Cypulchre

by Joseph Travers MacKinnon

  ONI PUSHES the plunger. The adrenalin ambushes Paul’s system. She retracts the needle, and steps back into the fold. With her: a white-collared man in his mid-sixties; Booker Gibson, dressed in the same suede-trimmed flak jacket and scars he had on at the SenseDen; and two women strapped into medical garb, including the woman Paul’d unwittingly assaulted.

  Gasping, Paul reels forward, no longer fettered by his leather straps.

  “Jeeze!”

  “Amen,” says the old man, stepping forward. “I’m going to get my introduction out of the way now, because that nasty wound of yours is just begging for sepsis…”

  The very mention of his wound has Paul searching his body for shrapnel and missing parts.

  “And normally I’d shake your hand, but under the circumstances…” The old man points to Paul’s arm, as if asking a question.

  Paul nods.

  “Father Edmund Barros. People around here just call me Ed.”

  Paul sees two dark little eyes grilling him behind the pastor. He leans back, and bungees a smile.

  “Nice to meet you Father. I’m…”

  Oni steps foreward, her eyebrows umlauting a serious stare. “They know, Dr. Sheffield.”

  Edmund pulls a wheeled chair over to Paul’s side, sits down, and unrolls a cloth-burrito-full of surgeon’s utensils on his lap.

  “I don’t remember ever being so popular,” says Paul, gulping at the sight of the blades and derms, Oni’s intensity warming his legs. “Oh shit,” he startles, “Allen’s funeral…Have I missed it?”

  “Cool your jets,” Gibson says, calmly. “Y’barely escaped the need to haunt your own. Relax.”

  Oni nods to Gibson. She takes a breath and then a pause. “These are important times, Paul,” she says with a soothsayer’s confidence. “We all have to decide what we want and what we’re prepared to do to see that happen.”

  “How’d you know about the mechs following me?”

  Oni sighs and bats her eyes. “Someone at Outland wants you dead, and for the first time in a long time, they’re not being subtle about it. Not even securing their comms.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do they have it out for you this time?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not exactly sure,” she blows a rebellious wisp of hair out of her eye-line. “But it probably means we need you alive more than Gibson and I had first imagined.”

  Paul wishes it’d all been a bad dream. All of it. “Crap,” he whispers, staring blankly past the tent’s frayed ramparts to the LA skyline. “But I’m not even at war with Outland. I’m a non-player.”

  Gibson pipes up: “Granted your history, I’m not so sure. Regardless, Outland’s at war with you.”

  In the light of the hologram depicting his insides, Paul can make out the raised etchings written across Gibson’s face, documenting pain and loss.

  Oni throws a dagger of a glance to Gibson. “Paul wants his family back.” She sits at the end of Paul’s cot, and turns her gaze to his brutalized face. “We all have problems. And all of them start with the CLOUD.”

  “Yeah? What’s your problem?” Paul says dubiously.

  His disbelief knocks her in the gut. She tilts her head, just-so, enough for Paul to glimpse her pain and guilt. “It’s taken something from all of us, Paul…My principle problem has been our lack of a solution up until now. Look around you. I’m cleaning up my mess. Our mess. I’m finishing what you started a decade ago.”

  “What are you talking about?” Paul asks, genuinely interested in hearing an honest answer. His sides hurt more with his newfound vigor. “Damn,” he wheezes.

  Edmund pushes Paul back, and applies a localized anesthetic. “Calm yourself down, son.”

  “You fought Winchester on pushing the CLOUD to the domestic market. You knew what it was capable of doing…” Oni continues.

  He can’t feel Edmund’s blade, but Paul shivers at the sound of his skin separating—the sound of a Ziploc bag being resealed. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I didn’t exactly win that fight.”

  “Booker, here,” Oni indicates Gibson with a light flick against his lapel, “Doesn’t know who he is. Doesn’t even know if Booker Gibson’s his real name. Name’s all it said on his pod.”

  Paul feigns a sympathetic nod.

  “Ed and I found him two months ago in a Spirit Train that was headed to the Citadel. Was shot down by RIM-tick privateers. According to the script on his pod, he was on his way there to be de-synchronized for violating Outland protocol.”

  Gibson’s pursed lips dam silent agreement.

  “Stole XP and intel from the Yakuza or something like that. Has more of their memories than his own. Some mechs from Tokyo were looking for him. Some experientialists too.”

  “So they want him dead. What’s he want?”

  “CLOUD destroyed him, whatever he was. CIA agent…Hacker from the Yukon Sprites. Orientalist. Who the hell knows? Now, he’s just fragments of different types. A ghostly mosaic.”

  “What does that mean?” Paul turns to Gibson. “What do you want?”

  “To stop running.”

  The scars mapped across Gibson’s face now make sense to Paul. He could have easily and cheaply had them corrected by a cosmetician’s laser, but kept them. Wanted to maintain some connection with his past, even if that meant wearing his incomplete and violent biography.

  Paul laughs. “I wouldn’t pray for immobility. Chances are, you’ll be surprised by fate’s misinterpretation.” He notices Edmund coating the wound with a variant of heavplast—one that crumbles if peppered. “That’s a neat trick.”

  Edmund shuffles his eyebrows in agreement.

  “What’s your deal?” Paul asks the priest.

  The old man pauses, holding his tools above Paul’s wound as if readying to eat a meal. Serious reflection contorts his face. “Well…” he says wiping his forehead with his gloved wrist. “I suppose I’m just trying to help.”

  “Great,” says Paul, “I’ve got Shouta’s murder on my ticket. Gibson’s a fugitive being hunted down for whatever sparks he’s got left by more than one paramilitary death squad. And,” he continues, pointing this time to Oni, “you’ve gone full-Mother-Theresa with Ed, here. Doesn’t sound like a playable starting-line. In fact, I can’t imagine what this team could start, if anything. I’m thinking the lot of you will bring a bunch of heat and attention down on my efforts.”

  Edmund squeezes together the lips on Paul’s wound. No numbness there.

  “Jeeze, watch it will yah?” Paul says, sucking in air around his clenched teeth.

  “Efforts? Which are? What exactly do you plan to do? Picket out front of the Citadel? Outland Sentinels are everywhere looking for you. And, Dr. Sheffield, no offense, you’ve never really been in any shape to fight them alone.”

  Paul looks over at Edmund’s reaction. Cool as a fish.

  “You want your family back,” Oni reminds Paul.

  “Obviously.”

  “Tell me how you plan to get them out of the Citadel’s protected residences. Tell me how you plan to desynchronize them without Outland coming after you or severing their exo-cortex leads.”

  He conveys his frustration by throwing his head sideways into the pillow. “I’ll figure it out.”

  “Before the Anomaly assimilates them?”

  Paul’s silence affords Edmund’s chair an opportunity to squeak uninterrupted. He tongues the roof of his mouth. “You know…?”

  “I found out independent of Dr. Katajima’s discovery. Gibson hacked Katajima’s Monocle to confirm my thesis. It took a few hours to draw the correlation between the spike in evap mortality and the data stockpiling, but once it grew large enough to stand out, I knew it’d be a problem. Those who’ve died already…They were assimilated; their minds, anyway. It’s vacuuming sentience and data and power. It’s far too late to go on the defensive. We need to attack this thing with everything we have. And when we do, we have to make sure that there’s nothing left of th
e CLOUD.”

  “Cyber-terrorism?” Paul balks. Oni’s on the right track; Paul’s looking for innovation by teasing out the discrepancies between their respective plans.

  “Liberation,” answers Gibson.

  “Tell me how crashing the CLOUD will be any different from letting the Anomaly consume everyone?”

  “We want a hard rain, not a genocide.” A new mask of seriousness tightens around Oni’s features. “Whoever’s behind the Anomaly is out for destruction and power.”

  “Right. And remind me: you want destruction and…?”

  “I’ve turned it around, Paul. I’m helping people now. Eddie, Gibson, the staff, and I—we’re working all day, every day, to help those the CLOUD’s shorn and rendered helpless.”

  Gibson winks at Edmund, who’s looking up, exasperated.

  “The CLOUD and the so-called Omega Point that Winchester was always on about—they have to go. But not before everyone is extracted safely. This thing, whatever it is, will kill everyone synched to the CLOUD. And it won’t stop there. If it’s after power, then it’ll hardline out. Drones, the Net—anything with a receiver or an electric signature will be fair game,” says Oni, sporadically dipping from English into Japanese.

  Katajima couldn’t have put it better. “Then I guess you’re running out of time.”

  “Listen, asshole,” barks Gibson. “You came to us. She fixed you in good faith, thinking that you’d buck-up and consider not being such a chickenhead. You’re the one out of options.”

  Oni gets up. The mud left by the rain slurps at her boots. She grabs Gibson’s arm, and turns to go. Without looking at Paul, she says coolly, “Let me know if you want us to take a break from treating symptoms in order to help you with a cure.”

  Chapter 20: PICKING UP THE PIECES

  FATHER ED CUTS the twine gridding Paul’s wound, and dabs the puss collected at the corners. “Sorry about your family,” he says somberly.

  “It’s not too late,” Paul convinces himself.

  “Never is.” The priest winces, squeezing focus and accuracy out of his vision. “There!” he exclaims. Edmund lays a transparent binding tape on the oozing trap. “Blasted printer is jammed, so I can’t graft you anymore layers, but the lace will hold and the wound’ll heal…so long as you don’t pick at it.”

  “Then I guess I have to think of something better to do until it scabs over.” Paul lifts his shirt, stained a brick-colour, and he runs his finger along the alien skin lining his arm and side.

  “Ah, yes! I decellularized the patch to lessen the chances of rejection. It will naturalize to your colour once the blood starts flowing again.”

  “Thank you.”

  Father Edmund smiles. He takes a look at Paul’s holographic, and shuts it down. “You’re a lucky man, Paul.”

  Paul slides off the bench with a grunt, squishing his face into a clownish look of disbelief. “How’s that?” he replies, checking the cleric’s handy work. “Besides you finding me when you did?”

  “You’ve something left to lose. That’s rare outside of the Blue Zone.”

  “I suppose I still have that to be taken away from me.”

  “Well, count yourself blessed. As for Booker and Dr. Matsui, this is it. All they have are dreams of justice and revenge.”

  “Oni didn’t say what she’d lost…Shouta’d mentioned something about the Purge.”

  “I found their names on the memorial downtown…Her family. She was so excited about the CLOUD, that she enticed her brothers and her mother to buy-in. They were among the first victims of the data collectivization—the Purge.”

  Paul sighs.

  The Purge was a fatal programming error that took out a few thousand early subscribers. Outland had tried to curb excessive bandwidth-hogging by assigning barriers to high-intensity users. Instead of sectoring and limiting noospheric activity, Outland had effectively lobotomized all their frequent fliers. Should have been the end of the CLOUD, but the blame was ascribed to hackers and anti-tech groups. The CLOUD wasn’t ready for consumption then, just as it isn’t now.

  Paul had no idea Oni had lost family, let alone that she had had family. He massages his brow, regretting his earlier response.

  “Your family is not the only reason you’re lucky…”

  Paul jerks his head, physically bidding the pastor continue.

  “Your osteo-implants—”

  “Spidersilk,” Paul interjects.

  “Kept you whole. Could have been a lot worse.”

  Pulling his shirt back down, Paul winces—the morphine’s effect now waning. “No doubt.”

  “The contortion marks on the scar tissue we removed while you were under…” Edmund turns Paul’s holographic doppelganger back on. “The only instances where I’ve seen marks like those before were on amputated limbs or on hanged men.”

  “Sticks and stones, unless you’ve a little help,” Paul throws his shoulders back into a stretch, tweaking for the strength wrapped around his core.

  Father Ed snaps off his latex gloves, and tosses them into a bin overflowing with bloody rags. “And you,” he pivots, and strides over to a little coffee maker squeezed between ventilators, fuming from the hood, “Have had a lot of help.” He turns to Paul with twin tin cups. “Drink this. Whatever’s next is going to require all the energy you can muster. And try to keep the weight on your other leg.”

  Paul looks down past his knee. There is a heavplast band around his ankle.

  “We threw in a micro-rivet to reduce joint tension. You’re going to have to take it easy for a while, but it should last you until you cross the finish line.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Before I forget, I managed to scrounge up two bottles of anti-psychotics. Your file stressed their importance, and for whatever reason, someone cut your line to supply.”

  “There’s a full cast of potential suspects.”

  Edmund hands Paul the SIKS. Paul ravenously wrenches the lid off of the first bottle, and pipes-down three triangular tabs.

  “Thank you. I was seeing things…hearing things. Thank you.”

  Paul pockets the bottles, and throws out his hand. Smiling, Edmund takes it and grips it.

  “A second chance.”

  “You’re a life-saver, doc…Y’have a preference?”

  “Pardon?” Edmund asks, returning Paul’s hand to him.

  “Doctor or Father?”

  “Goodness. I guess that depends on the nature of the saving.” Edmund’s grin widens, and then flat-lines. “Now I’ve a question for you.”

  “Alright, shoot,” Paul blurts out, feeling the quick flush of SIK-induced euphoria relax his shorted nerves.

  Father Ed thumbs the handle on his mug, and steps into his query. “Spidersilk. A Monocle. Juncts. Subcutaneous orthopedics. You seem to be on board with all the latest tech…”

  “Yeah?”

  “But you’re drawing the line at noospherics? The CLOUD?”

  “I’m interested in improving life, not illusions, Father.”

  They both sip with fallen gazes.

  “And I’ll be forever damned,” continues Paul, indicating the rain-outs tabled around the clinic, “for my hypocrisy—for distracting people from what really matters.”

  PAUL HOLDS A SECOND cup of Edmund’s coffee against his chest, feeling the rising steam soften his prickly chin and wet the bandages greased across his swollen face. He watches Oni, on the other end of the medical tent checking the med-regulators on one of her patients. She squeezes the saline bag above the closest blanketed body, and wipes her brow with her palm. Sighing, she corners a blade of hair behind her ear. If an ant under Paul’s current magnification, she’d burn.

  All that time I’d pinned her a mouse in my lab, when she’d actually been a lion.

  Another one of Oni’s nurses startles Paul, scanning his arm without an introduction or warning.

  “Jeeze!” yelps Paul, gripping his chest and embellishing his scare.

  “Nope, just Emily
.” Emily, in a tight, gridded leather jacket, with hair pulled back into a bun, whose saffron curls strike a surreal contrast with her drab, pastel surroundings.

  “Whaddya want?” Paul grumbles.

  “Dr. Barros asked me to double-check to make sure he didn’t miss anything when mending your wounds. Shrapnel or the like. Now lean forward.” Clearly not the waiting type, she unabashedly pushes Paul forward, and continues her scan.

  Paul coughs, and then capitulates to her warm handling. “You guys aren’t too keen on bedside manner, huh?”

  “Would you prefer I ask you ‘how’s your day going?’”

  “No,” Paul grunts, half-resisting the nurse’s grip. “That’s fine.”

  “Dr. Matsui is a very strong woman. Very courageous. Deserving of respect,” she says.

  “What?” Paul pulls his arm free of the nurse’s clutches and stands straight.

  “You were watching her work.”

  “Oh, is this that bedside manner we decided against?’

  Emily leans in closer, pocketing her scanner. “But she’s not invincible. So long as the CLOUD’s up, she’s in danger. We all are.”

  “Wow, you guys are relentless…They put you up to this?”

  “No.”

  Paul scratches at the heavplast concretized around his wound. “I have a mind to put an end to it. Just not much of a team player,” Paul says. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t play.”

  Emily crooks her neck. “At least with a team, there’s someone to pick you up when you fall.”

  One of the nearby rainout’s monitor beeps. Emily communicates goodbye with a squeeze of the arm, and scurries off.

  Something about her pisses him off, Paul decides. Her sincerity? Her outmoded good nature? Something about her interest in Oni—in my interest in Oni? Maybe she’s right. Oni, too.

  “Hey, one of you two mind giving me a hand over here?” yells Oni, fingers lost in a bramble of circuitry, wires, and flayed flesh.

  Paul looks around for one better-tasked, only to see Emily busy massaging some loser’s heart.

  “Sure,” he answers, placing his coffee on the bench. “What’s up?”

  “This one is synched to one of our rehab Sandboxes. Think along the lines of the Oasis construct. He’s in withdrawal, and fading pretty fast.”