Gaia's Toys

by Rebecca Ore

  “Wouldn’t it be nice to enjoy sex again?” I put my hand on his leg. I’d never delayed gratification so long before.

  Joe said, “Jesus, Allison.”

  Willie said, “Let me see if I can even bring myself to look at one.”

  Loba made a call and came back to say, “One of the whorehouses rents isolation space and virtual suits for perversions live women refuse to handle.”

  “No, it’s more than that,” Joe said. “Some guys just want to be alone after sex.”

  Loba drove on with Dorcas, leaving Miriam and Joe to bring us back from whatever happened. I began to wonder if I was bullying Willie. I asked him, “You really want to try?”

  He said, “Then I could cuddle you out of your nightmares.”

  “Oh, Willie.”

  The whorehouse sold worms, so after we paid the couple who ran the house, we were all set.

  Willie crawled in the tank naked, his dick and balls tight against his body. Joe said, “I can’t watch this,” and left the room.

  Miriam said, “Should I go, too?”

  Willie said, “Stay, I’m scared.” I felt rebuked, as though I scared him. I probably did, though, insisting that he recover his sexuality. We left the top hatch open so we could talk to him. Sensory deprivation wasn’t in order here. I sat by his head and stroked his face, remembering the boys who’d watched me in my teenaged machines.

  “Don’t show me the worm,” Willie said. “Don’t even give it to me. Let me just rest in here.”

  I said, “Can we give you just a little bit blended in milk. You won’t see it.”

  Miriam said, “Allison, why is this so important?”

  I said, “I want to heal him. Before I was always the worst injured one.”

  Willie said, “You lucky I don’t shoot people for pitying me.”

  Miriam said, “He’s terrified.”

  Let him look close at his own damn nightmare. I said, “Might as well go all the way, Willie.”

  “Don’t show me.”

  “In milk,” I said.

  “Let Miriam mix the dose,” Willie said.

  Miriam went to the whorehouse kitchen and came back with milk stained light brown. Willie closed his eyes and tasted the milk, out of her hand, not mine.

  “It’s got sugar in it,” he said. “And liquor.”

  “To cut the taste,” Miriam said.

  “Wasn’t the taste of bugs messed me up,” Willie said. He sipped so slowly I wanted to grab him and pour it down his throat.

  We waited for a half hour. He got an erection, gasped, sweated all over his head where it was above the salt solution, lost the erection. “Is this worth it?” he asked.

  I said, “The Feds took this away from you, Willie. You won’t be yourself until you’re fully functional as a human being.”

  Willie said, “But you don’t even like human beings.”

  Miriam said, “If we truly hated human beings, there’d be none left by now.”

  “No, I’m talking to Allison.”

  “I go from hating them to hating myself, Willie. I want to love someone all the way. Mike… Mike, I think he was partially right in that I needed to trust someone, but I need to have my brains together, I need… someone like me.”

  “Okay, I’m trying. Let’s go for it.” He looked like he was ready to die. I wondered if I looked like this while Kearney played with my lethal needle.

  Miriam mixed a stronger dose, then left me alone with him. I held his hand while he came. I felt like I was rebirthing him, healing him of sexual trauma. Men so rarely suffered sexual trauma that I felt a twinge of regret that this might work.

  “Enough for today?” I asked.

  He nodded, the Epsom solution sloshing around his chin. I opened the bottom hatch and helped him out.

  He said, “It felt like the other bug. But not as long, not as intense. Without hallucinations. So bugs took it. Bugs will give it back.”

  I wanted to take him to bed now, but sensed he wasn’t ready. Yet. He turned away from me to dress, then said, “I’m hungry.”

  We ate fajitas while the latest Ghanaian band wailed over the whorehouse dining room tables. My and Willie’s hair had already grown out, but this was the first time I felt like I had normal hair. Conductive jelly worked as well as baldness to get the messages in and out of my subdural net. Barring emergencies, Willie wasn’t ever going to do drode work again.

  Somewhere in the Mississippi below Tennessee, while foe and Miriam went to get Loba and Dorcas, Willie was able to have sex with me, carefully with lots of sweat.

  Kearney grabbed me as soon as I began to dream. He jammed a baby nuke between my legs, but Willie shot him before the bomb stuffed up my snatch could explode. I woke paralyzed, terrified that I’d never escape, that I’d die blown to bits. Willie cuddled me, saying, “Allison, Kearney’s dead. Remember?”

  “You were in the dream. You shot him.” I didn’t tell Willie his dream self hadn’t quite been fast enough, that I had a bomb up my snatch.

  Loba bought Willie a retina job. We watched a puppet opera performing Carmen at an old opera house in Natchez while the job was done. Willie came out with better vision than he’d had since becoming a drode head. The doctor also closed his electrode holes, but the net and transformer was still in Willie’s skull.

  For the next three nights, I turned into a little girl. One night, I turned my parents in to the police, remembering the car’s license plate. The second night, I joined the child gang and ran on half-dead legs from Kearneys who kept popping up everywhere. Willie, not Jergen, opened the door that saved me.

  The third night, I stood to let them kill me and they circled me, baffled. Willie said, “Allison, you okay? Not like last night?”

  I said, “I don’t need to be so afraid. They’re only dreams.”

  Willie said, “Dorcas made a play for me.”

  Now I felt paralyzed. I managed to say, “I’d rather we be faithful, but thanks for telling me.”

  “I wouldn’t have her,” Willie said. “She hasn’t really been hurt by this world.”

  “She kept expecting some university would reward her for being a good girl. Or for being a rich girl.”

  “The more fool she, then,” Willie said.

  I rolled over and kissed Willie, gently. “I like being with someone who’s had it rough, too.” Had Jergen and I kissed so gently?

  Willie said, “Did she check the news nets when you were in Natchez?”

  “She did disappear during the opera intermission.”

  Willie said, “We’ll fix your retinas in New Orleans.”

  “Will Loba get Dorcas’s retinas rebuilt, too?”

  Willie said, “The reward for her is enormous. She is advertised all over the world. Loba is afraid even her connections would sell out Dorcas.”

  I said, “I’m learning a lot from Dorcas. She seems a little uneasy about it, but then the Movement taught me a lot about biology earlier.”

  Finally, after weeks traveling up the Mississippi, down the Mississippi, or parked at various marinas, we arrived at New Orleans. The river had stopped the wildfires started by my bomb from getting the city. Full circle. Will the circle be unbroken? The ground seemed strange underfoot after the weeks on the river. We giggled at each other as we lurched on the unwavy, unwaked ground, then took a taxi to Loba’s retina doctor.

  Dorcas’s head swung slightly when she located a public news node. I wondered if she’d mapped Willie’s new retinas, how many of us she’d betray before the Feds arranged an accident for her.

  “Stay until my retinas are done,” I asked her.

  “Oh, fierce Allison, are you afraid?”

  “Nanotech can screw up,” I said.

  “Loba knows best,” Dorcas said.

  We got out of the taxi in a pretty condo district built to look like the French Quarter, only without the wrought iron, then walked back a couple blocks to the clinic. The doctor was a woman. I said, “A woman from Sao Paulo said you cou
ld help.”

  Dorcas said, “How long will it take?”

  “An hour.”

  I wondered if Dorcas planned to come back. She kissed me on the cheek and said, “I’ll be back in an hour.”

  The doctor said in a Latin accent, “I have known your Brazilian friend for many years. You can always trust her.”

  I said, “She’s been like a mother to me.” I felt like crying. Everyone dies in the end, but the mothers try to keep their children going as long as possible. And Loba made such a good mother substitute for me, stem but concerned.

  “Can we trust that American redhair?”

  I shrugged. “You might consider moving.”

  “We always do,” the woman doctor said. “I understand you hate being drugged, but the visual distortions as the machines work might be unpleasant.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “You’ve been rebuilt before?”

  “Yes.”

  She led me inside and sat me down in a chair. Then she pulled on gloves and opened two foil-sealed packets, pulled out two silver-stained pads. “Close the eyes,” she said. I obeyed, felt the chill of nanomachines so tiny they were liquid against my eyelids. They ran between my eyelashes and around my eyeballs.

  “One, dos, tres, quatro, cinco, you may open your eyes now.”

  My vision wobbled and wavered as the nanomachines rebuilt my retinas to fit a fake identity, perhaps a dead woman’s, or a woman who’d disappeared, or perhaps a completely invented woman.

  When the hour was up, Dorcas came back, smiling. I knew she’d arranged to meet her parents, hoped they’d be supportive, hoped the Feds weren’t riding a trace down to us.

  I looked back at the doctor who burned the recalled nanomachines. “Vayo con mercia, ” I said, not sure I’d spoken anything in real Spanish. Go with mercy.

  Dorcas said, “Let’s get back. I’ve got a taxi waiting outside.”

  I felt like now would be a good time to walk, but the woman doctor looked out the window at the cab and said, “He’s trustworthy.”

  Good momma Loba, keep an eye on Dorcas. I asked, “Do we owe you anything?”

  “It’s paid. Don’t get caught,” the woman said.

  We got in the cab. Dorcas said, “I figured we’re headed out of the country from here. Loba’s renting a jet or something. I’ve got to go to the airport to check it out.”

  I said, hazarding a guess, “So your parents are going to meet you there.”

  “We had an unbreakable code, not a cipher. Don’t tell Loba. My dad doesn’t like the Feds any better than the rest of us.”

  “Shit, Dorcas, why?” Then realized Dorcas had to have her own way, with insects, with men, with universities, all on her own terms. Was I that bad?

  “I want to tell them I’m okay. Don’t tell Loba, please.”

  “Loba’s already told. This is her cab driver.”

  The driver said, “Excuse me, miss. Let me arrange the one to drive you to the airport.” He picked up his radio mike and said, “Uno secundo, por favor.” More Spanish that was street names and numbers. He wrote out a number for Dorcas and said, “Very good man. He’ll pick you up here.”

  Dorcas got out of the taxi. I looked back at her as we left her on the pavement. She looked lost to me.

  The taxi driver walked me back to the barges. Joe was watching the gangways. I said, “She’s meeting her parents at the airport.”

  “We can’t hold her captive,” Joe said.

  I asked, “Why the fuck not?”

  “We know what Dorcas can do with insects,” Joe said.

  I hugged Willie when I got on board, then asked, “Loba, will we take her back after she meet her parents?”

  “Perhaps it will be okay,” Loba said. “Her parents don’t seem to have alerted the Federales.”

  Joe said, “She’s a spoiled brat.”

  Loba said, “But a gifted spoiled brat. I believe her latest product will be pupating in a couple of days. We’ll be gone then.”

  “Out of the country?” I asked.

  Loba said, “It depends on what happens at the airport. She may try to betray us, but I don’t think the Feds would let her live long if they can’t catch us.”

  Willie said, “Allison and I learned a lot from her.”

  SIXTEEN

  ADULT CHILD AND IMAGO

  Now Dorcas had space to work but the rest of her group avoided her, made excuses. All except Allison, who reminded Dorcas unpleasantly of an ambitious graduate student.

  The day Allison had her eyes rebuilt was the day Dorcas planned to meet her parents. After the morning session, Allison smiled and washed the electrolyte jelly out of her hair. She said, “After today, I won’t be Allison anymore.”

  “You’ll still have the electric works in your brain,” Dorcas said. Perhaps, she thought, I can come back to them. She suspected that she hadn’t made the right decision, but she was tired of Loba telling her what to do, tired of being the unattached single woman—Loba and Sue didn’t count as they had a certain singularity no man could penetrate.

  So Dorcas made her arrangements and got out of the cab. She waited on the steaming pavement until another cab pulled up beside her. “Do you have the number?” the man asked. Dorcas handed him the slip of paper the first driver gave her, then got in the cab. “To the airport.”

  “Perhaps your parents will be understanding,” the driver said. “If not, we need to know.”

  “What’s wrong with you that you’re with them?”

  The driver pulled off into a parking space. He twisted his body so he could lift a leg over the front seat. The shoe wasn’t fitted for an ordinary human foot.

  Dorcas said, “You could get it fixed.”

  The man pulled his leg back and stared at Dorcas without speaking. He started the car and pulled back into traffic. They drove on to the airport.

  Dorcas went to the information counter and asked, “Are Mr. and Mrs. Hudson in yet?”

  The man at the counter looked through a stack of paper messages and said, “They’re at the Holiday Inn. Room ten-fourteen.”

  “Will I need a car to take me there?”

  “I would recommend it,” the man said.

  The driver waited for Dorcas. She said, “I need to go to the Holiday Inn.”

  “What room?”

  Dorcas wonder why she would tell him that, but the group had given her everything she needed for her insects. “Can 314 I really go back if you keep an eye on me?”

  “If we understand what happened,” the man said. He started the car, pulled away from the curb and drove about a third of a mile to the hotel, another building like any international airport hotel, still being built or remodelled.

  Dorcas said, “Room ten-fourteen, then.”

  “You shouldn’t do this.”

  “I need to check on them. They’re my parents.” She closed her eyes and visualized refineries, oil pumps rocking like metal dinosaurs.

  The driver didn’t open the door for her, couldn’t move quickly with his crippled feet. Dorcas got out and walked into the hotel as though she belonged. She did. Her parents were there.

  Room 1014. A man who looked like early photographs of her father opened the door. He appeared to be in his late twenties. Dorcas never remembered him looking so young. “Dad?”

  “Well, you haven’t changed,” her father said.

  Her mother came out, younger than Dorcas. Dorcas asked, “Do you think you were followed?”

  “No,” her father said. “Would you like tea, coffee?”

  “A soda?”

  “Emily, make Dorcas a soda,” her father said. Dorcas was almost shocked to hear her mother’s name applied to this young woman.

  Her mother poured a canned drink into a glass, added an ice cube from the refrigerator. She looked at Dorcas in the mirror, her real back to Dorcas, then shrugged.

  “I’ve got this secret job. The Feds are just pretending to be looking for me.”

  Emily turned and ha
nded Dorcas her drink. Paul said, “Dorcas, we know better. You’ve been gene-hacking for eco-terrorists.”

  “There’s money in it. You were always one for market opportunities.” Dorcas drank the soda her mother had given her.

  Her mother said, “Dorcas, you’ve been a disappointment to us since you were in high school.”

  “Not that we didn’t spoil you,” her father said. “But our doctor thought you were our best genetic combination.”

  “Yes, Daddy, I’m your gourmet child.” The ice cube had melted unnaturally quickly.

  Her mother said, “Sit down, Dorcas. We feel we owe you an explanation for what we’ve done.”

  Dorcas felt her body shift. “It was in the drink? Nanotech? You’re changing me. Please change my retinas. Loba couldn’t risk it because I’m wanted everywhere.”

  “Yes,” her mother said. “We know how we’d raise you this time.”

  Paul said, “It’s not like we’re killing you. We’re just going to reduce you to babyhood.”

  Emily said, “You need to lie down, dear. Paul, go get the plastic sheet and the cryogenic unit, in case she’s stops before term.”

  Dorcas said, “I’ll drown in my own tissue.”

  “Don’t worry, dear, we’ve got all the necessary life support. We’re just using your uterus.”

  Dorcas felt her womb filling. “No, mother, please.” Her toes turned to jelly.

  After the nanomachines scavenged what they needed, her father vaccuumed away the rest of her feet. Dorcas said, “But it won’t be me. I’m my memories.”

  Her mother said, “Would you like sedation, dear?”

  “Mom, how long will this take?”

  Her father said, “We put in a massive set of machines so they could be quicker reassembling you.”

  “How quick?”

  “A few hours.”

  Dorcas tried to get up, but she seemed disconnected from her dissolving body. “But will it keep my memories?”

  Her mother said, “It would be more humane to sedate her,” and reached for a needle. Dorcas felt the needle go in.

  Her father said, just as she faded away, “Your memories aren’t our baby.”