Wakers

by Ron Collins

  She stepped into the crowd and made her way to Tania.

  Yes, she needed this.

  The music took her, and she danced, stepping closer and closer until finally she snapped her image into Tania’s Think Space and stepped into her dance space at the same time.

  Tania gave a howl that satisfied every level of Kinji’s existence.

  She wrapped her arms around Kinji’s shoulders, ground their bodies together, then slowly planted a long, gloriously wet kiss on her lips.

  They joined, then, gathered in Think Space and danced.

  Kinji would never be the physical artist Tania was, but she had fun, and she was fair enough.

  Tonight, she danced release. She danced anger, and she danced all the questions she’d been pondering since she left the Central Inspector’s Office. Riffs poured through her veins in yellows and golds, colors that came when she wasn’t as certain as she had thought she was.

  Red was her learning color, indigo blue her passion tone.

  Greens were knowledge colors.

  But yellows and golds were her questioning spectrum, which meant she wasn’t clear about things. And to avoid dancing yellow all night, she focused as much of her time on Tania as she could, which meant that she saw a steady stream of every shade of blue that existed.

  It was a very nice color, a color that lasted late into the night and deep into the morning.

  Tania was already awake, sitting at the counter of her kitchen nook when Kinji came to. Tania had gone to three-tone red hair today.

  “Hey, sweetie,” Tania said.

  “What time is it?”

  “Well, you missed breakfast, but if you get your firm little behind up out of bed and get a shower, we could still make a late lunch.”

  Kinji sighed, rolled to the edge of the bed, and ran a hand through her tangled hair. Her head swam, and she felt the ache of her thighs, calves, and stomach. She looked at Tania. “How do you look so good this early in the day?”

  Tania gave a blazing smile and pointed at the tabs sitting on the nightstand. “Dental tabs, baby. With a lemon-water chaser,” she said. “The key to everything. Try one.”

  “All right,” she said with a laugh, reaching the top off the bottle and draining the glass Tania put down.

  The liquid felt wonderful.

  The tabs did whiten teeth, but they were also a low-grade synthetic drug that pushed a slow dopamine bump, as well as a vasodilator that helped ease headaches.

  She stood up and walked toward the shower.

  Tania stepped into the room with her and sat on the privy while she prepared.

  “So, you’ve got something to tell me,” Tania said.

  “What do you mean?” Kinji stepped into the shower and punched up water at 30.5 degrees. The stream bit into her shoulders and flowed down her head. She moaned.

  “Come now, love. You don’t honestly think you were covering well enough to fool me, did you? Something’s bothering you. It’s hanging over you like a wave.”

  “You’re in my TS?”

  Water splashed. She scrubbed herself.

  Tania laughed. “Honey, I can read you like a palm. But it didn’t take sending a spy bot up your brain cord to tell something’s up. You were a butt-kicking woman on the floor last night, and if that wasn’t enough, I would say someone must be T-doping just based on your … uh … activities last night.”

  “Sorry.” Kinji felt herself blushing in the shower.

  “I am not complaining.”

  “So, what is it that’s got you all tied up in knots, love?” Tania said. “Was it the Waker?”

  Kinji bent to wash her legs.

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “What was he like?”

  “I don’t know. Not like anyone I’ve ever met.”

  “Did you jump his three-hundred-year-old bones?”

  “No.”

  “I know you’re losing a step in your old age, but you really should be able to run down a three-hundred-year-old guy.”

  “He’s in a clone that’s aged to nineteen.”

  “Even better. For you, at least. I assume he’s still a man.”

  “Yes, Tania, I’m sorry to report that Mr. Montgomery is a man.”

  “Pity.”

  Kinji used a moment to rinse her hair. “There are a few other things to this world than sex.”

  “That’s true. But none of them matter.”

  “Well, I’ll jump his three-hundred-year-old bones if I see him again. Good enough?”

  “It’ll have to be, won’t it?”

  Kinji used Tania’s shampoo.

  Tania waited for her, like she always did.

  “He’s just different,” Kinji finally said. “He talks about the old days with this off-the-wall passion. Money. Deals and … stuff.”

  “Well, that makes sense.”

  “Why do you say it like that?”

  “You’ve always been a sucker for something new, and in some weird-ass way this old fart is the newest thing on the block.”

  “I don’t think it’s that.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “Well, maybe that’s a little of it. But Bexie’s something more that just the flavor of the day.”

  “Bexie, is it now?”

  “It’s his name, Tania.” Sometimes Tania’s single-minded approach to the world could be incredibly wearing.

  She shut the water off and leaned into the dryer.

  A moment later she was dry.

  She stopped in her tracks when she saw Tania staring at her with a fixed expression somewhere between a grin and a grimace.

  “What?”

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  Kinji really did blush, then.

  “What did you do, Kinji Hall? I know you didn’t get Mr. Montgomery’s rocks off, because you’d have held that over my head, and I know you didn’t just spend a pleasant day chatting. What did you do?”

  Kinji knew better than to pretend that she didn’t understand. She walked to the bedroom and picked up a pair of her jeans, white with mint pinstripes.

  Tania followed her.

  “I let him in.”

  “Oh, Kinji, doll baby. Are you that much of an idiot?”

  “Maybe.”

  Tania put both hands to her head. “This is going to be a long story, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Okay. Let’s go get something to eat and you can dump it on me.”

  “Sounds good,” Kinji said.

  CHAPTER 22

  Bexie tried to land a punch, but the copper robot, or clone, or whatever the hell it was, slipped it with ease, then landed its own crushing blow to Bexie’s ribs. Bexie sucked air and fell to the ground.

  Crowds parted as more security surrounded him.

  He tried to crawl, his vision swimming as his ability to breathe slowly came back to him. He smelled the odor of dust and dirt in the concrete below him and felt its rough texture on his knees and hands.

  “You’re being a bad boy, Mr. Montgomery.”

  Then he felt a sharp sting to his upper arm. The last thing he remembered seeing was the concrete rushing up at his face.

  It was dark.

  For some reason he expected it would be cold, too. But while he could feel his body laid out over a curved surface, his back bent ever so slightly backward, his arms and legs stretched and constrained in ways that made him feel like he was on a medieval rack, he did not feel cold. Nor did he feel warm.

  He tried to talk, but his tongue didn’t seem to move. He tried to bring his arm to him, but it was clearly locked down.

  “Where am I?” he thought.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Montgomery.”

  “Where am I?”

  “We have returned you to the medical center,” the voice of the doctor bot said. “We apologize for our previous error in your care. This time we’re making sure you get the attention you need.”

  “I need to be let out.”

&n
bsp; “We know you feel that way now, but we can’t leave Wakers to their own devices until their connections are fully formed.”

  “What do you mean?” But Bexie realized what it meant as soon as he said it.

  “We need to ensure you fully absorb your learning modules, Mr. Montgomery. And you’re not going to be equipped for that until the connection has completed its acquisition process.”

  They were going to make sure they could track him before he would be allowed freedom.

  “Please don’t feel inferior,” the doctor bot continued. “We have seen this in other Wakers. But we’ll be able to help you just as we’ve helped them.”

  “How?” he said.

  “Please provide additional information. I’m not sure how to interpret your question.”

  “How will you help me? What do you mean that you’ve seen this in other Wakers?”

  “Wakers come from different cultures. Many have thought in ways that don’t match the evolutionary path your species has taken.”

  Adrenaline spiked.

  “So, we’ve had to occasionally provide a modification to the analytical portions of their frontal cortex. Don’t worry — it’s quite simple.”

  “You’re going to actually change how I think?”

  He felt something like a worm crawling through his brain then. A shiver went through his spine, the closest thing to a chill he could feel. Was it real? Would he feel the cells in his brain link together? Perhaps that would be like thinking you could feel bones healing, or blood flowing through a vein. Those were impossible, of course. There were no nerve endings there, no paths to feel them. But Bexie thought he could feel this attack. He thought he could feel individual synapses firing differently as the doc bot worked to alter his own thinking.

  “Don’t think of it as changing how you think. All the passages are there, all the memories. But there are safe ways to process information in today’s world, so we’re going to improve the pathways that your mind will select when you need to make such decisions as you made in the shops.”

  “I don’t want to think in safe ways. I want to think like I think.”

  The doctor bot seemed to hesitate, a pause that made Bexie feel like he had won something.

  “That way of thinking is outdated, Mr. Montgomery. It is important you understand this. It is well understood that it does not lead to optimal comfort and optimal happiness for society.”

  The chill Bexie felt just got worse, even if he couldn’t sense it — or maybe because he couldn’t sense it physically. He was going to lose himself, his ability to control how his mind processed information, lose how he made his own decisions. He couldn’t think of anything worse.

  He pressed harder against his restraints, but probably only served to bruise his wrists and strain a tendon in his elbow. He had to get out of here. He put energy into his thought and tried to envision himself destroying the worms crawling through his brain, because that’s how he saw them now — worms, a thousand squirming creatures sliding through the folds of his gray matter.

  “Can I at least go to my room? I’ll be good, I promise.”

  “We’ll be giving you a new room when the linkages are properly tested and found to be firm.”

  “Can I go there now?”

  “No, Mr. Montgomery. We will finish the process first.”

  “No!” he screamed. “Stop it!”

  But the doctor bot did not respond. Fear rose, then wonder, then, oddly, a sense of boredom or simple weariness that in its own way was even more unnerving. He pressed against the tingling in his mind. He could feel it. He swore he could. It was cold water slithering through his connections. His muscles strained with the effort of rejecting this invisible attack, but still it came. What was going to happen as he lost control? Would he feel it? Would a light switch flip? Would it hurt?

  Or would his thoughts just slip away quietly like the moon sliding over the black sky?

  CHAPTER 23

  “There’s not a system that’s been designed that can’t be hacked if someone’s got enough interest in it.”

  GreYStroke – Code buster, 2112

  Recorded from his cell

  Kinji and Tania went to brunch at Keltiki’s, a deli bar on the Acapulco coastline. They sat out on an exposed platform under the shade of the restaurant’s awning and enjoyed the gorgeous, sunny day.

  Kinji wore a pair of sunshades that scrolled news under her frame of reference as she stared out into the bay. The shades made her feel good, today. Oddly romantic. They hid her eyes, she thought. For some reason, she didn’t want to be seen.

  Tania sat with her back to a walk-through garden of palm trees and guava plants, consuming a smokeless cigarette that was a mix of cannabis and genetically stripped tobacco from Ethiopia.

  “Want?” she said, offering Kinji.

  “Not now.”

  The sun had crested the midday point and was beginning to create glare on the tops of the Pacific waves.

  The smell of fresh deli foods and coconut oils made Kinji’s stomach growl while they waited for the food to come, which fortunately wasn’t long.

  Kinji took a bite of her salad — salmon over Dorchester lettuce, with sprigs of guacamole-flavored sprouts, dried cranberry, and roasted almonds. She enjoyed the sense of fullness in her mouth, moaning with pleasure. “That’s sooo good,” she said, then took another bite.

  “So,” Tania said. “Tell me more.”

  Kinji told her about escorting Bexie to the plaza.

  She mentioned the presence of the medical center escorts and feeling like she was being watched. But mostly she talked about him. She described the fashion show he put on. “He was so awkward at first,” she said. “But then he just took it and ran, you know?”

  “I love that in a guy,” Tania said, rolling her eyes.

  “You’d have been impressed, Tania,” Kinji replied. “He played the crowd. Natural. Kind of like you but with different equipment, and so much less obnoxious.”

  Tania stuck out her tongue.

  Kinji ignored her, talking about his ability to jump into her design and make good suggestions.

  “He was so curious. And he was sharp. I mean, he’s out of date, but he put one and one together really well, and he had vision.”

  “Funny how a lot of tall, strong guys have vision.”

  “Oh, shut the hell up. You’d like him, I think, even though he’s a man.”

  “Hey, a man will do if there’s nothing else available. Like a door handle or a perfectly good washing machine.”

  Kinji rolled her eyes. “Whatever.” She chewed another bite of her salad and watched the waves come up across the beach.

  “He had that feeling, you know. Skittish.”

  “Trapped bird.”

  “Yeah. He wanted out.”

  Tania’s expression grew darker, and she tilted her head as she looked at Kinji. Slowly, she glanced around the room as if checking for surveillance. “You showed him the Free Think, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  Tania stared at her.

  “Not exactly.”

  “You know I hate it when you’re being obtuse on purpose, right?”

  “That’s why I’m so good at it.”

  Tania gave her a stink-eye but waited for Kinji to continue.

  “I didn’t show him how to get there yet, because I couldn’t do it without being too obvious. But I left him the gate and told him kinda sorta how to find it.”

  “Oh, Kinji.”

  “I had to.”

  “No. You did not. If he gets caught with that in his TS a lot of people could get hurt. You know that, right? I mean—” Tania ran her hand through her hair, pausing to make a fist. “That’s so fucking dangerous.”

  “He’s an artist.”

  “Ha.”

  “He is. In his own way. I couldn’t bear seeing him stuck like that.”

  “So where is he now?” Tania said, sitting back in her chair.

  Kinji picked at h
er salad. “I don’t know. I’ve been scanning the wires, but there’s no news.”

  “They probably got him.”

  “Maybe. I told you. He’s special.”

  “Don’t bet your titties if you can’t afford to lose them.”

  Kinji stared at her. “Seriously, Tania?”

  Her friend’s response was a classic in-your-face gaze.

  Kinji shook her head. Where was Bexie? And, really, why did it matter? She’d spent only a part of one day with him.

  “I watched him leave, Tania. The whole way — if I hadn’t known he was there, I wouldn’t have been able to tell a difference. He didn’t even know the equipment and his diversion was sublime.”

  “A natural.”

  “He was. It was beautiful to watch.”

  “Sounds like an interesting guy.”

  Kinji nodded and looked out at a sailboat skimming the waves.

  “If the CIO catches him, Kinji, they’ll do a full scan, and that means they might find the zone.”

  “I think he’ll be able to hide it.”

  “He’s new. They’ll get through to him.”

  “He’s had at least a little time in Think Space, and it was clear to me that he knew it was something important to shield.”

  “Typical. You just met this guy and already you’re taking up for him.”

  “You would, too, if you had met him.”

  “So, you’re going to help him again.”

  Kinji glanced up at Tania with an expression that must have shown her surprise.

  “Kinji, sugar. When are you going to finally learn that I can see through everything you are? That’s what I do, honey. I do people. And you’re my fave people.”

  Kinji laughed.

  “No joke, Kinji.” This time Tania’s eyes were clear, and her jaw was set. “I know where you’re going with this. You’re going to go into the safe zone and help him take the next step.”

  Kinji didn’t deny it. It was exactly what she’d been contemplating.

  “Don’t fuck this up. I may well drop for anyone who bats me an eye, but I don’t think I could live in a world without you in it.”