Perion Synthetics

by Verastiqui, Daniel

  Joe did his best to return a smile. He hurried into Gantz’ office and shut the door.

  “Sorry about that,” said Gantz. He settled into his high-backed chair. “Appearances—a necessary evil, right?” When Joe shrugged in response, he asked, “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m fine,” said Joe. “We made our peace.”

  “Do you need anything? Anything at all?”

  “Maybe. Have you seen the feeds this morning? The world seems to think my father is dead. There are no synthetics outside of the city to spill the news and no one in town who would report on the story, except for that aggregator.”

  Gantz waved the idea away. “It wasn’t Cam. There hasn’t been any mention of Perion on the BMP feed or any of its subsidiaries. Deborah says he has an uplink going, but either Banks isn’t liking what he’s feeding or he’s saving it for one big push.”

  “Then we have a leak somewhere. Every synny in the city said my father was dead. Only a handful of people know it’s true. And somehow it got out.”

  Gantz sat back in his chair. “Joe, we’re taking care of it. Deb is watching the network traffic, and I’m watching the doors and windows. Nothing is coming in or going out of this city without one of us knowing. I’m not going to let anything bad happen on my watch.”

  Too late; the products had already taken over the company.

  “Why the loyalty, Robert? My father is dead. You’re taking orders from a goddamn synny.”

  “No. Steve Phelps takes orders from a synny; I take my orders from a higher power. I’m protecting the company the way James Perion would have wanted me to.”

  Joe leaned forward. “And now that’s he’s gone? Who do you take orders from now, his holy ghost?”

  Gantz smiled and tapped the desk with his fingers. “I was wondering how long it would take you,” he said, nodding. “Twenty-four hours to step up to the plate. I’m impressed.”

  “It wasn’t all my idea,” said Joe.

  “Someone’s been coaching you?”

  “All my life.” Joe paused a moment. “Dad and I talked before he passed. He told me to do what I think is right. And I don’t think a product should be in control of the company that makes it. That thing is not a Perion; it’s Katsumi tech, Chuck Huber architecture, and Bhenderu psychology. My dad’s personality is just an add-on. And that’s fine if you just want to keep up appearances, but we’re talking about the future of a company here. My company.”

  “There it is,” said Gantz. “There’s the Joseph Perion I’ve been waiting for.”

  “So you’ll help me then?”

  “Not so fast. If you’re going to suggest what I think you’re going to suggest, then I need to be prepared to find myself on the wrong side of a Scorpio’s rifle. Whether he’s your father or not, that synny has your father’s ambition. He’ll lean on Phelps and Phelps will lean on me. And then you’ll have no more friends in the PC. Nico might back you, but the poor bastard can’t even face his wife without shitting his pants, and that’s when he’s not strung out. No, if you’re going to do this, it can’t be a full frontal assault.”

  “Then I’ll build up support,” said Joe, running through the roster in his head. “I think we could get Ms. Kessler onboard.”

  “She’d never go for it. Too tied up with Chuck Huber to risk putting his research in jeopardy.”

  Joe stood and approached the vidscreen on the far wall. It was showing alerts and advisories in yellow and red text, but he wiped them away. A triplet of feeds faded in, one from each of the houses. In visual format, they appeared as a jumble of keywords scrolling off the top of the frame. The word PERION dominated two of the three feeds.

  “Everyone is waiting to hear what Banks Media has to say. And we’ve got one of their aggregators roaming the city.”

  “He’s touring the assembly facility today,” said Gantz.

  “The fact is he’s here. We can use him.”

  “Then Kessler’s really out of the question. I don’t know why, but she can’t stand him. You should have seen her at dinner on Monday. The tension could have choked a horse.”

  “Is he an asshole or something?” asked Joe.

  Gantz shook his head. “No, she was just pissed because a Virgo prototype was staged at Southpoint and no one had told Kessler about it beforehand. She tried to take the synny away and Cam went over her head. And if I know one thing about Sava Kessler, it’s that you don’t go over that woman’s head.”

  “Alright, then we’ll do this without her.”

  “Do what exactly? You’re just like your father sometimes, Joe: big on the goals but scant on the details.”

  Joe looked away, at the floor, at the walls, but no matter where his eyes landed, all he saw was his father’s shriveled face, the cracked lips. His whole world had changed a mere twenty-four hours before, and yet Joe felt he hadn’t done enough in the interim, hadn’t taken back the company with the speed and agility his father would have been proud of.

  Deciding on the goal was easy: remove Synth J from power. How to achieve that goal was harder. There were several routes, from a simple conversation to physical detention, but no course of action felt like a sure thing.

  If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four sharpening my axe.

  Joe recalled the quote written in permanent marker on the white board in his father’s workshop, a white board that had followed him for decades. Joe first saw it when he was sixteen and at the time, had erroneously attributed it to Lincoln Tate, head of Umbra’s Lincoln Continental feed. Only when he asked his father why there was a quote from a feed monger on the board did Joe finally understand it was from the other Lincoln.

  Gantz was still waiting for an answer.

  “I don’t know yet,” admitted Joe. “But I want you to be ready when the time comes.” He turned to leave, but at the door, he found the handle wouldn’t budge.

  “There’s just one more thing,” said Gantz.

  Joe turned and folded his arms.

  “How do I know you’re not a synthetic?”

  Joe scoffed. “Are you shitting me?”

  “Look, I just found out about your dad’s little game on Sunday. I’ve been calling Synth J boss for months. How do I know there isn’t another angle to this? You want my help? Prove to me you’re human.”

  “How? Slit my wrists?”

  Gantz shook his head. “Let’s take a little drive out to Pure. You make it ten paces past the PNR and we’re in this together. If not, I’ll tell your father what you were planning.”

  “Don’t call him that,” said Joe.

  “Fair enough.”

  Joe checked his sliver. “I’ve got a full plate today. Let’s do this tomorrow, maybe over lunch?”

  “If you’re not there, I’ll come for you,” Gantz replied. He touched a hidden button under his desk and the locks in the door clicked open. “See you tomorrow, Mr. Perion.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  Joe pushed the door open and walked back down the hall. For one terrible moment, he considered the idea Gantz could be right. After all, Joe hadn’t been past the PNR in months, maybe a year or more. What would happen tomorrow when he walked past the outer marker? He put his hand over his heart, felt the beating. He licked his lips and smelled the air. His senses were operating as they always had, reinforcing the reality that he was a living, breathing human.

  He slowed to a stop in front of the elevator.

  If he fell down dead tomorrow, if his insides dissolved into sludge, Joe felt he wouldn’t even be surprised.

  At this point, there was no telling what Synth J was capable of.

  38

  As a synthetic, Synth J had no use for the comforts of the Perion master suite on the sixty-eighth floor. It fell to Joe to sort through the knick knacks and framed photos his father had scattered throughout the four bedroom apartment, adorning shelves in the study, standing in front of books in the library, and placed with care above the vidscreen in the liv
ing room. There were two portraits of Victoria and James Perion there, each five feet tall. Between them, in an only slightly less gaudy and smaller frame, was Joe Perion, looking svelte at twenty-one.

  Joe spent the rest of his day cataloging what would stay and what would go. Late that night, he carried a box full of mementos down to his apartment on the fiftieth floor. The ornate style of his father’s things would look foreign among the neo-modern motif of his home, but Joe felt it was better to keep the photos where someone would appreciate them.

  He placed a framed picture of Dad standing next to the very first Perion synthetic on the nightstand next to this bed. There was something incongruous about the crude prototype with its unibody design and the middle-aged man in a leisure suit and full sideburns, and though Joe hadn’t been alive when the photo was taken, it reminded him of his childhood, when the ebullience of James Perion dominated not only his professional life, but his personal relationships as well.

  The photo was the last thing Joe saw before he fell asleep and the first image he saw when he awoke. As the sun rose beyond his windows, he lay with the frame sitting on his chest, thinking about his father, and not just the most recent revision. There was modern Dad, with his focus on perfecting a dream. There was millennial Dad who spent most of his time on the road, glad-handing with politicians and private investors. James Perion of the eighties and nineties was only visible in home movies and aging documentaries, but Joe knew he would miss those versions as well.

  It was perhaps the loss of future versions that kept Joe in bed until the vidscreen automatically turned on at ten-thirty.

  “The mood in Umbra is subdued this morning for the third straight day on the news of the death of James Kirkland Perion, CEO and founder of Perion Synthetics. While the company has yet to confirm his passing, sources at White Line Media say the seventy-seven year old entrepreneur has finally succumbed after a year-long battle with cancer. Residents here are paralyzed by the uncertainty of the company’s future, with one Umbra local calling Perion Synthetics the last great hope and the world’s most powerful weapon against Vinestead. Arthur Sedivy, CEO of Vinestead International, could not be reached for comment.”

  Joe slapped the remote and turned the vidscreen off. Sliding his legs over the side of the bed, he sat up and put his head in his hands.

  Seventy-two hours had passed since the rumor of James Perion’s death had leaked and already the world was trying to figure out how to fill the void. A simple press conference would have put everything to rest, yet Synth J allowed the rumor mill to crank out theory after theory, creating panic in both public and private sectors, driving down the stock price…

  Joe stood and walked over to the phone on his desk. He placed a call to Legal on the eighth floor and when a woman named Rita answered, he asked to look into stock trades for the last few days, specifically any company making huge buys since Monday. She assured him she would call back with the info just as soon as humanly possible.

  “Message me with whatever you find,” he told her, and then hung up.

  Joe wandered into the living room as he gave his idea more thought. Could there be something behind the stock crash, something intentional? The vidscreen over the shelf came alive when he walked in front of it and synced to the bedroom’s previous channel.

  “Reports of virtual vandalism have been the buzz of VNet since early yesterday morning, with the message THE CREATOR LIVES appearing on high-profile landmarks in many public arenas. While initially thought to be the work of enthusiastic supporters, closer inspection by computer experts has revealed viral payloads hidden in the graffiti. VNet users who come into close proximity with the message may have their avatars overwritten with what appears to be black funeral dress. Subsequent attempts to communicate either orally or via text will be interrupted by the phrase DEATH TO VINESTEAD. VNet representatives have issued a statement assuring the public a patch will be released to deal with what they are describing as a minor and temporary annoyance.”

  An alert popped up at the bottom of the vidscreen—an incoming message from Gantz.

  Damn, thought Joe. He had forgotten about their lunch date at Pure.

  He dragged a finger over his sliver and opened the message.

  “Security breach this morning,” Gantz had written. “It’s bad. Got a meeting with Big J in twenty. You going?”

  Joe retrieved his palette from the desk in his office. A meeting invite was pending on his calendar. “Yes,” he wrote, and then closed down the messenger app.

  He was out of his apartment in ten minutes and in his rush, he almost ran into the Automated Guard stationed outside his door.

  “Pardon me, Mr. Perion,” said the AG.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Joe. He didn’t stop walking until he had pressed the call button on the elevator.

  “For your protection, Mr. Perion.”

  Joe turned to look back down the hall. “Who says I need protection?”

  “Chief Robert Gantz assigned me to this post, sir.”

  Damn he works fast, thought Joe.

  The elevator doors opened and Joe stepped inside. As the car rose, he thought about how serious the breach must have been to warrant an armed security detail. By the time the doors retracted on seventy, Joe had dismissed the AG as an overreaction, a precaution spawned from a set of protocols rather than a conscious decision by Gantz.

  There were more Scorpios on seventy, about a dozen by Joe’s quick count. They lined the hallways with their hands crossed in front of them, their guns hanging by straps at their sides. One looked at Joe as he approached, but upon detecting no threat, it resumed its stoic guard.

  Joe could hear the muffled yelling as he approached the conference room doors.

  “Vinestead? In my house?”

  One of the AGs opened the door for Joe. Inside, he found Synth J standing at the head of the oak table, waving his hands around like a haywire synthetic. Also present were Robert Gantz, Nico Shaw, Chuck Huber, and Sava Kessler.

  “How does this happen?” asked Synth J. He pointed to the vidscreen behind him.

  Surveillance footage rolled, showing a woman in a black, skin-tight suit blasting a synny to pieces. Joe didn’t recognize the place, but given the synny’s integration into the environment, it couldn’t have been anywhere else except the Perion Spire.

  “Joseph, you’re here,” said Synth J. “Please have a seat. I’m just going over with Mr. Gantz here the appalling lack of security in my city.”

  “I can’t watch the entire sky, Mr. Perion,” said Gantz. His eyebrows were scrunched together in the middle of his face.

  “Then maybe I should hire someone who can!”

  Screaming? Threats? Just how advanced were Virgo-class synthetics?

  “Mr. Perion, if I may. We can argue security policy later. For now, we have Vinestead tech within our walls. We have to rid ourselves of this germ before it has a chance to infect us. I recommend you deport her immediately.”

  “Chuck is right,” said Sava. “We don’t know what she’s carrying around in that head of hers.”

  Gantz cleared his throat. “Mr. Ferko says there are only traces of Vinestead hardware in the intruder. It’s not like she’s got a full-on Guardian Angel chip in her neck.”

  “No, Mr. Gantz, it is much worse. She has a modified mil-spec Ayudante. Imagine the damage she could do if she hooked into our network.” Synth J turned to the vidscreen and shook his head. “Of course they would send a woman. They’re trying to play to my sensitivities. Well, if this is what Arthur Sedivy wants, I’ll show that motherfucker how the game is played.”

  Joe shook his head.

  “Ms. Keats hasn’t been able to match her with anyone in Vinestead’s employee database,” said Gantz. “We don’t know for sure who she’s working for.”

  “Then she’s disavowed,” said Chuck. “In which case, we can simply expunge her and be done with it.”

  “She came into my home,” said Synth J. “She destroyed
my property. She spent God knows how long sneaking around my building. If we hadn’t grabbed her when we did…”

  “Did you ask her who she’s with?” asked Joe.

  The room fell silent as all eyes turned to him.

  “Brilliant,” said Chuck, under his breath.

  Sava gave him a slight smile.

  “As if we could believe anything from a Vinestead spy,” said Synth J. “Look at her, Joseph. She’s a rogue agent, a loner. That’s why she was chosen for this mission.”

  Joe noticed Gantz rolling his eyes.

  “Vinestead thinks they can just pull some techy neophyte off the street and send them into my city? No!” Synth J banged his fist on the table, producing a noticeable dent in the wood. “They will not walk over James Perion. I am the defender of this castle and woe betide the creature who steps into my garden. We’ll make an example out of her.”

  Sava looked at the floor, her eyes scanning back and forth.

  “Chuck.”

  “Yes, Mr. Perion?”

  “Is the Paulson imprint ready to go? Can you modify it for Ayudante architecture?”

  “It will take a little time, but yes. Yes, I believe it will work.”

  “What’s the Paulson imprint?” asked Joe.

  “Don’t worry about it,” replied Synth J. “I’m handling this now.”

  “What’s the Paulson imprint?” he asked again.

  “It’s done, Joe. Chuck, get on this immediately. I want it taken care of by COB today.”

  “Goddamn it, Dad. Answer me!” Joe felt the sting in his throat.

  Synth J turned, the fire draining from his facial servos.

  “Son,” he said.

  The word felt like a toothpick under Joe’s fingernail.

  “All you need to know is Vinestead is always looking for a way to destabilize us. I thought you would have understood that by now. Arthur Sedivy and I may play nice in front of the cameras, but down in the trenches, it is a never-ending war. He sends his soldiers into battle and they follow his orders without question. Do you know why that is, Joseph?”

  Joe shook his head. To his left, Gantz shifted in his chair.