by Anna Mayle
“It was very skillful.”
The hacker would have none of it.
“It looked just like Richmond. And I should know. I grew up here, before the war and the plague.”
Cora stared at him in shock and wonder. Had he never told her how long he’d lived? Or had it simply not sunk in? “Really?”
Enoch nodded and looked off in the distance, in the direction of his original home. “My parents taught at the Virginia Commonwealth University. They worked with various committees trying to keep people connected and safe. They designed the Network, my mother designed the first concept Wall…it was nothing like they turned it into. We lived on Bywater Drive, by the lake. It was the last time I truly felt safe.”
“What happened?” Cora asked, curious.
“They got old.” It was all he could offer without sounding short with her. “Here, it’s dark enough now. I don’t need my goggles. Put them on and I’ll drive around slowly. Jacobi?”
“I have it up again,” the hacker said dully.
Cora stripped off her own mask and goggles and lifted Enoch’s to her face. Her jaw dropped and she sat up straighter in her sidecar, spinning and staring at the broken windows and demolished store fronts with wonder. Enoch knew the magic of what she was seeing. For someone who had never known it, the sight was a gift. He had known it though. This was why he avoided the public level of Wall networks. This was what they did, placed people in a rendered city of the one the Wall was built upon. Detroit, Seattle, DC, Boston, Edmonton and Churchill all immortalized, until recently at least. If the Governors of the North Walls had corrupted the data too much, all of them but Seattle and DC would be lost.
It’s like raping the dead.
“Everything is so clean! And look! Jacobi, that lady is wearing an animal on her shoulders! And that boy has wheels on his feet! This is…I want to make this again. Do you think we can make this again?”
“You mean the computer program?” Jacobi asked helpfully. “Sure, as long as Enoch has books on—”
“No,” Cora corrected him. “The Wastes, do you think we can make them like this again?”
“Ah,” the hacker faltered.
Enoch took up the conversation. “You might be able to, someday. Or your children might. But for now, Jacobi can show you the Once World, and I can teach you some of what you’ll need to know.”
“I thought you’d given up on humanity.” Jacobi pointed out quietly.
“I have,” Enoch admitted, “but she hasn’t.”
The hacker didn’t say a word, but Enoch could almost see the sappy smile on his face.
“First, though, we have to meet you. Why don’t you port out of the Network and come meet us?”
Jacobi nodded, his smile wide. “I can do that.” There was a pause. “Huh.” He sounded surprised.
“What is it?” Enoch asked, slowed the cyc to a stop and motioned to Cora for his goggles. When he slipped them on, he found Jacobi standing in view, touching his neck to port out. He would flicker, vanish, and jerk back into the Network each time he tried.
“That’s not good.”
The understatement had to have been for Cora’s benefit, because Enoch had only seen it’s likeness once, when someone had died while they were Network bound. After six minutes of cursing and trying to identify the glitch, the brain died and the avatar had simply frozen. It had faded out of existence in three minutes later as the electrical impulses left in the plug device drained.
Jacobi must have known the story, too, because he stared in Enoch’s direction in horrified agony and said, “I love you both.”
“You love everyone,” Cora teased happily, unaware of the severity of the situation.
The hacker nodded and gave a forced chuckle. “You two are special, though. I love you most.”
“Jacobi…”
“Connection to Cora is muted but she can still hear your side,” he informed and reminded sadly.
Enoch was helpless. Jacobi made him helpless all too often lately, but this…
Bile rose in his throat, his fists tightened so hard that if the cyc’s gripbars hadn’t been solid steel, he might have broken them. Everything in him was red hot and ice cold at the same time. It wasn’t fair that Jacobi had brought emotion prominently back into his life only to let him feel anger, loss, and grief.
“Where are you? What building?”
“Cora shouldn’t had to see—”
“What building God damn you!” Enoch roared.
Cora jumped and stared at him, happiness fading to worry. “What’s wrong?”
“Main Street Station, down—”
Enoch gunned the engine and Cora slammed hard back into her seat. “I know where it is.”
Jacobi watched from Enoch’s perspective as the world shot buy at an almost sickening pace. It was dangerous on the broken roads of the old city. “You should be careful, there’s a child with you.”
“She will be fine.” Enoch ground out.
“I only have four minutes at most. Four minutes. I should have put more thought into last words. Apparently, I’m not very good under pressure.”
“We don’t know that the cause is—”
Something chimed in the darkness and Jacobi brought the window up automatically. He’d done it so many times…
The program to piece together the corrupted data from the far reaches of the Network, he’d never shut it down. Jacobi had completely forgotten about it in all of the…life, of the past couple weeks.
“Project—purpose to aid,” it read, some of the words were still in the process of being uncovered some might never. But there was something. “Enoch Nikova will–this–S–N–.”
“Nikova?”
The cyc hit a hole in the pavement and Enoch swore. Jacobi couldn’t see his face but his saw his arms, one of them wrapped quickly around Cora and pulled her half onto the seat with him, he was getting ready to curl around her and protect her if they went down, luckily the cyc managed to stay upright.
“Where did you find that name?” Enoch asked as he settled Cora again.
“I’ve been slowly deciphering the corrupted data in the Network archive areas. I’m sending it to you now, so after—”
“We’re here, don’t talk like that!” They pulled up outside of the station.
“Enoch you’re scaring me,” Cora cried. “Where’s Jacobi?”
“Time’s up.” Jacobi sobbed. Enoch’s link to him went dead. He’d probably destroyed the earpiece. “I’m sorry.”
“Jacobi?” Cora called frantically. “Jacobi!”
He unmuted her. “You’re an awesome kid. You’ll look out for Enoch, right? Won’t let him go all dweller in the darkness again?”
“We both will,” she agreed.
Jacobi’s heart ached. “Nah, I couldn’t leave the Network. It means I have no body to go back to. No body, no brain, nothing to run the avatar.”
“But you’re still talking to me!” she insisted.
“The brain lives for up to 6 m—” he looked at the blinking numerical display. “It’s been ten minutes.”
“Since you started acting weird, yes,” Cora agreed.
“If I were dead, my avatar should have faded by now.” Jacobi reasoned. “This is…I don’t know what this is. Even I can’t make people stay in the Network against their will. Who…” There was a crash on Cora’s end of the line. “Cora! Are you okay?”
“I think Enoch is looking for you,” she guessed timidly.
That didn’t explain the noise. “What was that crash?”
The little girl took a moment to answer.
“Cora?”
“Your doors,” she swallowed. “Did you think you were dead?”
“It was the logical conclusion.”
“Does he still think you’re dead?”
“Damn it.” Jacobi wished there were working cams in Richmond because of course Enoch thought he was dead. The guy’d torn off his goggles and shattered his ear piece.
; The goggles!
Their video feed was of the just lightening sky and some rounded metal protrusions, pipes maybe. “Cora, Enoch took his goggles off, do you see them? They should be on the ground, next to the cyc.”
“They’re here.” The image moved and she turned them to face her. “Can you see me?”
“Yes,” Jacobi sighed in relief. “Now I’m going to be here with you, we’re going to move the cyc out of open site and wait.
“Shouldn’t I go in and get him?” she asked, throwing a worried look at the station.
“No, sweetheart,” Jacobi shook his head. “I don’t know if he’s alone in there and I don’t want to risk you. He wouldn’t thank us when he got back.”
“He is coming back, right?”
“Yes,” Jacobi insisted.
* * * *
Enoch tore through the large building, not worried about staying quiet or hidden. If someone was there, if they had killed Jacobi when they were so close…well, violence could be cathartic.
The upper floors were weak, fallen through in places. Most of the ground floor wasn’t much better. He would assume basement, but Main Street Station had flooded before and no one would put a Network station in a flood hazard. What Enoch was looking for would be some place hidden and stable but above any possible water damage.
With those parameters, it didn’t take him long to suss out a location. There was a room over one of the sets of doors, doubly stabilized by solid floor covering little length or width and several marble columns whose loss wouldn’t fell it, but presence did strengthen it. Also it had huge ornate windows, possibly a balcony, for solar rigging. It was where Enoch would have put his headquarters if he’d chosen that building.
Luckily the stairs were stone and solid. They had become worn and chipped, cracked clear off in some places, but not badly enough that Enoch couldn’t find his way up.
The door was just around the bend after the stairs and Enoch paused. No one had come for all the noise he’d made. They hadn’t seen a soul since entering the city. It was completely possible that what he’d find in that room was the corpse of an old or badly injured man who had simply died as men do. Jacobi had said Cora didn’t need to see this, but Enoch had to. Someone had to lay him to rest with love. Jacobi wouldn’t be just another bit of bone here and there scattered by wind, animals or Angels.
The door stuck and he pushed hard against it. The hinges gave but not without a lot of effort. It hadn’t been opened in a long time. Warily Enoch stepped inside.
A dep tank, one of the very first models, was set up in the far corner. It was welded metal covering a porcelain or stone inlay. Air tubes ran from the top and out, to hang carefully in the open. In the center of the room was a pilot’s chair and massive Network consol. There were cameras set up, but none of them appeared to be functioning. Six screens spanned around the chair showing various programs. One showed the view from Enoch’s own goggles, Cora’s face looking worried. Another showed biometric readings and Network support, it read a heartbeat, breathing regularity. These things wouldn’t be read for a dead man.
Heartened, Enoch ran through the various cameras and found the tank interior image.
It wasn’t possible.
The man in the tank had Jacobi’s body type, his height, but the face kept shifting. Like it had in the Network, before Enoch had told him to stick with one certain face. Human or Angel, this wasn’t possible.
He looked around the room. There was an old filing cabinet against the wall opposite the tank, a smaller desk, bookshelf and coat rack arranged around the crowded area. The bookshelf held actual books. Some were nothing but loose half-destroyed pages, but some had persevered. The pages yellowed and brittle, Enoch was sure opening one would destroy it completely, but they were physically there! On the desk a Zebra pen lay over the tattered remains of a spiral notebook. The mesh wire basket labeled junk had a handful of loose change, a pink plastic pig with little white wings, the ring of a key chain, rotten bits of leather cord, and stone beads that spelled D-A-D.
The coins were dated 2070. They’d still been in circulation when Enoch was born. A couple of picture frames sat back in the shadows. He pulled them forward one was so dark from age and heat it couldn’t be made out at all, the other had passed sepia toned and gone on to a deep copper, but bits were recognizable, enough. Enoch was staring at what had once been a picture of his mother. The key chain he’d given his father as a child, the little toy pig, he remembered that too. His dad used to wrap fishing wire around its wings and make it fly for him.
Enoch was in shock, he knew he must be because he felt nothing at all. Barely felt physical stimuli. He opened the Network console and brought up every file he could. They were original schematics for the Network, plans for the hub and signal tower. Some mentioned the Walls and systems of government that could work without breaking into feuding autonomy. Plans for the land, to help the world come back to what it had been. A lot of starting points his father hadn’t had the chance to see through.
Then he saw it. A folder alone in the back of two other folders, he might have missed it all together if it wasn’t for the name. JACOBI. Enoch opened it, at a complete loss.
It was a guardian program, for the Network. Meant to manage viruses and shore up defects, to run maintenance from inside, a helper. That didn’t make any sense unless Jacobi had just taken the name from that program. He was, real, human. A bot had only a set number of responses it could manage. Jacobi talked way too much to ever be mistaken for a bot.
“JACOBI— Judge Autonomously Code Operations Based In-Network —Purpose to aid in preserving the Network.” That was what the file said. Enoch honed in on it. That sounded like part of what Jacobi had uncovered before. Reading on he found the rest of the broken message. “It is my hope that in time this program will self-modify enough to take over all but physical control of the Network process. Then my son, Enoch Nikova, will be allowed to step away from this duty I am imposing upon him and be able to truly live, for however long his mutation allows, in happiness and joy. –Seth Nikova.”
Enoch stared at the screen. It didn’t make logical sense, but in every other way…
He used the video feed from the goggles to ping Jacobi’s location, alert him that there was an open connection near. A connection he should have known about. “Jacobi?”
The voice that answered made Enoch’s legs go weak with absolute relief. “Although it was heartening to see how much I mean to you, I think you scared the girl.” He caught himself on the thick table until he could be sure he was steady. Jacobi’s face popped up on one of the screens, mouth curved into a soft, apologetic smile. “I’m sorry I scared you.”
Enoch shook his head. Liquid splashed against his hand and Enoch wiped away the tears he hadn’t realized he’d been shedding.
“Are you okay? There weren’t any Angels or Wastrels? We didn’t hear fighting.”
He shook his head, “I don’t think anyone’s been here for a long time.”
“Well, anybody but me,” Jacobi clarified.
“No, not even you.”
The hacker’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“I should have known. There were signs. No one who’d really been touched by this place could be so…positive. You think the world is good, that people are good.”
“But that’s because they are.” Jacobi insisted.
“No,” Enoch denied. “Jacobi, you’ve always been wrong about that. The world is all rust and waste. The people are corrupt and ugly things, maybe not all of them, but enough to stain their image. The world and everything in it is shit. You, though, you’re crystal. The world isn’t good, you are. You’re not the perfect human. You aren’t human at all.”
“I’m an Angel?” Jacobi worried. “Am I hideous? Will I scare Cora?”
“Jacobi, this is your dep tank, isn’t it?”
“Yes, you can see my body on the vid feed can’t you?” he asked and looked aside, likely checki
ng another screen.
“I see something.” Enoch spoke slowly, letting it sink in. “What do you see?”
“Me,” Jacobi said confused.
“And your face?”
He looked to the side again, “Is human?”
Enoch nodded. Jacobi hadn’t realized in the Network either that his face did that. Enoch thought he might know why. “I’m going to open this tank.”
“Okay,” Jacobi agreed.
The old door stuck even tighter than the one to the room. Enoch had to break the hinges completely off the remove it.
“Hey, careful!” Jacobi cried.
Enoch peeled the door back and stood aside to let Jacobi see what he had known he would see; nothing. The tank was empty but for some old, dried up suspension gel lining the bottom of the chamber.
“But…” Jacobi looked from one place to the other, checking the screens against one another. “Then where am I?”
“You’re light, Jacobi, pure energy.” Enoch said with revenant wonder.
“Is this like that crystal thing?” the hacker sounded nervous, looked nervous. He knew what Enoch was trying to say. “You’re saying I’m a sunshiny person?”
“You’re a ghost in the machine, Jacobi, a random configuration of program code and collected data that managed to become something more. Like some form of divinity saw what a mess the world was and decided to try making a soul somewhere else.”
Jacobi’s face fell. “I’m not…I’m not real?”
“You’re very real!” Enoch insisted. “Just because you aren’t doused in filth like the rest of us doesn’t mean you aren’t real.”
The hacker, the ghost, lowered his eyes, a tear rolled down his cheek. Enoch would have sworn it was unbidden. “Does this mean you don’t want to anymore?”
He was taken aback by the question. “Not want you? Jacobi, I love you!”
It was Jacobi’s turn to be surprised. “But I’m not human.”
“No, you’re better. You’re so much better.”
The hacker smiled shyly and reached out to touch the screen. Enoch placed his hand over the other being’s and smiled back.
