Perion Synthetics (32 page)

Joe didn’t take his eyes off of his father.
“I know you think you’re this man, but you’re not. You’re a dermal veneer on a
carbon-fiber skeleton. You’re…”

“I understand you’re upset,” said Synth J.

“Yes, but can you empathize?” asked Joe.
“Can you
feel
it?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with
anything.”

“I can feel it,” said the synthetic nurse.
Though her voice was digitized, Joe thought he heard sadness in it.

“Aries-class,” said Synth J. “The only thing
they feel is obsolete.”

“Joe, I think I should tell you,” said Dr.
Parris. “Your father was asking for you earlier this morning. I tried to ring
your apartment, but there was no answer.”

“I didn’t think he’d regain consciousness
again.” Joe thought about the bottle of Glenfiddich in his apartment. Last he
had seen, it was on its side on the floor by his desk.

Dr. Parris cradled her palette in folded
arms. Strands of her blonde hair had fallen out of her bun, obscuring the bags
beneath her eyes. “He’s a fighter,” she said, choking back a sob. “James Perion
does not die until he is ready.”

“Amen,” said Nico. He had drifted to the
door by the bathroom, a crumpled tissue in his hand.

“Mr. Shaw,” said Synth J, “I don’t think
we’ll be requiring your services anymore today.”

Nico took a step, hesitated.

“He stays,” said Joe. “I want him here.”

“It’s
my
goddamn death. I say who
needs to be here or not.”

“It’s happening,” said the nurse.

The monitor next to the bed flared bright
red as Dad’s heart rate dipped below viable levels. His chest shuddered,
sending the EKG to the top of the frame before it dipped down again.

“His body is making its last efforts,” said
Dr. Parris. “You should say your goodbyes now, Joe.”

“Shit.”

Synth J snorted. “So now I know. The last
thing my son says to me on my death bed is
shit
.”

Joe leaned over and put his mouth near his
father’s ear. All of the speeches he had rehearsed fluttered into the breeze.

“Dad,” he said, his voice failing. The tears
began to run down his cheeks. “There hasn’t been a day in my life when I
haven’t looked up to you. You’ve done so many great things. You’ve set the bar
so high. I understand why you did what you did. You were scared I couldn’t step
up, but I’m going to make your dream come true. Go see Mom and tell her I love
her.”

A hand appeared on Joe’s shoulder; it was
Nico’s.

“It’s okay to go, Dad. I’ve got things
covered. I love you.”

Joe kissed his father on the forehead and
stood up. He reached under Nico’s arm and put his hand on his assistant’s
shoulder.

“Goodbye, Mr. Perion,” said Nico. “It has
been an honor to work with you.”

The nurse approached the bed and said
something in garbled white noise. Only Synth J seemed to understand what she
was saying.

Dr. Parris tapped the vidscreens; their
contents faded away. The respirator wheezed to a halt a moment later. “God
speed,” she whispered, hugging her palette again.

The room waited as James Kirkland Perion,
founder and CEO of Perion Synthetics, drew his final breaths.

His chest rose and fell for the last time,
and then the titan expired.

“Un-fucking-believable,” said Synth J,
before collapsing. He struck his head on the railing of the bed and hit the
floor with a heavy smack.

Beside Joe, the synthetic nurse fell
backwards into the window and slid down the smooth glass. She ended up in a
sitting position with her eyes wide and her mouth agape. A hand from Dr. Parris
prevented her from falling over completely.

Nico rushed around the bed to check on Synth
J.

“Goodbye, Dad,” said Joe. He reached out and
put his fingers to his father’s neck. There was no pulse.

“Mr. Perion, can you hear me?” Nico shook
Synth J by the arm, but got no response.

Joe patted his father’s chest. “I got this.”

“Joe, help me! Something’s wrong with your
father.”

“My father is dead,” replied Joe, refusing
to turn around.

“Do you want to lose them
both
?”

At that, Joe stepped back from the bed and
looked at Nico. The man’s bloodshot eyes were pleading, but Joe simply crossed
his arms. He drifted to the window and watched the city twinkle in the early
morning sun.

When Dr. Parris saw him standing there, she
seemed to remember herself. She stood and checked her sliver. “Time of death,
0708 hours.”

Nico cried out as a synthetic hand closed
around his throat. It tossed him across the room as if he weighed nothing.
Synth J rose from the floor and surveyed his surroundings. His face was cold
and toneless, a common configuration for newly minted synthetics. His eyes
flickered, settled on the bed.

“The Creator is dead,” he said.

From the floor, the nurse’s voice echoed his
statement.

Synth J looked at her when she spoke.
Something clicked.

“Mr. Shaw,” he said, kneeling down. “Are you
alright?”

“Get the fuck away from me,” screamed Nico.
He pushed ineffectually at the synthetic’s hands.

“Dr. Parris, this man needs attention.” Then
to Nico. “I apologize, Mr. Shaw. I don’t know what happened.”

“You glitched,” said Joe, uncaring if anyone
could hear him. “Not many people get to watch themselves and their Creator die
in the same day. Your synthetic mind probably couldn’t handle it.”

Synth J stood slowly.

Joe faced him, drew himself up.

“Hell of a thing, isn’t it?”

The body of James Kirkland Perion was burned at sunset.

In the morning, Joe placed his father’s urn
on the mantel beside his mother’s and watched the polished silver gleam in the
morning light. They had similar designs except for the etching along their
lower thirds: schematic symbols, logic gates, and equations for his father;
floral fractals and ribbons for his mother. Though their deaths had been
decades apart, both urns gave off a brilliant luster.

He couldn’t help but reminisce about his
parents as he took the elevator down to the fifth floor. The vidscreens showed
the same reassuring text from the day before, urging the residents of Perion
City to continue business as usual. For the most part, people listened, though
there was some talk, some whispering behind closed doors.

The fifth floor of the Perion Spire was home
to the security arm of the company. Its primary mission was the protection of
the city, its occupants, and its secrets, from both a physical and virtual
perspective. At the head of the division was Steve Phelps, Vice President of
Security. His direct reports were Deborah Keats, Director of Tech-Sec, and
Robert Gantz, Chief of Police. While Deb and her team stayed behind closed
doors, typing on laptops and palettes long into the night, Gantz’ department
ran more like a typical police station with an expansive, yet empty, reception
area. If Perion City had criminals, they would have found the padded chairs and
numerous vidscreens comfortable and inviting.

“Good morning, Mr. Perion,” said the desk
sergeant. “How can I help you today?”

Joe nodded to the hallway to the left of
Booking. “Just here to see Mr. Gantz. Can you buzz me in?”

“Sure thing, Mr. Perion. I’ll let the chief
know you’re headed back.”

The door at the far end of the hallway
buzzed and the magnetic locks at the top of the frame released. The frosted
glass turned clear as the door swung open.

Joe walked past the front offices and the
Quick Response room where two-dozen riot-geared AGs sat immobile on metal
benches. Each held an assault rifle by their side, moving it only when a woman
in a lab coat stepped in front of them to run diagnostics. Gantz must have been
shaken up by the Collapse the day before, evidenced by the lack of Scorpios
freely roaming the halls.

Gantz was waiting in the threshold of his
office. He smiled when Joe came around the corner.

“Greetings, Mr. Perion,” he said, bowing his
head slightly. “What brings you to the lower levels this morning?” His eyes
scanned the hallway, connecting with other uniforms in earshot.

Joe did his best to return a smile. He
hurried into Gantz’ office and shut the door.

“Sorry about that,” said Gantz. He settled
into his high-backed chair. “Appearances—a necessary evil, right?” When Joe
shrugged in response, he asked, “How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine,” said Joe. “We made our peace.”

“Do you need anything? Anything at all?”

“Maybe. Have you seen the feeds this
morning? The world seems to think my father is dead. There are no synthetics
outside of the city to spill the news and no one in town who would report on
the story, except for that aggregator.”

Gantz waved the idea away. “It wasn’t Cam.
There hasn’t been any mention of Perion on the BMP feed or any of its
subsidiaries. Deborah says he has an uplink going, but either Banks isn’t
liking what he’s feeding or he’s saving it for one big push.”

“Then we have a leak somewhere. Every synny in
the city said my father was dead. Only a handful of people know it’s true. And
somehow it got out.”

Gantz sat back in his chair. “Joe, we’re
taking care of it. Deb is watching the network traffic, and I’m watching the
doors and windows. Nothing is coming in or going out of this city without one
of us knowing. I’m not going to let anything bad happen on my watch.”

Too late; the products had already taken
over the company.

“Why the loyalty, Robert? My father is dead.
You’re taking orders from a goddamn synny.”

“No. Steve Phelps takes orders from a synny;
I take my orders from a higher power. I’m protecting the company the way James
Perion would have wanted me to.”

Joe leaned forward. “And now that’s he’s
gone? Who do you take orders from now, his holy ghost?”

Gantz smiled and tapped the desk with his
fingers. “I was wondering how long it would take you,” he said, nodding. “Twenty-four
hours to step up to the plate. I’m impressed.”

“It wasn’t all my idea,” said Joe.

“Someone’s been coaching you?”

“All my life.” Joe paused a moment. “Dad and
I talked before he passed. He told me to do what I think is right. And I don’t
think a product should be in control of the company that makes it. That thing
is not a Perion; it’s Katsumi tech, Chuck Huber architecture, and Bhenderu
psychology. My dad’s personality is just an add-on. And that’s fine if you just
want to keep up appearances, but we’re talking about the future of a company
here.
My
company.”

“
There
it is,” said Gantz. “There’s
the Joseph Perion I’ve been waiting for.”

“So you’ll help me then?”

“Not so fast. If you’re going to suggest
what I think you’re going to suggest, then I need to be prepared to find myself
on the wrong side of a Scorpio’s rifle. Whether he’s your father or not, that
synny has your father’s ambition. He’ll lean on Phelps and Phelps will lean on
me. And then you’ll have no more friends in the PC. Nico might back you, but
the poor bastard can’t even face his wife without shitting his pants, and
that’s when he’s not strung out. No, if you’re going to do this, it can’t be a
full frontal assault.”

“Then I’ll build up support,” said Joe,
running through the roster in his head. “I think we could get Ms. Kessler
onboard.”

“She’d never go for it. Too tied up with
Chuck Huber to risk putting his research in jeopardy.”

Joe stood and approached the vidscreen on
the far wall. It was showing alerts and advisories in yellow and red text, but
he wiped them away. A triplet of feeds faded in, one from each of the houses.
In visual format, they appeared as a jumble of keywords scrolling off the top
of the frame. The word
PERION
dominated two of the three feeds.

“Everyone is waiting to hear what Banks
Media has to say. And we’ve got one of their aggregators roaming the city.”

“He’s touring the assembly facility today,”
said Gantz.

“The fact is he’s here. We can use him.”

“Then Kessler’s really out of the question.
I don’t know why, but she can’t stand him. You should have seen her at dinner
on Monday. The tension could have choked a horse.”

“Is he an asshole or something?” asked Joe.

Gantz shook his head. “No, she was just
pissed because a Virgo prototype was staged at Southpoint and no one had told
Kessler about it beforehand. She tried to take the synny away and Cam went over
her head. And if I know one thing about Sava Kessler, it’s that you don’t go
over that woman’s head.”

“Alright, then we’ll do this without her.”

“Do
what
exactly? You’re just like
your father sometimes, Joe: big on the goals but scant on the details.”

Joe looked away, at the floor, at the walls,
but no matter where his eyes landed, all he saw was his father’s shriveled
face, the cracked lips. His whole world had changed a mere twenty-four hours
before, and yet Joe felt he hadn’t done enough in the interim, hadn’t taken
back the company with the speed and agility his father would have been proud
of.

Deciding on the goal was easy: remove Synth
J from power. How to achieve that goal was harder. There were several routes,
from a simple conversation to physical detention, but no course of action felt
like a sure thing.

If I had six hours to chop down a tree,
I’d spend the first four sharpening my axe.

Joe recalled the quote written in permanent
marker on the white board in his father’s workshop, a white board that had
followed him for decades. Joe first saw it when he was sixteen and at the time,
had erroneously attributed it to Lincoln Tate, head of Umbra’s Lincoln
Continental feed. Only when he asked his father why there was a quote from a
feed monger on the board did Joe finally understand it was from the
other
Lincoln.