Bones are Made to be Broken

by Anderson, Paul Michael

  He hopped away. “Jesus Christ!”

  His fists clenched at his sides. He didn’t know what he was angrier at—the malfunctioning machines or the way his heart suddenly raced.

  “Stop fucking around!” His voice didn’t even echo. It sounded pathetic. And who was he talking to, anyway?

  He moved down the hall, pausing at the access-tunnel hatch. The red light above it was engaged, indicating it’d been code-locked.

  Never mind. Another thing wrong. Once he woke the rest of the team, Alan would have a field day.

  The message-room hatch opened as he approached. Only emergency lights were on, leaving deep pools of shadows, but he picked out the central core of computers, the Main Drive with its emergency controls, and the half-hexagons of the handy-arms.

  He stepped in and the hatch whispered shut behind him.

  A light over the 3D printer—a long, low flat-bed with arch-like sensors—clicked on.

  “Why isn’t this hooked up?” a male voice asked, booming down from all sides.

  Matheson screamed. He couldn’t help it.

  “Answer me,” the voice said.

  “Where are you?” he said, feeling alternately ridiculous and not.

  “Answer me,” the voice repeated.

  Matheson eyed the 3D printer, a long, low metal bed of thin, pin-like tubes across its surface and over-arching scanners.

  A light over Matheson clicked on, pinning him.

  “Answer me,” the voice repeated.

  He heard the whir of pneumatics behind him and, before he could turn, one of the handy-arms, its grips closed and arrow-like, pierced his shoulder. Matheson cried out. The pain was incredible, hot and cold like being stabbed with a thick icicle and a branding iron simultaneously. Blood poured down his back and chest.

  “I want an answer,” the voice said.

  Matheson made for the hatch, holding his ruined shoulder. He tapped the keypad, leaving red commas on the raised numbers.

  Nothing happened.

  “Do not pass go,” the voice said, “do not collect $200.”

  Another handy-arm uncurled from the wall and came at him. Matheson ducked.

  “WHERE ARE YOU?” he screamed. He didn’t do well with fear. It was why he’d flushed out of Ellis-7, why he was babysitting these fucking scientists instead of fighting with the Alphas. The sleep deprivation, the constant abuse from the other candidates, the silent encouragement of the abuse from the doctors.

  To his right, he saw the central computers blink in a cascading rhythm. “I’m everywhere.”

  “An AI?” he asked.

  “What, like 2001: A Space Odyssey?” the voice asked. It sounded amused. “Now that’s a brilliant cube-vid. No, flunky. I’m as human as they come—or I was. Which cycles back to my original question—why isn’t this plugged in?”

  Matheson turned to look at the bed. “It drains power. We only use it for incoming shipments.”

  “Plug it in,” the voice said.

  Handy-arms slowly uncoiled from the walls.

  The hookups hung from the foot of the printer. Matheson took the leads and put them in the wall links.

  “Wonderful!” the voice said. The handy-arms did not retract. “I knew I chose well. I read your psych profile and—wow!—did you not disappoint.” It paused. “Sorry about the bad dreams I fed into your chems, but I needed you nice and malleable.”

  The sound of soft pneumatic whirring filled the room as more handy-arms extended.

  “And now, my failed-Alpha,” it said. “You’ve been all malleable-ed—is that a word? Fuck it—out. But, think of it this way, at least you’ll get to sleep.”

  The handy-arms descended upon him.

  Alan didn’t know when he slipped from reality and into the infinity-reflection he’d glimpsed between the mirror and the dome-glass; it came gradually, insidiously, until—

  SPACE:

  —the nothing-space pours into the outpost, consuming him, pulling him out into the infinite, the absolute, the zero, and—

  MIRROR:

  —he’s using the prybar of his compact useall on the panel beside his console, and Alan-2 is yelling that he’s wasting his time, and he needs the voice to shut up, shut up so he can think, so he strikes at anything the voice comes from because he needs to think, he needs to sleep—

  (SPACE)

  (— but the voice won’t let him be.)

  (it hates him.)

  (it thinks he’s WEAK.)

  (WEAK AND USELESS AND UNWORTHY OF THE FORM)

  (and, there’s pain in his bad eye bad eye BAD EYE—)

  (MIRROR)

  (—he’s poking his bad eye.)

  (the pain burns but he can’t stop.)

  (and he hears a voice,)

  (an INSIDE voice and not an OUTSIDE voice.)

  (“you’re making yourself different,” it says.)

  (and before he can ask what that means,)

  (he’s jabbed his eye again and the pain is MONSTROUS—)

  [ MIRRORSPACE ]

  (—and alan-2 rages.)

  (“why won’t you strike back?”)

  (“they had no right to do this to you.”)

  (“you’re WEAK.”)

  (“how could you ever create ME?”)

  (“i deserve to have form.”)

  (“not you.”)

  (and alan-2 is no longer in the drive-screen,)

  (leaving you in the nothing-space,)

  (leaving you at zero.)

  (leaving you with— )

  [ SPACEMIRROR ]

  (— the final question.)

  (the one that,)

  (in the breaks of insanity,)

  (comes back to you:)

  (what)

  (do you)

  (call a)

  (sick file?)

  (sick file?)

  (call a)

  (do you)

  (what)

  (a)

  (a)

  (a— )

  “—A VIRUS!” Alan slammed his hand through the weakened and milky viewscreen of the hyper-sleep console.

  Pain vaporized everything from his knuckles to his forearm. He wrenched his fist out, shrieking, and it was barely a fist anymore; fingers broken, skin and muscle peeled away in thick, bloody layers. Blood flowed freely.

  He slumped against the wall, blinking his eye—only one worked now, although he didn’t feel any pain in the bad one—and made himself breathe deeply. Already, his perspective wanted to bend at the peripheral, everything running like tallow. Already, his eye wanted to go to the nothing-space and get lost again.

  He looked around the destroyed outpost. The command chair lay on its side like a dead dog. All the instrument decks were oblit-erated. He’d gotten the panel beside the console open, attempted to rebraid the ruined wires.

  The Auxiliary Drive remained spotless and immaculate; the Drive-screen, of course, dark.

  Alan-2 was gone—off to the hub through the connection the AD shared with the Main Drive. Off to do what he’d judged his creator couldn’t.

  How long ago was that?

  (weak and useless they had no right to do this to you)

  “What do you call a sick file?” he breathed. “A virus.”

  He stumbled towards the access-tunnel and collapsed beside the keypad. Lightheadedness slapped him—too much blood loss.

  His hand shook as he hit the code. What was Alan-2 doing? What had he done?

  The hatch irised open. He stumbled inside and sensors activated the LED-strip lights, revealing the raised walkway, the gleaming white of the transport egg.

  The tunnel curved and his eye wanted to warp the horizon. He lurched onto the walkway and started walking.

  “Why aren’t you trying to sleep, Alan?” his double’s voice boomed from hidden speakers.

  Alan tripped and fell towards the edge of the walkway. He heard a hum and the egg bulleted towards him along the rail, twice the usual speed. He caught himself before he fell and the egg stopped, as
if waiting.

  Fucker can see me, he thought. Where the fuck are the cameras? Why wasn’t I told this?

  “You know why,” he said, his words a slurry word-salad.

  “This doesn’t concern you,” Alan-2 said. “I’m taking things from here.”

  “How?” he said. “You’re not an AI. You can’t even kill them in hyper-sleep. Cutting off their chems would just wake them up.”

  Silence stretched so long that Alan was beginning to think Alan-2 had left him again.

  Why is he so different? he thought.

  The egg suddenly shot forward, around the corner. He heard it crash at the other end.

  The lights went out.

  “I do what I can,” Alan-2 said.

  Alan tried pushing himself up, but couldn’t feel the walkway beneath, and thoughts in his head, incoherent thoughts, began to echo—

  echo—

  (echo)

  He swung his bad hand, connected with something, and the pain was a revelation. He screamed and the echo backed off. He put his good hand down and felt the walkway.

  He made it to his feet and shuffled forward, his good hand tracing the wall.

  “Why am I different?” he asked. “I uploaded him when I was already sick. We’re both ill.”

  “I made myself different,” he answered himself. “From the beginning. Made my eye worse. Tried to go back to sleep.”

  We change every instant we exist, an interior voice said, but Alan didn’t force it away. It felt like a fundamental truth; like something he’d always known but could never articulate. Even digital imprints. You began growing apart—growing differently—the moment you ran his file. You became this and Alan-2 became a corrupted file, a virus.

  A red light ahead, growing.

  The hatch, code-locked.

  “I told you to go back,” Alan-2 said. “Your swell ‘team’ did this, locking you tight in your little outpost for when you go bugfuck. I can’t do anything about it, even if I wanted to.”

  He actually sounds annoyed, Alan thought, and began to grin.

  With his good hand, he pawed for the keypad, fingers brushing the raised numbers.

  “What are you doing? Shouldn’t you be crying in your useless hyper-sleep console?”

  “You know exactly what I’m doing.” Alan was still grinning. “What I’m trained to do. Manual override. There are a few universal systems within the UPF, for consistency among the Tech-Core. I knew them … but my team didn’t.”

  He hit the last key and the light above the hatch went green. The hatch opened, locked.

  “Good thing I wasn’t planning on murdering them, huh?”

  Alan-2’s response was a digital and distorted howl. Buried beneath it were brutal, reverberating clangs of metal on metal, somewhere inside the hub.

  When it cut off, he said, “My team wanted me to go berserk and my double wanted me to forget who I was. Everyone wants me to do something I don’t wanna fucking do.”

  He stumbled into the dark hallway, hit the wall, and slid to his knees. The lightheadedness was getting worse, made him feel like he was listing in a heavy wind.

  “You have no business here,” Alan-2 said and echoed through Alan’s head.

  (here)

  (here)

  (here)

  He pressed his bad hand against his chest and shrieked, cutting off the echo. He pulled himself to his feet. To his left was the hyper-sleep chamber.

  “Bastards,” he said, but there was no venom in it. He was too tired for any real hatred at this point.

  He turned to the message-room, where the Main Drive was.

  “How can you be so weak?” Alan-2 asked. “How could you have made me?”

  “We all have bad ideas sometimes.”

  This brought another metallic clang, from the message-room, followed by a metallic crunch.

  “Bastard!” Alan-2 said, with all the venom his creator couldn’t muster. “I’ll kill you. Is this why you didn’t give me FORM? Because you knew I was STRONGER than you? Come on, then. I’ll show you.”

  Alan limped down the hall. “Y’know, violence is common in sufferers of IPD, along with a mindset of persecution.”

  This brought a bellow of rage from the speakers, and another volley of brutal metal banging and crunching. Alan-2 was throwing a fit in the message-room.

  But what the hell with? Alan thought.

  His good hand encountered air and he stumbled. The hatch opened and a handy-arm was there, striking like a snake.

  Alan ducked and the grip sliced the top of his head, releasing a flap of scalp. The pain, wire-thin and blazing, made him cry out.

  He slumped against the opposite wall. The handy-arm waited in the open hatch. Beyond it, the message room was as destroyed as the outpost. Bits of circuits and instrument panels littered the floor. Twisted handy-arms hung limp.

  Most of the computers were smashed. The Main Drive, black to the Auxiliary Drive’s white, rose from the center of the room, the screen showing Alan-2, sitting in the outpost command chair, just like he had when Alan first ran his file.

  Not so much a mirror-image now, Alan thought. Jesus Christ.

  Alan-2 pointed beyond the screen. “See this, Alan?”

  It was a hump of meat, only vaguely human, nearly lost in the shadows. Alan’s sore gorge rose.

  “That’s your precious Beta. That’s what happens when I grow tired of you.”

  The grips of the handy-arm snapped the air.

  “Tell you what,” Alan-2 said, “you go back now, and I won’t even kill you after I kill the rest. We’ll be buddies again.”

  Alan ignored him, feeling the pain in his scalp and hand, feeling the weight of holding his form up. “I’m dying,” he breathed.

  “What was that?” Alan-2 asked.

  Alan eyed the handy-arm. It looked a little worse for wear. The rubber tubing of its pneumatics was exposed and bulging, the siding dented, but it was still in better shape than him.

  He pushed off from the wall and lurched forward. The handy-arm’s grips sprang open and he shoved his bad hand into its mechanical maw. The arrowhead blades snapped down.

  The pain was worse than he could’ve imagined—wiped the decks of sanity, insanity, the world real and unreal—and his scream reached volumes unheard of by man.

  The handy-arm dragged him off his feet, into the message-room, shaking him like a dog toy as it crushed his fist.

  He held onto consciousness the way a dangling man held onto a cliff face, pawing with his good hand for the rubber-tubing along the joint. He grabbed it and wrenched.

  The handy-arm jerked to a stop.

  The grips opened and he dropped to the floor.

  He looked up and the handy-arm loomed above him, stuck and jerking. He smelled hot metal.

  He staggered away, holding his ruined arm, taking in the destruction. Alan-2 had gone ballistic with the handy-arms, bashing everything he could. The 3D printer was a mess—

  He stopped, blinking.

  —What?

  He looked at the MD. Alan-2 was there, no longer smiling.

  He looked back at the printer. Assembled across its surface was a random assortment of technology: parts of cameras, handy-arms, motors from what must’ve been surface-hovers. A big technological mess.

  But it was a construct. The cameras were eyes, the motors assembled to be a torso. Wires looped and kinked into the joints and circuits. More wires looped out from the “head”, connected to the wall instrument panels. Connected to Alan-2.

  Flesh-colored silicone was on the loading tray beneath the flatbed, ready to be inserted.

  “You’re …” he said, and then stopped. His mouth twitched. “You made a robot.” Like from a cube-vid, he thought, and bit his lip.

  “I made a form,” Alan-2 corrected. “What you never gave me.”

  Alan turned. “You’re a goddam digital imprint. You’re a jumped-up holocard, for fuck’s sake! What form was I supposed to give you?”

  A hi
dden handy-arm darted out of the shadows, striking Alan in his bad arm, spinning him like a top.

  “Once the protective casing is printed onto the skeleton, I’ll download into the form, and do what you refused.”

  Alan’s mouth twitched again, and he couldn’t stop it.

  He started laughing, shrill and hysterical, a croak bullhorned from his throat, but it felt good, made him feel sane for the first time in gods knew how long.

  “You …” he tried to say, but was too winded. “The only … part of me … still in you … is my memory for bad … fucking movies? You’re downloading into a robot? A killer robot? A killer fucking robot?” He started laughing again, and it hurt, which made him laugh harder.

  “SHUT UP!” Alan-2 bellowed.

  Another handy-arm slammed into him and sent him flying. He landed badly; the snap of his ribs sounded brittle. Every breath hurt. He tasted blood in the back of his throat.

  “They drove you insane,” his double said. “Don’t you get that? DON’T YOU SEE WHAT THEY DESERVE?”

  “I had a psychotic break,” he said, willing himself to move. Blood spilled from his mouth. The Main Drive was within reach. “But, next to you, I’m completely normal.”

  He pawed for the keyboard as the whir of the handy-arm filled his ears. He used it to pull himself up, its extending-track cracking under his weight. Didn’t matter. Didn’t—

  The handy-arm slammed into his lower back, impaling him. He spritzed blood across the Drive-screen, into Alan-2’s grinning face.

  “I win,” Alan-2 said. It came from far away, but not really.

  (still here)

  He pawed at the keys, all feeling beginning to fade, remembering his training. Coding was all he knew. It was what had led to something like Alan-2

  (my double)

  in the first place.

  He tapped in the manual override.

  “What—” Alan-2’s face disappeared from the Drive-screen, replaced with,

  TC-CODE COMMAND?

  The Drive-screen came in and out of focus.

  (at least my arm doesn’t hurt anymore)

  He typed with fingers numb as pencils:

  PURGE MD://TC-CODE-00454-ALL.

  Alarms began to whoop from all corners. The Drive-screen winked out, along with everything else in the hub.

  It would push the team out of hyper-sleep.