Debris of Shadows Book I: The Lies of the Sage

by Tony LaRocca

  “They haven’t,” he said, as Bananas nuzzled their legs. “At least, I don’t think so. And not Sigma, she’s hurt badly. They say it’s all my fault.”

  “And you don’t think it is.”

  “No.”

  “Then don’t let them,” she said. “Just keep believing in yourself.”

  He took her useless right hand in his, and rubbed her fingers. “Mom,” he said, “don’t you want to draw again?”

  “Stop that,” she said. “Don’t change the subject.”

  “I just thought it might make you happy.”

  She looked at the ceiling, and shook her head. “How can I be happy?” she asked. “I’m a prisoner here. I’m a criminal, I’m crippled, I’m pregnant, there’s every chance I could lose my baby, and my son is four, going on twenty. I’m too scared to be happy.”

  “Nineteen,” he said. “Is that why you won’t get the neural interface?”

  She blinked. “Oh great,” she said. “Now they’ve got you pushing it on me too?”

  Bananas looked up at him, wagging her tail. “I don’t understand,” he said. “With an interface, you could draw again, maybe even do some of the stuff I can.”

  “Like what?”

  He folded his hands. When he opened them, he held a rosebud in his palm. She took it, brushing the soft petals with her fingertips. “Smell it,” he said. She did, taking in the aroma. “Hang on,” he said. “I’ll make you a vase, and some water. Oh wait, you need a stem first.”

  “Stop,” she said. “Don’t you understand? If I let them hook up my brain, I’ll never get out again.”

  He looked at the virt projection. The news was on, broadcast by the only remaining network. The newscasters wore respirators, their foreheads glistening with sweat.

  “I think the Sage is the only future,” he said. “I don’t think there’s going to be much of a world left out there, at least not in NorMec, and we can’t get anywhere else.”

  His mother shrunk back. He had never seen her look so vulnerable. “Promise me,” she said. “I want you to promise me that as far as you know, it’s safe.”

  His mouth opened and closed for a few seconds as he reached his mind across the Sage. “As far as I and my brothers know, the operation is safe.”

  “And I can leave any time I want?”

  “Mom,” he said. “You know the answer to that.”

  A muscle in her jaw twitched. “But you still think I should get it?”

  “You really have no choice,” he said. “They want you to. I can understand you being angry, hurt, and wanting to fight them every second, but you’re never going to win. And if you did escape, there’s nowhere for you to go.”

  Alyanna bit her lip. “Thank you,” she said, “thank you for telling me the truth.” She rubbed her forehead. “All right, I’ll do it.”

  He fell back on the couch as a wave of relief crested over him. He had not realized how tight his chest had become. “Great,” he said, as Bananas jumped onto his lap, and licked his face. He could not help laughing. “Oh, that’ll be awesome.”

  “Sure,” she said, with a smile on her lips that was miles from her eyes. “I guess it will.”

  Alyanna walked with 0800 amongst the immersion tanks of the Sanctuary. The retraction of the V.R. suit’s tubes and needles had left her insides sore and raw, and every step was agony. She bit her tongue, and forced herself to move normally.

  Dim, blue lights in the floor illuminated the hall, and it took her eyes a few minutes to adjust. She could see naked bodies within the tanks, each identical to the Cyleb who walked beside her. She wondered if he felt any embarrassment.

  They reached Sigma’s vat. A nest of hoses met in a mask that covered her mouth and nose, while a glowing network of spindly fibers dangled from the back of her neck. She moved her limbs inside the viscous liquid as if walking, her head cocked to the side. Her mouth opened and closed. Her open eyes twitched, and darted from side to side.

  “Is she talking to us?” Alyanna asked.

  “Negative,” said 0800. “The interface bypasses all her receptors, but only 41.942 percent of her motor functions. Think of it as sleepwalking, if it helps.”

  He pointed to a bank of screens above the tank. “Here, you can see her stats are constantly monitored. You don’t have to worry about your health, or your baby’s. The tank will correct any major deviations from your biological median within seconds.”

  Alyanna examined the screens. The numbers and graphs meant nothing to her. “Matthew said she was hurt,” she said. “He says you told him he was responsible.”

  “That’s not your concern.”

  “I thought he was your golden boy.” She put her hand on his arm. He winced. “0800, I’m serious. You and Sigma are the only real friends he has, and I would much rather you be his role model than Jaeger.”

  “He’s not a boy anymore. He’s beyond role models.”

  “No he’s not,” Alyanna said. “Look, I know I’m no one’s friend here, but you’re the only one I trust. Please, be his friend again?”

  0800 looked at her hand. “He is always my brother,” he said at last. He took her hand in his silvery one, and removed it from his sleeve. “Very much has changed in the past few weeks, Mrs. Galbraith. Much more is still to come. Few of us do what we want; we do what we must.”

  She looked at his inscrutable face in the blue light, so much like her son’s, yet so different. She shrugged. “Yeah, whatever,” she said. “I know I’m not one of you, and I don’t want to be, no offense. But you keep saying he is, so help him. You all think he’s a man now. He’s not, he’s still only four. He needs your help.”

  0800 ran his fingers across the smooth glass of the tank. “You haven’t seen her since the incident,” he said. “She will never be the same.” He straightened, and tapped a display. “The iatric fluid works with the neural interface to focus the healing process. If anything goes wrong, it will do the same for you.”

  A tiny but sharp cramp stabbed through Alyanna’s stomach. It’s just from the suit, she told herself. She took a deep breath and exhaled, trying to squash the surge of anxiety. “What about when I have the baby?”

  “That will be up to you. You can have it while you’re hooked up—”

  “Like hell.”

  “Or,” he continued as if she had not interrupted, “you can be released for it. Either way, our medics are trained for all eventualities. Please keep in mind, you are at a very high risk for miscarriage, no matter what you do.”

  Like I forgot, she thought. “Does it hurt?”

  “It doesn’t hurt me,” he said, “but I’ve had circuitry intertwined with my neural pathways since before I was born. Besides, you won’t be awake for the process.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It has to be bored into the base of your skull. There, it will form microscopic tendrils that will burrow into your cerebellum. After that, it branches out to all parts of your brain.”

  She swallowed. “Holy shit.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, “it knows where to go.” Alyanna’s eyes widened. “Whenever you want to enter or leave the Sage, you make a conscious choice. The interface just works its way under a little fold of your skin, here.” He traced a line across the back of her neck.

  “What if you lobotomize me?” she asked. “Has that ever happened?”

  “No,” he said. “Well, not with this procedure, anyway. Some did in the past, when the technology was in its alpha stage, but that was decades ago.”

  Alyanna watched Sigma’s arms and legs twitch within her tank, her masked face inscrutable. “All right,” she said, “let’s get this over with.”

  Matthew lifted a brush from the floor of his mother’s studio. Its bristles were caked with dried paint. He placed it in a jar of turpentine. He swirled the handle, watching the pigment mix and dissolve.

  “There was a time,” he said, “when she never would have let her supplies get dirty, no matter how depressed she was.�
� He wiped the brush clean with a rag. “Once, when I was little, I saw her drunk off her ass. She was on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor. The attic was like a shrine to her.”

  “But not this place,” Sigma said from behind him.

  “No.” He smirked. “Thought you could sneak up on me?”

  “Never. Turn around, please?”

  He turned, and looked at her. He tried not to let his face react. The first thing he noticed was that her formerly thick, wavy hair was now short and straight, cut in a neat bob around her face. Her left cheek was gaunt, while her right was puffy. Her left eye blinked and squinted every few seconds.

  “I don’t like your new hairdo,” he said.

  She laughed, but it was not quite the same as before. It was higher, almost like a cough. But her mismatched eyes smiled, and he could not help smiling back.

  “Look at you,” she said, “all grown up.” She squeezed his bicep, and winked. “You’ll be too old for me soon, the way you’re going.”

  Matthew opened and closed his mouth. “You’ve changed,” he said.

  Sigma giggled. “You’re so red right now, you should see yourself.” As if a switch had flipped, the light dropped from her eyes. She pulled her hand away. “The Sage is trying to put me together,” she said. “What’s left of me, and what they remember of me, the Sage is trying to make it all work. Eventually, it will even out. I think some of them were attracted to me or something—the second generation, I mean.” She raised an eyebrow. “All except you, of course. They say you can’t be trusted.”

  “I just wanted to save you,” he said. “They don’t believe me.”

  She focused her glowing eyes on his. He tried not to stare at her tics.

  “I believe you,” she said.

  Without thinking, he pressed his lips against hers. They were warm, and sweet. He could feel his heart pounding, but more so, the muscles of his cleft shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her, and pressed her against him. She broke off, and folded her arms.

  “Don’t do that again,” she said, a sliver of her old hardness in her voice.

  Matthew swallowed. “Sorry,” he said. “I thought—”

  “Never mind,” she said. She seemed to lean away. “So, you’re convinced my old personality and memories are still out there, locked away in a corner of the Sage?”

  “They were stolen by a WesMec mutant. It seemed to think it was doing holy work. It kept quoting the Bible, all kinds of stuff from Revelations, but it got the quotes wrong. It was trying to launch a weapon, or something. It was hard to tell.” The words came fast and jumbled.

  “They’re mindless insects,” she said. “How could it know scripture, or how to launch anything?”

  “Maybe someone taught it.”

  She pursed her lips. “So, not only is my mind trapped out there, but so is a WesMec infiltrator,” she said. “Maybe there’s a nest of them?”

  “Can you talk to the general, and try to make him understand?” he asked. “He made me promise I’d never go looking for it or you again, or he’d evict my mother. But I know you’re there—the real you.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “he’d never evict her.”

  “Not yet.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Ah,” she said, placing her hands on her hips. “That’s why you’re cleaning this place for her by hand, when you could do it instantly with a thought.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  She walked across the studio. He had stacked his mother’s canvases, organized her paints by color, and cleaned every one of her brushes, sponges, and knives. “You don’t have to,” she said, “it’s obvious. They never expected you to move along so quickly. You could tear the Sage into chaotic noise, if you wanted. The general thought he’d have decades to indoctrinate you. Instead, he had months. They’re afraid of you.”

  Matthew opened a drawer. It was piled with charcoal pencils and gum erasers. He dumped them on the table. There were cases around, somewhere. He took a blunt 4B, found a razor, and began to shave it. “The Sage,” he said, “how big is it?”

  “In time, you’ll see its boundaries, and think that they’re more than you could want. But sooner or later, those same boundaries will seem small and constricting. And someday, maybe you’ll find a way to make them grow.”

  “That’s what they want me to do?” he asked. His left shoulder ached and throbbed. He stared at it, and tried to make it stop.

  Sigma took his arm, and rubbed it. “In time, even this won’t bother you anymore.”

  “You mean the differential will seal?”

  “No,” she said, “I mean you’ll feel free to be two entities, to be who you are, deep within yourself.” She took a filthy eraser, and molded it into a lopsided cube, pinching the edges and corners with her fingertips. “Everything has dualities, all the way down to the two smallest divisions in reality: energy and matter. People are broken between the logical and the emotional, the physical and mental, life and death. We even divide life into two groups: plant or animal. And in all computers, everything breaks down to ones and zeros, or more specifically, on or off.” She placed the eraser on the tabletop. It was spotless. “Like everything, you are divided into two parts, which are also one. Shadow cannot exist without the light.”

  Matthew’s mouth felt dry. “That’s a very fortune–cookie way of putting it,” he said. “You’re making it sound too simple.”

  “No one says you have to take it all in in a day,” she said. “Especially a day for you, which is like the blink of an eye to most of us.”

  He held the pencil to the light. It was lopsided, a large chunk shaved from the wood. He sighed, and with a thought, sharpened it to a perfect, symmetrical point. “I’ll always think of her as my mom,” he said, “though I know I’m really one of you.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, what would have happened to me if I had stayed here?”

  “Do you really want to know?” Sigma asked. Matthew nodded. She bit her lip. “All right,” she said. She opened a pocket in midair, and pulled out a visored helmet. “Put this on, and wait.”

  He shrugged, and pulled it over his head. “I can’t see,” he said. After a few minutes, he took it off. He was alone. He put it back on. “Hello?”

  A pale blue line appeared in the darkness. It flickered, and expanded. He heard a short zzt of static, followed by footsteps. The blue–white field of noise wavered, and snapped into a picture. It was an image of a hallway that stretched into the distance. Harsh lights glared from above, reflecting off plastic and metal.

  “Will yourself to turn around,” Sigma’s voice said. He did so. The image rolled and panned until she came into view. His vision was at her chest height.

  She coughed. “Raise yourself,” she said. He complied, and the image floated upward. It centered on her face. It looked as it had before the attack, although her cheeks were gaunter than he remembered, and dark bags drooped from her eyes. Her thick, wavy hair was wet, and plastered to her face, and he felt a swelling in his throat.

  “Please keep your hair this way,” he said. His voice sounded flanged in his ears, as if digitized.

  She sighed. “Focus, would you?” she said. “You’re controlling a remote camera drone. Come on.” She turned, and walked down the hall. He willed himself to follow. It took a little getting used to. The camera, although equipped with an antigravity cell, still had mass and inertia, and overshot his thoughts when it moved too fast. They came to a door. It slid open, and they went inside.

  The room was small and dark. In one corner was a standard military–issue cot. In the other stood a pillar that looked to him like a large fish tank. Something floated inside, something pink and glistening, with tiny, black eyes. A pulsating cable snaked from its stomach to the top of the vat. Another ran from the back of its under–formed head. At the point where it met the base of the fetus’s bent neck, hairs of silver fiber branched into its translucent sku
ll. They flickered intermittently with a faint, orange light.

  “Oh my God,” said Matthew.

  “His name is 0000,” said Sigma. “I call him Zero for short.” Her voice broke. “Hello, Zero.”

  A screen at the top of the tank flashed to life, displaying a series of pictures: the sun, a smiley face, bubbles, and a blooming sunflower.

  “He can only communicate in basic emotions. He is either happy, sad, or frightened.”

  Matthew watched the parade of joyful images for a few seconds. “How long?” he asked.

  “Eighteen years.”

  “Eighteen years,” he repeated. For an entire lifetime, this child that never was had been trapped in goo.

  “We take the genetic material we need from him to clone the third generation,” she said. “We feed him, and he grows it back. Then we farm some more.”

  “That’s disgusting,” said Matthew. His stomach churned as a set of pincers descended, and pushed into Zero’s spine. The fetus writhed. The screen displayed a multitude of images: happy faces, sunsets, kittens, and grinning children. Ticklish squeals of laughter came from the tank’s speakers.

  “They’re farming him now,” she said. “It’s just a waste of material. They haven’t made any new clones from him since the outbreak of B–Seven–N–G. Obviously, he isn’t immune.”

  “Then why are they doing it?”

  “Because it makes him happy,” she said, her voice raw. “We wired his brain to enjoy the process. Mentally, he has developed a very tiny amount. So we decided that it was best to keep him this way: happy.”

  Matthew felt something spin inside his stomach. I’m going to be sick, he thought. I’m going to be sick right here. He ripped the helmet off, doubled over, and threw up. The hot bile sped past his lips to splatter across the studio floor. He heard a shimmering sound, and Sigma appeared. He willed the vomit away, and his mouth clean.

  “Leave me alone,” he said. “Just go away.”

  “You wanted to know,” she said. “Now you do, like all your brothers.”

  “That’s what I would have been?” he asked. Sigma nodded, her cheek twitching. “Why? Why him, and not me?”