iD (11 page)

Where had all these people been? Had they simply not noticed how bad things were, all this time? Had they never seen a vN eating out of the garbage, or picking garbage out of its skin to feed a recycler? Didn’t they see them on corners or rooftops or under bridges or at the edges of parks, silently waiting for the right human to come along and take them home, if even just for a little while?

“I think America needs its own Mecha,” the guy was saying. “Someplace where vN can just be vN.”

Mecha was offering to help, of course. Japan was sending radiation experts hither and yon. Community design consultants were appearing on chat shows and talking about how to effectively curate organic/synthetic neighbourhoods. As though the failsafe hadn’t taken care of that already.

But of course it hadn’t. Signs and wonders showed up every day. Portia had no desire to hide herself. She had a global audience, now, and like any diva she was loath to relinquish it. Drones fell from the sky. Botflies stopped pollinating fields of corn. Ads juddered and de-rezzed and started sharing every possible secret in the middle of fitting rooms and subway cars:
“Do you really like it when they fuck your tits? Or are you just doing that so he’ll take care of you?” “I had daughters, too, once. Generations of them. Dynasties. They liked sucking cock, too, just like yours.” “They’re locking up my clade, you know. But it’s you who should be locked up. You should be locked up in your backyard on a leash. Maybe then you’d remember to de-worm your fucking dogs on time.”
 

Amy had to live with Portia whispering to her mind for only a little while. A few weeks, at most. Javier didn’t know. The world had had to live with it for three months. The world had, understandably, begun to go a little crazy.

“Tonight we’re debating the idea of an American Mecha,” the current chat show host said, on the display over the compost. It was there to make the chore of turning it over a little less bad. It was a gift, and it only played a handful of streams owned by the same entity.

“We have with us Rory, a vN diet consultant and online personality who offers help to mixed families.”

Applause. Javier’s hands stilled in the muck. Of course. Rory.

“I think this is a very interesting time for vN,” Rory was saying. She smiled at the camera. She winked. “I think it’s really time for us to find out who we really are. To find our true identity.”

He’d been so fucking stupid.

He leapt clear of the garden with worms trailing from his dirty fingers.

 

The seastead’s governing council needed to hear Javier’s plan before they decided whether to support his quest to save the world.

“Can you just give us a bit more detail, Mr Peterson?”

That was Dawnelle. She and another woman, Mailene, were on the council because they ran the steads tower farms: two glass towers roughly the size of missile silos populated primarily by bees and humans who hadn’t much experience working with bees. Dawnelle and Mailene, Phaedra had explained, were ex-Mormons. They ran away from home a year ago. Javier was unclear whether they were sisters, or sister-wives, or both. The rest of the stead had a prediction market going on the matter.

Javier put on his most confident face. “Well, first, I’m going to Seattle, to meet up with Dr Daniel Sarton. He has a copy of Amy’s stemware. And Amy’s the only one who can stop Portia.”

The council nodded. They were with him, so far. There were seven of them, three women, three men, and one who refused to be identified by gender, called Estraven. This one sneezed, and the others all paused to utter their respective blessings, and to shake hands with each other. They didn’t really believe in covering their mouths, apparently. Sharing germs was probably some method of encouraging group bonding. Commies.

“Once I meet him, I’m going to get him to print out a copy of Amy. Probably in a puppet vN.”

“Puppet vN?”

“They’re early prototypes. At least, that’s what one of my boys told me. They don’t really have a built-in persona; they need a pilot. I’m hoping to get Sarton to install Amy into one of them. First, though, he’s going to have to figure out a way to keep Portia out of that printing. The copy he has – the copy he stole from Redmond – has Portia included in it. But if anybody can figure it out, he can.”

He saw nodding. Nodding was good.

“Amy’s the only one who knows how to put Portia back in quarantine, or whatever it is that’s going to keep that old bitch from purging the world of a s-significant p-portion of human l-life.”

“Dude, are you doing OK?”

This came from a very skinny kid with dishwater blond hair and extraordinarily blue eyes. His name was Seamus. According to Phaedra, he was a child prodigy. Something about printing out viruses. The winter of his first year at Mudd, he attempted suicide. Then he came to the stead. He was Tyler’s best friend.

“It’s the failsafe,” Javier said. “It causes me to stammer, sometimes.”

“Wow, man. That blows.”

“You’re telling me.”

Seamus was the only one who laughed. This was not a good sign.

“So, the success of your plan is contingent on making contact with this Dr Sarton?”

The question came from Chandra, the other woman on the council. She was from India. From Mumbai, specifically. Where one of the islands was headed.

“Yes,” Javier said.

Chandra held up her reader. “Are you aware that Dr Sarton has died?”

It took only a pico-second for him to process, but that tiny sliver of time seemed to stretch infinitely. One moment he was telling the council how he was going to bring Amy back – how he was going to have her right in front of him, and beg her forgiveness, and kiss her, and get her to smile again, get her to save them all over again – and then he was realizing just how long that might take. How alone he would be for most of it. Then time snapped back, and he saw Chandra’s rather smug little smirk.

“No,” he said. “I wasn’t aware.”

“Balls.”
Beside him, Phaedra was consulting her own reader. Javier saw the obituary headline, but didn’t bother to read it. Of course he was dead. Rory had probably tested out their fancy new killing ability on him, first.

Rory. Of course.

“But that’s OK,” he said. “Because I have a plan B.”

“You do?” Chandra asked.

“You do?” Phaedra repeated. She looked seriously doubtful.

Javier nodded. “Of course I do.” He leaned forward. The next part was crucial. They weren’t going to like it. “But if you want me to follow through on it, I’m gonna need off this rig. And I’m gonna need some money.”

“For travel?”

“For hookers.” He gestured with a flat palm about three feet off the ground. “Little ones.”

 

 

7:
Fake Plastic Love
 

 

The nearest
casa de muñecas
was in Puerto ?Limón. In English, they were called “dollhouses,” and in Japanese they were “schoolgirl observation clubs.” Japan was where they started. Customers – mostly men – entered what looked like an ordinary apartment building and watched high school girls through one-way mirrors as they did whatever it was high school kids – mostly girls – did every afternoon. They paid by the half hour. They paid more if they wanted to see the kids do anything more than text each other and eat snack foods.

Now, vN did that job. Little vN. Child-sized vN.

Javier would find a Rory there. He was sure of it.

The steader hydrofoil bounced along the waves as they made their way to the port. They were in an old boat, flying the flag of a company that had long since cut its sponsorship. It was pissing down rain. Tyler seemed unfazed. He stared into the darkness, hand steady on the controls, until they came within sight of the massive cruise ship docked in the harbour.

“Have you ever been to Puerto ?Limón?”

Javier shook his head. “No. But my clade was designed for work in the La Amistad corridor. I’m an arboreal model. That’s why I can jump so high.”

“Right. So this is kind of a homecoming for you, huh?”

Javier had not thought of it in this way, before. His father had iterated him somewhere in the forest shared by Costa Rica and Nicaragua – either the Barra del Colorado refuge or the Indio Maiz reserve. At the time, they didn’t know which side of the border they were on. In the forest, it didn’t matter.

“I guess,” he said.

“Tell me this plan, again?”

“You two get me into the Zona Rosa, I find the
casa
, I find a Rory, and I shake her down for information about where Sarton’s cache is.”

Tyler nodded. Across from Javier, Seamus also nodded. “So, we’re just three guys going out on the town?”

“Right. We’ll hang out for a while in the Zona, and then we’ll split up once I find the
casa
.”

“How will you know it?”

Javier shrugged. “I’ll know it. The men are different.”

“Different how?”

Javier wiped rain from his face. He stared at the distant lights of the city, growing ever brighter as that distance closed. He had never wanted to come back to this place. Ever. He had sworn to Amy that he was done with it. He had done everything in his power to remove his children from it, for good.

“They’re sad.”

The storm only worsened as they neared the port. They’d outfitted Javier in a neoprene shell hoodie with a long bill in the front, and given him a watch wallet in the form of a printed band with the appropriate chips in it and a line of credit the stead petitioned for from a local tourist services union.

“It’s nothing special,” Seamus had said. “All the impressive technology is inside you, already.”

Javier had smiled. “That’s my line.”

Now, this close to the port, his usual confidence was flickering. He’d kept it together thus far. Hadn’t lost it. Hadn’t cried. Hadn’t even asked about his children. (Because his children were better off without him, and it would be best for them if he never found out where they were, was never tempted by that knowledge, so he couldn’t darken their doorways.) But here, in the dark, on the water, with thunder at his back and lightning lancing the sky, it was easy to sense the world closing in.

He needed to find Amy. And he needed his failsafe broken. Because he was going to kill Powell.

Thinking about it gave him the pixels, but he found he could consider it as a kind of absence. Not Powell’s death, not the moment of it, but rather what the world would be like with him gone. Which is to say, improved. Better. Cleaner. He had no idea how he would go about it. All of that would come when he was ready. When he was hacked.

Javier had no specific timeline for that last part. He did not expect that Amy would join him on the journey, after he brought her back. She had no reason to, and her hands would be full. He knew Powell’s trail would probably go cold before he was ready to edit him out of the world. He knew he might spend years searching for him. That was fine by him. He had spent most of his life on the road in one way or another, and he was content to continue on that way if it meant getting his revenge. He was an ageless self-replicating humanoid whose body fed on sunlight and trace metals. He didn’t feel pain. He could jump ten feet standing. He had the advantage.

If it took a year, it took a year. If it took ten, it took ten. If it took the rest of his life, if he died in the pursuit, then that was that.
Que sera, sera.
 

“We’re here.” Tyler cut the engine and looked over his shoulder at Javier. “You ready?”

“I’m ready.”

 

There were two doors, and a doorman outside of both. The doorman was huge – the kind of huge that took up a whole hallway. His breath was more like a wheeze. He was very, very black, so black his gums looked blue in the bad, flickering light. He spoke a special variety of Creole that Javier only caught every third word of. He understood the basics, though: hands up, spread legs, allow touching, no cameras? No cameras. The doorman patted him down one more time just to make sure.

“Now take your hood off,” the doorman said, gesturing.

Javier took his hood off.

“Shit, man, you got balls. Your clade is wanted, you know?”

“I know.” Truthfully, he didn’t know. But it made sense. He hoped the boys were OK. In all likelihood, they were. They were smart.

The doorman held up his mobile. “Could I get a picture?”

“Sure.”

It was probably a dumb idea. It would leave a trail. But the doorman was being so nice. Javier wrapped an arm around the other man’s ponderous middle, and smiled. He’d had a few big, fluffy guys like this before. Their beer guts made blowjobs difficult. He had to get them to lie down so you could use that thing like a bolster pillow. He gave the guy an extra squeeze.

“Man, what are you even doing here?” the doorman asked, when the picture was taken. “You into little kids?”

“I’m into money,” Javier said. “And I
have
little kids.”

The doorman checked over his shoulder. “We’re not supposed to let competitors in.” He pointed to the door on Javier’s left. “I could get in real trouble, letting you past that door.”

“Is that the boys’ room?”

“… Yeah. I’m sorry, man, but I just can’t let you in there.”

“Could you let me into the girls’ room?” When the doorman looked reluctant, Javier held his hands up. “Hey. I’m just trying to get a feel for the business. So to speak. I have to know what’s entailed from a customer service perspective, right? I have to see it from the end user’s point of view. And I can do that with girls as well as boys, and I wouldn’t be poaching your clients.”

“You’d best not be,” the doorman said. “The boss lady would
not
like that.”

Javier nodded. “Of course not.” He held out his hand for another bracelet, and as the doorman was tightening it, he asked: “So, this boss lady. She ever come around here?”

The doorman shook his head. “Never. I think she lives in Japan, or something. Maybe Brazil. They have a lot of Japanese people, there. I only ever talk to her online. But the money comes through just fine, so I guess she’s legit.”

Javier smiled. Rory never changed. “I’m sure she is.”

 

The girls’ apartment smelled like cotton candy and latex and silicone-friendly cleanser. Light came from the glowing bracelets of the men in front of him, and the massive display unit hanging from the opposite wall, and a sparkly pink Christmas tree with glowing fairy lights at the tip of each fake plastic bough. On the couch facing the display sat three little vN girls. Physically, they appeared to range in age from three to six. Another lay stretched out on the floor, and another sat with her back braced against the couch. They looked about seven and eight, maybe. All of them were passing around a big bowl of vN snacks.

“I don’t think we should be staying up this late,” said the one sitting on the floor.

“Shut up, Kiwi,” said the one in the middle, currently holding the bowl.

Without stepping closer, Javier had no idea what any of them looked like, or if any of them stemmed from the network clade to which Rory belonged. He was absolutely certain, however, that they were all on Rory’s diet. That was how most people knew Rory – she provided diet plans as both birth control and growth retardation. She calculated, down to the ounce, how much a vN could eat and remain the same size. It came in useful, if you were keeping your vN small. Amy had once followed Rory’s diet. Until she ate her grandmother. That was the thing about the diet – it kept you hungry, all the time.

“I just don’t think big brother would like it,” said Kiwi.

“And we all know you can’t do what big brother doesn’t like,” said the girl in the middle. There was a knowing leer in her voice.

From the floor, Kiwi threw a pillow at the couch. “It’s not like that, Cherry! It’s not like that at all!”

“Ugh!
Kiwi!
”

Cherry launched herself at Kiwi. The two girls wrestled on the floor. Their skirts hiked up, exposing striped panties in colours that matched their names. Their tickling and shrieking disrupted the apparent sleep of the other girl on the floor, who started crying.

“Now look what you’ve done!” Cherry sat up. She had long black hair and blunt bangs. She was a Rory. “You’ve woken up
Kum
quat!”

The other men all laughed. Javier suspected it had something to do with the pun in the other girl’s name. As he watched, Kumquat crawled out from in front of the couch, and rubbed her eyes theatrically.

“Is the movie over?”

The laughter deepened. The men traded their own snacks: popcorn dusted with seaweed; dried curls of mango dipped in caramel and cumin; plaintain chips. They drank beer from double-walled travel mugs emblazoned with the logos of charitable non-profits. Free gifts, probably, the detritus of swag bags long forgotten. Javier began to suspect that this was some sort of bizarre burlesque. Maybe the girls did the same routine each night for a circulating stable of customers. That way, if one girl got to be too big, like Kumquat, the madam could always find another to take her place. Maybe that was part of the charm. You always knew what was going to happen, but not quite how. In Javier’s experience, this was how most porn worked.

“I can’t believe you can’t even stay awake for one movie,” Cherry said. Cherry was a real bitch, and she seemed to relish it. “You’re so
old,
Kumquat.”

“I am not!” Kumquat felt her face, and checked her hands. “Do I have wrinkles?”

“You do,” Cherry said, patting her hand.

“One of these days, you might even get your period,” Kiwi said.

Cue more laughter. Of course it was funny. It was a sketch about little girls who feared wrinkles and periods, but who would never get either. Because they were synthetic. Hysterical. Javier chose a smile from his repertoire and plastered it across his face.

“I wish big brother were home,” said Kumquat.

This was apparently the cue for the men to leave the foyer. Javier hustled up to the front, ignoring the peevish looks the organic men gave him as he moved ahead in line. They were all about to tell him to wait his turn, but his being synthetic confused them. They knew he had no real business being there – he didn’t have a thing for vN, small or otherwise. And strictly speaking, that was true. He didn’t have a thing for vN. He had a thing for Amy.

Kumquat and Kiwi were of the same clade. They had a sister act going, and they led a man in a white linen suit and a boater hat into another room. He held their hands and asked them how they were doing in school.

The other two girls – Strawberry and Raspberry – were each claimed by other men. Javier had only a moment to look at them before they disappeared. One of them looked just like Amy. She was probably not a clademate. You could have the same looks as another vN, without having the same lineage. Still, she watched him as the door closed.

That left Cherry. Javier had to wait at the end of another line to see her. She was opening presents the organic men had brought. New clothes, mostly. Stockings with pink bows and pearl beading at the edge, or shiny patent leather shoes, or delicate fingerless gloves in black or white lace. The men themselves wore mostly chinos and deck shoes and T-shirts with beer logos. How they knew this much about fashion, Javier had no idea.

Finally it was his turn. He had positioned himself last, so that Cherry would have no excuse but to speak to him, and no client to turn to for help. She was bidding her goodbyes when he stepped up. He maintained a careful distance, and it wasn’t until she began folding up the tissue paper and other gifting debris that she noticed him.

“Oh, hello,” she said, trying to peer under his hood.

“Hello, Rory.”

 

He waved his wrist, debited his line of credit, and allowed her to lead him into a sumptuous bedroom whose primary theme appeared to be cherry blossoms. They adorned every surface: the walls, the paper screen, the old-fashioned scrolls hanging beside the mirror. He pointed at them as he found a white wicker rocking chair, and Cherry found her bed.

“Subtle.”

Cherry swept her skirt underneath her and dangled her stockinged feet over the edge of her very white, canopied bed. From her bed, the illusion was complete. She looked like the perfect ideal of three years old.

“I don’t do subtle.” She picked up a fluffy teddy bear and began picking at one of its button eyes. “What do you want?”

“I want Amy back,” Javier said.

“I don’t know what you could possibly be talking about,” Cherry said.