by David Beers
"You know what will heal her, don't you?"
"Of course, but it's not what you really want. That's what I'm trying to say. You don't want her healed; you want her safe, and that's something I can't give you."
Caesar sighed and looked down at his shoes. He smiled at the nonsense this thing was saying, some kind of mechanical magi, spouting off riddles supposedly wrapped in truth. "Look," he said. "You're going to tell me what I want. Not what you say I want, but what I'm telling you I want. How do I heal her?" He looked up at the application. Its eyes were perfectly calm, a lake untouched for a thousand years.
"You take one of our applications back to her and you have it work on the wound. One of the doctors in this city will do. They all can fix it fairly easily."
"That's it?" Caesar asked.
"That's it."
"It seems too simple."
"There's nothing complicated in life, Mr. Wells. What do I have to gain by lying to you? If she dies or lives it is of no matter to me. My time here is over, that is quite clear, and why would I lie to you on my way out? To hurt you in some way? Your attachments to things that you cannot have will hurt you more than enough. I'm telling you the truth. Find a doctor and bring it back to her. She will be healed."
"And The Genesis? Where is it?”
The Tourist smiled, for the first time in all of this. It had remained stoic since the moment that Caesar grabbed control of it, showing no emotions, showing no will other than to remain quiet and still. Until now. Until this smile.
"I told you that you will find no happiness in my answers. I don't think you want to hear this one, if I'm being honest."
"Why are you smiling?"
"Because I know how this ends," The Tourist said. "Because I know what you're going to say and where you're going to go and what's going to happen when you get there. Because none of this ends well for you."
"And that makes you happy?" Caesar asked.
"Happy? I'm not sure that's the name I would give this emotion. Satisfied, maybe? The one feeling that humanity can't hold onto for longer than a few seconds. Knowing what happens to you gives me satisfaction."
"Tell me where it is and let's be done with this."
"Yes, let's. The sooner you know the answer, the sooner I can have my satisfaction."
Chapter Ten
You felt it?
Of course.
Have any thoughts you'd care to share?
I don't think things could be going much worse, to be honest. I think that we're about to set something loose that we won't be able to control, multiple things, really. I think that the theory just killed perhaps one of the most important applications we had. I think he did it without us knowing it was coming. I think that we didn't provide it with adequate security, that we didn't even foresee he would show up there again. I think—
Stooooppp, stop. I can't take it anymore. Sometimes I wish we had digital Zoloft or something with as much as you complain. You depress me and I know you depress yourself. It's not that bad.
Losing that application isn't bad?
It would be nice to have it still, but we can create another.
No, not like that. Six hundred years of learning and adaptation. Whatever we create won't nearly hold its capabilities, not for a long time. And what did we gain by losing it? Nothing.
Okay, so the theory scored a point. It's nearing half time and we're still up.
We're up? Are you mad? In what reality are you living that you think he's not neck and neck with us or even ahead? And you're about to let that dog off its leash? We're setting something up that we don't truly understand. The probabilities are just that, and the further we go, the more we add, the more convoluted those probabilities become. Lendoiro is just the beginning. When we bring in Mock? Do you really think we're going to be able to control this?
How many times do I have to tell you; we want him to see things when they're out of control.
* * *
The bottle protruding from Manny's mouth still expanded and contracted, keeping his lungs opening and closing, keeping oxygen flowing through his bloodstream. The little spiders that had crawled on his body were gone; the attention directed at Manny, for the moment, focused on his skull. A small globe hovered around his head, floating in the air the same as a balloon might, except with an ability to move on a whim. It floated across his skull, two small saws extending from the orb. A single red eye glowed on the front of it.
The two saws drilled down on Manny's skull, rotating almost quicker than the human eye could see. They collided with bone, sending a wrenching, messy sound echoing through the small room. Blood shot out in a stream, but was quickly absorbed by the floor beneath. The room would stay clean no matter what happened. Whether Manny lived or died during this operation, the room would not be sullied.
The floating application moved around Manny's skull the way a dancer might a floor, lightly touching where it needed to, but never staying too long in one spot. The saws peeled his skull back, revealing the soft gray tissue beneath it. Once the top of Manny's skull sat on the table next to him, the tiny saws that had opened his head morphed into the tiny needles seen on the spiders that once crawled across his body. They started poking and prodding, opening up pieces of Manny's brain, closing others, as if they were looking for something.
Another floating machine flew over to Manny's head, but instead of pointed needles for hands, it simply carried a thin sliver of metal inside it. Hovering over the hole now in Manny's brain, the application opened from the bottom, and the needle slowly slid out, dropping centimeters and then inches into the gray and somewhat bloody tissue. The first application got busy as the needle slid inside, using its pointed fingers to stitch up the hole, to mold Manny's brain around the metal that was now in it.
Manny lay with his eyes closed, his lungs still pumping under the volition of a machine.
Chapter Eleven
The Life of Caesar Wells
by Leon Bastille
We're catching up to the present now. We're not quite there, but we're arriving and soon you'll see all that I see. Soon you'll see everything and then you'll have to make a choice as to whether or not Caesar should have been spared. I can't rush it though; I have to make sure you see everything, because I want history to have a fair accounting. I'm not perfect, obviously, but I'm trying to lay this out as honestly as I can.
Caesar went after The Tourist despite everything I said. I've already said that no one was going to stop him, not once he woke up with that chip in his head—no one would persuade him to give up this crusade. Things were going on all around him that he didn't know about: Manny for one. Things in the cities that we'll get to very shortly. All of these things being done to put him on a path that he wouldn't be able to steer away from. Even going after The Tourist, we now know, was part of The Genesis clearing the woods on that path. Making sure that the ruts in the ground would hopefully be too deep for Caesar to pull himself out of once he got started. Hell, maybe it was too late once Jerry put the chip in, I don't know. Maybe, by that point, there wasn't any way to get him on another track.
I don't know everything that chip can do, but I think it has powers that none of us fully understand. Even more than its ability to control people. I think, in some ways, it has the power to bring back the dead. At least, for a minute, and at least for Caesar.
I don't know if he knew I was watching. He may have known and still went on, not caring—or perhaps he was so engrossed in what was before him that he saw nothing else.
Either way, before Caesar left the second time, I watched him speak to his brother. I watched him speak to Cato in a way that he had never been able to in real life, never been able to because a vat awaited him if he did. Somehow, Cato's image, his hologram, stood in the middle of Caesar's room, beaming out from a machine. I don't know how Caesar uploaded it, how the chip in his head was able to communicate with it, but that was him—sure enough. That was Cato. Except his eyes were different. His eyes were
something I've never seen before. They weren't the hazel he possessed in real life; they were completely black with white lines running vertically across them, maybe a dozen on each eye.
"I won't," Caesar said.
He was crying. I couldn't see his face, only the back of him, but his voice carried more than enough emotion.
"I promise I won't."
Cato didn't speak at first, he just looked at Caesar, those white lined eyes holding anger. I don't know who that anger was for, but it frightened me.
"What if you lose?" Cato asked, his voice the fresh sound of a sixteen year old, not the evil that I expected from those eyes. It was Cato, the same one that I knew, the same one that had grown up around Caesar and I. Cato, standing there talking to his brother. "Then I died for nothing. Then Mom and Dad died for nothing."
Caesar put his head into his palms, his hands covering his eyes. "Are they okay?" He asked.
"No, they're dead."
Caesar let out a soft sob. "No, I mean. Are they upset? Do they hate me? Do they blame me?"
"I don't think Dad did. I don't think Mom understood. I think even when she melted, she still wasn't completely sure what was going on."
"Did she say anything?" He asked.
"About what?"
"Jesus," Caesar sobbed. "About what I did to her. About being put into a vat. About her son living while she died. About any of it, Cato."
"No. She cried a lot. It's hard to say much when you don't know why any of it's happening."
"And Dad?"
"He held her. He said it was going to be okay but he had to know none of it would be okay. When they stripped us down naked, he had to know nothing would be okay."
"I'm sorry," Caesar said. "I'm so sorry, Cato."
His brother said nothing, just stood there staring with those eyes that didn't need to blink. I don't know, even now, if Caesar could tell the difference between reality and his mind at that point. I don't know if he really thought he was speaking to Cato or whether he recognized it was just his brain's interpretation of Cato. Maybe it was his punishment to himself, to face his brother, to be berated by him. Hear Cato tell him all the things that Caesar felt about himself. Hear Cato tell him that he couldn't quit going after The Genesis. That whatever excuses he had to make, whether it was to save Paige or for justice, or whatever else he came up with—that he had to keep going. Or maybe he thought he was talking to Cato. I don't know; I only know what I saw, a man driven by demons.
Chapter Twelve
I can do one of two things; I can go after The Genesis or I can save Paige.
Caesar said the words, letting them travel hundreds of miles instantaneously. Knowing that Jerry would receive them and understand not only the actual sentence, but the gravity that came with it.
What did you find out about The Genesis? Jerry asked.
There's a train. It's the only one and it goes directly to The Genesis, to its home. Twice a year, Jerry, that's it. I think for protection, the less paths in the better. Twice a year it brings applications home, both physical ones and the ephemeral. Some are there for upgrades that can't be uploaded digitally, some are there for deletion, but twice a year a train loads up and ships them to The Genesis. Caesar paused for a few seconds, not wanting to say the next words, knowing what they meant. It's tomorrow. The train leaves tomorrow and it leaves from a city about one hundred miles from where I am now.
Jerry was silent for a few minutes and Caesar didn't interrupt the quiet. He lay in a hotel room, enjoying the comforts that he, most likely, wouldn't feel again. Nothing was tracking him. Nothing was coming for him in this city. The disguises he wore kept any applications from suspecting, even the retina scans gave someone else's identity.
And, the bed felt a lot better than the cot back in the cave.
What about Paige? Jerry asked.
It's going to be a point of no return soon. If we don't get her help, there won't be anything anyone can do.
How soon? Jerry asked.
Two days? Maybe less.
He heard Jerry sigh, the weight of the choice finally laying fully down across him. Paige or The Genesis. That's what this came down to. The fucking Tourist said Caesar wouldn't find happiness, said that he chased something that didn't exist—security. The application didn't exist anymore, nothing but its memory, and Caesar lay on his side looking at the wall, thinking about those words. Thinking that the damned thing had been right. That he came looking for security and what he found was a choice that put his world into more disarray.
You have to be on that train, Jerry said. Paige is dispensable.
Caesar closed his eyes, having known since he killed The Tourist that Jerry would say this. Jerry wasn't wrong either, not in the long run. Paige was just another human that would eventually die, whether it happened now or in seventy years, did it matter? No. She was dispensable. If Caesar wasn't on the train tomorrow, then that was another six months, and in another six months everything could be destroyed. Already he had skirted death too many times. Luck didn't hold out, not luck like that. In six months he would be dead, or if not him, then everyone else he knew.
I know, he said. Tears sat beneath his closed eyelids, but not quite enough to leak out.
I'll tell the rest that there is no cure. They don't need to know.
Caesar didn't care about that. He didn't care what the rest of the people knew. Not even Leon. He was making the choice to kill the person...that he what? That he loved? He didn't want to use that word because you didn't kill people you loved. You saved them.
You didn't love your brother? He thought. But no, that wasn't fair. That was different.
Is it? He wondered. You made your choice to save that girl and your family ended up dead because of it. Did you love them, Caesar?
He pushed the thoughts away. Not now and not here. Not with this decision facing him. If he doubted the choice he was making, all he had to do was think back to Cato telling him not to stop. That if he stopped, Cato's death was for nothing. He could bring Cato back, bring those white streaming eyes that said he lived with The Genesis now. If he thought going back for Paige was best, then that's all he had to do was ask Cato. He would find his answer there.
Fine, he said. I'll let you know when I'm boarding the train.
* * *
Caesar sat down on a train, looking nothing like himself. He still wore the disguise, would wear the disguise until he showed up at the next train—the one that would deliver him to The Genesis. He didn't think he would need a disguise there, and truly, he didn't know what to expect when he arrived. Would the applications overwhelm him, or would they mind their own business? Would he have to fight?
He didn't have much of a plan, that was for sure.
"A lot of those applications, they're docile, not protective types. The ones meant for security normally have uploads to their software, that way they don't have to go offline," Grace said in his ear.
That's good. Will you be able to tell more about them when we get closer? Caesar asked.
"I should."
Grace hadn't said anything about the decision. She simply started feeding him the information she possessed about what might happen. That bothered Caesar too. Not as much as his decision, but some. Because a week ago she had been begging him not to go for The Tourist, not to try to face down The Genesis. She had said that he owed it to the people following him not to get them all killed. Now though, since his return, she said nothing of the sort. It appeared, to Caesar, that Grace thought they could all die now. That he could die too, and that was okay with her. And despite his refusal to listen to anything she told him in the past, it bothered him.
You're not going to give me your thoughts about this? He asked.
"My thoughts?"
Don't be coy, Grace. About my decision, about going to this train.
"You almost died a week ago. I'm still not one hundred percent sure why you didn't. The skin across your back is still a shade of purple that looks like it will take
weeks to fully heal. And yet you're returning. The woman you sleep with is dying, and yet you're returning. What am I supposed to say that I haven't already?"
There it was, the truth. She was giving up on him. Giving up on his humanity, on his goodness, on his very soul maybe. She wasn't going to waste her proverbial breath on him any longer. If he wanted to rush forward and kill everyone he knew, then she would shut up and tell him the best way to do it.
Tell me what you would do, he said.
"Why? So you can ignore me?"
Because you're my moral compass, Grace. Show me north even if I go south.
She sighed in his ear, that human emotion that she picked up from him so long ago. The sigh that said he would never learn, that despite all his intelligence, he was little more than a mutt that she had to teach not to piss on the floor.
"I'd find the application that could heal Paige and I'd bring it back. I'd save the woman that I shared a bed with. I'd let this whole mess go." The words flowed into Caesar's ear, but there was no conviction in them. She said them because he asked her to. Not because they would make a difference, because they wouldn't, they never had—not since the beginning of this.
I won't have another chance, Grace. This is it. If I miss this train, it's all over.
"You stupid fool. It was over from the moment you started talking crazy. It was over from the moment you were born. It was fucking over the moment those scientists gave The Genesis life. How many times do I have to tell you that? How many times do I have to keep saying it? You show up now or you show up in six months and you're still going to die."
I lived the last time.
"And look at how easily The Genesis grabbed a hold of you. You got out because your brain developed the ability to do what no brain has ever done before, and still you almost died. Now you're going to let the last person to really care about you die because you think you might be able to stop this thing?" She spit vitriol at him, pure acid pouring into his ear. "I'm here because I don't have anywhere else to go. I'm here because I'm going to go ahead and help you walk off the cliff because maybe that's what I should have done since the beginning. Because maybe trying to save you was just me creating a monster."