Ectopia (11 page)

Bender tried his new feet out, step by step to the window. You see views like that when you die if you're lucky. Just flying in dreams you don't see so far. Out running, everything's dust. Now he was high in a Cromozone Tower. The land was brown from up there, but he could kid himself. He could say it was green. Blades of grass, scraps of weed, leaves on twisted hedges, it was all just enough to make a pattern. Things still lived out there.

Then the edge of the city scraped the life away and the green was gone. Dust smudged the city sky. Bender's eyes went blank while he saw the future. It filled his head so he could see nothing else.

The city would burn. He watched it happen. He heard flames shoot high and fire crackle. The city went dead and turned to dust.

He closed his eyelids then opened em again.

The flames had gone. The city stood.

- Are you for real, doc? Are you a proper doctor? I wasn't sick when I got here. You've done something to me. I know it. What is it? What have you done?

- You'll learn, Steven. In good time. Soon. Before we let you go.

- Just tell me.

- I can't. Telling's no good.

- Fuck what's good. Fuck you.

Doc Drake's body was old but strong. Maybe in its forties. The neck looked creased and older than that. The eyes were worse. Extra dark in the center with a glint in the whites. People get that look when they think they know better.

- Do you ever listen to your Dad, Steven? Do you let him tell you things?

Bender shuddered. The doc was talking about Steven's Dad, not his. Bender had no Dad. A lifetime's conditioning takes a while to shake but he'd do it as quick as he could. For now, Steven's Dad was what the word Dad meant. It meant the same sick fuck of a man as ever.

- Of course you don't. Why believe your Dad? Why believe me? Why believe anyone? The whole planet's cheating on you. That's how much you know and you're not wrong. No-one can tell you anything because you know all there is. You know that it's all change. That things will die before you'll get to describe them. I'll not tell you anything, Steven. I'll show you instead. Show you everything I have to show you. Hide nothing. You can see everything for yourself. Then you can make up your own story.

- What have you done to me? Tell me that.

- I'm a doctor. Bodies fall apart. I'm trained to keep them together as long as I can. The day you were born changed my life. No more girls came after you, Steven. Baby after baby followed you into the world, every one of them a boy. Imagine it. In seventy years a few geriatrics will stumble over the wreckage of Earth, then phut. We'll be extinct as a natural born species. It's a fact, Steven. What would you do if you were me? Would you keep the old bodies going till they die, or help the young ones? Change the young ones? Give them hope?

This doc was good. Steven's Dad had skills but no charm. Doc Drake's words oozed round Bender's brain and slicked inside him. When I speak em now it's like vomiting poison.

- This doc is Steven's Dad, Bender told himself - Dad plus charm. See through it. He's only Steven's Dad.

- That outfit suits you, the doc said.

He held out a hand. He was showing off the manicure on its long nail. Then he sliced it down the center of Bender's chest.

Bender stared down at himself. The nail had cut him. He felt it, but the pain faded even as he reached up to finger the black material of his bodysuit. He could find no slit.

- You see, Steven?

Doc Drake looked from Bender's chest to his own raised finger. His eyes bulged in a comic show of surprise.

- You've never been safer than you are in our hands. A fingernail's as lethal as it gets round here. Not deadly but you'd think it would scratch. Check your skin and you won't find a blemish. The material of this slinksuit was developed for condoms. Maximum protection with maximum sensitivity. It lets your skin breathe like it's naked. It keeps your balls pouched from slapping about when you're running. It restricts no other movement. These new shoes of yours, this slinksuit? You'll amaze yourself, Steven. It's like running in a permanent slipstream. You won't believe it. You won't believe any of the things we can do for you, Steven. The greatest brains and the most powerful computers are focused on you right now. You can't understand what we're doing. Even I gasp in wonder at times. The best you can do is run with it.

The doc pressed the flat of his hand against a panel beside the door. The door breathed open.

- Come on, Steven. Let's see those shoes in action. Let's go and explore the new world.

 

Bender got as far as the door and looked out into the corridor.

- Mom? he said.

Be kind to him. Say all mothers look the same. Inflate a body to three times its size, wrap its head in a ball of fat, and you have to get subtle about distinguishing features. You have to start counting warts or something to tell one fleshblob from another. Mom, you have to say, I love you for your warts and the difference they make. You have to come up with something as rich and moving as that.

Bender saw a fleshblob on a slipcart far off down a corridor. He watched this blob draw near and thought he might be saved.

That's sick of course.

Nothing out there saves you, Bender. Nothing's worth saving.

It's now Bender. Everything's now.

What's not now is nothing.

The fleshblob drew nearer. Call it instinct but before she passed, before he smelled her, he knew this woman wasn't his mom. With one hand she worked the controls of the slipcart, the flesh of her palm pushing against a lever. Her other hand pressed a large plastic jar into the folds between her breasts.

- Come on, the doc said – We'll follow her.

Bender stepped from the doorway of his room. All he can do is take steps, I guess.

The black shoes felt good. The slinksuit felt good. The fleshblob drove her slipcart fast but keeping up was effortless. Bender left the doc in his wake. He felt like his old self. Whatever they had done to him wasn't that bad.

That's what he thought.

What's left to trust when your own thoughts lie?

The fleshblob turned her slipcart to face a door. The door had two panels, one at eye-level for women seated on slipcarts, the other at standing eye-level. The fleshblob stared her sightwaves at the lower panel and the doors slid open. Doc Drake caught up as Bender waited, and told Bender to stare into the upper panel.

- Don't worry, he said – You've got full clearance for the day. We've nothing to hide, Steven. We want you to see everything. We want you to understand.

Bender stared. The door drew back to let him in. Doc Drake followed and started to explain. More words of poison to vomit out.

- The creature in the woman's plastic jar is a girl. It's a fetus in fact but we speak of them as girls. This woman's brought it from the maternity section. Look around you. They're all girls here. Every one of them.

The walls were lined with metal shelves, and the metal shelves with plastic jars. Each jar contained a pickled fetus. Bender looked at one up close. It curled against itself inside the jar. Its head was big, its limbs tiny, its eyes shut. At least the thing couldn't see.

The blob of the woman inserted the fetus into an orange fiberglass cylinder, then turned away. Her job was done. Tears made her cheeks glow in the halogen light.

- No male hands ever touch girl fetuses. It's a council directive. You'll see the point in time. This fetus now goes through a comprehensive screening process. It won't come up with anything new, but we have to try. It's strict policy. No life must go to waste.

Doc Drake opened the door and waited for Bender to step into the corridor. Bender stayed put.

- Go ahead, Steven.

- Which way?

- Turn left.

Bender left the chamber and turned right.

The shoe molds triggered his feet muscles to adapt to his lengthening stride. His soles flexed to spring him forward. Between steps he was airborne. His body was light as he ran.

- Steven.

The doc called but didn't shout. Bender turned down a side corridor. A picture of a staircase was stenciled on the second door down. He stepped through it and ran up two flights. Up there he stepped through a door, and waited.

One minute, maybe two, and the door opened.

- Impressive, Steven, the doc said.

He held a screen in the palm of his hand.

- The green light is you in your current location. Your turn of speed was admirable. You took the stairs five at a time. Your pulse accelerated slightly but has already returned to normal. You're a lovely specimen. In fine condition. We're lucky to have you. I'll flick the screen to a smaller scale. There you go …

He handed the screen to Bender. It showed a floorplan.

- Make your choice. The green dot is you. Turn left and you pass through admin. Right and you're in the early stage ward. That's the more interesting choice of the two, wouldn't you say?

Bender glanced at the map. The doctor's right hand gripped the nape of his neck. Bender walked the way he was pushed.

- It did me good to see you run, Steven. No-one runs in this place. Your body will make a remarkable impression on the ward. I'm glad you chose this route. It'll be fun.

 

If that was fun, then running barefoot over glass is fun. Stuffing wasps up your nose is fun. Lying comatose in some fucked-up institution while some crazed doctor slavers over your body like meat's back in vogue, that's fun too. That's what fun means in Cromozone.

Cells with plate glass walls lined one side of a corridor. Each cell contained a woman. Not mothers or fleshblobs but young women.

- This a prison? Bender asked.

The doc laughed. The women turned their heads his way for a moment, then snapped straight back to face Bender. The nearest pressed against her glass screen as she stared.

She was young, young enough to be lean, but her stomach bulged in its white cotton smock. Her hair was black and pulled back behind her ears. She tilted her head to one side. She smiled as Bender watched her.

- These are our paying guests, Steven. They have external windows with panoramic views. They see the sun rise in the east. At night they see the moon and stars. We play them birdsong. Glass walls give a sense of community and a screen against alien bacteria. Vidscreens play footage of the pre-male era. It's the full dynamic of the natural world. And now they can see you. A lean, fit, young white Caucasian in a slinksuit. You're a hormone pump, Steven. You see this one with her palms pressed against the glass? Her belly's swollen but the pregnancy's false. Her embryo is formed but it's kept in a separate unit. Impregnation happens tomorrow. Having you fuck her would be more natural of course but it's the last thing she needs. You'd make a male embryo. These young women want to hold a baby girl in their wombs. They'll naturally abort, but they'll keep on trying. If they knew what we were doing with you, Steven. If only they knew. You'd die of their envy.

- If they knew what? What the fuck are you doing with me?

- All in good time. We've got no secrets. You'll learn the story as we go along. First the story, then the happy ending. Let's show you the basement. We house volunteers rather than paying guests down there. The elevator's back this way.

Every man is Dad. Bender had to remember that. He had to do the opposite of what he was told. It wouldn't make him safe. But it would land him in his own kind of trouble. He could live with his own kind of trouble. It's other people's trouble that fucks you up.

The women in their cells turned their heads as Bender passed. The first door to his right was another staircase. Fuck the doc and his elevators and his plans. Bender pushed open the door and ran.

He didn't count the floors. Why count when you're going nowhere? The new shoes gripped the cement. He twisted his body round sharp corners. Level after level, down and down and down and down till the stairs ran out. He was on level ground.

He turned sharp round and up again. Three steps at a time, then two, then a rapid run up single steps. Bender's breath grew short, his heart hurt. Up up up up.

The stairs ran out on a small cement strip in front of a door. Bender came to a stop but his head still span. He leaned on the door for balance. Through the door a motor buzzed. A sensor was reading the print from his thumb. He lifted his head and another motor hummed. A scanner located his sightwaves.

The door opened under the pressure of his weight. He stumbled through. The door closed.

 

The door was double sheathed. The mechanisms and sensors were sealed inside it. It had no handle. Rubber flaps sealed the edges.

No light. Only black.

The door held firm. Bender worked his hands and fingers around its edges but couldn't break its seal.

Black. He was trapped in black.

 

His breath was tight, caught in a knot deep within his throat. He screwed his eyes shut. He and Karen had played this game as kids, closing themselves into the loft and cellar, holding their eyes shut till their eyeballs ached. When they opened their eyes the darkness was smudged with shapes and you could see enough to move within a shadow world. Bender opened his eyes now.

Nothing. No shape, no outline. Only black.

And a sound.

It was faint, but constant. The pulsing of water down a pipe maybe, echoing inside the walls. Bender edged toward it, sliding his feet along the ground. His right foot tucked beneath a rubber flap. He pushed forward with his hands, reached and parted a curtain of rubber, and stepped through to the other side.