The Wish

by J.R. Blackwell | Aug 21, 2005 | Story

When Ren won the global lottery he thought his handheld had been hacked. He knew his chances of winning were small but he bought his tickets daily just like everyone else. The ads said that you paid for the excitement of playing and Ren knew it was true. As soon as he got the news Ren called a lawyer, spending half his weekly salary on the privilege of a consultation. Together they learned that his ticket was authentic. He had won.

Solicitations poured in, begging him to spend his winnings. His mother insisted that he buy practical things like high citizenship, a house on The Green and a Platinum Transportation Pass. He could have all of that now, and for the rest of his life he could live like a retired man. The fortune would buy him a sweet life.

Working in the cube, all Ren could scrape together was just enough for the middle-low lifestyle and to pay his ever present debts. He was mainstream; everything about him was completely the same as the man in the next cube, common job, apartment and debts. Winning the lottery was a sign; this was his chance to escape from monotony. Ren knew he could not let the worlds’ logic dictate to him what he should do with his fortune. The universe was giving Ren a genie in a magic bottle, and his wish wouldn’t be wasted.

Ren contracted the right people. The alteration would not be impossible, but it would take a team of experts to tailor his body to his specific desires. He bleached his golden olive skin and tinted his eyes a deep black. These were the easy modifications, but Ren wanted a full body conversion, a permanent change in his genetic code. He wanted to be like the characters in the novels he read as a child, like the movies that scared and allured him. He wanted his life to have that dark color.

The whole process took two years while a team of experts reinvented his genetic code. The cost used up not only the lottery money, but his personal savings as well. Surgeries and radiation treatments were painful and the viral changes, which carried the code of his wish through his whole body, had him vomiting and shitting at all hours. He nearly died.

Ren knew, when it all started, that he couldn’t go back to his old job, which required that he work in daylight hours. It took a long time to find work he was suited for, long enough that he had to take out a high interest loan just to keep drinking. Finally, Ren found work as a night watchman at a high security living complex on The Green. It was a place where the wealthy went to live in actual two story houses. He spent his nights in a room filled with monitors, his eyes glued to flickering screens.

In the morning, Ren would go back to the place he slept in the janitorial closet. His boss was letting him stay there until he got on his feet again. The light from his eyes turned the black room grey. Ren spent his time reading romantic novels and watching horror movies on a small cracked screen. The hunger was just as he asked for, persistent, gnawing. He laughed and shivered in his bleached white skin. Ren had what he wanted, he was a living nightmare.

Deo’s Hole

by J. Loseth | Aug 19, 2005 | Story | 0 comments

Down the hill, past the cornfields, just north of Brattleboro and west of New Hampshire is a bend in the river that they call Deo’s Hole. It’s a deep place that comes just after some tame rapids, a perfect swimming hole that just happens to have a rocky outcropping above it from which children have been known to jump.

I died there when I was six. I jumped off of the rocks when my mom’s back was turned, diving like the Olympians I saw on the wave. I wanted to be a diving champ someday, and I didn’t understand why Mom would let me dive into the public pool but not into the clear, cool river water.

I hear they didn’t find my body for a few hours. It had been swept downstream, and by all accounts, my mom was pretty frantic. When they pulled me out I was blue and bloated and had a gash in the back of my head—I still have the scar from that. It’s why I keep my hair long. Anyway, they got me to the hospital pretty quick and hooked me up to the stabilizers. The guru said my soul wasn’t too far from the body, which I gather is usually the case with kids. It’s not like the old folks, where the nurses have to fight them every step of the way to get them back in their skin. Never understood that, personally. No matter how old you are, isn’t it best to go on living? Our quotas are short enough as it is nowadays.

I’m getting sidetracked. The point of all this is that years later, when I was about fourteen, I looked up Deo’s Hole and found out it was named after a kid. That’s right, a kid named Deo, who jumped off that rock the same way I did and died there, decades ago, long before my mother or my grandmother were even born.

I was incensed. I remember storming home to my mother with the printout from the library in hand, demanding to know why they hadn’t renamed the swimming hole after me, why people weren’t remembering my name instead of some dumb kid from ancient times who probably didn’t even care about swimming or diving or the Olympics. She took me aside and told me that Deo’s Hole was like the hospital or the park; they both had “memorial” in their names to remind us of people who had died for good. Nobody needed to be reminded of me, she said, because the doctors had fixed me, put me back so that I could live the rest of my allotted years.

At fourteen, I had never before been exposed to the idea that people, young people, could die and not be fixed. The idea of losing so many years of life was shocking to a kid my age, and I had to go see a shrink for a few months to get all that sorted out in my head. Now every time I drive by Deo’s Hole, I take a moment to remember a kid I never knew from a past so barbaric that it never let him grow up. But as the car zips along, tires spinning like four prayer wheels, I think of all the years his name has been spoken, far more than our life quotas nowadays, and I wonder if Deo didn’t get the better end of the deal.

Copy

by J.R. Blackwell | Aug 16, 2005 | Story

“I still don’t understand how anyone could justify putting a little kid through this.” Quinn’s father glared at the doctor, viciously protective.

The doctor shrugged. “It’s to discourage use. They didn’t intend it for little kids.”

His mother had been begging hopelessly against the policy all morning. “Then why does he have to do it?” She asked.

The doctor was direct. “It’s the law.” They came to the end of the white corridor. The doctor put his hand on the white door, and looked directly at Quinn’s father. “Ten minutes in the room, you are allowed to be present because he’s a minor, but you can’t block his line of sight.” The doctor held open the door. Quinn’s father pushed the wheelchair into the room. There was a boy asleep on a metal bed in the middle of the room.

Quinn’s father started his stopwatch. “It’s starts now.”

“Right.” The doctor sighed, shaking his head.

“Quinn, that boy isn’t you.” His father gestured to the sleeping child. “It may look like you, but it isn’t.” Quinn couldn’t see the boy on the table very well from his wheelchair, just the side of the Copys’ pink face and arm, the rest covered by a blue sheet. The Copy was totally bald, and everything Quinn could see looked soft. He had no spots or scars at all. The Copy had tubes in his arms that led to bags full of yellow goop and clear liquid. Quinn felt his father put a big hand on his tiny shoulder “He hasn’t even got much of a brain son, so you don’t need to feel sorry for him. We just have to stand here in this room for a bit, because it’s UN law, because they want to make little kids feel bad.”

“They make everyone who gets a clone done for parts do it.” said the doctor.

Quinns father whirled and pointed his finger. “You just keep your eyes on your watch.” Quinns father knelt next to the wheelchair. “Now Quinn, it’s important that you understand that boy isn’t real, he’s just a bunch of parts, like the Connect-A-Bits that we got you. He doesn’t think and he’ll never wake up. He’s just going to go on sleeping forever.”

Quinn knew the truth, he knew because he had heard the other kids in the hospital talk about it when the grownups were out of earshot. They said that the doctors don’t make the first cuts on the Copy; it’s all done by workmen who haven’t taken the doctors’ oath. They just go in and cut out a huge chunk of person in the area they need and then doctors take that slab of meat and carefully take the chunk they want. One of the kids said that sometimes the Copy wakes up and screams, but Quinn didn’t believe that part, it sounded stupid, like it was from a scary movie.

Quinn’s mother’s eyes were glassy and she tightly gripped his hand. She looked at the Copy, her chin trembling, and her mouth tight. Her eyes were red.

“He’s breathing.” she said softly.

“Yes, Sarah, it’s breathing. It has to breathe. It doesn’t mean it’s alive.”

They were silent for a long time after that, all of them watching the nameless, nearly brainless boy.

Digital Multiplex

by J. Loseth | Aug 15, 2005 | Story | 0 comments

“So what about ‘light blue’ or ‘dark blue’? Can I just say ‘tinoh ekilit’ and ‘tinoh saikilit’? Or do you have to use a separate word?”

“No, no, you’re missing the point. They don’t have light blue or dark blue. It’s either blue or it isn’t.”

“But they have words for light and dark, so what’s the difference? Don’t tell me their eyes can’t distinguish different shades.”

Rennie sighed and rubbed his temple. His newest student was proving to be far more difficult than he’d bargained for. The government said the kid was quick, and sure, he seemed to be some sort of linguistic genius—he’d picked up in a matter of hours the amount of vocabulary that Rennie had had to study for a year. But what good will it do him if he can’t put himself in their mindset? “It’s not their eyes,” he told Greg for what seemed like the thousandth time. “It’s their brains. Like I said, a digital species. Blue or not-blue. Their eyes can tell the difference, but culturally, they just don’t care.”

“And nobody on Keraknos has ever challenged this?” Greg wasn’t buying it, and Rennie could tell. Genius he may be, but he’ll never be a great translator with an attitude like that. As if to confirm Rennie’s fears, Greg crossed his arms arrogantly over his chest. “I can’t believe that. Someone must have gone against the accepted order sometime, somewhere.”

“Look, this isn’t about government control or some coup d’etat.” Now Rennie was getting a little annoyed. “It’s a fundamental way of thinking. Their brains are just wired that way. You think a digital clock thinks about going against the ‘established order’ and turning analog one day? Of course not. It’s a basic difference between our species, and if you can’t handle that, you shouldn’t be trying for the Ambassador job.”

Greg scowled, and Rennie could tell he’d hit a nerve. The jab seemed to keep Greg in check, and he nodded, visibly swallowing his pride. “Sorry, sir,” he said with unusual and obviously reluctant politeness. “Can we go over the conjugations again?”

“If you want,” Rennie agreed magnanimously. “But I recommend you get another tutor if you’re not able to pick up the cultural stuff from me.” He watched Greg carefully for a reaction.

“No, sir.” Greg’s eyes were downcast, though they narrowed seriously when he spoke. “You’re the best, and everyone knows it. I really want this job. I’ll work on it. It’s just…” The boy genius scowled again, as if the next admission caused him physical pain. “It’s hard for me to understand.”

Rennie laughed out loud. The sound startled Greg, whose eyes flew up to his teacher’s face, flashing with anger and resentment at a perceived insult. Rennie didn’t care. That one sentence had convinced him; the kid really could learn, if he put his mind to it. “Don’t sweat it,” he told Greg, clapping the boy on the shoulder. “You’re only human.”