Nomad
Karin Lowachee
People in modern times don’t like to acknowledge that some of us Radicals are nomad. They interpret that as rogue and dangerous. If you think it’s hard for us now, it was much worse during the turf wars—especially if you weren’t integrated. When Tommy died I became uni—unintegrated—and that usually means nomad. I belonged to no Streak, had no chief and no Fuses to protect me. It wasn’t overnight.
For a month after Tommy died, my chief tried to convince me to integrate with another human. It’s not unheard of, though for many it is not desired. But since nomad Radicals have it hard against suspicious people, the majority of us capitulate and Fuse to a second, lesser human. Any human after your first is always lesser in some way. You have not grown with them; you have not shared memories from birth to death. Many Radicals who have lost their first human don’t last the year, Fused again or not; instead they voluntarily dismantle.
I was never one for suicide, though I have come close. But I don’t think it’s in my nature to cut myself short—I have the scars and dents on my armor to prove it. I spent too many years trying to keep myself and Tommy alive against rival Streaks, and he did the same. To dismantle myself, even if it’s my right, would be an insult to the Fuse I had lost when Tommy died.
Every Streak across the world thinks they know what went down when Tommy was killed, but they don’t know because everyone involved in that fracas, besides myself, was destroyed. (Human, Radical—the term “destruction” fits for both.) This was the beginning of my Streak’s suspicion of me and I suppose I can’t blame them. It is a hard thing to explain when your human dies and you survive. Tommy’s uncle was the chief, and the chief’s Radical was the only other Radical in our Streak that was older than me. We were possibly the oldest Radicals left in the world besides some beaten-down Copperpickers in the few mines left in the North., Anyway, Tommy had been the vice-chief. It is likely that once Tommy was dead and I was uni, Radical One calculated that I would want to take the primus position with a new human. But I had no such ambitions and still do not. Leading a Streak is not a simple thing and I’ve grown tired of the raids.
Maybe I have always been a little bit nomad in my programming. My generation model, they say, has some tragic flaws.
The day I decided to leave the Streak, the chief made one last effort to convince me to stay and reintegrate. I stood in the wreckhouse with the other Fuses, all of them doubles. I was the only single. We made thirteen, which is small for a modern Streak, but the chief didn’t agree with the corporate mentality that dictated there had to be at least twenty Fuses in a Streak. That was too much like a government army, and we were better beneath our own flag.
The armor of every Fuse is different. Our Streak wasn’t full of rainbow, like you find in the West, especially in Heo Eremiel. Their raids look ridiculous if you see them in your rearscan, like a flock of parrots who will talk you to death. We weren’t all about our looks, but our Tora Streak had some pride. Blacks, grays, blues, reds. When we raided up, we were a storm.
Radical One was a sheen of midnight blue integrated with the chief, covering him head to toe in a sleek armor husk. If you have never seen a Fuse it might be difficult to discern where human ends and Radical begins, but that is the point. Since we weren’t raided up, though, his faceplate was open, his gunports were shut, and I saw his hooded human eyes. Radical One’s red scanning eye on his forehead bent in regular beats across each of our faceplates and did not bend to the human eyes. I bent my eye back, but then ignored it to zero on the chief. He was old by human years, well into his gray period, but battle hardened in every line and vein.
“Why won’t you give Probie a chance?” Chief gestured with a gauntlet at the lone human who stood by the door of the wreckhouse. One of him and one of me. Even a first burst of a Radical could do that math out of the yards.
“I gave him a chance,” I said. “We won’t work.”
The probie had approached me the week before and said, “They don’t make your kind anymore, do they?” knowing very well that my model was discontinued twelve years ago. He’d taken two months to pluck up to me and that was the first thing out of his wet man-mouth.
“I wish I could say the same about you,” I’d told him. He’d taken offense, which wasn’t my problem. And he wasn’t going to be my problem now.
Deacon was his born name, but because he wasn’t Fused we all called him Probie. He did scut work around the house and the garage, and he had some skill with programming and basic Radical maintenance, not that I ever let him touch me. Mostly he did anything the chief wanted him to do for the Fuses, Radical and human alike. He had to learn that a Fuse wasn’t about the human. We weren’t cars he could flip a switch on and control out of the factory. I didn’t know why the chief made him a probie in the first place, because even if Deacon respected the Fuses, I saw that self-righteous gleam in his blue eyes. He reckoned he could stare down a Radical’s scan even though we never blinked. That kind of arrogance shares circuitry with stupidity. I’d rather dismantle than Fuse with that.
“So what’s your plan?” the chief said. “I hope you won’t kite off on a revenge mission.”
The payback on the bastard Fuses who had killed Tommy was not as complete as I would have liked. There had been much discussion in the Streak about the nature of this payback and the chief had his reasons for being careful about it. Keeping the peace between precarious towns; not wanting the locals to raise a paramilitary army to drive us out; not wanting more bloodshed when my murder of Tommy’s murderers could be seen as an even score. So many reasons and yet I would not have regretted more death.
But revenge wasn’t my reason for leaving.
“I’m going nomad,” I said.
All twelve Fuses made noises, human profanity and sharp Radical hums. Radical Five, who was called Steel, said that they would rather I stayed with the Streak as a uni than lose me to the grid. Steel was always dependable on my flank and its Fuse was now the vice-chief. His human Anatolia missed Tommy almost as much as I did. Once in a while they’d shared beds.
“I appreciate that,” I said, “but I think nomad is the direction for me. At least for now.”
“You will always have a place in Tora Streak,” the chief said. He wasn’t going to argue anymore. He’d given me enough outs in the past month and it was impossible to change my program once I’d set it.
Radical One’s eye bent and remained on my faceplate. Radical One didn’t have any other name, just the recognition number that every Radical possesses but none of us use in speech. It had never wanted to be more familiar to humans. Though the chief objected to my going and it was in the logs, Radical One never tried to make me stay. Without me around, its primus position would be fixed until dismantling or destruction through battle, since none of the other Fuses were close enough to take over unless for some reason the chief died independently. But Radical One was powerful, despite its age, and it did not lose in battle.
The chief said, “Radical Two is determined to be nomad. We won’t keep it here. Does everyone give their support to Radical Two?”
The consent was unanimous, if full of regret. I had some regret too, but not enough to keep me from leaving.
The chief said, “Then go with the wind, Mad.” And that was the first time he had ever called me by my chosen name.
It was the name Tommy had given me.
Humans don’t always name us. We name ourselves if we want such a familiar designation. But when Tommy was four he thought of Mad, not because I’m an angry Radical, he just didn’t want to call me Radical Two anymore. “That sounds so cold,” he said. “And you’re too warm inside.” When he melded to the hollow of my armor body, we created warmth.
I was also only four years out of the yards, we were four years integrated alloy and skin, and every time he shed me to be only human I felt an emptiness. I suppose that was where it all began.
We call it armor but the technical name is Tran
s-Developmental Biogenic Alloy. After the ratified Constitution that granted us rights and privileges as any sentient intelligent being, humans short-handed us to Radical Armor, and then just Radical. We are told that the name alludes to part of our chemical makeup; one of our origin scientists coined it. I have always found it a little sarcastic. Free radicals. Perhaps Dr. Gom had been a sarcastic man, as much as he had been a genius.
We grow with our humans, a second skin that can slip apart and exist away from the Fuse. The racists call us Silly Putty for our ability to morph, change constitution, and adapt. And we do adapt. We change. We integrate.
The Streaks are weapons grade Radical Armor.
First integration happens as close to birth as possible. It’s the only way you can be sure a Radical’s bioware adapts properly to a human, when the human’s mind isn’t fixed already. Once we’ve been through our first integration, we can integrate again, but it’s never as smooth as that first; when you’re new and your human’s new, slipping inside each other’s thoughts in that infant stage is like a synthesis of pure instinct or a predatory scent of blood.
I have memories of Tommy from five minutes after his first cry in this world, and before he died he had all of mine. Like the first time I opened my hand and saw my faint reflection in my perfect obsidian armor. Before the battle damage.
I remember the first time I set my hand over his and our grips locked together and became one. It took no thought to move our hand because the integration was more instinct than intellect. That is how you know that the fix is right. It is not artificial intelligence; it is intuitive intelligence.
It’s a need, those first memories. The first time he breathed the air, the first time he shut his eyes and saw instead through mine. The world is limitless when you’re Fused. It’s a hunger for experience and we spend all our lives in a hunt to fill it.
That’s what drives a Fuse. You, your human, and everything you can’t satisfy.
That is our biggest weakness too.
In our need to integrate with them, we adapted to human flaws.
The Fuses gathered around to bid me goodbye from the wreckhouse. Steel and Anatolia, Sol and Markie, Wyrm and Jasper, Giniro and Imori, Kikenna and Selene. The chief and Radical One only touched my shoulder and left first through the door. I scanned both human and Radical faces and it was a hard thing to know that I might never see them again.
They asked me where I was going but I didn’t tell them. I had plans to follow the road that would lead me away from the turf wars. I didn’t want to say out loud that I didn’t want to see any Radicals that I knew, or any Radicals at all. They would have considered this insane, because we all knew that in places where Radicals weren’t welcome, no law would protect me. Some humans did not acknowledge the Constitution, our rights, our sentience, our ability to choose not to kill them. Their fears were not completely unfounded, of course. But there are more murderous humans than there are murderous Radicals, and that will likely never change.
After Tommy’s death, I just wanted to be away. Vengeance could wait. Vengeance was bone without the marrow. Something else unknown and even dangerous matched the open spaces that were expanding through my inner wires and biogenic gyroscopes. I was being gutted the longer I remained in Tora Streak, racked to Tora thoughts.
The wreckhouse was where we all congregated when we weren’t launching raids. It catered to both humans and Radicals, with thick seats, docking spikes, and areas of play integration outlined by lights and nebular controls. Right now as I passed my eye over it in a wide beam, it looked and sounded skeletal beyond repair. The walls of the house reflected nothing and loomed empty and unlit, a dead alloy that could not change as its occupants did in their desires. The movements of the Fuses as they clasped my arms or bumped their heads to mine seemed to echo in hollow bass notes.
I said goodbye, made no promises to return, and stepped out the door into daylight.
The probie stood against the outer wall of the wreckhouse, smoking a cigarette.
“You’ll regret leaving,” he said, with my back to him.
“I won’t regret leaving you.” I had a blip of a thought to educate him about his attitude and why that would hinder his graduation from probie to full Fuse. But he wasn’t worth even that, so I kept walking toward the gate that surrounded Tora’s compound.
“Tommy wouldn’t want you to go,” he said to my back.
I turned my head around without moving the rest of my body, so my eye bent direct on his narrow little face. “You are determined to live a short human life.”
He flicked his cigarette away onto the pavement. “I think you should give me a second chance.”
“I have given you more chances than you realize.”
I watched as he approached, hands in his jacket pockets. He stopped right below my eye. He was shorter than Tommy, enough so that I had to tilt down my face to scan his features. The overlay showed me where all of his biodots were, a scatter of constellations in his brain. This might’ve been what made him such a sharp programmer. I did not know much about his past, only that he had come to the Streak from the town by recommendation of a human ally in the police department, and he had no living parents. The chief had done a thorough check on him and deemed him worthy of probie status. I didn’t ordinarily disagree with the chief, but if I could’ve taken back our vote before Tommy had died, seeing what I saw now, I would have—and jammed a bullet in this probie’s smirk while I was at it.
“I want to really talk with you,” he said. “But not here. If afterwards you still don’t think me worthy, then I’ll never bother you again.”
“You’ll never bother me again as soon as I walk through the gate.” I turned my head around and set myself in that direction.
“It’s about his death,” the probie said.
I circled back and snatched him up by the scruff of his neck. The gate opened at my signal and I walked on, holding the probie off the ground. He kicked and struggled but it is impossible for a human to break a Radical’s grip. He had a gun but he wouldn’t dare use it.
So I walked with him just like that down the road, away from Tora compound. I walked a full hour and then walked another, until the cars and other Radicals from Freemantown no longer passed us. None of them questioned me because they saw the orange and black Tora mark on my chest. I walked us out to the roads between towns, where yellow land stretched long and empty on either side. It was a cool day and I didn’t falter. I was well-maintained and topped up with energy, and could’ve moved faster if I adapted into road mode, but that would’ve required setting him on my back somehow. He fell limp in my grip eventually, weary from fighting and cursing at me.
But he woke up when I dumped him onto the side of the road.
“You bloody robot piece of shit!”
They continue to think “robot” is an insult.
I bent my blue eye to him and sent up the beam so it hit him on the forehead like a target. “Is this what you want to say to me?”
He was covered in dirt. He hauled himself to his feet and struggled to climb up the gravel embankment to face me toe to toe. I watched his gun hand. He was not generally that stupid, but he was angry, and humans have a tendency to be stupid in their anger.
“You think you know what happened to Tommy.” The probie spat at my feet. “But you don’t.”
“You think you know what happened to Tommy?” I too had guns. They were in-built.
“That ambush from the Gear Heart Streak.” He stared up at me with a blaze in his eyes. “When they raided up on you in Nuvo Nuriel. In the hotel. The chief sent you there to pat a deal with the Gears, but then they ended up turning on you? There was no deal, Mad, except to fuck you over. You and Tommy, ’cause of what you were to each other.”
My scan overlay went red. I grabbed him up again by the collar and shook him hard.
His feet kicked. “Let go of me!”
I pitched him ten meters into the field. He fell with a dull thud and a cry.
I bounded over to him in one leap from the road. My right foot almost nailed his chest, but he rolled away at the last second. I wanted to crush him. It would not have been difficult.
“I know you loved him!” the probie gasped, nearly winded. A true fear spread across his face. “I know it’s taboo. I don’t care about that; it’s wrong what they did. The chief set you up!” He began to cough.
I tangled my fingers in the front of his jacket and lifted him up so we were eye to eye. He kicked for a second out of reflex then stopped, just staring back. His arms hung long, all the arrogance slammed out of him. I calculated the option of killing him. Here in between towns it would take some time to find him. But then, many people from Freemantown had seen me walking with him.
“How do you know the chief set me up?” It was the most pertinent question. After I got my questions answered, maybe then I would send him back to town just so people could see him alive. Then I could circle back, hunt him down, and kill him.
“I read the chief of the Gear Heart Streak,” the probie said. “I read his Fuse.”
I scanned this probie’s biodots again. “With that in your head? There is nothing exceptional. You cannot scan a Radical with your limp brain.” Radical minds were fortresses.
He said, “I’m a wetthief. And the Gear Hearts are a bunch of second string Fuses and you know it.”
I did know it. Their ambush that had killed Tommy had only focused my hatred, but we had never liked them and their marauding spirits. They were not well-maintained except in their wanton raids. Yet the chief had been bent on patting a deal “to cut down on the killings between the territories” where Tora and Gear tracks bisected the land. What could we have done? The votes went against us. Peace seemed a good avenue but it was always more of a dark alley. Nobody had listened to Tommy on that score.
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