by Sarah Lahey
Quinn is processed by a Vector AI called Tilly, who takes the form of a giant bot. Gendered female, her round head is as large as her square body, and she’s dressed entirely in purple—dress, shoes, stockings, hairclips, gloves, and eye shadow.
Tilly begins in French, “Bonjour ma belle demoiselle. Je m’appelle Tilly, et je vais m’occuper votre arrivée aujourd’hui. Avez-vous des armes, des bombes, des substances illégales ou des idéologues religieux fondamentaux que vous voudriez déclarer?”
Quinn shakes her head.
“Oh, pardon. Buongiorno, adorabile signorina. Mi chiamo Tilly, e lavorerò il tuo arrivo oggi. No?”
“No.” Was that Spanish? “I’m sorry, I don’t . . .”
“Ahh, English. Good morning, lovely young lady. My name is Tilly and I’ll be processing your arrival today. Do you have any weapons, bombs, illegal substances, or fundamental religious ideologies that you would like to declare?” Tilly shuffles forward on her giant purple feet, leans in, and whispers, “I already know about the knives. And the laser. Just declare. Makes my job so much easier.”
Quinn agrees, declaring her armory. With the best of humor, Tilly confiscates the array of weapons strapped to Quinn’s body and grants her entry into the city.
Now she must wait in a colonnaded courtyard, surrounded by statues of extinct animals—lions, elephants, tigers. Water fountains intermingle with the defunct animal effigies, and behind these are rows of multi-lobed arches decorated with woven lace patterns. It’s elaborate, lush, and beautiful.
Quinn sits on a stone bench, bookended by carved elephants.
After a few minutes, Niels enters the courtyard, strides over, and sits next to her. When she looks into his face, he’s staring straight at her. So she stares back, into his perfectly groomed features, and his grey-blue eyes remind her of Mori. They remind her of why she’s here.
“I stole your data; I know about the ghost on the G12. I haven’t checked the fingerprint, but I will, and I’ll find out who set it.”
“Mori set it. He’s mining in Antarctica. There was a fissure. The G12 would have caught it. He set the ghost to cover it—needed time to get it under control. He didn’t expect it to turn to shit. But we fixed it; we closed it. We just needed time.”
“That’s why you kept me on the atoll for so long.”
He nods.
I hate these people. “You have so much. You’re rich, the both of you. Why start mining? What else could you possibly want?”
“Resources, rare metals, magnets. It’s not about us; people need these to survive. We’re planning for the future.”
She knows this is not true. Of all the things people need to survive, mining under the Antarctic Circle is not one of them. “I want to go home.”
“Soon. Dirac wants to meet you. Tomorrow. You’re invited to the Salon for dinner.”
“Really? You want me there?” The Salon is Dirac’s private soirée, rumored to be a religious sect, a revival of nineteenth-century mysticism.
“No. I want you to fuck off and stop causing me grief. But he asked for you.” He shrugs. “I’ll tell him you refused. The last thing we need is a debate about science.”
Is he serious? That’s exactly what these people need. “Wait, I’ll go.” It’s about time science had a seat at this table. Besides, Lise would want me to go. “I’ll bring Jin as my date. We can argue about AI; it might amuse him.”
Niels frowns. “I doubt she’s up to it.”
***
Jin is living in Habitat12. Niels authorizes access for Quinn, who intends to surprise her friend. She enters the Pod and finds Jin asleep on the sofa, pallid and luminous. She looks dead. Wearing a white singlet top and loose black pants, her lower half merges with the black fabric of the sofa so her legs appear to be missing. Her skin is as pale as her white shirt. But something has happened to her: red-purple lesions cover her face and arms.
Quinn feels her heart contract, like someone just squeezed it. She drops her bag on the floor. Jin opens her eyes.
“Want me to kiss you?” Quinn offers.
“Finally.” She chuckles, then coughs.
“What’s going on?”
Jin pulls herself up. “Sit down.” Quinn sits on the sofa, right next to her friend, the way Niels sat next to her on the stone bench in the colonnade garden, just a little too close. Jin points to the chair opposite and Quinn moves to the chair. I’m not going to like this.
“FF. Another strain. No cure.”
They were living together when Jin first showed symptoms of Feline Flue. It began with joint pain, headache, fever, and a sore throat. A cold, the flu, maybe a virus, she said. She logged the symptoms into her SelfMed, lay in bed for two days, working from home. On day three a rash appeared on her torso and upper back. It spread to every part of her body; even the soles of her feet were covered in patches of red dots. Quinn pressed them and they turned into white, blotchy patches. It was obviously a virus, an infectious disease of some sort, but they were isolated in Hobart. She hadn’t been exposed to anything or anyone unusual. Then her eyes turned yellow and streaks of sienna shot through her irises. This was unique, but it became more common as the pandemic spread.
Last year, similar symptoms showed up in global pockets. The new mutation of FF spread between humans, and it spread quickly.
“They’ll find a cure, there’s always a cure—a new vaccine, antiviral drugs.”
“Nope. Tried. They can’t help.”
“Okay then, CRISPR. Go in, cut the gene sequence out. It won’t affect the genome, but it’ll kill the virus inside the host chromosome.”
“It’s clever; keeps outwitting my immune system. It stole a gene that codes for toxoplasma, and now it’s poking holes in my cells and everything’s leaking out. I’ve been injecting blood and antibodies, but it hasn’t worked. No one’s survived.”
Shit. Quinn clamps her hands together and squeezes hard.
“I’m in the final phase. I’m sorry.”
“You’re not dying. I won’t let you.”
“I am.”
Tears fill Quinn’s eyes and she stares at the tiled floor, at the smooth, grey material and the way the joints in door seals don’t line up with the filler between the floor tiles. Finally, she looks back at her friend. “You can’t be.”
“I am. Sorry.”
Quinn drops to her knees, shuffles over, and takes her hand. “They’ll find a cure, I’m sure they will.”
“Yes, but not in my time. That’s why I made Mori, to help you with your . . . emotional literacy after I’m gone. He’s an emotional support animal. They’ve made a huge comeback—all the rage right now.”
“Seriously.”
“What? Sometimes you’re not so good with people. He’ll keep you company; you’ll have someone to . . . to open up to.”
“I’m not that bad.”
“Actually, you are.”
This is not about me. “We’ll figure something out. Have you spoken to Niels? He’s got more Coin than he knows what to do with, and he owes you, big time. Employee of the fucking decade.”
“Don’t be angry.”
“Shit, what have you done?”
“I’ve chosen CyberSleep. A cure might be a year away.”
“No one’s ever survived. And how can you afford it?”
“I have a sponsor.”
Quinn sighs. “Of course you do. Niels.”
“We have an agreement. He gives me three years in Sleep and I code a Transhuman AI, a full merge between a machine and the human brain.”
“The singularity, are you kidding? Totally illegal, and the ethics are . . .”
“He’ll lobby for changes in legislation. Conceptual experimentation, then approval for adaptation. But I’ve no intention of doing it. I just want to do this. I want to go into CyberSleep.”
Quinn raises an eyebrow.
“Okay, maybe I will do it. If it’s not me, it’ll just be someone else. And it has to be this way; the alternativ
e is, we step aside and let robots rule the world, and we all know how you feel about that.”
“You’re only saying that to placate me.”
“Yes, I am.” Jin grins.
Quinn grins back. “Okay, enough about fucking robots and the singularity. I don’t care. I only care about you. CyberSleep has shitty side effects: skin deterioration, cornea issues, bowel problems, your hair may never grow back. And what if your organs don’t reboot?”
“Honestly, I have no other options. I’ve run out of time, and I need you to help. Please. Just think of me as sleeping, in a beautiful state of neither life nor death. I’ll be ethereal, transient.”
“You’ll be dead.”
“Everything we do, we do to prolong life. Eat, sleep, exercise, get dressed, go to work. We do it to live longer. This is just another way. I don’t want to die. It’s too soon.”
“I don’t want you to die either.”
“Remember what Carl Sagan said?”
“We’re all made of star stuff?” How’s that relevant?
“No, no, the other one.”
Of course, the one about butterflies. “‘We’re like butterflies, fluttering for a day.’ I love that quote, it’s one—”
“No. He said, ‘Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.’ It’s an adventure, and I want you there. Please.”
Quinn nods. Of course, she’ll do it.
***
Quinn moves into the second sleep zone in Jin’s apartment. She’s slept in this room many times, albeit in Hobart, on the other side of the world. Jin’s Pod is modular, and the entire studio was transported: untethered from a residential habitat, slipped onto a conveyer, dispatched to Accord, and supplanted in a new tower. At least the familiarity of the decor is comforting.
Jin’s decorating style is straightforward. She likes black and grey and white, so she doesn’t have to deliberate or decide on new furnishings or accessories. The result is an uncomplicated design: white walls, black sofas and chairs and stools, grey pillows and throws. New acquisitions and accessories are always grey; all the pots, lamps, rugs, and art are grey.
In the second sleep zone, Quinn sets down her things and then sits on the grey bed. Wearing her pale blue climate suit, she’s the only thing of color in the room, a lively smudge in an achromatic background, like a single blue water droplet in Antarctica, and she feels just as lonely. She looks around the room. The walls are covered with black-and-white photos, pictures of happy things—the ocean, the beach, balloons, people running, people laughing, people with balloons frolicking on the beach. On the bed is a single cushion, heart-shaped, with an arrow pointing to the word Happiness. It’s a ridiculous message, happiness—what does that even mean? How can anyone ever be happy? She’ll miss her friend.
Forty
The Salon de la Rose and Croix.
NIELS WANTS TO LIVE forever. He’s set his initial forever goal at one hundred and fifty years. After that, he plans to enter CyberSleep. After that, he figures the Tech will be advanced enough to maintain his fragile human form forever. Jin has been a valuable commodity as a living employee, and now she’s serving as a valuable guinea pig in his quest for eternal life. During her CyberSleep he’ll run experiments on her, monitoring the outcome, all in preparation for his own Sleep journey.
Over the following days, he agrees to provide Jin with whatever she wants, whatever she needs. She requests wine, apples, and chocolate. It’s depressingly like a last meal.
***
Geller walks through the door with a bottle of wine, two bars of chocolate, and a bundle of apples. Her hair is out, falling around her face and over her shoulders, and she smiles at Quinn, plucks an apple from the bag, is about to take a bite when she sees Jin lying on the sofa.
Jin smiles. “Hello.”
Geller’s eyes travel slowly over Jin, from her cute white socks to her black halo of limp hair. “Hello,” she responds, and in that one moment they’re gone. Both of them. Without taking her eyes off Jin, Geller bites into her apple. “Juicy,” she says. “You want some?”
“Yes, I do,” says Jin.
Geller tosses the fruit to her but Jin doesn’t have the strength to raise her arm, so Quinn plucks it from the air and hands it to her. Jin takes the fruit, bites into it, and then hands it back to Quinn, who tosses it back to Geller. Geller grins and takes another bite. Now they’re both chewing the juicy apple, smiling across the room and offering lustful glances at each other.
Desire is unpredictable. Suddenly three’s a crowd. I’m the odd one out.
Geller sits too close to Jin on the sofa, and Jin doesn’t object. Geller adjusts the patient’s pillows and asks what’s going on, what’s wrong with her. Why does she look like she just dropped in from Venus? Or perhaps she is actually Venus—the Roman darling of love and desire, blessing them with a deific visit.
Jin giggles. “I’m dying. FF. Got a few days, maybe a week.”
Geller runs her fingers gently over the welts on Jin’s skin, and Quinn follows the meandering trail of her fingertips. It’s erotic. They open and share the chocolate and the wine. Geller listens intently to Jin’s theories on the rise of AI, and how humanity will one day live in harmony with thinking machines. Wine helps the conversation; it helps the touching and the laughing and the kissing. It helps everything. They curl up on the sofa together and settle in. Quinn is invisible, and she’s not drinking, so she retires to bed with an apple.
Desire might be unpredictable, but it is also loud. At midnight, Quinn is wide awake. The couple in the adjacent sleep zone takes turns, first Jin and then Geller, one never-ending female orgasm interrupted by short intervals of whispering and giggling. What are these walls made of? Modular construction might be convenient, economic, and environmental, but this Pod has the acoustics of wrapping paper.
After a few minutes of silence, Quinn finally dozes, but then it starts again, more moaning. Just hurry up so we can all get some sleep. Quinn makes a mental note to pick up earplugs tomorrow. Mori—not the meerkat, the other one—wore plugs to bed. He said the world kept him awake: the sounds of the earth, the wind, the birds, the trees, and Quinn’s breathing, especially her breathing. He needed total silence, in the way some people need total darkness.
She’s not surprised he set the ghost on her climate model; he was the only suspect, the only one who had access. She just didn’t think he was that devious. She’s shocked by that, by how much he fooled her— and lied to her. When Coin’s involved, people become unknowable.
On their first date, Mori took her to a public speaking engagement. His public speaking event. It was a full house, and he was talking about the Anthropocene Epoch, an era defined by war, radioactivity, plastic pollution, and billions of domesticated chicken bones. He was funny, his speech was peppered with jokes—“It’s so hot chickens are laying hard boiled eggs.” She laughed and watched as he held the audience. “If you’re over global warming,” he concluded, “I’ve one word for you: Titan.” The audience clapped and cheered.
Afterwards, she watched in awe as he worked his way around the room at the after party. She’s easily impressed by social skills and confidence. Now, months later, she knows his public addresses were exhaustively rehearsed, hours and hours of fine-tuning and preparation. Everything was practiced—his mannerisms, even his smile. He rehearsed it, over and over, in the mirror. And his jokes and material weren’t original; they were pilfered from various sources. She thought he was a visionary, but he was a salesman, selling himself—and she got in line and bought a front-row ticket. Thankfully, she left at intermission.
***
In the morning, Quinn stumbles, tired and bleary-eyed, toward the food prep and finds the culprits already there, both of them, looking self-satisfied and surprisingly fresh, and wearing each other’s clothes. They continue the routine from last night, grinning and giggling and kissing. Geller slices pieces of apple for Jin to nibble on, and the sight of Jin chomping on the apple, the juicy crunch,
crunch, crunch, and the sweet scent sends Quinn racing for the basin, where she pukes.
“Too much fructose.” She wipes her mouth.
Geller must report back to the military base; there’s a morning briefing she wants to attend. Maim and Kip have vanished and some believe they have already fled the city. If they rally Hexad, a counterattack on the capital is likely. She peels her military shirt off Jin’s scrawny back and departs.
Of course, Quinn know exactly where those pesky rebel leaders are hiding. Tig should have reached Hexad by now. The rebels will consolidate there, and then, if Dirac doesn’t concede, there will be war.
Tig will return in a few days.
Jin retreats to her sleep zone to rest. Dying and sex are exhausting. Quinn lies beside her, and Jin asks, excitedly, how Mori—not the man, the AI—is settling into his new home, how they are getting on, as if Mori is a real person, as if he has feelings that need to be considered and accounted for.
“He’s . . . fine,” Quinn manages to say.
Jin reveals that she has programmed special talents in the AI. He has advanced biological knowledge of living creatures, so he can look after Quinn physically and biologically as well as emotionally. He has access to NIoT—that’s a standard feature—but he also has acute hearing and vision. Otherwise, he performs and responds to his environment as any human would. His cognitive functions are decades ahead of anything anywhere on the planet. He has a conscious and an unconscious controlled by a super-unconscious. His circuitry is modeled on the human brain; there are 115,000 neurons per cubic millimeter in the human brain and each one makes a thousand connections, and the human brain contains 1.5 million of these cubes, so it’s impressive programming, and Quinn know this.