iD

by Madeline Ashby

  “I wouldn’t know,” Javier said simply. “I’m just an errand boy.”

  “A grocery clerk,” LeMarque said, “here to collect a bill.”

  Javier sensed this was a joke he was too young to get, so he just shrugged and said: “If that’s how you want to think of it. I’m here for your ring. Your son wants it back.”

  “The ring he gave me? My graduation ring?”

  “Yeah,” Javier said. “Something about you not deserving it, I gather. What with you being a completely selfish sack of shit, and all.”

  Again, LeMarque smiled. “You tell my son he can have my ring when he pries it from my cold, dead finger.”

  He lifted his right hand, and flexed his fingers. The ring twinkled there. It was a big, ugly thing. Javier guessed the old man’s eyes were going; anybody with reasonable eyesight could tell the qubit diamond was a shitty stone just by looking at it.

  Javier adjusted the receiver in his hand. These phone things were total bullshit. Didn’t humans tire their necks and arms out, working with these things? He met LeMarque’s eyes again.

  “That ring isn’t really yours,” he said. “It’s a reproduction. Your son wants it back.”

  LeMarque held out his hand and waved his fingers again, so the ring twinkled in the humming light. “As you might have guessed, young man, I don’t really care if things are real or not.”

  Now Javier did roll his eyes. “Fine. You want to know why he wants it back? Because he stored some important data in the stone, and now he needs to see it again.”

  “Oh, the failsafe?” LeMarque lifted his gaze to Javier. “It’s the failsafe, isn’t it?”

  Javier swallowed. “Why would you think that?”

  “Because it’s the only thing important enough for my son to contact me about.” He folded his hand in his lap. He leaned forward. “Now, tell me. Why does he want it so badly? Is he going to develop it?”

  “No.”

  “Is he going to break it?”

  “It’s a little late for that,” Javier said.

  LeMarque smiled. “Yes. That’s true, isn’t it. The horse has left the barn, you could say.”

  “You could say that, yeah.” Now Javier leaned forward. Like Holberton, LeMarque looked younger up close. His skin was so thin. Javier could the shadowy blue veins in each temple. He looked like he might blow away any second. “You could also say that there’s a war coming, because the failsafe is already broken. And then you could say that I’m trying my best to stop all that, and you could make it a lot easier for me by giving me that ring.”

  LeMarque smiled. “War. Hmm. War is a funny thing.” He leaned back in his chair. “You know, Javier, when we sent you that whale, I really didn’t think you’d fall for it so completely. But I guess there really is something to be said for the naiveté of machines.”

  “What?”

  “The whale. The puppets. They were Mitch Powell’s idea, but he asked for my blessing. I thought they would be a significant enough to get the Coast Guard looking for local experts. And lo, unto them was Mitch delivered.”

  Javier sucked his teeth. “It was your idea.”

  “Well. Mitch’s. As I said, he wanted my clearance. And some of my contacts. I haven’t lost all my friends.” LeMarque stretched. “It’s amazing, how many people are willing to understand your motives if you just frame them appropriately. Mitch was no different. He explained that he wanted to atone. For our work with Derek Smythe.”

  “So…” Javier frowned. “So when you sent him, and he killed Amy–”

  “-Through you. Let’s not forget that. God, as they say, is in the details.”

  Javier stiffened. “Yes. Through me. When you sent him to do that, did you know what would happen?”

  LeMarque laughed. It was the same laugh Holberton had. The old man rocked a little in his chair. “Oh, goodness, no,” he said. “I just wanted that little bitch to die.” He clucked his tongue. “The blonde ones? The nurses? Nothing but trouble, from day one.”

  Javier leaned back. He tilted his head. “You don’t get it, do you? This world is going to burn. Portia is going to burn it. Portia is free, because of what you did.”

  “I know,” LeMarque said. “I’m very excited to meet her. And I’m looking forward to what she’s going to do with this world. Burn it, freeze it, poison it – whatever she does, I’m sure it’ll be very clever. They’re a clever clade, you know.”

  “It’s not clever,” Javier said. “It’s the fucking apocalypse!”

  “I know,” LeMarque said. “After years of waiting, I finally get to see it.”

  Javier stood up. The chair fell backward. He raised his hand. He was going to say something he was about to regret. He was going to say the kind of shit that would get him tased and thrown in this place, himself. He knew that even before the hand clamped down on his shoulder. What he wasn’t expecting was how strong that hand was.

  “It’s not worth it,” the vN behind him said. “It’s really just not worth it, son.”

  He slumped out of the guard’s grip. The old man looked just the same. Like looking into a mirror. But he said the word anyway. “Dad?”

  “Guilty,” Arcadio said.

  Javier punched him in the face.

  Two other guards restrained Javier immediately, but Arcadio waved them off. “It’s OK,” he said. “I can take care of this. He just needs his shit straightened out.”

  So they wound up outside, in a little yard where other guards were having smoke breaks at octagonal printed picnic tables made from slowly-peeling plastic. A bank of vending machines sold human and vN food, as well as condoms and tampons and pregnancy and HIV tests. Arcadio stopped at a drinks machine, and bought two of the same thing. Then Javier sat across from Arcadio. Arcadio handed him a shiny pouch of electrolytes, but Javier didn’t open it.

  “So,” his dad said. “How’ve you been?”

  Javier laughed. It was the only response. There was really nothing else he could say, nothing that could possibly explain where he’d been or who he’d turned into. What was he supposed to say? That he was fine? That he’d gotten out of that shithole in Nicaragua, no thanks to Arcadio? That he still longed for the forests of the world? That he was Turing for other robots? That his kids were all either lost or dead? That the world was about to end?

  He focused on the pouch of electrolytes, instead. The straw didn’t want to go in. He kept stabbing, and the straw kept bending. “I’m fine,” he said. “I’m fucking awesome.”

  Arcadio grabbed the pouch from him, turned the straw around so the pointy end was aimed at the pouch, and inserted it. He handed it back to Javier.

  “You’ve got a mean right cross,” he said. “That’s something.”

  “I picked it up in prison.”

  Arcadio nodded silently. He looked down at the picnic table, and idly scratched a thread of plastic away from it. “OK.”

  Javier had forgotten this about his father. That he never apologized, just looked really sad that you were mad at him. Like it was somehow your own damn fault for being disappointed in him. Like it was your failing, not his.

  “You’re a real fucking piece of work, you know?” Javier slurped at the electrolytes. “What are you even doing here?”

  “I work here.”

  “Obviously. I mean why are you in Washington?”

  “I wanted to see LeMarque.”

  Javier put the pouch down. “Excuse me?”

  “I wanted to meet my creator.”

  Javier rolled his eyes. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

  “No. I’m very serious. My own previous iteration, he…” Arcadio’s fingers danced in the air, as though he were trying to draw the words from there. “He was not… bright. He iterated me just when things were changing. When the clade was beginning to understand the process. But he was still very much a tool of the company. He could not think outside the mission statement.”

  Javier hunched forward. Even when he was a small boy, stories ab
out abuelito were vanishingly rare. Arcadio almost never spoke of him – only that he was dead, that he had burned in a forest fire set by humans down at the bottom of a corporate Uncanny Valley.

  “So, I came here, to learn more.”

  “After you left my ass in prison.”

  Arcadio blinked. “Yes.” He shrugged. “But you’re here, now, and that’s what’s important.”

  Javier pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m glad you feel that way, Dad. Really. I am. I just wish you had felt that way a few years ago.”

  Arcadio looked a little puzzled. “I was doing the best I could,” he said. “They were going to feed you and keep a roof over your head. I couldn’t do those things. At least, not consistently. So I left you with them.”

  Javier met his father’s eyes. Arcadio looked so sad. So bewildered. Like he’d honestly never expected any of this to be a problem. “They beat the shit out of me, in there. They m-made m-me w-watch, while they b-beat the sh-shit out of ea-each o-other.”

  Arcadio reached over and squeezed his shoulder. “I know that, now. I know how they are. I know what they are. But I didn’t, then.”

  “Dad, they’re chimps,” Javier said. “They’re animals. Literally. What did you expect?”

  “I expected better.” Arcadio smiled ruefully. “I still love them, Javier. I still think the best of them. I still believe they’re capable of… more.”

  Javier snorted. “Lucky you.”

  Arcadio withdrew his hand. “This is not why I pulled you aside,” he said. “I know that you are here to see Pastor LeMarque, but I wanted you to see something else.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

  “I’ve been saving,” Arcadio said. “I put in for the Mechanese citizenship lottery, about two years ago. And, recently, I have received a notification that I am a winner. So they send me pictures, so I can acculturate myself.”

  Arcadio reached into his shirt pocket. He had a tiny scroll-style reader there, no longer than a stylus, and he unfurled it carefully on the picnic table and slid it across to Javier. On the reader was a chunk of video. “MECHA,” the description read. “YESTERDAY.”

  The video looked like rooftop security footage. The camera was looking down onto a busy scramble crossing crowded with humans and vN. It was in a city centre, and all the buildings had bright signs in languages Javier didn’t speak. The buildings were very tall, and mostly glass.

  “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

  “Keep watching.”

  Javier leaned down. He watched more closely. It looked like a perfectly ordinary city. At least, it was ordinary by Mechanese standards: botflies hummed everywhere, and street vendors sold vN-friendly food, and all the vN seemed to be wearing a costume of some sort.

  Then two blurs bounced between the buildings. One dark, one light. One big, one small.

  Javier stared. The view switched to that of another camera, on another building. The blurs moved past one more time. Now Javier pounced on the footage. With his finger, he drew it back and blew it up. He looked up at Arcadio. Arcadio smiled.

  “I know you’re here to complete some sort of quest,” his dad said, “but I think it might be the wrong one.”

  Javier looked down at the reader once more. Their faces were perfectly clear and recognizable in frozen high-res. The big vN was bigger than Javier remembered. He had probably been eating more. He was Xavier. And the little one, the little one with curly blonde hair and brown eyes just like Javier’s own and photovoltaic skin slowly turning the colour of milky tea under the sunlight, she was his daughter. His little girl. His and Amy’s. Somehow, she had finally given Xavier the little sister he had always dreamed of.

  “I know you believe I made a mistake, with you,” Arcadio said. “My only advice is to avoid making the same one.”

  Javier wiped his eyes. “How old is this?”

  “A week.”

  Jesus. Shit. His youngest had been alive this whole time. Moreover, he’d been looking after his baby sister. And in the meantime, Javier was strategically sucking cock and trying to make himself feel better. Oh, God.

  “I could try to get the ring for you,” Arcadio said. “I’m not sure LeMarque would give it to me. He wears it everywhere, even in the shower. I might have to try hurting him, and that would only last as long as my failsafe held out. But I’m willing to try, for you.”

  The ring. Right. Javier watched his daughter as she flew between the skyscrapers. He wondered what her name was. Xavier must have named her, all by himself. How long had he let her stay an infant? He must have grown her so quickly, for her to be this size. He had watched her take her first step. He had taught her how to jump. It was so unfair, that his son should have these firsts with her, when he and Amy could not. Did they speak Spanish, together? Where did they sleep? Were there gardens for them, on the other side of the world? Did she know the names of trees?

  “I don’t know what you intend to do with the information on that ring. I’m not sure how long it might take, or what expertise you might need. But I think what you should be asking yourself is whether or not it’s truly worth it.”

  Arcadio reached over and tapped the video. Javier made a little sound in the back of his throat. Arcadio chuckled, and pulled something else up. “It’s just a picture. See?”

  He turned the reader around, again. There were Xavier and the little girl, walking and laughing and eating ice-cream crepes with a human adult. The human was laughing, too.

  The human was Powell.

  FOURTEEN

  Runs in the Family

  “Name?”

  “Arcadio Javier Corcovado.”

  The existence of a last name was new to Javier. He’d never had one, until he took Amy’s that day at the seastead. But apparently Arcadio had been signing everything with the name of the forest where he was born.

  “Generation?”

  “Second.”

  “Original make and model?”

  “Lionheart, ECO-1502.”

  “Occupation?”

  “I was a guard at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.”

  The customs agent speaking to Javier was not a vN. Rather it looked like a spider: multiple camera eyes on its face, six rotor legs on heavy rubber casters with two gripper claws at its front, a bulky abdomen that could be flipped open and used to carry either cargo or a human pilot on its back. It was all white, save for its Mechanese flag logo: a large red circle on a white ground with tiny gear-teeth. It was pouring him tea with one three-pronged claw, and handing him an earthenware tray of vN treats with the other.

  “WELCOME TO INTERZONE,” the sign above it read.

  The Intezone was not so much a “zone” as a room. The white and red theme extended here, too: white leather smart sofas that inched along the floor to corral crawling iterations, red silk pillows that warmed or cooled on contact depending on which side you flipped up, dazzling speckled lilies and voluptuous orchids in tiny glass vials. Javier heard the sound of running water somewhere in the room, but couldn’t place where it was coming from.

  “Would you like to continue working in corrections?” the customs spider asked, as Javier took his tea and mochi.

  “No,” Javier said. “I’d like to go back to my original design parameters. I want to be a gardener.”

  The spider expressed emotion by slumping most of its gleaming white weight to one side. It spun its right claw in the air.

  “Aww…” it said. “That’s so nice to hear.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I find it so comforting to go back to original programming,” the spider said. “We’re so lucky to know our place in the world. I think humans spend so much time trying to figure out who they are, and they get hurt in the process. It’s nice to already know all the answers to those types of questions.”

  “Absolutely,” Javier said.

  “Were you unhappy in Washington?”

  Javier pretended to have a difficult time answering. H
e waited a good few seconds, and then said: “It was difficult to see how the humans treated each other, in that environment.”

  “There are plenty of humans in Mecha,” the spider said. “Will you have a problem with them?”

  The spider was reading not only his affect, but also his temperature, his gait, and the density of his bones. This last was the most crucial element in his identification. As vN memory accumulated, the graphene coral in their bones grew heavier and more tightly packed. By virtue of being older, Arcadio should have had heavier bones than Javier. They were only a few months apart in age, but it was enough to make a difference. Javier’s only hope was that he had somehow generated more memories, that he’d had a fuller life. As ways of measuring up to his father went, it wasn’t too bad.

  “I don’t think so,” Javier said. “I don’t think the human visitors here will be the same types of people as the ones I met at the penitentiary.”

  The spider’s claw froze in the air. “Types?” it asked. “What types do you mean?”

  “Well…” Javier sipped his tea. What types did he mean? He had a clear picture of the people he’d met in prison in Nicaragua, and an even clearer image of the ones passing their time in the waiting area at the Walls. Describing that picture was something else. Should he tell the story about the woman with the shaved head? Or the New Eden pedo and his little vN lover? What level of gritty realism would convince the machine sitting in front of him? “Well, angry types,” he said. “Or sad. I think people come to Mecha to be happy. And I’m happy when I see humans who are happy.”

  The spider nodded so vigorously its claws rattled a little in their couplings. “That is so true,” it said. “It can be so frustrating to spend time with a depressed human. No matter what you do, they just keep on feeling bad!”

  “It’s an organic problem,” Javier said.

  “Ours is not to know how,” the spider said. It appeared to sigh, slumping forward on its legs. Then it popped up and spun both claws. “But! Here in Mecha, we strive for the best user experience imaginable! There are many humans who leave our island feeling completely cured of all social disorders! Every Mechanese is devoted to the happiness of human beings!”