“Just like that? What if I talk about what I’ve seen here? What if I tell people you killed Robert Gantz in cold blood?”
“Robert Gantz was threatening the safety of Perion City and its residents. At the time, he was illegally trespassing on private property. I was well within my rights to protect the company and its interests. So write what you want. Tell people I killed him because of some long-standing rivalry or because we were secretly lovers—I don’t care. Just remember this when you’re painting me as some psychotic bitch with a blood lust: Cynthia Mesquina, at the behest of one Lincoln Tate of Lincoln Continental, did knowingly and willingly commit corporate espionage and sabotage. According to the laws of the state of California, Perion Synthetics has the legal right to seek damages in the amount of and exceeding the current net worth of Lincoln Tate and his media company.”
The words rolled off her tongue as easily as any speech to Chuck Huber about how much more he had to offer the world than his scientific achievements. It was empty talk, a theory of a notion of an idea of what someone working for Perion Synthetics would want to hear. Most times, Sava found her mind wandering even as she was speaking, retreating to the construct to think about something important, like the future, or the war, or what she was going to have for dinner that night.
“I don’t like threats,” said Cyn.
Sava chuckled. “I’m just telling you how it is. You are no longer welcome here.” She leaned closer. “It is time you went home.”
“I would, but I have some unfinished business with a certain self-righteous cunt who put a bullet in my shoulder. If you damaged one of my augments…”
“Your vendetta will have to wait,” said Sava. “Go back to Umbra. Spend some time recuperating. When you’re healthy again, come knock on the gates. I’ll have a hundred synthetic guards waiting to rip you limb from limb. I’ll repurpose every bit of tech in your body and see that a future line of synthetics is built in your image, with your gaudy red hair and sexually ambiguous body type that drives all the immersion junkies in Umbra crazy. I will make you Perion’s number one bitch until people have forgotten all about the real you and only remember Cynthia Mesquina as a submissive, synthetic whore who does all the naughty things not listed in the catalog.”
Sava stood and reeled from the sudden vertigo. When she recovered, she looked down at Cyn to find the smile had left her face.
“Your time in Perion City has come to an end,” said Sava. “Go in peace or in pieces. I don’t care which.”
Cyn snorted in response. “You can’t hide in here forever. You know that, right?”
“Girl, by the time I leave the PC, this country will be embroiled in a second civil war. Companies will fall, lives will be lost, and even people like you will be forced to take up sides. So forgive me if I don’t quiver in my panties at your little threats. When the end of the world comes, you’ll be fighting so hard just to survive that your petty grudges will seem like pleasant memories. Find me then, and we’ll reminisce about the time I shot you for trying to destroy billions of dollars’ worth of private property. We’ll talk about the Great Emancipation and how you set the fight against Vinestead back a decade.
“Or maybe we won’t. Maybe there won’t be a war after all. I’ll wake up one morning to find I’m a VP at a bankrupt synthetics company. You’ll wake up wondering why there’s a Guardian Angel chip in your neck and Arthur Sedivy’s voice in your ear. Either way, tonight won’t mean a thing. The sooner you get over it, the better off you’ll be.”
“I’ll get over it once I’m done here. After you’ve paid.”
Sava nodded. She understood vengeance, its driving need.
“Suit yourself,” she said, walking away.
“And I want my needler back,” yelled Cyn.
“Mr. Reyes has it,” said Sava, pausing for a moment. “Maybe if you ask him nicely, he’ll give it back to you.”
“Maybe I will. Then I’ll come for you.”
“Of course you will, sweetie.” Sava resumed her march to the hallway. “I’ll send some guards to wheel you out to the PNR. Some of my human staff will escort you the rest of the way to Perion Terminus.” She raised a hand in a backwards wave. “It’s been a pleasure, Cynthia.”
A string of unintelligible curses followed her into the hallway.
Before Sava could turn the first corner, a synthetic nurse stepped out of an operating room.
“Ms. Kessler, I must insist we examine your injuries.”
Sava felt her body sway. “Only if I can sit down.”
“Right this way,” said the nurse.
Fine, thought Sava. Ten minutes of downtime. Maybe fifteen.
After that, the real cleanup would begin.
57
“It’s too much,” said Sava, her voice flat in the infinite construct.
She was too tired to even imagine herself in her usual avatar. Instead, she sat on the glassy floor, legs doubled up beneath her, one shaky arm out to support her weight, the other pressed against her chest, trying to stamp out the fire in her lungs. Paralysis gripped her body, as if someone were holding her from behind, their limbs wrapped around hers. Sometimes this unseen phantom would flex its arms and a million little teeth would chomp their way along her triceps. Other times, it would dig a knee into the small of Sava’s back, forcing her closer to the ground.
In the distance, the Vinestead demon towered over her, almost laughing, and Sava wanted nothing more than to stand up and face it. She didn’t want to let it see her suffer, but there was no command she could give her avatar to make it move, no way to squeeze more energy from a depleted battery.
“That is the life,” said Anela. “You fight, you tire, and then you die. Is today that day?”
“No,” replied Sava.
“What was that? I cannot hear you from down there.”
Sava looked up; Anela had turned her head away.
“I said no.”
“Still nothing,” said her sister, tapping her ear.
Sava groaned and put her other hand on the ground. She twisted onto her knees and fell forward. The floor of the construct smelled faintly of the Pacific Ocean. The black sludge made room for her nose as it conformed to her face. Suddenly there was no oxygen; she would be dead in a matter of seconds if she didn’t pull away, if she didn’t give her imaginary lungs the air they so desperately needed.
“Sometimes, you have to get close to death to recognize it. Sometimes, you must be shown what you stand to lose before you really start to fight.”
Sava’s scream trembled the ground around her, sending violent ripples throughout the construct. The ache in her muscles fell away as the flames in her lungs licked at her throat. Stepping out of herself, she saw the sides of her neck begin to redden. They did not flush; they glowed as if her flesh had been draped over a roaring fire. Her lungs flared in her chest, making them visible through her back. The avatar’s black shirt burned away, exposing the many ridges of her spine poking up through her skin.
She pushed harder than the construct would allow, and it was just enough to tear through the constraints of the imagined simulation. She bolted upright on the examination table, narrowly missing an overhead spotlight.
A synthetic hand grasped her on the shoulder.
“Careful, Ms. Kessler,” said the nurse. “You’ll want to wait for the medication to wear off completely before you try to walk.”
Sava felt dried saliva at the corners of her mouth. She wiped it away with the back of her hand.
“How long have I been out?”
“You slept for two and a half hours. Your body needed it.”
“I told you I only had a few minutes. I’m supposed to check in with Mr. Perion every hour.” Sava edged herself off the table. When her legs threatened to buckle beneath her, she gave them a stern mental command. After a few steps towards the door, she knew it had taken.
“Mr. Perion is aware of your condition,” said the nurse. “It was his decision to let you sleep.
”
Sava stopped at the door. “How is he aware?”
The nurse pulled a section of the butcher’s paper away from the exam table and tore it off. “He came looking for you earlier. When he saw you were asleep, he told me to keep an eye on you but not to disturb you.”
“Where is he now? I need to speak with him.”
The synny nodded towards the door. “He may still be in the atrium visiting with the wounded.”
“She means glad-handing the proles,” said Anela.
Sava shook the voice away and stepped out of the exam room. Her neck felt stiff as she turned side to side to look at the gurneys lining the hallway. She put a hand up to test the skin; it came back covered in some kind of sticky balm.
The mood in Medical had shifted during Sava’s slumber. No longer were the patients being wheeled through the hallways like go-carts at an indoor track. The nurses, both synthetic and human, walked with less urgency, moved along by the plaintive cries which came less frequently. The worst was over; the tidal wave of injured and dying had been met by a massive synthetic breakwater. Anywhere else in the world, the nurses and doctors would have been overwhelmed by the sheer numbers.
But not in Perion City. Not in the synthetic utopia dreamed up by the man with graying hair and impeccable posture, by the man who now sat hunched over on the low wall of a garden in the atrium, his face pressed into his hand. For the first time since switching over to his synthetic body, James Perion looked tired.
Sava knew the feeling all too well. She navigated the rows of cots until she reached the garden. She sat down beside the boss of bosses.
“Ms. Kessler,” he said, without looking up.
“Mr. Perion,” she replied.
“Enjoy your rest?”
Sava felt the warmth climb her face. “I’m sorry. The time got away from me.”
“A lot has been getting away from you as of late,” said Perion. “I hope this isn’t becoming a new habit of yours.”
“Absolutely not,” she replied, trying to convince herself and Perion simultaneously. “Everything is under control. I’ve neutralized all of the aggregators and restored the synthetics to normal operation, as you can see.”
“You restored them?” asked Perion. “So Robert Gantz and Cynthia Mesquina had nothing to do with it?”
Sava’s stomach twisted. There was no way he could have known that, unless…
She sought out a specific cot in the atrium and to her complete lack of surprise, it was empty. Cyn was gone.
“I would have put everything back,” said Sava. “Once I had them contained, I was going to clean up the signal. So either way…”
“They came back,” said Perion. “My son came back to stop the destruction of the city and its people. If they had escaped, how long would you have let the synthetics run amok before calling them off?”
As long as it took, thought Kaili.
“I didn’t expect there would be this much collateral damage,” admitted Sava. “The city was more dependent on synnies than I realized.”
“It surprised me as well. I had always hoped for synthetics and humans to live side by side in a mutually beneficial relationship, but I never wanted us to be dependent on them.”
“You mean us on you?”
Perion sat up straight and surveyed the atrium. “Yes,” he said, his lips tight. “It’s clear to me that you have become too dependent on the synthetic workforce, at least here in the city. We were supposed to be modeling real world applications, but no city on earth will have this level of synthetic saturation, at least not in the near-term. We reached a critical mass at some point, but none of us saw it. You can’t have an entire firehouse of synthetics. You can’t have only one doctor and two dozen synthetic nurses. All machines have the capacity for failure. Even ours.”
“Especially ours,” said Sava.
“Though it’s not always their fault. Sometimes there is a human failure.”
Sava nodded; she understood it was time to be humble. “Yes, sir. I accept full responsibility.”
“No,” said Perion. “I signed off on the idea. This is on both of us.”
Sava followed his gaze over the endless sea of cots. For a few minutes, neither of them spoke.
“Was it really necessary to kill Robert?”
“You had to do it,” said Anela. “There was no other choice. Make him understand that.”
“You tell me,” replied Sava. “How many synthetic James Perions would Mr. Gantz have had to destroy before you considered him a threat?”
Perion looked down at his hands. “There were two of us running for so long… I had gotten used to the secondary data stream. Sensory input from another place in the world, processed independently but synced to the same consciousness. When Robert terminated that copy, it stopped the stream. I had forgotten what that felt like.”
“Like losing a loved one?”
“Deeper,” said Perion. “Like I lost a piece of myself.” He tightened his hands into fists and released them. “Maybe it was for the better. That part of me had grown dark and bitter. Too strong-willed. Perhaps Mr. Gantz did me a favor.” He shook his head. “At any rate, this is just a temporary setback. I will have a new copy imprinted and the stream will resume. I doubt Robert meant to kill me per se. If anything, he probably recognized the simple truth that I can’t be killed, and therefore my synthetic instances can be destroyed without personal risk to me.”
“Any man who points a gun at my head and pulls the trigger is my enemy,” said Sava. “I don’t have the luxury of backups.”
“You said I made a threatening move on Joseph. Robert’s response was to destroy that instance of me to save my son’s life. I see no problem with that.”
“He shot at me, Mr. Perion. He emptied an entire clip into Roberta trying to kill me. Punish me if you want, but I stand by my decision.”
The scene replayed in Sava’s head. No matter which direction she took the simulation, it always ended the same way. Robert Gantz would have killed her just as easily as he killed James Perion.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” said Perion. He gestured to the cots. “What matters is that we restore order, that we get these people fixed up and back to work. I imagine we’ll lose a healthy number of them after this.”
“You could give them bonuses to stay. Hazard pay or something.”
“Money only goes so far, Ms. Kessler. You know that. They’ll want someone to blame.”
“I’ll give them someone.”
Anela walked the perimeter of the construct in Sava’s mind, drawing up the shades on large vidscreens showing footage from the Spire’s security cameras. The video would back up Sava’s claims that aggregators acting with terroristic intentions, and with the help of a traitorous chief of police, had waged a private war on Perion Synthetics, its property, and its employees. By sabotaging key systems, they were able to bring down the command and control signal for all synthetics, rendering them mindless and freeing them from their safety protocols. Only through the tireless efforts of Perion engineers was order restored, showing once again that innovation and salvation will always come from within, that no matter what the world throws at Perion Synthetics, the company will forever endure.
The floor of the construct lit up in the undulating waves of an American flag as patriotic fanfare on a piano rose to a crescendo. Sava would make people loathe Robert Gantz and distrust any aggregator who dared to write one unflattering word about the company. In the end, the city would be stronger and its citizens more resolute.
It would be Sava’s most epic piece of social engineering to date. And judging by the smile on Anela’s face, Sava wasn’t the only person who thought so.
“I want a proposal in my inbox by the end of the day,” said Perion. He stood and adjusted his pants.
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, if you’ve had enough rest, I would like you to collect my son and bring him up to my conference room.”
Sava stood. “I sen
t Cam to look for him earlier, but I don’t know if they’ve made it back.”
“They just walked in through the north entrance.” Perion’s eyes drifted to the ceiling as if he were looking through the sub-levels to the lobby.
“How do you know that?”
Perion tapped the side of his head. “Multiple streams of sensory data. I had to fill the void with something.”
Total awareness, thought Sava. Was Perion tied into the building’s entire monitoring system?
“I’ll bring him,” she said, still wondering how long Perion had been subbing the security feed. Did he have eyes and ears watching and listening when she leaned in close to Gantz as he drew his last breath?
“Good,” said Perion. “I need to have a talk with my boy.”
58
It took ten minutes to clear the line of people waiting for an elevator on Medical. The crowd continued to grow behind Sava as she pulled out her phone, trying to ignore the stories of harrowing experiences from the synthetic uprising. She sent a quick message to Cam.
Send Joe up to 70.
She left out any explanation as to why she didn’t want to meet them in the lobby. It wasn’t just the possibility that Joe might be angry at her; simply being told his father still existed was an emotional blow Sava didn’t want to witness, not after imagining it for herself. The scenario played out in the construct, showing Anela succumbing to some treatable disease, only to be replaced by a synthetic version, which was then blown away by Robert fucking Gantz, and once again replaced by another synthetic.
Sava wondered if she would lose her mind from the constant ups and downs or if she would take comfort in the fact that Anela Zabora would live on forever, an eternal shoulder on which to lean.
“I already will,” said Anela.
The hallway was full of expensive suits and pleated skirts when Sava stepped out of the elevator on seventy. On the other side of the well-dressed regiment of Perion lawyers, Cam and Joe stood just outside the closed doors to the conference room. The son of Perion had paused as if collecting his thoughts. When Sava caught Cam’s eyes, he shrugged at her in response.
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