Amy's mouth fell open. "But he didn't do anything! You've got no reason to leave him behind!"
"Sure I do. Once he's grown, he'll iterate more. We'll grow the clade from San Diego to Vancouver." Javier lifted the baby again. "This size, he's just a little parasite."
Amy snatched the baby up off the ground. "That's a terrible thing to say! I can't believe you actually think of your own baby that way! My parents never called me a parasite!"
"Doesn't mean you weren't." Javier stretched. "I mean, you sucked up a lot of their resources without giving anything back, right? Like electricity and water and clothes and all that prefab vN food. That shit costs money, and you were just using it up like nobody ever worked for it. Right?"
Amy regained her stump. "I… I guess so… I never really thought of it that way."
"No shit." He sat up. "How old are you?"
"Five."
It was Javier's turn to look surprised. "You're five? Do you even know how old that is? You should be, like, a grandmother by now!"
"But five is when you go to kindergarten," Amy said. "I was in kindergarten. And then I… grew up."
Javier's eyes narrowed. "You're one of those slow kids, huh?"
"I am not! I always do well on–"
"Not like that! Like, human speed! Slow." He made it a whole hand gesture, his flat palm stroking the air.
"Mom and Dad said it would be good for me," Amy said.
"When you say Dad, you mean the human your mom lives with, right? Humans always think up crazy self-justifying bullshit. They totally retarded you."
"I'm not–"
"I didn't mean you were retarded, I meant that they retarded you. They slowed you down. That's what the word means. It means delayed. You know, tardy?" He shook his head. "You're like a bonsai tree. You kept growing and they kept clipping you." He made a snip motion with one hand.
Amy squared her shoulders. "Well, at least they never left me behind."
Something changed in Javier's face. His eyes went dark and flat. He snatched his baby from her. "Iterating isn't something most of us do because we feel like it, or because we're ready, or even because we want to."
Amy straightened. "Then why do you do it?"
"Because I can't stop," Javier said. "It's what I'm programmed to do. I'm an eco-model. I was made for helping trees. But I'm also a big fat carbon sink, and so are all my boys."
He seemed to come back to himself. Suddenly his grin reappeared. "You know, the more babies I make, the cooler this planet gets."
Amy had only just graduated kindergarten, but had watched enough media to know a line when she heard one. "I'll bet you say that to all the girls."
He nodded, and winked. "All the boys, too."
They didn't speak much after that. A morning spent in the sun helped Javier feel better, though, and soon he was tying the old sweater around himself like a sling in which to carry his son. He pushed vaguely north, claiming that he'd been headed that way before being arrested for "serial iteration," which Amy hadn't known was illegal in California.
"I didn't know, either, till recently," he said. "It's to preserve resources or something. They know we have to eat a lot to keep iterating, and the trace metals cost money. That's why they jack the price up on the reprocessed crap."
Amy happened to enjoy the reprocessed crap. She didn't like having to stick to the diet plan Rory sent her parents each week, but she liked the cute shapes each piece of feedstock was moulded into, and the smart offers on the wrappers, and the prizes that came with them, and the way she and her mother would save up for days and days just to binge on bigger meals later in the week. Her mom was trying to avoid having another baby. To do so, she had to monitor her diet very carefully. Her portions were only a little bit bigger than Amy's. But Javier didn't seem to have that problem. Now that she'd eaten the first big meal of her life, Amy could understand the draw.
"Were you really going to eat all that garbage behind the old electronics store?" she said.
"What the hell else is it good for? Better in my belly than a landfill."
"Isn't it all that metal bad for your teeth?"
"What, you've never broken a tooth before? They grow back the next day."
Javier picked out trails much faster than Amy did; he seemed to know just how to cross fallen logs and climb the ridges of hairy, exposed roots without really thinking about it, whereas Amy had to stand back and plot a path for herself before taking a step. Her slowness annoyed him – she could tell by the set of his shoulders – and it only worsened as she paused to stare into the cathedral-like ceiling of trees overhead, or ask about what animals he thought they might see. She had heard that vN proved especially troublesome for wild animals: bears and mountain lions and the like got frustrated because the vN just kept fighting back and didn't taste right. Her dad had read her a story online about a vN surfer who reached down into a shark's mouth and grabbed back part of his missing thigh. If a cougar decided to pounce on them, Amy wasn't so sure she'd be as calm.
"Where do you think we should go?" she asked, as a way of changing the subject.
"A main access road, and then our separate ways."
"Are you heading home?"
"Not really."
"Where do you live?"
Javier made a circle in the air with one finger. "Wherever I want."
Amy paused. She watched him continue hiking away. "Are you really homeless?"
He turned. "Well, yeah," he said. "It's a bad idea for my iterations to be clustered in one place, you know."
"I thought maybe you had a home base! You know, like a travelling salesman, or something!"
"Travelling salesman?"
"Well, there are these people in my building sometimes, and they offer to fix things. My dad says they narrow down searches about broken things to one IP and then knock on your door."
Javier nodded. "Oh yeah. I knew an abortion doctor in Mexico who did that." His eyes narrowed. "You know what those are, right?"
Amy rolled her eyes. "I can read spam as well as anybody, Javier." She hauled herself up over a fallen tree. "If you're not going home, are you going anywhere in particular?"
"Not really. Just north. You?"
Amy dusted off her palms. "I have to go home to Oakland. My mom and dad are probably really worried." She surveyed the trees. "I must be really far away, though. How long was I asleep?"
"A few days." Javier jumped down a hillside. He turned to watch Amy creeping down more carefully. "You know, you could apply for citizenship in Mecha. That's what I'm doing once I've saved up for the application fee."
Amy snorted. "I thought you had plans for world domination."
"Not world domination, just strategic… seeding."
"Seeding."
"Planting. Sowing. Whatever. The point is it's awesome over there. They sell vN food from little carts on the street corners, not crappy little one-shelf sections at the back of some human store, and you can watch or play any channel without worrying about the failsafe. They even pay the vN to live there and hang out with the tourists. It's our ideal habitat."
"It's thousands of miles away! And I thought Dejima was really crowded."
"Well, that's better than…" Javier frowned. He held a hand up. Somewhere in the trees, a twig snapped.
Javier made a throat-slitting motion and jerked his thumb at a tree. He ushered her in its direction, and held a finger over his lips. "Cops."
"What? Where–"
"Shut. Up." Slowly, carefully, he unslung his baby from his body and handed him to Amy. "You hold him. I might drop him."
"But–"
Javier took a running leap at the tree, and ran up its length for three steps before clinging on with his fingers. Amy watched him disappear into the green shadows above. A cloud of pine needles floated down toward her face. By the time she felt them drift across her skin, she had already heard the cough of police radios.
Behind her, Amy heard cautious footsteps brushing through undergro
wth: the swipe of leaves across leather, half-smothered human grunts when a boot sucked free of clay. They reverberated not merely in her ears, but across her skin and over her scalp. Stay perfectly still, a familiar voice within said. None of that giggling that gives the other kids away during hide-and–
–far away, a rock tumbled loudly, like an exclamation point.
The police followed it. So did their radios. So did their noise.
And above her, Javier bounced from tree to tree, hands curling confidently around boughs that greeted him with needles. She saw him hit the tree above her head and crawl downwards, lizard-like, toward her head.
"They're distracted," he murmured. "Go."
She ran.
• • • •
They sat perched in a Douglas fir that clung to a steep, unfriendly overhang with a magnificent view of the police officers and all-terrain trucks clustered below, at what was apparently a trailhead or logging road. From here, Amy could turn her head and watch the trail worm its way up the mountain, its shining length frequently disappearing under the cover of trees. She watched flashlights bobbing along it, now, as the officers hiked. A group had stayed behind to reload one truck's giant battery.
She had been sitting this way – legs and arms hugging the sticky, fragrant trunk of the tree, neck twisting as she struggled to obtain a better view, clothes stained with sap and mud and Javier's gunk – for hours. Javier sat comfortably on a very sturdy-looking bough, ankles hooked around the tree, baby in his arms. He looked completely at home.
Amy rested her forehead against the tree. Rain-wet wind reached up the back of her shirt. The tree swayed. She wanted to go home. She wanted the special vN cocoa from the coffee shop nearest her building, the kind she and her mom drank on winter days from specially coloured cups so the humans wouldn't get confused. She wanted her mom to know where she was. She wanted this to be over.
"When do you think we can climb down?" she asked.
Javier said, "Not for a while. The cute blond one just handed out more coffee."
"I don't see him with any coffee."
"I meant the girl."
Amy squinted. "How can you even tell who's cute and who isn't, from up here? It's dark."
"I saw them earlier, remember? Oh, there she is. She just stood up. Her shoes keep coming untied."
"Oh, the one who keeps bending over!"
"Well, uh–"
"She should just get Velcro shoes. That's what people who don't know how to tie their shoes yet wear."
"…Right. Anyway. They're digging in. We're up here for a while, I think." The bough beneath Javier creaked slightly as he shifted. "And I saw that guy's teeth, earlier. They're a total loss. He's got, like, this one, and it totally sticks out all funny."
"Maybe he can't afford injectables," Amy said.
"Humans are programmed obsolescence, all the way. It's a little sad." His bough creaked again. "They're cute, though. That makes them kinda useful, for a while."
"Ewww…"
"Hey, it worked for your mom. She found herself a nice slice of meat, right? You're a big girl now, and if those chimps down there can do anything, it's–"
"Not listening, la la la–"
"I could put in a good word for you with Officer Snaggletooth–"
"Shut up! You're gross." She shuddered. "I don't like him."
"Oh, yeah, sure. You're a total ice queen now, but wait till you're in front of him and your failsafe takes over. He'll have you playing Hide-the-Baton all night long." Javier poked the first finger of his left hand into a circle made by his right thumb and forefinger, in and out, in and out.
Amy turned away. "You're disgusting. I'm not like that."
"Yeah, right. Tell it to your OS. You've got a failsafe like everybody else."
Do you? Do you really?
Of course she did. Amy's mom hadn't spent much time on the subject, but she had said that von Neumann-type humanoids were "allergic" to hurting humans, or to seeing them get hurt. She'd said that's what love meant: the inability to see the other person get hurt without losing a part of your mind, the desire to do anything and everything to keep it from happening. And all vN everywhere felt that way about humans, whether they lived together or not. It was part of New Eden's plan – to leave God's unwanted children with people who could really love and protect them. But when Amy's granny killed Nate, she hadn't suddenly fallen down dead. Nor had Amy. Amy had looked at Nate's body – the limp and twisted heap of it, rumpled like dirty clothes – and had not recoiled.
"Is the failsafe the same for everyone?" she asked. "Every model, everywhere?"
"What, doesn't it feel that way for you?" Javier asked. "I can't help it. I love humans. They're adorable. Like those little dogs with the wrinkly faces." He grinned, then tilted his head a little when she didn't smile back. "Anyway. Every time we iterate, we copy the failsafe. That's why we get to roam free."
Not any more, though. Things are different, now.
Amy blinked hard. She looked down at Javier. "You sound like you give that speech a lot."
"Yeah, well, my kids had better know the score." Javier paused, licked his thumb, and wiped something away from his son's face. "Isn't that right, Junior?"
Amy smiled. "Are you really going to call him that?"
"All my boys are named Junior."
"Just Junior? No other name?"
Javier slowly extricated his finger from his son's fist. "I'm never with them long enough," he said. "They should choose their own–"
A giant arc light swung over them. Amy froze. Below her, Javier started scrambling. "Move!"
She moved. She didn't even bother thinking about the placement of boughs or branches. She hugged the trunk and slipped downward, ripping her pants in the process. Javier already stood at the bottom, clinging with one hand to the wet, crumbling earth of the overhang and his child with the other. Together they half walked, half slid down the overhang, wincing at tumbling rocks and hurrying into the cover of spiky trees. They ducked under hair-snagging branches and waded through carpets of spiny wood ferns. Thunder rolled in the distance.
"Just what we need," Javier muttered.
Behind them, a gun cocked.
"Turn around."
They turned, hands rising automatically. The woman wore forest ranger clothes and carried a flashlight that turned the rain to a shower of white sparks. Amy instantly envied her quilted coat and wide-brimmed hat; they looked like they would keep out the rain. Her own hair was stringy with it, now, her shirt uncomfortably wet and sticky.
As though reading her mind, the ranger chuckled to herself. She lowered her gun and her light. Now Amy could see her face better. She was a popular Asian-style model, with a broad face and full, pretty lips and high cheekbones that pulled her gentle eyes tight. Even under her bulky ranger clothes, a perfect hourglass figure was discernible. She spoke in a gentle, almost modest voice. "It's all right. You can put your hands down."
"Huh?"
"I'm a friend, I promise." She holstered her gun and reached inside her pockets. She tossed foil-wrapped packets of vN food at their feet. Amy recognized the cheery logos immediately; she bent down and grabbed as many as her hands could carry before making a pouch of her wet shirt and stuffing them there, kangaroo-style.
"What's going on?" Javier asked. "Why are you helping us?"
"Rory sent me," she said.
Amy blinked. "Rory? The one who writes my diet plan?"
The ranger nodded. She smiled. "I'm an ex-dieter, too. I know how the hunger feels. What happened wasn't your fault, Amy."
Something about hearing someone else say those words made Amy's tears well up. "Thank you."
"Rory feels terrible about this, Amy. She knows you were on her diet, and understands the role it played in what happened. She knows a place where you can get help. It's in Seattle, near the quake museum. It's not far." The ranger reached for an inner pocket and retrieved a ring of keys. "There's a car waiting for you about a hundred yards north
of here. I left the details and some supplies there. There isn't much, I'm afraid, just what I could scratch together… Oh, and this!" She dug in her back pocket. Amy and Javier glanced at each other. What more could the ranger possibly give them?
"Cash," the ranger said, holding out two sets of bills held together with paperclips. Amy took hers and stuffed it down a back pocket.
If her arms weren't already so full, Amy would have hugged the ranger. "Thank you. Thank you so much…"
"I only wish there were more I could do," the ranger said.
vN: The First Machine Dynasty Page 6