by Damien Boyes
Lost Time: Part Four
Social Faith
Damien Boyes
StatUS-ID
[fdaa:9afe:17e6:a2ef::Gage/-//GIBSON]
SysDate
[06:23:17. Sunday, January 19, 2059]
I don’t know how I ended up here, my life in ashes.
I spent last night with a woman I barely know. We slept, side-by-side on the bed, fully clothed. I laid awake, listening to her cyclical breathing, contemplating how we’d arrived here, two strangers who had once been lovers now separated by a gulf of memory.
We’re sitting now in silence at the kitchen counter, steaming mugs of coffee at our elbows. Black, for both of us. I’ve just cut into the eggs she made, soft poached. The way I like.
It’s hard, being with her. Pretending at a domesticity that’s never existed between us. Five days ago, I was happily married with a career and a life I’d worked to build. I thought that nothing would ever change. Then everything went to shit.
Connie died. I died. Even the Digital Life Assurance couldn’t save us.
When I came back, I was someone else and my old life was burned to the ground.
Dora was part of that: Finsbury’s life. A life that was mine but feel no connection to. She was Finsbury’s girlfriend. How he moved on so quickly I can’t imagine. I’d never do that.
Except I did.
Makes me dizzy every time I try to make the pieces fit together in my head.
I may not have done the things he did, but I know this: if Finsbury was capable of it, I am too. Starting an affair with Dora. Becoming addicted to shyfts. Abandoning the Service. Murder for hire.
There’s a version of me that did every one of those things. The potential is inside me.
I don’t want to end up like him, but how can I ever be sure I won’t make those same choices? We’re the same, him and I. The things he did lead him down a dark path. He became a shyft addict, fell in a with another man’s wife, threw his career away.
Finsbury tore his life, my life, down around himself. Maybe he was lashing out, consumed by grief. I can see it happening. Hell, I can feel it. The grief is there within me too. Only I’ve been so preoccupied with trying to figure out exactly what’s going on around me, I haven’t had the opportunity to soak in my sorrow. To let its talons sink into me.
I’ve had too much else to obsess over.
The life I knew is gone. Not only am I under investigation by my former partner for what looks like valid reasons, there’s also a superintelligence hunting me.
Dora wants to run. To disappear. I can’t blame her. Right now, it looks like the smartest solution. But that’s not who I am.
And that’s how I know I won’t turn out like him.
Because I can choose not to be.
I’ve been worried that I’d fuck up again. But I chose different last night. Dora showed up and I was relieved to see her and almost let myself fall into her.
I wanted to, but I didn’t.
That has to count for something, if only a little. Finsbury is not my destiny. I have to trust myself, one choice at a time.
Starting with Dora.
I understand why I was attracted to her. Beyond the physical, at least. These days everyone’s gorgeous. At first she was an irritant, a stranger barging into an already messy situation and making demands, but I’ve seen beyond that now.
There’s a wit inside her. A playfulness. It’s there, buried under layers of fear and guilt. She’s scared, and trying to reconnect with one thing she knows to be true—me—and I keep telling her she’s got the wrong guy.
It must be awful for her right now, all alone, with the person she counted on to stand beside her a stranger, in constant fear someone’s going to kill her, but she’s keeping it together. There’s a core of strength in her. A stubbornness. She can handle herself.
The problem is, she’s hiding something. Has been from the beginning. I want to trust her, but I’ll need to know what she’s keeping from me before I can.
“About last night—” I say and she puts up her hand to shush me, smiles with her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” she says and takes bit of egg, chews and swallows, wipes her mouth with a tea towel and pushes her plate away. “I shouldn’t have thrown myself at you like that. I promised myself I wouldn’t, but you looked so good sitting there and I—. I forgot myself. It won’t happen again.”
She looks at me. Awaiting judgement.
I don’t give her any. “I was worried,” I say. “I hadn’t heard from you.”
“That’s sweet of you, but like I said, I was keeping my head down. Staying alive.”
“We may not have to hide for much longer. I found out who’s after us,” I tell her.
The colour drains from her face. “You know?” she asks, her voice small.
How do I explain this? The truth, I guess. “It’s a fragment of a superintelligence jumping from skyn to skyn.”
She blinks and her mouth drops open. Her eyes dart around in her head but she isn’t looking at me or anything in the room.
“A…what?” she finally asks.
“The person that killed Connie—” I don’t know if I understand it myself. “I’m not exactly sure. He contacted me. Told me his name was Ankur and that some part of what he used to be, something that had evolved out of his humanity, was after me.”
Dora rubs her eyes. “What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know. I only know it’s coming for me. It exists to kill me. Was born with its one goal in life hunting me down. It’s been through Petra and Miranda and Tala and Dub and now it’s in Elder, trying to get close to me.”
Her face is slack, probably going over the past six months, trying to make sense of what had happened. Finally she says, “How do we fight something like that?
I shake my head. “I don’t know. Just like you said when you first came here—it could be anyone.” I take a breath, then just say it. “I don’t know you, Dora. Don’t know a single thing about you. You showed up here, saying we were in love, but this whole time you’ve been hiding something from me.“ She opens her mouth to protest but I cut her off with a small shake of my head and tell her what I've learned. “Miranda said you were the last person she saw before her memory cut out. Dub attacked me the moment I left the restoration clinic, tried to force a shyft into my head. Dub’s trainer said the last time she talked to him a woman had called and he went running.” She’s staring at me, her jaw tense, but I keep going. “Then you show up and you want me to shyft. Last night too.”
“You think I’m this fragment?” she says in a monotone.
No, I don’t. But there’s something. Something’s going on. “You said yourself—it could be anyone. Shouldn’t I at least be concerned you're not who you say you are?”
She takes a second, tilts her head. “Okay. I suppose you have a point,” she says then points to the cans of soup laying around. “You ordered those stacks of tomato soup because you couldn’t stand the food when you were in the Forces and you used to have a cat named Loki when you were a kid.”
There’s her evidence. The only people who knew both of those things were me and Connie.
“I told you those things?”
She nods. We really had been close. Okay, she’s not the fragment, but there's something. “So what are you keeping from me?”
She sighs, exasperated. “You keep telling me you’re not the person I think you are. How would you react if someone you loved forgot who you were? I’m trying to keep it together. I know I haven’t been doing a great job, but I’m doing my best. Yes, Miranda came to visit me, and then the next day she was dead. And yeah, maybe I shyft too much, but it helps. With all the shit that’s going on, the Bliss is the only thing keeping me sane. You just t
old me a superintelligence wants me dead. I think taking a Bliss is the right response to that, and you thought exactly the same way at one time. You’re no one to judge.”
She’s right. “Sorry. I just had to be sure.”
“Are you? You’re sure I’m not a piece of a superintelligence out to get you?”
“I am.”
“Good,” she says, smiles at me, reaches over to my plate and spears some of my egg. “The question is, what do we do now? I vote for getting the hell out of here.”
I don’t get a chance to answer because my IMP chimes through with an announcement. “Visitor in the lobby for you,” it says, withholding the ID.
That can only mean two things. It’s the police without enough cause to invoke the Service Override or someone’s coming to kill us but doesn’t want to take the stairs.
A killer wouldn’t call first, so that means the police. Or more likely, Standards. Special Agent Wiser, I’d bet. Here to ask me about what I was doing at the Fāngzhōu last night.
“It’s Galvan,” Dora says, getting there the same time I do.
I nod, set down my knife and fork.
“That’s settled. We have to leave,” she says as I get up, then reaches out to touch my back but stops short of actually making contact. It breaks my heart a little to see her straining like this, constantly fighting against her instinct to act on her feelings, but I can’t soothe her pain the expense of being honest with her. I can't pretend to love her. That would be just as unfair.
“No more running,” I tell her.
“That’s easy for you to say.” Her voice gets low. “I can’t let Standards find me, Fin. With all the shyfts over the past six months, my rithm’s way out of sync. I haven’t updated in months,” she jumps up, targets her bag with her eyes. It’s packed and ready to go. “If they scan me, I’m done. They’ll overwrite me. Pull my rithm back into line with who I used to be.” Her rips her gaze from her bag and looks at me, her eyes welling. “The person standing in front of you, here, right now, will be dead. Gone forever. Back to being her.”
Shit. One of those things she was hiding. No wonder she’s avoiding the police. No wonder she’s terrified. If Standards scans her, she’ll die. As far as she’s concerned, anyway.
The person she’s become since her last sync will be overwritten. Erased. I may not be in love with her but no way I’ll let Wiser wipe her head clean.
“Don’t worry. I’ll get rid of them.” I say, and think about it, then briefly touch my lips to her cheek, to reassure her. I don’t want her up here terrified. “Stay here, I’ll be right back.”
She wrings her hands but agrees, and watches me leave.
I take the elevator down and find Special Agents Wiser and Brewer. They’re wearing yesterday’s suits, salt stains around the cuffs of their wrinkled pants.
“More of your friends got hurt last night,” Agent Wiser says by way of greeting, before I’m even out of the elevator. He’s talking about Petra snapping and committing a mass murder at a Reszo-only club minutes after I left.
Two armoured Standards agents flank the elevator, one on either side of the detectives, thumbs pressed to the safety overrides on their weapons.
I step out into the lobby, hands in front of my chest. Brewer barks out, “Stop right there, shitbag,” and waves to one of the agents. “Scan him.”
“Is this necessary?” I ask.
Wiser’s holding a sleeve of coffee in his matte black hand. He raises it to his lips, casual, swallows.
“Fuckin’ right it is,” Brewer mutters.
The agent to the left of me pulls out a tab and shines a rolling rainbow onto my retinas. Five long seconds later, it chimes happily. According to the Standards dbase, I’m still me.
Agent Wiser’s prosthetic servos all tense at once, then cut. A second later his elbow whirrs as he takes another sip of coffee.
“I have an alibi,” I say. I wonder if the Mayor will corroborate she had me locked in a cell under her house when the shooting started.
“I know you didn’t kill anyone, Mr. Gibson,” Wiser says through pursed lips. “But you were there. In that same underground Reszo bar where Elder Raahmaan, your former restoration counsellor, showed up after being out of sight for six months. Ten minutes later Petra Anderson, another former member of your counselling group, came out of a room with him and proceeded to kill her security, then her girlfriend, and attempt to kill Xiao, who just happened to be there, before calling you out and putting a bullet through her skull. It’s your assertion that’s all blind random luck?”
“I had nothing to do with it,” I tell him. “I didn’t know Xiao would be there. I went to see Petra. I’m trying just as hard as you are to figure out what’s going on. Harder. At least I’m looking in the right places. You should be out trying to find Elder. He’s behind all of this and we both know it.”
I don’t mention there’s someone else occupying Elder’s head.
Wiser steps forward, his breath shallow, prosthetic fingers revving. “Oh, we should be out looking for Elder, should we? Tell me, Mr. Gibson, what, exactly, did you do to make Elder so mad he’d jack people’s skyns and shoot up a crowded bar to get your attention?”
“You know about the mindjackings?” I ask. He isn’t as behind as I thought.
Wiser’s chest rises and falls. He looks at Brewer then back to me. His eyes narrow. “You know Fin, that’s your problem. You think you’re the hero here. That this is all about you.”
My hands instinctively twitch toward fists but I keep them loose.
Who does he think he is? Trying to make it out like I’ve brought this on myself. Someone brought me back. Dumped me into this life. I squeeze down on a snarky reply.
“I didn’t ask for any of this,” I say, keeping my voice in check. “I’m trying to make the best of a shitty situation, and you’re not helping.”
“That’s right,” Wiser sneers. “You’re going to fix all this, aren’t you? Solve everyone else’s problems. You’re the guy who gets results. The guy who knows better than anyone else. The guy who works harder than anyone else, does whatever it takes.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong. Someone wants to kill me and I’m trying to stop him. I didn’t hurt anyone.”
“Not directly, no. But you heroes, you make decisions. Decisions that get other people killed. Like showing up at the Fāngzhōu last night. Just walked right in, didn’t care what would happen or who might get hurt. You were doing what you needed to do.” He raises the cup to his lips but lowers it before taking a sip. “The thing is, I know you’re not bad, Fin. It’s worse than that. You think you’re good. You think you’re doing the right thing. No matter what. No matter who it hurts.”
My cheeks tingle as anger pulses through my poker face. He’s looking for a fight and I’m ready to give him one, but the thing is, I can’t argue with him. I came to the same conclusion upstairs—the only way I’ll avoid ending up like Finsbury is to trust myself to do the right thing. I have to stay true to myself. To Connie.
But what if that’s what I was doing last time? What if I destroyed my life in the pursuit of what I thought was right?
Wiser knew me. Knew who I became. That’s why he hates me. As far as he’s concerned, I’m the same person he watched go bad, whether it’s happened yet or not. Nothing I can say will convince him I’m any different.
Finsbury. Still finding ways to fuck up my life.
I’m not going to end up like he did. “I’m not him,” I say, louder than I mean to.
Wiser snorts and turns away as Brewer steps up and puts his hand on my chest. He smells like he’s been washing with used baby wipes. “Answer the fucking question.”
“Ask me one,” I say, frustrated at myself, trying to calm down. Now’s not the time to get emotional. I need to think about Dora. Need to get them out of here.
“Why were you at the Fāngzhōu last night, smart ass?” Brewer prods.
“Can I put my hands down?” I answer.
>
Agent Brewer glances quickly over his shoulder and gets a nod from Wiser. I lower my hands but keep them open at my sides, visible, non-threatening. I don’t want to give the agents flanking me any reason to start shooting. “I went there to talk to Petra Anderson.”
“About what, shitbird?” Brewer sneers.
“About what the hell is going on. To tell her she was in danger.”
“From Elder?” Wiser asks.
I nod. “I wasn’t sure at the time, but he was high on the list.”
“You’ve been investigating.” Wiser steps forward and Brewer gives him room. “What lead you to believe she was in danger?”
For a moment, I want to open up to him, to tell him everything about Ankur and his fragment, but he isn’t ready to listen. It sounds insane. He’ll never believe a rogue, body-stealing superintelligence is trying to kill me. Wiser’s got a grudge against me so thick it’s distorting his view of reality. So I tell him what he wants to hear. “Ari Dubecki.”
“I’m going to need more than that,” Wiser says.
“I talked to him in his virt. He swears he wouldn’t have attacked me, would never kill himself. Miranda LeCroix says she’s innocent too. Tala Vivas is pretty far gone but I bet she’d say the same.”
Wiser chews his lip but then his eyes grow hard. “Miranda LeCroix and Tala Vivas presented their defences and were convicted of their crimes.”
“You and I both know a conviction doesn’t mean shit about innocent or guilty.”
“So what’s your theory?” Wiser asks.
“I’m still working on it.”
“And you maintain that you, Petra Anderson, Elder Raahmaan, and Xiao all happened to show up at the same place at the same time by some kind of coincidence?”
“I can’t tell you why Elder or Xiao were there, you’ll have to ask them. I was there for Petra.”
“We’ve examined the feeds,” Galvan says. “What do you think Elder Raahmaan was going to say to you before you were dragged away by Petra Anderson’s security?”
“Not a clue,” I say, then step back toward the elevator doors. “Are we about done? My eggs are getting cold.”