Issue 13 - Ray Gun Revival

Conversion, by Shaun Farrell Pg. 12
matted them. Amazing!”
“What does that mean?” Tuck asked.
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“No! NO!”
Then Gen realized how deep the silence in the
room had truly been. Chloe was no longer crying.
He rushed back around the crates, Tuck stumbling
after him.
Lynda had placed Chloe on the ground. Her
hands hovered over the child, shaking.
“Lynda?” Gen asked.
“She’s dead. My baby girl is dead!” Sobs racked
her as she lay down next to her child.
Gen knelt, put his hand on Chloe’s chest.
There was a gentle heartbeat there. Life still held
on. Flapper must have known. That was why he
apologized.
It took several minutes for Gen to calm Lynda
enough to talk with her. “She’s not dead,” he
finally said. “She was NET. The nans have reset.”
He wiped wetness from her face.
“How is that p-possible?” she finally asked.
“She wasn’t b-born on Earth.”
“I don’t know. But somehow NET infected
her.”
“I don’t mean to break up our moment of rest,”
Tuck said, “but eventually they’ll wake up, right?
If they’re just reformatting—”
“Then once the basic programs initialize, they
should wake, yes,” Gen said.
Tuck pointed at Gen’s computer. “What’s
the range on that thing? Did it reach their
spaceship?”
Gen considered it. “Probably.”
He swallowed, clearly in pain. “Alright, pick up
your kid. Gen, grab twitchy.”
“His name is Flapper,” Gen protested.
“Whatever,” Tuck said. “Come on, we’ll take
the landing shuttle to the ship, blow the rest of
them out an airlock, pick up the colonists in the
desert, and get the hell out of here.” He limped
for the door.
“Where will we go?” Lynda asked, gently
scooping Chloe into her arms.
“Don’t ask me,” Tuck replied, vanishing out the
door.
Gen put the computer in his pant’s pocket.
Flapper didn’t even weigh a hundred pounds,
and Gen lifted him with fair ease.
He wondered what the boy would be like
when he woke. Would he be his old self or a NET
agent? And what about Chloe? She must have
been infected in the womb, yet she acted like any
normal child.
What was NET up to?
Dixon’s blood covered the floor in the hall,
his body in pieces. He had given himself for the
group. Gen wished he had known the man better,
had tried to understand what had happened to
him. It was too late for that. It was too late for
a lot of things. But maybe they could start over
someplace else.
He walked past the sleeping soldiers. They
seemed to stare at him, and he imagined that he
could see programs coming online through their
vacant eyes.
Realizing he was getting behind, he rushed to
catch up with the others.
Ray Gun Revival magazine Issue 13, January 01, 2007