Ryan Boudinot - Blueprints of the Afterlife

“What the freak, 218?” 167 said. “ Shee-it .”

“167, there’s a corpse in the net.”

“A corpse?”

“I could use some medical attention,” Skinner croaked.

“What should we do?” 167 said.

“Bury him?” 218 said.

“We got to let him down first.”

“Let him down.”

“Good idea, 218. Let’s let him down.”

The two walked over to one of the legs and opened a sort of flap, argued about what button they needed to push, then started randomly pushing buttons to prove their respective points until the net dropped and Skinner landed face-first, from ten feet up, in the dirt. The two guys rolled him over. 218, the naked one, squatted for a closer look, his ball sac penduluming alarmingly close to Skinner’s face.

“I’m not dead,” Skinner said, “I’m pretty sure.”

“Ah, well,” 218 said, “chalk it up to inexperience on the fishbot’s part.”

“Was it supposed to kill me?”

“No, it was supposed to let you go.”

“I almost died. It saved my life.”

“Well, it’s obviously busted, then,” 167 said, “Thing can’t fish for shit.”

218 said, “What were you doing in the river, anyway?”

“I had an accident. I fell. I can’t move my legs.”

“Let’s get this guy inside,” 167 said. They half dragged, half lifted Skinner to the cabin. Inside, vaporized marijuana had for all practical purposes replaced oxygen. Tapestries of Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd, bicycle parts, gutted computers, cedar burls carved into the faces of characters from The Lord of the Rings. Soda cans, garlic braids, gears and rods, a stack of yellowed Penthouse Forum magazines, a couple screens, old-school video game consoles, a lamp that in a former life had been a chunk of driftwood, a bowling trophy, liquor-bottle candle holders, mouse traps, rag rugs, manuals for extinct machines, rope, frying pans, guitars, hunting rifles, optical devices. Shit hanging from the ceiling: fishing poles, a kayak, a bucket, pulleys, climbing gear, a couple more guitars, a tricycle, snowshoes, snowboards, inner tubes. Was there furniture? Sort of, buried amid the stuff. Perhaps a couple couches, two hammocks hanging Gilligan and Skipper–style on one side of the room. On the coffee table smoldered a Gaudiesque glass bong. There was a loft reachable by ladder and beneath it a cramped, overwhelmed kitchenette. 167 and 218 deposited Skinner on the couch. He lost his sense of time for a moment, then opened his eyes to see the two guys still standing over him, arguing maybe.

“The thing, you know,” 167 said.

“Like for his legs and shit?” 218 said.

“Yeah.”

“Do we have a thing, um, what do you, um, call it?”

“That’s what I’m asking.”

“I don’t even know what it’s called.”

“A bio…”

“A bio…”

“Yeah, one of those.”

“For his legs? Do you know how to use one?”

“Well, first we have to find it.”

“I know we used to have one, I think.”

The two wandered to separate corners of the house and started extracting physical objects, disrupting the disorder of things, upsetting piles of parts of stuff, tossing aside tools of dubious purpose. Skinner, shivering, pulled a blanket off the floor and arranged it over his body. The effort was almost too much. Eventually, the two guys reappeared, bearing a black box with some cables sticking out of it.

“You’re kidding me,” Skinner whispered.

“It should still work,” 218 said, “if it ever boots up.” He gave the ancient Bionet transmitter/receiver a slap, blew some dust off the device, and toggled a switch. “Think it still works?”

“Test it and find out,” 167 said.

“What do you think I’m doing? When did you use this last?”

“When I had a skin rash.”

“No you didn’t, you used it when you sprained your ankle that one time.”

“I broke my ankle, not sprained it.”

“You’re high.”

This indisputable fact seemed to momentarily resolve the bickering. Skinner swallowed and asked, “Who are you guys?”

“Us? We’re Federicos 167 and 218,” 218 said.

“Brothers,” 167 said.

“Heteros,” 218 said, and they both laughed.

“Exiles,” 167 said. “Rough drafts.”

“Genetically contaminated.”

“We didn’t exactly fit the description on the menu.”

“We were sent back to the kitchen.”

“I’m not tall enough, for one.”

“And I have no interest in household chores or hip-hop dancing.”

“We’re individuals!” they said in unison, then laughed again.

“We’re polluted with individuality,” 167 said smugly.

A dull green light had begun to flicker on the console.

“That’s our fishbot that fished you out of the river,” 218 said.

“Thanks for that.”

“Don’t thank us, thank the fishbot,” 167 said. “Usually it’s a pretty useless piece of crap.”

218 asked 167, “What’s it doing now?”

“It’s asking for a code,” 167 said.

“I guess that means he has to enter his code,” 218 said.

167 presented the console’s interface to Skinner. “You’re supposed to enter your code.”

Skinner tapped his code into the keypad of the sketchy-looking Bionet uplink device. 167 set it on the coffee table next to the bong.

“Paralyzations take what, a week to fix?” 167 said.

“Give or take,” 218 said. “But don’t worry, old man. We’ll get you back on your feet.”

“How come you’re naked?” Skinner said.

“I’m taking an air bath,” 218 said.

“What do you guys do up here? What’s your line of work?”

“A little of this, a little of that,” said 167.

“Some of the other thing,” 218 said.

“Which means robotics, fishing, decorative beadwork,” 167 said.

“What are you talking about? We haven’t done beadwork in forever,” 218 said.

“But it’s something we’re capable of doing if we have to,” 167 said. “If, say, there’s an emergency beading need.”

“True,” 218 said. “We could decoratively bead in a pinch. What about you, old man?”

“Skinner.”

“Skinning,” 167 nodded. “It’s an acquired skill.”

“That’s my name. Al Skinner. I’m retired military.”

“I see,” 218 said. “Going after newmans? Clones like us? Vampires? The mutant throngs of Nova Scotia?”

“Newmans, mostly.”

“What company were you with?” 167 said.

“Boeing, Exxon Mobil for a while… then News Corp.,” Skinner mumbled, zonking out. Ah, lovely Bionet, stepping in and beginning the restoration of his spine, flooding his system with synthetic opiates manufactured inside his body by nanotech what-have-yous. He wanted to laugh. Not that he thought any of this was funny, this cluttered cabin and the two clone stoners attending to his recovery.

He woke in darkness in great pain, writhing on the couch. The two men appeared and held him down as he thrashed. “It’s going to feel like this sometimes,” one of them said, “but if it feels like this it means it’s working.” The words rattled around in Skinner’s head like a rock in a bucket.

Days passed in which little seemed to happen besides 167 and 218 arguing over who had eaten the last of the instant udon. Occasionally one of them ventured into town for supplies in a battered, powder-blue pickup. Skinner couldn’t be certain what town it was they were venturing into but when they returned they brought freshly baked bread, soup, cheese, and fruit. Skinner was able to gradually piece together a semireliable history of how the two dudes had ended up in the mountains with their fishbot and Frank Zappa’s complete discography. They spoke cryptically and cynically of some ancient rich queen on an island surrounded by hundreds more of their clone brethren. They’d grown up on her estate and had passed as full-bred clones for a while, only to be cast out as teenagers when their corrupted profiles came to light. Or maybe they’d done something horrible and had to leave under duress. Hard to say. It didn’t help the story that Skinner passed through a series of narcotic fugues.