by Kurt Johnson
“PURPLE!” Godwill gasped, pointing at ME. The NPD team, as one, whipped around. For one very long second, no one moved. His bulging eyes became even wider when he saw Cri’s hair. She hadn’t changed it back to black from this morning. “And the.…,” he paused and looked to me, and then back to my sister.
“It’s…infected a Glean,” he whispered to himself, his voice raised in a creepy, mad-scientist way.
“Leave, Godwill. Now.” Mom’s complete lack of emotion was a promise of violence. Dad opened the door and motioned the NPD officers toward the courtyard with his pistol. Chunks’ snoring and our breathing filled the air between us as we all eyed each other.
“FOOLS!” Godwill shouted, breaking the momentary pause. His eyes were crazed as he glanced from Mom to Dad. “It’s purple! You have lost control of your Human!” He wiped a fleck of spit from his mouth with his sleeve and then made a small, circular gesture to his guards that ended with a finger pointed at me. The two nearest officers stepped toward me. “It must come with us. And your daughter, we must inspect her as well.”
Cri gasped at that. I was terrified. I knew I was different, but today was just one difference after another. My dad’s words from a moment ago were loud in my memory. Hunted. It was too much. My heart raced. My eyes welled over. NO. These jerks were not going to see me cry.
In a blink, Mom’s other pistol was drawn and smoldering air-distorting orange wrath. Godwill frowned at her and then Dad, as he realized that he and his men had dropped their rifles in the courtyard. Under Chunks. He motioned to his officers to stand down and became still for a moment. I saw his transformation. His giant eyelids slid down and up as he regarded me…and switched to Plan B.
“Little Terran,” he said to me, dipping his head in a single nod, suddenly composed.
“Leave. Now,” Dad said, pointing his guns directly at Godwill. But Godwill’s skeletal gaze didn’t move from me.
“Until the next time, Raystar.”
My name from his lips froze me where I stood.
The Jurisdictor exited our kitchen. Ignoring my dad, his four officers formed up, two-by-two, and followed in his wake. Their white ponytails waggled along the black and red of their NPD uniforms as they discreetly stepped around the snoring Chunks and entered their cruiser.
Looking more like a cracked egg than an oval, the cruiser took to the air uncertainly. It trailed heavy smoke as it turned toward Blue River and disappeared in the twilight. The house perimeter autocannons, every one of them, tracked the ship’s departure.
I wondered what they were talking about on their ride home. How their cruiser got trashed by a gratcher? Or were they plotting how to capture one purple-haired Terran? He’d known my name the entire time! I was hunted, and the hunter had made himself known. Was that thing in the fields connected to Godwill?
“Purrrrrple! Eeeek! Huuuman! Weee’re all going to dieeee!!” AI squealed at the retreating cruiser, from under my shirt, making us all jump. Then, in a normal voice and a brief flare of green, AI crooned, “By the Architect’s galactic butt! Those Lethians deserve everything that’s....”
“You set the gratchers loose on them?” Mom interrupted, glaring at me. The door was open and her hair spread out behind her from the incoming breeze. Her eyes glowed like twin suns. I scrambled backward.
“Mom…I….”
“Yeah, what in the great gravity well? You autotargeted them with our house defenses?” My dad turned his glowing stare to me as well.
“Could you be any more CRAXY? You mocked Godwill?” my sister shouted. At me!
“Uh,” AI chimed from under my shirt. I fumbled with the pendant around my neck like it was on fire and held AI at arm’s length. Mom, Dad, and Cri’s eyes burned after it.
“Yeah! What’s your major malfunction?” I said, heaping it on. And then I thought to him, What WERE you thinking?
Raystar. For over a millennia, Lethian doctrine is to ”disappear” Humans that manifest. You have manifested dramatically, AI returned.
So what? Hide me! You focus them on me? That’s DUMB! I snarled. I imagined a future on the run, living off of the land, being chased by leggers, evading NPD cruisers, craxy nanoconstructs, and being on GalNet’s “Most Wanted” list.
Forget any free weekends this year. Playtime was over. Giant doors were closing, and any semblance of a normal kid’s life was being sealed off behind them. My hands balled into fists. I struggled to breathe.
Ray, get a grip.
Answers, AI…I am not doing this anymore. I needed information like oxygen.
You haven’t been ready for answers. No one has. You’ve been too young, and your parents…they’ve strayed. I had no idea what he was talking about. The tightness in my chest pushed a storm of emotions through me and I gasped for air.
And became aware of…the growing silence in the room. My family had paused their interrogation of AI and was watching me. The conversation with him was in my head, so they only saw my fury with each thought.
“Explain yourself, AI.” My dad stepped toward me, gently removing the pendant from my outstretched hand. In contrast to his calm, his eyes were on fire. I blinked up at him.
“Lethian doctrine is the removal of Humans expressing the control gene. This isn’t over. You both know this. He knew Raystar’s name. This is endgame,” AI said as he swung slowly from my dad’s hand. “I bought us time to identify a solution. A solution YOU BOTH SHOULD NEVER HAVE NEEDED! That thing in the fields this morning, and now a Jurisdictor? Why are we even on this stupid planet? I didn’t cram myself into this ingot to babysit you both while you get lost in each other’s teenage Glean passions! Grow the gravity well up!”
“LADY. COMMANDER,” he continued, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “You’ve both lost control! Raystar is our responsibility and this is how you discharge your DUTY?” Mom and Dad looked at each other with guilt. The four of us, as one, blinked. Eye glows flashed out, replaced with the calm of Glean gold.
And then, to me, he thought, Raystar, you’re getting a nose-bleed. Calm, Raystar, calm.
I swiped away the drop that had reached my lip before anyone else saw it. What is “endgame” supposed to mean? Answers, AI. You, everyone, is keeping secrets. AND YOU KNOW MY PARENTS! I need to know what’s happening!
I’m here to help you. You don’t see it now, but you will. I promise, Raystar.
Pfft. I rubbed my blood between my thumb and forefingers, feeling it spark. Whatever this thing inside me was, it was active, just underneath, waiting for my emotions to release it.
Mom sighed, regarding AI. “He…it,” she made a small cutting motion with a hand as if waving away a fly. “Nent, we must occupy them with compliance to their rules. Create time for us to get offworld.”
“Uhng! I don’t understand,” Cri threw her hands up and thumped down on a chair.
Nent placed AI on the kitchen table, and sat down with his head in all four hands, black hair cascading around his fingers. “I can stall them for a week, maybe two,” he mumbled to the ground.
“You called the Embassy,” Mom said to Dad. “I haven’t spoken with my brother in…a long time.” She straightened up, touching her scar absently. “My movements will be tracked, yet Ever is safe for me. This threat is directed solely at Raystar. I will vid you from the Embassy.”
Cri stared at our parents, her mouth open in disbelief. “Mom. Dad. What are you talking about?” I wanted to tell her to say it slowly, so the grownups could understand the weight of this question, but I was locked in my battle with burning eyes. Mom looked at my sister, then me, and sighed.
“Darling Cri,” Mom said, “Our time on this planet is finished. Until we know what action to take, we must act as if the NPD visit was nothing more than a scary interruption.” she said. “When I return from Ever, we will have the information needed to determine our next move. In the meantime, you two will go to school as if it is the most natural thing in the world.”
Cri wrinkled her face and tilted her h
ead skeptically at Mom.
“This is because of her?” my sister asked, refocusing her attention on me, an accusatory frown gathering like a storm over her softly pulsing eyes.
Mom and Dad had moved toward each other, missing her question. They lit up each other’s faces with their deep gaze, and Dad took Mom’s four hands in his. “Love, I believe this is as much and as good as we can do right now.” They reached out to Cri and me and pulled us into a hug. I grabbed AI as eight parental arms wrapped us in a Glean embrace. In our familial hug, they missed Cri’s words:
“I don’t want to leave.”
10
The chirrups from the little bugs every world has were noticeably absent. They’d greeted me every waking morning since I could remember. Our house was quiet.
Ray, c’mon. Breakfast. School, AI prodded.
Arg. I rubbed my face with my hands. Waking up was dumb.
To my right, the Glean Dreadnought annihilated the Lethian ships for the millionth time. Opposite, Terra spun lazily in her blue, green, and white glory. Terra. Lethia. Neither of them should have been my problem. I pulled my blanket up and around my head so only my face was exposed. I’d seen my first space battle two days ago. Right above my home. Something had attacked me in the fields. I was being hunted. The NPD wanted me. Me. And my DNA was…what? Nothing made sense, and yet, too much was happening too closely together for this to be coincidence. The secrets I’d wanted so fervently to find had tracked ME down.
Everyone—well, maybe not Cri, but everyone else, including now apparently the flipping Jurisdictor of my planet—knew more than I did about ME.
For the first time in my life, I felt isolated. Alien. Desperately lacking in information. Whom could I trust?
I frowned. One person was at the center of all of my questions.
Answers. Now.
AI acknowledged me with a mental nod, as if he’d been expecting me to eventually get to him. I could hear my pulse. Sparks crackled from my hair to my hands with each stress-filled heartbeat. I recognized that surge of energy coursing through my body.
You’re different from other synths. What. Are. You?
The conversation must have looked odd. I’d jumped out of bed, AI clenched in both hands. I was glaring at his metallic, uh, self. I could have sworn he sighed, collapsing his virtual shoulders in a shrug.
I’m two things, he said, after a moment. I’m your ally. And I’m your…friend. I can’t give you specifics, in case, you know, Godwill manages to ask you questions, um, directly. Like through torture or something.
What? How could he joke right now?
Tell me something not out of a spy vid, AI. Besides, Mom and Dad are getting us offworld. I waited for him to continue. He didn’t. AI. I need more.
Yesterday, he had been my best friend. He’d been given to me by my Human parents. Today? This INGOT was holding out on me. Why? A spark jumped from my hair to the 3-D battle scene. It crackled and with a puff of metallic smoke, flashed off. My biological parents, my…DNA, he had known about these things all of my existence.
And he wasn’t telling me.
WE CANNOT GO OFFWORLD, he replied. Ray, trust me. We need to get you to….
“I’ve trusted you my WHOLE LIFE!” I shouted, ignoring his cautionary yellow glow.
I returned to communication by thought. Not go offworld? Static snapped, singeing the clothes covering my desk and making the shag carpet smoke. You’ve been holding out on me, for what, thirteen years? Trust you?
Calm down, Ray. Calm down. Your parents have it wrong. You’re an easy target offworld. Lethians will find you up there easier than on Nem’.
That didn’t help my stress at all. The Convergence wants my DNA? I thought back to him.
Not the Convergence. The Lethians, the Empress.
Riiiight.
Yeah. And there’s only one place where you’ll be safe. It’s a hail-Mary play, but safer by far than offworld.
Unngh! He could be so annoying! Can you just talk normal? Like, without all these flipping up-the-gravity-well expressions?
There’s a deserted Human base, underneath the Mesas. We need to get you in there.
I blinked, not expecting that. On one level, it made sense that there might be a Human base there, because Nem’ was, after all, a Human world originally. But for that base to be a safe haven after all these years? And how would he know? Dad was right—AI needed to be inspected.
C’mon, AI.
It’s true, Raystar. I’ve been searching for the key protocols, and I found them. They’re here on Nem’, in Blue River.
Seriously, why am I listening to this? Tell me something useful. My tone was full of contempt.
Ray, you gotta believe me. The base is called New Mars…you’ll need a DNA control key to get in.
I could do without any more talk about DNA.
Oh, AI thought.
What? I responded.
Maybe Godwill has it, and that’s why he’s made his move? I pictured the Jurisdictor’s skeletal grin, his last look at me as he called my name, and shuddered.
Last chance, AI. My whole life you have been spying on me. For whom? Keeping secrets from me. WHY? You’re supposed to be my FRIEND! If you know all this stuff now, why didn’t you tell me before? When it mattered!
“WHEN YOU MATTERED!” I was shouting now. Wisps of lightning crackled from my legs, melting brown circles into the shag carpet.
No. Seriously, Ray. I’m….
I began to hyperventilate. The smell of plastic filled my nose as I stomped to my bathroom and dropped him in my toilet.
Waiiit! Talk to the Elio.… I flushed. He’d turned bright yellow as he started to go down, and I saw the light follow him into our waste processor. As he disappeared, the toilet, the bathroom, and I returned to darkness.
With a buzz, the 3-D image of me flickered to life. My bedhead crackled with sparks and a thin line of blood traced from my nose to my lip, glittering with electricity. My eyes were huge and my chest heaved. I didn’t look unstable. Not at all. Right?
Who was I kidding? I would never have a babysitting job again. I imagined what my parents’ friends might say: “Raystar, don’t worry about the damage. Why, we hired an interior designer just last week, and the burned furniture is a reminder that this remodeling isn’t a next-year project. Besides, our littlest thinks you’re simply, how do you say? Nova! So…Here’s the tip. We’ll be sure to call you…if we ever become suicidal.”
Whatever. I batted the sparks away, smoothed my hair down, and used my wrist to wipe the blood from my nose.
“There,” I said, “better.” It was, right? My pajamas fell off me as a rack extended from the wall with my school clothes. If I rushed, I could make it down before Cri and actually get some food.
And if AI had a nose, he’d smell how done I was with the mystery. ALL DONE with his mysteries. His maddening presence in my life. Flushed down a toilet. Gone.
Thirteen years of companionship, gone. Pff. It was clearly a fake friendship. But I couldn’t dismiss how he’d comforted me, perhaps even more than Mom or Dad. He was in my head. When I was fever-sick, he’d tell me stories of Earth. When I was sad, AI helped me think through the sadness and, failing that, he’d tell me some stupid joke. So many times, I’d laugh despite myself. And if I did something amazing, or that I was proud of, he was there more than my parents to witness my achievement, to congratulate me, and to urge me to be proud of what I’d done, nearly the moment I’d done it. I had an unconscious running dialogue with him.
It wasn’t there any more. AI wasn’t just in my head, I realized. He was in my heart.
Oh my god.
“Raystar!” Dad shouted, startling me out of my horror. “Mom has left for Ever and I’ve made breakfast!” The house amplified his already way-too-loud voice. I felt weak. What had I done?
Dad smiled at me as I thunked down the stairs to the kitchen. He didn’t catch my deepening despair.
My purple hair flopped over my face
and the additional weight pulled me toward the table. Gratcher. Eggs. Uhg. The smell wasn’t delicious any more. It was just familiar. I thought of Chunks. He’d beat the…heck out of the NPD cruiser and pretty much saved us. Wow.
I can’t eat gratcher anymore. I ate everything around the steak and pushed the plate away.
“AAAIIIIIEEEEEE!” Cri screamed as she leaped down the stairs, sliding to a stop at my plate. Her black hair swished from her momentum. Dad’s giant guns materialized in his hands. I jumped, coughed a spark out like I was choking on electricity.
“Thanks!” she said, grabbing my plate, oblivious to her options for destruction. After finishing my food, she grabbed the plate Dad had set out for her with a hand and shoved its contents in her face with the others.
The first day of school made her hungry. And loud. Not in that order. She sucked down her food.
She shouted “C’mon, Twig!” and grabbed my hand with one hand and our lunches in two other hands. We rocketed out the door, into the courtyard, to our darts. “I’m not going to be late because of you.”
“SQUEAAAA!” Chunks thundered. Cri stopped dead in her tracks and I smashed my face into her backpack. Chunks looked down at us with lidded pig-eyes and snuffed again. I rubbed my nose. Ow.
“That gratcher is CRAXY,” my sister whispered, leaning toward me before backing a meter away from the gratcher pen.
I looked at Chunks while he regarded me. He was big and ugly, for sure. I was a weed. A hunted weed. Something clicked, irrational as it was. We were what was left of Terra.
Huh.
I reached into my lunch, grabbed the cake Mom had made for dessert, and, breaking it, tossed half through the force fence. His eye, high up in his giant head, tracked the cake’s arc. He looked back at me and lowered his head, reaching his slimy tongue out to taste the cake bit where it landed. It vanished delicately into his huge, toothy mouth. On a hunch, I reached my hand between the bars, the other half of the cake resting on my palm.