Altered States: A Cyberpunk Sci-Fi Anthology Read online

  The children are young—a boy and a girl. Nothing has been familiar since Carl and P.P.’s meeting, so I suppose that my presence there was a coincidence and not part of any plan. I can only guess that my experience is the same as everyone who’s dead—we’re all attached to a living thing. Wouldn’t it be something if the entire universe of the dead was attached to the same body—my ferret, for instance? We’re a weightless and volume-less population, we overlap, and, in our perpetually increasing numbers, maybe we all switch to a new body together every night. Who can say? I’m already telling you more than you could possibly have known.

  My ferret’s family is watching a documentary about me, the prelude to Annabelle’s Children. There are clips from some of my earliest movies. When I was a child, my eyes were wide and green and impish. My hair fell over my shoulders in auburn waves.

  “She looks like Cindy, doesn’t she look like Cindy?” the mother on the sofa says. No one answers. On screen my child-self makes a sassy quip, and above me the children and mother giggle. Another popcorn kernel falls and my ferret grabs it. Nibble nibble. A solemn voice narrates over photographs of me. I’m not so cute here—makeup blurs my features, and I wear short skirts and low-cut blouses that show my developing breasts. When I smile, my mouth is open and my tongue shows. Pose after pose in gown after gown on miles of red carpet. How many packs a day was I smoking? When did I develop the taste for Jack Daniels? I’m in a courtroom. My hair is tied back, and I look sorry. A judge speaks without making eye contact. Police officers usher me away, their hands floating beside my elbows without touching them. Then I’m dancing wildly, my eyes raking across space as I twirl. There’s my little red Porsche—and there it is again with its front crumpled. The dad sitting above me on the sofa laughs, low and guttural.

  “Rehab” punctuates every other sentence. “Things were to get much worse before they got better,” the narrator says. There’s a grainy video on the screen—a security tape. That’s me in sweatpants and a hoodie. I’m at a gas pump next to the Porsche, which has either been repaired or has yet to be damaged. Gasoline gushes from a hose dangling from the car—a puddle expands on the pavement. I’ve wrapped an arm around the pump, and I’m waving a cigarette lighter and howling. Next, an officer protects my head as I’m plugged into the back of a police cruiser: I grin as if I’m listening to a private joke.

  There’s M’ling—the vivisected cartoon dog-man from The Island of Doctor Moreau—who led me back to a righteous path.

  “Did we see that cartoon? Can we see it?” one of the children asks.

  “It’s a horror movie. It’s rated R,” the mother says. My dog-man cowers in the midnight shadows of tropical trees. The narrator mentions P.P. and Carl. I stand between them in a photograph. All three of us smile. I’d forgotten that I’d buzzed off all my hair while recording Moreau. I knew what baldness was like before chemotherapy.

  A PLAYBILL cover—I’m wearing an apron. My hair is shoulder length. I’m playing a mother. Then I’m standing at a podium, displaying an award.

  “Part two tomorrow!” the narrator says. “Recovery and triumph.”

  I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow. My host may not be near a television, and I’ll miss seeing my final chapter among the living. They’ll say I “battled bravely.” This documentary won’t show Carl, though he surely helped make it. He held my skeletal hand as I shuffled in loose pajamas to the rooms of doomed children. In my last days I bowed over them, my head as hairless as theirs, and offered what I could. There’d soon be nothing left for Carl. Maybe I owed him Annabelle’s Children.

  Try to imagine an existence without expectations. Without surprise. Without impatience.

  Season One of Annabelle’s Children is about to conclude: The twelve couples who have won my fertilized eggs will be named. Implantations are to take place during the summer hiatus, and Season Two’s opening episode will reveal the successful pregnancies. Viewers are teased by the prospect of a dozen mothers swelling to term with babies due in the spring.

  I gather this information while in the company of a speckled catfish. We’re suctioned to the glass of an aquarium. Algae and dust obscure the television across the small, dim room. It’s a struggle to hear over the pump’s hum and filter’s bubbling. Other fish waft above, beneath, and behind us. A young man, alone, slouches on the futon beside the table that supports our tank. He wears shorts and a T-shirt. One hand is down his pants, the other holds a beer. The pillow and blanket on the futon suggest it’s his bed. I see a sink, a mini-fridge and a counter full of dirty plates; an open door exposes a toilet.

  Also on the table with our aquarium is a framed photograph of a bride and groom, which I study during commercial breaks. The groom is a tuxedoed version of the young man on the couch. The bride is—me. I glance away again and again, but each time I look back there’s no question that I’m looking at myself. I’ve been photo-shopped into the picture—I’m almost twice the groom’s size. I recognize the silver gown I wore at the Tony Awards. I suspect I’m replacing another woman, someone the young man wants to exclude from his studio apartment. He continues watching television, unaware that he’s been found out. Is this what “haunting” means?

  Annabelle’s Children summarizes with highlights the months of competition that will earn the winning couples my eggs: a young African-American couple stagger through calf deep mud—the man is heavy, stumbles, and pulls his wife down face-first into the muck; another couple, tan and blond, argue over a quiz question I can’t hear because of the humming and bubbling—the woman offers an answer with a furrowed brow, the couple embraces joyfully, and the number of points displayed in front of them grows by a hundred; a pair of young women struggle across a rope bridge over surging rapids while carrying a life-size baby doll.

  The couples who have competed fill an auditorium. The camera sweeps over eager, anxious faces as all await the outcome of their trials. My catfish dislodges from the aquarium glass, drops to the blue gravel, and wriggles and sucks its way behind a scummy rock. Fish cruise over us like space ships. Time passes.

  We’re back on the glass. A dozen smiling couples stand on the stage—the winners. The host introduces profiles of the last few: here is the blond couple. Their ages, jobs, state of residence (Massachusetts), and income are posted over a video of the pair frolicking with a Husky in their suburban yard. The next couple, a black man and his Asian wife, sit on the stoop of a modest Indiana home. Their posted income is a tenth of the blond couple’s. The last duo, a pair of healthy-looking young women, is doing as well financially as the blonds—one is a financial analyst, the other a photographer. They live in an oceanfront condo in San Diego. I wonder which of the two will carry my baby. I missed the profiles of the other winning couples while the catfish foraged. The closing credits roll over a cartoon picture of a red-haired woman in an apron holding a basket of eggs aloft. I assume that’s supposed to be me. Carl’s and P.P.’s names slide over me and disappear.

  “Get to bed!” insists the robed mother to my host, a little girl of about seven who lingers barefooted on the linoleum floor of a narrow hallway. Her mother lounges on a couch. Ashes from the cigarette pinched in the woman’s lips threaten the face of the infant she holds like a loaf of bread.

  “But the babies are on. I want to see the babies.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have back-talked about your homework.”

  “But I don’t have any homework.”

  “Your teacher says she gives homework every night. That’s what she said.”

  “But I did it in school. I promise! There was time to do it in school today. Can’t I see the babies?”

  If my host goes to bed, it will be dark, and tomorrow I’ll be elsewhere.

  “You got your sister, Brittany.” The mother stuffs her cigarette into a soda can on the table by her elbow. “Get me another Diet Pepsi, and you can stay up,” she says to my partner, and the little girl and I scamper into the kitchen. There are dishes in the sink and bottles in a
pot on the stove. A crayon drawing of a pony with a rainbow mane and tail decorates the refrigerator, which contains cartons of milk and juice, Tupperware of different sizes, and a dozen or so cans of soda. We return to the living room, and my little girl hops onto the sofa after handing the beverage to her mom. She stretches her heels to the coffee table. Grime rims her toenails. The baby mews and snuggles into her mother’s belly.

  “Will Shana be on this one? I like it when Shana’s on.”

  “Shh. How do I know? Keep quiet or you’re going to bed.”

  Shana is three, as are all nine of my children. Ten of the couples winning my eggs had successful, full-term pregnancies. One of my babies, Harrison, died with his mother in a car crash last season. I missed the special memorial program, though I saw the commercial for it: Harrison is shoveling SpaghettiOs into his mouth, but most of the pasta is on his cheeks and chin. He has red hair, like most of my children. His mother laughs in the background as she records her son’s messy eating. If the deaths of Harrison and his mother are like mine, maybe they’ve seen themselves on Annabelle’s Children.

  The first segment of tonight’s show features little Veronica. Her parents have separated and share custody of their daughter. Veronica’s dad is a construction foreman, and he brings her to work, where she wears a miniature hard hat. She has curls like Carl’s. According to the show’s host, Veronica “was the first of the children to walk,” but there’s no video to document the event. I’ve seen other babies’ first words and steps, birthday parties, and Disneyland vacations.

  No Shana yet for my little host. Her dirty feet waggle impatiently on the coffee table during the show’s second segment, which features the “scientific” aspects of Annabelle’s Children. There are statistics and numbers. How many hours are spent in daycare? Who was nursed and who given bottles? Hours of television? Hours read to? Nutritional choices? Doctors in white coats discuss the “likelihoods” of this or that, but no conclusions are reached.

  “Shana!” my little girl cries when her favorite appears, briefly, stacking blocks while a technician marks down her progress on a clipboard. My host has tied her pigtails in rainbow ribbons that match the bow in Shana’s red hair.

  I don’t know what I am to these children. I’m not their birth mother, but their skin and hair and feet, their faces and their heart, have grown from my cells. I’m their First Cause. The last segment features Simon. His parents are lawyers. He looks a lot like Shana, and seems to have an eye for the camera—he poses in ways that remind me of photographs of myself in fan magazines. Tonight, while bouncing Simon on their laps, his mother and father discuss “transgendering.”

  Annabelle’s Children’s theme song plays while the credits roll. It’s a version of my one hit from the only album I recorded. “Who’s your mother? Where’s your mother?” I’d rasped and ranted punkishly. A children’s chorus sings the TV show’s rendition, accompanied by a harp. Unless I missed his name, Carl is no longer listed as a “Creative Consultant.”

  Baby Brittany wails, her mother swears under her breath, and my host rises, pats her little sister’s head, and we’re off to bed. My TV children have no siblings in their families. Did I miss a rule prohibiting them? I’ve seen no signs of a male in this house. It’s hard for a single mother to care for more than her infant—I learned that in my very last movie, and, since I’ve been dead, I’ve seen the truth of it again and again.

  I’ve been hosted by countless dogs, but this is the smallest, some kind of Chihuahua. We’re tucked between the knees of an old woman. She wears stretch pants and gray slippers that might once have been as purple as the burst veins mottling her swollen ankles. When the dog whimpers to pee its owner’s sagging face tightens into a fist.

  “Jingles, can’t you hold it?” she whines in a pitch that matches her dog’s. She struggles with the lever to her easy chair, and Jingles and I hop to the floor of their double-wide. When she pushes open the aluminum door, we skip from a cinder block to the hardpan, and Jingles squats. The woman clings to the door handle while she waits and looks back over her shoulder at her small television. I can’t see much in the dark, but from neighboring trailers I hear quarreling TV show voices.

  Back between the bony knees. Jingles gnaws on a huge biscuit. It’s been many nights since I’ve seen Annabelle’s Children. They’re calling this special show a “reunion,” but the kids have never met. When their parents won my eggs, they’d agreed to keep the children apart, “for the purpose of scientific observation.” The boys and girls are eight years old now. Everyone is dressed nicely; children and adults sit at separate daises. Between them is a microphone at which a tuxedoed host and several guests take turns reminiscing and joking mildly about Annabelle’s Children.

  “The kids could have their own baseball team,” a speaker quips. I anticipate other jokes about “nine,” but all I can think of is that cats have nine lives, and “lives” don’t seem appropriate to mention because of little Harrison. In all the time I’ve been dead, I’ve never been hosted by a cat. The children have seen their own TV show and understand its premise. They’re awkward in the presence of so many biological brother and sister celebrities they don’t know. They ignore the host and peek, mouths agape, at the familiar faces of strangers. No two are identical, and together they present a spectrum of resemblance that runs from Carl to me—dark curls to red hair, brown eyes to green. Looking at them is like looking into funhouse mirrors, and I suspect they feel the same way. Are they forming bonds or discovering them? Their parents squint toward the children with clenched smiles and seem to want to rush over and claim their own.

  The kids, their parents, and the television audience watch a video montage that begins with swollen-bellied mothers, then shows the children as infants and toddlers, interspersed with clips of my childhood movies, then shots of me receiving my Tony. A final video shows me delivering a speech at a children’s hospital shortly before I died. I am bald and hollow-eyed, but I say inspiring things about thinking positively and devoting oneself to a cause. Finally, waiters roll out a grand sheet cake. THANK YOU ANNABELLE is printed across it. The host prepares to cut into it with a saber-sized knife and invites the children to gather around with their plates.

  Tears sparkle like jewels on the cheeks of Jingles’ owner. Have I heard or am I guessing that this is the final episode of Annabelle’s Children? P.P. Frederico had predicted more than a single decade. While my anthem Who’s Your Mother? plays, the camera pans one last time across the cake-smeared faces of my children. The song stops as the credits freeze on two names, little Harrison’s and P.P.’s, followed by their birth and death years. Maybe P.P., wherever he is, has witnessed this memorial. Maybe he and Harrison are here. Maybe everyone’s here. Do you know any different?

  If my death follows a pattern, I don’t have the distance to interpret it. But I pass fewer nights attached to humans and domesticated creatures. Frequently, I slide through the dark with nocturnal hosts I may or may not see. I have wheeled with bats and lain between crickets’ whittling legs. There have been the speed and power and violence of hunting, cries of power or fear. I have burrowed, deep, into loamy soil and rotting hearts.

  When I am indoors, my hosts often dive for darkness, and I catch only winks of light. Tonight I hear whispered endearments and murmurs of pleasure: there’s lovemaking, but I’m with neither partner. Too dark even for shadows—I must be attached to a dust mite between a mattress and box spring. We rock with the sex, and if by some chance Harrison from Season Four is with us, maybe he remembers that rocking gave him comfort. One of the lovers cries out. Motion stops. Every moment is eternal patience.

  I’m coupled with an infant—it seems like forever since I’ve been attached to a human. His face presses into his mother’s breast. He gasps, exhausted and ecstatic from suckling. His mother watches television, but her embracing arms block the screen.

  “Shh,” the mother whispers.

  “Physics means pondering the imponderables,” the
TV voice says. All television voices sound like the announcer’s from Annabelle’s Children. When I ponder “time,” I picture the lines a prisoner scratches on a cell wall—four lines and a cross hatch, four lines and a cross hatch—five and five and five and on and on, until everything is shaded into darkness.

  My host-baby coos and frets, reconnects to his mother’s nipple.

  “Mmm,” his mother sighs.

  “Paul Dirac,” the television voice continues, “theorized that whether light is composed of waves or particles depends on whether you ask it a wave-like or particle-like question.”

  Don’t tell me that you understand!

  On this endless day, I can’t tell to what or whom I’m attached; time no longer seems to be something that moves. There’s light, but I don’t ask it questions about particles or waves. The light illuminates the bookshelf I face and have been facing forever. I focus on a book with a glossy paper cover; it’s surrounded by dusty, title-less volumes. Studying the spine of this newer book is all I do.

  I haven’t lost the sense that I’m attached, but either the dynamics of connection have changed (were due to change?), or I’m hosted by something imperceptible to my understanding. What could be so small? A microbe? A malignant cell?

  The book I stare at is titled My Life as a Child of Annabelle: The End of Reality TV. Below the title and unreadable author’s name, a sweep of auburn hair spreads over the book’s spine from a hidden cover photo. It might be my hair. It could belong to one of my babies. I’ve looked at this spine so long I can’t imagine not seeing it. Concerning the title, I can ask one kind of question if “End” means “death,” and a different kind of question if “End” means “goal.”