Genesis 2.0

by Collin Piprell

  "You killed your father." She repeats this proposition in neutral tones, rolls it around her mental palate.

  "It was self‐defense."

  "But you're beating yourself up over it."

  "Afterwards? I felt relief."

  Okay. That's shocking. That he'd admit it to her. "Why are you telling me this?"

  "I don't want to hide anything from you."

  "Maybe you should."

  "Should what?"

  "Want to hide things from me."

  "What do you mean?"

  "So innocent."

  "What?"

  "You have a history of this stuff."

  "What stuff?"

  "First your father, then Cisco."

  "I didn't kill him. Not your friend."

  "Coveting somebody else's woman. Crocodile tears for dead rivals."

  "No." Then he says, "I didn't want to kill Poppy. I didn't mean to."

  "Yeah, you were really sorry when Cisco went MIA."

  "We had no choice. We had to leave him behind."

  "Go to hell."

  "Give me a break," he says.

  "It's like wow, I'm horny, and there's only one woman around. So let's just take care of business."

  "I didn't kill your friend."

  "But you didn't stop him going down the hole, did you?"

  "How was I supposed to stop him?"

  "You managed to stop me."

  "I didn't want you to die."

  "You didn't like him. You don't like him." He isn't dead, she tells herself.

  "I liked him okay."

  "You don't use his name. What's his name?"

  "Cisco. Cisco was a man. A good one."

  "He still is. He isn't dead, you asshole."

  "What's done is done." Son's face goes hard. "That's what Poppy used to say. Never let yourself get distracted by things you can't help."

  "Who are you to say Cisco is done? And I'll decide what I can help and what I can't."

  •

  In some sense Son is Poppy. He embodies the ken. Dee Zu is repelled by this cold creed of calculation at the same time she's grateful he's on her side. Surprised by a rush of affection, she places a hand on his shoulder, but he looks away when she tries to meet his eyes.

  "Tell me again," Son says. "Where's Aeolia?"

  "You tell me. I'd never heard of Aeolia till yesterday."

  "It's something like a vid game?"

  "No. It's a real world. The scendents are more than teleps or avatars. They are who they are—autonomous persons independent of any living wet master." She can see she's losing him.

  "What about your friend?"

  "He's unique. Or so he says. He can operate both here and in Aeolia."

  "So there are two of him." His voice delivers a subtext: So he's twice the pain in the ass.

  "Not exactly. They have to keep his scendent suspended while the wet Cisco is up and about. He says only one of him can be up and running at any given time."

  "They?"

  "Sky, basically."

  "So this 'scendent' is like a backup."

  "Yeah."

  "I still don't understand. Where is this other place?"

  "I don't know. The malls are gone, but Aeolia remains somehow tethered to mondoland."

  "And your friend has been there?"

  "His name is Cisco, remember?"

  "Cisco has been there?"

  "So he says."

  "And Cisco figured you were going to join him up there."

  "He still does. He isn't dead."

  "What about me?"

  "Does Cisco want you to join us in Aeolia?"

  "Yeah."

  "Why not? You've got a WalkAbout."

  "Meaning?"

  "Maybe you could qualify for ascension."

  "How?"

  "The WalkAbout can serve as a two‐way channel. You need to stash a mass of data in the Lode."

  "What kind of data?"

  "Response to trauma, basically."

  "Trial by ordeal."

  "Exactly. You need data generated by stress. Lots of stress. Or so Cisco says."

  Son laughs.

  "What, that's funny?"

  "Tell me if I've got this right," he says. "First item on the agenda: Get into as much trouble as possible without actually getting killed. Next, we stuff enough of this rich experience up my WalkAbout before I am finally killed by one thing or another, and then it's hey, presto! Rebirth in another world."

  "Sort of. Same goes for me."

  In fact it would be hard to improve upon recent events, at least on the let's‐traumatize‐the‐shit‐out‐of‐us front. Too bad Son didn't get his WalkAbout a couple of days earlier.

  "So Cisco could get killed. The bio Cisco, anyway. But he'd still be alive?"

  He's using Cisco's name.

  "Yes," she says.

  "What about Auntie?" His voice breaks. "Or Poppy? The Lode doesn't have any information about them, does it? No data at all."

  Dee Zu puts her arms around him and hugs, tries to absorb some of his sorrow, needing distraction from her own. He nuzzles her, head down into the hollow of her neck, but not before she glimpses his tears. There's also a burning at the back of her eyes.

  She shouldn't let herself get distracted by things she can't help.

  boogoo boogie‐woogie

  Hard times and trouble are my ticket to ride, Aeolia‐wise. How to build a scendent that flies.

  – Dee Zu

  against the tide

  "Enough, already," Dee Zu says, and Son knows right away what she's talking about.

  "Move, move, move."

  The earworm is driving them both south toward the pod station.

  The few swarms they encounter are easily spotted. Most are cloaked only in tatters of blur dust. None—including the huge dragon Son has pegged not far ahead and to the west of himself and Dee Zu—shows any interest in them. All have pressing business to the north.

  It's hard to shake the gut feeling he's doing something fundamentally stupid. He and Dee Zu are going this way when everything else is headed the other. Toward Eden, not away from it. As though all the world knows something they don't.

  As they proceed south, they encounter fewer and fewer bios. Which is good. Because their own mantles are so tattered they're useless as either camouflage or protection against the Boogoo. If the blurs hadn't turned less predictably voracious, they'd already be dust. Whatever. They're making good time, and Sky has shut up for now.

  Everything from their own mantles to the Boogoo that shrouds the land is being transformed in ways Son doesn't understand. To say things are evolving helps to describe what's happening. But that says nothing about how or why. Or about how to deal with it. With this real situation they've got on their hands.

  "Don't worry," he says.

  "Okay," Dee Zu says.

  Then the dunes ahead of them start throwing up things to worry about. About twenty meters upwind, a patch of dust starts heaving. Not everything is Eden‐bound, it seems. Nor have mantles passed entirely out of fashion. A creature emerges from a monkeyswarm, a smaller patch rearing up in the center of the larger one, its great scaly head protruding from a shroud of blurs. Dragons normally remain deadpan. This specimen, though, looks as joyful as giant lizards ever get.

  "Is it okay to worry now?" Dee Zu says, so quietly he strains to hear her. For a mallster booby, she shows champion discipline.

  "Okay," he whispers back.

  The beast has ripped open a monkey, and it slings a jawful of guts back and forth, catapulting rankly odorous strings of black shit every which way. Resisting the impulse to duck, Son stays as still as he can, checks to see that Dee Zu also considers this a good idea. He really, really wishes they were mantled.

  Still, it all makes for good watching. Though a good watcher doesn't let such spectacles distract from routine watching in three‐sixty. Son spots no immediate threats anywhere. Back the way they've come, the double arches remain visible, still throbbi
ng with the impulse to sell hamburgers.

  Several of the eviscerated monkey's associates climb aboard the dragon, one of them ripping into its neck with six‐centimeter canines like fangs, digging for the jugular. The odds soon shift in favor of the monkeyswarm. The dragon keeps shaking them off, but for every one down two more tear into it. Eventually one finds the vein, and the beast's throat spurts blood. Then it gets better.

  Two more dragons erupt from dust mounds either side of the tussle. One is the giant Son noted earlier; the other is a big surprise, something he doesn't like to admit even to himself. They slither up the scent gradient, serpentine necks weaving from side to side, heads clear of their dust mantles, forked tongues flicking at the olfactory banquet of blood and shit, promise of feast. Seeing the odds have reversed again, the monkeys scamper together with military precision, wait a moment while a dust mantle enshrouds them, however raggedly, and then skedaddle. The two newcomers, one bigger, the other smaller than the first dragon, quickly abandon any ideas of hot pursuit. There's no need, not with all this meat right at hand.

  One dragon shoves its snout into the partially gutted lead monkey, a big male, and tugs. Meanwhile its companion watches the first dragon subside as it bleeds out.

  Judging its prey sufficiently weakened, the biggest dragon of all, the one who spurned a monkey appetizer, dives between the rear legs of the first dragon. The victim's last frantic thrashing attracts the attention of the third dragon, which abandons the monkey's remains to amble over and rip at the neck muscles of a main course that, beyond a few twitches, offers no further resistance.

  Dee Zu signs that she's impressed with these proceedings. Son smiles at her and indicates she should chill. He himself chances the slightest twist of his hips, and finds the old soreness has nearly disappeared.

  He listens to the companionable crunch and munch from the hungry duo, to their sporadic gulps and hisses of satisfaction as they gobble bone fragments and meat. All of which reminds him it's past time for his own feeding.

  A brief altercation between the two diners, a dusty foofaraw maybe over a choice bit of filet, leaves the smaller of the two bleeding profusely from one haunch. It has just enough time to rear back and tear at its own flank with fearsome teeth before it blurs, about a hundred and fifty kilos of giant lizard reduced to anonymous gray dust in moments. Gran‐Gran would have diagnosed this as divine justice, while Auntie would've seen it as a case of bad karma. "Horseshit," Poppy would say. "That's what it gets for taking the Boogoo for granted." Which is something Son has been guilty of, this past day or two. Consistency, to the extent the Boogoo has ever been consistent, has ceased to be its thing.

  "So what did he do wrong?" Dee Zu asks.

  "That was no he," he replies.

  "How do you know that?"

  The remaining dragon, having finished his meal, scuttles off to one side and disappears into the dust, no doubt looking forward to a well‐earned nap.

  Dee Zu sounds irritated. "Why should I care what sex the lizard was? What good is that information to us right now?"

  "You have to learn to see things."

  •

  Well clear of the dragons, which are no longer any real danger anyway, they make pretty good time. Checking behind them again, Son can no longer see the arches. Nor does he spot anything that might explain the sense that something evil trails them.

  warbot jamboree

  Dee Zu has instead been looking forward.

  "My God," she says.

  Half a dozen robot warriors rise from the dust, each three times as big as any boogooman. Son watches Dee Zu look around and find no place to hide.

  "What do we do now?" she asks him.

  UltraArmagirdians were another of Poppy's poster‐boy favorites, giant Swiss Army‐knife soldiers with weaponry sticking out every which way, ammo packs flapping. Good troopers that they are, the Ultras look around, reconnoitering in all directions. Then, as one, they focus on Son and Dee Zu. They shake themselves, maybe to rearrange their accessories, maybe to clear the dust though, being mere holos, they present nothing that dust could settle on. Or maybe just to scare the shit out of everyone with their clamor. Something Son and Dee Zu are not getting, at this moment.

  "Uh‐oh," she says, anxious though in no way panicky.

  "Relax," he tells her, trying to relax. "Listen."

  "I don't hear anything."

  "Exactly. That's because they're holos. The sound generator's down."

  "You know this for a fact."

  "Stealth Ultras on tippy‐toe? I don't think so. We're okay."

  These archaic warbots went extinct even before the Boogoo struck. According to Poppy, only the holo versions persisted, serving as decoys and diversions, low‐cost tactical feints.

  •

  "And what about over there?" She points toward yet another species of warbot. "Those are a couple of Shamurai Landships."

  "How could you know that?"

  "I'm a test pilot, remember? Veteran of all manner of combat Worlds."

  "Virtual worlds."

  "And these Shams aren't virtual?"

  "This—here, outside—this is real."

  "Yeah? The Worlds were realer than real." Dee Zu waves a hand at it all. "Realer than this."

  "So where are they now? These worlds."

  At the moment he's watching what could be a standard bunker, except that it has only partly emerged to stand above the surface right in front of them. Next thing, it presents a door, as though to say make yourself at home.

  "My God. What's this?" Dee Zu says.

  "I thought you knew all about Shams."

  What Son knows comes from Poppy's posters and war stories. Shamurai Landships were pre‐Boogoo warbots that could pass themselves off as innocent features of the landscape. Masters of mimicry and camouflage, of nasty traps for the unwary. One minute a Sham might resemble a rocky outcrop, a handy spot from which to perform a quick recce; the next it would present bunker superstructure, tempting shelter from the shitstorm. They were also designed both to physically morph and to project holo decoys, adopting the visual and radar profiles of a range of enemy warbots.

  "I guess the Worlds left that part out," says Dee Zu.

  The current Shams are themselves holos. They pop in and out of existence as though their generator has the hiccups, mainly looking like Shams but trying on a range of other guises. One of them, looking like a warbot for the time being, proceeds to make its silent and leisurely way right through the squad of Ultras. They show no sign of its passing.

  "So which are the decoys?" Dee Zu asks.

  "They're all decoys. Except for the ones that are diversions."

  "What, they're decoying each other?"

  "I guess."

  Now some old friends are back. Shaking their weapons menacingly, though not as menacingly as if this came with clamorous accompaniment, the Ultra phalanx advances on them in silence, fading as it approaches. One Ultra walks right up to take a swing at them with a laser stick or something before it disappears.

  "That was weird," says Dee Zu.

  "Yeah."

  Things get more interesting. The transformations in the Boogoo would be enough. But the shaky moratorium on dissing everything in sight is bringing other things out to play. At least something's bringing them out, stuff that has stayed out of sight these past years.

  "Have you seen this before?"

  "No."

  "What started them up?"

  "Not sure," he says. "Probably us."

  "How so?"

  "It's likely been years since they saw real live people out here on the land. Bare of mantle and reared up on their hind legs." Son listens to himself, hears pure Poppy.

  "So all this is like a welcome‐back party."

  "You could say that."

  By now they've got these jolly killing machines careening about the place like lambs gamboling in a meadow. This image comes, together with an ache of grief, from childhood memories of Auntie and picture book
s. "Most of this stuff," he says, "maybe the whole lot, it isn't dangerous. Only decoys, virtual flimflammery."

  "Most of it."

  "Fossil flickers," he says.

  "What?"

  "Relic holos. What Poppy called fossil flickers. I've seen a couple of these things before, when Poppy or I broke cover during the hunt or in combat. But never like this, so much stuff and all at once."

  Son has also been watching a big pigswarm that's lying low to the east of them. Chances are it's wary of proceedings as well; it's maintaining stealth protocols long beyond the normal piggy capacity to sit still.

  •

  Something else enters the field of play.

  "This one's new to me."

  "It's a Mac4," Son says. "Way ancient." According to a wall poster in the back room of the Bunker, till about 2027 the Mac4 EconoBlast Warwagon carried more firepower than anything Opposite Alliance war machines had back then.

  "Looks like it wouldn't have to fire a shot," Dee Zu says. "It could scare everybody to death."

  "Other machines don't scare, and by the time these items climbed out of the box, as Poppy used to say, machines were pretty much the only combatants out there." Aside from rogue forward observers and beta testers such as Poppy, operating only outside any official brief, generally with a projected lifespan of SFA.

  The Mac4 abruptly turns and advances straight toward them.

  "Don't move."

  "Are you crazy?"

  "Best not move out of the way of something harmless right into the path of something that'll kill you."

  "And you know which is which exactly how?"

  "Step into the path of one of them and see what happens. Or else sit tight and see what happens."

  "Thank you, Mr. Ken."

  "Sitting tight helps maintain overall focus. Plus it saves energy."

  "Rules to live by."

  Like it's all a joke. But she doesn't budge, even when the warwagon cruises by, missing her by less than a meter.

  It doesn't miss Son, who also sits tight. It passes through and around him as if either he or the Mac4 were totally insubstantial. Even the creepy sensation is probably only internally generated. The holo trundles on, silent, passing through a sudden Sham manifestation with nothing more than the brief sharing of a frizzy electrical aura. He has no idea what would produce that.