Four billion years. That's how much the universe had invested in crafting women
into the epitome of perfection.
So I could be forgiven, I think, for taking a certain well-founded pride in the fact that every day I did evolution one better.
Hell, who was I for false modesty? I did evolution five or six times better. I loved women with a driving passion, and it showed in my work.
Kris St. Joy, for instance. When she first came to You-Genes, Inc., she wasn't hard on the eyes by any means, but nobody was mistaking her for a model, either. Now, eighteen months later, she could turn every head from Houston to El Paso without breaking a sweat. Her breasts were particularly gorgeous, with areolas that sported complex bioluminescent Celtic knotwork.
I didn't mind admiring my work, even bragging about it. My portfolio was filled with my patients' success stories. Kris, for instance, went with our popular Courtesan package general vaginal tightening coupled with a fifty percent labial reduction and a hundred percent clitoral enlargement. She also opted for a refinement of her buttocks, to create a more "heart shaped" profile (her words), as well as an extra two inches added to her legs, increased joint flexibility, and an overall five percent metabolic reduction in bodyfat brand-new tits and ass excepted, of course.
Yet for all the effort I'd put into her new come-fuck-me bod, she didn't even have the common decency to offer me a test ride. I'd learned in my time that some women are simply too self-absorbed to express proper gratitude.
"You need to keep your biennial treatments if you're going to maintain your body's apparent age," I told Kris. "Genetic rejuvenation compensates for the effects of free radicals, degraded telomeres, all the effects of aging, but it merely resets the clock it doesn't stop it from ticking. You wouldn't want all this custom work we've done on you to start sagging and wrinkling, would you?"
She wrinkled her nose in disgust. It wasn't attractive, and I suppressed a wince. Facial reconfigs have never been my fortι.
"And you say you've done this eight times? You look so young."
Of course I looked young. That was the entire purpose of You-Gene. She was talking, though, and that meant her mind wasn't on the couch or the clamp holding her arm steady. The Y.V. viral ampule shot up the access tube, fresh from thawing, locking into the injector clamp. The clamp scanned the ampule's Absolute I.D., matching it with Kris' biochip implant. Then it double-checked, lasers scanning the contents of the ampule for tell-tale tagagents. Confirmed. Ampule secured, the clamp constricted. The You-Virus emptied into her vein. She never noticed.
"There. All finished."
The clamp released her arm, and she pulled it back, rubbing the imaginary prick she felt on her forearm. She rubbed the wrong spot, of course. I plucked the empty ampule from the clamp with a gloved hand, dropping it into the micro-incinerator slot in the wall.
"Finished? But, Doctor Grant, I don't know if I was ready."
"Of course you were. Kris, you've already been through the hard part, reconfiguring your body from your DNA on up. This maint just preserves your newfound perfection. I'm telling you the truth, you have nothing to worry about. Your breasts, hair, lips all that was taken care of during the reconfig treatments. This is just a simple maint."
"Then that's it? I can go?"
"Sure. A nurse will be by in about ten minutes to do a final vitals reading and discharge you." The door shooshed open for me as I got up to leave. "Just remember, no intimate contact for twenty-four hours."
Her face flashed alarm as she sat up quickly. "None at all? But...but Doctor, tonight's New Year's..."
I struggled to stifle a laugh. It never failed. "If you have to, use a genital screen. Vaginal, anal and oral. Normally infection's not a concern, but the viral delivery agents concentrate in mucus membranes for the first day. There's a moderate risk of extended irritation and inflammation for your partner, so remember: genital screen."
I turned to leave but she grabbed my sleeve. "I just wanted to thank you. You know, for everything," she said, motioning over her body with her free hand. Then she gave me a quick kiss ostensibly on the cheek, but catching enough of the corner of my mouth to hint of something more intimate.
As the door shooshed closed behind me, I couldn't help but smile. Four billion years were working in my favor. All I had to do was exercise patience.
"You do know she's married, Doctor Coleman?" Doctor Sally Weymoth was waiting at the corner, giving me that shit-eating grin of hers.
"Her divorce is final in three weeks," I corrected. "She paid for her reconfig out of the settlement."
"She's seeing someone."
I held out my hands, palms up, in a gesture of helplessness. "Hey, she kissed me. Haven't you ever heard 'The customer is always right'?"
"You're incorrigible!" Sally laughed, shaking her head. She was a full head shorter than me, with round brown eyes magnified by thick frame glasses. She had fiercely curly black hair and a nose two shades too small for her face. I could work some real magic on her, if she'd only give me the chance. "I wonder if it's possible for a woman to walk through our doors and not sleep with you."
"You've never given me a tumble," I pointed out.
"This is true," she agreed. "And likely to remain so. Here, catch." She tossed me a thumbnail-sized crystal file.
"What's this?"
"Last maint of the day. Guy by the name of Andrew McIlvane. He's waiting in maint room C."
"Wait a minute. I'm taking Melody to Allen Park for the big skyline show at midnight. I should be getting ready by now," I said, suddenly aware of the time. "Why do I have to handle him?"
"Because some of us don't come in late," she said, waving. "See you Monday."
"This is the third holiday I've had to close!" I shouted after her, but she made a show of not hearing. I flipped her off, then composed myself. Having to close, tonight of all nights... Melody was a petite brunette, gorgeous eyes, even better ass. All natural and not too much I'd change on her. She was Australian or New Zealander, something like that. We'd been seeing each other for three weeks, but she had definite intimacy issues. She'd given me an enthusiastic blowjob as a Christmas present, though, so my expectations for New Year's were riding pretty high.
I checked my watch again. Six-fifteen. Damn. I tried to call Melody through my comppad, but I couldn't get a signal. What else was new? Fine. One maint was forty-five minutes, max. Twenty if things went swimmingly. I could be home by seven-thirty and ready by eight.
Halfway down the hall I slotted the file into the comppad interface.
"So, Mr. McIlvane," I said, reading from the comppad as I entered the maint room, "it says here that you're thirty-two, and it's been just over two years since your last treatment?"
"Two years, three weeks," McIlvane answered in a soft, accented voice from the couch. Brit? Something European. Thin, almost gaunt, McIlvane had a pinched nose, pinched jaw, pinched brow pinched everything. His stringy black hair had a greasy sheen to it. Kind of faggy. His shirt was clean, at least, neatly buttoned. His plain umber tie matched his dark slacks and shoes. In all honesty, I was dumbfounded. Maint wasn't cheap, and while You-Gene counted a good number of naturals as patients, they were as a rule the "beautiful people." People like McIlvane who could afford maint could also afford to reconfigure. He didn't make sense, and that made me nervous.
"Are you English?" I asked in my best Making Conversation voice.
"A little of everything. Scotch-Irish, Welsh," he answered, smiling. "Mostly Welsh."
"Beautiful country, Wales. I've always wanted to travel there, see Stonehenge and the like."
"That'd be England. Salisbury."
"Really? My mistake. They're all right there together, though, aren't they?" I gave him a good smile, counting the minutes. "Arm please."
McIlvane lifted his thin, vein-lined right arm to me. I didn't like his eyes. They were too intense. Too much hidden going down behind them.
"You do this like an old pro." He was an old pro. Or rather a young pro. This was be his second maint, straight as I'd surmised, no enhancements or reconfig. No major disease treatments, either.
"I've been pricked a time or two."
I'd bet he had, at that. Apparent age was twenty-seven, so that made him about sonofabitch. His birthday was December 25th. "I suppose congratulations are in order. Happy birthday."
"What? Oh, my file. Thanks. I try to schedule " he pronounced it shedule "all my important stuff around my birthday. You know. To remember easier."
Right. I found the biochip under his skin, and laid his arm into the clamp.
"Good song."
"Huh? You say something?" His constant chatter was getting on my nerves. He was a talker. Talkers were distracting. They took longer to process. Damn.
"I said it's a good song," McIlvane said, shrugging. "This instrumental version isn't the original, but then what is?"
Now I couldn't help but listen to the piped-in pabulum. Once those damn synth piccolos got ahold of a song, they all sounded the same. It was an oldie, though. That much I could tell from the style. "No idea."
"'Doubleback Alley,'" McIlvane said like it was supposed to mean something. "The Beatles. Lennon's lost masterpiece."
"Oh." I might've heard of them. They toured in a flying submarine, or something. I'd never been much into the nostal move.
"They made beautiful music. Moving, creative songs. Liverpool boys. Practically my neighbors."
"Practically," I agreed. I set the clamp, and it began scanning his biochip. The empty ampule quickly filled with McIlvane's blood the baseline archival sample.
"They were quite famous in their day, you know. Lennon once noted the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ. That caused quite a row."
"Did it now?"
"It did. Many thought it blasphemous." His eyes bored right into me. The man was way too intense. "What about you?"
The Y.V. viral ampule shot up the access tube, into the clamp. "What about me? I told you, I don't know this band."
"No. Do you think it blasphemous? Do you even believe in God?" The clamp scanned the ampule. Absolute I.D. match.
"I believe in the church of medicine," I answered tersely. Rather cleverly, I thought, for such an odd question. "Singing hymns isn't providing your maint. Bread and wine didn't wipe out cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy. They don't pass out custom body reconfigs at baptism. You make the call."
"You speak of the flesh. The flesh is weak. It can be tainted and corrupted by women. Even the great Beatles were undone by a woman. What of your immortal soul? What will you say when Christ returns?"
The You-Virus emptied into his vein.
Why was it that I got all the nut cases? I thought they'd gotten all that second-coming shit out of their systems back in 2000. "Look, Mr. McIlvane, nobody knows how long someone undergoing regular maints will live. Theoretically, they can go on forever. I'd rather settle for that than gamble on some vague afterlife."
"You think I'm crazy, don't you Doctor?" McIlvane said, barely audible. His eyes glazed, getting a kind of far-away look to them. Oh, yeah. Bugfuck crazy, you betcha. "But I'm not. Christ will come again. 'Therefore stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour.'"
"I'll keep that in mind." I checked the time again, and swore to myself. I did not want to keep Melody waiting. Humor him and get the job done. I made a mental note that Sally must pay dearly for this one. I dropped the ampule into the micro-incinerator and unclamped the Jesus freak. I blurted my litany of medical cautions in a jumble. "A nurse will be by in about twenty minutes to do a final vitals reading and discharge you. Remember, the virus will be active in your system for about a day, so no sexual contact for twenty-four hours." Belatedly, I wondered if he was celibate.
"The Second Coming is no fantasy, Doctor. The plague of women will be purged from creation, and men will finally walk free, as God originally intended," McIlvane said. Definitely queer, too. I quietly flagged his file for future follow-up. "'Blessed are those who listen to this message and heed what is written in it, for the appointed time is near.'"
"Amen, brother," I said, bolting out of the room. The door shooshed shut behind me, and I thumped my head a half-dozen times into the opposite wall.
* * *
"Grant? Oh, Grant, I'm... Oh God." Melody's tear-streaked face filled my entire flatwall as I played back her message. She spoke, but I only heard snatches of what she said. "Tried to reach you...no signal.... My sister, Julie...she's dead."
I stared dumbly at the screen, numb with shock. Melody's sister, dead. Killed on the way home from a New Year's Eve party. I couldn't help but think of the absurdity of it. How she officially died "tomorrow" on the other side of the world. How tomorrow hadn't even arrived in Houston yet, but was mostly over in the South Pacific already. What a surreal, protracted, lingering death.
Melody wiped her eyes, smearing her mascara even worse. Amidst the background noise, I heard a boarding call for Virgin Galactic to Auckland. So she was already at Hobby International. No, I corrected myself. The message was an hour old. Like her sister's death, the message was the past brought into the present. That was strangely fitting. "Oh, Grant. I wish you were here with me now. You're always so supportive. I really need someone. I'll call you when I get to Christchurch." The screen went blank.
Christchurch? Christchurch. The reality of it sunk in. I would not be exploring the pleasures of Melody any time soon. I slumped onto the gatorskin futon and ran my hands through my hair. Why did I always have such shitty luck?
"Shit." I said it without conviction. I tried flinging my overcoat across the room. That didn't help, either. Frustrated, I paced a circle around my living room, small as it was in the hive flat. Mechanically, I called up FloristNexis on the flatwalls and ordered a bouquet for 70 NAFTdollars to be waiting for Melody when she landed in Christchurch, and another to be sent directly to the crematorium. She'd appreciate the gesture.
I paused at the order confirmation screen. That was a lot to invest in the prospect of future gratitude when the woman in question had only given up one blowjob. I slashed each order to 30 NAFTdollars and felt all the better for it. That was a reasonable investment.
I slumped down again, sifting through the pieces of my shattered plans. My hexagonal wetchest sat brooding beside the futon, its glossy black surface as dark as my mood. I'd fully stocked it for tonight, with top-shelf liquors and even some imported synths.
It'd be more than wrong to let all of that good stuff go to waste. It'd be criminal.
I checked the time. Eight-twelve. All the women I knew without dates would already be hitting the parties. The parties I turned down for the promise of Melody. Except for...ooh. I smiled. Evelyn didn't like crowds.
"Phone: Evelyn Kim," I ordered the flatwall. I counted to three before she answered.
"Hello?" Her voice was husky, resonant, with just the faintest sexy trace of an accent. The flatwall stayed dark. She was blocking vid.
"Turn on your vid, Evelyn."
"Grant? Well, stranger, it's been a while since I heard from you." The flatwall flickered to life. Evelyn was curled up on an overstuffed recliner wearing a forest green robe hanging halfway open to expose her cleavage. A third-year law student originally from Hong Kong, she was an exotic knockout with a brain to match her looks. Her cheekbones screamed out for enhancement, and I'd build up her shoulders, too, if given the chance. But overall she was a quality package. Her lips were perfectly oversized and her thick, straight black hair hung halfway to her ass. Yeah, Evelyn was definitely a good idea.
I shrugged in a casual, flirty way. "No one's stopped you from calling me."
"Point taken."
"So, what're you up to tonight? Hitting the books?"
"In a manner of speaking. I'm spending the evening with Vonnegut and Shiraz. Why?"
"Though maybe you'd be interested in a study break."
"Oh yeah? Don't tell me you don't have a date tonight."
"Got stood up. So what do you say?"
"Could be entertaining." She licked her lips. "Okay, you're on. Gimme an hour."
* * *
Evelyn laughed as I bucked under her, grinning that nasty little grin of hers. After one last spasm, I collapsed, completely spent, gasping. She ran a finger over my lips, tickling my moustache.
"Don't go to sleep, old man. I'm not finished with you yet." Light from the dimmed flatwalls flicked shadows across her body. She looked unreal. The spirit of sexuality incarnate.
"Mercy," I pleaded in between gasps. "Five minutes. Gimme five minutes." I wiped stinging sweat from my eyes. I felt it drip down my neck and shoulders, down onto the absorbing foamfloor.
Evelyn lifted herself off me, moving up to straddle my waist. Warmth seeped from between her legs to pool on my stomach. She was the only woman I knew who could make me feel my age my true age.
"Aw, shit. Vodka's all gone," she said, shaking the empty bottle upside down. "I wanted to top off my passion fruit." She pouted. With her lips, it was a profound pout. "I like vodka."
"You like anything with a kick."
"This is true," she said, cocking her head. "What's left, what's left?" She leaned over me to open the wetchest. Her bronze breasts hung in my face, with spectacular dark areolas as wide as my palm. I caught one in my mouth and sucked at it. The nipple hardened instantly, as thick as my thumb.
"Mmm, that feels good," Evelyn said, sitting back up. She held a bottle of champaign in one hand, the other tracing patterns in the light hair on my chest. "D'you think it's close enough to midnight to pop this bottle?"
I started to look at my watch, then thought, screw it. "If you think it's close enough, then it's close enough."
"Oh yeah? Grant, I like the way you think." She grasped the bottle neck in both hands, holding it tight against her chest as she forced the cork out. It burst free with a sudden pop. Laughing, Evelyn held it up, white froth splashing down over her face and body, onto me. "Whoo! That's the way I like it." She tilted the bottle up and took a deep swallow.
"Jesus, Evelyn. Do you have to make such a mess?"
"You ain't seen nothing yet, Grant baby," she said, winking.
She stood with the bottle, wobbling a little. Then she focused on the flatwall.
They had Mayor Sheila Whitfield on at the Allen Park grandstand. The flatwalls were muted, so I couldn't tell what she was saying. The clock superimposed on the vid ticked away the seconds. Less than three minutes to go.
"Almost time, but it's too quiet in here. This is s'posed to be a party! Music: Mangrove Hammer." The fast pulse of NewBreed Calypso did an airburst in the room. My head rang, every internal organ throbbing in time with the music. Evelyn sweet, horny, drunk Evelyn started dancing, whirling around, taking a swallow from the bottle every few beats or so. I just laid there, marveling at her. How this studious, asocial, semi-recluse managed to contain such a hedonistic wild side
"C'mon, Grant. This is great! The big skyline show's about to begin," Evelyn said, beckoning. She whirled around, reaching out to the other flatwalls. "Flatwalls two, three, four: secondary feeds. Give me a panorama." The flatwalls flickered to life, the Houston skyline surrounding us. "Wall five," she said, turning to the last, blank wall, "window open."
The wall faded transparent, the dark-light maelstrom of the city opening below us. My flat was on the fiftieth floor in a second-generation hive, dead-center of the skyline. I could see the searchlights over in Allen Park. In less than a minute, we'd be the featured attractions in the show.
"Evelyn, do you have any idea what you're doing?"
"Yeah, I'm going to suck your cock on an international AstralNet feed. But it'll be spiv. Once the lasers and 3-Deep projectors kick in " she waved her empty hand at the flatwalls, dancing up against the window now " it'll be profoundly surreal. Dali-surreal."
"You do realize that any kid with graphics enhancement on his comppad can single you out in all your glory."
"That's the whole idea, Grant. Let them. When I'm sober, I'm too damn serious. I'm too chickenshit to have any fun," she said, dancing my direction. "I'm having fun now. I'm glad your girlfriend stood you up."
"No complaints here." I wrapped my arms around her, and she nuzzled my neck. Her hair smelled of lychee. "Hey, Evelyn," I whispered, "five seconds."
She glanced back over her shoulder at the clock. "Three, two, one! Happy 2048!" she shouted, throwing her arms up in the air. Her breasts jiggled excitedly.
Light exploded through the window and across the flatwalls. Lasers darted up and down the skyline, swirling, luminous patterns, arabesque designs. All of the hives and old-generation skyscrapers suddenly transformed into living creatures, lumbering and loping in a chaotic dance of giants. The 3-Deep projectors came up, and Evelyn and I found ourselves in the midst of the spectacle. The colors and waves moved in and out of our bodies, like waves on the seashore. Some of the 3-Deep projecting against the hive spilled in through the window, mingling with the panorama on the flatwalls.
Unfucking believable. I could still see Evelyn clinging to me, but our bodies had blended together. Seized by a sudden impulse, I took her hand and began to waltz. I had the wildly real sensation of moving through solid matter. Around the flatwall panorama we waltzed, throngs cheering below us, the mayor screaming like a fool, all the while Evelyn laughed with joy. Evelyn and I spun apart. With the show, the drink and music, I lost all sense of place. I danced in a paradise that smelled of lychee.
Evelyn gestured to me, arms outstretched. I went to her. She wrapped her arms around me, pressing me against her cool skin. She kissed me deeply. Her tongue tasted like champagne, vodka, and passion fruit. The bottle rested hard against my shoulder. Her free hand roamed down my back, onto my ass. Surprisingly rough, her hands. Not soft and delicate like you'd expect from a lawyer.
I glanced back at the flatwall, the one focused on the grandstand. People danced and sang, kissing and waving fizzle-flares in the air.
In the middle of the crowd stood Andrew McIlvane, smiling calmly. I blinked against the swirling 3-Deep images. He was still there. I wouldn't have thought the skyshow would be his thing.
Evelyn knelt then, stroking my cock. She kissed it as it swelled to life, then took me into her mouth. I quickly forgot all about Andrew McIlvane.
* * *
"Okay, okay. Don't say it Sally. I'm late, and I know it, okay?" I said, pulling off my coat as I blew into the doctor's lounge. And this time, I was seriously late. It was almost 10 in the a.m., and my first reconfig patient had been booked for 8:15. Not that it was my fault, though, since it was Evelyn who wouldn't untie me. She hadn't left my flat since New Year's, and had gotten progressively wilder and weirder. And she wasn't even drunk anymore.
Sally, though, she didn't say anything. That was a first for the fastest mouth in Texas. She just sat there, alongside Rodrigue, puffing on a joint from a crumpled pack of Marlboro Greens, eyes fused to the flatwall.
"Hey, Sally! What're you doing? No smoking in here," I shouted, slapping my palm against the flatwall. It reverberated nicely.
"Knock it off, Grant. Rodrigue and I split your appointments. We flagged it with Carmichael both of us got an extra half-day of vacation coming, thanks to you," she said, dropping the joint to the floor and grinding it under her foot. "You look like shit."
"What crawled up your ass and died?"
"Funny, Grant. Real funny. Always know just the thing to say," Sally said, then covered her mouth with a hand.
Sonofabitch. She was crying.
"What's going on here, Sally?"
"You really don't know?" she asked in disbelief. Frowning, she sniffed at me. Then sighed. "You smell like pussy. Jesus, Grant. You don't even have the decency to shower before you come in?"
I looked to Rodrigue, baffled.
"The Mayor collapsed last night at the Rockets game. Convulsions or something. She's at the Medplex, but everyone's real tight-lipped about it."
"Mayor Whitfield? Damn, Sally, I'm sorry. You knew her, didn't you. I mean know her."
"She and Fred were supposed to drop by after the basketball game," Sally said. She was barely holding it together. "Our kids carpool together."
"Sally, Sally. Come on. What do you have left on your schedule today?"
"Shit, Grant. I don't know. Let me think." She wiped her eyes, the lines in her face a little deeper than I remember. "Uh, seven maints, two cancers, a boob job and an ambisexual reconfig second treatment."
I fought down a shudder. The ambiguous gender reconfig was one thing, but the hairless move that went with it gave me the creeps. "All the labwork ready for the specialties? Okay, then. How about you take the afternoon off, go visit your friend. My schedule's not that heavy the rest of the day, so I can probably cover your load. If I get behind, well, an extra patient or two wouldn't hurt Rodrigue any."
Rodrigue grunted non-committally.
She looked at me, shaking her head. "Grant, you are unbelievable. If I live to be five hundred, I'll never figure you out."
"All part of the Coleman charm. It's genetic."
"Fat chance of that I've seen your genome." She straightened her uniform, then gave me a weak smile. "I'll finish out my schedule through lunch, then take off. That work for you?"
"Sure thing." It worked for me, too. By taking her patient load, I'd cancel out the flag on my chart before Carmichael called me on the carpet. And if I could manage to dump the ambi onto Rodrigue, I might even be able to cut out early and get a sneak peak at what Evelyn had in store.
* * *
I woke sprawled on the foamfloor, head throbbing like Krakatoa in an echo chamber. I ached. Ye gods, how I ached. Breathing heavily, I started to sit up, then gave up as the room wobbled. Someone moaned next to me. Evelyn.
I managed to turn my head enough to see her, sprawled as I was, her naked body bone dry. Mine, too, I realized. How long had we been out? An hour? "Shit," I said, realizing the headbands were still on.
With effort, I reached up and fumbled for the off switch. The nanoprobes retreated from my scalp, and instantly the throbbing subsided. I wiped away tiny beads of blood from my forehead. I tried sitting up, and Krakatoa reminded me it was still there. No echo chamber, though. Even so, the experiment was damn well worth it. Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, was it worth it. Total sensory feedback. Orgasmic feedback, between her and me. To feel as Evelyn on the receiving end. Affirmation of everything I've ever believed known about women. Four billion years. Four fucking billion years. I called it. Joy welled up in me so much I wanted to cry.
I'd do anything to shake the hand of the genius that came up with this contraption.
Evelyn sat up, swooning slightly. Then she gave me a grin. "Told you it was illegal. Pretty damn spiv, huh?"
I pulled her to me and kissed her deeply. Fucking her for the past four days had become a religious experience. Every time I entered her, I was communing with a higher power.
"I love you more than anything," I said, thinking of nothing but those holy headbands. I had to get back inside her. I licked a finger, and ran it across her breast. The nipple hardened, right on cue. I loved that about her.
"Love?" She curled her lip around the word. "Didn't anyone ever tell you it's dangerous for little boys to use four-letter words they don't understand?"
"Evelyn, I know all there is to know about love, and then some."
She laughed as if I'd said something terribly amusing. "You keep telling yourself that, stud." She patted my chest affectionately. She was an odd girl, that Evelyn. "I need something to drink. You want anything?"
"An apple'd be good," I said, examining the headband. The band was creamy yellow with pewter-gray edges, smooth on the inside as well as out. I couldn't tell where the nanoprobes emerged, or where the infrared emitters or receivers were. "Where did you find these? I've got to get me a set."
"Just some guy I used to date. He's working on his Ph.D. in cybernetics. Brainstorm stuff. And no, you can't get any. This is lab equipment, only. I've got to get it back to him tomorrow, or we're in deep shit."
"Such a shame." Reluctantly, I set the headband aside and took a bite of the apple she tossed me. I climbed onto the futon while Evelyn opted for a glass of passion fruit juice. With a couple of fingers of vodka for good measure.
"CNN-Houston," I ordered the flatwall. "Mayor: Illness."
"So, what do you think she's got? Evelyn asked, snuggling in next to me as the familiar round, fatherly face of anchor Eric Stone coalesced before us. "Epilepsy, do you think? I mean, I've heard stories"
"Ssh! I want to hear this." Something bad was going on at Medplex. That's where Stone was, I could tell now. And the entire medical complex was cordoned off.
"...no idea the nature of the contagion at this time, or how it is spread, Vicki," Stone said. "Again, we're getting conflicting reports of a chemical agent or biological attack. We do know that as many as a dozen people may be affected here, with similar cases confirmed in New York, Atlanta and Los Angeles. The Medplex is under a state of quarantine, and... What? Vicki, I think they're moving us back, now"
Suits. Biohazard suits moved in the background, going into the hospital. Holy shit.
"...no confirmation on the earlier report that Mayor Shiela Whitfield has died," Stone said. He didn't look like he wanted to be there anymore. "This is footage we accessed from Medplex's online monitors of Mayor Whitfield's room before the link was severed from inside the hospital, in violation of the Public Health Information Act..."
I dropped the apple. It hit the foamfloor with a wet thunk. It wasn't the Mayor on the vid. It was her, but it didn't look like her. At all. Even with all the breathing tubes and monitors on and in her, I could tell. She'd changed since I'd last seen her on the New Year's broadcast. Jesus H. Christ, she'd changed.
Her face was thin, gaunt. Not even starvation could cause that in such a short time. Her broad nose seemed narrower inside her oxygen mask, her brow tighter, her jaw pinched...
"Is that supposed to be the Mayor?" Evelyn asked, crinkling her eyes in disgust. "Shit, what's happened to her?"
I ignored Evelyn. I'd seen that face before. Eric Stone came back on. He looked scared. The bastard wasn't half as scared as I was. Fuck. Not even a hundredth.
I snatched my pants off the futon and pulled them on.
"Grant? Where are you going? I thought we were making a night of it."
"We are. Maybe. I don't know. Things've changed." I sealed on my shirt.
"Well, are you going to be back? I cancelled a study session for this, and I had to call in a lot of favors to get these." She waved a headband at me, and her breasts jiggled. I so desperately wanted to fuck her and forget what I'd seen in Whitfield's face. "They're going back tomorrow morning, Grant. I don't think I'll be able to get them again."
I turned to her, grabbing up my boots. "Stay here. I don't want you going out. I think...I think I know what's happening with the Mayor. It's impossible, but I don't know what the fuck else it could be. If I'm right well, just hope I'm wrong."
She frowned as if to say something, then didn't. She looked at the headband in her hand, then at the flatwall, then at me. "I was just looking forward to spending tonight with you. That's all. Are you going to be gone long?"
"I don't know. Probably, yeah."
"Wake me when you get back?"
"We'll see. Maybe." I kissed her and was out the door.
* * *
I hated the lab at night. Actually, I hated it period, but at night it was even worse. No windows, just automatic airlocks and decontamination chambers. Security guards in penny suits that didn't know you and gave you suspicious stare-downs that no amount of biometric clearance could ease. The paneled lighting glared down from too-white ceilings, reflected from too-blue floors. It was always crowded during the day, but so late at night it was deserted, which was just as bad. Culture beds, nanosurgical stations, chemical and enzyme immersion baths, rows and rows of 3-Deep computer workstations. A vaguely iodine odor saturated everything.
We had well over twelve thousand individual human genetic samples stored in the Deep Freeze, chilled by liquid nitrogen to stave off degradation. The Deep Freeze was thirty meters underground, designed to dampen even residual background radiation. As an added precaution, virtual copies of each genome were stored off-site in a linked sequence of quantum hubs. Patients paid a lot for You-Gene's services, but they damn sure got value for their money.
I settled in to the closest workstation, the smart biometrics reading my fingerprints and retina as I brought the station online. I called up McIlvane's file, deleting the privacy warning the instant it appeared. McIlvane's record unfolded before me. Genome stock designation 7650, baseline sample archived four years ago. That'd make McIlvane's maint virus 7650.1, since he'd opted for no reconfigs. He'd gone through maint once since the baseline twice, I corrected myself. The comparative samples from the two maints were cryogenically stored alongside the original baseline as an added precaution, although the You-Virus was only brewed from the original sample.
His first maint came off without any anomalies. So what went wrong this time? I ordered up sims of the baseline sample, along with the two comparatives.
McIlvane's baseline unfolded before me, exactly like every other cellular specimen I'd ever worked with. I zoomed down to the chromosomes, running a full transcript map diagnostic. Nothing.
Annoyed, I tabbed up the first comparative sample from two years back. Again, nothing unusual. I launched the diagnostic, but this time the system flagged something. Some things. Whatever they were, they were small. Maybe 15 nanometers. Small even for a virus. I zoomed in. What I saw stopped me short.
It was a viral protein sheath, sure enough, but it was synthetic. It was a simple little Lewis & Clark variant tagalong, the kind first-year grad students use to track viral disease vectors. With tailored protein receptors on their sheath, they'd lock onto specified viruses and ride them into the infected cell...
Mouth dry, I ran the sequencer on the contents of the tagalong. With a capacity that small, the tagalong couldn't hold much code, and the sequencing took only a couple of minutes.
The tagalong contained a modified reproduction sequence from an Influenza A virus.
Instantly I injected a Y.V. proxy into the sim and held my breath. Like the tagalong, the Y.V. was a synthetic virus, designed to appear benign to the auto-immune system. But it was much, much bigger. More than 400 nanometers across, it carried a compressed RNA transcript programmed to rebuild the recipient's DNA to our specifications. The Y.V. was sterile, though. It couldn't reproduce. If the tagalong added the Influenza A sequence to the Y.V. infection, though...
Nothing happened. I slowly exhaled. The tagalong wasn't mating with the Y.V.
But this wasn't McIlvane's most recent comparative.
I overlaid the second comparative, the one from New Year's Eve. This time, I knew what I was looking for. I found them immediately. More tagalongs. I didn't recognize the type, though, and that worried me. I integrated the Y.V. into the sim.
The tagalongs flocked to the Y.V. like lawyers to a train wreck.
I didn't watch. I already knew everything that came next. I'd seen the end result on the news feeds. I checked my watch. Three in the a.m. Damn. I wondered, vaguely, why I wasn't more angry. Or scared. All I felt was numb.
I grabbed my coat, leaving the workstation running. Maybe someone would find it and figure things out. Maybe not. I knew where I had to go. Shit, there was only one place left for me to go. I couldn't do any good here. This thing had progressed way beyond stopping.
* * *
The rain came down like bitter needles of ice. An evil, stinging kind of rain. Lightning flashed, the sharp glare silhouetting lazerwire fences guarding the brooding domes of the fusion reactors lining the road.
Pasadena. Why did McIlvane have to live in the deepest, dankest nuke-slum of Pasadena? A blast of wind hit, shaking my Dodge Darter before the stabilizers compensated. The nav beacon on the dash bleeped softly at me. I was there at McIlvane's house.
If you could call it that. It was a knobby wooden two-story, looking for all the world like it was ready to collapse into the encroaching bay. The next category six to hit the Gulf would reduce it to flotsam. Maybe it'd been white once. It was the color of dirt and rot now.
I set down the Darter onto the curb, wrapped my coat tightly about myself, and stepped into the storm. The door clamped shut behind me, the jets retracting into the tapering, steel-blue hull. Salty spray slapped at me, pushing me forward. I smelled sulfur and crude in the spray. Shit was leaking from the old refineries under Sunken Bay. The whole thing usually caught fire around August, burning until October.
I stumbled up the steps, half afraid they'd collapse under me. I stopped at the door, unsure what to do. Unsure what McIlvane's reaction would be to someone standing at his door at 5 in the a.m. It didn't matter. I had to see the monster again. Had to find out how. Find out why.
There was no security clamp on the door. The old access lock was busted, too. Eaten away by the salt, from the looks of the corrosion. I tried the latch, and the door creaked open loudly, audible even over the thunder and rain.
The house stank of shit and vomit. Piss, too. It was dark, except for what little light followed me in through the door, along with the wind and rain. I left the door open. The crude and sulphur smelled better.
I checked the first room, unsure of what I'd find. There were people-shapes on the floor. I reached out a hand and found the eyebeam, lighting up the room.
I shouted, stumbling back. They were lying there, three of them, naked and dead. No, one bastard was still alive. They were lying on pallets, clothes and filthy sheets knotted up between them. Two were had been women. They were dead. Contorted, like they died in agony, breasts sagging like deflated balloons. Between their legs
I puked. Watery bile splatter against the wall, onto the floor. I gagged. Dry heaved.
Shit, shit and shit. They looked like him. The women's faces looked like Andrew McIlvane drawn, pinched. Their bodies tried to follow suit. Didn't make it.
The other was a black man. It didn't look like he'd stay that way much longer. Black, I meant. Pale splotches mottled his skin, like an out-of-control case of Vitiligo. He looked like McIlvane, too.
I found a dozen more people scattered throughout the downstairs rooms. All on pallets, set up like they'd expected this. Five were dead, three women and two men. The other seven were still alive, becoming McIlvane. Two were women. Those two were a lot farther along than the others. Their contorted agony didn't disturb me so much anymore, or maybe I'd simply shut down. I didn't feel anything, not even numb.
McIlvane wasn't among them.
I should've left then and called the police. I should've told them what I'd seen and what I knew. Instead, I climbed the stairs. At the far end of the hall, soft light filtered through an open door. I walked to it, my shirt soaked with sweat beneath my coat, my breathing ragged. Damn, but I could've used a drink.
I smelled more shit and vomit as I passed the other doors in the hall. I didn't look in. I already knew what I'd see.
The room at the end of the hall was tiny, cramped. Ancient wallpaper peeled away from the cracked sheetrock. Lightning flashed beyond the salt-crusted window opposite the doorway. A meter-long crucifix, made of wood or bone or resin and draped in rosaries, hung on the wall to my left. A monstrous iron-frame bed filled half the room, and there he sat, Andrew McIlvane.
He was shirtless and barefoot, wearing only a ratty pair of jeans. He sat there, bathed in the glow of the flatwall, staring at it with a beatific look. Two naked neo-McIlvanes lay beside him on the bed. One might've been a woman, once. The other whimpered, and he stroked it absently.
"Why?" My voice came out as a strangled croak.
McIlvane turned with a start, then smiled broadly when he saw me. "Oh, it's you. I hadn't expected to see you. Actually, I hadn't expected to see anyone, not for a few days at any rate. You've been well, I trust, Doctor?"
I struggled for something to say. He seemed happy to see me.
"I had a feeling about you." He winked at me, then gestured to the flatwall. I glanced at it, and realized it was UniFOX International. A biohazard suit was reporting from Tokyo. "I hadn't expected it to be so lonely. Joyce and Stephen here said they would stay up with me. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Ha. That's funny. Sad, too. Just like the Mount of Olives."
I suddenly felt light-headed. I began to shake. I didn't know if it was the stink of the place, or my anger, or fear. I wanted to snap his scrawny neck, but my hands...I looked at my hands, impotent. My hands created beauty. They sculpted women and gave them pleasure. I didn't know how to use them for anything else. Instead, barely above a whisper, I asked, "Who did it for you? The tagalong?"
"All things are possible through the power of God."
"Who brewed the fucking tagalong?"
McIlvane frowned, disappointment clouding those spooky eyes of his. "I know you have more faith than that." He sighed, shaking his head. "His name's Peter. He is was a grad student at the University of Houston. He swore his faith was strong enough. Swore he was ready... He was one of the first ones lost. I had to send Tommy to Moscow, instead."
"You've killed off your own cult, is what you've done."
"Open your eyes, Doctor. Open your heart. This isn't a cult. This is the Truth. My return was foretold. The day is come. The hour is now."
"Foretold by who? What the fuck are you talking about?"
"You already know, you just won't admit it to yourself. The Second Coming. I am here, before you, God made Man. Judgment Day has arrived." McIlvane stroked the woman's shoulder as he talked. "The righteous will know God, become as one with the Lord. Be remade in My own image. The blight of the feminine will be erased from mankind, the sin of Eve purged. Those pure of soul will be raised up and granted manhood, those beyond redemption will plague us no more. The millennium is upon us."
My knees buckled under me, and I slumped to the floor, back to the wall, tears blurring my vision. "Oh, God, no"
"None were chosen among the twelve," McIlvane explained gently. "None were chosen then, and there can be no place for them now in the final plan."
He slid off the bed and offered me his hand. I jerked back, knocking my head against the bottom of the crucifix. I reached up at the stabbing pain, my hand finding blood.
"We're very much alike, you and I," he said. "We both change women, Doctor. The only difference is that when you remake women, you reduce them to crass objects of lust. When I remake them, I remake them in the holy image of God."
McIlvane offered me a smile. A pitying, condescending smile. "I'll help you through it, Doctor. I know you're a strong one you just lack guidance. We'll greet the world to come together, and you will love"
I pulled the crucifix down on top of him. He threw up a forearm, crying out when it hit him. Rosary beads flew everywhere, clattering on the floor, against the wall. McIlvane fell, cradling his hurt arm. I staggered up, hefting the crucifix in both hands. The damn thing was heavier than it looked. I swung it again, stumbling. He flailed with his good arm, scrambling back onto the bed, trying to get away from me. He was shouting wildly, calling for his disciples. But they couldn't come they were too busy turning into him.
I hit him a third time, burying the crossbeam in his gut. He screamed, thrashing on the bed. I kept hitting him. Somewhere along the line, he stopped being anyone's Messiah. Then he stopped being alive.
I dropped the crucifix and collapsed against the bed frame, shaking uncontrollably. I looked at my crimson hands. His blood stained my coat and shirt and pants. There was a trail of bloody footprints beneath me. Rosary beads skittered away, kicked by my boots.
The enormity of what I'd done hit me then. Jesus H. Christ. I'd gotten the little cocksucker smeared all over me.
I was infected.
I stumbled out of the house, into the rain. It washed the blood from me, although I knew it made no difference. I was infected. I was becoming McIlvane. The psychosomatic symptoms kicked in. I could feel 7650.1 burrowing into my cells, supplanting my own DNA. Bullshit, I knew. My skin crawled all the same.
There was a crack in the clouds to the east, and a pink glow slipped through. Morning. Morning? With a start I realized I was standing in the You-Gene parking lot. I didn't remember driving there. I didn't remember anything after I'd stepped out into the rain. I knew why I was back, though.
I blew through the lobby so fast the penny-suit didn't know what had gotten into me. Same thing that'd soon be getting into him, the poor bastard.
Sally was probably dead by now. Maybe not, it could still be too soon. Maybe she'd live and turn into McIlvane. Second Coming, my ass.
I laid back in the bodymold couch, bringing the system up to speed with my comppad. When all the checks flashed green, I secured my arm in the clamp. It scanned my biochip. The ampule locked into place. Y.V. 4332.1.
Less than one percent of the world's population had genebank accounts. Maybe another one percent of the population had natural resistance to the synthetic Y.V., give or take. There was no telling how many millions or billions Y.V. 7650.1 would kill before it ran its course.
The clamp scanned for the tagagents. Match. The You-Virus no, the Me-Virus emptied into my vein.
"Fuck you, McIlvane," I shouted at the empty room. "I'm me for another day. How do you like that? Another maint, and I'll be me tomorrow, too. I'll maint every fucking day for the rest of my fucking life if I have to, but I'm never going to change! "
Then a thought struck me. I called up a comprehensive list of You-Gene's patients. I deleted the men, flagging the single women along with the married women whose husbands didn't maint. I marked Kris to the top of the queue. I was going to have to establish an entirely new network of relationships. Evelyn didn't maint. Melody, either, for that matter.
I felt a wave of sorrow at that. I grieved for them. I had loved them, both.
Then it passed.
Four billion years of evolution doesn't go down without a fight, after all. Women would survive, their perfection endure.
And I would love every single one of them.