by Sean Platt
Micah approached his mother, took her hand, and raised it to his lips. He kissed her papery skin then set her hand down delicately, as if it were fine China.
Rachel looked up. Micah had approached her without getting recognition, and if he didn’t know better, he would have thought she hadn’t heard him come through the door and approach. But of course, the old woman had the finest implants money could buy. Soon, she’d be all robotics and Plasteel, dressed in peeling, rotting skin. It would happen all of a sudden. One day, Micah would realize that his mother was dead and that what lived in Alpha Place had been something else for a very long time.
“How are you feeling, Mom?”
Rachel took Micah’s hand, which he’d left on the chair’s arm near hers. She patted it delicately then turned her cheek toward him.
“Is a kiss on the hand any way to greet your mother?”
“I didn’t know if you were bruising.”
“I don’t bruise under the affections of my son.”
Micah forced a smile then leaned toward Rachel’s cheek. He held a neutral expression, trying to ignore her scent. The odor wasn’t precisely decay, medicine, or old age. It was an ozone smell that reminded him of running electricity dusted with musk.
He kissed her cheek then pulled back. His lips had left an impression, delicate as he’d been. He watched as the white area on her cheek, after a moment, flushed red and inflated back to its prior state. Even the return of color was the work of her nanobots. It was macabre — more like watching roadies erecting a tent than anything remotely organic.
Micah pulled up a small soft chair and sat with his knees almost touching Rachel’s.
“So how are you feeling?”
“Poor.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It’s a very specific form of poor. My bones would ache if I had any left, and my muscles would be sore if they weren’t filled with machines and paralyzers. Fortunately, I have none of those original items. And in their place, I have ghost pains.”
“You mean phantom pains?” Micah remembered stories of pre-microsurgery amputees feeling a limb that was no longer there.
“No. I mean pains that stem from the fact that I should be a ghost.”
This was Rachel’s unique species of half joke. Micah, since childhood, had never known if he should laugh or turn his face serious when she made her jokes — a uniquely disarming experience tinged with both guilt and discomfort.
Micah chose to smile.
“Thank you for coming to visit me,” she said. She returned his smile. It should have felt like a confirmation that he was doing things right, but it didn’t. Micah had never, ever understood or felt comfortable around his mother. Rachel had been in her seventies and eighties through the boys’ formative years, wedging a double-wide generation gap between them. She’d never been able to do the fun, playful things that Micah’s friends’ mothers had done. She’d been old forever, and time had only magnified their differences. Before her first nanobot treatment, he’d felt like a caregiver assigned to an invalid. After, he’d felt like a good Samaritan visiting an anomaly.
“Of course.”
“You’re a good boy.”
“Thank you.” He forced a smile. “I do try.”
“Have you seen your brother?”
Micah cocked his head. They almost never discussed Isaac. Isaac came to visit Rachel as well, but their relationship, so far as Micah could tell, was quite different. Isaac usually ended up running errands and taking care of Rachel’s household for her. Micah was the confidant: the one she spoke to, the one she confided in. But the two worlds never crossed, and Micah and Isaac hadn’t visited their mother together in years. They’d never decided to split visiting duty, either. It had simply occurred because it seemed wiser. Safer, perhaps.
“We’ve spoken.”
“I worry about him.”
“You don’t need to worry about Isaac, Mom. Isaac can take care of himself.”
Rachel gave a crow-like scoff. “No, he can’t. He’s a fool.”
“Mom!”
“So now you’re offended?”
Micah’s hand was still near Rachel’s. But something had changed in the conversation, and Micah didn’t trust it. A moment before, he’d been a dutiful son visiting a poor old woman in failing health. In the blink of an eye, Rachel’s other, deeper face had replaced that of the sweet shut-in. That face triggered old chills. He remembered it from all those years ago, over dinner tables, discussing business with Pops…strategies that simultaneously seemed to circle matters of life and death. Micah and Isaac’s father was never part of those conversations. Micah still remembered the way Dad had always retreated to the parlor, reading and pretending not to know his wife’s business. Trying to pretend, Micah had thought, that he wasn’t terrified of his father-in-law.
Micah stood. He faced away from Rachel for a beat, trying to mentally compose himself. He was Micah Ryan, the public face of Enterprise. People feared him, the way Ashford Ryan had feared Pops.
Then he turned back, his face appropriately serious.
“I’m not offended,” he said. “Just wondering what makes you say that.”
Rachel laughed. “Why do I say he’s a fool? Because he’s a fool, Micah. You know it. You always have.”
“He’s your son.”
Rachel shook a bony finger. It swayed too much with each swipe, and Micah was reminded of a bag of water tied around a metal pendulum. “He’s my older son. Older. And yet you’re the one who took over Ryan Enterprises.”
“We’re partners.”
Rachel’s eyes hardened. “Listen to me, Micah. I don’t have many years left on this planet, and don’t want to spend them being bullshitted. You and Isaac have equal shares, subject to my 34 percent. When I die, you’ll be 50/50. But you are the board. You are the phantom stockholder with the single share that tips the balance toward you. And you have the will. Isaac is a sponge. You do realize that given the company’s private nature, you’re free to vote his shares invalid? He only has control as long as you want to keep giving him the warm fuzzies that come with illusions and fantasy.”
“Fine.” Micah sighed.
“I, on the other hand, am no fool. I had to give you equal shares of everything when you were kids. It was very Directorate of me, and I hated it. I did it because I ended up becoming a mother, then somehow it happened again. I didn’t have to do the things I did for you both. But I did it anyway.”
“You did great, Mom.” Somewhere inside, Micah realized that this was an atypical tone for a conversation with one’s mother, globally speaking.
“I did great by you,” she said. “And now you can do by me. Both of you. That’s the way things had to be, and have to be. I get it, and I was always willing to play along. That’s why you seem to have equal shares. Because Isaac is a delicate fool, and I must spare him even though he’s a grown man old enough to have his own grandchildren. But my compassion dies when we begin to talk about the business built by my father. One of you is qualified to run it. The other is not. And if you for a moment forget that your brother is weak and foolish, I will be forced to prove it by taking his inherited share and willing it all to you. Don’t make me do that, Micah. I’m too old to look like the bad guy. Let Isaac maintain his illusions.”
Micah nodded, unsure what to say.
“Now, what will you be doing about this situation with Natasha? Has Isaac asked you to step in?”
“He did.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him that it’s his problem.” Micah stopped short of telling Rachel that the complete thought included Isaac “getting control of his woman.” She might take offense, being a woman herself. But probably not, because his mother was practical above all else, and Natasha had to be reined in, for the good of both parties.
“Good. Are you going to step in anyway?”
“I’m monitoring it. We’ve talked anyway because she wants to shift to Enterprise
and be a bi…well, she wants to be loud about it. I know she’s spoken to Jameson Gray. As friends. I don’t believe he’s told her anything he shouldn’t have.”
“What did Jameson say?”
Micah resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Jameson Gray had made his enormous fortune by throwing glitter and waving his arms while wearing a stern, mystical expression. He maintained a show based on flimflam in a world where the most amazing illusions were already being supplanted by technology’s truths.
“I don’t know, Mom. It’s not like I have a pipeline to the Master of Illusions. Wouldn’t you know better than me?”
Rachel gave a minuscule shake of her head to indicate that it didn’t matter. “Let her do what she wants, within reason. You understand?”
“She’s going to make a big splash. A huge show. Just to throw it in Isaac’s face. I’ve neither encouraged or discouraged it. I figure it’s best she sink or swim on her own. And the same goes for Isaac.”
Rachel nodded. “That’s very Enterprise. She’ll learn one way or the other. What matters is that the press knows she’s left Directorate. What happens next matters little.”
“I didn’t even need to leak it. Natasha’s so huffy and insufferable, the sheets found out immediately. The chatter is as obnoxious as she is.”
Rachel nodded. “Good.”
“There’s something else.” Micah looked into his mother’s somehow artificial stare. “You remember Nicolai Costa. Well, he’s…”
“Yes, yes. Nicolai,” she said, waving a hand in acknowledgement, urging him to get on with it.
Micah blinked. She’d said it like Nicolai Costa was a common topic of conversation, but in truth they hadn’t discussed the Costas since Salvatore had died and Ryan Enterprises had stepped in to shepherd the development of hovertech that had conveniently made its way stateside. Micah, who’d been project head on much of Ryan Enterprises hovertech development, was in the middle on that one. He wasn’t supposed to know that his mother was part of a group that pulled strings above even the company’s reach, but blood had always had a way of talking. It put him in a strange position. Mysterious commands came down, and Micah had to accept them. And no matter how much he thought he knew about anything, Rachel always seemed to be six steps ahead of him.
“You act like he’s an old friend of yours,” said Micah.
“Oh, yes. He came to visit me yesterday.”
Micah’s eyes met Rachel’s for long enough to see a passing look of contentment. Then it vanished, and again she looked like an innocent old woman.
“He what?”
“He’s a very nice boy. Very courteous.”
“You didn’t think to tell me this? You didn’t think to ping me?”
“I’m an old woman. Sometimes, I forget things.” Again, she hinted a smile.
“What the hell did he want?” Micah felt himself becoming increasingly agitated and tried to will himself to calm. He was Micah Fucking Ryan. Micah Fucking Ryan was always in control. But it was difficult to tether his outrage. Nicolai was supposed to be Micah and Isaac’s responsibility. He’d stopped being of any concern to Rachel back in the ’30s, and as far as Micah had always thought, Nicolai had been more or less invisible to her since. With fifty years passed, Micah had assumed she’d have forgotten him other than as a legend. And now he’d come here, to Alpha Place? It felt like a personal violation, and Micah Fucking Ryan didn’t tolerate violations of any sort. This was his mother; this was his personal life and personal business; this was the secret that he was supposed to be keeping and the ace he was supposed to hold. Nicolai had no business here.
“He was curious about our past,” said Rachel.
“What fucking business is our past to him?”
“Our past is entangled with his family’s past,” she said. “With his father. With the development of the nanobots you gave me and that started the pollination that our friend Noah was so interested in.”
Micah just stared. He felt like a house of cards was collapsing.
“What did you tell him?” he said.
Rachel had a small knit blanket across her legs. Her hands formed a fragile tent atop it. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I’m old. I get very confused.”
Her coyness felt like a blade tearing down Micah’s vertebrae.
“Goddammit, what did you tell him?” he yelled.
Rachel’s innocent expression found a razor’s edge. “Don’t you dare demand anything from me, Micah. Do you understand? I own 34 percent of the company that Costa’s technology revitalized and made rich. That gives me a substantial interest in what has happened in it over the years and what it will do next. Thirty-four percent to your and Isaac’s matching 33s. This room life-logs everything I do and say and seem to think — not to mention what I specifically log on my own. Don’t you think for one fucking second that you can pull the rug out from under me. Even your shares are conditional — you and Isaac can’t pool them against me. Do I have to spell it all out? This company is mine until I die, and there’s nothing you can do about it. The same as with Panel. You’ve tiptoed around those connections and those powerful people all your life, and I know how you salivate for my slot in the group when I die. You aren’t even supposed to know about Panel, Micah, so don’t make me end your tenure on it before it even begins.”
Micah blinked. “I just wanted to know what you told him.”
Rachel’s expression softened. Again, she gave him that hectoring naughty-naughty wag of her finger. “That’s not what you said at all, dear son of mine.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Of course. But the answer is that I told him what he needed to know.”
“He doesn’t need to know anything.”
“Doesn’t he? Didn’t you tell him the same things already?”
Micah exhaled, unsure what to say.
“I just filled in the gaps, Micah. I admitted to things he’d surely already suspected. Nothing that changed anything. Do you see what I really gave him, by doing that?”
“I don’t know, Mom.” Micah sighed, resigned.
“The illusion of control. Same as Isaac. You know he has a role to play in our futures.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Oh, well. Then my research is apparently better than yours,” she said.
“Noah Fucking West, Mom.”
Rachel made a little brushing-off gesture. “Enough. Just another loose end that Isaac let go and that you must pick up. Nicolai Costa won’t be going anywhere for a while. You have little to hide. He’ll sneak around, but I’d advise you not to discuss our conversation. Act like I don’t exist, like you normally do.”
“I don’t act — ”
“So are you prepared for Shift?”
Micah felt blindsided by the change in topic but managed to recover without a stumble.
“There’s not much to be prepared for. The presidents’ men handle it all. Isaac and I just make speeches.”
“As it should be. Which way do you think it will tilt?”
“Enterprise.”
“You’re sure?”
“It’s time.” Micah shrugged. “But does it matter?”
“Part of me wants Isaac to have a victory. It would be good for his self-esteem. When you see him next, will you tell him to visit me?”
“I don’t really see him often, Mom.” That was a lie. He’d just seen him, and Isaac had a way of crawling back over and over again. Rachel was one tether binding him to Isaac, and Natasha was another. But for some reason, he felt he’d given his mother enough today.
“Whenever you talk to him then.” Rachel clucked her tongue and shook her head. “You used to see each other all the time. Why don’t you go out to dinner?”
“He’s kind of a wreck.”
“All the more reason,” said Rachel.” Do you think he’ll stay married?”
“I don’t see how he could get divorced. It would make him look so much worse. Natasha would take half of everything.”
> “She has to be good for a lay now and then, too.”
Micah shot her a disbelieving look. Rachel gave him a lecherous little smile.
“I wasn’t always this old,” she said.
Micah wanted to stand in order to end the conversation, but he was already standing. As usual, she’d controlled the entire exchange from beginning to end while barely moving a muscle. She’d simply sat in her little chair, blanket on her lap, looking ancient and innocent.
So in lieu of standing anew, Micah pulled his handheld from his pocket and glanced at it, making a farce of checking the time. “I have to go, Mom.”
“Of course. You’re a very busy man.”
“Yes. I’ll be back in…”
“And I’m very proud of you.”
“Thanks.”
“Say hello to Miss Dreyfus for me, will you?” she said.
Micah met his mother’s eyes, wondering how the hell she could know who Kai was, let alone what she meant to Micah.
“Goodbye, Mom,” he said.
Rachel waved, and Micah left the room, feeling too much like his brother for comfort.
Working from a park bench on an open AirFi connection on his mobile, his back to a ridge cut from a hill and his eyes darting around for watchers, Sam opened the Null forum and began typing a new private message.
His paranoia was probably over the top, and Sam was aware enough of himself to admit it. He had his anonymizer; he was mobile and using a different device than he typically used; he had the anonymous protection inherent to Null itself (a Null convention would be confusing. “Hi, I’m Null.” “Nice to meet you, Null. I’m Null, and this is my girlfriend, Null”); he was in the open in a place where many people were constantly hitting the network due to uploading media as part of the inane life-logging fixation. And as a final resort, if someone from NPS somehow located Sam through his many smokescreens, he could pocket his mobile and run. He even had a small slumbergun in his pack to disable pursuers. It was illegal, but no less illegal than everything else that Sam did.
Halfway through typing his message on the Null board, Sam felt his attention distracted by a mental squirrel. He opened a fresh window in his hacked mobile browser and, using the most stripped down, 2-D, antiquated presentation possible, began to scroll through the text version of Beam Headlines. At the very top was the same viral feel-good story about a puppy that had been Beam-top for hours now (it felt so contrived that Sam almost wanted to post on it, but he’d already decided to wait a few days). Farther down was a handful of news stories, many pertaining to Shift. Shift was just a week away, and every news outlet in the NAU seemed to have tossed its impartiality out the window. No one was siding with one party or the other (they paid lip service to impartiality), but all were rah-rah about Shift itself.
