Code of the Fates

By UvaBe Dolezal

Code of the Fates, is a science fiction & fantasy story that chronicles the adventures of the unlikely hero Captain, in the post oil age. Thousands of years into the future, world scientists compete to improve the human animal with woolier and keener traits from the animal kingdom. The fate of humanity's free will hangs in the balance when a potential mind-control weapon is implanted in the brain of a young man nick-named Code-E. To curb the potential world dominating power of a few greedy multinationals, the Fates create a hero out of a beer brewer, launching an adventure of vampire battles, banking revolutions and water rights wars.

129,000+ word count / 155 pages depending on the reader. This novel is book 1 of the 2 book ode to impossible mini-series. Release date goal for book 2 is 2014.

• Language: English
• Publisher: UvaBe Dolezal
• Release date: Nov 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466094925

UvaBe Dolezal

Artist / writer Uva Be Dolezal After a year of debating I've decided to republish 'Code of the Fates' for .99¢ until I finish editing and publish book 2. 'Will of the Fates' Please see my blogs, or social networking G+ https://plus.google.com/u/0/106488424923710466886/about or twitter @Uva_Be me if you would like to contact me.

Book preview

Code of the Fates

by Uva Be Dolezal

Copyright 2011 Uva Be Dolezal

Smashwords Edition

grammar & spelling edited by Shanti Maharaj

cover art by Tod Antilla

This story was written a blog post a day, everyday 365 in 2011, on a site titled 'Ode to Impossible'.

I also wrote and posted ｾ of the second novel in 2011.

As of January 2013 having broken my writing goal to edit and publish the second book in 2012,

I feel obligated to note, my best guess for a release date for publishing book 2 is 2014.

Chapter one. Norm’s Sacrifice - part one .

Norm lay on the operating slab getting his heart plug removed. He was twenty-seven. All the cell growth indicators had taken their expected downturn and slowed in the last month before his twenty-seventh birthday. They had injected him with the industry-standard three months of growth-stabilizing regimen. Norm’s contract with the Shear Union didn’t project to recoup their investment if they continued to induce ectofollicle mutations. As far as Norm was concerned, all this meant was that he had grown as big and hairy as he was ever going to get.

Norm lay quietly on the cold metal slab, his woolly auburn chest hair shaved, most of the rest of him wrapped in sterile, sky blue nanocloth that turned all sorts of colors when contaminated. Two doctors, also wrapped in blue nanoscrubs, had put up a little tent around Norm’s head so he couldn’t see what they were doing. The shorter, wiry doctor, who had camera lens goggles propped up on his forehead, test-poked Norm a couple times. How many of those pokes hurt you? the doctor asked.

Three; the lower poke stung worst. Aren’t ya gonna put me out?

No, this is just a local, the bigger, round doctor answered.  

Give ’im two more, lower and under the chin, the wiry doctor said to the round doctor. Then the wiry doctor flipped his goggles down over his eyes and stepped back into a tube that placed a blue hood over his head. The round doctor put something cold on Norm’s skin, test-pricked him a couple more times, then stepped back to put on a hood as well. The second the round doc stepped up to the table, the little wiry doc picked up a laser knife and started cutting.

Norm couldn’t see over the blue tent, but he could see a tiny refection of what the docs were doing in the goggles. The little pink square of his skin and the red line the doc had cut were more than Norm wanted to see.

You’re gonna feel some pressure, said the wiry doc. 

Norm didn’t feel any pressure, but he was surprised to smell an unpleasant burning smell, like a mix of burnt hair and burnt ham, as the doctor cut open the skin in his chest above the silicone and titanium subdermal port.

I wonder why they wear those funny blue hoods, Norm thought, staring up at the tops of their bobbing blue-hooded heads.

Sharp, bright flashes of pain pinged every few cuts or so, when they cut through a nerve. Then the docs inserted a spreading clamp and pushed aside the muscles under the port, opening a small, bloody red square down to Norm’s ribs.

They didn’t cut the ribs open; instead, they pulled the catheter end of the heart plug up, pulling the main artery leading away from Norm’s heart, which was attached to the tube, up between his ribs.

The wiry doc had zoomed in close now; the big doc had both hands near that little square, swabbing up blood with a sponge-tipped vacuum hose that made a gurgling, sucking sound.

The wiry doc yanked the heart plug out with an elastic snap. As Norm’s heart beat, a fountain of blood shot straight up in the air from the incision hole. It occurred to Norm that the blood spurt was as tall as the distance his feet are from his heart.

Clamp, said the wiry doc, but the round doctor was already there. Norm’s heart beat a second time, and a third, but only a few more tiny spurts of blood escaped before the wiry doc cinched the leak closed. Blood rain had splattered all over the blue hoods, spotting them green, and red drops dripped down the clear face masks of the surgeons’ hoods.

So that’s why they wear those hoods, thought Norm. 

The surgeons were sewing Norm shut now. The stitches were tiny strips of green triangle-mesh plant-barb tape and goo that shot from a spiral canister. It took the doctors more than three times as long to close up his chest as it had taken to cut him open and pull the plug. 

Norm’s local anesthetic started to wear off. He didn’t know if they underestimated his size or if he processed drugs faster than most, but they never seemed to give him enough. First he started to feel the fingers wriggling inside the incision, and then the bars of the clamps holding his skin and muscles open so they could work. At first, both were just pressure and prodding; as he became less and less numb, those hands and the tip of the glue gun and the pinch of the clamps began to feel more and more like shutting your hand in a door, and the clamps holding the muscles were like a cross between a bruise and a charley horse.

Hurry up, doc, Norm mumbled through gritted teeth. He grabbed hold of the edges of the metal table to keep himself from sitting up.

Did you get a seat on a monitored transport van for your kid? asked the round doc, loading a fresh cartridge for the suture gun for the wiry doc with a snap and click.

Yes, got him on a commuter van, why? He took the new gun. Mop.

Our kids are on the same soccer team; need to find an open seat, said the round doc, louder over the sucking sound made by the blood mop.

My son’s not going by the hospital zone this year, but my daughter takes a monitored tram to swim practice.

Oh? Same rec center; I thought she was in dance.

She is. Wiry doc peered around the blue tent and glanced at Norm.

Norm wasn’t sure if his cursory glance was to see how he was doing, or to see if he was listening to their banal conversation.

She does as many activities as she will do An inactive teenager is a crime waiting to happen.

Norm thought, Why don’t they at least strap a person down for this stuff? He was really starting to sweat now. Just at what seemed the point where he was afraid he could take it no longer, they pulled the clamp out with a snap and pressed down on the bruise, pulling the skin together tightly to sew him closed. Norm gritted his teeth and tried to breathe even. His job done, the wiry doc ducked away from the table. The round doc patted a piece of blue nanogauze down on the fresh line of suture, adhering the gauze to Norm’s chest with re-stickable skin tape. Blue nano bandages turn green for blood, green is good. Yellow is for pus, that’s okay, but hopefully you won’t see any yellow. If the gauze turns white, pink or any shade of purple, call the EM nurse closest to your home immediately. Change the bandages and follow the meds at the intervals set on your Cal-itiner. Do not submerge your body until the wound is completely healed, including no baths or swimming for three days. The round doctor said this so fast Norm couldn’t make out most of the words, but he nodded yes, because he knew the drill.

A bag with his clothes, extra bandages and meds was set into Norm’s hands. Then both doctors were in the tubes that had deposited the blue hoods on their heads. A vacuum sucked off the green- and blood-splattered scrubs, leaving the wiry doctor and the round doctor standing there in tight-fitting blue catsuit underwear. The booth vacuumed them a bit and a soothing computerized woman’s voice said, Particle-free grade three.

Disoriented and a bit in shock, Norm stared at them for a few seconds before walking out the door. He found it strange that he hadn’t noticed until now that the round doc was a pregnant woman. He hadn’t thought about it very much before; he hadn’t been sure if she was just an overweight effeminate man when she had had scrubs on. This was because because she had quite a stern face with intense creases between her eyebrows, like someone who might have a genetically modified heritage. If so, he wondered what animal: person-dog, probably. Funny how seeing someone in their underwear changes a person’s persona. Or not; the wiry little doc somehow looked the same. 

Norm’s hooflike toenails clomped across the floor as he ambled away. Outside the door, a row of other young sheep-men in sky blue nanowraps with chests shorn bare sat waiting on a bench in the hall.

Bio-Digital Ghost Dad

A week later, the pregnant doctor, whom Norm had referred to as the round doc as impersonally as she as had viewed him as surgery number five of eighteen person-sheep heart plug removals, still hadn’t found a seat on a monitored tram-car for her foster son. Instead, she took the tram to the rec center, doing the supervising home from the sports field herself.

Also, Norm had guessed wrong: she wasn’t a person-dog. The round doctor was an illegal mix of person-cat, and it was only because she was three, possibly four generations removed from the original graft that she was allowed to live a somewhat normal life as a genetic parolee. Her name was Molly Zywiec, a name her mother had made up after a beer her father drank. And like many of the rare unincarcerated people-cats, she had been abandoned because her part-cat father was more maniac than social.

Molly Z. was more territorial than maniacal. She had issues with her family heritage, and the baby she carried was a surrogate: a tiny fetus she had surgically saved from a seventeen-year-old girl who had had an ectopic pregnancy.

Molly had saved the girl’s life; the girl had begged her not to tell her parents. She would have rather died than tell them. So Molly paid the seventeen-year-old’s bills, implanted the fetus in herself, and set up the follow-up visits by sending the girl to one of her teacher friends in sports medicine, who scheduled the appointments for both of them at the gym nurse’s office. For Molly as a surgeon in the fifty-first century, the checkups were a simple noninvasive portable ultrasound scan in combination with a routine blood marker sequence. The sports doc’s terms were equally simple: I don’t want to know any details. Tell me only what I need to know to keep the girl safe and on the team.

Molly, being part cat, had good reason not to want to risk having a child of her own: she had suffered considerably. Unlike the people-sheep, who are human at the core and only externally manipulated, cats and dogs were genetically similar enough to graft together in a test tube. She had had laser hair removal on her face, had been born with a cleft palate and a tail, and had had two surgeries on her ears. Her ears were tucked into neat crescent human ear shapes, but were higher than usual, and even after the surgeries, she could move them around, like a cat could.

Molly moved her ears now, unconscious of the fact that she was doing so. No one could see her ears anyways because she was wearing a hooded coat as she walked down the street towards the rec center where her foster son, Mark, was at soccer practice. What caught her attention as she neared the field was a whispering, clicking sound that directed her to the area of the stadium where Mark was.

For the almost four years she had known Mark, this ever-persistent buzzing sound was always in the air around him. It didn’t bother her, like a buzzing bee, but she hadn’t heard anything or anyone who emitted a sound quite like it: a cross between a sonogram and the wind softly rustling leafy trees.

She walked over to the left side of the stands where a group of thirteen- to fifteen-year-old children, all dressed alike in winter sweatpants and jackets, were huddled around a replay prompter held by one of the coaches. Most of the parents had gathered at the other end of the field where the majority of the youths were still running laps or going through drills.

Mark, a twig of a tow-headed blond, split from the group, dribbling the ball along the ground, not seeming to see her, but headed straight towards her. He was more into computers than into sports, but had been a very good sport for his foster mom and had joined the team without a single complaint the day after Molly had implanted the baby. Molly, standing just outside the line of the playing field, held out her hand, not expecting him to take it, but to hand him an after-practice snack.

Doing rounds before we go home, then? Mark sort of asked, sort of knew this, in apparently the same way he’d known to break from the pack and walk towards her, all without looking at her or into the tote sack he had taken from her hand.

Mark looked in the tote, checking out the contents of his after-school snack as they walked away from the rec center playing field. Grilled tank-grown fish, with wasabi sauce in a side tin and two pieces of dry bread and a couple lettuce leaves; to keep it from getting soggy, he preferred to put his sandwich together himself. Plus a small box of almonds and dried currants and a bottle of malted grain milk, since the teenager had recently become lactose intolerant. … Thank you, he mumbled with his mouth full.

Is it okay? Molly asked, and she thought, Are you unhappy? I don’t go on night rounds more than once or twice a week… Not since we got you. This slight worry looked more like annoyance creased on the bridge of her nose. It’s Monday, we went the Tuesday before last, she reassured herself and the crease on her brow relaxed.

Then a wave of whispering clicks caught Mark’s attention for a few seconds. His eyes followed something she couldn’t see, but she could hear it with her part-cat ears. Well below the normal human range, she could hear the soft waves of static in the same way she could take a pulse without a stethoscope.

Mark swallowed the big bite of sandwich he’d taken and said, I like everything, the food you thoughtfully brought me. It’s a nice evening to do rounds; look at the twilight colors, M.Z.

Is an adult coaching him on what to say? Do teenagers talk like that? thought Molly, but she did pause to look around at the twilight colors. The vibrant glow of the playing field plants kept green under the solar roofing. The last of the fall leaves that clung to the trees, red and rusty orange decorations against the shimmer of gold and blue lights reflected off the smooth areas of tree bark and walkway rails.

. . .

Molly, seated beside her fourteen-year-old foster son in the commuter tram-car, wished she could blame the peculiar electronic noise on whatever bandwidth the small silver antique phone used. But she saw the phone was off and the noise continued. Mark had just put the card phone, strapped up his shirtsleeve like a concealed weapon, into sleep mode after he swapped out a fresh battery and booted his school computer.

Mark F. Taft felt physically ill if he was separated from a computer for more than eight minutes. He kept the small modified antique computer-phone on an armband or in his pocket at all times. Like all computer backpacks, his had a solar recharge panel built into the top outer pocket. He also carried two plug-in adapters (a thing unheard of

since the Global Adapter Unification and Reduction Act of 4767).

Mark’s computer was always running with the hood open. Not that it had a hood, but his computer, like ancient tricked-out racing cars, had a couple of extra sliding panels. He’d pop a taped-up card into the side, and it would run five to seven columns of flowing lines of numbers and letters that looked somewhat like command code. He’d open an assembler utility, type an equation into the box, and the flow of text lines would change, stop, or restart. Mark messed with his program screen for a few minutes, then popped out that little chunk of encased card and exchanged it for another, so that his computer appeared to be a normal internet terminal with his school ID and homework on the front page. Did you want to check my assignment inbox? he asked Molly.

Of course. Molly clicked the parent or guardian link and typed in her ID with a brush of her thumbprint under the date stamp: Monday 08/14/5026. There were as usual no notes in the Your child may need help in the following areas of study section. Instead, there were complaints from the college work-study techs who graded the coursework of students like Mark, who went over the heads of the grade school teachers. Choice of study is too esoteric to be useful in the job market. Hmm… Nothing interesting this time? Molly mumbled.

Mark shook his head no and logged out of school mode. Yeah, I miss that freak who wrote tantrums in the review box. Mark smiled for a flicker and then his eyes went blank as he focused on whatever he’d been working on before. After a bit, without looking up from the screen or moving his lips, like a ventriloquist, he whispered as quietly as he could, knowing she could hear him. They found me, M.Z. We got a couple days, maybe a week, to make a plan so I can keep living with you.

Mark’s timid disembodied whisper made Molly feel like they were being watched. She felt her hair stand on end. She wanted to whisper back, Who has found you? but was afraid to. She stared into the beady little black eye-level seat camera while her mind raced with questions. Starting with, Why are we having this conversation here on the train?

All public transportation was under surveillance; by whom depended on who you were. Is someone really after him? Is this why we are the fourth foster parents? She knew that Mark had stayed with three other parents, less than two weeks each. One of the reasons why she was able to be Mark’s foster parent was that he was listed as extremely difficult to find a suitable guardian for.

Mark always seemed to feel at home on trains; he’d often smile and wave at the little cameras. Each seat not only knew if it was occupied, it knew who it was occupied by, and it displayed a flickering readout of your weight. If a ticketed passenger left anything on or under their seat, it would sense the weight difference and an alarm would sound before you exited the train. If it was a smart-thing you left, your solar computer bag or keys, then the object would call you. If it was a valuable object, like your computer, it would call the nearest person with a badge.

Molly’s seat read, 64.41 - MD. Molly, meaning 142-pound medical doctor. Any hospital or emergency medical team could see her ID and contact her if she was in the area and they needed her, and anyone could read the common name she preferred to be addressed by.  

Mark’s seat read 46.01 - Sm. S for student, m for minor. All minors were protected by law. The names and IDs of all children were private by default. The world population had been ever so slightly losing footing, decreasing from 8.2 to 7.9 billion over the last thousand years, because of many complicating factors, not the least among them genetic mutations.

Molly wasn’t thinking about this; she had rested her hand on her tummy and felt the baby kicking just slightly. She was thinking about her cousin on her mother’s side. Unlike Molly, her cousin was just slightly person-dog. They didn’t think they looked alike at all, but they both had grey-green eyes, curly strawberry blonde hair, and a strong, square build. It was common for people to have a genetic stand-in for all sorts of minor situations. There would be no way Molly could have got on the foster parent list as part cat, and the dog stereotype conversely tended to indicate sociability and honesty. Molly’s cousin, ironically, had a bit of a gambling problem; Molly was by far the more responsible of the two. She was now looking at Mark, wondering if they could find him a double, and how serious these people who he thought were searching for him were.

. . .

Molly heard the teenager’s stomach growling slightly, almost in harmony with the whir of the electric motor and the rhythmic hornlike screeches of the tram-car’s brakes. He was in that bottomless pit stage of his teenage life.

Let’s go to the café near our stop. You’re hungry again, and I need to pee… again, she said, walking away from the train stop towards her third patient visit. The nearest café served vegetarian falafel. Neither of them were a fan of fried grain, so they kept walking to the nearest market instead.

You need to make friends, Mark.

Why? I’m plenty busy, he mumbled, not looking up from his phone screen.

Computer projects are no replacement for social interaction. Do you know anyone in school like you, who may need a friend too?

The frequency of clicks and static noise rustled around Mark. He paused, looking up at something that wasn’t there for a few seconds. … Say, that’s a good idea.

Who says? Who are you talking to? Molly stopped talking because Mark held up his arm and ran a few steps to catch up.

My dad says, Mark said, tucking his mouth into his shoulder to muffle his whispering.

Molly had heard correctly, and she knew his father had been murdered when he was ten.

The hairs all over Molly’s skin were standing on end again as she heard the humming rustle around Mark go up a couple notches. Three figures had just got out of a privately owned streetcar and were walking quickly down the dark sidewalk towards them. She was very conscious of what she described as her cat instincts; Mark was her territory and she wouldn’t hesitate to guard him. Besides, it was best for both of them to flee from direct conflict. Mark and Molly hurried into the corner market. The clerk sat in the glow of fish tanks, reading a screen.

Molly pointed at her round tummy. Sir, is the bathroom open? The clerk glanced at her pregnant waddle and reached over to buzz the door lock. Molly and Mark both hurried in and locked the door behind them.

Mark stood guard by the door. He’d already pulled up the store’s security feed on his computer screen. The three figures had followed them in. Two of them, a short lady and a tall grey-haired man in cheap civilian clothing, began shopping and the third, in a blue suit and jacket, waited by the door near the clerk.

Hi, did this youth and a pregnant dog step through your shop? The clerk, an immigrant with a Laplander’s cap and a thick, coarse beard, squinted at the screen the company man had shoved in his direction.

Sway who? Oh? He squinted hard at the image for a few seconds, taking his time. Mark could see the crow’s-feet in the man’s golden skin tighten just enough to change his expression from blank to angry. There was a to-go order, just picked up. I didn’t noticed if she was pregnant, he lied.

The store clerk lied for us, Mark told Molly. Mark tapped furiously on his computer for a couple seconds and was into the store’s registers; he moved a to-go order up the queue from a few hours ago to a few seconds ago.

Molly had completely forgotten she needed to pee. She was staring over Mark’s shoulder in horror at his hacking into both the store’s security and cash-flow systems. The to-go order now blinked at the top of the clerk’s screen. The man in the blue coat was yelling at the unflappable clerk, who seemed to be ignoring the badge he was waving. You understand me? This is a proximity search code! I need to know what they bought and where the order originated. The man was pointing his fingers too close to the clerk’s face.

The clerk simply shrugged and backed up, pointing at the door. Leave my shop. Then pointed at his counter, now flashing bright blue warning halogens. My counter will tase you.

Show me the information! Then the clerk saw the blinking cursor on his register. He frowned and pulled up the fake order Mark had pinged him.

Twelve seconds ago! Frack! We missed them by ten seconds. Blue-coat yelled the second part to his comrades, who hurried towards the shout from their sweep of the aisles and back of the store. They zapped up the info in this false ping, and all three ran out the door.

Mark was still staring at the monitor screen and a couple columns of scrolling numbers. He pointed at the stall. Don’t you still need to pee, Mum-Zee? I’ll go pick out something to eat.

Molly stared at the back of the closed door for a second. It always stunned her just a bit when he’d say her initials so it sounded like Mom… but this hacking into security and accounts?! She hurried as quickly as she could. 

When she got to the front counter, Mark and the store clerk appeared to be haggling over their screens. Mark had a to-go order bag, and the clerk was frowning intensely. Just check this ticket in eight days. It will be the correct numbers to win one of the smaller prizes. Payment for your trouble, Mark was saying with a polite smile.

I don’t play lottery. Lottery is for stupid people, the clerk retorted.

Molly stepped up to the counter, extending her digital money key in hand.

Your money isn’t needed. He paid two minutes ago, from the bathroom. Do you know what this kid did?

I have an idea, Molly said. She gripped Mark’s arm very firmly, until she had his attention, then let go.

M.Z., I didn’t hack it, it was my dad. He stopped and sighed sadly, his eyes moving away from both of them to something in the empty space beside them. It is my dad who hacked into your store; he hacks into everything, everywhere I go.

We paid you? Molly asked the clerk.

Yes, he’s edited the security feed, everything, look. Shmeggin’ hell! He’s still editing it now… in real time? You better go. That to-go order he faked was only from a few blocks away.

. . .

The third patient on Molly’s list was also only a few blocks away from the market; she hoped not in the same direction. They walked into an alley that had purposely been overgrown with long grain grass and clover. The grass was then chopped by hand and tied into wreaths that hung in quite a few of the windows. The pavement of the street had been almost completely torn up, except for two narrow walking paths a truck axle apart. The fire escape balconies were also now glassed-in greenhouse porches, overgrown with herbs, mostly mint and parsley. There appeared to be four or five person-sheep families living in this alley; they now peered out windows or sat in porches watching Molly and Mark.

There were no house numbers that Molly could see. She paused to type her medical ID into her small grey work computer to call the sheep who had the appointment. A woman, a Normal in grungy teal work coveralls, opened a door and waved them in.

Inside one of the greenhouse rooms, a very swollen lumpy-looking sheep-man wrapped in an old hotel robe perched uncomfortably on the edge of an ottoman cushion.

The sheep-man recognized Molly and he signed the time in on the schedule on his computer. Doctor-patient confidentiality law was very strict; it was a felony just to search medical records. Any conversation she had on the patient’s time would be as private as any conversation could ever get. She pointed at the warning on the top of her screen.

Doctor-patient confidentiality, Mark said, nodding that he understood the warning. But the apartment was a one-room studio; there was no other room to go to, so he waited, standing awkwardly in the doorway of the greenhouse, clutching the to-go bag of food.

May my son sit at your table and eat while I run diagnostics? Molly asked as she set up a lab kit and tools from her doctor’s case on the chair. She then went over to the sink to wash her hands, after acknowledging a nod from the man-sheep.

Mark timidly stepped up to the table. I’ve got extra-spongy bread and boysenberry jam, he said, knowing that most person-sheep were vegetarians.

The sheep-man smiled and shrugged, but was more focused on the large hollow needles of the biopsy kit. The clerk had packed them a family-sized meal. Mark unwrapped a pile of ten or twelve eggy pancakes, a good-sized packet of butter and a jar of jam.

Please eat some cake and jam, said Molly. The food is a good distraction.

Okay… If that’s not cow’s butter, then extra butter on mine, please, said the sheep-man, cringing a little as she shaved a patch on his calf and put numbing goo on the skin.

I’m no-lacto too, sir, Mark shared.

What can you tell me about the extra computer noises? Molly asked Mark.

It was Mark’s turn to be surprised. He looked up at her, wide-eyed, for a second, then turned away, whispering into his sleeve. Molly smiled at him, then focused her attention on the patient.

It wasn’t funny at all from Mark’s perspective. He wasn’t whispering into his sleeve; he was whispering to the antique phone strapped to his arm under his shirt. His father’s ghost existed as an invasive sentient biochemical implant in Mark’s head. He could see his otherwise dead father standing there in his mind’s eye. To communicate with Mark, the ghost was reaching interlaced fingers to type on a keyboard that wasn’t there, but connected wirelessly to the special biodigital panels Mark had added to his phone and computers. The images of his father were constructed out of Mark’s memories, recorded five years ago. Most of Mark’s memories of his father were of him working in his attic laboratory. The stainless steel and glass edges of the dim lab clashed with the room now, causing the edges of the memory to flicker against the light green and yellow pastel–striped wallpaper in the sheep-man’s home.

The biochemical-digital ghost of Mark’s father didn’t often speak with his voice unless it was something very urgent; instead, he communicated mostly by arranging data and pointing at it. He directed Mark’s attention to a copy of the company’s files that showed they had narrowed their search from forty-one possible foster youths in the county to eighteen foster sons who had been assigned foster parents from protective custody at around the same time as Mark. They knew Mark was not a daughter and the professional killers had taken samples of his father’s DNA. They could match him, if they found him.

Next, Mark’s father held up the profiles of two boys in his class.

M.Z., my friend doesn’t have to be a genetic double just yet, just a decoy… right? Mark asked Molly. There were another few seconds of buzzing, then Mark said, Then a couple of my classmates might work to misdirect them?

Molly frowned over the sheep-man’s shoulder at Mark.

That’s not what I asked you. I asked, what can you tell me about those computer noises. Molly had removed three samples from the person-sheep, two in areas away from his body core. One in his calf, and his right hand since he was left-handed. And just to be safe, she’d taken a third sample in the fat of his left love-handle. Then she had photographed the biopsy slides with her little portable lab setup.

I don’t hear any computer noises, the sheep man said. Am I going to lose all my wool?

Let’s not speculate on the health of the crimping follicles, okay? Molly held up her work computer screen so he could see. I’m sending these slides to the lab. I’ve yet to determine if it’s a virus in one layer of the mutated epidermis, or if it’s your own body’s immune system rejecting some specific layer of your skin. We won’t know what’s causing the antigen buildup… I mean, all the swelling, until after the results come back from the lab.

What? I’ve got a virus in my skin?

No, not that kind of virus. If you had anything contagious, my son and I wouldn’t be here with you running these tests. Don’t worry, the one thing I am sure of at this point is that what’s making you sick is in a layer of the crimping mutations.

Mark’s father was flipping through some personal notes made by one of the company Ph.D.s who were trying to decipher the experimental work he had been killed for. This scientist had sent a request to the private military agents who were searching for The teenage son, pseudonym not verified. He may have a pet rodent; have authorization prepared to seize any pet(s): rats, mice, lagomorphs or hamsters, etc.

Also, that computer noise, um… I mean, my dad says we should get a pet rodent of some kind.

Okay? Molly said to both of them.

Mark and the person-sheep nodded and Molly handed her computer screen to Mr. Marvo, the lumpy sheep-man, for his fingerprints to accept the prescribed treatments. I just got the reply results for the second opinion. The good news is there are no obvious malignant cells in any of the samples I just took. But the Shear Union has called the emergency transport to take you in.

What? I don’t want to go to their hospital.

I know, I know you don’t want to go in, Mr. Marvo, but it’s required. Either way, if it’s an infection or a reaction, it’s working your body over and I can’t leave you here covered in lumps without making sure you get proper care; please hold out your thumb, sign here. Molly gave Mr. Marvo a sedative to calm him down while they waited for the medical transport team to arrive.

This should’ve been my fourth shearing season. He waved a lumpy woolly arm at some framed photos of people in brown shimmery wool bodysuits. The person-wool was softer, stronger and had a lustrous sheen to it. People valued undergarments, glove liners and socks woven out of person-wool. Each person-sheep could grow enough person-wool for four or five custom garments per shearing season. These garments were not cheap, and a healthy person-sheep could earn a subsistence living on his wool alone.

Mark listened to his father’s ghost while they waited. He was sending some temporary communication from Mark’s computer to Molly’s little grey work computer.

. . .

Dear Mrs. Molly Z. M.D.

. . .

Please accept the following communications from me,

via my son…

. . .

Molly read the entire text message twice before she hit accept.

She scanned the cryptic letter very quickly. It was formatted to look like a medical report.

Mark nervously watched her reread the page. The spaces between the lines of the report showed additional lines of text. As she scrolled to the next line, the secondary script would disappear, returning to blank white space again.

Mark’s father tended to ramble, often finding it difficult to get to the point of his communications. He had gone on quite a bit with some technical jargon, most of which she didn’t understand, but knew had to do with the differences between the brain chemistry and brain structure of cats and humans. … How happy we’d been to find both a surgeon and part cat for Mark’s foster parent. If they knew how much data was actually implanted in Mark’s head they would most likely kill him or brain-damage him trying to get it out.

Molly looked up from the lines of the page to Mark. Are you getting drowsy at all, Mr. Marvo?

The sheep man drooled just a little. That’s good, you just close your eyes or sit back if you can. Your condition is treatable, do you understand me?

Mr. Marvo nodded, his eyes fluttered tearfully and he slumped a bit, but otherwise he didn’t move.

A private military consortium… hired thugs?! hissed Molly in Mark’s direction. "‘S

o far’!? they don’t understand how far he succeeded with his work in biodigital brain matter computing Am I reading this correctly? Show me where it is." Molly had picked up her bioscanner and was waving it at Mark.

Mark walked up to her, and pulled back the hair behind his ears. Molly looked at his scalp and found three tiny incision scars. She was furious.

The ghost of Mark’s father was humming now; she guessed he was ranting through a rapid series of explanations, but she wasn’t listening and she was too angry to read any more of his messages. "Was he sick? E

pileptic or had a brain tumor? No. Then you put his