She took me to the place. An old apartment building, the interior almost unlit, bare bulbs emitting just enough light to see peeling and cracked walls, whether painted or papered I couldn't say.
We climbed five floors and she knocked on a door with a peephole. After someone unhinged several locks it opened. An old woman stood looking at Gloria and when her eyes went to me she tried to shut the door but I pushed inside, gun in hand. I saw the woman I was looking for sitting at a table alone and I made for her, but several strong hands reached out and locked on like death grips, pulling me down and pinioning me to the floor. A quick sting in my butt and I saw the ugly woman at the table smile demurely, then dissolve.
I hung naked in empty space, inside an anemic green glow, suspended spread eagle by wrists and ankles between floor and ceiling. Within my range of vision a bare room, walls semi-gloss stainless steel. I saw no windows.
My head felt clear considering the drug they'd used on me, which was nothing compared to what was coming. I knew the drill.
I understood most of it. Four-orgasm Gloria'd suckered me. They'd done their homework. My ideal genetic blueprint, but not tuned in the manner I'd thought. She was tuned for deceit, explaining the scant four orgasms. She couldn't risk a lie I might see through.
I'd spotted the wild one. Or at least I thought so, in that final fleeting speck of consciousness. Maybe I'd hallucinated her. Maybe she came from a genetic blueprint kept hidden, only for special purposes. So ugly, maybe a mistake. But what hatchery would release such a mistake? Though with no chance of perpetuation there was no risk except to reputation. Genes alone could tell whether wild or hatchling.
A wild one would be a prize to any Orgulhian, regardless of rank. A treasure, a certified wild human female, progeny of a vestigial enclave of wild humans slipped through the purges, hidden out in some backwater spawning outside the tailored genomic blueprints that had grown so boring.
So this was my time for deflocculation. I had always wondered if it would be this way, or if I would survive to retirement with a simple gassing or an injection. Now I knew. My genetic code had the marker identifying my spawn, my whole history, the hatchery, the batch, the blueprint. It would be the evidence these Orgulhians would submit to the committee to get their points in the game. I'd been warned and I'd fucked up.
Deflocculate. What a word. First the drug, combination of effects like strychnine and curare. Strychnine to heighten the senses; they say you can hear the grass grow. Curare to immobilize, paralyze. And something to induce artificial rigor mortis and stop bleeding.
Important to be sure everything is experienced in all possible excruciating detail until the very last instant of life. So the hook-up comes first, devices to keep the brain alive independently of the loss of blood. The brain is the key. And communication with the requisite organs to pump out the fear hormones for that special musk Orgulhians love.
After the drugs the long tube up the ass, up past the colon, heated to a temperature just at the edge of tissue damage. Like a statue, stiff but alive and aware and feeling everything, hanging above the deflocculation tank and slowly sawed into chunks, starting with the extremities and working inward. Finally the head severed from the final slice of torso and then itself sawed into slices. All of it in suspension in a tank of chemical solution designed to condense everything down to no more than information, the tag ends of the body's blueprint, and fear. A suspension of information and the stink of fear, eventually vaporized for an atomizer and sent as a gift to the Orgulhian patron. A regal gift of respect and solicitude, compensation for the loss of points, commiseration maybe.
Jim Chaffee is an old guy who writes about what he knows: sex, violence, mathematics and dumbasses. His first science fiction pieces were proposals to the Air Force. These days he tries to be in Brazil. He has finished what seems to be a crime novel, São Paulo Blues, which pisses off a lot of people who read it. He began a publishing company The Drill Presss where you can find out about the book. It also publishes three online journals in English, one in Portuguese, and is planning a Spanish-language version. We seek writers and readers.