Eclipse Phase- After the Fall

by Jaym Gates

  [No,] Keb said. [Should the bodies of the Fukuda’s crew be turned over to the local authorities for an autopsy?]

  [No. Destroy all evidence.]

  Keb sighed and ended the transmission. They hated this part of the job. Yes, sometimes it was better to destroy evidence, but that didn’t make the actual act easier.

  They used the probe’s arms to pick up Val’s rifle and fired two precise shots in Cap’s back. Val and Tav stared at the probe dumbfounded. Val recovered first. She reached for her backup pistol.

  Keb put one shot between her eyes. Two shots through Tav’s heart took him down. Keb would have apologized but neither of them was going to remember this excursion anyway. Besides, it wouldn’t have alleviated their guilt.

  They tossed the railgun aside and picked up the cube. “What are you after?”

  —

  Keb’s alpha fork watched preliminary scans of the infugees from a secure simulspace. Getting a position on the debriefing team had been easy. Their history made them a perfect candidate.

  The video feed was a little grainy from the battery of security measures it was subjected to. Each infugee on the cube was being individually scanned for infection. The vapors and infected egos were immediately deleted. Since it was a matter of public safety, the powers that be didn’t bother to find out how or why. Those that passed were placed in quarantine, each one isolated. Keb paced when it was Eiko’s turn.

  [Scan commencing … Virus detection … Negative. Scanning ego integrity … Complete. Cleared for quarantine.]

  Keb nearly collapsed in relief. They sent an update to Keb prime before transferring her to a simulspace interview room. Their new security clearance as an infugee counselor made it easy.

  She sat in the center of a brown leather couch in the honey-toned room. Seeing her avatar, that of a young woman with auburn hair and Japanese features, took them back to all the pre-exam cram sessions, bad break-ups, and all-night gaming. If someone told them in that moment that the Fall had never happened, they would’ve believed them.

  Her hands were clasped so firmly in her lap that the images flickered, each projected hand at war with the other.

  Keb wanted to rush in but what if she didn’t like the person they’d become? They had to do to some rather unscrupulous things to survive after escaping Earth. Even if she didn’t object to any of that, the Keb she remembered was a he.

  [Is something wrong?”]The message from Keb prime scrolled through their consciousness.

  [No,] Keb lied. [Heading in now.]

  They pulled up from their personal archives the avatar they used before—a young black man with a shaved head and one pierced ear. A moment later they were vis-à-vis with her.

  “Eiko,” they said hesitantly.

  “Keb?” Eiko ran to them, throwing her arms around their neck. “I’m so glad to see you! I was starting to think no one else made it out!”

  They returned the embrace and for the first time in years wished they had a sleeve so they could truly savor the moment. As good as digital sensory data was, there were some experiences that it couldn’t convey as well as an organic skin.

  Keb, no longer able to stand this shadow of a reunion, broke the embrace. “Most of the gang made it out. As soon as you’re settled we’ll get everyone together to celebrate.” I’ll even get a sleeve for the occasion.

  “Is this customs? How long are they going to keep me here?”

  “Of a sort and until they’re certain that you can successfully assimilate into society,” Keb said cautiously. “A lot has changed since you left Earth. What was the last thing you remember?”

  “I remember the technician confirming that I’d been successfully uploaded.” Her brow furrowed. “Did we make it to Ceres? The captain wasn’t sure we’d get there. I think she had problems with the crew.”

  Keb turned away to hide their surprise. How did she know about that? Nothing in the log indicated that the captain had any communications with the infugees. Even if the crew had linked with the cube, the rest of the egos should have been inert.

  “Uh, I can’t divulge where we are,” they said once they’d schooled their features. “I wish I could, but procedure …”

  Eiko crossed her arms and huffed; something they didn’t recall her ever doing before. “I thought we were friends. How can you bullshit me like that?”

  Keb sat next to her and whispered. “It’s because we’re friends that I’m here! I could be fired for this!” Keb didn’t mention that it was the repercussions from Firewall that they feared. “I’m supposed to be impartial; act for the greater good.” They massaged their temples. They shouldn’t be getting a headache. One needed a head for that.

  A security breach warning from their muse briefly flashed across their view. It disappeared so quickly they wondered if it they’d imagined it until another warning flickered in front of them like a light bulb that was about to die.

  “Excuse me for a moment,” they said.

  Keb quickly checked the activity log. There were a couple of unsuccessful attempts to gain access to the facility’s archives. All were by an ID they didn’t recognize and their muse was having trouble tracking it back to the source. Bizarre.

  “Keb, where are we?”

  They turned their attention back to Eiko. She looked at him with her sad brown eyes and chewed her lip. It got him every time and she knew it. However, it wasn’t like her to turn on the charm for a simple question.

  “If I tell you, will you stop hacking the system?”

  Her shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry. It’s just that not knowing where I am is stressing me out. I need to know if they can find me here.”

  “Who?”

  “I can’t say. They have ears everywhere.”

  They could think of a few organizations powerful enough to do that. “We’re as safe as a president’s sex tape.”

  Eiko laughed. “That’s not very comforting.”

  They smiled and shrugged. “Well that’s about as good as it gets. Were they after just you or the others on the cube as well?”

  “Mostly me,” she said. “I knew too much. The others are associates, and co-workers who got caught up in it too.”

  Keb nodded. That wasn’t surprising. A lot of survivors fell into that category. They sent instructions to their muse to make a list of all known pre-Fall criminal entities that were still at large. It might turn out to be a ghost hunt but it was worth a try.

  “Would it make you feel better if my muse scanned for eavesdroppers?”

  “I’d feel better if I did it. I know what to look for.”

  They knew they shouldn’t, it went against every safety precaution, but they couldn’t find fault in her logic either. Besides, once she felt safe they could bring her up to date on the universe and on themself.

  She smiled. “Oh, thank you! Would it be too much to ask a favor?”

  “Not at all.”

  Eiko ducked her head demurely. “Could you bring out a couple of my associates? I’m worried about them. They’ve been inert for so long and it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have more experts on hand.”

  “Sure. Who did you have in mind?”

  Eiko smiled again, this time wide enough that it made her eyes sparkle. She named three egos. It wasn’t hard to find them, and luckily each had passed the initial scans. Keb brought all three over and they were overjoyed to see Eiko again. They embraced her and them in a group hug so tight that for a moment all their avatars seemed to merge. It was very disorienting.

  When they stepped back the three newcomers all looked like Eiko. For a second it perplexed them. Weren’t there others here? And just like that it suddenly became clear. How could they have forgotten that they’re forks? Yes, they’ve—

  Keb shook their head. No! That’s not right! What was happening? This was kind, sweet Eiko! She wouldn’t do th
is to them! Keb turned to the quartet. Each of them had a malevolent grin that sent a chill through their neural relays.

  They started composing a message of warning to Keb prime but they only got four words in when pain engulfed their senses. Keb fell to the floor. It was all they could do not to cry out. They weren’t about to give her the satisfaction.

  When it subsided, they saw one of her—they were uncomfortably certain it was fork 2—standing over them. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  Fork 3 stepped forward. “We can’t let you contact anyone until the process is complete.”

  “It wouldn’t do for them to hear you scream,” fork 4 said as another wave of pain struck. This one was twice the intensity of the first and, to their shame, made them scream. When it finally subsided, Keb’s avatar shook and quivered, the program barely holding together.

  “What have you done?” Keb asked the one that they somehow knew to be Eiko prime.

  “I know you’re just a fork,” she said. “But you’ll be a very useful asset.”

  “What do you want me to do?” the words came out of Keb’s mouth unbidden.

  “I want you to bring the others out of the cube. With their help we can take down anyone who threaten us and the TITAN we serve.”

  —

  “All of the remaining egos from the cube have been converted,” fork 9 said. It would have been much more efficient for her to call in their report. However, for some reason this fork preferred to appear in person.

  Keb knew now that it was the virus that allowed them to tell each fork apart. Not that knowing made any difference. They couldn’t speak or move independently. A small part that was still Keb watched, helpless, while capacities they no longer controlled used their various security clearances to open real and digital doors for Eiko’s growing number of recruits. They knew where each fork and recruit was sent and every attempt to alert someone, anyone, had a regressing measure of success. It was only a matter of time before the virus removed even this small measure of self.

  “Excellent,” Eiko prime told 9. “Send forks 27–32 into the TQZ to look for our allies. Thanks to 7, 11, 13, and 14, Pilsner City is almost under our control.”

  “They’re on their way,” fork 9 said. “Is there anything else you would like me to do?”

  “No, you’ve done well.”

  A warning claxon sounded in the room. The vibrations sent a pang through their overly sensitive neural relays. The couch disappeared, deleted. The honey-toned walls disappeared next, replaced by a construction grid. Thanks to a safety feature the room itself couldn’t be deleted while egos were still inside, although it probably wouldn’t take long for Firewall to work around that.

  Fork 9 tried to leave but found the way blocked. That last vestige of Keb smiled. 9’s image started to flicker. Both she and prime stared in disbelief as each pixel in 9’s hand fractured. Fork 9 screamed as she exploded in a burst of light.

  “You’re too late.” A cheshire grin spread across Eiko prime’s face. “You’ll never find all of us.”

  [We’ve been feeding your agents false data,] Charlyse’s voice echoed in the small room. [None of them left the facility. They’ve all been deleted.]

  “No!” Eiko screamed. “You’re lying!”

  Eiko thrust her hand out to Keb, causing a wave of pain to course through them again. This wasn’t the pain of the virus. This was pain for pain’s sake.

  “If you don’t let me out of here I’ll kill Keb’s fork.”

  [Go ahead,] Charlyse replied coolly. [You’ll be saving us the trouble.]

  The remnant of Keb laughed inside the prison of their mind. Eiko’s inexperience with the modern world couldn’t have manifested in a better way. It was impossible to play hardball with an organization that redefined collateral damage.

  The lights flickered. Eiko summoned objects to the room, any object, in the hope that increasing the digital mass in the room would maintain its existence. Items would appear for a moment or two—a bed, a coat rack, a feather, a shoe. Each would splinter and vanish in a small burst of sparks. Soon she wasn’t able to bring anything else in the room. They must have ordered Samuel to shut this down. Keb didn’t know very many people who could work that fast.

  They felt a moment of joy and relief as the lights flickered once, twice, and then went out completely. Eiko screamed in the dark. Their awareness of her disappeared a moment later. Keb could feel their mind start to crack as defenses were hacked away so they could be deleted. The pain accompanying this attack was easy to endure because, this time, there was no doubt in their mind that this was a necessary act.

  Lack

  Rob Boyle & Davidson Cole

  “What’s the number?”

  The words dig their claws into my new vocal cords and yank themselves up and out of my parched throat. My diction is predictably poor, as it always is during the first few minutes following a resleeve. The pitch of the voice is apparent despite the mumbled, sandpaper slur of the words. Definitely a biomorph, and my latest sex is female. This much I know in the first few seconds. The model eludes me right now, but I’ll know for certain soon enough, once motion is mine again. Another fury morph is my first guess.

  The slab is hard. Nothing more than frigid metal with crisp white synth-slick wrapped around it. Typical accommodations for a corp dollhouse. The chill seeps through my skin and wraps around my bones.

  A cortical cruncher looms over me, waving his welcome-back beam side to side, occasionally catching my pupils. His smug, bored face speaks: “Consciousness confirmed.” The beam clicks off. My question should have made it obvious that I am back, but the guy is a slave to procedure. They all are. Corporate body banks like their employees paralyzed by obedience, unable to think for themselves. I mumble the question again. “What’s the number?”

  “March 11.”

  “How many after the Fall?”

  “Are you for real?”

  I am paranoid. Yes. I need to know the year every time I return upon a body bank slab. Paranoia is just one of the plagues transhumanity faces these days.

  I try to snag the data from my new sleeve’s mesh inserts before opening my mouth again. No luck. Asking a sleeve tech for the year is always humiliating. Makes me feel like an amateur, but the circumstances are definitely extenuating, so I press him. Hard.

  “Answer the fucking question.”

  The corp sloth gives me the lunatic eye before he answers.

  “Uh … 10 AF. You haven’t been gone that long. Your last backup … “

  He scans his entoptics for the info.

  “ … 14 days, 7 hours ago.”

  It takes a second to sink in, but when it does, it stings. It never ceases to shock when time slips away from me. Two weeks. Gone. Completely wiped from my existence. Two weeks ago, there was another me, sleeved in another morph. There was a mission and it led to my death. That is all I know. Either Firewall failed to retrieve the cortical stack off the corpse so I could retain those two weeks, or the fuckers deliberately chose to swipe that time from me. Honestly, though, both possibilities are preferable to having another self bouncing around out there, doing who knows what-the-fuck. Some t-humies get off on having multiple selves traipsing all over, but my ego is in check. One Sava is enough misery to unleash on the ‘verse.

  Shit. My brain is wandering off into morose territory; always does during the first moments following a resleeve. I need a physical context. Something tangible to focus my attention on. I bring my hands in front of my eyes, arms feeling like two-ton sacks of rocks. The fingers are thin and long; the knuckles callused, scarred and misshapen. Obviously the work of many thrown punches, fists connecting with jaws, metal, flesh. Yep. A well-worn fury morph. You get what you pay for, I suppose; or what Firewall is willing to pay for. Why do I do it? As far as the org is concerned, I’m nothing more than a cheap precision instrument, tos
sed into the recycling bin when I snap in half. There will always be more of me, until the horrors prove too intense, until the files get too corrupt, until I know too much and Firewall decides to wipe me, then some other sap will step in to preserve transhumanity. Preserve transhumanity. Fantastic. Now I’m babbling like a Firewall propaganda tweet! My arms weaken and flop back to my sides. The strength just isn’t there yet. A few more minutes with nothing but my thoughts.

  On his way out of the recovery bay, the cort cruncher laughs at my feeble attempt at motion. “What’s your hurry?” he says. “Just relax, willya? You collapse onto the floor, you’re gonna stay there until you get yourself up. They don’t pay me enough to babysit newbies.” His flippancy doesn’t help my mood and the melancholy returns.

  What experiences are no longer a part of my consciousness? Perhaps the thrill of a lifetime. Did I discover true beauty? Fall in love? Have an epiphany? Save a life? I’ll never know. Those memories, that life, that version of me, is gone. The new me, lying on this slab, was never shaped by those experiences. My chest hollows out from the weight of the loss.

  I gotta shift the thought process.

  Fuck it. Maybe there was no joy, no revelations. It was a shit two weeks. I’m certain of it. I was bored out of my mind. Better yet, broken and suffering from an epic heartache. My demise was meaningless. I OD’d on kick, flopping on the floor in a pathetic speed-addled frenzy till my heart exploded. I was gutted by some low-life scumborn in a back station corridor over some lo-rez black market XP. I’m glad the time was wiped. Ecstatic, in fact. Fuck it. Fuck them. I don’t need those two weeks.

  But these thoughts are lies. I need those two weeks. I don’t feel whole without them. Hell, I feel incomplete if even an hour is sacrificed. I have to know.

  Someone knows what occurred. No doubt. Probably a Firewall proxy, Jesper most likely. He was my connect this go-round. I remember that much. The wipe would have been his call. And proxies have a quick trigger finger when it comes to wiping us sentinels. Even a hard-earned rep score can’t save my memories when Firewall deems the results of a mission too sensitive for an outer circle thug like myself to possess. As long as the fucking job gets done. As long as transhumanity perseveres.