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“You were
made,” Chal said. It was the exact wrong thing to say, and she
knew it as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Alan stood up
abruptly and slung the packs over his shoulders. His face was blank,
expressionless.

“I didn’t
mean–” Chal said, but didn’t know how to finish.
She stood up and walked after Alan. He moved mechanically up the side
of the dune and she scrambled to follow him. He stopped at the top,
looking out into the distance, and she came up beside him. He made as
though to continue on, but she took his arm.

“I’m
sorry,” Chal said.

“For what?”

“For saying
what I did. For hurting your feelings.”

“Why?”
Alan said. “It doesn’t matter.”

At that moment, Chal
felt that the paradox she had been living in was shattered. She had
known – intellectually, logically known – that Alan was
not a normal human, and although she had felt stirrings of human
connection between them she had not been prepared to acknowledge him
as an equal. A child, yes, someone who relied upon her and was
dependent for every need, mental or physical. Now the tables had
turned, and she was the one who was clutching to Alan in desperation.

Now she realized how
much he had come to mean.

“Of course it
matters,” Chal said.

“Do you think
I’m a person?” Alan said. He turned to her.

“I don’t
know,” Chal said honestly. “I think so, yes. As much of a
person as I am.”

“But you’re
not sure.”

“I can’t
be sure of anything,” Chal said. “I don’t know what
it’s like to be you.”

“Then I might
be nothing,” Alan said. “Just a programmed machine with
organic parts.”

“True,”
Chal said. “But we’re all programmed in a way. It’s
impossible to say if you’re different. Just because of how your
brain grew...”

“How did it
grow?” Alan asked. His tone had turned soft. “You said
you would tell me.”

“Okay,”
Chal said. “I’ll tell you.”

They began to walk
again while Chal explained to him the delayed brain development, the
digital implant that guided the neurons’ growth, enhancing
certain traits, implanting him with language. This was work that
fascinated Chal, and she went on for a while before she realized she
had been talking nonstop.

“It’s
very complicated,” she said. “But whatever they did to
you, whatever they implanted, you’ll find out sooner or later.
How to fly a plane. Shoot a gun. It’s no different from an
amnesia patient learning what their life is about.”

“No different,
huh?” Alan smirked.

“Well. Maybe a
little different. Just in how you got to this point. Your future’s
your own.”

Alan thought on
this.

“I suppose I
shouldn’t care one way or the other,” he said. “But
for whatever reason, I do.”

“The dunes,”
Chal said, waving her hand out in the sunlight. “You think
they’re beautiful.”

Alan nodded slowly.

“You’re
more of a person than I am, maybe,” she said. “I didn’t
bother to notice any of that.”

“But do you
see it now?” Alan said. There was a plaintive note in his
voice.

“The dunes?”

“The dunes,”
Alan repeated, turning back toward the high sandy berms. “They
are beautiful, aren’t they? I’m not just crazy?”

Chal shaded her eyes
and looked out at the desert. The ridges of the dunes were sharp
lines of light and dark, the red and white sand laced like a paper
doily. She saw the patterns he was talking about, the curves of
colored sand rippling out over the rolling surface of the desert. As
she was watching, a gust of wind swept the ridge away, crumbling it
into a cloud of sand that rolled over the dune, changing it with a
broad sweep of miniscule particles.

“You’re
not crazy,” she said.

“And the fact
that you’re worried about being crazy means you’re
definitely a real person.”

Alan chuckled.

Chal was thirsty,
her throat parched with grit and sand. She was tired, and hurt, and
for the past few hours had been thinking of nothing but the small
village they were heading toward and how nice it would be to finally
arrive. But as she looked out across the desert, she felt herself
grow bigger with awe. The dunes were beautiful, their lines
stretching out in the casual fling of wind and stone.

She had not seen
them because she had had her eyes on other things. Things that
weren’t even there. She breathed easier as she walked now.

“It is
beautiful,” she said. “The whole desert. Truly amazing.”

“I think
you’re just teasing me now,” Alan said, but she could see
that he was pleased. Then he did something that nearly stopped her
heart.

He reached out and
took her hand.

She was startled by
the gesture and lost her stride, stumbling slightly in the dunes. He
waited for her to regain her balance and they walked on over the
ridgeline, hand in hand.

His palm was smooth
and warm, his pace slow enough for her to keep up. The small slips
and stumbles that befell her were caught up by his strong grasp, and
Chal soon grew accustomed to leaning on him for support during the
tricky paths that wound around the blunt edges of the dunes. As they
walked on Chal realized that Alan was no longer paying attention to
anything but the desert horizon. When they came down into the valleys
of the dunes his eyes would fix themselves on the high ridge in front
of them, but along the tops of the dunes he looked far ahead into the
dusty blue sky.

She watched with him
and saw the desert as it really was, not barren at all but fully
alive. The sand which lay before them was not an obstacle to be
overcome, no, not even a hard journey to be endured. This –
this! – was life, part of the universe which encompassed all
things, Chal and Alan both.

It was some hours
before they had to rest, and when they did they were silent. There
was nothing they had to speak of that the desert did not already say.

Chal tried to push
herself to keep going, but an hour or so after sundown she stumbled
and did not regain her balance easily.

“Let’s
rest here,” Alan said. Chal could not protest; she did not have
the energy. She lay down on her side in the sand, the dunes sloping
up gently to either side of her, and exhaustion took her over. Alan
lay next to her, sliding his arm around her back.

“Alan –
”

“It’s
cold,” he said. His breath was hot on her neck. “We’ll
need the warmth.”

“Yes.”
It was nice to be so warm. His strong arms entwined themselves around
her, cradling her against his chest. She felt happy.

***

“Breakfast?”

Alan held up the
canteen of water, a huge grin spreading over his face. The world
skipped into a pause as Chal’s heart vibrated, plucked by the
picture of innocence that lay before her eyes. They didn’t have
any food left, and still miles to go with their remaining resources.
Chal should have been frightened.

And yet – yet
when she looked at him, she was not frightened at all. Just being
near him made this whole ordeal feel like more of an adventure. With
Alan around this was all a game, just another obstacle or three to
jump over for fun. She wondered at his optimism, and how he had
rekindled that feeling inside of her.

Perhaps it was that
growing up in the world was so hard to do without losing innocence.
His face was the picture of it, his features boyish, and oh –
his smile! The grin wrinkled the corners of his eyes and gave him his
sincerity as he reached out and handed her the canteen.

It was this quality
of his that drew her to him: that, apart from everything he was built
to do, apart from all of the wiring they had done in his brain, that
in this unconscious way he should be so kind. It was this kindness
that melted her resistance to everything he represented.
Representation was not reality, and sometimes there was more to a man
than his circuitry and chemicals would lead you to believe. It was
the thing of the universe.

They walked on like
two explorers into lands unknown.

Hours later, they
still trudged wearily across the desert floor. There was more foliage
around, but they had not yet come across water of any kind. Chal
marveled at the way the shrubs managed to claw their way up onto a
boulder, taking refuge in the shadows of a rocky crag, collecting dew
with their leaves in the morning and turning toward the sun during
the day.

There was a buzzing
sound in the far off distance.

“Do you hear
that?” Chal said. Alan nodded. He had heard it just as Chal
did. They both turned to find the source of the sound.

The sunlight shone
brilliantly in Chal’s face, and she held her hand up to block
it out. The buzzing was coming from miles away, but Chal recognized
the plane’s motor for what it was immediately.

Where Chal had lived
in Catalonia there had been a perpetual state of tension, with mortar
fire raining down upon the roofs from the northern edge of the
nation. Rogue French militia had taken it upon themselves to retake
Catalonia by whatever means they could. Catalonia’s response
was mostly diplomatic, and mostly ignored. France was one of the only
other non-Digital states in that Eurasian district, and they had much
more of an army than the newly incorporated Catalan nation-state.

The buzzing
continued to grow, and Chal felt the blood drain from her face. Her
skin was like ice even in the hot desert sun. The pinpoint of dark on
the horizon was so faint that she could hardly see it. She closed her
eyes.
No. No. This wasn’t happening.

Not again.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

She had been playing
in the bedroom with her sister when the sirens sounded.

Her sister was
younger than her by half, for she was a proud four years old and her
sister just two. They were playing at paper dolls, she remembered.
The girl’s face had nearly faded away from young fingers
touching the colors, and the tiny tabs for all of the dresses were
either torn or so bent that the outfits seemed to hang on by some
kind of magic, or will. Marie’s fingers were still too infant
to grasp the dolls without tearing them, but Chal would hold the
dolls in front of her sister, dancing them in the air. There was a
low buzzing in the air, but Chal did not notice it until she held up
a doll in front of Marie and saw a hundred black birds flying from
far away in the sky.

Birds? Birds
didn’t buzz.

Her vision shifted
from the doll to the window and beyond, and then Chal realized that
the birds were not birds.

The air raid signal
sounded.

Its howling twisted
nasally up until it resounded through the room at a high pitch. Chal
could hear it echoing through the narrow streets, the sound bouncing
off of the plastered walls across the city.

The planes were
growing bigger already in Chal’s vision. She stood and took two
steps toward the window, walking right past her sister. Pure
curiosity had seized her. She would come to know the feeling well
over the next few years, but this was the first time she felt it and
it seized her with a terrible purpose. It was a blinding curiosity
that stormed through her, leaving her vision focused on the sole
thing she cared about at that instant. This was the budding of her
intellectual career, the very tiniest sliver of that emotion which
would come to dominate her life. This was the instant Chal let her
curiosity reign over her whole being, regardless of consequence.

It was perhaps the
instant she most regretted.

***

“We have to
hide,” Alan said. The buzzing in the distance was unmistakable
now.

Chal froze,
paralyzed. It couldn’t be happening to her again. The terrible
sense of dread rose up in her heart. Now that the buzzing noise was
in her ears, it was all she could do not to panic. She felt like
running, making a mad dash for it. But where would she run? Her eyes
darted around.

There was only low
brush, a handful of scattered rocks and boulders. Nothing that she
could run toward. The dunes would have been worse, but here she felt
the agonizing indecision more acutely, for she could see farther in
every direction and see there was – nothing. Tumbleweed and
playa. It was hopeless. Chal’s breathing grew shallow, and she
noticed her body’s response to the surge of adrenaline –
tension, fear, a burst of energy that impelled her to action.

And no action that
would save her. No action that would save Alan.

***

Chal felt rather
than heard the lumpen apartment’s door slam open and before she
knew what was going on her heart began to pound.

“CHAL!”
Her mother’s voice sounded from the hall. Chal opened her mouth
but found that she could not speak, not even to cry out. The most
basic word, the first word she had learned –
mama
–
was nowhere to be found in her brain.

No matter. Her
mother was in the doorway. Wind blew through the room. The front
door, always kept carefully closed because of the draft, had been
left wide open, and the paper dolls blew across the floor. Chal sank
to her knees, placing her hands on the floor as though she could hold
the world together from falling apart.

One doll blew
straight under the bed, where Chal saw that Marie had crawled to
hide. She was all the way in the back, her hair matted to her face
with tears.

Marie was crying,
and Chal was confused – had she always been crying? When had
she started? Then Chal realized that it was the sirens that had
drowned it out. Her sister’s cries matched the siren almost
exactly in a higher register, and the two howls rose and wound
together in the room so that Chal felt like her ears were being
pierced from the inside.

Her mother screamed
at her to run, run to the kitchen. Her face was white with fear. Chal
had always imagined her mom as a perfectly omnipotent being, able to
protect them from any danger, and the expression on her face now was
so horrific that Chal felt the tears come to her eyes too, as if her
mom were yelling because of something she had done and not because of
the black birds that were no longer birds but planes in the sky.