Skinned -1 (22 page)

“There’s something else, right? More than just the zone?”

“Like that’s not enough?”

And here’s the thing. That
was
enough. Maybe it was a little shal ow to feel like my whole life was wrapped up in my zone, but that’s how I felt. The network was the only place where I could pretend I was normal. Hidden behind my av, no one would guess what I real y was. Losing it al like that, without warning? It was enough to be upset about.

Except that maybe he was right. There was more.

“Come on,” he said. “What?”

“It’s just…They said they terminated the account because I was dead. I mean, because Lia Kahn was dead, and I was…something else.” I held my hand up in front of my face. It was so strange, the way I could hold it like that, without trembling, for hours. And I knew I could: We’d done an experiment. “I didn’t tel you”—I hadn’t told anyone—“but this guy was here.

A while ago. This guy named Rai Savona.”

“Such an asshole.”

I should have known Auden would recognize the name. He knew everyone in politics; he actual y cared. Yet another weirdness.

“He was here to—Wel , it doesn’t matter. But he said…” I didn’t know why it was so hard to talk about. Maybe because the guy had made a pretty good argument. And maybe once Auden heard it, he wouldn’t disagree.

“Everything that guy says is a joke,” Auden said. “You should ignore it on principle.”

“Is that what your mother would have done?” As soon as it was out I wanted to take it back.

“She believed, but she wasn’t a Faither,” he said in a monotone. “And I’m not her.”

“He said I wasn’t human, okay? He said I was just programmed to
think
I was human, but humans had free wil , and al I had was programming.” It sounded even worse out loud than it had echoing in my head.

Auden raised his eyebrows and tilted his head, like,
Is that all?
“So what?”

“So…what if he’s right?”

“Do you
feel
like you’re programmed to act in a certain way?”

“Wel …no,” I admitted. “But he said that didn’t matter. That I could be fooled into thinking I was free, but real y I’m not.”

“He’s right.”

I’d thought I had prepared myself for the worst, but when it happened, I knew I’d been wrong. Auden kept going.

“But it’s true for him too. And for me. How do you know that I have free wil ? How do
I
know that I have it? Yeah, I feel like I make my own decisions, but who knows? He’s the one who thinks God is in charge. How does he know God isn’t jerking him around like a puppet? How does he know we aren’t al just machines made out of blood and guts and stuff?”

“It’s not the same.” I knocked the side of my head. “There’s no blood in here. No guts. Just a computer. It’s not the same.”

“No, it’s not the same,” Auden agreed. “But maybe it’s better.”

“Yeah, how?”

“You mean aside from the whole immortality thing?”

“Aside from that.” Why did no one seem to get that living forever was only a good thing if life didn’t suck?

Except you uploaded last night
, an annoying voice in my head pointed out.
And the night before that
. No matter how crappy my life got, it was stil my life. And sometime in the last couple weeks—sometime after meeting Auden, I tried not to think—life had become worth preserving again. Maybe even worth living. Too bad I stil wasn’t sure I could cal it that.

If even I wasn’t sure this counted as life, how could I expect anyone else to be?

“Al that stuff you complain about,” he said slowly. “Not feeling things the same way? Maybe it’s a good thing. You don’t have to get so screwed up by how you feel, like the rest of us do.”

“‘Us’ humans, you mean?”

“I
mean
, maybe it’s not a bad thing to have some control over your emotions. To be able to
think
once in a while instead of just act on animal instinct.”
Human
instinct, I thought but didn’t say.
Computers think; humans feel
.

But he was trying to help.

“You think I don’t get it,” he said. When I was actual y thinking how weird it was that he got me so wel . “So maybe you should talk to someone who does.”

“I am
not
going back to that so-cal ed support group.” I’d told him al about Sascha and her little losers club. “No way.”

“I wasn’t talking about the support group. Not the official one, at least.”

“Oh.” I’d told him about the rest of it too. The girl with the blue hair and the boy with the orange eyes. The silver skin. The house fil ed with living machines who wanted me to be just like them. But I hadn’t told him everything. I hadn’t told him about the knife. “Not there, either.”

“You have to go back sometime,” he said.

“Why?”

“Aren’t you curious?”

“Not real y.”

“Okay.” But I could tel he knew I was lying. “But I don’t think that’s why you’re staying away.”

“Tel me you’re not shrinking me again.”

“I think you’re scared.”

“Am not,” I said like a little kid.

“Are so,” he said, playing along.

“Am
not
.”

“If you say so.” He shrugged, and then turned to the screen. “You want to get started?”

“What?”

“Signing up for a new account with a different corp. Creating a new zone. Building a new av. Isn’t that why I’m here?” I flopped back on the bed. “What’s the point? They’l probably just come up with some excuse to take it away from me again.”

“You know what av stands for?” Auden asked weirdly.

“Avatar. I’m not stupid.”

“Yes, but do you know why it’s cal ed that?”

“I’m guessing you’re going to tel me,” I said. More old stuff. Like the past ever helped anyone make it in the future.

“It’s Sanskrit for—”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“A dead language,” he said. “Real y, real y old. And ‘avatar’ is Sanskrit for ‘God’s embodiment on Earth.’”

“So?”

“So maybe, if you think about it, you’re kind of like an avatar,” he stammered. “Like, the ultimate avatar. You know? This incredible body that’s been created as a vessel for Lia Kahn. Your embodiment on Earth.”

“So you think my body’s incredible?” I asked, smirking. Sometimes I went on autoflirt. Force of habit.

He blushed so hard I thought his blood vessels might actual y burst. “That’s not—”

“I know,” I said quickly. “It was just…” Tempting to imagine that someone could stil think of me that way. Even if it was only Auden. “Let’s do it,” I said. “New zone. New av. New everything.”

“You’ll never be the same.”

I
’l go with you,” Auden offered the next time we had what I soon began to think of as the Conversation.

“No, you won’t,” I said, “because I’m not going.”

“Stop saying I’m scared!” I insisted for the hundredth time the fol owing week. “There’s nothing to be scared of.” But al that got me was a smug smile. “That’s what I keep trying to tel you.”

“It’s not like I need more friends,” I tried later. “I’ve got you, don’t I? That’s enough.”

“Your flattery is embarrassingly transparent,” he said. “Don’t think it’s going to work.” But I could tel by the pink glow on his cheeks that it had.

“Why do you care so much?” I final y asked after one Conversation too many.

“Because I know, deep down, you want to go.”

“Except I don’t,” I pointed out. “So try again.”

“Okay…Maybe, deep down,
I
want to go.”

That was a new one. “Why?”

“Aren’t I al owed to be curious?” he asked. “You keep tel ing me I can never understand what it’s like to be a mech-head without actual y
being
one. Fine. But maybe this is the next best thing.”

“You’re serious?”

He crossed his arms and nodded firmly.

“You real y want me to go, just so that
you
can go?”

He nodded again. “Consider it a personal favor.”

I wasn’t sure if he was tel ing the truth or if this was just his way of letting me change my mind without admitting that, deep down, I couldn’t stop wondering about the house of freaks and their fearless freak leader.

“Okay,” I said. “We’l go. But only because you asked nicely. And because I’m sick of you asking at al .”

Auden grinned. “Whatever you say.”

We took Auden’s car. The coordinates Quinn gave me led us to a deserted stretch of road about an hour from his house, just a strip of concrete bounded on each side by a dark and desolate stretch of trees.

“You sure about this?” Auden asked as we parked the car on the shoulder and set out into the woods.

“
Now
you want to turn back?”
Say yes,
I thought.

“I guess not,” he said.

We disappeared into the trees.

The night was black. Auden led the way, silhouetted against the beam of the flashlight. We fol owed the GPS prompts, hurrying along the narrow, bumpy path, twisting through the trees, ducking under branches, Auden shivering despite his thermo-reg coat. I couldn’t feel the cold.

“You sure we’re not lost?” I asked.

He peered down at his dimly lit ViM. “According to the GPS, we’re almost—” He froze as the trees gave way to a riverbank dotted with people.

No, not people.

Skinners.

Although, in the dark it was harder to tel the difference.

They were lying in the grass, their flashlight beams playing against the trees, the water, the dark canopy of the sky. Beyond the treeline the night glowed with a pale, reddish light, just bright enough to cast flickering shadows on the fringes of my vision. As if, while watching, we were being watched.

Auden was stil shivering. “Maybe we should—”

“Let’s do this,” I said, and started toward the group. He fol owed, careful to stay a few steps behind.

Most of them ignored us, but a few figures climbed off the ground as we arrived.

“No way,” one of them said, a tal , slim guy I didn’t recognize. “You can stay, but
he
goes.”

“Lia, you shouldn’t have.” Quinn appeared at my side and leaned in, her lips brushing my ear. “He’s not supposed to be here,” she whispered.

“This place is just for us,” a girl’s voice said. I thought it was Ani—especial y when she threaded her arm through Quinn’s—although it was too dark to see whether or not her hair was blue. “It’s al we’ve got.” She jerked her head toward Auden. “
They
get everywhere else.”

Jude stood in the middle of the pack, silent. Watching.

Auden inched closer to me. “Maybe I should get out of here, let you—”

“You’re staying,” I said. “He’s staying. And he’s not a
they
.” Just like I wasn’t an
us
.

“He’s an org,” the first guy said. “He doesn’t belong here. And if you can’t get that, neither do you.”

“He goes, I go.”

The guy shrugged. “Fine.”

“She stays,” Jude said suddenly. His voice was deeper than I remembered. “They both do.”

There was no more argument.

After his pronouncement Jude wandered away. We were good enough to stay, but apparently not good enough to talk to. They al ignored us, except for Quinn and Ani, who sat down again, tangling their legs together. We joined them.

This is it?
I thought. Some lame, food-free picnic in the woods?

Quinn did most of the talking, at least at first. Everything was new to her; everything was exciting. Life was amazing. Wonderful. She couldn’t get enough. I wanted to dig up a couple clumps of grass and cram them in my ears. Or, better yet, in her mouth.

Final y I couldn’t stand it anymore. “So, Ani, what about you?” I asked. “What’s your story?”

She looked uncomfortable. “I…I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Why the download?” I asked. “What happened to you?”

“I…uh…”

“We don’t ask those questions here.” Jude loomed over us, his face hidden in shadow. “The past is irrelevant.”

“Typical,” Auden muttered.

“What?”

“I said,
typical
,” Auden said, louder. “That you would think the past doesn’t matter. It’s a common mistake.” Jude sat down; Ani and Quinn leaped aside to make room for him. It should have made him less intimidating, down on our level. But somehow it had the opposite effect. Maybe it was those glowing eyes. “The past is irrelevant to
us
,” he said, stretching his legs out and resting back on his elbows. “What we
were
has nothing to do with what we
are
. Not that I’d expect an org to understand that.”

“Speak for yourself,” I said. “I’m the same person I was.”

Jude laughed.

“I think what Jude’s trying to say is that the sooner you forget about your org life, the sooner you can realize the ful potential of being a mech,” Quinn said, darting a glance at Jude. He gave her a smal smile. She beamed.

“This is why I didn’t want to come,” I murmured to Auden.

Jude leaned forward. “Then why did you?”

“None of your business.”

“Maybe you got bored pretending you stil fit in to your tiny, claustrophobic org life,” he suggested. “You’re looking for a better way.”

“Better?” I sneered. “If this is so much better, if you’re al so superior, then why doesn’t
everyone
want to be a skinner?” Ani gasped.

“We don’t use that word here,” Jude said quietly. “We’re
mechs
. And proud of it.”

There was a long pause.

“Sorry,” I said, only because I felt like I had to.

“As for your question, I don’t
care
whether your rich bitch friends recognize my superiority. Some of us can make judgments for ourselves, without just valuing whatever the masses decide is cool that minute.”

“I don’t—”

“But don’t worry,” he said. “Even the rich bitches wil catch on. Sooner than you think.”

I stood up. “
This
rich bitch is leaving.”

“So soon? Such a shame.”

“Al that crap about embracing potential, and
this
is what you come up with? A supersecret society that meets at midnight to—What? Sit around in the mud, gossiping? Lucky, lucky me to get a membership. I’l pass.”

Jude shook his head. “You real y don’t understand anything, do you? This is just the staging ground. You can go if you want, but you’l be missing the main event.” He stood up too. We stared at each other, and for a moment it felt like we were alone in the night. Then he shouted. “Ready?” As one, the skinners—
mechs
—stood up and began walking along the riverbank. I looked at Auden, who shrugged. “We’ve come this far,” he pointed out.