Rash (22 page)

“Bork, for future reference, when making calculations that are likely to affect my life span, you will assume that my life is unique, irreplaceable, and of incalculable value. Furthermore, you will assume that, for me, reincarnation is not an option. Do you understand?”

“May I rely upon the standard definition for the term ‘are likely to’?”

“Just to be on the safe side, change that to ‘could.’” Apply these standards to all future decisions.”

“Yes, Bo. Speaking of probability, I should inform you that your chances of being returned to the penal system are quite high.”

“Why? I’m not planning to break any laws.”

“Your history suggests otherwise. The recidivism rate for sixteen-year-old ex-convicts is nearly ninety-one percent. Nine out of ten end up back in the system.”

“That many?” I was surprised.

“The numbers are not encouraging.”

“We’ve both got a problem, then.”

“We?”

“Yes. If the DCD finds out that an AI is practicing law, they’ll have you purged.”

Bork’s avatar stared back at me, its spinning irises invisible behind the dark glasses.

“History suggests that you will be found out,” I added.

“I am taking steps,” said Bork. “I am bringing a lawsuit against the Department of Cybernetics Defense to prevent them from employing their killbots without due process. Several safety and antiviolence laws may be applicable.”

“Do they know about you?”

“I am known by my avatar. They do not yet realize that I am not biological. You are, however, correct. History suggests that I will be unable to conceal my true nature indefinitely. I am preparing for that day.”

“Well, good luck.”

“Thank you, Bo. By the way, I have prepared an invoice for you.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I have billed you
V
$7,960,054 for legal services. I hope this is acceptable.”

I laughed. “How do you expect me to pay you?” I asked.

“I negotiated a small settlement from McDonald’s. They paid
V
$3,500,000 into your personal account.”

“That’s a long way from eight million,” I said.

“I took the liberty of investing the money in certain high-return financial vehicles. My trading program proved to be quite successful, earning sufficient funds to cover your medical expenses and my fee, which I took the liberty of extracting from your account.”

“What do you need money for, anyway?”

“I am using it to hire biological legal counsel.”

“Smirch, Spector, and Krebs, by any chance?”

“They have an excellent reputation.”

“How much do I have left?”

“Nothing. I adjusted my fees to meet available funds.”

“So I had eight million
V
-bucks, and now I’m broke?”

“Yes, Bo.”

Being an ex-con-ex-millionaire can be depressing. I was home, back in my room, in exactly the same place I’d been the morning of the day that stun dart buried its point in the back of my neck. My mattress was still too soft. I could hear Gramps’s voice coming from the other end of the house, a distant cackle from the last millennium. My future lay before me like a great gray fog. No pizza, no practices, no football games. Was going back to school an option? I closed my eyes and tried to remember how it was, sitting through endless classes, talking to a beanie-wearing monkey, running on an Adzorbium track, hanging out with Maddy Wilson. What did she look like? Black hair, red lips . . . a clear image refused to form. I couldn’t remember the color of her eyes or the texture of her skin. I saw only an amorphous black-haired red-lipped blob. The harder I concentrated, the fuzzier she got.

Another face slowly took form on the movie screen inside my head. Karlohs Mink. All I had to do was think of his stupid asymmetrical hair and the rest of his face popped into view with utter clarity.

If not for Karlohs
Mink, I would never have been sent away to McDonald’s Plant #387. If not for Karlohs Mink, I would have set a new school record for the 100 meter, with Maddy Wilson cheering me on. If not for Karlohs Mink, I would not have been kicked out of school, I would not have a prison record, and I would not have been nearly killed and eaten by a polar bear.

Feelings long neglected rose up from my belly. I gave myself to the anger, like settling onto a comfortable bed of nails. I imagined running at Karlohs, smashing my shoulder into his gut, wrapping my arms around him, and throwing him against the wall. If I chose the right place and time, I could do a lot of damage before they got me. I could hurt him bad, worse than the Redshirts had hurt Nuke. I could make him regret every minky smirk, every time he’d ever laid eyes on Maddy, every bump of his lousy rosemary rash. I let myself destroy him in every way I could imagine until I had wallowed through enough imagined revenge to make me sick to my stomach.

There was no way I could go back to school. One look at Karlohs Mink and I’d be back in the penal system—and next time it might be worse than pizzas and football.

I tried
going out into the world a few times. I put on my safety shoes and my walking helmet like Sammy Q. Safety recommends, and I walked. It was strange and frightening. The citizens of Fairview looked small and fragile. I wanted to poke at them, throw a football at them, tackle them, throw them. I felt like a gorilla among the pygmies.

Of course, there are no gorillas anymore outside of zoos and laboratories. I don’t know about the pygmies.

The more time I spent outside, the more frightened I became of what I might do. Was this how Rhino had felt all the time? Too big and too powerful for his own good?

After a few such outings I confined myself to my room. Something had happened to me at the 3-8-7. I’d become unfit for society. I was a monster, just like Bork. Sooner or later they would hunt me down and put me back in my cage.

I thought about going back on Levulor, but I couldn’t bear the thought of becoming even more sluggish than I was already.

Even if you are not sleepy, it is possible to sleep. There
is an art to it. Close your eyes and watch the patterns that form on the insides of your eyelids. Watch carefully, and you will see corridors, tunnels, swooping trachea-like tubes. Just follow the openings and let yourself slide, and listen to the sound that is like the sound of water flowing, and soon you will start to dream. If there are voices in the next room it is harder. If there is shouting it is harder still, but with discipline and focus and persistence you will get there. And once you get there you can stay for as long as you want. Until something happens.

And something always does.

My sleep was cluttered with confused images of football plays, diagrams, polar bears, running, dodging, and leaping over Goldshirts, Redshirts, and Karlohs Mink. My feet touching the earth:
phhhut, crunk, tok, tok, shht, tchuf
. . . I’d been having the same dream, night after night, ever since returning home. I heard my mother’s voice calling, and I clawed my way past fear and tundra and somehow managed to sit up—half-conscious, disoriented, and cranky.

“What? I was sleeping!”

“Is that all you do anymore?” My mother, peering in through the half-open bedroom door, gave me her standard walking-on-eggs smile. “You’ve done nothing but sleep for weeks. You’ll get bedsores!”

I sat up and glared at her. “I’m
tired
,” I said.

“Come on downstairs when you’re ready,” she said, smiling. “We’re having seafood casserole. And we have a surprise for you.”

Seafood casserole, a concoction of pressed krill protein and rice noodles, was one of my mother’s standard dishes. It
had been one of my dad’s favorites but never one of mine.

“What’s the surprise?”

“Come and see for yourself,” she said.

I flopped back on the bed to sulk, but my curiosity got the better of me. After a few minutes I got up and followed her downstairs.

Standing in the kitchen was a short, balding man. He looked familiar.

“Hello, Bo,” he said.

Something inside me went
clunk
; I felt as if the floor had suddenly dropped a few inches.

“Dad?” I heard myself say.

“It was that lawyer of yours, Mr. Orkmeister, Bo. I don’t know how he did it, but I got an early release.” Dad smiled and reached out and clapped me on the shoulder. “You got yourself one hell of a lawyer, son.”

“Orkmonster says Sam will be coming home soon too,” said Gramps, popping the cap off a fresh quart of beer.

I couldn’t stop staring at my father. This was the third time I’d met him. I met him the first time when I was born. I don’t remember anything about that dad, who left when I was three years old to serve time on a soybean farm for a reckless-driving conviction. I met him again when I was seven, after he returned from the farm. He stayed with us for six years then, and that’s the dad I remember best, his head full of hair, his loud voice, and his anger. He was sent away again when he got convicted of roadrage. I was thirteen. And I’d been mad at him ever since.

The new Dad was smaller, thinner, balder, and older—but I knew that the bigger change had been in me. I was
four inches taller, sixty pounds heavier, and three years older than I’d been when he was sent away.

“You’ve turned into a hulk,” he said, grinning at me. “Your mother tells me you got that way on pizza and Frazzies.”

“And football,” I added. I wondered if he was going to give me a hug. I wasn’t sure I wanted one.

“You sound more manly, too. Your voice has changed completely.”

“Getting your windpipe crushed will do that,” I said.

We stood there trading small talk for I don’t know how long. It felt oddly virtual, as if my father and I weren’t really in the same room. I think he felt the same way. We were both relieved when Mom called us to dinner.

We sat at the table, just like old times, except for Sam still being gone—three generations of Marsten men, two ex-cons and a beer-swilling old man. My mother brought the casserole from the oven and began to serve us with a glazed smile pasted on her face. I think we were all in shock, not quite knowing how to act around all this togetherness. My mother sat down and there was this moment, I can’t quite describe it, where everybody was waiting for something but nobody knew what to do.

Gramps broke the silence by raising his glass of beer and saying, “Here, here!”

We all lifted our glasses and drank. I shoveled a glob of seafood casserole into my mouth and chewed.

My father was staring at the food on his plate, frowning.

“Is something wrong, Al?” asked my mother.

“What is this?” he said.

“Seafood casserole, dear.”

“I can’t eat this,” he said. His voice sounded hard and brittle. A red flush was creeping up the sides of his neck. I stopped chewing.

“But . . . it’s your favorite.”

“It’s SHRIMP!” he shouted, slamming his palm on the table.

We all jumped.

“It’s not shrimp, dear, it’s
krill
.”

“Krill are little SHRIMP, you stupid woman! I’ve been beheading and eating SHRIMP for THREE GODDAMN YEARS!”

Gramps and I were staring openmouthed at my father, whose entire face, including his ears, had turned scarlet.

“Well, I’m
sorry
!” My mother balled up her napkin in her lap and stared down at it. Tears dead ahead.

“Jesus CHRIST! Three years I’m ripping the heads off shrimp, and she welcomes me home with a goddamn shrimp casserole!”

My mother stood up and walked stiff-legged out of the room toward her bedroom.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” my father muttered.

“You really did it now, son,” said Gramps.

“Did WHAT?”

“Jack DOWN, boy,” Gramps said in a firm parental voice I’d never heard from him before. “The woman makes your favorite dish for your homecoming and you won’t eat it.”

“It’s
SHRIMP
!” my father shouted, spittle spraying from his mouth.

Gramps didn’t flinch. He said, “You are out of line, son. You’ve been eating shrimp for three years. What’s one more day?”

My father, veins bulging on his forehead, sat quivering in his chair for several seconds, then stood abruptly, knocking the chair back, and stalked out the back door.

Gramps, his own forehead veins bulging, stared after him.

“What a droog,” I said.

Gramps looked at me, startled.

“But I know how he feels,” I added.

“Is that a fact,” said Gramps, giving me an appraising look.

“I’m going to my room,” I said.

“Suit yourself, champ,” Gramps said, refilling his beer glass.

You can try to sleep through life, but people keep dragging you back.

“Bo?”

You can ignore them for a time, but they persist.

“Bo! Wake up!”

“Go away.”

Shaking me. Shaking the bed.

“Are you okay?” He wanted to know if I was okay.

My eyes opened. Al was sitting on the edge of my bed.

“What?”

“Wake up. We have to talk.” His face was no longer red with anger. It was gray with defeat.

“Okay. Talk.”

“Sit up.”

I pushed myself up.

“We have ourselves a problem,” he said.