The God Organ Read online

  Lost in her own thoughts, she arrived at the Kay Boardroom and slid open the large glass door to the room. There were three men around a table. She recognized the tawny-skinned man with the cropped black hair as Zachary Stevens from the legal department. It seemed to her the legal department had an inordinate number of problems with their computers, especially those they used for preparing patent applications.

  The other two were unfamiliar to her. All wore suits in varying shades of gray. She felt slightly out of place in her dark jeans and rust-orange sweater.

  Zachary offered a placid smile. “Ah, our savior is here. They tell you what the problem is?”

  “Yes, I think I can get a handle on it and get you guys back online in about five minutes.”

  One of the other gray-suited men sighed and wiped at his sweat-soaked forehead. “I guess that should work.”

  Thin, gray-hued glass windows offset the deep mahogany of the paneled walls. Normally, the windows were transparent, but the men had selected the privacy setting. The smart-glass door was also glazed over in a shadowy gray to obscure them from anyone who might peek inside.

  Despite this evident effort to conceal the meeting from outsiders, the men resumed their talks while Monica worked.

  Zachary tapped on the conference table. “There really is no better time than now to try to use some of our poker chips. We don’t have much, but imagine what would happen if LyfeGen’s Sustain got booted. We’d be in a much better position to leverage them for a license to some of that technology.” He rubbed his cheek in thought. “Of course, we’d only get the stuff that works.”

  “True,” the bald man said. “But you know negotiations for that would be painful. Even if they couldn’t sell the damned thing, so much is protected by trade secrets. If we had the license for the parts they patented, we wouldn’t have enough to produce our own.”

  “He’s right,” the third suit said. “I’m confident in my team’s ability to reverse-engineer nanoparticles and polymers or mechanical devices, but a whole organ is another matter. Not to mention, it isn’t easy to take apart.”

  Zachary leaned back with his hands clasped behind his head. “So you’re telling me that even if I get licenses to their patents, it would be useless.”

  “Well, not completely useless. I’m sure we could take some of their cardiovascular genomic updates and merge them with some of our nanoparticle technologies.”

  Monica had fixed the link between the room and whatever group was trying to dial in. But she tinkered at the holoscreen with her ears perked.

  “That would be less than optimal, though,” the third gray-suit said. “You and I both know nanoparticles are no longer trending. They’ll be obsolete in the next couple of decades. People are tired of injecting themselves with tiny metal particles. It’s all about cell-based tech now. All the environmental groups like the Sustain better, too. No metal waste or byproducts to dispose of.”

  “It sounds to me like we need those licenses,” Zachary said. “But you guys are going to need to figure out the rest. Got to make the boss happy.”

  “Right,” said gray-suit number two. “I’d gladly give up part of my liver to whoever could get their hands on all the Sustain data and lab reports. It’d be an engineer’s wet dream.”

  “Well, I doubt your liver would be much use to anyone.” Zachary pantomimed taking a drink.

  “I’ll get myself a new one when we can puzzle out that god organ business. Say, if you’re so sure you can get the licenses for the patents, why not go for all the production secrets to sweeten the package?”

  Zachary let out a brusque laugh. “I could try. But there’s no guarantee they’ll include everything—even if they sign a contract saying they will. Remember when Coca-Cola claimed to have open-sourced their ingredients list? I’ve yet to test a generic that tastes near as good.”

  “Yeah, well, a drink like that is practically illegal now, anyway. Way too much sugar,” gray-suit two said. “And the god organ doesn’t fix teeth yet.”

  “It’s done,” Monica said.

  As soon as she left, the dread of subjecting herself to the confined space of the IT department and Sam’s unwanted advances confronted her. But she distracted herself with an idea. Maybe it was a pipe dream, but it was better than nothing. She needed a way out of Sam’s clutches. She needed a job.

  And she had just learned of a way to ingratiate herself with someone outside of Sam’s suffocating IT realm at NanoTech.

  Chapter 8

  Cody Warren

  October 16, 2063

  Beneath the orange-and-blue glow of a neon sign, Cody Warren sucked on a cigarette. Tendrils of smoke poured out of his nostrils. He shifted the black stocking cap on his head and tucked in a couple of curling hairs that had escaped.

  A man and woman holding hands walked past him with scrunched faces. Cody pulled his comm card out of his pocket and activated it. Its display reminded him what the cool night air and lack of other bar patrons had already told him: it was 7:34 p.m. on a Monday.

  During the day, the sun offered solace for him, easing the transition from the warm humidity of summer into the chilling, cutting winds of winter.

  But the autumn night offered no such comfort. Cody stuffed one hand deep into his ragged jeans pocket and wrapped his fingers around the fifty-dollar box of cigarettes adorned with gruesome images of blackened lungs and brown, rotting teeth to warn of the product’s inherent dangers. His other hand balanced the cigarette delicately between his lips. He relished the smoky air that warmed his lungs and chest from the inside out. He imagined he felt as the earth must feel, full of smoke and heat and fire and soft innards, but crusted over by a dreary, abused wasteland ravaged by humanity. Every time he drowned himself in beer, his imagination took unpredictable, fantastical twists.

  Philosophy and imagination roiled, as they so often did, fueling his desire to dig deeper into his mind and unleash these titans through another beer or two.

  His comm card buzzed and scattered his delusions. He tossed his nearly finished cigarette to the curb and ground it into the cement with his heel.

  He pulled the card, flashing red, from his pocket. There was a message from his video service provider threatening to disconnect the stream to his home holo projectors. He laughed; he had already sold the projection screen.

  “Well, that takes care of me having to cancel the damn thing myself,” he muttered as he walked back into Kingsley’s Bar. The aroma of stale beer and sweat saturated the air. Hazy green lightshades hung overhead. He sat on a stool and set his elbows on the sticky bar. A projection appeared in front of him displaying a list of artists and songs. Squinting, he scrolled through them and selected “Coal-Made Man” by the Barons of America as the bartender, Kirk, meandered toward him.

  “What you want now?”

  “Another Bud Light.”

  Kirk nodded and pulled a draft. The frothy head poured over the edge of the pint glass as he slid it over the bar.

  Cody put his head into his hand and pointed at the bartender. “I promise you, your job won’t ever be taken by any robo-recognition-drink-serving shit bot without a face or a personality. You want to know why?”

  “You’ve told me before.” Kirk tapped a holoscreen behind the bar and Cody’s comm card buzzed to notify him of the charge.

  “Because of the drunks.” Cody’s words slurred together. “Because of the washouts, like me. People with a depressing-ass story to tell. With some no-face-can’t-talk-automatic coffee maker, you don’t get a person to share a good, old-fashioned conversation with. If you were some screen with a camera, I wouldn’t be here. And God knows, y’all want my money here.”

  The bartender smiled and placed a rack of pint glasses in the wash.

  Cody slumped into the pit of his elbow. On busier days, the traveling roar of a bowling ball would echo through the floor above him. He would play a game or two between stints at the bar. Besides the relatively cheap drafts and the company of the barkeep
, he came to Kingsley’s for the bowling. The manual bowling alley required actual people to set the pins and return the balls. He appreciated the novelty of the human-run bar and alley and spent most of his evenings charging his comm card with beer and bowling games, stopping only for a hamburger to soak up the beer sloshing in his stomach.

  A cold blast of air rushed past as the entrance door opened. Three men walked in, all in their early twenties. They sat down at a worn booth. After they’d ordered their first round, one of the men placed his comm card on the table. He queued up a projection video of an electronic band called something like “Five Sixes.” Cody couldn’t be sure. The clamor of their music contrasted harshly with the quieter “Coal-Made Man” that buzzed through the bar’s speakers.

  Cody caught Kirk’s gaze and raised his eyebrow. He gestured toward the men. “Can’t a dejected man like myself wallow in my misery without having to listen to that pop crap?”

  Kirk offered a brief smile and nodded. He rose from behind the bar. “Hey, guys. Can you turn that off? If you want music, you can just sync up to our jukebox and choose something.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” the man in the tight red button-down shirt said.

  Cody held his half-full glass up to the bartender. “See, this is why I come here. Cheers to you. No robo drink bot can tell kids to quiet down their shit.”

  He downed his beer and licked the last drops off his lips. Signaling for another, he opened his comm card to scan the day’s news streams.

  The three men at the table started talking loudly. Cody swiveled around, already prepared to be distracted from the depressing streams reporting the dearth of job opportunities and rising unemployment. He leaned against the bar and smiled as he listened.

  “I’m definitely getting one,” Red Shirt said. “Are you kidding?”

  The young man across from Red Shirt wore a plain black t-shirt that snugly gripped his biceps. Next to him, their lanky friend with a Chicago Cubs hat sipped a pint of ale.

  “Come on, even with all this shit going on?”

  “My dad works there, dumbass,” Red Shirt said. “I can assure you, it’s perfectly safe.”

  The lanky friend nodded, his Cubs hat shaking comically on his head. “Yeah, it’s like laser eye surgery, man. Everybody does that.”

  “It’s not like laser eye surgery at all.” Biceps laughed at Cubs Hat. “Some days, I wonder how you even got into Northwestern.”

  Cody motioned to Kirk. “Northwestern kids. Probably didn’t get into Harvard and their rich parents sent ’em there instead.”

  Kirk shrugged and offered an almost apologetic smile as he wiped down the bar top. Cody used the same line every time a group of Northwestern students came to Kingsley’s. In truth, each time he saw one of the kids fortunate enough to afford the university’s tuition, it reminded him of the tens of thousands in debt he’d racked up in an attempt to better his life. All that wasted money had enabled nothing more than a brief, ill-fated stint in the biomedical industry.

  “Well, he did drop out.” Red Shirt smirked.

  “Shut up.” Cubs Hat frowned and crossed his arms.

  Red Shirt grinned. “Come on, we still like you. But try to keep your mouth closed more. Seriously. My dad says I can get one implanted as a graduation present.”

  Biceps shrugged. “Well, I guess, as long as he thinks it’s safe. I’d wait, though. Everything going around about their CEO’s death—it just doesn’t add up.”

  Red Shirt shook his head. “I told you, my dad works there. I’d know if anything was wrong since he obviously would. Anyway, don’t buy all the hype that the media shoves down your throat. Too much garbage to sell ad space and not enough valuable content.”

  “I guess,” Biceps said. “I’ll probably get one eventually. Maybe I should convince my parents to get me one for my graduation, too. I mean, my parents both have one, and they haven’t had any bad side effects.”

  “See?”

  “I know, I know,” Biceps said. “But, I’m still nervous about it. Surgery and shit, man.”

  “Yeah, I don’t want a god organ in me,” Cubs Hat said. “That shit could turn out to be toxic.”

  Cody smiled. He winked at Kirk and whistled at the young men. “You guys all got it wrong.”

  Biceps tried to ignore him, but Red Shirt looked at Cody with an air of disgust. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Cody. Who are you guys?”

  “Bradley,” Red Shirt said.

  “I’m Jeremy,” Cubs Hat said with a ridiculous smile. He motioned to Biceps. “And this is Paul. Nice to meet you.”

  “Gentlemen,” Cody said, his words slurring. “You’re focused on the wrong issue.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Cody’s laugh made Red Shirt wince. “You keep asking yourselves whether or not you should be getting one of those god organs.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Bradley’s cheeks reddened to a color matching his shirt.

  “You’re asking the wrong questions.”

  “Really?” Jeremy appeared incredulous. “How do you know what questions we’re asking?”

  Paul rolled his eyes. “He’s saying that we shouldn’t be talking about whether or not we should be getting a Sustain implant.”

  “Oh, the god organ?” Jeremy said.

  “Yes, the god organ.” Cody tried to emulate his best preacher voice. “The almighty, life-saving, righteous god organ. The savior of all people, good and evil. Particularly evil.”

  “What are you implying?” Bradley raised an eyebrow.

  Cody smirked. “I’m not implying anything. I’m telling you outright that that god organ, Sustain, mother of your child, whatever, is running this country into the ground, and it isn’t helping anybody good.”

  “Do you know how many lives have been saved?” Bradley said. “So many people who could’ve died or suffered their entire lives, and they get the Sustain—voilà.”

  Cody tipped his chin up and looked down at them. “Whose lives does it save?”

  “I just told you: anyone who needs it.”

  “BEEP. Wrong answer. Whose lives does it save?” Cody pointed to Jeremy.

  “All the people who got it, man.”

  “That’s right. ‘All the people who got it, man.’ All the people who can afford it.” Cody bobbed his head. “And who can afford it?”

  “I can.” Bradley puffed out his chest and obstinately stuck out his chin.

  “You can’t, kid. But your parents might be able to.” Cody frowned. “And it isn’t cheap, is it? You know that. The people who can afford it, get it. Sure, they benefit from it. But who are those people? They’re the upper class, the upper-middle class, mostly. The people who got good jobs, trust funds, or won the lottery. Not the average man.”

  “So?” Paul said. “That’s how capitalism works.”

  “You’re right,” Cody said. “Except when it no longer works.”

  “You’re too drunk,” Bradley said. “You aren’t making any sense.”

  “Oh, I forgot. Harvard rejected you. I’m going to make it clearer.” Cody stared at Bradley. “Our economy has been perverted by this so-called lifesaving organ. Everyone knows it. You get a good job, you get promoted, you work hard, you get promoted again, and eventually you retire, right?

  “Not anymore. Now, if you’ve got a good job, you get a god organ, you live like a god. You live forever, like. Maybe you’re so happy with your job and you keep working ’cause you want more damn money. But maybe you can’t retire. If you did, you couldn’t afford to live because you’re going to live for so long. You don’t even really know how long you’re going to live, so you’ve got to keep your job.

  “And the guy who works for you? He doesn’t get promoted because you never retire. Maybe he can afford a god organ, too. He joins the immortal club and keeps working, slaving away just to stay alive, never really going anywhere. The guy who works for him never gets promoted because the guy who works for you doesn�
�t get promoted. And they both need to keep working. They’d get jobs somewhere else, but it’s the same story there, too. At the bottom, those jobs start getting sucked up by computers who don’t need a salary. Bottom is full of bots and the top is filled with god-organ gods, squeezing out the rest of us.

  “Fortunately, every once in a while, someone will get promoted because a company will lose an employee to a freak accident or something the god organ can’t handle...yet.

  “Sure, there are some new jobs each year. But there are even more people looking for jobs. Twenty percent unemployment, Bradley,” Cody said, shaking his head. “Twenty percent. And for all those people who do have jobs and can’t afford a god organ—it’s because they’re underemployed for their whole lives. They’re forced to work the jobs that the gods don’t want—the jobs that don’t pay near as well. And those people die. They die like normal human beings to be replaced by other normal human beings who will also die like normal human beings.

  “So where does that leave the gods?” Cody didn’t wait for an answer. “It leaves them with all the good jobs, in charge of companies and the government, making the real decisions, with the freedom to live but unwilling to leave their posts. They keep staying alive, they keep making money, they keep getting richer.”

  The three young men were quiet. Bradley’s dumb, open mouth undercut his knitted brow.

  “All the while, the rest of us will never have that opportunity. The sky is no longer the limit for us in America. The gods are our limits. And the gods are our leaders, our bosses.

  “What do you think will happen when you graduate?” Cody slurred his words.

  “I dropped out.” Jeremy’s face fell.

  Cody wavered as he tilted toward Paul and Bradley. “What about you two?” His vision was slightly hazy, but he managed to focus on them, waiting for an answer. “Well?”

  Bradley shrugged. “We’ll get jobs.”

  “How are you going to get a job out there? Nobody’s giving up their jobs, so what makes you think you’re so special?”