Engines of Empire

by Max Carver

“Welcome,” said the doctor android when he arrived a moment later. He had a deep tan, striking good looks, and a charming smile, like a doctor from a soap opera. She could almost hear the cheesy, overly dramatic soap-opera music the moment he swept in through the door. “I'm Dr. White. I understand you had a bit of crash.”

  “Yeah, my car jumped the track. I didn't think that was possible anymore.”

  “You just lie right there, and I'll take good care of you.” He winked as he moved in closer.

  He shined a light in her eyes, then took some quick X-rays and magnetic images, all focusing on her head. The gear extended and retracted on mechanical arms as needed, disappearing behind wooden panels in the wall when it was done.

  “Your skull looks fine,” he finally said, while holograms of her brain floated around him, glowing in the pleasantly dimmed room. “No sign of tissue damage, either. Your assistant said you'd felt a headache and nausea. Any other symptoms? Confusion? Balance issues?”

  “A little bit.”

  “We're looking at a very mild concussion here,” he said. “Not much you can do but enjoy a hot bath, maybe some herbal tea and a mood enhancer. Relax and enjoy yourself.” He gestured toward the bath.

  “Now?”

  “Were you planning on going back out in public like that?” he asked. “We can provide you with fresh clothing.”

  “Oh, right.” Audrey looked down at herself, thinking of her mother's admonishments to always look good in public, always represent the family well. “Good thinking, Doc. I see why you put me in the room with the tub.”

  “We've had other high-discretion patients show up after too much fun and excitement,” he said.

  “I had the excitement, but not the fun.”

  “I'm sorry to hear that.”

  “Are we done, Doctor?” Audrey asked.

  “If you like. Some patients request that I join them in the mineral bath—”

  “Nope,” Audrey said.

  “Perhaps you would prefer a nurse—”

  “I've got Nin if I need anything.” Audrey gestured at her personal android, standing silent and still in the corner. “You can go now.”

  “Yes, ma'am. We thank you for your business.”

  He left. Reluctantly, Audrey disrobed and eased into the warm bath. Nin bathed Audrey, as always, and scrubbed away the crash foam from her skin and hair. The water was soft, full of soaps and salts.

  One of the nurses arrived with a fresh outfit for Audrey on a hanger, then bowed before leaving again.

  “Where should we go next?” Nin wondered.

  “You should go to the repair shop.” Audrey said. “And I'm going home.”

  “To your parents' uptown apartment? Or out to the estate?”

  “What? I'm going to my apartment, like I planned.”

  “But there's a building-wide party tonight,” Nin said. “Security will be extremely poor.”

  “I'm sure Security Steve will catch up to us by then.”

  “One security android will not count for much with so many people around.”

  “So have Hamilcar Security send more,” Audrey said. “Have six or ten of them hanging around my floor. But I'm going home and acting like everything's normal. My family will like the optics of that. Being a no-show at this party will raise more questions than my crashed car. How's that situation evolving, by the way?”

  “Ila is in charge of it,” Nin said. “The police report has been altered with pseudonyms to avoid publicity. Your car is being hauled away by Hamilcar Security.”

  “Good. Their people need to study my car and find out who hacked it.” She felt her lips peel back and bare her teeth, an involuntarily show of anger that she'd been trying to squelch since she was a kid; it was another thing for which her mother constantly admonished her. “See who tried to kill me.”

  “That's exactly it, Audrey. Someone tried to kill you.”

  “And failed. Dodge an assassination in the afternoon, go to a party in the evening—that's just life as a Caracala.” She stood up and took a thick towel from Nin, who arrived with it at just the right moment without being told. She'd been bathing Audrey since she was an infant and had a lifetime of memories and evolving user preferences that kept her in sync with Audrey's wants and needs. Nin would often pour a drink just before Audrey realized she was thirsty or adjust the thermostat just as Audrey began to feel too warm or too cold.

  Audrey dressed in the outfit the nurse had brought. It was simple, cut from white linen, fitted perfectly to her measurements. The wheelchair must have taken those along with her vital signs. She buttoned the shirt and put on the matching silky slippers that fit her feet perfectly, too.

  Nin fixed Audrey's hair and makeup. Audrey wore her black hair short these days, which her mother hated, especially compared to her older sister's blond locks that could be set into thick, glittering curls or styled up into high curling towers crammed with jeweled decorations.

  “All right,” Audrey said, looking at herself in the mirror. She was presentable again, with no sign of the wrecked-and-barfed look, should someone take a picture of her. The outfit was plain, but she liked the lightness and simplicity of it. “Let's get the hell out of here. Have them drop my old clothes into the incinerator.”

  A minute later, Audrey and Nin stepped out to the curb area where they'd arrived. A smaller, sleeker car awaited them now, a midnight black capsule of a limousine that Nin had hired. They climbed in, and they were off. Audrey hadn't encountered a single human at the clinic, which would help keep things discreet. Robots were not inclined to gossip.

  “You have call requests waiting from your mother, your sister, and your brother Marcello,” Nin said.

  “Oh no.” Audrey sighed. “Just my mom for now.”

  “Audrey, what have you gotten into?” Her mother appeared in holographic form a moment later, seeming to occupy the seat across from Audrey in the limo's soft white leather interior. She looked immaculately groomed, ready for a cocktail party, but that could have just been the holo skin she'd selected for this call.

  Audrey's mother, Liastrada Bontherias Venable Caracala, looked about eighteen or nineteen, though in reality she was fifty-one. A constant regimen of cosmetic microsurgery maintained her teenage appearance, which had grown odd and awkward for Audrey during Audrey's own teenage years. Now that Audrey was in her twenties, Audrey's mother looked more like a younger sister.

  “No big deal,” Audrey said. “My car left the road and hopped the rail. The emergency safety measures worked fine though.”

  “But that's not possible! Cars don't just leave the road. That hasn't happened in years.”

  “Well, they're going to have to roll the counter back to zero on that one,” Audrey said. “And some joke-dog of a hacker got into my car's system. Started giving me a whole anti-everything rant.”

  “A terrorist group attacked you? You can't go back to that student apartment. You should head out to the estate—”

  “I'm expected at this party, Mother,” Audrey said. “If I go ahead like nothing happened, that shows we're not afraid.”

  “But... aren't you afraid?”

  “I was, back when my car was hurtling down through the city. But I don't think this hacker's going to follow up by sending an armed death squad to a university residence tower. He's more likely some loner who's consumed too much conspiracy media. I bet that's what special services will find.”

  “And you're willing to risk your life on it?”

  “I think we can dial down the drama. I'll be fine. Nin's ordering more Security Steves. You can tell Father I'm putting on a brave face for the family's sake. He'll like that.”

  “I'll send him that message. But, honey—” Her mother reached out a holographic hand and laid it on top of Audrey's. Audrey felt nothing. “—if you change your mind, don't hesitate. You know our building is extremely secure.”

  “So is mine. I'll be perfectly safe.”

  Audrey took a deep breath when the call ended. H
er mother's anxious, worried energy was unpleasantly infectious.

  The car reached Transview Tower. The site of the trendy new tower had previously been occupied by a swirling, lavish, Rococo-style skyscraper built a decade ago, but that had gone out of fashion and been demolished after about eight years.

  This new skyscraper was even taller, rising into the sky in a kaleidoscope of shimmering colors. The digital-glass walls of many apartments had been set to transparent tints, revealing color-filtered views of the private lives of their residents to anyone who cared to look.

  The floors and ceilings were made of similar material, though thicker. It was possible for every apartment in the building to be transparent on every side, opening up a vast sense of space with one brightly colored chamber after another.

  Audrey usually kept her own apartment opaque—she'd moved to the building because it was popular with the students, not because she cared for the “edgy and innovative” design. She actually preferred the older-fashioned design of her parents' apartment, with its walled gardens and ornate fountains, its vaulted ceiling hung with flowering vines. There were plenty of private nooks there, good places to hide and read a book. Here at the new tower, people clearly preferred to be on display, to have attention on them from all angles.

  She and Nin stepped out of the limo at the fiftieth-floor indoor curb.

  The long black cylinder of a cargo truck arrived just behind Audrey. It turned the heads of students on the curb, coming and going between their own cars and the building lobby. Cargo trucks were rare up here, dozens of levels above the loading docks.

  The sides of the truck rolled open.

  Eight Security Steves hung limply inside, like eight identical bodies on their way to a group funeral.

  All of them straightened up, came to life, and jumped down from the cargo truck, four on each side. They marched up to Audrey, wearing identical grins on their identical lantern jaws.

  “I'm guess you guys are here for me,” Audrey said. “Come on.”

  Audrey, Nin, and her eight-android security detail filled up an entire elevator car, which was the same transparent colored-glass design as the rest of the building. More heads turned as they zipped up past one elevator lounge after another; the daughter of the prime legislator riding with a whole pack of personal security bots instead of just one or two. She supposed she could pass it off as extra security for the party.

  The green-tinted elevator stopped at her floor, where her roommates' assistant androids were getting the elevator lounge ready for the party. On every floor of the apartment building, the cross-shaped elevator lounge was the common area shared by the four corner apartments. Today, the floor, ceiling, and walls here were tinted transparent orange, and the androids were busy setting out orange balloons, drinks, and cookies.

  “Finally, you're home!” Audrey's floormate Jennilaura emerged from her own apartment, holding a bag of color-coded mood-enhancing pills. She poured these out like candy next to the drinks and cookies on the sideboard. Her smile faltered when she saw the small mob of black-suited security androids surrounding Audrey. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, I had some car trouble. My mom insisted on sending these guys for the party.” Audrey rolled her eyes as she gestured at the Security Steves. “I'll try to keep them out of the way.”

  “How do you like the place? Orange enough?” Jennilaura smiled.

  “Sure, but... ” Audrey looked at the orange walls, the same hue of orange in all four directions. The walls of Jennilaura's apartment were transparent, so Audrey could see all of Jennilaura's furniture and her fat Siamese cat sleeping on the floor in front of its eight-level cat condo.

  Another roommate, Kelleyen, had left her wall transparent too. Her handsome, muscled personal assistant, Lio, was giving Kelleyen her daily massage.

  Audrey's own apartment was opaque, as usual. She liked her privacy, even in her sitting room.

  “How about this?” Audrey whispered her idea to Nin, who nodded and wirelessly conveyed Audrey's wishes.

  The walls turned porcelain white, adorned with painted satsuma trees heavy with ripe orange fruit. It was the design from Simon Quick's antique tea set from Earth.

  “Oh yeah!” Jennilaura said. “I like how it's still orange, but it's so... cultural.”

  “Yeah, it's cultural,” Audrey said.

  “I love it!” chimed in Jennilaura's personal assistant, Ea, a pretty female android with colorful striped hair and long legs she showed off with short dresses. Ea tended to love everything with great enthusiasm.

  “Those orchids look like garbage!” Jennilaura snapped at Ea, who was arranging one of several vases of delicate orange orchids for the party. “I swear, Ea, I am trading you in next year. You're so useless.”

  “I am sorry!” Ea pleaded. “I will do better—”

  “Just download some new material. Copy something from a lifestyle site if you have to. Make it less awful.” Jennilaura turned back to Audrey. “Does yours give you this much trouble?”

  “No, Nin's great.”

  “I wish her model was still in production.”

  Audrey and Nin entered Audrey's private apartment, while Jennilaura resumed berating her android. “Why are there streaks on the floor? They need to be spotless for tonight! Do you want the girls below us to think we're slobs?”

  The door closed behind Audrey, leaving her alone in the peace of her sitting room. She dropped to the couch and listened to summaries of messages from concerned family members, which had been forwarded to Nin from their respective personal androids. Audrey gave Nin some replies to send back to her family members' androids.

  Then she squeezed in some classwork, studying a text called Manufacturing and Management of Public Opinion from her state communications course. She read the book in tall, glowing letters that floated like ghosts in her room. She watched the example videos. She was glad when the party started so she could finally stop studying.

  The elevator lounge grew crowded fast. Looking up and down through the orange floors and ceiling, she could see the same party taking place in one lounge after another, one level after another, an immense gathering of people.

  Good. Let there be no doubt that the terrorists hadn't scared Audrey at all. In addition to her personal security, the apartment building had plenty of security of its own. Even this huge party was not open to the public, only to tower residents and their invited guests. And their guests' plus-ones.

  People immediately started talking to Audrey, more and more of them, a chattering vortex of friends, acquaintances, neighbors, and random guests. She felt like socializing at first, but soon found her headache returning, and it was hard for her to concentrate on any conversation.

  “Come on, you obviously need something,” Jennilaura said, holding out the bowl of mood enhancers. “Just take a smiley.” The chewable tablets were identifiable by shape and color: red hearts for feelings of love and arousal, eyeballs for people who liked to hallucinate. The yellow smiley faces were for general happiness.

  “I don't usually—”

  “That's why you should.” Jennilaura opened Audrey's mouth and dropped a smiley on her tongue. It began to dissolve instantly. Jennilaura grinned. “Enjoy yourself. This place is crawling with opportunities.”

  “You should spit that out, Audrey,” Nin said.

  Audrey hesitated. “Maybe just for today. Don't worry, Nin. Things won't get too wild.”

  Nin frowned. “This is not your usual behavior.”

  “Maybe that's been my problem. Too uptight. That's what my sister has always told me. Which is kind of ironic coming from her, but... ” Audrey shrugged, letting the tablet dissolve in her mouth.

  She felt strangely empowered. Something important had happened to her. She'd nearly died. Someone had tried to kill her, and she'd survived. Maybe it was just the shock, but she didn't feel frightened. She felt... alive, like the event had broken through the cage doors of her tightly planned, anxiety-fueled existence and gi
ven her a dose of something primal, something vitalizing. Maybe this was why some people enjoyed life-threatening extreme sports, like orbital diving and magma-boarding.

  She danced with the crowd, made up mostly of students and their personal-assistant androids. Kelleyen had rented a DJ bot for their party, and the machine filled the elevator lounge with thudding dance music and flashing lights in every shade of orange, between its frequent bad jokes. Audrey dialed the bot's settings down to “minimal comedy.”

  At one point, she found herself arguing with Jasonius Falicorn, the intern who'd given the weak presentation on Klamptura. He was as cocky as he was dull, a handsome fluffhead in an expensive patchwork suit.

  “There's no reason to intervene in Klamptura,” she said, speaking loud to be heard through the music.

  “There's aluminum and cadmium,” he said, his voice slurred. A group of his friends stood around him, most of them male, all of them inebriated, their elaborately styled hair adorned with precious metals and rare feathers. “So much goddamn aluminum.”

  “Do you know what they do on Veritum?” Audrey said. “The men in the priesthood are called Faces of God. And all the girls in the colony? They're chattel, divided among the Faces. The women are nothing but sex slaves and brood mares. That's a place where Carthage can make life better for people.”

  “Huh. Well, that's why the religious nuts move out to miserable places that nobody wants, with no valuable resources.” Jasonius smirked. “They just want to be free to fuck their kids in peace.”

  Mouths dropped all around at his comment. Then one of his friends laughed, and everyone around them started to laugh, even Audrey's floormates Jennilaura and Kelleyen.

  Audrey, who'd spent a sleep-deprived week studying the issue and now had awful images seared into her mind, didn't laugh but headed toward her apartment again, her mood souring.

  “Hey, you're Audrey Caracala, aren't you?” chirped a voice from the thick crowd. Audrey turned to see a grinning girl with short brown hair and gray eyes. There was something familiar about her. Classmate? Neighbor?

  “Yes.”

  “Yes!” She stepped closer as if she had a secret to share, while her orange liquor drink slopped over the edge of her glass. “Listen, it's been a while. Do you remember me?”