Рич Ларсон - Tomorrow Factory - Collected Fiction

“Alright,” Anton said. “Into the hole.”

I should have dumped the whole incubator, but I couldn’t. I had to see the thing one more time. The lid slid off and the brute rippled weakly inside, groping tiny tendrils. I thought how if there was one thing I did better than Anton, it was being alright with letting someone else run things now and again. The brute clung to my arm as I lifted it up, but it was still cold from the nitro, still limp.

The cement churned and gurgled, impenetrable–looking gray. I looked up at Anton, saw his eyes wide and feverish in the dark. I held my arm out over the pit and that’s when Anton suddenly lunged, I think to stop me, or maybe because he knew I wasn’t going to drop it on my own, and then the three of us were on the ground. Anton was clawing at my arm, my shoulder; the sky somersaulted as we rolled back away from the hole, the splashing cement. I hit back, right and then left and connected with both. His head snapped away; blood and spit smacked my scalp. The brute was on the move, up my arm, under my sleeve.

Anton’s wild eyes, Anton’s reaching fingers, and then it was my fingers, Anton’s throat. Bitter smell. He gouged at my face and his feet kicked. The brute was wrapping around my hands. Anton’s breath came scalding hot. He lashed out with a hand and I saw oilspills behind my eyes. His nails ripped down my cheek, made me lean harder, my elbow on him now. Push, and push, and—

Everything went still. The dumper had stopped, work complete, brain whirring silently to a satellite for the next task. The quickset had settled. Anton had marks the size of my thumbs imprinted purple under his jaw, no breath coming in or out. It felt like the hot cement had all poured into my stomach.

“Anton,” I said. “Anton. Anton.”

Anton said nothing. The brute stirred on my back.

“Anton. Anton.”

He didn’t twitch. The brute spread, sliding over my skin.

“Help me,” I whispered. The brute touched a raw filament to the back of my neck and I felt it sting, like a jellyfish.

The apartment door was still gene–coded, so I went up the side. The red suckers on my fingertips clung staticky to the glass surface, let me shuffle up nice and easy. I climbed to the barred window and looked in. Empty again.

“I need to stop coming back here,” I said, hoping this time it would stick.

The weather had turned cold in the past week, but the brute was thicker than usual and it compensated with pulsing warm tendrils around my limbs. I pushed my face up against the glass. Scattered tools and equipment on the floor. A cylinder of what might have been liquid nitro. In the corner, the dull green shards of something vaguely familiar.

“Every act of creation,” I said, as if somebody had said it before, maybe whatever ghosty kept dragging me back here. The brute rumbled, and I could almost think it was in assent. I’d never talked to myself this much before. Good to imagine that the brute was listening.

The apartment was empty, so I dropped down to the sidewalk. The brute was heavy today. More muscle. I felt like God.

When I walked past the door, the scanner blinked at me, just once.

The mausoleum was all plexiglass and synthetic stone, lit by ghostly blue guide lights in the floor that charted visitors to their particular units. Elliot had free run of the place while his mother and grand-dad talked.

When he was younger he chased the autocleaner, slip-sliding on its slick wet trail until someone glared at him. Now he was twelve and the glossy black floor was only slightly tempting. Instead, he sat outside the booth with his swim bag and eavesdropped.

“You can’t afford another year in digital,” his mother was saying. “You’re shedding memories already. If you stay here any longer, we took out that clone policy for nothing.”

“Maybe it’s for the best.” His grand-dad’s voice was wavery, distorted.

Elliot peeked around the corner and saw the projection flickering, face carved in blue hololight. It was blurrier than usual.

“There’s the alternative, isn’t there?” Elliot’s mother said. “What we talked about?”

“Must have shed the memory.”

“Don’t be like that, dad. Elliot’s fully notched.”

That reminded Elliot that he’d loaded a new comic to read. He ran his finger along the inert plastic at the base of his skull, feeling the slot where the new chip was sitting and beneath it the arithmetic he’d loaded from school and neglected to open. Elliot leafed through the pages in his mind’s eye but kept listening.

“And he’s young enough,” his mother said. “He’s still got brain plasticity, maybe even for another year.”

“Why don’t you just ask him?” His grand-dad’s projected face raised both eyebrows. “I expect he’s listening in.”

Elliot’s mother craned around the corner and Elliot rolled his eyes back, pretending to be absorbed in the shifting pictures, but knew he’d been caught out. She smoothed her dark hair and blinked tired eyes.

“Elliot, what do you think? Come in here, love.”

Elliot stood up and walked into the booth, gangly now that he was finally growing. He waved, out of habit, even though he knew his grand-dad couldn’t see it.

The blue ghost was only a projection, cobbled from old EyeWitness recordings and follow-cams, that gave visitors something physical to interact with. His grand-dad was really in a neural web contained by the dull marble plinth in front of them.

“Elliot, you know what a piggyback is, right?” he asked.

“Yeah. Yes.” Elliot felt the nape of his neck again. “My friend Daan’s got a tutor AI.”

“Your grandfather is not an AI,” his mother said sharply.

“He knows that,” his grand-dad said. “What do you say, Elliot? Let the old man bang around your head? It’s your choice. Completely your choice.”

“Just for the summer,” his mother assured, pinching the bridge of her nose. Her nails had chipped. “It would just be for the summer while the clone’s growing. It’s really much better than keeping him here in the mausoleum.”

Elliot thought back to when Daan showed up for class with the shiny AI chip in his notches, how impressed everyone had been. This wasn’t the same thing, but it was close.

“Okay,” Elliot said. “Do you still know how to do algebra?”

His mother’s ears went red but his grand-dad just laughed, a synthesized warble that was almost too loud for the silent mausoleum.

Before they left they had him loaded into a bone-white chip, and then that chip was sealed in plastic wrap and dropped into a bag, and Elliot held it very carefully on the drive home.

“This might jolt a bit,” the technician said, clipping Elliot’s hair away from his notches.

Elliot nodded as well as he could with his chin burrowed in pillow. He was on his stomach on the couch watching rain streak down the wide window. The technician had come over with antiseptic-smelling gloves and a black toolkit because Elliot’s grand-dad was not an AI, and Elliot’s mother was not going to take chances with her trembling fingers.

She was washing up, but came into the living room every few minutes, hands red as lobsters and slicked with soap. She had excuses the first few times, but now it was just to bite her lip and stare. She didn’t realize Elliot could see her in the window.

“Putting him in, now,” the technician said. The chip descended in silvery forceps and Elliot felt something slide and rasp at the base of his skull. It settled with a meaty click. Elliot began to ask if they were done, and then—

Jolt.

His nerves blasted sparks all at once, arched his back like a cat, split the top of his head with a thermonuclear explosion. His body spasmed. From somewhere far away he heard himself howl. Then his mother was over him, holding him down, swearing a blue streak at the technician.