Perion Synthetics

by Verastiqui, Daniel

  Cyn froze in place, her leg hanging in the air above Cam’s bloodied face.

  “Lincoln?” she asked. “Is that you?”

  20

  They used to have a cat, a yellow and white furball who roamed the house like she owned it. Her name was Zao, after the tabby who had appeared in the animated film All My Lives the year they got her. Zao’s favorite resting spot was in Cyn’s room, in the line of sunlight cast by the tall, skinny windows on either side of the twin bed. She would start out on the floor in the morning, then move to the foot of the bed as the golden band shortened. Cyn would find her there in the afternoon, asleep or simply pensive, content in the safety of her kingdom. After a hard day of school, Cyn found no greater pleasure than burying her face in the tabby’s soft fur, listening for that deep vibrato purr that always followed.

  Years later, after the cat had died or run away, Cyn would experience the same rattling hum, but instead of a purr of pleasure, it would be from the spiking processor in her Ayudante chip.

  Guardian Angels had no such problem. They stayed well within their rated frequencies, limits set by the manufacturer and government agencies. The MX had no such stipulations or federal oversight. If you could overclock the one advantage you had on the battlefield, then there was really no choice. Push your chip to the limit, the saying went. It wasn’t as if you were going to live very long anyhow.

  Cyn had learned to recognize when her chip was overworked, first by the humming and then by the heat it gave off, the dull ache it produced at the base of her skull. It wasn’t a feeling that would put her down, but it wasn’t exactly pleasant. And as she stood over the fallen Cam, listening to Tate’s screams rattle around in her head, she felt the vibrations ripple through her body, as if the Ayudante were giving off its war cry, asserting itself after having been ignored for so long. The various aches and pains she felt in her body fell away, replaced by a sense of invincibility. The room around her shifted, became less of a generic background and more a three-dimensional puzzle full of escape routes and foot holds.

  Cam was still rolling on the ground, hands holding the underside of his jaw as blood pooled on his light mustache.

  Shaking off the disorientation, Cyn stepped forward and put out a helping hand.

  Cam considered the offer for a moment before reaching into his pocket for his cell phone. He snapped a picture of Cyn and then dropped his head back to the carpet.

  “Asshole,” said Cyn.

  With a groan, Cam rolled onto his stomach and then pushed himself to his knees. “My god,” he said, struggling to find balance. “They build them tough in Umbra, don’t they?”

  “Just you, baby,” said Tate. The whisperer crackled.

  Cyn examined her wrist and read the black on silver text.

  Connection Restored.

  Rotating her arm, Cyn rubbed the remaining concealer away until the black, bony line took shape. The tiniest scar ran down the center of it.

  “Augments,” she explained. “They come in handy whenever a rival house wants to start some shit.”

  “Hey, I was just trying to…” Cam cut his sentence short when he saw the smile on her face. “Well, I don’t know about your hardware, but your Kung Fu is definitely stronger than mine.”

  Cyn crossed her arms over her breasts. “What do you call that fighting style you were trying to do?”

  Cam coughed, grimaced. The small stream of blood from his nose began to trickle down over his lips. “A little of everything, I guess. I’ve been training in VNet for the last year. Never really had an opportunity to use it in real life.”

  “Well, thanks for bringing me back.”

  “Sure. I owed Tate for some hospitality he showed me last time I was in Umbra.”

  Cyn touched the back of her neck where the tremors from the Ayudante tingled her fingers. “Damn this thing is working overtime.”

  Across the room, the elevator dinged. There was no time to run; Cyn fell into a defensive stance. Cam didn’t even register the sound until he saw Cyn staring.

  The doors parted, and out stepped a familiar suit.

  “Chief of Police,” whispered Cyn.

  “I know,” whispered Cam in reply.

  Gantz took a few steps forward and crossed his arms. “Two aggregators from two of the biggest media houses in a city of hundreds of thousands, and you end up beating the shit out of each other in the most secure building in the city.” He laughed to himself. “You can’t make this shit up.”

  His tone made Cyn relax; beside her, Cam seemed positively nonchalant.

  “What do you say, Gantz?” asked Cam. “Should we get the hell out of here? I think I’ve gotten all the material I need for my story.”

  Gantz removed his jacket and held it out to Cyn. “I’m not here, understand? I don’t care what you feed, but you leave my name out of it. They are watching the feeds very carefully, and if you so much as hint about my involvement, all the augments in Umbra won’t be enough to stop me from putting you in the ground.”

  Cyn reached for the jacket and pulled it on. It was much too big.

  “Where’s Roberta?” asked Gantz.

  “She went on ahead,” said Cam. “With the…” He pointed vaguely to Cyn’s empty arms.

  For a moment, she felt as if the Ayudante might buzz itself right out of her neck. The directive was still very much alive, though the Ayudante was doing its best to fight it. But how did the directive get there in the first place?

  “Who…” She choked on the question, her brain refusing to admit the possibility. “Whose baby was that? I mean, I really felt like she was mine.” A cold shudder went through her body. “I still do.”

  “She’s not real,” said Cam. “She’s a synthetic like Roberta. Like I said, probably part of some scheme to cash in on the global population problem. My guess is Joe Perion wants to corner the market with synthetic babies that behave just like real ones. You pay your hundred dollar course fee, train on a robo-baby for a while, and go take your test.”

  Gantz scoffed. “I wouldn’t feed that bullshit if I were you, Gray. And attaching Joe’s name to it would only demonstrate how little you know of him.”

  “If not him, then who?” asked Cam.

  Gantz ignored the question and gestured to a nearby door. “Come on, we don’t have time to stand around in our underwear.”

  Cam held his tongue until they had walked down three flights of stairs and passed through half a dozen security checkpoints.

  When they stopped in front of a large exterior door, he asked, “Your company owes her an explanation, Chief.”

  Gantz examined the vidscreen next to the door, his fingers flying over the display, bringing up an inventory screen containing a gallery of cars. “The lab coats call them forced betas. Every so often, we get people walking out of the desert. Sometimes they’re lost. Sometimes they’re just curious.”

  “Sometimes they’re looking for a scoop?” asked Cam.

  “Not as often as you’d think,” he replied. “We used to turn them away or have them arrested, but some people just didn’t get the message. They wanted in, so we let them in.”

  A number flashed on the vidscreen and Gantz moved to a lock box on the adjoining wall. He fished out a black key fob. “Found our ride.”

  Cyn followed the chief and the shaky Cam out into the garage. Sunlight poured in from the open bay doors, bathing the evercrete cavern in an oppressive lens flare that made Cyn shield her eyes. Only by the sound of boots clapping on the ground in front of her was she able to keep up.

  The key fob was for a black Nissan, similar to the Perion company cars she had seen during live events where James Perion arrived in a convoy of identical vehicles to keep any potential assassins guessing. But where those had been longer sedans with bulging hoods over massive engines, the car Gantz had chosen was smaller, more nimble. An unbroken streak of black glass dominated the driver’s side. A hidden third door on the passenger side allowed Cam to slip into the afterthought of a b
ack seat. Cyn sank into the conforming leather in front and reflected on how out of place she looked with her bare legs poking out from under Gantz’ suit jacket.

  “Where are my clothes?”

  Gantz chuckled; Cyn watched his eyes seek out Cam in the rearview mirror. “Not the first time I’ve been asked that question.”

  In the back seat, Cam tapped a rim shot out on his knees.

  “Hey, Chief Gantz of the Perion City Police Department, the guy who is currently helping me escape my unlawful detainment, where the fuck are my clothes?”

  “Destroyed,” he replied. “I know, it’s a shame. That dive suit must have set you back five large at least.”

  “Nine,” grumbled Tate, as if anyone but Cyn could hear him.

  “We couldn’t take any chances though,” continued Gantz. “That thing was more tech than cloth, so we dropped it into the incinerator like a defunct synny. All of your equipment too. The only thing that didn’t go down the chute was your needler, but Sava Kessler took that for herself. She says it’s a one of a kind Newmark out of South Africa. How did you come by such a weapon?”

  “My mother gave it to me,” replied Cyn. She crossed her arms and looked out the window as the car exited the garage.

  “How does a PR flack even know how to place a gun like that?” asked Cam. “And you just let her take it?”

  Gantz shrugged. “You pick your battles with Sava Kessler. Write that down.”

  The windows dimmed in response to the increased sunlight. None of the guards lining the posts along the driveway would be able to see in. Gantz had his window open only a crack, just enough space to show his badge. After a few tense minutes, the Spire shifted to the side view mirror and began to recede. Cyn relaxed for the first time in hours.

  Then she realized her relief came not from the escape, but from the prospect of seeing Candice again.

  “Why do I feel a bond with a synthetic baby?” she asked. “How is that even possible?”

  “I don’t know the why,” replied the chief. “As to the how, it’s like I said, forced beta. Lot of these drifters coming out of the desert fail one important immigration rule.”

  “Guardian Angel chips,” said Cam. He cocked his head to the right, as if someone were screaming in his ear.

  “Yeah, Vinestead tech. It’s also the weakest and most exploitable mass-market tech out there. It’s not just a monitoring system; it can control you. Someone could walk in, say your average lab coat, and work fine and get along for years. Then one day, the code in their chip fires, activates some subroutine in their brain, and boom, they go all Kaili Zabora over some billion dollar prototype. That’s a time and money setback the big man would never allow.”

  “But you let them in anyway?” asked Cyn.

  “Not without wiping them clean, eyebrows to assholes and everything in between. It’s not exactly an on-the-books procedure, but the GA chip makes it easy to reprogram someone. It’s kind of like the ReTread procedure they use on inmates. Dump the original personality and make the scum of society into a useful contributor. We haven’t had a forced beta tester go rogue in a long while.”

  Cyn let out a deep breath.

  The buildings outside towered over the car, but began to shrink the further away they got from the Spire. Soon they were passing residential areas, neighborhoods of boring beige houses that twisted away from the road.

  “Well, if you’re not gonna ask,” said Cam. Then to Gantz, “She has an Ayudante chip. I didn’t think anyone had broken MoA encryption yet.”

  “Not broken, but subdued. Interfered with.” Gantz waved an uncertain hand over the steering wheel. “Deborah tried to explain it to me… All I know is that the girl with the skeleton tattoo isn’t a Vinestead virgin. Scanners picked up some lingering VTech the moment we popped them on. It may not have been enough to ReTread her completely, but I guess they didn’t need to.”

  Cyn felt herself being pulled through time to that back alley in Umbra, a nearly empty bottle of Stolichnaya in one hand and an anesthetic tab in the other. The hacker had said he’d get every trace of the diseased Vinestead tech out of her, but then he’d also promised his instruments were sterile.

  The resulting infection had put her in the hospital for two weeks, but it had been worth it to be free of the Big V.

  “Fucking Vinestead,” she muttered. The Ayudante opened the feedback loop just wide enough to let her know she was grinding her teeth.

  “Don’t spit in here,” said Gantz. “This is Corinthian leather.”

  “Like I give a shit about your car.”

  “It’s not that. I just don’t think you should do anything until we find out how badly they paddled your gray canoe. There’s a guy I know who’s done some ReTread work in the past. He’s got access to equipment we’ll need.”

  “That’s where we’re going,” said Cam. Then, with just a hint of sarcasm, “Your daughter will be there.”

  Cyn looked over her shoulder and shot back, “And your girlfriend too, right?”

  They made the rest of the trip in silence.

  21

  “What’s it like?” asked Tate.

  Cyn considered the synthetic baby in her arms, found beauty in the way the orange light from the street lamps outside crossed her—its—little face. She was standing at the window with Candice, unable to resist the directive. The more she tried to fight it, the more the Ayudante wanted to help her, and the more it upped its frequency, until finally the world dimmed under the intense heat and vibration in her neck.

  The biochip wasn’t designed to fight its owner. Cyn found through experimentation that holding Candice, walking her around, and cooing when she began to whine, brought her a level of relaxation on par with any of the codified cocktails from the finest synth spas in Umbra. The Ayudante relented on Cyn’s order—maybe it even recognized how therapeutic just having Candice nearby was.

  “Like a drug,” replied Cyn. “Like an addiction, but without the highs and lows. Caring for her provides a baseline. Any deviation from it produces a longing, a feeling of incompleteness. That stress makes the Ayudante throw a damn fit. And that’s where the real pain is.”

  “Hell of a thing,” said Tate, groaning. “I thought if you were caught, they’d rough you up a bit, maybe even try to jack you out, but I didn’t expect this.”

  Cyn leaned against the cold glass of the window. The small office in the back of the warehouse was dark; shadows hid most of the mess surrounding a small desk with scattered papers and empty water bottles lining its edge like impotent sentries. Roberta had been waiting for them, as promised. Candice, asleep in her arms, was waiting too, also as promised.

  Even for a synthetic, there was something off about Roberta, but Cyn couldn’t lock it down.

  “Probably star struck,” said Tate. “Gray is something of a minor celebrity in the City of Angels, even if he isn’t well-known in Umbra. She probably heard his name on the feed alongside some movie star or athlete, thinks she can swing a meet and greet if she just holds onto his coattails long enough.”

  “She’s a synthetic; what interest would she have in any of that? I don’t get why she’s so attached to Cam. It’s not like he’s that good looking.”

  Tate huffed. “Bitches be crazy.”

  “Shut up.”

  Cyn smiled as Candice opened her eyes for a few seconds and then drifted off to sleep.

  Did it sleep?

  “Well,” said Tate, his words beginning to slur. “At least we’ve got a story. You are blowin’ up the feed tonight.”

  “It’s a major score: brainwashing, synthetic babies, compromised security officials. And if what Cam says is true, then the Perions are building an army as well.”

  “You know the worst part of being brainwashed? Not knowing you’re brainwashed. If I have complete control over you and you’re not aware of it, then everything I tell you to do, you’ll think it was your idea. I could control everything, from what you buy to who you vote for.”

&nb
sp; The line went silent as Tate pondered the possibilities.

  A minute passed.

  “Don’t be all doom and gloom,” said Cyn. “We’ll expose Perion, put him under the microscope. When our subbers get wind of this, they’ll come gunning for Perion Synthetics. And not just them: the government, Vinestead, and hell, even the goddamn MX would risk an incursion if they found out someone has a way to dampen their command and control chip. You don’t just push an Ayudante aside without the MoA pushing back.”

  Tate let out a slow breath. “James Perion is in for a world of shit.”

  “We all are.”

  The Ayudante had been fighting the lingering fatigue in Cyn’s body, but the mellow provided by Candice had convinced it all was well and a little sleep might be good for the host. As if a dam of drowsiness had just broken, Cyn moved to the high-backed chair at the desk and sat down. She pushed back to recline, throwing her feet up and dropping them next to a blinking phone. Her new black boots—part of a gift of clothing from Roberta—shone with a red tint.

  Cyn closed her eyes for the briefest of intervals.

  In the darkness, she dreamed of home, of the shadowy streets of Umbra where tech was a presence you could feel with every breath, bleeding from every jackport, collecting in the street like a river of energy. Wading through it, walking with her steel toes in a sea of people and information, was the only time Cyn felt alive. The people of Umbra were just like her, pursuing the same things in life, yearning for that singular nirvana of total awareness. To be all knowing, to be completely connected: these were the dreams of the populace, fleeting fancy no one truly expected to attain.

  She imagined Tate standing at his window again, hands clasped behind his back, his occasionally sharp mind thinking of new and interesting ways to enslave the population with a satiation of the dependency some of them had lived with since birth. In a way, he was the first generation of the coercive feeder, a prototype attempt at controlling people’s lives. He chose the advertising, chose which stories to feed and in what light. If he didn’t think he was manipulating people by constantly running anti-Vinestead propaganda, then he was more of a fool than Benny Coker. It was hard to imagine Tate not seeing the similarities between himself and James Perion, how alike they were in purpose.