“Before we go ahead with the interview,” Masaru said, signaling the kids to pull the microphone closer, “I just want to remind our audience what Shift is. I’m sure most of you are aware – maybe even painfully aware – of what it can do to a person.”
“Shift is a dangerous drug, usually snorted or shot up intravenously,” Masaru said, “by itself it’s at least as addicting as cocaine or heroin. But it usually comes attached to tiny polymer balls called dendrimers.” Masaru pantomimed two molecules binding with his hands for the video watchers. “Attached to these dendrimers are these sort of guide molecules that give the whole complex quick access past the blood-brain-barrier and into nerve cells. A third set of molecules attached to the dendrimer, a CRISPR/Cas9/gRNA construct, cuts sections of neuroreceptor genes out. That allows DNA transported by the dendrimer to be inserted into the gene,” he touched his index fingers together to mimic DNA strands combining. “This ‘shifts’ the receptors so that they respond more to the drug than they do to your natural brain chemistry. This makes Shift more addictive than any other drug. A person becomes physically incapable of feeling pleasure – and eventually of even cognitive function – without the drug, and taking away the drug becomes fatal. At a certain point, the affect can only be reversed through gene therapy.” He shook his head. “Even then, withdrawal can be long-lasting and more difficult to kick than anything else.”
“Shift was invented somewhere around Detroit,” Masaru continued, “but quickly spread to Chicago. When the Mexican cartels started failing, their drugs shot up in price. And then with the rocky transition to the PRA regional government after the devolution, Shift exploded in popularity all over the place. The Shift gangs, still mostly in Michigan, have been fighting with the PRA government ever since. These gangs are now practically armies. Somehow, weapons seem to be able to get into gang-controlled areas and drugs seem to be able to get out without much trouble. CSA Director Gabriel Mitchell blames Darrel Gibson’s PRA regime, accusing him of collaborating with the Shift gangs. Gibson says this is a lie. Who knows? Both of them lie all the time.”
“Now, rumors were started that the forty-eights were making and dealing Shift from Mexico,” Masaru said with a slight sigh, “video was released of forty-eights in a Shift lab in Mexico. But the people we found there were Benecorp employees. The one we captured died soon after under…under strange circumstances. We found that he had nanoparticles in his blood. When they quickly replicated, it blocked off the man’s blood flow, killing him quickly.” Masaru paused a moment, expression contemplative. “Strangely, when the bombings that happened in the LoC took place a few days ago, we were able to capture one of the perpetrators. He ended up dying the same way. Coincidence?”
Masaru paused a moment and then said, “but we’re here today to talk with two of the children we rescued. They are victims of a massive human trafficking ring in the southwest of the United States. We have fifteen-year-old Raul, a boy who was sold into this human trafficking ring five years ago. He looks like he’s still only ten because of a gene doping concoction forced on some of these children to halt their growth and puberty. We also have Emilia, a sixteen-year-old girl who spent the last three years in captivity, but who was not given this treatment. Hello you two,” he smiled at them.
“Hi,” Raul said weakly, only managing a shy glance upward.
“Hello,” Emilia said, forcing a pained smile.
“But there is something else you two have in common,” Masaru said, “and you wanted to talk about that with us today.”
Both paused a moment, looking at each other as if unsure of who should talk. Finally, Emilia spoke up, “both of us…were forced to take the drug. To take Shift,” she said, “the doctor…the man got me…got us addicted.”
“And why would he do that?” Masaru asked.
This time Raul spoke, his voice quiet and small, “so we wouldn’t run away.”
“And to make us do what they…what they wanted,” Emilia added.
“And both of you were doing very different things, weren’t you?” Masaru said, voice low, gentle.
A short pause again before Emilia said, “I was on a farm. After…when the man…when he gave me…the drug.” She paused a moment before saying. “I was sent to work in the field.”
“You were a chattel slave,” Masaru said.
“Chattel?” Emilia asked.
“A worker,” Masaru said, “they just made you work in the field all day?”
“Yeah,” Emilia said, “I had to…to work…all day long.”
“That’s not something a lot of people are aware of,” Masaru said, “that there are still forced laborers. Probably more so due to regional government corruption being even more rampant than the old U.S. federal government. However,” he looked to Raul, “Raul’s story is all too familiar,” he gave an assuring nod, seeing the boy tense up, “for those whose growth was halted. But he was also forced to take Shift.”
Raul nodded slowly, keeping his gaze down, “I was…I was on a farm, too. For a while.” He paused, wiping his nose with his sleeve. “That’s where…that’s where they gave it to me before…”
“Where?” I asked, sitting up in my chair.
All three turned to look at me.
“Where?” Emilia asked.
“Where were the farms where they gave you the drug?” I asked, putting my elbows on the table to lean forward, lifting my right when the burning sensation erupted, “and who gave it to you?”
“For people who couldn’t hear that,” Masaru explained, furrowing his brows at me, “my producer asked where the doctor and the farm were located.”
“The…up north.” Emilia said. “I think.”
“The PRA?”
She nodded slowly.
“Where in the PRA?” I asked, “who in the PRA bought you? Who sends the kids back down south?”
Everyone sat quiet a moment before Masaru gave me a dirty look and said, “if you don’t want to remember the details of your captors, you don’t have-”
“The Doctor,” Raul said quietly.
“The Doctor?” I asked, “what doctor?”
Raul looked down at his hands clasped in his lap.
“What was his name?” I asked, “who did he work for?”
“He…he was only th-there once,” Raul said, still gazing downward, “but he was…was the boss. And I heard…I heard someone call him Doctor.”
Benecorp?
I sat quiet for a moment before leaning back again and saying, “I’m…sorry. Sorry. Thanks.” I looked back to Masaru as everyone sat quiet again.
Masaru cleared his throat before continuing. “As I was saying, for your different situations, they gave you both different versions of the drug…”
“Shift has two kinds,” Emilia said, “they…they call it…Up Shift and Down Shift.”
“And these have different effects,” Masaru said.
“Yeah,” Emilia said, gaining some confidence. “I was given Up Shift. It makes you hyper.”
“It’s a stimulant,” Masaru said.
“I dunno,” she said, “but it made me feel like working. They would give me little bits all day long and I could work all day.”
“Sometimes for several days straight, isn’t that right?” Masaru asked.
“Yes,” she said, “and if I got hurt, I-I wouldn’t care. I would just keep working.”
“And Raul. They gave you Down Shift,” Masaru looked to the nervous boy.
“Y-yeah,” he said.
“What does that do?”
“M-makes you f-feel good,” he said, “and…not caring.”
“It makes you not care about…what’s happening. What was happening to you,” Masaru said.
“Yeah…”
“So, they would give you this drug and…you would just…” Masaru said in a gentle voice.
“It made it so it didn’t hurt,” Raul said.
“And in both cases,” Masaru said, voice barely above a whisper, “they c
ould take the drug away from you if they didn’t like what you were doing.”
“Yeah,” Emilia said, “one time I tried running away. They caught me and didn’t give it to me for two days, and it was…bad.”
“Although I imagine it wasn’t as bad as the past few weeks,” Masaru said.
Both of them shook their heads.
“To my listeners who aren’t watching,” Masaru said, still talking in a low voice, “if you haven’t seen the pictures released of the kids forced to take Shift now that they’ve gone through withdrawal, the affect is…it’s quite dramatic. What happens is that dendrimer metabolites build up in fatty tissue. They oxidize the fatty tissue, turning it rancid right inside your own body. Doctors have to liposuction out a lot of this rancid fatty tissue from a person so it doesn’t kill them.”
“It makes you really weak,” Emilia said, “I used to work all day long. Now I can barely even climb the steps.”
“And the effects start happening while you’re still on the drug, don’t they?” Masaru asked.
“Yeah,” Emilia said, her eyes sheepishly down on the table, “My teeth and hair started falling out. I got yucky sores all over me.”
“And bad dreams,” Raul said, “even when…when I’m not sleeping.”
“But I always wanted more,” Emilia said, raising her gaze to Masaru’s, “even now, I…I can’t stop thinking about…about doing it again.”
Masaru continued the interview for a while longer, going into the more mundane things the two faced as they continued dealing with the effects of Shift addiction –sleep disturbances, changes in appetite, seizures and hallucinations, continued cravings. Raul needed almost half his liver removed due to buildup of the Shift components and Emilia had cirrhosis scarring hers. Both underwent regular dialysis. Both took large regimens of anti-seizure medicine, antibiotics, antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs, nutrient supplements, and muscle growth stimulants. They both had upcoming medical operations – heart valve transplants, skin grafts, kidney transplants. They were in therapy, looking forward to someday going to school and had hopes of being adopted.
“That went alright,” Masaru said after we came back in from escorting Liana and the kids to the Road Front Brothers automatic car pickup, “what happened to these kids is…well, it’s fucked up for sure. But the podcast itself...what was the deal with you asking about where they were? Haven’t you read the reports?”
“Yes,” I said, once again gingerly scratching at the gauze on my right arm, pulling back when pain erupted, “but I noticed a trend while reading them. I was hoping for some clarification.”
“What trend?” Masaru hobbled back into the living room to straighten up.
“Most of the kids addicted to Shift came from the PRA,” I said, watching him from the doorway, “and that’s where most kids being returned to trafficking houses now are coming from.”
“Makes sense,” Masaru said, leaning on the small table with his recording equipment as he slid it into the corner, “that’s where the Shift gangs are.”
“Yes,” I said, letting my right arm fall to my side, “but Shift can be found anywhere. So why would only kids brought to the PRA be given Shift? And why are traffickers in the PRA so quick to return them?”
“Worried about being caught?” Masaru said, picking up a sucker from his candy bowl, “a lot of them were probably owned by PRA government people. Their government is fighting with the Shift gangs.” He shrugged, unwrapping the sucker. “Lots of propaganda against the Shift gangs, so if they’re caught giving Shift to children…”
“Possibly,” I said, “but this doctor…experimenting on the kids. Like in the Congo. To me it sounds like Benecorp.”
“You think they were giving them more than just Shift,” Masaru said, putting the sucker in his mouth and moving it to his cheek.
“Indulge me,” I said, “see if you can get your hands on the medical records.”
“You want me to hack the hospitals records?” he asked. “Should I get Akira to…”
“If you think it’s best,” I said, “I just want to see exactly what gene doping they’ve found.”
Masaru nodded, shifting the sucker to his other cheek.
“I guess this podcast thing is something you want to keep doing?”
Masaru exhaled, lowering himself down next to me, using the cane to support his weight. “I think these kids need their story out. They want to get their story out.” He shook his head, “Regina convinced Emilia and Raul to do this without me even asking her to. I think…they don’t want their suffering to remain invisible.”
“I agree,” I said.
“But…maybe we’ll find something cheerier for episode two,” he said, forcing a grin around the sucker stick.
“Agreed.”
Both of us sat quiet for a few minutes. Masaru ground his teeth on the candy in his mouth – a nervous tick he developed since our escape from Mexico – losing himself in introspection. I imagined he was registering everything he talked about, mentally looking for strong points and weak points in the episode. He already knew both kids’ stories, so nothing came as a surprise to him, but still not a pleasant thing to listen to.
“How are you holding up?” I asked.
“You’re curious if I’ve been thinking about what you said about our mission,” he said.
I kept my eyes on him, saying nothing.
“I was…maybe a bit harsh,” he said, “saying that it was only about you not wanting to be alone. I don’t think you’re that selfish. I think your motivations are good, but maybe…misguided.”
“Misguided?”
“You’ve hated being reincarnated, haven’t you?”
“I…”
“People won’t understand that,” he said, “they won’t know what they’re getting into. And that’s assuming both that it’s even possible to figure out how your reincarnation works and that it’s something that can be given to others.”
“I know it’s a long shot,” I said, “but you have to admit, so is vaguely trying to ‘make the world a better place.’ Whether that’s through some kind and moral way of doing it that hurts nobody along the way or some ruthless process like Sachi is trying to do.”
He sighed, “you’re probably right about that. But, I mean, how will…do you feel a sense of purpose?”
“Like a cosmic purpose for being immortal?” I asked, “Sachi does, but I don’t.”
“Not even that,” he said, “I mean more like…how often, in all your time here on earth, have you felt, you know, driven to achieve some goal?”
I shook my head, but said nothing.
“What I’m trying to get at is…if people become immortal, like you, maybe that will make them act better. Maybe they’ll become nicer to their fellow humans and poverty will be irradicated and all that good stuff. But…will it give them a sense of purpose? Something to strive for? You said you want to do this because of human nature. Human nature also means needing a purpose, a way to feel meaning in their lives.”
“You’re afraid they’ll all end up empty and depressed like me.”
He sighed, “you’re putting words in my mouth. I don’t mean that you…well, you know what? To be honest, yeah. That’s kind of what I mean. You do feel that way most of the time, don’t you?”
“I, uh, I…”
“At least until you dreamt up this mission for yourself.”
“So, now you’re saying I’m only doing this to…” I paused, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly before saying, “what…what would you rather we do, then?”
“I want to hold onto hope,” he said, “that somewhere within human nature is the capacity to do better. To rediscover our sense of harmony with the natural world. And that we – you and me and Akira and even Laura – can do our part to bring this…this noble aspect of human nature out without bastardizing our very humanity in hopes of forcing some change in perspective.”
“You think I’m a bastardized version of humanity?”<
br />
“That’s…” he sighed, shaking his head, “you’re putting words in my mouth again. You have…a different nature, for sure. But that’s your nature. Other humans have our own nature. I just don’t think our humanity should be changed or viewed in this cold utilitarian way. Like when Akira had those brain implants put in, it…”
“What about her sex change?”
“That wasn’t changing away from her true human nature,” Masaru said, not a small amount of defensiveness in his tone, “that was changing into her true human nature.”
I put my hands up in front of me, “I didn’t mean anything by that.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, standing up with the help of his cane, “I want you to consider that every time people try playing god with nature, there are unintended consequences. Humans are the way we are because we’re supposed to be. I hope both you and Akira can remember that.”
I said nothing, watching silently as he limped his way out of the living room.
I awoke to the familiar sight of light coming into my room from across the hall. Laura sat on a wooden chair in her room facing the picture I made, working on more of her own art. If she didn’t have a shift in the lab, Laura would go through the whole night while everyone slept doing this. Eyes glazed over, working the tiny little folds, markings, and connections into her materials. Already a couple of the works were finished, different from the first one yet still maintaining the same theme of complex geometries.
“What number is this one?” I asked, stepping out of my room.
She looked up, shaken from her concentration. “Four.”
Once again, Laura’s wounds healed slow from her lack of sleep. A large, dark red scab surrounding the stitches marred the skin above her right eye. She wasn’t as burned as I was, but the burning she did have was dark red and blistered. Her right eye was irritated and more bloodshot than usual. A small pile of tissues stained with pus and dried blood from dabbing the leaking wounds sat beside her. My attempts to ask how she was were typically met with a sarcastic joke, so I didn’t bother asking anymore.
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