by Lazlo Ferran
I pulled his cap down over his face. “You worry about yourself and let me worry about me.”
“Well this is where I get off. See you in six weeks-time. They have gone soft on you. Just ‘cos you got a slight scrape on the tummy.”
“Rules is rules. Six weeks for stomach wounds, especially when it’s a winner of the Iron Cross.”
He laughed at that and stepped off the conveyor onto a slower, side-conveyor which would take him to the gate for Mars. I stayed on until the gate for Earth.
During the seven days of my journey to Earth’s orbit, I hired a blanker. Blank-Replicant’s were not cheap and in the Army, only officers of my rank or above could afford even the cheapest – Sensels. The name even sounded cheap and sexual to me, but I wanted to spend as much time with Jena as I could, so shortly after boarding I used my credit scan to pay for one and then went to the booth indicated on my heads-up. One enters a drug-induced coma while using a blanker, which is why they are forbidden while on duty and why I had not spent any time at all with Jena since last May. During the hour it took for the drug to take effect, I reclined on the comfortable lounger and thought about Jena.
She had requested a vid-link with me the day before the attack and I had accepted for late in the evening.
The link activated and I was looking at Chloe, blue-eyed and staring at me.
“Hi Chloe!”
Her eyes widened and she crouched, ready to make her escape. Her long white feline ears pricked up and then a pair of hands stroked her long white fur once, before lifting her out of view, to be replaced by Jena.
“Hi Jake!” She sounded upbeat.
I laughed “Hi! How’s Chloe?”
“As you can see, she is exquisitely adorable; doing what cats do. She misses looking into your green eyes and extracting as many of your inner thoughts as possible so that she can pass them on to me.”
“Well, she’s not a fool like you. She knows there are no thoughts there.”
“According to Hansegger, only replicants who are blanks or study Buddhism have no thoughts.”
“Well Hansegger has got it wrong.”
There was a long silence while we both weighed each other up – like two opponents trying to assess each other’s general combat readiness.
“How’s it going with the deal?” I asked.
“Oh that!” She looked embarrassed. “I hope you didn’t mind. I just had to tell you baby.”
I laughed. “It’s fine. So?”
“Yes. Going fine. Tell you a little more, but not too much, when it happens.” She indicated how much with a pinch of her thumb and first finger.
Jena looked great. She reclined and hooked her legs over the arm of her favourite leather chair. She was wrapped in a white cotton bath-robe and her blonde hair was newly washed and brushed back over her ears. Her inquisitive blue eyes tried, as usual, to penetrate my expressions for a quick advantage, speaking of her own insecurity I thought.
“So in answer to your question, yes women do like to be ‘claimed’ sometimes.”
She looked slightly uncomfortable revealing this. I hadn’t expected her to talk about it, especially since she had already answered me in message a few days before. I felt a small sense of triumph. I didn’t say anything, hoping she would go on.
“Satisfied?” she said.
“Not really,” I said “But that’s another matter.” As if wanting something in return for her intimacy she asked, “So what has your god been saying to you?”
“My god?” I stalled while I thought of which defense to try. Jena had one weakness that I knew of; she was impatient and so she became vulnerable if I didn’t respond to her messages or vid-link requests. She however knew my weakness too, and mentioning god was like cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer.
I tried my best defense. “I don’t have a god Jena. You know that. I never have had.”
“But I don’t believe that. How do you stay sane?”
“Who says I am?” I smiled at my facetious joke. She didn’t smile.
“How do you get through ... you know ... what do you do?”
I straightened up. “I live for one thing; getting back at Enquine. I don’t need God.”
“You have Enquine?” She smiled ruefully. “Not that again. I think it’s a defense. I don’t think that’s a real answer and I don’t think you’re being honest with me!” She looked affronted and her tone was acerbic.
I tried the little boy approach. “But it is true Jena.”
“And I suppose you really were too busy to respond to my messages for the last two weeks?”
“Yes. Things have been pretty busy.” I was cautious. She had changed tack.
“Yeah, yeah. Pull the other one. I am on to you Jake.”
I laughed. “Oh Jena. I miss you!”
“Yeah? Prove it Jake. Let me see.”
“See?”
“Yes. Let me see you. Unless there is someone else in the room with you. Katie perhaps?”
I laughed. “No.”
“Well then..?”
“Jena. Not tonight. I am really not in the mood.”
“She became silent and seemed to be brooding, her face smouldering, her mouth fixed closed.”
“Good night Jena.” I said, “End transmission,” and the comms centre blanked the screen. I brooded myself for a minute. I didn’t like falling out with Jena and I wondered whether she was now sitting in that chair sulking or laughing.
When I had heard of the Iron Cross ceremony on Mars, I had immediately left a message for Jena telling her when I would be in and that I wanted to visit her. Later I received her reply. “Love to. Any time and stay. xx”
The drug was taking effect now and I found it harder to order my thoughts in any way.
Gods? What god had Jena been talking about? His god, your god, their god, the god out there, but no god for me.
Mech, the god for all A.I. beings, as robots and androids were now permitted to call themselves, lived in a red world of dust which corroded him and he had three sons, Iron, Tin and Wire. They lived in the desert for they were afraid of the sea, but one day Iron, who was the eldest son, committed a sin by openly doubting Mech and Mech banished him. Iron wandered alone until he came to the sea, and left his mark upon a rock but no more was ever heard from him again.
The Myth of Mech went around my head until I said ‘No!’ For a while I had been curious about the android god but he wasn’t for me. Neither the Christian God, nor Allah, nor Yahweh were for me. Many replicants, like me, were not able to find faith. When you didn’t trust your own memories it was hard to find peace. The memory of the sunset on Mars was typical. If it had been real, I would have been six at the time, and I know the event happened, but not to me. Most replicants were ‘grown’ until the age of sixteen before being bought, or ‘adopted’, to use a more acceptable term. Of course, if you had the money you could adopt earlier or later, but sixteen was the most usual age. This was the age at which it was felt a rep. child would be psychologically stable and provide the least trouble for prospective parents.
Parents were encouraged to call the first day a birthday, and do something distinctive so that the rep. would remember it clearly. In my case it was a picnic by the river in Frisco East with my mother Mary, stepfather and sister Justine. At first, I had believed all the implanted memories of my early years, but soon, taunts of other children made me ask my mother what a replicant was. She told me, and later at college when I met other replicants, I soon learned the truth about our memories. It hurt.
For all this, the memory of the sunset on Mars was the most vivid and it didn’t stop coming.
While in the trance, I lived through the blanker, which was sent to Jena’s apartment. We spent five days together doing the sites of the Moon. Most couples used this method while traveling, to spend more time together. It had some hilarious results. While using a blanker the time-delay was often a problem and while feeding the baby mammoth – star-attraction at Collins Zoo, my bla
nker couldn’t react fast enough and had his hand bitten off. We lost the deposit of course. On the seventh day, I arrived and the blanker was returned to the vendor.
* * *
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Biography of Lazlo Ferran
Lazlo Ferran's extraordinary life has included studying aeronautical engineering; being a dispatch rider, graphic designer, full-time busker, a guitarist and singer (recording two albums); travelling widely, marrying in Kyrgyzstan and a long and successful career within the science industry. He has now left employment in the public sector to concentrate on writing. He has lived and worked in London since 1985 and grew up in the home counties of England.
Brought up as a Buddhist, in recent years he has moved towards an informal Christian belief and has had close contact with Islam and Hinduism. He has a deep and lasting interest in theology and philosophy. His ideas and observations form the core of his novels. Here, evil, good, luck and faith battle for control of the souls who inhabit his worlds.
He has traveled widely, spending some time in Central Asia having various adventures, one of which was getting married in the traditional Kyrgyz way. He keeps very busy writing in his spare time and pursuing his other interests of history, genealogy and history of the movies.
From the author:
Thank you for reading my story and I hope you liked it. I value very much feedback from people and need this if each book is to be better than the last, so if you could take the time to either post a comment on my amazon page or my blog or simply email me, I would appreciate it.
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