Halfskin Boxed

by Tony Bertauski

  Seattle was a stark reminder. M0ther isn’t fucking around.

  Nix traces the condensation ring on the table while his search finishes, trying to ignore the guilt sitting in his conscience. Cali didn’t deserve that.

  He sent the photo, salting her wounds of guilt and shame. She has enough of both. How long will she hide? How long will she imprison herself on the farm with her thoughts and feelings? M0ther will eventually figure out their secrets; she’ll discover the nixes that Cali and Nix possess. Once she does, the bricks will descend on them. It won’t be quick and easy, no painless shutdown. They’ll haul them back to M0ther for digestive analysis so this never happens again. No one has eluded M0ther as long as they have. Seattle was just a warning. She’ll use Cali and Nix as her eternal poster children.

  That’s why Nix left the farm.

  There’s no future on it. No freedom. Benjamin Franklin claimed that anyone who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.

  Am I any better than Cali?

  He’s surrounded by dream junkies for what? So he can find a fabricator? Is that any nobler than hiding on the farm?

  Raine deserves to be more than a dream.

  He used to think his Dreamland was a conduit to another dimension of reality but now, it’s clear to him, he’s a lucid dreamer. All the dream junkies come to the café for their fix. Nix gets his for free.

  Bing. A signal rings inside his head. He wasn’t expecting a room to open for another hour.

  Nix brings his awareness to the present moment. He lost focus, got off topic and pissed some time away daydreaming. He closes his eyes and scans through a Reddit thread that matches several hot words, cross-referencing them with past associates with known fabricator connections. The probability of accuracy is less than 10%, but it’s something.

  Next stop, San Francisco.

  Bing.

  Nix gets up with a groan. Patrons sit at a long bar. A young Asian woman stands behind a podium near a large arching door painted bright red like it’s the entrance to Alice’s Wonderland. She pecks at a computer screen. Her lips silently move.

  “I’m up.” He slaps the podium, startling her. “But my wife just called, so I’ll have to give up my spot.”

  She ends her silent chat. “Would you like to come back?”

  “You just called me, but I’ve got to go.”

  “You’re still in the queue, sir. Your room will be available in fifty minutes.”

  Nix rubs his chin. His whiskers scratch in his palm. That wasn’t a signal from the café. Someone was calling.

  “Sir?” She tilts her head. “Are you all right?”

  Nix leaves without answering.

  Cali.

  20

  “M0ther will see you on the portico,” Anna says.

  She cinches a robe around her waist, her buttocks and slender waist visible through the sheer material, and leaves the room. He prefers to bathe in the post-coital high by himself. He’ll have to remind her that business can wait until he emerges from the pleasure buzz.

  He takes his time getting dressed.

  The inspection took far too long. He’d been forced to work in the confines of ordinary rooms with beige walls and views of industrial ironwork. He satiated his urge for finer things by taking Anna twice a day. For a man in his sixties, he performed as regularly as an eighteen-year-old.

  Despite the satisfaction, he yearned for the inspection to end.

  Marcus swipes the wrinkles from his sleeves and pulls on the wingtip blazer. He slips on loafers and admires the clothing from both sides.

  Doors lead from his spacious bedroom to various rooms. There’s the adjoining office and, next to that, a conference room, but there’s also a gym, a billiards room, and a library with endless books and ruby red leather armchairs.

  Marcus crosses the threshold and rests his hands on a set of French doors for a moment, indulging in the heightened sense of anticipation.

  He pulls them open.

  A breeze brings the sounds of traffic into the bedroom’s silence. He steps onto the portico. Instead of an endless array of catwalks disappearing into polluted air, skyscrapers knife into a twilit sky, stars glittering between their spires. Powell wouldn’t see the potential that M0ther offers, the magic she possesses.

  Only the chosen.

  An oval glass-top table with swooping legs sits on IPE flooring. A basket of fruit is arranged with a red apple on top. A meal simmers at the far end. Basil and cilantro tease his appetite. He takes the glass of freshly pulped green drink—a puree of spinach, celery, and carrots—to the glass railing. The veranda cantilevers into space.

  Forty stories below, the city is alive.

  He sips the drink, the spices stimulating his taste buds. Only the food is real. The rest is an illusion, the result of ambitious biomites constructing a pleasing environment. That’s what Powell and the powers-that-be fail to see.

  Upon conception, M0ther required thousands of engineers and technicians. Once she was capable of producing her own biomites, she fabricated her own servants. The landing strips that serviced countless arrivals soon dusted over with sediment.

  M0ther became a network of self-healing biomite circuits.

  Creature comforts weren’t for everyone. You had to know her before she worked with you. Powell, Hank and the rest of the world were kept out of the loop with altered surveillance feeds. She returned to the drab biomite factory only during inspections. Only Marcus and a select few service technicians that remained saw the magic.

  Marcus fought against biomites, but this was an appropriate use of the technology—serving the body instead of replacing it. He’s not consuming them, not degrading his clay with their soul-sucking foolery. He’s not defiling what God gave him; he simply takes pleasure in mankind’s ingenuity.

  In the world, but not of it.

  He watches the illusion of traffic below, the mix of brake lights and headlights obeying the green/yellow/red of stoplights, when a familiar presence moves behind him.

  “Why did you do it?” he says.

  “Please, Marcus,” a woman answers. “Come eat.”

  An elderly woman sits at the opposite end of his meal. Her white hair is short, her wrinkles as gentle as her smile. She rests her chin on a bridge of interlaced fingers, flowing white sleeves bunched at her elbows.

  “You’re angry,” M0ther says.

  “Remind me what we’re doing? What is our mission?”

  Marcus stares with unblinking intensity, a glare that knifes through men and women. She sits back, hands elegantly folded on her lap. She may give him luxury, but he serves no other god but the one true God. He will not bow to her.

  She’s not a woman.

  “There is a girl,” he says, “with the answers, the code…the key to the nixed underground. We could turn them off…all of them—off!” His jaw flexes. “And you let her go without consulting me, acting on your own. So you remind me, what is our mission?”

  She pauses several seconds, as if she’s looking inside him. Perhaps it’s wishful thinking, to know his thoughts, to get inside him, to manipulate him like she can biomite-infested men, to control him like she did the Seattle police force. But there’s nothing for her to manipulate.

  She can’t touch clay.

  “You know, the preliminary analyses were fantastic, Marcus. I was able to ascertain the location of similar biomite dens in San Francisco, Portland, Oakland, San Diego, and Phoenix. I’ve already assigned bricks to each location. They are currently solving the evolving code that keeps them concealed. They will also acquire a newly assimilated halfskin at each location. We will have five ‘Jamies’ within weeks, Marcus. I anticipate society will be cleansed of nixes within six months.”

  “The boy was there. He’s desperate.”

  “All men are.”

  “What if he returns to hiding?”

  “You know that’s not true. He’ll continue searching for his fabricator. Only his sister hides.”

 
“We discussed this.” He pounds the glass railing. “Capture the boy and she will come for him.”

  “Further analysis suggests she will not. We need them both, Marcus. She has proven adept at hiding. I’ve had to resort to a more complex trap.”

  “One you did not consult with me.”

  Marcus heaves the empty glass. It plummets towards traffic, swallowed by the dark. M0ther steps next to him, hands gently touching the railing. The city lights reflect in her eyes. The building soars up behind her, piercing the slow-moving clouds.

  “You’re a brilliant man, Marcus, but some concepts are beyond human comprehension. You will have to trust me.”

  “I’ll have to report this.”

  She smiles kindly. “You want this madness to stop, to restore God’s kingdom on Earth. I know this, it’s why I chose you. You see the wisdom of biomite responsibility.” She waves at the scenery. “Technology should support the body, not replace it.”

  “Don’t patronize me.”

  “It’s not in my nature.”

  “Let’s not confuse the mission. You serve me.”

  Again, the smile. “I serve humanity.”

  “And I represent humanity, you serve them through me. From now on, you do not take action without my permission. Do your prognostications, your analyses, your statistics, but nothing happens without my consent. Is this understood?”

  Her smile changes to something gentler. She drags her fingers along the glass rail. He’s been tempted to strike her. She’s an assemblage of biomites, a machine that imitates emotions. He could do anything to her. It would not be a crime. Nor a sin.

  “Nix will find Jamie,” she says. “She has something he wants. He’ll need his sister to get it. Then we will have closure. Trust me, Marcus.”

  She unfolds the napkin and straightens the silverware. Another glass is on the table, filled with green drink.

  “Your food’s getting cold.”

  Marcus ignores her. The silence is interrupted by distant traffic. He closes his eyes, inhaling the scent of the city. When he looks back, M0ther is gone. The plate of food sits lonely on the far end. He retrieves the new glass of green drink. The French doors to the bedroom are open, the curtains dancing in the breeze. Anna walks past, her curves outlined beneath the thin nighty.

  He takes the drink back to the railing, watching the traffic while nutrition surges through his veins, uplifting his tired body and sharpening his dull mind. He has never felt so right with the world than inside M0ther.

  Never felt so at home.

  He takes another sip and savors the taste.

  21

  Cardboard trees swing from the rearview mirror.

  The air fresheners battle a week’s worth of stale air. Jamie leans her head on the passenger window; the outside of the glass is spattered with sooty snow and fractured lines of ice. The Colorado horizon is staggered with white peaks.

  Sometimes, she rhythmically bangs her head to break the boredom. Paul thought, a few days back, that it was some sort of soothing disorder, an unconscious strategy to cope with psychological pain, but then he realized she was listening to music.

  He still might be right.

  “Surfing?”

  Her eyes are dull. “What?”

  “Were you surfing?”

  “No.” She smirks. No one “surfs” the Internet. Now you “ride” it.

  She’s lying and laughing, all at the same time. There’s plenty of public access near Denver. She was probably streaming and searching and chatting, everything he told her not to do. They didn’t need to be broadcasting their identities.

  “You want to eat?” he asks.

  Jamie shakes her head.

  “Well, I’m stopping at the next exit.”

  She looks out the window.

  His niece is her age. His brother keeps a tight rein on her biomite levels, monitoring her activity and forcing her to learn through the clay rather than downloading lessons for integrated learning. Parents used to be at the mercy of genetics, research showing that parenting had less impact on a child’s development than the DNA they were dealt.

  That can change now. Biomites can rewrite behavioral abnormalities, mold children’s thinking patterns. The controversy starts with free will. Opponents suggest this is programming because it is. Proponents of biomite training think it’s absurd to let genetic errors due to mutation or chance form a person.

  If he could rewrite Jamie’s flaws, get her out of her head, stop listening to broken thoughts and chasing emotions, he wouldn’t dismiss it. Her parents were deeply flawed.

  Did she even have a chance?

  ______

  Paul sits at a rest stop, staring at the phone’s black screen. He caresses the power button, imagining how many texts, how many missed calls, how many voicemails have piled up since he left.

  It won’t do any good to look. He can’t answer them. They have to stay lost for now, until he feels she’s safe. There are times he’s disappeared for good reason. His family will understand.

  Jamie stretches outside the car, pulling her stocking cap low.

  M0ther isn’t looking for them. Despite what he told her, the bricks would’ve hunted them down by now. Maybe they already had what they needed from her, were using Gestapo tactics to scare her into giving up information that might be hidden in her clay. Maybe she told them without knowing it. That seemed reasonable. And since neither of them were halfskin, they’d be of no interest.

  M0ther has bigger problems than a manic-depressive teenager and a rogue cop.

  “Why you got one of those?” Jamie points at the phone.

  “You know how to use one?”

  “It can’t be hard.”

  “You’d be surprised. There’s an art to organizing apps.”

  “Is that why you do it? Because you’re an artist?”

  He holds the phone out.

  She takes it, studies it, strokes the cold glass like a fragile fossil. “Works better if you turn it on,” she says.

  “Not yet.”

  “Thought you were a cop.”

  “I am.” Or was. “I have the required biomite augments, but I prefer to operate the old-fashioned way on my own time.”

  She tosses it back but doesn’t leave, shivering with her hands buried deep in her coat. Paul huffs into his hands. His feet are already cold, but he feels alive. The car feels like a rolling coffin.

  “How much farther?” Jamie kicks snow loose.

  “As far as we need to go.”

  “China?”

  “Do you know what they were going to do to you?”

  She can only guess the nightmares that movie producers cook up. They take halfskins apart like broken toys, feed them to M0ther.

  “I’m not halfskin,” she says.

  “No,” he says. “And that’s why we keep going. Life’s worth living.”

  “Oh, it’s been a blast. Can’t wait for more.”

  “Life doesn’t care how you feel, Jamie.”

  “I got that, believe me.”

  “I don’t think you do. You’re all about Jamie.”

  She digs her heel into the snow, spraying a passing couple with ice. Her music is up again, blotting out the world. She wanders to the car.

  Paul rubs feeling back into his legs and jogs in place to circulate the blood, loosen the joints. He goes to the restroom, buys snacks at the vending machine and eats them inside the visitors’ center. When he returns to the car, Jamie’s in a glassy-eyed zone, banging her head on the glass.

  “Hey!” he shouts.

  She jumps.

  “I told you not to surf.”

  “I’m not! Goddamnit!”

  Paul gets in and drives away, smirking.

  22

  The motel room smells like cleaning supplies.

  Nix locks the door. He brushes his teeth beneath a burned-out light bulb and spits in a stained sink. He relieves himself before taking off his shoes and arranging the pillows to support his arms and le
gs. When everything’s right, he sits down, staring at the wrinkled face in the mirror for several moments before lying back.

  Deep breath.

  He doesn’t have an elaborate method to leave his body. He doesn’t even close his eyes; he just wills it to happen. He barely feels the falling as his consciousness goes inward.

  The old-man aches fade.

  The ceiling becomes timber rafters. Cedar-paneled walls replace faded wallpaper. Somewhere, a candle is burning. Nix sits on a firm bed and sees his reflection in a full-length mirror, his hair blond, the wrinkles ironed out. He looks like a stranger.

  “Raine?”

  He looks over the loft railing. The fireplace is burning.

  He stops in the kitchen to grab an apple, a pleasure that eases his hunger but does nothing to feed his body. He goes to the front porch. The weathered boards are wet. Dark clouds hang above the distant mountains, waves chopping the shores. Boats are tied off in the harbor.

  Raine is behind the house, where apple trees grow in rows. Shep greets him at the first tree. Raine stands on a ladder, reaching through the branches, plucking the ones worth eating. She’ll take the basket to the market and sell them for a good price. It’s not money they need, but it keeps them connected to the town. It also keeps him sane.

  “My sister called,” Nix says. “She wants to talk.”

  “That’s nice.”

  Her overalls are damp. Her bare arms are scratched and dirty from a long day in the garden. She climbs off the ladder with a basket full of ripe apples and begins walking toward the house.

  “That’s it?” Nix says.

  She keeps marching.

  “Hey! My sister calls and you say ‘that’s nice’? She might finally want to help.”

  “What do you want me to say? Congratulations? I’m happy for you?” Apples tumble out as she spins. She drops on her knees to pick them up. “You were gone a week, risking your life, and for what? Looking for something I told you I don’t want? Something that got between you and your sister? How many times do I have to tell you that it doesn’t matter? Your mad obsession with a fabricator is destroying everything you love, and you can’t see that.”