The Body Electric - Special Edition (4 page)

Not someone.

Something.

“No,” I groan.

“A new nursing android!” Mom beams. Her old one had broken down a few months ago, and I’d done my best to delay her getting a new one. During the Secessionary War, androids played a huge part in suppressing the uprising and helping end the violence. Now, decommissioned androids are cheap, and everyone has at least one. We have cleaning androids and a few working in the spa, but a nursing android will be around Mom all the time, impossible for me to avoid.

This one moves to stand beside Mom. It’s wearing normal clothes, the only sign that it’s an android from the label pinned to its chest: Robotic Operations Service Interface E-assistant.

“I’m going to call her Rosie,” Mom says proudly.

“It doesn’t need a name,” I say, even though it’s useless to argue. Mom always names the androids like they’re human.

Maybe that’s why I
don’t
like them. They wear human clothing over human skin—not literally, it’s really just a finely textured rubber and silicone mix—and they have perfectly groomed features. From behind, all androids look human. They sound human, too, if you ignore the fact that they never say anything worthwhile, only spitting out programmed phrases and responses. It’s really only when you see an android’s face that you know something’s… off. Every effort has been made to design android faces to look as human as possible. But the more they try to make the robots look human, the more I’m unnerved by the little things that remind me they’re
not
. Eyes that are lenses. Facial features that respond to a program, not self-will. Too-even smiles hiding porcelain teeth.

The more human they try to make androids look, the more they just remind me of death.

I’ve only seen death once. But at the funeral, when I peered down at my father, I remember thinking that although the body looked like Dad, it wasn’t, not really. The thing in the casket wore his face, but not his life.

That’s what androids remind me of. Something with a face, but nothing behind it.

“I was about to have Rosie give your mother a reverie,” Ms. White says. “I’ve already programmed her to use the machinery.”

I expect Mom to protest—reveries are expensive to create, and we’re such a new business that she always insists we can’t afford it—but instead Mom sighs. “That would be nice,” she says.

My heart sinks. The news from the doctor must have been really bad.

Ms. White stands, but I jump to Mom’s side. “I’ll do it!” I say quickly. I don’t want to be replaced by a robot.

Ms. White walks with us to the lift, and, after Mom gets on, touches my elbow to hold me back.

“Was it—?” I ask

Ms. White nods. “The nanobots are in complete remission,” she says. “They’re failing, one by one. And Dr. Simpa confirmed—your mother can’t have any more. She’s at max—over max, actually.”

When she sees my face, she pushes me onto the lift. “Don’t worry about it,” she says. “We’ll figure something out.”

Mom chats as we descend, and I realize why she’s had such a forced cheerfulness lately.

She knows something’s wrong.

She’s trying to keep it from me, to make me think it’s not as bad as it is. I shut my eyes briefly, weighing my options. When I open them, I smear a grin across my face. If she wants me to pretend everything is fine, I can pretend. For her, I can pretend.

seven

Mom breathes a deep sigh when we reach the reverie chamber and she settles into the plush cushions of the chair. She runs her fingers over the armrest, tracing patterns in the fibers. I lower the hood over her head—a large, half-globe helmet that will emit sonic flashes that she won’t feel or hear, but that will spark the memories in her mind. Mom shudders as I press the cool electrodes onto her forehead.

Before I do anything else, I connect Mom’s cuff to the reverie chair, checking her health stats. I have to swallow back a gasp of surprise—I’ve never seen her with such bad stats. Dangerously low blood pressure and heart rate, low oxygen, vitamin deficiency, constant dialysis pumps… how has she hidden how bad off she is from me for so long?

“Ella?” Mom asks when she notices that I’ve frozen, my eyes glued to her stats.

I force a watery grin on my face. “Ready?” I ask.

Mom nods and I turn my focus to the neurostimulator and adjust the dials, setting a low direct current of electricity to her brain. In moments, Mom’s slipped into sleep.

I take this moment to look at Mom, and try to ingrain her image into my memory.
This
image. The lines on her face smooth, and a small smile twitches the corners of her mouth. She looks peaceful now. Like she’s not even sick at all.

My fingers glide over the controls in the room. Every single thing—from the automatically dimming lights to the reverie chair itself—was designed by Mom. People had theorized that reveries were possible, but it was Mom who made the system. It’s Mom who’s changing the world with it.

Reveries are a state of controlled lucid memory recall. When you’re in the reverie chair, you experience a memory—your best memory, the time when you were happiest—just as if it were all happening again. On a purely theoretical level, reveries are easy—a dose of a specially designed drug plus transcranial direct current stimulation equals a state of lucid dreaming based on a pre-existing memory.

Reveries enable you to retreat into your own mind. Ms. White works with the government so she can funnel grant money into Mom’s research, and she’s experimented with having scientists and researchers use reveries to focus entirely on a formula or problem they have to solve. It almost always works: Reveries open your mind up so that everything inside of you becomes entirely focused on one thought.

But Mom didn’t invent reveries for science. She invented them for herself, for a reason.

In reveries, she gets to see Dad again. Before she got sick.

I slip out of the reverie chamber, keeping an eye on Mom’s health stats. I know from experience that Mom will be dreaming about Dad, reliving a day with him. It will feel real to her, as real as real life, and when she wakes up, maybe she’ll be able to hold onto that peace and happiness, at least for a bit.

As I watch Mom’s health scans, I can see everything improving—her tension, her blood pressure, her heart rate—it’s all getting better with every second she’s in the reverie. There’s no science to that: happy people are healthier. It’s not a permanent cure, but the effects usually last her a couple of days at least.

Red flashes across the control panel. I lean in, inspecting it. Her brain scan goes off the charts—her reverie is failing—and by the time I look back at Mom’s health stats, every single one of them is back up.

I race back into the reverie chamber just as Mom’s eyes flutter open. I can’t tell if, as the reverie fades, Mom feels fear or panic first, but either way, her eyes grow wide and then suddenly narrow. Her arms and legs twitch, as if she’s trying to summon the strength stand up.

“What happened?” she asks, looking at me. Her eyes are glazed—the reverie drug is still in her system.

It’s just not working.

“I couldn’t get you to a reverie,” I say. “I’m sorry, Mom, I thought I did everything right…” I lean down, inspecting the chair, the sonic hood, the electrodes.

Mom puts a hand on my arm. “Ella,” she says.

I ignore her, trying to figure out what went wrong.

“Ella.” Mom’s voice is firmer this time. I pause. “You know why it didn’t work.”

I shake my head. “That’s not it.”

Mom sighs, shifting in the reverie chair. “I theorized about this before. Hebb’s Disease attacks the synapses in my brain. My body’s not strong enough to have a reverie.”

The amount of pain in her eyes when she says this kills me. Reveries were the last thing that gave her any modicum of peace. She couldn’t forget about being sick, not ever, except in a reverie.

This damn disease has taken away so much. Not just her health, but her chances of happiness. She used to love to go out; now she never does. She used to run. She used to sing. But Hebb’s has slowly, irrevocably taken it all away.

And now it’s taken away reveries, the only chance she had to escape.

“It’ll work; let me try one more time.”

“Ella,” Mom says gently. “It’s hopeless.”

“Just stay there. Don’t unplug.” I pause. “Actually, here.” I give her a second dose of the reverie drug—it won’t hurt her, just make her sleep.

She’s asleep again by the time I slip back into the control room, pacing, pacing. There has to be something I can do. Mom’s sick—really sick this time, maybe so sick that—

I force myself not to complete that thought.

But she’s in pain. She’s been hiding it, but her health stats don’t lie. She hurts, she constantly hurts, but this—
this
—a reverie—would alleviate that pain. Just for a little. But that would be enough.

My mind races in a myriad of thoughts.
Mom can’t have more nanobots. Mom can’t have a reverie. There’s nothing I can do.

I pace back and forth in front of the control panel, thinking, thinking. There has to be something that I can
do
. I can’t just
not
do something. I have to—

I stop.

Mom can’t have more nanobots.

But I can
. I’m nowhere near my limit.

On the other side of the control panel is another door, a secondary reverie chamber that’s connected with Mom’s. Mom theorized that someone could go inside someone else’s reverie by linking two chairs together. She experimented, but it never worked—until she developed nanobots that were designed to help the observer break into the other person’s mind. She ultimately decided that it was too great a risk to give someone the additional nanobots, and she closed off the room.

But if it worked…

I could go into Mom’s reverie. I could enhance it, make it stronger, help her to stay in her memories, help her to remember what life was like before she got sick.

I check Mom’s stats one last time—the extra dose of the reverie drug has helped, and her mind is building the platform for her memories, but I can tell it’s shaky at best. She’s going to wake up again any second.

It’s now or never.

eight

My hands shake as I approach the secondary reverie chair. It’s nowhere near as nice as the one Mom uses with clients—why bother cloaking it in cushions and velvet when no one can use it?

A small recess in the wall holds what I was looking for: the additional nanobots needed for someone to use the chair. I pick up the vial. The inside looks empty, all except for a tiny sprinkle of silver glitter on the bottom. When I shake the vial, the silver moves like liquid.

There are
millions
of microscopic nanobots in that vial.

I take a deep breath.

I know this is dangerous. I have no idea what my nanobot count is, but I know that I shouldn’t be letting any more infect my body.

But Mom developed these. And if, by taking them, I can help her…

I stride across the room to the chair, and slide the nanobot vial next to the poison-green reverie drug in the injector. One dose will give me both the drug and the bots, administered as a puff of gas in my eyes when the sonic hood turns on.

My body wants to turn and run.

Instead, I sit in the chair. It’s long and reclined, designed to make me lay down more than sit. I slide my left arm against the raised bar, connecting my cuff to the system. I jam the electrodes onto my skin and lower the sonic hood over me.

Commence joined reverie?
The system asks me in warning yellow letters.

I shut my eyes, flinching even though nothing has happened yet. I think about the microscopic bots crawling over my eyes, behind them, into my brain, burrowing into grey wrinkles.

“It’ll work,” I say to myself, trying to convince myself that wishful thinking was truth.

I push the button.

The reverie chair hums with life. I have a moment to see the sparkle of the nanobots mixed with the green puff of reverie drug, and then I blink, and then—

—My body
explodes
with pain.