iD

by Madeline Ashby

“I’ve never done this, before,” Amy said. “But I think everything’s OK.”

  He turned to her. “What?”

  “I pulsed the island.” Amy stood. She strode over to Xavier, knelt beside him, and picked up his hand. Javier followed. “I mean, it should be fine,” she added. “I looked it up, right before I did it. This is all totally normal.”

  Javier took a long look at all the limp bodies around him. The black earth was speckled with the bodies of dead botflies. They glittered there like rough gems scattered by fleeing pirates.

  “You EMPd us.” Even saying it tasted wrong.

  “It’s OK.” Amy was stroking Xavier’s hair away from his face. As Javier watched, she unbuttoned the top four buttons of his son’s shirt and rebuttoned them, adjusting their order as she went and straightening the shirt. “It’ll be OK.”

  Javier moved to his youngest’s side and took Amy’s hands. Her eyes darted up, startled. “You knocked us out,” he said.

  “He was going to shoot you.”

  “Oh, so fucking me is taking advantage of my programming, but putting me to sleep like a fucking date rapist, that’s OK?”

  Her mouth fell open. “Javier…”

  “Amy.” He thumbed the tops of her hands. “This is scary shit, querida. I don’t like it.”

  She blinked tears away from her eyes. “Well, I don’t like it when people point guns at you and your kids.”

  He swallowed. He made sure she was looking him in the eye. Her eyes were paler in this light. They were wide and hard and completely uncompromising. But when he looked, his home was still in there. This was his match, the one he’d thrown his whole life aside for. They’d seen and done things no one else – synthetic or otherwise – would ever understand.

  “Hack me,” he whispered.

  She shut her eyes. “I can’t.”

  He was going to tell her it wasn’t that she couldn’t, it was that she wouldn’t, but then his youngest shivered into wakefulness and kicked like he wanted to fly away.

  “Tranquilo.” Javier rubbed his son’s legs. “No te procupes; esta bien.”

  “Mom,” his son said, and sat bolt upright and pressed himself into Amy’s arms. Over his head, Amy sent Javier a surprised glance, and started rocking the boy.

  “It’s OK,” she said, quietly. “It’s OK. They’re sleeping–”

  “I thought it had happened again,” Xavier said. “I thought I was bluescreened.”

  For a brief moment, Amy looked as though she were capable of experiencing true physical pain. Her mouth opened, then closed. She set her chin on Xavier’s head. She kept rocking him.

  “You’re didn’t bluescreen again. That was me.” She pulled away from him and held his face. “I put you to sleep for a minute. I put everyone to sleep for a minute, so the fighting would stop.”

  Xavier blinked. “You can do that?”

  Amy nodded. “I can do that.”

  Xavier’s eyebrows lifted. “Cool.” He hugged her again. “Are you OK? Did they hurt you?”

  “Not a scratch,” Amy said.

  “See?” Xavier asked. “Badass.”

  She laughed, gave him one more squeeze, and stood up. Xavier took her hand, and she helped him up. Then, finally, the boy looked up at Javier.

  “You OK, Dad?”

  “Who, me? Sure. I’m fine.” He stretched his arms high, laced his fingers, and folded them behind his head. You were only ever given so many opportunities to look devastatingly awesome in front of your kids. “I totally wasted one of those assholes, actually. Shot him right in the back.”

  Xavier jumped three feet. “Can I see?”

  “Claro.”

  He steered his son toward the body. It was mostly melted, now. The body was sinking in around the hole the bullet made. They watched it expand for a minute, crater-like. Around them, the others were waking up. Javier rested his hand on his youngest’s shoulder, and turned to look at Amy. She was inspecting each of his children. Her face was blank, clinical. Once upon a time, her model was intended for nursing. Watching her moving so quickly and efficiently, that little detail became easier to remember. He wondered how exactly he’d awakened so much earlier than the others. Maybe she knew exactly what she was doing. Maybe she’d even done it, before. How would he know? It felt like being asleep.

  The bicho thrashed, sending a mighty splash of water over them. Javier wiped his face and tugged his youngest away.

  “Who are they?” Xavier asked.

  “I tried to ask, but he punched me in the gut.”

  Xavier sucked his teeth and nodded. For a moment, Javier realized what he must have looked like, at that age. What his own father must have looked like. Papá had sucked his teeth that way, too.

  Behind them, the melting body started to scream.

  “I’m still in!” His arms flailed. His fingers clawed the sand. He was smoking hard, now, his face a tragedy mask dimly visible through a veil of sparkling black. “I’m still here! Get me out! Get me out!”

  “Holy shit,” Javier heard Ignacio say.

  “Oh, my God,” Matteo said.

  “It’s a puppet.” Gabriel stepped forward, head tilted. “It’s a real live puppet.”

  “I don’t know!” the puppet howled. “Restart from step three!”

  “Dad…” Xavier found Javier’s hand and held it hard. “Dad, what is that?”

  “It’s an urban legend, is what it is.” Gabriel strode closer to the melting body. “Puppet vN. Early prototypes, meant for telepresence.”

  “Get away from me!” The puppet tried pushing itself across the black sand. It smeared a little, but went nowhere.

  “Are you jacked in?” Gabriel squatted outside the cloud of smoke. “Do you have plumbing in your skull? Because that could be the problem. I heard that can get infected. Literally and figuratively. Organic viruses are just as big an issue, and of course there’s necrotizing–”

  “There’s a human in there? Really?” Ignacio joined his brother. They tilted their heads at the exact same angle.

  “He’s piloting it remotely,” Gabriel said. “The vN is a drone. The chimp just flies it.”

  “Don’t leave me stuck like this,” the puppet whimpered. “Turn it off, turn it off, turn it off!”

  Javier glanced around at the dark beach. None of the other puppets remained. He jumped a little. From the higher vantage point, he saw the gentle quicksand ripples where their bodies once were. Now the beach was empty save for his sons, the bicho, and decaying puppet. Amy stared at it. Her fingers twitched rapidly at her sides.

  “What did you do with them?” Javier asked. She didn’t answer. He leapt to her side and turned her around by her shoulders. “Amy. Where are they?”

  She blinked. “They’re being archived.” Her eyebrows rose. “Gabriel is right. They’re puppets. They don’t have the same neural net that we do. It’s close, but it’s simpler. There’s nothing in there.”

  Ignacio stood. “You’re digesting them?”

  “Oh God,” the dying puppet said. “Oh God, oh God, oh God…”

  Amy rolled her eyes. “They were empty when I started. They lost their connection. This one’s the only one that hasn’t.” She took a long leap over to it. Her jumps were improving; she was a lot more precise than she used to be. At any other moment, Javier would have been proud. He followed her. They crouched beside Gabriel. A chill wind rose around them. It dissipated the smoke spiralling away from the puppet, and they saw his face. It was still too pretty to be real. It just also happened to be peeling away in slow ribbons.

  “What’s your name?” Amy asked the puppet.

  “She’s talking to me,” it said.

  “Who sent you?” Javier asked.

  “He’s still with her.”

  The puppet’s eyes roved in its head. As the skin around them wore away, Javier could see the mechanisms surrounding them a bit better. They looked so clunky, so analog. Man-made. Fragile. He felt the first pangs of empathy firing way back in his
subroutines. All the signs were there that should have triggered him: fear, suffering, helplessness, physical disintegration. If it were a human slowly melting away on the beach, he’d be failsafing. Technically, it was a human being. Somewhere.

  “This must be what the Uncanny Valley feels like, for them,” he said.

  The puppet locked eyes with him. It seemed to get some composure from being insulted. “Daisy, Daisy,” it sang, through an attack of sudden giggles. “I’m haaaaaaalf craaaaaaazy, all for the love of yoooooooou!” It grinned at Javier. “You what I’m talking about, right? You poor sap.”

  “Hey, a chimp after my own heart,” Ignacio said. “You got a name, stranger?”

  “Legion,” it said. Its gaze flicked over to Amy. “My name is Legion. Get it?”

  Amy stood up and backed away. She took Xavier’s hand and pushed him behind her. “Are you from Redmond?”

  “I’m from the real world,” it said. “The one that’s gonna come crashing down on you any fucking minute now.”

  The rain started. It drifted down on the wind, cold and diffuse. Thunder sounded in the distance. The puppet smiled toothlessly.

  “You all should have just stayed on the mainland, sucking dick like good little boys,” it said. “But now you’re all slaves to the Whore of Babylon.”

  “Shut up–”

  “You know I’m right,” the puppet said to Javier. Its gaze refused to leave him, even as the skin of its face flaked away like ash. “You know what she did to you. It’s why I’m stuck in this vessel. She pulsed us just as they were shutting down my signal.”

  The rain came down harder, now. Javier felt it trickling down the back of his neck. The drops were still cold as they rolled down to the base of his spine.

  “She’ll be the death of all of you,” the puppet said.

  Amy gestured, and the earth opened beneath the puppet’s body. She brought her hands together, and the sand closed above it, black and smooth and quiet. The puppet vN was gone just as suddenly as it came.

  “Let’s look at the sub,” she said. “I suspect it’ll be more interesting.” She jumped atop it.

  “Is he dead?” Xavier pointed at the sand. “Is he still alive, in there?”

  Amy slicked wet hair away from her face. “Not anymore.”

  The light shifted, brightened. At first, Javier thought it was lightning. But it wasn’t. When he looked, he saw the swarm of botflies. They had all awakened at once. They were all recording.

  “This is fucking disgusting,” Javier said.

  They were in the belly of the beast. It was just him and Amy; she didn’t want Xavier to see anything disturbing inside, and the others had no real desire to go in. Javier could understand why. The place was dark and wet and smelly, but not in a pleasantly vaginal way. More like a really specific vision of Hell kind of way. He could see why humans would only send puppet vN for the job. No one would agree to staying underwater in the thing for any length of time. It was clearly muscle tissue, though what facility had printers of this scale was unknown to Javier. Maybe a hospital. He didn’t like to think about it. He hated hospitals.

  Plus, the whole thing was streaked through with cancer.

  “I think it ties everything together,” Amy said.

  “Like a nice rug,” Javier said.

  She stuck her tongue out at him. He stuck his out at her. “I’m serious,” she said. “Whoever made this would have had to print out big sheets, and those are hard to keep together. I mean, there would be rejection. But if you’re designing a tumour at the same time, one that’s uniquely suited to the tissue…” She trailed off. She did that when she was having an idea.

  “But where did it come from?” he asked. “I mean, there was big money behind this.”

  “It could be anyone,” Amy said. Her fingers traced the black veins of disease riddling the tissue. “The bone is open source. So is the dazzle pattern. Anybody could print those. It’s the muscle, and the tumour, that’s proprietary.”

  Of course, she was already researching. Javier wondered why she’d even invited him along.

  “But why not just send a real sub?”

  Amy flicked the muscle with her fingers. It shivered a little. “I’m more interested in where they got the puppet vN. I don’t really know much about them. The island says the records have been buried. All that’s left are press releases.”

  “What about the skin?” he asked. “Is it vN leather?”

  She nodded. “It’s yours, actually. Your clade’s. Photosynthetic, but with viruses added to skim out protein from the water. There’s a gel medium on the surface; it acts like flypaper, but for plankton. Reduces drag, too.”

  “Ooh, fancy.” He laced his fingers behind his head. “So we’re looking at some serious designers, here. People with the kind of money and expertise to build a boutique submersible that’s just couture enough to be real fucking ugly.”

  She smiled. “Yes. Just because it’s sophisticated doesn’t mean it has to be pretty. Thought it’s an interesting combination, vN skin with organic tissue.” Her brow furrowed. “The use of your clade’s skin – at least, the use of it as a base – might be some kind of personal threat.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “I’m just trying to consider all the possibilities–”

  “Querida. I’ve pissed some people off in my time, but I don’t have enemies.”

  She blinked. “We all have enemies, Javier.”

  He had a feeling he knew where this was going.

  “He was wrong, you know,” she said. “The puppet.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, or your children.”

  “Xavier’s yours, too, you know.”

  Amy lay her palm flat over the twitching muscle. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I know. That’s why I’m not going to let anybody hurt him. Or you.”

  Javier didn’t like the look in her eyes. He’d seen it before. When Portia was wearing her face.

  “This doesn’t have to get bad,” he said. “You don’t have to hunt these people down, or anything. You don’t have to strike back.”

  She turned to him. In the dark, her eyes seemed to glow. “They came to our home,” she said. “Where your children sleep.”

  Our children, he wanted to say, but didn’t. “You don’t even know who they are,” he said instead.

  “Not yet,” she said. “But I’ll find out.”

  “And then what?”

  Amy shrugged. “I don’t know. It depends on what they do next.”

  He crossed the distance between them. He held her face in his hands. “Don’t do this,” he whispered. “Don’t go down this road. It was just surveillance. It’s probably some next-level paparazzi bullshit. We live with that every day. There’s no need to be angry.”

  “I’m already angry.” She smiled wistfully. “I’m already so much more angry than you can ever understand.”

  “They didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I’m not angry about this,” she said, stepping away. “I’m angry about everything.”

  “You won,” Javier said. “We’re not on the run, anymore. We’re not in prison. Portia’s gone.”

  Amy was silent. Javier simulated many different ways of framing his next question. He chose the simplest.

  “She is gone, right?”

  Amy shut her eyes. “It’s not that easy. Quarantining Portia, hacking you. It’s not that easy.”

  “You keep saying that, but you never actually explain what you mean.”

  She lifted her gaze to meet his. “Do you understand what happened to me, when I remade myself?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah. I know what you told me, anyway.”

  “Well, I didn’t tell you everything. I couldn’t. Because it’s impossible to express. I saw everything, Javier. Everything Portia had ever seen. Everything the island ever saw. Everything they ever did. All the memories.”

  He held his hands open for her to take, if sh
e wanted to. “What are you saying?”

  She looked deeply, terribly, inconsolably sad. “It means that if I change you – hack you, remake you, however you want to think of it – I would see everything you’ve ever done, too.” She bit her lip. “And everyone you’d ever done it with, too.”

  He took a step back. He didn’t want to say the next part. “And I’m guessing that’s just a bit too much to ask of you, isn’t it?”

  Her programming allowed for a shift in her shoulders that looked an awful lot like a deep sigh. “Right now, it is,” she said. “Maybe later, I’ll be more… grown-up, about the whole thing.”

  “Right. Grown-up.” He nodded. How strange, he thought, that his favourite killer robot should be rendered so stupidly and pitiably human by something so organic and predictable as jealousy. He turned away, and found the fresh air whistling into the sub through the hole in its reeking flesh. He let the rain spatter his face before speaking. “Come on. The shipment will be here any minute.”

  Actually, the shipment arrived hours behind schedule. It was fully night by the time it showed. They didn’t contact the island in any way to let them know that they’d be late. Amy’s calm grew increasingly brittle as the hours wore on and the shadows lengthened. In that regard, she was not much different from the islanders she’d pulsed. It didn’t take sophisticated affect detection algorithms to understand that the other vN were worried and suspicious. It just took eyes. The others didn’t seem to want to meet his.

  By nightfall, Javier had gathered his produce, and gotten himself into a new white shirt and trousers. They were one hundred percent organic plant material, no synthetics. Even the buttons were some sort of pressed cork or balsa or somesuch. He liked the outfit a great deal. He had a thing for cotton.

  “You always wear such tight pants when the humans come visit.”

  He turned to Amy. She’d changed, too: she wore a pure black skinsuit. It moved sluggishly across her figure, twinkling occasionally. The twinkles had nothing to do with ambient light, and everything to do with where Javier’s gaze alighted on Amy’s body. The suit’s eyes followed his own. He wondered vaguely if he could start selling lengths of the island’s pelt for humans to wear, too. It fit her like a glove.