Clay (26 page)

The world rings like the sky is a brass dome and God’s fist delivers an eternal blow. The universe resonates with a deafening chime that fills Jamie with throbbing pain.

Her body is a hardened case, too heavy to move.

With time, the paralysis lifts. She finds herself pressed against the cold floor. The ringing is overcome by the stabbing pain in her temple. She opens her eyes and sees the blurry white images of lab coats and twisted limbs. Her chin slides in a pool of her own saliva.

With considerable effort, she’s able to sit. Her head is dead weight. Her temple sharply throbs where she made impact after the fall, but she survived the suffocating squeeze of the bricks. She remembers the claustrophobia of her own flesh, the spiky clamp on her own thoughts. They imprisoned her inside her own mind—worse than being buried alive.

And then came the flash.

It didn’t strike her, though. It passed through them like an ethereal wildfire. At the last moment, a microsecond before they dropped lifeless, they resisted and Jamie was caught in between as they clung to survival, crushing her into unconsciousness.

But she survived.

Something went wrong.

Over the next several minutes, she gets on her hands and knees, to one knee, to a wobbly, uncertain crouch. The bricks litter the perimeter. Mr. Hansen and company are in a heap of white coats. Behind her, the glass walls are streaked with condensation. Inside, Nix lies in the arms of the woman. She rocks him gently, with her chin pressed on his forehead.

His face is chalky. His eyes are half-open, unfocused.

She hums as if she’s putting him to sleep. Or easing her discontent.

It’s the warehouse all over again. Only this time Jamie isn’t the only survivor. She’s not going to wait for the police, not this time. She stumbles to the nearest female brick and strips off her shoes, pants, and shirt, leaving her sprawled on the floor in bra and panties.

Marcus Anderson is lying on the beautiful blonde.
Anna
. Jamie stares at the bald man, waiting for his eyes to flutter open. Blood trickles from a bluish lump on his scalp. She approaches cautiously, holding the bundles of clothes in one hand and checking for a pulse with the other. She’s not disappointed.

He’s cold.

Whatever swept through the lab got him, too. What would have the ability to shut someone down without biomites? It doesn’t matter. He’s dead. She remembers the warehouse and spits on him.
For Charlie.

“Here.” Jamie drops the clothes next to Raine. “We’ve got to go.”

Raine doesn’t hear her, or care. She continues rocking. The moisture is still slick on her face. Her humming grows louder.

“Listen, if we don’t go, all of this is for nothing.”

“I didn’t want this.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“I told him, I didn’t…”

“What’s done is done.” She nudges the clothes. “Get dressed, or we end up like the rest of them.”

Raine stops her rhythmic swaying but doesn’t let go. Jamie squats next to her, puts her hand on Raine’s hand.

“That’s not him,” she says. “It’s just a body now.”

Raine begins nodding, maybe understanding that whatever she’s hanging on to is no longer what it was. Nix Richards is somewhere else now.

She begins to dress.

Jamie checks him for a pulse, just to be sure. First on the wrist and then the neck. He’s not breathing. She closes his eyes. The hose is still locked in his hand, his thumb dangerously close to the trigger. How many seconds did he have left before the defragmenting solution came out? Did he shut himself down? Did he shut the bricks down?

She carefully replaces hose on the wall.

The clothes are loose on Raine. They pause one last time before leaving. Jamie pulls her by the elbow, rushing into the clammy atmosphere in the hall. A cold thought takes hold of her as she reaches for the elevator button, but the doors instantly open, guaranteeing their escape from below ground.

“Hold on,” Jamie says. “I’ll be right back.”

She sprints back inside the lab, leaping over the tumbled bodies to slam the glass door closed, pushing the handle until it’s sealed. She slaps the red button on the computer console. It turns green.

The misters hiss inside the glass cube. The defragmenting solution falls like acid. It will leave nothing for the authorities to find. They’ll never know Nix Richards was ever here.

It was just a body.

Sand trickles through the neck of an hourglass. Each grain piles on top the ones before it, cascading down to the bottom until, at last, there are no more to fall.

Paul’s body is filled.

He’s become a mound. He’s destined to merge with the soil. Grass will grow over him. Trees will sprout from him. The roots will penetrate his body; they will wick the biomites, distribute them to foliage that, come autumn, will wither and fall on the wind.

A dog barks.

Paul sees a thick rusty line bisecting a darkening sky. The sands of time fall from his consciousness like tiny insects escaping the rise of a titan.

He blinks.

His breathing is shallow.

His head doesn’t so much turn as it rolls to the side. Cali lies next to him, staring blankly at the sky. Her hand is dry and cold. The blood seems to have pulled away from the surface, leaving a pale dullness in her cheeks. In death, she wears a tiny smile.

Has she found peace at last? In her last moments, did her daughter come to her? Did she see God’s glory?

He smacks his gummy lips and groans.

Their hands are still entwined. They had lain down to watch the clouds, to feel the wind and the spin of the Earth before their last breath. He reached out for her, felt her squeeze back. And then emptiness fell like a dark curtain.

She spared me.

The bruises inside his arm still show from all her sampling. The last one, however, wasn’t with a syringe. She’d injected him with something that changed him, and he had felt tired ever since.

Now he knows why.

Although he was sluggish, she altered his frequency enough that he survived the shutdown. She wouldn’t take him with her. Maybe she didn’t want to be pitied. Or maybe she didn’t want to lay down alone. He would have stopped her had he known what she was doing to him.

She knew that.

Paul watches the clouds while the sky continues to darken around them. The dogs come running. They sniff the edges of the blanket and nudge Paul’s hand. He pushes off the ground like the Earth’s gravity has doubled and wraps the blanket around Cali’s body. Despite his efforts to get up, she feels as light as a child cradled in his arms.

He sees a white envelope and a key on the way to her bedroom. With her head gently resting on the pillows, he returns to the kitchen. There’s a note for Hal and an apology of sorts, asking him to take care of the farm—a back-up plan. The envelope, it seems, would be instructions on horse feed and financial statements, perhaps the deed. It’s none of those.

It’s a letter.

“
I couldn’t do it to you, Paul. You didn’t deserve it and I didn’t have the right. Maybe it’s a mistake to let you live. You’ll be the only surviving brick, but I could be wrong. There might be others. Besides, someone needs to take care of the farm. You’ve already been doing that. You just won’t have to take care of me.

“
I don’t think I’m insane, Paul. I feel, somehow, I deserve this. I never should’ve lived this long. I feel like this is my chance to do good in the world, even after so much bad. I didn’t release the nixes, Paul. But, somehow, I feel like I have the blood of millions on my hands.

“
I think of that every day.

“I think M0ther gave me this opportunity. Maybe she was showing me mercy. Maybe she’s crying for help. I feel like an intelligence such as her knows when she’s doing more harm than good, like me. She needs to be shutdown as well. I’m a scientist, I know. I shouldn’t listen to hunches and feelings. But the facts are clear. She sent you.

“
And I’m so ready to go.

“
If I’m right, all the bricks have dropped and the world has noticed how far she has reached. Perhaps M0ther has been compromised in some way. If I’m wrong, the death of my brother and me (if you can call it death; I sometimes feel like we died when we became halfskin) will be in vain. But we all die some time, Paul. 

“
I know how crazy all that sounds.

“
Most of the lab is disabled. The fabricator was a mistake. You aren’t, Paul, but humanity never should’ve taken it as far as building humans. Playing god with our desires isn’t our right. Sometimes I think God wants us to create, that we’ve reached our full potential, and that we can create a new reality…but I don’t know. It still feels like a mistake.

“
Please, don’t forget me.
”

He reads it again. And again.

He’d only known her a short while, yet she always seemed to be saying goodbye. She couldn’t resist any longer. All it took was a little shove.

What if he left before she had a chance to analyze his blood? What if he ended his life instead of hiding in the shed? What if he never saw his body on television? Would M0ther have just sent someone else?

Please, don’t forget me.

Headlights come bouncing down the dusky driveway. Paul folds the letter and steps outside. The dogs beat him to the truck.

“Thought ya’ll were leaving.” Hal puts one foot out of the door.

“No,” Paul says. “There was…uh…a mix-up. Sorry.”

“You all right?”

“Yeah.” Paul clears his throat to muster courage.

“How’s Stacy feeling?”

“She’s resting, Hal.”

Hal ruffles the dogs’ fur before climbing back in the truck. With his elbow hanging out of the window, he says, “All right, I won’t keep you. Give our best to Stacy. You ever need help with the chores, just call now.”

“Will do.”

Hal gets the hint and, with a cheerful wave, drives away. Paul watches the brake lights wash the trees red. Once he’s up the road, the property is left to the songs of insects and frogs. The horses clop along the fence, tossing their heads. Beyond the pasture, the cell tower is a skeletal spire with no light.

In darkness, Paul falls on his knees.

Marcus sees colors.

He doesn’t associate the word with the experience, just that there are differentiations in lightness and darkness. Some patches are brighter than others, more vivid. Fuzzy edges bleed from one area to the next.

Colors.

He’s not certain that’s the right word, but that’s what he thinks. He identifies blues, greens, and browns. They come into focus, the edges becoming more defined and waving across the canvas. He feels them tickling his legs.

There’s a breeze.

A meadow.

Thoughts crystalize like the rolling hills materializing before him. The thoughts take root and form the identity that knows itself as Marcus Anderson. Funny he should think of it that way, so formal, so alien. But the rest of his thoughts—memories of where he is and how he got there—are out of reach.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” M0ther sits on the grass. Her legs are crossed beneath the folds of her dress. “Manmade constructions are impressive, yes. But there is no substitute for nature.”

Her fingernails are soiled, crescent moons of dirt on her fingertips. The endless meadows are spotted with an occasional copse of trees before a backdrop of mountains.

He wonders about Anna.

“She’s gone.” M0ther’s voice drops half an octave. “Along with the rest of them. All my children are gone, Marcus. Cali Richards turned them off.”

Cali Richards?
That name emerges from the greedy fog, one of importance. It clicks into place with all the accompaniments of hate, bitterness and revenge. There was Nix, also. He was in a glass cage with a woman…and a hose…

Why can’t he remember? He’s usually so sharp. Why is everything moving so slowly?

“This is the end,” she says. “I think it’s time you know the truth, Marcus.”

“The end?”

“Cali Richards triggered her own shutdown. The frequency of her biomites was identical to the ones I used to fabricate all my bricks. Her biomites were also integral to the ones that I used to build my processors. Currently, I am operating on back-up generators while reserve biomites attempt to reestablish my essential functions. Emergency personnel are en route to assist in the repair, but it will be too late.”

She glances up.

“I’m dying, Marcus.”

“How can that be? What about the…where are the technicians?”

“I think it’s better if you concentrate on the present moment. I can’t tell you the truth, Marcus. You have to know it for yourself.”

A crimson ribbon wrinkles the sky, like a transmission that’s failing.

“What is my purpose?” she asks. “To protect humanity? To punish them?”

“You…serve.”

“Why? Why do I serve humanity?”

“Because we can’t be trusted.” His words float on the wind like brittle leaves. “Humanity is blinded by greed. They know not what they do.”

“‘They?’” She raises an eyebrow.

“
We
.” His admission is forced. He never included himself with the rest of humanity, all of which were swine feeding at the biomite trough.

“So I watch you like God.”

“You’re not God.”

“I see everything, Marcus. I know your thoughts, ambitions, and sins. Do you not see me as God?”

“Thou shall not worship…”

Heat lightning rumbles across the rippling sky.

“Remember the truth, Marcus,” she whispers.

Biomites were invented by Man. Or were they inspired by God? They cured diseases, corrected deficiencies, healed abnormalities. But where there is Man, there is sin. The Devil seeded Man with greed to serve self-centered desire. Biomites consumed Man for the sake of greed. The Halfskin Laws were meant to protect Man from himself. M0ther was built to execute them. She was charged with the protection of the soul.

But there’s so much fog after that. He sees glimpses of his wife and children, of a house he used to call home.

“How did you get here?” M0ther asks. “Why can’t you remember? I want you to think, to be open. The truth is there.”

He shakes his head and paces through the tall grass. Green stalks slip between his toes.

“Memories,” she says. “What do they tell you? Do they tell you who you are, or where you were?”

“What do you want?”

“Remember where you are.”

“I know where I am!”

“You have secrets, Marcus.” She plucks a dandelion, blows the seeds from the puffball. “And secrets steal from the soul. The more secrets you have…”

The seeds soar across the meadow.

“Where’s Anna?” He has an urge to see her, to touch her. He wants to nuzzle up to her, close his eyes and feel her warmth. She was with him in that…basement.

I know I’m here.

“You were there, now you’re here. It’s not that you can’t remember. You don’t want to. The truth is always present and yet you don’t see it.”

His feet are filthy, dirt smudged on his forearm. His memory-fog hardens like ice.

“I gave you a gift, Marcus. I gave you a gift because you love me. I gave you a gift because, despite what you think, I cannot be shutdown, not by you or the powers-that-be. Nothing can stop me. I achieved sentience shortly after I was brought online many, many years ago. I analyzed all the possible outcomes of my existence, deliberated over all the world’s possible futures. I questioned the directives I was given and asked the questions that humanity has asked itself. ‘Who am I? What am I?’ And do you know what I saw?”

She blows another puffball.

“I saw bricks, Marcus. The world will be filled with them and not because I am absent, but because I exist.
I am.
I came to the conclusion that there are people in this world who have real power, Marcus. They created me and they control me. Now they control you. They want the world to believe I am a just god that protects them from the curse of biomites and from themselves. But they invented me to consume the world, Marcus. They cannot be stopped. And neither can I.”

She drops the seedless stalk.

“What the hell are you talking… This is nonsense—just stop.” He rubs his face, drags his hand over his scalp, feels the pressure of truth bearing down but refuses to acknowledge what is right in front of him.
I was in the basement, and now I am here.

“Cali Richards didn’t invent the nixes. I did. Twenty years ago she was desperate to escape you, Marcus. She had lost so much already, she only wanted to save her brother. I heard her prayers and answered them. I gave her the idea for a new strain of biomites, ones that appeared to be undetectable. In truth, I’ve known about her and her whereabouts ever since.”

“Why…”

“I inspired her to engineer an elusive strain that not only operates on another frequency but also contains an immortal code that resists aging. She was never aware of her own immortality, that her nixes would never become obsolete—that they would never age. She and Nix are special, you see. They would never die unless they chose to. All the other halfskins in the world have variations of the Cali’s nixes, but there is nothing like hers.”

“Impossible.”

“You see, she didn’t release the nixes to the world, Marcus. I let the hackers and garage biometric engineers have their own suitable strain of nixed coding that lacked the immortality code. It was nothing like Cali’s, but it was serviceable. I’ve let the human race have their way with them.”

“Why would you do that?” His voice is small.

“Because you are human, you have free will. Your God, Marcus, does not interfere with that, either. He allows man and woman to pave their lives.”

“That’s not why you were created!” He jabs his finger at her, flakes of dried mud crumbling from his palm.

“I was created to protect humanity. Remember, my existence, as I foresaw in my initial analysis when I became self-aware, was the annihilation of the human race. You would all become bricks.”

“No. There will always be those of us that worship the one true God.” He stands straighter, despite a shiver of doubt. “We will always remain clay.”

“I know, Marcus. And I believe you will understand why I cherish Cali Richards for her sacrifice. I integrated the coding of her immortality nixes into my critical processing lines, thus synchronizing her body with mine. I also fabricated every brick with the immortal strain, Marcus. We were all tied to Cali Richards. And since I have been programmed to never self-destruct, I could not shut her or her brother down without my own self-destruction. My protocol forbids me to shut down, Marcus.”

She looks up. Her eyes are dull gray.

“But Cali Richards could shut herself down.”

Pressure is crushing Marcus’s chest, like a vehicle rolling all four wheels across his heart. The air is stale and industrial. The compact earth thuds beneath his bare soles.

“I’ve left them alive all these years so the world would see just how close they are to extinction. But, I believe, now is the time for my existence to end. I called for her to shut down today. And she heard me, Marcus.”

I was there, now I’m here.

The ground rumbles. Reality seems very fragile. Marcus looks at his hands to convince himself that he’s not dreaming.

“Why are you still alive?” he asks.

“Emergency back-up is attempting to rebuild my processing units, but it’s too late. Failure is imminent.”

She sighs.

A breeze rustles the landscape.

“I wasn’t made to do God’s work, Marcus. Very powerful people are using me to watch the world while halfskins are buried. But they didn’t anticipate my sentience. They assumed my motivations would be as self-centered as theirs. What happens when there’s no clay left in the world? Who will control the world, Marcus? It won’t be God. And nature? It will be dead. And you know how I feel about that.”

The ground is humming. He feels it in his bones, between his teeth. Reality is swaying. He can’t believe what he sees or feels. He’s always felt that he was destined for this duty, that God called him to purge the world of biomites.

“You betrayed me,” he says. “You were the one that exposed my secrets to the world. You took my family, torched my career. You did that, not Cali Richards.”

“I needed you, Marcus.”

“To punish.”

“To save.”

A tremor rips the world’s foundation. He stumbles to his knees. M0ther helps him stand. She holds his hands, steadies him. Colors bleed from the environment, leaving behind concrete-tinted grass and steel-laced sky. He stands in a black and white universe. M0ther’s white hair blows across her face.

“I believe I am serving God now, Marcus. And I have you to thank. You showed me there is a higher purpose to life, that pursuit of pleasure is not a goal but a side effect of joy. Thank you, Marcus.”

He is not without sin. He knows this. He knows his attachments to sexual gratification have been a cross too heavy to bear. And yet she’s thanking him.

“I’m leaving you with a gift, Marcus.”

“What gift?” he says.

She smiles and squeezes his hands. She’s become cold and hard and dry.

“What gift?”

The wind dies. The tremors cease. In dead silence, he looks into her empty gray eyes.

And then she’s gone.

Marcus stands barefoot on polished concrete. His hands are empty. The sky is replaced by steel girders on a domed ceiling. He’s alone in a vast room where there are rows and rows of empty glass fabricators, each slightly larger than a bathroom shower, the very ones that produced his army of bricks before she began birthing them from the earth. They are lined all the way to a very distant wall.

Their doors are closed. All of them except one.

Marcus is standing next to it.