Counterpart

by Hayley Stone

  “What about visiting Disneyland Paris with Camus for the first time? I was disappointed because Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril was closed for maintenance. I even bought a fedora and everything.” A smile slides into the machine’s voice. “Then I made Camus ride Big Thunder Mountain with me until he started feeling sick, and we got drinks in Pluto-shaped cups at that stand near the castle…”

  “Okay,” I say loudly, before pulling my voice down to a whisper as people pass me in the hall. “Now you’re just showing off.” I’ve bundled the machine’s head in a bloodless, white lab coat, but I’m still receiving odd looks. Maybe I should’ve taken Ulrich up on his offer. To be fair, as far as anyone knows, I have a rather noisy walkie in the pocket of this coat. And I just happen to be talking through the fabric. Like a freaking crazy person.

  “Do you remember it?” The machine is a dog with a bone.

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Vocal oscillations indicate stress. You’re lying.”

  And that’s not even the half of it. The machine’s indignant anger surfaces briefly, between long passages where it’s either bargaining with me to make it whole again, or softly crying. I peek once into the folds of the lab coat and spy realistic tears sliding down its smooth digital cheeks. Its eyes get just as red as mine when I weep. I quietly and quickly cover the head back up. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think the machine was traveling through the five stages of loss. And, quite frankly, I’m too damn tired to deal with the implications of that.

  For my part, I try not to acknowledge it during its disturbing pity parties, but several times it snares me with its questions.

  “Why is this happening to me?”

  There’s a tremor in its voice. So human. It sounds so terribly human. And afraid.

  “Why me?” it asks, just as we—I, I remind myself, there is no we here—step off the elevator onto the military level. “Please. Tell me.”

  “I don’t know,” I finally answer, adjusting the bundled head so it rests a little more comfortably beneath my arm. “I’m sorry.”

  Zelda is not nearly so sympathetic.

  “The hell?” is all she manages before slapping some kind of electromagnetic bolt on the machine’s head, knocking it out with a sharp, static sizzle. With her good arm, she tugs at the end of one of her dreadlocks. “Seriously, Long. What. The. Actual. F—”

  “Yeah,” I cut in. “I’m just as surprised as you. Believe me.”

  I honestly can’t tell whether Zelda is amazed or angry as she rotates the head back and forth, spinning it this way and that way on her work table, trying to get a good look at it.

  “Ulrich and a few others are carting the rest of the body here as we speak,” I continue. “I told them to be discreet. For obvious reasons. So, what do you think?”

  Her lips are moving almost imperceptibly, but she’s not actually saying anything aloud. It’s like her mouth is struggling to follow the rapid speed of her thoughts. I watch more closely, and realize she’s repeating the same phrase. What is this? What is this? With the occasional swear word thrown in for good measure. Yeah. I know the feeling.

  “Is it possible someone created this model toward the end of the war and we’re only seeing it now?”

  “What? No.”

  “How are you so sure?”

  Zelda gives me a scathing look. One that says Ask me that again. I dare you.

  That’s right. Because Zelda was there at the end, along with a handful of other brave programmers trying to repair the damage they helped cause. Trying to reason with, or else dismantle, the higher echelon, which had already begun to devour and destroy the more pacifistic and innocuous strains of the world’s many, many artificial intelligences. Honestly, I’m not sure why she’s so offended by the question. It’s not like she’s an open book. Most of what I know about her role in the Machinations I’ve had to learn secondhand from Ulrich and others.

  “Okay,” I say slowly. “So then—what? The machines are creating new machines? The higher echelon isn’t just manufacturing old models, it’s designing new ones. Is that it?”

  Zelda laughs, a single burst of sound, like dropping a wineglass on a hardwood floor. “Hell if I know.”

  “Find out.”

  She lays a hand on the top of the machine’s featureless head. “Trust me. I intend to.”

  “Before you get to work, there’s something else you should know.” I pick at a scab on my arm until I release a fresh welling of blood. Even then, I don’t look up, trying hard not to think about the next words out of my mouth. “It has my memories. Some of them, anyway. Enough of them.”

  Zelda doesn’t laugh at this. She doesn’t sneer. She asks, “How?”

  I smile weakly. “Hell if I know.”

  “Could it have learned the memories from someone else?”

  “Like who?”

  “Some prisoner of war. A family member. Friend. I don’t know, I’m not the keeper of your social history.” She folds her good arm over the one cradled in a white sling and pinches her mouth closed. Then, after another moment, she says something I never expected to hear from her. “Sorry. Here I am giving you shit, and you’ve clearly had a long day.” I raise an eyebrow, and she rolls her eyes. “Pun unintended.”

  “Thanks,” I say, applying pressure to my bleeding scab with my thumb. It’s not working. “To answer your question, the things it knows…no. It couldn’t have learned them from someone else. It’s like it downloaded my brain.”

  Zelda shrugs. “Maybe it did.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Really? You’re a clone. Lewis managed to transfer memories into your head.” Samuel. It keeps coming back to Samuel. “Makes sense the machines could do the same.” She’s not wrong. Samuel was able to store my memories on servers before. But the facility at Brooks was destroyed—so how did the machines get access to them?

  Unless they have access to the mind that first experienced those moments…

  “But why? What would be the point?” I ask, but Zelda’s too preoccupied with the small jacks on the side of the machine’s head to answer. To keep myself from pacing and pulling my hair, I plop down on a nearby bench. “You haven’t seen the rest of this thing yet. It’s built like a human, and it believed—it tried to put on skin. Those sticky bits on the top of its head? That’s someone’s scalp.”

  She rips her hand away, scrunching her nose in disgust. “You could’ve mentioned that before. Damn.” She wriggles her gloves, trying to shake off the red strands attached to them.

  “I thought it was obvious.” I rest my chin on my arms, watching her work, and ignoring the small bubble of blood on my arm. “You should have seen it. The thing was out of its mind. It thought it was me.”

  “You tell the council about this yet?”

  “Not yet. I was hoping you could provide me with a few answers first.” I close my eyes. The existence of this machine doppelgänger only deepens the McKinley conspiracy; it solves nothing. It certainly doesn’t answer the question of who was on the footage, or who the her is that the machine mentioned. I plant my face in my arms on the table. This machine raises a whole slew of other issues, strategic and ethical alike. What it means for our war effort, I can’t begin to guess.

  “Hey, Long.”

  I jerk upright, suddenly awake and a little dizzy, as if I’d lifted my head too quickly out of the water after bobbing for apples. Zelda’s not where she was standing a moment ago; on her work table, the back of the machine’s head lies open, already partially dissected. I must have drifted off without realizing it, or suffered another blackout. One or the other. At this point, I’m too beat to care which.

  “Take off,” Zelda says, not harshly. “Get some sleep. You look like hell.”

  “You, too.” I gesture vaguely at her injuries. My thoughts feel as jumbled as—something really jumbled. “Uh, the looking like hell part.”

  Zelda smiles.

  After nearly being murdered by m
achines, anything that falls under the umbrella of “not dead” is pretty much a compliment.

  As I’m leaving, I notice I still have Ulrich’s walkie. “If you discover anything,” I tell Zelda, turning back, “anything at all, I want to hear about it first. Clear?”

  “You’re the boss,” she replies without looking up from the machine’s head.

  Just as I’m exiting the workshop, I hear a breathy curse, a clatter, and then my voice saying, “Zelda, you have to help me. Look what she’s done to me.”

  And Zelda’s awed reply: “Holy shit. What are you?”

  “I’m Commander Rhona Long, leader of the resistance,” the machine responds, annoyed.

  “Yeah,” I hear Zelda say, followed by the sound of some tool scraping against a concrete surface. “No, thanks. We already have one of those.”

  The door slides shut behind me.

  The military level passes in an iron-colored blur as I navigate the halls, trying not to make eye contact with anyone, lest they drag me into some conversation about security or the future of the base.

  I’m waiting in line, about to board the only working elevator left on the level—apart from the express elevator, which does me no good since I don’t want to go to Command—when the doors open and amidst the flood of soldiers who emerge is a face I’d recognize anywhere. The first face these eyes ever took in. The one I’ve been looking for.

  And he’s frowning.

  “Samuel!” Finally! I wave frantically to catch his attention before he gets too far away.

  His chin bounces up—he was occupied with the floor, watching his step or deeply lost in thought—and when he spots me, he returns the wave before winding his way back through the crowd.

  When he’s within reach, I pull Samuel back into the queue with me, mouthing an apology to the people behind me who’ve been waiting just as long. The rest of the elevator’s occupants spill past us, some still clutching candles, which initially baffles me until I remember the vigil. It was only hours ago, yet it already feels like a lifetime.

  Up close, he looks awful. His cheeks are pebbly and unshaven, and his eyes bruised and worried. Combined with some weight loss, I barely recognize him as the same man who rescued me from death and doubt last year.

  “About damn time.” I bypass any hellos and how-are-yous, wrapping my arms around him in a quick hug. I swear I feel his ribs through his jacket. Damn. He’s gotten skinny while out in the field. Or maybe it’s stress?

  Samuel’s breath floats toward me when he opens his mouth, and that’s when I notice how cold it is. The air-conditioning unit must be malfunctioning again. Wrapped in a blanket of adrenaline and activity, I couldn’t feel the chill before now. “Sorry,” he says. So typical. He’s always apologizing for things that aren’t even his fault. “I just got back, maybe an hour ago. I was coming to look for you, actually.” He lowers his voice, quietly adding, “Are you all right?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  He frowns, eyebrows pulling together. I didn’t mean for my tone to be so sharp, so accusing. But Cordier’s suspicion still hovers at the back of my mind, a vulture waiting for its meal. “Because of the attack, and the council’s accusations,” he replies. “Because of…Rankin.” He says his friend’s name softly, almost reverently. “Hanna met me in the hangar. She told me everything that happened. I’m so sorry.”

  I don’t look at him, because I know what expression I’ll find. His soft brown eyes will be full of sympathy, his full lips caught in a worried pout. It will be the same look he gave me when I first crawled out of my capsule, climbing naked and shivering into his arms, when everything was going wrong. It will remind me of all the reasons I deserve pity and compassion now, at this moment, and I don’t want to think about those reasons. For the first time in my life, I don’t want to remember.

  Samuel’s shoulder bumps mine as we board the elevator. Going up. I take my usual spot nearest the threshold, and try not to feel sick—trapped—as the elevator doors close.

  “So?” he persists. “How are you holding up?”

  “Physically or emotionally?” I reply.

  He hesitates, like I’ve just asked him whether I look old in a photograph. “Uh, both?”

  “You know that scene in Alien where the creature bursts out of that guy’s chest?”

  This loosens his look of concern. He breaks into a small smile. “Ouch.”

  “Yeah. I’ve had better days. And worse.”

  The elevator reaches its destination: the dormitory level. While the smell of smoke’s abated for the most part, a strong overtone of mildew has replaced it, enough to make me wrinkle my nose. I can’t speak to the rest of the level, but this whole area has a creaky, waterlogged feeling to it, like a ship that’s been a long time at sea. Distinct waterlines mark the walls at baseboard level, recalling the sprinkler detonation the other day, and even more stains ribbon down the wall from the ceiling like streaks of urine. Which I happen to recognize all too well, courtesy of McKinley’s overpopulation issue.

  As everyone disembarks, Samuel pulls me aside. I can’t help drawing comparisons to the moment when Zelda dragged me out of the queue for the elevator, inadvertently saving both our lives. Everything seems to remind me of that horrible day. It’s like carrying around a large cup of water I can’t put down.

  “Can we talk?” he asks me.

  Most people’s fear of that phrase borders on primeval, as if at some point in humanity’s past one caveman turned to his companion and said “Can we talk?” right before clubbing them over the head and kicking them into a fire. I’m no exception.

  “That’s funny. Because I was just about to ask you the same thing,” I say, smiling weakly to cover my own nerves. “Has anyone on the council contacted you yet?”

  He freezes like a doe in headlights. Like I’ve just caught him out. “I figured they were going to want answers, so I may—or may not—have dodged Lefevre and a few others in the hangar on my way here. I wanted to tell you first. You should…you should hear it all from me first.”

  “Hear what? Wait. Not here.”

  Instead of heading toward my quarters, I lead Samuel toward the Entertainment section. He follows obediently, silently, a shadow of the man I know, shrouded in a guilt I don’t yet understand.

  —

  The Entertainment section, located on the northern side of dormitory level, has always struck me as something of an anomaly in a base otherwise devoted solely to survival. Entering the area is like stepping back in time to an era where frivolity was not only acceptable, but encouraged.

  The main room, which could fit the mess hall twice over, and comfortably, was formerly a cold, unwelcoming space until we remodeled it after a twentieth-century casino, replete with warm recessed lighting, splashes of diamond art on the walls, and a carpet patterned in a long-deceased art-deco style. (When I first arrived at McKinley, Samuel regaled me with the story of how we acquired the carpet from an establishment in Anchorage during an expedition for supplies years before. It was Hanna’s idea, along with most of the décor. She’s always had a thing for the past.) In the absence of slot machines, the room is dominated by dozens of dark maple tables, chairs, and mismatched sofas and loveseats, providing plenty of seating for conversation, public events, work, or study. I even saw a Magic: The Gathering card tournament being hosted here one night, and rumor has it a group of role-players meets every Wednesday to play an old tabletop game.

  “Where are we going?” Samuel asks me.

  “Somewhere we won’t be interrupted,” I reply. “Or overheard.”

  Together, we travel through the main room to the arcade section in the back. The black lights turn the whites in our shirts purple. We look like a pair of luminescent creatures plunging through the ocean depths. As we walk, boxy game consoles and pinball machines jut suddenly out of the dark, startling me with a burst of light or sound. It’s noisy in here, each system vying for our attention with a plethora of eight-bit tunes and cheesy FX soundtra
cks. Normally, I find it charming. Right now, however, I’m running on so little sleep that I’m surprised I’m not seeing fairies floating around.

  As we make our way toward the back, Samuel gravitates toward one console that has Space Invaders written in large yellow letters on the side, faded by time. Though they don’t require money anymore to run, I notice they still possess their original coin slots and ticket dispensers on the front. How cute.

  “Check this out,” he says in a voice loud enough to be heard over the thrumming bass line of whatever song’s blaring from the loudspeakers. I watch him run his hands over the controls, utterly familiar. For a moment, his eyes brighten, and his lips curve into a smile. These games, as old as they may be, hold important sentimental value for him. “We came here after that partial collapse on Command last year. Do you remember?”

  I do. I remember one conversation in particular:

  “So how do you win?” I asked him.

  Apparently knowledge of classic arcade games hadn’t survived the leap from my predecessor’s brain to mine.

  “Win?” Samuel had replied.

  “Yeah, you know, the opposite of losing. That thing.”

  “Oh, well, you don’t. Win, I mean. There’s no set end. You just play until you lose.”

  Yeah. Story of my life.

  I drag my hand through my hair. “Samuel. I’d love to take a trip with you down memory lane, but I’m exhausted.”

  “Right,” he says, stepping away from the machine. His disappointment is palpable.

  I take him by the hand, pulling him into a nearby booth, but even here the music continues to throb in my ears like a heartbeat. “Okay. Out with it.” Between the vigil, the debate over Commander Pan’s life, and the crazy machine on the biology level, whatever calm I had at the beginning of the night is completely gone. I’m nothing but a bundle of nerves now. I feel like a power line some animal’s been chewing on, still giving off the occasional spark.

  “We went to Brooks, Rhon.” Samuel pushes the confession out quickly, like ripping off a bandage.