Motility

MOTILITY

By Ives Pisgah

The gray skies kept darkening like rain was imminent. MacMoses breathed in deeply the brutally crisp and arid November afternoon air, and set out of the family hovel to see about finding an automatic tear duct pump. 

“Mo!” his mother wheeled to the doorway of the ground-home, leaning forward in her chair and gesturing in lively thrusts with her upturned palms. “It’s too late in the day to head out-especially for a part! You’ll never get back in time for supper!” 

In annoyance MacMoses squeezed the walking stick in his left hand. Turning to look at his mother over his shoulder he held up his right palm to her. “It’s okay ma, I know a warden who owes me a favor.” His mother then of course wanted to know who the warden was? MacMoses huffed the name “Griffin,” and turned back to ensue his quest. 

“Who?” his mother pressed. MacMoses shook his head. “Don’t worry about it, ma-you don’t know him. I’ll be back before it gets on too late in the night. I’d rather eat a cold supper-or not at all-than spend another waking hour manually pumping my eyes!” With that, ma acquiesced. “Please try and be back by around suppertime, sweet baby!”

\MacMoses waved as he turned back towards his destination for the second time. “MacMoses!” his mother called again. Sighing heavily, he turned again towards his mother at the hovel’s entrance. She made the sign of the cross. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” MacMoses crossed himself and blew a kiss to his mother. For the third and final time, he set off for the cemetery.

He’d already given his Plenary Donation for his five year check-up with the Commonbrain: 19 centimeters of his small intestine, his back right molar, and a kidney. The tear glands had been included in the Plenary Donation list the previous five year cycle. MacMoses had been manually pumping 15 to 20 times a minute, close to 1,000 times an hour, for the past 11 hours-since the automator gland had stopped working. He had begun to surmise, over the past 19,000 hand-pumps, that the Commonbrain designed to have replacement parts fail after a five year Plenary period. That way, he could get in debt to the Commonbrain, ordering a new replacement. But he was going to, in this one instance of his skinless life, beat the Commonbrain!

A grin flashed over his transparent Genuskin™ and immediately, MacMoses felt a shock of fear hit his bowels. His shifting guts made an audible swish. Even the most detached of ruminations concerning anything remotely threatening to the Commonbrain could result in immediate cremation. And every five years, during the Plenary Donation, one of the items physicians checked off the list was dream imaging, MacMoses knew. Immediate cremations had been ordered for the most abstract of images found in memory banks and occipital zones in subjects’ brains. 

I’m not ‘beating’ anyone! Certainly not Gracious Commonbrain! I’m simply…going around the task of purchasing a new part from the noble and fair One so that I can better pay off my debts for the auto-filter. Yeah-that’s it! It would be many more five year Plenary periods before he’d ever see the artificial kidney paid off; but the Commonbrain respected frugality and clever spending habits. 

By the time MacMoses had ankled his way to the Block A-14 of the Grafted Zone, the skies had become a charcoal mass. He knew he’d be lucky to get home before the sunrise. Few passersby had he crossed, and for this he was glad: a few group vans and some smaller transporters had hummed softly past on the road. He pumped three quick times, blinking in a concentrated effort to not start worrying. With the darkening skies upon him, each van or transporter was exponentially more frightening: Grafters and organ-scalpers were not uncommon at night, on an access road…and one lone traveler? Presently MacMoses fingered the credits in his wool satchel: twenty thousand. As he looked out over the tapering road past the junction before him, he made a very particular decision, one any human in his synthetic skin would: there was no way he’d stop for any reason, before finding Griffin. Living with a manual tear pump, he decided in that instant, was worse than blindness. Maybe I outta turn back, have hot buckwheat with Ma tonight. Then in the morning I can donate my eyes for an Accomodation! 

“No!” he suddenly hissed aloud, picking up his walk. I will at least try and get this fixed! He looked out at the dim autumn horizon, as the green glow of the UV Protection dome began to ignite the skies in its gelatinous way. And he saw the faintests of wisps of the crematorium smoke haze up across the dim green glow of the dome. I don’t want to lose my sight! A new momentum enervated his sinews as he picked up his hobbling pace. And he walked for an hour, noticing the complete blackness of the blurry night sky overhead. It was deep into the second hour, when the dome’s runny and silent oozing made its way far above him. Ma’s uncomfortable now. He thought about her waiting, far longer than rational, in hopes for him to return in time to share table with her. 

He crossed himself again. He whispered “just eat, Ma; say your prayers and don’t worry ‘bout me!” It was less than another hour of walking over the dirt and fragmented asphalt road that he saw the great razor wire-coiled gates of the cemetery. Against his now screaming calf and thigh musicals, he hobbled as briskly as he could. His walking staff made a succinct rhythm with his asynchronous steps, and each time he happened upon a chunk of Old World road pavement, he cheeringly tapped it with his staff. A dim blue glow appeared over the light mounds of the road. It was the light of the cemetery gate house. MacMoses was in a jolly mood now.  

Griffin had had too much his share of glute and leg muscle donations throughout his years, and in his present state he hobbled on crutches and wheeled roller-boots. He was as annoyed as he was flustered to see anyone approaching the gates-especially at night. “Visiting hours are closed!” he huffed as he hopped out of the stone arched doorway. He lifted a finger to the gate in front of him, upon which was posted a sign reading “cemetery closes at dusk.” 

“Griff! Griff it’s me, MacMoses!” 

The cemetery warden had just tossed his scarf back over his lower face. He grunted, taking a second look at MacMoses. Before he could ask ‘who?’ MacMoses clarified: “remember I helped dig last summer? You-”

In sudden recognition Griffin held a see-through finger upright against his scarf and hissed “shhhhhhhhh!” The wadren wheeled his way to the gate. Adjusting his brown wool cap over his nonexistent brows he quietly demanded “what are you doing all the way out here? At this hour?!” Pumping twice from his hand-held bulb, MacMoses told him of his synthetic tear gland replacement having gone kaput. Again Griffin made a gesture for quiet, and MacMoses felt a thud in his entrails of worry and sudden anxiety: he’s not gonna let me in?!  

“Listen,” Griffin quietly began, “things have been different around here. I can’t be sellin’ parts no more; some of the families got wise to us, hired permanent security.” Panicked, MacMoses whispered “I got twenty thousand creds with me!”

“Did you hear the words that just came outta my mouth? Now I’m already gonna have to explain this-we’re on surveillance! And the vids get checked, every five days!” In a desperate, almost unthinking whisper, MacMoses said “I dug those graves last summer without pay-for a bind like this one.” Nodding, Griffin told him he’d be glad to compensate MacMoses for the labor of gravedigging. It gave him a quick explanation to the security patrol too. As he turned back to wheel is feet back to the gatehouse and grab a sack of credits, his name was pleadingly hissed. He couldn’t pretend he didn’t hear; he couldn’t-damn it!

“Please?” MacMoses simply said as Griffin turned back around. He brought himself close to the gate, fearing too loud of an illegal conversation. “I’m pumping my eyes; they’re dry as sand.”

“So you buy yourself a new gland. You go to sleep, wake up and head to the replacements shop and have it installed when you buy it-it’s simple!” MacMoses made no stir this time, but Griffin could sense his extreme dejection. 

“Look, MacMoses, I’m trying to survive too, just like you! I gots me a belly-buddy, I play some music and enjoy cooking; I live a decent, simple life!” Taking a step back from the gate, the warden pulled up his coat and undershirt, revealing his clear Genuskin™ torso; the organs inside still dimming with the glow-shot he’d apparently injected earlier. MacMoses saw the tapeworm, still as Griffin’s entrails; upon which it was hooked fast. “Can you believe-people used to be afraid of these things?! These were something only dogs were supposed to get! They’d take pills to kill these little things!” Griffin looked at his belly and began cooing, as he massaged his belly. The belly-bud shifted along with his smaller intestinal tubes. The worm was probably the width of his own wrist, MacMoses noticed, as he politely asked when Griffin had gotten the pet?

“Not long after last summer. And look-” Griffin pulled the scarf down around his neck and displayed his see-through cheeks and face. “Isn’t my skin looking great? See that tone?!” Glancing quickly up at the orbital camera, which he presently noticed at the top left corner of the fence gate, MacMoses impatiently replied “you’re looking good and healthy.” Griffin asked him to hold his hand up to the gate. As he did, Grffin held his hand up next to it on the other side. The identical Genuskin™ hands both revealed 27 bones and vascular maps, pink cartilage and connective tissue; but mostly dark blood flowing throughout. “Take care of yourself, and you can have the same Genuskin™  tone; maybe even better! You are younger!” MacMoses blinked. “Now let me go get those credits I owe you,” Griffin said, his clear lips furled up in a grin.

“What say-900 credits, plus a year of interest…a thousand creds?” Griffin called back as he walked back up to the gatehouse. MacMoses nodded. Twenty-one thousand; that ought to be enough to get a downpayment for a loan.

All too soon, Griffin was walking back from the gatehouse and it was wrong. Did he even step inside?

“Hey! Mac! Come on in here; on second thought-you need to see this!” MacMoses watched, perplexed, as the cemetery warden wheeled and limped his way back to the gate. “What’s up?” he asked as Griffin fumbled with the button combination on the lock. His eyeballs glanced up quickly at MacMoses. The lock clicked, and Griffin slid the gate on its tracks, opening the way to the cemetery. “It’s nothin,’” Griffin said before the wide opening in the fence. Even as MacMoses ankled forward through the gate, his nervous anticipation was palpable. This is weird-not liking it! 

“I gotta rummage through my different spots. I mean I got it all-I got the creds, but why should you stand outside the gates, in the middle of the night? Y’know?” MacMoses grunted in understanding. Then, as if beginning a new conversation, Griffin said “I wanted you to see all the bellybuds I got growin’ in here! Top-shelf! Filters, best tanks and habitats, best food sources; I’m startin’ a bellybud farm! You want one?” 

“Sure,” said MacMoses absentmindedly, as he wondered why he felt so strange. He didn’t truly know Griffin; he only had ideas about him. He was older than MacMoses, perhaps in his fifties or early sixties; he had manned the cemetery at Block A14 for at least twenty years; he was apparently a bachelor, or a widower? Regardless, he’d always been solo in all past dealings. And for several summers, MacMoses had worked digging A-level graves for him, and was paid credits ‘under the table.’ Remember: Commonbrain likes frugality and industriousness! 

“They say havin’ one a these things also gives you better complexion; I’ll throw one of these buddies in with the twenty-one thou.” And it was then, as Griffin opened the door, that MacMoses knew; he knew. If he walked into the gatehouse, he’d not be leaving! At least, not without missing a heart and a brain; and who knows what else?! In the rush of his flustered and worried gut feelings, an anger overtook MacMoses. He thought of his mother lying awake atop her pallet. He pumped tears into his eyes, and blinking defiantly, he said: “It won’t!” Griffin turned as he stepped inside the gatehouse. “Huh?”

“Is nobody going to say it?!” MacMoses could see, even at night, even through his clear Genuskin™ eyelids, that Griffin’s eyes were indeed widening. “Of course not! Nobody ever does! But here goes: Genuskin™ isn’t any color; it’s clear! There, I said it-is that wrong to say?!” But Griffin looked inside, and even as MacMoses felt some catharsis as making his opinion known, he knew there were people inside the gatehouse-security. Before MacMoses could think of what more he felt about the different “skin tones,” Griffin was violently shoved against the opened gatehouse door. He didn’t wait for the image to fully appear in the blue radiance from within the gatehouse, MacMoses turned and hobbled. Quickly as his tired limbs could move him did he hobble, through the opened gate. 

A grip, whether a hand or a mechanical grip, pinched his clavicle and drug down him to the hard cold dirt. Pain erupted throughout his limbs at the tightening clutch. He groaned as his eyes darted wildly to see the source. Looking as far behind and above as his neck was able, he saw a hunched form dragging him back through the opened gatehouse door. He was slid on his back into the center of the little building. It was different inside than he remembered. Tanks and terrariums filled the walls, from floor to ceiling. Red and pink viscera and tissue filled the tanks, with tunneling tubules of tapeworms, from the size of a spaghetti noodle, to a finger, to a forearm. He certainly has a buddy farm side hussle! 

But MacMoses saw the huddled masses sitting in the far corner; three of them, presently joined by the fourth who’d dragged him. Three sat and the one stood, wearing brown wool pants and matching brown wool coats and brimmed hats. They’d all taken black-colored dyes, as their faces and hands were swirling black liquids beneath their clear skin; their round eyeballs in their sockets and what teeth they had like ivory detritus over black murky bogwaters.

“He’d done some diggin’ last year for me-I was just-”

“Shut up!” the standing hulk barked. “How old?” he asked. Dully, MacMoses realized the question was directed at him. “Twenty-nine years?” said MacMoses quietly; unsurely. “Good,” spat one of the brown-clad ones sitting. “Brain’s just freshly fully developed.”

MacMoses realized how much his ma was right, so many times; on so many items! “You got more of these under-the-tablers who’ll be coming around, Griffin?” one of the voices from the corner asked. Rapidly Griffin nodded, terror still written across his see-through face.

“I’m sorry, Mac-I…I’m sorry!” he offered. But squeezing his bulb for a few more tears, he closed his clear eyes, and prepared for a peace he hoped would be realized. He made the sign of the cross once more, and then knew no more as the jolt from a blitz-rod shocked him to instantaneous death. His last thought was the happy knowledge that at least his ma would be with the unseen God in heaven; if anyone was going to heaven, she was!

His back against the tanks, Griffin saw the wide eyes of MacMoses dilate, still in their see-through sockets. “I’m so sorry, man,” he whispered. And he knew then, that he’d share a twin fate as this MacMoses.