by Jim Keen
She looked at him, his nail-hard eyes unflinching. This man would kill her to get his revenge, but was that reason to let him? She leaned in and gently kissed him on the lips, his mustache bristling against her skin, then stepped back to pinch his cheek. “You’re such an asshole, Xavi. There I was, glad to see you for a minute. Always with the big questions I don’t have answers for. Let’s see if we can get to her first, okay? Come on, sit, eat. You can even smile if you’re up to it.”
He watched her, unmoving, then succumbed to exhaustion and crossed to the table. She saw the miles in his gait—the bent back and slumped shoulders. She hadn’t seen him since Arizona, and now they were at high altitude on a snow-covered mountain. He’d had to travel far, and by the look of him, fast and silent. He slid next to Conner, who punched him on the shoulder, giving him a big smile.
A waiter ghosted across to serve them breakfast. The meal tasted superb, ingredients cooked to perfection, and Alice let herself sink into her new body. The icy disassociation she’d experienced after the printer melted away. Emotions came online, buffered by the equipment in her head, but still full of organic life. Love for Julia and Conner warmed her, a kinship forged by endless lethal nights together. Sure, she had been there undercover, but couldn’t ignore reality; they had been as much a family to her as she’d ever known. Emotions expressed themselves as a tightness in her chest when she looked at them, a love strong and binding. She would die for these people; she knew they would do the same.
Then there was Xavi. Her feelings for him were complex—lust, pity, fear, but most of all a growing respect for the load he’d had to carry. Being with these people made her happy in a way she’d not known since the Marines, a feeling of family and shared goals, of belonging.
They finished and settled back in their chairs. Alice’s detox system spun up to deal with her full stomach. “Okay, talk,” she said, and they swapped stories.
Conner went first to tell how Toko had been in touch when he got home and asked for protection. Conner had provided it and was surprised, then appreciative, when, in return, Toko developed a way Five Points’ stretched defenses could hold the ports against Barlow’s crew. Toko, it seemed, was indeed working on his next job.
Xavi was next; he’d followed Alice to the unemployment train, but then Homeland Security patrol cars chased him away. He ditched the car and navigated to the hills overlooking the hidden city and settled down to watch and wait. With no supplies, thirst came on strong under the baking sun. As he considered his options, a silver aerostat dropped from the sky, and Four told him what had happened and where they were. After that, it was a chase scene as he stole a cop car, jacked two others, and journeyed across the country to end up here. They were in the Oak House Hotel, part of the president’s private mountaintop retreat. Four had gotten them a seat at the high table.
Alice went last and explained everything she’d seen in Arizona and Europa.
“So, where are the scans being sent?” Julia asked.
“I only saw the interior of the Jupiter habitats,” Alice replied. “They could be going to places we don’t know about, maybe the asteroid belt to be close to the mineral deposits.”
“Or their scans could be stored off world, waiting for the machinery to catch up,” Conner said. “It’s always been the scanning that takes time. If you have a million scans ready to print, you could take over any habitat you want once you get enough printers there.”
“There’s another option,” Four said.
“What?” Alice asked.
“The scans aren’t going anywhere.”
“So, you think they’re stored down here, in some Cortex memory array?”
“I hope so.”
“Well, we won’t know sitting down here guessing. You have the plans of that?” Alice asked nodding out the window at the president’s private residence.
“I have the originals, though they’re rudimentary. It seems post purchase the structure underwent a substantial refit.”
“What changed?”
“It used to be a private ski lodge, but she’s turned it into a remote base of operations. There are two main changes that I can identify. First, she built a new wing that holds enough communications and media equipment to rival a mainstream TV studio.”
“Yeah, that makes sense. She did that Six-Thirty national address from here, right, and again after last week’s roundup,” Conner said. “She wants to control the message wherever she is.”
“The power, cooling, and data requirements indicate a significant MI is also in attendance,” Four said.
“So this must be her headquarters, where everything is collated and organized,” Julia said. “Jolly good place for it after all, nice and secure."
“Got anything that could crack that MI?” Alice asked Four.
“That’s rather a challenge I’m afraid. Let me think about it and get back to you. The second change during the refit was new quarters for her private protection detail. I have their records; they’re all Special Forces and have been reprinted with enhancements and neural clocks. They’re not as advanced as you two, but they’re not far behind.”
“What the carney-clown is she talking about? What’s a neural clock?” Conner interrupted.
“Tell you later, Conner. How many troops does she have?” Alice said.
“Twenty in her personal guard, another thirty to watch the house. That’s interesting …” They turned to look at the small communications device as Four’s voice trailed off.
“What?” Alice asked.
“Their clocks are different in design from yours. I’ve not designed these; I had to speak with the Generation Ones to confirm. These soldiers had been gutted and reprogrammed, all freewill removed. They walk and talk like us, but anything the president demands, they do—no matter what.”
“Great. Robotic super soldiers, just when this was looking easy.” Alice leaned back in her seat and studied the roof.
“When what was looking easy? I haven’t heard an action plan or set of goals so far. What is it you’re proposing we do?” Julia asked, and everyone turned to Alice.
She looked outside; the dazzling white hill beckoned. “The government wants Five Points and B13 destroyed; I am wanted for murder, and nowhere is safe. The only way we can be free is to prove the president is behind it all. If there’s proof, it’s in that house—either evidence from her MI or a direct confession—and I’m going up there to get it.” She dropped her hands to the table. “I’m not an idiot. The chances of getting in there, getting what we need, and getting out are remote, but I’m going anyway. It’s time to take a stand.” She faced them, heart thumping in her chest, adrenaline fizzing through her system.
“About goddamn time,” Xavi said.
Conner smiled. “What the hell. New York was getting boring anyway.”
“She’s already killed me once, so I’d like to help. I’m not a soldier though,” Julia said.
“Not a problem. Xavi and I go after her, you and Conner go for the MI.”
“You make it sound so simple. Even if you do find a way in, how will you get her to talk?” Julia asked.
“Oh, I can be pretty convincing when I get down to it,” Alice said and sat back in her seat. “Xavi, how much are you worth these days?”
“I pissed them off real good. Last I heard was twenty million.”
“It’s time to collect.”
55
“You’re sure it’s him? If this is joke, very bad for you.” The MI emulation software was expensive but tuned for business meetings and stuttered when the face on the screen constantly swore. Alice’s oak chair creaked as she leaned back and inhaled the cold air. The afternoon sun cut a diagonal slash across the sun deck and illuminated the dazzling mountainside opposite.
Alice nodded at the white-walled cubist sculpture silhouetted against the sky. “He’s in there. You can check this transmission’s geolocate to confirm where I am. You’ve my full ident details, best I can supply, and what t
hey say is true. My name is Alice Yu; I was an NYPD cop until I saw your reward. I used New York’s facial-recon systems to track him to DC. Things got rough there, and I was in custody for a while. I busted out and followed the man you know as Dias here. He’s joined the presidential guard, as you can see in the video sent per the conditions of your contract.” Alice studied the screen and waited for a reply. They had videoed Xavi walking across the hotel lobby and sent the recording via autonomous suborbital courier to Bogota. The call back came two hours later, the head of B13 taking a personal interest in killing Xavi.
A skiing party scrunched by on the slopes below; voices drifted through the still air. The short and ugly man on the tablet screen had large ears and a broken nose. “Everything looks good, no issue. If we find him there, you’ll get the twenty as advertised. If he’s missing, we come for you.”
“What should I do now?”
“Wait. Watch. If he leaves, tell me.”
“What’s your ETA?”
“We come at night. Six, seven hours.”
“Great, when—” Too late, he’d signed off. The table’s thin screen ran encryption protocols then went dark.
“You really know how to piss people off, huh?” she said to Xavi, who scowled at her from behind the screen. “Okay, leave me alone, I’ve some research to do.”
Alice watched Xavi cross the sun deck and turned back to the tablet and set a search running for more information about Rachel Harper, Cortex employee #1 and president of the United States. There were hundreds of returns, so she picked an interview from the start of Harper’s election campaign. The screen buzzed a digital countdown, then resolved to show Harper when she was just a young upstart running for president.
Dressed in faded olive casuals, she stood on the deck of the USS Intrepid moored to Manhattan’s West Side. The flat, wide space held an encampment of orange FEMA tents filled with starving children. The sky buzzed with aerostats, their elliptical silver bodies struggling to lift aid packages to the designated tents. The smell must have been terrible; the interviewer held a cloth to her face and shouted over the thwack of helicopters and shouting people.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I’m trying to save the country,” Harper said, her voice raised against the background chop.
“What do you mean?”
“What do you know about me?”
“Poor girl done good.” The interviewer’s tone screamed Get me the hell away from here. It was obvious the crew wanted to finish the shoot as quick as possible.
“It’s so easy to summarize a life in a single sentence, but that is essentially true. My father worked cars in Detroit, then he lost his job and the limited benefits we had. My mom got a bar job, but we couldn’t afford the house, had to rent a trailer. The tap water was poison, and when Dad got sick, we had no money to look after him. There was no healthcare; we couldn’t afford a doctor or hospital, so we watched him waste away, eaten from the inside.
“The plants closed, everyone left, then Mom lost her job. Within weeks, we were on the streets living with the dropouts. I stole some school books, and Mom entered me for the Stanford entrance exam. I thought she was joking at first. I was filthy when I took it, this large hall full of healthy kids staring at me. I got the scholarship though. At first, they didn’t know how to let me know, had to hire the police to track me down.
“I didn’t want to go, but Mom made me. She tagged along, lived in the corridors of my dorm and kept out of the way. But people complained. One day, she was there; the next, gone—just like that. I never saw her again. The local politicians? Cowards, every one—bought and sold by corporations. That’s when I saw government for what it was: just another sociopathic business with one invaluable advantage. Know what that is?”
“Why don’t you tell me.” The interviewer couldn’t even fake interest now. Her gaze flickered to the cameraman, then back to Harper.
“The government writes the laws, which are implemented by the police, another government agency. It’s a circle of control that means only the government has the power to implement true societal change. I vowed to use that, to build a government that would provide for everyone.”
“You just happened to stop off at Cortex and make yourself a billionaire along the way, huh?”
That comment made it through. Alice watched as Harper held herself still for a beat as she reined in her temper.
“I don’t believe every politician is inherently evil and self-serving,” she said. “Of course, it is a profession that attracts sociopaths and narcissistic personality types, but overall, I believe governments do more help than harm. However, if you extrapolate that it is clear our current government hasn't fixed this problem”—she gestured at the tents behind her—“because they don’t know how. To reach their office, most politicians have to make a career out of it, and as a result are far removed from the cutting edge of technology. It’s on that thin edge I believe an answer to the unemployment problem will be found. Cortex was small when I joined, but I did my apprenticeship and saw mankind’s destiny. Only then was I ready to run for office. The money you refer to came as a byproduct of that work, not as a result.”
“Why the rush, though? People have a real issue with you buying your seat at the table. If you really wanted to help, why didn’t you start small? Run for mayor maybe? What gives you the skills to step in at the top?”
“We’ve seen what’s happened to the world over the last ten years; if I wasted another ten learning how to be president, where would we be? No, to fix the country, we don’t have time to waste. We have to change course before we hit the tipping point."
“What tipping point?”
“How long have you been a reporter?”
“Two years.”
“And how has New York fared in that time?”
“It’s gotten worse,” the reporter admitted.
“How so?”
“You’re either on the streets or in the skies. There’s no middle anymore.”
“You’ve seen the helpless huddled around trash fires. Think that will get any better? Think automation will just go away and leave us all alone? What if it does? What if I’m president and make synthetic intelligences and robots illegal—usher in a new wave of factories and manufacturing? Think that’ll bring jobs back? No. All it would do is manufacture products a hundred times more expensive than automated imports. So, I ban imports then, make this a closed system. You’ve bought yourself a trade war; all the printers are German, so goodbye to cheap hands and feet, goodbye to body replacements. The stem-cell miracle cures are Japanese, so goodbye to cancer therapy and dementia inhibitors. No, the genie is out, and that’s why I’m running for office. There’s no time for infighting if we’re going to get through this.”
“I’m hearing a lot of talk, but I haven’t seen much difference where it counts.”
Harper turned back to the orange tents. “I agree. Congress is moving too slow. Once I’m elected, I’m going to have to deal with that.”
Alice forwarded to the most recent interview; she wanted to see how the woman from the first interview had changed over the last six years. Time hadn’t been kind. Harper still looked fit, the epitome of a Silicon Valley CEO, but her hair was graying, and she looked exhausted. Makeup hid the worst of the dark bags, but she looked beaten up, worn thin.
This interviewer was altogether friendlier, the fawning video direct from the Oval Office. Headlines scrolled across in a clean sans serif, stating this video was part of the government’s Back to Work media offensive. Harper wore a dark-blue suit with a white shirt that contrasted her blond hair. She took a long sip of water and gave the interviewer a cool look. “My aim when I took the big seat was pure. The only thing that mattered was dealing with the unemployment consequences. I wanted to cushion the landing for those who lost their way of life; I wanted to help people like my father—but it was too late. By the time I could make a difference, the tide was too great to hold back.
As tens of millions lost their income, we lost all tax revenue. We borrowed until our credit ran out and then the entire social support system fell apart at the seams. Within eighteen months, I had failed at the one single aim of my entire life. Sure, I slowed it down, helped here and there, but it wasn’t enough.
“I put what little money we had left into the police and military—kept those going—but there was nothing to do for everyone. I would drive around DC at night, look at the crowds of dead and dying and know what that was like; I’d been there myself. For the first time in my life, I was lost, so I formed a Special Circumstances Committee, ordered them to find a solution where none existed.”
The reporter nodded, eager. “To expand off world?”
“Yes. It was genius, really. Provide incentives such as new bodies, sovereignty over discoveries, equipment—if they agreed to colonize the system and not return. This provides an ultimate answer for everyone. They get new lives, new addresses away from the slums down here. We get their goods and services when they are up and producing.”
“How have the other countries and planets taken this?”
“It’s part of a long process. Every country is aware of the potential benefits of a rapid system expansion, but we’re all faced with extreme technical challenges. We’ve agreed to work with the UN to prevent any one country monopolizing the system.”
“Your ‘Piece of Paper’?” the reporter asked. Alice had seen that—Harper on the steps of the ruined Capitol building, the new upload law in her hand as she waved to the crowd and promised a greater future.
“Exactly. The very last thing we need is a new cold war spreading out from Earth. We do this together, every country has their own Back to Work solution either in play or under construction, and we have agreed upon a slow rollout with our fellow countries.”
“The self-replicating MI remotes?” the interviewer asked.
“That is one part, yes. New habitats are under construction throughout the system; once we get the upload speed accelerated, we can really move forward. One day all of those people, all the unemployed, will be gone. Then you tell me the government can’t find a modern answer to the unemployment problem.” At this, Harper smiled. It was intended to be warm, but despite the makeup, it looked old and cruel. Alice shivered inside her clothes and turned to look out at the cold, hard landscape.
