by Shaun Barger
They fled with urgent caution. Jem led them through gardens, tunnels, and the occasional rain-slick streets in a paranoid, winding pattern she hoped would evade even Armitage’s all-seeing eye, should it be looking for them.
Finally she led them through the back entrance of a squalid apartment building, careful to avoid being seen in case their mask net and dummy mod signatures had been flagged for search. She’d have to recalibrate before they made for the backup drop point she’d been given the next day, just to be safe.
The Resistance higher-ups would know that the first drop point had been compromised when Blue and the doctor didn’t show. Hopefully they had enough faith in Jem’s ability not to assume that she’d been captured too. For now it would be too dangerous for her to attempt contact.
“We’ll be safe here for the night,” Jem said, relief flooding her as she held aside the flashing peacekeeper crime-scene tape for the others to pass into the darkened apartment. “Backup transfer isn’t till tomorrow, so we’ll have to lay low for the night.”
Fluorescent streetlight filtered in through the window blinds, thin slats of illumination falling across a bloodstained VR immersion bed. These days there was so much empty housing that nobody bothered cleaning up crime scenes like this one once the initial investigation and corpse removal was complete. As such, they made perfect hiding spots for Runners like Jem.
As the doctor sat Blue down on the dusty sofa across the room from the bed, Blue’s eyes followed the crusted brown pools of old blood to the words painted on the wall just beyond.
There’d been a rash of murders across the city in the past few months. Dozens that Jem had heard about, and likely many more that she hadn’t. Civilians with their throats cut while they were in full immersion VR. And always those same words, painted in blood over the corpse.
WAKE UP.
Too many murders for just one person, Jem thought. Maybe the splashy deaths had inspired copycats. Or maybe this was the coordinated work of multiple killers trying to send a message.
She pushed thoughts of the serial killings out of her mind and closed the door tightly behind them.
“Home sweet home,” she said, lightly. “Don’t mind the mess. I obviously wasn’t expecting company, or I’d have neatened up.”
Blue smiled weakly, tearing her eyes from the bloody words. “Interesting art choice,” she said, voice still raspy from being strangled. She opened her mouth to speak again, but stopped, rubbing her throat, too pained to continue.
“Here,” Jem said, popping the grate off of the wall vent where she’d hidden a bag of rations and supplies. She brought the bag over to the others and gave them boxed waters and some nearly expired MREs.
Blue drank the water gratefully, then stood up, hands pressed against her lower back as she stretched. As she arched her back, the swell of her stomach pressed out through the baggy clothing. “Bathroom please,” she said. “Doc here never told me how much getting knocked up makes you have to piss. Might not have agreed, had I known.”
Dr. Blackwell smiled. “Humanity thanks you for your bladder’s brave sacrifice.”
Blue went into the bathroom, and then poked her head back out. “I don’t suppose the shower works?”
Jem nodded, suddenly hyperaware of her own sweaty state and body odor.
“Bar of soap in the tub. Towel on the rack. Not exactly the Hilton, but better than nothing.”
Dr. Blackwell’s cheerful demeanor dropped as soon as Blue closed the door. Her expression went slack, the lines on her face seeming to deepen as she let the worry she’d been hiding show through.
“Hasn’t been easy, trying to keep a brave face for the kid,” she said, and pulled a squashed box of cigarettes from her pocket. She barked a quiet laugh and ran a hand through her thinning hair. “Stress isn’t good for the baby, but relaxation has been something of a tall order.”
The shower turned on in the other room with a comforting hiss.
“Who is she to you?” Jem asked.
Dr. Blackwell drew a cigarette with trembling fingertips. Then, seeming to remember the girl, she slid it back in and pocketed the pack.
“I asked for healthy young women. They provided them. Snatched a few who’d been trying to make contact with the Resistance. Disabled their Synth mods, took them off the grid. Offered them a position on the condition that they volunteer for my experiments. Blue was the healthiest, smartest, and most determined to do her part for the human cause. She’s a real believer in what the fertility cure might accomplish.”
She looked at the bathroom door, hope softening the worry etched so deeply into her face. “But who is Blue to me? Why, she’s a miracle.”
Jem stared at her blankly.
Blackwell smiled, amusement sparkling in her steely eyes. “Do you believe in miracles, Jem?”
Jem thought of Thomas, teeth sunk deep into his shredded hand. Thought of the brand on his forehead. Thought of a teenage girl named Eva on every screen in every city, so many years ago. Raven hair pulled out in clumps. The inverted triangle all-seeing eye of the Synth branded on her forehead, fiery red against the porcelain white of her skin. Teeth gnashing hard enough to crack as she struggled and screamed.
And her eyes—the eyes of the girl Jem had loved, the girl she’d have died for, the girl who might as well have been her sister. Dead eyes with nothing inside. Empty but for the animal tangle of pain and insanity that had replaced her mind.
“No,” Jem replied. A dull ache in the hollow of her chest. “I really don’t.”
“Well,” Blackwell said. “That’s fair. But when you get to be as old as me, you start to notice things. Little happenstances, here and there, with massive rippling consequence. Like gentle nudges of fate’s guiding hand. I could bore you with details. Talk about the people who died to get me here. Talk about the impossible luck that kept me alive, the kindness and sacrifice of strangers.”
The doctor shrugged.
“The plague is synthetic—adaptive, organic nano-machines that totally elude observation, let alone treatment. I wasn’t even trying to find a cure. I stumbled upon it by chance. Accident. Miracle. Whatever you’d like to believe. Now here we are, tasked with the candle of humanity’s continued existence. Mother, maiden, and crone. And I . . . I think it has to mean something.”
Jem smiled politely but did not reply. She found it cruel to try and convince a person that their faith was a fairy tale. But she’d seen too much to believe that there was any sort of inherent goodness to the world. Been let down by too many to hope that some benevolent, loving presence might be watching.
There was no plan. No God but for a vicious pantheon of silicon tyrants. Just this dwindling end, and the occasional burst of light that only a fool would see as more than the meaningless happenstance of an indifferent cosmos.
Blue came out humming a song that Jem couldn’t quite place—looking to Jem very much like an angel as she emerged from the clouds of steam.
Even meaningless happenstance could have its moments, she supposed.
They insisted that Blue take the sofa to sleep, Blackwell sleeping on the floor beside her as if to defend the young woman even in her dreams.
Jem sat with her back to the door, every vibration of every rare step down the hall reverberating in her skull as she allowed herself to drift. Neon green shimmered across her vision, stripping away the darkened gloom of the apartment and replacing it with the vast warm space of an opera house. She sank deeply into the recorded memory playing out in nearly full immersion. Jem never allowed herself to be fully immersed, afraid to completely blind herself to her surroundings, even for a moment.
The oppressive silence was replaced by the gentle swell of an orchestra.
She was a child again. Sitting up straight to see over the balcony, her father’s hand enveloping hers. Eyes shining with pride and admiration as they watched her mother come spinning onto the stage. Odette the White Swan, resplendent in feathered ivory and cream.
She was pe
rfection—an embodiment of grace. On either side of the dull blue glow of an illusory lake, rows of other dancers—other swans—framed Jem’s mother at the center of the stage.
The stage shifted, the lights changed, and the scenery became the palace on the night of the royal ball. The king with his great golden staff. The court in elaborate reds and golds, a multitude of couples filling the stage as they whirled.
Jem fast-forwarded through this part, which she’d seen a million times—the royal court zipping across the stage in blinding crimson zigzags and twirls. She slowed the memory down to normal speed again as the prince danced with women hoping to woo him, his movements polite but bored as he yearned for the swan.
Jem closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she was no longer in the audience with her father. No longer a child, but a woman grown. A dancer, she and the pale, malevolently handsome man beside her moving to the light of the stage. To the shadowed faces of the audience, watching in hushed veneration.
She was Odile, the Black Swan. Jem had always preferred dancing with the dangerous grace of this dark other to the simpering beauty of Odette.
The sorcerer in black led her by the hand into the ball, emerging from a cloud of smoke with smug flourish as he presented Jem to the prince. The audience vanished, and the stage became a real palace, immense and glittering with the light of a thousand candles.
Jem and the prince took center stage for their dance, and then—
“Whatchya watching?”
Smears of green filled Jem’s vision as she pulled from the VR in a panic, only to find Blue sitting cross-legged before her. Blackwell was fast asleep on the floor beside the couch, snoring softly.
“O-oh,” Jem stammered. “I was just—”
“It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me.” Blue cast a glance at the bloody VR bed, a glimmer of longing evident in her darkly beautiful eyes. “Alan—the Runner who brought us here—he told us that your mods are special. That you don’t need to plug into a VR bed for full immersion.” She sighed. “God, I miss it.”
“Well,” Jem said, sheepish. “Hold on.”
She got up, went over to her bag of supplies. She dug around, hoping she still had it, and—there!
A thick-corded wire, two powerfully magnetic connection pads on either end.
Jem held them up for Blue to see. “You can connect with this to my mods if you like. Gotta keep one ear open for Synth, so I don’t fully immerse, but you can go as deep as you want.”
Blue grinned eagerly and nodded.
Jem peeled off the dummy mods from the skin over the contact points behind their ears and replaced them with the pads at either end of the wire. They lay down side by side and went into immersion.
Blue took in the palace with a sound of awe, turning on her heel to look at the dozens of magnificently dressed dancers frozen in place around her. The immense ballroom silent but for the echo of her footsteps against tile.
Her eyes passed over Jem and she did a double take, looking her up and down.
“You’re a dancer—er, ballerina? Like, for real?”
“Once upon a time,” Jem said, twirling around Blue, showing off.
“Never been to the ballet,” Blue said. “Never had a chance to.”
Jem took Blue’s hand, the elegant black feathers of her dress and the thrill of the dance giving her a confidence she might not have otherwise felt. “Then I suppose you’ve never danced in one either.”
She waved a hand, and Blue’s clothing turned into that of the prince, with an elaborate black doublet and white, formfitting tights. Blue’s stomach was flat, as she had chosen not to reflect the pregnancy in the manifestation of her VR avatar.
“It’s the night of the ball,” Jem said, dancing around her. “And I, the black swan, have come to make you, the prince, fall in love with me. Tricking you into choosing me over the white swan—”
“That basic bitch—” Blue scoffed.
“—with a dance,” Jem finished.
Blue craned her neck to check herself out. “Never thought I’d look so good in spandex.” She grinned at Jem and bowed with exaggerated flourish. “M’lady.”
Jem curtsied gracefully. “My prince.” She waved her hand, and gossamer strings of light formed around Blue’s body. Blue looked down at them, alarmed.
“Let the strings guide you,” Jem said. “Release yourself to them, and—”
The music swelled, the phantom dancers of the court going into motion as Jem allowed the illusion to play. She began to dance, and Blue, as instructed, allowed the strings to guide her, carrying her through the intricate choreography like a giggling marionette.
When their dance was finally over, Jem dismissed the strings, and Blue fell into her arms, cheering.
“That was amazing!” she said, breathless. “You’re so good—can you do that in real life? Or is it just a virtual automated thing, like what you did to me?”
Jem nodded, sheepish. “It’s been a while since I did it outside of VR. I’m probably rusty. Hard to find a proper studio to practice in this town.”
Blue tsked. “No appreciation for the arts, our tyrannical robot overlords.” She took Jem’s hand. “Mind if I take us somewhere?”
Jem nodded, and Blue made the palace melt away, replacing the floor with dusky yellow cloud tops, rolling and voluminous. The cloud below them was like something from a cartoon—solid instead of gaseous. The softest possible swell of a warm, cottony sponge.
Blue let herself fall back into the cloud with a contented sigh. She patted the cloud top beside her for Jem to lie down, wisps of what in real life would be sulfur dioxide pushing through her fingertips in ghostly tendrils.
In the distance, the great Venusian cloud cities hung majestically over the swirling impenetrable sea of dense atmosphere below.
“Home sweet home,” Blue said. Her smile tinged with melancholy.
Jem lay down beside her, their legs touching. “You’re a colonist?”
“Pure Venusian, through and through. My parents, we were visiting family in America. When . . .”
“That’s crazy,” Jem said. “My family, and some family friends. We were supposed to go to Venus right around when it happened.”
Jem’s family, and Eva’s—a joint vacation, long overdue. And if they had left, just three days earlier . . . she thought of the images of the screaming, ruined Eva—that cruelly branded face paraded on every screen.
“Wouldn’t that have been something,” Blue said. “The cloud cities aren’t big. We probably would have met. We’re the same age—we might have even gone to school together.” She smiled. “Life’s funny, huh?”
“Yeah,” Jem said, trying not to sound bitter. “Funny.”
“I’ll show it to you someday. Venus. Give you the grand tour!”
Jem smirked, teasing. “Oh, so you’re one of those optimists I’ve heard about. How annoying.”
“We are the worst,” Blue said. “God, I missed VR. I know this isn’t real, but it’s the best we can do. I get homesick, you know? Even after all these years.”
She sat up and a guitar made of light formed in her hands. She closed her eyes and began to pluck an unfamiliar tune, humming. “Not to mention the fact that I haven’t been able to get my hands on a guitar since I joined the Resistance. If this was real it would wreak havoc on my fingers. My calluses are totally gone by now. “
She looked down at Jem, who still lay there beside her, staring up at the boiling yellow clouds. Their eyes met and lingered.
“Here,” Blue said. “Pick a song, any song. My jam list runneth deep.”
“Umm . . .” Jem said, at a loss.
“How about some Beatles? I love playing the Beatles.”
“The who?”
Blue’s expression of horrified shock was only half jest.
“Oh Jem. Jem, Jem, Jem. Fuck’s sake, dude. Forget the slow death of terrestrial humans. This is the real tragedy. Thankfully averted by yours truly. Here, let me play you my favo
rite. It’s called ‘Hey Jude.’ ”
Jem watched her play, captivated as Blue lost herself in the song.
When she finished, she looked at Jem. Expectant.
It probably had something to do with the woman who was singing it, but the song was quite possibly the most beautiful thing Jem had ever heard.
“I like it,” she said.
“Like it?”
“I love it,” Jem said, with exaggerated breathlessness. “It’s the greatest song I’ve ever heard. I have the collected library of humanity’s entire musical history stored in my mods, and I’m going to delete them. All but that one song. Because nothing else comes close.”
Blue nodded, satisfied. “Correct answer.”
She flickered out of existence for a fraction of a moment. When she reappeared, her VR avatar’s stomach was no longer flat, but swollen with pregnancy. She smiled at Jem, caressed the swell. “If it’s a boy, I’m going to name him Jude.”
“And Judy if it’s a girl?”
Blue crinkled her nose. “Nah. If it’s a girl I’m going to name her Zoë. After my mom.”
This time it was Jem who made a face. “Zoë? You’re going to name the first child born on Earth in thirteen years Zoë ?”
“What, do you want me to name her Mary? Or Hope? Some bullshit like that?” Blue scoffed. “She’s already going to have enough of a messiah complex. I don’t want her to be a total asshole.”
She let the guitar dissolve and leaned back, staring up at the now bruised orange sky, darkened as the artificial sun began to sink, though they couldn’t actually see it through the haze.
Jem looked at her stomach. “Can I . . .” she started, but trailed off. Embarrassed.
Blue smirked. “I mean, this isn’t my real body. You won’t actually feel the baby. But sure. Go ahead.”
She pulled up her shirt, and Jem delicately placed her palm upon the smooth curve of skin. The dark of her hand standing in contrast to Blue’s lighter brown.
