Kevin J. Anderson - Resurrection, Inc

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Resurrection, Inc.

by Kevin J. Anderson

Fictionwise - Science Fiction

Fictionwise

www.Fictionwise.com

Locus Poll Award Nominee, Stoker Award Nominee

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the purchaser. Making copies of this

work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk,

file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and

subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment.

For John Postovit and Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who have been with me through all incarnations

of this story. And also to Neil Peart, Geddy Lee, and Alex Lifeson of RUSH, whose haunting

album Grace Under Pressure inspired much of this novel.

PART I

RESURRECTION

The two Enforcers found the dead man in the street, long after curfew. The city's night hung around them,

tainted with a clammy mist caught between the tall and dark buildings. The smell of fresh blood, smoke,

and the sweat of close-pressed bodies drifted upward into the air.

The slain man was naked, spread-eagled inside a geometrically perfect pentagram drawn in blood. At

each of the five corners of the pentagram burned candles of black paraffin, made to look archaic with

artificially molded runnels of wax along the sides. A wide knife wound hung cleanly open in the center of

the victim's chest, like an appalled extra mouth.

With a throb of its rear jets, the Enforcers’ armored hovercar descended to the flagstones. As the engine

purred its way into silence, Enforcer Jones, a tall and thin black man, emerged from the craft. He hung

back uneasily, remaining near the hovercar. “Neo-Satanists again!” he muttered under his breath.

The other Enforcer, Frampton, agreed. “Yeah, they give me the creeps.” Belying his words, he went

eagerly forward, amused and confident.

Weapons bristled from pockets and holsters on the Enforcers’ body armor; tough helmets with

laser-proof black visors covered their faces. In the mercifully brief four weeks Frampton had been

assigned to him, Jones had never seen his partner's face, yet somehow he imagined it would wear a

stupid boyish grin, maybe some scattered pimples, maybe curly hair. Frampton seemed to think all this

was fun, a game. It didn't matter, though—they weren't friends, nor would they ever be. Other Enforcers

had a real camaraderie, a team spirit. But this would be Jones's last night patrol anyway.

“Think I should put out the candles?” Frampton asked.

Jones moved away from the hovercar, shaking off his revulsion of the pentagram, the blood sacrifice.

“No, I'll do it. You see to his ID.”

Frampton retrieved some equipment from the hovercar while Jones stepped forward, methodically

squashing each of the five black candles with the heel of his boot. In the distance, through gaps between

the massive squarish buildings, he could see the running lights of another patrol car moving in its sweep

pattern.

Frampton made a lot of unnecessary noise as he carelessly tumbled equipment onto the flagstones within

the pentagram. He picked up one of the scanner-plates and pushed it flat against the dead man's palm.

The optical detectors mapped the swirls and rivulets of the man's fingerprints, searching for a match in the

city's vast computer network.

“Nothing on The Net about him.” Frampton double checked, but came up with the same answer again.

“Figures,” Jones said.

“Ever wonder how the neo-Satanists manage to get people who aren't even in the databases, every time?

Weird.” Frampton sounded breathless. He was always trying to make conversation. Always.

Jones turned an expressionless black visor at his partner for a long and silent moment. He wanted to act

cold, wanted to be gruff with the other Enforcer. It was too late to make friends now—better just to

keep up the act for one more night. “How do you know they don't just alter the data on The Net?”

Frampton considered this in silent amazement. “That would be awfully sophisticated!”

“Don't you think this is sophisticated?” Jones jabbed a hand at the body, the candles, the pentagram.

“Enforcers sweep this area every five minutes after curfew. You know how strict it is, how closely

patrolled—and the neo-Satanists still managed to get him out on the street, draw the pentagram, light the

candles, and then vanish before we could get here.”

Only members of the Enforcers Guild were allowed on the streets of the Bay Area Metroplex between

midnight and dawn. Jones didn't fully understand the actual reasons for the curfew—he'd heard rumors of

a war taking place somewhere, but he had yet to see any signs of battle. Other, more sensible people

cited the occasional violent riots caused by angry blue-collars who had been displaced from their jobs by

resurrected Servants.

Jones himself had participated in some of the mock street battles staged by the Guild after dark. Nobody

really got hurt—the damage usually included no more than a few blasted palm trees, a handful of

scorched tile rooftops, and plenty of noise in the streets. But it all sounded terrible and dangerous enough

to the general public huddled in their living quarters, that they would always feel grateful for the protection

the Guild offered. Besides, it gave all the Enforcers something to do.

Earlier in the night, Jones and Frampton had captured a chunky Asian man cowering under the overhang

of a darkened business complex. The man had been trying to hide, not knowing where to go, as if he had

a chance of avoiding the Enforcer sweeps.

Frampton had pulled out two of his weapons and started toward the unfortunate man, but Jones

restrained his partner and listened while the chunky man babbled an explanation. He and his wife had

argued, and he had stormed out of their apartment, either forgetting about the curfew or not caring. Now

his wife wouldn't let him back in, and the man had been trying to stay out of sight until dawn.

Sheepishly the Asian man keyed his Net password into the terminal mounted in the armored hovercar; his

ID checked out.

“You know what we have to do now,” Jones said from behind his visor.

The man swallowed and hung his head in dejected horror. “Yes.”

“All your Net privileges are revoked for a week. Sorry. Curfew is curfew.” The Asian man sulked behind

the restraining field in the back of the hovercar while Jones and Frampton escorted him home.

Without The Net recognizing his identity, the man would effectively be a non-person for an entire week:

he would not be able to buy anything, make person-to-person video or voicelinks, call up entertainment,

or even enter his own home unless someone else let him in.

The man's wife looked frightened but not surprised when the Enforcers arrived to escort her husband

back into the dwelling; she didn't look pleased to see him, and the prospect of having to do everything

herself for the next seven days seemed to make her even angrier yet....

“Give me a hand here?” Frampton opened the refrigerated, airtight compartment in the back of the

hovercar and returned to the slain man in the pentagram.

Jones bent to take the body's cold, naked feet while the other Enforcer tightened his handhold under the

man's armpits. Jones could feel the rubbery dead flesh of the victim's ankles even through his

flexsteel-mesh gloves.

Frampton pursed his lips and grinned at the mouthlike wound in the dead man's chest. “Well, it's off to

the factory for you, my boy. I bet you're going to miss all this excitement, Jones.”

Transfer generally equated with punishment in the Enforcers Guild, and Jones had screwed up several

days before, during a daytime stint on the streets. He had frozen for a moment, let his conscience whisper

a few words in his ear, when he had seen a rebel Servant break from her routine and run.

All Servants were reanimated corpses, dead bodies with microprocessors planted in their brains to make

the bodies move again, to let them walk and talk and do what they were told. It was much cheaper than

manufacturing androids from scratch for doing menial and monotonous tasks.

But even with her head shaved, the lifeless pallor to her skin, and the gray jumpsuit/uniform of all

Servants, Jones had difficulty convincing himself that the rebel Servant wasn't human, that she was

already dead and merely reanimated, that she didn't matter.

The Enforcer found his reprimand ironic: Starting tomorrow, he would be taken from his easy

post-curfew beat for full-time service at Resurrection, Inc. to escort newly resurrected Servants to their

assignments.

But at least it would get him away from Frampton and his constant inane chattering.

They placed the slain man in the back compartment of the hovercar, folding his arms and legs to fit him

into the cramped space. Frampton stood with a miniature Net keyboard in his hand, punching in data

about the discovery. “Verify cause of death,” Frampton said. “Single wound, no other apparent bodily

damage, no identity information on The Net.”

Jones glanced at the wound in the man's chest. “Concur.”

“To Resurrection, Inc., right?”

“Yeah.”

Frampton dropped his voice slightly. Because of the dark visor, Jones could read no expression on his

partner's face. “Man, I hope that never happens to me.”

Jones closed the compartment and set the controls for quick-freeze. A hissing noise filled the air. He

knew exactly what Frampton meant, but he asked anyway, “What? Being a neo-Satanist sacrifice, or

becoming a Servant?”

“Neither one.”

On the sixth underground level of Resurrection, Inc., the technician placed the body from Vat 66 onto a

clean inspection table. The body's arms moved loosely, still dripping, almost cooperating, as the tech

rearranged them. Four days of conditioning had left the muscles free of rigor and the dead brain ready for

imprinting as a Servant. The room smelled strongly of chemicals, making the tech's eyes and nostrils burn,

even after his two years of working there.

On the pocket of the tech's non-porous lab smock, he had carefully stencilled his name, “RODNEY

QUICK,” so no one would steal it. Yet Rodney Quick was generally the only human to spend an entire

shift on Level Six anyway; the rest of the workers were Servants—bald and dressed in their

characteristic gray jumpsuits—and certainly no Servant would dream of stealing his lab smock. But the

stencilled name made Rodney feel important and easily recognized by anyone who might take notice of

his work.

Rodney straightened the body's pliant limbs while drops of vat solution trickled into drainage grooves cut

in the polished table surface. The tech hummed to himself as he found a roll of shredded duo-sponges

and dabbed the remaining solution from the body.

Thick but limp brown hair hung straight down from one side of Rodney's head, while on the other side

the hair had been tapered drastically back, leaving the area above his ear shaved clean. He stood a few

inches shorter than anyone who had ever tried to intimidate him, and his watery blue eyes flicked too

often from side to side. The gold-plated stud in his left nostril and the two silicon fingernails on his right

hand should have been stylish.

Adjusting the bright overhead lights, Rodney let the glare wash down on the naked body, illuminating the

open sacrificial wound in the center of the man's chest. Beneath the inspection table, sharp-angled

shadows crowded on the floor, responding with grotesque exaggerations to Rodney Quick's every move.

He was reminded of the monsters he had imagined under his bed-unit when he was a child.

The pre-Servant from Vat 66 had finished several days of initial prep for resurrection, soaking in a

solution of scrubber bacteria that removed all the lactic acid from the muscles and purged the dead body

of waste and undigested food. As a last step before bringing the body to the inspection table, Rodney

had drained all the blood vessels and refilled them with saline solution in preparation for the synBlood.

Rodney slipped a pair of magnifying goggles over his eyes and bent down to inspect the wound in the

man's chest. His own shadow lurched across the prone body, but Rodney didn't notice with his

drastically reduced field of view. The tech could see that the wound was clean; the tissue had been

hacked and the veins and arteries roughly severed, but Rodney didn't think it would be difficult to make

repairs.

He measured the chest cavity and, leaving the table unattended, went searching for an appropriate

synHeart. In the resurrection room other Servants wandered about, performing pre-programmed tasks,

checking dials and monitoring vats, meticulously jotting down information. Rodney always felt the irony of

having Servants assist him here on Level Six—it seemed like having cattle help out in a slaughterhouse.

The technician stopped at the door to the organ-supply room, keyed in his request to the Net terminal

mounted by the door. Moments later, in a puff of cryogenic mist, the door slid open and a flashing light

indicated the location of an appropriate cardiac pump. Rodney removed the synHeart and, as he walked

out of the clammy-smelling storeroom, he was tempted to toss the organ up in the air and try to catch it

when it came back down. But he restrained himself—as always, Supervisor might be watching.

“Out of useless death, we create Service to mankind,” said the inscription above the elevator doors—a

quote attributed to Francois Nathans, the magnate of Resurrection, Inc. Rodney suddenly noticed the

quote again after two years of working in the lower levels, and he wasn't quite sure whether to take it

with a liberal dose of seriousness or irreverence.

Certain criteria had to be met before Rodney could even begin the resurrection process, and the

Enforcers didn't always know what they were doing when they brought the bodies in. Rodney rejected

some of the pre-Servants if they had been too badly mangled, or if rigor had set in too firmly. A potential

Servant generally had to be the victim of a sudden death—if a person died from a debilitating disease or

old age, the machinery of the body would already be damaged. And Rodney Quick was not about to

spend all his waking hours restringing ganglia, growing compatible muscle fiber, popping in a junkyard of

synEyes, synLivers, synLungs—no thank you, the company wasn't quite that desperate for

pre-Servants. Besides, the whole process had to be cost-effective or it didn't make good business

sense.

Any death from an accident, or poisoning, or even cardiac arrest was fair game, though. The Enforcers

brought in even marginally adequate bodies, anyone they found dead, whether after the curfew or during

the daytime, whether dead in bed or killed during one of the street riots. Sometimes Rodney wondered

what kind of hold Francois Nathans had on the Enforcers Guild to make them cooperate so easily,

especially when Nathans publicly despised the Guild for forcing its “protection” on all of them.

The inadequate pre-Servants, along with other discarded bodies, were shipped off to be converted into

animal feed for the great Midwestern agricultural wasteland. Oh, sometimes the family whined about not

having the body of their loved one for whatever funeral rites they desired, but Nathans and his partner

Stromgaard Van Ryman had won a major victory by battling—both legally and morally—to convince the

public that the dead were a major resource to be used for all mankind. What a terrible waste, they

campaigned, to stick a body uselessly into the ground just so a few family members could cry over it.

Rodney brought the synHeart back to the table and, adjusting the local room temperature to keep him

from perspiring, took a deep breath. He lowered his magnifying goggles and arranged his tools, then set

to work. He used arterial sealants, capillary grafts, cellular cement to lock the cardiac pump firmly in

place. Every half hour or so, a parade of pain marched up and down his stiff back.

The technician worked alone, in silence, and when he finally eased the tiny battery pellet into the

synHeart's chamber and made ready to close the chest wound, he mused to himself, amazed at how easy

it had been for him. His spine ached, and his fingers felt stiff, but he felt proud at proving his skill again.

Let Supervisor try to deny that he was one of the best damned technicians in all of Resurrection, Inc!

Though both of Rodney's parents had been blue-collars, he himself had fought above all that. It could be

done, if you had the ambition and the drive. He had spent his teenage years in terror, knowing that he

was doomed to follow in his parents’ footsteps of manual labor, tedious blue-collar work that required

no brains, no skill at all. Then even that bleak future had been stolen from him by the Servant revolution.

But Rodney had had enough years ahead of him to plan a little, to realize how he must adapt to survive in

a rapidly changing new world. He had pored over the resources of The Net, isolating himself, focusing his

teenage world on the bright pixels. He expended all his effort to climb a few rungs higher on the ladder of

success, finally reaching a position where he could feel important—Main Technician on Lower Level Six

of Resurrection, Inc.

But now, with Servants rapidly replacing many blue-collar jobs, all the lower rungs in the ladder of

success were also disappearing—and Rodney Quick found himself back near the bottom again through

no fault of his own.

Rodney's father, who had worked in a factory that manufactured shampoo and soap products, was killed

in one of the early anti-Servant riots, receiving the full force of an Enforcer's scatter-stun. Rodney's

mother, tossed out of her job as a dishwasher at the Sunshine cafeteria, now lived off the blue allotment,

a special fund garnered from a tariff on the purchase price of Servants. His mother now wandered the

streets with the other aimless and apathetic blues who had no training and no hope for any other type of

employment. Competition was vicious for the remaining jobs, and Rodney's mother didn't have the

stamina or the enthusiasm to fight for something she had always thought would be hers by default. Nor

would she have anything more to do with her son, claiming that the stink of Resurrection clung to him and

that it reminded her of her husband's blood.

Rodney finished the synHeart operation on the pre-Servant and sealed the dead man's chest, taking care

to make certain the skin seams matched. He then rigged up a slow-pump that began the long and delicate

process of refilling the blood vessels with synBlood.

Rodney clasped his hands behind his back in a Napoleonic pose and walked away from the pre-Servant

on the table, leaving the pumps to do their work. He inspected the entire resurrection room like a

commander surveying his troops. Occasionally he had other human sub-technicians to assist him in some

of the inspections and operations, but most of the time Rodney remained the only human on the floor,

with only a few other Servants to handle the uninteresting tasks.

Seventy different vats rose from floor to ceiling, dispersed in perfect geometrical order around the room.

Some of the vats were for the initial bath of scrubber bacteria; others were for the solution of genetically

volatile bacteria to perform the finishing touches before reanimation. Intermediate holding chambers of

mud-thick silvery paste were sunk into the floor between some of the vats. At any one time Rodney

could prepare over a hundred different Servants for resurrection.

While grooming himself for a position at Resurrection, Inc., Rodney had reached out through The Net,

uncovering the scattered history of Servants and the corporation. After many abortive attempts to build a

serviceable, human-looking android, researchers had given up in despair at the incredible task of

manufacturing something as sophisticated as the human body. Even the few almost-successful android

attempts would have been prohibitively expensive to mass-produce—and if android labor was going to

cost more than even Union workers, why bother at all?

But fifteen years before, Francois Nathans had realized that a nearly inexhaustible supply of

almost-androids lay waiting to be used: the perfect machine of the human body, discarded at death but

often still completely serviceable with only a few minor repairs. Rather than trying to recreate out of

inanimate materials, and then mass-produce, the delicate interconnecting mechanisms of neurons and

muscles and bones and tendons and sensory organs, Nathans argued that it made more sense to find a

new “engine” to put into these already built—but no longer functional—machines, instead of doing

everything from scratch.

The sophisticated microprocessor embedded in a Servant's head linked into the existing contours of the

brain, simulating life. Attached to the proper ganglia, the microprocessor acted as a controlling motor, a

new engine for the discarded machine. A special “Command” phrase bound all Servants and made them

obey, humans, locking their reflexes and forcing them to follow instructions.

As far as Rodney was concerned, Servants weren't real people; the tech couldn't possibly think of them

as such. Sure, the bodies moved, and Servants could respond when you talked to them, but no real

person lived inside. Servants retained their language skills, and some basic knowledge—pretty much

anything that happened to be residing on the surface of the temporal lobe when they died. Servants

varied—some were like blundering zombies who needed explicit instructions for almost everything, but

others held a residue of intelligence and could actually respond almost conversationally.

But no Servant had a memory of its past life—all of that had been erased either in death or in the

resurrection process ... or maybe the microprocessor just couldn't reach deep enough to catch hold of

those memories. It didn't matter—despite the artistry Rodney Quick put into the creation of his Servants,

they were all just pieces of equipment, machinery, appliances.

Certainly not people.

Rodney stopped and gawked at the body of a well-proportioned young female floating in one of the final

baths, weighted down by heavy spheres tied to her waist, wrists, and legs. The front panel of the vat was

transparent, and she hung suspended in the thick golden-colored solution, but Rodney could imagine all

her details to perfection. She had already been shaved and trimmed, but Rodney still remembered when

she had come in, dead from self-inflicted poison. She'd had thick red hair, beautiful, almost the color of

blood. Rodney kept records of all such details.

It seemed that every time he tried to start a relationship with a woman, an honest-to-goodness human

being, she always broke it off. Handlers of the dead had been despised and shunned throughout history,

though in modern times men had claimed to be enlightened about such things. Undertakers and

morticians, sextons during the Black Death, gravediggers, the eta in Japan, “resurrectionists” in the

nineteenth century illicitly providing dead bodies for medical research.... How the hell was he supposed

to fight against leftover cultural sentiments?

Rodney sometimes wondered if spending his teenage years sweating over a Net terminal, trying to

escape from the other jobless blues and into a real job, might have left him socially inept ... not quite able

to relate to others in a meaningful way. He dressed stylishly, according to illustrations in all the Net

periodicals. He tried to be funny, compassionate, interesting—yet women seemed so volatile, so

unpredictable, with so much capacity for hurting in them.

On the other hand, Servant females never said a harsh word. Rodney placed his fingertips against the

warm glass of the finishing vat, staring at the naked body of the once redheaded female, watching as she

moved slowly in the gradual convection currents of the amniotic fluid. His own breath began to condense

fog on the side of the glass.

“What, exactly, are you doing, Mister Quick?” A woman's voice: deep and thick, uninflected but carrying

a symphony of overtones that made Rodney's blood congeal.

Supervisor crossed her arms over a deep-purple sleeveless tunic edged with random lines of silver

thread. She stood nearly Rodney's height, built somewhat stockier, but seemed immensely tall in her own

personal presence. Her long bluish-blond hair had been pulled into three even braids, neatly splayed and

pinned to the back of her purple tunic. A primary Net keypad had been tattooed on the palm of her right

hand. Supervisor's eyes had a pearly, distant look to them, but hard lines on her brow and around her

lips quickly destroyed any dreamy look she might have worn. Though she stared directly at him, Rodney

felt as if Supervisor watched him with many more eyes than just the two on her face.

One of the few humans who could act as a walking Interface with The Net, Supervisor lorded over all

the lower levels of Resurrection, Inc. Her brain carried a remote gateway processor, implanted so that

she could directly connect to The Net. Interfaces were rare and highly valued, so Francois Nathans had

arranged to effectively own Supervisor, protecting her and doing everything to keep her happy.

Consequently, Supervisor encountered no interference when she acted out her managerial fantasies on

her human underlings.

She enjoyed harping on Rodney in particular, or so it seemed to him.

“I asked what you are doing, Mister Quick.” The flatness of her voice didn't change, but Rodney could

hear a thread of surprise that he had not immediately answered her question.

“I am inspecting the vats, madam. To be sure the Servants haven't made mistakes in their tasks.”

“Servants do not make mistakes if their instructions are clear,” she said.

“You're right, madam. I was making sure my instructions were clear.” Rodney clenched his fingers into a

fist.

“Why aren't you keeping careful watch on the pre-Servant in Vat 66? Everything is routine?”

Supervisor's voice had the barest lilt at the end, only enough for him to guess that she had posed a

question.

“Yes, um, everything's routine, Madam. I'm pumping the synBlood in right now, and then he'll go to the

secondary vat. You're welcome to inspect my surgery—you can see I took great precautions while

installing his new cardiac pump. I'm sure you'll find everything satisfactory.”

“Since you are involved, Mister Quick, I expect nothing more than ‘satisfactory.’ You are incapable of

better.” She huffed, then continued. “The pre-Servant in Vat 66 now has a new designator, a name. You

will henceforth refer to him as ‘Danal.'” She paused, and then spoke again; her gaze bored into him. “I

will give you a warning, Mr. Quick. Francois Nathans himself has expressed an interest in this particular

Servant. After resurrection is complete, Danal is to be presented to Vincent Van Ryman.”

“Van Ryman? But ... isn't he the neo-Satanist priest?”

“That is his business, not yours,” Supervisor snapped, raising her voice only a little, but the relative

difference was enormous. “Your point of concern is that Mister Nathans is extremely interested.

Therefore your performance on this resurrection will have a direct bearing on your own future existence.

Think on that carefully, Mister Quick, before you become distracted by female anatomy.”

Rodney swallowed. “Yes, Madam. I, um, understand perfectly. I won't let you down.”

“I have no confidence in you whatsoever. You cannot let me down.” Supervisor turned curtly and

walked across the room to the elevator shaft, seeing yet not seeing with her pearly Net eyes.

Shaken, Rodney retreated from the female's vat and hurried back to the inspection table, where the slow

pump droned as it continued to exchange the inert saline solution with artificial blood. Rodney used his

magnifying goggles to recheck for any minute leaks around the seal of the chest wound. Satisfied, he

removed the goggles and stepped back to look at the pale and motionless body stretched out under the

harsh glare of the overhead lights.

He hated this place, but he couldn't think about leaving. Sometimes, though, he had to unleash his

rebellion in little ways. Smirking, Rodney patted Danal's cold cheeks in mock paternal affection. He

muttered to himself, “Such tender loving care for a corpse!”

He swallowed in a dry throat, looking around to see if Supervisor had seen him. She always moved

silently, maliciously, spying. He didn't see her, but that meant nothing—when linked to The Net, she had

all the ears and eyes of the entire network.

The other Servants moved about their mindless tasks. The vats bubbled and the slow-pump hummed, but

everything else was quiet. Lower Level Six seemed suddenly alien to him, and Rodney felt vulnerable and

alone.

Jones carefully arranged the pieces of his Enforcer armor on the spongy bedroom floor, and then aligned

all his weapons on the bed-unit. He yawned and stretched before beginning the laborious daily process of

assembling his uniform.

He slipped the torso guard over his shoulders and mounted the pelvic plate, making sure everything fit

properly before fusing the seams. Then came the arm guards and several segments of leg shielding. The

armor was made of lightweight flexsteel fibers, dura-plated around the joints, making for a flexible and

comfortable suit that was completely protective.

Last, Jones picked up the high-impact fiberglass helmet and stared for a moment at his reflection in the

polarized black visor. The visor could withstand even a laser strike full in the face, but it didn't allow so

much as a glimmer of feeling to show through. Jones narrowed his dark eyes, trying to make himself look

tough but not quite succeeding. His thin moustache had never grown quite full, though he hadn't shaved it

in years. Jones was tall, well built but not massive—yet every Enforcer looked the same behind all that

armor.

He picked up his weapons in order, slipping them into the appropriate sockets on his armor.

Heater-knife, club, grenade, smoke bomb, two projectile weapons, a fully charged scatter-stun, and a

pocket bazooka. Bristling with death, every day: instead of filling Jones with power and confidence, it

made him feel small and dependent. Not a policeman, according to the official description, but one of the

“conformance assurance personnel,” or perhaps even “a modern-day knight against the dragons of social

unrest.”

His personal Servant Julia stood at the doorway, watching him, waiting for him to speak.

“Good morning, Julia.” He consciously gave her a warm smile.

“Good morning, Master Jones,” she said, like a recording. She still wore the long blond wig he'd bought

for her, but then he remembered with some sadness that he had just never told her to take it off. It meant

nothing. According to the scant information he had been able to get from Resurrection, Inc., Julia had had

blond hair during her life; and apparently Julia had indeed been her real first name. But they told him

nothing else about her.

She was small and trim, and would have been attractive—though not beautiful—if it hadn't been for her

baldness and the unnatural pallor of her skin. The transparent synBlood did nothing to give a flush to any

Servant's skin. Servants didn't need to sleep, though they could sit motionless and pass hours without

flinching. Julia's hair would never grow, nor would her fingernails.

Jones strode to the door of his quarters. She didn't move. “Wait for me, please, Julia. You can do

whatever you want during the day, and I'll see you when I come back home.” He spoke gently, as if it

mattered to her.

Julia sat down on a chair facing the doorway. “Yes, Master Jones.” Her blond wig had shifted on her

head, but she made no attempt to fix it. He knew full well that she'd be there, unmoved, when he returned

in the evening.

He was trying so hard, hoping, but he began to confess that nothing would make her seem more human,

like a real companion. Jones had bought her the wig and some real clothes in place of the gray Servant

jumpsuit, but the clothes made her look pathetic—she wore them like chains, though perfectly willing to

oblige. Somehow Jones felt as if he had tried to dress up a dog or a monkey in some ridiculous costume.

Julia was not meant for a dress, or for any sort of human trappings, because she was not—he knew he

would eventually admit it to himself—she was not human.

Jones rarely went out even to entertain himself, and he made almost no effort at all to join the

camaraderie with others in the Enforcers Guild. He just didn't remember how to make friends anymore,

and all he had to comfort him were the scars of an earlier friendship.

People felt intimidated by Enforcers, and Jones suspected that the Guild itself fostered that attitude. He

doubted if anyone would want to have an Enforcer as a true companion. Even female Enforcers were

few compared to the males, and any Guildswoman snapped up a male companion of her choosing.

A month before, everything had finally reached its peak, but Jones had covered it up well. He had

become completely exhausted from staring at the walls, the ceiling of his apartment, alone, blinking at the

vapid Net entertainment channels. Enough. A few more nights like this, and he would have to squeeze

back tears, or else run yelling through the empty after-curfew corridors.

Jones had surrendered most of his merit earnings to purchase a Servant, compulsively, before he could

think too much about it. Though only an inexpensive, marginally responsive Servant, Julia had brought

him to his knees in debt. For what? He didn't know. Few people like him ever had a Servant; he wasn't

so sure he even wanted one. Ever since his transfer to become an escort for Resurrection, Inc., Jones

had been required to guard and protect emerging Servants against the angry people on the streets. But he

himself had a knee-jerk reaction of dislike and uneasiness toward Servants. Why in the world did he

want one for himself? What was the point?

Sure, he had convinced himself he needed someone to sweep the floors, to cook and clean and do other

routine things a Servant would be expected to do—but Jones also wanted someone to talk to, a

companion, a friend. Okay, so he was lonely—bring out the violins, he thought bitterly. It wasn't his

fault, but he just didn't have it in him to lay his friendship on the line, to risk everything. Friends were

unpredictable—they died.... And it was easier to buy a Servant, a surrogate companion—that's me, he

thought, good old path-of-least-resistance Jones.

With unrealistic expectations and barely restrained hope, Jones always treated Julia as an equal human.

Though Julia rarely responded with more than mechanical gestures or words, still he talked to her, asked

her if she would do things. He wanted to be a friend, and have a friend in return. He wanted to console

himself by having someone else around. He talked and she listened attentively, apparently interested

regardless of the subject matter, and Jones felt relieved just to have his bottled-up words falling on open

ears, Servant or otherwise. But he knew deep inside that Julia was not interested, and he doubted if she

even understood what he really felt.

Jones had tried to make love to her, once. She had been fully cooperative, even though he found himself

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Resurrection,Inc.byKevinJ.AndersonFictionwise-ScienceFictionFictionwisewww.Fictionwise.comCopyright(C)1988byKevinJ.AndersonLocusPollAwardNominee,StokerAwardNomineeNOTICE:Thisworkiscopyrighted.Itislicensedonlyforusebythepurchaser.Makingcopiesofthisworkordistributingittoanyunauthorizedpersonbyanymeans...

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Kevin J. Anderson - Resurrection, Inc

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