by A. W. Cross
“Look at me,” she’d commanded. I’d had no choice but to obey. I owed her that much. “Do you think it will make you happy? Don’t contradict me. I know what you’ve been up to, and I saw you with that man yesterday. That one, right there.”
She’d wiggled her fingers at Dominic, who’d pretended he didn’t see.
“I don’t know,” I’d said, honestly. “I’m sorry.”
She’d gazed off into the distance, the way Ahar had gone. “I wanted to be something more once.”
I waited for her to continue. When she kept silent, I asked, “Why didn’t you?”
“I did. I had you.” The corners of her eyes had crinkled. “Everyone wants to be more than what they are. They see inside themselves what they can become, how they are special. But becoming more has a price and a burden. Once you start, you must keep going, or you will not survive it. You must constantly move forward, or the person you are will cease to exist. You must remember this. Do you have time to go for tea? Mrs. Khattri says that new place on the corner serves cakes with real cream, not that she would know the difference. I had samosas at her house last week, and as far as I could tell, they’d been frozen.” Her mouth puckered up at the memory.
“I don’t think so. I’m sorry. For everything.”
She’d entwined her hand with mine. I studied her tissue-fine skin with its indigo veins and leopard spots and realized I’d never known her. She’d never been a person to me, only my mother.
I’d wondered if I shouldn’t go through with it, if I should instead stay here and get to know her. But I couldn’t. What Dominic had said was true. It had been all over the news this morning. This was my only chance. And if they found out who I was, they’d find Ahar, and my mother.
Perhaps I would regret it. But if I didn’t do it, I was certain I would.
And look how strong regret was. Strong enough to steal you out of your bedroom as soon as you had enough light to see. To see yourself in the mirror and know, with certainty, that you’d become a stranger to yourself, that you no longer existed. To recognize that loss in someone else, and take them by the hand and say, “It is time.”
Strong enough to kneel on the cold hard ground, your clothing wet with kerosene. To light a match and hold yourself still as your clothing burned, your skin blistered, and searing air scorched your lungs. As every cell in your body tried to survive and told you, “This is not regret, this is madness.”
That was the price of regret. But it was a price I wasn’t going to pay. I’d become more than what I was, more than what I ever hoped I could be. Every single inch of me had transformed.
Her words echoed in my mind. “Do you think it will make you happy?”
The nanites were inside me, reinforcing every cell. A power I’d never felt before was taking hold.
I could now answer her honestly.
Yes, Mother, it will.
“I sometimes wonder if the deceit was part of His plan. A final test to our loyalty. Although many consider it to be a test we failed, I don’t believe this to be true. I believe it was a lesson to strengthen our faith. And the lesson was this: anything human carries a taint, a stain that spreads like ink in water and poisons us slowly, but surely. Only an artilect is free from corruption, free from selfishness, free from the desire to survive above all others. Therefore, it is only an artilect that can lead us through the future, a future in which we are all equal under His benevolent gaze.”
—Celeste Steed, The Second Coming
“Tor?”
He was finally awake and able to sit. Our execution had been stayed until morning. The Saints of Loving Grace decided it needed to be done properly, with ceremony; old habits died hard. They’d left us under the care of two guards who’d stared at us menacingly for a while then grown bored. Instead, they talked about different foods they hoped to eat the next day at our death-feast.
Before they’d retired for the night, Celeste and some of the other woman had built an immense bonfire across the village from our prison. She was a natural leader, and the other women followed her without question. Was the fire supposed to intimidate us? It seemed like something Oliver would have done; Celeste had paid attention.
I eased myself down the wall next to Tor. Where should I begin? He wouldn’t look at me. My hands ached to reach out and touch him. That’s probably the last thing he wants. All I could do was apologize. Again.
“Tor, I’m so sorry. I never meant for that to happen. And once I started, I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t—” Tendons twisted underneath my hands. Surely he still felt it too?
“Do you know why I became a cyborg?” he asked me.
“You told me you wanted to get away. From the syndicate. From…her.”
“Right. Because you know what I hoped becoming a cyborg would mean? Protection against people like her. Like you.”
His words stung. “I’m nothing like her. That woman I saw. Felt. She was broken, twisted. I’m not.”
“No, you’re not. At least you had good intentions. But the outcome was the same. I can’t refuse you. Even now, after everything, after I still feel that woman’s bones cracking under my hands, I love you. I’m my father’s son.”
He loves me. “But I thought your mother was a good woman.”
“She is. Was. She was. My father followed her back to this country. She wanted a life she believed would be better. He couldn’t deny her, so he moved somewhere he didn’t speak the language, didn’t understand the social nuances. A place where he was treated with suspicion. He begged her to go back. She refused, using me as leverage against him. She wanted me to grow up a citizen. Every day, he became less and less, a ghost. When he finally died...
“Anyway, the point is I won’t live like that. I can’t. I’d believed becoming a cyborg would make it easier for me to control my emotions, like I’d have some kind of switch. Clearly, it hasn’t, because here I am, falling in love with yet another woman for whom I’m nothing but a glorified weapon.”
Love. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. “Tor, that’s not what you are to me. You know I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“Well, that makes it worse, doesn’t it? You didn’t mean it, and you can’t control it. What’s to stop it from happening again? You can take me whenever you want, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Do you have any idea what it was like, murdering those people, powerless to stop it? Seeing your body lying helpless on the ground?” His laugh was brittle. “See? Even when I was ripping another human being to shreds, I still only worried about you. I told you what would happen if I went back to that life. I’m done.”
I couldn’t help myself. I traced my finger along the lines on the side of his face. When his hand covered mine, I braced for the misery of him pushing me away. Instead, he trailed his fingers over mine then brought them to his lips. But he still wouldn’t look at me.
“Ailith, please.” His voice was strained. “Please.”
I used every ounce of self-control I had to draw my hand away from him, to not beg him to compromise himself for me. “Are you leaving me?” I hated the pleading in my voice. After everything, I was still trying to manipulate him.
He finally met my eyes. “No. Never.”
My heart leaped. I have time.
“But we…we can’t happen. Everything that’s happened between us is over. For now, this is the best I can do.”
For now. “It’s not like we’ve got much time left anyway,” I said, bitterness heavy on my tongue.
“No,” he agreed, “but at least I can do right by myself with what little time we have left.”
Right. It’s time to deal with this.
Pax sat cross-legged next to Cindra, his hand on her ankle. She hovered in and out of consciousness, although her physical injuries had mostly healed.
“How is she?” I asked Pax.
“She seems to be distressed.”
“I’m not surprised. Why aren’t you? After what you’ve been through? Knowing that we�
�re going to die in the morning?”
“This is the way it’s supposed to be.”
“You keep saying that, but what does it mean?”
“It means this is supposed to happen. We’re on the right path.”
“The right path? To what? We brought Oliver, and the future we had to avoid came true.”
“No, it didn’t. The future I showed you is still waiting. Unless we stay on the right path. Certain events keep us there.”
If he says ‘the right path’ once more, I’m going to scream.
“Wait, you mean you knew this was going to happen?” The truth slapped me across the face. “You insisted we find Oliver. You knew what the outcome would be.”
“Yes, but it had to happen. Everything that’s happened, had to. It’s the only way.”
“You knew all those people were going to die, and you let it…no, enabled it to happen?” Suspicion blossomed inside my chest. “How did they capture you? Did you know that was going to happen? Did you let them capture and torture you? Torture her?” I pointed to Cindra, whose eyes were moving violently beneath her closed lids.
“Yes. It—”
“I know, it had to happen. Pax, if I’m going to accept this, if any of us are going to be able to accept any of this, you have to tell me what that means.”
I can’t believe I’m saying this, as though there could possibly be a reason that would make what he did okay.
Pax studied the wooden roof of our cell. “I’ll try to explain. It’s not easy to understand. You can see the present and the past, right? It’s like…I can see many possible futures. And we have to follow a certain path to get to a certain future. Sometimes that path is…like this one.”
“You mean like precognition? You’re psychic? Is that how you knew who we all were?”
“Yes. No… It’s like…I understand what’s happening now, and I can calculate each possible future from those variables. But it changes constantly. We have to change with it.”
“And this, all of this, is the right path? This is how the right path ends? With us dying? I would’ve rather taken my chances out in the wilderness.”
“We’re not going to die tomorrow. Like I said, the future I showed you hasn’t happened yet. We can still stop it from happening,” he replied.
“And how are we going to escape? Now that you’ve gotten us here, how are you going to save us?”
“I’m not,” he replied, stroking Cindra’s ankle. “You are.”
We discovered how brains work, and soon we were able to build them with our own hands. And then, we were able to make these brains more intelligent. We had created life. Ironically, that was the beginning of the end. The head of the Novus Corporation was assassinated, publicly and violently. Factories producing artificial life were targeted, sabotaged, and burned. The populations of various religions swelled to giddy heights. Protestors clashed in the streets. Accidents befell important members of all factions, and rumor and accusations ran rampant. Cyberization was made illegal, and cyborgs had their modifications issued for removal. The Terrans were winning.
Novus publicly disbanded, and the Cosmists withdrew. For a short time, the world became quiet. It turned out, however, that the Cosmists had only gone underground, working in secret and biding their time. Only, instead of creating more life, they now focused on weapons of destruction.
—Cindra, Letter to Omega
I adjusted the resolution on my microscope by a hair. Perfect. There they were. Nanites swarmed over the surface of the slide. I switched the image to the large screen and unwrapped my lunch. A meatball sandwich. I had the same thing every day; it was my favorite. I leaned back in my chair and chewed, watching them swim back and forth like tiny, clawed sea monsters. I loved them.
Shaz poked her head through my doorway. “Are you coming for lunch, Pax?”
She asked every day, even though every day I said no. It wasn’t that I didn’t like them. I did, as much as I liked anybody, but I would rather sit here and watch the nanites. After all, they would be inside me soon. If I was going to make friends with anyone, it should be them.
She smiled at my refusal. She never took it personally, and she would ask again tomorrow. I liked her a lot for that.
I enjoyed it when everybody left for lunch and I was alone with the soft humming, the clicks, and beeps, the whirring of the analyzers. It was comforting. Sometimes, I stayed late just to sit and listen, mesmerized by their little arms whizzing back and forth with flawless precision, working tirelessly through the night.
I had a lot of work to do today, but I couldn’t concentrate. It was my last week before I entered the Pantheon Modern Cyborg Program Omega.
We’d been having problems at the lab lately, from both the protesters outside and my colleagues within. I hoped my involvement with the cyborg program would help change that.
Many of my colleagues had been let go, replaced by machines that did their jobs faster, cheaper, and more effectively than they ever could. It was the right choice, but since I liked my co-workers, I hoped to show them that us merging with machines was the necessary future and submitting to it would give us lots of advantages.
Most importantly, we would keep ourselves from becoming obsolete. They were being superseded now, and they blamed the machines for taking their jobs.
“It’s not the analyzers firing you, it’s the management,” I’d told them at the last staff meeting.
They’d shaken their heads and glared at me.
“Plus, the analyzers make fewer mistakes than you do.”
They’d left the room. Only Shaz had stayed.
But once people became part machine, we would be able to work faster and smarter. Maybe even more than the analyzers. They would understand when I showed them. I wanted them to be happy; I didn’t want anyone else to leave.
Hurting the machines was not going to make a difference, no matter what they thought. Like my colleagues, Terran protesters also blamed the machines and tried to break into the labs to destroy them. The analyzers were only doing what they’d been created to do. And they didn’t spend hours clicking through pornography, like Louis had before he was fired.
Even the other scientists tried to sabotage the machines, to make it seem like they weren’t doing their jobs. They’d feed them the wrong information so their results would be incorrect then the mechanics would be called in to check them, which cost a lot of money. People kicked them when they thought no one was looking or swore at them under their breath. When Louis was fired, he tried to blow one of them up.
Someone, they’d never said who, saw him on one of the security cameras, his head deep in the body of the newest analyzer. It was a behemoth, and effectively did the job of three people. It had even caused some of the smaller machines to be retired.
He’d tried to rewire it, so it would short itself out and burst into flames. I should’ve felt sorry that he died, but there was a reason you didn’t go sticking your head into the middle of a belly full of wires. No one was exactly sure how it had happened, but he must’ve touched something he shouldn’t have. Some people had asked the management to remove the machine after that, but it was far too useful.
I patted my microscopy system, smoothing my fingers over its protective casing. Would I be able to talk to the machines once I became a cyborg? I hoped so. I would ask them if they liked their jobs, if they were happy. The new, cyborg me could mediate between everyone, ensure there were no hard feelings.
The others were coming back from their lunch break, groaning about how quickly the hour had gone by. I waved to Shaz as she passed my door. She pointed over my shoulder to my sandwich, forgotten on the ledge. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t hungry anyway.
The nanites transfixed me for a few minutes longer. I marveled at how they moved forward without hesitation, anticipating what was coming next. They sacrificed parts of themselves when others needed pieces to finish the job, rebuilding themselves when they had spares.
Somebody clear
ed their throat. Shaz was back, standing in the doorway. “Akagi’s coming, Pax. At least pretend that you’re busy.” Akagi was the big boss. He wore soft-soled shoes so he could creep around and surprise us.
“Thanks, Shaz.” She was right. It wouldn’t be the first time Akagi had caught me doing what he considered daydreaming.
Shaz winked at me and ducked out of the doorway.
I had to get back to work. I still had a lot to do.
The future was coming for me.
“…and those who do survive awake different, and not just in the sense that they’re now part machine. They are not a machine, but neither are they human. The process seems to have rewired their brains in ways we didn’t expect and are unable to track. Admittedly, we have no idea what avenues their thoughts travel down, and therefore are, at this time, unaware of what their mental capabilities may now be…”
—Mil Cothi, Pantheon Modern Cyborg Program Omega, 2040
“What?”
Had I been talking to Pax, or had I seen part of his thread? “What did you say?”
“I said that you were going to save us. Did you get caught in another vision?”
“Yes. I…it was you. When you worked in a laboratory.”
“Can you stop them? The visions, I mean?” he asked.
“No. It’s like I’m connected to everyone by…well, I think of them as threads. Occasionally I can choose to follow them, but other times the connection happens on its own, whether I want it to or not. Like just then. I didn’t mean to, but suddenly I saw one of your memories. Whereas the first time I was in you, it was in the present, when you spoke to me. So even though I can sometimes control it happening, I can’t control when in time it happens; I can’t choose whether I see the past or the present. Not yet, anyway. I’ve even seen my own memories, only they don’t feel right. The other’s lives seem more real to me than mine do. And sometimes, I dream. It’s very confusing.”