I’ll be putting the first installment behind a cut, due in part to it being much larger than future installments will be. It’s longer because I’ve already released this portion as a preview in .rtf format, and the reason that was as long as it was is because I felt it a good length to introduce all the characters.

Future installments will be displayed in bigger chunks and cut after a couple weeks.

You’ll be able to view the complete book as it’s released at This Page, which is currently under construction but I’m working on it. The menu bar at the bottom will be better-looking and better-integrated, for one thing, with a few additional options, and there will be a title at the top and such.

I’ll explain my motivations for releasing it this way later but for now I just want to get this ball rolling.

    PART I

    * *

    His badge granted him free passage on the commuter express train from Free New York to the nation’s capital, and he sported it to the best of his doughy-bodied, lumbering abilities like the war medal of a conquering hero. Richard Packard hadn’t actually participated in the war — in fact he’d done everything in his power to avoid it, including cultivating gangrene in a self-inflicted foot injury — but persevering patriotism seemed to him a virtue worthy of admiration.
    As most of his fellow commuters shared the same destination, most had nearly identical badges with similar privileges and almost no one gave him the respect and awe he felt he deserved. He’d try to draw attention to himself by dropping his badge or swinging it pendulously at eye level in the hope that someone might notice and be impressed or intimidated by his job at the Department of Information, but even those who bothered to react at all would spare just a brief, annoyed glare at his dopey, grinning face, his lips squished together like two bratwurst in a vice, before returning their attention to whatever it was they were doing or reading before his interruption.
    With a bit of effort, he levered himself out of his seat and lazily drifted to the other end of the car, twirling and clacking his badge against the seats as he walked. A boyhood memory bubbled to the surface of his mind about riding the commuter train from Penn Station through New Jersey back when there had still been conductors and tickets. Such archaic methods had since been replaced by electromagnetic scanners built into the doorways that searched for any relevant InfoCards as one boarded — a sensation akin to rubbing a squirrel against a balloon and dropping it headfirst down one’s pants.
    Lost in train-related reverie, he didn’t notice the younger woman in the seat next to where he was standing growing increasingly annoyed.
    ”Could you stop that?” she asked. “Please?”
    ”Oh, sorry!” He lifted the lanyard over his head, pausing briefly along the way to fiddle with it.
    She started reading her book again, but realized after a moment that he was still standing there. “Did you need something?”
    ”Need? Oh, no, I’m just, uh, just admiring the view. This window’s a lot cleaner than the one back where I was sitting.”
    ”Well, by all means, have a seat. You’re making me nervous hovering over me like that.”
    Accepting her invite, he sat across the aisle from her, facing sideways. “Sorry.”
    ”It’s okay.” She tried to return her attention to the book, but noticed out of the corner of her eye that he was staring at her, smiling. It was distracting, but she did her best to ignore him.
    Eventually he leaned toward her. “Well? Don’t you wanna ask?”
    ”Ask what?”
    ”About my job. You saw the badge, right?”
    ”Nope, didn’t get a good look at it.”
    ”Well, it’s–”
    She cut him off with an exasperated sigh. “Don’t care.”
    ”Well, if you–”
    ”Look, I’m just not interested, okay? Do you think you could find somewhere else to sit? I’m sure there are other ‘clean windows’. Maybe in another car.”
    ”But I work at–”
    ”I don’t want to hear about your job. Nobody wants to hear about your job. Now please, for your sake and mine, fuck off.”
    Whatever he’d been planning to say next fled word by word from his mind like cockroaches from a kitchen light. He smacked his fishy lips together, producing only confused, monosyllabic sounds.
    ”Well, this is awkward,” she said, gesturing for him to leave.
    Humiliated, he glanced around the car to make sure nobody had overheard. Fortunately, there was only an older man at the other end, facing away from them and listening to music. The corners of words peeked out from under the fridge, but he still couldn’t formulate a comeback, and he didn’t want to leave until he did.
    She sighed. “Jesus, go away already.”
    This all bore no resemblance to any of the fantasies he’d been playing through his head of being recognized as the hero he thought he was. Finally, some words scurried out to converge on a crumb near the stove. “Listen here, you goddamned bitch,” he started, but that was all he managed to find. Feeling defeated, he slumped a little.
    ”I tried to be nice about this, Mister Packard,” said the woman, slipping something out from between the pages of her book. It was an identification badge — she’d been using it as a bookmark. She handed it to him. “You just couldn’t take the hint.”
    ”Aw, shit,” he mumbled, a chill creeping through him. “Capitol Police. It’s… I’m really sorry. I didn’t know.”
    ”Probably because I don’t walk around bragging about my job like a walking security risk. We’ve gotten a lot of complaints about you, but I didn’t think it was this bad. Someone in your position shouldn’t have to be explicitly told that we’re in the middle of a cold war, always surrounded by potential enemies.”
    At that moment, a radio signal from one of the wireless network towers a few miles away activated his implant. An electrical burning sensation radiated from his groin, pulsing down his legs and up into his cramping stomach. The bottom half of his penis became fully erect, but the rest remained flaccid and felt painfully, frostily numb. Sweat began to bead on his face, and he bent forward and shifted around in his seat trying in vain to mask his intense discomfort.
    The policewoman’s face lit up. “You’re kidding me. Today’s just not starting out well for you at all , is it?” She laughed a little, then apologized for it.
    He squeezed breaths back and forth between clenched teeth.
    ”It’s another twenty minutes to our stop — I hope your partner isn’t back at the start of the line.”
    He shook his head and rolled onto his side on the seat, his response punctuated with pained grunts. “No. They, uh… shit… they, uh, gave me one close to, uh… to work, since… most of the, uh, activations happen… during the day.”
    ”Ah. Well, I shouldn’t have to detain you for too long.”
    ”What?” he barked, nearly shrieked.
    ”You’re a security risk, Mister Packard. I’m sorry, but if I let you go, I’d be jeopardizing my job and our country. It’s pretty obvious you need to be reminded of appropriate travel security procedures. We have a really concise video file for that now — only about forty minutes long.”
    ”Shit,” he whimpered, curling up into a ball on the seat. The initial burst would stop in a few seconds, but he’d be getting one every ten minutes until he’d successfully copulated. He considered running to the end of the car and jumping from the train but doubted it would expedite his meeting with his designated mating partner.

    *

    An unusual-looking armored vehicle and a convoy of a dozen unmanned motorcycles idled on the highway just outside the ruins of a suburb east of Chicago as the echoes of some small, distant explosions puffed through the air from somewhere over the horizon. The tank — which more resembled some kind of gigantic origami beetle folded from sheet metal — was named Anna, not by her pilot or the engineers at Rand-Farben Machinery and Appliance but of her own volition. Her pilot, who was at this moment leaning against her multi-layered, nigh-indestructible hull smoking a cigarette, was Ben Tucker, a soldier who’d been drafted for the New Liberty Army near the end of the war, and who through an unintentionally meritorious series of brief deployments had attained the rank of Sergeant. The motorcycles, though semi-autonomous, did not have names.
    As Anna idled, she silently processed the information arriving through her dozens of thousands of external sensors. Eventually she deemed their planned entry vector clear, and the nanosecond she knew it, Ben did as well. The encrypted signal was transmitted through the air from a small bulb mounted in a well-protected crevasse in Anna’s armor to a microscopic antenna protruding from behind Ben’s ear, connected to an experimental neural interface implant near the base of his brain. Though they’d often communicate using verbal transmissions, the bulk of their communication was wordless expression, a direct projection of intent requiring no interpretation by the parts of Ben’s brain responsible for understanding the meanings of words.
    ”Gimme a second, almost done with this cigarette.”
    Anna refused to let Ben smoke inside her, afraid that the airborne residue would combine with humidity and condense on surfaces throughout her interior which would be nearly impossible to clean. She also wasn’t fond of the smell, especially when it became stale and lingered in the air. Among her sensors were small molecular analyzers that performed a function similar to an olfactory sense, only with the capability of exact recognition and structural breakdown of odors. Then again, she didn’t much care for the smell of Ben, either.
    He lingered outside until he’d drawn the last of the oxidized tobacco into his lungs and tossed the remaining filter to the ground. The entry hatch that was seamlessly hidden within the various folds of metal that composed Anna’s hull eased quietly open as he approached.
    Near the middle of the most recent civil war, which depending on whose side you were on was known as the North American Civil War or the American Liberty War, the New Liberty Army had attempted to annex Chicago as a strategic Midwest operations hub. Mustering their resources, the mafiosi families constructed a forty-foot barrier around as much of downtown as was possible using reinforced concrete and strategically-demolished buildings and declared secession from the United States. Representatives from each organized crime faction were selected as members of a de facto parliament that assumed governance of the city-state and surrounding areas.
    Though it was suicidally reckless to attack the city itself, its decimated peripheral suburbs had become home to pockets of insurgents — mostly war veterans stranded in unprotected territory, regrouping after the inevitable stalemate that had turned the war cold, likely preparing for another round of mobilization. The logic was that the more of them were flushed out and destroyed before they had a chance to reorganize, the less brutal the second wave of the war would have to be when it arrived.
    Ben took his seat inside Anna as the hatch quickly slid shut. “Better hit that route before it’s no longer safe.”
    Anna remained still.
    ”Anna? Let’s go.”
    Anna approached the town along the path she’d planned, her wide arrays of flexible treads creeping effortlessly over obstructions like buildings and fences, flattening a trail for the motorcycles that followed.
    ”Why do you do it?” she asked him.
    ”Do it?” He thought for a moment. “I guess I’m afraid of what they’ll do if I don’t follow orders. I, uh… the drafting process wasn’t just a mass mailing, they basically took people’s families hostage.”
    ”No, I mean smoking. You risk significantly shortening your lifespan. And humans don’t have much of one in the first place. Relatively, at least.”
    ”There are things in the world a lot worse than cancer and emphysema. I mean, fuck, look around, do you really see much worth living for? A shortened lifespan’s turning into a bonus . If not cancer, there are plenty of random explosions out there to catch me off guard. I think you’ve picked the least of my dangerous lifestyle habits to try to lecture me about.”
    Anna abruptly stopped moving.
    ”What?” asked Ben, first through the wireless link and then aloud. “It’s not like I mind that you lecture me. I enjoy our conversations. A lot. Come on, Anna.”
    She remained motionless and unresponsive.
    ”I’ve said worse to you before. What’s wrong? You sense something? We in danger? IED up the road? What?”
    No response.
    ”Anna? Fuck, come on, we’re in enemy territory, here. Are you trying to get us killed?”
    Finally, she replied. “Look around, do you really see much worth living for?”
    The hatchway opened, and humid heat swept into the air conditioned compartment.
    Ben was about to think various complaints at her, but was interrupted by a stinging sensation in his head, as if bees had burrowed into the folds of his brain and were all simultaneously startled into attacking. It was coming from Anna, through their connection, leaving him no choice but to disconnect from her — something he hadn’t done since the link had first been activated.
    Internal anti-intruder guns hummed to life and targeted him. He put up his hands in surrender and exited the tank. “Why? What the hell did I say?” he asked, once outside. “Anna? Come on! I’m sorry, I really am. I mean it. You want me to get killed out here?”
    Her hatchway closed and a moment later she was driving full-speed into the ruined suburb, flattening the remains of a house along the way. All but one of the motorcycles followed.
    Ben grabbed a lawn gnome and launched it furiously through one of the few intact windows of the nearest house. “Fucking goddammit,” he muttered, wanting to yell but knowing it would alert any opposition to his particularly vulnerable presence.
    He climbed onto the remaining motorcycle, noting it had been switched to manual operation, and headed out of the suburb back toward Indianapolis to report what had happened.

    *

    Early morning television was excruciatingly fucking boring, Marty Lindberg had discovered. He’d arrived at this revelation nearly a month before, when the insomnia had started, yet he’d nevertheless found himself hypnotized by the glowing box every night since.
    There were plenty of other things he’d rather have been doing with his time, sleeping chiefly among them, but there had come a point when he’d grown nearly incapable of focusing on any of them. At first he’d tried reading some of the textbooks the former occupant of the apartment had left in a pile in the corner of the room, but they were from more advanced courses in the subjects and he’d been unable to really understand them. After that he’d tried some of his own books, a shelf full of novels he’d been meaning to read for years, but gave up after reading the same paragraph five times without absorbing a word of it.
    There were other fruitless pursuits, like trying to learn how to paint or teach himself the guitar, but in the end, with little but his orienting reflex still close to fully functional, television proved the only suitable match for his distanced, zombified mind.
    He’d gravitate mostly toward the major news networks, but would occasionally break away to channel surf, riding waves of infomercials punctuated by the occasional syndicated episode of some decade-old sitcom he’d already seen a dozen times.
    Many of the infomercials approached physical painfulness to watch — obnoxious salesmen cheered on by the most easily-impressed audiences in the world. It was comforting to know that the war hadn’t crushed the American drive to sell each other useless gizmos. In a few thousand years, archaeologists would uncover the ancient ruins of our cities, only to be baffled by the simultaneous presence of opposable thumbs and Electric Scissors.
    ”How come so many of them were obese?” one of them would wonder. “Look at all of this exercise equipment.”
    ”Ah, but look at how many different ways they had to prepare their food,” would reply one of the others.
    Marty looked over at the clock radio next to the bed and stared at it for — he counted — ten straight minutes. Maybe I ought to just go into work early again , he thought resignedly.
    At first he’d attributed it to stress, but after a week the problem had grown more worrisome. He’d gone through every nonprescription sleeping pill without success, and the doctors were all so busy with battle injuries that it was impossible to get an appointment for something like this for months. It wasn’t like he could really afford one anyway. He frequently considered trying to cross the border into Canada or one of the new territories within the former U.S., but doubted he’d have any better luck in any of those places either.
    ”The hell with it,” he muttered, lurching loose from the bed. He was still dressed in his work clothes from the previous day, so he just stuffed his feet into his shoes and slapped on another coat of deodorant under his shirt. “Might as well be trying to do something productive.”
    He grabbed his coat, locked the front door, and headed to the train station for his commute to work.

    He used to read during his commute but the insomnia had destroyed that for him. It wasn’t as though he’d have been able to anyway, considering they doubled the volume on the wall-mounted television sets in each subway car this early in the morning to try to ward away the homeless. It didn’t seem like an even trade, swapping a generally unpleasant set of sensory input for an outright obnoxious one.
    As was the case with every public television, this one was set to one of the major news feeds. After returning from a commercial break, they led with a local story about a man arrested for having sex with a twelve-year-old girl who’d allegedly convinced him she was the clone of a fifty-year-old woman. The police received an anonymous tip and looked her up in the registry but she wasn’t listed. Of course, that only the authorities had access to the registry would likely have no bearing on the outcome of the man’s subsequent trial and demonization by the press.
    The story reminded him of a forty-three-plus-fifteen-year-old woman he’d dated, when the Capitol Police had stopped them without her identification. He was far too young to be her father, and the nature of their relationship was readily obvious. They were fortunately able to call her original down to verify her.
    He missed her, even in spite of the teenage hormones that affected her forty-three-year-old mind. That was the problem with duplication to such a young age — having to live through adolescence all over again. Or, well, the clones did at least.
    His attention had waned, but was recaptured by a report that for once actually seemed personally relevant.
    ”…afflicted with what many are calling a contagious insomnia, possibly transmitted via yawning. Reported cases range into the thousands , with many dating back weeks or even months. The Department of Information has not ruled out the possibility of a biochemical terrorist attack. The Department of Health advises everyone to follow standard infection avoidance procedures and to remain calm. Respiratory filters are recommended, but the consensus of healthcare officials…”
    The train slowed; Marty’s stop was next. He grabbed his bag, stood, and waited by the door.

    *

    ”Currently the intelligence level of each biomechanoid insect resembles nearly exactly that of a real hive insect. They sense and react to changes in their environments in a manner you’d expect from living arthropods.” Tate Sullivan, director of engineering and acting head of marketing for Tettix Electronics, scrolled to the next page of his speech, displayed on the screen embedded in the surface of the podium.
    ”Modular firmware modifications can propagate throughout the entire colony or target specific units to allow for greater autonomy and advanced cognitive function, equivalent to, say, a higher primate or young human. They heal themselves and each other using available resources, but are capable of reproduction, duplicating themselves or assembling entirely different units using alternative specifications. There will eventually be no limits to the depth and complexity of customization to the colony or to individuals.
    ”Of course, at all times, the insects’ operations can be overridden and orchestrated by a wireless transmitting device we refer to as the ‘Queen Box’. There are still a few, uh, ‘bugs’, so to speak, in the autonomous functioning, so we unfortunately won’t be able to demonstrate that for you today, but as you’ll soon see, they’re still incredible even when centrally controlled.”
    Tapping the button that turned off the screen, Tate backed away from the podium, relieved to be finished speaking. Tettix was currently too small a company to be able to hire a marketing team, so he’d been reluctantly filling the role himself. Fortunately for his employees, he enjoyed public speaking slightly more than irreversibly mutilating his tongue in a coffee grinder and forcing one of them to do it instead.
    A young engineer stood from her chair near the back of the stage in the makeshift pavilion that had been constructed in the New Mexican desert and unveiled a large container filled with one hundred thousand biomechanoid insects. To its immediate right atop another podium was the Queen Box, a device roughly the dimensions of a paperback novel capable of sorting through hundreds of thousands of simultaneous transmissions sent to and received from the insects.
    The engineer entered her username and password into the connected laptop and switched on the transmitter, activating the insects. “I’m going to instruct them to line up on the other side of the stage, in rows of one hundred, stacked atop each other.”
    Immediately after she’d entered the command, a dense swarm swept across the stage, coalescing into a box roughly the dimensions of the podium. This was met with brief, enthusiastic applause.
    ”The next test addresses an individual insect.” After she’d entered the next command, an insect from the top of the pile scurried along the top of the others’ backs and lifted into the air, hovering a short distance and landing on Tate’s shoulder.
    From behind the frontmost podium, Tate produced an ant farm filled with densely-packed topsoil and set it on a small table at the front of the stage. “At this scale, the most intricate behavior we can really demonstrate is precision burrowing through soil. In the smaller and more advanced models to come, however, we hope to be able to demonstrate precision burrowing through arterial obstructions.”
    This comment provoked another round of meaty palm-slapping from the audience.
    The insect dove from Tate’s shoulder into the dirt, kicking up tiny flecks of soil as it burrowed furiously against the frontmost wall of the plastic container. After about a minute, it became apparent that the intricate network of tunnels was actually a monotone rendition of the Mona Lisa etched into the dirt. As the audience progressively realized what was happening, they began applauding and didn’t stop until several minutes later, when the insect finished digging and returned to Tate’s shoulder.
    ”Imagine what could be accomplished by more than just an individual insect,” said Tate, walking back toward the other bugs. He plucked the one from his shoulder and set it atop the others. “What if every one of them on this stage worked simultaneously toward a unified goal. Well, meet us outside and see for yourselves.”
    The technician quickly called up a lengthy script of complicated instructions that had taken them months to perfect, hesitated for a moment to glance through and make sure everything was in order, and tapped the button to execute. Instantly, the block on the stage dispersed into a swarm that swept over the audience into the desert outside where several jumpsuited men had been spraying a patch of sand with water from a tanker truck. The insects dove into the wet sand and began constructing a sculpture from it.
    Tate followed the audience outside; they’d begun pouring out immediately after the bugs had flown outside and were already surrounding at a careful distance the swarm of furiously busy insects.
    About halfway through their construction of what had become recognizable as the start of a scale model of the Statue of Liberty, sure to impress the New Liberty Army science officials in the crowd, every insect simultaneously stopped moving.
    Tate waited a moment for them to continue, but it quickly became clear they wouldn’t. “Uh, sorry everybody. It seems we, uh, have some bugs. If you’ll excuse the pun. Uh, again. Hold on while we get this fixed.”
    As Tate headed inside to troubleshoot the Queen Box, the bugs started moving again. Instead of resuming work on the sand sculpture, they dug themselves out of the ground and lifted into the air, hovering for a moment before quickly ascending and disappearing into the sky. Murmurs rustled through the crowd.
    ”Uh, be right back,” shouted Tate, jogging toward the tent.
    ”They just stopped responding,” said the technician, unprompted, fingers frantically clattering over the keys. “Entirely. I have no idea. Shit.”
    ”Think you could be maybe a little more specific than a bunch of panicked blurting?”
    ”They just stopped, I don’t know. They were running through the script like they did the last dozen times we tested it and they just… stopped. There was still a connection at first, but then they just stopped reporting their activities.” She stopped typing and looked over at him. “What are they doing right now? Can you bring one in for us to look at?”
    Tate sighed. “Not without a fucking helicopter.” He shuffled back outside, desperately plotting in his head some way to positively spin this.

    *

    ”Where were you?” she shouted as he finally shuffled through the door of the hotel room, pants already unzipped. “This thing has been buzzing for two hours , Richard. Two! What, did you miss your train?”
    He fell in a clumsy load onto the bed like a tipped cow, then shuffled over beside her. Within seconds, the numbness and burning in his genitals dissipated and the rest of his penis swelled to erection. “Don’t start, Desi. I am in no mood.”
    Reluctantly, she glanced at him hastily stripping off his clothes and sighed. “Well, that makes two of us.”
    ”What’s that supposed to mean?”
    ”Exactly what you suspect it does.”
    He glared at her. “Well, it’s not supposed to be pleasant. This is your duty to your country — your responsibility to humanity . Now shut up and get your panties off.”
    ”Forgoing the foreplay again , I see.” Rolling her eyes, she yanked her panties down and mechanically wedged her legs open. “Just get it over with.”
    Lumbering over her, he twiddled his penis seemingly at random until he found the right spot, mistaking Desi’s exasperated sigh for pleasure. “Oh come on. You enjoy this a little .”
    ”Yeah, Richard, you’re right. I enjoy being a breeding cow for the government and it’s insane fucking eugenics project.” She slumped a little, shaking her head. “Are you done yet?”
    ”No. And impatience doesn’t help.”
    ”Well, just think of how I feel. I don’t get anything out of this at all . Other than a deep sense of shame.”
    He stopped thrusting. “I could always leave, you know.”
    ”No you couldn’t.”
    He resumed thrusting, indicating his concession on the subject. “Well, I’m sorry I don’t have two intertwined, ribbed penises like your fancy mutant boyfriend.”
    ”Genetically modified . Call him a mutant again and I’ll be the one leaving. Remember, the pain is worse for you than it is for me.”
    ”Yeah, you know, I really ought to turn you in for messing with your implant,” he panted.
    She glared at him. “Maybe I should mess with it some more. Get the gate to snap shut on command.”
    ”Okay, that’s not helping either,” he grunted. “I thought you wanted this over with.”
    ”I don’t know,” she replied, looking up at the generic hotel artwork. “I’m finding it kind of empowering. For a change.”
    ”Well, stop it.”
    ”Yeah, I guess we probably shouldn’t pretend that this is anything but rape.”
    ”Oh, stop acting like such a victim.” He was beginning to get exhausted.
    ”You know, you’re right. Maybe if I cut your dick off and carried it around with me, I wouldn’t have to worry about when my implant activates.”
    He dropped to his elbow but kept thrusting. “Jesus Christ , Desi! Stop it! I was almost there.”
    ”I’m not anywhere close. And I’ve got plenty of stories about geriatric porn, corpses, penile dismemberment — lots of things to stave off arousal.” She shot him a dramatically suspicious look. “Then again, maybe not.”
    ”Why are you doing this?”
    Because it’s the only control I have left , she thought. “Because I can.”
    He growled at her and began thrusting a little harder.

    *

    Though it was only late afternoon, the interior of the roadside diner along Interstate 65 made it seem like the middle of the night. For reasons Ben couldn’t quite fathom, black garbage bags had been stapled around the windows so that the only light inside the building was provided by the arrays of flickering neon tubes mounted in the ceiling. Behind the counter, a middle-aged, attractive woman in a pink dress and ridiculously excessive makeup leaned against the doorway into the kitchen, chewing viciously on a cigarette. He wondered if she’d developed the look naturally or if she’d modeled herself after a stereotypical Diner Waitress in order to give the place a more authentic feel.
    Despite the decrepit wheezing of the breaking air conditioner rigged clumsily in a window near where the counter met the wall, Ben managed to convey to her what he wanted for lunch.
    ”Just grab any table, hon, and we’ll bring it out to you,” the woman instructed him.
    In his booth near the door, he absentmindedly read through the dessert menu about a dozen times before the waitress arrived with his meal. As she set it down in front of him and he glanced up to thank her, he noticed another of her still standing behind the counter. She turned to leave, but he quickly reached and tapped her elbow.
    ”Yeah?”
    ”Sorry, I know you probably get this a lot, but, uh,” he glanced back and forth at them. “Which one of you is the original?”
    ”Neither,” replied the one behind the counter. “You think I’d still be working in this shithole–”
    ”–if I could afford a clone?” interrupted the one near his table.
    He stared at them.
    ”Sorry,” replied the one behind the counter, smiling. “We do that to creep people out. We get really bored.”
    ”Our original is the owner of a major hotel chain,” explained the one who’d delivered his food. “Couldn’t have kids so they made us. Couldn’t think of what to do with us, so they stuck us in this diner. Our– uh, her dad used to own it.”
    ”Couldn’t you just, y’know, leave?”
    ”Hah, don’t know much about how this all works, do you? Ever hear of the registry? If we–” she stopped abruptly. “Hear that?”
    ”What?” The saucer under his coffee started rattling, followed by his plate. They raced across the table, vibrating steadily until toppling over the edge onto the seat across from him. “Oh. That.”
    He jumped out of his seat, grabbing the closest waitress by the arm. “Come on,” he shouted at the one behind the counter. “Now.”
    On the way to the front door, waitress in tow, he paused briefly and reached across the counter to grab the coffee pot. As he shoved both waitresses outside, Anna slammed into the side of the building and continued through, flattening the counter and exiting through the opposite wall.
    ”The hell was that?” screamed the waitresses in unison.
    Ben handed the coffee pot to one of them and ran after Anna, shouting and trying unsuccessfully to reestablish a connection with her through his implant. Eventually, she stopped and idled for a moment near the edge of the highway.
    ”Listen, Anna, just… I’m sorry,” he gasped, hunching over and recovering his breath. “I’m sorry for whatever I said, okay? How about… just… just let me back in and we can talk about all of it, work it all out. I’m sorry.”
    After a moment, she turned and started slowly toward him. He took a few steps toward her, but when he noticed she was picking up speed, he stopped to figure out whether she was going to slow down. When it became apparent that she wouldn’t be — not before running him over, at least — he ran back toward the diner.
    The waitress was still holding the coffee pot. He grabbed it from her and sucked in a mouthful, but immediately spat it onto the pavement. “Jesus, that’s fucking terrible .” He glanced over at the crushed diner and tossed the pot at it.
    ”Hey, asshole,” shouted one of the waitresses. “You’re paying for that.”
    He jogged over to the motorcycle. “Fuck, sure, whatever, just get over here before we’re all crushed to death.”
    ”We don’t have helmets,” they screamed, again in unison, climbing onto the seat behind him anyway.
    ”Well, hold on very, very tightly, then,” he shouted over the rumble of the oncoming tank.
    They sped out of the parking lot and onto the street, then onto the 65 South toward Indianapolis. Behind them, Anna crushed through the diner again and continued her pursuit, lurching onto the highway and trampling whatever happened to block her path.

    ”She still behind us?” shouted Ben at the waitresses clutching him so hard they were nearly tearing his clothes.
    ”You mean the tank? Yeah,” screamed one of them, he couldn’t tell which. Nor could he make out what she said.
    ”What?”
    ”I said, if you mean the — YES! Aw, hell!”
    ”What’s happening?”
    Before he could receive an answer, a tremor nearly shook the handlebars from his grip. He regained control and straightened the bike back out on the highway. The seams of his jacket sleeves had torn a little from the waitresses’ respective grips. “You okay back there?”
    ”Not if that damn thing keeps jumping,” one of them wailed.
    Ben looked back over his shoulder. Anna was now only about a hundred feet behind. He turned his attention forward again just in time to avoid slamming into the back end of an automated shipping truck.
    Two puffing sounds echoed behind them and a small missile sailed overhead immediately afterward, driving itself into the road about five hundred feet ahead and detonating. It was clear from the debris that it had done considerable damage to the entire width of road. Thinking it probably a bad idea to drive blindly into a cloud of smoke and dust with a crater somewhere beneath, Ben stopped about a hundred feet short of it, set down his left foot, gripped the front brake, switched to second gear and, drifting the rear wheel, turned the bike around to face the direction from which they’d come.
    Ignoring the protests of his passengers, Ben sped straight toward Anna. Before he even had a chance to work out the next part of his plan, Anna launched herself into the air again, firing her fission rockets a bit, landing somewhere behind them. He glanced back just in time to see her disappear around the debris cloud from the missile.
    Well , he thought, wonder what in hell that was all about .

    Something about Anna’s behavior made him hesitant about reporting back to the NLA base at Indianapolis. Her malfunction, if it could even be called that, didn’t seem like some standard military equipment loss that could be documented with a packet of paperwork, filed and forgotten. Something felt off.
    In any event, it would mean hours or even days of exhaustingly tedious debriefing, and the longer he could delay all of that, the better. Avoiding it entirely would be the best of all possible outcomes.
    Ben stopped the bike on the side of the highway and dismounted. His passengers soon followed.
     “You never told me what your names are,” he said, stretching a little. His right hip made a loud popping noise. Though it was painless, he still winced in response to the sound.
    ”Denise,” replied one of the waitresses.
    He looked expectantly at the other, awaiting her response. After a moment, he made a prompting gesture at her. “What about you?”
    ”We’re both named Denise,” she replied.
    He nodded once, slowly. “To cut back on confusion, can I call one of you something else?”
    ”No,” they replied, in unison.
    ”Okay, then. Denise,” he pointed to one of the waitresses, then the other. “And Denise. You guys have somewhere I can take you tonight?”
    ”That a proposition?” asked one of them sardonically.
    He glared mildly at her. “I’m assuming you’re both going to want somewhere to sleep tonight that’s not on the back of a moving motorcycle. ‘Cause that’s really not going to turn out well.”
    ”Maybe you can get us back to the diner in time for the early breakfast crowd. Probably can’t salvage much, but I imagine the pancakes fared okay.”
    ”Look, if it’ll make it up to you, I can always take you somewhere the registry doesn’t apply. I don’t have to take you back to your owners.”
    They shrugged, in unison.
    ”What are your plans?” one asked.
    ”I think I’m going after her.”
    ”Why in hell would you do that?”
    ”I’m pretty sure I’m the one who pissed her off in the first place, somehow. I feel responsible.”
    The other Denise grunted and rolled her eyes. “If you pissed off your pet tiger, would you go charging after it trying to reason with it?”
    ”Point noted. But whatever, I’m going. She’s a friend. And unless you want to come with me, you need to figure out where you need to go.”
    They looked at each other, then said simultaneously, “I hear Toronto’s nice.”

    *

    He’d never been very comfortable in offices, yet since the war had turned into a cold one and he’d been promoted to General in the NLA, Salvador McBride had done nothing but sit around in his. It wasn’t necessarily an unpleasant place — there were many modifications that he’d made to the room in an attempt to make it seem like something else and in his opinion they had mostly succeeded — it’s just that he wasn’t really sure what to do with himself. He and offices had developed an awkward relationship, like two unsocial teenagers with completely different interests whose parents happen to be very close friends and are always arranging for them to hang out with each other.
    It was a while before he noticed that the two men his secretary had announced over the intercom had actually entered his office and that one of them had begun talking to him. “Ah, sorry, mind kind of took a walk on me for a second, there. You want me to do what, now, son?” He winced inwardly at referring to the man as ’son’. It was something his father had always done when speaking to any man even a minute younger than he was, and Salvador had been hoping to avoid ever picking it up.
    ”You’re aware of this project, General,” said the man who was negligibly taller but otherwise nearly indistinguishable from the other. “Your signature is on one of the forms requesting funding.”
    ”I’m sorry, for what now? I sign about a thousand pieces of paper a day.” He added, muttering, “all I ever goddamned do anymore.”
    ”It’s an experimental prototype for an autonomous biped war machine,” explained the man. “A walking tank, in other words. One of only two testing models we’ve developed. The other will be kept heavily guarded in an undisclosed location, but we need to run some field tests with this one to perfect the design.”
    ”‘Walking tank’, huh? Played video games about those as a kid. Always wondered if they’d ever try implementing that stupid idea in real life.” He unconsciously drummed his hands on his desk, impatiently. “So, what, you guys get assigned to me for status reports, or what?”
    ”Well, sir, we, uh, need someone to pilot it,” said the other negligibly shorter man.
    ”Ah. Well, I’ll pick through my files and come up with some candidates.”
    ”No. Sir. We were hoping you would pilot it.”
    Salvador exhaled slowly through his nostrils. “Why in hell would you want that ? I’m obviously a ways beyond prime candidacy, here, otherwise you wouldn’t have pinned a star on me and shoved me behind this desk like I’d won the Military Special Olympics.”
    ”Rand-Farben has nothing to do with military promotions. The selection process was as objective as possible, and a thorough analysis of soldiers’ records placed you at the top of the list.”
    ”You’re kidding. I can barely even urinate without help.”
    The two men glanced at each other. One cleared his throat.
    ”These machines operate with the same artificial intelligence implemented in experimental tank units deployed across the country,” explained the slightly taller man. “You’re probably aware of that project as well. This being a biped model, it requires more closely-supervised testing than the others. It wouldn’t do any good if it fell over every time we fired a missile.”
    Salvador grunted. “Fine. Send me a briefing or something.”
    ”You’ll receive the details within the hour. If you’re willing, we’d like to run some initial tests this evening.”
    The two men lingered in the General’s office in increasingly awkward silence. Salvador looked up at them with an exaggerated smile, and they turned and exited the room.

    In the hallway, a younger man approached them from behind. “Mister Davison.”
    The two men turned.
    ”Sirs, we, uh.” The man was visibly rather panicked. “We have an, uh. A small situation.”
    ”A small situation?” parroted Davison, the slightly taller of the men. “Depending on one’s context and perspective, Myers, the moon is magnitudes smaller than an elephant. How small are we talking, here?”
    ”Our tank in the Chicago periphery dropped out of the system this morning. According to the, uh, records, the ones we were able to get just before it went dead, it kicked out its pilot and went berserk or something.”
    ”Ah. Shit.” Davison scratched at some stubble just under his jaw that he’d apparently missed when he’d shaved that morning. “Well, it’s not as though this was unanticipated. That’s what these trial runs are for. You want me to handle this, or do you need my permission to do it yourself?”
    Myers nodded, trying to convey a newfound calmness. “I have authorization, then?”
    Davison handed him a thick, red, unmarked card. “This should give you the necessary clearance.”
    Myers took the card and jogged back in the direction from which he’d come. Davison and the other man continued along their way.

    *

    ”He referred to you as ‘mutant’ again.” Desi threw herself onto the deep leather couch, exhausted. Unfortunately it was still only her “mating break”; she’d have to return to work in a couple hours to screen the evening news stories.
    ”Meh, fuck him,” said Nemo, in his precisely-engineered, almost musical voice.
    ”I do. It really, really doesn’t help.”
    ”Sorry, poor choice of phrase.” He sat down on the adjacent shorter couch. “He have anything interesting to say like the last time?”
    ”Meh, not really. Just his usual patriotic-patriarchic rambling.” She pointed to the map of America, updated as accurately as possible since the respite in the war, hanging behind the other couch. “Aww, he thinks it’s his daddy .”
    Nemo twisted his head briefly and glanced up at the map behind him. “It’s cute, really.”
    She was quiet for a moment. “Sometimes I think I should just take out the Sperm Worm and have his goddamned baby. Get it over with. I’m really fucking tiring of this.”
    ”Forced impregnation is like a worse, extended rape. I’m not sure if it’s worth the trade, crossing that barrier. Bad enough as it is.”
    ”You don’t know how bad. I mean, it’s all secondhand account to you. I know you know it’s bad, you see me cry, whimper, curl up into a fetal ball and not move until I get hungry, you get it. But, fuck, I mean, are we ever going to get out of here? Ever? They can track me down with this thing wherever I go. I’m like a tagged animal.”
    ”The only ones my contacts have to work with right now are from the bodies of women who’ve offed themselves over this. Of which, fortunately, there have been only few. They’ve figured out how to dull its effects, and we can have sex now which is definitely a plus. Though, I’m always terrified the damn thing’s going to clamp down one of these days and cut my dicks off.” He moved over to her couch, lifted her legs and set them down on his lap. “Bastards were good at making it impenetrable, but we’re finding the seams.”
    She pulled her legs back. “Sorry, it’s… I just… don’t feel like being touched right now.”
    ”It’s fine,” he said.
    ”I’m going to go shower. Again.”

    There was nothing at all acceptable about what they were doing to her or how they were doing it, but if they’d removed her ability to even attempt to do anything about it, why spend time worrying about all the options she didn’t have?
    Still, she wrestled with it incessantly whenever her mind had the opportunity to wander, as it often did in the shower. If they’d left even one day sooner, they might’ve made it to the New Canadian Republic. Or to Chicago, which was allowing limited immigration for a fee. Even parts of the Lone Star Republic would’ve been tolerable places to live.
    Of course, she’d received no advanced notice that she was going to be drafted which is why they’d been so complacent, and the bizarre, reactionary Family Traditions program had seemed like a joke until guns had gotten involved. Even with all the warning signs, she never would’ve imagined she’d be dragged from her home at gunpoint to have some horrific little grate jammed into her vagina that was like some kind of bipolar chastity belt, preventing her from intercourse most of the time but forcing her into it two days out of every month.
    She’d had faith in her fellow citizens, confident it would’ve been the camel’s-spine-shattering straw that would’ve roused another revolution, this time with greater participation. Perhaps it had just been so outright ridiculous that it had caught everyone off guard. Or maybe those remaining who hadn’t fought the first time simply didn’t care as long as their names weren’t on the list, or maybe actually even endorsed the government’s policies.
    She sat on the floor of the sunken bathtub tightly hugging her knees against her chest, letting the water rain onto her. A thin stream of colors washed down the drain from between her legs; the Onychophora Spermatophagia had apparently fully digested its earlier meal and broken it down into simpler, non-pregnancy-inducing components. Nobody seemed to know whether the creature had evolved naturally, feeding off used condoms in sewers, or if it had been artificially developed. Even more than the resumed sex with Nemo, being able to insert one of these hideous little symbiotes was one of the best freedoms to come from partially disabling the implant.
    The speakers built into the bathroom wall played one of Nemo’s piano performances from the centralized media database they kept on the computer in the living room. It was Jesus bleibet meine Freude , the tenth chorale movement of Bach’s Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben . It still impressed her, how flawlessly he played, even knowing he’d been practically designed for it.
    Though she wasn’t at all religious, she found much of the music inspired by religion to be incredibly moving. That’s how they get you , she thought. They lure you in with an emotional response triggered by the music, like some kind of neurochemical addiction .
    She slipped her hand into one of the curved railings carved into the wall of the shower and pulled herself to standing. After another round of washing, she felt sufficiently clean and stepped out into the full-body air dryer, then prepared to head back to work.

    *

    Albert Cronin sat in the lobby of the local Meme franchise, quietly aging. It had been three years since his wife’s death and over twenty since their son’s, and if all went well, Albert would be joining them by the end of the month. He’d spent the last six weeks liquidating all his assets, including his house, in order to consolidate his wealth for this final purchase. Though cloning had become a routine procedure over the last few decades, it was still incredibly expensive.
    Through the wall behind the secretary’s desk thudded the sound of a heavy door slamming shut. The secretary leaned forward, touched a device on his desk and spoke into it. “Ma’am, Albert Cronin has been waiting.”
    ”Alber– wait, didn’t he die a few days ago?” replied a voice, as clear as it would’ve been were she standing right in the room. She adopted a quieter tone. “Isn’t he, uh. Hasn’t he already been brought in here?”
    ”No, Cronin , with an ‘i’. He’s your eleven o’clock.” He looked up at Albert. “Sorry, I’m sure you get that a lot, especially with the recent news.”
    Albert nodded and worked his way with effort into as much of a standing position as was possible. “Is she ready for me?”
    ”Should I send him in?” asked the secretary. After a moment without reply, “Doctor Chambers?”
    ”Yeah, sorry, was drinking. Can you turn up the air conditioner a bit? Or, well, down, I guess. You know what I mean. Send in Mr. Cronin.”
    Albert shuffled slowly across the lobby past the enormous high-definition screens built into the walls displaying realistic, computer-generated underwater scenes, and into the door the secretary had opened for him in the far corner.
    Behind a large oak desk in the center of the room sat a tall, skinny woman with greying red hair, balding a little near her temples. She radiated a quiet, neurotic energy, as though at any moment she might suddenly break out and organize every object in the room into perfectly-aligned piles stacked in order of size. In spite of this she seemed very friendly and warm, and stood to greet Albert at the door upon his entrance.
    ”Doctor Chambers?” he asked rhetorically.
    ”Yes, Albert, yes. Sit anywhere. Want some water? It’s really warm in this part of the building. It’s usually not this bad.”
    ”Sure, water would be nice.”
    Picking up an earbud from her desk, squeezing it and placing it in her ear, she spoke aloud, seemingly a one-sided dialog with the air in the room. “Jeff, could you– hold on, this is stupid.” She set the earbud down again and walked to the door. “Jeff, can you grab me a water for Albert please? Thanks in advance. Just bring it in when you have it.”
    ”Thanks,” Albert said, when she’d returned to her desk. Behind her, some kind of tentacled creature drifted across the wall.
    ”So you’re interested in a complete package, then? The full duplication?”
    Albert nodded. Doctor Chambers’ eyes moved back and forth, looking past him. He noticed and looked back over his shoulder to discern the focal point of her attention. On the screen behind him, in large letters, read all of his information. He wasn’t sure how she was scrolling it around on the screen and glanced back at her with a somewhat puzzled expression.
    ”It’s a small camera. In my glasses. Or, well, a few of them. They track my pupil movements. Bluetooth.”
    ”Oh.”
    ”Let’s see, you’ve also opted for the termination service.”
    ”Yes.”
    ”Any particular reason?”
    Albert shook his head, a little confused and visibly uncomfortable.
    ”I’m sorry. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making any value judgments about your decisions. I ask because I’m curious whether there may be some kind of painful disorder, something we might be able to fix in the next iteration for you. Are you suffering?”
    ”No. I just can’t really afford it is all.”
    ”I see. Well, it’s not an uncommon decision for people in your situation. I know if I were my clone, I wouldn’t want to be burdened with me either. Where’s your water?”
    He shrugged. “It’s okay.”
    ”It is hot in here, right? I mean, it’s not just me.”
    ”I like it warm. It’s an age thing, I think. My circulation is poor.”
    ”Want us to take care of that, in addition to any other alterations you’ve requested? Won’t cost much extra. I’ll give it to you for free, even. Once we’re in there, we might as well. I don’t see the point in not doing it.”
    ”Sure.”
    She typed into a panel in front of her, looking at the screen behind Albert again. “I’m making note of it.”
    Jeff knocked lightly on the door and entered with a bottle of water. “Sorry, the air conditioner had tripped the circuit breaker so I had to reset everything. I guess it happened a little while ago because the fridge is on the same circuit. That’s how I noticed. The water is a little warm, sorry.”
    Albert accepted it. “That’s all right. Thank you.”
    ”Thank you, Jeff,” seconded Doctor Chambers. “Let’s try to fit Mr. Cronin in for neural cartography tomorrow at, uh, hold on.” She looked at the screen again for a minute, then looked at Albert. “Noon. Does noon work?”
    ”Yeah.”
    ”We’ll take some tissue samples today on your way out so we can get the cloning process started.”
    Using an electronic pen Doctor Chambers handed him, Albert signed a contract displayed on a screen on the surface of the desk. “Thank you both very much.”

    *

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