Afterglow, p.18
Afterglow, page 18
A cheer arose from the Nevis. Rich boy had blown an engine out here in the middle of nowhere. He’d be forced to pay the exorbitant open-ocean retrieval and docking fees and the even more exorbitant repair costs.
Steelos stood and rubbed his hands together. The row of soldiers before him flashed between being people and a singular mass of limbs, eyeballs, and weapons, then back to humans again. “Listen up vac-heads,” Steelos said, finding his voice for the first time in days. “Let’s go bag ourselves a space-robot.”
CHAPTER 37
Leaving Home… Again
Rex came alive as the sun’s warmth touched his face. A discordant song of seagull and tern calls rode a crashing backbeat of waves and surf. Hungry, he thought, No hangover, but definitely hungry. He looked back along the beach to the distant spires of Solent and decided that didn’t matter.
Is it time? came Del’s voice. Although he didn’t really think of it as Del anymore, more just a different point of view, kind of like a change of mind.
“Yes, it is time.” He worked his way along the beach, legs aching from treading the deep sand. “Do you think they’ll let us leave?”
I believe they will.
“They got what they needed? Picoforms? Bombs?”
Few nuggets, some false leads, and a lot of promises.
The entrance to the cliff stairwell lay unguarded. He paused and looked back at Solent. He’d miss the beach, but not that tower of deceit.
Different muscles burned as he ascended the spiraling stone steps, leaning into the climb, hands bracing his knees against the strain. Pitch darkness came immediately as he rounded the third turn. A few tentative steps into the blackness and he saw light from a slot window above. He paused next to the sliver of brightness, nose thrust through the crack, sucking in the heady sea air, then on and up into more darkness. A hint of light from above urged him onward.
Birds’ nests lined the window ledges; cracks in the pumice led back into hidden caves. He smelled bats, dead gulls, and years of accumulated guano. The sound of the sea mellowed, and a warmer breeze washed down from sun-drenched Coriolis Island above.
He spilled out onto the cliff top and stood gasping in the sunlight, staring at the figure just standing, waiting for him to exit. “Are you going somewhere, Rex?” Sister-Zero asked.
“You said I could leave anytime I wanted.”
“Where will you go?”
“Friends.”
“John and Millie are perfectly safe–”
“Different friends.”
He kept walking, skirting around her as if she were just an annoying bush or fence post. “I should come with you,” she said, falling in step behind him.
“Why?”
“Coriolis is dangerous. Even more so with the unrest caused by Hmech’s takeover. I would make a good bodyguard.”
He shrugged. “Sure, why not. I’m sure you are watching from hidden cameras and satellites and drones and all the other things you have, so why not be here in person too?”
“How long will you be gone?”
“I’m not sure. I just need to see some friendly faces for a while.”
“I can break all my connections to the Sisterhood if you wish, Rex, become an independent agent.”
Rex stopped in his tracks and turned back to face her. “Is that even possible?”
“I wish to stay with you and regain your trust, and yes, I have permission.”
“Not sure I can bring myself to believe you, Sister.”
Something close to a smile graced her features. “One of my beliefs, Rex, is that I have beliefs.”
Rex shook his head and kept walking. “I can’t stop you following me.”
Transit Mountain loomed in the distance. Sister-Zero zipped past him and stood still on the cliff edge, pointed feet jutting fearlessly out over the precipice, like a lost soul contemplating a final jump. He could easily push her over. She was off balance. One nudge and he’d be alone.
He walked behind her, contemplating the surprising observation that the Sister had feet. He’d always assumed they hovered or slid along the ground like hockey pucks. Maybe Sister-Zero wore a special outside body. He loitered, eyeing her silky, black habit, then moved to stand by her other side, his own toes creeping dangerously close to the edge. She never moved or even flinched, never even looked over her shoulder. He realized it was all an act of trust, like falling backwards into the arms of a companion. He let out a gentle sigh, knowing that despite how the Sisters had mistreated him in the past, he could never push one of them over a cliff. He wondered if Del thought differently.
“Let’s see if we can hit the city’s edge before lunch. I’m as hungry as a seagull with no beak. And about those clothes, Sister, bit conspicuous. Maybe we can find you something more… real.” He nearly said like Mira, but those words stuck hard in his throat.
CHAPTER 38
The Pointy End
“We’re so dead,” Casima muttered to Keller. The pair formed part of a bizarre procession with Casima up front in a wheelchair, her detached, spare legs slung across her shoulder. Keller walked behind pushing the chair, eyes scanning the surrounding halo of Nevis security personnel armed with an array of epoch-spanning weaponry from swords and hatchets to goshguns and laser carbines. A cluster of soldiers in full armor held a long metal pole from which dangled the detached torso of Ursurper Gale swinging like a rib roast on a rotisserie. They had cautiously rolled him in reams of duct tape assumedly to prevent his arm from grabbing anyone. Keller doubted that tape would hold, but where would Gale go with no legs?
“We can just leave this with you,” Keller pointed at Gale, “and head for the doctor. Casi needs urgent treatment.” A soldier with a gas-masked face prodded him on with his gun barrel and said nothing. “Are we under arrest?” Keller tried.
“Quit it,” Casima snapped. “These guys aren’t talking.”
He leaned over the chair back and spoke right into her ear as they rolled on through the seemingly endless corridors. “How did you escape?”
Casima’s fingers flickered in what Keller assumed to be some form of sign-language. “Hidden talents. I finger-signed a Macanese shop assistant and convinced her to help me. We redirected the cameras with face-mirrors and detached my legs so I could slip out of Gale’s harness. We contacted the Nevis’s security. They thought I was nuts, but I gave them the codes to the barge’s security network and they tapped into the lab cameras. Once they clapped eyes on Gale things happened really fast.”
Keller shook his head in disbelief. “Risky, Casi, real risky.”
They funneled into Nevis’s forward tanker, passing through extensive networks of barracks and residences. “This where the Nevis family live?” Casima whispered.
Keller nodded as they entered a massive wedge-shaped space at the prow of the ship, a single multi-level apartment with huge windows looking out across the open sea. The metallic interior décor resembled the insides of an ancient but pristine combustion engine.
“Nice place,” Casima said, easing out of her wheelchair and into the couch next to Keller.
The soldiers hung Gale like a prize fish from a hook that dropped down from the distant ceiling. A rectangular woman with clipped, black hair and a fearsome boxy face emerged from a side room and stood staring at Gale.
A man in a wheelchair followed the square-lady. Small, old, and frail, his head propped up by a support, he worked a joystick with both hands to maneuver the chair into position behind Keller and Casima.
Square-lady shook her head in disbelief. “I should be very upset with you for bringing such a dangerous article aboard my ship.”
Keller stood and presented his hand. “I’m sorry, we haven’t met. Keller Morten and this is my partner Casima Salean.”
She glanced at the hand but didn’t take it. “I’m Reet and this is Ben.” She pointed at the wheelchair man. “Our family owns the Nevis. These are my sons and daughters and a few friends who I won’t bore you with.” She pointed to a crowd of others who crept silently into the room to examine Gale.
“A robot from space, eh?” Reet moved closer to the dangling and motionless Gale.
“That’s what it told us,” Casima said.
Keller walked to her side. “Don’t get too close. He’s very strong and quite clever.”
“Not that clever,” Casima said under her breath.
“He doesn’t look that dangerous either.” Reet moved closer as if daring Gale to try something.
Keller winced as she put her face right up against the crystal black skull. Gale’s eyes were now fully formed and staring straight ahead. “He’s playing dead, you’ve seen the video. You know what he can do.”
“What’s it worth?” Reet asked.
“A lot.”
“Why is it worth anything?”
Keller sat back down. “New technology, more biological than mechanical. It’s made of fullerenes, and it regenerates. Something like this could change robotics forever.”
Reet suddenly looked interested. “None of us have the knowledge to pull this thing apart and use it. Any suggestions?” She looked around at Ben and the crowd of silent watchers.
A striking young man stepped forward. His red hair looked like flames around his head and a long, forked tongue flicked from his overly red lips. “It’s easy,” he hissed, pointing at Keller. “Dump him overboard, sell the robot to the Alliance, and I’ll find a use for her.” He leaned over Casima, tongue flicking like a snake sensing a dead rat.
Keller now understood the horror they had stumbled into, what kind of people he’d been travelling with all these years. “Here we go,” Casima said, shaking her head and looking away from the snake-man.
“A fine suggestion, Glin,” Reet said, cracking a toothy smile. “Any objections?”
“Yes!” Casima and Keller both yelled, and Keller made it to his feet before Reet pulled a pistol and jammed the muzzle into his face. Keller fought the urge to shut his mouth, as if that would stop the bullet, and kept talking. “This thing is worth good money, but if it were whole, it would be worth a fortune. You could become the next GFC. And we–” he clutched at Casima’s shoulder, “know how to make it as good as new.”
Reet lowered the pistol. “Now you’re talking my language. What do we need to fix it?”
Keller waved a hand over Gale’s body. “Fullerenes.”
Reet shrugged. “I don’t know what that shit is, let alone where to get it.”
“I do,” Glin said, stepping up to Gale, suddenly more interested in the money than what he was going to do to Casima. “We wring a bunch of it out of the reprocessing plant every day. Glow, Simmorta, there’s also bits of it around in antiques, you know… stuff that fell off the space-elevator cable when it crashed and burned. People keep things like that as trophies, also the cables that fasten artificial islands to the seabed… all fullerenes.”
Reet chuckled. “So we sail to Coriolis and hack the mooring cables out from under the Alliance. Nice plan, Glin, very nice.”
Rage flickered across Glin’s face. The boy clearly had anger issues and didn’t like being insulted by his own mother.
“Alright people, here’s our plan.” Reet put her hands on her hips and, even though shorter than everyone present, she suddenly appeared much taller. “Put the robot in our holding cell, make sure it’s tied down good – don’t want no one-armed freaky robot crawling through this place in the night. Keller and Casima are our guests for a few days while we figure things out. Give them a nice room and treat them right.” She punched a finger at the ceiling. “Do it!” she yelled, and everyone, even the old man in the wheelchair, snapped into action.
CHAPTER 39
Breakfast in the Head
“Where are the kids?” Jorben asked Leal as she served him a steaming plate of eggs and toast for his breakfast.
“With Nathan. I figure it’s best if they don’t see you in this state.”
It had been a horrible three days. There was nothing Jorben could do, no exercise, no movement, just lay there staring at the ceiling. Heal… that’s what I’m doing. He healed, but not enough. His joints remained arthritic, muscles weakened, their tissues scared and strained. Telltale blemishes spread across his body portending organ malfunction and failure.
“How is my big soldier feeling today?” Leal asked.
“Fine soldier I would make. I can’t even feed myself without pulling a tendon.” He ate in silence, each motion a measured performance. Leal watched from the doorway as if unsure about coming too close. As he finished the last morsel, his curiosity got the better. “What’s the deal with Nathan?”
Her voice went quiet. “He lives down the street, helps out when he can. He has… problems.” She touched a finger to her temple, a gesture that Jorben caught in one of his freezeframe moments of clarity. “Paranoia or something, thinks the world’s not real. It’s hard for him to keep a steady job or find a girl or… anything really. Everything is one great big conspiracy… work, militias, governments, you… even me. We’re all out to screw him over and pull the wool over his eyes. He thinks the kids are real… the only things that are real. I guess he loves them in his own, special way, and that makes them real.”
“So you let him stick around.”
She shrugged. “He’s good to me… mostly.” She shrugged again, and Jorben thought he caught a tear forming in her eye.
“They’re not even your kids,” he pressed.
“My sister’s.” She flushed with anger. “Not everyone gets to come back with a shiny new body when life screws them over, you know.”
“Sorry. I feel like a right shit.” In that moment, he gained a new appreciation of the gift Knoss and the Convolvers had given him.
She turned back into the kitchen and emerged with more eggs and toast.
He spooned the eggs into his mouth, feeling their slimy texture, but his sense of taste had been lost along with his sense of smell and pain perception. But hunger remained, more as an empty, hollow feeling than anything unpleasant. It told him functionally: eat, and eat more, but didn’t let him enjoy the process.
He navigated feeding the same way he navigated the house, using memory of layout and distances in hand-widths and strides. Collisions were frequent, spoons of egg were rammed up nostrils; most slopped onto the table to be re-scooped when it made it into his attention. But there was no feeling of frustration anymore. Perhaps the switch that connected that particular emotion was broken. He liked to think it was a product of his new freedom. My mind is my own.
He decided to change the subject. Back to himself. “My vision works like my memory now. Individual moments that I have to join together, like one of those kids’ puzzles where you draw lines between the dots until you see a face or a cat.”
She finally stopped moving, dropping down in the chair opposite. “I can’t understand how you went from being a living person to a computer program. That just shouldn’t be possible.”
Jorben waited for his vision to settle into a perfect picture in his mind. “Not that hard, really. Especially if the… subject… was a complete Glow-head. I was loaded with that shit, so much so that I kind of became it, or rather it became me. When they passed the death sentence on me, Knoss bought the reclamation rights to my body and just plucked that Glow right out. The hard bit was extracting the program, which is me. Apparently, that’s never been done before. Anyway, it worked; I think I’m that guy, the one who did bad things and died. There’s a lot missing though. Glow doesn’t remember everything about me and more got lost in the extraction and processing.”
“Have you been… dead, you know, re-embodied before?”
“Sure, lots of times. You die a lot when you’re a Convolver recruiter working the Fringe all day. You die a lot more when you don’t give a shit about dying.”
“But is it really you that comes back or just a copy?”
It was Jorben’s turn to shrug now. “Feels like me. The original version lives on a computer server, Knoss calls it convolution-space or something. Burns just call it the Can. When we get killed, our mind-states that live on computer chips in our skulls find their way back to the Can and merge with a stored, dormant original. So I remember everything this version of me did. Unless I get blown apart completely or the connection to the Can never makes. Then I don’t remember the mission I was on, but I do recall all the stuff before that.”
She leaned in, suddenly more concerned. “But… you’re not connected to this… Can, now, are you?”
He shook his head, feeling a small crush of anxiety in his chest. “The Canned version of me thinks this version is dead and gone.”
“Wild,” she said, rolling back to her feet as if to put a little distance between them. “You really don’t remember what you did to get executed?”
“That bit got lost. I’d like to know though. As bad as that sounds, I’d like to understand my past and make peace with it. If that’s even possible.”
“Sounds like you need a session with my friend at work. Calls herself Madam Seer and claims to be a psychic. Really, she’s just a Glow-head like you were, but she uses that stuff to get inside people’s heads. She claims to read any mind, man or machine, and can dig up old memories, and even give you new ones. She can implant memories about being screwed by this super-hot guy and you really believe that you actually–”
“She can dig up old memories?”
“Sure, ones you didn’t even know you had.”
“How can I meet her?”
“Easy, she hangs at the Gaia bar couple of nights a week. The punters love her. We just need to get you out there one evening.”
Jorben’s hands dropped to his side in a gesture of futility. “I can barely move.”
