vN: The First Machine Dynasty

by Madeline Ashby

  Amy removed her goggles to get a real look at the pig. Surprisingly, it still existed for the naked eye – but as a pig-shaped lump of feedstock, not the gleaming bronze sculpture visible in 1986. Gone were the fruit stalls and the bakery windows full of donuts and pork buns, the flower vendors, the tiny strawberries clustered in boxes folded from green paper. Gone were all the families with children. There was something about how casually you could flip between the times that Amy didn't like. It was like turning history on or off. Now there was a bustling city plaza. Now there was a decaying ruin. On. Off. Alive. Dead. She handed the goggles to Javier.

  "Wow." He made a slow circle in place. "Look at all the food. It's so fresh. I wish our food came in those colours." He faced her, but kept the goggles on. "All of this used to exist. Right here. I can't even see any vN. We've all been edited out. Have you ever seen anything like it?"

  "Not really. I've been to a lot of museums with my parents, but…" Now it was Amy's turn to trail off. This was the first museum she'd visited without them. It used to be one of their favourite weekend activities. Sometimes, they even went during the week just to beat the crowds at special exhibits. She remembered being small enough to fit on her dad's shoulders, small enough that her mother could lose her in a crowd. Once they took too long discussing a painting and Amy wandered off, and she wound up in a conversation with some students researching an essay on the museum's design. It was fun, talking with big kids who had big vocabularies. They warned her about some of the more gruesome pieces – the mortification of saints, the sacking of cities. They had a big map and they pointed out the galleries she shouldn't enter. They were nice. But even so, she had never seen her dad so angry as when he strode up to their little bench in the centre of the gallery and marched her away. Not because she'd disobeyed, he said later, but because it would break his heart if she wandered too far off and something happened to her. And now, that very thing had happened.

  "Hey." Javier had removed the goggles. "Let me show you something."

  He took her wrist and ushered her through the crowd of blankly staring humans to an empty square of space marked out by stickers. His hands tightened on her shoulders as he stood her inside the square. Standing behind her, he dropped the goggles over her face and carefully fixed them in place.

  "Stay there and close your eyes. Don't look until I tell you. OK?"

  "OK."

  "OK. On three. One… two… three!"

  Amy opened her eyes–

  –and watched a shimmering salmon fly straight through her. 1986 pooled around her: ice chips, dead fish, and brawny men in orange coveralls. One aimed a fish at another who clutched butcher paper at the ready. He yelled an order and made to throw the fish. Amy ducked immediately. Tourists laughed. She heard Javier's laughter to her right, and unhooked the goggles. Her mouth opened to tell him off for embarrassing her, when he asked:

  "Do you think Junior would like it, here? I was thinking we could take him tomorrow. Do something normal. The three of us. I mean, assuming you get the answers you need today. I don't take my kids to a lot of museums, but this one has vN-safe layers, and–"

  He stopped abruptly when she rushed him.

  It wasn't a hug – hugs ended quickly, even long ones, but this one persisted and changed into something else entirely. Javier reached up and stroked her hair. Not a single smooth motion, like petting a cat, but like he couldn't quite discern the make-up of the strands and needed his fingers to truly understand them. It felt wonderful – better than being tickled, better than the sun. She held him tighter and heard him swallow hard. Her body no longer felt so big and awkward. It was just the perfect size for this moment, just tall enough to catch the sharkskin roughness of his skin and smell the burnt sugar wafting from the creases in his neck.

  "I think that's a great idea." Amy pulled away a little. "I think he'd really like it. I know I would."

  His eyes searched her face. "It's nice to see you smile again. It looks so real."

  Amy rolled her eyes. "I was really smiling before, when I saw you in that stupid outfit the museum gave you."

  "That wasn't smiling, that was laughing at me. That doesn't count."

  "That doesn't count? How can it not count? My mouth was doing the exact same thing–"

  "Oh no, it wasn't. I know all the moves your mouth can make – well, most of them – and this was definitely–"

  "Sorry I'm late."

  They glanced up. Above them, a whining botfly zipped through the air. It hove into view. A light blinked.

  "There you are," it said in a tiny voice. "I've been so distracted by your iterations, Javier."

  Javier's grip on her waist loosened as Amy twisted to face the machine. She grabbed the botfly out of the air and clutched its humming body in her fist. "Who are you?"

  "Dan Sarton, PhD."

  Amy re-examined the drone with new interest. She had heard about organic people migrating to their electronics. It happened a lot in stories, the way there used to be stories about toys coming to life if a human loved them enough. (Then that very thing started happening, and those stories went away.)

  "Do you enjoy being a botfly?" she asked, striving for something polite to say.

  "I might, if I were one," the botfly said. "I'm a man, not a migrant. I've thought about migrating, but I'm very attached to my body. My penis in particular. I'm lucky enough to put it to regular use."

  Amy let the machine go. "That's… nice."

  "Yeah, good for you, pal," Javier said. "Rory said you could help us. Can you?"

  "Right this way." The botfly zipped down the street. It coasted through the air, sometimes disappearing behind museum visitors and sometimes veering straight into Amy, as though Dr Sarton were piloting the thing himself and having some trouble figuring out the controls. It led them north first, then west toward the water. A high fence separated them from the crumbling shore. They pulled up short as the machine soared overhead and dipped down to the other side.

  "I've timed the cameras to avoid looking at this area. If you jump now, you won't be seen."

  Amy turned to Javier. "It's OK if you don't want to go. I can do this by myself."

  Javier snorted. "You went with me when I had a gun to your head. I think I can handle a little water."

  They leapt. Their toes left the ground and their knees met their chests and they cleared the fence together like it was nothing. For a moment, Amy saw the herds of tourists toggling between invisible years, all blind to the arc of their two bodies as they fell toward the dark water below. She glimpsed the real layers of time waiting there just under the waves; the rippling shadows of old things left to rot like the rest of the city. Javier's frantic fingers skimmed over the back of her hand. Then the water closed over their heads.

  10

  Hermit Crabs

  "Why are we in a snowglobe?"

  They were trying to keep up and out of the water that had pooled beneath them when the bubble – a clear sheet of smart tarp – had curved up around their bodies after they hit the water. Little bits of algae and birdshit floated on its surface. Javier lurched against her as the bubble sank downward suddenly. The light faded, and the world went green, and she watched the surface rising upward as they dropped further and further away.

  The wreckage of buildings loomed large in their vision. Cars, their bodies crushed or flipped or sandwiched together, streaked by as the bubble journeyed downward. Traffic signs, now coated thickly with barnacles, bristled horizontally from the lumpy layers of cement and asphalt that bumped up against the bubble's surface. A hermit crab scrabbled across the bubble briefly. It lived inside a child's shoe.

  "There are bodies down here, right?" Javier's voice was hoarse.

  Amy instantly felt colder, and somehow more alone. "I think so. The responders probably couldn't find everyone. They were probably too busy trying to help the people who survived the quake."

  "I don't know how my failsafe deals with corpses." He shut his eyes tight. "Must b
e nice, being able to see everything without frying."

  An old net ghosted up under them. As they passed over it, Amy saw the spotted flippers of what was probably once a seal. The rest had been picked away in chunks. Ribs glowed under the remaining shreds of bobbing flesh. They looked remarkably human. She imagined that both species looked the same in their final moments as they writhed and struggled for air and shrieked for help that never came. "Yeah. Lucky me. I get to see all the ugly stuff."

  "Hey, who're you calling ugly?"

  Amy flicked Javier in the ear. She picked a cigarette butt out of his hair. When her hand came away, Javier's eyes had opened. "What if you see something bad?" Amy asked.

  His eyes searched her face. "I won't."

  Amy smiled. Javier smiled back. His face seemed more expressive, lately. He had learned how to reach and hold the moment between a blank, lost face and a full-powered smile – that calm that lived in the eyes and at the corners of the mouth. Amy would have said as much, but she suspected that would have ruined things. She knew what he meant. She could read his face, now.

  The expression vanished, though, as something skimmed the bottom of the bubble. It sounded rough, and it felt prickly. Javier shut his eyes again. "Shit."

  "It's OK." Something like fingers scraped the bubble. They dragged across its surface as though testing its strength. "It's OK. It's OK–"

  "It's probably that goddamn tentacle monster that eats the container ships–"

  "It's a forest, Javier." She tried not to let her relief sound so palpable. She shook him a little. "Open your eyes. There are trees down here."

  "Trees?"

  He sat up. The trees surrounded them, now. They grew up straight and tall from the crooked remains of streets and bricks and steel, and they reached up for the surface like dark, thin ghosts striving to touch something that still lived. Their branches brushed the bubble softly. "Evergreens," Javier said.

  "They must have slid down here when the quake happened," Amy said. "I mean, the root system would travel with them, right? During a landslide?"

  "Yeah, totally." Javier sat on his knees. "They just kept growing, I guess."

  A striped eel oozed its way out from between two boughs, then darted back inside as they passed. More neighbour fish poked their heads out, or swam alongside the bubble, or bumped into it, as the bubble's speed increased. Now they drew nearer to a source of light. Although turning around inside the bubble was noisy, wet, and difficult, they rearranged their limbs and peered down through the clear surface. They were being drawn swiftly down to a cluster of derelict shipping containers with museum logos on them. A retracting tether pulled the bubble toward a seam in the topmost container – an airlock, Amy guessed.

  Her suspicions were confirmed when the bubble snugged up to the seam and popped through. A needle pierced the bubble's membrane, and it began deflating. Amy hurried through, and Javier followed. They splashed down into a dark container so thick with rust and algae Amy could almost taste the oxidation. A strange, high humming filled it, like a hundred propellers spinning all at once. Phosphorescent tape glowed up through the floor: "EXIT."

  "You're kidding me," Javier said.

  "I think it's a hatch." Amy knelt down in the water. She felt around blindly. Her fingers landed on a metal ring roughly the size of her hand. She yanked. Water poured through the rough trap door and brighter light greeted her. There was even a ladder, the kind found on old swimming pools. She threw the door back the rest of the way and began descending the ladder. Halfway down, she stood on her toes to look at Javier. "I'm sorry. I take you to all the worst places."

  He looked around at the rusted walls and the filthy water at his feet. "It's fine. Better than prison, anyway."

  They splashed through water, following an arrow pattern marked out in more glowing tape. It was mostly unnecessary, though – they could hear a woman's voice singing up through the steel. As they opened another hatch, it grew clearer and louder. Now Amy knew it was a recording: she heard a full band backing the woman up. She didn't recognize the song; it sounded sad, with a deep voice twisting up into high notes to emphasize some long-ago hurt. They entered a vertical shaft equipped with a thin ladder that left dark streaks on her fingers. Javier watched her through his legs, and slid the rest of the way down the ladder when she had cleared it. When they turned, they found another door, this one marked with the words "The Doctor Is: In." Music blared through it. Amy smelled rose incense.

  Javier gestured at the door. "Ladies first."

  The door stuck a little, but with some shouldering it popped open with a deep, pained groan. Inside, a man in a smoking jacket, a very long plaid scarf, loose linen trousers and treaded beach slippers sat in a caramel-coloured leather armchair before a massive display unit that unfurled from the ceiling of the container and stretched down to the floor and across to each of the adjoining walls. Behind him, a door peeked open on what looked like a workshop – she saw pieces of drones on the floor. Onscreen, Amy watched views of the museum gently fading in and out: families, years, damage, the same buildings collapsing over and over before building themselves back up again. She saw herself loom large on the display. The man raised his hand and brought it down. As he did, the music lowered in volume. He turned in his seat.

  "Hello, Amy."

  The man stood up and strode across a panelled floor strewn with intricately patterned carpets. He was round: round body, round, rolling walk, round head that shined under the light of blown glass lamps overhead. He made a little bow to Javier. "It's nice to meet you both. I see the two of you have met Rover." He opened an antique cabinet and produced two fluffy towels from elaborate scrollwork. "Please."

  Amy started drying her hair. "Thank you." She wiped down her arms. "You're Dan Sarton?"

  "Guilty as charged." He gestured at the display. "I know it doesn't look like much, but it's mine and it's not crowded with students, funders, or any other human allergens."

  Amy looked around. "It's not really much of an office."

  "Oh, dear, no. This isn't my office. This is where the museum keeps the backup servers. They handle the rendering load when one goes down for maintenance. Saves a lot of energy on cooling, as you might imagine." He lowered the music still further. The same high sound they had heard earlier took its place. "There are still fans, of course. You can understand why I block them out. But I still prefer to spend my time here if I can."

  Amy looked at the display. Currently, it showed a group of people watching educational footage of the old city – how the landfill undergirding the city's oldest buildings was of poor quality, how the soil was prone to liquefaction, how the whole thing was quite literally built on sand. "Why did Rory want me to come here?" she asked. "I'm not bluescreened."

  "My work in Redmond had to do with what we might call the vN immune system," Sarton said. "I hypothesized that bluescreen events were really failsafing events in disguise – that for whatever reason, the iteration in question had begun to failsafe, but gotten stuck."

  "So you know all about broken failsafes," Amy said.

  "I thought I did. Then you came along." Dr Sarton made kissing sounds at a large lump of red silk cushion in the corner, and it promptly inched its way across the floor and curled around Amy and Javier's ankles. "Have a seat."

  They sat. The cushion was warm, and it purred slightly. "Please don't mind the stains," Dr Sarton said. "I sometimes sleep here."

  Javier muttered something behind his hand that sounded a lot like "Chimps…"

  "The vN immune system is comprised of two parts," Dr Sarton said. "The first is exterior – your body remembers what it should look like, and edits out the damage that occurs. The second part is interior. You're protected against a wide variety of worms, memes, viruses, and so on. Most of that is unnecessary because you're not actually wired to a network. Connected models were considered, early on, but there was a very serious concern that if and when the failsafe failed – as the result of a hack, or a virus, or an emerge
nt property – the failure might spread virally among vN."

  "Is that what happened to me when I ate Portia?" Amy asked. "She hacked me from the inside?"

  Dr Sarton licked his lips. He steepled his hands. "I'm not sure." He made a pinching motion at the display, and new footage opened up. Amy recognized her clade immediately. Groups of identical women shuffled in and among triage units full of wounded humans, squirting skin glue on wounds, holding hands, administering fluids.

  He said, "After the Cascadia quake, your clade was crucial to the relief effort." He pinched again, and the view bounced downward, toward one tent where a man with ruined feet screamed silently at the camera. His nurse ignored his noise, but kept working diligently on removing glass and other debris from the wreckage of his feet. "This was before you all attained sentience, of course. The nursing vN were easy to program and deploy as search and rescue units. Several were lost in the aftershocks. They were spread quite thinly; a Japanese prototype of a networked model was sent over to assist, but their container was lost in the Pacific."