He folded his hands neatly in front of him on the table. I could see that he had something tucked inside his right palm. Some sort of device. Maybe he was one of those new messenger models I’d heard about, disposable clones built for one-way missions followed by a quick download.
“You’re a Newbie,” I said, recognizing the unmistakable glitter. “A month old, maybe.” It was my turn to look him up and down. “East Coast chop shop. My guess is you came from Harry Kim.”
“Yes, of course. East Coast. You now have four minutes.” His eyes turned cold, his speech pattern skipped a beat, slipped into something almost foreign. He said a couple of words I couldn’t understand, then he returned to English. “If we waste time, you will regret it.”
I shrugged.
“Where is Ellen?”
I felt the hair on the back of my skull stand up. I glanced around the room, tried to figure out if there were any cameras or recording devices that I couldn’t see.
“I need to know the research progress,” he continued. “You haven’t turned in any reports for several days and my sources have informed me that the last dog, Omega, is missing.”
“Okay, you wanna know what happened? She split, that’s what happened,” I said, trying to sound angry and betrayed, trying to keep my thoughts in check. “That mediocre research assistant your boss pawned off on me just disappeared. She ran off when the last dog died, that’s how much she cares about your little project. And this research is all a pile of crap, I haven’t had anything to report because it all failed—”
“That’s a lie. This model,” he made a sweeping gesture that referred to himself, “is equipped with many modern conveniences that Fresh Start does not offer. You are lying about—” He paused and looked up to the right. “The dog, he is not dead; the research, it did not fail. And Ellen.” He took a deep breath. “You are at least telling a partial truth. She ran away.”
He glanced at his watch. “You have one minute. I have to tell you, this is your second warning.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We gave you a clear warning just before the break-in. We told your brother that we needed the dog. And the research. But now the stakes have gotten higher. For you.”
“You monsters almost killed my daughter last night! How much higher can the stakes get than that?”
He smiled: a thin decadent crescent that revealed dimples. “Do you really think that death is the worst thing that can happen to a young girl? Just how naive are you, Domingue?” He flashed long eyelashes at me, lowered his gaze flirtatiously. “I, myself, grew up in the Underground Circus, back in my first life. It would be delicious to teach your daughter a few of my own special tricks—”
I flew at him then, lunged across the table and grabbed him around the throat. We crashed to the floor and tumbled. But he didn’t fight back. Instead, I saw a faint light flash in his hand—the device he had hidden in his palm.
His limbs fell limp, his features waxen. His eyes met mine.
“Second warning,” he whispered.
Then he died.
I stood up and screamed, then I started to kick the weasel. Bones cracked in his chest and blood seeped onto the floor.
“Get in here and pick up your rubbish!” I shouted as I continued to beat his worthless carcass. “Hurry up and get your garbage before I make a mess!”
The door opened quietly and two mugs dressed in black, wearing hoods again, came in and carried out the dead Newbie.
Then another man walked in, someone I’d never seen before. There was a weariness in his features, but his eyes were dangerously bright.
“You’re free to go, Domingue. Apparently your brother threatened the jumps for every mug in the station if we didn’t let you go,” he said. “So go ahead. Get outta here. But if I was you, I’d use the back door. There’s a mob waiting for you out front.”
The sun splintered through the darkness. Black sky changed to indigo.
I hovered in the doorway, an intruder in my own home. Black boot marks stained the floor; like a dotted line they led upstairs, where the investigation continued. Strange voices murmured. Someone was talking with a French accent, someone else was slipping through the bayou mud in Gutterspeak.
“I don’t sees how they gots liquid light. It’s illegal for anyone ’cept the lawmakers and the ’sitters—”
“That was the idea. This stinks like a setup.”
“So ya still thinks they’re innocent, those Domingues?”
“I didn’t say that. But we need to forget whose house this is or we’re gonna miss the important clues.”
“I’ll tells ya the important clues. Them dead kids. Them sixteen babies that was burned alive. That’s what ya needs to remember.”
I couldn’t face the mugs that had taken residence in my daughter’s room. Instead I turned down a hallway, followed a path of polished wood and painted wainscoting. I could hear a faint hum in the distance, felt a slight electric buzz in the air. Saw a pale blue glow beneath the door as I came around the corner. Heard the whisper of voices.
The hallway smelled like a bakery: shelves lined with cookies and cakes, walls smeared with vanilla frosting.
I hate that smell. Virtual reality. The candy shop that never closes.
I heard crying, so I opened the door. My wife, Marguerite, stood in the middle of the VR room, wearing a VR suit, surrounded by about a dozen faceless, shapeless creatures that looked just like her. All sobbing and sniveling. It was her sous-terrain société: her flesh-and-blood surrogate family, grafted and stitched together from serendipitous encounters. They usually met in Grid chatter bars and, after several months of friendship and a brief civil ceremony, they chose assigned familial roles. Brother, sister, mother, cousin. Like children playing with blocks, they built their own fragile ancestry.
Weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. That’s about all the sous-terrain société was good for. This group of Stringers didn’t even notice when a real live human walked in the door.
“Hey, I thought you were going to wait for me at the station,” I said, then watched as startled VR heads turned.
Marguerite swiveled to face me. Even with her suit on, I could see the tears glistening on her cheeks. Her voice wavered when she spoke, “I was—I did, but the mugs made me leave.”
For a moment I realized how vulnerable she was, how our lives were never going to be the same after last night. I thought about the first time we met, that red dress she wore, the sound of her laugh. Then I did something I hadn’t done in months.
I put my arms around her, held her for a long, quiet moment.
“Why don’t you turn that thing off and go take a nap,” I whispered. “You’ll feel better—”
“But the funeral is this afternoon. I need to invite my family—”
“Marguerite, you’re a Stringer—” She didn’t have any family. They were all dust in the wind and had been for years.
“You’ve never understood what it’s like to be les enfants sans sourire,” she said as she pulled away from me. All the VR heads around her nodded, murmured in agreement. “To be one of the children of no joy—”
For a second I thought I saw sixteen children, dead on the floor. Their ghosts seemed to surround us, filled the room. “Where’s Isabelle?”
“Chaz wouldn’t let me take her. He said I’ll need at least seven guards before he’ll let her leave his hotel suite.”
I paused, frustrated. Felt tension building in my chest. I needed another gen-spike, but my stash was upstairs. And so were the mugs. “Okay, why don’t you round up ten or twelve guards. We’ll pick her up after the funeral.”
“I don’t—I don’t know who to—”
“Just call Pete. He’ll take care of it!” I snapped. I wanted the tension and the pain to stop, wanted her to shut up, to quit being weak. “And I told you to turn this off! I have a conference call with Aditya Khan in a couple of minutes.” I hit the DISCONNECT button and the glittering crowd arou
nd Marguerite faded away.
“I wasn’t finished!” She pulled off her face mask and threw it on the floor. “You don’t care about anybody but yourself. For the past two years all you’ve done is humiliate me!” She paused, narrowed her eyes. “Do you think I don’t know what you’ve been doing, staying late at the office every night—”
I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her close. She winced in pain.
“What do you know?” I asked, my voice low.
“That you’ve been having an affair with that dark-haired research assistant of yours, that Ellen.” Her eyes blazed, a smoldering combination of fear and anger. “And apparently she’s had more than enough of you and your gen-spike Jekyll-and-Hyde routine, because she split. I don’t know what happened between the two of you and I don’t care, but the mugs are pretty hot to find her—”
I gripped both of her arms now. She cried out and her knees buckled.
“They’re here now,” she gasped. “Upstairs.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Just what I said. She’s gone. You two were having an affair. And I don’t care. About either one of you.”
I released her and she collapsed on the ground.
“Bastard.” She rubbed her arms, then glared up at me. “As soon as Isabelle gets back, I’m taking her and leaving—”
“I don’t think so.”
She stood up and stumbled backward, away from me. “I’m her mother.”
“And that death certificate we used came from my father. Legally she’s my daughter and you’re nothing more than a surrogate.”
Marguerite watched me like a caged tiger, all bristle and claws and dagger-sharp teeth, and all of it useless. “You won’t be able to stop me.”
I walked over and held the door shut so she couldn’t leave. Crossed my arms. Flexed my muscles. Felt a left-over surge of gen-spike rush through my veins. When I spoke, my voice sounded like something out of a nightmare.
“Do you want to disappear like Ellen?” I asked.
She cocked her head, then her eyes slowly opened wider. She moved her mouth, but no sound came out.
I opened the door.
It took a long time, but she finally got the courage to walk past me.
Out of the room and away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Russell:
I hate watching the news. Hate watching the world shrivel up and die. Especially hate it when the End of the World interrupts my VR transmission. I was trying to patch a transmission through to Aditya, but I was having problems. Probably because of the thick cloud cover left behind by that volcanic eruption in the Andaman Islands last month.
Then a special news bulletin jammed its way through.
A 3-D holographic map of the world rolled out across the screen. A horrific patchwork quilt of the inevitable, colors that marked the boundaries between tomorrow and yesterday.
A man’s voice played over the scene, silver words framing enameled images.
“We interrupt your VR transmission for an update on the Nine-Timer Report,” he said in a bright artificial tone. “Last night a tour bus crashed in the city of New Delhi, already a known hot pocket chiefly inhabitated by Five-Timers. After the accident occurred, a large crowd of tourists and bystanders died almost immediately, their circuits on overload from the shock—”
Photos flashed larger-than-life on the screen. Like the aftermath of a medieval civil war. A portion of the once colorful city of New Delhi had disintegrated into brown and gray rubble; the once noble land that had competed with Japan as a leader in technology was crumpling like a handmade paper kite. Cars were stalled in city streets and dead bodies were strewn everywhere. In the distance, a river of dark water was thick with bloating bodies. The Ganges, once a holy river, had become a river of the dead.
“—this caused a panic, which then spread throughout several city blocks, within which both Six-and Five-Timers froze up as well.”
The newscaster stared into the camera. This was big news. Pay attention, world. Somebody Important is telling you Something Really Important. Maybe you’d better go check your records and figure out what life you’re on. Right now.
“They stopped breathing,” he said after a long dramatic pause. “Wherever they were, whatever they were doing, they just fell over. Dead. This is a new turn of events, something we’ve never seen before in the Fifth Generation clones—”
They hadn’t seen it before, but I had. I’d even seen it take place in Third-Timers, when the stress factor was high enough. It was just one of the many elements that played into this bizarre end-times scenario.
“Riots and looting began soon afterward and, as you can see from our satellite photos, the panic is spreading,” the newscaster continued. “Right now, power is out throughout most of the state of Delhi—”
I switched off the Grid, rubbed my temples, glad that there were no children in the photos. No starving babies, no abandoned toddlers, no homeless adolescents. Although that truly was our greatest problem here—all the clones after the Sixth Generation were infertile. The DNA broke down sooner than we had anticipated and, on top of that, with each successive generation there were fewer and fewer One-Timers. Before long, there wouldn’t be enough sources of pure DNA left to go around. The Nine-Timer scenario that everyone had been fearing, a sort of New Dark Ages, could happen anytime. We used to think it would happen in another two hundred years, but we underestimated the popularity of resurrection, underestimated the possibility that large population segments might jump from one life to the next at a rapid rate.
We never guessed that stress alone could short-circuit a cluster of Three-or Four-or Five-Timer clones, or that once it started it could sweep like a blanket of darkness, knocking out several city blocks at a time. Eventually, even whole provinces could topple over like a row of dominoes, cascading into one another, turning off the lights for each other, shutting down farms and factories, cutting off communication and transportation. The Nine-Timer lifespan for resurrection was winding down, slamming to a rapid glue-in-the-machinery halt. We didn’t even have a system in place to dispose of all the dead bodies. And there would be nobody left to take their place when the last set of clones died.
From its onset, people had advocated that resurrection would improve our world, that we would now have the opportunity to achieve long-range goals.
But those of us who stood behind the steering wheel knew the truth.
Resurrection had almost single-handedly undermined every major religion. We all just pretended to believe in an afterlife anymore. All our tomorrows were man-made, granted and blessed by man. We’d finally found a way to take the Big Guy out of the picture.
Today it was the state of Delhi.
Tomorrow it would be the Middle East.
Immortality. Resurrection. Death.
In the end, only a handful of One-Timers would survive. And I planned on being one of them.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Chaz:
There are moments that echo with beauty, like notes in a piano solo. They stir the soul, and then, like pebbles dropped in a pool, they ripple ever outward. The memory of one perfect moment can make you spend the rest of your life trying to recapture it, to reinvent it, to prove it really happened.
I slept. I don’t know how long. At times it felt like my head would explode from Skellar’s psychotropic cocktail, but somehow I managed to sleep through the pain, aware of it in some helpless nightmarish way, unable to stop it or wake up.
And then autumn sunlight poured into the living room, beams of honey, thick and sticky sweet with humidity. I woke slowly, with a sense of heat centered in my chest. And an unusual feeling of peace.
My eyes flicked open, blinded for a moment by the cascading light. Then I saw her—my niece—curled up beside me on the narrow sofa, her head resting on my chest. Her mouth was open and she was snoring softly. A slow, steady purring sound, almost like a kitten. My right arm ached, but I knew if I moved, it would w
ake her.
It would destroy this perfect moment.
I kissed her forehead, damp and feather soft. She sighed.
I lifted my gaze and saw Angelique sitting in the chair across from us, her legs tucked beneath her, both hands holding a cup of coffee. Her hair hung over her shoulder in glimmering waves and she was wearing a black dress and boots. She smiled quietly.
There was something about the three of us together in that morning of golden light that felt right. Complete.
This doesn’t belong to me, I reminded myself. Isabelle’s not my daughter, Angelique will be gone in a few days. All of this is borrowed. Imagined.
Still. If all of eternity could reside in one moment, this was the moment I would choose. This was the single note that I would want to resonate in my heart.
I wished that it could have lasted one more minute.
But even as I acknowledged its perfection, it began to dissolve.
CHAPTER FORTY
Angelique:
Day faded into night and then back into day. I don’t know how long any of us slept. At some point, Isabelle came out of her room and curled up on the sofa next to Chaz. I knew my time here was limited, this false sense of safety would expire. I just didn’t know when. Russ was a ticking bomb now. At any point in time he would turn me over to Neville, or worse: to Neville’s Nine-Timer boss, some high-level government official, and their interrogation would start. I wouldn’t be able to hold out. I didn’t have their advantage. I couldn’t download into another clone when things got rough.
I got a few things together, and then realized how tired I really was. I paused for a few minutes to drink another cup of coffee, trying to clear the last bit of Newbie confusion from my head. That was when Chaz woke up.
There was a split second when I wondered if I should tell him everything. But my split second didn’t last long enough.
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