The Body Scout: A Novel

by Lincoln Michel

  “Jesus. You’re going to let people just control other people?”

  “None of this is my doing. They just brought me in to work on fixing the clones. To find a treatment that would keep them operational after the PR disaster with their showpiece.”

  “Showpiece?” Anger was swarming inside me. I lifted my gun again, aimed it at Arocha’s guts. “I don’t care how you justify it. Which of these is Zunz? The real one?”

  Arocha put her hands back up. Waved them slowly in circles. “Hey, lower your gun. Please. Look, these are all Zunz, in a sense. All made of his genetic code.”

  “I’m not here for a biology lesson.”

  “None of these are Zunz Prime, as we call him. They’re experiments. Aborted attempts or organ incubators. Sometimes we have to transplant. Zunz’s genes are uniquely suited to the growth treatments required to gestate the Spares in a scalable time frame. Monsanto wants industrial production. But there are still issues. As the whole world saw live.”

  “What happened? What killed him or killed it or whatever?” I said. Although I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  “The issue started where the neural mesh is implanted on the dura mater. The whole thing shorted out, causing a cascade failure through the nervous system. His cerebrospinal fluid had completely evaporated. Here, I can show you with one of our test heads.”

  Arocha was pointing toward a pair of small tanks, each filled with a Zunz head floating in red gunk. They were bald, but hundreds of silver wires were flowing out of the tank like metal hair. The wires were connected to a silent, black machine.

  “Stop,” I said, as she started walking toward them. My heart was pounding. “I don’t need to see it again.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  Dolores took my hand and squeezed gently. She turned to Arocha. “Just tell us what caused it.”

  “My theory is there’s an issue with his neural stem cell stock used in the bioprinting. They’re replicating the damage years of upgrades have done to Zunz’s cells. And all this is exacerbated by the upgrade treatment. DNA doesn’t encode all the treatments these players have gotten. We give them years of upgrades in a couple of weeks.”

  I wanted to hit something. Maybe Arocha. But Dolores kept hold of me. “Can we see it?” Dolores said. “The duplicate clone. You said it was in the basement, right?”

  Arocha shrugged and nodded toward the door. “You’re the ones holding the guns.”

  45

  THE STAINED MIND

  I lagged behind Dolores and Arocha as we walked down the staircase, feeling something between dread and excitement building with each step. The subbasement was large and brightly lit. One wall was an enormous monitor displaying different fluctuating graphs. In the center of the room, there was a large horizontal tank half filled with red liquid.

  The Zunz clone was lying, naked, inside. He was strapped to a slab with his head propped up above the fluid. Despite the wires and tubes puncturing his skin, this Zunz looked peaceful. Asleep. You could even see the dimples in his cheeks. I stepped closer. He was Zunz all right—the same face I would see when I woke up during sleepovers needing to pee. The one I’d painted with anti-surveillance paint when we were planning pranks, and the one that sat across from me in diners eating burgers at 2:00 a.m.

  Except not, of course. Without his helmet on, I could see the receptors on his temples as well as the scar at the very top of the forehead where they’d inserted the neural mesh. Other than that, he looked healthy and new, like a car that hadn’t been flown out of the lot.

  For some reason I felt ashamed to see him like this, nude and alone. I avoided looking at his waist. His vital signs streamed across the surface of the glass. I walked over and put my hand on the tank. Studied him. I wanted to believe I could spot the difference between the clone and the real thing. A missing scar or a new blemish. Yet, as I looked all over his body, I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t remember where the freckles or hairs had been. I did recognize the brown splotch of a birthmark on his cheek, and I’d been right. They’d tattooed it on backward. He was a fake.

  “Let’s go,” I said, turning around.

  Then I stopped.

  “Kobo.”

  The voice was faint, yet it made my heart flutter in my chest like a dying bird. I looked back and the clone was looking at me. He leaned forward even as the restraints held him down.

  The clone had a slight grin on his face. He reached out toward me and his hand hit the glass. His pupils were wide as dimes.

  “Kobo. Where?”

  I felt like the air had been sucked out of the room. I turned to Arocha.

  “You said this was a clone. A clone with a blank brain. How can he be speaking?”

  Arocha spoke a hair above a whisper. “They’re made with blank minds. As blank as you can make one. But the Astral, well, it leaves an impression. All those thoughts and feelings being streamed in, they rewire the synapses. Every time Zunz logs in, the clone gets a little more of him. Staining, we call it.”

  “Staining?” I said. This was how these scientists thought of my brother’s consciousness. A stain.

  I realized that was what had called me, back at the beginning of this mess. Not Zunz. Not my brother. But a clone. A clone stained with faint memories of me and Kang that got mixed together in its mangled mind.

  “Remarkable,” Dolores said. “Fucked-up and remarkable.”

  The clone was pressing his palms to the glass now, trying to push open the lid. The liquid sloshed around inside.

  “Jesus, let him out,” I said. I ran over to the glass and pressed my palms over his, feeling the cold glass between us. His eyes were wild.

  “We can’t. Dr. Setek will be here any minute. And anyway it wouldn’t last out there without a user to control it. The clone has the brain of a newborn, basically. A couple memories, but that’s it. It would die if it went too long without a pilot.”

  The clone seemed to calm looking at my face. I thought I saw a tear leak out of his right eye.

  “Kobo,” he gasped. His head shook from one side to the other. “Brain feels bad. Why I no remember?”

  “We’re going to get you out,” I lied. “We’re going to fix you.”

  Arocha walked to the machine regulating the tank. She spun a few dials. As if a switch had flipped in his brain, the clone shuddered violently. Then his eyes closed. He seemed to be asleep.

  “It goes on and off like that. The neural suppressors have to be switched off before piloting,” Arocha said.

  I wasn’t listening. I was trying to lift off the lid. I moved around the tank, looking for a latch. The Zunz inside was convulsing a little bit. As I was pounding the glass, I felt Dolores’s hand on my shoulder. “You don’t have time for this. You still have to find Zunz. Your Zunz.”

  She was right. It was getting close to opening pitch. I turned to Arocha, who was making small adjustments on the tank’s controls.

  “Where is he? My actual brother. Coppelius told me he was still alive. Back when Coppelius was alive.”

  “He has to be in the stadium for the signal to work perfectly. I believe he’s on the top floor, near the Mouth’s suite. I haven’t been there personally. They just send us fresh cell scrapings each day.”

  I asked her more questions, but Arocha didn’t know any of the answers. She didn’t know if Zunz was injured or imprisoned or just a brain kept alive in a jar. The only thing she could tell us was the whole project was a lot bigger than the Mets. It had government funding, straight from President Newman.

  “And Lila?” I said. “Why are you after her?”

  “Who is Lila?”

  “Zunz’s daughter.”

  “Ah. A daughter. Dr. Setek keeps talking about a second source with untainted neural stem cells for us to work with. The Mets would never tell the public this, but all the juicing and upgrades have had unforeseen side effects on the cellular level. The cells get tainted. Mutated. It’s true for all of us, but especially for the players. The treatments
they get can be pretty extreme.”

  “That wouldn’t be a problem with the daughter. She’s an Edenist.”

  Arocha’s face lit up. “Oh, that might be perfect. A viable donor with undamaged cells? We should be able to introduce her NSCs to—” She saw the look on my face and stopped herself. “Sorry, that’s just the scientist in me talking.”

  “Why don’t you use a test subject who has never been upgraded?” Dolores said.

  Arocha shrugged. “Who would that help? Most of the country is upgraded. But Zunz’s genes have a few mutations that are ideal for upgrades. The Mouth demanded we use a player as a showpiece, and we tried a couple from the team. Zunz’s clones are the only ones who’ve survived past the fetal stage. If we can sort out the neural stem cell issue, he should be the perfect template for the entire Spares line.”

  “I suppose there’s no better publicity than your new product winning the World Series,” Dolores said.

  I was breathing rapidly again. I needed to get out of this underground laboratory, surrounded by clones of my friend. I could picture the whole place collapsing, my last moments of life being crushed by the mass of my brother’s body parts. His fingers sliding down my throat as I screamed.

  “Dolores, we need to leave. How do we get out of here?”

  “There’s a drainage tunnel down that hall that leads to the stadium,” Arocha said. “If you’re trying to sneak into the stadium.”

  “Yes, we saw it on the blueprints,” I said. All the biopharm stadiums had closed off water supplies to prevent rival companies from straining their wastewater for secrets. On the map Pyramid provided us, the drainage tunnels all ran toward the stadium. “Let’s go.”

  “I can’t do that, Kobo.” Dolores’s gun was up, pointed between Arocha and me. Her face was drained of expression.

  She walked over to Arocha, ran a finger around the rim of her security collar. She pulled out a small white tool about the size of a screwdriver. “I can short this temporarily. Once I get you to the Pyramid compound, we’ll reprogram it.”

  “Reprogram it?” Arocha said.

  Dolores opened the locket on her neck, popped out a deodrive on her hand. “You said you wanted to get out of here, right? Load all the files on the Spares project onto this. Pyramid has authorized a hostile acquisition.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? We need to get to the stadium.”

  Dolores frowned a little. “You go. I need the data and I need Arocha. They’re my meal ticket.”

  “What? We have to find Zunz.”

  “No.” She pressed a button on the side of her goggles, which flipped open the lenses to show me her dark brown eyes. “You do. This has been a good time, Kobo. But here’s where our paths diverge. Your path is to save your brother. My path is getting the data and Arocha to Pyramid and then getting paid. I wasn’t lying when I told you my parents have massive healthcare debt.”

  “But you were lying about everything else?”

  “You’ll get a finder’s fee. Enough to reattach your arm I think. I owe you that much.”

  I stood there, my one arm hung limp at my side. “You knew about this? About Zunz?”

  “Somewhat.”

  “What the hell does somewhat mean? You knew Zunz wasn’t dead all along?” I walked toward Dolores and she lifted her gun. She pressed the barrel tenderly into my stomach.

  “Step back, Kobo. I knew Monsanto was working on a way around the anti-cloning laws. I knew there was government money pouring in. And I knew Pyramid would pay me three years of salary to get it. Why do you think Pyramid offered the blueprint plans to this compound?”

  “This is just about money?”

  “Money means a lot when you’re in debt. You know that. But no, it’s not just about money. It’s a lot bigger than you and me. These clones could change everything. Think of the possibilities. People can buy a second body, live a whole second life. A third. A fourth. It could change everything. We can’t have that power all be in the hands of one corporation in league with one corrupt president.”

  “Having it in the hands of two corporations is better?”

  Dolores shrugged. “It pays better.”

  “Pretty thin line between this and a double-cross.”

  “You started it by scanning my eyeball to break into the Pyramid compound. You brought me into this. I worked my angle while you worked yours. This is what we signed up for. This is the life of a scout.”

  I started to leave. Stopped. Came back. But my brain had emptied itself. I didn’t have anything to say.

  “Do I have a choice here?” Arocha said.

  “Yes,” Dolores said, not even looking at me. “Load up the data, come with me, and you never have to work for Monsanto again. Or I shoot.”

  46

  THE RED TUNNEL

  Parts of Zunz floated past me. Fingers. Eyeballs. A handful of teeth. I couldn’t see much, but I could feel. A mess of arteries flowed by, wrapping around my ankles as I trudged through the waters. I dry heaved. Shook them loose.

  The waste tunnel was dark. The stench of Zunz’s parts was overwhelming. I had to hold my one hand against the wall to keep from collapsing.

  I was wading through a river of my brother. Or copies of him at least. In the tunnel, Zunz was deconstructed. Rendered into bizarre art by a mad-scientist Picasso. It was hard to imagine how all these bobbing organs in the water could be compiled into a human being.

  By now, the fans would have filled the stadium and the players would be readying themselves in the locker room. Game seven of the World Series was about to begin. I didn’t know if Zunz’s clone was there in the dugout, getting ready to run on the field. I tried not to think about it, or about Dolores’s betrayal. Tried not to think of anything but getting where I needed to go. To Zunz. The real Zunz. My Zunz.

  At the grate where the maroon waters flowed into the stadium’s main sewage system, I could see the control screens blinking. No one else was around. I kicked open the grate. It took a dozen tries.

  When I emerged into the water regulation room, I was soaked and stained. I threw off my jacket, tried to slap the remains of my friend off me. I kicked loose a section of intestine caught in my shoe. It slid across the floor like a dead eel.

  I was almost glad I didn’t have my bionic arm right then. It would have taken me weeks to clean all the gunk out of the casing.

  One wall of the room was filled with monitors, showing the specs and status of each bathroom. Which stall was flushing, which sink failing to drain. Bathrooms were always one of the most important parts of a stadium. No amount of upgrades could stop two hundred thousand people needing to piss and shit.

  I looked at the blue schematic. Most of the floors had dozens of bathrooms, laid out every couple hundred feet. The top floor was closed to the public and the press. If Zunz was in the stadium, he’d be kept away from any accidental detection. He’d be there.

  I knew the north half held the broadcast teams, and the south half was company suites. I looked closely at the south-side rooms. One was massive, with three toilets, a bidet, a hand sink, a foot sink, a Jacuzzi tub, a regular tub, and a cubic shower. The Mouth’s owner’s penthouse. There was a blinking yellow mouth right on the map.

  There were two other suites about one-third the size of the Mouth’s. I figured Zunz was being kept in one of those.

  As I was heading to the lifts, I got a call on an unknown line. Hesitated, but decided to answer. Noblood Gerald looked back at me, frightened and bruised. His lip was split, and the blood coagulated in his beard.

  “I thought you were staying underground, with Lila?”

  “That was the plan.” He spoke slowly, like he had to drag the words out of his mouth. His eyes were shallow pools.

  “I liked the plan. It was a good plan.”

  “The police raided us. A whole squadron. I barely escaped through the subway tunnel.”

  “What? Where’s Lila?”

  “The police took her, along with two dozen
of my people.” He was looking away, ashamed. “Threw her into the back of a black van. I can’t tell you anything else.”

  I hung up, called Okafor. I was sputtering out the words when they answered.

  “Whoa, whoa. Slow fucking down, Kobo. What happened? Where are you? You have to come to the station right. Now.”

  “I’m in Mets stadium. About to rescue Zunz.”

  “Goddamn it. I’m supposed to be questioning you about a homicide. And what did I say about the police handling this?”

  “It’s a little late for that. Just tell me where you put Lila.”

  “Who on earth is that?”

  “The twig girl. The one you arrested before.” I gave them the rough outlines. I was too angry to fill in the details.

  Okafor sighed. Searched through the police systems. “I’m sorry, I don’t see her in any log. We don’t have her.”

  Something hard and full of spikes was twisting in my gut. The Mets had her. I knew it. I’d failed her the same way I failed her father.

  “Maybe she hasn’t been processed yet,” Okafor offered. “Kobo. Leave the stadium. Come to the station right now. We’re old friends, but that only goes so far.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  I hung up.

  I messaged the news to Dolores, told her Lila had been taken and I hoped she was happy about it. Slid my screen into my pocket and got ready.

  My erasers were stained from the drainage water. I leaned against the control panel and lit one anyway. Smoked it down to the nub. Let my feelings disappear in the fog.

  The Mets had sealed off the area where the Diseased Edenists had rioted with a quarantine netting. Rerouted the fans to the other entrances. It might be a mess, but it was contained. The stadium was filling up and the Mets announcers were getting the fans excited.

  “Have you ever seen an atmosphere as electric as Monsanto Meadows today, Mad Dog?”

  “The fans here are bouncing around like quantum particles. What a journey. It wasn’t that long ago that the Mets lost their star player, JJ Zunz. They seemed done for. Kaput.”