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Joan had told him, when Barry was only a boy, that he would eventually stop feeling the licks of the flames against his skin.
She’d said that to him, of course, when he was eleven-years-old and whimpering on the floor of his cell. At that moment, he assumed his trainer-slash-experimenter-slash-mother-figure was trying to taunt him. But as the years passed on and Barry grew further from L.I. Machinery, he realized that she’d meant it. In the laboratory, surrounded as he was by reflective grey visors and unfeeling voices, she was the only real source of warmth he’d felt.
Barry Steakfries (he’d chosen the name himself as a child when he thought he was funnier than he was) was the product of thirty years of research into genetic engineering and artificial cell-generation conducted by Legitimate Industries Machinery, the foremost company in technology. Presumably after seeing the Attack of the Clones in 2002, the engineering empire had decided to devote time and money into cloning in order to create super-soldiers to auction off to the highest-bidding government instead of taking away the message that maybe our democracy is more fragile than we think like the rest of us did.
Barry came out of his cloning chamber as an averagely intelligent, moderately athletic, and decently healthy ten-year-old boy. They’d assign Scientist #52 and a team of the other topmost scientists in the company under her command to guide his development as the world’s first super-soldier. Barry had absolutely no superpowers - though he secretly believed he could read people’s minds - or genetic advancements whatsoever. He was just a totally average boy, except one engineered to have absolutely no thoughts of his own. A human being, created just to fulfill the desires of others - the perfect soldier.
Maybe Barry didn’t have any thoughts of his own, but he had feelings. Ones that made him insist approximately two months after his “birth” that his name was Barry Steakfries and they absolutely had to call him that instead of “Specimen #1” as they had been before. Scientist #52, upon hearing of it from an absolutely terrified younger scientist, had simply smiled to herself in amusement and personally went to him in-person and asked him what she should be called. Barry had thought for a moment before christening her as “Joan”. Scientist #52 or Joan as she now insisted everyone on the team should refer to her by, was the only scientist that thought it was a good thing that Barry had impulses and urges that might lead him astray from the Cause, which L.I.M. was resolute in. See, it wasn’t entirely true that they wanted to auction off the soldiers to the highest-bidders, they wanted to send them to the government with the most-possible chance of creating a perfect society, a peaceful and harmonic utopia. The Creation of Utopia was their ultimate vision, and they believed Barry was the perfect tool to bring it about. Scientist #52 was the strongest advocate for the Cause, despite what her unconventional beliefs might have said. She believed that feelings, real human emotion, that aligned with his absolute desire to fulfill the Cause would result in the greatest soldier, the potential baseline for all future clones. All of the awe-inspiring passion of a human being mixed with the utter devotedness and blind faith of the perfect soldier. Barry should have been perfect under her guidance.
But he wasn’t. Because maybe you couldn’t create a perfect soldier, a human with no thoughts of their own. Maybe they tried too hard and too well to make Barry close to a human being, that they made him believe that he was a human being or close enough by his own standards, if nobody-else’s.
But none of that mattered anymore, because now Barry Steakfries was a twenty-five year old man who lived by himself because L. I. Machinery’s Board of Directors had trashed the project seven years in after a review began Year 4 finally concluded the expenses weren’t justifying the results. Barry was independent and answered to no one’s whims but his own and all that independence drove him to find a home in Los Angeles, California and work at The Raccoon, an up-and-coming restaurant downtown. Barry was a regular twenty-five year old who worried about regular twenty-five year-old things like whether he should give law school another shot or paint his kitchen a different color instead of insane seventeen-year-old things like whether he could successfully pilot a dragon mech or fly a hydropowered jetpack through an obstacle course (in its last legs, the program splurged on more creative tech that eventually led to its expenses piling up and getting forced to shut down down, though they had been training him in the use of a jetpack, because of its slick and versatile maneuverability, since the start of his training). He was utterly normal and only thinking of Joan’s old words (that she’d used to get him to stop whining at the burns the jetpacks left on his arms despite all his stiff and protective flight suits) because he was a somewhat professional chef who’d managed to set his finger on fire while trying to boil water.
“Jesus Christ, Barry!” exclaimed Jamie, who was blonde, but still attractive. They were Barry’s best friend, and also completely oblivious to his colorful past.
Penelope simply laughed and started to pull out her phone to record him while Sammy cursed and actually leaped to dump a bucketload of water on his finger.
“It’s okay, barely felt it!” Barry gritted out through his teeth.
Penelope continued to laugh and roll on the floor, managing to make out “Barry-ly felt it” through gasps while tears actually started to stream from her eyes.
“You’re an asshole, Pen,” Sammy said rubbing his temples, “Why I hang out with you three is beyond me…”
“Oh, you love us,” Jamie said, flopping over the back of their shorter friend. Sammy kicked Jamie off and Barry decided he should show his friends the door.
“It’s been great having you, but the Steakfries Hotel is now closed!” Barry said firmly while ushering the three of them out.
“I can’t believe ‘Steakfries’ is, like, your real last name,” Penelope said, still giggling a little, and already out the door.
“Don’t hotels famously not close? I feel like closing for the night would defeat the whole purpose of a hotel,” Jamie said, not one to leave without throwing in a zinger.
“Penny! You don’t just ask what someone’s ‘real name’ is!” Sammy shrieked.
Barry shut the door and rested his forehead against as the sounds of his friends arguing faded down the hall of his floor. He continued to pretend that he didn’t have a fierce grin on his face and he was actually super pissed-off at his friends’ antics. He straightened up, shaking out his shoulders, before actually turning off the stove and dunking his finger in a glass of water.
His grin slipped off his face quickly enough, and he stared at his flesh through the distortions of the cool water. He wondered if this burn would scar.
Barry thought of Joan’s words again. She was right, in a way. The burn from the stove barely stung compared to the pain he’d suffered at the intense burns of a blazing engine against his sensitive arms through his training. He swirled his finger in the water, enjoying the way it felt like his finger was dancing weightlessly through. He thought of the feel of his arms burning, when he was so very young and full of fire, he thought of the feeling of soaring through the skies, dodging zappers and missiles.
He thought of flying.
He thought of leaving.
After Barry’s severance with the company had been announced, Experiment #52 had locked herself in her quarters. After 48 hours had passed, Barry had been the one to go to her room and pound his fist against her door. “Joan, please. Please come out of there,” he’d begged her through the door, feeling at fault, despite the fact that the orders for his separation with L. I. M. had come down straight from the top, with no input of his own.
Barry felt a familiar surge of guilt when he thought that. It wasn’t entirely true that Barry was completely against the separation, despite loudly complaining about it and insisting he was loyal to the company.
The truth was, Barry had grown tired of the constant training. The burns and aches and toll the company took on his body and mind. Part of his training had been an extensive education, something the company feared would lead to him developing stray thoughts, but that Scientist #52 had demanded, insisting he be smart as well as strong. He’d known enough of the world to know that the way he was being raised was inhuman and cruel, though he felt selfish when he thought of blaming the company. It wasn’t their fault either, really. They just strived for the Cause, for Utopia.
And Barry believed himself to be raised, not “created” or “trained” or anything like that. He privately believed that he had experienced all the twenty five years that he claimed to be, remembering being born and living ten years in some empty grey room, devoid of any interaction. He believed, in the split second between when the scientists got his heart beating and his body pumping blood to his mind actually being activated, he had experienced the ten years of life the scientists denied him, in the only way his dumb brain knew how. He remembered it. He remembered feeling things and feeling out-of-place, like things were wrong all the time.
He knew that he should not have been raised like that. But he couldn’t help the guilt.
He yanked his finger out of the glass, relishing in the dull ache of his finger. He shook himself and headed to the door, following the path of his long-departed friends and grabbing a black denim jacket on the way out. He walked down the flight of stairs and burst out the doors, blinking at the sudden cold of the night air. He rubbed his fingers against his chin and felt the bristles of his stubble poke against his touch, quickly blowing hot air on his hands to warm them up.
He walked aimlessly around his neighborhood for a short while. Not really thinking about this place that he’d called home for the eight years since he’d left the only home he’d ever known.
He thought back to Joan. She’d eventually emerged from her quarters. And after a meal they shared together, Barry had fallen ill. Though Joan thought she’d found a clever way to extend Barry’s stay, the scientists at Legitimate Industries Machinery had found out and the Board terminated her contract with them and suspended all her access to Plan B (the cloning project’s codename).
Barry remembered waking up blurry and disoriented after a feverish sleep, to a group of scientists telling him that Scientist #52 had mixed something into the food that she’d prepared for their meal together. He remembered hysterically crying that his mother had poisoned him.
He flushed to think of it, feeling the heat rise to his chilled face. He didn’t think of Scientist #52 as his mother, no more than he thought of Scientist #67, her second-in-command, as his father.
They were his handlers, his control staff, his torturers, and whatever else. They weren’t his family. But, they might have been Scientist #52’s. She truly had believed in the Cause, but she had been forced out of the home she’d devoted most of her life to, along with Barry, who’d been there his entire life.
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, maybe part of him thought that since both of them were out of the company, they could live in exile together. Living outside of the bounds of the only world they knew.
But he hadn’t seen her since she’d poisoned him. And he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Mostly glad, he thought.
His feet had been leading him more than his mind had, for the last several minutes, but Barry found himself captivated by something glittering out of the corner of his eyes. He saw the shining silver of the metal body first, and then the leathery brown straps, and the bright red of the emergency parachute.
JETPACK JOYRIDE
It was a bright and flashy flier for a play’s audition haphazardly taped to his community theater’s bulletin board. He slowly read the description of a stupid boy who builds a crazy machine and learns that the real crazy machine was his heart and its power to love.
He suddenly realized that he hadn’t been breathing for the last few seconds and opened his mouth, feeling the cool air hit his now relieved lungs. He remembered, suddenly, the feeling of the jetpack strapped to his back, flying through the air on nothing but his faith.
He broke from his spell and grabbed a pen from his pocket to scribble down the details on a stray bit of paper.
The pen rubbed against the burn on his finger and he cried out, embracing the pain of his wounds.
Tears dripped down the boy’s face, and he found his heart lighter than the air he breathed.