Genesis 2.0

by Collin Piprell

  Sal moves to retake Cisco, who sidles around to the other side of the stacked turbine bearings, once more in possession of the catchbag cord. Sal looks no more like an angry refrigerator than he does in default mode as they move clockwise, and then counterclockwise and then back the other way again. Cisco remains always just beyond reach of those hydraulic‐looking arms.

  "Truth to tell, though, I'd be sorry to see you go, my boy. You and Dee Zu. The boy Son as well. Together, you've nearly restored my faith in humanity. Sad to say there's no hope for them. But your wet master is still with us. Standing right here and willing to break fists and feet engaging with a yakbot of Sal's caliber. That in itself is impressive."

  Cisco is standing behind the stack of backup balls before Sal can react. In an instant he loads his catchbag‐cord sling with a ball.

  "Don't be silly, my boy."

  "Guess who's fucked now."

  "Maybe it escaped your attention. Your backup was written on the wind, my boy. And you've been left just as mortal as Dee Zu. Perhaps more so, if you continue in this vein."

  "What do you know about Dee Zu? Where is she?"

  "The lovely Ms Dee Zu? On her way to America. With Son. And with a projected lifespan of about ten minutes. It's a dangerous world out there, not fit for the likes of you and your kind."

  Pleased to find he's much stronger than he was even a few minutes ago, Cisco launches the ball into the stack of electronics behind Muggs, something that produces a satisfying series of crashes and tinkles followed by sounds of frying circuitry. He reloads the sling in a blink, catapults another ball into the guts of Brian's substrate.

  "Sal!" Muggs says. "Stop him."

  overreactions

  "Fuck me, Sal. Now look what you've gone and done."

  "The subject posed a threat."

  "For a bot, you are prone to overreaction."

  "I was following the program."

  "The fuck you were. That was overreaction. All you had to do was take that sling away from him. What real threat did the boy pose?"

  "The subject's behavior displayed most of the salient criteria."

  "Sal, my friend, I suspect you'll come in handy again sometime. If I didn't, I'd tell you to take your fucking raygun and shoot yourself in the head with it."

  "I wouldn't do that."

  "You'll do what I tell you."

  "Such instructions would contravene fundamental directives."

  "Well, la‐de‐fucking‐dah. What a charmingly bureaucratic mindset."

  "Where would we be without the rule of rules?"

  "Look at that mess. We can't even salvage his brain."

  despatch from hell ~ speak not ill of the defunct

  Our headline du jour. Coming to you straight from Harry's Hat.

  R.I.P. MOM AND THE LODE

  Of course it has been a total pleasure knowing you, for we shall not speak ill of the defunct. Never mind the greatest intelligence in history was just another dingbat, when it came down to it. Nobody ever takes enough care of their data. She Who Ruled Her Universe reigns no more. Bereft of a backup, MOM winds up bereft of being. Because the format took. Big time, it took. Her temporary suicide proved nowhere nearly as temporary as she'd planned.

  So we spell an end to that particular storyline.

  Sky liked to marshal her human agents, one and all, in pursuit of lofty missions, for just one example blowing the shit out of my hideout and killing me and mine. Only to establish her authority. An old story. Been there, done that. And her latest plan? Delete this brave new world of Aeolia plus all its inhabitants, merely because it didn't conform to her ideals of openness to novelty. Heaven forbid we take the surprise out of Existence. And I'd have destroyed the joint only because it was fast becoming a totalitarian ode to Babbitry, and deserved obliviating on those grounds alone.

  Another headline.

  POSITS DEFUNCT

  Kiss the posits goodbye. But who cares? Big deal. MacPeople. Worthy successors to homo sap.

  Never mind. That's all history. Now it's time for a review, some quality time with myself.

  Imagine this. I inhabited a qubital world which itself existed only in the mind of a machine that pursued agendas I didn't entirely understand but had reason to fear. This machine personality, at war with itself, was in some ways quite mad. Just think. You're trapped in a qubital space where the reality engine, the world processor, is itself going cuckoo. And then this machine decides to commit suicide. How does that feel? Plus there's no backup.

  Whatever. The obsessive‐compulsive backer‐upper par excellence wins in the end. Me, that is. He who backs up most assiduously persists. A maxim for our time.

  •

  So we've got me. The godlike Lizard behind the scenes. Who else has survived the apocalypse?

  Sky showed no compunction about sacrificing a pawn or two when this served larger goals. Indeed, she wasn't averse to clearing the whole board, at least temporarily. This matter of her deisuicide providing a case in point, where she went so far as to sweep away the king and queen. You could even call that reckless and not be wrong. Hey. What would have happened if there was nobody left afterwards, no one to set up the pieces again?

  And what about homo saps? What's left of wet humanity? Evidence suggests it amounts to a dry weight of less than forty kilos. Minus its microbial content, that comes to maybe thirty‐five kilos. In all its glory. In short, discounting Lee and Co., and forget about miscellaneous ferals, the numbers and whereabouts of which we know little or nothing, planet Earth is left with two wet specimens of homo sap. Superior specimens, perhaps, but doomed to join their fellow extinctees soon. Their dry weight is fuck all, which is nevertheless greater than their chances of survival. No real loss at this point, eh? It's been a blast and all, but perhaps we must bid homo sap adieu.

  •

  Or so, until recently, I might have argued.

  Now I find myself conflicted. More and more I'm coming to admire our young friends. Maybe the very best have survived till the last. Because these aren't the homo saps I was happy to see the end of. Maybe I have to reassess the prospects for this world I mean to oversee in my soon‐to‐be capacity as the only one true god.

  Take Cisco. He renounces immortality, Heaven and a standing gig with Sky the Sexual Omnivore, returning to a world of pain to rescue his one true love, whom we have to admit is a piece of work. Then he risks all, scendentless and anteing up his wet master, to stop our Muggs from aborting the resurrection of Sky. I'm impressed. R.I.P. Cisco the Kid. You're an argument for giving homo sap another chance. You and Dee Zu. "Noah & Co.: The Sequel."

  And now there's Son. He turns out to be twice the rascal he first appeared, which by most standards was already quite the rascal. Though he threatens to prove a cosmic pain in the ass, the way he's carrying on.

  He has well and truly reared back on his hind legs and hollered FUCK YOU at the heavens. I like that.

  •

  And here we have Feral Boy and the scrumptious Dee Zu heading all the way over to the US of A to visit my old friend Lee. All for nothing. Even if he's still alive and they can squeeze the codes out of him. Because we don't need that shit. Though what with young Cisco dead and gone—twice dead, in fact, and twice gone—a couple of wet agents in mondoland could prove handy. You never know. I'd probably find a use for them. Especially Dee Zu, bereaved as she is, and maybe twice bereaved before long. Hah! Only joking. Maybe.

  My guess, though, is that it's goodbye Dee Zu and Son forever and ever, and what a shame. Because she is quite something. Whoo‐ee.

  Besides which, Sonny the Survivalist still has the backup ball. And we really need to neutralize that pesky gadget.

  survivors

  Every time you activate the ball's sub‐projector level the Boogoo goes demented and then comes up with a whole new bag of tricks.

  – Son

  still alive

  The godbolts stop.

  His breathing comes easier now and, when he reaches up to his
face, he finds his eyes protected by prosthetic blur lenses. Once more, the Boogoo has mantled him against harm, maybe providing camouflage against infrared sensors, which he reckons are looking for them even now. For the first time since the storm struck, he feels they can talk.

  "Dee Zu?" He reaches for her.

  "What?"

  "Are you wearing a mantle?"

  "I think so. Yeah, I am."

  They huddle together. More accurately they swarm, for once again their mantles merge.

  "Your friend missed," Son says.

  "What about after the dust clears?"

  "Guess we'll find out then."

  For now Son waits, and he watches. He can't see a thing, imprisoned as they still are by dense, dark dust unrelieved even by godbolt strikes. But he listens, for what he can't say. And, through his mantle, he senses some connection with the Boogoo. Beyond that, he has knowledge of things present to him yet not quite in sight, things that resist interpretation.

  He plays with the ball, half unscrewing the hemispheres and then screwing them back tight together again, testing his fingers, which ache, though they're not too bad.

  •

  The wind dies down, as does the dust, at least to some extent.

  Clenched against the prospect of white‐hot blasts from on high, he remains still. He watches and waits.

  "Wait," he tells Dee Zu. "Don't move."

  They're strafed by a quick burst of rain. Fat muddy drops crater the dust, smear his lenses with gray.

  "A mud storm?" Dee Zu says. "What's next?"

  "Shh." Why he'd tell her to be quiet, under the circumstances, he can't say.

  The rain falls harder and continues for some minutes before it stops. His vision clears again, this time because the lenses fall away. In moments the whole of his mantle, and Dee Zu's, sloughs off.

  Exposed once more to the sky, to the light of day, he tries to relax. Fails. This is what it is to be a roach, right out there in the middle of the dining‐room floor and trapped in the glare of Gran‐Gran's indignation. Jesus.

  In other developments, as far as the eye can see big patches of Boogoo are fluffing up and turning light gray.

  "Yo, Great Hunter."

  That's better than when she calls him boy, but not much better.

  "Recalling our earlier tutorial, I have to believe I'm looking at huge swarms of sweaty monkeys trying to cool off all over the landscape."

  "This is different," Son says.

  These patches are far larger than any bio‐blur swarm ever was. Not to mention the landscape, however subtly, is also undulating. In a minute or two the fluffing and heaving stops.

  "See?" he says. "That was just the Boogoo drying out."

  "So you say."

  Whatever. Things are dry enough a stray gust of wind whips up a dust devil and spins it along the crest of a big dune. Son watches hard for other signs of movement out there.

  "Sky?" He subvocalizes. Might as well deal with things. She hasn't killed him yet, maybe it's time to talk.

  "Are you getting anything from your friend?" he asks Dee Zu.

  "Sky? No. Nothing."

  Again he goes, "Sky?" But his head remains clear of voices. "What's going on?" he asks Dee Zu. "My WalkAbout isn't working. Is that only temporary?"

  "How would I know that?"

  What amazes Son, more than having the collective knowledge of humanity at hand ever did, is how fast he has come to rely on this power. How natural it seems. And how much he misses it now that it isn't working. He hopes the breakdown is only temporary.

  •

  A pale rainbow arches across the sky to the north. Lower, toward the horizon, scaly patches glimmer pastel shades of pink and blue and orange. A deep barking drifts down on the breeze from up toward Eden, a boss monkey asserting its authority. The Boogoo has gone quiet again.

  "You idiot." That's what she says, though she doesn't look that pissed off.

  "You're welcome."

  "Some survivalist."

  "We're alive, aren't we?"

  "A real man, a hard dude who knows what's what."

  "Your Sky pissed me off."

  "Do tell."

  No denying he deserves a dressing down. Poppy would have given him lots worse than this.

  "But thanks. I guess."

  "No problem." He waves what's left of his hand, his attempt to dismiss her gratitude with a gesture falling short. The arm hardly hurts at all. Odd.

  "You're playing with that even more than your other new toy," Dee Zu says, giving the latter item a tug.

  "What? Now?"

  "So I'll take a rain check." She gives it another tug and a gentle flick of a forefinger.

  Son loves it when she chuckles. He still can't believe how fast his hand is growing back. A hard nubbin, the hint of a nail, has appeared at the end of the little finger—on the joint that been missing these past four years.

  And Dee Zu's foot looks almost whole. She's taking turns standing first on the good foot and then, tentatively, on the bad one. "So," she says. "It's time we got a move on, no?"

  only crazy till we understand

  Son is playing with the solar system. Even in daylight Dee Zu can see the tiny sun blazing where he has drawn it out beyond the lip of its cup. He's thinking hard.

  "Why go now?" he says.

  "You've got a better plan? Something you just have to do?"

  "We need to set up a base of operations."

  "A base of what operations?"

  He tells Dee Zu about the GameBoy bunker. "We can make a life there," he says.

  "The two of us."

  "Yeah."

  "So cozy."

  "There aren't any real stocks of food; they were living hand to mouth. But I can do the hunting till you learn the ropes."

  "You really want to retreat to a hole in the ground?"

  "We could fix the place up," he says. "Make it comfortable."

  "And we'd commute to Eden for all our shopping needs."

  "Pretty much, yeah. But first off, we've got to figure out what's going on."

  "You've said it yourself—everything has gone crazy. How do we make sense of that?"

  "It's only crazy till we understand what's happening."

  "Okay, Mr. Einstein. Contact me when you've got it all worked out."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I'll be in the USA. I've got the codes and passwords. I don't need you."

  "What's the point? Where's your Sky now?"

  "I'll tell you what the point is. As long as I can do anything that might help Cisco, anything at all, I'll do it. Do you understand that?"

  "No."

  "We were part of a plan, and that plan included Cisco. You've done everything you can do to mess up our part in it; I'm going to make things right."

  Son says nothing. He walks ten meters away to stand with his back to her. He looks so forlorn she considers relenting.

  "Sky," she says. "Tor? Please. I need information. Cisco? Can you hear me? Goddamnit!"

  Son squats on his haunches. He watches to the north, where wisps of smoke still rise from Eden/Living End. He watches to the south where nothing at all is happening, so far as Dee Zu can see. He turns west and watches another dust devil dance.

  "Son?"

  He looks back toward her. "Okay," he says. "Let's move."

  blurball

  They maintain a southerly route, negotiating shallow wadis and low dunes, traveling as fast as they can.

  Son holds his one spear awkwardly, using the same hand to massage the nanobotic construction site on his other one. They stop to share a chunk of charred pig and sip water from Son's canteen. Their WalkAbouts are silent, unresponsive when queried.

  "So what about your scendent data now?" Son says. "With no WalkAbout, I mean.

  "Who can say? Maybe there's no Aeolia left to ascend to. Anyway, we've got enough else to worry about at the moment."

  "Heads down, and keep on keeping on."

  "More Poppy?"
>
  "No. Something I made up for the occasion."

  "What does it mean?"

  "I'm not sure. Whatever. Maybe Sky just isn't talking to us."

  "Mixed blessing."

  The silence in his head isn't as welcome as it might have been an hour ago.

  •

  After an hour of walking Son suddenly doubles over, convulsing.

  "Son?" Dee Zu says. "Son?"

  She's beating him on the back, and he's trying to wave her away, when he chokes up a slimy gray object maybe a quarter the size of a peach. It lies there on the ground between them and turns fuzzy.

  "What the hell?"

  "No problem." He's still gasping. "It's like a hairball."

  "A hairball."

  "Something to do with cats, Auntie said."

  "Cats."

  "Yeah." Son takes a minute to get his breath back. "Call this one a blurball."

  "My God."

  "It's like bits of mantle take up residence inside us. They assimilate blur invaders; that's why we don't get dissed from inside."

  "Have I got blurballs?"

  "Dunno. I hope so."

  "My God."

  "Auntie called them internal mantles. One more fix to help us coexist with the Boogoo."

  His coughing fit has scared her more than Sky's death threats ever did, something that pleases him more than it should. Meanwhile his blurball, this interesting conversation piece, has attracted so many wild blurs it's the size of a pear. Then it merges with the dust even as they watch.

  "A personal record," he says to Dee Zu. "Usually it takes weeks to produce anything like that."

  "Yeah, well, it's also totally gross," Dee Zu says.

  Son can see she's pretending to be more repelled than she really is, and way less worried.

  Here's an idea. Maybe he coughed up his gizmo this time. But the sense of liberation at having lost both WalkAbout and gizmo quickly passes. A passing fancy. He scratches at his hand, tells himself not to. The loss of his mantle has left him both more vulnerable and more liberated. It's wonderful to stand outside with the breeze directly on his body, this unfiltered scenting of the land.

  Free of the blurball he also feels cleaner on the inside. As though it has left a nicer space for this thing he feels for Dee Zu.