by E. R. Jess
Alessa demanded that the universe help Kagan live. She didn't care what the cost was.
The moon was being eclipsed partially by Ilios, the space station's cut-out shape leaving a sharp shadow. Eight looped a chain through holes in the door of an industrial plastic box keeping Makz prisoner. Makz settled in to a corner of the box and kept quiet. He was roiling in pain and out of energy. He fell into an uneasy sleep.
Eight sighed, letting out a breath he'd been holding for a while. He looked up at the moon and its artificial companion in the sky. He lingered for a while, avoiding what he dreaded, checking on Kagan. He didn't foresee anything other than bad news, so Eight decided to leave Sam alone to her work. He then went to do some work of his own.
Eight surreptitiously surveyed the people that had gathered around Kagan and the pacifists. Whether they were there to help, to guard or to well-wish, Eight was suspicious of all of them. He began with the rusters toting guns. Several men had taken it upon themselves to walk the perimeter of Kagan's ramshackle hospital room as sentries. Eight went by some and delved quickly, looking for an overview of their past, and some others he started superficial conversations with to get into their heads more fully. He found nothing out of the ordinary. Lost souls. Sad and desperate people. Itchy trigger fingers and empty stomachs.
Eight moved on to the less militant rusters, at least from outward appearance and demeanor. Instead of finding a trail to an assassin or a guilty party, Eight found deep woe. Some knew of Kagan from his revolutionary days during the purge. Others felt sympathy for a man of peace being gunned down. It was a bellwether moment for many. The relative fearlessness that many had felt had dissolved. They began to feel unsafe and anxious. The ruins of the Free City were no one's home.
Eight stumbled upon a partial memory in an old woman's mind. She saw a shadowy figure firing a gun from the rafters of the meeting place. The woman had caught a glimpse of the would-be assassin and didn't know it; it was something she saw out of the corner of her eye, but didn't turn her head in time to see fully. Eight could see a little past her peripheral vision, he could see the recorded memory with a little more clarity than it's owner. She had come a long way to hear Kagan speak after all those years since the purge. Eight was more and more surprised at Kagan's influence in the Free City.
The woman's memory was a fragile vision. A fun house mirror image, all fog and blurry lights. But there was a killer in there. Eight carried her memory with him and locked it up, hoping it would later help him. That dream-like photo in his mind would occupy his thoughts for a long time.
Eight and Jenna met again beneath the overpass. Eight, remaining wary, kept his distance. Jenna's arms were folded in to keep her warm.
“You're the mind guy?” Jenna began.
Eight tilted his head. “Yes, I guess so,” he answered.
Jenna shivered. “I didn't know what Makz was. Well I did, but I didn't know what he was up to,” She said.
“I know,” Eight said, his voice absent its usual calming tone, “Maybe I did my mind guy thing on you.”
“So you get what happened?” Jenna asked, relieved.
Eight looked over to Makz's cage. “You knew what he was, and you expected him to stop any trouble us dangerous cultists might put up.”
“Something like that.”
“But you also thought that maybe Alessa would want to collect. Want to collect on her goods. What if she needed a kidney or heart? You would have traveled this way for your own death,” Eight said with no little vehemence.
Jenna sighed sharply and argued in a whisper, “You can't do that, you can't root around in people's heads for stray anxieties and turn them back on people like tangible evidence. You can't go mucking around in people's heads without their permission.”
“As you do?” Eight responded quickly. “You wires think peoples implants make them open source and free to invade.”
Jenna folded her arms tighter. “Yes, I can see that. What we do is not much different, both are violent. Something that is against your ethos.”
Eight smiled sarcastically, “Moral debate with the hacker that has killed people by destroying their implants. Sure, you didn't put a gun to their head, but you knew you were condemning them to death.”
“We all have a past,” Jenna said simply.
Eight nodded, “Yeah, we do. And here we all are. This is where our memories deposited us, at the blurry edge. We're in the path of a new Manifest Destiny. Whether it's some warlord or UPC, we're in the way,” Eight went through his pockets and pulled out a single bullet, “I used to be a gun runner, back before I found Alessa. I never killed, but my guns certainly did. I read the memories of my clients to keep me from falling victim to my own merchandise. And I never got in any real trouble before the purge. Then, when the rioting burned the Free City up, this young woman, who was about your age now, nursed me back to health when I was beaten by a UPC friendly militia.”
Jenna extended her hand, “Then we'll agree to agree.”
Eight hesitated, then shook her hand with a light smile. “And now you want to reconcile with your former partner,” Eight said, motioning to Makz's hotbox.
Jenna's lip curled into a smile, “Not fair, mind guy.”
“Just a guess,” he said, letting go of Jenna's hand and leaving.
Jenna watched him leave and typed a few commands into her handheld. Her smile dropped when Eight was out of sight.
Dernen was reading from a tattered book. He sat on a guardrail overlooking the pacifists latest home beneath a maze of overpasses. He pulled the book close, trying to make out the words in the moonlight. He gave up after his eyes began burning. Eight climbed up the bridge and joined him. They sat and viewed the skyline for a while, watching the cool glow of the City-State off to the east, the spattering of lights throughout the darkened landscape.
Eight pat Dernen on his shoulder. Dernen nodded at the gesture. Eight spoke up, “We're in the woods, aren't we?”
Dernen grimaced. “Yes. This is something we will have a hard time living with.”
“We can't stay here for long. I'm afraid to say that if Kagan doesn't pass soon, then we have to move him,” Eight said, long-faced.
“We can try to build a cart to carry him, one that will relieve the stresses of the road,” Dernen mused.
Eight replied, “I'll start scavenging for parts in the morning. If we had Vorn's help we could build a fleet of them. Either way, no ride would be easy enough for Sam's liking.”
“In the morning we should all look at our options. It's only a matter of time before hell rains down,” Dernen said.
Eight rested his hand on his face. He was too tired to sleep, and dozens of other people's memories were rattling around in his head. “Still not sure what to do about the rusters that have gathered around us. Or how to deal with Makz.”
“The Free City people will be here as long as there is news. Once we tell them something, they will leave one by one. The armed rusters won't be an immediate problem; when we dismiss them, they will go. They will follow us at a distance, acting as guardian angels. Whether we approve or not,” Dernen said as he tapped his book, “Still easier is the decision of what to do with Makz. We let him go. He did nothing wrong. And if he tries anything, there are plenty of people here to stop him.”
Eight balked, “You don't understand, that man is an incredibly violent killer. If you could just see what he has done.”
“If you could read anyone else's memory as well as you could read his, I think you'd be just as fearful. The memories of everyone here are filled with worse, I assure you,” Dernen said forcefully.
“Not like this man,” Eight said firmly. He sighed and said, “I was just talking about this with Alessa's clone down there. The differences between what we were and are. In my experience, they are hard to separate.”
Dernen patted Eight's shoulder in return. “He's not to be trusted, to be sure, but I believe you are doing us a disservice by holding him prisoner. Kagan would not
have done so. Makz is not Revan Kore. He is not the man you fear.”
Eight remained quiet. They watched the sky, watched a net of contrails cross each other over the heart of the City-State, watched the blinking and flashing aircraft and spacecraft flitter about the night. They looked into the dim stars.
Dernen said, “But if we do release him, the rusters might want to take their anger out on him. What he needs is our protection. That will be the real test.”
Eight rubbed the six-day beard that had grown on his face. “I was afraid you'd say that.”
“We have much to decide tomorrow. And if Kagan survives another night, we will be joyous. Either way, Alessa will need to prepare herself for a greater responsibility,” Dernen said, his voice tired.
“Do you think she'll be able to handle it? Not the leadership, Kagan,” Eight asked.
“No,” Dernen replied, “But we will help her through.”
Makz woke suddenly when Jenna approached. She turned his implant on, shunting some newly refreshed pain-relieving chemicals to his body. He settled into a corner of his box a little more comfortable than before.
“Better?” Jenna asked as she peered at him through the box's openings.
Makz grumbled then said, “A little, could use more.”
Jenna cut off the pain relief and replaced it with the opposite. A splitting headache topped the rest of the pain throughout his body. Makz clenched his fists to endure it.
Jenna asked, “So, what did you think would happen once you got to Kagan?”
Makz couldn't answer.
“You've been scratching names off of the Redlist to, what, absolve yourself?” Jenna prodded, releasing him from his headache.
Makz panted and spat. “UCM had a good reason to go after Kagan, and I was just following in their footsteps. But that didn't happen. I didn't shoot him. Anyway, you hired me to help you track down your sister and deal with her kidnappers. Now that you find the situation isn't as you thought, I'm the bad guy again.”
Jenna sat on a chunk of concrete. “There are a few things you forgot to mention. Like the people chasing us through the tunnel. I read their tracking tags, they were The Elder's men. Is there anyone not gunning for you?”
Makz laughed, “Little girl, you picked me. What did you expect? I'm not a nice person.”
“Neither am I, Makz,” She said as she increased his pain levels via her handheld, “I'm writing a new program for you.”
Makz tried to keep himself from yelling out. He asked, “More pain?”
Jenna leaned over to his cage, closed one eye, and looked at Makz. “No, something for your memory. That man who can read you like a book, he can't read me half as well as he thinks. I fed him some manufactured memories. I'm disciplined. I've been hacking through the Outernet for a long time, my mind is fairly well protected from invasion. Yours isn't. But I can help with that. This conversation, for example, I would prefer that it disappear.”
“Why?” Makz asked, quite wary.
Jenna tapped away on her handheld and inserted a cable into her data port. “Because you're still in my employ, and we're not done yet.”
Twin Paradox
The Nanotextiles cerebral modem's slogan was Just Think NANOTEXTILES. The slogan was printed eleven feet tall on a wall in front of Revan Kore, Nanotextiles' new industry analyst. Revan pored over three holographic displays of figures; production and material costs, payroll balances, research and development investments. They were in stiff competition with Neonman, whose modems were faster, but less stable. Close behind was Standard Technologies. Their name was synonymous with everything Outernet. It was a cutthroat world, and the new responsibility was difficult. Revan was at first overwhelmed. He had always considered himself a good worker, or at least he thought he used to be. He knew that he had been reprogrammed, that he had either been through rehab for a crime or his mind was adjusted to weed out seditious thought. He didn't remember anything about his former life, but he knew he was a dedicated employee, that whatever he did, he believed in the value of labor. His hands and mind were valuable commodities. Revan looked out of a window across from his cubicle, the ruins of the derelict parts of the Free City looked like a crooked forest spilling out over the Appalachians. From his vantage, he could tell the Earth was taking the city back. Its bricks and mortar would hold the next generations of trees. Revan got lost looking out into the morning, the shadow of his new workplace, the Nanotextiles tower, reached the series of walls that held the City-State together.
He felt the eyes and cameras of his supervisors bearing down. He worked until his window turned bright amber from the setting sun. Acres of numbers. Thousands of directories. He categorized and filed and ran statistical analyses. His head pounded like a drum and he slumped against the wall of the elevator. No one spoke to him. Just another conformed worker like them. Just think. The words rattled around his head. He said them to himself when the elevator emptied. He was thinking of getting the cerebral modem. He could go anywhere in his mind, he could access vast amounts of data with a thought. It would make him a better worker. It would make him important.
The tram was crowded with workers being shuttled from the financial sectors to the various living enclaves. Revan lived at the end of the line, a tenement low-rise dipping down into the negative forty-eighth level. Revan looked into his reflection, his silvery-white counterpart in the tram window. And someone looked back, or so his imagination told him. There was his opposite, his nemesis, sharing his visage and breathing his air. Revan shook off the feeling. He alone got off of the automated tram. And the doors slid shut and the tram car whisked itself away soundlessly. Revan stood in the station, lost for a moment. He referred to his handheld, displaying a map. He got his bearings and found an elevator to his level.
What was left of the twilight glow was swallowed by the city. He was deep underground, surrounded by chasms of steel and glass, layers of magnetic highways, and a million points of light from a million windows. Revan stood as upright as he could, completely exhausted and bearing a thousand pounds of stress on his shoulders. Something pressing was left undone. He had much work to do, but no task. Whoever he was before was haunting him like a ghost. His old spirit was clinging to his bones like tattered sails on a ghost ship. Revan found his apartment door and entered like a stranger.
He walked to the center of his two-room flat and settled into a chair. He loosened his tie and dropped his handheld to the stone floor carefully. Instead of windows, there was a pane of glass with a thin waterfall behind it. Revan watched the water slip down the glass for the remainder of the night. It wasn't home yet, but he was confident that it would be. Revan had faith in UPC, that the society in which he enjoyed safety and security was a noble one, and soon enough he would settle into his new life. Revan tried his hardest to remain incurious about his former life. That man was dead. Whomever he was, he didn't have what it took to be a good citizen. Maybe he was gluttonous; he may have indulged in women and drugs. The old Revan could have been an envious man, a man who looked into the towers of industry and hated his masters. Maybe the Revan that was no more didn't care for UPC at all. He might have thumbed his nose at the perfect order that took lifetimes to build, the order that kept him secure and happy in a time of great woe. Whoever that man was, Revan didn't want to become him again. He spent the night perched in his chair, letting the waterfall swim in and out of his dreams. His dreams were slippery things, watery visions and next-door-neighbor sounds, nothing tangible, nothing he could grab onto and hold as he began another day at the office.
So he watched the wasteland. Out there was a sea of rust and soot. Broken bone buildings. Mountains of shattered towns. From his view in the Nanotextiles building, he could see a river snaking through the ruins, a crystal vein whose origin and ending were a mystery. Revan could feel the concrete sand under his fingernails. He could smell the smoke.
The elevator rocked suddenly and he found himself unsure if he was going to, or coming from, work. Up felt
like down. And the dizziness was so ever present that he wasn't sure what stable felt like. Revan Kore finished his first week at his new position and an android handed him a piece of e-paper. It was his first progress report. Average across the board. Revan squinted at the figures. He worked as hard as he could and found himself scoring average. He didn't think he could maintain the pace he was keeping, but the report contained instructions to increase his productivity, and to keep his focus on his displays, not the window. Revan didn't fret. He knew that he was a dedicated worker, an important worker. And if all else failed, if he failed, then he trusted that UPC would know what to do. He would be reeducated and the whole process would start over. Revan ate by his waterfall, thinking to himself about how to prosper at work. He knew that it would only take time and faith. Revan Kore was being reinvented before his eyes, and he looked out the tram car windows into the bright life of the City-State and swelled with pride at the great society he was a part of.
0
The old tram tunnel came to life. Spidery shattered glass panes mended themselves. Rubble fell back into the walls, sealing neatly. The lights sparked back on, the escalators spun again. Morgan stood in the middle of the station. Through a viewfinder, the tram station of the past as recreated on the Outernet was superimposed over his vision. Colonel Morgan fast-forwarded the tunnel's history back to his own time. At his feet was a body.