The Way of All Flesh: Illusions Can Be Real

by Corey Furman

  “No experiential memory, huh?” He pondered. “You sound unsure. Should I order definitive testing?”

  “It won’t be necessary, Doctor.” The words hung like a shroud in the air. Quietly, she added, “The testing would show you what I’ve told you.”

  As he stared off in no particular direction the muscles in his jaw flexed, and she could almost feel the gears in his mind turning. Eventually he said, “This was expected, but I had hoped for a better outcome.” Holding it with the tips of his unclean fingers, he dragged on the cigar, then nodded his head. “It is what it is. I can’t justify any further cost associated with this simulant pair. LabSys, close this case file as —”

  Maré was afraid of what she was hearing. Something final was happening, and she had no control over it. What is this? I should say something – but what? I should just –

  “A moment, Doctor, please indulge me.” said 183 timidly.

  “Quickly, please,” he said irascibly. “I have spent enough time on this. I have other, more pressing matters to attend to.”

  Uncertainly she said, “I believe the organization could benefit from subject 370’s repurposing as a lab assistant here.”

  “That won’t be possible, 183. The four allotted slots are filled. You know this.”

  183 paused and shook her head, but then she squared her shoulders and stood straighter as she met his eyes. “She could bed with me, and I would train her.”

  “And what about the rations? Will she share your rations as well? The budget is tight, and will already be strained by the loss of three previous simulant pairs, now four.”

  Speaking quicker now, she said, “Yes, Doctor – the cost will be mine.”

  “It is an interesting proposition,” he said as he stroked the wisps of hair on his chin, considering. “As you wish, 183. You of course understand what it means if this goes badly, sí? I will have to find another way to control the costs of the project.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “LabSys? Strike last command. Mark this case as unresolved and release.”

  “Acknowledged, Doctor.”

  Almeida drew a thin black strap from the pocket of his coat, reached over and fastened it about Maré‘s neck. As he did, he said, “370, this is a behavior modification collar. It will display your moniker, but it will also discharge small doses of a number of compounds that interact with your nervous system. Your body will produce everything it needs; it simply leeches and stores a little at a time from the blood vessels under your skin. Using it, I can not only monitor your whereabouts and vital signs, but I can also reward good behavior with pleasant sensations and emotions. I do so on very few occasions, as you will behave or you will leave this place for somewhere far less pleasant. The collar can also be used to correct wrong behavior… which can also be quite unpleasant, but considerably more immediate.”

  Then he produced a small control from the opposite pocket. “LabSys, prepare for new collar linking.”

  “Ready, Doctor.”

  The collar produced several mild beeps when he scanned it with the small controller.

  “Recorded, Doctor. Confirm when ready.”

  He pressed a button on it, and the band grew snug around her neck.

  “183, you have one week to make this work. If she is to be punished, you will be punished twice as much. Get her remaining infection under control. She is not to be around the crop during that time. Comprende?”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “Do not fail, you sentimental fool.”

  With that, Almeida left the examination room, snickering to himself and trailing blue smoke behind him.

  Maré huddled in on herself and a tremor of anxiety that started in her gut shook its way up her torso. Events were outpacing her and she didn’t know, couldn’t understand the rules of the game. “What just happened?”

  183 pursed her lips and exhaled. “For one thing, I just saved your life, Maré. We’ll talk more in a bit, but first I need to clear your lungs. He’s given me a week to make sure the job’s done, and there’s only one way to be certain. Please lie back down.”

  She wasn’t happy about it, but Maré laid back and watched her dig around in a cabinet. When she came back over, she had a thin, black probe, a chrome canister, a bunch of tubing and a big bucket. Maré‘s eyes went wide. “What are you going to do to me, 183?”

  “We’re alone now, Maré – you might as well call me Luna. This,” she said as she held the jumble of equipment up, “is a medical vacuum, a specialized robotic one, and I’m going to use it on your lungs. I’m sorry, but we’ll probably have to do it every day for the next week. The good news is you’ll be essentially infection free head-to-toe afterward, meaning the meningitis will be gone, and anything else that might be lurking undetected. It’s going to jack you up on so much antibiotics, antivirals and antifungals that you’ll be about the cleanest person alive. The bad news is it’s going to be uncomfortable, to put it mildly. It will become tolerable and you’ll get used to it after a minute or two, but until then it’ll feel like drowning.”

  Luna fitted various pieces together, put the bucket on the floor, and finally hooked the canister up to the probe. “You won’t like this, but I’m not going to hurt you,” she said as she sat down on the stool next to her. “Do you believe me, Maré?”

  She was scared, but she knew that this woman was her only guide. “I’ll trust you, Luna – I…” she said with tears on the verge of spilling down her cheeks. “I don’t think I have any choice.”

  Luna grinned. “Not really, no,” then she leaned over her. “I’ll put this strap across your arms loosely. If you have to fight, fight against that.” She fastened it, but not too tightly, and said, “Do you want to know the specifics of what I’m going to do, or would you rather just get it over with?”

  The grave way Luna was looking down at her gave her pause. “I feel pretty blown away at this point, and I’m not sure it makes a difference.” Do I want to know? How bad could it be? “Tell me, I guess…”

  She sighed, and held up the black probe. “Okay. Using little articulated legs, this thing is going to open your windpipe, then –”

  “Wait! Stop! I was wrong – I don’t want to know any more. Just get it over with, please.”

  “That’s a better call,” she said with a pat on her shoulder. “Ready?”

  Maré nodded.

  “Open your mouth, please.”

  Trying to follow the probe with her eyes, Maré did as she was bid.

  Luna put the tube into her mouth and close enough to her throat that her gag reflex nearly kicked in. She mashed a button on the box attached to it. Maré wanted to close her eyes, to will it all away, but she couldn’t; the tube was picking its way into her throat, and it was far too real to pretend otherwise. Stars, the damn thing feels alive! From the corner of her now leaking eyes she could see a small light on the box pulsed red as the tube crawled deeper, and it flooded her lungs with a terribly cold fluid. It was all the excuse her gag reflex needed, and she almost vomited. Luna said, “try to breathe normally – as much as you can – the antiseptic liquid is oxygen-rich. And whatever you do, try not to cough or heave, or we’ll have a huge mess to clean up. Getting it in your nasal passages will make it worse, too.”

  Maré made a grab for Luna’s hand, but only managed the sleeve of her lab coat. Looking down, she gave her a smile. “Don’t be afraid – I’ve got you. Hang on,” she said, and moved Maré’s hand so they could lace their fingers, and gratefully, Maré held on as tight as she could.

  As revolting as it was, she did adjust slightly – as much as she thought she possibly could – to the pressure of the bizarre sensations in her lungs. A small, barely sane part of her mind told her that the fullness of the liquid in her chest meant that she was going to black out and drown at any moment, but somehow she gripped Luna’s hand tighter and managed to fight through it. It was revolting, she was definitely breathing after a fa
shion. It was every bit as bad as Luna had warned her that it would be – and then some – but she’d also been right that she’d be fine, able to respire, if she just held on.

  The liquid was pumped in, sloshed around, seeped through her innards and filled her with its cold, surging wake. Maré could just hear it making wet sounds as it fell into the unseen bucket on the floor below her over the sound of the blood rushing in her ears. She barely noticed it, though; what drew her attention from everything else was the sensation of the device’s minute attachments picking through her lungs, separating her, sifting her, cleaning her. She had the crazy image in her mind of a sadistic swarm of miniscule robots, each with a mop and a bucket, scrubbing away at her bronchial tubes, pausing only occasionally to poke her for fun. The cure seemed every bit as bad as the disease.

  The machine continued to go through its cycles and filling the bucket, and Luna gripped Maré‘s hand tightly with a tight but patient smile.

  After an eternity, the light changed to a steady yellow and the sensations changed. Luna said, “It’s almost done now… it just has to pull any excess moisture out and coat your lungs with aerosolized meds.”

  The light went green as the thick tube snaked its way out, collapsing into the canister as it went. After Luna dislodged the end of the tube from Maré‘s mouth, she helped her sit up. She disconnected the canister from the vacuum, and tucked it under her arm. She put the vacuum back in the cabinet, and the rest went into a receptacle in the wall.

  Maré looked at Luna. “Stars, that was rough,” she said a little hoarsely, as a nauseating medicinal taste was beginning to creep out of her heavy chest and up into her mouth. “We’ll have to do that again? You’ve got to be kidding me – a whole week?”

  “Yeah, I thought it was nerve racking, too.”

  “Why were you nervous? Haven’t you done this before?”

  “Nope. I’ve seen the training videos though, and I’m a fast learner.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t tell me that before you stuffed that friggin thing down my throat!”

  “Relax – the machine does all the work,” she said with a dismissive shrug of her shoulders. “Would could go wrong?”

  “Nice.”

  She held her hand up with a sickly smile. “I think you may have bruised a few bones in there, though.”

  “Sorry. I’ve got so many questions that I don’t know where to start… My throat hurts.”

  “Here,” Luna said, as she handed her some scrubs from a cabinet. “Put these on. You can wash your mouth out if you like.”

  Maré got off the table, dressed, and walked over to the sink. She cupped her hands under the spigot to rinse and spit several times, but paused when she stood back up. Looking at herself in the mirror, Luna watched her hand stray up to touch the collar on her neck. I’m sorry, Maré, she thought with a pained heart. You’re property now, too…

  Luna turned from her and sat down, and tried to grapple with the implications. What have I done? There are going to be some huge obstacles, but it wasn’t like there’d been time to think it through… She hoped she was successfully hiding what was going on inside – Maré had been through enough shocks – but she was uneasy about the situations that were coming at them. At least she could avoid introducing Maré to the others until the morning; the twins should be fine, but 85 would probably make trouble. She always did, and that’s not going to change…

  She shook her head to clear that line of thinking. Whatever – it’s done, and it was the right thing to do.

  Maré sat back down next to her and put her head in her hands. “Where do we go from here?”

  Luna said, “let’s start by showing you our room. I warn you, it won’t be much.”

  Maré rubbed her temples between the tips of her fingers and squeezed out a few more forlorn tears, but she tried to pull it together as she looked up. Luna was still trying to give her what she prayed was meant to be a reassuring smile, but she wasn’t terribly hopeful. “Believe me when I say that after this start my expectations are mighty small.”

  She proffered her hand, Maré took it, and allowed herself to be led from the exam room. What confronted her on the other side of the recessing door was one more thing to knock her off balance.

  Four

  Feeling lightheaded and shocked, Maré put her hand on the door frame, certain she was going to swoon.

  Whereas the examination room had bright, powerful fluorescents that harshened every edge and drained what little color existed, the corridor beyond had warm, sepia-toned recessed lights along the ceiling that were almost comforting. They were evenly spaced between the door at her back and several more just like it. There were also a few couches along the wall as well, and part of her mind took note of the thinly cushioned carpet beneath her flimsy slippers, but it was the view that astonished her.

  Opposite the exam room doors was a floor to ceiling wall of glass, exposing a view of the silvered roofs of many lower buildings. The swirls of the weather patterns of a large gas planet provided the backdrop to the whole scene. The view was quite severe, almost as if someone had turned the contrast knob on reality to maximum. Still, it was beautiful in its alien way.

  Maré drifted over to the window and put her hands on the cool glass. Smooth. She could feel it leaching the heat out of her palms. The sensation was something she could believe in, something she understood. A tiny bit of condensation haloed between her fingers.

  “Luna… where are we?”

  “We are on Paradise Station in orbit around Jupiter,” she said with quiet awe. To Maré’s ears her voice almost seemed muted, clipped, as if sound didn’t travel as far as it should in this place. “We are in a small medical wing adjacent to a crop building.” Luna came up beside her, and stood there for a few seconds. “Off to the left,” she said as she gestured towards a taller building sided with glass, “there is another medical wing, for that crop building. You can see its skywalk easily enough.” She pointed at the roof of the building next to them. “That building down there – it’s where we were both formed and grown. You, I, and all of the chromanity in our bloodline.” Just a few meters below their point of view, it looked just like many of the other buildings, boxy and warehouse-like. As featureless and non-descript as they were, they surrendered no hints at the gestating lives they held within.

  They stood there for a few minutes, and Maré’s mind tried to wrap itself around the colossal scale of the view before her, redefining her understanding of distance… and of people being grown for a purpose.

  “How many of us are there?”

  A pause. “About ten thousand in our bloodline alone, give or take. We grow five hundred and twelve pairs a year. I’m not sure how many are in the other bloodlines. A lot, though.”

  Maré let her eyes roam over the lower rooftops, speechless.

  “Compared to most of the other models, our numbers are actually pretty low.” Her voice picked up a cynical quality as she continued. “I guess we go pretty cheaply in the market, but the humans want the better, more specialized models.”

  “I wonder if the real Maré and Luna would be proud of… this.”

  Luna took her by the shoulders and turned her so that they were facing each other, but she kept looking out, still trying to absorb the universe and her place in it.

  “Look at me, Maré,” she said. It took her a moment to drag her eyes from the view and back to the corridor, to the here and now, and to Luna.

  “Thinking like that can be dangerously depressing, though honestly, I’ve wondered, too,” she said. “And you might not have your memories, but your perception shows through. You are who you are. In any case, it doesn’t matter; our premisants are long gone, and we are here, Maré. We are real.”

  “How do we get by? I –“

  Luna thought about it. “This is a bizarre existence, but we can be happy.”

  Unable to think how that might be true, Maré gave a short laugh. “I don’t kn
ow, Luna.” She looked out on all of the buildings that held their sleeping male and female chromanity. She tried to count the building pairs, but they were all the pretty much the same and she kept losing her place. Chromanity, she thought. Another new word, and such a strange one for artificial people… For what we are. It’s like the word used to describe humanity, yet just different enough.

  “How many thousands are out there?”

  “Try not to swallow all of it at once, Maré. Give yourself some time to adjust, and it will get easier.”

  They stood in silence for a few more minutes.

  Finally, Luna said as she tugged the sleeve of her tunic, “We should go for now, but we can come back here, if you like this.”

  Maré turned to her. “Wait.”

  Luna’s eyebrows shot up with a question. “Hmmm?”

  Luna watched her as she moved to her other side. Maré reached for her hand and laced their fingers. When she looked up and their eyes met she said, “I’m not sure, but it feels like that’s how it should be…”

  Luna gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “Yep, we always held hands,” she said with murmured words, and started walking. “C’mon now, it’s very late.”

  Leaving the skywalk, Maré was drawn along sterile corridors between empty labs, down drab, concrete and steel flights of stairs, and even along the outskirts of a small set of cheaply carpeted office partitions. They saw no one else until they came across a nondescript looking man in green coveralls emptying the trash cans of the cubicles. If he took notice of their passage, he gave no indication.

  As they had passed him, Maré noticed that he also wore a thin black collar, but it didn’t display any markings like theirs. When they were out of earshot, she asked Luna about it quietly.

  “You don’t need to whisper – he won’t think you’re rude,” she said with a shake of her head. “He is neither human nor simulant, but an android. Androids are like sophisticated computers – they are programmed and predictable. The ones kept around humans are usually imbued with a thin veneer of personality – it makes humanity feel more at ease – but they are just simple creatures, limited in their abilities to doing a narrow set of skills.”