Riff was not supposed to be here. She had heard of being “fired” in the old education vids they sometimes showed in the cafeteria. Images of women crawling on their bellies, ugly and soiled by the lack of purpose. Bowls in their hands filled with bits of metal the old ones used to denote currency. Sometimes the vids would show children, flies on their faces, sticky lumps around their eyes. DON’T BE A JERK! WORK! in bouncing bubble font shadowing the sick child’s eyes. Riff hadn’t seen a child in five Earth cycles. Not a very little one, anyway. There hadn’t been a replacement at the Girl Factory in a very long time. Gram was the youngest.
Her arms oozed clear fluid from the punctures and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. The air up here on the higher floors was still and warm. She followed signs with pictures of human reactions on them. Happy face. Surprised face. Excited face. The white plasticine floors were flecked with veins of gray to mimic Earth stone up here. Up the spiral. Down the rabbit hole. She remembered that from The Before. But she could not remember a rabbit exactly.
When she finally reached the top floor, a great spire jutted through the center of the transparent ceiling. A landing circled the huge structure, fenced by guard rails. The spire was built from the bodies of mechs and spaceships, all quilted together with thick black welds. The tip of it penetrated the belly of the transport ship, clasped to it with hooks and couplings. Ships hovered in a line, waiting to reach the tip. The wind whipped orange dust, unfurling swaths of orange around the spire. The sun blinked cold behind the curtain of butterscotch atmosphere, cold and far. A sign read: The Nozzle: A Feeding of The Corporation in firm block print.
Cleaning mechs dotted with rust scrubbed at the unending layer of film on the transparent ceiling. The space was filled with gentle whirrings and tinkings. It was hard to swallow here. Hard to breathe. Riff pulled out the playing card with her mother on it. She remembered with some vagueness her mother’s hardness, her softness, and the confusion that came with each slap or each kind word.
“Mija, bring Mama your homework,” Mama, dressed in a crisp suit, beckoned to her. Her homework was to put frogs in baskets with letters printed on them on her tablet. Her brother – older, funnier, somewhere else. Probably in his room. He was always in his room. Mama grabbed the tablet and scoffed. This is why I spend so much money on that pinche private school. Don’t say that word. Because it’s for grownups to say. Mama did not hug like other mamas. Mama put clean laundry in drawers. Mama worked for men who never listen to her. Mama was not afraid like other Mamas. Mama made money. Mama did not kiss skinned knees.
Shuffling footsteps echoed around the huge room.
“Oh here you are, Riff.” Al, in She-form, rounded the platform.
Her slight frame pressed against a silvery jumpsuit. Her lavender hair was pulled into a small top knot. Sweat prickled under Riff’s arms. Her palms ached. Fear and sex pulled at her thoughts like threads separating from cloth.
“I was just looking at this thing.”
“Well, you really need to come back and get your bandages changed. You’re looking a little oozy, my darling.”
“Was my tracker not on?” Riff knew her tracker was back in her bedroom, tucked between the mattress and the wall.
“No.”
Al eyed her.
“We have to get the swelling down or they might send you to the colonies, Riff. They spent a lot of money on you already.” Al’s tone rose into a small panic. “What are you doing here? Who told you about The Nozzle?”
“I’m busy, ok?”
“What are you talking about?”
Trusting Al. Trusting Al. Her heart beat the words in a rapid pattern. Trusting Al. “I just want to be alone.”
“But why?”
“Because you can’t tell me what to do.”
Al wrung the gauze she was carrying around her middle finger and looked up at the ship pulling away from The Nozzle. A fine mist of clear liquid floating from its belly into the red-whipped wind.
“I just want to help you.”
Al began to shift, growing bigger, taller, muscle packing on. He-form at its fullest. The jumpsuit stretched to neat transparency, revealing curls of hair thickening below the slightest naval. His hands were now large and felted with hair. Al wrapped his forearm around her waist and pulled her to him. Pain from her incisions melded into a single burning knot on her back. Confusion rose in her. Her body wanted them all. Her body wanted every form of Al, every touch from Gram in the dark, every brush from Fern. Al drew his finger under her jaw. This was forbidden. Only Corporation-sanctioned contact between androids and humans for the entertainment of the masses was permitted per Section 27 of The Rules™. Al’s body, her body. Property – bought and sold.
Riff wound her arms around Al’s middle. Strands of invisible DNA from creatures long extinct wound around one another under the skin, creating odd ridges on his spine and irises slightly too large for his eyes.
“What do you want?” Riff asked.
“I’m not programmed you know. I am not a mech.”
“Can we talk here?” Riff looked around for cameras and small ticks in the wall.
“Yes. The radiation here messes with the cameras and it’s boring up here. No screens.” Al’s irises widened and contracted as the ships overhead drifted across the weak sun.
“How old are you? How many cycles?”
“I don’t know.” Al slid his hand along the side of her neck and slid his fingers under her hair, leaning into her.
Footsteps echoed from around The Nozzle and Al dropped his arms from around Riff, shrinking back into She-form. The crackle of her joints like plasticine beads underfoot. The jumpsuit crawled back to opacity. Riff dropped away from Al and scooted back against the railing. The footsteps got louder, louder. Cameras. Eyes. Control. Blink. Blink. Don’t Blink. Don’t touch. Don’t look.
The small woman who slipped her the playing card her first day in the care unit swung around the corner. Her right hand was tucked under her smock and her black and yellow hair had been cropped. Her gaze slid from Riff to Al. Bright suspicion tugged at the corners of her mouth.
Al put her hand on Riff’s shoulder and whispered hot behind her ear. “If she saw us, I’ll offer her credits. I have lot saved up.”
“It’s ok, I think. I think you could probably go now if you wanted.”
“What? No.”
The woman approached, the pale sun becoming weaker with Phobos’ shadow. The ships passed like great prehistoric beasts, pondering across the sky, sipping from The Nozzle. Riff’s pulse snapped against her temple, loud and quick.
“So you brought your care unit? That wasn’t part of the instructions.” The woman’s voice was quiet.
“No, I didn’t. Al… I mean... my care unit was just about to go.”
Al’s brows knitted together.
“What instructions, Riff?” The android shifted from one foot to the other.
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“Nothing, Al. She is just my friend, and we were planning on meeting here.”
“For what?”
The woman stepped in closer, drawing her hand out of her smock and offering it to Al.
“My name is Reina. Riff and me are friends. You know, from Earth.”
Al looked at her extended hand.
“Aren’t you kind of old to have been in the Girl Factory?
“From before then.”
“I see.”
Al layered her arms over her belly and drew her lips into a tight line. A strange orange flush blossomed on her neck and her coloration wavered from pale to variegated stripes of red and orange. A song by Shanana Schwoop Shigetty about taxation on kisses cut in over the loudspeaker. Al turned from them and walked back down the corridor without another word.
“I’ve never seen no android do that,” Reina said.
Riff shrugged and opened her mouth to explain.
Reina was no longer listening. The song cut out and was replaced by a low level whisper about buying things at The Commissary. Whippets to destress. Organic Dog Jerky. Daylight lamps. Beauty creams. Romance. Adventure. Happiness. Riff felt a squeezing at the base of her throat.
“We have to go. Venga.”
Reina reached for her hand and guided her toward a door with a screen above it that showed an eyeball suspended in amber liquid. A long corridor sprawled into darkness.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere where we can talk.”
“Can’t we talk now?”
“Jesus, no. The eye, el ojo.” Reina pointed toward the pinpoints of green light in the wall at the opposite end of the hallway. “Now, hush.”
***
The Holy Book™
Chapter 10 Verses 12-18
12 Now on the blue planet, there was a great calamity amongst the people who did cry out for a new Child of God. And they did sprawl amongst themselves and within themselves across the World Wide Web.
13 The Web did bring them many false prophets and in those days, politicians, who did make many promises. Elders were forced to live on in suffering and uselessness, and the young were coerced into choosing their own labor. The women did rend their clothing in thoughtful obsession, and the men became soft.
14 Drinking water, heavy with chems, churned in the people’s bellies and they did appeal to The Corporation, who took pity on them and sent them a new God Child.
15 The God Child was not born of mothers, as rich and poor alike were sanctioned to do in those days, but was born of machines. Conceived without intercourse. And He was so beautiful and new and strange that women wished to lie with Him and men wished to lie with Him.
16 And so it was that He was placed into the care of the machine convent in the West and there He grew into a man of power and substance, for He was nourished from the breast of The Corporation.
17 On a very hot day, He unveiled himself to His adoring people once again. Now He was long of bone and thick with muscle. His jawline was like that of the old gods who showed their love for mankind by lying with them and their children.
18 The people, seeing Him for the first time, raised their light boxes to capture Him and hold Him forever. But He raised His hand and sayeth unto them, “Be still, and know the words of My Father. Until you give your body and your minds unto The Machination, you cannot know happiness.” And the God-man unplugged from them and returned only when they obeyed.
***
Deeper under the red dirt, deeper into the hive cluster Riff and Reina went. The hallways turned from plasticine-coated white to an older material that felt cool underfoot as they descended. The ceilings lowered, and the artificial atmosphere pods hummed in unsteady labor as they drew in the cold, dry air and filtered and churned out breathable air. They descended in silence, Reina glancing behind them, above them, around them. The smell of artificial cinnamon hung around them in the cold tunnel. The white light globes dotting the ceiling of the tunnel hummed and flickered.
A single doorway illuminated the end of the tunnel. Figures rustled dark in the bright room behind the white rectangle of light. Riff wondered if she could run if she had to, and where she would go. Reina dropped behind her, herding her toward the doorway. The rustling figures came to a standstill, peering at her. Most were women, some were other. Something in the not possible. Her mind surged at concrete examples of something, anything to pin these beings to. She listed extinct animals she had only seen in vids, cataloging them in her brain. Monkey. Bird. Lizard. Sea Urchin. Slug. The creatures ticked along the hard floor on four limbs, each tipped with a dark nail. Thousands of tendrils the size of a plasticine fiber floated from their backs, each connected to a black unblinking eye. Each being was connected to a machine by a long tube strapped around the center of their thick bodies. The women tended the machine and occasionally drew the tips of their fingers through the tendrils, absently stroking through the waving nests, eyeing her.
Reina nudged her into the room. And Riff saw her. Mama. Mama from the floods. Mama from The Before. Her skin was a mass of scars and her black hair was laced with silver. Mama stepped toward her.
“¿Eres tú?”
“Sí, Mama.” The words came to her. They felt unfamiliar in her mouth.
Mama tucked her graying hair behind her ear and reached out to touch her arm, but drew her hand back.
“Good. You are so big, daughter.” Mama never hugged much.
The women and the beings watched them with mild interest.
“What is this place?”
“We are in The Under and all this is to be free, before you forget what it means to be free.”
“What are you talking about?”
Riff’s throat tightened and her vision blurred. She could have screamed at Mama. She could have bitten through her skin and pounded her with her fists for leaving her in the water, for leaving her back there in The Before. Mama squatted in front of her and drew her finger along the stone floor, dragging a long line in the red dust.
“Mira, this is us here.” She notched a small tick at the end of the line. “And this is Natsar.” Mama pointed her red-tipped finger to the beings, their unblinking eyes reflecting pinpoint yellow orbs as they swayed to the chug chug of the machine. She bisected the line in the dust at the beginning. “Now, look.” She spat into the dirt and gathered it into a small pile, binding it into rounded a mound. Her scars shone and jerked along her arms as the muscles worked underneath. The Natsar ticked in place, shimmering and crooning with excitement. Mama reached into the folds of her smock and brought out a piece of thin plastic from the folds – no bigger than a razor blade – and pressed it against her right eyeball.
The room began to vibrate and the other women squatted in unison where they stood, blood running down their thighs. Minute orifices opened on the sandy floor, sucking the blood down. The Natsar’s tendrils delving into the holes and pulsing against the sand like ripples from far-thrown stones into low tide. Riff found herself squatting with them, digging her fingers into her thighs, the core of her tightening and contracting into painful release. And she was nothing in her mind. Just a cell in this room. A body. A vessel. And then she understood.
Space unfolded before her in velvet blackness. Ripples of light and radiation burned her bones and dissolved her. Her blood boiled and evaporated, and she floated for millennia in the nothingness. The universe spoke to her in a voice that rang in her chest like the acid winds on Venus. The universe was a mother.
It said, “Child of the sun, are you lost?”
“I don’t know.”
The Natsar orbited her, their tendrils looping around one another and through her until her body was enmeshed in the blackness of space. Their bodies split and wilted over the shining black eyes, draping wet into spheres that vibrated, each in unison to the other.
“I will show you the way,” the universe said.
“I’m scared.”
And time looped over, and Riff stood on the front porch in The Before, her bare feet gritty and black on the bottom from running barefoot over the sidewalks. Her heart pounding. Her pink Minnie Mouse shirt clinging to her chest. Her name was different. The sky was different. Her bones felt heavier.
The day was leaving. What was the word for this? The sun anchoring below the mountains in a purple echo of itself. The neighborhood kids pattering back to their houses where the windows shone yellow. Then-Riff hugged the chipped-paint post by the front door and bit her thumbnail. The sky station floated above the mountain ridge, a black mark in the pinkening sky.
Her brother opened the front door and threw a marshmallow at her. She ignored it as it rolled into the dirt by the scorched azaleas and glared over her shoulder at him. What was his name? She could not remember after The Event. Another marshmallow arced over her right shoulder. She missed him even though he was there. Even though she couldn’t remember his name. His face. He seemed to sense her reticence.
“¿Qué pasa?” He knelt by her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. She forgot how tall he was.
“Mira, hay un planeta.”
“¿Dónde?”
“Ahí”. She pointed to a faint glimmer in the fast-fading sky.
The planet grew on the horizon, enveloping the sky into a dark clot of swirling clouds. Her brother faded behind her, the warmth of his hand still lingering on her shoulder. The planet collided with her body and in its immensity absorbed her into its jungle belly. Alien leaves, blacker than tar, dripped with moisture all around her sprawled body on the earth-rich floor. Her open mouth overflowed with thick nectar and two suns glinted through the trees. A word sat with her. Home. Casa.
The suns shifted into Mama’s face, her chipped front tooth gleaming in the salmon-pink sky. A Natsar drifted from a black tree trunk, parachuting on its split skin and sliding its tendrils into her sticky mouth. And she was back in The Under, her mother looming over her, her fingers twined in Natsar hair.
“What did you see? ¿Qué visté?”
“I remembered my brother. I remembered our house.”
“You have been taking The Corporation’s pleasure drugs. Now, what else?”
“Drugs?”
“Yes. To make you forget and be calm.”
“Why?”
Mama sighed and gritted her teeth.
“It doesn’t matter why right now. The Natsar can’t live very long outside of their tank because of diseases from us. Now tell me what you saw.”
“I saw two suns and a black forest. What was my brother’s name again?”
Mama ignored her. “Did you see the stars?”
“No, but I saw a planet from Earth.”
The women left the Natsar and crowded around. Mama reached out and patted her shoulder. The incisions on her tricep burned at the touch of their cool fingers. Nausea swelled in her throat.
“Qué bien. Qué bien.”