Lucky Child #8

Their kid keeps dying, and I keep bringing him back.

With so many corpses coming and going, you’d expect these parents to live in a dark Victorian with oil paintings of long-dead relatives, but the house is modern, poured concrete imprinted with wood molds, and every room has high ceilings filled with natural light.

Which is why the bars on the windows stick out.

I tend to show up after a car crash or a fire. Sometimes an unattended bathtub. The parents are sad, but not that sad, because they’re gonna get everything back.

Still, I dress in dark, muted colors. I’m polite. Not too much eye contact, not too much conversation. I pretend like I know how all the buttons and dials on the machinery work because they feel like they’re paying for a doctor or something, but really the wand does the work.

This family doesn’t even bother with insurance. They pay out of pocket every time, and by the looks of their place, no one’s skipping any meals to afford it.

They’ve paid in direct transfer credits six times. This will be the seventh.

The dad always wears the same thing. Black turtleneck and expensive jeans that look like a second skin. I wonder if this guy has a walk-in closet with three hundred sixty-five pairs of jeans and turtlenecks and just incinerates ‘em after every wear.

He’s got close-cropped hair with a little more salt than pepper and wireframe glasses that look like the stuff they make spaceships out of. He smiles at me with the side of his mouth, like the whole thing would be too much to offer, then returns to his tablet.

The mom is blonde, skin like a salamander, wearing magenta lipstick I couldn’t pull off. She smiles with her eyes, but her forehead never enters the picture.

“Thanks for coming . . .” she says, her eyes scanning for a nametag that doesn’t exist.

Folks actively forget my name. My presence feels like evidence they screwed up. I bring the spare body, vacuum-packed in amino acids like a giant chicken thigh, and they want me out of their lives the moment the chicken thigh comes out of the bag.

But we’ve met before. Six times.

“Of course, Mrs. Sandberg. Here to help.”

Here to help took some workshopping. “Sorry for your loss” isn’t technically applicable ‘cause these folks didn’t really lose anything. “Happy to be here” or “Happy to help” or any phrase using the word “happy” after a kid eats it raises hackles. Busting down the door and asking “Where’s the body?” or “Where’s the hard drive room?” is a good way to get someone to actually fill out the customer service form. Brusque doesn’t get you five stars in the service business, baby.

I don’t have to ask where the hard drive room is. It’s directly next to Alex’s room, and even with the racks of data storage along the walls, there’s plenty of space in the center for me to wheel in my mobile morgue and assorted zappers.

I pause nonetheless, allowing Mrs. Sandberg to lead the way.

The steel cart is about chest height for me, just above the waist on Mrs. Sandberg. Thankfully it works like a mechanized pallet mover at a big box store, helping me move several hundred pounds of machinery from job to job with ease. And, of course, there are the bodies. You can cram three bodies in on their sides, toes to nose, and we’ve got a full house today. Alex’s clone for reanimation, Julie’s old, aged-out clone set for disposal, and Fredrick, already reanimated, so now his remains are on ice set for disposal.

***

Years ago, after the first reanimation, Alex corrected me when I called him Alexander.

“Alex,” he’d said, arms crossed over his skinny torso, still covered with goo. Goo’s not a technical term; it’s just what I call it.

I’d covered old Alex with a sheet. Kids are sometimes freaked out seeing themselves stiff and gray, bent or burnt. I also put a sheet over backup Alex. It’s awkward waking up naked in front of some stranger, and we only dress ‘em once they’ve showered off the goo.

That first time, Alex didn’t say much. Kids wake up scared, angry. I do my best, easing frantic kids into being alive again, but my two front teeth are off-white ceramic ‘cause a bruiser of a fifteen-year-old headbutted me when I tried giving him a tissue. 

That first time, Alex was ninety percent eyes, ten percent words. His eyes were jarring, blue irises with gold halos. They followed me like a set of headlights on a mountain road. I took the silence as fear, so I tried setting him at ease.

“Like to draw?” I asked.

He was six or seven, and in my experience, that was a base hit every time for kids that age.

“Yeah,” he said, following my hands as I retrieved the electrodes from his head and heart.

“What do you like to draw?” I asked, tossing the electrodes into a jar filled with green cleaning solution.

Alex paused, and I saw his hand fiddling with the slightly curly hair at the back of his head.

“Horses,” he said.

“Love horses,” I said. “There’s a farm not far from where I live. Watch ‘em graze some weekends.”

I thought Alex’s eyes were bright before; they were halogen now.

“It’s hard,” he said, “getting the back legs right.”

I watched him follow my hands as I returned the wand to its creche for charging.

“Hooves are a lot easier to draw than hands, though.”

 ***

The training for this job consisted of a series of videos, including a fifteen-minute animation where the wand (“Wandy”) describes how to use her. 

“I hate getting wet!” cries Wandy, though the tech placing her in a tub of water is the one whose animated bones light up like a Christmas tree. 

After attaching the uplink electrodes to the head and the heart (another fifteen-minute video), Wandy does the whole reanimation thing. Honestly, if you’ve ever slow-cooked a roast, you could handle the setup.

 ***

The second time I saw Alex’s name on my list, I took my break early, stopping at the dollar store on the way.

“Hey, Sarah,” he said after sitting up. Hearing my name come out of a backup’s mouth made my toes clench inside my flats.

I’d forgotten Alex had asked my name the first time, which tells you how old I’m getting, ‘cause that was unique. Out of all the kids I’d brought back, Alex was the only one who’d bothered.

I recovered quickly, flashing Alex my gray-white teeth, peeling off the electrodes, and dropping them into the green cleaning solution.

“Hey, Alex,” I said, remembering his correction from the first time.

“What’d you get me?” Alex asked, which again stopped me in my tracks. Nothing about this process feels natural no matter how long I do it, but it felt like this kid was reading my mind.

“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling the lump in my jeans pocket from the dollar store.

“I mean, it’s technically my birthday,” he said, chuckling to himself.

I shook my head, busying myself with laying out Alex’s towels, returning Wandy to her creche. I felt silly. The kid wasn’t seeing my thoughts; he was setting up a joke. I considered forgetting about my dollar store purchase, not wanting to make things awkward. But then I saw Alex—he was probably nine then—awkward skin and bones, hugging his own shoulders like some newborn foal, and I reached into my pocket.

Alex’s eyes darted towards the sound of crinkling plastic, and I opened my hand to reveal a pink horse-shaped eraser.

“It’s not really my birthday,” said Alex. “It’s in May.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s in your workup.”

Alex held the eraser in both hands like it was a bird.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Any time,” I said, immediately regretting the implication I’d come back.

When he was fully dressed, he tucked the pink pony into his sock, carefully adjusting the cuff of his jeans to cover the lump.

 ***

Since the tech guides itself, the real job requirements are an ability to keep a poker face while rich folks treat you like machinery, and the ability to lift up to seventy-five pounds of dead weight. I wish they mechanized that part of the job, but apparently someone did the math and decided a hydraulics bot was more expensive than a bottle of ibuprofen for my back.

One might ask, if all we’re doing is uploading what’s been stored on the servers to the new body, why we’d have to hang onto the old body as well as the new.

The answer is liability. We’re supposed to be in the business of reanimating kids who died of “misadventure,” not, you know, murder and abuse. So we’re taught how to scan the old body (different wand. I call that one “Wandal”), and stick a probe into the liver (I have not anthropomorphized this one) to check for unexplained bruises, toxins, etc. If anything is out of the ordinary, we preserve the old body for ninety days per our contract with the city, and the police are notified. I do not immediately reanimate the child, for obvious reasons.

I’ve never had a case bounce to the police. That’s not to say murder of backed-up kids is unheard of. Often, it’s someone who doesn’t know the kid’s got a backup, and there’s an eyewitness in storage. Other times, it’s a “crime of passion” where some asshole loses their temper. I even heard about a mom who was poisoning her kid for attention and got the dosage wrong.

But it’s rare.

The third time I brought Alex back, he didn’t joke about birthday presents. I think he was afraid he’d have to figure out a way to smuggle more contraband into his room. I zapped the fresh backup, and Alex sat up to receive the cup of water waiting in my hands. Then I asked about his inner ear.

The manifest said “fall.” I observed bruises on the body, and Wandal confirmed they were consistent with falling. But this wasn’t his first fall, so I couldn’t help wondering.

“Get dizzy often?” I asked.

Clutching the plastic cup, Alex shook his head.

“Lose your balance?”

Alex took a sip from the cup, leaving a pink half-moon of goo. Head shake.

“‘Cause if you’ve got balance issues, I can get another tech to look at your backup’s inner ear. Easy fix.”

Again Alex shook his head, then pointed his cup towards the Randcorp-branded cart.

“Who’s in the box today?” he asked.

“Another backup, and a, uh, original. Both boys, like you.”

“Only backup the boys?” asked Alex.

“Nah,” I said. “They back up all sorts.”

Alex nodded. “Tell me again about the wand.”

“Wandy,” I smiled.

“Wandy,” repeated Alex.

We went over the process, again. With all my practice describing it to this kid, I could’ve run the Randcorp training, no notes. Alex finished the water, wiped off the goo, and walked out of the room for a third time.

Is it only déjà vu the first time you get the feeling? Do they have another term when it happens a second or third time, or is it still déjà vu?

The fourth time bringing Alex back, I couldn’t help but question how good Wandal was at assessing foul play.

I stuck the probe into the liver, and once again got the green light. Either Wandal was asleep at the wheel, or Alex was the most accident-prone child under the sun.

Electrodes. Welding glasses. Wandy. Zip-zap. Alex sat up.

This time, I wasn’t off guard.

“Hey, Alex,” I said.

“Hey, Sarah,” said Alex.

And before we fell into our regular routine, Alex feigning interest in the process of animating backups, I asked my own questions.

“Is it true backups remember everything?” I asked.

Alex paused, considering.

“I mean, would I know if I didn’t?”

“Good point,” I said. 

“Do you remember, uh . . .” I glanced at the manifest. Stairs. He fell down the stairs. “. . . falling down stairs?”

Alex nodded.

Asking questions wasn’t protocol. Probably traumatic. But I needed to know.

“Yeah,” said Alex. “I bounced twice, then was stuck on the landing until a maid found me.”

I grimaced and had the sense not to ask the obvious follow up: So if you remember falling, and you’ve died falling down the stairs before, why the hell can’t you remember to hold the handrail?

After my questions, Alex still asked about the electrodes. Wandy. The bodies in the cart.

“All boys again,” I said absentmindedly.

I waited until Alex left the room to put his old body into the Randcorp cart. I really didn’t want to return. I liked Alex too much.

The fifth time bringing Alex back, I swear I would have felt fifty pounds lighter if, upon glancing back at the manifest, it’d said “trampoline” or “pool.”

Still stairs.

Goddamn it, Alex. There are two fucking bannisters. Two. Something about “stairs” made my whole body cold, like I was complicit in something, as I grabbed the probe to test the liver.

Wandal blinked green. Alex was bruised along the shins, torso, and arms, and his head pointed in an uncomfortable angle.

Yeah, okay, looked like stairs, which was such a fucking lazy way of describing what’d happened. Like, it didn’t even say if he’d fallen up the stairs or down the stairs or if he was facing forward or backward or if someone had forgotten to pick up a little red toy car. If there was more information, maybe we could prevent the next one, you know?

Electrodes went on the head and heart. Wandy called down the fire of the gods.

Distracted, I’d forgotten my goggles. Blind and blinking, lightening rod in hand, I heard Alex’s voice in the white-darkness.

“Hey, Sarah.”

“Can you please learn to hold a handrail? I can’t keep seeing you this way, twisted and broken.” I stopped myself before saying the rest. That every time I’ve brought him back, I feel like I’ve lost a part of myself buried inside this cold-ass house to wither and die.

Blinking, the shape of the room returned, and I found my way to the cup of water. Alex took a sip before answering.

“I’ll be more careful,” he said. I swear if he’d said “next time” I would have zapped myself with Wandy just to feel something else.

The sixth time was a blur. The manifest said “electrocution,” and seeing the state of Alex’s corpse made me long for “stairs.” I set the probe, I got the green light from Wandal, I brought him back, I gave him water.

I answered his questions.

“So you set the electrodes, then Wandy zaps the body back to life?”

I nod, dropping the electrodes into the green fluid.

“Your job sounds pretty easy. No offense.”

“None taken,” I say. And until Alex, it has been. He could have said it like a smarmy rich kid, ducking his chin and raising his eyebrows, using “no offense” to intone meanness within the bounds of politeness. But he’s just talking about the thing we commune over every time. 

“Bath or shower?” I ask.

“Bath,” he says, and I’m mildly surprised, because he usually chooses shower. I nod, heading next door to the bathroom. The tub’s big and luxurious, feet like claws of a headless animal. Despite trying to think of anything else, I’m thinking about the charred skin on Alex’s forearms. A metallic clatter brings me out of my fugue. I turn off the water, quickly testing temperature with two fingers, then head back to check on Alex. Nothing’s amiss. Alex is sitting up straight, eyes towards an empty corner of the ceiling; if I were to draw a line opposite his gaze, I’d find my purse, but I don’t bother going through it. It’s just keys to a company car and bargain drugstore makeup I never get up early enough to use.

Days later, I rummage through my purse, unable to find the cheap cellulose hair clips which accumulate at the bottom of my bags like alluvial silt.

 ***

When I get the call to reanimate Alex the seventh time, I’ve already made my decision. My resignation is in my “draft” email, ready to send. Randcorp has great benefits, and Alex is right—bringing dead kids back to life is “easy,” but I’m not doing something good anymore, giving families second chances. I’m bringing back Alex, and I know in the pit of my being he doesn’t want my help.

The seventh time, looking at the new body and the old, I’m struck by the hair. The backup body, even covered in goo, has long, flowing hair, almost shoulder length. It’s the length I’d seen Alex’s hair the last time I’d zapped him back into existence. The dead body’s hair has been cut so short you can see the scalp, like the first day of boot camp.

The manifest says the cause of death was “stairs,” and though I mutter “damn it, Alex,” under my breath, I’m not angry. I’m glad it wasn't something worse. I couldn’t stand seeing Alex burned again, and if he were blue and bloated, I don’t know if I could stay in the room long enough to finish this final job.

I note the clothes Mrs. Sandberg has placed in the corner: a pair of blue jeans and a black turtleneck, much like Mr. Sandberg’s uniform, ironed and folded. Often, folks getting their kids reanimated for the first time forget the new set of clothes. But again, Mrs. Sandberg is well on her way to filling a field of dreams with dead Alex clones, so she knows the routine.

I put one electrode on Alex’s head, the other on his heart. I put on my welding goggles then pick up Wandy, slowly waving her over Alex.

He sits up slowly, shaking his head like waking from a bad dream. He smiles a little when his wet hair brushes across his neck, and he runs both hands through the thick tangle of light brown curls.

“Hey, Sarah,” he says, draping the white sheet across his body like a toga, wringing the pink goo out of his hair.

“Hey, Alex,” I say, handing him the cup of water.

He leaves pink, goopy half-moons on the lip of the white cup.

“One on the head, one on the heart,” he says, plucking off the electrode on his forehead. “And it doesn’t matter which goes where.”

A statement, not a question; at this point, Alex could teach the reanimation course.

“Exactly,” I say, half listening, enjoying the scratchy, high-pitched sound of Alex’s voice, committing it to memory.

“Then you just wave Wandy over the body, and she guides you where to zap.” He motions towards Wandy with the electrode he’s plucked off his chest.

“Yup.” So familiar with the process, he uses Wandy’s Christian name.

He wipes his feet with the sheet before stepping down, padding towards his old body on the cool hardwood floor, gently removing the sheet from the bottom half. He lifts up the corduroy pant leg, digging into the sock, removing a golden tube with red grooves in it. It resembles a little art-deco tower.

He covers his old body with the sheet, then hops back onto his table, spindly legs dangling.

I hand him a fluffy towel.

“Too good for pockets?” I ask, trying to be nonchalant, remembering the pink eraser.

“I’d keep my stuff in drawers, but things go missing in this place,” he says, gesturing towards the house as whole, not meeting my eyes. I don’t press.

“You clean arms, I’ll clean legs,” I say. He nods, wiping goo off his forearms. He’s gonna need hot water, but it’s a lot easier to get the first layer of goo off before bathing.

“They don’t feel like my arms,” he says, “or my legs.”

I raise a thick eyebrow. “You’ve been in this body for a whopping minute and a half. You know the routine. Give it time.”

Wordlessly, he starts wiping off the goo. The towels go straight into the trash; no amount of washing gets this gunk out.

“Who’s in the cart today?” he asks.

I tick them off on my hand, starting with my thumb. “You, a kid named Fred who threw up on me after waking, and thirteen-year-old Julie’s aged-out backup.”

Alex’s eyes go halogen. I cock my head, and he avoids my stare.

“What happened to Fred?” asks Alex, handing me a goopified towel. His speech has slowed, but it’s out of sync with his breathing, which is fast.

“Slipped, smacked his head,” I say.

“Been there,” says Alex. He slides off the fold-out table, liquid and catlike. Before I can stop him, he’s opening the lower-hatch of the cart.

“No, you don’t want . . .”

It’s too late. He’s already opened the hatch with the bodies. If Mrs. Sandberg walks in now, Fred’s not the only one who’s toast. Why am I nervous about a job I’m quitting?

But Alex isn’t looking at Fred, he’s looking at Julie. He puts his hand gently on the side of her face, removing it when I clear my throat.

“Do bodies go bad?” he asks, pulling the sheet tight around himself.

“Nah,” I say. “They just age out. How would you feel if I downloaded your brain into your four-year-old body?”

Alex nods.

“You could do that?” he asks.

“Well, legally, no,” I say. “You can’t just throw any brain into any body.”

“But it’s possible?” he asks. “Even though the brains are different sizes?”

“Well, it’s not your whole brain. It’s your consciousness. Just, like, downloading your frontal lobe.”

“So, you could put my, uh, consciousness into Fred?” he asks.

“No,” I say, “‘cause Fred’s dead.”

“Okay,” he says, his index finger and thumb curling the tips of his hair. “So, could you put me into Julie?” He says it like he’s reading from the phone book, but I can see his bare chest, rising and falling, a caged bird flapping wings against tin bars.

“Yeah,” I say. “Again, it’s just your consciousness, and cloned brains are built specifically to house reanimates.”

“Cool,” he says, like he’s lost interest with the conversation, like he’s moved on to thinking about lunch.

All we have to do is wash off the remaining goo, get Alex dressed, and I’ll be on my way.

“You have kids?” asks Alex.

“No,” I say. While I’ve been in perpetual motion since arriving, attaching electrodes, getting towels, and checking the manifest, this question makes me stiffen. Again Alex notices, because his wide, haloed irises are lassoes, capturing everything.

“It’s just . . . you seem like you’d be a good mom.”

I’m twenty years past kids being a possibility, even if I won the lottery. I turn away and brush at my face with the last clean towel.

“Shower this time, or a bath?” I ask.

“Bath,” says Alex.

“I’ll add bubbles,” I say.

“Thanks, Sarah.”

“Here to help.”

I want to peel off my uniform and soak for hours in this ridiculously large tub. I want to get the smell of Fred out my nostrils and get Alex’s questions out of my head. 

Yeah, Alex, I’d make a great mom. My apartment walls are practically made of books, I live next to a park, and I make mac and cheese from scratch. But kids are for the rich and the lucky, which are really the same thing. That tightness in my chest is supposed to be dead, no matter how many times you wave Wandy over my heart.

That’s when I hear the pop, like an old-fashioned flashbulb filament combusting. In that moment, I know I’m an idiot and this fuckup of mine is gonna make its way into one of those fifteen-minute training videos.

I turn off the spigot and run back to Alex’s room, just in time to see Alex clutching Wandy, still blinking from the bright light. Meanwhile, Julie’s body is sitting up and peeling the electrodes off her head and her heart, like she’s done this a thousand times.

“What,” I ask, “have you done?”

Alex and Julie smile in tandem, and it’s the same smile, right cheek pulling a little tighter, shoulders coming up towards the ears. I stare at Julie, who is scheduled for incineration tonight, and she runs both hands through her waist-length hair, then begins wringing the goo out.

Alex pulls out the little gold cylinder, trying to hand it to Julie, but she pushes it away. Alex insists.

“It won’t be contraband,” he says. “You’ll want a piece of home.”

“Thanks,” says Julie. While the voice is a thirteen-year-old girl, the tight vocal cords of a soprano, the inflection is terribly familiar, an echo in the room.

“We’re in so much trouble,” I interrupt, unsure who to address. Loading consciousness into multiple bodies? That’s not a fine, or even jail time. They destroy the clone.

Julie and Alex stare at me for what feels like a long time, because I’m certain Mrs. Sandberg will walk in at any moment.

Alex speaks.

“I can’t live the way I want here, and I can’t leave. I’ve tried. They just keep bringing me back.”

“But I can,” says Julie. “I can grow my hair as long as I like, wear any shade of lipstick.”

“Apply your lipstick now, because this ends the moment your mom walks through the door,” I say. “I lose my job, and Alexander number eight gets incinerated.”

“Alex,” they say in unison.

Again, they stare at me, and I can’t think of any options. I should be furious, but now the initial shock’s worn off. I’m surprisingly calm. I turn around, fill up a cup, and hand it to Julie-bodied Alex.

“You’ve had eight lives to think this through,” I say to Alex. “What did you see happening next?”

 ***

Things go quickly with three sets of hands. Julie and Alex clean the goo off themselves, and Alex shows me where he’s hidden a second set of clothes.

“Everything all right in here?” asks Mrs. Sandberg. By the time she ducks in to ask, everything appears in order. Alex is dressed just like his father, and I’ve stashed the two fold-out tables. The towels are in the trash. The tub has been washed out.

“Just finishing up,” I say.

“Hey, Mom,” says Alex.

“Hello, Alexander,” says Mrs. Sandberg.

When she leaves, I ask Alex my question, which I’ve turned over in my head since the fraternal twins sprang into action.

“Why?” I ask.

“I told you,” says Alex. “She gets to live her life.”

“But you’re still here. Stuck.”

“They can keep me here, but they can’t keep me a child forever. When I’m grown, I’ll be whatever version of myself I want. But I can’t put everything on hold for someday. Right now, I can smuggle a piece of me, the real me, out. I’m gonna visit someday, see how she’s grown. I think she’s gonna be beautiful.”

When I wheel my Randcorp cart back through the concrete house filled with too much light, it weighs the same. I’ve got the same number of bodies, but somehow, I feel lighter. I wonder if this is what Alex feels as he watches us exit onto the street through the bars.

“Thank you . . .” says Mrs. Sandberg.

“Here to help,” I say, wheeling out the daughter she’ll never meet, not for lack of trying.

 ***

Miles from home now, Julie-bodied Alex slips to the front seat. It’s sunset, and the lights of the city have flickered on. But instead of looking out the window, she clicks on the dome light, transforming the passenger window into a mirrored surface. She pulls out the gold cylinder and twists it, revealing a bright magenta tip, and in the half-mirror of the city, applies the brilliant shade to pursed lips.

Then she rolls the window down, her long, loose strands of hair flying in every direction, carried by the evening wind.

“I’ve got clips in my bag,” I say, motioning to my purse with my elbow.

“I know,” she says, but she doesn’t move. She runs her hands through her hair, momentarily smoothing it before the wind plucks it up again, a tornado tethered to the passenger seat.

“I like the way it feels.”