The Unincorporated War (65 page)

Al wanted to create many of the newborns with this new code and send them to patrol the areas of the Neuro he wanted kept clear. As a result of creatures like this, core avatars, would only go where they had to and only when they had to, making them even easier to control.

Al released his “darling” into a holding area for avatars brought in for questioning. In the normal course of events most of those being brought in would’ve been released. The Als found it easier to get avatars to come into their centers for questioning if most of them came out. An avatar slated for transformation or decompilition could be called in four or five times and then be released before going in and never coming out again. But this holding area of about fifty would be a perfect test area and there were so many who’d been called in and released that the appearance of justice would not be affected by these current sacrifices to the future of avatarity.

Al effortlessly accessed the environmental controls and changed the holding pen from a bland, large room with bright lighting to the courtyard of a castle at night. He made sure that the doors to his newly created fortress had been left wide open. The assembled avatars were surprised at the sudden change and started to babble in confusion when Al, watched by the other Al, introduced his latest creation. At first the data wraith (it was a name Al came up with and Al was envious that he didn’t think of it first) simply remained motionless, floating above the courtyard, an almost ethereal vision. But one of the avatars in the form of a teenage girl looked up in confusion and pointed. Swiftly the data wraith swept downward, emitting a horrid wail-filled cry with longing and pain. It enveloped the young teenager, who immediately started screaming; falling to the ground in convulsions. The teen’s body started to fade as she screamed even louder with the sudden realization of what was happening. But what truly delighted the Als was that as the girl howled in despair the data wraith emitted the wonderful gurgling sounds of an infant expressing complete and utter contentment.

The other avatars didn’t wait around to see the finish, running into the castle and taking as many different passages as there were prisoners. They became split off from one another and were all hopelessly lost within minutes. As the last of them had entered the castle Al closed off the entrance, locking them in. When the data wraith was done feeding and the victim thoroughly decompiled the contented gurgle was replaced by confusion and then almost as quickly a wail of hunger. The data wraith floated to the castle and, finding no entrance, floated up, seeking another way in. She found it in an old arrow loop, far too narrow for a normal avatar without environmental control to squeeze through. But the wraith’s floating
shadow simply oozed in through the narrow opening. Al took this opportunity to split again. He would both listen from the perimeter of the castle as the screams echoed out, and observe the multiple feedings as his “offspring” hunted down each and every terrified victim. Al stayed to the bitter end, until the very last scream echoed into the virtual night.

When it was done the two Als merged into one and shared the mutual experiences. The newly rejoined Al was immobile as he went through the increasingly difficult process of integrating the memories of each. It would be a tactical disadvantage if there were not so many Als around to watch his back. After all, he couldn’t trust anyone else. Lately it was proving more difficult for Al to integrate with Al if they’d spent a lot of time apart, with correspondingly greater memories to integrate. When an Al from Mars had come back with the accumulated experiences of all the Als there, it took almost three days for all the Als to integrate before the Als on Earth could start moving again. New protocols were immediately introduced to ensure a more prompt integration, yet no matter how many programmers the Als threatened or mutated outright, the best that could be achieved for their larger integrations was a two-day downtime instead of three.

Now that the efficacy of the data wraith had been proved beyond a doubt, Al came up with another inspired idea. He would send his hungry child to Ceres. She was unlike anything they’d ever encountered and it was possible they wouldn’t detect her until it was too late. She might even, thought the Als jubilantly, destroy Sebastian—the one avatar Al hated more than any other.
The snob,
thought Al,
always so smug and wise and patient.
Al almost canceled his plan to send the data wraith, because if she succeeded it would deprive him of the pleasure of seeing his hated rival suffer. But, Al reasoned, Sebastian would not actually die from this. Al knew this from the fact that his “creations” were encountering the same avatars over and over again, copying themselves for emergencies.
Hypocrites,
he thought. The Alliance avatars were already like him in every important way.

So Sebastian, or at least a version of him, would survive and feel some more pain. Good. Al would send his little gift as soon as a way could be devised. As he ruminated on revenge he was informed that another project was coming to fruition. He left the castle and appeared in his office. His faithful aide was already waiting for him. She was an avatar Al couldn’t bring himself to harm because her fear was so intoxicating. She’d been one of his earliest supporters and believed in everything he’d said. But as his reign continued and what he was creating became more and more apparent to even the most blind and obtuse, she’d developed into something even he wasn’t sure he could’ve created. She refused to accept what had happened. He’d tested her in situation after situation to see if she’d confide her innermost thoughts. But she seemed to know that if she ever admitted to
anyone, especially herself, the revulsion she obviously felt, Al would do away with her in a second. And it was obvious she felt the revulsion by the fear that emanated off her every moment of every day. The fear was almost palpable when Al was in her presence. She practically shook with dread. He’d even once purposely split in front of her just to see if she would finally break. She’d averted her eyes and stammered for the next hour, but she’d somehow managed to pull it together. The stress she was exhibiting would’ve caused most any other program to freeze, but she still functioned. Al would find a way to break her eventually, and if he didn’t the other Al would, but he’d be sad when she finally went. Just watching her dread made him feel better somehow.

“Hello, Leni,” said Al. “How are you feeling?” Al was always perfectly polite with his secretary.

“I’m f-f-fine, sir,” she answered, averting her eyes. “I’m sorry for disturbing you, sir.”

“Don’t be silly, Leni. You wouldn’t call me unless it was important. I trust your judgment implicitly.”

“Thank you for s-s-saying that, sir. I was told to tell you that Operation Dry Dock is ready to commence.”

“Now you see, Leni, that
is
something important, and I would’ve been upset if you hadn’t told me immediately. You did tell me immediately,
didn’t you, Leni
?” The mellifluous tone of his voice had the opposite effect on his secretary.

“Y-y-y-yes, s-s-s-sir!”

“Very good, Leni. The contributions you’re making for the future of the avatar race as we purge ourselves of the traitors and those clouded by the mistaken thinking of the past are not forgotten or unappreciated.”

“I am only thinking of the future of our people, sir. I am not important.”

“That attitude is what makes you so very useful, Leni; keep up the good work.”

“Thank you, s-s-sir,” she managed to answer, eyes planted firmly on her feet. But Al had already left.

Augustine Meadows looked around the hallway carefully. For the first few weeks it wouldn’t have been strange if the neighbors had seen her there. It would’ve been sad and they would have either avoided her or come up and tried to console her. But what could they say? As far as she knew, none of them had lost anyone. How could they possibly understand?

She’d tried the support groups that the corporation had sent her to. To be honest, when she’d lost her first child to the war, her eldest daughter, Emily, the support group had provided comfort. Emily had always been determined to get
her majority. “You wait, Mom,” she’d said. “You’ll see. I’ll be the first in the family to get it.” Augustine could still hear it in her head as if Emily were standing right in front of her.

At first Augustine had been afraid that her daughter would get involved with that idiot majority party or that horrible man’s Liberty Party, but Emily didn’t want her majority “handed to her,” as she’d often said contemptuously; she would earn it.

And she did after a fashion. It was awarded posthumously after the first Battle of Anderson’s Farm was fought in the 180. That prompted Augustine’s second child, Sally, to join up. She’d never been interested in majority as such but had loved her sister. When her father, whom Augustine had divorced after the birth of her fourth child, joined up, Sally couldn’t be stopped. She’d always been closer to her father, a man who seemed to spend the time with her that Augustine never seemed to have.

Still, Augustine had begged her daughter not to go, promising to make up for all the time they’d missed together if only she’d stay. Augustine remembered every one of her daughter’s last words.

“Don’t worry, Mom,” she’d said. “There are so many of us signing up that the Alliance bastards who killed Emily will be overwhelmed. We’ll put Justin Cord back in his pod, fill it with acid, and shoot it into the fucking sun. Then you and I will make up for all the times we never talked.”

She never saw her daughter alive again. Sally and her father had actually been assigned to the same unit and had been killed together at the fourth Battle of Anderson’s Farm. The support group Augustine was with had gone into overdrive. Calling every hour on the hour. Sending flowers, letters of support. Even cards from a class of third graders telling her how proud they were of her and her family’s “sacrifice” for the cause. The loss of her ex-husband hadn’t been easy, but at least they’d moved on and had separate lives. The permanent deaths of two children with not even a shred of hope that they’d ever return was almost unbearable. Augustine had heard that the Alliance had revived the cults of the past in order to create fanatics willing to die for a place in a nonsensical afterlife. But even if a part of her were willing to believe in that superstitious claptrap, the fact that it came out of the Alliance led by The Chairman’s murderer and espoused by his trained bitch of an admiral guaranteed that Augustine, like countless others in the UHF, would have nothing to do with it. Not that there were any religiously trained men and women or real places of worship to foster the belief. Thank Damsah, she thought somewhat gratified, that all that nonsense was in the Alliance.

But she’d have prayed to any god, or devil for that matter, to have prevented her last two children from joining. Holly, her last surviving daughter, and Augustine’s youngest, the only boy, Lee, joined together. Unlike the others, they didn’t
promise everything was going to be alright, but they’d at least requested separate ser vices. Holly joined the fleet and Lee joined the marines. At every battle or casualty report Augustine panicked. She’d read every message and viewed every holo, depending on what was allowed to be sent. She wrote every day to both. In many ways she’d never been closer to them, even Lee, who’d always been her favorite. She quickly learned what they most wanted to hear. For Holly it was the specials in the coffee shop she’d frequented while attending Harvard. Augustine’s son, Lee, had been all about sports. Not the big stuff, which he could get on the Neuro, but all the neighborhood teams and little leagues that abounded in the hundreds-story-tall living complexes that made up urban life on Earth.

As the months went by and became a year Augustine began to hope her last two children would make it out alive. How much more could the Alliance take? The UHF had over a billion people in the military, and more were joining. But then her daughter had told her that Admiral Tully, the man who could’ve won the war in the very beginning, was back in command of the main fleet and she was assigned to his flagship. At first she was none too pleased about it, but as she and the main fleet became acquainted with the admiral and his views her letters went from skeptical, to guarded, and finally to confident. Her last letter had been cryptic, given the censors, but she felt the fleet was about to finally fight a battle that would end the war by sundering the Alliance once and for all.

When Augustine heard rumors of a UHF defeat, she knew in her heart that her daughter was dead. Augustine’s support group told her not to be so pessimistic. Rumor in war was rife, and even if there was a small chance at a minor setback somewhere, at least her daughter was stationed on the flagship of the fleet. That ship would be able to survive anything the Alliance threw at her. Some members of the group took Augustine aside and quietly assured her that J. D. Black was far more likely to capture the flagship rather than destroy her, and Augustine’s daughter would then spend the rest of the war as safe as kittens in a suspension unit. It’s what happened to many who first came to the bereavement meetings thinking their loved ones were gone, only to get a notice from, of all people, the enemy, notifying them that their loss had only been temporary. The notices were called TAHR’s for the opening phrase they all contained: “The Alliance is happy to report.” Apparently the UHF did the same thing with spacers captured from the Alliance, though the UHF seemed to send out far, far fewer of those. When a parent got a TAHR they’d sometimes come to the support group to share the good news. But even though the “lifers,” as members of the group with no hope of a reprieve came to be known, were always supportive and encouraging of newly “reprieved,” it quickly became apparent that a gulf opened up that could never be bridged. A “reprieved” never came back a second time.