Velvet Dogma About 3300 wds (11 page)

Rebecca stepped into the room and pushed the door open the rest of the way. The apartment smelled of soiled clothes, sweat and rotting food. She wrinkled her nose and turned to see if Andy was following. He was right behind her. He nodded, but his attention was entirely on the woman who, with excruciating slowness, finally turned. Whatever Rebecca had anticipated, this hadn't been it. Never in her wildest dreams did she imagine this could happen.

It was Olga, all right. Her robe hung open revealing sickly gray skin and sagging breasts. Stained underwear hugged her crotch. Her mouth hung slack. A thin line of drool had made a permanent home at the corners of her mouth. Grimy PODs rested over each eye and the overhead light reflected off the lenses turning them green.

Andy shook his head. "She's an iDict. What a waste."

Rebecca's hands went to her temples. "Olga? Jesus. What can we do, Andy? Look at her."

He shrugged. "We can't do anything."
 
He looked at the pictures on the entryway wall. "Look at these."

Rebecca looked and saw Olga in a far happier time. Healthy and hale, she'd been the beautiful mother of four kids. What could have possibly happened for things to change so drastically?

"Olga, honey? Can you hear me?"

"Mmm...hear me..." repeated Olga as if she were rising from a deep sleep, her voice high-pitched like a child's.

A ray of hope. Rebecca hurried over and grasped her friend's hand. Maybe it wasn't too late. All wasn't lost. She stared into the green-lensed end of the PODs knowing from conversations with Andy that Olga could see her if she toggled for external view. "Olga, if you can hear me, say something."

"Mmm...something."

Rebecca grinned happily at Andy. "Look—she can hear me."

He frowned. "Just parroting, Bec. She's gone too far in. I've seen this before. Really, there's nothing you can do."

"I don't believe it," Rebecca said hotly.

"You don't have to. That's just the way it is."

"But she's answering me!"

"No, she's repeating your words. Just impulse. Reflex. What have you."

Rebecca shook her head. She couldn't believe it. She shook Olga's arm and vigorously rubbed her hand with her own. "Olga, snap out of it, honey. It's Rebecca. I've come back to see you."

"Mmm...Rebecca?"

"Yes. Olga, it's me. Rebecca. Remember college? Remember your roommate, Rebecca?"

"Mmm...Rebecca."
 
The timber of Olga's speech changed. "I've missed you."

"Oh, my God. I've missed you, too."

"Mmm...Where were you?"

"This shouldn't be happening."
 
Andy frowned as he approached and examined the PODs. He pressed a tiny button on the side and a display lit up. "Nothing special about these. Moderately expensive X-94s. Ah ha, look at that. These PODs have been deactivated."
 
He glanced at Rebecca. "That's why she can respond. Frankly, I'm surprised her brain isn't fried."

" What can I do? Can I get you some water?"

"Mmm...Water. Yes."
 
She began to show more life. Her mouth had closed, remedying the slack-jawed look.

Rebecca hurried to the kitchen and managed to find a glass that wasn't caked in filth. She found water in the refrigeration unit along with several dozen packets of Game Joy. She scanned the packet. Dehydrated food supplements for gamers.

She hurried back with the water and held it to Olga's lips. It took a few moments for Olga to figure out how to move her lips properly, but eventually she drank what was in the glass.

Andy snapped his fingers. "Maintenance cycle, that's it. She's on her maintenance cycle."
 
When Rebecca looked uncomprehendingly, he added, "She must have programmed the PODs to shut down at a certain time every day so she could eat, drink, and whatever. Smart girl. Too many forget and starve to death or die of dehydration."

"Mmm...My children."
 
Olga licked her cracked lips. "Where are my children?"
"She wants to know where her children are, Andy."

He examined the room and shook his head. "My guess is that they're long gone. Either daddy or child services took them."

"Rebecca? Mmm...Is that you Rebecca?"

She turned back to Olga and smiled. "Yes. It's me honey. It's Rebecca."

Suddenly the woman stiffened, her body straining as if electrified. Then she fell to the floor and began to twitch and shake. Her head and legs beat against the floor in a spastic tattoo. Rebecca knelt beside her, but could do nothing to help.

"What's happening?" she screamed. She fought to hold one of Olga's arms still. "Andy, help me!"

He dropped to his knees on the other side of Olga. At first he mimicked Rebecca's attempts to hold the woman still, but after a moment he abandoned this. Instead, he reached up and unhinged the PODs from Olga's face.

Rebecca was horrified to see that the PODs had been held in place by hooks attached to bolts jutting from Olga's temples. The skin beneath the PODs was red and raw. Sores wept with putrid yellow pus. But that wasn't the worst part. As Rebecca watched, Olga's eyes filled with blood, changing from a pale yellow to a deep red, until even her pupils were lost in the plasma swell.

As suddenly as it began, the seizure stopped. Olga's limbs stilled. Her breathing hitched, then failed. Within seconds she was dead.

Neither Andy nor Rebecca spoke for a moment as each of them stared down at the ruined woman. Andy was the first to break the silence. He pointed to the display on the side of the PODs. "Something downloaded. Or at least tried to."

"What was it?"

"We'll never know. Whatever it was killed her, though."

Rebecca looked at her hands as they grasped Olga's arms. She looked at the pasty skin, the soiled clothing, the rash around the woman's once beautiful green eyes and the bolts protruding from the sides of her head. She suddenly felt ill. She let go of the dead skin and stood shakily. She waved off Andy as he tried to help. When she found her balance, Rebecca finally relented, holding out her hand. "Just get me out of here."

The bile rose in her throat. She hated this place. She hated this world. If this was what had happened to the world, she didn't want to be a part of it.

T
heir three-block walk to the D-pens where Rebecca's grandmother was waiting to die went unmolested by police, Black Hearts or gravBoarders. It was just as well, because Rebecca felt like giving up. If the police wanted to put her back in prison, then she'd let them. If the Hei Xin wanted to take her organs, fine. She'd been released from prison a little over twenty-four hours ago and she wanted nothing more than to return. If that wasn't an indictment on what society had become, she didn't know what was.

Kumi had tried to explain the logic behind the organ levies during reintroduction."The world isn't the same as it once was. Overpopulation, starvation and disease have bred a new class of people. Basically, unless you're born with a waiver, you're body doesn't belong to you. You have a responsibility to take care of it, because when you die, your parts go immediately to help others in need. While you were under, you were surveyed, and the results were passed to the Global Allocation System to be catalogued and tracked. In the tragic event that your heart stops, collectors will come and harvest your organs in less than thirty minutes."

Rebecca's couldn't disagree more. Her body was her own. "That's not right!"

"Isn't it?"
 
For the first time, Kumi seemed to lose her cool. The words came rapid-fire with a trace of East Asian accent. "How would you like it if your daughter died because she didn't have a donor match for her kidney and all the while people are allowing their kidneys to be buried with them?"
 
Before Rebecca could respond, Kumi continued. "How would you like it if you needed a blood transfusion and your perfect match decided that she wanted to be cremated and in doing so guaranteed your death? Is
that
fair?"

"But my organs are mine!"

"Even when you die?"
 
Kumi had shaken her head and clucked her tongue. "I know. The question is unfair, especially to you. The argument over ownership occurred in 2024 when it was deemed that clinical death was the end of organic ownership with rights referring to the previously contracted subscriber. In the early days that subscriber was the government. But governments being what they are were unable to handle the situation. So private contractors evolved."

"What you're saying is that someone owns me now?"
 
Rebecca asked incredulously. A sick feeling spread from the pit of her stomach.

"Not at all."

"Then what? They own part of me? They own a piece of me? I don't understand."

"When you die the Pacific Autonomous Resource Allocation Syndicate owns your remains. They were the highest bidder."
 
Kumi leaned in. "You have no idea what your organs are worth. You haven't been subjected to a lot of the toxins the rest of us have. For all intents and purposes you're like a newborn and ideal for transplant."

Rebecca had been feeling her ire rise throughout the conversation. It had been more than a decade since she'd been able to demonstrate her anger. She felt the heat of her emotions color her face. Her eyes widened as her lips curled into a snarl. Anger rose like a snake.

Kumi backed away holding her hands out protectively. "Whoa. This isn't my fault, Rebecca. This is just the way things are now."

"The way things are? You mean that the world has decided that the best course of action is to allow people to be harvested before their bodies even become room temperature?"
 
Rebecca delivered the words as evenly as she could.

"It's not like that," Kumi insisted.

"Then what
is
it like? Jesus. Damn."
  
Rebecca ground her teeth. "One thing I forgot when I was locked up was how messed up the world was. And to think that I'd imagined it better."

"But it
is
better."
 
She saw Rebecca's answering sneer and hurried to add, "You'd think there'd be a hurry to harvest the organs. That was the initial fear when the laws were passed, but that's not how it is. If anything, healthcare has improved. I read that you had to pay to see a doctor before you went away. No more. Now everyone is provided the same service."

"Provided their organs are transplantable."

"There is that, of course."

"Of course."
 
Rebecca crossed her arms.

The irony of that conversation struck Rebecca as she stood in front of a sign that read *Sunset D-Pens* with the words
Helping the Young Through Sacrifice
scrawled neatly beneath. The sprawling low-slung building looked more like a K-mart than an old folks' home, nothing like she'd expected.

When she'd been little and a Brownie they'd gone to some of the homes to help the elderly, play games with them and sometimes to just sit and talk. She remembered the buildings as usually being dark brick, with lots of aromatic wood, carpeted floors, carefully manicured green grass, immaculate flowerbeds and meandering sidewalks wide enough for wheel chairs. Old men had played shuffleboard. Women rocked in chairs on the shade of the porch.

This place looked more like a retail outlet, a place where at any moment the intercom would announce a sale on livers or a run on spleens. Heavily tinted floor-to-ceiling windows comprised the entire front of the building. Red metal walls met a dark gray roof that peaked just enough to urge rain away. Cars filled the parking lot. Drink dispensers stood ready to serve near the double entrance doors. If the inside was anything like the outside, how impersonal it must be.

She turned to Andy who He shrugged helplessly, looking none too happy. "I don't like it either, Bec. This is a horrible way to go."

"They're literally waiting for her to die, aren't they?"

"Yes."

She set her teeth against her lip and scowled. "Monsters."
 

"They think they're doing a service," he said, then quickly held up his hand when she started to retort. "Not that I'm defending them Bec, but I thought you might want to know. I used to date a girl who worked at one of these places. She loved the sense of duty the job provided to her. She really felt that she was doing a service, recycling the organs of the dead and providing them to the living."

"But what about the dying? What about
my grandmother
?"

"They're supposed to be taken care of right until—"

"—they get pushed over the cliff."
 
She crossed her arms defiantly.

"I've heard stories," Andy admitted. "Let's hope this place is on the up and up."

Rebecca still had the idea that she might spirit her grandmother away. She'd planned on staying with Olga—presumptuous, but necessary—but that wasn't an option any more. She'd worry about that later. Now she needed to see what was going on, and how best to rescue her grandmother. Worst case scenario, they'd all be on the run.

"We need to be careful when we go in."
 
He touched her elbow. "We're not going to have a lot of time, anyway."