iD

by Madeline Ashby

  “Like hell you’re not.” Powell was staring at Javier. “What about you? Are you good?”

  Javier looked down at himself. His shirt – the nice cotton one – was ruined. Carbon streaked across the front. He turned around. His back was sticky. She’d pierced his skin. He sucked his teeth.

  “Take that off,” Powell said. Javier did as he was told. Powell whistled low. “Damn, son.”

  “Is it bad?”

  “Not as bad as it could be. Your legs, though…”

  Javier flexed his feet. “They feel just fine.”

  “We should check, though. Be a shame to damage a donkey kick like that one.”

  Javier looked up at him. “Are you asking me to take off my pants?”

  Powell smiled. “Don’t worry. I’ll still respect you in the morning.”

  Javier started unbuttoning. “Oh, I’m not worried about that,” he said, as he stood. “I find people tend to respect me more with my clothes off.”

  His pants fell, and the preacher’s brows rose.

  “Shit,” Powell said.

  “That’s putting it mildly,” Javier said. He turned. “How’s it look from the back?”

  He heard a soft crunch in the dirt as Powell stepped up behind him. He was still too warm, in the way that humans were all too warm when they were afraid or angry or aroused. Javier didn’t know which one it was. He was still safe, he reasoned. Still on the right side of his relationship. Still faithful to his mechanical bride (who hadn’t said yes, who saw no need to say yes, who wouldn’t change him, even when it led to moments like this). His own responses wouldn’t kick into high gear unless Powell’s did. You couldn’t want them until they wanted you. You could make them want you, of course, just to set things in motion, but you couldn’t force them. It was part of the failsafe. They could force you, but you couldn’t force them.

  Powell’s fingers lit on the base of his spine. “Looks all good to me.”

  “Why did you provoke them?” Javier asked. “I told you to stay put.”

  “I just wanted to see.”

  His warmth moved down Javier’s back. He was kneeling. He was widening Javier’s stance, like a police officer searching for weapons. Between the legs.

  “What did you want to see?” Javier asked.

  “I wanted to see you,” Powell said. “That’s why I came to your room.”

  Javier swallowed. He focused on the tree. He focused on the details of its bark, Amy’s fingerprints all over it, the backyard she’d never had and always wanted, the space she’d made for him and his children. Amy. Amy. Amy.

  “Why are you really here?”

  “Here on my knees, or here on the island?” His fingers traced up the insides of Javier’s legs as he stood. He pulled up Javier’s pants, reached around, and buttoned them. “That’s a good question, Javier. That’s a really good question. Because if Amy really does see everything on this island, she saw what just happened. And she didn’t stop it. Any of it.”

  Javier turned. “What are you saying?”

  Powell looked just as calm as ever. “I’m saying that maybe there are things in Never Never Land that Amy doesn’t see,” he said. “I’m saying that her control of this place might not be as complete as she wants us all to believe.”

  Javier picked up his shirt. He buttoned it as best he could. “If you’re talking about the attack, that was just a default.”

  “A default that almost failsafed you.”

  “Well, what else could it be?”

  Powell reached over and started rebuttoning Javier’s shirt. “I think we both know the answer to that.”

  “The answer to what?”

  Amy was lit by a halo of botflies, green and red and white, circling her lazily. Her hands were fists.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “We…” Javier looked toward the Veldt. Her gaze followed. “There’s something going on–”

  “I can see that, Javier.” Her mouth was a thin line. “You took a human being into the Veldt.”

  “Yeah, but–”

  “Where the children are.”

  “The kids are all fine, they’re asleep–”

  “These people rape children, Javier. That’s what they do.” Amy stepped closer. Her voice got lower. She pointed. “That’s why their leader – his boss – is in prison. LeMarque raped children. He raped his own children. He made a multi-player game about raping children. And now his followers keep their vN small, so they can keep fucking them. And thanks to the failsafe, they can’t possibly say no.”

  Powell held up both his hands. “Miss Peterson, that’s not me. I’m here to–”

  “You’re here to spy,” Amy said. “You’re here to–” She blinked. “Are you… Is that…” She stared at Powell’s groin. For the first time, Javier noticed that Powell was at half-mast.

  “It’s not what you think,” Javier said.

  “That was quick,” Amy said. “First you do the one thing I’ve explicitly outlawed on this island, ignore the one request I made, and then you start…” Her lip trembled. “Did he failsafe you?” she asked. “Is that why you did it?”

  “We didn’t do anything!”

  “We didn’t,” Powell said.

  But tears were rising in Amy’s eyes. “Why is your shirt all wrong?” She pointed. “Why are your knees all dirty?”

  He tried to take her by the shoulders. She batted his arms away. “Is this because I didn’t say yes?”

  Oh, Christ. Oh, Jesus. He was so far beyond fucked.

  “Amy, querida–”

  “Miss Peterson–”

  “Shut up!”

  Amy pointed, and the earth beneath Powell’s feet opened. He stumbled and it closed, burying him up to his thighs. He couldn’t stand but he couldn’t kneel, either, so he was reduced to scrabbling for balance in the dirt, quite literally bowing and scraping. Javier’s vision started to change; the edges of everything sharpened. It was happening again.

  “S-stop,” he said. “Stop this. R-right now.”

  “Did he failsafe you?” Amy was staring straight at Powell. Her fingers pinched closed around her thumb. Her gaze traveled to Javier. She spoke in a whisper. “Did he rape you?”

  Javier’s mouth opened. Nothing came. He tried again. “W-what?”

  “Did he rape you?”

  “I didn’t!” Powell was sweating. His eyes roved wildly in his skull. Javier thought of the puppet on the beach. “I swear to God–”

  “Fuck your god,” Amy said, and buried him deeper.

  Javier looked between them. His vision was a series of lines, now, like CRT, pulsing white hot where it lit on Amy, her palms open to widen the void. He charged. He grabbed her around the waist and jumped. They sailed eight feet in the air, into another tree. It wasn’t far from here to his own garden. He crossed the distance in two more jumps with her wriggling around in his arms.

  “I told you to let me go!”

  “You were gonna kill him!”

  “He deserved it!”

  Now he did let her go. She stumbled back a bit, onto the nearest bough. “Don’t say that,” he said.

  “He deserved it. He failsafed you. He raped you.”

  Javier was about to tell her that no, Powell hadn’t raped him, that it wasn’t that simple, wasn’t that easy, but that thought branched his focus elsewhere and he said: “If you’re so concerned about that, why won’t you hack me?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re worried about me, you think I’m so vulnerable, but you’re the one who’s keeping me vulnerable.” He swallowed. “If you’re really so concerned about it, you should make me stronger. Make me able to refuse.”

  She gripped the limbs of the tree with white knuckles. “You’re saying this is my fault?”

  “I’m saying you’re a hypocrite!”

  The wind picked up around them. Hearing it rushing through the leaves – the real leaves – was different from hearing its progress through the solar
and carbon ones. It sounded better, softer, more alive. Something deep in his clade’s original programming preferred it. He was suddenly grateful to be in this space, and knew why he had chosen it for this conversation.

  “I’m going to spend the rest of the night with Xavier and the boys,” he said. “I think it’s better if I just take some time away from home right now.”

  Amy remained frozen. She obviously had no idea what to say. It was one of the few advantages he had over her – he had experience with this kind of thing, and she didn’t. He let himself fall out of the tree, and started walking.

  “Well, that didn’t take very long at all,” Ignacio said, when Javier arrived.

  Unbeknownst to Javier, it wasn’t just his youngest who chose to spend the night Matteo and Ricci and José. The others had all joined in, too. They were crammed into the second tier of a stack of old containers. Unlike the others, it was insulated, and well lit. It was meant for guests. They were listening to some terrifically antique Eliades Ochoa recordings on a thing called a “turntable” that a really rabid fangirl had sent them from Boston. Ricci was serving a bunch of vN rice rolls, which looked exactly like the organic version, except the fibrous meat inside was really asbestos. A box of them had come in on the boat. Apparently he had to stream a review of them, later.

  “So is this it, or what?” Ignacio asked, in Spanish.

  “I don’t know,” Javier answered.

  “Is the missionary OK?” Ricci asked.

  “I jumped over there, but he’d dug himself out already.”

  The boys nodded as one. “You’re better off,” Ignacio said.

  “It’s his life,” Matteo said. “Leave it alone.”

  “She’s not right in the head,” Ignacio said. “Anyone could see that. For Christ’s sake, she ate her grandmother.”

  “She was protecting her mother,” Xavier said quietly. His youngest looked up at him. “She was just protecting you, Dad. She does that.”

  Javier sipped his electrolytes. He felt them fizz on his tongue before swallowing them. His iterations, particularly this one who had booted back from a bluescreen, had a way of reminding him of the things he’d forgotten. His youngest was right. Protecting others was in Amy’s nature. It was who she’d been from the very beginning. It was why they’d met in the first place.

  “What was she saying, about a generation ship?” Gabriel asked. “Why did she mention that?”

  Javier shrugged. He finished his drink. “No idea. I guess she and the island were talking.”

  “About the sub?”

  “I guess.”

  “You didn’t ask?”

  “I had other things on my mind!”

  “Dad,” Matteo hissed. He pointed to the tier above them. “The baby. Asleep. Remember?”

  Javier nodded, closed his eyes, and lay down. “We should follow José’s example,” he said. “I just want to sleep.”

  They unrolled a futon for him against one wall. Xavier unrolled one next to his. Léon slept against the opposite wall. Ignacio slept outside, on a bough three feet from the window. Gabriel moved to the bottom tier with a scroll reader. Matteo and Ricci joined their son upstairs.

  His son patted him on the shoulder. “It’ll be better in the morning, Dad.”

  Javier rolled over and rested an arm over his son’s middle. “Are you too big to cuddle, now?”

  After a moment, his son shook his head. “No.”

  “How’s your treehouse coming?”

  “Slow. I had a platform and everything, but that was when I was smaller, and now I think it should be bigger because I’ll be growing.” He wriggled. “Besides. My sister is going to live there with me, so I should have at least two rooms.”

  “Your sister, huh?”

  Xavier nodded emphatically. “Mom says she’s not ready, yet.”

  “Well, there’s a lot your mom isn’t ready for just yet, so I wouldn’t get too excited.”

  Xavier flicked his arm. “Not like that,” he said. “I mean, my sister isn’t ready. She’s not finished, yet. She’s still being worked on.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t know why you thought Mom was going to hack you,” Xavier said. “She’s not even done with her first baby, yet. How can she change you if she can’t even iterate? You’re the bigger job, you know. You have all kinds of memories and adaptations and stuff. Plus she has to take care of the island, and all of us, and the orphans, and the other islands, and everything.”

  Christ, he was such a piece of shit. He shut his eyes and hugged the boy tighter and buried his nose in his curls. They smelled of seawater and oil and glue. Love hit him as hard as the failsafe, all at once. He wasn’t worthy of this kid. He wasn’t worthy of Amy, either. He didn’t deserve this island, this home, or any of it, not when he was being such a whiny little bitch about things. He would tell her that. He would apologize. He would do what he always did and come back, like a fucking boomerang, and he would beg forgiveness. He would ask about her iteration. He would stop making it be all about him.

  “A generation ship is a starship,” the boy said. “I read about them.”

  “A starship? Like for rich assholes?”

  “No. For everybody. Well, humans. On a long trip.”

  “What, like colonizing other planets, or some shit?”

  The boy nodded against Javier’s arm. “They can’t do it, though. Because of the food. They can’t grow enough food.”

  Javier considered. “Would printed meat help with that?”

  “Maybe. But the meat starts making mistakes, after a while. It misprints, when you expose it to the kind of radiation you get in space. It gets sick.”

  Cancer. Shit. The submarine.

  Pastor Powell was waiting for him outside, when Javier left to make his amends. “We have to talk,” he said.

  “Amy first.”

  Powell shook his head. “It’s Amy we have to talk about.”

  Javier kept walking. “She didn’t really hurt you. I was the one who overreacted–”

  “Portia’s coming back.”

  He pulled up short. In the bright light of day, it seemed impossible that they could be having this conversation. Inside the house, José and his parents were singing along to another one of their ancient recordings. The air was full of music. His children were laughing. The air was still and fragrant. Even the botflies looked happy, darting this way and that. He turned around.

  “Why would you say that?” he asked.

  “I recorded everything last night,” Powell said.

  “You what?”

  “Including the lions. I watched it over again. It’s Morse, Javier. They’re blinking in Morse. It’s so old you probably don’t know it, but it’s still effective.”

  Javier shook his head. “No. You’re seeing things.”

  “I’m not.” Powell held out a reader. On it, the lionesses sat in their circle, blinking. As they did, subtitles appeared beneath: S-O-O-N.

  “That could mean anything,” Javier said. “Maybe Amy’s just testing something out.”

  “Or maybe she quarantined her psychotic grandmother in those animals, and that’s why they attacked me,” Powell said. “Maybe she split Portia into a bunch of pieces, and they’re trying to come back together.”

  “So what if they are? We buried that crazy bitch once; we can do it again.”

  “Can you?” Powell stepped closer. “You saw what she was like, last night. She has no respect – no empathy – for human beings. She doesn’t care what happens to us, Javier.”

  What was it Amy had said? That she didn’t need to wait for human approval? But that wasn’t the same as not caring. She had a human father, after all. Who she hadn’t seen in months. But Jack was still a meaningful connection to the human world. And she did fine with Tyler and Simone. She and the island did regular business with the seasteaders without any issues.

  “Just because she doesn’t like you doesn’t make her a psychopath.”

  “Sh
e tried to bury me alive last night.”

  “I know. I remember. She thought you raped me.”

  “But I didn’t, Javier. I could have, but I didn’t.”

  There it was. Javier heard it in the little catch of Powell’s voice. That boyish little crack. He hadn’t fucked Javier, no. But he’d wanted to. He’d been on the cusp of it. Something had held him back.

  “Well, gold star, preacherman. You didn’t failsafe me into fucking you.” Javier raised his hands and started clapping, slowly. “What a gentleman.”

  Powell’s face went totally blank and slack. They were having a real argument, now. “She killed that puppet.”

  “The puppet was never really alive. It wasn’t really a human being.”

  “Would that have made a difference?”

  Powell was up close to him, now. Javier could see the grey in the grizzle sprouting from his chin. He had good skin, tightly-curled eyelashes, a face that said it used to smile.

  “You’re trying to sell me something,” Javier said. “What is it?”

  “I can bring her back.” Powell withdrew something from his pocket. It was a bar of vN chocolate. A popular brand. “Amy has a flaw in her immune system,” he said. “She is what she eats.”

  “I know that already.”

  Powell nodded. “This is an add-on to the stemware. She will internalize it if she eats it.”

  “What?”

  “It’s an add-on,” Powell said, like that meant something. “It will modify her from the inside. She’ll be able to feel pain.”

  Javier stepped away. “Pain?”

  “Real pain. Organic pain. Like we feel.” He tried to close the gap between the two of them. “You want to know why I’m really here? This is why. I’m here to give this to Amy. I’m here to poison her.”

  Javier scowled. “And you’re telling me this why?”

  “Because you’re the only one she trusts. You’re the only one who can give it to her.”

  Javier stared at the bar. He was going to ask who Powell was working for, really, or and who had made this awful thing, and how it was coded or printed or whatever, but the question he settled on was: “Why would I want the woman I love to feel pain?”