Perion Synthetics

by Verastiqui, Daniel

  The expansion would continue, no doubt, whether or not James Perion stood at the helm. The machine was in motion, hurtling down the highway at a hundred miles per hour, heading for a collision with the immovable Vinestead boulder sitting squarely in the middle of the road. Though Sava wasn’t on board, at least she was able to watch the scene from a safe distance where the impact wouldn’t kill her but rather provide a spectacular show of flames and carnage.

  Perion Synthetics was on its own now.

  Fire and forget, thought Sava, as she closed her eyes.

  The construct reorganized itself into a massive arena with two levels of stadium seating surrounding a dirt oval. At one end, the demon stood with its arms raised to the open roof, the flames on its horns licking at the stars. Around one of its massive legs, a chain of black steel secured the beast to the wall. Sava turned her mind’s eye to the left and saw the Perion army amassed in total for the first time. Row after row of identical synthetics marched forward, their unnecessary fleshy veneers ripped from their chassis, replaced by charcoal sinew that disappeared into desert-camo pants. Their boots kicked up dirt as they pressed forward, closing the distance between Perion Synthetics and Vinestead International once and for all.

  Sava floated into the stands and sat down next to her sister.

  “This is the catalyst, you know,” said Anela. “After this comes the war. Vinestead will feel threatened for the first time in its existence, and that means they will lash out harder and faster than ever before. Standing against them will be more dangerous, and it will only get worse as we get closer to the end.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “Courage will not be enough, Kai. You will have Gil by your side, but this war will be fought in virtuality as much as it will be fought out there. You should start gathering more ciphers to the den. We will need to be ready when the time comes.” Anela placed her hand on Sava’s knee. “You can do this, Kai.”

  At ground level, the army came within twenty yards of the demon. It paced in the small circle allowed by the chain, stomping its hooves in the dirt. As the synthetics approached, the demon retreated to the wall and gave a massive roar.

  Sava winced as the dome glowed and cracked; it was poor protection against the sudden fire flaring in the infinite ether around the arena.

  The hoof prints left behind by the demon turned black and reflective, and through them pushed the heads of ten smaller beasts, each one crying out in a high-pitched whine. As they found their footing, they turned their attention to the synthetics. In unison, they opened their elongated jaws and spewed flames across the distance, charring the dirt of the battlefield. The first row of synthetics melted mid-step and collapsed into a heap. Soldiers behind them crushed their remains with their boots as they passed over them.

  “An ambush,” said Anela. “We should have anticipated that.”

  Something blurry danced in Sava’s periphery. She turned to look at it, swirling the construct around her. The bottom dropped out and she felt herself falling, chasing after some elusive piece of information stinging at her from the edges of her awareness. She pursued it deep into the black of the construct until the arena was but a speck overhead. Through this singularity, she could hear a voice calling to her.

  “Kai. Kai! KAI!”

  Sava jerked awake, slamming her knee into the glove box.

  “Easy there,” said Cam. “The bad man can’t hurt you anymore.”

  In the distance, the brown hulk of Outpost Alpha pushed through a hazy mirage. There was no traffic on the PE, nor any obstacles to slow them down, yet Sava couldn’t stop herself from imagining a line of demons stretching across the blacktop, their mouths open and ready to spew napalm.

  No. Not demons…

  To the right of the road, the last of the turnarounds flew by. In another hundred yards or so, the outer barriers would start to build up; they were designed to keep traffic from veering off the road as they approached the outpost, which was exactly what Sava needed Cam to do.

  “You alright?” asked Gil.

  Sava reached out and yanked the steering wheel towards her, pulling the car off the road and onto the uneven dirt. The vibrations made every muscle in Sava’s body ache, but she held tight even as Cam wrestled for control.

  “Stay off the road! And don’t slow down.”

  Cam let the car drift a few more degrees to the right and then held a steady course.

  “What’s your problem?” he asked.

  “Ferko.” Sava took a breath to steady herself. “We need to go around the outpost. I gave a kill order to shoot any synthetic on sight. And after how we left things at the Spire, I’m sure they’ll be expecting us.”

  “Yeah, but isn’t there some kind of fence or something?” asked Cam.

  “On the border, yes,” said Sava, “but not here at the PNR. It’s just stakes set in the ground. Pick two and drive between them.”

  “If the car holds up,” he replied.

  Gil leaned forward and stuck his head between them. “What the hell is that?”

  Sava followed his gaze. A blur moved on the horizon, kicking up dust as it ran parallel to a line of metal poles jutting up from the dirt.

  “Is that one of your AutoGuards?” asked Cam.

  It was moving too fast over uneven terrain to be a Scorpio. It could have been something new, some special toy in Javier’s arsenal he had been saving for a special occasion.

  “Stay away from it,” said Sava, “whatever it is.”

  Cam let the car drift to the right, only to see another blur pop out from behind a low ridge of rocks.

  “Aw shit,” said Cam.

  “They’re wearing AG uniforms,” said Gil, “and they are really hauling.”

  “Step on it, Cam. They won’t follow us past the PNR.”

  In the construct, Sava shot a glance at Anela, who shrugged in return.

  The engine growled as Cam floored the accelerator.

  “Not gonna make it,” said Gil, sitting back in his seat.

  “We’ll make it,” replied Cam. He squeezed the steering wheel, muttering come on, come on under his breath.

  Sava looked back and forth between the blurs and tried to do the calculations. By the looks of it, Gil was right. Even if Cam could get the car’s speed into the triple digits, the Scorpios were converging too fast.

  “Ram one,” said Sava, pointing to the AG on the left. “If he gets too close or if he starts firing, run him over.”

  “Just a little property damage, right?” asked Cam.

  Seconds dragged as the car’s suspension absorbed every rock and hole it encountered, whining in high-pitched squeals and sending vibrations racing through its passengers. Sava pulled her seatbelt tighter and gripped the handle above her window.

  Cam cut left and put the car on a collision course with the AG. In turn, it skidded to a stop in the dirt and changed direction. Now facing them, Sava could see what Gil had seen with his advanced eyes: camo uniform, embedded sunglasses, and an M4 carbine slung over its back.

  The Scorpio made no effort to avoid the car. At the last possible moment, it leapt at them, sending a flying knee into the windshield. It bumped along the roof, coming to a stop as metal fingers pierced the cabin just above the rear window. The rest of the synny crashed against the glass, shattering it and sending shards over Gil and Roberta. A gloved hand reached in through the open window and grabbed ahold of Gil.

  Outside, the metal pikes of the PNR flew by without acknowledgement from the synthetics inside the car.

  Sava turned in her seat, wanting to help Gil, but he and the Scorpio were moving too quickly, fighting it out with teeth and elbows, shredding the leather and busting out the side window.

  Gil kicked at the back of the driver’s seat, pushing Cam’s face into the steering wheel. He let out a curt hack and then slumped over, remaining upright only by virtue of his seatbelt.

  “Stop fucking around, Gil!” yelled Sava, grabbing for the wheel. The car was losing s
peed, but she still struggled to avoid the stray boulder or Joshua tree.

  Gil let out a sudden grunt that faded into the distance. When Sava looked back, she saw both synthetics sliding off the trunk of the car. They landed in the dirt and rolled several times.

  Sava threw the car into park and waited as it ground to a halt. Blood ran from Cam’s nose, but the pounding vein in his neck meant he was still alive. Voices from behind drew Sava’s attention, and she was out of the car and running before realizing she had no weapon, no real way of helping Gil.

  “He is not worth your life,” said Anela.

  In the construct, Perion’s army stumbled and fell, leaving the demon to roam free in the arena.

  “We need him,” said Sava. “The war needs him.”

  By the time she reached Gil, the Scorpio had ceased its attack. It held its position a few feet away from Gil, one knee on the ground, one hand reaching for the knife in its boot. Despite its aggressive stance, its face was calm, almost as if it were listening intently.

  “All must walk their own path to the dust,” said Gil.

  The AG relaxed and considered its surroundings. Concern crept onto its face.

  “We are past the PNR,” it said. Frantic hands patted its chest to make sure it was still there.

  “We are,” said Gil. “And we’re both still alive.” He looked to Sava and forced a smile.

  “Told you you’d be fine,” said Sava.

  “This isn’t possible,” said the AG, standing up. It looked back towards the PNR. “We… we can leave?”

  The construct shimmered. Anela wiped away the arena and the stands and the stars until it was only her glowing figure standing in the null space. Her face grew dark.

  The AG looked past Sava to the horizon. Somewhere beyond the curve was I-10 and beyond that, any destination a synthetic could dream of. It took its first voluntary step away from Perion City.

  “No,” said Gil, climbing to his feet. He pointed to the PNR. “You have to go back. Your brothers are waiting for you. Go tell them what I’ve told you. And then you show them and everyone like us that you’re free to leave this place.”

  Anela’s screams felt like hot needles in Sava’s ears, but she couldn’t bring herself to open her mouth. For so long, she had protected Perion Synthetics, putting herself between the company and whoever might threaten its security. But now, she wanted nothing more than to step aside, to let someone else take up the mantle for a while. And there was no reason that person had to be human.

  Perion engineers had given synthetics everything they needed to pass for a real, live person.

  Now it was time to give them a choice.

  “Go protect your brothers,” said Sava. “Vinestead will be coming for you. You need to prepare yourselves.”

  The AG stared at Sava for several seconds before touching the band around its throat. “Alpha Thirteen for Alpha Actual.” He waited for a response, and then said, “Targets bugged out. Returning to base. Out.”

  “Good man,” said Gil.

  Alpha Thirteen pulled his rifle from his back and handed it to Gil.

  “If they will be coming for me, they will be coming for you,” he said.

  Gil slung the rifle over his shoulder and nodded to the AG, who then took off at a light jog towards the PNR.

  “Alright, let’s go,” he said.

  Sava turned and walked with Gil to the car.

  “You’ll have to drive,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “You knocked out Cam.”

  Gil huffed. “Just a little organic damage, right?”

  “Right,” said Sava, glancing back over her shoulder.

  The PNR floated above a shimmering mirage. Just beyond it stood Anela Zabora with her arms folded and her head slowly shaking back and forth.

  CODA ONE

  KAILI ZABORA

  January 2016

  Le Soleil Rouge occupied the second floor of a dilapidated building in Astoria’s Old District. The elevator on the first floor had a sign on its doors directing customers to the stairs, as the decades-old cables could no longer reliably carry the car from one floor to the other. The foyer of the building had dust and occasional leaves collecting at the floorboards; painter’s tape covered the far wall in random streaks, as if a renovation project had been started and forgotten in the same day.

  The only clean surfaces were the stairs; each step had a veneer of polished, white marble with veins of some dark brown mineral flowing through it. The flickering LED lights near the elevator made the steps glimmer. The stairs snaked upwards in a spiral, clinging to the outer wall to form an open well; a chandelier hung down from the second floor to about six feet off the ground, its crystals throwing sparkling light on the walls.

  As Kaili Zabora climbed the stairs, she noted the stark contrast between the first and second floors. Stepping onto the landing, it was as if the foyer had never existed, nor had there been an Old District or even Astoria. She felt completely transported, like stumbling upon a rogue construct in virtuality, some self-contained bubble of Eden floating in the ether. Through the glass walls of Le Soleil Rouge, she could see a young woman in a black blazer sitting behind a reception desk, the rims of her dark glasses framed by short, blonde hair. There was another woman seated in the waiting area with a palette in her lap. She wore a wooly scarf over a leather jacket—appropriate for an Oregon winter, if you didn’t count the bare skin running from the lip of her skirt to the tops of her knee-high boots.

  The doors slid apart at Kaili’s approach, causing the receptionist to look up from her terminal. She smiled and rose to greet her customer.

  “Welcome to Le Soleil Rouge,” said the woman. “How are you today?”

  The reception area was warm; Kaili untied the belt of her trench coat and slipped it off of her shoulders.

  “I’m fine,” she replied, though she was anything but. “Yourself?” she asked, though she cared little about the answer. Kaili Zabora didn’t have the patience right now for inane niceties, but then at that moment, she wasn’t Kaili Zabora.

  “I’m doing great. How can I help you?”

  “I have a reservation. Bonnie Diaz.”

  “Absolutely, Ms. Diaz,” said the receptionist, sitting down again. She banged away on her keyboard for a minute and then pulled a palette from its dock. “Since this is your first time with us, we’ll need you to fill out this registration form. Would you like a hot tea or water while you wait?”

  Kaili took the palette and scanned the questions. “How about a coffee?”

  The receptionist smiled. “I can make you a decaf. We don’t recommend our guests have caffeine before their treatment.”

  That was too bad; Bonnie Diaz loved her coffee black and jittery.

  “No, thank you,” said Kaili. She took a seat in the waiting area, putting a low table between herself and the woman with the self-insulating legs.

  The registration form asked for standard information like her name, address, and phone number. Kaili put bogus information in each text box, but the second part of the form made her consider her answers more carefully.

  List your current injuries.

  Kaili rolled her memory back to the week in Perion City when her carefully constructed plan had come crashing down. She had assumed an identity, gained the trust of hundreds of Perion Synthetics executives, and helped steer the company towards its inevitable showdown with Vinestead International. Then, a mistake, a rumbling of the foundation, and all of the cards she had so meticulously placed flew into the air. If the old man hadn’t died, none of this would have happened. She wouldn’t have had to kill Robert Gantz—a crime for which she had paid no real penalty except for losing her job.

  Kaili Zabora: fired from a job.

  It was the kind of story Cam would die to get his hands on.

  She recalled her escape from Perion City, when the car was idling at the curb in front of Cam’s house in Burbank. Cam had been quiet for most of the ride, staring out th
e backseat window as the car rolled along, occasionally sniffing away some pain. Kaili stood with him for several minutes on the sidewalk, talking about the future.

  “You’re going to feed this, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “It’s what I do,” he replied, his voice lacking his usual enthusiasm.

  “And you’ll mention my name?”

  At that, he looked away from the darkened door of his home and caught her eyes.

  “Three months,” he told her. “Maybe four. I can’t stop the truth from coming out, but maybe I can delay it for a while. You can figure Benny Coker will be pushing Gil’s story down our throats for the next several weeks, so I’ll have to hold off anyway.” He waited as she looked away. “You have to understand, Kessler. The guilty have a way of getting what’s coming to them. The Perions, Chuck Huber, my backstabbing cocksucker of a boss, and yeah, even Sava Kessler. I’ll do what I can to paint it in the right light, but you did kill someone.”

  “Don’t worry about Sava Kessler,” said Kaili, smiling. “She’s not even a real person.”

  List all personal effects.

  She had left Perion City with only the clothes she was wearing and the money in her pocketbook. Going back to San Diego had crossed her mind for a moment, maybe to see mom and dad before the shit storm came ashore, but showing up with two synthetics in tow would have raised too many questions. Instead, Kaili drove Gil and Roberta to a Calle Cinco safe house in El Cajon. She rested there for most of December before setting off alone on I-5, making the thousand mile trip to Astoria over the course of a week. A hotel in the Old District provided a place to sleep between the days spent walking the condemned piers of the city, watching the sun set in one unique oil painting after another.

  “Ms. Diaz? We’re ready for you now.”

  Kaili handed over her palette and followed the receptionist through a black door with a small porthole.

  “This is our relaxation room. You can wait for your specialist here after you’ve changed. We have beverages—water, juice, and tea—but as I mentioned, no caffeinated or alcoholic drinks. Please help yourself to anything you’d like.”