Hell's Nerds and Other Tales

by Stephen Lomer

  As she stopped outside the double doors to the master bedroom, she took a deep breath, furiously wiped fresh tears from her eyes, and then knocked. A voice called for her to come in.

  In the bedroom, in front of a full-length mirror surrounded by attending bridesmaids, stood Lisa, a radiant, dark-haired beauty. Her makeup was flawless and her ornate dress breathtaking, but the one thing Nova cared about was the one thing impossible to tell. Lisa might have been under 120. She might not.

  Lisa spotted Nova in the mirror and squealed with glee.

  “Nova!”

  She ran across the room and enveloped Nova in an enormous hug. After a few moments she released her, glowing.

  “You’ve done such an amazing job,” Lisa gushed. “Thank you thank you thank you!”

  Nova tried to smile, but it wouldn’t come. She swayed a bit, and Lisa held her by both arms.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Oh. Yes. Yes, I’m fine,” Nova said unconvincingly. “Just . . . running through some last-minute stuff in my head. You know. You look beautiful.”

  “Thank you!” Lisa said as she spun around so Nova could take in the full effect of her finery.

  “That’s . . . not the original dress you had. Is it?”

  Lisa’s smile faltered the tiniest bit.

  “Well . . . no, actually, it isn’t. I loved that dress, but . . . well, after a month with Gino’s family, I couldn’t fit into it.” Lisa laughed in an embarrassed sort of way.

  “And there wasn’t time to alter it, so I got this one. But you know what? I think I love this one even more.”

  “Yes. Yes, it’s lovely. Lisa . . .”

  Nova hesitated, debating exactly what to say next.

  “Do you happen to have a scale handy?”

  Lisa looked at her quizzically.

  “Um . . . sure. Why?”

  Nova thought fast.

  “Oh, I . . . have a bet with the caterer. He insists his samples have put ten pounds on me, but I say he’s crazy.”

  Lisa smiled and pointed toward the en suite.

  “You’re going to win that bet,” she said, smiling. “You look great! It’s right in there.”

  Nova hurried into the bathroom. She looked around frantically, next to the shower, next to the sink, behind the toilet, but there was no scale to be found. She rushed back out into the bedroom, where one of Lisa’s bridesmaids was fitting her veil.

  “There’s no scale in there.”

  Lisa only had eyes for her reflection.

  “There isn’t? Huh. It was there this morning when I took a shower.”

  The bedroom door opened and Lisa’s mother poked her head in.

  “Sweetheart?” she said. “It’s time.”

  Lisa and her bridesmaids gathered their things and, beaming, headed out the door. Lisa noticed Nova rooted to the spot.

  “Nova? Aren’t you coming?”

  “Yes,” Nova said blankly. “Be right there.”

  Lisa left Nova alone in the bedroom. She slowly sank to her knees and sobbed uncontrollably.

  In the sumptuous living room a short while later, the bride and groom, the bridesmaids and groomsmen, family members, and friends gathered near the French doors that led out to the backyard amid a buzz of excited conversation. Nova entered the room, visibly shaking. She didn’t even bother wiping the tears away, but in the general hubbub, no one noticed.

  Finally, Gino held his hand up for quiet. He smiled at Lisa.

  “Before we head out there and take our sacred vows before the good Lord and my grandmother—God rest her soul—there’s one last thing I’d like you to do.”

  “Of course!” said Lisa. “Anything.”

  Gino snapped his fingers and Sebby magically appeared, holding a digital scale. He placed it on the floor next to Lisa, glanced up at Nova, and then stepped back.

  “What’s this for?” asked Lisa.

  Gino smiled. “I’d just like you to weigh yourself, that’s all.”

  “What? Why?”

  “An old family tradition,” Gino said, his smile slowly fading. “Call me superstitious.”

  Lisa looked around the room, which had gone deathly quiet. No one seemed to understand what was happening.

  “Gino, this is silly,” Lisa said. Then in a softer voice, “I don’t want to weigh myself in front of all these people.”

  Gino’s expression darkened, just as it had in his office earlier.

  “When I tell you to get on the goddamn scale, you get on the goddamn scale. Do you understand me?”

  He grabbed her roughly by the arm and pulled her up on the scale. There was absolute silence in the room. Gino gathered up the front of Lisa’s dress so he could see the display. Nova quietly angled around so she could see it as well.

  The numbers counted up. 109. 111. 115. 117. Nova felt like she was about to vomit or pass out. Or both. 119. The moment froze in time, and then the display began to flash, indicating 119 as Lisa’s final weight.

  Gino’s demeanor once again turned on a dime. He gave a joyful shout, and indicated everyone else should do the same.

  “One hundred nineteen!” Gino cried. “That’s good luck on a weddin’ day!”

  Everyone hesitantly joined in, except for Nova, whose legs had given out. She fell into a nearby chair and took a deep, shuddering breath.

  At the country club later, the reception was in full swing, echoing with music, excited conversation, and laughter. Nova stood by herself in an empty coat room, anxiously chewing her fingernail.

  After a few moments, a door at the end of the coat room opened and Sebby walked in, guiding a young girl by the shoulder. The girl lit up at the sight of Nova.

  “Mommy!”

  The girl ran over and Nova swept her up in her arms.

  “Baby! Oh my sweet baby. Are you all right? Let me look at you. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” the girl said. “I made a new friend. Her name is Angelina. Can she come over and play?”

  “Well . . . we’ll see, honey. We’ll see.” Nova locked eyes with Sebby for a moment. Sebby nodded his head, indicating they should leave.

  “Come on, honey. Let’s go home.”

  The girl took Nova’s hand and they walked quickly out the front door. Sebby watched them go, and in a few moments was joined by Carmine Ciaffoni, who was short but tough-looking. He was one of Gino’s men.

  “Hey,” said Carmine.

  “Hey yourself.”

  “So. I take it Gino don’t know that you tampered with the scale.”

  “No,” said Sebby. “He don’t. And you ain’t gonna tell him, you understand?”

  Carmine nodded. He thought for a few moments.

  “Why’d you do it?”

  Sebby turned and stared at Carmine.

  “You think I’m gonna kill a 10-year-old girl over a few pounds? Jesus, Carmine. My girl is 10 years old. It’d be like pulling the trigger on my own daughter. No way.”

  “Fair enough,” Carmine nodded. “Hey, ya know, me myself? A few extra pounds don’t bother me none. I like a girl with some meat on her bones.”

  Sebby thought for a moment and then smiled.

  “In that case, c’mon. Lemme introduce you to my cousin Annalisa.”

  15.

  FUTURCATION

  Today was the day. Finally, at long last. Devon would be taking the vacation he’d been dreaming about for as long as he could remember.

  He stood in front of the gleaming building, with its animated marquee, and found that he was too excited to even mount the few steps to the front door. He patted his pocket for the hundredth time. His credits were in there. He knew they were. He just wanted to make sure one more time.

  Devon made his way into the building’s lobby, which glowed with a white light from every surface. His heart was pounding in his throat. He approached the reception booth, which had a beautiful android woman waiting to greet him.

  “Good morning,” she said happily, her mouth moving in perfect s
ync to the electronic words. “Welcome to CallosumCorp. How can I help you today?”

  “I’d—” Devon started, but he had to clear his throat before he could continue. “I’d like to book a futurcation.”

  “Certainly, sir,” the android said. She gestured to a hallway on the right. “Please make your way to room 1138. Mr. Sine will meet you there.”

  “Thank you,” Devon replied, and his feet moved of their own accord. He wondered if there might be a men’s room between the lobby and room 1138 because he thought he might wet himself with excitement, but the thought of delaying even for another second was more than he could bear, so he picked up his pace and very nearly jogged down the hallway, his bladder be damned.

  He passed rooms 1135, 1136, and 1137 before he arrived at the correct one. He pressed his hand to the glowing plate next to the door and it slid away to the side, revealing a stark white office within.

  There were no decorations on any of the walls, no rug on the floor, no window overlooking the city skyline. Just a white guest chair in front of a white desk, behind which sat the man who Devon assumed must be Mr. Sine.

  “Come in, come in, don’t be shy,” Mr. Sine said convivially, standing up and gesturing Devon toward the guest chair.

  “Thank you,” Devon said, and he crossed the room and shook Mr. Sine’s outstretched hand. He sat on the edge of the guest chair, too nervous to sit back and relax.

  “So, what can I do for you today?”

  “I want to take a futurcation,” Devon said before the other man had even finished his question.

  “Oh, wonderful!” Mr. Sine said. “I’m always happy to see someone this excited.”

  “Oh yes, I’m very excited,” Devon said. “I’ve been dreaming about this for years.”

  “Excellent,” Mr. Sine said. “Well, let’s get started then, shall we?”

  Devon could feel his smile stretching from nearly ear to ear. It’s finally happening, he said over and over in his mind. It’s finally happening.

  Mr. Sine pressed a button on his desk and a virtual keypad sprung up and hovered above the surface.

  “So let’s start with the basics,” he said. “Name?”

  “Devon Zayre,” Devon replied.

  “Age?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “Occupation?”

  Devon hesitated. “Construction.”

  Mr. Sine’s fingers hovered over the keypad for a moment, and then he swung it off to the side.

  “Mr. Zayre,” he said, folding his hands in front of him, “I’m not trying to cast aspersions here, but . . . a futurcation is something of a, shall we say, luxury item.”

  “I have ten thousand credits,” Devon said quickly. And then, as if to justify this, “I’ve been saving up for years.”

  Mr. Sine’s demeanor warmed up immediately. “Oh. I see. Well, that’s excellent, congratulations,” he said genially. He swung the keyboard back in front of him.

  “All right, let’s just get this finished up and then we can discuss different options for your futurcation,” Sine said. “Wife’s name?”

  “Oh, I’m not married,” Devon said with an embarrassed little smile.

  “Well, no matter. Not everyone is. Children’s names?”

  “I . . . don’t have children either. Just me. Single,” Devon finished rather lamely.

  “Ah,” Mr. Sine said, and once again swung the virtual keyboard off to the side. “Now that’s a problem.”

  Devon felt a flood of panic. He was so close. “Why is that a problem?”

  “Mr. Zayre . . . may I call you Devon?”

  “Sure.”

  “Devon, are you familiar with how futurcations work?”

  “No,” he said. “I just know that you’re able to take a vacation in the future. That’s all.”

  “Yes, well, that’s the basic idea,” Sine said. “But what’s important—especially in light of your lack of offspring—is how we do it.”

  He stood up and rounded the desk. “Come with me. I’ll show you what I mean.”

  Devon followed him out of the room and back into the hallway he’d first entered. They walked past several more offices and passed many smiling employees, all wearing the distinctive CallosumCorp red jumpsuit that Mr. Sine wore, which stood out starkly against the building’s glowing white walls and floors. At last they reached a door that read THE BASICS OF FUTURCATION. Mr. Sine placed his palm next to the door and the two of them stepped in.

  It was a large, round room with a railing circling the middle. In the center was a hologram, which was playing triumphant music over the flashing three-dimensional CallosumCorp logo. Several people were watching it, each accompanied by a CallosumCorp employee.

  “Oh good,” Mr. Sine said as they approached the railing. “That’s the end of the hologram. It should be replaying momentarily.”

  A few moments later, the hologram reappeared. It was accompanied by different triumphant music over the CallosumCorp logo, which faded to a 3-D re-creation of an office just like the one Devon and Mr. Sine had just left. A very handsome, well-dressed man sat in the guest chair while an impossibly beautiful dark-haired woman sat behind the desk, her smile as dazzlingly white as the CallosumCorp building.

  “So, what can you tell me about futurcations?” the man said, crossing his legs and getting comfortable in the guest chair.

  “Plenty,” the woman said. “CallosumCorp is the only company in the world that has the proprietary technology to offer futurcations. When you sign up for a CallosumCorp futurcation, you’re guaranteed the safest, most enjoyable experience available on the market today.”

  “Well how does it work?” asked the man.

  “First, we make a full map of your DNA,” the woman said, and her voice became a narration as the holographic images shifted to technical readouts and schematics. “Then we locate your descendent along a future time stream. We upload your consciousness to that offspring, and just like that, you’re experiencing the wonders and excitement of the future.”

  “So you’re saying,” said the man, “that I could spend two weeks inhabiting the body of my great-great-great-great grandchild, two hundred years in the future?”

  “That’s right,” the woman said, smiling even wider. “At CallosumCorp, we can make all your futurcation dreams a reality.”

  The man and woman faded and an atom bloomed into the space, with words swirling around it, reading WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? BOOK YOUR FUTURCATION TODAY! The music that was playing when Devon and Mr. Sine entered played once more, and the CallosumCorp logo returned.

  “So you see the problem,” Mr. Sine said when they had returned to his office. Devon felt sick to his stomach, on the verge of tears.

  “Isn’t there anything you can do for me?” he asked plaintively. “This is all I’ve dreamed about for as long as I can remember.”

  “Well, there’s a simple solution,” Mr. Sine said. “You need to have at least one child. Actually, the more children, the better, as it increases your odds of going further into the future and gives you a number of options.”

  “But I can’t afford to have a kid!” Devon burst out. “I’ve saved all my credits for my futurcation!”

  “Well, see what you can do,” Sine said, gesturing toward the office door. “Keep in mind that when you do have a child, you can go on your futurcation the day the child is born. As long as your genetic line continues, we can work our magic.”

  Devon sat on a beat-up old stool in The Depths, a corner bar in his sooty, run-down neighborhood. He sipped the cheapest ale they had slowly, obsessed with holding on to his credits, while he explained his predicament to Lou, the old cyborg who owned the place and had been a sympathetic ear on more than one occasion.

  “Wow,” Lou said, shaking his head as he mopped the top of the bar with a torn old dish towel. “That’s fucked up.”

  “Wow, thanks, Lou,” Devon said irritably. “I never would have known what a fucked-up situation it is without your help. What woul
d I do without your insight?”

  “Okay, all right,” Lou said, holding up his hands in surrender. “No need to bite my head off.”

  Devon leveled his gaze into Lou’s eyes, the rheumy blue one and the glowing green one. “What I need is a solution.”

  “Well, it’s simple, isn’t it?” asked Lou. “You just gotta find a girl who wants a baby and put her in the family way.”

  “‘Put her in the family way’?” Devon repeated. “God, how old are you anyway?”

  “Hey, I’m still under warranty, kiddo. Well, most of me is, anyway.”

  “Let’s stay focused here,” Devon said. “The problem is that I don’t even know any girls. The last time I touched a boob was during a drunken hookup in college.”

  “Oh, I miss touchin’ boobs,” Lou said, looking down at his cybernetic hands. “I can never get these damn things warm enough.”

  “Anyway,” Devon pressed on, “even if I did happen to find a nice girl, I’d have to date her, then propose, then be engaged for who knows how long, then get married, and then have kids. And at that point my futurcation plans would be moot, because all my credits would be spent.”

  “And if she ever found out that your whole motivation for having kids was this futurcation of yours, she’d probably divorce you too. Then you’d really be fucked. And I speak from personal experience.”

  Devon took a long swig of his drink. “What am I gonna do, Lou?” he pleaded. “This futurcation means everything to me.”

  “Hey,” Lou said suddenly. “What about Findamate? They claim to have a ninety-nine percent success rate in connecting people. I’ve seen their commercials on the holo.”

  “Is Findamate free?”

  “Mmmmm, no. I think it’s a hundred credits to join.”

  “Well then that doesn’t help me, does it? I need all my credits for my futurcation.”

  “Could you donate some of your swimmers to a fertility clinic?” Lou offered.

  Devon shook his head. “I thought of that. I mean, I could, but they can keep my stuff in cryo for decades. And there’s no guarantee they’d ever use it. And I’d never know if they did.”