by Damien Boyes
The alarm suddenly cuts and the house lights come back on. Behind us, the rear wall parts, sliding away in two sections to expose the driveway. The smoke thins as the fresh air rushes in and the flames roar in response. The influx of oxygen has stoked the fire and its spread to the back half of the house. Incandescent light flickers from the bedrooms. The kitchen wall is smouldering.
I’m not worried, yet--there’s a big open space between us and the flames. I’m safe until the roof collapses, but not forever. This house is beyond saving and someone will notice the hill burning. It might take a few minutes, but the rescue hoppers will be launching soon.
“Get me out of here now and I’ll tell you everything,” Cole says. “The bed’s automated, just hit the escape sequence on the panel.”
“Tell me now,” I say. The fire is still spreading, back into the house. The heat is intense and I step around closer to the open wall.
“You’re a cop, you can’t just let me die.”
“I’m not a cop anymore,” I correct him. “And I came here to kill you.”
“No, not after all I’ve worked for, after all I’ve done—”
“What have you done?”
“I built this, all this. I’m a fucking genius. You think anyone else in the world who doesn’t have a computer in their head could have written the shyfts I have?”
“If you’re such a genius, why are you trapped in here with me?”
He growls over the speakers. “You think I want to live like this, a prisoner in my body? I have the money. I have a skyn waiting for me, but...I couldn’t. Recovery is destructive. They have to destroy your brain to read it. Whoever it is who wakes up in that Cortex won’t be me—I’ll be dead. It’ll be some other me who gets to live.”
“You’re scared,” I say.
“Of course I’m scared. I’m fucking terrified. Weren’t you?”
“I used to be. But I’ve been dead, and you know what? It isn’t so bad. No pain or grief or fear or consequences. It’s nothing. I’m almost looking forward to it. But not you, you want to live. Which is why you’ll tell me what you know about the psyphonings.” I’ll leave a note for Wiser, let him close out the files on those cases.
“No,” Cole says in what he thinks is a tough voice. “You get me out of here first, then I talk.”
“Have it your way,” I say, and move to leave. The flames are intense now, pooling along the ceiling on the other side of the room.
“No, no, you can’t leave,” he begs. “Just—fine, look behind you.”
I turn, raising my hands, not sure what to expect, and see a wall of trophies I hadn’t noticed through the smoke. He’s got a full row of Prime Coder trophies, just like the ones Amit’s parents had on display. Except there’s only nine of them. Amit stole the tenth out from under him.
Below those are assorted eLympic and other gaming awards. Below those are seven hovering projections: tight balls of light, flickering and pulsating in place. They look like rithms.
A morbid shudder runs through me as I realize that’s exactly what they are.
“It was you,” I say as the balls spasm with jagged colour in unison. “You’re the one who psyphoned those people.”
“You think it’s cheap to live like this?” he says. “And they deserved it. Their money was wasted on them. They were all terrible people, I was doing the world a favour.”
He’s insane, terrified to die but can’t see life in anyone but himself. “You tore people’s minds from their heads and held them for ransom.”
“I did what I had to do, to survive. Just like you did.”
This isn’t survival. This is Darien Cole proving to the world he isn’t a shrivelled useless man. If I’d let him into my head, I would have ended up a twisted ball of light on his shelf like the others.
We’re nothing alike. What I’ve done, none of it was about me. “No, I wouldn’t,” I say.
“We both know who you really are, deep down,” he says. He isn’t pleading anymore, he’s mad now. “You came here to keep me quiet so you could get revenge on the man who killed you. You’re hardly a white knight of nobility. You’re a killer.”
“Maybe,” I say, and hit the release on Cole’s bed. The transparent tube slides open and exposes his body to the naked air, probably for the first time in years. His bony chest heaves in the smoke and convulses. “I’m not interested in trophy hunting. I’m more of an exterminator—squashing bugs, one at a time.”
The fire’s spreading, there’s no saving the house, or anyone in it.
I leave through the opening in the wall as he screams at me, cursing my name, screeching incoherent threats and pleas over the speakers. His voice haunts me over the hills for a few minutes then abruptly cuts out and the mountains fall to stillness.
I’m almost down to the hopper when the sky erupts behind me with a booming whoof that launches a ball of flame into the sky.
***
[22:45:11. Friday, May 10, 2058]
I wait until I’m hours away from the pillar of smoke rising from the mountains before I have the IMP try to contact Rene DeBlanc. I’ve got it figured out. I know where to get another skyn.
I’m amazed how calm I am. I just let a man burn to death, I should at least be questioning if I did the right thing. I flew across the Union, broke into his house, and ended his life. I should feel something. Elation. Remorse. Revulsion. Something. But I don’t.
All I can think about is Eka. About what comes next. About what I have to do. But all I feel is anger.
All I want is revenge.
The anger, though, it isn’t overwhelming. It isn’t even anger anymore, really. It’s fuel. It’s turned into a propelling force that won’t let me stop until the job is done. Until Eka is dead.
And the last piece has finally come together.
DeBlanc owes me for letting him off for those shyfts we found in his apartment. When I tell him his stolen memories won’t be blackmailing him anymore, I’m sure he’ll be in a giving mood.
Rene’s rep is too high to send a direct message, and I don’t have the Service override anymore, so I pay a small fortune to get a note through to him, let him know I have news he’ll want to hear.
He chimes through minutes later. His voice is different than I remember, and not just because his accent’s drawn out by the Revv. There’s a softness to it now, the condescension tempered. Maybe having his mind ripped from his head took some of the self-righteousness with it. “Detective Gage?” he asks.
“Used to be,” I say then get straight to it. “I’ve got news. I found the guy who psyphoned your mind. You don’t have to worry about him anymore.”
“You...arrested him?” His voice trembles. He’s probably spent the past weeks tortured by thoughts of what was happening to his stolen mind, or maybe plagued with guilt at the relief it wasn’t him who ended up on Cole’s mental dissection table and hung up like a prize.
“He won’t be stealing any more lives,” I say, and leave it at that.
He lets out a long tired breath and I hear him slump down onto something, there’s a clink of ice on glass and four long swallows.
“And my—other—self?”
“Out of his misery.”
“Merci,” he says, but his throat closes before he can finish and he coughs through a sob. When he recovers, he says, “By chance, did you determine the whereabouts of my assets?”
“I didn’t ask,” I tell him.
He sighs. “Thank you, Detective. If there is anything I can ever do to—”
“Like I said, I’m not police,” I say. “But as it happens, there is something.”
“Anything,” he says, his voice suddenly clear, eager to please.
“I need to borrow a skyn,” I say.
This stumbles his enthusiasm, but only a fraction. “Of course. When? For how long?”
“As soon as possible,” I tell him. “Just an hour or so.” I don’t mention he probably won’t see it again.
“Male? Fema
le?”
“Healthy,” I answer. “Don’t care other than that.”
He’s quiet for a second, thinking, then says, “I have connections. Let me make enquiries,” and cuts the call.
I stare out the hopper’s window for the next hour with the Revv turned down, watch the crops of the Midwestern plains crawl by, and think about Cole. I wonder if the smoke got him before the house collapsed? Burning alive is an awful way to go.
Either way, Cole was no more human than Eka is. How many mindjackings did I prevent? The world is better without him in it.
DeBlanc doesn’t get back to me until I’m nearly home. He apologises for making me wait, but tells me he has a skyn: a sort of demo unit from a private clinic. Male. Very clean. Top of the line. Barely worn.
He tells me to meet him at an address in Reszlieville in about eighteen hours.
And that’s it. I’m ready.
Eighteen hours.
Now to decide what to do with the last day of my life.
***
[16:57:09. Saturday, May 11, 2058]
I treat myself to a last meal. Steak, french fries and a thousand dollar bottle of wine—but I can’t eat. The wine tastes like dirt. For the first time in a long time, I’m anxious, my bowels are tight like I’m a kid again.
I’m hours away from splitting myself in two, from copying myself into another body. I’ll be in two places at once--one version of me will stay in my head and the other will end up in the skyn DeBlanc’s found for me. The concept is so surreal, I’m not sure if it’s terrifying or exciting. I imagine we’ll think exactly the same, but will our minds stay that way or start to drift apart? I don’t figure we’ll diverge that much in the short time we’ll be individuals, but who knows?
How will if feel to be in two places at once? Or to have a conversation with myself?
The one thing I do know is I’m tired of thinking about it--I just want to get started.
After I got back to the city, I immediately collected the package Cole sent me, hoping he’d done what he promised. All I needed was him screwing me over one last time from beyond the grave.
He hadn’t. He’d provided everything he promised. The package contained a clear box not much bigger than a shyft, a SenShare cable, and a single neatly printed page of instructions.
Turned out the process is simple: the transparent rectangle is an encoding device with one of two settings: ‘Alpha’ and ‘Mate.’ I only need to set the encoder to Alpha, press any shyft against the rectangle’s contact port, and the device adds a subroutine to the shyft that’ll piggyback its way into my active rithm. From there I’ll be able to use the SenShare cable to transfer my mind to any other skyn prepped with a Mate shyft.
Once the…other me is occupying the DeBlanc’s skyn, there’s a single mental command that’ll let me rejoin our rithms back in my Cortex through the cable when we’re all done—if we even get to Eka at all. I’ll remember everything, have both sets of memories. None of me has to be lost.
Cole was even thorough enough to mention the Mate shyft times out every six hours, and if I don’t refresh it, the host Cortex’s anti-intrusion routines restart and I’ll be forcefully removed.
Fine with me. I don’t figure this’ll take nearly that long.
I can’t believe I’m about to be in two places at once. How did I end up here?
The answer comes quick: justice for Connie. That’s all I wanted.
Yeah, I’ve done questionable things—but all for the right reasons. Haven’t I?
I’m up against a rabid superintelligence. A thing like that warrants some rule breaking.
Doesn’t it?
Big picture? I’m doing the right thing.
There’s only one thing between Eka and me now. One thing left to take care of: Dora.
I need to apologise to her, to make her understand. I wasn’t hitting her. I’d never hit her. I was mad at myself, was lashing out at my own face--didn’t even see her.
She has to understand that. I don’t want to die with her hating me.
I’ll stop by her house. Just for a second. I have time. I can fly right there.
I know I’m abusing the rented hopper--burning money from the anonymous Gibson account to keep the waiting vehicle parked outside like I’m some kind of celebrity--but I don’t care. I’ve got all the money in the world and today might be my last chance to spend it.
I leave the waiter a thousand dollar tip, an untouched steak, and nine-hundred and seventy-five dollars worth of that thousand dollar bottle of wine on the table and take the hopper to Dora’s, park it on the street in front of her house. It’ll draw attention out here, so I need to make this quick. Tell her ‘I’m sorry’ and leave.
Next stop is Rene’s. I’ll split myself off into the skyn he’s got for me and then—Eka.
Dora’s house is modest and attached on both sides and the walk to her door from the curb only a few steps. She answers my knock and as she opens the door her eyes shudder through a moment of fear, then narrow.
“What are you doing here?” she hisses and glances back over her shoulder.
“Dora,” I say, keeping my head down and voice low. “I don’t want anything. I only came to say I’m sorry about what happened—”
“What happened?” she says, her eyes livid. “No man has ever laid a hand on me in that way. And after what I let you—” She shakes her head, glances inside again. “Leave, now.”
She tries to close the door and I stop her, put my foot against it. “I know you’re upset,” I say, trying to calm her down. “You have every right to be, but I’m not that guy. I would—”
Before I finish the sentence, I get a message from the IMP, straight to my thoughts. By the time it gets to the third word word, I’ve maxed out the Revv and start working on contingencies.
The Service has sent a bulletin to SecNet. I’m wanted for questioning in the murder of Darien Cole.
Cameras and sensors all over the world will be looking for me.
Chaddah will be on her way.
I’ll never make it to Rene’s.
Shit.
I let myself feel a nanosecond of pure, unfiltered rage then shut it down before it hits my face. I thought it would take longer for someone to realize Cole was dead. He lived alone and he was an asshole, I bet people were happy not to hear from him. The local PD must have dug something out of Cole’s security feed, something that survived the fire.
I’m done.
I can’t run from SecNet. It’s only a matter of time now.
How can they find me? The hopper. It’ll take time to tie me to it, but not long. I’ve got it wired so the rental company can’t automatically recall it, but won’t get much of a head start. An hour maybe. I’ll have to head north, disappear in the woods. I can probably survive for a few days, live from closed up summer cottages until I can hop a train to Churchill, find a boat out of the Union. I’ll have to find a new skyn somehow, trade this one in—
But if I run, I lose Eka for good and I live the rest of my life a cypher, hiding in an unregistered body.
Everything I did, everything I gave up, and the man who killed Connie is still alive—or whatever passes as ‘alive’ for a superintelligence—and I’m never safe again.
I can’t let him go on hurting people, I have to stop him.
There’s still time, if I go straight there. No time for DeBlanc’s, I need a skyn. Now.
Dora’s standing in front of me, eyes halfway through a blink.
I have no other choice.
I’ll take her’s. Just for a while.
Her face morphs into confusion as I change demeanour in the middle of a sentence, from mollifying ex-boyfriend one second to bad cop the next.
“You need to come with me,” I say and take her by the wrist. Not hard, but tight. “Now.”
She takes a step, then plants her feet and pulls against me. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demands.
“I need your skyn.”
She
cocks her head, trying to figure me out. She won’t be thinking I’ve outsourced a shyft that’ll let me inhabit her active Cortex and swipe control of her body out from under her. No one would. But I don’t have time to explain it to her. “I need into your head. Just for a little while, you won’t even know what’s happening. It’ll be like a nap. You'll wake up when it’s all over.”
“How can you—?” I see her decide not to care about an explanation and reject the premise entirely. “No. I won’t.”
It doesn’t matter if she understands, she only needs to do what she’s told. “This is going to happen. I’m so close. I’ll be all over SecNet soon enough, might even know where I am now. Something in your house will have picked up my voice. I need to move and you’re the only option I have left.”
“No, you’re crazy. I thought you were-” she sets her jaw and her eyes well. Then she shudders and snaps back to angry. “I have a husband to care for. Leave, before I call the police myself.”
She moves to return to her house and I’ve got her wrist locked by a pressure point before she can get halfway around. “I can’t let you do that.”
“Ow,” she barks and pulls away but I don’t let go.
Instead, I squeeze, hard, and she gasps.
“Everything all right, Doralia,” calls a voice from inside. An old man. Her husband.
If she calls to him, I’m done.
“You will come with me,” I hiss, “or I’ll walk in there and tell him what you and I have been up to.”
Dora’s face falls and she glances back into her small house. I see her gaze linger on a wood-framed mirror hanging in the short hallway beyond the door. The mirror she probably used to give her face one last unconscious check before she’d come to meet me.
She turns back to me and shakes her head. “Do what you must.”
I can’t—there’s no other way.
“Fine,” I say, a chill in my voice I don’t recognize, and I pull her close. “I didn’t want it to be like this, but you’ve left me no choice. You’re coming with me, right now, or else I’ll go inside your little house and I will hurt your husband. And when I’m done hurting him, I’ll find someone else to hurt. Then someone else, and someone else until they kill me. Or, you come with me now, and in an hour, you’ll be standing back here on the porch, not remembering a thing, and I’ll be gone forever.”