Son of Man

By Michael Trotta

In the year 2036, global funding rests in the hands of SIH, a private insurance company headed by two domineering male life-partners. Twenty-four-year-old Joshua Crysmann and his childhood friends come to realize that the secluded upper New York village theyd grown up within is untypical. Their throwback to a turn-of-the-millennium town was not only a safe haven, but also a genetic factory where many same-sex households had raised their legitimate children. Josh soon learns that his most impulsive friend is the in-vitro offspring of two reincarnated mass murderers, the founders of SIH, and that only he can stop them from placing their only begotten son into a position of world domination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781479785919

Michael Trotta

Michael Trotta is the author of three groundbreaking science fiction novels and several short stories. A New York native, he was born in the Bronx, raised in Westchester County and graduated Saint John's University in Queens. He currently lives in New York's magnificent upper Hudson Valley region with his wife Joanne.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

FIRST PUBLIC EXECUTION IN THE United States since that long-forgotten August fourteenth of exactly a hundred years ago: 1936, spewed from the overhead speaker as they shuffled us into that holding chamber. I looked through the solid glass wall ahead and spotted the handsome newscaster lifting his sleeve toward the three of us, his designer sweatshirt as vibrant as a peacock. He swiveled his face squarely to the hand cam and resumed his obnoxious monologue. And the first triple execution since the bygone days of traveling judges and their territorial hangings in the dusty old towns of the Wild West. But many things are different nowadays, and naturally for the better. For instance, what most of the hype’s been about in anticipation of this fateful Friday afternoon is the latest capital method of flash disintegration. Absolutely painless. The quickest and most humane form of punitive execution ever devised. These new state-of-the-art Golgotha models behind me are so reliable that we’re able to bring you this live broadcast with only a millisecond delay."

The camerawoman banked her reality cam into the room beside ours. She reminded me of a hotrod model, her slick blue jeans sleek and yet curved into a perfect figure eight. I imagined that she should have been the one posing in front of that hand cam, her v3D replication broadcast right onto the palm of any loyal citizen sporting a newly implanted PI.

Boris Norris, the taller, fatter, and sloppier of my two fellow convicts schlepped his big black head at the wall to our right and snipped nervously. Yeah, t-totally p-painless. As if anyone knows f-for sure. And especially that pr-pr, that pr-pr… that pr-pretty boy—he raised his chins and shook a gigantic fist at the glass—just try standin’ here in this st-stinkin’ holding tank and waitin’ for that last d-door to open.

I finally glanced to that terminal portal myself. It was as bland and heartless as the plain wall it centered, but it still made my gut wretch. I stroked the radical divot of oxford brown hairs disguising my chin and focused my deep hazel brown gaze back to the eyewitnesses.

They can’t hear a word you’re saying, George West stated from below my opposite shoulder, a little runt of a troublemaker who had somehow remained as calm as could be. Finally he exposed his weaker side, craning his scrawny neck at that imposing white door with that protrusive Adam’s apple gulping nervously up and down.

That’s when I realized how everyone present was staring at that final threshold. The padded door hung flush to the wall and was broken at eye level by a smoky-gray rectangular window. We all knew what loomed behind it. Anything as swift as those superconductive cubicles has to be painless, I stated in order to calm Boris, and maybe even myself. One instant you’re there, the next you’re an insignificant wisp of ghostly vapor.

M-my chaplain kept r-remindin’ me how some of its d-designers lost fingas without r-realizin’ it right away, Boris released spontaneously, sweat beading on his upper lip. You both heard that. At the t-trial. When that guy swore we didn’t need to be sh-shaved, like they used to d-do for them old electric ch-chairs. Th-that’s what’ll happen in less than one of them little kinda seconds. R-right? I mean, most of ’ems didn’t even knows their fingas was gone. At least not until they f-felt w-warm blood running down their hands and r-realized they’d just heard a f-faint zappin’ sound. Or when that other guy said he r-reached to pick something up and swiped r-right through the air instead. Th-that’s what he swore when he yanked off them f-fake fingas and held up them n-nubs. About how painless it’s gonna be for us. R-right?

Yup, we’ll be just another fading memory before anyone out there ever knows it, George sardonically reminded us. A puff of dissipatin’ mist. But don’t forget that this is the first time these novel contraptions is ever being used on live humans. So who can say for sure? You heard that wired-haired physicist testifyin’ how this peculiar kinda radiation might alter electrical firings in our brains, distorting our sense of space-time and making that last instant feel like an eternity: A slow… molecular fry. Drawn out in a quantum consciousness… . Absolute hell.

I felt a familiar burning sensation in the birthmark gracing my right ribcage.

Boris’s jaw dropped and his big cow eyes bugged out at me.

I replied peacefully, my mellow tone again sedating Boris, Yeah, but that was just a rebuttal to the state’s request for the death penalty. I stroked the radical divot of fuzz covering my chin and strove to appear undaunted, turning to West. And even he said these newest Golgotha units disintegrate entire live cows in way under a picosecond. Way under. So every cell in our bodies will be gone in half that time. Long before a human nerve impulse can even begin. I smiled reflectively. And that’s a fact.

Maybe so, West responded, exuding twisted satisfaction. But don’t forget that most people used ta think the clean slice of a guillotine was instant death. Especially the doctor himself. Until the mobs gathered at them eighteenth-century executions kept gossipin’ ’bout how them severed heads looked ’em right back in the eyeballs when their executioner lifted their twitching faces from those bloody catch baskets.

Boris fidgeted copiously, unleashing a world of hostility in my direction. I-It’s all b-because of y-you, ya know. SIH is r-real scared of peoples like you. Th-that’s why they’re so keen on m-makin’ examples of us threes. Because of troublemakers like you who d-don’t knows when to keep their blessed mouths shut. And f-for someone who done so much pr-preachin’ at that trial, you sure clammed up r-real good when it c-counted the m-most.

George whined as the animated golf ball on his neck slid vertically. It sure as hell don’t take a genius to figure that you’ve known we was suckered into that hotel room that night, just like you. It ain’t no coincidence you showed up just seconds after we picked that lock. And you saw by the looks on our faces that we weren’t the ones who cut up that sleazy whore… Well, at least not that one, anyway.

As much as I hated to admit it, those two pathetic dissenters were right. I knew exactly who our two exalted rulers of SIH had been hunting all along, and exactly why those dual leaders of our new GOV had so conveniently swept aside this particular slashing. But I didn’t dare let on. Even though I really didn’t put it all together until the court clerk played that damning deposition from our late buddy, Jud A. Steele, projecting his impetuous image onto the witness seat in virtual-3D—you know, v3D—raising his bloodied hand and perjuring himself with that dying testimony.

Despite that most graphic death of the world’s first FC—our inaugural and already former global funding czar—Jud’s painful denial was the kiss of death for me. But I realized right then and there that I shouldn’t implicate him. As soon as I heard his closing words. Words that brought me back to our final day at Redemption Community College together. The day this darkest of all natures was first truly revealed to me—though I was much too naive and way too close to the problem to recognize it back them. It all hit me the moment I relived holding that razor-sharp blade in my hand—and remembered exactly who’d put it there.

1

CUT THE LITTLE RAT’S HEAD off! Jud had commanded so curtly, just a few short weeks ago, his dark eyes widening and getting ready to enjoy it. But stick it into his guts and make sure he squirms first. He’s gotta pay for what he just did."

That’s when I noticed how cold the knife really felt; a silvery reflection glistened sharply off its edge. He can’t be serious, I remember thinking, observing that familiar gleam in his eye and suddenly praying for a miracle. Does he really think I could ever do something like that?

Horace was convinced he was going to keep coming at me, and shook his raven-black hair to somehow stand up to him. Don’t make him if he doesn’t want to, he said, pressing the bridge of those silly wire-rimmed glasses to his richly toned nose, magnifying the terror Jud perpetually entombed in his ebony eyes, his fearless play fading fast.

Jud spun in the opposite direction and released in a near frenzy. Then you do it, Rocky.

You’ve gotta be kiddin’, dude! Rocky Peters replied with a serious Hispanic accent, a tall lanky kid of twenty-four years, yet one whose peach-fuzzed, olive-toned skin and sandy hair conveyed barely seventeen.

I asked flat out, Jud, why would anyone ever even think of doing something like that?

Wusses, Jud countered contemptuously, looking up guiltily to the three of us and shaking his head. He ran a scrappy hand over his furry brown hair and grabbed the scalpel from me, anticipation gleaming in those dark hollow eyes, and motioned us away.

He’d never actually gone through with any of his gruesome threats before, at least not in front of anyone who’d ever admit to it, but I noticed a unique glimmer in his eye that gray day. He usually behaved best when I chilled and stayed calm, so I smiled like my old self and rested a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.

We both jerked abruptly when the bell rang: loudly!

Final period at last!

Incessant student gabbing rose above scraping chairs and a cacophony of electronic gadgets conversing and signing on and off.

Lucia Christenson foxily fueled the commotion by swiveling her stool and aiming those soft hazel green eyes at Jud, adding with a devilish tone, I thought this stupid lab would never end.

Even under her sleek white-cotton lab jacket, those sumptuous curves really stood out. A lucky wool sweater hugged her sable torso and wrapped firmly around her uplifted bosom. Even the colored liquids suspended in the beakers behind her bubbled profusely. She slid off her stool, tilted her head, and smiled while winking eye to eye to Jud, and at last meandered away, her feline sway rendering the three of us mute.

Rocky eventually said, Man, how would you like to—

You bet I would, I said before he could finish. What I wouldn’t give to pounce on something like that just once.

Jud said as if it were payback, twitching those unruly brows up to the three of us and smirking, Heh, heh. Why wonder, buddy boys, when I can tell you that the old saying is right. Yous all know the one: ‘The darker the meat, the sweeter the treat.’ That little vixen wiggles like a live serpent sizzling on a hot skillet.

Is that a fact? Rocky muttered.

Horace remained sheepishly quiet.

Don’t you believe it, I said naively.

Yeah, Josh, Horace replied, his mind obviously entangled with the same ill-fated snake. But you know anything’s possible with him.

Of course I knew that, as stubborn as I was to admit it back then. But what I remember most about the next moment is how all three of us had glimpsed the wet stain on Jud’s lab coat sleeve and then turned away, before he could notice.

He knows I ain’t lying, Jud spat back, returning from another extended glance at Lucia, who leaned back against a metal doorframe listening to our little chemistry professor.

She aimed that soft coco cleft in her chin at him, a small black beauty mark pitted perfectly by her right dimple.

Jud grabbed his crotch in typical fashion and uttered his most infamous words. Everyone has their weakness, and skillful tongue or not, I know exactly how she wants this monstrous stimulus package delivered.

Horace, Rocky, and I all stared back blankly.

But only one thing counts now, Jud appended impulsively. And that’s that we’ve finally made it. We’re finished with our classes. All of ’em. Forever and ever.

Amen, I said looking up, most grateful that Jud himself had changed the subject.

If we pass all the upcoming SUNY boards. Horace typically reminded us, peeking back to the arch surrounding our frail little teacher and the sumptuously chocolate complexion of Lucia. He turned back to Jud. You were there when Professor Ying said they’d be extremely tough. Harder than hell. In fact, now that I think of it, Jud, you’re the one he said it to.

Gauging the ornery posture overcoming our scrappy little comrade, I imparted with a forgiving grin. Too bad we can’t earn straight As the way she always manages.

Horace and Rocky’s chary glances reminded me how Jud habitually flexed his muscles to boost his own marks, forever flaunting his unique relation to SIH’s top two power mongers, yet never gaining favor from poor little Ying.

We’ll pass ’em all, Jud retorted, his brows merging up at the three of us and atypically doubting himself, certain that our little trio was going to pass them all, and without the official intervention he was surely about to receive.

I certainly hope so, I inflected with genuine uncertainty, which thankfully pacified Jud again, though I think that was the first time I truly admitted to myself that one day, sooner than I wished, he wouldn’t yield so readily to me. Cause if anyone fails even one of those tests, they’ll have to take that entire class over—even physics or chemistry—and probably in some gigundo school jam-packed out in the mainstream.

That really pisses me off, Jud released. Us Servants shouldn’t have to pass any of them bogus exams anyway. I mean, what’s the point? Our SSs are guaranteed, no matter what. Unlike them mainstream saps. Heh, hey.

Horace was still gawking aimlessly at Lucia, his mind understandably yanked from our conversation. The moment Jud caught him, Lucia impishly smiled back to Horace, as she for some unknown reason sometimes did, really getting Jud’s goat. She turned and shielded her mouth with her hand, uttering a secret in the direction of the schoolgirls gathered beside her, who all impishly peeked our way and giggled.

Knowing Horace, I shut my eyes and tensed as he turned that goofy smile back our way, his coming cliché invoking a hellish nightmare. Well, he replied obliviously, you know what they say, buddy boys: ‘Better to be pissed off than to be pissed—’

Ah hum! Rocky tactfully cleared his throat.

I stared at Horace.

Silence was deadly as Horace’s sallow complexion indicated he’d finally caught on.

Jud scowled at the moist yellow stain on his sleeve and crinkled his brows at the scalpel resting in his hand. He peered at the doorway and twisted a familiar gleam back to the rodent cage he’d left trembling on the lab bench. Maybe you three lugs better beat it. Ying said he wanted to see me after class. Alone. Yous all heard him. And yous know how anal he gets if you don’t do exactly as he says. I’m bettin’ he’s got another notion for me to stay after to clean this scuzzy old classroom up so that his pet Lucia can help him grade our finals. He’ll regret it one day. Heh, heh.

2

REDEMPTION LANDING," I REPEATED ABOVE a clamorous barroom tune, fiddling with some red-and-white checkered curtains at a corner table in the antiquated pub of an upstate Hudson River village named Wappingers Falls.

I really have heard of that one, the buxom brunette responded, giggling, then pressing another set of red lip-prints onto the rim of her latest vodka tonic. She was no older than we were, twenty-four, maybe a tad younger. She peeked repeatedly to a small round coffee table set by the front door, where two burly dudes and a wrinkled old gal raised clear seltzer toasts. A Just Married sign rested atop their checkered tablecloth.

I think I’ve heard of that one too, her very blonde friend released, obviously as buzzed as the rest of us. She moved a little closer and aimed her sleepy green eyes at me, fingering the faded black-and-white grammar-school photo mounted on the brick wall to our right.

Horace hesitated, his obsidian irises dancing about the dingy parlor. I guess that’s to be expected. Things’ve been changing quite rapidly of late. I mean, it may have been one of the most secure communities in the country for the last thirty years or so, but it’s really loosening up now that those compounds are all about to be dissolved. He adjusted his wire rims and aimed them at the front door again, contemplating why both girls had glanced that way again.

We’ve been hearing more and more about those sequestered communities over the last couple of months, the brunette admitted, very curvaceous and not nearly as plump as I’d first surmised. Really we have. They’ve been running droves of specials about them lately—on primetime and everything. Especially about how they’re all being dismantled now. Some newer reports are even admitting that SIH has had much more control over those communities than we’d always believed, even from way before they became part of the new GOV. They do say they’ve been a very safe haven to live in, though, nothing like the bedlam out here in the mainstream—not nearly so congested and all. But I’ve never paid much attention to why those secret communes were constructed in the first place, and way back before the turn of the millennium when things hadn’t really deteriorated all that much yet.

It is super freaky how we’re only findin’ out ’bout that whole scene now, Blondie hiccupped, snickering afterward. In this day and age.

They were actually conceived back when SIH was still a private insurer, Horace said. "A decade before the String of Bailouts afforded them so much funding to start lending worldwide—their loses socialized, their gains privatized. We thought everyone knew that much. It’s actually how they secured the fourth branch of the U.S. government, reshaping the nation into our new GOV by adding the monetary branch, in order to dictate a uniform fiscal policy. To insure everyone’s well-being, of course."

But of course, the girls chanted in harmony, shaking their heads and chortling at our foolishness, then tilting their heads to look helplessly at us for more answers.

Horace peered to me for an out. You tell ’em, Josh.

So I did. Just a few years after all that, SIH segregated entire families of their top Servants into tucked-away locations—including some special biotech divisions—and protected us with their own security contractors acquired in that now infamous mega-merger. Cleverly inaccessible towns immune to any kind of outside audits. Totally isolated. A loosely banded network of twelve separate communities scattered throughout the United States—one strategically populating each of the distinct dozen districts formally controlled by the twelve privately owned Federal Reserve banks. Working on all sorts of cutting-edge projects. Not just monetary allocations like securing our spenddowns. A last-ditch effort to combat all the unexplainable leaks spewing from so many capitalized ventures. To fully insure everyone’s well-being, of course.

But of course, the brunette acknowledged first, but by no means last.

Blondie batted her long lashes. So then, like, your parents are full-fledged Servants and all? Their SSs, their Servant spenddowns, fully guaranteed by SIH.

Naturally, Horace chirped. So are ours. Both of us. We were born and raised inside a secured community. Spent our required twenty-two years confined inside. That alone entitles us to our Servant status.

Really? the girls chanted in harmony, at long last fully coming on to us.

Just then, the front door opened, and both girls twisted eagerly that way, where a bald-headed man held the door for his wife, the frigid wind swirling behind her. The two girls looked back to each other and sniggered again.

The three leathery lounge lizards sitting by the entry glared back at us.

Well, anyway, one of the girls said, I guess what we really want to know is what kind of stuff you guys knew about when you were growing up.

Horace was even cornier when he was drunk. We knew everything happening in the mainstream. The adults always insisted on that. Got all the free airways, TV, Web, v3D, news pages, blogs, Reality View. Same stuff you all tap into out here. But our parents accepted the fact that we had to remain isolated—to insure everyone’s well-being, of course.

But of course, the four of us responded innocently, lifting our drinks as absolute proof.

It’s the reason we still can’t connect with anyone back home, I said, pointing to my wrist. Not anyone, not even our parents. At least for a few more weeks now, until our community’s communication quarantine is finally lifted.

But no, silly, Blondie petitioned, falling against my shoulder and nursing a tartly lime cocktail as green as her eyes. What we really want to know is what kind of research they tangled with in the compound you all grew up in? She giggled, snuggled closer to me, then outright laughed. Mister Servant Man.

I peered around the dingy parlor again. That old pub was noisy enough to restrict the ES, SIH’s all-seeing Essence in the Sky, and we had all muted our IBs, the identity bands clipped permanently around our left wrists. But any nearby IB could easily hone in our conversation, even the older models with microprocessors.

The three slouching locals seated by the front door lifted their nuptial champagnes and glimpsed our way again.

We’re not supposed to talk about stuff like that, I said.

Blondie’s eyes meandered around the pub, moved gingerly toward the front door again, then rested back on me. They did mention that on all the broadcasts I’ve caught. Along with quite a few other things. Even ’bout what kinda shenanigans went on in some of them. But regardless, now that you guys from those sequestered communities are finally being unleashed, aren’t you all lookin’ forward to livin’ a little dangerously?

Horace and I wondered where anyone would get such a notion. Media sensationalism, we figured. We’d both viewed the recent postings.

Not really, Horace admitted like a bonafide nerd. Besides, we don’t know all that much about the nitty-gritty stuff. Our parents worked on those projects. Not us. We were way too young. And they never said a thing about their work. Not allowed. Ever. Not even to us.

My folks didn’t even work at the plant, I blurted as if anyone really cared. Neither of them. So they never knew that much themselves. My dad’s an engineer for the local building department, and my mother’s a pediatrician down at our CC, our Centro Commercial.

But both you guys grew up in that freaky pen, Blondie responded, unsatisfied. And kids always have ways of findin’ things out. Always. Even if it’s little by little. And they always share secret stuff like that. So don’t tell me you two don’t know what I’m talkin’ ’bout?

Horace’s eyes flicked to me, then again to those three drained mugs resting on the adjacent red checks. We were both reliving the rainy spring afternoon when the two of us crept through that creepy crawlspace in his basement. The day we stumbled across those loose foundation blocks—and the even creepier manila disc hidden behind them.

We don’t know a thing, Horace swore up and down.

So exactly where is this Redemption Landing? the brunette begged, aiming her voluptuous cleavage at Horace.

It’s in Adirondack State Park, Horace said. About a hundred miles north of here.

Upstate New York? she responded. That’s doesn’t seem so hidden to me.

Biggest protected wilderness area in the contiguous forty-eight states, Horace bragged. Six-point-one million acres. Bigger than the combined areas of Yosemite, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Glacier, and the Great Smoky Mountains national parks. Put together. Probably because it’s the watershed for the New York City area. So Redemption’s just a speck up there.

And you’re imbibing with two of its prized Community College’s very last graduates, I boasted, patting my chest and wondering if my slur had really sounded as noticeable as Horace’s—or that cutesy blonde who was thankfully falling into me again. Class of 2036.

Only seventy-seven kids in our entire class, Horace added. And nearly every one of us aced the SUNY College Boards, too. Same exact tests all you NY grads have to take out here.

I instantly thought of Jud, who had surely milked special treatment in order to pass—with honors, no less; but I quickly migrated onto how we might lure those two horny little devils out that door, you know, to have them try and coax some trendy information out of us.

We knew you were grads from there the moment we met you, the brunette said.

No way, Horace said incredulously. How?

Yeah, how? I really wanted to know too.

Suddenly, both girls sat upright, their eyes broadening at the pub’s front entrance. They patted their hair, no longer interested in either of us.

At first I hadn’t realized that the front door had opened again, but it was impossible not to notice the compact athletic silhouette blocking the howling wind outside.

One of the girls uttered, We were starting to think you weren’t coming tonight, Jud.

Our furry little comrade brushed the beaded raindrops off his head, flinging them coldly at Horace. He twitched his brows with unbridled satisfaction. Me, not coming? You know I’d never miss an opportunity to hook up with either of yous two cuties. And besides, I’ve gotta find out what kinda juicy material my two best buddies have been spillin’ here tonight. Heh, heh.

3

THOSE TWO CHICKS WERE RIGHT last night, Josh," Horace said, fixing his glasses while leaning against a knurly old fig tree rooted in a greenhouse at the Bronx Botanical Gardens. The patch of sunny grass beyond our glass enclosure ended just thirty yards away, at another towering wall of inspiring translucent panes.

Jud was already leaving us again, moving through the budding courtyard outside, winking at two curvaceous arborists sporting orange jumpsuits.

You mean when they told me you have a nose like a falcon, I responded facetiously.

We were both feeling rather frisky, after talking with Maggie deLin and Lucia Christenson lasered up in flawless v3D from Jud’s state-of-the-art PI—his brand-new embedded palm identity—and both saying how they had already made it to Manhattan, the Big Apple, but even better yet, how they wanted to meet up with the three of us near Rockefeller Center later that afternoon. I felt bad that Horace was going to be the odd man out, considering how Maggie and I had exchanged crushes since kindergarten—and everyone knew what Lucia and Jud’s favorite pastime was.

Horace kept us on focus. It is weird, Josh, and you know it too. No matter what Jud says. We were always convinced that people in the mainstream have been more up to date on sequestered communities like Redemption Landing, and especially with SIH’s initial role of both funding and securing all twelve, but that they just weren’t encouraged to talk about it openly. For everyone’s well-being, of course.

But of course, I recited.

Horace continued. But now that we’re finally out and about, it’s obvious how meager that’s actually been. I mean, I guess by the time we were ten, we started realizing how extreme it was that even families on vacation went to places where families from other sequestered communities were vacationing. And even those few school trips of ours were always heavily chaperoned by SIH. Why do you suppose that was?

Maybe you’d realize why if you peeked in a mirror once in a while, I said in one last attempt to avoid the inevitable.

Be serious for once, will ya, man? Think back, whenever we’ve watched a TV series or movie on any type of media, interactive or not, have you ever seen any kids getting grilled on what and what not to say to outsiders whenever they left their hometowns?

That’s when I gave in a little. After all, I really wanted some answers too. All right, all right. We always knew that was a little weird. But our folks insisted that certain shady individuals might try to find out exactly what went on inside there.

But come on, Josh. How would anyone expect kids to understand the essentials of sophisticated stuff like that?

Maybe so, but I doubt the guys we hung around with were the only ones who ever went snooping around their parent’s junk. What about our fourth-grade pirate excursions to the plant boundaries on Thursday afternoons? Other guys did stuff like that, too, you know. Remember what Vozza and Carlos swore they saw in their digitizing binoculars from behind the north fence the day Tommy Chin broke his wrist.

Horace’s eyes darted around the verdant enclosure. It was still empty inside our ripening orchard, but a few visitors ambled outside the clear panes, with one of those babes in the orange jumpsuits working her way nearer the entrance—the other one suspiciously out of sight.

I lowered my voice and rolled my first-fingerprint over an arbitrary spot on the identity band wrapping my left wrist, checking its status and instructing it to emit a low but distracting beat. Okay, dude, okay. But I doubt too many of them ever came across anything as serious as that little manila disc we discovered under your floorboards?

And such a weird hologram labeling it too, Horace said, shaking his head as we scrutinized the remaining arborist lower her orange pruning pole and prepared to enter our little green haven. He artfully tapped his own IB, which instantly recognized his first-fingerprint to play a somewhat different beat. I’ll never forget that look on your face in the crawlspace when I read it aloud, Josh. You said it sounded real familiar to you. Remember? Real familiar. But you couldn’t quite put your finger on it. Either way, I’d never heard such a spooky name: ‘Son of Man.’

4

ONLY THREE WEEKS HAD PASSED since we’d left Redemption Landing, just a month after the official slackening of its borders. Three emancipated college grads primed to see the mainstream, bidding farewell to a slew of others doing the same. The Adirondack peaks we’d so eagerly left behind had still been blanketed in its biting winter chill, but while treading that crowded urban concrete spring was in full bloom, and it smelled as if summer was just around the corner.

The high-rising chasm and three-dimensional projections lining the tall stories of Broadway bombarded us with boldly novel colors. We looked through the unending crowd, the streets packed with warm bodies, diverse faces squeezing past us and so many changing rapidly.

How much longer do you suppose till we reach Time Square? Horace asked me, inching through the compacted hustle and bustle. He lifted his hands and turned them upward, twisting to avoid the congestion of harried New Yorkers, his body conforming like a hieroglyph.

Don’t be so impatient, old boy, I said, holding up my wrist. Both our IB’s confirmed it’ll only be another block and a half. No matter which way we choose.

Our eyes dallied around the unending array of flashing 3D posters consuming entire buildings and the cloud-sized panoramic projections floating like zeppelins in the sky. We peeked backward. Maybe it was good we had yet to spot Jud and our two lovely classmates.

So, I blurted as if it hadn’t crossed my mind a gazillion times, what do suppose the chances are of that little manila folder still being down in that dingy crawlspace of yours?

I’ve been wondering the same thing myself, Josh. Poppa Ram swore he took it back to the plant the day after we found it. But he could’ve just said that to cover up his little slip. Remember how quickly he bonded those blocks back into place.

He was a first-rate pisser. And he did scare the crap out of us when he told us what would happen to both him and Poppa Pepi if SIH ever found out he’d goofed up like that—letting a couple of kids get their hands on a classified file he was responsible for.

The penalty he ranted on about made sense to us, Josh, didn’t it? Considering how everyone always warned about junk like that. He even lectured me big time on how they both might get shipped off to other communities, regardless of whether or not Pepi knew squat about that disc. He said I might even get two totally new parents in their place, and maybe not even two men. Imagine that? It’s why you and I never mentioned it again.

Thank heavens we never thumbed the security tab on that disc, I said, staring Horace in the eye and instantly realizing he’d been keeping something monumental from me all those years. The way his face contorted was unmistakable. Well… ? I asked.

Horace moved his mouth nearer my ear and said. All right, Josh, I crept back downstairs and left my imprint on that folder after you left.

Duh… And… ?

Well, I didn’t get to see much. Ram came sneaking down those steps about fifteen minutes later. Big as he was, he was always quiet as a mouse.

No doubt. But you must’ve seen something—you’re acting awfully buggy.

Horace’s eyes danced about the urban hustle and bustle. No one was following us, we were certain, but he lowered his voice nonetheless. Well, you know that Redemption’s main gig centered around some highly secretive genetic work, not only controlling phenotypes, what people look like, but most importantly our genotypes, our proteomics or body chemistry—searching for a way to make all us citizens fully immune to any kind of lethal disease.

Double duh, I replied, expecting more. We always knew that much. Plague free. With the population density in the mainstream, germ warfare has always been this nation’s biggest threat. Even a nuke is somewhat contained, but a slowly incubating organism could spread clear across the country before a single symptom ever appeared, maybe even the world. It’s why SIH now claims we need that global funding czar, the world’s first FC, someone who can execute their emergency financial directives to ward off the most pressing infections.

Horace rolled his eyes; his words got softer. Yeah sure, Josh, but regardless, I think things wound up going much deeper than the types of genetic engineering schemas we’d always figured on.

I nodded for Horace to flip me some more.

Well, Josh, you remember that afternoon when your cousin Johnny started harping on how strange it was that hardly any reality shows had two dads or two moms as the heads of households—like so many of us at Redemption had?

I didn’t know what he was getting at, so I artfully blurted something corny. Are you trying to tell me that that manila disc had a top-secret list of TV shows on it, old pal of mine?

Horace pushed his glasses up into his face and shook his head. Jesus, man, be serious for a change, will ya?

Okay, okay. But there were more and more of those types of shows as we got older. And because of them, same-sex parenting in the mainstream is approaching 15 percent.

But almost 20 percent of the kids in our class alone had two dads, Horace said, pointing to himself. And over 40 percent had two moms. That makes nearly 60 percent of us who grew up in same-sex households. And that all began way back when we were born, almost a quarter century ago, in the early 2010s.

Yeah? So you can do math. Besides, you were one of the few kids I could always tell how out of place I felt sometimes that I have both a mother and a father.

This isn’t about you, Josh, Horace said urgently. Well, maybe it is, in some ways. But it isn’t only about you. It’s about all of us. All us kids from Redemption Landing.

All of us? In what way?

I’m still not positive, but it seems as if so many things aren’t quite the way we’ve been indoctrinated. I do have some freaky notions, though. But no matter what, like I said, somehow, I think it goes far deeper than just the ultimate pandemic-related DNA engineering. Far deeper.

Toss me a hint? I said, spotting a familiar head of furry brown hair darting hungrily through the crowd ahead.

We couldn’t tell if anyone was with him yet.

Horace’s