This Is How You Die

by Matthew Bennardo

  “Sorry,” she says. “I can’t.”

  She flees from the room, throws a glance of agonized apology to Lisle as she goes. Ruined her party for her. It’s not fair. This is Lisle’s day, not Pome’s. Pome should have listened to her fears. Ignorance would be better than this. No party ruined, no new death weighing down her mind. Such a burden. She wonders how they carry it. Wonders if it’s only this heavy because it’s coming soon. So soon.

  Pome hits the street. Late out here, that deep darkness before the dawn. The Lumine trees cast only the softest blue haze. An all-consuming panorama of sky, awash with a clouded swath of starlight, shrivels her, makes her feel so small. She’s too frightened to feel more fear. It’s oppressive. Suffocates her.

  Pome dashes tears from her eyes, turns her gaze to the floor, and runs as hard as she can. The pale echo of Scope’s shout, the faint rap of his feet, ring behind her. They grow louder till he’s running alongside.

  “You can’t run forever,” he says to her between breaths.

  Pome knows this. She’s not trying to outrun her fate, the weight in her skull, only gain some distance from the immediacy of it all. “Just a little longer,” she says, hating the pleading tone in her voice. “Just to Puerto.”

  “Top of Puerto, then,” he yells. “After that, we talk.”

  Scope grabs for her hand; she doesn’t fight it. Allows strong fingers to lace through hers, hold her steady as they race on, faster and faster, toward Puerto.

  At the base of the scrapers, pink sunrise bleeds into royal blue night. Sitting on the roof of Puerto tower, on the east side of Hunter, Pome raises her index finger, presses her nose to the knuckle. The pain in her mind is a constant thrum. A hard, liquid weight, as if the whole waters of the ocean had been poured into a space too small to contain them. She moans a little, trying not to feel it. Closes one eye, then the other, in succession. Pink. Blue. Pink. Then blue again.

  Makes her think of her sister Jaim. A game they played when they were small. Thought just by looking they could keep the day, send the night running from the heavens. Pome wonders if she can bring that belief back, reconfigure it to encompass this new death wearing away at her mind, send it running from her. Feels impossible without Jaim beside her. But they haven’t stood together in a long time. They don’t even speak these days.

  Jaim’s afraid of Pome’s singing gift, perhaps jealous of it. Whatever the truth is, she walked away the day Pome began singing for a living. She’s never come back. Pome wonders if it’s been worth the loss, because Jaim is not here right now, when she needs her most of all. Everything they once had lies broken, by bitter words and sour deeds, too many to fix.

  Grief washes over her—dark, more terrible even than the cold fear resting deep in her belly, the liquid weight bowing down her head. She lowers her finger; eyes fill with that mix of pink and blue at the horizon. They blend together, seamless, perfect, and she wonders how day and night can manage when she and Jaim cannot.

  A touch on her elbow.

  “Pome. We have to talk about this. We can’t just ignore it.”

  Scope. Gray eyes sparkling fear, concern, ringed with dark circles. Brown hair a ragged snarl even without wind. Pome turns to him. Words drag out of her, reluctant, painful. “I know. I just don’t know what to say. It’s unreal. This shit never happens, Scope.”

  Scope reaches out, toys with Pome’s fluttering curls, as blue as daytime sky. “So, chickah, maybe we need to find out why it has.”

  “How?” Pome sighs. Shakes her head. “Who would know but Priest, and he retreated from the world; he’s ancient by now. Why would he speak to us?”

  “Surgeon,” he tells her, such certainty in him, she is stunned by it. “Surgeon would know.”

  Pome stares, appalled. “Surgeon? Surgeon at the Nexus…?” She’s amazed by the sheer audacity of the notion. “You can’t go to him. You can’t do that. If you go back there you’ll never get out.”

  Scope looks down at her hand, fingers splayed, eyes eloquent with fear. “Yes, I will. It’s been ten years, Pome. Things are different these days. I’m different. And Surg is not like the others. He’s… altruistic when he wants to be.”

  “No.” Pome’s answer is sharp, astringent. “I won’t let you go back.”

  Scope hugs her shoulders hard. “That’s not your choice to make.” He stands, holds out a hand. “It’s your future, Pome; it’s been stolen. Even if you can ignore that, I can’t. Please, let me help.” His eyes beg her. “Don’t force me to watch this happen, knowing I’ve done nothing to fight it.”

  Pome examines his face. Everything she’s feeling is written there, in bold, and more, too much more. So this is what it is to know how your death will touch the ones you love. She can’t bear it. Pome takes his hand. “Okay. Okay, Scope. We’ll fight. But in and out quick, no dawdling.”

  Scope grins; his whole face lights up like the Strip on a Friday evening. “No dawdling, I promise. C’mon, chickah, let’s hit the FlyStream.”

  Pome races along the building’s edge, catching his relief; it’s infectious. Feels like she can forget that anything has changed at all, just for a moment, up here on top of the Puerto Tower, on top of the world. Below her lies the city, spread out to the horizon. The jutting fingers of scrapers stretch to touch the atmosphere. It’s noiseless at this remove. A stop-motion film. Shadows moving slow with the path of the sun. Feels like it all belongs to her still, as though she hasn’t just learned that her place within it has been erased.

  Five stories beneath their feet flows the slight haze of the FlyStream. Blurred to smears of color by the vapor, vehicles flash through. Mechanical fish flying downstream. She lets herself go, runs faster, harder. She can’t die from defrag in the FlyStream—such weapons won’t work there—and she needs to feel free right now. Turns to watch the end of the roof as it speeds toward her, and then she’s airborne. Dropping fast. Whooping. Scope at her side, arms wide. He reaches for her hand again. Grabs, pulls. They point downward, head into the FlyStream.

  Falling in is like hitting water after a cliff jump. Hitting rapids. Sudden whoosh about the ears. Pressure. Temperature drop. Then the Stream hits and she’s jetting along, Scope still clings tight to her hand. Riding is danger, excitement, adrenaline overload. Pome grins, can’t help it, flicks her legs, moving strong. The ripples tell her something big is coming. Gotta catch it, go faster.

  She rolls to one side. Jackknifes. Stretches to fall into the trail of the transport. It’s a violet bus, runs all the way to Cassia. Pome flips to her back, closes her eyes. Allows the violet bus to whip her through the Stream, Scope’s fingers curled warm into her palm.

  They jump the FlyStream at Nexus. From here, Scope’s old haunts spread out in a slow seep of dark putrefaction. Row upon row of tall, broken tenements, slumped against one another as if in abject despair. Red-light districts, drug zones, the featureless, heavily guarded fortresses of the Pile gangs. That’s why they call it the Nexus; all the vermin of the world collect at this point, and no one who comes here, or comes from here, is ever truly a part of anything else.

  Scope relaxes on these filthy streets as he does nowhere else. His gait a swagger of absolute self-containment. An edge of lethal intent simmers beneath his skin. Pome can’t quit looking. He’s always been beautiful to her. A little savage, a little strange. But now he’s exquisite. An animal uncaged and free to roam in its natural habitat. Sleek, smooth, and confident.

  The weight of her death can’t spoil this, because without that weight, she’d never have witnessed it. How strange to be grateful for such a thing when only an hour ago she was so opposed to his returning.

  “Do you know where he is?” Her voice sounds remote. Altered. As if she’s already gone and speaking from her next life, from the void. “Will he still be there after all this time?”

  Scope smiles. “Surg never changes. Nobody who stays does. Only those of us who leave get to do that.” He carries on walking. Eyes flicking as swift as lightning
down side streets, across neon signs, still lit even in the first light of day. Then he points. “There.”

  Pome squints. It’s shoved at the end of a cramped alley slick with black water from leaking drains, the sign a hanging circle so small Pome wonders how Scope’s eyes picked it out in the murky depths. There’s no door, only a corrugated security roller, raised to halfway. Pome ducks beneath in Scope’s wake, unfurls in the musty confines of a workshop crammed with rejigged tech.

  At the back, curled over a small desk, a long man sits bent almost double over a series of incomprehensible units. Sends up small wisps of smoke as he touches a hot pen to the innards. Pome expects to hear small hisses like heat burning flesh, but the sounds are softer, more like sighs. Long man raises a hand without turning.

  “Ho, Scope.”

  “Surg.”

  Long man Surg turns. Grins. Pome rears back, breath hostage in her throat. At first, she thinks he’s eyeless; then she spots the slight haze over the holes in his head and her breath whooshes out in one long blast. VR sight. Her hand shoots to cover her mouth, hold in all the words suddenly crowding to be said. Those static-filled hollows turn to take her in.

  “Who’s blue?”

  Scope pulls Pome forward, hugs her to his side. “Surgeon, this is Pome.”

  A brow rises on the eyeless face. “Pome the singer?” The question is loaded, full of wariness, unease, perhaps distaste.

  Pome answers him herself. “Yes.”

  She pays no mind to his attitude; Jaim is not the only one to fear her gift. Many people fear what singers do, how they see things others can’t when they raise their voices in song. She’s often met with terror or unease. It’s just a fact of the life she chose. With her voice, as good as it is, she could be famous, wealthy, one of the Prelacy singers, pampered and cosseted, but it’s never tempted her. She loves the life she’s had stolen. In light of that, Surgeon’s opinion of her gift is unimportant. All that matters is whether he can help her or not.

  Surg’s throat works a little; then he nods, sits a little taller, taps his temple. Fuzzy, disembodied eyes appear, floating on the gaping holes in his skull. They’re an unusual shade of purple, bright and cutting. Piercing, as if he sees beyond her flesh into the striated pathways of her veins, along spiked avenues of sparking nerves, right to the neocortex, to the bloated tumor of information crowding out her mind.

  “An honor,” he says, terse, carefully neutral. “Not often one so gifted graces my workshop.” Browned teeth bare in a humorless grin, still hostile but not as much as before. “What brings you here, singer?”

  Here it is. She doesn’t even know this man, but she knows her choices. Speak and perhaps learn what’s happened to her. Or run and die in ignorance. Pome looks straight into that purple gaze. “My death changed. I want to know why.”

  The room fills with a steady hum of machine noise as Surg sits, silent, at his desk. His gaze flickers in and out, a poorly tuned channel, moves between Scope and Pome in rapid shifts. A bloodhound gaze, sniffing clues. Finally, he purses his lips, unfolds from the desk, his body a line of reluctance.

  “A singer’s death changed? That’s… unusual. Wait here.”

  Pome turns an agonized look to Scope as Surg disappears, bent over like an old man in the shrunken dimensions of his workshop. Scope mouths, “It’s okay.” Rubs her arms with chilled fingers. They offer no comfort. Feels like her flesh is already dead, just waiting for the rest of her to realize and let go. Nausea wells up her throat; Pome pulls away as Surg reenters, pushing a shrouded shape before him. His voice cuts through the room like a Klaxon, too loud, jarring to the ear.

  “What was your death?”

  Pome blinks. “My first?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Death in sleep. Eighty years from last year. I was to live to four score and twenty-three. So long. Longer than most anyone I know.”

  Surg huffs, impressed. “And now?”

  Pome takes a deep breath. Licks her lips. “Defragmentation. Soon.”

  Surg is crouched low on the floor beside the shrouded object, his legs jutting out at angles, frog legs. Not enough so they can see what’s under it, just enough to work on what’s hidden. His hands move too fast to watch; soft clicks and a growing burr of noise accompany them. At this, though, he hesitates.

  “Defrag?” He directs a solemn gaze at her. “I am sorry. That’s… brutal. How soon?”

  “I… I’m not sure. I don’t want to look. Please don’t make me.”

  “Fine.” He looks at her, flickering purple eyes too candid. “There’s weight, yes?”

  She swallows. “A lot. It hurts. Sharp pain.”

  “Why is there weight?” Scope asks, his hands on Pome’s shoulders. Looks as if he’s holding himself up rather than supporting her.

  “Too much for the psyche,” Surg answers, matter-of-fact, then dips his head at Pome. “They bioscape your blood to fool your body, but they can’t do shit about your mind, especially not if you have another reading. The loss is a paradox, a short circuit.” He moves his chair before the shrouded object. “Come and sit. You been feeling strange before this?”

  Pome stares at him as she moves to sit. “Yes. How…?”

  He shakes his head. “Seen it before, haven’t I. How long?”

  Pome nibbles at her bottom lip. Surg studies her with intent as he rubs hard at the back of her hand, tapping, then rubbing again, holding her fingers in a tight fist. “It started not long after the wedding party where I got my first reading,” she tells him. “A few months. Just under three.”

  Surg retrieves a long umbilicus from under the sheet. At the end sits a delicate needle, as fine as hair. He inserts it deftly into a vein on the back of her hand. Then he pinches the cloth, lifts it away with care bordering on tenderness, his face a studied blank. What’s under is a deformed, ugly remnant. A Machine somehow perverted, misshapen, wronged. Swollen and sickly white. Pome cries out, tries to move away, but Surg has her in a firm grip.

  “I need another bubble. You won’t taste it. I will.”

  “But Machine.” Pome can’t stop gaping at it. It’s like seeing an angel reduced to peddling flesh. “Is it… does it… the AI…?”

  Surg catches her chin as slow whining, a travesty of Machine’s song, begins to issue from the deformed mass. His eyes hold hers prisoner, hard, savage. “I found this in the industrial wastes. I’ve found them once or twice before, but this is the only one that survived. It hangs on and so I do the best I can for it. I rarely ask it to work, but you have questions and this is the only way we’ll be able to answer them.”

  Tears spill down Pome’s cheeks. The whining is so close to being song but so far away. It aches within her as if it’s she who’s broken. As if her voice is trying to sing and failing. It doesn’t matter that it’s an AI. This is wrong. As the whine runs down to silence and the bubble looses from a broken hole near the top of the mass, Surg lets go of her chin, says, “Save your pity; you’ll need it for yourself soon enough. What they’ve done to you makes this Machine’s suffering look like mercy.” Then he leans down and catches the bubble on his tongue.

  Purple eyes snap off, replaced by static, blank holes. A hiss of VR data. The muscles about his eyes twitch, staccato, as in REM sleep. Then he jerks. One hand flies to rest on Machine. Surg’s head tilts, as if he listens to faraway voices. His mouth drops open on a soft exhalation of awe. For a moment, his face is clear, as soft as a child’s. Then the hand on Machine twitches, convulses, lies still, and his expression shutters, closes down, bleak and grief stricken.

  Haze stutters back to purple eyes then. He says only two words, his voice hoarse with unshed tears that are not for Pome. “Prelate Agastine.”

  Scope slumps against a tower of conjoined units. “Agastine?” His tone is dead, a ghost of itself.

  Surg’s mouth twitches downward. He says to Pome, “Given your death is defrag, I expected it to be a notable. But no matter who it was, there’s no changing it. H
is death is now yours, and your life belongs to him.”

  “He wanted my eighty years,” Pome says, still stuck on the shock of who it is that has her future, feeling thin, fragile, a touch unhinged.

  “Not just your years,” Surg tells her, “your death, too. It makes those years unassailable, unmarred. Clearly too big a prize to resist.”

  Pome stares at him, wretched. “How is it he could take them?”

  Surg takes time pulling the needle from the back of her hand, his fingers sure and gentle. Speaks slow and even, as if he can make the words easier to hear somehow. “Priest created more than Machine. Word is, when he tested himself, his diagnosis was bad. Some degenerative disease, a slow killer. So he created something to fight it. Called it the bioscape virus.” Surg reaches into his jacket, pulls out a vial, hands it to Pome. “It’s data-intensive biotech. Reprograms cells.”

  Pome looks at the liquid in the vial. It glides up and down the vial as her hand moves. The liquid shimmers, millions of tiny glistening specks, trapped constellations, in thick, silvery solution. It radiates gentle heat. Her palm tingles with it. Feels like she holds a life in her hands, a thrumming heart.

  “Can Pome use that?” Scope asks. The hope in his voice is a ragged edge.

  Surg snorts. Takes back the vial. “No. It can do a lot, but it can’t stop death.” Surg tilts the vial, repockets it. “That’s the problem, see; death is what notables like Agastine want to avoid. They can’t, so they cheat it instead. Watch Machine records for people like Pome, people with a stock of years. Take them while they’re sleeping, steal their blood. This”—he pats his pocket—“makes it all possible.”

  Pome can’t take it in. It refuses to make sense. “How can that work? It’s not the blood the future is tied to… it can’t be. Why does no one put a stop to it?”