The Body Electric - Special Edition (3 page)

I stuff my single pastizza into my mouth, relishing the warm, gooey cheese. The flaky crust crumbles down my shirt as I tap my cuff against the scanner by the gate. Four armed guards stand at attention, and another one checks my info before allowing me into the gardens. The Secessionary War ended before I was born, but there are still threats against our blossoming global union.

While I eat, I check my messages on my cuff. An advertisement for a clothing store I went to once, a summary of articles that mentioned Dad or Mom’s names published online this week.

“Look, Harold!” a woman exclaims, stopping in the middle of the path so suddenly that I bump into her. “Sorry, sorry,” she says, grinning at me as I step around her. “I just got so excited!”

I glance up to see what she’s looking at—Triumph Towers. The path through Central Gardens is designed to wind around, showing off the city’s skyline at strategic points.

I step off the kinetic walkway, cutting through the manicured lawn. New Venice is the capital of the world—not just in politics and economy, but everything else, too: fashion, art, technology. While I’ve never left the shores of Malta, I feel as if I’m more global than a world traveler. Everything comes to us.

My wrist buzzes and the tech foil vibrates against my skin. I look at the words that flash across the top of my cuff, then glide my fingers over the surface, answering the call.

My cuffLINK—the licensing, identification, and networking key I wear around my wrist—is linked to the nanobots inside me. Twenty years ago, the only bots people used were for vaccines, but now everyone has nanobots. Enhancement bots ensure that everyone has good vision and hearing throughout their lives. Media bots connect to our wrist cuff, giving us the ability to display information directly into our retinas, or to listen to music or have conversations through the interface without using an earpiece.

Now, as I answer the call, my vision fills with a holographic image of my best friend, Akilah Xuereb. Her voice rings in my ear—“Hella’, Ella!”—all of this directly fed from my cuff to the nanobots in my eyes and ears.

“Hi, Aks!” I grin. I keep walking through the park; the image of Akilah floats in front of me, as if she’s walking with me.

“What are you up to?” she asks. She sweeps her hair—done up in long Havana twists—off her shoulders, shaking it behind her.

“Just on a walk.”

Akilah doesn’t speak for a moment. Her eyes narrow.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“Nothing.”

Akilah purses her lips.

“
Nothing
,” I insist.

“What happened?”

I sigh. I can never get anything past Akilah. We’ve been friends since primary school, when she let me twist her fluffy hair into dozens of braids during recess.

“Mom’s worse,” I confess as I veer deeper into the gardens, heading toward the trees.

Akilah curses, and I note that she’s picked up some more colorful words since starting her service year in the military. Before becoming a full citizen, everyone must complete a year of service at the end of secondary school. A white band illuminates the top of my cuff to indicate that I’m serving as an intern; Akilah has a yellow band on her cuff since she was assigned to a year of military service.

“But does this mean your father’s treatment isn’t working any more?” Akilah asks.

I shake my head. “And we’ve had to scale back on it, anyway. She’s overloaded with bots.”

Dad’s medical nanobots in Mom’s system work to replace the synapses that the disease destroyed, but there’s a limit to the number of nanobots someone can have. No one realized nanobots were dangerous until the Secessionary War. That’s when the government started giving the human soldiers new enhancement bots. Bots in the eyes to make a soldier be able to see in the dark. Bots in the muscles to give superhuman strength. Bots in the mind to make a soldier go for days and days without sleep.

Too many bots. And one by one, the soldiers started to develop bot-brain—their brains literally turned to mush. It was a quick but gruesome death as the very bots they’d taken to live destroyed them from the inside out.

Which is exactly what will happen to Mom if she takes more bots.

“What are you going to do?” Akilah asks.

I pause, looking at my friend. It’s almost like she’s here with me, but of course she’s not. I glance up at the moon, nothing more than a pale white shadow on the rich, blue sky.

Akilah’s somewhere there, at the lunar military base. And while I can see her, thanks to the nanobots projecting her image directly into my eye, I can’t feel her. I can’t touch her.

“There’s nothing I can do,” I say finally, defeated. “Listen, I’ve got to go.”

Akilah shoots me a sympathetic frown, then her face freezes. “Wait… you said you were going for a walk. You’re not… Ella, where are you?”

“Nowhere,” I say too quickly.

“Ella! You
can’t
obsess! You really shouldn’t—”

“Gotta go, bye!” I say quickly as I swipe my fingers across my cuff and disconnect the call. Akilah’s right—I shouldn’t obsess over my father’s death. But after that nightmare and Mom’s health, I just… I need to see it again.

Dad’s grave.

five

A long, long time ago, people used to bury the dead. But New Venice is a modern city, and there’s no room for carved stones and wasted earth. Instead, people are cremated, and their remains are used to fertilize the roots of trees and other plants in Central Gardens. On the far side of the park, near the perimeter walk, the trees are larger, some of them planted from the remains of people who died before the city was finished being built. Not everyone who dies has a tree planted—only the people very important to the city.

Like my father.

The groveyard is my favorite place in the entire city. It’s the only place in New Venice where real trees grow. I know that if we dig down far enough, the base of my city is steel rafters and concrete, not solid earth. But it
feels
real, here, where the trees are growing up from the gently rolling slopes of the cemetery that’s really a forest.

My steps slow as I reach the groveyard. The trees waft gently in the breeze, but my attention zeroes in on one in particular—a small holly with a plaque encircling its base.

Philip D. Shepherd

2299-2341

Truth lies in the heart of fortune.

I stand there, blinking away tears as I stare at the hard, prickly leaves. The world grows cold and still. There’s a sort of bitter finality to seeing his death date right there in front of me.

And there’s something worse inside of me, a weight tugging my heart out of my chest at the way I notice, for the first time, the way there’s space under Dad’s epigraph. Space for Mom’s name to be inscribed. She’ll be planted here, too, her ashes mingling with Dad’s, growing from an ivy that will wrap around the holly tree. I was the one who set up Dad’s funeral arrangements; I saw the ones she’d already prepared after she was diagnosed.

I grit my teeth together.

I can’t lose Mom. Not her, too.

“Um?”

I turn around, surprised that anyone else is here. The groveyard isn’t exactly popular, not when you could pretty much do anything else in the city. The guy who spoke is about my age, a little taller than me (which isn’t saying much), and he barely fits in the worn black jacket covering his cut biceps despite the warm day. I wouldn’t say he’s handsome, or even particularly good-looking, but there’s something about him that makes my heart clang like a bell. He has dark, cropped hair, but the most striking thing about him his is pale blue eyes.

Or maybe I just notice his eyes because he’s gaping at me.

“Yeah?” I ask, impatient when he doesn’t say anything else.

The guy reaches for my arm, pulling me closer to him. I wrest free—I don’t like strangers touching me—and he reaches for me again, his wrist encircling my arm and yanking me painfully several steps forward. I act on instinct, twisting my wrist out of his grasp and slamming the end of my palm against his face, connecting with an audible crunch against his nose and splitting his lip open. “Don’t touch me!” I shout at him. My muscles are tense, ready to spring into action. I’m suddenly aware of how very alone we are.

“Look—” the guy starts, but I jerk around my elbow blocking him from coming closer.

It’s like the guy’s face snaps into a mask, one made of hard edges. All the color drains from his face—except for the bright pink of the blossoming bruise on his cheek and nose. His heavy eyebrows pull down into a scowl, and he glares at me so much that I take an instinctive step backward. My movement makes some sort of emotion flicker across his face—regret?—but it’s quickly masked again.

“Look, I’m only here to warn you.” There’s something of desperation and danger in his expression; he looks like a caged animal, despite the fact that we’re in an open area.

My eyes grow wide, and I look around me, half expecting to see attackers jump out from behind the trees.

He rubs his hand over his short hair. “It’s not—it’s—”

“What?” I ask. I wrap my right hand over my left wrist, over my cuff, where there’s a panic button that will bring police to my aid if this guy turns dangerous.

The guy’s eyes narrow when he sees. He curses. “I just wanted to warn you about Akilah,” he said. “There, I said it, I’m gone now.”

“What?” I ask again as he turns away. “What about Akilah?”

He hesitates.

“How do you even know Akilah?”

He stops entirely.

“Don’t be like that,” he says without turning. His shoulders slump, defeated, and I almost don’t catch what he says next. “I know it sounds crazy, but… listen, you can’t trust her.”

“Of course I can; she’s my best friend!” My only friend.

He still doesn’t turn around. “Not any more,” he says.

I start to object, but he turns, throwing up his hands. “I only came here to say that. Out of… respect for you father. That’s all. I’m going.”

He starts to walk off—and I let him, there’s no point talking to crazy—but he pauses at Dad’s grave. He stands there respectfully, his eyes lingering on the little stone marker that encircles Dad’s tree. His face is hidden as he leans down, his mouth muttering words I cannot hear.

I glance away, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear. He’s talking to Dad the same way I do. His face is full of sadness, his tone, regret. He looks kind.

He looks as if he misses Dad as much as I do.

six

I walk slowly back to my apartment and the Reverie Mental Spa. I have no idea who that guy was, but there’s something about him that feels like déjà vu. I shake my head, trying to clear it. I’m tempted to call Akilah, but she only has certain blocks of time she can use her cuff; the military is strict about communication on the base. I have no idea how that guy knew Akilah, but he was clearly—

I stop in my tracks, almost slapping myself on my head.
Of course
. He was wearing a jacket, even though it’s so hot outside today. He was trying to cover up his cuff. He was my age, he knew Akilah, and he didn’t want anyone to see his cuff.

He’s a defector.

Anyone assigned to the military has a yellow band on their cuff. After their year of service, the band turns gold. But if they scamper, then their cuff turns black so everyone can see.

That guy was probably assigned military for his year of service, just like Akilah. And instead of serving it, he defected. He must have been enlisted long enough to meet Akilah—he knew her well enough to learn who I was, at least—but then dropped out. What a loser. Without completing his year of service, he’s lost all chance of going to university, he can’t vote, he might as well pack it up and go to a Secessionary State. I don’t know why he bothered to try to say something to me about Akilah, but someone willing to defect has more issues than I care to try unravel.

By the time I get back home, Mom and Ms. White are already there. Mom assures me everything’s fine, but my eyes shoot to Ms. White’s grim look.

“Oh, don’t be so doom and gloom!” Mom says. “Look what Dr. Simpa gave me!”

Mom points to Ms. White’s office. I shoot her a confused look, and then someone steps out of the office.