Crashland

by Sean Williams

  We saved the world from Improvement, she wrote, but that was only the beginning.

  And perhaps that was why she was having so much trouble. Her victory had come at a cost she was sure some people thought was too high. So what if a few listless kids were killed in order to give actual geniuses a second chance at life? Was it worth breaking d-mat to fix that relatively small problem? Was it worth switching off the powersats, if it came to that?

  Dupes walk among us. . . .

  If you see someone behaving strangely . . .

  Not everyone is who they seem. . . .

  Clair opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. The room she was sharing with Jesse was small, possibly the smallest bedroom Clair had ever seen—and it was meant for two! At least it had separate bunks, narrow though they were. Clair hoped she wouldn’t be asked to sleep in them. They were about as comfortable as planks of wood.

  Her lenses were confused. Sometimes her menus were the blue of ocean and arctic skies, sometimes they were the hard blue of steel and machines, courtesy of the seastead’s internal networks. As she lay back on her narrow bunk and tried to concentrate, she could hear Jesse’s fingers working hard on the bunk opposite, tapping out messages via his augs. His legs, crossed at the ankles, reached vertically up the wall because the mattress wasn’t long enough for him to stretch out flat. Every now and again he reached out to touch her hand in wordless reassurance. She appreciated it, except for when it interrupted her train of thought. Overall, it was a good thing.

  “Any luck with WHOLE?” she asked.

  “Some,” he said. “People know I’ve used d-mat now, so I have to win their trust back. It’s tricky. But I’ve found out who took over from Turner Goldsmith. She’s in Russia. Her name is Agnessa Adaksin. She’s a hardliner, not one of the public Abstainers. People are blaming WHOLE for the collapse of d-mat, so she’s abandoning the old cell structure and calling WHOLE to muster to her—and they’re coming, every way they can.”

  Clair understood the instinctive need to find safety in numbers.

  “Will she help?”

  “I don’t know. She won’t take orders from me or the PKs, but I don’t think she’ll have any objection to fighting the dupes in a bigger way. Maybe we can just leak her the info she needs . . . make it look like she’s in charge of any joint operations, not anyone else . . .”

  “That’s a good idea.” And it was. In his own way Jesse was making more progress than she was.

  I have been imprisoned, impersonated, threatened, and attacked. My mother has been kidnapped, my friends have been killed—and I’m not the only one who has been targeted this way. Some of the people who committed these crimes have been brought to justice, but others remain at large. Using everything we have, we’re tracking them down and stopping them.

  At least she hoped they were. But who were “we,” exactly? Clair still didn’t know.

  Locating Sargent through the seastead interface, she sent a bump to see if there was any movement on that front. She felt more comfortable talking to Sargent than to Forest. They agreed on at least one important thing: giving people the right to return if their deaths were premature.

  “We’re still conferring,” came the immediate reply. “It’s complicated.”

  “How is it complicated? The dupes are the bad guys. They have my mother and they have to be stopped.”

  “Read this.”

  With Sargent’s brisk reply came the results of a preliminary survey handed down by the Consensus Court. Clair had never been particularly interested in the workings of OneEarth, beyond watching her parents participate in the Consensus Court on matters that moved them. But she knew in principle how it worked. Everyone over eighteen could contribute if they wanted to, guided and informed by lawmakers. Lawmakers took their lead from random samples of people, creating a feedback loop that provided governance without needing any one person or group of people to be in charge.

  Since the crash, lawmakers had been busy, along with peacekeepers and everyone else. Testimonies offered up by Jesse, Clair, and others, such as the Improved, had been processed. The results were just starting to come in.

  People were to be judged, the preliminary survey said, by their appearance. So if someone looked like Dylan Linwood, that was how he would legally be treated. In the case of disputed identities, where two people looked the same, everyone was to be kept in custody until some kind of consensus was reached as to who was who.

  In other words, no one was ordering the peacekeepers to kill the dupes at this point, just to capture them and lock them away. And as for the Improved, they would be allowed to remain inside their new bodies indefinitely.

  “What about parents who’ve lost their kids to Improvement?” Clair shot back, annoyed and frustrated by the ruling. “What about the families of the dupes? What about me?”

  “I know, it’s crazy,” said Sargent. “And look, here’s another one.”

  This survey concerned the legal status of people who had died in the process of being duped or Improved. It all came down to how they had last been witnessed. If the victims were last seen alive, then they were considered still alive and retrieval from a data cache was allowed. If they were last seen dead, then retrieval of an earlier pattern was not allowed. They had to stay dead.

  By that ruling, Zep, Libby, and Dylan Linwood had all suffered verifiable deaths, either witnessed directly or recorded from afar, as in the case of Wallace’s secret space station, and therefore they had to stay dead. That Ant Wallace and Mallory Wei were considered dead too was only a small consolation.

  “This is wrong,” said Clair, kicking one leg restlessly against the stiff mattress, barely able to contain her agitation.

  “I know, but what can I do about it?” asked Sargent. “A peacekeeper’s job is not to define the peace or how to keep it. That’s what the Consensus Court is for.”

  “So if the Court told you to kill every firstborn . . . ?”

  “That wouldn’t happen. OneEarth is self-monitoring, self-correcting.”

  “Isn’t that what they used to say about VIA?”

  Sargent didn’t respond to that, which only made Clair more anxious.

  At least the decision hadn’t been unanimous. One of the loudest dissenting voices belonged to LM Kingdon, the lawmaker who had offered her legal advice after the PKs had taken her in for questioning. She was a gray-eyed, middle-aged woman from London who believed that all dupes should be wiped out immediately, whatever the cost. Clair skimmed a speech Kingdon made to the Consensus Court and found herself agreeing with every word.

  As Clair watched that speech, a bump came from Kingdon herself.

  “Is now a good time?”

  Surprised, because she’d thought she was invisible to anyone looking at the seastead, Clair hesitated, then answered, “It so isn’t.”

  “I mean, to chat.”

  A request followed. Clair hesitated again. She had understood what Kingdon meant, but she didn’t understand why the lawmaker was contacting her. Clair was far from a model citizen at that moment, given the company she was keeping. Besides, it wasn’t long ago that she herself had had ambiguous legal status, existence-wise. Bringing Kingdon into the mix might only make her situation more precarious.

  Turning Kingdon down, though, could be even worse, depending on what the lawmaker wanted. Everyone seemed to want something.

  “Okay,” she said, accepting the request.

  “It’s good to talk at last.” Kingdon’s voice was warm and British in Clair’s ears. It came with a live image. The lawmaker was in a wood-paneled office, leaning back into her seat and crossing her legs in front of her. She wore a dark-blue suit with a white shirt and open collar. There was a silk tie lying on the desk in front of her, pink with blue spots. Her smile was relaxed and natural. Kingdon’s voice had the same kind of easy authority that Clair associated with the least annoying school counselors.

  “You’re a tough girl to get hold of,” Kingdon said. “It’s ta
ken me a long time to get through. But I’ve been following you with interest: Libby and Improvement, your friend Zep’s death, that terrible situation with Ant Wallace in New York . . .” Here Kingdon paused, and Clair wondered if she was considering adding your brave and pointless sacrifice. “Now there’s your mother. . . . My dear, if anyone has reason to hate the dupes, it’s you.”

  Me and a million other people, Clair thought, but she wasn’t so cynical that she was unmoved by the woman’s concern.

  “Thanks for your messages,” she said, clearing her throat.

  “My offer of legal advice was sincere,” Kingdon said. “It remains on the table.”

  “Thanks, but—”

  “You don’t need to decide now. I’ll never turn you down. We have to look out for each other, Clair. We have much in common.”

  “We do?”

  “I like to think so. We’re both determined to put an end to the injustice of this situation. I don’t know what exactly you’re doing right now, but I’m sure you’re not sitting idly by—as I am not. You can see what my efforts have been, and I want you to know that I won’t give up until the natural sovereignty of ordinary people over their bodies is fully restored. That’s something you agree with, isn’t it?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Of course it is. People are people, and they have all the proper rights accorded to them by law. Illegal duplicates are not people and as such have no rights—and we, lawmakers and peacekeepers and citizens of OneEarth alike, must be clear on this. Ambiguity is unacceptable. Tolerance is unacceptable. We must use every measure available to permanently eradicate this threat to our lives and liberty.”

  Kingdon had left her seat and was roaming around her study, pausing to adjust the placement of service awards, to straighten a framed OneEarth flag, and to brush the dust off a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. Clair felt as though she was being lectured at—and it was then she wondered what the lawmaker was really doing. She had called Clair when Clair was alone, presumably so they wouldn’t be interrupted, but at the same time the chat was public from Kingdon’s end. People could hear everything Kingdon was saying to her. Was Kingdon using Clair as a means of getting her message across to a larger audience?

  That was okay, to a point, Clair thought. They did agree with each other when it came to the dupes and the laws required to bring back people like Libby and Zep. It just stung that Kingdon didn’t care about her. The sympathy was fake, and maybe the offers to help were too.

  Still, Clair told herself to be relieved. As long as she didn’t say the wrong thing, as long as she played the game, she wouldn’t draw the full attention of the Consensus Court and find herself under investigation again. As long as she was useful to Sara Kingdon, Clair Hill would be fine. And if Clair Hill was fine, a chance remained for Allison Hill.

  So she nodded and tried not to look bored until LM Kingdon had finished her spiel. They exchanged pleasantries.

  “Let’s talk again when all this is over,” said Kingdon with another broad smile. “I can even help you with your vocational choices, if you like. The world always needs bright new lawmakers.”

  Clair made polite noises even though the last thing she wanted to be was a lawmaker. Of that she was certain.

  One sentence of Kingdon’s speech remained with her when the chat was over.

  We must use every measure available to permanently eradicate this threat to life and liberty.

  It sounded so black and white, and in principle Clair agreed, but how was she to know when she had done enough? Was it possible to do too much?

  Clair considered waking Jesse to talk through the slightly surreal experience, but decided to let him sleep. Instead, she wrote and erased several sharp messages to Sargent, without whom she couldn’t really do anything, eventually settling on the simple but testy, “Seriously, how long does it take to confer?”

  “Just finished,” Sargent immediately sent back. “We’re sending official observers to the seastead, so we’ll have PKs on the ground when this goes down. They’re authorized to respond if provoked. When the dupes attack us, in other words, we will fight back.”

  “Even if there’s no official position on the dupes? Even if they send dupes in bodies that are still legally recognized as people?”

  “Doesn’t matter who or what’s breaking the peace. Human or otherwise, we’re obliged to stop it.”

  “Okay,” Clair said, forcing herself to accept what concessions she could get. “I can live with that.”

  Clair returned to her draft, somewhat reassured. With RADICAL and the PKs on her side, and the backup of leading lawmakers like Kingdon, how could the dupes possibly beat her?

  All she had to do was write the right message.

  There’s so much I want to say, but there’s so much I still haven’t worked out. Maybe it is partly my fault that d-mat isn’t working at the moment—but wasn’t it really Ant Wallace’s fault in the first place for using d-mat to kill people? Someone had to stop him. I wish it had been someone other than me, because then Libby would still be alive. I wish that every day. You can believe that.

  Oh, but if you see any videos of me doing crazy stuff? It’s probably the dupes trying to make me look bad again. Follow me, follow what I’m doing, because actions speak louder than words. Let’s kick out the dupes, get this world working again. For my mother, and for everyone else in danger.

  Until they’re all safe . . .

  Clair hesitated. Even in a rough draft, a long way from reaching its audience, she found the final sentence hard to write. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t as though the words had magic powers and a dupe would suddenly appear in the cabin with her and Jesse. His eyes were closed, lashes surprisingly long and delicate now that she took a second to notice them. She wanted to sit still and study him, marveling in him while she had the chance. All those years they had been at school together and she had barely noticed him. Now she couldn’t get enough of him. It amazed her how quickly things had changed. She didn’t want to think about how quickly things could change again. It made her heart race to imagine where they might be in a few hours, either way.

  There was no time for stillness. She had to move forward, her eyes on the destination and everything she would need to do to get there.

  Until they’re all safe, she wrote, I talk to Nobody.

  [30]

  * * *

  “YOU’VE STOPPED WRITING,” Devin bumped her fifteen minutes later. “Does that mean you’re finished?”

  She didn’t reply. He was monitoring her lenses again, thanks presumably to the seastead’s interface. Just because she had finished the message didn’t mean she was ready to send it. One Rubicon at a time. How would the dupes respond? What if the dupes took her message as the challenge it was and raised the stakes even higher? What if they killed her mother—or worse? What if they ignored the message completely?

  Sitting around watching Jesse sleep wasn’t helping Clair work up the courage to commit to this crucial component of her plan, so she put on a shirt she had fabbed and slipped out of the room. The fabric of the shirt felt stiff and starchy against her skin, reminding her of the uniforms soldiers used to wear. If anyone expected her to shave her head they’d find themselves in a whole world of hurt.

  The seastead hummed and buzzed around her as she wandered its empty metal corridors, meandering through mysterious chambers and marveling at the extravagant weirdness that was in essence a mobile city. Only before the Water Wars could something like this have seemed a sensible idea. In every other period of history that she was aware of, especially her own, it was the city that stayed put and the people who moved. But here she was, sailing the high seas on the back of a machine big enough to move an entire population. It did have a certain grandeur, she supposed, but so did a lot of other crazy things from the past, like atomic bombs and emperors.

  She wondered what her mother was thinking right then, if there was anything magnificent in her circumstances, or just misery and fe
ar.

  She hoped the dupes understood that she would never, ever stop if they harmed a single hair on her mother’s head.

  Clair bit her lip to stop herself from crying like a baby.

  “Going anywhere in particular?” Devin bumped her.

  “The place with all the booths,” she said, regaining her composure and picking a destination at random. “Where we arrived.”

  “You’re way off course,” he said. “Left up here.”

  She followed his directions and saw nothing but more corridors.

  “You wandering around lost, me giving you directions. No matter how many friends in high places you get, we’ll always have this.”

  Clair sighed and opened a chat, knowing she’d never be able to restrict a conversation with him to merely a few lines.

  “What do you want? To tell me off for talking to LM Kingdon?”

  “No, the call was scrambled at her end. If anyone traced you from there to here, they’ve got Q-level skills. I’m just after your draft letter.”

  “Who says it’s finished?”

  “You’re not fooling anyone. What’s the problem? Cat got your tongue for once?”

  She recoiled at the thought of handing it over, even though it was more or less complete. It was her plan, and she was the one with the reasons. What would her mother want her to do? That was what really mattered to Clair. Was she taking every available measure, or one too many?

  “I don’t see that there’s any great hurry. Why don’t you look for Q while you’re waiting? I’m sure Trevin’s not right about her refusing to help.”

  “The PKs are sending their troops in an hour. We don’t want them to get bored.”

  “That’s . . . really soon,” she said.

  “War waits for no one. Or should that be waits for Nobody?”