by Damien Boyes
Even I don’t know if I’m bluffing. If she continues to resist, how far will I go? Killing Cole was one thing, he had it coming, but an innocent man?
She blinks. Opens her mouth in horror and slaps her free hand over it.
“Who are you talking to?” her husband calls again, more insistent this time. He’ll be getting up. What if he comes out of the next room and sees me? What am I going to do then?
Darien Cole couldn’t raise a finger to defend himself, and that didn’t stop me from killing him. But he was a serial mind-thief. Can I really kill Dora’a husband in cold blood? Is my revenge worth murder?
I wait for something to tell me I won’t, that I’ll turn and run or give myself up. But nothing comes.
I guess we’ll find out.
Dora’s hands are shaking and she glares at me like I’ve infected her with something. “Just Mildred from next door,” she says, her voice modulated, sounding something close to normal. “I’ll be right in with your tea.”
He grunts from inside and I pull her away from the door and she doesn’t fight me, lets me put her in the passenger seat of the hopper at the curb. I hold out the cuff and she takes it from me, snaps it to her neck. Then I hand her the shyft, the one that’ll let me double myself into her, let me overwrite her active rithm with mine and snatch her body out from under her.
She takes that too. “One hour,” she says, and gives me a look—I don’t know her well enough to know if it’s resentment, resignation, disgust or hatred—and presses the shyft to her cuff. Her body freezes, everything but her eyes. They keep right on watching me.
I get around to the other side of the hopper and plot one last course.
One more stop before this is all over.
StatUS-ID
[fdaa:9afe:17e6:a2ef::Gage/-//GIBSON]
SysDate
[06:54:51. Monday, January 20, 2059]
What did Dora mean, ‘she’s coming home?’
I don’t wonder long. My mind cleaves and I’m assaulted by an incoming barrage of memories. Things I remember—Connie’s last cry, Amit’s blank eyes as he drove through us, my tiny apartment. And things I don’t—meeting Wiser on my first day back to the Service, hunting the streets for cyphers, fucking Dora and hating myself for it.
These are my memories.
It isn’t the fragment that’s been hunting me. It’s been me, inside her. Those thoughts are mine. Mine and not mine at the same time. It’s him.
The other Finsbury.
All this time, frantically plotting a way back into his head. Into my head.
The memories come faster now. A succession of horrors I can’t look away from parade across my senses, like someone else has gained control of my thoughts.
I watch myself casually shoot Elder, squeeze the trigger on innocent people at the Fāngzhōu and don’t think twice about it. I throw Dub down in front of a train. I threaten Dora into giving me her body, expecting Eka will kill us both.
Months of memories. Waiting and plotting, desperate to get my fractured mind back home where it belongs. Spreading from person to person, wearing their lives until their usefulness wore out and had to be disposed of. Pulling myself between skyns like a parasite, splitting up and rejoining through Dora and Elder and Tala and Miranda and Petra. All to engineer my restoration, so I could get back to the rest of myself.
My vision sea-saws and flips and now I’m looking at Dora’s skyn, the one I’ve been in so long I feel like I’m looking in a mirror.
Those people, they’re not dead. None of them. They’re still in storage somewhere, all they lost was some time. A small price to pay for what I did to protect the world from Eka, a fucking superintelligence. Shit, I should get a commendation from the President for taking it out.
I flex my fingers and toes and my body doesn’t feel any more familiar than Dora’s did, but for the first time in months, I can stretch my thoughts, stumble across memories I didn’t even know I had, memories I’d abandoned when I copied myself into Dora.
This is what I was missing. It’s all there.
My forgotten childhood. The beautiful anxiety. Mom. Dad. The war—Jesus, the war, how could I forget that. After the war. Meeting Connie.
I smell the tropical flowers. Watch her hair stream like a comet. Feel my face flush and my bowels clench.
I remember. This is who I am, not that closed-up sliver of myself.
It all comes rushing in, so vivid and rich with emotion I’m overwhelmed, like I’ll drown in the intensity, but it soon evens out and I’m floating in a calm blue sea of thought.
I had no idea what I’d lost, living all those months in Dora’s cramped head.
It was all worth it, everything I did.
I’m back.
I remember myself.
A sob I’ve been holding in for years erupts from my throat.
I’m me.
I did it. I got justice for Connie’s death, saved the world from a rabid superintelligence and made it back into my head. There were so many times I almost gave up, let Dora’s Cortex erase me. But I didn’t. I kept going.
Yes, there were some sacrifices, some collateral damage. But short term.
No one died.
I won.
Though it was way harder that I thought it would be. I thought getting back into my head would be easy, thought I had it all worked out: keep Gibson on his toes, keep him reacting. He was me, I figured if I kept him from gaining a sense of stability it’d be easy enough to get him to shyft and open himself up. I was interested in Dora, why wouldn’t he be? Except I put up more resistance than I thought I would. Gibson didn’t react like I thought he would. Like I thought I would. It was frustrating, but I got there.
And letting that fucker Amit walk away with Xiao—I can’t believe Gibson was going to surrender the datakey. The Eka pattern is a weapon pointed at humanity and he wanted to hand it to the only guy who can pull the trigger.
That’s not going to happen now, thanks to me. Again. Not that anyone will ever know what I’ve sacrificed.
I sigh and the breath feels od in my lungs. I’ve gotten so used to Dora’s skyn I’d forgotten what a male body feels like, lighter and heavier at the same time, and the floor is much further away.
I’d like some time to acquaint myself with this new skyn but I can’t. Wiser is on his way.
I need to be ready.
The official story will be I was too late. Showed up, tried to talk Elder down, but he killed Dora before I could stop him. There was a struggle and I shot Elder through the eye, destroyed his Cortex. I didn’t want to, but I had no choice.
There’ll be loose ends, but most of my crimes will be pinned on Eka and his lingering homicidal fragment.
I eliminated a superintelligence. I won’t ever be a cop again but with my name cleared I should get most of my rep and money back. I’ll be rich, I won’t need a job for decades.
All I need to do is sever the connection with Dora’s skyn, destroy her Cortex, set the room up to match the story and this will all be over.
It all seemed so easy a moment ago, before I actually got back into my head, but now—how did I ever think I could just kill Dora?
My head grows light and the room wobbles around me and I have to steady myself on the bed. I just killed Elder, and it seemed so right at the time but now…
No. I have to go through with it, like it or not. This was the plan. I’ve come this far. I have to shoot Dora. Her Cortex will be gone but she won’t be dead, she’s still in storage. I can revive her, get her a new skyn…
So why am I just sitting here, scared to move?
I can’t think, don’t know who I am or what I should be doing anymore. Everything seemed so clear up but now that I’m back in my own head, now that I once again have access to my memories and everything I was, I have a terrible feeling. What if I’ve been wrong?
I’m not—this is how it has to be. I’ve come so far, I can’t give up now. After I cut the connection to Dora’s Cortex,
it’s all over. I get my life back. Isn’t that what I wanted?
Still, I don’t cut the connection.
Time is running out and I know it. But how am I’m supposed to just shoot Dora?
Her mind’s still in there. Held dormant by the shyft but once I release her skyn, she’ll restore from a local sync, just like Elder just did. She’ll die.
I don’t know why this is such a problem for me now. I just did the same thing to Elder and didn’t think twice.
She’ll wake up with her last memory of me on the porch, maybe just before, but it’ll be her.
And I’m supposed to just kill her?
Yes, that’s the plan. It’s her or me.
She’s a person.
I have no other option.
There’s always another way.
Always another way. Connie used to say that. She never saw an obstacle, only a new challenge to be overcome—and as I remember her words, the comforting image of her face comes to me.
Of all the things I loved about her—she was kind and smart and had perfect lips—the thing I loved most was she never let ‘no’ stop her, not if she believed in what she was doing.
She knew what was right, and wouldn’t stop until she succeeded.
My mind winces. Pain stabs me through her smile.
This isn’t right.
Her smile turns as she sees me. Sees who I became.
This isn’t me. What have I done?
I only wanted—my thoughts squeeze up and I heave the contents of my stomach over Elder’s corpse. The room goes black as tears rain down my face.
My God, what have I done?
My body dissolves in fire and my memories shred. I try to hold on, find something to cling to, but all I can see is Connie. She’s disgusted and angry and hurt and I want to tell her I did it for her, but we both know that’s not true. Everything I did was in spite of her.
I used people. Hurt people. Killed people. All in her name, all because I wanted vengeance. Everything else fell away and I lost myself to it.
She would have hated me for what I’d let myself become.
Lightning roars through my skull, white crackles of distortion that cut through my vision.
I’m sorry.
Something’s wrong—
My thoughts tear, shrivel like dried grass.
I’m fading.
No-- I just got back.
Instead of accepting me, my own head’s treating me like an intruder.
It should have worked. Why would my own head reject me?
I must have been away too long, be too far out of sync. I’m not myself any more.
My own brain doesn’t want me.
I can’t go back to Dora’s skyn, can’t live with my thoughts so narrow. So crumpled--
But I have no other choice.
I’ll die, let go. It’s over. I’m gone too far already.
I can’t— I don’t want to die.
I think the panic word, retreat back into Dora’s Cortex, and almost instantly forget what I left behind.
StatUS-ID
[a646:d17e:8670:511f::Finsbury/D//GAGE]
SysDate
[18:35:17. Saturday, May 11, 2058]
The hopper’s pilot gives me the five-minute warning. We’re in the air, almost to Eka’s building. I’ve stalled long enough.
I snap the SenShare cable onto Dora’s neck. She’s paralysed. Unconscious too, I hope. Thinking that she might still be in her head, watching me get ready to invade her mind, I can barely—
Enough. Time’s up.
I ack the Alpha shyft and don’t feel anything. Nothing changes until I remove my cuff and attach the SenShare to Dora.
My brain twitches. The twitch pulls out into a sucking vortex in my skull—the Mate shyft, calling to me from across the cable. Inviting me in.
My heart is trilling as I close my eyes and sink into a new body.
The world slows down. Way down. It’s not the Revv. I had to disable it before the transfer, and anyway, this is further than the Revv ever went. So slow the low drone of the turbines is drawn to a silent vibration.
I don’t know how long I’m stuck like this, frozen in time between bodies, and then it’s over and I’m in two places at once, seeing out of two sets of eyes.
I’m prepared this time and breathe through the vertigo. Dora’s body is familiar, but completely alien at the same time. I raise my left arm and watch two bodies move in unison. The movement is identical but the two arms feel distinct in my head. One of me is breathing faster. Shifting in my seat elicits contrasting sensitivities.
A moment passes and I keep my eyes open, staring at myself, then I clap two sets of hands with a single sound.
It works. Except for a tightness in my head I can’t identify. A kind of mental claustrophobia, like someone’s squeezed a band across my brain and cut off access to my thoughts. Must be a side effect of the transfer. It’s unpleasant, but I can deal with it for an hour.
Now to let go. One of me stays here, and one of me becomes the copy. Which one will I end up?
I sever the connection and the constricting band around my thoughts relaxes.
I’m still in my body. Still me.
I try to keep the relief off my face because I know exactly how the other me is feeling right now, how I’d be feeling if I’d ended up the copy—he’s left his skyn and is now living inside someone else, having a literal out of body experience. He’s not me and he’s not Dora—he’s wearing Dora.
He’s Fin-in-Dora.
Her eyes flutter and she reaches up and strokes her cheek, squeezes her face then looks at me and shakes her head in disbelief.
“How do—?” I start to ask and Fin-in-Dora’s already answering.
“Weird,” she says, “like my thoughts are all scrunched up in a ball. Make sure you keep your head in one piece. I don’t know how long I can stand to be in here.”
We both nod and reach over the seats into the hopper’s rear storage to arm up. Fin-in-Dora takes the cuff and doses herself with a Revv, and I do the same. Even with two of us, sharing programming and thinking at speed—I don’t know if we’ll make it to Eka.
We don’t know what’s waiting for us on the inside, but I do know a full frontal assault won’t work. I came up with an alternative plan when I was watching Eka’s building, banging those drones against his rooftop’s exclusion zone. I did done some trial-and-error experimenting and measured exactly how close the drones could get to his building before Eka disabled their guidance and sent them flying home.
There’s about five metres of dead air around Eka’s roof. If anything airborne gets closer than that it ends up spit right back out. I can’t get the hopper closer than five metres, but I don’t need to. Five metres is plenty. I bought an emergency ladder from a hardware store this morning, one long enough I can set the hopper hovering just above the exclusion zone and we can climb straight down to the roof and enter the building from there. No ground sensors to avoid, no need to deal with the security on the ground—it almost feels easy.
So easy, I’m worried I’ve overlooked something.
We’re close now, one hundred metres out.
The address is an eighteen-storey apartment all by itself on a corner lot surrounded by a wide swath of lawn and a bunch of city trees. The structure is triangular with squared-off corners, rust coloured brick muted by phovo film. With the sun just down Eka’s hideout blends in perfectly with its surroundings. A pleasant apartment block in a neighbourhood full of pleasant apartment blocks. No one would ever suspect it was the hive of one of the most dangerous creatures on the planet.
We’re still sixty metres out when the console does dark. The turbines downshift into emergency landing and we descend for three seconds before the system resets and springs back to life.
“Shit,” we say.
Fin-in-Dora and I both move to reset the bootleg drone control app and I get to it first, retake manual control and circle the hopper back around, gain altitude, a
nd park us sixty-five metres above the building. Eka must have the exclusion radius set larger for bigger drones, I should have expected that, should have known Eka wouldn’t overlook a detail in his security.
“We’ll have to find a ground approach,” I say, surprised I don’t hear an echo.
“No,” Fin-in-Dora says. “There’s another way.”
She reaches out and flips through the hopper’s menu and when I realize after a second what she’s doing I immediately wonder why she got there before I did.
I reach up and make sure the belts are tight around me and Fin-in-Dora does the same, then hits the manual shutdown.
The turbines cut and the hopper drops. No slow emergency decent this time, we’re in free fall, plummeting. A reboot on a hopper’s main computer takes roughly three seconds. Usually plenty of time to recover when flying at cruising altitude, but we’re above Eka’s building—about three and a half seconds from crumpling into the roof.
The consoles are off, the power dead. That means no cushions. This is going to hurt.
I watch the elongated milliseconds count down from inside the Revv, and clutch at the restraints as the memory of Eka running Connie and I down cycles through my head. Not the real memory, though, the one from the Dream. Instead of the few last loving seconds of time we shared before the end, Connie’s staring at me, her face contorted into a disgusted scowl. I don’t want to see this, I try to remember her smile and can’t.
0.94 seconds before impact the console blinks back on. The hopper sees the roof and doesn’t even try to restart the turbines. The cushions are still inflating when we hit, doing something like 125 kph.
The front of the hopper ripples against the roof and when the roof doesn’t budge the hopper compresses, a shockwave travelling up the hood and headed straight for us. I don’t want to live through the rest of the crash in slow motion and pull back on the Revv to get it over with.
