by Grant Piercy
I didn’t respond. They tried to intimidate me and hurt me through questions about Devon and about the house on Maple Canyon. But now they cut to the chase, giving up their hand. They didn’t like me being quiet.
The void of a person leaned in close and asked, “If you don’t tell us, your kids grow up without a mother. They’re left with a father who likes to get his nuts off on fucking robots. They never know what happened to you. They think you just up and left one day, never to return. What does that do to a kid?”
This was a tactic to establish leverage. They had no way of knowing I didn’t want to return home—that I didn’t want to face Devon. Or that I’d been wrestling with these very questions on my own. So now should I give up Block and his elusive counterparts? It always came to one impossible choice or another with these people, just as it always had with the gods above.
“I already told you to eat shit. Now I’ll tell you this: go out of this room, find me a glass—I mean, a true blue measuring cup, so I know exactly the amount of shit I want to feed you, so you can chug it right the motherfuck down. Now get out of my fucking face before I bite your goddamn nose off.”
I heard the sound of something squealing, like the wheels of a cart moving across the floor. I could barely make out in the shadows with the light blaring in my face that it was a tray being rolled into the room with a fairly large contraption on top of it. I couldn’t see exactly the nature of the device, just that it was a large mechanical thing.
Static burst into my ear, followed by a voice. It said, “You need to tell them something. And you need to tell them now.”
Next they were on me, several of them, forcing my mouth open and bracing my teeth wide. Whatever held my mouth open was strapped around my head, forcing it back, as though it were attached to the chair support. I heard a switch flip and a high tone increasing in pitch.
“Regina, this is your last chance. It’s not just that we’ll take you away from your family,” the void of a person said, “but we’ll take you from your body. And it won’t be like your Transhuman friends, where we place you in another body. We’ll put you into something else. And you’ll never be able to escape. In your place, in your real body, will be just a blank outline. Everything that you were will be erased. There is a fate worse than death.”
“They’re telling the truth,” the voice from my implant said. “They can take you out and we’ll have no way to retrieve you. You absolutely have to give them something. It’s okay to tell them about me. Soon it won’t matter anymore. Your life isn’t worth our secrets.”
My head shook back and forth against the restraint. I couldn’t say anything with the way my mouth was forced open. Vague sounds wretched from my throat. My tongue clacked against the roof of my mouth. The pitch of that high tone kept increasing. “It’s almost ready,” a voice from behind the white light said. Tears spilled down my cheeks.
“I’m sorry, I can’t understand you,” the man said demurely. “Will you talk?”
I tried to nod my head up and down as best I could while clacking my tongue.
“What was that?” he asked, tipping his ear in my direction.
I tried to answer something more than ‘eat shit,’ but I was ravenous with fear.
Shadows approached and unfastened the restraints on my head, removing whatever it was holding my mouth open. I coughed and spat, the taste of metal and plastic heavy on my tongue.
“Will you talk?”
“Yes, I’ll tell you what you want.”
“Good,” the voice answered. “It’s good to know that we can be reasonable adults here. Now, which one of them contacted you.”
I sighed, heavy with guilt, the heat and sweat rolling off me. “Anthony Block.”
“How did he contact you?”
“I have an implant in my aural canal to help with hearing. It began picking up transmissions. At first random broadcasts, but eventually direct communications. I didn’t know who or what it was until he confronted me on the flight to Seattle.”
“How did you know to go to Seattle?”
“A pair of people I met at the house on Maple Canyon told me it was where I needed to go. Where to find answers.”
“To what?”
“I became tethered to Opal. It was like remoting, but there was no need for remoting hardware or software. She mirrored everything I did. The Transhumans had done it and wanted me to infiltrate James Burke’s hideaway in northern Washington. They couldn’t masquerade into Burke’s facility themselves. He had some sort of backdoor to shutting them down.”
That sent them scurrying. The void of a person looked back at the other shadows behind the light. There was a flurry of activity back there.
“Good. That’s good,” the man said. “What did you find out at Burke’s facility?”
“He called it the Vault. It was carved into the side of a mountain, a ways off the main road. I used Opal to get in, just as they had asked. I found a room, with rows upon rows of cubicles. Synthetics were typing into computer terminals. It was like they were writing poetry on those machines. Like a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters.”
“What type of poetry?” he asked.
“Dante. The Divine Comedy.”
This again caused a stir behind the light. Someone exited the room, and light flashed in the shape of a doorway as they went. The silhouettes had features for a vague second, which faded back into darkness when the door closed.
“What do you think the poetry was for?”
“Some kind of command line programming language. I couldn’t tell you what it was or what it meant, though.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “You’ve been more than helpful. You might even have given the human race a fighting chance. This is exactly what we wanted to know.”
A voice from behind the light murmured something that sounded like, “Put two and two together.”
“So what now?” I asked.
They released me from the restraints, cutting the zip ties that were slicing up my wrists. What followed was much more a straightforward interrogation now that they had a cooperative witness. They made me go back over everything, back to the blackouts at the town hall where I first noticed my implant glitching. The chief interrogator looked like a mustachioed police detective in the light, his sleeves rolled up and a shoulder holster over his shirt. I sat across a table from him and went over the whole story, and then wrote down everything I could remember in an official statement. They brought me a cheeseburger and a soda after awhile.
After the interrogation, they brought me to a small cell with a bunk and a toilet, providing me with proper overalls and a blanket. By then it was mid-morning; hours and hours had passed in the darkness of that room. I spent the day in the cell, staring at the rust and peeling paint, waiting for someone to tell me what came next.
Eventually a woman came to the metal door and stepped inside. She wore a navy blazer, a pencil skirt, and high heels. She looked like a woman of some authority; her blonde hair curling out to the sides of her face, almost like curtains drawn from her cheeks, and her eyes a clear and piercing blue.
“Yeah?” I asked, prone on the bunk, my arm resting on my forehead.
“Regina Kent?”
“Yeah.”
“My name is Vanessa, and I’m here to get you out of here.”
NMAC CEO James Burke Found Dead
By Joanna Heard, Chronicle Staff Writer
James Burke, founder and CEO of the NMAC corporation, was found dead Tuesday of an apparent suicide, sources confirmed. Burke has been reclusive in recent years, retreating to a mountain facility in northern Washington’s Cascade region. Contractors who had been working with the legendary inventor and businessman discovered the body in the facility after recently losing contact.
Burke’s company NMAC had been in dire straits financially after the company’s standard bearer Talos X model experienced blackouts the world over. Burke worked tirelessly on patching the problem from his mountain hom
e, which doubled as an NMAC research and development facility. Whether the company’s finances contributed to the CEO’s apparent suicide has yet to be confirmed, though sources did corroborate that a suicide note was left at the scene, but has yet to be released to the media.
The contractors who discovered the body noted that they had reached out to the reclusive billionaire and investigated his home when they were unable to establish contact. It has not been determined how long he’d been dead prior to the discovery of his body.
A spokesperson for NMAC also released a statement regarding Burke’s death: “We are deeply saddened by the loss of our founder and CEO. That James decided to take his own life is a devastating blow to us. James left behind no family or significant other, leaving his estate in the care of his one true love: the company.”
NMAC’s co-founder and Burke’s former business partner Carlo Villeneuve declined to comment.
Burke leaves behind a massive tech empire and a power vacuum, despite NMAC’s financial hardships. The Talos X is still considered the marquee model in the synthetic humanoid industry, with a next generation model planned for the new year—though those plans may be on hold after Burke’s death.
30 : disconnected (the architect)
Her hair was so soft, smelling of both her perfume and her product, a mixture of fruit and flowers. My fingers ran through the curls as I held her close, my face nuzzling into the side of her head. In the quiet darkness, what we were doing could not be seen. We clung to one another desperately in the aftermath of what we’d witnessed.
Ian’s words rattled in my thoughts: “This wasn’t the time... You’ll know soon.” Something had changed out in that building carved from the mountainside. We’d looked at each other and sought comfort, our hands tightly entwined. On the way back to civilization, they stayed that way. I felt her other hand gliding softly over my wrist and knew the world had changed before our very eyes.
When we were back in the dark hotel room, we embraced quickly and warmly. It wasn’t the same as before when our lips locked onto one another immediately. This was about survival and affirming our lives. I only wanted to be in a world where her skin could press against mine, where our warmth could mingle together into unspeakable heat, where we didn’t need words. It took that long to recognize we hadn’t spoken the entire trip back to the hotel.
We collapsed on the bed together, still clothed as we bonded in that embrace. We wrapped ourselves in those blankets and held each other tight. Thoughts floated through my mind like snowflakes. I began to slip into dream. I dreamt of her soft, heart-shaped face haloed by curled hair and golden light, lips pursed in a trickster grin. I indulged myself for the briefest of moments, admiring the line of her jaw and the sharpness of her wing-tipped brown eyes, but she disappeared in footfalls wading through water, circles reverberating out from a center. Then I was lost in space.
Stars floated by, cinders drifting through the cold eternity. The wide, black universe hung silent as my limbs ambled weightless in the void. Broiling engines forged heat and light in the distance, great galactic machines beyond comprehension. Was I an astronaut, an explorer untethered from his ship, witnessing the heavens dancing across the night sky?
In the empty nothingness pranced incomprehensible figures, celestial beings twirling about with footsteps revolving around stars and black holes. These unimaginable gods hid behind nebular veils, lighting off quasars as part of their vast games.
My eyes snapped open in the darkness of the hotel room. There was almost no difference between the deep void of dream and the empty black of reality save for me and my awareness. She had turned over as I drifted, so I curled behind her, an arm under the pillow and another under her shirt and over her belly. My mouth nestled onto her shoulder, my breath hot on her neck.
Her hand pressed against mine on her stomach, and urged it downward. I stopped fighting the voice in my head and gave into the all-too-human desire. She was so warm and welcoming, and her pleasure sighs so rapturous and musical. She stiffened and pumped her hips against me, bucking against my lap (Render’s lap—the guilty voice in my head reminded me). My other arm wrapped around her torso and into her shirt, teasing a breast as I laid soft kisses against the back of her neck. I shut out my conscience and lost myself in her hair, her skin, her smell and taste.
We stripped down and coupled together again, our bodies tangling and heaving with no words passing between us. She couldn’t see the face she kissed or the body she held, but moved with ecstasy in the moment. I slipped inside her and she twisted and writhed beneath me, moaning breathless, heat pouring from her in waves. Sweat and saliva intermingled on skin until we stiffened and climaxed. We collapsed, dotting kissing along each others’ lips. I pressed my face into her wet neck, hiding as long as I could before reality set back in.
We laid back together. She traced fingers along my chest and stomach (Render’s chest and stomach) as we recovered in a quiet state of bliss.
“Well this complicates things,” she whispered.
“It was already complicated,” I said.
“Where do we go from here?” Those words hung in the air between us, drilling a pang of anxiety into my stomach (Render’s stomach), even as her fingers traced shapes there. I placed kisses on her forehead as she rested on my shoulder.
After a few moments of silence drifted by, she finally looked up at me and said, “Do it again.” She grasped me in her hand and then crawled on top of me. We continued further, her shadowy silhouette hovering over me as I squirmed beneath.
The second time was more rote and mechanical than the first, lasting until I finally tensed and exploded inside her. Again we collapsed, covered in sweat and saliva, sticking to the sheets.
This time, she asked the question I expected much sooner. “Earlier, what did he mean when he said you had the greatest weapon ever created in your pocket? The only thing you had was that phone. You said Block gave it to you so you could contact him.”
“That wasn’t exactly what it was made for,” I answered.
“What’s on that phone?”
So I told her.
“You’re shitting me, right? That’s not a thing that exists, is it?” It had been years since the incident with the Dead Hand device, and Evelyn was in school when it happened. She didn’t even notice that little news item.
She immediately got on her phone and started tapping away, looking up everything she could about the Dead Hand and Robert Henry Baines, the last person in the United States to be executed for treason. There was even an Agent of Truth post about it where he railed about a doomsday device missing from the Pentagon.
Her eyes, filled with stunned disbelief, regarded me carefully, peering over the edge of her phone. She had seen what we were capable of in the confrontation with Burke, and now this. Finally, she set her phone aside. “I know it’s a lot,” I said.
“It’s all a lot,” she sighed.
We took turns going to the bathroom to clean up before returning back to the bed. For a moment, I saw her lipstick smeared on her mouth and the eyeliner streaked on her cheeks, and she looked sexier than I could ever imagine. After washing her face in the bathroom, she came back to bed. Once we settled in, she laid her head back down on my chest and said, “Try to get some rest. I hope it’s okay if I lay here—the sound of your heart helps me sleep.”
Her curled hair brushed softly against my cheek, her skin sticking to my chest and shoulder. I drifted back into a dreamless sleep with her nestled against me, still smelling of sweat and perfume. In that darkness there was nothing, and into nothing I awoke.
She was gone.
Her luggage, her personal effects, all of it disappeared as though she’d never been there. For a moment I worried that she may have taken the phone, but it was still with my suitcase, just where I’d left it. On Render’s phone, I tried to call her, but she didn’t answer. Message after message went to voicemail. We’d had another day in Seattle planned before we were supposed to head back
to Ohio, back to Daphne and the real world. She could only have headed to the airport to take an early flight, but no telling what airline she might have chosen.
Maybe the best course was to try to get my own flight moved up a day through customer service and catch her back in Columbus.
Or to respect her wishes and leave her be.
But I still smelled her on me, tasted her on my lips. Unbidden tears slipped down my cheeks as I thought about the mess we created together. Was Daphne out of the hospital? Had Evelyn really just fucked the man in her sister’s fiancee’s body? How ludicrous it all sounded.
Was there truly any way to get the real Michael Render back, or was he gone forever? Should that be my mission now, having sinned so terribly against him and the love of his life?
Or, the unthinkable. Was I really Michael Render and just thought I was the Architect?
What was my place in this world? These shattered emotions were expected to manage a doomsday device for... Hours? Days? Weeks? With her at my side, I could face down an army of synthetics. But now, how could I go back to the ruin of Michael and Daphne’s home just to wait until called upon?
I packed up the suitcase full of Render’s belongings and checked out of the hotel. I ordered a Ryde back to SeaTac and approached the airline’s customer service to have my flight moved up to today if possible. They were only able to put me on stand-by. I ended up on another flight through O’Hare, a solid four hours back to the Midwest.
I had each of the phones in my pocket. I toyed with the one Block gave me, staring blankly at the app labeled THERMO. How was someone supposed to carry the weight of this around? I let the screen fade to black, seeing the face of Michael Render reflected back at me.
What do our small human dramas matter? Who will remember our loves and our losses? What do such lives mean in the face of such overwhelming enormity? If we are lucky, what are we but footnotes in history? The city lights twinkled below, the void pressing unbearably against them, trying to snuff them out.
