by E A Carter
We pass a fully equipped kitchen in gleaming white, its counter sporting a spotless chrome unit I recall makes special kinds of coffees. I saw this one at the museum, too. A Gaggia, from Italy. For as long as I can remember, coffee everywhere is made from freeze-dried chemicals to taste like coffee. But this machine—the curator spent a lot of time telling us how it used to work—it made coffee from beans it had ground only moments before, so I know it's useless. There are no more coffee beans. I would know; I used the black market enough.
On the immaculate island, pears, ripe and ready to eat perch in a metal basket shaped in a pattern of flower petals. It looks designer, expensive, and rare. An item like that—made just for fruit, in a world like ours. It's obnoxious. I glance at Akron to see if he is watching me. He's not, his eyes are straight ahead, fixed on a pair of closed walnut doors, offset by an antique mahogany baby grand piano on one side and a fully stocked bar on the other. I take a pear from the top of the heap and bite into it. Its grainy texture melts in my mouth and soft, sweet, almost vanilla-like juices run down my throat. I have never tasted such a perfect fruit in my life, I groan in pleasure. Akron glances back. A look of revulsion crosses his face.
'What a waste,' he mutters.
I shrug, defiant, and bite into the pear again, loud, chewing it with my mouth open just to piss him off.
Opposite the open-plan kitchen, a vast slab of a birch table surrounded by a variety of chairs—all of them arty and unique—overlooks a vista of a rugged, rocky terrain sloping down to a stormy, grey sea. Towering pines bend in the rough wind, and a gust of snowy wind hurtles past the windows, buffeting the trees.
I slow. Hanging over the table: a copper-tinted metallic lamp, its pieces arranged in the shape of an artichoke. Very, very expensive, and extremely rare. This piece I know, because I fell in love with it at the museum. It's the famous Artichoke lamp by Poul Henningsen, or PH as he was later called. I bought a postcard from the museum shop of an artful photo of it and hung it in my locker to remind me we weren't always monsters. Once, before we had fucked up the world, we had had art and beauty. We had had time to make lamps that looked like an artichoke, so perfect it could only be called art. The curator mentioned there were only fifty intact Artichoke lamps left in the world, and only ten in pristine condition, the rest lost to the upheavals and wars during the mass climate migrations. Now I am certain. I am definitely not in Omega V. I suck the last of the pear's flesh and juice from its core and toss it into a silver dish on top of the bar. Akron stops at the double doors. The wood is solid. Not veneered. Of course. He turns to me.
'I think I should warn you, we aren't in Omega V.'
'No shit,' I say and glance meaningfully at the lamp. Only nine others exist in that condition, including the one in the museum.
'We brought you here from the Bunker at Omega V while you were in stasis mode.'
'Stasis,' I repeat, bitter, trying and failing to avoid thinking of the metallic things roiling inside me, and my lack of genitalia. I press my revulsion down, promising myself I will deal with my situation later when I have more intel. A lifetime of military discipline redirects my focus and I become aware of pear juice on my fingers. I rub them against my trousers. I would have rather licked the juice off them but I can't bring myself to do it in front of Akron. I ate a pear, my first one in twenty years, and it was beautiful. It's enough. Also, I catch the thinning of Akron's lips as I do it, marking the waste, and a thrill of satisfaction ripples through me. Worth it.
'And 'here' is?' I prompt into the disapproving silence.
'You've been brought to Alpha VII,' Akron answers, watching me for a reaction. I give him none. He tilts his head towards the apartment's interior. 'This is—was—Henrik's home.'
I glance around, my interest deepening. I'm certain now, whatever the executive order has financed me into, I'm worth a lot. Much more than Akron is letting on. Alpha VII is for the elite of the elite—even Akron isn't good enough to be here. I realise he's only here because of me, to debrief me as my commanding officer. I keep my expression bland. 'It's been sixteen years since Henrik disappeared. I'm surprised they didn't give this place to someone else.'
'A-Seven has been maintaining it in case he turned up again,' Akron says, but he looks away, feigning interest in the visual of the Nordic snowstorm sweeping past the dining area. A white-capped wave breaks against the rocky shore. It's beautiful. Envy slices into me. Life isn't bad in Omega V, but it's nothing like this. This is a whole other thing, and compared to the exclusion zones, like the one where I found Blue, this is a fantasy. My heart clenches, regret, then remorse strike me in quick succession. No, not Blue. Cassandra. The Oracle. The one who drugged me, learned about my next mission, and kissed me goodbye, knowing all my men would die.
'Given the recent developments, this property has now come under the jurisdiction of A-Seven's authority. It has been reserved for a new resident.' He looks back at me, bland. 'Cassandra Vallis.'
I blink. 'I don't understand.' I say, and mean it. He just convinced me she is the enemy; the reason all my men died, and now she gets a free ticket into Alpha VII? It makes no sense.
Akron smiles, close-lipped, tight. He nods at the closed doors. 'Until Genesis II goes live, this will be where she will stay. She doesn't get past these doors. The whole floor has been secured for mission purposes.'
'But why here and not back at headquarters at O-Five?' I ask.
'Because Genesis II is here. And there are too many other players looking for her, lower down the chain. There is too much risk she might be taken out from under our noses. Orders are to get her here, alive, using deep covert.' He lifts his hand, stopping me from asking whose orders. 'A-Seven calls the shots now. I am the only officer outside of A-Seven who knows about Vallis and her connection to Genesis II.'
'And you know all this because—?' I ask, but feel like I am starting to see the picture, at least the outline of it.
'Because of your memories,' Akron says, flat. 'As your CO, I have to read them and submit a report. Elites were in my office within ten minutes of me seeing Vallis. You know they can see everything in our systems. Facial recognition caught it.'
'So you're a security risk now?' I scoff.
He doesn't meet my eyes. 'I've been reassigned.'
'To?'
'For now, debriefing you,' he says, and opens the door. Two Elites—A-Seven's private military personnel, the majority of them repurposed from what was left of Israel's Defense Force—sit at a glass smartdesk in a wide, plush-carpeted, neutral-toned corridor, the desk's surface covered with screens flicking from one image to another. Both men wear wireless earpieces. I lean forward, discreet, to see what's on the screens. Upside-down views of the interior of Henrik's apartment scroll past: the bedroom where I woke up, the toilets, the showers, the kitchen, dining room, another bedroom, behind the bar, the front door, everywhere. I'm certain they have listened to our entire conversation.
Akron salutes them. I don't, determined to exploit what few perks there are of being a machine. Without looking up, one of the Elites slides from his seat, turns his back to us and walks down the corridor, ignoring us. Akron's humiliation is tangible. I almost feel sorry for him. Almost. Outside of A-Seven, he's someone, but in here, he's nothing. Just like me. One point for the droid. I follow after Akron and our black-bereted escort.
'What happened to Genesis I?' I ask, low.
Akron glances at me. 'They ran out of time, had to scrap it,' he whispers.
'Time to do what?'
'To set up a colony on Mars,' Akron answers, wary, his eyes on our escort's back.
'What do you mean ran out of time?' I ask, tight.
He says nothing. Instead he jerks his head, terse, at our escort who pauses at another smartdesk where a pair of black-fatigued Elites sit outside the double doors of the only other apartment on the floor. The number twelve glows in white on a glass panel by the door. The men exchange several sentences in Hebrew. Our escort departs, his eyes hard
. I catch the translucent silver shimmer of an iris overlay, and realise he's reading data embedded in the corridor we can't see. He brushes past us as though we don't exist. And maybe we don't. I'm officially dead. I wonder if Akron's status has changed, too. The thought makes me uneasy. I'm used to covert ops, and high clearance missions, but this mission—whatever the whole of it is—has a whole other feel to it. It feels dark, dangerous, and stinks of deception. I sense I'm close to the real power on Earth and I don't like it.
One of the Elites goes to the panel by the door, enters a code, then presses his thumbprint against the screen. The doors unlock with a quiet click. He opens one of them, and steps back. Inside, an apartment similar in layout to Henrik's, transformed into a dark cave, lit by the light of more than four dozen glass screens.
In the middle of the room, a conference table. Desks, screens, and tech occupy the apartment's perimeter. The stink of stale coffee hits me. Several operators sit at desks, typing on the glass interfaces, the glow of the screens bathing their profiles in ghastly greens, whites, and blues. They look exhausted. Several are chewing gum. I'm willing to bet the gum is laced with amphetamines. So this is mission control. I'm going to get strung out guys for base support. Not a good start.
'You'll be debriefed by someone who has higher clearance than me.' Akron stops at the door. 'I have orders to wait here.' He backs up several steps and stands at ease, his hands clasped behind his back. I pause. This feels wrong. He's my CO. He tilts his head at the open door, a look of warning in his eyes.
The Elite behind me is giving off a hostile vibe. I sense him willing me to hurry up. I go in. As the door closes behind me, I glance back, but Akron is looking the other way, his gaze distant, blank, neutral, like he doesn't care, but I know he does. I have a feeling my worst suspicions are right. He will never go back to O-Five. His career is over. Guilt washes through me. Was it not enough my men died? I turn and prepare to face the music, the taste of pear sour in my mouth.
A woman in black military fatigues approaches me, her black hair pulled into a sleek, tight bun, her beret folded and held in place on her shoulder with a thick strap, neat and tidy, just like the rest of her. She says nothing, just eyes me, her brown eyes cold, and turns and walks away, past the workstations of the technicians. She pauses by the kitchen and glances back at me, an aura of disapproval surrounding her. I realise I'm supposed to be following her. I catch up.
She pours herself a coffee, and nods at tray holding a stainless steel carafe and empty mugs. I pour one for myself, because I feel like she expects me to, not because I want any. She moves on, still silent, towards the bedrooms down the corridor, its walls stripped of its mirrors. I follow her, a mug of hot, chemical coffee cradled in my big hand, grateful for small mercies.
We go past the master bedroom into a smaller bedroom, though it's not smaller by much. It's been repurposed into a briefing room. Just like in the main rooms of the apartment, all the furnishings have been stripped out and replaced with military issue kit. Four rows of steel chairs line up before the blank wall screen. A smartdesk sits at the front of the assembly. On a side table, a half dozen tablets, and a small safe, its door open, containing a sleeve bulging with data tabs.
'Capitaine Ryan Maddox,' she says in the unmistakeable electronic twang of a droid.
I back up, thinking it must be a joke. I'm to be debriefed by a machine on a Q Clearance matter, regarding intelligence even Akron can't be privy to?
She smiles at my reaction, and continues, 'Allow me to introduce myself. I am General de Pommier, this is my avatar, which allows me the ability to communicate with you 'in person' even though I am nowhere near you. Nice, no?'
I salute the droid, crisp, still holding the coffee mug in my other hand, feeling ridiculous and honoured all at once. No one, to my knowledge had ever actually met General de Pommier. I had heard she only gave rare briefings via satellite uplinks relayed at the same time over seven hubs to make triangulating her location impossible. No one knew where she was. Not even Akron. And no one I knew even knew what she looked like. After the rash of UFF abductions of high level military staff in the 2070s, this was how Command had reacted, by making its most powerful people invisible and untraceable. But a droid as an avatar—I hadn't expected that. I don't want to admit it, but I'm impressed. I wonder if I'm allowed to tell Akron about this.
She smiles again. She's so life-like, I could almost believe it's her. 'At ease, Capitaine Maddox.'
I obey, longing to get rid of the mug, but she is still holding hers, so I hang on to mine, floundering a bit. I was never trained in the protocol of coffee-mug-holding in the presence of Command's highest authority.
She steps closer to me and looks me over, examining me. I hold still.
'Impressive,' she says, her dark eyes moving over me, curious. 'And you have all your memories, intact, no?'
'Yes, ma'am. As far as I can tell, nothing is missing.'
'You are the first of your kind, Maddox. A great success.' She steps back and sips her coffee, the muscles of her throat moving. 'I understand you know you are no longer human, but a conscious machine with the memories of Delta Force Capitaine Ryan Maddox.'
I nod, my throat tight. I really don't want to talk about it, especially not the way she describes it. I feel real. It's enough. No need for inconvenient details.
She takes another sip, watching me, intent. 'We French tend to be quite romantic—even now, stuck in this ravaged, dying world of ours.' She nods at me. 'Yours was the first successful transfer of a complete neural network. After four years, and fourteen failures, this time we got everything right. Lucky you, no?' She arches a thick, curved eyebrow at me. 'Your body was badly burned when the drones found you, but you were still alive, barely. Per protocol, your body was cooled twenty degrees and shipped to base for memory retrieval.' She pauses to drink her coffee, nodding at me to try mine. I do, because I have to, not because I want to. The coffee is bitter, syrupy, familiar, reminding me life in the barracks. The memory is somehow comforting. Nostalgia assaults me.
'It seems the line between life and death is much wider than we have been led to believe,' she continues, breaking into my thoughts. She sighs and sets aside her coffee cup. It's still half full. 'It is fascinating to think on the brink of our annihilation we have finally been able to transcend death.' She glances up at me, a look of regret fleets through her eyes. 'It is . . . ironic, no?'
I blink. I thought I was a droid, and a really ugly one, my memories copied and programmed piece by painstaking piece onto a hard disk buried somewhere inside me. But this—the transfer of a complete neural network, this is something else. It is the holy grail. Eternal life.
'I once read a paper about a two-year-old boy who drowned in freezing waters in the United States,' she continues in her educated, French accented electronic voice. 'It happened just over seventy years ago, in 2015, when neuroscientists still quibbled over the so-called 'hard problem' of consciousness.' She graces me with a slight eye roll. 'The boy was dead for one hundred and one minutes. Think of that. One hundred and one minutes with no heartbeat. They managed to resuscitate him. The child came back, fully functioning.' She shakes her head, incredulous. 'His brain should have died from lack of oxygen, but it did not. It has taken decades of trial and error for science to ascertain precisely how to replicate the right temperatures to stop all physical processes, yet keep the brain intact, without carrying over the psychic trauma which sometimes comes with near death experiences.'
She falls silent and eyes me. I realise she's waiting for me to speak.
'Ma'am,' I hazard, uneasy, 'exactly what am I?'
She smiles, pleased. I must have asked the right question.
'Your outer cells are human, unlike the droids, taken from the body of the man you now inhabit, but underneath you are a machine—that is, apart from your neural wiring which is made of biological matter, sustained by nanotechnology and overwritten with a quantum protocol.'
She pauses to glance
at a message flashing up on the smartdesk. I lift my fingers to my brow, wonder suffusing me. All this, yet I feel exactly the same.
'And,' she carries on, her eyes still on the screen, 'we have plans to continue to improve you. You are the world's first cybernetic organism, Maddox. With the nanotechnology inside you, you are virtually indestructible. I had to break bread with my nemesis, the Prime Minister to get the executive order signed to release the funds needed to build you into a military machine.' One of her perfect eyebrows lifts again and she looks up at me, contempt sliding over her smooth features. 'It was . . . one of my less enjoyable meetings.' She glances back down at the screen, nods, abrupt, and looks back at me. Approval darkens her eyes. 'But,' she lifts a slim forefinger, 'now you are here. It cost fourteen billion to make you. Let us hope my efforts will be worth it. One moment.'
She falls silent, the light in her eyes dims. I sense the connection has been cut. I wait as several long minutes pass. No one comes for me. The droid stands motionless, staring straight ahead, its eyes empty. I look away from it, unnerved. I realise I am still holding the coffee mug. I take a sip; the brew is still warm, just. My thoughts wander. I think of Blue, of her selling me and my men out to the UFF. Away from Akron and his persuasive arguments, the whole thing feels wrong again. Like I'm only getting half the story.
The droid blinks. 'Capitaine Maddox,' General de Pommier says through her avatar. 'I understand Major Akron has debriefed you regarding your mission to acquire the target.' Her attention is back on the screen on the smartdesk. I sense our cosy chat time is over, it's all business now. I set my empty mug onto a nearby chair and stand at ease, my hands clasped behind my back.
'Yes ma'am.'
'You were told the target is essential to the success of the project known as Genesis II?' she asks, tapping the smartdesk's screen, swiping left more than right.