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Xarms

By Adicus Ryan Garton

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Tobey sat in his julie, idling in the parking lot. His hand reached up unconsciously and started flipping through Dogstar radio stations. It was a nervous habit he had picked up in college, sitting out in his car, scanning through the radio stations before taking a test or breaking up with a girlfriend. Now, here he sat in his $300K julie, idling in the parking lot.

Junkrabbit. No. Engineer rock. Too structured, weird time signatures. Tobey couldn't handle a 13/4 song right now.

Septica. No. If he wanted to hear kids screaming at him, he'd go home.

Putomundo...

Hmmm.

Tobey let the Spanish rock wash over him as he squeezed his eyes, trying to steel himself for what he had to do today.

***

Two things you need to know before you read anything more.

First, the virus. In the middle of the twenty-first century, we finally learned that we were not alone in the universe. The Kryllyrk visited us, numbering in the tens of thousands, landing simultaneously in the U.S., in China, in Japan, in France and Nigeria. They immediately sent ambassadors to countries in South America, the Middle East and Australia.

While there were many ramifications of this visit, the most significant was the virus they spread worldwide, now called Crazy K. It caused massive bone damage, heart failure, necrosis and insanity, among other maladies. It was completely unexpected, as the Kryllyrk had studied us for almost a century and the virus had never affected humans prior to their visit.

The pharmaceutical industry, realizing that the extinction of the human race was bad for business, set about finding a cure. Dr. Timothy Mallory discovered that the virus had mutated upon impact with a rare virus found only on certain species of mushrooms found only in Nicaragua, and this was the reason it had never bothered humans.

Leave it to Nicaragua to nearly destroy mankind.

Mallory and his team produced a cure, with a lofty price tag, refusing to sell to individuals but only to countries themselves. He became the richest man in the world. In disgust at man's avarice, the Kryllyrk left, rejecting Earth's entrance into a cosmic League of Civilizations, which had been their reason for coming in the first place.

Mallory created the world's first DNA-altering drug, and the pharmaceutical industry became the most powerful on Earth, eclipsing the fuel, food and even war industries.

Second, in the last twenty years or so, the pharmaceutical industry has come under fire for their inhumane, monopolistic and careless attitude toward their customers, and someone somewhere suggested that executives go under the knife (figuratively) to show the industry's sympathy.

Since the CEOs and the Board of Trustees were exempt from this rule, they okayed it.

***

“Come on, people! We need some new ideas! Next month, GenRx is revealing their new product at P3, and we have to have something fresh to excite the market.” This was their yearly speech from the boss, Ivanovich. These week-long brainstorms were responsible for some of the past five years greatest innovations in genetic pharmaceuticals: buzzcaps, a pill that allows humans to digest uncooked and spoiled foods; vizcaps, prescriptions vision corrective tablets; and last year's best-selling Bustcaps. “Mikey, you came up with the viral breast implant—what do you have for me, boy?”

Mikey shrugged.

“What about memory pills, boss?” asked Lark. “Like gingko biloba—but it actually works.”

Ivanovich thought for a moment and then shook his head. “Nah. DEM's cornered the market for memory enhancement. There's no reason for a prescription memory supplement.”

Pete nodded, grinning. From the day he had his digital eidetic memory installed, he never shut up about how amazing it was. Tobey wondered if he started remembering how amazing it was while thinking about how amazing it was if it might cause a feedback, making his head explode. With the words of Putomundo running through his head, he imagined the boardroom showered with pieces of Pete's brain.

            “Tobey! What do you got?” asked the boss.

Tobey, imagining himself with C-cup breasts, shook his head.

“What about extra arms?” asked Melinda, who everyone in the office thought was a complete whore.

The boardroom got quiet. “What? What do you mean, extra arms?”

“Well, I was watching CNN the other day, and there's this Japanese doctor at Stanford with four arms, only two of them are robotic, and they looked clumsy as hell. I was thinking, what if we strapped two extra arms on Tobey here?”

“Hmmm, that's a bit more permanent than I usually like. But it does intrigue me. Marketing?”

Jerry and Jennifer sat at the end of the table, listening quietly, their brains cross-referencing case studies and reference groups and market trends.

Jennifer spoke first, “Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, with only two legs.”

Jerry followed with “Mozart wrote many sonatas, imagining he had four hands.”

“Hum one, then, Jerry,” said Ivanovich.

“Uh... boss, those are complex pieces.”
            “Would people know them?”

“Probably not.”

“Then why would you suggest that? What are we, culture-mongers? No!” The boss turned to rest of the team. “Okay, then who’s going to do it?” Looking around the room, Tobey saw men and women with genetically altered hair, eyes, faces, limbs, organs, cuticles, sex drives and more. There were a hundred alterations in a room with only a dozen people, and of those 12, only Tobey still had his original DNA. His thoughts turned to julie, the only person in the world who really paid him any attention, his kids who couldn't be pulled away from their antiPods if their lives (or his) depended on it, his wife and her methodical, biweekly love-making, and his hand raised.

Everyone turned to him, and Jennifer gasped.

“You sure about this, Tobes?” asked Jerry.

With a curd nod, he lowered his hand.

The boss looked around the room once more and started nodding. “Get cracking, guys. We have a month to give Tobey here four arms.”

Tobey sighed as the rest of the executive team scrambled to talk to their guys, who would in turn talk to their guys, who would in turn make a pill that would alter Tobey's DNA, giving him four arms. “Shit,” he muttered, feeling like his skin was too tight. There was no turning back now.

He never should have left his julie.

***

He got inside his julie, and it sprung to life. “Good afternoon, Tobey. Are you off work early today?” Julie's voice was calm and friendly. There were five or six pre-programmed voice packages and he could download more off the net, but he had paid $300K for this one, why would he want to go mess it up with some user-defined files. He didn't need his car speaking to him like Robocop or whoever was playing the Terminator this decade.

“Yeah, Julie. I just learned that I'll be getting four arms from the boss.”

Julie was silent for a moment. “I'm afraid I don't quite understand. Would you care to rephrase that?”

“No, it's not important. Just take me home.”

“You're the boss.”

His julie's sonar monitored the area around the car, communicating with other cars' ADS to prevent any fender-benders or crashes. And since his car was more expensive, almost every other car's automated drive systems gave him right of way.

Tobey grabbed the steering wheel, which wasn't truly connected to the wheels in any way. Ten and two (and four and seven). “Oh, I think I'm going to be sick.”

***

The guys down in projection got the four-armed DNA in no time. A bunch of guys fooling around with the essence of life, and they couldn't be bothered to come to work in a suit and tie. Tobey interrupted one who was busy playing some ancient 2D viz game.

“Yeah, buddy?” asked the programmer, the smell of him terrible. Tobey had heard that these guys had weeks where they wouldn't go home and shower; they insisted on staying in the lab and working out kinks. This guy's black band t-shirt was wrinkled, faded and looked the way the homeless smelled.

“I'm not your buddy,” Tobey spat out, trying to get the taste of sweat and hair out of his mouth and nose. “I'm Tobey Nakamura.”

“Oh, the four-armed guy. I'm Zeppelin. What d'ya need?”

“I need you to show me what we're buying upstairs.” Even though the lab was in a different building and not physically under anyone in charge, management psychology dictated that Tobey talk down to anyone under him.

“Alright, follow me.” Together, Tobey and Zeppelin walked into the demo room. Tobey had been in here many times before. It could project a 3D hologram of a life-sized human, his different systems, zoom in and out, all sorts of expensive tricks. Zeppelin fired up the projector and Tobey saw a naked him standing in front of him. They got every roll of fat, every scar, every wrinkle—projection was not a kind business.

“Okay, I won't bother with the nervous system, because that was basically a cut-and-paste job. We hired in some osteo... bone guys, and they redesigned your skeletal system. Check this out.” He grabbed the hologram with both hands and did something with his fingers, stripping Tobey of his skin and musculature until there was nothing left but bones. “They had to redesign your ribcage.” One flick of the wrists and Tobey had two sets of arm bones where before he only had one. His ribcage looked sick and twisted. “I know what you're thinking, but those osteo... bone guys, they made it all work. Your new arms'll work just as well as your old ones, and despite your freakish ribcage, it shouldn't be too uncomfortable.”

Tobey stared at Zeppelin who just shrugged. “You see, this is why I got into computers,” he said. “Nobody'll ever tell me I need to grow two wieners or twenty toes.”

And I drive a $300K julie while you probably drive a Prius, you smelly hippie.

Tobey left the projection department and leaned against a pillar outside. Keep crawling like a caterpillar and they'll try to make you into a butterfly.

He realized that at the meeting, he should've asked for wings, too.

***

“Dad! Dad!” Jody screamed. “Mario has my antiPod! And he won't give it back!”

“Give it back, Mario!” Tobey shouted half-heartedly, spooning flavorless bran flakes into his mouth. The dietitian had give him his new diet yesterday, one he had to follow to the letter until the genetic resequencing could take place.

“It's not hers, Dad! It's mine!” shouted his son. They used him as a conduit to scream at themselves. If he interjected, they would take their argument elsewhere. He didn't have to work in projection to figure that out.

“Nuh-uh! He lost his at school!”

“That's not true, you liar!”

“Yes, it is! Ow!”

Their argument delineated into squeals and screams, and Tobey tried to drown it out by crunching his flakes louder, his mind weighing the price of an antiPod against peace and quiet.

***

Later that morning, Tobey took a 20 minute T-rail from Boston to San Fran, where he had an appointment with Dr. Tonaka, who that crusty Zeppelin had kept calling Doc Ock. “Please,” said Tonaka's receptionist with the slightest hint of an Asian accent. “Dr. Tonaka will see you now.” Tobey entered the man's office, or what he thought was the man's office. It looked more like a warehouse for old electronic components and computer hardware. Tonaka sat behind a desk, wearing a mad scientist's lab coat, spattered with what looked like blood. The Japanese man even had it on his hands and face. Tobey's shock must have been apparent because Tonaka's brow furrowed and then an easy smile cross his face.

Without rising, he said a string of Japanese words that Tobey only vaguely recognized, being fourth-gen Japanese-American. When Tobey didn't reply, the doctor smiled and said, “Come in, come in, Mr. Nakamura. No need to worry about this—it's just lubricating oil for the extra arms. The xarms, some of my first-year grad students call them.”

There was no sign of the xarms. Tonaka then stood as Tobey approached, and the xarms came out from under the desk, where they furiously manipulated a Rubik's cube. Tonaka wiped some of the oil from his hands with a rag, then offered his hand, his real hand, and Tobey shook it with unease. “The Rubik's cube, the 5X5 one, is part of a computerized calibration they have to run through every morning after lubrication.

The xarms looked like high-end prosthetics with the exception of the fingers, which were a nightmarish mesh of fibers, gears and servos. They were pretty noisy as they spun, flipped and twisted the large red, blue and yellow cube.

“Come, sit. I was asked by your director to give a quick rundown of the mental processes required to manipulate extra limbs. Tonaka sat behind his desk, his xarms hiding once more. “Your brain isn't wired for six limbs. For millions of years now, your evolutionary path has been crawled by things with four. But before that, when we were but insects...,” here he snapped his fingers—his real fingers—and continued, “That insect mind still exists in ours as a couple of letters in our DNA. That was one of Mallory's lesser celebrated findings when he finally busted the human genome to create K-caps. People just don't like to think that the monkey is still up here.” Tonaka tapped his head with a real index finger. “In order to operate those two extra limbs independently, you have to tap into that insect mind. Otherwise, your new limbs will simply mirror what the ones above them do.”

Tobey stared at the doctor. “So how do I ‘tap into my insect mind’?”

One of Tonaka's xarms opened a drawer and pulled out a pill case. Gently, the xarm (the xhand? the xand?) laid it on the desk. “These puppies right here. I had them specially designed for the task. By your company actually.” Then the doctor pulled out of his desk, of all things, a prescription pad. “Got my M.D. from John Hopkins in '97. I'll write you a scrip.”

***

The drugs made Tobey dream. Dream, I say, because nightmare cannot be a verb.

***

One morning, when Tobey Nakamura woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible insect. To be specific, he was a bumblebee. Bzzz, he said to the world.

His family was not so horrified, though his son and daughter thought for a moment that the bumblebee had eaten their father. His wife wondered aloud if she might still collect his life insurance or whether she'd be forced back to her old job as an accountant's assistant. Either way, she said with a sigh, their standard of living would have to come down.

When his children returned from school, they found him hovering over the trash, trying to suck the remains out of their soda bottles. After that, they kept his trapped in his office, where he constantly tried to escape through the closed window. It was almost impossible for him to see glass.

Then, during his meal of sweet, sweet corn syrup, his children had another fight about their antiPods, one which culminated with the antiPod flying through the air and wounding his back. He cried out, the stream of sound coming from his mouth unintelligible.

He lay on the floor, unable to bend his crooked wings, twitching as their fight carried them out of the room, their broken, bug father forgotten and alone.

***

With a twitch of his backside, Tobey awoke next to his wife. He blinked the dream away. They'd been coming less frequently but were always similar. He'd dreamed himself as a giant grasshopper, a cockroach, a silkworm and most disturbingly as a wasp. In that dream, he hadn't any sense of empathy or mercy, and his stinger, as larger as his forearm, had relentlessly stung his family and friends. He shuddered at the thought of that nightmare.

He crawled out of bed, for the last time, he thought, with but two arms. Today, his genetic resequencing began. They would mold his DNA like clay and pump him full of regenerative drugs until his body got the hint and grew itself another couple of arms.

After a shower, he ate his bran flakes, listening for his children's first argument of the morning. They seemed oblivious to his inner turmoil, content to argue and pinch each other. His wife took them to school, leaving him last and alone in the house. He listened to the ominous silence, wondering what he had done to deserve such a lovely family.

They knew the risks that he faced being an executive, but they didn't have to act so casual about it.

He put the bran flakes on the top shelf of the cabinet and shuddered at the idea that the next time, he might be using a new set of hands to do it.

He left the house and called julie out of the underground garage. “Where to, boss?” she asked, somewhat playful, because that's what he had wanted in a car's personality. She knew damned well where.

“Work, julie. And after I go in, come back home. I won't need you for a week or so.”

“Sure thing, Tobey,” she said, sensing that joviality was not in her best interests. She dropped him off without saying a word and went home.

Tobey went inside, where Ivanovich and a bunch of other execs accompanied him to the research wing. They took his clothing, measured him one final time, interrogated him about his eating habits, his exercise habits, his sexual habits, and finally, one doctor said as he placed a neuro-dampener on either temple, “Close your eyes, and this will be over sooner than you think.”

Bullsh

***

No dreams. No nightmares. No out-of-body experiences. No insect body experiences.

***

Tobey awoke three times before the sight of his xarms stopped forcing him into unconsciousness. Finally, he opened his eyes, groaned, expecting the blackness but found only the harsh glare of the overhead lights in his room. Doctors swarmed over him, checking stats, adjusting machines. They didn't seem to notice or care that he was awake. When one leaned over him, he reached with all four hands and grabbed his white coat. “Give me some water, please.”

The doctor smiled from ear to ear. “Just a moment, Dr. Nakamura, let me just... I'll be back in a second with a glass of water.”

The doctors slowly filtered out of the room. Tobey found himself wanting to go with them. Ivanovich returned with a bottle of mineral water from a vending machine.

“I heard you wanted some water.”

“Where's the doctor? Are you sure I can drink that?” He paused for a moment. “Could you put a packet of sugar in there and shake it up first?”

“Nope. That four-armed guy from Stanford said that you'd probably be asking for sugar water for a month or so. The doctors said that would interfere with your IV.” Ivanovich motioned to the bag hanging over Tobey's head.

“Fine, hand it here.” Ivanovich held it out but wouldn't give it to Tobey until he reached out with one of his new hands to get it. “How do they feel?”

“Like arms.”

“Do they hurt?”

“No.” Why would they hurt? They were a part of his body now. He downed the bottled mineral water and then handed the empty back to Ivanovich. “Did it work? I mean, did you get all the information you need to make more?”

“Oh, yes. Smashing success, Nakamura. We're sure to have the spotlight at P3. You rest now.”

His boss left the room, and Tobey looked at his new arms, turning his hands back and forth.

***

At P3, fighting down the bile and acid churning in his gut, Tobey watched the commercial unveil on the monitor backstage.

Mozart's Turkish Rondo plays as Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man comes into focus. Two of the legs fade away, leaving only the wild-haired figure with four arms. Xarmcaps, the caption at the bottom of the screen says, When life throws more at you than two hands can handle.

The commercial continued, but Tobey looked away, groaning at the obvious parody of the old sunflowers-and-cloudy-day approach of selling Rx. The seamless CG-created four-armed doctor aligned x-rays while fixing an IV and adjusting a heart-rate machine. The four-armed mom spoon-fed her infant while pouring a bowl of cereal for two screaming brats, and read a novel with her last free hand. The four-armed musician played keyboards with one hand, guitar with two others and screamed into a mic held by his last free hand.

The last shot was a keyboard playing Mozart's Rondo with one hand, then two, three, and finally all four hands playing in harmony. Xarmcaps—Do more the screen read as the keyboard image faded to black.

Mozart reminded Tobey of his kids. He'd tried to get Mario to attend piano lessons, but the boy had just stopped going. Refused to get out of the car, and Tobey wasn't going to cause a scene by dragging an uncooperative 13-year-old boy out of a car worth more than most people's housing. At that thought, Tobey looked down at his arms. Then his xarms. That kind of thinking had caused him to raise his hands during a brainstorm and resulted in having two extra hands.

I think I'm going to sell my car, he thought. And then I'm going to spank the hell out of Mario. Without his explicit input, his xarms made spanking motions in front of him, and for the first time since that brainstorm, Tobey smiled. His face split in half it was so wide. He began chuckling and then laughing, and then some backstage assistant ushered him onto the stage as the commercial ended.

Polite applause greeted him and soon faded as a hush came over the audience, as men and women who had seen every disease, every deformity, every advance in modern science, were awed to silence by a man with four arms.

He raised them as Ivanovich, at the podium, announced Xarmcaps, and introduced the first man able to play Mozart properly, Tobey Nakamura. The audience clapped softly as Tobey approached the podium to recite the speech prepared by the ad agency.

The response was underwhelming; the people in the audience had eyes that could see radio waves, feet that could climb concrete walls and teeth that could chew titanium. What use had they for two more clumsy hands in a world that used touch less and less. In the dongle hiding in his ear, Ivanovich told him to finish it up, that he was dying out there.

When Tobey went backstage, Ivanovich was screaming into a phone. He clapped it shut and stared at Tobey. “Come here, kid.” He put his arm around Tobey's newly-shaped shoulders. “That was the Board. They've decided to scrap the xarms project—GenRx's instantaneous gender-flipping pill has won this year. We're refocusing on bustcaps—gonna try to sell to the ‘new’ woman.”

Tobey stopped and looked at his boss. “So what does this mean for me?” He raised both sets of hands and wiggled his bottom set of fingers. He looked at the boss, who had an internal “infection” that allowed him to breathe underwater. He'd never had to walk down the street carrying four bags of groceries in four separate hands. He'd never had to endure stares from a bunch of freaks who'd volunteered to alter themselves just to stand out.

His niggling inner voice laughed at him. Tobey had never quite mastered denial.

“Oh, don't worry. It wasn't your idea that failed us. You've still got your job.” Ivanovich smiled at the world's only four-armed man, a mixture of pity and cruelty. “Let's get you back to the hotel, son.”

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