Fairweather

by Jones, Raya

  They took us to an empty room and told us at gunpoint to strip naked. Fred rasped, ‘Like hell I will! You can shoot me dressed.’

  They told him they were not allowed to kill us, but had permission to wound. We were given grey cloth overalls to put on. When I undressed, Fred noticed that I wasn’t wearing my customised biosuit, and knew that I had anticipated this scenario. He didn’t comment on it. He said only that I looked ridiculous in the overalls. The garment was too big for me. I folded my sleeves and trouser legs.

  We were scanned for implants.

  When the guards were satisfied that we had nothing on us but cloth, we were teleported to another room.

  It was a while room with no windows or doors.

  There were no portals or a computer of any kind.

  There was a single futon, water cooler, hygiene unit, and nothing else.

  Fred grabbed my arm, saying that we must keep in tactile contact so that neither of us could be whisked away without the other. ‘I’m with you until you find out what happened on your date of birth. After that I’m not in your debt anymore.’

  There was no clock. I counted seconds in my head, heart racing. When I reached 56, Wye Stan Pan was in the room with us.

  Wye Stan Pan looked older than his official portrait. His hair was still long and straight, but silver-streaked and sparser. There were slight wrinkles around his eyes. His face seemed sharper, paler, and more unsmiling than his unsmiling official face. He wore an unadorned grey silk robe that reached to his sandals. He didn’t need to dress up for us. He didn’t need to impress or intimidate. The piercing blackness was already upon me, making my flesh crawl and my knees weaken.

  Fred said loudly, ‘Hello Version 7, you self-replicating son of a bitch. I was in the neighbourhood. Guess who’s with me.’

  Wye Stan kept his distance from us, his hands clasped in front of him and a forefinger idly stroking a large ring. He didn’t look at me. I saw him as through fog. His eyes were on Fred. ‘Does it know?’

  ‘What sort of greeting is that after thirty, what is it, thirty-five years now? You’re supposed to say, “Nice to see you Freedom Cordova, I’ve missed you so much.”’

  Wye Stan spoke quietly and precisely. ‘I didn’t miss your prattle, Fred. You shouldn’t have come here after what happened last time. Does it know?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest what you’re on about, you motherless bastard. This is Suzie’s son.’

  ‘This artefact calling itself Jexu Jiu is the motherless one. Let go of it and we’ll go somewhere else.’

  ‘Suzie’s son needs to talk with you. Go on, Al, ask him your question.’

  I couldn’t speak.

  ‘It can’t speak,’ informed Wye Stan, coldly.

  ‘Then I’ll speak for him. Al wants to know what happened on his date of birth.’

  ‘It wasn’t born.’

  ‘He didn’t come out of an assembly line, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Correct. It’s a unique prototype. Does it know about you?’

  ‘Am I a unique prototype too?’

  ‘You are one of a kind, Fred,’ Wye Stan said dryly. ‘Have you told it that you tracked it down thanks to a toy you had given Perseverance? A teddy bear?’

  ‘No, a bloody pink elephant. And I didn’t track him down. You didn’t tell me he was alive.’

  ‘I had to stop you from terminating it.’

  ‘Me? Killing Suzie’s… Let me guess: she stole him from the lab. But that didn’t make you stop the experiment. You continued to monitor his development in the field. Am I right? When you saw his talent, you had her assassinated in order to retrieve him. You had him sponsored through her aunt in Phyfoamicals so that when he becomes your pawn in the CSG, they wouldn’t suspect Cyboratics. What went wrong? The experiment has developed a mind of its own and dropped out of the academy?’

  ‘That’s exactly what happened. Except for my wife’s death. I didn’t have her killed. You did that.’

  ‘Me… kill my Suzie?’

  ‘You put her in a situation to get killed.’

  ‘By suggesting she marries you?’

  Wye Stan corrected without malice. ‘No. By sabotaging this project. If you left things alone she would have got over her upset about what she thought it was.’

  ‘What happened on his date of birth?’

  ‘It wasn’t born.’

  Fred sensed me sway, and pulled me closer, so close that I could feel the warmth of his body through the clothes. ‘Let me tell you about Al. He’s more human than you’ve been ever since you started to come out of vats.’

  ‘Fred, you know that I’m born through surrogate mothers. It’s a tedious and messy process. I can’t pass on my memories and skills to my clones,’ Wye Stan said with a hint of passion.

  ‘How did cloning Suzie help you, exactly?’

  ‘It wasn’t cloning.’

  ‘You may as well tell us everything.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Usually at this point the arch-villain reveals his evil master plan for world domination.’

  ‘But it’s not my plan for world domination… Very well, I’ll tell you,’ Wye Stan 7 gave in like a patient man who knows Fred too well.

  On that date, at precisely 08:46 Standard Time, Perseverance Suzuki Pan teleported from the apartment she shared with her husband in Cy City Mars. Wye Stan didn’t meet her that morning. They rarely met in the privacy of their home. At 08:49 he received a message that a viable copy of his wife’s teleport pattern had been obtained at last, after months of failed attempts. For a fraction of a split second she was in two places at once. But even as the copy was being downloaded, the project team started to install radical modifications that erased all her memories. The somatic pattern was regressed to neonate and altered into a male. They entered a battery of enhancements for health and mental capacity. I came into being by 13:13. I was Phase 1. They were going to keep me in a lab with no windows or doors—a room just like this—and monitor my development.

  It felt as if I hadn’t left this room my entire life.

  It felt as if Fred was speaking about a stranger when he told Wye Stan that they had overlooked my susceptibility to warp sickness when they installed those enhancements. Wye Stan replied that they didn’t bother with that since I wasn’t going to go anywhere.

  Fred retorted loudly, ‘He did go places and this weakness has made him stronger. You sad bastard, you’re so busy improving on natural design to make yourself stronger that you’ve lost sight of where human beings get their true strength from.’

  There was no strength left in me.

  Fred told me to pull myself together, but there was nothing left of me to pull. I remained standing up only because his embrace stopped me from collapsing. My mind mechanically monitored the conversation between the two men:

  ‘Still the romantic after all those years, Fred. Have you kept the Russian doll?’

  ‘No, I burnt it!’

  ‘You can be so melodramatic. Come with me now. I’ve told you what happened on that day.’

  ‘You didn’t explain why.’

  ‘Explain what? I was always good to you. I let you continue your relationship with my wife. I would have let her have a child with you. I didn’t ask for anything except your loyalty. Why do you begrudge me a copy of her that wouldn’t have mattered if she didn’t find out?’

  ‘Just like taking a photo of someone? If it was so trivial, why didn’t you tell her the truth? Let me tell you what happened,’ Fred announced for my benefit. ‘When Suzie learned by chance about this project, you made it worse by telling her that it involved her clone. She was upset that she’d been cloned without her consent, but she could have come to terms with that. When she wanted to raise the child, you made it worse by telling her that the experiment had tested some new gestation procedure and the by-product had been terminated. It seems normal to you to experiment on your own unofficial clones, you twisted sick bastard, but she heard you saying that you create babies for
experiments and then kill them. She couldn’t live with you after learning that.’

  ‘You were not truthful with her either,’ Wye Stan pointed out, speaking evenly. ‘Perseverance thought that she knew you so well. You grew up together, she loved you so much, and yet she had to find out that you were military only when seeing you in action. She saw, Fred. She was with me watching you shoot dead the two scientists. She couldn’t live with you after that. She went to the lab to preach ethics before leaving with your men. She calmed down when seeing that the by-product was still alive. They let her hold it and come to my room with it in her arms. And then she saw you shoot them in cold blood. She begged me to keep you away from her. So I let her go. I let her keep what she stole from me. I let her continue to Earth, and even provided baby milk and diapers for the journey. I did all that to keep you with me.’

  Fred trembled, but took a deep breath. ‘And here we are together. Despite all your efforts, Al and I have come together like fate intended.’

  ‘Not fate. It was my will. You’ve retrieved it for me. Now you’ll terminate it for me. Phase 1 is over.’

  ‘How many more phases have you got going?’

  ‘None,’ he admitted, emotionless. ‘The knowledge was lost when you killed the inventors and burnt down the lab. Their backup files self-destructed when I tried to open them. But don’t gloat, Fred. What was invented once can be reinvented.’

  Fred gloated. ‘You don’t get it. The lost knowledge won’t be recovered. Its purpose has been fulfilled. I bet that some unrepeatable sequence of events had made it possible to make a teleport duplicate and bring to life a brand new human being. It was a confluence of gaps in flows of information, like a dark stream moving under its own volition.’

  ‘Where did you get that?’ Wye Stan said with sudden sharpness.

  ‘From Al. He sees it.’

  Wye Stan was silent for a moment.

  Then he spoke quietly and precisely, ‘I need only to have my own copy with my memories and skills intact but younger in body. The other modifications that went into Phase 1 were tests that those scientists wanted to try out. I know that you mean it derogatorily when you say that I’m self-replicating, but this is the future, my future. It could be yours too.’

  ‘Are you offering me immortality?’

  ‘Yes. Only you are invited. Later we could offer it to select other people if we want.’

  ‘The Council of Nine Immortals?’

  ‘Could be. Relinquish your illusion that this redundant experimental by-product is a person. Step away from it and we’ll go somewhere safe, somewhere we can sit comfortably. You like your comfort.’

  Fred shook his head. ‘You really don’t get it. One soul per body, that’s why teleport copies don’t stay alive. You went to ridiculous lengths to make it possible for Al’s soul to become embodied. Your technology gave him his body, and his mother gave him his humanity.’

  ‘She wasn’t his mother. Take a good look. This is your Suzie with modifications.’

  ‘You take a good look!’ Fred tensed as if to pounce, but instead turned me around so that Wye Stan could see my face. Wye Stan’s gaze shifted away. ‘He has her DNA like any offspring and inherited some annoying traits from her, like compassion and a weird sense of humour. But he’s nothing like her!’

  ‘Let’s go. There’s nothing more to be said in its presence.’

  ‘Only one thing, there’s only one thing that must be said here and now.’

  Wye Stan waited.

  Fred spoke, ‘You need to know this about Al and me. There’s a bond between us that you can’t grasp and could never share. We grew up in Ground Zero, where there’s a sense of freedom and fate like nowhere else…’ Some impulse made me look up to check Wye Stan’s reaction. He stood with folded arms, expressionless, his gaze fixed on Fred. Fred spoke as if it was I speaking, telling my own story. ‘We grew up in that deep impact crater where mankind has risen from the ashes of the Apocalypse. You don’t know what it’s like to see the Western Rim rise to immense heights…’

  ‘You too don’t know, Fred. You can’t see the Western Rim from Phoenix-3.’

  ‘That’s just a technicality. The cliffs loom over everything, their impassable high slopes appearing and disappearing in mists. Their presence is felt even indoors at night with the windows boarded up. Pilgrims come. They put stones on piles like memorial mounds that get dispersed in sandstorms and rains but the next year and the year after, and after that, more pilgrims come and do it all over again.’

  Fred was retelling my own memories, my own words that I had told him during our journey. He looked at me and smiled warmly, his eyes twinkling with triumph. He could tell from my posture that I was back.

  Everything he had taught me came back to me. I remembered how he made me promise to hold on to my inner strength when confronting Wye Stan.

  I disengaged myself from his hold, and found my voice, ‘Wye Stan Pan, why don’t you look at me? Are you afraid? You’re one of the most powerful men alive.’

  Fred corrected, ‘He is the most powerful. He’s the GM.’

  I went on, ‘You are the Game Master and you’re afraid to look at me.’

  Wye Stan met my gaze unflinchingly, remote, like examining an android.

  ‘Are you afraid to speak with me?’ I taunted.

  He turned to Fred. ‘Is he the one we’ve been expecting?’

  ‘No, he’s the Other-capital-O.’

  ‘Does he know?’

  ‘Oh yes he knows. But he doesn’t believe in myths and legends. You have no idea the ridicule I’ve had to endure from him.’

  Wye Stan twisted his ring, and the blank walls came alive with the cyberspace realms I used to inhabit. It was my web of links and sites—or what was left of it. Even as the display swirled in data flows all around us, my remaining fixtures were rapidly succumbing to tendrils of impenetrable blackness that purposefully sought them out. Unable to hide my elation to see it happening exactly as I had anticipated, I said excitedly, meaning it, ‘This is awesome. I’ve never seen a sweep so swift. This devourer has hypo-tentacles!’

  ‘Your firewalls had teeth and claws,’ muttered Wye Stan—talking to me, I realised.

  ‘How could my webs reach the point of irrecoverable disintegration so fast?’

  ‘It wasn’t fast.’

  As if startled by his own lapse into speaking with me, he turned to Fred and told him that our teleport patterns had been suspended for nineteen days. That’s how long it took him to modify the devourer so as to counteract my firewalls, which fought back with tooth and claw, and to neutralise my butterflies, which jinxed Cyboratics networks. Wye Stan told Fred, switching off the display, ‘Jexu Jiu is as good as dead in all his virtual identities. This Al of yours will stay in this room for the rest of his natural life unless you take pity on him and end it sooner. Let’s go.’

  ‘Like hell, I’m not going anywhere without Al.’

  ‘Then stay. When I leave I’ll activate an android programmed to respond to three commands: Android, food! Android, lights! Android, clean! That will be the only contact with anything outside this room. This doesn’t have to be your end, Fred.’

  ‘Send in a bed for me.’

  ‘I’ll send you a gun. When you kill him, I’ll let you out.’

  ‘Can I have my toiletries?’

  ‘You’ll have a gun.’

  ‘To shave with?’

  ‘You won’t stay here long enough to need a shave. How long do you think you’ll last, with your boredom threshold? Twenty minutes? I can wait.’

  ‘You are too patient for your own good. Perhaps you’ve waited too long. You left him loose in the world for thirty years. If he dies in this room, maybe that’s how it was meant to be. You don’t know what he’s set in motion. But you of all people should know what I’m talking about. It’s a power so much greater than the three of us trapped in this room.’

  ‘I’m not trapped,’ Wye Stan corrected.

  ‘Then piss off an
d leave us alone already.’

  Wye Stan vanished.

  A handgun appeared on the floor.

  We sat side by side on the floor saying nothing. There was no way to tell the passage of time. Eventually Fred asked how long it would be before he makes a dash for the gun. He was bored. Was it twenty minutes yet?

  ‘Try the android,’ I suggested.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Android food, android…’

  ‘I’m not hungry yet.’

  I called out loudly, ‘Android, clean!’

  An ancient model, the kind found only in museums, appeared with fresh overalls and bed linen, and started to clean the spotless room. It didn’t touch the gun. As soon as it finished and was gone, I called again, ‘Android, clean!’ Again, it came with clothes and linen, cleaned the room, picked up the untouched pile of ‘laundry’ from its previous visit, and left. After the third time and before I could call it for the fourth time, Fred asked whether I was thinking of hitching a ride out with it.

  ‘No, I’m just being annoying.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re back to your old annoying self, but this little gun is looking more attractive by the minute. Is it twenty minutes yet?’

  ‘The android takes 483 seconds to do its cleaning round. It did it three times, that’s just over 24 minutes.’

  ‘Okay, I get it. You’ve found a timing device.’

  ‘It has other uses too. We can bet on how many rounds it takes before it runs out of clean laundry, and the winner will get to sleep on the futon.’

  ‘No need. You can take the floor,’ he offered magnanimously. ‘I was looking forward to getting my life back on track after our deal is over. I’ve helped you to get the answer to your question. That’s where I was going to make my exit. I should be skipping off into the sunset with the miserable sod. Promising me immortality, would you believe it.’

  ‘But you didn’t take his offer.’

  ‘Not yet. I’m waiting for you to pull your rabbit out of the hat.’

  I stared at him alarmed, thinking of Harvey. He wasn’t supposed to know.