Synapse

by Steven James

  He’s grieving the loss of his mother just as you’re grieving for Naiobi. He’s trying to find hope, just like you’re trying to find answers.

  And when grief augers its way into you, it’s not easily removed—no matter who you are.

  This whole idea of nonhumans having human emotions was still difficult for me to wrap my mind around. His feelings were as real as mine, I knew that. His beliefs were as real as mine too. Still, I had a tendency to diminish the similarities, slipping into a form of xenophobia, but in this case the individual in question was a machine and not someone from another culture or country.

  I was halfway down the block, passing beneath one of the broken streetlights, when I heard a rustling to my left. When I turned to look, a hand shot out of the shadows and grabbed my shoulder, pulling me into the darkness. I was about to cry out when another hand clamped over my mouth and someone said in a rushed and urgent voice, “Shh! It’s me. It’s Nick.”

  He let go of me.

  I pulled away. “What on earth are you doing here?” I said harshly, with a mixture of shock and irritation.

  “Jordan called me.” Nick kept his voice low. “He told me what you’re planning to do here tonight. I can’t let you go in there alone.”

  “Wait—Jordan called you?”

  “He said something about seeing an address on a water bottle label and—”

  “Right. But—”

  “He was concerned about you, Kestrel. He wanted you to be safe. He said this time he didn’t want to be responsible for his owner dying. That’s how he put it.”

  “Well, how did you get here so quickly?”

  “I was properly motivated.”

  I was quiet for a moment, then said, “Nick, the note was clear that I’m supposed to come here alone. You have to let me go. It said eight o’clock, and if I don’t get moving I’m going to be late.”

  He shook his head. “There’s no way I’m letting you go in there by yourself. Either I come with you, or I call in a Tac team and let them take over.”

  “That’s not a good idea. I’m sure that whoever is waiting for me has a way to get out of here without being seen. If you bring in a tactical team, they’ll know, and our one chance at talking with them will be gone. I need to do this. It has to be me.”

  He evaluated that.

  “Alright. I won’t call in reinforcements, but I’m coming with you. If anyone asks, my name is David Turner. I’m an old friend. You were afraid to come alone. Since I used to be a cop and you trust me, you called and asked me to join you.”

  He took out his slate and started scrolling across it.

  “David Turner?” I said. “They might do facial recognition, and if they do they’ll find out you’re a federal agent.”

  “We’re not in the public archives. Besides, they’re Purists. They’re against using facial rec technology—but if you’re right and they do look me up, here’s who I am.”

  He tapped the screen one final time, then showed me his slate, where his face and the fake name and law enforcement credentials appeared.

  “I’ve been David before,” he explained. “Now, let’s go meet these people before you’re late.”

  * * *

  Ripley assessed where things were at.

  The eyeballs were gone and so was Sienna’s account on the Feeds—at least that would slow down his unit making any connection to him.

  Destroying Sienna’s eyes wasn’t going to solve everything, but it would buy him some time to move forward regarding the plans for tomorrow afternoon. He wasn’t sure if he would be present when everything went down—his contact hadn’t notified him regarding that yet—but he did know that at least this attack would provide more of a long-term solution.

  As a Plusser, Ripley had a unique perspective on the use of technology. He was stronger than Naturals. He could perform tasks more quickly, more accurately, and with more precision than Naturals could. There was no comparison.

  Cognizant machines, especially those that looked identical to humans, were not the next step in evolution, but a drastic deviation from the natural way. He was the best of both worlds, and that’s how things should remain. Now, with the emergence of machines that looked nearly indistinguishable from humans, the time had come to act.

  So, when he’d been approached by his contact, the person hadn’t had a tough time convincing him to help with the project—especially with the number of credits they were offering him for his assistance.

  * * *

  It turned out that the address I’d been given was a deserted pharmacy in one of the empty strip malls lining Spring Grove Avenue.

  I went to knock on the door, but Nick stopped me with a firm hand on my shoulder.

  “Let me do this.”

  He stepped in front of me, tried the doorknob, found it locked, and then rapped on the reinforced wood. No one answered, and I wondered if having him along had caused the people I was supposed to be meeting with to retreat.

  Nick studied the front of the building. “You’re sure this is the place?”

  “Yes.”

  The barred windows on our right were shattered and the ones on the left, although cracked, were still intact. The bars were no doubt there to keep the drugs inside protected, as much as possible, from looters. I wondered if they had done any good.

  Nick leaned over and attempted to peer through the glass, then tried the doorknob again. This time, it opened.

  “Okay, that’s interesting.” Cautiously, he pressed against the door. It opened with an obstinate creak and when I looked past him all I could see were shadows before us.

  “Stay close,” he said.

  “Good idea.”

  I wondered if he would reach for his gun, but instead he held one hand behind him for me to take and produced a flashlight with his free hand.

  We entered and he shone the light in front of us, illuminating shelving units still stocked with hair products, deodorant, shaving cream, toothpaste, and other toiletries. A thick layer of dust covered everything and no one was in sight.

  He led me forward into the gloom. We passed the empty OTC drug shelves on the way to the pharmacist’s enclosure, all picked clean of medications with any sort of street value.

  “Hello?” Nick called. The word echoed hollowly off the stark walls. “Is anyone here?”

  At first, there was nothing. Then a husky voice that seemed to come out of nowhere said, “You were told to come alone.”

  “He’s an old friend,” I replied hastily, still not sure where the person who’d spoken to me was standing. “I was scared. I wasn’t sure who to trust.”

  All at once, three burly men appeared from behind the shelving units surrounding us. Each held some sort of assault rifle slung in front of him.

  The man closest to us, who was also the tallest and most heavyset of the three, pointed his gun at Nick. “Who are you?”

  “David Turner.”

  Nick was still holding my hand. I let go just in case he needed to reach for his gun. Then a woman’s voice came from the darkness: “He’s an ex-cop.”

  So, they must have had access to facial rec or the Feeds after all.

  One of the other men asked Nick, “How do you know Kestrel?”

  “We met at a Chinese restaurant,” he said. “She likes Chinese.”

  “That true?” he asked me. “That you met at a restaurant?”

  “Yes,” I told him. “The Golden Dragon. He was eating General Tso’s chicken with white rice. It’s his go-to dish.”

  “Hmm.” He sounded unconvinced.

  The woman’s voice returned, though I still couldn’t tell where exactly she was. This time she was addressing Nick. “Lower your flashlight.”

  He complied.

  “So, you’re an ex-cop?”

  “Worked homicide mostly,” Nick said, playing the part.

  “Ever arrest any Purists?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  He was clearly being teste
d.

  “Most well-known was Max Caffers.”

  “I know him.”

  “He was a real piece of work,” Nick told her, and I wondered if he really had been responsible for arresting this man. Maybe while he was working under this false identity.

  “Yes, he was,” the woman replied. “Until he was killed in prison.”

  “A shank in the throat. Not a good way to go. But he did it to himself—he wasn’t killed.”

  She said nothing to that, but the big guy gestured to one of the other men, who stepped forward and held a retinal scanner in front of Nick’s eyes. Only then did I realize that each of these men was missing the tip of his left pointer finger where his ID chip would have been implanted.

  A shiver ran down my spine. These people were obviously prepared to take drastic measures to keep their own identities secret. Where that might lead tonight, I wasn’t sure, but it certainly made me uneasy.

  Even though they were using retinal scanner technology, there was little doubt in my mind that they were Purists.

  The man with the scanner studied the screen, then nodded toward the guy who was apparently in charge. After pocketing the device, he patted Nick down, found his gun, and took it. I was concerned that they might be able to identify Nick as a federal agent by the type of gun he carried, but then I noticed that it was a different model from the one he’d unholstered when he checked my ransacked apartment yesterday.

  He’d changed guns, perhaps anticipating that they would frisk him and take away any weapons he was carrying.

  The Purist who now had Nick’s gun also took his slate from him and smashed it on the floor, then stepped back, flipped his rifle in front of him once more in a smooth, adept motion, and aimed it at me.

  Then I heard the woman behind me again. This time, her voice was close and startled me because it sounded like it was coming from only centimeters behind my ear. “Hands to the side,” she said, “then stand still.”

  Somewhat anxious, I held my arms out and she patted me down, found nothing, and then told the man calling the shots, “She’s clean.”

  “Follow me,” he ordered us, then headed toward the pharmacist’s glass-enclosed work area.

  Because of the rise in the number of armed robberies over the years at pharmacies, most had been retrofitted with bulletproof glass, separating the space dedicated to prescription drugs from the rest of the store, and from what it looked like, this place was no exception.

  He indicated the window under which pharmacists would distribute drugs through a small, sliding drawer, and then held out his hand to Nick. “Your flashlight.”

  Nick passed it to him and the guy placed it in the drawer, slid it through to the other side, then told his team, “Sweep the area. Make sure there’s no one else around.” Then, just as silently as they had appeared, they eased back into the darkness and were gone. And that’s when a voice from beyond the glass said to me, “Kestrel, it’s been a long time. I miss reading your posts.”

  30

  “That was all in another life,” I said.

  “Yes, for both of us.”

  Is this really Conrad, or is it someone else pretending to be him?

  “You know how it is,” I told him, and then, referencing one of F. W. Boreham’s books, I added, “I’ve been caught up carrying around the luggage of life.”

  “Toward the other side of the hill?” he replied, bringing up another of Boreham’s titles.

  “Yes, toward the mountains in the mist.”

  “And the home of the echoes.”

  Well, if this wasn’t Conrad, he certainly knew his Boreham books.

  “What are you doing here, Kestrel? It’s been, what—seven years? Eight?”

  “Nine.”

  “Nine years. And you’ve been working as a Christian minister all this time?”

  “Yes, after finishing up seminary. I’m at my second church now.”

  With Nick’s flashlight gone, my eyes were starting to get accustomed to the darkness. Just enough light came through the drugstore’s front windows to allow me to see him beside me. I glanced over but couldn’t read his face, nor could I see any details of the man behind the glass, except for his silhouette.

  “And this man with you?” he asked me.

  “David. He’s an old friend. He used to be a cop.”

  “Right.” Conrad said the word slowly, and I couldn’t tell if he was dismissing what I’d told him or if he believed me. “So how can I help you, Kestrel? Why did you reach out to me after all this time?”

  “There was an attack this week at the Terabyne plant. Six people died.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Why are you involved with this, Conrad?”

  “What makes you think I had anything to do with it?”

  “Come on,” I said, “it has all the hallmarks of a Purist attack.”

  Except one, I thought. Except that it was a single event and not simultaneous bombings.

  “Things are not as clear-cut as they appear,” Conrad explained. “We do not want anarchy, we want sanity.”

  “And to that end you kill innocent people?”

  “At the beginning of the Uprising, there were a lot of people fighting for the right things in the right way. Since then, things have changed. There are some who believe in fighting fire with fire, but that only causes more things to burn.”

  “What do you believe in?”

  “Putting out fires once and for all.” From someone else it might have come across as a threat, but that wasn’t how it sounded coming from him. “We just want to be left alone. We’re not trying to overthrow anyone. We believe that leaning too much on technology robs us of our humanity. The development of ASI could cause humans to be deemed either a plague destroying the planet, a race in need of extermination, or simply irrelevant—unnecessary baggage on a dying world.”

  Now, Nick spoke up. “So you’re doing all you can to stop it.”

  “Stopping it isn’t an option. Not anymore. Things have gone too far for that. Life is a thin, narrow arc between two eternities. We’re here to celebrate it, not shorten it—for anyone.”

  “You target innocent people.” Nick’s voice had become steel. “People who have nothing to do with promoting technology.”

  “Some Purists do, yes. I’m not here to justify them to you. I can’t even justify some of their actions to myself. But we’re not responsible for most of the attacks we’re blamed for.”

  “Then who?”

  “There’s more to this than the bombing the other day. There’s going to be another one.”

  “When?” I asked. “Where?”

  “Tomorrow. Late afternoon. I don’t know where, but it’s going to be—”

  Gunshots rang out, their distinctive, stark sound reverberating off the bare walls of the pharmacy. Before I could even register what was happening, I felt Nick’s strong arms enfold me as he drove me to the floor.

  The shots continued.

  Just like when my parents were killed.

  Just like when they were gunned down at that airport.

  “You okay?” Nick asked urgently.

  “Yeah. You?”

  “Fine.”

  Two more shots sounded and I heard movement in the shadows surrounding us. Gruff voices mumbled something indecipherable. It might have been in another language. Someone returned fire, shooting through the bars of the missing window near the front door.

  I remembered that the Purists who first met us had taken Nick’s gun. “Do you have another weapon?”

  “I’m about to get one. Stay here. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

  “But—”

  Before I could finish objecting, he rose and, staying crouched low to the ground, scurried to the right. I heard scuffling, the impact of punches, and a heavy thud. A moment later, Nick was at my side again, holding one of the assault rifles that the men from earlier had been carrying.

  “Did you kill him?” I asked, my voice fragile.
<
br />   “No. He’ll wake up with a headache, though.” Nick patted the gun. “But he won’t be needing this in the meantime. Come on, let’s get you out of here.”

  He eased around the edge of one of the shelving units, then directed me to put my hand on his shoulder. “Don’t let go.”

  He didn’t have to ask twice.

  As we were about to move, someone out of sight fired another burst of shots. This time, they ricocheted off the bulletproof glass that Conrad had been standing behind. I wasn’t sure who was firing at whom and if anyone was on our side in all this, but I shuddered. Just the thought of proceeding into gunfire nearly paralyzed me.

  From where I was, I couldn’t tell if Conrad was still in the cubicle, but right now I was more worried about getting out of here alive than I was about his whereabouts.

  Using the shelves for cover, Nick moved forward slowly. I stayed right behind him. When we came to the end of the shelf, I could see the front window of the pharmacy. In the night, a few hunched shadows shifted into position.

  Who are these people? What’s going on?

  “Hang on,” Nick whispered. He eyed the other side of the store where the window was missing.

  I saw movement outside where he was looking, then heard a gunshot. Nick leaned forward and fired the rifle that he had. The harsh, loud reports of the shots startled me. Then, outside there was a heavy grunt, the clatter of a gun hitting the ground, and then silence.

  “Alright,” Nick said. “That one’s no longer a threat.”

  My heart was hammering. I wished there was more I could do, but I didn’t have a gun and wouldn’t have known how to use it to help us even if I did.

  Nick studied the inside of the pharmacy, then cocked his head as if he was listening attentively to something. “Okay, there’s no one else in here.”

  “Are you sure? How can you tell?”

  “I’d be able to hear them.”

  “How?”

  “I’m a Plusser,” he replied after a brief hesitation. “Hearing only, but it comes in handy. No heartbeats here. No breathing. No movement. We’re good.”

  For some reason, finding out only now that he was a Plusser made me uneasy, that instinctive prejudice against those who are different coming through again. Maybe that—or maybe because he was one step closer to being a machine, like what’d killed my parents.