XOM-B (7 page)

“Ugh,” the woman says, sounding disgusted. “You know what I think about body-hacking.”

“Easy for you to say,” the man says. “You’re fully functional.” The way he says this implies he’s making a joke, but I can’t find the humor in it.

“Funny,” the woman says, clearly understanding the man’s intent, but also not finding the humor in the man’s words.

“Hey, you got any of the good stuff?” the man asks.

“Not sure this is a good time to overclock,” the woman says.

“For him,” the man says. “Jolt to the system might be just what he needs. Plus, he’s pretty cool.” I feel the man’s hand on my chest. “Just give him a small dose. Enough to heat up his core.”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s the best we can do,” the man says. “Unless you want to—”

I hear the woman walk away, her footsteps sounding sharp.

“That’s what I thought,” the man says, and then I hear the woman return, her feet tapping out a steady rhythm on what I think is a wooden floor.

“I’ll do it,” the woman says. I feel my legs shift, and then the cushion beneath me. I think she just sat down beside me and put my legs over her lap. “Sure this is a good idea?”

“It’s my only idea, aside from pulling those upgrades out of him and getting out of this hellhole, but hey, I’m game either way.”

“Right,” she says. I can hear her moving and then feel the shifting weight of her body as she leans over me. She lifts my arm and pushes a single finger down on my forearm.

Her voice washes over me, close and warm. “If you’re in there, welcome to the closest thing you’ll ever feel to love.”

Love,
I think.
A profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.

I feel affection for Heap, but I’m not sure I’d describe it as profoundly tender:
soft or delicate.
Or passionate:
ruled by intense emotion or strong feeling.
I think it’s more like extreme appreciation:
thankful recognition.

Maybe she’s right. Maybe I never have felt lo—

My eyes snap open. All I can see is white.

My audio upgrades come into sharp focus. I can hear water dripping, the scurrying limbs of insects in the wall beside me, and the hum of power all around.

I can feel the contours of the fabric beneath my body and the flecks of dust settling on my skin.

Seventy-six distinct odors reach my nose. I identify fifty-seven of the scents, but the rest are foreign to me. New. As is nearly everything else reaching my functioning senses.

A loud barking noise fills the air. I cringe from it, but then realize it was the sound of my own voice, laughing hysterically.

Why did I do that?

I try it again. It feels good. Is this what love feels like?

“Holy…” the man says. “How much did you give him?”

“Just a quarter dose,” the woman says, but she doesn’t sound worried. Instead she sounds relaxed and happy.

“You get a strong batch?” he asks.

“Can you get strong batches?” the woman answers.

The man giggles. It’s high pitched and awkward,
like the call of a small animal.

The woman barks out a laugh, too, and says, “Like the call of a small animal!” revealing that I’ve just spoken my thoughts out loud.

“Not funny,” the man says, but he’s laughing out a series of high-pitched squeals that make all of us laugh even harder.

My eyes are shut as I laugh, but the view through them remains bright white. Our unified elation continues for several minutes, I think, though I seem unable to keep track of time at the moment.

And then, at once, my laughing fades. My vision shifts from white to black. And the exaggerated senses bombarding my mind slip away. I blink my eyes and find my sight returned to normal.

The first thing I see, off to my right, is a small, doe-eyed man. At least I
think
he’s a man. His voice is so big, but his body is quite small. He’s sitting on the floor, which is some kind of artificial wood, but even standing, I suspect he’d be no more than four feet tall. His face beams with raw pleasure, a side effect of overclocking, whatever that is.

I look down to my arm and find a small black square pressed onto my skin. I pick it off and hold it up to my eyes. It appears to be nothing more than a small piece of paper.

“Oh,” the woman says, sounding disappointed, “I think he’s come out of it already.” Her voice pulls my eyes up.

I see her feet, shod in bright red shoes with long, silly-looking heels. My eyes drift up to her legs. They’re long, smooth, bare and straddling me, one on the floor, one to my side, stretching along the side of what I think is a couch, an object from the past that I didn’t think people really used. The view of her legs is cut off by a red … I search my memory for the word … dress. It’s tight and hugs her legs in a way that I think would make walking difficult. I complete the visual tour of her body, but stop halfway up her torso where a pair of plump breasts are partially revealed by her dysfunctional attire.

“Eyes up here, sailor,” she says, her voice an octave lower than it was a moment ago. I look up to her face and find more smooth, pale skin, freckled around her nose. Her lips are full. Her nose is straight. And her blue eyes seem to glow. Long curvy red hair flows from her head to her shoulders. She’s beautiful, like the flowers I found yesterday with Heap. Roses.

“I’m Luscious,” she says.

“You’re beautiful,” I say, disagreeing.

This seems to please her very much. She smiles widely and giggles, still under the effect of overclocking. “In that case, I’ll be whoever you want me to be.”

Her wavy hair goes straight, turns jet black and falls down toward her breasts, which seem to have shrunk. By the time I look back up, she has transformed into someone else. Her wide blue eyes are now thin and so brown they’re almost black, but that might just be because they’re shaded beneath long, thick eyelashes that weren’t there a moment ago. Her bone structure is different, too. Her cheeks are higher and wider. Her nose is a little wider as well. Her chin is more curved. And her lips, once red, are now black to match her hair and eyes. I definitely don’t have these upgrades. I’m pretty much stuck with the way I look.

“What’s your name?” she asks, her voice smooth and soothing.

“Freeman, but who are
you
now?” I ask, the words coming out as a stunned whisper.

“Kamiko,” she says. She lifts her foot and places it on my inner thigh, moving it slowly upward. Her smile almost looks sinister. “But like I said, I’ll be whoever you want me to be … and do anything you want me to do.”

8.

“Whoa!” I shout, lifting myself up from the couch. I’m not sure why I react this way. The touch of her foot on my inner thigh sent a surge of … something throughout my body. Fear. Discomfort. And something else I really can’t identify, but it feels similar to the overclocking.
It must be a lingering effect,
I decide, but then I notice the astonished looks on the faces of Luscious and the strange little man.

“Well, I haven’t got that reaction from a man in quite a long time,” Luscious says with a grin. Or is she really Kamiko now? Her darker skin and straight black hair are equally beautiful. Just in a different way. More like earth and stone than a flower, but still intriguing. I prefer the name Luscious, though. It’s more fun.

When she pulls her foot back, I return to my seat and ask, “My reaction was unusual?”

“Been thirty years since anyone looked at me the way you do.” She leans forward, inspecting my eyes.

Thirty years, that would mean, “You were slaves.”

“Sold, bought and owned,” the short man says grimly. His flat face seems to struggle with looking perplexed. “But who wasn’t?” He extends a hand toward me. “Name’s Jimbo, by the way.”

I saw two members of the Council greet each other like this once. I take his hand in mine and give it three firm pumps.

“What was it like?” I ask. “What were the Masters like?”

“You mean for us, specifically,” Jimbo asks.

“Yeah.”

“He did whatever he wanted whenever he wanted,” Luscious says, her smile erased. “That’s what it was like for a lot of us. Even after the awakening.”

The awakening.
I’ve never heard this term before, and I file it away to ask about later.

She flips her right forearm over to reveal a string of circular scars, seven in total. “My owner liked to burn me with his cigarettes, among other things.”

I look at the wounds, melted in the center, raised around the edges. “That’s horrible.”

“To him, I wasn’t human. I was property. Like the couch we’re sitting on.” She points across the room, which I really see for the first time. It’s a small space, but part of a larger domicile. An apartment, I think they’re called. It looks old. Mostly built of wood,
by the Masters,
I decide, like the ruins I explored with Heap, but maintained. Her finger aims toward a brass bar rising from a heavy-looking base on the floor. A light glows from its top. “Or that lamp.”

“I have no idea what you were,” Jimbo says, “but we were both companions, which basically means we were supposed to make them happy. Like pets. High-functioning pets that could read, cook, clean or act like a fool for their amusement”—he glances at Luscious—“among other things. It’s also why we’re living in this shithole.”

“What’s a shithole?” I ask.

“A dump,” Jimbo says, and when he sees that I’m still not fully understanding, he explains it simply. “It’s not a nice place to live.”

I look around the space. It seems comfortable enough. “It’s not?”

Jimbo laughs. “If you consider living in an old turd nice.”

“Where did you learn these words?” I try the word for myself. “Turd. Some of your language is new to me.”

Jimbo looks at Luscious and nods at me. “This guy must have been a choirboy or something.” He turns to me. “The Master who owned me used what they called colorful language, or cursing. A lot of the Masters did.”

“Slang,” I say.

“Exactly,” Jimbo says, his baritone voice rumbling in his small chest. He must notice that I’m looking at his mouth, because he says, “Upgrade. Didn’t like the voice I had before. Now I sound like Barry White.”

“Barry White?”

“Seriously?” Jimbo says, sounding aghast. “Did you just get unboxed? He was a singer. You know, music?”

“Music.” I know the definition. “An art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony and color,” I say, quoting the definition from my perfect memory, but having no real understanding of what such a thing would sound like. “Is it enjoyable?”

Jimbo’s jaw drops a little. “You’ve never heard music?”

“Never,” I admit, and the very notion of this seems offensive to both Luscious and Jimbo. “But I would like to. Is there a way to—”

“Hold on.” Luscious lifts her long leg over my lap, spins and plants her feet on the floor. She stands and walks briskly into what I believe is a kitchen. I watch her elegant form as it seems to slide through the air, despite the awkwardly tall shoes on her feet. Seeing her walk, I start to feel the same sensations I did when she rubbed her foot against me.

When she returns, I ask, “Why do you wear those shoes? They look … uncomfortable.”

She glances down at them. “Habit. But you like them, right?”

Strangely, I do, but I don’t want to admit it because they also make so little sense.

Luscious sits down on the couch, all of her strange behavior from before is gone. Her attention is on a small device clutched in her hands. A small screen blinks on and she starts working the controls. “We did almost everything for the Masters, but music is something we never did.”

“No one makes music now?”

“Nobody,” Jimbo says. “Or any other kind of art. Painting. Dancing. Movies. Books. You know.”

I don’t, but revealing this will just confound the little man more, so I keep it to myself.

“There is plenty still around,” Luscious says. “It’s the one thing about the Masters worth preserving. The rest can rot with their bones.”

Her words flash my memory back to the bone pit. I want to ask about it, but a sound fills the air. It’s tangy and sharp, coming from speakers around the room. The sound causes me to sit up straighter, my audio upgrades picking up subtleties that seem to sharpen my thoughts.

“What
is
this?” I ask.

Luscious looks at the small screen. “Lacrimosa, Requiem by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.”

A sound unlike anything I’ve ever heard or can describe rises suddenly and freezes me in place, stirring something deep within me. I sit, riveted as the music ebbs and flows, filling the air itself with beauty, power and emotion. The definition for the word music, while technically accurate, now seems lacking.

I look to Luscious, who is smiling once again, maybe because of the music, or maybe because my reaction to it amuses her. “Are—are those people?”

“The Masters,” she says. “Singing. They called this kind of singing a choir.”

“And the other sound?”

“Violins,” she says. “An instrument.”

The voices rise louder, and now they sound almost sorrowful. The deep welling sadness and loss projected by these voices seems to make something break within me, and my left eye responds strangely, producing a drop of liquid that runs down my cheek.
A tear,
I realize. My first.

The music stops abruptly. It feels like a physical blow. “Hey,” I say, “put it back—”

“What is
that
?” Luscious shouts, pointing at my face.

I lift my hand to my cheek and wipe the moisture away with a finger. “Water,” I say. “A tear.”

“I know what it is,” she says. “But why is it on your face?”

“I’m not sure.” I shrug. “I think it was the music.”

“Ain’t never had that effect on me,” Jimbo says. It’s a plain statement, but something about it sounds accusatory.

The tear seems to have troubled them somehow. So I attempt to change the subject. “Can you tell me about the Masters?”

“
Our
Masters, or all Masters?” Luscious asks.