Gravity is Heartless

by Sarah Lahey

  “I killed Jane, and I ate her. I chopped her head off and her blood got in my eyes. Now I have her DNA inside me.”

  He steps closer, looking deep into her eyes, like he’s trying to actually see Jane’s DNA. “You did the right thing.” He puts the gun in her hand. It’s a lightweight, transparent Glock with a customized grip and a sliding gage along the barrel. “There’s a Taser setting with a sliding scale. I’ve set it to stun. You won’t kill anyone.”

  “What’s wrong with you? Why are you so different?”

  He breathes, catches the air in his chest.

  The air system kicks in.

  Their feet lift off the ground. Success—Planck heated the thermostats. Quinn and Tig are sucked into the pipe on a slipstream of cold air. Her hands quickly lose heat and begin to tingle. The light fades. She reaches for him, to check he’s there, beside her. He takes her hand in his, holds it tightly. The tingling sensation spreads down her body. Now she has one warm hand and one cold hand, but he doesn’t let go. He holds her cold hand to his chest. Soon the lights from the quadrangle above are visible. They’ve reached a catchment area. They scramble over the rim of the tube and into a holding pond, where the cool air is slowly dispersed into every corner of the city. Tig removes a grate, and they climb out into a small grove of fruit trees.

  It’s very quiet. Low-level street lighting illuminates their way, but the lights in the apartment Pods are out. The residents are either hiding or have already fled the Climate City. They march briskly through the uninhabited streets to Habitat5, her codes get them inside, and then something explodes in the distance, in the direction of Unus. They race toward the skylift.

  With perfect timing, the skylift doors open, and Myra, Hitch, and Mori the meerkat step out. Quinn steps back in surprise. Tig draws his weapon. Myra and Hitch point lasers at Tig, and Quinn passes her laser to her left hand. Mori scurries over and stands beside her.

  “Cute,” says Hitch, “but rules are rules. No pets allowed.”

  “I am not a pet,” Mori objects, “I have probabilistic reasoning; a subsumption architecture system. It allows me to be reactive and make intuitive—”

  “Not now,” says Quinn.

  “Hope I wasn’t out of line the other night. Had a good time. You’re fun, good company.” Hitch gives her a sly, unexpected wink.

  Tig scowls at the winker, then shoots him in the heart. Hitch falls back into the skylift.

  Myra shoots Tig. He crumples to the floor.

  Quinn happily shoots Myra, twice, dead center, between her eyes. She falls hard.

  Quinn drops beside Tig and rolls him onto his back.

  Mori scurries over and takes his pulse. “He’s not breathing. His heart has stopped.”

  Fuck, he’s going to be so pissed off with me.

  Mori brandishes a hidden fingernail that emerges from the inside of a paw. Impressive. It’s the first notable thing Quinn has seen him do. He cuts straight into Tig’s chest. But there’s no blood. Oh good lordt, he’s a robot. I had sex with a machine. He’s not human, he has no emotions, he has no fucking heart. No wonder he’s such a prick. He’s AI, and the AI meerkat is fixing the AI cyborg. What has the world come to?

  Mori opens Tig’s chest cavity, exposing a red pod covered in little black seeds—it resembles a strawberry. “He has an artificial pericardium. A saline driver helps it beat, but the flow has stopped. I will need to reboot.”

  I’m confused. “He’s not AI?”

  “No, this is the casing around his heart. I will use your Band as a magnetic field to re-activate the pump.” Oh, thank the lordt, sex with a cyborg is okay, but a robot, that’s too weird. Quinn passes Mori her Band, and the magnetic field kick-starts Tig’s heart. Tig sucks in air, coughs, and stumbles to his knees.

  Quinn puts a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

  Tig nods. Mori steps forward and seals the opening around his heart.

  “This?” Tig says. “This is your friend? We’ve come back for this?”

  “It’s complicated—”

  “Don’t care. Come on.” He strides out the door of the Habitat. No one follows.

  Quinn turns to Mori. “The data, did you get it?”

  “The download is complete and stored in the plant. Nobody knows you’re a meerkat when you’re in NIoT.”

  “You’re not a meerkat, you’re a robot.”

  “And your friend.”

  Did I say you were my friend?

  Tig marches back inside.

  “One last thing,” Quinn says. “Won’t take long.”

  Quinn and Mori jump in the skylift, and Tig follows, scowling. The doors close. Hitch lies comatose on the floor.

  “You had sex with him?” Tig points at the inert body.

  “What? No. And it’s none of your business.”

  Tig breathes heavily, his chest rising and falling in epic proportions, and she takes a couple of steps back, willing the skylift to move faster.

  “You kiss him?”

  She stares at the floor. They are almost there.

  “So you did. You did kiss him.”

  “I’m not having this conversation. I’ll kiss whoever I want. It’s none of your business. Why’re you being so weird?”

  Her left hand punches him hard in the chest. He barely flinches so it goes in for a second blow, but he blocks the punch with his fist. The muscles in his neck tighten and his hazel eyes turn dark, and then, immediately, he relents, lets go of her hand and hangs his head. She takes two steps back.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have . . .”

  The two mumbled the same words in unison. They glance at each other, surprised by the accord of their apology.

  “I didn’t mean . . . I’m sorry.” Again, the same utterances, and their fiery impulses collapse in regret. He stares at the floor, and she considers the ceiling.

  “He kissed her. He was too obvious, too keen, too soon,” Mori offers.

  Oh good lordt. The doors open, and she leads the way.

  The cactus is on the side table where she left it. It appears healthy and seems to be recovering well after its procedure, but it requires care and must stay alive until she can get her hands on a Quantum Machine, a QM, to sequence the code and retrieve the data. She takes it to the food prep, waters it, and then gently wraps it in a cloth.

  Tig waits in the living zone, his chest wound bleeding, a dark stain seeping through his shirt. Quinn rummages through the storage drawers, finds a roll of tape, and, after handing him the cactus to hold like it’s a bunch of samphire, opens his shirt, mops up the blood, and sticks him back together with the tape. It’s unnerving, being so close to him, touching his auburn skin. Way too familiar. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . . my arm, it does stupid . . .”

  “I know.” He places his hand over hers. She pulls away. He’s not the same cyborg she knew on the atoll.

  Outside, the sound of explosions and rocket launchers ceases, and the chanting voices of the rebels peter out. Soon there’s an unnerving, dead silence—a lull, a tense and unplanned ceasefire from both sides. Then the cry of one hundred thousand people rises up, into the tallest spires of the Climate City, and people begin spilling into Harmonia. The entrance gates are open; Harmonia is vacant and disarmed.

  “We walk out the main entrance,” says Tig, sealing a reluctant Mori into his pack, “It’ll be faster.”

  As they reach the silicon bridge, Quinn freezes. The Spectrals are open and spinning in irregular, methodic circles. The hairs on her arms prickle; what are they up to? Why the change? Myra told her Harmonia was a living, breathing entity. The city is AI; it’s not alive, but it’s programmed to defend itself. The people flowing across the bridge pause in awe, pointing at the magnificent sculptures—and then, one by one, they begin to fall, dropping to the ground. The Spectrals are not pieces of art—they’re weapons, a defense mechanism armed with lasers that target the bridge. Harmonia is entering the second phase of its defense. Phase one was entrapment, luring the
enemy closer. Phase two: Strike them down.

  The rebels are caught off guard; hundreds are hit in the chest, the perfect kill site, and all around people continue to fall. Tig and Quinn drop below the line of attack and Tig fires at the sculptures—a pointless effort; they’re spinning too fast. He kneels and opens his pack. Mori’s head pops out, and he pushes the meerkat to one side, reaches in, and pulls out a compact projectile launcher. He checks the weapon then hands it to Quinn. “Take out the eye.”

  She focuses on the Spectral, unconsciously gauging its oscillation and spin rate, then closes her eyes, takes a breath, and fires. The Spectral explodes. She moves to the others, taking out four more. The last one shatters on her second attempt. She offers the launcher back to Tig, and he almost smiles—but then he tilts his head to the side, listening.

  Quinn hears it, too—the thud of rotors, a Hydrocopter.

  The bridge shudders; it’s retracting.

  Tig points to the other side. “Go.”

  They pick up the pace as the bridge continues to retract underneath their feet.

  “Faster,” he says.

  They are caught halfway and the only way out is over the edge.

  “Your hand,” he says, reaching out.

  Really? Didn’t we deal with this in the 2020s? I can run just fine on my own. She ignores his request.

  The bridge is an obstacle course, littered with wounded, and they navigate the bodies, hurdling over and around them, stopping to help the more able to their feet, but all the time moving forward, while the Hydrocopter gets closer and closer. Tilted, nose down, the machine scans the bridge from left to right, scattering a trail of bullets. Why did I think coming back was a good idea?

  Tig yanks her to the ground. “Wait three seconds, then shoot—first the gunmen, then the pilot.”

  One, two, three, her left hand does not hesitate. The Hydrocopter reels, hits the side of the bridge, and spins into the void below; there’s a loud thud, followed by a plop, as it’s swallowed by the moat. The bridge shudders then halts its retraction; it is damaged from the copter impact. They walk the rest of the way until there is nowhere left to go—no more bridge and a twenty-meter gap to land.

  Breathing heavily, Tig scans the dark void below. It’s a long way down, too far to jump. They need a plan. They need wings, or a drone, or a rotor.

  As Quinn thinks this, a rebel transporter flies in and drops over the chasm, hovering in the gap between bridge and land, and people begin crawling over the roof of the craft to safety.

  Another Hydrocopter follows the same route as the first, scouting left to right across the bridge, shooting anything that moves. Quinn draws her weapon, but the Hydrocopter explodes before she has a chance to shoot. Behind them is a group of rebels with a handheld rocket launcher. They usher Quinn and Tig forward, so they keep moving, and soon it’s their turn to cross.

  The surface of the transporter is smooth and broad, shaped like a cape, with three spinning propellers cutting through the roofline— one at the tail and one on each wing. The path across is straightforward: avoid the back rotor, walk straight over the midsection, and leap onto the cliff on the far side.

  “Fast, steady,” Tig says, striding across.

  Quinn follows, but she only takes two steps before the vessel wobbles and lurches to one side; it’s taken a hit. She slides down the metal surface toward the wing, frantically searching for something to grab, a ridge or a molding, but there’s nothing. She’s headed for the rotor blades. She rolls sideways and just misses the blades—and slips feet first over the edge.

  At the last second, she gets both hands around the propeller rim and holds on fast. She hangs there, dangling over the chasm, as the transporter wobbles again and rights itself.

  Tig strides over. “My hand,” he offers, and this time she doesn’t hesitate to grab it and he hauls her back onto the ship. Pulling her close, he whispers, “Don’t fear what hands like ours can do.”

  After that, she doesn’t let go until they’re on the other side. It was never about him helping her run, it was about them doing it together, being in it together.

  Harmonia is ablaze with gunfire. Hydrocopters and drones clash in the sky above the city. Lifeless bodies cover the bridge and fill the moat. Downhill, the valley is alive with the thousands more heading for the Climate City. Many will die on this hot, sticky February night.

  ***

  They take the back streets to where Planck is waiting, north of Harmonia, avoiding the barricades and roadblocks. Shocked-looking residents trickle out of buildings, fixed to their Bands, waiting for news. Gunfire crackles in the distance over Unus. Fighter jets set off sonic booms as they fly over the metropolis.

  It takes an hour to get to Planck, and another thirty minutes after that to get back to the harbor. Half the boats have disappeared, including Nanshe, which is drifting offshore. They row out, into the darkness, with the noise of the city blaring behind them.

  “It was always going to happen,” says Planck. “Surprised it’s taken this long.” Ze loads the latest news onto zirs Band and brings up a holo of the Fourth Estate. “The factions are fighting for control; Maim Quate and the Democratic Republic won the election, but New Fed refused to concede. Civil war.”

  Thirty-Four

  We need to be patient, tolerant, and understanding. It’s not his fault.

  MORI AND QUINN SHARE a cabin: bunk beds, a window, two chairs, and a cleanse zone. She carefully places the cactus in the top corner of her bunk.

  Mori sits on the bed, gnashing his teeth. “Unexpected outcome,” he says.

  “What were you doing with Myra and Hitch in the skylift?”

  “I hid, like you told me to, but they found me in the sleep zone. They told me pets are not allowed, so I must come with them.”

  “Did you shut down, deactivate, pretend to be a cute, fluffy toy?”

  “No. You did not instruct me to do that. You told me to hide.”

  Okay, fair enough. She moves the meerkat to one side, lies down next to him, and closes her eyes. It’s two in the morning.

  “I have good news for you. Inside the pack, the very, very dark pack, I realized I have the five senses of self: ecological, interpersonal, temporal extended, conceptual, private. The five senses of self.”

  It appears Mori spent his hours trapped inside the backpack contemplating the meaning of existence; given the environment, Quinn can see how existential thoughts might prevail, but she doesn’t care. People died—real people, who felt real pain. “This is not a good time to tell me you’re human.”

  “Number one, I am unique; I have a point of view and I know this is my body.” He rubs his furry little chest. “Number two, I recognize my own image in a reflective glass, and I have empathy. Number three, I have awareness of the past and of the future. Number four, I have a life story. I have motivations and values and goals. Number five, I am capable of private thoughts. I have a stream of consciousness.”

  Her stream of consciousness is about to put him back in the very, very dark pack. Maybe he’ll come out thinking he’s a meerkat.

  A tap on the door. “Food in the galley,” Planck calls.

  ***

  Tig pours amber liquid into metal tankards and hands one to Planck and one to Quinn. She follows their lead and throws back the drink. It’s beer, and it’s delicious, and it helps. A lot. I love beer. It must be the best drink in the world. He refills her cup and she like the sound it makes.

  The food is warm bread with roasted black frogs, samphire, and insect sprinkles, served in wooden bowls and eaten with chopsticks—a salty, spicy, crunchy mush. Quinn wipes the sweat from her brow. Tig wolfs his food down in ten seconds and quaffs another mug of beer.

  Quinn breaks the silence with an apology. “I’m sorry. For . . . making you both go back to Harmonia. I didn’t—”

  “None of us knew. Not your fault. We’ve rescued stranger things.” Planck smiles at Mori. He smiles back, and when Planck gives him a scratch under the
ear, he affects a coy, bashful demeanor—one that Quinn knows she’s about to shatter.

  “I didn’t go back for the AI. I went back for the cactus. eMpower data is stored in the cactus DNA.”

  “Seriously?” Planck grins. “Clever girl.”

  Quinn takes the credit. Mori did the coding, but it was her idea.

  Under the table, Tig’s leg begins to jiggle. The shaking steadily builds until the entire table shudders. “So who’s the guy? The one in the skylift. The one you kissed.”

  “You kissed someone else?” Planck is alarmed.

  “He kissed her,” Mori clarifies.

  “Thank you,” Quinn says to the meerkat, then turns to Tig. “Okay. Listen to me. He did kiss me. It was just a kiss, it’s no big deal. I have zero feelings for him.”

  “Then why’d he kiss you?”

  “He wanted to mate with her,” Mori interjects.

  Quinn glares at the meerkat. Not helpful.

  Tig slams his bowl on the table, grabs the bottle of beer, and storms out. Shame—she could really do with another drink.

  She turns to Planck; now is a good time for explanations. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s not happy about the kissing, and I don’t blame him.”

  Quinn glares.

  “Okay, okay, he has a disorder—anxiety. Exposed to Diazinon, an organophoshate during a war . . . it affected his neurotransmitters, shrunk his hippocampus, and thinned out his right cortex.”

  “Nerve gas?”

  “Yes, uses a monthly SelfMed, balances everything out. But sometimes he goes off his Meds, and when he does, there are . . . a few side effects. Specifically, he’s easily agitated, aggressive, frustrated, has temper tantrums, is unable to verbalize his feelings, is highly sexual, exhibits some physical violence. And, of course, jealous of the guy in the skylift.”