EXO
Hard-driven rain lashed the windshield. No wind should make a noise like this one did?a howling keen that echoed down the artificial canyons made between the skyscrapers. Surely it must deafen the shuffling lines of people, shrouded in transparent organic bubble wraps, slowly moving in an endless river along the sidewalks, sometimes spilling over into the streets.
Eddies and whorls in the stream of displaced humanity caused the patrol car to slink through and around knots of congestion, guiding itself carefully along a weaving course. Now and then, pulses of directed sound from the siren made one or another blurrily glimpsed face flinch, one or another mummy-wrapped body stumble out of the way.
To Officer Byron, sitting and watching the refugees swirl past, they looked like shrink-wrapped packages on some Dante-esque assembly line. Faces seen through rain-streaked transparent membranes looked hollow, scoured of hope and vitality. Las Vegas was never meant to be a refugee center, but the super-storms didn't know that; nor care.
The ping of the car's collision alarm was simultaneous with the soft jolt as something bounced off the front bumper. No, Byron thought; not something, someone. Someone in the ubiquitous uniform of a refugee, grey organoplast.
The specialized stem cells that inflated pockets of insulating air would also have protected the person inside the suit from any damage, as would the necessarily slow speed of the patrol car. Differently specialized cells would provide traction for feet on slippery pavement, and more such cells allowed the officers inside the car to vaguely see a contorted face through the permeable membrane over it.
The third cop on the team, Officer Patricks impatiently jabbed the override controls and keyed on the external pickups. Before the compression kicked in, a din of pelting rain and shrieking wind made all three cops flinch visibly. "Come on, reffie, move it," Patricks said wearily. "Center's just on the corner there, about 100 feet on your right, at the end of the block." He pulsed the siren once, briefly; enough to jar the refugee blocking their wayoff the hood; not enough to cause pain.
Though the bundle slumped against the hood flinched and shuddered a bit, it did not move. The high, hysterical voice of a young woman?a girl, really?wavered through the car?s speakers. Compression made it sound like it was speaking from the bottom of an ocean. "And God appeared unto the Prophet Kaitlynn, saying, "'You shall know me, for my eyes shall appear full of wrath within the tattered sky! From my judging eyes shall I spin scourges from the clouds! My nets shall sweep all peoples from the beautiful Earth which I have made!'" She gulped a gasping breath through the membrane of her refugee suit. She continued in a high, hysterical voice, "'All my beautiful world shall be cleansed, and the only hope is for those who believe in me, the one true and wrathful God of your forefathers!'"
Patricks cursed and touched the siren icon again, longer this time. The woman outside wailed, but still didn't get off the hood of the car. People were starting to turn and peer through the curtains of wind-blown rain to take in the commotion. The girl was shrieking now, almost desperate to deliver her message. "And He said unto Kaitlynn, "'All those who believe in me must appear naked before my eyes, though the scourge of my anger shall tear their flesh! And all those who have faith in me shall cast themselves into the nets of my vengeance, though the nets should devour their bones. Their souls shall rise free of this Earth and into my glory!'"
The trembling girl made a violent motion toward her throat, a ripping motion down her chest. The specialized stem cells that fastened her suit closed obediently parted, and the suit deflated and puddle around her feet.
She was naked beneath it. She must once have been pretty and curvy. Now, her gaunt body held no remnant of femininity as it almost instantly shriveled before the gale. Goosebumps and red wheals began to redden her punished flesh as she stood defiantly. Wracked with shivers and sobs of ecstasy, she seemed to parody a shimmying, sensual dance, even as she was blown before the wind and pummeled by the rain. Her hip bones juttedg starkly, ribs and shoulderblades ruined the lines of her body instead of enhancing them.
All three cops wince, but it was Patricks, the volatile one of the team, who cursed and touched the siren icon again. Under the pulse of directed sound, the girl collapsed as ungracefully as she had stood, her vertebrae easily countable as she writhed weakly, tried to stand.
"get her in here, Warren,? Patricks snapped in an exasperated voice to the rookie of the team. Manning the special equipment panel, officer Warren unshipped the external arms and gently grasped the struggling girl and lifted her over the roof of the car. With a hiss of equalizing pressure, the rear canopy slid aside and the girl was deposited, naked and weeping, onto the stretcher in back of the patrol vehicle. All three policemen turned to watch dispassionately as the small, fragile figure was drapped with a thermal blanket, and the auto-aid went to work on her.
Byron, silent and introspective as always, couldn't take her eyes off the girl coming apart in the back of the squad car. "Amanda's that age," he said softly. "By God. That could be ..."
The tattered girl was still mumbling incoherently, interspersed with pleading. Faintly, Byron caught her forlorn whisper, "let me out! Let me out to face my God. Oh please, please let me out into the storm of his eye..." Then the sedatives took over, and she went limp. Byron felt his own panic click up a notch. His daughter's face swam again through his mind.
Patricks scoffed, and Byron thought he might have spat, were he just a hair more uncouth. "These Third Testament wailers really piss me off," he jabbed at the soaked and bedraggled waif shivering under the blanket, his finger thunking loudly against the transparent partitian separating them. Though she had stilled with the injection, snot and tears still streaked her face with the makeup of panic. "Some bitch says the super-storms are God. She says God created the Earth to be his wife or lover or something, and we?re an ugly infection that must be scrubbed clean. Suddenly, all the women with low self esteem just start dancing!" He shook his fist in front of the transparency, though the girl's eyes had slipped closed. "Hey"--" He glanced behind him at the readout that was appearing on the car's main screen. "Hey Kirsten Dannenberg from Lawrence, Kansas! We aren"t ugly and we don't need to be scoured off the planet in order for Her to be beautiful! We did this to ourselves! We did it to Mother Earth with CFC's and greenhouse gasses, by destroying the ozone and with soil erosion..."
Byron felt comforted by the older man's ranting, for it masked his own growing misgivings. He touched Patricks on the shoulder gently. "How long has it been since you heard from Kathy?"
A spasm crossed his face and he suddenly slumped, all the anger gone. "Eighteen months since she sent that--what do they call it--disownment card." Again, his face seemed a hair's width from spitting on the floor of the patrol car.
Byron nodded, and then Warren, the new guy, unexpectedly spoke up. "Ask me, we are the only ones who can make Her beautiful, not some angry daddy god up in the sky sending super-storms in revenge." ? Officer Kevin Byron suddenly felt as tired and devoid of hope as the girl (she had a name, Byron reminded himself; Kirsten, a pretty name, for a girl who should still be dating awkward boys and riding horses) had been driven by desperate panic. Kevin lifted a trembling hand to his throat and fingered the pendant that hung there. Technically an illegal decoration, not strictly regulation, the proponents of religious freedom spoke louder than the police? insistence on sticking to the uniform. The pendant was a small silver pentacle; a stylize sun with its rays touching a circle which had miniature planets arrayed about its edge. It lay gleaming, nestled in his only slightly shaking hand.
Like a bulldog shaking off a stinging fly, Patricks shook himself all over. "Talk to me, Warren. What's our little basket case's condition?"
Warren studied the information panel. "She's on Yud, according to the car. She crashed pretty hard when the sedative hit. I guess we'll take her downtown and book her? Indecent exposure, obstructing police activity, wreckless endangerment?"
Patricks waved him silent. "Rookie, you've been watching too many crime shows. We'll take her to the center right up there and let them deal with her. They've got better facilities and, much as I detest the place, she's better off there than in a jail."
Byron tore his gaze from the sleeping Kirsten's face. He was still haunted by the carefree girl he saw lurking there, behind the drug-pumped religious frenzy and beneath the storm-inflicted redness and bruises. "What've you got against the Centers"? He asked. "Everybody's got a brain, and everybody's got space they never use--a lot of it. The centers just take some of that space in trade for food or cache."
The fire came back into Patricks? eyes as he turned to glare at Byron, who regretted instantly having said so much. He chalked it up to the slowly mounting sense of urgency that made the ghosts of his family swim behind his eyes.
"Look," Patricks grated. "Partitioning off unused brain space just so the big multinationals can crunch more numbers is unhealthy! Sure it's FDA approved, but the FDA's just a puppet for the corporations anyway. It's bad enough that they pump your head full of information you can't even think about, but it's worse that they pay you in cache. Storing more and more of yourself in some virtual dream somewhere in a computer is just as bad as what that stupid kid back there--" he jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the sleeping young girl--"is peddling! They're all traitors to the Mother Earth, and She needs all of us now, now more than ever! Caching should be a crime!"
Byron recited from memory: "And I shall be a warrionr in Her name, healing the Mother of us all of the wounds inflicted by her thoughtless children..."
Officer Warren glanced at them both. "What's wrong with--" Byron cut him off with a sharp flick of his fingers, but it was too late.
"Kid," growled Patricks, "Don't ever let me catch you talking about some virtual reality paradise that you plan to escape to. If you want to stick your head up your own ass and crawl up after it, do it on your own time and risk Police Board sanction, but so help me Goddess, I'll turn your traitorous ass in if you talk about it. So just shut up and let's do our job."
Kevin Byron wiped suddenly sweaty palms on his uniform trousers. He hastily got busy punching in a call to the refugee center the car was approaching.
"Bunch of traitors, all of you," Patricks grumbled. Outside the slowly moving patrol vehicle, a storm-shredded palm tree drifted by in the clogged gutter.
The place had once been a casino. Now, machines of a different sort ranged in rows along the huge open space where gamblers had once strolled with glazed eyes full of dollar signs. No bells and whistles now, no flashing lights or whirling wheels. Instead, while occupants were still arrayed before machines, now they reclined in padded comfort, eyes flickering beneath closed lids in a dreaming sleep. Specialized stem cells in their refugee suits, now deflated and conforming tightly to the bodies, shepherded information back and forth between the brain and the net of computers which was ravenous for more memory, more cache.
The brief lash of rain as they transferred the sedated Kirsten from the back of the patrol car to the refugee center had not only soaked officers Byron and Patricks, but had revived the girl to a semi-waking incoherency. She trembled and mumbled, still pleading to be left to wander naked in the remnants of the latest super-storm that had managed to make it over the Sierras to bludgeon Las Vegas. The cops ignored her, as did the blank-faced receptionist. "Third floor, we'll take care of her from there," he said.
The third floor had once, Byron guessed, been luxurious hotel suites. The world that was now could not afford suc luxuries, when whole coastlines changed radically, and when being in the open could mean death from the giant, ravaging storms. As if echoing his thoughts, Patricks turned to Byron. "Can you believe that people could rent such places, back in the day? Millions lived on the street, out in the open, back then. At the same time, people rented the spaces all for themselves?" He laughed sardonically. "Now all the homeless are dead and all the richpeople are refugees from the coasts. It almost serves them right."
Byron hoped he suppressed the shudder that rippled through him. His wife and daughter beckoned just a thin veil away. They played on a beach beside a tranquil sea, and the snug cottage waited to echo with laughter, and later with whispers and sighs of love.
They deposited the again-asleep Kirsten Dannenberg from Lawrence, Kansas into the impersonal care of the hospital attendants. They told the nurse about the Yud the girl was crashing from, and she nodded knowingly. Byron wondered if she'd have any of her religious conviction left once the Yud was flushed from her bloodstream, and the God trip had finally run its course. Paticks called out, as they were turning away, "And pay her in cash, will you? Cash, not cache!" It was a popular slogan, but he was a cop; he could get away with it. They wouldn't listen anyway.
Warren was waiting for them when they got back to the patrol car. "We've got a call," he said. The excitement of youth was in his voice. "Computerized landlord reports no rent paid and no activity of daily life for five days from--" He glanced down and his information screen and read off an address on Henderson Drive. Byron knew that area, knew the cheap apartment buildings in that street; his heart sank. it was probably an exo who'd crashed with no one there to pick up the pieces. Great.
Patricks slammed his fist down on the car's control wheel, causing the car to emit a puppy's injured yelp. Even the hard-bitten, burly Patricks winced a bit and shook his head before regaining his ever-present, seething rage. "Exo! Great; another traitor!" Byron sighed. Almost, he spoke up in quiet defense of a little place all your own; say, a cottage on the beach by a calm sea. Kevin Byron knew better.
Patricks jerked his finger up at the refugee center that had once been a place of play for the wealthy and frivolous. "billionaires used to buy places like that. Now instead of trying to make billions of dollars, they try to acquire billions of gigabytes of hard cache! Living in cheap dumps and starving themselves to death, and they think they'll build their dream palaces and be rich!" He grabbed the control wheel. If the car had not moderated with the sensibility of emotionless electronics, there might have been an accident. Instead, they pulled smoothly out into what sparse traffic there was and resumed a sedate course through battered Las Vegas.
It was Officer Warren, this time, who pitted his youthful idealism against Patricks' jaded cynicism. "Hey, what do you care if people upload and become exos? Less mouths to feed, less resources taken up..." He trailed off as Patricks turned that ferocious glare upon him.
"Do you know," Patricks began with a mockery of patience, "that all this--" he swept his hand around at the city outside the car?"was once desert? Little rainfall. Different biosphere entirely. It's people who screwed this up. People made the storms that are strong enough to make it over the Sierras and the Rockies and up from the plains. We've devastated this face of the Mother, and we are the ones who owe it to Her to fix it. Crawling up our own asses into virtual reality, gathering exobytes of storage room to build dreams out of ones and zeroes is not going to bring Her back to the original beauty and life the way we found Her."
"So what," asked Warren. "This isn't beauty? Doesn't stuff grow here, now that there's more water? Aren't there deserts elsewhere now? It's just evolution, right?"
Byron had had enough. Even the calm beach under the cerulean blue sky retreated into the background. He held up his hands and thrust them between the two quarreling men. "Enough," he said, "enough. Forget it. We've got a job to do and there's no sense in arguing about it. Forget it?have a donut."
They had to break down the door. When it crashed into the dingy studio apartment, the sound seemed to profane the silence which draped the run-down apartment house like a shroud. A puff of dust drifted past the two cops who stepped over the collapsed door. It made Officer Byron think of a ghost. Surely this flimsy piece of plywood was a bridge between life and death, and this phantom must guard it.
The smell was bad. The man within had surely been dead for a few days. Byron reached for his nose filters automatically. He'd done this so many times that it was routine. Officer Patricks already had them in.
They found pretty much what they had expected. The emaciated, tattered man was hooked up to a standard brain box. A trunk cable ran into the back of his neck. The helmet which swaddled his head looked like second-hand gear.
From the neck down, he was a mess. He could have been a poster for a famine-wracked third world country. But then, thought Byron, that wasn't so far from reality in this country anymore.
After checking for signs of life and finding none?a mere formality, considering the stench, and the bloated, gassy look of the man--Byron yanked the trunk cable out of the socket in the corpse's neck. Immediately, a dusty LCD screen lit with various error messages and warnings. Patricks tapped a few keys on the dusty and slightly sticky keyboard. It had obviously been rarely used, its owner preferring the more direct method. "our exo," reported Patricks after a few more taps, "was Michael Bishop, age twenty-five." He looked up with an expression of mingled shock and disgust. "Young to be an exo, don't you think? Seems he was an independent contractor, but mostly worked for an outfit called MentaRent. Cute name; makes me want to vomit."
Byron looked around. Mattress on the floor. One dilapidated chair in the corner. Desiccated remains of a TV dinner on a flimsy tray table next to the chair. And something else.
"Hey Patricks," Byron walked over to the corner and lifted an object. It was a white cane. "Our exo was blind."
Patricks was always a good cop first. ?Don't touch that, asshole! It's evidence!" Then it sunk in. "oh. Oh jesus. Blind? Well ? can you blame him for being an exo?"
Warren, the rookie, spoke up for the first time since entering the cofin-sized flat. "My Grandaddy was blind. Back in the day, they had schools and institutions. Places that would help blind peopleout, give them things--" He trailed off uncertainly.
Even before flinching at Patricks' words, Byron had automatically dropped the cane, which fell over with a hollow clang on the hard wood floor. In Kevin Byron's mind, his daughter called him to admire a sand castle by the peaceful water's edge.
Patricks' usual bulldog growl was muted, and carried a softer burr of confusion. "Why didn't he get the help, then? I mean, blind?"
"When the Earth started dying hard, I guess we just forgot about blind people," mused Warren. Without the helping and the schools, they didn't know how to stand on their own."
Patricks' expression was now one of pity, the contempt washed away. "Goddess I hope he made it. I guess, in his case, I take back ... I mean, ... blind?"
"Check the inventory," Byron said wearily. He had a wife and kids to get home to and, though he didn't want his partner or the LVPD to know it, a part-time gig as well. It seemed like the more cache you had, the more you needed. He wasn't an exo (at least not yet, but with a little more panic, a little more desolate reality...), but what harm could it do to have a little vacation place on the side? Just somewhere to slip away to when the real world was busy shitting on you ?
"His account's got a password on it, I can't tell what his wages were or how many exobytes he had, or whether the poor bastard made it all the way or not. I can't really blame him for trying though. Blind. Jesus..."
Byron had 3.5 exos. He knew it wasn't enough, but with just a few more, he could at least afford something modest; a cottage by the sea in a world where there were still beaches, maybe, or an explorer module on the surface of Mars. He could upload enough of himself so that visiting would seem like coming home, but not so much that leaving his virtual dream place would be unbearable. This poor slob had gone all the way, renting the unused parts of his brain to crunch numbers. IN return, maybe he'd had enough cache to build himself a virtual mansion he'd never have to leave. A place where his blindness didn't exist. That is, if he didn't mind dying by degrees.
"come on, let's go." Patricks stood up from the keyboard and wiped his hands on his uniform pants. "I say we call this one a death by misadventure, or maybe accidental causes. I'll talk to the coroner and see that it's put in that way so the credit vultures don't hunt down his family." He made a face. "Blind. Jesus. I can"t blame him at all for wanting to get away from that. It"s not like he could help the Mother out as he was ? And we can't afford to support people like him any more. Maybe that's the one thing worse than--" He gestured at the window, where the rain was finally slackening and the wind beginning to calm. Byron keyed his com unit to call in the forensics team and medical examiner. "Can't think of much excuse for abandoning the Mother's need and becoming an exo," Patricks continued, "but ... Blind? maybe that's a good enough reason." He shrugged. "Come on, let's let the teams bag everything."
Only Byron saw the look of contempt that flashed across Officer Warren's face. "Grandaddy was the best guitarist I ever heard," he said softly. ""made a mean omelette, too. We didn't need to forget about blind people, or crazy people, or--" Again, he trailed off in confusion.
Another force five storm was battering the northern California coastline. As they prepared to face the sodden street, a harbinger blast of wind and rain rocked the building. The calm had not lasted very long at all; it never did. This time, as they stepped over the flimsy door that lay where it had fallen, no phantoms stirred.
This story was originally published in July, 2009, as part of
From the Dark Side Anthology.
and I have only slightly revised it as of September, 2011. It is intended to be a warning, and a comment on how pity can blind us all.