Unnatural

By Anthony DiGiovanni

In the developed world, year 2062, the human body is obsolete. Those too poor to be rid of this handicap, such as would-be pathologist Dennis Uriah, are called Organics. Fed up with a society that marginalizes people like him and his partner Pat Mallard, Uriah attempts to take justice into his own hands when Pat tells him that Isaac Livingston, a playboy of the exoskeleton-equipped Transhuman class, raped her.

Immediately afterwards, every human besides Uriah falls unconscious, leaving him not only responsible for the welfare of animals that his traumatic memories compel him to save, but also in a position of extreme suspicion to the residents of a Russian moon colony. To avoid becoming the survivors' scapegoat, Uriah's only option is to discover how to reverse this apocalyptic affliction -- something that Livingston, who has somehow survived both a murder attempt and the global coma, isn't prepared to let happen when he has all but one of Earth's androids on his side.

Parallel to Uriah's struggles, Sabrina Lockhart, already grappling with depression and the isolation of being the moon's sole Organic due to her religious convictions, has lost on Earth the only person she truly loves. The colony's governess requests her help to use her Organic immunity from EMPs to subdue a rogue robot, an emotionally advanced servant who has lashed out against the moon colonists after separation from her master.

Sabrina knows well, however, that her community has an ulterior motive. Unless she complies with their wishes and bears children with the only other Organic, the human species may not outlast this sparse group of survivors. How will she defend her identity when the most powerful woman alive wants to exploit her as a mere reproductive utility?

[Note: Although it would not be accurate to mark this book as having "adult content," there is a mild trigger warning for moderate discussion and depiction of violence, and (for those sensitive about it) some profane language and sexual content. Treat this novel as roughly on the level of a PG-13 film in terms of content appropriateness. Personally, I wouldn't get too hung up about this considering I had to read more disturbing material than this in a grade-school curriculum, but my aim here is to please readers, not to invoke the anger of parents. I promise this novel won't encourage your children to join Satanic cults.]

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthony DiGiovanni
• Release date: Feb 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310041181

Anthony DiGiovanni

I write because I love to explore the hypothetical consequences of situations people could be in. If doing this happens to pay for the necessities of staying alive to write some more, so much the better, but if even one person is left happier because of something I wrote (provided no one else is miserable by the same cause), that's all I can ask for. Besides engaging in this willing psychosis we call fiction writing, I enjoy attempting (keyword) to play the saxophone, helping out with organizations to make the world more awesome (mostly at school), learning the natural and social sciences, doodling, fanboying over my favorite show/book at the time, and guffawing like a hyena at the Internet.

Book preview

Unnatural

By Anthony DiGiovanni

Copyright 2014 Anthony DiGiovanni

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Author’s Note

Those who expect science from this story will be subjected to vivisection. Those who expect romance from it will be forcibly sterilized. Those who expect decent language from it will have their original bodies vandalized with profanity.

PART 1

CHALLENGE

"Take a moment to think about your own human body … We take our bodies completely for granted. We consider our bodies to be essential – so essential that … we cannot envision our lives without human bodies. But that is a primitive way of thinking. In the near future you will discard your body – you will literally throw it in the trash – because you will neither want it nor need it. You will discard your biological body gladly, like you would discard an old pair of shoes today. You will be quite grateful to be rid of it."

–Marshall Brain

CHAPTER 1

God damn you, Isaac Livingston! Uriah said under his breath. Decadents like that man had no right to the comforts of mechanical bodies. Not in the eyes of the ragged, torn-jacketed individual whose old shoes trod his kitchen tiles, anyway. All this security was so flimsy – Uriah was in, after all – but Livingston probably had paid more for it than would reliably keep ten children safe.

Footsteps in the direction of the basement. Gotcha. He drew the electromagnetic gun and opened the cellar door a few slivers. Seeing the glint of a metallic humanoid shape, he flung the door aside and fired.

The ensuing thud immediately preceded the muffled noise of a car crash. He looked towards the cellar window, then back at Livingston. The degenerate was dead silent. Uriah was hardly in the mood to incriminate himself, but what was he going to do? Let the driver go without medical attention because of his cowardice?

He laid the weapon by Livingston’s hand and scurried away to the cul-de-sac. The offending vehicle had smashed into the garage door of a house directly across from the street that ran out. Uriah stuffed his gloves into his jacket. Not like he planned to stick around waiting for the ambulance, but fool me twice …

The driver didn’t seem to have suffered any concussion, yet she was unconscious and, Uriah confirmed after a few seconds, not breathing. As he groped for a cell phone and dialed 911, he thought, Damn those richies, they’re the only ones who can afford the cars that could be saving lives more worth saving than theirs.

No one picked up.

Uriah looked around. Nobody else seemed to be aware of the accident, except – a body. He could just barely see it, illuminated by the street lamp. He kept dialing while approaching the limp figure, a chill rushing through him with the wind.

Another Organic, he noticed, wearing running shorts and a headband. Poor sap must have had a heart attack. Not that he was freaking Dr. House, but it still struck him as very strange that the runner appeared as if he’d just died in his sleep, like an elderly fellow. Uriah’s next dials were quick and strong. He soon found that the cell phone had a feature that could alert a nearby android of an emergency. Figuring a medical bot couldn’t suspect him, he sent the alert.

Idiot! CPR first, then get help. But what was the compression-to-breath ratio, again? Cursing himself, he locked his hands together and applied twenty bursts of pressure to the man’s sternum. Definitely more presses than breaths, he remembered that much, but what were the ever-loving numbers? And why the hell was the occupant of 544 Stanley Way not giving any assistance whatsoever? Five artificial respirations.

The subtle siren of a hospital robot blared throughout the neighborhood. It was sparse relief for Uriah, however, who by this point was prepared to shoot himself for forgetting to pinch Night Runner’s nose closed. Where was an AED when you needed one? He sighed, remembering those three little words. All for Pat.

The seconds vanished.

It was hopeless. No breathing, no response, no evidence of Night Runner’s being anything more vivacious than the mannequin on which Uriah had first practiced CPR. He gave up, rubbing some of the fatigue out of his arms and giving himself some air. Knowing he could not save this guy made it easier to forgive himself for not trying the same method on the crash victim, who was probably beyond revival as well. Residents of Aberdeen, Nevada, were too relatively poor to have artificial doctors close enough to most people who needed them.

Uriah refocused his gaze on the house to the right of Road Rage’s. Did these people simply not care? Maybe they knew they were as incompetent as he was. Covering his face with his hand, he departed from Stanley Way with that thud still ringing in his ears. Faint, but as distinct as the original. He was a killer.

* * * *

Uriah woke up worrying what Pat would think of his absence that night. They had basically stuck together up until then, taking as much comfort in their mutual lack of solvency as the human psyche can paradoxically take. Now more than ever, she was likely terrified of not knowing her boyfriend’s whereabouts, in this societal web of anti-Organic aggressors. She may not like it, but it’s still all for her.

It was a crisp morning in Aberdeen Park. Birds sang, bugs buzzed, and a squirrel darted around the trees. Yet there was a certain silence in the air, a strange lack of the morning rush and pedestrian activity that gave Uriah reason for perplexity.

He liked it.

A stretch and a yawn, and he was up off Turing Memorial Bench. A mild stroll brought him over to the streets, where he stopped short. Lo, dozens of cars, some lined up neatly as if stopping at a red light, others rammed into each other like dominoes, or into buildings or poles. Some of the vehicles were still on, depleting in limbo a negligible amount of hydrogen fuel. Many had shut off at the command of an intelligent autopilot.

Every single one had at least one dead human inside.

Now, Dennis Uriah was no fool. He knew when he was experiencing reality, thank you very much, and he was hardly prone to hallucinations. And what an ideal reality this was! Gone were the days of parasitic suburbanites’ wasting his oxygen with their political and religious drivel, of their ravaging Earth’s beauty and life with their crimes, of their absurd social standards and shallow customs, of their splurging valuable resources needed by folks like him and Pat.

Pat! Uriah had to tell her about this, so that they could live the life they had longed for since the end of the golden days. He maneuvered about the traffic down Franklin Parkway, coming to another halt, this one of genuine demoralization, at a silver Nissan.

The woman who had loved him most intimately for the past four years sat still and breathless in the driver’s seat.

Contortions of anxiety on her face made it abundantly clear why she was on the road. She must have stolen her parents’ car, perhaps on her way to stop Uriah from doing something he would regret.

How long had she been dead, he wondered? No stench of your average death, and her imperfectly perfect skin showed no severe wounds or pallid transformation. She was a statue. Even if he hadn’t doubted that a coroner was anywhere nearby, he suspected such a professional’s services would be useless here.

It was as if a bomb had silently detonated and drained the life out of all these people’s cells. Softened as his heart was after losing Pat, it wouldn’t let his eyes rest more than a flicker on the sight of children in those automobiles. Children, for God’s sake!

Brought to a standstill as Aberdeen’s humans were, the machines persisted as much as the other living beings did. Automated Mag-Lev trains zipped by, and the traffic signals gave Schopenhauer’s proverbial lecture to no one.

Uriah heard footsteps coming from the adjacent video store. Dammit. He crept nearer and peered in through the transparent door.

You’re gonna kill us all, aren’t you, Dimitri? said a trembling feminine voice. Whose owner was only round as a character, as he found by the glow of the TV from which the voice had emerged.

He retroactively justified the stupidity of pursuing his threat by telling himself he had known there was no threat at all. Dandy. With his mind already on the most helpless creatures of Earth, Uriah jogged over to the Finlon Humane Society.

If anything tormented his mind’s ear as he ran more than Livingston’s death fall, it was the howl of an unforgettable mutt named Andy. Thirteen years ago, twelve-year-old Uriah had made a habit of taking walks around his neighborhood. He had considered the exercise and opportunity to absorb nature worth the risk of harassment. Those not superficially polite enough to merely block their windows, after glaring outside with mistrust, would occasionally holler, Stay away from our property, you filthy Org!

Thankfully, such taunts were only a slowly growing prejudice at the time, so the words hardly unnerved him as much as Andy’s hostility. One day, during the moving in of Andy’s caretaking family, Uriah turned right at the gazebo just as always, when the bark of a light brown entity tearing into the front yard from the back sent him veering into the street.

The dog pursued him across the sidewalk, and by the time he reached the opposite house, it had clamped its jaw around his lower left leg.

"Andy!"

Twisting his head around, Uriah could see his attacker rush toward a blond-haired boy of about his age, stomping down the doorsteps. Whassamatter with you? he said to the dog at his feet with thinly veiled rage, which elicited a barely audible whimper from the creature. Just ‘cause he’s an Org doesn’t mean ya oughta snap his fluffin’ leg off!

Uriah winced for more reasons than one as he rose. The boy opened the front door, letting Andy fly in about as quickly as he had chased Uriah, and looked up. Sorry ‘bout that. Haven’t got our electric fence up yet, and the little bugger’s a bit territorial. Come on in. We were just havin’ dinner.

"I don’t need your charity. I’m not poor, and if I take one step in there your bastard of a dog’s gonna have me for dinner." Uriah faced away from the kid and took a step before he heard him insist:

No, really, you need that bite taken care of! And Andy’s goin’ downstairs, ya won’t see a hair of him.

He pursed his lips for a moment, then approached the house of the boy who, he saw more clearly now, was wearing a shirt with a small Libertas logo to the right. Uriah resisted rolling his eyes, thinking, Because your slur didn’t advertise enough your sense of supremacy over those of us using the bodies we were born with.

My name’s Perry, by the way, he said as rummaged through his first aid cabinet, which Uriah imagined his family either was embarrassed to have but kept as a courtesy to Organic visitors, or reserved in their kitchen because Perry was the only bigot in the household. Mom and Dad are out, but I can handle this. Jist take a seat on the couch.

Thanks. Dennis, Uriah grunted. Then came the howl, a noise of pure longing. Uh, Perry, I …

Oh, that’s jist Andy gettin’ what he asked for. He chuckled, of all things. Kinda hilarious when he’ll bend over backwards for his kibbles, to tell ya the truth.

Uriah froze before he could lie on the sofa. He felt like he was going to lose his lunch twice over. I’ll – you know what, I’ll go care for my own injury, thanks.

Limping his way out, he heard Perry say hoarsely, You ungrateful Orgs are all the same! Don’tcha know hospitality when ya see it?

He had not visited that house ever since.

Having at last arrived at the Finlon Humane Society, or FHS, Uriah decided he could no more leave these animals untended after that than a reader of Greek mythology could trust wings made of wax. He might have gone to Andy’s rescue if it were not likely the poor thing had already died after all these years.

Observing the building’s interior right from entrance gave him the impression that androids provided much of the animal care. Machines easily handled waste disposal, and other devices could distribute the proper food and water portions to the dogs, cats, birds – even some cows, pigs, and chickens, according to a map of the facility.

Some, but not all, of the features of FHS that provided for the animals’ proper cognitive development had robotic supervisors. Uriah found a room full of playthings with which a cat could nurture its hunting instincts without biological victims. A particularly fluffy white feline pounced on a mechanical mouse, which scuttled away faster after escaping. An agile yet undesirable dog played catch with a robot called a Homunculus, according to the door.

Evidently canines made better friends to androids than to humans, if Perry was representative.

Still, it became clear to Uriah that these animals needed human patronage, something they couldn’t receive from the workers who were in the same apparently comatose state as everyone outside. He looked through each feeding room. Most of them included meal distribution devices – one needed only to place the source of food inside a sanitized trough – but several species had diets too specific to work with this system, and a few had malfunctioning robots. The number of animals and food needed to sustain them was daunting. No way could he haul bags of that stuff by himself, even just from the store shelves to a car.

I need some robot slaves.

* * * *

The idea to loot Aberdeen Township High School struck Uriah with embarrassing obviousness. It was the easiest-accessed, nearest building that employed physical worker robots, at least during this time of year. Benefit auction season at a piteously underfunded public school for lower-class Organics. The convenience of it all pleased him as much as its relation to now-dead kids, who had suffered stratification to which he was no stranger, repulsed him. The animals at FHS should be able to stay fed for a couple hours.

He sauntered over to the academy, finding, a bit to his horror, that it took only under a dozen EMPs to clear the security. It had the appearance of a school whose architects clearly wanted to establish a sleek and dignified facility, but whose primary occupants were too averse to their confinement to give a care about respect for property.

Muffled sounds and the distinctive glow of what seemed to be a video presentation drew Uriah to a door at the end of one hallway. He blocked the sight of the seated, lifeless viewers with his left hand, and the insignia at the top-right corner of the still screen made his blood boil. Libertas.

It made no sense. That company’s ubiquitous mechanical body, apparently a demo, was standing right next to the presenter, all but calling out to Uriah. He even made a few steps toward it, which rang out faintly through the room in a monopoly on sound. Ascension to a higher standard of living lay within reach of his fingertips, and the presenter doubtless possessed some documents outlining the installation process.

But he drew back, like a child who has discovered too late that the stove is, indeed, hot. Uriah retreated to the door without looking away from the puppet, slamming the door in front of him once he reached the hall. He took a deep breath and moved along, looking for something to distract his mind.

Curious, he followed his memories of high school to the one place in the building where he knew he could invariably find the most honest expressions of teenage thought – the lavatory. Those honest expressions tended to be Freudian in his school days, but he was impressed to find more maturity, if not cynicism, in these young closet autodidacts’ graffiti:

Q: What’s the difference between a school and a prison? A: I don’t know. Ask the nerds when they’re finished being beat up by bullies when the so-called responsible adults aren’t watching, having their voices stifled by monotony and authority, being fed the bare minimum food quality, getting discriminated against for being gay, black, Latino, or trans, hearing condescension from their superiors, and being forced to do useless work. Oh, wait, at least prisoners do community service sometimes. Never mind. –Alonzo Y.

Sights like this almost made him glad that society had vanished. Not even fellow Organics could find solidarity anymore. Deciding it would only depress him more to linger on impracticalities, Uriah briskly returned to the hall and stared down at the floor’s seemingly infinite pattern of yellow and gray as he continued.

He found a horde of identical work-bots as soon as he entered through the large automatic doors. The silent killer had effectively frozen every simultaneous moment of human activity in time, and this effect was most noticeable here. While a committee of faculty and parents had been standing out of the way, discussing matters left forever ambiguous, the robots had evidently been in the middle of executing some pre-programmed mission.

It was cruelly humorous to see the finished preparations of the event, with the laborers neatly aligned in what one could almost call an army formation. Uriah wondered vaguely if his sister’s plan for the Gallagher Corporation building’s construction was still becoming a reality at that very moment. Not like she deserved another second in his thoughts, the creep. You brought this on yourself, had been her last words to him.

Uriah started up one of the androids, a Homunculus that, he found up close, was a product from a company called Metrauto. Fortunately, its emotionless voice told him how to input commands. Follow me until I say ‘stop’, he ordered. He heard the pleasantly soft footsteps of the machine behind him as he ascended the stairs to the gym balcony. I guess you can see, huh? Stop. Nothing but the sound of his own footfalls greeted him when he progressed towards the closet off to his right.

Sure enough, a dozen more of the bots stood inside. That number, plus the fifteen in the gym, was just six shy of being convenient for his objective. Making some of the androids do a round trip would take too long, for the nearest store with all the materials he needed was at least three hours away for a running Homunculus.

Fan-freaking-tastic. He barely dodged an EMP that had come from the ceiling.

* * * *

Now here is a respectable richie. Uriah took in his surroundings in the so-called Marshall Manor. Not an extravagant – or any – television, ridiculously pricey wardrobe, or solid gold toilet seat to speak of in this place.

What Marshall Patterson’s waste expulsion device did feature was machinery that allowed it to detect evidence of potential tumors simply by testing the urine, presumably for visitors. Perhaps in a few decades mankind would have seen the end of cancer for people of all classes, without Armageddon doing the job, of course. The house’s technological amenities had so much promise in them, it saddened Uriah to think they would never have their Utopian children because of his ignorance of engineering.

Uriah found a device built into the living room wall that he recognized as a mechanized pseudo-bookshelf. Booting it up, he scanned the screen’s display of literature to find a variety that was particularly heavy in esoteric biographies, do-it-yourself books, neuroscience texts, and transhumanist resources. The computer functioned also as a storage for academic and professional documents, and for Genius-compiled notebooks on tagged articles from the Internet. One could keep the most important information together from a variety of sources – many of which would be recommended by the computer’s AI without a single second of manual searching – on, say, a topic related to World War II for a high school student’s research thesis.

Intrigued, he pulled out an inconspicuous drawer below the main screen to find it loaded with odd-looking paper labeled Softsheets in sans-serif calligraphy on the top. He didn’t own one of these machines, but he’d watched enough commercials and heard enough raves by his late acquaintances to know that each Softsheet was actually a device onto which one could upload a book or document.

I wonder … Uriah jumped into the information superhighway.

A search for tips on domestic animal maintenance yielded a few promising documents. Emergency Veterinary Care for the Layperson caught his eye: Never again be caught inept to take preventative measures that could save your pet’s life – endorsed by Oswald I. Sullivan, M.S.! Five-star reviews and even a free bibliography of the booklet’s sources corroborated this claim to credibility, and all for fifteen dollars!

Not that that made a difference now. Money was officially obsolete, at least to anyone capable of hacking a user’s password for a virtual credit account. Uriah was hardly tech-savvy, but he resolved to give it his best try. For Finlon’s sake. Where would I store passwords if I were notorious for getting along better with AI than real people? Perhaps the answer lay in the question.

Thinking Marshall Patterson would have owned a butler-bot in his lifetime, Uriah stopped inside the sole bedroom. He felt awkward at the sight of a nude woman in the bed who could only be the home owner’s lover. Except …

Marshall wasn’t there, and just as he realized this the woman woke up.

You’re not Marshall, she said.

Well, if you want to ignore the twin elephants in the room, okay then. "Nah, but I am the Uriah, and I have to say I’m glad you’re still alive. As she sat up and looked puzzled, Uriah continued, I mean, I can stand losing the majority of the wastes of space around here, but one human or two is welcome."

I’m not a human. Did Marshall really make me that convincing? She – it – smiled.

An anatomically accurate robot had woken up unclothed in a genius’s bed and shown little modesty about its situation. Clearly the owner of this house was wealthy but could not buy the heart of a real woman, so he indulged in the company of a synthetic one. He tried not to laugh. Yeah, that’s, that’s the word for it.

So what happened to everyone else? Its expression sunk into the hints of disillusionment. Marshall’s gone, too. The last thing I remember from before I woke up is that he got out of bed really quickly, swearing to himself, and he must have turned me off here. What’s that like? Uriah wanted to ask, but he decided against it. I’m Jane, by the way.

Well, uh, I’m not sure how it happened, but I seem to be the last human in the biosphere. I haven’t found a single other person around here. No TV or radio programs. Not a single train, plane, whatever. No responses from people out of state I’ve tried to contact. Hell, no one’s tried to ca– He caught himself. Just how far could he trust Jane?

Marshall’s not picking up. Not his coworkers either. I guess you’re right. It stared at nothing in particular before looking down.

Uriah didn’t want to sound insensitive, crazy as it seemed to him that he was empathizing with an artificial woman, but the question deserved to be asked. He hesitated. Jane, did Marshall give you any friends? Bots like you?

It faced him. I love Marshall. He’s really nice to me, even though everyone else looks at me like a … toy of pleasure. I would do anything for him.

So he’d isolated Jane, tried to establish exclusive loyalty, and it was reinforcing the myth. Those other helpers would have to come from somewhere else, then. Still, Uriah tried not to make his astonishment too obvious, for fear of giving it the impression that he was as cold towards it as anyone else besides Marshall. He took a seat at a comfortable distance from Jane and smiled. He was a lucky man.

He said the same. But you shouldn’t be here. Just because Marshall is dead, that doesn’t mean I’ll do the same things for you that I did for him.

Wouldn’t dream of it. Actually, Jane, I want to be your friend.

Marshall didn’t want me to make friends. Friends made him jealous.

He resisted the urge to point out the irrelevance of a dead man’s wishes. They shouldn’t. I told you I wouldn’t take advantage of your services, so why shouldn’t you be my friend? We could use all the alliance we can find in times like these.

It’s a rare occasion to observe cognitive dissonance in androids. I do what Marshall wants me to.

Jane, I know you love Marshall, but I don’t think he’d mind my being your friend if he didn’t even know it.

Marshall knows best.

Does he?

Silence reigned. Uriah looked through the window to find a half-dozen cadavers. After some contemplation, he said, Jane, I have to leave soon, so let me make this brief. There’re a few things I need to do in a short time. First, I want to earn your trust. Second, I want to get some food for the animals down at the Finlon Humane Society, where they’ll starve if I don’t help them. To do that I need someone to, well … He couldn’t finish his request.

Well, what?

What I’m trying to say is, I want your help to keep these animals alive so I can go realize my dream with my conscience at peace. I know it sounds like a bad deal, but as I said, I’d also love to be your companion. A platonic companion. You’re probably used to thinking everyone except Marshall sees you as an impersonal machine, but I don’t.

Jane shifted its lips in suspicion.

"As a human, I admit I have certain, well, emotional needs. Most flesh-and-blood Homo sapiens don’t fulfill those needs, but you’re not flesh-and-blood. You’re … different. Special. And I like that." He extended his hand out to the robot.

Jane looked at his palm for a moment before standing up. "No. I know people like you, Uriah. Marshall’s orders or not, you’re in need, and I know you won’t just be a friend. If there aren’t any other women on Earth, then you’ll try to get your fix from me. I will not do work for you, I will not sleep with you, I will not put trust in you, and I will not let you fool me."

The android jabbed a finger dead center at his sternum. I’m leaving. I am going to find Marshall. I will do whatever I can to bring him back to me, because his protection of me from friends has been for my own good.

I just got rejected by a sex doll, thought Uriah as he watched Jane put on its clothes, which had been left on the floor, and run out of the room with its hand facing him. As if it had something to protect itself. And it just suddenly got smarter.

CHAPTER 2

For the second time in twenty-four hours, Pat’s parents’ car became the stolen property of a person on a mission to prevent at least one life from being lost. Uriah decided to move her body to the passenger’s seat, not anticipating any odorous decay to occur for at least a day. It gave him an excuse to talk to himself, and he wasn’t yet ready to cremate her, even if he knew how.

The Homunculi followed his order to move out of the way any problematic cars left on the road after the event he came to dub the Housekeeping. To make the long drive somewhat fun, Uriah tried to infer what each dead person he passed had been doing in their last few minutes. Perhaps that old man over there was heading home to make some progress on his memoirs, or that young lady was on her way to her job on the graveyard shift.