“Yeah. And on that front, I think you should lose the uniform,” I suggest. He raises an eyebrow in question. “Diplomacy, remember? And if they are going to double-cross us, our uniforms aren’t really a match for thousands of robot people.”
“Okay,” he says as he stands, “I’ve always wanted to dress like a dude in a Viagra commercial. Looks like today’s the day that wish comes true.” Levi leaves the room and heads to the bedroom. He takes a moment. I hear water running in the bathroom for a while, then hear it shut off. He emerges in black trousers and a dark burgundy shirt, all made of the same magical fabric that feels like you’re being wrapped in a cloud and covered with unicorn kisses.
He joins me on the couch. My leg bounces up and down. I squeeze my palms together. It doesn’t take long, maybe half an hour, until there is a knock on the door. I stand while Levi opens it. Thunder does not enter the room. Instead, he hovers at the threshold. Beside him is a tiny but serious-looking woman who is exceptionally tense, even for a SenMach. I think, though I can’t be sure and the timing is wrong for me to ask, that she might be a young Queen Victoria.
“If you will both please follow us. This is my colleague Hyssop.” Hyssop makes little effort to acknowledge the semi-introduction, keeping both hands locked behind her back as her eyes scan every inch of our bodies instead of our actual faces. “The Conclave has assembled and is waiting for you,” Thunder says in a tone that is far more remote than I’ve heard from him. Well, he was the first through the room when I held that gun up to my head, so I can understand his skittishness.
Levi simply nods and we both follow Thunder and Hyssop down the elevator to the entrance of the building where there is once again the illuminated blue path for us to follow to the middle of the city. It takes quite a few minutes to get there, even at our brisk clip. I see other SenMachs out and about. These people, some famous, some anonymous—at least to me—uniformly stop whatever they are doing so they can stare. I wonder how Cosmos could have ever thought Levi and I would be happy here. Wherever we went, we would be stared at: zoo animals allowed to roam free outside their pens but curiosities nonetheless. I glance over at Levi. There is just the faintest crease between his eyebrows. We are getting very good at this, communicating through microgestures and the slightest shrugs and nods. It’s vital that we are able to use this currency of silence. We need to be able to speak without actually speaking. It means that I will know to go on the offensive by the way his weight will move from one foot to the other. It also means that I must always watch him and he must always be watching me.
It means we’re actually in this together.
When we arrive at the main administration building we are whisked up to the top floor, where we end up standing in front of two massive doors that swing open on their own. Thunder and Hyssop usher us into a high-ceilinged room with a glass roof. The floor is gray slate and the only pieces of furniture are an unbelievably large, white-lacquered oval table and the stainless-steel chairs around it. Sitting in these chairs are over two dozen SenMachs. Immediately I recognize Feather and Cosmos. Abraham Lincoln is sitting there, too, which is pretty neat. I stare at him for a second or two, surprised at how much better-looking he is than I would have thought.
Thunder pulls out two chairs at the end of the table and gestures for us to sit. They have provided us with two glasses of water. I take mine and sip gingerly. It’s awkward in this room full of people I recognize but don’t know. People who could have a deciding vote on whether or not my friends live or die. It’s come down to this moment. I have been a soldier, a fighter, a killer. Today, in this room, I must rely on something else, something ARC never taught us. Still, I can only imagine that the kind of cunning required on the battlefield has to be the same kind you would deploy in negotiations. There’s a reason all those business guys read Sun Tzu.
Yet this isn’t battle. I just have to remember that the thing they want most is for us to be safe. I cannot be explicit about the kind of dangers we will most likely face, or even the kind we have faced in the past. I have to be vaguely assertive because what we want, of course, is not only to leave here but to leave with SenMach technology that will help us even after our journey through the Multiverse is over.
“Levi, Ryn,” Cosmos announces, “thank you for joining us. I realize that you are anxious to be on your way, so let us begin.” Cosmos folds her hands gracefully in front of her on the table. “Neon is the head of our physics division. She had a very good look at the hardware that you entrusted us with yesterday. Neon?”
The woman in question is a light-skinned African American woman. Like Hyssop, she looks vaguely familiar. I riffle through my brain. I keep a lot of useless crap stored in this photographic memory of mine. A photograph. That’s where I know her from. I think she is Josephine Baker, the entertainer from the 1920s. I can’t be absolutely sure, though, since Neon is not dressed as a flapper. She is wearing an outfit similar to mine except she also has a white lab coat on.
“Thank you, Cosmos. We took a look at the program for your QOINS.” I subconsciously straighten my spine. It felt like giving it up was the smartest move at the time, but sitting here, across from android Abraham Lincoln, I’m not so sure. “Although we were able to upload it successfully into your new computers, we did not find a way to Rift directly to a quantum signature without the wobbles of pitch, or ‘jumps,’ as the additional written materials left on your desktops describe.”
“Wait. New computers? You want to replace our laptops?” I interrupt. Rocket boots I’m down for. Totally replacing the thing we rely most on to get through the Multiverse, though? Could be great, could be an epic fail.
“Your laptops are antiques,” a voice says from the table. I look around. Oh. My. God. It’s Tim Riggins. I feel my mouth go dry. My heart starts to race a little. Jesus fuck he is gorgeous, even the silver-eyed, non-jersey-wearing version of him is starting to wreak havoc on my lady parts. I hear Levi clear his throat and so I tear my gaze away and look sideways. He must have heard my pulse. I widen my eyes at him. He’s not having any of it. I fold my hands together on the table and do my best to stay cool. “You asked for our assistance. You could not possibly believe that our software could adequately function on something so archaic.”
It turns out Tim Riggins is kind of a douche robot.
I mean, I didn’t think he’d be warm and fuzzy, but this SenMach is almost hostile. And of course I know he’s not really Tim Riggins, or the actor who played him (who is Canadian, and there’s no way a Canadian could be this rude), but it’s still a shock to see someone you think you know but have them be so completely different from the image you had built in your mind.
It’s kind of a bummer, actually, so, note to self: If I ever see an actor in real life on my Earth—just walk away. In the opposite direction.
“I don’t know anything yet, which is why I’m sitting here at this table,” I say firmly in his general direction because staring at him directly is, quite frankly, like looking into the sun.
“We will get to that eventually, Doe,” Cosmos says, chiding Riggins. “Doe is Neon’s second,” she explains to us. I hear Levi chuckle under his breath. He’s laughing at Tim’s name. I turn my head so he can see the curve of my mouth. It’s enough to silence him. If anyone at the table notices, they say nothing, and Cosmos says, “Please, Neon, continue.”
“We were able to eliminate the need for the Heads and Tails part of the system by boosting the signal—an improvement we are satisfied with, given our time constraints.” Neon pauses and looks at Cosmos, who blinks her long eyelashes slowly and nods her head, prodding Neon to go on. “The code inside this program is remarkable and complex. The fact that once an Earth has been locked into the system it can then be returned to again, without the multiple jumps, is, in and of itself, beyond our scope at this moment.”
“What does that mean?” I ask sincerely.
“It means that a harmonic quantum signature is a harmonic quantum signature. The register of the tone d
oes not change. The QOINS somehow recognizes the tone of places it’s already been but can’t recognize one it hasn’t been to before. Why not? Logically it makes no sense.” I furrow my brow. I’m not sure what she is saying, so none of this is making much sense.
“I think perhaps we should have Pocket explain this further. He is the department head for Specialized Coding. Pocket?” I turn to look at the person Cosmos is referring to, who might be a young Morgan Freeman, which would make sense because I feel like Morgan Freeman is basically everywhere on our Earth.
“Yes, thank you. The coding for the QOINS is one of the most elegant I have ever seen,” Pocket begins. “How the program is able to store coordinates of an established address but not an established tone is what has us wondering.”
“Wondering what? It makes sense to me. Once we’ve been to a place, the computer remembers where it is, like storing your home address in your GPS,” I argue.
“On the surface, yes, but mathematically? No. Think about it: As Neon said, a tone is a tone. The tone is the address. Let us continue with the GPS analogy. You want to go somewhere. You enter the street number and name. Normally, it takes you right there. But this time, when you look at the directions, you realize there must be something wrong with your GPS. It is malfunctioning because it is asking you to stop at several different places before your destination. Without an actual map, and without knowing exactly where you are going, you are forced to follow the GPS’s route. The next day, you want to go to the very same place. But if your GPS is still broken, you would not expect it to take you straight there just because it had been there the day before, would you?”
Levi and I look at each other. “But the QOINS does do that. Huh.” I chew on it for a little bit, but while his example definitely computes, I still don’t know what it means. “How does it do that?” I ask. Pocket looks at Cosmos, who in turn looks at us, with concern. This can’t be good.
“We believe that there is more going on here than you were told,” she says sadly.
“Well, you knew that,” Levi jumps in. “Ryn told you that.”
“Yes I heard a muddled explanation and I saw the alterations to your genome, but to read that code—that was something else entirely. It was . . . troubling. We believe the Roones can jump from one Earth directly to another. The code has been manipulated. Corrupted, but the solution is there. If we had more time, we could deconstruct it and solve this problem for you. The question, however, remains: Why would the Roones, or your superiors at the Allied Rift Coalition, want to put you in considerable danger with all these unnecessary jumps? It suggests something dishonorable at best and sinister at worst,” Cosmos admits reluctantly.
“I can’t say that I’m surprised. They’ve never been honest with us. It’s why we left. But what does that have to do with what is going on at this table? How is the QOINS relevant to you?” I ask as I lean in closer, putting my elbows on the table.
“It’s relevant in terms of our involvement. The code changes things and now we have a dilemma. Two, actually, and we do not have a quorum to deal with them, which is why I want you to speak directly to the Conclave—so that you might be able to answer some additional questions that may lead to solutions.”
“Fair enough. Let’s discuss.”
“Well the first problem is that if the Roones are simply the architects of this technology, but not the abusers, that means that the Allied Rift Coalition, and more specifically, humans, are your enemy. If you are looking to us to intervene in a military capacity on your Earth against your own kind, that would be impossible. We will not alter our base code to harm human beings, not even those who abuse children. The cost to our society would be too great. We tried that approach on this Earth and we failed miserably. Look at what happened when we tried to keep you here. We cannot infantilize the human race. You must grow up and learn from your own mistakes.”
I bite down on the inside of my cheek. I hadn’t even thought of putting troops on the negotiating table. I had only been thinking of getting to Ezra safely and then maybe some super-genius computer hacks to use back home. The SenMachs are seeing the long game. I need to start thinking this way, too.
“That’s fair,” I say. “So we won’t ask for military aid against other humans. But what if it isn’t us? What if the Roones really are pulling all the strings? What if we want military aid to fight a combatant that isn’t human?” I’m thinking of the Roones, of course. But now I’m also imagining beyond just fighting the Roones directly—how the SenMachs could pull the chips out of all the Citadels’ heads—chips that could blow their brains out with the Midnight Protocol. With their level of tech, they should be able to neutralize those chips far faster than we could, meaning that even if they can’t fight, they can free up a fighting force for us . . . and give the Citadels a chance for autonomy.
Long game.
The only answer I get is awkward silence. They’re probably sending a thousand text messages back and forth that they’re reading behind their eyes.
Eventually, Cosmos speaks up. “The party or parties behind the atrocities which led you to our Earth brings us to our second problem. The Roones may be your enemy. It may be another species entirely, manipulating and maneuvering all of you behind a very well-concealed veil. However, whoever created that code is a force to be reckoned with. If their aim is to infiltrate other Earths and pillage those Earths for technology and/or resources, what do you think will happen once they take a look at what you have brought home, at what we can give you? There are members of this assembly who believe that our first priority should be finding a way to block the QOINS receiver so that another Rift can never be opened here.”
My heart sinks. God I’m crap at this. It never even occurred to me that I would be putting the SenMachs in danger by simply being here. The only thing I can offer them now is the absolute truth, which hopefully, given what Cosmos knows was done to us when we were just little kids, will mean something to her.
“Look,” I begin. “You’re right. Blocking the QOINS would be the safest option.”
“Ryn,” Levi hisses.
“No, Levi. We have to be honest, that’s the only way this is going to work,” I admit softly.
“Are you saying that you do not want our tactical assistance, Ryn?” Cosmos asks.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I—we—want your assistance very much. But I recognize the danger in offering it and I would understand completely if you decide not to. The only thing I can say is this: If you did choose to align with our cause, I would never ask you to participate in any way that violated your base code, and I would only ask for your help, in a military capacity, if it was a matter of life or death. I would never ask you to expose yourselves to prove some kind of point or show of force.”
“That is all well and good, but if it got that far, we would already be lost. It would be impossible for us to protect ourselves and remain true to our base code if Citadels loyal to ARC Rifted here to our city.” I look in the direction of the voice who had made the comment and I’m completely bummed to see that it’s Matt Damon.
Matt Damon!
The real Matt Damon would totally be with us. All the way. He was Jason Bourne! Jason Bourne knows a thing or two about being a brainwashed super soldier.
“I understand that,” I tell them all in a tone that I hope does not sound combative. “But I hope that you understand, really understand, what we’re up against. You guys are thousands of years old. We’re teenagers. Granted, we are not typical teens, but still, at this point . . .” I struggle to find the right words. Words that will convey strength but at the same time convey how invaluable their help would be. “We’re just . . . new.”
“Yes. We all realize how young you are.” Fake Matt Damon—again! “And we worry about your safety. But the risk is so great, and the reward may only be in helping a group of humans who could be doomed already, given your violent predilections, through no fault of your own, of course.”
&nb
sp; “Tin, that is unnecessary,” Cosmos says with icy authority.
I consider Tin’s statement. However cruel, it also rings true. The risk is significant and the rewards minimal. But what if we actually had something to give? Something of value?
“Fine,” I say in a tone that I hope matches Cosmos’s. “What if we could make a trade? What if you helped us and got something in return?” I see Levi’s head whip toward me. I know he probably won’t like this, but we can’t exactly negotiate when we have nothing to leverage. I can see that Cosmos wants to help us, but the others need something beyond seeing to our safety. A SenMach like Tin (who, let’s face it, is a poor man’s Matt Damon) is not built the same way as Cosmos. Help from the SenMachs isn’t about us being able to just leave now. It’s not even about the tech or military aid they can offer. Tin is right, SenMach City would be dangerously exposed. We need to make it worth it.
“I do not know what you could possibly offer up in return that would compensate for such an enormous risk,” the usurper Matt Damon predictably chimes in, which annoys me, but it also lets me know that my head is in the right place.
I grit my teeth, flexing my jaw for a moment. Here goes nothing. “Eggs. My eggs, to be specific. And Levi’s sperm.” I don’t need to look at Levi to know he must be glowering at me. “As well as live tissue samples, blood, and any other biological material you might want to have. I know that you use real tissue for your skin and I imagine you also use live, organic cells for other parts of your own bodies. If you choose to one day repopulate the earth with humans, our children would be strong and smart. Think about it: human beings on this Earth again, humans that you would raise and care for with your values. I know you all regret not being able to stop the extinction of humanity on this planet. With our help, you could really do something about it. Also, I am aware that you would require more biological diversity to repopulate. I can guarantee there are other Citadels who would be willing to offer the same thing.”
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