S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (57 page)

A chance, maybe, but not a choice.

First it was their forced conscription into the military. “An opportunity to regain their honor. If they die in service to their country, isn't that a preferable end to rotting away in a cell on Death Row?”

The arguments weren't terribly compelling. Nevertheless, nobody could argue with the program's success. The Omegaman Forces took credit for bringing about the end to international conflict. And more volunteer soldiers — sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers — were coming home safe from overseas, whole and unharmed.

But the Omega's success soon threatened the program's very existence. With all these implanted conscriptees and no more wars to fight, the government needed to find new uses for them, so they contracted with iTech, the creator of the implant technology, to find peacetime applications for them.

The construction of the Stream tower network on Long Island was their pilot project. There were other plans for expanding the program, using the Omegas in a variety of other roles, some labor-intensive, others just distasteful. The public was gradually coming to accept that maybe this was better than paying for criminals to sit out the rest of their lives in a concrete cell.

But acceptance is a far cry from love. That these violent men and women had been rendered peaceful and obedient through the use of medications and mind-control certainly didn't make them lovable. Not even the neural devices implanted inside their brains, could render them completely sympathetic. None of this could ever erase their heinous pasts.

“Everyone must have someone, somewhere, who loves them,” Lyssa said diplomatically. She knew it was an overgeneralization.

“So you can be dead and real, too, if someone loves you enough?”

Another skipped heartbeat, and Lyssa's frown turned deeper with concern. “They're not dead, honey. Why would you think that?”

“People say so. And they look dead.”

“They're not. They've just been—”

What? Implanted. Drugged. How do you explain something like that to a little girl?

Even if Lyssa knew all the details, which she didn't— nobody did — how could she explain to someone so young that it was all right to let someone else control you? And not just control where you could go, but what you did? And to do it in such an intimate way as this? If you thought about it —
really
thought about it — it was a gross invasion of privacy and an insult to freewill.

The government had never shared the technical details with the public, citing issues of national security. But that was the public explanation. In truth, the company which had licensed the technology to the government did so with the restriction that any information which might be used to either copy or interfere with the technology be kept in the strictest confidence.

Cassie shook her head. “Their skin is creepy. It looks dead.”

Lyssa rolled her eyes. The Omega crew members actually had very little exposed skin— a small band beneath their masks and an occasional flash around their wrists. Everything else was covered. So she guessed the reason Cassie was saying this now had less to do with their appearance than something she might've heard, possibly in preschool.

To be honest, it wasn't the first time Lyssa had heard it said about them. There were conspiracy nuts who claimed the Omegas were lethally injected and then brought back to life. Lyssa's favorite DJ was known to make the same claim. Besides being impossible — everyone knew there were no such things as zombies or reanimation — it seemed like an unnecessary step to achieving the same goal. What advantage did it provide to kill someone if you were only going to bring them back?

Of course, the rumors stubbornly persisted.

Lyssa had tried to protect Cassie as much as she could from such nonsense ideas. She tried to remember not to tune the car radio to WDQR whenever Cassie was with her. But she couldn't protect her all the time from the reckless things other people said.

“Did you hear that at school?”

“No, Mama.”

“Ronnie? One of her housemates?” She stopped short of asking if she'd heard it on the radio. She didn't want to give Ramon another reason not to listen to her Jay Bird. Ramon already believed he was a waste of time.

“No. I just think they look dead.” She looked past her mother. The work crew was now less than twenty feet away.

Lyssa turned her eyes toward the site. The workers were climbing out of a hole in the road, their movements stiff and mechanical. She knew this was just an artifact of the interface between them and the people who controlled them, the so-called Operators.

A hand reached up out of the darkness, followed by a masked head and shoulders. The coveralls pulled tight against the man's shoulder, as if snagged on something inside the hole, so that a larger slice of skin was now exposed. Clearly visible on his neck was a wide gash. Lyssa gasped. But the snagged shirt came free and covered it up again and suddenly she wasn't sure she'd seen what she thought she had. It could've been dirt or oil. In fact, it was most likely to be that. The liquid dripping down his shoulder was thick and black. It hadn't looked anything like blood at all.

“They're not dead, honey. Don't think that.”

“So, nobody loves them?”

Lyssa sighed. “Can we talk about something else, honey?”

“Like what?”

“I don't know. Anything.”

“When's Daddy coming home?”

Lyssa squeezed her eyes shut.
Okay, maybe anything but that.

 

The next morning, Veronica Mueller angled her car toward the curb in front of the Stemple house and killed the engine. She sat for a moment, listening to the motor tick and sigh, before pulling the key from the ignition. She felt bad for Cassie. The little girl was such a sweetheart, so much in need of love and attention. The way her parents treated her, neglected her, acted as if she wasn't there half the time, deeply troubled Ronnie.

From the one undergraduate psychology course she'd taken, she knew she really shouldn't blame them. Losing a baby the way they had, just a few days after being born, must've been a terrible shock. That part she could sympathize with. But for heaven's sakes, it'd been more than two months now. Poor Cassie was starving for attention.

The Stemple house stood farther back from the street than most of the others. It was a fairly modest but modern Tudor, unremarkable in a neighborhood where modest but modern Tudors were run-of-the-mill. And the owners had done little to make it stand out, whether by painting it a color other than white or doing anything creative with the lawn. It was all well-tended — most likely by groundskeepers hired by the neighborhood association — but there was simply nothing extra to any of it. Even the clichéd front porch felt somehow uninspired. There simply was nothing to distinguish this property from any of the others on the street except for the fact that its roof was now covered with shiny new black panels.

Cables dangled from the eaves and lay draped over the bushes, the loose ends coiled in large, stiff loops at the base of the foundation. The trees on that side of the house had been trimmed back to maximize exposure to the sun, but it didn't appear that the panels were yet connected to the home's wiring system.

She grabbed the bag containing her books, artist's kit, and computer from her passenger seat and stepped out into the bright morning sunlight. She guessed that on days like this, the panels would generate more than enough electricity to power their needs, maybe enough to run a small factory. But that was the problem. Clear, sunny days like this, while not uncommon during the summer months, were a rarity during the other three seasons. Fall and spring were too rainy, and winter was too hazy, even with the drop in snowfall in recent decades.

She caught herself grimacing at the thought of the family resorting to candles and gas lanterns when there wasn't enough sunlight, then dismissed the idea as ridiculous. She was sure the Stemples knew what they were doing. They were both scientists and business owners. They might be blind to their personal problems, but certainly smart enough to weigh the costs and benefits of solar.

Lyssa met her at the door and invited her in. She seemed frazzled and in a hurry to leave. “I've packed Cassie a snack,” she shouted over her shoulder as she hurried down the hallway. The clothes dryer in the hall alcove was making a racket, like there might be a pair of sneakers inside. “It's on the counter.”

Ronnie stood at the entrance to the kitchen, unsure of what to do, whether she should have a seat at the table or help herself to the fresh coffee brewing on the counter. “Where is she?” she called.

“Out back with the rabbit.” Now Lyssa was around the other side of the house, probably in the downstairs bathroom.

Ronnie walked to the living room and looked out through the sliding glass door and into the enclosed yard. In the far left corner, way in the back, was a wooden shed. Beside it stood the rabbit hutch and, at its base, sat Cassie cross-legged, her light hair glowing brilliantly in all that deep green. She was hunched over on the lawn, a large ball of fluffy white fur on her lap.

In the middle of the yard was a metal play structure. Beneath its plastic swings was a second ball of fur, golden this time and quite a bit larger than the rabbit. The nearly fully grown puppy bobbed its head as it gnawed some unknown object, probably something it wasn't supposed to have. From where Ronnie stood at the door, it looked a bit like a shoe.

“Ramon's supposed to stop by soon.”

Ronnie turned in time to see Lyssa emerge from the other hallway, her hands behind her head as she worked her hair into a bun. The lipstick and makeup was a bit of a surprise, and Ronnie wondered what the special occasion might be.

“He'll probably drop some things off.”

“Things?” Ronnie asked, confused.

Lyssa came to a stop beside her, but her eyes were on Cassie in the yard, watching the girl yet not really seeing her. “We agreed to patch things up. I think it's best for Cassie's sake.”

That must be why she's acting so frazzled.

“That's great news, Missus S.”

“Lyssa,” she gently reminded her. “Anyway, I expect he'll be coming soon.” She reached out and took hold of Ronnie's hand. “Thanks for agreeing to stay here with Cass. I know it's a lot to ask. Help yourself to anything in the fridge. And the TV, of course. Give me a call if anything comes up.”

“You're leaving already?”

“I have to get in. I've got a busy day ahead of me, and with traffic . . . . Well, you know how it's been lately— the construction and the military exercises everywhere. I'll let you know if I'm going to be late coming home.”

Ronnie followed her to the front door, waved, and repeated the same thing she'd said to Cassie's parents every weekday morning for the past six or seven weeks: “She'll be fine. You don't have to worry.”

But this time it felt different. For some strange reason, here at Cassie's own house, in the one place the little girl should've felt safest, Ronnie just couldn't seem to shake a feeling of agitation.

You're just nervous. Uncomfortable. This isn't your house. You'll get used to it.

Ten minutes later she was pouring herself a cup of coffee when the front door opened and footsteps sounded in the vestibule.

“Ronnie? Hi.”

She turned, once again unprepared by the startling blueness of Ramon's eyes and the blackness of his hair. But then she chastised herself, realizing how wrong it was to be thinking about the father of the child she was being paid to watch. And, okay, maybe it wasn't
wrong
wrong to just think it, but it definitely wasn't decent. Besides, he was much too old for her.

“S-sorry,” she stammered. “I was just—”

But he was already making his way down the hallway. “Cassie in the back yard?”

“Yeah. With the rabbit.”

“Ah, good old Ben Nicholas.” Mister Stemple chuckled. “He was a rescue, you know. Saved from the jaws of Death.”

Funny way to put it
, Ronnie thought.

“Got him from the lab. After Remy—” Ramon swallowed. “After we came back from the hospital, I thought Cass needed something to look after, distract her from . . . things.” He sighed. “She sure does love that rabbit.”

“Not the dog?”

He shrugged.

“I always thought Shinji was hers, too.”

“Lyssa's,” he replied curtly. His face seemed to cloud. “I got him for Lyssa.” He waved a hand. “Anyway.”

“Ben Nicholas is a funny name for a rabbit,” she said. “Did Cassie come up with it?”

Ramon nodded. “She named him after a vampire.”

 

“As promised, Lyssa,” Drew said. “I have delivered. The rabbits are preggers.”

She looked up from the glass slide and slumped in her bench stool. Another batch of cells dead. They had time for one final run, but only if Heather came through and the package was delivered by that afternoon. “How many, Drew?”

“At least twenty. I confirmed with the urine tests. You know what a pain in the ass it is following them around holding those tiny pee sticks under their bottoms?”

Lyssa smiled and shook her head. “I'm more impressed at how quickly you managed to get it done.”

“They're rabbits. It's not like they need soft music and candle light. They don't need an excuse, just an opportunity. Put ‘em together and wham bam—”

“I get the picture, Drew. Any package from Boston yet? They were supposed to overnight it.”

Drew shook his head. “No deliveries this morning, last I checked. But it's still early. I'm going to prep the samples on the assumption it'll arrive.”

“If it's even the right stuff. If it's in any condition to use. And if there's enough of it.
If, if, if.
”