Halfskin Boxed

by Tony Bertauski

  Laughter rumbled through the auditorium. The floppy-eared black puppy skidded to a stop, paws hanging over the edge of the stage, and searched for a way down. Then piddled on the floor.

  Another spotlight knifed from above, this one illuminating a slender figure that stepped out from stage right. This time, the entire room erupted. They were on their feet, applauding and cheering.

  Ned was forced to stand.

  The iconic figure didn’t recognize his fans with his usual wave. Instead, he strode in front of the small table and towered over the puppy now prancing in a circle.

  “Accidents happen,” Allen Smith said, scooping up the puppy.

  While the crowd continued, silent assistants placed a chair by the table and wiped up the dog’s accident. Allen Smith sat down and crossed his legs. The puppy climbed up the front of his black turtleneck to lick his face.

  And the mystery box continued to churn.

  Allen Smith cleaned his round spectacles while the crowd settled. He remained calm even after the room was relatively quiet. The puppy curled up on his lap and he scratched it behind the ears.

  The crowd waited.

  “Over the past twenty years,” he finally said, with little effort, “we have brought human-augmented technology to unprecedented heights. Our company is solely responsible for biomite stabilization. We curbed runaway replication and allowed humanity to control their biomites. Thought-chat is more common than texting. Internal audio has replaced the need for external speakers. We’ve increased memory storage like internal hard drives, initiated group thinking and collective IQ. We are on the cusp of developing augmented dreamworlds that will generate new realities inside the mind. Quite simply, we’ve made better humans.”

  Allen Smith looked up and delivered his trademarked line.

  “What else can we do?”

  This was greeted with raucous cheers. Ned sat quietly, perhaps the only spectator not moved by Allen Smith’s theatrics. Pomp and circumstance were not substitutes for substance.

  Allen Smith put the puppy down and paced to the left. He folded his hands and walked meditatively. The crowd couldn’t contain its enthusiasm. Allen Smith, characteristically, ignored them. He continued walking with measured steps until he reached the left side of the stage and turned around. The puppy followed him to the right.

  He returned to the center and stood next to the table. He held his reflective pose, gazing at the floor. The puppy sat by his side.

  “What else is there?” he asked sincerely this time. “For twenty years, we have seeded biomites into our bodies to support life, to bring it more vitality, greater longevity and infinite potential. People, we sit on the precipice of creating imaginary universes and unheard-of genius.”

  Assistants scurried out with a short set of steps and placed them in front of the table. Some spectators muttered. Ned was riveted to his seat.

  “People, we were made in the image of God. And now we can follow in His footsteps. I don’t want to simply support life anymore.”

  He grabbed the blanket.

  “I want to create it.”

  Beneath the blanket was a glass case that contained silver rods that moved like mechanical fingers preparing magic, circling around an inanimate object.

  Allen Smith was expressionless. The puppy, however, climbed the steps to investigate what looked like another puppy, this one white.

  The crowd murmured. Ned hoped they wouldn’t stand. He gripped the armrests like he was on the edge of a cliff.

  The silver rods twirled around the white puppy one last time; mist emitted from microscopic nozzles embedded along ridges inside the box. Everything folded up and collapsed to the bottom.

  There was just the white puppy.

  Allen Smith didn’t wait for quiet. Even he knew, at this juncture, that silence would not return. He tapped the front of the box and the glass pane opened. Ned barely heard what Allen Smith said next. His heart was thudding, his ears ringing.

  The white puppy moved its head. It looked at Allen Smith. A lull of stunned silence fell on the room. The white puppy stepped onto the steps and hesitantly climbed down. The puppies collided and rolled in rollicking puppy fervor.

  The crowd found its breath.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Allen Smith said, “I bring you the world’s first fabricator.”

  The magic words were spoken.

  Ned was the first one to stand, his meaty palms applauding. The crowd joined him, tears streaming down their cheeks. Some would not sit again.

  And Allen Smith, uncharacteristically, smiled.

  1

  It’s raining in Seattle.

  Imagine that.

  Jamie pulls up her collar. Her stocking cap is already wet. A drum solo bangs through her auditory implants while droplets drift around a streetlight halo, reflections stretching across wet asphalt. A lone red light at the end of the dilapidated pier is dismal. Across the water, Christmas lights smudge the horizon.

  She can smell the harbor.

  Charlie’s at a metal door that’s flush against a brick wall, corrosion spattered over the surface like paint flung from a brush. His dark form casts a dim shadow. In situations like this he used to shuffle back and forth. He couldn’t stand deserted streets and dark alleys, said they made him jumpy. He would have to talk to himself to keep from freaking. That was before he changed.

  The door cracks open.

  Charlie stands still, almost inanimate, staring at the paint chips. Someone peeks through the widening slice of light. A dirty blonde puts her face in the gap, her eyes darting around. She squeaks when she sees Charlie, the psychopath.

  Jamie calls up her music.

  The haze looks like the night sky is falling, making the world feel dark and small. Green lines run across her vision, identifying the Puget Sound and the abandoned warehouses. She had downloaded the names of the empty buildings and lonely streets in this derelict section of Seattle, home to rats and mosquitoes.

  Jamie looks at her boots, the steel toes scuffed down to the metal. Only the music keeps her from running.

  “Hey.” Charlie tugs on her sleeve. “Turn it down.”

  Jamie rolls her head and thought-chats the volume down. Her eardrums throb and the auditory vacuum rings in her head. The door is closed.

  “Did you turn off your field augments?” Charlie squeezes her arm.

  “Just running audio.”

  “I told you not to.”

  “I’m not, relax.”

  “That’s a deal-breaker. No one’s allowed to run a perception field inside.”

  “I’m not, Charlie. I’m cold off.”

  “These people don’t play, babe. It’s just this one shot. They don’t like you or you don’t play by the rules, then you watch from the outside.”

  He cups her cheek, rubbing the smooth skin behind her ear. His eyes have become bluer and sharper. They used to be pinkish around irises of dull gray. He hardly blinks anymore, like he sees with X-ray vision, right inside her.

  Where it aches.

  “You take the pill?” he asks. “You’ll feel better if you do, just until we get inside. It’ll be good. You’ll see. After that…”

  “Charlie, I don’t want to do the pill, okay? I’m all right, serious. I’ll go in cold off.”

  “One pill, babe.” He digs deep in his coat pocket and pinches a dirty white tablet. “It’s a onetime deal. You won’t need them after this. I promise.”

  Drugs were old school. Chemical addictions took forever to kick. She’d rather go cold off than swallow a pill. But Charlie used to do pills before he changed. Now he doesn’t.

  He’s got those razor-blue eyes that tell her it’s going to be all right.

  “Promise?” she asks.

  He holds it to her lips and pushes it inside her mouth with his tongue, wet and warm. The pill sticks to her throat, a chalky residue spreading inside her cheeks. She works up enough saliva to get the lump down but not the taste.

  Charlie opens h
is coat and draws her in. She puts her arms around him, feeling his warmth, inhaling the essence that is Charlie. He protects her from the rain.

  “You sure you want to do this?” he whispers.

  “Of course. Why?”

  “No going back. If we get caught, it’s all over. Lights out.”

  “I know.”

  “I just want you to decide.”

  Jamie buries her face inside his coat, her cheek against his chest. His heart beats in her ear, filling the silence. He rocks her back and forth.

  Somewhere, a ship moans.

  Charlie keeps looking at the door. It’s taking too long. There’s no handle to pull; it only opens from the inside. Only on invitation. The minutes pile up. Her stocking cap is cold and the pill isn’t working. She can’t remember the last time she went cold off for this long. Music is always in her ears and video feeds her vision.

  The tendons flex on Charlie’s neck. He swallows hard. Each second sows doubt. She’s not charred, not like Charlie was. Her biomites aren’t overworked and burned out. If this doesn’t work, though, it won’t be long.

  The sliver of light returns. The girl pokes her head out like before. She might be nineteen, like Jamie, but hard living makes her look thirty. Her skin is blotchy and her hair knotty. The rims of her eyes are red.

  She impatiently gestures; Jamie comes closer. The dirty blonde’s fingernails are chewed down to the nubs. Jamie’s fingernails still have candy blue polish on them. The dirty blonde presses her clammy palm against Jamie’s wrist.

  “Forty-nine point nine,” she mutters. Her front tooth is discolored.

  Jamie yanks her hand back. If the girl read Charlie’s visible biomites, it would be 49.9%, too. And so would everyone behind that door. Jamie didn’t come for visible biomites. She came for the other kind, the ones Charlie got a month ago. The ones the government can’t see.

  Nixed biomites.

  The dirty blonde’s stare goes unfocused. She’s silently chatting with someone, the circuitry of her biomite-enhanced brain wirelessly networking with others. It’s bright white behind her, like nothing exists in there. It’s supposed to be a dance club. Jamie shuffles back.

  Charlie hangs on.

  “Okay.” Dirty blonde pushes the door open and steps back.

  A cold shank of fear keeps her legs from moving. She thought this would be easier, thought she’d go running inside when it came time. Charlie leans in, his breath warm in her ear. He nuzzles against her neck, kissing it gently.

  “It’s all right,” he says. “I promise.”

  He holds her hand and walks inside, not letting go even when the white light swallows him. He’s a bleached figure, smiling back, hanging on, pulling her toward the light. Toward hope.

  Towards a promise that things will feel better.

  The warehouse dance club explodes out of the white.

  Laser lights fire at bodies that are slammed tight and bouncing to an endless techno-rhythm that ripples over her skin. Charlie pulls her through a crease in the crowd. His military coat looks brand new: clean, pressed, and sparkly. It didn’t even look that good when he stole it. Jamie pulls her stocking cap off. It’s clean and toasty. Smells like fabric softener.

  The dirty blonde looks back, only she isn’t so dirty. Her hair shines like gold, her complexion smooth and tan. Her eyes are clear blue, all white, no red. She smiles a perfect smile and Charlie follows, pulling Jamie through the party that smells like an evergreen forest. It reminds her of spring.

  They walk for several minutes, occasionally passing booths tucked deep into corners where skin heaves in and out of the dark: elbows and knees, thighs, and shoulders.

  Everything unblemished, perfect.

  Augment, baby. Biomites make life worth living.

  They reach a horseshoe-shaped booth in one of a thousand corners. It feels like the back of the club, but there’s no wall in sight. Blondie gestures like a game-show host. Charlie slides in first.

  “Can I get you anything?” Her voice reverberates in Jamie’s head.

  “You can turn that shit down?” Jamie says.

  Blondie sneers like synthesized dance beat is Mozart and how dare she. But then the volume drops until it’s barely a whisper above the ringing in Jamie’s ears. She knows it’s still pounding a rhythm inside everyone else’s heads.

  Charlie holds up two fingers—two drinks—and Blondie melts into the crowd.

  “Don’t insult him,” he says.

  “Who?”

  “The guy running this place.”

  “Charlie, the music is ear shit.”

  “Just…” He takes her hand. “You’re here, babe. You’re knocking on the door, let’s not piss anyone off. All right?”

  He strokes the back of her hand. Before, his fingers would’ve been twitching with all these people, all this stress. Now he comforts her. The thing is, she really should hate this music. She knows that its computer-generated sound bites manufactured for brainless mobs, but it’s getting inside her, making her hungry for more. She forces her feet to remain still, to keep her head from bobbing. She’d never forgive herself.

  “His name is Cee,” Charlie says. “All this is his field.”

  “All of this?”

  “Everything you see and hear. Everybody is experiencing his perception field. That’s why you can’t run your field—you have to commit to his. You feel it, right? You feel the music?”

  She refuses to answer. Does he know what she’s thinking? Was she tapping her toe? Charlie’s not nodding; he’s bouncing his head to the rhythm. He feels it, too. He likes it. If he pulled her onto the dance floor, she’s not sure she could resist.

  “How’s he do it?” she asks. “How’s he making other people see his field?”

  “It’s the power of halfskin.”

  “But everyone is experiencing his field. That’s just…”

  The perception field is a personal thing. Jamie had auditory augments; she could change the color of her eyes or release serotonin into her bloodstream, she could roll identifier script through her vision to see maps or read someone’s name, but she couldn’t make someone else experience it. And not an entire club.

  “He’s almost a brick,” he says.

  “Impossible.”

  “Yeah. They say he’s like 99.9% biomite.” He bites his lip, looking at the dancing. “He’s only a tenth of a percent clay.”

  A tenth organic? Would that even be human?

  Red, blue, and green lasers fire in all directions. The partygoers try to catch them. There’s an island bar not far away, and in the occasional gap in the crowd Jamie sees the lurkers watching the madness. Most of them are chatting up women wearing tiny skirts or transparent blouses over hard nipples.

  One guy leans back on his elbows. He doesn’t like the music.

  Blondie drops off two drinks and a plate of nachos with melted cheese. She holds a metallic pill between long, polished fingernails and flicks a knowing glance at Charlie. He acts like she didn’t just chat him.

  The pill settles between the drinks.

  “What’s that?” Jamie asks.

  “The answer.”

  The pill is hexagonal, silver on one side and white on the other. “No more pills, Charlie.”

  “That’s not what you think. They don’t seed nixes through a gun anymore, that’s old-school shit. Just swallow the pill, the nixes integrate. I thought it was bullshit, too. Look at me now.”

  He smiles. This time she sort of cringes. His smile looks like everyone else’s: all shiny and happy.

  “How’d you pay for it?” she asks.

  He takes a long swallow. “The drinks are complimentary.”

  “No, how’d you pay for the…” She swallows, nervous to say it out loud. “The nixes.”

  His foot stops dancing to the endless beat. He’s looking at the dance floor but doesn’t see it. She can’t believe she didn’t ask this question earlier. When he said he was going to talk to a man about this, she was sca
red he’d never come back. She was happy to see him, happy that it worked, that he wasn’t dead. Happy that there was hope. So when he promised she could have the same thing, that she could save herself from becoming charred, she didn’t ask what it cost. Whatever the price, it was worth it.

  But watching the mindless dance craze and perfect smiles makes her stop.

  “Charlie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How did you pay for this?”

  His jaw clenches. “We don’t have a choice, Jamie.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “I made arrangements.”

  Suddenly, she’s not digging the music. The colors feel bland. Everyone feels like mice on a churning wheel. Jamie tries to engage her field, open her music, and scan the crowd, but she can’t override the club’s perception field, the bodies still happy and perfect.

  “If I didn’t do it, I’d be charred the rest of my life. If you don’t do this, you will be, too.” He slowly turns the glass of beer, leaving rings on the table. “We’re nineteen, Jamie. You’re sitting at 49.9%. You’re maxed out, no more biomites. Another year and you’ll char, just like me. You’ll be left with hard feelings, babe, with sixty-plus years of hard feelings ahead of you.”

  He looks up.

  “So what choice is there? They told me what it would cost, I paid it. We need to be halfskin to cope. This place is giving us the chance. It’s the only way. You know I’m right.”

  Jamie pulls her hand away. “What’s the price?”

  “Just helping out, that’s all we have to do.”

  “You signed us up for favors?”

  “No. We just work for the club until the debt’s paid, that’s all.”

  “What kind of favors?”

  “You got to understand, becoming nixed halfskin is expensive. We could flip burgers for twenty years and not have enough money. I did what I had to do.”

  “What kind of favors?”

  Blondie knows what kind of favors. She’s working off debt, too. That’s why she’s answering a back-alley door and serving drinks while everyone else is having a good time. Does she even know what she looks like when she opens that door? Would she love this music if she stepped outside?

  Does she ever leave?