by Damien Boyes
After a moment, she takes me by the hand and leads me upstairs. On the way, she says she talked to Saabir. Said he can get us new identities. She wants to go somewhere no one knows us, somewhere warm where the beer is cheap. She wants to disappear. To be free.
It sounds nice, but I know after a week or a month, I’d be stir crazy. I can’t hide the rest of my life, that’s not who I am. The constant apprehension, waiting for something to catch up with us—it’d make me mental. I’d rather face my problems head-on than spend the rest of eternity waiting for Eka’s fragment to strike. Running made sense when it was the only option, but we have an alternative now. Dora is convinced that running is the only solution, but I bet she’ll come around once I tell her what happened with Xiao and Ankur.
She leads me to the saferoom at the end of the hall, the micro-apartment Saabir keeps for his ‘guests,’ and pulls me inside. It’s even smaller than my old apartment: a bed, a hidden bathroom/kitchenette, and that’s it.
She peels the tiny jacket off me and when she notices the laceration across my scalp she gasps and reaches out to touch it and I catch her wrist and smile and shake my head and she gives me a curious look, but only for a second, and then she smiles back, pushes me onto the soft mattress and I let it happen. Thoughts of everything we’ve been through wink through my head—how she showed up at my door out of the blue only days ago with a wild, unbelievable story, and how things have only gotten weirder since.
Thinking about her makes me think about Connie, how much I love her still. I can’t imagine a time I won’t, but it feels like so much has changed, like so much more time has passed than it actually has.
Dora gets out a Bliss, puts it to her cuff and her muscles sag. Then she pulls her cuff off, reaches around and puts it on me. For some reason, I don’t argue. I’ve had a hell of a few days, what harm could a shyft do?
She fishes through her bag and comes up with a cylinder that seems to slosh around as she holds it up. “Just an alcosoft,” she says, her vowels loose. “Perfectly legal.”
I want to, but I need her to be on board with joining Xiao before this goes any further. I take the shyft from her hand and see her hide the disappointment. “We need to talk,” I say.
“No good has ever come from that statement,” she replies and sits up away from me, her face drawn in a frown even through the Bliss.
“It’s not bad,” I say. “I promise.”
“What then?” she says, lowering her guard.
“You have that datakey I called about?”
She rolls her eyes and fishes it out of her bag. “Yes,” she holds it up. “Right here. What’s so important about it?”
I sit up and slide out from under her and take the key from her hand. It isn’t anything, just a strip of black plastic. Plastic that contains the secret code to wake the next evolution in human existence. Makes it much heavier than the slight weight between my fingers.
“I’m taking this to Xiao,” I say, pocketing the key. “I’m going with him, and I want you to come with us.”
Her face screws up, as if amused, waiting for the punchline. When it doesn’t come she gets pissed. “You what?”
“Xiao is on a mission. He’s convinced Fate’s going to enslave humanity, and I think he might be right. Fate seems like a great idea to everyone now, but no one’s ever seen inside but Xiao. They all have—they were slaves with their minds tweaked to enjoy it.”
“You want to get involved with Fate now? Join a terrorist? An internationally wanted criminal on her suicide mission? This isn’t your problem.”
“I can help. We leave and the fragment comes with us. Ankur’s promised to come up with some way to stop it. We’ve got back-up, we can we stand and fight. We can win. It’s the best possible choice.”
“I thought you were smarter than that,” she says as her confused eyes narrow to disappointment. “How do you think running away with a terrorist will solve our problems? It’s not bad enough you have Standards and the Service after us, you want the rest of the world hunting for us too?”
“Standards and the Service aren’t interested in us. They don’t have a case. We’re out from under all that.”
This gives her pause, but only for a moment. “So that makes you want to go looking for more trouble? No, we need to disappear, not join forces with the world’s most wanted man.”
“We’ll never be free from Eka’s fragment,” I say. She needs to understand running means we lose. Forever. I won’t live like that. “Xiao can help us end it. For good. Do you want to live wondering if it might be him inside every person you meet? I know I don’t.”
She snorts, tightens her lips. “You love this, don’t you? Need to feel needed. Need to be doing something. You can’t accept what you have and be grateful, can’t help yourself running into trouble. You may not have learned the lesson yet, but these days trouble isn’t what it was. It used to be, trouble would just get you killed or miserable with grief. Now you can end up a living shadow, forgotten in a stock, or your mind ripped from your brain and tortured on a daily basis. I don’t need any more trouble in my life. I’ve had enough. I want quiet.” She gets up, collects her things. “I won’t go. You don’t want to come with me, that’s fine—I don’t know who you are, anyway. You’re sure as hell not Finsbury Gage. Not the one I knew. Go ahead, go off and play soldier, I’ll find someone else to be.”
She pulls the door behind her but it refuses to slam and closes softly on its hinge.
I don’t follow her, lay back on the bed and examine Ankur’s key, but it really is just a featureless strip of plastic. No one would ever imagine what it contained.
As I lay there, staring at the black sliver, my head starts rotating around everything that’s happened, all the decisions that led me here. It’s hard to believe this is my life. I’m ready to deliver a data key to a former superintelligence so he and a terrorist revolutionary can go to war against a corporation bent on enslaving the world through guaranteed digital immortality.
Every piece of that his huge. Everything that’s happened to me in such a short time. So much that’s happened to me I’ll never know. My sense of who I am has numbed, like I fell asleep lying on it and know it’s there but can’t get back inside. I can only hope, given enough time and space, the feeling will return. Until then, I need something to shut my thoughts off, give them a chance to introduce themselves to each other.
The alcosoft Dora left is still on the bed next to me. I’ve still got her cuff on my neck. Why not try it out?
I pick the cylinder up and shake it and the liquid contents seem to splash around inside. What harm would it do? It’s just an alcosoft. It’s perfectly legal.
As I raise it to my cuff, my tab buzzes, and I forget the shyft for a moment. It’s probably Ankur calling with where to meet him.
It isn’t.
It’s a livefeed of Dora. She’s perched on a small bed, and her eyes are lowered but staring defiant from the screen.
“Hello Finsbury,” says strained voice. A voice I recognize instantly, even though I’ve never heard it before. It’s Elder. He’s holding the camera. “Time for this to end.”
StatUS-ID
[a646:d17e:8670:511f::Finsbury/D//GAGE]
SysDate
[19:23:52. Tuesday, May 7, 2058]
There’s a certain freedom in knowing you’re going to die--the trivialities of life fall away.
I’ve decided. I’m going to arm up and fight my way to Eka. Wherever he is in that building of his, whatever it is he’s become, I’m going to shoot everything he throws at me until I hit something important. Full frontal assault. I don’t see any other way.
The Revv won’t be enough. All the guns I can carry won’t be enough. I’ll need to be lucky too.
I came in too hot last time, jacked up from abandoning Xiao and the Service. I was careless, running on instinct and adrenaline with my brain on a feedback loop of rage and hate. This time I’ll be careful. I’m sure I can round up a couple assau
lt rifles, double-cap the mags. I’ll need all the bullets I can carry, come at Eka head-on and pick off his skyns before they can get close. I’ll need pistols, just in case. A knife for emergencies.
Although if I’m fighting off Eka’s skyns with a knife, it’ll mean I’m about five seconds from hardlock.
Tomorrow, I figure. I’ll get the guns in the morning, those’ll be easy. Run simulations until dark and hit when the moon is high. Bystanders should be off the streets by then.
It’s a suicide mission, but I don’t see any other way this ends. Eka dies or I do.
I’ve got maybe thirty hours left—just over a day of what’s likely to be the last of my existence—which is why I surprised myself when I left my apartment and Sküted to counselling. The whole ride over I went back and forth, why waste my last hours enduring Elder’s homilies about accepting myself? Counselling was a begrudged requirement to keep my job. My career is over, I could have blown off this last one. What difference would it have made?
As I walked in the front doors, I realized why I came: I didn’t want to spend my last night alone. I may have loosened my desperate grip on survival—decided that if I die, I die—but that doesn’t mean I’m not terrified about it.
The meeting started late. Elder and Miranda were having a semi-private conversation on the far wall while we all arrived and arranged the chairs in a circle and pretended we couldn’t overhear them, made loud small talk to cover the outbursts of heated conversation from across the room. Miranda was upset, somewhere between furious and panicked. Something had happened with her daughter and Elder was trying to talk her down.
The awkwardness was compounded by the two new women who’d joined the group—a man-sized redheaded woman named Vaelyn, and Petra, a tomboyish girl. They sat on opposite sides of the circle and couldn’t have been more different. Vaelyn jumped right into the conversation, even drowning out Dub at one point, while Petra sat and stared into nothing, either professionally aloof or shyfted a world away.
I sat beside Dora and pretended like nothing was wrong. Her eyes lit up when she saw me walk in, handed me a black coffee when I sat down. Then she left her hand on my knee just a fraction of a moment too long as she laughed at Dub’s story about a fumbling encounter with his first Gladiator groupie.
Everyone noticed, even the new girls. From inside the Revv, I watched the mood in the circle shift ever so slightly as the group processed the information. It seemed to affect Dub the most. His face closed up like a snare.
He’s interested in Dora. I hadn’t noticed before.
Well soon enough, he won’t have to worry about the competition. I wonder what the mood will be like next meeting when my chair’s empty and my name’s all over the feeds?
Dora will take it hard, which is why she and I are done. Tonight after the meeting, I’m going to end it with her before I end myself. I don’t want her unprepared, wondering what happened, why I didn’t say goodbye.
When Elder finally leads Miranda back to the circle she appears more collected, but her chest is heaving. Elder doesn’t sit, enters the circle, spins to catch everyone’s eye then says, “Good evening, travellers. I appreciate your patience.” He gives Miranda an encouraging smile and takes his seat. “I’m sure you’ve all noticed the conversation Miranda and I were engaged in, and while Miranda isn’t quite ready to share, I thought I’d take this time to pose a question to the group. This will benefit our longer standing members, but it will also help our two guests to get to know us better—“ His head swivels around the circle, checking in with everyone, then points to the set of green double doors and says, “Now, be honest with yourselves. Tell me--are you the same person you were when walked into this room for the first time?”
He looks around the circle once more but doesn’t press, gives us time to ruminate.
“I am,” Carl grumps immediately. “I didn’t want to be here then and I still don’t.”
“Of course you don’t,” Elder consoles. “You’ve built a prison of self-hatred inside yourself. You’re trapped behind walls of your own design. Once you realize the walls are insubstantial, that you can pass right through them, you’ll see how profound your new existence truly is.”
Carl looks at Elder for a long second then says, “I can’t do this anymore” He stands, pushes his chair back and sulks out of the circle, headed for the exit.
We all turn to watch him go and Elder says, “Carl, don’t give up, it will come if you give yourself time.”
Carl doesn’t answer. He walks through the doors and they close behind him with a sigh.
Elder takes the disappointment in stride and says, “Anyone else feel as though they’ve not progressed?”
No one answers. We sit in silence, introspective.
Have I changed? The question is easy enough to answer. Absolutely I have. In the past weeks I’ve turned from someone who hated himself for what he was to someone who hates himself for what he’s become. I’ve given up everything--everything I have and everything I am--to catch Eka, and now that I’m only hours away the end, I feel the weight of what I’ve had to do to get here.
My revenge has consumed me, purified me. Made me into someone willing to sacrifice anything to get what I want. “I’ve changed,” I say, breaking the silence. Elder regards me with a smile, misunderstanding.
Yes, I’ve changed. I’m not the same person I was when I first walked in here, and that terrifies the hell out of me.
***
[22:13:57. Tuesday, May 7, 2058]
I’m inside Dora, SenShare linked, watching myself fuck her through her eyes.
I was supposed to end it with her after counselling, tell her that I couldn’t see her anymore. She has a husband—and Connie, even after all that’s happened, she’s still fresh in my head--but I didn’t say anything when Dora climbed into the Sküte next to me. She squeezed my hand and I squeezed back. I didn’t want to be alone. Couldn’t bear to see the hurt on her face when I told her it was over.
When we got back to my apartment, I let her undress me and put the SenShare on my neck and crawl on top of me. When it came down to it, I was weak. I couldn’t see past my immediate needs so I use Dora to sedate my growing apprehension about what I have to do.
Elder’s forced introspection during counselling set me reeling. I’m so far from where I started? I don’t know who I am anymore. I’ve fucked up my life, trampled over it. I have nothing left, nothing else to sacrifice but myself, and still I probably won’t get to Eka.
I roll us over and we tense and moan in concert, connected, mind and body.
What am I doing here, sharing myself with this woman I hardly know? Watching myself repeatedly, compulsively, betray my wife? I can’t stand the sight of myself.
I close my eyes, but Dora doesn’t, and my face hovers above me, contorted and smug, as I thrust into myself harder.
That face. My cheating fucking face. I hate the sight of it. A sudden wordless rage overtakes me. I thrust again, too hard, and pain shoots up from my groin and a shocked gasp escapes my closed lips, echoes through my twinned ears and I pull away from myself.
I deserve it. Deserve the pain.
I pull my arm back, release. The palm strikes my face, knocks my head sideways. It burns, starts to swell. I jerk up and back, trying to get free but there’s too much weight on me, I’m pinned, rear back and hit myself again. This time harder, fist closed.
My face, my asshole fucking face. I swing again, taste blood and start screaming, thrashing, and open my eyes to see Dora bleeding from the nose, the side of our face red, our eyes streaming with tears.
I jerk back, my eyes wide in shock, as if I didn’t know what I was doing all along, as if I didn’t deserve everything—I reach around, yank the cable free and the connection severs and all I see now is Dora, shrunk as far away from me on the bed as she can get, curled into a protective ball, her eyes livid.
“Dora,” I say, reaching out to her. “I’m so—”
“Stay away from
me,” she barks, her voice ripe with fury. She slaps my hand away and follows it up with a left to my jaw. She’s off-balance and there isn’t much weight behind it, but she’s stronger than I’d expect and the blow jars my head to the side. I don’t try to defend myself, lower my head and wait for the next one. She hits me again and cleansing pain washes through my skull.
Yes.
Another hits my cheek, shatters fire across my head.
Again.
I could turn down the pain with the Revv, but don’t. I want it. I want to feel it.
I deserve it.
She shoves me back off the bed and rolls off the other side, dragging the covers with her, gathering up her clothes as she races across the short distance to the bathroom then slides the door behind her.
What have I done?
Dora. My god, what am I doing?
I can’t live like this. I don’t know who I am. Everything’s gone. Connie. My parents. My career. My friends. Myself.
Everything.
The only thing I have left is Eka. Once I’m done with him, it won’t matter any more, I won’t matter anymore.
I hate the thought that I’m going to fail the last thing I ever do. I know I won’t be enough on my own, even armed to the teeth. There has to be a better way.
If I had help--just one other person. With a little luck, we could force our way into Eka’s building, cover each other’s backs, but I can’t risk anyone else getting hurt or killed. I’m expendable, if there was only something—the bathroom door opens with a bang.
I roll my head to watch her stalk out. I want to call out and tell her how sorry I am but for once decide to leave things be. Nothing I say now will make a difference, I’ve gone too far, and her hating me will soften the blow when she learns I’m dead.
The front door beeps her exit.
The SenShare trode is on the floor beside me. Fucking thing.
