Pureline

Prologue

I AM A SYNTH.  

        It's a word that's wielded like a baton. Sometimes, they call us betas or prototypes. Or rabbits, for those who like their cruelty to have a more clever bent.

        It's also a dangerous word. When you get down to the bones of it, I am someone else's creation. A made thing. And a made thing is an owned thing.

        I look in the mirror to find something there that is mine. But I can't find it. 

        My dressers shave my hair down to the scalp.  Not that I'll miss it. My hair is flaxen, almost an imitation of hair, heavy with a plastic shine. Sometimes when genes are manipulated, there are pleiotropic effects. Hair is a dead give-away. So are eyes. Eyes may have mottled color or no pigment at all. Once in the lab, I saw a baby whose skin was as thin and tender as wet paper. He lived in a glass box until his body finally poured from its torn envelope. 

        I could have been born rabbit-eyed or a bleeder. I should count my blessings. 

        I'd like to say my eyes are brown, but they're closer to a dark magenta, especially when the light hits them at a certain angle. They are large. Thoughtful, I was told once, but not as a compliment. My skin is pale. Blue in places -- at the wrists, inside my elbow, and behind my knees. And I'm small, or at least smaller than average. Most synths are on the large side, denser bones, heavy muscle. The engineers in our delegation are more subtle, more thoughtful in their compositions. They are usually singled out by Pureline for unusual successes. Bellwethers. Inspiration for the other teams, called delegations, that may be floundering or in need of an instructive shock of jealousy. 

        I slip my hands into the long gloves that are now, to me, synonymous with the annual meeting at the top of the glass Tower. Maman prefers that I wear the dark gray tunic and long skirt of non-engineers, but she swipes the laser wand on the fabric of my gloves to turn them white. White symbolizes Pureline. More specifically, the upper echelons of Pureline, the directorate. I suppose she thinks this combination is evocative of our reaching toward perfection or some such. It's better not to argue. She is sensitive during these annual meetings. Our entire delegation is on edge. The victor may not rest, Maman says. At least, several times a day she says this.

        Around my neck is a ring of ice, a crystal collar. But I'm not supposed to say "collar." It is unpleasant to use words that most closely resemble the truth. The clear choker is about the thickness of my little finger.  In it are a microchip receiver, a needle, and two ounces of a scrambling serum. It would kill me if activated, yes, but its primary purpose is to corrupt my genetic code, which the chemical will do to every cell in my body within fifteen seconds. Not to protect the code from other delegations, but from Pureline's enemies. Which I'm told, with typical Pureline contradiction, do not exist. Even discounting that lie, I don't see the point of it. A thief could just as easily chop off my finger or, less violently, clip my fingernail, pull a lash from my eyelid.  I suppose that pulling my hands out of the gloves or unwrapping the translucent veil from my head would take longer than fifteen seconds, but it would require someone from my delegation to know of the danger. I've been instructed -- ordered -- to deploy it myself should I believe that I will be compromised. I don't know if I could do it. I don't know if I would want to do it, despite the litany of horrors I've been told would happen to me at the hand of the thieves or Pureline itself. I've never been told what that death would be like, that fifteen seconds until the end.

        I finger the choker and watch the air bubble in the serum circle my neck. Anyone could press the fatal switch at any time. I could press it. My own little eject button.