He succeeded with one goal, to be sure. He knew no one was going to laugh at the dummy that was supposed to speak in his stead. Even he, its creator, was barely able to focus on its face without turning away. Nonetheless, he was not ready to abandon the idea of speaking through the surrogate, teaching himself to speak without moving his lips.
He spent hours unearthing a serviceable singing voice. He taught himself the phonetics of the language sung by the Veiled Woman and her surrogate and fought the inclination to translate the song. This, he told himself, was in preparation for one last presentation to the CEO of his company to get his job back. In truth, he was in the thrall of the Veiled Woman, not so much in love with her as addicted to seeing and hearing her.
He woke up looking forward to sitting in front of the primitive external screen and listening to the voice that only it could emit. He wondered about the people who had been so insightful as to provide her a place, a platform to ply her extraordinary craft. He envied those in the audience. He pictured himself as one of them, people at the edge of her light.
***
One early morning, before the Bird arrived at her window, the Girl lay awake contemplating the logistical and economic challenges of running away to be with Nat and Tina. She heard the aria “Vissi d’Arte” drifting through the house. She knew the song from one of her opera freak friends whom the Bird also visited. Her friend had translated the aria, and the Girl, thinking of the translation, assumed it was her mother, the Author, playing the music.
Days and days later, one of the last things she would do for the Scientist before leaving the house would be to give him the translation. He read it and put his head in his hands. Water seeped between his fingers. She regretted what she had thought of him all these years and put her arms around him. She even suppressed the urge to draw back in horror when she glimpsed the small pile of figures that were not quite him laying crumpled in the corner of the room with their ghastly eyes.
***
A day or so later, the Scientist was riding along holding his surrogate in an opaque plastic bag on the seat next to him. He’d made a physical appointment to get in line for a lottery ticket that might allow him to speak with the CEO of his company. Part of the transport was in total darkness so as to obscure the route.
When he finally reached the ticket line, he found people in a joyous mood as if waiting for an amusement gram. It lifted his own spirits to the point where he felt like chatting with the others in line, many of whom wanted to know what was in the plastic bag.
Eventually, security beamed in to find out why so many people had laid down in line. By that time, the Scientist had moved many places ahead of what was becoming a pile of sleepers. He was less than ten places from a lottery ticket when security pounced. They grabbed him and those ahead of him in line who were still awake and began an interrogation.
The Scientist had never been more frightened. He spoke rapidly, and loudly, desperate to get back to the line. The others who had been in line with him were the first to fade, their knees buckling and heads nodding despite their wanting to remain upright and alert in the presence of such fearsome security units. But the security units themselves began to succumb, to feel woozy and heavy headed.
The utter fear the Scientist felt at that moment reminded him of the fear that had led him to seek out the CEO in the first place. He needed to help his family. He felt his daughter slipping away and his wife being stuck into some unshapely hole of a career, and they would still have no good means of surviving, and he would be isolated at home with no colleagues, no work. So he began to edge slowly backward toward one of the ticket dispenser areas.
It wasn’t until he got home and was showing the lottery ticket to his family that it dawned on him he’d left the plastic bag with the surrogate behind. It came to him as he watched them watching a news gram about a “dead android” with eyes that appeared to want to crawl off of its face. Officials in the penal system thought the thing was a brilliant creation and were scrambling to find some uses for it and to find its creator, pretending, for some reason, that they hadn’t already scanned the object for its maker’s identity.
At that point, the news gram was interrupted by the CEO’s security detail appearing in the family’s house. Not grams but the real things, their muscles bulging through their orange lizard scale armor. Only one had a weapon. He’d also been modified with a spiked tail. They put the Scientist on an exclusive transport bound for the top office.
***
Though the people making the orders had no clear idea of what they would do with the units, orders for the dead android were pouring in from his friends who ran penal facilities, and the CEO wanted to be in on fulfilling the orders. The dead android was going be a goldmine, another platinum news gram for the collection. It was exciting because it was so crude and unexpected. The media in people’s implants all but throbbed as it consumed and resold the info.
Given all of this, the temptation was overwhelming for the CEO to listen in on his under partners’ conversations with the creator. Unbeknownst to even them, the CEO planned to summarily dump the Scientist after they’d made a good gram of him and he had revealed exactly where and how he’d stopped the printer to get the eyes just right. The CEO planned to give the Scientist a good chunk of money. But any demands for his fair share of the stream would fall on deaf ears.
What pushed the CEO to listen, albeit via external screen, and what distracted him from listening was the usual when he became overly excited—an earworm attack. He was, in fact, still a bit woozy from sleep aids and anti-hallucinogens taken the night before. But the sloshing sound and the familiar whisper of the voice that had no place, “What’s really in there?” and the mantralike repetition were all too recognizable and rising like foul water.
Deciding whether or not to listen in on the interrogation was as close as he ever came to questioning himself. He left the images flat on the screen but closed the audio, at least at first.
The CEO’s screen revealed what he’d gathered and feared, group after group of macho interrogators became drowsy, unwilling to admit that they could not listen to the Scientist without falling out. Finally, one woman interrogator fitted herself with a probe and began the interrogation via screen only. For a while there was silence as their exchanges appeared in front of them. The CEO opened the screen into a gram and with it came the audio, which was now only the room ambiance.
The woman was fascinated with the Scientist’s work on sharing consciousness without probes. He seemed on the verge of a monumental breakthrough if only he could get someone besides his wife and daughter to listen. With the mention of his wife and daughter, the aria from Tosca blossomed in his head. Some of the words made it to the screen in English and others in Italian. None of the music translated. The program seized up and men watching from behind glass all but pushed the woman aside and restarted the verbal interrogation.
Now, the temptation for the CEO to hear the infamous voice of the Scientist was too great. Just a snippet he thought, surely I could survive that. It took but a moment or two for the interrogators in the room to pass out, and the CEO fell asleep shortly thereafter.
When he awoke, he thought he was still dreaming. There was no trace of the earworm. He was almost frightened. He tried purposefully to recall the Bird’s sound. He brought it up and dismissed it with ease. He almost drafted parchment then and there that would grant the Scientist a fare share of the two streams, one for the dead surrogate and one for the earworm cure. Instead he closed all lines and became inexplicably absent.
When he returned, satiated from days of debauchery, he engaged the Scientist with a probe and cut a deal. The CEO would provide the Scientist access to his friends with the earworm, and he and the Scientist would split what the Scientist thought was an enormous fee. The Scientist agreed to it instantly. The walls of the room seemed to open as he all but leapt from his seat after his bios scanned through the parchment. He would return home triumphant. His family
would not lose their home. His wife would not have to write those dreadful stories fit only for entertainment grams. His daughter would receive elite training.
What he didn’t know was that his daughter had left home after the second week of his absence. Security had prevented even the most basic communication with his family. Concern over the fate of the Scientist had left her and her mother distraught. The Author had tried to bury herself in her work. The Girl had taken to feeding the Bird more and more so that it would come more often. It became even chubbier and its song more robust. The Girl debated with herself. Was her hearing improving? Regardless, she loved the sound of the Bird. Her mother, on the other hand, did not. They tried not to argue. But it was no use. The link between the Bird and the Singer was unknown to the Author but was a beacon to the Girl, and, when things at home came to the breaking point, the Girl boarded a transport and sought out Nat and Tina.
The Scientist did not communicate with his family until he got home. Most of the joy he’d felt about his new position was lost with the Girl gone. The Author never thought she’d long to hear the disgusting, misshapen Bird. But she longed for any sign of the Girl.
***
It is hard to see your home until you leave it. The further the Girl got from home the clearer it became, especially in the moments that felt like gaps, spaces between intentions. It was there she found all the things she could have said and, just as importantly, recalled the true weight of idle moments. The Bird flew in the window and sat before it sang. Her mother had finished writing and stared out of the window. Her father closed his eyes with his ever placid face over a small hand screen of formulas. The three of them sat in a moment where no one spoke at the dinner table. One of them smiled a blank, reflexive smile and the others smiled back just as reflexively, and suddenly, because they came all at once, the smiles were not so blank.
Then there was the Bird. It refused to follow her. Assuming someone remembered to feed it, she would have to return home to see it.
The trip felt longer than it actually took and she fell asleep on the transport. Normally, this would not have been a problem, but the operators who were supposed to rouse sleepers before the end of the line were distracted by a gram, a rumor really, that a cure for the earworm had been discovered. They were all fascinated even after they admitted they didn’t know anyone with the worm.
The Girl wound up at the end of the transport line in the dark with barely enough money to get back to her destination. Even so, the transports wouldn’t cycle back up for hours. She was hungry and panicked. The operators that were supposed to have sent signals through the car to rouse her were now walking through the unit kicking people off, and they weren’t too kind about it. She jumped from her seat and began to grab her belongings to avoid being slammed around like some of the sleeping and disheveled folks in other parts of the car.
She noticed that one person of indeterminate gender and dressed rather well to be on a transport did not seem concerned about being tossed about, was not excited, but moving deliberately as if it were normal to be getting off here where everyone else was kicked off. The calmness the Girl saw on the person’s face turned to sadness when their eyes met. The person looked at the Girl’s mismatched possessions and tried to smile bravely as if to encourage her, but the smile took a bit too much effort.
The Girl noticed the operators were closing in and she continued to gather her things to exit the transport. The Person followed her.
“Do you have a place?”
It was one thing to exchange half smiles with a stranger on the transport. Conversation was another level of engagement. The Girl wanted to act as though she hadn’t heard the person speak. But, off the transport, in the hustle of the overly bright city, she relented.
“Not here,” she replied, unable to hide her uneasiness.
“That’s fairly obvious. I’ve never seen you in the car.”
“You always take it to the end and in those clothes?”
“You wear what you have. There is a place I can show you. It’s not much to speak of, but it’s safe.”
The Girl decided to follow the person. Their destination was a few units away. Fewer and fewer people were on the street, but it became noticeably louder. Their clothing was dull. Most of the people were dark. Hair mods abounded, especially with the women and the neutral gendered.
“I’m Gen,” said the person. “Do you prefer a name?”
Gen, boy that’s original, thought the Girl. Why not just call yourself person? But she kept those thoughts to herself. The Person, Gen, was showing her kindness.
When Gen and the Girl entered the place where Gen lived, the silence was the first thing the Girl noticed, perhaps because it had been so loud outside. What’s more, it was a large open area crowded with young people with trendy, homemade mods; fake third eyes; heart-shaped lips and foreheads and cheeks with the glowing red circled A. Most wore probes of some type. There were many doors on one side and in the wall facing the door. She assumed they opened to sleeping units.
How and why did so many people—there must have been fifty or so—stay so quiet? It seemed unlikely they had the money to condition the place. But who knew?
“They let her sleep past her stop,” Gen announced to the group, “and she has no preference.”
***
Tina was on stage giving it all she had, as usual. It was only when she stopped singing that she noticed sweat was stinging her eyes. She wiped them for relief and in the hopes that she was not seeing what she thought she saw. The level of noise in the place dropped when she went silent. She could almost hear the noise of the scuffle she saw off to her right where other audience members were clearing away. Two people were trying to subdue a third person who had steel blue skin.
Where was security? In a moment there would be chaos. Nat jumped from the stage with his guitar. The crowd noise was up again. Those who hadn’t yet noticed the fight closed in around Nat, thinking he’d come to be with them. They stepped back when he swung the instrument off his shoulder and held the neck with both hands like a bat.
The steel blue creature turned just in time to take the blow from the instrument full in the face. It staggered but seemed like it would recover. Nat struck again and it fell.
***
There had been violence now at three shows in a row. Horrific wounds were sold to low-end screeners. Nat and Tina and other Revue members had nightmares full of screaming, bloodied fans. Still, the dismissive bluster of some in the Revue who had returned to society was now replaced with an even more cynical resolve.
Nat was the exception. Even the ugliness of prison had not hardened him to where he could rest with pleas for mercy from innocent fans. It spun in his head day and night. It distracted him during rehearsal. He’d almost swallowed a mod offered by one of the singers. He’d confronted her earlier because he thought she was an addict. He only refused the offer when he noticed the sexual glint in the woman’s expression and realized he would be accepting more than the drug.
He had become more rigidly monogamous and regimented as the tour had become more successful. He was always practicing or recording. The constant and detailed scheduling felt somehow like the opposite of prison, even as something about having been in prison drove him to nail down as much time as possible. The free moments he had, he spent with Tina. It was the only time he was not focused on a current or future task. Even so, when he was not with her, he kept planning to ask her not to dance so provocatively on stage. It seemed wrong in public, somehow.
After a minor surge because of the publicity, show attendance dropped because of the violence. The sparser crowds included more people with head and neck mods. Nat thought he recognized a few people from LJ’s.
The Revue’s meetings had become subdued. Tina didn’t have to make the usual repeated calls to order. No one was discussing the crowd reaction to a particular song or new improvised section. The direct security were particularly low key, having been probed into depression. So
meone or something at the shows was digging deep enough into the security folks to make them all but immobile when the attacks were happening. A few had quit. No one had so much as applied to be added to the force, even with increased pay.
The Security that had stayed on were always looking to prove themselves. This only heightened tension in the Revue. They scared people during one meeting when the alarms sounded. One even forgot the rule about weapons at meetings and nearly brandished hers when the alarm voice noted two figures the system had never scanned approaching the east door. She put her weapon away when the Girl and a quite forlorn Gen came to the screen. They hugged for what seemed like forever. After that, the Girl looked sad. Everyone watching felt they were watching a final farewell.
***
The Girl was torn. On the one hand, she had set out to join Nat and Tina’s Revue and she’d finally made it to the door. The people in the house with Gen had not been easy to live with. Still, the place fascinated her.
It was there she had learned how sound was encrypted at the weapons factory to pass sensitive data from one monitored printer to the next to create the most sophisticated weapons, hot borders, and robot defense grids. Very few outside of the house or the plant Gen infiltrated suspected anything as primitive as sound could, or would, be used to create such complex real and virtual weapons.
The Official Report on Human Activity Page 15