Saint Joseph School

They say your life flashes before your eyes before you die. That there's something, a thought, an image, some spiritual epiphany.
Want to know the last thing that went through my head?

A forklift tine.


Dad hooked me up with some cop ridealong program. He was all gung-ho about criminal law for me. He's a lawyer, high-priced defense, though it never seemed like we had THAT much money, certainly not like the rich defense jerks you see on TV getting OJ Simpson off the hook.
They say it's the American Dream.

So I was on this ridealong thing, supposed to be real safe. We roll up on a warehouse, he told me to wait in the car.

My most clear memory of the night was the rain. I'd never been to King's Row before. It was dirty, grungy, and it seemed like no matter how much rain poured out over the place through grungy black clouds that billowed out of the old garmentworks it'd never get clean. Oil slicks made everything rainbow and neon. lights glare in the rain off asphalt, I'd never noticed; the roads in Founder's are concrete. It was absolutely stunning, the kalidoscope glinting through dark and dangerous streets.
So the cop went in after someone, I forget what it was. B&E or drug dealer or something.

You get godawful bored sitting there in the thrum off water off the roof. Car didn't even have a radio, batteries on the iPod were dead. I realized that I was starting to futz with the stuff in the car, I decided to get the hell out of there before I accidentally shot a hole in the roof or called in the SWAT team playing with the radio. They say idle hands are the devil's plaything.


Place was dark, rain STILL drumming the roof, but now it was corrugated tin and it was amplified. Something whirred in the dark, this should have been a warning.

I was maybe 50 feet in when I heard it, and I never did see what hit me. They say time slows down when you're about to die, adrenaline freezes things, or slows them down.
Apparently adrenaline didn't even have time.
My only conscious memory of what everyone seems to think should be the defining moment of my life is a streak of yellow warning tape and the feeling of pressure. It didn't even get to the point of pain before I was gone.

The AI, wait... I'll get to that later...

I woke in a tank of goo, thinking I was drowning. Real odd sensation, to be breathing a liquid, even if it is giving you oxygen. She was there too.

Okay, I lied, I remember one other thing about the accident. Her. Well a blur of pale flesh and pink hair, an impact before the mother-of-all-impacts.
I'll never know what on god's green earth would impel a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, from King's Row, a drug-dealer's daughter, to heroics. What would possibly give her the reflex that caused her to see a man about to be flattened by a ton and a half of Komatsu forklift and dive into the way. if she hadn't my head would have hit the sensor relay in the middle of the lift, not even the nanite bath could have saved me. Sometimes I wish she had had a little more self-preservation instinct, then at least one of us would have made it intact
She saved my life.
She died with me.

The Perfect Drug

Is it love, if you might be coerced?

I ask that most nights, certainly every time I see her. They said it wasn't, in Faultline, when we were sitting under the statue by the wall. My last remaining pair of designer jeans slowly turning green in the grass.
Truth or Dare is a dangerous game. They asked if I had a girlfriend, they asked her if she was in love.
How can a boy my age answer that? A girl her age?

I said 'no' then, and I regret that, I regret it because it hurt her, and the moment I saw that little glimmer of a tear through high-rez eyes the nanites hurt me.
Oh they love to mess with me: a little boost of carboxylic acid and I feel like I'm drowning; drop my ATP and I'm stuck in slow-mo until they let me back to speed; injections of adrenaline feel like fear, until you're used to them.
So if they're making me care, then is it love?

But I can't deny the adrenal buzz when I'm about to see her, it feels like love. A nanite can't make me think of her. If they could, Alex argued while we sat in the dirt around the bonfire, my first pair of leather pants dusted with chalky soil, they'd just rewrite my memories so I always loved her. Alex had a very important point.
So I think of her when we're apart, and I think that I'm in love, but I wonder if it's me or the machine.

And I wonder if it really matters so long as I feel superhuman when she's in my arms.

[urban songs will shine electric]

I am not the kind of boy that should be in a place like this.

It's just after midnight, Talos Island, Jenny's dad's flat off the beach. I knew Jenny pretty well, way back when we kinda had a thing going a few years ago, I think I was like in 8th grade, maybe.
Now she won't talk to me, she's standing by the kitchen counter, pouring herself a drink, talking to Ryan. I knew Ryan too, second-string quarterback for the football team at Regan High, good guy, always down for a good time, and always real quick with a joke.
He's not talking to me either.

In plain fact none of the people here are talking to me. Not Jenny, Ryan, Bill, Andrea (though I really can't blame her for that after I dumped her for her best friend), Katie, Regs, no one.

A girl I don't recognize is staring at me, keeps looking at my eyes, not in to my eyes, at them. I'm embarrassed enough I blush chrome and she stares even more intently.

So I get up, walk over to the group standing on the patio, the smoker's clique out there. "Hey John, hey kelly" I say, trying to sidle up to the group.
Kelly turns her back, leaning over the railing. John doesn't say a word, he looks like he's frozen, unsure, maybe his eyes widen by a fraction of a millimeter.

So I head back in, sit back down on the couch. The girl is still staring at me, and I'm starting to get pissed about it. The backs of my hands start to blush chrome. Fight-or-flight response causing the claws to brush the back of my skin, waiting for the call. I want to tell her if she wants to keep staring that she can just get her phone out and take a picture. I want to tell her that if she wants to look at me all night long, maybe we should get out of this morgue and go get some pancakes at the iHop. I want to tell her that if she wants to stare at freaks she can go to the circus like a normal person.
Do they still have circus freak shows? Or has genemod tech and the Superhuman Affairs Division snapped them all up by now?

The guy at the other end of the couch takes one look at me and scoots as far as he can to the arm. Jesus, why don't you make it a little more obvious, especially because that girl, she's staring at me again...

I get up and stalk over, trying real hard not to get too pissed off. Dumb girl, she's just staring because... no I can't answer that, I don't know why she hasn't taken her eyes off me, but won't even talk to me.
I lean in real close to her, and she's frozen. She looks scared for Christ's sake. Dammit, these people used to be my FRIENDS.
I lean in real close, and I can't help smirking a little toothy smile as I whisper, low and dark, "it's not polite to stare."
Yeah, I never really was good with spur-of-the-moment wit.

And then a hand is on my shoulder, shoving me. "Hey! leave my girlfriend alone you prick!" the kid with the terrible haircut is shouting, and the entire party stops. Everyone looking over.

"Just talking man, cool it" I say, but I know in advance it won't work, his entire head is moving as he looks me over, his legs moving erratically. He's drunk and disorderly and wants to go.

Is it scary it's a tempting thought to put a single metal spike through his throat? Not kill him, just make sure he's breathing through a tube for a while? Even if I don't want to kill him, is it still so terrible?
I'm thinking this as he looks me over, and decides to take a step back. Maybe he thought better of it, maybe he just wants me to throw the first punch, because he's shouting now, "why don't you just get out of here, freak."

Freak. Oh yeah, hit below the belt normie, here's hoping the vahzilok cut you up on the way home, I'm certainly never saving your xenophobic ass.

I give the girl a glance, and walk right around the guy, towards the door. I would normally have messed him up, but... I just don't have the desire. I don't even care enough to want to take a swing. I just want to get out of here. Back where I belong.

So I sidestep another drunken attempt to shove me and I'm out the door.

I swear I can hear them laughing through it though.