Carola Dibbell - The Only Ones

At Armory, they do some serious follow up on those blood checks. They send the labwork way out to a Westchester County lab that is so SOTA, they figure out she is a Creedmoor hardy.

She is fifteen years, seven months old! She doesn’t want to be a Creedmoor hardy. None of the other girls are Creedmoor hardies.

“Ani! You should be proud!” We’re walking home from the Friday dropoff. “Do you know what people pay for product as hardy as that? You’re even hardier than a Creedmoor hardy. You are a Sylvain hardy. Ani, with all this hardy in your file, what are the chances you could not be a Tech?”

Well that didn’t work. She didn’t say anything all the way home. But when we got inside, she just says, “Who was my Dad?”

I said I didn’t know.

“You just bought his product without even meeting him?”

I said I would tell her another time. Go to bed.

And when she did, I just locked the front door to keep her safe, then triked up to the Little Neck Board to check in on the latest viables, see what happened to the ones that worked. They’re still alive. Then I triked home, tiptoed to her room, and checked if she is still alive.

She’s still alive.

And by the way, at Armory Prep? She does not do her work.

All in all, I got 100 viables. That’s including multiples Rauden showed me how to make with the sound-wave process, so you get four from one. Believe me, I didn’t have 100 eggs, even with the solos on ice. In fact the Harvest is way low. Maybe they stimulated not have unprotected sex.”up gme too much all those years. I have to get on Rauden’s case, up the goddamn dose, R. But he’s afraid this ovary is going to break like the other one did.

We don’t know much about what’s going to happen after the sale. I think sometimes the brokers have a contact for a Host. Maybe the Parent sets it up. Rauden says somebody has to of figured out how to make better tanks, or maybe they got Compatibility under control and human Hosts could work. Something did work in Santa Sofya and Grozny. Anyhow, I didn’t have to worry, would they change their mind like Rini Jaffur, and give the kid back to me. It just was a whole different marketing structure. The broker brings the viables to the Life auction in cryoPaks, then they go somewhere else to gestate. It could be pretty far away. Wherever it is, I’m two or even three or more steps from the Parents. If the Parents change their mind, that’s their problem.

Don’t take this the wrong way. At this point in my life, I’m just not in any position to bring up another child. It was just a different time.

When Ani comes home for her weekend, I am in a good mood but she is so quiet I am like, oh, look, I found a new tabletop, hey, they put a food cart on the golf course, whatever. She doesn’t say anything. Something seems different about her. Like, she does not even eat. She does not watch the TV if it works. In the mornings, I could hardly even get her out of bed. Now I really start to worry. This is not going to work. I have to find a new school ASAP. Lorena Hutz says there is a really good regular school nearby in Nassau County, we could use her address. It is not even that far. Like, Nassau County, City Line northeast, two different worlds but we could walk there. Even if their system is a little SOTA, I could probably work my way around it. But I am worried if we could sneak in so easy, how safe could it be?

I finally got Lore! She was still alive. They all are. Migan already transferred to another school, Country Day, in Connecticut. They all moved up there so Migan does not have to do sleep-away. Lore tells me who to contact and I find out this new school is a unique educational Opportunity. They do not even have walls because the school is so far in the middle of nowhere you don’t have to worry is your kid safe — in fact Lore says Ani’s safer there than my own neighborhood, from vigilantes anyhow. Ani would have to do sleepaway even on weekends but think of all the extra work I could get done at the Farm.

The person at Country Day sets me up for Interview for next month and says send them a link to Ani’s files. I’m not going to tell Ani yet. I’m going to keep it a surprise. If I make some sales in the next weeks plus my regular cleaning, by the time she would start school, I could have enough saved for some kind of downpayment. With the extra hours of work from her being gone, my income could practically triple — the school investment will practically pay for itself. I finally persuade Rauden to megadose, because I really got no time to spare.

If I double up on my cleaning to clear my schedule for five days of hard work at the Farm, I will go to the Boston Life dropoff with a really big load of cryoPaks and do the sales there. I timed this very close. I give myself the extra shot early Monday before Ani wakes up, and by the time she gets up I am so puffed and ready to burst. I could hardly wait to see her on the van at seven Monday morning and get on my way. It’s not that I don’t miss her. I’m just ready to burst.

As soon as I wake up on the Newburgh OBGYN’s RV table, I know something went wrong.

The OBGYN is looking at a danger to herselfe g me, and Rauden is looking at me too.

I ask, how many eggs?

“For God’s sake, I,” he says.

Oh, man. Bandages and blood. I try to sit up.

“Will you fucking stay down. We could of lost the whole shebang.”

That means they didn’t. So I could still have eggs.

Rauden is shaking his head. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into the megadose, with your history.”

Shit! I’ve been off Signal for hours. Mrs. Ridenhour is buzzing me. I never told her I couldn’t scrub her Dome. Shit! Rauden wants me to rest but I need to take this job. Country Day is buzzing me. I get dressed fast and say you are right, R. I’m going home to rest, I will come back later in the week to start the viables at the Farm. He really doesn’t want me to take the long trip back to Queens, but how could he stop me?

I nap on the hybro from the bridge. I am a little dizzy so I stop in Yonkers at a Beverage Locker near one of those shady operations that does the Change. Then I buzz Country Day. They are really nice. They say they wouldn’t bother me but they are having a problem with my daughter’s files. I go, let me look into this but I’m so groggy, I forget. I just take a shaw back to Queens, head through the hole to Nassau County and though Mrs. Ridenhour went ballistic, she accepts my story that Ani had an emergency. So I scrub her Dome in the dark and drag myself home and man, I conked out. Next morning early I’m heading back upstate by the Bronx. Oh shit. I forgot to follow up with Country Day. I reach them from Yonkers. So I say, oh, sorry, and they say not a problem, our system is so SOTA we got her files only now it is saying she is twelve years old. Shit! They got Grozny. I do some hanky pank with manual override and blow the system out, message back and say, I do not understand what happened, they go, not a problem, our system is so SOTA we called her files up again only now it is saying she is thirty-five years old. I go, oh, must be some sort of anomaly. They go, no, we don’t think so. It looks more like it read her as you. So I go, oh, I accidentally put my own swipe in. Then I just blow the system out again.

Shit! Someone is buzzing me. I’m too busy to see who it is. I have to get back to Country Day. Oh, sorry, I tell Country Day. The systems are such a mess here.

They say, not a problem only it looks like you are sisters. This is intriguing, what do you know about your own origins? Can you find a pure code Reader and we will try to sort this out? Can you find a spit code Reader?

To tell the truth, I am not that far from Wappingers Falls, which is spit code central as well as they run every kind of sleazy operation but Country Day does not know where I am so I play for time and say, yes, I will try to find a spit code scanner but, you know, and I will tell you I was pulling the answers out of the air, in Diversity neighborhoods like ours, the scanners is few and far between, so it could be tomorrow before I bring it off.