“You’re full of shit.”
“I may be full of smoke, but I am not full of shit.” Javier rested his hand on his palm. “Seriously. The other guy fell asleep.”
“He
fell asleep?
” Holberton blinked. “How is that even possible? Was he
numb?
”
“Drunk.”
“Wow. Unbelievable.” He frowned. “And you were good for that?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? I don’t need to breathe, and my jaw never starts to hurt.” He rubbed his chin. “There were some issues with chafing, though.”
Holberton flopped over onto his back. “Do you do this often?”
Javier army-crawled up to him. “Do you?”
“Not often
enough
. My cock feels like it should be waving a white flag.” Holberton looked him over. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Do you need looking after?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, would you like me to return the favour?” Holberton sat up, with some difficulty. “It’s not often I have hot guys in my bed who’ve had a rough few days and might need some tender, loving care.”Holberton
felt bad
for him. Maybe even pitied him. How had Javier not seen that, earlier? It was about
him
, about making
him
feel better. And yes, he was milking this moment for all it was worth, but he was being good. Kind. Not pushy. Asking him at every step. He was so smooth Javier hadn’t even noticed it. Maybe it was some sort of theme park thing, some sort of customer care philosophy, internalized and manifested in every aspect of Holberton’s personality. Or maybe he was just a man who had once been a boy, and that boy had once been Jonah LeMarque’s son. Maybe he knew a thing or two about asking, first.
“Are you crying?” Holberton inched closer. “Can you do that?”
Javier wiped his eyes. “No. I mean, yes. We can. I just don’t. I don’t even think I have the plugin for that. There was a rights issue with it. Development hell. So I’m not even sure if–”
Holberton’s lips closed over his. “It’s OK. You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”
When Holberton’s breathing grew deep and even, Javier pulled back the smart cover and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The coverlet obediently snuggled back up to Holberton. Javier put on his clothes carefully. He might need to run, by the time this was all over. It wouldn’t do to be naked for that.
Exiting the bedroom, he found the living room alight with snow. Real snow this time, not like in the Winter Wonderland. Outside, the sky was a mauve pink, and the snowflakes looked like the shavings off quartz chips. It accumulated steadily on the patio furniture and the cacti and the sagebrush. The snow made the house seem quieter than it really was. Javier decided he liked it. He liked that quiet stillness. He was glad there were still places in the world that could still experience it, if only very briefly. Belatedly, he realized that the house had no Christmas tree. Though given Holberton’s history with religion, it made sense not to celebrate.
The tour hadn’t included an office, but Javier guessed it was downstairs. Track lighting illuminated his progress as soon as he set foot on the first step. The first door was another bathroom. It stocked extra towels, probably for the pool outside. The second door led to a room full of light.
The light was rich and golden and antique. It took Javier’s eyes a moment to adjust; the colours kept dithering and he actually couldn’t be sure if certain things were blue or black or grey. The room was lit entirely by lamps and sconces with old-fashioned filament bulbs. He had never seen so many of them in one place. Not even in Las Vegas.
Posters for various Frankenstein films hung on the walls. He recognized
The Curse of Frankenstein
, having attempted to watch it while on the ship. The other posters looked like they belonged to the same set. The shade of red used in the fonts was the exact same on each.
Holberton’s homescreen was an overexposed shot of a girl at a party. She was dark and slender and wearing too much eye makeup. She’d hiked the skirt of her school uniform up to levels that were probably against regulation. As he watched, she straightened up and appeared to put something down. She walked out of the frame and into the room. He could see through her, but just barely. She wrapped her weightless arms around him for a minute before sitting down on a stool that, Javier now understood, was probably put there for this exact purpose.
“Hi, Dad,” she said.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Javier said. “I need your help.”
“Sure thing,” she said. “What can I help you with?”
It couldn’t possibly be this easy. “I need to know where your uncle Dan’s cache is. There’s something in his files that I’m looking for, and it’s really important.”
She looked deeply apologetic. She bit her lower lip like she was confessing a minor infraction: a broken vase, a broken condom. “Sorry, Dad. I have no idea.”
Javier nodded. He was right. It couldn’t possibly be that easy, after all. “Do you have any idea where I might have put it? Have there been any big files floating around that I’ve missed?”
She shook her head. “None that I’ve seen.” She brightened. “I did find all that stuff on Mitch Powell that you’ve been looking for, though! I wrote up a whole report, and everything!”
Javier smiled. “That’s my girl.”
When you searched “Mitch Powell; New Eden Ministries; missionary,” a lot of what came up was porn. There seemed to be a whole subgenre involving catching your vN at home with a New Eden person. It was mostly about catching your female vN with a female New Eden representative. They would usually be naked already, by the time you got home, and then you got in the middle of it, and then the New Eden lady felt bad, and you punished her with the back of a hairbrush or something while the vN girl begged you not to.
But Pastor Mitch Powell also showed up. He was younger. He had hair. It was a mug shot. Apparently he had a few priors. He’d been through the system just like Javier. The American version, at least. He had a youth record, too, but it was closed. His adult record had mostly to do with assault. He would lose his temper. It was for this reason that he and his wife divorced. That, and he was caught on an indecent exposure charge at the Tallapoosa Welcome Centre, a rest stop off the I-20. The boy he was caught with was eighteen at the time of his arrest, which was after midnight. Powell had fucked him while he was on his way home from his birthday party, but legally, it wasn’t statutory rape. In later interviews, Powell claimed that strange luck was all he needed to convince him that God was indeed watching out for him. He searched for a variety of churches. He had been raised Baptist, but had burned bridges in local congregations. He also tried some Maranatha and Charismatic traditions. None of them held him for long. All that changed after he got involved with New Eden.
New Eden was a lot newer, then. It was before the game was developed that would put Jonah LeMarque in prison. Back then, LeMarque was just a young guy who refused to iron his shirts and thought raising money online in advance of the apocalypse was a good way to go about things. He was also able to accept Powell’s sexuality. He encouraged Powell to date. And he did date, but it didn’t go well. His relationships with men were just as prone to acts of violence as his relationship with his wife had been. The charges against him were all dropped, but he was under at least one restraining order that kept him out of his Atlanta suburb for two years.
During these two years, his role in the church changed from devout parishioner to corporate headhunter. He started visiting colleges and universities and hacklabs and makerspaces. He went to fairs. In other states, he visited high schools with robotics clubs. He spoke in front of church youth groups. He attended seminars and talked about the relationship between science and religion and optimism and hope. Little by little, he brought in the scientists that developed the vN.
His most notorious “get” for the organization was Derek Smythe.
Derek Smythe was the lead supervisor on the engineering team that developed the failsafe.
Derek Smythe had died at home, shortly after developing it. His obituary and the eulogies delivered by his tiny handful of friends spoke of the combined pressures of brilliance, post-traumatic stress disorder, and overwork. Only one friend mentioned the curious project he was working on, and the robot he lived with. A gynoid. Named Susie.
“Susie looks just like Amy,” Holberton’s daughter said.
“Yes,” Javier said. “She does.” He frowned at the display. “So, Smythe was helping develop the failsafe?”
“Oh, yeah. He was basically the architect of it. He started developing something similar for NASA as part of his dissertation, but the funding fell through.”
“And now he’s dead?”
Holberton’s daughter raised her eyebrows. It pulled the smudges of blue on her eyes that much higher. “Uh…
duh?
Do you not listen to me at all? Seriously. It’s really annoying.”
“He’s dead,” Holberton said, behind them. He glanced at the avatar. “Go back and have fun with your friends, Rhiannon.”
“OK. See you later!”
She walked back into the frame.
Holberton leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed. He wore a dressing gown that looked suspiciously similar to the brocade and velvet pieces that appeared in the Hammer films. “You know, I really thought we had something special there for a minute, Javier.”
Javier stood. He came very close to Holberton. He slid his hand in between the folds of silk. Holberton pulsed in his hand like a polygraph. “We
would
have something special,” he whispered, “if you weren’t planning the systematic extinction of my entire species.”
He expected the other man to hit him. Or to run. Or to call for help. He didn’t. Instead, he looked down. “I’m sorry about that. Really sorry. I didn’t want it to go down that way.”
He said it like it was a promotion Javier had been passed over for. Like the wholesale destruction of his entire species was a bad interest rate, or some other unfortunate nitty-gritty detail of life that nobody really liked but everybody had to deal with. Like all the vN were no better than any other failed technology. Like he and his boys were just another Corvair, or Betamax, or exploding lithium-ion battery. Years from now, people – chimps – would talk that way about the vN.
They worked just fine, until they didn’t. They were defective. But it’s all fine, now. We got rid of them.
He pulled back and smiled. He looked delighted. “It was
you
,” he said. “
You
broke Jack out.”
“Gold star.” Javier looked back at the display. “Now are you going to tell me where Sarton’s cache is, or are you going to make me suck your dick again like that asshole did?”
Now Holberton did pull away. He retied his robe. “God. No. Jesus.” His mouth fell open. Tears rose in his eyes. “Oh, my God. He…” He covered his mouth with his hand. “I’m so sorry, Javier. I’m so, so sorry.”
He tried to hug Javier, but Javier stepped back and held a hand up. “Please don’t. You’ve done enough.”
Holberton went pale. “So, upstairs… ? Oh, Jesus. Oh, my God. I’m so–”
“Upstairs was fun. You didn’t force me to do anything.” Javier sat down on the stool Rhiannon had previously occupied. “But I still need your help.”
“With what? The food? I can get you the clean stuff, that’s no problem–”
“I need you to explain all this.” He pointed at the display. “And then I need you to answer something for me. But this first.”
“Oh, boy.” Holberton paced for a minute. “I’m getting some gin. Hold on.”
Holberton came back with a bottle of Hendrick’s and a glass full of ice. He clutched a lime in one hand and a bottle of soda under one arm. He set all the items on the table and started pouring. When he was finished pouring, he rimmed the glass with a wedge of lime, but didn’t squirt any of its juice into the drink itself. When he had consumed a good third of his glass, he sat back down.
“I don’t know how much Violet told you, but Derek Smythe supervised a whole team. Coders, testers, the whole bit. But he was the one who answered directly to my father.” Holberton took another drink. “And your missionary man, Powell, he brought Smythe in. Convinced him to join. It was a hard sell. So I guess you could say that this whole turn of events, the way the world is right now, that’s all Powell’s fault.”
I could explain it all to you. I could tell you my whole history. I could tell you that I’m atoning for something. Because I am, Javier. I’m atoning. I’m making something right.
“Oh, God.”
“Literally.” Holberton took another long drink. “I honestly don’t know how vN live without alcohol,” he said. “I mean, what do you do when you want to get drunk?”
“We fuck.”
“Well, then.” Holberton raised his glass. Then he finished it. He seemed to be turning an idea over. But when he opened his mouth, he didn’t say what Javier expected. “You should know something else.”
“What’s that?”
“Derek Smythe turned in the finished failsafe. That’s part of the issue.”
“It wasn’t
finished?
”
“The beta version is the one that went to rollout.”
Javier’s mouth fell open. “That’s… That’s not
legal
, is it?”
Holberton waved a hand. “This kind of thing happens all the time. The oil rigs in the Gulf, for example, their inspections process was shit for decades. The 2008 housing crisis, the SEC had letters coming in for years warning them what would happen, and no one listened. Chernobyl. Walkerton. It happens.” Holberton leaned forward. “We’re flawed, Javier. And we made you flawed, too. And then we covered it up, the same way we cover up every other preventable industrial disaster.”
Javier sat back in his chair. He understood that this variety of artificial light granted humans a sense of warmth, but he felt none of it. If anything, the thought of all those filaments blinking away toward their inevitable decay made him feel decrepit. “But someone would have found out,” he said.