by J M Thomas
The impact jarred her grip on my arm loose, but not my face. But it was all I needed. I whipped a second knife from its place inside my belt and held it against the skin of her forearm, ready to slice it open if provoked.
Marsh nodded sagely. “Hmm, against unarmed Ehksmian female, can win with knife. Us not impress.” He waved his hand and Marsha released me, stepping back to assess the situation a bit. “I think she kill first. Jet need speed and cunning.”
“Speed and cunning.” Marsha agreed, croaking out a note to her beloved. “Can us trust synth?” She swiveled her head on her thin neck to look me in the eyes, her own narrowing as she assessed me. With a shrug, she looked away. “Think yes.”
With that, they both dived into the river, slightly-webbed feet kicking as they made their way away from the dock.
“Hey, wait, what?” I called.
“Jet want card? Must swim!” Marsha called, laughing her throaty croak of a laugh. Both of them disappeared beneath the surface, the moonlight rippling the water where their heads had been moments before.
“Aww, fuck it.” I took a running leap off the edge of the pier, diving in where I’d seen them. It was pitch black beneath the surface, and when a strong hand grasped my wrist, I nearly lost my saved breath hollering in surprise. I followed the tug downward, until a rough shove sent me crashing through a bubble, then through… a ceiling?
As my sopping wet self fell through the air, I barely had time to get my feet beneath me before I crashed to the floor. The slimy wet bodies of both Marsh and Marsha immediately toppled me over again, bowling me back over as a tangle of amphibian limbs unknotted themselves and stood up, both Ehksmians giggling uncontrollably.
“Aha!” Marsh thrummed in triumph. “Bring Jet every time. Landing much softer.” He grabbed a couple soft towels from a hook on the far wall. Below our feet, the slatted floor seemed to swallow up the water we’d brought in with us when we broke through the weak field keeping the river water out. It wasn’t even slick already.
“Very funny,” I sighed, uncertain as to how I’d managed to trade one heckler for a pair of them. But, unlike Blade with his relentlessness, Marsh and Marsha got quickly to business. They’d stripped, a sight I wished I could unsee and never wanted to see again, and re-clothed themselves in dry clothes within a minute. At least they were efficient about it.
As the couple went about their business, I was free to fade into the background and get a look around. The structure was designed to look like someone had dug out and polished a tree’s root system and filled that with an air bubble. I knew better—the technology keeping the river water out and us oxygenated correctly was downright mind-boggling. It was its own type of bio-dome, remarkable not just for its impermeability, but for the fact that it admitted intentional entry force while maintaining integrity against steady force.
How the hell do I know this shit?
“Hey, Marsh. How do I know about that bio-dome?” I called toward the office where the two Ehksmians had disappeared.
A hand reappeared, gesturing with its broad-tipped finger pads for me to follow. I did, stepping into what I’d assumed as a little office room to the side. It turned out to open up into an eight meter by six meters of wall-to-wall technical equipment. Marsha held out a device to me and put an almost matching one next to her own tempanic membrane.
“Testing,” she called out. I picked up her word as “testing,” but the sound that came out of her mouth sounded closer to a creak.
“Testing,” I repeated, and she nodded as Marsh put his own on under the pair of headphones he was already sporting.
“There.” Marsha nodded. “I needed to ensure we understood each other perfectly. Our language and yours do not share a few necessary conventions, and our anatomy makes it difficult to shape each others’ sounds. If you were made with one of the synthetic bodies with the proverbial bells and whistles, you’d be able to speak and understand our language as a subroutine. Apparently, they gave you the cheapest unit they had on hand.”
“Wait.” I shook my head at her fantastic level of articulation. It sounded so strange after hearing her attempts at my language. “I’m a cheap model?”
“That isn’t necessarily a bad thing.” Marsh spoke up, spinning in his oddly-shaped desk chair that was clearly designed for their people’s narrower hips. “The higher-end models are easier to shape, more receptive to external hacking. You may notice information you didn’t have in your former life, and minor exchanges in how you think about things.”
“Like what?” I raised my eyebrows, not liking the idea of factory-specification Jet one little bit.
“Before, how would you have described the size of this monitor?” Marsh pointed to the screen before him.
“One mete… no.” My eyes widened. “Three feet. I think in metrics now.”
“That is an example of these minor changes. Neither is wrong, you just have a standardized operating system now.” He gestured to the only human-ass-shaped chair in the room. “Sit.”
I did, watching him and Marsha working their equipment and making adjustments. After a minute or two, Marsha turned toward me again and smiled a little. “Not happy, Jet?”
With a sigh, I shook my head. “I’m fine.”
“Oh dear, it really must be serious, then.” She swiveled her chair, crossing her legs and propping her chin on her hand as she leaned her elbow on the desk. “If I were, clutch forbid, to become synthetic, I would be distressed about any changes to my old way of thinking. You seem to have a similar problem, yes?”
“That’s just silly.” Marsh cut in, still typing away at a hundred-keyed console. “You two are so sentimental about your minds and bodies. You have an operating system now for a brain. Of course it isn’t going to be the same as an organic brain. Your organic brain would be dead.”
“But my organic brain isn’t dead!” I blurted, and both Ehksmians started.
“Wha… what?” Marsh looked horrified. “How do you know?”
I shrugged. “Because I spoke with my original. The nurse wheeled him away to be put into cryosleep after they took the testament file copy. They had to remake me a few times before I ‘took.’”
“This last word, it isn’t translating,” Marsha eyed me with rapt attention. “Could you explain what you mean by 'took?'”
“I’m not entirely sure what it means, either. My brain and the download weren’t compatible at first. I had to convince my original that we were not the same person, that I was a separate being from him, and that we were both things as much as we were people, to get the proper file from him.”
The worried looks on the Ehksmians’ faces didn’t exactly reassure me of what I’d just said. I debated asking, then decided I wanted to know more than I didn’t want to know. “What?”
“The official narrative,” Marsh began, a sarcastic tone taking over his voice that lowered his creaks and croaks to a note I’d never heard from them, “is that our bodies die and our Testaments survive. We continue in new bodies. If what you say is true…”
“We can know.” Marsha cut in, her voice so soft it was nearly a whisper. “And so can others.”
This cryptic statement propelled Marsh into further action. He hopped up with a single thrust of both legs and bounded over to the other end of the room. With his arm trembling slightly, he keyed in a code on a metal box, releasing the lid to pop open wide.
I peeked my head over toward the box, then immediately regretted doing so. “Hard nope.” I shook my head as he lifted the DypThink helmet and thrust it toward me.
“Please,” he begged, surprising me by falling to his knees, extending the helmet toward me in a pleading gesture.
“Please share with us what you have seen. Your experience could be the proof we need.”
“Dude, I am not putting one of those on again.” I shook my head.
“You trust us with your life, but not your mind?” Marsha inclined her head, then glanced at her beloved. “Shall I force him?”
Marsh shook his head, letting the helmet drop to rest on the floor between his knees. “No. They force him. We do not.”
“Even if it means…” Her voice trailed off.
Marsh emitted a despondent creak that sounded something like a heavy old door with a rusty ball-peen hinge. “What point is winning if you have to become the predator you defeated?”
Chapter 15 – Memory
“Oh hush, Marsh.” Crossing her arms, Marsha leaned back on one foot and eyed me up and down. I got the feeling she could see through my skin to the depths of whatever semblance of humanity I had left. “You just got finished giving this man a sermon about not being so trusting, then get on your knees like a wheedling amplexic, begging him to let you in his fragile brain. Don’t be such a moron.”
Marsh wheezed something akin to a sigh and rose, setting the offending helmet on a bench. “I know. I just… I want it to be over already. I want the sacrifices to be worth something already. I was impatient.”
In a moment of tenderness I felt like I was intruding on, Marsha cupped her finger pads around his cheek. “Cheating Ehksmians lose and have to wash the dishes. Your passion overcomes your patience, Beloved.”
“Ahem,” I cleared my throat, hoping to interrupt the little scene before their clothes could come off again. “May I go now?”
Marsh snorted, a motion that set his nostrils to flapping. “You can try. Be my guest.”
I realized I had no idea of how to get the other way through the air bubble, and Marsh still had all my stuff in his waterproof bag. Just as I was about to scratch my head in bewilderment, the amphibian spoke up again.
“You came here to see what that locket does, no? Perhaps find out about that before heading topside again?”
“I’d almost forgotten.”
“If we are going to be here for some minutes, we should get our guest something dry to wear.” Marsha interrupted. “Synths won’t catch cold, but they do smell something awful and drip river water all over our precious equipment.”
At Marsh’s enthusiastic nod, Marsha directed me toward a changing room and selected an outfit from the closet. As she handed over the bundle of clothes and a towel to me, I nodded my thanks. “Hey, one question, Marsha, if you don’t mind me askin’.”
She paused as she was turning to leave, inclining her head toward me. “Yes?”
“What are your real names?”
A grin split her thin lips. “I am relieved you asked, Jet. Blade told us you were a clever and perceptive officer, but you hadn’t given much obvious indication that he was telling the truth about you. Now I see some of this was an unwillingness to impart what you knew or at least suspected.”
She paused as if considering her answer for a moment. “I could tell you our names, but then that information could be extracted from you. Marsh can fix you so they can’t get in your head again, but he isn’t certain that’s wise just yet. I tend to agree. Besides, you wouldn’t understand our words, nor could your body repeat the sound in our language. Marsh and Marsha will do fine.”
“Thanks. Also, ouch.” The other question seemed to blurt itself out. “Why don’t you want my mind inaccessible just yet? Still holding out on extracting that memory?”
“I’ll let Marsh tell you that after you’ve gotten changed.” With that, she strode out of the room, her confident pace somewhat less dramatic-looking with her partially-webbed bare feet slapping the floor.
As I changed into the clean clothes, an off-white linen-like getup, I pondered the nuances of Marsha’s words. As much as I wanted not to, I couldn’t help but believe the genuineness of these Ehksmians. My continued hesitation about allowing Marsh access to my mind currently had nothing to do with whether I believed he’d do his best to keep my brain intact.
It had more to do with my doubts that he knew what he was doing. This place was clearly an underground, off-the-grid location kept running by a well-resourced but sketchy patchwork of equipment cobbled together from disparate flotsam. I wasn’t about to entrust my brain to that, not without an indication that it worked flawlessly.
I took my time wandering back into the room, reticence winning out over curiosity for the moment. I apparently took longer than expected, as Marsh stuck his head around the doorframe and beckoned me into the little room once more.
With more relief than I’d expected, I noticed that Marsh had put the helmet away again. Some of the equipment had been uncovered as well, and the computer had an extra screen on each side, strings of code running the entire length of the curved glass.
“There is so much to tell you, I don’t know where to begin.” Marsh wrung his hands until Marsha massaged his shoulders.
“Perhaps with your own beginning?” supplied Marsha.
“I was born at a very young age,” I quipped, to two sets of narrowed eyes.
Marsha gave me an almost indulgent look. “We hatch.”
“His point is valid. My tadpolehood is as irrelevant as going back to the first amphibians exiting our planet’s swampland. We must begin our story where our story begins.” He considered a moment more. “Perhaps at the moment my peace was destroyed.”
I leaned in to listen as Marsha rested her chin on Marsh’s narrow shoulder.
“New adult Ehksmians are often gangly and awkward, but we do not have wild years as some other peoples do. Perhaps times of doubt, which is why I took longer than I should have to choose my path. I was always good with electronics, and in this capacity I was working to save the funds to purchase my first levcar pass.” A nostalgic look passed over his features, then a smile followed it. “I wanted to go see Marsha when I pleased.”
She returned his smile as he continued, “I was working on an underground line that day, and my shift had just ended. It was a long, achy journey back up to the surface from beneath the street, and I heard voices up top, sounding agitated. I knew immediately that I should be cautious, so I took care to rise in complete silence.
“When I came within line of sight, the first thing I noticed was the photo-luminescent syringe in one man’s hand. We call the drug by its street name, ‘fyrefly.’”
“I call it the weird blue synth shit.” I interjected, lacing my fingers behind my head.
“Apt enough.” Marsh nodded as he considered my words. “It was a synth who employed it at that moment, using it as a weapon against the Ehksmian he was mugging. But he had no desire to steal anything of the man’s belongings—only to hit him with a single dose. That’s all it takes for us. We become lifelong junkies, living for another hit until our bodies are utterly ruined.”
“And all of it legal, thanks to Synthcorp manufacturing the substance for use in its own transfer process.” Marsha’s voice had that particular note it had gotten when she’d tasted my nasty soup. “If a substance has a legitimate use, any illicit activity done with it is the responsibility of the user alone, according to Ehksmian law. It was a perfect opportunity for Synthcorp to come in, destabilize our government through widespread synthesizing of our politicians, and effectively own the only real continent on our planet.”
“Of course,” Marsh added, “I felt much the same as our laws for most of my young life. The clutch brother I had who’d fallen prey already was as good as dead to me. After seeing that synth jabbing an Ehksmian to bring him down to his level… I visited my brother one last time. I vowed I’d do what I could to stop this terrible thing.”
I wasn’t sure what to do with the overwhelming emotion the Ehksmian was clearly feeling, so I glanced around the room again and let him have his moment. One of the screens blinked with a white-rimmed dialog box, then the computer emitted a croak or two of its own instead of a chime like I was used to.
“It’s ready.” Marsha prodded her distraught husband.
Collecting himself with a resettling of his shoulders and a nod, Marsh plodded over to the desk and plopped into his chair. “Bring the locket.”
I dangled it in front of his screen as he gently twisted the chain
against the bauble. Without preamble, the whole computing unit went dark. In a second, it rebooted, opening several new boxes with a script I’d never seen before.
The Ehksmian couple gasped in unison, eyes wide and mouths agape as they looked to each other, to the screen, then back to me.
“What did I just do?” I asked.
“You just managed to work a miracle. Whoever designed this device was a pure genius.” Marsha brought her fingers to cover her mouth as she spoke, shaking her head in disbelief.
Marsh made an attempt at explaining. “I had my very best software on the task of protecting this terminal from remote entry. That device essentially projected the administrative password into my protective subroutines and used them to open access to the computer’s most protected information.”
“So...I hacked you? With a wave of a magic bracelet?” I snorted. “Farfetched doesn’t begin to describe it.” I took another long look at the device in my hands. “This little thing is smarter than I am.”
To my surprise and, if I was honest, a tiny dollop of consternation, both Ehksmians nodded. “By far.” Marsha added, for good measure. Rub it in, why don’t ya?
Marsh shut off his computer with trembling hands. “This is precisely why we operate in blind pairs.”
I had a feeling I was about to be insulted again. “We what?”
“Every operator in our syndicate isn’t a single operator. We have teams, and one member always holds missing pieces of the other’s knowledge. That way, if we are compromised in one way, all is not lost.”
“So you two are…”
“We were partnered romantically before we joined the syndicate together. As a premade pair, we could be seen together without raising suspicion. It’s the same reason you and Blade are able to operate so well. You have years of history from which to draw in trust and understanding of each other’s habits. No one could fool you with a fake version of Blade. From his account, your discovery of his doubles took literally seconds every time the synth tried.”
