To Dream Read online

  Louis K. Lowy is a former firefighter with the city of Hialeah, Florida. He is the author of two books, Die Laughing, a humorously dark science fiction adventure set in the 1950s, and Pedal, an inspirational tale of a 49-year-old music teacher who loses her job and struggles to reclaim her life through bicycle racing.

  Lowy is the recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship and an alumnus of Florida International University’s creative writing program. He lives in South Florida with his wife, Carol, and their daughter, Katie. Their son, Chris, resides on the west coast.

  Visit Louis on his website www.louisklowy.com and on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

  J.R.R. Tolkein wrote that stories are all about one thing: the inevitability of death. And we might add: they are about our unwillingness to accept that fate. Our thirst for immortality, which began with Gilgamesh, continues here in Louis K. Lowy’s savvy and unnerving new novel Anatomy of a Humachine Book I—To Dream. The book takes us from a somewhat familiar South Florida of the near future to a dystopian exoplanet centuries from now. It’s an extraordinarily ambitious novel that deals head on with the ethical and moral dilemmas that real science is already presenting us with. It’s engrossing, unpredictable, and fast-paced. Grab a drink, settle into you favorite chair, open the book, and begin. You’re home for the evening.

  - John Dufresne, I Don’t Like Where This Is Going.

  IFWG Publishing Titles by Louis K Lowy

  Die Laughing

  Anatomy of a Humachine Book 1: To Dream

  Anatomy of a Humachine Book 1

  To Dream

  Louis K Lowy

  This is a work of fiction. The events and characters portrayed herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places, events or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author do not necessarily represent the opinions of the publisher.

  To Dream

  Louis K Lowy

  Copyright Louis K Lowy 2017

  ISBN-13: 978-1-925496-09-3

  Version 1.0

  Published by IFWG Publishing International

  This ebook may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  IFWG Publishing International

  ifwgpublishing.com

  Acknowledgements

  My deep felt gratitude to the following, whose insights helped to make this book possible—John Dufresne and the mighty Friday Night Writers, Corey Ginsberg, Joyce Newman, Marjory Hamilton, and Melanie Mochan. Special thanks to everyone at IFWG Publishing, especially Gerry Huntman, and my editor Louise Zedda-Sampson.

  To Carol, Chris and Katie for their love. To Mr. Bradbury, Misters Lee and Kirby, Mr. Tolkien, Mr. King, Mr. Lang, and Mr. Wise for their inspiration.

  Chapter One

  Date: 2250

  Planet Truatta

  GTS Warehouse

  The Humachine, J-1, swiped back a lock of hair that had fallen over his left brow. He turned his attention to the Teleporthaton resting in the middle of the warehouse. Seated at his desk, J-1 straightened the short sleeves of his zip-front khaki coverall, and sent an internal message to the fifty-foot-high purple apparatus: Ready for transport.

  It responded with its own internal message: What borough?

  The Teleporthaton stood next to another apparatus, the Receive & Package, or R&P. Both machines ran like parallel covered bridges for fifteen hundred feet—nearly the entire length of the building—and were key components of the assembly line.

  The R&P beamed in raw genimetrothiasine—GTS—from the outside mines into the window-less and door-less warehouse. The R&P also bombarded the raw GTS with various light spectrums to break down its impurities and labeled the large sealed trunks. Depending on demand, the processed mineral would either be placed on warehouse storage shelves for later distribution, or sent directly to the Teleporthaton for dispersal to Ameri-Inc.’s distribution satellites centered on the outskirts of Earth. There it would be weighed, repackaged, and flown in armed and guarded shuttles to Earth. Finally, it would be sold to disease-eradicating and anti-aging conglomerates that would slice it up, re-repackage it, and dispense it to those rich enough to afford it.

  What borough should I transport GTS? the Teleporthaton asked J-1 again.

  There was a familiar rumble in the distance. Despite having never been out of the warehouse since being brought here from Earth 193 years ago, he’d heard the sound plenty of times before. It was a common carbonous oxide thunderclap shooting up from a fissure in nearby Lake Freeto-Lay. Though it may kill some of the Dizney trout, an indigenous fish that were staples of the restaurants in the nearby resort city of Apple, J-1 reasoned by the shortness of the clap that it was no big deal.

  What borough? the Teleporthaton repeated a third time.

  Milton Enterprises Prefecture, J-1 internalized back.

  The Teleporthaton chirped twice. Its conveyor belt rolled inward along the machine’s tunnel-like structure with a soft hiss. J-1 turned his attention to the wire cage where the lifters were stored. Shelf removal, he internalized to the cage.

  Number of lifters needed? the cage flicked back.

  Crisp, short, clattering sounds tapped against the roof. J-1 glanced up. The carbo-oxide ice storm cometh. J-1 internalized back to the cage, Three hundred.

  The cage door rolled up and 300 lifters emerged. The lifters were simple, lanky machines resembling large dustpans with six-foot-high broom handles. They glided forward, hovering a foot above the floor. Their purpose was simple, to move the trunks of GTS between the storage shelves and the assembly line machines.

  The lifters glided to the tall shelves lining each side of the walls, where the trunks of GTS were stored. In turns, the lifters floated upward and slid their spatula-shaped bottoms beneath the containers and carted them to the Teleporthaton.

  A sharp rumble cracked overhead. It was one of the loudest thunderclaps J-1 had ever heard. He studied the ceiling for a moment waiting to see if there would be a repeat. There was none and he went back to work.

  The final two lifters removed their trunks of GTS. As they passed J-1, a sonorous boom rattled the walls. One of the lifters rocked and bumped against the other. Their bottoms interlocked. A large spark crackled from one of the lifter’s stems, knocking its container to the floor. J-1 sent an internal message to the pair of tangled lifters: Coco and Horatio, power down. The two tangled lifters descended to the ground. They remained motionless until the thunder booms passed.

  Coco and Horatio, activate, J-1 internalised.

  The two lifters powered up and separated. Horatio, who had held onto his trunk, carried his tray to the Teleporthaton. Coco wobbled like a bird with a clipped wing. The wounded lifter banged into J-1’s desk. Pause, Coco, he internalized. Coco stopped and hovered a few feet from J-1’s chair.

  J-1 stood and approached the dropped container. He bent down and examined it. There was a hairline fracture in it. A sliver of a bluish-purple gel seeped through the crack. In his nearly two centuries as warehouse manager, he had never seen refined genimetrothiasine. Though there were a few raw samples lying around that his human supervisors at Ameri-Inc. had left behind before warehouse operations were turned over to him, purified GTS was always contained in airtight trunks to maintain its integrity.

  J-1 leaned in closer, bringing his eyelashes so close to the crack they feathered it. A glow—no, more like a glowing sensation—swept through him. He knew what he should do next. His orders were clear: note the damaged trunk in the warehouse database, isolate it and notify his supervisors at Ameri-Inc. Something—an inner tick
le—compelled him not to. He rubbed his finger against the crack and sniffed the gel smudged on his fingertip. He shuddered from the sweet-sour smell. His stomach fluttered as if a squirrel had raced across it.

  Status of lifter Coco? The wire lift cage internalized to J-1.

  J-1 ignored the question. Something was happening beyond a tickling sensation. His processors felt as if they were in a sports staditorium, doing the wave.

  Status of Coco? the lift cage asked again.

  In progress. J-1 dug his forefinger through the crack until it widened.

  Outside the warehouse, the noise grew. J-1 barely noticed. He removed his finger from the trunk and rubbed the gelatinous substance with his thumb.

  J-1 did what he had never done before—ignored his protocol. He sniffed the gel, licked it from his fingers and waited. There was no reaction. That made sense to him. Its anti-aging effect on humans was something he didn’t have to worry about. He walked to his desk to follow through on what he should have done from the beginning; notate the damage and inform his supervisors. On the third step his knees wobbled and he staggered to the floor. His body shook violently and his head felt as if it were a lava-spewing volcano. Outside the warehouse, the noise grew from clatters to cavernous booms.

  Chapter Two

  Date: 2030

  West Redlands, Florida

  Ameri-Inc. Research and Development

  Robotics Division

  Someone was trying to open the locked bathroom doorknob from the outside. It was their third attempt in five minutes. Niyati Bopari coughed, took one last draw on her Gold Flake King, dropped the cigarette into the toilet and flushed. Niyati waved the smoke away until it dispersed. She coughed again, washed her hands, glanced in the mirror and smoothed her shoulder-length, gray-streaked hair. She flattened her smock, unlocked the door and walked out.

  Armando Robles from accounting glared at her. “I have a long drive home with no rest stops.” He rushed in, sniffed ostentatiously and added, “This is strictly a no-smoking environment,” before shutting the door.

  Niyati hurried down the hall and into the Robotic Research and Development reception room of Ameri-Inc. “Any word, Kaye?” she asked.

  Her secretary was at her desk. She hand-signaled the word processor. A notice arose on the screen. “The bizjet is circling Tamiami Airport, waiting for the go-ahead to land. Give us an hour. Regards Miguel and Pete.” She spun the screen for Niyati to see.

  Niyati nodded and glimpsed at the wall clock. It was nearly 5:00pm. That meant they would be here around 6:00pm. “There’s no need for you to stay beyond work hours,” she said to Kaye. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Are you kidding?” Kaye asked. “After all these years, I want to see these two in person.” She shrugged. “Besides, I can use the overtime.”

  “Thanks.” Niyati knew Kaye was aware of how nervous she was about this. Before Niyati entered her lab, which was located behind Kaye’s antechamber, Kaye crossed her fingers and added, “Good luck, Doctor Bopari.”

  Niyati’s lab was a twenty-by-twelve room with three solid walls and an iron-barred, panoramic window on the west wall. The tinted window faced the wetlands and the Everglades beyond. In the center of the tidy lab was her desk. It held a phone, her laptop, and a framed photo that faced outward. Against the solid walls were thirty larger computers, each on individual stands housed inside their own kiosks.

  Hanging on the south wall was a sixty-inch 3D monitor screen. J-1 was slumped dormant on a stool in the southwest corner. He was dressed in jeans and a navy-blue polo.

  Niyati sat at her desk and drummed her fingers. She couldn’t remember being in the lab when it was totally down like it was now. She hated the silence. It made her antsier than she already was. Nothing was to be turned on until after the demonstration. That was the order she had been given: security reasons.

  She stared at the dimly lit room and attempted to recapture its normal sounds: the rustle of her smock as she bounced from one computer to the other amid the constant back and forth chatter. Behaviorists, code programmers, aerodynamicists, bio-mechanists, mechacytologists, geometricians, plastic surgeons, and cosmetologists answering and asking her questions about J-1 from their own computers located around the world and her own voice responding to them.

  She even tried imagining the late afternoon—and sometimes evening—videoconferences with corporate reps Miguel Acevedo and Pete Hemley. She glanced at her wristwatch. It was still another twenty minutes before they were scheduled to arrive.

  Niyati studied the cardboard back of the framed photo sitting on her desk. Though the picture faced away, she knew every detail. She reached for it, but pulled her hand back. It had been a long time since she studied it. During the project, the photo became quick breaths between decisions; glances during international conferences; and contrails of memory in the wee hours when she analyzed, connected, and inputted data into her mainframe.

  She yearned to hold the photo. Niyati took a deep breath. No, that was a lie. The truth was she didn’t want to think about it. That’s why she had agreed to head this project—it required endless hours of work and massive amounts of concentration. Unfortunately, at this moment there was plenty of time and nothing to focus on. She looked at J-1 slumped on the corner stool. She had given him umpteen vigorous trial runs. Maybe she should do one more to be sure.

  “No.” Niyati again reached for the photo, hesitated, and turned it around to face her.

  Chapter Three

  Date: 2030

  Kendall, Florida

  SR-864 South, between exits 16 and 18

  Pete Hemley flashed the headlights of the rented Egyptian Solarcomfy SUV. An elderly man in a rotund Ford ProEdsel, who was driving at a turtle’s pace in front of them, paid no attention. Hemley glanced at Acevedo and flashed the lights again.

  Acevedo smiled to himself. Born and raised in Hialeah, he was used to the bumper-car mentality.

  Hemley shook his head, put his right turn signal on and swerved the SUV from the fast lane of the expressway into the middle lane. As he did, an H-Civic2 barreled in behind him and blasted its horn. Hemley lunged back into the lane he was trying to escape from. The driver of the speeding car, a young girl with shaggy dreadburns, shot him the bird as she raced past.

  “Shit!” Hemley again flashed his lights at the elderly man. “What is it with these people?”

  “It’s South Florida,” Acevedo said. “Eighty-year-olds drive at twenty, and twenty-year-olds drive at eighty.” He studied the condos and commercial buildings sliding past them. Though he had left the area nearly three decades ago for Washington, DC, the tropical-colored buildings in green, blue, terracotta, and orange, hadn’t seemed to change one bit.

  Hemley glanced in the rearview mirror, whipped the steering wheel to the right and gunned the SUV. When he was safely in the middle lane he grinned at Acevedo and said, “Take that, South Florida!”

  Acevedo nodded. He didn’t exactly like Pete Hemley, but he didn’t dislike him, either. Hemley was an ambitious young gun: thirty-four, big house, pretty wife, two kids and looking for advancement. At times too eager to brown his nose, but in the four years they’d been the liaison between corporate and Project Humachine, Hemley had been a straight shooter. And he wasn’t a backstabber like a lot of people at Ameri-Inc. “Do you think this so-called Humachine can do all Bopari says it can?”

  Hemley shrugged a shoulder. “If it does half, the execs should cream their jeans.”

  “Yeah,” Acevedo said. “Our promise: Improve mankind through technology.”

  Hemley glanced at him. “You sound cynical, Miguel.”

  “Not me, bro-bro.” Despite Ameri-Inc.’s mission statement, Miguel Acevedo figured that the Humachine they were picking up, and the others to eventually follow, would replace God knows how many hundreds of thousands of human employees. No wonder they had pumped more than a billion dollars into its development. Peanuts compared to the ultimate savings.

  “If
this thing actually works,” Hemley said. “Think of the lives it’ll save: police, firefighters, soldiers, exterminators, miners. Anyone who works in hazardous environments won’t have to anymore. No more injury or death because of sleep deprivation, distraction, or ill intent.”

  “I’m not arguing, Pete.” Not at sixty-one, Miguel Acevedo thought. Not while he was less than two years from retirement and his pension, stock portfolio, and company shares would make him golden for the rest of his life. Especially not when he had plans to purchase one of those old-style shotgun houses off of Duval Street in Key West, or maybe a villa outside of Catalonia, and spend the rest of his days with a beer in his hand.

  “I know I sound like a company toady,” Hemley continued, “but the savings will be geared toward education, healthcare and providing for those who can’t provide for themselves. You’ll see, Miguel, that’ll be something to be proud of.”

  The SUV’s female activoice kicked in. “Mr. Hemley exit eighteen, West Redlands, is approaching. Would you care for music? The region is noted for Haito-LegUp and—”

  “No thanks,” Hemley replied. Pete Hemley flicked the turn signal on as he inched toward the exit. Miguel Acevedo adjusted the Glock strapped beneath his left armpit. He hadn’t decided if he’d spend his retirement reliving or forgetting his job because he wasn’t sure which one appealed to him the most.

  Chapter Four

  Date: 2030

  West Redlands, Florida

  Ameri-Inc. Research and Development

  Robotics Division

  Niyati stared hard at the photo of her son, Jay. At his chestnut eyes and dark, sweet-tea-colored skin. Niyati touched her forearm. His skin was hers. Jay’s hair was also like hers: black, shiny and full. A lock of it cascaded, as it nearly always did, just below his left eyebrow. She slid her forefinger along the lock as if she could brush it back. His high school graduation mortar cap was angled proudly on his head. He had the strong, straight nose of a leading man and the sincere, full-lipped smile of a leader. “So much potential,” she said.