THE ANTIMATTER OF DEATH Read online

  In front of me the half-abandoned glass cube of Exponential Humanity Inc rakes into the steely indifference of the sky. According to my floating info stream, it’s part of the pioneering biotech company Exponential Humanity Inc that offers services like synthetic designer dreams, external memory immortalization and cryogenic suspension. The one place to freeze time until a life-saving medical breakthrough. Only, I’m not here for myself.

  Having snuck inside its warehouse-like basement, I stumble into a long, deserted hall that resembles a steampunk-inspired factory, only instead of warm steam it’s lit with an spooky blue light that glows with arctic sterility against the whitewashed walls. It’s freezing; I can even see white clouds of my breath every time I exhale. Row upon row of cryo-capsules extend in front of me, filled with clients suspended in a purple gel. Like sleeping ghosts.

  Frantically I search for my brother among them—ducking, pausing, hiding in a careful choreography to avoid the rotating security cameras. As I advance from one capsule to the next my legs grow weaker and weaker.

  There!

  Finally I see his name on a display. My eyes drop to the message below it:

  Cryopreservation service expired.

  Empty!

  No. No! A vacuum rips open inside me as my heart grows teeth and devours itself. I bang my metal hand against the glass, screaming. Everything is lost. Richard dead—Stella dead. A universe of secrets untold, lives unlived.

  As I sink to the floor I catch my own terrifying reflection. The bloodshot, sunken eyes of a stranger peer back at me. They resemble black holes and a short white beard frames my face. My entire body feels like a leaf sliding from autumn into winter, ready to be crushed by the foot of time. I gape for air and touch my face in shock. Whatever horrifying disease I carry, it’s accelerating rapidly.

  Then suddenly, in the midst of my despair, a cold hand grabs me roughly from behind and the impartial steel of a gun is thrust against my skull.

  “Gotcha,” says a grinding voice.

  FOUR (100)

  In the evening, the winds are blowing furiously on the rooftop terrace of the HeliXtower, the Humanity X headquarters. The self-flying cab lifts off behind me and my hostage. A man in a tailored suit is standing at the chest-high railing on the far edge of the terrace, his back to us.

  I keep the gun pressed against the back of the bastard who attacked me in the cryogenic hall. Regrettably for him, he underestimated the strength of my bionic hand. Shielded by the chrome and fueled by adrenaline, I managed to get a hold of the weapon, an entry ticket to meet his boss. As I shove him forward I notice the battery of my prosthesis is running low. One more thing to worry about is exactly what I need.

  The man in the suit turns around slowly, hands behind his back. His athletic posture radiates the confidence of an emperor. The velvet sun, drowning behind him, basks me in his colossal shadow. I have no doubt that this is his tower, his city.

  My mouth opens when I catch a glimpse of his face in the twilight.

  Strong-boned, as if etched into a Greek statue of tanned marble, he’s squinting and looking me up and down, examining me as if I were a phantom.

  With one hand I fold the picture in my pocket in half and hold it up to the man in front of me. The paper and the flesh halves unite as a perfect match. “Ri–Richard?” My voice trembles.

  “Is that really you, Etoile?” he asks, sounding as stunned as I am.

  He has somehow survived the cancer that was devouring him alive—that’s why he was released from the cryogenics capsule! I want to give him a brother bear hug in relief, laugh our heads off together, but then the imagery of Stella and the replicon hunters appears in front of me.

  We stand there, not knowing what to say, where to even begin.

  An awkward, “What’s up?” escapes me.

  He smiles. He steps forward, apologizes for the small army that was sent to apprehend me. They were dispatched by an automated smart contract to retrieve the asset at all cost. The robot was collateral damage.

  I let the words sink in. Collateral damage! They weren’t after Stella. They were after me.

  I’m the asset.

  Richard excuses the guards a moment after they burst onto the terrace. I let my hostage weasel away, too, and find myself alone with him.

  The revelations that follow break my mind. My entire life was nothing but a lie––programmed, fabricated; the essence of my life liquefies into nothingness.

  He explains slowly that my memories are an illusion. My mind is a consciousness machine that curates its own reality, it’s own perception of time. The memories it harbors bifurcate on their own. I never had a lab in Paris—I’ve never even been there.

  When I ask about my research, he shakes his head. I just happened to be reading lots of books on the topics. I hold up the fading photo of him. All the birthdays we celebrated together? I filled in the gaps myself, extrapolated. This was his thirtieth birthday, my fifth.

  In a sudden whirlwind memories flit through my twisting brain––no, not memories: anti-memories. I realize I don’t have any recollection of him and me growing up together.

  It can’t be true. I must have simply forgotten.

  I laugh out loud, nervously. It becomes hysterical, high-pitched.

  Richard gazes at me coldly, his face going hard.

  My giggle dies. I sense that he’s wrestling with himself.

  Pointing to the photograph of himself, he explains how, a long time before the picture was taken, he learned about a genetic defect that would one day kill him before his time. In response, he pursued CRISPR-based genome editing research to develop a genetic treatment, which later became Humanity X, and became patient zero in the experimental trial of a secret blockbuster program.

  “Look around you. When biology becomes an information technology, solving death becomes a programming challenge. I had a few breakthroughs. I’ve invented a cellular algorithm called the Antimatter of Death. People with some spare change can create replicons––genome-edited clones of themselves. That way, in case something in the client’s body starts malfunctioning—think of it as a bug in the operating system of life—they have ready-made, perfectly-compatible replacements on hand from engineered donor organisms. It’s all about creating ones and zeroes––originals and backup copies.”

  The way he stares at me makes something inside me freeze.

  He clears his throat. “You’re not my twin brother, Etoile. You’re my replicon.”

  “Your…replicon? What are you even talking about?” I scoff, narrowing my eyes.

  “You are the first zero. Survival is human nature.” Richard’s expression is bitter. “After years of discoveries, I started that first trial. My own replicon: you.”

  “So, I’m…if you’re not…that means I’m…I’m just a…” I stammer, grasping the dark origins of my existence. I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

  He evades my glance.

  He’s the one, I’m his zero.

  “Years later, when you were already an adult, aggressive tumors spread to my organs. Medicine couldn’t save me. I had no other choice but to retrieve you, even if it broke me. But at that time ten years ago, your plane vanished. Cryogenics saved me. A side-project of mine. Now, thanks to scientific advances, I’ve been cured with an efficient, personalized gene therapy.”

  My legs become wobbly; my guts are on fire. I wasn’t born. I was made. Made to die. Are there more of me?

  “You–you think you’re the…the master architect of humanity’s source code? The one rolling the dice in your own fav—”

  “C’mon Etoile—this little hobby of yours—the mastery of chaos. Isn’t that exactly what curing cancer means, too? Controlling the chaos unleashed from the depths of our cells? Don’t you see that the real ethical failing would be to withhold a cure from those who are dying—?”

  “Hobby?” I scream. “Jeez…One accident doesn’t make it a hobby—there are actual human beings involved in your sick lit
tle hob—!”

  He exhales sharply and shakes his head, visibly offended. “I’m saving people. I fix errors in broken code,” he says calmly.

  “You’re creating broken fucking code, Richard!” I scream at the top of my lungs. The words come out as a husky roar. “Just look at me,” I whisper, gasping for air as my chest flares up.

  Then it strikes me. If it’s all true, then I never had a lab. The accident couldn’t have happened. Then why the artificial arm? Richard guesses my thoughts.

  “The lab accident never happened. Not like—”

  “Then how?” White spots dance before my eyes and I crumple to the floor.

  “Worse. Much worse. Let’s not— ” Richard waves his hand dismissively.

  Blood is running from the corners of my mouth. I stare at my hands. “Do I have your cancer?” I ask quietly.

  He looks at me. Lowers his eyes.

  “I wish,” he replies after a pause. A wave of pain washes over his face. “Then I’d know how to save you.”

  It dawns on me that I’m not the mediocre rivaling sibling who grew up in his shadow, failing to follow in his footsteps. We’ve only briefly even been the same age. We don’t have this human relationship. He’s my maker.

  I don’t know which is worse.

  He steps forward, framing my face with his hands, and reassures me softly, “Do you have any idea how proud of you I am, simply because you live and exist? My technologies have helped build this entire city, this entire urban cosmos. But you Etoile—you are my single greatest masterpiece.” He spreads his hands out over the metropolis.

  Tears sting my eyes. I can’t hold back the storm of colliding emotions exploding within me. I’m the moonshot he’s been reaching for all his life—ad astra per aspera. Now I’m dying.

  “I just tried to protect you. And I failed you, lost you––” His voice breaks.

  I stare at him, blinking, tears streaming down my face. The matter of my memories is reshaping.

  “Lies,” I hiss and brush his arms off. “Lies! My arm. It wasn’t an accident, was it?”

  Bitter darkness fills his eyes. He looks like a man with a secret guilt so heavy it’s breaking him.

  “Tell me!” I scream. The air is bristling with charge; Richard jolts.

  Hesitantly he reveals the truth. A night shaken by a vicious storm, a blackout. Young me had gotten lost in a dangerous area of the city, between the darkness of narrow streets and glassy buildings. It was an act of bestial violence. I’d lost my arm, cut off with some kind of high-tech, perhaps a portable lasercutter. Richard found me, traumatized, almost bleeding to death.

  I catch a memory fragment. The mirror maze was not my instrument, it was the skyscrapers. The laser…a crime, not a calculation error.

  “Every piece of you is a multibillion-dollar asset––”

  “Who was it?”

  “It could have been anyone. Research competition; pirates of trade secrets, stealing the algorithm in your cells, your genomic informat––” He goes quiet.

  “It could have been you,” I say slowly, stepping toward him. His eyes glance around nervously, like those of a trapped animal. Cold raindrops explode on my forehead. It has started to rain.

  “Etoile, please. Haven’t I taught you anything about proving a hypothesis?” he stammers, face going pale.

  “I see you’ve already claimed a piece of your corporate asset.” My chrome hand is twitching forcefully as I inch closer to him. I take one more step and a brutal cough almost rips my chest apart, forcing me to my knees.

  “What the fuck is happening to me?” I ask. A wave of nausea washes over me.

  “The replicons…age fast. Your code isn’t broken. It’s how I engineered you from my stem cells.” Distant thunder rumbles as it approaches. “Survival is the bug, not the feature.”

  “You created me to die so you could live. You—didn’t call me here to see you for the last time, did you? You lured me here to harvest me!” The rain is growing stronger. A lightning bolt divides the dense sky.

  “The callback was automated. I signed a…release form…to suspend you from any sort of––”

  “Harvest!” I shout, “I’m just…a living program to fabricate matter, organs for you! Not any more human than a human-looking machine!”

  “You’re wrong! It doesn’t make you any less hum—”

  “Then what you did is even worse!”

  “Didn’t you come to me to save your own life? See—you fight to live, bleed, feel––what do you feel?” He fixates me, both terror and fascination in his eyes.

  Chaos. The raging vortex of a black hole flares up in my chest, not just for me. What if there are others? I grab him, smash the glass railing with his body, and hold him out over the precipice. I must stop him.

  He’s too heavy; I slip. He falls, his arm breaks through the glass, but he latches onto the railing. I jolt––I didn’t want this to happen. My vision blurs. He’s gasping, pleading.

  “Help me! I was dying before I could…release you from the program. I heard about the plane, tried to…find you. But someone else…found you first––” Thunder blasts, swallowing his words. “Help me, dammit! You can’t just let me die like you’re…an emotionless machine!” he shouts. The rain is now pouring down violently. Horror is sharp in his face.

  “But I’m just a replicon. As you just said, survival’s the bug––or isn’t it?”

  He closes his eyes; tears run over his face. “Please, Etoile. I’ve seen how much more there’s to life than the race to create time. I couldn’t know I’d grow to love you like a brother—a son. You’re my family.” He struggles, his feet dangling in the air.

  But the betrayal burns like fuming acid in my stomach.

  Then, somehow, I hesitate, seeing him like this. After all, we’re parts of the same. At least to me, that means something. Despite everything, I realize he’s all I have, too. “I–I forgive you,” I mumble as my mouth fills with blood.

  I try to pull my brother-maker up to safety but I’m shaken by a violent cramp. His hand is slippery, my own aged hand too weak. My prosthesis’ battery has run out. I can no longer move my fingers, but I reach my paralyzed bionic arm toward him. In slow motion I watch him reach for it.

  At that instant a gruesome pain explodes from the brain-connected high-tech hand. It’s getting ripped off my upper arm by the weight of Richard’s body! He screams in pain and I notice a deep cut along his arm. The bone looks broken. His arm, like mine, is getting pulled apart. It’s slipping through my fingers. Our hands fit together perfectly, like matter and antimatter that annihilate each other when they collide.

  I hear the nauseating sound of flesh and skin ripping. Richard falls. I stare down into the abyss, weeping. The fingers of his hand are still holding onto my prosthesis in a surreal phantom handshake of life and death. Eventually they, too, loosen and fall.

  With Richard’s fading scream, my consciousness drifts into a void and the blackness of the universe swallows me.

  The next morning the steps I take near the Embarcadero at the bay are careful, one foot in front of the other. Even though I’ve only spent two days here, I’m reliving moments that seem like a lifetime. I still can’t get the gruesome scene out of my head: Richard’s hand ripping off in exactly the same place as mine. Now I know why. Richard brutally harvested my hand to replace his own, just like downloading a freeware package off a personalized library. That maniac. But it’s over now. I can finally heal from all the secrets and my broken biology.

  I look to the side at a familiar face. Stella. My favorite buddy. Her face is illuminated by soft light, a hint of a halo. Only a scar-like junction remains of her bullet wound. I was grateful, overjoyed to learn she survived the crash. Embedded deeply into her programming, her system forced a reboot and activated the backup emergency circuits. Like a fight or flight response. And she did both successfully.

  Not only that, but she came to save me, guessing correctly where to find me. She did fix me
, like she promised. She laughed at my astonished “ah’s” and “oh’s” while she explained how she had hacked a ChaosGeneBox—a few of them, to be precise—to engineer an abort code to my genetic algorithm. I remember them from the holographic ad during my first few moments here.

  Full circle. Perhaps I am indeed just a genetic program. Aren’t we all just biological machines made of aggregated, programmable matter and drawn together by the pandemonium of the accelerating universe? It doesn’t matter. At least I was fixed using the same biological computing tools with which I was built in the first place.