by A. W. Cross
“No. You’re still who you are, and that’s what you were always going to do. We can still avoid that future.” His face turned serious. “Do you know what an hors d’oeuvres is?”
“It’s like an appetizer. Can I ask you one more thing?”
“Yes. Is it about hors d’oeuvres?”
“No. It’s about today, this…party. Is it another crossroads?”
Pax nodded. “Yes. A big one. The biggest one yet. There’s an unknown that keeps me from seeing any further, a variable I can’t yet define.”
“When you say big, how big do you mean? How much difference will this variable make?”
Pax cocked his head, considering. “The difference between life and death.”
“Life and death? For us?”
He smiled in his enigmatic way. “For everyone.”
Perhaps you’re wondering if a robot could love you back? And if they couldn’t, then what? Would it be enough for you to be the only one who loves, knowing that it’s a program adapting to your needs, rather than genuine feelings? If all your needs were satisfied, would requited love matter?
—Cindra, Letter to Omega
By the time we’d gotten downstairs, the Cosmists had arrived, their coats whisked away by Kalbir, who glided across the floor with a fluid grace that wasn’t solely due to her cyborg nature. She caught my eye and nodded as she passed.
The scene before me was surreal, people milling about, smiling awkwardly at each other over the buffet table like it was completely normal for us to be together in this room, casual acquaintances instead of two factions that had brought the world to its knees. Eyes darted and bodies rotated as human and cyborg alike tried to keep their backs to the wall. I’d expected the introductions to be formal, with us lined up like good sportsmen, shaking hands before we tore each other to shreds.
There were eight Cosmists present, including two younger women and one older. I remembered the latter from Fane’s mind. Lien. And the dark-haired young woman was Stella. She’d fought with Ethan over us. He was also there, tall, and pale, and scornful. Three other men stood with him, the youngest of whom I recognized as Ji, Lien’s son. As for the others, my memory was vague.
And then, of course, there was Fane.
He lingered near the entrance, observing the chatter. He looked like he’d stepped from the pages of an old romance novel, fashionably unshaven, his sandy hair tousled, a white buttoned-up shirt that was unbuttoned just the right amount to show off the curve of his collarbone and the hollow at the base of his throat. His face lit up when he saw me, brightening further when he saw what I wore. I smiled back, and he pushed through the crowd. Mine were not the only eyes following him. I caught Cindra’s face over his shoulder, her mouth agape.
“Wow,” she mouthed, giving me a thumbs-up.
Cindra, he’s not what you think.
Tor watched him like he would’ve a large predator: warily, at a respectable distance. Even he had dressed up, his black trousers pressed and clean, his black sweater snug-fitting. He’d gathered his hair back into a short ponytail, though tendrils of it had escaped and curled about his face. Only the dark circles under his eyes and the light stubble around his mouth put him at a disadvantage. When he saw me watching him, he turned away, joining Pax at the far side of the room, where he’d nestled into one of the couches, hair neatly parted and combed, and the crook of his arm filled with snacks he’d filched when Kalbir wasn’t looking.
“Ailith,” Fane boomed, and more than one head turned at the sound of his voice. He slid his hands down my arms then raised them up from my sides, taking a step back. “You look wonderful. You smell wonderful too,” he murmured, leaning down to embrace me, his fingers lingering a second too long on my spine.
A blur of skin on skin, a lone white button on a whiter sheet.
“Fane.”
A brick wall solidified behind me, and Tor curved his muscular arm around me to grab Fane’s hand in a crushing handshake. The muscles in their arms corded as they stood locked together, two titans sizing each other up. Fane let go first.
“Tor. You must be Fane.”
Fane’s answering smile was dazzling. “Tor. The God of Thunder.”
“What?” For a moment, Tor was disarmed.
“Your name. The God of Thunder,” Pax replied. I hadn’t seen him standing just behind Tor’s shoulder. He came closer, examining Fane with interest. “Fane means joyful. It suits you.”
Fane grinned. “Thank you. And you’re—”
“Pax. It means—”
“Peace,” they finished in unison. Pax grinned. He held out a hand to Fane. “Cookie?”
The pleasure on Fane’s face was heartrending in its genuineness, as though he wasn’t used to such small acts of kindness. He cradled it in his hand, a treasure.
“I think I see more over there, in the corner. Kalbir’s been trying to hide them from me.” Pax winked at Fane conspiratorially. “I’m going in. Do you think she’ll catch me? I hope she catches me.”
“Ailith, he’s a key. Fane is a key.”
“What do you mean? What do you mean a key?”
“He’s the variable. He’s important for the path. We need him on our side. But he’s vulnerable.”
“Good luck, brother,” Fane said solemnly as Pax crept gleefully away, sliding in and out of Kalbir’s field of vision.
“So what do you two do here?” Fane asked.
“About what?” Tor replied flatly. The muscles of his chest were frozen earth against my back.
Fane tilted his head, his pupils dilating as he studied Tor. “About—”
“I’m the gardener,” I interrupted.
“Of man?”
“What?”
“Are you the gardener of man?”
The gardener of man. It echoed through my mind, and something inside me shifted, uncurled.
“I— No, I garden. Grow things. In an underground greenhouse.”
“Can I see?”
Tendrils creeping through the darkness, grasping for purchase, for a way to reach the sun.
Mil’s voice pulled me back. “Tor? Could you please come over here for a moment? There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
“Are you going to be okay?” Tor asked.
“Of course,” I said, suddenly irritated.
He gave Fane one last, long look then followed Mil back into the crowd to a smiling young man with slicked back hair and slightly protuberant ears. He appraised Tor in a calculating way I didn’t like, like a buyer searching for a flaw to leverage his price.
“Is that your lover?” Fane asked, his eyes wide and guileless.
I snorted. “Lover? Fane, nobody says ‘lover.’ At least, not anybody who’s less than a hundred years old.”
“Is he?”
“Yes. No. I— It’s complicated.”
“I would make an excellent lover.”
“Thank you, I’ll keep that in mind.”
The slipperiness of sweat, the curve of a hip. A throat, exposed.
My back arched involuntarily as I gasped. “Fane? What are those? The…experiences you broadcast to me?”
“They’re the culmination of millions of human experiences in my programming. It’s how I experience emotion, how I translate it. That is how I feel.”
Mil tapped the side of his glass, and the buzz of voices quieted. I stepped back from Fane, conscious of the eyes watching us. Kalbir wove through the group, pressing glasses of burgundy liquid into our hands.
“Now that you’ve all had a chance to settle, perhaps we should make some formal introductions. This is Lien and Ethan, and their colleagues, Stella, Ilse, Ji, Gabriel, Cassian, and Fane. Lien and Ethan used to work with Lexa and me.” He then introduced each of us. They assessed us with a professional curiosity that made my skin crawl.
“Like us, they’ve become part of the community in Goldnesse. I can’t believe we haven’t seen them until now.” Mil’s voice had an edge that belied his informal tone. He could be
lieve it; they’d been one step ahead of us, watching, and he knew it. “So, let’s have a toast, to old acquaintances and new beginnings. And of course, to Ethan’s attempt at the finest wine this side of the apocalypse. I hope it’s better than your batches before.”
Ethan’s smile was thin as we all raised our glasses in salute. The wine was heavy and jammy with a metallic aftertaste that sat unpleasantly on the back of my tongue.
“What kind of work did you do together? I mean, when were you and Lexa ever Cosmists?” Kalbir asked bluntly.
Ethan seemed to notice her for the first time. His gaze lingered on her, even as Mil spoke again.
“We weren’t. In the early days, none of us were. We designed cybernetic components. In fact, some parts of your design are thanks to them.”
“So what happened?”
“We had a conflict of…interests. Of ideals. We all wanted to use our research and resources to eventually create sentient artificial intelligence, to lay the foundation for something, a gradual process that wouldn’t necessarily happen in our lifetime.” He put his hand on Lexa’s shoulder and smiled at her. “We wanted to cyberize humans first, both to preserve and extend our lifespans and our humanity toward the day we could leave this planet in the event it couldn’t be saved from human destruction. Once we’d mastered that, brought ourselves to our full potential, only then would we be responsible enough to create an entirely new, sentient life form.”
Mil took a deep pull of his wine and glanced at Lien. “But Lien and Ethan saw this as a waste of resources, a high-risk strategy that in all likelihood would result in a mere prolonging of a dying race. They wished to preserve our humanity now, in machines, to guarantee beyond a doubt that human life would not simply pass out of existence, unknown and undocumented, our lowly legacy a desolate planet that would one day vanish, and that would be it. We would simply cease to exist.”
He sighed heavily. “Who’s to say now who was right? Regardless, we went our separate ways, and Lexa and I used much of our research to create all of you.”
“Used? Don’t you mean stole?”
“That research was shared by all of us, Ethan. Perhaps if you hadn’t been in such a rush to create your synthetic opus, you’d have been able to put that research to more effective use and been successful. Instead, that research went to creating cyborgs.”
“Bet you’re thrilled about that,” Oliver said. For once, he wasn’t slouched insolently over the furniture, and his gaze was fixed on Ethan.
“I beg your pardon?” Ethan replied.
“Oh, come on, mate. I know who you are. You stood up and condemned us outright before the war, at that symposium in Vancouver. Said our existence was an abomination and an unconscionable waste of time and resources. In fact, according to CSIS, you were suspected in a number of—”
“None of that matters,” Lexa said hastily. “That was before the war. Things are different now.”
“Bullshit. He can barely stand the sight of us. He would kill us all right now, if he could. Look at his face.”
Oliver was right. Ethan’s face was a mask, too still, too neutral. As we watched, his control faltered then broke.
“He’s right,” he said, turning to Lien. “I can’t do this. We shouldn’t be here.” He turned back to Mil. “We should be in Goldnesse, telling them who’s really in their midst. Who’s lying to them, deceiving them. You claim to want to help them, that you want us all to live together in peace, supporting each other. And yet, you can’t even be honest with them from the start. Are you afraid they’ll finish what the war started?”
“Honest? You want to talk about being honest?” I flared.
Fane slipped his hand into mine. At first, I thought he was trying to stop me, but—
“Do it.”
A white lotus, blossoming on the surface of the water.
“When were you planning to tell us that Fane’s an artilect?”
Our rift with the Cosmists, and our subsequent separation, boiled down to one simple reason: that our goal was to preserve the human race, while theirs was to make it obsolete. I fully believe the Cosmists sold us out to their own enemy. I think they knew that once people saw our cyborgs, they would embrace them, that given time, even the most die-hard Terrans would come around to our way of thinking. This would’ve spelled the end for the Cosmists, so they started a war, knowing full well what they were doing.
—Mil Cothi, personal journal
A bubble of silence surrounded Fane and me as chaos broke out around us. He clutched my hand to his heart. Or at least, where his heart would’ve been.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have outed you that way.”
“No,” he replied. “I’m glad. I don’t like lying, and I don’t like being a pawn. This gives you more leverage. As afraid as the townspeople may be of you, they’d probably be terrified of me.”
“You almost sound happy about it.”
“I am. This means we’ll have to work together. Plus, it’s nice to see Ethan caught off-guard.”
“Oh my god, you’re enjoying this.” I extracted my hand from his.
“I am,” he said, his voice elated. “It’s very exciting.”
“You and Pax should spend some time together. He also finds being in mortal peril exciting.”
“I’d like that. He seems very interesting.” Across the room, Pax ignored the uproar, his eyes unfocused as he traveled down paths only he could see.
“He is.”
“Is it true?” Mil’s voice, strong for once, rang out over the others. Silence fell.
Lien stood straight, her chin lifted in defiance. “Yes, it’s true.”
“And when were you planning to tell us?”
“When the time was right.”
“And when would that have been? How long would you have deceived us?”
“There was no deception, Mil,” she said. “We simply wanted to know if we could trust you. Besides, who are you to talk about deception?” Her voice was harsh with a bitterness that had ripened and burst, the festering remains never truly rotting away.
“Lien, that was years ago,” he said, running his hand through his hair, his voice weary.
“Well, we might not be standing here today, Mil, if it wasn’t for that deceit.”
“None of that matters any more. What matters is what we do now. Lien, Fane being an artilect…this changes things.”
“How, Mil? How does this change things? What exactly was your plan?”
An odd expression crossed Mil’s face. “Our plan was…just to live. To become part of the community. To plant seeds, bring about a gradual awareness. Then, when we’d been accepted, we would tell them the truth.”
“And how would you guarantee your acceptance? What would have to happen for you to tell the truth? Fire? Flood? Plague? How long would you wait? And then what? Swoop in and save them? Their angelic cyborg saviors?” Lien spread her arms in a mockery of wings, her shadow taking flight on the mottled walls.
“We would wait as long as it took.”
“You could be waiting for years. And the longer you wait, the longer you lie to them. How do you think they’ll feel about that?”
“I think they’ll understand. These are not the same people who started the war. They won’t feel the same way about us.”
“If you’re that sure about them, why lie?” Her voice was full of scorn. “And what do you plan to do if they don’t react the way you hope? Will you just leave quietly? What if they attack?” She looked around the room, hands on her hips. “Do you not understand that there’s likely a massive well of resentment toward us all?”
“We have planned for every possibility,” Mil said evenly.
“Yeah? Do they know what your plans are?” She indicated the rest of us with a toss of her head.
Mil hesitated a second too long. “Yes.”
Lien smiled with grim satisfaction. “I thought as much.”
“Well, what exactly was your plan then?”
Lexa asked her, positioning herself just in front of Mil.
“Pretty much the same as yours. Isn’t it?” the woman called Stella said, turning to Lien, her forehead creased in confusion.
“Be quiet, Stella!” Lien glared at the younger woman.
Oliver laughed. “I thought you were protesting a bit too much. Let me see if I can guess. Now, taking into account how they would feel about him,” he gestured to Fane, “whatever you’d save them from would need to be big. Probably nothing that would happen anytime soon. I mean, the world is already in the shit, isn’t it? So, you’d have to create some kind of disaster, right? Fuck them over to the point where their only choice is to embrace you or die? Convince them that your AI here is the future of their survival, the only future. Does that sound about right?”
“That’s right. If certain things happened, they could,” Pax piped up, blinking rapidly.
Lien started. “What is he talking about?”
Pax. No.
But it was too late. Ethan turned to Pax, his eyes predatory. “You can calculate the future, can’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And you see our plan coming to pass?” Ethan’s expression reminded me of the first time I’d seen the Saints of Loving Grace, their gaze focused on Oliver with the fevered intensity of worship.
Pax smiled. “Not anymore. The minute I said it out loud, the variables changed. It’s no longer a possibility.” His voice was almost giddy.
“See what I mean?” I whispered to Fane as Ethan’s expression turned savage. He grated his teeth together, reminding me of Nova, her snapping jaw grinding her own teeth to dust.
“And what about the rest of you? What else are you hiding from us?”
Say nothing. I prayed the others would do the same.
He stepped back with a single barking laugh, tugging down the hem of his blazer. “Fine, don’t tell me. I can guess. Like Mil said, we were colleagues once. I know what’s inside you better than you do.”
“None of that matters now,” Lexa said.
“Actually, it does. Why are we wasting our time in hiding? Bowing and scraping to those people, those Terrans.” Ethan spat the word as though it tasted foul. “I say we join together, reveal ourselves now. What are they going to do but accept us? If it hadn’t been for them, or at the very least people like them, the war never would’ve happened. All they had to do was let nature take its course and allow us to evolve. But when they saw that all the petitions, the hate, the protests weren’t going to stop us, they used force. And here we are again, letting them dictate how we should live.”