Autonomous

by Annalee Newitz

  The post ended with an update: Medics in Yellowknife were asking people who had taken Zacuity to get to the hospital as soon as possible. No questions asked. They just wanted to make sure nobody else got killed.

  Jack ripped open one of the boxes she’d set aside from her stash and positioned a mood-stabilizing strip under her tongue. She gripped the steering wheel uselessly, waiting for calm. This was the biggest fuckup of her career, if you could call piracy a career.

  FALL 2115-FALL 2118

  Jack and Krish named their anti-patent text repo The Bilious Pills, after the first medicine patented in the former USA. It was a little in-joke that was generally misinterpreted to mean something like “snarky bitches” by their adversaries, namely the Big Pharma bosses and liberal patent system apologists.

  The repo’s vocal cadre of followers called themselves Pills, and many became famous among researchers whose work was being wrecked by the calcification of patent law. Jack rejected a full-time job at Louise Bendis’ patent farm by committing an open letter to The Bilious Pills about how drug patents make the human population sicker. She got quoted on news shows, but after that no university wanted to hire her as a professor. How would she ever fund a lab when she’d devoted herself to destroying Big Pharma, her most likely source of grant money?

  Instead, Jack became a low-level researcher at Franklin, teaching geneng to undergraduates and doing other people’s lab work. And yet everywhere she went, from international synbio conferences to local meetings of Freeculture activists, her reputation as a founder of The Bilious Pills preceded her. She became a regular contributor to a health and science show that streamed to millions of people every week.

  The patent reform movement was reaching a critical mass. It wasn’t just the scientists and engineers who were angry—the public cared, too. Medicines were too expensive. Every month, they got more and more crowdfunding for The Bilious Pills, until Jack could finally quit her lab job to work full-time on anti-patent organizing. That’s when she and Krish decided it was time to stage a major protest. Something that would broadcast to the world how broken the patent system really was.

  Their chance came when a massive ship docked at Halifax, its cargo containers packed with pharma that had been fabbed in the African Federation. It was bad enough that people in the Federation were making drugs for people in the Zone that they couldn’t afford themselves. But in the past year there had been a record number of deaths in the Federation from childhood neurological disorders, several varieties of cancer, and infectious fatigue syndrome. The meds on the ship could be saving hundreds of thousands of Federation lives right now. Instead, they would be warehoused in the Zone.

  Jack spent two frantic days exchanging encrypted messages with a Pill whose pseudonym was “Rosalind Franklin.” She had the connections to deliver the drugs to Federation kids who needed them. All they needed was the right moment.

  They snuck aboard early in the morning, surrounded by a dozen swarm cams that streamed the whole thing live. Jack led a group of twenty-three of the most radical Pills wearing masks, powdered wigs, and eighteenth-century-style military jackets. It was a pirate action, after all. Jack stood out in her black three-point pirate’s hat adorned with a skull and crossbones.

  Back in Saskatoon, Krish was coordinating the video stream, making sure Jack’s commentary came in loud and clear.

  She pitched her voice to carry, waving a plastic sword over her head. “We live in a world where everyone can live for over a century without disease and without pain!” Behind her, the Pills used a metal-eating bacteria to soften the locks and rip open the cargo containers like paper. “But the keys to this good life are held in the greedy hands of a few corps, whose patent terms last longer than a human life. If they won’t open access to medicine, we’re going to smash it open! The time has come to fight this system that calls health a privilege!”

  The cam swarm streamed footage of the protesters as they looted the cargo containers, holding up boxes of pills and syringes. Autonomous Federation drones, Rosalind Franklin’s friends from the anti-indenture movement, hailed down from the dark sky. The humans lifted the booty up into robot arms. The drones grabbed box after box, then shot over the Atlantic toward a Federation barge in international waters.

  The Pills began to chant. “What do we want? Patent reform! When do we want it? NOW!”

  When Jack handed a box of antivirals to one of the drones, the machine used directional sound to speak into her ear: “Thank you. It’s time for humans to understand that property is death.” Surprised, she didn’t have time to reply before the drone surged upward, on a mission that went far beyond the goals of this protest.

  That was the last thing she saw before the truncheon came down. It cracked her skull, covering her face with blood and sending her hat spiraling down into the harbor’s black water.

  JULY 7, 2144

  “It’s a bot revolution!” Threezed yelled, pointing at the mobile propped against the dashboard and laughing.

  A flash of anger broke through Jack’s drug-induced tranquility. How could he just ignore all the danger and comment gleefully on this movie? Suddenly, she wanted more than anything to break through Threezed’s carefree bullshit.

  “Didn’t they teach you shit in Shenzhen? Not even about classics like Metropolis?”

  Threezed hit the pause button, struck a sultry pose, and let his accent thicken. “No, they didn’t teach me shit in Shenzhen. Just how to look pretty and talk nice so I’d get slaved quick.” He looked like he was ready to slap her, or maybe to be slapped.

  A wave of relaxation came over her, rolling back the rage. She was actually getting somewhere: Her guess at where he came from was apparently accurate—or accurate enough, anyway.

  “So you’re from Shenzhen, eh?”

  “From the Nine Cities Delta, anyway.” He named the special economic zone that sprawled across thousands of square kilometers in the southeastern Asian Union. No surprise that he came from there—nearly all industrial work was centered in the Nine Cities and Hong Kong.

  “When did you enter contract?”

  “I got slaved when I was five. My mom sold me to one of those indenture schools. They taught me to read and make an engine.” His attention wandered back to Metropolis, whose evil bot was frozen in the middle of a passionate speech about worker uprisings.

  Outside, pale blue lakes flashed between dark pines. There were no cars on the road and it was almost evening.

  “So how did you end up with that fusehead?”

  Threezed was clearly feigning disinterest now, idly advancing the movie frame by frame. The bot clutched her breasts with agonizing slowness, eyes wide.

  “The school went broke and auctioned off our contracts.”

  Jack had read about tough cases where indentured had their contracts bought out from under them, their terms changed overnight. But she was still surprised to hear that one of the AU indenture schools, even a bankrupt one, had sold its wards without any background checks.

  “They sold your contract to that guy?”

  Threezed shrugged and poked the bot’s action forward on the monitor. “No, they sold me to this machining lab, and then the lab decided to cut corners, so they auctioned me out in Vegas.” He stretched, a sliver of brown belly showing between his shirt and the waistband of his pants. “That was about three years ago.”

  “And you never made it out of contract that whole time?”

  “Why are you asking me all this shit? You a human resources manager, when you’re not pirating drugs?”

  For the first time, Jack realized that Threezed’s sarcasm wasn’t bullshit. It was a perimeter weapon, and probably the main reason he’d made it this far with his mind intact. Instead of asking more questions, she leaned over to kiss Threezed hard on the mouth. His reaction was not artful. It felt sloppy and real.

  JULY 8, 2144

  Yellowknife was still hours away. Jack and Threezed slept in a tangle of thermal sheets in the back of
her truck, legs and arms touching, until an alert sound announced that they’d entered city limits. It was 4:00 a.m. and sunlight slanted through bright, deserted streets.

  Jack sent a message to Mali, who replied right away.

  Do stop by for breakfast. I have given up on getting Judy back to sleep.

  After decades of indecision, Mali had finally had a baby. Of course she was awake at an absurd hour of the morning.

  They pulled up outside a one-story house in a suburb of identical homes built to look like twentieth-century log cabins hidden among trees. Mali waited for them at the door, her black hair in a neat bob, her slacks and shirt carefully pressed for work. Thirty years on the highest-recommended daily dose of Vive had kept Mali looking about the same age as her interns. She held Judy face-out against her chest, smiling over the infant’s dark, wet curls and uselessly wiggling feet. The scene was so normal and almost comically domestic that Jack felt momentarily safe. She dropped her sack to the ground and gave her old friend a hug, careful not to crush the damp baby.

  “I’ve got some coffee and oatmeal going.” Mali led them into a modest living room full of blocky furniture, antique shag rugs, and a tabletop projecting muted scenes from the morning news. Jack dumped a pile of boxes emblazoned with Ganesh onto the sofa.

  “Let’s go over that after breakfast,” Jack said. “By the way, this is Threezed.”

  Threezed shook Mali’s hand. “Thank you for your hospitality,” he said formally. It was the first time Jack had seen him interact with other people. His manners were so good it was as if they’d been ironed into him.

  They proceeded into a warm kitchen, settling down at a table built in a semicircle around the cooker. Its four little doors were already steaming with cups of coffee behind them. Jack helped herself to one and watched Mali rearrange Judy in the crook of her arm.

  Jack tried to make small talk. “How are things at the hospital?”

  “Pretty good. How’s your business going?”

  The baby began to cry, and refused to respond to Mali’s shushing. At last, a young woman entered the room from the back door and took Judy from Mali wordlessly, rocking the little girl in one arm while retrieving the final cup of coffee with the other. Mali neither introduced the woman nor looked at her. Jack glanced sideways at Threezed, wondering what he thought of Mali’s casual rudeness toward her indentured nanny. He glanced at the nanny as she left with the baby, his mouth quirking into its usual expression of arch amusement.

  “I’m sorry, Jack, you were saying?”

  “There’s been a problem, actually. This may be my last shipment for a long while.” Jack needed to tell somebody, to air her guilt in this safe kitchen where she could smell oatmeal being assembled. The words tumbled out in a rush. “I sold some reverse-engineered Zacuity. But of course their trials didn’t catch all the possible side effects. Now my customers are giving Zaxy a free trip back to Phase 1.” Phase 1 clinical trials were for one thing only: To find out if a new drug could kill people.

  “Wait, what?” Mali looked ill. “You’re the one behind those drug psychosis episodes? What the hell are you doing selling shit like that?”

  “Zaxy is an IP hoarder.”

  “So liberate more of their antivirals. Or go after those new marrow regenerators. Nobody needs Zacuity.”

  “People want it. Plus, it is kind of a necessity. When you’re competing for jobs with people who take it, Zacuity could mean the difference between employment and unemployment.”

  Jack wasn’t even convinced by her own argument. Mali shook her head, her face reflecting a mixture of care and anger that looked too complicated for her youthful features.

  “Jack, I’m worried about you. This Zacuity situation … we’ve seen some really bad stuff at the hospital. And Zaxy is just as likely to murder you as they are to arrest you.”

  “I know, but I have an idea. I think I can make this right by getting some data out to the public that proves Zaxy is selling an addictive drug. I can release it with a therapy, too. Bring down the whole corrupt corporation.”

  “Are you nuts? Zaxy owns half the reps in the Zone, and probably in every other economic coalition, too. Plus, who is going to believe you? It’s not like you’re a scientist anymore. You’re a…”

  Mali paused awkwardly and Jack stared at her coffee. What was Mali going to call her? A pirate? Criminal? Dealer? It didn’t matter, because it stung enough to hear her old friend say she wasn’t a scientist. Jack’s whole world was science. She spent most days in the lab tinkering with molecules so that even the poorest could benefit. But of course someone like Mali wouldn’t see it that way. To her, Jack was no better than a lab monkey, churning out copies of other people’s drugs.

  “I know it can’t be me who releases the data. I’m going to leak it to someone who can. Someone who’s a real scientist.” Jack’s words came out more bitterly than she’d intended.

  “I’m sorry, Jack. I didn’t mean it that way. But you don’t need to go public with this. We’re already working on a therapy at the hospital, and we can’t be the only ones. You need to hide.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Jack finally looked at Mali again. “It’s possible that something genuinely good could come out of this. Zaxy broke the law. When the public knows, it could lead to real changes.”

  “Do you really think so? Or are you just going all martyr because…” This time, Jack appreciated Mali’s habit of trailing off. Was Jack trying to kill herself to make up for what she’d done? Maybe. Probably. She didn’t know.

  “This isn’t just about my life, Mali. This could destroy one of the most corrupt pharma corps in the world. We might never have this chance again.”

  Mali sighed. “True enough. How are you going to do it?”

  “You’re already way too implicated. The last thing you need is more information.”

  Abruptly, Jack realized that Judy had started sobbing again, her cries muffled but distinct. Mali noticed at the same moment and looked resigned.

  “Is there anything I can do besides pay you for the shipment today?”

  “Actually, there is.”

  There was no way that new mom Mali could resist the tug of protectiveness when Jack told her about Threezed, indentured as a child, rescued from a brutal client, and desperately wanting autonomous work. As Jack talked, Threezed remained silent, his expression completely blank. Mali gave him a hug and said she was sure she could get him a gofer job in one of the research labs. The credits wouldn’t be brilliant, but they’d cover an apartment and ramen.

  Finally Threezed spoke, in his politest AU schoolboy accent. “Thank you so very much. I had thought I might be of further assistance to Jack, but this would be perfectly lovely.”

  “Come along with me for the morning shift. Just leave the dishes here for the girl to clean up.” Mali disappeared into another room. Before they left together, Threezed shot Jack a look that hovered between anguish and rage. But she couldn’t worry about that right now. He was safe, and that’s what mattered.

  Somehow Mali had also talked Jack into taking a shower, followed by having a nap in a real bed before she hit the road. The nanny sang a song to Judy as Jack blasted herself with hot water. Lake country was the best place to get clean—no water shortages meant no cutoffs. In twenty minutes, she was sound asleep in Mali’s guest bed, dreaming about nothing.

  * * *

  Med was buried deep in her research at the workstation farthest from the reception area when the gofer from the hospital lab dropped off the samples. But somehow, while the young man waited for some results, he found his way to her desk. Then he stood in the perfect spot for looking over her shoulder at the neural map of the man who didn’t want to stop painting.

  He started talking to her with no preamble. “What’s that? A brain?”

  She hadn’t discussed her research with anyone yet. Nobody would return her messages about it, nor comment on the articles she’d tried to post. Frustrated, she found herself inf
odumping on this new lab gofer.

  “It’s one of my patients, who has developed a novel kind of addiction. I’ve never seen anything like it—his dopamine system has been completely tweaked in a matter of days. Probably caused by some street drug he took. A pretty damn sophisticated drug, though.”

  For a long time, the gofer didn’t say anything. Med realized, with a pang of embarrassment, that he must not have any idea what she was talking about—until he dug deep into the pockets of his jacket and pulled out a tiny box decorated with images of Ganesh.

  “A drug like this?” he asked.

  She took the box from his hand and shook a few pills out into her desk. The gleaming, onyx gelcaps were etched with the words “EAT ME” in a pink Comic Sans font. Without thinking, she tossed one into the spectral analyzer.

  What she saw, on a cursory reading, brought her up short. “Where did you get this?”

  He grinned and leaned on her desk with one hand, hip cocked coquettishly. It occurred to her that many humans would consider this lab gofer to be quite beautiful.

  “I know the person who makes them.” He used an incongruously flirtatious tone. “Want to meet her?”

  * * *

  When the door to the bedroom slammed open, Jack sat up abruptly and palmed her knife. Mali’s bedside clock said she’d been out for six hours.

  Standing in killing range were Threezed and a pale, terrified-looking young woman in a medic’s lab coat. The medic stared at the sheen of Jack’s scar, a fat pink track that started on her neck, divided her breasts from each other, and crossed her entire stomach. Jack knew it was the kind of deformity that medical students read about, but rarely glimpsed. Scars were so easy to prevent with a variety of Fresser skin glues.