by H. A. Swain
The person fights, but she’s stuck, tethered to the bottom of the pool by a pant leg sucked into the drain. I bob to the surface for another gulp of air and dive down again, pushing hard with my arms to reach the bottom. I look at the girl. Dark hair floats up around her head. She’s wearing Talitha’s green shirt with the frog on the front. Knowing I’ll never get the pant leg out of the suction of the drain, I loosen the waist of her pants and strip them off her body, pulling her shoes off, too. I wrap my arms around her legs and push off the bottom as hard as I can, with her sitting on my left shoulder to drive both our bodies toward the surface of the water.
TALITHA NEVA
ALPHAZONIA, EARTH
I EXPECT MUNDIE to figure it out and go after Castor, but he stands in the doorway and watches the person he thinks is me run away. His shoulders slump. I see resignation in his eyes, which are alive again, unlike when I passed him in the hall.
“Your sister’s a bitch. And a tease,” he says. “Led me on for years, but I don’t care anymore. She’s a lesbo, and I’m not into that.”
I could almost feel bad for Mundie if he weren’t such a jerk. He would have been better off living in Merica, where people think like he does. Instead he came to AlphaZonia and made himself miserable, so it’s easy for me to stay put against the wall, my arms crossed defiantly, sneering at him as I imagine Castor would.
“But at least I’m getting rid of you!” He reaches out and grabs my shoulder. My heart catches, and my palms sweat, I’m so afraid he’ll know it’s me. But in his anger, he doesn’t seem to notice.
Please, Uma, please be on that Shuttle, I think to myself as Mundie shoves me into the hall and marches me toward the elevator.
“TFT Implant Center,” he commands, and we travel down to a lower floor. We exit into a pristine patient ward in what appears to be an automated hospital. MediBots zip along the corridor and disappear into quiet rooms. I peek inside one as we pass and see a young Yoobie guy in pale pink lying passively on a bed, laughing at an external Stream projected on his wall while three MediBots prod and poke him.
“Are all these people getting TFT installed?” I ask as we walk past dozens of these rooms.
“Duh,” says Mundie.
“Am I getting one?”
He shrugs and says, “It’s not so bad. I have one.”
I wonder if the dead-eyed people I saw earlier with Mundie were patients here.
At the end of the hall, he dumps me in an exam room where a SecuriBot snakes out two tentacles and straps me to a gurney. The room is small and cold. The bright overhead light reflects off the silver surfaces of a sink and metal countertop. I shiver but don’t struggle, because there’s no use. Whatever’s about to happen to me can be no worse than what Uma’s going through. I have to be strong for her and make it onto that Shuttle.
A person walks in that I don’t recognize at first, then I realize that it’s D’Cart. She looks nothing like she usually does. Instead of her trademark flowing pink silk clothes and glammed-out hair and makeup, she’s in a crisp white lab coat, hair pulled back tight, face scrubbed clean. She pulls on gloves, then takes a thin patch out of her pocket.
“I’m sorry your sister chose the Moonling over you,” she says perfectly pleasantly as she walks toward me.
“MUSC drones got the Moon girl,” Mundie says, and D’Cart blinks with surprise. “Picked her up a while ago and carted her off like vultures with a hunk of meat.”
D’Cart shudders. “Cruel people. Hauling her back up to the Moon, I suppose. Poor kid. I was just like her once. Dying to get out of there. At least I get to go back on my own terms.” She grins and comes at me with the patch.
“What’s that?” I ask, instinctively pulling away, but I don’t get far with the straps holding me in place.
“Just a little oxymorphone mix to make your flight more pleasant.” She pushes up the left side of my shirt. I flinch, afraid that my outie belly button or the small mounds of my breasts beneath the binding will give me away, but she only exposes my hip, which she rubs with a cold, wet swab before she pulls the backing off the patch and slaps it on my skin. Immediately, my belly feels warm and my legs get heavy. That sensation continues to radiate through my body, and I feel myself relax, despite my fear and uncertainty about the situation.
“There’s enough anesthesia in there to keep you comfortable for the entire flight, plus a nice strong dose of a benzodiazepine to erase your memory of this. You won’t notice a thing once you’re under or have a clear memory of what happened here when you wake up,” she says, as if that should be comforting.
She picks up a small machine from the countertop and sets it on my chest. Two clamps reach out and attach themselves to my temples as a thin black cable snakes forward and stops in front of my right nostril. “You know what this is, don’t you?”
I whimper but can’t shake my head.
“It’s one of my finest EndoscoBots!” she says proudly. “Normally I’d attach a drill to the end so it could bore a hole through the transnasal corridor and insert a TFT web in your brain, but I have something different in mind for you!”
She withdraws a box from her pocket, then uses a set of tweezers, the kind I’ve seen Castor use many times on the Yoobies during a DopaHack, to pluck out a small silver disk.
“Isn’t it cute!” She holds it up to admire. “I stayed up all night making this pump.” She attaches it to the end of the black cable, which sways in front of my face like a cobra waiting to strike.
“I’ve had this idea for a long time,” she says. “But I couldn’t figure out how to spread my little cyber critters to the MUSCies. Their security is airtight. All of them walking around with those stupid hoods.” She rolls her eyes. “Until the Moonling showed up. Then I knew, if I could infect just one person with the right stuff … Actually, I wish it had been the Moonling,” she says. “Then again, you are the perfect person for this job. Do you know why?”
I shake my head, which makes the room spin.
“Once I load you onto the Shuttle, you will be untraceable. Like all Wastelanders, you’re a nobody. An undocumented person who doesn’t belong anywhere. That’s what I was, until I made myself into someone else. No one but your sister and your mother will ever miss you.”
“Mastream!” I slur. “Flowers. No. Fallers. Ugh.” My tongue feels fat in my dry mouth, and I can’t get the words to come out right.
“Your stream? Your followers? Oh, please!” says D’Cart. “Streams die all the time. The people of Earth have the attention spans of gnats.”
Mundie laughs.
D’Cart scowls at him, then leans down close to my ear. “I wish I could have sent dumdum over there in your place.” She jerks her thumb toward Mundie. “But I already put a chip in his brain, so the virus would have shut him down, and I’m going to need him. Such a shame to waste a brilliant mind like yours. I always knew you were special, Castor. It’s amazing how with no education at all, you can put things together in new ways to make something novel. That’s the sign of genius. And this…”
She holds up the canister of goo Mundie stole from me. “What you did with this is pure brilliance!”
With the tweezers, she plucks out tiny glimmering balls of goo that she inserts into the minuscule pump, one after the other. “Who knew the way to spread my virus was under our noses all this time?” She tosses her head back and cackles. “Get it? Under our noses? But it’s ironic, isn’t it? Me using your stolen tricks against you to get back at MUSC?”
Next, she takes a vial and a syringe from her other pocket. “Now for the virus.” She pulls the cap off the needle with her teeth and spits it on the floor, then inserts the tip into the vial. “I’ve had this ready to go for years.”
Slowly she draws the liquid down into the syringe, then flicks it to loosen an air bubble. The needle glints in the cold white light. My heart is in my throat as she comes toward me, but my body is too leaden to move away. Instead of injecting me, she inserts the needle into the
tiny pump and loads it with the liquid.
“There it goes,” she says, and shakes the snaky robot arm to mix the goo and the liquid inside the disk.
“Now, with every breath you take, my itty-bitty cyber warriors will hop on the backs of the bacteria filling up your respiratory system. And when you’re on board, breathing and coughing and sneezing, our little friends in here will circulate through the Shuttle’s air system, get up the noses of the MUSCies, sliding right up inside their neural webs, and BOOM! I’m in business.”
“Bzzniss?” I ask.
“Expansion! Colonization! A new destination for my followers,” she says excitedly. “And no more ExploroBots.” She takes my hand in hers. “Together, we’re going to end that travesty. Now, are you ready?”
“No, please,” I moan.
“First, a little spritz of local anesthetic so you won’t feel a thing.” She shoves a small nozzle up my nose and squeezes a mist into my airway. Immediately, the front of my face goes numb. Then the clamps on my face tighten so I can’t move my head while, slowly and carefully, the snake-like cable enters my right nostril and pushes the pump deep into my sinus.
“Don’t worry!” D’Cart pats my arm when I gag and sputter. “We’re just installing it in the middle nasal meatus, snuggled up between the two layers of the nasal conchae. No long-term harm done to you. Once the goo runs out, the device will shut down and you’ll sneeze it out or swallow it.”
The cable retracts from my nostril. I feel my nose running. Something drips onto my upper lip. She wipes it away with a soft cloth.
“It’s working,” she says, sounding giddy.
“Now listen, Castor.” She leans in close. “If you’re half as smart and resourceful as I think you are, you’ll probably survive. You have no implant, so the virus won’t affect you, and you’re hardy enough to fight off the bacterial infection. All you have to do is stay alive once you get to MUSC.”
A sick feeling washes over me.
“And if you do, you can join us. You’d truly be an asset to my organization when we get there.”
“Gewhere?” I ask, unable to make my numb lips form clear words.
“MUSC,” she says like I’m stupid.
“Idonunnerstan,” I say.
D’Cart pats my arm. “I don’t expect you to. You’re a pawn in a bigger battle, and I’m not who I seem to be.”
I blink and try to focus, but I feel myself being pulled under, and I’m uncertain if I’m hearing her right or if the drugs are making me hallucinate now.
“But if you do make it through all this, here’s a message for you to deliver.” She leans down and grips my face between her cold hands so we’re eye to eye. “If you see Valentina Fornax up on the Moon, tell her Zaniah Nashira is coming back and MUSC will soon be mine.”
She steps away. My vision blurs. Then Mundie is close to me. “You know, Castor, with both you and the Moon Girl out of the way, I’ll finally have Talitha all to myself, and when I find her—”
“No,” I say. I look him straight in the eye and muster up all the reserves I have. “I’m T’ltha.” Mundie blinks at me, and I try again. “’M Talitha.”
“No you’re not,” he says, but I can hear the panic rise in his voice as he begins to suspect the truth.
I start to float away. Above my own body into the bright white light of this room. I hear myself laugh, sloppy and sad. “Mgointothemoon.”
“No, no, no,” says Mundie. He pats at me as if I’m a dog, starting at my shoulders, past the flattened mounds of my small breasts. My stomach clenches as he violates me with his touch.
“Quasar,” I growl sloppily. “Attack.” Then I remember, Quasar isn’t here. Soon I’ll be floating in the sky. Weightless like my father.
“This is the wrong one!” Mundie cries. “The wrong twin. It’s the girl. This is Talitha.”
“Doesn’t matter.” D’Cart snaps off her gloves and tosses them away. “All we need is a host. Boy, girl, human, Moonling, any warm body will do.” She turns away. “Have the SecuriBots take her to the ExploroBot Creation Center in the Wastelands. There’s an AutoTruck waiting there for her.”
UMA JEMISON
ALPHAZONIA, EARTH
SWIM, MY FATHER tells me. Move your arms and legs and swim. The tide pulls me back, away from him, and I’m out of air. My lungs burn, and my body is too heavy to move. Swim, he yells again. Above me I see wavering light. Blurry blue and yellow. That way is up. I need to go. I make myself move. I claw at the water. Something below me lifts my body until my head bursts into the air and I gasp. I sputter and choke as someone or something tosses me up and out of the pool and I roll facedown on concrete, gasping like a dying fish. A person climbs up beside me and stands over me, dripping.
“Are you Uma?” a deep voice asks.
I flop to my back and squint up into the light where I see Talitha’s face. I think my eyes must be playing tricks on me. I can’t talk. Only cough and choke and nod.
“We have to go.” The person with Talitha’s face reaches down and pulls me to my feet. I’m barefoot. My pants are gone, but this person doesn’t care. “SecuriBots!” he yells in an unfamiliar voice. “Run!”
My arms and legs are waterlogged and heavy. My shoulders ache, and my arms tingle from where the drones carried me. But I do my best to follow across the grass, away from the pool, away from the Palace, away from three red robots now in pursuit.
“Who. Are. You?” I manage to get out.
“I’m Castor,” he says, and pushes me to go faster.
“Twin?” I gasp.
“Yes.”
Behind us the red SecuriBots wobble up the hill, wheels uncertain on the uneven terrain. Castor darts away and scoops up something shiny from the ground as we run. “This yours?” he asks when he returns to my side.
I feel slapped stupid. I can’t understand.
“Is this yours?” he asks again, shoving it at me.
I recognize it. My device in three pieces. Fallen from the sky. “Yes.” I gasp for air.
Castor swings a red bag off his shoulders. Talitha’s knapsack! He unzips it as he jogs and shoves my device inside. Ahead of us, I see the ruined remains of a smoking MUSC drone. One propeller still turns. Castor swipes that and bags it, too.
“Keep going!” he says when I slow down. He grabs the corner of my shirt and pulls me forward. We climb a hill, pass a pond, and follow the curve of a small stream to the right, toward willow trees and the security wall. The robots have spread out. Triangulated to cut us off. One goes into the stream, spraying water left and right as it speeds toward us.
My lungs burn, my legs are jelly. “Can’t!” I gasp.
“Yes you can!” Castor shouts. “Talitha will be waiting for you. You have to get there.”
“Where?” I beg.
He shoves me into the stream ahead of the robot and yells, “Duck!”
I dive under a low branch. Through a face full of water, I see a small grate where the stream flows out of the wall ahead of us.
I hear the SecuriBots thrashing through the branches behind us. Castor slides past me and kicks at the grate. “Help me!” he yells.
I grab a heavy stick from the bank of the stream and crawl forward to bash at the grate until it pops open. “Go! Go! Go!” Castor yells, and pushes me through the hole.
I look over my shoulder as I slide through the opening. One red robot has made it through the branches. It shoots out two tentacles, but Castor dives headfirst through the hole just as the tentacles splash into the water where he crouched a second ago.
Safely on the other side, we scramble to our feet and run out of the stream, go through more trees, and pop out onto the side of a road. The road Talitha and I ran up days ago. Castor shouts, “Jack-a-Pod!”
I double over, sure I’m going to vomit, worried I’m going to pass out.
“Come on! Come on!” Castor shouts, dancing from foot to foot as he scans the road just like Talitha did before.
Below us, at the
bottom of the hill, a red SecuriBot zips out of the Palace gates and beelines for us.
“No!” Castor shouts. He reaches into his knapsack and takes out the dead drone, then wings it at the robot. He catches it in the faceplate. It falters, rears back on two wheels, then rights itself again. Castor picks up a rock from the ground and whips it at the Bot, knocking it off course. Then another. I try to help, but my arms are still floppy and my aim is bad. Just then, a blue AutoPod flies down the road. “Pod!” I yell.
“Run!” Castor shouts, and somehow I find one last burst of energy. Barefoot and shouting in pain, I follow Castor across the burning road to the AutoPod that has screeched to a stop in the middle of the road.
* * *
Hours later, Castor and I idle in the jacked blue AutoPod behind the MUSC Shuttle terminal. I’m clean and dry and back in my silver MUSC long underwear that I left at Talitha’s house before we went to Calliope, plus shoes from her closet and a little stuffed toy that looks like Quasar tucked on my lap. Overhead, the nearly full Moon hangs low in the wee hours of the morning while the Shuttle sits like a proud silver bird, floodlights illuminating the MUSC seal and logo on its side.
Although Castor explained Talitha’s plan to me, I’m so nervous that I can’t stop shaking.
Your body temperature has spiked to thirty-eight degrees Celsius, Darshan informs me. Do you require medical attention?
“I’m not sick,” I tell him aloud.
“Huh?” says Castor, who’s dozed off beside me.
“Sorry,” I say. “Talking to my nanobrain cyber assistant. You’re sure you hid my location when you put this thing back together?”
“Yeah,” he says, and stretches. “And I hacked some other stuff for you while I was in there. Now you have a blanket override. Figured it might come in handy.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“You know, for when he tells you he can’t access something or doesn’t have the info. It’s just a lame layer of security. The truth is, he can access anything in the MUSC cybermind once you change those settings. Just ask him!”
