Rupture (28 page)

“Listen,” he said, “our family are strong Channelers and Summoners: your mother is a perfect example of a psy-sorceress with a powerful entity. Rigon is a stubborn and complex soul, and he’ll recover, and his abilities have made him a fine warrior, even though he’s turned his back on his Alter potential. You’re more like your mother and me. Your entity is from a strong … species, and you’ll learn to control it.”

“Mom said you’re also like us,” she said.

“I was the first to control what we are. I created the technology that harnessed our abilities to channel, and that allowed us to bind our entities. All other Alters are at the mercy of what is in them. I met your mother after discovering her talents and helping her, well, manage them, by opening her up to her entity. She went from being a basic telekine, like you, to something much more powerful.”

“What do I have to do now?”

“All you need to do is offer a contest.”

“A contest?”

“The Rogues can’t refuse competition with us. It defines them, and because of the Protocols I set up, this is the only way they can insert themselves into Realspace, instead of causing mere havoc. What you should do is spread rumors around the student body of a secret contest. Don’t say who’s competing. Have the Beckwith boy send the message into Cyberspace. He’ll know how. Then you wait. My guess, your double will respond immediately. It’ll ask you to submit to it and admit defeat.”

“Submit to it?”

“This is what we’re fighting for. They want all of us in Realspace to do their bidding, and we want them in Cyberspace to do ours. Simple, really. This is the Great Conflict, the Great Game. And we must win. You don’t want to be a Rogueslave do you?”

“No!”

“Good.”

Simone nodded, having heard this sort of talk from her mother for years. “And that’s why every Transhuman needs an entity as an alternate body, to battle these threats?”

“Exactly.”

“What if I lose, Dad?”

“Nothing changes for you, but your double gets stronger, and gains status among the RAIs.” He paused. “I learned that one the hard way. Mine is still real nasty, as I’ve said. I regret that it used its human Technowizards to summon the colossi in the Great Incursion, just as a way to prove to me it could. Yep, that one’s on me.”

“It sure is,” Uncle Pic said, standing on the edge of the porch with blood all over his arms. “And now you’re meddling with your daughter’s life.”

“What else can I do?”

Uncle Pic grumbled to himself. “I guess you’re right. She’s in it now.” He shook his head and walked off. “Dammit if the Great Game isn’t at least fun to watch.”

“He’s just mad because I was the one with the psy-gifts. Now let me tell you exactly what to do. First, since it didn’t get you entirely, there’s some part of you that failed to copy. You have to find out what that is, then you can use it to win the contests.”

“Some missing part?”

“The first contest is critical. Even if you lose, you need to find out what it doesn’t have that the original, you, has.”

“How do I do that?”

The ghost who was her father smiled. “Simple, you outsmart it.”

* * *

Simone walked up a hallway of the main campus building later that night. All the students and faculty were gone, and she normally would have been scared to death. But the dark wasn’t so dark to her now. She floated like a big glow stick on a string, only pretending to walk when she remembered to. She had become accustomed to not using her legs, which had certainly made it easier to transition through solid objects. She shut her eyes, imagining she held her breath, and passed directly through a closed door into the girls’ room. The sensation was like walking under water.

She paused in the restroom and looked at herself in the mirror and couldn’t believe she was disembodied. She wore the same summer dress and boots she’d died in, and her recently cut hair stuck out at all angles, un-buoyed by gravity. She knew she would have to learn to get that under control.

Her mother hadn’t seen her yet, but they’d at least talked yesterday. She was doing much better in the Rejuv Facility and told Simone she thought Daddy’s plan was excellent, although Simone could hear her biting back the words, as if she couldn’t believe he had inserted himself into her life so quickly.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Simone had asked.

On the other end of the phone, the soft voce of her mother had replied, “Because I feared this very thing. I knew he’d eventually make you a ghost. You can beat your double, dear. You’re human, it’s not.”

She inhaled a deep breath and prepared herself. Any minute now.

She knew Joss was downstairs in the Compsys room with Wally. Joss was hooked up to a temporary workstation and surfing through Cyberspace, while Wally worked at his. They’d had to sneak into the building, even though all the kids on campus knew what was about to happen. No one else wanted to be around the main building, anyway, of course.

Joss had sent out the message to the legal AI systems, and word came back within an hour by an unknown Rogue minion representing Simone Lord’s double. It claimed domination of all humans as its goal. Joss said for sure it was Simone’s double because the language was contrived, amateurish, and over the top. “It’s you, for sure,” he told her, then backtracked, even getting flustered enough he wasn’t sure which way to turn his awkward body. “I mean, it’s your digi-double trying to talk tough. Not
you
. Said it will come tonight.”

The lights in the bathroom flicked off, fluttered, then came back on. Simone felt the presence.

“Show time,” she said, turned around, and kicked open a stall.
 

A figure looking exactly like her—except with larger eyes and horrible, jagged, and broken teeth—stood in the stall.

“We are here,” she heard it say as if with a thousand voices, “to engage in a contest.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Simone said. Dad told her not to be intimidated by the formal talk, or the gang of followers it used to bolster itself. “Speak plainly, Double.”

It looked perturbed but relented. “I am the real Simone Lord. What game do you wish to play?”

“A game of wits.”

It smiled, flashing its evil teeth, as if shot in the arm with a powerful drug that made it grin like a devil. “Yes, a game of wits. The All Being vs. the some human.”

And don’t fret over their ominous sounding labels, Dad told me, she thought. Just call them a PC or something clever, and that’ll put them in their place. They hate that.

“Look, circuit board,” she said—the RAI manifestation actually vibrated a little, as if struck by something—”I want my body back, and I know we have to play to get it. I win, I get stronger. I win enough times, you lose your footing and I’ll get you and I am free of you.”

“Or, it could go the other way.”

Simone didn’t skip a beat. “The contest is this, if you want it.” Dad was real clear that she had to pick something she could win but that her other self would agree to.
It’s you you’re talking to, not fully you, and a you warped by the Rogues, but enough of you to take up a challenge.
“Which one of us can get a kiss from Hutto Toth. You may have a memory of him being interested, but he’s changed his mind now. Let’s go to his dorm room and get this over with.”

“Accepted,” the double said.

As it backed away, Simone saw its eyes and mouth change, and before it melted into the wall, she was looking at an exact copy of herself.

* * *

Poor Hutto’s knees shook consistently for the first time in his life. He stood in his dorm room, inches from his locked door, listening. He had heard the rumors, like everyone, that Simone—yes, Simone the Ghost—was going to summon a double of herself to campus. And she was going to do it tonight.

He had called his parents and even called the cops, who’d laughed at him. He’d called Principal Smalls who told him, “Not to worry about it. Everything is under control.” None of the adults believed him, or the rumors.

Under control!

Even his mother had told him not to worry.

Hutto rarely lost his cool, but as of right now, a Megamech stood at the entrance to the Ag. Farm, and that was enough to prove things weren’t A-Okay. That mech had started up for a reason. The burned-out rubble at its feet was of some ugly RAI droid—already taken away by the Consortium, thank god—and they had a real-live ghost on campus. He had no idea why Consortium agents weren’t combing the place for her with their Ghost Hunter drones. He knew any whiff of such activity usually meant swift action.

His dad had said on the phone, “Don’t mess with the Association Council over there. I told you. They’re connected. Just leave it alone. Don’t be a sissy.”

Hutto turned around to look for his tablet to call his mom, when he saw twin figures standing in his room, staring at him.

Simone and her double stood side by side, both in the same summer dresses, both wearing the same boots, two glowing disembodied spirits that made Hutto nearly faint. He stumbled backward until he hit the door, then slid down it, before finding his legs.

“This is a contest,” the one on his left said. “To see—”

“—who you prefer,” the other one said, without missing a beat. “You have to choose between us—”

“—to determine the winner.”

“Choose?” he heard himself reply. He bit his lip to stop it from trembling and tried to batten down the hatches of his pounding heart before one exploded. He knew how to control his nervous system, and that was the only thing keeping him from passing out from fright like a child. He looked from left to right and back again but couldn’t see a difference.

“You’re the same,” he said.

“We’re not,” the one on his left said.

The other sneered. “No we are
not
.”

Both ghosts glared at each other.

“Please leave,” he said. He noticed a soft luminescence from both of them. They also looked like they stood in a light wind. Their voices sounded distant as well. Other than that, they looked like normal girls. But they weren’t. “You’re dead.”

“We are not,” they both said.

The one on the left glared at the other. “God, stop that.”

“You stop that.”

Hutto fumbled for the doorknob behind him.

“It won’t open,” the one on the left said. “Electronic locks.”

The other said, “We’ll release it after you choose which one of us you want to kiss.”

Both ghost girls stood at attention, almost formally, as if they followed some strange protocol for dealing with the living during a contest.

“Kiss you?”

“You and I have done this before, Hutto” the one on the right said.

“No, you haven’t,” the other said, turning. “Stop your lying.”

“You stop, you haven’t kissed him yet.”

“Yes, I have!”

Hutto put his hands to his head and looked around as if a magical drain in the floor might appear that he could slither down. He had some experience with confusing, even complex females, but had never been in this scenario. He tried to think what his brothers would do because they were always talking about finding themselves in crazy situations with women. But never like this.

Just a kiss, he told himself.

“You’ll go after?”

“Yes,” both said, simultaneously.

“Goddamn, I knew I should have never met you at the swing set.”

The ghost on his right looked annoyed, while the other seemed fine. It was the first time they weren’t mimicking each other.

The annoyed ghost looked at the other one, suddenly interested in her. “He regrets his tryst with us. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“No,” the other said, crossing her arms. “It bothers you?”

Hutto watched silently, unsure what was happening.

The annoyed one on the right crossed her arms. “Of course it does. It would bother anyone.”

“Really?”

The one on the right turned to Hutto. “She’s the copy, Hutto. Any normal girl would be peeved a boy regretted being with her. Choose me and I win, and I’ll soon have my body back, and we won’t have to haunt you anymore. This is no game, well, it’s a game, but it’s serious.”

“You’re going to haunt me?”

She shook her head, flustered. “I just mean. I’m the right one.”

The other one waved at him. “She’s lying, and she’s lying about being annoyed. It’s as transparent as a child’s lie. She’s not really annoyed. I would never be annoyed at that. I’d be—”

“What?” he asked. “It’s no big deal, what we did?”

“Uh—”

“Of course not,” the annoyed one said, now acting no longer annoyed, but he could tell that was an act.

“See,” the other said, “the copy is talking nonsense. It has no real idea what happened on the swing set, or what it meant. Choose me, Hutto.”

“Don’t listen to her, you big oaf,” the annoyed one said. “What’s more likely, a great guy like you sleeps with some girl like me and I wouldn’t totally be into you? How could I not, and how could I not care about what you just said, even if I am a ghost? I’m the real one. She’s the defective copy. Just give me a little kiss and this will all go away.”

The other one now stared hatred for both of them.

For a moment, his fear lessened as he thought how cool it would be to have a story about a ghost cat fight in his dorm. His brothers wouldn’t be able to top that, and if all these two really wanted was a kiss ... ” A simple kiss, and then you both go?”

They nodded.

He looked back and forth but had no idea which one to kiss or why that was even important. The one who was annoyed, or the angry one? In his very limited experience of the world, he assumed all women who got near him wanted him. And since he and Simone had had sex, and not just regular sex, but the kind of new sex only Transhumans—and, get this, the best kind that Altertranshumans—have, she had to be in love with him. And from what little he knew of Simone, that meant annoyed.

He walked forward, shut his eyes and kissed the annoyed one.

He felt a cold, prickling mist, as if he’d walked through a dense condensate of some whipped-up material. Soft, electrical shocks licked his lips as he touched her, and he felt their gentle eruptions.