Bless Your Mechanical Heart

by Seanan McGuire

  “We need you to make a choice, soldier,” a voice said. “We’ve managed to save you by augmenting most of your biological functions with a fully-cybernetic upgrades. Unfortunately, you can’t pass for a human being any more. We can either put you back into service, though in a different role than you are used to, or you can retire. Choice is yours.”

  “Which will serve the timeline better?” Serendipity asked.

  Her words came from a speaker in her throat rather than her vocal cords. It gave her voice a tinny, artificial quality.

  “We can’t answer that,” the voice said. “People will die, or even cease to exist, no matter which choice you make.”

  Serendipity considered. With the fifty-year-old-scotch and the artificial voice, she pieced everything together why she felt such a special connection to her servant, and which choice she had to make. Odd, Serendipity had always assumed they’d given Rose a face that looked familiar so that Serendipity would be comfortable with her maid.

  “I’ll serve,” Serendipity said. “But want a new name.”

  “A specific name?” the voice asked. “Or shall we choose one for you?”

  “Rose,” she replied. “It was my grandmother’s name.”

  Years later, as Rose waited for James to return from the Lincoln mission, the apartment door blew inward with an explosion. Butler and maid robots, armed with weapons so old they were nearly archaic filed into the apartment, five in total.

  Rose stifled a laugh. The most cutting-edge robots carrying cast-off projectiles seemed like the funniest thing she’d seen in a long, long time.

  “Up against the wall, cyborg,” one of the robots said. Its voice box was synthesized so perfectly it sounded closer human speech than Rose did. “We don’t want you, just your soldier.”

  Rose backed up.

  Three went into the staging room. One watched the front door. One kept watch on Rose.

  Words flashed across her retinal HUD.

  Rose

  The enemy has somehow reprogrammed the servant bots on your ship.

  We believe this is the test run.

  We don’t know how or when, so you must clear your ship of robots before your fellow agents return from their missions.

  If not, all is lost.

  Weapons are in your legs.

  Good hunting.

  As the message vanished, plates in each of Rose’s thighs opened up. She rolled behind the La-Z-Boy—not the best cover but better than nothing—and pulled the two guns from her legs. One was a plasma blaster, the other a micro railgun. As soon as the weapons were free of her legs, the bur in her rotator cuff stopped bothering her.

  Several rounds blew through the La-Z-Boy. Rose came up firing. If all six had stayed in the room, they might have gotten her with numbers.

  An instant later… James phased back into existence.

  He blinked several times, letting the backstory of his returning to existence solidify in his mind. The robotic maids and butlers remained in the staging room, but now they lay in scattered heaps on the floor, gaping holes and scorch marks covering their bodies. At least two more lay outside the door leading back into the apartment.

  Rose stood just inside the doorway, plasma blaster in one hand and a micro railgun in the other. She curtsied. If not for the carnage strewn around her, James might have laughed at the sight of her with those weapons still glowing from use.

  Now James understood why Serendipity looked familiar when he saw her on the mission. The medics had done the best they could to put her face back together, but the bomb had shredded her something ugly.

  “I knew we’d met before,” James said. “What’s with all this?”

  “We need to save the ship,” Rose said. “These are waiting to kill soldiers as they return from their missions.”

  “Can’t have that,” James said. “Help me get into something to cause a little carnage with.”

  Rose walked to the weapons locker and brought out an antipersonnel plasma cannon mounted on a gyro-balanced stabilization rig.

  “I think that’ll do,” James said, as they worked to get him strapped the rig.

  James moved toward the door.

  “One moment, sir.” Rose reached into a pocket of her apron and brought out a flask. “We have forty-three seconds.” She handed him the flask. “I took the liberty of saving this hundred year old Knockandoo for a special occasion.”

  “Ah, bless, darlin’,” James said. “Ah, bless.”

  EVER YOU

  Mae Empson

  The thing that came back from Vogg home-space is not my sister.

  It looks like her. Exactly like her. But we’ve been mistaken for each other plenty of times, identical twins that we are… were… never made us the same person.

  They say it’s her brain running the circuitry, ghosting the metal.

  Sure.

  I don’t doubt that they took three pounds of wet flesh and nerve out of her corpse, out of her skull, and dropped it in an Ever-U for the first re-issue.

  This one smiles like her—that unforgettable smirk that never meant anything cocky, just that she didn’t want to show the teeth on the left side of her mouth because of the one that got knocked out, in what would be the first of many, many fights. This re-issue gets that much right. The smile. They always do. So far, anyway.

  It takes a head shot to drop an Ever-Unit, so you have to figure there’s a little less brain to transplant each time.

  My friend Thayla thinks they clone the brains, off the original, so they never lose anything. She thinks there may be five or ten or a hundred of each of them running at the same time. Why not, right?

  They’ve only re-issued Myn three times in six years, so I’m inclined to think they aren’t running multiple copies, at least not of her. But there’s no way to know. Way above my clearance.

  “It’s me, Daffs,” it says, in her voice, when I pick it up from medi-sect, on level six. Hot out of the phoenix oven. The Ever-U always remembers the little stuff, like nick-names. No one ever called me “Daffs” but her. It looks at me, and twists that mask of her face into the same big, dumb, eternally lop-sided grin I remember from when she made Corporal.

  My sister would expect to be met by her sister. Her best friend. Her roommate. They pay me to go through the motions so it doesn’t ego-fracture on re-issue.

  “Please don’t do that,” I say, once we are back to my suite. Her suite, technically.

  They pay me to keep my mouth shut, too, but I don’t. I can’t. For whatever reason, none of her re-issues have turned me in for it.

  It looks down at its hands, like it did something physically wrong. Does it wonder if it lost control of them for a minute?

  An Ever-U hasn’t gunned down its next of kin in at least three years, but it only had to happen twice to keep the hazard pay good as it is. One week, each time she’s re-issued. That’s all you have to give, and they don’t give them their weapons until the last day—deployment day.

  “Remind them what they’re fighting for.” That’s the bullshit lecture we get each time, before we go to meet our re-issues.

  One week. Easy to schedule as vacation from your regular job, and it covers your bills for months, so you can save a little, or let it run through your fingers. I’ve tried it both ways. Neither makes it hurt less. I try to tell myself it isn’t worth the pain. But it’s crazy hard to walk away from comparatively easy money, when everything on the station is so expensive. My job at the lab is not pleasant. It’s steady and useful, which is good, because any job not useful to the war effort is long gone. My job meant I didn’t get drafted, and likely won’t. I’m grateful for that.

  She went to officer school. There was never any question how she’d serve.

  And I miss her. I really do. This is as close as I can get to her. I want to remember, even if I refuse to pretend that this thing is her.

  I look at my own hands. We should be a mirror, heads tilted, the same hair falling forward, the same blue eyes gla
ncing down, but my hands are six years older.

  Its hands are steady.

  It is my right hand that shows a bit of tremor. My fingers on both hands are swollen. I still have diabetes. It doesn’t.

  Underneath the synth-flesh, it’s mostly a machine. Machines don’t have stomachs and endocrine systems. It’s not missing that tooth, either, though some combination of nerve and muscle memory keeps it grinning lop-sided, like it has something to hide.

  “My sister died six years ago,” I explain. “You are not her. Stop trying. It won’t hurt as much when you stop trying.”

  The last two re-issues stopped. Eventually. The first one took six days. The second one—I know I was clearer in my demands—relented after only two.

  Here’s the thing. If this all really worked, wouldn’t the re-issues remember her life and memories after the first transplant? Well, alert your feed, they don’t. Every time it’s the day after the first death. The real death. The brain doesn’t make new memories. It just keeps the Ever-U from hurting itself or anyone else it shouldn’t, because it can’t figure out who it is, or why it is. And, all they really need is the basic training memories and officer school stuff, the stuff they fill their heads and muscles with before they could possibly die the first time. Chain of command, flight formations, how to fire phase-guns, and fly a capsule, and how much they love the flag of Earth, and hate the Voggs.

  “They fixed me, Daffs. It’s all good,” it tries to reassure me. “It’s me. Look, I’ll show you. We sat right here in this room not a month ago, before I shipped out. You proofread my speech.” It smiles, and puts a hand on my shoulder. It has the weight of a human hand, no less, no more.

  The re-issue won’t ever make a spelling mistake. It will only place one space between sentences. She usually did two, and sometimes four with carelessness around tracked changes.

  I remember that speech. Six years ago, but it was the last thing we worked on together. She was speaking at a station award ceremony, singing the praises of one of her rookies who’d made good on some daring mission and survived what should have been un-survivable.

  Why didn’t that make me think how dangerous it all was? How likely it would be that this might be my last chance to see her? I just couldn’t believe anything could ever happen to her. She was the brave one, the tough one.

  That rookie’s almost certainly ghosting an Ever-U now. The body counts are vicious on the Vogg homeworld.

  I’ve re-read the comments I put on that speech. I had nothing to offer but grammar corrections, and some notes about flow. I should have written “I love you” in all the electronic margins, red as corrections always are, red as hearts that still beat.

  Leg cramps wake me up at about 3 am that night. The muscles behind my calves lock tight and hard as baseballs. The doc says it’s dehydration. Water is not exactly cheap on the station. It’s never happened while I was babysitting a re-issue, giving it that mandatory week of recuperation before going back to the lines, but it happens to me a couple times a month. One leg is rough. Both at the same time is a nightmare.

  I scream. Waking up to that kind of pain… you scream before you realize you are screaming.

  It comes running.

  “What’s wrong?” It sounds like her. It always does.

  “My legs,” I grunt through clenched teeth. “Stupid cramps. No big deal.”

  Fingers warm and nimble as human fingers massage the knots, until I can move my legs again.

  I feel helpless and stupid. Flesh is weak and inconvenient. We all know it. But it’s real.

  It probably remembers… or rather, has access to her memories of getting cramps like this herself, and helping me when I did. Before her death, when she could still thirst. When she still had diabetes. When she was alive. When she was still my twin.

  I fumble for the light and switch it on, planning to get up and order some water, too little too late, but I don’t want the cramps to come back.

  I catch sight of the tears running down its face.

  It doesn’t drink, but they programmed it to store and secrete fluid to express emotion? That must have some combat purpose, causing them to go back for each other, or something. Some actuary must have worked that out, pennies for the water-works per unit vs. the expense of Ever-Units getting left behind, and having to be completely replaced.

  Still, it looks so much like real tears.

  “You okay, Myn?” The name slips right passed me. Her name. I wanted so much to be true to her memory and not give her name to this thing, but it just pops out of my mouth before I can close it. I’m too tired to think straight. My legs are still throbbing.

  It reacts with widened eyes, and then a flash of puppy-happy grin, and then something like worry. It rubs at its synth-flesh cheek. I guess it can feel the wetness, same as I can see it.

  It looks at me. A long beat of silence. It glances all around us, like there’s something it should be watching for.

  It puts its hand on my shoulder again, expression such a good facsimile of care that it makes me anxious before I remind myself it’s a machine.

  “You do not have to call me that, sister-of-my-brain-giver,” it says, at last, monotone. “I understand. I do not want you to hurt.”

  I nod, and it goes back to her room. The whole apartment is rent-free so long as I keep the Corporal’s room exactly as she left it. I don’t think they do that for most of the soldiers, but it’s a perk for officers’ next of kin, usually wives or husbands. I couldn’t stay on the station if they didn’t do that, and then I’d lose my job, and I’d be a grunt on the front, as they say, never mind that I’m thirty plus and out of shape.

  Word is the grunts die almost daily. They don’t get the same perk of a week of recuperation either. It’s just die and fight and die and fight. In and out of the oven. They don’t need them to remember as much, or to inspire anyone.

  I can hear it sobbing in the bedroom next to mine. Did the other re-issues ever cry at night like that? I don’t remember, but I probably slept more soundly last time, and the time before.

  It must be a lot to absorb. Maybe I should have pretended I thought it really was her.

  Thayla always pretends with her husband, for all her theories about the number of Evers running around with her husband’s brain at any one time. She wants to pretend.

  This thing seems capable of feeling emotions.

  And, it is a soldier, returning to hell in just a few days to hold the line for humanity.

  What kindnesses would I show a soldier who was a complete stranger to me, if I passed her or him—a living soldier, or it—an Ever-Unit, on embarkation level, out of respect of the uniform? It’s not like you can even tell the difference with a stranger. Chances are good it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a living soldier. Maybe years.

  I’ve got to do better.

  I fall asleep before it stops crying.

  I wake up, itching to be a better patriot.

  If it could eat and drink, I’d make it eggs and coffee. I should expect it to want the things that she liked. It has access to her memories, even if it isn’t her. She liked her scrambled eggs practically burnt, and a bit crispy with cheese.

  I try to think back to our last conversations, before she shipped out. Six years ago. 2044. We used to watch Delta Horizon together, the old primetime drama about the famous lost colony. Zogg strike ground zero. She shipped out in the middle of the second season, and I remember how we laughed that the episodes would be waiting for her on her first station leave, and she could keep an eye out, on the Zogg homeworld, for the three characters who got kidnapped and taken there, presumably as slaves, in season one, because their actors had some contract dispute.

  So ridiculous. The Zogg don’t take living prisoners. We know that now.

  And it was just a silly thing to tease her about. They were just characters. Nobody real, though I suppose, realistically, that most of the actors—maybe all of them—got sent to the front eventually, or some other wa
rehouse or lab job.

  Would the re-issue remember Delta Horizon? Would it care? This, at least, I could give.

  I dig up the last seven episodes out of the station archives and load them in my digi-queue, ready for projection. I’m pretty sure that’s as far as she got.

  It doesn’t come out of her room until almost lunch time. I picture it touching her things, remembering the life it hadn’t lived.

  “So, uh, I was thinking maybe we could just relax. Help you rest and get ready to go back. I meant to thank you for your service. I have the last couple episodes of Delta Horizon if you want.” The words tumble out, too quickly, too awkward and artificial.

  It looks at me.

  “Daffs…” Her voice. Just like I remember it.

  It looks away.

  Its shoulders shake a little, and it sounds like it’s choking. It turns back, and it tries to hum the Delta Horizon theme, a proud little proof of a stolen memory recalled. It’s all halting and awful. Sob. A couple of hummed notes. Sob. Another note.

  I don’t know what to do.

  “Projector, run Delta Horizon episode 204.”

  The real opening theme swells into the space between us, followed by all the holographic actors as they enter and exit during the opening credits, and I can’t hear the re-issue’s awful broken humming any more.

  I sit down on the couch. Same couch. I haven’t changed it. Importing furniture to the station is… way beyond my pay-grade.

  It sits beside me. I know that weight, that shift in the cushions to have the second body there.

  We watch the colonists argue over food and shelter and who is in charge and have desperate sex and all the things that make a good projection. They pass through us like ghosts.

  Our patter—cheering the good ones, cheering even louder for the sneaky charismatic anti-heroine, good old Sara Starfall who you know is going to survive no matter what, like we all tell ourselves is true of Earth, though it gets harder and harder to believe the more we know about the Vogg.