Halfskin Boxed

by Tony Bertauski

  But 5% wasn’t enough to change genetics.

  The men and women that failed to keep up with evolution, to conform to a biomite-infested society came to a tavern where gin was cheaper than another dose of biomite. They came to forget, to drown out their humanity.

  They came to make a slow exit.

  Marcus pulled on the end of his ecig, the vapor swirling in thick currents. The mentholated scent couldn’t blot out the stench of sadness and despair, both emotions hanging thick as ash and saturating Marcus’s hyperawareness.

  “Keep.” A man raised an empty glass.

  The barkeep, the owner and bartender of this resort, was locked in a television trance.

  “Hey, Keep!”

  “Hold your horses,” the barkeep snapped, an expression as old as the mustardy-yellow ceiling tiles.

  He poured a drink and lit a cigarette—an old-fashioned, real tobacco cigarette, each huff of real smoke too expensive for most of his clientele. A place like this shouldn’t afford such luxuries. But the barkeep was hiding things. He hid a lot of things.

  “You all right, partner?” Jimmy pointed his cigarette at Marcus and completely ignored the old woman. Like she wasn’t even there.

  She sat upright on the cracked-leather stool, posture that could only be described as graceful. Her hair was white, like Marcus’s, but shoulder length and flowing like her attire. A tiny smile resided in her eyes, the type that was more often felt than seen. Even in a place like this.

  The barkeep’s affront ordinarily wouldn’t be ignored, but the old woman understood. She expected it.

  Light knifed across the tavern, a column of bright fog piercing the depressed air. The door slammed behind a man that limped. The barkeep sloshed a scoop of ice and Coke into a glass and topped it off with Jack. It was waiting for the limping man when he arrived two stools to Marcus’s left.

  Patrick Nelson.

  He went by PN, a little jokey-joke he told people. My initials are peein’.

  “Is this a witch hunt?” the television host asked the viewers, his hair perfect, lips plump and a bit too wet. His words appeared big, bold and yellow at the bottom of the screen. “To discuss the apprehension and segregation of bricks, we bring in our panelists. Welcome to the show.”

  The split screen showed three people.

  “I’d like to start with you, Craig Fellers, founder of the Coalition for Humanity. You know, the initial law that repealed the rights of all fabricated humans stated a voluntary surrender and relocation to the Settlement, but when a third of them failed to report, there was a different approach that feels sort of like a three-year witch hunt.”

  “First of all, stop calling them fabricated humans.” The image of the man in the left panel filled the screen. “These are bricks, end of story. There is nothing about them that is human, and that’s the problem with this debate. We cannot continue acting as if they are human just because they walk, talk and look human. They are one hundred percent biomites, always have been. They do not contain a soul, and never will.”

  The host’s well-practiced smile never faltered. “But doesn’t this feel a little like a witch hunt?”

  “No, not at all. In order to be a witch hunt, they have to be human. This pointless discussion could be ended today if we just turn them off. The government has their frequency coded, they know where they are, they can hit the switch on their life force and end this. That settlement in the wilderness? All that free room and board? It’s costing the taxpayers billions.”

  “Amen to that,” PN muttered.

  “You said life force,” the host countered. “Doesn’t that imply life?”

  “They’re not human, remember that. We slaughter cows and pigs because they’re not human. You want to debate the rights of steak and bacon, leave me out.”

  PN crunched an ice cube and shook the glass. One down.

  “I’m going to skip Jan Flaherty from the clay state of Georgia just for a moment.” The host cut off Craig Fellers’s rant. His lips now moved silently. “I want to jump over to Gerald Gaiman, legal counsel. How do you answer the witch-hunt question?”

  “Well, thank you for having me.” Gerald was warm and genteel without smiling. “I think it’s important to note the legal ramifications whenever discussing fabricated humans. The court does not qualify human attributes based on conception or morphology. The fact that fabricated humans are composed of one hundred percent biomites, which, I might note, is only a fraction above a ninety-nine percenter, is irrelevant.”

  “Buuuullshit,” PN called.

  “The Sentience Laws quantified that any intelligence that passes the Turing Test be given human rights. All fabricated humans that are currently imprisoned on the Settlement—”

  Craig Fellers silently protested the use of the word imprisoned. Because, as PN would say, those fuckers got free room and board on my dime.

  “—have passed the Turing Test, their human rights have been stolen, and the Sentience Laws revoked. These are self-actualized humans that are no different than you or me. One could be standing in line at the bank and you’d never know it.”

  Despite Gerald’s good intentions, his prejudice slipped. One could be standing… one, as someone would refer to an object.

  “You might even argue they’re smarter than you and me,” Gerald continued. “These men and women have identities; that is a fact. They are either cloned from a human, have had memories transplanted from a human, or memories downloaded from a dreamland.”

  Craig’s face turned into a plum. Hands flailing, the host took mercy on the founder of the Coalition for Humanity before the artery throbbing across his forehead burst.

  “You are jeopardizing the human race! Dreamland is a dream, Gaiman. That does not make a brick human.”

  “Humans dream, Craig.”

  “And so do dogs.”

  “But we haven’t imprisoned dogs, have we?”

  “That’s the definition of a pet, you idiot. Dogs do what we tell them. What do you think the world will look like if we keep fabricating these people, huh? What if these bricks figure out how to have babies, what will the world look like?”

  A smile grew on Gerald. “Better than it does today.”

  “Jesus Christ!” PN drained number two and slammed the glass. “Motherfucking brick lover. You hear that, Keep? What the hell.”

  PN swept stray ice off the counter and rattled the glass. The barkeep filled it without reacting to his rant. He was around brick prejudice every day. He knew how to ignore it.

  “Tell you what they ought to do,” PN continued. “They ought to make this a real hunt. None of this pretend witch hunt bullshit, they make this a real hunt. You set up that Settlement place like some real-life Hunger Games and put it on television. Only you let them go one at a time. The highest bidder gets to track a brick down. There’s points for weapons and survival, make a game out of it.”

  PN paused for a sip.

  “How many bricks out there now, five hundred?”

  “Five hundred and eleven,” Marcus said.

  “Right on.” He turned to Marcus. “I mean, shit, they could hunt one every week for the next ten years. And if the show’s a hit, and you can bet your ass it will be, they just print up another one. It ain’t like they’re human, I don’t give a shit what that one asshole said. Am I right, Keep?”

  The barkeep ignored him.

  The old woman took Marcus’s hand, kneaded his fingers and whispered. He nodded to something she said. PN naturally thought Marcus was agreeing with him and continued. Marcus, however, was watching a woman walk behind the bar.

  There was a hunch between her shoulders, frayed kinky hair escaping a bun at the back of her head. She came up to the barkeep’s chest. He bent over to hear what she had to say.

  Marcus closed his eyes and inhaled.

  Through the smoke and despair, he caught a whiff of what they had come for, a familiar tang of biomites, a recognition like old friends that had grown old and unrecognizab
le. Although they had never met, Marcus and the woman were more closely related than anyone in this bar.

  Margaret.

  He knew her name, felt the raised letters on the surface of her thoughts like a scarred brand. Marcus could feel things like that. On her, it was easy.

  Margaret kissed the barkeep on the arm, then poured a beer for someone at the other end.

  A commercial break interrupted the program (dreamland vacations that are certified and 100% guaranteed safe, not one incidence of dream disease, so come on down!). PN went to the bathroom and returned in time to catch the last panelist, Jan Flaherty, the woman from the great clay state of Georgia.

  “What’s the opinion of the state of clay?” the host asked. “Is this a witch hunt?”

  Jan was sitting in a living room, her makeup professionally done but not too prepped to take away from the I’m-just-like-you look. That she nailed.

  “Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina, as you know, abide by the law of existence and separation. In no form do we support the suffering of any intelligent being, including fabricated humans.”

  “You do support the death of halfskins, though,” the host added.

  “That’s incorrect.” She added a touch of a smile, just enough to appear unperturbed without condescension or callousness. “The clay states have abolished biomites to support the development of clay beings. We are not anti-technology, we simply refuse to accept any substitutions for our organic cells.”

  “So no one has a prosthesis?”

  “Be reasonable.”

  “She’s got that right,” PN said. “Biomites got us into this hot mess. Bet you if she was off camera, she’d be down for a brick hunt. Guaranteed. They don’t take no shit down South.”

  Another beam of sunlight sliced the room. Two men and a woman entered, their details lost in the glare.

  “Keep!” PN raised his glass. “You on vacation?”

  Margaret was at the cash register, her back to PN’s whistling. She was completely still, like she was trying to remember something.

  The barkeep dropped off another drink, the booze and soda spilling over the edge. PN complained, but the barkeep paid no more attention than he did to the well-dressed trio that had just entered. Instead, he went back into a television coma.

  “It’s not too late for those tired of biomites,” Jan the clay state representative said with her final minute. “You can convert biomites back to clay.”

  “Jury’s still out on that technology, Jan,” the host chimed. “A bit controversial.”

  “That’s media hype, Jay. It takes a little time, but biomites can be flushed from the body, organic cells replacing them until you’re clean.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “I’m proof it works, Jay. I used to be 40% biomite, now I’m born again…100% clay. We’re already fabricating organs with clay.”

  “So what’s stopping you from fabricating a human from clay instead of biomites?”

  “It’s against our beliefs, Jay.”

  “So it can be done?”

  “In no way have we attempted that.”

  The barkeep seemed to be following the news crawler at the bottom of the screen while his wife was still at the register, trying to remember something. The old woman squeezed Marcus’s hand.

  The trio was on the move.

  They spread out, each talking privately to the patrons saddled at the bar, their conversations a low murmur. A pair of dice stopped clattering at the opposite end of the bar. One by one, they got up, their drinks half-full.

  PN was expanding his Hunger Games theory (this one included death-row prisoners) when the well-dressed woman approached. She put her hand on his shoulder and leaned into his ear.

  “Hey, honey,” PN purred. “Have a seat.”

  Her grip tightened. She said a few more words and stepped back.

  “Buuuullshit,” PN said. “I’m not leaving with a drink—”

  He froze, epileptic. No tremors or shaking, just a full-body seizure. It was the result of an electrified hand that reached inside his brain and squeezed. He slid off the stool and walked toward the door, arms stiff at his sides.

  “Sir?” One of the well-dressed men approached.

  Marcus nodded.

  He didn’t resist, didn’t want the man to attempt syncing his thought biomites with Marcus’s mind and overriding his bodily functions. Unlike PN, Marcus cooperated.

  None of the well-dressed trio said anything to the old woman with white hair. Nonetheless, she stood up and followed Marcus.

  A red banner scrolled across the bottom of the television, blinking letters that read BREAKING NEWS! The panelists blipped off the screen. The television host had enough time to announce the big news.

  The barkeep jerked his head toward his wife. “No. No, no, no—”

  The last no gurgled in his throat. He took half a step toward his wife before his biomites were seized. The well-dressed trio hijacked his body, turning him into a wax replication of horror and desperation.

  “Our sources,” the television host announced, “tell us the last brick has been identified.”

  ______

  As Marcus walked into a bright afternoon, a row of black sedans and SUVs with men and women waiting at open doors greeted him. He let an agent guide him across the street, where the tavern’s patrons watched. Dark forms moved inside the tavern behind the neon Budweiser sign.

  Chicago police directed traffic and corralled the general public, but the federal biomite agents were running the show. The patrons had been ushered behind quickly erected barriers. Newsfeed vehicles arrived minutes later.

  “If you would all remain in this area,” an agent proclaimed, “we’ll be with you shortly.”

  “What about our drinks?” PN shouted. “We paid money. We should get reimbursed or something. Hey, I mean it!”

  Two agents, a slender middle-aged man and a petite woman, started asking questions that were irrelevant, conversational distraction that allowed them to sync up the patrons’ biomites. It was modern-day mind reading. They learned everything in moments, downloading official identities, outstanding warrants, or possible collusion.

  Meanwhile, more agents filed into the tavern. The last brick found.

  Margaret would be sent to the Settlement, where a home would be provided for the rest of her life. Her husband, the barkeep, might never see her again.

  The Chicago police were summoned by one of the biomite agents. They handcuffed one of the patrons that had been rolling dice at the end of the bar, an outstanding warrant for delinquent child support.

  “Patrick Nelson?” the young female agent asked.

  “PN. And I better get that drink.”

  “Could you tell me how long you were in the bar?”

  “Long enough.”

  “Were you aware Margaret was the last brick?”

  “Are you shitting me? She was a… are you shitting me? I knew it, I knew it! I knew there was something wrong with that bitch.” Anger boiled his cheeks red. “She’s a plant, ain’t she?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A plant, a goddamn transplant, man. She was sick a while back, had something wrong with her guts or organs or something. Then she disappeared and came back all good, acted like she was never sick, like she had amnesia. And Keep, that sick fuck, would never talk about it, just said she got better. But I knew it… I knew that goofy bastard was up to something. He cloned her body and transplanted her memories, didn’t he? He made himself a plant and didn’t tell anyone.”

  The rant continued.

  PN despised bricks, but a plant? A plant didn’t know it was a brick and somehow that was even worse.

  Like everyone, the male agent ignored the white-haired old woman and approached Marcus. A faint shimmer trickled through his body, a weak electrical caress. Marcus allowed him to sync up and access his biomite core, giving up the legally allowed personal information. Marcus was evasive without being resistant. He could
easily overpower the man, but deception was easier.

  “Brock Harris?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Marcus said.

  “That ain’t his name,” PN interrupted.

  “Sir?” the female agent said. “Stay in this conversation, please.”

  “I’d like to speak with your regional director,” Marcus said. “We could meet over there. Thank you.”

  The suggestion was unusual but persuasive. The agent was, beyond his awareness, compelled to retrieve the highest ranking officer on site. There was nothing alarming about the request. To the agent, it felt very normal.

  “Nicely done,” the old woman said.

  Marcus walked further down the sidewalk where no one would hear. He and the old woman waited patiently, no words passing between them. Rarely did she stray far from him. She couldn’t. At one time, this bothered him. She was his greatest betrayer. He’d forgiven her, though.

  Half an hour later, a woman wearing creased slacks and a casual jacket approached with a hard pace. Her presence reached out to Marcus, feeling through his biomites. He allowed her to sync up. That was the easiest way for him to read her without her knowledge.

  “How did you find Margaret?” he asked.

  There was a brief pause. Under no circumstances would she answer the question. But Marcus had already invaded her thoughts and given her permission to do so.

  “She was identified,” the regional director answered.

  “Identified? This was not the result of analysis?”

  “Our network identified her.”

  “And who controls the network?”

  She shook her head. That, she didn’t know. Perhaps no one did. But one thing was clear: someone was identifying the rogue bricks. Marcus had known this for a very long time, ever since the Settlement was established. But who? And could they identify me?

  The newsfeeds had it wrong. He was the last brick.

  He knew there was likely a time limit on his freedom, his unstoppable power over biomites, his inexhaustible ability to hide. This, perhaps, was why he had forgiven the old woman for turning him into a brick, for fabricating a clone from his original body—a body free of sin, a body no longer living. Marcus would be a brick for the rest of his life, but with it came great power.