Velvet Dogma

chapter 32



The austere room boasted a view of Kowloon Bay where multi-colored junks sailed through a sunset of red and orange swirls. All along the curve of the bay, lights winked on as night began to take over. A doctor and a nurse entered the room. The nurse went to the bed, where a very old man lay ensconced in gelatin, his face and eyes the only part of his body that wasn't submerged. On the wall behind the old man were a dozen screens detailing the patient's condition. Upon entering, the doctor touched the window rendering it opaque.

No longer did it seem as if everyone was in part of the penthouse suite of the Pacific Autonomous Resource Allocation Syndicate headquarters in Hong Kong. No longer could they look out upon the world like gods from on high. The room had become what it was meant to be—a hospital room where one man struggled with life and death, his only hope resting in the ingenuity of his doctors and the resourcefulness of his only daughter.

"Ms. Rasangawan, that you were able to find suitable hippocampi was beyond amazing," said the doctor as he approached the bed.

"I was fortunate to find a donor." Kumi Rasangawan's lips were pressed nervously together.

"Well, if anyone could, it would be you," he said. "Where, may I ask, did you find this donor?"

"The North American Free Trade Congress—the organs came from a prisoner."

The doctor began to check the Chinese characters scrawling across the many screens on the wall beside the bed. "Not a dangerous one, I hope."

"Hardly. She was a computer hacker, nothing more." Kumi placed her hand on the side of the bed. "What of the surgery, doctor? Will my father be all right?

"He'll be fine. There were some problems with the size, mind you, because of shrinkage due to his old age, but the brain is a remarkably resilient organ. The pressure should diminish within a few days."

"What about any lingering memories?" Kumi asked.

"They shouldn't be a problem. The hippocampus is a bridge that allows information to pass, and as his own memories and thoughts propagate, something they haven't been able to do in several years, they should flush whatever remnants of the donor's memories that still exist away."

"Good. My father was a man among men. I wasn't sure what would happen by giving him the memories of a woman."

"He'll be fine. This isn't the first hippo-replacement we've done, you know." The doctor turned to the nurse. "Let's bring him up." To Kumi he added, "He's going to be a little groggy. We have him heavily sedated because of the pain, but I think you'll see the difference right away."

Tears glistened in Kumi's eyes. "He hasn't recognized me in two years. Do you think he'll know who I am?"

Instead of answering the doctor checked a screen, nodding as he did so. Within seconds the pitch and tone of the equipment changed.

The nurse slipped around to the other side of the bed to monitor a panel. "He's coming out of it, Doctor."

The old man's eyelids fluttered a bit before slowly opening. Groggy intelligence gazed from his dull hazel eyes. After a moment, his eyes began to move as his gaze shifted from each person in the room, until it finally settled on Kumi. He smiled. "Kumita," he said, his breathless voice drawing out the word.

His arm lifted free of the gelatin. Kumi grasped his hand with both of hers and brought it to her face. She placed her cheek against it and stared into his eyes. "Oh father." Her voice broke as tears slipped down her cheek. Instead of the sadness she'd feared, these were tears of joy.

The lights in the room flickered once, then twice. The doctor and nurse exchanged glances, then looked at Kumi. All of them were equally perplexed. An alarm went off on one of the vid consoles. The doctor spun, his finger following the characters as his eyes read them and shot wide.

"What is it?" the nurse asked.

"This can't be!" The doctor punched buttons on the vid console, read the results then punched more buttons. "I don't understand."

Kumi stood straight, still gripping her father's hand. "Doctor..."

"I don't know how this could have happened," the doctor muttered to himself. "We checked for everything. But this..."

"What's going on?" Fear had turned Kumi's voice hoarse.

The doctor spun towards her. His shoulders slumped as his hands fell helplessly to his sides. Confusion swept across his face as despondency filed his eyes. He shook his head. "Mycobacterium leprae. Your father has Hansen's disease, Ms. Rasangawan. It's through his whole body... everywhere. I don't understand—"

"Hansen's..." Kumi's eyes bulged as she looked first at her father, then at the doctor. "Leprosy? How could he have leprosy?"

"It had to have come from the organ. Did you check the donor?" the nurse asked.

"The donor didn't have..." Her eyes narrowed as a scowl transformed her face. "She got it from the Day Eaters. That bitch!"

"You really should have checked." The doctor's expression made it clear it was already too late.

"Why? What's going to happen?"

"It's already happening. The brain is necrophying around the implantation site. The implanted organs are refusing to graft. It's only a matter of time before the body rejects them and we have to remove them. There's nothing we can do."

"Nothing?"

The doctor didn't bother to repeat himself. Instead of answering, he merely stood there, his head down. The nurse stood beside him, mirroring the pose.

The lights flickered once more. Kumi glanced at the wall of monitors and froze. On each of the dozen screens was the smiling face of Rebecca Mines. The face stared back at her for a moment, nodding her head. Kumi was about to say something, but the screens returned to normal. She fell to her knees and howled. Still grasping her father's hand, she began to sob.



Rebecca's revenge was complete. She found her way out of the servers in the Pacific Autonomous Resource Allocation Syndicate headquarters. She'd left logic bombs which were due to go off in less than a minute, destroying all the databases filled with information on the world's organs, their donors and their locations. Not only had she destroyed the corporation that had helped carry out her murder, but she'd destroyed the leader as well. The thieves had stolen her organs and they'd taken her life, but they hadn't been able to touch her mind, and in the end, her mind was her greatest weapon.

She shot free of the building's servers into the busy ID nexus of the Pacific Rim Amalgam. Here data packets the size of mastodons fired along fiber optic highways like shells through a canon. She fell into line and found an East bound cable running across the sea floor to California.

Less than ten minutes later she found herself once again on the rear deck of their frigate, standing beside an older woman bedecked in the gold brocade and livery and tri-cornered hat of a Barbary Coast pirate. A Spanish galleon listed to their fore, smoke billowing out of the middle deck and orloop hatches. A breeze whipped through Rebecca's long, flowing hair. It carried the scent of gunpowder, burning wood and the sea.

Pirate Agnes stepped forward shouted a command. "Strike the mizzenmast and break out the jib! We're going to bring her around and come in close."

Rebecca eyed the enemy's cannons. "Not too close, I hope."

"You never know." Agnes held Rebecca's arm in an iron grip, and pulled her close for a hug. "Hold on everyone, here we go!"

Andy ran up the stairs, a patch over his left eye. He grinned wickedly before barking his own command. "Prepare to repel borders!"





Who Is Weston Ochse?



Weston Ochse is the author of six novels and over a hundred short stories. He’s won the Bram Stoker Award for First Novel and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for Fiction. His work has appeared in professional writing guides, comic books, magazines, anthologies and collections. Find him online at www.westonochse.com.





Excerpt from Butterfly Winter



"Are you sure the locals are okay?" Pearson found it hard to believe that they'd stumbled upon the golden buffet at the end of the world. There had to be a catch.

"Oh yeah. They're perfectly fine."

"I'm asking because we're not exactly everyone's most favorite people right now."

Rasheen waved away Pearson's doubt. "These folks are beyond politics. They're not even really Chinese. They call themselves the Bai. From what I get talking to Ms. Mei, they're some lost Tibetan tribe. They're artists and architects and writers. These pagodas were built more than 1300 years ago. Can you believe it?"

Pearson was struck by Rasheen's easy adoption of this new land and new way of life. He seemed almost too eager to embrace it. A strange light lit up the man's eyes, perhaps a fervor designed to hide other emotions.

"Before everything started, the town had a population of about twenty thousand. About a third were conscripted and moved to the Gobi for some hush hush project having to do with suborbital platforms. The remaining men were drafted to form battalions that went to reinforce China's Taiwan grab. If you remember the lessons about Chosin Reservoir from the Korean War, General MacArthur had thirty thousand crack United Nations troops on the Chosin Reservoir in the middle of winter back in 1950. The Chinese have one commodity they have more of than anyone else and that's people. Outgunned and outmaneuvered, the Chinese decided to help their North Korean commie brothers and threw Chinese bodies at our forces until they were driven from North Korea. It was a blistering defeat. Like the Frozen Chosin, the Taiwanese didn't know what hit them."

"So who's left?"

"Besides a thousand children? About the same amount of adults if I figure right. Only a handful are helping the kids, the rest are scattered, doing their own thing. I see them occasionally and try and flag them down, but they won't come near us."

"I don't blame them. They have a right to be afraid. Look at what we did to the planet."

Rasheen stared at him for a moment, the excitement in his eyes replaced momentarily by a pain that caused his head to bow and his eyes to lose focus. Then he shook if off and forced another grin. "Enough of that. I got this figured out. It's a glass half empty or glass half full scenario. On one hand it's the end of the world. On the other it's our chance to influence a new beginning. I won't lie and say I didn't wish this never happened, but it did and we have to live with the results."

There was a point. They were alive. And by all accounts, their future, which had looked bleak as they outraced the pressure waves over Shanghai, now looked promising.

A bell gonged in the distance. Before the reverberations died, a new sound arose—something like traffic or the waves in the ocean. Pearson turned towards the town of Dali which lay over the crest of a hill. The sound came louder and louder. Soon, a single child shot into view, running, his mouth open, arms windmilling as he ran and tumbled in the tall grass. Then more kids appeared, and more, and even more, until the entire grassy knoll was covered with children. The sound of the noise was no longer a mystery. School had let out and what he'd heard was the combined cries of a thousand children released from scholastic servitude, their destinies and lives once again their own.

A human wave rolled towards Pearson and Rasheen. For a moment, Pearson wanted to run. But he held fast and braced himself as the children broke around him, their arms grasping him, touching his skin. Shouts of Hey Ren filled the air. He had no idea what it meant, but they seemed to be talking about him. He laughed and held out his arms. Twenty children immediately latched on to him and pulled him towards the center of the triangle made up by the pagodas.

"Hang on, Pearson. They're going to take you for a spin."

Pearson managed to turn as he was dragged away. Rasheen was similarly engaged, an almost beatific smile on his face as the children pulled him in a slightly different direction, their destination roughly the same acre of grass that made up the center of the park.

What did he mean by a spin?

It didn't take long for Pearson to discover what was meant, and he laughed until his chest ached, his joy overcompensating for the heartbreak that threatened to take him down; memories of a dead America and a dying earth temporarily forgotten in the exuberance of youth as he danced.