The Body Scout: A Novel

by Lincoln Michel

  I debated fleeing immediately, but it would have been risky to stroll through the Monsanto compound as a one-armed oiler carrying an unconscious woman with an Edenist girl in tow. We’d have stuck out like three eyeballs in a bunch of grapes at the grocery store. So I called Okafor again.

  “I’m coming, Kobo. You dragged me out, you cocksucker. Be outside in ten minutes. And be ready to do a lot of explaining.”

  When I got done with the call, I saw that Lila was gone. I looked around and found her in the back room, gazing at one of the Zunz experiments mounted on the wall. Lila’s dull Edenist garb was specked with different fluids now. Red blood, green serum, clear tears. She looked healthy, otherwise. She had her hands clasped behind her back and her hair held up with a clip. I couldn’t say the same for the Zunz on the wall. He was only a half a Zunz. The torso was cut off at the waist, cinched with a metal plate. The part that was there was dead tissue and sagging skin. I felt an urge to reach and cover her eyes. But Lila was shaking her head.

  “Gross. Is this what I’m going to look like when I’m older?”

  “You don’t need to look at these,” I said.

  She tapped on an aquarium, causing the four-inch Zunz inside to curl up in fear. She turned to me. “Where’s my actual full-size father?”

  I looked at her. Tried to decide what to say, but she understood without me saying anything.

  “Never mind. Can we go outside? This place gives me the creeps.”

  “Yes. Let’s get Dolores conscious again.”

  I found a wake-up shot in one of the drawers. Plunged it into her side. She started to stir.

  “That prehistoric bitch,” she said, slurring. She signed angrily with drugged hands. “Where is she?”

  I helped her sit up.

  “They left. Took all the serum and equipment. Erased the data banks.”

  “There goes my goddamn payout.” Dolores looked around, yawning. Then she patted herself, pulled out the deodrive. “Well, I got a partial download before Setek interrupted us. Got the data on the growth process. Should still be worth something to Pyramid if they want to catch up to Monsanto.”

  Lila and I got Dolores to her feet, and we left the lab, limping outside together.

  As if mocking the darkness and death inside the room, the outside was bright and alive. The park was foaming at the mouth with flowers. Streamer birds flew above us, their tails waving in the wind. We were too far away to hear the announcers, but we could hear the cheers of the crowd. The scoreboard on the side of the stadium said the Mets were up six runs to three. Bottom of the seventh. The Mets were a few outs from winning the World Series for the first time in a decade. Zunz really had led them all the way.

  “I need to sit down,” Dolores said. She was leaning on me to walk, arm hooked around my neck.

  We helped her to a bench. In front of us was a fountain filled with orange and blue goldfish and past that the gigantic stadium, bursting with sound. Lila sat down between us and draped her arms on our shoulders.

  “You weren’t the worst detective,” Lila said, patting me. “You figured it all out, in the end, right?”

  “I’m a scout, not a detective.”

  “Still.” She smiled. “You got there eventually.”

  “Thanks.”

  A burst of orange smoke flew out of the top of the stadium. It rose into a huge mushroom cloud shaped sort of like a baseball above the dome. The Mets had scored another run. Any New Yorker looking toward the park would be cheering now.

  “Shit, you guys are going to beat us, aren’t you?” Dolores said. “Should we watch?”

  “Yeah. What else are we going to do?” I said.

  “Wait, I forgot something inside. I’ll be right back,” Lila said and ran back into the lab.

  I pulled out my screen and brought up the feed. The crowd was on its feet, hands in the air. The camera, attached to some drone or another, swooped through the crowd like a falcon, capturing the faces of the fans. Mouths thrilled circles, eyes open, hands waving. They were all shapes and sizes. All colors and ages. But they were moving together as one organism.

  The camera flew up toward the roof for an aerial shot. The Sphinxes pitcher threw the pixelated ball. A tiny digital Zunz fouled it to the left. When he got a hit and sprinted safe to first, I couldn’t help myself. I cheered.

  Despite everything, I still loved the game. The weirdness of its rules, the uniforms, and the crack of the bat amplified through the stadium’s speakers. It felt timeless. Players would come and go. Teams would move cities. Leagues would fold. But the game, like some stubborn dinosaur dragging its thick tail into the future, would remain.

  Dolores leaned against me, still only half awake. “So what happened with Zunz? You couldn’t find him?”

  “I found him.” It was all I could say. He’d left me behind a while ago.

  Maybe it would be different in five years or ten or fifteen. The league would spit him out eventually. Just like the CLB did to me. He might tumble down that tower he’d climbed. End up back on my level. Maybe we’d reconnect. Go out to dinner, laugh about the old times. Forge the old bond and never ever let it break again. Stranger things had happened.

  Lila came back with a silver case with airholes in it and sat between us. We watched silently for a little while.

  Finally, Okafor’s cruiser approached. A single, solitary squad car. The siren wasn’t on. It settled down beside us.

  “You are one sorry-looking hunk of scrap,” Okafor said, hugging me.

  They pulled back, looking frightened, and asked me where my arm had gone.

  I said it was a long story and I’d tell it later.

  “Okay, we have to go. Right now. I’ll yell at you later. But you absolutely cannot be here when the other cops come.”

  “Wait. Where is everyone?” I said. “The rest of the department? I thought you were bringing the cavalry. Didn’t I tell you this case could make your career?”

  I thought Okafor was missing the big picture. I started to explain the whole thing again as quickly as I could.

  Okafor just shook their head like they were trying to slap sense into me.

  “Kobo. You’re wanted for questioning in a murder investigation. And if, if, what you told me is true then you’ll have the whole might of Monsanto falling on you. They’ll crush you quicker than an ant under a bowling ball. You need to flee.” They looked at the ground, shaking their head. “Jesus. Didn’t I tell you to stay out of this case?”

  “He doesn’t listen, does he?” Dolores said.

  I still thought Okafor hadn’t understood everything. That they were missing the essential details. The right data points that would make them realize their error and help me storm down the castle. I pointed back to the lab. “There’s a dead doctor in there. There’s illegal clones. There’s government corruption. Stolen profits. This is a huge scandal.”

  Okafor crossed their arms across their metal chest. Drummed. “There’s no squadron, Kobo. I mentioned what you said to my bosses. They told me to look elsewhere or else look for another job.”

  “Monsanto bought the cops off?” Lila said.

  “It goes way beyond Monsanto. Those cocksuckers have bigger cocksuckers backing them. I told you from the start to stay out of this.”

  “Government corruption. Corporate sabotage. Illegal cloning.” I was sputtering.

  Dolores slowly pulled herself upright, using my remaining arm to steady herself. “Come on, Kobo. Our cyborg parts used to be illegal. Steroids used to be illegal. They used to arrest you for erasers, and weed, and pills.”

  “So?”

  “So what’s illegal is only what hasn’t been allowed yet.”

  “She’s right,” Okafor said. “Also, you dumbass. Breaking into a Monsanto facility? And I don’t even want to know what you had to do with the Edenist terrorist attack on the stadium. Let’s go before I change my mind and turn you in for a pay bump.”

  “Fuck that,” I said. “This is it? Everyone g
ets away with it? Everyone goes free? That’s it? That’s where it all ends up?”

  Dolores held on to my shoulder, still unsteady from the knockout shot. She laughed, short and sad. “Things just keep going, Kobo. Maybe they get a little worse. Maybe they get a little better. More worse than better recently. But they keep going,” Dolores said. “Haven’t you been paying attention?”

  52

  THE NEW DAYS

  I don’t watch a lot of baseball these days. And I certainly can’t play. I still don’t have a right arm. Not one attached to my body at least.

  I do keep my old bionic arm in the basement. Every once in a while, I take it out. Tinker. Fiddle. Try to patch up holes and fix the wetwires. I can get the fingers to seize and elbow to bend. At this point the arm is so old-fashioned, it’s vintage. New cybernetics are sleeker and stronger. Sport a whole new set of features. Fixing this one up is just a hobby. A way to pass the time.

  Mostly, I sit on top of our home and look at the open emptiness. The air is clean and fresh out here in the desert. It blows around the tumbleweeds and bundles of rusted mesh. No smog for a hundred miles. The hot sun licks its cancerous tongue all over my skin. It feels warm, good.

  I never have to go underground out here. Never worry about a cave-in crushing me. There are no other buildings around us, and in town nothing is more than a dozen stories tall. I stay on the same level as everything else on this hot flat plane.

  I meditate now. I’m trying to be a better person. Appreciate the things I have in life. Live in the now. All that hogwash.

  And I don’t get upgraded anymore. Promised I’d never get into medical-loan debt again, never have a company claim they own the rights to my limbs and organs. I’m done talking to sisters with red pens and big fists.

  The only sport I pay attention to is basketball, and only when Lila plays. She’s a budding point guard. Has the vision to see the whole court, the angles to bounce the ball. She’s grown a lot but is still short for her age. The pickup players don’t realize her tiny size is a strength. She zigs her twig figure between the players, zags to a layup before they even notice.

  I clap from the park bench, whistling and smacking my one hand on the metal.

  “Calm down,” Lila says. “You’re embarrassing me.”

  But she smiles, most of the time.

  Sometimes I bring our little Zunz along, the one Lila took from the lab. I place him next to me and make sure he doesn’t wander off. He doesn’t know what’s going on, but he likes to look around. His head darts this way and that like a lizard following flies.

  I’m not saying it’s a paradise out here in the Mextexan Free State. I work ten hours a day on the solar farms. It’s hot all the time and bugs fly in through the cracks in the creepeasy Lila and I have repurposed as a home. We have to monitor the waves in case the skirmishes between the Free State militias and the Remaining States army spill our way. Make sure we avoid the roving gangs of religious cartels like the Luddite Christians and the Techno Mormons.

  It’s safer out here for Lila and me than it was in the city. After the attack on the stadium, the cops cracked down on the Edenists. Rounded them up by the hundreds. A bunch went to jail, and a bunch of others successfully sued the police for a variety of abuses. But the police budget for that anyway. The important thing was we got out before the police could find us. And if Monsanto finds out where we are, that’s going to be the end of the line.

  Or maybe not. Maybe Monsanto doesn’t care anymore. They’re busy fixing the neural mesh issue and counting their new piles of cash.

  Monsanto’s duplicate cloning program made the news. The Sphinxes exposed it all after the World Series, thanks to Dolores’s eyewitness testimony and photographs. It was a big deal for a while. Monsanto had to forfeit the title after the FLB ruled the Astral system counted as cybernetics and violated the league’s rules. The Mouth reportedly has refused to give back the trophy, but in the official history books, the Sphinxes won the title. There was talk of resignations, politicians made rumbles about throwing the executives in jail.

  Monsanto’s stock crashed for a couple weeks, then shot back up to new highs. Much of the public was shocked at the clones and professors were all over the holofeeds talking about the ethical, moral, and legal violations their existence caused. However, investors thought it showed the right initiative. Analysts applauded their foresight in opening a new market, the human form itself. Eventually, President Newman issued an executive order declaring the clones legal noncitizens and pardoned everyone involved.

  And somehow JJ Zunz came out a hero. JJ Zunz, or an imitation of him, won the MVP as they clinched game seven by a score of six to three. Zunz or his clone, however you wanted to count it, wasn’t the best player during the series. He only batted .250 and drove in two runs. Made a bad error at the end of game seven. But he had the best story, and the story is what sells. Of course, he’s got an asterisk in the history books too.

  “I don’t care if he’s real or a clone. Has any ballplayer ever showed as much heart as JJ Zunz, Mad Dog?” I heard one of the Mets announcers say.

  “He’s an inspiration, Skip. He shattered his hand so bad he couldn’t play anymore. But did he give up? No. He made a new body with a new hand and used that. He makes us want to be the best version of ourselves we can be.”

  The Mets publicists worked overtime to spin the scandal their way. It wasn’t an illegal, amoral program. It was the future. “We’re inventing body insurance,” the Mouth had said at the press conference outside of the police station. “Imagine buying your own backup clone. All the possible uses! Tornados. Pandemics. Terrorist attacks. As long as you have a Monsanto-brand Spares system, you’ll be able to deal with anything life throws at you. Anyone who opposes that is, frankly, anti-American.”

  Monsanto is branding them Monsanto Spares. The “World Series edition” will even come with Zunz’s special mutations spliced into your DNA, free of charge. Without Setek or Arocha, they haven’t figured out a permanent fix to the neural mesh issue. But they hired enough experts to devise a short-term fix and switched business models. Now you rent your Spares and pay a subscription fee for a once-a-week injection to keep their brains from melting.

  Zunz was the key to the marketing campaign. The Mets brought in high-profile clients to test-drive his Spares in the stadium. Let CEOs and pop stars get a chance at bat against professional ballplayers in private games. The ultimate luxury good is your own body, the ad goes.

  A Spares clone currently costs more than a Manhattan condo. But Monsanto claims the middle class will be able to afford them in two decades. Maybe three. Anyway, there’s a massive waitlist and most of the production is earmarked for the government.

  President Newman narrowly won reelection, using the Spares in his campaign pitch. He’s buying an army of Spares soldiers to crush the SoCal separatists and retake the lost Mextexan territory “without the loss of a single patriot’s life.” And once they’re stabilized, he’s got other plans. He’s drafting an order to subsidize Spares for “desirable citizens” willing to use them for reproduction. Newman wants it to be based on ancestry, with the Spares reserved for those who can trace their genes back to the pilgrims. “We can’t keep having our body politic diluted by refugees,” he said at a rally. “As I’ve said for years, the American dream is for American genes.”

  Newman’s allies in Congress are pushing a repeal of the Rank Act, declaring “life begins at duplication” and the Spares should be eligible to vote. Meanwhile the Democrats are suing, saying the clone subsidies should be available to “all Americans regardless of race as long as they’re fully employed.” The whole thing is tangled up in the courts.

  It’s a mess, but not mine to clean up. I only want to make sure I’m no longer helping things get worse.

  I click off the feed. Tell Lila I’m going out for pizza.

  “Get pellets for Z,” she shouts from the other room. She can’t bear to call him by his full name. It’s too painful.
“And a pepperoni slice for me.”

  Our little Zunz doesn’t say much himself. Can’t really form any words. Or if he can, his vocal cords are too small for us to hear them.

  “Sure, sure,” I say and head out. I could order it. Have it delivered by drone or hoverbiked out by an underpaid teen saving up for anti-acne injections. But I like to walk.

  I miss New York. Miss the noise and the smell and chaos. Miss the giant skystabbers and the smog and the crowds of angry people, and how you can slip inside them and disappear. Dolores tells me they cleaned out the air back there, engineered filter gnats that feed on the smog. They grow fat on the poison, die, and then are vacuumed up and shipped out to garbage heaps in the Midwest. A problem for future generations to figure out.

  Out here, I walk a half hour before I hit a building. The buildings are short and squat out here. Nowhere to hide except behind the cacti. It’s not the city, but it’s also not so bad. Lila and I are safe for now. We’re starting a new life.

  The Plethora Emporium is the only store in town. A giant gray cube with no doors or windows. The size of a baseball stadium, if one was encased in concrete. I put the order into the cashier station. Pay. Somewhere inside the concrete belly, a drone flies through the warehouse and picks up everything I’ve purchased. Who knows what it looks like? Maybe like a bird or a fish or a human heart. Maybe just a black metal sphere flying alone in the endless rows of products. An entire civilization’s achievements locked away in a box of concrete.

  When I get home, Lila and Zunz are sitting on the roof of the creepeasy. Lila’s watching holostreams and Zunz seems to be staring at the stars.

  “You’re covered in dirt,” I say, climbing up.

  “I’ll vacuum off before coming inside,” she says, grabbing the pizza. She chomps down, points at a wiry creature darting between rocks. “What do you think that is?”

  It’s black and mostly hairless, four big eyes glowing above its snout.

  “Zootech,” I say. “Part beaver? Or armadillo?”

  “Weird-ass zootech.”