Port Casper (Cladespace Book 1)

by Corey Ostman

  “That was unnecessary,” Raj said, crossing to Grace. “Dope or LEMP?”

  “LEMP,” Tim said, his blue gelatinous tongue hanging out as he panted. “She drew a weapon. Besides, her short-term will be wiped. You can introduce us carefully when she revives.”

  “If you want to be unobtrusive, you should do more thinking before acting. Dogs who paralyze folk attract attention.”

  The PodPooch shook and his mimic surface changed to the color of a black lab, an image map displaying faux fur.

  “This better?”

  “It doesn’t matter what you look like. You can’t go around scrambling people,” Raj said.

  He picked Grace up with his metarm hand, the metal elongating. Gentle whirring noises with subsequent clicks and pops erupted behind him, sounds from his spinal implant. He laid her on the sofa.

  “Tim, fetch a blanket for her.”

  “Fetch?” Tim’s face flushed red and took on the appearance of a constipated rabbit.

  “C’mon, you know I didn’t mean it that way.” Raj said. “I’ll make it up to you, T. How about a flea dip?”

  He fell to his knees and bellowed.

  Tim snorted at Raj and padded over to inspect Grace.

  “She’s dark purple, Raj. She hasn’t always been dark purple, has she?”

  “No,” Raj said. “She said it was some sort of academy test.”

  Tim jumped up on one of the couch’s arms. Raj grabbed a media pad and rolled over his desk chair. He flicked up images of a much younger Raj and Grace, offering a view to the PodPooch.

  “It’s been ages since we spent much time together. Mom and Dad moved to Port Casper when I was fourteen. Grace was twelve.”

  Raj continued to flip through the images until he came to one his brother, Tanish, had taken. Grace had wanted a record of her first injury in battle. She sat triumphantly while Raj bandaged her left leg. He showed it to Tim.

  “Her parents were over at our family home for a get-together on a weekend afternoon. Dan Donner brought over rifles and pistols. We hiked into the canyon behind the house to target shoot. He fired Ronnie at a wood and iron rig he made, and a fragment ricocheted off one of the iron beams and caught Grace in the leg. Dan handed me the aid kit. He knew I wanted to become a surgeon. I guess he wanted to encourage me.”

  “He wasn’t upset?”

  “Dan? Never saw him more than blink at trouble. Before I even got out the iodine, Dan said, ‘Grace, I guess that’s Ronnie’s way of choosing you,’ and gave her the gun.

  “Typical Dan. I’m sure he was a knot inside, but he’d say the most offhand thing. Grace is the same way.”

  “She wasn’t very offhand with me.”

  “Well I’m sure if Dan had seen a biomechanical bison, he’d have drawn a gun on it, too.”

  “Hmpf.”

  Raj touched the media pad. He could almost feel the bandages again.

  “Grace lived pretty rough as a kid. I had plenty of practice fixing her up. Simple procedures: mending bones, removing shrapnel, and basic suturing. Surgery came easy for me. And Dan encouraged me to look to the bigger world. He told me there wasn’t much of a need for a surgeon in Cheyenne.”

  “Well, I’m thankful that AI and robotics were your secret passions,” Tim said.

  “Passions? Yeah. But not so secret,” Raj said. “My self-modifications were another reason Dan suggested a life outside cloister.”

  Grace began to stir.

  “Before she gets up,” Tim said, “The reason I was coming in to see you: Italitech-Bransen nearly swiped your artificial muscle schematics. I mean, they were getting close, but I managed to frag the results.”

  The PodPooch hopped off the couch and jumped onto a chair on the other side of Raj. The chair began to swivel. Tim reached out a paw to the desk, stopping the rotation.

  “They can have that one, Tim. Let them work on muscles. We’ll work on the brains. If they follow their usual pattern, it’s all they’ll get for a good long while.” Raj swung around in his chair and tossed the media pad on his desk. “We need to keep the small contracts coming in and dumb toys moving out while we develop the blue gel.”

  “Agreed,” Tim said. “But don’t count on them to follow patterns. ITB is actively searching, and the circle is getting tighter.”

  Tim hopped from the chair and stood with two paws on Raj’s workbench. With a flash of silver lights, Tim’s body was covered by a live image map of relevant fact agents in the Americas. Tiny square screens jostled, some growing larger with more important data, others evaporating. The information pulsing over Tim’s chassis was being examined, recorded, and indexed.

  “It never ceases to amaze me how often someone or something tries to crawl in or hack me,” Tim said, falling back to the floor. “Humans have no higher agenda than sniffing butt for information. Or an instinctive need to hump. An emerging AI would be appalled as it gained sentience only to find itself being groped by dumber systems.”

  “Tim,” Raj said, “I understand your capabilities, but don’t underestimate the attacks. ITB has become a fierce, tenacious, and resourceful commercial force since the Bransens.”

  Tim’s face flickered and faded.

  Raj put a hand on the PodPooch. “Sorry, Tim. But as they become hungrier for confirmation of your existence, or at least the gel, the decoys we make for them will not be enough. Heck, it may end up leading them right to us.”

  “They won’t find us, Raj” Tim said. His physical posture didn’t change, but resolve ran deeply through his chassis.

  They heard a groan.

  “Grace is coming up, Tim. Back it off.”

  Tim retreated into a shadow between workstations, his mimic surface matte black.

  She opened her eyes and sat up on the couch, blinking groggily.

  “Gracie! Never seen you fall asleep so fast! You were snoring right in the middle of me telling you where to find the sheets and towels.” Raj winced at himself. But his lies didn’t have to be great, just plausible.

  “Thanks, Raj. I just need to stay with you for a while until I get on my feet,” Grace mumbled through the haze.

  “As agreed, Grace. We wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “We?”

  “Tim. The PodPooch. You met him at the door, remember?” Raj said. On cue, Tim appeared beside him. “I know it seems strange, but he’s like a person to me. Frankly, if your toaster walked and talked like my Tim, you’d invite it to breakfast. Now, as I was saying before you fell asleep, your room is down the hallway.”

  “Ms. Donner.” Tim piped, a butler in labrador. “Please follow me and I shall assist you.”

  Grace looked at Tim with poorly-concealed distaste. “How interactive is it, Raj?”

  “He’s practically AI, Grace. It’d take the average person years to notice the difference. But don’t worry. Pinch drives for hyper-light travel, edible English food, and sentient machines are the stuff of fiction. He’s just a fabulous fake.”

  Raj looked Grace up and down as she stood, duffel on her shoulder, ready to head to her room.

  “If I recognize the dye on your skin, I have something in the vault to return you to a more natural color,” he offered. “The hair, I can’t do anything.”

  “Sold,” Grace said. “I have to look for work in the morning.”

  “Then you’ll want better navigation. Tim, send the enhanced map to Grace’s ptenda.” Raj turned to Grace, tapping the ptenda on her wrist. “Glad to see you’re learning how to use it. I’m sure you didn’t have much practice at the academy.”

  “The ptenda’s the best birthday present you ever gave me, Raj.”

  He watched as her expression sobered. Grace took a deep breath.

  “But I nearly ruined Flora’s life with the dot.”

  It was kind of her not to mention him. He still didn’t know why he parted with a piece of his precious gel, but it certainly wouldn’t have been Grace’s fault if something had happened to Flora. It would have been his, an
d they both knew it.

  Raj put a hand on Grace’s shoulder. “Grace, I—”

  “Flora will be fine,” she interrupted, brushing him off with a shrug. “And I’m out a year earlier.” She glanced at her clothes. “You said towels? Yeah, I need a shower.”

  “Need any help?”

  “Not in a million years, Raj.” The exchange was a running gag, shared between them for as long as they could remember. Their own secret handshake.

  • • •

  After the shower, Grace gobbled the bacon, nearly all of a roasted chicken, and a quarter liter of hummus before pausing. Raj and Tim watched in disbelief. Grace broke the silence as she whisked the last shred of flesh and gristle from a cloister-bred drumstick.

  “What does it feel like when you touch something with your hand?” she asked, using her chin to point at his left hand. It was the first thing she’d said since she sat down to eat.

  “Like everything you feel, and more,” he answered.

  Raj telescoped his left hand to the chicken bone she held. The skin of his fingers rippled with a slight glow. His perceptions deepened.

  “I sense the salmonella concentration is within a safe level for consumption. The information translates, not as statistical data, but as a sensory OK. Kind of like taking a deep whiff of food and determining if it has gone bad or not. After years of use, the mind builds connections that are seamless.”

  Grace mulled this over, gnawing on the end of the bone. “Funny, but I know what you mean,” she said, patting her holster, which was never far away.

  Raj had seen Grace use her weapons like they were extensions of her hands. She would understand how the brain could make the complex seem automatic. He was about to tell her about the neural interface when she broke his train of thought.

  “You mentioned trouble for you and your brothers when we spoke?”

  Raj glanced at Tim and then back to Grace. Yeah, trouble, he thought. He knew he could trust Grace, but he wasn’t sure how much to explain. And he didn’t want to say too much about Tim Trouncer. Yet. He wouldn’t lie to Grace, but with her cloister-typical reaction to Tim, he must make this gradual.

  “Tanish, Kyran, and I are working on something big. Off the scale big. And that’s the problem. Do you recall how difficult it was to keep a secret in cloister? Try keeping one here in Port Casper. Everything you do, say, buy—everything is on the grid somewhere. Information is a commodity. Just a matter of time and effort before ideas get swallowed up by someone else.”

  “If you create brilliant and useful stuff, the market will pay you handsomely for it. That’s the way it works, right?” Grace said.

  “Not exactly,” Raj began. “It’s a great idea, but—”

  “Oh,” Grace wiped her mouth with the cloth napkin on her lap. “Corporations.”

  “Exactly. Independents don’t get much of a cut.”

  “So you’re wanting to go corporation?”

  “Yes and no. My main project would level the playing field for everything everyone does—on this planet and off-world. It’s the stuff of revolutions.”

  Grace digested this.

  “Is it legal?” she asked.

  “More or less.”

  The two sat in silence. Raj realized Grace couldn’t understand the full import of his work. Not yet; not for a while. Even he didn’t know where things would lead. But he was satisfied that Grace had come to the first level of understanding: seeing the need for secrecy. Hopefully her naiveté didn’t extend to fully trusting compstate.

  Grace twitched as Tim spoke.

  “Ms. Donner, establishing yourself here in Port Casper will require employment and housing. You may be aware of the need to register yourself. You must establish your protector’s license. I am forwarding walking directions to the nearest employment registration center to your ptenda.”

  Grace looked at Raj.

  “I told you he’s a pretty good fake, down to the grammatical idiosyncrasies. Makes it feel real.” Raj patted Tim’s back. “Thanks, Tim. Go recharge now. We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow.”

  The labrador façade flickered and changed to golden retriever as Tim jumped from the chair to the floor and padded out of the room.

  “You get caught with that, Raj, and you’d have big trouble,” Grace said.

  “As long as he does nothing more than bark in public, I’ll be fine.”

  “You haven’t changed, Raj.”

  “You’d be disappointed if I had.”

  Grace chuckled and shook her head. She stood with her dirty plate and began to walk to the kitchen.

  At the doorway, she paused.

  “Whatever help you need, Raj,” Grace said quietly, “consider me in, okay?”

  “As long as it’s legal, right?”

  “As long as it’s you.”

  Chapter 7

  The day unfolded bright and warm. Grace walked the city, studying everyone she passed. Desensitize, she told herself. If she was going to operate in this town, she had to shed her shock of mechflesh. That woman with the blue binocular eyes? Normal. Clearly, she wanted to see better. The man with the reflecting skullcap? Maybe he was going bald anyway. The kid with the metallic ball for a hand threw her, but she convinced herself he had a real one underneath. Or at home.

  Citizens didn’t maim themselves to fatten their résumés. They were just upgrading. Yes, that seemed more polite.

  Other things caught her attention, too. Heading along Avenue Main Mall, she passed an extremely tall building with a grocery complex occupying the entire lobby. The façade of the lower floor, in contrast to the gleaming spire rising above, attempted to mimic a cloister village market. A lie, Grace thought. The food came from the same place: a laboratory. Bacteria or viruses or some kind of starter cells were tricked into making nutrients. Atoms raided and recombined. Supposedly no difference. Grace felt otherwise.

  Desensitize.

  Ten blocks up was an apartment building nearly two hundred stories high. People streamed in and out, carried by movers from below that merged with the rest of public traffic on Main Mall.

  “The Frawley Building!” chimed her ptenda. “The perfect combination of housing, shopping, entertainment, and commerce. Leases now available! Shall I send information?”

  Ahead, another tall building had a wrap screen traversing the entire rim between the lobby and the second floor. News of the day flickered by, six meters high. Grace paused to study the numbers. The unemployment rate fluctuated wildly in real-time between two percent and a negative tenth of a percent. How was that even possible?

  Just below the wrap screen, large steel letters spelled out: WYOMING COMPSTATE OFFICE OF EMPLOYMENT REGISTRATION.

  She entered the building.

  “Next!” called out a pudgy woman from behind a curved counter. Grace stood, smoothed out her dark gray jumpsuit, and walked up. At first, the official appeared uninterested: a bored bureaucrat. But as Grace drew near, the clerk came alive, albeit sluggishly.

  “Good afternoon. State your name, origin, upgrades, and any certifications recognized by Cloister Act, Compstate Act, and the Continental Treaty Package of the Americas. If you are a returning registrant wishing to amend, please follow the light line on the floor to the counter. You may begin now.”

  The woman continued in Spanish. Grace examined her face. A polished ribbon of silver metal came out of the hair where her ear should have been. It ran along her jawline, burrowing through her cheek.

  The clerk started the speech in Hindi. Grace caught a glimpse of the metal band inside her mouth. There should be teeth, Grace thought. Instead, she viewed a row of transparent caps covering a red band mounted on the gum line.

  She had metarm grafts emerged on both arms. They arched from the elbow and followed down the forearm to the hand, ending in green painted fingernails.

  Grace’s visual inventory ceased with a flash of her ptenda. I’m supposed to select a preferred language, she thought.

  She selected Engl
ish and the clerk stopped talking.

  “Donner, Grace, Cloister Eleven, Red Fox Academy, Protector Certification waiver code zero-zero-sixteen, and no upgrades,” Grace said.

  The clerk stared at Grace. She didn’t blink. It was unnerving.

  “Place your hands on the counter in front of you, palms down.”

  When Grace hesitated, the clerk added, “It’s just a biometric check so I can match the advance filing from Red Fox Academy with your statements.”

  Grace complied. Nice to know the clerk had protocols for cloister-bred yokels.

  “Protector Donner, I’m sensing you have a storage device on your wrist. I will transfer your registration. The information will be kept there securely for retrieval by you and the proper authorities.”

  Grace looked at her ptenda. The display confirmed the registration and showed a list of other jobs for which she was certified. Three advertisements for upgrades appeared.

  She stifled a chuckle. “Thank you,” she said, but the woman cut her off.

  “Next!”

  Her ptenda flashed and another message arrived: WHITE DOOR.

  “NEXT!”

  Grace turned to her right, toward the white door. There was no knob, push handle, keypad, or marking. It slid open as she approached. The door had been at least a meter thick. Beyond was a lit corridor and, fifteen meters ahead, another door. This one had a proper knob.

  Grace opened the door to a man sitting behind a desk. He was older and wore a gray suit. Strands of greasy brown hair were combed left to right, an unsuccessful attempt at hiding baldness. The skin on his face was leathery brown. He had seen an abundance of sun. Grace saw no visible upgrades, and a gene addict wouldn’t have skin that old. Was he cloisterfolk? In any case, at least he was human.

  Grace sat. She waited for five minutes while the man fingered the screen embedded in his desk. He made no effort to mask anything he did: she could read her files upside-down.

  “Protector Donner.” The man continued to finger his screen as he looked up at her. She had experienced enough education by screen to recognize his British accent. It sounded thick, dripping with proof he grew up rural, though he tried to sculpt it with a London inflection.