by S. C. Jensen
“Let’s get you out of that harness before you give yourself a hernia,” Johanna said, bending to help me with the clasps. Gore managed to get himself out without breaking a sweat. I cursed him too.
Johanna said, “Are you always this high-strung?”
“Only when I’m floating through the ether on a hijacked bangtail, spiralling toward certain death,” I said. “Now is one of you ladies going to dish on the details, or are we going to play charades? I’ll tell you right now, I’m terrible at that game. I’ll still be guessing when we land.”
Johanna cocked a thumb toward Patti, who was still pacing and muttering to herself, and said, “She’s the boss. I’m going to make some drinks.”
“We have reason to believe someone at LunAstro is working for Price,” Patti said. “And Rae’s situation might not be what it appears to be.”
“It appears to be a hot mess,” I said. “If you’d like to tell me otherwise, I’m all ears.”
But Patti was lost in thought. My own mind wandered to connections between LunAstro and Libra. Molly, Jimi, Rae. Rae had been wearing a necklace I didn’t recognize. Mr. Fen, too. A thought started percolating in the back of my brain.
Johanna set four glasses on the counter. She said, “What’ll you have?”
Gore stretched and fell into a calisthenic routine far more complex than needed given the fact that he’d only been seated for about an hour. He bent slowly at the waist, expelling a hissing breath through his teeth as if letting the air out of a tire. When he had folded in half completely, his pale white head turning an alarming shade of pink, he said, “I’d love a glass of cold milk.”
Johanna and I blinked at him. She said, “Bovine, ovine, or caprine?”
Gore lifted his head from between his knees and twisted at the waist, his spine crackling. He looked over his shoulder at Johanna with a boyish expression on his flat, primate face. “Caprine, please. I haven’t had goat milk since I was last on the north coast. Do you really have it?”
Johanna crossed her arms and stood with her feet shoulder width apart, as if thinking she might have to tackle the goon. “No, you great lummox. Animal by-products are prohibited in extra-Terran environments, not to mention hideous.”
Gore’s face fell. “Should have known. Water’s fine, then. Or whatever synthetic hydration compound is available.”
“Do you really drink animal milk?” Johanna’s voice carried a mixture of awe and disgust, as if she had encountered an extremely rare and slightly repulsive new species.
“Southerners are bad enough.” Gore grunted and twisted himself into another convoluted pose. “You off-worlders are something else.”
“Even in the Barrens it’s considered a vile habit,” Johanna said.
“Is that so?” Gore grinned at her. “Well, I’ve enjoyed my time in the northern trade zone. I always did like a town where vile habits are easy to indulge in.”
Her lips went thin, and she looked like she wished she hadn’t brought it up.
I rolled my eyes. While I shared the big guy’s fondness for genuine dairy products, I had to wonder about a hit man who drank milk and did yoga. At least he wasn’t wearing a red necklace. I turned to Patti to ask her about the suspicious jewellery, but she wasn’t there.
The android had disappeared again. My scalp prickled.
“NRG soda,” I said and furtively tucked a hand inside my jacket. “I’m going to use the toilet.”
“That stuff will kill you,” Gore said to my retreating back.
“You and Rae should get together,” I said over my shoulder. “You’re made for one another.”
As I followed the signs toward the shuttle’s washroom facilities, I heard Johanna say, “Have you really been to the Barrens?”
I lingered inside the corridor, wanting to hear his answer. Could this be where Gore and Tom met? Tom had done some kind of special training in the northern trade zone, long before I met him. He didn’t like to talk about it. A pang of regret hit me that I had never pushed for more details. The sphere inside my pocket buzzed again. Forget it, I thought. I’ll ask Gore about it privately.
I trotted down the hall, keeping an eye out for signs. I’d have killed to have my visilens glasses. The augmented map overlay was priceless when navigating new places. But somehow I stumbled my way through the tight, switch-backing corridors into the hygiene station.
Rows of rounded port doors lined the perimeter of the waiting area. Some indicated multi-person use for families or those with caretakers. The others were marked for individuals. Orange lights above all the doors indicated that the hygiene station beyond was occupied or out of order. Great. We’re the only people on the ship, and I’m still going to have to wait to get into the bathroom.
One door had a blue light. I reached into my jacket and squeezed the metal sphere.
“Almost there, Hammett,” I whispered, and pushed the button on the outside of the door.
The door spiralled open, revealing a room covered top to bottom in pale-yellow biorubber tiles. A toilet with a privacy screen stood in one corner. A curtained shower stall in the other. Clean white towels hung on the wall next to the toilet. On the far side of the room, a counter—big enough for even Rae to empty her cosmetics bag onto—stretched from wall to wall. A generous sink and mirror hung at the far end.
I attended to the basics as quickly as possible, then took off my jacket and lay it on the counter in front of the mirror. I wore a plain white t-shirt and a pair of ripped synth-leather trousers—the only wearable combination of clothes Dickie and Tom had managed to put together in my travel bag. My face still had an unnaturally smooth and plump complexion thanks to the treatments non-consensually gifted to me by Cosmo while I was injured and unconscious in his House of Cosmetic Horrors.
My friends all thought the look was an improvement—except Tom, who had seemed a bit threatened by this younger version of me—but I was gratified to see dark circles forming beneath my eyes and faint crow’s feet emerging at the corners. Truth will out. I missed seeing my past in my face. Addiction, yeah. And survival too. Now I had to figure out how to survive what was coming. I ran my fingers through my hair and tied it up into a messy pink nest at the back of my head.
The reflection of the room behind my face wavered slightly, as if the glass was warped. I blinked my eyes a few times, and it cleared. Must be tired. I hadn’t slept properly since we got to the asteroid. The shuttle hummed beneath my feet. Now that we were on our trajectory the burners released a steady stream of gas from its combustion chambers to keep us on track. The engines produced a steady buzz that drilled into my bones and rattled my teeth. Maybe it shook the mirror too.
I reached into my jacket and pulled out Hammett’s sphere, rolling it in the palm of my hand gently. As much as the little pig irritated me sometimes, I immediately felt calmer and in control knowing its advice was just a button click away. It vibrated in my hand as if Hammett were happy to see me too. I flicked a finger over the power button and a holographic lock screen popped out of the sphere, asking for my voice passphrase and fingerprints. I pressed my thumb against the reader, and something yanked my head back.
“I hope you’re not doing what I think you’re doing.” Patti Whyte appeared in the mirror behind me as if from no where, one hand twisted in my hair and one wrapped around my throat. Rage contorted her flawless android face.
I tried to speak, to cry out, but my words came out in a strangled gasp.
She squeezed my neck between her fingers until I dropped Hammett’s sphere onto the counter. She didn’t let go. My heart pounded in my chest, and I gagged, trying to swallow past the pressure on my throat. She squeezed harder, hatred burning in her artificial eyes. How could a machine hate me so much?
I gripped her wrist with my upgrade and wrenched on her arm hard enough to open my windpipe. I sucked in a lungful of air and shouted, “Ruby Gimlet!�
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A nanoparticle field misted out to surround the SmartPet’s sphere. The particles coalesced into Hammett’s nanoskin, and the pig took shape on the counter. Big cartoonish eyes blinked up at me and the little piggy tail straightened in alarm. It said, “Oh dear. Please don’t kill her yet, Ms. Whyte. I have a message for you all.”
“A message?” Patti’s voice was a guttural hiss in my ear. “For us? She wasn’t transmitting?”
“Goodness, no.” Hammett wrinkled its little pink brow in consternation. “I am not authorized to transmit from this or any LunAstro properties or facilities.”
Patti released my throat, and I leaned against the counter, heaving in deep lungful of air.
“The lab geeks at LunAstro scanned it and gave me the all clear,” I said. “Gimme a little credit, would you?”
“I cannot afford to give anyone credit,” Patti snapped. “Someone has alerted Libra to our plans, I’m sure of it. What about that friend of yours?”
“Gore?” I said. “He’s not my friend. But given what LunAstro expects us to do, I doubt he’d want to announce our arrival. I don’t even know where our arrival is going to be.”
“They know,” she said. “I can feel it . . . ” Her eyes went distant, then she narrowed them and pinned me with her gaze. “What are you sneaking around for if you aren’t about to betray us?”
“I wasn’t sneaking around,” I grumbled, rubbing at my throat. “You were. I was having a pee and checking in with my sobriety support pet. The last couple of days haven’t exactly been a luxury vacation, you know—” A laugh climbed up my throat and burst onto the scene without permission. “Except the only luxury vacation I’ve ever been on was a lot like this . . . Never mind.”
“At least on the Island Dreamer I got a cute uniform,” Hammett said. “Apparently LunAstro prefers we let it all hang out. Do you suppose that’s that what is meant by ‘private bangtail’?”
“You don’t have any privates, Ham.”
“A pig can dream,” it said with a sigh. “I do, however, still have my dignity, unlike some unspecified members of our present company.”
I frowned at the pig. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well get dressed,” Patti snapped. “And then one of you is going to explain what exactly is going on here. What is this message?”
I slid a little farther down the counter, away from the android. The yellow room seemed to pulse with my heartbeat. My throat ached.
“Perhaps we should wait until we’re all together,” Hammett said. “There are others, are there not? I heard voices.”
“What were you doing in here by yourself?”
“Uh, going to the bathroom?” I rubbed my neck and glowered at the android. “Humans tend to do that kind of thing solo. Or hadn’t you had time to notice?”
Patti crossed her arms and stared at the floor, her jaw clenching and unclenching. She grumbled, “I’m not an idiot.”
I shook my head in exasperation. Clearly this wasn’t a two-way conversation. Turning to the pig, I said, “Since when do you care if your fuzzy pink bits are showing?”
“Since someone abandoned me in my sphere without a proper shutdown sequence.” Hammett cleared its throat dramatically. “I’ve had to while away the hours perusing all the various skins, fashion accessories, and personality upgrades available for this unit. Did you know there are more than three hundred thousand different holoskin accessories to choose from? And what in heavens are we doing in this repulsive yellow lavatory?”
“Fine, Hammett,” I said. “Just pick something and don’t break the bank. It’s fragile enough as it is.”
Patti tapped her foot and burned a hole in the side of my face with a death glare that would make a mega-corp security robot proud.
“Did you have to crush my esophagus like that?” I turned to her. “I kind of liked it the way it was.”
“Talk,” Patti said.
“I already told you,” I said. “I had to use the toilet, which you literally just watched me do. I’m not even going to bring up the fact that that’s weird on multiple levels.”
She rolled her eyes and pointed at Hammett. “And that?”
“And,” I said. “I wanted some privacy to talk to my pig—”
“That’s not nearly so off-colour as it sounds,” Hammett said.
Both Patti and I turned to stare at the SmartPet. It now wore sparkly red stilettos on its front feet and shiny black patent leather shoes with white spats on the back. A lacy black negligee dangled from its round, pink midsection and a red feather boa wrapped saucily around its fat neck. Two little pink ears poked out of the stovepipe hat upon its head. Hammett wiggled its tail. “What do you think?”
“Subtle,” I said. “I like it.”
Patti stepped backward, her eyes scanning the holoskin up and down as if looking for some clue. She said, “Are you a girl pig or a boy pig?”
“Technically I am neither male nor female,” the pig replied. “I am a complex algorithmic personality software that is designed to suss out and meet my owner’s needs.”
I patted Hammett on the head and the nanoparticle skin tickled the palm of my hand. “Why choose? Life is complicated enough without trying to force yourself into a box.”
“Sphere,” said Hammett.
“You do you, my pretty little pork chop.”
“I must insist you stop using those derogatory nicknames.” Hammett huffed and puffed out its lacy chest. “How would you like it if I called you skin bag?”
The corner of Patti’s mouth quirked up slightly. She said, “What about meat sack?”
Hammett snorted and wiggled its tail gleefully.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “The evolved ones have spoken. Now what did you think I was going to do in here? You followed me from the passenger lounge?”
The smile slipped off Patti’s face, and she observed me intensely with eyes that shifted from brown to hazel to green and back again as if unable to settle on a mood. A strand of wavy auburn hair had come loose from her bun. She looked, strangely, as if she were about to cry. Androids didn’t cry.
“You were watching me,” Patti said. “When Rae . . . There was so much hurt and anger in your face. I felt certain you blamed me, somehow. That if you thought it would help her, you would use me. No matter what the cost.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” I said.
Patti’s face fell, and she turned away from me with her mouth in a hard line. “I trusted you once,” she said. “But maybe you’re just like all the others.”
Guilt gnawed at my chest. I ran my hand through my hair and sagged against the counter. “Okay, I thought about it. But what can I do? I have to help my friends.”
“I want to help them too.” Patti clasped her hands before her. Her eyes oozed such over-the-top sincerity I couldn’t bring myself to believe she was faking it. An android should be a better actor than that.
“I want to believe you.” The words ached in my throat. Anger bubbled up in my chest again, just like it had when I was watching Patti through the glass of the observation room, with Rae screaming and thrashing on the bed. “But why do you care? You’re a machine, Patti. A plug. You look human. You act human. But you’re not.”
Patti smiled sadly and leaned against the yellow wall. She tilted her head and stared at herself in the mirror. She said, “I’m more human than you might believe.”
“I thought so, when we first met,” I said. “I tried to tell Rae that you seemed genuinely empathetic, that you wanted to help us. That that was why you helped me take down the plugs in the Mezzanine Rose.”
“I do,” she said. “I want to help.”
“She told me it was impossible,” I said. Patti winced and turned away from her reflection. I twisted my arms over my chest and faced her. “She told me humans don’t understand empathy well enough to
program it into an android. That whatever I interpreted as empathy must have an ulterior motive. So what is it, Patti? What’s the motive here?”
“She’s right,” Patti said. “True androids cannot experience empathy. In some cases, they come close, when emotion and logic are aligned. But more complex human emotions evade even the most sophisticated artificial intelligences.”
“It’s true. I have no idea why you do anything that you do.” Hammett spun in a circle and sat on its plump behind. “I can predict your future behaviour based on models that I’ve constructed on your past behaviour, but the so-called logic defies me. I’m convinced there is none, and I consider myself to be quite sophisticated.”
I poked the pig’s lacy midsection and grinned. “You certainly look it.”
But my smile was empty, just an ache in my cheeks. The cold dread that I had experienced seeing the changes in Rae returned. An intelligent virus had infected her brain and twisted her. Rae had become something both less than and more than human. She was possessed by something distinctly inhuman.
Yet the conflicting emotions on Patti’s face couldn’t be anything but human, and I knew she was a machine. What was I supposed to do with that information?
Patti took a deep breath and rubbed her face with her hands. Speaking through her fingers, she said, “You are not going to like what I have to say.”
“I don’t like being kept in the dark.”
“Let’s walk,” Patti said. “I never did care for yellow.”
The android strode across the room silently, her cloaking suit flickering between black and the soft yellow of the walls. That must have been how she escaped the observation room without any of us seeing her. I recalled the pile of clothes I’d seen on the floor where she’d been standing next to Rae’s bed. Now, Patti led me out of the hygiene station and back into the network of tightly wound corridors that honey-combed through the centre of the shuttle. Hammett trotted along behind us, taking in the scenery. The pig had always loved to travel.
