by Sean Platt
“We ritualize it,” Noah blurted.
“Ritualize it? What do you mean?”
“You’re the storyteller. So we tell them a story. It’s supposed to be mercy killing anyway, right? So we make it look like the state wants to make the whole thing more merciful. Right now, people are wheeled into rooms in hospitals, and they never come out — neat and tidy, but kind of a bummer and pretty sterile. But what if we turn Respero into something totally different? Stop thinking of it as medical, and make it social as well. Hell, make Respero graduations an honor; I’ve seen O do stranger manipulations to what you’d think were immutable morals and beliefs. We create events around the whole thing. Maybe before you get evaporated, there’s a ceremony. Or better — a fancy dinner. A time for…oh, yes, this could work…a time for family and friends to say goodbye.”
Iggy nodded. “Okay. And…what? Someone’s there with covert scanners, to make the maps?”
“State Respero agents. But they have to dress nice. Seem to be part of the party.”
“Sounds expensive.” But now Iggy was rediscovering his stride. A moment later, he said, “But the state doesn’t pay anyway. Like you said, we make it a point of honor to have a great Respero Dinner. It’s already ritualized a little; people accept it; there are cards you can buy, for shit’s sake. So…yeah.”
“What about poor people?” Noah asked.
“Quick and dirty. They get a short version — just long enough to get the map. Like a final meal more than a fancy dinner, but…but everyone who knew them still gets together. Shares photos, shit like that. Get them reflecting on those old days enough to push the right buttons.”
“What about people with no families? Gutter Enterprise, people like that who get sent to Respero?”
Iggy waved a dismissive hand. “Can’t win them all. But this would allow the units to upload most of them. Okay. I can work with this.” He nodded and paused. “Should I ask the ethical question?”
“Which ethical question?”
Iggy laughed. “Okay. I guess I won’t ask it. Because this is all for the good of mankind, right?”
Noah hadn’t been joking. Iggy’s question had been serious, but already Noah could see the tall man rationalizing. And it really was for the good of mankind. For mankind’s best and brightest, anyway. Because that was the thing about evolution: in order for it to work, only the strong could survive.
But still, in the wake of his laugh, Noah could see doubt forming on Iggy’s face. The issue as a whole was solved; Iggy was practical that way. But the man was also a thinker, and the disturbing facets of the idea had wormed beneath his skin. Noah could see it forming like a benign but troublesome cancer.
“What?” Noah asked, watching him.
“I was just wondering what it’d be like,” Iggy said. “Expecting to die then waking up again if they’re one of the few minds that stick. What would they think, returning to consciousness and swimming amid the billions of failed, fragmentary, probably demented Resperos? The ones that survive — would they wake up on the network, do you think?”
They’d have to. That was the point. The statistical few who made the upload intact would be Mindbender’s first successes, albeit scattered and less-than-ideal ones. They’d have undergone the brute force, sheer-numbers filter that no person would ever voluntarily undertake on their own — but they’d be successes nonetheless.
“For the good of mankind,” Noah said, dodging the question.
Chapter Two
Violet awoke to the sounds of screaming.
For the first few seconds, she felt totally disoriented. The last thing she seemed to remember was being wheeled into the alloy chamber. Her mother had held her hand and hadn’t wanted to go. Dad had wanted to pry Mom away. Violet had been watching the ceiling, unable to move, only noticing her parents when they entered her view. It had been that way for most of Violent’s recent (at least she thought it was recent) memory. She’d been able to hear and see, but the doctors kept saying she’d never improve, that she was locked inside her mind and worse than terminal. Still, without the ability to respond, seeing and hearing had felt like a hollow talent. So when everyone had begun saying that poor little Violet James was destined for Respero, Violet had figured it was no big deal. She’d been dead and a burden to her family for a long time anyway. Except that Mom, in those last seconds of memory, must have forgotten her acceptance. Until Dad peeled her away, she’d refused to let her little girl go into the darkness alone.
For Violet, in the last bits of memory she could recall, there had been only ceiling. She’d felt a sense of lifting, and the air had seemed to fill with fireflies.
And then she’d been here, wherever this new place was, suddenly able to move. Not exactly able to feel her body…but able to come to her knees, look around, and see the way the rear of the large room of well-dressed people was tearing itself apart. She didn’t know where she was. But within seconds, she did know one thing: that she definitely didn’t want to be here.
Everyone was shouting. People were rising from behind, as if from the floor itself, dressed in what looked like mecha armor. Shots were being fired; Violet could see the deadly things striking the ceiling overhead and raining plaster dust like snow. She saw at least one person blown back when one of the warriors took aim. That person did not get up. Violet hoped they were okay. She hoped she was okay.
She remembered a man. A man in an apartment. A man who’d been struck.
But there was no proper place for that memory, especially here and now. Her mind felt divided. On one hand, Violet felt sure she’d never met that odd young man — never had the memory that somehow felt far more recent than the Respero chamber. But there was another part of Violet — a serene part, and that was definitely the word: serene — that felt sure that she had been in that apartment with that man. That she’d tried to help him. That she’d tried to give him clarity. Because that man knew something that others didn’t, and those others needed to find out what he knew before it was too late.
Violet shook the thought away when Mom appeared at the crowd’s front, practically elbowing a man in the face to sprint forward. Behind her, a woman seemed to fly through the air as if tossed by an impossibly strong hand. To the flying woman’s right there was a loud banging before a red splatter appeared on the wall.
Mom ran to Violet. Violet stood. Then Mom ran through her, stumbling to fall on the floor.
“Violet!”
She reached back to help her up. But again, the other hand went right through Violet’s as if she wasn’t here.
There was shouting to her right. Violet saw four people: three men in formalwear and a woman in a sheer gown. The woman was goggling at her while two of the men scrambled to drag the others away. Somehow, the woman seemed familiar. Just a touch, as if they’d once passed each other in public.
Then one of the men turned, assisting the last member of their party in trying to pull the tall red-headed woman away. Her face seemed to clear at the new man’s touch. The woman’s focus moved from Violet to the man. And she punched — not slapped — him hard in the face.
“Dammit, Natasha, move!”
“You son of a bitch! You evil, selfish, stupid son of a bitch!”
Another of the men grabbed the redhead, and they both pulled, dragging her away. They were just in time. Something hit the wood floor where Violet was sprawled, flashing blue like lightning. It ripped boards asunder in a long gash, its noise like thunder.
As the woman was dragged away — actually dragged, with both men hooking hands under her armpits — Violet became aware of Mom, kneeling, trying to touch her. Each time, her mother’s hand went through her leg, her arm, her torso, her shoulder, her face.
“You’re a hologram! What…where are you, Vi? Is it really you? Are you…are you really here?”
Amid the chaos, her words were strikingly out of place. Violet wanted to urge her mother to get out but was curious for the answers herself.
A few of
Violet’s memories were beginning to surface — or to return, perhaps. They were distant, like her memory of the man in the apartment.
A school.
She had children, despite being little more than a child herself.
A sense of floating.
A feeling of a spoon made of chocolate, melting as it stirred in hot soup.
“Where…where are you, Violet?”
“I’m right here.”
A sense of being everywhere. Everywhere at once.
“But you’re being projected! Where’s the…the…” Then, more slowly: “The file?”
“Mom, what do you — ”
Violet stopped when a new shot struck the stage. This shot hit her mother too, and she crumpled into a corner. The daughter was the one who was supposed to die. But that’s not what had happened.
The others had fled. The room turned to chaos, people versus something like cyborgs. The half-metal woman who’d shot her mother with fire was coming forward, gunning for Violet.
The room screamed.
And now, with her mother dead, Violet screamed with them.
Chapter Three
Nicolai and Kate were about to bar the door with a chair — as if that would help — when Kai elbowed her way in.
“Thank West it’s you,” Nicolai said.
“Who were you expecting?”
“Anyone. Maybe Braemon. Kate promised to meet him here after the magic show.” Nicolai looked into the hallway before shoving the door closed and propping the chair in place as planned.
“I don’t think a chair under the knob will keep anyone out who wants to come in,” Kai said.
“What’s going on out there?”
Kai sounded out of breath. “Some sort of an assault squad. Highly equipped. They seemed to come up from the…from the fucking floor. Not police. But not like a normal riot, either. It’s…it’s precise, Nicolai. It looks like chaos, but I can tell it’s not. They’re looking for something.”
Nicolai turned toward Kate, who was still banging away on Braemon’s canvas. “Anything?”
“I uploaded the Doc shell, but nothing’s opening up. It just glitched hard.”
“We saw that happen in the front room,” Kai said.
Nicolai stepped forward. “Let me try York.”
Kate’s eyes hardened, and for a second Nicolai saw Doc Stahl’s formidable intensity. “I told you, this is the plan. You’re our last resort. Rachel fucking Ryan wants your shell used, that’s reason enough not to use it. This is our plan, Hopalong, not yours.”
Nicolai turned to Kai as Kate returned to her work, trying to force Doc Stahl to open doors that Nicolai knew perfectly well had always been a wild goose chase.
“Speaking of Rachel…”
“Dead,” Kai said.
“Just like that?”
“It’s not hard to kill someone, Nicolai,” Kai spat, her manner all business. “I did my job. Now you do yours. Tick-tock.”
“Stay away, and let me work,” Kate growled, her manner fully Doc’s. Even hair, legs, and large breasts couldn’t convince Nicolai that Kate wasn’t his old dealer in sheep’s clothing.
Nicolai listened as something exploded in the front room. He felt instinct prickle inside, suddenly sure that it was only a matter of time before someone stormed down the hallway. There was no reason to come back here if the action was in the front room, but for some reason Nicolai still felt certain that someone would be here in seconds. The sense was animalistic, like a prey smelling a predator on the wind.
“You’ve got ten more seconds, and then it’s my turn,” Nicolai said.
“Motherfucker, you are not going to install that shell!”
“Let him try,” Kai said.
“You stay out of this, freckles.”
Kai’s composure seemed to break. “Let him try! This is the last fucking resort! While you two were back here measuring your dicks like you always seem to — ” she stared directly at Kate, her eyes saying, You heard right, “ — I was out there while cyborg commandos were coming up from the…from the motherfucking sewers, I don’t know…and doing my job. And if you’ll just fucking step aside and let Nicolai try what we already know will work, maybe we can get out of here without this all having been useless!”
Kate’s hands raised in surrender. “Fine! Fine. You want to do what Rachel Ryan wants, be my guest. I’m getting the fuck out of here.”
Kate stormed forward, avoiding eye contact with Nicolai and Kai. She ripped an antique hunting rifle from Braemon’s wall and made for the door.
“There’s no way you’ll be able to shoot that,” Kai spat after Kate.
Kate turned to lock eyes with Kai. The blonde was a full head taller. She turned the big weapon end for end, holding it midbarrel like choking up on a bat.
“I ain’t plannin’ to shoot with it, sweetheart,” she said.
She ripped the chair aside, opened the door, and stormed out.
Chapter Four
Sam sat in his apartment. Just to torture himself, he checked the time. It was 4:16 p.m.
The woman’s arrival had given Sam a burst of hope. Even her departure had given him hope. Somehow, he’d been certain that she was a real person — not even AI, benevolent or malignant. And if someone could join Sam in the hole and then escape, there must be a way out.
But it had been — well, there was no way to say how long it had been, since he’d renewed extrication efforts at 4:16 p.m. and it was now already the ripe old hour of 4:16 p.m. Still, here he was, with only a stubborn idiot microfragment for company.
Was the physical presence of the microfragment cause for encouragement? It meant his mind hadn’t fully succumbed to the illusion. Some part of Sam’s used-to-be-tech-addicted mind hadn’t entirely redonned the cape of addiction. That part was letting him see the fragment for what it was. And it didn’t take a genius to figure out that a floating fractal that changed color and shape when it spoke in its electronic voice wasn’t a part of everyday, not-in-a-hole reality.
“If I kill myself in here,” Sam said, “would I really die?”
“Sam Dial Sam,” said the microfragment. It became a three-dimensional starburst, pulsing like a heart. It became a mostly flat dodecagon. It became a cube then blushed red.
“If I die in here but not in life,” Sam said, “would I just reset?”
“Sam Dial Sam Sam.”
He stood. He’d destroyed the illusion’s walls a few times. He had to keep trying, but he was so damn tired. And he’d made no real headway other than inviting the microfragment and possibly the angelic woman. That had been a boon: She’d revealed important information that he couldn’t act on. Now he was still just as fucked, but at least he knew exactly how much damage he was doing by failing to deliver his message.
He had to let Costa know that whatever he’d been told, it was a trap. Time was frozen, and he had no idea how long he’d been in here, but he could sense awareness leaking through the glitches. He could sense the real world out there, even if he couldn’t reach it — and to Sam, it felt like it was falling apart.
“It’s not just me,” Sam said. “There are a bunch of holes forming on The Beam now.”
“Sam Dial,” the microfragment replied.
“Something with The Beam. Something is changing. That’s what she pretty much said, right? The woman? The woman who had no problem leaving this place?”
“Dial Sam.”
Sam stood. The microfragment swooped out of his way like a startled bird. He looked into his apartment’s corner, where wall met wall. Near where the woman had been. He tried to remember her, tried to push out with his mind.
Nothing happened.
“There must be a way.”
“No,” said the microfragment.
“She got in,” Sam countered.
“Crazy.”
“And she got out.”
“Crazy,” the microfragment repeated.
When you were trapped in a hole, you had to do somet
hing that forced the system out of its repeating rut. Something…yes…kind of crazy. But he knew, somehow, that time wasn’t as late as he’d feared. Just as he knew that the woman wouldn’t have been able to speak with him before this section of The Beam had begun to fracture and change. Things were different now. But there was purpose to everything, it seemed.
A firm conviction, spoken in the woman’s voice, entered Sam’s mind: You wouldn’t have got the warning if there wasn’t a way to deliver it.
Something unexpected.
Sam slapped the wall.
Sam punched the wall.
“My name is Sam Dial, and I’m stuck in a hole.” And because it was odd and unexpected behavior, he stood on one leg.
The wall blinked. For a split second, Sam saw the Starbucks room before his own room reappeared.
Sam stood on his single leg again.
“My name is Sam Dial, and I’m standing on one leg.” He used the other leg to kick his table. It hurt. Good. So he kicked it again, enough to spill a glass of water.
A blink. The wall was gone for longer.
Encouraged, Sam hopped. His mind tried to focus, to see the truth, to hold the image of the Starbucks carrel in his mind’s eye.
I’m there, not here. I’m there, not here. And then, because it was bizarre in his apartment but made perfect sense where he actually was, Sam said, “Canvas! Bring me a latte!”
No latte appeared, but now one entire wall became the smooth pale surface of a Starbucks room. It looked odd abutted to his apartment’s walls but was definite progress.
“I still have time.”
“Maybe,” said the microfragment.
“I can stop him. Whatever Nicolai is going to do, I can stop him in time.” It didn’t matter that Sam had no idea what Nicolai wasn’t supposed to do, that he didn’t know what Nicolai had been told or given. It didn’t matter that Sam didn’t even know the motherfucking time of day. It only mattered that he had a way out. And that he wouldn’t have been given the warning if there wasn’t a way to deliver it.
