The Body Electric

Chapter 4

When I step outside, the glass doors of the Reverie Mental Spa closing behind me, I allow myself a moment to get lost in the chaos of the city. Our building is on one of the busiest streets in the city. The autotaxis and magnatram zip by the road in front of the spa, with dozens of e-scooters weaving in and around the traffic. A crowd of people gather in front of the Reverie Mental spa—tourists, snapping pics with their cuffs of the elaborate iron gates that lead into Central Gardens, just across the street from us.

New Venice was one of the first good things to come of the Secessionary War. After more than a decade of violence, the war ended a year before I was born with the formation of the Unified Countries, a republic designed to govern global issues. It took a while for the new government to decide on a city to be its seat of operations, and ultimately, it decided that a new government deserved a brand new city.

Originally, the island nation of Malta consisted of two landmasses, but New Venice was built as a giant, ten-kilometer square bridge connecting the two large islands. Right now, if I were to blast through the walkway, I’d land in the Mediterranean Sea.

“Excuse me,” I say, squeezing past a tour group. It’s easy to spot the tourists, even if they didn’t have a red band across the tops of their cuffLINKs. The tourists are the ones who stop in the middle of the street to stare at simple things like street androids. They’re the ones who lift their feet and stare at them as they walk on the rubberized cement of the kinetic energy generator sidewalks. They’re the ones who are always dressed in shorts and tank tops, no matter what the weather, because they cannot imagine this Mediterranean island being anything but warm and sunny.

They also tend to look at the city through tourist programs. Most of their pupils flash silver, a sure sign they’ve connected their eye nanobots to some sort of program—history walks through the city, or news, or chats with their friends back home, or just recording everything they see.

I slip around the tourists gathered at the gates of Central Gardens. A street android stands at attention just on the other side, and I go to him before the tourists spot him.

“A pastizza please,” I say, pointing to a pastry filled with cheese. When I touch my cuff to the scanner attached to the street android’s cart, my credits go down and my caloric counter goes up. I consider buying two pastizzi, but if I go over my daily calorie count, I’ll have to add at least an hour of exercise to my day.

I idly wonder how much trouble I’d get in for cutting off my cuff. One more pastizza wouldn’t hurt anything. But, of course, if the cuff comes off, all the links to my health status go offline and an alert is sent out.

I stuff my single pastizza into my mouth, relishing the warm, gooey cheese. The flaky crust crumbles down my shirt as I tap my cuff against the scanner by the gate. Four armed guards stand at attention, and another one checks my info before allowing me into the gardens. The Secessionary War ended before I was born, but there are still threats against our blossoming global union.

While I eat, I check my messages on my cuff. An advertisement for a clothing store I went to once, a summary of articles that mentioned Dad or Mom’s names published online this week.

“Look, Harold!” a woman exclaims, stopping in the middle of the path so suddenly that I bump into her. “Sorry, sorry,” she says, grinning at me as I step around her. “I just got so excited!”

I glance up to see what she’s looking at—Triumph Towers. The path through Central Gardens is designed to wind around, showing off the city’s skyline at strategic points.

I step off the kinetic walkway, cutting through the manicured lawn. New Venice is the capital of the world— not just in politics and economy, but everything else, too: fashion, art, technology. While I’ve never left the shores of Malta, I feel as if I’m more global than a world traveler. Everything comes to us.

My wrist buzzes and the tech foil vibrates against my skin. I look at the words that flash across the top of my cuff, then glide my fingers over the surface, answering the call.

My cuffLINK—the licensing, identification, and networking key I wear around my wrist—is linked to the nanobots inside me. Twenty years ago, the only bots people used were for vaccines, but now everyone has nanobots. Enhancement bots ensure that everyone has good vision and hearing throughout their lives. Media bots connect to our wrist cuff, giving us the ability to display information directly into our retinas, or to listen to music or have conversations through the interface without using an earpiece.

Now, as I answer the call, my vision fills with a holographic image of my best friend, Akilah Xuereb. Her voice rings in my ear—“Hella’, Ella!”—all of this directly fed from my cuff to the nanobots in my eyes and ears.

“Hi, Aks!” I grin. I keep walking through the park; the image of Akilah floats in front of me, as if she’s walking with me.

“What are you up to?” she asks. She sweeps her hair—done up in long Havana twists—off her shoulders, shaking it behind her.

“Just on a walk.”

Akilah doesn’t speak for a moment. Her eyes narrow. “What’s wrong?” she asks.

“Nothing.” Akilah purses her lips. “Nothing,” I insist. “What happened?” I sigh. I can never get anything past Akilah. We’ve

been friends since primary school, when she let me twist her fluffy hair into dozens of braids during recess.

“Mom’s worse,” I confess as I veer deeper into the gardens, heading toward the trees.

Akilah curses, and I note that she’s picked up some more colorful words since starting her service year in the military. Before becoming a full citizen, everyone must complete a year of service at the end of secondary school. A white band illuminates the top of my cuff to indicate that I’m serving as an intern; Akilah has a yellow band on her cuff since she was assigned to a year of military service.

“But does this mean your father’s treatment isn’t working any more?” Akilah asks.

I shake my head. “And we’ve had to scale back on it, anyway. She’s overloaded with bots.”

Dad’s medical nanobots in Mom’s system work to replace the synapses that the disease destroyed, but there’s a limit to the number of nanobots someone can have. No one realized nanobots were dangerous until the Secessionary War. That’s when the government started giving the human soldiers new enhancement bots. Bots in the eyes to make a soldier be able to see in the dark. Bots in the muscles to give superhuman strength. Bots in the mind to make a soldier go for days and days without sleep.

Too many bots. And one by one, the soldiers started to develop bot-brain—their brains literally turned to mush. It was a quick but gruesome death as the very bots they’d taken to live destroyed them from the inside out.

Which is exactly what will happen to Mom if she takes more bots.

“What are you going to do?” Akilah asks.

I pause, looking at my friend. It’s almost like she’s here with me, but of course she’s not. I glance up at the moon, nothing more than a pale white shadow on the rich, blue sky.

Akilah’s somewhere there, at the lunar military base. And while I can see her, thanks to the nanobots projecting her image directly into my eye, I can’t feel her. I can’t touch her.

“There’s nothing I can do,” I say finally, defeated. “Listen, I’ve got to go.”

Akilah shoots me a sympathetic frown, then her face freezes. “Wait... you said you were going for a walk. You’re not... Ella, where are you?”

“Nowhere,” I say too quickly. “Ella! You can’t obsess! You really shouldn’t—” “Gotta go, bye!” I say quickly as I swipe my fingers across my cuff and disconnect the call. Akilah’s right—I shouldn’t obsess over my father’s death. But after that nightmare and Mom’s health, I just... I need to see it again.

Dad’s grave.