by PJ Manney
He put on his flak jacket, helmet, and weapons, then turned to his two helpers and knelt. “Talia. You have to leave now, or you’ll die here, too.”
“I want to die,” she cried.
“And I can’t let that happen.” He reached under her arms and lifted her from the ground.
“No!” she wailed.
Tom handed her into Balthazar’s arms and gave the teen another handgun from his holster. “Keep the guns. Get her back to that ship.” He pointed to the Zumwalt. “And get on board with her. I hope I see you there. And good luck.”
Then one thought overtook Tom’s mind: Find Winter and Carter. And make them pay.
Tom sent an order to the Zumwalt: Get out of here as soon as Talia and the guys board.
“Are you nuts?” asked Veronika from her dome nest.
“No,” said Tom. “No more deaths. No more. Follow the Roosevelt out.”
“And how the hell are you getting back?” she asked.
“I’ll figure it out,” he said.
After 2.3 long minutes, the image alarm pinged. A camera had captured Winter in bizarre repose, leaning against a fence with her arms crossed over her chest, a laser gun in her right hand. Her long, curvaceous legs crossed, and a smile rose on her face as she watched the end of the world unfold.
She was only a quarter mile away. So like he had done all day, he ran.
She deigned to notice him at a hundred paces, even though she would have tracked him the entire time, even as he had searched for her. Tom stopped twenty feet from her.
“Fancy seeing you here,” said Winter with a coquettish simper. Then casually held the gun at the head of a terrified girl.
“How could you do this?” he asked.
Winter smirked. “Because I love you.” She winked and kissed the air.
Tom felt a level of rage he hadn’t known he or Rosero possessed. He focused all the attention he had spread among cameras, ships, people, data sets, and media toward a single purpose.
Kill the bitch.
As he lifted his weapon, Winter lifted the girl like a human shield. The girl screamed, kicked, and tried to wriggle away. Winter put the laser gun to her temple. “Settle down or you’re dead,” she ordered. The girl froze.
Tom did not lower his gun.
“Would you really?” Winter asked him. “For the satisfaction? You know it’s meaningless.”
“Talia thinks you’re bait,” said Tom.
“But you’re smarter than that. And smart guys always turn me on.” She whispered into the girl’s ear, “Do they turn you on, too?”
“What a fucking psychopath,” said Tom.
Winter grinned, baring her teeth. “And you made all this. So what does that make you?”
“Why all this?” asked Tom.
Winter turned serious. “It’s necessary. You’ll figure it out. Well, maybe not. Your latest incarnation is especially stupid.”
Tom’s hands shook. He tried to aim at the part of Winter’s head that was exposed behind the girl, but while he had decent aim and a laser scope, he could still miss.
Veronika text messaged from the Zumwalt: I can help.
Do it, messaged Tom.
“Come on, my dear,” said Winter. “Get the balls and shoot us both. Don’t the ends justify the means? What did Talia call you once? Dudley Do-Right? Didn’t like that, did you, sweetie?”
“Ask her for place names! Make her say them!” said Veronika.
Tom took a step closer to Winter. “You’re right. You were always right. I’m the idiot. I’m the monster. So now what? Fight? Where? In the real world? Virtually?”
“See? Was that so hard?” Then Winter blinked. And blinked again.
“How? Mano a mano? Rock ’em sock ’em sexbots? Just pick a place. Palo Alto? San Francisco? Malibu? Venice? DC? The old Phoenix Camp? Hell, I’ll go to Antarctica.”
Winter started to answer, but then shook her head, as though to shake mental cobwebs free. She looked accusingly at Tom. “Who’s in my head?”
Back at Caltech, Arun found a path remotely tracing Winter’s program far enough back to find the digital version of a backup vault. Carter was a narcissist and kept his backups offline in multiple places for posterity. If they could access one and find a single merge conflict with the other backups, they could insert that conflict and wreak havoc. The conflict would be a word, image, or behavior, anything that didn’t replicate properly.
Arun had found it. He noticed that Winter never verbalized anything related to place names. On the Long Beach Pier she had twitched while attempting to say Island White. There had to be a merge-conflict glitch in Winter/Carter’s thoughts of place names. And Arun had let Veronika know only minutes before.
“Where?” said Tom, moving closer. “Just say it! What’s your problem? Are you an idiot? Just say it . . . ”
“D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d . . . ,” Winter sputtered. Spasming like Ruth, her hands sprung wide, dropping the laser gun. She released the girl, who took a moment to realize she was free. Then she bolted. Winter fell over like a shuddering toy.
Tom held the gun in front of him and walked slowly toward her.
Twitching on the ground, Winter said, “P-p-poor Ruthie. Now I g-g-get it.” She looked without fear down the barrel of Tom’s gun. “You know every t-time I die, you lose a little m-m-more of yourself. This’ll hurt you m-m-more than it will me, m-m-my dear. Adiós, m-muchacho.” Then she tried to wink, but her eyelid only fluttered.
Tom pulled the trigger, drilling his laser into her frontal lobe. Her eyes remained open, her mouth stuck in a smile. Then he shifted his aim to her heart, driving a stake of light through her like she was a vampire. Perhaps she was one. Maybe he was, too.
But Winter, and Carter, were wrong. It didn’t hurt him. Revenge felt satisfying, even tasted good.
But he knew that if he paused to enjoy it, he would be jeopardizing his own life. Turning away from Winter’s body, he looked out toward the harbor, linking back to the cameras, taking in the enormous devastation, and planning the next move. The asphalt was a wet, dark reddish gray. The sounds of the terrified had lessened. Those who could escape had scattered. Those who couldn’t were strewn all over the port, injured, dying, or wandering. The drones had accomplished their goal: there were no more “refugees” on the ground at Port Everglades. Only “enemy combatants” and “victims,” as the SSA had wanted all along.
The sounds of the aftermath haunted Tom. First, there was quiet. The drones had left. Human moans colluded in a low, gentle hum. A few GOs rang. Then a few more. Soon, a ceaseless medley of ringtones, sound effects, song snippets, and comedy punch lines. The noise was as terrifying as weapons discharge and the cries of agony, the sound of thousands of family and friends trying to find out if their loved ones were okay.
A GO rang two feet from Tom. Its owner looked the same age as Rosero, his limbs tucked around him in a protective fetal posture, still. He was covered in blood. The face was familiar. Not to Major Tom, but to Rosero. Tom reached for the man’s pocket, removed the phone, and brought it to his ear.
“Hello?”
“Oh my God you’re okay thank our lord you’re okay please tell me you’re okay are you okay?”
“I . . . I’m . . . I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” stuttered Tom.
There was silence on the line. Then a shrieking, the name Aaron, over and over. He placed the GO gently near the young man’s ear.
Staggering away, Tom tried to focus both his mind and body. While the digital brain functioned, the human brain had frozen. Major Tom took control, turning Rosero’s head to take in the scene. At the nearest dock, the Ocean Harmony lay in two sunken chunks. Out beyond the breakwater, the CAS Theodore Roosevelt sat in the open ocean, its big missiles and guns ready to fire if fired upon.
The strategists of the SSA were not foolish. They had killed the refugees to assert dominance over a territory that remained a thorn in their side. Knowing that any military commander worth his or her salt would neve
r start a shooting war unless fired upon, they didn’t threaten the CAS Theodore Roosevelt. The SSA had no intention of starting a war with anyone who would fire back.
Defying Tom’s orders, the Zumwalt hadn’t moved. It sat at Terminal 25, engines running, ready to go. Any drone not recognized by the LEOs as their own had been shot down. Citizens had once had the legal right to film violence that transpired in public, but those rights had been abolished in the SSA. As of last year, drones had no rights, nor did their human operators.
A new wave of drones arrived to explore the carnage. Official state news outlets sent flying robots in lieu of costly mortal journalists. As they had after 10/26, the world tuned in to the horror. The revolution would not only be televised—it would be carefully staged and edited.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Tom regained some integration between his brains and his body during his dash to the ship. Dodging the living and the dead, he leapt onto the gangplank. As soon as his feet hit the steel walkway, it began to raise. He ran down its length and onto the ship as it headed toward the breakwater to join the Roosevelt.
He had killed the two entities he set out to, though it was feeling more and more like that was a part of the plan. He tried to save others, but by the end, he was the only target left at the port. Carter allowed the Zumwalt to escape. He could have destroyed Tom and the ship at any time. But he hadn’t.
Tom was no longer needed in their Port Everglades narrative. The club was building a larger narrative with him as the villain. Carter’s new version of Thomas Paine’s story went out on all media: Major Tom had control of the terrifying orbital laser that had killed refugees and destroyed the Ocean Harmony. He had used the orbiting laser to murder the 10/26 terrorists and his compatriot Bruce Lobo. He had killed innocent people. But his story had changed so many times that people couldn’t remember how many versions there were or which was correct. In their confusion, only one thing was clear: Thomas Paine was the enemy.
Tom lurched through the ship, passing passengers he was unable to forget. Most were from New Orleans, fewer from Port Everglades. Their faces and wounded bodies taunted him. If he had seen them even once, terrified or injured or on the run, he couldn’t forget them, their experiences repeating, repeating, repeating.
His mind fragmented in furious anguish. Was he standing in a cramped hallway on the Zumwalt? Was he back on the dock, killing Winter? Trying to save Steve? Confronting Talia’s face, its expression confirming that he would never have her heart or trust again? He didn’t know. Maybe if he tried to compartmentalize the day, lock it up tight in a private digital vault, he would feel grounded. But even as he tried to keep the gates shut on his memories, his body couldn’t forget what it had experienced. Or the number of people who had died, all because he had thought he could help.
He felt faint. He grabbed a hallway doorknob to steady himself, but his hands shook no matter how tightly he grasped.
Coldplay’s “42” started up in his head. He could hear it in quadrophonic sound: stereo from both his servers and Rosero’s brain. The dead would be in his head forever. Because he was dead, too. He leaned his forehead against the door and gently bumped it against the metal. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it . . .
A young girl shoved up against him. She looked frighteningly like the patient Steve had tried to save before he died. “Hey. Are you that guy?”
He looked at the girl, wide-eyed, shell-shocked. “What?”
“That guy. Who killed people?”
Muscles spasmed through his body. He felt like Ruth on amphetamines. He jerked back from the girl and staggered down the hall for the bridge.
Ruth, Talia, and Veronika sat motionless in their bridge chairs. Each wore her own expression of devastation and loss. Talia wouldn’t look at him. It was unbearable.
Rising out of her chair, Ruth marched up to him. Her right hand rose and shook violently. She looked like she wanted to slap him in the face, but instead, she spun around, picked up a navigation manual, and whacked him across the face with it.
“Geh in drerd arein!” she yelled. Go to hell.
He had a better idea. The countless dead in his head told him what he had to do. He sat carefully in an empty console seat and, closing his eyes, searched his own programming to find the files and the commands.
An alarm pinged on Veronika’s monitors. The Major Tom program displayed on her screen was changing, but Tom had authorized it. She turned to him and asked, “What are you doing to Major Tom?”
“What? D-d-doing what?” asked Ruth.
Studying the commands, Veronika said, “I think he’s trying to access his memory files.”
Ruth’s eyes widened. She screamed, “Nein! You will not d-d-do this!”
Talia whispered, “He’s erasing his memories?”
“Stop him!” Ruth ordered Veronika.
Veronika jumped into the routine, typing fast. “I know it hurts,” she said to Tom, “but you don’t understand what you’re doing!”
“Don’t make me remember this. I won’t. . . . . can’t!”
“You will!” Ruth yelled back. “You will never f-f-forget it. I will make sure of that! I have copies. When it disappears? I will add it back. You have no right to f-f-forget!”
“Please!” Tom begged. “Sever the server connections and cut the power. Let me go dark.”
Ruth crossed her arms in refusal. “And kill your human body, too? Have you no compassion? For the boy?”
Lack of compassion was not his problem. He had too much of it. Rosero’s body was pumping his digital system full of anger, rage, terror, grief, and regret. He could feel Steve’s body pitching off the ship’s deck, hitting the sides of the boat on the way down, breaking his head and neck, and dropping into the sea. That lukewarm, dark, disgusting water had stopped his breath and his heart and his mind. Forever. Tom could hear the instantaneous pain, the emptiness of all those vaporized when the Harmony was laser-pulsed. Each refugee gunned down by drones.
He had had enough. It was more than anyone could sustain.
Ruth stood her ground. “Ale tsores vos ikh hob oyf mayn hartsn, zoln oysgeyn tsu zayn kop.”
Tom chose not to translate out loud. All problems I have in my heart, should go to his head.
“Nein,” she continued. “You will see what you d-d-do. You will not run away. You must care! Or you are just another Carter.” Then glanced sorrowfully at Talia, then back at him. “Mit a krechts batsolt men nit a choiv.”
You cannot pay a debt with a sigh. Tom owed Steve and Talia more than could be measured. And he had given them nothing but the dubious honor of joining him in a crusade they agreed with but had lost their stomach for years ago. The only payment he could give, they refused. They were bound to one another, but he was still a monster to them.
No, he was a monster only to Talia. He would be forced to remember that. Only Talia now.
The bridge was suffocating. So was his body. So was life. “I have to go. You can’t make me stay,” he said.
“Oh, for you?” scoffed Ruth. “T-t-t-time is meaningless. But for me? For T-T-T-Talia? You have consigned her. To hell.”
Talia hadn’t moved. Her eyes looked dead, her voice without affect. “No. Let him go. Rest. We all need rest.” She got up deliberately, as though she had only just remembered that she was capable of standing, and wandered off the bridge toward her bunk on the ship. Tom hoped she would sleep. And sleep and sleep. For his part, he never wanted to wake up.
Ruth turned to Veronika. “Keep an eye. On him. Don’t let him do. Something stupid.” She turned on him. “Go away, too, pakhdn!”
She had called him a coward. And like a coward, he fled. But his body didn’t know where to go. In desperation, he staggered back through the throng of refugees to his own bunk. But his mind needed to hide, too.
Now that TCoMT was gone, there was only one other place he could go. He messaged Veronika, asking her to send her avatar to join him at a certain location in cyberspace that he had never
shared with anyone. And to bring an avatar for him.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
In her trademark black steampunk ensemble, Veronika’s avatar appeared at the appointed location. With her, she had a Major Tom body of her own design: an amalgamated head and body constructed of Peter Bernhardt, Thomas Paine, the sexbots, and Rosero, dressed in the black T-shirt, jeans, and boots long favored by Peter.
Tom inhabited the avatar like an old set of clothes, grateful to adapt to Veronika’s human reaction time. Exhausted and miserable, he wanted to think as little as possible. But he grudgingly animated the avatar and tried to show some appreciation. It was difficult. “Thanks. You just had this? All ready to go?”
“Ummm . . . yeah. Do you even, like, know me?”
“I’m starting to. I’m another Veronika’s Veil?” He matched a new portrait miniature around her neck.
“The Catholics said it had the power to raise the dead. We’ll see.” She looked around the anonymous white foyer. “Where are we?”
“It’s a hidden backup. I copied it, just in case.”
Her avatar looked surprised. “There’s a hidden backup of the entire Memory Palace?”
“This isn’t the Memory Palace. If my housemates ever got out of hand, I could jettison or destroy it, and come here. Which we did. That was Dr. Who’s advice when she built both. Smart lady.”
He pointed at the simple white-paneled door. “I’ve never shown this to anyone.” His hand touched the paneling, as though to check if it still existed. “I need to hide for a while. But I’m afraid to be alone. I might try something again.”
“I won’t let you self-destruct. Promise.”
“Please, don’t tell anyone about this.”
“Dude,” she said. “I’m your friend. I would never hurt you.”
He paused, silent for a few seconds. “Okay. Here goes.”
He opened the door, and they stepped into a wonderland.