Tomorrow Factory: Collected Fiction

YOUR OWN WAY BACK

The mausoleum was all plexiglass and synthetic stone, lit by ghostly blue guide lights in the floor that charted visitors to their particular units. Elliot had free run of the place while his mother and grand-dad talked.

When he was younger he chased the autocleaner, slip-sliding on its slick wet trail until someone glared at him. Now he was twelve and the glossy black floor was only slightly tempting. Instead, he sat outside the booth with his swim bag and eavesdropped.

“You can’t afford another year in digital,” his mother was saying. “You’re shedding memories already. If you stay here any longer, we took out that clone policy for nothing.”

“Maybe it’s for the best.” His grand-dad’s voice was wavery, distorted.

Elliot peeked around the corner and saw the projection flickering, face carved in blue hololight. It was blurrier than usual.

“There’s the alternative, isn’t there?” Elliot’s mother said. “What we talked about?”

“Must have shed the memory.”

“Don’t be like that, dad. Elliot’s fully notched.”

That reminded Elliot that he’d loaded a new comic to read. He ran his finger along the inert plastic at the base of his skull, feeling the slot where the new chip was sitting and beneath it the arithmetic he’d loaded from school and neglected to open. Elliot leafed through the pages in his mind’s eye but kept listening.

“And he’s young enough,” his mother said. “He’s still got brain plasticity, maybe even for another year.”

“Why don’t you just ask him?” His grand-dad’s projected face raised both eyebrows. “I expect he’s listening in.”

Elliot’s mother craned around the corner and Elliot rolled his eyes back, pretending to be absorbed in the shifting pictures, but knew he’d been caught out. She smoothed her dark hair and blinked tired eyes.

“Elliot, what do you think? Come in here, love.”

Elliot stood up and walked into the booth, gangly now that he was finally growing. He waved, out of habit, even though he knew his grand-dad couldn’t see it.

The blue ghost was only a projection, cobbled from old EyeWitness recordings and follow-cams, that gave visitors something physical to interact with. His grand-dad was really in a neural web contained by the dull marble plinth in front of them.

“Elliot, you know what a piggyback is, right?” he asked.

“Yeah. Yes.” Elliot felt the nape of his neck again. “My friend Daan’s got a tutor AI.”

“Your grandfather is not an AI,” his mother said sharply.

“He knows that,” his grand-dad said. “What do you say, Elliot? Let the old man bang around your head? It’s your choice. Completely your choice.”

“Just for the summer,” his mother assured, pinching the bridge of her nose. Her nails had chipped. “It would just be for the summer while the clone’s growing. It’s really much better than keeping him here in the mausoleum.”

Elliot thought back to when Daan showed up for class with the shiny AI chip in his notches, how impressed everyone had been. This wasn’t the same thing, but it was close.

“Okay,” Elliot said. “Do you still know how to do algebra?”

His mother’s ears went red but his grand-dad just laughed, a synthesized warble that was almost too loud for the silent mausoleum.

Before they left they had him loaded into a bone-white chip, and then that chip was sealed in plastic wrap and dropped into a bag, and Elliot held it very carefully on the drive home.

“This might jolt a bit,” the technician said, clipping Elliot’s hair away from his notches.

Elliot nodded as well as he could with his chin burrowed in pillow. He was on his stomach on the couch watching rain streak down the wide window. The technician had come over with antiseptic-smelling gloves and a black toolkit because Elliot’s grand-dad was not an AI, and Elliot’s mother was not going to take chances with her trembling fingers.

She was washing up, but came into the living room every few minutes, hands red as lobsters and slicked with soap. She had excuses the first few times, but now it was just to bite her lip and stare. She didn’t realize Elliot could see her in the window.

“Putting him in, now,” the technician said. The chip descended in silvery forceps and Elliot felt something slide and rasp at the base of his skull. It settled with a meaty click. Elliot began to ask if they were done, and then—

Jolt.

His nerves blasted sparks all at once, arched his back like a cat, split the top of his head with a thermonuclear explosion. His body spasmed. From somewhere far away he heard himself howl. Then his mother was over him, holding him down, swearing a blue streak at the technician.

“It’s normal,” the man was repeating. “It’s normal. He’s fine now. Ask him. He’s fine. Aren’t you, Elliot?” He was folding his gloves, wiping the sweat raised on his forehead.

Something was stirring in the back of Elliot’s skull. Right here, Elliot. Steady now.

“Are you okay?” his mother demanded. Her nails were digging crescents in his hand. “Just say something, alright?”

“I’m okay,” Elliot said. He felt the stir again. “So’s grand-dad. He’s okay.”

Elliot’s mother exhaled, but didn’t let go of his hand.

It wasn’t like having a tutor AI. Elliot’s grand-dad didn’t switch off or go dormant. He was always there in the back of things, when Elliot woke up in staticky sheets and when he sawed through his mother’s burnt breakfast sausages and when he walked to the public pool early each morning.

Elliot had scrimped the money for his pass from months of bannering the local chipshop, putting value ads in his slots to widecast on the subway or in the street. He didn’t get pocket money anymore, so every time the laser raked his neck and scanned him into the pool he felt a beat of pride.

Elliot liked his swims best in the morning. Only a few others were ever there, usually middle-aged men churning industriously up and down their lanes. The lifeguard bobbed at the side like a plastic jellyfish, monitoring the chlorine level.

His mother had given him a gelatin (“Cover up your blowhole,” she’d said, taut smile on her way out the door) and he slathered it over his notches, letting it go dry and shiny before he slipped into the water. The chip tingled in his neck but his grand-dad remained silent, still curled somewhere in the back of Elliot’s head as he swam.

At school, his classmates were impressed—for the day. By the end of the week Elliot was starting to hear sniggers and knew something was going to happen come gym or break.

On Thursday the sky was dark and blustery, and the supervisor watched the footy game from a far distance with her chin tucked into her windbreaker. They were playing with an old Soccket that rattled when kicked and didn’t bounce quite right, and that was why Elliot had missed another open shot.

“You’re slow, grand-dad,” said Stephen Fletcher, who was small and fierce and had his hair razored around his notches.

“What’s that?”

“Your old man chip is turning you slow,” Stephen said, grinning like a wolf. “Slooow and stiff.”

“Quicker than you,” Elliot said, but he knew he wasn’t, he was only quick in the water.

“You’re too poor to grow a clone for him.” Stephen bounced the ball hard against the cement and stuck it on his hip. “That’s why you have the chip.”

Everyone was watching, now, and the keeper from the opposite end was wandering up from his orange pylons to see what was going on. Elliot looked around, looked at Daan, but Daan was grinning, too.

Steady now, Elliot. It’s fine. It’s a laugh.

Elliot gave a start. His grand-dad hadn’t said a word all week.

“Maybe they can stick him in a baboon,” someone suggested. Someone else gave a fair imitation of a monkey screech. Elliot clenched his teeth.

It’s fine.

“If your ma’s going to make all that clone money, she’ll have to work the corner.” Stephen pumped his hips. Grinned. “Think?”

The baboon dropped quiet and they all stared. Elliot balled his hands.

Thumb outside your fist, Elliot.

Him and his grand-dad went in swinging.

On the walk home, with the sky bruising overhead and his face now doing the same, Elliot asked about his grandmother. Rain was speckling the sidewalk and Elliot tipped his head back to wash the scabby blood from under his nose. It was a long time before his grand-dad answered.

She didn’t want storage. Or a new body. She said she’d had her time, and that was that.

“Why’d you stay?” Elliot asked. His grand-dad didn’t answer, and Elliot knew enough to not ask again.

Yellow cabs slid by with rain wriggling down their windshields. Elliot wondered what time his mother would be home.

When school finally let out for summer, Elliot could spend all day at the pool. The weather turned sunny and so they turned the smartglass ceiling transparent, drenching the tiles with afternoon sunlight and making the water glisten blues and greens. More people showed up. Some of Elliot’s classmates splashed and threw foam balls in the shallow end. Elliot stayed in the lanes. He was working on his breaststroke.

You could hold your glide longer. His grand-dad said it as Elliot sloshed to the wall in a final burst.

“What?” Elliot panted, hooking his elbows over the pool’s edge.

Go again. I’ll show you.

Elliot adjusted the pinch of his goggles, inhaled chlorine. There were too many people making waves now and the water was warm as a bathtub. He pulled reluctantly into the lane for a few more lengths. As he did, his muscles seized.

Sorry about that. Here. Relax a bit.

His limbs started moving without him. Elliot leaned into the stroke and felt a hundred small adjustments, how his shoulders sloped and how his hands bit the water. He felt like a fluid. His mouth peeled a foamy grin under the water and suddenly he was smoother than he’d ever been, nothing awkward left in his growing joints, nothing but pure motion.

At the other end, one of the morning men was swilling water in his swim cap. “You’re really putting that together,” he remarked. “You should trial for the club here, boy.”

Elliot nodded and grinned and clambered shaky out of the pool.

After that, grand-dad swam with him and told him stories about how in summer he used to put his clothes in a plastic garbage bag and jump off high rocks into the bay, cupping his balls and holding his nose against the splashdown, and how him and his mates set races from buoy to buoy and bet all their pocket money on them.

There was a lot of time for those stories. Elliot generally went home to an empty apartment where he draped himself over the couch and churned through his comics, hair forming a damp patch on the pillow. His grand-dad didn’t like how the comics had all gone back to 2D, but he liked how Elliot could change them as they went along. Sometimes the villain deserved to win, Elliot thought.

When he was hungry he trawled for recipes online and always ended up cooking pasta with mushroom soup from a can. His grand-dad was no help with that. He did, however, show him how to make coffee. His mother was slightly suspicious of it when she dragged in the door to find a pot gurgling on the counter.

“Tastes good,” she admitted, swishing the sample in her mug. “That’s it for me, though. Have to sleep. One more way I’m inferior to those damn autocabs, isn’t it?” She grimaced and poured her dregs down the stainless steel drain, then disappeared into her bedroom.

She worked more than ever and came home late most nights. Some nights they played cards, the three of them, with Elliot and his grand-dad teamed up, but she usually fell asleep halfway through.

She works too hard. Doesn’t spend time with you. His grand-dad said it in the night, just as Elliot was drifting off. The constellations on his ceiling were peeling and only glowed when headlights shuttled by outside the window.

They didn’t get physical bills anymore, but Elliot could tell when they came in from the tightness of his mother’s mouth as she checked her phone.

“She has to,” he said. “She’s saving.”

You ever feel tired, Elliot?

“Now, yeah.”

Not like this, you don’t. Ah. Never mind. Sleep well.

“You too,” Elliot mumbled. He stretched his arms and his legs and slept like a starfish, imagining himself afloat in the water.

One day Elliot came home from his swim and found the apartment unlocked and smelling like cold lemon. His mother hugged him and asked about his swim times. Maybe he could invite some of his friends to go with him once in a while? For the first time in a long while her nails were painted hard and white.

She picked the small bits of gelatin out of his hair while they ate greasy takeaway, and afterwards she told him they were going to the FleshFac.

“I thought we were growing a custom,” Elliot said, bundling up the paper sheaths. “So it’ll look like him.”

“Well, it doesn’t hurt to see options.” His mother smiled hesitantly. “Does it?”

Elliot realized she was asking his grand-dad, but his grand-dad didn’t answer. He pulled his jacket half-on and followed his mother out to the car. When he was younger he’d liked the yellow paint. It looked bad now, too bright and too obvious. He slid into the passenger side and then they drove. The seats smelled like marijuana cigarettes.

The FleshFac was on the edge of the city, located near a large warehouse and a hospital. The building was squat and iron gray, like a safe dropped from the sky. The AI greeter at the entrance scanned them in, and directed Elliot and his mother down a peeling green hallway to the clone rooms. Everything smelled like antiseptic.

Clones were lined in scratched plastic shells, shrouded by a poison-yellow vapor. Another family was there for an upload, and while Elliot and his mother watched quietly one of the shells hissed open. Hidden vacuums sucked the fog away. The clone was long-limbed and sharp-shouldered with ghostly white skin that had never seen sun, but after a long silence the little girl said, “Daddy, daddy, we made your bed for you,” and then hugged him. The woman stood there with a collection of red balloons wilting in her hand.

So young. He deserves it.

“You deserve it,” Elliot said, forgetting his mother was there with him.

There are so many years in that clone. God. A lot of years.

The family left. The daddy was walking stiffly on new legs and his wife held his hand like it was something foreign, but their daughter skipped ahead happily with the artery-red balloons. Elliot and his mother walked down the row of clones.

They came in two models, basic male and basic female, both with standard musculature and post-racial features. They didn’t look anything like his grand-dad. Elliot could tell that his mother was doing numbers in her head, and with every clone they passed her teeth bit deeper into her lip.

When they got home she locked herself in the bathroom and turned on the fan, but behind the roar he could still hear her crying and crying.

“There’s enough,” she said, when she came out red-eyed. “There’s just enough. We can do it.”

Elliot nodded. His grand-dad said nothing.

I stayed because I was scared.

Elliot stood in the locker room shower with his face up to the nozzle, letting it beat a tattoo against his forehead. “Of being dead?” he asked, swilling water in his mouth.

I suppose. Yes. That. She must think I’m a real coward if she’s still up there waiting.

“You must miss her,” Elliot said. He dragged his toenail along the crack between two tiles.

Madly. I thought maybe I was staying to help your mother. Since your dad split so early.

“Oh.”

But she doesn’t need me taking care of her. Not anymore. And she sure as hell can’t afford this clone, not even one of those gawky bastards from the factory.

Elliot switched the water off. Drops splashed off his face to his collarbone, trickled from his armpits down his elbows. “What do you mean?”

I’m not going to let her put you two in debt when it’s time I moved on. I’m tired, Elliot. I stayed because I was scared, but now I’m tired of being scared. You get me?

Other bodies moved away and Elliot was alone in the changing room, fingers turning blue.

You had a good swim today. What do you say to one more in the morning?

“Here?” Elliot asked faintly.

Not here.

In the earliest hours of the morning, when it was still dark outside his window, Elliot found a pen and a pad of paper and closed his eyes. He had never learned to write without a keyboard, but his grand-dad moved his hand for him in graceful swoops and curls over the page. He filled up four of them and then Elliot shuffled them under his mother’s door.

His swim-stuff was wet from the day before but he changed all the same, putting the clammy togs on under his trousers. He let himself out of the apartment and walked down the street with the bag tucked under his arm, past the hazy glow of the streetlamps and a roving autocleaner collecting the trash.

The bay was closed off now, with a wire fence that hadn’t existed in his grand-dad’s time, but Elliot had spent enough time clambering after lost footballs to scale it competently, if not quickly. He looked at the murk with trepidation for only a moment, eyeing the bobbing plastic refuse and slippery rocks, then he stripped down and plunged in.

His grand-dad pulled him off into the bay with smooth strokes, powerful the way Elliot had always thought of seals or sleek dolphins as powerful. They were alone in the water, making the only noises. His hands carved the cold surface and the slapping of his body, the tug of his breath, the water in his ears, all seemed vastly loud in the dark.

When they were finally bobbing far out in the bay, watching the red lights of the skyline, his grand-dad said it was time.

Expect you can make your own way back.

“Yeah. Yes. I can.”

Pull me out, then.

Elliot’s cold fingers scrabbled for the gelatin lump at the back of his skull. He pulled it off in clumps, then long strips, then it all came away at once.

He winched the notches open and his slippery fingertips found his grand-dad’s chip. He hesitated for a heartbeat, two heartbeats, then yanked it like a tooth and hurled it off into the bay. A spark jumped once. Disappeared.

He swam slowly on the way back, his empty-feeling head held carefully above water. He toweled off and dried the strange tingling hollow at the back of his neck. His eyes stung. Swimming without goggles always turned them pink.

Elliot’s mother was waiting for him on the curb when he got back home, the pages spread around her bare feet.

“Haven’t seen his handwriting in so long,” she said, combing a strand of dark hair from her face.

Elliot eased down on the cement curb and his mother wrapped an arm around his shoulders. They sat together, watching dawn streak the sky with filaments of red.