That left eight.
Once past that obstacle, the roots quickly dug deeper, slipping beyond the epidermis, into the dermis, then through the fatty cells of the subcutaneous layer. Receptor cells measured changes in chemical content and density. Underneath the subcutaneous layer, just before the firmness of muscle, the roots began a phase change. Each of the eight roots became the center for a new organism.
The second stage ensued.
This rapid growth had depleted the seeds’ food stores. Now nothing more than used delivery vehicles, the little husks fell away. Under the skin, second-stage roots spread out. They weren’t like roots of a tree or any other plant, but more akin to little tentacles, branching out from the center, drawing oxygen, proteins, amino acids and sugars from the new environment. Like biological conveyor belts, the roots pulled these building blocks back to the new organism, fueling an explosion of cell growth. One of the seedlings ended up on the host’s face, just above the left eyebrow. This one couldn’t draw quite enough material to fuel the second-stage growth process. It simply ran out of energy. A few of the seedling’s parts kept growing, assembling, automatically drawing nutrients from the host and creating raw materials that would never be used-but for all intents and purposes this seedling ceased to be.
That left seven.
The surviving seedlings started building things. The first construct was a microscopic, free-moving thing that, if you had an electron microscope handy, looked like a hair-covered ball with two saw-toothed jaws on one side. These jaws sliced into cell after cell, tearing open the membrane, finding the nucleus, and sucking it inside the ball. The balls read raw DNA, the blueprint of our bodies, identifying the code for biological processes, for building muscle and bone, for all creation and maintenance. That’s all the DNA was to the balls, really; just blueprints. Once read, the balls returned this information to the seedlings.
With that data the seven knew what needed to be built in order to grow. Not at a conscious level, but at a raw, data-in and data-out machinelike state. Sentience didn’t matter-the organisms read the blueprints, and knew what to do next.
The seedlings drew sugars from the bloodstream, then fused them, a fast and simple chemical weld that created a durable, flexible building material. As the building blocks accumulated, the organisms created their next autonomous, free-moving structures. Where the balls had gathered, these new microstructures built. Using the growing stores of the building material, the new structures started weaving the shell. Without fast shell growth, the new organism might not live five more days.
It needed that long to reach stage three.
4.
Perry Dawsey threw back the heavy bedspread and mismatched covering blankets, exposing himself to the sudden grip of winter-morning chill. He shivered. The part of his brain that always beckoned him to sleep, to set the alarm for another fifteen minutes, tugged at him. A mild hangover didn’t help his resolve.
See? the voice seemed to say. It’s cold as hell this morning. Crawl back under the covers where it’s nice and warm. You deserve a day off.
It was his morning ritual; the voice always called, and he always ignored it. He stood and shuffled the four steps from his bedroom to the tiny bathroom. The linoleum greeted his feet with unwelcome cold. He shut the door behind him, started up the shower, and let the bathroom fill with deliciously warm steam. As he stepped into the nearly scalding water, the nagging morning voice faded away, just as it always did. He hadn’t missed a day of work-or even been late-in three years. He sure as hell wasn’t going to start now.
Scrubbing himself roughly, he came fully awake. His left forearm flared up with a tiny itch; he absently scratched it with his thick fingernails. Perry shut off the shower, stepped out, grabbed a rumpled towel that hung over the shower-curtain rod and dried himself. The steam hung like a wafting cloud that bent and drifted with his every movement.
The bathroom was little more than a closet with plumbing. Just inside and to the right of the door sat the small Formica counter that held the sink, its once-white porcelain stained with rusty orange from a combination of hard water and an ever-dripping spout. The countertop had about enough room for a toothbrush, a can of shaving cream and a shrunken, cracked bar of soap. All the other necessities resided in the medicine cabinet behind the mirror mounted above the sink.
Just past the countertop was the toilet, the other side of which almost bumped up against the tub. The bathroom was so small that Perry could sit on the toilet and touch the far wall without leaning forward. Used towels of various unmatched colors hung from the towel rack, the shower curtain and both sides of the doorknob, creating a rainbow terry-cloth contrast to the lime-green walls and scratched tan linoleum floor.
A small digital scale, dented and pockmarked with rust, was the only decoration. With a sigh of resignation, he stood on it. The bottom LED of the “ones” digit never lit up. It made the last digit look like an A rather than an 8, but it didn’t hide his weight: 268.
He stepped off the scale. Another itch-this one on his left thigh-hit quickly, like the bite of a mosquito. Perry twitched with the sudden discomfort and gave the area a solid scratch.
He finished toweling off his hair, then stopped suddenly, jerking his hand away. Something hurt above his left eyebrow-that angry-dull pain of accidentally hitting a big zit.
With his towel he wiped steam from the mirror. A shadow of bristly red beard covered his face. Bright red beard and straight blond hair, the strange distinctive mark of Dawsey men for as far back as Perry knew. He wore his hair shoulder length, not for style, but rather because it helped hide the striking facial resemblance he shared with his father. The older he got, the more the face in the mirror looked like the one face he wanted most to forget.
“Fucking desk job. Making me a fat boy.”
He focused his attention on the eyebrow zit. It looked sort of like a zit but also looked…strange. Small, gnarled red bump. It felt odd, like a teeny bug was biting or stinging him.
What the hell is that?
He leaned forward, skin almost touching the mirror as his fingers prodded the painful spot. Firm, solid skin, with something really small sticking out of it. The something was…black, maybe? A tiny speck. He dug at it for a second with his fingernails, but the spot hurt. Probably an ingrown hair or something like that. He’d try to leave it alone, let it firm up and deal with it later.
Perry reached for the shaving cream. He always took a good look at himself before shaving and brushing his teeth, not out of vanity but rather to see just how much further along his body was toward Old Fogey-Ville.
Back in college his body had been hard, chiseled, six-foot-five, 240 pounds of muscle befitting his All-Big Ten linebacker status. In the seven years following the knee injury that ended his career, however, his body changed, gradually adding fat while depleting unused muscle. He wasn’t overweight by anyone else’s standards, and his body still drew plenty of looks from women, but Perry could see the difference.
He shaved, slapped some mousse in his hair and brushed his teeth to complete his repetitive morning preparation. Perry dashed out of the bathroom into the cold apartment. He dressed quickly in jeans, an old AC/DC concert T-shirt and a warm San Francisco 49ers sweatshirt. Finally protected against the cold, he headed to the kitchen nook (he could never think of it as a “kitchen,” he’d been in houses with a “kitchen,” this six-by-eight-foot alcove stuffed with a stove, cabinets and a fridge was and would always qualify as nothing more than a “nook”).