Automatic Reload

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  Silvia deserves a human touch.

  I watch the clock in my HUD tick down: it’s dutifully logged the deadline as “surrender to police,” and is now counting down from 23:59:32. And …

  I punch a wall.

  The IAC shouldn’t get away with this. Silvia didn’t deserve this. Her mother and sister don’t deserve this. Yet the IAC’s analyzed Silvia’s personality models until they found a way to shatter her resistance.

  It wasn’t even personal. Some Yak bigwig had said, “Get that woman back,” and some AI combed Silvia’s therapy records to find her pressure points. The terrorists I’d once bombed might be kept awake by nightmares, but that computerized voice held no concept of mercy.

  If the IAC did inflict bodily horrors on Silvia’s mother, their fabled automated punishment facilities would record the damage with no more emotion than a hospital computer logging a death. This wasn’t terrorists orchestrating a kidnapping; it was a UPS algorithm figuring out the most efficient method to retrieve a package.

  Which led to an even more terrifying implication: maybe nobody had made that decision to get Silvia back. Maybe some monitoring process had noted Silvia’s absence, queued up a macroed response of “find the target’s psychological weak points,” and the IAC’s manhunter-AIs had collated data.

  No human mind made those choices. It was merely software, wrecking lives.

  Everything I had worked so hard to avoid becoming.

  Yet what had emotion gotten me? I knew how brutal the IAC was; I’d tossed data aside for sentiment. I should have known that fighting Donnie would deplete my combat effectiveness, that I wouldn’t be able to return home for resupplies, that one man battling a multinational operation was a fool’s errand.

  The algorithms were, once again, smarter than our messy wetware.

  “What did you mean when you called me an ‘operative’?” Silvia asks.

  My therapy-AIs could help me deflect the question. But dammit, when you send someone off to the firing squad the least you can do is be honest.

  “They left you human hands, and a human face, and the … outline … of what’d be covered by clothing would be … uh…”

  I stall, hoping Silvia will get the message, but she looks nauseous. Her gaze flicks down to look at her tendriled torso.

  “It’s … curvaceous,” I finish, blushing.

  She runs her fingers across her chest, then flicks her alien skin’s moisture away in revulsion. “I think I know where you’re going. But I want to hear you say it.”

  I sigh as I slip into mission-briefing mode. “You’re faster than Donnie’s armaments. You knew how to take out his weaponry. Put you in a pantsuit with the right faked credentials, and you could slip into any crowd without notice. I, uh … I don’t think any government’s got security prepared to deal with someone like you.”

  Her quiet is glacial. “They want me to kill people.”

  “I think that’s the next stage of your training, yes. If I had to guess, you’re fresh off the factory line. They were probably bringing you to an indoctrination facility to…”

  What’s the word? Brainwash? They wouldn’t remove her panic disorder—they’d redirect it into panicking at disobedience. Computer-inflicted Skinner-box torture.

  “To train you,” I finish.

  “How many have they done this to?”

  She’s thinking at this from a different angle than I am. That’s hopeful. “I … don’t know. I’ve never worked with the IAC before. This was a favor for a friend.” I don’t know why that’s important to explain to her, but it is. “This was a training run—to see if this squad could handle IAC missions. I don’t think they’d have trusted this to Donnie’s crew if you’d been their sole prototype. So … I’d guess there’s others.”

  “You … seemed surprised to see me, yes? To see this?” She scrunches up again, an increasingly familiar crouch that blocks me from seeing her fibrous, wriggling torso.

  “Yeah. That’s … it’s new.”

  “And if someone like—me—had killed people, you’d have heard of it?”

  “Not necessarily. Not with the IAC. But there’s been no high-profile missions involving someone like you that I’m aware of.” Though one wonders how much I would be aware of; I suspect the IAC’s AIs have already broken into the NJPD’s records to erase the logs of Silvia’s attack.

  She draws in one trembling breath. “Are they all panic-disorder victims?”

  “I couldn’t tell you for sure. But you say your mother booked you into an experimental treatment for panic disorder, which … seems to indicate the IAC was searching for subjects who met specific criteria. Could be these bodies work better with people whose neurochemistry puts them into a continual fight-or-flight loop.”

  “So what you’re saying is…” She holds her belly tight, like she has a stomachache. “There’s an IAC project where they hunt for people with panic disorders, and kidnap them, and remold them into assassins?”

  “I can’t be certain. But … that’s the most likely conclusion.”

  “And we’ve got twenty-four hours to stop them.”

  Hope lifts me up. Yet I have to leave emotion behind, use algorithmic logic to talk her out of rebelling.

  “We can’t stop them, Silvia. We haven’t even avoided the cops. If we do escape police custody, we still don’t have a repair lab for me to get refitted. If we find a lab, chances are good the IAC’s analysts have anticipated we’ll go there. Even if we avoid the pitfalls and somehow figure out where this prison facility is, our chances of destroying it are minimal. And none of that protects your family.”

  “I don’t care!”

  Silvia’s fists shatter the concrete, bury themselves up to the elbows in clay.

  “Do you know what my mother gave up for me?” she asks.

  “No.” This time it feels right to slump next to her, bumping my artificial shoulder against her genetically engineered one.

  “Everything,” she whispers. “She had to get a job that would let her call in sick whenever I had a breakdown, so … she got fired a lot. She had a job as a pediatrician, but those became harder to find as the auto-docs got more efficient. Yet she never complained. She worked her ass off to keep me in therapy. She took me to church whenever I lost faith with God. She researched what jobs I could hold down, and when she discovered an experimental treatment that helped panic disorders she fought for me to get into the program. She gave up everything for me.”

  I swallow back envy. When I told my friends I planned on severing my own limbs, my combat buddies told me I was getting too into body-hacking. Sure, I pushed my friends away when they told me to drop the chrome, but … I was hoping they’d push back.

  Despite Silvia’s problems, she had something to lose.

  “Your mom sounds extraordinary.”

  She rests her hand on my thigh. “Someday I’ll tell you about my sister. But that’s where the IAC fails, you see?”

  “I don’t.”

  “What it knows is that I’m terrified Mama did all that for nothing, right? What if Mama’s wasted her life shepherding some—some broken-down daughter who she should have let die.”

  I put my arm around her. “Hey now.” The reassurance feels lame. “Hey.”

  “No!” She shrugs me away. “That’s how she is. She helps everybody. She’s always bringing home people she met waiting on the unemployment lines. We bought her a spare bed for Christmas, because the people who kept sleeping over complained how uncomfortable the couch was; she called it the best gift she ever got. So you tell me, Mat …

  “You think Mama would want me killing people to help the IAC? You think God will?”

  I nod, then notice the way Silvia’s craned her neck around to watch my reaction. This is no rhetorical question. I could shut her down by telling her her mother would never know what happened to Silvia anyway, and it’s better to prioritize a single woman you know over faceless people you don’t.

  Except I used to kill th
ose faceless people. My drones showed me the children who got killed in collateral damage. I saw grief-stricken relatives staggering towards the mangled corpses; my cameras had tracked them as they fell to their knees, my microphones picking up their distant wailing.

  I lost the ability to hand-wave casualties away.

  I can’t influence her decision, even though I burn to fight. Instead, I lift up my helmet so she can see my face. “Your mother will never know what happens either way, Silvia.”

  “I’ll know. That’s what the IAC’s people can’t comprehend. They know what scares me; they don’t know why I’m scared. If I turn myself in, I betray who my family wants me to be. If I fight the IAC, then … oh, Lord, Mama … Vala … they’re…”

  She bolts for the door; I grab her. For once she doesn’t punch my face in.

  “I can’t fight them all the way, Mat. I’m not that brave. I try to be, but I’m not. But … they gave us twenty-four hours because of that thirty-three percent uncertainty, right? Because they’re not a hundred percent certain the message was passed on?”

  It’s a 35.3 percent uncertainty, but I don’t correct her.

  “If we don’t get anywhere after twenty-four hours, I have to turn myself in. If I get Mama and Vala hurt and make no difference, then that’ll destroy me. But we have to stop something before our time’s up. But I…”

  She hangs her head.

  “I’m not some combat machine, Mat. I wasn’t even a good home inspector. I can’t do this alone. I hate to ask you, after everything you’ve done, but … you have to help me. I don’t know how to do this alone.”

  “Silvia, I—”

  “Don’t say no.”

  “I’m not saying no, but I don’t know what to do either. We need to find a refitting station. One the IAC won’t expect us to go after. And we don’t know where the IAC was going to take you, or what defenses they have.”

  “I don’t care!” She shoves me backwards, all eight hundred pounds of me; I slam into the fuse box.

  She flicker-kneels next to me, pressing her face to my forehead.

  “Oh God, oh God, I’m sorry, Mat, I was born broken but they fucked me up worse, they broke me so bad.”

  “They didn’t break you,” I tell her. “They forged you into a weapon.”

  She clutches onto that thought like a drowning sailor clutching onto a wreckage. She didn’t volunteer to be a weapon—yet when she’s looking to cut her enemies down, she’s glad to have something to bring to the party.

  “Not an experienced weapon though.” She puffs, dejected. “Not like you. I’m sorry, Mat—I don’t know what a refitting station looks like, let alone where to find one. I’d just strip Donnie’s spare parts off and bolt ’em on.”

  It doesn’t work that way.

  Yet there are other ways to scavenge.

  “Huh.” I turn an idea over in my head, “I bet—”

  An alert chimes. Herbie. Despite everything, Herbie made it to the house unseen.

  “I’ve got a place to go,” I tell her. “And I don’t think this refit station’s on the IAC’s list.”

  * * *

  We talk about movies on the two-hour drive down. Because movies are safe, and silence lets the uncomfortable questions swell.

  “So … have you seen The Godfather?” I say, purposely naming an eighty-year-old movie that most people find dull.

  “I love The Godfather!” she squeals, clapping her hands. “It’s a little bloody, but such a classic drama about loyalty! You know about the oranges, right?”

  The way she tilts her head indicates she’s giving me her own test—but if she expects me to fail Godfather trivia, she’s got another think coming.

  “The deadliest fruit,” I say dramatically. “Don Vito dies with an orange in his mouth, bowls of oranges are set before each of the five families…”

  “Don’t forget how the don buys himself oranges before he gets…”

  Shot, she would have said.

  She reaches down to pull a bullet out of her stomach, her gut’s coiled masses still squeezing out the rounds shot deep into her body. Previously avulsed bullets, deformed from the impact, roll around clinking in the footwell; she drops this new addition down into the collection.

  “So why do you like movies?” I ask, prodding us away from contemplation of the potential ambush awaiting us.

  She shrinks into the seat, wrapping the seat belt around herself; clearly this was the wrong question. “It’s what lets me stop thinking about stuff at the end of the day. Mama or Vala sit me on the couch, and watch movies with me until I stop pondering the day’s screwups.”

  I can’t tell if she’s missing her family or doesn’t like being reminded why she needs movies.

  “Yeah, but…” I can match her awkward for awkward, as it turns out. “Why old movies? It’s not like the new movies are any less distracting.”

  “You sound like Vala.” I think I’ve made a mistake until a slow, beautiful smile creeps across her face. “She keeps telling me new movies are just as good, hasta la madre, why can’t we watch something made this century? But … new movies aren’t as good. They’re all flash-cuts and whip-pans and bam bam bam.”

  Her hands blur before her at superhuman speeds, relaying what the chaos of modern filmmaking feels like to her.

  “New movies are too tense.” Her voice quavers. “I like sinking into a shot. I like something nice and sedate, so I can lose myself in slow visuals and stop bothering people.”

  I’m trying to imagine her family calming her down after a tense action film. I realize managing Silvia’s condition was a full-time job. She pushes her feet around in the footwell, doubtlessly remembering the threats the IAC made to her sister, the bullets making wind-chime tinkle noises. She shuffles, acquiring a rhythm.

  “Musicals!” she says brightly. “You watch musicals? Nobody danced better than Ginger Rogers.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Surely you mean Fred Astaire.”

  “No, I mean Ginger. Ginger did everything Fred did, but backwards and in high heels.” She hugs herself happily, remembering old dance scenes. “I was a clumsy kid, but I’d watch Ginger and think, maybe someday I could be that graceful.”

  “Maybe you could be now.”

  “Maybe I could dance in this body! I could never get my legs to do what I wanted. But with these reflexes! Wouldn’t that be something?” She grabs my arm, excited. “Can you program in dance sequences into your limbs? We could dance together.”

  “That would be…” I stop configuring my intrusion software to ponder how I’d reconfigure my artificial musculature loadouts for quick, rapid footwork. Copying Fred Astaire’s movements would be trivial—there are packages I could install for body-mirroring—but I’d have to compensate for my increased body mass.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “It’s a dumb idea.”

  I realize I’ve been so busy pondering how to do it that I’ve let the conversation go dead.

  “No, no,” I reassure her. “It’s an interesting challenge.”

  But the moment’s passed. I talk when I should be silent and go silent when I should be talking.

  “Ever see Spinal Tap?” I interject.

  She wrinkles her nose. “I don’t like comedies. Too much embarrassment. How about Indiana Jones?”

  “You mean Raiders of the Lost Ark?” We hum the theme song, and our awkwardness vanishes into a happy debate about which Indiana Jones movies were the best—there are, we decide, only two Raiders movies that count—which in turn extends into ranking the best Harrison Ford movies.

  Then we debate which 1940s-era actor Harrison Ford is more like, Robert Mitchum or Humphrey Bogart. She doesn’t like all the movies I do: she’s much more prone to retreating into fluffy musicals; she doesn’t like horror; she can’t stand war movies. Yet finding someone who knows those names is a joy—it’s like her imaginary friends know my imaginary friends.

  She rests her hand on my thigh.

  “Vala always
dozes off when I put on the classic-film stream.” She sighs. “It’s nice talking to someone who likes this stuff.”

  In an ideal world, we’d hole up in my laboratory and show each other our favorite movies until we fell asleep.

  Instead, I fret that I’m somehow taking advantage of her. I don’t know what her touch means. Is it flirtatious? Friendly? Does she realize I can feel her fingers on my prosthetics as intensely as if she’d pressed her palm against my bare belly?

  Does she even know she’s doing it? She notes her palm spread across my thigh’s armored plating, eyes widening; she snatches her hand back, pressing it to her chest as if her arm somehow got away from her.

  Yet as we debate the merits of Orson Welles’s directing—she thinks he’s overrated and dreary, I think he’s magnificent—her hand drifts back.

  I don’t mention it because I remember that awkward silence after the dance discussion. I don’t want to make her self-conscious.

  That’s what I tell myself, anyway.

  But honestly, it’s been a while since anyone’s touched me without fetishization. I have no lack of choices when it comes to partners—but in return, I have to satisfy their urges to couple with something freakish. I can’t just be a person with them; I am an experience. They trail their fingers along my prosthetics like they’re sizing up a new car, then waggle their eyebrows and ask me whether everything’s artificial.

  (For the record, my penis is the John Henry of biological equipment, staunchly refusing to be bested by any cyborg enhancements.)

  Yet Silvia’s touch is … it’s honest. And I’m selfish. We’re headed into death’s teeth. I won’t nudge a woman who’s potentially in Stockholm syndrome into further confusing adrenaline with chemistry, but …

  We both need this.

  For now.

  And as we finish off a rousing discussion on whether The Big Lebowski is a comedy or not, Herbie pulls to a stop across from a rusted security gate.