Wilders

by Brenda Cooper

  Beside her, LeeAnne glowed brighter yet, almost blinding, a brilliant neon green. She glanced around, looking for the others.

  “Watch out!” LeeAnne screeched.

  Coryn braked automatically, glancing at the real world through the virtual overlay in front of her just in time to miss hitting a bollard. Aspen barked, complaining about the sudden near stop. She cursed and reoriented, found the lead three streets over and going a different direction.

  LeeAnne yelled at her again, “Follow me!”

  Coryn cringed. She was a true fuckup if the sweep was keeping her behind. But she leaned into the wind, the bike responding as she adjusted to the AR. She noted her speed—twenty-one on the flats. Nice.

  The other riders glowed bright green, and her exercise stats showed up in black. The real world had become a series of yellows and pale browns, dizzying.

  She’d only been gone a few weeks. How could she be so unbalanced by AR so fast? But within ten minutes she began keeping up better as her brain made its initial adjustment to the enhanced world.

  She rode hard, the AR world around her making the physical effort of the ride easier. She almost emptied the water bottle in easy reach and couldn’t tell if there was another one. Her calves and thighs burned. Each breath ripped into her lungs and blazed out. Each team member had a symbol; she puzzled out who was who. She looked like a dog.

  Julianna, a wolf, kept up just fine, moving fast, two bicycles behind the lead, and making every turn on time. In spite of the pain, Coryn forced her body to move fast enough to catch up to LeeAnne and pass her. “I’ve got it,” she yelled. “I can see the route.”

  “Make the next turn!”

  The lead disappeared in front of her. The route line stayed, a bright green arrow blinking in front of her nose. She slid right with it and entered a tunnel, the entire world darkening around her except for a string of pale lights on the ground that she kept just to the right of her front tire. She swallowed, trusting, legs pumping, riding through near dark with Aspen tucked safely beside and just behind her, her bike wheel spinning sounds that bounced back at her from the top and sides of the darkness. Bright green lights ran in a straight line ahead of her. The glasses dimmed in the darkness to preserve her real sight but helpfully laid in the outlines of the tunnel. They jogged left, and a few minutes later right and up a hill, everyone slowing, and then a left again and downhill, using brakes to stay under twenty.

  She lowered her head and dug further, focusing on keeping her heels down and her upper body still, on using her quads and glutes to power through the darkness.

  The tunnel angled up so steeply she barely managed not to grind to a halt as she ran through gears, finding a low that let her stay above fifteen miles an hour. Her legs turned faster, almost a blur, and her lungs burned even harder. Just as she thought she couldn’t keep up the pace a second longer, they turned again and rode left, flattening out, still enveloped in darkness. The other riders’ breath sounded almost as loud as hers, and at least one rider had even more trouble than she did, his or her breath ragged and wheezing.

  Light beckoned. The lead sped up. They all followed suit, emerging onto a clean concrete pathway. A raw dawn spilled yellow-gold light onto purple, pink, and white flowers that lined the path. Beyond them, carefully kept lawns were decorated with more paths, benches, and fountains.

  The lead called out “stopping,” and she braked with the others; they gathered in a circle, panting, and watching the sky. He nodded at them all, his gaze lingering on Coryn for an extra second or two. “Nice job, all.”

  LeeAnne grinned at Coryn, and Coryn nodded back. She was too tired to return the smile, though, and too heartsore. It had been well over twenty-four hours since she slept.

  One by one, the others reached for water or cracked open snacks. She took the cap off of her almost-empty water bottle and poured a little into it for Aspen. He lapped it up, and to her amazement he seemed happy to stay tucked into the zipper of the pannier. His small pink nose stuck out, curiously sniffing the air. She leaned down and whispered to him. “We’ll find Lou again. She’ll be okay.” It felt like lying through her teeth, like saying her parents would come back, which she had done a few times right after they killed themselves, even though she’d known it wasn’t true when she said it.

  Paula. She’d left Paula, who would never have left her. Except she did—she made Coryn leave.

  Coryn reached down and touched Aspen’s nose. Victor had had the right of it, after all. She had been forced to choose between her robot and her dog.

  LeeAnne handed her a post-ride gel and she sucked it down, immediately feeling a slight easing in the taut muscles of her lower back and neck.

  Julianna seemed at home. She led them all to a big shed and helped them park their bikes. Everyone waited patiently, almost no one talking, as Coryn let Aspen mess up the beautiful lawn. Julianna didn’t even wince.

  They walked up a gentle hill toward a sprawling white house. Halfway up, they turned left to follow a narrow gravel path. Coryn gasped as she saw a pool the size of her old orphanage. A low bungalow on the far side of it proved to be a set of bathrooms with showers and changing rooms. The others—including Blessing and Day—seemed to know where to go. Julianna led her to a shower stall, where towels and clean clothes had been laid out on a low shelf. “These are for you.”

  “Where am I?”

  Julianna began pulling her hair out of its gray braids. “One of my houses.”

  “Do you know anything about Lou? My sister?”

  “She’s safe.”

  Coryn tensed at the stilted answer. “Do you know that?”

  Julianna crossed her arms, watching Coryn carefully. “You could thank me for saving you.”

  Coryn crossed her own arms, mimicking Julianna. “You could have saved her.”

  “Your sister or your robot?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “Both.”

  “Hardly.” Julianna looked almost like she was holding back a laugh. “Your sister made herself a powerful target. She rode in full of demands and stupidity and the brashness of the young. She also rode in with no support, and, worse, with enemies. You’re still not much of anything, hardly on the radar. Neither are Blessing and Day. Even so, it was barely possible. I had to pull favors to route you to me.”

  “How did that work anyway? Weren’t we all alone on a bridge and visible to everyone, and couldn’t any drone have followed us?”

  “That’s what the tunnel is for.”

  “Surely people saw us go in.”

  “We’ve got shields up over the neighborhood. That’s enough for you to know.”

  Right. Because if she knew anything at all for sure, the world might end.

  She wanted out of her sweaty clothes, but she didn’t want to stand around naked. “So why did you bother? Why save me at all?”

  Julianna started stripping off her clothes, obviously not suffering from any of the shyness that enveloped Coryn. Her body was hard and muscular, although her skin sagged at the arms and around the knees. When she got down to bra and underwear, she stopped and smiled, maybe noticing Coryn’s discomfort. “Not many people have run with me and asked for nothing.”

  Coryn bit back a reply. She heard a slight hesitation, almost vulnerability, in the old woman’s voice. Something breakable. But that had to be wrong. Surely she was just so tired and hair-trigger that she couldn’t read Julianna right. “Can I shower?”

  Julianna gave her a little bow and backed out of the changing room, pulling the cheerful blue-and-pink-striped curtains closed behind her.

  The water felt like heaven. The shampoo smelled of gardenias. The towel was as soft as summer sun. She had come unwashed and exhausted into the world of the powerful, utterly alone except for a scruffy, lovable dog. No Lou. No Paula.

  She sobbed into the shower, trusting the running water to cover the sharp sounds in her breath. Why had she wanted to find Julianna? Maybe even missed her?

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE<
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  Coryn woke stiff and sore and full of the starvation that followed marathons. “Aspen?”

  He licked her face.

  “Okay, okay.”

  The strangeness of the bed and the unfamiliar scent of flowers wafting in the open window tugged at her. Late morning light? She looked for Paula before she remembered her last sight of the robot on the far side of a metal gate. She fell back into the bed, staring at the ceiling, blinking back tears.

  There was a hole in her life.

  Her thighs throbbed from the bike ride. Someone had handed her a chicken sandwich and a tall glass of water after she showered, and she had finished both as if they were the last food and water in the world. After that, LeeAnne had led her to this room with its comfortable bed.

  She felt as if she had forgotten who she was, as if she’d journeyed to some place far away and hadn’t quite come back yet. But maybe grief had made her sleep.

  Maybe she should sleep forever.

  Her belly rumbled a strong disagreement at the idea of going back to sleep. Aspen was no more help than her stomach; he sat at the foot of her bed and whined.

  She pushed herself out of bed. When he hopped into her arms, she hugged him close. A pair of comfortable beige drawstring pants and a loose white shirt had been laid out for her on the dresser, as well as sandals and underthings. The clothes were seamless—clearly printed on something high-end—and they hung comfortably on her sore body. The distressed purple shoes fit and looked fabulous.

  The fancy clothes didn’t make her feel any better.

  She stalked down the corridor. Aspen followed at her heels, looking for a place to take him outside. The first door she tried led to a long, groomed lawn lined with dogwoods bathed in late morning sunshine.

  She spotted Paula standing on the far side of the lawn, looking up at the flowers.

  How could she have gotten here? It didn’t matter. Her feet moved in spite of her doubt, carrying her toward the robot. “Paula! Paula! How did you get here?”

  The robot turned toward her, wearing a smile that Paula often wore.

  “Stupid robot,” Coryn said, and then repeated it. “Stupid robot.”

  “Excuse me,” the robot replied. “I am not stupid.”

  Coryn looked into her eyes, suddenly certain it wasn’t really Paula, hoping she was wrong. “What’s the name of the bridge we stood on when I graduated from junior high?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Coryn’s fist balled. She’d never hit a companion robot, but in that moment she wanted to.

  She dug deep and mustered enough self-control to turn around and walk away. She grabbed Aspen and buried her face in his side. Why care so much about a robot when she had a breathing, living, happy being who loved her?

  Somewhere nearby, Julianna called out, “Coryn!”

  She lifted her head. Julianna stood almost beside her, watching her. “I hate you.”

  “I told you I’d buy you a replacement.”

  Coryn stood, shaking. “You can’t replace Paula with a robot.”

  “Paula was a robot.”

  She shivered and hugged Aspen tighter. “Was?”

  “She fought a group of police and their drones who were trying to get through the gates and follow us.”

  Coryn set Aspen down and swallowed hard, a wave of disbelief and dizziness almost making her fall. “Of course she did.”

  “I can show you.”

  Coryn took a deep breath. Her bottom lip quivered and she bit it. “Send it to me. I can’t watch it now. Not yet.”

  Julianna nodded slowly. “I understand. She died to help you.”

  “What do you mean, died? What is dead for a companion?” Coryn knew she was reaching for the impossible, but she kept doing it anyway. “There are backups. Surely there are backups.”

  “They shot her. It took five shots to stop her from giving commands. By then she’d killed two policemen and used one of the bodies to knock three drones from the sky.”

  She could remembered Paula on the ecobot, calmly knocking the policemen back. She’d gone out fighting. The gentle companion who’d told her stories and followed her around city streets as she ran, keeping her safe, had died fighting for her. A slight smile tried to escape onto Coryn’s face but she denied it. “She was my protector. That was her job.”

  Julianna shook her head. “Robots who kill frighten the city. You wouldn’t be alive now if the ecobots had killed anyone after they came through the dome. No one would have cared if you got hurt. Not compared to the danger of a killer robot. You have no idea how much effort the city expends to keep itself safe from automation.”

  Coryn knelt and petted Aspen, looking down so her hair covered her face.

  Julianna words remained unrelenting. “Paula killed people. That means each and every copy anywhere will be erased forever, and it will be illegal to own one or to load one into any body.”

  Didn’t this woman think she knew the laws around robots? Coryn looked down and kept petting Aspen, who nudged her hand with his cold nose and wagged his tail. The angry lump in her throat was too fierce for her to push words past.

  Julianna’s voice softened. “We made up a story about Erich, that he actually reprogrammed her when he had her. That he was the reason she went killer. So if you hear that, you’ll know why. It’s to protect you.”

  Coryn blinked for a moment. Julianna knew about Erich? How?

  Julianna finally had the good grace to fall quiet.

  Coryn couldn’t keep the image of Paula sitting on top of the big rumbling ecobot out of her head. Heat broke across her chest and spilled out through her limbs, flushing her face and making her hands tremble. “You had no right.” She stood, looking into the old woman’s eyes. “I don’t care who you are, you had no right.”

  “I’m not the one who brought her robot into a war. I’m not the one who got into a war she couldn’t get out of.” She paused, searching Coryn’s face. She looked gentle in spite of her harsh words.

  Coryn stared back. Surely Julianna felt Coryn’s anger—so deep and hot it almost had to scorch her. If she did, she didn’t react to it, or step back, or anything. Coryn took a step toward her. “I don’t remember a time in my life when she wasn’t there. She fed me and proofed my homework. You can’t replace that.” She pointed at the fake Paula. “I know they look alike—you had to have done some work to find that body, to make her hair the same. But Paula wasn’t a wristlet, or a piece of jewelry.” To her utter shame, hot tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. “I don’t care if it’s breaking the law. Surely there’s a copy somewhere. You can get one. You can do anything. You’re the great Julianna Lake.” She knew she was going to regret her words, but they kept coming out. “You could have let her come with us. She wouldn’t have hurt anyone.”

  Julianna reached a hand out toward Coryn’s face.

  Coryn slapped at it.

  Julianna trapped the arm that had come toward her easily. She turned Coryn so that she looked away and then she trapped Coryn’s other arm.

  All the force of Coryn’s body pointed away from Julianna, her balance tipped away so that only Julianna’s strength kept her from falling.

  Julianna’s body conformed to hers, pressing out and pulling, in ways that kept Coryn from reaching her or from getting away.

  Coryn struggled anyway. She tried to kick the older woman, the tears falling now, hot and embarrassing. Nothing she did freed her. Nothing she did hurt Julianna in the least.

  Julianna simply stood there, holding Coryn immobile, letting her rage and cry.

  Aspen danced around them both, yipping.

  She wasn’t going to win. She simply looked ridiculous, pinned in place by an old woman’s cunning and strength. She took deep trembling breaths. “You can let go now.”

  “Can I?” Julianna sounded as if she were having a quiet conversation over breakfast. “Do you promise not to hit me again, ever?”

  Coryn nodded.

  “Say it.”

/>   “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  Was Julianna a bully? “Yes, I promise I won’t hit you again or hurt you. I’m sorry I did at all. I just don’t understand.”

  “Sit down, and I’ll tell you what I can.”

  “Okay.” She probably wasn’t a bully. She was rich and powerful and trained. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t touch me again, though, not right now.”

  “I promise.”

  Julianna let go of Coryn’s arm, and Coryn sat on the grass, Aspen wriggling between her legs.

  Julianna sat a good five feet away, waiting until Coryn looked at her and said, “All right. Explain.”

  “Companion-bots are not really your friend. Or at least that’s not all they are. If you stay in the city and stay healthy, and you don’t do anything suspicious, they seem to be your friend. The law says they belong to you, but it also says they must report back to the city’s systems.”

  A rabbit hopped across the lawn, and Aspen pulled away, eager and excited. Coryn started to get up, but Julianna said, “It’s okay. He can’t catch it; it’s faster than he is. There’s a fence.”

  Coryn loosened her hold. With a yelp, the dog shot off her lap, racing after the fleeing rabbit. Coryn watched without really seeing either dog or rabbit. “So what? I always knew she’d report me if I broke certain laws. I mean, that’s why kids don’t steal candy, right? We reported it when the Listeners were killed. Doing the right thing doesn’t make her evil.”

  “Companion- and assistant-bots are always connected to the city mesh. Distributed nodes take in data from all the city systems. They collect feeds from the water system, from the dome’s billions of almost-invisible sensors, from the vertical farms, from the cars and the bikes and the streetlights. The only thing the city doesn’t collect data directly from is you. Unless you let it, and then it does that, too.”

  “Like fitness monitors?”

  “More often like security systems. Not all of them. But some are marketed by the city departments.”

  Dog and rabbit had vanished somewhere. “The city always knows where I am.” Coryn stood, looking for Aspen. “That was the weird thing about being Outside. No one knew where I was, except Paula.”