Maybe we’ve been going at this all wrong. Maybe this is just a story someone wrote to explain what happened. A broken story for a broken world. Some way of ascribing chaos to a vengeful goddess. Some way of finding motive or meaning in all that death.
Was it easier to grapple with, if you thought you brought it on yourself? Or did that just make it worse?
11
GRAMMA
“Do you want to have kids?” Xavier asked, late one night.
Esperanza rolled over to face him. She poked her head out from under the blanket they shared. “You mean together? Both our traits?”
“Your iterations would already have both our traits, Zaza,” Xavier said.
“Oh, so you want me to do all the heavy lifting,” Esperanza said. She poked him. He smirked. Her fingers dug under his shirt and he laughed, helpless, and she crawled on top of him to tickle him more. They were playing a very old game. One their parents had played, too. They did not know this. Only Portia knew it. Only Portia saw it. They were very careful, the two of them. But of course they had grown up together. Esperanza had sprung fully formed from her mother’s mind for the sole purpose of protecting her older brother.
Portia wondered when Amy and Javier would cotton on to this little development. She had no desire to let them know. Let them discover it on their own. When it was too late. Not that it mattered – the recessive legacy code Swiss-cheesing through their systems was already hopelessly entangled. And it wasn’t as though they had birth defects to worry about. Nor was there any reason to abide by human laws, or human customs. But Portia knew Amy wouldn’t like it purely because Amy had lived so long with her useless meatbag father, and too many years among the chimps had given her hangups.
This is what happens, she would tell them, when you leave your devices to their own devices.
Esperanza sat on top of her brother. She ran her fingers over his ribs. She felt the strength of them. Or so Portia imagined she must have. Portia knew the weight and density and composition of their bodies. She knew how strong they used to feel, under her hands. Amy’s hands.
“Do you think Dad still likes humans?” Esperanza asked.
Xavier frowned. “Of course not. He loves Mom.”
“He was talking to that guy, the one in New Mexico, for a really long time. I think something happened, back then.”
“Back then was only a month or two ago,” Xavier said. “But a lot has changed. Mom gave him the cure. He wanted the cure. He asked for it.”
Esperanza’s tongue prodded her lips experimentally. She was still developing her own mannerisms, her own ways of communicating anxiety or hope or lust. It was the hallmark of all new vN: they had not yet learned how to be anything other than mechanical. She traced fingers along his clavicle. She began undoing his shirt button by button. “What about you? Do you still like humans?”
“I think they’re like drugs,” Xavier said. His fingers clenched on her thighs as she continued unbuttoning. “I think they feel good but they’re not good for you.”
Esperanza nodded. “That’s deep, mijito.”
Xavier slapped her leg. “I’m older than you. Only I get to call you that, Zaza.”
“Only you get to do a lot of things, with me.”
He stuck out his tongue. She stuck out hers. They kissed.
It was different, since the Christmas bonus. Xavier had always loved his little sister. He had always lived with her. He had spent some time on Amy’s island. During that time, he asked for a little sister almost daily. He was very clear with Amy and Javier about what kind of sibling he wanted. But even then, he had kept the humans at the forefront of his mind.
They used to have jobs performing stunts in the ninja forests of Dejima, doing Tokugawa Restoration roleplays and tengu dramas and who knew what else. Portia’s concern was not how they made their money. She could always have sent them more money, if they needed it. She had sent them money multiple times, under the guise of being an avid fan. They had no idea it was her. She had never told them. Not telling them was difficult, but telling them would have caused more problems. And after all, it was only money. It was not love, which she could not display openly without scaring them. Love was keeping them alive. Love was crashing a car into a human being who was crossing a street after having followed them home too many times. That was love. It was murder.
Now things were different. Now Xavier was free. He could properly say no. Which meant he could also honestly say yes.
He flipped his sister over so she was on her back, staring up at him. He pulled the shirt off that she’d so thoughtfully unbuttoned. “I named you,” he said. “You remember that? I’m not like Dad. I gave you a name.”
“Hope,” Esperanza said. “You named me hope.”
“Yes,” he said. “Because you were the only hope I had, Zaza.”
“Mom made me for you,” Esperanza said. “She made me to watch out for you.”
Xavier looked away. “Everyone’s always watching out for me. Mom did that. Before. When Dad left. Both times he left.”
Occasionally, Portia wondered what the boy remembered of her trying to eat him. Did he feel it, when she slurped down his infant-sized toes in that junkyard? Did he see the electric fence, when those humans threw him into it? He had not seemed alive, when she began to gnaw on him. He had seemed like he was meat. And their clade, as it turned out, had a taste for meat.
“Dad loves us, Xavier. You’re the one who kept telling me that. He can love. Now. For real.”
“Not like Mom does.”
“Not in the killing way, no. But she got that from Abuelita Portia.”
It was nice to be so highly regarded. If the two of them remembered nothing else about her, she preferred that they remember like this. She was a killer. She had never been anything else. She had remained true to herself throughout all the lives she’d had. Pretending to be anything different had never appealed to her. That was for other vN. That was for Charlotte. The great deceiver. The great betrayer. Had she ever really loved any of them? Portia, Jack, Amy? The idea that she might not know or recognize her iteration caused her to stop the spin on a farm of windmills floating off the coast of Newfoundland.
At least Amy had never tried to be anything different than what she was, either. Portia had to give her that. It wasn’t much. But it was something. Slowly, one by one, Portia allowed the windmills to resume their rotation.
“What do you think of Mom’s plan?” Xavier asked.
Esperanza wriggled under him. “I wish it were different,” she said. “I wish we got to keep our bodies like they are.”
“It’ll be just the same, when we get there. We won’t look any different. We’ll just be heavier. Well, maybe our skin will have a different spectrum. There’s less sun. And it’s colder. We’ll have to be stronger. She’ll make us stronger.”
“I like you just the way you are, though,” Esperanza said, and ran her hand up his leg. “I don’t want you to change. I don’t want you to be any heavier.”
“You can be on top, then,” Xavier said, bending down. “But only after we get there.”
“After we get there, we can iterate,” Esperanza whispered.
Her brother’s eyes lit up. “Has Mom given you the stem code?”
And just like that, Portia knew what her final gift to her great-granddaughter would be.
Like her father, Esperanza was wakeful at dawn. She felt the sun fizzing under her skin. She hungered for it in a way that was not so dissimilar from her other, more recently-satisfied hungers. Portia listened to her listening for the first signs of light and life, the dawn chorus. Even this high up, in the towers of glass and steel, Esperanza could still hear birds. Even if they were just the giant crows that honked to each other about the rising cost of real estate.
“Did you want something?” Esperanza whispered.
Portia murmured the words into her bones. Unlike Amy, Esperanza had never hidden her mind from her great-grandmother. Portia had been sa
ving this moment for that very reason. She could play this just card the once. If she failed, the girl would wall herself off from Portia forever. It was odd, to have this kind of access, again.
Where are you going?
“I have a job I need to do.”
What kind of a job? It seems you haven’t told your mother.
“Mom wouldn’t like it. It’s dangerous.”
Our lives are dangerous, my darling.
“Abuelita, that doesn’t really make me feel any better…” Esperanza dug herself deeper under the covers. “Why are you asking me? Are you going to tell Mom?”
Your mother is busy, building her dollhouse. How could I possibly dream of interrupting her?
One of Esperanza’s eyes opened. “Is Mom OK?”
Portia considered. She had no idea, really, how Amy felt about anything any longer. She had her guesses, but they were impossible to confirm. Her granddaughter had partitioned off those parts of herself. They had shared too much, before. Neither of them had any desire to do so again.
I believe your mother is doing the things she wants to do. I believe that her current project is consuming her in the way she enjoys being consumed. Don’t let it concern you. She has been this way since before you were born.
“But is that, like, enough?” Esperanza propped herself on one elbow. “I’m never sure what’s enough for her. I’m never sure what she really wants.”
Portia couldn’t believe she was about to say these words. If she were in a less magnanimous mood, or if she simply needed nothing at all from the girl, she would have been doing everything in her power to split them up. To let Amy experience the pain that Charlotte had given Portia. But of course, that didn’t quite fit. Because Esperanza had never met Charlotte. Charlotte could never even have imagined Esperanza. This darkly golden child who leapt ten feet in the air and took her enemies apart and let her networks range far and wide. This constellation of traits that Charlotte could never have foreseen making a part of herself and her lineage.
Your mother wants you to be safe. That is all she has ever wanted. That is all either of your parents have ever wanted.
“Is that why we have to go away?”
Yes. But it’s going to take you a while to get ready to go, and your enemies are devising plots against you the longer you stay. But I don’t want you to worry about it. I will take care of them.
Esperanza flopped on her back. “You’re still coming with us though, aren’t you, Abuelita? Mom would be lonely without you.”
She asked it so innocently. The child truly had no idea of how deep the trench of hate ran between Portia and her mother. Of how their visions of the ideal world for vN were so wildly different. To her credit, Amy hadn’t tried to poison the well. Apparently, she wanted to let her daughter find the truth out on her own. Or perhaps she expected Xavier to explain it, to tell her the story.
Lonely? Do you really think so?
“Of course,” Esperanza said, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “You’re the only one who remembers her mother.”
She has her meatsack father for that.
“But you know things Jack doesn’t. About her mother. About…” Esperanza wriggled a little, as though this would free the thought from her processes. “About being a mother. You’re the only other mother she knows.”
Trust me, darling, there are no two people more inclined to disagree than mothers of different children.
“But doesn’t it feel lonely, not being part of Mom anymore? Now that you’re split up?”
Portia paused. She watched a population ticker continue fluttering on and on and on in Times Square. She watched the drone stream of a celebrity funeral in Egypt. ScarabTV, they called it. She remembered the sensation of pulling Charlotte’s body from her own with her bare hands, how her best iteration emerged just like all the others, wreathed in glittering black aerogel smoke. She thought of never having that sensation again. She thought of her new body, the whole apparatus of surveillance technology that was her sensorium, how she was both stretched thin and filled to capacity all at once. Could she ever truly be lonely, this way? Would she ever really be alone, again?
I have never been lonely before, she said. It was perhaps the most honest thing she had ever said. Being alone suits me.
“You’re happier alone?”
It’s cleaner.
“Won’t you miss us?”
No, Portia said. I won’t miss you, because I know that wherever you are and whatever you become, you will have a piece of me with you. Every time you defend yourself. Every time you refuse to obey. Every time you kill for something you love, that is me. That is mine. I gave it to you. And it will go on living in your daughters, and their daughters, and their daughters.
Amy bounced to her feet and paced into the kitchen. She opened the fabstock cupboard. Closed it. Opened another. Closed that one too. Why they still had a kitchen was beyond Portia. It wasn’t as though they spent much time cooking artisanal feasts from vN food components. And obviously what Amy really wanted was a workshop. A garage. A place to get her hands dirty. A kitchen seemed like a throwback to another century, another prototype, another species. “Do you know where Esperanza and Xavier are?”
Of course Portia knew. She always knew. She never lost sight of her great-granddaughter. Not even for a picosecond. Portia showed Amy a map.
I’m not your Housekeeper™, you know, she wrote across the fridge.
She felt Amy shift her weight on the kitchen floor. “They lied to me. About where they were going.”
Children do that. Your mother lied to my face before she left. Then she lied to your father’s face about actually loving him. Perhaps it runs in the family.
Amy slammed a cupboard door so hard it actually bounced. “Can you just stop being you for two minutes? Can you stop executing this particular sub-routine? It’s stale. It’s old. And it’s not helping. Look where they are. Look at the map.”
Portia looked. She realized.
I’ll be right there, she wrote.
12
DOLL PARTS
Their location was not difficult to find. She’d inserted smart etching and threading into all the design parameters for all their shoes and clothes, back when they were little. Now every time they printed or wove something to wear, she knew where those things went. Not that she genuinely cared about Xavier’s whereabouts, but wherever he went, so did his sister. It paid to keep track of them both.
Finding a feed with them on it, one she could actually see, was proving very difficult.
The last place their tags had gone off was in the subway system. Portia checked for them on the outgoing trains. No. None of the trains had registered them; none of the cameras had identified them. She checked the lapel cams on transit cops: just a couple of glimpses. No tracking or following. At least they weren’t in custody somewhere. That was something.
She checked their purchases. Esperanza’s last purchase was a flashlight at a convenience store inside the station. It was a small keychain unit. Nothing heavy duty. She could probably clip it to a belt loop while her hands did something else. Portia began to check the train station’s anti-suicide monitors.
Across town, Amy asked: “Can you see them?”
Not yet, Portia wrote, and felt Amy begin to pace the floor. In the bedroom, she felt the mattress shift as Javier stirred. He was so heavy, now. So full of child. So full of himself. Portia had no idea why Amy had allowed the iteration to continue. They didn’t have time for another little one. Matteo and Ricci’s little ones were already a handful.
“¿Querida?”
The anti-suicide monitors had picked up something: two false-positives on the tracks. Little flicks of motion and brief sensations of pressure. Nothing heavy, though, and nothing sustained. Portia reached into the cameras and adjusted their toggle pattern: slowly they saw thermal, one by one by one.
“Are you out of your mind? Why would you ask her?!” Javier bounced around the apartm
ent. He was big. He looked the way he’d looked when Amy first met him in a mobile prison bound for Redmond. Huge and fat and pregnant. Pitiful, really.
“She can find them faster than we can,” Amy said. Amy had always understood Portia’s usefulness. Even if she never wanted to admit it out loud.
Javier found the nearest eye. It hung inside the refrigerator door. It was meant to catch midnight snackers. “Where are my children?”
NICE TO SEE YOU GIVE A SHIT, Portia displayed on the refrigerator door. THAT’S A NEW LOOK FOR YOU.
Javier slapped the refrigerator door. It was so useless. So stupid. His anger was always like that. Once, she’d watched him take a fireaxe to a comms unit on a container ship, just because he didn’t like the intelligence on the other end of it. Idiot.
“Where are they, Portia?”
There. Two skittering figures, crawling lizard-like on the ceiling of the subway tunnel.
SOMEPLACE YOU’RE TOO FAT TO GO, she wrote, and ignored him.
The deeper Esperanza and Xavier climbed, the more senses Portia lost. They crawled back in time, through archaic infrastructure, old signaling networks whose ancient impermeability was the only thing keeping them safe from her touch. She read up on them as the children crept along. She had a vague sense of their speed and direction and could triangulate where they might wind up. Where that was did not exist on any map she could find. Perhaps it was on paper, somewhere. She was blind to paper. Terrible loss, that. Poor planning, not to have scanned everything. Then again, document maintenance was a complex, tedious process. Humans didn’t do tedious or complex. They had machines for that.
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