Subterran

Part I: Reinventing Bone Structure - Chapters 13 - 18

Our Ceremony was lavish—lilacs and laser shows, silk and leather dressings, a full-course banquet with black truffle hydrogen mousse for dessert. I ordered the purest candy injections and C-17 vapors since it was his first time at the Chapel. The C-17 vapors were a bit much for Paranoid Phil to handle—he lived in a block on the East side and had grown up on the C-12 varietal.

"I've never done this before," he said. "Not the 'going out type'."

"It's okay," I told him, wrapping one of my orange vines around his neck like a scarf and pulling him close. "Just do what I do. Repeat after me. That's how we say our vows."

Phil was still nervous, even with the vapors, and our Ceremony was over too soon. I didn't mind though. He'd looked at me like we were two adolescent boys making eyes at each other on the football field, and for the moment I felt young, guiltless, and free.

Chapter Fifteen

Attention all Generik residual-earning residents. Sleep is now a thing of the past. Why would you want to go through half your life with your eyes closed?

D.E.F. played with the neon green remote that controlled his mini-redscreen, dressed in a little blue and grey outfit that said "Save Me" across the front. We sat in the main room, while in the kitchen Mari busied herself making pancakes and sectioning the vita-meds that G.P.B. had prescribed for him—Monday, Thuesday, Wednesday. Tursday. Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I tried to swipe the remote from him to switch the channel to anything that was showing in prismascreen but he bit my finger.

"You shouldn't do that," I scolded lightly. "I'm your dad."

He just blinked at me with his two enormous green eyes and banged the remote against the table. I hated to say it, but he definitely had some of the old man in him.

"Can't we watch something else?" I asked him. It was tuned to a 5D cartoon about adorable rodents who exterminate humans upon visual contact.

"Eyah," he said. His face said don't change the channel or I will bite you again.

I figured he was unlikely to warm up to me until after I had purchased him a Young Person's Hover Car for ages 9 months to 12+ years, and he had been taking his new vita-meds for at least a few weeks. He got bigger every time I saw him—I wondered whether it was because kids these days grew up faster, because I didn't come to visit that often, or because I had trouble remembering a fair number of the visits. Now he had a full head of light brown hair with bangs that needed to be trimmed, and some obvious yet dubious motor skills, I noticed as he attempted to jam the small remote into a non-fitting slot in my acu-tank. When he was old enough to have his own tank fitted to him, I imagined buying a little stylish one for him about half the size of mine, with all the right upgrades for his age demographic.

Mari's tablet beeped from the kitchen, then took over the display on the redscreen D.E.F. and I were watching.

Dinner's ready, it said.

Fruit-flavored Gummy Tummies and vita-meds for D.E.F. Antifreeze fish and veggie Gummy Tummies for me and Mari. Regulator and relaxation meds for me.

# #

Dressed in a fresh, nearly transparent black-blue hospital gown, I was prepped and ready for maintenance. Doctor Marc's grin was wider than usual today, his teeth impossibly whiter and straighter, a walking advert for his colleague's dentistry. He pranced about the spic n' span office while whistling some show tune, giving me a thumbs up every time he successfully strapped something into place.

My body was in good working condition, I was in today for a routine mental evaluation/brain scan, my fingers and forehead hooked to electrodes which transmitted their findings wirelessly to Main Computer—the all-knowing collected and analyzed, matching my results against algorithms and spitting me out wherever I would be most useful. For the past few years, junior-to-mid level management at Infrastratos had come back as YES, so there I remained.