Halfskin Read online

  Let’s just call her M0ther.

  A mother that doesn’t bake cookies or wash your underwear. She’s not getting up to make you French toast or wipe your nose. Nope. This bitch is going to spy on you until you’re dead. Which may be sooner than you think.

  M0ther is somewhere in the frozen plains of Wyoming. No pictures of her exist because no one’s allowed to even fly over. But rumors say she’s this massive dome, a computer the size of a football stadium, like some artificial brain heaved out of the frozen soil that’s wirelessly connected with every biomite in existence.

  Did you catch that? EVERY BIOMITE IN EXISTENCE!

  Hear that buzzing on your phone? She’s listening.

  Feel that tickle on your laptop? She knows you’re tapping.

  All that Do Not Covet Your Neighbor’s Wife crap? Yeah, that’s the real deal now. M0ther might tell your wife what you’re thinking about doing to Joe-Bob’s wife mowing the lawn in a tube top.

  George Orwell wasn’t even close, man. I mean, Big Brother was just a peashooter compared to M0ther. Big Brother was pissing on a forest fire; M0ther’s bringing the goddamn ocean.

  Here’s the official statement from Marcus Anderson, chief of the Biomite Oversight Committee.

  (BTW, he looks like a gargoyle. Right?)

  It is with great pleasure that, after ten years of global effort, I present to you the greatest feat of humankind. I present to you a regulatory system that will keep all people safer and healthier for centuries to come. Bionanotechnology has put us on the brink of greatness, but with that comes uncertainty and danger. The human species has the potential to live forever. Or end tomorrow.

  I prefer the former.

  Mitochondria Terraforming Hierarchy of Record is linked to every booted cellular-sized biomite living inside our bodies. Its primary function will be to monitor individual levels of biomites and take appropriate action if, or when, they cross a previously determined threshold. This will keep us human.

  This will keep us safe.

  Forever.

  I don’t know about you, but this is not a gross infringement on our freedom: it’s raping it. I don’t want anything or anyone peeking into my biomites; that’s none of your business, none of my neighbor’s, and it sure as hell ain’t the government’s.

  Biomites aren’t evil, dude. They’re artificial stem cells, that’s all. What’s the big deal? If you want to be 100% artificial, be my guest, that’s your business, bro. I don’t give a rat’s pink sphincter what you do with your body. You want to boost your brain with biomites to get smarter? Hey, as long as you got the cash, good for you.

  What the chief didn’t say in his official statement was what exactly the previously determined threshold is.

  Want to know?

  You should, before you rebuild your kidney or tone those wrinkles, you should know that when your body is 40% biomites, you’re a redline. And redlines go to jail.

  JAIL.

  Think I’m joking?

  They call it a Detainment and Observation Center. You can’t leave, you don’t order takeout, you shower with other redlines. That’s jail. You get a federally funded cot and three hots while they watch your biomite levels. On a side note, you’d think the scientists could figure out how to keep biomites from reproducing and slowly taking over our bodies once we get seeded. They are the geniuses, for Christ’s sake. Doesn’t seem like it should be all that hard.

  But all right, whatever. So they continue dividing once they’re in our bodies. It’s worth the trade-off: they are the answer to every disease, every shortcoming, every desire known to man. They’ll figure it out; give them some time.

  But here’s the kicker. Guess what happens when you hit 50%. Guess, no seriously. Take a stab. When your body becomes halfskin, when it’s 50% God-given, good ole-fashioned organic cells and 50% artificial biomite cells, guess what M0ther’s going to do?

  Bitch is going to shut you off.

  That’s right.

  And when she does, when she turns off all your biomites like a light switch, what do you think happens to the other half? The living half?

  Yeah. That’s right.

  It’s real, peeps. Real as it gets.

  The death of human liberty happened today and you probably didn’t even feel it.

  Well, I did.

  2

  CALI KNELT DOWN TO REBOOT a server. Her knee hit the concrete, driving spikes up her thigh. She cursed and didn’t hold back. She stood a little too fast and steadied herself against the stainless steel rack. A head rush stormed her entire body, weakening her knees. She remained still until it passed and made a mental note to drink some water.

  She walked two more rows. Computer after computer blinked green lights at her. No one would suspect she was in a suburban brick house with a pink flamingo in the front yard. The basement looked more like an industrial IT department. It took two air conditioners to keep the house cool.

  She couldn’t afford to shut her lab down. Not now.

  No one could afford a setup like that—hell, there were companies that couldn’t afford it. But she had money. Blood money. When she married Thomas, he joked he’d need another life insurance policy. Luck was not something Cali’s family possessed. She thought he was joking, but he took out a ridiculous life insurance policy on himself so that Cali, Avery and Nix would never worry about money again if something ever happened.

  And it did.

  Cali sat at a desk cluttered with gadgets and monitors, microscopes and assemblers. She sipped at a water bottle while waiting for an espresso-like machine to drip a gun-metal droplet into a flask. No coffee from that machine. It was uniquely constructed to produce congealed biomites: the raw synthetic stem cells with designer DNA coding. At one drop per day, it was a slow process.

  She took a heavy flask of mercury-like liquid off the shelf and swirled it under a circular magnifying glass attached to a hinged arm.

  Good.

  It would take a complete analysis to see if they worked, but she’d seen enough raw biomites to know the subtle colors, just like an Eskimo knew snow. These were brighter than usual, less viscous. Exactly what she expected.

  There were six monitors arranged on the wall in two rows of three. The one in the middle, bottom row, was the largest. Numbers scrolled down a column that she occasionally stopped with a mouse-click. Several submenus expanded with another series of clicks. She sat back and let the numbers continue to run. The analysis was taking too long, but the program needed time.

  Time was the only thing she couldn’t afford.

  Biomites were humanity’s greatest invention. Forget telecommunications, forget transportation… bionanotechnology changed everything. Once humanity controlled the human body, they could cure disease, heal bones, alter brain chemistry. Biomites were the answer, the one big answer to every question.

  Only one side effect. It was a big one. They were malignant.

  They were exact duplicates of the body’s cells but, for some unknown reason, wouldn’t accept enzymatic cues to stop dividing. No matter what coding bionanoengineers inserted into the DNA, they always reverted back to runaway division, replacing the body’s natural organic cells.

  Cali had a theory.

  She believed the biomites intuited the weakness of organic cells—their susceptibility to random DNA variability, cancer, disease—and logically replaced them. Biomites were doing what we wanted; they were making the body sound and impervious.

  Perfect.

  The monitor to the left, bottom row, chimed. Another email arrived and filed at the top of a long column of unread messages. The office manager confirmed Cali’s paid leave of absence was nearly depleted. She’d spent her sick days and vacation long ago. Pretty soon, her leave of absence would convert to unpaid. Her employers had been very sympathetic. They gave her more time than they should have. She was a valuable asset, a deserving individual, but a Fortune 500 company can only bend the sympathy branch so far. Pretty soon, they’d prune it.r />
  Cali finished the water and rubbed her eyes. She saw her reflection in the dark monitors. The shadows across her cheeks were long and dark, disguising the red rims of her eyelids and cracked lips. Oily blond hair hung over her eyes. She retied the ponytail.

  She rolled the chair to the right and touched the electron microscope. Images lit up a dark monitor, obliterating her deathly reflection. The previous batch of biomites that percolated from the espresso machine was still active. Under magnification, they looked like grains of sand jittering on meth. Excellent stability, that was good. She wouldn’t know if they possessed runaway division until further testing, but she didn’t care about that. Not anymore.

  Priorities change.

  She was looking for biomites that would disappear. Not physically, but virtually. Every biomite emitted a frequency that could be monitored. That’s what M0ther watched, the frequency with which biomites spoke to each other. M0ther was an eavesdropper, downloading everything they did. There weren’t enough zeros to count how many biomites were in existence, but everyone had them.

  So M0ther knew what everyone was doing.

  Cali wanted to change that.

  So far, nothing worked. There was still hope. There was still time. But not much of either.

  Someone squealed upstairs, followed by a fit of laughter. Avery was about to pee herself. Only Nix could make her laugh like that. She loved that sound, her favorite sound in the entire world. Without Nix, she might not hear it ever again.

  This is all my fault. All mine. I knew this day was coming, knew his redline potential, but I waited. I waited because I’m selfish. Nix is going to pay for that. We’re all going to pay.

  The numbers continued to scroll in a fuzzy line.

  She rubbed her eyes and tried to focus, but it only smudged the images further. She didn’t have time for this, not now. She could sleep when this was all over; she just needed to focus, to see the data come together so that she could hide her little brother.

  Get him off M0ther’s map.

  M0ther didn’t care what he meant to her, what he meant to Avery. They would come, they would take him, they would take him from her life, from Avery’s life, and he was all she had, all she had, he was all she had—

  She closed her eyes.

  Breathing slowly, breathing deeply.

  She relaxed before opening her eyes. The images around her weren’t sharp, but she could make them out. She could read them. The analysis was almost over. Once that was done, she could get the next batch started and then lie down for a nap. She’d done it earlier that day (or was it night, there were no windows in the basement), fallen directly into REM. Twenty minutes later, she was brand new.

  She took the water bottle to the bathroom and filled it. She heard a bell ring and leaned out the door to see if the analysis finished early. The numbers were still scrolling. She sat back down and took another deep drink—

  BING.

  That was upstairs.

  The doorbell.

  Cali stayed completely still, ears pricked with attention. There were muddled voices. A long silence. She remained as still as a stowaway.

  The basement door opened and snapped closed.

  Little feet danced down the steps. “Mommy,” Avery said, “there’s some guy at the door talking to Uncle Nix.”

  Cali stood too quickly and braced herself on the desk. “Who?”

  Avery shrugged. “They want him to go.”

  Cali stumbled to the steps, barely seeing the door at the top rush towards her. She punched it open, slamming it against the wall.

  Time is out.

  3

  Nix just finished draining the dishwasher when the doorbell rang.

  He stopped to turn the television off, where cartoons blared loud enough that his sister would hear them in the basement. He was going to take her something to eat and considered mashing up a sleeping pill in some cottage cheese. She swore she was taking naps, but her face was caving in. He’d laced her food once before, when she pulled a week’s worth of all-nighters to finish the coding on a new batch of biomites in time for a presentation at a global convention.

  He dried his hands and slung the towel over his shoulder. There was a car in the driveway, a black four-door sedan with an unassuming man in the driver’s seat. No sunglasses, no badge. Just an ordinary guy sitting like a waxy replication of a normal everyday somebody.

  BING.

  Nix slowed. He thought-commanded a self-analysis of the biomite population in his body.

  39.8%.

  He was composed of less than 40% biomites; that meant over 60% of his body was good, old-fashioned organic cells. That meant he wasn’t redline. That meant it couldn’t be them. But biomite patrol didn’t make house calls to see how you were doing. They showed up for one reason.

  There’s some mistake.

  He gripped the door handle.

  They’ll understand. Gear sometimes needs calibrated.

  The door opened.

  The man standing there, unlike his partner in the driver’s seat, was wearing sunglasses, the reflective kind.

  They stood there, facing each other. There were no words. No greeting or informal nods. Just a silent recognition. They’d never seen each other, but they knew what the other was about.

  “I’m not redline,” Nix stated.

  The agent didn’t flinch. He unclipped a cell-phone-sized gearbox from his belt. He held it up like a badge and waited. Nix took a half a step forward. The agent lowered the box, pressing it against Nix’s flesh between the breastbone and bobbing Adam’s apple.

  Nix felt the thing whir hotly. Its effect scattered over his skin like electric spider webs, wrapping over his shoulders and across his back, penetrating his body like feeder roots to estimate the biomite population. The agent pulled the gearbox away, leaving Nix feeling weak. He looked at it and turned it so Nix could see the number.

  “It’s wrong.”

  “We’ll confirm at the office.”

  “It’ll say the same thing, and it’s wrong.”

  “You need to come with us.”

  Nix took a step back. He considered running. The agent shook his head one time. There would be no running. Any attempt to resist would be met swiftly. M0ther was in Wyoming and Nix in southern Illinois, but she could see him like he was standing right next to her. She knew what his biomites were doing, what he was thinking. If he ran, if he disobeyed a biomite agent, M0ther would flip a switch. He’d hit the floor.

  Obey. Or else.

  It’s the law.

  “It is my duty to bring you into a Detainment and Observation Center to be fully analyzed. You are not under arrest, simply detained for further observation. If our readings are wrong, you will be brought back to your home and compensated for your time. Do you understand these rights?”

  Nod.

  He brandished a stiff metal ring, the color of a cold weapon. “For your safety and ours, I’m going to place this suppression ring around—”

  A door cracked inside the house.

  “NO!” Cali bounded across the room and wrapped her arms around Nix. “He’s not redline. You can’t take him.”

  “Ma’am, this will be your only warning. Do not interfere.”

  A car door shut. The driver approached the house.

  “Look, look.” Cali fumbled her own reader, slimmer and colder, against Nix’s neck and shoved the reading in the agent’s face. “38.8%. He’s under; we still have time.”

  “He’ll be verified at the satellite office. If there is a mistake, he will be back before dinner.”

  The driver stopped behind the first agent.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Ma’am.”

  Her hand clamped on Nix’s arm.

  There was a long moment of staring. Nix could sense all the thoughts floating around them like transparent bubbles. He couldn’t hear them, but he sensed them. Thoughts of escape. Thoughts of apprehension.

  Violence.

 
Nix reached up and gently squeezed her hand. It would be bad enough to be taken away. He wouldn’t be able to handle watching his sister punished for it. She was still shaking her head, mouthing the same word over and over.

  The agent reached up and lowered the suppression ring over Nix’s head to rest around his neck. It was cold against his skin, warming quickly.

  Heaviness fell on him as the biomites in his body slowed down, diminishing their activity. They were not deactivated, just reduced to keeping him alive, to keeping him subdued for his safety and others. Thoughts became dull; memories began to pale.

  But worst of all… Cali is alone.

  Nix was guided to the car. A few of the neighbors watched. One leaned on a rake, relief on his face that it wasn’t one of his kids.

  Cali wasn’t in the doorway when Nix sat in the backseat of the new-smelling sedan. The front door was closed. She was already in the basement.

  The suppression ring wasn’t fully powered. There was still time to say goodbye.

  Nix laid his head back and closed his eyes. The car rocked as it backed over the curb. Traffic sounds faded. He no longer heard the cars passing or felt the pavement grind under the tires. The world around him disappeared. Nix went to his safe haven, went to a place he discovered many years ago, a place that protected him from the world. Where he wasn’t different.

  He went to a lagoon deep inside his mind.

  4

  THE LAGOON WAS DEEP AND clear with striped mussels and bright starfish on the sandy bottom. Sometimes sharks would find their way through a small channel that funneled water from the ocean. They would skim near the beach, their dorsal fins cutting the surface. They’d come so close that Nix could run his hand over their slick skin.

  A fire smoldered from inside a pile of sticks, a thick column of smoke withering in the still air. There was no scent, no sting in his eyes. He smelled very little in this dreamland, good or bad.

  The smoke obscured the view across the lagoon where, above the palms on the far shore, blue cliffs rose up. Halfway up was an opening that spewed water like a giant faucet, its roar heard a mile away. The water poured forth and sprayed misty droplets, leaving an ever-present rainbow stretching into the palms.