CheapLit: Free ebook sample of "Zombpunk: STEM" by Christopher Blankley

It was a shit sandwich – a sandwich made of shit. The bread was stale and molding, and the meat... well, whatever it was... sat like slime between the two slices. Elder Tull poked it with a disinterested finger. It was his sandwich – his shit sandwich – and he'd have to eat it. It was all he had, the only thing to eat that day, but he took no joy in anticipating the act. If it looked bad, Elder reasoned, then how disgusting must it taste? His half-naked, bone-thin figure shuddered. He scratched his stomach through the abject filth of his t-shirt and tried to summon up a mouth full of saliva. He would eat it, he knew, but he would have to cajole his taste buds to play along.

Mustard, Elder Tull thought, mustard. It'd definitely taste better with a little mustard...

What could be keeping Steve and Eydie? Elder stepped away from the counter of the small kitchenette and picked a path through the soiled mattresses and garbage that littered the floor of the flee-ridden apartment. At the window, he looked through the broken glass down at the alleyway below. There was no one there. It'd never taken Steve and Eydie this long to score scran before. They should have been home over an hour ago.

Elder steadied himself on the windowsill as a fit of retching convulsed through his body. A ball of phlegm made its way out of his lungs, and he spat it out through the broken windowpane. He'd just have to eat his sandwich without mustard, he concluded, and made his way back towards the kitchenette.

The sandwich sat there alone on the cold counter. He had better eat it before it stood up and demanded marriage equality, Elder Tull thought, reaching for a rusty kitchen cleaver. The filling of the sandwich oozed over its sides as he sliced the sandwich in two. Elder's stomach churned.

A slice of sandwich was paused at Elder's lips when he heard the handle to the front door rattle. Steve and Eydie! he thought, and dropped the slice back onto the counter with a wet slop. He skipped through the garbage of the apartment and fumbled with the chain to the door. Instantly, a crack in the door pushed open and the small frame of Eydie slid into the room. She didn't speak, just pushed the door closed behind her, slapping Elder's hand out of the way to reattach the chain.

"Did you get the–" Elder asked, but Eydie wouldn't face him. She scurried off across the room, crab-like, keeping her back to Elder, until she reached her mattress by the broken window. She flopped down and pulled a threadbare blanket up and over her head, leaving only her skanky head of dark dreadlocks visible above the covers. "Eydie?" Elder began, then paused. He looked around, his addled brain slowly registering the absence of something. "Where's Stevie?" he finally asked.

Eydie didn't reply. She didn't even stir.

"How about the scran?" Elder asked, the pain in his stomach reminding him. "You said you knew about a guy..." He trailed off as the nest of greasy dreadlocks slowly began to shake. Eydie was crying silently into her pillow. Elder's empty, starving stomach sank. Oh God, he realized, what had happened to Steve?

Elder crossed the room and lowered himself down beside the mattress. He held out a hand and let it hover over the blanket. He wanted to comfort Eydie, but knew better than to touch her. He satisfied himself with a cooing sound. Perhaps she'd find that soothing... Elder vaguely remembered it working with crying babies.

Eventually he summoned up the force of will to speak again, "Eydie," he tried, "what happened to Steve?"

But he already knew. When the covers came back and Eydie turned to face him with bloodshot, wet eyes, he already knew. They had him. How or why, Elder didn't yet understand, but the most important cold, hard fact he already knew: they had him. And that meant he was now one of them.

"Oh, God..." Elder collapsed like the pins had been pulled out of his spine. If he'd eaten his sandwich, if there'd been anything in his stomach at all, he'd have puked it right up. But the dry heaves he could choke down. He lay down amongst the garbage of the apartment and let his head lay against the cold wood of the floor.

Steve was gone. Steve was a Stem.

"We–we were down on Stone..." Eydie began, pulling herself up onto her knees. "Y–You know, almost all the way down to the canal... there's this Puke... well, used to be this Puke... with a squat in an old pizza kitchen down there... anyway, you said you were jonesing for mustard..." Eydie paused as the tears began to well up again. Elder sat up and put a comforting hand on her bone-thin shoulder. "And this Puke did a trade in old spices... not much nowadays, but... I mean, he had connections, out in the sticks where things still grow... but we get there and–"

Eydie stopped, suddenly turning sheet white. She stared dead ahead, like she could see straight through Tull, at the sight she'd seen in that old pizza kitchen.

"Somebody had plugged the old fool," she continued. "He was laying right there on the linoleum in a pool of blood. We come in the back way, under the fence like always, and there he was, right in the middle of the kitchen."

"Oh God..." Elder Tull muttered.

"But the worst part is that we weren't the first to find him," Eydie blinked, then coughed, and her gaze snapped back to the present. She looked up at Elder. "We stumbled right into the middle of it: a whole fucking episode of CSI. Cops and coroners and photographers, the real deal... taking measurements, putting stuff in plastic bags... they all just stood there for the longest time, staring at us like idiots, wondering what we were doing there. All the while, we're staring back at them. Nobody's moving. Nobody's doing shit. Just Steve and me, half the Seattle PD, and a dead Puke on the linoleum, with a hole in his head.

"Then I'm, like, thinking: this doesn't look good. Us walking right into the middle of a murder scene, and all. And for what? Mustard? Who's going to believe that shit? And I know Steve is thinking the same thing. I can sense him next to me, going all cat-like... you know, his back arching up. He's gonna run, I can feel it, and I'm, like, dude, don't you dare, 'cause these cops will pounce the second you show tail. But I'm not saying it, 'cause we're all just standing there in silence... the cops just staring at us like we're the fucking second coming of Christ or something.

"Then the shit hits the fan. I don't know if Steve started running, or a cop just came to his senses... all I know is everyone was suddenly shouting and guns were coming out and Steve and me were back out through that door like our asses were on fire. We hit that fence and Steve pulls the chain link up for me and I'm scrambling in the dirt and by the time I'm back on my feet in the alley a cop is body-slamming Steve like a Mexican wrestler. He's all squashed up against the chain link as the cop is twisting his arm and people are yelling at me to stop were I am, and the barrels of guns are being shoved through the links...

"So I turned and ran." She stopped, her thousand-yard stare returning. Elder realized his hand was still holding her shoulder, gripping it tight. He must have been hurting her, but she didn't seem to notice. He let go of her shoulder, his fingers leaving behind a red welt ringing her shoulder blade.

"Oh God..." he said one final time. But it didn't do the situation justice. "Fuck," he tried.

"Yeah, fuck," Eydie agreed.

"Then..." Elder continued after a contemplative pause. He glanced back towards the kitchenette counter where his sandwich was waiting for him. "No mustard?"

#

There was nothing that could be done. If the cops had Stevie, guilty or innocent, he'd already have been stemmed.

He was already dead as far as Elder Tull and Eydie were concerned.

It wasn't like the police had much of a choice – it wasn't like they were set up to feed Pukes – but it hardly condoned the procedure of stemming each and every prisoner arrested for even the most casual of crimes. Not that there were many people left without stems. Just sad, useless Pukes like Elder, Steve and Eydie. But didn't they have their rights? Weren't they still human?

No, not without a stem they weren't.

It was the single greatest scientific discovery in history – that fact could not be disputed. It was the savior of mankind, the earth, and western civilization: the Whole Life Interface, the WLI, casually know to all as 'The Stem.' It was a cybernetic implant that supplanted the stomach and converted electricity into nutrients. It left only a simple electrical socket above the surface of the skin, mounted below the sternum. Plugged into an electrical power source, the stem provided its owner with almost unlimited, cheap sustenance; they could eat electricity. It meant an end to world hunger, an end to wide-spread poverty, an end to suffering...

And an end to food.

Clean, carbon-free fusion reactors created the electricity to fuel the stem, and without the need for humans to consume resources for survival, humanity had almost completely removed itself from the planet's ecosystem. No more hamburgers needed to feed a hungry population; no more cattle needed to be made into beef for those burgers; no field upon field of corn needed to feed that cattle; no fleet of trucks needed to haul the fertilizer to grow that corn. Without the pressure of human consumption weighing on the planet, the environment was finally able to made inroads and heal itself. Perhaps the greatest gift the Whole Life Interface had bestowed on mankind was a measurable decline in anthropological global warming. There'd been a three degree drop in global temperatures since the stem had reached a critical mass of adoption globally. The war between the environment and humanity was over and they had learned to live in peace. And it was all thanks to the stem.

But not everyone had signed up for the brave new world.

Small groups in all cultures resisted the new technology. Many based their antagonism on religious beliefs, others on social conservatism. A whole slew of conspiracy theories were floated in regard to Whole Life Inc. the corporate entity that developed, patented and sold the stem: that it was a form of mind control, that it stole people's free will.

But mostly these groups remained on the fringe. In mainstream society, the stem had been quickly adopted. Not only did the stem free its owner from the burden of daily sustenance, its internal regulators and advanced software made sure that each client of Whole Life Inc. was kept in peak physical condition. There was no more overeating, no need to strain with daily exercise. Through small, internal electrical stimulation, the stem could tone muscle and burn fat while its owner slept. Suddenly, the world was thin and beautiful.

But not the Pukes.

Those who held out against the social pressure to be stemmed were pushed further and further towards the edges of society. The global food distribution system quickly collapsed. Grocery stores closed and restaurants vanished. Pukes quickly discovered that what food they couldn't grow for themselves was impossible to find. They were too few in number for any business to serve profitably, and far too lost in the political wilderness for any welfare state to assist. They were a problem that mainstream Stem society hoped to remove, either by stemming the last of the hold-out Pukes, or by letting them die in the gutter from self-imposed starvation.

Those few holdouts were a squalid lot.

Unable to hold jobs, they could do little else but forage for sustenance. They were nothing more than food junkies, scratching out what living they could, attempting to pull together enough for a simple meal. Those in rural areas initially fared better, where the fruit of the land was more easily within reach. But as the volatile whims of nature plowed under crops and the scarcity of equipment fit for farm use increased, most were forced into the city to scavenge off what affluent Stem society discarded.

They were little more than animals, one missed meal away from death. But at least they were free, and whole as God intended. That is, until they broke a law. Then, for their own safety, they would be forcibly stemmed.

And then all their troubles were over.

Chapter 2

There was a white light, then darkness. Pain, then a sensation of peace. Slowly, Steve became aware of the ceiling tiles above him. He blinked, attempting to focus, then let his eyelids close. He was tired, and something had his left arm pinned. Unconsciousness overcame him. There was nothing but darkness again.

He awoke with a start, sucking in a large lungful of air and struggling against the bedclothes that covered his body. He sat up quickly, sending his head spinning. A wave of vertigo threw him back against a mass of white pillows. He breathed hard, pausing. He took in the room. The same ceiling tiles from before were there... a hospital bed... medical machines... IV drips... blinds covering a dark window...

His heart was pounding. He raised a hand and laid it on his chest. His arm was a nest of tubes and IV needles. Where was he? The last thing he remembered was the backseat of a police cruiser, his hands in cuffs. No, he remembered more: dried blood on a steel gurney...

No, no, please... Steve's hand moved down his chest. There, just below his ribcage, a cable running from under his hospital robe...

"Good morning, Mr. Pope. How are we feeling?" a female voice spoke from inside the room. Steve convulsed with shock. He wasn't alone. He pulled himself up onto his elbows and saw a woman sitting in a chair against the far wall of the room. An attractive, young woman with long blond hair, looking at Steve with concerned eyes. Her legs were crossed and she held a lit cigarette between the first and second fingers of her right hand. A swirl of smoke curled up from its burning tip, filling the room with the smell of tobacco mixed with cannabis.

Stem! Steve's mind screamed. Stem!

He scrambled back against the head of the bed, up to a sitting position, and grabbed frantically at the cable that protruded from his chest. The woman was on her feet, reaching out with a comforting hand. Steve slapped her arm away and pulled his paper-thin robe free of his shoulders. He bared his chest and stared in horror at where the cable terminated: a round, plastic socket stapled awkwardly below his sternum, the cable plugged into it like a lamp plugged into the wall. The flesh around the socket was red and bloodied, sore and swollen from the incision that had implanted the device.

Steve screamed.

The memories came flooding back to Steve... the dried blood on a steel gurney... the police officers holding his arms... the pain... the jail nurse, bare hands covered in Steve's blood... the centipede-like device, tentacles flinching, silhouetted in the harsh light, before slowly being fed into his wound... more pain, then blackness... then waking up here...

"Mr. Pope!" the woman yelled, taking Steve by the shoulder. "Everything is all right! Mr. Pope! Calm down. You're safe now. You're in a hospital." In her right hand, with the cigarette, she had a small remote control. With her thumb she was dialing a button. A warm feeling began to wash over Steve. He breathed hard, his heart thrumming in his chest. The terror inside him was receding, like a cloud moving away from the sun.

"I-I-I..." Steve stammered.

"Your name is Nathan Pope, do you remember?" the young woman asked as she rubbed Steve's bare shoulder.

"Nathan?" Steve replied. "No one calls me Nathan..."

"Nevertheless, isn't that your name?" the woman asked soothingly. Steve nodded. "My name is Jude. I am your court appointed therapist. You've had a terrible shock, Mr. Pope, but everything is all right. You were in jail."

"Oh, God..." Steve's fingers danced along the length of the protruding power cable as if contemplating how to detach it from his implant.

"Don't!" The woman let go of his shoulder and took his hand, squeezing. "Yes, while in jail, you were stemmed. But it's okay... I'm here to help you though this transition. Mr. Pope?"

Steve couldn't pull his gaze away from the cable thrusting out from his chest. It couldn't be true, it just couldn't be. It had to be some sort of bad dream.

#

They called it Stem Shock. During the first twelve hours after implantation, the risk of a psychological break in a number of boarder cases had been determined to be non zero. After the initial twelve hours, almost a hundred percent of recipients had grown accustomed to the cocktail of endorphins and neural stimulants fed to them by their stem. But in those early hours, close monitoring and the presence of a therapist was required to mitigate the risk of a breakdown.

Essentially, all a patient needed as the shock of waking and finding a foreign object implanted in your his chest hit him was some medication management and a hand to hold. These therapists had facetiously been nicknamed 'midwives,' as their role was considered something akin to assisting with a live birth. Perhaps calling it a re-birth was more accurate: from an old way of living to a new, improved form of existence.

Jude was Steve's midwife.

She seemed too young to be a therapist, but Stems always did. Steve would have guessed she was no more than fifteen or sixteen, but he knew that to be an illusion. Stems didn't age like Pukes, and she could have been anywhere from twenty to fifty and shown no signs of her age. As he looked at her, he realized she was one of the Stems to follow the fad of having her intestines removed surgically as unneeded bio-matter. She had the resulting impossibly thin, wasp-like waist. She was pretty; something like a life-sized Barbie.

She had a bubbly, sorority sister charm about her as she calmly and carefully talked Steve through the events of the last few hours. He had been arrested in connection with the murder of one Samuel 'Geezip' Andrews, sent to County, and processed. He was still in recovery in the jail's infirmary when his Public Defender filed a writ of habeas corpus. The police's DNA and fingerprint samples taken at booking had come back negative – Steve wasn't their murderer – so the Attorney General's office refused to prosecute. Steve was a free man. He had been transferred to Harborview Hospital before the sedatives from his stem implantation had even worn off. That was when Jude had been called.

"The police still have some questions – like exactly what your business was this evening with Geezip – but for the time being, you're supposed to focus on your recovery," Jude said, lighting up another cigarette. She took a deep draw and blew a billow of smoke into the air between them. Steve sat motionless in his bed, watching the woman.

I should jump out of the bed and throttle her, he thought. A few hours ago, put in this same position, he'd have done exactly that. He'd come to despise the Stems so much – so many years of hating everything they stood for. If he'd been put alone in a room with a Stem then, he'd have killed without remorse. One less Stem to pollute the world, he'd have reasoned. But now... sitting there with her not a meter away from him, he couldn't raise within himself enough power to even move a finger.

"I hope you will think of me as a friend," Jude was saying. "It's my job to help you re-acclimate to normal society. You've been lost for so long, Nathan, lost to the slavery of your own horrible dependence. It can be terrifying to discover yourself, just like that, free of the bonds that once held you down. It's my job to help you adjust. I'll be here to help you, Nathan, every step of the way. And there will be many steps, Nathan, before you can put your old life behind you."

"Steve," Steve spoke, low and growling. "My name is Steve." That was what he had been called. Steve and Eydie, like the singers. Eydie...

"Yes, alright. If you'd like to be called Steve..." Jude took another drag on her cigarette.

"I'm..." Steve began. "I'm hungry..." He looked down at the cable attached to the power socket in his chest.

"Phantom hunger pangs. It's normal," Jude said. "Soon you'll never be hungry again."

Chapter 3

Elder ate his sandwich hungrily, not letting it sit in his mouth long enough for him to taste. He ate it all before remembering Eydie. She was probably hungry, too. She'd gone out for food and come back empty handed – even without Steve.

Better not to think about Steve. He was gone. That'd be easy enough for Elder, but Eydie wouldn't forget so quick. They'd been together... hell, longer than Elder could remember. They were Steve and Eydie, for Christ's sake! You couldn't have Steve without Eydie, or Eydie without Steve. It was Steve AND Eydie. Never one without the other.

It'd be up to Elder Tull now.

He could remember before, when they'd all been young – before the food had started to get scarce, back in college. Elder and Eydie had dated. Yeah, before she'd met Steve, before she'd been called Eydie. What had her name been? Elder couldn't remember. All he could remember was the sight of Eydie, naked, when her body had still been whole. High, full breasts and a pair of real hips, not the skin and bones she was now. He could remember vividly the sight of her straddling him, smiling as various pleasures played a symphony across her beautiful face.

But now the memory did nothing for him. Nothing. He looked down at his soiled boxer shorts. There were no signs that the memory stirred any sort of physical reaction. With Steve gone, if Eydie looked to Elder... he'd need that sort of memory to stir something.

Elder coughed, then coughed again. Very soon he was consumed by another retching fit that doubled him over as he stood at the kitchenette counter.

If Elder was the man of the house now...

He went to find his pants.

#

The torn blue jeans were under his mattress. Eydie didn't stir as he dressed. Elder counted what little money there was in his pants pockets, and unhooked the chain from the door. Minutes later, he was out of the squalid apartment and amongst the bustle of an early evening on the Ave. The sidewalks were crowded with Stems, fresh from a day of classes at the university. With the university not two blocks away, the Ave was always crowded with them, out for an evening visit to the smoke bars that lined the length of the high street.

They gave Elder a wide berth. His dirty beard and toothless snarl were a sharp contrast to the perfect visages of the Stems. Like a leper on market day, Elder moved without interference from the crowd – all he lacked was a bell, and the rhythmic chant of "unclean." No one would touch him, he knew, as if his dire straits could be caught through physical contact.

Where he was going, Elder Tull didn't know. He had the vague idea that he needed to score some scran. When Eydie emerged from her sorrow, she'd be hungry. Even the loss of Steve couldn't hold that pain back for long. And it was Elder's duty now to provide. Eydie would be depending on him. But it'd been so long since anyone had depended on Elder. It was like an old coat he'd found in the back of a closet. He put it on, only to find it was now two sizes too big, and he couldn't find his hands, and each way he stepped he feared he'd trip over its hem. Where was Elder going to find some food? Where?

Panhandling was useless. It'd been years since that ploy had worked. There wasn't a sympathetic face left in the great sea of Stems that moved up and down the Ave. Not for a Puke, at least.

And what good was money to Elder, anyway, without food to buy? No, he'd have to shake the tree: hit up other Pukes for what scran they might have scored themselves. After all, it wasn't for him, but for Eydie... if he pitched around the story about Steve's arrest, maybe there'd be some sympathy. If sympathy scored him a square meal... well, what was wrong with that?

He moved south down the Ave to where 45^th crossed the main boulevard. As he approached the intersection, the low beats of muffled music reached Elder's ears. It could mean only one thing: the Brothers. Elder broke into a slow trot and turned west onto 45^th. Sure enough, in an empty lot facing onto Brooklyn Ave, a low stage and a pair of fluttering banners had been erected. The Brothers of Bannock! Elder laughed, and choked back a cough. Sons of bitches!

On the low stage, a rock-and-roll quartet was charging through some old classic rock track Elder hazily remembered from the good old days. A preacher stood beside them at a podium, thumping on a Bible and bellowing into a microphone. Perhaps two dozen disheveled Pukes were milling in front of the stage as the preacher delivered his sermon. More were lined up at tables beside the stage, where men and women in blue and green t-shirts were handing out loaves of bread and something white wrapped in clear plastic.

Elder didn't need an invitation. He quickly fell in line at the back of the bread queue.

"Sin, my brothers and sisters!" The preacher's voice echoed off the surrounding buildings, amplified tenfold by a massive pair of free standing speakers. The bread line was uncomfortably close to these and Elder held his filthy hands over his ears. The line shuffled slowly forward as each Puke took his handout in turn. "Sin, I say! 'Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh, for I am the Lord!' These are the words of God! 'Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God!' I ask you, brothers and sisters, who are we to reject the gifts of our Lord? 'Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things!'"

When Elder's turn finally came, he was happy to take the offered loaf of bread and package of unidentifiable white goo, and he slipped quickly out of earshot of the thundering speakers. At the mouth of a nearby alleyway he paused to take a bite out of the bread and examine the small, plastic-wrapped lump. The bread was doughy, undercooked, but edible, and the white stuff was something like cheese, though perhaps nothing more than unprocessed curds. He unwrapped the package and gulped it down in two large bites. It was bland and a bit salty.

The preacher droned on as Elder ate. He'd finished half of the bread before he remembered the reason he'd ventured away from the apartment in the first place. He'd save the rest for Eydie, he told himself, chewing and swallowing a mouthful. Back in the empty lot, the preacher's voice faded from the loudspeakers and the band kicked into high gear, attempting to cover some hair-band oldie. There were more missed notes than hits, but the drummer kept thing moving along, covering up the worst mistakes with a crescendo of cymbals.

The Brothers of Bannock, the crazy motherfuckers... Elder thought, taking an absentminded bite out of the loaf. Out and proud, sticking a finger up the asses of the Stems. Elder didn't care for any of their religious bullshit, but he had to give the Brothers props. They had balls – big, hairy ones – to be out in the early evening feeding Pukes for free, right there for the Stems to see.

They had to know what a disgusting spectacle they made. Anyone else and the cops would come down hard. Creating a Public Disturbance, or some shit like that. But rumor was that the Brothers of Bannock were well protected politically. Elder had heard that none other than Drew Arrow himself financed the religious group. And with money like Drew Arrow's, you could afford to be out in the open.

With money like Drew Arrow's, you could buy off a hell of a lot of cops. With money like Drew Arrow's, you could buy just about any-fucking-thing...

Elder munched on his bread, thinking.

Outwardly, the Brothers were about feeding poor Pukes, easing the suffering of those left unconverted. They objected to the stem for religious reasons, claiming it to be unnatural or ungodly or some shit – Elder Tull didn't care. Secretly, however, it was rumored they were preparing for a complete split from Stem society. Some sort of evangelical, shining city on a hill sort of deal.

According to the Prime Administrator (who, admittedly, wasn't a reliable source) Bannock was a real, physical place. Somewhere up in the mountains near Seattle. Drew Arrow and all the end-of-days, keen-for-Jesus types had started construction on their new Jerusalem years before the stem had even been invented. They'd seen its introduction as fulfillment of prophecy – the first sign of the coming Armageddon. Someday soon, when things got really dire, they would round up all the remaining Pukes – however few were left – and set out for this hidden Elysium.

Of course, this was all according to the Prime Administrator, so it was probably bullshit. But Elder had a soft spot for such talk. The idea of a place where Pukes could go and just be... well, Pukes. Where there was food and drink aplenty and no scavenging around for scran... what was not to like?

Yeah, Elder had to give the Brothers props, even with all the religious bullshit. If there really was a place like Bannock where all the Pukes would someday get to go, far away, where the Stems couldn't find them... well, Elder Tull wouldn't say no to that. No sir. Elder Tull was ready and waiting.

Elder pushed the last crumb of his doughy loaf into his mouth and chewed on it as he contemplated Bannock. He'd swallowed before he realized what he'd done. Ah, shit! He threw up his hands, disgusted with himself. Idiot! Motherfucker! He kicked the wall of the alleyway angrily, then doubled over from the pain in his foot.

He was right back to square one. He still needed to score some scran for Eydie. He thought about getting back in line with the Brothers of Bannock. If he fed them Eydie's sob story... but he knew from experience not to try it. He couldn't see them, but he knew there'd be some heavy security near the Bannock tables, ready and waiting for some Puke to get the bright idea of rushing the breadline.

#

Elder Tull followed 45^th out towards the freeway, weighing his options and letting the drone of the Bannock Revival fade into the distance behind him. At the off ramp, where the wide artery poured a steady stream of battery-powered cars into the University District, Elder approached Kevin, standing at his usual spot, holding his handwritten, cardboard sign.

Kevin was noble in his stance, even while begging. His untidy nest of curly graying hair merged seamlessly with the pelt of his beard. Underneath, his dark skin was spotted with pink patches of flaking sores. He stood with his eyes closed, muttering under his breath, slightly teetering on the balls of his heels.

As always, Kevin's sign consisted simply of one word: Food. What exactly he meant by this, Elder had never been able to fathom. Was it meant to be 'Food?' with a question mark, as in 'Do you have any food?' That seemed like a ridiculous question to ask an ever flowing stream of Stems passing in their cars. Perhaps it was Kevin's reductivist version of the classic 'Will Work For Food,' shortened to its most critical element. But then the idea of exchanging labor for sustenance was as ridiculous as hoping for a handout.

No, Elder had come to conclude, Kevin meant nothing more by his sign than exactly what it said: Food. His post at the off ramp with his handmade sign was no attempt to panhandle, but his own personal vigil; a survey, conducted one drivers side window at a time; a search for any sign of conscience in the hurriedly averted glances of the passing Stems.

"Kevin!" Elder yelled across the off ramp, waiting for the green man to tell him to walk. "Kevin!"

Kevin stirred from his stupor, turning to see Elder across the road. When the traffic stopped, Elder scurried gingerly across the street. "Kevin, you hear about Steve?"

Kevin blinked once and turned his attention silently back to the traffic.

"Didn't you hear?" Elder said urgently, putting a hand on Kevin's shoulder and giving it a shake. "The cops got Steve. Just a few hours ago. Eydie's a wreck. I left her back at the apartment. You ain't got any scran, do you? She ain't eating now, but when she calms down..."

Kevin lowered his sign and turned back to Elder. "Didn't you try the Brothers?" Kevin tilted his head towards the echoing bass of the Revival.

"Yeah, they came up short," Elder lied.

"Steve, huh?" Kevin said slowly, turning back to the traffic, raising his sign back to eye level.

"Yeah, Steve... can you believe it?" Elder let out a snicker and was suddenly unable to decide what to do with his hands. He settled on sinking them into the pockets of his jeans, where he found the discarded plastic wrapper from the salty cheese curds.

"Jail?"

"Yeah, someone popped a cap into some Puke down by the canal. Cops fitted Steve for it, I guess. Say, about that scran..."

"I ain't holdin'," Kevin replied solemnly. Elder deflated. He kicked a rock, which skipped off the side of a passing car, and he started off again to cross the bridge back over the freeway. He'd only taken two steps when Kevin's voice brought him to a halt. "Did you hear about the Potluck?" Kevin said.

"Potluck?" Elder almost shouted, spinning around.

"Yes, tomorrow night. No?"

"Shit, no!" Elder said excitedly.

"Apparently Prime had a bountiful trip out to the foothills. He's returned with quite a feast."

"And he's throwing a Potluck?"

"Yes, all in. Tomorrow night. Like old times," Kevin said with a slight wistfulness. "At Madame Damnable's, of course."

"Of course!" Elder exclaimed. A Potluck? At a bar, no less? Shit, this was big, Elder thought, the biggest thing to happen in a long, long time. Wait until Eydie hears about... Elder's heart sank. Once again, he remembered why he'd stepped out into the evening air. "Say, about Eydie... without Steve... I don't know if she'll make it 'til tomorrow–"

"Try Sweet Beat," Kevin interrupted with a sigh. "If you must. Tell her I sent you."

Elder smiled. Good old Kevin! Always good for a little scran when a fellow Puke was down on his luck. Elder turned on his heels and trotted off across the freeway bridge.

Kevin returned to his silent vigil, doggedly displaying his cardboard profanity to each and every Stem that passed.

Chapter 4

Jude stroked Steve's cable gently.

"No, no!" Steve called out, reaching up and stopping Jude's hand. She giggled and Steve choked back a grin. "I... I..."

"It doesn't hurt. It won't switch you off or anything," Jude teased. She took a firm grip on the cable protruding from Steve's stem and tugged it, almost pulling Steve clean off the edge of the hospital bed.

"It's just..." Steve hedged. Strangely, after waking up in such terror at the sight of the cable, he was now reluctant to see it removed. "Do I have a full charge? Or whatever you call it?"

Jude laughed. Steve was sitting up, half-naked, with her standing close, the cable in her hands between them. He was close enough to smell her perfume, something flowery. She twisted the cable a quarter turn, and the socket clicked. Steve held his breath. The cable was free, but nothing seemed to change. He let go of the breath and sucked in a new lungful of air. Jude watched him slyly, biting at her bottom lip.

"All right?" She leaned forward, trying to catch Steve's gaze. He looked away timidly. "Okay?" Steve nodded, grinned, and let out an embarrassed laugh. They made eye contact and Jude chuckled. He was like a child, she thought, taking his first steps. It was going to be a big day for Nathan Pope, she knew. She was glad she was there to stop him from falling flat on his face.

Jude turned away and retrieved her still-lit cigarette from the ashtray where she'd left it. She took a drag and collected her thoughts.

It was, of course, ethically problematic for a midwife to have a physical relationship with one of her cases. It could cost her her license, if not more. But just that day, only an hour before arriving at the hospital, Jude had learned that occupations such as Stem Shock Therapist would soon be a thing of that past – that after Nathan Pope, there'd be very little demand for her special services. So whatever happened between her and Nathan Pope would be nothing more than an issue between Jude and her conscience. And Jude's conscience had never been something that overly bothered her.

"Feel like getting up and walking about?" Jude asked, turning back to Steve. She picked up a folded pair of jeans and a white shirt off the table beside her ashtray and tossed them on the bed beside Steve.

"Up? About?" Steve raised an eyebrow. "Is that a good idea?" Steve straightened up his posture and poked tentatively at his implant.

"Who's the therapist, huh?" Jude replied over her cigarette. "You're physically fine. And as for mentally..." She held up the small remote control in her hand.

"What's that?"

"I'm monitoring your stem. I've got a readout here of your EKG. Endocrine levels. If there's any change in your neuro-chemistry, it'll beep here. Then I just push this..." She pointed at a plus button next to a minus one at the base of the remote.

"And what's that?" Steve smiled.

"The Happy Button," Jude smiled back. "It bumps up your stem's production of seratonin. Perfectly natural, safe... it just takes the edge off, lets you see the world in a new light."

"You can control my moods? With that?" Steve asked, concerned.

"Not control. Influence." Jude snuffed her cigarette out in the ashtray. "But I don't think we'll be needing it." She stepped in close to Steve and put the remote down on his folded, clean set of clothes.

"No?" Steve asked as Jude leaned in dangerously close, her full, red lips tinged with the sweet scent of her cigarette.

Jude ran her finger around the outline of his implant. "No," she said, watching her fingers move across his chest. "There are so many more fun ways to increase seratonin levels, you know?"

#

Nathan Pope would be the last Puke forcibly converted.

At least that's what the voice had said on the phone as Jude had driven to the hospital. He would be the last Puke forcibly converted, that is, outside the walls of a military installation. A decision had been made. It was still hush-hush, not ready for prime time, but when the penny did drop, there would be no more Nathan Popes. People who knew people would be coming to call, the voice had told Jude. People-people, it said. And all of it had just landed in Jude's lap as the on-call midwife.

Jude hung up and kept driving, the news swirling around in her head. The last Puke to be converted to a Stem? She forced herself not to jump to conclusions. Jumping to conclusions was a dangerous habit. But even without conjecture, the sort of people-people Nathan Pope would soon be attracting was obvious. Party people. Media people. If decisions had been made, whatever they might be, they'd need to be sold to the public. The last converted Puke would be just the sort of thing to trot out and show off to a curious nation – with a sufficiently harrowing and contrite tale of rehabilitation prepared for him, of course.

And it had just landed in Jude's lap.

She scrambled to get her thoughts in order as she pulled into the hospital's underground parking lot. She parked and killed the engine, lighting a cigarette and slowly smoking it down to the filter, sitting there behind the wheel of her car. She didn't want to step out until she had a plan of attack. If she could play the situation just right, it could be big – really big. The last Puke could be... well, the autobiography alone could be a multi-million dollar seller. Jude even knew a novelist down in San Diego with a half-finished manuscript right along those lines. Only the names would have to be changed, the geography moved around a bit.

Yes, a whole new million dollar media empire. The Last Puke. Not just a story, but a brand... it could be big. If handled right. And Jude could handle it.

She opened her car door and stomped out her cigarette on the concrete. She grabbed her purse and crossed the parking lot towards the elevators. She had it all straight in her head now, not five minutes after her cell phone had rung. She pushed the up arrow and waited, digging in her purse for another cigarette. She knew exactly how to handle Nathan Pope:

She'd fuck him the first chance she could get.

#

Steve pulled himself up off the edge of the hospital bed and let his gown fall to the ground around his feet. Jude was watching him, no more than a few feet away, apparently unconcerned by his obvious erection. He took the folded jeans off the bed and shook them out, stepping into them. Once he'd secured his erection away in the fabric, he zipped up the jeans, pulling the white shirt on over his shoulders.

As he was buttoning the shirt, he noticed for the first time his reflection in the mirror. The sight came as a shock. There he stood, half-dressed in the mirror, the round, plastic power socket just below his sternum. But it was not Steve staring back at him from the mirror. No, it was High School Nathan standing there with the new surgical implant in his chest.

Someone had shaved his face and trimmed his hair while he'd been unconscious. A brace of long-neglected teeth still filled his mouth, but the sight of his own clean-shaven face was something he'd almost forgotten. But it was more than just grooming, Steve realized, as he looked at himself in the mirror. The posture, the shape of his shoulders, the sight of himself standing at his full six-foot height. It was the old Nathan, not Steve. The Nathan who'd played J.V. Football and eaten three meals a day, and worried about things like homework and girl's phone numbers. It was the Nathan before he'd become Steve. The Steve that survived off scrounged food, that lived off the refuse of a society that had long given up on eating.

It was Nathan in the mirror, not Steve, he realized as he buttoned up the shirt over his stem.

"There are some people we need to meet," Jude spoke, interrupting Steve's mediation.

"People?"

"If you're feeling up to it, of course." Jude slipped in beside Steve, putting an arm around his middle. She admired the reflection of the two of them together.

"Up for it? Sure, of course." Steve smiled at the mirror. "What people?"

"People," Jude replied, laying her head on Steve's shoulder. "People-people. You'll like them."

"People?" Steve hedged, feeling some almost forgotten tingle of bigotry. "Stem people?"

"Sweetie," Jude stepped away, picking up her purse. "There aren't any other kind of people."

Steve stood motionless, watching High School Nathan stare back at him from the mirror.

"You coming, Nathan?" Jude said from the hospital room door.

"Yeah, yeah sure," Nathan replied.

Chapter 5

The old tattoo parlor was just across the freeway on 45^th. Elder Tull slipped down the east side of the building, where it didn't quite touch up against the next structure, and came out into the alleyway behind the parlor. There, a small set of stairs climbed up to the rear entrance. Elder was just starting up when the rear door opened suddenly. A handsome, well-dressed Stem emerged from the darkness within. Elder backed up and let the man exit, keeping his distance as the Stem skipped down the stairs. The man looked around nervously, adjusted his suit, and locked his focus on Elder.

"Fucking Pukes," he cursed at Elder and started off up the alley. Elder watched him exit the alley, the Stem's gaze dodging quickly here and there. Even the back of the Stem's head was handsome, Elder realized, as the perfectly styled haircut vanished around the corner.

"Fucking Stems," Elder cursed after the man when he was sure the Stem was completely out of earshot. Elder turned back to the stairs and climbed them into the old tattoo parlor.

Inside, the only light burning was the red bulb in the large picture window.

Sweet Beat was sitting on her stool in the window, lazily wrapped in nothing but a white sheet. She was smoking a cigarette, the kind the Stems smoked, a toxic mix of thick tobacco and high-powered pot. Sweet turned to look at Elder as he entered with the glassy eyes of someone who lacked the peptide inhibitors needed to handle the high-test weed. The Stems were almost immune to the stuff, many smoking two or three packs a day, but for Pukes, the cigarettes were caustic.

"Sweet, how you doing?" Elder asked as he entered. Sweet Beat said nothing, taking another drag on her cigarette and turning back to look out the window. A thin stream of pedestrians passed by, each trying hard not to notice Beat's mostly naked shape bathed in the red light. "Did you hear about Steve? Cops got him. Eydie's back at the flat. She's in a bad way."

Sweet Beat said nothing. Elder coughed. Her silence was uncharacteristic. 'Sweet' Beat's name was something of a joke, like 'Little' John. Beatrice was anything but sweet. She must have been high, out of her mind wasted, not to say something. Steve. Cops. Stemmed. Elder coughed again.

"You okay, Sweet?"

Was she high enough that Elder could just take some food? Would she even notice? It didn't pay to make that call wrong though, not with Sweet Beat, as the USMC and Semper Fi tattoos on her naked shoulders attested.

"I..." Elder started and stopped, trying another tactic. "I talked to Kevin. He said that maybe... for Eydie... you see, she'll be hungry... soon..."

Beat had finished her cigarette. She dropped it on the wood floor and stomped it out with the heel of her black pump. She stood up, unceremoniously letting the sheet fall to the floor. She walked buck naked across the room and to a small purple refrigerator tucked away in the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator door and leaned forward, reaching in.

Something inside Elder leapt.

Elder was encouraged. The sight of Beat, naked, stirred him. He could feel her lean, half-Filipino frame light an old fire in his filthy jeans. He almost screamed with surprise and delight. Perhaps such things were not completely lost to him. He touched his crotch, hoping to help the feeling along, but pulled his hand away as Sweet came up out of the refrigerator with two foil bags in her hands.

Best not to push your luck, Elder thought, enjoying the sight of Sweet Beat's front as much as he'd enjoyed the rear. Sweet closed the fridge and returned to the main room, handing the foil bags to Elder. She snapped up a dressing gown off the bed and pulled it over her shoulders, not bothering to tie it closed. She returned to her post on her stool by the window without a word.

Elder licked his lips, the sight of smoldering sex quickly trumped by the promise of a solid meal.

The bags were ButtyNut, a mix of peanut butter, wheat and various nutritious spray vitamins the Government produced out of the goodness of its heart. One bag was supposed to be all the nutrition a Puke needed for a single day.

It actually tasted pretty good. At least that's what Elder remembered from the few times he'd tried it. The Government supposedly made enough to feed the whole of the country's Puke population three times over, but distribution was so corrupt that very little of it ever made it into the hands of hungry Pukes. Most of it was snatched up by disreputable Stems, like the one Elder had encountered in the alley out back. Stems who used the food packets as currency – along with pot cigarettes – to pay for the sexual services of desperate Pukes.

It was a fetish with some Stems. Something kinky. They reveled in the literal filth of violating an anus that still served a function. If Elder understood it correctly, ass-fucking was the most common form of sex amongst Stems, the orifice long ceasing to serve any other purpose. But to pump on an asshole that still had some utility...

Well, it was how Sweet Beat made her living.

Elder Tull was in no position to judge. Two whole servings of ButtyNut was quite the score. He thought about thanking Sweet, but guessed she wouldn't even hear him.

It was taking all of Elder's willpower to fight back the urge to crack open the foil and start chowing down. But this score he'd get back to the flat and share with Eydie, he promised himself.

After all, if there was still some life down there... if Elder was still some sort of man after all these years... perhaps Eydie might spend a little time showing Elder how grateful she was for the meal....

"You hear about the Potluck?" Beat said as Elder was turning to leave. The sound of her voice made Elder jump.

"Yeah, Kevin said," Elder replied.

"You coming?" Beat asked, looking back over her shoulder, glassy-eyed.

"Fuck yeah! Try and stop me!"

"Bring Eydie, huh?" Beat was reaching for a pack of cigarettes beside her stool, groggily leaning, unbalanced on her seat.

"Well, of course."

"You hear Prime was in Bannock?" Sweet Beat had her smokes and pulled a cigarette out of the pack.

"What?" Elder asked in shock. Sweet might as well have said that the Prime Administrator had been to the North Pole to meet Santa Claus. "What did you just say?" Elder pressed.

But Beat had her new cigarette lit and had returned her attention to the picture window. Stems were moving by as Beat sat in the red light, her dressing gown open, hanging away from her breasts. Elder let himself out, chalking her talk up to the chronic.

Bannock, indeed. Why not say he'd been to the moon? Elder could almost taste the blue cheese...

Chapter 6

The tires of Jude's small go-kart of a sports car caught air as she crested the hill, hurtling towards the downtown core. Nathan screamed and grabbed frantically at the dash before him. The road twisted away before him down the hill, lit up with a chain of red brake lights. Jude wasn't slowing, shifting up into fourth as the watermelon-sized engine behind them whirred. She was laughing. At least, her face seemed to be making the expression of laughter. Nathan could hear nothing over the sound of his own shrieks. Jude made a hard right, and suddenly they were threading their way down a freeway on ramp that moments before had been completely invisible.

They picked up more speed as Jude merged the low car into traffic. She changed lanes frantically, rapidly shifting, her beautiful blond hair snapping out and above the car's open top. The light fabric of her short skirt was riding high in the breeze, revealing more than a little extra thigh.

They were heading north, over the canal bridge, back into the University District. Nathan was heading home. No, Steve was heading home... Nathan was living in the moment, watching the muscles of Jude's legs flex as she worked the car's clutch.

It was almost too easy, Jude thought, as she turned her head to change lanes and caught a glimpse of where Nathan was staring. Though it wasn't exactly fair. With the remote control Jude had surreptitiously slipped into her purse, she could have dialed in any emotion for Nathan that she chose. Lust was easy, just a small hit of dopamine every time he glanced in Jude's direction. Two or three iterations and Nathan's brain would take over and supply the dopamine naturally on cue. Disgust would have been just as easy. Hate, horror, all were within her power. But only lust was any help to Jude right then. She needed Nathan controllable – controllable by her. And the anticipation of copulation would keep him well and truly focused until Jude decided to release the tension...

Once the whole deal was in the bag, once all the angles had played themselves out, once she knew exactly where she stood. And not until then...

But she knew she could never pull the deal off all on her own.

While she'd waited at Nathan's bedside, while the nurses had shaved him, she'd fired off a dozen quick texts. It would be difficult to get a media war room setup at ten on a Friday night, but not impossible. She knew plenty of the right kind of people who'd get out of bed or excuse themselves from a night club, upon receiving a tersely-worded text. Wheels were in motion. While Jude had been handling a hysterical Nathan, things were being arranged. A single word on her phone had told her where the first meeting of the evening would be: "Dremel's" it had read.

"So, who are these People-people?" Nathan asked as they pulled off the freeway, falling into the queue of traffic waiting on the light at 45th. Nathan was so taken with the view of Jude's creamy white thighs that he completely missed the sight of his friend Kevin standing at the exit, displaying his obtuse 'Food' sign.

"Friends of mine," Jude lied. "Peters, he's with the Big U. And Waverly, he works for the paper."

"Why do I want to meet them?" Nathan asked. The light changed, and the traffic shunted out onto 45th, but they had hardly moved a block before the traffic knitted up again, brake lights shining up the street towards the Ave.

Jude flipped her transmission into neutral and leaned back in her chair with a soft sigh. "Oh, they want meet you, dear," Jude purred.

"The U?" Nathan asked with suspicion, turning his attention to the traffic in front of them. "The Party? I don't know..."

Jude laughed. "Nathan, you're still thinking like a Puke."

"Well, I am," Nathan replied without thinking.

Jude didn't answer. The traffic eased forward and Jude put her car into gear. They rolled on in silence until they came within sight of the corner of Brooklyn and 45^th. There, a stage and the fluttering banners of a Brothers of Bannock Revival were erected. But the normal crowd of hungry Pukes gathered for the free handout was conspicuously absent. The instruments on the stage were quiet, and the pulpit empty of the expected fire and brimstone preacher. Instead, a few police officers in full SWAT gear were milling around the empty city lot, the flashing lights of their patrol cars casting shadows off the surrounding buildings.

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