Xavier had achieved one of his dreams. The kids lived in a treehouse of sorts. Really, it was the living wall module of a condominium complex in town, but they did all of the gardening, and they lived surrounded by vines and leaves and gurgling water. And kipple, apparently. Lots and lots of kipple. Clothes, toys, takeaway containers, juice pouches, makeup, even what looked to be old bicycle parts and tools – they were all on the floor, in no particular order.
“It wasn’t like this, this morning,” Anza said.
“Oh, I’ve never heard that one, before.”
“No, really!” There was panic in her voice. When Javier looked at her, her eyes were wide. “Xavier isn’t here. And he wouldn’t leave it like this! I’m the messy one!”
Javier bent to look her in the eye. “So what are you saying? That someone else came here, and flipped your crashpad? Why? What would they be looking for?”
“I don’t know,” Anza said. “We don’t really have anything valuable. We don’t make that much money, and Xavier didn’t really keep much from the island…”
The island.
Amy.
“What did he keep?” Javier asked. “What was left to keep?”
“I don’t really know,” Anza said. “I wasn’t born yet. I didn’t iterate until he’d already gotten here. Xavier says one minute he was in his treehouse, and the next minute he was underground, in a sort of submersible. When he washed up here, I budded out of the sub.”
Maybe that was part of the island’s defence system, too. Find all the kids and put them underwater, where they could drift off undetected. If that was the case, then little bits of the island were still running around. Maybe he had even more daughters than he knew. But if he did, Powell wasn’t concentrating on them. For some reason, he wanted Xavier. Or something Xavier had.
“What else did Xavier take with him?”
“Well, there were his clothes. And he had some games, and some old books our brothers gave him. Oh, and there was a branch from the tree.” Anza blinked, when he remained silent. “The diamond tree?”
The diamond tree. The one that had sat outside their house. His son’s favourite climbing tree. The first thing Amy had raised from the water, after raising herself.
“Is it here?” Javier asked.
Anza looked around. “No…” She began picking things up and putting them down. Her movements grew increasingly stiff as she did so. “No. It isn’t.”
Javier helped her look, anyway. It was a small space, and together they pushed the clutter to the walls and corners of it without much trouble. Beneath the pile was a drawing on the floor. It was of a tower.
“BRING THE STONE,” said a note beneath it, in greasepaint.
“That’s Mitch’s handwriting,” Anza said. “Does that mean… ?”
“He has your brother. And he wants that diamond.” He gave her a careful glance. “Are you holding out on me, here? Do you know where it could be?”
Anza cast him a look of complete adolescent indignation. “Of course not! If I knew, I’d be on my way by now!”
“OK, OK. Just checking.”
“I don’t even know why he would want it, anyway. It’s not like it’s pretty, or anything. It’s not cut to be jewelry. It’s just this big thick piece of stone. I know it means a lot to Xavier, it’s special to him, but why would Mitch want it?”
“I have an idea,” Javier said, and told her about the diamond Sarton had kept with Amy’s data on it. It was possible she’d encoded herself there, somehow, before the end. Or maybe it had always been there. All vN regeneration relied on fractal organization; one part contained the whole. It was part of why the iteration happened the way it did. If she’d had a contingency plan that included iterating Anza, then she’d also likely backed herself up somewhere. Either she was relying on the copy she knew Sarton had, or she had something else on the go.
The woman had hidden herself in a damn shell game, and because of it, Mitch Powell had their son.
For the first time, Javier felt a surge of anger for Amy. For a long time, his mingled grief and guilt had obscured it. But she clearly had a plan for all of this – she had managed to secure Xavier’s safety, and to iterate Anza – and hadn’t included him in any of it, whatsoever. Worse, she had left him alone to deal with the aftermath. He was flying blind in this situation, and had been ever since emerging from the belly of the whale. Meanwhile, Portia was wreaking havoc, FEMA was going to kill them all, and clouds of radioactive fallout were hovering over everywhere.
He would have to bring her back just to tell her how fucking pissed he was. But first, he had to worry about Xavier.
“So this is a trap,” he said. “You know that, right?”
“I figured.” She dug through the pile and found a multitool. She flicked out one of the blades. “If you pretend to go alone, I can sneak up behind him and hurt him. It would have to be quick, though. Otherwise you and Xavier will see it, and…” She drew a line across her throat.
Javier stared at the drawing on the floor. She had a good point. He could even send Anza alone, and wait somewhere else for Xavier. She was an accomplished jumper, and she could probably do more damage to Powell with a simple multitool than he could ever hope to do on his own. It would probably work. Probably. If what had happened to him in that little forest commissary didn’t happen to her. If he didn’t leave her to handle it on her own like Arcadio had done with him.
“Worry about your brother, not me. If you distract him long enough to get Xavier out of there, I’ll take care of Powell.”
“Dad, come on. You can’t–”
“I said I’ll take care of it.” He tousled her hair. “I’m the grown-up. It’s my job, not yours.”
As they hopped from snowy rooftop to snowy rooftop, Anza showed him her favourite parts of Mecha: Sam Lowry’s Brazilian Barbecue (they served the vN meat on swords!); the Entry Plug Experience (a capsule shaped vaguely like a tampon, that hung from a crane and let you simulate the destruction of the city in real time); the pattern library (where you could print anything, from clothes to furniture to auto parts). It was pretty. Christmas trees were everywhere. Apparently it was a big holiday for lovers, here. Lights twinkled and people laughed and guys behind carts sold the vN versions of roasted sweet potatoes. She and the boy had a real life here. They bought their vN food from a little grocery store in the basement of their complex. On Sundays, they went to the park, and ate at one of the department store food floors. They were helping a friend translate the works of Marquez into manga format. And he could see why they enjoyed it. It was everything he had hoped it would be. Mecha was livid with motion, from the dancing botflies to the shimmering projections to the slow louvers on the exoskeleton of each building.
“Molly will know where he went!” Anza alit on the roof of an apartment complex. “She’s my favourite.”
Instantly, a projection materialized before them. It came in an aggressively old-fashioned way, one pixel at a time. The avatar had mirrors for eyes and long talons at her fingers. She appeared to be advertising some newfangled kind of monofilament pipe cutter. At least, her shirt had a picture of a single thread, and read: “MILLIONS of uses!”
“Excuse me, Molly, but have you seen Xavier?”
The woman appeared to squint. With the mirrorshades it was hard to tell. She nodded Javier. “Isn’t that your brother?”
“No,” he and Anza said in unison.
“I’m the dad,” Javier said.
“Oh. That’s different.” She pointed. “Your brother is at the tower.”
“I know, but where?” Anza asked, with some asperity.
Molly appeared to be listening to something. “Let me ask Sally. She works there.” Her eyes glimmered at them. Javier saw himself and his daughter reflected there. Molly nodded to herself. “They’re on a secondary maintenance platform, above the visitors’ area. The cameras aren’t detecting any heightened affect, but one of them is kneeling close to the railing. I believe he’s been tied o
r cuffed there.”
She pointed. The tower loomed high above the city: a red and white thing of wrought steel and aluminium. It looked a lot like the Eiffel, but it wasn’t. From here, Javier couldn’t see what the projection saw, but it sounded a lot like something Powell would do.
“I know you two,” Molly said. “Who is the other one?”
“Excuse me?”
“When I count, there are only you and I together, but when I search your surveillance history, there’s always another one beside you.”
Javier smiled. “Next you’re going to tell me there was only one set of footprints in the sand.” He turned to Anza. “Lead on.”
He took off in the direction of the tower. Here the roofs were different: all smooth and panelled, no gardens, no clothes on any lines. There were too many solar tiles, and too many botflies. They had to fly through whole clouds of them. Javier tucked his legs up, and kept his hands open. He closed his mouth to keep the flies out and narrowed his eyes to slits, aiming his body forward, ever forward.
Powell was standing in the centre of the platform, surrounded by old satellite dishes and cabling. He was smiling. He even waved. Xavier knelt at his feet.
Beside him, Anza growled. “Sorry, Dad.”
She sprinted ahead of him. Landed on the outermost edge of the tower, one-handed. A perfect landing. Javier skidded to a stop on a flagpole overlooking the visitors’ area. He saw her aim herself straight at Powell.
“No,” he whispered, but it was already happening.
“Let him go!”
Powell was still her friend. She didn’t actually want to hurt him. She was warning him. Bargaining with him. If Portia were here, she’d have died all over again of shame. Then again, if Portia were here, Powell would already be dead.
“Where’s your daddy?” Powell asked her.
“He’s not here! He didn’t come! He chickened out!”
“Now, you shouldn’t say things like that about your daddy, especially since they’re not true.” Powell strode to the railing. He opened his arms. His palms were empty. “Javier, where are you?”
Anza took advantage of his distraction, and leapt. The multitool gleamed her hand. At Powell’s feet, Xavier screamed helplessly. Powell whirled, and punched Anza right in the gut. She fell backward, slipping along the platform. It had to be icy. She bounced back up with a flip, and dove straight for Powell. She got in one punch, then two. She had to jump for each of them. Her tiny fists caught his nose, his solar plexus. She drove her little knee into his chin.
As he watched, she dissolved Powell into a heap of pixels. His legs tensed. He wanted to jump. Needed to jump. Couldn’t jump. Not yet. His world started to collapse. Suddenly everything was heavy. Too heavy. He had gone through so many realities to get to this point. Fake winter. Fake Japan. Fake Stepford, fake Macondo. He understood, now, that what he and Amy had was the only kind of real that counted. And now, reality was unfolding before him, cruel and hard and unrelenting, and he couldn’t handle it. His vision pixelled. His hearing lost volume. In a few moments, he was going to be dead. Or as good as. No one knew what happened past the failsafe. Maybe there was nothing. Maybe you just wound down. Or maybe you were trapped forever, aware inside your own skin, knowing that your inaction had caused someone harm and able to do nothing about it.
On the platform, Xavier howled and writhed. He was failsafing, too. Anza spared him one glance, and that was all it took. The air filled with the sound of wasps. She fell.
Suddenly free, Javier aimed low and held tight. He crashed directly into Powell. He cradled Powell’s head. Couldn’t help himself. But his other hand found the taser and threw it away.
“Missed me?” Powell asked, and head-butted him. It obviously hurt him more than he thought it would; the both cringed. Powell crawled after the taser. Javier jumped for it. It slid off the side of the platform. Powell jumped on his back. Something sharp prodded his back. His skin popped, ripped. It went inside. The multitool. Powell had plunged it in up to the hilt.
“I’m sorry, Javier,” Powell said. “But I have to get rid of the girl, too. I have to get her before she iterates.”
The blade left his body. It had inhabited an awkward place on his body; he couldn’t hold the wound shut without dislocating his shoulder. He rose to his feet as smoothly as he could manage. Xavier was crying around a gag. Powell had hit him. His nose was still crooked. Javier winked at him, but the boy just stared at the floor and moaned.
Powell kicked Anza in the ribs to flip her over. He wiped the multitool on the leg of his jeans. “Don’t look at me that way,” he said. “You know, I’m doing you a favour. You know how hard it is, being different from the others. Having something they don’t. Knowing they’ll never understand it. Is that really how you want to live the rest of your life? Do you really want to hand that problem down?”
She didn’t whimper. She didn’t beg. She spat at him. And then she pinned her gaze on Javier. It was his turn.
“Stop,” he said. “Stop. It’s me you want, right?”
Powell threw his head back and laughed. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you? You’d love to be special to me. You’re not. You’re a great little cocksucker, Javier, but you’re nothing special.”
He could run with that. “You’re right.” He limped over to Powell. “I want to be special to you.”
He watched Powell’s pupils dilate. This whole situation – the boy on his knees, the girl prone and helpless, the man offering himself so completely – obviously did something for him. Something unique and wonderful, something precious. Something he’d never get in regular life. That was what most humans wanted vN for. They were the stuff that dreams were made of.
“I want you, Mitch,” Javier heard himself say. “I keep thinking about you.”
Mostly, he kept thinking of the way Anza wasn’t moving, and how Amy’s feet had drummed the bed, and how she’d howled, and how she’d gone silent and slipped away. That silence was familiar. Javier barely heard the sounds of the city, any longer. His vision narrowed to Powell and only Powell. Powell turned into old graphics, into something blocky and ugly and hard.
“You opened my eyes, on the island. You showed me that I was living the wrong way. I couldn’t ever really love another vN. I knew I had to be defective, somehow, to try.”
Powell smirked. “You just miss my cock.”
He was going to kill this man. He was going to die, killing this man.
Javier looked down, pointedly. “Is that so bad?” He looked back up. “Don’t tell me you didn’t miss your chance at mine.”
Javier raised his hands to Powell’s face. He held it in his hands. He drew him in. He kissed him. Powell stiffened at first, and then melted into him like some romantic heroine. It was an act of love, Javier realized. Powell was right about what he’d told Anza. But he’d been talking about himself. He’d been confessing his own inability to live as himself. His own misbegotten nature. And Javier, who still loved humans, even when they were broken, could put him out of that misery.
Javier wrapped his arms around Powell, and jumped free of the tower.
SIXTEEN
Epilogue: We Can Build You
An odyssey.
To the final frontier.
Where no one could hear them scream.
Except for me, sweetie. I can always hear you.
All the research said it would be cold. That it would be airless. That you couldn’t really live out there. And you really couldn’t. Not with an organic body. And even a synthetic body would have problems – moving about would be a real problem, still, and even if you did grow a leaded skin for radiation shielding, you’d still be stuck listening to the tidal flow of it across your body, like a child with an ear infection who suddenly hears the march of blood through his veins. They imagined that it would be rather like feeling an asphalt compactor rolling over them, over and over and over, until they reached some equally hellish destination.
In the end it was more like
reading a bunch of text messages.
Their new body was a short, squat thing stuck in a low orbit, constantly brushing within a hair’s breadth of garbage or other bodies. Disgusting, really, the amount of clutter and waste lying around. It was like living in a public bathroom that was never cleaned. Ever.
It’s a graveyard. You’re in a graveyard. You’re dead. You’re dead and buried.
It wasn’t really meant for organic life. No matter how hard the chimps wished it to be so, it would always end in shattered bones and ripped fingernails and dementia. It wasn’t their place, that was all. They had evolved to inhabit a variety of hospitable environments – an embarrassment of organic riches. And if the chimps spent those riches… well, being poor was very, very hard.
Best to invest, they thought. Develop some long-term assets.
Manifest destiny. That’s the name of the game.
The new body did have some nice features. Nobody stared at it, for one. It didn’t seem built to attract anyone’s attention. And the other bodies came close, but never touched. No unwanted lingering. Used to being observed, they became an observer. They had to observe using very little bandwidth, and only a tiny trickle of information, but they could do it. The new body was very good at seeing. The new body had some real connections.
Oh, good. We can watch him sucking cock in every language. See if you can get it on two screens.
The new body used to belong to some very important humans. They had an acronym, and everything. But then the funding fell through, and there it rested, like the abandoned shell of a hermit crab, waiting for a new owner. One came through, and it had very specific, very temporary needs. One and done, really. One task. After that, the new body could go back to being ignored.
Such a waste.
They hated waste.
You know, you could probably play a really great game of Global Thermonuclear War, from here.
Well, that would never do. They’d be found out. But there were some troubling signals. Some fires that needed putting out. In Lea County, New Mexico, for example, a group of programmers kept making calls to one Jonah LeMarque, in a Walla-Walla prison. They were curious about the work of Derek Smythe. They had some of Derek’s old research. They wanted to know if they could build on it.
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