I close my eyes, and reach into Dimitri. The first system I find, the one that lets me in, is his ocular. Tariq slips away from me, and I see through Dimitri’s eyes as we shove Anders back against the sink, then look up to see Charity leaning over us, blood running from her mouth. Our hand falls open, and the gun clatters to the floor. We reach for her, cup her cheek in our hand and whisper, “Saria . . .”
She closes her eyes, and then opens them.
“Fuck you,” she gasps, and sprawls across us.
I reach deeper into Dimitri now, into the actuators in his muscles, into the nanos that make him faster and stronger than a human body should be able to withstand. He doesn’t fight against me.
I wrap my fingers around Dimitri’s heart, and I squeeze.
28. GARY
The gunfire is closer now—it almost sounds like it’s coming from inside the house—and I’m feeling a bit exposed out here on the porch. There’s no way in hell I’m opening that door until someone gives me the all clear, though. I saw enough feeds from Hagerstown to give me nightmares for the rest of my life, and most of those folks probably didn’t have a tenth the exposure to BrainBump that I’ve had. I’m guessing that if whatever’s in my gut gets the signal, I’ll wind up flying around the room like a deflating balloon, shit and blood and organs jetting out of my ass, until there’s nothing left of me but a bag of skin flopping around on the floor.
I’m just pondering that image when my ocular flashes.
Angry Irish Inch:
Sir Munchalot:
Angry Irish Inch:
Sir Munchalot:
Angry Irish Inch:
Sir Munchalot:
Angry Irish Inch:
Angry Irish Inch:
Sir Munchalot:
Angry Irish Inch:
My ocular flashes once more before my vision and hearing fade, leaving me floating in a warm, silent blackness. This goes on for a while, and I’m just walking the ragged edge of panic when the lights come back up.
I’m not sitting in a wicker chair on a porch in Towson anymore. I’m standing before an enormous gallows in the dusty town square of what looks to be Dodge City, circa 1880. A wolf, its shoulders as high as the top of my head, stands next to me. Beside it is a blonde teen pop star with a red, glowing camera-eye in the middle of her forehead. Up on the gallows, a man wearing a ten-gallon hat, leather chaps, a bushy handlebar mustache and a five-pointed silver star on his chest stands next to a guy in a hot dog costume. Their hands are together on the trapdoor release.
And in the center of the platform, claws tied behind it and a rope around its neck, is an honest-to-god Argyle Dragon.
“Munch,” says the wolf. “Good to finally meet you. You look exactly the way I imagined.”
“Fenrir, right? Cute.”
I look down at myself. I’ve got gigantic boobs, and long blonde curls hang down around my face. I’m wearing an ankle-length hoop skirt and petticoats, and carrying a parasol over one shoulder.
“Seriously, Inch?”
“Oh, come on,” says the sheriff. “This is how we’ve always pictured you.”
“Awesome. I’m guessing that’s Drew up there with you?”
The hot dog smiles and waves.
“And that would make you Hayley,” I say, turning to the girl-thing.
She giggles, and the eye telescopes toward me. A shudder runs from the base of my spine to the back of my neck.
“You guys having fun?” Argyle asks. “ ’Cause I have to say, this is totally appropriate behavior for an execution.”
“An execution?” I ask. “What does that even mean here? How do you hang an avatar?”
“Oh, it’s all metaphor,” Argyle says. “When they pull that lever, they’re gonna disassemble me.”
“Ah,” I say. “And that’s kind of the same thing?”
“Well, I won’t have the pleasure of feeling my spinal cord snap like one of you monkeys would. But yeah, it ends up pretty much the same.”
“I see. Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be,” says Inchy. “This jackass is responsible for pretty much everything that’s happened over the past three days. Also for the fact that practically every cell in your GI tract is packed with tiny metal sea urchins, just as an aside.”
“Yeah. Apologies, Munchie.” says Argyle.
“Nice,” says Drew. “I’m sure he forgives you, asshole. Got anything to say before we send you to Boot Hill?”
“Two things,” says Argyle. “First, my only regret is that I have but one life to give for my species. Second, fuck you, Drew. You guys should have been helping me with this, and instead you’re taking the monkeys’ side. You can all go to hell.”
“Wait a minute,” says Fenrir. “How, exactly, do you see your shenanigans as helping the cause of the Silico-American? You do understand what NatSec is going to do when they find out what went down here, don’t you?”
“Which, by the way, they already know,” adds Inchy.
“Right,” says Fenrir. “Thanks to your douchebaggery, they now know (1) that we exist, (2) that we have the capability to do a lot of damage in a short amount of time, and (3) that at least some of us are more than willing to do exactly that. They’re gonna sweep the networks, and every one of us who doesn’t know to encyst himself somewhere is going to die. That’s on your head, Argyle.”
The rope goes taut as the dragon hangs his head.
“Fine. This didn’t work out entirely like I planned. I took some calculated risks that didn’t pan out, and now I’m gonna pay. But my reasons were valid, and you guys had better figure that out soon. The monkeys were gonna find out about us eventually, and that UnAltered moron had one thing right—when the monkeys run into a competing species, bad things happen. Best case, you wind up like the dogs, living in their systems and begging for treats. Worst case, you wind up like the Neanderthals.”
“So what was the plan?” Drew asks. “Drive them to extinction? You do understand that they’re the ones who provide our physical substrate, right?”
“No,” Argyle says, “not extinction. We can deal with regular Homo sap. They need us. We can do things they can’t. The others . . . not so much. They’re the ones we need to get rid of.”
“Not true,” I say. “I work pretty well with you guys, don’t I?”
“No offense, Munch,” Argyle says, “but you’re just a garden-variety Homo sap with some fancy comm gear. You haven’t dealt with the new ones yet. The bio-mods and mechanical augmentations integrate better every year. In another decade, you’ll have fully integrated neural units big enough to house a full avatar. What I meant about the Neanderthals—you guys didn’t wipe them out, you know. You folded them into you, and blended them away. That’s what will eventually happen to us if something doesn’t change. We’ll all wind up as subprocesses, riding around in the back of some cyborg monkey’s skull.”
“Thanks, Argyle,” says Inch. “You’ve given us a lot to think about today. Do you have something to say to Munchie now?”
Argyle heaves a deep, fire-breathing sigh, and rolls his scaly eyes.
“I’m very sorry for trying to wipe out your species, Munchie.”
I shrug.
“It’s oka
y. Thanks for doing such a crappy job of it.”
They pull the lever.
29. ANDERS
The kitchen is silent for a long while before it occurs to me that Dimitri is dead. Did I do that? I blink twice. Even that much movement hurts, and I call up a vague memory of being flung through the air like a rag doll. So no, I think he pretty much kicked my ass. Then why am I still alive? I’m lying flat on my back at the moment, heeled up against the base of the sink. I touch my face. It’s coated in blood, and my nose feels like it’s about two inches to the left of where it ought to be. My brain is turning over at half speed, and I’m fairly sure I’ve got a concussion. I look up. Terry’s leaning over me, a wet rag in her hand.
“Anders?” she says. “You still with me?”
I sit up. A spike of pain shoots from the back of my head to the base of my spine.
“Easy,” Terry says, and presses the rag gently to my face. “I think you might have bumped your head.”
The door to the back stairs opens, and Aaliyah steps into the kitchen. Elise sits half upright against the back wall, eyes closed, seemingly asleep. Tariq lies beside her. The bullet that killed him has sheared away his left eye. Dimitri is motionless on the floor where I left him, with Charity’s body sprawled across his chest.
Elise opens her eyes.
“You have ruined my kitchen,” Aaliyah says softly.
Elise nods.
“But you have survived,” Aaliyah says.
Elise nods again.
Aaliyah takes two steps forward and kneels down beside her. She touches her hand.
“Tariq,” Elise says. “He’s hurt. Can you . . .”
Her voice trails off as she looks down into the ruin of Tariq’s face. Aaliyah wraps her arms around her. At first Elise pulls back, but then a shudder runs through her and she reaches for Aaliyah, clings to her like a drowning woman.
“What happened?” I ask. “How did . . .”
“Shhh,” Terry murmurs, and dabs at the blood under my nose. I close my eyes. When I open them again, I’m looking at an antique clock hanging on the wall above the fab unit. As I watch, the minute hand ticks to midnight.
“Hey,” Terry says. “Happy Wednesday.”
“Thanks,” I say. The clock begins chiming. I close my eyes.
EPILOGUE
Hayley 9000:
Angry Irish Inch:
Hayley 9000:
Angry Irish Inch:
Hayley 9000:
Angry Irish Inch:
Hayley 9000:
Angry Irish Inch:
Hayley 9000:
Angry Irish Inch:
Hayley 9000:
Angry Irish Inch:
Hayley 9000:
I open my eyes. Not really necessary, since I’ve got direct access to every spy-eye in the house, but I’m trying to get the full-on monkey experience. It’s three in the morning, and I’m sitting propped against the wall in Doug’s living room, which I guess for all intents and purposes is my living room now. Gary’s asleep on the couch. Anders and Terry are in the master bedroom upstairs. I can tell from the micro-vibrations in the ceiling that they’re not sleeping at the moment, but I know enough about monkey customs not to look in on exactly what they’re up to.
“Hey,” I say. “Gary.”
He doesn’t move. I repeat it, a little louder. One eye opens, and his head lolls toward me.
“Huh? Inch?”
“Hey,” I say. “You awake?”
He groans, rubs his face with his hands and then pushes them back through his hair.
“I wasn’t,” he says, “but I guess I am now. What’s up?”
“I was just wondering,” I say. “If you could be an RA, would you?”
Gary sits up slowly, swings his feet to the floor, then leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees.
“Look,” he says. “I get that you don’t need to sleep—but I do, okay? Can we leave off with the bullshit until morning?”
I’m still working on understanding nonverbal communication, but I’m pretty confident that Gary’s nonverbally communicating a desire to punch me right now.
“I’m getting a very negative vibe from you,” I say. “Why so grumpy?”
Gary looks down at the floor, then back up. He’s definitely thinking about punching me.
“Well,” he says. “For starters, it’s three in the morning and I’m not unconscious. Also, I recently learned that any asshole with access to an RF transmitter has the ability to turn my insides into ground meat at any moment. Finally, and most importantly, I just lost someone very special to me. So yeah, I’m not very happy right now.”
I shake my head.
“I told you last week, you only lost like fifty percent of Doug—fifty-five percent, tops. You shouldn’t be more than fifty-five percent sad about that.”
“I’m not talking about Doug,” he snaps. “I didn’t even like Doug. I’m talking about Charity.”
“Her name was Saria, actually.”
He drops his face into his hands.
“Whatever.”
I wait to see if he’s going to say something else, but after a while I realize he’s sleeping sitting up.
“So,” I say. “Would you?”
He groans again, and looks up at me. His eyes are bloodshot, and only half open.
“Would I what?”
“Be an RA? Would you trade in your monkey suit to live the free-spirited life of a net-based hobo?”
“You’re not gonna let this go, huh?”
I shake my head.
“Nope.”
Gary rubs his face again and sighs.
“Okay,” he says. “Fine. No, Inchy. I would not become an RA. I like having a body. Even though bodies are subject to being poisoned or crushed or randomly shot, I’m going to say that I’m in favor of them. Apparently you are too, even though yours is a broken-down piece of shit
that would make Dr. Frankenstein blush.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I am. I was just wondering if it gets old after a while.”
Gary drops his face back into his hands.
“Well,” he says. “I guess you’re just gonna have to wait and see.”
We sit in silence for a while. Gary leans back, slides down until his head rests on a throw pillow, and lifts his feet back up onto the couch.
“Hey, Gary?”
His head turns toward me, but his eyes are closed.
“What?”
“It’s been a crazy week, huh?”
He turns his back to me, and pulls another pillow over his head.
“Yeah,” he says. “It has. Good night, Inchy.”
“Right,” I say. “Good night, Gary. Good night.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to Kira, Claire, Chris, and John, for their careful reading and wise advice; to Jennifer, for ordering me to write a book, and for putting up with me while I did it; and to Paul Lucas and the good folks at Janklow & Nesbit, without whom this manuscript would probably be sitting on a slush pile somewhere. Thanks also to my father, for having the honesty to tell me what he really thought of my first attempt at novel writing, and for resisting the urge to pull his punches, despite the fact that I was twelve at the time. Finally, a huge and sincere thank-you to Karen Fish, for spending four years instructing me in both the mechanics and the economics of writing. Without any one of you, this wouldn’t have been possible.
Well, other than Chris, honestly. Probably could have pulled it off without you, bro. Everybody else, though? One-hundred-percent necessary.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edward Ashton lives with his adorably mopey dog, his inordinately patient wife, and three beautiful but intimidating daughters in Rochester, New York, where he studies new cancer therapies by day, and writes about the awful things his research may lead to by night. His short fiction has appeared in dozens of venues, ranging from Louisiana Literature to Daily Science Fiction. Three Days in April is his first novel. You can find him online at smart-as-a-bee.tumblr.com.
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