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  Midway through the twenty-first century, projects connected with the geological exploitation of Mars and two of Saturn’s moons, Titan and Enceladus, led to the creation of an android that would be resistant to the harsh environmental conditions in the mining colonies. In 2053, the Brazilian bioengineering company Vitae used stem cells to generate an organism that was matured in a lab at an accelerated rate and was virtually identical to a human being. It was marketed under the name Homolab but quickly became known as a replicant, a term taken from a futuristic film very popular in the twentieth century.

  Replicants were an instant success. They were used for mining exploration not only in outer space but also on Earth, as well as for deep-sea fish-farming. Specialist versions began to be developed, and by 2057 there were already four distinct types of androids available, for mining, computation, combat, and pleasure (this last specialization was banned years later). In those days it was inconceivable that Homolabs would have any control over their own lives. In reality, they were slave laborers with no rights. This abusive situation became less and less viable, and finally exploded in 2060 when a squad of combat replicants was sent to Enceladus to put down a revolt by miners who were also androids. The soldiers joined forces with the rebels and assassinated all the humans in the colony. The rebellion spread rapidly, giving rise to what became known as the Rep War.

  Although the androids were at a clear disadvantage numerically, their endurance, strength, and intelligence were superior to those of the average human. During the sixteen months the war lasted, there were many losses, both human and technohuman. Fortunately, in September October 2061 Gabriel Morlay, the famous android philosopher and social reformer, assumed leadership of the rebels and proposed a truce in order to negotiate peace with those countries that produced replicants. The difficult negotiations were on the point of failing countless times; among the humans there was a radical faction that rejected the granting of any concessions and advocated prolonging the war until such time as all the replicants started to die, given that in those days their life expectancy was only about five years. There were also humans, however, who condemned the use of slaves and defended the justice of the claims of the rebels. Referred to disparagingly by their adversaries as replickers, these androidsupporting humans became very active in their pro-negotiation campaigns. This, together with the fact that the rebels had taken control of various production lines and were making more androids, finally resulted in the signing of the Moon Pact in February 2062, a peace agreement based on the concession of a series of rights to the insurgents. It should be noted that the android leader, Morlay, was unable to sign the treaty, which had been his great work, because just a few days beforehand he completed his life cycle and died, thus ending his fleeting existence as a human butterfly.

  As of that moment, civil rights were progressively won by the reps. These advances were not devoid of problems. The first years after the Unification were particularly fraught with conflict, and there were serious disturbances in various cities on Earth (Dublin, Chicago, Nairobi), with violent confrontations between antisegregationist pro-rep movements and human supremacist groups. Finally, the Constitution of 2098, the first Magna Carta of the United States of the Earth (USE), and still in force, recognized the same rights for technohumans as for humans.

  It was also in this same constitution that the term technohuman was used for the first time, as the word replicant is loaded with insulting and offensive connotations. These days, technohuman (or techno, as it is used colloquially) is the sole official and acceptable term, although in this article the word replicant has also been used to ensure historical clarity. There are, however, groups of techno activists, such as the Radical Replicant Movement (RRM), who reclaim the ancient designation as a banner of their own identity: “I’m proud to be a rep. I’d rather be a rep than a human, never mind a technohuman” (Myriam Chi, leader of the RRM).

  The existence and integration of technohumans has generated a fierce ethical and social debate that is far from being resolved. There are some who maintain that, since the original creation of replicants as slave labor was an erroneous and immoral act, their production should simply cease. This possibility is rejected outright by the technos, who view it as genocide: “What has once existed cannot return to the limbo of nonexistence. What has been invented cannot be uninvented. What we have learned cannot cease to be known. We are a new species, and like all living beings, we yearn to continue living” (Morlay). Currently, the management of the android production lines (these days referred to as gestation plants) is split fifty-fifty between technos and humans. An android takes fourteen months to be born, but once born it has the physical and mental development of a twenty-five-year-old. Despite technological advances, a life span of a decade is still all that has been achieved: at approximately the age of thirty-five, the cellular division of replicants’ tissue accelerates dramatically and they undergo something like a massive carcinogenic process (known as TTT, Total Techno Tumor), for which a cure has yet to be found, and which leads to their death within a few weeks.

  Also controversial are the regulations specific to technohumans, especially those dealing with memory and with the period of time dedicated to civic work. A committee consisting of an equal number of humans and technos determines how many androids will be created each year, and with which specifications: computation, combat, exploration, mining, administration, or construction. As the gestation of these individuals is very costly, it has been agreed that all technohumans serve whichever company made them for a maximum period of two years, in work consistent with the area of specialization for which they were created. Thereafter they are granted a license, together with a moderate amount of money (the settlement allowance), to help them to set up their own lives.

  Finally, all androids are implanted with a complete memory set, together with sufficient actual documentary support (photos, holographs, and recordings of their imaginary past; old toys from their supposed childhood, etc.), since various scientific investigations have demonstrated that humans and technohumans coexist and integrate socially far better if the latter have a past, and that androids are more stable if they are furnished with mementos. The Law of Artificial Memory of 2101, currently in force, thoroughly regulates this sensitive area. Memories are unique and varied, but they all contain more or less the same version of the famous Revelation Scene, popularly known as the dance of the phantoms. This is an implanted memory of an event that supposedly took place when the individual androids were about fourteen years old, when their parents told them that they were technohumans and that they themselves lacked reality and were pure shadows, empty images, a firing of neurons. Once the memory has been installed, there can be no modification of any sort. The law prohibits and prosecutes vigorously any subsequent manipulation of, or illegal trafficking in, memories, a fact that neither stops the aforementioned trafficking nor prevents a lucrative underground market in memories. The existing regulations governing the lives of technos have been contested by diverse sectors, and both the RRM and various supremacist groups have several appeals lodged against the law. In the past decade, numerous university chairs in technohuman studies have been created (such as the one at the Complutense in Madrid) in an attempt to address the multiple ethical and social questions posed by this new species.

  CHAPTER TWO

  There was a time when sexual relations between humans and reps had been forbidden. Now they were simply frowned upon—except, of course, when it came to the ancient and venerable practice of prostitution. Pablo Nopal smiled sourly and contemplated the bare back of the girl warrior. A straight line of elastic skin, the perfect curve of the slim hip. Sitting up in bed, as he had just done, Nopal could also see one of her tiny breasts, which was gently rising and falling in time with her quiet breathing. Despite seeming to be asleep—and she surely was—she would leap up and, for all he knew, land him a forceful blow if he so much as brus
hed her waist with his finger. Nopal had slept with enough combat reps to be well aware of their habits and their disturbing defensive reflexes. It was safer not to kiss one on the neck in the middle of the night.

  Indeed, the best thing to do in the middle of the night after having sex with such a girl was to leave.

  The man slid out of the bed, picked up his clothes, which were scattered across the floor, and began to get dressed.

  He was in a bad mood.

  The hour when dawn was breaking, dirty and faded, with the night dying and the new day not yet arrived, always depressed him. That naked hour when there was no way to disguise the nonsensical nature of the world.

  Nopal was rich and he was miserable. Misery was a basic component of his being, as cartilage is to bones. Misery was the cartilage of his mind. It was something he couldn’t get rid of.

  As an old writer whom he admired used to say, Happiness is the same for everyone, but unhappiness is different for each person. Nopal’s misery manifested itself in a clear incapacity for life. He hated life. This was one of the reasons why he liked androids: they were all so eager, so desperate to keep living. He envied them, in a sense.

  The only thing that had kept Nopal going in recent years—the only thing that really warmed his heart—was his search. Now, he tapped his mobile computer, brought up the list of androids onto the screen, and deleted the warrior girl with the thick, curly hair with whom he had just had sex. Obviously she was not the technohuman he was looking for. He gazed almost with affection at her flat profile. It had been an effort to gain her confidence, but now he hoped never to have to see her again. As was his habit, his basic misanthropy had triumphed again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The advantage of dealing with dead reps, thought Bruna as she entered the Forensic Anatomy Institute, was that you didn’t have to put up with tearful relatives: parents shattered by grief; offspring stunned at suddenly becoming orphans; partners, siblings, and other whimpering family members. Androids were solitary beings, islands inhabited by a single castaway in the midst of a motley sea of people. Or at least almost all reps were like that, although there were some who insisted in believing that they were fully human, and established stable, sentimental relationships despite death lurking at their heels, and who even managed to adopt a child—always a sick child or one with some problem—because the early use-by date of replicants prevented them from garnering the points necessary for a normal adoption. As for Bruna’s own story, it had in fact been a mistake. Neither she nor Merlín had wanted to become a couple, but in the end they became trapped by their emotions. Until the inevitable heartbreak occurred. Four years, three months, and twenty-seven days.

  It was three in the morning and the institute was deserted and ghostly, immersed in a bluish half-light. She had come at such a late hour with the intention of meeting up with Gándara, the veteran medical examiner who worked the night shift and was an old friend who owed her a few favors. But when she entered the office next door to Dissection Room 1, she found a young man with his eyes glued to a pornographic hologram. When he became aware of her presence, he switched off the scene with a flick of his hand and turned toward her.

  “What...are you doing here?”

  Bruna noted the hesitation, the start, the sudden suspicion in his eyes. She was used to her appearance making an impression, not just because she was a tall and athletic techno, but more than anything because of her shaved head and her tattoo—a fine black line that encircled her entire body vertically, running down the left side from her forehead, through the middle of her eyebrow, eyelid, and cheek, on to her neck, breast, stomach, and belly, her left leg, one of her toes, the sole of her foot and her heel, and then running up the back of the same leg, her buttock, waist, back, and the nape of her neck, completing the circle by traversing the shaved roundness of her head until it met up again with the descending line. Obviously, when she was dressed, you couldn’t see that the tattoo formed a complete circle, but Bruna had verified that the line, which appeared to cut across a third of her head and then disappear down inside her clothes, had an undeniable impact on humans. Moreover, it showed that she was a combat rep: almost everyone in the military had elaborate tattoos.

  “Gándara’s not in?”

  “He’s on vacation.”

  The man seemed to relax a little when he saw that Bruna knew the chief medical examiner. He was a short, pudgy young man who had one of those standard, cheap plastic-surgery faces, a model picked from a catalog, the typical graduation present from parents with a modest income. It had suddenly become fashionable to have face jobs done, and there were half a dozen models that were repeated ad nauseam on thousands of people.

  “Fine. Then I’ll talk with you. I’m interested in one of the bodies. Cata Caín. She’s a technohuman, and she’s missing an eye. She died yesterday.”

  “Oh, yes. I did the autopsy a few hours ago. Was she a family member?”

  Bruna looked at him for half a second, impassively. A rep related to another rep? This guy was an imbecile.

  “No,” she said eventually.

  “Well, if she’s not family and you don’t have a court order, then you can’t see her.”

  “I don’t need to. I only wanted you to give me the results of the autopsy.”

  An exaggerated look of outrage appeared on his surgically modified face.

  “That’s even less likely! It’s highly confidential information. Moreover, if you’re not a family member, how were you able to get in here?”

  Bruna took a deep breath and made an effort to appear friendly and reassuring—as friendly and reassuring as was possible given her shaved head, catlike pupils, and the tattooed line splitting her face. She felt it would be imprudent to reveal that old Gándara had provided her with a permanent entry pass to the institute, so she took out her private detective’s ID and showed it to him.

  “Look, the woman was my neighbor...and my client. She’d hired me to protect her because she suspected that someone wanted to kill her.” Bruna was improvising on the spot. “I can’t tell you any more, as I’m sure you’ll understand; it’s a matter of professional confidentiality. I was the one who contacted Samaritans; she was with me when she yanked out her eye. If you’ve got the police report at hand, you’ll see my name there, Husky. Caín went berserk, and I’m afraid she may have poisoned herself somehow. What I mean is, I’m afraid she may have been poisoned. I need to know as soon as possible. You see, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but there might be more people who have been poisoned...and we might still be in time to save them. I’m not even asking you for the details; just give me the conclusions and we’re done. Nobody will find out.”

  The doctor shook his head slowly and pompously. It was clear that he was making the most of his small degree of authority in order to be annoying.

  Bruna furrowed her brow pensively. Then she hunted through her backpack and pulled out two one-hundred-gaia bills.

  “Of course I’m more than happy to compensate you for your trouble.”

  “What do you take me for? I don’t need your money.”

  “Take it. It will be helpful when you get your broken nose fixed.”

  The man touched his nasal appendage with a reflex reaction. He lovingly caressed the silicon nostrils, the bridge shaped by plastic cartilage. His emotions revealed themselves one by one in a clear succession on his face, like clouds scudding across a windy sky: first, relief upon realizing that his synthetic nose was still intact, then the gradual and overwhelming comprehension of the significance of her words. His eyes opened wide with concern.

  “Is...is that a threat?”

  Bruna leaned forward, placed her hands on the table, advanced her face toward that of the man until she was almost touching his forehead, and smiled.

  “Of course not.”

  The medical examiner swallowed and mulled things over for a few moments. Then he turned toward the screen and muttered, “Open final reports, open Caín.”


  The computer obeyed and the screen began to fill with successive images of the one-eyed rep, an unfortunate naked, disemboweled corpse in various stages of dissection. In the last one, the laser scalpel cut the cranium as if it were slicing an orange in two, and a pair of robot tweezers delicately probed the gray matter, which was in fact quite pink. Bruna had never seen such a pink brain, and she had seen quite a few. The tweezers emerged from the greasy neuronal mass clutching a small item between the pincers: a tiny blue disc. An artificial memory, thought Bruna with a shiver, and I’m sure it’s not the original implant. On the screen the voice of the medical examiner was running through the results: “Given that the technohuman subject was 3/28 years old and still some time off her TTT, we can rule out a natural death. On the other hand, the memory implant that was found lacks a registration number and undoubtedly comes from the black market. This medical examiner is working on the hypothesis that the aforementioned implant was tampered with and caused the edemas and cerebral hemorrhages, provoking symptoms of emotional instability, delusions, convulsions, loss of consciousness, paralysis, and ultimately the death of the subject due to the complete breakdown of all neuronal functions. The implant has been sent to the bioengineering lab of the Judicial Police for analysis.”

  Poor Caín. It was as if Bruna were again seeing her neighbor gouging out her eye with that horrible squishy sound like a suction cup being removed. As if she were hearing again her deluded words and experiencing her anguish. By the time the Samaritans arrived, Caín was already rigid, which was why Bruna wasn’t surprised when they called her four hours later to tell her that Caín was dead. In the interim, Bruna had stopped by the caretaker’s office and then gone into the woman’s apartment with one of the janitors. That was how she found out that the woman’s name was Cata Caín, that she was a clerk, and that this apartment was her first domicile after receiving the settlement allowance, since she was only three rep years—or twenty-eight virtual ones—old. Too young to die. According to the rental contract, she had been in the apartment eleven months, but the place looked empty and impersonal, as if no one was living there. Indeed, not one of those all-too-common, small, artificial mementos was to be seen: the customary photo of the parents; the childhood hologram; the grubby little candle from an old cake; the electronic poster with the dedications from university friends; the ring adolescents bought for themselves when they lost their virginity. There wasn’t a replicant alive who didn’t have such a collection of rubbishy trinkets; even though the reps knew that the objects were false, they continued to hold a sort of magic, to offer solace and companionship. Just as paraplegics dreamed about walking when they wore virtual eyeglasses, so reps dreamed about having roots when they looked at the artificially aged pieces in their glory box. And in both cases, despite knowing the truth, they were happy. Or less unhappy. Even Bruna herself, so resistant to emotional outbursts, had been incapable of ridding herself of all her prefabricated mementos. Yes, she had destroyed the family photos and the hologram of her grandmother’s birthday party (she was turning 101, and she died a short time later; that is, she had supposedly died), but she couldn’t throw out the collar belonging to her childhood dog Zarco, with the animal’s name engraved on it, nor a photo of herself taken when she was about five years old—already perfectly recognizable, and with the same tired, sad eyes as she had now.