Corporate Mentality

CHAPTER ONE

ADITI

The needle pierced Aditi’s skin and cool, heavy liquid flooded her shoulder. She tried to squirm away, but the restraints held her firmly in place.

"Hold still, Aditi," Father said sharply. "You know wiggling only makes it worse." Slowly, too slowly, he depressed the plunger, and the amber transport medium drained into Aditi’s vein. She suppressed a shudder. Although she couldn’t see them, it seemed like she could feel the millions of microscopic nanobots scurrying and swimming into her blood, sliding between veinal cells, invading her body with their tiny claws and microscopic teeth. They tasted her chemicals, smelled her hormones, rearranged her cells.

Kept her alive.

Not for the first time, Aditi considered trying to knock the cold syringe away. She knew full well that without this particular infusion of nanobots, her arrhythmia would rocket out of control, sending her heart into tachycardia and leading to a quick death. Father, of course, would never allow that.

Ved Amendeep slid the needle out of his daughter’s shoulder and today’s assistant, the one with a mole on his face, pressed a bit of gauze to the site to stop the bleeding. Although the shoulder was an unusual injection site, Father had to inject Aditi there because her single arm wouldn’t remain still long enough to accept a needle. No matter what Aditi did, the arm continued to twitch and strain against the smooth polymer restraint as it had done every moment since Aditi’s birth nineteen years ago.

A spasm of pain twisted through the bones in Aditi’s legs like a small tornado and Aditi grimaced. Nothing new there, either. There was no point in crying out—Father didn’t believe in painkilling drugs any more than he believed in aborting a deformed fetus.

"The injection process is complete, Dr. Amendeep," Mole-Face said. Aditi had never bothered to learn his, or any other assistant’s, name. He dropped the bloody gauze into a biohazard container, as if Aditi’s condition were contagious.

"All right," Father said in his tired voice. "Give me a moment to bring the new programs on line and we’ll get started."

Father turned to the computer and muttered to it in a voice too soft to hear. Sensor readouts beeped and flashed across the computer display while Mole-Face checked and changed Aditi’s colostomy bag, a twice-daily chore since Aditi had no rectum and only half a kidney. Aditi couldn’t change the bag herself, of course. Her arm shook too much for her to have any real coordination, and her bent, twisted legs made it difficult for her to even sit upright. Standing was out of the question. Aditi might as well hope to fly.

Or die, Aditi thought, angrily staring at a white ceiling she knew better than her own backyard.

The Brahman in attendance at the ultrasound that revealed Aditi’s deformity had declared it a sign from Shiva. It was, after all, rumored that MediLife, Ved’s employer, was performing forbidden experiments with nanobots and human flesh. This was visible proof that Ved was being punished for his sins. Aditi herself was obviously paying for some unimaginable crime she had committed in her last incarnation.

Ved Amendeep, however, disagreed with the priest. Aditi couldn’t possibly be a sign from Shiva. Shiva was a destroyer and would never have allowed a monstrosity to exist. Vishnu, a creator, was speaking instead. Aditi’s ultrasound pictures were a divine message giving Ved Amendeep time to prepare a laboratory prison for his deformed daughter and save her life. It was simply too coincidental that a child who could only survive by weaving nanotechnology into human flesh would be born to a man bent on perfecting that very procedure.

Ved sent the Brahman packing and set to work in his lab. When Aditi was born, he installed her there as soon as she was stable enough to move. The feeble protests of Aditi’s mother were silenced by a quick divorce and a large cash payment to her parents. Nineteen years later, Aditi was still alive and in the same room, with countless nanobots burrowing continuously through her body, regulating blood sugar, hormone balances, leukocyte production, T cell levels, and everything else.

Father continued muttering into the computer. His voice was still tired—he worked full time for MediLife in addition to his work on Aditi—but his tone was unmistakably full of scornful resignation. Father barely tolerated her, and he hated all the work her survival forced on him. It would be so easy for him to pull the plug and go on with his life now that his experiments had proven successful. Aditi glanced down at her twisted body, the one propped up and restrained in its hospital bed, and wondered why he didn’t, why he never had.

Father continued muttering to the computer while Mole-Face recorded Aditi’s vital signs. Aditi stared stonily past the white walls and out the window. The clear summer day outside possessed color and texture. Honey trees waved blue-green leaves in the warm breeze in the yard, and purple gita vines curled lumpily around soft, red-and-white Vishnu flowers in the window box. Aditi had planted none of them—the gardener took care of that. Aditi had never even handled so much as a clump of earth. Her room was a careful model of efficiency. The white walls and gray tile floors were bare—decorations gathered dust that inflamed Aditi’s asthma. The only exception to this rule was a holocrystal that displayed Ved Amendeep forcing a smile to his face as he stood behind his tiny, twisted daughter and her hospital bed.

The holocrystal sat next to Father’s small workstation, which was in one corner. Its computer connected to Ved Amendeep’s main laboratory, to the house computer, and to the local nets. Aditi was allowed to use it when her father wasn’t logged on.

"Pollen count is low today, Aditi," Father reported from the workstation without turning around. "Maybe Ranjan will be able to take you outside for a while this afternoon. Getting you out of your room for a while might cheer you up."

Aditi didn’t answer. She continued to stare at the plants and trees outside. This wasn’t her room. It was an extension of her father’s lab, just like Aditi was an extension of her father’s work. Hatred flooded Aditi’s mouth with a taste like fried bile. She only wanted to be left alone, to die in peace. Her body could feed the plants outside, become one with the hardy, rough tree trunks and soft, delicate blossoms. Then she would be pretty for the first time and people would like what they saw.

"I need you, Ranjan," Father said. "I’m ready to bring the new infusion of nanos on line."

Mole-Face joined Father at the workstation and the keyboard clicked beneath his fingers while Father muttered more commands.

A sudden thirst swept Aditi’s mouth and her tongue went dry and raspy. A glance at the wall clock, however, told her that it would be another hour before her malformed kidney could handle more fluid. Another twist of pain gripped her legs and she tightened the twitching fingers on her hand until it passed.

"Medullary interface functioning normally," Mole-Face reported. "Cortical monitors report no unanticipated problems. The interface for the new nanobots is now in place."

"Activating communications sequence," Father said. "The new system should be on line . . . now."

Aditi’s mouth was still dry. She wanted water, or even juice. Something cold, sweet, and wet. Maybe she could ask—

Something shifted. Aditi gasped and tried to swallow, but nothing happened. It felt as if her insides had jumped an inch to the left without her. Then a noise crackled inside her head, like a radio transmitter clearing its throat. A presence brushed her mind for a tiny moment, then clamped her brain with an iron grip. Her heart rocketed out of control. A mix of fear and relief—

i’m going to die i’m going to die i’m going to die

—flooded her mind and she had time to make a tiny, mewling whimper before the convulsions began. Pain like nothing she had ever felt before thundered through her muscles and her joints creaked and twisted in protest. Aditi flopped and squirmed against her restraints like a dying fish, unable to stop, unable to scream.

Alarms sounded on the computer, and Father rushed to her side. His white lab coat brushed the holocrystal, which shattered on the hard tile floor. He touched Aditi’s shoulder, and the moment his skin contacted hers, an awful fear swept his face. He screamed. Aditi, still wracked with convulsions and buried in pain, caught only a hazy glimpse of her father’s expression. The unfocused brown blur of his face washed blood-red and bone-yellow before it vanished entirely from view. His screaming stopped. The convulsions eased a little, and Aditi’s own screams began.