The Body Electric - Special Edition Page 2

  New Venice was one of the first good things to come of the Secessionary War. After more than a decade of violence, the war ended a year before I was born with the formation of the Unified Countries, a republic designed to govern global issues. It took a while for the new government to decide on a city to be its seat of operations, and ultimately, it decided that a new government deserved a brand new city.

  Originally, the island nation of Malta consisted of two landmasses, but New Venice was built as a giant, ten-kilometer square bridge connecting the two large islands. Right now, if I were to blast through the walkway, I’d land in the Mediterranean Sea.

  “Excuse me,” I say, squeezing past a tour group. It’s easy to spot the tourists, even if they didn’t have a red band across the tops of their cuffLINKs. The tourists are the ones who stop in the middle of the street to stare at simple things like street androids. They’re the ones who lift their feet and stare at them as they walk on the rubberized cement of the kinetic energy generator sidewalks. They’re the ones who are always dressed in shorts and tank tops, no matter what the weather, because they cannot imagine this Mediterranean island being anything but warm and sunny.

  They also tend to look at the city through tourist programs. Most of their pupils flash silver, a sure sign they’ve connected their eye nanobots to some sort of program—history walks through the city, or news, or chats with their friends back home, or just recording everything they see.

  I slip around the tourists gathered at the gates of Central Gardens. A street android stands at attention just on the other side, and I go to him before the tourists spot him.

  “A pastizza please,” I say, pointing to a pastry filled with cheese. When I touch my cuff to the scanner attached to the street android’s cart, my credits go down and my caloric counter goes up. I consider buying two pastizzi, but if I go over my daily calorie count, I’ll have to add at least an hour of exercise to my day.

  I idly wonder how much trouble I’d get in for cutting off my cuff. One more pastizza wouldn’t hurt anything. But, of course, if the cuff comes off, all the links to my health status go offline and an alert is sent out.

  I stuff my single pastizza into my mouth, relishing the warm, gooey cheese. The flaky crust crumbles down my shirt as I tap my cuff against the scanner by the gate. Four armed guards stand at attention, and another one checks my info before allowing me into the gardens. The Secessionary War ended before I was born, but there are still threats against our blossoming global union.

  While I eat, I check my messages on my cuff. An advertisement for a clothing store I went to once, a summary of articles that mentioned Dad or Mom’s names published online this week.

  “Look, Harold!” a woman exclaims, stopping in the middle of the path so suddenly that I bump into her. “Sorry, sorry,” she says, grinning at me as I step around her. “I just got so excited!”

  I glance up to see what she’s looking at—Triumph Towers. The path through Central Gardens is designed to wind around, showing off the city’s skyline at strategic points.

  I step off the kinetic walkway, cutting through the manicured lawn. New Venice is the capital of the world—not just in politics and economy, but everything else, too: fashion, art, technology. While I’ve never left the shores of Malta, I feel as if I’m more global than a world traveler. Everything comes to us.

  My wrist buzzes and the tech foil vibrates against my skin. I look at the words that flash across the top of my cuff, then glide my fingers over the surface, answering the call.

  My cuffLINK—the licensing, identification, and networking key I wear around my wrist—is linked to the nanobots inside me. Twenty years ago, the only bots people used were for vaccines, but now everyone has nanobots. Enhancement bots ensure that everyone has good vision and hearing throughout their lives. Media bots connect to our wrist cuff, giving us the ability to display information directly into our retinas, or to listen to music or have conversations through the interface without using an earpiece.

  Now, as I answer the call, my vision fills with a holographic image of my best friend, Akilah Xuereb. Her voice rings in my ear—“Hella’, Ella!”—all of this directly fed from my cuff to the nanobots in my eyes and ears.

  “Hi, Aks!” I grin. I keep walking through the park; the image of Akilah floats in front of me, as if she’s walking with me.

  “What are you up to?” she asks. She sweeps her hair—done up in long Havana twists—off her shoulders, shaking it behind her.

  “Just on a walk.”

  Akilah doesn’t speak for a moment. Her eyes narrow.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks.

  “Nothing.”

  Akilah purses her lips.

  “Nothing,” I insist.

  “What happened?”

  I sigh. I can never get anything past Akilah. We’ve been friends since primary school, when she let me twist her fluffy hair into dozens of braids during recess.

  “Mom’s worse,” I confess as I veer deeper into the gardens, heading toward the trees.

  Akilah curses, and I note that she’s picked up some more colorful words since starting her service year in the military. Before becoming a full citizen, everyone must complete a year of service at the end of secondary school. A white band illuminates the top of my cuff to indicate that I’m serving as an intern; Akilah has a yellow band on her cuff since she was assigned to a year of military service.

  “But does this mean your father’s treatment isn’t working any more?” Akilah asks.

  I shake my head. “And we’ve had to scale back on it, anyway. She’s overloaded with bots.”

  Dad’s medical nanobots in Mom’s system work to replace the synapses that the disease destroyed, but there’s a limit to the number of nanobots someone can have. No one realized nanobots were dangerous until the Secessionary War. That’s when the government started giving the human soldiers new enhancement bots. Bots in the eyes to make a soldier be able to see in the dark. Bots in the muscles to give superhuman strength. Bots in the mind to make a soldier go for days and days without sleep.

  Too many bots. And one by one, the soldiers started to develop bot-brain—their brains literally turned to mush. It was a quick but gruesome death as the very bots they’d taken to live destroyed them from the inside out.

  Which is exactly what will happen to Mom if she takes more bots.

  “What are you going to do?” Akilah asks.

  I pause, looking at my friend. It’s almost like she’s here with me, but of course she’s not. I glance up at the moon, nothing more than a pale white shadow on the rich, blue sky.

  Akilah’s somewhere there, at the lunar military base. And while I can see her, thanks to the nanobots projecting her image directly into my eye, I can’t feel her. I can’t touch her.

  “There’s nothing I can do,” I say finally, defeated. “Listen, I’ve got to go.”

  Akilah shoots me a sympathetic frown, then her face freezes. “Wait… you said you were going for a walk. You’re not… Ella, where are you?”

  “Nowhere,” I say too quickly.

  “Ella! You can’t obsess! You really shouldn’t—”

  “Gotta go, bye!” I say quickly as I swipe my fingers across my cuff and disconnect the call. Akilah’s right—I shouldn’t obsess over my father’s death. But after that nightmare and Mom’s health, I just… I need to see it again.

  Dad’s grave.

  five

  A long, long time ago, people used to bury the dead. But New Venice is a modern city, and there’s no room for carved stones and wasted earth. Instead, people are cremated, and their remains are used to fertilize the roots of trees and other plants in Central Gardens. On the far side of the park, near the perimeter walk, the trees are larger, some of them planted from the remains of people who died before the city was finished being built. Not everyone who dies has a tree planted—only the people very important to the city.

  Like my father.

  The groveyard is my f
avorite place in the entire city. It’s the only place in New Venice where real trees grow. I know that if we dig down far enough, the base of my city is steel rafters and concrete, not solid earth. But it feels real, here, where the trees are growing up from the gently rolling slopes of the cemetery that’s really a forest.

  My steps slow as I reach the groveyard. The trees waft gently in the breeze, but my attention zeroes in on one in particular—a small holly with a plaque encircling its base.

  Philip D. Shepherd

  2299-2341

  Truth lies in the heart of fortune.

  I stand there, blinking away tears as I stare at the hard, prickly leaves. The world grows cold and still. There’s a sort of bitter finality to seeing his death date right there in front of me.

  And there’s something worse inside of me, a weight tugging my heart out of my chest at the way I notice, for the first time, the way there’s space under Dad’s epigraph. Space for Mom’s name to be inscribed. She’ll be planted here, too, her ashes mingling with Dad’s, growing from an ivy that will wrap around the holly tree. I was the one who set up Dad’s funeral arrangements; I saw the ones she’d already prepared after she was diagnosed.

  I grit my teeth together.

  I can’t lose Mom. Not her, too.

  “Um?”

  I turn around, surprised that anyone else is here. The groveyard isn’t exactly popular, not when you could pretty much do anything else in the city. The guy who spoke is about my age, a little taller than me (which isn’t saying much), and he barely fits in the worn black jacket covering his cut biceps despite the warm day. I wouldn’t say he’s handsome, or even particularly good-looking, but there’s something about him that makes my heart clang like a bell. He has dark, cropped hair, but the most striking thing about him his is pale blue eyes.

  Or maybe I just notice his eyes because he’s gaping at me.

  “Yeah?” I ask, impatient when he doesn’t say anything else.

  The guy reaches for my arm, pulling me closer to him. I wrest free—I don’t like strangers touching me—and he reaches for me again, his wrist encircling my arm and yanking me painfully several steps forward. I act on instinct, twisting my wrist out of his grasp and slamming the end of my palm against his face, connecting with an audible crunch against his nose and splitting his lip open. “Don’t touch me!” I shout at him. My muscles are tense, ready to spring into action. I’m suddenly aware of how very alone we are.

  “Look—” the guy starts, but I jerk around my elbow blocking him from coming closer.

  It’s like the guy’s face snaps into a mask, one made of hard edges. All the color drains from his face—except for the bright pink of the blossoming bruise on his cheek and nose. His heavy eyebrows pull down into a scowl, and he glares at me so much that I take an instinctive step backward. My movement makes some sort of emotion flicker across his face—regret?—but it’s quickly masked again.

  “Look, I’m only here to warn you.” There’s something of desperation and danger in his expression; he looks like a caged animal, despite the fact that we’re in an open area.

  My eyes grow wide, and I look around me, half expecting to see attackers jump out from behind the trees.

  He rubs his hand over his short hair. “It’s not—it’s—”

  “What?” I ask. I wrap my right hand over my left wrist, over my cuff, where there’s a panic button that will bring police to my aid if this guy turns dangerous.

  The guy’s eyes narrow when he sees. He curses. “I just wanted to warn you about Akilah,” he said. “There, I said it, I’m gone now.”

  “What?” I ask again as he turns away. “What about Akilah?”

  He hesitates.

  “How do you even know Akilah?”

  He stops entirely.

  “Don’t be like that,” he says without turning. His shoulders slump, defeated, and I almost don’t catch what he says next. “I know it sounds crazy, but… listen, you can’t trust her.”

  “Of course I can; she’s my best friend!” My only friend.

  He still doesn’t turn around. “Not any more,” he says.

  I start to object, but he turns, throwing up his hands. “I only came here to say that. Out of… respect for you father. That’s all. I’m going.”

  He starts to walk off—and I let him, there’s no point talking to crazy—but he pauses at Dad’s grave. He stands there respectfully, his eyes lingering on the little stone marker that encircles Dad’s tree. His face is hidden as he leans down, his mouth muttering words I cannot hear.

  I glance away, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear. He’s talking to Dad the same way I do. His face is full of sadness, his tone, regret. He looks kind.

  He looks as if he misses Dad as much as I do.

  six

  I walk slowly back to my apartment and the Reverie Mental Spa. I have no idea who that guy was, but there’s something about him that feels like déjà vu. I shake my head, trying to clear it. I’m tempted to call Akilah, but she only has certain blocks of time she can use her cuff; the military is strict about communication on the base. I have no idea how that guy knew Akilah, but he was clearly—

  I stop in my tracks, almost slapping myself on my head. Of course. He was wearing a jacket, even though it’s so hot outside today. He was trying to cover up his cuff. He was my age, he knew Akilah, and he didn’t want anyone to see his cuff.

  He’s a defector.

  Anyone assigned to the military has a yellow band on their cuff. After their year of service, the band turns gold. But if they scamper, then their cuff turns black so everyone can see.

  That guy was probably assigned military for his year of service, just like Akilah. And instead of serving it, he defected. He must have been enlisted long enough to meet Akilah—he knew her well enough to learn who I was, at least—but then dropped out. What a loser. Without completing his year of service, he’s lost all chance of going to university, he can’t vote, he might as well pack it up and go to a Secessionary State. I don’t know why he bothered to try to say something to me about Akilah, but someone willing to defect has more issues than I care to try unravel.

  By the time I get back home, Mom and Ms. White are already there. Mom assures me everything’s fine, but my eyes shoot to Ms. White’s grim look.

  “Oh, don’t be so doom and gloom!” Mom says. “Look what Dr. Simpa gave me!”

  Mom points to Ms. White’s office. I shoot her a confused look, and then someone steps out of the office.

  Not someone.

  Something.

  “No,” I groan.

  “A new nursing android!” Mom beams. Her old one had broken down a few months ago, and I’d done my best to delay her getting a new one. During the Secessionary War, androids played a huge part in suppressing the uprising and helping end the violence. Now, decommissioned androids are cheap, and everyone has at least one. We have cleaning androids and a few working in the spa, but a nursing android will be around Mom all the time, impossible for me to avoid.

  This one moves to stand beside Mom. It’s wearing normal clothes, the only sign that it’s an android from the label pinned to its chest: Robotic Operations Service Interface E-assistant.

  “I’m going to call her Rosie,” Mom says proudly.

  “It doesn’t need a name,” I say, even though it’s useless to argue. Mom always names the androids like they’re human.

  Maybe that’s why I don’t like them. They wear human clothing over human skin—not literally, it’s really just a finely textured rubber and silicone mix—and they have perfectly groomed features. From behind, all androids look human. They sound human, too, if you ignore the fact that they never say anything worthwhile, only spitting out programmed phrases and responses. It’s really only when you see an android’s face that you know something’s… off. Every effort has been made to design android faces to look as human as possible. But the more they try to make the robots look human, the more I’m unnerved by the little things
that remind me they’re not. Eyes that are lenses. Facial features that respond to a program, not self-will. Too-even smiles hiding porcelain teeth.

  The more human they try to make androids look, the more they just remind me of death.

  I’ve only seen death once. But at the funeral, when I peered down at my father, I remember thinking that although the body looked like Dad, it wasn’t, not really. The thing in the casket wore his face, but not his life.

  That’s what androids remind me of. Something with a face, but nothing behind it.

  “I was about to have Rosie give your mother a reverie,” Ms. White says. “I’ve already programmed her to use the machinery.”

  I expect Mom to protest—reveries are expensive to create, and we’re such a new business that she always insists we can’t afford it—but instead Mom sighs. “That would be nice,” she says.

  My heart sinks. The news from the doctor must have been really bad.

  Ms. White stands, but I jump to Mom’s side. “I’ll do it!” I say quickly. I don’t want to be replaced by a robot.

  Ms. White walks with us to the lift, and, after Mom gets on, touches my elbow to hold me back.

  “Was it—?” I ask

  Ms. White nods. “The nanobots are in complete remission,” she says. “They’re failing, one by one. And Dr. Simpa confirmed—your mother can’t have any more. She’s at max—over max, actually.”

  When she sees my face, she pushes me onto the lift. “Don’t worry about it,” she says. “We’ll figure something out.”

  Mom chats as we descend, and I realize why she’s had such a forced cheerfulness lately.