Barricaded pawn-shops and living hair clinics gave way to a long stretch of defunct department store, its walls and windows coated with a thick layer of yellowish gray biopolymer paint. Plaint, as it was commonly known, was one of many materials based on matrices of organic cells which GeneSys produced.
The parked cars disappeared and maglev traffic thinned. An aged Ford Taurus rumbled down the pitted motor lane, sending up splashes of rain from numerous potholes. Its movement was labored compared to the occasional blurred whoosh of the levcars.
Helix watched the motorcar pass, lumbering into the distance at a pace still, despite its age, beyond her own. What's more, it was going someplace, which was more than she could say. She’d left on an impulse, hoping to discover why when she got there; wherever it was she wanted to go. She was continually aware of the foolishness of it, but apparently that didn’t matter, she could not get herself to go back. Whenever she thought of it a hand — an invisible hand that she did not know —
placed itself firmly on her heart and pushed her forward through the abandoned streets as it had pushed her out of Hector’s apartment door several hours ago.
Woodward led her down through the city, towards the river, past the university and the cultural center; beautiful, crumbling stone buildings shored up haphazardly, halfheartedly, with garish patches of purple and orange MasonBond.
A small group of people passed by, shaggy men and women in weather-faded greencoats and colorful knitted hats; students or squatters, or both. Helix drew in her shoulders and put her head down as they passed, but none of them seemed to pay her much mind.
She stopped in front of the Art Institute. Blank, boarded up windows stared back at her blindly, a line of polybond around each like heavy mascara, outlining their surprise at the theft of sight. There were supposed to be people living there now, artists. The front doors were padlocked and barred and padlocked again, as if someone wanted very much for you to know you could not go in there. Before this denial brooded The Thinker, too large, too solid and permanently heavy to steal, but convenient to deface. His full body tattoo of fluorescent spray-plaint gave testimony to years of flourishing artistic expression.
She walked on, Woodward leading her visibly closer to Oz, through a district of moderate prosperity which supported clothing shops, small offices and restaurants.
She pulled Hector Martin's faded overcoat around her protectively as she passed a group of office people, chatting unceasingly with one another, oblivious to her presence. On the next corner there was a stoplight, and more people, all the time more people, and Helix took extra care that her mouth was completely shut.
A little girl in a pink biopolymer raincoat with matching hat and umbrella passed her in the intersection. As her father tugged her along, she looked at Helix with bright black eyes and smiled. But Helix didn't dare smile back.
On the next corner the neon warmth of a diner beckoned, "Fine Food," and her stomach growled on cue. It had been hours since she’d left GeneSys, aimless hours of walking. There'd be even more people inside, and in closer proximity, but she was hungry, her stomach as empty as her vacant and searching heart.
The diner smelled of coffee and frying eggs. Helix sat in a red bio-vinyl upholstered booth at the back of the restaurant, speedily demolishing a club sandwich and fries. It was warm inside, the windows fogged and sweating, but she kept the raincoat on. Nobody, including her waitress, had paid much attention to her. As she reached for her coke, the waitress reappeared, "Anything else?" Helix shook her head, and the waitress placed a swiper on the table and walked away again. Helix stared at it as if it were a cockroach that had just crawled out from beneath the napkin dispenser. Its screen showed a total for her meal, $12.67.
A chill went through her and settled in the pit of her stomach. She shivered, despite the muggy air. Sweat stood out on her arms and neck. Hector Martin's raincoat clung to her clammy skin. She'd forgotten about money.
Helix riffled through the pockets of Hector’s overcoat, searching for the cash card she knew she’d left behind in the apartment. All she found was a useless data card. She turned it thoughtfully between her fingers, then pantomimed passing it through the slot on the swiper, carefully shielding the card with her palm so an observer would not see that she hadn’t actually run it through. She stood up and walked down the aisle, passing her waitress on the way to the door.
Helix was almost past the cash register when the waitress called out, “Ma’am, you forgot to swipe your card!” Helix plunged for the door. “Ma’am! Ma’am!” the waitress cried again, running after her. Helix slammed her upper palms against the polyglass door, overcoming its resistance with her momentum. She plunged towards the outer door, only to be brought up short by a sudden jerk at her shoulder. She whirled around, expecting the waitress, but instead she saw the corner of her raincoat, jammed in the crack of the door behind her. Helix tugged frantically at the raincoat, but it was solidly wedged in the doorway.
The waitress barrelled towards her, a dishwasher waving his hands in her wake. She reached the door and pushed on it. Panicking, Helix pushed back and they stood there, separated by the polyglass, deadlocked. The woman scowled and shoved at the door again. It opened a crack, and Helix bent to free her coat. The bottom button had torn off, and as she stood again the coat gaped open. Turning for the outer door, she caught a glimpse of the waitress staring, her eyes wide. Helix fled blindly down the street, running at first and then, at the stares of passersby, slowing to a brisk walk. She turned a corner, and another, but heard no footsteps following her. They weren't chasing her. She'd seen that waitress' face. They were afraid of her.
She lifted a hand to cover her mouth, and found that her face was wet. She was crying. Silent tears spilled down her face and dripped off her chin.
Behind a drugstore Helix sat on a milk crate, staring at the pavement between her shoes, seeing not the cloncrete but that waitress' face; her eyes wide, her mouth gaped in shock, in horror. She'd seen. She'd seen what Helix was, and that was why Helix was always so very careful not to be seen. In her mind she heard the shrieks and cries of her classmates as they surrounded her on the playground, Chet and Carla and Tim and Darron darting in from the circle to each grab one of her arms and then run, around and around, laughing, spinning her until she was sick and her arm sockets were sore. She remembered the whirling faces, contorted with joyous hate, and their voices, like the harsh cries of birds, calling, calling, in monotonous cacophony, "Freak Girl! Freak Girl!" And she, the eye of the vortex, screaming back, wordlessly, just screaming and screaming, her mouth open wide to show all of them her gleaming fangs.
Hector had rescued her. His first visit came the same day as the playground incident. He brought her a comic book — Clone Avengers number ninety-eight. He didn’t talk about adoption that first day. His third visit, he asked her to be his daughter. She’d been floored, mystified, but too desperate to escape her situation to question his kindness, and she never had cause to, after she went to live with him. He worked hard, it was true, and sometimes she was lonely, but he’d given her everything he could. That it wasn’t enough was her failure, not his.
He’d been up all night last night, working on some problem, fiddling with equations on his multi-processor, his face glowing green from the numbers and symbols floating in the air before him. He called them the keys to life. She didn't understand it; remained forever curious but exactly what it was that he actually did stayed well outside her grasp. All she ever saw was the multi-processor, his fingers restlessly striking keys — a far cry from the steady rhythm of the data entry work she sometimes did. Of course that was just when he was at home. Most of the time he was at the lab, and she had never been there, even though it was in the very building where they lived. She didn't even have the door number, floor number or the transceiver extension. He couldn't be disturbed when he was in the lab, she assumed, but she'd never asked, never asked for any of those things and he had never offered them, either. And this morning she’d stood in the hallway as he stumbled off to the shower, “Aren't you going to get some sleep?"