The Death of All Things

by Faith Hunter

  John ran to the door. It opened this time. He disappeared into the haze outside.

  * * *

  John awoke in pain, strapped to an unyielding backboard with a neck brace tight under his chin.

  His rig was upturned. A dump truck had rammed it from behind. Two paramedics hoisted John on their stretcher as police and firemen and bystanders looked on.

  He saw Clara in the crowd.

  John sobbed.

  “Take it easy, pal,” one of the medics said.

  The world was all flashing red lights and the smell of spilled diesel as they lifted him into the warm confines of their ambulance. John reached into his pocket for his wedding ring, desperately thinking of Evelyn, his poor Evelyn, and what would happen to her if he was gone.

  He checked both pockets. The ring wasn’t there.

  One of the paramedics loomed over him. He had wrinkled eyes with slicked back salt-and-pepper hair and a matching beard. John’s vision grew bleary, distorted, and the medic’s face shifted into that of a red-eyed goat with twisted horns and brown teeth.

  But only for a second.

  “I found your ring near your truck,” the medic said. He slid it onto John’s finger.

  “Thank you,” John croaked.

  “Don’t sweat it,” the medic said. “I’ll put it on your tab.”

  DEATH AND MY MENTIONS

  Fran Wilde

  Kryssamit paid the captain of the rusting vaporetto to take her all the way up to the Hotel des Bains’ half-sunken second floor. She clutched her worn messenger bag as the boat creaked precariously over the waves. Below the hull, shadows of windows gaped open like startled fish. Everything in Venice smelled like sewers and rot, even out on the Lido.

  They didn’t pay her enough for this.

  Wouldn’t, either. Not until after the company’s public launch in twelve hours.

  Instead, Aeterna, Inc. gave interns like Kryssamit discarded hearts and souls. Those were the company’s terms for the digital equivalent, anyway: lost photos, deleted experiences, personal histories scraped from dating profiles. Meant for personal use only, but on the black market, those went for good money.

  Aeterna had been the first to realize: everyone wanted immortality. Or at least the guaranteed server space that came with it.

  That’s why interns, at least, worked for no money until the launch. That’s why they’d sift through discarded files, looking for footage—hearts and souls, that proved connections with celebrities, geniuses, with Ms. Lavin, with any of the immortals Thoth might potentially select.

  Buyers with just the right amount of insider information were particularly keen on making themselves more interesting, perhaps gaining Thoth’s attention, pre-launch.

  A seagull cruised the blue sky above the boat. Instead of taking a photo, Kryssamit thought back to her last conversation with Aeterna’s AI. Thoth, once a non-player god in a moderately popular video game, had laughed at various investors’ efforts to game Aeterna’s first pre-approved immortality list. Meantime, Krys worried aloud. “No one’s putting down a deposit, just angling for your attention.”

  “Our boss isn’t worried; you shouldn’t be,” Thoth had said in Krys’ ear when it finished laughing. The AI gave Krys and the other interns their work orders, but Thoth’s boss was Aeterna’s aging CEO, Merienne Lavin, whom, until today, Krys figured she’d never meet.

  “Thanks to BethAnn Plantagenet leaping on deck to become the first immortal, everyone’s watching and waiting,” she’d shot back. “But everyone still wants to see how she fares.”

  Graceful BethAnn, mediocre singer, dark hair, tea-colored eyes that just ate up the camera, young starlet already struggling to find work after her newly-discovered status wore off. She’d wanted to make sure her legacy didn’t get wiped. “I want to last,” she’d told reporters. She’d signed on. For all of it.

  For the right to be first more than anything.

  “If there are no glitches, people will pay all sorts of money for a spot on the list. For all the extra heart and soul mods too.” Thoth was right about the latter already, but not just for the mods. Krys couldn’t sell second-hand hearts and souls fast enough.

  “Not diving today?” The vaporetto captain asked, breaking into Kryssamit’s thoughts.

  Krys shook her head. “Here for work.”

  The captain looked about to ask more questions, so Krys dug in her bag, even though the only things inside were a satellite screen, some files, and a crumpled chocolate bar wrapper.

  People hungered for information and advantage everywhere. At Aeterna, the interns’ public mentions flooded with asks for footage of the burn room, of Thoth, of BethAnn. Anything. Some of the interns faked data to turn a quick profit and got canned. But Krys never had. She’d stuck to hearts and souls.

  Until Thoth put her on a boat headed for the worst network zone in the world, on the day of Aeterna’s public launch. To deliver a report to the only other person besides BethAnn that the company had guaranteed immortality: Merienne Lavin, Aeterna’s CEO. Who’d retreated to sunken Venice to watch the birth of the first immortal, to die of old age herself, and then to reappear with the help of Aeterna’s software.

  But in order for Aeterna’s version of immortality to succeed, Ms. Lavin had to stay alive for a few days more and BethAnn needed to die.

  And then BethAnn needed to come back.

  But BethAnn had only managed to do the first thing so far.

  The details were in the report Kryssamit carried to the Hotel des Bains.

  As the boat bumped over the Adriatic’s chop and what was left of Venice crested the horizon, Krys cursed her luck and wished she’d done a lot more hustling. The company’s future could go either way. All Kryssamit’s invested time could go either way too.

  “Don’t worry,” Thoth said in her earbud. “You’ll be fine.”

  That was easy for the AI to say. “Why didn’t you send a VP? A manager?” Kryssamit whispered so the captain wouldn’t hear. She wasn’t sure how many VPs there were at Aeterna.

  “You’re much less expensive,” Thoth whispered back.

  Less Expensive: more expendable. Less connected. No one at Aeterna Inc. or anywhere else wanted to be disconnected for too long. When social profile ranks impacted your credit and the popularity of opinions drove down the price of goods, you stayed on the hook. Downtime could wreck you. Worse, once Aeterna launched, downtime could limit how deep your afterlife went.

  Who deserved immortality? That had been the big question in Krys’ mentions and everywhere else lately. What no one knew to ask yet was: Who’d get thrown off the servers later to make space for the future?

  That was insider info even the biggest hustler wouldn’t sell. They knew they were expendable already.

  There was a time when there’d been enough storage to go around. But everyone logged everything now. Cradle to grave. In sepia and full color. Artistic, with font overlays, music, and straight up raw. Too much data, and companies had begun deleting things wholesale to make room for new. A few mistakes here and there, lifetimes lost, and Aeterna was born to standardize what would be kept and what would be discarded.

  Whatever. Krys had always wanted to travel, see things firsthand. She’d just never had the cash. Now, Venice shimmered beneath her, on the company’s dime.

  Ms. Lavin had the cash. Had paid Krys’ way. Lavin would make it all back and more after the company launched. But the CEO didn’t want anyone to know she was dying, not until after. So, secrecy, and an intern to hand-carry a report to a wifi slow zone. Less risk of damaging information getting out last minute.

  And Thoth trusted Kryssamit. That meant a lot to her.

  Find a pipe or a metal frame to boost your signal once you’re in the hotel.

  Thoth’s messages in Krys’ mentions came through even as the AI’s voice faded with the last of the network.

  Kryssamit cursed softly. Thoth had said of the whole trip, “You won’t be alone.”

  She’d
believed the AI. It would have been reassuring, too, except Thoth had let her listen in as it said the same thing to Death, the assassin hired to take BethAnn over to immortality. That gave Kryssamit chills. Thoth didn’t seem to mind.

  The vaporetto chugged to a slow halt. No one waited on the balcony to catch the tossed line, so Krys jumped the short distance to the ledge and clung there. “I’ll call when I’m ready,” she shouted, hoping the captain could hear her over the engine.

  The elderly captain didn’t even look back as Krys struggled over the railing, the salt-wake licking at her jeans and soaking her sneakers.

  She made it over the ledge and then climbed the makeshift ladder to the third floor. No elevators here in the shell of the old hotel. No entrance either. Merienne Lavin had taken the entire floor for herself and her secretaries and no one had cared to stop her. Boxes from numerous drone deliveries lay scattered around, their packaging gutted and spilled across the scratched parquet.

  “Everyone’s out diving the city,” Ms. Lavin’s voice echoed against the high ceilings. She coughed softly into her sleeve. “Come in.”

  Krys did as told. The wide settee the CEO lay on was the only soft thing in the room. Lavin’s skin was nearly transparent as ice. Swathed in a thick cream turban and robe, she looked like a has-been twentieth century movie star. A walker waited beside the settee. A box of health-shakes, two dozen, sat half-opened on the floor beside it. Bottles of pills, too.

  “Ma’am.” Krys fussed with her messenger bag. “Still no sign of Ms. Plantagenet.”

  The CEO waved her forward. “It’s true then. She might be gone for good?” Her hand shook.

  Kryssamit nodded. “Death kinked the job.”

  She’d practiced saying it on the flight from London. Thoth had said it first.

  “How? We had a contract.” Lavin sounded truly amazed, but her outrage clipped each word short.

  Krys waited. When Lavin didn’t continue, she said carefully, “The evidence was hard to find. Just a few bits of footage.” She swallowed hard. The footage was Aeterna-owned, but she’d made the copy. Risky for an intern, an employer’s misdirected blame. “This is so far above my paygrade…” She let her voice trail off. Krys was pretty sure Lavin didn’t know she was selling hearts and souls, but was it worth antagonizing her boss?

  Thanks to the black market, Krys had paid off all her debts before she left. She’d banked some credit in the bank-of-mattress, too. Bought a better camera for her phone, more filters. But it wasn’t enough. Immortality or adventure. One or the other.

  That’s why she’d gone to Venice when Thoth said go.

  Now her funds were halfway around the world. And she was here, in a sunken hotel on the submerged Lido, with no network. Lavin cared about secrecy, and Krys could see why. But a few strands of footage shot here might make her famous enough for even a wayward AI to consider her worthy of immortality. Some day.

  Better that than a data-wipe when a server ran out of space. That’s what BethAnn had told all the reporters, every chance she got. Aeterna was betting that, tomorrow, everyone would agree.

  But if Krys and Lavin couldn’t beat Death, the bet would fail. No BethAnn, no launch.

  “Show me,” the ailing CEO said. “Show me everything.”

  Sali, this guy just tried to pick me up in a bar by quoting my Aeterna page. But he’s got nothing on his profile. He’s a blank.

  The soon-to-be immortal’s voice sounded like water over rocks in the cavernous hotel room. “BethAnn Plantagenet, last known conversation,” Krys whispered. “Seven billion followers.”

  Lavin nodded, turning her ear to listen harder. “As it should be.”

  Dick.

  “Sali’s her personal assistant—an AI. Foul mouthed thing.”

  “That I know,” Lavin said.

  “Locked down right after the murder. Won’t talk to anyone.”

  “That I didn’t.”

  No, really, it’s a problem. He said I’ll be wiped. That it’s just marketing. A blank said that to me.

  Aeterna promised. We’re good for it.

  I’m making copies anyway. I want your help.

  Krys pulled out a sheaf of logs showing BethAnn’s attempts to copy her data. Each time she reached for an image, shifts happened. Footage disappeared, replaced by other shots, different angles. Pieces of stories appeared with a new name added here, a shade-dimmed silhouette appearing by her side.

  “Who is that?” Lavin whispered. But Krys had watched her face. She’d said the words as if she was being recorded, for effect. Lavin knew who the silhouette was.

  She’d seen the same silhouette in her own Aeterna-locked footage.

  Krys swallowed dryly. “Your assassin? Freelance, right?”

  Lavin waved a frail hand. She reached for a shake on the table beside the settee. “There’s water in the bathroom in gallon containers. And some snack bars. Help yourself. We can get more delivered.”

  Grateful she wasn’t being offered a shake, Krys rose and turned until she spotted the bathroom behind peeling doors. Her footsteps squelched on the parquet. In the bathroom, six jugs of water, a clean plastic cup with her name Sharpied on it, and a dozen snack bars were set up on the ornate sink next to rows of pill bottles. “You won’t be alone,” Thoth had said. She shivered. She drank two glasses of the room-temperature water and pocketed one of the bars before heading back out.

  Sali, I think he’s following me. I just took my boat to the dive area, and there’s another boat already here.

  If already there, he’s not following you, he’s ahead of you.

  Sali. Cut it out, I’m frightened. I know the contract said to act happy, but this—

  You can film that. We don’t have a lot of footage of you frightened. Could come in useful.

  A final image. BethAnn’s face. A smile. Not frightened. As if she recognized a friend. And then nothing.

  * * *

  “When they found BethAnn’s boat, her dive gear was still onboard. She’s down there, in the sunken city,” Lavin said softly.

  “Beneath the Bridge of Sighs,” Kris added. The report was poetic, at least.

  A tourist had found her, on an excursion dive. Left her there, too. No matter how many times Thoth washed the system, more images of BethAnn appeared. Venice and the dead immortal: one caught the other. The sunken limestone arch, her splayed form pressed against it, cargo pants filling with fish, long, dark hair strung with kelp.

  “Now we know where she is,” Lavin snapped, her voice like crumpling paper. “Soon, everyone will know it. My mentions are already filled with her. And still, I can’t get her back.” The old woman’s voice held a deep longing.

  Krys shuddered. “There’s more.”

  “Tell me. I’m not paying you to hesitate.” The fear in the old woman’s voice came as a bit of a shock. Krys couldn’t weigh it—was it fear for Aeterna? Or fear for herself?

  “Death sent a ransom note.” Now Krys’ voice wavered. If Merienne Lavin was afraid, Krys had a right to be, too.

  On the screen, a silhouette appeared. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t show my face,” a voice said. “I’m trying to build my own portfolio, and, well, this is not something I want remembered for eternity.”

  Lavin leaned forward, reaching for the screen. “I know that voice. I’d only contracted with him on paper. I didn’t realize. Robert.”

  The voice sounded as old as Lavin’s own. Still. “Thoth wasn’t able to trace him to a name. He’s got no records.”

  An almost-face. Shadows. “I’ve done other things like this for you over the years, Merienne. Now it’s done. Now you’ll give me a life. As promised, but better. More experiences, more background. More hearts. Souls. All of it, if you want to see BethAnn again.”

  “That’s impos—” but Lavin stopped. “No. It’s possible. Especially if Sali’s helping him.”

  Of course. And now Death wanted a profile.

  Krys shook her head. He wanted it badly enough to murder
the first immortal, permanently. Withholding BethAnn’s files was almost as bad as wiping them.

  “This is a disaster for the company,” Lavin whispered. She began coughing. “Ten hours until we go public. You have to help me, Miss …”

  “Kryssamit.” She didn’t give a last name. Lavin was just being polite.

  “Thoth likes you. Said you were the brightest of the catalogue interns. The best with mentions and backstories.”

  Krys blinked. “That was kind.”

  “So you must help me. BethAnn’s gone, I’m ill. Who knows if we can satisfy Robert? We must find her, or fake her, on our own.”

  Krys froze. Lavin wanted to use her hearts and souls, too? Impossible. Not for a starlet as well known as BethAnn. “Nothing to fake,” Krys dodged, and cursed under her breath.

  So much for getting paid.

  “Now what will you do?” Krys asked. No immortal, no IPO, no company. No company, no pay.

  “We wait,” Lavin said.

  “For Death.”

  The old woman nodded. “He’ll come here next. I’m ready.” Lavin reached for her walker. She withdrew a small pistol from the handle.

  Krys swallowed. They were absolutely not paying her enough for this.

  * * *

  “I’d rather get a boat back to the mainland,” Krys muttered. “Now that I’ve brought what you needed.”

  “I’ll call you a boat when it’s over,” Lavin whispered. Her eyes were on the balcony doors. She looked younger and more awake than she had when Krys entered. “This is for posterity.”

  Krys didn’t speculate what “it” and “this” were. She was trapped in a half-drowned hotel with an immortal, waiting for Death. That was obvious enough.

  What she wanted was to be back at home, sitting on her own mattress, working on her own footage. Getting a stronger profile.

  “Can I film while we wait?”

  Lavin waved a hand dismissively. “You can film the whole thing. Consider it a bonus.”