by Phoenix Ward
Shame, she thought. I would have liked to see the Pavilion once more before I’m exiled to the slums forever.
She knew that’s where the prison was. It had to be the Pavilion, guessing by the bus stop she had waited at. Everything was so clean and pristine. Like it was built brand new. That kind of care only existed in places where I.I.s alone lived. It was easy to keep places clear of litter when there were no snacks to eat, no wrappers to abandon, and no waste to produce.
When Tera arrived in Slumside, she started to walk around. Without realizing it, she started to take the same route she would on patrol with Abenayo. It was as if instinct drove her, or perhaps she just wanted the comfort of something routine. Something familiar.
The faces were less angry and the people less disheveled than she remembered. In fact, some even seemed pleasant and kindly. Handsome and beautiful. Had it always been this way? Or had they become more attractive since she’d been gone?
Perhaps it’s me, she thought.
The slum dwellers weren’t disgusted at her for being a Council cop anymore, because she wasn’t a Council cop. They just saw her as one of their own. Another face in the many. Perhaps thinking that she was going through the same struggle made them less likely to scowl at her.
There were still some people who didn’t seem happy to see her, however.
No matter what your status, there will still be people who hate I.I.s, she thought.
As she continued walking, she started to grow uncomfortable. When she walked through the less populated streets and alleys, she sometimes found someone following close behind. Whenever she cast a glance back at them, she found them staring at her. Sometimes sneering.
She knew they couldn’t hurt her the way they could a human woman, but that didn’t make her want them to follow her. Having patrolled the streets, she had seen what some I.I.-hating humans were capable of. It was important to note that she was just a lowly bodyshell and not a cop; no one would care. Her case would be passed down to some rookie like so many cases had been passed down to her. They were all learning tools — no one expected them to be solved.
She started to miss the smiling faces from earlier.
I guess it doesn’t take long to be disillusioned by the slums, she thought.
Once she was able to shake a few of her stalkers, she looked for someplace to sit. Someplace to call home, she thought.
There was a small deadend alley she found not far from the precinct she once worked at. She figured, of all places in the slum, the safest would be those close to the police station. If for no other reason than that the cops didn’t want dangerous criminals too close to home.
There was a small patch of mud beside one of the alley’s dumpsters that Tera took a seat in. She didn’t care about the filth anymore — her cheap bodyshell wasn’t worth the concern. All she wanted was a safe place to conceal herself so she could enter a low power state. Maybe there was some network adapter option she would find if she dug around in the bodyshell’s settings enough. She doubted it, but it was possible, even for the worst of humanoid machines. If so, then she could start to formulate a plan.
She wasn’t going to stay in the slums. She had to prove who she was and get her old life back.
Then I’ll make some changes from within, she thought. If I was in charge, no one would have to live like this.
A new sense of determination filled her.
That’s what I’ll do. I’ll start a revolution of sorts. Build a new Shell City.
She reached over and grabbed a bit of ragged tarp that was bundled up by the dumpster and draped it over herself. Convinced she was hidden well enough to avoid some street punk messing with her, she entered a low power state.
It was rough going since day one. It was now a week into Tera’s new life as a slum dweller, and she didn’t know how much more she could take. Every day was a constant struggle to move, find a decent place to loiter, and fend off the other slum dwellers.
She grew accustomed to harassment in her short time as a Slumside resident. The men would make rude comments about her and try to intimidate her with their size. She thought of them like posturing apes, beating on their chests. She tried to ignore them, but that only angered them more. The best approach, she found, was just to avoid them altogether. Don’t allow them to get close enough for an altercation.
The children would try to mess with her too, prodding at the panels on her bodyshell when she wasn’t looking. It was like they were playing some weird game where the goal was to cause as many mechanical malfunctions on her person as possible. Fending them off was even harder than the men because they were small, tricky, and persistent. The more she tried to shoo them away, the more interested they became. She hadn’t found a good approach for them just yet.
There was some solace in the other I.I.s who called Slumside their home. They weren’t exactly welcoming, but they were acceptable company when she needed it. They didn’t try to mess with her or intimidate her because they knew what it was like.
As she got to know a few of them, she started to realize the I.l.s trapped in the ghetto might be worse off than the humans. Despite being oppressed, the fleshies had strength in numbers. They fought, of course, but more often than not, humans got along with each other. And together, they hated progs like her.
Tera became friends with one I.I. who offered her things to read in order to kill the ever-present boredom of the ghettos. She found the things he gave her enlightening. They motivated her even more to take action, to change the city around her.
Then, one day, her friend pulled her aside while the other I.I.s played a game of dominoes.
“I know who you are,” he said.
She cocked her painted-on — not synthetic — eyebrow. “What?” she asked.
“You’re that former cop, Tera Alvarez,” he replied. “I know you.”
The female bodyshell stepped back a little, a suspicious expression on her face.
“You’ve seen me on patrol before?” she said.
He nodded.
“And who are you?” she asked.
“My name is Gauge,” he replied. “I want to offer you a chance to redeem yourself. To clear your name and to make sure no one else has to endure the injustice you’ve been subject to. That’s what you want more than anything, isn’t it?”
Tera was shocked. “How do you know these things?”
“I have some connections. In fact, my friends would like to meet you, if you would be interested,” he said. “You’d have to keep it really low key, though.”
She thought for a moment.
“When do they want to meet?” she asked.
22
Briefing
“Ethan,” Gauge said. “I’d like you to meet our newest recruit.”
The young man turned away from the computer console he was working on and faced the two bodyshells that approached him. He didn’t recognize the mechanical woman Gauge was leading, but that was to be expected. He barely recognized Gauge, and he had seen him every day for the last month or so. To him, a lot of the bodyshells looked alike, so it wasn’t until he actually spoke to them that he could be sure who they were.
“This is Tera Alvarez,” Gauge said, waving towards the feminine bodyshell. “She used to be a police officer for the Council.”
“A cop, eh?” Ethan asked. “How do we know we can trust her?”
Gauge laughed a little. “I assure you, we vet our people, Ethan,” he said. “But thanks for the concern.”
“You don’t look so trustworthy yourself,” Tera said, eying the teenage boy up and down. He was only a year or so younger than her, yet seemed like a child in comparison.
“Ethan here has been helping us understand a whole hell of a lot about the Council’s security systems,” Gauge said. “You see, he’s one of the victims of their meat puppet farm. They kept him in a simulation since he was a baby. He has just as much reason to hate the Council as you do.”
“Must have been nice,” Tera
said, “getting to spend all that time in the simulation. That blissful ignorance.”
“Yeah, it was a real treat being lied to my whole life so they could harvest my body like some sort of livestock,” Ethan replied. “I bet being a Council lapdog was more fun, though.”
Tera narrowed her eyes at the teenager. He returned the death glare.
“Well, I knew you two would get along,” Gauge said sarcastically.
Despite his indignation, Ethan couldn’t help but feel like something about Tera was familiar. Not her face or name, of course, but her voice. Like he’d spoken to her once before, briefly, and had since forgotten it.
“Ah, there you are!” a male voice called to them. The three of them turned to the makeshift entrance of the “room”, which was really just a stack of crates placed to form an enclosure not unlike a terrible cubicle. The Clevingers, embodied by the human form of Betsy, appeared around the corner. “All three of you are here! Excellent!”
“I told you they would be, dear,” Betsy said to her husband. “Gauge told us he was taking Tera to meet Ethan an hour ago. My goodness, can an I.I. go senile?”
“If I go senile, it’ll be because of your brain, woman!”
Betsy looked at Tera.
“You see the way he talks to me?” she said.
The female I.I. smiled.
“How can we help you?” Ethan asked, almost like he was the host.
“We might have a job for you, actually,” Marvin said through his wife’s skull. “A mission of diplomacy.”
“Diplomacy?” Tera repeated. “Don’t you think we’re a little under-qualified?”
“Yeah; I’m not a negotiator,” Ethan said.
“I think you two would be perfect diplomats, actually,” Betsy said. “Both of you.”
“Why?” Tera asked.
“Because we need allies and you’re all sympathetic characters,” Martin said. “The more people we can bring into our cause, the better chance we have against the Council. You interested?”
“Who are we meeting with?” Ethan asked.
Betsy turned to him. “As you’ve learned in your time here, there are groups of unimplanted humans who live out in the ‘wild’ areas between the cities,” she started. “We figure, if anyone would have both the disposition and resources to help us, it might be one of them. That’s why we want to establish relationships with them and try to persuade them to join our cause.”
A look of distrust crossed Tera’s face. “I was attacked by ferals from the wastes,” she said. “I don’t think I want to talk to them again.”
“I understand what you went through, which was terrible,” Betsy started. “These ‘ferals’, as you call them, are from an entirely different group than the one you encountered, though. In fact, there are a great number of these unimplanted tribes out in the world. We want to be friends with as many of them as we can — within reason, of course.”
“Where are you sending them?” Gauge asked. Even though he wasn’t going, it was clear he was interested.
“The Holy Kingdom of Opes,” Martin replied matter-of-factly. “At least, that’s what they call it.”
Everyone looked at the Clevingers with skeptical expressions, as if they weren’t sure they heard things quite right.
“That’s right,” Martin continued. “They are a small nation of religious people who coped with the fall of mankind by turning to spiritual mysticism. We don’t know much about their worship, but we know a lot of their culture revolves around the ‘human spirit’, so to speak. We imagine they would find what was done to Ethan atrocious, which might help our cause.”
“They’re just supposed to trust the story of a stranger?” Ethan asked.
“If we succeed, you won’t be strangers to them,” Betsy explained. “But you’re right; we’ll need evidence to back up our claims. That’s one reason we’ve been scanning your brain as much as we have during the last month or so, Ethan. On top of the tactical advantage it gives us, it also provides us all the evidence we need. They’ll have no reason to doubt you.”
Tera and Ethan looked at each other. Neither could divine what the other was thinking, but there was an uncertainty present in both of them.
“When do we go?” Tera asked. She was thinking of all the preparation she felt she needed.
“Today,” Betsy replied. “We have a discreet autocar available for you two that no one should see leaving the city. It’s about an eight-hundred-mile journey, so it should take a couple hours to arrive.”
Both Tera and Ethan’s faces fell. Neither said anything as they tried to wrap their minds around the task before them.
“You better get going, then,” Gauge said, a smirk on his robotic lips.
23
Reception
The long flight to the Holy Kingdom of Opes was an uncomfortable one, to say the least. Not in a physical sense — there was ample room and a sofa for each person to sprawl out on — but conversation was difficult and felt forced.
For the first half hour or so, Ethan managed to ignore the I.I. by staring out the window, pretending to be fascinated with every bit of abandoned land that zipped by below them. The autocar kept a low altitude in order to avoid being detected by any Council authorities, so everything moved by in a blur. After a while of staring out at it, Ethan got dizzy.
“First autocar flight?” Tera asked. She was desperate to relieve the tension between them.
“Second, actually,” Ethan replied. “But I figure it’ll take a few more before I’m used to it.”
There was another stretch of silence while Tera stared at the human and he tried to ignore her. When the silence built up to the point that Tera feared the autocar would rupture, she spoke up.
“What was it like in there?” she asked.
“In the simulation?” Ethan said.
She nodded.
“It was perfect,” he replied. “A hell of a lot better than out here. But it was all a lie — and I don’t even know if that matters.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if I was happy with the lie and I’m miserable with the truth, what’s so bad about the lie?” he said.
“Ethan, they were going to lobotomize you,” Tera said.
“No, you were going to lobotomize me,” Ethan corrected her, his tone sour. “Don’t forget that you were working with the Council. Did they have you forcing human babies into those pods often?”
If her rudimentary bodyshell was capable of it, Tera would have blushed bright red with indignation.
“I had no idea what they were doing to you, Ethan,” she replied. “You weren’t the only one they lied to. And they didn’t even get the chance to use you yet, like they used me.”
Ethan thought for a moment. There was a small look of shame on his face.
“I guess it’s not easy having your whole world upended around you,” he said.
“No,” Tera said. “It’s not.”
The rest of the flight was a little less tense.
Ethan and Tera both sat up when they noticed the autocar start circling to make its descent. It took almost an hour longer than they thought the flight would be, but they managed to kill the time by learning a bit about each other’s worlds. By the end of their trip, they were starting to crack jokes about their histories.
They were high above a patch of desert when they started the final approach. A thin river ran through the cragged dirt and rocks, along which a strip of green vegetation grew. Right where the river became its widest, forming almost a small pond, were structures. They were all tan and orange with small windows and bits of wood holding the buildings together. Ethan and Tera were unable to get a great view of the large village that composed the Holy Kingdom of Opes before they landed.
Since Ethan had studied a bit of geography in the simulation, he placed their landing somewhere just east of the Grand Canyon. He had come to learn that, while they had lied to him about a lot of the world of the present, they were actually prett
y accurate about the subjects unrelated to the rise of the installed intelligence. He was a little grateful that all the science, math, geography, and ancient history he learned wasn’t useless.
Tera peered out the autocar’s windows as they lighted down. A wall of dust was kicked up around them, but it blew away quickly. Once it did, she could see the settlement itself better. It was composed almost entirely of clay-based adobe buildings and a number of cloth tents. Some of the buildings had colorful murals painted on them, but for the most part, everything was red, orange, and brown like the clay it was made from.
A form started to approach the autocar, the robes it wore flapping around in the wind. It was a man was dressed in all white, with a long golden chain around his neck. Atop his wrinkled head sat a tall hat that looked like someone put a white bucket over his scalp. To Ethan, it reminded him of the chef hats he’d seen some computer-generated cooks wear in the simulation, but without the wide plume at the top.
The man strode toward the vehicle alone. His sandals sunk into the sand a little as he took each step. Tera and Ethan opened the door to their vehicle as he closed in on them.
“Greetings!” the man cried out. “Welcome to our holy kingdom, my friends.”
Ethan raised his hand as he exited the autocar, blocking out some of the dust that blew around in his face. As he did, he was able to see the man’s aged features a little better. It looked like he was at least fifty years old, enduring the blowing dust every day of his life. He had large eyebrows with long, wiry hairs that looked like they were trying to escape his face.
“Hello,” Tera said. “My name is Tera Alvarez, and this is Ethan Myler.”
The older man bowed with a smile on his face.
“I am Adviser Orram, high ranking priest here in Opes,” he introduced himself. “I hope I’m not being too forward, but I haven’t actually seen a person such as yourself, though I’ve heard stories.” He was referring to Tera.
She looked at Ethan awkwardly, unsure of how to respond. If Adviser Orram knew the Council like she did, then she was reasonably nervous about what stories he’d heard.
