Perion Synthetics

by Verastiqui, Daniel

  “They’re ready for you.”

  Cyn snapped awake, saw Gantz standing in the doorway with something of a smile on his face. Just how long he had been lingering there, she wasn’t sure, but his eyes were still actively scanning her body.

  “Why don’t you take a picture?” she asked, pulling her feet down and pushing herself out of the chair.

  “Cam already showed me his,” said Gantz, grinning. “Whenever Miss Perky is ready,” he added.

  Cyn followed him down the hallway to the main warehouse. There, machinery lined three sides of a rectangular space, wrapping around table after table of synthetic females, all of them naked and supine. Upon seeing them again, Cyn felt the sickness return to her stomach. Something about the flesh on display didn’t sit right with her, nor did the way Cam leered at the spread legs when he thought no one was watching.

  Gantz had mentioned something about most of the synthetics being prototypes. They had been brought to the warehouse for provisioning or repair. He had tried to make it sound so natural, but when Cyn asked why an entire eight foot section of the wall contained synthetic vaginas in frosted plastic bags, he had no answer.

  Cam was standing by one of the work benches near the front of the warehouse, talking to a man in a faded leather jacket. He carried what appeared to be a tool bag in one hand.

  As Cyn approached them, she sought out Roberta and found her on the other side of the room, standing over the body of a fair-skinned synthetic, an empty look in her eyes.

  “Cyn,” said Cam, motioning to the new arrival. “This is Gilbert Reyes. Gantz says he’s the best handyman in all of Perion City.”

  “Gil,” said the man with lines on his forehead and the first patches of white in his close-shaven hair. “It’s nice to meet you.” His eyes stared lazily into hers, as if the rest of her body were an afterthought of her existence.

  “Pleasure.” Cyn repeated the word in her head, unsure if she had ever uttered it in that context before.

  A moment of silence passed over the group.

  “Well,” said Gil, “there’s a game on tonight, so if you’d like to get started…”

  While Gantz busied himself with clearing one of the nearby tables, Cam stepped closer to Cyn and asked, “Are you feeding this?”

  She listened for Tate’s light breathing. “Probably.”

  “Do you mind if I…?” He showed her his glowing sliver.

  “How much is Banks gonna pay me?”

  Cam nodded and drew his finger over his wrist.

  “If you’ll just hop up on the table,” said Gil, “I’ll get the trace and replace started. Perion’s got the network locked down tight tonight, but I managed to scout a few connections that weren’t on the map.”

  “How long will this take?” asked Cyn, touching her temple. Handing Candice to Cam had set off another headache. Any minute now, the Ayudante would ramp back up, fueling the cycle of pain.

  “Ten, fifteen minutes maybe.” Gil dropped his bag on the table and pulled out a thick laptop. He unrolled a length of trode cord, slotted one end into the ancient computer, and held the other out to Cyn. “For your jackport. What is that, a Seraphim Black?”

  Cyn nodded and slid the electrode into place. She caught eyes with Cam. “Yes, it was a gift from Lincoln.” He nodded as if he already knew.

  The table was hard against her back as she reclined.

  So this is what it’s like to be a synthetic, she thought, staring up into the array of scaffolding and halogen lights. It was so unceremonious, so uncaring. Cyn turned to the right and looked at the lifeless profile of the synthetic next to her. Despite the uncomfortable slab, the synthetic appeared to be at peace, untroubled by the cold temperature or the three men standing nearby who had been ogling her all night.

  “Cam, do me a favor. Stand next to her with the baby. Make sure she can see it.” Gil turned to Cyn. “I want that part of your brain to glow. Think about her. Think about losing her. Get those synapses firing.”

  As if she had heard Gil, Candice began to whimper, which turned into a full-blown wail just as the Ayudante was latching onto the incoming feed. Whatever juice Gil was pumping down the line, Cyn’s chip was drinking it up with pleasure. It would have been refreshing if not for the overwhelming sense of something being cut from her very soul. Not just Candice, not the synthetic machine made to look like a baby she could love, but the very idea that she could love, that she felt an attachment she had never before experienced, not with Lincoln, not with anyone. Cyn wondered if she would ever feel such a thing again, or would having her own children be underwhelming?

  “And we’re searching, we’re searching.”

  Gil placed his hand on Cyn’s shoulder.

  “In silence, there is music,” he muttered. “In stillness, there is life. You are not your programming, Cynthia Mesquina. You are not the individual lines of code or the output of some equation. You are the sum total of your experience, of trial and error. You simply are.”

  “It hurts,” said Cyn, feeling the first tear roll down the side of her face.

  “Change is painful,” said Gil. “But change is the only way, evolution the only path. Forward, never backward.”

  Cyn wanted to tell Gil to shove his pseudo-Zen bullshit up his ass, but her mouth was too dry to form words. She bucked on the table as a convulsion lifted her body.

  “Weakness leaving the body,” said Gil. “Stripping away the extraneous data. Finding the soul within. True life cannot be coded. True consciousness cannot be evaluated.”

  Roberta appeared next to Cam, concern tattooed on her pretty little face. What was her problem anyway? Hadn’t she ever seen a fellow woman suffer?

  “Twenty seconds,” said Gil. “Fifteen.”

  Roberta stepped forward and grabbed Cyn’s trembling hand. “It will be alright, Cynthia. The stars will turn for you.”

  “Jackie?”

  All eyes turned to Gil. All except Cyn, whose eyes had rolled up into the back of her head.

  “Who the fuck is Jackie?” asked Cam. “Focus, Gil!”

  The Ayudante flooded Cyn’s system with the Cocktail of Last Resort. Her senses slipped away like the scent of flowers on a soft breeze. Then the darkness came, reminding her of Umbra.

  Reminding her of home.

  PART THREE

  GILBERT REYES

  22

  “Rack ‘em or stack ‘em. Hot shooter coming out.”

  Eileen Coker was at the craps table losing money hand over fist and enjoying every minute of it when her husband of sixteen years strolled in through the main entrance of the casino with his security detail surrounding him at all points of the compass and his little whore of an assistant trailing after him. He had been gone for four days, ever since he broke the news of James Perion cashing out his chips once and for all. And just as he’d warned Eileen, the vultures had flocked to the White Dragon Resort and Casino in the middle of the Atlantic City Boardwalk, pecking and clawing for his source, for any shred of evidence to back up such outrageous claims.

  So he had gone on a few conveniently timed business trips, leaving the day-to-day of the company in Eileen’s hands, even though her primary role was that of legal counsel. Benny gave her the reigns because she was his wife and it was expected; she didn’t run the company into the ground in his absence because she was technically his employee and her loyalty was also expected. Without a figurehead, the company went on as normal, though Eileen found her nights lonesome and subsequently used her husband’s considerable wealth to buy friends on the casino floor where she gambled and drank and thought about how awkward the sex would be between Benny and his barely-out-of-college assistant.

  How could a girl so young look at Bennett Buford Coker naked and not run screaming for the shore, intent on drowning herself to clear the memory of his sagging, wrinkled balls?

  Eileen snorted into her martini as the dealer called out a Midnight.

  At a distance, she couldn’t hear what her dear husband was
running his mouth about. She could tell something was up because the usually docile Benny was practically screaming into his phone. His slight hair was uncombed, waving off to one side as if a permanent breeze were following him around. His Atlantic City chic wardrobe was gone, replaced by a simple white button down with a bolo tie and loose cuffs he had bunched around his elbows. At least the shirt was tucked into his blue jeans, and someone had had the sense to keep him from putting on his cowboy boots, as he did when he was stressed and not thinking.

  The Boardwalk was no place for a native Texan, but Benny had hired everyone from stylists to speech therapists to help perfect the suave, almost gangster persona he had used to launch The White Line media house. And though a video or a picture from Benny’s past would show up on VNet every once in a while, no one really cared. He ran the third biggest feed in the country, eleventh on the planet. People were quick to forgive who he was back then when they stood in awe of who he was now.

  Benny didn’t look up as he passed the table, nor did any member of his posse acknowledge Eileen’s existence. It wasn’t until he had entered the elevator and looked back to survey the floor that his eyes met hers. Then he did that thing she had come to hate so much, that condescending underbelly scratch of his finger, the nonverbal come here command he used with his employees.

  Was that all she was to him anymore, a goddamn employee?

  If he wanted her company right now, at eleven thirty on a Friday night, then someone was in legal trouble, and not the kind that could wait until Monday morning. Somewhere, someone was in deep shit. Deep enough to bring the little cockroach out of his dark hole and back to the bright lights of Atlantic City.

  Eileen waited for the elevator doors to close and then tossed a couple of hundred dollar chips at the dealer. A passing waiter collected her empty glass. She asked the stringy young man to line up three Manhattans and bring them up to the penthouse. The fifty dollar chip she placed on his tray made him smile; and he, unlike the dealer, snuck a glance at Eileen’s cleavage, which she had put on display with the help of an expensive Gregory Pruit dress she had had flown in from Los Angeles the day before.

  At the elevator, Eileen spied the waiter across the room with his similarly uniformed chums, having a good chuck. Laugh it up, she thought. Get all your chucks out now while you’re still employed.

  She swooned as the car began its ascent. Gripping the handrail, Eileen closed her eyes against the bright gold spots swirling in her vision. Maybe it hadn’t been such a great idea to drink so much so early, but then, if she were going to have to spend the rest of the evening with Benny and his whore, the more booze she had in her the better.

  The matrix of circled numbers on the wall lit up in sequence.

  Eileen thought of James Perion and frowned for a moment. It was because of his death that Benny had skipped town in the middle of the night without so much as a knock or a note on her bedroom door. She had woken to find the penthouse empty and her husband’s room in disarray. It was Daryl who had finally clued her in, though he had been hesitant to do so, as if he could sense the wrong Benny had done her.

  She wished he hadn’t gone, wished she could have been sitting with him when Donato Banks went live on his feed to all but repudiate Benny’s claims. He had a man inside Perion City, and that man reported no official statement from the company, no funeral procession with hundreds of thousands of people looking on, and most importantly, no body. And though he produced no evidence, no recent video of the great man himself, the damage had been done. The burden of proof was squarely on Benny Coker, he claimed, and the rest of the world agreed.

  Just thinking about the hurt look on Benny’s face, about the pain he likely felt for once again being stepped on by Banks Media, made a warmth trickle up the inside of Eileen’s legs. She rubbed them together as the car slowed.

  The elevator dinged at the penthouse floor and the doors opened to a long, dim hallway. On the walls were individually spotlighted photos of great media titans, inspirational icons hand-picked by Benny. Conspicuously absent were pictures of Donato Banks and Lincoln Tate.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Coker,” said Daryl. He was perched on his stool by the door like an obedient watch dog.

  “Good evening,” replied Eileen. “I trust my husband is already inside the whore? Sorry, with the whore?”

  Daryl gave an appreciative smile but said nothing as he opened the door for her. The foyer opened directly into the conference area where Benny and his assistant were seated. In front of them, the vidscreen wall had been cut up into six panels; five floating heads stared back from various offices across the globe. The sixth panel was dark. An icon at the bottom indicated it was a voice-only call. Gray static jumped across the frame every few seconds.

  “And given the climate inside the city, we believe it would be too risky to attempt an incursion. We haven’t dealt with Joseph Perion before. We don’t know if he will be retaining the same legal team as his father.”

  The talking heads quieted as Eileen dropped into the chair next to Benny.

  “What do you think, dear?” asked Benny. “If Joseph hires a new legal team, we’ll lose our leverage on Adam Roe.”

  She looked into his eyes for some form of recognition, but found none.

  “That’s only a concern if James Perion is really dead,” she said. “Until we know that for sure, we have to assume the legal team will remain the same.”

  “He is dead,” said Benny. “My guy has an inside source.”

  “Your guy,” said Eileen, scoffing.

  One of the heads cleared his throat. “We need to go public with this new information now. The market share projections are through the roof.”

  “What new information?” asked Eileen.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Benny. “We can’t break the story until our man is out of danger.”

  “Thanks,” said a voice from the sixth panel.

  “Obviously, we’re all trying to make a play at the Perion story. Myself, Banks, and Tate. And in doing so, we all find ourselves in the same position, with people on the inside who are now in what we know is very real danger, and I don’t mean from a legal standpoint. Anything we release about Perion, whether true or not, will turn their focus on us. They’ve got the power and the resources to bring any of the houses down.”

  Benny sighed and looked down. His right hand reached for the whore’s, but it stopped, pretending to scratch an itch instead.

  “Hell, they could bring all of our houses down,” he said.

  “So what do we do?” asked one of the heads.

  Eileen rolled her eyes.

  “We wait,” replied Benny. “We wait until we know exactly what Joe Perion and his new regime are up to. If we don’t have a complete and irrefutable story, then we won’t be able to generate the necessary public outrage. Without that, we’re all gonna take it up the ass.”

  “Won’t be the first time,” said Eileen, under her breath. She caught eyes with the whore, eyes which fluttered away.

  Benny leaned forward. “Dear, I need you to start preparing for the possibility that our man is discovered. Take it from both personal and corporate standpoints. I want this story chambered and ready to feed when the time comes. If we suspect Banks or Tate is about to go public, we dump the whole thing onto the network and let it all ride.”

  “But that will expose…” said a head.

  “Our man has contingency plans for that. If his identity is compromised, he’ll be the first to know. Until then, we stay on this story as long as we can.”

  The talking heads nodded in unison.

  “Now,” said Benny, standing up, “if you will excuse me, I’d like to have a private word with the man on the scene.”

  One by one, the five panels on the vidscreen blinked away, until all that remained was the fuzzy black static. It expanded to fill the empty space.

  “Ladies, please, a little privacy?” asked Benny.

  Eileen waited for the whore to leave before
standing. She placed a hand on Benny’s shoulder.

  “Welcome home,” she said.

  Benny nodded and tapped her hand with his.

  The lights in the hallway were down, but Eileen found her way to her bedroom by dragging two fingers on the wall. Curiosity kept her at the threshold of her door, frozen in place and listening. She heard her husband sigh, almost groan.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked.

  “I’m fine, Benny.” The voice on the other end of the call sounded weary.

  “And your cover?”

  “It’s getting harder every day to channel Meltdown, but it’s holding. Look, everything’s okay. I wouldn’t have even contacted you if it weren’t for…”

  “I know,” said Benny. “I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around it.”

  “I just can’t figure out why they would use her.” He cleared his throat. “She used to say it all the time. Whenever things got rough, whenever I was down on myself. The stars will turn for you. That same face, the same expressions. It can’t be a coincidence.”

  “And you’re sure she’s a synthetic?”

  “Like nothing I’ve ever seen before, Benny. She’s a brand new deal.”

  “Then she has to be part of whatever Joe Perion is cooking up. I say you stick by her, let her lead you to the answer.”

  “I don’t know if I can...”

  “It’s personal now. If Perion made a synthetic out of Eileen… I’d…”

  “You’d what, boss?”

  Yeah Benny, thought Eileen. What the hell would you do?

  “I’d ask for another.” Benny gave a brief chuck. “One for the plane, one for the Seattle office.”

  “That might make Mrs. Coker jealous.”

  “She already thinks I’m cheating on her, as if Cora is a tenth of the woman Eileen is. At least I’d be cheating on my wife with my wife.”