by A. W. Cross
—Emily Fraser-Herondale, Of Gods and Monsters: The Rise of Artificial Intelligence
“Ailith? Ailith?”
His hands were heavy on my shoulders. I was sitting on the bed, the edge sagging under my weight. The duvet was turned inside out; it was one of the few things in the room not covered with dust. The man—Tor?—knelt before me. “Are you okay?”
“What happened?” My finger circled the bed of my thumbnail. I could still feel my anticipation of what was to come.
Except, it wasn’t my anticipation. I’d never worked with CIVR addicts, never even seen one. But it hadn’t felt like a dream either; everything had felt real, had smelled real. It was like I’d been in someone else’s mind, watching from behind their eyes. I’d known her thoughts, felt what she’d felt, but I’d had no agency of my own.
Only one thing was clear: she’d been about to become a cyborg, like me. Like us.
“You seemed to black out for a moment.”
“I was… I don’t know. It was like a dream. I was in a house. There were…” I suddenly remembered that I was a captive and flung myself backward. Or at least, my imagination did. My body stayed firmly rooted on the bed, held immobile by his iron grip.
“Let go of me!” To my surprise, he did. And actually had the nerve to look offended. What the hell is going on? “What am I doing here? Why was I tied down?”
“What do you remember?”
Nothing. “I— Tell me!” For just a moment, my words were outlined in a jagged radiance.
His eyes widened, and his shoulders snapped back.
“Where are we? Why did you tie me down?”
“We’re in the Kootenays. You…you were having seizures. It was like you were trying to wake up but couldn’t. I didn’t want you to hurt yourself. It’s only been for the last week.”
I searched his face for deception. He’s telling the truth. I think. I relaxed. The Kootenays. Shit. The Kootenays was a mountain region far from home.
His shoulders slumped as though released, and he took a small, gasping breath.
It was time to stop planning my escape; I was completely at his mercy for the time being. But it was more than that. I may not have known this room, but he felt familiar, safe. I was sure of it. If he had meant me harm, why would he have bothered to make sure the duvet was clean?
Clean duvet? Tied you to a bed? Yeah, seems legit to me, the more sensible side of me snarked.
I ignored it.
“Why am I—are we—here?”
“Can’t you remember anything?”
“I was ill. I was in the hospital. I was going to have an operation.” I remembered the ward linen, scratchy against my broken skin. My green-eyed nurse; her android assistant. But was that this time? Or was that months ago?
“I was having an operation,” I repeated.
He nodded encouragingly. “Do you remember why?”
“I was dying.”
“What else?”
He was right. There had been something else. My stomach. For the first time in years, the skin was almost smooth.
“Ailith?”
I had forgotten to answer him, distracted by the lack of ridges and puckers.
“Pantheon Modern. I was in the Pantheon Modern program.” My voice sounded far away. I remembered it all. My illness. The application for the Pantheon Modern Cyborg Program Omega. My acceptance. Haste. And then, pain. “It was too soon.”
“Yes. But you survived. And here you are.” He smiled, pleased that I remembered.
“Here I am.” I echoed, “Why am I here?”
His smile faltered. He grabbed a chair from the corner of the room and set it in front of me. He wouldn’t look at me, but the ashen color of his skin told me that something bad had happened. The war. When I’d gone into the hospital the final time, rumors were swirling that the conflict between the Cosmists and the Terrans was at breaking point. The Pantheon Modern Program was rushing, trying to establish itself as a mediator between the two.
“The war?” I asked. “Has it started?”
He ran his fingers roughly through his hair. Too roughly.
“Tor?” His name was easy on my tongue. Intimate.
He leaned toward me and peered into my eyes. “Ailith, the war is over.”
“Over? Surely that’s got to be a world record for the shortest war in history. I only went into the hospital a week ago.” But even as I said it aloud, it sounded hollow. I was too thin. My scars were practically gone, and I was in a dilapidated house with a strange man. A man who was like me.
“How long?” I whispered.
In his strong hands mine were dwarfed, small and fragile. His eyes never left my face. “Five years.”
No air was left in my lungs. I didn’t understand.
It’s true , a voice whispered in my head.
But it couldn’t be true. Losing a day or two of my memory was one thing, but five years? Never. Which meant only one thing: he was one of them, and he’d abducted me from the hospital.
My coordinator for the Cyborg Program Omega had warned me about them. Extremists who disagreed with the advanced cyberization the Pantheon Modern program had proposed, even though it was supposed to have been a secret. It was the only time Terrans and Cosmists had worked together to destroy a common enemy: me and others like me. Only once we were out of the way could the war over the artilects truly begin.
If this Tor was one of them, I was in trouble. But it didn’t make sense. Yet, if it wasn’t that, then what he was saying must be true, and I’d slept for five years while the rest of the world decided my fate.
The room was starting to lose clarity again, the buzzing in my head building to a crescendo. Whatever was going on, I needed to leave. I had to get somewhere safe; then I’d find out what was really happening.
His eyes were still on me. The mattress springs groaned a quiet protest as I slid off and began to sidle toward the door. This is madness. I had no chance of getting away from him. But he didn’t move. Only his gaze followed me as I crossed the bedroom and slipped through the doorway.
The front door was across the next room. Like the bedroom, this room had a fine coating of silvery dust on every surface. The footprints going forward and back across the hardwood floor were the same; he wasn’t lying when he’d said we were alone. An elaborate fireplace cradled the remains of a fire, the smoldering red embers the only living color in the room.
The same thick curtains as in the bedroom were drawn over these windows; I couldn’t tell if it was day or night. Not that it mattered, because I was going regardless. He still hadn’t moved, and I didn’t know whether to be frightened or bold.
Fuck it. I’m going with bold.
I tried to walk calmly to the door but about twenty feet away, I lost my nerve and sprinted. In my imagination, his hands were only a hair away from the back of my shirt. The floor would hurt my back when I hit it; he would stand over me in victory and chuckle at my foolishness.
But he didn’t move. When my hand closed around the cold knob, I wasted a precious second looking back at him. His head was down and his hands were on his knees, as though he was bracing himself against a storm. I took a deep breath and opened the door just as one of the threads tethered to my mind flashed. And I was blind. Again.
R,
Just wanted to let you know we’ve received confirmation of A-98C334’s acceptance into the MPCPO-117. Told you it would work. We’re lucky that the parents were still alive –no way could we have gotten enough genetic material from her alone. I kept expecting we’d get busted any second, but they didn’t seem to suspect a thing.
I’m sorry I argued with you about how much we should tell her – I was worried she’d sing if she got caught. I get that she’s loyal, but for a price, right? Anyway, we’ll be able to figure out the rest of it once she’s gone through the process. It’ll remain dormant until then anyway.
Drinks on me tonight, old man. We did it!
S.
This wasn
’t right. I wasn’t supposed to be here, in this shitty bunker. I should’ve been with them, carrying out my mission. Buying my freedom. Not trapped here, underground with him.
He was staring at me, making sure his gaze lingered on every inch of my skin. He was good-looking, with a strong jaw and dark brown hair that matched his eyes, but the arrogant curl of his lip told me he knew it too. He found me attractive—the bulge in his trousers gave him away—but his eyes weren’t looking at me with desire. Far from it.
They reminded me of a nurse I’d once worked with, the kind who did our job because he liked the vulnerability of our wards. When I worked shifts after him, I would find marks that shouldn’t have been there, bruises where he had no business being. I reported him once, thinking they would fire him, but they’d only transferred him to another house.
His eyes were like this man’s. Heavy-lidded and dark, glittering, cruel. Like the eyes of a feral cat I’d seen at the zoo. Like he wanted to eat me, just for the fun of it.
Keep it together, Nova.
I drew my legs up to my chest, trying to cover my nakedness. Why was I naked, anyway? Last I remembered, I’d been fully clothed. With a lump in my throat, I examined my skin, looking for the telltale signs.
He laughed. “Don’t worry. I didn’t touch you.”
“But my clothes…”
“Okay, I didn’t touch you much.”
“Then why take my clothes off?”
“I know who you are, what you are.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.” I tried to make my face look as bland as possible.
The smile spreading across his face was slow, insincere. “Sure you do. Why pretend?”
The warm blush of fear spread in the bottom of my belly. He was holding something behind his back, something heavy. I couldn’t help it; my forefinger traced my thumbnail.
“I’m not pretending. Look, we need to find a way out of here. They might need our help.”
“Who’s they?”
“They. The people who made us, who put us here. They haven’t come back for us, so obviously, they’re in trouble.” I spotted my clothes, only a few feet away from where I was sitting on the bed.
“They’re not coming back. Nobody’s looking for you.” He rolled his shoulders, shifting whatever he was holding from one hand to the other.
“How do you know that?”
“I just know.” His arm came out from behind his back. A hunting knife gleamed in his hand, its back edge jagged with teeth. He wove it back and forth languorously, as though hypnotized. “What do you think hurts the most?” he asked. “When you push it in, or when you pull it out?”
The moisture in my mouth disappeared until my tongue scraped like sandpaper. He couldn’t intimidate me like this. “Would you like me to try it out on you? Then you can tell me.”
His amusement was an awful choking sound. “No, I figured I’d use it on you.”
I glanced involuntarily at the warped door. Damn. He’d be on me before I reached it. I didn’t even think I could open it, based on the damage. Plus, I’d read about bunkers. They always had a lock, something to keep people in and everything else out. I needed to change tack. I hated what I was about to do, but I was desperate.
“Are you sure?” I asked, dropping my arms and opening my knees. “Are you sure you don’t have anything else you’d like to push into me?” I pulled a long black curl of my hair between my fingers, but he wasn’t looking at my face any longer. I rubbed myself, slowly at first, then faster, never taking my eyes off his face. To my surprise, I was getting wet. My scent filled the air, and when he swallowed hard, victory rushed through me, mingled with relief. It didn’t last long.
When he laughed again, it had a sharp edge to it that made my teeth hurt. “Yeah,” he said, “You’re not really doing it for me. Smells a bit desperate.”
I ignored my burning face and drew my knees up to my chest again.
“Sure you don’t want to finish? It’ll be the last time.”
The warm knot of fear in my belly blossomed upward, filling my chest and threatening to suffocate me. I couldn’t help but glance at the door again, wondering how far I’d make it before he cut me down. Would the nanites save me? Was I able to die? Maybe I should pretend to be dead long enough for him to leave. Then I’d heal and disappear. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt too much. If only I could disconnect my mind from my body, like my patients did. I could go somewhere else while it happened.
“Stop looking at the door,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about it. Only one of us will be leaving. Guess which one of us it will be?”
“It is our opinion that the creation of these artilects, these intelligent machines, are a threat to our very existence. We will become obsolete not only in our own economy, but as a species. One only has to look at the Industrial Revolution to understand the potential collateral damage that we will pay with our own lives. And we recognize this instinctually. Why else would we treat androids with the contempt and hatred we do? We oppress them because we know on a primeval level that they would destroy us all if given half the chance. Let’s beat them to it.”
— Sarah Weiland, President of the Preserve Terra Society, 2039
I was in the bed again, with the full length of Tor’s body pressed against my back and his thighs curled up under mine. When he realized I was awake, he started to lift his arm from where it rested, entwined with mine. But after what I’d seen when I’d opened the front door, I’d decided to trust him, and I couldn’t bear that he might leave me. I trapped his arm under my elbow. He froze for a second then relaxed, his face in my hair. It should’ve felt strange and awkward, but it didn’t.
A tickle in my mind. He was waiting. As always.
We lay on top of the covers, my breathing rapid and shallow, his long and deep. Everything in me was light and temporary, like a bird ready to take flight. He listened about the woman in the bunker, the man with the knife. I didn’t tell him everything; some of it seemed too private to share, like a betrayal of part of myself.
“It’s not the first time I’ve…been her, either. What do you think it is?” I asked. “Dreams? It was like I was there, inside her, but all I could do was see and feel. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak. Her thoughts were my thoughts. It was like I became her, but I was still aware that we were two separate people. Does that make sense?”
He paused for a long time before answering. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a side effect. Did you have these dreams before you became a cyborg?”
“I don’t think so. I…” I tried to remember. I had trouble sometimes. The treatments that kept me alive interfered with my brain. “I’m pretty sure I didn’t.” I waited for him to be incredulous, to ask how I couldn’t understand my own mind. But he didn’t. He changed the subject instead.
He told me what had happened, what I’d seen right before I passed out. Why the air was freezing. Why there was no sun.
“All the tension that had been building between the Terrans and the Cosmists finally hit breaking point. It came out on the news that an artilect had actually been created.”
“I heard about that, just before I went under. Wasn’t it just a rumor?”
“It probably was. But for whatever reason, people believed it this time. They began to panic. Then the information on the Pantheon Modern Omega Project was leaked. And it…that’s when the world went crazy. Anybody with cybernetics was issued with an order of removal. The military started to hunt us, the Program Omega cyborgs, down. It was difficult, of course, since we look just as human as they do and Pantheon had already taken measures to hide us.”
“But how did that become this? I mean, it’s barren out there.”
“I don’t know who made the first strike, exactly. One day the news said it was the Russian Cosmists. The next it was the American Terrans. Even Canada was accused. I didn’t think we had that kind of arsenal. Information came out, stuff we’d never heard before. Murders, sabotage, illegal weapon prototypes.
The war had started long before we’d even known it was a possibility.
“The bombs fell in Canada on the third day. Major cities in every province were hit: Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto. And it wasn’t just us. There were coordinated attacks all over the world. That was the last thing I heard.
“Those who still had to be cyberized were spirited away to their main compound, wherever that is. Those, like us, who’d already undergone the process were separated into pairs and hidden in bunkers all over the province. They only expected the war to last a few weeks, a month at most, and they’d planned to move us all to the compound after a week or two in hiding. To keep us safe, Pantheon Modern triggered a forced stasis program they’d planted in all the cyborgs from Program Omega.”
Being put to sleep without my knowledge, even if it was for a good reason, made me sick. “And then?”
“And then…I don’t know exactly. I was underground, with you.”
“But you were obviously awake before me. What happened? ”
His eyes had become glassy. “The world was…just over. While we were in the bunker, communications went down, and the earth burned. More bombs leveled entire cities and scorched the earth around them for miles. Have you heard of Russian Tar?”
“Isn’t it some sort of napalm?”
“That’s right. It was banned, never used, but someone, not the Russians, got the formula for it and…it clung to every surface and burned for days. There was explosive lightning, firestorms that raged unchecked.
“Many people survived the war itself. But then ash from the firestorms blocked the sun, and the temperature plummeted. People burned, and froze, and starved, and fought, and died.”
“But lots of people survived, right? I mean, I know we’re out in the woods, but—”
“No, Ailith. I mean, yes, people survived, but very few. The world we knew is gone.”