Tester’s swarm split into three; one piece remained to protect his body while the other two scuttled around to flank Sky. In response, Sky cut her swarm into three to ward off the attempt.
The enemy swarm-units gathered and struck as one, almost penetrating Sky’s split defenses before her swarm could reform in time.
Two-Eagle’s maya flashed centimeters from Sky’s face, distracting her for only a moment, but it was enough for her father’s swarm to grab hold of Sky’s helmet. She felt it coil just below the hard ring where the helmet linked with her suit, and squeeze.
Her suit’s flexible material gave way. Sky felt a mounting pressure around her throat. Her swarm tried to free her but failed. She grabbed the choking swarm with her hands, a futile gesture. She could not think. She tried to breathe but it was like inhaling ash. She feared her throat would collapse at any moment. She thought she could hear her mother’s scream.
Then the vise loosened, just enough for her to breathe. The world came into focus again. She spotted one of the fighters—the one she had summoned, piloted by Clarissa—take off and dip out of sight, probably on its way back to the gunship hangar. Tester’s fighter remained parked on the hull.
A maya of Earth appeared before Sky. The footage zoomed into space, focused on nothing in particular. Then Sky saw it; a shadow that blocked out stars as it passed across them. It was an object, camouflaged black, the shape of Ol’ Pete.
They’ve found you, Sky cried, connecting to her mother in an instant. She felt Winona’s panic—not for herself, but for Sky.
I’m not important, her mother told her. Save yourself.
Two-Eagle’s maya was near. ‘I have no desire to kill the daughter of a dear friend. And sentimentality aside, your death would serve no purpose to our civilization. Your community needs you.’
‘My community,’ Sky breathed, ‘is buried in a collapsed lava tube on Apollo.’
The federator shook her head in disappointment. ‘I do not wish to hurt anyone. But I have found that the more responsibility you gain, the more distasteful your choices.’
The footage of Earth switched to another location, somewhere in space. The camera was attached to an object that was moving at great speed.
‘Ms. Tester, you are much too valuable. Unless you grant me access to your mind—complete and unfettered access—the missile will reach your mother in less than a minute.’
17:3
Sky watched the seconds tick by as the missile approached Ol’ Pete. Her body pounded with war drums. She wanted to bite into Two-Eagle’s neck and rip her head off.
45,000 meters to target and counting.
She buried her rage, forcing herself to attempt a more passive strategy. ‘Please,’ she said. Addressing Two-Eagle in such a puerile tone made Sky feel ill, but she pressed on. ‘I don’t care about Geppetto. I don’t care about your politics. Let us go and I promise to keep your secrets.’ It was sheer desperation.
Two-Eagle laughed. ‘You expect me to rest humanity’s future on a mere promise? No, the information in your brain will eventually leak. It is too great a risk.’
‘If I wanted to turn against Earth, I would have released my memories to the VOL while I was there.’
The federator scoffed, ‘You returned because you were too weak to make the sacrifice. You were blinded by your attachment to your mother.’
40,000 meters to target and counting.
Winona’s fear balanced on the tip of Sky’s consciousness, not a fear for her own life but for that of her daughter’s.
‘If I give myself up, what happens to my mother?’
The federator shook her head. ‘I have, on occasion, been accused of stubbornness, of being unwilling to bend. I’m sure you can relate.’ She paused. ‘Given the circumstances, I think it is time for a compromise; your mother could return to Earth. The hospital would find that her initial infection had been misdiagnosed, an understandable error given their overwhelming workload.’
You’d let her live?
‘After we recapture your mother’s ship, you’ll both be wiped, just enough to forget what you need to forget. Then you will be free to return to your lives.’
They’ll let you live.
Can you trust them? Winona replied. It was one of her loaded questions. But Sky could not shake the thought of waking in her apartment, her mother on the sofa watching her favorite shows, whining about Sky spending too much time on the net.
30,000 meters to target and counting.
It’s a chance, Sky pleaded.
Can you trust them?
Sky was frustrated at her mother’s lack of enthusiasm. Maybe I can, Sky said.
Even after a lifetime of lies?
Maybe. Maybe not.
It was hard to kid yourself when you had someone else in your mind to answer to.
Sky decided to try another approach.
‘I left my memories in a data bank on Apollo,’ Sky told the federator. It was a lie, of course, but the federator had no way of knowing. ‘If I don’t return soon, the vault will open and then the VOL will learn everything.’
The federator did not display any outward sign of concern. ‘If that were true, your original BOS would have informed us. Nice try.’
Sky shrugged, caught in the lie. ‘I’ve got a better one,’ she said, preparing to play her final card. ‘Let us go or I’ll transmit my memories to the VOL.’
Two-Eagle’s lips formed into a condescending smile.
‘I’m already linked,’ Sky pressed. This time, it was the truth. She had used Geppetto to copy her memories before arriving at Billy-Jay’s farm. When she had entered space, stowed away on the gunship, and her BOS had informed her of available VOL networks, she located the potential recipients. ‘I’m inside a group of telepath minds as I speak. Each of them happen to be reporters for rival news agencies. They are unaware, for now.’ Sky brought the fingers of her right hand together, as if she were dangling a grenade. ‘My memories are hanging just over their consciousness. If you kill either of us…’ Sky opened her fingers, simulating the release of her memories.
The federator’s smile waned. ‘Even if you’re telling the truth, do you think they will believe what they see? There are countless mockumemories in the VOL, so realistic you can’t tell the difference between real or imagined. What makes you think they’ll take yours seriously?’
20,000 meters to target and counting.
‘Because mine will be transmitted from Earth-space, and they’ll align with every interaction I’ve had on Apollo, including the destruction of the telepath colony.’
Two-Eagle stood there, expressionless. Her nostrils flared as she forced a breath. ‘Sky, when that missile hits we may both lose something very dear to us.’
The enemy swarm—still gripping Sky’s neck—oozed over her skull and began to squeeze. Her helmet groaned under the pressure.
10,000 meters to target and counting.
Winona’s thoughts tried to intrude. Don’t do it.
5,000 meters to target and counting.
Two-Eagle waited.
2,000—
‘Stop!’ Sky cried.
1,000 meters to target and decelerating.
Sky gasped.
She had dangled over the precipice of a cliff, only to claw her way back to safety.
The federator’s reaction was somewhat similar. ‘A sensible choice,’ Two-Eagle said, wiping her brow. She took a moment to compose herself. Having done so, she approached Sky, and as she did, her hand reached out to Sky while its fingers stretched and split and multiplied like the heads of a Hydra.
‘Now let me in,’ the federator ordered.
Sky sensed when the first of the tentacles penetrated her mind. She felt herself being eased out of her own head.
You are doing the right thing, she told herself. Yes, I am, she agreed. Relax, open up, and let her in. I will.
As Sky lost touch with the last vestiges of herself—or what she thought was herself—the memories came… a waterfall of
experiences cascaded across her awareness; Okiro, her father, Mym, Dante, her mind-kin… snippets of lives, never the whole, just the broad strokes of a Japanese brush painting, enough to create an illusion and no more. They were her brothers and sisters and fathers…
How many lives had Geppetto taken? Lives full of joy and pain and hope and achievement, ending in an artificial self-loathing whose only relief was suicide.
How many more lives would Geppetto take?
She had lost so many mothers. Their memories began to fade like morning dew under a summer sun. Their faces merged into one another until they formed the features of Winona Marion, the first of her mothers.
I taught you to fight, the living Winona told her. I will fall again, and again, unless you fight.
Sky saw the inside of Ol’ Pete… Billy-Jay sat at the wheel with his eyes glued to a holo of the dormant missile. There was the ghostly outline of Winona’s reflection on the cockpit window.
A decision took shape in Sky’s mind, like a newborn pushing its head into the light; its personality already formed.
As the federator’s tentacles penetrated further, Sky called out for Geppetto. The program still had a link with the minds of the telepath reporters on Apollo. Sky could drop her memories at any moment, revealing Earth’s secrets to the entire solar system.
A part of her—an infinitesimal part, a mere whisper—had told her it might come to this, one way or another.
As the last of her will faded, Sky released her memories to the VOL.
17:4
Geppetto expelled the federator’s intruding tentacles from Sky’s mind.
Two-Eagle stared at Sky in disbelief. ‘Your every action over the last week has been in the service of your mother; your programming demanded it. Your programming demands it, even now. You can’t change your programming.’
‘No, you can’t,’ Sky said. ‘But others can.’
Two-Eagle took a step back. ‘I see you understand sacrifice, after all. You would have been a great asset to your people.’ She detached herself from Tester’s body and walked away.
1,000 meters to target and counting.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ Sky called out. ‘The VOL have my memories. You won’t bring them back with murder.’
500 meters to target and counting.
‘I am a woman of my word, Ms. Tester. I always have been, no matter how distasteful the promise.’
Goodbye, dear, Winona told Sky.
Sky’s link with her mother severed.
The missile’s footage cut out.
Sky grasped for her mother, but there was nothing there. Nothing. Their neural link was an unfinished rail track, and all that Sky found at the end was her own scream. A horrendous wail that emanated from her every atom. A bloody cry that split the fabric which bonded Sky to herself and to her surroundings.
Ma is dead.
The thought repeated in her mind, like the waves of tears that streamed down her face, so bountiful that even her suit’s evaporator could not contain them.
Ma is dead.
Sky had set out to save her mother’s life, and instead had sentenced her to death. In that horrid grief, a part of her regretted the decision to release her memories to the VOL.
Her head told her she had done the right thing, but her heart…
Billy-Jay had perished. Sky had been so distraught at her mother’s passing that she had almost forgotten the kindly man who had spent a lifetime hiding from the scanners. Sky had sacrificed his life as well as her mother’s.
She did not die in vain… they did not die in vain, Sky tried telling herself. The VOL will learn the truth. The entire Solar System will learn the truth.
A message came from her BOS, < No recipients found. >
What did that mean? The BOS showed her; the telepaths she had transferred her memories to were dead. They had killed themselves, infected with the Tellinii virus.
‘They were easy enough to trace,’ the federator said. ‘A small sacrifice for the future of humanity, albeit one you could have averted. And now, sadly, you have lost everything and gained nothing.’
The federator’s maya was the last thing Sky saw before the swarm collapsed her skull.
17:5
Jeong-soo Tester had remained aware of his surroundings even as the federator gripped his mind. There was a kindness in her presence; she understood his weakness for his daughter, and even valued it, to an extent; how could she not? She had once had a son.
Two-Eagle had turned away before the swarm shut on Sky’s brain like a bear trap. Jeong-soo wished he could do the same. Two-Eagle chose not to see the pulp of bone and brain tissue that was once Sky Marion, float away, aimless.
Two-Eagle could breathe. She would remain as federator of the Americas. Geppetto was secure. She had made up for their errors. Soon they would persuade the colonies to return to Earth’s fold, thus liberating them from the moneyed oligarchs who toyed with their fates.
Humanity was safe, once more.
Chapter 18
Symbiot
18:1
Tester had lost his wife, and now he had lost his only child. A rumbling came from inside his skull. His vision trembled. His body shook.
Sky was dead. A headless corpse floating along the hull.
He kept watching her, hoping that somehow her murder had been an illusion. That her limbs would begin to move again. Instead, they flailed, helpless. The swarm that had supported her body was unravelling…
She had fought so hard. She did not deserve to die. Not after all she had been through.
Winona and Sky were dead, yet he lived on. Why?
‘It’s over, Jeong-soo,’ Two-Eagle said. ‘I promised you a mem-wipe. Let me take you home.’ She thordered his body to return to his fighter.
Jeong-soo remained in place, anchored by his swarm, staring at the headless body of his daughter. A maintenance bot captured her frame before it floated into space, perhaps to dispose of the evidence.
Come, Two-Eagle’s voice called, a second time.
No.
As the federator’s will faded from his own, he imagined what she would be thinking; how could Tester resist an order? His Geppetto was subservient to her own. It was a safety feature installed into each federation’s director of Neurosecurity. The director was subservient to the federator, just as the federators were subservient to the chief. A pyramid of checks and balances. That was how it worked. That was how it had always worked. Until now.
*
Jeong-soo’s heart had sunk when Sky refused to give herself to the federator. Yet it had come as no surprise to him. Jeong-soo had seen the resolve in his daughter before she had spoken her first word: no. Stubborn little brat that she was.
When Jeong-soo saw the missile connect with his wife’s vessel, and watched as Winona’s life extinguished into a million pieces, something woke in him. It came from some shadowy cavern in his mind, a dungeon where his will bounced off the walls. He had an overwhelming desire to turn back time. When that became impossible, the should-haves appeared. The should-haves banged their heads against the law of Time, again and again. But Time refused to budge and its pitiless wheel continued to turn. He could not change anything.
And so it was that the door to anger, and a path to rage, opened.
The rage grew until even the programmed cordons of his neurals could no longer contain it. For one solitary moment, the prison in which his will was captive, rattled. He sensed a crack in his cell, a mere breeze through a crevice.
That was when he heard the voice.
*
As the federator’s swarm clasped around her helmet, Sky could only think of her mistakes; she should have listened to Dr. Yukawa. In desperation, she had made herself believe she could save her mother. She had lied to herself. She would die now, as her mother had. Nothing could change that.
A sudden heat warmed her skin, as if someone had left a window open on a hot day. She followed this sensation—the last she woul
d ever experience—and it led her to a surprising source; her father’s brain, a brain that should have been closed off to her.
His mind was a furnace.
Time slowed.
‘What is a virus?’ a voice asked, neither her own nor her father’s. ‘What is a virus?’
It was Dr. Yukawa. ‘What is a virus?’ he asked, like a riddling sphinx.
‘A virus is a program,’ Sky answered.
‘Yes, a program; forget yourself, hurt yourself, kill yourself. And what are you?’
‘I am…’
‘What are you?’
‘I am…’
A crack echoed around her, as if the universe was caving in.
‘I am work, hide, grieve, love, fight, sacrifice.’
‘Yes…?’
‘I am… a program.’
Dr. Yukawa’s hands clapped, his exoskeleton whirring them into action.
A virus is a program, I am a program, she said. A program… can be copied.
Dr. Yukawa’s eyes lit up. He nodded, then—satisfied that his work was done—he vanished.
Sky knew what to do.
She thordered Geppetto to fulfill the purpose for which Dr. Yukawa had originally created it; to copy a mind. It took a snapshot of her neurals, memories, everything—even Geppetto itself.
She named this copy Sky2.
Crack. The air rushed out.
*
Jeong-soo wanted to make things right, more than anything, but he was helpless; Two-Eagle controlled him now.
Dad.
It sounded like his daughter, Sky.
He should not be able to hear her, at least not her thoughts. Perhaps he was going mad, years overdue.
Dad.
It was her. It was Sky. He sensed her presence this time.
Sky explained that she had made a copy of her neurals, and that copy—2—carried its own Geppetto, a copy of the one Dr. Yukawa had leaked, the one which the federator could not control. If Tester would allow 2 to enter,shecould dethrone the federator from his mind.
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