by C. Gockel
Noa exhaled. Her hands flicked to her side—and she remembered being kicked—thanks to Fleet tech she was healing much faster than natural and it wasn’t unbearably painful. “It does make sense,” she said, and she did understand his ambivalence. She had pulled the trigger on more than a few unsavory individuals; it was harder than the holos made you believe. A man with no history of combat, nor apparently in a profession that would have given him training, killing three men? Her throat tightened. Of course, he’d just been shot out of the sky—probably because he was hyper-augmented. The situation was extreme—it could have pushed an ordinary man to extreme actions. And he hadn’t hurt her, or ignored her, or dumped her off the snowmobile when she fainted. He had spooned with her scrawny, stinking self to save her from hypothermia.
“I feel … disconnected,” James said. His face was turned away; his hand was on his data port.
“Because we’re disconnected from the ethernet,” Noa whispered.
His eyes narrowed and he shook his head, eyes roving around the room. “It’s more than that. I feel off, Commander.”
Noa’s eyebrows rose. Something was off with James, but she didn’t feel threatened. Instead she felt herself softening, seeing him for what he was—a civilian thrust into a war zone, a man who had overcome some physical and probably mental handicaps with augmentation. Her eyes grazed his perfect jaw line, the muscles and tendons in his shoulders that showed just above the comforter that covered them, and remembered the perfectly chiseled body below—his augmenters might have gone too far.
She sighed. “If you’re not Fleet, you don’t have to call me Commander.”
Dropping his hand and turning to her, he said, “Very well, Ms. Sato.” His jaw did that odd side to side shift, and he touched it in that self-conscious way.
He was too close for a stranger, and Noa fought the urge to pull away. “Just Noa is fine,” she said, keeping her voice level. He turned away, and she felt herself relax. She reminded herself that he wasn’t threatening, that he’d saved her, and there was no reason to be nervous or suspicious. Still, there was something else wrong with his story. “If you’re not with the Fleet, how did you know my location?” She didn’t remember her coordinates being broadcast, and her locator was Fleet secret tech.
“I saw your signal. I felt I had to find you.” He gazed out the window.
Noa’s brow furrowed. Her secure Fleet signal didn’t rely on ethernet transmission at close ranges, but it was still secure and encrypted. Even if he’d tuned into the frequency, how would he have known it was her?
He shook his head—it was an odd movement—almost a shiver. “But I knew you were here. I hoped you could explain it.”
Reaching up to clutch the edges of the duvet, she said, “I think the Luddecceans must have knocked out the satellite transmitter for this region—that’s why the ethernet is down. Maybe the signals were scrambled as they were knocking down the satellite, and you accidentally tapped into the secure channel?” The Luddecceans and her own.
“A weak hypothesis,” James said, perfectly sculpted profile angled away from her. She felt herself relax, and realized if he had agreed with her, she might have been distrustful. His honesty made her instincts shout, “very strange” but not “danger.” Or maybe she was just too hungry to feel danger. She sank against the wall, the sensation of her stomach curling in on itself overtaking her.
“Noa Sato … that is a Japanese name,” James said, the lack of segue startling her.
“Yes,” she ground out.
“My middle name is Hiro,” said James, “after an uncle four generations back. My parents made me install a Japanese language chip so I could speak to Uncle Hiro and my grandmother Masako.”
“Huh. I probably have that app,” she said—or her mouth said automatically. She didn’t feel as though her brain had taken any part in saying it. She felt as she had just before tumbling over the root in the forest, or slumping on the bike. She closed her eyes. None of it was a dream—not the concentration camp, Ashley or Kenji.
“Nihongo wakaru no? ” said James, shifting beside her. “Honto?”
You understand Japanese? Her app translated. Really?
And she could understand his surprise … Japanese was no longer spoken, except by tiny enclaves of Japanese purists, and the app was rarely installed. To have two people in the same room with the app was rare, indeed. As she thought this, he rattled off in Japanese about how his great-great-something-or-other grandmother had left her purist family to be with his great-something-or-other British grandfather. It was a lot like Noa’s family’s story. Her parents had made her install the Japanese chip so she could talk to her 200-year-old purist Japanese great-great-great grandfather Jun Sato. And nebulas … like her, James didn’t even look Japanese.
They could bond over that, but at the moment … bowing her head into her knees, Noa whined, “Get me food, James!”
He didn’t move. “You’ll be all right?”
Remembering his hunting rifle, Noa muttered, “What, do you have to go kill and skin it?”
“No, there is food in the kitchen.”
“I’ll be fine,” Noa said, her stomach feeling like it was trying to devour itself. Remembering her first aid, and how it applied to starvation victims, she asked, “Do you have any soup? Something broth based?”
“I’ll go check,” he said, standing and giving Noa a view of the well-defined planes of his back and of his backside. She didn’t even remember her brain telling her neck to lift her head. Scrunching her eyes shut, she groaned and banged her head against her duvet-covered knees.
James came back moments later with two sealed packets of soup in his hand. “Do you want me to warm the tomato or the chicken and rice—”
Seizing the chicken and rice packet from his hand, Noa ripped a corner open with her teeth and sucked out a mouthful of broth. James stared at her a moment and then did the same to the tomato soup. She raised her eyebrows at him.
Settling down beside her and draping the cover over himself, he said, “I’m hungry, too.”
“Mmmmmmm….” Noa managed. The cheap cold broth from the packet was the most delicious thing she’d had in weeks. With each slurp she felt as if the cells in her body were rejoicing, the fuzziness at the edge of her consciousness was beginning to sharpen, and the nightmare of hunger and death of the camp starting to fade. Still sucking on the broth, she began to inspect her surroundings. The wall to her left had a huge window that was half-covered in snow. Outside it appeared to be close to evening—and the wind was howling madly. Inside … had James called this a cottage? The bedroom was nearly as large as the first floor of the house she’d grown up in. There was an unlit fireplace made of pale rough stones. She felt warmth beneath her bare feet—the floor was heated, which meant the fireplace was for decor more than function. There was a plush rug laid out over the wooden floor, and there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere. As she thought that, a tiny cylindrical cleaning ‘bot a few hands wide and half as tall rolled out from under the bed. A light on top of it flashed in their direction and it turned away, obviously programmed to be as unobtrusive as possible. She lifted her eyes. On a dresser across the room another ‘bot was hanging from the top of a mirror, wiping the glass clean. She frowned.
“You’re definitely from Earth,” she said.
“Yes,” James answered, lifting an eyebrow.
Her frown deepened. Earthers. Luddecceans would hire actual people for help; even menial work was better than no work.
She shook her head. Tapping her data port, she said, “I was out for a whole four hours?”
“And six minutes and forty-seven seconds,” said James. “Why were they chasing you?”
The lack of segue threw Noa for a second, but she shook it off. Highly augmented minds sometimes were … odd. “I was on leave to visit my brother. I was picked up on the street, interrogated, and incarcerated in what they called a re-education camp. I don’t know why.”
“They h
ad you working, didn’t they?” James said.
The hairs on the back of Noa’s neck rose. “How did you know that?”
James looked at her sharply. “I didn’t know, which is why I asked.”
Noa scooted away from him just the same. He didn’t seem to notice. Wiping his face, he said, “I’m just trying to understand what’s going on. If I understand the big picture, maybe I’ll understand why they shot me out of the sky, why I am missing huge chunks of my memory, and why I knew how to find you.”
Noa felt the tension drain out of her shoulders. The words were clipped. He was frustrated, she decided, and confused, just like her. “Like I said, you’re hyper-augmented … ” She waved her hand around the room. “Rich and from Earth. Of course they don’t like you. It’s crazy, but you shouldn’t waste your time trying to understand things that are crazy. Better to focus on how to blow the insanity wide open.”
James shook his head. “How would they know any of that if I never sent them my authorizations?”
Noa drew back. How would they have known? One of her brows shot up. “You rented a shuttle on Time Gate 8, they beamed down your data.”
Looking away, he was quiet for a long moment. “That doesn’t feel right.” His head did that compulsive tick thing. She heard one of the ‘bots whir beneath the bed.
“The tattoo on your wrist, the forced labor … ” he said quietly. “It sounds like other historical events. May I ask what they had you doing?”
Noa’s body stiffened. “Things that should be done by a ‘bot, even on Luddeccea.”
James stared off into the distance again. She took a long suck on the soup. Soup, heated floors, a mattress, a quilt … Her left thumb went to the stumps of her ring and pinky fingers. She was safe, for now, and so many other people were not.
“The scars on your abdomen are old, but the injury on your hand has barely scabbed over—an accident during labor?” James said out of the blue.
Noa’s whole body went still. She felt her heart rate increase, a prickle on her brow. “I … ” Noa said. Her lips stayed parted. She remembered the guards holding her down, the ax, the pain—but more seeing them take away her rings, the rings Timothy gave her. “Can’t talk about it,” she said.
Without missing a beat, he said, “Who is Timothy?” And Noa felt like the atmosphere had become too thin.
She took a deep breath, smelled wood, floor polish, and James—he smelled impossibly good for a man who’d been on the run, and who now seemed set on mentally torturing her—and she smelled herself. “I reek,” she said, because she couldn’t say anything else.
James said nothing. Hopping to her feet, soup packet in a death grip, she looked around frantically, reminding herself he probably couldn’t help his hyper-augmented brain. James hopped up immediately beside her. She was distantly aware of his fingers, just below her curled arm—as though he was preparing to catch her if she fell. Seeing a door slightly ajar, she said, “Bath?” She couldn’t meet his eyes, but she saw him nod in the periphery of her vision. She set off toward the door without a backward glance.
* * *
James stood outside the bathroom, head bowed. For a moment he had a vision of Noa, lying at the bottom of the tub, her eyes wide open, her lips parted, and no air coming from her lungs. Stepping closer, he pressed his ear against the door. He felt static just beneath his skin. What was he doing? Why was he standing here obsessing?
Above the roar of the faucet, he heard the sound of Noa sloshing, and then he heard her sigh. He shook his head, irritated that the sound made him feel as though a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He stepped back from the door and the edges of his vision went hazy. James felt himself waver on his feet. He was still hungry.
Backing away fast, he stumbled down the hall past the familiar pictures that felt unfamiliar and unreal. He stepped into the kitchen. There was something about the place that reminded him of the set of a play he’d once performed in during college. Going to the cupboard, he pulled more emergency rations out—sealed packets of soup, boxes of shelf-stable soy milk, crackers, and several jars of peanut butter. Going straight for the peanut butter, he grabbed a spoon from the correct drawer without a pause, opened the jar, and scooped a heaping helping into his mouth. Every taste bud in his mouth was jumping with joy. His eyebrows rose as he took another bite. He didn’t remember loving peanut butter this much. Was it just hunger, or the fact that he’d nearly died … he smacked his lips and licked off all the salt. Or was it just that the peanut butter tasted real? He wanted to slow down and savor every gooey, oily, salty bite, but couldn’t keep from shoveling spoonful after spoonful into his mouth. As his stomach started to fill, his mind returned to something else that felt very real: he and the Commander—Noa—were wanted by the local government.
The ethernet was still inaccessible, so they could not call in the Republic’s authorities for help. Opening the soy milk container, he washed down a quarter of a jar of peanut butter. The Holocaust, the Gulags in the old Soviet Union, the Khmer Rouge, the rise of ISIL, and the North Korean slave state were all very interesting historical events—he had data on all of them stored in his banks. Now he was witnessing a similar regime first hand. What luck. He felt a bitter smile want to form, and then his neurons flared white hot. No, Noa had been the witness—they’d tortured her and forced her to work for them. He shouldn’t have asked so many questions—her answers made him want to go back to the camp she escaped from and set it on fire. He felt heat flare beneath his skin; it was a worthless impulse. He had to keep them both out of the camps.
He plundered his databases. Cutting off communications to the outside was what fascist regimes did. But in successful, long running campaigns of population control, civilians were held in check by propaganda.
Soy milk and peanut butter still in hand, he strode to the living room. It was decorated in rustic chic. There were the wood-paneled walls, recessed lighting in the ceiling, a rug under a chest that passed for a coffee table, and a blue couch. Everything was as he remembered it, and yet it was still dream-like—something was missing.
Shaking off his unease, he went to the trunk and popped it open. He pulled out an ancient-looking device—a chunky flat box the width of both his hands and about three centimeters thick. It was an all-frequency receiver, tuned to the antenna on the roof. His parents kept it around for emergencies. He flipped open the device like a book. On one side was a screen, on the other was a series of buttons with worn letters and numbers on them. He pressed a button that had a barely discernible symbol, and the device—a “laptop,” his father had called it—sprang to life. Or at least it lit up. It took a frustrating few seconds for a menu to appear. James touched the screen and a communications app opened. After a few more touches, the screen displayed a man with too-symmetrical Euro-Afro-Asian features in a neat Luddeccean Green high-necked suit. “Greetings, Luddecceans, this is Bob Wang in the Briefing Room. I have good news and bad news tonight. The good news is that the war with the aliens is going well. We have shut down the entire ethernet network above Luddeccea that was being used by the devil-invaders to spread misleading propaganda.”
James’s eyebrows rose. Aliens? Devil-invaders? That seemed about as far-fetched as archangels.
Dipping his chin, Bob looked directly into the camera. “The bad news is that a dangerous alien sympathizer has escaped from the secure detention center.”
The word “sympathizer” rang in his mind. An image of Noa in her Fleet uniform burned through James’s visual cortex. James fell back as though he’d been physically pushed into the cushions.
On the screen, Bob continued. “The escape was made with alien assistance.”
James turned up the volume with a few keystrokes. Were they calling him an alien, or referring to some other assistance she’d received before he’d run into her?
“The authorities have secured the escape route, and it won’t be used again; but the escapee is now at large in the Northwest Province. ”
A holo of Noa sprang up beside Bob. In it, she appeared skeletal, with dark circles under her eyes, and had mangy, almost non-existent hair.
“This is Noa Sato,” Bob Wang said. “Alien sympathizer. She is armed and considered extremely dangerous. If you see her, report her to authorities at once via the new landline network.”
Bob waved a hand. “And now we’ll take questions from civilians in our studio.” The camera shifted to a man standing next to some bright studio lights. He was of average build and appearance, dressed in rough attire. “I’m Jorge Mendoza,” the new man said. “I’m a farmer in the Southwest Province. How do we know an alien if we see one?”
Bob turned back to the main camera and Mr. Mendoza was no longer on the screen. “Well, Mr. Mendoza, that is the truly duplicitous nature of the alien scourge we are up against. It cannot be seen. The alien menaces that infiltrated our time gate and satellites are beings of pure energy, much like the djinn in the Final Book. They almost went undetected. They are capable of seizing and controlling augmented humans.”
James had stopped breathing … and couldn’t force his lungs to work. He hadn’t run into Noa. He’d found her. Deliberately. Almost as though compelled… as though he’d had no choice.
Bob took a step closer to the camera. Hands raised to chest level, fingertips together, Bob said, “That is why it is important that you shut off your neural interfaces, lest the djinn hijack your free will, or make you a carrier and responsible for alien assimilation.” Tilting his head, tone conversational, he added, “But not to worry. With your neural interfaces inactive, you are immune to alien influence. All the information you need can be obtained at your local authority and this station. Landlines will be available to all households soon.”
Noa’s voice cracked behind James. “What?” Twisting around on the couch, James saw her leaning in the door frame in a pair of flannel pajamas. He blinked. They were his father’s flannel pajamas—his father had let them hang on the back of the bathroom door. There was a new packet of soup in her hand. Waving the soup, the Commander exclaimed, “That was a load of lizzar excrement!”