Clay (23 page)

Chicago’s Central Manufacturing District.

Nix and Jamie drive past boxy buildings with company names stamped on them. Few are recognizable; they are mostly plants that produce fabrics or decomposable containers or little plastic parts that fit deep inside a machine, never to see the light of day. They follow the directions sent by Mr. Connick’s admin assistant until they find it in big, blue letters.

Munsen Digital.

It’s a four-story building, beige. The windows reflect the gray sky like sad eyes. There’s no fence or security, just a half-empty parking lot and a set of glass doors.

Nix turns off the car. His eyes flick to the rearview, like bricks might be following.

They would just shut us down,
Jamie thinks.
No drama.

She waits for him to settle his thoughts while her belly purrs with excitement. Nix is slightly pale. It’s only the biggest day of his entire life.

They cross the parking lot. The weight of a thousand eyes pushes down on them. She tries not to look at the windows, tries to avoid looking guilty but she can’t see beyond their steel reflections. It only gets heavier.

Inside, something mechanical is rhythmically banging away somewhere. The reception room is small and empty, off-white. Nix rattles his fingernails across the long, empty counter while a commercial for erectile dysfunction plays on a television.

Minutes go by.

A door opens in the back and fills the room with the sound of manufacturing, like an old printing press. A skinny man steps sideways, closing the door quickly. He sniffs nervously, doesn’t make eye contact. He taps at a keyboard.

“You’re here to see Mr. Hansen.” It’s not a question.

Nix nods.

“Smile,” the guy says. Jamie feels a wave scan through her, a tickle lingering somewhere in her intestines. Several clicks of the mouse and he looks up. “Elevator is through that door.”

He stares at Jamie. His eyes are blank and careless. She doesn’t like it, refuses to blink or look away until Nix pulls her along. A smile cracks the corner of the guy’s mouth. Jamie stumbles into the faux walnut-paneled elevator that smells like grease and burnt rubber.

The ground floor button stays lit as the doors close. The three buttons above it remain dead. Their balance is thrown off when the elevator drops. The ground floor button dies as they descend. Cooler air greets them and the smell changes to something resembling putty and singed aluminum.

When the doors open, they’re greeted by a long hallway. A Caucasian man steps through one of many doors, a white lab coat buttoned up to his chest. He takes several stiff steps with his hand extended the entire way.

“Congratulations.” He briskly shakes their hands. It’s soft, almost feminine. “Few people are privileged to get this far.”

“Are you Mr. Hansen?” Nix asks.

“I am. But down here, names are inconsequential.”

“Why’s that?”

“You’ll find out shortly.”

“Is this lab fully functional?” Nix’s eyes narrow.

Maybe he didn’t expect it to be so elaborate. Maybe he’s used to second-rate translucent boxes stuffed in the back of bars or hidden in a basement. This is nothing like the warehouse. But this place has survived M0ther’s purge, so they probably did more than fabricate dogs.

“We do more than just fabricate. Follow me.”

Mr. Hansen folds his hands in a most peculiar way: one on top of the other, like he’s captured a small frog. He marches to the nearest doorway on the right and waits. Nix gently places his hand between her shoulders and guides her forward.

They stop just inside the lab.

The room is two stories high with plenty of clean, hard floor surrounding an enormous glass-walled cube. Inside the cube, thousands of filaments hang from ceiling mounts. Nozzles are fixed along vertical rails. A silver disc is slightly raised in the center, the surface polished.

The smell of putty is overwhelmed by the sting of antiseptics. Jamie swallows down the smell but it sticks in her throat. There’s a lone lounger facing the glass cube, shaped like the one in the warehouse. It’s even the same color.

“Munsen Digital manufactures non-biomite material,” Nix mutters. “It would explain the massive power consumption down here without visits from biomite inspectors. You’re also licensed to research and develop electronics.”

“We’re paid very well,” Mr. Hansen says.

An Asian woman and an Indian man approach, both wearing lab coats. No one shakes hands or acknowledges each other.

“But it’s more than that,” Mr. Hansen says. “We believe in the future of biomite technology, but we have to be careful. Therefore, you will remain here until your fabrications are complete. Ms. Chen will then alter the last two weeks of your memories before you leave.”

“Why not erase them?” Jamie asks.

“Erasing causes a blockage that creates psychological pressure. It’s better to make your memories vague. You will not recall details, such as places or names or this lab. You won’t even be sure if this is Chicago. If you don’t agree to this, our business is finished and she can alter your memories now.”

He hides the imaginary frog and waits for their approval. They nod.

“Payment, then.” Mr. Hansen opens his hand, rigid and flat. “Mr. Sing will verify the strain without the suicide code.”

“No,” Nix says. “The suicide code remains.”

“That is not the deal. You are to provide a fully functional strain that matches your deposit.”

“You’ll use my sample to begin our fabrications. They will contain the suicide code. This will guarantee that neither you nor I will turn them off. Once we’re out of the building and safe, I’ll permanently rinse the suicide code.”

Mr. Hansen is frozen, hand out and empty. He blinks rapidly. “What guarantee do I have that you’ll sanitize our batch?”

“Our fabrications will be linked with your sample.”

Jamie didn’t understand this part of biomites, how they synchronized or replaced clay. She only knew what they felt like.

“I’ll have to verify this,” Mr. Hansen says.

Nix places a vial on the man’s outstretched fingers. The overhead LED lights reflect off the shimmering contents. Mr. Hansen delivers it to Mr. Sing, who takes the sample to a large bank of beige, boxy equipment. A conduit is mounted on top of the largest of the machines that channels the majority of filaments up the wall, across the ceiling, and into the glass cube.

The room begins to hum.

Jamie feels it in her feet. It creeps up her legs and into her chest. It transforms into a whine. Nix stares at Mr. Sing, his fingers flexing at his sides. The wrinkles in his forehead undulate, slightly smoothing out before deepening again. His transfigured disguise is faltering under stress.

“Hey.” Jamie squeezes his arm. He walks away.

An hour passes. Mr. Hansen and his collaborators gather for more than a couple discussions; their voices are hidden beneath the replicator’s whine. Frequently they watch Nix, who refuses to sit.

“Okay,” Mr. Hansen shouts with a smile, hands offering a truce. “You have been granted two fabrications with the agreement that your memories will be altered, as we discussed. However, you will not leave the building until the suicide code is rinsed from our batch. Are we in agreement?”

Mr. Hansen ignores Jamie. Nix nods.

“Very good.” Mr. Hansen has a long discussion with the other technicians before approaching Nix. “This is how it will work. We will extract the source code for each of the fabrications. A digital model will be constructed and validated. This could take a few days but it’s very important. We don’t want to fabricate the organs in the wrong places, all right?

“The more details contained in the source code, the less time it will take, and, of course, the more accurate the fabrication will be. The actual fabrication will take a week. So the sooner we can start, the sooner we finish.”

Mr. Hansen lays out his hand again, like he’s expecting a jump drive with programming.

“The source code, please.”

“You’ll take it from memories,” Nix says.

“Memory extraction?” He flinches and looks back at Mr. Sing and Ms. Chen. They’re too engrossed in their machines. “You want to extract from memories? I’m afraid you’ve wasted our time. Do yourselves a favor and buy a couple real dolls. The results will be tepid, at best. Pets work on memories, but humans? They’ll be an animated shell of the person you want. I thought you, of all people, the one with this elegant strain of biomites, would know the correct source code requirements.”

He looks over his shoulder.

“Perhaps Mr. Sing can build the source code. He has a background in biometric engineering.”

“No,” Nix says. “Memory extraction.”

The standoff between Nix and Mr. Hansen ends with an anticlimactic shoulder shrug. “It’s your money.”

Jamie stands alone and catatonic in her thoughts. She eventually follows them to the lounger.

She tries to recall Charlie’s face while Ms. Chen helps Nix lay back; Mr. Sing fixes a wire matrix over his head. Jamie can’t remember Charlie’s details. They blur into general shapes and colors. If she closes her eyes, she could recall the protruding eyebrows and blue eyes. He had a little scar above the right one. His lips were full and his nose bent. Still, it’s hard to put it all together. Now that she really thinks about it, she can’t really see it.

Ms. Chen places a pulse monitor on Nix’s finger. His vital signs are displayed on a small monitor.

“I’m going to ask a series of questions,” Mr. Sing says. “You will answer them. This will activate sections of the brain where more information can be extracted. The process will take several hours. Once we begin, we cannot stop. Are you comfortable?”

Several hours?

Jamie has lost her desperation; the maniacal drive to bring back Charlie is gone. All her life she’s identified with fear; she’s clung to it, afraid that if she didn’t feel something—even if it hurt—that she’d disappear, that she wouldn’t matter. She’d believe the little voices that said she was nothing.

And now those voices are gone. It’s like she just let them go.

She thought she needed Charlie to help her do that. And even if he didn’t, at least she could share the insane whispers with him. He understood. He shared her pain, and that made it tolerable.

But he’s not here.

She understands that now, staring at the glass cube and the lounger. He can’t come back. She doesn’t need him to come back. Even if a fabrication walked and talked like him, it’s not him.

Charlie’s dead.

“How did you get this strain?” Mr. Sing mutters so only Nix and Jamie can hear. “It is impossible. You are a genius, maybe, but you cannot manufacture nixes of this sophistication. This is mistake, bringing you here, I feel.” He sits in front of several monitors, jabbing at a keyboard. “Let’s begin.”

Mr. Sing punches the last key.

Nix stiffens.

His head slams into the headrest and the tremors begin.

The monitors streams with unintelligible data. Mr. Sing pushes back, confusion morphing his anger into nervousness.

“What’s happening?” Jamie asks.

Ms. Chen and Mr. Hansen run to them. They offer suggestions while Mr. Sing hits the keyboard. Nix’s eyes dance beneath his eyelids: a REM cycle on speed. The tremors become convulsions. The vital signs are jagged and angry.

“What are you doing to him?” Jamie grabs the wire matrix, but Mr. Hansen stops her.

“Don’t. Not yet.”

The wrinkles melt from his complexion. Nix’s lips fill out, his nose slimming. The technicians hardly notice a much younger man jittering in front of them. Mr. Hansen’s grip tightens on her wrist. She swings with her free hand but he drags her away, avoids her heels stomping at his feet. He wraps her in a bear hug, his strength surprising her.

Nix becomes as rigid as a pipe. His body bows upwards.

“No!” She can’t let this happen. She watched someone else die. Are they sucking the biomites out of him? “Stop!”

Just as she was about to elbow Mr. Hansen in the kidney, Nix drops. His arms dangle over the sides of the lounger; his body is limp and deflated. His mouth falls open and so do his eyes. But they’re focused on Jamie. He sees her struggling.

The sound of keyboards stops.

“We got it.” Mr. Sing runs his hand through his thick black hair.

“What do you mean?” Mr. Hansen asks.

“The extraction…you have to see this.”

Mr. Hansen releases Jamie. She pulls the wire matrix off Nix. Tiny welts appear on his forehead and temples.

“What’d you do?” she asks.

“I brought someone into the world.”

The three technicians study the results and argue over bits and pieces. In the end, they agree the extraction was a success. Mr. Sing begins creating a back-up copy. Jamie wonders how many profiles are stored here. If they can extract a personality with memories and identity, can they back up their own selves?

And just fabricate another body for themselves?
We do more than fabricate.