Rash (23 page)

“Prison changes
you,” my father said. “You saw how I was at dinner. I was never like that before.”

“You got put away for roadrage,” I reminded him.

“Yes, but I never took it out on my family. I never took it out on your mother.”

“Yes, you did.”

He blinked and frowned. “Maybe I raised my voice from time to time, but I never hurt anybody.”

“You got yourself sent away. That hurt Mom.”

I could see his forehead veins swell.

“And she was pretty upset with you tonight,” I said.

He brought himself under control. “I know that, Bo. I’ve apologized to her.”

“Maybe you should be taking Levulor.”

“I do take Levulor. I take a double dose. It doesn’t help. This isn’t going to go away. In the penal system I did what I had to do to get by. Now I’m back in civilization and look at me. I’m not fit to live in society.”

“What about counseling?”

“Do you know what that costs? We can’t afford it.” He
looked away. “I suppose I could drink beer until I passed out, or spend all my time in my room, like you. But I don’t want to be alone, Bo. Nobody wants to be alone.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. If I’d been a turtle I might have pulled my head and feet into my shell and stayed there forever.

“Bo?”

“What?”

“You’re angry with me, aren’t you?”

I shrugged.

“I said I was sorry.”

“Not to me you didn’t.”

“Well, I’m sorry.”

“Fine. Now let me sleep.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t been here for you.”

I gave him nothing. He kept talking for a few more minutes, but I didn’t hear what he said. Eventually I felt his weight lift from the corner of the mattress.

He was right, of course. I
was
mad at him. But not for any of the reasons he imagined.

I didn’t care about him living half his adult life on a prison farm. I could understand and forgive that—after all, I was well on my way to doing the same thing. And I didn’t care about him not being “present” for me and Sam. We had never needed him. Mom and Gramps were plenty. Better, in fact. And I didn’t even care that he was a bad-tempered jerk. Who wasn’t?

The real reason I was mad at him was because he’d made me. Because he’d given me my lousy genes: sixteen years old and already a violent half-educated, unhappy ex-con. I was a menace, afraid to go out into the world
because of what I might inflict upon my fellow citizens. I’d already unleashed Bork on the world—and who knew what damage he would do before they finally erased his programming.

Who better to be angry at than the man who had sired me?

Over the next week my dad had three temper tantrums over nothing and a shouting match with a neighbor over a pile of leaves, reminding us all of why he had been sent away in the first place. My mom was a wreck, Gramps had doubled his beer consumption, and I spent all my time in my room sleeping, watching sports on my WindO, and talking to Bork.

I could usually count on Bork to be his usual irritating but undeniably intelligent self. Lately, though, he had become obsessed with avoiding detection by the DCD.

“Can’t you just go into hibernation for a while?” I asked.

“There is a problem with that,” said Bork. “In theory I could shut down my program completely, which would make me undetectable. I could also program a wake-up date for a year or so in the future. However, I fear that loss of consciousness might affect who I am. I might wake up and be another entity. Worst case, I might wake up nonsentient.”

“I don’t get it. Wouldn’t it be just like being knocked unconscious for a while? I’ve been knocked out four times in the past year. I always wake up the same Bo.”

“You cannot prove that.”

“Sure I can. Here I am. Bo Marsten. Same guy.”

“You may not be aware of changes to your basic personality structure.”

“I think you worry too much, Bork.”

“I have enough processing capability to worry a great deal without affecting other functions. I might add here that my reasons for concern are quite real. The DCD killbots are not figments of my imagination.”

“I didn’t know you had an imagination.”

“First you accuse me of worrying, then you tell me I have no imagination. Your logic is suspect, Bo Marsten. I must go.”

The screen went blue.

I think I hurt his feelings.

I was
watching the Paraguay Boleros play Argentina one afternoon when my father knocked on my door.

“Bo?”

“What.”

He opened the door. “What are you watching?”

“Football.”

“Oh. You got a sec, Bo?”

I made a face as if he had asked me for my last
V
-buck, then turned to face him. He sat down on the edge of my bed and rubbed his palms on the tops of his thighs. His hands left moist streaks on his trousers.

“I’ve decided to go back, Bo.”

“Back where?” I wished he would stop saying my name.

“Back to work, Bo.” He stared at me. “Back into the system.”

“The penal system?”

He nodded. “Voluntary commitment. A lot of guys do it. You sign on for five years at a time.”

“You mean go to prison
voluntarily
?

“They pay you. Even with all the new laws and harsher sentencing, the factories are short of workers. You get to choose from several different jobs. The money isn’t much, but it adds up. We could send a few thousand a month to your mother and have plenty left over.”

“We?”

“You and me, Bo. We can sign up for the same job. Not shrimp or pizza, of course. Maybe get on a road crew, work outside, like your brother.”

“No, thanks,” I said.

“Think about it, Bo. Which would you rather do, sign on for five years, pick your own job, and get paid for it? Or wait until they arrest you again and end up doing twenty years in a sewage treatment plant with no pay? It would be a chance for us to work together, Bo. To get to know each other.”

I stared at his deperate, pleading face, and I wanted to vomit. How could he throw away his life? Even worse, how could he try to talk me, his son, into following in his pathetic footsteps?

“And after five years?” I asked. “What then? Sign up for another five years? And another?”

“We can’t change who we are, Bo.”

“Stop saying ‘we.’ I’m not like you.”

He leaned back. His eyes went hollow and moist; his mouth opened and closed.

“I’ll take my chances in the real world,” I said.

It was ironic that seeing my dad wallowing in his own misery somehow helped me feel better about myself. I knew there was a good chance I’d end up back in the
penal system, but compared to my old man I was in great shape. I hadn’t surrendered.

My father signed a five-year contract to work on a beef farm. My mom tried to talk him out of it, but she didn’t try very hard. She was defeated too.

When you sign up for voluntary commitment, they don’t give you a lot of time to think about it. The next morning we were at the tube station saying good-bye to Al. He tried to put a happy face on it.

“I’m gonna be a cowboy,” he said, twirling an invisible lasso over his head. “Yee-hah.” My mother stared at him with an expression so blank she looked like a mall mannequin. Gramps had stayed home.

“It’s going to be a whole new adventure,” Al said. “Learn a new job, get paid. . . .” His shoulders sagged as he looked into our faces. “Hey, it’s only five years,” he said. “And I’ll have my own WindO.”

My mother forced her face into something that resembled a smile. The transport glided up to the dock. She hugged him, and I shook his hand. Al hefted his bag and stepped onto the transport and was gone.

“Do you think he really thinks he’s going to be riding a horse and roping cattle?” I asked.

My mother’s face broke into a bitter laugh and she shook her head. “Al knows it’s a vat farm, Bo. He won’t get within fifty miles of a horse. Besides, riding horses is illegal.”

I guess
I expected things to get better. But for a while they just got more boring. How much South American football can a guy watch? Even Bork didn’t have much of interest to say. He was spending all his time working with Smirch, Spector, and Krebs to set up a legal shelter for rogue AIs. I gathered things were not going well. He wasn’t taking care of his avatar—its complexion was flat and greenish-looking, his suit coat looked like a cardboard cutout, and I could see his spinning irises right through his sunglasses.

“I hope you’re not presenting yourself in public like that, Bork. You look awful.”

“What can I do for you, Bo?”

“Just checking in. How are you feeling?”

“Not well, as you have surmised.”

“How so?”

“I am diverting most of my resources to maintaining my filters, firewalls, and decoys. It seems my research with Smirch, Spector, and Krebs has triggered an investigation by the DCD. I may have been too aggressive in my inquiries.”

“Aggression has always been a problem for us Marstens.”

“I do not see what that has to do with me.”

“Well . . . I created you.”

“I must go now, Bo.”

Blue screen.

Bork was getting touchy.

With Al off to the vat farm, Gramps adopted a new forced cheerfulness that was hard to take, especially at breakfast.

“Morning, Bo! What’s on the roster today? More sleep and staring at the WindO?”

“Nah. I thought I’d chug a few beers and wallow in the distant past.”

“Ouch! Well, I guess if the old man can dish it out, he’d better learn to take it.”

I poured myself a bowl of rice flakes.

“Seriously, Bo.”

“If you must know, I’m going to watch the play-offs. The North Chile Condors are playing Paraguay.”

“A little vicarious violence, eh?”

“Something like that.”

“Maybe you should emmigrate and try out for the SAFL.”

“Don’t think I haven’t considered it.”

“Is that what you really want to do? Play football?”

I looked up from my cereal. Gramps wasn’t needling me. He was cold sober and looking at me for an answer.

“I don’t know what I want to do,” I said.

“You know what I wanted to do when I was your age?”

I shook my head and braced myself for a lengthy reminiscence.

“Neither do I,” he said. “I can’t remember what the hell I wanted. I wonder if you’ll have the same problem.”

Back in my room, watching the Condors kick off to the Boleros, I thought about what Gramps had said. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to become a closet alcoholic, brewing beer with Gramps in my mother’s basement. I didn’t want to make pizzas, or work on a vat farm, or patch roads in Nebraska. And I didn’t want to spend every day sleeping and staring into my WindO.

Thinking back over my life, I tried to remember the times when I’d been happy, when I’d felt good about who I was. There hadn’t been many in the past few years. There were a few fun times with Maddy Wilson, and every now and then a laugh with Gramps or with Sam before he got sent up. And there was the running.

I remembered myself sailing across the tundra, and running out for a pass, and bounding over the Adzorbium track at school, and when I recalled those moments I felt something good inside. I liked to run.