by Sean Platt
“Why are you telling me any of thi — ”
With a tremendous shake, something tiny seemed to jut beneath the lab’s strong door. A thin, dark stream of what must be proprietary swarm hoverbots swirled in a miniature tornado. The tornado came closer. Stephen looked to the strange man in black for help, but he’d vanished as inconspicuously as he’d arrived.
Knowing it was pointless, Stephen ran for the lab’s white walls. The tornado of hoverbots followed, crossing the space in an instant. York swatted them like flies. His foot found the stool, and a second later was clambering for the lab bench as if intending to crawl out through the ceiling.
From his higher vantage, York scanned the lab. The man in black was nowhere to be seen.
One foot on the bench. Then another. His panicked, grasping hand found the top shelf but found no solid purchase; he dragged a paper notebook from its place and nearly staggered back toward the floor before recovering.
The cloud came like lightning. There was no point in fleeing. There never had been.
Stephen felt the nanobots enter his mouth. His nose. Even his eyes. They’d be crawling into his body through his sweat glands, the roots of his follicles. Trying to run from them was like trying to flee air.
Stephen felt himself go rigid.
They’d played with the idea of swarms just enough to frighten York as he fell from the bench, stiff like a new corpse. Right now, if these bots were anything like he and Noah had conceived (and certain high-privilege folks had apparently developed), they’d be in his cortex, beneath his membranes, shutting him down. Scratching at his memories. Making him forget.
Stephen hit the floor. He wasn’t sure if he struck his head, or the stool, or anything else. He knew only that he was down. A moment later, he found himself staring at the ceiling — although the nanobots must be doing their work quickly, because he’d already forgotten which ceiling it was.
Five seconds passed. Then ten.
Which ceiling is this? Where am I?
He became dimly aware of pain but wasn’t sure why. Something had happened to injure him that felt recent, but he couldn’t recall what it was. He could feel body parts being tended to by medical nanobots, but they weren’t his own. They were bots that someone (who?) had brought with them into…into wherever this was.
He sat up.
The room wasn’t familiar. Why was he here? He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be somewhere else. So really, he should go outside.
Stephen stood, walked to the door, and did something to a panel beside the door. He had no idea what he was doing, why, or what it was meant to accomplish. The actions were rote, as if he understood them fully without understanding at all.
The door opened. A tall woman stepped in, her hair bright red. A nondescript black man followed.
The woman shut the door. Without preamble, she said, “What is your name?”
He felt his brow furrow. His hand went thoughtfully to his chin. He had a beard. He didn’t think he’d had one before. It felt shaggy, as if it had grown in a hurry and not bothered to keep itself neat, as if the beard had a mind of its own. Then again, maybe he did remember the beard — at least as much as anything else.
“I…I don’t know.”
The woman looked down and tapped something on a handheld. A brown cloud surrounded him. He felt violated, the noxious whatever-it-was entering his mouth and nose.
“He’s locked down,” the woman said, still tapping her handheld as the cloud dispersed.
The male visitor looked into his eyes but spoke to the woman. “You’re sure?”
The woman held up the handheld. “See for yourself.”
“Won’t he remember us?”
“I’ll leave a few nanos behind. They’ll complete the firewall once he’s off-premises. We don’t want him remembering this facility anyway.”
“What happens with the facility?”
“That’s none of my business. Yours either.”
The man shrugged. “Okay. Come on, Steve.”
Steve. Yes, he sort of remembered being a Steve.
The black man’s eyes widened. He looked at the woman. “He’ll forget that too, right? That I just called him Steve?”
“Yes.”
“Then come on, Steve.”
The man led Steve out onto the street.
“Where to?” the man asked the woman.
“Times Square.” She looked Steve up and down. “He’s still a little clean, but I guess his current clothes will do.” She sniffed, and her nose wrinkled with disgust. “Wow. I don’t think he’s been showering since West died. So at least that fits.”
“Fits what?”
“The homeless image.”
The man seemed to approve of that answer. Steve watched his head bob. “Oh, okay. That works.” He touched Steve’s face. “The beard looks like a bum’s beard.”
“Give him a day or two in the Square before sending Long to find him. He’ll stink even worse by then.” The woman looked into Steve’s eyes. “Won’t you, fella?”
“Are we going to the park?” Steve asked. Something deep down was trying to tell Steve that he shouldn’t be here and that something else — besides a tempting park trip — was happening. But it was all very uninteresting to him right now.
Pick at the edges, a voice inside his head inside whispered.
“The park, the Square, whatever,” the woman said, as if it was all the same.
“I’d like to see the squirrels,” Steve told her.
Keep the loose ends close, the voice added. But again, Steve didn’t know what that meant. But again, he found that he didn’t care.
“Come on then.”
They walked. And as they strolled, Steve found himself becoming increasingly interested in seeing the squirrels — something that a moment ago had seemed only like a lark. Squirrels meant trouble. They got into things. They stole nuts. They could carry disease, and the disease they carried sometimes made them mad. Not angry mad. Crazy mad.
After a bit, the woman turned and asked, “What’s your name?”
He blinked, unsure. He’d once known. Once or twice, but not anymore. But despite that rather obvious knowledge gap, he could still hear something inside telling him that this wasn’t right, that he should care a lot more about something other than squirrels. That voice was a second person inside him, like a prisoner in a cell. A person with no name or identity. A person who — like those troublesome squirrels — might go mad if trapped alone for too long.
Recite what you can find, to keep it fresh. Your mind will do the rest.
“Two,” he said.
The woman looked at him then at the black man. As if speaking to a toddler, she said, “That’s right. There are two of us.”
“Three,” he said.
“Three including you,” she agreed, nodding.
“Five. Seven. Eleven.”
The black man looked at the woman. The woman looked back, her eyes not quite right.
He made a decision: he should keep this to himself.
Whatever these numbers were, he should keep them to himself. Saying them felt good, like an anchor in an otherwise lost sense of world and self. But as confused as he felt, he could tell that saying the numbers out loud might cause them to hurt him.
And so as they walked, nearing the park or the Square to see the squirrels, he continued to say them, reading off some unknown internal scoreboard — relics from the life of someone he didn’t recall.
Thirteen. Seventeen. Nineteen. Twenty-three. Twenty-nine.
Recite what you can find, to keep it fresh. Your mind will do the rest.
Thirty-one. Thirty-seven. Forty-one.
His mind settled.
Beneath it all, previously unknown wheels slowly turned.
Working out the numbers under the numbers felt like an unfathomably massive task, but there was no rush.
He had all the time in the world.
Chapter Two
Dominic ignored his
handheld. Then after another two buzzes he grunted, looked at the thing, and rushed to answer the call before the caller hung up.
“Dominic?” said Leah’s voice.
“Who did you think you were calling?”
“Well, up yours, too,” Leah said.
“I’m sorry. I’m really, really glad you called.”
Dominic frowned, wondering if he should be less transparent — less abjectly needy. But fuck that. He was in over his head with Omar, in over his head with the mysterious and beautiful Kate, in over his head with Lunis (both with his addiction and as a dealer in trouble), in over his head with NPS and Agent Smith, and definitely in over his head with the Organas. Leah might just be his only friend — the only person who understood both Dominic’s predicament and the Organas as a community.
In the time it took for Leah to respond, a thousand horrors replayed themselves in front of Dominic’s inner eye. In the past half hour, he’d seen one of the captive Organa women hook her fingers through a man’s eyes. He’d seen an old man in braids rip an arm clear off some hapless teenager. The medics would fix it all, of course, just like the police would eventually get their way over the lawyers and restrain the Organas for their own protection. It was flat-out necessary if any of them were to survive, given that the arm pulling was something Dominic wouldn’t have thought possible — and if he needed proof that some in Organa today had once been mechanized warriors from Gaia’s Hammer, that one provided it in spades.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have been ignoring my calls if you’re so eager,” Leah said, an edge in her voice. She sounded like Dominic felt. Maybe something stressful was amiss on Leah’s end of things, too.
“I ignored the calls because I thought it was another of the DZ captains I’ve been dodging. There are still riots happening out there, and everyone wants a piece of me. Nobody seems to understand why a bunch of hippies being brought into the station requires my full attention.”
“I’ve been trying to reach you for forever.”
Dominic decided not to bite back, as thin as his nerves felt. What Leah said wasn’t really about the calls. It was about her oft-stated opinion that Dominic, as a DZ citizen and police captain, should have a cochlear implant or corneal heads-up display at the very least. It was strange to hear a supposed Organa argue for augmentation, but Dominic was in many ways more Organa than Leah — and at times like this, when the urging of AI could have made sure they connected earlier, it was hard not to see her point.
“So they’re there?” Leah went on, sparing Dominic the indignity of responding. “Leo and the others?”
“They’re at NPS holding.” Then: “How did you even know they were brought in? Leo seems to think you were away, in the city.”
“It’s not important. I know you need my help.”
Dominic started to bluster. Then he let that go, too, because it was the reason he’d wanted to talk to Leah ever since he’d left the wing where the increasingly violent Organas were being held.
“I do. How fast can you get down here?”
“I’ve been standing right outside for twenty minutes. The same amount of time I’ve been trying to call you. If you had any sort of add-on to access Beam Social while you’re — ”
“Don’t start, Leah.” Dominic spun on his heel and began marching back to the compound. “Meet me at the station. NPS, not DZPD.”
“No way, Dom. I said I’m outside. I need to stay outside.”
“You need to come in, Leah,” Dominic countered. “Leo and the others are out of their fucking minds. There are no Organas left to speak rationally for them, except you.”
“Exactly. No Organas left except me.”
Dominic sensed a double meaning behind Leah’s words but didn’t pause to figure it out.
“Without an advocate, it’s just the fucking NAUCLU lawyers in there. All they can do is read the playbook. A literal book because these are Organas we’re talking about. It’s like the lawyers learned about Organa from vidstreams and films. They might even believe they ride around town in horse-drawn carriages.”
“Well…” Leah began.
“You get my point. I was just there. NPS doesn’t have as much capacity as we do, but they won’t send the Organas to DZPD because they’re state prisoners, and I don’t think they — NPS, I mean — trust us. Over there, they only have six private cells with bars between them. The rest is quasi-gen-pop.”
“What does that mean?”
“Why don’t you come inside and see?”
“Use your head, Dominic. They just arrested the entire village. If I waltz in there, as an Organa they missed, do you think they’re going to offer me a cup of coffee?”
“I’ll vouch for you.”
“How’s that going so far? Trying to vouch for anyone else? Are you having much luck getting NPS to take your suggestions?”
Dominic was going to ask how Leah knew he wasn’t getting his way with the NAU Protective Service, but the answer was straightforward. Bureaucracy was bureaucracy. You didn’t need insider info to guess that the agencies had already spent significant time measuring dicks.
Dominic sighed. “Not well,” he admitted.
“So what’s quasi-gen-pop?”
“It’s a huge holding area that can be subdivided by semi-opaque force fields. Repellant ones, not shockers. It should be easy to give every one of these freaks their own cell inside the larger space so they can’t get at and hurt each other, but the lawyers won’t let NPS enact the force fields. They say that because the detainees are Organa, separating them with Beam-facing fields is like spitting on a Christian’s Bible.”
“That’s insane.”
“That’s lawyers,” said Dominic. “I need you to talk some sense into them. You’re Organa, but you haven’t lost your mind yet.”
“I told you, I can’t.”
“Then call in and speak to them that way. I’ll put you on with the guy in charge. Or even better, do a holo, so he can see your face.”
“They’ll track me. Don’t pretend you can’t requisition City Surveillance to do facial recognition if you have reason to believe someone you’re after is inside the core network. The only thing keeping me free right now is my lack of a Beam ID.”
Dominic opened his mouth to retort, but Leah was right and both of them knew it.
“Then why are you wasting my time?” he snapped, his thin patience snapping like a twig. “Why did you come all the way down here if you’re too chickenshit to do anything? I’m trying to put out fifty fires at once!” And that doesn’t even include the twenty illegal fires I’ve got brewing with Omar Jones, his mind added.
Leah was quiet. Then she said, “There’s something else, Dominic. Something you need to know. About Crumb.”
“Crumb?”
“You remember Crumb?” The way she said it seemed guarded. They’d all mostly trained themselves to refer to the man as Stephen or Steve or York by now, so Leah’s using his old, more-public name now meant she didn’t trust their connection’s privacy.
“I don’t see how he’s relevant right now.”
Leah paused then said, “It’s complicated. If you come out here, I’ll tell you what’s bugging me.”
“I’m not coming out. You come in. We deal with Organa now then deal with Crumb later.”
“I think they may be related somehow.” Leah sighed. “There’s a lot to this. I don’t know where to start. Some stuff I’ve found, Dom…it just feels like there’s too much entanglement between Crumb and the Organas and everything else. Even the way you were called to deal with Crumb when you first found him and then brought him to Leo bugs me. It all feels very coincidental. Almost too convenient.”
Dominic was again about to argue but then remembered some of the coincidences he’d just pointed out to Kate. He fought a constricting feeling, blinking hard to stay present.
“That doesn’t change the here and now, Leah. I don’t know or care what’s bugging you about Crumb because the people I jus
t saw are ripping themselves apart. Pretty soon, I imagine NPS will send in immobilizers, but that’ll only handle things temporarily. They need to be sequestered. Every one of the detained Organas needs to be locked in solitary.”
She inhaled, exhaled. “Look, I had a thought. I’m pretty sure I can get them out, but…”
“How?”
“It’s moot until we know what to do with them once they’re free. You say they’re violent?”
“Holy shit, yes. It’d be like freeing wild animals.”
“And there’s no way to get them more dust to calm them down. Not from your coffers, nothing?”
“Believe me, I’ve tried. There’s a…let’s just say, ‘a supply chain problem.’”
“West,” Leah swore. “You don’t by any chance know some top-secret, cops’-eyes-only cure for Lunis withdrawal, do you?”
“Sure I do. Wait it out. See who survives. But that’s the catch-22 about all of this: Bars are all that’s keeping them safe, so getting them out scares me, too. But what else can we do? If they stay in unrestricted custody, all but a few of the strongest will be dead by day’s end.”
“Just ‘wait and see who survives.’ That’s it? That’s the only option?”
“As far as I can figure, yes.”
Leah fell silent. Dominic thought she might be thinking. Either that or giving up.
“There was something Leo mentioned,” she finally said. “He was figuring out how to kick the habit.”
“Figuring out how to defeat biology? I don’t think so, Leah. Leo knew what he was getting into when he got the first Organas hooked on that shit. Everyone knew the rumors about how addictive it was before it hit the streets. And Leo knew what he was doing when…”
Dominic trailed off.
“What, Dom?”
“Hang on.” Dominic put his finger in the air as if he were talking to Leah in person.
He was about to say, When he got them all busted by NPS.
But Dominic had got Organa busted, not Leo. And still the idea wouldn’t leave Dominic’s head now that he’d had it, obeying layers-deep cop instincts.