A Stand-In for Dying Page 8

  And so, Corinne Takana on a glorious spring day in 2051 wandered into the Church of the Double Helix and was swept up in the passion of the congregation and enthralled by the message of its scriptures. Once she felt the spirit of the community of worshippers, she wanted it to become part of her, and she wanted to share with her family the same sense of belonging that came so naturally to her that day. Natasha could grow up with other children who would experience wonder in something greater than themselves. And perhaps even Marcus would embrace the faith and relinquish his quest for immortality.

  “It felt as though I was always supposed to be there,” Corinne gushed, “like it was my destiny.”

  Marcus listened as the energy she’d absorbed from the congregation seemed to pour out of her. There was no stopping the flow of her words.

  “I’ve got to go back. Come with me next week,” she pleaded. “I know you’ll feel the same way. You’ll see.”

  The following Sunday, Corinne and Marcus stood side by side and joined their voices with the music of the Church. He was happy to be there with her even if he wasn’t as moved by the service as she was. At least while the music enveloped them, the terrible chasm that divided their futures faded into the background and he could imagine that they might journey together to the end of their lives.

  Week after week, he looked forward to the transient escape from his singular reality and found comfort among the throng that shared a common vision with them. Marcus and Corinne blended easily into a congregation composed mostly of people who, like them, had grown up in an age of scarcity and had learned not to waste precious resources. Many of the congregants, like them, remained slick-skinned and hairless in the style of their youth as a symbol of their commitment to preserving the earth for the coming generations.

  Marcus appreciated most the anonymity that he enjoyed within the Church. Of course, most of the people knew who he was. He was too famous to go completely unnoticed. But to most of their fellow congregants, it didn’t matter. He was just “Brother Marcus” or “Marc.” They came together to worship and to share a vision, not to compete with one another for status or to conduct the business of the secular world. He and Corinne felt safe with Natasha learning and playing among their children.

  Between the sanctuary he found within the Church and watching Natasha grow and thrive, life began to feel almost normal. He could forget for days at a time that he kept secrets from his wife and that at any moment without any warning, he could suddenly cease to exist. Despite the Conversion, which conferred permanent fitness, he continued to run at least five miles every day. Running became another refuge from the burden of his future. When he ran, the rhythm of his feet striking the ground and the rhythm of his breathing were all that mattered. As long as he was running, he wasn’t thinking, and the exhaustion that followed kept his mind empty for a little while longer.

  An extraordinary man can only expect to live an ordinary life for so long. Marcus’s treasured obscurity came to an abrupt end when he was overtaken on a run one sweltering day by an athletic looking young woman who trotted beside him without breaking a sweat. She had close cropped dark hair and was clad in a form fitting black jumpsuit. A slender four-inch-long cylinder was barely visible under the sleeve on the inside surface of her left forearm, its translucent tip peeking just beyond the edge. Marcus noticed the partly concealed weapon, the destructive power of which belied its small size.

  “Mr. Takana,” the woman said without a hint of breathlessness, “Please come for a ride with me. We have something to discuss with you that is of utmost consequence.” She gestured toward a sleek, black hovercar that was pacing them on the roadway that bounded the track. By now, Marcus had concluded that she was a SPUD, whose function was likely security for a person of influence.

  “I’d rather not,” answered Marcus. “I’m not interested in anything you have to say.”

  “This is an invitation you really shouldn’t refuse,” she insisted. “At least hear what we have to offer. You may find it hard to turn us down.” Despite the weapon, there was nothing threatening about her tone.

  Marcus remembered another time in his life when a run had been interrupted by someone bringing him a preposterous offer, one that perhaps he should have turned down. He wondered how his life would have turned out had he rejected Terra’s proposal. His instinct told him to nip this one in the bud, but his curiosity was sufficiently piqued to go along. The woman signaled to the car, which pulled over and waited for them.

  When Marcus was let into the back seat, the face of the person waiting in the shadows stunned him. And as the car lifted off the ground and sped away, he wondered what new dilemmas would face him in the days ahead.

  13

  “THEY’RE A THREAT to the very fabric of our society and must be stopped.” The steady voice rang out over the crowd, whipping it to a frenzied pitch.

  Hector Lasko’s eyes were riveted on the speaker, an athletically built young man with steel blue eyes, wavy blond hair, and the smooth clear skin of a young adult. The speaker’s fist thrust upward to punctuate his words.

  “Some people claim that SPUDs are our allies,” the young man went on, “but mark my words, they can never, ever be trusted.” He lowered his head and voice as if confiding a secret. The crowd settled down so they could hear him.

  “They’re nothing more than mindless tools. They have no morals. They’ll even destroy their own kind if directed to do so. There’s no limit to their capacity for evil.” His voice rose again with the last sentence. The crowd cheered. Hector’s voice mingled with those around him. The message spoke to the pain that had gripped him for more than a decade.

  Images from the past began flashing through Hector’s mind. On his seventeenth birthday, Arianna had accompanied him to a party. She’d often accompanied him when he got together with his friends. Like him, they’d taken her presence for granted over the years, but he’d gradually begun to notice others within his group stealing the same hungry looks at her that he did when he thought she wasn’t watching. He’d instinctively begun to keep her close whenever they were around. His own feelings for her were becoming almost too much to bear.

  Hector didn’t notice at first the man standing beside the speaker, a stocky man with almond colored skin and graying hair. But at the height of the tirade, the older man reached behind the speaker’s back and the tirade abruptly stopped. The earnest young speaker hung his head, his arms fell forward, and he became immobile. His operating system had been deactivated, a living example of the speech’s thesis. The older man watched the trick’s effect on the crowd, then took charge.

  “They will never be our equals,” he proclaimed, “and they must always know their place. They’re here only to serve us. We must never succumb to the illusion that that have feelings or that they can reason or make decisions like we can.” Hector felt the electricity running through the crowd. They were on their feet, shouting and cheering.

  Hector hung around until most of the crowd had dispersed and approached the older man as he was packing up his props. The blond SPUD stood in the same fixed pose he’d assumed when he was powered down. The difference between this doll-like figure and his lifelike appearance when animated was striking.

  A lithesome young woman who appeared around Hector’s age approached the speaker and handed him a rolled-up banner. “Anything else you need before I leave?” she asked.

  “I think everything’s under control. Thanks for asking.”

  She spotted Hector out of the corner of her eye as she turned to leave and flashed him an enticing smile. He felt the warm flush wash over his face, but before he could respond she was gone.

  “Is she…?” Hector began, addressing the older man.

  “Flesh and blood,” responded the man with a knowing smile, “and as far as I know unattached.”

  “Loved your presentation. That was quite a show.”

  “Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it. We’ve got to do whatever it takes to keep them in their
place. I’m Ellison.”

  “I’m Hector. Let me give you hand,” Hector said, stepping forward.

  “Thanks, but not necessary. Samson here can help.” With that, he reached behind the back of the stationary figure and flipped a switch. The blond man came back to life and began carrying things to Ellison’s car. He seemed completely unaware of the time that had elapsed since he was turned off.

  Hector accompanied Ellison to his hotel and they wound up talking deep into the night. Ellison was passionate about his cause. He’d become disillusioned years earlier when his six-year-old daughter drowned at the beach while under the care of a SPUD that was charged with her safety. When the undertow swept her off the beach, it had jumped in after her, but stopped moving after it hit the water. Both Ellison’s lifeless child and the SPUD washed up together on the beach hours later. That model was later recalled because of a defect in the integrity of its skin that made it vulnerable to moisture. Ellison never differentiated his anger at the manufacturer from his personalized rage at its product. He had trusted it, after all, with his daughter’s life and it had let him down.

  “I was betrayed, too,” said Hector when Ellison had finished his story. “I had my heart broken when I was just a kid.”

  “What happened?” asked Ellison, leaning in with his chin on his hands.

  “I had a nanny for as long as I could remember. Her name was Arianna. She was with me almost all the time and I always felt safe around her. She had a wonderful smile that seemed only for me, and even as a small child I was aware that she was more beautiful than most other women, prettier even than I thought my mother was.”

  “She sounds very special,” said Ellison. “Did something terrible happen to her?” Ellison guessed that she’d somehow become the victim of a SPUD.

  “Not exactly,” answered Hector. “When I hit adolescence, I started to have a different kind of feeling for her. She wasn’t just beautiful, but ageless, too. As I caught up to her, my attraction to her became overwhelming. She was so close, yet always just out of reach. I’d fantasize about being with her every night as I fell asleep. I had to have her.”

  “What about her? Was she falling for you, too?”

  “For a while I thought she was. As time went by, she seemed emotionally softer. Her manner was more tender and intimate. I could only hope that it meant she cared for me in the same way I cared for her. But I knew, of course, there were barriers, taboos. She was my nanny, after all. She wasn’t supposed to love me that way.”

  “It sounds like it must have been torture for you.”

  “It was. Then on my seventeenth birthday, we were at a party. I’d been drinking a little too much and suddenly couldn’t stand it any longer. In a moment of impulse, I took her in my arms and kissed her.”

  “Then what happened?” asked Ellison.

  “Absolutely nothing. Her lips were stiff and unyielding. There was no trace of any affection or connection. She pushed me away and then I saw this look of utter bewilderment in her face. I suddenly realized that she had no framework for responding to my advance. And I felt my stomach turn, realizing what I’d just tried to kiss.”

  “She was a SPUD,” said Ellison, finally getting it. “You’d been in love with an illusion.”

  “It was humiliating. How could I have missed all the signs? We’d become contemporaries, yet I’d failed to notice that she’d never aged. And all her emotions were simulations. How could I have failed to see that?”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself.” Ellison put an arm around his shoulders. “When she came into your life, you were just a child. And as you grew up and became more perceptive, she must have been gradually upgraded and educated in the nuances of human emotion so that the illusion kept pace with your ability to detect it.”

  “My parents never told me she wasn’t human. I found out later that they were as surprised that I didn’t know as I was surprised at my discovery. She’d been such a crude approximation of a human at the beginning that they’d assumed I’d always known.”

  “So what happened next?”

  “I was crushed and heartsick. I couldn’t look at her without a sinking feeling of betrayal and humiliation. So I told my parents to get rid of her.”

  “And they did?”

  “I never saw her again. I had no idea what happened to her and didn’t care. Maybe they sold her or maybe they sent her back to the factory for parts. It no longer mattered now that I knew she wasn’t human. All I could feel about her from then on was contempt.”

  “Consider yourself among friends. Most of the people in the Tribe have been hurt in some way by a SPUD. Mostly the damage happens when people expect them to be more human than they’re capable of being. It was probably a mistake in the first place to create them in our image. No good was ever going to come of that.” Ellison was a skilled closer, but Hector was already sold.

  Hector joined the movement and became Ellison’s protégé, traveling around the country with his blond, blue-eyed SPUD, leading rallies. He gradually took Ellison’s place in the presentations, relishing the power of activating and deactivating his synthetic foil, fair compensation for the power he imagined Arianna once had over him.

  Ellison watched his young accomplice approvingly from the sidelines while Hector savored the limelight. Hector’s youthful zeal together with the chemistry between him and Samson was drawing bigger and bigger crowds. But getting the word out was only part of Ellison’s plan.

  “He’ll do very nicely,” thought Ellison during a particularly rousing rally just months after they’d first met. “Soon he’ll be ready. Then nothing can stop us.”

  Chapter 14

  RAY’S DRIVER pulled up to the front of a weathered brick faced building almost entirely covered in a dense thatch of ivy. The passenger door slid silently open.

  “This is it,” said the driver.

  Ray stared at the building, rooted to his seat. Beads of perspiration formed at his temples and dripped slowly past his throbbing ears.

  “I said we’re here,” prompted the driver. “aren’t you going to get out?”

  Ray drew in a deep breath, clenched and unclenched his hands, and put his right foot out the door.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?’ he asked, staring at the dilapidated structure. “It’s supposed to be a doctor’s office.”

  “Of course I’m sure. Now are you going to get out or do you want me to take you back where you came from?”

  He drew another long breath, swung his left leg onto the pavement and pulled himself to his feet. He wobbled a moment, steadied himself, and waved the driver off. He moved tentatively across the sidewalk to the entrance, which was secured with a rusty iron gate. The doctor’s name was the third from the top: “Abigail Jensen.” There was no modifier indicating her professional status or degree. Beside the nameplate was a black button framed in corroded brass. He pushed it and waited.

  The lock on the gate buzzed and he pulled it open. He hadn’t seen an entry like this since his youth. He turned the handle on the door and it gave way. As he stepped across the threshold, it felt as though he were stepping through a time warp into the distant past. Inside was an ancient looking elevator and a stairwell. Ray chose the stairs and made his way warily to the third floor as the stairs creaked under foot. Upon emerging into the corridor, he spotted a door cracked open. A diminutive figure stepped into the opening and beckoned him in with a sweep of her hand.

  “Dr. Jensen?”

  “You must be Ray,” she replied, extending her hand. He didn’t take it. She nodded, let her arm drop to her side, and stepped aside to let him pass.

  Ray’s eyes darted about. The tension grew along the muscles in the right side of his neck until he gave in with a stifled jerk. Everything about this place felt alien. On the floor before him was a threadbare oriental rug. Paintings and photographs hung from the walls. And there was fabric everywhere. When he let himself breathe, the aroma of the room filled his nostrils with an unsettling
familiarity. He tried to place the smell, but any attached images lingered just beyond his awareness. His ears began to ring as he imagined the room teeming with microbes. There was too much texture. How could he ever control the contamination?

  The doctor gestured toward a couch, inviting him to sit. He stood in the middle of the room, arms drawn tightly to his sides and shook his head from side to side, looking like a small child refusing to obey a parent. The room suddenly seemed huge, the ceiling vast and distant.

  Dr. Jensen settled into a large upholstered chair in his line of sight and rested her hands softly in her lap. She looked even tinier, framed by the chair, than she’d looked when he’d first seen her...like an antique doll left over from another century. Her face was soft, the experience of years mapped with branching rivulets and trails. Tightly coiled silver ringlets seemed to form a protective helmet atop her head. Only her eyes had escaped the ravages of time and now drew Ray’s attention. Deep creases defined the upper edges of her eyelids, accentuating dark brown irises reaching into a well of serenity.