by K. L. Denman
Melissa said it was the best summer ever. And when it was just the two of us walking home, her body curled close to mine, kissing me, sighing my name, soft and low…
“You all right, kid?”
I blink back into the fluorescent glare of the drugstore and find a guy eyeballing me.
“Huh?”
“Looked like you were having a seizure or something.” He glances at my hand and grins. “First time buying those?”
I look at my hand too and find it clutching a package of condoms. I don’t say a word to the guy. I turn away, walk to the checkout, hand over the cash, take my bag and go home.
When I get into my room, I plug in the charger at the outlet behind my desk and stash the other stuff under my bed. I peek behind my desk and watch the red light on the charging unit, visualizing the electricity flowing into the Blackberry’s lithium battery, and it’s as if the energy is pumping into me too. I feel great. It’s actually happening. Everything is falling into place. I go to my computer and start downloading songs. I get the seventies, the eighties, the nineties. I get the top songs since Y2K, and when that’s all done, the green light is lit on the Blackberry.
Dad sticks his head in my bedroom door and says, “You still up?”
I shrug. “Just about done.”
He frowns. “Hope so. Time for bed, eh?”
I nod.
I make a show of using the bathroom, splash water around, brush my teeth, flush the toilet. I get back into my room, sit down at my computer and open up my manifesto document.
Category Three: Work
Most people must work at jobs to earn money so they can buy things like food and clothing. They also need to pay for a place to live. If they earn enough Money, they can buy a house or an apartment, but they usually have to borrow money to do that, and it takes a long time to pay back the loan. Lots of other people rent a place to live from a wealthier person who owns extra places. Some people don’t work and can end up living on the streets. Who knows why they don’t work. Maybe they’re sick or crazy or drug addicts or they just don’t want to and they like the freedom to wander around.
I should discuss drug addicts. You will find samples of two common illegal drugs among my artifacts. The plant is marijuana which people smoke to get high. It’s not supposed to be extremely harmful quite a few kids I know have tried it and they seem okay after I even tried it once. The lumps of crystal are called meth which is short for………is supposed to make you feel really great for a short time. It is highly addictive and screws up your brain.
There is a third drug at the scene, alcohol. People get addicted to this too. It comes in many flavors and is in liquid form when you analyze my body, you should find that I drank a type of alcohol known as vodka. That’s the plan. I don’t usually drink this but it has the effect of numbing the senses, I will not notice myself freezing to death.
This doesn’t have much to do with work, does it? There’s all sorts of work. My father is a plumber he installs pipes in buildings to carry fresh water in and dirty water out. How is your water situation? I hope you’re not down to drinking recycled urine. My mother’s work involves a lot of paper and trying to sort out whether someone has broken the law or how people might solve legal disputes. Other people work as doctors, teachers, cooks, garbage collectors.
I wonder if you have the technology to clone me and bring me back to life. Then I could tell you in person all about life today but would my clone have my memories? Are my memories in my cells? Speaking of cells I used to have a friend whose mother was a type of massage therapist and did treatments called the Rosen Method. She told me about it. When people are injured and pretend it wasn’t frightening or didn’t hurt, the bodies hold those emotions in that area. Well, years later you may have a very bad pain somewhere and doctors can’t figure out why but you go for Rosen treatment and when the practitioner contacts that spot the muscles clench and quiver. So the practitioner probes that place and suddenly you’re crying or angry and all these horrible feelings that you suppressed start coming out this is supposed to be good because if you allow the emotions to happen, they’ll be released from your flesh.
So maybe you can find my memories in my clone?
Category four: aliens
I’m pretty sure that by now you’ll know if there’s life on other planets lots of people claim to see UFOs Unidentified Flying Objects (my grandfather saw one) and some people even say they’ve been abducted by aliens. These aliens examine the people then let them go sort of like how we catch wild animals and examine then release them.
Did I mention animals don’t have it too good here sometimes? Some people are cruel to them and others use them to test chemicals and drugs it is disgusting. Hopefully by now you people won’t be doing this anymore. I really hope so.
If we do get visitors from other planets I hope they’re not only advanced in technology but also in ethics they will do the right thing and act kindly, maybe help us out instead of wipe us out. Of course they could be like the guys on Star Trek and follow the Prime Directive which would mean they couldn’t interfere with our evolution.
Speaking of evolution it took a long time for my eyeteeth to come in. I had to go to an orthodontist and get braces on my teeth and he told me that some people today no longer get eyeteeth at all this could be due to evolution since humans are no longer using their teeth the way we once did—that is, we’re not biting and chewing at lots of tough meat and hide which sounds pretty bad, eh? Some people don’t get wisdom teeth either and those of us who do get them end up getting them pulled out. Mostly crummy molars at the back of our mouths and I should tell you when you examine my body you won’t find mine there although I did have them.
My manifesto is going great. Just a few more categories to go, but I’m too tired to keep writing. The clock says it’s 3:15, and that’s am for sure. I have to go to school tomorrow. Need to get the meth and weed. I’m getting close.
I crawl into bed, but even though I’m exhausted, I don’t fall asleep. I lie there for a long time before I eventually drift into a strange place of half waking, half sleeping….
TEN
I’m in a canoe, casting my fishing line into an indigo alpine lake. Dark forest grows thick from the water’s edge on every side, the green rising up around me in a ruffled mass. Above this is the sharp white peak of a young mountain. The mountain is close, so close I feel I could cast my line up and it would snag the peak, forming a slender connection I could swing upon and shimmy straight to the top.
But not yet. I’m utterly content here in the boat, watching sunlight wink on wavelets, peering deep into the water, glimpsing flickers of pink and green on the swift flanks of rainbow trout. I love this place. I live for such moments. And I’ve made it so this moment can go on for as long as I choose.
I’ve seen the signs of global warming in my travels around the planet; my trip to the thawing Arctic last year was the catalyst that drove me to perfect the program. Day and night, for weeks, for months, I stayed away from my love and built the solution. I sigh and lean back, trail my hand in the water, picture that building I’ve left behind. It’s filled with computers all bent toward a single purpose: identify, beyond any doubt, the factors creating climate change.
The computers will find the proof. They are capable of seeking out all other computers, of accessing, correlating and analyzing all data. And since there is no more time to waste in discussion, in presenting the proof, no time at all, I programmed them to go one step further. My final instruction to them was, once the sources of the problem are discovered, be they cars, industry, jet planes—whatever—to go right ahead and activate the robots to eliminate the problems by any means necessary.
By the time I get back to civilization, things will be underway, maybe even fully implemented. Perfect. I know people will moan and gripe about the massive changes to our lifestyle, but we’ll adapt. Humans are good at that. After all, we got along for millennia without burning fossil fuels or putt
ing every little damn thing in plastic, didn’t we? Yes, we must make some serious changes, and the computers will see that it’s done efficiently. No more schizo waffling on what we humans must do, or undo.
We humans…I leap to my feet and, in an instant, am toppled into the water. I gasp and thrash in the icy cold and can’t tell if I’m numbed by this chill or by the realization of my terrible error. The computers were instructed to eliminate the problem. But if the ultimate problem is us…! I struggle to reach the canoe. I must get back, must shut them down, stop them…
“Kit? Hey! You’re having a bad dream. Kit?”
From far away, I hear myself screaming, “Stop them! Must stop them!”
And again, the soft voice, urgently calling. “Kit? Come on, wake up. It’s okay. Just a nightmare.”
I’m not drowning in a distant lake. I’m tangled in the blankets on my bed, coated in a film of cold sweat, gasping. My heart is pounding so hard it feels as though it’s trying to burst from my chest. Mom is leaning over me. Dad too.
“Kit?”
I croak, “Yeah.”
“Wow. Must have been some nightmare. You were screaming, honey. Are you okay?”
I sink back against my pillow and manage a nod.
“I’m going to get a damp cloth and some water, okay? I’ll be right back.” Mom’s anxious face disappears from my line of vision, and Dad’s takes its place.
“Must have been a doozy, kid. Haven’t heard you have a nightmare like that for years. Scared the bejeesus out of me.”
“Sorry.”
He shakes his head. “No, no need to apologize. Can’t be helped. Do you want to talk about it?”
I can’t tell him what I did. It still feels so real. I, Kit Latimer, single-handedly caused the annihilation of humanity and the rise of the machine. How could I have been so colossally stupid? I shudder, and Dad pats my arm.
“Never mind. Maybe later. Here’s Mom back.”
And there she is, patting a cool cloth over my face, just like she did when I was a little kid. She finishes and offers a glass of water. “Drink?”
I take the glass and swallow. The water going down my dry throat feels icy cold. I hand back the glass and mutter, “Thanks.”
She straightens out my bedding and says, “Would you like me to sit with you for a bit?”
I shake my head.
She purses her lips and nods. “Okay. Maybe we can all catch one more hour of sleep, eh?”
I glance at the clock and see that it’s almost 6:00 AM. One more hour until it’s time to get up, go off to school, off to score. I nod and wait for her to leave the room; then I throw off my blankets and get up. No way am I risking going back into that nightmare. I sit at my desk and watch the minutes tick by on my clock. They tick in unison with my heartbeat.
This small machine is in tune with my body. I reach around and feel my tattoo. Tattoo. That’s a word that can also mean a beat or a rhythm, isn’t it? I keep a hand on my back and my eyes on the clock and sure enough, it’s all synchronized. What does it mean?
There’s a pattern here, I’m sure of it. The machines in the dream, my heart beating a tattoo in sync with my clock, in sync with my tattoo…A chill runs through me as I realize that some of the nanos must have survived. They’ve made it to my heart, haven’t they? But so what? They can’t do anything. There aren’t enough of them. Maybe only two or three, the size of bacteria. That’s the message of my nightmare. It must be. The nanos have survived and are on the move.
A glimmer of another dream I had recently surfaces. It was about the nanos, wasn’t it? Do computers make nanos? Now that I think about it, how could people make something that small? It’s impossible. I switch on my computer and type in a search for nanos. Thousands of hits come up and I start clicking. Sure enough, to be effective, the nano robots must exist in swarms. But then I learn that the objective of some scientists is to make them self-replicating. The web page I read says this is still theoretical, but is it? They don’t want us to know what they’re really doing, do they? What if they’ve already made the self-replicating nanos and are keeping the technology a secret?
I should report Tony. It’s the right thing to do. How many unsuspecting people have gone into his parlor for tattoos and come out with a whole lot more than they bargained for? What if there are thousands of people being injected all over the planet, and when the time comes, the nanos are signaled to self-replicate and take over the bodies they’re in?
I stand and start pacing. I need to think this through. I could go to the police and tell them, but I’ll bet they won’t believe me. Could I tell Fred? No, he wouldn’t believe me either. Nobody wants to believe such things are happening in the world. Maybe I could write a letter to someone? Who? Man, it’s so bizarre this is happening when I should be focusing on my own special mission. I can’t delay my mission. But I can’t go and leave this unreported either. It’s bad enough I stole the Blackberry, never mind turning my back on everyone for the sake of the people in the future. If the nanos take over now, there might not even be people in the future.
I should write to the government. But what if they’re in on it? I’ll bet Tony is an agent for the government, a front man posing as a tattooist. But would everyone in the government be in on it? So maybe I’ll write to lots of governments and the United Nations and all the churches because for sure they would think it’s evil for machines to take over humans.
The faint buzz of my parents’ alarm startles me. When I look at my clock, I find the whole hour has gone by already. Ike was definitely right about time speeding up.
Another buzz. This time it signals the end of English class, and I automatically gather my books and rise to my feet.
“Kit Latimer? I’d like to speak with you for a moment. Please remain seated.” Mr. Porter doesn’t sound happy.
I slump back into my desk.
Mr. Porter waits until the other students have exited, going off to eat their lunches. I’m supposed to be on my way to get my weed and meth, so whatever he has to say, I hope he gets it over with fast.
He approaches me and sits at the desk next to mine. I don’t look at him, but I can feel him staring, willing me to meet his gaze. It’s an old teachers’ trick, and I’m immune. He says, “I know what you’re thinking.”
And with horrifying certainty, I realize this is true. He knows. He knows everything. He knows about the nanos. I don’t look at him. I can’t let him see that I understand or, worse yet, allow him access to my eyes. He’d have total control then, wouldn’t he?
“Kit?”
I shake my head.
He sighs. “You think if you ignore me, then maybe I’ll just do the same, right? But I can’t do that, Kit. It’s my job to teach, and it gives me a great deal of satisfaction. The thing is, it’s a two-way street. In order for me to teach, I need my students to learn. Have you learned anything at all in this class?”
It’s a trick question. He wants to know what I know. I shrug.
Another sigh. “Listen, Kit. I looked at your records. Up until this year, you were a good student. Very good. But we’re several weeks into the new semester, and you haven’t yet handed in a single assignment.”
I keep quiet.
“I also give marks for class participation, but I don’t recall you contributing to any class discussions. I’ve got to tell you, Kit, I’m concerned about your chances for passing this course—one that’s required for graduation. You do understand this, don’t you?”
I force a nod. I understand all right.
“Good. What I’d like to suggest is that, for the next while, you spend the lunch hour in my classroom. Just until you’re caught up. I’m going to write a letter explaining this to your parents, all right? I’ll have it ready for you tomorrow, and then I need it returned to me, with their signatures, by Friday.”
He’s planning to get my parents in on it. I feel sick.
“Kit?”
I keep my eyes glued to the top of the desk.
“Are you okay? Maybe you should meet with the counselor too. I can speak to Mrs. Jamieson if you like.”
“No, thanks.”
“No? Hmm. Well, we’ll see how it goes with the extra class time first, but if I don’t see any improvement… Look, is there anything you’d like to tell me?”
Like I’m going to fall for that.
“Okay, then. Go ahead and have your lunch. I’ll have the letter ready for tomorrow. Understood?”
I nod, get to my feet and go. There is no way I can ever go back into that classroom. No way at all. I shuffle down the hallway; it’s almost deserted. Almost. A group of guys hangs in a knot on one side. Farther down, two girls sit on the floor, their backs against the wall. All of them stare at me. The guys huddle closer and murmur; the girls incline their heads together and whisper. They’re all talking about me. I’ll bet if they were naked I could see their tattoos. They’ve been taken. They’re waiting for me to be taken too.
I force myself to walk past them, even though I have the overpowering urge to run. Or scream, tell them I know all about their plans. Why me? I’d like to ask them that. I hesitate. Maybe I should ask them. Maybe there’s some shred of humanity left in one of them and they’ll help me escape.
No. I don’t need their help. It’s too big a risk, like handing myself on a platter to a pack of soul-sucking zombies. I make it past them and speed up, go straight for my locker. I’m going to empty it, take everything I own and go. I’ll have to make sure I get every last bit of me, even a stray hair that may have fallen; I can take no chances of them having access to my DNA. No chances.
ELEVEN
My laden backpack feels unnaturally heavy, as though the books are super-weighted, but if something has been planted in them, the discovery will have to wait until later. First things first. And the first thing now is getting the last thing I need from this so-called school.
The kids hanging in the clearing watch me plod into their midst with the barest flicker of interest. These ones have not been taken by the nanos; not yet, anyway. They’ve been taken by the drugs. The pungent odor of weed drifts on the air, along with their lazy chuckles, and I approach the first knot of stoners with something like relief.
