Рич Ларсон - Tomorrow Factory - Collected Fiction

“It’s normal,” the man was repeating. “It’s normal. He’s fine now. Ask him. He’s fine. Aren’t you, Elliot?” He was folding his gloves, wiping the sweat raised on his forehead.

Something was stirring in the back of Elliot’s skull. Right here, Elliot. Steady now.

“Are you okay?” his mother demanded. Her nails were digging crescents in his hand. “Just say something, alright?”

“I’m okay,” Elliot said. He felt the stir again. “So’s grand-dad. He’s okay.”

Elliot’s mother exhaled, but didn’t let go of his hand.

It wasn’t like having a tutor AI. Elliot’s grand-dad didn’t switch off or go dormant. He was always there in the back of things, when Elliot woke up in staticky sheets and when he sawed through his mother’s burnt breakfast sausages and when he walked to the public pool early each morning.

Elliot had scrimped the money for his pass from months of bannering the local chipshop, putting value ads in his slots to widecast on the subway or in the street. He didn’t get pocket money anymore, so every time the laser raked his neck and scanned him into the pool he felt a beat of pride.

Elliot liked his swims best in the morning. Only a few others were ever there, usually middle-aged men churning industriously up and down their lanes. The lifeguard bobbed at the side like a plastic jellyfish, monitoring the chlorine level.

His mother had given him a gelatin (“Cover up your blowhole,” she’d said, taut smile on her way out the door) and he slathered it over his notches, letting it go dry and shiny before he slipped into the water. The chip tingled in his neck but his grand-dad remained silent, still curled somewhere in the back of Elliot’s head as he swam.

At school, his classmates were impressed—for the day. By the end of the week Elliot was starting to hear sniggers and knew something was going to happen come gym or break.

On Thursday the sky was dark and blustery, and the supervisor watched the footy game from a far distance with her chin tucked into her windbreaker. They were playing with an old Soccket that rattled when kicked and didn’t bounce quite right, and that was why Elliot had missed another open shot.

“You’re slow, grand-dad,” said Stephen Fletcher, who was small and fierce and had his hair razored around his notches.

“What’s that?”

“Your old man chip is turning you slow,” Stephen said, grinning like a wolf. “Slooow and stiff.”

“Quicker than you,” Elliot said, but he knew he wasn’t, he was only quick in the water.

“You’re too poor to grow a clone for him.” Stephen bounced the ball hard against the cement and stuck it on his hip. “That’s why you have the chip.”

Everyone was watching, now, and the keeper from the opposite end was wandering up from his orange pylons to see what was going on. Elliot looked around, looked at Daan, but Daan was grinning, too.

Steady now, Elliot. It’s fine. It’s a laugh.

Elliot gave a start. His grand-dad hadn’t said a word all week.

“Maybe they can stick him in a baboon,” someone suggested. Someone else gave a fair imitation of a monkey screech. Elliot clenched his teeth.

It’s fine.

“If your ma’s going to make all that clone money, she’ll have to work the corner.” Stephen pumped his hips. Grinned. “Think?”

The baboon dropped quiet and they all stared. Elliot balled his hands.

Thumb outside your fist, Elliot.

Him and his grand-dad went in swinging.

On the walk home, with the sky bruising overhead and his face now doing the same, Elliot asked about his grandmother. Rain was speckling the sidewalk and Elliot tipped his head back to wash the scabby blood from under his nose. It was a long time before his grand-dad answered.

She didn’t want storage. Or a new body. She said she’d had her time, and that was that.

“Why’d you stay?” Elliot asked. His grand-dad didn’t answer, and Elliot knew enough to not ask again.

Yellow cabs slid by with rain wriggling down their windshields. Elliot wondered what time his mother would be home.

When school finally let out for summer, Elliot could spend all day at the pool. The weather turned sunny and so they turned the smartglass ceiling transparent, drenching the tiles with afternoon sunlight and making the water glisten blues and greens. More people showed up. Some of Elliot’s classmates splashed and threw foam balls in the shallow end. Elliot stayed in the lanes. He was working on his breaststroke.

You could hold your glide longer. His grand-dad said it as Elliot sloshed to the wall in a final burst.

“What?” Elliot panted, hooking his elbows over the pool’s edge.

Go again. I’ll show you.

Elliot adjusted the pinch of his goggles, inhaled chlorine. There were too many people making waves now and the water was warm as a bathtub. He pulled reluctantly into the lane for a few more lengths. As he did, his muscles seized.

Sorry about that. Here. Relax a bit.

His limbs started moving without him. Elliot leaned into the stroke and felt a hundred small adjustments, how his shoulders sloped and how his hands bit the water. He felt like a fluid. His mouth peeled a foamy grin under the water and suddenly he was smoother than he’d ever been, nothing awkward left in his growing joints, nothing but pure motion.

At the other end, one of the morning men was swilling water in his swim cap. “You’re really putting that together,” he remarked. “You should trial for the club here, boy.”

Elliot nodded and grinned and clambered shaky out of the pool.

After that, grand-dad swam with him and told him stories about how in summer he used to put his clothes in a plastic garbage bag and jump off high rocks into the bay, cupping his balls and holding his nose against the splashdown, and how him and his mates set races from buoy to buoy and bet all their pocket money on them.

There was a lot of time for those stories. Elliot generally went home to an empty apartment where he draped himself over the couch and churned through his comics, hair forming a damp patch on the pillow. His grand-dad didn’t like how the comics had all gone back to 2D, but he liked how Elliot could change them as they went along. Sometimes the villain deserved to win, Elliot thought.

When he was hungry he trawled for recipes online and always ended up cooking pasta with mushroom soup from a can. His grand-dad was no help with that. He did, however, show him how to make coffee. His mother was slightly suspicious of it when she dragged in the door to find a pot gurgling on the counter.

“Tastes good,” she admitted, swishing the sample in her mug. “That’s it for me, though. Have to sleep. One more way I’m inferior to those damn autocabs, isn’t it?” She grimaced and poured her dregs down the stainless steel drain, then disappeared into her bedroom.

She worked more than ever and came home late most nights. Some nights they played cards, the three of them, with Elliot and his grand-dad teamed up, but she usually fell asleep halfway through.

S he works too hard. Doesn’t spend time with you. His grand-dad said it in the night, just as Elliot was drifting off. The constellations on his ceiling were peeling and only glowed when headlights shuttled by outside the window.

They didn’t get physical bills anymore, but Elliot could tell when they came in from the tightness of his mother’s mouth as she checked her phone.

“She has to,” he said. “She’s saving.”

You ever feel tired, Elliot?

“Now, yeah.”

Not like this, you don’t. Ah. Never mind. Sleep well.