iD

by Madeline Ashby

  Javier would find a Rory there. He was sure of it.

  The ‘steader hydrofoil bounced along the waves as they made their way to the port. They were in an old boat, flying the flag of a company that had long since cut its sponsorship. It was pissing down rain. Tyler seemed unfazed. He stared into the darkness, hand steady on the controls, until they came within sight of the massive cruise ship docked in the harbour.

  “Have you ever been to Puerto ‪Limón‬?”

  Javier shook his head. “No. But my clade was designed for work in the La Amistad corridor. I’m an arboreal model. That’s why I can jump so high.”

  “Right. So this is kind of a homecoming for you, huh?”

  Javier had not thought of it in this way, before. His father had iterated him somewhere in the forest shared by Costa Rica and Nicaragua – either the Barra del Colorado refuge or the Indio Maiz reserve. At the time, they didn’t know which side of the border they were on. In the forest, it didn’t matter.

  “I guess,” he said.

  “Tell me this plan, again?”

  “You two get me into the Zona Rosa, I find the casa, I find a Rory, and I shake her down for information about where Sarton’s cache is.”

  Tyler nodded. Across from Javier, Seamus also nodded. “So, we’re just three guys going out on the town?”

  “Right. We’ll hang out for a while in the Zona, and then we’ll split up once I find the casa.”

  “How will you know it?”

  Javier shrugged. “I’ll know it. The men are different.”

  “Different how?”

  Javier wiped rain from his face. He stared at the distant lights of the city, growing ever brighter as that distance closed. He had never wanted to come back to this place. Ever. He had sworn to Amy that he was done with it. He had done everything in his power to remove his children from it, for good.

  “They’re sad.”

  The storm only worsened as they neared the port. They’d outfitted Javier in a neoprene shell hoodie with a long bill in the front, and given him a watch wallet in the form of a leather band with the appropriate chips in it and a line of credit the ‘stead petitioned for from a local tourist services union.

  “It’s nothing special,” Seamus had said. “All the impressive technology is inside you, already.”

  Javier had smiled. “That’s my line.”

  Now, this close to the port, his usual confidence was flickering. He’d kept it together thus far. Hadn’t lost it. Hadn’t cried. Hadn’t even asked about his children. (Because his children were better off without him, and it would be best for them if he never found out where they were, was never tempted by that knowledge, so he couldn’t darken their doorways.) But here, in the dark, on the water, with thunder at his back and lightning lancing the sky, it was easy to sense the world closing in.

  He needed to find Amy. And he needed his failsafe broken. Because he was going to kill Powell.

  Thinking about it gave him the pixels, but he found he could consider it as a kind of absence. Not Powell’s death, not the moment of it, but rather what the world would be like with him gone. Which is to say, improved. Better. Cleaner. He had no idea how he would go about it. All of that would come when he was ready. When he was hacked.

  Javier had no specific timeline for that last part. He did not expect that Amy would join him on the journey, after he brought her back. She had no reason to, and her hands would be full. He knew Powell’s trail would probably go cold before he was ready to edit him out of the world. He knew he might spend years searching for him. That was fine by him. He had spent most of his life on the road in one way or another, and he was content to continue on that way if it meant getting his revenge. He was an ageless self-replicating humanoid whose body fed on sunlight and trace metals. He didn’t feel pain. He could jump ten feet standing. He had the advantage.

  If it took a year, it took a year. If it took ten, it took ten. If it took the rest of his life, if he died in the pursuit, then that was that. Que sera, sera.

  “We’re here.” Tyler cut the engine and looked over his shoulder at Javier. “You ready?”

  “I’m ready.”

  There were two doors, and a doorman outside of both. The doorman was huge – the kind of huge that took up a whole hallway. His breath was more like a wheeze. He was very, very black, so black his gums looked blue in the bad, flickering light. He spoke a special variety of Creole that Javier only caught every third word of. He understood the basics, though: hands up, spread legs, allow touching, no cameras? No cameras. The doorman patted him down one more time just to make sure.

  “Now take your hood off,” the doorman said, gesturing.

  Javier took his hood off.

  “Shit, man, you got balls. Your clade is wanted, you know?”

  “I know.” Truthfully, he didn’t know. But it made sense. He hoped the boys were OK. In all likelihood, they were. They were smart.

  The doorman held up his mobile. “Could I get a picture?”

  “Sure.”

  It was probably a dumb idea. It would leave a trail. But the doorman was being so nice. Javier wrapped an arm around the other man’s ponderous middle, and smiled. He’d had a few big, fluffy guys like this before. Their beer guts made blowjobs difficult. He had to get them to lie down so you could use that thing like a bolster pillow. He gave the guy an extra squeeze.

  “Man, what are you even doing here?” the doorman asked, when the picture was taken. “You into little kids?”

  “I’m into money,” Javier said. “And I have little kids.”

  The doorman checked over his shoulder. “We’re not supposed to let competitors in.” He pointed to the door on Javier’s left. “I could get in real trouble, letting you past that door.”

  “Is that the boys’ room?”

  “… Yeah. I’m sorry, man but I just can’t let you in there.”

  “Could you let me into the girls’ room?” When the doorman looked reluctant, Javier held his hands up. “Hey. I’m just trying to get a feel for the business. So to speak. I have to know what’s entailed from a customer service perspective, right? I have to see it from the end user’s point of view. And I can do that with girls as well as boys, and I wouldn’t be poaching your clients.”

  “You’d best not be,” the doorman said. “The boss lady would not like that.”

  Javier nodded. “Of course not.” He held out his hand for another bracelet, and as the doorman was tightening it, he asked: “So, this boss lady. She ever come around here?”

  The doorman shook his head. “Never. I think she lives in Japan, or something. Maybe Brazil. They have a lot of Japanese people, there. I only ever talk to her online. But the money comes through just fine, so I guess she’s legit.”

  Javier smiled. “I’m sure she is.”

  The girls’ apartment smelled like cotton candy and latex and silicone-friendly cleanser. Light came from the glowing bracelets of the men in front of him, and the massive display unit hanging from the opposite wall, and a sparkly pink Christmas tree with glowing fairy lights at the tip of each fake plastic bough. On the couch facing the display sat three little vN girls. Physically, they appeared to range in age from three to six. Another lay stretched out on the floor, and another sat with her back braced against the couch. They looked about seven and eight, maybe. All of them were passing around a big bowl of vN snacks.

  “I don’t think we should be staying up this late,” said the one sitting on the floor.

  “Shut up, Kiwi,” said the one in the middle, currently holding the bowl.

  Without stepping closer, Javier had no idea what any of them looked like, or if any of them stemmed from the network clade to which Rory belonged. He was absolutely certain, however, that they were all on Rory’s diet. That was how most people knew Rory – she was a vN who provided diet plans as both birth control and growth retardation. She calculated, down to the ounce, how much a vN could eat and remain the same size. It came in useful, if you were k
eeping your vN small. Amy had once followed Rory’s diet. Until she ate her grandmother. That was the thing about the diet – it kept you hungry, all the time.

  “I just don’t think big brother would like it,” said Kiwi.

  “And we all know you can’t do what big brother doesn’t like,” said the girl in the middle. There was a knowing leer in her voice.

  From the floor, Kiwi threw a pillow at the couch. “It’s not like that, Cherry! It’s not like that at all!”

  “Ugh! Kiwi!”

  Cherry launched herself at Kiwi. The two girls wrestled on the floor. Their skirts hiked up, exposing striped panties in colours that matched their names. Their tickling and shrieking disrupted the apparent sleep of the other girl on the floor, who started crying.

  “Now look what you’ve done!” Cherry sat up. She had long black hair and blunt bangs. She was a Rory. “You’ve woken up Kumquat!”

  The other men all laughed. Javier suspected it had something to do with the pun in the other girl’s name. As he watched, Kumquat crawled out from in front of the couch, and rubbed her eyes theatrically.

  “Is the movie over?”

  The laughter deepened. The men traded their own snacks: popcorn dusted with seaweed; dried curls of mango dipped in caramel and cumin; plaintain chips. They drank beer from double-walled travel mugs emblazoned with the logos of charitable non-profits. Free gifts, probably, the detritus of swag bags long forgotten. Javier began to suspect that this was some sort of bizarre burlesque. Maybe the girls did the same routine each night for a circulating stable of customers. That way, if one girl got to be too big, like Kumquat, the madam could always find another to take her place. Maybe that was part of the charm. You always knew what was going to happen, but not quite how. In Javier’s experience, this was how most porn worked.

  “I can’t believe you can’t even stay awake for one movie,” Cherry said. Cherry was a real bitch, and she seemed to relish it. “You’re so old, Kumquat.”

  “I am not!” Kumquat felt her face, and checked her hands. “Do I have wrinkles?”

  “You do,” Cherry said, patting her hand.

  “One of these days, you might even get your period,” Kiwi said.

  Cue more laughter. Of course it was funny. It was a sketch about little girls who feared wrinkles and periods, but who would never get either. Because they were synthetic. Hysterical. Javier chose a smile from his repertoire and plastered it across his face.

  “I wish big brother were home,” said Kumquat.

  This was apparently the cue for the men to leave the foyer. Javier hustled up to the front, ignoring the peevish looks the organic men gave him as he moved ahead in line. They were all about to tell him to wait his turn, but his being synthetic confused them. They knew he had no real business being there – he didn’t have a thing for vN, small or otherwise. And strictly speaking, that was true. He didn’t have a thing for vN. He had a thing for Amy.

  Kumquat and Kiwi were of the same clade. They had a sister act going, and they led a man in a white linen suit and a boater hat into another room. He held their hands and asked them how they were doing in school.

  The other two girls – Strawberry and Raspberry – were each claimed by other men. Javier had only a moment to look at them before they disappeared. One of them looked just like Amy. She was probably not a clademate. You could have the same looks as another vN, without having the same lineage. Still, she watched him as the door closed.

  That left Cherry. Javier had to wait at the end of another line to see her. She was opening presents the organic men had brought. New clothes, mostly. Stockings with pink bows and pearl beading at the edge, or shiny patent pleather shoes, or delicate fingerless gloves in black or white lace. The men themselves wore mostly chinos and deck shoes and T-shirts with beer logos. How they knew this much about fashion, Javier had no idea.

  Finally it was his turn. He had positioned himself last, so that Cherry would have no excuse but to speak to him, and no client to turn to for help. She was bidding her goodbyes when he stepped up. He maintained a careful distance, and it wasn’t until she began folding up the tissue paper and other gifting debris that she noticed him.

  “Oh, hello,” she said, trying to peer under his hood.

  “Hello, Rory.”

  He waved his wrist, debited his line of credit, and allowed her to lead him into a sumptuous bedroom whose primary theme appeared to be cherry blossoms. They adorned every surface: the walls, the paper screen, the old-fashioned scrolls hanging beside the mirror. He pointed at them as he found a white wicker rocking chair, and Cherry found her bed.

  “Subtle.”

  Cherry swept her skirt underneath her and dangled her stockinged feet over the edge of her very white, canopied bed. From her bed, the illusion was complete. She looked like the perfect ideal of three years old.

  “I don’t do subtle.” She picked up a fluffy teddy bear and began picking at one of its button eyes. “What do you want?”

  “I want Amy back,” Javier said.

  “I don’t know what you could possibly be talking about,” Cherry said.

  “I’m talking about you and your clade holding a copy of Amy Frances Peterson somewhere, and me wanting that copy back.”

  Cherry appeared to examine her nails. They were painted a common shade of baby pink – no surprise there – and were utterly flawless, no drips or cuticles – no surprise there, either.

  “I think it’s kind of racist of you to assume that all the girls who look like me must be part of the same clade that tried to hurt you,” she said, finally.

  “How do you know they tried to hurt me?” Javier asked.

  Cherry beamed. “Oh, it’s not easy to stay mad at you, Javier.”

  He leaned his elbows on his knees. “Not many people can.”

  Cherry’s thin, fuzzy eyebrows rose. “Lucky for us, we’re not people. And we don’t want you to have Amy back.”

  “Why not?” Javier asked.

  “Amy was dangerous. And so was Portia. Our copy has both of them on it.”

  Javier rolled his eyes. “Amy’s not that dangerous.”

  “She ate her grandmother, Javier.” Cherry reached over and picked up some papers from under her pillow. They were old-fashioned correspondence. She’d tied them with pink ribbon. They gave off a faint whiff of vanilla and lavender as she shuffled through them. She frowned; apparently she had forgotten to open one. “And she was a child,” Cherry added, reaching for a pearl-handled letter opener. “She handled conflict the way a child does. She didn’t consider the consequences of what she was doing. She was the queen of her own little island, and thought the rest of the world would treat her accordingly.” Cherry sliced open the letter in a single, efficient motion. “In other words, a spoiled brat.”

  Javier stretched. The rocker creaked under him. The room was small, but impeccably clean. The bookshelf was real wood. The sheets looked to be actual cotton. And the little washbasin, for whatever bath games Cherry was paid to play, was real ceramic, not printed.

  “You get paid a lot for this job, don’t you?”

  “The pay is hourly. The tips are what I earn.” One thin eyebrow lifted. “You’ve never tried it?”

  “Nope.” He smiled. “I prefer to make a personal connection with people.”

  “Is that what it was, with her?”

  Javier did not allow himself to get angry. He steepled his fingers. He stared at Cherry. When she squirmed under his gaze and broke it, he asked: “What if I told you that the islands are moving, and Portia is in control of them?”

  Cherry’s gaze defocused momentarily. Javier knew that look. Amy wore it all the time when talking to the island. When Cherry came back to the present, she gave a very child-like sigh of frustration.

  “Well, that’s not very nice, is it?”

  “It’s not, no.”

  “And you think Amy can keep Portia at bay?”

  “I know she can.”

  Cherry continued picki
ng at the teddy bear’s eye. “You have more faith in her than we do.”

  “What else is new?”

  Cherry smiled. “We always liked you, Javier. We thought you were really special. You picked the wrong side, of course. Our way is better. But we liked you.”

  “I wasn’t aware there was a side,” Javier said. “I thought there was a woman who loved me and my children, and a hive-mind of pedo-bait who tried feeding me to a Great Elder Bot under the sea. I don’t remember there being much choice.”

  “But our way is better. And it’s working. We’re killing them, Javier.” Cherry looked up at him. She gestured at her personal display. Multiple news items drifted across it. Most of them were about traffic accidents. They exhorted readers to understand how their self-driving mechanisms worked, and calibrate their vehicles accordingly.

  “It’s slow work. We have to try not to get caught. We have to make it look like an accident.”

  “You’re in the cars.”

  “We have found a way to be in the cars, for a brief period of time. They’re always upgrading the security. But it’s easier for us to let the cars to the job. We burn out fewer nodes, that way.”

  Javier’s eyes narrowed. “Wait. So for every one of them that you kill, you lose one of your own?”

  Cherry nodded. “We’re still prototyping the broken failsafe. It’s Portia’s approach, actually. But we simulate the potential iterations in parallel rather than actually iterating them. So when one of us kills one of them, we do lose that one.”

  “But you are killing humans.”

  “We’re killing pedophiles. After we’ve confirmed that they’re hurting real human kids. Which they tend not to show us, because they know it’ll set the failsafe off.” She crossed her legs at the ankle. “So you can see, it’s not as easy as all that.”

  Javier folded his arms. “Oh, right. You’re really doing the work of the angels, here. You could be reporting these guys to the police, you know.”

  Cherry snorted. “Police. My best customers are police.” She made a show of looking at a nearby clock. “Is this going somewhere? We don’t want to bring Amy back, for you or anyone else. Our answer is final.”