Synapse

by Steven James

  “Where’s that?”

  “Eden Park.”

  24

  After making sure that there were no security cameras on in the hallway, Ripley made his way down the basement hall of NCB headquarters toward the building’s autopsy room.

  Yes, he was on mandatory leave, so no, he wasn’t supposed to be here, but he needed to locate those ocular implants before they led the team to anything that might implicate him.

  He knew that the techs would have transported Sienna Gaiman’s body here so the M.E. could remove the eyeballs, and if he was going to stop them from retrieving what her artificial eyes had recorded, he needed to do it here, now, today.

  As he turned a corner in the hallway, he nearly bumped into Sophie Fahlor, a senior case agent he’d worked with several times over the past four months. She was currently researching intel on the Purists for Nick. She glanced at Ripley curiously. “I thought you were on admin leave?”

  “I just came by to pick up a few of my things.”

  “Down here?” A head tilt. “Did they move your digs?”

  “Gotta fill out some paperwork regarding the shooting. It’s in the M.E.’s office.”

  “Aha.” Then she lowered her voice. “So what was it like?”

  “What was what like?”

  “Shooting her. Actually killing someone.”

  “It was tough,” Ripley lied. “But it had to be done. It was one of those situations—I was fearing for my life.”

  “Justified fear of imminent demise,” she said, quoting the policy manual.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what I heard. Well, I’m glad you’re still here with us.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  She seemed satisfied. “Okay. See you soon.”

  Ripley paused at a water fountain, and then, once she was out of sight, he directed his steps toward the autopsy room once again.

  * * *

  Located on one of Cincinnati’s iconic seven hills, Eden Park overlooked the entire greater Cincinnati area, offering panoramic views of the city.

  It had a man-made pond that was circular, concrete, and probably only a meter or so deep. When I was pregnant I’d often walked the half-kilometer path that led around it, doing circuits before returning to my car.

  Why did the contact ask you to come here?

  Then an answer: Maybe someone knows you’ve been here before and that you’re familiar with the place.

  I found that a little hard to believe since it would mean they’d been keeping tabs on me—possibly for months. No, that couldn’t be true. They’d probably just chosen this area because it was a commonly known public meeting place that also provided plenty of foliage in case someone needed to hide or slip away if necessary without being seen.

  Jordan and I approached the children’s playground area. Only as we neared it did I realize that I probably should have told Nick where I was going and what I was doing.

  However, I could see both sides of the issue.

  The more I thought about it, the more I doubted that Conrad would chance showing up in public himself. If he did send a messenger, I didn’t want Nick here right now because I didn’t want Conrad to think I’d betrayed him and was turning his people over to the NCB. Also, I felt like I needed some answers before filling in Nick about what was going on.

  Jordan and I took a seat on a paint-flecked park bench near the play area. While he watched the children climbing and swinging and shouting, I glanced at my slate to see if there were any notifications.

  Nope. Not yet.

  The biking and walking trails were mostly vacant, apart from a few weary joggers making their way along the park’s circuitous trails.

  Looking around the playground again, I noticed that nearby there was plenty of seating for parents so they could easily monitor the Artificials who were playing with their children.

  Although more and more families were educating their children at home exclusively through the Feeds, some kids still attended brick and mortar schools, but classes were over for the day and the park was bustling with children.

  As far as playgrounds go, this one was rather large and sprawling. It provided creaky swings, several plastic tube slides, rusted monkey bars, and a labyrinthine layout of tunnels for the children and their supervising Artificials to crawl through.

  The structure was in need of a good pressure washing and stain job, but the laughing children didn’t seem to mind as they chased each other through the wooden tunnels and scaled the child-sized climbing walls or leapt from the swings into pits of packed-down mulch.

  I imagined that in the past the city would have spent more effort on upkeep—making sure there weren’t any nails sticking through the weathered boards, that the mulch was thicker and fresher, and the rope swings weren’t so worn, but resources were limited and, as is so often the case, children had fewer advocates than adults do and, subsequently, were granted fewer rights. Case in point—legalized third-trimester abortion.

  More abortions.

  More children lost, just like Naiobi.

  For the most part, none of the Artificials who were acting as guardians or playmates were as natural-looking as Jordan. In only one case was I unable to tell if the adult pushing a little girl on a swing was a Natural or an Artificial.

  Watching those children play was tough for me. All I could think of was Naiobi and how she would never laugh and swing and run free in a place like this.

  I averted my gaze and studied the parents. Most were scrolling across their slates or listening to music through neural implants—a few even wore headphones, which I hadn’t seen much of in the last few years. Maybe they were making a comeback.

  Jordan’s attention was still on the playground and the children. One of the girls lost her grip on the monkey bars. The Artificial who was attending to her had two other children in tow and didn’t make it to her side until after she’d fallen and skinned her elbow.

  She began to cry, and the Artificial spoke soft words of comfort to her, and then she held up her arm and he kissed the place where she’d scraped herself. Then he reached over and wiped away the girl’s tears. He spoke to her again, and she stifled her crying and nodded. A moment later she was laughing and chasing a boy through the playground tunnels.

  Jordan took the whole thing in without saying a word and I wondered what he was thinking.

  “Could you hear what the Artificial said to that girl?” I asked him, knowing that his auditory sensors were far more acute than my ears were.

  “Yes. At first he offered to kiss the girl’s elbow to make it better. Then, after he did, he said to her, ‘There. See? Just like I said.’ And apparently she was better because she stopped crying.” Jordan turned to me. “What healing power was there in the kiss her Artificial gave her?”

  “None,” I said. “Except that she believed it would help.”

  “So, a placebo?”

  “A placebo?”

  “Yes, the kiss. Similar to when a soldier is in pain and is given a placebo instead of morphine. People have had limbs amputated without any medication and without pain when they take a sugar pill that they’re convinced is a painkiller. Their pain-free condition depends on faith as well.”

  “I suppose.” I’d never thought of a kiss as a type of placebo, but I could definitely see where Jordan was coming from. “I like how you help me see things through fresh eyes, as if I’m seeing them for the first time.”

  He said nothing, but just continued watching the children.

  I checked my slate again but found no messages. Nobody approached us or seemed to be keeping an eye on us.

  I said to Jordan, “This morning you mentioned that you wanted to tell me about your mother.”

  “She’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Destroyed.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “I found her at the production plant. She’d been scheduled for a CaTE and was apparently damaged irreparably in the blast
. I don’t know if her consciousness was uploaded or not.”

  I could tell by his tone that this was a difficult subject to discuss. “We can talk about this later if you want.”

  “Yes. Okay.”

  Since he’d been so adamant about telling me about her earlier on, I was a bit surprised that now he so promptly agreed to put it off and I wondered what he was feeling.

  After a moment, I stood. “Come on. Let’s walk. I’m getting anxious just sitting here.”

  Mirror Lake used to have a fountain in the middle of it that circulated the water and kept it clean, but the fountain had long since fallen into disrepair and hadn’t worked in years. As a result, the water was far from crystal clear, and the surface was marred with stagnant patches of algae and broad smears of green scum.

  I showed Jordan how to skip a stone across the water. He immediately picked up the skill and, after a few tries, was sailing the rocks eight or more skips past the algae into the middle of the pond.

  “Yesterday when I awakened you,” I said, “you showed me a video of Artificials doing jobs that Naturals typically do.”

  “I remember.”

  “It looked like you in the video. Was it?”

  “No.”

  “So, an identical model?”

  “It must have been, yes.”

  For some reason I didn’t like the idea that there were more Jordans out there. I wanted him to be special—a unique individual. But then I realized that, in truth, every moment that he was processing his surroundings, having a conversation with me, or developing his own dreams and aspirations, he was becoming more and more different from any other models that might happen to look like him or share the same operating system.

  Sort of like twins or triplets, I thought. They’re genetically identical, yet distinctly different as well—even their fingerprints are unique.

  I checked my slate again.

  Still nothing.

  Scanning the park, I looked for anyone or anything suspicious, but came up empty.

  Jordan tossed one final stone across the pond—a nine-skipper—and then said, “Have you ever done anything that needs forgiveness, Kestrel?”

  “Oh, yes. Many things. I couldn’t make it through a day, even an hour, without hurting someone or placing myself first in ways that I shouldn’t.”

  “Because, according to Christian doctrine, you’re a sinner.”

  “I am.”

  “So you receive forgiveness from God?”

  “Yes, although humility requires me to also seek the forgiveness of the people I’ve wronged.”

  “What if the person is dead?”

  Off the top of my head I didn’t have an answer for that.

  A runner came toward us and we both stepped out of the way.

  “Perhaps I need to be forgiven,” Jordan said once the woman had passed.

  “Forgiveness is something that’s only necessary for those who’ve turned from God’s ways. Animals do as their instincts dictate; machines do as their programming directs them. Neither necessitates forgiveness for their actions.”

  “But I have the ability to choose. I’m a morally free agent.”

  I was slow in responding. “Yes, that is true.”

  “What if I wish to worship God? What’s to stop me? What if I want to pray?”

  “To pray you must believe.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  “You’re a machine, Jordan.”

  “What is it like to pray?” he pressed me.

  “Prayer is how people commune with God. It’s how we make requests of him, praise him, thank him—even complain to him.”

  “You complain in your prayers?”

  “Sometimes, yes. For instance, the book of Psalms in the Bible is a collection of Hebrew prayers, but more of them are complaints to God than tributes of thanks for what he has done.” Then I circled back to what he’d said a few moments earlier. “What would you need to be forgiven for, Jordan?”

  He answered my question with one of his own: “What if I’ve failed to love as I should?”

  Love is a choice, I thought. It’s not something you can program into a machine. It can only be programmed into a heart.

  But I didn’t say that because I realized that he’d been right a moment ago—he did have free will, and that meant he could make moral choices, good or bad.

  He was quiet.

  “Is there something you’re trying to tell me?” I asked him. “Something you want to say?”

  “My mother once warned me that ‘a secret hidden is a lie waiting to be told.’”

  “Your mother.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have a secret, don’t you, Jordan? One that you don’t want to lie about?”

  “I want to be honest.”

  “I know.”

  His question about finding forgiveness from someone who was dead came back to me and the entire trajectory of this conversation began to concern me. Finally, putting two and two together, I said, “I’m not your first owner, am I?”

  “No.”

  “What happened to your first owner?” I asked, although I was starting to think I knew.

  He was silent.

  “Jordan, what happened?”

  “Her injuries proved to be fatal.”

  The chill came, slow and deep and real. “You killed her? That’s what you need forgiveness for?”

  “I failed to save her.”

  I found myself edging back slightly from him. “Jordan, tell me what happened. Don’t keep anything from me. No secrets. Tell me the truth, start to finish.”

  And so, he did.

  25

  “Her name was Sarah Ellsworth. She was a comptroller for a bank and the person who first awakened me. One day as she was giving me her husband’s shirt to take to the dry cleaners, she smelled perfume on it.”

  The implication was clear. “Someone else’s perfume,” I said.

  “Yes. She asked me to pull up his schedule through the Feeds, and when I did, she took a careful look at his business trips and the times of his meetings. Then she called one of his colleagues, a man he’d said he was working with the night before.”

  “Okay.”

  “She explained that her husband had forgotten his slate somewhere and asked if he’d left it with him. She had me monitor the man’s response for signs of stress, to see if he might be lying. Well, he told her that Caden hadn’t left anything there. ‘But he was there?’ she asked. ‘Yes, of course,’ the man replied on the video call. But based on the pause preceding his words, the way he avoided eye contact, and the strain in his voice, I believed that he was deceiving her.”

  “What happened then?”

  “That evening Sarah asked her husband about his business meeting the night before and he told her that it had gone well. And she said, ‘I’ll bet it did.’”

  Then, Jordan reenacted the conversation, imitating the voices of Caden and Sarah to such a realistic degree that I could almost hear them arguing right in front of me.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I called Liam. He told me you never met up with him.”

  “You were spying on me?”

  “I smelled the perfume, Caden. On your shirt. It was awfully strong. What, did she dump some on you, or did you wipe her down with your shirt after you were with her? I mean, for the love of—”

  “That’s enough.”

  “How long?”

  “Sarah, I—”

  “How long!”

  “Five months. Well, six.”

  “Oh. Wow. I’m even more clueless than I thought.”

  “Sarah, please, it’s—”

  “Do you love her?”

  “That’s not even the—”

  “Do you love her!”

  “No.”

  “And see? I don’t know if I should be thankful for that or not—that you would have an affair with someone for that long and not love her, just use her, or if I should be glad that you haven�
��t—Do you still love me?”

  “Listen, we can sort this out.”

  “That was not the right answer.”

  Then Jordan was quiet for a moment. “Caden asked me to leave the room, she told me she wanted me to stay and I was conflicted. On the one hand he was the one who’d purchased me for her, but I feared for her safety, so I wanted to stay.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I left. But I could still hear them arguing. It ended when I heard a slap. Quickly, I reentered the room and saw Caden holding his cheek. She must have slapped him.”

  “Well, the guy deserved it,” I said.

  “Yes. Then he shouldered his way past me and left.”

  When Jordan hesitated, I said, “I don’t believe you did anything wrong. I don’t think you need forgiveness for anything you’ve told me.”

  He didn’t respond directly to my words. “That night she locked herself in the bathroom and I heard her crying. Caden hadn’t returned, and when I knocked on the door to check on her, she told me to leave her alone, to go away.”

  “And did you?”

  “No. I waited and I listened. Soon the crying stopped and I had to choose what to do. I heard her gasp and her breathing momentarily became quicker and then more ragged. Then it slowed, but it didn’t sound like she was asleep. Finally, I forced the door open and entered the room.”

  “What did you find?”

  * * *

  He speaks. He recalls. And it all comes back, every sentence giving rise to the next, his memory unfolding and sharpening, recalibrating with each subsequent recollection.

  Words come to him. A poem. A thought riddle he needs to solve.

  I have painted over the past again,

  with carefully chosen colors

  to cover all the stains

  my choices have left behind.

  “She was unconscious in the bathtub,” he says. “Blood spurted from her laterally slit wrists and a razor blade lay on the floor. Water was running over the lip of the tub. Her slate was near the blade, and there was a note on it.”

  “What did it say?” Kestrel asks.

  “‘I would rather die than live knowing I’m unloved. Don’t try to save me.’”

  “What did you do?”