by Rich Larson
“Learning a new way, huh,” it says. “Jesus. You’re going to be us all over again. Predation is step one.”
“I’ll help out you,” Carver Seven says. “Make you safe. But you have to do something for me, too, okay? Finish fix it up a bit Anita.”
The Man slumps. “You should just let them cut me up.”
Carver Seven knows the Man sometimes self-damages for reasons beyond his understanding, but there is no time to learn why. He looks around, sees Carrier Three’s head set on a little mound of sand, and picks it up carefully.
“Nearly finished,” he says. “Now finish fix it up a bit.”
“I can’t,” the Man says. “I have no fucking idea how a positronic brain works. I lied. I lied so you would help me with the boat. I can’t fix your friend.”
Carver Seven replays the sounds over and over, unwilling to believe it. The Man can’t fix Carrier Three. The Man never could. Recycler was right.
“I did try.” The Man makes its clipped noise, just once. “I looked at the wiring and all. But that was done in a lab with lasers and microtools and . . . all that robot shit. I’m sorry, buddy.”
“Anita is gone,” Carver Seven says, to be sure, hoping desperately the Man will contradict him.
“Yeah,” the Man says instead. “Anita is gone.” It rubs its head. “Don’t think I’ve said it till now. Said it properly.” It pauses. “I’m sorry.”
“Why boat?” Carver Seven asks, because he has no way to articulate what he really wants to say, that he has the deep hollow feeling like Carrier Three is being disassembled all over again.
“Thought I’d try to get to the mainland,” the Man says. “See if any survivors got carried past this little spit. If any lifeboats made it. Doesn’t matter, though. If I don’t die here, I’ll probably die in the sea. If I don’t die in the sea, I’ll die somewhere else. Doesn’t matter.”
Carver Seven thinks again of his sharp blades, how simple it would be to damage the Man. Simpler still to let the clan do it for him. Then he thinks of Carrier Three’s kindness.
“Nearly finished boat,” Carver Seven says. “Tin mans no go sea. Boat make you safe.” He goes to the last tree they felled and dragged, rolling it toward the others.
“You serious?” the Man asks.
In answer, Carver Seven begins stripping the log, short sharp strikes, precise and rhythmic. He is a Carver, so he will carve. He will be kind how Carrier Three was kind.
“You’re a better human being than I am,” the Man says. “You should know that.”
“You should let’s get to work,” Carver Seven says.
By the time the Man declares the boat finished, the sky is changing color, turning purple and red. The glimmering lifelights up above them are fading away. Carver Seven asks the Man what they are before they disappear completely, in case it knows.
“Stars,” the Man says. “They’re stars in the sky.”
“Stars in the sky,” Carver Seven echoes.
The Man pauses. “Some people, you know, they think we go up there when we die. They think our souls . . . our . . .” It taps its head, then its body. “They think a part of us gets to go up in the sky. And watch over the people who are still down here.”
Carver Seven parses the information. He looks down at Carrier Three’s near-dark lifelight, cradled in his manipulators, and wonders if maybe the other sparks are up in the sky. It seems improbable.
“If you want I could take her with me,” the Man says. “Just in case I meet some crazy roboticist.”
“Anita is gone,” Carver Seven says.
“Yeah.” The Man sucks in air through its audio port. “Thanks for helping me. Hope your people aren’t going to be pissed at you. Other tin mans hunt you?”
“No,” Carver Seven says. He’ll tell the rest of the clan the truth, that the Man must have floated away on its boat in the dark. He won’t tell them he worked through the night to ensure it. Recycler will guess, maybe, but not tell the others. Carver Seven will apologize to her, and give her Carrier Three’s head to finally recycle, but maybe ask that a small piece, just a tiny piece, be soldered to him.
“Good,” the Man says. “That’s good.”
Carver Seven uses one manipulator to help the Man drag the boat as close to the waves as he dares, then steps back. The Man hops on, making the wood bob in the water.
“Guess this is goodbye,” it says, with its photoreceptors in danger of leaking lubricant again.
“Crying like a little bitch,” Carver Seven says. “Get out of here.”
The Man makes its clipped noise, over and over, as it poles out into the waves. Carver Seven can’t tell if it is distress or happiness. As Watcher-in-the-sky rises and warms his back, making his steps back toward the village smooth and strong, Carver Seven can’t tell which he is feeling, either.
ATROPHY
“If you’re having eye problems, you should go see him,” Durden said, stripping down. His brow was knitted. Eris put her hand where his muscle sliced lean to hip bone. His brow unknit. He grinned white and made his stomach taut.
“It might not happen again,” Eris said. She raised her arms and Durden tugged her shirt up and away. He stowed it in the locker and fed it a token.
Eris looked at her naked reflection a moment longer, then they stepped into the baths. Steam sucked towards her lips. The floor was stark white, prickling with rubber traction pad. The walls were wet marble. Bronze bodies appeared in slices through the fog, sculpted backs and sylph limbs. Relaxed voices mingled. Flesh slapped on flesh.
“Still,” Durden said, when they were entwined under a hot jet.
“Still what?” Eris asked, watching the tracery on the wall.
“Getting resynched would be safest.” Durden scrubbed under his arm. “How, ah, how did it happen? Exactly? You said things jumped.”
“Yes. They jumped.”
Eris thought of how to explain it. She’d been walking Addy to the school, crossing the bridge. Then something split the top of her head open. She’d stumbled against the railing but the vines turned to metal under her hands, and when she looked down the bright clear canal had no water, only brackish sludge, and something pale and red-spotted was lying in the mud.
“And then right back to normal?”
“I don’t want Addy to know,” Eris said, hooking her chin over his shoulder. “She’s worried about getting her imps. This would just make it worse.”
Durden said something to that, but Eris didn’t hear. It was happening again.
The steam vanished, whisked by some invisible hand, and the floor turned slimy cold under her feet. Cracked tiles with black tendrils creeping between the gaps. The rusted shower nozzles were discharging a pale blue foam. Bodies shivered where they stood and laughed and nuzzled against each other. Sagged breasts, sharp ribs. She saw shiny pink scar tissue and puckered lesions.
Eris closed her eyes and didn’t open them until she was sure it had passed, and then she buried herself in Durden’s unblemished skin.
She’d thought this might happen one day.
“Lind got his imps today, mammy,” Addy said. “Showed us them.”
“That’s early,” Eris remarked, spooning yogurt.
“Reckon they bribed the optometrist,” Durden said. The yogurt plopped in his bowl and he grinned over Addy’s yellow head. Eris tried to picture the optometrist taking a food bribe. She tried to imagine him even eating.
“He says it’s blue,” Addy said. “And it’s all bright and beauty.” Her small voice was somber.
“Soon you’ll be seeing it too, little duck.” Durden tapped his eyelid. “You should be excited, Addy. Your mammy and me, we’re excited.”
Addy played with her spoon. “Lind says it hurt,” she told it.
“Maybe a little,” Durden said. “Hell if I remember. You’re a big girl, though, aren’t you? Six is a big brave girl.” He looked sideways.
“Nothing to be scared of,” Eris said softly.
“Says he already forgot
how things used to be,” Addy said. She frowned. “Mammy, why aren’t you looking at me?”
“I’m just watching out the window, love.”
Addy nodded solemnly. “It’s snowing again.”
The blank gray sky outside was building clouds in soft stacks. Fluffy flakes pinwheeled down in the breeze, small beautiful crystals that glimmered.
Things jumped. The sky was mottled red, a chemical haze she’d never seen before, and gray scraps were drifting down like feathers. It wasn’t snow.
“That’s ash.” Eris said it before she could catch her tongue.
“It’s snow,” Addy said.
Eris felt Durden stare at her.
“It’s snow,” he said firmly. “Your mammy is teasing you.”
Later, when Addy was asleep, they argued in whispers over her cocoon of blankets.
“Eris, you said you’d tell me.”
Eris, feeling irritable, shrugged. “I know.”
“Has it been happening all day?” Durden demanded. “The jumps?”
“If I look at anything too long. Yes.” Eris bit at her lip. She reached out and stroked the slice of Addy’s hair that showed from under the covers.
“That’s why you haven’t looked me in the eye all day?” Durden stood up, paced two steps and back. His back was pale and flecked with scars. His back was smooth sunkissed flesh.
Eris blinked. “I don’t want to worry Addy.”
“You haven’t looked at her, either,” Durden said. “Don’t think that worries her?” A tendon jumped in his neck. He sucked air through his nostrils. “What does she look like?” he asked.
Eris remembered the bridge. She saw her daughter hobbling, sunken-eyed. Hair in pale strands across a distended skull. “Not like Addy,” she said, with a hook snagged in her throat. She stroked Addy’s head again. She kept her eyes on the ceiling.
Durden’s hand clenched around hers. “Then why haven’t you gone to the optometrist?”
“I don’t know. I will. I don’t know.”
“People go mad, you know.” Durden’s voice was shaky now. He deliberately removed her hand from Addy’s blanket. “Don’t you remember what happened to your mother? They get desynchronized, they go mad.”
“Don’t talk about my mother,” Eris said. She shook her head hard. “It’s so much worse than I thought it would be. Than what I remember from before the imps.”
“Then get your imps fixed, Eris.”
Eris said nothing. Addy rustled in the bed.
“Do you like it?” Durden asked softly. “Does it make you feel like a fucking prophet or something?”
“It’s not that.”
“What do I look like?” Durden finally asked. She’d been waiting for the question to force its way past his teeth. “Tell me. What do I really look like?”
“Durden.”
“Tell me.” Durden spread his arms. His smile was pained. “Look at me.”
Skin spotted from the radiation, hair in wiry patches. His shoulders stooped and the hollow of his chest was waxpale; his fingernails were yellowed stubs. His ribcage was a skeleton’s hand clenched around his chest. Dangling cock like raw hamburger, disease-colored. Puffy lids around matte black eyes.
“Quiet,” Eris said. “Addy’s sleep—
“Let’s go up on the roof, then,” Durden said. “Like old times.”
“Quiet,” Eris begged.
Durden half-laughed. “It would be like fucking a zombie, right?” He turned away with the bridge of his nose pinched between two fingers. Addy shifted again.
“I’m going to get resynched,” Eris said. “I promise.”
“You’re still beautiful for me. It’s not . . .” Durden broke off.
“I promise,” Eris repeated.
Durden’s shoulders shrugged. His hand rested on Addy’s back, rising and falling with her breath. Eris stepped quickly across the rotting floorboard. She pulled on a coat and went into the night before she started to cry.
The world had fractured. Eris looked once and saw pittoresque houses, bricked paths and manicured vegetation. She looked again and the trees were long-petrified, the housing units were pitted concrete, the ground was littered with garbage. The sky oscillated over her head, from a soft velvet strewn with oversized constellations to a dark starless cavern.
She went to the wall. The elaborate carvings had disappeared, leaving sooty iron and barcode stamps in digits Eris couldn’t read. She stumbled up the stairs, half-expecting them to give way under her feet. Her clanging was the only noise, that and then a foaming in her ears. Eris held onto the moor in her head, the rolling hills and willowy trees, the deep greens and stony grays through the mist.
She came to the top and looked over. The ground was blasted bare. The mist was a poison-yellow fume that shrouded black rock. Craters from high-impact charges puckered the wasteland and Eris could see nothing green, nothing living. Her breath caught in her throat. She braced herself against the railing.
Eris scanned, scanned, scanned, but did not see her mother’s skeleton down among the rocks. She cried. When dawn seemed like a possibility, she left.
Addy’s hand was sweaty inside hers as they walked to the optometrist. His hut, metal and composites, hunched on the edge of the town like a stubborn child. Eris hadn’t visited it for decades now. Not since her own imps had gone in.
“You’ll be fine, love,” Eris said. “Remember what Durden said.”
“Brave,” Addy mumbled.
“Brave. That’s right.”
They ducked inside. The interior was dim. The optometrist sat behind his machines, fingers dancing over keys and levers. He was tall and stately-looking, silver-haired. He smiled incorrectly as they approached.
“Hello, good morning,” he said. His voice moved oddly over the syllables. “We have your gene scheme uploaded and I’m ready to do the procedure. What is your name?”
“Addy,” Eris said for her. She closed her eyes.
“Come lie down, Addy,” the optometrist’s voice said. “We’ll have you synchronized in no time.”
“Does it hurt?” Addy asked.
“Come lie down, Addy,” the optometrist said. Eris heard the swiveling squeak of a padded chair.
“Brave girl,” Eris whispered. She leaned down and kissed the top of Addy’s head. She heard small feet scuff the floor, then an exhalation as the optometrist lifted her into the chair. Eris swallowed hard and opened her eyes.
A great black insect, a thrumming machine, some combination of both. The optometrist click-clacked around the chair on spider’s legs. Tendrils telescoped and moved over Addy’s face, concealing her. Eris clutched her arms to herself and watched.
“You’ve come undone,” the optometrist said as he worked.
“What?”
“You are not synchronized,” the optometrist said. “I can tell. The same thing happened to your genetic donor. Perhaps the tendency is hereditary.”
“Concentrate on Addy,” Eris said. “Please.”
“The procedure is automated.” The optometrist paused. “Your implants could be replaced. They are an old model. Interference from the retina can create conflicting images.”
“The real images,” Eris said.
“I do not make such distinctions.”
“Why do you do this to us?” Eris asked.
“You want me to,” the optometrist said. He pulled back, and Addy was lying perfectly still with a gray putty packed over her eyesockets. Black button eyes nestled where her old blue ones had been. Addy’s head turned. As Eris watched, two small red pinpricks appeared in the glossy black.
“Is it done?” Addy asked. Her small smile was crooked. Her teeth hadn’t grown in right.
“We’re all finished, Addy,” the optometrist said. “Easy, wasn’t it?”
“Easy,” Eris echoed. She took her daughter’s hand and helped her out of the chair. Addy’s head was on a swivel. She had a delirium grin. The optometrist scanned each new eye and gave Eris a small bottle
of drops for the swelling.
“If you would like your implants replaced, come back tomorrow,” he said, then glided back to his machinery.
Eris went numbly to the door with Addy tugging at her arm. The sky outside was radiation yellow. The soil crumbled under their feet.
“Mammy.” Addy sighed. “It’s so beautiful.”
EVERY SO OFTEN
It’s cold, but Victor keeps waiting. They’ll be coming out soon. He moves the snap pistol to his other hand and the wintry metal bites. There is nothing warm in Mauthausen. The packed dirt streets are frosted. The air is chilled. The people are frozen in their own way, if Victor thinks about it. Sometimes they look more like a photograph than . . .
The butcher shop opens with a slink of steam and light. The assassins emerge, squabbling about directions. One of them is suitably Austrian-looking, with plastered blonde hair and well-synthesized clothes. The other is not. His muddy post-racial melanin stands out sharply against the pallid villagers. A handgun winks in and out of view with the motion of his untucked shirt. Victor doesn’t recognize the model. He supposes it is a few years ahead of his time.
Time. He needs to ensure the Quo.
“Grüss Gott,” Victor says, rounding the corner of the alley after them. They both whirl. They have frantic eyes, unsteady. They are terrified and elated all at once by what they have come to do. There is a hunger and a purpose shining in their beautiful irises. Neither of them speak German.
“Get lost, you fucking bum,” one of them mutters, waving Victor off.
“We must be close,” the other one says. “Oh, God, we can do it. We’ll actually do it.”
Victor has to wonder again how so many have slipped through. Bribery, for the most part. Social conscience could be another factor. Some officials might not try their hardest to prevent an illegal rewind if they secretly sympathize with the cause.
“As unlicensed rewinders in a restricted time and area, you are in violation of the Quo.” He didn’t mean to mention the Quo. That slips out unbidden. There is a section and subsection he should have snarled at them instead.
Victor has already scanned them for bombs, so he snaps a bullet into each of their foreheads. The shooting is very quiet. He covers the bodies with nanoweave, tucking sprawled limbs under the tarp with practiced motions. He can do disposal later, during the night.