Salya nearly shouted this, and the transformation shocked Raymond into action. He had to get Henry, or Manolo, or whoever this person was, to spill concrete details that could lead to his conviction.
"So what," he started, "Michaels was a pawn? A pawn in a game you set up so you could upload?"
"Michaels was a self-important, overly ambitious rookie. It was a matter of time before someone sacrificed that piece. Might as well be me."
"And Brody? What ever happened to her?"
"The last thing I needed was a real detective on the case."
"You can pull strings like that?"
"That's child's play."
"And Bob?"
"It's amazing what an inventor will do when you take his brainchild away." Salya smiled, basking in Raymond's amazement.
Brody was right—I really am in a special position to get this villain to open up.
"Seriously," said Raymond, "I know Bob wasn't entirely on the up-and-up, but how did you coax him into collusion with the FBI?"
"Oh, that was all Michaels. All I did was plant the seed in his greedy little mind: think of the glory if you could deliver this technology into the hands of the Old Men, and keep the Bureau's best investigative minds alive? Not to mention the monetary potential as they all paid him off."
"Old Men?"
"Heathcliff, Sneider, Mankewiecz—all the Old Men's Club. Semi-retired agents who still consult with the Bureau, and still have a good deal of clout. And money, from the deals they cut through the years. They've all got one foot in the grave, and not one of them would be above bending the rules for digital immortality."
"And you're not one of the Old Men?"
"No, I'm not FBI. Are you kidding? I get all the benefits of an insider without the sticky difficulties."
"I don't follow," said Raymond, hoping for something more material. "How exactly did you pull that off?"
"I sold them their surveillance systems, and I ran the team that built them. Ever heard of a company called GSI?"
"No shit."
"Funny the jobs they'll give a hacker, no? And when it came time for a security audit, who do you think they hired?"
"Didn't they do it themselves?"
"Hell no. They don't trust their own talent to do it right, dumb sons of bitches."
"Surely they didn't hire the same company that built the systems."
"No, but they might as well have. They hired Femus, a little auditing firm I did the hiring for. Half the Femus auditors were on my payroll at GSI. I set Femus up with clean samples, Femus conveniently neglected to look any further, and they greenlighted the whole thing."
"And now you use your backdoors to manipulate surveillance data?"
"That's just the tip of the iceberg."
"That's a nice racket you've set up for yourself. You've probably got some pretty big-name clients."
"Everyone from Ernesto Claudio to the CIA to... Saudi princes."
"You say you're not on the run like I was, but with clients like Ernesto Claudio, it seems like you'd be quite a target yourself ."
"I've got blackmail on every major terrorist group in the world. Another good reason to upload."
"But then... you are on the run."
"There's a difference between a smart defense and being on the run. You ever dreamt of putting your NBC up in space?"
"Sure."
"Well I could actually do it. If I wanted to. And without giving up a damned thing. I'd still be in touch. I'd still be connected with my people."
"Your people?" scoffed Raymond. "You have people?"
"You'd be surprised."
"Name one."
"I'm not about to defend my self-worth to you."
"I'm not challenging your self-worth. I'm challenging your worth to others, and whether anyone's really worth anything to you? Who would you give your life for? Who loves you? Who's your Anya?"
Pride welled within Raymond: Anya really did love him, and he would give anything for her. He suddenly glimpsed himself as part of something bigger, and it was a joyous revelation despite knowing it would quite probably cost him his life.
"Mere rhetoric," said Salya dismissively.
"You don't have anyone, do you?" challenged Raymond, trying hard to corner his captor. "You're as adrift as I was, aren't you? Only I was relatively harmless."
"Harmless?" cried our Salya. "Look at me!" She tore her gown even further, revealing most of her torso. "Look at what you did to this woman!"
"And I see that now, and I'm sick with guilt," said Raymond straight-on. "Even though she's not real. While you—you're fucking with real people, and you don't seem to care."
"I just wipe out data."
"Bullshit. You can't deny the results of your actions. You conceal assassinations, you hide the deeds of low men—for money. You're as bad as they are."
"Enough!" shouted Salya. She stepped swiftly around the table and lunged at Raymond, placing a strong hand on his throat and driving him backwards against the wall. He fell backwards over the chair and landed hard on the floor.
He scrambled to his feet, and she allowed him to put some distance between them. He looked around for something with which to defend himself, but knew it was futile.
"I could kill you right now, you know that?" asked Salya, as if reading his mind.
"You could, couldn't you?" asked Raymond pointedly. "You've done it before. And not just me. You killed Jacob Falls, didn't you?"
"Jacob Falls knew too much. He turned on me, and he thought... Wait a minute." Salya looked at him with narrowed eyes. "Your mental data predated your upload. You shouldn't know who Jacob Falls is."
Raymond realized his misstep. "You thought you could reuse my NBC?" he asked, and was mortified as his voice cracked. "You thought none of my memories would endure, but I do remember things." His lies were utterly see-through, and he knew it.
"I didn't reuse your NBC," said Salya slowly. "Not the original one. It's Fidel, isn't it. I was a fool to trust him. I shouldn't have brought anyone over from Anya's team. He and Anya are tight, aren't they. And he's my surveillance man—he's in the perfect position to talk to you and hide it from me. You know too much."
Salya produced a disruptor from nowhere and pointed it at Raymond's head.
"Time to die."
Raymond signaled to Scorpio for emergency assistance, but it was too late. The last thing Raymond saw was a burst of blue light—at point blank.
Chapter 22
Nothing. No Salya, no medical equipment, no feeling. No eyes with which to see the nothingness.
The void. I've been returned to the void.
He tried to exhale and panicked. No lungs to push out air, no air to be pushed out. Gradually, panic gave way to a sense of relief.
The disruptor blast didn't kill me. It must have just kicked me out of Nurania.
His visceral fear had faded, but a deeper anxiety started setting in. A moment before, he had expected his life to be snuffed out, but he was still alive—and vulnerable to a far worse fate at Henry's hands.
Manolo turned out to be much bigger than Raymond had ever suspected—a giant in the world of shady hackers. Had any of their final conversation made it to Brody? Even if it did, had he given her enough to go on? And was there anything she could do against a man with such powerful connections? Alone in the void, Raymond had no way of knowing.
Did I just sacrifice myself for nothing?
His mind turned to his own situation.
How was that even a sacrifice? I was going to be killed by the comet anyway. To imagine myself a hero is sheer vanity.
It was fitting to be killed by Salya, after everything he had done to her. Seeing what had come of himself and his world after uploading, he was disappointed. Yet it was disappointment at a distance.
It was my god copy—it wasn't really me.
He wondered again whether his god copy's NBC had malfunctioned, driving his psychology into the twisted darkness necessary to create Iniquita. It was
hard to accept that this was what his own self could become, that this was merely the darkness of a man utterly alone. His god copy had voluntarily subjected himself to Iniquita. In fact, it seemed as though he had embraced it, craving the suffering as an antidote to the shallowness and inherent insignificance of Nurania's simulated populace. As if brutality and darkness could fill in where meaning was absent.
Time ran on. Raymond's thoughts turned to the brief time he had had with Anya. Seeing her, he knew now that she still cared for him. She was protective of him, willing to take a risk to talk to him. Thinking of her, he wanted to smile. Having no face to show expression, no lips to turn up in a smile, his happiness felt muted. He pictured her face, smiling on his behalf. Unable to smile himself, her imagined smile felt empty, left him feeling even flatter. But he persevered in thinking positive thoughts about her. Her life seemed balanced and productive. Her thoughts were outward, his were inward. She gave of herself, and she expected him to give of himself in return, but he had always been secretive and selfish.
He wondered again whether he was about to die. Would it be bad if he did? What loss would there be, other than to himself? There was another copy of him, in Anya's care. What right did any man have to live more than one life?
Especially me. I can die. There can be zero copies of me, and the world will go on, no worse off than before.
He thought back to his childhood. He was jealous of children who had had more than he, children who had grown up taken care of. The State of Illinois had given him food, shelter, occasional supervision, and sufficient computing resources to provide himself with an education. When he got to the university, everyone seemed so confident, outgoing, energetic. Positive. Loving, and loved.
He wanted to release himself into Anya's care, this time with nothing to hide. He wanted to lay his head in her lap and close his eyes, and have her pet his head and say pleasant things, about her day, or her plans for the summer, or fond memories of her father. He wanted to throw himself into the arms of a woman who could rebuild him as an innocent.
At least once, I came through. I went out on a limb to get Henry. Success or failure, I did it. I got a glimpse, at least, of myself as part of something bigger. If I do somehow come out of this alive, I'll always have that.
o-------------------------------o
The void persisted for what seemed like forever. He started to engage in mental exercises, attempting to recall details of people, places, music, events—anything he could conjure from memory and attempt to reconstruct in his mind's eye. Perhaps the void, this world of nothing but his thoughts and words, was to be his place of immortality. He tried to imagine specific sensations. Cold vs. hot, lying down vs. standing up, air moving over skin, taking a deep breath. The smell of coffee. The feeling of swallowing hot liquid. Tightening groin muscles to hold in pee.
He started to worry that this state really would never end. What if his message hadn't gotten out, and Henry had chosen to leave him running in isolation indefinitely—at least until managing to upload into the NBC himself.
He imagined knife-fighting with Hammers in Delta Nuevo, single-handedly defeating groups of three and four attackers. He tried to remember the rules of card games he had played as a child, in the Joliet Home. He imagined he was with his karate instructor again, showing her all the moves he knew. He made up elaborate series of moves. He imagined rain. Gentle rain, on water, on leaves, on pavement.
o-------------------------------o
"Raymond?"
Raymond came to at the sound of Anya's voice. He realized he must have lost consciousness at some point. Perhaps he had fallen asleep?
"Raymond?" gasped Anya, desperate, nearly panicked. "Can you hear me?"
He tried to open his eyes. He had no eyes. He was still in the void. He wondered whether he had imagined hearing her voice. It would be impossible to hear anything without being connected to a body. He could have been dreaming.
"I'm seeing aural and linguistic activity," she said. "You should be able to hear me. It looks like you just woke up? Oh Raymond, if you can hear me, please talk to me. Imagine you're talking to me. I should be able to transmit the neuristor activity through a speech converter."
"Anya?" asked Raymond. "Is that really you?"
"Raymond! Oh thank god. I did it."
"Are you hooked up directly to my NBC?" asked Raymond.
"Yes. I've made some advances since you uploaded. Listen, we may not have much time. Your NBC was badly damaged in the explosion. Something caustic got into the case—some kind of acid or something."
"Explosion?"
"Henry must have had more security measures in place than anyone realized. Fidel tried to let me in, but his code access had been revoked. We went back to get what we could from the main lab, and then we heard an explosion. Fidel thinks it was Henry's attempt to cover his tracks. But we found your NBC in the rubble. The bands that lock it to the ground must have protected it from the blast. But it's still locked down, and I can't get it out to clean out the acid. I need to—"
"Did Fidel get any of what Henry said?" interrupted Raymond.
"Yes, all of it. He got it straight to Brody, which is how Interpol got involved. They're on their way. You did it, Raymond. We've got Henry on the run."
"Are you sure you're safe?" asked Raymond. "And your father? Henry won't go down easily. He could have men on the way, to finish the cleanup. And he probably has inside connections with Interpol."
"We'll be fine. My father's already under protection."
"Did my other copy survive—R1?"
"Yes. Nothing in the original lab was destroyed."
"You said my NBC was damaged? I can't feel it."
"I don't have the tools I need to run diagnostics, but there's clearly damage. The case of your NBC was smashed in at one corner, where it's not protected by the banding. Listen, I'm worried the acid could seep in further."
"Well, as long as you're okay, I don't care."
Silence.
"Did you really just say that?" Raymond heard Anya draw a breath. "You do love me, don't you?"
"You're so much more than I am, Anya. I would suffer a thousand deaths for you. And... actually, I may be the first person for whom that's not an empty assertion."
Raymond heard Anya's laugh. Just one laugh squeaked out before she stifled it, but she had laughed. Again he wanted a face with which to smile.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't laugh."
"No, you should. It makes me happy. I wish I could see you laughing."
"But then you'd see that I'm crying at the same time." He heard her exhale heavily.
"So," said Raymond. "Are you and Fidel gonna blow this thing open? Maybe the ESW will see that they can't stop upload research. They've just driven it underground. It's going to be done, and it should be done in legitimate labs, under the scrutiny of society at large."
"Maybe. I mean, we'll try, but the media has portrayed you as a criminal, a crazed hacker—a peripheral member of society. I'm not sure even my father could get your story into any of the respected journals. Not the ethical story."
"Well, if you can get your hands on the Nurania recordings, maybe you can share them and they'll see that there's more to me. Like Fidel did."
"Maybe... It looks like a lot of hardware was destroyed. We'll see what Interpol can turn up when they get here."
"Anya, do you love me?" asked Raymond.
"I... I do. I love you, R-sub-2."
Silence.
"I'm sorry," said Raymond. "I shouldn't have asked."
"No, really—I do, I do. And I'm so proud of you. You've shown such courage."
Raymond felt a bizarre sense of cold come over him.
"Are you still there?" asked Anya.
"Yes. I'm scared."
"Oh god, Raymond, I'm scared, too. I wish I could get your NBC out! I wish I could hold you. Are you okay? I'm seeing some activity that concerns me."
"Anya, you've got to get out of here. What if
Henry has men on their way? Or bots?"
"I can't just leave you here."
Raymond thought about asking her to simply destroy his NBC.
"Wait a minute," said Raymond. "You said my NBC is locked to the floor? How is it locked to the floor?"
"There are four metal rods sunk into the floor, and metal banding around the sides and over the top. You'd have to have a heavy cutter to get through it, and you'd probably destroy the NBC in the process."
"No way! Oh, that's so classic. They didn't lock down the NBC. They locked down the case!"
"What do you mean?"
"Break the case! It's made of the same composite material IBM uses for all their academic research cases. Most of their cases, actually. It's designed to splinter on sharp impact, rather than denting inward and damaging the important bits inside. That's why the one corner broke. Crack it open more, and you should be able to get the core out."
"There's got to be a safer way."
"I don't think there's time. Smash the case. Give it a good whack, with a hammer or something. Expand the hole."
"I don't see anything like a hammer."
"Is there a table with removable metal legs? Lab tables are usually assembled onsite."
"Um, no. It doesn't look like it. There's so much rubble in here. Wait! What about a fire extinguisher? I brought one in with me."
"That sounds like it might be too big."
"No, it's a little one. I think it will work. But—what if it doesn't? I could kill you."
"Well, the alternative seems to be death by acid. Or major brain damage."
"Wait, does the NBC core have its own power source?"
"Yes," answered Raymond. "I should be good for at least a couple weeks."
"Okay, I guess," said Anya hesitantly.
"Wait," said Raymond. "Is R1 happy?"
"Sure, he's happy."
Upload Page 37