Fix

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  Ruth grinned. “What happened?”

  “Well…” Paul straightened his tie. “When Aliyah was born, the obstetrician asked if I wanted to cut the cord. And I, well…”

  “You asked if there wasn’t anyone more qualified to do the job!” Imani snapped, her face contorted in bemused disbelief – and they burst into laughter, family and Unimancer alike.

  “No one can take this cup from your hand, Mr Tsabo,” the general said solemnly. “This is your Gethsemane. If you fail…”

  The general swallowed.

  “If you fail, so does humanity.”

  But I’m not qualified, Paul thought. He was still tempted to hand responsibility to Imani, even though Imani couldn’t sense broaches or hook into Unimancy.

  The general stepped aside to give Paul a view of Bastogne’s villagers carrying in logs, splitting them with axes, piling up the firewood – like they expect winter to come, Paul thought.

  Help me to be their guardian, Aliyah had said.

  Paul felt freefall terror: there was no one more qualified to handle this. Every bureaucracy had someone who made the final decisions. Paul had spent his life offloading as many decisions as he could, handing his power to Payne, to Robert, to anyone who’d distribute the possibility of failure–

  But now it had to be him.

  “All right,” Paul said.

  you think you are war

  He wasn’t war. He’d tried to be, but that certainty had ruined his humanity. He needed to heal this broach as a bureaucrat would.

  Paul sat down on a stump, putting a legal pad in his lap. He licked the tip of his pen, then wrote down five goals:

  Stop the invasion

  Neutralize the excess flux

  Heal the broach

  Keep Aliyah safe

  Save Valentine

  “Unimancers out.” They retreated. “Imani, general – we’re not leaving until all five of these objectives are crossed off.”

  Within two hours, they’d filled up their first legal pad.

  By sunset, Paul’s fingers were smudged black with ink.

  By morning, the three looked over an ankle-high drift of papers, fluttering about the grove like leaves. They’d skyrocketed past crazy approaches into contemplating nonsensical approaches. The sky glowed like a stained glass window in a fire, the last remains of blue nearly gnawed away.

  He tore off a sheet, started afresh–

  Imani put her palm over the pad. “Paul,” she said. “That’s the plan. That’s our best shot.”

  “We need more options. We need to–”

  “Paul,” she repeated. “Remember when Valentine had to throw a dart to get you to choose?”

  “This isn’t the soccer game!” Paul snapped. “Look at that!”

  He stabbed a pen into the five objectives: no successful plan they’d concocted could cross off “Save Valentine.” Even if Valentine survived that first flux-blast, she’d been pulled miles above the Earth; Paul could not think of a ’mancy they possessed that would prevent Valentine from smashing into the ground like a failed parachutist.

  The sky thrummed again. Valentine, fighting her endless battle. Valentine, who’d doomed herself saving them.

  “She won’t last much longer,” Imani snapped. “Our best plan involves you writing out a complicated contract. If you want to do that and restructure the Unimancers to give them the certainty we’ll need to pull this off, we need to act now.”

  “But she…”

  Imani’s eyes were baggy; she’d contributed more ideas to their pool than anyone. “She made her sacrifice, Paul. She’d make it again.”

  “I…”

  She was right. They didn’t have the resources to save Valentine – they had no planes, no aerial technology, just one bureaucromancer and sixty-plus Unimancers who couldn’t accomplish anything world-class humans couldn’t manage.

  Paul was down to not saving Valentine, or not saving anyone.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s do this.”

  Fifty

  Pills and Thrills and Daffodils Will Kill

  why do you fight

  Valentine carved out tangential improvements in fighting this nightmare armada, mining Imani’s stupid videogame list to find new approaches, but inevitably–

  Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.

  why do you FIGHT

  “Because I’m going to beat you,” she muttered. She’d channeled Doom, luring the buzzsects into crossfires with the ciliabeasts whip-tentacles, goosing their anger with a touch of magic to have them turn on each other.

  But she was surrounded by hungry buzzsects who lapped up her excess ’mancy to burst into hideous clouds that ate her alive, and the razorplows homed in on her magic like heat-seeking missiles, and if she survived them then coliseum-sized beasts crawled out of the Thing’s throat and

  Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.

  you cannot beat me

  even if you win you will destroy everything

  each battle adds to your destruction

  “They need me!” Valentine shouted, jerking her left arm back again, lost in a sweaty battle haze, and sometimes she was so desperate for human contact that before she died she’d hug a ciliabeast’s blistered skin and pretend it was Robert before it swallowed her into its sticky guts and

  Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.

  they do not need you

  And God that was true it was true, nobody even knew she was here, she fought a pointless battle that would dump a fluxplosion on their heads, she was a liability she’d always been a liability

  She’d been such a liability to Robert, of course he didn’t need her.

  They were supposed to go crazy together.

  Robert had gone sane.

  That was why they’d never work out: Robert had healed his neuroses, he didn’t need some fucked-up fantasy to keep him going any more, and she did, and…

  Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.

  Robert has a black belt in karate Robert can pick locks Robert can run a national organization and what could she do? She could be such a fucking lunatic that her craziness punched holes in the world all she’d ever do was hurt people why the fuck would he stay with someone like that?

  Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.

  She’d done this forever and her world was a murderfield, all cutthropods and pustulancers and blistrodes and why would Robert ever go on adventures with her when her adventures were one horrific battle after another?

  Why would he stay?

  He gave you a ring, a small sad voice thought.

  People walk away from rings every fucking day, she thought. The only thing that puts asses in seats is raw need and he doesn’t need you why would anyone need a crazy person

  Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.

  why do you fight

  She couldn’t remember why she fought. She couldn’t remember the sweet taste of Red Bull and the warm massage Robert gave her after a videogame marathon, she couldn’t remember the strength of Robert’s arms hugging her when she hurt, she couldn’t remember the tautness of leather belts around her hips when she pulled on her strap-on to take Robert. All she remembered was bugs chewing her skin and cutthropods tearing her apart and razorplows slicing through her eyeballs…

  Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.

  why do you fight

  “Because I’m crazy.” She let the buzzsects take her sometimes before she snapped back into yet another loop. “Because I’m crazy, and broken, and–”

  they do not need you

  “i know,” she said, feeling the buzzsects gnaw her, frightened at how good it felt to be nothing.

  Fifty-One

  Got To Get Out Of This World Somehow

  The general looked up at the sagging sky and apologized.

  “Our cavalry won’t arrive in time.”

  Paul realized with shame that of course the general hadn’t sat idle while Paul planned. “W
ho were we expecting?”

  “Experts on broach management who’d been working in less dangerous territories, a professional psychologist to talk you out of any breakdowns, and a case of Dunkin’ Donuts.”

  Paul blinked.

  “…Dunkin’ Donuts?”

  “It’s the apocalypse, Mr Tsabo. I’d prefer not to meet my ending without one last mouthful of Dunkies.”

  “So where are the experts?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  He jerked a thumb upwards. “That’s interfering with radio signals. Fortunately, we can convey some messages through Unimancers. And I have left orders with the international SMASH teams that something big is happening in Europe; the usual ’mancer roundups will be suspended until the current crisis is over.” He fingered his medals, proud to have done the necessary legwork. “Unimancers all over the world are on standby for when you need them. When Valentine breaks through, you’ll have the full attention of the collective. What else can I provide you, sir?”

  “You’ve done enough. Ruth, if you wouldn’t mind – I need to join ’mancies with you. With all of you.”

  Ruth recoiled, her normally-blank face contorted with fear.

  “No offense, Mr Tsabo,” she said. “You damn near wrecked our network the last time with those rules you implemented–”

  “It won’t be that way again,” he assured them.

  Ruth hesitated – all the Unimancers hesitated, their lips twitching as another argument swept through the collective. Their legs locked into place, their bodies seizing with the arguments’ furor–

  “There’s no time for this!” Paul barked. “Join your ’mancy with me!”

  He grabbed Ruth’s hand, reaching out to the network…

  And felt their desperate, grasping need.

  Paul had been grieving for his lost morality the last time they’d connected, and so had willingly subsumed himself into their desire. Now he was determined to retain his own decision-making, and they grappled him – a drowning woman so desperate she’d cling to anything.

  Everyone, Paul had realized, discussed Unimancy like it was something that had sprung up organically, the Earth’s natural reaction to fighting the broach.

  But someone must have been the first Unimancer.

  He held back, determining what that person had been like.

  Something shivered at the heart of the Unimancy network as he resisted their pull. Paul felt the first Unimancer’s ’mancy seeping through him – a woman so lonely she’d fetishized the idea of harmony, obsessing over friendship and goodwill and sharing until she’d created communal magic.

  She’d erased her sense of self to facilitate bringing others together.

  And she was long dead. She had to be. The broach had been active for over seventy years, and Unimancy had been there to fight the broach once it crept across Europe. It was entirely possible she’d been dead for centuries.

  Yet this nameless woman’s convictions still held Unimancy together – and the idea that a ’mancer could connect to them and not be a part of them broke this dead woman’s still-beating heart.

  Panic surged across the Unimancer network as they flooded with panic that someone might leave, forced by reflexive ’mancies to drag Paul in deep–

  He’ll be your father-construct, Ruth thought in despair. Forever second-guessing you, forever sifting through your secrets, so close you’ll never escape–

  WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOU?

  Paul’s outrage was a thunderclap that short-circuited the network.

  Ruth felt Paul’s wave of empathy, a tide of tenderness backed by a cold and rising fury, realized Paul was once again moving to protect his daughter–

  Except Paul knelt to take her hand.

  “My God.” His eyes welled with tears.

  He examined her mother-construct, appalled.

  She’d not been prepared for him to care about her – but he was networked into the hivemind enough to rifle through her history, saw the Mom-construct’s endless lesson-prison…

  Children should be free, Paul told her.

  Ruth bristled. I’m not a child, she protested.

  She gasped as Paul flooded her with his image of Aliyah – strong, unrestrained, beautiful – and Ruth realized that to Paul Tsabo, calling someone a child was no insult. A child was, to him, the purest form humanity could take – someone to be nourished and nurtured to become whatever they wanted to be, not pigeonholed by rules and restraints.

  Paradoxically, he believed in bureaucracy because good guidelines set other people free.

  You wanted Aliyah to find her own path, Ruth thought, stunned. Despite standing in so many memories of other people’s upbringings, she’d never once contemplated that parents could need their children’s independence.

  “Yes,” Paul whispered. “I want it for you too.”

  He reached into the Mom-construct – and, viewed through Paul’s eyes, Ruth realized her Mom-construct was merely an elaborate set of instructions. Paul froze the mother-construct in place while he analyzed the laws that governed it, mapped out its millions of branching paths.

  It was a program.

  Like any program, it could be uninstalled.

  And if the Mom-construct had experienced any fear at the idea of its dissolution, Ruth might have moved to defend it. Yet the Mom-construct expressed no concern; it waited patiently as Paul examined it line by line, asking, Am I no longer needed?

  Paul turned to Ruth. I don’t know. Is she needed, Ruth?

  Ruth had always said if she could get rid of the Mom-construct, she would have. But now the choice was here, she realized she’d never hear her mother’s voice again, never sense her mother’s pride…

  Aliyah pulled Ruth close. Are you ready to leave her behind?

  I thought I was, Ruth thought. But now…?

  For the first time since her mother had died, Ruth burst into tears – long, chest-racking tears, the tears of a girl who’d been so horrified she’d never gotten a proper outlet for her grief. The only way to satisfy this ersatz mother was to be so hyper-competent that it left no room for any emotion but cold anger.

  Now she could leave the Mom-construct behind, she remembered all the things she’d secretly treasured.

  Ruth sagged into Aliyah’s arms, truly mourning her loss for the first time.

  The hivemind wrapped tendrils around Paul’s magic, trying to fuse with him.

  He reached deeper into the network, refusing to be subsumed. As he’d mapped out the mother-construct’s directives, he’d felt those imperative command-structures in the collective.

  Ruth’s mother had not, in fact, come up with the idea of the Mom-construct. The edumancer, more than anyone else, had understood how Unimancy had worked, realizing the collective was guided by a psychic operating system templated off one woman’s final desires.

  Unimancy, Ruth thought, dizzied. It too is governed by one woman’s dying wish. She’s locked everyone into her strengths – and her terrors–

  Paul nodded. Yes. But it doesn’t have to be.

  He delved down into Unimancy’s rules, found the core axioms that allowed them to exist in the same mindspace.

  Perhaps Unimancy had been alive when it started – but now its creator was dead, the ’mancy had been reduced to a set of procedures. The personality had been boiled away, leaving behind rules designed to provide order when no qualified minds remained to make decisions.

  At its core, Unimancy was a form of bureaucromancy. But the worst kind of bureaucracy: one without compassion to guide it.

  These rules can be altered, Paul thought, his fingers tangled in the deepest and most complex portions of the Unimancer hivemind. You panic when you disagree because she panicked when people argued. You can only hold one opinion because she could only hold one opinion.

  I can help you change this into a world you choose.

  The hivemind lit up with discussion – and as it did, Paul held the Unimanc
y internals open, demonstrating the artificial distress flares shooting through the network whenever raucous discussions hit critical mass, showed the ways in which Unimancy guided them towards certain conclusions.

  These were good rules, Paul said, contemplating the beauty that bound Aliyah and Ruth – a well-thought-out magical system that had lasted for decades. But together, we could tweak this framework so you’re more accepting of new input, more accepting of divergent opinions. Your decisions would become more complicated… but they’d also be more…

  Honest? Ruth suggested.

  Yes. More powerful. But, Paul added, I won’t do this to you against your will. Do you want this?

  Swirls of discussion rose up, debating risks versus advantages. Paul stood away from the hubbub.

  The Unimancers came to a conclusion – recognizing Paul’s suggested changes would make them more resilient, able to handle unexpected crises better, able to come to consensus in more organic ways.

  Paul’s upgraded Unimancy could save the world.

  We agree, said the hivemind.

  As Paul restructured them, he laughed joyously. Once, he’d vowed to destroy them.

  Now, he’d make them magnificent.

  As they laughed, the sky sagged like an overloaded garbage bag. The heavens bulged, eye squeezed from a crushed skull, rippling with insectoid limbs–

  They heard the faint but unmistakable noise of Valentine screaming – lost, hopeless, stretched thin as the sky itself.

  Her Nintendo DS leapt off the ground like a jumping bean.

  The twin screens cracked.

  The sky convulsed, a boom resonating across the orchard. Three seconds of silence. The heavens retreated, resetting to their previous position, the save point having reset her position.

  When the sky restarted, Valentine was still screaming.

  Her screens had gone dark.

  Paul grabbed his legal pad and started writing out the new Contract.

  Fifty-Two

  Tumbled, From the Burning Sky

  Valentine tumbled