Halfskin Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  vi·gnette [vin-yet]

  HALFSKIN

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  Halfskin

  M0THER

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

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  vi·gnette [vin-yet]

  A brief evocative description, account, or episode.

  HALFSKIN

  We’re often convinced if we just get this, all suffering will end. Yet with all of today’s advancements, why does utopia still seem to be something achievable only after death while dystopia our human inheritance?

  Can technology change this?

  Medical technology can print body parts. That’s happening today, right now.

  Suppose that medical bioengineers take the technology a step further and invent a synthetic stem cell, a biomite, that can replace any cell in your body. Unlike our organic cells, biomites are infallible. No more kidney failure, no severed spines or blood disease. No cancer. Pharmaceuticals become obsolete. As our percentages of biomites rise, we become stronger, we become smarter and prettier. We become better.

  If tempted by the promise of perfection, can we resist? As a society, probably not. Who are we when our bodies are replaced by synthetic replications? Are we our memories? Our brain? Heart? What if we retain one single organic cell, what are we then?

  Still human?

  If biomites exist, governments will see the danger of unlimited access. Laws will be imposed to prevent people from excess and abuse. The Halfskin Laws will decree a human composed of 50% biomites is no longer human. Halfskins will have no legal rights and will have their biomites shutdown.

  They won’t be murdered. Merely deactivated.

  1

  Ned Peterson sat in the third row, center stage. The set was black and empty except for a small table, also black, with a large box beneath a heavy blanket. Something inside moved with mechanical precision.

  The kids around him were in their mid-twenties, maybe thirties, erupting with nerdgasms. There were thousands of them. Ned was polite but didn’t talk much. He never came to product launches; this was his first and probably his last. But he didn’t want to be distracted by theatrics.

  If the rumors were true, this would change the world.

  Ned taught high school students the basic manipulation of their initial biomite seeds: how to increase intelligence and inspire creativity. He wanted them to use their gifts to better humanity. His students, on the other hand, just wanted to initiate Dreamland experiences and thought-chat.

  Ned was about to find the bathroom when a beam of light engulfed the mystery box. There was applause and standing ovations. When nothing happened, silence settled. Ned sensed a subtle drone in the background, a low baritone that amped the anticipation.

  A puppy bolted from stage left and raced across the stage.

  Laughter rumbled through the auditorium. The floppy-eared black puppy skidded to a stop, paws hanging over the edge of the stage, and searched for a way down. Then piddled on the floor.

  Another spotlight knifed from above, this one illuminating a slender figure that stepped out from stage right. This time, the entire room erupted. They were on their feet, applauding and cheering.

  Ned was forced to stand.

  The iconic figure didn’t recognize his fans with his usual wave. Instead, he strode in front of the small table and towered over the puppy now prancing in a circle.

  “Accidents happen,” Allen Smith said, scooping up the puppy.

  While the crowd continued, silent assistants placed a chair by the table and wiped up the dog’s accident. Allen Smith sat down and crossed his legs. The puppy climbed up the front of his black turtleneck to lick his face.

  And the mystery box continued to churn.

  Allen Smith cleaned his round spectacles while the crowd settled. He remained calm even after the room was relatively quiet. The puppy curled up on his lap and he scratched it behind the ears.

  The crowd waited.

  “Over the past twenty years,” he finally said, with little effort, “we have brought human-augmented technology to unprecedented heights. Our company is solely responsible for biomite stabilization. We curbed runaway replication and allowed humanity to control their biomites. Thought-chat is more common than texting. Internal audio has replaced the need for external speakers. We’ve increased memory storage like internal hard drives, initiated group thinking and collective IQ. We are on the cusp of developing augmented dreamworlds that will generate new realities inside the mind. Quite simply, we’ve made better humans.”

  Allen Smith looked up and delivered his trademarked line.

  “What else can we do?”

  This was greeted with raucous cheers. Ned sat quietly, perhaps the only spectator not moved by Allen Smith’s theatrics. Pomp and circumstance were not substitutes for substance.

  Allen Smith put the puppy down and paced to the left. He folded his hands and walked meditatively. The crowd couldn’t contain its enthusiasm. Allen Smith, characteristically, ignored them. He continued walking with measured steps until he reached the left side of the stage and turned around. The puppy followed him to the right.

  He returned to the center and stood next to the table. He held his reflective pose, gazing at the floor. The puppy sat by his side.

  “What else is there?” he asked sincerely this time. “For twenty years, we have seeded biomites into our bodies to support life, to bring it more vitality, greater longevity and infinite potential. People, we sit on the precipice of creating imaginary universes and unheard-of genius.”

  Assistants scurried out with a short set of steps and placed them in front of the table. Some spectators muttered. Ned was riveted to his seat.

  “People, we were made in the image of God. And now we can follow in His footsteps. I don’t want to simply support life anymore.”

  He grabbed the blanket.

  “I want to create it.”

  Beneath the blanket was a glass case that contained silver rods that moved like mechanical fingers preparing magic, circling around an inanimate object.

  Allen Smith was expressionless. The puppy, however, climbed the steps to investigate what looked like another puppy, this one white.

  The crowd murmured. Ned hoped they wouldn’t stand. He gripped the armrests like he was on the edge of a cliff.

  The silver rods twirled around the white puppy one last time; mist emitted from microscopic nozzles embedded along ridges inside the box. Everything folded up and collapsed to the bottom.

  There was just the white puppy.

  Allen Smith didn’t wait for quiet. Even he knew, at this juncture, that silence would not return. He tapped the front of the box and the glass pane opened. Ned barely heard what Allen Smith said next. His heart was thudding, his ears ringing.

  The white puppy moved its head. It looked at Allen Smith. A lull of stunned silence fell on the room. The white puppy stepped onto the steps and hesitantly climbed down. The puppies collided and rolled in rollicking puppy fervor.

  The crowd found its breath.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Allen Smith said, “I bring you the world’s first fabricator.”

  The magic words were spoken.

  Ned was the first one to stand, his meaty palms applauding. The crowd joined him, tears streaming down their cheeks. Some would not sit again.

  And Allen Smith, uncharacteristically, smiled.

  2


  Perry Dawkins had never been in a green room.

  Turned out that the backstage room wasn’t green at all. He knew that, but he still had expectations, would’ve been happy if the walls were mossy. Instead, they were white and water-stained. A coffee machine was in the corner.

  He was breathing a little too rapidly and feeling light-headed. He could control the nerves like other fabricated humans (a thought-command to increase dopamine and suppress norepinephrine for starters) but preferred to let it ride. The stress wasn’t debilitating. In fact, it was exhilarating. Humanizing.

  After all, he’d started out human.

  Emotions were evolutionary shortcuts to environmental response. It was only when he ignored them did they back up, an emotional river that spilled over the muddy banks and flooded him with anxiety. If more fabricated humans embraced the emotional aspect of their identity rather than exerted their will over them, they would have fewer problems assimilating into society.

  Perry was more than a role model. I am a perfect human.

  “How you doing?” an elderly man with wavy gray hair took his shoulders and asked. “A little nervous?”

  Perry blew through smiling fish lips and nodded.

  Dr. Wilkerson shook him, patted him and then embraced him with his characteristic hug that, for a moment, squeezed out all the air. He slapped his back with a heavy paw.

  “You’re going to change the world,” the professor said gruffly.

  One of the conference directors grabbed the professor for a few words but not before he imparted a fatherly grin, the stage lights sparkling in his eyes.

  A stagehand came after Perry with a wireless mic. “It’s backup, just in case primary audio goes down.”

  He worked on fixing it to Perry’s lapel while a young woman waited with a short brush in one hand and a box in the other.

  “Do you mind?” she asked.

  The professor mentioned they’d want to fix him up for the recording, add color blanched out by the stage lights. Perry’s complexion was mocha, his hair looping curls of surfer brown, eyes distinctly almond-shaped. He was an amalgam of several races. No one would guess him as a neuroscientist. The world’s leading.

  “What’s the talk?” the makeup artist asked.

  “What?”

  “You look nervous.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He shook his hands. “A little.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Um, dream disease.”

  She exaggerated an understanding frown, intrigued but not really. “Friend of mine’s daughter has a friend at school that died from it a few months ago. It’s a shame, really need to do something about it.”

  “I think I have an answer.”

  “Tell you what the answer is.” She made long, soft strokes across his forehead. “It’s getting rid of the bricks. They started it.”

  The smile that had grown through his nervous breathing wilted; the butterflies in his stomach curdled into lumpy, crawling critters with thick lapping tongues.

  “That’s not true,” he said. “See, there’s evidence out there that… you see, the dream accelerators that allow halfskins to generate dreamlands are networked, which means halfskins are trading…”

  Her brush slowed.

  “Bricks have stable dreamworlds,” he blurted, hoping his use of the racist vocabulary would win her over. “They really have nothing to do with the dreamlands that halfskins experience. And there’s no connection with clay dreams. My analysis is conclusive. The sooner we can identify the real cause of this epidemic, the sooner it can be cured.”

  “Done. Good luck.”

  His hand twitched. He wanted to snatch her like a rogue calf that needed to learn how the ranch worked, but it would only scare her. She didn’t know he was a brick when she started applying makeup, but it was clear she figured it out.

  Bigotry had a finely tuned detector.

  Maybe he could convince the waiting room of academics, but how would he win over the general public? Prejudice wasn’t interested in facts. People like her already lived in an altered reality designed by their xenophobic thoughts.

  People like her. He had to watch his own prejudice.

  It was just hard to stomach reactions like that. The incidents of dream disease among the brick population were nonexistent while the casualty rate of halfskins using dreamland accelerators was pointing at the sky.

  It was the scientists from the clay states that suggested a theory that bricks were carriers of the psychological disorder since dream disease didn’t exist prior to the sentience laws. They couldn’t explain why clays were succumbing to dream disease, albeit at lower rates than halfskins; just blame the bricks and everything would be all right.

  Bricks were vectoring rats.

  The link, as Perry’s lab discovered, between dreamland and dream disease was the halfskin accelerators. They were all networked. It would be like no one washing their hands during an influenza epidemic and coughing into each other’s mouths. Start by getting rid of the accelerators and then they could focus on clay dream disease.

  The answer sure as hell wasn’t getting rid of the bricks’ dreamlands. No evidence supported it, yet they still kept them from dreaming. It was only Dr. Wilkerson’s connections that allowed Perry to venture off the Settlement to lead the research. This was rare and, as it would turn out, would be the last time it ever happened.

  Perry had proof that the accelerators were the problem. Halfskins were using them to create their dreamlands. Dreamland accelerators were malleable resorts, digital funlands that expanded the dreamer’s recreational opportunities. This was a trillion-dollar industry that Perry was blaming.

  But they were missing the entire point of dreamland. It was so much more than a dream vacation world where they could sleep with twenty women or skydive without risk or murder without repercussions.

  Dreamlanding is world building.

  Imagine a creative outlet that wasn’t a blank canvas or pages in a book or images on a screen but an actual universe with planets and stars and outer space. Perry believed that dreamlands were real.

  We are the seeds of new realities.

  No single region of the brain controlled dreamland. It was a production of the entire organ. That was Perry’s proposal: biomites would be used to rebuild the entire brain. That was why the bricks could dream so effortlessly, why they were immune to dream disease—there was no clay holding back the experience. And clay, by the clay state’s own admission, was imperfect. We are descendants of original sin, one such pastor claimed, proudly.

  But we don’t have to stay in the garden!

  Perry would show the audience that he had proof that imagination didn’t just create images and sensations but acted like a portal to new planes of existence. He would pull back the curtain on God, give a purpose to each and every human being. We weren’t just here to enjoy ourselves.

  We are creators!

  Perhaps that was what God intended, not for us to live a good life, an obedient life, a fun-filled healthy life. But a creative life.

  And dream disease? Maybe that was our failure to live up to that purpose. Our imperfections created monsters that terrorized dreamlands instead of spinning new and amazing solar systems.

  The dream feasts on the dreamer.

  “Five minutes!” someone shouted.

  Perry took several short, choppy breaths, shook his hands and jogged in place. Dr. Wilkerson was with his peers. They gave him a thumbs-up. He would be presenting for the team. It was a collaborative effort, but Perry was leading them. It was his baby. They wanted him to deliver salvation.

  A brick to save the world.

  Stagehands rushed past him. His introduction had begun. The makeup artist was approaching for a last second touch up. He closed his eyes and bowed his head for a few moments of inner solitude.

  He didn’t see her press the Taser against his stomach.

  Didn’t feel the floor crumple beneath him.

  The electrical
charge delivered enough voltage to cause serious damage. He never recovered.

  And the world never changed.

  3

  The room was warmly lit with a corner lamp, the walls dark olive with three sofa chairs a dark shade of pumpkin. It would be described as cozy, something a therapist would design.

  Exactly what Hanoi Fender expected.

  One of the chairs was singled out and faced the other two. That was his chair. He wasn’t ready to sit, but they’d be watching what he did while he waited. He wanted to appear relaxed, confident. For the next fifteen minutes, he slouched into the deep cushion and watched a fish tank bubble. It was home to a goldfish that seemed obsessed with escape, bumping its nose against the glass the entire time, probably since it was dropped in its new home.

  Probably until it died.

  Funny thing was this: if it managed to somehow escape—flop out of the tank or push through the glass—it would suffocate on the carpet.

  Maybe that’s what it wanted.

  “Good morning.” A woman stepped inside with a man.

  “Good morning,” Hanoi answered.

  They sat across from him, smiling pleasantly. They were athletic looking, attractive and nonthreatening. He doubted they mixed it up outside of work, but they’d make great babies if they did.

  “Okay, well,” she said. “Here we are.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you comfortable?”

  “Very.”

  “If you’re thirsty, there’s water on the table.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “This will take about an hour.”

  “Yes.”

  He let out a long, easy breath, questioning whether he should’ve acknowledged that last statement. It wasn’t good to know too much, but everyone knew this took an hour.

  That answer was fine.

  “Nervous?” she asked.

  “Little bit.”

  The couple nodded. They didn’t write anything down, didn’t need to. Everything was being immediately analyzed—every word, every movement. All the way down to how he blinked.

  He let out another long breath, let this one shake a little at the end, and darted his eyes between the two evaluators. That would look cautious.