“Please,” I say, pleading with Gal. “We have to run.”
“Run. Yes. Run,” he says, pointing at the image of soldiers pounding down the tunnels leading to the underground labyrinth. I recognize their equipment all too well. They’re carrying riot shields and batons. Their black body armor is imposing.
Clunky pistols are drawn. Jesus. This is it. My feeble escape is over before it began. I brace. The aging airlock door we entered is open. Although we’re hidden around a natural bend in the cavern, I can hear boots pounding on the steel planks lining the main passage. Fuck. My heart is beating out of my non-existent chest. To my surprise, the boots continue on. Soldiers run past the rusted airlock leading into Gal’s apartment. There’s shouting, yelling.
I peer around the rock wall, watching as they return to the surface, having grabbed some poor sap from the next cave. Like jackboot-thugs of every age, these guys are emboldened by the anonymity of their dark uniforms. They stride past the airlock, pushing a chump ahead of them. Additional troops peer into our airlock and the one opposite us with batons in hand. They’re ready to fight off any resistance. They look at me, but I’m only partially visible, peering past the rock. To them, I must look like yet another sheepish bystander. With carefully honed training, they peel away, retreating behind their troops.
Snatch-and-grabs are well-rehearsed on Erebus. As we’re in the slums of this age, there’s probably the occasional backlash. The soldiers are so preoccupied with preparing for that threat they’re not paying attention to what’s actually going on in our cavern. From a distance, I appear solid enough. Perhaps that’s my one saving grace. When Jorgensen and Dr. Everton revived me, they gave me a realistic rather than a transparent holographic form.
“See? See?” Gal says excited, peering out from behind the rock wall.
“Oh, I see,” I say, turning back toward him and stepping out of sight of the airlock.
“He was, how do you say?” Gal pauses. I’m unsure what he’s trying to express. He gestures to me as though it were obvious.
“A patsy?” I ask.
The blank look tells me that phrase doesn’t compute.
“An anal sphincter,” he says.
“An asshole,” I say, smiling.
Gal grins, nodding. “Yes. Yes. That’s it.”
“Damn. You are one slippery customer.”
For a second, Gal looks down at his chest. He’s confused by my comment. He examines his clothing for any sign of moisture.
“Ah, it’s figurative,” I say, but that term doesn’t communicate either. Their 22nd-century dictionary is missing a few entries.
“You were right,” he says, pointing at his head. “No trust. Nowhere. Not on the Veritas or on the Refusal.”
I’ve fallen in with this millennia’s version of hackers, and they had a score to settle with one of the neighbors. It seems they were quite happy to experiment with his freedom. Hey, it works for me. Gal’s already cut into what looks like a restricted feed. He brings up several spheres showing the inside of the police vehicle. Our unwitting perp is pleading with police, but they’re having none of it. Thinking isn’t their forte. Their purpose is to flex muscle.
“So let me get this straight,” I say. “You were on your secret channel, right? Your Refusal. Where you should have been safe—and wham!”
Gal nods.
“You, youthful female. You were right.”
I’m tempted to remind him my birth predates his by thousands of years, but I let that slide. Besides, I think he meant, ‘You, young lady.’ That’s the way such an accidentally patronizing statement would have been expressed by my Mom. That language was already out-of-date by at least two hundred years in my day. Jane Austin might like that shit, but not me. At a guess, he’s plucked a colloquialism he thinks is appropriate from my time, butchering it slightly in his delivery. I smile.
“No trust,” he says.
“They’re compromised,” I say, impressed by how he’s tested my theory.
“This is a problem,” he says. “Scanning the Veritas makes sense, but not our network. The Refusal is encrypted and distributed via a constantly shifting onion network. It shouldn’t be possible to intercept anything that is routed peer to peer.”
“But it was,” I say.
Gal spoofed his identity. He faked his address and sent the cops on a wild goose chase. Even so, I’m worried about the speed with which they unraveled his communication. That suggests even his cute little ruse could be uncovered.
Gal seems to sense my concern as he says, “Why did they act so quickly? They came as brutes—as beasts. They could have sent in undercover cops. I think they’re scared of you, and that makes me wonder why.”
“I’m more interested in how this happened,” I say. “The aliens I saw lacked any kind of technological advancement, let alone the means to manipulate us.”
I’m worried. These aliens have no desire to use electronics. Perhaps no need would be a better way of describing it. Whoever these creatures are, their existence is purely biological. Somehow, that has allowed them to reach the stars. Even when they cross paths with a technological civilization like ours, there’s no interest in harvesting tech. They exploit it, yes, but they don’t incorporate it, at least not as far as I’ve seen. Being an astrobiologist at heart, I’m wondering if I’m witnessing a celestially symbiotic relationship. Could this be like bees pollinating flowers? Or barnacles growing on whales.
I don’t know quite what I should say to Gal. This is his time—his world. It must be horribly disconcerting to realize nothing is what it seems. I don’t want to say too much until I’m sure about what’s happening.
The astrobiologist in me is intensely curious about the behavior of these aliens. They’re not parasites—not from what I can tell. They’re certainly not infecting humans as a host. Also, there’s no mutual benefit. They’re not pilot fish, clinging to the sides of sharks and picking off parasites while being protected from other predators. The people I’ve met on Erebus have been oblivious to the alien existence. This could be a commensurate relationship. Egrets sit on cattle, picking off fleas and ticks, while the host is largely oblivious. Some plants have seeds that are sticky or have hooks, catching on an animal’s fur as a means of distribution. Whatever the relationship, this has been happening for thousands of years. With the exception of my appearance, it’s been harmonious—or has it?
“Where are your children?” I ask.
Gal looks at me as though I’m mad. Oh, I am, Gal. After all this time, that’s my default position.
I point at my abdomen.
“You know. Families. Kids. Babies. Do women get pregnant here on Erebus?”
I exaggerate my point by putting my hands on my hips and extending my stomach. I press him further.
“You live for hundreds of years. How is there no population explosion? Where is everyone?”
His eyes flicker as he struggles to decipher my comments with what I hope is a local copy of the Old Tongue.
“What about immigration?” I ask, pointing at the ceiling. Although Erebus is isolated from interstellar space, there are other colonies within the system. “What’s the overall population on Erebus and your other moons and planets?”
To my mind, it’s got to be well into the millions, but from what I can tell, the population on Erebus is only into the hundreds of thousands. Why is it so small after so long?
“I—ah,” he begins, but Pretty Boy cuts him off.
“Baby, baby, baby.”
“Yes,” I say, seeing Pretty Boy has finally rejoined reality. “I want to know about babies. Where are your babies?”
“You’re a baby,” he says, raising his chin as he laughs at me. If I wasn’t virtual, I’d slap him into the next century.
Someone’s coming in through the lock. In the quiet of the air circulating through the ceiling vents, I can hear someone stepping through the decrepit opening.
“See baby,” he says, gesturing toward the airlock.<
br />
I step out around the corner so I can see the airlock, and there I am. It’s me. Five-foot six inches of pure American trouble displaced by several thousand years. I’m wearing a loose navy blue jumpsuit. My hair’s scruffy. The part is on the wrong side. Well, it’s on the right side, but I’m no longer looking in a mirror. I see myself as I am, not as I appear in a reflection. A light smattering of freckles sits below my eyes. My cheeks have the characteristic blush that makes me look perpetually surprised. Damn, that got me in trouble with a few too many boys in high school. Rosy cheeks were a magnet for the jocks, regardless of whether I was interested in them or not. My bust, my waist, and even my pudgy thighs are all there. Mom always said I was self-conscious, but there’s a reason I gravitated to a profession where the focus was technical competence. I’d never win a beauty pageant, and yet there I am.
I smile. Not hologram me. Other me. It’s my doppelgänger that’s smiling at me. Damn, that is more than a little unnerving.
Pretty Boy says, “See you.”
“Yes,” I say, not sure what to make of this. “See me.”
Me
“I fly you, baby. I fly—you!”
He points at me with both hands, raising his eyebrows as though he’s making a profound point.
“Uh, Gal?” I ask, turning to the old man.
He smiles. “It’s good, no?”
I walk toward me. Well, I don’t actually move, but she does. Fake-me walks toward actual-me.
Pretty Boy darts past virtual me. He grabs my brain fragment from where it sits beside the holographic projector on the table.
“Whoa, easy, cowboy,” I say, holding out my hands and appealing for calm. He shakes his head in dismay. He’s dealing with an imbecile. Funny, I was thinking the same thing.
I follow Pretty Boy over to second-me. He reaches his hand out, placing his palm on her chest. His fingers touch the point where her jumpsuit gives way to the pale skin over her sternum. Really, Pretty Boy? This is where we’re at? Alt-me reaches up and unzips the jumpsuit without so much as batting her eyelids. I’m expecting breasts but what I see is smooth skin dissolving into a wireframe. There’s nothing beneath the synthetic cotton beyond a maze of crisscrossed wires following the contours of a body that’s not there. I watch, mesmerized as the thin wireframe opens, revealing an empty chest cavity.
“What the fuck?”
Pretty Boy laughs at my sense of amazement. He reaches into her chest, placing the urn with my fragile remains on a narrow ledge roughly where the heart would be. Fine wires enfold the brain fragment like the tendrils of a creeping plant. They wrap themselves around the transparent casing.
“Now you,” he says.
“Me?”
“Turn,” Pretty Boy says, but his voice is kind. He waves his hand in the air, tracing a circle, wanting me to turn my back on my doppelgänger. My heart is racing. Is this what I think it is? Is this really happening?
With my back turned to the robotic impersonation, I feel my palms go sweaty. Now that’s a virtual sensation I never thought I’d experience. I stand still. The machine steps forward, consuming my hologram, slowly filling all the space. My body sparkles with light. Gal grins like an idiot. God, I love him.
Pretty Boy positions himself in front of the two of us as we overlap. I’m aware of the shimmering hologram on the edges of my vision as my virtual-self seems to bob in and out of the mechanoid. For the first time, Pretty Boy’s deadly serious. As I watch, he peers one way and then another, looking at how my shoulders line up, checking my waist, my hips, and legs.
“Tis good,” he says. “One arm, please.”
I raise my left forearm. The robot moves in unison with me.
“And turn your hand over,” he says, gesturing for me to follow his motion.
I roll my wrist, turning my hand over and looking at my palm. Sparks dance on my fingertips. The hologram merges with the robotic figure. Each mechanical finger moves in perfect unison with my virtual hand.
“Good, no?”
“Very good,” I say, catching the movement of my new lips on the edge of my sight. “Damn, you’re good.”
“And your feet,” he says. It’s only then I notice his hands twitching. While Pretty Boy’s focus is on me, his hands tell another story. He’s working with an invisible interface. If anything, the motion of his fingers is like a spasm. It’s probably residual motion from his neural interface. It must feed off the same parts of the brain used for motion. Pretty Boy fine-tunes his simulacrum of me.
“Step toward me,” he says.
Both of us step forward, virtual me and robotic me, but we’re slightly out of sync. Not for long.
“Again,” he says.
This time, there’s a shimmer around my knees. My hologram and the robotic impersonation are in sync. Pretty Boy raises his hand, holding up a single finger and swaying it from side to side like a doctor. Being a good patient, I follow his motion with my eyes. His eyes never leave mine.
“Good. Good,” he says. “And in three, two, one.”
I want to ask what’s in three, two, one, but there’s no time to react. For a split second, it feels as though I’m standing under a waterfall. A torrent of virtual water cascades over me, drenching my skin. Pretty Boy snaps his fingers in front of my face. All my senses realign. The difference is subtle but noticeable. My hearing is crisp, my sight clear. Until this point, I didn’t realize my vision was slightly out of focus. The cracks in the rock wall appear in high definition. Colors aren’t brighter so much as more distinct. The contrast is greater, more vibrant. It’s as though there’s more range between red and green. I can feel the cool air spilling out of the vent above me, sliding down the back of my neck and beneath my jumpsuit. Instinctively, I look up. Gal laughs. He loves seeing my reaction to the new world unfolding around me. Yeah, okay, this is pretty damn cool.
I can’t help myself. I reach out and grab Pretty Boy, pulling him into a hug and burying my new head into his shoulder. I’m not sure what physical etiquette exists in this epoch, but he’s taken by surprise. He reciprocates, placing his arms around my waist.
“Thank you,” I say, trying not to cry.
Can I cry?
I step back, taking another look at my hands. There are fingernails, fingerprints, and creases in my palm. Blood seems to rush through capillaries that aren’t actually there. This is every bit as real as my hologram seemed and more, even if it is just some sophisticated wireframe.
“Boy good?” Gal asks.
“Yes, he’s a very good boy,” I say, agreeing.
Pretty Boy grins. He’s right to be proud of his handiwork.
“You can fly me any time,” I say, and both of them laugh. I wink. Yeah, I always knew that was a euphemism.
Gal comes around beside me, resting his hand on my shoulder as he brings me over to the table. Damn, it feels good to be touched.
“Now we go to war, huh?”
“Against the aliens?”
“Against all of them.”
“Ah, yes,” I say, realizing he’s right. I’ve been thinking this is just about the creatures inhabiting this system, but it’s not. There’s collaboration at work, only it seems humanity has been excluded from the deal.
“The Refusal?” Pretty Boy asks.
“It’s a lie,” I say.
“Yes, yes,” Gal says. “It’s clever, no? We are restless. We humans. We are never content. We long for freedom. They know this. The AI understands this. They play both sides. We think we’re free, but we’re not. We think we can rebel against them, but it’s an illusion. The Refusal becomes the rallying point for our dissent, but it never leads anywhere. We go in circles. We—how do you say?”
“Chase our tails,” I say.
“Haha. Yes. I like that. We chase our tails. We go around and round without actually going anywhere.”
“You’re in a prison.”
“Yes,” Gal says, pointing at me. “One without bars. We think we are free, but we are not.�
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“There are three parties involved here,” I say. “Humans, AI, and these aliens. They’ve joined forces and teamed up against you.”
Gal grins. “It is so very clever. All this time, we thought we were fighting one enemy, but there are two. We are sexed, no?”
“Fucked,” I say. “That’s the term you’re looking for.”
Gal laughs.
Pretty Boy likes that. He clenches his fists beside his hips and thrusts back and forth a couple of times, laughing.
“Oh, that’s it,” I say. “You’re trapped here in this system. You’ve got two human factions. Those that accept and those that refuse, but you can never break out against the AI, right? Anytime you get close to escaping, they shut you down.”
“And you,” Gal says. “You’re the wild card. You’re the flaw in their plan. You don’t fit. You cannot be controlled.”
“So they want to get rid of me.”
“Yes. You see them. All of them.”
I’m confused by that point. “Why?” I ask. “Why is it I can see these creatures, but you can’t?”
Gal shrugs. “This, too, is something I long to know.”
“What about your children?” I ask. “You know, babies.” I need to bring them back to the point that got swept away in the excitement over getting a physical body. “You must have kids? Offspring?”
Gal looks at me with curiosity, and it’s then it strikes me—their captors have erased this concept, but why? Is everything from conception through to birth now in a test tube? Where’s the fun in that? Well, perhaps not the labor part. Based on Pretty Boy’s flirting, sex is still relevant.
“You’re born. You live and grow. And you die,” I say. “Where are your newborn children. Where is the next generation?”
His eyes go wide with the realization of what’s missing.
“What’s in it for them?” I ask, realizing there has to be more to this.
“They keep us here,” Gal says.
“That explains the AI,” I say, “but not the aliens. What’s in it for them? Why would they collaborate? And for hundreds of years. How can such an alliance be maintained?”
Déjà Vu (First Contact) Page 14
