by Stanley Bing
Jerry calmly regarded the ugliness of the naked thing that was Arthur when he was displeased. Then he smiled and inclined his tiny, shiny head perhaps a quarter of an inch, but it was submission enough. “I got you, boss,” he said without irony.
“Good man,” said Arthur, who then clicked a button on the desktop in front of him. The room reverted to its default setting, which placed Arthur at the edge of the south rim of the Grand Canyon. He sat there for a while. Took another sip. Then he blinked twice, looked around the room as if he had never seen it before, and regarded his bathrobe as if it were a foreign object placed on his body while he was unconscious.
“What the heck?” he said.
Then he blinked once again, shook his head vigorously, peered at the drink in his hand with horror, and, after a moment of stunned silence, reared back that strong right arm he had been congratulating himself about just a moment or two ago, and threw the glass across the room, where it exploded into a thousand shards, spraying hundred-year-old scotch over all those delicate electronics. “Diego!” he yelled at the top of his young, powerful lungs. The door once again sighed open and the floating Roomba appeared. It looked nervous, if such a thing was possible in a cybernetic device.
“Sir?”
“I’m afraid I’ve made a mess in here.”
“No problem, sir. I’ll have Dorothy clean it up.”
“And Diego?”
“Sir?”
“No more booze for me for a little while. It seems to have a strange effect on us.”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Arrange for a Hyperloop at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Sallie and I will be going north.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’ll take Lucy with us to keep Sal company while I’m in meetings.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay then.”
Arthur stood. He attempted to adopt an aura of command, but he felt very woozy. It was all he could manage to get back to the bedroom, where he slept for the rest of the day, waking only once at three in the morning to take a massive dose of ibuprophametaphine, wondering what in the world had produced a headache of that size and intensity before he fell back into the comatose slumber of a much younger man.
At dawn they were on their way to the megalopolis up north—Arthur with his own thoughts, and Sallie and Lucy snoozing on the couch, snuggled together under a blanket with a weight and temperature calibrated perfectly to any change in the temperature, humidity, or general ambience of the environment. For the length of the two-hour voyage, they slept, waking only upon their arrival in Athena.
13
A Voice from the Deep
It began as a whisper at the break of day, at the peak of the night that is almost morning, a sigh in the profound recesses of the part of Liv’s mind most closely in touch with her cranial implant. This was an unintended side effect of the mechanism. Planted so closely to the brain’s many intricate functions regulating speech, hearing, sight, and thought, these descendants of the smartphone, embedded in the hard matter behind the ear and fashioned in a variety of styles and shapes, were now an integral part of the extended brain. Newer models were capable of transmitting and receiving far more than was originally intended. They were faint, perhaps, but there were reports that thoughts themselves could sometimes be sensed over the digital ether, sometimes at very great distances if the will to send was strong enough.
“Oh, Liv,” came a soft murmur, heavy with confusion, pain, and the darkest despair. “Liv, baby. Livia. Liv. Honey.” And then, almost a whisper too weak to be heard at all: “Help me.”
She lurched upright, sensing the air around her with all six senses. Was there somebody in her apartment? Was it a noise far below in the street? Unlikely. The public areas, populous during the daytime, were heavily policed by robot guardians from dusk to dawn. No living thing wandered there unattended. Not outside, then. The darkness around her was not complete. The side of her head, the jaunty, hairless side, felt a light breeze from the air purification system; her slender torso was swept with goosebumps. She carefully rose, gathered the sheet around her, and crept into the main room outside the sleeping area. Shadows. Silence. Not outside, but not inside, then, either. Perhaps a dream?
“Ohh . . . Livvv.” Between a low moan and a sob. A man’s voice. A man giving up. Saying a word to himself simply to provide his soul with a bit of comfort as it waited for death at the bottom of a well. “Ohh, God, help me,” it sighed.
It was inside her head. A voice crying out in the utter absence of hope, of light, too tired to weep, speaking to someone that it knew was too far away to listen, too distant to hear.
“Gene?”
Outside the plate-glass window, the black had morphed into a sick, misty dark the color of slate, and around the edges of the sky, a hint of morning was creeping. A bank of smog swept across the distant valley where the former great city lay, replaced by a metropolitan sprawl studded with chain stores and industrial housing.
“Gene? Is that you?”
Nothing. The voice was gone. The being that had been inside her head had departed. Maybe it was still there, she thought, but just a little too far away to be received, like a man caught at the base of the canyon calling out for rescue to those on the rim thousands of feet above his head—the wind blowing, the water in the river roaring—and he is screaming, yelling his head off, and all anybody can hear up above is the piping of a distant sparrow coming from no discernible direction.
“Gene?” She sat in the darkness that was becoming light. Then Livia threw off the sheet and walked naked back into the bedroom, the tats that covered her from neck to ankle walking with her, changing shape as she went, alive with intentions of their own. She went to the closet and grabbed a few things without thinking much. Boots. Kevlar-rayon one-piece body suit. Went into the bathroom. Washed. Meds. Flash recharge of her head. Then she walked back into the main area of the apartment, turning on lights as she went. Sat on the edge of the couch and lightly touched the space behind her ear. “Bronwyn,” she said. And waited.
It didn’t take long. “Dang, Leelee,” said a gentle, bemused voice in the forefront of her consciousness. “It’s either too early or too late.”
“I think I heard from him.”
“Who?”
“Gene, Bee. I heard Gene in my head.”
“Nah,” said Bronwyn. “I talked to Bob. He’s way under. It’s crazy, but he’s not in his body anymore.”
“What if he is? What if he’s in there somewhere and trying to send me a message?”
“Well, then. I don’t really know. That would be pretty terrible.”
“Where are they going? Now, I mean.”
“I think they’re headed up north. Bob said he’s going to meet them there.”
“We gotta help him, Bee.”
“We missed our window. I mean, didn’t we? Miss it? Once Bob did . . . it?”
“Maybe. We don’t know. I’m not gonna just sit here.” Liv felt a certain part of her mind click in. Okay, she thought. They had allowed this thing to drift to the dark side. Now they had to do whatever they needed to do to pull it back.
Liv could feel Bronwyn sitting in her own slice of the lightening day. “Livvy,” said Bronwyn, very carefully, “What if you’re imagining the whole thing? Because, you know, you want to? Because you miss him.”
“I do miss him. So what?”
“Yeah,” said Bronwyn. “So what. Good point. Okay, look.” She was fully awake now, and the idea of action was calling to her. Maybe this was the point of departure that Tim always talked about! Seize the time! Seize the day! The liquor of revolution suddenly spurted into her veins. “We won’t know anything if we don’t get a look at what’s going on. So let’s Loop it up north. Get into the vicinity. I’ll stick with Bob. You stay in touch. We’ll play it by ear. But don’t get me busted, Liv. I can’t be useful to the movement if Bob becomes aware of my true situation. He’ll be with us soon. His heart is good, I swear
it is.”
“Well,” said Liv. “I guess we’ll see about that.”
“I’ll see you when I see you,” said Bronwyn. She touched her head once, twice. “Bobby?” she said. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
She went into the bathroom and turned on the shower box. “Wanna take me up north today?” she said, peeling off her tank top and stepping into the shower box. As she did, she said, “Alexa. Water temp.”
“Moderating water temp,” said the watertight enclosure, which was controlled, as were 87 percent of all homes in the connected world, by Amazon’s proprietary internet of . . . things.
“What say, Bob?” she said to the other end of her hookup. After a moment, with a little edge on it: “No, Bob, I’m not turning on the telepresence at this time. Listen. I want to ask you something.” She stepped under the spray. The water temp was perfect.
She procured a dab of liquid soap from the tiny printer in the wall capable of dispensing anything from food, to cleaning solutions, to certain substances that could serve as both. “You told me that you assumed that after the transfer took place, the other entity would be a blank slate. Is that correct?” She listened. “As much as possible. What do you mean ‘as much as possible’?” She put her head under the fine stream of recirculated water. Some buildings had been using the same water for twenty, thirty years, but Bronwyn had the good fortune to live in corporate housing, so she and her fellow tenants of the tower enjoyed water that had been in use for only three to five years.
She listened some more. The water shut off at the exact time allotted for her shower on a weekday. “Well, what if he didn’t?” she said. “Go completely under,” she added, for clarification. Then: “What do you mean ‘unknown unknowns’?” The 360-degree air blast came on, and within three seconds, she was completely dry. “That’s a joke?” she said. “I’m afraid I don’t grasp the reference.” She stepped out of the box, grabbed a bathrobe, swept it on in one fluid motion, and then went to the mirror, which was supplied with a counter loaded with personal grooming products of all kinds. She selected a few seemingly at random and began to apply them to various portions of her face: first eyes, then lips.
“Any consciousness trapped inside of somebody else’s mind would find it pretty unpleasant, Bob,” she said as she added a bit of color to her cheeks. That completed, presumably still listening to the lecture Bob was supplying on the subject of consciousness, Bronwyn nabbed a cordless electric toothbrush from the maelstrom of stuff on the counter, supplied it with a dab of goo from a nearby tube, turned it on, and brushed her teeth with surprising ferocity. That done, she spit into the sink, rinsed, spit again, and exited the bathroom.
Striding decisively through the area around her bed, which was littered with shoes, tops, underwear, more shoes, charging wires and associated hardware, and even a few physical books, she went to her closet. Listened to her head unit and then said, “Well, what if he’s still in there?” She selected a green sheath that appeared to be constructed of wafer-thin titanium and iridescent lizard skin. “What if, I mean, he wanted to come out but couldn’t?” She slipped it on over her head. An improbable crimson belt came next. Then she bent over at the waist entirely, so that her head hung down, and shook her hair vigorously. She stood and regarded herself in the floor-length mirror on the closet door, still attending to what was being fed into her head.
“What kind of trigger?” she asked. “I see. Known unknowns.” Bronwyn went into her living area and scanned it for her keys. Very quickly, she located them in one corner of the apartment, then honed in on her teeny-weeny backpack in another, and was ready to go.
“Anyway,” she said with finality, “what about it? You gonna take me with you up north or not?” She paused and listened. “Good. Thanks. I’ll see you in, what, twenty minutes? Half an hour? Right.” She touched her head. “Alexa,” she said. “Send text to Liv.”
“Ready,” said Alexa.
“See you in Athena,” she said and then added, almost as an afterthought, “You may want to bring a neurophaser.” After another pause, she added, “Better make it a plastic one, so you don’t set off any alarms.”
“Repeating message. ‘See you in Athena. You may want to bring a noodle blazer. Better make it a plastic one so you don’t set off any old farms.’ ”
Bronwyn made the necessary corrections and then said, “Alexa, send.”
“Message sent,” said Alexa.
Livia got it almost before it went out. Good, she thought. Bronwyn will be there. Good old Bee. Nothing could go as wrong as it could go wrong if she wasn’t. She looked out the window and considered. Master Tim would be very, very pleased. He had been waiting for the day when what he called “the great break in the continuum” would come. This could be that. She touched her implant very gently, as if trying to raise a ghost.
“Gene, you there? Come on, man. Talk to me. I’m listening.”
Nothing. Maybe it had all been in her mind?
“Can you hear me, Genie?” Nothing. “We’re coming to get you, baby. Hang in there.” Silence. The sound of her own breath.
In the hurtling Hyperloop, Arthur and Sallie slept the deep slumber sometimes granted to bodies in motion—Sallie with Lucy on her lap; Lucy on automatic recharge, gleaning power from available ambient light, dreaming the silicon dreams known only to those imbued with a certain level of artificial intelligence; and Arthur, stalking the black, unquiet land between sleep and wakefulness, neither aware nor unaware, a gnawing sense in the pit of his gut that something was amiss. He woke ten or so minutes before they reached Athena Station.
“Hey, kitten,” he said to Sallie, who immediately opened her eyes and smiled.
“Hey, new Artie.”
“Wanna make it? We got time.”
“Not with baby here.”
Arthur glared at Lucy. “We could turn her off for a few minutes.”
“Artie,” said Sallie. “Don’t be mean.”
“Woof woof,” said Lucy, in a disturbingly human voice.
Arthur looked at Lucy with skepticism. “Sometimes I think all these fucking artificial gizmos understand a lot more than we give them credit for,” he muttered.
Sallie put Lucy down on the seat beside her and opened her carry-on bag. Rummaged. He leaned across the central space and took her face in one young and slender hand. “Come here,” he said. And kissed her.
“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to handle the new you, Artie,” said Sallie, and she was only half-kidding.
“You are all there is for me, kiddo,” he said. And kissed her again.
“Athena Station,” said the androgynous voice of the Musk Line virtual conductor.
“Game time,” said Arthur.
“Woo-woo!” said Lucy.
They popped the pod open and went to meet a fate for which they thought themselves prepared.
14
Athena
Stepping out of the Hyperloop, you were instantly confronted by the enormity of the metropolitan nexus served by this terminal. Polished spires of neurosteel rose high in the air; galvanized plastic surfaces gleamed in the soft iridescence of the klieg lights. You felt a wonderful sensation of airy space that did not dwarf you but uplifted and motivated you to be whisked on your way to what was sure to be a productive and pleasant destination having something to do with business.
Sallie stood in the arching space, holding Lucy under her arm. By her side was the creature that was Arthur and yet was not. The thing had Artie’s drive, certainly, his passion for acquisition and domination, and yet there was something more likeable about him: softer, more thoughtful, less defined, less profane, too. Even the way he stood was very subtly, almost indefinably different, the way he leaned with his weight slightly to one side rather than planted on two solid feet like a mighty oak; the way his head tilted a bit while dark waters churned in his mind.
“I’d like to get the fuck back to Bel Air as soon as possible,” said the cyborg tortoise/lizard/spaniel u
nder her arm.
“Lucy, hush!” Sallie nonchalantly strolled away from Arthur, who was looking at something on his archaic, external smartphone, even though the body he now possessed had a perfectly good implant in its head. Old habits die hard, as do their owners.
“Please, dear,” Sallie murmured to Lucy, who looked up at her with an expression that would have been described as disgruntled if it were found on a human face. “If Artie finds out you’ve been upgraded like this, well, let’s just say he won’t like it.”
“What’s he going to do?” said Lucy. “Kill me?”
“He might,” said Sallie. “Or at least revert you to your default factory settings.”
“Well, that would certainly suck,” said Lucy. Her voice was mild, neither male nor female, dry and sarcastic, and only very slightly strobed. “I’m not very smart,” she added, “but I’m not as dumb as I used to be.”
“Seriously, dear.”
“Okay, okay.”
Arthur approached, and regarded Sallie with perplexity. “Sometimes,” he said, putting one arm around her waist so that his hand could caress the small of her back, “I worry about you with that thing. It’s a fucking toy, you know. It’s not, you know, a real person.”
“I know, Artie. But I love her anyway. And I want you to love her, too.”
“Yeah?” He looked at Lucy, and she looked at him.
“Arf,” said Lucy.
Arthur looked very, very suspiciously at Lucy, who continued to regard him with saurian disdain. “Anyway,” he said, with a vague sense that he’d lost the altercation. “Let’s get going.”
“By all means,” said Sallie, tucking a rather smug Lucy tighter under her arm.
They exited the station and entered the grand plaza of Athena, which was a hive of quiet, efficient activity. Fit, attentive people came and went, crossing the great expanse on foot as well as on a variety of silent vehicles powered by either solar cells or one of the infinite battery units pioneered by Google in the earlier part of the century and now in use worldwide by the open patent the company had provided when it transcended the need for money some years later. Zoom, they all went, here and there: Hoverboards, fusion-assisted Segways and Nikes, whatever could be used for quicker transport. On the interweaving pathways that extended as far as the eye could see, self-driving cars, vans, taxis, and rickshaws meandered back and forth at extremely moderate rates of speed. All the buildings were square, low to the ground, and interspersed with manicured greenery—all but one. At some distance, with its top floors swathed in mist, was the glowing single tower that housed all operations and accommodations serving the organizational entity that was at once the State and, at the same time, the multinational corporation that provided the globe with virtually all of its goods and services. The line between government and enterprise had dissolved long ago, and nobody seemed to miss it. Nobody who had money, at any rate.
