Clay (24 page)

“Fabrication is still a long ways off. It’ll take hours to spin enough biomites to begin.” Mr. Hansen takes notice of Nix’s appearance. The old man is gone. It won’t take long to identify Nix Richards, but still, he asks, “Who the hell are you?”

Nix closes his eyes, lets out a long breath, one he’s been holding for a very long time. Jamie pulls a chair next to the lounger. While the spinner hums, she lays her head on his arm. It’s sometime later when another sound disturbs her. It’s a hydraulic pump.

The silver disc is rising inside the glass cube.

The filaments begin dancing.

Cali hides behind the curtains.

Paul is talking to Hal, who is shaking his head like there’s only so much bad news he wants to hear. Cali can’t wear the disguise anymore. She could transfigure back into the old woman, Stacy. She just doesn’t want to. She’s tired of hiding.

Hal will learn the truth soon enough.

A handshake and a quick wave and he’s back in the truck. Paul watches until he’s gone. Cali sits in the back room, a glass of water by her side. The house shudders when the front door closes. Paul’s boots clop through the house.

“He agreed,” he says. “He’s a little worried that you’re still sick, said he wants to send out a doctor. I told him you wanted to talk to him in three days, said the horses might need to be fed. You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“Have a seat,” she says.

“You can’t have another sample. My veins are flat.”

He moves slowly, like he’s pulling an anchor. He’s lost weight. They both have. She hears him pacing in the middle of the night when she comes up from the lab. Sometimes she’ll hear the door close before the sun comes up and, soon after, see him walking in the pastures. Those are the nights she wishes that he’d just keep going, not turn back. If he left, it’d be much easier to do what she’s got to do. And she wouldn’t have to tell him.

But he’ll stay. That’s why he’s here—to stay. Because M0ther sent him.

“I’m going to shut us down.”

“What?” He sits up.

He starts and stops a few times, looking around the room for answers and finding none. Cali takes a deep breath and exhales the tension.

“Your nixes are identical to my original strain of nixes,” she continues. “That means M0ther knows about Nix and me. There’s no question M0ther chose not to shut me down; she proved it by sending you. In fact, she’s manufactured all her bricks with the same strain of nixes as you and me.”

She hesitates, stops short of calling him a brick. It pains her when the realization crosses his face.

“I’ve done an identity scan across the world, and verified this. There’s a lot more bricks out there than the public knows, Paul. If M0ther were to shut me down, she would be turning off my strain of nixes. And that would include all of her bricks.”

“Why?” he says.

Maybe he means why would M0ther do that? Why would she fabricate all her bricks from Cali’s strain? Why would she leave Cali alone all these years?

Or maybe he means why is Cali talking about shutting herself down?

“I don’t know.”

She sits calmly and explains what she’s been thinking for the past couple of days.

Cali always assumed that her creative bursts were self-induced. She took credit for her spurts of genius, the break-throughs she developed in her basement. She invented nixed biomites that billion-dollar corporations couldn’t touch.

Why?

Twenty years ago, when she needed to save Nix from being shut down, she developed the nixes in a short amount of time. It was inconceivable—she knew this. She had even considered it, at one time, divine intervention. There were no explanations for the ease with which she eluded M0ther and achieved the impossible. In the last week, she developed the transforming strain of nixes to heal Jamie and, in retrospect, it seemed too simple. Maybe it wasn’t divine intervention, after all.

It was M0ther’s intervention.

“I think M0ther has achieved self-awareness, Paul, and I don’t think anyone’s aware of it. The size of her processing capacity and redundancy pathways made that inevitable. Her directive was to save humanity by implementing the Halfskin Laws—shutting down people before they converted their bodies into artificial vehicles. If she achieves sentience, they’ll shut her down. I think she has, Paul. I think she’s evolved and understands what she’s capable of doing. ”

He appears hollowed out, staring vacantly at the floor. Maybe he knows all of this already, and it’s just now coming to light.

Cali doesn’t tell him what made up her mind.
Am I her fail safe?

“I can exclude you, Paul. I can begin a biomite transfusion that will take you off my frequency so that it won’t affect you.”

“What about you?”

“I have to shut down for it to work.” She looks down, avoids eye contact.
That’s a lie.

“And Nix?”

“I can’t reach him.”

“You’re going to kill your brother?”

“Shut down, Paul. There’s a difference.”

“You shut down biomites. You kill clay. One percent of you—and Nix—is still clay.”

“It’s not fair, I know.”

Life’s not fair, Cali. Here we are again.

“You’re not thinking clearly.”

“No, Paul. I’m think more clearly now than ever. Don’t you see? I’m the key to every brick. Everything is linked to me. I can cripple M0ther by shutting down everything she’s done.”

“And then what?”

“The world will see what she’s doing.”

“They already know!”

“No, they don’t. There’s something about her that we don’t know, but she does, Paul. She wants to be shut down.”

“Then why doesn’t she just do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s what I mean! If she wanted to shut down, she’d do it. She’d let the public know that she’s self-aware, she’d trigger an automated shutdown—it can be done. She’s up to something, Cali. She wants you to do this. Think about that. If she’s indestructible, why would she reach out for you to stop her?”

“Trust me, I can feel it.”

“You’re a scientist! You don’t go on gut-feelings, you analyze data; you look for statistical differences, not feelings. This is all wrong, Cali. Listen to yourself.”

“She never should’ve been created, I think she knows this. Marcus Anderson and others like him were well-intentioned but they were wrong. It’s more than just shutting her down. Marcus and others like him need to be stopped.”

She can taste the bitterness. She wants vindication from Marcus Anderson’s relentless pursuit. Her brother didn’t deserve to be shut down when he was a kid. Marcus made her turn Nix halfskin to save him. She never forgave him for that.

It’s not that. Something feels right. She can see the truth, and it’s sitting across from her, shaking his head. It all makes sense now.

He leans his elbows on his knees. “You’re making a mistake, Cali. I think you’re looking for reasons to end this. If this doesn’t work, it’ll be a waste.”

She can’t deny that. She thought she found peace on the farm, that when she had security from M0ther, she could be happy. But something never left her.

The hole in her life stayed.

Maybe she’s manufactured this whole belief, spun this tale of a righteous heroine in her mind so that she’d end her life with purpose. It’s possible she seeded herself with coded thoughts and erased the memory of doing so. Maybe she’s insane and rationalizing suicide.

Maybe.

“The transfusion, Paul. Let me give it to you.”

He stares at her. She meets his gaze, unflinching. He’s looking for an explanation in her eyes, a hint of doubt. What he sees is what she embodies. Total conviction. He paces around the room, looks out the window. Cali feels her breath slow down.

“If you’re going to do this,” he says, “you take me with you.”

He’s calling her bluff, daring her to take him, too. She doesn’t want to, he can sense it and she won’t deny it. But he can’t stop her. It’ll only take a thought for her to trigger the mass shutdown. But she had to give him an option. She knew he wouldn’t take it. But she had no right to do that, not even with his consent. She has no right to take the bricks, really. Perhaps the facts suggest they aren’t real, that they’re incapable of self-reflection. But there’s proof that one brick is self-aware.

He’s standing in front of Cali.

“Let me take one more sample from you, just to be sure.” She holds up a stethoscope-looking instrument.

“What’s that?”

“I’ll use it to check my work. Just to make sure everything is working.”

He yanks his arm back. “Don’t inject me with something.”

“Look, I don’t have time to run a full battery of tests. This is a speedy sampler. It just matches what I previously saw. That’s all.”

She takes his arm and this time he lets her, but not without searching for her intentions, staring deep into her eyes. She looks back, unblinking. He’s suspicious. He should be. She’s never used this to draw a sample.

She ties a band around his arm.

The small vial containing a silver liquid is hidden from his sight, nestled beneath a cover she fastened in place. She knew he’d turn down her offer, so she was ready. He watches her while it does its work without any idea that she seeds him with another variation of nixes.

He leaves the house, rubbing his arm.

She drops the seeder on the floor and closes her eyes. She reaches out to Nix like she’d done a thousand times. Through the ether, she calls to him. She’ll leave a message and then call again. She has no right to shut him down, either.

But life isn’t fair. Never has been.

The replicator hums, sending vibrations through the floor.

The filaments run back and forth in slow, methodical rhythm, hissing as they lay down biomites a microscopic layer at a time. Another set of filaments flail around the disc dispersing fine mist. It starts as footprints on the silver disc and slowly builds feet. The cross-sections of bones, muscles and nerves are visible, like watching a thin series of dissecting cuts in reverse.

Her veins bulge on the tops of her feet, just as Nix remembers them. Her toenails are translucent, the tips slightly white.

A miniscule layer at a time, it goes.

By the end of the first day, the knees have been completed. Under the artificial lights, her brown flesh is closer to beige than tanned hide. Now, on the second day, the upper thighs are nearly complete. A pair of legs—slick with moisture—stand independently of each other, waiting for the pelvis to join them.

The cloying scent of putty is strong.

He hardly notices his reflection—the visage of a young man. He couldn’t hold the disguise through the upload. There was no point in resuming it. They know who he is now.

Jamie exits a side room where thin bunks are available. She yawns with a coffee cup in each hand, gives one to Nix. They watch the hypnotic filaments finish another layer. The misters keep the newly formed flesh moist. Soon, they’ll fabricate the intestines and uterus. Already he’s daydreaming about having a child, and she’s still not halfway to the flesh.

“You sleep?” she asks.

He dozed off when the fabrication was midway up the shins, remembering the scar she earned falling out of a tree.

Jamie walks the perimeter of the glass cube, studies the legs from all angles. She’s been withdrawn since the fabrication began.

A new technician checks the monitors. At some point, Mr. Hansen and his assistants were replaced by a heavyset black man and a short white woman with spiky hair. They don’t talk to Nix; they barely acknowledge him.

“You uploaded her,” Jamie says. “Didn’t you?”

“You ever heard of Dreamland?”

“The biomites-induced hallucination?”

“I just close my eyes and go there.” His reflection is stoic and distant. “I’ve been going there since I was a kid.”

Given everything they’ve been through, it’s not hard for her to believe.

“And so you dreamed her up.”

“She was just there—living and breathing when I discovered I could go there.”
Go there, like it’s a place. I still want to believe.
“But Dreamland depends on me to exist. I was out here and she was trapped inside. If something happens to me, Dreamland is dead. And so is she.”

“So you’re bringing her out.”

The filaments break their rhythm to reconfigure. The legs are complete. There’s a hesitation before the filaments begin circling. They begin at the bottom of the buttocks. Eventually, they’ll complete the mid-section and torso, then the shoulders and arms before starting on the head.

“You’ve got to understand something.” Nix addresses Jamie’s reflection on the glass cube. “The details of what I know about her aren’t memories. It’s a grand design that goes all the way to her genetic make-up. It’s information that I couldn’t possibly know or remember. Memories are biased, Jamie. We’re all guilty of running them through filters until we’re left with distorted images of the people we love.”

He taps the glass.

“That’s not how I remember her. That
is
her.”

She sips her coffee, nodding. “What’s her name?”

“Raine.”

With slow, careful steps, she starts around the glass cube, again, making it around before returning to the bunk room to lie down. He wants to tell her more, tell her he’ll become a regular person now that she’s in the flesh. Maybe they’ll hide on the farm with Cali. He won’t need anything else, really. No reason to explore the world. He’s always got Dreamland for that. And they’ll start a family, too. They’ll have a boy named Joshua. Or a girl named Pearl. Either way, they’ll be as human as the clay farmers that live around them. Happiness is on the other side of the glass. He could almost touch it.

On the other hand, Charlie’s fabrication is impossible, she knows that. That’s why she leaves Nix to watch his dream girl alone. Will it stop her from fabricating Charlie?

It wouldn’t stop me.

Soft pressure swells behind his eyes.
Bing.
Cali is calling again. He dumps the message. There’s nothing she can say to stop him. He should probably thank her. In a way, she forced him to turn Jamie halfskin. And that’s what brought him here.

And Raine one step closer.