by Curtis Hox
When she emerged, she knew why her mother had put her there.
It was up high, sure, she thought, and it stank.
Then she heard a guttural roar.
Barely able to stand after being assaulted by the Rogue nanoviruses, she jiggled open the silo door at the top and peered down. She saw her transformed mother’s entity in full psy-sorceress glory standing before the ominous-looking machine. Around her, a slew of monstrous creatures lay dead or dying. Her mother swung arms of razor-light in all direction.
Simone tried to untie the rope, but her fingers were too shaky and weak, and she had to grab onto the platform railing.
“Mom,” she heard herself cry.
She watched a running, leaping creature jump from atop a berm and disintegrate in flame and ash.
Then three long, lean things with pallid skin hunched before the machine, as if waiting for Simone to emerge. Something about them made her want to retch. She also wanted to climb back into the silo, dive to the bottom, and hide. She sensed her mother needed help, though. “Rigon, where are you?”
She wanted to summon her entity, but she couldn’t move enough to dance. She yanked on the rope, but it wouldn’t budge.
The three creatures attacked at once. Her mother lowered her defenses, as if distracted by something. She struck two down, but the third knocked her entity off its feet. The Rogue creature bent down, latched on, and began to feast.
Something in its bite caused instant paralysis in the entity. Her mother was trapped.
“No!”
Simone saw movement coming out of the darkness. More huge, dog-like, eye-less creatures with massive canines ran toward the silo.
The surviving pallid, fanged thing over her mother looked up, screamed a call in an ululating voice. It glanced over its shoulder until it saw another one of its kind emerge from the machine. Through a bloodless face that may once have been human but was now something that never saw daylight, the Wraith over her mother smiled at her, then returned to its feast. The other started crawling toward the silo, surrounded by the hellhounds. She thought about all the times her mother spoke of the Rogues and their life-and-death contests and how one should never gamble with them. Serious business, her mother used to say. Very serious.
Simone heard the crashing of the Megamech’s legs before she could see it. She had enough rope to edge around the silo. She saw the massive military machine across the field, striding through the darkness like a savior out of an action movie. Her relief at the sight of the lights and the sound of the war-horn was palpable. She had seen enough video of them to know they were the good guys.
At first it appeared to be on a direct course for the ugly machine down the road. But then the Megamech almost stumbled, as if unsure which way to go. It righted itself, but was now heading directly for her silo.
Simone pulled on the rope once, almost half-heartedly, as if it might come undone. Another pull. Nothing.
“Turn,” she said, “Turn, turn, turn.”
The last thing she saw was the blinding lights as the machine shifted its weight, and the sight of a huge shoulder joint about to smash through the silo.
* * *
“Halt, halt, halt!” Captain Picham yelled.
But Wally had lost himself in the Megamech a few minutes ago, as if they were one. He could smell what it smelled, and it smelled the—
Enemies of Mankind. The system AI had finally spoken to him. She had finally spoken to him.
We have found them. Thank you for waking me.
Wally was so shaken by the voice in his head, as if it came from the sky itself, that he lost concentration and control for a few moments. It was as if a chorus of angels had just said his name, and he wanted to relish every syllable. When he gained enough equanimity to force his mind back to the present, three large grain silos emerged before them ... with Simone standing atop one, trying to back away. She raised one arm ...
Stop!
Wally realized his mistake too late. He was the machine. No one was listening. It was his voice.
When he barreled through the silos and saw the Rogue Dread Walker down the road, he felt the mech’s rage and lost himself in it again. The black machine at his feet had to be destroyed. All thought of Simone’s fate disappeared as he strode forward.
Wally felt the Megamech’s every rivet and joint. It was like soft tissue and bone to him. He felt each massive foot dig into the hard-packed soil of the dirt road. He saw the Dread Walker prepare to fire, but it was wounded. Its systems wouldn’t respond.
Still, the Megamech’s energy shielding activated and enveloped them as would a warm blanket on a cold night. He sighed in ecstasy. With one great stomp, he brought the full weight of the Megamech down on the enemy machine. It burst asunder underneath him, exploding as would a cream-filled cupcake.
The fire that erupted seared the Megamech but did no damage.
Wally felt only a pleasant warmth. He shifted the Megamech’s weight, driving the Walker even deeper into the ground.
“Holy hell on fire,” Captain Picham yelled. “Now that was a thing of beauty. Pure poetry, son. That pretty much won it for us.”
Everyone in the mech clapped, and for a moment longer, Wally felt himself to be a god.
Captain Picham began shutting her down, and the Megamech’s systems began rotating off.
Wally heard himself say, Goodbye, and when he no longer felt as if he were talking to himself, he knew it was over.
At least for now, he told himself, determined to one day pilot a Megamech again. One day.
* * *
Yancey tried to sit up, even though the Nanovamp Wraith had drained enough of her essence to almost kill her and, worse, had captured a good portion of her genoscript. Its crippling spell broke, freeing Myrmidon, when the Megamech crashed through the silo.
Myrmidon sat up, still stunned, but alive. Yancey felt her entity’s strength return as the lethargy spell dissipated. It punched ten-inch talons through the Nanovamp Wraith and ripped out its chest cavity. Through Myrmidon’s eyes Yancey watched the silo explode and saw her daughter fly through the air. Her entity crawled to its knees as pieces of the silo rained down and the huge Megamech approached.
Yancey, her mind still dulled by the Wraith’s touch, shut her eyes, expecting to be crushed, as she felt each leg pass on either side of her. The sound of its war-horn almost made her insides burst.
She ignored its attack on the Dread Walker.
The final Nanovamp would be feasting on her daughter by now. If it got her entire script ... she turned until she located the Wraith in a ditch, atop Simone.
Yancey summoned all the strength left in her wounded entity, and struck. The energy that erupted with a massive single bang flattened the other two silos, sending grain and debris into the air. It also pulverized the remaining Nanovamp Wraith as if a hot wind had eaten away its temporary flesh in and instant.
“Simone!”
Yancey cried out because the attack that had killed the Wraith had also done just what she’d expected to her daughter: Simone Wellborn’s body disintegrated during the nano-attack that was transmitting her genosoul to the Rogues. But the Simone who Yancey had known was analog, organic, real. The body Yancey had given birth to disappeared in an instant. She’d killed her daughter to save her. Myrmidon felt its host’s pain and cried out in a long wail no earthly animal could mimic. Then it retreated in slow motion, returning Yancey to her normal form. Yancey had to wait until the process completed. Where, Simone? Where are you?
She scanned back and forth, waiting, believing that what her husband had told her about ghosting had to be true.
Down the road, Yancey saw a form emerge, and she began to cry from both grief and relief. Her husband had promised her such a scenario would work.
Simone!
All the Wellborns were granted this special and highly sought-after gift encoded in the Protocols: the ability to become a digital ghost.
* * *
Simone aw
oke in a ditch, staring at the stars, thankful she wasn’t dead. She sat and looked at herself: she was a translucent body emanating a soft glow. She raised her hand, able to see through it. Through her palm, she saw the wreckage of the silos and the huge Megamech. It had finished off the other machine with a single stomp that had sent smoke and fire into the air. It now stood over it, at rest.
“Oh, my god,” she said. She stood. She wore the same boots and summer dress with the slit along the sides and the opening at the shoulders, but she could see through herself. “I’m a disembodied person. I can’t believe it.” And then, as if realizing what that meant, she asked herself a question: “Am I dead?”
Now no one will ask me to the Senior Send Off! Definitely not! But she knew that was silly and the least of her problems.
She wanted to scream at her mother, who she saw sitting in the middle of the road, now in her silver bodysuit, looking like she was crying. Simone tried to walk but, instead, glided along the road, struggling with movement in this new purgatory.
Simone considered running off into the woods to hide. She was now on the very bottom list of social pariahs, a handful of disembodied ghosted persons who lived in the borders between Realspace and Cyberspace. Not a regulated disembodied person like cyber Interfacers who communed with the AIs in Cyberspace. No. She was dead, but alive. Alive, but dead. Stuck between two worlds, a glitch in the cosmic system, an anomaly. An Unperson.
I’m definitely getting arrested now, she thought. No way around it! God, Mom!
“You’re alive, dear. You would have died ... ” Simone’s mother said as she neared, looking like her normal self then, but she’d taken off her shades. She coughed, blood dribbling from her mouth, and out of the multiple puncture wounds in her neck crept black tendrils in a web. “I must tell you something important, Simone. Your father is just like you, somewhere, moving between our-space and their-space, as he calls it. He’s a ghost. See your Uncle Pic. He’ll tell you. He’s up there in that machine.” Simone tried to grab her mother’s arm, but she only felt a slight, insubstantial pressure, again as if in dream, far away. Her mother said, “When I recover, we’ll fix this. I promise. See your Uncle Pic ... and don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid of it. You can defeat it.”
Simone heard the first whup, whup, whup of the helicopters, left her mother, and retreated into the shadows with one thing on her mind: Dad is a ghost too.
* * *
That night at Sterling, Consortium Blackhawks continued to fly patrols, while ground troops scoured every square mile. A squad of Consortium infantry mechs tore up the fields and paths as they looked for any other RAI sign.
Simone Wellborn stuck to the shadows. She ignored them until she saw a huge Chinook land. A team retrieved Rigon’s braincase then medevaced it out. Surrounding him lay the torn remains of a dozen Zamps, plus six Killermechs. No one knew what finally got him, but the blast to his chest looked like it must have come from the Walker, and that was what the Consortium told the Association.
Simone looked at herself hiding in the shadows, her glow already something she could control and dim. And she wondered, again, if she were alive or dead.
She watched as the Consortium soldiers set up a perimeter around the Megamech, now standing idly at the entrance to the Ag Farm. The other Alters and her father’s brother, Captain Picham Wellborn, exited one of the towering legs like heroes, even though they were met by elite troops with pointed guns. They stood around as if they’d just gone on a joy ride. The Consortium brass debriefed them in the rubble of the silos and praised them for getting her running again and destroying the Dread Walker.
No one had asked about Simone yet.
They didn’t even know she was missing. She wondered how they would react when they saw her.
* * *
Later that evening, Joss, Hutto, Kimberlee, Beasley, and Wally sat downstairs in the Compsys room, waiting for Principal Smalls to take them back to the dorms.
Joss had been watching the night’s activities through the school’s surveillance systems. He rubbed his neck because his head was almost on correctly. The reversal process meant his head was slowly adjusting as the soft tissue corrected itself in tiny increments. An evolutionary impossibility, sure, but the rapid therapy was working. As of now, he could look comfortably over his left shoulder, but his arms were still on sideways.
He stood behind Wally in his high chair, watching the feeds.
“You guys were awesome,” Joss said. “Just awesome.”
“Where’s Simone?” Kimberlee asked.
Everyone remained silent.
“We saw her on that silo,” Hutto said.
Wally began gesturing and moving some tiles around on his workstation, clearly agitated. Beasley glared at Hutto.
“What?” Hutto asked. “It’s not his fault. The authorities said so. He ‘fessed up, and they said there was noting he could do. The silos were in the way.”
Wally paused, hand in mid-gesture. “Why aren’t they looking for her?”
Hutto sniffed under his arm. “I need a shower,” then he sniffed Beasley, “and so do you.”
“Disgusting,” Kimberlee said. “You’re so rude.” But she was smiling and trying not to laugh.
Joss ignored them and returned to his workstation. “There’s something not normal here.”
“No, there’s not.”
The voice came from across the room. Everyone looked past the several islands of mainframe stations and tower racks behind glass cases. But they only saw an empty room. They should have been able to spot whoever was talking, unless that person were hiding.
“Who’s there?” Joss asked, peeking down the main aisle. “Oh, shit on a stick.” He waved everyone to look.
Simone came walking toward them, except her feet didn’t touch the floor and, oh, she was translucent and a cobalt-gray. She said, “I know, right?”
Her voice was substantial enough, but Joss knew exactly what he was looking at. “You’re more messed up than I am by a mile now. I’ve never seen one of you in person. I’ve heard they exist, but I never thought I’d see one in Realspace.”
The others all looked like they’d seen a ghost, and they had. Beasley and Wally both stiffened, but it was Hutto who accidentally knocked over a workstation table. He backed up, stumbled, babbled something about specters and wraiths and ran for the back exit.
Kimberlee wrung her hands together like she might scream an obscenity, or jump for joy. Beasley did nothing but stare like a statue.
Only Wally looked excited to see her. “You’re not dead!”
Joss said, “Depends who you ask. The old definition of not having a body means she’s dead. And the new definition?” He stared at her, amazed because he was looking at a real Unperson. “She’s a disembodied person who can move between both realities.”
“You envy her?” Wally asked.
“Well, no, but it is cool as hell.” He stepped sideways to see her better. She crossed her arms, floating, her hair and dress moving slightly as if blown by a soft wind. “Pure digital substance. Can I?”
“Sure,” she replied, looking back at them like they were the weirdos.
He pushed his fingertips inside her forearm; little flecks of light flickered like meteors entering a solar system. “She’s got substance. She’s just not all there.”
“Sterling’s got a real live ghost,” Wally said. To Joss, he said, “Looks like you and Hutto will need to compete for a new Senior Send Off queen this year.”
Simone perked up. “You thought I might be queen? You’re sweet, Wally. No hard feelings about the silo. Besides, I’ll get my body back. Don’t count me out.”
“Aren’t we a sight?” Beasley said, smiling. “Maybe Wally and I’ll be king and queen.” She winked at Wally.
Wally edged forward on his desk. “How did it happen?”
“Nanovamps were feasting on me. Got most of my script, but not all of it, before ... it happened.”
“Perfect recipe
to make a ghost,” Joss said, “according to the rumors of how the Protocols work. If they get all of you and you die, you join the RAIs, for better or worse. You’re lucky that didn’t happen. If they get part of you and you live—”
“—like my mom—”
“She’ll have a double, like I did, that can be hunted down and eradicated easily. And if they get part of you and you die ... you’re a ghost.”
“That’s me.”
“Chatter on the data channels says your mother’s in stable condition and the Consortium has already tracked down her double. The Rogues gave it up right away. Seems they’re happy about something else.”
Simone looked relieved. “They must be happy to have my double.”
“What now?” Joss asked.
“We could have a costume party in the dorms,” Wally said, “and tell everyone they have to dress up as a Tranz reject. You two’ll fit right in.”
Kimberlee popped him in the arm, but not hard at all.
“I’m not sure about you guys,” Simone said. “But I know what I have to do.”
“Get your body back?” Wally asked.
Simone shook her head. “That, yeah, of course. And before the Senior Send Off ... is that even possible?”
They all laughed.
“Engage in a contest with your double, Simone,” Joss said. “The Protocols are clear on this one. Then you can get your body back. But the Consortium won’t rejuv you if they learn you’re a ghost with a double. No way. Two persons alive at the same time and all that.”
“I need to find my father, and soon.”
“He’s alive?” Wally asked.
Simone looked around, as if someone might be coming. “I should go before I get spotted. Don’t tell.”
Joss nodded. “If they catch you, you’ll disappear for sure.”
“Sorry about your brother,” Kimberlee said.
“Thanks. They’ll have him back in shape in a few months. The Consortium has the fastest Rejuv Centers in the world.”
Kimberlee stepped forward, as if she might grab her. “Will you come back?”
“Of course. Like you guys said: Sterling’s got it’s own ghost now.”