The Uploaded

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  “Catch you later tonight, Mr Damrosch.” She gave me a mischievous wink, and pirouetted out.

  10: LENOX HILL HOSPITAL, PLUS TWO INTRUDERS

  * * *

  My arms ached after a hard day of chipping coral, and my legs were rubber. I could hitch a ride back on a salesman’s ponycart for a buck, stashed in with some beer barrels or a pile of old clothes. It was slower, since the vendors made stops along the way to sell their wares – but I’d trade a two-hour ride for an hour’s walk any day.

  But then I thought, that’s a buck I could give to Izzy. So I lugged those heavy test tubes until my hands blistered, and thought about saving up for a pushcart to stow my sample case in. It seemed like a crazy luxury after only three voiding weeks.

  Shouldn’t there be public carts waiting to carry people across town? Why shouldn’t the government encourage us to travel, instead of keeping us at home to save energy?

  And why did Peaches think she could get me into the LifeGuard with my record? You had to Shrive a perfect Liminal just to take the entrance exam. Peaches could pull strings, but… strings that big?

  And why did she think I’d make a decent LifeGuard? They were all muscles and violence. In the unlikely event I made it through boot camp, did she think I’d be happy spending my days singing patriotic songs and shooting people in the head?

  The LifeGuard were supposedly here to protect us, but everyone remembered what they’d done to Boston. Boston had rioted when Wickliffe had shut down public transit to encourage the new locavore gardening initiatives. Wickliffe had negotiated with Boston for weeks before he’d finally given the orders, even crying on camera to beg the rebels to stop –

  – but once he’d declared Boston voided, it was the LifeGuard who’d walled Boston off. They’d cut supply lines, kept anyone from escaping, trapped Boston’s citizens until they ate each other alive. Half a million ugly meat-deaths.

  They replayed the footage every year, on the anniversary. Ostensibly we were supposed to mourn for the City Shrived Criminal, but realistically it was a reminder of what the LifeGuard would do to you if you stepped out of line.

  Could I shoot a starving mother trying to get some food for her kid? Just because she’d crossed the quarantine border?

  What if that meant Izzy got to live a good life?

  Normally, I’d walk through Central Farm, hunting for Therapy. Today, I had to see Izzy.

  The nurses at the hospital desk frisked me nowadays, like I kept ponies in my pocket – so I’d filled my pockets with rotting coral to discourage them from sticking their hands in. They frogmarched me all the way to Izzy’s room.

  I needed to hear what Izzy thought. She’d had physical therapy today, so she’d be wiped out – but we’d always made time to talk to each other at the end of the day.

  Except she was talking to someone already. And I tensed as the nurse shoved me through the doorway, because I already knew who:

  Mom and Dad.

  “…this poor, dragon-ravaged town,” Mom said, with the hushed air of a camp counselor telling stories around a campfire. “Everyone was starving, since all their crops had been devoured. And you know those cowardly Firbolg traders wouldn’t help…”

  “Those bastards.” Izzy sat painfully crosslegged in front of their screens. She clenched her fists in rage.

  “Why, you can’t expect other people to be brave,” Dad chuckled. “Only you can test your own mettle. And so we ventured there, thinking our Vorpal Vortexes would do the job. But we soon found this dragon couldn’t be slain by steel.”

  “I assume silver blades were its weakness?” Izzy’s forehead was creased with that little frown as she worked out how to slay an imaginary dragon.

  “No! No mortal weapon would suffice!” Mom said, low and urgent. “This dragon fed on despair.”

  “Then… how did you defeat it?”

  “We had to give each townsperson hope. It took a hundred quests – bringing starcrossed lovers together, hunting down lost treasures, convincing poor, clumsy Snozzel that he was worthy to be a knight–”

  “Is Snozzel a…?” Izzy asked.

  “He’s an AI,” Mom admitted. “But honey, you just don’t ask if people are artificial. It’s terribly rude.”

  “Sorry.” Izzy hung her head, suppressing a wince; normally she couldn’t get out of bed on therapy days. But she hid her pain from Mom and Dad so they wouldn’t feel bad.

  “So we had a town full of hopeless townspeople. It took us months to find out what each of them needed…”

  “…but when we finally convinced Snozzel to slay the dragon, the dragon starved on the spot!” Dad interjected.

  Izzy applauded. “No wonder you were too busy to check in with us! What an amazing adventure! What heroism!”

  Dad tipped his cap to her, blushing. “Now, sweetie,” he demurred. “It’s nothing you won’t do when you get here with us…”

  “Oh, for void’s sake!” I said. “You disappear for months to cheer up some stupid AI, but you can’t even show up for your daughter’s hearing?”

  “…what hearing?” Mom asked.

  They looked startled, confused… and completely innocent.

  I shot Izzy a glance: did you even bring up your trial with them? Izzy made a shushing gesture: don’t make a fuss, Amichai, they don’t need to know –

  “I left you a thousand messages!” I yelled. “Izzy was on trial for her life! Maybe if you’d shown up to testify, but no, you ghosted away – again –”

  “Amichai!” Izzy snapped. “I get so little time to hear what they’re up to, don’t you spoil it–”

  “You can’t keep making excuses for them! They need to–”

  “Amichai Warren Damrosch!” A stern Mom-voice, even carried through speakers, could still silence me.

  “Look, Amichai,” Dad said. “We’re sorry we didn’t check our voicemails.”

  “Checking voicemails is just so character-breaking when you’re adventuring,” Mom sighed.

  “But the moment poor Snozzel could get by on his own, we checked in on you. And everything’s fine, isn’t it? You’ve got a steady job, Izzy’s recovering…”

  “Have you even looked at Izzy?” I snapped.

  Dad shook his head, as if he just wasn’t up to the task of getting through to me.

  “Oh, Amichai,” Mom sighed, pressing her palm to the screen. Izzy nudged me; I trudged over obligingly to touch my palm to Mom’s, but all I felt was cold plastic. “I know you’re angry. But life’s short, and then you die.”

  The old platitude failed to comfort.

  “I’m not saying life’s not a bitch,” Dad chuckled. “Believe me, I know! I remember being so worried about scraping up enough money to feed us – but I never forgot a birthday party, did I? I always surprised you with something. Remember the fire-balloons?”

  Dad always made a huge fuss over our birthdays, devising new surprises. But he never asked whether I wanted the surprises.

  “Then we died,” Mom said softly. “It was awful. Izzy, don’t think just because we didn’t say anything doesn’t mean we don’t notice how badly you’re doing.”

  “There’s just nothing to be said. Life is terrible.”

  “We’re so grateful to have left all that awfulness behind. But once you straighten up and die right, we’ve got a section of Wingbright Pass we can’t wait to show you. We’ll adventure as a family–”

  “Except for, uh, certain grownup areas,” Dad coughed.

  “–well, maybe not Wingbright Pass. We’ll find somewhere. It’s a big Upterlife, sweetie.”

  They beamed, as if that had solved everything.

  “…and when Izzy spends the next sixty years locked into an agonizing job?” I asked. “What if her employers scar her so deeply, she’ll forget how to be happy? What’ll her Upterlife be like then?”

  Mom stammered. “Well… we… we’ve met a couple of survivors like that, but they managed, to… to shake that off in a century or two…”

&
nbsp; “That’s your solution to everything, isn’t it? Give it time.”

  “Sweetie, time is our gift to you–”

  “That’s not your gift. You didn’t do a voiding thing except die young. And then you left us to go on stupid adventures that mean nothing!”

  “Like you’re any better?”

  I turned, stunned by my sister’s accusation. She rolled her eyes, looking up to the heavens as if hoping someone would knock sense into me – and then slapped her palms on her thighs, wiping the sweat off as if she was getting around to a job long overdue.

  “Look, Amichai – you’ve tried to take care of me. And I appreciate that. But you also…”

  “I also what?”

  She swallowed, hesitant to speak. Tears stung my eyes: angry as she was, she still didn’t want to hurt her baby brother.

  “You can’t yell at Mom and Dad for being irresponsible when you’re the one pulling the crazy pranks,” she said. “You think I don’t know how close you came to Shriving Criminal, after the pony stunt? At least Mom and Dad’s adventures aren’t putting them in real danger. You don’t want to admit how much you have in common with them, but… you almost left me, Amichai. Alone.”

  Left unsaid, because she couldn’t say it out loud: You almost got yourself voided.

  I could barely breathe.

  Dad cleared his throat, annoyed. “Amichai’s not your legal guardian, Izzy. I am. And I assure you from this moment on, if it’s that serious, we’ll take care of you. We can file paperwork just as well as Amichai, can’t we, darling? We can get a new hearing, I’m sure.”

  “Oh yes,” Mom said, confident as always. “This time we’ll do better.”

  Izzy squeezed my hand, her grip still far too weak. And I wanted to believe Mom and Dad. I wanted them to tell me their stories, to feel their heroic battles meant something.

  But their promises were as empty as their adventures. All their good intentions were dreams. Emptiness.

  Ghost stories.

  “Look, I gotta go,” I said, giving Izzy a goodbye hug.

  “You just got here!”

  “I’ve got a job to take,” thinking that yeah, I could join the LifeGuard.

  Because I had to do better than my parents.

  11: SUBWAY TUNNELS REPURPOSED INTO PARTIES

  * * *

  Blackout Parties, it must be stressed, are also not illegal. There is absolutely nothing wrong in discovering a dead spot in an abandoned building. There is no law that says every inch of New York must be surveilled by cameras. And if the cameras in the vicinity of a Blackout Party fail mysteriously in the hours before the event, well, who’s to say it’s not providence?

  Perhaps the LifeGuard sits far back, eyeing the party with binoculars (since their more complicated surveillance equipment tends to short out once the counterinsurgent hackers set up shop).

  The LifeGuard keeps their distance, though they want to interfere so much their fillings ache. Yet their dead superiors give the orders to hold back: certain segments of New York must be allowed to let off steam. The truncheon-strokers are informed, by those who lived through it, that the last time the LifeGuard really clamped down on Blackout Parties it led to a Boston-sized rebellion.

  This is one of the few benefits of having all-dead politicians; the Boston riots were fifty years ago, but they remember them as though the slaughter was yesterday. Walter Wickliffe and his cabinet will reign eternal, never resigning due to sickness or death – and the missteps that led to the massacre will not be reduced to a historical lesson, but will remain real and emotional memories.

  Even ghosts feel guilty about what happened to Boston.

  I felt guilty, too. I was headed to my last Blackout Party to join an organization that wanted to exterminate Blackout Parties. This would be my last dance to organic music, the last laugh with my friends, the last drink with people who wanted to be alive.

  I was doing the responsible thing by joining the LifeGuard.

  So why did it feel like dying?

  36th Avenue, at least, was well lit; the streetlights had been shut down, replaced by the golden glow of Upterlife servers. I nodded to my fellow travelers as they passed by; the shepherds guiding their lambs back from the shearing stations, the repairmen with their pushwagons of welding kits, grimy sweatshop workers trudging home from the clothing mills. They all had the characteristic self-loathing of physical producers. Who wanted to make anything for the real world? Clothes tore, wagon wheels rotted, coral crumbled.

  Only the Upterlife lasted forever.

  I was blasted out of my reverie by the howl of a magnetorail whizzing overhead at 300 mph, delivering circuitboards.

  My legs ached. I’d walked thirty blocks to City Hall from Lenox Hill. This was why everyone wanted ponies. With a pony, you could haul goods across the city with ease.

  I hoped Therapy was OK. Once I got into the LifeGuard, I wouldn’t have time to search for her.

  I ran my hands along a long wall, looking for the bricked-up entryway with a narrow hole knocked in it. It wasn’t easy, but that was part of the fun.

  See, finding a Blackout Party is a trick in and of itself. All invitations are passed on through the curl of a fleshy tongue – no electronic invitations, only the exhalation of living lungs.

  Blackout Parties allow no cameras, no recordings, no blogging – it’s a celebration as transient as our bodies.

  And like life, each party is distinct. Which is why I wandered in darkness down the abandoned access tunnel, uncertain what I’d find. I muttered to myself, rehearsing what I’d bellow once I got in:

  “Calm yourself, citizens,” I muttered. “Amichai is here. Let the rumpus commence.”

  I smacked my lips, trying to swallow back the taste of lame.

  I used to be special. Once, I’d shown up with twenty friends and a PA system, and we’d conga-lined our way in. Another time the party had filled with white smoke, and when the smoke cleared, wham! There Dare and I crouched, clad in badass ninja outfits.

  But I hadn’t had time to prepare. For the first time, I understood why older people were so scarce at the Blackout Parties. I’d only been working for three weeks – and I was so exhausted, I was ready to call it a night before I even got to the party.

  As I found the firefly-bioluminescence streaming foggily towards the music, my hips began to sway.

  I grinned. I wasn’t ghosted yet.

  I followed the biofog. As it grew brighter, I saw its glow reflecting off polished gold-and-black tiles. The walls curved upwards towards a vaulted cathedral ceiling, the tiles crisscrossing inwards to focus upon stained-glass windows. The golden glow of the Upterlife shone through them like diamonds.

  It was glorious.

  Then I realized, as Mama Alex must have intended:

  This place had been built by the dead. The real dead. The moldy oldies, who’d died before the Upterlife had been invented.

  How old were these walls? Three hundred years? Four hundred? No matter. This had been made back when electricity itself was new, when magnets and turning gears promised a future that rattled and clanked. Each tile had been placed by a now-dead hand, this art their sole legacy.

  Mama Alex had repurposed this, refashioned a desolated tomb into a vibrant party, thrumming with music designed to resurrect the spirit of these dearly departed artists.

  It would be a crime not to party here.

  I moved deeper into the chamber, where the walls had been scrubbed and lit with floodlights – though all the fans in the world couldn’t quite push away Little Venice’s moldy death-scent wafting down the tunnels. Rusted tracks curved in and out, winding their way past polished wood-and-brass ticket stations, each staffed with smiling old women serving drinks.

  I squeezed my eyes shut as I approached the main entrance.

  “CALM YOURSELF, CITIZENS,” I bellowed, my voice swallowed up by the thrumming beat. “AMI–”

  Someone shoved his fingers in my mouth to examine my gums.


  I coughed, smelling Halitosis Harry’s sewery reek.

  “Three weeks since I seen you. Bold Amichai musta gotten a job,” Harry said, peeling open cracked lips to expose grass-green rotted teeth. He wore a wooden clapboard. It read: “WHY WORK TILL YOU’RE NINETY? LET US TEACH YOU THE MYSTERIES OF PASSIVE RESISTANCE!” And then, in smaller letters: “Venality guaranteed! Will Shrive upon request!”

  I spat, clearing the taste from my mouth. “Harry! You’re looking well.”

  Harry gave me a peeved look.

  “Sorry,” I apologized. “Terrible. You look terrible.”

  “You think?” he asked hopefully. He palpated my thighs before giving me a look of disappointment.

  “You’re doing it wrong, my friend.” He extracted two cigars from a filthy pocket. “Your legs are stronger. Gotta counteract that, to confound the corpses.” He jammed the cigar in my mouth, lit it. “Suck deep, my friend. Get those lungs filled with tumors the size of babies’ fists. As long as smoking’s legal, let’s use it.”

  The cigar tasted even worse than his fingers. “What’s in this?” I choked.

  “Haven’t a clue.” He tapped his temple in a just-between-us gesture. “If I knew how bad t’was, it might be suicide.”

  “I’ll save it for later,” I told him. I extinguished the cigar, then tucked it into my pocket so as to not hurt Harry’s feelings. He was a nice guy for a Degenerate – but even though the Degenerates generally made it to the Upterlife, sickening myself in protest held no appeal.

  “I’ve seen how this goes, Amichai. You mean to show up for the party, but first you need to unwind. So you play an Upterlife game. Chat with a friend. And then it’s too late to go out, and you’ve passed another day like it was a bowel movement…”

  “Gotta go, Harry.”

  “You’re working too hard!” he called after me. “When you’re too tired to party, the corpsicles are stealing your life!”

  The exhaustion in my bones told me he had a point.