Crashland

by Sean Williams

  “What about Zep?” he asked abruptly.

  “What about him?” His tone was difficult to read, although it was clear that his delight at seeing the garden had been superficial.

  “Do you want to bring him back too?”

  “Of course I do,” she said, wondering why it felt like a confession. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Because he’s really dead. You saw what happened to him.”

  “But it shouldn’t have happened, and if we can find that pattern Wallace dug up—”

  “This isn’t like Libby or Dad, Clair. Zep wasn’t duped or Improved. He was shot twice, and you can’t bring him back just because you want to.”

  She folded her arms and glared at him. “You don’t get to tell me what I can or can’t do, just because we made out a couple of times.”

  “This isn’t about that—”

  “Are you sure? It’s because of that stupid clip. You’re jealous, admit it. You’re glad he’s out of the picture and you want him to stay that way. That’s why you’re practically putting a gun to his head and shooting him all over again.”

  That shocked him, and Clair was shocked in turn by how much that pleased her. A fierce bubble of vindication rose up in her, so hot and powerful she wanted to shout, Ha! in his face, just to rub it in.

  “Maybe this is too hard,” Jesse said. “You and me, right now, on top of everything else.”

  The hot feeling turned to ash. She instantly regretted what she had said. Her anger wasn’t really directed at him, but at PKs like Forest who would stop her saving her friends. Attacking to make a point was what Libby would have done, at her worst. Clair hadn’t known she was capable of that.

  “Don’t,” she said. The last thing she wanted to do was scare Jesse away. “You don’t mean that. I’m just tired, and I know I was out of line. I’m sorry.”

  He looked cautiously relieved. “I’m sorry too. And you’re right. I am jealous of Zep, always have been. I shouldn’t let myself get confused . . . about the wrong things.”

  Clair wondered if her feelings were completely clear-cut on that front too, when it came to the thought of bringing Zep and Libby back so they could continue their relationship in front of her.

  “Let’s just eat,” she said, too exhausted to talk anymore.

  They foraged in the sub-Antarctic garden, reaching up to take fruit from branches and digging through the undergrowth for vegetables and fungus. Clair had never eaten part of a living thing before, and at first it made her feel queasy. Then she realized that whenever she dialed uncooked fruit and vegetables through a fabber, they were undoubtedly this fresh, taken from the tree and put straight into the scanner, so the only difference was that this time she was seeing the rest of the plant.

  “Thank you, fruit factory,” she said, pulling a peach from a low-hanging branch.

  “You’re welcome, meat machine,” Jesse replied in a pretend voice on behalf of the plants.

  It was a weird way of looking at the world. She wasn’t sure she liked it, but she could live with it if it meant they both got to eat.

  [16]

  * * *

  THEY WASHED THEIR hands and faces in the spring, which was clear and cold, probably melted snow from the surface, and took turns with the refreshingly modern “facilities.” Then they unfolded their sleeping bags and helped each other from their outer layers of armor. They lay on top of the sleeping bags and peeled up the sleeves and legs of their undersuits to compare bruises. Clair’s elbow hardly hurt at all now, so she took off the patch and put it down by her shoes, for recycling later. She felt self-conscious of her body in the undersuit, but Jesse didn’t seem embarrassed about his, and she was content to take his lead. He was skinny but not as bony as she had imagined he would be, with long muscles in all the right places. From gardening, she assumed, not sports. Competing with other schools required using d-mat, so he had never been on any of Manteca New Campus’s teams.

  “You gave me a beauty on the shoulder when we all fell out of that booth,” Jesse said, flexing his right arm.

  “Sorry. But I’m not giving you a massage.”

  “Rats.” He frowned in mock disappointment. “Worth a try.”

  Clair liked that he wasn’t holding a grudge after their argument. She felt like she could be herself around him, even if that meant occasionally disagreeing. Or maybe they were both less irritable with food in their bellies.

  “Where were you?” he asked. “Before, when we arrived.”

  “Talking to Devin in one of the other tanks,” she said. “He can’t make up his mind whether Q’s good or bad, so he’s taking it out on me.”

  “Really? That’s a bit rough. It’s not your fault.”

  Maybe it is, she wanted to say, but didn’t. She hadn’t told him about her broken promise to Q. She still felt too ashamed of that, on top of the collapse of d-mat and everything.

  “PK Sargent shut him down in the end, thank goodness. I’m glad she hacked her way in.”

  “Is that what happened? One moment Sarge was with us, the next she cycled out. Guess she and Forest drew straws. I think Devin’s a bit frightened of her.”

  “Good,” said Clair firmly. “What did you and PK Forest talk about?”

  He didn’t answer immediately.

  “About Zep, actually,” he said. “That’s why he was on my mind. Because of the, uh, video and who was in it, Forest wanted to know exactly what I’d seen in the station and the safe house. He had me go over it twice—and I’d already told PK Drader twice before.”

  “Did you talk about anyone else?” she asked, wanting to keep the topic well away from the fake sex tape.

  “Dad too, but not so much. He was never really himself any of the times his dupe died. Forest didn’t seem as interested in him.”

  Building a case, Clair thought. Deciding who was going to be allowed to live and who wasn’t. Lawmakers and the Consensus Court would decide, but PK Forest was sure to make his opinion known. Hopefully Sargent was building a case of her own, although she hadn’t mentioned it for a while.

  Sore shoulder or no sore shoulder, Jesse folded his hands behind his head and closed his eyes.

  “How many days has it been,” he asked wearily, “since you bumped me to ask about Improvement?”

  She checked her lenses. “Five. Bet you wish you hadn’t answered.”

  “Never.” He opened an eye. “Does that make me an idiot?”

  “Completely and utterly. It’s your most attractive quality.”

  He smiled. “This idiot needs to sleep, unfortunately. But have I told you how fantastic you look in that outfit?”

  She blushed and grinned at the same time.

  Jesse crawled into the sleeping bag and rolled onto his side with his back to her. The forest’s sunlight didn’t dim, but that didn’t hold him back. Within moments, his breathing was deep and regular.

  Clair was too restless to sleep, torn between concern about the outside world, about the future, and feelings for Jesse that were neither simple nor open to exploration at the moment. Perhaps in a real forest, miles away from any cameras and under completely different circumstances . . . Under ordinary circumstances they might have dated like people usually did—but awkwardly, given how much of that kind of thing required d-mat. Clubs and cafes, for instance: were there any nice ones near where he lived? She’d never had reason to find out, despite going to school just around the corner. Likewise, there would be no jumping off to a romantic sunset or show anytime they felt like it; they’d have to check the Air beforehand to get the timing right. Dating a Stainer would kill any kind of spontaneity.

  But it wasn’t as if her previous dating experiences had amounted to much, up to and including Zep. She had lived vicariously through Libby, not confident enough to pursue anything serious with any of the boys who had asked her out. Now, after Zep, she liked the thought of being still for a change. She wished that everything apart from Jesse would go away for a while, but of course that was a fantasy
she couldn’t afford to indulge, except in her mind. At least her mom wasn’t around to scold her for spending the night alone with a boy.

  While she had basic access to the Air, she surfed it for random news grabs and gossip. D-mat still wasn’t working, but people weren’t taking that lying down. Telepresence services were going through the roof. Ad hoc organizations like those in Windham under the guidance of local peacekeepers and their new deputies were ensuring that essential services didn’t stall. There was no sign of the three-meals-to-savagery problem that Sargent was worried about, and Clair supposed there wouldn’t be while fabbers still worked.

  Ronnie was sound asleep, several more empty wrappers added to the pile at her feet. Her caption showed a child’s face covered in chocolate, with the line Overeating my way to oblivion. In the last hour, Tash had killed a python with her machete and posted a picture of its headless body. Didn’t expect to do this today, Tash said in the post. Guess I have Clair Hill to thank for that.

  Clair didn’t read anything else to do with her former life. It hurt too much.

  The investigation into VIA was producing more reports and opinions than Clair could possibly read in one sitting. Test transmissions of inanimate objects with complex geometric properties proved that the network had the capacity to function normally, if only it could be trusted with precious human traffic. There were rumors that one of Q’s parent AIs, Quiddity, had survived the crash and, if brought back online, could be sufficient to run the network on its own. OneEarth, however, insisted that no one but PKs would use the network until its integrity was completely assured. Claims of elitism were inflamed by deaths that might have been averted had patients been able to get to the hospital the usual way. In the midst of all this, the Abstainer movement—and, Clair assumed, WHOLE, too—was campaigning vigorously, seeking new recruits among those feeling disempowered and frightened by the system’s collapse.

  Then there was Clairwatch. It was amazing to think that, with everything else going on, there were still people who had time to monitor her activities and the fallout resulting from them. Rumors continued to circulate about Clair’s role in the crisis and the accusations that her dupe had retracted. Events in New York and flooded Washington were closely analyzed, with numerous competing theories arising to explain them. Some were completely fantastical; others were canny and insightful. Drone footage from both locations had been used to identify several dupes. That they used to be members of WHOLE only muddied the waters even further.

  At least no one knew where she was now. Or, if they did, they weren’t talking about it. She was sure that Q would know, if she was still out there, but her inbox contained no replies to the many messages she had sent. Feeling both snubbed and desperate, she tried yet again.

  “A lot of people want to talk to you, Q. They all want something from you, or they’re afraid of you, or they don’t understand you. RADICAL wants me to tell you that they don’t necessarily want to erase you, which I think they expect you to find totally encouraging! I want you to know that I’m not on anyone’s side. I’m just worried about you. Tell me you’re okay. Will you at least do that?”

  After an hour of waiting for a reply that might never come, Clair dialed down her lenses and got up to walk around. Moving silently through the forest so as not to disturb Jesse, she found and ate a handful of sweet red strawberries and examined with some interest the veinlike irrigation channels threading through the cave. There were several species of bugs making homes in the roots and canopy above. Without birds or wind, it was eerily quiet.

  By the door to the facilities, her toe caught on a patch of turf and lifted it up off a harder substrate below. Squatting to pat it back down, she grew still.

  The turf was barely an inch thick. Below that was nothing but mirror. The “cave” was another big d-mat booth, which meant the forest might be completely unnatural. She had assumed it was maintained hydroponically, but for all she knew it could have been built from scratch moments before she and Jesse had climbed down into it. Maybe that was what Akili had meant by “tending” the gardens—editing the patterns, not actual weeding. By doing that, the resource could be re-created fresh at any time in the future.

  A wave of weariness rolled through her. Too many lies. Tomorrow she would try to pin down RADICAL and the PKs on exactly what they knew about Wallace and the dupes. For now, it was a case of sleep or die, as snake-killing Tash used to say. Clair went back to her sleeping bag and curled up inside it, covering her eyes with the soft fabric so the light wouldn’t disturb her. The fake forest stirred around her, full of fake life. Jesse probably deserved to know the truth, she thought, but she wasn’t going to be the one to tell him.

  [17]

  * * *

  CLAIR DREAMED SHE was being drawn deeper and deeper into a vast virtual map much larger than the one of Crystal City. It was a tangle of connections in brilliant colors, almost fractal in its detail. Every time she thought she had reached the end of a particular line, new connections appeared before her, tugging her onward.

  “Getting colder,” said Q in her little-girl voice.

  “Why can’t I find you?” Clair asked. She was hopelessly lost, but she kept looking and looking. There was no going back now.

  “You never lose at hide-and-seek when you don’t have a body.”

  Clair could have kicked herself. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? “No fair! Play by the rules!”

  A thunderous boom shook the floor beneath her, and Clair jerked awake in a panic, thinking it was the Great Alexandria Barrage exploding again . . . no, the space station . . . and then realizing that it was neither. She was in a fake forest deep in the Antarctic ice, and she had no idea what the sound was.

  She sat up at the same time as Jesse. His hair was a mess and his eyes were wide.

  “Wait—what?” he said, shaking his head as he slowly regained consciousness. “Have they found us?”

  “Yes,” said Devin. His voice came over an intercom somewhere in the forest rather than via their augs, his tone brisk and urgent. “I don’t know how, but I suggest we get moving.”

  Clair and Jesse crawled out of the sleeping bags and pulled their armor into place, taking hasty turns in the facilities as required. There was no sign as they ascended the ladder of the mother or daughter who had welcomed them. Clair thought about grabbing some fruit on the way, but there wasn’t time.

  The icy waste outside was now marred by a plume of black smoke rising out of a crater a mile or so to the east. Black lines starred out from the crater, stark against the snow. Two white drones not dissimilar to PK models circled the site, streaming information back to the tanks. What the drones saw appeared in a window to one side, with technical data trickling in red text across it.

  “Impact,” said Devin, “not explosion. They dropped something from orbit.”

  “Why?” asked Clair, not hiding her bad mood.

  “To show us they could, I guess. The next one could come down right on top of us. You have been warned, that kind of thing.”

  “I haven’t had any more messages,” said Clair. “Maybe they mean business this time.”

  “It’s possible that the next one is already coming right at us,” said Devin. “Depending on the orbit, it could have left hours ago.”

  “Why not take out the powersat so we’re all stuck here freezing to death?” asked Jesse.

  “Valkyrie Station has its own power supply,” Devin said.

  Contingencies, Clair thought.

  “I wish they’d make up their mind,” she said, kicking the floor with the toe of her boot in frustration. “Are they trying to kill me or not? If Wallace is alive, you’d think the dupes would have sorted themselves out by now.”

  “I definitely think Wallace is still alive,” Jesse said. “And we’re dealing with two factions of dupes.”

  “Interesting, but not very helpful,” said Devin, “given that neither is remotely on our side and they both might be working with Wallace. I don’
t think we can afford to take the chance that at least one of them has decided to wipe us off the board once and for all.”

  “So where are we going this time?” asked Jesse.

  Clair could tell by looking at him that he wasn’t stepping into another d-mat booth without good reason. He had a point.

  “I’m sick of running,” she said. “It’s time we pushed back.”

  “You have my wholehearted agreement,” said Devin. He sounded surprised, but not in a bad way. “RADICAL can help with that, too. We just need a little time to get ready. To gain that time we’re going to have to try something really tricky.”

  “Such as?” Clair wanted to know exactly what the wunderkind from RADICAL considered “really tricky.”

  “Hang on.” The view through the tank walls changed again. Devin appeared in front of the crater, still dressed in his PK light armor, and Forest and Sargent popped into view nearby.

  “Here’s my thought,” Devin said. “Naturally, we have our own private version of the shadow road—”

  “Naturally,” said Forest.

  “Yes, no surprises there. Just like yours, it’s stretched way beyond capacity right now and it lacks AI oversight. And just as with Net One, the problem is how to stop someone from finding us when we arrive. This is a scenario we’ve struggled with, and like good scouts we’ve figured out a means of working around it. You might not know this, Inspector, but our network is designed to keep someone moving constantly and randomly so they can’t be tracked or intercepted. The relay stations are small, low power, and can only handle four or five people at a time, total, but they have an advantage in sheer numbers: they’re all over the world. We call this network the Maze. Once we’re in there, we can stay mobile as long as we want, constantly jumping, while we prepare to push back against the dupes elsewhere. Hopefully they’ll be so busy looking for us that they won’t notice.”

  “Push back how?” asked Sargent.