by Lee Bond
… realrealreal. He was a real boy. He’d been realREALreal since the moment he’d been born… reAlREaLREAL…
… seeing if they could reinvigorate the tyranny of Latelyspace once more.
Herrig decided that when he came across those folders, they were going straight into the ‘Out’ box. He just didn’t want to put up with them any longer. Dealing with their duplicity. Managing the problems that always stemmed from their back alley decisions, and there were always issues following these secret meetings; people suddenly out of work, supplies disappearing, bankruptcies-that-weren’t …
“It’s like people have lost their goddamn minds.” Herrig dumped Ritta into the ‘IN’ box. She deserved help. Herrig had zero inclination to find himself across the bargaining table, facing an accumulation of assholes who had transformed themselves into war profiteers. “But not me. Oh no. I understand the necessity of what I’m doing more than anyone. More than anyone. With Garth out there doing who knows what and Huey disappeared and even Sidra avoiding me these days …”
Mentioning Sidra’s name aloud brought Herrig up short. His genial expression faded as he tried to count the number of hours since he’d seen her last and he realized he couldn’t do the math. She said she hadn’t yet come to terms with the aborted ascension to Fivesie, that the equipment she was being forced to wear on the off chance that it might happen again was making her feel less than she was and … Herrig didn’t believe her.
Naturally, he felt terrible about it, about not trusting the one person who’d stood by him through thick and thin. Without her presence behind him while dealing with Fenris and the others … Herrig knew beyond any doubt that if she hadn’t been there, the entire meeting would’ve gone a different way altogether. He owed her more than he could ever say out loud, just for that moment alone. For giving him her heart?
Well, he supposed he owed her everything for that as well, but ever since her body had tried going Fivesie … Herrig didn’t like what his love had become. Or was becoming. He couldn’t forget the look in her eyes, the subtle but still observable shudder of flesh beneath his, almost as if her very skin loathed his presence.
The Chairman picked up fallen MoE files for a while in silence, lower lip still protruding, forehead beetled as he considered the status of the only relationship that had ever –pardon the awkward synchronicity of terms- felt real. In the beginning, he’d felt so blessed.
How could you not? Become the chosen paramour of a woman nearly five thousand years old, a being so ancient yet so young and beautiful, that you felt … delirious with happiness. Here was a woman who’d been in relationships that’d lasted longer than entire family trees, with literal gods among men, soldiers with lives and histories as unique and storied as her own, deciding to be with a mortal, a man with a meager handful of years left to him before the end, a man with a single history to tell, and most of that as boring as entering numbers into a ledger.
Now, though, with her distance, her awkwardness, her … alienation, Herrig wondered if the honeymoon was over.
“That’s what they call it, you know. Or, at least in Trinityspace. When the absurd happiness of a relationship is replaced with dullness. They say ‘the honeymoon is over’. I don’t know what they call it here.” Herrig confided this to the dour image of a purebred IndoRussian citizen by the name of Lars Runtgeon. Accused of trying to start a religion that had in fact turned out to be a human trafficking ring, Lars was a very bad man indeed; religion was no longer that much of a concern, and was proving useful in some of the further planets and smaller colonies, so when Lars had begun approaching the families of people on those worlds with small children, offering to move them to the infinitely safer Hospitalis, many many parents had seized the opportunity.
Only to learn that their money and their children were destined for something far worse than simple freedom on the homeworld for all Latelians.
Lars went so hard into the ‘OUT’ box that the flimsy plastic container lurched backwards a few inches.
“I don’t know what they call it here,” Herrig repeated himself again, “but that’s how I feel. I need her. She’s never here, and when she is, she looks like she’s ready to run out the door like Si Sally. It’s honestly beginning to get on my nerves. I wonder if it’s because I’m real and she’s not. Did … did I ever tell her that?”
Herrig paused in his efforts to clean up Sally’s mess, racking his brains to see if he’d ever done that. He’d like to believe that he’d recall being as stupid as that, but honestly, running a solar system while simultaneously trying to handle both a war of attrition and a small handful of overpowered lunatics who really and genuinely did believe the best way to end everything was to kill everything who looked at them funnily kind of filled your head with a lot of stuff.
Sometimes he forgot his own name.
That was how full his brain had become.
No. Nothing. He couldn’t remember on his own.
“I need you.”
One second, before the admission, nothing. No sense of anything in the room with him whatsoever.
After the admission, the faintest of sounds, the merest of pressures. Both of which were indications that the HIM’s extra-dimensional extrusion into the realm of the real was inside the office.
“Did I ever tell Sidra that she wasn’t real?” Herrig asked the HIM. He knew it’d have the answer. It always did. It was listening to everything he said and watching everything he did, because he was the realest man in the solar system until Garth returned, making his existence the most important thing.
The kind of thing that required the 24/7 attention of the most powerful machine in Latelyspace. Fenris –or his foolish brothers- hadn’t been stupid enough as of yet to send assassins his way, but the HIM was ready. To kill who needed killing, all in an effort to protect the Chairman of the Latelian Commonwealth.
While the HIM checked it’s endless records –at the moment, at every moment, it was using it’s unfathomably powerful netLINK access to the fabric of the solar system to essentially record the comings and goings of every single atom far and wide- Herrig continued cleaning up the mess.
In the back of his mind, the singsong that was his constant affirmation of existence played.
...hewasreal… a real boy … hewasaREALBOY…
“I mean,” Herrig tossed a few more names into the ‘OUT’ box, admittedly not paying any attention, “it’s not like I thought things would last forever. I know what I look like in the mirror. I know what kind of woman Sidra is. She’s five thousand years old. She could’ve just told me she’s fallen out of love. I wouldn’t have held that against her, but this … ignoring me thing. That makes me so sad.”
The HIM chimed gently, announcing it was done.
Herrig put the remaining files randomly into both the ‘IN’ and ‘OUT’ box as quickly as he could, then plopped down in his chair. “Send me the information.”
It didn’t take long. It was as he’d thought. He hadn’t told her anything about her status as a possibly unreal character living out a false life, a life that ultimately didn’t matter to anyone at all, so she couldn’t be going through that kind of existential crisis.
Also, she was a Goddie. A Foursie. Renowned for being able to shrug off the worst moments in her long life as if they didn’t matter, making claims that she was still rattled by her awful experiences during the failed ascension not entirely truthful.
Herrig’d asked terrestrial resources to track Sidra down, and between his ordinary servants and the people over at MoE, they’d done a very good job of giving him a detailed list of her comings and goings when she was with him, but it wasn’t good enough any longer.
He needed to know precisely what was going on with her, why she was ignoring him, why her skin tried crawling off her body when he touched her, why she lied with every breath and why she rarely came when he called.
It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, he deserved answers.
“Because I am a rea
l boy.” Herrig told the HIM this information sternly. “I am real boy and I deserve the truth in all things. Watch her very closely. I need to know everything about her. Use your resources like you’ve never done before. I want everything.”
The HIM chimed acceptance of the new protocols. Scanning devices once devoted to charting the position of atoms in the heavens, of dark matter between the whirls of stars in the skies, of where the extra-dimensionality infringed on the physical structure of the Unreal Universe itself quickly and efficiently bent themselves to the task of tunneling into the life and times of Sidra the Foursie.
Herrig felt the powerful supercomputer disappear from the room. He pushed the intercom button on his prote. “Si Sally, please send whoever’s waiting for me out there in. It’s time to get this going. Remember, Si, hold my calls and cancel the last meeting of the day. I’d like to spend time in my own home tonight.”
“Yessa, Chairman.”
***
“… naturally, we would require access to the next phase of avatar development in order to achieve these goals, but I think you’ll find that by providing us with what we need, everyone involved will benefit quite handsomely. Our research into adopting and adapting Trinity tech into our own is moving along nicely, but there is the … bit with the AI. We keep bumping up against protocols our avatars can’t simulate. Err … Sa?”
Herrig realized he was both staring out the window and tapping his fingers impatiently on the table, giving Sa Rehol all the indicators that not only was he bored with the proceedings, but that he was quite possibly one step away from having the man murdered.
The Chairman flashed Sa Rehol an apologetic smile and brought himself back around. “Apologies, Sa, I’ve got a considerable amount on my mind. No disrespect was intended.”
…realrealREALREALrealreal…
Rehol scratched at an impatient itch just under the collar of his shirt, trying to figure out why in the blazes it felt like his skin was literally on fire. It couldn’t be the laundry detergent they were using at home, because they were using the same stuff they’d been using since he’d been a toddler in his mom’s arms. “No, Sa Chairman, of course not, none taken at all. I am personally quite pleased you took time out of your hectic day to meet … with … me.”
Blast! The Chairman was at it again, staring out the window, drumming the fingers of his left hand on the table over and over. Thunkthunkthunk. Thunkthunkthunk.
“Your statement of intent.” Herrig said absentmindedly, trying to imagine what the battle millions of light years above his head would look like and failed. He could, of course, command the Screens in the room to flash and flare to life with scenes direct from the battlefield, hammer home just what was the most important thing in the system right then, but the Noble Opposition would take that churlish behavior and turn it against him. “It says you have a dozen pieces of Trinity tech, but there was no manifest amongst the documentation you provided.”
…hewasarealboy. hewas. He remembered breakfasts in bed with Sidra, laughing and smiling and not feeling self-conscious at all. realboys remembered things like that. Hewasreal. He didn’t even know why he kept …
Rehol nodded, face shining, immensely pleased that they were getting back on track. He supposed it didn’t really matter if the Chairman made eye contact or not. Except he’d always heard that dealing with Chairman DuPont was like being in the room with one of your friends. Made the meeting, upon which sometimes billions of credits could hang, simpler. Less pressure. “That is correct, sa. A dozen solid, workable pieces. Immensely lucky to lay our hands on them in the first place. The Army and especially Specter leave nothing behind unless they can’t help it, and ordinarily, those pieces have a tendency to self-destruct once they’re removed from their AI networks.”
Herrig stopped drumming for a second. “Are you feeling all right, Sa Sehol?”
Sehol realized he’d been all but raking his fingernails across the side of his neck, and had been about to draw blood. Damn! He was so itchy. Could it be the shirt? Could it be something in the room? The businessman, who’d come to meet with the Chairman in the hopes of acquiring legal permission to use the only tech capable of possibly working through the Trinity protocols, flushed with embarrassment. “S…sorry, Sa. It’s a new fabric softener, I think. I … ah … when I get home, it’s going right in the bin.”
“When I first immigrated to Latelyspace at the behest of my bank managers, I had the most awful time acclimatizing to, well, everything.” Those early days had been incredibly trying. Port City had been more locals than outsiders back then, and the ugly face of racism had risen it’s venomous lips to his ears on more than one occasion. The things Latelians used to shout when they thought no one was paying attention! “From the way we talk to the foods we eat and yes, to the types of fabric softener we use. I once got a rash so bad it turned into hives. Covered most of my face. Terribly embarrassing, er, of course, so I can easily understand. Why is there no manifest, Sa Sehol?”
Sehol blinked, startled at the sudden intensity in the Chairman’s voice. One second, rambling along about old times and then hammering in with the one question he hadn’t wanted to ever answer.
Herrig fiddled with his glasses for a second, wondering if …
…realrealREALLLLLL…
… Sehol was aware he was still grating at the spot on his neck, and that tiny droplets of shockingly bright red blood were dotting the once-pristine collar of a thousand dollar investment. But … he couldn't stop. The itch was beyond sense! Sehol felt a grim, almost sick pleasure at working away at the prickly patch of skin with his fingernails, wishing only he hadn't trimmed his nails that very morning.
“I can see you are made uncomfortable by the question, Sa Sehol.” Herrig gestured matter-of-factly. “But you can also see why I ask. In seeking permission to use the next level of avatar code, you are asking to be … hmmm … elevated? Which will in turn elevate your company’s business. The code is faster, smarter, more adaptable. With it, and with the right programmers under your control, the sky is more or less the limit. The only thing better is government code. People looking for this kind of power go through a very careful vetting process.”
Sehol put a hand to his throat, then calmly smoothed both his hands out onto his lap. “I assure you, Sa Chairman…”
Herrig flicked a hand. “You passed the security checks with flying colors, Sehol. You, your company, the people you have on staff and the people you’ve dealt with in the past, all clear. There is little doubt in my mind, and in the minds of people who’re paid to know a great deal more than I, that you will be entirely responsible with your … er… new responsibilities.”
Sehol was scratching again. He didn’t care. The itch needed to be dealt with. “Then I …”
“But you see, it’s this manifest that has some of us concerned, Sa.” Herrig gestured, and the room flooded with images –some of them quick little five second bursts of live action, but most were static- of the different types of technology scavengers had been finding all over the place following a run-in with Trinity forces.
Many, as Sehol had mentioned, were destroyed. Either by explosive devices left behind in the hopes that the ‘enemy’ would get ‘theirs’ or, as he’d supposed, from the moment those very same pieces were moved outside the carrier feed.
But not all. They had weapons and computer equipment. They had listening devices and encrypted drives. They had a surplus of Trinity-based technology at their disposal, and quite frankly, UMDT was already in a better position to do what Rehol was hoping, and with infinitely more transparency.
The thing that was bothering Herrig –even though he was utterly distracted and terribly upset that the HIM hadn’t yet returned with information concerning Sidra and it’d been hours since he’d commanded it to do so- was that every other company making the same request as Rehol had voluntarily given him a manifest of items. Right from the start. As you were supposed to do.
“I’m sure it was an ov
ersight, Sa.” Sehol fidgeted in his chair. The itch had gloriously switched from his neck –he knew he was bleeding and that the collar of his shirt was ruined- to the top of his leg, which meant he could scratch for however long this meeting went without doing any visible damage. “I can get right on it, right away.”
“And yet your hand does not move towards your prote.” Herrig resumed window watching. The view outside was better than anything happening inside the room. Huey’s weather convertors had done a miraculous job, and not just in helping with the toxic poisons spewed into the air from their repeated global disasters, but with the overall health of the world itself. “The Ministry of Examination was most interested in this oversight, especially in light of the fact that you brought yourself forward as you did. Every other thing about your request was properly done, Sa Sehol. At this level of business and exchange, you simply can’t have a lapse in judgment. I …”
…but what if he wasn’t real? What if he only thought he wasreal and hewasn’treal? How would that feel? Would he feel different? Would he know he wasn’treal? Sa Sehol didn’t know he was an artifact, some kind of code left behind by the Engines of Creation, and he sat there, scratching his leg like an idiot, blood leaking out of the holes he’d dug into his own neck, completely unaware, acting like everything was normal…
Herrig blinked and worries over being unreal disappeared. He was real. He knew it. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, Sa. A short while ago, your facility was raided by the appropriate Ministries in search of the items recovered from the field of battle. By now, they’ve been tagged and bagged and are being removed to remote location for further study. For obscuring your requests and attempting to gain access to technologies better suited for the Commonwealth, you are fined one million credits. In light of the methods used to breach your facility, you may request a third party to appraise the damages. Any costs for repairs will be absorbed by the fine. Should damages exceed the fine, the Latelian Commonwealth will of course ensure that everything is taken care of. Thank you for your time today, Sa Sehol.”