by Ian Scott Wilson
“Do you have a moment to talk about your genetic health?”
A massive group of lowlies, probably from center district, walked by the kiosk, brushed against Thompson, and knocked his hat to the ground. Each of the lowlies, in their way, seemed to be a part of a giant centipede or a swarm of ants hungry for something sweet.
Thompson retrieved his hat, wiped off a bit of dark water, and dismissed the man.
“I really don’t have the time. Just the bagel, please.”
The dark eyed clerk started the toaster, but was intent on his real sale.
“I can see you’re a skeptic,” he smiled, his dialect was heavy, “There have been thousands of success stories. Would you believe I used to be severely depressed? A real lowlie!”
Thompson shook his head.
“Too right. I felt like I was in a hole. There was no way out for me. I would wake up every morning and come to work but never really feel I was getting anywhere, you know? Like, what was it all for?”
“Money? Systems? Order?” He suggested, knowing his answers would be rejected.
“People aren’t insects, Mister. We need to do our own things. I never knew what to do with myself. I heard of the system, of Genetios. I figured that all them stories were too good to be true. Something inside me made me feel like it was another spiritual thing.”
Thompson looked at his watch and exhaled. A small whirlwind blew a discarded newspaper around before landing it in a puddle of muddy water. On first glance the leaves in the puddle might look like marine forms.
“Cream cheese and chives or butter?” The clerk asked.
“Cream cheese, and can I get a soda?”
The clerk nodded and took a metal spatula, stuck it in the open container of white with green speckles, and began to put the poppy seed bagel together.
He went on, “It wasn’t nothing of the sort. There’re real scientists behind it, you know. It’s a fact. The Genetios System works, and I’m living proof.”
“I don’t have any problems,” Thompson said. “How much is it?”
“Two twenty,” he said. “Look, you might think I’m just a sap, eh? What do I know? But let me tell you something- everybody’s got problems. You have that look about you.”
“Look?”
“Yeah, you don’t talk much, you’re too busy for your own health, you don’t seem happy. You’re in a hole yourself, I can see it!”
Thompson thought about it for a minute, “You’re telling me that Genetios will make me happy?”
The clerk smiled, “I bet my life savings on it.”
Thompson scoffed, “I don’t have any problems.”
He took his bagel and soda, slapped down two dollars and fifty cents, and walked away.
Behind him, Thompson heard the clerk say, “Yeah, you seem chirpy and pleasant. Genetios is a miracle, mister. When you’re in that hole and you don’t realize it, that’s when you’ll be there for good!”
Thompson ate his bagel as he walked to the Howard building where he worked. In the elevator to the fifty-sixth floor an elderly couple was arguing about if they really needed to come all the way here, and why didn’t he wear the brown shoes Sarah got him, they are inthis season, and this elevator takes forever. Thompson got off and the couple continued up.
At his desk he put his soda next to the Personal Organic Matrix, jokingly called an Oyster by much of the staff, and activated the psychic feeds. He rolled up his sleeves and pushed his left arm into the P.O.M. It was unpleasant but he was used to it. A brief electric current tickled his wrist, poured through a small fleshy entrance on his forearm, and then he was logged into the system. The morning memo (dull, pointless) from upstairs spoke into his mind and his brain perceived it as a full color conference address. He was able to see all of the bland colors running together into a puddle of information, all of it hollow.
“Welcome back to Genetios Incorporated. Today is Tuesday the eighth of October, nineteen ninety nine. The threat meter is low today; enjoy a trip to the beach.”
Thompson sighed as the morning announcements went on. Nothing new was happening in Genetios except that they were supposed to have the Korean branch check in before the end of the week. Genetios’ latest hardware upgrade, the P.O.M. Mark IV, was having difficulties with tissue recognition for some pre-launch clients. The issue concerned a problem in the corpus collosum imitator that must have gone undetected by the testing centers. It meant that the electrical signals sent back and forth between the three sections of the P.O.M. weren’t being properly relayed. A broken wire somewhere.
Thompson’s to-do list seemed barren; he had guessed that the company was slowly reducing his number of tasks until he just wouldn’t come in anymore. They did not tend to fire people directly. No one was likely to approach him and say he was going to be let go, instead his account would just stop being filled and he would spend more days at home than in the office. Soon he’d find himself in the ghetto, like the sad beasts—the retched lowlies.
His one task for the day required him to visit an unsatisfied client, in the ghetto. He disconnected from the P.O.M, his Oyster, and made his way back to the elevator, leaving his drink untouched. He was ignored on his way out.
Outside and under the threat of cool rain, Thompson made his way through the park and across to the south ghetto. They had never rebuilt the skyscrapers in this section of town, and the memories of rubble still left everything dusty. On his way out of the park, he saw a homeless man lying against a tree, made orange by the light through the leaves. His face was a swirl of genetic imperfection and weeks without a bath. Thompson looked in his pocket for change, and dropped some into the man’s jar.
“Thank you, mister. Bless you!” He said, his voice weak and drunk. “Bless your genetic goodness!”
After he walked through the front arches of the ghetto it wasn’t long before he came to the address he had memorized. It was a shared living space, four stories tall and possibly fathoms deep.
He knocked on the door and pulled his jacket tight around himself. Somewhere he heard shouts of “I’ll get it, hold on.” Then his call was answered.
A wrinkly, mutant stood before him, coughing into her hand.
“How can I help you?” She asked.
Thompson attempted a bow and said “Nice to meet you; I hope your genetic health is excellent. I’m from Genetios, Ma’am. They sent me here about your complaint.”
Instant recognition, “Oh yes, yes, come in. The creeping thing won’t work! What did they even install it for anyhow? No one wants to touch it, but when they do the voting we have to know it works.”
He was led in through the dark corridor, past a shared kitchen where several rotting pumpkins sat; the scene looked as if there was an attempt at carving some sort of jack-o-lantern fright, but the rancid flesh had just caved in.
“Thing’s just through here, sat in a goo pile,” she said. “Say we need to get better or something, but this ain’t going to do nothing for me. You should just see my husband, or should have seen him I should say.”
The room was chilly and brown; years of damp seemed to be eating through everything, and there was a smell of mold crawling through the air. The one window in the room was boarded up and no light pierced the gloom.
“It’s over there, scurried into that corner,” she said.
Thompson saw a small, pulsating orb in the corner, hiding in the grime. The older P.O.M. was clearly damaged. It was aerated like someone had used it as a ball, thrown it around, or in some way battered it.
“These units should never be misused,” Thompson said.
“Oh and how exactly,” she coughed up into her hand, which she then put into her pocket. Thompson presumed it was mucus.
She went on, “How should we then? It’s done us no good. None.”
“The adjustment takes some time, Ma’am. You need to let it get used to you. Is this the only one here?”
She nodded and was about to speak, but Thompson interrupted.
“I think I’ll need to write that in my report, then. Every family unit needs one, as you well know.”
“Oh, have some heart, no need to be so cruel. Look we just need it fixed now. I’ll put in for some later,” she said.
Thompson shook his head, “I’ll have to write it up. But for now let me have a look at this.”
Thompson crouched over in the corner, careful not to step on the tendrils, and stuck his finger out at the P.O.M. It jerked away from him.
“This is no good at all,” he said. “You must have scared it.”
He put his hand behind it slowly and then moved his finger towards it again so that when it jumped away, it fell directly into his hand.
“There, got you,” Thompson said, prodding the P.O.M. with a metal rod he had gotten out of his pocket. “I’ll just need to sign on and see if it’s not too damaged.”
He pulled up his left sleeve and offered it to the P.O.M. The tendrils felt the air around him and moved up his fingers to his wrist. It needed a little taste to be sure it could trust him. Thompson’s wrist opened and the feelers lapped at the entrance before finally pulling his fist into the main body of the P.O.M. and establishing the psychic connection.
Thompson was in. The P.O.M. had accepted him. Immediately he expected color to fill his mind and the P.O.M. to start a system check, but there was nothing. He was sure the psychic connection was working properly; he could feel as the Oyster felt. He only felt fright which confirmed that the damned thing had been abused. But he could not see any other operations being performed. It was total blackness in the system.
He disconnected and retrieved his hand.
“This is more than just a malfunction,” Thompson said to the ugly woman. “We’re going to need to put this one down, I’m afraid. It isn’t linking up with central.”
When Thompson turned from the corner, he saw that the woman was now joined by another creature, and he was holding a rifle.
The woman coughed without using her hand to disguise it. Thompson was close enough to smell her rotting breath. The man tightened his grip on the weapon; he was visibly shaking. Thompson looked him over; his nose had been split in some old accident, and his ears were deformed to the point he probably had significant trouble hearing.
The woman held a red thing with many meaty legs.
Thompson could not bring himself to speak. What could be said to lowlies that was of any use?
“Do you have a moment to talk about your genetic health?” She mocked. The man with the rifle gave a short, deep laugh, one that signified low intelligence. Everything about them was low.
Thompson took a step sideways.
“No, no,” the woman said, “Have some of this.” She produced a silver dart gun from a hidden orifice and aimed it at Thompson. Her one handed grip on the gun left the red thing squirming around in her other.
Thompson said, “This is terribly rude, I’m going to need to write this up.”
The woman fired a single dart into his abdomen, and after a moment of hazy vision, he collapsed.
Sometime later he came to full awareness, and understood that he had been deposited into a kind of cell. The only light came from the cracks in the ceiling. It was damper in this space than the brown room, and his clothes had been dirtied by some foul water that formed a shallow pool under his form.
He felt around the room and then let his eyes adjust. The search had immediately revealed no obvious door.
He heard someone talking in the distance, they sounded anxious. Somewhere he heard footsteps. Soon it seemed to be coming from above. The noise began to grow louder, and then the light flooded in—a hatch had been opened.
Thompson still could not find the words—if these lowlies had imprisoned him, he could not reason with them. They were, by definition, lowlies—they were beasts, savages, and morons.
He heard the deep laugh, and then a figure came into view above him. It was the rifle-man, dangling something over the hole.
He smiled a toothless grin and released something. It sped towards the ground, altered course with a weird flapping of protean wings, and settled near the pool of water.
Thompson, now able to get a better look at it, saw that it was sticklike and crimson, with ten thick legs that all touched the ground though they writhed as if uncomfortable. It had weird feelers that stuck to the ground and came off with a ‘pop’ as it moved, and it couldmove quickly. From nose to tail it was probably a foot or a foot and a half long. Thompson shivered.
A straw emerged from the front of its sectioned body, and shot into the water. It clicked as it drank.
Above him the rifle-man laughed again, and spat down at Thompson.
“How your genetic health?” The rifle-man asked, and spat again, now smiling larger than before. Thompson heard the lowlie woman cough.
Her figure came into view at the edge of the hole.
“What’s Genetios going to do without you now?” She asked.
Thompson looked at the red creature, watched it clean its legs with some wet protuberance, and then answered the lowlie.
“They’ll do just fine,” he said. “I was on my way out of the pool anyway.”
The lowlie woman looked confused as she closed the hatch again. In the shadows, Thompson heard the wings start to buzz. He felt a tingle at his wrist as the red thing tried to connect with him.
