iD

by Madeline Ashby

  The evening’s festivities were supposed to take the form of a matsuri, in keeping with the hotel’s theme. Skinny Tie and all the other staff vN encouraged visitors to proceed through the garden, and start their journey in the Sengoku Jidai era of the hotel, and proceed through the Meiji, Taisho, Showa, and Heisei eras until they approached the heart of Akiba. There, the hotel’s investors and designers would all be waiting. They had done a media event earlier in the day to answer questions, but this would be a special evening for preferred guests and high-rollers.

  “Please, take these,” one of the samurai vN told him, and handed him a set of high-value poker chips. “Tonight’s winnings go to benefit the victims of the radioactive fallout.”

  Javier winced. “It’s been rough for you guys, I take it?”

  The samurai’s smile faltered. “This is just about the worst possible time to open a vN-friendly casino, yes. I believe Thematic is taking a huge loss.”

  Javier nodded. “And the designer? Holberton? How’s he taking it?”

  The vN rolled his eyes. “Mr Holberton already has his next thing lined up.”

  “Oh?”

  “We’re not supposed to talk about it.”

  “Message received.”

  Javier was tempted to sprint ahead and get to Holberton as soon as possible, but there was no need to rush. Holberton would actually be more vulnerable and amenable after a few drinks. The key would be to get him at a point in the party when he honestly wanted to leave. That probably wasn’t going to be at the beginning.

  So he meandered through the festival. The whole thing revolved around old-fashioned games of chance: ring tosses and fishing and even some archery competitions. The vN who initiated each competition hawked them from thatch-roofed dwellings, from which they also sold pressed balls of rice and skewered chicken livers. All of these came in vN-friendly varieties, too. In fact, a significant portion of the people sharing the festival with him were vN. None of them looked like Amy. It was as though she’d been erased.

  The end of the festival opened into a relatively blank space: pine floors, white walls, blown glass pendant lights, crackled but colourless. It was a nice change. Like a vent of fresh air. And standing in the centre of the room was Chris Holberton. Javier recognized him from behind: his hair was eye-catchingly white. He wore a navy blue suit. His hands were in his pockets. Then he turned, to gesture at the entryway. When he saw Javier, he smiled. He recognized him, Javier realized. Recognized his face, probably. It had been in the news a great deal.

  Now or never. Javier crossed the room.

  “Welcome to Akiba,” Holberton said. He held out his hand. “I’m Chris Holberton. Are you with the press?”

  “I’m a guest.” Javier shook it. “Ricardo Montalban.”

  Holberton laughed so loud, other people turned to look at the two of them. His laugh more of a snicker. It sounded almost childish. Javier liked it immediately.

  “That’s great! I can’t believe it! Where did you learn about him?”

  Javier shrugged. “Online. Movies. You know.”

  Holberton stopped laughing, and looked him up and down. “It suits.” He gestured with his gaze. “What are you doing here, Mr Montalban?”

  “Please. Ricardo.”

  “All right, Ricardo. What are you doing here?”

  Honesty was, in certain cases, the best policy. “I wanted to meet you.”

  Holberton blinked. He was very fair; even his eyelashes were blond. “Most of the people in this room want to meet me, Ricardo. What makes you so different?”

  Javier smiled. “What makes me different is that I didn’t want to meet you until you smiled at me.”

  Holberton smiled like a child who had just been handed a very large, extravagantly-wrapped present. His mouth opened to say something. Naturally, one of the Rory chose that moment to intervene. She spoke to Holberton, but she looked at Javier.

  “Mr Holberton, one of the Dubai people would like to speak with you,” she said.

  Holberton rolled his eyes. “I’ll find you later.”

  “No,” Javier said. “I’ll find you.”

  Holberton turned away, and two vN closed in on Javier. He felt them before he saw them. “Mr Montalban,” one said, “there appears to be an issue with your account.”

  They were dressed like Skinny Tie, but they weren’t the same exact vN from the lobby. They walked him through an Employees Only door just outside the pachinko parlour. It opened into a bright but narrow hallway broken on one side by steel doors. Once they were through, they took his pen.

  “What are your names? I just call all the girls Rory. It saves me some time.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that any longer, Mr Peterson.”

  They turned him to the left, and guided him through one of the steel doors. The room was dark. As he entered, the lights came on. There was one aluminum folding chair, and a drain in the floor. He looked up. No cameras. Unfinished ceiling. Good. He turned around. The two vN were waiting with folded hands.

  “Can I at least take my jacket off?” Javier asked. “This suit cost me a lot money.”

  They shrugged. Javier took his time unbuttoning the jacket. He and Hayward had decided on something versatile: two buttons, charcoal alpaca, relatively short and light. But it was all he had, and it would have to do. He eased it off himself slowly. He took hold of the collar, brushing the jacket carefully before pretending to lie it across the back of the chair.

  Then he circled his wrist, coiled the fabric tight, and whipped one vN in the eyes with it. He grabbed the chair by the legs, and slammed it into the other vN’s ribs. This one grabbed the chair and yanked it out of Javier’s hands. As Javier watched, he folded the chair backward. It snapped at the hinges.

  In Javier’s mind, simulations and probabilities branched away into a forest of possibility. They both rushed him at once. He jumped. He gripped the pipes above him, and kicked one in the face. The other grabbed his other foot. One cheap canvas shoe came off. The vN holding his bare foot held it under one arm and brought out the pen. Primed it. Javier used his other foot to kick him away.

  Above him, the pipes began to creak. The other two vN were holding their faces. Smoke and fluid drained away from their skin. One’s nose had collapsed in completely. He started to swing. Maybe one was electrical. He brought his legs together to slice through the air faster. His body sketched a perfect half circle. Forward. Back.

  The pipes gave. He fell. Steam clouded the room. He felt no pain, but he did feel the damage. In a minute, his skin would start peeling. So would theirs. They ran for the door. He grabbed one side of the broken chair, snapped off both the back legs, and shoved them up under two sets of ribs. Then he pulled the chair legs out, flipped his grip to overhand, and stabbed again. He pulled down, from shoulder to waist. Seams ripped with skin. Smoke mingled with steam. They howled in frustration. They knew it was over, probably. Their wounds were too deep. They were smoking out. They turned.

  “This was a mistake,” one said.

  “Yeah,” Javier said. “Your mistake was giving a guy with a ten-foot jump the chance to kick you in the head.”

  He buried the chair legs in their throats, watched their faces go slack, picked up his jacket, and left the room.

  In the elevator, humans stared at him.

  “I fell in the pool,” he said, and got off at his floor. His key card no longer worked. He kicked the door in. The room lit up to greet him, but the terrace remained dark. There, he took off his other shoe. He hid it under the chaise.

  He had both feet on the railing when the hotel started talking to him.

  “What are you doing, sir?”

  The hotel interface was really very sweet. It was Rory’s voice, but it wasn’t Rory. At least, he didn’t think so. She didn’t seem to mince her words, lately.

  “I’m going out for a walk.” He placed one foot in front of the other. He didn’t have a wraparound terrace, but he was willing to bet that Holberton did.
Somewhere. Up a few floors.

  “Please, sir. Get down from there. Please reconsider.”

  “I’m not reconsidering anything. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

  Below him, the lights of the Las Vegas Strip glowed and pulsed. At the dead fountain, scores of tourists stood watching. Their glasses twinkled with tiny embedded lights. They were holding hands, or carrying children on their shoulders. They were all so happy, staring at nothing.

  “I’m sure you have a lot to live for, sir. There must be people out there who care about you. You must have a family, somewhere. They must be very worried about you. Would you like me to call them?”

  Javier made it to the edge of the balcony. A concrete pillar stood before him. It stretched up the southwest edge of the building. He looked up. He was on the sixty-second floor. That meant there were at least eight floors between himself and the penthouse. And his hands were burnt.

  “Sir? Is there someone you would like to speak with? Someone I can contact, for you?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m on my own.”

  He jumped.

  Making his way up the building required a sort of monkey shimmy. This meant clinging with his fingers, his toes, and his inner thighs and inching up, slowly, with the wind at his back and music in his ears. It was funny, how noise from the Strip floated up so intact.

  “Well, then he started grinding up on me. And I couldn’t get away.”

  “You should have just punched him. Or elbowed him in the stomach, or something.”

  Humans had it so easy.

  He inched up a little higher. His suit was slippery. He’d only made it one floor. Trees were easier. Why hadn’t he just gone to the rainforest, in Costa Rica? He could have found a way out from there. Or maybe he never would have. Maybe he could have just gotten lost in there. It would have been better for everyone if he had never left the rainforest. Better for Amy. Better for his iterations. It was his father’s choice to take them out of the forest. He was a child, then, but he hadn’t wanted to go. Hadn’t wanted to leave. Why had he followed Arcadio? What had the old man ever done for him?

  He had taught him to climb.

  “Loosen up,” Arcadio had said, their first time climbing trees together. They had started at the bottom, with the roots. There were tapirs and jaguars and not too much sunlight, down on the forest floor. It was dark. He was scared.

  “Stop hugging the damn tree,” Arcadio shouted up at him. “It’s not your girlfriend.”

  But he liked the tree. He liked the softness of its moss. He liked how big it was. He liked all the insects crawling around through that moss. It would be fun to be one of them, just wriggling around in all that pillowy green lushness all day. He wasn’t going to tell Arcadio that, because it was stupid, but that was how he felt.

  “The monkeys don’t hug the tree,” Arcadio said. “They just hold it. Like it’s a tool that they’re using.”

  A tool. Something you used with your hands. Javier pulled away. He gripped with his hands. Then just with his fingers. He shut his eyes.

  “There you go,” Arcadio said. “Now haul up with your fingers and push up with your toes. It’s like a crunch. You don’t know what those are, because we don’t need to them, but I’ll show you. You bring your knees to your gut.”

  “But then, I’d have to let go,” Javier had protested.

  “It’s OK if you let go all at once,” Arcadio said. “You know that. Your body knows that. Your body was built for it. All you have to do is let go.”

  Javier opened his eyes in Las Vegas. He pulled his body away from the wall. Wind whistled between him and it. This was the difference between crawling and running, between climbing and leaping, between man and machine. Up with the fingers. Up with the toes. Knees to stomach. He let go.

  He sailed up ten feet. His fingers found the next grip without his computing it. Then he did it again. And again. And again. Then he stopped counting.

  Holberton’s room was on the penthouse level, as expected. Javier recognized it by the bottle of wine left out on the terrace. It was a brand Holberton once talked about in an interview. The room was unlit, but it lit up as soon as Javier entered it from the terrace. Inside, it was very clean. Housekeeping had been by. He would need to find the safe.

  “Where is the safe?” he asked.

  “You don’t belong here,” Rory said. He recognized her immediately. It was the hotel talking, but it was also her. She had a special kind of smug.

  “Bullshit.” Javier started with the perimeter of the room. He nudged aside each piece of art, and every mirror. Nothing. He checked the cabinets in the kitchenette. Then the bar. Nothing. He even opened the wine cooler beneath the counter, and checked the powder room and laundry room nearest the door into the main hall. Nothing. But that was just being thorough – the safe was likely in the bedroom, where giant watches and gems went to sleep. He went there, next.

  Amy was projected on every wall of Holberton’s bedroom.

  No, not Amy. Not all of them were Amy. Most were her clademates. They looked exactly like her, but they weren’t her. He had no idea what particular pattern matching or facial recognition algorithms allowed him to recognize that, but he was usually able to identify his own flesh when he saw it on display. He’d been able to do it, the first time he watched news coverage of FEMA herding Amy’s clademates and all the clades who shared their bodyplan onto trucks. He’d watched for her. Obsessively. It got him chased out of an electronics store where he’d been scouting for e-waste to eat.

  The vN who looked like Amy all seemed to be inhabiting the same space. The images were surveillance images captured from household environments: kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms. The women were dressed normally, not in prison jumpsuits or lab scrubs. They were interacting with humans. Mostly men, but a few women.

  The vN were also iterating.

  Javier found a picture of a human man smiling into a camera – a nice camera with favourable lighting, not a surveillance camera – and hugging his iterating vN. She was huge and full. Her face was round. Even her ankles had puffed, just a little. This was what Amy would have looked like, if she had ever iterated. If she had given Xavier the little sister he kept asking about. If she had given the two of them a daughter.

  The next image was of the resulting iteration. There was a new picture for every day. In each image, she was naked. Javier waved his hand and the little girl grew, faster and faster, stretching up and out into the child Amy had once been, wispy fine blond hair and huge green eyes, up into a more teenage size, out into a woman grown, the perfect replication of her mother. The final image was of the two women standing together.

  When he flipped the images forward, a blueprint filled the wall. The blueprint was not for a single building, but a whole town. There was a central square and a big sculpture where a fountain might once have gone, and a group of parks, and businesses, and houses. When you gestured at any of the groups, photos from them popped up. Amy’s clademates were in every one. Young and old, iterating and not. A field of green-eyed, fair-haired women and their husbands and wives.

  At the bottom of every image was a single word: STEPFORD.

  He was about to open a folder named “DIET PLAN” when in the hallway, a door closed. Shit. Javier hastily disarranged the photos with frantic gesturing, and got himself behind the bedroom door. He wiggled into its corner just as it opened. Holberton stepped in. He was alone. Javier made himself as still as possible. Holberton paused, looked at the pictures, gestured at them, and shrugged. Then he crossed the room and opened the bathroom door. The light came on, and he closed the door.

  Javier was almost out the bedroom door when he heard the sound of bees, and fell. The charge plowed through him like a freight train. He was instantly rigid and heavy. He fell without breaking his fall, his face pressed deep into white shag carpeting. From there, he watched Holberton’s shoes come close to his face.

  “You know, when you said you’d find me, this isn’t quite wha
t I had in mind.” Holberton used his foot to roll Javier over. He held out the taser. He shook it a little in his hand. “Move and I’ll use this again. Blink once for yes and twice for no. With a name like yours, I’m sure you’re familiar with the Pike method of communication.”

  Javier wasn’t, but he blinked once anyway.

  “Good. Now. Is your name really Ricardo Montalban?”

  Javier blinked twice.

  “Thought so. Are you a journalist, photographer, or in any way affiliated with the infotainment industrial complex?”

  Two blinks.

  “Excellent. Are you a spy sent from a foreign government?”

  What the fuck? Two blinks.

  Holberton straddled him and knelt. “OK. Here’s the really big question. This is the important one, so pay attention. Are you with New Eden? Did my father send you?”

  Two blinks. Javier struggled to open his mouth. “No,” he said. It came out more like a moan.

  Holberton stood. He sidestepped Javier and held out a hand. With difficulty – it felt like pushing a broken-down car – Javier lifted his arm and took it. Holberton helped him up. He pushed him over to the settee at the edge of the bed and stood in front of him.

  “Who are you?”

  The truth, again. “My name is Javier Peterson.”

  Holberton whistled. “The Javier? From the island?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you were dead. Everyone does.” Holberton turned, pulled some images aside with his fingers, and brought up a square of footage. In it, Javier jumped clear of the destroyed house on the little home island. He walked out into the water. And he fell into it, and didn’t come back up.

  “Please stop.”

  “Sure. Sorry.” Holberton wiped the images away with one hand. Now the room was lightless, artless. Only the light from the hallway came through. A single shaft of amber light, illuminating just the very edges of both of them. “What are you doing here, Javier?”

  “I need your help,” he said, after a moment. He looked up. Holberton was very close to him. His eyes were a seaglass green. Just like Amy’s. They were, in fact, Amy’s eyes. Someone had reproduced them in her bodyplan, right from this very pattern. “New Eden killed Amy. A missionary by the name of Mitch Powell. Now I’m on the run, and I need someone who hates those Bible-thumping bastards just as much as I do.”