Chapter Two:

Richard

“Is everyone feeling okay? I can get some more ice if you’re too hot.”

The fifteen sweaty children mumbled distractedly but continued working.

Richard Drex watched the unwanted children make posters decrying their wretched situation, begging for more donations. Though every picture was staged and every slogan pre-approved by the Fund For Reality, the children created each poster with a loving care that saddened Richard.

They wanted the world to remember them.

Richard went to get ice. When he returned, he set the bowl in the center of the room and felt a burning anger at the FFR for not buying the sanctuary a new cooling system. It had the money—in addition to his other duties, he’d collected five times the amount it would have taken to buy the system. He’d intended to purchase one himself, but the credits had simply vanished from his account, claimed by Accounting for some other purpose.

“How’s this, Richard?” one of the boys asked, lifting his poster.

In it, the boy stood between two adult console beds, looking forlorn. The poster read, MY NAME IS WILLIAM FROST. GAMING TOOK MY FAMILY. In smaller letters, it said, Support the FFR. Give me a chance at reality.

“Looks good,” Richard said. “Where you gonna put it?”

William glanced away.

Richard winced. “They’re not gonna recognize you, William.”

William got to his feet. He went over to the TimeSavr and punched in an address. With a quick, bone-rattling hum, the boy disappeared.

Richard sighed. The boy was probably going to go plaster the poster to the outside of one of his gene-parents’ consoles. William, like every other child in the room, longed to have his parents step out of their consoles and remember him. Richard knew the feeling. It was why he worked for the Fund For Reality when he could be earning twenty times as much in one of the colonies.

When Richard’s brain-chip informed him it was two-forty-five, he said, “Fifteen minutes, kids, then we start board games. Wrap it up, you can finish them tomorrow.”

The kids made various noises of reluctance, but in the end left their posters unfinished and went to find their favorite games. Richard gathered up the abandoned posters and winced when they caught the splinter in his left thumb. It had been plaguing him ever since he tripped and caught himself one of the kids’ antique bunkbeds a week ago. The whole digit was red and swollen, throbbing every time he touched something. He was still trying to save enough money to go to a medical center to remove it.

Richard set the stack of unfinished posters in a corner and went to supervise the board games. Richard did not allow any sort of electronic entertainment inside the FFR retreat. It was a rule he strictly enforced, not even admitting handheld logic games within the bungalow’s walls. This made for difficulties, since nobody manufactured non-electronic games anymore. He had recreated many board games by hand or had paid collectors outrageous prices for them, all with donations he never reported to the Fund For Reality.

Despite its recent hardships, Richard was proud of the FFR. His fifteen wards were some of the only children in the Southern California city zone not addicted to NewLife, and the only reason they weren’t plugged into consoles was that Richard had kidnapped them. It was his job to monitor transactions with the Bioengineering Bureau every evening. If a gene-parent missed a scheduled pickup, he had to intervene before they left their games long enough to receive the Bureau’s messages and remember they had ordered a child. Or, in unfortunate cases, before the Bureau could transfer the unclaimed child to Population Control for deportation.

Richard was a lab-diver, and a good one.

Of anybody in the FFR, Richard was the best at getting kids out of the Bureau without raising suspicions. It was a complex mix of hacking the database, concentration, and disguising himself well enough to pass an iris scan. Diving was tough work, and if he ever got caught, all the FFR’s lawyers would probably only manage to decrease his sentence to a ten-year mind-wipe.

It was the kids that kept Richard going—they deserved real parents. Richard had saved eighty-nine children since he began diving seven years ago at twenty-three, more than any other diver in the FFR. Richard still hadn’t gotten caught, but he knew his luck wouldn’t last forever. Divers always got caught.

Looking at the children, Richard felt a welling of disgust for their parents. They were so addicted to gaming that they hadn’t even remembered they had ordered kids. If the FFR hadn’t stepped in, Population Control would have shipped the unclaimed children off to colony planets in exchange for raw materials. Even worse, the children who got claimed were plugged into Newlife’s FirstYears program so their parents didn’t have to waste time raising them.

Gaming addiction was destroying society on every civilized planet in the universe, but it was especially bad on Earth. Of the fifteen kids in Richard’s living room, every one of them would grow up to be involved in the government. NewLife had crippled too many people to maintain a functioning society without using every single child they could save. Soon Earth would have to start importing aliens to run the government.

Until then, AIs were taking up the burden. With so many people locked in their console beds, placid AI faces dominated every excursion, from shopkeepers to workmen. They had grown cocky after the latest amendment to the New Constitution, but with Earth’s lack of manpower, they had humanity by the balls and were not about to let go. Richard had begun to hate going into public because AIs threw their new status into the face of every human they met, making errands a living hell.

Richard grew irritated just thinking about it. He looked up and tried to smile as William came back into the living room.

“Still gaming?” Richard said.

William refused to look at him.

Richard got up and walked over to the child. “Will, you’ve gotta stop. Even if they see the poster, they’re not gonna realize—”

William burst into a sob. “They looked right at me! They woke up and asked me where my parents are!”

Richard dropped to his knees and tugged William into his arms. “I know. Believe me, I know. You’re gonna be all right, Will. You’ve got us.”

Will wrenched himself out of Richard’s arms. “I want them!” He ran to the bathroom and slammed the door.

The rest of the day went as usual, ending with a scanty meal from the cheap-grade food generator. The FFR had sent him defective matter-cubes for that week, so he ended up short. He had to divide the nine remaining meals into fifteen portions so the kids could all eat. He made do with the metallic-tasting mush left over from the defective cubes.

That night, Richard put everyone to sleep in the real wooden bunks his predecessor had bought for the bungalow before the Bureau caught him and reduced him to the mental state of a four-year-old. The kids loved the wooden bunks, but Richard wanted to buy replacements as soon as the FFR stopped confiscating his donations. Real wood was dangerous, as his swollen thumb could attest.

Once he was alone, Richard went to his desk and plugged himself in to the Bioengineering Bureau’s classified network. He read the logs for the day, then went stiff as his eyes scanned one of the entries.

Cassie Earlson. Age 7. Born 08/14/2355 at 0200. ID# 85WJ20PX15B98. Parents 09FL81KG91F33 and 77HJ19RV12D56 failed to pick child up on predetermined date. Attempts to contact failed. Population Control to be notified at 02:00, 08/15/2355.

Richard checked his chip. 22:39, August 14th. He frowned and re-examined the file. Cassie had been finished today, and yet she was slated for deportation tomorrow morning. Confused, Richard exited the Bureau’s network and plugged the parents’ ID numbers into the worldwide database. He found them both living at Apartment 2KK9T983J in Upper Taiwan.

“2KK9T983J.” Richard glanced at the kids’ room door and picked up the com unit. He dialed Bob Greel, the FFR treasurer.

“Yeah.”

“Got another one, Bob.”

“You’re kidding. That’s two in one week.”

“This one’s hot. PopControl’s got her slated for deportation in three hours.”

“Three hours? How’d you miss it?”

“They didn’t give her the five-day grace period for some reason. I’m gonna check it out. Need you to watch the kids.”

“You got it.”

“Bring some matter cubes. Generator ate a couple this week and we didn’t have enough for dinner tonight.”

“Christ, why didn’t you say something?”

“I just did.”

“That’s irresponsible, Richard.”

“Just bring the damn cubes, Bob. The kid’s only got three hours.”

On the other end, Bob grunted. “See you in a minute.”

Richard hung up and grabbed his case of tools from the safe. He set his chip for a countdown and waited impatiently for Bob to appear.

His internal timer read 2:56:08 when the FFR treasurer arrived carrying the matter cubes.

“Put them on the desk,” Richard said. He got into the TimeSavr and entered the address. Instead of transporting him, the TimeSavr display flashed TRANSFER CANCELLED. PRE-APPROVED PARTIES ONLY.

Behind him, Bob grunted.

Richard set his case on the TimeSavr platform and extracted a remote control that had cost the FFR more money than most people earned in a lifetime. He entered 2KK9T983J and waited for a response.

In moments, the display read, CONNECTED.

Richard scrolled down through the menu and changed Pre-Approved Parties to Accept All. Then stuffed his remote back into his case and re-entered the address in his TimeSavr. White-hot prickles and an instant of blackness engulfed him before Richard stood in the living-room of Cassie Earlson’s parents.

Richard did not even have to leave the TimeSavr platform to confirm his suspicions. Two large gaming consoles lay in the living room like coffins, their displays showing solid green lights indicating they were in-game.

Richard hopped off the platform and jogged over to examine them.

When he saw their faces under the console lids, Richard felt nauseous. Both were dead. Skeletons. Their eyes had sunk back into their deep brown sockets, seemingly burrowing into their brains. A thin film of moss grew on one white face. The individual bones were visible in their arms. They’d been gaming for years, dead for months. Only the antibacterial sprays inside the console had kept them preserved for so long.

Disgusted, Richard moved to their personal database plugin and checked the timer on his chip. 2:49:19. No time for a scrambler. He’d just have to hope they never checked the log. He removed another tool from his case and tested the feed. Trev and Alexis Earlson. Their last upload had been three months ago. Richard plugged himself in and began downloading. He learned every detail of each of their lives right up to the point of their last upload. His chip was high-capacity, an expensive upgrade over the mandatory government-installed chips, something the FFR required in its divers. He was still trying to pay it off.

Once he had a copy of the Earlson’s lives, Richard disconnected and went back to the consoles. 2:28:56. The download had taken more than twenty minutes. Cursing, Richard opened Trev’s console. The stench of molding flesh assaulted him as he bent closer to pry the dead man’s eyelids open. Even glazed in death, Trev’s eyes were a startling green. Richard took the scanner from his case and scanned Trev’s eyes, then his thumbs.

When he was done, he closed the lid and returned to the FFR bungalow. He reconnected to the Earlson’s TimeSavr and erased all records for that day.

“Well?” Bob said.

“Gamers,” Richard said.

“You look pissed.”

“I’m fine.”

“Come on.”

Richard let out an explosive sigh and set his equipment down on his desk. “Only thing left was their skeletons. Been dead for months.”

“Both of them?”

Richard nodded.

“Weird. Must’ve found the Holy Grail of games.”

Richard gave Bob a sour look and withdrew his package of tiny round memory-films from his desk and inserted two into his scanner. When they came out again, he took a deep breath and stuck them to his eyeballs.

The memory-film burned, momentarily blinding him as the film sucked up all traces of water from the surface of his eye. Richard had to resist the instinctual urge to tear them away from his eyes in a panic, the first test to being a lab-diver. After two excruciating minutes, they were fully glued to his eye, uncomfortable and stinging.

“I don’t know how you do that.”

Richard grimaced at Bob through tears. “Worst part of diving.” He checked his chip. 2:20:07.

“Thumbs aren’t that much better.”

“Yeah.” Richard inserted two tiny oblong films into the scanner. As they were curing, he uncapped a bottle of clear solution and rubbed drops into both thumbs. He then pressed the finished films onto his thumbs and endured the hot-cold sensation as they reacted to the solution, stiffening like leather. He would have to burn them off afterwards with a laser, taking the uppermost layer of skin with them. Because of this, Richard no longer had fingerprints of his own—a fact that would condemn him if he was ever caught.

“I’ll get the makeup guys,” Bob said. He picked up the comset and made a call to FFR headquarters. In minutes, three technicians arrived carrying bags of cosmetics and a portable mug-machine. Richard plugged himself in to the mug-machine long enough to feed it a picture of Trev Peters from Alexis’s memories, then sat back in his chair.

“Okay, you know the drill,” a technician said. “Don’t flinch.” She set the mug-machine over his face and pressed down. In an instant, scalding putty melted to his face, forming the basic features that the technicians would cover with skin casts and false hair.

When they were finished, Richard did not recognize himself in the mirror. He examined his face for cracks in the putty as the technicians added the red pucker marks of a gamer to his arms. The rest of his body already fit the profile. For the last seven years, Richard had purposefully kept himself thin and undernourished so it wasn’t hard for anyone to believe he spent most of his life in a console bed.

“Good to go, Richard,” one of the technicians said. She slapped him on the butt and grinned. When Richard grinned back, she grimaced. “Better work on your smile. You look like someone superglued your lips to your teeth.”

Richard went to the bathroom and spent several precious minutes in front of the mirror, attempting to make his smile look genuine. The putty made his face stiff, his expressions lopsided. Before he was completely ready, he went to get dressed. 0:42. He’d wasted nearly two hours on makeup.

“No good,” the woman said, measuring him. “You’re too tall. Need to lose two inches.”

“He’s always too tall,” the man muttered. “A damn giraffe. What’s gonna happen when you get a shortie?”

“I’ll cope.” Richard wrapped himself in an opaque material that hid his slouch and got on the TimeSavr. He punched in a random code, then once he had arrived at the random destination—this time a street bar in a seedy part of a Western-styled city—he entered in the address to the Bureau’s headquarters. Back at the bungalow, Bob was already in the process of erasing his trail.