Orgonomicon by Boris D. Schleinkofer Page B

take it anymore—his mom's
horror story was too much, the beer going to his head after not
drinking for all this time was too much, the oppressing dankness of
the whole shady apartment was too much. He needed to get out.
    "Get more beer!" She'd yelled at him; he took
a ten-dollar bill out of the cookie jar and grabbed his old bicycle
off the back porch. Trusty old bicycle, you could count on an old
Schwann, they were from back in the days when people knew how to
make things right. The old bat hadn't thrown it away; he supposed
he was lucky. He pushed off into the night, headed for the gas
station, and slowly picked up speed. He never saw the black sedan
coming around the corner and careening into him, never saw the
blood and the stark fear in the drunk driver's eyes as he squealed
away from the accident.
    The red glow of the taillights receded into
the distance and Scott pushed himself up onto one elbow. He was
pretty sure he had broken bones but surprisingly little of him
actually hurt. He held his hand up to his face and watched the
blood absorb back into the skin; in just a few seconds, the tissues
had re-woven and most of the smaller cuts and gashes had already
healed.
    "What the hell is happening to me?" Scott
moaned into the indifferent night as another white jet liner
streaked across the sky, leaving twin rows of a thin, dissipating
haze that spread slowly out to obscure the face of the full
moon.
     
    Agent Buzzsaw held the vial of black liquid
up against the thin moonlight and shook it, slooshing the oily
contents against the insides of the glass tube.
    "That isn't what I think it is? What the hell
are you doing with that, BUZ4937? Field agents aren't allowed to
get anywhere near that stuff! We're not even supposed to know it
exists? Where did you get that?"
    "I got it. That's all that matters. I use it
for various things, and that's all you need to know."
    "Various things like what?"
    "Like it makes a good focus for rad-work, for
instance. Now fuck off. I'm not answering any more of your
questions."
    "You'll answer to internal affairs when they
find out. How did it not come up in briefing?"
    "Yeah, makes you wonder, don't it? Maybe they wanted me to have it, asshole."
    SEL6210 couldn't take the man any longer.
"I'm going out for some air. I'll finish up when I get back. We've
got all night."
    "Don't expect me to take up your slack."
    "Not expecting anything of the sort, just
need to get out and stretch my legs."
    And get the stink of your awfulness off me,
SEL6210 thought to himself. He didn't even care if the neural net
passed the thought along to the man, so long as the precious few
seconds of lag time were enough to get him out of his presence.
    One got used to having a chip embedded in
their brain after a while. He'd come to think of it as his
emergency flight recorder, like the black box on an airplane, a
lifeline back to the system that kept him alive and safe. And he
was never lonely—it talked to him all the time.
    It had been awkward at first, invasive, but
he'd gotten used to it pretty quickly. He'd never had any privacy
growing up with his authoritarian father and snooping mother, so he
was already pretty used to the feeling; it was only a difference of
degree.
    It was such a slight difference to give your
whole self away.
     
    William was three years old when he began
losing the memories of what he'd been in his last life. This time
around, he was going to be a little human boy, like those around
him. He wanted to fit in, to be accepted as one of them. This time,
he wanted all on his own to do what they said, if it meant he could
belong.
    This was to be no easy accomplishment. He
could hear their thoughts, at first, much as it had been when he
was with the Hive, but fainter and without the sense of
unquestioning obedience. And the first thing they had told him had
been to stop listening. It was his first and greatest strength, and
they needed him to relinquish it. People were self-contradictory
like