Future Holds
mbro was edgy about the meeting with himself - himself at age 280, with a
storied past.The only thing the two Ambros had in common was an uncertain future.
This clone was only two-weeks-old, born for this special, upcoming moment. Yet he was reeling from equal parts dread and elation. He was Ambro-100, not to be mistaken for the more wrinkly original version, famed universally as Ambro the great, the magnificent. Ambro was wild, too, especially in the early days when mores mattered. He was known, basically, for being rich beyond imaginings, beyond expert calculation, even. All that Ambro ever really understood was his whimsy of the moment. That was the legend, the lore.
But Ambro-100 knew better. His neural-pathways were rife with early memories of odd and tender propensities. The one toward religion, so archaic given the revelations of the central data bank, was inexplicably strong. Ambro-100 could easily summon the most subtle sensations: the whiff of spicey incense; the same paternal glint in Christ's eyes, as captured in thousands of paintings, icons, and even crude illustrations; the sense of guilt, and that of ultimate absolution - the former a core-wrenching ache, the latter a release of tension more profound than sex, more profound because it was an uncommonly durable sensation, one that could be recalled, in some minor measure, well after it was no longer warranted. Ambro-100 recalled the feeling now, smelled the incense, felt the melodic psalm lift him above the grinding machinery of ordinary consciousness, elevating him to where skies were still blue and the air still able to carry the scent of spring blossoms. He breathed deeply of this rarified air, his eyes closed, imagining a forever of pastoral pastels, and a sweet-featured muse materializing in cirrus wisps.
"Number One hundred? Earth to One Hundred?"
He heard the consult-couch click into place. It was Berdick, of course, his coach and the original Ambro's lackey. Had he, too, been cultivated originally as a replacement unit, one in a precursor series, perhaps? Berdick would not say. He would never divulge any personal history, insisting on tending to the drill of his current charge's preparations, evincing nothing more human than well-mannered condescension.
"Are you with us today? You seem distracted." Berdick's voice was its usual blend of unctuous command and restrained panic.
Ambro-100's voice, by turn, was a dull thud. "What's the rush?"
"Well, besides being two stages behind in hypno-regression, we're also falling down in our physical therapies. Ambro, of course, wants the facial moles removed and the abs further defined. You gotta do the drill, fella. We also have an ittsy-biddle contractural obligation. You saw the memo, no doubt. I had it transferred to your sleep absorption panel yesterday afternoon."
"I don't want to comply."
"Ah, One hundred. You're acting like vintage Ambro. But we're not after vintage Ambro, are we? Into the glando we must go, and soon." Berdick was identical to Ambro series models, except for the snake-like eyes, an optical defect that probably had kept him out of the replacement rotation.
Ambro-100 stared at his perfectly replicated feet. "I can't get in that thing. It's like a coffin." He looked around at the white walls of the consult chamber, felt their empty texture and color reaching into his senses to deposit death itself.
Berdick snickered. "Coffin? Have you been checking out those ancient interactives again? What gothic favorite was it this time?"
"I can't stand that contraption, either," Ambro-100 said."If I want to live through a sensation, I would like an original."
"Please, come on. We don't have a lot of time." Berdick glanced at his continuum monitor."Just jump in the 'ole glando machine and let those magic fingers do the trick. Got six clients in this contract alone just dying to make babies with your sperm. Or, should I say, Ambro's." Berdick just had to get that one in - yet another reminder of number one hundred's replacement status.
Ambro-100 felt his temper flare up. He liked this sensation; it was the fuel of assertive action.
"Look Berdick, maybe Ambro at 35 was sexually stimulated by the combined odor of heated leather, rhino urine and wallrus vaginal secretions, but that doesn't work for me, and never will."
Berdick shrugged, looked hurt. "You never complained before, for ryst sake."
"It's Christ, you ashall. Christ. The biggest cultist that ever lived. You ought to take some of this mind development therapy. You must keep your brains in the glando machine."
Berdick raised his hands in surrender, as he would often do when it came time to fake conciliation. "Okay, okay. What do you want? Maybe a little fetal death stench, mixed with vanilla? That's the big ticket item these days. Throw in some of those pre-historic porn visuals you like so much, the ones with actual people. That ought to get a couple hundred thousand of those little buggers hualin' ash to the finish, eh?"
"I want something even more old fashioned," Ambro-100 said, his tone infused with something like passion. "I want real sex."
"Real? What are you, some kind of pervert?" Berdick's perfectly aquiline features and medium complected caucasoid skin seemed, suddenly, to be melting into a ghastly, misshapen mass. He had to take a deep breath before he could resume.
"My gop, man. Nobody has actually engaged in direct biological fooking in nearly 300 years. Gop only knows what it would do to the gene pool."
"Not gop, you fookhead, God."
"Look, you little clone-drone, you've been playing in the way-back files way too much lately. That right there is grounds to have you reduced to a mindless partmetron. Your entrails should be harvested when needed. A kidney here, a hypothalmus gland there, maybe a glutamus maximus, and we can zap the rest down the fecal flusher."
"What, for recycling into the glando odorama primer?" Ambro-100's chortle richochetted through the chamber in an angry echo. "Would it kill you to set me up with one lousy fook?"
It frightened Berdick to hear this perfect replication of Ambro in his prime - so blonde, symetrical, even pre-tanned - talking the same pathetic gibberish as the old man he was soon to replace/absorb.
"I'll tell you what's killing me," Berdick said, his face still a rubbery, tentative version of its usual Teutonic self. "I've got Ambro wanting you on-line in three more days. Three days! And I've got a whole Lesbonic commune calling for Ambrosic sperm, which is already 24 hours late. These Lesboys don't play around. They're in a reproduction surge. And more importantly, Ambro has big contracts with the whole damned Lesbonic League."
"Couldn't I just fook one. That ought to do it."
"No, you can't fook 'em. Most of them aren't even genetically female anymore. These days, all the pregnancies mature in the perinatal lab."
"I've seen some Lesboys on the intervid. Some of 'em look pretty female to me," Ambro-100 said, remembering how much of the vintage porn depicted hetero/Lesbonic fooking.
"Forget it...But wait. Maybe a transmale..."
"Uh oh. I'd rather do the box, rhino piss and all."
"You sure? Because I kinda think I could get you a couple of those. You could even have one around as a pet.Those guys work pretty cheap. Of course, they're not really guys anynmore, either."
Ambro-100 sat still, watching the walls closing in. "Gender distinction is pretty much history then, huh?"
"Well, yeah," said Berdick, flexing the charlie horse out of his left plastilient cheek muscle. "But when you got the box, hey, who needs the messy old real stuff? Even the visuals are so inefficient, and dangerous. Did you know that, way back in the 1900s, people used to say porno visuals would undermine mental stability? And that was back before they had intervid."
Ambro-100 shook his head. "I don't like that stuff, either. The intervid people always smell like melting plastic."
"I know," Berdick said, shrugging. "Why do you think organic odorama options came along in the first place?"
"You might as well get out the invol-milker."
Berdick's face started melting again. "No way, man. Come on. These Lesboys want stallions, not old nags that have to be artificially pumped out."
"I'm sorry, Berdick. I don't care if you break me down to partmetron. I can't do that box again. Never again. I need a real piece of ash. And, come to think of it, not just ash, either."
The replacement closed his eyes, his mind's eye focusing on the blue skies, a fine-featured muse, and glories of a former time. "I want luff," he said.
Berdick winced. "What?"
"Luff."
"What is it?"
"It's where you find somebody of another gender, and you both fall into it."
"Luff? Never heard of it? Does it involve fooking?"
"Oh yeah," Ambro-100 said, his eyes dreamy. "That was one of the main luff things. But not just fooking. You would find somebody, put up with all their faults, like them anyway, and promise to do it forever, then you fooked the livin' shit out of them, everyday."
"Aggggggh! My gop, man." Berdick's bio-circuits were overheating to where you could actually smell his face burning. "Gee Zeus H. Ryst! You are one sorry piece of biotechnology. I will never have you ready by Saturday."
Then, his hands shaking, Berdick reached into the anscillaries cabinet and pulled out a plastic cylinder, whose exterior bore a series of flat buttons.
"How do you want your milker?" He asked. "Hot to trot, or easy does it?"
The old man lay at the epicenter of what seemed a cathedral to post-post modern interior design - everything was plasticized neo-art deco, neo-art-nouveau, and electronically enhanced neo-Victorian. The bed was a gigantic oval, glowing pod, around which were positioned banks of sleek, flat, humming devices.
Berdick escorted Ambro-100 to bedside, but minutes before, while they'd waited in the hall, the coach had issued a warning: "The old man's not interested in a lot of chit chat. He wants to go right ahead with the transference. Don't worry. It won't hurt. Your identity will simply merge with his. The only thing you'll feel is smarter."
Now, at bedside, Berdick withdrew with a slight, deferential bow, and an attendant in white put the helmet on Ambro-100's head. A similar head-piece was already ensconcing the prune-like countenance of the old man.
"Ready?" the attendant asked.
"Yes," said Ambro-100, who, a heart-beat later, realized the question had been directed toward the old man, who simply, and very weakly, nodded.
The burst of energy was unpleasant - a flash of blinding light, an electrical current coursing through his limbs. Then, abruptly, there was a sense of being elevated beyond the ordinary, grubby grip of reality. The muse's face was now fully detailed, complete in all her fine and exquisite dimensions. The emerald green of her eyes penetrated his core without being invasive. Sudden knowledge of her height, weight, figure, her likes, dislikes, temperment, I.Q., her genetic history, home address, plus sundry other details on subjects ranging from relationship history to career ambitions, had thus been instantly downloaded into his mind. "She lives, boy," he heard a tired, old voice say inside his head. "She's the last one, and if you're half the man I hope you are, you'll find her."
The old man's voice imparted one other thing, then all the buzzing newness died down and Ambro, the man, passed into a realm where, according to the data files, souls come back as low band radiowaves emitted by mating insects.
Ambro-100 felt as if he were his old replacement self, except that, now when he closed his eyes, he could see the higher reality more clearly. He recalled now the incense, the paternal glint in God's eyes, heard the choir, and knew, for the first time with certainty, that whatever happened to you when you died, it was at odds with the accepted data.
"Berdick!"
"Yes sir. Is the drone serving you well, sir?"
"Far better than I expected. Well enough to where I won't be needing your services anymore."
"I beg your pardon." The plastic in Berdick's face was beginning to curl brown in corners behind the ears.
"But I want you to know your work was not entirely unappreciated," Ambro said, then, leaning over, he removed a plastic card from the end-table drawer.
"A gift certificate," said the new master of the house, "for 2,300 gallons of pig piss. That ought to stoke the old glando box, eh Berdick?"
