twist. “What summons?”
Sherri stared at me through her sweaty visor, eyes big and clumped with mascara that just barely concealed the orange tint. “No one told you?”
“Told me what?”
But even as I said it, I knew: the atmosphere curdled like piss through an old purine, and in the sudden silence the syncopated rhythm of sensible footwear on the floor announced the arrival of Human Resources.
Two at first, then four, then eight—every one of them filed into the room wearing a pantsuit and smile that didn’t quite fit. Finally a dozen HR rats were crowding up the health ward, letting off the stink of corporate messaging.
Sherri leaned so close, I could of put a tongue through the mouth of her holographic smile.
“You’re going to meet the president,” she said.
5
Sometimes I hear talk about the pack of grifters working for the Commonwealth in the ’60s, and running oil drums of New Hampshire cash down to the exchanges in New New York, trying to flood the international markets and drop the price on Hampshire greenbacks so the freedom fighters wouldn’t be able to afford Texas help. Let me get one thing clear—those squids may’ve been traitors, or they may’ve been heroes, but they weren’t grifters. Borders, wars, and politics don’t mean screw-all to a grifter. We work for nobody and nothing but ourselves.
—from The Grifter’s Guide to the Territories FKA USA
Crunch Enterprises’ executive mid-territories satellite branch was housed Uphill, north of the river, in an enormous steel-and-glass building that looked exactly like an ET craft. The clean-swept streets, wide as big rigs, were empty of people. The massive luxury complexes, built to house upper management, showed nothing but glare in their windows. There was no noise or hanging laundry to let you know that anyone lived inside at all.
Outside of corporate, an enormous statue of Mark C. Burnham, the father of the current CEO, raised a fist to the sky. Some people said that Mark J. had lifted the statue to honor his dead father. Personally, I banked he wanted his dad good and stuck in Crunch 407 for the rest of eternity.
Like they say, revenge is best served cold, in marble relief.
We passed through a revolving door and into a high-ceilinged lobby, empty except for twelve SecureOfficeBot™ 4000s guarding the elevator banks—humanoid in outline and silhouette, with fiber-optic cameras for “eyes” and a speaker grille that looked like a mouth.1 But it was all for show. Two decades ago, after news spread of the uprising in Silicon Valley, nearly every country on the continent stopped making sentients altogether.2 All the new-model bots were about as conscious as a table leg.
“ID scans,” the bots prompted us in unison. They must of been wired on the same network.
The troop of HR dipdicks smirked at me as they flashed their SmartBands one by one and a small purple light indicated Level-8 security clearance. My SmartBand kicked back a dismal yellow light. Level 2.
“Proof of summons,” the bots said. I held up the summons and was a little skid when one of the bots fed the entire thing into its mouth. Or its grille. Whatever. After a click, narrow ribbons of green came grinding out of the printer carriage and fluttered into a trash can girded to its undercarriage. I half-expected a flush.
The bot rolled aside and plugged a fist into the elevator bank. The doors opened with a musical ding. The HR rats crowded forward, but the bots closed rank immediately, blocking their passage.
“Security error 505. Improper clearance codes.”
One of the HR rats huffed her outrage through oversized nostrils. “We’re clearance eight.”
“Security error 505,” the bots repeated. “Please see Human Resources for diagnostic and troubleshooting.”
“We are Human Resources,” she snapped. I had to give it to her, though—she never stopped smiling. Her lips looked like a rubber band someone had hooked to her ears and stretched too tightly.
“Security error 505. Please see Human Resources for diagnostic and troubleshooting,” the bots chorused again.
“I guess I’m supposed to go alone,” I said, half-hoping someone would naysay me.
But no one did.
A goon with a wicked overbite and opinionated nose hairs shook his head. “Twenty-two years Corporate Relations,” he muttered, as his nose hairs trembled in fury, “and this close to meeting the CEO.…”
“Don’t worry,” I said, and gave him my biggest company smile. “I’ll tell him you said hi.”
Then I slipped inside the elevator before he could ask for permission to plug his fist into my nasal cavity.
The ground fell away, and for a second I almost fell over: I thought we would launch straight through the roof and out into space, like an old-time astronaut blasting into orbit. Maybe I’d wind up on Mars and find the crew of the long-lost Mission Reboot, not dead at all but happily smoking moon dust and having dance parties in .38 gravity.
Why not? If I’d made it to Mars, I wouldn’t send squirrel back either.
A tinny, New New York–inflected voice announced the penthouse, and I stepped out into a reception area: giant windows, lots of sun, swag armchairs, and the quiet burps and giggles of a marble fountain. The flow must of been filtered a dozen times: there was none of the usual sulfur smell that came off the river.
The secretary who came out to greet me was the most perfect-looking person I’d ever seen in my life. If it weren’t for the fact that she reached immediately for my hand, I would of assumed she was a holograph: coco leche skin, blond hair, and feathered eyelashes, a body barely leashed into a suit. I found myself searching for a trademark or VIN. Her cleavage, I felt, warranted a real hard look-see.
“You must be Mr. Wallace,” she said. She was beaming at me like I’d just arrived
from a distant galaxy to save humanity from itself. She smelled like no human being I’d ever known. Even Annalee couldn’t escape the stink of Low Hill: a Crunch-patented combo of formaldehyde and fiberglass, of fresh and vape smoke and cheap coffee-grinder packs, burnt shiver and moonshine. This woman smelled like things I didn’t even have names for. “Please. Follow me.”
I tailed her down a long hallway, the carpet purring beneath my feet. My stomach took a nosedive as we got close to Burnham’s office, known for reasons nobody could remember as the Iceberg.3 I was surprised when the office door was marked not by holo or tablet or retinal tech but by an old-fashioned brass nameplate.
Burnham’s secretary swung open the door—it wasn’t even locked. But as soon as I tried to squeeze past her, she laid a hand on my chest.
“Visor, please. And SmartBand.”
This, at least, killed off my growing boner. I’d never removed my SmartBand except to get an upgraded one. Being without one was illegal, since the band fed our location back into the company server. But it was more than that. SmartBands pulsed the time, and passed us into our shoeboxes. They tagged our names and our credentials. Going bandless was a little like taking off your skin.
“You’ll get it back right after the meeting,” she added when I hesitated.
Beneath the band, my skin was wrinkled and soft and smelled like the inside of a dirty sock. Without the usual rhythm of its alerts, I felt as if my own pulse had been removed. I wasn’t too jack-happy about handing over my new visor, either, but I didn’t see as I had much choice.
“Thank you.” She made it sound like an invitation. She gestured me inside, and I passed so close to her, my dong lifted its head again and nudged hopefully at my zipper. As she leaned forward, I thought for one wild second she was going to try to kiss me.
Instead, she just got her mitt around the doorknob and slipped out, whisking the door closed behind her.
The room was dim, surprisingly cluttered, and nothing at all like the infamous Board Room on the 404th floor of the Ivory Tower on New Fifth Avenue in Crunchtown One, famously marbled with the teeth of a generation of executed clones4 and hand-detailed by an army of corporate ants sent skyward5 daily to polish, wipe, and shine.
