The Silver Six

by C. A. Gray

“I know you are. And I love you for it,” I murmured.

  Chapter 23

  “Hey, you guys need any help?” I asked Julie. She and Val were making dinner for everyone, and it smelled like something Italian involving marinara sauce. Julie specialized in this particular kind of Italian cuisine, mostly because boiling pasta and pouring a can of sauce over it didn’t involve reading a recipe. Val probably could have come up with something fancier, but far be it for her to take control in anyone else’s presence.

  “Nah, we’re pretty much done,” said Julie. “Can you just call everybody to dinner? Andy’s in the basement, I think.”

  “What’s he doing in the basement?” I asked, but was already halfway to the basement door to find out when I finished the sentence.

  Andy sat in the dark on one of the couches we’d set up earlier, the projector’s colorful images dancing once again on the otherwise blank wall.

  “Oh hey,” he said in a listless tone.

  “Dinner’s ready,” I said, glancing at the wall. “Whatcha doing?”

  He shrugged. “Larissa showed me how to get on the Commune, and I asked your friend Matt to send over a bunch more movies, since I can’t play End Game without a direct labyrinth connection.”

  I felt a twinge of annoyance, remembering our conversation at the campfire the night before about finding purpose here. But, I should give him the benefit of the doubt. “More research?” I asked, “like earlier?”

  “Not really, I’m just bored. Everybody else has a project to work on, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here. I’m just kind of taking up space.”

  “Well, you could help us with the film,” I suggested, “or with meals, like Val and Julie are doing…”

  “Becca, I don’t draw, I don’t act, I don’t sing or play any instruments, and I don’t write,” he cut me off, “and I also don’t cook. I’m not all techie like most of the others, and I don’t know anything about science. When I do try to make suggestions, you don’t want to hear them. I don’t know what I’m doing here. Me and Alex are the two most pointless people in this place! And Rick, I guess, but he’s mostly content to just stand around and look all bodyguard-ish.”

  I blinked at him, taken aback. He paused the film and pushed himself to his feet, glowering at me.

  “And… this is my fault?”

  “Well, yeah, technically it is your fault! I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. I’d still be in school, living a normal life, able to talk to my parents and my roommate and come and go as I please. But I’m a prisoner here! I don’t even understand what your complaint is; Halpert’s not that bad of a guy.” He said this last bit almost under his breath, as he shoved past me on the stairs.

  I stood there after he left, too stunned to reply. I glanced at the blank wall, and descended the stairs again, un-pausing the film so I could read the small title that appeared in the upper right hand corner to tell me what he’d been watching. It was a documentary called Our Glorious Future.

  Andy is still brainwashed, I thought, almost dazed. Either that, or he was just feeling useless, and taking it out on me. Yes, that’s more likely, I decided. We just have to find something he can do here, some way he feels like he can contribute.

  Dinner was awkward, mostly because of Mom’s injunction not to share any of our plans with Alex. I was bursting to update everyone on our progress on the script, and I wanted to know about Liam’s program to block future bot downloads, and Giovanni’s virus research against the Silver Six. But since all such topics were off limits, conversation was restricted to comments about the food, and Julie’s excited prattling about Queenie. Andy sulked. Francis’s mood seemed about the same as it had been after The Immortals, which was the last time I’d seen him that day. Presumably he was still having a bit of an identity crisis.

  “So, this is cheerful,” Alex commented at last, looking around the table. “Should I just excuse myself and eat in the basement, so you guys can talk freely?”

  I saw Mack and Mom exchange a look. Mom sighed, and Mack gave her a tiny nod.

  “Alex, I’m sorry you feel that we are keeping things from you,” she said, very formally.

  Alex blinked at her, and returned a sardonic smile. “Wow. That was so heartfelt, thank you.”

  I could tell by his gesture that Mack had put a hand on Mom’s knee under the table. He took over.

  “You’re a programmer, Alex. Right?”

  She blinked at him, unwilling to play along. I saw Val shift in her seat uncomfortably. Even unflappable Rick—it was so easy to forget Rick was even there—looked a bit awkward.

  Mack went on, “I know so little about technology, and I know there are a lot of different types of programming. What’s your specialty?”

  Alex glared at him, but Francis answered for her, “She’s like me. Hacker, coder in just about any language you can name. She broke in to four different government-run firewall-protected tech companies and siphoned off fractions of a cent into an untraceable bank account hidden under about six layers of false identities, and amassed a small fortune.”

  Mack cleared his throat. “Well, that’s… impressive,” he finished.

  Alex raised her chin. “Thank you,” she said, like a taunt. “I would have gotten away with it, too, if Karen hadn’t framed me as a Renegade.” She smiled sweetly at Mom, who stiffened.

  “They were already on to you, and Wallenberg’s team was closing in,” Mom said, “I framed you because I knew you’d be captured soon anyway, regardless.”

  Alex narrowed her eyes at Mom, but Dr. Yin jumped in first. “So Alex, if you don’t mind my asking—why did you do it? Embezzle the money, I mean.”

  Alex whipped her head around to face Dr. Yin as if expecting a threat, but then she looked from Dr. Yin to Mack, as if performing some kind of calculation in her mind. It was the first non-smalltalk question, and she seemed to recognize this too. Finally she said, “Nobody can live on the pittance they give you for the Universal Income. It’s an insult—it’s just enough to buy us fake chemical foods that make us sick, rendering us even more dependent on their medical bots to control the symptoms their food produces, with this pill and that pill. Then the side effects of each pill make us even sicker. Nobody can fight back, we’re just biding time until we die. I wasn’t going to buy into that system just to be ‘legal’!” she used air quotes.

  “But… you wouldn’t have had to,” Dr. Yin pointed out, “you had a very marketable skill. You could have earned a wage.”

  “Oh, right. Let them pay me ‘fair market value’ while I work for them,” she raised one palm in the air, and then the other, “or… become a multimillionaire while sticking it to them at the same time.” She teetered the hands back and forth, and sneered, “Tough call!”

  Now Dr. Yin and Mom exchanged a look.

  “So basically, you hate everybody,” Mom said.

  Alex winked at her. “Now you’re getting it.”

  “You really stole from government companies without their noticing?” Nilesh said at last, sounding impressed.

  “They did notice,” Mom rolled her eyes. “Like I said, they were going to arrest her soon anyway.”

  “Yeah, but how long did you get away with it before that?” Nilesh persisted.

  Alex shrugged, looking smug. “Several years.”

  “Wow…” Nilesh murmured, his expression almost worshipful. I knew what was in his mind: he was envisioning Alex as one of those scantily clad warrior babes from Andy’s role playing games, unnaturally sexy and unstoppable. I wanted to reach over and shut his mouth for him so he wouldn’t drool on the table.

  There didn’t seem to be much more to say after that, but fortunately the meal was already almost over. Liam volunteered to clean up, and I said I’d help too.

  “Oh, that’s not necessary, I’ll help him,” said Val.

  But Liam argued, “No, you cooked, you shouldn’t have to clean. Bec and I have got it.”
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  Val glared at me, but there wasn’t much more she could say after that.

  Once we’d cleared the table and piled the dishes in the kitchen, Liam said, “That was awkward, huh?”

  I wasn’t sure if he meant Val glaring at me or the conversation with Alex, so I just said, “Yeah.”

  “I’ve hardly seen you all day,” he said. “Did you make any progress on your script?”

  I’d been dying to update everyone at dinner, so I unleashed it all now: the script and plot so far, Jake’s drawings on AnimatR, and the songs Madeline and I had chosen.

  “I was hoping I could convince everyone to go back up to the caves tonight to learn them,” I said sheepishly. “I sort of… cast you in the role of the dictator.” I gave him an exaggerated grimace, like I was waiting for a backlash.

  Liam laughed out loud. “I’m Halpert? Seriously? Man, I thought I was going to get to be the love interest!”

  That caught me off guard. I almost said ‘there is no love interest in this story,’ but… it was my story. If I said that, it would send a signal that I didn’t want to send him anymore. So instead I said evasively as I stocked the dishwasher, “But ‘Halpert’ has the best song!”

  “So who’s playing me, then? I am in the story, right?”

  “It’s… fictionalized,” I hedged. “It’s me and three friends, played by Jake, Julie, and Val, if she’s willing.”

  I saw Liam’s face cloud over as he scrubbed out a pan over the sink.

  “What?”

  He glanced at me. “Huh? Nothing.”

  “No, tell me,” I pressed. “Val doesn’t like me anymore?”

  He glanced at me again, opened and closed his mouth as he set the last pan in the drain board and dried his hands. “She… thought that song we sang together last night meant more than it did.”

  “Oh.” I blinked. His words felt like a blow, but I willed my features to remain neutral.

  “I explained to her that it was just a stupid song, we didn’t even pick it…”

  “Right. Of course.”

  We just stood there awkwardly for a moment, and then I realized my fingers were still dripping water on the floor. I wiped them on my jeans.

  “Well, I’ll go grab Jake and see about building another fire in the caves…”

  “Bec?” He reached out and touched my shoulder just as I was turning to go. “It was just a song… wasn’t it?”

  “Of course it was!” My laugh sounded fake even to my ears, and I turned away to rush out of the kitchen before he could see my red cheeks.

  I hardly saw where I was going, and nearly collided with Mack in the hallway.

  “Hey! Whoa there!” he chuckled, and then inspected my face. “You okay? You look a little red.”

  “I’m fine,” I blurted miserably—I wasn’t far enough outside the kitchen yet. Liam almost certainly heard him.

  “What’s the hurry? Do you have a minute?” He rested one hand on my back and then gestured to the den with the other.

  “Oh, sure. I, um, just wanted to find Jake about building a fire…”

  “He and Julie and Andy already went out to the caves with a newly minted log and some matches,” Mack assured me, “and I promise I’ll let you go and join them shortly. I just realized that if I ever wanted to get to know you, I’d have to practically accost you in between your various projects.” He smiled at me, sitting down on the couch across from the electric fire in the hearth. He gesturing for me to sit beside him. “You’re a lot like your mother in that way.”

  I opened my mouth and closed it again. “I guess I didn’t know you wanted to get to know me.”

  “Well, I care about your mother very much, and you’re a big part of her life,” he shrugged. “And I admit, my first impression on you was not the best.”

  I gave a short laugh, as the blood slowly subsided from my cheeks and my heart slowed to a normal rate. “You mean when you warned me that my life was in danger and weirdly knew exactly where to find me and everything about me? That was a little creepy, yeah.”

  He smiled, and tapped his temple. “Your mom sent me satellite tracking of your A.E. chip, and pretty much gave me the script. Sorry about that.”

  I shrugged. “Well, you’re a good actor. Maybe when we do a live action screenplay, we should cast you as—” I stopped. I’d been about to say, We should cast you as my dad. Not that we’d do a live action of my story when we’d already done an animated version of it anyway. But still. What a thought.

  As if he’d read my mind, Mack prodded, “Tell me about your dad.”

  I shrugged again—I realized I shrugged a lot when I felt uncomfortable. It was like a nervous twitch. “You already know everything about him, I’m sure.”

  “From your mom’s perspective. But not from yours.”

  I opened my mouth and closed it again. “Well… he was brilliant, of course. Obsessive, too. Once he got an idea in his head, he wouldn’t let it go. But he had a really quirky sense of humor. Sarcastic, but not in a mean way. Really protective. Really protective, like over-protective almost… but I guess that’s because, he knew what could happen.”

  After a long pause, Mack said in a probing tone, “Sounds a lot like Liam.”

  I looked up at him, startled. He’d tilted his head to the side, watching my reaction. I felt the heat rise to my cheeks again, and Mack gave me a knowing smile.

  “Don’t worry, you’re not that obvious. I’m just perceptive. Maybe not compared to Francis, but you know. Relatively speaking.”

  I laughed and groaned at the same time, clapping my hands to my burning cheeks.

  “Your mom told me you liked Andy,” Mack went on, grinning now, “but I just couldn’t see that…”

  “Ugh, are we really gonna talk about my non-existent love life?” I pleaded. “Please, tell me about you.”

  He shrugged. “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, I don’t know… what do you like? Hobbies, interests…”

  Mack gave a short laugh and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Ah well. I’m pretty much your typical guy. Good with my hands,” he opened them as if to demonstrate and then clasped them back together again, “pretty decent fighter, although you wouldn’t know it to look at me. I can fix most things that break, or take them apart and make them work better.” He gave me a sidelong smile. “Easy-going, I’m told. A good counter-balance to a high powered woman like Karen, or at least I like to think so.”

  I nodded and smiled back, wistfully. I wouldn’t have attributed any of those words to my father. He’d been a firebrand. Maybe that’s why he and Mom clashed all the time, though I think much of that was because she didn’t share his obsession at the time. If he’d been around today to see what she’d become, how she’d carried on his legacy and adopted his vision as her own… what would their relationship have been like?

  But Dad wasn’t here. Mack was. And he was right—from what I’d seen, he was a good counter-balance to Mom: steady, dependable, and willing to support her any way he could, without seeming to feel threatened by her strength. If Mom and Dad had been together as Mom was today, perhaps the two of them could have set the world on fire. As it was, Mom had to set it on fire all by herself.

  But, perhaps she wouldn’t be who she had become in the first place, without Mack’s support.

  “Do you know I pursued your mom for almost a year and a half before she finally agreed to a date?” Mack went on. I looked up at him, surprised, and he said, “She just put me off, and put me off, one excuse or evasion after another. But I knew what I wanted, and I wouldn’t give up.”

  “Why did she accept in the end?”

  “Because she finally let go of your dad.”

  I blinked—suddenly tears sprung to my eyes out of nowhere, and when I swallowed, I felt a lump.

  “She didn’t actually grieve for years,” he went on, “she just kept going, dealing with crisis after crisis. She didn’t le
t herself stop and be sad for what she’d lost because she didn’t want to face it. But you probably knew that.”

  I hadn’t, actually. But it sounded oddly familiar.

  “I’m not trying to presume anything. But I can’t help noticing that even though there are a lot of people here that love you, you still consider a robot to be your best friend. And I get it—Madeline can’t hurt you. But she also can’t truly love you, the way a human can. It seems to me, Rebecca, that some part of you is still in hiding, still trying to protect yourself from the pain you felt when you lost your dad.” He looked at me, his eyes penetrating. “So, if you haven’t actually let yourself let go, this wouldn’t be a bad place to do it.”

  I didn’t trust myself to speak for a long moment. When I finally did, I sniffled, wiped away the tears that had leaked out onto my cheeks, and shook my head. “I can’t. I have important things to do. Maybe not as important as Mom, but the scripts, and the VMI studies…” What I didn’t say was, if I opened those floodgates, if I let go of the tight control I’d held over my emotions for all these years…

  Well. The idea was terrifying.

  “But remember what you’re fighting for,” Mack said gently. He made a circular gesture with his finger behind us. “These relationships here—in a microcosm, this is what we’re all fighting to protect. This will be our lives, for the foreseeable future. It’s important for us to still live them.”

  Chapter 24

  “Becca, there you are! You coming?” asked Julie as I emerged from the den, gesturing at the entrance to the compound as Queenie writhed and whined in her arms. “The others are already out there—I came back for you and Queenie. Hey, what’s wrong?” She stooped her tall head down to almost comically inspect my face.

  “Oh! Nothing,” I smiled at her, blinking away unshed tears. “Intense conversation, that’s all.”

  “Ah. Well, some campfire singalong ought to help, right?” She looped her dog-free arm through mine.

  “Oh, hold on! I have to go get my notebook so we can practice!” I ran back to my room for the song list I’d been working on.