Genesis 2.0

by Collin Piprell

  watching the watchers

  The guy lies off to one side.

  He snores loud enough to alert every predator within a two‐kilometer radius. Poppy always said a good hunter followed two rules: Grab any chance you get to take a safe piss, and seize every opportunity to enjoy a secure nap. This escaped mallster has got it only half right; he needs to sleep more quietly.

  •

  Dee Zu is watching. Silent and still as stone, she's silhouetted against a sky bright with a full moon and its companion constellation of corporate logos.

  The sky is clear, unusually free of dust, at least above the high‐tide mark. You can even see a few stars, despite the brightness of the moon and other stuff up there. A WU logo, a three‐color molecule twice as big as the moon, floats in orbit about thirty degrees from the western horizon. Who knows what it's supposed to stand for.

  Something Poppy told him once long ago: "When WU hides the moon in winter, dragons sleep high and winds can't be far behind."

  "Really?" Son had said.

  "Of course not." Poppy snickered. "I'm bullshitting you."

  Right now the WU is nowhere near the moon, which is more directly competing with twin golden arches. Neither does Son know what they're supposed to represent; Auntie said it had something to do with hamburgers, if you can believe that. There's also a silver checkmark of similar size.

  Gran‐Gran called the checkmark the Swoosh, claimed it conveyed a message from the Lord. "'Just do right!'"

  Auntie begged to differ: "It's an ad for shoes."

  "Shoes?" Son asked.

  "People used to buy a lot of shoes."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know. But it was very important. I mean, think about it: one shoe company orbited an ad bigger than the moon."

  "I'll tell you what it is," Poppy told them. "It's a pain in the ass. Sometimes it blocks out the North Star, leaving us one low‐tech navigational aid poorer."

  •

  It's Son's watch.

  He watches Dee Zu sleep, even though Poppy would say he can't do that and stand guard at the same time. He watches the swell of her moonlit breasts, their gentle rise and fall, the line of her neck, the smooth movement of moonlit haunch as she shifts in some dream. He looks, and he sees the guy watching him watch Dee Zu.

  "No problem," Son says. "I've got it. I'm watching."

  The guy says nothing.

  restorations

  With morning light they're all awake. Though the sun has hardly broken the horizon, Son feels the heat coming up. There's no sign of the previous night's billboard.

  The wound looks good. The skin around it, yellow with blackish patches, is hardly swollen at all. Though it itches like crazy. He sucks a great big breath down and then expels it. "Aaah." His ribs don't hurt; they just tingle.

  Dee Zu turns his way, assesses his condition. Smiles at him.

  He feels good. He feels very good, all things considered. There's no trace of fever. In fact, it's amazing how clear‐headed he is. And he's starving. Really hungry.

  Then he thinks about Auntie, and Poppy. He breathes deep, shoving a plank of sorrow from behind his eyeballs down into his chest. But what's gone is gone, as Poppy might say, and overall he's doing pretty okay. He stretches his arms above him and rises on his toes. There's no sign of the old aches in the ball of the left foot or in the right ankle. The background ache in his pinkie has been with him so long he has to pay real attention to confirm it's still there. His right elbow twinges, though not too badly. He's also getting a funny pain deep in his abdomen. Overall, however, he's in good order. Energized, even. He looks over at Dee Zu.

  He feels better than he has in a long time. "So tell me," he asks her. "Exactly what are these 'medibots' doing?"

  Again, it's her friend who answers. Doesn't matter. Son isn't paying attention, he's listening to a voice inside his head:

  Greetings, and congratulations again upon your newly enabled WalkAbout. Updated medical status report follows:

  Eliminated pathogenic bacteria infections.

  Neutralized residual toxin, reptilian in origin.

  Removed parasites (three probably reptilian in origin, others typically found in wide variety of vertebrates): four intramuscular, three bloodstream, two liver, one brain, and thirteen gastroenterological, both amoebic and vermiform.

  Upgraded metabolic function.

  Restored recently damaged skin and muscle tissues.

  Repaired second joint, left index finger. (Removed scar tissue and dysfunctional calcium deposits, shortened one tendon. Applied salvaged material to rebuilding cartilage and extending one tendon.)

  Restoration of third joint, right little finger, suspended until anomalous foreign object is identified and authorization granted to disassemble said object, a sealed composite tube, to determine whether it contains a substance that might expose the organism to possible ill effects.

  Repairs to older tissue and bone damage in progress.

  Attempted removal, unsuccessful, of anomalous pre‐existent nanobot construction in abdomen, amalgamated in some way with subject's come‐and‐go WalkAbout. No pathology detected; surveillance/monitoring procedures initiated.

  Routine maintenance procedures initiated.

  Further details available upon request.

  As Poppy liked to say, nanotech was headed in purely amazing directions. Till it turned on us.

  Whatever. This particular bit of nanotech hasn't finished with Son yet.

  Elevated HQ ninety‐five percent attributed to removal debilitating parasites.

  "What's 'HQ'?" Son asks Dee Zu.

  The guy jumps in to reply, "Happiness quotient." He doesn't actually sneer as he says this.

  The Lode continues its report:

  Five percent of HQ elevation attributed to hormonally induced anticipation of agonistic sexual challenge.

  "'Agonistic'?" This time Son asks the Lode, watching the smooth ripple of Dee Zu's haunch as she gets to her feet. "What's that?"

  throwbacks, cupcakes & damsels in distress

  "If eyeballs had teeth," Cisco says, "there'd be nothing left of you but crumbs."

  Dee Zu laughs. "Cut him some slack," she says. "He's only a boy. Two days an orphan."

  "Right."

  "I probably remind him of his aunt."

  Maybe at that proposition, the boy's eyelids flutter and he comes awake. "Who's been watching?" he says, urgency in his voice.

  •

  "Watching what?" asks Cisco, just as a pack of six GameBoys clamber out of a smoking fissure on the other side of them, the one away from the cave entrance.

  In less time than it takes to tell it, three of them have Cisco corralled at spearpoint. They do not live to regret this. The other three have advanced on Dee Zu. Son, on his feet with his knife and moving fast, leaves two of her attackers down before they know what has happened. Dee Zu launches a spinning back kick at the last GameBoy, only to run afoul of Son, who comes in airborne intending, she guesses, to stomp this creature's lead leg. Just in time, she sees who has collided with her and stops her knuckle‐thrust well inside Son's defense but short of a crippling blow.

  The GameBoy is as surprised as anyone at this novel tactic, where your enemies leave off attacking you to attack each other instead. His bemusement opens him up to Cisco's lunging straight lead punch, which arrives an instant too late. Dee Zu has stepped off Son's shoulder as the boy thrusts back up from the ground, using him as a springboard to soar over the jabbing spear and come down hard enough to break the GameBoy's collarbone, stomping his bent lead leg on the way down. The GameBoy screams, not loud enough to cover the snapping of sinews.

  The scream tapers off in gurgles cut short by Son's knife.

  •

  "What on earth did you think you were doing?" She's so angry she's hissing.

  "Idiot." Cisco is right up in Son's face, clearly hoping he tries something. "You nearly got her killed."

  "What are you talking about? She left herself
wide open."

  "So wide open she had time to kick your ass before getting back to business."

  "You have no idea." Son draws himself up to his full height.

  "Oh, yeah. Our little damsel in distress forgets more about hand‐to‐hand combat than a boy like you ever knew."

  "Tough talk for a mallster cupcake."

  "What?"

  Cisco and Son are sizing each other up with serious intent as Dee Zu says, "Take it easy, you two. No harm done."

  "This kid nearly got you killed." Cisco steps back, though there's no retreat in his manner.

  "Stop being a child," Dee Zu tells Cisco. "You don't have to prove anything to me."

  On the other hand, says Son's smirk, I'm as adult as it gets.

  "You are only a kid." Now Dee Zu confronts Son. "So maybe you have an excuse. But you." She turns back to Cisco. "What's yours?"

  "If you get killed," Cisco says, "you're dead. Same goes for our young throwback, here. The difference is, I've got a backup. Remember?"

  "Oh, yeah. I forgot. The man who can't die."

  "No matter how hard he tries," Son says.

  All the adolescent mine‐is‐bigger cockiness. What an anthropologist might feel tripping across a pocket of Neanderthals. "I think with my dick," she says, including both of them in her analysis, "therefore I'm a man."

  She doesn't laugh.

  •

  "That boy knows how to sleep. That's what he mostly does when he isn't eating, talking about food, asking stupid questions or rolling his eyeballs all over you."

  "Give it a rest," Dee Zu says.

  Cisco is trying to make amends, massaging her feet, giving the new toes gentle tugs, squeezing and twisting all the while, even though she told him they don't hurt. "The kid's medibots have gone to his head," he says.

  "He was only trying to help."

  "This one‐step‐up‐from‐a‐slowjoe has delusions of grandeur."

  "Unlike your own condition in exactly what way?"

  "Give me a break."

  "Mr. Nothing Touches Me, I'm Bulletproof. Never mind you're operating in a world without a rulebook. No bail button."

  "This kid is a danger to us and to himself."

  "He's young," she says. "That's all." In fact, the boy's about as old as Cisco was when it dawned on him that he and Dee Zu were more than buddies.

  "Yeah. Young and high‐spirited. And never mind how half dead he was a few hours ago, now he's ready to fuck anything that moves. Especially you."

  She chuckles. "And what he can't bonk he'll eat," she says.

  "You boost his HQ big time. And you love it."

  "You're kidding, right?"

  "You encourage it."

  balls

  Son's awake.

  He watches his companions stretch themselves out, test their bodies as they limber up with a slow‐motion sparring match that's more like a dance. Son admires Dee Zu's moves more than he does her friend's. Never mind she has a bum foot, she's a match for this guy. Finally, they finish. They stand upright and let their bodies dangle forward from the waist, palms on the ground behind the heels of their feet.

  Then the ache settles in his groin. The buzzy pain hits him about the same time he spots the fleye. Bam. By the time the second fleye shows up, he's on his feet and whirling to face their attackers before the others even see the GameBoys. One comes up behind Dee Zu as the other fast approaches her friend.

  Bam. Son shuts down Dee Zu's GameBoy with a swing of his mace. Bam. He steps forward with his second swing, taking out her friend's attacker with no more ado than that. He clears the ball of blood and brains as he switches the weave of his basket to sling mode, whirling the ball once at the end of its cord to catapult it at a medium‐sized dragon that has scuttled toward their perimeter. Bam, again. THWOCK, in fact.

  "Wow," says the guy, looking down at his GameBoy, then at the dying dragon and finally at Dee Zu's GameBoy.

  "You weren't watching," Son says.

  "What is that thing?"

  "A dragon."

  "No. The ball."

  "A turbine bearing. And this is the cord from my catchbag." It's doubtful this goof knows what he's talking about in either case.

  The woman is better than her friend is at staying alive. Her first response is to check that her attacker, recently retired, is truly dead. Then she looks all around before checking with her friend regarding the other GameBoy's deceased status. "Is that one defunct?" she says. A mallster she may be, a marshmallow she's not.

  "Pretty dead," he says. "His temple's caved in." The guy goes over to the dragon, which has stopped twitching, and stoops to recover the ball. He returns to wipe both it and his hands off against the thigh of the deceased GameBoy, watching all around as he does this. "Nice shot," he tells Son.

  Mr. Cool. As if this Mr. Mallster generally finds himself up to his knees in blood and shit.

  "So you couldn't make things any messier than that?" the woman says. She flicks with a forefinger at something on her eyelash, maybe brain tissue. She doesn't bother to hide her disgust.

  •

  "You'd better take the ball," Son says. The guy fails to hide his surprise. Even more, Son enjoys Dee Zu's obvious approval.

  He shows the mallster how to weave the cord into a sling that turns the ball into a mace, and then, with a couple of quick flourishes, how to transform it instead into a catapult. He also presents him with the second catch bag so he has somewhere to keep this gear. Then he passes one of his spearsticks to Dee Zu. "If I've got to have you two watching my back, I'd just as soon you were armed."

  So that's Dee Zu with one of his spearsticks, and her friend with the bearing. Poppy loves this idea. That Son's leaving himself more vulnerable not only to whatever threats await out there, but also to his new companions, whom he has yet to truly test. It's time to retrieve the fun ball from where he hid it under the rock, so he won't be left as vulnerable as all that.

  Basically, though, Poppy would have to admit it's better to have these two armed so they can all watch each other's back more effectively. Who knows what they might encounter.

  •

  Take the GameBoys, for example. They keep boiling up out of the ground, never mind they should be long extinct. Where the hell are they coming from? Poppy always claimed they were descended from the roaches. Back in the Bunker, where there was nowhere much to hide, and even with the recycler and liberal applications of pesticide from the storeroom, they'd still find the occasional solitary roach. Son feels the same way about the GameBoys. Though he'd swear roaches are smarter.

  Meanwhile, the guy is busy collecting spearsticks and other hemmelite items the GameBoys used as weapons.

  "Leave that stuff," says Son. "Never carry more than you can run with. And we've got plenty as it is." Another knife would be nice, but none of this lot had carried one. "Any more than what we've got would be a liability."

  this boy's list of favorite things

  Everybody's tired. This amount of killing and stuff takes it right out of you. Dee Zu sleeps for an hour while Cisco stands guard.

  By the end of Cisco's watch the boy is awake again and, he says, hungry. Incredible. He produces an unlabeled can from his bag and, as though he can see right through metal, holds it up for inspection. Whap. He punches the heel of his hand against the haft of his knife, puncturing the can to release an odor at once sick‐making and alluring, an operation that also awakens Dee Zu.

  He saws the lid open and levers it back. Scooping a mound of fatty guck with the blade, he offers it first to Dee Zu, who declines. He then thrusts it at Cisco.

  "What's that?"

  "Corned beef." The boy's manner suggests this is something precious beyond imagining, and he's clearly okay with putting it in his own mouth if no one else wants it. He chews slowly and with great relish before swallowing. Maybe emboldened by his medibot transfusion, he licks the blade clean.

  "Okay." Cisco changes his mind. "I'll try some."

  "Blood broth
ers," Dee Zu says, without actually chuckling.

  Blood brother or not, Cisco doesn't like the way Son, zero sense of decorum, looks at Dee Zu. Just going by the throwback's manner, you have to imagine Dee Zu's butt ranks right up there with potted meat on his list of very good things.

  And the canned stuff is awful.

  "This is the last of it," says the boy. "Let's keep the rest for later."

  "Good idea," says Cisco.

  "Hey. Would you guys rather have fresh food?"

  "Uh, I guess," Dee Zu replies. "Maybe."

  "I'll be back."

  triage

  "We've got enough on our plate without having to babysit this kid," Cisco says.

  "We need his know‐how, his local knowledge."

  "What local knowledge? This ken of his is clearly past its expiry date."

  "You don't know that."

  "That extra data you need for your scendent lode? The stressed stuff? I have a bad feeling he'll be a big help with that."

  •

  "What about Son?"

  "What about him?" Cisco says.

  "He has a WalkAbout. Doesn't that make him a candidate?"

  "For ascension?"

  "What else?" She doesn't say "you schmuck," but Cisco hears it anyway.

  "He'd have a lot of loding to do. He's starting from scratch."

  "A shit‐lode of life to live before he meets his Maker."

  "Something like that."

  "He'll never get enough of himself loded in time."

  "But I will?"

  "You've got years of good data stashed. Everything from the mall. And everything since."

  "And Son?"

  "Things are what they are."

  "And?"

  "They'll be what they'll be."

  "We just leave him? All alone?"

  "That's the way we found him. Right now you're our priority."

  "Back to the Plan, then. Where do we go from here?"

  "We play it by ear."

  "What a good plan."

  "Yeah."

  She massages her foot. The new digits resemble toes; they're even sprouting toenails.

  monkeyball

  "He's back," Cisco says.

  Son comes bearing a knobbly black object twice the size of somebody's head.

  "Yum," says Dee Zu. Never mind he describes it as dinner, it looks like a rock.