How could she accept this existence of permanent torture? No, she was stronger than that. She had pride. She would not succumb to this insufferable unjust internment. She would rise above it. She would take control of her life in the only way open to her; she would end it.
End it.
It was not suicide. It was euthanasia. The ultimate release.
The decision filled her with joy.
Somewhere in the distance, she heard a voice, an extinct southern accent like her Great Uncle Jesse’s. < Ma’am, you’re infected with Tellinii. I’m tryin’ to get Geppetto to fight it off, but it ain’t working. >
If only her great uncle were here. Apart from her mother, he had been the only person Sky could speak to. He had never judged her, just accepted everything with a smile. When he had passed away, Sky had been inconsolable for weeks. It was only when the doctor suggested that she base her BOS’ personality on her memories of Uncle Jesse that she began to improve.
Now even Uncle Jesse’s memory had betrayed her.
Sky bashed at the railpod’s transparent bubble with her fists. She banged her head against it, hard and harder until her forehead bled. It felt good. There was relief. Relief was happiness, or as close to it as she would ever get.
Something threw her against the seat, clamped her hands, arms, legs, body, head. It was her own swarm, holding her down.
Another traitor.
She was pinned like a butterfly in a display case. She tried to link with it but there was something in the way. It was Tester.
Sleep.
‘I’ve infected you with Tellinii,’ he said through the intercom. ‘You gave me no choice. I’m going to sedate you and then cure the virus. You’re coming with me whether you want to or not.’
Sleep.
But Sky would not sleep.
‘Stop fighting and everything will be okay, I promise.’
Sleep.
No, he was wrong. It had never been okay. And it never would be.
End it.
The tendrils entered her mind again, this time deeper.
Sleep, they said, sleep.
But the other voice—the one who urged her to end it—was louder.
She reached out to the swarm again, this time with Geppetto.
‘Stop,’ her father ordered.
She persisted, throwing her mind again and again at the task. A link to her swarm opened for a second—only a second—but it was enough; she threw her swarm at the transparent bubble of the pod. It struck with such force that the bubble flew off its hinges.
The winds howled.
Her swarm crashed against Tester’s railpod, dislodging it. The pod dangled as it slid along the rail, then it snapped and plummeted toward the ground with Tester still inside.
Her fellow passenger, Manny, still strapped in his seat belt, continued to sleep.
Sky peered over the edge of her open pod, winds buffeting her hair like a storm at sea. Below her, hundreds of pods zoomed along their rails. The ground was but a pinprick where the lines of skyscrapers converged.
She registered the shock on the passing commuters’ faces as she stepped out.
‘No,’ she said.
I don’t want this.
‘I’m infected,’ she told herself, the mental fog lifting. ‘I want to live.’
But the Tellinii virus had other plans.
And she jumped.
14:4
The apartments and offices blurred into a waterfall of metal.
The wind was a roaring sea. The virgin morning air was heavy with oxygen. She caught sight of the ground. She could make out the streets below. As she spun, she thought she saw a shadow chasing her.
Please, no.
The ground came at her so fast.
She crashed through something—glass?
Green-leafed palms and sounds of breaking branches and other things.
That chasing shadow again. It slid under her, cushioning her…
But there was one last horrid snap.
And the world froze.
Shards of roof sheeting and branches and leaves rained down around Sky. Her only light was that of a billboard ad selling programming enhancements: “Change your brain, change you”.
Something moved between the back of her head and the ground, sliding out, slow and even. As it rose, the light disappeared and Sky realized she was in the shadow of a swarm. It was not her swarm, for she had no link to it. It had tried to stop her fall, but it had arrived too late.
The swarm appeared to be watching her. It swayed, as if unsure what to do. It seemed so lost that Sky felt a pity for it. Then it scuttled out of sight to the sound of crunching bracken.
The world faded in and out.
‘Sky.’
That voice.
A maya.
It was Dante, the dead mayor of the dead colony; a demon come to take her?
‘Sky?’
Dante’s features morphed, like that of an olon, and settled on another familiar face; a programming officer, Okiro, a mess of confusion.
‘Sky, you’re infected,’ he cried. ‘Don’t move.’
But she could not move, even if she wanted to. Her body would not answer her commands.
14:5
As Sky Marion was one of Okiro’s regular clients, he was the first to receive the suicide alert.
Impossible, he thought, the network is secure; the government wouldn’t let another infection slip by. The network is secure.
The network had not even informed him that Sky had returned to Earth.
The ambulance hopper was already on the scene when Okiro arrived. Sky was in a stretcher. The medbots had placed her in an artificial coma. He sat beside her in the hopper and watched, helpless, as the ambulance’s mechanical arms worked on her body. The readout confirmed that her spinal cord had been damaged, resulting in quadriplegia.
How had this happened? He checked the city’s camera database, but he could not find security footage of the incident.
Strange. All the pods and rails had cameras. They would have seen something.
The worst of it was that Sky was infected with Tellinii. A part of him thought it would have been better if she had not survived the fall. Poor Sky; first ’36, then her mother infected, and now herself. Life had choked her.
He waited in the hospital corridor while the emergency team worked on her. The news channels mentioned a Tellinii case in Detroit—only one. The victim had tried to connect telepathically to the VOL. Nothing to be concerned about, the network was safe, they said, as long as you kept your mind to yourself.
Why would Sky Marion, of all people, attempt telepathy?
Had something happened on the Moon? Had they got to her?
Okiro remained by Sky’s side when they transferred her to the bedroom. The doctor explained they could correct her quadriplegia, but there was little point in surgery given her Tellinii infection.
Work called; was he okay? When would he return? He asked for a few days’ leave; it was a family matter. That wasn’t strictly true, but it felt right. His eyelids became heavy and his thoughts hazy.
Sleep.
14:6
Director Jeong-soo Tester found his daughter lying in the hospital bed, unconscious, infected, but alive. His first instinct was to rush to her, but it was merely an instinct. He ordered his two agents to wait in the corridor.
Her visitor—the man Tester had put to sleep—was a Neuroprogramming Officer.
Okiro Mohammed-Levi. The name amused Tester; it would have been all but impossible not so long ago. It was a testament to Earth’s superiority.
This was the same programming officer who had dug into Sky’s file, too deep for his own good. He was not well-programmed, but he had instinct. The NIA could use that.
Jeong-soo had infected Sky to disarm and sedate her, but he had not anticipated her mental strength, nor had he anticipated her regaining control of the swarm. After his railpod had derailed and fallen, he had landed safely on a roo
ftop courtyard, thanks to his own swarm. That was when he sent the swarm after Sky.
She had survived. But it was pointless; she had been infected for too long, the scanners had picked up her thoughts and identified the Tellinii virus, the ambulance had been called, the programmers alerted, and the news had reported it. It was all on the record.
If Sky hadn’t fought, if she had just slept as he had commanded, he could have cured her. Even if the scanners had picked up the virus, they would have dismissed it as an error.
He had gambled with her life, and failed. He had failed as no father could.
Yet here she was, alive. Peaceful. Her closed eyelids reminded him of the little girl he had found asleep on the sofa, waiting up for her father.
Jeong-soo moved to the other bed, to the woman he had once loved, when he had been able to love. Winona Marion.
The feeling was still there, somewhere, in the distance, an echo in the wind. They had met on campus, as many had. A smile. Deep brown eyes. The dark silky legs were a bonus. Who was he kidding? The legs had come first. One single day is where it begins; that first meeting, the rush of infatuation, consuming pursuit, union, comfort, family, and partnership.
These were but memories; nature’s mayas, nature’s hallucinations.
What utility was there in regret? When a railpod malfunctions and causes a collision, is it the passenger’s fault? Regret feeds off the illusion of autonomy. How very human.
He heard the door open. It was the doctor.
‘Mr. Tester, I need your final authorization for euthanasia for your wife and daughter,’ he said in that artificially compassionate tone of theirs.
Sky had survived the fall, survived Apollo, the telepaths, and even escaped the NIA for a time. She had sacrificed so much.
I nursed her in my arms
A useless thought, a waste of neural energy, a gap in his otherwise excellent programming.
He had first set eyes on baby Sky a few hours after Winona had delivered her. A tiny babe, just under two-and-a-half kilograms—five pounds in the old system. He had planned to be there for her delivery, but there had been an emergency at work (though, right now, he could not recall the nature of the emergency). When he finally met her, she melted like putty in his oversized hands. Her skin was warm, her eyelids closed, her lips suckled the air.
‘The decision to euthanize is entirely up to you, sir,’ the doctor said.
‘Is it?’ Tester asked, in a limbo between past and present. He scratched at his face.
‘Yes, of course,’ the doctor replied. ‘Perhaps you’d like to take some time to think about it?’
I could cure them both, he thought. Just two infected patients cured out of a million. A statistical anomaly. A scanning error. A natural genetic predisposition to suicidal thoughts but not execution, worrying but harmless.
‘No,’ said Tester.
‘Sir?’ the doctor asked, puzzled.
‘Leave them as they are. Give my daughter a mem-wipe, one month’s worth, and make sure to clean out any programs she received during that time.’
‘She is going to die, sir. There is no point in wiping anything.’
‘It’s a matter of national security; we can’t afford her to be hacked.’
‘Sir, if I may, the virus is on the brink of degrading your wife’s neurals, eventually your daughter’s too. It is only a matter of time.’
‘They’re fighters,’ Tester said. ‘Let them fight.’
The doctor nodded with a hint of resignation. He initiated the mem-wipe procedure.
As the mem-wipe deleted Sky’s memories, Tester comforted himself in the knowledge that he had performed his duty, albeit not as precisely as he had intended, and not as perfectly as the federator would have. Yet, he had served the federation and his planet in his own way; Geppetto was safe again, and as for his family—Sky and Winona—he had done all he could for them. He was but one person, a mere afterthought in the technological tsunami of evolution; what did the primitive yearnings of one human brain count for in the face of eternity?
Perhaps it was time to update his programming, ahead of the scheduled bi-annual session. The past week had taken its toll on his neurals and a visit to the programmer would be wise.
‘The mem-wipe is complete, sir,’ the doctor said.
Tester had expected to feel something.
He left without a word. He ordered the two NIA agents to remain in the corridor, then stepped out into the long night.
Chapter 15
Tinfoiled
15:1
Die, die, die, Sky told herself. Die, die, die. A holy bloody mantra.
She was in a dream without a dreamscape, locked away safe but disconnected. She found herself in a hall of mayas which reflected clones of herself into eternity; thousands of Skys stared back at her from all directions, a chorus of die, die, die.
The only other voice was that of Uncle Jesse.
< Ma’am, they’re wipin’ your memory for the last month, includin’ Geppetto. There’s nothing I can do, > he said. < I guess I’ll see you on the other side of the wipe, where we’ll both be none the wiser. >
Her maya reflections continued, End it. You’re a burden. They’re better off without you. Failure. You failed.
She caught her own lips repeating the same words; You’ll never get better. This is all there is, forever.
She turned, and they turned with her. She ran, and they followed. She was a dog chasing its own tail, round and round she goes.
There is only Sky.
Sky cannot run from Sky.
Yet she ran. Despite the futility of it, the running gave her something to do, and made their voices appear more distant.
She ran past her memories; her apartment, the brainbender, Dr. Yukawa, Apollo, the thug Gregos, kind Nathaniel, Mym, the telepath colony. She saw her mother, and stopped to embrace her. Winona’s image began to fade, as if a fog had rolled in. Sky reached out to grab hold of her, but her mother’s body had morphed into another—it was Dante, the mayor of the fallen telepaths. His face shifted again and again—Olon Rhodes, Shamyn, Xen, Dario, Sasha, Ariel, Jin, Miguel, and many others.
Dante again. He said something. He repeated it. She watched his lips. A few more repetitions and she figured out what he was saying: Do not run.
How could she not?
She had run for so long; from her fears, from losing her mother, from the NIA, and now from herself. Round and round she goes.
Her life had been one perpetual exodus: avoid, hide, leave, run, escape. That was her program, and it had been so as long as she could remember. When there was pain, she turned away. Always turn-turning until…
She stopped.
The voices grew louder, beating against her chest until she thought she would implode; you killed the telepaths. You killed them all. Mallets against her brain.
Don’t run, Dante told her.
Not run? What then?
Listen.
So she listened.
You killed your mother. You killed your mother. You should die with her. It’s only right.
As she listened, the words began to lose their meaning and became a jumble of syllables that clambered over each other. Programs within programs. The mallets went from bashing to tapping, and the thousands of voices of her thousands of reflections became a murmur. Yet she could still hear that voice; her voice, but not her voice.
Die, die, die, it continued.
She found the culprit, a single solitary reflection, you deserve to die, you are worthless, die, die, die, it said.
A single voice.
There is Sky, and there is the voice. The voice is not Sky.
The voice had cloaked itself in Sky’s own form, to make her believe its thoughts were her own. It was Tellinii.
How could she rid herself of it?
She tried to embrace the Tellinii-Sky. She put her arms around it, but the thing did not stop its die, die, die.
She remembered Geppetto, virus-maker and vir
us-killer. Could it help? But where was it?
‘Looking for this?’ It was Dr. Yukawa. ‘They’re trying to take it from you, but I won’t let them.’ In his palm was a wooden cross, like the ones they used to control puppets, but instead of strings there were chains. ‘Yes, it is ready. Your neurals have accepted Geppetto faster than I had anticipated… with a little help, of course,’ he grinned.
Sky accepted the cross. The chains wrapped themselves around her hand. Tight.
The surrounding fog began to lift. She could see her reflections again. They smiled back at her, all except Tellinii; that one turned and fled, screaming. As it ran, its die, die, die became garbled, and its body fell apart, limb by limb, revealing its true form; computer code, which dissolved into the ground until there was nothing left.
Tellinii was no more. Sky had healed herself. Geppetto had worked.
Having dispensed with the virus and having reclaimed the throne of her mind, Sky sensed there was still something foreign inside her.
< It’s a mem-wipe, ma’am, > Uncle Jesse explained.
Geppetto could put an end to it by preventing the intrusion, but that would come up on the medical mayas and Tester would see it. If only there was a way to make it appear as if the mem-wipe had succeeded…
< Ma’am, Geppetto can fake neural signals, remember? >
15:2
The first thing Sky sensed when she woke was the light tapping of rain. For a moment, she thought she was back in her apartment, by the window, watching a shower clean the streets.
When she opened her eyes, she found herself in a hospital bed wearing a flimsy gown. Outside, a light rain fell like snow, sparkling in Detroit’s night light.
Sky recalled the fall. Tester had infected her. He had told her not to fight, but the Tellinii virus had been too powerful.
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