Halfskin Boxed

by Tony Bertauski

  Janine didn’t leave the office. She faced the bookshelves near the exercise bicycle, looking up. Thinking. This was unusual for her. Too passive. Was she giving up?

  He opened the email. It was short. He read it twice, not understanding.

  I can find anything. Leave us alone.

  He didn’t recognize the username, CNN, no one in his address book that he could remember. He didn’t subscribe to that liberal news outlet and it was certainly no one he corresponded with. He had a very good spam filter, but occasionally one would slip through. This one had an attachment, something he certainly wouldn’t open. The pointer hovered over the trash icon. He looked at the username again.

  CNN.

  C and N.

  The attachment was an .AVI file.

  He downloaded it through virus protection. It came up clean.

  Janine was still there, still thinking. Still quiet. Still looking up.

  Marcus opened the video file.

  At first, he was confused. He looked at Janine, then over her head at the books on the top shelf, then back to the video.

  Finally connecting the dots.

  Marcus turned the sort of gray that a dead man wears beneath the mortician’s makeup.

  Fear stabbed him once again, freezing everything inside.

  He closed the laptop.

  It was a long time before he spoke again.

  65

  The horseshoe crab lay still, half beneath the receding wave. The tide was going out, leaving behind ocean detritus to bake in the South Carolina sun. The spiny ridge glistened along the domed shell as saltwater ran off.

  A flower—yellow petals with a burgundy center—fell and stuck to the shell. The next wave knocked it off.

  Cali clenched the flowers in both hands. Her toes sank in the sand as the water washed it from under her feet. When she was little, long before Nix was born, they lived on an island not too far from there. She remembered seeing—every morning when she looked for sand dollars with her mother—the beached horseshoe crabs, dead and dying. They’d flip them over and, sometimes, see a dead carcass stinking beneath.

  A living fossil, her father would say about the horseshoe crab. One of the only things still alive that has fossils dating back 500 million years.

  Cali wondered how they were living when they seemed to die so easily.

  She wondered if a horseshoe crab cared when it died.

  Some kids screamed in the waves. Judging by their sunburns, they were on vacation. She did the math and figured they were Avery’s age. If she was still alive. She would do the math like that whenever she saw kids. She’d do it for some time to come.

  The curtain had been lifted. No more giggles. No more hugs.

  Avery is gone.

  She’d been gone a long time.

  Cali remembered laying daisies where she was buried. She’d picked them out of a neighbor’s yard. Didn’t ask, just wandered through and grabbed a bundle. No one stopped her from such eccentricities, not when they knew what happened. They looked much like the flowers she was now dropping into the water, watching the waves drag them out.

  Watching them go to the ocean.

  Watching them disappear. Forever.

  Nix’s shadow covered the horseshoe crab. He remained silent until the last flower fell. It stuck on the sand. The next wave pushed it between Cali’s toes. It bobbed in place, waving at them until the wave receded. The foam took it under. The color paled beneath the green wash.

  “I’ve got some food.” Nix held out an apple.

  Cali took it. She picked at the sticker and shined the red skin with her thumb.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Yeah.”

  She took a bite and smiled. She said, once she swallowed, “You say hello to Raine for me?”

  “Not yet.”

  Guilt kept him from meeting her eyes when she brought up the dreamland. After all, he still had his delusion. Long ago, he had told her all about the lagoon—the crystal water and black sands, the funneling waterfall and clear sky. And his beautiful girl. His best friend.

  She knew what he was thinking. She could have that, too. Cali could create her own lagoon inside her head. The new breeds could make it as realistic as the sand beneath her feet, the water on her toes. The flowers in the water. She could have anyone there.

  And I would never leave.

  She’d had enough of illusions. She’d fooled herself for all these years; it was time to live right here and now. Perhaps there was nothing wrong with Nix’s lagoon. He insisted there was something more to it, that it wasn’t just a lucid dream.

  Delusions, though, can be pretty convincing.

  “You sure you’re all right?” Nix asked.

  Nod.

  “You want to come in, grab some dinner?”

  The sun touched the horizon. “Think I’ll go for a walk first.”

  “You sure you should be out like this?” He looked around like Marcus Anderson might be on vacation down the beach. “I mean, shouldn’t we lay a little… lower?”

  Cali reached down and plucked a flower out of the water that rode a wave in. She tucked it behind Nix’s ear. She touched his cheek, the stubble rough on her hand. She remembered when he was little, when his face was smooth. When he needed her. Her brother was like her child before there was Avery.

  “No one will ever come looking for us, brother.”

  She almost smiled. Smiling, though, was a long ways away.

  Nix didn’t ask about Marcus Anderson again. Whatever she did, he believed her. With Cali, nothing was impossible.

  She walked along Folly Beach by herself. A beach known as the Edge of America.

  A place where she was scared to death.

  Where she would be for quite some time.

  66

  Nix lay back.

  All it took was closing his eyes, like going to sleep. Only he didn’t drift into unconsciousness, he stayed awake for the ride.

  Like falling down a long dark hole.

  At some point, it didn’t feel like falling. He couldn’t exactly decide when motion stopped. It just became normal. And then he didn’t feel the pillow or the couch. He never once felt like he left his body, only transitioned from the physical world to dreamland.

  Like stepping through a door.

  He heard a macaw. Palm fronds rustling. The roar of the waterfall, somewhere out there.

  Water lapped his toes. Nix felt the weight of his eyelids but kept them closed. Instead, he savored the green scent of the jungle and the salty breeze. The lagoon is alive.

  The new breeds brought it to life, opened his senses. Or clarified his connection. Whatever it was, there was no discernible difference between his two worlds. He imagined brightly colored fish—gold, yellow, and orange—with long tails and spiny fins.

  He opened his eyes. There, near his feet, was exactly what he’d pictured. He waded deeper, sank his hand in the water and let them nibble on his fingers. He floated on his back, tasted the seawater on his lips, and felt the fish tickling his back as he paddled along the shallow water.

  It was possible that his sister was right: the lagoon was a construct of his mind. He had gone way beyond a halfskin. A part of him was still organic, but he’d stopped checking just how much.

  There was no going back.

  He flopped his hair out of his eyes. A spent fire was on the beach. Charred logs sat among a gray bed of ash. Nix dripped on the ring of stones.

  Raine?

  She was usually waiting for him. He closed his eyes and imagined her there, bare feet digging in the sand. Skin bronze.

  But nowhere.

  Weird.

  Nix walked the beach, tempted to shout her name. Words were as good as thoughts at the lagoon. He thought he saw her paddling in from the ocean, but it was just the sun reflecting off the waves.

  A subtle feeling of panic clenched inside. He’d never considered the lagoon without Raine. Never had to. If she wasn’t there, what w
as the point? But that was impossible.

  Why isn’t she here?

  He continued along the sand until he reached the ocean inlet, where white-crested waves ate away at the sand bars that protected the lagoon. The horizon was flat and endless.

  He thought he heard her shouting, convinced it was a wave slapping the sand. Maybe a bird. He shaded his eyes and looked toward the soaring blue cliff, wet with mist.

  “Hey!”

  It was distant, just an audible bump in the water’s roar.

  Nix squinted.

  Something was at the base of the cliff, just above the trees where the earth sloped down to meet the jungle. It was boxy. The top was angular and shiny. A metal roof, perhaps. Yes. Yes, it was. A house. A blue and green house with a copper roof built into the side of the cliff.

  And, there, just below it was someone waving.

  Raine waved him to come to her, to join her in the home he never once saw, certainly never imagined. And yet, there it was.

  And there she is.

  Nix dove into the water, stroking his way across the lagoon in the company of the brightly colored fish.

  Perhaps, he thought as he climbed the opposite shore, making his way up a narrow path, falling trees do make sound in the lagoon when I’m not around.

  M0THER

  Behind Closed Doors

  ______

  Janine Anderson loved her children. Loved her career.

  But never her husband.

  He was a safe bet, that’s what he was. Janine was not a gambler. She knew, the day she met him at a conference for medical technology, that he was a sure thing: connected to politicians and dedicated to his work.

  He was deep into his forties and, if she gambled, would bet he never would’ve married had she not asked him out to dinner. Even then, their marriage was more like a business arrangement. She wanted children and he wanted someone to take care of him, legally as well as maternally.

  Not a match made in heaven.

  So it was no wonder she’d had enough. She knew what she was getting into when she struck the agreement, knew any attraction between them—usually fueled by a bottle of wine—wouldn’t last the length of their agreement. She couldn’t blame him, really. Maybe that was her fault. She figured she was the one falling on the ugly grenade, not him.

  Maybe she overestimated herself.

  One thing was certain, she was not innocent. She’d sought relief from their emotionless arrangement, as dry as a sandbag. She accepted the fact there was dirt on her, that if he got wind of Janine’s sexual preference (Helen was a very, very good friend) and occasional dalliance, she’d lose everything in a divorce. Marcus wouldn’t want the children, but he’d take them because he was cold-blooded. He liked to win.

  So did she.

  That’s why their arrangement seemed like such a good idea, in the beginning. They shared the blood of reptiles.

  And that’s why she installed the cameras.

  He was a Washington insider. His office was his inner sanctum, off-limits to everyone in the family for the purposes of national security. She had never suspected anything of a perverted nature, nothing she could pin on him during a divorce. He played politics as dirty as any of the elected, but in marriage he was as clean as a virgin. No cussing, drinking, or smoking.

  There was never a reason to suspect Marcus even had a pulse around women. But Janine always remembered Justine.

  She was young and slender. Her blouse was unbuttoned one too many, revealing the crack of voluptuous breasts. Janine was distracted and a bit irritated by such a rash display, and the fact that she couldn’t stop looking. But the warmth that lit Marcus’s cheeks was revealing. He had a pulse, after all.

  His gaze lingered on her full lips and caught sight of her display when she looked away. At first, Janine chalked it up to masculine lust triggered by a pair of balls, filling him with an urge against his will. Not that he acted on it, but it was there.

  Who would guess?

  Just in case it was more than that, she scanned his emails for flirtatious correspondence. But nothing. Taped phone calls. Still nothing. Even hired a private investigator that turned up… nothing.

  Maybe she guessed wrong. Maybe he was a man that controlled his appetite. After all, it wasn’t disloyal to think about sex. But she couldn’t stand around with nothing for long. She wanted out. She wanted a life, her life and all that was in it.

  Minus Marcus.

  So a camera was installed in the office.

  She did it herself. It was the size of a marble that fit into the binding of a book that sat on the top shelf, the pages hollowed out to hold its components. A motion sensor turned it on, wirelessly streaming to her laptop. She tested it multiple times while he was in Chicago. His first night back, he locked himself inside to Skype a meeting. She went into the bedroom and watched him argue at the monitor for an hour.

  After that, she only watched the recorded bits at the end of the day, and that she did in fast-forward. Each one more boring than the next. It was the fifth day that things got interesting.

  The fifth day he was sitting back in the wheelchair, apparently sleeping, when he looked up. Looked around. He wheeled to the door and checked that the deadbolt was in place. A lock that couldn’t be undone with a key. A lock that ensured privacy.

  Janine sat up.

  Watched him wheel back to his desk.

  He closed the curtains, checking all the gaps were secure. That he was alone.

  That no one could see.

  He spun around—

  Nothing.

  The streaming cut out. Clipped like an edit. Like something—or someone—had tampered with the video. At first she went cold with fear. He knew. He’d found out somehow and destroyed some evidence. But what didn’t make sense was that all the rest of the records were still there. It just stopped at that point.

  How convenient.

  She would have to check the feed and always make sure it was still there. That it was still working.

  But not until he was gone. Perhaps install a backup while she was at it. If he was up to something—and he was—she would catch it. Eventually, she would catch it.

  What she didn’t know was that her equipment worked just fine. That the video was indeed clipped from the stream and downloaded to the memory of another computer, one that consisted of new-breed biomites seeded into the brain of a woman hundreds of miles away. A woman that had been snooping through their computers, their finances, and pictures and documents until she found what she was looking for.

  Quite a home run, it was.

  Unfortunately, she did not see her husband reach into the upper right drawer, where a secret compartment was installed deep under the desktop, and retrieve a cube. She didn’t see him hold it gently, tenderly, stroking the edges and corners: a cube he’d acquired in Amsterdam, by accident, really. She would remember the trip if he told her.

  It was a conference on biomite perversity, how the porn industry was using biomite technology to enhance orgasms and sexual prowess. It was the basis of some of his best arguments, how biomites contributed to the depravity of the human race. He’d be lying if he said there was never a stir in his groin when he saw some of the images, lying if he said he was shocked at how they were using technology.

  He truly and honestly had no idea they could do that.

  It was just so… real.

  It was during that trip he’d acquired the cube that would be with him for years to come. An item he kept hidden, even though its use was of no consequence to the naked eye, to the unknowing observer. A cube that went everywhere with him. Because he was lonely, if he was honest. His life was dry and empty. He needed something to cope, something to manage the emotional isolation he found inside his house. In his life.

  He placed it on the edge of his desk and wheeled away from it. It wasn’t cheating. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t flesh.

  He laid his head back, watching through slits as the cube unfolded.

 
; Watched the biomite cube expand like magical origami. Watched metallic color turn fleshy, digits turn to fingers and toes. Watched an unfolding lump smooth its rough edges into sumptuous curves and crossed legs.

  Janine would never see the biomite perversion cube walk across the room in high heels, watch her husband lay his head back and close his eyes. She would never know this addiction.

  Unless he broke his promise to the culprit that clipped that video. If he did, he had more to worry about than his wife.

  Clay: BOOK 2

  NIXES

  Through our body, we know the universe.

  An incompetent vessel, it is.

  M0THER

  Fabricating a Better World

  ______

  Ned Peterson sat in the third row, center stage. The set was black and empty except for a small table, also black, with a large box beneath a heavy blanket. Something inside moved with mechanical precision.

  The kids around him were in their mid-twenties, maybe thirties, erupting with nerdgasms. There were thousands of them. Ned was polite but didn’t talk much. He never came to product launches; this was his first and probably his last. But he didn’t want to be distracted by theatrics.

  If the rumors were true, this would change the world.

  Ned taught high school students the basic manipulation of their initial biomite seeds: how to increase intelligence and inspire creativity. He wanted them to use their gifts to better humanity. His students, on the other hand, just wanted to initiate Dreamland experiences and thought-chat.

  Ned was about to find the bathroom when a beam of light engulfed the mystery box. There was applause and standing ovations. When nothing happened, silence settled. Ned sensed a subtle drone in the background, a low baritone that amped the anticipation.

  A puppy bolted from stage left and raced across the stage.