Bastion Science Fiction Magazine - Issue 7, October 2014 by Manfred Gabriel Alvaro Zinos-Amaro Jeff Stehman Matthew Lyons Salena Casha William R.D. Wood Meryl Stenhouse Eric Del Carlo R. Leigh Hennig
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about twelve hours. Collected and disposed of by the company, or it gets farmed out to the city coroner, depending on how busy the day is. You wake up in a brand-new body, tailor-made to your specifications. Total cerebral transplant, almost zero surgery. Total, extraction takes maybe five seconds." He thinks: been a long time since I've said that many words in a row.
"It's that fast?"
"That fast."
"Did they tell you about my new body?"
Quinn shakes his head no. "Why would they?"
She nods. "Fair enough, Mister X. Fair enough."
Her eyes refocus on the SCED. "Can I see it? The, ah. The...needle?"
He doesn't see any reason why not. He holds the SCED out again and punches the button. There's a noise like a faint digital screeee and the needle jumps out of one end, hard and fast enough to punch through flesh and bone in one go. Keeps it out long enough for her to get a good look, then takes his finger off the button. The needle disappears.
"It seems so easy," Missus Pearsson says.
"It is."
She shifts underneath the blankets. All he can see of her is her face, piled inside a hillock of heavy bedding that only faintly defines the form underneath.
"What about weaponry? Do you carry a weapon, Mister X? Seems like your job might be sort of dangerous, from time to time. A gun?"
"No guns."
"A knife, then?"
He doesn't say anything, but then, he doesn't have to. She lights up with self-satisfaction.
"Fantastic," she says. "That's fantastic." Smiles like a floodlight. The brightness hits him full-force and makes his stomach turn. He keeps looking at her as her expression shifts. Sours, somehow. Grows cruel. It's not something he could explain if he was asked—just a series of miniscule shifts underneath the skin. Impossible for him to say what changes in her face, but it's undeniably there. He moves to stand, to get on with the work, but she holds out her hand, staying him for the moment.
"Before you do what you came here to do, you have to understand something, Mister X: this is not a life I ever wanted. Not one that I was ever once interested in. It was thrust upon me. I was conscripted into it the moment the moron I thought was my loving husband guilted me into keeping a child I never wished to have."
Quinn can feel the air around them growing somehow colder, but he may be imagining it.
"I had a life. I had a purpose. I was my own person. Then I got pregnant, despite my best efforts, and my husband simply droned on and wept like a child until I thought he was right about wanting to keep it. I thought that way for nine months, until a small mewling thing that looked just like him came into the world and he expected me to care for it solely. From that moment on, my life was not my own. It became an endless parade of idiot children and grandchildren, and now, great-grandchildren. An entire brood of moronic things created by one moronic act. By my weakness. My momentary sympathies for his cretinous ways. I loathe them all."
Something sick rises in his chest at the thought of it. Something bilious and hollow that makes him think of his sister and how much he can't bring himself to hate his own family. Realizes too late his reaction to Missus Pearsson's words. He tries to hide it, tries to keep it off his face. She sees it and cocks her head to one side—a curious, weathered old magpie considering its dinner.
"Do I sound harsh to you?" she asks. "I must. But understand this: I have spent seventy years of my life watching my family grow and spread like a sickness, knowing for a fact that I was the point at which it began. Seventy good, usable years gone, and now, cancer? No. I refuse to let it end like this. I know you've read my file, Mister X, but make no mistake—there are worse cancers in my life than the one devouring my pancreas.
"Now is my chance to escape them all, forever. To become the person I was always supposed to be. The woman I was always supposed to be, free of obligation or tether. Free of all the things
"It's that fast?"
"That fast."
"Did they tell you about my new body?"
Quinn shakes his head no. "Why would they?"
She nods. "Fair enough, Mister X. Fair enough."
Her eyes refocus on the SCED. "Can I see it? The, ah. The...needle?"
He doesn't see any reason why not. He holds the SCED out again and punches the button. There's a noise like a faint digital screeee and the needle jumps out of one end, hard and fast enough to punch through flesh and bone in one go. Keeps it out long enough for her to get a good look, then takes his finger off the button. The needle disappears.
"It seems so easy," Missus Pearsson says.
"It is."
She shifts underneath the blankets. All he can see of her is her face, piled inside a hillock of heavy bedding that only faintly defines the form underneath.
"What about weaponry? Do you carry a weapon, Mister X? Seems like your job might be sort of dangerous, from time to time. A gun?"
"No guns."
"A knife, then?"
He doesn't say anything, but then, he doesn't have to. She lights up with self-satisfaction.
"Fantastic," she says. "That's fantastic." Smiles like a floodlight. The brightness hits him full-force and makes his stomach turn. He keeps looking at her as her expression shifts. Sours, somehow. Grows cruel. It's not something he could explain if he was asked—just a series of miniscule shifts underneath the skin. Impossible for him to say what changes in her face, but it's undeniably there. He moves to stand, to get on with the work, but she holds out her hand, staying him for the moment.
"Before you do what you came here to do, you have to understand something, Mister X: this is not a life I ever wanted. Not one that I was ever once interested in. It was thrust upon me. I was conscripted into it the moment the moron I thought was my loving husband guilted me into keeping a child I never wished to have."
Quinn can feel the air around them growing somehow colder, but he may be imagining it.
"I had a life. I had a purpose. I was my own person. Then I got pregnant, despite my best efforts, and my husband simply droned on and wept like a child until I thought he was right about wanting to keep it. I thought that way for nine months, until a small mewling thing that looked just like him came into the world and he expected me to care for it solely. From that moment on, my life was not my own. It became an endless parade of idiot children and grandchildren, and now, great-grandchildren. An entire brood of moronic things created by one moronic act. By my weakness. My momentary sympathies for his cretinous ways. I loathe them all."
Something sick rises in his chest at the thought of it. Something bilious and hollow that makes him think of his sister and how much he can't bring himself to hate his own family. Realizes too late his reaction to Missus Pearsson's words. He tries to hide it, tries to keep it off his face. She sees it and cocks her head to one side—a curious, weathered old magpie considering its dinner.
"Do I sound harsh to you?" she asks. "I must. But understand this: I have spent seventy years of my life watching my family grow and spread like a sickness, knowing for a fact that I was the point at which it began. Seventy good, usable years gone, and now, cancer? No. I refuse to let it end like this. I know you've read my file, Mister X, but make no mistake—there are worse cancers in my life than the one devouring my pancreas.
"Now is my chance to escape them all, forever. To become the person I was always supposed to be. The woman I was always supposed to be, free of obligation or tether. Free of all the things
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