by Tara Basi
Alice’s stocky silhouette was framed by the kitchen doorway, her flabby arms tightly folded under heavy breasts. She was draped in a dark apron streaked with flour; her long, dark hair was tucked up inside a paper cook’s hat. Alice couldn’t seem to decide if she should be angry or glad to see her mother; her thin-lipped mouth was undulating nervously like a slug in a frying pan.
Seeing Alice, Zip remembered her daughter had been at the psychiatric hospital, by her bedside, when she’d woken up. Alice hadn’t abandoned her completely.
“How’s Duncan?” Zip asked.
Alice’s hunched shoulders dropped. “Duncan’s gone.”
“I never liked Duncan,” Zip offered.
Alice stiffened. “I don’t care what you think of Duncan. You don’t know anything about him; you’re never around enough.”
Zip flinched and tried another tack. “Still baking?”
Some of the tension went out of Alice. “The café’s doing well.”
“Your friend, the senior administrator, plans to open a café, a real one. Maybe you two should get together.” Mother Zip instantly knew Bitch Zip should have kept her mouth shut.
“The senior administrator’s not my friend. His real café would be for Pilgrims. Not my favourite people.”
Pleasantries dispensed, Zip decided she might as well get this over with. “What’s your problem? Is it this body?”
“Looking younger than your granddaughter and dressing like that doesn’t help.”
Zip was annoyed. She’d tried; she was wearing a tasteful holographic dress, sensible black shoes, and her tail was hidden. “I was ill, remember? There wasn’t much choice when it came to donor bodies. It was this or nothing.”
Alice tightened her cross-armed grip, draining the blood from her clenched fists. “You weren’t ill. You cut your own throat. So yes, I get it. A bit of a coincidence, though, that a body like that was available. Sure you didn’t arrange it?”
Zip had no memory of that week’s events: nothing about her suicide attempt or any recollection of its immediate aftermath, not even a Recording. A sharp splinter of something still lingered from those missing days. It wasn’t an image or a voice, only a feeling of utter dread and a horrible conviction that she’d done something terrible, even by Zara’s standards. A Recording blank shouldn’t be possible, not without a Record of her deactivating the system, but when she recovered from the transplant, she hadn’t cared about that final week. Only a complete Reset and deletion of her Record made sense. Zip wanted Zara’s violent past erased. Afterwards, it felt good not to be able to recall everything in every terrible detail. It was easier to tell people she’d become ill, since she couldn’t remember, and it had happened to someone else, to Zara, not her.
“This body was luck, or fate. I didn’t get to choose. Is it the Reset that bothers you?”
“You wiped out a lot of good with the bad, but you had a lot of bad that needed wiping out.”
“Just spit it out, Alice. Is it your dad?”
Alice’s anger exploded. “You killing Dad after the ultra-Pilgrimists got to him was expected, what he would have wanted. I got over that a long time ago. Or I had, until you converted. The doctor told me you’re for real. How could you choose to be a Pilgrim?”
Zip wasn’t surprised by Alice’s angry incomprehension. Anything else would have been so much easier to explain. “It’s complicated. I don’t really understand myself.”
“My whole life you told me the Orb is just a weird alien ball, that the Church is evil and Pilgrims are brainwashed morons or Pilgrimists thugs. We had to fight them all to keep London safe. The last refuge of the Ungodly free. You owe me an explanation.”
Looking up at the ceiling, Zip wondered if she should leave now. Instead, she gave her daughter a well-rehearsed answer. “I’ve been given another perspective. All Pilgrims aren’t the same. Every Pilgrim and their beliefs are meant to be unique and individual. I hadn’t understood that subtlety of the Revelation before. You know I can’t discuss my personal Revelation, but I am a Pilgrim, and I still believe that the Orb is an inscrutable alien artefact, not a god. The Church is corrupt and exploits Pilgrims.”
Alice turned away as she began speaking. “You’re talking crap. The next war’s coming – Ungodly on one side, Pilgrims, the crazy Pilgrimists and their Church on the other.” As Alice disappeared inside the kitchen, she was still berating her mother. “Where will you be standing? What happened to my fighting mum? Don’t you care about your granddaughters? Or do you plan to save us all through conversion?”
Zip wanted to leave. Reluctantly, she followed her daughter into the kitchen. Alice was viciously kneading a large lump of dough on the kitchen table, sending little white clouds of flour billowing into the air. For the first time, Zip noticed the wonderful aromas coming from the large bread oven and the cooling loaves and pastries sitting on a counter under a window, looking out over the painted concrete garden.
Alice looked up at her mother. “Do something useful if you’re staying: feed some bread into the taster.”
There was nothing else remotely modern in the kitchen, which made the microwave-sized machine sitting alone in one corner on a small table stand out.
Zip picked up a lovely, round, still-warm loaf with a wonderful dark brown crust, just begging to be torn open to reveal the large air pockets of whiteness inside and release the full aroma of the bread. It had been years since she’d last helped Alice with the tasting. She still remembered how it all worked. Zip scanned the barcode etched in the crust into the machine, which beeped in recognition, then opened the door and placed the loaf on a steel plate inside as though it were a sacrifice to an AI god. As Zip closed the door, the machine trembled and buzzed in appreciation of the offering and then burped a beep before opening its door for more. Zip removed the metal plate where the bread had been, replaced by a pile of ash. She emptied the contents into a waiting bin. The loaf had died and been reborn in every detail in Alice’s VR café, ready to be sliced, toasted, fried, jammed, cheesed or anything else that you could do with the real thing, and it would taste the same but without the calories. It was a shame she couldn’t eat Alice’s loaf and virtualise it.
Alice none-too-gently elbowed Zip to one side and fed the taster with a tart she’d taken from the oven. Zip stared at the taster as it consumed her daughter’s savoury flan. Alice returned to her dough-bashing duties.
Without looking at Alice, Zip tried to explain who she was now. “All the time I’m afraid. It’s hard getting out of bed, terrible being in the open. I get … panic attacks. Sometimes I just curl up and freeze. I’m not a Special anymore. I’m done fighting.”
The sound of Alice pounding the dough abruptly stopped. Zip turned to face her daughter, who was staring at her as though she were a stranger. Alice wiped her hands on her apron as she walked towards Zip until the two women were almost nose to nose. Alice tapped Zip’s forehead. “Are you really still in there or is this all Pip now?”
Zip slapped Alice’s hand away. Her daughter sighed and turned back to her dough, punched it hard a few times before picking it up and throwing it across the room, only narrowly missing Zip.
“Last year, we barely managed to save Jane from the Pilgrimists, and now her sister’s curious about her grandmother’s glorious transformation.”
Zip didn’t know how to respond. She had no idea. “You should have told me. I’ll talk to them, set them straight.”
“Listen to yourself. You’re not my mum anymore, not their grandmother. Go be a gutless pretty-girl Pilgrim somewhere else.”
“Something wrong?” The voice came from behind Zip, and she recognised it immediately. It was Jane. She turned, a smile already half formed. Her older granddaughter, who was the same body age as Zip, was coming out of the cellar door carrying a sack of flour over her shoulder. Her jumpsuit and face were streaked with the tracks of the day’s baking. Jane’s bright hair was tied up in a messy bun, golden threads escaping in all directions.
“I heard shouting,” Jane said as she squeezed past Zip and dropped the flour sack on the floor beside the table.
“Everything’s fine,” her mother answered, staring at the floor, seemingly unable to look at Zip.
For a moment, Zip forgot the ugly conversation with her daughter and stared at Jane, her smile broadening. It had been too long.
“Sorry, who are you? Do I know you?” Jane asked.
The words wiped away her smile. The young woman stared at her suspiciously, her brow furrowed. Zip wanted to hug her and tell Jane everything.
Alice spoke up. “She’s nobody, and she’s leaving.”
It felt like Alice had stuck a knife between Zip’s shoulder blades and killed her. Jane shrugged and slid past Zip into the kitchen. Jane didn’t look back. Alice had turned away as well.
Zip managed to get out of the house before her eyes overflowed. She bowed her head and walked quickly away, heading nowhere. Tears tumbled over her cheekbones and pooled on her jawline before being shaken loose by her jarring stride to splash on the concrete. After a few moments of furious, tearful walking, Zip stopped and looked up, wondering where she was going. The nearby north bank of the shallow river was dotted with empty benches. She headed for the closest and slumped down. With her thoughts elsewhere, the nostril-stinging stench of chlorine rising off the still ribbon of water went unnoticed. Her eyes were locked on the shiny tips of her real leather shoes being splattered with tears.
Zip was a lonely heretic Pilgrim, unloved by Church and Ungodly alike. Alice was right: the war had always been coming, just as the AI in the catacombs had predicted. Someday soon, the Church would unleash total war against Orb Industries and seize the Cuboid and the Orb for itself. A few of London’s Ungodly, like Senior Administrator Bremer, might survive.
Who would she fight for then? Pilgrims? The atheist Ungodly? Her granddaughters? Herself? Could she even fight anymore? Fighting for Orb Industries in the cold war with the Church hadn’t achieved much. What would be different now?
Lifting her head, Zip flopped backwards against the bench and stared up at the underside of Pimlico-Ten. Perfect, little, randomly generated, fluffy, white holographic-clouds scurried across the painted sky, though there wasn’t a breath of wind. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and considered her choices. Zip leaned forward and stared out across the artificial river that perfectly mirrored the artificial sky. She could ignore what was coming and enjoy her new youth while she could. Better medication might dampen the panic attacks. She’d given enough, done enough. For the last two years, she’d lived a VR fantasy life of clubs, recreational drugs and wild sex. Why change now?
Peter’s case had upended a lot of things. She couldn’t go back to being a poor copy of Pip filled with the worst parts of Zara and live for nothing but living. Before she became ill, cut her own throat, she scared the people she didn’t like; she wasn’t terrified all the time, just some of the time. No one messed with Zara, the ex-Special working for Orb Security. Giving it all up hadn’t stopped the nightmares, and the panic attacks had got worse.
Something about Peter, or Kiki, or both, scared the Church, and they weren’t easily scared. If she could expose the Church’s corruption or prove the Orb wasn’t god, the world’s Pilgrims might desert the Church and go find their own way. But if there was even a remote possibility she could succeed, then the Church would do anything to stop her. If she wasn’t going to quit on Peter, she had to be ready to fight back.
And Zip wasn’t about to give up on her grandchildren.
Zip searched for a lift that would get her close to Sediment Town. She was going to call in an old favour.
Chapter Eight – Creep
The little two-carriage train pulled out of the Orb Industries’ Archway barracks and headed due north. The glassy, grey apartment blocks of the Archway and the low-rise concrete garrison were quickly left behind as the engine picked up speed. The rattling train trundled on through the Greenbelt, the intermittent patchwork of greenery encircling built-up London. It was a necklace of precious emeralds set in a sea of desolate gold: the Clear and Safe.
The short train was carrying two sets of passengers: visiting Pilgrims heading back home and a pair of shiny stowaways, clinging to the underside of the rattling train.
Quattro, and her sisters’ quantum echoes, loved the experience of flying over the raised tracks, twenty metres above the ground. It reminded her of Kiki’s childhood, the excitement of the unknown without fear, as if the view below was merely a Victorian flicker show with the sleepers performing the role of the Zoetrope.
In-between the patches of green and beyond, all the way to the Great Wall of London, was a six-kilometre-wide, sterilised expanse of nothing but carefully maintained, fine, blond sand. Meticulous drones patrolling overhead and their counterparts under the sand kept the virgin surface Clear and Safe. They destroyed anything that disturbed the smooth perfection, usually unwelcome visitors lacking the proper permits. Quattro imagined the little metal termites tutting when they came for the debris, annoyed about having to clear up the mess. If she fell onto the sand, they’d come for her.
Onward the engine chugged, across the desert, on its elevated track, towards the Walthamstow Cross passageway and through the Great Wall of London. The wall was a monumental creation. It followed the path of the old M25 orbital motorway, all 188 kilometres, and lovingly embraced London. It was said to be keeping back the tide of irradiated filth that lived on the other side of the wall and those who couldn’t afford or wouldn’t qualify for a visitor’s permit. The barrier was as wide as the old M25 and went straight up for a couple of kilometres and straight down for just as far.
Having a body had transformed her external world, but the inside of her head was still a cabal of competing voices, just as it had been in the VR cellar. The old Ks from Peter’s earlier experiments had been part of her since she’d been born. Peter didn’t believe her. Déjà vu, he’d called it. A glitch in the wiring. It was definitely a glitch, either in her quantum brain or Peter’s technology. K1, K2 and K3, his first attempts to resurrect Kiki from her Recording while she was still alive, somehow clung to life. They had survived his reset. Damaged for sure, but still in here with her, sharing her consciousness, along with someone or something else that Quattro called the Whisperer.
Or maybe Peter was right. Maybe she was a late-stage schizophrenic, spiralling into madness. Whatever the ghosts were, now she had a body and was getting better, she wished they’d all quietly fade away and leave her alone in her own head. Yet something told her that the Whisperer wasn’t leaving until Zip found what she was looking for.
Her excitable spirit sisters were in full flow. K1 couldn’t stop giggling. K2 kept crying, “Faster! Faster!” K3 intermittently worried that Mathew was going to rape and kill them all, despite Quattro pointing out that he had no genitals and neither did she. Mostly, K3 contemplated suicide and the difficulties of achieving that objective while Quattro selfishly clung to life.
A little further along the underside of the train, Mathew was silent and still as steel, as though he were some elaborate, shiny train part. He hadn’t said much since he’d led Quattro down the rabbit hole and out of Peter’s cellar in her lovely new body.
The unyielding strength in her arms and hands felt amazing; there was no lactic build up. She could hold this position, clinging to the bottom of the train, until the sun went out.
At first, Quattro hadn’t understood what she had become, imagining only that her human VR body had become real, but it was so much more. If she dared, she could lower herself to the tracks, stop the little train dead, lift it over her head and throw it through the air, so far that the image made her gasp. And there was something else. The body and Quattro seemed made for each other, as though they were twins separated at birth who always knew that something was absent. Now she felt complete and powerful.
Mathew had warned her about the initial God-mode euphoria. There were weapons, man
y weapons – in the skies, under their feet and in the hands of humans – that could kill them instantly. Even with all their power, they had to be careful.
The security of the wall was mainly outward facing, which meant that anyone could leave. Anyone human. Any detected AI was instantly obliterated in whatever direction it happened to be travelling.
As the train slowed on its approach to Walthamstow Cross, Mathew dropped onto the tracks, rolled between the wheels and crouched down. Quattro laughed; they all did, even K3. For a human, it would be an impossible feat: the split-second timing required, the speed of movement. Through her new eyes, the train was a snail. Being run over by its wheels would require more effort than avoiding them. Even if it did run her over, the train would come off worse. Her sisters all whooped as she dropped and rolled to come up beside Mathew.
Mathew didn’t so much explain as silently data-smash her. Her skin was pixelated; her body could deform. How wonderful, but what did it mean? Mathew demonstrated as he morphed into an anonymous, naked Pilgrim: a stooped old man with white hair. Who should she be? K3 protested that there was only one possible choice, and she should be careful. Old-man Mathew had morphed himself some wrinkly genitals.
Quattro, wearing Kiki’s image, and Mathew, climbed up onto the platform and joined an excited group of fellow travellers disembarking from the train. The dozen or so Pilgrims formed an orderly line and headed along the platform towards the towering mass of the Wall. It disappeared above the rain-threatening clouds and stretched from horizon to horizon. The wall was as smooth as glass and black as tar. The Pilgrims were still euphoric from their Orb encounter, boisterously comparing their experiences, anxious to get home and somehow try and convey what they’d seen.
The platform led to a narrow tunnel cut into the Wall. One by one, the Pilgrims passed through a heavy-duty, floor-to-ceiling turnstile at the entrance: the point of no return. Far ahead, a spot of daylight promised an end to the claustrophobic space. Halfway along the tunnel, the Pilgrims clicked through another thick, barred turnstile. Before the final barrier and access to the daylight beyond, the tunnel opened out into a larger space lined with metal cabinets.