"There you go,” she said, and hugged him tighter.
The climber wouldn't be down for a day, so Alex took Adele back to Palos, his favorite bar. It had run a chimera show, full of clumsy surgical freaks, until Adele came down. Then the shows had ended. Alex suspected she cared for him, and that she had had something to do with the shows ending, but he didn't know how to ask, or what to do in return to thank her.
Because Adele was something like Shekinah. Embarrassingly sexual. He was almost glad that Shekinah had to remain behind in Malibu. It was easier. And he could always watch her dance on the remote monitors, even if it did seem to upset Adele.
Adele liked him, he knew. Maybe even loved him. But he didn't know what to do. He had never felt anything like love, certainly not the all-consuming force that was portrayed in the games and movies. He liked spending time with Adele, and he liked the nights they shared, but he could not imagine tying himself to her in a way that could not be undone. He had thought about it, briefly, shortly after they met, but he had never become any more certain.
Back at his apartment, under the glow of a screen that showed their BeyondEarth logo, he told Adele: “I'm moving down here."
Adele looked at him, her eyes steady and clear. As if she was expecting something.
"After all, it's not like Winfinity really wants me back in its country, after I stole this out from under them."
Adele looked away and sighed.
"I have a lot of plans for Shekinah. There are new methods for increasing cognitive capacity."
"Something of yours?"
Alex frowned. “Something I bought. I don't make anything anymore."
"You should have called her Lilith.” Adele's shoulders shook, and her voice was low, husky.
"Lilith wasn't an angel."
Silence for a time. Then: “What do you see in the thing? Why do you keep it?"
Because it's a reflection of what made it, Alex thought. Because maybe, just maybe, it can be a reflection of what we could be.
But he said nothing.
After a time, Adele lay down next to him, softly crying. When he tried to embrace her, she elbowed him away.
* * * *
The pink things came and stabbed her, drawing blood. She yelled and clawed at one of them, raking his cheek with bright red stripes. Blood spattered her face. The pink things yelled and babbled and left her alone.
In the place. The new place. Where she could go in or out. She could walk through grass. She could see the sun. A tall fence, slick and white, kept her from walking farther.
She liked the sun, until she was sick.
Belly-clenching pain. Throbbing pain in her head. She moaned and twisted, trying to evade the hurt. Tired, she went back inside and lay down on her nest.
Sweats in the night.
Strange things seen, bright, exploding.
She woke to ruined rags. They smelled of pain and fear and something else, something deep and cold and hard and wrong. She kicked them away. She could never lay on them.
The hurt in her head gnawed and pounded. She went outside and rolled in the grass, clawed at the fence. One of the pink ones watched her for a time, but it was not the constant-pink, the one that babbled at her longest.
The constant-pink came later that day. It extended a hand through the fence. It smelled of fear and something else, that strange smell that it got when it talked to her, repeating that same sound over and over...
Suddenly, the pain in her head leapt up like a wild thing. She could feel it eating through her head. And then it was like seeing a faint path, leading backwards to days (before).
"Shekinah,” she said, pointing at herself.
The constant-pink's expression changed suddenly. It showed its teeth and made a small noise. The dark scent disappeared. For the first time, it almost smelled happy and content.
"Shekinah.” She pointed at herself again.
The constant-pink nodded and babbled. It smelled very happy. Then it pointed at itself and said, “Alex."
The pain in her head peaked again. She squinted and moaned. The constant-pink squeezed her hand. Water came to his eyes, and his smell darkened.
She walked away, moaning, back inside. She ate the food the pink things left and kicked the rags away. But the ground was too hard without her nest.
She slept outside, shivering, under the stars. She could see the heat of three pink-things outside, watching her.
More bright flashes and strange sights.
More sweats, tossing, turning.
In the morning, the grass had the bad smell. She ripped it out of the ground.
The constant-pink came to her late in the day. He opened the fence and came inside. He kneeled by her and made some noises, but she didn't try to grab him for comfort. He always smelled terrible when she did that. He stroked her head, which felt nice, despite the pain.
He made her cover herself in scratchy fabric, then he took her out of her place. He put her in a strange-smelling box that roared and moved. The hurt leaped again and she saw something, dimly, like cold dark. Boxes like that. But boxes that moved different, with openings that showed only sky. She had been very frightened by that.
She was less frightened by this box. Outside, green trees and brush passed. Then white buildings, like (something before).
He took her out of the box and led her to a small building with openings of many colors. It smelled of mold and dust and old things. It was very comforting.
Inside, sunlight made the colored openings glow brightly, and she stopped to look at them. The constant-pink held her hand and waited.
She walked in a little more. An unmoving pink thing in white had its arms outstretched. Above him there were other things in white, things with wings.
(Like hers).
The unmoving things above the white pink thing were (like her.)
"Shekinah,” she said, looking up at the unmoving things like her.
The constant-pink jumped and babbled, smelling happy.
"Shekinah,” she said, pointing upward.
The constant-pink showed her its teeth. “Alex,” it said, pointing at itself.
(Was the thing called Alex?)
"Alex,” she said, pointing at him.
"Yes, yes!” it babbled.
"Yes, yes,” she said.
The pain exploded in her head. It babbled other things, but all she could do was hold her head.
It babbled more, smelling worried.
"Alex.” She pointed at it.
It nodded and babbled.
Then other pink things came into the place and made loud noises, smelling sharply of fear and anger. They walked towards them, arms outstretched, forcing them outside.
* * * *
* * * *
When BeyondEarth went public, Adele made Alex take her up the elevator to celebrate. At the geosynchronous station, dozens of spacecraft huddled outside. Some bore Winfinity flags, some wore corporate logos, some, old-fashioned, still had the symbols of the ESA or CEL on them. Spindly structures extended on either side of the geosynchronous station. Eventually, they'd grow the station to Earth's first true spaceport.
They took a room that looked down the ribbon to Earth, glinting gold in the sunlight. The Earth, cool blue, looked peaceful and far away. The room was still chill aluminum composite, unfurnished, but Adele suspected that it would soon be a luxury hotel suite, or an insanely expensive apartment. For now, though, it was theirs. There wasn't another human-transport crawler coming for three days.
He can't run away from me, she thought.
Alex floated over the window, looking down at the Earth. His face was slack, puffy with zero-G bloat.
"What are you thinking about?” Adele asked.
"Nothing,” Alex said.
She tried to hug him, but he shrugged her off.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
Adele waited. He'd talk eventually. That was the way he was.
"We could go up the teth
er and sling off towards Mars,” Alex said. “No rockets. No fuel."
"And get there in years,” Adele said.
"Or we could drop smart packages all over the world, and grow new cities."
"You're still mad."
"Of course I'm fucking mad!” Alex screamed, slamming a hand into the bulkhead. He went spinning in the air, then curled himself into a ball, eyes closed.
He's the richest man in the world now, and all he sees is his biggest failure, Adele thought. Winfinity had come to them, shortly after the drop. They'd worn much better suits than Oversight. They showed Alex and Adele the Earth-to-orbit missiles they controlled. They showed them the firepower in the nearby space junk.
No stupid planting cities stuff, no stirring up trouble on Mars, and everyone's happy, was the message.
"Never bring a billfold to a gun fight,” Adele said, softly.
"What?"
"Why don't you go back into research?” Adele asked.
"I don't have any more ideas! It's the brainshot kids and bots now."
Silence for a time. Alex finally stopped his spin and clung to a handrail. “I'll miss everything,” he said.
"Miss what?"
"I won't walk on Mars without a squeezesuit."
Adele just looked at him.
"I'll never go to Alpha Centauri."
Adele shook her head.
"I'll never see where we're going. Where we're really going. This Oversight stuff, this Winfinity stuff, they're just in the way. It's not where we're going."
"Alex—"
* * * *
"Why can't we just ... stay together?” Adele said. Hating the whine in her voice. She squared her shoulders. “I want to be with you. I—"
"You mean marriage, kids, all that?” Alex said. His face was blank, expressionless.
"If that's what you want. If not—"
"You don't know who I am,” Alex said. “Do you know how I got to UCLA?"
Adele shook her head. That was one of the world's mysteries. Oversight was just getting started back then. There were pieces of found media scattered all over the nets from when Alex was in UCLA, but not much before.
"I volunteered for medical research,” he said.
"Volunteered?"
"Remember the Merck programs?"
Adele gasped. Families had signed their children away to them, under the bizarre reorganization laws of the economic collapse in the early 20s. Most of them had never emerged.
"You volunteered?"
Alex nodded, looking away. “My parents leased me out, before that. Some of the families were okay. Some had ... odd ideas about what constituted family activities."
Adele pushed over to Alex and tried to embrace him. He pushed her away, not looking at her.
"I'm sorry."
"They loved each other,” Alex said. “Mom and dad had one of those old-time marriages, with penalty clauses. They'd never be apart."
Adele said nothing.
"I don't know what Merck did,” Alex said. “I don't remember a lot of that time. I remember going into a lab, one day, and saying, ‘Why are you doing it like that, when you can do it like this?’ That's when they made me a student."
"How old were you?"
"Sixteen."
Adele felt tears welling in her eyes. She wiped them away. She went to Alex, put her arms around him, and held him tight even when he tried to push her away. They thrashed away from the window and out into open air. They floated, spinning slightly.
"I just want to see what we can be,” Alex said. “I don't know if I can be what you want me to."
The bar he liked was in old Quito. Converted from an old internet café, it still ran random screenshots of Web 1.0 stuff on dim and battered LCD flatscreens. At several tables, there were even reproductions of ancient computers—iMacs, Dells, Compaq laptops—connected to complete working archives of the internet circa the turn of the century, hidden in matchbox-sized processors under the tables.
Alex preferred the bar. He'd been born at the advent of Web 2.0, and even if he understood how revolutionary the turn-of-the-century apps were, he couldn't understand the attraction of interacting with simulated personalities on old-time message boards, or bidding on Ebay items long since passed.
The white-haired bartender had deeply tanned skin, like polished mahogany. He hadn't spoken more than five words to Alex in all the times he'd been there. Today, though, a younger man was at the bar, and Alex caught the man looking at him.
When the bar got quiet, late that evening, the bartender came over and stopped. “You're the rich guy, aren't you?” he said, in perfect English, with no trace of a Spanish accent. Alex must have looked surprised. “Expat,” the bartender said. “I just look the part."
"Oh. And yes, I'm him."
A nod. “What possible sorrow can you be drowning?"
Alex laughed. How could he explain? Adele didn't understand. Why would this man?
"I'm Rafael Quincero,” the bartender said, offering a hand.
"Alex—"
"Farrell. Yeah, the rich guy. Why don't you go up the beanstalk, rich guy? Or at least go to a hotel tower in downtown? Are you pining over some woman?"
Alex shook his head. “I'm pining over all the things I'll miss."
"I don't know what you mean,” Rafael said, frowning.
"I need to invent a time machine.” To see what's coming, to get beyond this small-minded Winfinity crap, this caveman stuff, my club is bigger than yours, you obey!
Rafael grinned. “We already have time travel."
"What do you mean?"
Rafael turned to the bar and pulled a bottle of El Tesoro tequila off the shelf. He put it on the scarred wood in front of Alex.
"I don't understand,” Alex said.
"Tequila is time travel in a bottle,” Rafael said. “Drink enough, and you wake up in the future."
Alex laughed. Then he jumped. He felt a hot shiver pass through his body. “What did you say?"
"Drink enough, wake up in the future."
Alex picked up the bottle and held it in his hands. It was warm. The amber liquid sloshed back and forth, a tiny fractal sea. That was it. That was what he had to do. Go to sleep. And wake up in the future.
"Thank you,” he said, clutching the bottle.
Rafael looked uncertain. “I was just joking."
"I'm not,” Alex said. He beamed the barman ten thousand Winfinity points and ran out the door. He ran through town, clutching the bottle and yelling. He remembered long-forgotten physics lectures about old Greeks and hot baths. He didn't care.
That was it. He didn't have to miss anything. All he had to do was miss the stuff in the middle.
* * * *
Alex didn't come that night.
He did not come to Shekinah's room. They did not take their walk. He did not try to teach her harder words. He did not show her pictures or tell her things she did not understand.
"Play,” she said. “Fun.” Two new words. She wanted to remember them. So Alex would smile.
"Smile.” Another new word. She'd almost forgotten it.
"Smile, smile, smile,” she said, trying to press it into her mind. Her head hurt again.
She waited until it was dark, then lay down on the bed. Thinking about Alex coming to her, comforting her. It was good to think about that. It soothed the pain in her head.
One of the others had tried to comfort her, but he fell screaming on the ground. Shekinah had never seen him again. After that, the others besides Alex stayed far away from her. They didn't answer when she repeated her words to them.
Her words. Were there others she had forgotten?
She stood. She paced. The night smelled of clean vines and grass. She wanted to run. She wanted Alex. Her wings were restless, and her back ached. She leaned them against the wall, willing Alex to appear.
Eventually, she went back to lie on the bed.
She wondered if Alex would come the next day. Or the next. Suddenly the days seemed t
o stretch out ahead of her, clearings along an endless path.
Shekinah whimpered. She had never thought anything like that. Things to come. Many days.
She imagined days stretching back behind her, but the path was shrouded in mist, gray and diffuse.
"Alex,” she said, softly, as sleep came.
* * * *
Western States Mining was in the middle of Nevada's Unincorporated Territories, where the last core of libertarians and socialists and constitutionalists and anarcho-capitalists had come to thumb their noses at the Winfinity-Reformed States conglomerate, which was only too happy to ignore them.
Until now, Adele thought, watching the tanks slowly fill with metallic silver.
They were inside one of the old mines. It was cool and dark, and smelled like dust. Support timbers, gray with age, bore graffiti with ancient dates: 1932, 1977, 2000.
The nanoextraction system made only the smallest noise, a faint liquid rushing. Deep in the mountain, she knew, water coursed through all the abandoned tunnels, all the played-out veins, binding and releasing silver in a mindless mechanical dance. The process ended here, where the silver was unbound, captured, dried, and eventually melted into ingots.
"What extraction rate are you running here?"
"About three grams per gallon per hour,” said Charles Strathern, the golden-haired President of Western States Mining.
Adele nodded. It was about twenty times the rate of their best process. “This is built on Nanolife templates?"
A shrug. “If it matters. We don't recognize your IP here."
"And you have no nanoprocess permitting from Winfinity?"
Charles squinted at her. “If you aren't interested in buying, we don't need you here. The door's that way. Don't let it hit you in the ass on the way out."
Adele held up a hand. “Just getting the lay of the land.” You may not recognize our IP, but you have no problem selling improvements back to us. She wondered briefly how long it would take the Nanolife labs to duplicate their feat, but quickly dismissed it. If she didn't buy it, someone else would.
Charles crossed his arms. “You've seen the process. Are you interested?"
"Possibly. How many cycles will the nano tolerate?"
"Seven, eight hundred."
"What's the efficiency delta between inception and end of life?"
Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #214 Page 4