Lower CoSMOS-Life of Lance Vier #2

Life of Lance Vier #2

             You would think me coming home to my human wife. My natural one hundred percent human wife would stir human emotion of sympathy for me as I now had another link to my parents. My downcast face didn’t help.

            “Well. Are you satisfied? Can we go to the psych-chip shop and get you straightened out now? Your dad was a psychopath who would say anything to get them to believe it. He smoked like the Reichstag and drank every second he got.” She slammed a pan on the stove. Not because she was cooking but because she was in the kitchen and it was the closest thing to make noise with.

            “And who was that guy that told you to go? You said you would tell me later. Here I am!” She stayed in the kitchen. Hand on hip.

            We weren’t married as in ‘officially.’ Official. Court documents? Yes, but, according to life as it is now she was anyone’s wife. Anyone could come into my home and claim her. They would need her permission. If she said no, they were out of luck and it was against the law to move any further than that. The law held immense power these days. Try to take her, the consequences were severe. Maybe I can go into storytime later. Anyway. No one came. So. Happily married we are.

            I moved to the couch and plopped down. We didn’t have anything to entertain us other than each other. Digital platforms disappeared by this time as people were thankfully wise enough to figure out it was masked as a better form of programming than television. They didn’t want the control anymore. So a better way was to control movement. Only allow them to go somewhere at certain times and in certain situations. Digital control was a bonus but not needed. People may have gotten wiser to being tricked, but they did not get any braver.

            Unmoved in the kitchen, she continued: “Ignore me then. The next man that comes in here and wants some of this. I am gone, honey.”

            Thankfully, people sickened themselves of the thought of relationships. Not me. I loved her.

            She stormed off. I couldn’t sit there and wait to find out more of what she thought of me. It was from the couch to the door of another home I knocked, searching for the junkyard funeral times for euthanasia though my Mother technically did not sign off to be killed. She was still functioning but they had her scheduled anyway. They wanted all the hunter’s vehicles destroyed with no trace of Granny Sometimes or her nasty orphanage. The bounty hunters still living got their monthly pension to stay quiet, but believe me, you can bet the government would love for those payments to stop and they could put the money in their own pockets instead. I went through the neighborhood unscathed. It got better the further I walked out of Keet City where I lived and into Verderbond. They were snobs there. Everywhere. It was like living in a better time. The more money you had, the safer you were. That never changed. The streets were clean and the houses were all alike. One bedroom. Kitchen. Enough for a single person or two people to survive. Family homes? Ha!

            Elga Reinweich lived in the area. Pac tipped me to her address without asking. In his tough exterior, he cared for my mother. Maybe it was longing for the days when he chased my dad trying to make money. He saw me as some kind of good memory I think. Of better times. The oldies do that sort of reminiscing. He did ask I return with some weed. Of course, I would. When at Elga’s door, I began to walk up but it was open. Checking my sides from either direction there was no others around to see me walk up. I got to her doormat that said “Verpiss dich.” Nice. I heard a faint beeping sound, like an old sonar ping. As I got closer, it was louder. Inside the expensive home, the furniture sublime, new suburban.

            “Hello.”

            “Nein Nein. Hier. Hier!”

            I followed the voice. As I moved in, the pinging rang with intensity. Entering the kitchen there was a woman. Six feet easy. Big chest. Thick legs and zero plastic surgery. In her late 60s but still attractive. She held up a small screen for me to see. There was a red blip on it, pulsating in and out, beeping louder as I came near. She pressed the side button and shut it off. It is stereotypical to think German, mad scientist, nazi and sick experiments but she is German and she had good intentions for us all who survived the metal womb.

            “The day has come as I thought my little one. As I thought. They cannot get rid of all of you. Come here and embrace me,” she said. I was compelled to. She did not invite many to get that close to her because she always assumed that men sought her out for sex. They did. With the wife I had I never had to leer elsewhere and had no intention here. My wife made sure I did not have the energy for anyone else although I wondered if she did.

            “Elga?”

            “Oh, Nein.” She placed her arms out again for me and the prospect was comforting by the sight of her tight shirt.

            I later learned that inside was a device to track my life and my movements. Where I lived and where many of my other possible brothers and sisters in experiments were. It begged the question of why Elga did not go and try to find us. I am sure you may have plenty of questions right now if you kept up so far, but for now, she was aware of where we were but because of the watchful eye of all things powerful, for her safety, she remained in the shadows. She cried when I mentioned my mother. She had nothing to do with her coming decommissioning and was eager to scream.

            “No. No. You cannot let this happen. Your, Vater would not allow it. That bastard he would not. No.” She spoke in an accent, sometimes going into German but then remembering who she addressed.

            “They are going to. I have no say in it,” I said.

            “Sure, you do. You are her son. You go. I vill watch und dey fick mit sie. Ich fick mit ihen.”

            I shook my head and wanted nothing to do with this. I wanted to go back to my life I wanted kids of my own. The fantasy of possibility at least. It was never going to happen.

            “I can’t,” I said.

            “Was ist das?”

            “She disowned me, Elga.”

            “Oh, Nein. She is bitch to his bastard. You will see. She will stop being such a Hundin. I can see that you don’t want her to die like the others. They were sehr special. Like your Mother. Watch, Lance. But now you must know. Listen.”

            My father was a bounty hunter. Babies were few back in the day. Worse than it is now. The specter of eugenics gave the government every incentive to preserve all those who had no blemishes or undesirable DNA information. CRISPR and MRNA changed the world for the better or worse depending on where you stood on the subject. Then came CDNA, CRISPRX, and so on. Termination at any age was allowable, for any infringement brought the death penalty, contrived or not. Imagine all those years of fighting against the death penalty and abortion turned around on you. Everyone was on their best behavior. Pure technological tyranny brought full compliance. Granny Sometimes was tasked to bring in all the babies. Keeping them alive. They wanted a full headcount of the amount that was left. But only the ones with “bad” genetics. The good ones stayed in the populace in affluent areas. Elga aided the whole process. The right hand of Granny. She went on to interrupt telling me this to mention a carpenter who died in the first century, but I told her to get to the point. She kept talking about him and I threatened to leave. I didn’t want to hear any religious bullshit. Anyway. The first batch of babies were genetic misfits, sent into the populace as activated drones until they became teens and returned to Granny. She grew them in-house to adulthood, giving them a little extra of everything.

            Naming them off, she stopped at my father. His cohort and best friend went by the name Pibb. After the cult soft drink. By that time, it was not uncommon to be named after merchandise. This was before the corporate cyber wars. That by itself consisted of keyboard warriors whom I envisioned slap-fighting each other when the time came to be introduced for conflict without the aid of the internet.

            “You need to get her out of there. She is one of a kind and your only mother, Lance. My number Vier.”