by A A Woods
“You have one more chance.”
Khali’s laugh is glorious and throaty like the ringing of rusted bells. It echoes over the grinding mechanisms.
Then she’s back, and this time it’s different. She’s moving faster than I can keep track of. A ghost in the system. A wraith behind the machines. She flits from one to the other and I can’t find her, can’t stop her.
Quick learner.
I want to be irritated, but all I can think is how promising she is.
She’s better than Damien.
Better than Kitzima.
That key’s as good as ours.
For a heartbeat, she settles into the crane closest to the marked car, still trundling along the belt on its way to completion. She manages to get the crane beneath the vehicle before I catch her. I swat at the crane’s arm. But she’s already shifted, plunged into the huge fingers that lift the finished cars off the track. They curl around the target, preparing to hold its weight.
I drop the car on her without warning.
There’s a crunch, but the fingers hold.
The marked car shifts, the arm cocking like a pitcher about to throw.
I fly into the myriad of arms along the belt, forming a web in the air, ready to stop the trajectory. My held breath is a burning ember behind my sternum, flaring with the beat of my heart.
But the arm doesn’t move.
I release the breath and shift my attention to the manager’s station and the two girls standing behind it.
One of them is short, starved-looking, bangs cutting a harsh line across her forehead, face settled into its usual scowl. Black jacket, black shirt, black hair, black jeans. My mind, as usual, snags on myself, on the strange experience of seeing my own body from the outside.
It’s something I’ll never quite get used to.
And then I look at Khali.
Her knuckles are white and her face is blanched and her beautiful eyes are squeezed shut. The bright colors of her outfit—forest green pants, bright purple top, platform pumps studded with iridescent gems—can’t hide the tension in her shoulders or the tremors of pain running up and down her arms.
I pull out of the factory and into my own body. One hand reaches down and yanks out my IRIS, a pang of self-pity ringing through me as my world goes dark once more. Hope curdles in my chest.
With my free hand, I rest tentative fingers on her vibrating arm. “Khali?”
“It’ll pass,” she says in a voice like a violin string. “Must have pushed it too far.”
I want to apologize, but that strays too close to sympathy, too close to pity. So I draw back, lean against the control console, and fold my arms. A thought crosses my mind, selfish and abominable but sticky. It catches on my jagged edges, on the pieces of me that once cared about other people and broke a long time ago.
What if this happens when we’re dueling for the key?
I shove the traitorous thought away, clearing my throat. “You were doing well.”
Khali snorts. “You’re a fucking ninja with that thing. I didn’t stand a chance.”
“You were still doing well.”
I feel a shift. Her breath comes in a sigh and I wonder if it’s over. Whatever it was.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Peachy.”
I flinch, for a moment transported back to Zhu and our apartment and our stupid code-words from a more innocent time.
“We don’t have to do this,” I say to distract myself.
“Plug that nonsense. I have no intention of letting this thing beat me.”
“But you don’t have to risk more damage.”
Khali’s laugh rings out again, strangely resonant against the fading hum of machines as they power down like children being put to bed.
“Life is damage.”
“You’d think someone who’s dying would be more eager to stay alive.”
“On the contrary. What do I care about staying alive? That’s already been shot to hell. No, I want to live.” Khali pushes off the console, her heels clicking as she steps backwards. Away from me. “There’s a huge difference.”
I think of my mother. Of Plastic Mike. Of all the MemHeads scattered in the Tunnels.
“I know.”
Khali takes a deep breath and I hear another rustle of clothes, shifting of fabric. I stay still, leaning against the console, hands tucked close to my sides, thinking about the recorder on her cable and how much I might learn when I check it tonight. How much things will change.
“So. What’s your story?” Khali says at last.
“My story?”
“How did you become such an IRIS guru?”
“I practiced.”
“Oh no,” Khali says, her voice sharp and coy. “No one gets that good with practice.”
“Skilled players do.”
Khali’s laugh comes again and its addictive, infectious. There’s a lightness in her, a charismatic warmth that reminds me of Zhu. Practiced, cultured. I wonder how much experience she’s had at this kind of verbal jousting, prying secrets out of unwilling minds.
I need to tread carefully.
“What about you?” I say. “What made you become a Gamer?”
“The usual,” Khali says, clicking around the edge of the console. “Only child. Shitty family. Too many expectations and not enough life left to care.”
“Parents?”
“Parent,” she corrects. “My dad’s… not in the picture.”
I swallow to clear my throat. “And your mom?”
Khali’s breath comes out sharp and hard. “Kitzima’s got nothing on her.”
I’m silent, listening to Khali as she moves around, her arms sliding along the railing of the manager stand. I can feel the vibration of them through the metal, her shirt rubbing closer.
“I heard about what happened,” she says. “With the Vixens. Sorry about your bike.”
My frown deepens as Khali’s elbow brushes my side, her voice beside me.
“You’re going to give yourself wrinkles if you keep doing that.”
“I’ll sue Kitzima for damages.”
“Let me know how that goes.”
I exhale a half-laugh, thinking about Kitzima, about the way she’d cackled as she tossed the metal rod at me.
“She’s a bitch,” Khali says, as if reading my mind.
“Well, what goes around and all.” I wave one hand, feigning nonchalance. “Are you planning to go back? To the Gaming ring?”
“Oh no, I’m staying clear until that tournament noise blows over.”
My heart clenches but I keep my face schooled and impassive. “You don’t want to be a ProRec champion?”
“I’d rather let the Vixens rip out my cable,” she says lightly. “Besides, it’s all a hoax anyway. No way is ProRec going to endorse gaming, not with their stupid embargo against Yuri Gamen.”
“But only the best Gamers get invites.”
“Well, you’ve already pointed out that I’m not the best Gamer. Guess I’m off the hook.”
My teeth clench and my fists curl, but Khali is sighing, her breath filling the space. I can picture her leaning back, staring at the ceiling as if it’s the sky and she’s outside and we are both somewhere else. Someone else.
Who are you?
“I should go home,” I say, thinking of the recorder. I need more information. I need something to force her hand.
I might be a cheater, but I’ll be damned if I let Kitzima make me a beggar.
“Is that an invitation?”
I scoff and shove off the console, trying to stop the flush creeping into my cheeks. “I’ll meet you here again tomorrow morning. Nine A.M. sharp.”
“What kind of barbarian are you?” she says in a scandalized voice. “I don’t function before eleven.”
My molars grind together, but I can’t make her suspicious. In fact, I can’t make her anything. I have nothing to bargain with.
Yet.
“Fine, eleven then.”
“I’ll check my schedule.”
I don’t respond, turning toward the Tunnels without bothering to glance back. As my boots thud gently over the smooth expanse of concrete between the manager’s stand and the exit, I hear her laugh. Rusty. Raspy. She echoes like a voice from deep beneath the ground, like something from an old horror movie. It’s throaty and mesmerizing and entirely incongruous with her loud outfits and wide lips.
And somehow all the more alluring because of it.
I try not to think about her voice as I step through the door, plug myself in, and make my way back toward the surface. Toward the Chain and my long ride home. But the memory of her is like molasses, clinging to me, sweet and addictive.
Who are you?
But the only answer is the whistling of air through the Tunnels and the churning chaos of my thoughts.
Tora
Thursday, September 20th, 2195
8:36 P.M. EST
I get home to the smell of something burning. My nose twitches as I step inside our apartment, swinging my borrowed PAP over the bread-crumb trail of discarded clothing, scattered boxes, rumpled blankets.
On the stove, smoke curls out beneath a pan lid frosted with condensation.
“Shit!”
I sprint into the kitchen and tear open the pot. A sharp, acrid stink rises in thick columns, saturating the already stale air of our apartment. I turn off the burner and wave my free hand over the pot to clear the smoke, leaning away from the heat even as I bring the PAP closer.
A curdled blackened mass coats the bottom, still smoldering.
“Mom?” I call as I dump the pot in the crowded sink and run water over it, knowing it won’t do any good. It’s beyond ruined. “Mom?”
I step around the kitchen wall, sweep my father’s PAP over the apartment.
She’s there, staring out the window, silhouetted by the throbbing city lights. She looks like a ghost in her threadbare sweatpants and ripped t-shirt, almost translucent against the loud world outside. When she turns toward me, her expression is lost. Frightened and innocent and vulnerable, like something tender left out in the cold. I wonder if all that time spent hiding in her own memories has made this world too brutal to be tolerated.
“Mei?”
I disconnect from my PAP. I can’t bear to see the shifting bones beneath papery skin, the stumbling steps that are even more hesitant than mine.
“You ruined a pot,” I say, shoving my father’s PAP into my jacket. Zhu’s jacket. “I’ll have to get a new one next time I go out.”
“I was trying to make you dinner,” she says in that ethereal voice. “I thought I would make my carbonara.”
“Without any cream or cheese or bacon?”
“Oh. Right.”
I roll my eyes and reach down to pick up an admonishing Pixel, his irritated meow loud and demanding from around my knees.
“Where have you been?”
“Out,” I answer as Pixel settles into my arms. I refuse to pet him, but he purrs anyway.
“Thank you for cleaning up,” she says. And then adds, “Peaches.”
“Don’t call me that.” My voice comes out harder than I intend, but I don’t soften it.
“I was just remembering—” I flinch, but she goes on, barely noticing “— how Zhu used to call you that. He used to say it when you were walking, like a pet name.”
“It wasn’t a pet name.”
“Peaches,” Mom says, tasting the word. “It was so cute.”
I clutch Pixel tighter, wishing I could just turn and leave. This constant reminder of how little Mom noticed me even when Zhu was around feels like an endless memory of being stabbed. My mind drifts back to when we invented the word, that shared moment with Zhu when he crouched down, looked into my dead eyes, saw me for what I am. Met me on my own level and helped me move forward.
He was the only one who ever tried.
I hate the way his memory curls like burnt paper, tainted by the aftermath he left.
“Do you need anything?” I ask, dropping Pixel.
“Arun comes home in an hour. I think I’ll take a nap before he gets here.”
My heart clenches and my stomach roils. I don’t move as she shuffles to the couch, collapses into it with a puff of air, but I feel like I’m running, my blood thundering.
So it begins.
It was bound to happen eventually, but the difference between knowing something’s coming and watching it arrive is the difference between the anticipation and the punch. I feel the pain of it radiate through my sternum, vaguely aware of the chirping noise as Mom plugs back in.
She’s losing her mind.
Or at least she’s losing her hold on it.
When memory-sharing first appeared in the city, spreading like wildfire through its eager citizens, ProRec claimed there were no side-effects. It was perfectly safe. Just diverting entertainment, a way to connect beyond what human beings had ever known. Be a part of something bigger.
The truth has been far more sinister.
It’s the reason ProRec hates MemHeads. The reason the topside population pushes addicts into the Tunnels. No one wants to see the true effects of abusing their IRIS cables. Because living in memory, lingering in the corners of your mind that should have been glanced at, brushed over, lightly touched… it wears down the neurons and synapses. The brain begins to lose its ability to separate real from remembered. How can it? A MemHead, by definition, wants to live in a fabricated world, yearns for the recollections to be true in some way or another.
So their brains make it so.
I’ve been waiting for this, bracing for this. But as my mother slips even further from my grasp, it still leaves me breathless with pain.
Tora
Thursday, September 20th, 2195
8:42 P.M. EST
Back in my room, in the SubNet, I can ignore what’s happening in our living room and sink fully into my hunt for Damien. Pixel kneads the heavy blanket I’ve thrown over my knees and I sift through the massive well of data that my search net dragged in, brushing over Damien’s endless list of memories without even looking. His channel, Soar, and his handful of tuners knot in the mesh of my code, weighing it down, but I’ve seen all those files before.
Strange, I think as I pass the memory he uploaded the night he failed to show up—the night I fought Anubis/Khali—and find no new memory stacked on top. Damien’s devotion to his fans is legend, a mockery even to himself. He would often joke when I came to the Tunnels to practice with him that we had to work around his schedule, that he had to supply new content or else he’d be inundated with angry messages.
For all the months I was monitoring his cable to ensure he wasn’t betraying me to ProRec, I never saw a single such correspondence.
But two days have passed since his last upload and he hasn’t even signed in. No update, no mirror-chat. Nothing.
A chill runs down my spine and the buzz of my panic grows louder.
Throwing aside Soar and all the attached data, I’m left with a pile of outdated memories. Recollections from his childhood, his mother’s doting posts about family outings, his sister’s online political rants. A few compiled “picture-books” by a company in New Jersey with sickly-sweet names like birthday fun and my precious children and I’m the proudest mother in the world. They’re all more than a decade old, little tow-headed Damien smiling between his two larger siblings.
I edge around the personal files as if they were diseased. It would be a gross breach of privacy for me to watch them, to see what he was before he had a say in the matter.
But really, I don’t want to see them. Because the life he lost is not so different from the one eating my mother alive.
I brush the memory-books away with a disgusted, impatient sweep, wondering if his family knows he’s missing.
Would they care?
All that remains now are the random scrapings that make up a life. Appearances in other memories. Mentions on Gamer boards and police records. It�
�s sparse and impersonal and unhelpful as I wade through it, drawing up images at random and feeling my heart sink with each fresh failure.
I reach a blank, an emptiness starting the day he vanished. Take a step into it, hoping against hope that there’s something there, some final dropped crumb to tell me where he went.
Glittering at the very edge of the net is a single memory, shared by a reporter for a small-time news station. It holds onto my search algorithm by a spider-silk thread, the image barely registering as Damien. As I drag it up to the center of my mind, I can see why. The picture in the memory is nothing more than a flash, a white-haired boy with a hand covering his blurred-out face.
But his fingers are painted with long, delicate tattoos.
Feathers.
I slip into the memory, letting it sweep through my senses. I’m standing in front of an enormous wrought-iron gate as it swings open to admit a black limousine. Bobbing heads bar my view, but I can see the front steps of a square house the size of the Edeken factory, enormous and gilded and reeking wealth.
The reporter’s voice vibrates in my chest as shouts rise around me. “Here we are, outside William Barber’s mansion, trying to catch a glimpse of his mysterious new heir. As the inventor of Neurowiring, William Barber became one of the world’s richest men in the early 22nd century, helping Project Recollection shape Nova into what it is today. But after the bachelor was diagnosed with a progressive and untreatable bone cancer early this year, there has been much speculation as to who will inherit his vast fortune.”
In front of me, the driver is pulling up. The frenzy around me grows, frays. The gate clangs shut and the crowd mashes against it, PAPs blinking as the reporters crush forward, fighting for a good memory.
“This Wednesday, it was announced that William Barber passed away suddenly, leaving everything to an enigmatic unnamed orphan who has yet to make a public appearance. The decision garnered criticism from those who were hoping the money would be put to better use, but spectators are fascinated by this strange Cinderella story. Who did Barber choose? Where did the orphan come from? And, most importantly, who is this boy who just become the richest person in the United States?”