The Woman Who Died a Lot

“No problem, friend-O. You take charge? Not double-tapped yet. Maybe you take honor.”

Stig drew his twelve-gauge revolver out of his shoulder holster and offered it to the policeman.

The officers looked at one another.

“It’s still alive?” asked the sergeant.

“Always best make sure.”

“ SO-13 reinstated, you say?”

“From midday.”

“We’ll leave it in your capable hands,” remarked Kitchen, and he beckoned to the officers to back away.

“You have acted . . . wisely,” said Stig as he parked the massive weapon back in his jacket. “Hold perimeter and call when our transport arrive.”

“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant as he saluted smartly, glad to be spared the responsibility of command.

While Stig called his brother-in-law to bring a van to take away the body, I stared at the latest Synthetic. She was the seventh we knew of and the third since my accident. The pre-accident ones had all been killed by Stiltonistas thinking they were me, and of the post-accident batch one we’d found in the house going through my stuff presumably in order to better emulate me and the other was arrested when it tried to cash a check on my behalf. Both of them had been questioned but could explain little and were helped into long eternity pleading that they were me— but without being able to answer anything except rudimentary Thursday trivia. Landen and Spike had disposed of them. I think they’re in the Savernake Forest, where the Stiltonistas disposed of the earlier ones. None of them had seemed that smart, and none of them—until now—would have fooled anyone. But maybe that wasn’t the point. Maybe the early ones were simply testing the waters.

The small data plate under her eyelid had simply stated that she was a TN-v7.2. The last one had been a v6.6. There was a serial number, and I jotted it down. We stared at it for a while. It was kind of weird, seeing me lying dead on the floor with half a head. It was a waste of a good body, too. Boy, could she run. And although I’d not had a chance to put it to the test, she probably could have given Landen a seriously good run for his money in the sack.

“Do you have any of her memories?” he asked. “I mean, she didn’t pop into existence here at Booktastic. She must have walked in the door like the rest of us.”

I thought hard. I knew nothing of her being her before she was me being me. My memories were simply of me. “Nothing.”

“Shame. Stig?”

“Physically, specimen excellent,” he said, “good muscle tone, firm all over—almost no fat.”

“It was a great body,” I said, somewhat wistfully.

“But it made hastily,” he said. “Look at legs.”

He showed us an athletic yet hairless leg.

“Stretch marks on the knees and shin?” said Landen, leaning closer and putting on his reading glasses. “And why is the skin so smooth otherwise?”

“No sweat glands. On a hot day, she’d boil.”

“How quick did they grow her?”

“Our guess ten weeks,” said Stig as he showed us her hands. The fingernails looked long, but they were stuck on. He pulled one off to reveal a real nail below, and only a quarter way down the nail bed. He pointed to the side of the scalp still remaining, which at first glance seemed to have a goodly amount of long hair, which was in fact manmade fibers stuck into the scalp.

“Six brushings and no hair left,” Stig said. He prodded the stomach—which was flat, I noted. He then grunted with interest, looked in her throat, rolled the body over and pulled down her trousers and pants.

“No digestive tract. Not designed for longevity.”

A tract wasn’t the only thing she—or it—was missing.

“She was going to be seriously frustrated with that libido, too.”

“Not what she designed for,” said Stig. “See here?”

He pointed to what looked like a thin scar on her upper back. It wasn’t, though—it was a flap.

“Umbilical went here,” he said. He wiped his finger on the flap, then smelled it. “Activated two hours ago, give/take. Not seen this sort of Synthetic before. Cheap body.”

“But excellent brain,” added Landen.

“Indeed,” agreed Stig. “She sent here find out something, do something, see something—perhaps report back, then die.”

“The BookWorld,” I said. “Goliath has always wanted to get in there. I could easily have read my way in with this body. Do you think that’s what they were up to?”

No one answered because no one knew.

Stig peered into the skull cavity and poked a chubby finger into the the remains of the brain stem. “Dismantle it when back at lab. Shame you shot it through head, Landen. We could have learned more.”

“Note to self,” said Landen sarcastically. “Don’t shoot wife through head.”

Landen and I walked out of the bookshop after offering our apologies for the mess, and I told them to send a bill for any damaged books to Braxton Hicks.

“Are you okay?” asked Landen as we hobbled back toward the car.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I just miss running.”

“You will again,” he said, but I knew, despite the conviction with which he said it, that it was going to take a while.

“Sure,” I said, “and your leg is going to grow back.”

He said nothing but squeezed my hand.