The Harmony Paradox

by Matthew S. Cox

  “There’s a difference between bragging rights and stupid.” Joey saluted it with the tile. “Knowing I got this and keeping it quiet is better than my dead ass being remembered as ‘the guy who got this.’”

  “I see. Humans are an interesting species. I look forward to studying them more. Why do you think they are so protective of knowledge that may prove other beings exist?”

  “Hmm.” Joey shrugged. “I guess humans don’t understand them.”

  A small mouth appeared on Shinigami’s glassy face, curling up to a smile. The AI’s toneless laugh reverberated in the room. “Farewell, Joseph.”

  The AI faded away.

  Joey clutched the data tile in both hands, holding it up to his face. “You almost got me killed. You’re the reason I had to leave Mars and rent a room in the rectum of West City.” It looked like it would take him hours of work to peel back the crypto. Bastard thing could’ve opened it, but he knows me too well.

  He cackled, and slipped the data tile into his nonexistent coat. The gesture copied the file to a hidden folder on his console. A few minutes’ work created a concealed virtual node deep in the public GlobeNet, where he stashed another copy and dropped in some prefab Division 9 defense software, enough to keep it secure on the one in ten trillion chance someone stumbled across the hidden room.

  “I gotta go check on Nina. This waiting around shit is killing me.” He leaned back, and sent a logoff command.

  ina sat on the living room floor, back against the sofa, wearing a tank top and sweat shorts. Her left arm, whole once again, draped in her lap, and she stroked her fingertips over the skin like a pet cat. She’d told them not to give her any technical details about what broke, so they’d left it at saying everything was back to being as before. They’d even provided a new set of ballistic stealth armor.

  Hardin’s going to grill me about the psych thing. I wasn’t very subtle refusing to look at the damage.

  She squeezed her wrist, testing it.

  If I was human, that cannon would’ve popped me like a water balloon. She gazed at her milky white legs, wiggled her toes, and sighed. I guess I’m still me, even if my insides are a little tougher. Back and forth, she traced her fingers over her arm. This isn’t real skin. It feels like it, but it isn’t. A silent sigh leaked from her nose. Suppose I’ll never get skin cancer.

  “Hey, gorgeous.” Joey glided in from the kitchen. He handed her a tall, narrow glass full of iced coffee with an inch of beige foam on top. “Sniff that first, make sure that’s the pumpkin spice one.” He shuddered.

  “What?” She sniffed, confirming pumpkin, and nodded. “You don’t like it?”

  “Anyone who does that to coffee ought to have their ass removed.” He winked.

  “I smell whiskey.” She held her cup to her nose, basking in the fragrance.

  “Only a little.” He sipped his coffee. “So you stay underground the whole time?”

  “What?” She started to drink.

  “You go to Mexico and you come back white as a ghost. Not even a tan.”

  She coughed on pumpkin spice foam, and cracked up laughing. “Gah!”

  “C’mere.”

  Nina pulled her feet in, pushed herself up, and scooted onto the sofa.

  Joey put an arm around her, clinked glasses, and kissed her. “It’s good to have you back.”

  She smiled, fending off guilt at making him worry with memories of José and the others’ exuberant faces as they disembarked the DS2 after it landed within UCF territory. “It’s good to be back.”

  If I was still human, they never would’ve sent me down there… so I never would’ve been at risk of being water-ballooned by a 23mm in the first place. She rolled her eyes and slurped coffee.

  Elizaveta walked in and stood before them, stark naked.

  “Like mother like daughter,” said Joey.

  Nina poked him.

  “What? That was your standard ‘I’m at home’ outfit for months.” He faked a quivering lip. “I kinda miss it.”

  She stared at him and mumbled past a clenched jaw. “Not with a kid here.”

  Joey gestured at her. “I don’t think she’d mind.”

  Nina blushed. “That’s beside the point. It’s not right.”

  “Mommy? Will you stay in the room while I clean?” Elizaveta looked down.

  “Of course, sweetie.” Nina leaned over to kiss Joey on the cheek, and whispered, “It reminds her of the cage. She’s afraid it won’t open and let her out.”

  He nodded.

  Nina stood, took the girl by the hand, and walked with her to the bathroom. With her there, the child seemed unafraid of the autoshower and hopped right in, even humming to herself while it ran. Fifteen minutes later, Nina pulled a pink nightdress over the girl’s head and helped her brush her teeth. Elizaveta scampered down the hall to her bedroom and climbed into her nest of stuffed animals.

  “Are we still gonna go tomorrow?” Elizaveta’s blue eyes widened with anticipation.

  “Yep. We sure are. Sector D Funzone in the morning, and after lunch, the Spectrum Animal Park.”

  Elizaveta clapped. “Yay! Are they real animals?”

  “They’re synthetic. It’s cruel to keep real animals for an attraction… but they look and act the same as real ones.”

  Elizaveta regarded her with an analytical stare. Nina braced for a comment about her being sent to Mexico because she was ‘a synthetic animal’ and it would be mean to make a human go. “Syn-fetic animals don’t have brains.”

  “No. No they don’t.”

  Elizaveta sat up and hugged her. “I love you, Mommy.”

  Nina melted. She cried in silence while hugging her, and wiped her tears once the child lay back down.

  “Good night.”

  Nina stood and kissed her on the forehead. “Night, sweetie.”

  She backed up to the door. Elizaveta grinned for a second and closed her eyes. Nina shut the lights down and walked back to the living room, a tornado of emotion swirling within. She snagged her coffee from the table and fell into the couch next to Joey.

  “She did something obnoxiously cute, didn’t she?” He plucked a tear from her face on a fingertip.

  “Yeah.”

  “How long you think it’ll take her to fall asleep?” He patted her on the thigh.

  Nina chuckled. “She’s excited about tomorrow, so probably a while.”

  “Mmm.” He leaned in and kissed her. “Guess we should try to be extra quiet then.”

  She set the coffee on the end table and embraced him. They lay entwined on the couch for a few minutes, kissing.

  “You’re nervous.” He raised an eyebrow. “I can feel it.”

  “Still decompressing from the trip.” She snuggled with him. “I’m just enjoying being home and intact.”

  “Not the case?”

  “No. The case is over… at least for Division 9. Harmony, without those nanobots, is tame. None of our concern. I don’t even think Division 2 is bothering with it after learning the aggression came from the nanobots.”

  He slid a hand up under her shirt, grasping her breast.

  Nina gasped, stifled a laugh, and stared at the hallway for any signs of child.

  “Speaking of which, Penumbras’s routine seems to be working. That damn dragon beat us to it… reverse engineered the shit and sent out a kill command that makes them deconstruct their surveillance implant and seppuku their way to the bladder.”

  “You are a master of sexy talk.” She nibbled on his earlobe. “Tell me more about nanobots invading bladders. That really gets me going.”

  He laughed. “I half expected Shinigami to have something to do with it all. Like some kind of experiment.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Son of a bitch gave me the data that almost got me killed on Mars.” He put a finger over her lips. “Don’t tell anyone. I don’t even know if it’s really what he says it is yet.”

  “I doubt they’d kill you now.” She rubbed his crotch through
his pants. “You’ve almost got as much clearance as I do.” The mood faltered. “That AI gave me a file, too. He said it would make me question everything I know.”

  Both his eyebrows shot up. “Whoa. That sounds like a big deal. Maybe your parents are Ixylid.”

  She gave him a playful swat across the back of the head. “My parents are not aliens. I haven’t looked at it. Major crypto on it… I don’t think I could even get to it if I wanted to.”

  “Do you want to?” He winked.

  Nina bit her lip. “I don’t know. Maybe I like my world.”

  “You’ve got that look. Gotta know. That’s an ‘I can’t sleep until I know’ look.”

  She folded her arms, feeling as nervous as the day her parents made her try out for ballet class at nine. Dancing hadn’t been the problem; performing in front of people freaked her out. “Umm. What do you think?”

  “Well, either he’s messing with you, or whatever’s in there is going to ruin your day, or decades from now when you finally decide to look at it, you’ll kick yourself for not doing it sooner.”

  She sighed. “Fuck it. Let’s look.”

  “Okay.”

  Nina put her tit back in her tank top and jogged to her bedroom, where her Division 9 Netspider deck sat on a desk. She scooped it up as well as two M3 wires, and returned to the living room. She slid the wire into the socket at the back of her neck, and connected the other end to the deck. Joey linked to the aux port.

  The room froze in a camera-flash moment and melted away from itself. Everything seemed a little cleaner and newer. Nina glanced around at the cyberspace version of her home. Her body had changed to her last-used net avatar, which resembled her real-life appearance except for the addition of huge black and violet butterfly wings.

  An old man in a duster coat appeared next to her. As soon as she looked at him, a sense of palpable dread came over her. She fought the urge to shriek and muttered, “Knock that off” past clenched teeth.

  The odd fear stopped. “Sorry. It’s radiant. Adding you to a permanent exception list.”

  “Be right back.”

  Nina teleported across the net to a Sur-Stor data warehouse where she’d rented a ten-petabyte box. The GlobeNet-only building consisted of a tiny white booth with the Sur-Stor logo and four massive rotary-barrel laser turrets, but the door opened to an immense warehouse lined with bright orange doors that varied in size from small lockers like hers to garage-style affairs, a cosmetic indicator of size.

  She navigated hallway after hallway of storage compartments until she found her spot: 127915. The creepy black tile Shinigami had given her remained the only item in it. After picking it up, she teleported back to her living room and held it up.

  “Well, this is it.”

  Joey reached up and took it, turning it around in his hands like a puzzle box. She paced about, gnawing on her knuckle. Twice, anxiety built up to the point where she almost asked him to wait, but couldn’t get the word out.

  “Hmm. This isn’t C-Branch. Not quite as tough.” He flipped his hand around and a power drill appeared. “I can get in. Might take me a few minutes, but I can get in.”

  Joey set the tile on his lap and started drilling.

  Nina paced back and forth. “Wait.”

  “Hmm?”

  She sighed. “Never mind. Just nervous. I keep changing my mind and changing it again.”

  “That just proves you’re female.” He grinned.

  “Ha. Ha.” She shook her head.

  He stopped the drill. “This could be Shinigami fucking with you.”

  “Yeah, it could.”

  Joey shrugged and resumed drilling. Bands of text appeared and wrapped around the tile inside glimmering silver circles. Every so often, a bit of armored tile peeled away to expose glowing cyan circuitry inside, but re-sealed.

  Nina turned her back on it, and continued pacing while again rubbing her repaired arm. How long will it take me to forget seeing that? She sighed in her mind. I’ll probably never forget it… How long until I accept it?

  “I’m in.”

  She spun.

  The ever-shifting armored tiles had settled down to a neat arrangement.

  “The crypto is disabled, but I could turn it back on… of course, I have the password now.” He held it up. “Last chance, beautiful. Do I open this?”

  Nina walked over and sat next to him. “Sure.”

  Joey grasped the tile like a book and pulled. Two simulated holo-panels expanded out of it, stacked on top of each other. He touched the first one.

  The screen expanded to the size of their living room holo-bar, about 150 inches. Within, an image of a medical tank room appeared, with Nina’s body floating in the breathable gel. Three sword-sized holes pierced her abdomen, one big enough to see through to the other side. A few bullet wounds marked her left arm and right leg.

  Nina’s heart almost stopped. She reached out to touch the insubstantial image. “That’s…”

  “You.”

  “I know that, I mean…” She stood and walked up to the screen, which displayed her near life size. “Oh this is so weird to see from the outside, but… three stab wounds and some bruises…” She grabbed the front of her throat, choked up.

  Joey moved up behind her, and put his arm around her. “That doesn’t look like, uhh…”

  “Enough damage to put me in this body.” Her heart raced. “They said I was a pile of unrecognizable spoo.” She shivered. “Too smashed to save. That file that you saw…”

  “You looked a whole hell of a lot worse than that.”

  Nina touched the screen, starting the playback. All her wounds appeared to be closing.

  The soft pneumatic hiss of a door preceded a brown-coated, pallid man walking in from behind where Nina’s avatar stood. He stopped in front of her, staring at the Nina in the tank. “That’s her. Connect me.”

  A woman in a white coat hesitated until the man stared at her. She did something on a control panel before nodding at him.

  “Miss Duchenne?” He paused a second. “Officer Duchenne, can you hear me?” He waited another moment before glaring at the medtech. “Does this thing even work?”

  The woman in the tank twitched. Her jaw opened and closed.

  “We’ve become aware of you, Officer Duchenne. I’d like to offer you a chance to one-up that promotion you’ve been hoping for. We’d like to bring you in to Division 9.”

  Nina in the tank twitched again.

  Nina in Cyberspace grabbed Joey to keep from falling. “They lied…”

  “There isn’t a great deal of time involved,” said the man. “I need to know if you are interested in our offer.” He walked up to the tank; the pale face of a man in his early fifties reflected in the glass, inches from his nose. “Officer Duchenne. Are you interested in our offer? We need your agreement to proceed.”

  Her body in the tank twitched; the largest of the three holes in her gut appeared to be shrinking. The jaw opened and snapped closed. Her hair massed around her head like a cloud of ink.

  Something on the medtech’s console went green.

  “It went green.” He turned to face her, gesturing to someone behind the camera, off screen. “We have a yes. Do it.”

  The medtech woman looked uncomfortable. She gave him a ‘must you?’ look.

  “Don’t worry. She won’t die.” The man lifted a cigar-shaped Nicohaler to his mouth and took a long drag. “Stitch her up nice, would you? She might want this body again someday. We’ll be outside.”

  The video stopped.

  Nina shuddered with sorrow and rage. She stared down at her hands, or at least the hands of her avatar. Before Joey could get a word out, she whirled around and jabbed her finger into the second file.

  Another massive holo-panel opened, with a view of a white-blue room filled with rows of smaller tanks. They resembled the medical gel tanks, but only a third of the diameter, mere inches wider than a normal adult’s shoulders.

  The camera view glid
ed down a row lined with frost-covered tanks on both sides, each containing the blurry hint of a nude body within. It turned a corner, passing more tanks. After twelve seconds, it stopped and rotated ninety degrees left, facing one of the tanks in the row.

  A waiflike body floating like a wingless angel hid beneath a layer of frost on the glass. Her features seemed delicate, like a faerie trapped in ice.

  Nina stared at herself, frozen in gel.

  Her five-foot-four self.

  “They lied,” she rasped. “They lied.”

  He closed the file and reactivated the encryption. Once more, the armored panels on the data tile shifted and flipped over each other. He tucked it in his jacket; the old man melted into Joey’s real appearance, and he embraced her. “Can we log out so I can hold you for real?”

  She wrapped her arms around him and nodded, sniffling.

  Cyberspace faded. After a wash of vertigo, Nina found herself sprawled on the sofa where she’d been at login. She disconnected the wire and clung to Joey as if he were a giant teddy bear that would protect her from all the scary monsters.

  He held her in silence for a few minutes.

  “Of course… how could my body be so far gone? He stabbed me a couple of times with a vibro-blade. I had armor on. Division 5 showed up before he could peel me open.” She shivered, fighting the urge to throw up. “They took my brain. They tricked me.”

  Joey rubbed a hand up and down her back. “Hey… slow down. Don’t forget what we’re dealing with. This came from Shinigami. He synthesizes the consciousness of entire people; he can make a video. That AI is probably just poking you with what you want most to see how you react.” He cradled her face in two hands and stared into her eyes. “This could be nothing more than a cruel trick.”

  Tears gathered and streamed down her cheeks. She stared into his eyes for some seconds before her voice could emerge from its hiding place.

  “But… what if it isn’t?”

  Thank you for reading The Harmony Paradox!

  I’d like to also thank everyone at Curiosity Quills for making this book a reality.