Plucky Seven

Plucky Seven

Year 0

            Seven screamed. He screamed before ever opening his eyes, before he started flailing weakly about, before he bit his tongue or started trying to rake off his skin. He screamed while the doctors backed away in confusion and the nurses scrambled for a stronger sedative. He continued to scream as he slipped his minimal restraints, stumbled out of bed and broke his nose, as he crawled away from his benefactors then tried to lunge under the furniture. He screamed until the contents of the syringe in his thigh had worked their way through his body. The room was very nearly soundproof. Outside, a peanut gallery of diffident aging executives exchanged exasperated glances. The one in the most expensive suit allowed himself a Mona Lisa smile.

            “He doth bestride the world like a colossus.”

            Later, they sheepishly gravitated toward the conference table, none daring to bleat first. The Director finally prompted them.

            “So, any suggestions?”

            The dam broke. There followed an hour of accusations, hand-wringing and barely-restrained threats of neck-wringing. Their camera-friendly frontwoman with the officially not-honorary degrees was tossing her lovely mane of (still egg-yolk blonde at over fifty) hair about, gesticulating wildly at the video screens as though a throng of reporters lurked, poised to burst through.

            “- just four days away, four stinking days and they’re already beating down our doors!  If a single one gets even a glance, even a rumor about number seven, you can forget about competitors or agencies because you’ll be buried under an avalanche of reactionary maniacs before you can say ‘Frankenstein’ and don’t tell me you’re-”

            “What we need to do” intoned one of the physiologists in a trembling but forceful monotone “is buy a bit more-“

            “Whatever little stalling you could do now wouldn’t be enough.” A psychologist interrupted in what he must have imagined was a conciliatory tone “If possible, which doubtful, you’ll need years, or at least months, to make him presentable.”

            “A corpse is more presentable than that thing…”

            Within seconds, as the remark registered in everyone’s consciousness, the table grew silent. The surgeon who had spoken studiously avoided their eyes. A project as expensive as Morella incubated many safeguards, not all of them pleasant conversation pieces. The company’s Heir-Apparent, sensing it was time to display some modicum of leadership, cleared his throat and started in the sort of voice one normally reserves for crying children and rambunctious house-pets.

            “Listen, we all knew it may be necessary. We have six healthy, photogenic young faces for the vultures.”

            “Hardly” a psychiatrist cut in. “Three’s still cackling like a hyena and we’re not sure Two can be allowed around women yet. We have to sedate Five just to get her to let us take her protective bed-pan off her head.”

            The Director shrugged. “This changes nothing, then. Live bodies, it’s all they want to see. A pretty young boy sleeping peacefully in a hospital bed is almost better than what we have so far. Sever him.”

                        A collective wince rattled shoulders around the table. So gauche of him to state the obvious. There remained only mock-deliberation, token opposition and admonitions from actors self-consciously glad to receive a script. They gradually trickled out to strut and fret their respective roles.

Year -13

            Number Seven was running late. The Director thumbed through the day’s legal updates. The judge in the ovary case was stalling. The second case had been decided against the right brain as a juridical person, on grounds of its inconsistent attempts at communication. Good. At least one bribe had paid off. Unfortunately they’d been undermined again in the crucial arrested development case. Her honor had been suddenly caught involved in a white slavery ring.

            He swore under his breath. The company’s sharks had purposely greased palms toward female judges precisely knowing how easily the public lusted after the blood of males claimed to have broken some sexual taboo. If the other side’s spooks had the confidence to accuse a woman, the decision was being pre-empted by some very deep pockets with an axe to grind. They needed a replacement, hopefully with a change of venue. He tapped his assistant’s name on his terminal.

            Nothing.

            He furrowed his brow and assaulted the panel a bit harder. A message obsequiously informed him that her office and his own had both been evacuated due to the current… quarantine? A soft purr of approaching helicopter blades overhead made him swallow. He paced swiftly to his office door. Locked. A new alert brought him back to his screen. A security cam feed of the rooftop had popped up. The two-seater just landing almost looked like a standard rescue helicopter, if you ignored the fully opaque glass, the slightly deeper frame large enough or a third seat next to the stretcher and its intemperate approach. No alarms there. As far as the city’s emergency response system and the clinic’s own security were concerned, it was the real deal, their very own chopper 514a making an emergency delivery.

            His phone showed no signal. He tried the company network again. No matter whom he attempted to target, technology informed him they had been evacuated due to quarantine. Outside his blinds, nothing stirred. No-one had left the building or would leave, sure as planets rotate, until whatever was in that helicopter had made its way in. He cursed again, and settled at his desk viewing the unfolding drama, awaiting his cue. Someone wanted him to see this, to witness the tides halting under majesty’s command.

            The machine had landed. Two figures in non-standard emergency services vestments stepped calmly out planting their feet, designer combat boots biting downward securely, surveying the rooftop. Their uniforms bulged ever-so-slightly at the hip. One turned and nodded subserviently toward the back of the chopper then reached in, providing support for a hand so lithe it imparted no momentum on the guard’s. A small business suit hobbled out shakily and began to shuffle toward the rooftop entrance, supporting itself on one underling’s arm with each halting, pained step. The door slid open before being reached. The two goons followed behind, carrying… the Director caught his breath, knowing this now for more than a show of strength, more than an offer he couldn’t refuse. They had committed a commitment, and implicated him as easily as walking in the door. He waited, fists clenched, for two minutes until his office door clicked open as he knew it would and the tiny passenger slowly entered, handed his EMT cap to one of the goons and waved them off. The mangled body on the goons’ stretcher made its exit, leaving him staring at his visitor.

            It wavered and wobbled, standing now partly on two skinny legs seemingly prey to constantly shifting seismic forces, and partly on two slender metal canes whose gigantic pearl handles grudgingly suffered the caress of papery, tapering, liverspotted fingers.  The head atop the thousands upon thousands of dollars of grey fabric turned slightly from side to side, surveying the room like a raptor picking its perch, never even settling on the man whose office it had invaded. The blanched lips parted. A skinny tongue, the wrong half of a serpent’s, darted out in a vain attempt to wet them.

            “I’m goin’ siddown.” A voice rasped out in opposition to the air, seemingly of its own accord. The legs and canes began an arduous trek toward one of the plush office chairs opposite The Director’s desk. Pant legs fluttered as if only bare bones filled them. The Director made no attempt to help, not for mere fear or resentment at this grotesque invasion of his headquarters, but morbid fascination. He tracked the ancient figure’s movements, attempting to divine the myriad ailments, maladies and apocalypses from which it had been preserved by every art of modern science. Before him shuffled a continent’s worth of surgeons and pharmaceuticals, alchemically transmuted into a single shriveled form. He intuited why this apparition had come to haunt him, and settled in behind his desk as he had for countless other guests, feeling its comfortable familiarity now offered scant armor against this assailant collapsing into its seat, barely denting the cushion. It attempted to speak again.

            “You know” pause for a breath “why I’m here.”

            He nodded. The figure closed its eyes as a spasm over-rode the tremors fighting for control of its limbs. It took a deep drag of the oxygen tube bulging its nostrils.

            “Your seventh patient. Accident. Bad luck. Very sad.” A dry heave indicated it might be trying to laugh. The Director swallowed down his bile. “No big deal. Newsfeeds won’t even care. Won’t know. Won’t want to know. But you, lucky you” pause for a breath “you got yourself a replacement.”

            “You.” Not a question. Only an acknowledgement of their situation.

            “Me.” It lowered its head into a nod, then struggled to raise it again. “Your patient” breath “will be… officially checked in. Readmitted.” breath “Means you’re gonna speed up. Your schedule.” breath “You operate tomorrow. Same name on the roster. Except – “

            “Except you.”

            “Me.”

            The Director tore his eyes away for a bit, turned, rose, risked another glance beyond the blinds. Beyond the as yet unsuspecting parking lot underneath stretched expressways and byways, pedestrians and nimble little city cars. Above these, billboards for a thousand products flashed and loomed and basked in the sun. He knew several of them as masks for the decrepit manikin behind him and wondered how many of the others bore its leathery imprint. How many fronts and shells and fly-by-nights would collapse and cannibalize themselves tomorrow if he used his letter opener to perform a little exorcism… ah but he’d never been the martyr type.

            “You’ve already bought us, I assume?” The Director sat down again facing his antagonist.

            “Nothing that petty.” The ancient huffed. “I bought… the people who bought your little hospital… two years ago.” The corners of its mouth lifted slightly. “Idiots wanted to parcel you off… strip the biotech properties… sell the patents… keep the safe investment. I saved your ass.”

            “The legal opposition, the judges, that you…?”

            “The hell should I know… I told my PR girls… make sure you don’t get started without me… rest up to them… Don’t micromanage… you ever wanna score in the big game… you learn not to micromanage.”

            “Then you’ve never looked into the actual… procedures, which you’d be undergoing?”

            “Had my Academy types wrangle up reports… from a thousand different geeks… said if anything has a chance of working… it’s your little magic trick.”

            “Well, the other candidates have had their receptacles brought to term and growing for over a year already. It would take time even to isolate your healthiest-“

“I’ve had mine growing… for over five years. Cute little bastards. Didn’t know what I’d use ‘em for… seemed a good investment. My blood” it lifted a sleeve to display a cannula “mostly theirs these days.”

“Ah, but then… I mean specifically, you do know the preparatory period is several months long. The exercises-“

            *Tap* one of the canes smacked the chair leg angrily.

            “Do I look… like I got several months? I go in… tonight!”

            “No, I have to insist.” The old money narrowed its eyes angrily at this but the Director cleared his throat and continued. “I-it’s not only a matter of physical conditioning. Our long-term sleep induction studies and the biostasis test runs both have repeatedly demonstrated the importance of managing one’s… can I ask, are you even a lucid dreamer?”

            “Managing… managing is what I do… and I don’t dream. Gonna sleep like a baby until you plug me back in.” It grinned titanium and ceramic alloy across the room, a predator’s snarl.

            “Well, actually the reason we insisted all our test subjects be lucid dreamers, the reason even they need to exercise the ability is that artificial stasis, clearly divergent from vegetative states, tends to require a psychological conditioning program covering repeated sleep-wakefulness cycles -“

            *Clack**clack* the canes planted themselves in the floor. The figure rose, haltingly, over a period of several seconds, clattered and lurched to stand before the Director’s desk somehow managing to loom despite its bone structure long having shrunk, gnawed by time and disease. Decades’ worth of practice at looming and glowering pinned its victim helplessly. A sickeningly sweet musk assaulted its interlocutor with every venomous, hissing phrase:

            “Listen! Lissen a-me… you jumped-up… pissant... lab rat! Think I need your goddamn help… t’take a nap? Conditioning? You think you know… conditioning? You think you know... willpower? I’ve broken hundreds of men… worth a hundred of you… One word from me… one hint you’re mistreating me in there… one hint… you are in hell. In Hell!” It paused to catch its breath, allowed its hackles to lower. “I take care… of the rest. I… go in… tonight.”

            With that it turned and walked to the office door, tapped it with its cane. The security gorillas, already waiting outside, opened it respectfully and escorted him downstairs, toward the operating rooms.

            The Director let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Trembling, he briskly tiptoed to the office door and closed it, clinging to the psychological security of its isolation despite recent proof of its uselessness. He paced from the window to his desk and back to the door several times before his secretary’s call, already in “urgent” mode, rang out from his desk’s speakers. He collapsed into his chair, buried his face in his hands, then finally accepted the call.

            “Where the hell have you been? The doors were locked, the surgical crews are going nuts over some change in schedule, and the fifth district court just…”

            “Shelve it.”

            “But-“

            “Shelve it!” He tried to summon some of the predator’s sneer he’d witnessed just moments prior. “Schedule an extraction and storage before tomorrow morning.”

            “You wanna do a take’n’bake on less than half a day’s notice? Have you lost your mind?”

            “Not yet, no, I don’t think so. Call in any of the surgical staff that hasn’t been working the past shift and give them the rest of the week off with pay for tonight’s work. I’m guessing we can afford it now.”

Year -12

            The Director walked, swiped, printed and scanned his way into his new personal office. In its windowless absolute silence he fished the anti-static opaque bag out of his pocket which he’d received from a hobo ignorant of its provenance or destination in return for a few bills. It contained a minuscule jumper, identical to those found on every circuit board in the ten monitoring units in the new research hospital’s basement. Even under a microscope, none could tell its slightly different alloy. A few millivolts of current difference, in a non-essential system. He had a promised to personally supervise a yearly inspection of all ten containers and the support apparatus. It included a reboot of their support systems. A gesture of goodwill toward his test subjects. He studied again the placement of security cameras, practiced removing, palming and pressing the new jumper into place. Two seconds. His future would hang on two seconds.

Year -9

            Two seconds and three years later, concern was mounting. Number seven’s scans were showing unmistakable signs of distress. Then again, so were all nine of the others, if to a lesser extent. As greater liability would’ve been incurred by tampering than by observation, the decision was made to take no decisions. As greater liability would’ve been incurred by interference than by passing the buck, the congressional committee decided not to decide, aside from extending the moratorium on all transplants until all original ten test cases were resolved. As greater liability would’ve been incurred by expressing opinion than by not, the media made no mention of either indecision.

Year -7

            The Director’s wealth had grown beyond management. Go-betweens and advisors, dapper flappers notified him of his gains and losses, the former always greater than the first. The public had already forgotten his name, yet from interested, well-informed parties his patents drew a constant stream of investment.

Year -2

            Wealth draws envy. Certain decisions had had to be made. Certain companies had needed to be purchased, wealth re-routed, towns left in ruins. The Director no longer officiated The Company, itself now only a minor element of The Conglomerate. Older money had stepped in. And he was only growing richer with everything he lost. He only still directed the research project itself. No need to micromanage the rest. He would be stepping down soon. One of the staff, an Heir Apparent was already being groomed to take his place. Soon, Project Morella would be only a small portion of The Company.

Year -1

            The media were beginning to remember. Before they had sought publicity, publicity had sought them. The first of the receptacles was almost to maturity. The SpaceSeed Initiative demanded results: would they need more than five kilograms’ storage per colonist or not? Rows of vats, a multibillionaire in each, lay secreted through the hospital complex’s undocumented sub-basements over the years, awaiting legality.

Year 0

            After the hand-wringing and hard indecisions of the official meeting, only the Heir and his master retired to his private office. The Director grinned.

            “So, any suggestions?”

            “Yes, but I think you’re headed there anyway.” They both chuckled a bit further down off the previous hours’ tension plateau. He poured them both celebratory drinks, flipped on the Faraday cage and set his walls to “white noise” privacy mode. The Heir cleared his throat. “So, the delays in operating, if I had to guess…?”

            “Yes, intentional.” the older man nodded “I needed him to be kept away from observation until the press event. We have to fail just enough that others want to leave us holding the pieces. The Conglomerate has half the world in their palm. I have this building. I had to restrict the playing field. We had to keep him here until I was sure.”

            “They want him? Why? Who is he?”

            “You’re not a ‘he’ once you get that high, mostly a ‘what’ and he was a force, a plague and a disaster. He’s one of their own, before they were one ‘they’ pulling all the strings.” Besides, he doesn’t legally exist now. He died. It doesn’t bother anyone that he still nominally owns entire nations because he contributed so generously to their disinterest. He even has the legality of his inheritance to himself rigged like a slingshot. As soon as he awoke... at least two of the nurses in that room were plants by his people. One sane word from him and he’d live again. He’d own us.”

            “What did you do to him?”

            “Nothing. I just… didn’t do something to him. Exactly as he wanted. He didn’t need my help.”

            “You said it was his choice to skip the psych program.”

            “It was. And how. There was no time. He said he could handle it. Would’ve wiped us out if we hadn’t played along. Owned us. Us and a hundred others worth a hundred of me. The alpha, the chieftain, my lord and liege demanding his rights, who was I to refuse him? His insides were already leaking into each other. We got him, the part of him that mattered, into the vat, and that was that. And I made damn sure-“

            “They’ll find out eventually.”

            “I should think they already know. They’re content to let him… vegetate, for now. His rivals are probably relieved they don’t have to kill him and his parasites are already getting other clones ready for transplant. They might take him back after our little photo-op. Don’t oppose them. Gesture of goodwill. Let them try un-scrambling that psyche.” The old man’s face twitched sadistically.

            The Heir’s eyes suddenly widened.

            “His suppression was never meant to work! He was the first to destabilize, the first to outright dream… it’s why you opposed full imaging, supported the privacy acts… but how?”

            “Doesn’t matter. A very small part, which has long since been swapped out. I didn’t dare do more. Too many moles. But once he’d started he couldn’t stop. None of them could. Iced or not, thirteen years is a long time. You’ve seen the others: lucid dreamers to start with, given at least a few months of training and even they’re having trouble coming out of it.  They each built something for themselves in there: sexual, paranoid, grandiose or idyllic fantasies. The three that won’t wake up… trust me, they just don’t want to leave. You’ve seen the scans.”

“Euphoria.”

“Heaven. Their own heavens. All I did was leave him to his own. All I had to do was nothing. He never wanted my help anyway. It would’ve been beneath him.”

The Heir excused himself to go supervise the proceedings. The Director, barely noticing, mused:

“You have to wonder what they had to say to him. To… do… to him. All those hundreds of broken men each worth a hundred of me.”

Year 0 and four days

            ImmersiaCast arrays blanketed the room, capturing every detail of every surface. The Company’s most photogenic doctors proudly described the wonderful new opportunities this presented, the miracles The Company had performed, in terms any child could pretend to understand. Prim nurses fidgeted in the background. The wealthiest investors lined up to smile and shake the project leaders’ hands. Six confused but recovering patients giggled, laughed, waved or glowered silently at what they guessed were television cameras. Four bodies remained at rest, one with bruises and scratches neatly rendered invisible by cosmetics. Six out of ten. They had broken even and then some. Not bad for a first try. They could sell this. They could market this. The SpaceSeed representatives were already singing their praises in the media. More billionaires were lining up, checkbooks at the ready. Court cases were being scheduled.

            Inside a peaceful fourteen year old comatose body, Seven’s century-old brain screamed through its endless labyrinth of nightmares.

Year 1

            The Director twisted and calmed his breath, wiped his brow, reached for the bottle of water by his bed and cursed at knocking it over. Flipped the lights on and surveyed the darker corners of his room, cursed himself for his paranoia. It would be another year before his quasi-cerebrate clone was ready for transplant. He wouldn’t need to spend much time in the tank. Not even a week, not even days, maybe mere hours while they filed and whittled away the unnecessary connections from his brain stem, pockmarked his temporal and occipital lobes with new channels to suit his new eyes and ears.

How many destitutions, buyouts, close calls, court battles, bidding wars, budget slashes, sweatshops, layoffs, backroom deals, palms greased, how many treatments denied, tears shed in his office, screaming relatives escorted out of the building. How many collaborators had he shed over the decades? How many victories? How many hundred-strong demons had he accrued so far? Would number seven be among them? Would he lead the charge as a maniacal fourteen year old or as a reeking centenarian with a titanium snarl?

            Just a few hours… yet every hour in Hell was said to be an eternity.