by Eric Warren
Blu’s smile finally faltered. “Fine. Next time you have a major breakthrough I’ll be sure to have my sourpuss face ready.”
She sighed. “I’m sorry, Blu, I really am. It’s just…I was in meetings all day with people from all over New York. Each of them needs so much and despite the amount of money Echo left me, it only goes so far. Eventually there won’t be any left.” Without anything useful to contribute to the building or operation of the gate, Arista had thrown herself into philanthropic work; trying to find a way to help the poor people of this Earth whom the rich had left to fend for themselves. Her original plan was to invest in certain sectors to try and help stimulate the nearly dead economy outside of the rich districts. However, that hadn’t quite gone to plan.
Blu waved her hand and turned her chair back to her screens. “You don’t need to worry about that. You guys will be long gone before that ever happens. Leave that to me and Dad.”
“You seem very confident we’ll make it back.”
Blu scoffed, throwing her palms up to the screens. “How can you not be?” she asked. “Especially after my amazing work today?” She crossed her arms and stared at Arista. “I pretty much single-handedly saved your ass here.”
Arista chuckled and sat on Blu’s bed which was only a few feet away from the monitors.
“Would you look at that, the sourpuss has a sense of humor after all.” Blu rolled her chair over to her. “I know today can’t be easy,” she said, dropping her gaze. “And I know you’ve got a lot on your mind. I was hoping this might distract you. Wanna hear a secret?” Arista nodded. “I actually cracked it two days ago.”
“You did what?” Arista exclaimed.
Another smile broke out across Blu’s face. “I cracked it two days ago. I was saving it for today! I figured it wouldn’t hurt as the gate itself still isn’t up and operational yet. I thought it might put you in a better mood. Guess I was wrong.”
Arista reached out for her hand, which Blu eventually relinquished. Arista held the girl’s hand in her own artificial one. “You weren’t wrong. I do feel better. I just wish…”
“…we could have done it sooner. I know,” Blu finished for her, squeezing her hand. Even though her artificial one was made out of polymorphic alloy, plastic and had thousands of circuits and connections running through it, she felt the sensation just as she would with any other part of herself. Without the Device analyzing every input that came into her brain, she’d realized just how lifelike the appendage really was. It was more part of her now than ever before.
“Have you told anyone else yet?” she asked.
Blu shook her head. “I wanted you to be the first to know.”
Arista dropped Blu’s hand and stood. “We need to let your father and Frees know about this. They can start integrating the parameters into the test gate. Give us an idea if this thing will actually work or not.”
“It will work,” Blu said. “You can count on it.”
***
Arista couldn’t help but chuckle as she pulled the van back out of the garage and into the sky above Queens. It was a clear day, clearer than most she’d seen here. Often the skies were laden with a fog that just wouldn’t lift, blurring the sun and filling the air with a pungent odor that was a mixture of stale seawater and sulfur. Today the fog seemed to have burned off, but the radiant heat beat down on the city despite it being mid-October. Arista didn’t mind, she preferred the heat to the smog any day. That was one thing the machines had done right, they’d managed to continue almost entirely without harmful emissions.
“What’s so funny?” Blu asked in the passenger seat beside her. Her combat boots were up on the dash of the new van but Arista wasn’t about to tell her to put her feet down. As far as she was concerned, this was Blu’s van and she was just borrowing it.
Ever since her notoriety had gone through the roof Frees had insisted on hiring bodyguards, but Arista refused. She wasn’t about to have her life monitored by a strange group of people she didn’t even know. She was capable of taking care of herself and despite the inconvenience of dealing with the public on an almost daily basis now, she wasn’t about to subject herself to being guarded. That’s what Echo had done.
“Arista?”
“Hmm?”
“What’s so funny?”
Arista turned her head slightly to see Blu’s eyes on her, probing. Even now she couldn’t help but get lost in her own thoughts. “Oh, I was just thinking how if someone had told me two months ago I’d be negotiating with a bunch of humans for money I would have told them they were crazy.” She winked at Blu. “In the same vein if someone had told me I’d have a sister I would have probably laughed in their face.”
Blu gave a short laugh and returned her attention out the windshield. “I guess you never know what life might bring.”
Arista couldn’t agree more. Six months ago, it had just been her, Emily and Carver, and even though they were machines and she was human, she called them Mom and Dad anyway. They were the ones who found her as a child and raised her. And had all machines not had a built-in lifespan of twenty-five years the three of them probably would have gone on living just as they had been, hiding from the authorities, keeping a low profile, keeping Arista out of sight. After all, humans were illegal in her world. Or at least they had been until Arista had destroyed one of the leaders of the machines.
No, she only thought she’d destroyed him.
She shook away the thoughts and focused on their destination ahead of them. Over the last month she’d been slipping back into some bad habits, the most notable being not paying attention and letting her mind wander to that forbidden land of what-if. But she’d self-appointed herself these people’s financial savior and she was going to make good on that promise for as long as she was here. Whether that was another month or the rest of her natural life was up to Frees and David. She only hoped she wasn’t getting her hopes up for nothing.
The giant rectangular building loomed in the distance, growing closer. “Here we are,” she said.
TWO
Arista parked the van in the rooftop garage which had been specifically installed to accommodate the vehicle. Despite most of her resources going to needy people and organizations, Arista couldn’t help but splurge on making sure she could get in and out of this building easily and with as little attention as possible. Some of the more fanatical people following her had managed to track her here on more than one occasion. But after they had sealed off all street access and only allowed entrance from the roof, suddenly people getting a look inside had become much less of a problem.
The garage door rumbled closed behind them and sealed with an audible click as she and Blu exited the van, heading for the main elevator.
“Think they’ll be surprised?” Blu asked.
The elevator doors closed and it shifted, dropping them down. “I doubt it. I think Frees always knew you could do it, though he might be surprised how quickly you managed to make it happen. Your dad though, I don’t think there’s anything he doesn’t think you can do.”
Blu chuckled. “I do have him in the palm of my hand, don’t I? It’s too bad I’m not an evil genius; I could really warp and twist my power over him.”
“Oh yeah? And what would you do?” Arista asked.
A large grin formed over Blu’s face as she narrowed her eyes at Arista. “Make him go into the city and get hot dogs every day.”
Arista burst out laughing. “My god, that would be evil. I’m keeping my eye on you,” she said. Not only was it difficult to get into Manhattan without some kind of pass, but finding and returning with some of their famous hot dogs was a feat in itself. Arista figured she’d grown up on such basic food, even being forced to eat the machines’ food for a time, which, despite her mother’s inventions which made it edible, often tasted like a mixture of motor oil and sandpaper. If there was one good thing about living in a world dominated by humans, it was the food.
The elevator dinged and opened up on a
small inner office. They were greeted by a tall man stationed at the elevator in a dark suit. He reminded Arista of the Peacekeepers back in her own world. He nodded at them and they proceeded through the second set of doors into the main part of the warehouse.
Inside the cavernous space was a giant structure that reached almost to the ceiling, five floors above them. It extended out four hundred feet on either side but only had a depth not much thicker than the van itself. From what Arista could tell the workers had made a lot of progress in the few weeks since she’d last been here. The entire frame was complete and all sorts of components Arista didn’t recognize were being installed around the massive opening in the center of the structure. It resembled an extremely large doorframe and was at least twice as big as the one they’d arrived here through.
Off to the side of the structure she caught sight of Frees, instructing one of the construction teams as usual. Frees spent most of his days here, obsessed with getting the gate up and running. Not only had he transcribed every bit of information he’d received from Hogo-sha about the operation and design of the gates, but he and David had been studying and deciphering all of the information to find out exactly how the gates worked and how they could be used to transverse the universal barrier.
Frees perked up upon seeing her and dismissed his team, making his way over. Arista barely registered Blu giving her a little shove as he did; she’d gotten a kick out of watching them dance around each other these past weeks and made no attempt to hide how amusing she found Frees having feelings for Arista.
“Hey, guys,” Frees said. “Come to check on our progress?” He spoke to both of them but his gaze didn’t leave Arista.
“Actually, we have some good news,” Blu said, wiggling her eyebrows at him. Blu also didn’t hide just how infatuated she was with Frees. Not romantically, but because Frees was the first artificial life form she’d ever met. Before Arista and Frees arrived she and David had been working on creating an artificial life form of their own so it was understandable Blu would be completely blown away by Frees. Though Arista thought some of it would have waned by now.
“Oh?” Frees asked, his attention finally diverted away from Arista.
“Yeah, but let’s grab my dad. You’ll both want to hear this,” she said, moving ahead down the walkway toward the main offices.
Arista followed and Frees fell in step beside her. “How are you feeling today?” he asked.
“Fine,” she replied. In all honesty, she tried her best not to think about it as much as possible. But Blu’s “revelation” had all but made that impossible. She knew the girl had only wanted to help, but it seemed like an exclamation mark had been stamped right down on this day, only reinforcing Arista’s failure.
“I’m sure it isn’t easy, but don’t give up hope,” Frees said.
“Frees…” she warned.
“I know, but we don’t know what happened to them after Jill took them through the gate. She might have figured something out. They could still be alive.”
Arista took a deep breath and exhaled loudly, hoping he would pick up on the hint. They’d already been over this a dozen times. The fact was the deadline for her parent’s lifespans was up a month ago today. They were dead and she couldn’t dare to hope different. Despite everything she had done to save them, it seemed like two universes had come together to conspire against her. Even if they were alive what sort of world had they woken up to? Charlie had made it back across the gate in the subway, and without any further communication from the other side they had no clue what sort of damage he’d done when he’d arrived.
No, she didn’t dare hope. Hope got people in trouble. All she could do was put her head down and focus on the tasks at hand and pretend like it didn’t bother her as much as it did.
“What’s the status of the gate?” Arista asked, steering the conversation away from anything personal.
Frees glanced up at the structure, his orange eyes scanning every inch of it. “Coming along really well. We’ve had a few hitches, but David has some real intuition about this thing. I don’t know if that’s because his doppelganger designed the other one or if he’s just got added confidence because he knows some version of him figured it out before. I think we’re getting close. We should be able to start testing the aperture by the end of the week.”
She followed his gaze and scanned the giant structure. It was at least twice as big as the one that had brought them here. Frees explained it had to be much larger in order to penetrate the barrier between worlds; the other gate could rely on the operational power of all the smaller gates over in their world. But since this was the only gate in this world so far, it could only rely on itself.
As they passed under a giant section of material being hoisted by crane into place, Arista couldn’t help but wonder if they were doing the right thing. By giving this world the technology to build these gates they were altering the trajectory of how society would develop from now on. Part of her wanted to say fuck it and just let these humans compete with each other until all of them died out. But the other part couldn’t let that happen, despite how anti-human she’d been in the past. Spending time with Blu and David had given her insight into humans she hadn’t had before, and she couldn’t just ignore that now because it was convenient to do so. It was why she’d been working so hard to try and right some of the wrongs the rich had bestowed on these people. That and it kept her mind occupied.
“Dad!” Blu jogged over to the man who was physically identical to Arista’s own biological father, with a few cosmetic differences. David glanced up and broke into a smile; something that was uncommon for the man. Over the past six weeks Arista had learned he was a compassionate and warm person, he just never showed it. He was more like a machine should be, but with waves of emotions rolling around underneath.
“Bloom! This is a surprise, I didn’t know you were coming to see us today,” he said.
“Dad,” Blu warned.
David rolled his eyes. “Sorry, Blu. It’s just hard to see you growing up so fast.”
“Maybe faster than you realize,” Arista said as she and Frees reached him. “You’ll never believe what your daughter did.”
David squinted at her. “You didn’t. I refuse to believe it,” he said.
Blu’s smile was infectious as she smacked her father’s shoulder. “Of course I did. And you now owe me a hot dog. Arista and I discussed it on the way over. I’ll take it with mustard and a side of relish. Chop, chop.”
David’s mouth turned into a frown. “I don’t understand,” he said, shifting on his feet as if he’d been caught in a lie. It wasn’t often David didn’t comprehend something, and more often than not it was something of a social or relational matter. Arista had learned this was when he was most uncomfortable.
“I’m just messing with you, jeez.” Blu shook her head in disappointment.
“But you did it?” David said, searching for confirmation. “You actually found how to map them back to their own universe.”
A smug satisfaction fell over Blu’s face. “Sure did.”
“That’s amazing, honey,” David said, reaching down to hug his daughter. She pretended like it was a big inconvenience, but there was no mistaking his approval meant everything to her. It made Arista’s heart pang for the approval of her own parents. Parents who were now shut down somewhere.
“I suppose she told you already?” David asked after he released Blu.
Arista nodded and when she glanced at Frees his face was a mix of excitement and concentration. Blu’s discovery had started the clock and now they were under pressure to get the gate working.
“That means we have everything we need.” David turned back to the workstation he’d set up in here. It mirrored the one he had back in the garage, though it was a good deal larger. “Frees, what do you think? Three days?”
Frees’ eyes went wide. “Until full operation? I don’t—”
“We’ll need to make some adjustments to the sched
ule of course,” David said as if he hadn’t heard him. “Timetables will need to be moved up and we’ll need to begin round-the-clock construction.” He turned to Arista. “Can we count on you to provide our workers with overtime?”
Arista shrugged. “Sure, whatever you need.” She still wasn’t convinced this was going to work. Even if Blu’s calculations were right there was a big difference between theoretically being able to cross dimensions and doing it. If they did succeed, what would stop the humans from this universe from spreading to their world and others? Some part of her felt like they deserved it, and the other part remembered what they had done here, in this universe. Was that really something they wanted to unleash to the multiverse? Did they even have that right?
David was still talking and she’d missed most of what he’d said. She caught Blu’s gaze and the girl only shook her head as if to say “It’s just how he is.” Arista turned back to Frees. “Can I talk to you a minute?”
She seemed to have caught him off guard as he looked as though he was coming out of deep thoughts himself. “Yeah, sure,” he said, regaining his composure.
“We’ll be right back,” Arista said, then returned her attention to Frees. “Come with me.”
THREE
“Frees, I don’t know if we’re doing the right thing,” she said once they’d arrived in his office. The door closed behind them and she found herself in what was probably at one time a floor manager’s office. Frees had repurposed it for his own needs which meant there was a desk and two chairs inside and little else. She couldn’t help but think back to when she’d first entered his apartment back in Chicago and had trouble moving around for all the equipment lying everywhere. She’d taken him for a hoarder then, but it seemed he was just disorganized. When he had plenty of resources to work with he was quite tidy.
“What do you mean?” he asked, standing beside the desk. On some level Arista had become used to his human disguise and on another it was foreign to her. He was still missing the skin from his left hand from where his felp had been destroyed in the colony. Most of the skin covering on his right leg had burned off from where he rescued David in the subway. And then there were his eyes. But other than that, he made a passable human. The only problem was every time she looked at him she was reminded of Byron. Frees had used Byron’s pattern to make himself a new layer of skin so they could infiltrate the human colony. And it had been a good thing he’d had it when they arrived here, otherwise he would have been destroyed on sight. Frees kept a glove on his hand and wore pants so no one was the wiser about what he really was. To anyone else, he was just another fair-skinned, dark-haired human with cheekbones that were slightly too high for his face and strange orange eyes.
