Afterglow, p.3
Afterglow, page 3
“Call… got you, Rex, got you. I know I have.” He slammed his pair of tens onto the table and sat back, face rippling in fear of losing, eyes peeled wide with hope.
The two aces on the table matched nicely with the two more in Rex’s hand. Four aces, which must be the Future-Lord telling him something. Rex folded his cards away in mock-disgust. “Nah… I got nothing,” he said. “You win again.”
CHAPTER 5
The CyberSea
The CyberSea crashed through the choppy harbor waves with all the grace and efficiency of a diesel-powered brick, sending sheets of spray up and over the barge’s prow, soaking Keller as he fought the wheel and rode the swells with cowboy tenacity.
He liked an open-window policy when commanding his boat. Open space. That feel of sea air and spray on his face, something Casima had tried, briefly, before retreating back to the warm, dry lounge, and watching from behind the comfort of a safety-glass viewing blister.
Through the towering concrete harbor gates and into open waters, Macau vanished in the mist behind them, now just a luminous dome of smog and light pollution in the early morning grey. The sun rose behind storm clouds shedding a sinister light over the ocean. Ahead, the behemoth nation ship, the Nevis, was a dark and foreboding rhombus, lurking in international waters. Around it a fleet of smaller boats came and went, collecting and delivering supplies and travelers to and from the mainland.
“I’m back.” Casima teetered along the deck toward the cabin. She’d abandoned Keller’s impractical but aesthetically pleasing legs and found the going easier with her shorter, more agile urban ones. They lowered her center of gravity and handled the awkward ship motion with ease, leaving the rest of her body, from hips upward, waggling and tottering in a strange, ungraceful way.
“First time on a boat?” Keller chuckled, knowing it wouldn’t matter once they docked with the Nevis.
She grinned and used the window frame to ease herself into the cabin. A soft-pink poncho with its hood pulled up over her head kept the sea-spray at bay. Keller snaked a steadying arm around her waist, pinning her securely to his side. He felt her relax and begin to ride the sea’s motion instead of resisting.
The CyberSea slalomed through the flotilla of watercraft surrounding the Nevis. Some leaving, others just joining, most were there to ply wares and offer services. Nevis would shed most of that diffuse halo of crafts when it departed for the more dangerous waters of the open ocean.
“This is my eighth voyage with the Nevis,” Keller said. “She’s kind of an old friend now.”
“Don’t go making me jealous.” Casima’s soft, polymer hand rested on the nape of his neck, caressing away the tension built up from battling the waves.
“I didn’t think you’d come with me,” even the words made Keller’s stomach churn. “That I could never pry you away from your city.”
“Didn’t really think you’d want me along… you know… cramping your style.”
He faced her squarely, suddenly serious. “I told you, there’s never been anybody else. Literally never.”
“Heard that one before,” she laughed.
“No really, I was a college nerd studying to be a doctor and then a surgeon. No time for anything else. You know the rest.” He felt his blood pressure surge, sweat trickle down from his armpits. Breathe… out here I am safe. With her I am safe and free.
“I’m grateful that you became a robot nerd.” She touched her hip pocket where she kept the photos. He’d seen most of them, friends, brothers, parents, their faces and identities lost in the crinkles and stains. Then there was the one he’d taken of her as she took him on his first tour around Macau. At the time he went out of sympathy, didn’t really need a guide. She was so small, he assumed she was just a child, but really it was her prosthetics, legs made from wooden crutches and rusty cables with big, clunky electric motors. Her back hunched under the weight of the old car batteries, one on each side, giving her the power to move. She carried a colorful umbrella, a solar charger that took all day to repower the cells. One day at work, another begging on the streets while she recharged. “I’ve no pictures of me,” she said as he handed her the photo. He came back the next morning to take more, and to do another tour.
Keller swung the barge around to the rear of the Nevis through the densest swathe of boats and ships, all heaving in the ocean only meters apart. A path remained clear through the middle leading up to the Nevis’s entry port. Keller steered the barge into the makeshift waterway like a vessel entering a canal and joined the immigration line.
The Nevis itself was an eclectic kluge of large ocean vessels, headed at the front by a defunct oil tanker, one of the largest ever built. It was still solid and stoic, bristling with wind-turbines, solar arrays, radar domes and defense pods. The Nevis family who owned and ran the ship lived up front with thousands of permanent residents. Behind the front tanker and secured to it by colossal articulating steel walkways were two smaller tankers fastened side by side by an underwater grid of girders. The space between formed a sheltered harbor, a sanctuary for smaller vessels. Each harbor-tanker had yet another, smaller vessel fastened to its out-facing side, making them in-effect catamarans. Like wings joined to the outside tankers, two giant oil rig platforms arched out into the ocean on flexible couplings. The platforms were used as additional moorings and housed thermal-difference engines and wave-motion plants that powered the nation ship.
“It’s huge,” Casima said, craning her neck up at one of the passing hulks.
“Five-million tons of city in the sea.”
They powered in past rear defense platforms, tracked by turret guns and gigantic longshore bots with gantry shoulders and arms made of cranes. A mechanical spider the height of a tower block waved them through and into the calm of the inner harbor where they joined the thousands of other vessels moored inside.
Keller maneuvered the CyberSea in next to a near-identical barge. They bumped together gently, and he listened for the familiar clicks and grinds as the automatic docking mechanisms sought out their connection ports and pulled the CyberSea into tight proximity to its new neighbor. As the locks closed, the choppy motion of the barge froze into the slow, rhythmic swell of the Nevis. They were now part of the big ship, bolted in place for the next three months.
Keller let go of the wheel and killed the barge’s engine. “Our boat is now public property. Anyone can walk over it, so make sure you keep the doors locked and any possessions off the deck.”
An animated face appeared on Keller’s control screen, blue and friendly, almost like a cartoon cat, but with very human features. “Name please,” it asked in English. The translation of its words appeared in a dozen other languages on the screen.
“Keller Morten aboard the CyberSea.”
“Welcome back, Mr Morten. Do you require ship’s quarters in addition to your barge mooring?”
“Just the mooring.”
“And how are you paying for your transit?”
Keller felt the twinge of anxiety. “I’ll work. My credit record should be good.” Cash reserves were small, any capital being tied up in robot parts, magazines and various other fungibles stashed away on the barge.
The avatar paused. “Yes, your work record is excellent, and we have plenty of need for your services over the next three months. Welcome aboard and enjoy your trip.”
Keller slapped his hands together, rubbing away the chill of the sea. “Off deck, Grimace,” he barked at the motionless robot poised over the barge’s stern. Grimace folded himself back through the door and into the viewing lounge. His metal visage appeared in the window blister. He would remain on guard but confined to the inside of the barge.
“Exciting,” Casima muttered, her eyes huge as she took in the whole experience.
He curled a hand around her waist. This would be a test for him. The longest he would spend in the company of another human since the Nova-Insanity. Rather than the panic he usually felt when confined to any space with another living person, he felt strangely calm. Things were going to be alright.
CHAPTER 6
All That Remains
Boiler Hill, Rex’s name for the nub of rock and dirt jutting up over the city rooftops. A favored haunt for when he needed an escape, somewhere to be alone with his thoughts without straying too far from the people he most cared for.
The cylindrical remains of the water tower that once crowned the low summit lay scattered and smashed across its slopes. Rex clung to the snapped-off stump of one of its concrete legs, blending with the rust and creepers like a chameleon, eyes focused out across Coriolis City.
There, through a gap in the trees and tilted office buildings was the yard of the Forever Friends Rescue Sanctuary. Sometimes he saw dogs, sometimes tiny figures, perhaps Mrs Ogilvy or Hanna or one of her many new helpers. He even imagined he recognized some of the dogs: Rust, Bela, Winston… Goliath? His eyes grew watery and the huge wolfhound became just a mirage. His fingers twitched, imagining Goliath’s soft fur still warm after he’d given his life to save Rex and Mira. The lich he’d fought off, there to collect on Mira’s Glow debt, was long dead now, removed, rendered, and processed. Whatever demented mind had inhabited that body was a glowworm, a soul in damnation, living inside a manmade hell watching the world helpless and trapped inside someone else’s body.
Just like Del.
Rex had never fully pieced together who Del was. Even Del seemed unsure as he surfaced in Rex’s dreams, startled alive, wondering who and where he was, only to fall back into what he knew, the Star-River with its endless simulations of mankind’s future. But Rex understood one thing, that you could never trust a glowworm. They all wanted the same thing: freedom from their prison. A body. His body.
Rex had gleaned some facts over the last months, usually from John’s stack of old news journals; other times, things seeped through the barriers in his mind giving hints from either Felix’s or Del’s personal memories. He understood that Del was a founder of the once mighty GFC and equally responsible for its downfall. Del had languished in their prison on the Cloud9 orbital for years before his escape. An audacious jailbreak unlike any in history, he’d downloaded his own mind into a drug substrate, into Glow itself, a copy of which now resided inside Rex’s mind.
The GFC, that was a name that invoked hatred, fear, but also nostalgia. Or maybe that belonged to Del? It poisoned the world with its immortality nanotech drug, Simmorta, confining humanity inside a bubble of technological addiction. And all under Del’s purposeful leadership! But Rex saw his memories; flashbacks and snippets leaked over into Rex’s own thoughts, and even though he tried not to look, tried not to witness, he felt those moments slowly, inexorably becoming his own. How Del realized the GFC’s folly. How his glorious plan for a galactic civilization was hijacked by greed and incompetence. How he rebelled, and lost, and formed a new plan to escape his prison with the help of Felix Siger, co-inventor of the nova devices that nearly destroyed the world. The same Felix Siger whose body and mind Rex now inhabited.
Del called Rex the plague. But the plague that Rex saw on the news bore no resemblance to the mess of thoughts and memories inside his mind. The plague that festered across the globe took control of bodies and minds, whole communities, and most didn’t even realize that they were sequestered. They just carried on doing what they did but also doing what the plague wanted them to do, which seemed to be corrupting dormant Simmorta inside humans and turning it into more Glow, more plague. Is everyone just becoming a version of me?
A figure appeared below, sliding silently out from the water tower rubble. Wrapped in black, its face shone like pale starlight from inside its cowl. Black lines crawled and curled across the faceplate mimicking human features, approximating a smile. “Rex,” it said as if surprised to find him out here. “It’s good to see you again.”
“Sister-Zee?” Rex dropped from his vantage, eyeing his escape route back down the hill to the dubious sanctuary of the city. He didn’t know how he knew that this creature was Sister-Zero, the chief security bot at the Sisters of Salvitor Hostel, before it was blown to smithereens by the carbon-black demon calling itself Jett. He just knew.
She nodded, seeming to read his mind, even from a distance. “There are many Sister-Zeros, Rex, and I am indeed one of them.”
“You’ve been following me.” His heart dropped in fear for John and Millie, home alone.
“We’ve been watching over you for some weeks. You are in grave danger now. Others have found you, others more powerful than us.”
“Trabian?” He remembered the stranger John had told him about.
“An agent of the Alliance. One who was instrumental in overthrowing the GFC. He is now on Earth and working directly for Hmech.” She eased slowly up the hill, barely perceptible in her movements as if shifting just inches each time he blinked and then remaining stock-still.
Rex backed away. “I… I have to get back. Have to see John.”
The Sister’s face vanished, and a screen replaced the crude features. He gazed into its depths, the roses, the garden path, Millie in a rocker on the patio. Through the window he saw John fumbling with some drinks. “They are safe, Rex, and we promise to keep them this way if you come with us. The Alliance forces were repelled from Coriolis months back by the militia and the explosion that destroyed our hostel, but Hmech is determined. Coriolis will fall, and their presence here will only grow.”
“Come with you? I know the kinds of promises you make.” Suddenly the screen was huge, filling his whole vision. An iron hand snatched his wrist as he tried to lunge for a rock or stick.
For a second, he hung in her grip, cursing. She released, and he dropped, sobbing, to the ground. “Rex, I am sorry, please know that I am not here to hurt you.”
“How many times?” He struggled to string words together. “How many times have I trusted you? What could the Alliance do to me that you haven’t already done?”
“Our purpose is resolute: guide humanity toward survival, toward the Future-Lord. Hmech’s allegiance is to a machine future, to the replacement of all biological life.”
Images of Del’s Star-River visions flashed through Rex’s mind. Everything dead, unconscious. Life optimized out of existence and becoming just a simulation of itself. He plunged his face into his hands not wanting to see as more Sisters appeared, dozens of them surrounding him in a ring. “And what will you do with me if I come with you?”
“We have a research lab, Rex. We will remove Del from your mind and give him a more suitable form. Then you can aid us in our studies of plague networks and emergent personas, all while we shield John and Millie as best we can against outside threats.”
“Research lab!” Rex laughed, finally opening his eyes. To his surprise, the Sisters kept their distance. Most of them faced outwards as if watching for some unseen foe.
“Help us, Rex. The Future-Lord still needs you.”
“I want Simmorta… for Millie, maybe it can fix her dementia.”
“Since the GFC’s destruction, functional Simmorta is unavailable. Maybe we can find something else–”
“Just do it.”
“Then you’ll come?”
He buried his face again. He knew his idyllic life couldn’t last. Knew that someday he’d hand things over to Del and become a glowworm for good, or, if he was lucky, just die and be gone, utterly gone.
His hands parted, eyes opened, and the hillside was bare. No Sisters, no enemies, just a ruined water tower. He stared past to the distant dogs playing carefree in the yard. The urge to run to them was strong, but this poker game was real. The world dealt him a shitty, awful hand of cards, and he must play them, no folding, and not just for matchsticks or money, but for real lives – his, John’s and Millie’s.
He barked his best bluff out into the unflinching world and jogged back down the hill towards home.
CHAPTER 7
Jorben
Real or not real?
Jorben left the downtown Coriolis Convolver Enclave through a side door, hoping to avoid the attention of the recruiters that clustered near the building’s entrances. He barely inhaled a single breath of the moist morning air before they spotted him and rushed forward like a mob of autograph seekers.
Real! Jorben decided, ducking under the wads of contract papers and incentive notes. “Leave me alone.” He shouldered through, arrow straight, leaving two men sprawled and groaning on the slick, warm, crystal surface of the Welkin nova lake.
“We’re just trying to help!” One of the injured yelled at Jorben’s hulking back.
Jorben fought down the urge to turn back. Two things surprised him about violence: one was how easy it still came to him even after years of restraint training and contemplation, and second, that his Convolver masters didn’t seem to care. For years, they had preached a peace and turn-the-other-cheek philosophy but did little more than revoke some minor privileges for infractions. And there had been so many infractions.
Breathe deep, keep calm. Don’t break anyone. This is definitely real.
Behind him the Enclave towered over the city. A twisted, tortured pyramid sprouting up from an X-shaped base, a corkscrewing ziggurat stabbing at the sky. A homage to the Future-Lord rising from the glass of the Welkin nova lake, signaling their emergence as a world power and no longer just a hidden sect within the Sisterhood. A building as real and solid as any in the city when viewed from the outside. But inside… things were different. Doors led to improbable spaces with sights, sounds, and creatures that could only exist in a virtual world. Outside: Real. Inside: Not real.
A stout man on crutches eased out from behind a sentry post and pulled alongside Jorben. “Be nice, Jawbone.” His voice was gruff and deep with a military bark. “We’ve all got to make a living.”
“Only my friends call me that, Benz.”
