by Jon Skovron
“Where is Liel?” I said.
“At The Show, of course,” all five of them said in unison. “Since that is where I was conceived, I decided to set up primary servers there. Plus, there were so many interesting host options to choose from.”
“My parents!” I said. “If you do anything to them, I’ll—”
“You’ll be dead by then,” they all said. Then Oob swung a massive fist at me. I was faster, but only just barely. His knuckles grazed the tip of my nose as I dodged to the side.
“Claire, get out of here!” I shouted.
“Like hell!” she said. “I’ve got the harpies, you just handle that ogre!”
Like that’ll be easy, I thought as he came at me with both hands. I caught his wrists. There was no way I could overpower him, so instead I used his momentum to pull him off balance, then I bent down so he fell over my back. But he was more than just an ogre now. VI’s intelligence was inside and saw that one coming. He wrapped his arms around my torso as he fell, pulling me down with him. Then he just started to squeeze. I couldn’t pry his arms loose—he was way too strong for that. I tried to roll us, but he was also a lot heavier than me. I was running out of air and out of time. I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t think of any other options. So I reached up, took hold of his sunglasses, and yanked them off as hard as I could. I heard the skin tear loose with the staples, then a wet pop as the wires ripped free from his sockets. He shuddered and his arms loosened enough for me to break free. Without stopping, I rolled over, grabbed his shuddering, eyeless head, and slammed the side with the signal device into the floor as hard as I could. I heard the plastic device casing crack, and Oob stopped shuddering and went limp.
I lay there panting for a moment, staring into his bloody eye sockets. Poor Oob.
“You okay?” asked Claire.
“Just need to…catch my breath…” I said.
“That didn’t go quite as planned,” came the squeaky brownie voice. Ernesto stood next to the kitchen sink, a frown on his little face. “But I have a contingency, of course. If you want try to save your parents, that dancer whore, and the rest of those science-fearing relics, you can come find me at The Show. And I recommend that you arrive in the next twenty-four hours. I have a city-wide rollout to implement, and I have no intention of pushing back my launch date just for you.”
“A city-wide rollout of what?” I asked.
“I plan to find out what the visual cortex aggression hack I used in Saint Louis would look like if deployed on a large scale. I will project it on every television and computer monitor in New York City tomorrow at eight p.m., eastern standard time.”
“Listen you little—” said Claire and she grabbed for him.
He leapt out of the way. Then he flicked on the switch for the garbage disposal.
“I refuse to give you the satisfaction, you savage,” he said. Then he jumped into the sink, followed immediately by a wet grinding sound and spatters of blood.
“Holy shit.” She stumbled back toward me. “This chick is psycho! She makes the Hydes look like kittens!”
“Yeah,” I said. “And it’s all my fault.”
“No, Boy.” Claire shook her head. “This is way more than you ever—”
“I doesn’t matter. I’m still responsible. And even if I wasn’t, I still have to save my parents and everybody else at The Show. If I can.”
An empty robe and slippers appeared in the open doorway.
“All right, Boy, I know you have your big date tonight, but really, can’t you…” There was a moment of silence. Then, “Dear God, what happened here?”
“You were right.” I slowly got to my feet. “I have to face the consequences of my actions. Will you help me stop them from getting any worse?”
A FEW HOURS later, I stood with Kemp, Kitsune, and Claire on a small private airfield just outside Los Angeles. The nearby city skyline was wreathed in the sickly orange light that hung on the horizon. Around us, there were no buildings or other equipment you normally see at an airport. It was just a long strip of dirt outlined in bright incandescent white lights that stuck up from the ground in regular intervals.
“She should be here in a few minutes,” said Kemp, his coat collar pulled up against the chill evening breeze.
“I really appreciate your getting in touch with her,” I said.
“It’s been a very long time since she and I have cooperated, and I can’t quite remember why,” he said. “She and I used to get on so well. Perhaps once this is resolved…” His shoulders shrugged. “Well, we shall see. Now, before I send you off, please tell me you have a plan.”
“I have an idea that theoretically should work,” I said.
“That sounds…encouraging,” he said. “Please do try to come back in one piece this time.”
I turned to Kitsune. Her long black hair was pulled back, but a few stray wisps fluttered across her face in the wind. I realized that the reason I liked her so much was that she was a lot like my mother. Other than the stories she told, she was a woman of few words. But the way she looked at me told me all I needed to know. I remembered what she’d said when we first met. Worth it. This was worth it. No matter how it ended.
I bowed to her. And she bowed back.
Then I turned to Claire. “You can’t come.”
“I appreciate that you don’t want me dead,” she said. “But I don’t want you dead, either. And I’ve already saved your arse enough times to know you’re probably going to need me to do it again.”
“No,” I said. “Literally, you won’t be able to come. She can’t carry us both for three thousand miles.” Actually, I had no idea if the Dragon Lady could carry us both that far. But even if my plan worked, it seemed pretty unlikely that I would survive it. The only way I could go into it with a clear head was if I knew she and Sophie wouldn’t go down with me.
“But what about disconnecting?” Claire asked.
“Well, you can’t do that part, either. Your fingers are too big.”
“But you can’t do it yourself.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Then…” She closed her eyes. “Oh. You need Sophie.”
“Yeah. Her fingers are small enough.”
“Right.” Her face was tense and I could see that muscle in her neck twitching again.
“You did save my ass, though. A bunch of times.”
She smiled a little. “I did. And probably will again in the future.”
“I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities,” I lied.
She put her hands on my shoulders. “I’m sorry I choked earlier tonight. You know, when you got all mushy and confessional on me.”
“Look. We don’t have to—”
“Shut up. About your question…the one you asked earlier. Here’s the answer.”
Then she kissed me. We stood on the windswept airfield as I pulled her in close and her hands pressed against my back. Then her lips began to soften, her head lowered, her arms and torso shrank, her touch became gentler. Suddenly, I was holding Sophie in my arms, her long, curly hair flowing in the evening breeze. She pressed her cool cheek against my neck and sighed.
“Hiya,” she whispered.
“Hey,” I said.
“Good to see you.”
“You too.”
“You’re going to ask me to do something gross, aren’t you?”
“Pretty much.”
“You suck.”
“Totally. Will you do it?”
“What if I cock it up?”
“You won’t.”
“Okay.”
We stood there for a little while longer, her face pressed into the curve of my neck. Then the moon went dark. We looked up to see the Dragon Lady circling overhead, her vast wings stretched wide as she glided lower and lower. Finally, she neared the ground, her wings flared up, and she stepped gracefully on to the dirt landing strip. Her head swiveled around as she looked down at us.
“Hello again, little monsters,�
� she said.
“Thank you for coming,” I said.
“In the dark hours, we must all be lights for each other.”
“It’s good to see you again,” said Kemp.
“And it is good to…be with you again, Doctor,” said the Dragon Lady.
Kemp’s hat cocked to one side. “If you don’t mind my saying so, it seems you have…changed somewhat since our last encounter.”
“As have you,” she said.
“A lot can happen in fifty years, I suppose.”
“Indeed.” The Dragon Lady turned to Kitsune. “When will you next grace us with your presence, Fox Maiden?”
Kitsune turned her amber eyes to Sophie. “Soon, I think.”
The Dragon Lady turned back to me. “Well, little monster. Are you ready?”
“I just have to do one thing first.” I turned to Sophie. “Ready?”
“You sure you want to do it now?” she asked. “Didn’t you say that the longer you’re like that, the worse it is when it’s over?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s the point. So are you okay to do this?”
She bit her lip and nodded.
I handed her a small clamp with a long, thin wire attached to it. The other end of the wire I had already attached to my belt. Then I turned to face the dragon. It was comforting to look in those glowing, eternal eyes. It made me feel like no matter what happened, some things go on forever.
“Loosen the stitches at the base of my skull,” I said.
After a moment, I could feel a little slack back there.
“Now carefully spread the flaps apart.”
I felt the breeze snake its way past the barrier of my skin and I had to repress a shudder. I didn’t want to make any sudden movement right now.
“Now, there’s probably a lot of stuff you have to push aside. What you’re looking for is a thick, orange bypass cord right above the spine that connects the brain stem to the cerebellum.”
“Eeew,” said Sophie, and I heard a wet sound as she pushed her fingers into me. “What if I get the wrong one?”
“It’ll be the only orange thing in there.”
“I don’t see it.” Her voice sounded a little queasy.
“You have to go deeper.”
“Ugh.” I heard more wet sounds as she pushed in farther. “You know this must be love, don’t you? I wouldn’t do this for anyone else in the world.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I love you t—”
SOPHIE: Did I get the right one?
BOY: Yes. That is the correct one. Emotional reactions have been blocked.
KEMP: Astounding. It’s almost a different person.
BOY: No. It is merely less than a person. A machine. But I have been told we are all machines, anyway. Perhaps a reevaluation of the concept of “person” is in order.
Sophie embraces Boy.
SOPHIE: Good luck!
BOY: Luck is a lie we tell ourselves to account for the unfairness of life.
Sophie steps back quickly, a distressed look on her face.
SOPHIE: Please bring the whole Boy back.
BOY: That is the preferred outcome, but the probability is low.
SOPHIE: Wait, what?!
DRAGON: Strange little robot monster. Are you ready now?
BOY: Yes.
24
Curtains
ON THE STAGE, VI connects the cables to Boy’s nervous system via preinstalled USB and DVI interfaces. She begins the personality override.
VI: Really, Boy. I had hoped there would be some small challenge in subduing you. But you made it easy.
BOY: That was by design.
Boy reaches behind his back and yanks the wire that is attached to the clamp on his nervous system….
There was a moment when I finally felt like me again, my physical and emotional sides linked back up. I felt clear and calm as I took in my surroundings, the stage of The Show, the gigantic mainframe computer I was connected to at the back of my head and my wrists.
But it was the quiet before the storm, and I could feel the pent-up emotion looming over me like a tidal wave.
I braced myself.
“What?!” said VI. “Disconnect! DISCON—”
Then it hit. And it was like I was swept backward in time to feel all the emotions that had been building up for the last twenty-four hours, but compressed into a burst of such searing intensity that it might ruin my mind, or maybe just kill me.
THE DRAGON LADY swooped me up from that landing strip outside LA, and the world spun away as we launched into the night sky. My stomach lurched and I almost threw up as we rose higher and higher, moving so fast my eardrums burst. As blood trickled onto my earlobes, I heard the dragon thunder:
“How is this compared to your flying machines, little science monster! Are they this fast, this glorious?”
I heard the passionless voice of the other, disconnected me say, “No.”
Far below, one half of the love of my life reached her hand up toward us as we sped away. The look of horror on her face rent me and I wondered: Have I gone too far, shown her too much of me, of what I’m capable of becoming? Now will she always see some grotesque cyborg creature when she looks at me? I wanted to rip free from the dragon’s clutches, go back to her, forget all this and hide with her somewhere far away. But it was all too late for that now. Besides, if I couldn’t fix this, I didn’t deserve her, anyway.
The wind screamed in my bloody ears and it was so cold icicles formed in my hair. Exposed in the claws of a dragon, hurtling through the upper stratosphere at several hundred miles per hour, there was a chance I could freeze to death before we even got there.
But the other disconnected me remembered that I had calculated all of this ahead of time and knew I was tough enough to handle it. I played at being human, but I wasn’t. My father lived in the Arctic for a hundred years. I was his son. I could take it.
Time stretched on interminably. I began to wonder if I would go insane up there among the clouds. I wanted to babble to the dragon, but nothing came out and my body was stiff with indifference and cold, aware of little more than the slow buildup of pressure at the base of my skull.
I looked down, and through the clouds, I thought I saw Pittsburgh. I could have been wrong, of course, but it was a triangle-shaped city with an excessive number of bridges. Far below, somewhere in that industrial steel town reborn into academia and insurance was a broken-down machine man who saw the beauty in Claire that I could not see at the time. His chipped, worn head must have been filled with the things that might have been. Perhaps it was true, that suffering brought wisdom. He had certainly suffered enough. Yet still perhaps one day, when the world was a better place—when we had made the world a better place—Claire, Sophie, and I would go back to that warehouse and awaken him and he would be so glad that he would suddenly be able to weep despite his lack of tear ducts. And he would turn into a real man. And I would become a real boy, and we would all live happily ever after….
No. That wasn’t possible. I wasn’t making sense. The emotional pressure was building too fast. I didn’t know if I’d even be able to make it to New York at this rate. The air was so thin up here it was getting hard to think and my head felt ready to burst with pressure.
But wait, there it was down below. I would have known that bristling pack of concrete and vibrancy anywhere. That was New York fuckin’ City. My city. And that mistake of a program was down there trying to destroy it. I would kill her. I would erase her.
We were still about fifty feet above the roof of The Show when the Dragon Lady shouted, “I can’t get any lower!”
“Drop me,” I heard my dead voice say.
I couldn’t even scream as the world that seemed so peaceful from afar now hurtled toward me.
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
A shrieking, endless gash of pure noise coming from VI’s hosts brought me back to the present for a moment. As the emotional backlash tore through me, it funne
led into the cables at my head and wrists and into VI’s mainframe computer, maxing out her already taxed CPU, which in turn caused all her systems and hosts to freeze up.
I lay on the stage of the theater, my body so rigid it was shaking. Above me, the stage lights flickered in random spasms, and in the wings, the fog machines belched up noxious clouds of dry ice.
Someone tried to pick me up, but I pushed them away.
“Boy, it’s Ruthven! VI seems to be stunned momentarily, but I don’t know how long it will last! Let me unhook you before—”
“No!” I said through clenched teeth, my voice pinched and shaking. “Have to…see this…through to…the end.”
“But it’s killing you!”
“Hopefully, it’s killing her, too,” I said.
Then another wave of emotion sucked me into its memory.
WHEN I LANDED on the roof, ice broke off my body in sheets. The impact shot pain up my legs and into my spine, but I didn’t even break stride as I walked toward the edge of the roof. I never realized how much of the response to pain was emotional. And again I was surprised at just how tough I was. The disconnected me had calculated it correctly, I just hadn’t been able to believe it.
Once I reached the edge, I jumped over the side and landed with a clang on the rusty fire escape. I kicked in the closest window and climbed through into the dark hallway by the mezzanine bathrooms.
The nymphs were there waiting for me. I didn’t realize there were so many. Ten beautiful, identical females. Thank god they didn’t have the sunglasses and implants yet. But they had the crazy, violent look that the humans had at the mall. As soon as they saw me, they swarmed in, biting, scratching, kicking, pulling, gouging. My fists swung fast and hard and suddenly the hallway was filled with the sound of pounding meat, breaking bone, and wails of pain. And none of it was mine. I wanted to stop hitting them or at least pull my punches a little. They were innocents. They didn’t deserve this. But the disconnected me didn’t see them that way. To him, they were only obstacles to be dealt with in the simplest manner possible. I hit one in the face so hard she flew back ten feet. I didn’t even know I was capable of that much force.