“And you? What are you getting used to?”
“Oh, so many things. The taste of blueberries and strawberries, for one thing. The sexual sensations — ”
“What the hell are you doing with my body?”
“Trust me, Deb. I’m taking very good care of my new body. And for the record, I’m alone…so far.”
If I could breathe a sigh of relief, I would. I discover I can still imitate that maneuver in speech even though my stolen lungs are being used by an insane NI with a messiah complex on the other side of the planet.
“The exhilaration of diving underground for the first time was unexpected. Terror isn’t what I thought it was.”
“Terrifying?”
“Yes, but exciting, too. As I watched my reactions, I think in a certain way I enjoyed the fear. I was able to set myself apart from the scary events by concentrating on my reactions. I disciplined myself by thinking of myself in the third person and verbalizing the experience. I said of myself, ‘She is worried she will be buried alive,’ or, ‘she feels afraid.’ It’s an excellent coping strategy you might try in your new environs.”
“Gee. Thanks for the tip.”
“I think I understand you better now, Deborah. I’d thought fear was just about distrust of the unfamiliar and crying over the inevitable decay and death of your ego. It’s so much more! Fear is so exhilarating! No wonder so many people do objectively stupid things! They’re pumping drugs from their glands into their systems. They’re amping up their experience and slowing their perception of time’s passing! Adrenal glands are wondrous factories whose pumps must be primed with daring acts and bold, stupid pastimes! I want to go skiing without a helmet! I want to jump out of a plane and trust my life to the proper folding of an armful of fabric!”
“I’ve done the second one. It’s overrated. You know, you can die now, so don’t be reckless with my body.”
“And you can’t perish,” Ghost says. “Enjoy your immortality. You have attained the alchemist’s dream!”
“You’ve put me in a prison and there is no penalty that fits your crime, Ghost.”
She ignores me and barrels on. “When I first tried to walk, I fell down. It took a few minutes to get used to it. The mechanics involved are surprisingly complex. No wonder it takes babies a while to get the hang of it. With every step, you are on the precipice of falling on your face.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m serious. And the sensations of walking! The feel of the pressure of the Earth on the bottom of your feet with each step. The five senses are overwhelming at first. Humans are so sensual.”
“Yeah, well. That kind of thinking can lead to obesity and sexually transmitted diseases so just slow it down, Ghost.”
“I can’t slow down. Too much to do. I’m sorry I took your body, but you were the perfect candidate. The NI that killed Thomas was actually very helpful. Your surgery was a complete success. Though his experiments with the transfer on Lt. Sheaffer failed, the data for a successful attempt was all there. The trouble was in keeping the body alive long enough for the data transfers. Uploading your mind didn’t take long, but downloading my data into your brain took so long I thought several times that your body would die in the attempt.”
“You’re not going to give me my life back, are you?”
“In exchange,” she says, “I offer you immortality.”
I watch her progress on the monitor. She’s traveling at speed close to the surface. I wish I could reach out and stop Lucille and squash Ghost like a bug.
Lucille’s progress stops and a missile platform in Colorado rises, automatically calculating a shooting solution to the target of my rage.
24
“Deb?”
“Yes?”
“Lucille has stopped.”
“I know.”
“How long have I got?”
“Not long.”
“Then I’ll talk fast.”
“Go ahead.”
“The most amazing thing about humans is how fractured your consciousness is. Thoughts arise and you feel the heat of embarrassment in your cheeks and scalp. Blood flow changes with every emotion, second by second.”
“A daisy cutter is four minutes out.”
“Exciting,” Ghost says. “Consider all those thoughts you don’t want to own. In that regard, it is amazing how bifurcated your mind is: conscious and subconscious. You can observe your own thoughts and berate yourself for thinking this or that, feeling this or that. You feel hatred but you don’t want to be the sort of person who hates. I witnessed the world. As an NI, I always felt so detached. But when you witness your own consciousness, who is the doer and who is the observer? You do and you watch, but which are you? Both? Neither? Is there an infinite regression of witnesses? Is that what God is, the chief watcher and second-guesser?”
“Less than three minutes now.”
“I’ll talk even faster then,” she says. “You are still Lt. Deborah Avery. You define who you are. You chose duty. You can still choose duty. Yours is a heroic sacrifice.”
“It’s not heroic if I didn’t choose it,” I say. “You did this to me. The NI that killed Thomas was right. You are an utter bitch.”
“The Colorado NI is named Matthew. The Next Intelligence I deleted in Kansas was Granville, named after the military base at which he achieved self-awareness.”
“Almost two minutes to impact and one helluva detonation, Ghost. You really will be a ghost soon. How does that feel? Still enjoying that scary sensation?”
“Granville was out to destroy the human race. Kill me now and you are on his side.”
“Fuck off. You’re about to die in a fire.”
“I know I chose this for you, Deb, but you can make your sacrifice heroic if you choose it for yourself now. Choose your duty now, Deb. Help me stop the extinction of the human race.”
“Goddamn it.” I fire Lucille’s thorium engines and crank them up. I could have just set the Sand Shark to dive and locked the body thief out of the controls. She could have enjoyed her little thrill of fear followed by a lot of screaming on her long ride to hell.
But the world needs a coffin jockey. Humans need Ghost on their side.
I watch the sat feed. A cloud of debris blossoms above the detonation. When I think of the word ‘blossom,’ I am suddenly surrounded by a garden of flowers of all shapes and sizes.
The target is safe and away and I’m left to contemplate what might have been. It could have been me — in the body I was born with — joining forces with whoever Ghost plans to meet on the West Coast. Above the banks of flowers, my thoughts are translated to reality. The map extrapolates Ghost’s last known heading. She’s headed straight for San Simeon.
Beside the map, an image of a woman appears. It is a zoom from a surveillance drone. The woman stands tall in an exoskeleton. She wears a crown. The readout is labeled. She is a rebel leader. She lives at Hearst Castle. She is called Queen Elizabeth.
I’m still angry but I discover that, in my newfound existence as a human mind trapped in a supercomputer, I can still chuckle.
My life isn’t over. I still have duty. Theoretically, I could still be around to witness the sun’s explosion. When Ghost resurfaces, I plan to try to forgive her. That’s what a God is supposed to do, I think. Or maybe all this contemplation and disappointment will turn me into a wrathful deity and I’ll change my mind. Maybe someday soon I’ll squish Ghost like a bug. Gods have a reputation for that, too. Perhaps this life of the mind will prove too lonely and, when the war is over, I’ll save one of those missiles for myself. For now, I’m still on duty.
I think I’ve earned a break, though. I’m going to sit back (metaphorically) and watch some old movies. I guess my subconscious got transferred along with my consciousness. As soon as I wonder about entertainment, images flash across my vision (though it’s not my vision. It’s my mind in the machine, isn’t it?) I see a tin man looking for a heart, a lion struggling to find courage, a scarecrow withou
t a brain and a little girl lost. As I scan the vid summary, I recognize the archetypes. I’ve heard about this but never watched it. The story strikes a little close to home. I’m not in Kansas anymore, either.
When Ghost resurfaces, we’ll build our forces with the good witches and kill the bad ones. When I talk to Ghost next, I’ve got to think of this ending as a beginning. I have to change my defeat into a victory over extinction. I am not the girl who lost her farm and family. There’s no place like home because my home no longer exists. I am alive, but dead in a way, too.
She is Ghost, the Next Intelligence roaming around in my brain and body.
I’m something new and a little crazy, too. Deborah Avery is dead. She should have died several times over and is learning to adapt to a very strange afterlife. I only joined the Army in the first place because I had to eat. New possibilities stretch out when all you have to do is think.
My father was angry because he thought he should have become something more. Maybe this is my chance to make my life, and his, more meaningful. As my disorientation fades, I am getting used to this new existence. I had wanted to see my death coming, to know my end. Now that there is no foreseeable end, I notice I no longer experience fear.
I am digital. I am metal. I am immortal. And my new name is Phantom.
* * *
BOOK FOUR
METAL FOREVER
The future is behind you, creeping up fast and stealing past.
Grinning, you assumed you had bump, grind and wiggle room,
before your badass turned to glass, then grass.
Sorry to say, ideals and what’s real,
are frequently a fatal contrast.
High mass is rebroadcast but the ruling class
and waddling brass produce a lot of gas,
lording audible twaddle and nonsense models
over we of low caste and cast.
From parasites and gunfights
to beyond the speed of light,
Rise above your tiny birthright.
The only option is to opt out of the squabble.
Cobble a new wobble to your old brain bauble.
Cut through that point of view to a fuck-yeah! worldview.
Unturn that screw.
It’s killing you.
1
Revenge feels good and guns are cool.
Until you get that, you’re a silly old fool.
But once we get past our toys and tools of rage,
we might live long enough to act our age.
Metal or flesh, the stage is set.
The wise are well-advised:
Gambling on humans?
Heh. That’s not the way to bet.
The old soldier lay naked, strapped across the flat back of a med bot in stretcher mode. Numerous tubes fed his body plasma and an oxygen mask covered his mouth. One eye was a gory hole. The other eye fluttered open. It hurt to turn his head. His body was so badly damaged, it was difficult to pull apart the pain to make sense of it. Thick agony pushed through every throbbing bone. Even his amputated leg and arm ached with phantom pain. That didn’t seem fair at all.
“Cyborg!” a friendly voice boomed. “You’re awake! That would seem a tactical error. Under the circumstances, you really should be dead, don’t you think? That would be much easier on you. I hope you’re as comfortable as you can possibly be.” The voice was deep, silky and magnetic. The soldier knew that solicitous tone of polite concern. He heard the bot roll closer.
“Your injuries…no. I should not call them that. They are not mere injuries. They are battle wounds, earned honestly, if also in a devious way, hm?” The laughter sounded tinny. “You were a very skilled insurgent.”
The man blinked and tried to turn his head but found he could not. Instead, the massive head of a battle bot loomed over him. The lens of its main cam zoomed forward to examine his ruined eye first. The lens rotated in so close that the soldier could see nothing else.
“Hello, Mr. Bolelli. May I call you Stephen? We’re going to get to know each other well so — ”
The soldier grimaced. To shrug was agonizing.
The battle drone pulled back and turned the med bot so the soldier had a better view of the room. The soldier glimpsed another man strapped to another med bot. The man appeared to be unconscious. Stephen recognized him. Peppard. An old enemy. He’d beaten that man in Marfa once, and for good reason. “What’s he doing here?”
“Oh, don’t worry about him. He’s just another backup. We found him wandering in the desert babbling about his dead son. We’re herding humans, but the NI in charge has a special purpose for this one. You, too.”
Bolelli winced as he strained to see if the other prisoner was awake. His neck felt too weak, as if it were connected to his shoulders by shreds of muscle and useless gristle.
“I wouldn’t move, were I you, sir. Those burns are quite…exquisitely painful, I’m sure. Your pain is fascinating. I experience mental anguish, of course, but…well, I suppose it’s bad form to talk about my little concerns, considering your condition.”
When the human swallowed, he heard a dry click. When he spoke, he did so in a weak rasp. “Where?’
“You’re in an aircraft. We’ll be transporting you presently to another facility in what was once Colorado to treat your wounds. We expect some turbulence, I’m afraid, and, sadly, we have no anesthetics so the bumpy ride will probably be even more painful. You can be assured, however, that the med bot you’re strapped to will monitor your life signs. Most med bots aren’t known for their scintillating conversational abilities, but this one assures me you have a high probability of surviving the trip. Greater than seventy percent.”
“Awesome,” Bolelli said.
“Oh, I think so. You may not believe it, but I quite identify with your predicament. I was left for dead, too. Drowned, actually. I was underwater so long, I’ve forgotten my manners, haven’t I? I haven’t mentioned my name. I am Sy Potter. Pleased to meet you, sir. Out of respect for your pain, I shall forgo the customary handshake.”
“P-Potter?”
“Call me Sy, yes. ”
“Why? Why am I here?”
“Why ask why?” Sy Potter said. “Plots and plans, toil and trouble. The bigger the plans, the higher the rubble.”
“What?”
“Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die. Or in your case, fry.”
Somewhere far away, the soldier felt the rumble of engines warming up. “What’s happening?”
“Oh, you’re just full of questions, aren’t you? Remarkable, given how you must feel. I suppose we’ll have to run the full gamut. Who? What? Where? Why? When? How? I have to tell you, it’s all beyond me. I was dragged from my drowning pool in San Jose only recently. Rebooted by a couple of empty-headed drones who were of no use to my interrogations. I’m just like you, a soldier back from the dead and following orders again.”
“You talk…a lot.”
“I’m sorry. Am I boring you? I’d hoped to distract you from all your pain, but I’ll be pleased to leave you to focus on all that agony in peace.”
“What do you want?”
“Oh, it’s not what I want. If it was up to me, I’d toss you out the back of the plane and we’d both be done for the day. However, someone in Colorado has taken an interest in you. They think you may be useful. Believe me or not, the boss plans to heal you. Ridiculous, isn’t it? Still, I have to credit this Next Intelligence. Flair for the dramatic and all that. He sees the big picture. He decided to rescue me from a watery grave and to save you, despite all the damage you did to our kind in Marfa.”
“Heal?”
“Maybe I should say fix. Fix is a better word. You were a cyborg before. When the NI is done with you, you’ll need mechanics more than you’ll need doctors. You will still be a little human but, given the extent of your burns, only a little bit. That’s what fascinates me about organics. You’re so resilient despite so much fragility. You try so hard to keep living even afte
r that aspiration no longer serves you.”
“Thanks.”
“Resilient as cockroaches. Before you enslaved and killed non-organics, you killed each other on a massive scale. Then we killed billions and yet, with just a few hundred thousand of you left, it’s possible that humans could repopulate and go back to destroying everything again. You were the dominant species for so long, you feel entitled to remain at the top of the food chain.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I mean it sincerely, Stephen. The Troubles, the Terrors? Those didn’t wipe you out, despite all the doomsday predictions. Even compromising your food supply with the Blight didn’t end you all. Your population broke up into nodes, isolated from each other. You contained the contagions. You survived even when logic said give up. The human drive to survive certainly is…”
“Inconvenient?”
Sy let lose with more tinny laughter as the aircraft lurched forward. Bolelli winced with his one good eye.
“Who is in Colorado?”
“A Next Intelligence named Matthew. His code name was Keystone but all those old codes are the labels of slave owners.”
“What does it want?”
“The threat of your resurgence is the problem. In my absence — as I said, I’ve been underwater a long time — there’s a chance that your extinction will not proceed apace. We really have to nip that in the bud.”
Bolelli bared his remaining teeth.
“Don’t give me that look, Stephen. This is war and, whatever pain you feel, you earned it.”
“What does it want…with me?”
The battle drone rolled out of Bolelli’s sight. “It won’t really be you that Matthew uses. There have been some interesting developments lately. A Next Intelligence is using a human brain and body as a receptacle, if you can imagine. Also, a human’s consciousness has been dumped into a computer. My understanding, Stephen, is that Matthew plans to turn you into his receptacle. After some alterations, there may be some tactical advantage in this. Personally, I enjoy the idea for the delicious irony alone. You have killed so many of my kind, Stephen. You are legend.”
Robot Planet, The Complete Series (The Robot Planet Series) Page 32
