by Damien Boyes
“Yeah,” he says and lowers his weapon to his side. “They tend to do that. Their Cortexes are wired to keep us out of their heads. Xiao has always been one step ahead of us.”
I peel myself off the sticky floor and notice twin crimson circles on my knees—Boaja’s blood. The blood of the man who ran into a hail of gunfire to save us from Fate, to save Standards—people who have been relentlessly hunting him for months. I know he still exists in a virt somewhere, that he isn’t really dead, but the person he was two seconds ago is. That Boaja is gone forever.
How did he feel knowing that while he’d live on, it wouldn’t be him doing the living?
“After what I’ve seen the past couple of days, that doesn’t surprise me,” I say. “Xiao believes he’s saving the world. No matter what he has to do.”
“That’s the problem,” Wiser mutters, then notices the blood on my face. “Are you hurt?”
“It’s just a scratch,” I say, waving his concern away. “It’s already stopped bleeding.”
“Ever the tough guy, huh Finsbury?” Wiser says, his voice a chord less hostile, his eyes appraising me as if seeing me for the first time. “You know, that’s your problem--you keep telling me I’ve got the wrong idea about you, yet you always think you know best, even when it puts you on the side of a criminal.”
He’s right. I’ve always been stubborn, never able to leave well enough alone, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong about Xiao. “The me you knew probably agreed with you—at first anyway. But I’ve learned different. You only consider Xiao a criminal because the law hasn’t caught up to the real world yet.” I knock my head with a finger. “An immortal computer brain is a long way from where I was born.” Then twist my chin at his prosthetics. “So are those robot fists of yours that can pound through a kitchen countertop. They’re not ‘standard.’ Are you and I criminals too?”
“The law is the law,” he says, his voice flat. After everything he’s seen, I wonder if he still believes that?
“What does the law have to say about people selling their minds to a corporation?” I ask, gesturing to the carnage around us, to the bullet-ridden Fate agents, the fried skyns and the shaky Standards agents slowly regaining their senses. “Fate is responsible for this—they didn’t think twice about going through you to get what they were after. You want them responsible for safe-keeping your brain when you die?”
“They’ll say it was the work of rogue operatives,” Wiser says, but he’s rubbing his beard with his black hands, whirring over it with his mechanical fingers.
“Xiao’s gone off to fight his war,” I answer. “Let him go.”
Wiser chuckles. “Next thing you’re going to say is I should let you go too.”
I open my mouth, take a breath, and in that moment decide exactly what I’m going to do. “You should, they need my help. Xiao will be gone, out of the Union and none of your concern. I’ll go with him, take Dora and you’ll never see any of us again.”
He squints as I mention Dora’s name but he doesn’t mention her. “What about Eka’s superintelligence? Isn’t it still after you?”
Exactly. “One more reason to disappear.”
“I can’t let you walk away, Fin.” Wiser says, his voice low, almost sad.
“You don’t have a case against me,” I tell him, like I’m back training a rookie. “Be honest with yourself, what do you have to bring to a prosecutor? As much as you may want there to be, you’ve got nothing to charge me with, nothing that isn’t circumstantial. Arrest me and you’ll waste everyone’s time trying to come up with a reason to keep me. I’m sorry about what happened between us, but it has to end. I’m going to help Xiao,” I say. “If you want to shoot me, then that’s up to you. But I don’t think you will.”
I turn away from him, walk toward the plastic strips hanging between the warehouse and the drone yard outside. Wiser doesn’t move to stop me.
I’m about to push through the plastic when Wiser says from behind me, “I don’t want to see you again, Finsbury.”
His words give me a moment of respite--one fewer person to look over my shoulder for. They also cement my decision to leave, to join Xiao on his mission to thwart Fate from engulfing the world. There’s no going back now, I only need to convince Dora to come with me.
I nod, duck my head and push out into the night.
StatUS-ID
[a646:d17e:8670:511f::Finsbury/D//GAGE]
SysDate
[05:31:52. Monday, May 6, 2058]
I’ve ignored Inspector Chaddah’s pings all morning, ditched my tab on the way home from my failure at Eka’s when it wouldn’t stop thrumming with her insistent demands for a response. I’m running everything through my cuff now. Why bother dragging a device out of my pocket when I can dismiss a message with a thought instead?
She’s finally given up, but left one final message with my IMP, just a few minutes ago: either I’m at her office at 06:00h, or consider myself suspended without pay and on the fast-track to a dishonourable discharge. So, not arrested--not yet--but I don’t have a bright future ahead of me in the Service.
Fine with me. I’ve already decided my days of hunting down the ‘deviants’ polluting their skulls with code are over. I can’t pretend I’m any different anymore. Trying to enforce rithm crime is useless, the floodgates are thrown wide open. All the Service can do now is clean up the mess the rampant spread of shyfts and scafes leaves. I’m not interested in spending any more of my time mopping up Standard’s inability to see reality for what it is.
I’m done with the Service, but I owe Chaddah enough to tell her in person.
Maybe I can make her understand why I did what I did. Xiao isn’t the enemy. We all saw it. Yeah, his actions may contravene Standards, but that doesn’t make him evil.
Eka though—
Even with my brain spinning like a neutron star, I wasn’t fast enough to beat him. He had his eyes closed the whole time and I still couldn’t win. We can’t legislate away the existence of technology like him. He may be a wholly unique entity now, but he’s only the advance scout for what’s to come. Once any technological advancement gets cheap enough—it can’t be stopped.
Skyns may be expensive now, the recovery process still exclusive to those who can afford it, and we may be still able to hunt down and eliminate every rogue superintelligence and Standards-defying skyn, but the floor is about to drop out of the price, and soon anyone who wants a super fast brain of light will be able to get one. Either Standards and the Service start changing their attitude about what a human’s limitations are now, or they’ll be on the losing end of a race war as Reszos take their rights by force.
Either way, the future is going to be a wild and dangerous place. It’s just too bad I won’t get to see how everything turns out.
***
[05:56:59. Monday, May 6, 2058]
“You left us,” Chaddah finally says.
She didn’t stand when I entered her office, sat with her elbows on her desk and watched me take a seat without a word, her face a mask, then let the silence hang for a moment before she spoke.
“I pursued a another target,” I clarify.
“What target?” she asks. “Why didn’t you report in?”
“Because the Service can’t help with this.”
Chaddah leans forward. “This is where you tell me exactly what’s going on.”
I take a breath and almost say, 'I found Eka. He’s number one on Standards’ most wanted, a feral superintelligence smart enough to camouflage itself from every resource law enforcement has at its disposal. And I can deliver Eka right to them.'
But I don’t.
“I thought I found the man who killed my wife,” I say instead.
“The private investigation I ordered you to cease?”
I nod.
“He was there tonight?” she asks, clearly disbelieving me.
“I thought so,” I say.
“But you were wrong?” she asks, her voice tinged with s
corn. “You declined to arrest an internationally wanted terrorist in favour of pursuing someone who you may or may not have a personal interest in?”
This is my last chance. I know where Eka is, right now. I can explain. We can all go back to his apartment building. Spin up all the TAC squadrons. Call Standards. Hell, call the army if we have to. Together, all that might be enough to get to him. I don’t know how else I’m going to.
Don’t I want Eka dead? Isn’t that the point of all this? All I need to do is tell the truth.
Except I can’t, not anymore. Just killing Eka won’t be enough—not that I have any idea how I’ll accomplish it. But simply knowing he’s been snuffed from the planet isn’t going to sit with me. I need to force him to his knees first, make him choke on everything he did to me. Everything he did to Connie.
She suffered. I need to make him suffer.
I need to watch the light go out of his eyes.
“Well?” Chaddah says, her voice tight as she repeats herself.
“I lost him,” I say.
She straightens her spine, zeroes her gaze on me. “You disobeyed direct orders and allowed Xiao to escape, for nothing?”
“That’s how it turned out.”
Chaddah’s jaw muscles grow rigid.
I should be anxious, terrified even. I’m about to lose my job, my career, everything I’ve ever worked for—but I don’t feel anything. The Revv gives me an extra second to process away my emotions before they can affect me, lets me keep my anger stoked just hot enough to burn everything else away.
“Finsbury Gage, I hereby rescind your authority as a Peace Officer for the Toronto Police Service.”
“Suspension witnessed and logged,” the AMP announces from nowhere.
I expected it, but it doesn’t mean I like it. “I thought you were smarter than this,” I say.
Chaddah’s eyelids spasm and she sits back into her chair. “You have something to add for the record?” she asks.
“You’re pissed because I let Xiao get away, fine. I did. But everyone here saw what life in the Yuanfen is like. More and more countries are signing up. Soon enough, Fate will own everyone.”
“The future of the human race is above my clearance,” Chaddah deadpans. “I am sworn to uphold the law, not debate it. Xiao is a criminal and you allowed him to escape.”
“We keep fighting these same wars. The paternal majority telling people what to do with their bodies and their minds—” I start, but it’s an old argument that won’t lead anywhere and I cut myself off.
“Whether I agree with you or not is immaterial, Finsbury. I have a job to do,” she presses up, leaning over her desk now. “You may not be able to see past the tip of your immediate sense of need, but I’ve learned to take the long view. Sustainable societal change occurs only under subtle pressure. Whatever his noble goals, Xiao’s actions are illegal and ultimately dangerous. He should have been your primary target. Both of you so are concerned with the trappings of right and wrong, you think it’s up for debate. It isn’t. Right now the world needs Standards to keep its foot on the brake, to keep society from tearing itself apart.”
“Then you’re going to lose,” I say, shrug, and lean back in the hard chair. “We’ve both seen soldiers stimmed to a blur. The Union gives those guys assault rifles and calls them heroes—jacking minds with performance enhancing drugs is fine with Standards, but someone tweaks their Cortex without permission and it’s shoot to kill. Human Standards are arbitrary and we both know it.”
She takes a breath, stands and walks to her office window, watches the night shift working away at their desks, fielding calls, keeping the city safe the best they can. “They are, yes. They will change. You see the law as a boot to the throat. I see it as a release valve, allowing just enough pressure to escape, keeping society running at a constant pace while actively preventing an explosion.” She continues to watch the office below. The new coffee machine arrived yesterday and the technicians are setting up to install and calibrate it. “I won’t ask again, Finsbury. Are you going to tell me what happened last night?”
“I decided Xiao wasn’t as important as the guy who killed Connie. I made a choice. I don’t regret it.”
She turns slowly. “If what you’re saying is true, why the secrecy? Why not let me help you find him? You have evidence of some sort I assume?”
I shake my head. “Nothing Standards would allow.”
She nods. “What if I were to run a patternsync on you, right now?” she asks. She knows I’ve been shyfting, pulling memories from my head. Maybe she even suspects I’m Revved, Galvan might have told her.
My heart flutters in my chest and I wonder if the AMP noticed, sensing my immediate tension. If she were to check my pattern, she’d see exactly what I’d been up too. See I was Revved and then I’d spend the rest of my life in a stock.
Standards isn’t going to help me with Eka. I’m on my own. It’ll take well-armed suicide run to get anywhere near him, but I’ll take that over a lifetime as a fraction of a person.
“I guess we’ll find out,” I say, readying myself, digging into the Revv, trying to figure a way out of the station without killing anyone.
She regards me across the room while I run through projections. If the AMP’s in her ear I can’t tell. Even this deep into the Revv her face doesn’t betray a single emotion. No micro-expressions. She barely blinks.
“You’re on indefinite suspension pending an investigation into dereliction of duty,” she finally says and I take an anxious microsecond to compose myself before dropping back to realtime. “I’d recommend you contact representation for your hearing.”
I drop my weapon on her desk. I won’t bother with the lawyer, there’ll never be a hearing.
In just a few more days, one way or another, this will all be over.
StatUS-ID
[fdaa:9afe:17e6:a2ef::Gage/-//GIBSON]
SysDate
[23:15:08. Sunday, January 19, 2059]
Special Agent Wiser may have let me walk away from the mess at Xiao’s warehouse, but he didn’t offer a ride home. I’m up north of nowhere, my hair crusty with dried blood, and Ankur left with my tab. I can’t hail a Sküte on the road, they don’t even run up here, and no one’s going to stop to offer a blood-caked hitchhiker a ride. I’ll need to call a hirecar—once I find somewhere to call from. With no other choice, I pick the biggest source of light on the horizon and start walking along the side of the road.
It takes me nearly an hour to find an open automart, buy a cheap tab, and wash the blood off my face while waiting for the hirecar to arrive. I don’t know what they’re all busy with at eleven-thirty on a Sunday night, but the car takes its time arriving and I don’t get back to Saabir’s safe house until nearly one AM.
Saabir’s building is dark, his front door locked. I call Dora to tell her I’m outside and she races down to let me in. Before I can get the door all the way open, she’s burst out and has her arms around my head and her face buried in my neck.
“Thank God,” she muffles into my tiny jacket.
I squeeze her back. Still not sure if this should be happening, not sure if it’s what I want, but all the same, I’m suddenly drained and holding her is better than collapsing.
Finding and forgiving Ankur for killing Connie--
Learning the crimelord the other me threw our life away for is actually fighting for the future of the humanity--
Discovering I hadn’t turned into someone I despised--
It’s all such an unexpected and overwhelming rush of confusion and relief I’m having a hard time processing.
Not that I’d been a model cop, but under the circumstances he was faced with? I get it.
Yes, he was shyfting, but it must have started innocently in an effort to dig Eka out of his head, out of that memory of the accident he and I both share, and things escalated from there—but he wasn’t dirty. Not like everyone said.
Wiser said he killed someone named Darien Cole, but there’s
no actual evidence that I’m aware of. I’ve never even heard of the guy. If the Service knew he killed someone I wouldn’t be standing here wondering about it.
Plus, Finsbury Gage took on and beat a fucking superintelligence. That should count for something.
Not that it absolves him of anything. He made some shitty choices, absolutely, and while I don’t agree with all of them, I understand them. In a different life, I could have made them myself.
Up until now, I’ve been fighting against him, against Finsbury, but in truth, we’re no different, not really. I couldn’t believe the things he’d done, couldn’t imagine ever doing them. I was wrong. In his place, I might have done everything he did.
I woke up, just like him, haunted by Connie’s death. He had the time to dive into an obsession searching for Amit Johari that I never got. If I’d been him, I probably would have done exactly what he had. Anything necessary.
I may not be him anymore, but we’re close enough. Dub attacked me the second I walked out of the clinic and it’s been one thing after the next since. It’s been a nightmare but even still I was lucky to come back second--I didn’t have to make the hard choices he did.
Now that it’s all over, I have a chance to make up for some of those choices. He mortgaged our life in search of revenge, but it brought me here. Maybe I can make amends.
I can help Xiao and Ankur. Get the key to the Eka pattern. Join their cause. They look like they could use the help. Not to mention Eka’s fragment is still after me. We leave the city and that thing will follow. No one else will get hurt.
With enough time, I bet Ankur will come up with something to stop it for good.
It’s running, but not away from something. It’s something to run toward.
Hopefully Dora will want to come with me. She’s been hiding so long, waiting. It’ll give her something to run toward too. She pulls away and looks up at me. Our eyes meet and she leans into me for a kiss and I kiss her back, tentative at first but I don’t resist.