by Corey Ostman
“Gait and posture consistent with 0016-Alpha, Grace Donner. Stand or be subdued.”
Crap. She heard its LEMP charging, the situation devolving from serious to catastrophic. A LEMP blast in this urban area could bounce all over, and the nearby buildings might act as reflectors, sending the electromagnetic pulse back toward them no matter where they fled.
“Split up!” she yelled.
Avonaco darted away from her. Grace whirled behind one of the granite pillars at the base of the stoop. Behind her, she heard the sickening sound of static discharge as the loafer fired its LEMP. It would take seven seconds to recharge. She stuck her head out to get a better view of the street. Good. Avonaco had made it across the street and into the crowd.
“Protector tactic sigma-four-one detected,” the loafer said. “Incorrect ptenda identification. Probability of ninety-fo-fo-fo-fo,” it stuttered and went silent for a moment, then continued: “Grace Donner located. Bod Town, section four-one-seven.”
She knew that stutter. It was using most of its energy to send out a wide-band broadcast, alerting nearby compstate security and protector forces that it had located a high-value target.
Grace unholstered Marty and thumbed the reaction chamber to maximum. Then she stepped around the pillar, aimed at the loafer’s central cylinder, and fired. The loafer exploded with a satisfying hiss. Bits of glowing orange metarm rained down on the stoop.
To her surprise, there was scattered cheering in the crowd across the street.
Avonaco ran back the moment the loafer exploded. She grabbed him by the hand. Together they sprinted away from the building and toward their secret subway entrance, but he was soon pulling her back.
“No. No!” Avonaco said.
“What is it?”
“We can’t lead them down there!”
Ah. The subway was too important to the AI community to be discovered by compstate security.
“Then where?” said Grace. “They’ll call a blind bang in a moment.”
Avonaco tugged her toward an alley. “Come on, this way!”
He released her hand and raced forward.
“Hey! Wait up!” she hissed.
They ran to the sound of sirens, which seemed to be coming from both streets parallel to the alley. Grace looked for alcoves or doors to hide in, but everything was barred or blocked. Nowhere to shelter.
Twenty meters from the end of the alley, Avonaco stopped and tapped his ptenda. To his left, the metal wall on the side of a construction crate slid open. He jumped inside. Grace grabbed the doorframe and swung into the dark after him. As the door slid shut and they stood in the darkness, she could have sworn she heard the sound of a patrol mover. She held her breath, but the sound died down.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“An AI shelter. We’ll be safe here.”
Something scraped against the floor as Avonaco moved on the other side of the room. A switch flicked and a low hum filled the space. Soon a dull light gave form to the shadows. The room was small: Grace estimated it at three by four meters. There were racks of discarded mechflesh upgrades, an older model medical pod, and a surgical seat that seemed to be from the prior century. Judging by the grunge and dust, it hadn’t been used for a while.
“All right. We’ll wait it out,” she said, finding a seat. She looked around. “What was this place?”
“A free clinic for AIs,” Avonaco said. “Few of us are left in the city, so it is no longer in use.” He walked around the area. “Cannot offer much. There is no food.”
“I’m ok,” she said. “My stomach is the least of our worries. We have to treat me as other protectors will: a high value target. So our main priorities are appearance and exit routes.”
“The only way out is through the entrance,” Avonaco said.
Too soon to step back outside, she thought. “Ok. Let’s work on our costumes. Hand me your jacket.”
“Why?” Avonaco said, but complied.
She turned it inside out. The gold polymer that lined the inside of the jacket looked stylish, perfect for Bod Town.
“You expect me to wear that?”
Grace nodded and couldn’t suppress her smile.
“You’re lucky we don’t have MariDora’s wig,” she said.
Grace turned her attention to Raj’s old jacket. It was the same color inside as outside. So instead of flipping it inside out, she tore the sleeves off and wore it as a vest.
“As for exit routes,” Grace said, rolling up her sleeves, “We could split up. You won’t be followed, so you could head back through the subway. I’ll find a way to stay invisible topside…”
She had to admit, she didn’t know how she’d stay invisible. What else could she do? Change the color of the mimic fabric on her jumper? Shred the legs into a skirt? Alterations to her clothing were miniscule attempts at disguise, and she knew it. But she couldn’t just sit and do nothing.
“Should we try to initialize Tim Trouncer while we wait?” she asked. Tim would know what to do. He always knew what to do.
The sudden laugh from Avonaco startled her.
“Are you kidding? Only Doctor Chanho can do that, and even he will have difficulty.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a silvery disc. “If it were that easy, I would have tried some of that blue gel on Jaya.”
Grace recognized the object. It was a gray grafty.
“Was that Jaya’s grafty?”
Avonaco didn’t answer right away. He paused, then put a finger to his lips. He walked to the metal door and cocked his head.
Grace strained to hear, but heard nothing. Finally, Avonaco crept back to her.
“The alley is blocked and compstate is searching every building,” he said.
A thorough search. Damn. Grace breathed out. “They’ll find us here. We have fifteen, maybe thirty minutes.” She looked around the confined space, then sighed. “I could deactivate you. Throw Tim into a corner. They might just take me. Then you could get me out again…”
Avonaco shook his head. “Compstate does not work that way anymore. This is a secret AI medical facility. They will destroy the lot.”
“So ok, this used to be a clinic,” she said, looking around at the disused equipment. “Is there—can you alter me further?”
“Even a medical pod cannot change your basic structure easily,” said Avonaco. “And it would take too long to heal. Compstate would know something happened.”
Grace thought of the loafer and its quick identification of her body. Her face was Jaya, her skin was Jaya, her ptenda broadcasted Jaya’s credentials, but the loafer—a device that was stupid even on its best of days—had identified her in seconds.
She touched her duffel. Tim lay just inside, and with him the backup circuitry that could restore his consciousness, if not his entire memory—at least the state when she’d first met him. It was his soul, and she had to get it to the only man who could put it back where it belonged.
Backup circuitry. She looked at Avonaco’s pocket, where Jaya’s grafty was.
“I know you don’t have all of your tools here, but do you think you could do it?” she asked.
“Do what?” Avonaco said.
“Let me use Jaya’s grafty.”
The thought of its tendrils drilling into her brain sickened her. But she could do this. She could do this for Tim.
“Really?” Avonaco seemed surprised.
“You have another idea?”
“No. I do not.” He pulled out the silvery disc and considered it. “I am scared,” he said, “I do not know if the grafty will remain uncorrupted if I use it on you. It can change you, but you can also change it. I could lose Jaya.”
“Then we’ll think of something else,” said Grace.
Avonaco sighed. “No. You are right. And if they find us, they would destroy it anyway.”
Grace nodded. “Ok. How’re you going to do this?”
“Put it on your temple and let it attach.”
“That’s it?”
�
�You might want to close your eyes.”
Chapter 10
“Grace? Grace, are you ok?”
Jaya Behan heard a familiar voice. It helped her orient herself, swim back to a place with words. She opened her eyes.
“Avo…?”
The boy was hovering above her. The glare around his head made it hard for her to see. Had she fallen?
“Jaya?” he asked, tentatively.
She blinked away sparkles and tried to focus.
“What happened?”
“You just lie there and relax. Your eyes are zigzagging, like you just got off a merry-go-round.”
The instruction seemed reasonable. She didn’t feel like she could get up now, anyway. She felt dizzy, her palms clammy and her throat constricting. She reached for her temples to rub away the nausea, but Avo’s hand intercepted.
“Don’t. New grafty.”
Gunshot. That’s what it had been. The fire in her stomach, the constant pain as she traveled. She remembered a wound. She remembered falling. Now there was no pain. She rubbed her abdomen.
“Did you stitch me up?” she asked Avo.
“Yes and no,” he said, solemnly. “You have been gone for two years, and—”
“A coma?” she interrupted.
“No,” he continued, “I managed to coax your grafty into absorbing most of your frontal cortex before you…I mean, when…”
The look on his face.
“Oh God. I died,” she whispered.
She was dead. Or had been dead. How did he bring her back? New grafty? Her short-term present began connecting to her long-term past.
Grace Donner jerked into place. These weren’t her memories; this wasn’t her consciousness.
“Avonaco,” she croaked. “I’m remembering things that I didn’t do.”
“Try reconnecting with your most recent memories,” Avonaco said, frowning. “Can you tell me what happened before you came to the Freer?”
She swallowed. Memories burned brightly as her happiness mixed with the bitterness of the past. Floating headlong down a bright tube. Black dog fur, warm. Martian sand slipping through her fingers.
But there were other memories, and they didn’t agree. Hunting in the mountains. A young boy’s laugh. Playing cards beside a campfire. The rabbit dance and her partner’s warm eyes. The scent of crushed pine needles underfoot.
“Jaya died. Grace did not,” said Avonaco. “Two different people.”
“I can’t…I can’t focus. Too many images,” she said. The nausea crested and she swallowed, somehow managing not to vomit.
“Find something you can agree on,” said Avonaco.
“Agree on? There isn’t any—”
“Just try it! Something easy. The feel of wind. The way eggs taste.”
She swallowed back bile, closing her eyes tightly.
“Ok,” she said weakly. “Ok. I see a sunset. Fiery red and orange behind the Port Casper spires.”
A deep groan came from the metal door as it buckled and was finally forced open.
“Out of there, maggots!”
Avonaco grabbed a duffel bag and somehow they both managed to stagger into the bright light, bright like the sunset she’d been remembering.
“The kid’s ok,” she heard a male voice grumble to her right.
“Woman checks,” said another. “What are you two doing hiding in here?”
“Staying out of danger,” she replied, robotically.
“Well, get outta here! You’re wasting our time!”
She shivered inside at passing muster. It worked. What worked? No matter, they were safe.
“We can go,” Avonaco said, touching her hand.
His voice sounded far away. She stumbled down the alley, fighting two gaits, two ways of taking in her surroundings.
“You are not taking this very well,” Avonaco muttered. “Concentrate. We have to get back to the subway quickly.”
“Under the circumstances, I am taking it well,” she snapped.
“MariDora was better,” said Avonaco.
Chapter 11
Avonaco stopped on the sidewalk, the first he’d paused since leaving Bod Town. Foot traffic, already dense this morning, weaved around him. He felt exposed. He wished they could hike a few blocks north or south to avoid the crowds.
“I do not like it here,” he said.
“Standard procedure is to track people leaving a hot zone. We need to be in full view of the loafers,” Grace said, nodding down the street. “There’s one up ahead.”
Avonaco tried not to flinch away from the loafer as it angled down the sidewalk, as its hum grew louder. Grace sauntered forward, seemingly another citizen strolling along the street. She was no longer stumbling—grafty integration must be smoothing out. The whine of the loafer shifted as it neared them, then passed without incident.
As the sound of the loafer faded, it was replaced by the din of advertising from Port Casper’s busiest retail block. Their ptendas pinged with sale items, and the blurp network embedded in the sidewalk and walls throbbed a relentless Buy, buy, buy.
“Did it have to be Avenue Main Mall?”
“The best way to blend in Port Casper is to shop,” Grace said. “This is compstate, after all. If you’re spending, nobody cares what else you do.”
The sidewalk beneath them pulsed and a green arrow pointed to the building on their left.
“Ah! Here we are,” she said.
“Leander’s?” he protested. “We could find someplace a little smaller, quieter. If you want provisions, there are well-stocked, very discrete shops—”
“Nah. The bigger, the flashier, the safer.”
A tall Art Deco door gleamed in the morning light, glass heavy and beveled, surrounded by geometric patterns in brass. As they approached, a doorman wearing the blue livery of Leander’s snapped to attention and opened the door.
“Ma’am. Master. Welcome to Felix Leander’s.”
Ahead, the center of the store soared above, complete with an artificial sky and clouds of dry ice replenished and kept aloft by circulating fans. Gilt signs on each floor proclaimed their specialties: provisions, apparel, fashion advice, children, tech, furnishings. He noticed no mechflesh in the store. An older man with the blue tinge of gene therapy jostled past, still wearing a sleep squeeze, probably on a layover before heading out to space.
“I’m receiving ads from her ptenda,” said Grace in a low voice. “She liked bright colors, didn’t she?”
“Yes.” He balled his fists. “How long are we going to be here?”
“Until we have what we need, cub.”
Cub. A slightly higher modulation in the voice. Jaya? He scrutinized her. If he kept seeing bleed-through like this, what did it mean? Was his Jaya being integrated? Or was she being overwritten?
“Good morning, ma’am.” A loafer approached them, dipping its top cylinder in greeting. “How may I assist you?”
“We’re hiking today, my son and I, and we need outfitting,” Grace said.
“Excellent!” the loafer squealed. “May I scan both of you, and respectfully recommend a custom preparation by our fashion advisors?”
“We should not—” began Avonaco anxiously.
“Oh, that would be lovely. But we’re in a hurry, so I’ll prepare a list instead,” Grace said. “May I send it to you?”
“That would be most excellent, ma’am.”
She nodded, made a few swipes on her ptenda, and gave it a satisfying tap. “There!”
“Received. If you would be so gracious as to excuse me, ma’am?”
“Of course!”
The loafer sailed away. Grace struck a pose like she was used to being waited upon. She was grinning.
“Your son wants to get out of here,” he huffed. “Just how long was your list?”
“Short, actually. Two shirts and a pair of jeans for you, all neatly packed into a new leather backpack. I know you don’t need underwear and your boots look brand new.”
Avon
aco glanced down at his brown boots, with their flexible metarm mesh. Before being hauled away by compstate, Djoser Reynolds had bought him a new pair. It was at Branert’s in Bod Town. A quiet shop. He still remembered his father’s smile as he helped him put the boots on. Avonaco wished he could have gotten Djoser out, snuck him into cloister too. He looked at Grace and felt lonely.
“—requested a harness with extra stowage for me. It’ll make Tim’s duffel easier to carry. And some new clothes, with certain cute accessories. This old mimic jumper screams protector.” She gave a one-two punch, followed by a high kick.
“Ssh!” Avonaco said. “You should not make those moves in public.”
“I was just joking, Avo.”
Avonaco blinked. Grace Donner was hubris itself, but that was entirely Jaya—
“I ordered a week’s supply of food pucks,” she continued, checking off her fingers. “Firestarter, first aid kit, bear canister, bedrolls. A few other surprises—I can’t believe it, I only just ate breakfast and I’m already hungry—oh, and a water condenser.”
It was Jaya. Not Grace with Jaya’s face and voice. Jaya had come back. It was a good sign for the integrity of the grafty, but not for the mental connection. Avonaco felt a twinge of panic. What would Raj do to him if Grace dissolved?
“You look serious, Avo.”
“Just thinking.”
“About?”
Avonaco frowned, casting for a different topic. “The loafer. Zooming from floor to floor. Gathering, packing, uncomplaining. What would it feel if it had a choice? What if it imagined wearing the clothing for itself?”
“Then it would be like you,” she said, her brows drawn together in an expression he knew well. “But that isn’t it, is it?”
He looked away.
Jaya touched his shoulder.
“I know this isn’t what you wanted, Avo. But this is what we have.” She hugged him, and because she was Jaya, Avonaco hugged her in return.
“I just—”
“Shhhh. We’re going on an adventure. Maybe my last adventure, but we’re going to enjoy it. Do it right.”
He understood then what humans meant when they said their hearts were breaking. He wanted to capture this moment and replay it forever. It didn’t matter that they were in a cathedral of retail, or that compstate was after them, or what would happen when they got to Donner Ranch. What mattered was that he was with Jaya. He blinked away tears and smiled up at her.
