vN: The First Machine Dynasty

by Madeline Ashby

  He flopped backward and rolled over, away from her. "My need for sleep, that's real. I'm fucking wrecked. My thumb still hasn't grown back all the way."

  "I'm sorry…"

  "See, there you go again." Javier rested one arm across his son's ribs. "You're saying sorry because you learned to say that when you've screwed up. You're not actually sorrowful, or anything. Your stomach isn't tying itself up in knots. You just know you did a bad thing and you don't want me to get mad, so you're apologizing."

  Amy was suddenly glad he couldn't see her face. One look and he'd know exactly what she had in mind. "I thought you just said that you couldn't get mad, Javier."

  "Well…"

  She poked him between the ribs. "What about now?" She poked again, harder this time. "Are you mad, now?"

  He batted her hand away blindly. "No."

  She jabbed two fingers right under the lowest rib. "Are you sure?" She snapped her fingers near his ear. "Because I can keep it up–"

  Javier flipped over and grabbed both her hands. He stood up and pushed her. She had to dig into the carpet with her bare feet just to get any traction. Amy had seen girls playing this game in the bathroom at school; they called it Mercy. They always stopped when she walked in. If they really hurt each other, then Amy would be hurt, too. At least, that's what the teachers had said – they said the other kids couldn't fight if a vN was watching. But privately Amy had always wondered why, if it was really so bad, the other girls started up again just as soon as the doors shut behind her. Javier certainly seemed to enjoy it. At least, she assumed that's what the smile meant.

  "Hey, stop hitting yourself," he said, and made her fist tap her chin lightly. "Why are you hitting yourself? Come on, stop hitting yourself!" He punched again and again.

  Frustrated, Amy tried stomping on his foot. He only laughed and made her hit herself once more. She aimed higher, with her knee. It was OK with other vN, she decided. There was nothing in the original programming about not hurting them. They couldn't even feel pain. But Javier doubled over anyway, then lunged forward and dug his fingers into her ribs.

  I'm not ticklish, she tried to say, but all that came out was squealing. She had seen other people get tickled before, had seen all the wriggling and screaming and laughing, and now she understood it: tickling was wonderful. She did a checkpoint pose, raising her arms high and letting herself go limp against the wall. He could get more spots more quickly, this way. Oddly, it didn't work – he stopped immediately, stepping back with his hands up like she'd suddenly turned electric and dangerous to touch.

  "You're supposed to fight back. Humans always fight back, anyway." He frowned. "I always have to quit, or my brain will fry. Something about how high their voices go when they beg you to stop…" He gestured vaguely at his skull, as though his important processes were really held there and not all through his body.

  "Why do they do that?" Amy asked. "It feels good." She bent down and started rolling up one leg of her jeans. "Can you try the back of my knee? My dad is ticklish there."

  His eyes rose from her bare leg to her face. "Huh?"

  "I've never been ticklish, before. I want to see if every spot is equally ticklish."

  Javier tilted his head. "You, uh, need my help with that?"

  "I promise not to fight back," Amy said. "And even if I did, it wouldn't matter, right? I'm vN. You won't melt."

  He rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm starting to wonder." His head jerked toward the bed. "Sit."

  "I have to be sitting down?"

  "I can't really get the bottom of your feet if you're standing on 'em, can I?"

  "Oh! Good thinking." She sat, and stuck her feet out.

  Javier picked up one foot gingerly and started tickling. It was very light, and reminded her of the odd scratches she'd received from holding the class mouse for the first time. "So, this is new for you?"

  "Mmm hmm." Amy lay back on her elbows. "I've never been ticklish. I must have gotten it from you, like the photosynthesis."

  "It's built into our tactile receptors," Javier said as his fingers skittered lazily up the back of her leg. "It was so our clade would feel snakes and spiders crawling across our skin. So we wouldn't bring them back to camp with us by mistake."

  "So they wouldn't bite the humans?"

  "Right." He lifted one hand and stretched it out. "The jungle spiders are huge. Bigger than my hand. My dad said so. He had to kill one, once."

  "Did your dad see any other animals?"

  "He lost his hand to a jaguar, one time." Javier wiggled the remains of his left thumb. "Now I know how he felt."

  She sat up. "Can I see?"

  Javier held out his hand. Amy took hold of it with both of hers and flipped it over. The thumb was there, but it looked too small and loose to be of much good. She had really done some serious damage to it. "I'm sorry. I didn't know it would take this long to come back. It's still so floppy!"

  "Hey!" Javier retracted his hand. "Be nice."

  Amy wasn't aware she'd been mean. "Sorry." She grinned and reached out for Javier's middle. Now that she knew what tickling felt like, it was much more fun to try it on someone else. Javier tried slapping her hands away, but she was much quicker and ran her hands up under his arms. He scuttled backward, but she stuck her foot out to trip him and he fell down. Amy pounced. Her dad did it this way: somehow she always wound up on the floor. Vaguely, she wondered if Junior would enjoy being tickled, too. Javier was now rolling around like a big cat with his belly up, laughing and swearing. It was a little odd – normally people only ever said, "Oh shit, oh fuck," when they dropped something or locked their keys in the car. But the deeper her fingers went, the fouler his language got.

  "You said no fighting back!" Javier wiggled his fingers under her collar. "You promised!"

  Amy paused. "Don't you like this?" She sat back. "I can stop–"

  Something banged on the door of the RV. She froze. Javier shoved her off him and scrambled up. He peered through the window, rolled his eyes, and yanked the door open. "What?"

  "Meter says you're done," the voice said. "You're all charged up."

  "Thanks," Javier said, and slammed the door. He patted his pockets. The keys had fallen out while he was squirming around on the floor, and Amy held them up. He grabbed them quickly, and resumed his seat. The RV fired up the moment he swiped the keys across the dash. Amy watched through the windscreen as they exited the parking lot and found the road again.

  "I thought you wanted to rest," Amy said.

  "No, I'm good. Let's just go."

  "Shouldn't we at least have looked for food? Junior ate most of what was in the cabinets."

  "I'll keep him small for a while. You and I can get by on sunlight if we're not too active and don't get hurt."

  Amy bent down to his level and peered at the night sky. "What sunlight?"

  Javier sucked his teeth. He pinched open a map on the dash. It unfolded across the windscreen, mostly transparent in the way of hard water stains, but still legible. Reaching over, Amy tabbed through the available layers (rest stops, restaurants, laundries, places that sold puke rounds) until she found the right map for vN food vendors. It was barren, aside from one glowing green dot in the centre. That single spot was enough to make her want to vanish the map entirely.

  "It's a garbage dump," Amy said. "We have to keep going."

  The dumps were full of food – carbon and lithium and ethylene and enough chemicals to keep the ionic liquid in their muscles charged and ready to run. Amy hadn't really thought of the actual make-up of her body and what it required in years. She ate pre-packaged vN food, and it gave her the right balance of elements to satisfy her self-repair mods. Processed garbage could become the feedstock that was printed into the packaged vN food. Only the big companies could buy the stock, though; vN couldn't make their own food and had to buy it. The one who couldn't ate the raw garbage.

  In a game she'd sampled once, you could play a garbage man, and your garbage truck came with li
ttle turret-mounted guns to scare off the hungry vN that would chase it. The game called them "junkyard dogs". You could shoot them. Doing so improved your standing in the garbage man union, and you got to move up within the ranks. You could even manage your own landfill and make important decisions, like whether your drones should tase vN on sight by default, or whether they should ask you first.

  Her dad had climbed a long way up the customer service tree to talk to a human person about that game. He had explained Amy's user profile. He said that it should have been obvious from the company's data collection that Amy was vN. They should have known, he said, because of her timing and her decisions and her word choice and how she interacted with the other players on the network. He had asked them if they thought it was funny when they streamed it to her for free. He had asked them who exactly he should be speaking with to terminate the account. And then he had said that yes, he did accept their apology, and yes, he would appreciate a free suite of beta-level historifics.

  To this day, Amy had never told her dad that it was her mom who searched for and showed her the game.

  "I wonder if Rick's reader has any games on it." Amy let Junior grip her fingers with his fists. They were sitting on the table Javier had unfolded into a bed. "Would you like to learn how to read?"

  Even if Junior had understood enough English to answer her, he didn't get the chance. The RV swerved abruptly to the right, throwing them both against the wall. Amy grabbed him and tucked him in close to her as the RV bounced up and down. She rolled off the bed just as a shower of cups rained down on them from a cupboard with a faulty lock. "Javier, what do you think you're doing?"

  "LET'S BOTH GET SOME REST," the RV said in a gentle tone.

  Gripping the wall as the RV slowed down, Amy made her way to the driver's seat. "Javier?"

  "YOUR VEHICLE WILL NOT START AGAIN FOR ANOTHER TWO HOURS. YOUR INSURANCE COMPANY HAS BEEN NOTIFIED. PLEASE TAKE A NAP."

  Javier sat in the driver's seat, head on his chest, eyes shut. The RV had driven itself onto a gravel access road with deep ruts, the sort that heavy logging trucks must have once made. As Amy watched, the RV's displays all dimmed and vanished, and the vehicle quieted. Only the image of an old padlock remained, with a series of Zs fluttering away from its keyhole and a countdown timer showing her how many minutes were left of the enforced nap.

  "Javier?"

  He didn't move.

  Looking at the fading sky outside, Amy set Junior on the dash and unbuckled Javier's seatbelt. "Javier, come on." She patted his face. No response. She snapped her fingers. She clapped her hands. Nothing happened.

  Maybe he's dead.

  "Shut up, Granny."

  Maybe saving your useless hide and getting shocked with too many volts and winding up in a car crash and iterating a child was just too much for him.

  "Wake up, Javier. My granny's saying mean things about you."

  Amy tried slipping her arms under his so she could at least pull him out of the driver's seat, but the position was too awkward; he kept slipping out of her arms. Finally she reclined the seat mechanically, and did it that way. When she had him half-on, half-off the unfolded bed, she put Junior next to him. The baby crawled onto his chest immediately and started pushing at his face. Nothing. Junior looked from his father's face to hers. He looked back at Javier, and tried pushing more. He kneaded his father's lips with his tiny palms. He bounced a little. He rocked. Javier still didn't wake up.

  "It's OK," Amy heard herself telling Junior. "We have the reader. We can just look this up. I'm sure it happens to everyone once in a while; there must be something."

  Bluescreen, the reader told her. There was a technical term, but this was the real word that real people used. Bluescreen: slang. The state a defective von Neumann-type humanoid enters when unresponsive to external stimuli such as light, heat, electricity, food–

  "Food!" Amy rolled up the reader and stuffed it in one pocket. She popped open the cupboards and dug out the rest of the vN food. Only three bars of the stuff were there. She ripped open the first wrapper, pried his jaws wide, and crammed the food down inside. She stood back and waited. Nothing happened. As an afterthought, she reached over and closed Javier's mouth.

  Instantly, his eyes opened. He struggled with the food for a moment, choking it down, then opening his mouth for more, fishlike. His eyes fluttered closed again as Amy eased more out of the wrapper and past his teeth. "Haven't you eaten at all?" she asked.

  Of course he hasn't. He wasted all his resources repairing you and feeding his iteration. And that was before being thrown in a cage – how do you think the bounty hunters caught him? With a butterfly net?

  Amy ripped open another bar of food and snapped off a section. She opened his mouth with two fingers and stuffed it inside. "I'm sorry, Javier. I didn't mean for this to happen."

  He groaned. Amy fed him more. Occasionally his eyes would open, but they closed again just as quickly, and soon the food was all gone. She checked the cupboards again, but that only confirmed what she already knew: there was nothing left. And Javier still hadn't really woken up. Biting her lip, she withdrew Rick's reader, unfurled it, and located the garbage dump on the map. Expanding her view, she estimated the distance and the time it would take. The map had no details on its security, but in truth she didn't really want to know. Knowing would only make it harder. Putting away the reader, she looked over at Javier.

  "Just try to rest, OK?" Amy said.

  Carefully, Amy lifted Javier's wrists and wrapped his arms around Junior. She rose from the bed and dug around in Melissa's clothes for a pair of socks. She watched Javier as she rolled them on. Finding a pair of old cowboy boots, she wormed her feet down into them and wiggled her toes. Last, she tied her hair back and zipped herself into a dark hooded sweatshirt.

  How very ninja of you, Portia said, when Amy saw herself in a mirror. They'll never catch you, now that you're dressed appropriately.

  Amy forced herself to ignore the voice inside her head, and instead focused on Javier. She lifted his legs so that he was completely on the bed, and pulled a blanket over him and his son. "I'll be back soon."

  She locked the door behind her, and started walking.

  5

  The Hard Part

  Amy followed the ruts in the road. It was dark and she stumbled at first, but then the constant grind of the feedstock's compiler led her forward, and soon violet-tinged light penetrated the trees. She left the road then, taking cover in the undergrowth. The smell of the place hit her next: rust and battery acid and the dry dust smell of old plastic slowly turning beige. A hollow feeling spread through her limbs: hunger. Her steps picked up and she drew nearer to the fence. It was at least twenty feet high and it hummed. Old signs pocked with buckshot warned about the dangers of high voltage.

  At the front of the dump was a small, squat structure the colour of wet cat food. It had its own fence. Amy guessed it was a guardhouse of some kind. In the game her mom had shown her, you always had to decommission the security in places like that before gaining access to the feedstock from the compiler. It was tough, though, and you were likely to get hurt: in-game, the guardhouses had electrified roofs and the dumps had botflies equipped with thermal vision, and these were linked to fence-mounted turrets full of puke rounds. Amy looked at the fence. Sure enough, there were slender guns mounted on every second fence post. Puke rounds sat clustered under them like plastic beehives.

  You could always run. He's not worth it. You know he's not.

  Amy shook her head. "He didn't have to save me before, either, but he did."

  Amy decided to walk the perimeter. It would give her a better sense of where the best garbage was, assuming the security drones didn't find her first. She could see them darting among piles of scrap metal that glistened with yellow anti-theft acid coating. Kneeling, Amy dug a small hole in the ground and coated her hands with dirt. She wished she had mud, instead. It wouldn't really stop the burn once she stuck her hands in the garbage, but i
t might delay it for a while. She'd have to rely on her mods to take care of the rest.

  The garbage dump wasn't actually that big. It was roughly the size of the big-box store they had visited earlier, and sat on a square of green spongy material, sort of like the stuff that got sprayed over oil spills, when there were more of those. The sponge spanned the entire width of the dump, from fencepost to fencepost. It was darker and plumper under each pile of garbage. If Amy could get some of it on her hands, it might absorb the acid – maybe even the electricity from the fence, too. She'd have to reach under the fence to get it, though, or maybe she could dig under it and snatch some. If the fence's wires didn't go down too far, it was worth a try. Amy peered through the fence. There was a single PET shack with a solar tile roof, but Amy couldn't see if anyone was inside. It sat facing the proper entry to the dump, which was on the access road she'd walked up. Aside from the pump and crunch of a compactor unit and the roar of the compiler's furnaces, there was no sound. Even the yellow camelbots with the forklift teeth slumbered silently, their work done for the day. She'd never have another opportunity like this one.