Bless Your Mechanical Heart

by Seanan McGuire

  “Septic tank it is,” Brother Marrow said with a nervous grin.

  And so, for the next few months, Kendra lived. At least in Brother Marrow’s heart.

  The two of them lived and worked side by side, tending the monastery gardens, maintaining the buildings, and meditating on the truths inside reality and illusion. They spoke very little, but that was actually how Brother Marrow remembered his life with Kendra all those centuries ago, where days would pass without them needing to speak, so well did they know each other.

  For Brother Marrow, the irony of this was almost beyond comprehension. He’d joined the monkhood because he couldn’t stand living in a world so tied to the virtual, a world where he could spin memories of his dead love into a copy of Kendra and live as if she’d never die. That world had bubbled all around him—and still did—begging only a quick neural connection to access. He’d forsaken those illusory temptations to recreate Kendra only to have the same temptation arrive in the form of this artificial construct.

  “Why did she die?” Kendra asked one day as they were repairing the path’s stepping stones after a strong rain washed them askew.

  “An ancient dam broke. No one ever determined exactly why, although the river was at flood stage from heavy rains. But the fault also lies with Kendra and myself. We were young and arrogant. We thought ourselves truly immortal—that our healers would revive us from anything. But they don’t. When she died, it was like my heart had been ripped out.”

  After Brother Marrow said this last part, he froze. He hadn’t intended to mention what Kendra did to people. He was merely being honest.

  But if Kendra was hurt by his poor choice of words, she didn’t show it. Instead, she seemed sad, as if truly pained by Brother Marrow’s loss. “Sometimes I could kill myself,” she said softly. “But every time I try my programming stops me. I think my creator was afraid I’d commit suicide before I killed him.”

  “He was a selfish man.”

  “I know. But I still loved him.”

  Brother Marrow sighed, trying to remain detached from this copy of Kendra, but also finding himself drawn to her. He’d been tempted a few times to open his connection and contact the Priyas or his distant abbot and alert them to Kendra. But each time he’d been about to do so Kendra had appeared at his side, looking hurt and angry as if she knew his plans. “I’ll disappear,” she’d simply say. “A single warning and I’m gone.”

  Unspoken was that her next death would be on his conscience.

  He’d even tried trapping Kendra, locking her in a storage shed behind the temple. The shed was strong, built of reinforced stones and metals, having stood there for the last two thousand years, and he’d planned to summon the Priyas to capture Kendra. But before he could open his connection to call, Kendra knocked down the shed’s side wall and stood there staring at him, her incredibly strong body twitching. For a moment she’d looked alien—like the mix of human and machine she was—before her body flowed back into Kendra’s familiar face.

  After that Brother Marrow gave up trying to stop her.

  “I like this,” Kendra said as they finished leveling the final stepping stone. “It’s satisfying, doing work like this. You get to see what you accomplish.”

  “There’s reality for you.”

  Brother Marrow had intended to continue talking—to perhaps preach on the differences between reality and the virtual, and the similarities too. But instead, as he watched Kendra tap the stone down with her foot, he realized he enjoyed simply being near her when she was happy. He glanced up the path, his enhanced eyes picking up each highlight and flicker of the dappled green trees around them. He heard faint laughter, and increased his hearing until he could hear clearly the sounds of children playing in the village below.

  “Reality, huh?” Kendra said, smiling as she joined Brother Marrow in looking around. “I don’t see much difference between a beautiful day experienced by your enhanced senses—and a virtually re-imagined day clicking through your neural connection, or a memory of a beautiful day. If they all make you happy, what does it matter?”

  Brother Marrow paused, trying to collect his thoughts, trying to remember the lessons he’d taught on that very subject. But as he stood by Kendra—as for the hundredth time he nearly forgot this wasn’t his long-dead friend but instead a simulacrum crafted from his memories—he couldn’t find any response.

  “I thought not,” Kendra said, before laughing and jumping up and down on the stepping stone to push it smoothly into the dirt.

  A few weeks later Brother Marrow and Kendra were in the monastery’s vegetable garden, pulling weeds, when he heard someone walking up the stepping stones on the path. He glanced over in time to see two fems waving at him with synchronized movements of their hands.

  The Priyas. Both halves.

  He thought Kendra would run, but instead she bowed slightly to the village heads when they reached the garden.

  “And you are?” the right Priya Half asked.

  “I’m Kendra. An old friend of Brother Marrow’s.”

  Brother Marrow opened his mouth to tell the truth, but he saw Kendra’s arm twitch and knew the construct would rip the Priyas apart if need be. He then waited for the Priyas to search the virtual and learn the truth, but instead the Priyas relaxed and smiled in friendship, as if whatever they’d accessed had confirmed Kendra to be who she pretended to be. He should have known Kendra would be prepared for people who attempted to research her life.

  “Brother Marrow is a good person,” the left Priya Half said. “Of all the monks who’ve stayed here, he is our favorite.”

  “Mine too,” Kendra said.

  “Have you caught the killer?” Brother Marrow asked, tired of the layers of illusion and pretense swirling around him.

  “No. That’s actually why we’re here,” the right Priya said. Brother Marrow’s heart jumped, hoping they’d figured out the truth, but instead the right Priya reached into her pants pocket and removed a small disk the size of her fingernail.

  “We are distributing these to everyone in the area.” Pulling back her hair, the right Priya Half showed where she’d placed a similar disk on her skin just under her right ear, directly over her own the neural connection. “If the disk senses you are being hacked, it surges electricity into the connection. It’ll knock you out instantly.”

  Kendra looked closely at the disk. “What if the attacker simply waits until we wake up?”

  The left Priya Half laughed, causing the right Priya to blush a deep red. “Ah yes,” she said. “I pointed that out to our superiors. But they said this is better than nothing.”

  The Priyas placed a disk in Brother Marrow’s hand, and one in Kendra’s, before starting back down the mountain path. Kendra examined her disk closely before giving it to Brother Marrow. It won’t stop me, she transmitted to Brother Marrow’s neural connection, having forced it open so the Priyas couldn’t hear her. People have tried this before. As I said, I’ll simply wait until they awaken.

  As Kendra said this, Brother Marrow looked into her face and realized how beautiful she was. How she called to him. How she begged him to embrace her.

  Brother Marrow took a step toward her before stopping himself.

  “The time grows near,” Kendra said. “My programming is demanding I fall in love again. I’m sorry.”

  Brother Marrow nodded sadly, and glanced down the mountain at the Priyas’ receding forms, part of him desperate to yell for help. His enhanced eyes telescoped the Priyas until they appeared to again stand before him, while his enhanced ears picked up their footfalls as they walked down the path. But no matter how he enhanced this reality, the Priyas still didn’t understand what had truly happened here.

  “I like those Priyas,” Kendra said. “They obviously love each other quite deeply.”

  “They can’t help but love each other, living as they do.” Even as the words came out of his mouth, Brother Marrow realized what he was saying. Kendra nodded to his words.


  “Not only a good person, but insightful too,” Kendra said. “I like such qualities in those I fall in love with.”

  Brother Marrow tapped his foot on a weed and ground it into the garden’s soil. He wondered if the next monk to live here would take such care of the monastery. Because he knew, one way or another, at least for him, all this would soon be over.

  That night Brother Marrow sat on the ground outside his hut, unable to sleep but likewise unable to meditate. He stared at the two tiny disks in his hand. He’d already broken his vows—yet again—by opening his connection and accessing the disks’ programming. Now, as he lay on his back, he clicked the disks one against the other, over and over and over.

  A soft knock on a tree nearby startled him. He looked over to see Kendra standing behind him.

  “This is the last night,” she said. “I’m certain of it. Tomorrow I won’t be able to hold back my programming.”

  Brother Marrow nodded. He could barely imagine how powerful her full programming would be. Even now, before her peak, Kendra looked so beautiful, just as she did in his most intimate of memories.

  “You do understand I’m not her,” Kendra said. “I’m only your memories of her. While you may have connected many times with her mind, she was still she. And you are no longer the you of all those centuries ago.”

  “That’s why I never recreated a virtual version of Kendra. It wouldn’t have been the same.”

  Kendra nodded, pleased by his answer. She stepped closer, standing only a hand’s touch away. “I’m not Kendra. While my programming makes me mimic her, all the other lives I’ve copied also swirl in me. And there’s even a touch of myself somewhere in here.”

  Brother Marrow’s body shook as he spoke. “The last time Kendra and I embraced—not the embrace of fighting to survive in the flood, but a true embrace—was a few hours before she died. When we were in a forest near our village.”

  Kendra nodded. Brother Marrow knew she’d already touched this memory in his mind, but she was kind enough to still act as if all he said was unknown to her.

  “That memory is perfect,” he continued. “We enhanced our reality until the moon bled milk-light through the forest, and the wind chilled just enough to encourage us to hug each other tight. Our minds linked and we dipped our senses through nothing but absolute love. I treasure the memory because, a few hours later, it was all I had left.”

  “But…?” Kendra asked softly.

  “But I can’t let it go. Something haunts me from that night. A taste I can barely describe. A feeling that we were being watched. I sometimes wonder if our love that night truly happened, or if it was all someone’s hack. Perhaps even a hack I made. Maybe I was so desperate to fall in love that I crafted these memories from the virtual world around me.”

  Kendra sat down beside Brother Marrow. “Your memories are true. I know you truly loved me. We truly experienced that time together.”

  Brother Marrow shivered at how easily Kendra embraced a life she’d never lived, and memories she’d never experienced. But he didn’t care. “How do you know?”

  “I’ve hacked enough minds to know when someone is being hacked. No, our love truly happened.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “But I still can’t…”

  Brother Marrow began to cry. Kendra reached around him, hugging him close and letting him cry until the tears stopped. He again tasted bloody iron and salt-given sand—the same as on that long-ago night. But where before the taste had always stormed to painful memories of that dam breaking and Kendra’s death, this time he felt absolved. As if the memories which had slammed his mind for so many centuries were being washed away like the flood waters from his long-ago village. If this was a hack, it was the most blissfully perfect one he’d ever experienced.

  “Thank you,” he repeated.

  Kendra smiled as she leaned over and kissed him, her strong arms drawing him to her. Brother Marrow shivered again, but this time in happiness, as they lay back on the ground beside his hut and the night pretended it didn’t need to be enhanced at all.

  In the morning Brother Marrow stood up quietly, taking care not to wake Kendra as he wrapped his leaf-covered robes around his naked body. He looked at Kendra as she twitched in her sleep. His neural connection buzzed slightly. He could literally taste her dreams—she was running, chasing after phantoms which her programming always dangled just out of reach.

  He knew once she woke the slight buzz he felt in his connection would immediately change as her programmed demand for love kicked in.

  Brother Marrow reached into his robe’s pocket and felt the two disks the Priyas had given him. Even though he’d reprogrammed them last night, he still hesitated to take the next step. While he was far more bio-human than Kendra, many parts of him were still machine. He was reasonably sure his enhanced eyes and ears, and the healers which gave him such a long life, would survive what he planned. But he wasn’t positive.

  Not that any of those enhancements had helped him all these years, as he’d fought to overcome his memories. But Kendra, she had helped him. Maybe he could return the favor.

  He knelt beside Kendra, who was still lost in her dreams. He placed both of the Priyas’ disks over his neural connection, then reached out and nudged her awake.

  Kendra opened her eyes to see him smiling. Her eyes twitched, and she looked at him as if they’d never truly seen one another. Kendra smiled back, a look of purest love radiating from her face as her connection slammed into Brother Marrow’s. As she reached into him and promised love—nothing but love—for all time.

  Brother Marrow barely had time to feel himself falling toward that love before the Priyas’ disks shocked him unconscious.

  Brother Marrow woke hard, his eyes fuzzy, his ears ringing. He felt the sun warming his face but couldn’t see the sun. Where before he’d always heard every whisper and cry from the village, now he heard only the weak susurrus of the wind blowing.

  Except it wasn’t the wind. The sound was a scream, a weak scream which built in intensity as his enhanced hearing returned. He heard a snapping as of a tree breaking, following by more snaps. And a crash, as of a small building collapsing upon itself.

  And then silence. Footsteps. The hot breath of someone growling in his ears, lips almost touching his skin. Strong arms snatched him painfully up and gripped him break-bone tight.

  “Marrow?” a sharp voice asked. “I know you’re awake.”

  Brother Marrow shook his head, trying to see through the haze around him. The world was no longer crisp and clear. Something burned on his neck. He reached back and touched the disks—and remembered. The Priyas’ disks were only supposed to shock him unconscious when Kendra accessed his neural connection. But he’d increased their power, and placed two disks there.

  “The disks…” he said.

  “They destroyed your connection. And damaged your enhanced eyes and ears. The healers are even now repairing you, but your neural connection is beyond help.”

  Brother Marrow was able to see a little better, as the healers repaired his eyes. A face hovered before his. Kendra.

  Behind her, Brother Marrow saw his meditation hut in ruins. The trees around the hut were also broken, snapped like dry twigs under a child’s angry hands.

  “Do you know what you’ve done?” Kendra asked.

  “I’ve stopped you. With my connection burned out, you can’t overwhelm me. You can’t make me ask to be killed.”

  Kendra screamed, and dropped Brother Morrow on the ground as she ran to a nearby tree. She punched the tree, snapping it in half, the top part crashing to the ground in a burst of leaves and dust. Kendra kicked the fallen tree and screamed again, grabbing her head as if in pain. She stomped back to Brother Marrow and pulled him up to face her.

  “Say it,” she demanded. “Say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “Your heart. Ask me to rip out your heart and eat it.”

  “No.”

  Kendra screamed again as she col
lapsed to the ground, taking Brother Marrow with her. Fear ran through his body. He tried to breathe deep—to release the fear—but couldn’t.

  “I’ve freed you,” he whispered. “Without my connection, your programming can’t make me ask to be killed.”

  As Brother Marrow said this, he gazed at Kendra’s face. He could see the love in her eyes. Just like the eyes of his own Kendra before she died.

  For a moment he imagined their life together—imagined the last few months stretching into years and decades. Kendra once again loving him, and the love he’d begun to feel for this copy. But he wouldn’t be so overwhelmed that he’d ask her to kill him. And as long as he didn’t ask her to kill him, she wouldn’t be free to kill anyone else. Her programming would be stuck in a loop, unable to fulfill the one thing she’d been built to fulfill.

  Brother Marrow knew his abbot and fellow monks wouldn’t approve of what he’d done—how he’d used love to trap this construct—but what other choice did he have?

  As he looked at Kendra, he saw her calming down and reflecting on life. He whispered to her of what they could have together. How this was her chance to experience true love, not the illusion crafted by her programming.

  “I think I’d like that,” Kendra said, cradling his body with her leg and right arm, as her left hand gently rested on his chest. “But would our love be real? Do you really love me?”

  Brother Marrow nodded gently.

  Kendra’s body shook, and a tear ran her cheek. She seemed happy, truly happy, if only for a moment, then pain shivered her face and she looked away. When she looked back at Brother Marrow her hands shook.

  “I… I have to tell you something,” she said. “You won’t love me after I tell you.”

  “Nothing will change what I feel.”

  Kendra leaned over, her lips beside his ear. “Iron and sand,” she said. “Now that your neural connection is gone, the hack I placed there is also gone.”

  Brother Marrow looked puzzled for a moment. Then the taste of blood-cut iron and salt-given sand flooded his mouth. He remembered his last night with Kendra. Remembered the feeling that someone had been watching. That an angry face was nearby, observing their love.