Sleeper Protocol

by Kevin Ikenberry

  Listening to his conversations with Mally, she realized that, if she’d been able to hear them in real time, as they happened, her worst fears would have been realized. The Terran Council would have done more to stop her. In their pursuit of control, they had guaranteed he would die but not at their hands. There would be no subjects receiving any type of AI interface. The pursuit of technological resonance was too costly to human life for the foreseeable future. Humans didn’t need assistance, Berkeley realized. The power of the human potential was far greater than any machine would ever be able to challenge.

  The maglev descended off the plain toward the coast, and the wide indigo curve of the Great Australian Bight stretched across the southern horizon. Tourists crowded the south side of the train, marveling at the sight of the ocean in its early morning glory. A boy across the aisle asked if they could open the windows. The recycled air blowing through the tight cabin freshened with every passing kilometer. Soon, the briny scent of the sea had everyone aboard smiling and chatting about their vacation plans. Scrolling through her datapad and reviewing properties to rent, Bennett felt tears at the edge of her vision. She’d had no plan when she’d left Cambridge, only to have pieced-together work and maybe a place to live on a new continent. Kieran would have been proud of her for taking up the challenge. He knew what it was like to make things up as he went.

  Pulling into the terminus, the train lurched once and began to slow down quickly. Passengers rose and collected their belongings all around her, but Bennett sat staring out at the blue sky. As the crowd dwindled in the aisles, she rose, collected her two bags, and made her way to the platform. Leaning against a pole, a large blond man in a loose shirt, shorts, and leather sandals caught her eye. Closing the distance, she smiled, and the man returned it before pushing off the pole and stepping toward her with his arms outstretched.

  That he was a stranger didn’t matter. He’d known Kieran and loved him as much as she did. Dropping her bags, Bennett wrapped her arms around Allan Wright and let the sobs come again. The breeze tossed her hair around her sticky face, and she pulled gently away from the tanned man who smelled like beer and aftershave. Allan Wright was exactly as Kieran had described, and it made her miss him even more.

  “It’s all right.” Wright stroked her hair.

  Things were okay, and they were getting better by the second. “I’m okay,” she whispered against Allan’s chest and gained her composure with a few deep breaths. She brushed tears from her hot cheeks and looked up.

  “Doctor Bennett, I presume.” Allan Wright smiled down at her. “Otherwise, I’m going to be in a lot of trouble.”

  “Please call me Berkeley, Allan.”

  “Thought you went by Gwendolyn.” Allan squinted at her. “‘Least that’s how it was in the news.”

  “Berkeley is my middle name.” She shrugged. “It’s how he knew me.”

  “You should stick with it.” Allan unwrapped an arm from her and guided her toward the end of the platform.

  “I am.” Being there felt better than good—almost natural.

  “Good. I can see why he fell for you.”

  Berkeley blinked. “How do you know he fell for me?”

  “He wrote good letters.” Allan shrugged.

  “You never responded.”

  Allan nodded, his face serious. “To every single one of them. I’m guessing he didn’t receive them.”

  “No,” Berkeley said. Damn you, Mally. What else could you take from him?

  “Are you going to let me read them?”

  “Depends,” Allan said. “Why don’t you tell me what you were doing here in the first place. When you met him on the beach. Were you following him?”

  They boarded an autocar, which Berkeley swept quickly with her neurals and then secured the transmission record. Confident the area was secure, she replied, “I was following him. My job was to get close to him, establish an emotional connection, and get him to integrate.”

  “Sounds perfectly clinical.” Allan shook his head, disgust palpable on his strained face.

  “That’s how it started. But he was very different, Allan. You know that, too.”

  “I’d hate to think you manipulated him.” Allan frowned.

  “I knew I was falling for him on about the third day out of California. When he told me that he loved me, I told him I loved him, too. That night, his protocol went berserk and threatened to kill him if I didn’t leave. I left him alone in the mountains of Colorado with that damned thing manipulating him worse than I ever could. By the time we’d figured things out, his guidance protocol became paranoid for his life. Really, it was her life she wanted to protect. It ended up killing him before I could intercept them in Tennessee.”

  “He made it, huh?” Allan smiled. “Not surprising. He was as tough as they come. You know he tried to rescue a kid out of the surf here, right? Out at Cyclops?”

  She’d heard the reactions of the surfers in town right after it happened, but it did not compare to the memory files she now had. “I did.”

  “Damned strong bloke. Can’t imagine being alone like that. I’m glad that you were with him, even for a bit.” Allan bit his lip. “Were you there when he died?”

  “I was. Why?” Berkeley felt tears threatening her eyelids again.

  “No man deserves to die alone. And he found love before he died. It wouldn’t have suited him to come back around for a second time and die alone, far away from home, without knowing love.”

  “He was home, though. He died over his own gravesite.”

  Allan chuckled. “That wasn’t his home, Berkeley.”

  Kieran had remembered his life, his identity, and even where he’d been buried. But he went to Tennessee to find something impossible to define. Home is never where you think it is. Smiling, she let the tears trail down her face again. Allan was right. Kieran had known where his home was for this life, and he’d known love. That she’d been able to share even a measure of that with him meant more than a Nobel Prize ever would.

  “He lived life like it was brand new,” Berkeley said. “We should all be so lucky.”

  Allan nodded. “I think the bastard deserves one helluva party.”

  Berkeley looked out at the swells. A perfect day for surfing. “I think we have to give him one.”

  Allan wanted to clean the bar from top to bottom, knowing a Terran Defense Force major general was on the guest list for the wake, but Berkeley stopped him. “You have to trust me. He’s not that type of person.”

  “But he’s a general, and it’s my place!”

  Berkeley finished laying out the plates and utensils for the buffet and drank from a bottle of Tooheys. “Trust me—he’s going to come in wearing a floral shirt and shorts, I promise you.”

  “Good thing we’re not having a graveside service, then.”

  Berkeley agreed. Kieran’s body belonged to the Terran Defense Force medicos, where it would be researched and studied. Creating a clone with nearly full memory recaptured was a feat unsurpassed in medical history. Only one in a hundred clones was even physiologically capable enough to survive the way Kieran had. Still, the TDF had proven it was possible. Crawley never discussed any specifics, but she understood the intent of the project. She could join his research team at any time—he’d offered her a prime position—but she’d declined. Being that close to Kieran’s remains would throw salt in her wounds. She couldn’t bury Kieran—he had a tombstone, but he wasn’t there—and that was a blessing, really.

  “Berkeley?”

  She looked at Allan. “Sorry. I was woolgathering.”

  “Dirty job.” Allan’s face screwed in mock disgust. “I asked if you wanted to freshen up before the wake. I can handle the early crowd.”

  Berkeley smoothed back a lock of hair that had come loose from her long ponytail. S
he took stock of her shorts, a blue unbuttoned long-sleeved shirt of Kieran’s over a tank top, and her sandals. “Nah. I think I’m good just like this.”

  Allan settled onto a barstool. “Then I am, too.”

  Walking to the adjacent stool, Berkeley touched her blue bottle to Allan’s. “Here’s to Sleepy.”

  “Sleepy,” Allan said.

  The voice came from behind them at the door. “You’re not drinking without me, are you?”

  Berkeley spun around, and her mouth fell open. Adam Crawley stood in fresh dress uniform, a bus-driver’s hat neatly tucked under his left arm and not wearing the floral shirt and shorts she’d imagined. “General!”

  Allan shot to his feet with a jerk and sputtered. “Sir!”

  Crawley held a stone face for a moment and then began to smile. “I’m a bit early, aren’t I?”

  Allan slicked back his hair. “Wake starts in a couple of hours.” He wiped the front of his shirt and glanced at Berkeley. “Seems we’re underdressed, too.”

  Crawley stepped farther inside the bar and unbuttoned his uniform tunic. “Hardly. Traveling in uniform for official duties is required by the regulations of the Terran Defense Force. Conducting unofficial business has no similar requirement.” Under his uniform shirt, Crawley indeed wore a short-sleeved floral-print shirt. Unabashedly stepping out of his shoes and pants, he revealed brown-and-white-plaid shorts. He eschewed his military loafers and went barefoot. Padding across the bar, he hugged Berkeley and shook Allan’s hand until the bigger man had pulled the general into a tight embrace.

  “Thank you for coming,” Allan said. “Honored to have you here, sir.”

  Crawley pulled back from the hug, stepped around the open end of the bar, and found the beer cooler. “You don’t mind if I serve myself, do you?”

  Allan nodded. “Make yourself at home, General.”

  Berkeley squinted at them. Something didn’t fit. Crawley stepped behind the bar, opened a cooler, and fished out a beer with the ease of experience. “What’s going on?”

  Crawley swigged a deep swallow of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. “I told you she’s pretty sharp.”

  “You did,” Allan said. “Definitely worth the effort.”

  “What effort?” Berkeley pointed at Crawley. “What’s going on, General?”

  Crawley rounded the bar and sat next to her. “Putting this on and getting you here, Berkeley. Relax. We’re here for him. That was the effort.”

  “You’re lying to me.” Berkeley studied them for a long moment. “You’ve been here before. Stepping around the bar like that.”

  Crawley chuckled. “I came here a couple of days ago. I wanted to know everything that Mister Wright knew. Can you blame me for following up?”

  Berkeley chuckled, unsurprised. “No, I suppose not. You could have told me.”

  “And ruin the surprise?” Crawley chuckled. “I can’t have that.”

  The door to the bar snapped open and closed with a smack. Berkeley said, “You can’t have that.” She glanced to see who was there.

  The silhouetted man in the door was familiar. He smiled a lopsided grin topped with glittering blue eyes. There was a roll of his shoulders, a wide shrug, and a slight tilt of his head to one side. All of it perfect—and out of place.

  Berkeley was off her stool and into his arms. They locked arms around each other, Kieran effortlessly lifting her off the ground and spinning them both around. She was crying again and made no effort to stop the tears. There were a million questions that no longer mattered. A million things threatened to come out of her mouth all at once. Nothing mattered except for the man in her arms. She ran her hands through his longish brown hair and felt the curve of his jawline tucked against hers. It was him, not another clone or anything of the sort. There was a scar on his neck, behind his left ear, where the protocol had been removed, but the rest of him was perfect.

  Allan and Crawley touched their beer bottles together and made their way out to the front porch. Lips crushed to his in a kiss, she danced her tongue against his playfully. The heat of his arms and chest warmed her soul. Her heart fluttered at the brush of his fingertips along her cheek. Lost in the kiss, they stayed together, hardly moving, until he smiled, and she did too.

  Wriggling in his arms, she looked up into his smiling face. “Don’t you ever do that to me again.”

  “Not my idea,” Kieran said. “I was dead, but you saved me.”

  “I didn’t. I was too late to get a full download. I only got 95 percent.” Crawley had said brain function was all or nothing. Either he was wrong, or there’d been something he didn’t mean for her to know from the very beginning.

  “More like 98 percent,” Kieran said. “My brain went into stasis mode, and my body preserved itself until the general and his team could revive me. Still took a couple of days, but I’m me. When I woke up in Sydney, the first thing they told me was that you came back for me and that you saved my life. General Crawley ordered me not to contact you. He had something else in mind.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. The whole of their time together crashed through her heart in a flash of emotion. “I never should have left you.”

  Kieran shrugged. “Doesn’t matter now. I’m here, and for the next five months, thirteen days, and a few hours, we’re going to be together.”

  “Longer than that.” Berkeley smiled and pressed her lips to his again. The kiss was slow and tender.

  She glanced over Kieran’s shoulder and saw Allan and Crawley open the screen door and shuffle inside with chagrin on their faces. “You bastards knew this all along, didn’t you?”

  Allan rumbled to life. “The wake was for Sleepy, not for Kieran Roark, Doctor Bennett.”

  “I didn’t tell you about stasis, Berkeley, for two reasons. One, we weren’t sure it would work, given what Mally did to him. Two, until he did wake up with everything intact, we had no idea just how successful you were. It was an almost perfect match between his batch file and the stasis copy. He has a six-month extension for his therapy. Maybe more.”

  “Really?” Kieran asked, his breath hot on Berkeley’s face, making her squirm.

  “In fact”—Crawley raised his beer bottle—“a year ought to be just enough time for you two to get things together here before our next phase. Just no traveling outside Australia until we’re ready. The rest of the world doesn’t know Kieran’s alive.”

  “What do you mean? Is that why you lied to me?” Berkeley asked.

  Crawley said nothing, and it really wouldn’t matter anyway. There would be a time and place for it. The night was to be a celebration. Work would wait. Her trust in General Crawley should have been a little strained because of the secret he’d kept, but Kieran was alive because of him, too. They would figure things out—together. As the night wore on, they drank beer and sang old songs until the sun rose. Berkeley watched Kieran fall back into the arms of their collective family. That he was alive and hers was all that mattered.

  “What was it like?” Berkeley asked with her lips against my chest.

  We’d made love a second time before the questions started. There was something oddly therapeutic about it.

  “I mean, waking up all over again in the Integration Center two days later. Did it freak you out?” Her casual use of twentieth-century slang made me proud.

  “No. My first thought was I was stuck in a movie or a story that ends with the journey beginning all over again. That’s not my favorite kind of story. They work sometimes but not for me.”

  “Were you scared?”

  “For about ten seconds. Then I said my name and stared out the window, thinking about the whole time I’d been traveling, until Doctor Garrett came back in and welcomed me home.”

  “You could have called me.” Berkeley sighed.

 
“No, I couldn’t. Remember? The council needed to believe that everything was done. When you said you quit the university, Crawley decided to put this whole thing together. Called Allan and let him in on things.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Day and a half. Surfed out near Cyclops for the first time yesterday, down off the barrier-island break. The guys took me out before the tourist boats came. You should’ve seen it.”

  Berkeley sighed, and her tears hit my chest. Rubbing them away, I looked at her as she said, “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Me too.” Out of my bag, I pulled out a worn leather-bound book and handed it to Berkeley. “There’s something you should see.”

  She opened the book to a page marked by a thin red ribbon. “What’s this?”

  “The diary of General Crawley’s great-great-great-grandfather. He was my division commander when I was killed in Afghanistan.”

  Berkeley read the marked page and gasped. “It mentions you by name! ‘The brightest young officer I’d ever encountered. His ideas on the future of combat were far beyond his time. The day he died was a sad one for me and the division.’” Berkeley looked up at me with tears in her eyes. “Crawley knew all along, didn’t he?”