Clay

by Tony Bertauski

“Talk to me. You didn’t know what?”

  “So much death,” he whispers.

  “Where?”

  “When I arrived at the warehouse, there were so many bodies. I’d never seen anything like that. They just fell where they were standing. So desperate. The abuse…never so evident. That moment, I understood we needed M0ther to watch over us to make sure this didn’t happen again.”

  He looks less like the handsome police officer that arrived uninvited and more like a broken, shaggy man clutching a new reality.

  “But Jamie survived,” he says. “She was scared and alone and cornered by life. She reminded me of my niece. Reminded me that, if I had a daughter, she could be that survivor lost in this desperate world.”

  He falls silent, sorting his thoughts. Cali squeezes the doorjamb to keep from shaking him, again.

  “When the bricks arrived, it got confusing. I…I don’t even remember how it happened. I just…couldn’t trust anything. I didn’t know if my thoughts were from me or them. Sometimes I found myself doing something without thinking. There were blank spots and I’d be somewhere else, not remembering where I was. I felt so…so dead. We all did. We were puppets.”

  He’s staring like his hands betrayed him.

  “And then there was a long gap of memory, a black space. I don’t know how long it lasted, I just knew I had to save her, knew what they were going to do with her. I had to get Jamie out before they came for her because she could be my niece or daughter. We had to run away, far away. It was the only thought I had—to get her out. And now I...now I don’t know if that was my thought or their thought.”

  “Who are ‘they?’”

  “I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing, I couldn’t trust them. We were all under the bricks’ control. Somehow, I couldn’t feel them inside me anymore. I figured I just slipped through, that maybe they released me too soon. I grabbed Jamie and left without telling anyone, without saying goodbye to my family. At the time, I didn’t think that was odd, it was what I had to do to keep her safe because that’s all I could think about. I just left. And no one ever came looking for me. No one ever called.”

  He pulls up his legs, grabs handfuls of hair.

  “What are you saying?” Cali asks.

  Several moments pass. He looks up, his complexion dyed in the circuit board’s ghostly light. She feels his thoughts, feels him reaching out, attempting to chat. But it’s not words he’s sending, not a message.

  It’s a link.

  She processes the root directory, runs it through virus detection. It appears to be a video stream linked to a licensed blogging site, the contents tagged with the events at the warehouse. The images overlay the inside of the shed and Paul’s haunting look.

  The bodies are lined up on the concrete. The view scans the grieving survivors. Police manage the orderly chaos. She had seen this event through Nix’s eyes, when he sent the vindictive photo of Jamie. This is nothing new.

  She almost cuts it short but the recording pans to a back office. There’s a body crumpled at the foot of a lounger. The soles of black shoes are askew, a navy blue pant leg hiked up the shin. The view quickly goes to the back of the office space.

  Cali stops it.

  She rewinds it, enhances the profile of the man’s face. The handsome, middle-aged man is pale in death. Paul.

  “No.” She cuts the video off, the details of the shed coming into focus. “No, those bodies are fabricated. The bricks took the halfskins…M0ther has been secretly harboring them, leaving fabricated duplicates behind…”

  Paul’s slumped in the corner, staring at his hands, again. He’s not a brick. He can’t be. He’s been here for months; M0ther would know Nix and Cali were here. He’s not a brick.

  “You’re not,” she says.

  But how did he leave? That question always bothered her. She rationalized when he arrived that there was nothing she could do about his true nature. And when nothing happened, she let it go.

  But why would his body be in the warehouse? What does that make the man in front of her? If that’s a fabrication of Paul in the warehouse, that means they know he took Jamie. If that was Paul’s clay—his flesh and blood—in the warehouse, then there’s a brick on her property.

  Either way, M0ther sent him. She compelled him to save Jamie.

  The police found his body at the scene, assumed he somehow died during the investigation. His family would grieve. The police would retire his uniform. And somehow M0ther kept it all a secret so that no one would look for him. He would be free to take Jamie.

  For Nix to find them.

  To bring them here.

  “Where are Nix and Jamie? What have you done?” The question is directed at herself as much as him.

  “I didn’t know.”

  Cali drags Paul from the corner. His dead weight prevents her from pulling him out the door. He grabs the circuit panel. Cali slams her fists into his back.

  “Goddamn you! What have you done?”

  “Leave me,” he says. “The greatest interference is under the cell tower. No one can see me if I stay here.”

  “What’s it matter now?”

  “I can’t be out there. I can’t put you at risk.”

  “It’s too late.” She loses her balance, crashing against the wall. Vertigo spins the shed. The feeling of dread is reaching up for her, again, its teeth snapping at her intestines, ready to take from her again, again, again.

  First her parents. Then her family.

  Now it’s come for her.

  She always thought there would be a sense of relief when the dreaded end took her. It seemed cruel to take everything else first, to leave her to her watch it all pruned away before she was uprooted and pulled into death’s embrace.

  She stumbles out of the shed, falling on her hands and knees. The ground alternates between dull green and blood red as the tower’s warning light flashes. She sprints in search of Nix and Jamie, even though it makes no sense. She can’t feel them. She knows they’re gone.

  Gone.

  The world feels so incredibly small.

  44

  The dogs are outside the utility shed. Occasionally, they put their noses to the bottom of the door, sniffing Paul’s presence.

  He’s buried in the sleeping bag Cali tossed at him late the night before. Although spring has arrived, the nights are still cool in the mountains. The circuit board gives off some heat, but not enough. The concrete is an unforgiving slab. His hips ache.

  Biomites are not invincible. They are perfect replicas of organic cells, refined to avoid degradation and programmable by thoughts, but the red blood biomites still needed oxygen.

  They still suffer.

  He was awake through most of the night. The wind picked up around midnight. Pine needles blasted the outer walls.

  How could this have happened?

  The last thing he remembers, with any clarity, is standing inside the warehouse, staring at Jamie, helpless on the lounger. The memories before that—getting up that morning, attending his niece’s birthday party the week before, fishing off the pier with his brother—are faint, like stories someone told him

  Are they real?

  From time to time he lifts his hands, turning them over, wondering if they are his or just replications. Wondering if this body contains any clay at all. Wondering who is in the warehouse, who is in this shed.

  Wondering…Am I a brick?

  He doesn’t feel any different than before the warehouse. Those memories tell him this is what reality is supposed to feel like. If that’s really his body in the warehouse, who is he now? If he’s a brick, why hasn’t he betrayed Cali? That’s the biggest mystery. It’s the proof to which his sanity clings: If I’m something other than clay, why haven’t I done something?

  It gives him hope that this is all a dream.

  But why leave his body to be discovered?

  Unless she wanted me to see it.

  The dogs begin to whine. The door is yanked open and morning
light stabs through the darkness. Paul throws the sleeping bag over his head.

  “Come inside the house,” Cali says.

  “They might be looking for me. M0ther might have lost me in the storm. I can’t take the chance.”

  “She doesn’t lose contact. The damage is already done.”

  “We don’t know that.” He rolls over, squints. “We don’t know anything.”

  She hasn’t slept either. Her frizzled hair is a halo in the slicing light. A rogue wave tingles through him. She’s doing a mental scan, looking inside him, again. Could she make him come inside? Could she assume control of his actions like before?

  He’s tired of being manipulated, of losing free will. He thought he freely rescued Jamie, but now it seems he was tricked into making those choices. M0ther wanted him to do it. She made him do it.

  I can’t trust my thoughts. I can’t trust anything.

  “Leave me alone.”

  She drops a tote bag and kneels next to him. The dogs come inside, sniffing. She pulls food and water out of the bag. Paul sits up to drink, watches her remove a black case from the bag and unroll it. Syringes, tubes, and a stethoscope-like instrument are inside.

  “Where are Nix and Jamie?” he asks.

  “Gone.” The news is delivered in dead, hollowed-out words. “They took your car.”

  She takes a syringe from the pack and finds several alcohol wipes. He watches her tear the packets open, wondering if Jamie is hiding somewhere on the property. Nix must’ve figured out where a fabricator was located, but why would she go with him?

  “I’m going to take samples to analyze, find out what you’re made of. I should’ve done this when you arrived.”

  Paul works his arm out of the sleeping bag. The air outside is frigid on his bare skin. Cali wipes down the inside of his arm and expertly finds an artery with the needle’s tip. The dogs watch the tube fill with red blood. When biomites were first available, they maintained their gun metal color. Today’s strains didn’t just operate like cells; they look every bit like them. Only close analysis could see the difference.

  Cali takes two samples, quickly packs them away. She leaves the food on the floor. The dogs scamper out.

  “I didn’t make Nix and Jamie leave,” Paul says.

  “I know.” Cali stops in the open doorway. “I did.”

  She remains still, staring at the soggy ground. She wants to say more. Paul can feel the weight of her thoughts. How long has she lived this way, with no one to confess her troubles to?

  She closes the door and seals out the light, leaving Paul in the green glow of the circuit board. He feels around for the food, finds it on the very hard, very cold floor.

  Part Three

  FABRICATIONS

  Reality is relative.

  M0THER

  The Birthright

  Deena Flannigan adjusted the bed when her husband, Duane, came in the room with their baby. Gregory Allen was eight pounds two ounces. Her husband laid the bundle on her lap. She was too weak to do anything else but hold her baby boy.

  “He’s finally here,” Duane said, stroking his wife’s forehead.

  It felt like they’d been trying for a decade. They could’ve solved their infertility and conceived on the first try if they embraced new technology. Deena and Duane were old-fashioned.

  The way God intended.

  “He’s beautiful.”

  One second Deena was laughing, and the next she was crying. She was aware that the roller coaster of emotions was just beginning. Her body was dumping all sorts of hormones into her bloodstream. There was a cure for that, too, but she’d work through it. With pleasure comes pain, she always said.

  Deena’s roommate was on the other side of a blue curtain divider. The roommate’s family had arrived an hour earlier and made no effort to contain their enthusiasm. Deena tried to sleep through the new mother’s talk about the painless miracle of childbirth.

  “Claire fell asleep,” her husband had said. “Right in the middle of it.”

  Deena experienced the gift of birth in all its glory. There was nothing painless about it.

  Duane crawled in bed with Deena. Gregory Allen was nestled between them. They didn’t need words to experience their miracle.

  “How we doing, Claire?” A nurse pushed a cart into the room followed by a professionally-dressed woman. They smiled at Deena then disappeared behind the curtain.

  “When can I go home?” Claire asked.

  Laughter ensued. “Pretty soon. Let me just have a look.”

  The nurse went through a standard examination of the infant while the family made silly baby sounds and teased the nurse for taking so long.

  “What’s his name?” the nurse asked.

  “Billy Junior,” the father spouted. “Just like his daddy.”

  “William,” the nurse added. “That’s a strong name.”

  Deena could see through a gap between the curtain and the wall. Billy sat next to Claire, the baby in his arms.

  “Well,” the nurse said, “this is Marian Fletcher. She represents the Biomite Augmentation Program. She’ll be serving as witness to William’s birthright. If you can just look this over and confirm all the information is correct. Do you have any questions?”

  “Yeah,” one of the family members said. “You can shoot the leftovers in me.”

  Laughter. Ms. Fletcher and the nurse didn’t find it funny. Claire handed a tablet back to the nurse.

  “Thank you,” Ms. Fletcher said. “Just to confirm, you qualify for the basic biomite subsidy which includes language, memory, and sensory enhancement as well as current disease immunization. After the first year, if approved by a doctor, you may seed William with a neural booster.”

  Billy tickled the baby’s lips while singing a goo-goo song.

  “Please be aware that biomite augmentation is monitored by the government. If, at any time, William’s body exceeds 49.9% biomites, he will be considered halfskin and lose his human rights. Are there any questions?”

  “You know how many times I’ve heard that?” someone said.

  The tablet came back to Billy and Claire while someone mocked the Birthright Augmentation Memorandum.

  “Claire,” Ms. Fletcher said, “if you can hold William.”

  Billy handed the baby to Claire. The nurse moved into position on the opposite side of the bed and turned William on his stomach. The baby struggled in his wrappings, started to whimper. Billy told him to hush up.

  “Damn, that thing looks wicked,” someone said.

  The nurse kept the tool hidden. “I’m going to place this at the base of his skull. He’ll feel some pressure for about two seconds. We can expect his body temperature to rise. If there are no complications, he’ll be back to normal in an hour.”

  She didn’t hesitate.

  The seeder looked like a shiny gun. The blunt tip went flush against William’s neck, just below the hairline. Seconds later, it was over. William was not happy. Neither was Billy. His son needed to man up.

  While they attempted to calm the child, the curtain was pushed aside. The nurse rolled the cart to Deena’s side of the room with a well-rehearsed smile. Duane stood up.

  “How are you this morning, Deena?”

  “Just fine, thank you.”

  Ms. Fletcher moved to the foot of the bed while consulting her tablet. The nurse introduced her.

  “We’re not seeding him,” Deena said.

  The other side of the room got quiet. Duane pulled the curtain all the way to the wall.

  “I see that,” Ms. Fletcher said. “I just need you to answer a few questions before you waive your son’s augmentation birthright. You do realize that the current strain of biomites is non-replicating.”

  Gregory Allen squirmed in his mother’s grip. Duane held her hand.

  “You’ll have to confirm that you understand what I’m saying.” Ms. Fletcher paused.

  “We understand,” Duane said with a bit of Southern accent, “but we do not
agree.”

  “Duly noted. And you also understand that by refusing to seed your son he will not have the same biological and mental enhancements as 98% of the human population. He will also require immunizations. He will have to be registered as unseeded clay.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The nurse signed off on the tablet and handed it to Deena. She and her husband acknowledged their refusal to poison their precious gift with false idols. Ms. Fletcher directed them to several screens that positively identified the parents by retinal scan.

  “Idiots,” Billy sort of whispered.

  “That baby’s going to grow up stupid,” Claire whispered.

  Deena and Duane pretended they didn’t hear them. They’d heard comments like that all their lives. Deena hugged little Gregory Allen while Duane finished confirming the waiver. When Ms. Fletcher and the nurse left, it was just the three of them.

  They were 100% God-given organic cells.

  Or, as Billy would say, they were clay.

  45

  Before Jamie’s father left—or, rather, when he was taken—he brought her to the mountains. They had hiked up Mount Rainier, high enough to see the spring flowers on the hillsides like bright carpet. He took the binoculars from his neck and pointed towards the stream.

  “Look near the big rocks.”

  Jamie fumbled with the binocular’s barrels, squeezing the hinge until both her eyes were centered over the eyepieces. The world was fuzzy green. Awkwardly, she spun the dial until, slowly, shapes emerged and edges sharpened. Colors expanded into rich hues of verdant green and crisp blue. She swung them toward the boulders where he was still pointing. There, she saw deer sipping from the stream.

  The world was so alive.

  Later, when she became a teen, when she learned how to tweak her biomites, when she sold half her clay to biomite seedings in search of the wonder, she lost her sense of aliveness.

  But now it’s back.

  She’s 52.1%. There’s no going back.

  M0ther’s gaze is palpable, like a giant invisible eye sweeping over the earth, staring at her through the lens of binoculars, searching for evidence of her transgression—her digital finger caressing the switch on Jamie’s life. A twitch is all it would take.