by Al Robertson
‘It’s fully weave aware,’ commented Dieter. ‘Interfaces with the virtual as easily as the real.’
‘I know.’ Leila remembered the flies scuttling across her skin, then digging into her. Disgust shook her.
‘It’s forcing full weave overlay.’ Dit nodded towards the screen. ‘It looks natural, but it’s not. Let’s see what’s really there.’ He pulled out a keyboard and started tapping away. The fly remained unchanged. ‘Rejecting my overlay drop requests.’ He typed out a string of commands then hit the return key. ‘And let’s see what that does.’ The fly darted out of shot. ‘Motherfucker,’ cursed Dit. ‘Rejected that too. And I can’t go in with anything harder. It’ll realise I’m more than just a standard home security system.’
Leila remembered the white silhouette in the hospital. ‘Can you see what the pressure man really looks like?’ she asked.
‘No,’ replied Dit. ‘Same problem.’
‘And what are they doing to Lei?’ She remembered the flies scratching at her. ‘They were in my memories before you pulled me in here.’
‘Nothing good,’ replied Dit. He thumped the keyboard and the cameras zoomed out. Lei was barely visible beneath a hard, glistening, insect skin. ‘They’re going deep. Rewriting her past.’
‘Like psychoactive tech does?’
He frowned. ‘This is certainly how it works. Rearranges memory blocks, edits them, fabricates new ones. But I’ve never heard of anything like this. It’s always been in ancient artefacts – not flies riding a retro thug.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Yes, he really is the worst person you’ve ever bought back to the flat.’
Leila whacked his shoulder. ‘For gods’ sake, Dit, how do you even know that? You said you were just a user interface.’
‘I’ve been checking up on you two every so often since I was created. Watching a fetch and a geek hang out together.’ Dit chuckled. ‘Better than a sitcom. And Dieter copied all his favourite memories of you into me. To make sure I’d really care about you.’
‘And annoy me as much him.’
‘Yeah, I’d say that’s pretty important too.’
Leila smiled ruefully. ‘When I see him I’ll tell him you’re not bad at it.’
‘Positive feedback’s always welcome.’
‘Before I give him a good telling off for not letting me know about you.’
Dit snorted. ‘Well, there’s a lot you haven’t told me. What were you doing in the Shining City in the first place? How did you meet Deodatus and the pressure men?’
Leila thought about trying to explain again. She imagined him freezing and disappearing, then having to restart their conversation from scratch. ‘I think it’s outside your scope,’ she said.
Dit looked sad. ‘You’ve already reset me?’
Leila nodded. ‘Several times.’
‘I’m sorry. I am quite limited.’
‘Well, you’ve kept us both safe. That’s the important thing.’ She sighed. ‘I just wish I could get out of here.’ She forced herself to focus on what she could control. ‘Can we see which memories the flies are rewriting?’
‘A lot from the last few weeks, and he’s dipping in and out of longer term ones too.’
‘Let’s start with the more recent stuff.’ A thought struck her. ‘Perhaps you’d better not watch it. It might trigger another reset.’
‘Ah. Out of context info. OK. I’ll go on percentages. See where he’s making the biggest changes to Lei’s memory.’ He worked quietly for a minute or so. ‘Putting them up on screens. Only you can see them.’ There was a pause, and then times past pulsed out at her. ‘This is what he’s editing.’
Leila watched the rewritten past. Each screen held a different looped moment. Many were relatively short. Others ran for a minute or so, some even longer. Each was silent, until she focused on it for more than a few seconds. Then sound would spring out and surround her.
‘I’ve picked out a top ten of recent memory changes,’ explained Dit. ‘Should give you a sense of what he’s up to. I’ll summarise the longer term stuff while you’re watching them.’
Leila thought at first that the flies were only rewriting anything to do with the Deodatus payment. It had been a jagged break in her life. They made it something far smoother, far more integrated.
In the hospital, a new, fictional Dieter explained the situation to Lei. ‘I’ve done it for you,’ he said, ‘to make up for not being there for so long. Please accept this gift from me.’ He took her hand in his. ‘Don’t try and bring me back again.’ She saw another her, a lie, nodding acceptance. The final seizure came. There was no summons to the Twins, no doctors desperately trying to resurrect him. Lei watched briefly over his still form, then gathered herself and left.
She visited Ambrose. He confirmed the terms of the insurance. But there was no shock. ‘I already knew,’ she said. Ambrose replied: ‘So generous of him.’ Then she met Cassiel, who assured her that everything was in order. ‘Deodatus are very reputable,’ the mind told her. ‘Very well-established.’ The last thing she said was: ‘There’s no need for us to meet again.’
The wake was still a sad affair. Guests muttered about sacrifice. ‘He always said, just live your life for yourself,’ one of them told Lei. Ambrose was there. He looked broken. ‘Don’t look back,’ he advised. ‘That’s what he’d have wanted.’ He offered to show her one of Dieter’s favourite historical sites. ‘Something to remember him by.’
Then, Lei was standing in the Mikhail room. Drops of fire fell around her like memories, flaring brightly then sputtering into nothing. ‘He loved places like this,’ replied Ambrose, his face lit up by the dead god’s branding. A few minutes later he was gone, leaving Lei to remember her brother. ‘At least you came good in the end,’ she whispered into the darkness. There was no grief in her voice.
‘Getting anything out of it all?’ asked Dit.
Leila had almost forgotten that he was there. ‘Yes. The pressure man wants to stop me from kicking up a fuss about something. Something very big. Something I’m not going to walk away from.’
‘That’s my girl!’ exclaimed Dit. ‘I’ve never known you back down from a fight.’
‘Can I see the older stuff?’
Dit nodded. ‘Here goes. Heavily compacted. It summarises years of changes very quickly. You’ll get the big picture, but you won’t get much detail.’
Then the new past hit her, a thousand memories spun together to form a single, re-edited life. Minutiae rushed by. Leila felt that she was moving across a vast, open landscape at very high speed. Slowly, its geography emerged. She perceived a vast absence. All of it hinged on a single moment. There was Lei, aged eleven, standing in an apartment block corridor that reeked of piss and cheap drugs. Her neat little backpack and her fresh, clean school uniform made her feel so out of place. She had a container of food in her hands, all ready to be warmed up. And a door had just slammed in her face. There was an unbearable sense of loss and betrayal.
Leila dropped out of Lei’s false past, gasping with shock.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Dit.
‘Fine, fine.’ She felt his hand at her elbow. ‘Gods.’
‘What is it?’
‘He’s wiped Dieter out of her memory. Almost all of him.’ She found herself about to choke out a sob. A nod towards the screen. ‘Making it look like he moved out when she was eleven, started squatting and never came back. Told her to fuck off when she tried to visit him.’ She felt grief heave within her. She imagined a deep bitterness, too. ‘Dieter abandoned her. She had to do it all on her own. If the flies had got me, that’s all I’d remember. I’d take the money and just let him go, and I wouldn’t care about any of it.’
‘Thank the gods I was here then!’ said Dit perkily. ‘We’ll soon get all this sorted out. There’s less and less editing going on. I think he’s almost done.’
Leila sighed.
‘Hang on,’ said Dit. ‘I’m not sure I like the look of this. The pressure man’s active.’
‘What’s he doing?’
‘He’s accessing your social networks. Running a full search on Dieter’s name, any references to him in chats…’ Dit peered closely at one of the screens. ‘Scraping full identity and contact details for anyone you’re close to and have discussed Dieter with.’
‘Why does he need that?’ asked Leila. There was an answer in her mind, but she was resisting it. She hoped that Dit would convince her of something less painful, less intrusive.
He didn’t. ‘Simple enough. He’s just rewritten Lei. She’s a new person. And that new person isn’t compatible with your old friends. Her new version of her life is very different from the one they remember. So he’s doing something about it. He’s going to send the flies after them, too.’
‘Oh, fuck. I have to get out.’ If Deodatus won then Dieter wouldn’t just disappear from her future. He’d vanish from her past, as well. She had to fight back somehow. A thought struck her. ‘What about the flat’s administrative weavelinks? Can you send me out through them?’
‘Through the wardrobe or the fridge?’ He smiled absently as he accessed the appropriate memories. ‘Yes, I think I might be able to. Move you through their weavespace, so you won’t have any sort of presence in the main parts of the flat. He might still see you, though. Have you got anything to protect yourself with?’
Leila waved the fly spray at him. ‘There’s the skull face too.’
Dit nodded. ‘And where should I send you once you’re out?’
‘Ambrose.’
‘Are you sure? What if he’s been attacked too?’
‘Dieter’s defences kept me safe from the pressure man,’ replied Leila. ‘I’m sure Ambrose’s will have protected him too.’
‘He’s not virtual.’
‘Look, if there is a problem, if I even hear a single fly, I’ll jump straight out.’ She barely felt the anxiety that even the thought of jumping usually created. There were far more important things to worry about.
Dit still looked nervous. ‘If there’s psychoactive tech involved, Holt should know about it. He’s an InSec, but he’s got some heavy resources. Or you should go back to the Coffin Drives. The Fetch Counsellor can sort you out with a ghost cloak. Dieter built it for him. It’ll keep you invisible anywhere in Station.’
‘No,’ replied Leila. But Dit’s question had set her thinking. She wondered about rushing to her friends. Perhaps she could protect them. But she could only reach them one by one – and she wasn’t sure how much that would actually achieve. She thought about returning to the Coffin Drives to find the Fetch Counsellor. But the Coffin Drives weren’t under any threat. She remembered Cassiel’s message. The mind seemed to be safe too, for the moment at least.
There was still only one real choice.
‘Send me to Ambrose,’ she said. And then, to herself, so she didn’t reset Dit again, ‘We’ll work out where the Shining City is. And then we’ll get Dieter out of there.’
Chapter 15
The jump still sickened Leila but now that sickness seemed like an indulgence. She shut it off. Determination eclipsed any emotional shock as her new location leapt into being around her.
‘Ambrose?’ she called. ‘Are you there?’
His defences were still up. They’d queried her as she’d arrived. His office was quiet and dark. He’d deactivated its weave overlay. There were no flies and no pressure men. And there were no bookcases, no log fire, no armchairs and no antique desk. In reality, his office was a small, cheap, windowless space. Metal shelves hung from concrete walls, holding chaotic piles of printouts. The armchairs were cheap plastic recliners. The table was plastic too, its garish surface pocked with cigarette burns. The room smelt damp. Leila thought of the cosy hours she’d spent chatting with Ambrose in here and sighed. She wondered how well she really knew him.
The door to his living quarters was open. Pushing through, Leila found herself in a narrow corridor. Without the weave, it would no longer end in Ambrose’s comfy, exquisitely decorated little flat. ‘My castle,’ he always called it. ‘Drawbridge up, safe from the world.’ But now, concrete walls and floors sat grey beneath an unpainted ceiling. Fluorescent lights parched the colour out of them. Leila moved down the corridor, feeling disturbed. She readied herself to jump away at the slightest hint of pressure man presence. She opened the door into Ambrose’s living room.
Grief echoed out towards her. Someone was sobbing. Dread took Leila’s heart in its cold hands. She thought about fleeing. But she couldn’t abandon Ambrose. She’d pushed him into taking her to the satellite, then moving beyond it. She had to help him. The sobbing continued. She touched her pendant for good luck, spun up the skull face, gripped the fly spray and moved cautiously into the living room.
‘Hello?’ she called. ‘Ambrose?’
The weeping eased. The living room’s true self was as cold and hard and impersonal as the hallway. Ambrose sat at a little table, looking small, sad and grey. Without overlay, his hair drifted in greasy streaks across a shiny scalp. His face was less cheerful, less confident. His eyes were dull, unpolished stones set in dark rings of exhaustion. His skin made her think of damp putty. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. His shirt was unironed. She could smell stale sweat. There was a half drunk bottle of Docklands whisky and a small, dirty kitchen knife on the table in front of him. The skull face asked if he was a potential target. No, she told it.
‘Here I am,’ Ambrose said. He looked hopeless. ‘My father said you’d come for me.’ He picked up the knife. ‘So I got this from the kitchen.’ His words had a light slur to them. His hand shook.
Leila took a careful step towards him. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘We went down together. We escaped together. Now we’re safe together.’
‘Safe!’ he replied, pain in his voice. ‘Safe. Perhaps we are.’ He looked at the knife. ‘You know, I’ve only just realised this can’t stop you. Stupid of me. But I always was stupid. That’s what father says, anyway.’
‘Why would you want to stop me?’ she asked, taking another step towards him.
‘Stay back!’ He thrust the knife towards her, then looked at it, then laughed bitterly. He put it down on the table. ‘You see? There it is in my hand. It couldn’t hurt a fetch. I didn’t even think.’ And, in a more confiding tone: ‘I don’t think. Father says that too. I never did, he told me.’
Leila wondered what had taken root in Ambrose’s head. ‘Your father came?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ replied Ambrose. ‘I remember him so clearly. Standing right where you are. He told me that I’ve always been stupid, that I don’t think. That’s why he never reinstated me.’ He paused for a moment and took a shuddering breath. ‘I always had hope. The back door – I thought they left it open on purpose. To help me.’ He looked up, his eyes pleading for understanding. ‘He said the door was an accident. That he’d shut it down. He made me turn off the overlay in here. Face the truth of my life, he said.’ The knife shivered in Ambrose’s hand. ‘He told me about you.’ His voice cracked into something close to a howl. ‘About what you’d become.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Leila. ‘I’m me. Just like always.’ She took a cautious step towards him and spoke, making her voice as soothing as possible. ‘The pressure men have been here. They’ve written new memories into your mind.’ A second step. ‘One of them tried to do it to me. ‘
‘Oh no. No pressure men.’ He suddenly looked much sadder. ‘Just father.’ He rubbed his finger across the blade. ‘I sharpened it, you know.’ He looked up at her. ‘He said if I was quick enough, I wouldn’t have to face you.’ A sigh. ‘I couldn’t even get that right.’ Guilt and shame shivered across his face. ‘It’s so hard to look at you. At what you’ve become. It’s my fault, Leila. I’m so sorry.’
&nbs
p; ‘I am what I’ve always been, Ambrose.’ She remembered how the flies had rewritten Lei’s memory. She wondered how Ambrose’s memories of her had been changed. ‘Dieter left defences. A partial version of himself. It kept me safe. The pressure men didn’t get anywhere near me.’
‘I saw you, Leila. I saw what they did to you.’ A sad laugh. ‘Here I am, talking to you as if you’re still the person you were. And that part of you is just a mask now. A lure. To get me back down there.’
‘No, Ambrose. That’s wrong. A false memory the pressure men forced into your head.’ She took another step towards him. ‘I’m still the Leila you’ve always known. Your friend, Dieter’s sister. Uncorrupted. And you are right – we still have to find the Shining City again. But not to trap anyone. We’ve got to get Dieter back.’ Another step. ‘I can’t do it without you.’
‘No!’ he shouted, his voice suddenly harsh. His mood changed so quickly. It was as if his personality had been smashed, then too hurriedly reassembled, leaving jagged discontinuities it was so easy to trip over. ‘Stop! Don’t get any closer!’ He thrust the knife out again, then realised what he was doing. Another broken laugh. ‘That won’t scare you, will it?’ Suddenly the knife was at his own throat, pressing into skin. ‘This will.’
‘No, gods – no.’ Leila stepped back, her hands up, until she felt the wall behind her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped. ‘I won’t – I mean – what could I do to you?’
‘You want to get me back to Dieter’s workshop and rewrite me. Have me working for the pressure men. Like him. Like you.’
She scrambled for the right words. ‘You have to trust me. I’m not working for them. I’d never work for them.’
‘Of course not.’ He snorted. ‘I watched Dieter strap you into one of those chairs of his so they could remake you.’ The knife moved against his flesh. ‘Both of you lost. And it’s all my fault.’
‘That’s not what happened.’
‘I shouldn’t have been so scared. I should have gone to him in the hospital. I should have tried to get that fucking box out of him. I should have done something. You and Dieter, gone like Cormac’s family. And it’s all my fault.’