The Incision of Being, page 5
Salamander nodded and approached one of the downed Defuncts, measuring his foot against the dead man’s boots.
“Hurry,” Annalease said, and took aim at the farmer’s head.
“Please, no. We can make it.” His hand rose to block the bullet’s pathway, then fell to tug at the arrow in his leg. His left pantleg was dyed scarlet red and his face was a lightening pale.
The wind blew, and something caught Annalease’s eye. It was the poster the farmer had saved of people climbing ladders to escape a fire. Why did he keep the last one? Annalease wondered. And then uttered something so mysterious it caused Salamander to choke on his spit. “We’ll take you to the hospital, just stop messing with the arrow.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“Go ahead, I got him,” Annalease said.
Salamander scoffed as Annalease loaded the farmer into the passenger seat of the jeep, relegating Salamander to the back. They discussed agriculture as they traveled. Salamander joined the conversation after a short administration of the silent treatment. Like the rest of them, he loved food, and any chance of going to bed with a full stomach was like winning the lottery.
Sometime later the farmer stopped talking, and Annalease and Salamander hopped out.
Chapter 5
Ernest stood admiring the Achievement of Excellence plaque hanging on his office wall. He could still hear the applause of so many proud co-workers. Their congratulatory words massaged the aching muscles in his mind. He had taken on Mount Everest, and he made it to the top, frost bitten, weary, and maybe even a little bonkers. But it was worth it.
Colleagues, friends, mother, father and sister. All in the crowd, smiling and cheering. Emily cheered the loudest. Her praise equaled that of five others, and her presence outshined all in attendance. Her dress reflected the radiance of a purple star and the ribbons in her hair twinkled gold.
Emily called her brother’s name. “Ernest. Ernest, can you hear me?”
The falling flakes of snow hardened into white marbles, clattering on the ground. A gale of wind burst through the windows.
“Ernest, please wake up.”
The wind tunneled through Ernest’s ears. It plugged his nose and windpipe. Even as blackness fell like a curtain to enshroud and blind Ernest, he could still feel the warmth of so many clapping hands…
“Ernest!”
“What?”
“Ernest, please.”
“What?” Ernest said, opening his eyes.
Emily released his shoulders, flinching. She muttered a few words to the lord and savior. “You look like a corpse when you sleep. Why couldn’t you have tested the opossum DNA on somebody else?”
Ernest pushed himself to a sitting position. His aching back presented an argument to lay down. “Quickest way to start an experiment is to use yourself as the test subject. How long have I been out?”
Emily touched her colorful strands of hair. “I stopped in around breakfast, but who knows how long before that.” She stood up and crossed the room. “Light?”
“They’re on a timer. Come back later.”
“Three, two…” she flipped the switch.
Ernest rolled over and slung an arm over his eyes.
Emily ripped away the sheet and cool air ran down the length of Ernest’s neck, chest, waist and thighs. An uncomfortable feeling—not because it was chilly, but because Ernest remembered a time not long ago when the air would also brush against his calves and feet.
“No progress?” Emily asked.
“Excellent observation, Doctor.”
Emily glowered at him. Recent years had dulled the brightness in her blue eyes.
“Sorry, I had a nightmare and am still recovering,” Ernest said. He motioned at his stumps. “No progression beyond the inch of scar tissue.”
His sister considered this, scratching her scalp and inciting a militant flutter of colors to dance at her fingertips. “Let’s get some air,” she said, lifting the blanket completely off the bed. She folded it into a neat square. “Get you out of this room for a little while.”
“Something’s off with you,” Ernest said. He allowed her to assist him out of the bed and into clothes. “Nolan picked a date to tie the knot?”
Emily brought over the wheelchair, checking her watch as she did.
“You’ve found a worthy batch?” Ernest guessed next.
“Hop in.”
“I’m getting closer,” Ernest said, and scooted himself into the wheelchair. “You’ve relinquished your bitterness of legally unenforced, yet socially stigmatized, laws against the consumption of sugary beverages.”
“For someone who can’t stand up you surely don’t lack a supply of funny jokes,” Emily said.
“That’s what happens when you spend hours on end in a room by yourself contemplating if cutting off your own legs was the correct move.”
“Don’t dwell, move forward.”
“One step at a time,” Ernest said, and couldn’t help the slump in his voice.
They entered the hallway. The elevator was only a few feet down the corridor, a convenience Ernest never knew he had until he bound himself to a wheelchair; its closeness afforded less opportunity for interaction with people that would inevitably look down on him with sympathetic eyes and words of encouragement.
The elevator dinged as the car ascended through the different floors. Ernest busied himself reading the latest EGL success stories pinned behind the glass bulletin board. “L26-E77 becomes the fastest-learning polylingual class of the year.” “C750-B12.1 erects more than 880 residential buildings for expansion in quadrant 1.10 well ahead of deadline.” “Fluorescent dye highlights the blood flow of children studying cardiovascular physiology.”
A pair of scientists snickered as they passed behind Ernest. He didn’t turn around, but he did search for their reflection in the bulletin board’s window. They probably weren’t snickering, he told himself. A joke. People make jokes all the time.
Emily wheeled Ernest into the elevator.
“I still have control of my arms,” he said.
“Sorry,” she said, stepping around from behind him.
“I made a joke earlier about the newest batches being worthy of your consideration,” Ernest said. “But I am actually curious. It’s a big step, becoming a parent.”
“Same as before. Solar-panel installation, web-engineering, programming, yada yada.” She pulled her shimmering hair into a bun, the elevator’s steel walls radiating dull shades of purples and golds. “And I know there are other batches available. Cathy showed me her options this morning, and there it was, gene splicing. Why the hell…” She took a breath. “I’m going to call the head of Human Productions in the morning to sort it out.”
“Probably a glitch in the system,” Ernest said.
The elevator dinged, and the door opened. Bill walked in, nodding as he said, “Morning, Doctors.”
“Good morning.”
“Morning, Bill.”
“Heard about the incident out there at the Hunting Grounds near the border?” Bill asked, scooping a spoon of strawberry yogurt into his mouth.
Emily pressed the elevator’s close-door button. “I heard one of our teams working there got ambushed.”
Bill smacked his lips. “It got ugly.”
“What happened?” Ernest asked after a few moments of silence.
“Some other hunter group, the off-grid type, decided they wanted a piece of what our boys were snatching up. One thing led to another and BANG.”
Ernest flinched in his chair. “Just like that, huh?”
“Quick,” Bill agreed. “One guy almost got away. A defective farmer. Took off in a jeep with a piece of arrow stuck in him and a bullet in his leg. It must’ve hit an artery. Poor bastard bled out forty miles away from the closest hospital. So now our security chief is calling a big meeting. Soon you may see us walking around with guns instead of these stupid sticks,” he said, gripping the handle of his baton.
Emily chortled. “Lethal weapons in a place of scientific development. Excellent.”
“Oh, come on Doctor Emerson, everyone knows the deadliest weapons are cooked up in science labs,” Bill said. He ate another spoonful of strawberry yogurt as the elevator dinged. “Have a good rest of your day.”
The security guard stepped out. Emily rounded Ernest’s chair and began pushing.
“Do you think I could use the security meeting as an excuse?” Ernest asked his sister. “For not accepting Kevin’s calls? I’ll tell him I was busy discussing potential regrowth plans for those involved in the incident.”
“What was Kevin calling about?” Emily asked. She steered the wheelchair into a testing room for printed organs, where her fiancé stood next to a bed.
“He keeps calling about the regrowth formula,” Emerson said, offering his arms to allow his sister and her fiancé to lift him onto the bed. “And I keep trickling the information along. Octopoteuthis, Deletron, Conch…but I don’t want to give him everything because then we may finally get around to the real reason he’s calling, and I have the gut feeling it has more to do with his sponsorship than my formula. Which brings me to my next question, why are we here?”
Emily gave her fiancé a peck on the lips, and then he disappeared behind a pulled curtain. “We place complete faith in your formula and know that your legs will grow back in time,” she said.
“We are not stitching a 3D leg to my limbs,” Ernest said. “That kind of procedure isn’t even approved, and I can only be a guinea pig for one experiment at a time.”
Emily shook her glimmering head of hair. “No operation. That was my idea. But then Nolan suggested something better.”
Her fiancé emerged from behind the curtain with two metallic legs clutched to his chest like brilliantly shining footballs. He set them at the foot of Ernest’s bed. “A quick fitting process and then this,” he held up an apparatus that looked like a nightcap with various dime-sized electrodes stitched throughout its meshing, “will relay signals from your brain—”
“To the prosthetic,” Ernest finished. “Yeah, thanks, but no.” He glared at Emily. “A mechanical prosthetic, that’s why you brought me to Organ Printing?”
“Yes, I just thought—”
“That if we went down to the fifth floor, you wouldn’t even get me off the elevator,” Ernest said. “I salute your intentions,” he said to Nolan, and wheeled his chair into the hallway.
Emily followed him to the elevator. Ernest planned to deny her entry when it arrived, but how could he? Enable his chair’s locking mechanism and sit an inch behind the door’s border? A ridiculous spectacle. Have you heard the latest gossip about the Emersons having a standoff in front of the elevator?
The elevator dinged. Ernest watched the metallic walls reflect his sister’s iridescent hair as she entered behind him.
“We’re fully staffed on the 7th floor, thank you,” Ernest said.
“We need a second,” Emily said, denying her fiancé entry.
Ernest shrugged as Nolan stood shocked, his mouth agape. The doors slid shut.
“It seems your fiancé still has a few things to learn about you,” Ernest said. “You hit the wrong button. Seventh floor, please.”
“We understand the importance of setting boundaries in a relationship,” Emily said.
“Ironic. Seventh floor, please.”
She did as he asked. “Do you know why I worked on Sunset Moth?”
“So you’d never have to dye your hair again?”
The elevator dinged. The doors slid open and Emily held up a finger, “Give us a minute,” she said to the person waiting, denying him entry. They continued downward. “I did it because of the rigorous study schedule Mom and Dad forced upon me. They demanded I kept busy, so I decided to work on a project they would never in a million years approve of. And Sunset hair was born to the praise of millions. Dad was pissed, Mom was happy, and then she convinced Dad to be happy too. And I became lost in the bliss of their appreciation, something I thought was an impossibility.”
“I can see you’re lost in the bliss of nostalgia at this very moment,” Ernest said. “Don’t you want to get that back? The feeling of creating something so cherished?”
Emily kneeled next to Ernest. “I want to know why you did this. Why would you cut…”
“Why can’t you pick the batch you want?” Ernest asked. “Is it really a shortage, or is it because our namesake has fallen from favor? What do the hallways say when they whisper? Pretty hair this, stumpy that. A family so blinded by science that we threw away the frog and put a dog in its place.”
Emily stood up and pressed the button for the seventh floor.
“Wait and watch as the wheel turns when my legs grow back. You won’t only be able to choose from the best batches of scientists, but you’ll be selecting their individual traits. Just give it time, big sister, and I will lift us from the ashes. Do you believe me?”
“Yes. Of course,” Emily said, staring at the button panel as the doors slid open.
Finally, she allowed Ernest to wheel himself out of the elevator.
Chapter 6
Orvil cranked the handle, turning it round and round. He had been cranking for 106 minutes, along with the three coppers to either side of him. When Orvil asked the human known as Robert how long it would take until the batteries were fully charged, Robert replied, “Time is a construct. You do it until it’s done.”
A strange thing for Robert to say, seeing that he checked his wristwatch more often than the others. But the copper mechanthrops didn’t push the question—“affirmative” was all they knew how to say—and so neither did Orvil. He just kept cranking the wheel round and round.
Just another job. Each new piece of work Annalease or Robert assigned had subsequently declined in level of complexity. First it was brooms, dustpans, mops and spray bottles distributed for some “long overdue deep cleaning.” Robert checked his watch more often during these tasks, and Annalease inspected the areas post-cleaning.
The mechanthrops second job consisted of liquifying metal only to reshape it into its original form, but with the addition of an electrically charged capacitor infused in the bullet’s tip. These were the “shock-cartridges,” as Robert called them, and they “packed a punch stronger than the jaws of death.” Orvil had no idea what he was talking about and Robert seemed mildly irritated at Orvil’s ignorance. Neither Robert nor Annalease showed much interest in the altered bullets, but Skink and Salamander sat watching with the rapture of a couple of programmers searching for the corrupt line in the written code of a software program.
Round and round, Orvil cranked the lever. He wanted to communicate with the copper to his left or right, but his actions would be seen as “off.” Through learning the mannerisms and thought processes of humans, Orvil had inadvertently started monitoring his own actions.
Engage in communication without having been engaged = “off”
Commit an unprompted action of physical displacement = “off”
Display any sign of sentience outside of being instructed to = “off”
And then an absurdity occurred and Orvil stopped cranking. That’s off, his system warned, and he began cranking again.
“Requesting an application of lubricant,” the copper repeated.
“System maintenance required,” another copper said, not slowing nor showing any signs of efficiency loss as he continued his task.
“Attention to kinetic functions required,” Orvil said.
The three coppers ceased cranking simultaneously. A millisecond later, Orvil stopped as well.
Robert walked over with a spray can in hand and doused the copper to Orvil’s left. The pressurized mist hung loose in the air. From outside Orvil’s visual field came the strained coughing of Annalease, an affair that only occurred during cleaning tasks.
Having applied enough lubricant to the copper, Robert approached Orvil. And passed him. Mist danced like twinkling stars to Orvil’s right. The compound’s greasy aroma reminded Orvil of Mechciety. A pleasant smell, and even more prevalent than the deodorizing fragrance used by human society.
More coughing, then wheezing. Why hadn’t Annalease vacated the room, as she usually did when exposed to cleaning products?
Robert finished with the remaining coppers and made his way to Orvil. His brown hair, dark eyes, and opaque complexion blended with the gray, dimly lit walls and floor. To a human’s eye, Robert would be difficult to distinguish.
“Something is different about you,” Robert said. He snapped his fingers. All three coppers jerked into motion, their arms synchronized as they cranked their levers. “Too slow. We know you’re mimicking them.” He held up his hand. Orvil noticed that the pinky finger was substantially shorter than the others.
Focus, Orvil thought, and pinned his eyes and ears to Robert’s face and hand, listening and watching for the change. Light steps pattered behind Orvil—Skink moving about. Annalease sneezed. The coppers stopped cranking. But Robert never gave them a signal.
“Why don’t you come out of there?” Robert said. “Quit playing follow the leader and be what you were designed for.”
“How could you know what I was designed for?” Orvil asked.
Robert smirked. “You told us. A leader of High Society. The problem is, we never heard of a High Society.”
Someone cleared her throat. Orvil rotated his torso to find Annalease leaning against the wall near the portable heater, arms crossed, one boot hooked around the other. Orvil heard the nuance in her throat as she swallowed spit. So far, Orvil had heard her cough, sneeze, gulp, whistle, cry, and now the choppy hehemm of her clearing her throat. Soon Orvil would be able to identify her strictly by audible cues.
“Back to me, big guy,” Robert said.
Orvil swiveled around. The lever he had been cranking for the past couple hours was gone. Robert had replaced it with a chair he stood upon to reach Orvil’s height. “All the evidence in the world in front of her face, and she still has doubts,” Robert said. He displayed the Overrider before aiming it at Orvil’s head. “Do you remember what this is? I bet you do.”
