Shall Machines Divide the Earth

by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

  “You don’t need to look at this,” Daji says from behind me. “It really is not necessary.”

  “Discipline.” I touch the door labeled Domestic Life. “As I said.”

  A room, warmly lit, with a window that looks out to a black shore and a sea the color of engine fuel. The table is set for three. One person is chopping up shallots and garlic; another is plating noodles, and a third has sat down to dine. After a time it becomes obvious they never do more than this—an infinity of shallots and garlic are produced from a synthesizer, the chopped-up ones are conveyed and fed back so they can be extruded again. The person with the kitchen knife chops and chops without ever moving on to another task. The same goes with the noodle-plating. The one idle person always leans forward slightly, as if anticipating the meal, arranging and rearranging the spoon and chopsticks. Over and over. None of them show signs of fatigue or boredom.

  I pick up the spoon and set it aside. The person continues. I take away the chopsticks. They go on to move empty air around the table. I expect that if I take away the noodle or cutting board both of the others will behave likewise, perpetually plating and chopping nothing. Their expressions are serene, with the unnaturally crystalline gazes of those up to their gills in narcotics or—as is the case—lobotomized.

  “Do their parameters,” I say into the sound of chopsticks clicking and knife rapping on the cutting board, “have to be quite this limited?”

  Daji stands against the window, her arms crossed. “Their isocortices were disabled. That means no higher functions, and they now run on simple routines they’re assigned.”

  Recognition arrives, deeply belated. The person handling the noodles—which miraculously have not turned to mush—has a face I’ve seen before, an interstellar athlete or pilot or possibly an actor; I have a good head for features but not necessarily for the purposes attached when those don’t concern me. A celebrity either way, I must’ve glimpsed them in an entertainment or broadcast.

  I stare into the celebrity’s face, wondering what brought them here. They must’ve been close to victory, one of the last two standing, to have been harvested for this exhibit. The Mandate breaks defeated duelists open like ripe fruits; anything and everything can be done to them. Even so to bear witness to it, to have the evidence before my eyes and ears, is something else. It seems senseless—I can’t see what could be gotten out of forcing braindead carcasses to perform these vacant scripts. Cruelty. Payback. “Can you,” I say to Daji, “puppeteer any of them?”

  “Detective.” Her voice is edged.

  “Well?”

  “I have access.” The line of her mouth has grown thinner and thinner.

  The celebrity blinks and straightens with borrowed awareness. Their features shift into sharp irritation as they put their hands on their hips. “Happy?” they say with Daji’s inflections.

  I study the marionette’s face a little longer. Yes: you can almost believe this is a real person with their own volition, Daji’s control has made them that much more lifelike. “It will do. Thank you.”

  The instant Daji lets go, the former celebrity returns to their business of arranging utensils. The change is abrupt and absolute, expression turning blank, will turning slack and then absent entirely. I’ve seen people in shell shock look more present.

  Competitive Spirit turns out to be two people locked in combat, seemingly to the death. Unarmed but both are doing their best to strangle, claw, and bite the life out of each other. “Amygdala edits to promote aggression, pheromonal changes to mark each other as enemies,” Daji tells me, grimacing. “The room’s flooded with neutralizing gas every so and so, to prevent anything fatal.”

  It is sick, I could say, though I knew that coming in. Engaging in Art offers a lone person chiseling a wall that instantly reforms and repairs itself. The Divide module, chattier than usual, lets me know that this empty shell used to be a sculptor who wished to become the most sought-after artist in their galactic sector. Human Gaze contains a person in military uniform staring at deconstructed engine parts, a table scattered with gears and cogs and wheels, primitive clockwork. They were, supposedly, once a soldier in the Armada of Amaryllis.

  The final exhibit is called Cerebral Pursuits, a chamber full of brains kept in glass tanks. After everything this makes me burst into laughter—it is so peculiarly absurdist, anticlimactic nearly, even as Daji grows tenser. I leave the Gallery saying, “That was instructive.”

  “It was not. You found it ghastly.”

  “Yes,” I say amicably, “but it’s useful to keep sight of what I stand to lose. If it comes to that, will you come visit and puppeteer me occasionally?”

  Her hand shoots out, gripping my wrist. “Don’t you dare joke about that. I’ll save you from this even if I have to burn up my core. I’ll sacrifice anything to keep you from those rooms. And we’ll triumph regardless; don’t you believe in me?”

  “Utterly.” I think of the Vimana’s staff, that wedding party in the lobby, even the woman I slept with on the passenger liner. “How many people on this world are marionettes?”

  Daji’s fingers tighten. Humans are visual creatures—with how fine-featured she’s made her proxy, it is easy to forget she can grind my metacarpals to dust. “Duelists get a lot of leeway, but some questions even you shouldn’t ask.”

  “Of course.” I close my hand over hers—my hand, which is gloved in her. The intimacy, nearly obscene, that can only be had with a machine. “You don’t need to risk your core for me.”

  “I risk what I please, Detective.” Her mouth quirks; she is on firm ground once more. “I want to give you all of me. We’ll be everything together. You are limitless for me. I will be mortal for you.”

  The next morning Recadat messages me to meet her at the ecodome in western Libretto, if I’d like more information on Ensine Balaskas.

  The ecodome is a construct of diamantine steel, its exterior opaque and paneled. I take a lift to the highest floor. Inside it is temperate, damp with the smell of rain but not humid the way Cadenza is, cooled by well-directed breezes. High foliage, fragrant blooming vines, a wealth of orchids. The most pleasant environment I’ve seen on Septet. This is a glimpse of what one may have in Shenzhen, temptation dangled before the deprived, the aspiring.

  I find Recadat in a mezzanine bistro. Her table is laden with cups of cold sake, perspiring, and plates of food—all untouched. Glutinous rice in little pyramids, studded with marinaded pork and gingko nuts; steamers of siu mai and braised goose feet; a platter of desserts. Lemon curd and matcha choux creams, butterfly pea cakes, taiyaki piled high with egg floss.

  “I can’t believe you remember what food I liked,” I say as I sit down. “A veritable feast.”

  “I don’t forget details. You know that, old partner.” Recadat watches me, her chin propped in her hand. “Everyone looks at you and expects your diet to be pure carnivore. Raw meat and gristle and marrow. Like you’d snap your jaw around a beautiful woman’s throat and tear her open, and she’d thank you for it.”

  “I like to defy expectations.” I smooth down the front of my coat. “And I haven’t tried cannibalism yet, beautiful women or not. Ah, cannibals—do you remember the vampire cult?”

  She laughs and sips her sake. “Yeah. Imagine getting augments so you can pretend you’re vampires and lamias. Takes all kinds, but it was real dedication. At least they didn’t kill too many, just what, a dozen between the lot?”

  There’s a level of comfort, camaraderie born of sheer duration. We’ll always be able to reminisce together. I’ve eased her back into it and, despite the danger it represents, I’ve missed this closeness. “When we get home we’re going to have to catch up. Drinks on me.” Then, because I have an unbreakable habit of picking at scabs, I add, “Last night, back at the hotel—”

  Her expression flickers, the slightest spasm of the mouth. Her left thumb jerks against the sake cup as though she’s been lightly electrocuted. “Sorry. It’s just—you’re a piece of Ayothaya, the
only one that I know for sure escaped and survived. I was feeling low and homesick; I embarrassed myself completely. You like your women with riper figures, anyway, and I’d look terrible in a qipao or cocktail gown.”

  Not unequivocal, but she’s given me an out. The path of least resistance is the most convenient for all of us. “You look just fine the way you are. But you have nothing to apologize for.”

  Her smile is small, rueful. But she seems as relieved as I am to steer the conversation elsewhere. “I have to say, when we first met I couldn’t imagine you having tiny pastries either. And then you still, somehow, make eating these look . . . ”

  “Angry?” I take one of the small taiyaki. It’s stuffed with black sesame paste. These things have to be eaten in a single bite—the filling spills everywhere otherwise. “Famished? It’s just my face. You know I was born glaring.”

  “You were born solemn and grew into a wolf. All black muzzle and predator eyes.” She picks up one of the choux creams, eats it in a single bite like I do. “Before I met you, I used to chase a particular kind of men—fragile and pleasant to look at, but useless. You made me realize I preferred women.”

  “You never did tell me that.” I raise an eyebrow. “Funny, Eurydice said something similar—she was engaged to a boy once, that was in her twenties.”

  Recadat toys with the restaurant’s physical menu, a resin plate where items propel themselves back and forth, jellyfish sentence fragments. “You have this effect; you turn women single-minded. Speaking of which, some of the duelists I talked to fell for their regalia. Ouru too, if you can credit the thought. Must be something in the water, or in the game at any rate. Maybe the Divide module brainwashes us a little bit. Subliminal. How are you with—her?”

  “Daji is . . . very.” My mouth twitches. “Does that apply to Balaskas? Falling for her regalia?”

  “Who knows? She’s a sociopath.”

  “You know that term’s clinically meaningless.”

  “Pedant,” she says, smirking. “Anyway, I didn’t get you out here just to lunch and look at plants. I’ve been trailing Ensine Balaskas. She comes here every other day, at around the same time. Nothing if not predictable. Could be that this place reminds her of home, wherever that is.” Recadat nods at the balcony, at the view of the cascading currents below, waters running in shades of dawn.

  We don’t have long to wait. The gate between two waterfalls opens and a woman glides in, clad in a dress that appears to have been spun out of smoke, shod in shoes with impractically high heels—from here it seems they taper to near-needlepoint and add at least eleven centimeters to her height. Ensine holds in one hand a thick copper chain. At its other end is a figure in tattered white and gold, their head obscured by a hood and visor. Even from a distance it’s clear that this person is not lucid. They move with a drugged, uncertain gait and Ensine has to jerk the leash to make them turn a corner.

  Something about the figure. Familiarity throbs as sharp as a thorn deep in my palm. Adrenaline spikes, prescient, even though I don’t know yet what for.

  Pain sears my optic nerves. It takes a moment to recognize this as backlash from the neural link that connects me to Daji. AIs don’t have involuntary reactions—my fox gloves are inert—but something’s wrong. Daji?

  Her response is slow to come. Yes.

  What’s going on? Upset—she is upset. The sight of the drugged person has gotten under her skin. I didn’t even realize such drastic emotion was possible for an AI. Daji doesn’t answer, though the link stabilizes.

  “That’s her human pet,” Recadat is saying. “Makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t it? Illegally trafficked, I’d guess, not that that means anything around here. I have never seen what the person looks like, she keeps them covered up. Thannarat, are you all right?”

  My vision rebalances. Recadat noticed my reaction—it must have been visible, a twitch of the head, a pinching of the expression. “I’m fine. You know her habits and likely where she’s accommodated; what’s stopping you from dropping a Retribution strike on her?”

  “If she survives, she’ll come straight for me, and I don’t have any regalia left. And I don’t know where she’s based—I only found her here by sheer coincidence.”

  I try not to show that I’m attempting to calm down. Occasionally I wish I’d installed an endocrinal control, a switch that would allow me to adjust cortisol and adrenaline levels at will—to mute or bring on the instinct to fight. But you can develop a terrible dependence, and I’ve seen too many police officers or ex-soldiers broken by it, hollowed out to a husk. “Fair enough.”

  Ensine Balaskas and her pet reappear once more, a glimpse seen between the metal of a trellis and the shimmering fronds of a palm with low-hanging fruits. She reaches for her captive, removes the visor impossibly gently, and then yanks the hood back with abrupt violence. This time I go cold. This time it is not Daji who reacts.

  The slim waist, the rounded shoulders. The face. The face that I’ve seen over and over, near and far, next to me when I went to sleep and next to me when I woke up. Bare or under cosmetics, and once beneath the golden veil she wore at our wedding. Those high cheekbones, that tight nose, that broad plump mouth.

  Did you hear about the haruspex program? She was showing me an image: a cyborg with moonstone skin and antlers growing out of their zygomatic arches, shoulders draped in golden scales, arms clad in exoskeleton. They’re so gorgeous, each of them a unique work of art. But you know, if I became one I’d like to keep my face. We could be a matched pair, both with perfectly human faces. We’d stick out like sore thumbs and scandalize them all.

  I had looked up, only half-interested; already dismissive because I knew what the initiative entailed, that it was too new to risk. Early adopters never won. And for all my interest in machines, I never wanted to lose my autonomy and volition. You’d become state property of Shenzhen. Is that worth it?

  Eurydice gave me a long, sly look. I wouldn’t understand the significance of it until much later. Some things are worth any price, my wonderful wife. Would you bleed for love?

  My laugh was short, nearly derisive. Depends. Depends on the person, on the kind of love. Doesn’t that apply to everything?

  I was a detective. I prided myself on quickly grasping the hinge on which a person turns, the wet sanguinary core they hide from their family and friends, from the public eye. I could decipher an entire personality—the pattern of action, the decision-making process, the trauma or ease that might have informed them—within an hour of talking to a suspect or witness. How good I was at my work; how inept I was at home. I could not comprehend my wife even though the evidence was there right under my nose. Pages that I never cared to read because in my arrogance I believed I already knew the book inside out.

  Ensine Balaskas tugs on the leash attached to the thing that looks like my wife, the puppet shell that might be all that remains of my wife. Ensine laughs, the noise like razors on glass, and pulls again. The two of them move into a labyrinth of flora, and soon they disappear from view.

  Chapter Six

  My regalia nearly pounces on me as soon as I’m through the suite’s door. She isn’t light—proxies are made from alloys and nanites much denser than my cybernetics—and she pins me to the wall by sheer mass. “Detective.” She nips at my neck. One of her hands is already at my belt.

  I take hold of her shoulders, gripping hard. “Were you going to tell me? Were you ever?”

  “Yes.” Her mouth is hot, her hands likewise as she unbuttons my shirt. Most of her is bare, gleaming with temptation, as though illuminated from within. “When you’re victorious. I’d present myself to you as the prize. You want your wife back. You’ll get that. The data—”

  “You’re not Eurydice.” Stupid. The clues have been at my fingertips this entire time, and as with my wife I ignored them. I didn’t think such a coincidence was probable, even though I should have suspected from the moment Daji admitted she used to be a haruspex, that her human half died in the
process. Simply I had assumed such botches were common. “This is the real reason you chose me as your duelist.” As well the real reason Benzaiten in Autumn approached and offered me xer patronage: a machine experiment, the same as the Gallery.

  “I am Eurydice,” Daji whispers, clinging to me. “I was part of her, deep inside her brain. We were a single being.”

  I push her away and straighten, drawing air into my lungs as fast as I can. But all that comes is the rose-and-pomegranate fragrance of her, a fragrance that has nothing to do with my wife. Eurydice never wore perfume so distinct; for her it was subtle jasmine, and even then rarely.

  My regalia looks at me, her hands at her sides. “You don’t want me anymore.”

  Another breath. Still only Daji’s scent. What rises in me is jagged, animal. I want to take her. I want her to take me. I want us to ruin each other like two cannibal stars. My belt, half-loosened, comes off swiftly. I seize her wrists and wrap the belt around them. It’s thin restraint—even I can break free of it, let alone a proxy, but she does not resist.

  In bed I press her down, kissing her throat as I draw a knife from my coat. I bite the tender skin as I run the edge between her breasts. Flecks of gold pinwheel in her eyes as she looks up at me, her mouth parted. “Detective,” she gasps.

  Almost I want to ask her, Can you become Eurydice, but I stop myself. What would be the point save to delude myself further. She’s never tried to act like my ex-wife, has never attempted to mimic Eurydice’s mannerisms or speech, has never given the game away. She doesn’t want to go back to being a haruspex, she told me; she’d never willingly wear Eurydice’s personality and maybe not even Eurydice’s face. “I love you.” My voice is thick, harsh. “I hate you.”