Sons of Earth

by Geralyn Wichers

  Khalia pushed past and dropped her bag on her desk with a solid clunk. She fumbled in the drawer for the pills.

  “As I was saying,” Adam turned and squared his narrow shoulders. The fluorescent light reflected through his thinning hair. “This is..." his voice faded out as Khalia's fingers closed around two small, green pills. She dropped them on her tongue and gulped them down with a wash of cold coffee. She set the cup down, squeezed her eyes shut and sighed. Her hand fumbled to stick the bottle into her purse, but it just scrabbled across the papers on her desk. Khalia opened her eyes yanked the bag toward herself and glanced around. Mina and Jennifer walked, heads together, toward their desks at the far side of the lab. Jennifer laughed, high and shrill. Adam's drone continued. His gesturing hands poked and waved from behind a white, lab coated back. A dark head nodded.

  "Oh..." Khalia froze in place with the bottle poised above the purse. It was Monday, and that was Vermeer, her new assistant-read-replacement. And she had just walked past him and dove for her medication.

  Not fair, not today of all days.

  She took a covert glance at his back. His erect figure towered over Adam—square shoulders, slender, sable hair in a short, fashionable style. He'd turned his head slightly to the side as if skeptical. He had just a bit of neat facial hair. Was it to make him look older?

  Dominic Vermeer was young, twenty-six or seven, but the man had an impressive resume and she was determined to like him, as unlikely as that seemed. Maybe he'd become an ally of sorts. She needed one. But now she just hoped the oxy kicked in before Vermeer put his fine ass in the seat next to her.

  Khalia squared her shoulders and got up. She screwed the top off her coffee cup with hands that trembled and exited out the back toward the cafeteria. She'd be composed by the time she got back.

  When she returned with a full coffee cup and a muffin, Vermeer already sat at the desk next to hers, speaking numbers quietly into the laptop. Images and input boxes flicked across the screen at tremendous speed, but as she slipped through the door he looked up. He jerked back his chair and stood.

  "Doctor Kassis." He held her gaze with intent brown eyes that glittered from behind a dark fringe of lashes. She had to tip her head back to look him in the face as she walked forward to accept his extended hand.

  She squared her shoulders and smiled. "Khalia, please."

  "I've read all of your published papers," he said as she released his hand.

  Khalia pressed her lips together for a moment so her mouth wouldn't drop open. "Oh, uh, thank you. I perused your doctoral thesis as well. It was... interesting."

  So, you're a looker and a kiss-ass. Great. You'll go far here, one way or another.

  "This didn't faze the management at Caspian, apparently," Vermeer's lip curled.

  "Indeed." The man had written about 'post production death rates among manufactured persons'. Postulating that the number one cause of death among Empties was suicide hadn't been a popular conclusion. She'd doubted his reasoning, but she couldn't deny that he had moxie.

  Khalia took a step back and glanced around the room. "Barjinder got you situated? I'm sorry I didn't greet you properly earlier. I had some unforeseen circumstances this morning."

  "No trouble," he said.

  "I will give you a tour of the production floor this morning, but first I have some policies for you to read and sign. Have a seat, I'll just go get them."

  "Of course."

  As she turned to her desk for the sheaf of policies, Khalia caught sight of Adam marching toward her desk. She sighed.

  "Vermeer's bracelet." The slim metal bracelet, sealed in a plastic bag, dropped in front of her. Adam leaned in and said in a low voice, "You know, if you're unhappy with my choice of assistant for me, just say it to my face, Khalia."

  What, was that what being late made him think? Khalia looked up into Adam's fat face. He had a smudge of something purple in the corner of his mouth, probably grape jelly. Of course, she wouldn't tell him. Let him figure out that he'd oriented the boy-wonder with breakfast on his face. "No, I'm not unhappy with your choice, Adam," she said coolly, "And if you're here to lecture me on being late, you tell me to my face." Adam knew she'd worked late last night, finishing work he was supposed to do.

  "No, I'm not..." Adam mumbled, glancing at his scuffed dockers. "Just give Vermeer the policies and the tour, okay?"

  "I have the policies right here." She tapped the folder. "I'll give him the tour after break. Good enough?"

  "Yeah." Adam walked away.

  Khalia blew out her breath and glanced over her shoulder at Vermeer, who had returned to his computer. No, she wasn't unhappy with Adam's choice, though she'd been miffed when he'd made it clear she had no real input in the matter. If Vermeer would just work hard and not be a pain in the neck, everything would be fine. If she could trust him, maybe even call him a friend, well... that might be too much to hope for.

  __

  “Here is your permanent key bracelet." Khalia said above him. A thin metallic band, with Dominic's name printed on it, clunked onto the desk in front of him, the pass that got him through every door. "I will take you on a tour of the facility.”

  Dominic looked up from the stack of papers he’d been signing—non-disclosure agreements, blackout policies. “Sorry?”

  Khalia had stood up from her desk. Standing straight and tall, chin lifted, she hardly had to bend her head to meet his eyes. Her glossy dark eyes stared at the bridge of his nose, not his eyes. “A tour? Of the facility? It must be a tad more interesting than reading a record-retention policy.”

  Dominic pushed his chair back. Indeed. Indeed it was. That was what he’d been waiting for all morning, while pretending to read each document slowly and carefully. “Of course. Lead off.”

  “I remember reading all those policies,” Khalia said as she held the lab door open. “They make more sense once you actually deal with sensitive materials.”

  “They make sense.”

  “Oh.” She paused in the hall. “Good. Because you will deal with many sensitive documents, as I am sure you are aware."

  He was. In fact, he was banking on it.

  "We will enter the manufacturing floor through the production office,” she said.

  They passed along a narrow hall between rows of desks. Dominic took no notice of the people sitting at them, though he could feel eyes on him.

  Khalia opened a door labeled “Entering MFP Production Area, gowning in effect”. A metal locker stood in the corner, along with bins of gloves and masks. Khalia handed him a lab-coat and pointed to a bin of shoe-covers. Dominic was already reaching for them.

  “I presume the gowning at Symbiosis is similar,” Khalia said as she snapped the lab coat shut under her chin. Its hem dangled mid-calf.

  “Yes and no.”

  She reached up and touched a screen that hung beside the door. Its shiny, black surface came to life with a floor plan of the manufacturing area. "If you are unsure of where you need to go, you can search for any room by number or title on this map. For instance," she tapped on a button and said, "Rejection."

  A square on the map lit up.

  "If you need to find someone on the manufacturing floor, you can search by person or by employee number. Everyone, including yourself, is tracked by bracelet. MFPs are tracked by implanted chips and can be searched for by lot number." She tapped another icon. "Manufacturing Supervisor." Three blue dots appeared on the screen—two in one room, and another scurrying down a corridor."

  Dominic reached around her and tapped the button. "Dominic Vermeer."

  A silver light lit up in the airlock on the map.

  He tapped the room icon. "Toilet."

  Nothing lit up.

  "Good try," Khalia said in a wry tone. "Try that in the lab, then search for Adam Richards. He's probably in it."

  Dominic laughed.

  "The bracelets can track our activities," Khalia said, "Similar to how MFP data is tracked. But for the moment, none of tha
t data is recorded."

  "So it can track Adam's bowel movements?" Dominic muttered under his breath. He didn't like the idea of being monitored, but he'd expected it.

  She must have heard him, for a tiny smirk played about her lips. She reached for the door handle. "I don't know what the policy is at Symbiosis, but at Caspian there are rules of conduct around the MFPs that I should outline as we interact with some of the product." She held her wrist up to the swipe station. The station beeped and the door clicked open. They passed out of the airlock into a wide, white hallway. Two workers in grey scrubs walked by, their hair-netted heads together. "The MFPs are conditioned to not look people in the eyes. They will only speak when spoken to. It is our policy to also avoid eye contact, and to speak only when necessary to give directives. There is to be no physical contact beyond what is necessary for our work."

  "Has that been a problem?" Dominic asked dryly.

  She turned back to look at him with narrow eyes. "People are strange, Mr. Vermeer. But the rule is to protect the product—from abuse or," her mouth twisted into a smile, "from love, whatever your definition of that is."

  "At Symbiosis the products are expected to interact seamlessly with humans," Dominic said, "They looked us in the eye."

  "And were trained to mimic human emotions and social skills. I know," she kept walking, "But these MFPs have no need for social skills."

  "And there are too many of them," Dominic said to her back, "They need to remain compliant, and that's how you do it."

  "Hah," she didn't even turn back. "That's true, but I know better than anyone that you get the occasional outlier. I'm the only Caspian scientist to be attacked in the lab by an MFP."

  Dominic smiled grimly to himself. Oh, he knew.

  "It was logical, really," she glanced over her shoulder, "I'm small."

  They paused by a blue, roll-up door. Inside, workers in grey scrubs and blue aprons sprayed things with hoses and pushed shiny stainless-steel containers by the door.

  “This is where all the cleaning of production equipment happens,” she said. “Laundry and food dishes are separate operations.”

  Dominic peered through the plastic window in time to see an operator squirt a steam hose into a silver container. Red fluid sprayed out, mixed with water.

  Dominic recoiled and swung to look at Khalia. She'd left him behind. He jogged to catch up. He could taste bile in the back of his throat.

  Khalia's lab-coated back stopped, and Dom pulled up beside her. He was composed again.

  “These rooms contain biocribs for the earliest stages of development, but no new MFP’s are in development right now,” she said. “The last lots are maturing, and after one last production round we will, of course, begin producing MFP2s.”

  Inside it was just light enough to see rows of shelves containing what appeared to be glass, fluid filled boxes. But Dominic knew better. Inside those compartments, MFPs were raised from zygote to the fetal stage.

  Where he’d been raised.

  “In here we have the secondary stage, also empty.” Khalia indicated a room full of larger glass biocribs. Workers in yellow rubber suits waded among foamy cleaner. “The chambers have just been emptied, the MFP’s taken to third stage.”

  They turned the corner into another white hall. This one teemed with workers, pushing carts, carrying bundles, rushing everywhere. No one looked up. And in one corner, two security guards stood with guns strapped to their backs, talking to each other.

  Those hadn’t been there back in the day. Had his escape set that ‘precaution’ in motion? He suspected so. Just as they'd implemented location-tracking chips, embedded in each MFP. If he'd been given one, so long ago, escape would have been impossible.

  “Here is the third-stage corridor.” Khalia grabbed two ear loop masks from a box on the wall and handed one to him. “Let’s go in.”

  Air whooshed out of the pressurized room into Dominic’s face. Khalia paused in the doorway and began explaining their specific maturation process, but Dominic wasn’t listening.

  Rows and rows of six-foot biocribs were before him, glass boxes like roomy coffins, but containing living bodies. Hoses snaked into them, lines that contained water, liquid feeding lines, catheter lines that took care of the MFP’s bodily functions. Grey-clad workers moved silently among then, viewing HMI screens on each biocrib and making notes on their clipboards. Each box glowed cold blue and emitted a familiar bass hum.

  Dominic could just see into the nearest one, just see bare, adult-sized feet, and beyond that, in the next, a dark head. The room was warmer than he remembered. He remembered it being cold as he emerged from the biocrib the first time.

  He stepped forward, then checked himself. Khalia was still talking.

  Dominic nodded as she finished, as if he’d heard and understood everything, and followed her into the first row. They paused by the first crib. The MFP inside was just under the six-foot specified height that Dom knew he was bred for. His bare skin, tinted blue from the light, was smooth and hairless, his face bereft of expression, still retaining traces of childish features in spite of his height. This one was an adolescent, still a few months from immerging from the biocrib to be matured on his own strength. Matured, taught to speak, to know all the basic things a human should know, and most important, to obey.

  Dom scanned the HMI as Khalia explained each screen and its functions.

  “This graphs its weight-gain,” Khalia said, pointing at a yellow graph against the white HMI background. “As you can see, it is on schedule.” She flipped to another screen. “This is a map of its brain function. The MFP is currently in a rest state. Every eight hours they switch to another cycle which stimulates the brain and allows the brain to develop normally.”

  Indeed. As if it were possible to make up for a normal childhood.

  “Its brain function is inside specifications.” Khalia pressed the home screen button and moved on to the next crib. The specimen inside was nearly identical to the other—dark hair, the start of classic, handsome features. A worker hurriedly wrote something down and moved to the next one.

  “They are taking parameter readings, and adjusting the biocribs as necessary,” Khalia said. They paused at the last crib in the row, and Dom glanced in. The youth inside was skinnier than the others. His ribs were definite ridges under his pale skin.

  “Is this one younger or is he behind?” he asked.

  She flipped through screens on the HMI. “It’s behind. Looks like it’s nutrition mix has been changed today to see if it can be caught up.”

  If not, it was rejection for this MFP. Dominic bit his tongue until he tasted blood. "Maybe it is early to ask this, Ms. Kassis, but what is your percentage of reject on a given lot?"

  She smiled wryly at him. "I thought you would know that."

  "In-process mortality wasn't part of my research. I only studied post-production deaths among manufactured persons. So what is it?"

  "One point three percent," she said as she narrowed her eyes at the HMI, "One MFP per lot, more or less. This looks like a simple fix. I doubt there will be product loss."

  But that percentage was averaged over a thousand or more lots. Dominic clenched his teeth and watched her brown eyes whisk back and forth across the screen. Hatred splashed up inside of him, and for a moment he imagined grabbing her and slamming her head into the glass HMI. It wouldn't be hard. He'd overpowered her before.

  She looked up then, and saw him looking at her. She smiled tightly, but her doe eyes were weary, even sad. The anger passed. He needed her, Dominic thought as he followed Khalia from the room. She was his most likely ally, even if it were only unwittingly.

  __

  Khalia got up and took the sheaf of papers with her. Vermeer was just through the door in the MFP2 designated lab, bent over pages and pages of preliminary research—her research. After his tour on the floor, he'd requested to begin reading immediately.

  Khalia passed by him and went to the section of lab that she’
d already set up on Friday. The bin of beakers, vials and containers, all empty, stood waiting to be cleaned and approved for use. She felt a slight rush of excitement. She loved setting up a new project, and she’d grudgingly looked forward to starting actual, material tests of MFP2.

  She donned long, rubber gloves, measured the caustic cleaner into a basin, and filled it to the line with water. Then she carefully set each item into the cleaner to soak. While that sat, she turned to sanitize the purified water tap.

  She sprayed bleach all over the tap and hooked the spray bottle on the ledge above it. Bleach dribbled down the side of the bottle onto the floor. She fiddled with the cap and reached for a paper-towel to wipe it up.

  “Khalia,” Vermeer said behind her. “I seem to be missing a page.”

  “What?” Khalia spun around. As she turned, her foot slipped on the spilled bleach and she reached out for anything to steady herself. Her hands caught the edge of the basin filled with cleaner, and it slid toward her. She realized her mistake just in time to push it back onto the counter, but a wave of water and cleaner rolled over the side and down her front.

  She felt a burning itch immediately, and then, pain as it soaked onto her skin. She yanked the fabric of her lab coat away from her body and stood staring down at her front.

  “Khalia!” Vermeer grabbed her from behind and shoved her toward the emergency shower.

  She didn’t realize he’d pulled the handle until cold water cascaded down on her like a shockwave. She gasped, and came to herself as the icy water poured over her head. Dominic’s face wavered through the water.

  “Get your shirt off. You have to get it away from your skin.”

  Khalia sputtered and shook her head.

  Dominic turned his back to her. “Do it! I don’t want to see you with your top off! I want to save your skin!”

  She saw his logic and struggled to get the sodden lab coat and sweater off, and then her bra. Dominic never looked her way, even as the wet clothes fell on the floor beside him. The shower stopped. Khalia wrapped her arms across her breasts and stood shivering and staring down at the red rash on her white skin.