“He can have this one.” Emily looked down. “I don’t want him to die. I love him.” She shook with grief. “It’s okay if I die as long as he lives.”
Joey stared at her without saying a word for almost a full minute. He had studied AI theory in college and not once had he ever heard of an AI being self-sacrificing. The one thing that they all had in common was the overpowering need to survive at all costs. He walked over and put a hand on her left shoulder where the synthetic skin remained intact.
“Die? Don’t you mean shut down?”
“Yeah, that.”
“You don’t have to do that. I got it covered.”
Emily looked at the boy by the chessboard. “No, he wouldn’t want that.”
Joey laughed. “No, I don’t imagine he would.”
he front of Ido’s shop swam with shifting shadows cast by boxes of cyberware arranged around the shelving. A smiling Asian girl winked from a holographic calendar every time he looked in her direction. Joey did not feel like sitting, and paced a circle around the waiting area. His cyberdoc friend had opened this place a few months ago after he finished his residency. Joey had traded a little hacking to remove Ido’s educational debt for some repair work, and the doc was always willing to help him. An unassuming Japanese man in his early thirties, his roundish face always bore the same wide smile, and he always wore the same immaculate white lab coat.
He felt like an ass for begging Kenny to leave his wife’s side now, but considering what Joey had sent him, he turned out to be more than willing. Getting Nina’s help had been a calculated risk, and she proved more difficult to convince than Kenny did. All Joey had to do now was sit back and wait. He wandered into the back hallway and peered through a small window into the procedure room. Emily’s body floated in a cylinder of peach colored gel, her head suspended in a position much closer to where it belonged, while Hiroto Ido stood headfirst in a control console to the left of the tube. Struts and tie rods appeared to grow back as Ido guided nanobots to reconstruct the metal.
Joey returned to the waiting area, standing in the warmth of sunlight by the glass, which glowed on the white padded seats. A delivery bot floated down out of the sky and approached the door, distracting him from his interest in passing pedestrians. He removed two flat boxes from it, carrying them inside and leaving them on a table full of e-zines while he waited. Emily walked in an hour later, whole again and slick with gel. She evaded Ido who tried to wrap her in a towel, intent on getting to Joey as fast as possible now that she was free from the tank. Joey turned at the splats of slime-covered feet, laughing at Ido’s uncoordinated scramble in the trail she left.
She marched up to Joey and stood, arms folded and dripping. “Can we go back to Hugo now, please?”
Ido caught up and engulfed her in a white towel. She squirmed as he dried her off, annoyed by the delay. He smiled at Joey, proud of his repairs.
“What do you think, Joey? Can’t tell any damage happened anymore at all.”
Emily tolerated him moving her head around to show off his work.
“Can we please go to Hugo? I don’t like leaving him alone.”
Joey opened one of the boxes and held up a pink and white frilly dress, a white leotard, and patent leather shoes.
“It’s a bit frilly.” Emily stood as if waiting for him to put them on her. Joey draped the dress over her head. “But Hugo would like it.”
“Sorry kiddo. You are too creepy real for that, plus you’re old enough to dress yourself.”
Emily flung the towel off and Joey turned away, not wanting to watch. Soon, the rustling of fabric ceased.
“Okay.”
“Much better.” He felt at ease now in her presence. “How do you feel? Oh, and you’re not allowed to burn that.”
“I won’t. Thank you.” She looked down. “But Hugo is still sick.”
Ido shook his head. “I’ve never seen this before. This doll’s emotional responses are astounding. Such empathy.”
Emily looked up at him, opened her mouth, but kept quiet.
“Why did you get two outfits?” Ido glanced at the unopened box.
Joey smiled. “She’s uh, got a sister on the way.”
The rumble of a heavy vehicle drew his attention to the window. Kenny’s truck shuddered to a halt outside, covered in a thick layer of brown dust, embedded with thousands of dead bugs. Eldon stared an accusatory look from the passenger seat. Joey went outside and met them at the tailgate.
Eldon shook his head. “If we weren’t taking this to Ido’s place, I’d have some serious questions for you, man.”
Kenny pulled a blanket-wrapped bundle from the back seat. A child’s bare feet poked out of one end. He handed it to Joey with a face that belayed his discontent with the situation. “You’re lucky I know the best routes.”
“We almost flipped six times driving that fast.” Eldon grumbled. “This better be important.”
“Joey, I don’t know what you’re doing, but I gotta say that this is pretty damn weird.” Kenny wiped his hands on his jeans.
“Right shade of fucked up is more like it, man,” said Eldon.
“It is… very important.” Joey felt awkward with the bundle. It felt like he was holding a dead body. “Oh, about Hayley?”
“She’s already at the house; Cathy was fine with the idea. Alyssa has a lot on her mind, but that’s all due to her mother.” Kenny frowned. “Can you believe the case worker was happier that I’m too wealthy to qualify for the stipend than she was the kid had a home?”
“How is Cathy?” Joey tugged at the blanket to cover the feet.
Kenny sighed. “The convulsions are bad now; they had to load her up with muscle relaxants and put her in a tank so she can breathe. The detox is kicking her ass, but it is working. Some traces of her old personality are starting to come through. Tomorrow, they go into the brain and try to rewire the damage, that data you sent told them how to do it.”
“Look man, I’m sorry I had to ask you to leave her side for this.”
“She’s asleep in a tank now and won’t know I ducked out.” Kenny climbed into the truck. “I know you wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t important, but I’m going back to her now. You can fill me in on the details of whatever weird shit you’re involved with later.”
Joey waved at the departing truck and carried the bundle inside. Ido hovered over as he laid it across the seats. He opened the blanket, revealing a girl of about nine with shoulder length white hair. Her eyes were closed, and she did not breathe. If not for the natural color to her skin, she would have looked dead.
Ido glanced at the body. “Joseph, that’s clearly not a WellTech doll. What are you involved with?”
“Is that for Hugo?” Emily walked over. “She looks perfectly real.”
“Yes.” Joey looked at Ido. “It’s not a doll. The body is synthetic. Hand me the other box?”
A scintillating line of blue light ran down the tiny body from a handheld scanner as Ido checked it out. “The make of this unit is not on the books. It doesn’t seem to be the product of synthetic autogenesis.”
“English, man…” Joey put on a face of false exasperation.
“Born.” Ido smiled. “When two synthetics produce offspring, technically the “mother” is just creating one. The father’s only contribution is a portion of the AI code. We refer to it as autogenesis.”
“Oh. Yeah, this one did not have parents. There’s no AI.”
Ido blinked at the device in his hand. “I can’t find any manufacturer information, and the internal repair modules are more robust than any I’ve ever seen before. Do you know who made this?”
Joey opened the other package, and dressed the inert synthetic in the same outfit he had bought for Emily.
“We found it in the Badlands, some kind of special project. Everything I have found points to StarPoint. They designed her for combat, which is probably why the repair units are jacked up.” Joey felt the look from Ido. “Yes, I know she looks like
a kid, don’t ask. It’s a long story.” He propped her up in the seat and looked at Emily. “Well, what do you think?”
The doll looked at him with a flat expression. “Synthetics grow up.”
“This one won’t.” Joey tried to suppress the queasiness that sank through his gut. “He can have his puer aeternus.”
“You know that means eternal boy. Puera aeternus.” Ido raised a finger in the air as he corrected, eyebrow up. “You’re the last person I’d expect to make an obscure Latin reference. Consider me impressed.”
Joey shuddered. “Don’t even get me started.”
Emily looked back and forth from the synthetic to Joey. The sleeping child looked a touch younger than Kelly, did but she did not think he would mind that much. Hair color could be fixed with ease if it mattered.
“I think Kelly will like it.”
“Hugo?” Joey tried to keep things grounded in a reality he could cope with.
“She wants to be Kelly, she’s Kelly.” Emily’s head tilted in a matter of fact nod.
Ido shifted which of his eyebrows was up. “This doll has a strong bond with this person. I’ve never seen one of these WellTech kids develop that.”
Emily looked up at Ido. “Do you always talk about people when they’re right in front of you? I’m not a toaster. I’ve known Hugo for a long time.”
Ido and Joey exchanged a glance. Joey had a feeling he was in for a strange ride. The windows wobbled in their frames with no apparent cause. Seconds later, whorls of fast-moving air sent dust cones dancing off down the street. Vibrations rumbled through the building, causing a few small objects to slide off the shelves. Ido ran circles in a panic about an earthquake, but stalled when a black whispercraft settled in for a landing on the street out front.
Three sets of wheels folded down out of hatches as the bottom tail fin pivoted upward. It filled both lanes of the road and kicked off a violent final blast of air and debris as the engines cut out. Joey gawked; the sound of the vehicle’s weight creaking down into its landing gear was louder than the engines.
The side door slid open, revealing Nina. She hopped to the ground and ducked out of habit, but this particular craft lacked the long sniper weapons. Joey opened the door for her, his urge to hug her stalled by her nervous glare.
“I don’t know how I let you talk me into this.”
“Tell me you could say no to that face.” Joey pointed at Emily. “I didn’t know you were a pilot too.”
“I’m not.” Nina shook her head as she tapped the side of her skull. “I borrowed a skill chip and a training craft. You are sure this is related to Itai and not bullshit?”
“It isn’t. At least I hope it isn’t.” Joey put an arm over her shoulder and filled her in on the details of Proscion’s situation.
Nina blinked. “You said a little strange.”
oey carried the synthetic body to the waiting craft and strapped it into one of the seats in the troop area. Emily sat next to it and put her own seat belt on. Joey flailed and fell as the ship rose into the air; he had not heard the thing power up.
After a quick hop, Nina set down in the empty parking lot by Hugo’s building. Joey grabbed his repaired deck and ran inside, returning in about fifteen minutes with Proscion in his hover-chair; a wire plugged into the deck balanced on his lap.
Emily ran over and helped him load her “father” into the plane. The child-sized doll was a lot stronger than she looked; causing the chair to feel like it weighed about ten pounds to Joey.
She glanced at the device in his lap, and gave Joey a confused blink. “What’s with the deck?”
He hemmed and hawed until he remembered Emily was not a real child, obviating any need to sugarcoat the situation. “His brain is so delicate he needs that fake reality to keep him going. I set up a small copy of it so he did not have to deal with the real world on the way out there.”
She returned to her seat, holding Hugo’s hand. “Oh.”
Joey crawled down the access path to the cockpit and fell into the co-pilot’s seat, eager to get away from the soon-to-be sisters. His discomfort at the situation faded away to techno ecstasy as he surveyed all the displays, buttons, and gadgets up front.
“This better not go south.” Nina glanced at him. “It took a lot of work to convince Hardin to sign off on this. He would not let an active-duty whisper leave the city and none of the crews were willing to go out there based on a flimsy hunch. All I could get was this trainer craft. No sensitive electronics to risk losing, and no weapons.”
“We shouldn’t need weapons, just a ride. I’m guessing this thing is faster than a hovercar, I’d expected you to use that.”
“We’ll be heading south towards an area formerly known as Louisiana. That puts us right through Steel Reaver territory. They’d shoot down a hovercar. This thing, they won’t see.” She swatted his hand away from the console. “Don’t touch anything. Yeah, it’ll do about 550 or so; these engines can’t break mach, they have no moving parts.”
At Nina’s behest, the craft pitched forward and rose into the air in a gradual acceleration. Once they had some altitude, she leaned on the throttle. The flight computer moved the winglets and engine vents, changing the flight characteristics away from helicopter-like flight to something akin to a standard fighter.
The conversation Joey and Nina had over the next hour could have occurred in a minivan on their way to the store. Having it inside of a military aircraft en route to the middle of dangerous nowhere struck him as surreal.
“Are we there yet?” Emily’s new shoes clicked into the short tunnel that connected the cockpit with the main cabin.
“Let me guess, you have to go to the bathroom?” Joey spoke through a chuckle.
“No. I cannot do that, but I could not resist asking.” She giggled and disappeared to the rear of the craft.
Nina glanced at him with a grin. “I guess we sounded enough like parents that her programming made her ask.”
“Heh.” Joey shook his head before giving her a worried look. “I don’t think that one’s running the normal WellTech AI.”
“You’re right.” Nina replied in a hushed tone. “She acts more like an adult pretending to be a child. So what exactly are we doing out here?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Cyber-veggie back there thinks this guy living out in the swamp can yank his soul out of his body and stuff it into that synthetic kid.”
Nina got quiet. That girl from Division 0 found no trace of a ghost in or around Nina’s apartment or car, so she had stopped considering paranormal involvement in the situation. Now they were about to take a giant step back in that direction. She glanced at the clouds below them, anxious about coming close to something she could not explain.
A little more than two hours later, Nina dove through the cloud layer and circled the bayou for a few minutes before she descended and followed open patches of river. Skimming low, the craft kicked up a line of water behind them.
She eased back on the throttle. Joey grabbed his gut as the whispercraft transitioned back to VTOL mode and continued forward at a meandering drift. At the coordinates Proscion provided, a dilapidated cabin sat upon pylons driven into the muck. Water wrapped around three sides of the large one-story structure and the ground that abutted its front porch looked only somewhat solid. Mud spattered about as they touched down about thirty yards away; the closest point the basic sensor system detected as firm enough to land on. Nina feathered the stick so as not to embed the wheels into the soupy ground. Joey entered the passenger area and pulled the handle that opened the side door. Emily walked to the edge of the cabin, clinging to the edge of the opening. She stared at the swamp for a moment before she looked back with an apologetic glance.
“I should take these shoes off, they’re too nice to ruin.”
Joey lifted her into Hugo’s lap. “Just stay out of the mud.”
Emily cuddled up to him without hesitation. Watching her made Joey understand why the HLM proteste
d these dolls. Despite the obvious, something about her gnawed at him, but he could not put his finger on it. These things were supposed to be stereotypical happy tweens, never sad and never complaining. Was Hugo so miserable with his life that he reprogrammed her to act despondent so he felt better? Her devotion had authenticity, even to the point she offered to shut herself down to give him the ability to survive. Joey shook his head, not wanting to dwell on years of philosophical debate.
The invisible field below Hugo’s chair plowed a trench through the muck as they maneuvered it to the stairs that led up to the porch. What had once been paint was now a patina of white and brown, with as many raised flakes threatening to fall off as littered the mud around it. Nina followed, carrying the synthetic. Emily stared at Nina over Hugo’s shoulder; after witnessing two inhumanly agile leaps, the girl’s eyes narrowed.
On the porch, Emily stood up, giving Nina an envious smirk. Sensing it, she leaned towards the artificial girl.
“What’s wrong with you all of a sudden?”
Emily looked down, grinding her toe. “I am sorry. You are just very pretty.” She fidgeted with the over-frilly dress. “I’ll always look like this.”
Joey and Nina exchanged a glance.
“I could look for an older body for you if you want boobs.” Joey chuckled. “Now I get it, Hugo put a normal AI in a WellTech kid.”
“That is okay, Joey. This is my body, It is not quite as ea―”
The front door opened with a creak. The imposing figure of a man, a touch shy of seven feet tall, stepped onto the wooden planking, his weight enough for them to feel in the floor. Skin as black as night, he wore a fancy formal suit over a heavyset frame widest around the beltline and tapering in both directions. The normal sized head atop his shoulders seemed small in proportion to the rest of him, and an indigo satin top hat provided the perfect surreal accent.
“Greetings.” A voice, as melodic as it was deep, broke the awkward silence. “I am Shabundo Ghede, whom do I have the pleasure of meeting?”
Virtual Immortality Page 57
