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Diary Entry

I am starting a new project today, from boredom as much as anything else. So here it is, the story of me: Diary of a Freak. Hold your applause. If you don’t, you’ll probably regret it later on.

I was squirted from my birthing torso ten years ago into the protective, waterproof, and faux-loving arms of a carebot. I was breathing, a condition that resulted in my being scrubbed until I cried and the metal nutrient cord popped loose from my belly. On I went to a viewing room, where my parents got their first look at me. I’m told Father fainted, but I never found the visual or even audio. I guess the factory zapped it, since my parents didn’t pay for the First Encounter vid. That’s my word, factory. A factory for babies. The place has some coochie-coo name, like Dewy Bottoms.

Not a whole lot happened between birth and now. I spent a lot of time getting to know my inhuman carebot thoroughly, as in ways to deceive it for moments or blissful hours of freedom.

It’s Saturday afternoon, and my parents are in the room down the hall, sliding. I don’t know if they’re doing it together or apart. If I had a choice, I’d do it apart, but that’s just the thing. I don’t have a choice.

Thomas Hardlore, that’s me, has a lot of time on his hands, but what he doesn’t have is a mask. My parents have enough money for the lux models, but do they give their only offspring a mask, even a basic? No.

It’s not like I was intended to be an only child. Boy first, girl two years later. Turns out when the boy is me, one child is enough. The only thing that kept them from appending me to some other couple was pride. When I look in their eyes, I see that it still is. Their own pride, not their pride in me.

Back to the mask. I think about having one all the time. The kids I go to school with already have their own, or so they say. Not that I’ve been to their houses to check that out. School is mostly net time. When I do meet an actual kid, I never get invited anywhere. Can’t have anyone come here, either. Two kids in the house are chaotic and noisy, my parents say. What’s noisy is my parents when they’re forning. They think I don’t know about that, that I’m too young, too asleep, too somewhere or something else. I’m ten. Maybe centuries ago I would have been playing with dolls and learning how to read. Whatever ten-year-olds used to do back then. That’s for babies, now. We pride ourselves on being an Advanced Race. Race to what?

Of course, centuries ago kids like me didn’t exist.

I know all about forning, I just don’t want to do something so slippery, and I can’t imagine a girl wanting to either. If I ever have kids, it’ll be clean, a dish job. If the girl doesn’t want to carry it—and who would—we can sign up for torso space. Not that I’d want to have one of those around the place either. You open a closet to put away a scootcar and there hangs a torso, with its life support module whooshing away, bulging with a baby inside. No, I’d rent a torso at Dewy Bottoms. Let the techs worry about maintenance.

They could pay for genetic enhancement, and they did. Officially, I’m the politician model. Little preborn Tommy’s genes were tweaked here and there, that’ll be four thousand credits please. The results should have been enough to vault Tommy above the masses in terms of looks, intelligence, sociability, and a dozen other traits. Didn’t happen. Intelligence, sure, I guess. Mom and Dad sued and got a lot of money for the heartbreak of me. You’d think they could spend a few credits of it and buy me a mask. They show their disappointment and rejection in subtle ways, like not updating the carebot I’ve had since I was a baby. I have a model that’s ten years out of date, and that’s what they place in charge of their precious Tommy’s life when they’re not home. Hoping that there will be an accident, maybe?

I do have a see-um, or at least I did. That’s a little kid’s play system. You make up stories and tell them to the see-um, and it turns them into 2-D visuals. Or if you’re too lazy, you can push a button and retrieve somebody else’s visuals, as long as they have their see-ums set to broadcast. I made a visual and set it up for wide broadcast. It had everything I like in it, plenty of ships springing leaks out in space and peoples’ eyeballs swelling up and exploding, that kind of thing. I guess it made some little kids cry, because Father took away the see-um and locked it in my carebutt’s storage drawer. I can get it out, but it’s too simple to be fun anymore. 

Sliding is the thing.

Using a computer with voice commands is like climbing a mountain in holo. Yes, you can see for klicks and your lungs are about to burst from the thin air. But you’re not really there. With a mask, your body disappears. You aren’t using code, you are code.

I have reason to want my body to disappear. There’s not a politician anywhere that looks like me. White hair, little bulb of a nose, lips drawn on with tint, arms like twisted sticks, some other nasties covered by clothes. That’s me, Tommy Hardluck: freak.

~*~*~*~*~

The sun’s shining on the other side of the world, so it’s social time here in MetChi. That’s this sprawled out place that covers, I don’t know, half the old Midwest. Used to be a city called Chicago, but we don’t have cities anymore, just Mets. I sit in front of the view window in my room, watching the sunset. It’s not a real window, in case somebody should decide to open it and dive out from Floor 208, where my parents live. Too dangerous. A diver might damage the tube system wrapped around and coiling out from the building like transparent arteries. Imagine being in there and a diver goes splat! right above you as you’re clicking along. Personally I would love it.

My parents put on the kind of clothes everybody wants to be seen wearing and go out. I usually stay at home with the carebot, which just stands in the corner. It’s hardwired to respond only in an emergency. Last time, I finished my whole pack of Blue Arrows in about two minutes after they left, but did the carebot care that I’d run out? I consider that an emergency. My skin had worked up to a radiant yellow, but it wore off in a hurry since I didn’t have more Arrows. I heard that if you swallow several different colors, you can get a rainbow on your body. I have enough Arrows this time, lots of colors, to last until sunrise, which is when my parents get home. I’m planning to strip and see what I look like with stripes. Maybe the carebot will consider that an emergency.

If only I had a mask, I wouldn’t have to dance around naked for my own amusement. Imagine my surprise when the two of them come in and say I have to go with them. It’s a Children’s Museum. Everyone is bringing their children to the grand opening. I argue that they should just skip it this time. No way, they say. Mother needs to impress somebody. Send her alone, I say. Even the carebot, outdated model that it is without even a holo projector, is better company than a group of stuffy grownups and their showcase kids.

Mere minutes later I am trussed in my one stylish outfit and shoved into the tube, my destination tag humming. The wrist straps lower to my height. At each exit, my tag clicks as if to say, “Not here, you idiot.” Others obediently depart when their tags chime sweetly. The tube’s crowded—it’s social time—and all of us travelers sway from our straps in sync as the tube rounds a corner. The sensation of touching other humans is a rare one for me. While I’m deciding if it’s a pro or a con, a 2D comes to mind from a history lesson: slaughtered pigs hanging from hooks in a freezer, ice crystals forming in their just-dead flesh. I classify the tube experience as a semi-con.

The Children’s Museum, which is actually named after somebody like Marigold or Marrygold, is in sector 108, not a short trip. I spend part of the tube time hanging upside down, with my ankles in the wrist straps. Just when I’m wondering how long I can do it without blood filling up my eyeballs, my tag registers my destination, chimes, and the tube spits me onto a landing pad. I roll nicely and come up smiling, quite a feat when my feet are asleep. Talented Tommy.

My parents come shooting out behind me, making two-point landings instead of three-point, and Mother takes my hand. I can’t remember the last time my hand was held. The space where the party’s being held is interesting, and my eyes swirl around, resting greedily on everything like hungry flies on shit. Yes, people may have delegated the birth process but they still shit—past tense shat, a great and novel shocking word—and as far as I know, there are hungry flies somewhere in the world, though I couldn’t confirm that from personal experience. I would love to see and hear one.

The ceiling’s high, high enough to make little clouds form up there from the warm, watery breaths of so many people. I wonder if it rains. What I take to be the exhibits of the museum are sticking out on shelves from the walls, and there’s a slow tube going up each wall, with a landing pad at each shelf. Nobody else is even looking at the scenery. They’re looking at each other, wagging tongues and hips, and collecting invisible points for their presence and their sparkling children. In some cases, the children really are sparkling. Must be a new fashion.

My hand is tugged and I follow Mother, obedient little satellite that I am. Father follows a little behind the two of us, a reluctant planet to her star. Voices float over my head, along with a newscam that’s following someone important. Time after time, I am pushed forward to press palms with adults whose glistening diamond eyes show they’ve already found the bowl of free Fire Petals near the entrance. A few are having trouble standing upright, and I know they won’t remember much about me in particular, just that Mother and Father did indeed have issue from their loins. It occurs to me that is why I was dragged along this time. After a few Petals, even a freak with flat orange lips like me would pass inspection.

“He’s so intelligent,” Mother says. She’s talking to a slim man with a shimmering scarf wrapped around his bald head and a matching one around his shaved genitals.

“Off the scales, Cornow, off the scales,” she says. “Hasn’t been one like him in a hundred years, we were told.” Father murmurs something as if from a great distance. He’s right behind me, though.

I am quite short for my age, another point that won my parents a refund and more in the disappointment that is me. My eyes are right about the level of Cornow’s navel, and I can’t avoid his display of manhood.

“Nice to meet your balls, sir,” I say.

“Hmm?” He says, looking somewhere over the top of my head. “Nice to meet…”

Mother’s hand slips behind my back and pinches me. So she does listen. The man tousles my hair, apparently noticing for the first time that it’s white.

Before my appearance can fully sink in through his Fire Petal haze, Mother grips my arm and leads me away. The same scene is repeated several more times, with creative variations on my part. Then I look up into the face of the next person she’s targeted, and my breath stops in mid-lung.

He’s wearing a silver mask, a Techplate Model 3. The latest. The mask isn’t engaged, because if it was, he wouldn’t be responding to the scene around him. He’d be somewhere else. Somewhere better, where things happen because he wants them to.

What would I do for that mask?

Kill? Without a single regret. But not in such a public place where it would be obvious who did the deed. I’d die before going to prison. Prison for little degenerates like me is going back into a torso for genetic remodeling. Who knows what I’d be when I was thrust out of the womb a second time? The shame would be too much for my parents and I’d probably be appended to, oh I don’t know, maybe a political family if my looks got cleared up. Or a sewage worker’s. It happens.

The mask acquisition would have to be without bloodshed, for my sake, not his.

I stumble through my greeting to the man wearing the mask, for once acting like a normal ten-year-old. I’m eager now to escape Mother’s gravitational field, so I mumble something about wanting to play with some friends I see. She narrows her eyes at me in suspicion, but releases me, with strict orders to keep my twisted fingers out of the bowl of Fire Petals. Kids aren’t allowed to have them until they’re fifteen. I nod. I have no intention of blurring myself with Petals. I’m on a mission.

Arcing away from Mother like a liberated comet, I time my course for a perfect interception. Across the room is Domed, known to all as Domehead because of the prominent bump on his head that for reasons unknown he does not want to have resculpted. I sidle up to Domehead and talk, which takes him by surprise. He’s on the fringes of the wowkids, always panting to join them, imagining his life as it would be if he could just acquire some wowness. Domehead doesn’t want to be seen with me, for fear of losing his tenuous hold on social status.

I don’t care what kind of neek Domehead thinks I am. I’ve been called worse things than a neek. There’s something I have to know. I reach out and snatch his kid’s mask, an EduMinor, probably a Model 1. I don’t know what to expect when my fingers curl around the edge of the dull green metal that appears pressed tightly to his upper face, leaving his mouth free. Do masks come off easily? Can they be pulled off, or do they have to be released by the wearer? I’ve heard the rumors about masks exploding in the grabber’s hands if a password isn’t murmured first. I tug hard, wondering if I’m going to take off the skin of Domehead’s face, and wondering whether it would be an improvement. My worry about exploding my hands fades when my fingers actually touch the object of my delight.

The mask slips into my hand with a whirr and a soft pop. I’m holding a mask.

“What?” Domehead says. Belatedly he pulls his full attention to me, away from a wowgirl standing not far away. It’s typical of his conversations.

“Sorry, Domed,” I say, honoring him with his given name. “My mistake. I was just wiping that little drop of Geyser Juice off your chin, and my hand slipped.”

Contritely I hand the EduMinor back. There is a slight hesitation in my movement, not enough for Domehead to notice. If I kick him in the shins or higher, I could probably make off with the mask and tumble all the accusations later by acting suitably freaky so no one would want to talk to me for very long. Is it worth the trouble? Not when there is a TechPlate Model 3 in the room. The TPM3 is the best.

Tommy deserves the best.

I keep an eye on Mother and Father, an eye on TPM3, an eye on the newscam, and an eye on the time. That’s four eyes, but I’m very good at multitasking. I know we’ll be leaving about 0400, because my parents need a solid four hours’ sleep before they pop on their work masks and earn their daily credits. The older one gets, I’m told, the more sleep one needs. Something to do with finding brain space to reorganize memories picked up during the day, like having to compress data to store more. I have the advantage of the new model brain that uses the built-in expansion areas. All my genetic improvements are on the inside, it seems.

Gauging TPM3’s rate of descent into Petal haze, that state of oblivion to the outer world where the mind plays with itself, I see that he won’t be hazed by 0400. When I’m certain Mother isn’t looking, I raid the Petal bowl and take a handful. Making my way to where TPM3’s lying on a couch, I tip the handful into his lap and scoot away. I see his eyes glisten through the mask’s slits, and he tilts his head from one side to the other like a bird, checking out what’s invaded his personal space. A smile forms below his mask line, and he picks up a Petal, pops it in his mouth, and savors the sensation as it dissolves on his tongue.

I know what Petals taste like—what ten-year-old doesn’t? It’s like eating a flower made out of sugar that turns into a tingling, bubbly scent in your mouth. There’s a company that makes non-hazing Petals for kids under fifteen, but they don’t have the same mouth feel as the real ones. As good as Petals taste, I don’t think I’ll ever take enough to get hazed. I’d rather be in control of my brain and body, and I wouldn’t mind being in control of somebody else’s too.

As 0400 nears, I see that TPM3 is sprawled among the hazed on the foamfloor, a section of floor that molds itself to whatever’s on it. This being a Children’s Museum, there are supposed to be happy kids rolling around, making foam angels. I notice that the newscam’s been deactivated, which means that its target is doing something uninteresting, like hazing.

I step delicately through the tangle of arms and legs, bend over, and tug the mask, worrying that a more sophisticated model will have better protection than Domehead’s. I picture my brains no longer neatly occupying my skull, or at least some kind of wicked, a code segment with nasty intentions, like spraying me in the eyeballs with acid since my fingerprints don’t match the TPM3’s owner. Elegant wickeds are a specialty of mine. Concise, undetectable by the unskilled, merciless. I haven’t sprayed anybody’s eyeballs with a disintegrating substance yet, but for now the spare beauty of the code is enough.

I know if I had a TPM3, I’d soak the thing in wickeds.

Whirr. Pop. The mask is loose in my hands.

I tuck my prize into my bubble pants, ridiculous things that balloon from my waist to my ankles, where they are fastened tightly with red ties. A slight air pressure inside the pants keeps them away from my legs. I press the pressure adjuster at my waist and the pants collapse into thick folds. Fortunately, I’d insisted that my bubble pants be opaque, not sheer. There is a slight bulge where the mask rides, making me look more anatomically gifted than I am, and I have to be careful not to let the mask slip down to my ankles.

I locate Mother and Father, remind them in my most concerned manner that they need to get some sleep, and we’re out the door after a few insincere air kisses. In the tube, my destination tag glowing with the warm blue of home, I focus on keeping the mask in place, and don’t bother hanging upside down. In my room, I check in with the carebot, who tracks my goings and comings.

The mask is mine, no murder needed!

It’s been a far better use of my time than chewing a rainbow of Arrows and dancing naked, although I do have some regret about missing out on that.

~*~*~*~*~

At home, parents are snoring next door, Mother’s authoritative flap-flap-flaps alternating with Father’s surprisingly delicate trills. Resisting the urge to slap the mask on my face, I hook it up to my computer to see if it’s got any wickeds. There’s that story all the kids tell about some wowboy who stole his father’s mask and got his pretty eyes burned out, plus his brain messed with. Or maybe parents start that kind of story going around to keep their kids from messing up their masks’ P&Ps—Preferences and Parameters. It can take a long time to get a mask set just the way you want it.

No wickeds, but the TPM3 does have a privacy code. I jangle it, and the code surrenders, spreading its arms to welcome me. Not many privacy codes around that can keep Tommy out. In fact, I haven’t found one yet.

Now I slap it on my face. The world goes dark, and then explodes with light and color and sound. I try to make sense of it but it’s overwhelming and it hurts my nerves. It’s like every neuron in my brain is screaming for attention and none of them know what the others are saying. Chaos. Worse. I howl and rip the mask off.

The carebot rolls over and asks me if I have an emergency. I reassure it, willing my heart and breathing rate down.

I retrieve the mask from where I’d dropped it. Now I know what tuning is for. Normally a mask is tuned to you by a tech when you buy it. I can’t go running to the nearest tech, though, because it would be obvious the mask didn’t belong to me. For one thing, it’s an adult’s mask. They’re supposed to have a lot more capabilities than kids’ masks. I hope those capabilities are not just forning sims, or something like that. For another thing, the real owner’s ID is almost certainly in the mask’s data store.

I set to work with glee.

The ID is the place to start. I seek the newsnet for the event at the Children’s Museum. Coverage is just slipping in. I watch the vids at quad speed until I see TPM3 pressing palms with the museum director. I freeze the vid and question for bio. The space between my eyes and the screen fills with soft green text.

TPM3’s name is Trav Lorski. I know of him. He’s some kind of government minister. A worry weaves in, a possible nasty. Some people are tracked all the time, their masks in constant touch with each other. I glance at the mask. Is it silently screaming for help?

Shit.

My glee wilts. I don’t know whether to sneak out and dump the mask somewhere or try to make it mine. For a while I cruise my spinning thoughts. Then I read the bio again. Sub-Minister of Agriculture, Region Three. I don’t have much interest in government. Is that an important title? I hope not, because I’m not giving up this mask until it is ripped from my dead hands.

I pop the government ID files and look up Trav Lorski. I’m breathing a little harder now, listening for the sound of feet in the corridor or the security override on the door. I find the ID in the mask’s data store. Taking no chances, I set off a bomb in there, my own design, an indiscriminate killer of data. I imagine I hear the tiny moans as the wave of destruction moves through the mask’s data and then into its applications. The apps are the last to die, seg after seg of code realigned to null. I let out the breath I’ve been holding in a soundless whistle.

I unstring the cable, leaving the mask isolated and lifeless. Vanquished. I rest my hand on its fluid silvery surface. I believe I’m trying to comfort it.

Don’t worry; I’ll take care of you. Things will be much better soon.

I have a plan.

Next Chapter: Chapter Five ~ First Slide