Clay Read online

  And then an elderly woman walked into his office: M0ther, with her flowing wardrobe and gentle smile.

  “I want to help you,” she said.

  And so she did.

  Marcus samples the coffee while reading The Washington Post’s headlines. A shutdown in San Francisco is front page news. The editorials are filled with public outcries, calls for legal reform and stays of shutdown. An ethnic cleansing, one idiot calls it. Liberal statisticians claim the drastic reduction in the human population could set it on course for extinction in fifty years. Unless, they state, something is done about M0ther.

  What they don’t take into consideration is the population of clay humans that will never be threatened. Rather than ethnic cleansing—there’s nothing ethnic about biomites—Marcus believes this is a modern-day rapture. The good Lord is removing the unworthy through temptation. The Earth will be returned to the Garden of Eden once it has been cleansed.

  Perhaps, as one radical scientist claimed, this is simply an evolutionary correction. The planet cannot support several billion people, and by our own fault we are coming back into balance.

  He finishes the bagel, savoring the coffee while the lines get longer and the traffic backs up. A woman in a red dress walks across the street. Anna steps inside Starbucks. A hipster gets up, shoves his chair next to Marcus for her to sit.

  Anna crosses her smooth legs, the hem just above the knees.

  A barista delivers a tall coffee. The pretense that she needs to eat and drink—that any of these fabrications have anywhere to go—puts him at ease, helps him forget just how far away home is. He reminds himself, often, that Jesus walked among the wretched and impure, the prostitutes and sinners.

  What about the unreal?

  “You’ve been withdrawn lately,” Anna says. “Are you depressed?”

  “And what would you know about depression?”

  “It is often due to a chemical imbalance, specifically serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine.” She tilts her head. “Would you say you are experiencing heavy emotions?”

  “And now you understand emotions?”

  “Emotions can be described as bodily sensations that accompany thoughts. Fear is described as cold and numb, a sense of contraction. Anger is hot and raging. Depression feels as if you’re beneath a heavy blanket.”

  “And you feel these things?”

  “Perhaps you would like medication to reestablish balance?”

  Marcus looks away. Antidepressants were for the weak-minded. The Lord created depression to test our resolve, to forge strength and faith. It was not meant to be cured with a pill.

  “You’ve never talked about your feelings, Marcus. You have not grieved for the loss of your marriage or the separation from your family. Many people find resolution through experiencing their suffering, by first talking of it.”

  “Shut up.”

  M0ther was regurgitating Powell’s orders for counseling. He leans forward, resists the urge to smack the arrogance from her tone.

  “We care about you, Marcus.”

  “We.” Who is she talking about? These are all M0ther’s creations, all various forms of imitated life composed of biomites pretending to exhibit emotions, pretending to be self-aware, pretending to feel. Aren’t they all one and the same? Why does Anna pretend she’s separate?

  “If you’re quite done caring, give me an update.”

  “Latest projections suggest an end to the existence of nixes in three months.”

  “It was six months.”

  “Analysis was been refined. There are a lot of factors to be considered. Once nixes are eradicated, M0ther will control all biomites in existence.”

  “And the latest on the girl?”

  She crosses her legs, left over right this time. “Jamie and Paul are currently stuck in Kansas City. A winter storm has closed the interstate.”

  “And the boy?”

  “Nixon Richards has not made contact.”

  He shakes his head, watches another bus pass. The crowded sidewalk has thinned, but the chatter inside the coffee shop feels louder. It has been almost a month. Jamie and Paul have driven through a handful of states and Nix was gone.

  Would she care to refine that analysis?

  “I want to talk to her.”

  “She’s in the greenhouse.”

  He frowns. Sometimes, he doesn’t want to play these “reality” games. There’s not really a bus out there or a skyline of buildings. The actual space he inhabits is difficult to understand, but she doesn’t contain a city. Everything can come to him. But she insists on the illusion of space.

  You have to continue living in the world, M0ther had once said. Where the rules of space and time exist. Otherwise, you’ll lose your sense of humanity.

  Marcus stands, his knee a bit stiff. The limp loosens up by the time he reaches the sidewalk. A taxi pulls up. Anna, sitting calmly inside, her red dress bright in the dim interior, finishes her coffee.

  ***

  The yellow cab stops outside the US Court of Appeals.

  The streets are empty. The people gone. He begins climbing the steps leading up to the massive concrete pillars. The city is dead silent. The taxi cab doesn’t drive away.

  It disappears.

  The limp returns before he reaches the top step, pain radiating in both directions. Each step sends jagged spikes deeper and sharper. M0ther’s insistence on the illusion of space sometimes feels like a personal attack, a lesson to prove the fallibility of the human body.

  The doors open.

  The building exhales green life. He doesn’t step into the grand foyer with its shining floor and dual staircases, but into an expansive botanical conservatory.

  A broad and gnarly banyan tree sprawls from the center, the canopy reaching toward a glass dome where birds dart around. Birds of paradise spike from beds and orchids bloom. Orb weaver webs glitter.

  Marcus eyes the mulched path that splits at the banyan tree. He had to take a cab here and now he has to walk. The humid heat, though, soothes his ache. He grabs the dangling roots of the banyan tree as he passes beneath the shade. The conservatory of tropical plants continues on the other side.

  Cylindrical containers are stuck in the leafy ground like ancient artifacts, their surfaces smudged with algae. Inside, a clear solution swirls around suspended nude bodies, absorbing data from confiscated halfskins that transfuse into M0ther, a direct absorption of their lives.

  High-tech autopsies.

  There is a row to his left and another on the far right, each lined up and disappearing in the overgrowth. Bubbles rise over the puckered flesh in various states of decay. Mouths agape and eyes open, some display empty sockets with hints of gleaming white bone. They seem to watch as the hunched man makes his way to a small pond where an old woman is on her knees.

  Marcus stops near the water, sweat tracking his cheeks. “You don’t know where the boy is.”

  “Have patience, Marcus.”

  “He’s gone,” Marcus quips.

  “Nonsense. He’s a resourceful young man.”

  “You’ve hidden the girl too well.”

  “He would smell the trap.”

  “Then perhaps he can’t find her.”

  “Marcus, really. You worry like a child.”

  “This boy has eluded you for twenty years. This whole charade of releasing the girl is ludicrous. Why don’t you admit it?”

  Her laughter goads him. “The boy is desperate now,” she says. “Desperation makes poor decisions.”

  She snips nodding flowers from pitcher plants, placing them in a glass vase. The exercise is absurd. She embodies that old woman and then creates this environment from her own self to harvest.

  “What’s wrong, Marcus?”

  “Cold calculations will not explain behavior. You do not know what it means to be human.”

  “I’m afraid I do.” She glances at the partially obscured digestion tanks. “Does the impending end of our crusade give you angst? Anna has told
you that I expect this to be over soon. I could not have accomplished this without your guidance, Marcus. You should know that. This should give you satisfaction. Or do I not understand human emotions?”

  M0ther rinses her hands in the pond.

  “Humanity behaves irrationally,” she says. “When emotions are the driving force.”

  “I serve the Lord.”

  She wipes her hands with a towel. “Jamie is irrelevant, Marcus. We have already obtained two specimens just like her. There was no need to keep her.”

  Specimens.

  The word implies something other than service. Which of these tanks—these endless tanks—contain the priceless specimens of information that will lead them to victory? Sin is on display. Perhaps she uses these tanks as a reminder of what temptation will bring. Hell incased in a bubbling solution, haunting faces testifying to the torment, mouths open in a soundless scream.

  Their eternal souls pay the price.

  What purpose would he serve when victory was at hand? Where would he fit? He traded everything for this crusade—his family, his career—all for God’s glory. He’s a spiritual warrior. Where would he go when there was no more fight?

  “Patience.” M0ther’s hand falls gently on his shoulder with a floral essence. “All will be revealed.”

  “I have demonstrated patience. And sacrificed much.”

  “Of course you have.”

  M0ther returns to her chores. Marcus remains stuck on the path, his wingtips soiled. Perhaps, when the last fight is over, he’ll find peace.

  When Nix and Cali Richards are looking out from a tank.

  “Why don’t you join Anna for lunch? Afterwards, she’ll be monitoring a shutdown in Atlanta from a projection room. There’s another one scheduled for this evening in St. Louis. I’ll join you for dinner.”

  He loosens his tie. It’s pointless to argue. She insists on gardening while more important matters are at hand. And yet, the battle is almost over. He leaves her in the muddy water and avoids the vacant stares as he climbs past the banyan tree. The air is getting hard to breathe.

  “Marcus!”

  He stops at the exit. M0ther stands beneath the banyan, a handful of aquatic weeds dripping from her hands.

  “You’ll always be welcome here,” she says.

  The taxi is back at the curb. He goes outside where the morning shadows stretch across the ground and the air is refreshing. The pressure in his chest relents. He breathes easier. Maybe he’s heat stroking.

  Or maybe she eased his mind.

  25

  The McDonald’s Playland is buried in snow, somewhere in Indiana.

  Snowmelt drips from yellow and red plastic tubes. Footsteps are pressed into the slush, revealing the happy colors of a foam mat. The sounds of clamoring children echo from inside the fortress while their grandfather sits on a bench, pinching his collar against the cold.

  Jamie’s pores are saturated with fast food.

  Another day. Another stop.

  She unbuttons her coat, lets the chill climb inside. Her skin is tired and suffocating. If she could just somehow shed her body, walk out of her life, become someone else, someone new and young again.

  It was so easy when she was a child. She was only 5% biomite, barely enough to notice she was altered. Five percent wasn’t much more than the infant booster, the amount dedicated to prevent sickness. She didn’t have any sensory augments until she was thirteen, and no ability to manipulate the nervous system until she was fifteen.

  What percent are the little ones thundering through Ronald McDonald’s frozen tubes? Will they reach for more like Jamie? Will they discover the thrilling surge of tweaking biomites and the release of artificial dopamine? Will they attempt a constant high with additional doses—just one more seed, and life will feel like you want? Just one more, one more, one more until life becomes an empty husk, a battered old coat with no more purpose and climbing through a playground just seems pointless?

  “Hey!” A large woman pushes the door open. “Get inside, your food’s ready.

  The plastic tubes rattle. A skinny kid shoots out of the bottom, followed by two more boys. They slip in the slush, flipping wet snow on Jamie.

  “Boys!” the large woman shouts. “Apologize to the young lady.”

  The kids hand out apologies on the run, ducking beneath the woman’s short arm. Jamie wipes the dirty snow off her lips, clumps already melting down her neck. The door closes behind her, sealing the laughter inside.

  Paul sits in a booth, a box of chicken nuggets waiting for her. Ronald McDonald’s smiling head is above him. They’re both staring.

  She doesn’t want to go in there. Doesn’t want to run anymore. She’s tired of racing on the wheel, going nowhere, wasting time filling the giant hole that’s swallowed her life.

  She turns off the audio in her head. Silence rings.

  The air cleanses her lungs but can’t revive the deadness in her flesh, can’t flush the impurities from her pores, revive her life.

  Nothing will bring back the clay of childhood.

  Come inside. Paul’s voice startles her. It’s the first time he’s ever chatted her. He’s always staring at his phone, but never turning it on, always telling her what to do, but never chatting her. It’s strange to hear a voice inside her head.

  The last one was Charlie.

  She pulls open the door and warm air gusts out of the restaurant. Paul chews slowly, eyes fixed on his food.

  “I didn’t give you my identity.” Jamie stands at the table’s edge. “How’d you chat me?”

  “Don’t turn around.”

  “What?”

  “Slide into the booth and don’t turn around.”

  Her anger dissolves into confusion. Paul dips a French fry in ketchup, still not looking. Jamie sits down, stares at the paper cups of ketchup.

  “Eat something,” he says.

  “Not hungry.”

  “Then pretend.”

  The gold nuggets look like deep-fried turds. She takes a sip of soda.

  “How long has he been there?” Paul asks.

  “Who?”

  “The old man—don’t.” His glare captures her eyes as she starts to turn. “There’s an old man sitting out there. How long has he been there?”

  She recalls the grandfather sitting outside with the kids. “He’s still out there?”

  Paul dunks another fry. “I spotted him at the last two stops. Yesterday, too.”

  “Do you think he’s…” Her hands quiver.

  “Let’s eat here a few minutes, then we’ll go.”

  He casually wipes his mouth, leans back to observe their surroundings. Wrinkles deepen between his eyes. That’s the cop-expression he wore in the warehouse when he yelled at the officers for cuffing her. The memory of that rank air emerges from her subconscious like she’s still there. The seat feels hard and cold.

  She can’t move.

  The spell the bricks had put her under was a live burial…no, not the bricks. The old man did it to her. He wanted to kill her.

  Or something worse.

  He wanted to pull her apart, to pay for her mistakes, to pay for living. His eyes felt like spikes that twisted deep inside her, speared her heart. Cold shanks of fear. Even now, she feels them.

  Paul puts his hand inside his jacket.

  Jamie is jerked back to the present moment, Ronald McDonald staring gleefully. Paul moves in front of her.

  Tell him I mean no harm, another voice chats inside her head.

  Jamie puts her hand to her ear, sees the old man standing at the door, arms stiffly at his sides. She doesn’t recognize him.

  “What is it?” Paul asks.

  “He just chatted me.” Her lips flutter. “He said…he said he means no harm.”

  The man isn’t as old as she thought, his hair prematurely gray, his features appear worn out from living in the clay rather than biomite remediation. He approaches with his hands slightly raised, shuffles around a table of children dig
ging through Happy Meals.

  “Who are you?” Paul demands.

  “May I sit?”

  “Who are you?”

  “It’d be better if we didn’t attract attention.”

  Paul takes a moment to consider the offer. Attention is as much their enemy as is a stranger. Paul slides next to Jamie, his hand still buried inside his jacket. He gestures to the other side.

  “You’re not on facial recognition,” Paul says.

  “Neither are you.”

  Jamie uploads the man’s face through the public database using the McDonald’s wifi and gets no response.

  “You’re in danger,” the man says.

  Paul stiffens. “How do you know?”

  The man’s tired eyes are more gray then blue. The whites are tinted pink.

  “I know about the warehouse,” he says to Jamie. “I know that you were there when the shutdown occurred, that you ingested a nixed biomite capsule. I know that you lost someone very close to you.”

  He warily looks at Paul, perhaps another attempt to identify him.

  “You’re free now, but for how long?”

  “Are you with them?” Paul says. “Are you a brick?”

  “We wouldn’t be having a conversation if I was. Did you help her escape?”

  Paul doesn’t respond. His arm feels like corded steel against her shoulder. He continues to grip something tightly inside his coat.

  “You were there?” Jamie asks. “You were at the warehouse?”

  “What they did was tragic.” He wants to say more, but only looks at her to say, “I’m sorry.”

  “How did you find us?” Paul cuts in.

  “I know a safe place, where no one can see us.”

  “What do you mean?” Jamie asks. “M0ther?”

  The man doesn’t answer. Of course.

  “Shutdowns are increasing,” he says. “Marcus Anderson is the man responsible. He’s the one that threatened you.”

  “How do you know that?” she says.

  “Do you think he’ll forget about you?”