Tomorrow Factory

by Rich Larson

  When they were finally bobbing far out in the bay, watching the red lights of the skyline, his grand-dad said it was time.

  Expect you can make your own way back.

  “Yeah. Yes. I can.”

  Pull me out, then.

  Elliot’s cold fingers scrabbled for the gelatin lump at the back of his skull. He pulled it off in clumps, then long strips, then it all came away at once.

  He winched the notches open and his slippery fingertips found his grand-dad’s chip. He hesitated for a heartbeat, two heartbeats, then yanked it like a tooth and hurled it off into the bay. A spark jumped once. Disappeared.

  He swam slowly on the way back, his empty-feeling head held carefully above water. He toweled off and dried the strange tingling hollow at the back of his neck. His eyes stung. Swimming without goggles always turned them pink.

  Elliot’s mother was waiting for him on the curb when he got back home, the pages spread around her bare feet.

  “Haven’t seen his handwriting in so long,” she said, combing a strand of dark hair from her face.

  Elliot eased down on the cement curb and his mother wrapped an arm around his shoulders. They sat together, watching dawn streak the sky with filaments of red.

  I WENT TO THE ASTEROID TO BURY YOU

  I went to the asteroid to bury you

  because the world had too much color in it.

  I took a grimy tourist shuttle,

  where the seatbacks played grainy footage

  of the moon landing

  and androids named Buzz and Neil

  served tubes of orange juice.

  When I tore mine open with my teeth,

  the juice escaped as small wobbling suns.

  I unhooked myself to swallow them

  like I swallow your name. Buzz glared; Neil

  asked me to return to my harness.

  ~

  I docked over Yorick’s Crater and saw

  new biodomes bubbling in the bottom.

  At the duty-free, I bought the vodka

  that made you sick. I rented a spacesuit,

  boots and extra arms for digging.

  The neurolink fizzed in my brain

  like a soft drink

  and the arms did a preprogrammed

  dance to limber up.

  You’d have laughed. I filled my O2 tank

  at 35c per liter, enough for us both,

  and left the airlock.

  ~

  I walked through a stellar night vast

  and gray. Tethered halogens lit the way

  and at the city limit, cubes of trash

  floated in a minefield. I walked

  and walked with loping steps,

  staring up at a star-spun sky,

  until, like Orpheus,

  I turned

  to look for you.

  Your voice must have been static

  in the suit, because all I saw were my

  cracked footprints.

  ~

  I stopped when I felt I no longer existed,

  and told my arms to drill. They churned

  in rhythm, displacing untouched rock

  into a swelling cloud, but it was

  too smooth and too easy so I

  drilled the rest myself, until

  sweat beaded and froze

  inside my suit and fogged

  my faceplate.

  I kissed your vacuum-sealed ashes

  through cold glass. With vodka, I christened

  the new crater after you.

  ~

  I knelt in the frozen galaxy of dust and

  pushed your urn down like a bobbing magnet.

  That was when I realized I

  had no way of covering you, no way

  of returning dust to dust

  and smoothing you away.

  I couldn’t bury you

  with a hundred thousand motes

  haloing my head

  or the hundred thousand words

  in my desiccated mouth. So I said your name,

  and it shattered on my tongue, it

  latticed my faceplate with ice.

  CAPRICORN

  Nyx sold his product in the exercise yard, in a blindspot the rusty autoturrets couldn’t swivel to anymore. Inmates walked in slow circles around the synthetic track and every so often one would stop off for the furtive exchange. Nyx slapped neoprene baggies into palms with every handshake.

  Basta wasn’t furtive about it: Woadskin crew didn’t worry about things like follow-cams or autoturrets, not now that they ran every cell block in the prison. Nyx reached into his sleeve and produced a particular bag for him.

  “Color’s different,” Basta said, juggling it in his hand. “You run scant on fucking, uh, ephedrine again?”

  “Better filter,” Nyx said bracingly. “Better batch. Floats like, whoa.”

  “You best not be cutting my shit.” Basta bit the corner and tongued the red-tinged powder. “I’ll know.”

  “Hey, hey, it’s pure. Ask Cade and his units.” Nyx tugged his jumpsuit down and scratched at his neck. “Dosed them the same batch this morning.”

  “I told you to cover that tag,” Basta snapped.

  Nyx looked down at his collarbone where a zodiac sign was tattooed in bioglow ink.

  “You’re not getting no fucking points for loyalty.” Basta touched the pocket where he kept his shiv. “He’s on ice. He’s not coming back. Nobody does.”

  Nyx kept his eyes on the zipper as he dragged it up slowly, carefully. “Year later, you still don’t say his name?”

  Basta wrenched him down by his ear; Nyx wailed at the feel of crumpling cartilage.

  “Capricorn. And nobody comes back from cryo. He’s in 114 till he’s dead.”

  “Okay, unit, okay, fuck,” Nyx choked.

  Basta dead-eyed him for a moment longer, then let go. “You’re lucky you mix this shit so good. Or you’d be dead with the rest of the old crew.” He slipped the baggie into his waistband as the buzzer started to bleat.

  Nyx rubbed his ear, then joined the inmates slouching back inside, ushered by the creaking autoturrets. They always cleared the yard when a new shipment of prisoners was coming in.

  In decontamination, Boniface seemed more naked than anybody else. His skin was pale and paper-thin and free of any ink, flays, or ritual scarring. When the chemical mist billowed up around their waists, he looked like a lean ghost. Only his face was colored with bruises.

  “Hundred percent prisoner retention,” said the man beside him. “Nowhere to escape to when they stick you on an asteroid, is there? Only one man ever came close.”

  “So I hear,” said Boniface. His bright blue eyes raked the shrouded room. He crouched down, where the mist deadened voices and obscured faces, and his companion did the same.

  “When they caught him, they put him in cryo for life,” the man went on, muttering now. “Braindead on ice. They’re supposed to thaw you every few months for a physical, Bremnes Act or whatever the hell it is, but I think they probably just leave you frozen. Who would know, right? I’d rather be dead.”

  “How are you feeling?” Boniface asked, smothering a cough. The fog tingled cold on his skin.

  “Rather be dead and have it all over with,” the man said, staring into space.

  “How are you feeling?” Boniface repeated, meaning the purpled sutures across the man’s stomach.

  His face twisted. “It hurts.”

  “All be over with soon,” Boniface said. He jackknifed over another cough, a worse one.

  “Yeah. Yeah.” The man grinned shakily, unperturbed by the noise. “Teach them a fucking lesson. Out with a bang.” Vacuums came to life with a roar and began sucking the mist away, pulling it in wreaths and tendrils away from Boniface’s bent head. Specks of rust red floated off with it.

  “That’s right,” he said, straightening up, wiping his mouth. “Try not to whimper.”

  “What?”

  Boniface put a finger to his lips as
the doors slid open and a synthesized voice ordered them forward.

  The sweepers came in the middle of the night, but Nyx didn’t sleep anymore. He hid his glassware and bottles of knock-off chemicals mostly out of habit, shuffling them into the gouged-out wall behind the bed. The sweepers scanned the cell door open and marched inside, all matte black body armor and clouded facemasks. They were dragging someone behind them.

  “What is this?” Nyx demanded, pulling out his earbuds.

  They dumped the man on the floor. His head was a canvas of cuts and his eyes were swollen mostly shut. He groaned.

  “Hey, it’s the chemist,” said one of the sweepers. His mask retracted and Nyx recognized one of his more valued customers. “Got you a roomie for the night, chemist.”

  “This is my fucking cell, Dirk,” Nyx said. “It’s my workplace. I don’t share it, you know? Thought you had that figured out upstairs, unit.”

  “Concussed, internal hemorrhaging,” Dirk said, nudging the man on the floor with the toe of one boot. “Probably going to die overnight. Either way, I’ll come pick him up in the morning. Maybe you spot me some of that new batch I’ve been hearing about.”

  “Welcome party?” Nyx asked, staring at the blood smears.

  “Grigio Krewer,” said the sweeper. “You remember. He chopped up all those little girls on Penance.” He resettled his mask and gave the injured convict a once-over. “What did you expect, you piece of shit?”

  “Fuck you,” the man gasped. “Said it would go off. Promised.” He clutched his stomach and Nyx noticed the puckered scar for the first time.

  “He’s panned, man.” Dirk gave a snort of disgust, translated into static by the mask. “You have a good night, chemist. We’re going to. You animals get so riled up every time the fresh meat comes in.” He hefted his stunstick, jaunty. “Think I’ll have to torch a few fuckers before morning. Just to keep everyone zen.”

  “Thought that was the Woadskins’s job.”

  “Yeah. Well.” Dirk slid the cell door shut. “Basta, he’s no fucking Capricorn, is he?”

  Both guards disappeared down the gloomy cell block, tips of their stunsticks whirling electric blue in the dark. Nyx was turning to find his earbuds when the child-killer’s head snapped upright. He squinted puffy eyes.

  “You told me it would go off,” he said, pushing words through split lips, shattered teeth. “You motherfucker. You said if they touched me it would go off, but it’s not, it’s not going off.”

  “I didn’t tell you shit,” Nyx said. “I don’t know you.”

  “Not a bomb,” the man gasped. “You fucking liar. It’s not a bomb, is it? Oh, fuck, fuck. It’s coming. Out.” He was fetal on the syrupy red floor, arms clutched around his abdomen. Nyx straightened up to ask what he meant, what he was talking about.

  Something shuddered through the man’s body and made him vibrate like a rag doll, made a noise like a buzz-saw coming to life. His blood-burst eyes winched wide. Burning fat smell, a long rattling howl, and then the man’s stomach erupted.

  Nyx stood frozen while clots of gore slapped across his jumpsuit. A grip-pad rasped out of the ragged hole, slicked wet and struggling for purchase. The rest of the limb appeared, and then the next, and then the spidery medroid was pulling itself out of the dead man’s stomach.

  Nyx could tell it had been antiseptic white once, but now the plastic plating was drenched in blood and yellow bile. The medroid lurched forward on its tripod legs and Nyx could see the saw it had used to cut itself out, a syringe bundled beneath that.

  He jumped backward as the machine made a bee-line for his stash. Red laser light raked the beakers and baggies, lingering on the vial of iodine additive Nyx had been using for the past week. The medroid’s feeler slipped inside, probing, then the machine turned back to face him.

  Nyx didn’t move for a sweating minute, two minutes, as the scanner danced carmine lines up and down his body. The medroid’s red eyes blinked once. Then the machine slipped through the cell bars and was gone in the gloom.

  “Who else was in your prisoner transport?” Nyx asked faintly, scraping off the front of his jumpsuit, but of course the corpse didn’t answer.

  In the morning, three Woadskin lieutenants were dead in their cells. They’d all had their cams scratched, a perk of status, so nobody had seen the shankings. Nyx heard about it in bits and pieces: bodies drained to husks, mysterious needle marks in places not even a headfucked mainliner would inject themselves. The whole cell block was a buzzing hive, and it took until afternoon for someone to come clean up Grigio.

  “You really have to bust him like that?” Dirk demanded, rolling the body onto an inflatable stretcher. “Shit, chemist, I didn’t know you even kept a razor. Slashing him belly-open like that? With all this other bullshit going on? Don’t make more fucking work for me, man.”

  “So what happened?” Nyx asked. “Cade, Darius, and who?”

  The sweeper held out his cupped palm.

  “Yeah, yeah, sure.” Nyx scrambled back to his stash and snatched up a baggie, tossed it over. “Now tell me.”

  “Have to get an autocleaner down here,” Dirk muttered, peeling back the corner. “Have to take someone off-shift to supervise, already got too many fuckers clocking security so your Woadskin friends don’t riot—”

  “Cade dead, Darius dead, who else?”

  “That broad-nose motherfucker from the lunar colonies.” The sweeper raised his mask and snorted a bump. He blinked. “Going to need this today. That’s punchy shit, chemist. Pure. Must be that stuff I got for you.”

  Nyx blinked. He stared at the red rim of the man’s nostril. “Yeah. Uh, yeah. Thanks for that.”

  “Someone thinks they saw a medroid,” Dirk went on. “You know, one of those field medic things that they used in the Subjugation. Unit in question was slammed to the eyes, though. Not a reliable source. And medroids don’t murder people.”

  Nyx paused. “Heard someone smuggled in psychotropics and they’re going around,” he said. “People think they see all kinds of shit.”

  The sweeper grunted and resettled his mask, then floated the stretcher out of the cell. Nyx sat down as far as he could from the blood stains.

  They found Boniface in the food line, staring down into his empty tray. Basta knocked it away and protein slop gurgled from the nozzle onto the floor. Two Woadskins pinioned Boniface against the wall.

  “So.” Basta cocked his head. “Your shipment shows up, one day later, three of my best men get toe-tagged. Who are you?”

  “Not the only prisoner on that transport,” Boniface said. The food line shuffled on past him, all eyes averted.

  “You’re the only one who went in for a fucking reskin before you got here,” Basta snapped. “Who were you? Who’d you claim before you took off all your tags?” He peered closely into the bruised face. “You remind me of someone, motherfucker.”

  “This is my first skin. I don’t like tattoos.”

  Basta put himself level with Boniface’s blue eyes. “We’re going to have a conversation, like it or not. But the more you talk, the less it hurts.”

  “It was a medroid. Refitted, reprogrammed.” Boniface told it to the tray on the floor. “I convinced another inmate to smuggle it in for me. Grigio Krewer.”

  “That lunatic we tuned,” one of Basta’s men mumbled. “Panned him real good in the showers.”

  “Knew I saw a droid,” the other one said. “Fucking knew it.”

  “Reprogrammed to do what?” Basta demanded.

  “It’s the kind they use for triage,” Boniface said. “Assessing injuries on the fly. Dope here, cauterize there. Tag corpses for disposal, live ones for pick-up. They can be out there for a long time. Days, weeks. That’s why most models take biofuel.”

  “Those track marks? You saying that thing used Cade for fuel?”

  “It’s been reprogrammed.” Boniface looked up. “It’s always hungry, now. It just went after whoever was closest.”

  Basta nodded, t
hen suddenly Boniface found himself sprawled on the floor, cheek mashed on concrete. “I’m going to put that thing up your fucking ass when we catch it. Where is it now?”

  “I don’t know. It’s got avoidance AI. Probably in a vent. A closet.” Boniface began to cough; Basta’s foot was an aching weight on his spine. “Won’t come out again ‘til night.”

  Basta crouched down, brows knit. “You’re trying to fuck with me. Who sent you here?”

  “Nobody sent me,” Boniface said, wiping his mouth. A gossamer spit-strand webbed his fingers.

  “That thing killed three Woadskins. Not adjacent cells. Nobody else. How would it know to do that, huh?”

  “Ask your supplier,” Boniface said. “Ask whoever gives you phetamines.”

  Out of the cafeteria, into the corridor. Basta was in a hurry and Boniface was mostly dragged, arms wrenching in their sockets. Nobody looked at them as they passed by. Boniface looked at them all, the feather-white scars and tattooed necks, the steroid-popped shoulders and sinewed arms. He wondered what the chemist would look like now.

  They trooped into a large cell, through shatter-proof glass blotched with dry blood. Inside, a man in the standard slam jumpsuit crouched over a stain on the floor, scrubbing at it with a wet rag. He scrambled upright when he saw who was coming to visit.

  “Nyx, who is this motherfucker?” Basta asked, pushing Boniface forward.

  Nyx’s eyes went wide for only a split second. Then he gave a careless shrug. “Don’t know. Ugly-looking unit. Why?”

  Basta ignored him, striding to the dark spot on the floor. He pointed. “The fluids. Krewer? Don’t tell me no fucking lies, Nyx.”

  “Krewer. I gutted him.”

  “You? Or the fucking droid?” Basta pulled his shiv. It glinted on its deliberate arc towards Nyx’s throat. “You say you don’t know this unit. But I can tell he knows you.”

  Nyx managed a grunt. His larynx bobbed at the tip of the blade.

  Boniface, arms tethered by the two Woadskins, had turned his attention to the ceiling.