The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred by Greg Egan

Author:Greg Egan [Egan, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Published: 2016-11-30T05:00:00+00:00

“Do you see it?” Camille asked impatiently. “Here!” She touched the spot.

Olivier remained silent. Perhaps his eyes were taking longer than hers to adapt to the dark.

“Oh, you’re right.” He laughed nervously, and slid his thumb back and forth over his inner arm, as if the fluorescent calligraphy might rub off.

“The J is a bit crooked,” he complained.

“No, you’re just tensing your muscles strangely,” Camille retorted. “The morphogens are better at measuring the normal distance from cell to cell than you are.”

“So when does yours show up?”

“Who knows? Not everyone will get enough of a dose.”

Olivier said, “I think I should perform a thorough examination.”

Camille undressed in the dark and lay down on the bed beside him. She thought the search would just be a game, but after a few seconds Olivier cried out in triumph and led her over to the mirror. The letters were on her lower back, angled obliquely. Choosing the site and the orientation had proved too hard; in the end, they’d settled for control over content rather than placement.

“J’accuse,” she read, convincing herself that the upside-down mirror writing really was a faithful reproduction. “This is better than stamping it on everyone’s forehead,” she decided. “It’s the element of surprise that’s half the fun.”

“Fun?” Olivier hesitated. “I hope that’s how it’s taken.”

“More fun than six hours of cholera, or six weeks of drought.”

“I’m not criticising the plan,” he said. “But most recipients’ first thoughts might not be ‘Hooray! I don’t have cholera!’”

Camille snorted. “Well, fuck them if they can’t take a joke. I didn’t think it was all that hilarious when I got mobbed in the emergency room.”

“I know.”

The doorbell rang. Olivier glanced at an overlay from the entrance camera. “Laurent?” he muttered.

“Ignore him,” Camille suggested. “We don’t all need to compare tattoos.”

Laurent started pounding on the door. Olivier went to open it while Camille made herself presentable.

She heard the two men talking, too softly for her to make out the words, but the cadences were far from jovial or celebratory, and when she joined them in the sitting room the mood was sombre. “What is it?” she demanded.

Laurent said, “Mireille is dead.”

“What?”

Olivier was hunched over on the couch, unable to speak, unable to look up at her.

“How? What happened?”

“She was in a nightclub,” Laurent replied. “Mouthing off about the tax, and taunting some people…” He trailed off, but Camille understood: people for whom the message was suddenly visible, glowing on some patch of exposed skin.

Laurent continued. “Her friend said she was shouting, ‘think about what’s next!’”

Camille was light-headed. “But what did they do to her?” Throw a drink in her face? Throw a punch or two?

“They dragged her out and started beating her. By the time the robots pulled them off, she had a skull fracture and a blood clot. She died in the hospital, about an hour ago.”

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