SCARS [preview]

SCARS

The deepest scars cut beyond the flesh.

By J. Ishiro Finney

“The shrieking of nothing is killing, just pictures of Jap girls in synthesis, and I ain’t got no money and I ain’t got no hair. But I’m hoping to kick but the planet it’s glowing. Ashes to ashes, funk to funky, we know Major Tom’s a junkie strung out in heaven’s high, hitting an all-time low…”
–David Bowie, Ashes To Ashes (1980)

“In 1828 Rattus norvegicus, otherwise known as the common brown rat, was the first animal ever to be domesticated and bred for purely scientific reasons. Sharing 99% of their genes with humans, these rodents now serve as an important animal model for research in psychology and biomedicine. In the US alone, approximately 100 million rodents per year are used in such research. Without their sacrifice, the health and long lives we enjoy today would be impossible. Although, this has not been without consequence. After nearly two centuries of being bred, genetically altered, and experimented on, these rats are now showing signs having undergone an accelerated evolution—one inadvertently caused by human hands.”
–Boston Journal of Biomedicine, “Of Rats and Men” (May 2019 edition)

>Rise and shine!

I awake to tiny hands on my face. Delicate. Clawed. Batting at my cheek.

>Up and at ’em!

>Daylight waits for no one!

Eyes drift open to a darkened room. Outside, the mild roar of the freeway says that it’s sometime after four AM. “Max, I don’t see any daylight…” My voice is a dry-mouthed croak. There’s bile on my tongue. Deep within my belly forces are conspiring against me.

>Situation Charlie Foxtrot!

>Max was in kitchen. James was yelling.

>James was dreaming bad.

“Well, I can’t argue with that.” I gently push Max off my face, then wipe the sleep from my eyes. The bed is a wreck. Twisted sheets and scattered pillows. Clearly, my voice wasn’t all that had alerted Max. “Christ on a fucking crutch,” I mutter, sinking back into the mattress. It’s clammy with the chill of my own sweat. “Fifth night in a row…I’m getting damn sick of this. If I don’t get some decent sleep…”

>Max and James should go for a walk.

My four-legged friend climbs onto my chest, then pokes his nose against mine before rising to his hind legs. Behind him the room is painted in serrated shadows cast by the glow of a streetlamp outside. His pearly black eyes gaze down at me expectantly.

>Max and James should go for a walk.

He repeats.

I want to tell Max no. Tell him that James needs more sleep. A lot more sleep. But we both know those ears of his are good enough to hear my heart, and right now my heart is pounding rivets into my chest—as if the rapid breathing and quaking jaw wasn’t already enough of a giveaway. I’m riding the edge. All nerves and shivers. A textbook example of a mind scarred by traumatic imprinting. One short burn is all I’d need to lose my shit. To panic straight into apocalyptic collapse of all rational thought.

Emotionally, though? I’m absolute zero.

I’m numb. Tired. Yet very much awake.

Awake and looking into the demanding eyes of a very stubborn rat.

“Alright…alright…” I say, reaching over to fish my leg out from a pile of clothes. “Max and James will go for a walk.”

Pull. Twist. A flick of the thumb.

And click!

The limb is firmly locked in its socket just below the knee. Snapping the thing on is easy, even in the dark. Finding a brand of footwear that doesn’t clash with the prosthetic, on the other hand, is a different matter entirely. For now, I’ve stuck to Chaikin A7s. Orbital boots. The kind I was issued during my stint aboard the Atropos. Of course, these days I only need one boot, for my flesh and blood foot. The polycarbonate one is best left bare. The mechanisms work better that way.

Max flops off the bed. Scurries into the closet. A few seconds later he’s back, dragging a t-shirt behind him.

>Smells clean.

He tells me.

“Lemme see what we’ve picked today.” I raise the shirt into the scattered half-light. A demon-faced furnace glares back at me from the cheap fabric. “Moloch’s Forge…good choice. Used to work with this guy. This is his band.”

>A clean shirt is good.

>Music is good.

>Music that is a shirt does not make sense.

We’ve had this conversation before. It’s a losing battle. “On some deeper cosmic level, Max, you’re probably right,” I say, standing. Stretching. Pulling on the shirt. I’m slapped by instant vertigo. Then nausea. I brace against a wall. “I guess…” I continue, steadying my head. My goddamned hands won’t stop shaking. “I guess there are some things that only make sense to a primate species that’s got a love affair with iconography.”

Five minutes later I’m in the kitchen. In my palm is breakfast, a collection of the best pharmaceuticals my policy can buy:

-A serotonin inhibitor to stabilize mood.

-An aminoketone stimulant to keep me balanced.

-An over-the-counter antacid to beat back the nausea.

-An anti-inflammatory to quell the swelling in my stump.

-And then there’s the sledgehammer—Chronocyclarol. The magic diazepam derivative that’s able to smash even the worst of post-traumatic episodes.

With a swig off the tap, I choke it all down in one go. The alkaline kiss of rust-tainted water washes away the bitter chalk aftertaste. Now all that’s left is to wait. Shiver. And watch the clock. I’m standing in my usual spot—back to the fridge, arm folded, eyes locked on the second-hand as it ticks, ticks, ticks, tracing its path over stylized numerals, each shaped to resemble an animal in the Chinese zodiac. The clock is cheap tourist trash, molded in red recycled plastic and flecked with gold paint. I’d picked it up the last time I was in Hainan. Bought it from a stall outside the spaceport.

That was a year ago.

Might as well have been a lifetime.

The memory is distant. Foreign. Like it belongs to somebody else. I suppose, in a way, it does. I’m not the man I was the day I boarded that clipper in Hainan. It’s not him I see in the mirror, anymore. It’s the same face, but the eyes are cold, the lids are sunken, dark rings showing against pale flesh. They’re the eyes of a man who can sleep—but can never rest.

I watch the clock.

Count the seconds.

T-minus six minutes left to go.

Twelve minutes is a typical wait. The time it takes the Chronocyclarol to slam my system and force all those jumbled nerves to go from jagged peaks to gentle S-curves. Already my breathing has slowed. Soon my heart will follow. Then, I’ll be five-by-five, smooth and steady, until the mood stabilizer and stimulant can pick-up the slack an hour later.

It’s at T-minus four minutes and counting when a tiny set of teeth nips at my toe.

Nibble. Squeak!

The blur of a tail zips out of sight, vanishing under the table.

>Gotcha!!!

For as shit as I feel, I can’t help but laugh. For all of Max’s gene-spliced smarts, he’s still a rat. And this? This is a favorite rat game. Sneak up on the human, nip his toe, then bolt for cover. It’s akin to a child’s game of tag. And right now, I’m it.

“…direct brain-to-brain communication became a reality at Harvard last year when a team of researchers led by associate professor of radiology Seung-Schik Yoo developed the first interspecies brain-to-brain interface… “We were interested in creating a way for information to be transmitted between two brains without using nerves or muscles,” says Yoo…”
–Harvard Magazine, “Scientist Creates Human Brain To Rat Brain Interface” (April 2014)

Why does James dream bad so much?

The words flare like movie subtitles across the bottom of my vision. Everything Max says comes to me this way—as tiny yellow letters projected to my retina. The eye enhancement is a leftover from my time with the company. Every lasso-jock has one installed, for when comms are overloaded and there isn’t bandwidth for another voice. If it weren’t for the upgrade, I’d need a hands-free device to read Max’s texts…and to be brutally honest, maybe that would’ve been for the best. As it is, I can never tune him out.

>Why does James dream bad so much?

He asks again, and just like every other time this question has beamed onto my eyes. I wrack my brain for a way to dodge it. “That’s a tough one, Max.” I say, my voice tapering off into a long, uneasy sigh.

In the morning chill I can see my breath—caused more by humidity than temperature. If it were truly cold, Max would be burrowed into a jacket pocket right now. Instead, he’s perched in his usual spot, riding shotgun on my shoulder. We’re two blocks away from the place I’ve come to call home, a single loft apartment at the edge of San Diego’s trendy plaza district. Under the stale glow of streetlamps, the scene is a moment frozen in time. A ghost of its daylight self. Signs still crackle with holographic light. Mannequins still pose in the latest fashions. Yet the world is dead of movement. Empty sidewalks. Empty streets. And all the silence that comes with it.

“Oh, I dunno Max,” I finally say, my gaze tilting skyward. “Some questions have no easy answers. Sometimes, well…” Above, there’s not a single star in sight. Just the rust-orange patina of aerosols and dust made luminous by the city’s electric glare. It’s the reason I live here, so close to the coast. Here, the only “stars” I see are the circling drones that monitor traffic, and the occasional low-flying aircraft.

>Sometimes what?

> What?

An endless string of “what?” blazes across my retina, the five-character message rapid-fire repeating until the sidewalk is clouded over under a mess of tiny, yellow words.

“Alright, Max,” I sigh, giving him a gentle (but firm) bop to the nose. “Lessee if I can put this to words…ones that both us understand. You’re a mammal. You’re smart. And I know you dream. So, you must have nightmares, right?”

>Affirmative.

“What do you see in your bad dreams?”

>Max dreams bad about fire and noise.

>Max dreams bad about burning smells.

His back teeth grind. It’s the bad kind of grinding. Like boots on broken glass. Unknown to most, rats have two sets of teeth. There’s that overbite in the front, which everyone sees—those four long incisors that jut out like a Cenobite’s idea of a staple remover. Then there’s a second (and far less terrifying) set—twelve tiny molars tucked away in the back. I’ve come to learn those molars are more than just for chewing. They’re a barometer for Max’s shifting moods.

>Bad dreams are ass.

>Burning smells are ass.

>Max hates burning smells.

“All burning smells?”

>Max hates ALL burning smells.

“Even barbecue?”

The grinding stops. His feet twitch. He makes the faintest of tittering noises.

>Barbecue is best!

For someone who communicates mostly in text, Max has a way of making it known when he’s deadly serious. Something in the way he grips my shoulder and in that subtle flinching of his tail.

“What if I say I don’t believe you?”

>Shut up! Barbecue is best!

“Even when it comes to chicken?” He knows I’m screwing with him but can’t help but take the bait. Barbecue is serious business.

>Barbecue chicken is most best!

“I dunno, Max. I suppose barbecue is okay…”

>James! Stop being so much shithead!

“…if you’re into that kind of thing. I mean, anybody with three teeth and a pair of thumbs can barbecue, but grilling? That’s where the flavor is at. Grilling is a goddamn art form.”

>Barbecue!

>Grilling is ass!

It’s a cruel trick, but an effective one. When Max starts in with the uncomfortable questions, I’ll mention any one of his favorite foods—then argue with him about it. Max is by no means stupid, but he is a rat. And rats think a lot about food. The method is far from foolproof but has saved me more than a few times now from having to explain why I wake-up screaming. Or have a snap-on leg. Or why I can’t bear to be under a clear night sky. Max has never seen the stars. To him, they’re mere smears in the dark. How do I even begin to explain the great void to someone whose world ends a few meters away from his snout?

Of course, that’s an excuse.

And a goddamned lie.

I’ve approached Max like every unknown in my life. The moment I was assigned Max I read everything I could about his kind. How he thinks. How he lives. How he engages his surroundings. In a way, Max is no different from the AI aboard the Atropos. Once I studied the manuals and pored over the specs, talking to that idiot-savant of a computer was easy. And if I can hold a conversation with a brain-dead machine, there’s no reason I can’t explain a bad dream to a brilliant rat. A brilliant rat, who already understands hard concepts like mortality and loss.

Truth is, I haven’t told Max fuck-all about my past because…

…I’m not ready to be honest with myself.

That same dishonesty came to a head four months ago when I was wheeled into a trauma ward, my blood toxic with wine and pills. What I recall was unpleasant. Stomach pumping. Blood replacement. Tubes and needles jammed into arms and orifices. At least, that’s how I remember it. The doctors said I hallucinated for three days. When I finally came back down to Earth and was able to form sentences once again, there came a very long and uncomfortable talk with a specialist. A woman from the company who worked exclusively with cases like mine.

“You’re a wreck,” were the first words out of her mouth.

“No shit,” were mine.

The diagnosis was about what I expected: Post-traumatic stress disorder. Depression. Social anxiety. Most probably suicidal. Strangely alcoholism didn’t make the list. “You’re not an addict, James,” the specialist had told me. “Just self-medicating in the dumbest way possible. I’m giving you two options: Enter the treatment program I’ve prescribed…or enjoy an extended stay at one of the company’s rehabilitation clinics.”

I took the first option.

And with the first option came Max.

Enjoying this sample? Buy the book to continue reading.

SCARS
by J. Ishiro Finney
Published by 01Publishing
www.01Publishing.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic form mechanical methods, without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical review and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, and events portrayed are fictional or are used in an imaginary manner to entertain. Any resemblance to any real persons or dead is purely coincidental.

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