by Linda Nagata
I open it and flood the room with sunlight.
But I stay well back from the window.
• • • •
That afternoon, Sunday, I go through my e-mail and my phone log. I have my phone set to put live calls through only from select people. Everything else gets logged. I clear the log and after a quick scan I dump most of the e-mail, knowing I’ll never catch up. When I check the phone log again, there are twenty-four new calls. I recognize only one name: Joby Nakagawa, the brat engineer who made my legs.
Curiosity wins, and I call him back.
He links right away. A little image slides into sight on the periphery of my vision and I’m looking at his pale face framed in white-blond hair. “Hey, Joby.” Then, because he’s sensitive about his work and I have a bad habit of baiting him, I add, “I haven’t managed to break the legs yet. Still working on that.”
“You can’t fucking break the legs.”
I sure as hell hope he’s right.
He adds, “I can’t believe the fucking army gave them to you without consulting me.”
“Sorry about that.”
“I told them I have a program running on your overlay—”
“You do?”
“Of course I do. I have to track performance data on the legs. You didn’t erase it, did you?”
“I don’t think so, but the army wiped all their stuff.”
“I don’t put my data where Command can access it.”
He talks me through the file tree. It turns out he knows his way around my overlay better than I do.
“You see it?” he asks.
“‘Bonedance’?”
I hear a heartfelt sigh of relief. “So it’s still there. Okay. Find the settings.”
“Why? What do you want?”
“I want my data. It hasn’t been able to upload in months, and now the army has cut off my access.”
It’s nice to have confirmation that the army really is out of my head.
Joby and I have had our differences, but he did a damn fine job on my legs and I don’t see any reason to deny him his data. “Tell me what to do.”
We set up his access, and the first data package uploads. “Got it,” he confirms. “Okay . . . I’m setting the program to upload once a day.”
Suspicion kicks in. “Hold on. Is this going to include location data?”
“Is there anything you don’t complain about?”
“I’m not complaining. I’m asking a question.”
He must really want this to happen, because he bites back on his temper. “For the data to be meaningful, I need to know the environment you’re operating in.”
“Yeah? And what if I don’t want to be tracked all over the globe?”
“Why? What have you got to hide? Are you going to work for Carl Vanda?”
This is so out of context, I’m at a loss for words.
“Because I heard you played the hero and saved his life—”
“Ah, shit.”
“—that you fucking got in the way after somebody set up a guaranteed kill.”
“Somebody?”
“Yeah.”
I inventory my memory of Joby’s menagerie of robot toys . . . and decide not to ask any more questions. “You’re right, Joby. I did get in the way, and I’m sorry for it. I really am.”
Several seconds pass in silence while he tries to decide if my apology is sincere.
It’s totally sincere.
“Yeah, all right. If you’re off on some secret mission, you can turn off the geopositioning. It’s just a check box.”
“Okay. I’ll do that if I need to.”
“Don’t forget to turn it on again.”
“Yeah.”
“Or I’ll reach in and do it for you. And if the legs ever do break? No one works on them but me. You got that?”
“Understood.”
• • • •
I go through the closet and the drawers, pulling out my old civilian clothes, the leftovers of another life, from before I went into the army. I put all the slacks in a pile to be donated because my robot legs are two inches longer than my organic ones used to be. Most of the shirts still fit, though I discard a few that I must have purchased in a state of teenage euphoria.
Then I decide I’m going out.
I pull on a pair of knee-length athletic shorts and a running shirt, no shoes on my gray titanium feet because I don’t need them. My heart is thudding at the thought of going outside—which is why I have to go.
“Dad!”
“Yeah?”
I find him in the living room. “I’m going running.” I head straight for the door, not giving him a chance to object.
He doesn’t try. Just like last night, he’s braver than I am. “Don’t run over any mediots,” he advises me as I step into the hall.
It’s not the mediots who scare me. I’m used to being watched. It’s the potential for a bullet in my brain that’s got my heart racing.
The elevator stops twice to pick up people. Both times, the new arrivals do a double take on my legs before they realize who I am. Then it’s all smiles and welcome-homes. I want to be polite, but “Thank you” is all I can manage.
The skullnet icon is glowing steadily by the time I cross the lobby, but I still feel afraid. Outside the door there’s a gauntlet of at least fifteen mediots. They’ve caught sight of me and already their farsights are blinking in recording mode.
Face your fears, right? I step outside. A mob of strangers closes in, shouting questions. I shoulder through them. Feedback from my legs is a jumble of sharp sensation, hard to parse, but I think it’s telling me I’m stepping on feet, kicking ankles. I don’t care because I’m on the edge of panic, sure that someone in this crowd is not what they seem and that I’m about to take a knife in the ribs or feel the cold muzzle of a gun hard against the back of my neck, my last sensation. Then the sidewalk opens in front of me and I take off at a hard run.
The corner light cooperates with my escape, letting me cross the street. I turn right, then left, cross another street, and put another block behind me before I slow to a walk. I’m sucking for air; my heart’s hammering. Despite my daily workouts, the five months I spent in prison have wrecked my aerobic conditioning. I need to start training again, today. But for now I just walk.
The sidewalk is not crowded, but there are people coming and going, some in masks. It makes me uneasy, not seeing their faces. Anonymity shifts the power balance, which is why we always patrolled with our visors opaque.
I try not to make eye contact, but I notice anyway when gazes linger on my legs. Some people even stop and stare, their farsights blinking in recording mode. A few try to stop me, to get me to talk, but I just keep going.
In my logical mind I know it’s a beautiful afternoon, sunny and cool, but it’s not my logical mind that’s in control and I hate everything about being out on the street. I hate the touch of the breeze against my skin and the absurd lightness of my clothes that offer no protection against anything but sunburn; I hate that I don’t have the assistance of the squad drone and that I can’t tap into its angel vision to look around corners and assess hazards in the surrounding terrain. I hate that I have to turn around to know what’s behind me.
To think I used to live like this all the time, vulnerable without even knowing it.
I eye the traffic, study the windows on both sides of the street, check doorways and alleys as I pass. I evaluate the pedestrians, masked and unmasked, and keep my distance from them when I can. I want to be in uniform, anonymous behind my black visor, linked in to a squad willing and able to back me up. I want the counsel and advice of my handler Delphi.
Up ahead I see a new hazard: scaffolding over the sidewalk that’s holding up an ugly canopy to protect passers-by from an ongoing remodel of the buildi
ng above. The sidewalk beneath the canopy is gloomy and enclosed. I don’t want to go there, but I make myself do it anyway. The scaffolding squeezes the pedestrian traffic and I wind up trapped behind two older women who’ve just come out of a store. On the street, a gray cargo van rolls slowly alongside the curb, falling so far behind the flow of traffic that a taxi driver lays on the horn. It makes me think of the fake FBI van in the parking garage of the federal courthouse . . . and of the merc whose throat I tore out.
I fade back toward the building, watching the van driver who is watching me through an open window. He’s a big man, muscular, with a military haircut. He’s not wearing a mask, so I get a good look at him. My encyclopedia detects my interest and launches a facial-recognition routine, but it can’t come up with an ID so he gets tagged unknown.
My paranoia is more creative, and labels him as an Uther-Fen mercenary.
I cut into a corner drugstore, weave between the aisles, go out a different door that opens onto a cross street where there is no scaffolding, waiting there until the van clears the intersection and moves on.
This street is luminous with late-afternoon light. It glints in rearview mirrors and the reflective faces of street signs, and picks out a flight of small objects suspended above the traffic: microdrones, three of them, hovering six meters or so above the center of the street. They look like aerial seekers, the palm-size helicopter drones the army uses for surveillance in urban environments, equipped with camera eyes, audio pickups, and chemical sensors.
I hear a faint buzz and turn to see another microdrone, this one just high enough above the street that it won’t be hit by trucks. Looking up, I see even more—gray objects hovering high between the buildings. I try to count them: Seven? Eight?
“More than usual,” a man observes.
I whip around, doing a threat assessment, ascertaining the position of potential enemy, but there’s just the one guy. No high-fashion mask for him; he’s going barefaced. He looks maybe thirty, skinny as a junkie, wearing tight jeans, a tighter shirt, and a lifeless prosthetic arm. He’s gazing up into the blue through the lens of his farsights.
“Since when are any of them usual?”
“Since Coma Day. It’s a whole new world out here.” He brings his gaze back to Earth, looks at me, and gets labeled with the same tag as the other guy: unknown. “You’re him, aren’t you?” He gestures with his dead arm. “I was in Bolivia. You got better equipment than I did.”
“The difference a couple years make. Who’s running the drones?”
“Police. Private security. Mediots. General snoops.”
“It’s legal?”
He shrugs. “They’re supposed to stay above the buildings. You know how that goes.”
A tiny green light winks on in the corner of his farsights. He’s recording me. I return the favor, logging an image of his face so my system will know him if we ever meet again. As I walk away, the microdrones retreat ahead of me like a flight of fairies.
Up ahead, I catch sight of the imposing bulk of an armored personnel carrier, rolling through the next intersection surrounded by civilian traffic. It’s an urban APC, with four wheels and four doors, marked with police insignia. So it’s come to this? The police riding in military equipment on a beautiful, peaceful spring day?
I cross the street and jog the next block, walk the one after that, alternating, but always looking around, evaluating threats. There’s so much going on, so much in motion, cars and pedestrians and drones and bicycles, with uncountable windows and rooftops for snipers to inhabit. I need an AI to track it all.
Calm down, I think. Calm down. Too bad my skullnet doesn’t know that command. The icon glows, but it’s only taking the edge off, because in my profession—my former profession—a healthy fear can be the difference between life and death . . . but this isn’t a healthy fear. If Delphi were with me, she’d adjust the biometrics, but I don’t have a way to do that.
I stop wishing for it when I hear a shot—bang!—echoing off the buildings. I scramble for cover, shouldering open the door of a deli. Standing well back behind the window display, I try to guess where the shot came from, where it hit. Bang! I flinch as another gunshot rings out—except it’s not a gunshot. Across the street, a pair of overenthusiastic kids helping out on a remodel are hurling old plywood panels into a steel truck bed.
My hands are shaking, but I make myself go outside again. The gray van I saw before is waiting at the curb, hazard lights flashing. The sliding door is ajar. Two muscular men stand on the sidewalk beside it, arguing in Russian. They wear civilian clothes but have military haircuts. Both look up at me. “Hey,” one says, switching to English as the van door slides open wider on remote control.
I don’t stay to find out what he has to say, or what’s inside the van. Uptown traffic is stalled, so I make my escape by cutting in front of the van and then weaving between the cars until I’m in the middle of the street. I scare the shit out of an oncoming bicyclist as I dart in front of him to get to the opposite sidewalk. A block uptown a siren goes off. I look over my shoulder. One of the Russians is in the street, glaring at me, but his hands are empty. He’s not carrying a weapon. Maybe he’s not Uther-Fen after all. Maybe he’s just a civilian who wants to tell his friends he got to meet the fucking Lion of Black Cross.
The siren is getting louder. The Russian glances uptown, scowls, and retreats, jumping into his van as a police APC like the one I saw before heads our way, lumbering across the intersection under lights and siren. I turn and walk fast for the corner. I want to get around it and out of sight, but the cops have other ideas.
The APC swoops up to the curb in a no-parking zone just ahead of me. Doors open. The cop riding shotgun jumps out, along with two more from the backseat. They head straight for me and I know I’m in trouble again for jaywalking in this town.
The first cop grins at his fellow officers. “I told you it was him. Lieutenant Shelley, sir, it is an honor to meet you—”
I glance back at the van, in time to see it turning the corner.
“—but I need to warn you not to cross the street like that. Tickets for pedestrian violations get issued automatically now, and there’s nothing I can do to help you out.”
“What?”
“You know, street cameras, they ID you with facial recognition and a ticket shows up in your city account if you’re a resident, last known address otherwise.” He sticks out his hand; his name tag says Sutherland. “Welcome home.”
Officer Sutherland is carrying a gun, but I estimate the odds of him shooting me are low and I don’t want the NYPD pissed off at me, so I shake his hand and then I shake hands with the other cops, trying not to show how messed up I am.
I think they suspect. Sutherland says, “It must be a shock for you, being in the big city again.”
I ask about the microdrones. “Is it always like this?”
They turn to look at my flock of hovering fairies and as they do, the drones move away, rising higher between the buildings. “Shit,” Officer Sutherland says. “Let me get the meter.”
While he returns to the APC, one of the other cops explains. “All the drones emit IDs, so we can cite their registered owners for harassment, and seize the equipment on a repeat offense.”
But by the time Sutherland is back with the meter, the drones are out of sight. “We’ll log you into the system,” he promises me. “Then our drones can monitor the situation.”
I guess that means it’s only police drones that are going to be pursuing me from now on, but I don’t ask.
They let me go on my way, but I’m done. I need to get off the street.
I start to flag down a cab. Then I get a better idea. A few more blocks will bring me to Elliot Weber’s apartment building. Elliot’s a journalist, and he’s been my friend since before I went in the army—though now that I think about it, his name wasn’t in my phone log. I
t’s possible he doesn’t want to see me. During our last conversation, he was trying to tell me something important, and I wasn’t listening. We didn’t part on the best of terms.
It would be smart to call ahead, but I don’t.
Maybe he’s not even home.
I get to the lobby, and then I make the call.
He startles me by picking up right away. “Shelley? Where are you?”
“Downstairs.”
“Stay there. I’m coming.”
• • • •
His apartment hasn’t changed much: notes and papers on every horizontal surface; a stack of old tablets; a large monitor on the wall; a collection of long lenses for a digital SLR I’ve never seen him use. He sprawls on the couch, long and wiry, his tightly curled black hair cut short and his eyes veiled by the tinted lens of his farsights. I stand at the side of the window, studying the windows across the street, and the cars and people below. Looking up, I see a microdrone floating against the pale blue sky.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Elliot tells me, “but this needs to be said up front, so we understand each other. I appreciate your intentions on the First Light mission, but I think what you did was absolutely crazy. And wrong. There was no excuse for it. People died.”
Lissa died.
The Uther-Fens we killed? I don’t care about them. They were the enemy, and they were in our way.
Still, after being treated like a hero ever since the pardon, I’m almost relieved to hear a different opinion.
“I’m glad you got off,” Elliot adds.
A gray van rolls slowly down the street, but I’m sure now that the Russian who tried to talk to me wasn’t working for Carl Vanda.
Elliot gets up, walks to the window, looks down at the traffic. “What’s up, Shelley?”
“I walked here and it was crazy. I was crazy. I was scared to be out there. I thought I’d get over it if I kept going, but it just got worse.”