The Uploaded

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  “You don’t even believe in sin. Why do I think I can talk to you…?”

  I reached out, took her hand. Her calloused fingers in mine felt more intimate than the makeout sessions. “Because I want to listen?”

  She leaned over, kissed the spot beneath my ear.

  “I don’t know if I can fight any more, Amichai,” she said, resting her head on my shoulder.

  “OK.” This was good. This was her working through things. This was certainly not a beautiful girl pressing her body against mine. “…is it because of… of… your parents?”

  “Have you ever watched anyone you love die?”

  Peaches, I thought, flashing back to that moment I was sure Peaches had died – and shook it off, remembering that Evangeline needed me to listen to her right now. I felt guilty, thinking of Peaches, but… Peaches had told me to kiss other girls. Peaches was kissing other boys.

  Who was I betraying?

  I cleared my throat. “I watched my parents die, from the Bubbler. It was… I would have done anything to save them from that.”

  “I had to kill them.” She was talking about her parents, of course.

  “You did.”

  She licked her lips. “They… they told me death was a reason to rejoice. My parents were going to Heaven, Amichai. Casting off these mortal shackles. But instead, they just looked… pained.”

  I had no idea what to say. How could she have thought meat-death was glorious?

  How could she ever have believed in God?

  “I tried not to let it affect me,” she said. “So I got in the spirocopter, barking orders, back in combat. I’d been trained for combat. But when Peaches got shot and the copter crashed, I saw… I saw my mother’s eyes. Her empty hope. And… oh, God, Amichai, I was afraid.”

  “We’re all afraid.”

  She stiffened, pulling away. “We are not. We fight for the Lord. But there’s a poison in my soul, Amichai. For the first time, I… I value this life.”

  “Why wouldn’t you value your life?”

  She shoved me away hard enough I tumbled ass-backwards.

  “Because I need to value my soul!” She thrust her shaking hands out at me. “I can’t load bullets like this! And what am I, if not a warrior? How can I be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing, when I quail in the face of danger? What… What should I fight for, if not for the Lord?”

  I laughed.

  She slapped me hard enough to rattle my teeth.

  “How dare you minimize my pain!”

  “No, no.” I held up my hands. “I’m not… ow, crap that hurts.”

  “I should break your jaw. Of all people, you should understand. Your people are dying in riots; you set them aflame, and now you must find out what it means to lead them. How can you steer them to safe havens without something to aim for? Faith matters, Amichai.”

  “It’s not your faith I laughed at. It’s just… Peaches would never talk like that.”

  She flinched, hugging herself. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to intrude on your… your relationships…”

  Was there another possible way I could screw this conversation up?

  “No! It’s… That’s why you’re special, Evangeline. You never hide your feelings. Sharing is a special kind of bravery.”

  She bit her pink lip, suppressing a smile, and oh void how much I wanted to kiss her.

  “So how do you deal with it? That… emptiness?”

  “I’ve got one life. I’d better spend it right.”

  She squinted from behind a tangle of hair. “You’re not scared?”

  “Not scared enough to stop, no. I know what I need to do. I may not know how to do it, but…”

  “Then what scares you enough to stop?”

  “…Everyone else.” Now I trembled. “If I void myself, that’s my choice. But Izzy? Dare? My decisions keep fucking them over.”

  “And Peaches. You… you yell about her in the night sometimes. You flinch in time to the gunshots.”

  “That’s… I’ll be fine. Let me worry about you.”

  “Why? Why do you keep digging for my weaknesses?”

  “Because you matter, Evangeline. When I saw you in the Orphanage, you were a… a warrior saint. Strong, and beautiful, and… I was so glad I rescued you.”

  “You didn’t. I rescued me. I always rescue me.”

  “That was even hotter.”

  Not my wisest phrasing. But my feelings spilled out in a waterfall of words–

  “And then you came back to save me from Gumdrool. And it hurts. It hurts to to think maybe… I screwed you up somehow… because, I mean, you’re amazing, and…”

  She kissed me. Kissed so hard all the barriers shattered, and my hands slid under her woolen shirt, and she touched me in all the ways I’d been aching for.

  Things got very physical.

  37: IN DEEP

  * * *

  Eight words you don’t want to hear when falling asleep with a beautiful woman:

  “Now we are one in the Lord’s eyes.”

  38: FRANTIC EXPLANATIONS FOR TERRIBLE DECISIONS

  * * *

  Evangeline clung to me, her face wreathed in a blissful smile, sleepily pulling me back whenever I moved.

  I didn’t want to go. But I wasn’t sure I could stay.

  I shouldn’t have done that. I’d heard religious people viewed sex as something sacred. And I liked Evangeline, cared for her, but… one in the Lord’s eyes?

  I didn’t believe in the Lord. And I wasn’t sure I believed in being one in anyone’s eyes.

  She knew something was wrong when she woke.

  “Did we…” She curled away from me. “Was that bad?”

  “No, no, it was good. Really good. It’s just…”

  She grabbed for her clothes, blushing. I tugged her back.

  “Listen! That was wonderful! But… what was it to you?”

  She snorted. “Less than it was to you, evidently.”

  “That doesn’t make it nothing. I just… you know I’m not a ‘Lord’ kind of guy, Evangeline.”

  She yanked her boots on. “I am aware you are an unbeliever, yes.”

  “Look, that was a mistake. Not because… it was bad… but we should have talked. About what that sort of thing means to you. Because I don’t know how it is for NeoChristians…”

  “It’s a bond for life.”

  “…yeah,” I admitted. “That wasn’t that.”

  She went cold. It was the look she’d given the guards at the branch server before she’d destroyed them.

  Then she punched a tree.

  I moved to pull her back. She elbowed me in the chest.

  “Void it, Evangeline!” I huffed, clutching my bruised sternum. “We have to talk–”

  “Shut up, Amichai.” She ripped a strip of robe to bandage herself. “I don’t know what that was for me, either. If I had faith, I would have… have resisted you. The works of the flesh are evident. Yet I used you to not think about death for a while and…” She whirled on me. “But it would have nice to have had you want me for life, you understand?”

  “I–”

  I strangled my immediate reaction, which was to assure her of course I wanted her for life. Because I didn’t. I wanted to know her, but all this Jesus stuff scared the void out of me, and I wasn’t sure we were compatible and oh void I hoped Peaches was going to be as cool with this as she said she would.

  “Evangeline.” I tried to make a sentence grow out of the end of that word, failed. “Evangeline, I–”

  “There you are.”

  Therapy stepped through the underbrush, leading a grim-faced Mama Alex. Mama Alex cruised to a stop as she noted me, still naked, talking to a blotchy-faced NeoChristian in hastily donned clothing – but she closed her eyes and shook her head, as though she had expected no better.

  “The Brain Trust’s got Hsiang’s online,” she said. “Time for a war council.”

  “Now?”

  “Did the clock stop ticking? Y
our attendance is mandatory, Pony Boy. And, uh… Evangeline, is it?”

  Evangeline couldn’t look Mama Alex in the eye. “…Evangeline.”

  “Be there, too.”

  39: WATCHING COMMERCIALS FOR THE APOCALYPSE

  * * *

  By the time Evangeline and I shuffled up to the Brain Trust, there were at least three hundred rebels and NeoChristians seated across the mall’s levels, playing in a big drum circle.

  That would have been awesome if the drum circle hadn’t dribbled to a stop when I walked in, announcing my entrance.

  Between my matted Jewfro and Evangeline’s tangle of wild Irish hair, it was blazingly apparent what had happened. I searched for Peaches, trying to indicate via silent gesture that this wasn’t what it seemed, which, OK, it was what it seemed, but perhaps more explanation would calm this out…

  …and Peaches was fine. She stopped talking to a set of strapping young boys to look me over: a new respect for me blossomed across her face.

  Dare, however, looked ready to strangle me.

  Wickcleft flickered onto the screens, rapping his cane on his simulated floor. “All-all!-all right, children. Dr Hsiang has been assimilated into our luh-luh-lovely little microculture, and… shuh-she’s mostly intact. Say huh-huh-hello, Doctor.”

  Dr Hsiang crept onscreen. Her features had slackened, like a stroke patient.

  “HHhhhhhhaaaaa,” she said. It took me a second to figure out that meant hi.

  Wickcleft pushed her gently aside. “Nice girl, but if shuh-shuh-she’s going to debrief you, it’ll take all duh-duh-day. And you thought I-I!-I was bad!”

  Laughter from the crowd… or at least from the rebels. The NeoChristians scowled.

  Evangeline squinted, suspicious of me for treating a program like a human. I wondered what she’d think about me wanting to win the love of my parents, whether she’d even think of Izzy as my sister once Izzy uploaded.

  Sleeping with her seemed like an increasingly poor decision.

  Wickcleft noted their coldness, bowed. “In deference to our allies, I shall luh-luh-let the living deliver the nnnnnnews.”

  Mama Alex stepped forward. “Hsiang doesn’t know much. Wickliffe’s been tweaking the mindslavers for a long time. If he’d been willing to spring for new hardware, he could have rolled them out years ago – except, for some reason, he wants to do it all through Shrive helmets. Which aren’t really designed to alter brains so much as read them.”

  Josie, the one-armed girl, held up her hand. “Why wouldn’t he just roll out new Shrive helmets? Ones with brainmelting technology built right in?”

  “Good question. First off, the dead hate spending cash on this world. He couldn’t acknowledge brainwashing was his goal, so Congress would block the budget.”

  “And the other reason is?”

  “Secrecy. Way easier to slip in mindslavers through a firmware update.”

  The rebels muttered. The idea of waking up one morning, Shriving, and being silently coopted…

  “And finally, Wickliffe’s… reluctant. If it was up to Hsiang, she’d have rolled out a halfassed version already, but Wickliffe… he has a real distaste for this. He won’t do it until he’s positive it won’t harm the living.”

  “Thuh- thuh- that’s m- me!” Wickcleft said. “I- I!- I told you I loved the luh- living!”

  He took in the hatred in the NeoChristian eyes, the disgust on the rebels’ faces.

  “…Orrrrrrr I did, at one point,” he added.

  “I wouldn’t be too proud of yourself,” Mama Alex said. “Bad Walter’s made his next move.”

  Wickcleft flickered away, replaced by a sleek onyx headpiece that rotated on the screen like jewelry. It dripped raw technolust.

  “In a world with fewer living,” a basso voice boomed out, “We must maximize each life.”

  Cut to a pan across the devastated farmlands of the Midwest, the putrefying coral of New York City.

  “The physical world decays,” the announcer continued. “Farmers who don’t know what blight looks like, rain-battered circuit boards with no trained hands to repair them, sickened coral with no living medics to tend it.”

  The focus snapped back to the crown, now descending like a UFO to land on a rapturous living woman’s temples. “It’s time to reclaim life.”

  A zoom pan through complex circuitry. “The Mother Mentor is civilization’s best hope to keep the Upterlife working. The Mother Mentor reads your mind to train you in lessons customized to make sense to you as if you had learned it yourself. Every concept will be explained instinctively, so you’re guaranteed to remember it! You’ll learn a lifetime’s lessons in weeks!”

  Cut to rich, vegetable-laden farmlands tilled by hale, satisfied living men. Cut to straight-backed living women fixing sickened skyscrapers. Cut to a living teenager diagnosing a circuitboard, then repairing it.

  My breath caught in my throat. Every rebel in the room leaned forward, drawn by the pull of honest work, yearning for agency.

  “The Mother Mentor will be rolled out on a test basis to select individuals!” boomed the voice. “Those found eligible will be put down at age forty – a just reward for a life well spent. Apply today!”

  The commercial faded… and we slumped forward like marionettes with cut strings.

  “It’s fiendish,” Peaches murmured. “The ambitious living will want it because it’ll give them choices. The unambitious will want it for the premature death…”

  “Are you insane?” Evangeline asked. “No one will try it! They saw Amichai telling them Wickliffe is trying to erase their mind!”

  “They also saw Amichai apologize for faking it,” Peaches told her. “Admittedly, a lot of the living won’t bite. But dying at forty is a huge incentive. And Wickliffe… maybe he doesn’t need everyone to try it. We don’t know what he’s trying to change living minds to think. He never told Hsiang that.”

  “Convenient, that.”

  “I-I!-I always did puh-play it close to the vest,” Wickcleft admitted sheepishly.

  “If we can get our hands on one,” Mama Alex said, “We can reverse-engineer it. We can find the parts that rewrite brains, and we can release that information to the world. Anyone with a copy of a Mother Mentor can verify Wickliffe’s treachery.”

  “The Buh-buh-brain Trust has broken into everyyyy access center they kuh-can get. Huge numbers of technical suh-suh-supplies have been rerouted to one puh-puh-particular factory. Our guh-guess is that’s where they’ll muh-muh-mass produce the Mother Mentors.”

  “Lacona Springs,” I said.

  “Jeezum crow,” said Mama Alex. “That Gumdrool boy is trying to lure you in there fierce.”

  “Good thing I’ve got a plan to stop him.”

  40: THE TIMES SQUARE DOG AND PONY SHOW (BUT MOSTLY PONY)

  * * *

  If you were in Times Square on a Monday morning, you either had a lucrative dead sponsor or were trying to find one.

  Times Square was one of New York City’s biggest marketplaces. The “Live Local, Die Global” initiatives had ensured most things were made within walking distance of your home – seamstresses sewed clothing, rooftop farmers grew food, furniture growers tended hydroponic tanks that sprouted hard-coral chairs. No sense spending valuable energy carting those things in from factories miles away.

  But there were always things only big industry could produce. That’s what came whizzing in on the monorails. The living couldn’t afford the good stuff, naturally, but the dead needed living men to pick up the canisters of roach and rat-kill, living hands to repair their properties, living minds to troubleshoot the cameras that served as their eyes to this filthy world.

  So Times Square teemed with hungry employees. There were no merchants – all the negotiating was done online, from dead to dead – but there were stacks of lumber, barrels of nails, pallets of computer servers wrapped in clear plastic, bolts of fabric, girders for the new waves of Upterlife servers, rolls of cable, refrigerated fruits brought in
as gifts for the most faithful living servants, tubs of wifi antennae, rows of earputers strung on fishing line, vats of clips and fasteners and door hinges.

  And winding among the merchandise were sweat-stained living workers, toting crates and scanning in the latest shipments, all with that glazed look of distraction as the dead barked orders into their ears. Times Square was motion and money.

  We’d planned on getting caught, of course.

  The LifeGuard patrols cocked their heads, noting an alert generated by the dead who’d made it their hobby of keeping track of arrivals: one hundred new people, folks typically not seen in this area.

  Then, a few minutes later, when the dead had run the new arrivals’ faces through the recognizer software and realized none of them had Shrived in over a year, the real alerts went out.

  We watched ourselves on the huge monitors placed over Times Square. Once, Times Square had been festooned with house-sized signs to advertise old sodas, or movies, or whatever else the moldy oldies spent cash on. Now, those monitors showed images of the Square itself, directing people to pick up their goods.

  Standard operating procedure for protestors was to “kettle” them. You quietly called in LifeGuard to seal off as many exits as you could, then stampeded protestors into a corner.

  Difficult in a place as big as Times Square.

  Our Brain Trust had told us they knew trouble was coming. They’d intercepted memos showing how Gumdrool had gotten the funds to station superfast LifeGuard squads in specially equipped supersonic spirocopters all over New York State, ready to respond to any threat within half an hour.

  Oh, Gumdrool. You always did think ahead.

  So our new faces kept trickling in, one at a time, as LifeGuard forces from all across New York state relocated to just outside Times Square. You wouldn’t have noticed anything particularly amiss in the usual commerce-crazy hubbub, unless you noticed the tense cops.