by Carol Riggs
“No thanks, I have my water bottle. So your text said you’re thinking about joining The Body Institute as a Loaner.”
I nod and flick a glance down at myself. “I’m really tired of living like this. I’m sure you know how people treat you when you’re overweight.”
Shelby gives me a gentle look. “Do I ever. It’s like you’re not a real person with feelings inside, just because you don’t look the way they think you should.”
“Exactly. Luckily my boyfriend doesn’t care, but other people can’t see past the pounds. They’re surprised I even have a boyfriend.”
Her low laugh holds a sharp edge. We chat for a few minutes about the positives of the Institute and her fantastic weight loss. Then I lean forward over my mango-pineapple drink. “I’d like to know about negative things, too. Is there anything you didn’t like about your Loaner experience?”
She shrugs. “I’d say shallow people still being shallow people. Suddenly they want to be my friend because I’m on ad-vids and I weigh fifty pounds less. It’s really annoying, you know?”
“I bet. What about ERT, the whole weirdness about having no consciousness the entire time some stranger is losing weight for you?”
“It didn’t feel like three months. It’s like going to sleep one night and waking up the next morning, except lots of things have happened in the world while you’ve been out of it.”
I try to appear merely curious for my next question. “Did the ERT work okay, or do you remember some things now that might not be yours? Images or thoughts that don’t belong, for instance.”
An obvious inner war plays out across Shelby’s face, with eyebrow and mouth twitches. “Oh, nothing too big of a deal,” she says after a bit. “Mostly, the whole experience made me have strange dreams. Or thoughts, or whatever they are.”
“Like what?” I need to know. I have to know.
She uncaps her water bottle, fingers tense, and takes a long swig. “Well, there’s this one bizarre image that I get whenever my family goes over to my aunt’s, and she drives us to the hover-skating rink in her car.”
A compressed-air car. I think I know what’s coming. “What’s the image?”
“It’s me, bent over a keyboard, happily typing an essay about air compression tanks and how they crack and not shatter upon impact. I mean, how would I even know something that geeky tech? It doesn’t make sense.”
It does to me. Because it’s my memory—one I actually remember, since it was in my original backup file when I finished my Shelby assignment and got Restored.
“The reason I ask,” I say, “is because someone told me ERT sometimes misses memories when it creates the Reducer’s privacy brainmap file, the one that’s used to cancel them from their Loaner bodies. It sounds like you got a stray memory from your Reducer.”
Her mouth twists. “It’s not going to go away, then.”
“Probably not. I hope it’s something you can live with. Does anything else pop up when you don’t want it to?”
“Um, I see some really awful green chairs, like I’m sitting in the Clinic waiting room. And I see a beautiful woman with dark hair, singing to me while I’m snuggled up in bed. It’s the most amazing sound, like the song of a husky-voiced angel. I can’t make out what all the words are, but I know it’s a Christmas tune.”
My stomach pitches and drops hard. Mom. That sounds like a memory of her, one I don’t remember. I can recall other images of her singing while I was young and in bed, but they didn’t involve a Christmas tune.
No. Oh, no. I’ve lost that one to Shelby. That memory got downloaded into Shelby, and then it stuck in her brain when I got canceled out of her body. Not a problem for a Reducer normally, but that memory must’ve stayed in my real brain this time instead of being downloaded into Jodine, and I don’t have my own body anymore.
Haze it all, ERT isn’t even consistent with the memories it brainmaps from one assignment to the next.
Part of me is gone forever.
Shelby tenses up even more and leans so far over the table toward me, our heads nearly touch. “There’s this one other scene that gives me the shivers. It’s like I’m in a long hallway, following a silver robot shaped like a bell. I overhear a phone conversation spoken in some guy’s deep voice. He’s angry.”
This is new, something I don’t remember. “Yeah?”
“He comes out of a room and almost runs into me. He has a black goatee. His face matches the words he just said—angry.”
“Do you remember the words?”
“Yes, and I wish I didn’t. He says, ‘Then get rid of him, if he knows too much. Send him to Seattle.’ I don’t know what that means, but it sounds light-years beyond creepy.”
“It sure does.” I try to keep a shiver from running down my arms, but a crop of serious gooseflesh springs up. Seattle. There’s an Institute branch in Seattle. Leo’s there now.
Shelby curls her hand over my forearm, and her fingernails press into my skin. “I hate thinking of that image. I figured it was just a bad dream until September when I was at the admin building waiting to plan a new ad-vid, and that very same guy came out of Mr. Behr’s office. He’s real!”
I grit my teeth, pat Shelby’s hand, and extract her fingers from my arm. “I don’t know if I want to join the program if I end up with memories like that.”
She thumps against the back of her chair, exhaling long and hard. “Overall it was worth it, but I wish they’d fix their Transfer equipment and get it working right.”
I shove my hair away from my face and close my eyes.
That, Shelby Johnson, is the understatement of the century.
Chapter 25
New park, new rendezvous bench. I stand on the sidewalk in South Park as the MT hums up to the Green Zone shelter and opens its doors. Now that I have this nasty tracking chip in my arm, Vonn and I have to meet at a totally different park to prevent Leo from making a connection between me and the park Vonn used to record in his daily log.
Vonn steps off the MT, strolls up, and gives me a hug so intense that it leaves me breathless. “Seems like ages since I’ve seen you instead of just yesterday. Come on, let’s swap info. I’m dying to know what you’ve learned from Shelby.”
We start along the paths, and I tell him what Shelby said. “That means the memory of the goatee guy must’ve happened while I was Reducing for her. That’s why I don’t remember it.”
“Right, and it stuck in Shelby’s brain during your cancelation mapping, so that’s why she remembers it. I’d like to know what’s in Seattle that’s such a punishment.”
“No kidding.” Or maybe I don’t want to know. “Have you learned anything with your WHA research?”
“Conspiracy news galore, most of it ridiculous. Maybe we need to join the WHA to get an inside view.”
I chuckle with him. Like that’s going to happen. “Did you find anything about the Spares?”
“Not a whisper or a hint. I don’t think anyone knows about them.”
Which makes it more difficult to uncover the truth. I’m dying to find out what Leo knows. Too bad I can’t ask him directly, or blackmail information out of him somehow.
“Where are all the Spare bodies kept, anyway?” Vonn asks. “In the suspended animation rooms? If that’s true, a bunch of them got blown up in our branch’s bombing.”
“I never thought of that. Hey, do you think Steven was a Spare? The Institute could’ve stripped his brainmap and sold his body to Chad’s mom. They could’ve lied to her about why Steven was brain dead.”
Vonn’s eyes are bugged as he spins toward me. “Do you realize you’re implying that my best friend was the kind of guy who would end up on death row?”
“Sorry!” I say, my own eyes bugging. “I didn’t think before I blurted it out.”
“Don’t worry, you’re still my favorite Geekling,” Vonn says with a lopsided smile.
I bump him with my elbow. “But maybe not all Spares are criminals on death row. A few of them migh
t’ve just been in accidents and lost their brain function, like Steven.”
We slow to a walk for our second lap. Vonn’s silent for so long, I dart a look at him. He doesn’t look mad, though, just thoughtful. Pale and thoughtful.
He veers off to a bench and accesses his phone, flicking info across the screen. “I’m looking up records for Steven,” he says. “I was going to do it before, but then the bombing happened. There’s gotta be something online that I didn’t see back when he disappeared. Not that I was really looking. I just thought he forgot his email password again, since he wasn’t the most organized guy.”
I sit close beside him and rest my chin against his shoulder. He checks accident and death records first.
“Here it is,” Vonn mutters. “A death record for the fourth of February. Sounds about right. Ten months ago is when I lost track of him.”
“Is that the day someone did Chad’s Transfer and inserted his ID chip into Steven? They’re calling that the date of Steven’s death?”
“Could be.” Vonn scratches his chin. “Huh, check this out. He also has an arrest record. Dated in January, three weeks before his death.”
I look and frown. The arrest is for trespassing and mild property destruction. “What’s that’s all about?”
“I can make a good guess,” Vonn says. “Steven was really into animal rights and ran around with a bunch of frat boys who sometimes got a bit, uh, passionate when they heard about people abusing their pets. They’d go on aggressive rescue operations. Save starving dogs and stuff. Sometimes they’d trash people’s houses while they were at it. Looks like Steven got caught.”
“That incident or arrest wouldn’t have anything to do with him being brain dead, would it? Like, he got injured or something?”
“Dunno. This record just says he was arrested, no hospital addendum. You know, it could be that the Institute has nothing to do with his Transfer. There might be a black market for bodies, and another group is stripping and selling them.”
“Scientifically speaking, that’d be a stretch. It’s really advanced tech.”
Vonn’s mouth is a tense line as he pockets his phone. “An Institute scientist or worker could be leaking classified data, selling it to underground groups. Something’s going on, Morgan, something terrible. We just don’t know exactly what or how.”
“We’ll keep digging,” I say. “We should try Chad and his mother next. I bet she’d know if it was the Institute or another group who did their illegal Transfer, even if Chad doesn’t.”
Vonn curls his fingers around mine, and links them tight. “She’s not going to tell us.”
“We could convince Chad to ask her, and he could tell us. We need his contact info. Can I borrow your phone to do a bit of research without Leo having a fit?”
He digs it back out and hands it to me. “Needle in a haystack, Geekling. We don’t know his last name, and Missouri’s a big state.”
Unfortunately, he’s right. I run searches on CyberFace for “Chad in Missouri,” and come up with hundreds of matches. Less for images, but too many to comb through while sitting on a hard park bench with a cold December breeze blowing in my face. “Ugh, I’ll look through these tonight on my own phone. Chad might not even have a CyberFace profile. How about his mother?”
“We don’t know her first or last name.”
“Hey, don’t spoil my fun.” Not wanting to give up already, I type in Chad, mother, National Health Care, and Missouri. Chad did say his mother worked for health care. On the second page of results, my fingers freeze over an image on the screen.
Vonn sucks in a sharp breath. “Would you look at that…”
The photo is dated two years ago, taken at an annual health convention dinner. A bony young guy with dark shadows under his eyes and no hair is labeled as Chad Moore, son of the councilwoman of the Missouri National Health Care Association. Chad’s mother stands next to him, petite, auburn-haired, and fierce. A man stands on her other side, his arm wrapped around her shoulders in a comfortable and possessive way.
There’s no mistaking the man’s trim mustache, the precise styling of his hair, his determined salesman smile.
It’s Leo. He used to work for National Health Care.
Not only that, it seems he knows Chad and his mother.
With Jodine’s thick coat collar turned up against the spitting December rain, I join the flow of the crowd heading for the brick building across the street. There’s a surprising number of people attending this WHA meeting. Vonn doesn’t think I’ll uncover anything worth the risk of being discovered, but I have to try every angle to dig up information.
If I’m caught, I can just tell Leo I was checking out the holiday lights in this area. It’s decorated with glowing snowflakes and rows of crimson-draped trees.
“Excuse me,” I say to a woman with tiny wreaths for earrings. “You’re going to this meeting, right?”
“I am.” She stops, boots poised at the edge of a puddle. “You’re welcome to join us, although I’m afraid we’re not too organized at the moment, with Walter gone.”
“Did Walter Herry really have anything to do with the Institute bombing?” I restrain my words to keep them from coming out harsh. “That was horrible. No one’s rights are protected when buildings and people are blown up.”
The woman’s forehead puckers. “Not all of us advocated violence like Walter. We agreed something had to be done, but we were split about what that would look like. He and his diehard followers decided the bombing was the best way to get the public’s attention.”
Ah. Herry did scheme with the maintenance tech to set off the bomb. As I suspected. I wish I could tell this woman about the Spares, how Vonn and I are 99 percent sure the Institute performed Chad’s illegal Transfer—involving ID swapping that isn’t sanctioned by the International Nations Council yet. Or at least Leo himself arranged for it, under the table. I’m super tempted to say something right now, but for that risky of a move I’ll need to wait until my assignment is done and I’m out of Jodine’s body.
“I’m thinking of signing up at the Institute as a Loaner,” I say to the woman. “But I’m afraid of losing my backup file or having my body attacked by your group.”
“Don’t sign up,” a male voice cuts in from behind us, before the woman can speak. “The program sucks. It’s designed for a bunch of Ego-Heads who think they’re better than you because they can lose the weight you can’t.”
I turn and discover two people in black sauntering up the sidewalk, a blonde with a star tattoo on one cheek and a smokin’-hot guy with spiky hair. “Maybe Reducers just want to help others,” I say, my words coiled tight. “Not everyone is a shallow Ego-Head.”
His gaze sweeps across me in a split second, and I can tell by the glazed look that follows that my round figure and overall appearance haven’t made one tiny blip on his male radar. To him I’m a chunk of asphalt or a piece of furniture, nearly invisible as a female.
The blonde bounces in her buckled shoes. “Come to the meeting with us!” she says to me. Her voice is breathy, as if everything is beyond-galaxies exciting. “I’ve been a WHA member for more than two years, and we’ve done some really important work.”
“The WHA helped murder a lot of innocent people,” I say. “That didn’t solve anything.”
The guy shrugs one shoulder, barely a twitch. “It’s a war dealing with rights, and there are always casualties in a war. Besides, none of those people were innocent, since they agreed to work for the Institute.”
The blonde nods and starts listing off “valid” reasons for the bombing.
The woman with the wreath earrings spears the blonde with a stern look. “Don’t make blanket statements, young lady. Not everyone in the WHA supports using violence to solve rights issues.”
The blonde huffs, while the guy launches into a tirade to defend her. I’ve stood around here long enough. I’m not learning any new information. I hold up a gloved hand. “Sorry, I gotta go. Don’t be late for
your meeting.”
The wind whips my face as I head to the nearest MT shelter. Man. I used to be deluded about a lot of things, people and beliefs alike. But I’ll take one Vonn over a thousand hot-but-empty dudes like that WHA guy any day.
I’ve almost reached the Kowalczyks’ house when Leo texts me. I feel like ignoring his message, but I don’t want to get on the wrong side of him. He’s formidable enough when we’re working toward the same goals.
Morgan. The auto-system just alerted me. What were you doing in the Red Zone tonight?
How I loathe my tracking chip.
I didn’t know being in the Red Zone was against the rules.
Don’t avoid my question. Let me state it this way: your chip placed you squarely in the vicinity of the WHA meeting scheduled there tonight. I want to know why.
There goes my excuse about the holiday lights, since anything related to the WHA is apparently flagged. This kind of linking to my location will really cramp my investigating.
Don’t you trust me, Leo? I hate the WHA! They ruined the backup files and blew up my body. It’s not like I’m going to attend one of their meetings or become a member, if that’s what you think.
So what WERE you doing?
Antagonizing them, apparently.
It’s the truth, though not my initial goal.
I was arguing about rights and the WHA going around murdering Institute workers.
Ah, I see.
A slight pause.
Don’t engage them, Morgan. It’s pointless. Concentrate on your job. You’re not in Jodine’s body to right the wrongs in the world. Do that on your own time.
Fine. I’ll wait until I belong to myself again.
Whoever “myself” is—or will be, by the time this job is finished.
Chapter 26
On the tenth of December, I awaken in Jodine’s room and groan. I cover my eyes with one bent arm. It’s Saturday, my eighteenth birthday. I don’t see how this day will be enjoyable by any vast span of the imagination. My only bright spot will be meeting Vonn at the park later. Somehow I have to make it through my routine until then.
