Fix

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  Aliyah smiled too. Then Ruth tugged her hand. “Come on!” She seemed happy Aliyah was into what she’d offered.

  No more smiles. Time for reconnaissance.

  This mess hall felt more like a family than a military operation. The euclidosuppressants made her lurch to conclusions, skipping over the steps that had brought her to a realization; Aliyah fought to backfill the reasons why her conscious mind felt this was a Christmas reunion.

  The answer, as she scanned the Unimancers’ faces, was age. Most were in their mid-forties, with a fair contingent of retirees. Some hobbled on canes.

  Which made sense: it took decades for obsession to blossom into magic. Aunt Valentine was considered precocious for casting spells in her late twenties. Daddy had been pushing fifty when he sparked.

  Aliyah remembered SMASH as fit military men. They must have sent the youngest Unimancers after them.

  Still, the Unimancers made Aliyah feel freakishly young. She focused on the Unimancers’ wrinkles, then Ruth’s smooth ginger freckles.

  Ruth brought her to a long table set with a single tureen of meaty stew; this is the kids’ table, Aliyah thought. The stew was covered in a dark black crust, sitting atop a Sterno can, a bubbling vat of beans and sausage that quivered with this area’s kinetic bleed-off.

  Aliyah looked around guiltily; only she, Ruth, and the locals had stew. The other Unimancers had that unappetizing gray fluid.

  “Don’t worry.” Ruth crumbled her rosemary into the stew. “My family will drink the fluid – it’s nutritionally balanced – but when I eat this cassoulet, they’ll plug into my tastebuds. You’ll see. But before we eat, we hold the daily memorial service.”

  Ruth let that last sentence hang.

  Once Ruth had determined Aliyah would give her no reaction, a heavy quiet swept over the room. The locals lowered their heads, the parents shushing their children.

  “Consensus,” the Unimancers whispered, bringing their clenched fists up over their hearts.

  “Sean Patrick Kelly,” they recited.

  A respectful pause. Then a beautiful Californian-looking housewife said, in a gravelly Texan accent:

  “Ben Franklin’s truth: get a man to do you a favor, and he will like you more.”

  A sickly-looking Mexican woman nodded as though some ritual had been completed, then said in the same male voice:

  “Consumption of coffee gives people a mental boost that makes them easier to persuade. Give free coffee in meetings when you can – but don’t drink it yourself.”

  A butch leather dyke with a buzzcut spoke, in the same accent: “The kinesthetic internal modality of proprioception can be hijacked to lead the customer to a conclusion they were already arriving at mentally.”

  Aliyah tried to memorize each statement to tell Daddy later – but it became apparent they were reciting Unimancer sales tips, leavened with random facts like, “When accessing shared memories of rifle shooting, remember shoulder pressures are variable.”

  This didn’t seem like a memorial service. More like a disjointed seminar.

  Ruth leaned over to whisper into Aliyah’s ear: “Sean’s gone, but we can each store something he wanted us to remember.”

  “So you live on forever inside the…”

  Aliyah wanted to say “hivemind,” but maybe that term was impolite. Nor did it feel polite to note that these memories seemed impersonal, uniformly clustered around salesmanship – though she found it reassuring that people seemed to retain their own obsessions inside whatever passed for the Unimancer shared space.

  “Do you live forever inside of each other’s memories after… death?”

  Ruth swallowed. “No. That’s been… it’s been done. It doesn’t end well.”

  Aliyah still wasn’t certain this ceremony wasn’t a trick – but Ruth’s distress seemed very real.

  “I know this seems a little abstract to you,” Ruth explained. “But… this is… it’s a thin afterlife, I guess. Bits of you float around in us, and some of your memories become useful, and take root. But it’s not you. You wouldn’t want it to be you.”

  Ruth reached for a glass of water, but her hands shook. The Unimancer next to her picked up the glass and poured it into her mouth.

  “Do you choose what memory you get?” Aliyah asked.

  Ruth’s face paled. “I’m stuffed with memories. I’m overflowing with them.”

  “Stuffed? How can you–”

  An elderly black Unimancer with her gray hair in a bun tapped Aliyah on the shoulder, shaking her head. Ruth rubbed her temples, her lips twitching, like a crazy person arguing with themselves.

  Aliyah longed to comfort her. Ruth felt like a missing piece of Aliyah’s puzzle; Aliyah had been accelerated into ’mancy as part of a terrorist’s botched plan, and however Ruth’s magic had been called forth, it had scarred her as surely as it had Aliyah–

  Sean’s salesman techniques mutated into a list of folks he’d rescued from the broach. The Unimancers who spoke for him seemed especially proud of these, and Aliyah realized that yes, while Sean Patrick Kelly had started out as a salesmancer, saving lives had become his real obsession.

  “Kara Owl,” the Unimancers recited before sharing Kara’s divination techniques, followed by her memories of rescuing a family from a broach near Bruges. “Richard Shealy,” who had much to say on the chatoyancy properties of gems, and had saved three rogue ’mancers who would have overloaded on flux.

  And then “Cassandra Khaw.”

  Silence.

  “…did something go wrong?” Aliyah whispered.

  Ruth mashed her face into her palms. “…some don’t have a lot to say, you know?”

  “She’s got to have something.” Aliyah felt foolish – she’d never considered a Unimancer’s passing as anything more significant than trimming a toenail. Now she knew Unimancers had memories, seeing one of them ignored at their funeral was worse than death. “You have to remember her.”

  “She’s in here,” the black woman assured her, answering as though Aliyah had spoken to her – which Aliyah supposed she had. “But we are larger than this. We are thousands, spread across Europe, clustered next to the worst rips and the remaining population centers. Trust us, Aliyah – we remember our dead, because no one else will.”

  They left a respectful gap to mark Cassandra’s demise, then: “Ramez Assad,” a neurochemist who’d talked a man out of suicide. “Sara Harvey,” a clothier who’d made fitted tops for breast cancer survivors.

  Aliyah tapped her feet nervously. With each name they spoke, she became certain the Unimancers would name “Malik ‘Pee Wee’ Reles.”

  That had to be the drugs talking. Pee Wee wasn’t even a ’mancer. He’d been a small-time gangster who’d gotten in her way, and she’d smashed him through a wall. It was only after the fight that she’d realized she’d shattered his skull. She hadn’t even known his name until the Watch Dogs game she was channeling popped up a mini-profile next to his body.

  She had Daddy check in on Pee Wee periodically. He was on lifetime disability. He could walk for up to five hundred yards before he needed his motor scooter.

  Rainbird had trained her to be a killer, but Pee Wee had saved her.

  Why was she thinking of Pee Wee?

  Then she realized: the Unimancers.

  They had names.

  She’d vowed never to kill anyone after what Rainbird had done to her. But the Unimancers had been goons to be swept aside, as impersonal as swatting wasps.

  She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to know them. She’d have to fight them when she got back with Daddy.

  Or was this the psych ops?

  She wanted the drugs gone. Without the drugs, she could be sure whether this was some show, and this didn’t feel like a show, but…

  “How many deaths do you remember on an average day?” The words squirted out of Aliyah’s mouth.

  “The average is between eight and nine,” a bushy-haired geriatric man volunteered. “Two die of ol
d age, one of unrelated accidents, five dead to sealing broaches. The technical average is 8.4 per diem, 0.6 above our current replenishment rate. At this pace, combined with the broach’s expansion rate, our calculations predict Europe will be critically understaffed in a decade.”

  “That’s… good information,” Aliyah stammered. Did he think they weren’t brainwashing enough people into being Unimancers?

  She thought of that mangled sky.

  She’d never considered why they’d abducted her friends.

  Ruth leaned over to whisper, “Numbers there was an actuarymancer. As you can see, he still finds comfort in tabulating demises.”

  “But…” Numbers held up one quivering finger, “the average, as always, varies. Seven memorials today. One under. Though that hardly makes up for the astounding nineteen Unimancer deaths we chronicled one day last week–”

  Icy silence.

  Numbers clapped his hands over his mouth, dismayed, the Unimancers turning to face him–

  “What happened last week?” Aliyah demanded.

  “That wasn’t your fault,” the old black lady said.

  “He shouldn’t have spoken,” the Russian twins intoned, swooping in to carry him away.

  “Sometimes, you catch something close to your old passion, and it makes you disregard wiser minds,” Ruth said. “We apologize. The culpability isn’t yours.”

  “No!” Aliyah grabbed Numbers, keeping him close. “He can say what he likes!” Numbers pulled back, trembling from the Unimancers’ collective displeasure. “What happened last week, Numbers?”

  Numbers blinked owlishly.

  “We…” He glanced over towards Ruth, who nodded. “We captured you.”

  A kite string, bisecting a blond Unimancer.

  Fiery helicopter wreckage raining down.

  Mom putting bullets into skulls.

  “Nine dead in a single confrontation,” Numbers said. “A high aberration, high. Capturing rogue ’mancers is a statistically safe activity – except when it comes to your father. He’s killed more in one day than we normally lose on patrol in six months – a walking spike in fatality rates.”

  Aliyah had never thought of her daddy as a murderer. But here in the heart of the Unimancer network?

  Paul Tsabo was the goddamned boogeyman.

  The Unimancers escorted Numbers away. Ruth curled an arm around her.

  “That has nothing to do with you.” Ruth hastily spooned some cassoulet into Aliyah’s bowl. “You’ve never taken our lives. It’s why we honor you, Aliyah – despite your father’s bloodlust, some innate morality has kept you pure.”

  “That has everything to do with him,” Aliyah shot back. “He taught me we’re not the people who kill!”

  Another ’mancer stepped forward, old, scarred. “Tell that to the seven ’mancers who died when he dropped an earthquake on our headquarters. Tell that to the squadron swallowed up by the broach he ripped open in Long Island.”

  Aliyah’s head spun; the Unimancers pressed in around her, their movements dizzying. “You came after him! You hounded him!”

  “He was brewing magical drugs, Aliyah! Handing raw ’mancy to thugs!”

  “He was–” Aliyah clenched her fists, trying to remember the good reasons Daddy had done that. This was like a game of Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney: her best friend was on trial and she had to muster the facts to acquit him.

  Except the locals rose up, concerned because the Unimancers were concerned. Their angry faces were too much to process…

  “Dad was trying to save me!” she blurted out.

  Ruth fishmouthed, shocked. “So dumping drugs into New York and tearing open broaches was worth it to save your face?”

  This was a game of Ace Attorney. The evidence rose before her, menus displaying facts that could clear her father’s name. “It was worth it because the ’mancy was beautiful! Because you – you’re melting down these unique magics into one hivemind!”

  “Beautiful,” Ruth spat at Aliyah’s feet. “Look out there, at that rift, and tell me that’s beautiful. Men like your father created that.”

  “My father is – he’s nothing like–”

  “He’s exactly like. We remember. We have memories from dead ’mancers at the Battle of the Bulge. They want us to remember those bright scientists – so organized, so certain, so convinced ’mancy was rational–”

  “Those scientists weren’t ’mancers – and my father is–”

  “Your father’s triggered three broaches. Do you think that’s wise, Aliyah? You think Morehead thinks that’s wise?”

  The Unimancers murmured their approval, which made Aliyah sick – Ruth distorted the facts. She closed her eyes, trying to map out the evidence like a real ace attorney.

  “Thing is, Aliyah,” Ruth continued, cheeks ruddy with anger, “your father doesn’t give a damn what happens to the world so long as a handful of petty iconoclasts can cast whatever pretty magic they please–”

  “Objection!” Aliyah boomed, pointing dramatically at Ruth.

  The Unimancers fell preternaturally silent, rendered mute.

  Aliyah looked down. She now wore a blue suit instead of the gray prisoner’s uniform she’d had on. Her black skin had faded to a pale Caucasian. She touched her hair with her non-objecting hand and discovered her curls had slicked back into an aerodynamic hairstyle, like she’d stuck her head into a wind tunnel.

  Phoenix Wright. In her rage, she’d channeled the Ace Attorney.

  She’d done ’mancy at the heart of the broach.

  The universe split open at the tip of her index finger, unraveling in loops around the tent as the people of Bastogne began to scream.

  Twenty-One

  An Indecent Proposal

  The cops’ faces contorted in confusion as they trained their guns on everyone in the asylum basement.

  Paul imagined how things looked from their perspective: they’d been called into a disturbance at the old asylum, found portions of the decrepit institute repaired, then walked into the basement to see a geriatric kinkster with nipple-chains holding back a one-legged accountant, and a woman fondling a bloodied hand sticking out from a cell door.

  Then he saw Steeplechase reorient his fingers, his razorlike claw-tips poking into the veins on the underside of Imani’s wrist, quietly taking his wife hostage.

  Paul froze: was this stray flux or honest bad luck? Maybe the cops had seen Robert pull into the asylum parking lot. Maybe this was Butler’s flux seeping out after weeks of tending to Steeplechase. Or maybe

  YOU WILL LOSE YOUR DAUGHTER IN WAYS YOU NEVER IMAGINED

  Maybe it was that sticky black flux. That was the problem with flux – things went wrong in ways designed to punish the ’mancer who’d created it.

  Between Valentine, Butler, Paul, and Steeplechase, Paul had no idea who was being punished. He couldn’t tell what to brace for.

  But if he yanked Imani free, he’d be punished with his wife’s messy death…

  Then Butler held up both hands, bent down on one knee.

  Calm radiated across the room.

  “Officers,” Butler said – and when they spoke, the word “officers” held the solid weight of graceful authority, noble lieges to a great hierarchy. The cops relaxed, though they kept their guns raised.

  “I understand this situation is confusing to the untrained eye.” Butler’s voice was as satisfying as warm syrup poured over pancakes. “But if you’ll join me for a drink, I assure you I can provide a profitable explanation of events.”

  Butler gestured; over in the corner on a silver stand sat a French coffee press, an electric kettle with kukicha tea, a two-liter Dr Pepper bottle, and an ice-cold glass of milk.

  Those weren’t there when we came in, Paul thought. Butler’s ’mancy had conjured the cops’ favorite drinks into existence. Paul felt Butler’s skin flushing with new flux.

  Imani tried not to scream as Steeplechase pulled her closer to the cell, knowing anything might break Butler’s tenu
ous spell of politeness.

  “Paul,” Valentine whispered. “Check what facts they’ve radioed into headquarters. We can handle the local yokels, but inbound Unimancers…?”

  Paul nodded. These were local cops, but the Morehead broach had spooked everyone. They’d call in SMASH for anything odd. And if they’d alerted SMASH, then this place would be swarming with Unimancers any minute.

  He could look up the dispatch records from the local station, but…

  He didn’t know which department had jurisdiction here. He needed a form to chain himself deeper into the station’s bureaucracy to procure tonight’s alerts.

  A badge number. He could file the right paperwork if he had a cop’s badge number.

  “Paul!” Valentine hissed as Paul crept closer to the cops, who allowed Butler to approach the silver stand. All the while Butler talked, that mellifluous voice ensuring the police that of course proper procedures would be carried out, but surely a spot of tea would help settle the waters…

  Paul limped, dragging his telltale artificial foot behind him, glad that Butler was so unique that for once, Paul wasn’t the most interesting thing in the room. Two officers hung back in the stairwell, listening but not quite convinced. Paul leaned in as one cop hesitated, not quite willing to put down her gun to take the proffered cup of tea.

  Officer A Sharpe, Badge #379.

  My wife is in danger! he thought, furious at having to spend time ensuring they weren’t in more danger.

  All this slow caution might get his wife murdered.

  He wanted to thrash these cops for their insolence. Butler was assuring them of course the law should investigate potential intruders in abandoned property – but Paul seethed with anger that these idiots had shown up at the wrong moment.

  He tracked Sharpe’s badge number back to employment records at the Poughkeepsie station, chained into the hiring records to locate the names of the dispatchers, checked the shift records to see who was on for tonight. And though he fought to keep the details straight through the haze of painkillers, he determined that no, the last known call was four officers investigating a plateless SUV.

  No SMASH alerts triggered.