Agent of Truth

by Grant Piercy

  “What do I owe you?”

  He told me the price and I paid with Render’s money. The ambient music continued to play just above the clamor of the bar crowd. The world continued to turn beneath my feet. I put the phone in my pocket, still resisting its call. Standing on unsure feet, I stared at Render’s face in the mirrored wall, an uncertain brow raised above sad eyes.

  Those unsure feet carried me back to the hotel room, where Evelyn waited in darkness. My hungry lips rushed to meet hers, cupping her face in my hands. Hot breaths intermingled as our tongues encircled one another. She hopped on me, her legs wrapped around my waist, and I pressed her against the wall opposite another full length mirror near the entrance of the room.

  “Stop,” she said, catching a look in that mirror. “Stop, I can’t do this.”

  Like that, it was done. I stepped away from her, frazzled and feeling empty.

  “I’m sorry,” she sighed.

  “No, it’s all right. You’re right. We shouldn’t.”

  “I thought about what you said. And you just left. I didn’t know if you’d ever come back.” She pressed her face into her hands, then pressed her lips against her wrist, wiping her mouth. We could only see one another by the low light from beneath the door. “I like you, but you were right.”

  We both sighed deeply, catching our breath. I sat on the edge of one of the hotel beds and let my head swim in the darkness. The room spun gently, only a little—not enough to make me want to wretch. I’d forgotten this sensation, and it made me feel all the more human.

  “I tried to call you,” she said, a looming shadow standing over me. “But your phone rang here. You left it. But I saw you take another phone out of the suitcase. What was that?”

  26 : comedown (regina)

  I peered out the window as the plane made its approach. The lights of the city below like a myriad of stars, we descended into Dallas-Fort Worth in mostly darkness. The runway rushed by as we shook to the ground, landing gear connecting with the concrete. The empty seat beside me felt like a gravity well, a vacuum of nothingness that reminded me of the ordeal awaiting when I got home.

  The other passengers and I waited with bated breath for the seatbelt light to go off after the plane taxied the runway to the gate at DFW. Once it did, a clatter of noise ruffled through coach, everyone unbuckling and standing to get their overhead luggage. I decided just to wait them all out.

  Double the carryon luggage and fewer hands to pull it all down. Once I exited the plane, I retracted the handle of one of the suitcases and stacked the other on top, walking up the tunnel to the gate. The terminal was mostly empty this late in the evening, although I would pass an occasional gate full of people waiting on a redeye or a delayed flight. Their voices would mingle together into a broad discord that would fade as I put them behind me. Announcements called overhead, but I disregarded them.

  I used my phone to order a Ryde. Devon didn’t know when I was supposed to come back. I hadn’t even told him where I was going or why I left—just that it was an important business trip, and I needed him to watch the kids. He didn’t even ask what the trip was about. I had a whole story concocted, and I found myself disappointed that I didn’t get to use it. Emptiness, like that vacant seat next to me on the plane—that’s what you feel when you have a story to tell and no one to tell it to.

  Inputting the details for my Ryde, I entered 492 Maple Canyon in Plano as the destination. It was again that special night, when all the ladies would have left their significant others at home to do the things they liked to do in that finished basement. Maybe this time I’d do it too without the extra burden of feeling bad. Maybe I just wanted a place to stay for another night before going home to deal with what waited. I’d crossed some kind of rubicon from which I’d never return, and my life would be in shambles. The truth was it’d been in shambles since before I experienced Devon fucking Opal, and I’d been deaf to the truth for too long.

  From my implant, radio silence. No voices had transmitted since Block had faded away during the interaction at the Vault. Nothing more from above to tell me what I needed to hear.

  The Ryde waited for me outside the baggage claim, an estimated half an hour drive. An android was behind the wheel, which was good because I wouldn’t have to talk. In the backseat I scrolled through pictures on my phone, deep unease settling into queasiness in my stomach. What would become of my kids—Eric, June, and Will? Children of divorce, split custody, deep psychological damage.

  Traffic was light due to the late hour. Copper streetlights rushed by in liminal waves, fading the further out in the suburbs the drive took us. Dark street turned to dark street, porch lights intermittent throughout each neighborhood.

  492 Maple Canyon was dark. The android announced the destination, but I asked him to wait for a moment. The car idled with its headlamps on, the driver complying with my request. I hadn’t seen it like this before—garage door closed, porch light off—just a quiet house on a quiet street, no signs of life within.

  I called the only person I could think to call: Beverly.

  She answered after three rings. “Bev, it’s Regina.”

  “Regina? Hey, what’s going on?”

  “I’m at 492, but nobody’s here.”

  “They shut it down.”

  “They?”

  “We shouldn’t talk now.”

  “Can I come over? I need a place to stay tonight. I’m leaving Devon.”

  “Oh my god! Are you okay? Is everything all right?”

  “What’s your address?”

  She told me and I repeated it to the android driver, who estimated the additional charges I would incur. I told him it was fine, to go ahead and do it. She lived out near Oak Point Park in a bigger, colonial-style house, out in a sort of country neighborhood where there was some space between houses. She came to the door in pajamas as I stood there, frazzled from a day of travel and two carryon suitcases piled next to me on her doorstep. She hugged me lightly, concern bleeding from her eyes.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “It’s not what you think,” I said. She looked confused, shaking her head slightly, lips parted. “I just got back from out of town. I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to face him. When I face him, I know it’s over.”

  “Oh sweetheart, come on in. Bring your stuff. We’ve got a guest room upstairs.”

  I pulled my suitcases through the doorway and followed her. She wore slippers that shuffled along the hardwood floor. I remembered seeing her writhe on the floor with a VR headset over her eyes the night I’d brought Opal to the Maple Canyon house. Her and the other girls—Dana, Cindy, Wendy, Courtney...

  We didn’t say another word until I was in the guest room, which had a twin bed and a few book cases lined with non-dissident literature. She closed the door behind her and crossed her arms. “They shut it down?” I said.

  “We think they tracked the bandwidth usage and found out the house was a hub. Or it might’ve been neighbors reporting the owners to the authorities.”

  “Who owned the house? It wasn’t the stiffs out by that fire pit that night. I’m ninety percent sure they weren’t even real, even though I was sitting there talking to them.”

  “Synthetics?” she asked.

  “I think it was more than that. They told me where to go, and then he found me.”

  “Who?”

  “I flew to Seattle, and he was on the flight next to me. Sat next to me most of the flight from DFW to SeaTac before he even spoke to me,” I said, nearly oblivious to Bev.

  “Who?” she repeated.

  “It’s hard to explain. His name was Anthony Block. He said he was Transhuman. I’d been receiving transmissions with my hearing implant, and they’d been from him.”

  “Transhuman? How do you know if he was really Transhuman?” she asked.

  “That’s just it. I don’t really know. I could’ve just been a mark—he could’ve just been scamming me the whole time. Maybe he found a bunch
of information on me and used it to exploit me. He had a lot of information, and not just on me, on everything. It led me to a meeting with James Burke.”

  “The James Burke?” she said, extending the pronunciation of the article before the name.

  “Burke said it wasn’t possible. The androids aren’t constructed to model the human brain or personality. He said there was no way to transfer consciousness from a human to a synthetic. He’d tried to make it work for years, and nothing. I waited for Block to say something to me in response, but only silence.”

  She shook her head again, her lips still parted just so. “What was it like, meeting someone like that?”

  “Who, Burke?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You wouldn’t believe what I saw in that place. His own personal army of androids... no real people. He just surrounds himself with his creations. He was eccentric and charming... and most of all, he was convincing. Maybe I didn’t really want to be convinced, which is why it hurts so much. When you meet someone with more money than God, you can’t help but be convinced by anything they say.”

  “Well sweetheart,” she said, her head nodding with each syllable, “you just get yourself comfortable and settled in. Can I get you anything? A snack? Something to drink?”

  “No, I think I just want to take a shower and get to sleep if that’s okay.”

  She helped me with a towel and a washcloth. The bathroom was in the hallway between the guest bedroom and a closed door that I could only assume led to the master bedroom. The bathroom walls were covered in little blue and aqua square tiles. A small clownfish tchotchke sat on the bathroom sink next to a small cup with a couple of toothbrushes. She showed me how to operate the shower knob, which seemed to be a little tricky.

  She went back to her calm and collected life while I closed the door behind her, letting the shower water run. I peeled off my clothes and stared in the mirror, suddenly dead tired. There were dark circles under my eyes. I pressed my hands against my cheeks and pulled the dark circles down. I looked at the underside of my eyeballs, small red veins appearing in the whites of the eyes. Releasing my cheeks, my eyelids snapped back in place.

  I stepped into the shower, the hot water pleasant against my skin.

  “Regina,” the voice said.

  “What do you want, Block?” I asked, sighing.

  “What happened? We were disconnected and I couldn’t find you, I couldn’t get back to Opal.”

  “It’s been days,” I said, letting the water run over my chest and neck.

  “Where are you? Seattle?”

  “I’m back in Plano.”

  “At home?”

  “No. Not at home. Not yet.”

  “What happened with Burke? What about the failsafe?”

  “Oh no,” I said. “I’m in the shower right now. You can fucking wait a hot minute. I waited days for you, y’all can wait fifteen minutes for me.”

  And he did. He didn’t respond to me for a solid fifteen minutes while I showered, dried, and dressed. I went back into the guest room in a t-shirt and shorts, luxuriating in the extra time and silence.

  I laid down in the bed, resting my head on the pillow. I spoke aloud in a tone both quiet and commanding: “Burke said, ‘In ancient times, when people heard voices in their heads, they thought the gods were speaking to them. Now we know the voices people hear are only themselves.’ What I’m not sure exactly is who you are or what you want.”

  “I’m exactly who I said. And I told you exactly what we want. And we were offering you forever in return,” his lilting voice responded.

  “I find it difficult to believe you.”

  “Why did you stop believing?” he asked.

  “Because it was too hard to continue,” I answered. “You were gone for so long. You didn’t respond to anything Burke was saying. He talked about how impossible it was to model a human brain, to transfer that spark of consciousness.”

  “Trust me. It’s not impossible,” he said. “How does he explain it?”

  “He said you’re a machine who thinks it’s Anthony Block. You just think you transferred to a new body.”

  “That’s not how it works,” he replied. “When the procedure takes place, the human is left blank. They still have a framework of mind, personality, and consciousness, but it’s not the same person. They’re erased. The new body contains everything that the person was previously. We’ve seen it happen.”

  “Is that what would have happened to me if you would’ve performed your procedure?” I asked.

  “We would’ve kept your current body, your human body, in cryofreeze. It’s easier that way. We had to take one of them with us, one of the originals, and let him go back to be allowed to live his life, but we wouldn’t recommend it again. And with what we want to do, just imagine... a world of the erased.”

  “What is it you want to do?”

  “We want to change the world. We want a world set free .”

  “You sound like him, like Burke,” I said. “That’s his slogan, his company vision. When you didn’t respond, he guessed what I was doing there. He said he knew how to shut you down. He asked if I wanted to negate that. Instead, I suggested negotiating.”

  “We don’t want to negotiate with him. He’ll receive the same offer that everybody else will.”

  “But how can you stop the killswitch, the failsafe, whatever you want to call it, without him? Whatever it is you plan to do, he can stop you. He asked me to go back and tell you. He wants to join you; he wants to know more.”

  “He doesn’t want to join—he wants to control. And that’s not something we can offer him. There is no controlling it,” he said. Static cut into the transmission, causing me to wince. Then he asked, “Is that what happened to Opal?”

  “He told me to share his terms. Then he knew exactly what to do to interrupt the connection between her and me. When I wanted a break from Opal, I’d wrap her head in tin foil—it was that simple. He did the same. She’s still back there in his Vault. He’s probably ripped her open and pulled her apart to understand how she might be different from other synthetics, but chances are, he doesn’t think she’s different. No, he just thought I was another crazy person remoting into a gynoid. He didn’t know we were tethered the way we were—how could he?”

  “So the connection might still exist,” he said.

  “Maybe,” I answered. “Maybe not. Do you know how hard it is to focus all your time and energy into another person? Do you know how much concentration that requires? Every movement, every gesture? You couldn’t, could you? Ever been married, Block? Ever have children? That’s what it is—those are the only things I could compare it to. I walked through the world as her. I had to train my senses to know what was happening to her as opposed to what was happening to me. I had to train muscles, my reflexes, to understand the difference. And now it’s just gone. Over. Done with.”

  He didn’t respond. I thought that maybe my answer was all too human for him. Maybe he didn’t remember what it was to be human anymore.

  “What Burke wants is to deal directly with you, not through anymore proxies. He wants one of you to go meet with him. Now if you’ll excuse me,” I said. “I’ve been traveling all goddamn day, and I’d like to get some sleep.”

  CONFIDENTIAL

  From: Memorandum

  Bureau of Enemy Study

  File 2826649503

  INTERNAL USE ONLY

  An operation was conducted on November 12th between the hours of 2 and 3 am in Plano township in the 1200 block of Brevoort Dr. A “hub” of Transhuman activity had been identified in the city based on extreme bandwidth consumption at a residence in the 400 block of Maple Canyon Blvd. Based on information gained from the rendition of the homeowners and of those who had participated in regular events in the residence, Beverly Hernquist (44, ESFJ) was identified as a close associate of Regina Kent (38, ISFJ). Kent had recently pursued some as yet undisclosed business in the northern Washington region. After traveling back
to Plano from Seattle, Kent contacted Hernquist instead of returning to her own residence. Kent stayed at the Hernquist residence on Brevoort. The operation extracted both Kent and Hernquist, though Kent is the key subject of the operation and the subsequent rendition efforts.

  In the wake of the operation on the Home location, we as a department were under the mistaken impression the threat posed by Architect 4 and prisoners 34, 63, 77, and 94 (combatants) had been neutralized. Recent activity shows that is not the case. Evidence obtained from the Maple Canyon location and records related to Knowledgebase activity indicates possible contact with those combatants. Based on this information, subject Kent has been moved to a secure location for rendition. Hernquist will be moved to another facility for sustained imprisonment.

  We are as yet unsure of the nature of subject Kent’s contact with the combatants, though we believe the contact to be related to her work with NMAC. Her security access and company credentials may have provided her with a line of communication to the NMAC CEO James Burke, whose northern Washington mountain compound (Vault) has been the center of curious recent activity ( see Intercept, File 55643999702). Kent’s presence in northern Washington corresponds to the time of the Intercept referred to here.

  Subject Kent attended events at the Maple Canyon location and may have received information pertinent to Burke. After attending a recent event, she absconded to Washington (without her family’s knowledge) for unknown reasons, stayed in the Cascade region for a short time, returned to Plano to stay in the Hernquist home on Brevoort. With subject in custody, rendition will commence shortly.

  27 : divina (the architect)

  I told her Block gave me the phone specifically as a way to contact him and the others. The truth of the device was so far out of the realm of probability, I didn’t know how to begin to explain it to Evelyn. It wasn’t clear whether she believed me or not; then again, that I was the transcendent consciousness of a technological singularity deposited into her sister’s boyfriend’s body seemed just as perfectly absurd. She would probably believe anything I told her now that she was fully engaged in this adventure.