by Curtis Hox
* * *
Picham Wellborn sat on his front porch, whittling a piece of hickory with a pocketknife. He’d been working it all morning, waiting on his niece. His slat-board cabin nestled itself deep in the woods of the Blue Ridge. He’d waited patiently for years, eagerly hoping the time would come for his mech to walk again. And it had. He’d spent the last half hour forming the top half of a wild-haired psy-girl with her arms spread wide, and fingers splayed. He flicked off a splinter and regarded his work.
He breathed the cool, fresh air, and gave thanks for this peaceful summer morning. MacEllen had finally walked again, and not a minute later than needed.
He heard a familiar crackling of his brother leaning up against the door. “Go back up until I call you,” he said. A pause, some more rustling, then silence. “Good, and keep quiet. We don’t want to spook her.”
He chuckled to himself. If the Wellborns were anything, they were hard to scare. He guessed his niece wouldn’t spook easily. Still, he turned and looked over his shoulder, listening to see if a certain someone back there was being defiant.
“You’ve caused enough trouble for one lifetime,” he said.
He began carving with more purpose as he remembered leaving MacEllen and seeing the Consortium soldiers pointing their assault rifles at him.
At that moment of triumph, he’d smiled and raised his hands. “Hold on, boys. I’m Captain Picham Wellborn, and this is my mech. Ain’t she pretty?”
They’d kept him under guard until they’d found someone high up enough to sort him out. When a female officer walked into the makeshift tent, he realized how old-fashioned and antiquated he’d become. She had never even heard of him before.
“I saved your assess in Asia, young lady. Well, me and MacEllen did. Well, saved your parents’ assess.”
“Right,” she’d replied, looking over her tablet with one eye and the other glued to him.
“I know I don’t look like much,” he said. “But I did my part and it worked out, and these rags just mean I’ve been living in the woods for some real good reasons. It should all be in there.” And then, “They used to have a big file on my family.”
He waited patiently as the young officer screwed her face up and struggled to make sense of him and his Megamech. He didn’t offer any more help.
He could tell when she found it because she gulped and hiccuped at the same time. “Excuse me,” she said. She looked up at him from her tablet. “I guess you outrank me.”
“I’m just a captain, ma’am.”
But she walked out. He heard her say, “He’s free to go.”
Hell, yeah, I was free to go, he thought at he sat whittling. He’d been sitting on that porch for decades waiting for his brother’s toy Rogues to show their faces. He felt relief it had finally happened; now maybe he could get rid of—
He saw movement in the dense brush across the small open area in front of his cabin.
“Come on out,” he said. “I won’t shoot.” He saw his niece gingerly glide forward out of the brush along the tree line.
She was moving her legs naturally, he noted.
Good, she’s got spirit, he thought. She’ll need it.
“Well, hello there, Simone.” He patted an empty rocker nearby. “Sitting will calm you. Too much moving is tiring, I hear.”
She glided across the wild grass in his front lawn and up onto the porch and sat. She placed her hands in her lap, saying nothing, but she failed to sit in the chair like a person with real weight. She floated a few millimeters atop it.
He said, “Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out. Takes a little while to fool people. I haven’t seen you since you were a baby. I’m you’re Uncle Pic, and your father’s younger brother, and a damn fool for not becoming a dentist when I had the chance.”
Simone smiled, and he smiled back. “Mom said to find you. I didn’t even know you were still alive.”
“They told you I died?” He stopped his whittling and almost stood in protest. He looked over his shoulder and considered barking an insult at his hiding houseguest. “Well, I’ll be.”
“Said you died in the war.”
“Died in the war! I saved them all. Your father, his wife back home, all the rest of the damned lot!” Simone looked a bit frightened. He said, “It’s all right. Too much time in the woods talking to myself and MacEllen.”
“The mech?”
“The one and only.”
“Why did my mom say I needed to talk to you?”
He looked at her disembodied self, as if it were obvious. “You know what an Unperson is?”
She nodded.
He assumed she had heard the horror stories of meddling with the RAIs, or getting caught trying to become disembodied, maybe messing up the process. To become an Unperson living in either Cyberspace of Realspace was to be damned by your enemies and your friends. The RAIs would enslave you and force you to become something horrible as they tore you apart bit by bit, or the Consortium would blast your essence to smithereens because they couldn’t explain your existence. Only licensed Interfacers were allowed to remain, temporarily, disembodied for any length of time. And those persons lived in Cyberspace, never Realspace.
He was of a mind that those rigid rules were best, seeing as how much trouble his brother had caused since becoming the first Unperson to live in Realspace. Ghosts, doubles, all that nonsense meant trouble for simple-minded people like himself.
Picham felt the presence on the other side of the door.
Simone turned her head, even though her back was to the door, obviously sensing it.
His brother, Skippard Wellborn, emerged through the door in all his disembodied glory, which wasn’t squat. He appeared just as he had been when he’d died: tall, strong, a perfect human, in perfect health, with rolled-up sleeves and in a bath robe under a lab smock with a draw string around his waist. He looked ready to go run more experiments, the same kind that had started all this nonsense in the first place.
Skippard rounded Picham’s rocker and regarded his daughter.
“Back up a little,” Picham said. “You’re given me the shocks.”
Simone jumped up.
“Don’t,” Picham said, but Simone was already rushing forward.
Skippard raised his hands, but she collided with him in a flash of sparks, and passed right through him.
“That’s gotta hurt,” Picham said.
Skippard looked like he’d been jazzed with ten-thousand volts of electricity. He stood still for a moment.
“Here we go,” Picham said and watched his stunned brother start to float away. “I wish I could help.”
Simone had blasted herself into a thousand shards of light, and was only now beginning to reform. Skippard had managed to keep himself intact but he was as rigid as a clapboard and as walleyed as a dullard.
“I guess I’ll go get something to eat while you two regroup.”
He chuckled to himself again.
Damn Wellborn curse: a world of potential always lying shattered on the floor.
* * *
Simone awoke floating supine a foot above the porch, as if she’d just taken a nap. When she sat up, she felt as if she’d been hit over the head with a two-by-four. She saw her father sitting in a rocking chair, rocking away, watching her. He looked like a regular human being, except for the gray-blue coloring and the intermittent lines of energy that rippled along his body.
“That sent me flying,” he said. He pointed to the empty chair. “I like to sit and rock. Join me.” She righted herself and floated over, her feet struggling for purchase. He smiled. “No need for that yet. You’ll get the hang of it.” She stopped moving her feet and glided into the chair. He said, “We have so much catching up to do.”
“Mom said you were—”
“A ghost?” He nodded. “Yes, but she can’t stand it. She thinks this is all my fault. Every time we see each other it’s a fight. The last time I saw her was some years ago, and that was it. I’ve stayed away
since. She made me stay away ... made me stay away from you.”
“She’d take you back.”
“Even without my body?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
Uncle Pic came walking around the side of the shed with a headless chicken in his hand. “Anyone seen my big knife?” He didn’t wait for a response and kept looking in the yard. “There it is.” He wandered over to a stump with a wood-handled carving knife punched into it.
“My brother’s a good man,” her father said. “For sticking through all this. Over the years.”
“Forty years, to be exact.”
“Right,” he said, nodding. “But I meant since Simone saw me last. Eleven years ago. You were so young.”
“Old enough to remember you leaving.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t really leave. Has it been that long?”
She knew she should feel something other than annoyance, but something prevented her from telling him she loved him and missed him, telling him how many times she cried herself to sleep, or wished he was there on her birthday and Christmas. Instead, she knew this was all his fault. Every single bit of it. And there he was, looking surprised by how much time had passed.
“Mom wants to give up her body and go help you.”
“She almost got her wish last night, but she survived.”
“How did she almost get her wish?”
“I set up the Protocols. All of us, the Wellborns, can be ghosted, plus a few other key individuals I made deals with. The process is secret, but if anyone already in the system, like us, gets killed during a genoscript process ... ghost. Others have tried unsuccessfully to master it, and failed. That’s why the Protocols are so important. That’s why the Rogues came for you: to get to me so they could get to the Protocols. They want to learn to create ghosts because they can use the ghosts to enter Realspace. They wouldn’t need Walkers or Makers or any of the other surrogates they use. When the Rogues figure out how to ghost themselves, we’ll all be in trouble.”
“She was protecting me. But she really wanted to become like ... this?”
“She’s been nagging me about it off-and-on for a decade. I’m here and she won’t talk to me, but she’s convinced that the other me is worth defeating so that she can get me back. The other me’s not me, by the way. It’s complicated. And if she loses her body in the process, she’ll be in the same trouble I am, but she doesn’t care.”
“I’m confused.”
“I can’t be rejuved unless I destroy my other self.”
“And me?”
“Same situation. But you’re in luck. I’ve been battling this particular double for a decade. But this is my third time as a ghost—”
“You’ve done this before?”
“Several times. I know how to beat them. I made mistakes, lost a bunch. SWML has grown strong with status. It backed the Tricad who contested us last night. Your double is brand new and barely changed. You’ll find it quick enough, I’m sure.”
“How?”
Her father smiled, like he used to smile at her, in such a way that said all would be well. “A series of contests. Weaken it to a certain point, then destroy it. I almost mortally wounded mine last night.”
“The incursion?”
“Yep. It came for you and almost got you. It was a very … close contest. But I almost got it.”
“I saw the Walker.” She also remembered her mother being distracted before she fell. “Was that you outside?”
“I was seconds away from winning. My double and I were in our own contest, while the other Rogues sent their Wraiths after you. I was about to win a simple wager over what my wife would do. Then your uncle’s big mech interfered and ruined everything. I had wagered she would sacrifice herself to save you. They said she would not. The Megamech destroyed the fabricator in the Walker, and cut the connection. My double disappeared a few feet away from me, just as she fell. Had my double officially lost ... ” A wicked looking ghosted dagger appeared in his hand. He swiped out, as if at an invisible enemy. He also glared at Uncle Pic, who was now cleaning the chicken with his own knife. “My prize was to stick this in its heart. I would have blasted it for good. I was so close. It’s weakened now, though. I’ve won a series of contests, and its status has been damaged by its loss at Sterling. They’ll change tactics now, I’m sure. I was sooooo close.” He regarded his daughter. “You, though, have a great opportunity.”
“To get my body back.”
“Well, that, yes. But to demonstrate how to defeat one’s double and be rid of them.”
“Is that hard?”
“Hard enough. To win your body back you’ll have to deal with the artificial you that lives in Cyberspace but that is exiled from Realspace—the place it wants to go. It’s confusing, I know. Your double is a mirror of you projected into Cyberspace that sometimes comes for a visit. It’s a pretender crossing boundaries it wasn’t meant to cross. You kill your double, you can live as a normal human ... or as a ghost, if you choose, without any pests. But the Rogues possess this digital copy of you, and they can use it to temporarily project your double into Realspace. Once that happens, and it will, the contests begin. You’ll never be free of it unless you destroy it. And the only way to do that is—”
“Win.”
“That’s why your mom is so mad at me and wouldn’t let me see you. My double—and what I mean by that is my Rogueself—is mean as hell by now. A decade we’ve been doing this. But like I said, this is the third time I’ve been ghosted. The first time was by mistake. A Wraith got me. It took me twenty years to defeat that double. And it was responsible for the Battle of the Steppe and the creation of all kinds of horrors. The other two times I ghosted myself as experiments. And what have I learned? My double has memories of the prior doubles’ lives. So this current version has had plenty of time for it to evolve into something nasty. It has many names and followers now. The brand I sense on you has its initials: SWML.”
“That’s it.”
“Sorry. It’s a symbol of their desire for you.”
Simone thought about her hopes at Sterling for having a normal year, maybe even winning the Senior Send Off school’s most important student award as a junior, and knew none of that would happen if she were a digital ghost branded by the Rogues. Principal Smalls might let her take classes, but only with tutors, and she definitely couldn’t go to the prom, or any of the other events. None of that seemed to matter now in a world of vicious Rogue AI manifestations and disembodied Unpersons.
“Listen,” he said, “our family are strong Channelers and Summoners: your mother is a perfect example of a psy-sorceress with a powerful entity. Rigon is a stubborn and complex soul, and he’ll recover, and his abilities have made him a fine warrior, even though he’s turned his back on his Alter potential. You’re more like your mother and me. Your entity is from a strong … species, and you’ll learn to control it.”
“Mom said you’re also like us,” she said.
“I was the first to control what we are. I created the technology that harnessed our abilities to channel, and that allowed us to bind our entities. All other Alters are at the mercy of what is in them. I met your mother after discovering her talents and helping her, well, manage them, by opening her up to her entity. She went from being a basic telekine, like you, to something much more powerful.”
“What do I have to do now?”
“All you need to do is offer a contest.”
“A contest?”
“The Rogues can’t refuse competition with us. It defines them, and because of the Protocols I set up, this is the only way they can insert themselves into Realspace, instead of causing mere havoc. What you should do is spread rumors around the student body of a secret contest. Don’t say who’s competing. Have the Beckwith boy send the message into Cyberspace. He’ll know how. Then you wait. My guess, your double will respond immediately. It’ll ask you to submit to it and admit defeat.”
“Submit t
o it?”
“This is what we’re fighting for. They want all of us in Realspace to do their bidding, and we want them in Cyberspace to do ours. Simple, really. This is the Great Conflict, the Great Game. And we must win. You don’t want to be a Rogueslave do you?”
“No!”
“Good.”
Simone nodded, having heard this sort of talk from her mother for years. “And that’s why every Transhuman needs an entity as an alternate body, to battle these threats?”
“Exactly.”
“What if I lose, Dad?”
“Nothing changes for you, but your double gets stronger, and gains status among the RAIs.” He paused. “I learned that one the hard way. Mine is still real nasty, as I’ve said. I regret that it used its human Technowizards to summon the colossi in the Great Incursion, just as a way to prove to me it could. Yep, that one’s on me.”
“It sure is,” Uncle Pic said, standing on the edge of the porch with blood all over his arms. “And now you’re meddling with your daughter’s life.”
“What else can I do?”
Uncle Pic grumbled to himself. “I guess you’re right. She’s in it now.” He shook his head and walked off. “Dammit if the Great Game isn’t at least fun to watch.”
“He’s just mad because I was the one with the psy-gifts. Now let me tell you exactly what to do. First, since it didn’t get you entirely, there’s some part of you that failed to copy. You have to find out what that is, then you can use it to win the contests.”
“Some missing part?”
“The first contest is critical. Even if you lose, you need to find out what it doesn’t have that the original, you, has.”
“How do I do that?”
The ghost who was her father smiled. “Simple, you outsmart it.”
* * *
Simone walked up a hallway of the main campus building later that night. All the students and faculty were gone, and she normally would have been scared to death. But the dark wasn’t so dark to her now. She floated like a big glow stick on a string, only pretending to walk when she remembered to. She had become accustomed to not using her legs, which had certainly made it easier to transition through solid objects. She shut her eyes, imagining she held her breath, and passed directly through a closed door into the girls’ room. The sensation was like walking under water.