by Damien Boyes
Dora’s words to me have been following me since I left her stranded and confused on the side of the road. She’s had months of her life stolen, her body used. How’s she supposed to live with that? I know I sure as hell couldn’t. I had to know what I’d become—and now that I do I almost wish I’d just walked away. The other Fin’s memories in my head are nauseating. Knowing what he did to her, to everyone. Feeling it. The depths and exhilaration and terrors and no remorse for anything. His mind had been churning on itself for so long, unable to stretch out and solidify itself, he’d become a sociopath. That’s in my head now. He didn’t die when he left Dora’s body, not completely. He may not be in control, but he’s in here with me.
On the third stop to recharge, I’m in so much pain from the cold, I can’t continue, and sit in the lonely heated automat in the middle of nowhere long after the hopper’s ready to go—
half-wishing to hear sirens, wondering what I’m supposed to do if I don’t—before I force myself up and march my feet out and get back into the air for the last leg of the ride.
I should enjoy the ability to be miserable in my body while I can. I need to turn myself in. The weight of everything I’ve done, whether it was me that did it or not—I don’t think I can live with the guilt.
Once I turn myself in to Wiser and lay out all the horrible things I’d done—both when I was his partner and after, when I was in Dora—I expect I’ll be living a long time as a ghost, stocked, longing to feel the agony of frostbite again.
Looks like before I do though, at least I’ll be able to help Xiao.
Ankur gave me exact co-ordinates to their staging area: a former logging camp cut into the woods, nothing more than a shed and a dead-end railway trunk running off into the trees. A short train of passenger and cargo cars waitis to depart, with only a few palettes left to load. It looks like they’re running about an hour behind schedule but are almost ready to go.
I land next to the plywood building and Ankur runs out to meet me, smiling. “You came,” he says.
“Most of me,” I answer, then dig Eka’s key out of my pocket with my numb fingers and hand it to him. He reaches out to take it but I don’t let go. “I’ve seen what this thing can do,” I say, holding his gaze. “What can go wrong, even when you’re careful. Are you sure you can control it?”
Ankur’s grip doesn’t falter, but he doesn’t pull either.
“No,” he says after a moment. “But I have no choice but to try.”
I see the fear and resolve in his eyes. He doesn’t want the power I’m handing him, but he knows he’s the only one who can wield it in their war against Fate. Finally, I let it go and he slides the key into his breast pocket.
“Thank you,” he says as the door to the shack creaks open and Xiao steps out with Grandma—the name Lin Jia comes to mind, unbidden—following right behind.
“He brought it,” Ankur says as Xiao steps up beside him.
He looks me up and down, like a manager assessing a new hire, nods and states, “You know what the stakes are—I need soldiers like you.”
The offer’s tempting. Only hours ago, I thought it was the best choice for me, back when we were fleeing from Ankur’s fragment and I still thought I was a good person. “Thanks for the offer,” I say. “But I can’t. “
Xiao creases his eyes but nods, then says. “May I ask why?”
“I’ve done things,” I tell him. “I need to be held responsible.”
Ankur purses his lips, perplexed. “I have watched you since your restoration and have seen you do nothing to be ashamed of.”
“No, you don’t understand—” I say, but I’m not sure I do either. I remember things happening, terrible things. I remember doing them and know I didn’t at the same time.
“Mr. Gage,” Ankur says, his voice eerily calm, “I understand exactly. That is why the materials I have just released to the link will reveal convincing and exculpatory evidence as to the actions of a former superintelligence known as Eka. A dangerous and malevolent entity who you tracked down and eliminated. I included further evidence that exonerates your friends from their convictions as well. Your culpability, and that of your friends for their supposed crimes, has been wiped away. When word spreads as to the true nature of your actions, I believe your reputation will be restored. You can return to your old life, though I don’t suspect you’ll be welcome back at the Service.”
I shake my head. “No, you don’t understand. The things I did—”
“That you did, or he did?” Xiao asks, pointedly.
They know. The know I was in Dora’s skyn. “But I remember—” I say, and suddenly I’m on the verge of tears, overwhelmed by it all, by all the pain I’d caused. I clench my jaw and fight to bottle my surging remorse.
Ankur gives Xiao a worried look, then steps up and seems to want to reach out and touch me but hesitates and stares up at me instead, his face serious. “He tried to force a reintegration?” he asks.
The hideous memory of Fin-in-Dora’s mind invading mine overcomes me and I can’t speak, manage only a nod.
“But you’re still here,” Xiao says.
“My Cortex rejected him,” I say, and take a breath, suddenly aware how fragile I must seem. I need to keep it together.
Ankur gives my shoulders a squeeze. “Because you aren’t that person. You never were.”
Xiao raises a gentle finger. “A reintegration can be a traumatic thing,” he says. “But remember, whatever actions you remember, you didn’t choose to make them. The guilt lies with the person who made the decision to act, even if he’s in there with you.”
He sounds like he has first hand experience with reintegration himself. I wonder how many times he’s done it? His words make perfect sense. I know I’m not guilty of the crimes he committed, but I could convincingly confess to them, testify to how I laid Dub’s skyn down on the railway tracks and watched the train approach until I ejected at the last second and watched his head explode. I could paint a picture of how Miranda’s husband looked after I stabbed him to death. These things are inside me and always will me.
“Even if I didn’t choose,” I say. “It was still me—”
“That isn’t how it works,” Xiao offers, and cups his hand on my bicep in an almost fatherly gesture--but the other Fin pops up with a memory: Xiao isn’t a man—inside he’s a woman: Mai-xie Zheng. Both a wanted terrorist and a survivor of an eternity consigned to life as a happy slave. “I am not any one of my other selves trapped in the Yuanfen, as similar as we may be. We are individuals, each of us, from the moment of separation, and when we have the fortune to reintegrate we celebrate, because all experience, good and bad, shapes us. You are your own man now, free to make your own choices, regardless of what a different you may choose. Even if those thoughts are inside you, you aren’t those thoughts.”
My head is spinning but what they’re saying makes sense. As much as I understand and sympathize with some of the things I did last time, I didn’t do any of them.
Guilty thoughts are just that, thoughts.
The difference lies in what I do next. That’s all I can control.
“Thank you,” I say to Ankur. “But I can’t join you. Miranda and Tala and Petra and Dub—Dora. I can’t abandon them. I need to get their lives back, I can’t leave until I know I’ve done all I can.”
Xiao lays his hand on my shoulder as he walks past, toward the waiting train, and as he passes says, “As you should.”
Lin Jia takes up her position behind Xiao, striding along with her lands folded into her robes, and as she passes me she hitches a small bow without making eye contact.
Ankur hangs back. “Thanks again for this,” he says and pats his breast. “Though I’m not eager to experience what lies inside.”
“Just keep reminding yourself who you are,” I offer, then turn to leave and remember I have something for him. I reach into my pocket for the note I’d found when I was cataloguing the contents of Fin-in-Dora’s big bag during one of the
recharge breaks on the flight up here.
Amongst the assorted shyfts and clothes and toiletries, I found a note addressed to Amit. I didn’t read it, but I think it’s from when I went to visit Amit’s parents. I vaguely recall asking his father if he wanted to write a message to get him out of Amit’s room. It had been meant as a distraction, but for some reason I’d kept it.
I hold it out to him and he looks at it then me and eyebrow twitches. “What’s this?” he asks.
“It’s for you. Maybe open it when you’re somewhere on your own.”
He squints at me but takes the paper and slides it into his breast pocket with the key. “I have something for you too,” he says and I feel my tab buzz.
“What is it?” I ask.
He just shrugs and says, “I found it a while ago. Maybe open it when you’re on your own.” Then he gives me another shy smile and walks to the waiting train.
The sun’s light is warm on my face as I watch Ankur climb the steps to the train. Xiao was waiting and boards last, giving me a nod before the door slides shut behind him. The train’s engine whirs to a high pitch and the train slowly picks up speed, rolls away around a bend into the trees. Off to free the Ancestors imprisoned in Fate’s forever farms.
They could use my help, but I can’t leave, not yet. I know I’ll ever be able to make up for what I did, never be able to undo the pain I caused, but I have to try.
Eka will take the heat for everything. It feels wrong, like I’m cheating, like I deserve a lifetime of punishment, but I’ll let what Finsbury Gage did die with him.
I’m not that man anymore. I’ve become someone else.
Now to figure out who that is.
I pull my tab out of my pocket and there’s a message waiting, it’s from Ankur. When I open it, I’m greeted by a voice so familiar, my knees give out and I collapse onto the frozen ground.
“Hey hubs,” Connie says, her voice teasing and playful, and for a brief second, I almost believe it’s really her, and I cry out, overcome. For a long moment, I revel in the thought that Connie’s alive, somehow alive after all this time, calling me from somewhere on the other side of the tab, but I recover my senses and realize it isn’t really her, it couldn’t be.
No, it’s not Connie. It’s the exaggerated version of her. The IMP personality sprite she’d created for my birthday all those years ago. The other me had deleted it, but Ankur must have found it. Restored it somehow.
It isn’t her, but I’ll take it.
“I’ve missed you,” I say.
“Back atcha,” she replies. “Where the hell are we? Let’s find some fun.”
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