The Uploaded

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  “My brother doesn’t lie to me. Not about anything important. And that video where he claims it was all faked? That’s not the way he talks. I know my brother, I…”

  Izzy ran her hands through her hair, clearly deciding whether she was going to actually say what she was thinking.

  “I believe in Amichai Damrosch.”

  She gazed into the camera, as if daring anyone to contradict her.

  “I believe that my brother discovered something horrible that Wickliffe is planning. Something to brainwash us. Don’t get me wrong, I am still immensely proud of the living – I pledged myself to protect them when I put on this uniform.

  “But I am no longer proud of the dead. I believe in my brother. I believe in his cause. And I believe that any LifeGuard member who pledged themselves to the service of the living has to examine this evidence that Amichai has provided. They have to…”

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Gotta go.” She leaned over to turn off the camera.

  Peaches pounded her armrests enthusiastically. “Did your sister just try to tell the LifeGuard to rebel? Oh my sweet void, I have never been prouder.”

  I wanted to feel the warm glow of family pride, but all I could think of was that knock on the door. What happened after that? Why didn’t she rerecord her video?

  “Her main account’s shut down,” I said, typing frantically. “But we had a backdoor account we shared, just in case Beldon tried to close off our nightly chats…”

  “Look,” Peaches said. “There’s a new video with no hits. Set to family-only credentials.”

  I hit play. The screen filled with grainy shadows – a late-night video post.

  Izzy looked haggard, as if she’d been woken from a bad dream.

  “I’m being shipped off,” she said. “I knew they’d assign me to factory work, but… they’re relocating me before my physical therapy is complete. The nurses say that’s… unusual.” Her eyes glanced off camera, seeking permission to speak.

  “…They’re telling me this project is vital to the Upterlife. They tell me… No, fuck it! I won’t sucker him in! You give them hell, Amichai! You fight! I believe in you! I–”

  “That’s enough.” A familiar face leaned in:

  Gumdrool.

  He gave me the shit-eating grin of a poker player with a royal flush, and the video went dark.

  I dropped the tablet.

  “Lacona Springs,” I said. “That’s where he’s taking her. We head to Lacona Springs, and we–”

  Peaches grabbed my arm. “We will not.”

  “He’s bringing her to Lacona Springs to experiment on! My sister is in danger!”

  “Tell that to Dare, why don’t you?”

  As I looked down at Peaches’ wheelchair, the stirring argument I’d been about to give lost all traction.

  “Look,” Peaches continued. “Gumdrool could have deleted that post. Instead, he uploaded it. Why? Because he wants you. He wants you bullrushing him, so he can capture you. He’s playing the only card he has to get you. Like it or not, that card is Izzy.”

  “But my sister…”

  “…may have to void, Amichai. Same as all of us.”

  “But she didn’t sign up for the cause!”

  “Watch that video again,” Peaches said. “She did.”

  35: AT THE FOOD COURT, WATCHING NEOCHRISTIANS BEAT UP NEOPHYTES

  * * *

  I wasn’t sure how to rescue Izzy, so I retreated to the food court to ponder my next move. A NeoChristian family had heaped soil over the tiles there to teach karate.

  I’d thought their martial arts would be flashy, movie-style throws. But the NeoChristians were brutally efficient: a kick to the crotch, stiff fingers in the throat, dirt kicked in your eye.

  I watched them, pretending every blow was to Gumdrool’s face.

  The rebels took their beatings with enthusiasm. They all shared my fearlessness: screwing up meant you’d learned something interesting. Though in their case, “interesting” often meant a smashed eyebrow.

  They waved me over, inviting me to join in their reindeer games. But if I started punching people now, I’d never stop. Not a good attitude to bring to a sparring session.

  Mama Alex sat down next to me. Her knees cracked as she eased herself onto the bench. “Good to find you here.”

  “In the food court?”

  “In the compound. I had Ximena’s family ready to hunt you down if you took off after Izzy.” She cleared her throat. “…I mighta told ’em to rough you up a little.”

  I chuckled. “It’s good to watch them playing, isn’t it? NeoChristians and unbelievers together?”

  She sucked air through her teeth. “Won’t last.”

  “Doesn’t seem like that thought bothers you.”

  “Everything good comes with an expiration date, Amichai.” She smiled as a NeoChristian took a knee to the forehead from a one-armed stringy housewife. “See that girl? Josie’s her name. Lost her girlfriend in a LifeGuard attack in Poughkeepsie. Wickliffe’s thugs voided her lover, then shot her as she tried to escape. Left her to die in a ditch. Gangrene took her arm. She staves off the grief by fighting harder.”

  My sister was in trouble, maybe brainscrambled by Gumdrool… but at least she was alive.

  Josie’s girlfriend had been erased from history.

  I shivered. Josie might be meat-dead tomorrow. Maybe at my orders. And I wanted to imagine Josie and her girlfriend happy somewhere together, rewarded for all this bravery instead of being meat in a grave.

  The NeoChristian Upterlife still seemed childish. But now I understood the appeal.

  “The NeoChristians aren’t our friends, Amichai.” Mama Alex chewed a stalk of grass. “They got too much stock invested in that skybeard of theirs to stay permanent allies. But right now? I got two hundred people missing lost friends and lost limbs. They’re looking straight into the void, and they ain’t flinching. The NeoChristians are the only other people left on the planet who know what it’s like to lose – really lose – a loved one.

  “So we’re bonded by a common enemy, and a common fear. But some day, there’ll be a funeral for someone they both loved, and you’ll see what happens when one draws comfort from thinking the dead are in the clouds, and the other thinks the dead are in the ground.”

  I thought about Evangeline. Our friendship. Our maybe more-than-friendship.

  “No,” I retorted. “We have more in common than that.”

  One of Mama Alex’s silver amulets buzzed. “Th-th-that’s what I like about him!” said Wickcleft, from Mama Alex’s bosom. “Tuh-tell him something’s impossible, and he-he!-he digs right in! Luh-like me, when I faced down duh-death!”

  “Maybe the world woulda been better if you hadn’t been so damn stubborn,” Mama Alex picked up the pendant between two long fingers, twirled it. “Wisdom comes from knowin’ when to give up.”

  “Nnnnnonsense,” Wickcleft riposted, with a well-worn sense of banter. “Idealism forges paradise. You knnnnnnow that.”

  “Really? I ‘know’ that?” She swooped the pendant around dramatically, as if to show Wickcleft the whole world. “Then why ain’t we livin’ in paradise?”

  “Duh-don’t confuse an en-en-engineering problem with a fuh-fuh-flaw in my philosophy. The Upterlife juh-juh-just needs some adjustments, is all.”

  “You carry him around with you?” I peered at the pendant – which was studded with not rubies, but camera lenses.

  “We’re partners. Walk with me, Amichai, walk with me.”

  She got up – producing another old-lady groan – and led me outside the mall. NeoChristians and rebels alike were patching up the NeoChristian ships.

  Then an alarm sounded. Everyone fell silent as a missile-drone whooshed overhead. They stared at the sky, hoping the camo nets held, imagining what would happen if that bomb found them. It’d blow them to wet meat-scraps.

  I trembled, hostage to my body’s fears.

  “Nobody wants to
die, Amichai,” Mama Alex said. “But I can’t say death is bad.”

  I thought of the bullets ripping through Peaches’ belly. I thought of Evangeline, plunging her knife into her parents’ hearts. I thought of Hsiang, raving as her dysfunctioning body messily shut down. “How can death not be bad?”

  “Everything has a time.” Her voice was as soft and implacable as water. “You know people like me weren’t allowed to eat at the same table as you, right?”

  “That was centuries ago.”

  “You know boys like Dare used to be beaten for liking other boys?”

  “Also in the past.”

  “And girls like Peaches used to be called sluts?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “And genetic engineering used to be seen as an insult to God?”

  “Genetic engineering’s still not allowed.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Because the people who grew up believing genetically modified kids were abominations never died.”

  She held her sea-gray gaze on me, letting her point settle in.

  “Thing is, Amichai,” she continued, “people don’t change all that much. But the most virulent racists died off, and the new kids grew up with more black and Latino and Asian friends, and the world got a shade better. Not perfect – occasionally some freshfaced asshole raised on yesterday’s thoughts would squirm into power for a time – but better.

  “We never could have won if we had to face down all our enemies in their prime, Amichai. We just outlived ’em.

  “You’re right to call ’em ghosts, Amichai. They haunt us. Every baby could be gene-engineered disease-free. Except the old-guard dead think genetic engineering’s a violation of nature, and they’re still around. And that opinion is not going away. Their old, bigoted culture gives new kids an excuse to be assholes.

  “You might hate death. But we’ve come to fetishize eternity – like hanging around forever is an unquestionable good. Death? It’s got its downsides, Amichai. But it sure clears away the underbrush.”

  “You say that,” I ventured. “But nobody wants to die.”

  “Oh ho-ho-ho!” Wickcleft was unsettlingly jolly. “Ask her, Amichai. Shuh-shuh-she’s been offered a puh-place in our branch server. We’ve carved out spuh-space for one woman’s muh-magnificent mind. And guess what shuh-she’s said?”

  “You can Shrive,” I spluttered, “and you’re turning it down?”

  “I got a lot of wisdom to teach,” she demurred. “I’ve also got a lot of preconceptions. Like I said, everything good comes with an expiration date.”

  “You can’t void. We need you…”

  She shrugged, somehow making the gesture eloquent. “We got a hundred seventy-eight people living in the Brain Trust. They’re smart people… But creative as a rock. Wickcleft thinks it’s some subtle flaw in the compression techniques used to store minds; I think old people get set in their ways. I trust the Trust to analyze technical specs, but devising creative solutions?” She squeezed my shoulder. “That’s up to living boys like you.”

  I blushed. “Thank you.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be you.”

  “What?”

  Mama Alex knelt before me, her knees cracking like ice on a winter pond. “Amichai, you stumbled into becoming the man people want to follow. But you don’t have to lead this revolution. We can put you somewhere safe. ’Cause if Wickliffe goes after you with everything he’s got… he’ll get you.”

  He’ll get you.

  My own death became a reality. In Mama Alex’s arms, in this hollow quiet after the missile had missed us, I felt my body’s fragility. My consciousness was a weak current trickled through organic mush. A poke with a sharp stick here, and my systems splattered apart.

  It wouldn’t be difficult to take me down.

  “Even if you win,” Mama Alex continued, “the NeoChristians are right: it’s got to be shut down. I don’t see the dead relinquishing power. And we can’t stuff ’em in a box and ignore ’em; they control the electronic world. If you take this job, your best case is the worst choice a human being’s ever had to make: voiding every person in the Upterlife.”

  “No.” The word surged out, reflexive – but I felt the rightness of it, shaping a world that needed to be.

  “Amichai, you can’t just–”

  “No, Mama. I talked about this with Dare. There’s got to be some way to reconcile their needs with ours. I mean – void, I don’t even know how to stop Wickliffe, but… Killing people is never the solution. If you tell me that’s my choice, then I refuse.”

  Mama Alex looked as though I’d struck her. Applause emanated from the speaker around her neck.

  “I tuh-tuh-told you!” Wickcleft roared. “Juh-just like me! Luh-look reality in the eye and deny it, Amichai! That’s how men make power!”

  “I’m sorry, Mama.” I pulled her into a hug. She felt like a bag of sticks, terrifyingly thin.

  I wasn’t sorry. I felt connected to the billions of lives who’d be enslaved if I failed. Humanity as I understood it would cease to exist.

  I also felt a connection to the trillions of lives in the Upterlife servers – shortsighted idiots, greedy, but still deserving of life. If we destroyed the Upterlife servers, then humanity as I understood it would also cease to exist.

  What did one life matter, weighed against that? Even my own?

  “Nuh-nuh-never mind her.” Wickcleft’s voice buzzed against my sternum. “Whuh-whuh-what gifts do we have for the mmmman who will guh-give his life for the people?”

  “This isn’t a game show, Mr Wickliffe.”

  “Suh-sorry,” Wickcleft apologized. “Buh-but Amichai, you have nnnnno idea how muh-many favors I had to c-c-call in to get this guh-gift for you – Buh-Black Hoods, fuh-farmers, wwwwageslavers, and it was all duh-doubly difficult thanks to that Guh-guh-Gumdrool thug crossing swords with me…”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Shuh-show him.”

  Mama Alex took me by the hand. All the other rebels seemed attuned to some great secret I knew nothing of; their heads turned, then they found excuses to walk behind us. Within minutes, we led a procession of whispering fans – and by the time Mama Alex led me to the old cargo storage containers, the whole enclave surrounded me.

  Mama Alex unlocked the container.

  The door creaked open.

  The hot scent of hay and shit wafted out.

  It was dim; strangled sunlight-slivers flickered through rusted holes. But inside, slumped and low-eared, stood a familiar silhouette:

  “Therapy!”

  Her ears perked as she saw me – and then she launched herself forward, bowling me over, snuffling that soft nose all over my face.

  A cheer went up as she licked my nose. “They came to see you ride, Ah-ah-Amichai! So ruh-ride!” The rebels surged forward, lifted me up, deposited me on a confused Therapy’s back.

  “The Pony Boy!” they cried, exultant. “The Pony Boy!”

  Therapy craned around to look at me, as if to ask, Are you sure this is OK? I wobbled on her back; I’d never actually ridden her, or any horse. The crowd seemed convinced I was an awesome rider, though.

  I knotted my hands in her mane. “Come on, Therapy,” I whispered. “Let’s have an adventure.”

  Therapy leapt over the crowd, a ten-foot high soaring leap. She pumped her legs, bringing us looping in a thunderous circle around the mall, Therapy whinnying in delight, our muscles moving as one as the world blurred into one great swell of movement, going fast and nowhere all at the same time with the crowd whooping and everything contracting to a beautiful certainty of this movement, this motion, this grace.

  And you know what?

  I was an awesome pony-rider, much to my surprise.

  36: HANDS, WHERE THEY SHOULDN’T BE

  * * *

  “She’s so beautiful,” Evangeline murmured, stroking Therapy’s nose; Therapy leaned into her touch. I loved the way Evangeline’s tangled red hair looked against Therapy’s
sandy fur, but loved the blissful smile back on Evangeline’s face more.

  “Not as beautiful as she once was.” I pulled back Therapy’s mane to reveal a metal bolt implanted in her skull.

  “An autobridle.” Evangeline examined it. “Shuts down her higher functions when desired, right? Ensures she never can pose a threat?”

  “I like threats.” I got out the IceBreaker, synced it to the autobridle’s signal; there was a pop, then a thin stream of gray smoke streamed out. Therapy shook her head, a dog shaking free of a leash.

  “You’re good now, girl.” Therapy blinked and took off, running out for another exultant loop around the mall.

  “You sure that’s wise?” Evangeline asked. “You may need to rein her in at some point.”

  “I need to rein you in. I can’t find you during the day. You only come at night, and I’m always asleep when you sneak in.”

  Evangeline had taken to sliding into my arms after I’d drifted off. She pressed her body against mine, nuzzling my neck as though she was terrified to believe in my existence.

  It wasn’t sexual – but it wasn’t asexual, either. Evangeline’s body held a terrible, trembling tension, vibrating towards a decision. Sometimes she sobbed, biting my shoulder. Other times she rubbed her body against mine, her breath warm against my ear, straining against some urge neither of us quite wanted to name.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized – and looked away. That disturbed me. I remembered the Evangeline of the Wickliffe Orphanage, the Evangeline in the prison yard, and both those Evangelines had stared at me until their green eyes swallowed me up.

  “You don’t have to be sorry. It shouldn’t take a pony to lure you out. If you can’t talk to me, at least talk to another NeoChristian…”

  Her laugh was bitter as coffee. “They don’t talk to outsiders.”

  “I know you have to confess to someone.”

  “They’d just tell me I’d sinned.”

  “Is it us? Should I not be kissing you?”

  “I’m kissing you.”

  She was right. I didn’t dare trespass into whatever hurt she had, so I’d let her take the initiative. Every kiss had been her idea… though it had taken all my strength not to slide my palms up her stomach.