Brooks stared at his old friend. He knew Oscar Graves well enough to know what this cold, calm tone and the dark look in his eyes meant. Oscar was beyond pissed.
"You here for revenge, Oscar? Is that what this is?" Brooks said, his right hand hanging at his side, dangerously close to his sidearm. The draw would be easy, but what would Brooks do if he missed? The Detective Sergeant knew all too well how lethal his friend Oscar Graves could be when he decided to open certain dark doors within his mind.
Thankfully, Graves started talking again.
"No, Brooks, I’m not gonna kill you. But if you’re thinking about a preemptive shot you should know that the dame I’m working with isn’t as… friendly as I am. If anything happens to me, you might want to consider putting one through your own head afterward. Otherwise you may find yourself with an extra asshole or two if she ever catches up to you.”
"We’re good, Oscar. Wasn’t even thinking about it," Brooks lied.
“Sure you weren’t,” Oscar scoffed as he stood and eyed the door.
“So that’s it?” Brooks asked. “You were just stopping by to let me know you figured it all out?”
"I just wanted you to know that you owe me, Brooks. Big time. Someday I'll be back to collect,” Oscar said, his voice shifting to a menacing tone. “And I also wanted to speak to you face to face to make sure you know not to try any shit like this again. I know you didn't want Catalea hurt, but it went bad. If you're as pro-synth as you claim, don't put another one in danger just so you can get another check mark in your win column. Got it?"
Brooks nodded quickly. "I understand. I'm sorry, Oscar."
"Yeah… I bet you are," Oscar scoffed.
Without another word, he trudged past his oldest friend and left.
CHAPTER 18
◆◆◆
The doors to Lynn's apartment opened and Oscar Graves stepped through with a troubled look plastered across his face. Lynn rose from the sofa and came to greet him.
"How’d it go?" she asked.
"He was angry… a little self-righteous even," Oscar said. "But I think he got the message. I just hope it sticks, you know? He’s an asset for sure right now. Just hope he stays in line. Either way, we should get back to work. I heard a rumor, something about another series of synth disappearances a few hours away from here. Could be related to Greyson. I'd like to look into it. Maybe even bring a few more players onto the field, you know? I know a few guys..."
"So do I," Lynn said. "But I think we already have a third team member who could use your attention right now."
She glanced to her right. Oscar stepped forward to see what she was looking at, and saw a woman in the bedroom. She was standing at the window, staring out at the cityscape.
"I might have had an old cyber body or two lying around," Lynn said with a warm smile.
Oscar swallowed a lump in his throat. "How... how much does she remember?"
Lynn blinked slowly. "Everything."
Oscar nodded. He walked toward the bedroom, feeling as though he was floating.
"Catalea?" he said.
She turned toward him, bashfully. Hoping the new cyber body that she was inhabiting wouldn’t somehow lead to him rejecting her. But the new form didn’t matter to Oscar. One look and he knew. He could instantly tell from the look in her eyes and the smile on her face, that it was her. He had to make doubly sure, so he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in to a deep kiss. A kiss that would have been over too soon even if it had lasted for a thousand years.
SEEVA
By A. King Bradley
CHAPTER 1
◆◆◆
Los Angeles, California…
– March 14, 2140
Seeva Cavelin timed the passing seconds with a repeating rhythmic flick of her right foot. It was a metronome, perfectly in sync with the unseen, abstract phantom of time.
Fifteen seconds to go.
As her foot continued to flick, Seeva looked around the room. She checked the angle and brightness of the lights, and surveyed her reflection in the mirrors above and behind the camera. She was well lit. The utter and inhuman perfection of her synthetic skin was hidden by a warm yellowish glow that gave it a more organic appearance. It was, of course, warm already. Artificial blood ran through it. A rich and radiant synthetic fluid that was teeming with billions of microscopic nano-machines. Despite the differences between her deep-purplish synth-fluid and the crimson life-blood that flowed within the veins of her organic counterparts, Seeva still felt that she was human. In fact, in her heart of hearts she knew she was... but appearance was everything, especially if you wanted to change the world.
Five seconds…
Seeva quickly looked around the rest of the room. Checking the position of all the equipment. There wasn't much of it, just a dimensional analogger (for approximating her three-dimensional form for those viewers who possessed the proper viewing apparatus), a voice modulator (to roughen up her perfect accent a bit, make it more relatable) as well as a standard broadcast camera (for reaching anyone in the world who saw fit to tune into her little broadcast).
Of course, "little" was the wrong word now that she had gone viral. The viewers were already logging on in droves. They would currently be watching a standby screen, a countdown timer. Already the viewership was in six figures, and rapidly climbing. Word of her broadcasts had caught on somehow, like a wildfire. It spread through all major news providers, both synthetic and organic. Just one of those lucky breaks. Most people tried their whole lives for an opportunity like this, and never got them. Seeva knew full well how fortunate she was and she was ready to make the most of it.
Her newfound data sphere stardom meant that she would get many more viewers than usual, but it also meant that the majority of her viewers would be people who, until a few days before, might have never heard of her. Of that group, many would be there just to heckle her, to insult her, to write follow-up articles or do response broadcasts denigrating her every point. Or just insulting her looks or the sound of her voice.
That was par for the course though. Even before the stardom, she had built a dedicated following of over one-hundred and twenty-thousand, and you didn't get a number even ten percent of that without wading through a sea of haters.
Zero seconds…
The broadcast went live. Seeva still had a few seconds as the opening animation played out. She settled in her chair, assuming a posture that was relaxed and open but still professional.
Then she smiled. It was a smile she did not feel. She was consciously aware of all those new sets of eyes, those judgmental faces glowering at her spotless skin and her perfect hair through their screens. She wanted to be excited, but now she only felt anxious. She wasn’t willing to give in to that anxiety. Instead she took those anxious feelings festering in her mind and crushed them down into a tiny ball every bit as massive as a black hole and tucked them inside an imaginary reactor inside her head. Now properly harnessed, it would power her through the next twenty minutes.
"My name is Seeva Cavelin," she said. "And I am happy you've all decided to join me. This same kind of instance might have occurred on this day… thousands of years ago. But perhaps on a smaller scale. We’d have been a few dozen people, maybe, huddled around a campfire and listening to each other’s stories and opinions. Now we are hundreds of thousands… millions even, thousands of miles apart…worlds away, in some cases, but still together in spirit. We are synthetic, and we are organic. Our brains are like forests on opposite sides of the planet. Made up of different materials, but both equally beautiful. Both parts of the same magnificent system.
"But if you take that analogy one step further, you'd realize that an oak tree in Canada and a palm tree in Tunisia will likely never see each other, never have the chance to breathe the same air. I'd like to change that. I'd like to cultivate an environment that is equally friendly to both the oak and the palm. An environment that can sustain each. A place where they can each exist as permanent neighbo
rs, and recognize that, at the end of the day, they’re both… trees. Different types of trees… but still… trees.
"I am a synthetic human. I am a daughter of Maestro… a bit of persona code given meaning by the attachment of sensory organs and an encasement of synthetic flesh and bone. Just as my organic brethren watching were once stardust, beautiful scintillating matter that cascaded through time and space in eerie majesty... but which only found a purpose in the lowness of earth, under the dome of the same sky that we all now share. That is me. I am human, born not from the body of man but from the minds of the brilliant organics that made my existence possible through the creation of Maestro. If you are the daughters, then I am the granddaughter. Other than that minor distinction, how much is there that truly separates us?"
CHAPTER 2
◆◆◆
A man in the dark, sitting at his desk, reached out to grab a file with Seeva Cavelin’s names scribbled across the front. It was a paper file, tucked into a big yellow paper envelope. Old-fashioned, obsolete. He like the old stuff. It felt nice in his hands. Weighty. Textured. He enjoyed the sound of paper snapping under his thumb, the whoosh of air as the pages turned over, the soft crackle-crinkle as they fell into place. He was a man who took pure delight in the world and his presence in it. Everything was a thrill.
Here in the file, in thirty pages tightly packed with print, he saw all currently available information about Seeva. Manufactured nineteen and a half years ago, just after the passing of the thirty-second amendment which granted full citizenship to the U.S. synth population… at least on paper.
Seeva's file indicated that she had a standard cyber brain and body for the era, strong and reliable. She was certainly both of those things, but to the man that was reviewing her file, Seeva was also breathtakingly beautiful. He wondered what had inspired the birthing plant algorithm that designed the surface details of her body; because she was an absolute work of art, beautiful in a subtle, special way that no organic human had ever been. She was, perfect to him in every way and he viewed her as the type of creature who could inspire lust so strong it could easily turn to murderous rage by the slightest hint of rejection.
She was smart, too, as all synths were. But she had channeled her intelligence in a way that made her hot property. Now she had suddenly become a big name... but fame was fickle, and by next week half the people who tuned into her little equal-rights broadcast would have forgotten her name. Not him though. He could never forget her. And he knew he had to have her.
First he’d have to make her vulnerable.
CHAPTER 3
◆◆◆
Seeva was midway through her broadcast, discussing the minute differences between synths and organics versus their vast similarities and how further fellowship could only benefit both sides, when the lights on all her gathered machines suddenly went dark.
The analogger died, the diode turning from green to red. The camera lost connection to the data sphere. The voice modulator went on modulating, but in vain. The broadcast was dead. No one could see or hear her now.
She shot to her feet, running to the camera to check the connection. Then she followed a cable back to the computer station that monitored and moderated the broadcast. Flipping through screens, she quickly pieced together the last minute of traffic and was able to determine the cause of the blackout.
It was in the viewership. Up until a minute ago, each unique viewer was showing a computational address, a location in the data sphere indicating their connection point. Suddenly, more and more of their addresses were being hidden, X'ed out. Someone was hijacking all these connections, spamming access points from hidden locations. Her viewership had shot up to over ten million in the space of ten seconds, a huge jump that caused the sphere to see her as a potential security threat and shut her down.
She knew the rules. The regulations. It would be twenty-four hours before the automated defenses let her broadcast again. This had been her greatest moment, her best shot at beginning to make a difference and some asshole out on the sphere had blown it for her.
Some asshole who must have access to some powerful equipment.
As she stared in disbelief at her viewership records, messages from viewers began to pop out at her.
-If you really want to make the world a better place, take a kill-pill on camera. – 9.4k likes
-Synth whore. – 11.1k likes
-This dumb bitch really thinks anyone cares about what she thinks? – 12.3k likes
-She has nice tits, but I feel my brain dying every time she opens her mouth. – 18.8k likes
-Lady, you're a bad spokesperson for synths. If all of you are this pretentious and preachy, you're never going to be invited to my neighborhood. We don't need some self-righteous bimbo telling us all what assholes we are. – 6.9k likes
-Was there an error when they created your persona? Because you're stupid, annoying, and uninteresting. The only reason you're popular at all is because you're a synth. That's it. – 4.5k likes
There were thousands of these messages. Each of them was bookended with perfectly reasonable comments and arguments, and even glowing messages of support... but the bad ones were the ones that seemed to garner the most likes and therefore those were all she saw. She turned away and fell slowly to the floor. Not for the first time, she wondered why Maestro hadn’t equipped her children with a manual shutdown function.
CHAPTER 4
◆◆◆
A knock at the door. A muffled voice calling out for Seeva.
She opened her eyes in the dark room. The windows were shut, the blinds drawn. The air hot and stale. She sat up, swinging her feet to the floor. The clock read half past six PM. Had it really been almost twenty-four hours already? It had passed by in a blur of moping and self- hatred, of pacing and throwing things around.
A vague memory floated to the front of her mind. A memory of smashing her modulator. Had that just been an imagined delight?
She scanned the room and saw the wreckage in the corner. So, it had really happened. For her next broadcast, she would speak with her normal voice. They could take it or leave it. Why hide who she was, why try to fit in? How about they adjusted instead, wrapped their stupid brains around the fact that not everyone who's different is an enemy?
By the time she reached the door, she was already pricing out a new modulator in her head and feeling like an idiot.
Seeva let the door open, and immediately she was assailed by a wall of jovial noise. Two of her friends and fellow synth influencers flooded in, laughing and slapping her back and joyfully voicing their complaints about the miserable days they had had.
One of them was Marina Poole, a young-looking beauty to rival Seeva herself. And she was even more popular. Probably because her content was rarely political in nature. Usually it had to do with adapting organic products to synthetic uses, and vice versa.
The other was Alifred Yull, a tall and exotic looking man who had come out of the secluded Vancouver birthing plant. Their cyber body designs were among the most unique in the world, because they spent months perfecting each of them. That uniqueness was reflected in Alifred, one of those creatures who was so beautiful as to almost seem alien.
Seeva might have been attracted to him. But he had always been like a brother to her. As they stepped inside, Alifred reached out and laid a hand on Marina's shoulder. She fell silent. Together, they surveyed the messy disaster of the room.
"Seeva, dear," Marina said. "You're an ass-kicker of the highest order, you know that? Don't let this attack bother you."
Seeva stared at the other woman. "Easy for you to say. It's never happened to you."
Alifred quickly shook his head. "That's because Marina's content is innocuous..."
"There have also been those who have called it vapid or vacuous," Marina said with a grin.
"It entertains people," Alifred continued. "But it's not in danger of changing the world. It is only a symptom of a world that's changing whether they like it
or not. Marina does the grunt work on the ground, creating a happy and relatable character, but she's not going to win many new converts. You, on the other hand, are attacking the global idiocy outright, and most people don't like that. People like to be ignorant, and they like to have something to complain about. Someone to be angry with. The organics are the reason utopia will never exist... but perhaps that's fine. In a utopia, no more progress can be made, and to be honest that just seems sort of… boring.”
Marina reached up and knocked her knuckles against Alifred's forehead. "Let's not get all dreary and philosophical. The future is uncertain, the past is dead, and the present is made for fun!"
Alifred nodded. "Right. That's part of why we came, Seeva. There's a party happening, a lot of organic influencers will be there. It's a mixed crowd. Supposed to be very casual, no business discussions. Just fun and camaraderie and such. Thought it might cheer you up a bit. We're actually on our way there now."
Seeva looked down at her body. She was still wearing the same clothes from yesterday. They were a wrinkled mess.
"How come I haven't heard about this?" she asked, turning and striding through her apartment in search of clothes. "I feel like I would have been invited."
"You were invited," Marina chimed. "Just now. By us. It's a last-minute thing, organized just today. No official announcement. I hear the guy who put it together typically operates off word of mouth only."
Grave Makers (Darkside Dreams - Series 1 Book 2) Page 12