by Sarah Lahey
Using a laser beam of radiation, Jin opens the lattice structure of the diamond and removes a qubit. With a qubit balancer, she zaps the particle with a magnetic field, putting it in a mixed state of superposition, simultaneously spinning in two different directions. Then she extracts and loads the particle into a QM.
The data takes a few seconds to process.
Jin squints at the message on the machine, then hands it to Quinn. It reads: “(He) 2s2 2p1.”
Quinn stares at the screen, then furtively at Jin, then back at the screen. Then she laughs. Jin laughs, too, until she can’t handle the excitement and collapses in a coughing fit.
“Someone goin’ ta tell me what’s goin’ on?”
“It’s—well, it’s boron,” says Jin.
“An’ why is tat funny?”
“Boron’s number 5 on the periodic table. It’s what Quinn and I commonly refer to as the most boring element on the table,” Jin says. “We give elements human traits. Like, arsenic is annoying, chromium is crazy, and boron is boring.”
“An’ why would you do tat?”
“Because it’s fun. And Lise knows this—the way we talk about the elements, giving them human characteristics. The message means nothing; it’s a joke.”
“Or, she knew it would be read, so she set a diversion, a decoy,” suggests Quinn.
Geller squints. “So it means sometin’—or notin’.”
“Yes,” Jin agrees.
Forty-Two
The CyberSleep Vault
THE CYBERSLEEP VAULT IS an urban enigma, a legendary place with a cult status that divides ethical and metaphysical mindsets: They can only save a few wretched souls, so should they? Where lies the humanity in that divisive decision? Death was once the great certainty, the one sure thing, but not anymore. Now it’s a victim of the economic divide because avoidance is an option only the wealthy can afford. The masses gossip about the inequality of the business model, but those who actually understand the operational processes and the toxic emersion that the human body must endure mumble about the final outcome because no one has ever survived. There are only two great certainties: booming profits and death.
The depth of the Vault is unknown and the rumors have given it mythical status—a small underground city, three kilometers below the surface of the Earth. But it could also be a bunker, ten meters deep. Either way, it’s designed as a tomb for the terminally ill or those who believe there’s more to this business called daily living—that there has to be, surely this can’t be it. Other rumors circulate: People go in and they never come out; the place is a vortex and the friends and families accompanying the clients are never seen again, swallowed in the morass of technology and toxins used the pickle the clients.
Inside the eMpower office is a designated skylift, resembling all other skylifts. Once inside, partitions engage, sealing the doors, and the lift spins one full circle, like an amusement ride. Security is activated, and Jin’s hair stands on end. She enters a coded word as a final check: AI RULES.
Quinn rolls her eyes. Seriously?
The doors spring open and they have moved. They’re in a new place; how far away, how far below the surface, it’s impossible to tell. A dimly lit corridor lies ahead, and the surrounding walls, ceiling, and floor are covered in mint-green ivy. They’re in a tunnel of thick vegetation, so long and narrow they can’t see the end.
“Wasn’t expecting this,” says Jin. She touches the soft, moss-like leaves. “It’s real. I think.”
“It’s like a forest, an enchanted forest,” says Quinn.
A pale green snake slithers up the wall. A few meters away, a black-and-white lizard looks in their direction, then turns and plods away. Security robots.
Then the floor begins to move. It’s a conveyer belt; it’s moving them down the never-ending corridor.
Doorways appear on either side; Jin says her door is number fourteen.
Quinn calls out the door numbers: “Sixty-two, eleven, thirty-three, eight, one hundred.” The numbers are out of sequence. If there’s some relevance to the order, she can’t work it out. It’s unnerving not understanding the number series or why it’s skewed.
They continue for several minutes, Quinn calling out random numbers, with no sign of fourteen. Soon Jin’s calm exterior begins to slip, and her excitement switches to anxious silence. Quinn wants to say it’s okay, they’ll find it soon, don’t worry, they’ll find her door, but she doesn’t want to ever find it. She wants it to be a mistake, a bad dream, so they can all go home and have a cup of tea and finish the chocolate and share what’s left of the apples. That would be a pleasant way to end the day. Then she sees it: number fourteen.
Giggling, Jin breathes a sigh of relief. Entrance codes hover in the air around them, then dissolve, and the door to room fourteen vaporizes.
Inside are a dozen silver tanks with transparent silicon hoods. Quinn thought Jin would be alone, would have her own room. She doesn’t like the idea of her sleeping next to all these strangers.
They step inside, and the floor is yielding and familiar—made of aerogel, like Mori’s Cloud Ship. It has the same squishy resistance. Kerguelen seems such a long time ago, and it’s the last thing Quinn wants to be thinking about. She pushes the memory away and focuses on Jin and the process she’s about to undergo.
Along one wall is an open cleanse zone, and that’s about it for décor: silver tanks, aerogel on the floor, and black jets projecting from the wall.
One tank is open. The others are closed, softly backlit, and filled with pale, naked CyberSleep tenants. Geller and Quinn roam the rows, voyeurs of the undead, and it’s a mesmerizing and fascinating stroll. Who are these people and what happened to them? They pause by a tank and ponder a white-haired baby girl, maybe six months old, sleeping on her back with her arms carefully placed over her chest. Her skin is translucent mauve. The tank beside her holds a young, white-haired boy; her older brother, serene and unearthly, he has similar-toned skin.
“NBIC children, born in an artificial womb incubator,” says Geller.
Quinn doesn’t understand.
“NBIC. Nanotech, biotech, informashun tech, an’ cognitive science. Smorgasbord, pick an’ select children, but you can only do so much.”
Quinn moves away. She doesn’t like it down here.
Jin doesn’t mess around; she’s been briefed on the procedure. After undressing, she washes under a foamy marine liquid, like a dowse of seawater, that flows from the black faucet, removing earthly toxins—makeup, hair products, deodorant. She’s painfully thin, all angular elbows and knees, loose flesh hanging off her bony frame. The virus has devoured her physical form. She’s also covered in red and purple welts, and Quinn knows there must be bruises all over her organs, too. She’ll come out the other side, if she survives the noxious processes, just as frail and sick. But she smiles.
Quinn silently sniffles as she tries to hold herself together. Geller maintains a calm, slightly fragile expression. But Jin smiles. For her, this is not the end. It’s a new adventure, a new beginning.
It’s time for farewells. Jin and Geller smirk. They take each other’s hands, and their grins widen into reverent smiles. Geller is taller, and she leans forward and kisses Jin softly on the forehead. A restrained parting for a couple that spent two days engaged in intense physical gratification, but they always knew this time would come. Their future was a sure thing, and the end, the parting and the loss, fueled the urgency of their desire. What’s done is done, and the beautiful, climactic memory of the other is now an explicit impression, consolidated and stored in memory. They’re both happy with the outcome.
Jin leaves Geller and turns to Quinn, who can’t stop crying. She chuckles at the sight of her friend’s smudged face. “Get a grip,” she says, and Quinn nods and sucks in breaths of air, attempting to regulate her breathing, trying to pull herself together.
One, last, deep breath, and she manages to assume a calmer expression. She pulls Jin close, hugging her, kissin
g her, never wanting to let go, and Jin returns the impassioned embrace, comforting and consoling her friend, wiping away Quinn’s tears and kissing her quickly.
Then Jin climbs into the tank. She lies down in a cold bed of cool light and lays her arms by her sides. Then she changes her mind and carefully crosses her arms over her chest. Then she has a mini crisis and covers her face; she doesn’t know what to do with her arms. She giggles. What to do with your arms when you are entering CyberSleep?
Quinn also laughs. Idiot.
Jin tries another position, but the process has been activated and an electromagnetic seal whips around the edge of the tank. She’s gone. One of her arms lies across her chest and the other is halfway across her stomach.
“No, no, she wasn’t ready,” says Quinn. “Look, her arms, she needs more time. Her arms, we need to fix them . . .”
“She was ready enough. Let’s get outta ’ere. We can mourn somewhere better tan tis ghostly place. Can you see ’em?”
“Who?”
“Some’a tese people are already dead.”
Never, in all her dreams and hopes for the future, did Quinn see this coming: Jin, at the age of thirty-four, dying from some stupid cat disease and slipping into CyberSleep, and herself pregnant, by a cyborg with a personality disorder.
***
Quinn and Geller escape the Vault without incident, and head straight back into the skylift and up to the surface. Outside, they collapse onto seating in a private garden near the building’s entrance.
“Fuck,” says Geller. “Tat was ’eavy.”
“I need a drink.” Quinn wipes away tears with the back of her hand.
“I’ll ’ave one for te both’a us. Tat’s te sort of friend I am.” Geller slides an arm around Quinn; they rest heads together and Geller’s lips graze her cheek. “You’ll be okay. We both will.”
“What’d you mean by ‘already dead’?”
“Worked in te morgue when I was young, I know dead people. Some’a te poor souls down tere should get a refund.”
Quinn doesn’t disagree. It’s early evening, and it’s been a long day; she closes her eyes and leans back against the bench. Maybe they can just stay here and sleep on this seat for a few hours. Tomorrow’s a new day, and it will be a better day than this one. It has to be a better day than this one. They can sort out their lives, the future, what to do next—they can sort all that out tomorrow. She’s so tired.
An explosion pierces the silence. Quinn opens her eyes.
Geller is up, on her feet, listening, scanning the sky. She points, “North, te Pods. One bomb usually means two.”
On cue, there’s another explosion, followed by rapid gunfire. Military transporters pass overhead, and the sky fills with thousands of dark shadows tumbling rapidly to Earth. An air strike.
A shell stops in the sky a few meters above them. They freeze and tilt their eyes up toward the hovering bomb. The weapon spins and opens, a long shaft emerges, and a dozen battle drones shimmy off the end of the rod.
Quinn stiffens. Shit.
Geller gives her a signal to calm down. “Cistern Missiles. Won’t kill ’umans, tey’re lookin’ for a tank. If tey don’t find one, tey’ll self-destruct.”
A second wave of armed robots inundates the sky, and two figures touch down on the other side of the garden.
“’OTRODs,” says Geller.
“What?”
“MeanMachines: part organic, part bio-mechatronic.”
“They’re human?”
They do resemble a human form, with arms and legs and a head with eyes, although one is black and the other neon yellow and their bodies are wrapped in layers of black and silver metalloid that accentuate their bulk and size so they appear monstrously huge. Running toward Quinn and Geller, they look like giant cartoon characters.
Quinn shakes her head. “These guys are way over the line.”
“Yeah, livin’ tings, but no longer ’uman. Once crime-committing, violent fuckers, you know te type, durin’ te Wars tey were given a choice between prison an’ combat. Tey chose combat, merged themselves into an exoskeleton, military emptied teir brains so all they can do’s follow orders. Dispensable foot solders, except tey don’t die easy. An’ tey’re mean.”
And they’re coming straight for us. Quinn grabs Geller’s arm, ready to run.
“Wait,” says Geller. “They can’t shoot you.”
“Why not?” They look like they have every intention of shooting her.
“You’re pregnant. Where te fuck ’ave you been?”
“Hobart.”
“Post War convenshun: crimes against civilians, children, and pregnant women, especially pregnant women, are no’ permitted.”
“Really?”
“Aye.”
“Well, that’s progressive.”
“Aye, we learnt sometin’ from years’a killing each other in te name of god. They’re pre-programmed; in a minute tey’ll scan you an’ realize.”
In a minute!
Geller pulls Quinn in front of her. “’Uman shield. Sorry. No weapons; we don’t shoot at tem, tey can’t shoot back.”
The HOTRODs are almost upon them, if Geller is wrong they’re about to die an explosive death, but they pull up a few meters away, scan them, and then stand down.
Slowly, Geller and Quinn back away.
A missile whistles overhead and lands on the other side of the garden.
“We go to te Temple—it’s ’istoric,” Geller says. “Maim’s an ’istory professor. Rumor is she won’t destroy it.”
Forty-Three
I can’t be Late—not again.
PLANCK RISES EARLY AND prepares breakfast for the stowaways. After many unforeseen delays, including Hexad’s procedural bureaucracy (a dictum to avoid conflict unless absolutely necessary) and the defensive navigation they opted for (sailing in circles to avoid the New Fed military), they are finally underway. Tomorrow, they’ll dock at Hexad and deliver their cargo.
Breakfast is a Biodiverse Plate: pinkfish, mussels, samphire, pickled vegetables, and fermented seaweed, plus insect sprinkles for added protein, texture, and crunch. Planck switches on the infuser for tea and begins to plate up the food.
Piercing morning sun, low in the sky, floods the galley, bouncing off surfaces and causing a blinding glare. Too early for this. Planck taps two fingers on the smart glass, searching for the right shade of translucency, but misses the mark and darkness permeates the space. Ze adjusts back and forth a few times. Perfect. Ze finishes plating, using the last of the hemp oil as dressing in the process; ze makes a mental note to collect more. Then ze pauses and peers out the window.
They’re traveling east, unless the sun has moved, which ze doubts. East. Hexad is west, due west. What the fuck is he doing now. Abandoning the breakfast plates, the tea, and the perfectly filtered light, ze goes in search of Tig.
Ze locates him on deck with Martha2. “What are you doing?”
“Detour. I checked the calendar; it’s been six days. I can’t be late— not again. We’re going back to get her. She’s not safe.”
“A few extra days, she’ll be fine. We agreed.”
“Nah, not doing it again. Like you said, we’ve come all this way. I can’t leave her again.”
“You have to. It’s important. Thousands of lives are at stake and Maim is President—or will be President. You can’t say no to her.”
“Can’t see it happening.’”
Reinforcements. Ze heads back inside.
Maim ambles into the galley as Planck comes in. She tucks loose strands of grey hair behind an ear as she shuffles onto a seat at the bench. Her climate suit is two-piece, black, with vertical white stripes running the length of her pants. She zips up the matching jacket. “Why is it so cold in here?”
Planck shrugs. “Your cool is my warm.”
Maim places her elbows on the bench, knits her fingers together, and rests her chin in the nest of her knuckles. She closes her eyes and yawns.
&nbs
p; Planck pours her a spicy spearmint infusion to kick-start her day. “Tough night?” She must have a lot on her mind.
“Actually, perimenopause. My hormones are all over the place.”
“Considered synthetic hormone—”
“Doesn’t agree with me.”
Ah, of course. “Stateswoman, lawmaker, executive diplomat, leader of the armed forces, Commander in Chief, and wildly fluctuating estrogen levels, combined with a severe decline in progesterone and testosterone. Insomnia? Night sweats?”
She nods.
“Fatigue, headaches, palpitations, heavy bleeding?”
She nods.
“I’ll fix you a supplement with added calcium and vitamin D.” Ze scraps half the mussels off her breakfast plate before passing it to her. “You also need to watch your cholesterol.”
She tucks into her food. “Delicious. I’ll be recommending you. In fact, I’m going to need transport back—”
“Let’s concentrate on getting you there first. We have a problem. We’re sailing in the wrong direction.”
Maim dips her head and considers the position of the sun out the galley window. “Good lordt, you’re right, we’re traveling east, back to Unus. Why?”
“Tig’s in love. He’s lovesick.”
“What do you mean, he’s in love? He’s not in love. Who’s he in love with?”
“Quinn Buyers. She’s in Unus.”
Maim spits her spearmint infusion across the galley bench. “Lise’s daughter. Are you sure?”
Planck nods. “They’re expecting. A baby girl.”
“Oh good lordt, I’ve heard it all.” She slumps back in her chair and sighs. “Of course, that’s why she was here on the boat.”
“Yes. You okay?”
Maim nods, slowly, thoughtfully, and sips what’s left of her tea. “I’ve not told anyone this. And it’s strictly between you and me, and that goes for all our little tête-à-têtes. But I was supposed to be at that wedding, with Lise. We were seeing each other, about to make it public. I was supposed to be her date, but Ada, well, they had history, she’d known Quinn for years, so I stepped aside. Didn’t want to make a scene . . .”