Perion Synthetics (27 page)

“You can’t do this,” said Gil.

“I’m pretty sure I can,” Roberta replied.

“You see this?” He held up his wrist as if
it were a holy relic. “You know what this flashing red light means? Everything
we say or do is being broadcast live on The White Line. If you kill me, hell,
if you so much as bruise me, everything Perion has done will be for nothing.
Lay a finger on me and you’ll kill the public’s trust in Perion Synthetics
forever.”

Roberta shot forward, reaching for Gil’s
arm. Her fingers closed around the sliver in his wrist and squeezed.

At first, it was just a mild pressure; the
vodka had dulled his senses sufficiently enough, but nothing could compete with
the sensation of bones crumbling between synthetic fingers. The cracking sound
echoed in the condo, each reverberation ripping at the lining in his stomach.
Gil visualized his wrist turning to white shards, mixing with the sliver
circuitry to create a non-viable, human-machine sludge.

The pain was intense but brief, occurring so
quickly Gil wasn’t sure it had happened at all. The blood was there, as was the
mangled flesh and a hand hanging loosely from taut skin, but there was no data
coming in, no mention of organic damage in any of the trillion signals passing
through his brain. All he felt was detachment, an almost refreshing peace of
mind.

On the vidscreen, the market share swelled,
but the SatIndex took a huge hit as millions of angry subbers down-voted the
sudden dead air.

Roberta had broken his wrist, and more
importantly, the uplink.

A knee came up between them and Roberta
buried it in Gil’s chest. The acceleration backwards felt like falling, but Gil
was able to get his body turned around before toppling over. Now he was falling
forward, in the direction of the glass doors of the balcony. Instead of trying
to stop himself, he pumped his legs and listened to Benny or Meltdown or
someone in his head telling him to raise his arms and use them to protect his
face.

The impact rattled his remaining bones.

How many times had he watched people go
through windows and glass doors in movies? It had always seemed so effortless,
but of course that was because it was fake glass, or pre-cut, or something
other than the thick double-pane separating Gil’s living room from his balcony.
It almost felt like the glass wouldn’t give; his elbows made no dent on their
initial contact. Then his body hit and the door shattered before him, sending
shards of glass into his forearms and torso. On some level, he registered the
accompanying pain, but the Ayudante envoy was singing an inviting tune, drowning
out everything else in the world.

Gil used his momentum to hurl himself at the
railing. This time, there would be no jump, just a shifting of weight over the
side to whip his legs up. He closed his eyes as he became weightless and didn’t
open them again until his shoulder dug into the soft grass, separating it from
the socket. Gil let out a curt howl, then became quiet again. Staring into the
brightening sky, he gave thanks that he was able to see it—

“Again, I’m addressing the current leadership
of Perion Synthetics. You have a product that is out of control and threatening
the life of one of my aggregators. You are also holding two aggregators from
Banks Media and Lincoln Continental. If our people are not returned unharmed,
we will have no choice but to hold Perion Synthetics and its employees
personally responsible. Again, I’m addressing…”

“Coker?” asked Gil, looking around for his
boss. He realized the voice was in his head, coming across the feed through his
whisperer. Coker must have boosted the signal to get past the PC blackout.
Jacking the repeaters was a trick that could only be used a couple of times;
that Coker had used it to help Gil…

Roberta’s face appeared over the railing of
the balcony. Her eyes widened when she saw Gil lying on the grass.

He rolled onto his stomach and used his good
arm to push himself up. His legs felt like sandbags, but at least they kept him
upright.

The courtyard behind his condo was formed by
the cornered arrangement of four buildings. Exits to the streets sat on the
midpoint of each side, all pointing to a raised center where several picnic
tables and two grills sat unused in the chilly weather. It was deserted; Gil
looked around at the windows facing into the courtyard, wishing and hoping
someone would be standing at one, perhaps sipping a cup of coffee, unaware they
were about to see the first synthetic on human murder since Vinestead launched
their NORM series.

A thud sounded from behind, and Gil ran.

He didn’t know where he was running to, only
that Roberta was behind him and if she got her hands on him again, she wasn’t
likely to let go. He opted for the closest exit, off to the left. He could see
the black, wrought-iron fence growing out of the high shrubbery on either side
of the path. He imagined himself hitting the gate, thrusting downward on the
handle, and pushing his way out into the street. There, he would be able to
flag down a car, or maybe someone would see him.

A sharp pain tore into in his calf muscle; a
glance backwards revealed the retreating toe of Roberta’s shoe. The remaining
power in his legs gave out and he tumbled to the ground, once again landing on
his shoulder. His little slice of Ayudante tried its best to block out the
signals, but it gave up when Gil attempted to use his broken wrist to turn
over.

When the pain got through, the fear followed
close behind it.

Roberta was on his back in an instant,
digging a knee into his spine and grabbing at his arm. She yanked his mangled
wrist and twisted it behind him, as if it could be broken further. She answered
Gil’s cries with laughter.

“Let go of this reality.” Meltdown’s voice
faded into nothing.

Gil raised his head and looked to the
windows again, then to the gate where a dozen men in black riot gear were
streaming into the courtyard. As they fanned out, a woman emerged from behind
them.

Sava Kessler. And Gantz?

The chief trailed after the head of public
relations, whatever emotions he was feeling hidden behind his sunglasses. They
walked with urgency, but not fast enough for Gil.

“Get this fucking thing off me!”

“If you think they’re here to save you,”
said Roberta.

“Roberta, directive!” Kessler’s sharp voice cut
through the ringing in Gil’s ears.

He tried to turn his head to see the
synthetic’s reaction and noticed more security filing in from the other gates.
They joined together around Roberta and Gil, forming a circle.

Or a screen.

Kessler stopped a few feet away.

“Imprint protocol Alpha,” she said. “Gilbert
Reyes.”

The pressure on his arm lessened, fell away.
Sweet relief swept through his body as Roberta’s knee slid from his back.

“Thank—”

“Confirm imprint,” said Roberta, her voice
flat.

Kessler nodded at her. “Confirmed by Sava
Kessler. End this piece of shit.”

Gil felt hands grip his head: one on the
back and the other under his chin.

“Gantz, what the fuck?” screamed Gil, but
the chief only turned further away.

There are two types of people in the
world: those who rush and those who are dead.

Hyperventilating, Gil found it difficult to
yell, but he managed to curse Sava Kessler, Robert Gantz, and the whole of
Perion Synthetics before Roberta’s hands pulled with all of their synthetic
might.

Gil heard the wrenching sound, could almost visualize
the tendons and muscles snapping.

There was a brief flash of Jackie’s face
before the world went dark.

The servers at The White Line pegged at one hundred percent
utilization as the clock hit 8:34 on the morning of November 14th. A tapeworm
planted by one of its employees, an aggregator by the name of Gilbert Alejandro
Reyes, had just counted the last of its forty-eight intervals necessary for
determining whether its programmer still walked the earth. Having received no
feedback for two full days, the tapeworm set about liberating Gil’s personal information
from the databanks, both local and abroad. LEDs flashed, routers and switches
glowed, and fiber connections full of viral code reached out to the world.

Backups hidden in the furthest reaches of
VNet spontaneously combusted. Medical records safely stored in the firewalled
servers of various New Jersey hospitals overwrote file handles with gibberish.
At Affinity Credit Union, money jumped from a forgotten account into one owned by
Maribel Reyes, raising her net worth by two hundred thousand dollars in the
blink of an activity LED. The empty account then vanished into the ether, along
with its backups on the archaic tape machine in the basement.

Within twelve minutes of starting, the whole
of Gilbert Reyes’ existence had been wiped from the grid and reduced to nothing
more than an echo in the feeble memories of the people who had known him.

And if Gil had known this was happening as
he lay panting on the floor of a dark room, he would have been pissed.

As it was, he had bigger things to worry
about than being unemployed, penniless, and according to the United States
government, nonexistent. There was a languid quality to his body, as if he
were stuck half in and out of a dream, staring at a reproduction of his
bedroom, trying to get out from under the comfortable sheets but not realizing
he was still asleep. The commands that would normally turn his head or raise
his hands were muddled or ignored, resulting in an ineffectual flopping around
like that of a drunk person.

After a few minutes of grunting, Gil found
himself on his back, staring at the ceiling. His head fell to the side,
allowing him to see a shaft of light coming in around the frame of a door. It
was thickest at the bottom; shadowed footsteps crossed the amber glow, though
none of them stopped or even slowed when he called out.

His mind raced, faltered.

There should have been pain, and lots of it,
but he had been able to turn his head without any signals shooting through his
nervous system. The realization spawned relief; perhaps Roberta hadn’t broken
his neck after all. Maybe she just maimed him, enough for Kessler to take pity
on him and bring him back… where?

Gil felt around in the dark for his arm,
felt the solid wrist that should have been in a million pieces.

“Fuck,” said Gil, his heart picking up the
pace.

He continued exploring, clamping his fingers
around his wrist. He repeated the action on the other hand, just in case, but
it too came up empty.

His sliver was gone.

An uncoordinated hand sought out the back of
his neck, tried to find the small scar from the jackport. Instead, his fingers
traced over unbroken skin.

The sons of bitches had taken his jackport
too.

Gil wanted to laugh, but there was soreness
in his throat; it flared every time he took a breath. He felt neutered,
disconnected from the glittering world. Benny Coker had probably shit himself
when the feed went dark. Whatever heights The White Line had reached during
Gil’s livecast were probably a distant memory now.

“The stars turned, didn’t they, Coker?”

His listened for a response from his
whisperer, but heard nothing, not even the signature white noise to let him
know it was there.

“An aggregator without a whisperer. What the
fuck is the world coming to?”

At least he was alive. Just thinking about
the injuries to his wrist, shoulder, and neck sent a shudder up his newly
repaired body.

Look for the angle.

No doubt they had been listening to the
feed. They must have known how it looked to the world that a synthetic was
threatening the life of a human. Regardless of what they or Sava Kessler
thought of Gil, it was just bad PR to have someone die at the hands of one of
Perion Synthetics’ newest products. This was no Vinestead NORM with its silicone
skin and wonky speech interface. This was Perion Goddamn Synthetics—only the
best and the brightest minds fueled its development.

Fixing Gil’s injuries and accelerating his
healing would go a long way towards smoothing over the differences between Coker
and Joe Perion. Though Vinestead would always be Perion’s number one enemy, it
wasn’t a good idea to have a media house on your ass. As Meltdown always said,
the feeds were just selling perspective. And if that perspective didn’t look
kindly on Perion and company, then millions of subbers wouldn’t either.

Joseph Perion wasn’t stupid; he knew the
score.

Gil rolled onto his stomach and found his
body willing. His arms felt stiff, but he was able to push himself up enough to
get his knees under him. He paused for a couple of minutes, amazed that such a
simple act could take so much energy. Yet he could feel the strength returning,
more and more as he tried to whip the muscles into shape. Only after repeating
himself, telling his leg over and over to get a foot on the ground, did it
finally move. He climbed to his feet, stumbled, but caught himself on the wall.

Slowly, he made his way around the perimeter
of the room to the door. He gave it a shove, but when it didn’t open, he banged
his fists against it, harder and harder until he could feel the numbness in his
hands.

“Hey,” he screamed. “Let me out of here you
sons of bitches! You can’t just—”

Locks clicked at the top of the door and it
slid soundlessly into the wall. Gil held his hands to his eyes against the
sudden light, stumbling backwards as it poured into the room. Two silhouettes
stepped into view, their hulking frames filling the entire doorway.

“Come with us,” said a deep voice from the
right.

As Gil’s eyes adjusted, he noticed they were
both carrying SMGs against their chests.

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Gil. “Not
until I get some fucking answers.”