Perion Synthetics (19 page)

“Like I give a shit about your car.”

“It’s not that. I just don’t think you
should do
anything
until we find out how badly they paddled your gray canoe.
There’s a guy I know who’s done some ReTread work in the past. He’s got access
to equipment we’ll need.”

“That’s where we’re going,” said Cam. Then,
with just a hint of sarcasm, “Your daughter will be there.”

Cyn looked over her shoulder and shot back,
“And your
girlfriend
too, right?”

They made the rest of the trip in silence.

“What’s it like?” asked Tate.

Cyn considered the synthetic baby in her
arms, found beauty in the way the orange light from the street lamps outside
crossed her—its—little face. She was standing at the window with Candice,
unable to resist the directive. The more she tried to fight it, the more the
Ayudante wanted to help her, and the more it upped its frequency, until finally
the world dimmed under the intense heat and vibration in her neck.

The biochip wasn’t designed to fight its
owner. Cyn found through experimentation that holding Candice, walking her
around, and cooing when she began to whine, brought her a level of relaxation
on par with any of the codified cocktails from the finest synth spas in Umbra.
The Ayudante relented on Cyn’s order—maybe it even recognized how therapeutic
just having Candice nearby was.

“Like a drug,” replied Cyn. “Like an
addiction, but without the highs and lows. Caring for her provides a baseline.
Any deviation from it produces a longing, a feeling of incompleteness. That
stress makes the Ayudante throw a damn fit. And
that’s
where the real
pain is.”

“Hell of a thing,” said Tate, groaning. “I
thought if you were caught, they’d rough you up a bit, maybe even try to jack
you out, but I didn’t expect this.”

Cyn leaned against the cold glass of the
window. The small office in the back of the warehouse was dark; shadows hid
most of the mess surrounding a small desk with scattered papers and empty water
bottles lining its edge like impotent sentries. Roberta had been waiting for
them, as promised. Candice, asleep in her arms, was waiting too, also as
promised.

Even for a synthetic, there was something
off about Roberta, but Cyn couldn’t lock it down.

“Probably star struck,” said Tate. “Gray is
something of a minor celebrity in the City of Angels, even if he isn’t
well-known in Umbra. She probably heard his name on the feed alongside some
movie star or athlete, thinks she can swing a meet and greet if she just holds
onto his coattails long enough.”

“She’s a synthetic; what interest would she
have in any of that? I don’t get why she’s so attached to Cam. It’s not like
he’s that good looking.”

Tate huffed. “Bitches be crazy.”

“Shut up.”

Cyn smiled as Candice opened her eyes for a
few seconds and then drifted off to sleep.

Did
it sleep?

“Well,” said Tate, his words beginning to
slur. “At least we’ve got a story. You are blowin’ up the feed tonight.”

“It’s a major score: brainwashing, synthetic
babies, compromised security officials. And if what Cam says is true, then the
Perions are building an army as well.”

“You know the worst part of being
brainwashed? Not
knowing
you’re brainwashed. If I have complete control
over you and you’re not aware of it, then everything I tell you to do, you’ll
think it was
your
idea. I could control everything, from what you buy to
who you vote for.”

The line went silent as Tate pondered the
possibilities.

A minute passed.

“Don’t be all doom and gloom,” said Cyn.
“We’ll expose Perion, put him under the microscope. When our subbers get wind
of this, they’ll come gunning for Perion Synthetics. And not just them: the
government, Vinestead, and hell, even the goddamn MX would risk an incursion if
they found out someone has a way to dampen their command and control chip. You
don’t just push an Ayudante aside without the MoA pushing back.”

Tate let out a slow breath. “James Perion is
in for a world of shit.”

“We all are.”

The Ayudante had been fighting the lingering
fatigue in Cyn’s body, but the mellow provided by Candice had convinced it all
was well and a little sleep might be good for the host. As if a dam of
drowsiness had just broken, Cyn moved to the high-backed chair at the desk and
sat down. She pushed back to recline, throwing her feet up and dropping them
next to a blinking phone. Her new black boots—part of a gift of clothing from
Roberta—shone with a red tint.

Cyn closed her eyes for the briefest of
intervals.

In the darkness, she dreamed of home, of the
shadowy streets of Umbra where tech was a presence you could feel with every
breath, bleeding from every jackport, collecting in the street like a river of
energy. Wading through it, walking with her steel toes in a sea of people and
information, was the only time Cyn felt alive. The people of Umbra were just
like her, pursuing the same things in life, yearning for that singular nirvana
of total awareness. To be all knowing, to be completely connected: these were
the dreams of the populace, fleeting fancy no one truly expected to attain.

She imagined Tate standing at his window
again, hands clasped behind his back, his occasionally sharp mind thinking of
new and interesting ways to enslave the population with a satiation of the
dependency some of them had lived with since birth. In a way, he was the first
generation of the coercive feeder, a prototype attempt at controlling people’s
lives. He chose the advertising, chose which stories to feed and in what light.
If he didn’t think he was manipulating people by constantly running
anti-Vinestead propaganda, then he was more of a fool than Benny Coker. It was
hard to imagine Tate not seeing the similarities between himself and James
Perion, how alike they were in purpose.

“They’re ready for you.”

Cyn snapped awake, saw Gantz standing in the
doorway with something of a smile on his face. Just how long he had been
lingering there, she wasn’t sure, but his eyes were still actively scanning her
body.

“Why don’t you take a picture?” she asked,
pulling her feet down and pushing herself out of the chair.

“Cam already showed me his,” said Gantz,
grinning. “Whenever Miss Perky is ready,” he added.

Cyn followed him down the hallway to the
main warehouse. There, machinery lined three sides of a rectangular space, wrapping
around table after table of synthetic females, all of them naked and supine.
Upon seeing them again, Cyn felt the sickness return to her stomach. Something
about the flesh on display didn’t sit right with her, nor did the way Cam
leered at the spread legs when he thought no one was watching.

Gantz had mentioned something about most of
the synthetics being prototypes. They had been brought to the warehouse for
provisioning or repair. He had tried to make it sound so natural, but when Cyn
asked why an entire eight foot section of the wall contained synthetic vaginas
in frosted plastic bags, he had no answer.

Cam was standing by one of the work benches
near the front of the warehouse, talking to a man in a faded leather jacket. He
carried what appeared to be a tool bag in one hand.

As Cyn approached them, she sought out
Roberta and found her on the other side of the room, standing over the body of
a fair-skinned synthetic, an empty look in her eyes.

“Cyn,” said Cam, motioning to the new
arrival. “This is Gilbert Reyes. Gantz says he’s the best handyman in all of
Perion City.”

“Gil,” said the man with lines on his
forehead and the first patches of white in his close-shaven hair. “It’s nice to
meet you.” His eyes stared lazily into hers, as if the rest of her body were an
afterthought of her existence.

“Pleasure.” Cyn repeated the word in her
head, unsure if she had ever uttered it in that context before.

A moment of silence passed over the group.

“Well,” said Gil, “there’s a game on
tonight, so if you’d like to get started…”

While Gantz busied himself with clearing one
of the nearby tables, Cam stepped closer to Cyn and asked, “Are you feeding
this?”

She listened for Tate’s light breathing.
“Probably.”

“Do you mind if I…?” He showed her his
glowing sliver.

“How much is Banks gonna pay me?”

Cam nodded and drew his finger over his
wrist.

“If you’ll just hop up on the table,” said
Gil, “I’ll get the trace and replace started. Perion’s got the network locked
down tight tonight, but I managed to scout a few connections that weren’t on
the map.”

“How long will this take?” asked Cyn,
touching her temple. Handing Candice to Cam had set off another headache. Any
minute now, the Ayudante would ramp back up, fueling the cycle of pain.

“Ten, fifteen minutes maybe.” Gil dropped
his bag on the table and pulled out a thick laptop. He unrolled a length of
trode cord, slotted one end into the ancient computer, and held the other out
to Cyn. “For your jackport. What is that, a Seraphim Black?”

Cyn nodded and slid the electrode into
place. She caught eyes with Cam. “Yes, it was a gift from Lincoln.” He nodded
as if he already knew.

The table was hard against her back as she
reclined.

So this is what it’s like to be a synthetic,
she thought, staring up into the array of scaffolding and halogen lights. It
was so unceremonious, so uncaring. Cyn turned to the right and looked at the
lifeless profile of the synthetic next to her. Despite the uncomfortable slab,
the synthetic appeared to be at peace, untroubled by the cold temperature or
the three men standing nearby who had been ogling her all night.

“Cam, do me a favor. Stand next to her with
the baby. Make sure she can see it.” Gil turned to Cyn. “I want that part of
your brain to glow. Think about her. Think about losing her. Get those synapses
firing.”

As if she had heard Gil, Candice began to
whimper, which turned into a full-blown wail just as the Ayudante was latching
onto the incoming feed. Whatever juice Gil was pumping down the line, Cyn’s
chip was drinking it up with pleasure. It would have been refreshing if not for
the overwhelming sense of something being cut from her very soul. Not just
Candice, not the synthetic machine made to look like a baby she could love, but
the very idea that she
could
love, that she felt an attachment she had
never before experienced, not with Lincoln, not with anyone. Cyn wondered if
she would ever feel such a thing again, or would having her own children be
underwhelming?

“And we’re searching, we’re searching.”

Gil placed his hand on Cyn’s shoulder.

“In silence, there is music,” he muttered.
“In stillness, there is life. You are not your programming, Cynthia Mesquina.
You are not the individual lines of code or the output of some equation. You
are the sum total of your experience, of trial and error. You simply
are
.”

“It hurts,” said Cyn, feeling the first tear
roll down the side of her face.

“Change is painful,” said Gil. “But change
is the only way, evolution the only path. Forward, never backward.”

Cyn wanted to tell Gil to shove his
pseudo-Zen bullshit up his ass, but her mouth was too dry to form words. She bucked
on the table as a convulsion lifted her body.

“Weakness leaving the body,” said Gil. “Stripping
away the extraneous data. Finding the soul within. True life cannot be coded.
True consciousness cannot be evaluated.”

Roberta appeared next to Cam, concern
tattooed on her pretty little face. What was her problem anyway? Hadn’t she
ever seen a fellow woman suffer?

“Twenty seconds,” said Gil. “Fifteen.”

Roberta stepped forward and grabbed Cyn’s
trembling hand. “It will be alright, Cynthia. The stars will turn for you.”

“Jackie?”

All eyes turned to Gil. All except Cyn,
whose eyes had rolled up into the back of her head.

“Who the fuck is Jackie?” asked Cam. “Focus,
Gil!”

The Ayudante flooded Cyn’s system with the
Cocktail of Last Resort. Her senses slipped away like the scent of flowers on a
soft breeze. Then the darkness came, reminding her of Umbra.

Reminding her of home.

“Rack ‘em or stack ‘em. Hot shooter coming out.”

Eileen Coker was at the craps table
losing money hand over fist and enjoying every minute of it when her husband of
sixteen years strolled in through the main entrance of the casino with his
security detail surrounding him at all points of the compass and his little
whore of an assistant trailing after him. He had been gone for four days, ever
since he broke the news of James Perion cashing out his chips once and for all.
And just as he’d warned Eileen, the vultures had flocked to the White Dragon
Resort and Casino in the middle of the Atlantic City Boardwalk, pecking and
clawing for his source, for any shred of evidence to back up such outrageous
claims.

So he had gone on a few conveniently timed
business trips, leaving the day-to-day of the company in Eileen’s hands, even
though her primary role was that of legal counsel. Benny gave her the reigns
because she was his wife and it was expected; she didn’t run the company into
the ground in his absence because she was technically his employee and her
loyalty was also expected. Without a figurehead, the company went on as normal,
though Eileen found her nights lonesome and subsequently used her husband’s
considerable wealth to buy friends on the casino floor where she gambled and
drank and thought about how awkward the sex would be between Benny and his
barely-out-of-college assistant.

How could a girl so young look at Bennett
Buford Coker naked and not run screaming for the shore, intent on drowning
herself to clear the memory of his sagging, wrinkled balls?