by DeVere, Taya
“Looks to me like she’s doing fine.” The voice startles Dennis, makes him spin around on his heels.
“Maria. You’re here!”
“Where else would I be?”
He investigates the dark woman’s face, counting the new scratches and grazes. “I thought you’d be in the—”
“Hospital? At the Chip-Center, you mean?” She laughs, showing her pearly teeth. It’s unusual for her, being this chipper. “I thought about it, yes. Figured, why not? One or two hours back in a stasis capsule, getting patched up and treated by Chipped technology… what could go wrong?”
Plates and mugs clank against the kitchen’s broad glass table. Jenny talks to herself, bouncing around, grabbing dishes and disposable food boxes. Maria smiles at Dennis and leaves him staring, frozen on his tired feet. She joins Jenny, opening the delivery boxes, peeking in all of them, muttering back to Dennis’s assistant while they arrange the dinner for three.
All he can do is stare. Stare and take in every detail. Maria’s slight limp. The way Jenny clasps her hands together each time she sets something on the table. The suite’s soothing light. The perfect silence. The strange, easy way he now breathes.
“The spinach noodles, Em.” Jenny waves at the enormous metal fridge. “Second shelf to your left.” Maria opens the fridge and takes out another delivery box with a Happiness-Program logo on its side. She leaves the fridge door open. Up on the higher shelf sits a familiar-looking wooden bowl. Jenny must have found it in his stuff when moving everything from the penthouse to here.
Maria walks back to the fridge and closes the door. “You coming or what?”
Dennis stares at the fridge a moment longer, waiting for the familiar ringing in his ears to start. But for the first time since that moment ten years ago, since he last saw that wooden bowl in his fridge—the last time he saw his family—his ears do not ring.
Maria tilts her head, much like Owena. All these little gestures. All these new people. Real people. “What, you saw a ghost or something?” She picks a noodle from the box and drops it in her mouth.
“Maybe I did.” He walks to her. “Here, let me help.” He takes the noodle box from her hands, and places it on the table. “Shall we?” When he sits down, Maria and Jenny do too.
“I didn’t know you believed in supernatural stuff,” Jenny says, passing along the boxes.
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, Jenny.” Dennis gives her a smile.
Maria’s focused on the food, her eyes flickering between her plate and the boxes Jenny hands over. She piles the food on her plate, then reluctantly passes it along to Dennis. “Your past haunting you, Texas?”
He can’t meet her gaze, not that she’s looking at him. All those people Maria had to kill, back at the mansion. Her friends who died at the winery—by her hand. But it was never Maria who killed them. It was the program. The city. It was Dennis.
“Would it really help anything if I told you it did?” he asks, failing to keep a light tone in his voice. “If I told you that I regret some things? That I got lost?”
A mouth full of noodles, Maria shrugs. “It mifft.”
“Well, in that case.” Dennis reaches for the pepper, “I am happy to tell you…” then the salt, “I’ve come to notice…” he folds his hands on the table and clears his throat, looking straight at Maria. “That some ghosts are more real than the people who live in this city.”
***
The bed. The kitchen. Closets and counter space. It’s all untouched in Kaarina’s room. In the middle of the floor, two sleeping bags and two pillows. So she does sleep here, at least. For a moment, Dennis thought the rebel woman was as loony as Doctor Solomon says she is. Or used to say. Now all Laura cares about is the girl sitting in the corner of the room, petting a black and white bunny. The Chipped man with overgrown hair hovers nearby. Markus. Dennis has finally learned everyone’s names.
“Hey, Sanna,” Dennis says, trying to get Sanna’s attention. The girl doesn’t look up. Most of her face is covered by her long black hair. “Do you speak to your mother at all?”
The man they call Yeti steps closer to the girl and glares at Dennis. “What kind of a fucked-up question is that?”
Dennis raises his hands. “Well, hey. If it’s a touchy subject, I’ll leave it alone. But I mean, you do know that Laura’s not really dead, right?”
Markus waves his hand at Yeti, gesturing for him to back off. “She can’t talk to Solomon, Dennis. The AR-glasses hurt her too much.”
“But I see you people dealing with the city lights and CS-keys and other Chipped technology all the time. Why can’t she?” He wonders if he’s being insensitive. But he still wants to know.
“So what are you asking?” Kaarina says, staring out the closed balcony doors. Outside, Maria paces by the railing. “You want to know if we’re all the same?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Yeah, but it’s what you meant.”
Sanna looks up and presses the bunny gently against her chest. “Stop that. Stop, stop, stop.”
Yeti rolls his eyes. “Way to go, cowboy. Now you’ve upset the kid.”
Sanna hands the bunny over to Markus and walks to Yeti. A tiny fist lands on the man’s arm.
“Ow! What the hell, kid? How many times do I have to tell you? Your fists are unnaturally sharp and pointy. That’ll leave a mark.”
“Then stop being so rude to Mister Jenkins.”
“I wasn’t being…” his words fade away when Kaarina gives him a look from across the room.
Outside, Maria pulls her hood on tighter and turns to face the wind. She’s been there for a while now, tapping someone. There’s something off with the city weather. It’s never this windy. Dark clouds have gathered above the green glow. Anyone who’s lived here longer than a few days would know this to be strange; it never rains in City of California.
Sanna looks at Dennis. “How about you? Do you ever speak to my mother?” Her piercing eyes stare right through him. He wishes Jenny was by his side, speaking for him. When it comes to the rebels Jenny always seems to find the right words, whereas his words only seem to cause fights.
Dennis folds his arms on his chest. “Sometimes I do. Yes.”
“Have you talked to her today?”
He shakes his head no.
“How about yesterday?”
Had he? Was it really only yesterday when he cheated death, saved his assassin, and let a bunch of outlaws take over his kingdom?
“Yesterday? Yes. I did speak to her.”
“How is she?”
Crazy. A lost cause. Dead.
“She’s great, Sanna. Yeah, better than ever.”
“Maria told me that Margaret told her that I might be able to talk to my mother soon.”
“You don’t say?”
“Yeah. There’s a magical computer or something. Upstairs where the queen lives.”
“The queen?” It’s Yeti asking the question. So the big man doesn’t know who’s taken over Dennis’s home. At least Dennis isn’t the only one who’s been kept in the dark.
“It’s someone who will do my mother’s work, right?” Sanna looks around her. Kaarina nods at her, Markus spreads his hands, Yeti folds his arms on his chest and raises his eyebrows at Sanna. They all wait for her to elaborate.
“Because my mother used to be in charge of all the cities. Right Markus?”
“Right.”
“So she was sort of a queen. Everyone just called her doctor instead, because she was so smart and that’s what she did for a living. Cured people.”
Yeti scoffs but doesn’t correct the girl. Kaarina gives him another look.
“This new person upstairs is the new queen.”
“Is she a doctor too, kid?” Dennis asks, partly wondering whether she might actually get some of this right, whether she actually knows something. The whole setup is so strange that everyone seems to have lost count of who is who and what comes next.
; “She could be a doctor.” Sanna shrugs. “I could ask Margaret.”
“You’ve been speaking with Margaret?” Kaarina asks, surprise in her voice.
“Sometimes. When I have nightmares. She lets me tap her then. Usually, she’s too busy.”
“Busy with what?” Markus asks.
Another shrug. “She says that a lot of people tap her, and that she doesn’t want to ignore them. That we all are important in our own ways.”
“Who? The Unchipped?” Dennis asks. “That’s who we’re trying to save?”
Yeti turns to face him. “Really? You’re going to debate politics with a ten-year-old? That’s really rich, even from you, Jenkins.”
“Again, that’s not what I said. Lordy, you people are really touchy…” As he has so many times before, Dennis raises his hands to gesture for a truce. “I didn’t mean it like that, like you people… oh, lord.” The more he talks, the deeper the pit he’s in. “All I want is to understand what in the actual hell happened to Laura Solomon. What’s going on in her head and what happens next.”
It’s true. He didn’t mean to pry, and he doesn’t want to insult anyone. But some information would be nice. It can’t stay like this forever. Them, in a building that stands out in the green city like an AR-date without make-up and high heels. The shut-down building makes them targets. The Unchipped may be safe, for now, but doesn’t this just make them prisoners of the building instead of the Chip-Center? And who’s the mystery queen that has taken over Dennis’s home without asking? What will Nurse Saarinen do once she learns that this new Owena won’t be returning home?
Sanna takes her bunny back from Markus. Gently, she presses the critter against her stomach and strokes its long ears. Keeping her eyes on the rabbit, she says, “I think Mister Jenkins is important too. And Markus. I don’t think it matters what the chip thingy is doing in your brain. We can all be queens.”
Low chuckling fills the room. None of them want to correct Sanna. Her words have loosened the tension, and nobody’s ready to break the illusion that things might turn out okay.
Finally, Maria slides open the balcony door. Without closing the door behind her, she walks in with an uncharacteristic look on her face. She’s grinning. Her whole face is beaming.
“What?” Yeti asks. “You won the queen lottery or something?”
Maria looks quizzically at him but keeps smiling. “The what lottery?”
Yeti waves her off.
“So what’s going on?” Kaarina asks. “What did Margaret say? I don’t know why we can’t just all be a part of this. Why the secrecy?”
“She told me to apologize for that,” Maria says. She takes off her hoodie and dries her hair with it. Outside, it has started to rain. “But she’s worried about Nurse Saarinen hacking one of us. It’s happened before. And no matter how good Iris’s firewalls, they’re getting better and better with their coding.”
“Yeah, but Margaret is better,” Markus says. “Right?”
“As far as we know, yes. But she wants to play it safe anyway. If only one of us talks to Margaret at a time, it’ll be harder for them to listen in.”
Dennis reaches to adjust his AR-glasses, only to remember that he’s not wearing any. Maybe that’s why he feels so woozy. This new reality is taking its toll, dragging him into a whole new atmosphere of brain hacking geniuses and telepathic conspiracies. “So what happens now?” he asks.
“We go up—”
Dennis grunts loudly, interrupting Maria’s sentence. Markus grasps his head between his hands. Dennis lurches against the wall so he won’t fall down as the piercing pain in his head overtakes him. There is movement in the room, people yelling. What they’re saying, Dennis doesn’t know. The pain is too immense to pay attention to anything else.
“Dennis? Dennis!” It’s Maria holding his arm, shaking him. But her voice is muffled, like it’s coming from under water.
“Dennis, what’s going on? Talk to me!”
He leans into the wall and slides his body down to sit on the floor. He gasps for air and buries his head in his arms. The pain is excruciating. He yells but can’t hear his own scream.
“Dennis!”
And then—as suddenly as the invisible attack began—the pain disappears. Out of breath and perfectly still, he stares at the floor, tears filling his eyes. Maria’s hands rest on his shoulders, still shaking him. When Dennis finally looks up, he sees Markus sitting on the floor, just as haggard as Dennis, surrounded by his friends and allies.
“What the hell’s going on?” It’s Yeti’s voice. He can hear again, the sounds swarming into his mind all at once.
Sanna’s sobs in the corner.
Kaarina’s rapid breathing.
Maria’s low whisper. “It’s Nurse Saarinen, isn’t it?”
As soon as she says it, there’s a knock on the door. Kaarina walks over, presses her hand on the CS-key. Carrying a set of blinking AR-glasses in her hands, Jenny appears, striding straight to Dennis. “The call is on every screen. These are my glasses, but she’s calling you.”
“Nurse Saarinen?” Maria asks. Jenny nods for yes. Before Dennis has a chance to take the glasses, Maria snatches them from Jenny’s hands. Face twisted in pain, her body stiff, Maria stares into the glasses, where three white dots run across the screen.
“You can’t answer the call, Maria,” Dennis says, still out of breath. “It has to be me.”
Maria curses in Spanish, takes the glasses off, and hands them to Dennis. They’re all looking at him, Markus still gasping for air. Kaarina holds him by the shoulders, her low voice talking in a language Dennis doesn’t understand.
“Answer it, then,” Maria says. “But I want to have a word or two with the witch myself.”
Dennis shoves the glasses onto his face. Once he taps the sound on, the familiar smooth AI voice enters his ears.
CALL FROM NURSE SAARINEN. CITY OF FINLAND
“Answer call,” he says and slowly gets up from the floor. When Maria reaches for the glasses, Dennis dodges her and steps away.
“Mister Jenkins.” Her voice is more high-pitched than Dennis remembers. “Long time no talk.”
“Nurse Saarinen.” Dennis can feel the room freeze. “To what do we owe this pleasure?”
“Pleasure? That’s what you call this?” She huffs. “You must be into some really kinky shit, Jenkins.”
Dennis grunts, the aftershock of the immense pain still lingering around his skull. “We both know you didn’t hack my chip and my assistant’s glasses to talk about kinks. What is it you want?”
“Simple. I want you to hand over what was never yours to begin with.”
The affidavit. Of course.
“And what’s that? The mansion? My good food printer?”
“I’m not up for games, Jenkins. I know Laura had a soft spot for you and the patience of a snail for this kind of bullshit. But I’m not Laura. And I’m tired of waiting.”
“And why not ask Laura herself?”
“Cute. I know that you’ve heard of her death. You probably watched us bury her in the blue city cemetery, unless you switched channels before the hole was filled. Speaking of… Aren’t you a little old for something as desperate as a dating room?”
Could it be? It sure sounds like it. Nurse Saarinen doesn’t know about Laura being uploaded. She doesn’t know about the egg, or her co-operating with Margaret Lewis.
“Hello?” The impatience in Nurse Saarinen’s voice is growing. “Is this a bad time to call or something? My bad, Jenkins. If you’re in a hurry to get back to one of your trophy wives, let’s keep this short. Just hand over what’s mine, and I’ll be on my way.”
“The power of attorney letter was signed to me. Not you.” Dennis is distracted by Maria pacing around him. She’s blocked her ears to focus on another conversation going on inside her head. “How can I give you something that is not mine to give?”
“Didn’t I already tell you I don’t have time for this? Just have your lawyers draw up
a document and send it to me. Tonight, Jenkins.” There’s a short rustling sound on the line. “That’ll be all.”
“And if I don’t?”
A deep sigh fills Dennis’s ears. “You’ve always been a tad simple, haven’t you?”
He doesn’t reply.
“I’ll give you twenty minutes to send me what’s mine. Twenty minutes, or I’ll blast your chip and shut down the green city for good.”
“My lawyers can’t—”
“Your lawyers don’t need to do shit. Just scratch your initials on a piece of paper and send me a copy. That’s all. I’m out.”
The line goes dark. All that’s left is an animated picture of Jenny riding a unicorn. This is not good. Not in the slightest. He needs to reach Doctor Solomon, but he has no idea how to call the egg. He takes the glasses off and hands them over to Jenny.
“Should…” Jenny whispers. “What…”
Maria waves her off. “It’s okay Jenny. We got this. Just go back to your apartment and lock the door. Okay?”
Jenny nods, fixes her hair, and walks out of the apartment. The click of the door closing echoes in their ears long after Jenny’s left them. Markus is the first one to recover.
“How much time do we have?”
“Twenty…” Dennis clears his dry throat. “Twenty minutes. Or she continues to drill into our heads. And then she’ll turn off the city.”
“Fuck the city,” Yeti says.
“We have no choice,” Kaarina says. “We have to give her the program. Markus has been through enough, don’t you think?”
“Hey, this is not your decision to make,” Maria says. “Don’t walk away and leave Dennis and me out of this conversation.”
Kaarina turns with a huff. “Well, what do you suggest we do, then?”
“I don’t know.”
“Thanks for chiming in,” Yeti says. “Really helpful.”
Maria bites her lip and pauses for a moment. “What I do know is that we won’t give that sick fuck anything she wants. If Nurse Saarinen is in charge, she’ll kill off every single Unchipped person she can get her hands on.”
“So we let her start with Markus and Dennis?” Kaarina shakes her head. “Over my dead body.”
