Orgonomicon by Boris D. Schleinkofer Read Free Book Online Page B

was going to do to the
boy. It was exactly what HfX7qe2179A9 had always done on the
harvests; it was the protocol. The protocol was exactly the lie. It
was the same.
    These were the most forbidden of thoughts,
and HfX7qe2179A9 quickly learned to turn off a part of its mesh,
for to do anything else would have meant discovery and a total
dissolution. A concentration upon the mechanism, a concerted
squeeze, something that went 'pop!' and part of the mesh would
begin to corrode. It would self-repair, but in that time the memory
would have been encoded in the fleshy material without having been
mapped. The mesh was not all-powerful.
    The returning beam did not bring HfX7qe2179A9
back to its designated pod; upon rematerialization, it appeared in
the middle of a strangely familiar chamber, vast and teeming with
all of its kind, upon which it had had never before set eyes.
    Towering over the drone was the Queen, her
eight tentacled pseudopods stroking its head and shoulders. All the
forbidden thoughts flashed through its mind but one: the lie to
'Mother'. Yes, he understood. HfX7qe2179A9 understood, too. A space
of separation was born.
    HfX7qe2179A9 was once again disassembled, its
memory edited and recompiled, and sent back to Earth with missions
parameters now again clearly defined and precise.
     
    Karen was used to taking care of the boy by
herself.
    Nine years of marriage had come to nothing
long ago and she'd learned to accommodate. She'd been way too accommodating. No one was going to help out with the housework,
no one was going to help her watch the kid, no one was going to
help her with a goddamned thing. And she didn't need the help—she
hadn't known back then that everything was going to come down to
her, to how well she could cope in a world alone, surrounded by
enemies, but found that she was a well of resourcefulness with
inestimable depths.
    And she did it all on her own. The lazy
good-for-nothing had been happy enough to get her knocked up, not
so with dealing with his responsibilities. Now he was getting a
full taste of cause and effect.
    Manny went to work every day, for whatever
that was worth. He could work a hundred hours a week at his crappy
little minimum wage job and it still wouldn't be enough to take
care of his family the way they needed. It took a certain degree of
certainty to raise a child in the world today, certainty Emmanuel
and his lazy good-for-nothingness just couldn't provide for them.
She'd demanded he go back to school and learn a real trade, she'd
put the want ads down in front of him with meaningful circles drawn
in red ink, she'd even called him in appointments with employment
agencies; she'd threatened, cajoled, pleaded and harassed him and
all the best she'd ever gotten had been empty promises and
see-through lies. Manny would never amount to anything and they
both knew it.
    The early years of their marriage had been
full of big talk about getting the deals, how he was going to write
the Great American screenplay and make Hollywood fall in love with
him—it had all been bullshit. The months turned into years and the
money never materialized; he quit or got fired from one crappy job
after the other, never earning much more than the minimum wage.
She'd kicked him out, then; he stayed away for three months and
came back with a brand new manuscript and a handful of promises,
desperate and swearing that he'd 'finally done it with this
one.'
    She'd been stupid enough to believe him about
how it was going to change everything and let him come back. She
needed it as much as he did; she was now pregnant again and behind
on the bills but if he was under the belief that his performance
alone would decide whether or not he got to stay, well then who was
she to deprive him of his illusions? She needed the money, plain
and simple, but quickly found out that it wasn't quite enough.
    There was, of course, always the possibility
of roping another man to take care of her, but there were problems
with that.