by Damien Boyes
Anika goes on and explains how she infiltrated the island, not clarifying that I had jumped in with them and not HuggyJackson, and then runs through how they took out the AI and brought the game down.
When she’s done, the room goes quiet.
“That’s quite a story,” Chaddah finally says. “We have no jurisdiction over what you did on the island, but theft of Past Standard biotech is a serious offense. You need a lawyer.”
Anika flashes a weak smile. “I told you, I don’t want a lawyer. I did what I did and I’ll live with the consequences.”
Hearing her so easily admit to what she’s done stabs my guts with icicles of guilt. Everything I’ve done and I’m still hiding it. She’s a far better person than I am.
Chaddah turns to me. “I’m still struggling to understand your involvement in all this, Finsbury. Why are you here?”
“Moral support,” I answer.
Yellowbird rolls her eyes. They both know I’m involved but won’t be able to prove anything. Once again I’m protecting myself, hiding behind someone else’s truth.
“Are you’re sure you don’t have anything to add?” Chaddah presses. She fixes her dark eyes on mine and once again the last honest part of me wants to confess, but Anika doesn’t give it the chance.
“He had nothing to do with it,” Anika says. “The only reason he’s involved at all is one of the other gladiators thought I was up to something and asked Fin to find out what it was.”
Yellowbird takes a deep breath. “It’s true,” she adds. “Finsbury told me about suspecting OVRshAdo last week.”
Chaddah’s head slowly swivels to face Yellowbird. “Is that so?” she asks, and while her face remains calm her tone is sharp enough to cut glass. “And you documented this, I’m sure?”
“No,” Yellowbird says, then presses her lips together. She’s in for it now.
“I see,” Chaddah responds. “We’ll discuss this later.” Then she turns back to me. “Very well, Finsbury, once again I’ll simply have to accept your involvement was conveniently peripheral.” She pushes her chair back and stands, and Yellowbird does the same. “I’ll ask you both to wait here while we discuss the matter.”
“Am I under arrest?” Anika asks.
Chaddah hesitates. “Not for the moment,” she replies, “though I’d ask you to remain here in the meantime. Can we get you anything?”
Anika shakes her head, and while I’d like a coffee I don’t want to push my luck.
She and Yellowbird leave us in the conference room, and while I know the AMP will still be listening to us, Anika still hasn’t told me what the AI showed her back on the island.
We walked most of the way to the comms in silence. I knew she was still dealing with whatever it was she’d seen and didn’t want to press, and while I still don’t, I’m worried about her.
She’s sitting at the table and I drop into the chair beside her and take her hand, and she grabs mine like it’s old habit.
“Thanks for coming here with me,” she says. Though I haven’t known her long she’s always seemed so strong, like nothing could hurt her, and I’ve never seen her looking this fragile. Her skin seems paper thin and her eyes like glass.
“Are you okay?” I say, keeping up the charade I wasn’t there with her. “I know you went through some shit on that island.”
Her chest rises and falls. “No,” she says, and her face tightens. “But at least now I know who I really am.”
“What does that mean?”
Tears form in her eyes and spill down over her cheeks and I grip her hand tighter.
“That I’m weak. And selfish—”
“Stop it—”
“I am. What else would you call someone who abandons their son when he needs them the most? Rael was dying and instead of taking care of him I threw myself into winning a stupid game. I couldn’t bear to watch my boy suffer, so I ran away.” Tears are streaming down her face now but she doesn’t seem to care.
“You were trying to save him, did everything you could.”
“No,” she barks, her voice hoarse. “I told myself I was doing it for him, but I wasn’t. It was for me. He died alone, crying for his mother, and after it was over I killed myself so I wouldn’t have to remember how I ran away. So I could wake up and it would all be over, like it happened to someone else. That’s who I am.” She pulls her hand from mine and sits back. “You should go. I’m sorry I got you into this.”
“First of all, you’re not the boss of me,” I tell her. “And secondly, whatever you think about yourself right now—even though you’ve done things you regret, terrible things you can’t get back—those things don’t define you.”
“Don’t try to—”
“Shut up and listen to me,” I say. “Trust me when I say that I know how you’re feeling. You think you’re corrupted, that there’s something evil in you and you deserve whatever you’ve got coming, and yeah, it’s gonna fucking hurt, for a long time, ’cause you did a shitty thing, but you can’t let the worst parts of your life decide who you are. Yes, you are weak, and yes, you are selfish, and there’ll always be a horrible version of yourself living in your head and fighting to get out, but that’s true for me and everyone else. The question is—what do you do about it now? Give up and let it win, or fight back and try to make up for the shit you’ve done wrong?”
She buries her face in her hands and her body convulses in sobs, but after a few minutes she quiets and sniffles and looks back up at me. Her eyes are wet and puffy and her nose is running and I pull the hanky from my back pocket and slide it across the table to her. She takes it and wipes her cheeks and blows her nose.
“How do I do that?” she asks in a soft voice.
“You’re doing it now,” I tell her. “You didn’t have turn yourself in, but you did. You did the right thing, even though it was hard. Already makes you a better person than I am.”
She blows her nose again, and some of the color has returned to her face. “I must look a mess.”
“I think you look beautiful,” I say, and even as the words are leaving my mouth I know how corny they are but it’s too late to reel them back in.
Her mouth drops open and she shakes her head at me. “Are you seriously hitting on me right now?”
My stomach does a flip and my mouth goes all flustered. “I’m…” Shit. Shit, shit, shit. “No, that’s not what I—”
She lets me squirm for a moment before she smiles and leans back toward me. “It’s cool, soldier,” she says. “I think I know what you mean.”
Whatever this is between us, or whatever it’s becoming, it won’t be easy, but I don’t think either of us can ignore it. First off, she’s about to be arrested, and nothing puts a damper on a budding relationship like jail time. And even putting that aside, as close as Anika and I have grown, she’s still mourning her son and dealing with what the AI showed her about herself, and I’m still hung up on my wife.
I can’t just walk away from Connie, can’t begin to imagine a life without her, but the idea of embodying her isn’t as thrilling as it was a week ago. Hell, if I asked her I know Connie would tell me to take a shot at the real live girl, but I still don’t know if I’m ready, and I don’t know that I ever will be.
“So what now?” I ask, hoping she has some answers for me.
“I guess we wait to see how long they’ll sentence me to the stocks, and figure it out from there.”
We sit in the conference room for hours. A constable brings us lunch and a different one comes to clean up, and still we don’t hear anything. I don’t so much mind though. It’s likely to be the last time we spend together in person for a while.
Then, after seven hours, Chaddah comes back. Anika and I are sitting next to each other now and her trembling hand slips back into mine.
Chaddah’s face is an unreadable mask as she sits down and clears her throat. “You’re free to go,” she says.
“I’m—what?” Anika’s face goes slack. We’ve been sitt
ing here for hours with the tension ratcheting up, expecting the worst, but neither of us were anticipating this.
“Humanitech has declined to press charges,” Chaddah states. “Apparently, the exposure of the skyns on Decimation Island was a huge boost in publicity for them, and they don’t want to sour the story with a criminal trial.”
“Well, shit,” Anika says, and her face splits into a wide grin. “I didn’t see that coming.”
“No one did,” Chaddah says, but there’s a hint of a smile on her face as well. “And if what you said was true about the island being the source of the Killer App, you may have solved a problem for us.”
“Call it even?” Anika says.
“Agreed,” Chaddah says as she stands and extends her hand to Anika. “Though I expect a further career with the Gladiators is unlikely.”
“Hardly blame them for that,” Anika replies as they shake.
“Somehow I expect I’ll be seeing you soon,” Chaddah says to me.
“Can’t wait,” I reply.
“Remember—” she starts, but I finish for her.
“‘You’ll be watching.’ I know.”
She purses her lips at me, then says, “Until then, Finsbury.”
Yellowbird’s waiting to show us out.
“How hard did you catch it?” I ask as she leads us through the station.
She narrows her eyes at me. “I’ve volunteered to spend the next month of off-days coordinating trash walks around the city.”
I laugh but that only seems to agitate her, but then Anika leans in. “He’ll be there to help,” she says. “I’ll make sure of that.”
I open my mouth to argue but think twice and shut it and this time it’s Yellowbird’s turn to laugh.
“Oh, I like her,” she says.
“Yeah?” I say. “I’m not so sure.” Anika chucks me on the shoulder and that makes me laugh too. “What I mean is, I’ll be there.”
“‘I’ll believe it when I see it,” Yellowbird says as we get to the security gate. “But the next time you need a favor from the Service, ask someone else.”
“No promises,” I say, then lean in and give Yellowbird a hug. She stiffens cause it’s weird for both of us but then she goes with it and hugs me back.
“I don’t know what you’ve done to him,” she says to Anika over my shoulder, “but I like it.”
She waves as she reenters the station, and Anika and I walk out into the afternoon sun. Anika turns and faces me, smooths her short hair down, then leans in and kisses me.
My head rushes with thoughts and worries but for once I push them away and just let it happen, let myself live in the moment, and when we finally separate my head feels light and my stomach is fluttering and I realize, for the first time in a long time, I feel happy.
I didn’t know I still could.
“So where do we go from here, soldier?” she asks.
It’s a beautiful day, full of possibilities, with the whole city at our feet, but right now there’s only one thing I want to do.
“Have you heard of this game Endwarriors?” I ask. “I hear the bosses are sick.”
She throws back her head and laughs. “Seriously, after all this you want to jump back into a game?”
I shrug. “Why not? Besides, I never get tired of watching you frag.”
She laughs again. “You’re seriously messed up, you know that?”
“I do,” I say. “Though I could go for some Korean BBQ first, and you did promise me a meal…”
I offer her my arm and she snakes her hand through it. “Lead the way,” she says, and we cross the street, heading toward the glittering lights of Reszlieville.
Next in the Lost Time Series
Original Gamer
Lost Time: Book 6
Coming 2020
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Glossary
Words and terms from the world of Lost Time.
AMP. (Artificial Mind Pattern) Advanced neural code approximations running on cortical processors. They are classified as superintelligences but their use is governed and their operating code secured. Only licensed government agencies and select corporations are allowed to employ AMPs. The Ministry of Human Standards is responsible for monitoring and tracking down illicit use whenever discovered.
BioSkyn. An artificial, lab-grown body. Components printed a layer of cells at a time and then assembled and implanted with an optical processing Cortex.
Biosynth. Someone who uses geneblocks to assemble unique, life forms—bacteria capable of operating to order to create atomically precise circuitry, manufacture drugs, enhance the immune system or replace biological functions. Plants that grow directly into furniture. Or wholly fabricated animals for domestic or military uses.
Bit-head. Xero. Sudo. Derogatory slang for a restored personality.
Bright. An extropian, far leftist, digital human philosophy. Brights believe in a creator of the Universe—or ’the system’—and that humanity is one of a billion billion probable physical manifestations of rules that began to play out at the moment of creation. God didn’t create us, but it allowed the conditions for us to exist, like a scientist fine-tuning an experiment, and humanity its results.
Continuance of Personality Act. The set of legal guarantees allowing for the transfer of a consciousness from organic to digital.
Cortex. Second Skyn’s in-house neural prosthetic. Now common slang for any neural prosthetic.
Cortical Field. The composite image of a scanned consciousness. Since consciousness is stored holographically, the stronger the field, the stronger the fidelity to the original personality.
Cypher. A rithm without an official restoration record from the Ministry of Human Standards.
Digital Life Extension. Extending a human consciousness past brain death as a psychorithm. The personality is captured, translated to a psychorithm and the resulting rithm loaded onto a prosthetic mind implanted in a bioSkyn. The Continuance of Personality Act provides digital humans with all the legal rights of a fully organic human, while Human Standards laws limit the extent to which digital humanity can augment its existence. DLE is fraught with political and social turbulence.
Dwell. A simple shyft that allows the user to speed up or slow down stored memory playback.
Fate. The rapidly growing corporation bringing immortality to the masses and hiring out low-cost knowledge work, all while reducing governmental expenditures around the globe.
Fleshmith. Someone who uses modified geneblocks and scaflabs to produce designer bodies and organs.
Genitect. Someone who architects and encodes custom geneblocks, the genetic code building blocks used to form the genomes of synthetic life forms.
Headspace. A digital human’s customizable home running onboard their prosthetic brain.
The Hereafter. The brand-name of a virtual reflection of the real world, where digital humans can visit the living. It is the largest, and most populous, digital virt.
Human Standards. The legal baselines limiting human life extension, physical augmentation and neural enhancement.
IMP. (Intelligent Mediating Personality) Originally designed to assist with daily communication, the IMP’s capabilities quickly expanded to become a full-fledged digital assistant that learns over time. Upgradable with personality sprites.
The Link. The worldwide stream of conversations, sensor data, cameras, feeds, virts, games, and everything else that arose from the internet.
Lost Time. The minutes or hours of memory between personality back-ups lost due to a pattern decoherence or Cortex damage.
Lowboys. A gang of low-rep petty criminals. Kids, mostly.
Ministry of Human Standards. The government agency tasked with enforcing Human Standard laws.
Neurohertz. (NHz or N) 1N is the averag
e speed of human neural processing. Human Standards limit the function of prosthetic brains to 1.15N.
Past-Standard. The only Human Standard criminal offense. Past-Standard encompasses everything related to genetic augmentation and manipulation of a mind or body past established human norms. Past-Standard Offense and Psychorithm Infractions often intersect, causing friction between investigating agencies.
Prodeo/Prodian. What digital-only personalities against the restrictive Human Standard laws call themselves: Homo Prodeo. From the Latin "prodeo": to go forward, and "pro Deo": ’before’ and ’the supreme being.’
Psychorithm. The Conscious Algorithm. The human brain’s self-sustaining, recursive algorithmic neural code translated into digital.
Psychorithm Crime Unit. The Toronto Police Services unit responsible for investigating crimes by and against the local Reszo population.
Psyphon. To extract a rithm from its Cortex by force.
Recovered. A psychorithm is recovered from a dying or unhealthy brain and imprinted onto a cortical field.
ReJuv. The genetic reset performed once a year through the intravenous injection of a gene-regulating cocktail.
Rep. The cumulative social reputation earned by a personality on the link. Also known as Social Faith.
Restored. Layering a recovered cortical field onto a prosthetic brain. Also a common identifier for a digital human.
Reszo. Slang for a restored personality.
Revv. A shyft that allows the user to bypass human-standard neural governors and run their rithm higher into the NHz range. The effects are limited only by the hardware.
Rithmist. Someone who hacks the psychorithm. From manipulating autonomous and emotional responses all the way to enhancing or creating new cognitive abilities.
Second Skyn. The global leader in digital life extension. In defiance of global courts, Second Skyn opened its first facility in a small South-East Asian country that had more pressing concerns than enforcing soon-to-be-outdated UN cloning laws. Once Personality Rights legislation was enacted, Second Skyn formally opened in Toronto, Stockholm, Seoul and Dubai, then expanded around the world as demand grew.