Ectopia (12 page)

Black, still black, but the sound was louder, one beat on a skin drum then a second. Its note kept fading and the first beat returning, ba-bum, ba-bum. The beats filled the room from above and below and from the sides. Bender ran his hands along the floor, looking for speakers. Nothing. Just a polished surface.

Reaching to feel the way ahead, his fingers touched a different surface and burrowed into its sides. The material was soft, like wet brushed cotton. It moved like waves of water.

He tried to climb and cross it, to roll his body to its other side. Aim a fish across an ocean, you've got as much chance. The surface eased his knees against his chest, pulled his arms around his knees, smoothed his spine into a curve, and tucked his chin against his breastbone.

He was tired. It was black. The space was warm. Why move?

Ba-bum, ba-bum.

The sound was a heartbeat. Colors flowed like a dream. He was rosy with comfort.

 

- Steven

A whisper inside his head.

- Steven

He kicked in spasm.

- Steven

Mom? Mom's voice?

He uncurled his fists and stretched his fingers. A hand clamped hold of his. A large hand. The hand turned Bender's own upside down then pressed something inside it.

- A visor. Put it on, Steven. Look around.

Hands supported Bender's back as he sat up. He put the visor over his head. His eyes were open. He saw a white that was as brilliant as silver but no colors. Perspex tanks lined the walls of the room. Inside each tank was a translucent pod. Thin tubes squirmed between the pods and the wall.

- This is the womb room.

Bender turned his head and saw the doc, his eyes wrapped by a strip visor like Bender's own.

- You've heard street-talk of artificial wombs and female hatcheries? Here's the reality. Each of those tanks contains a fetus. Male, female, it doesn't matter. We keep a fetus alive until it dies. In remote secure storage we've got freezers full of fertilized eggs, but science will die before we know what to do with them. It's something to try, it keeps us busy, but it's not the future.

Ba-bum, ba-bum. The heartbeat still filled the room but it didn't drown out the docshit.

- Listen, Steven. Understand. Mothers were miscarrying while you were in the womb. Your sister Karen, your twin Karen, was the last baby girl brought to term by nature. At present female wombs reject female fetuses. The cause may be chemical, it may be psychological, it may be environmental, no-one knows. Natural wombs reject females. Women's bodies refuse to bear their own
kind into this world. We're world leaders in cloning techniques here. We've managed five generations of cloned mice. I could show you the end result. It would make you weep. Genetic flaws multiply exponentially with each generation. We're scientists, Steven. We don't create life. We parody it.

Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum

- You know that sound, Steven?

Ba-bum, ba-bum

- It's a heartbeat. A mother's heartbeat.

Ba-bum, ba-bum

- Your mother's heartbeat. Do you want to meet her?

The visor was lifted from Bender's head and he was blind again. Hands gripped him under the arms. They pulled as he kicked. Rubber curtains flapped around him and light flared, so bright he didn't dare open his eyes against it. He stopped his kicking and let himself be dragged.

- Your mother, Steven. Your mother.

His head was pressed into the softness of cushions. Ba-bum, ba-bum, the heartbeat sounded in his ear. He opened his eyes into a rosy glow. Reaching to push himself back so he could see, his hands pressed into soft cushions. They were white cushions flecked with pink and scored by the blue and purple of veins. Flesh cushions. A pair of arms.

- Mom?

Her body was draped in soft white cotton till the flesh resumed at her neck. Bender looked up beyond the folds of the neck, over the swells of her cheeks, in search of her eyes. The swelling had pressed at the flesh of her eyelids and sealed em shut.

The woman's mouth opened.

- Maaa-aaa, she said.

It was a bleat. A sing-song bleat, in some thin echo of his Mom's voice.

Bender stared at his Mom. His Mom directed her sealed eyes at the wide wall of window and the burning of the sky.

 

- You fed her qual before she got here, the doc said – Where did you get it?

Bender glanced at the doctor then back up at his Mom.

Mom.

Death's easy. Death's the end. I get death. Snap, you break a spine. Death. This I don't get. Even thinking about it now I don't get it.

Burn Mom, you get ashes. Bury her, put her in the ground and cover her up, you've built a hill. You can scatter ashes. You can squat on a hill. What do you do with this? What do you do with a woman dressed in a white sleeveless tent, tubes coming out of its base to feed into bottles, cables looping out of its neckline? Wires stream from suction pads glued round her head. She's tethered to machines. What do you do with a thing like that? Call it Mom? Press its lips back over its gums and brush its teeth?

- She's smiling, the doc noted – You notice that? She's always smiling.

Push Mom's cheeks high, hold em in place, I guess you could shape a smile out of her mouth. Pry her eyes open and you can watch her cry. Jolt volts up her spine and you can make her shiver. Push her hard and maybe she'll fall over. Stop her heart and you can have her die. She reacts but doesn't act. She's like an iceberg. It takes global meltdown to shift her. She accumulates or she melts.

- What have you done to her? Bender asked.

Bender had a Mom. I had a Mom. This wasn't our Mom.

- She was on the edge when she logged in for her last biofeedback from home, the doc said – When your father certified her. Then something extra happened. Something tipped her over. She could crash or she could fly. Look at her. She's lucky. She's flying. You gave her qual. A high pure dose. That wasn't your dose, Steven. You've never been issued that grade of qual. Where did you get it?

Bender stared at the doc. He watched the man's mouth move, and heard words coming out, but still it made no sense.

- I'm not Steven.

The doc stared him out, waiting for more.

- Steven was a kid in a house with a Mom. You've fucked him over. He's gone. He's history. I'm Bender. That's not my Mom. That's nobody's Mom. I've got no Mom.

- Steven had a Mom. He gave her qual. Not his qual. Not Steven's own. Steven was an empath. Like his Mom. You don't give an empath high grade qual. With qual like that an empath starts absorbing the whole fucked world. It's like pouring hot lead into a crystal glass, giving high grade qual to an empath. You just don't do it.

- What are you on about? Qual's qual.

- Qual's a streetname. The capsules aren't called qual. Qual's the name you give to the high. We've got a saying here in Cromozone. Different highs for different guys. Each day you sign on, the optical scans beam the biofeedback direct to our laboratories. Those on qual rations have their dose adjusted accordingly. We have an overwhelmingly young male population deprived of legitimate sexual focus. We adapt brain chemistry at the local, individual level to facilitate some harmony at the societal level. You've got a gland in your brain, Bender. A pituitary gland. We've all got one. It pumps out tiny doses of dimethyl tryptamine. DMT. You've heard of toads, squat little reptiles? Blow them up to the size of a hot air balloon and they look something like Steven's Mom here. I can show you some toads later if you like. We've cloned a few trays-full in one of the sheds. Their systems get soaked with DMT. They're hallucinating all the time, only for them it's standard. Human brains pump quantities of serotonin, toads pump equivalent quantities of DMT. Inject serotonin into toads and they wouldn't squat. They'd hop cartwheels, they'd flip into orbit. We're all on mindbending trips, Bender. All of us, all the time. It's just a question of what you get used to. Are you any good at history?

- History's fucked.

- I'm talking recent history here. The history of Steven. You remember how he used to get flashes of the future?

- How'd you know that?

- We're experts on Steven here, Bender. He and his twin sister Karen are the most logged humans in the history of the human race. Those flashes of the future that Steven had? Brain chemistry. As simple as that. Little tripwires in the neural network that screw up the standard sequencing perception. Steven had something of the toad in him. His pituitary gland produced irregularly high quantities of DMT. Any slight artificial increase could give an immediate sense of wellbeing. Steven was a special case in hard times. We treated him gently.

- He never got high grade qual?

- Not from Statesquad. Mix a cocktail of DMT, harmoline and dopamine, you don't give it to an empath. That stuff's for leaders. Kids with the strength and ability to match their own smug idea of themselves. Kids with talent and self-confidence who only lack a vision.

- Malik?

- He a friend of yours?

- I'm Bender. Bender's got no friends.

- He could do with one. Someone to share his vision. You've got vision. High grade qual gives vision to those who lack it and need it.

- So what was in Steven's capsules?

- Not a lot. A little DMT boost. Enough to make the capsules feel worth taking. Enough to give a qual high. Plus some hormones.

- Hormones?

- Look at your mother, Bender.

- Bender's got no mother.

- Look at your mother!

A shout. A shout that echoed round the walls of Bender's skull. An echo that flew higher and higher in pitch then was gone.

 

Ba-bum. Ba-bum.

 

A heartbeat stirred in Bender's head. Not from outside. The heartbeat started soft and low. His head stayed still but the sound increased. Notch by notch. Someone was turning up the volume. Fuckers. Heartbeats don't do that. They don't increase in volume. You're playing with me. Playing with Bender's head. Am I deaf? Is that it? Did you probe inside Steven's eardrums and snap some cord to make Bender? Does any sound come in to him from outside anymore? Is everything he hears some recording?

Bender lifted his head. Quickly. One moment his head was pressed against flesh, the next it had pulled back a distance.

Ba-bum Ba-bum.

The same old heartbeat, the same fucking volume. Not possible.

Then snap. The heartbeat stopped.

They turned the sound off. Too late. You think Bender didn't notice? Course he noticed. Now he's remembered.

Bender looked up into the face of the mound of woman they called Steven's Mom. It wasn't Steven's Mom. Steven's Mom lived in Steven's house. She didn't exist out of context. She'd become something else. They'd pulled this woman's feet to stick out in front of her along the floor and propped her back against cushions. Bender had been laid across her body, his head on her chest. Her hands had been placed around his shaved head. They were clammy. Sweat ran from the hands and down his cheeks. The woman's head was tilted down at him. Tears bulged behind the sealed lids.

You think I'm going to get weepy over my mother? You're fucked.

Mothers mean nothing to Bender. Bender has no Mom.

He pushed himself back. The doctor was gone. The room was empty but for the woman. He stood up and tried the door. It had no handle. The indicator light stayed red as he pressed his thumb against the scanner.

- Relax, Steven.

Bender looked round the room for speakers. He saw none. Of course he fucking saw none. Voices don't need speakers. They play inside his head.

- Go to the window, Steven, and look back.

What sort of voice was that? Man, woman, freak, voicebox?

- I'm not Steven.

- Bender. Go to the window, Bender, and look back.

He did it. I don't blame him. Bender and me, we're just about on the same side. Just about the same person whatever that is. He turned his back on the window and looked above the head of the hulk who used to be Steven's Mom. The wall behind her took on a glow. Images formed as light spread across it. The whole thing was a vidwall.

- Do you see us, Bender?

Not every boy needs a mother. Bender knew that. No boy needs four of em, but four Moms stared back from the vidwall. It had to be a vidwall. The Moms were projections. Only projections flare as big as that. They were gobs of muck on a lens somewhere. It was Bender's fucked mind that made em look like Moms. Moms with football heads and flails of hair, mounds of bodies and dangling feet. Hovering Moms, way clear above the ground, balloon feet and stub toes set to burst under pressure if they land. Two of em black, one white, the other some fuckweird color like jaundiced grey. They weren't real. They couldn't be.

Bender turned to scan behind him for the projector.

- Look at us, Bender.

They were draped in sleeveless tents like ex-Steven's ex-Mom. Broad steel poles went floor to ceiling behind em. It's like they were witches tied to stakes. Bender stared and stared some more and figured something out. The poles were the pillars of hydraulic lifts. The Moms were on chairs that hoisted their weight from their ankles. They were sitting the other side of a wall of glass.

They were speaking.

- We are alone. The doctor's gone.

The voice, as deep as a man's and mellow as a large woman's, had no direction but came from all around him. Or inside him, who the fuck knows. The Mom near the left moved her lips to match it, like she was sucking the words in.